~Written for The 2017 House Competition, Round 1~

House: Ravenclaw

Category: Short Story

Prompt: Jily

Word Count: 1960

For A Little Harry

"Disgusting! You abhorrent child!"

"Dad –"

"My daughter? To think that my daughter would do such a thing?"

"Dad, please, it's not like we're –"

"I withstood it. I withstood knowing so little about him. I didn't object when he came for dinner and said little enough about who the bloody hell he was. I held my bloody tongue when he stayed the night under my roof when you came home from work all but collapsing after 'a job' that I still know nothing about. Again and again, I've put up with it. But this?"

Lily wasn't crying. She couldn't let herself, and not because she didn't want to. She couldn't because for this… this was so wrong. Not tears as much as anger welled within her. "Dad, it's not like that. We're going to get married and we're –"

"Has he proposed? Has he? Where's the ring? What're his plans?"

"Dad –"

"Does he have a house? Is his job – the job I know nothing about – stable enough to support you? Can he support you?"

"Yes!" she burst out. "Yes to all of that! The house, the job, the – the –! And I can support myself, Dad! I can –"

"With a bloody baby, Lily? Nineteen, unmarried and with a baby?"

Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears. The walls seemed too close and the hallway, the span between herself with her back pressed against the front door and her father looming tall and quivering with rage, seemed somehow smaller. Her mother watched from behind him, shaking her head, lips pinched. Petunia watched too, her own lips as pinched as their mother's and distaste hollowing her cheeks.

All of them. All of them thought she was in the wrong. Because of James, because of their youth…

Because of their baby.

Lily wrapped a hand around her belly. It had yet to swell, but she could feel it. She felt her baby, her anonymous child, and her heart ached with a love the likes she'd never before felt for anything. Never for anyone. And her father was angry? He was hateful?

"It'll work out," she said, because she truly believed that. "It will."

"Nineteen and with a baby," her father growled again. He spoke the word as though it were a curse rather than a blessing. "Irresponsible. That my daughter – my daughter – could be so – so –"

Whatever he'd been trying to say fizzled into bluster. His face reddened, lips flapping, and in any other moment Lily might have even thought his voicelessness was amusing. Not then, however. Not then.

She raised her chin. Shame settled within her gut, but for the fact that she'd so upset her father rather than for the act that caused the upset itself. Her baby – her child, her angel, hers – wasn't worthy of guilt. Not from her father and certainly not from Lily herself.

"I'm sorry, Dad," she said, and even to her own ears she sounded insincere. Anger was all that rose within her. Hot and fierce and spitting with rage of her own. "I'm sorry that you're disappointed in me and I'm sorry that I didn't get married and settle down before starting a family. I'm sorry."

"And so you damn-well should be –"

"But I don't regret it." Lily raised her voice in a snap. She saw her mother twitch, saw Petunia flinch, but barely spared them a second of her notice. "I love James, and I love our baby."

"You –"

"And it might have been a little earlier than we'd expected, but it feels right, Dad."

"You would just –"

"We're going to have a family." Now the tears were welling, but they were hopeful rather than distressed, loving rather than ashamed. They were good tears, and she wouldn't let them fall. Not before her father. "Me and James and our baby – we're a family, Dad. We will be."

"Not under my roof," her father growled. He seemed to swell even taller than he had been, shrinking the hallway further and all but blocking out Lily's mother and sister. "Not under my roof. If that Potter boy could be so – so irresponsible as to get you pregnant –"

"The participation was bloody-well mutual, Dad!"

"- then he's not stepping foot in my house. And you," her father jabbed a finger at her, his eyes narrowing until they were barely slits in his flushed face, "will not be seeing him. Not again."

Lily's retort died upon her lips. All words failed her as the order struck her like a blow to the face. "W…what?"

Her father's lips thinned, drawing into a grim smile. Not satisfied but definitely determined. "That Potter boy is not welcome here anymore. Not after what he's done to you. Not unless he gets his act together and – and takes some responsibility for his actions!"

Lily stared. Her hand clutched at her belly once more and her jaw tightened. Anger welled within her once more, of a different kind this time. A slow, yawning fury, deep and black and hateful. Her chin rose further and as she stared at her father, at her hidden mother and sister that said nothing in objection, she hated them.

"Fine," she said curtly. "If he's not welcome here… then neither am I."

Turning on her heel, she left the house. Stunned silence – or was it acceptance? – followed after her, and she didn't care. Lily didn't care for any of it anymore. She didn't glance back as she strode down the cobbled path from her house, between perfectly manicured lawns and snipped shrubs. Not once did she look back.

It was the last time Lily Evans saw her parents.

"But what will we do? Can we even possibly manage?"

"We will."

"What if they're right? It's stupid, I know they're not, but – what if they are?"

"They're not. We'll be fine. I have money."

"Is it enough?"

"It's enough. I have Godric's Hollow, too. You know that. Mum and Dad left it to me."

"But… it'll just be the two of us. Just the two of us and –"

"How can you say that? Of course it's not just us two."

"But –"

"We'll have Sirius, right? He'll be the worst godfather in the world, but we'll have him. Right, Sirius?"

"Right."

"And Remus, too. He'll help us out with everything that we don't know. Need to know how to change a nappy and he's your man."

"That you have so much faith in me is commendable, James, especially given that I've had absolutely no experience with children."

"It's deserved. If nothing else, you'll make a mean guard dog."

"I think you're confusing me with Sirius."

"Woof."

"Shut up, Padfoot."

"And Peter, too. He might not be the most proactive person around kids but it doesn't take a genius to keep an eye on a sleeping baby. Right, Peter?"

"James, I… I don't know if I can –"

"You're not worming your way out of this one, Wormtail. We're a family and we're sticking together. You got that, Lily? All of us together. We're a family, alright?"

"… a family."

"All of us together. And hell, even if we fail, the entirety of the Order of the Phoenix is going to be looking over our shoulder the whole time. You really think McGonagall is going to let us raise a wayward son?"

Laughter rippled through the room, and not a one of their little family didn't add their voices to the chorus. A family. A real family.

For that moment, at least, Lily was content.

She was tired. So, so tired, and in some ways that weariness was worse than the pain.

Or maybe that was the painkillers themselves. As soon as the drugs were administered and the smothering drowsiness settled upon her, the pain had become almost manageable. It was the weariness that was harder to fight now.

But fight she did. She had to. Nothing in the world seemed more important to her than seeing him.

The room was cluttered with too many people that something in the back of Lily's mind told her wasn't that many. Still, it felt crowded. Her bed was illuminated by too many lights – one, but still too many – and the sound of voices were too loud. Murmuring, but still too loud. She wanted peace. She wanted silence.

But most importantly, she wanted him.

"Where -? Where is he?"

It was a struggle to prop herself up. The drowsiness, the dizziness – she might not have been able to feel the pain but for a distant, tearing throbbing, the work of suppressors masking the worst of it, but the weariness was debilitating. Even so, Lily struggled, and she had always been a stubborn person. She forced herself into sitting, wavering on trembling arms, and peered through the midst of too many people.

Where was he?

It was James who brought him. James, as pale and exhausted and weathered as Lily felt, his hair even messier than usual and his glasses askew, but her James who was smiling nonetheless. He held his arms out awkwardly before him, the tension keeping them aloft causing them to shake. Or maybe that was from fear. Maybe it was from wonder. Maybe it was all of that combined.

In the hammock of his arms, wedged between the crooks of his elbows, Lily saw him. Her eyes were bleary, her head swimming, but she wouldn't have missed him for the world. She saw him, and he was…

"He's beautiful," James said. His words caught in his throat, stifled to a choked whisper, but they somehow reached Lily's ears with more comprehensibility than those of the doctor and nurses and midwives.

Her gaze settled upon him as her arms reached, trailing cannula and blankets and shaking with need. She'd lost precious moments to oblivion in the birthing. She couldn't spare any more now. She needed.

The buddle in James' was small. So small, and wrapped like a cocoon in soft, multihued blankets. The circle of his face was ruddy and wrinkled, barely a clutch of thin, sparse hairs matted to his forehead. Was that a frown? He was really frowning, his mouth twisted in a grimace that only added more wrinkles to his blotched skin in an impression that was almost alien in ugliness.

And yet he was perfect. James was entirely right; ugly had never been more beautiful.

The weight of her baby in her arms was the only thing that had ever felt wholly and immediately right in Lily's life. She was tired, so, so tired, and wanted desperately to sleep. But the need to hold, to clutch to her chest a little wrinkled creature that was entirely hers, was more important. More precious.

"Our baby," Lily said, and she didn't realise she was crying until she spoke. Crying, finally crying as she hadn't since she'd left her parents. Crying – and she'd never felt happier in her life. "James, he's our baby."

James curled his arms around her shoulders, but she couldn't glance towards him. The doctor and nurses and midwives still spoke, but she didn't hear them. Her eyes blurred as she stared down at the angel in her arms, but it hardly mattered.

Nothing truly mattered – that they were too young to have a baby, that they were in the midst of a war, that Lily hadn't and likely never would see her family again. None of that mattered, because she had her James and she had her baby. She had her –

"Harry," she whispered, and somehow it came out a sob. "Our little Harry."

Lily didn't need a family who no longer needed her. She had one of her own, and it was completely and utterly perfect.