A/N: Thank you to last chapter's reviewers, Kerichi and typin' paw. Enjoy! Happy Holidays to you all, I hope you have a wonderful time.

Part Two

Yes. Of course they are. This is why they flew to Dumbledore. Floo and Apparation can make even the strongest feel queasy, after all, let alone someone in Lily's condition.

She pauses for a second to let this sink in. I don't really know what to say at first.

"We only found out ourselves last week," she says. "Normally we wouldn't have to rush things, but, as you can understand, my position has suddenly become very vulnerable. Going into hiding is really our only option."

"I wanted to stay," James said. "I thought maybe we could protect Lily here. But too many people know where we are, and the area's too populous, it'd be a huge risk to the Muggles around. So we need to start again. This isn't just about us anymore. We'd rather pack our bags then take a chance with our child's life."

I nod. Hearing the words 'take a chance with our child's life' when two minutes ago they were two normal nineteen-year-olds is a bit overwhelming. I also smile slightly, hoping to convey that I've understood.

"Of course. So...will you be using the Fidelius Charm and everything?"

"Yes," they say, and discussion of that, appropriately enough, ends here. I can see now however why the news seems so bittersweet. They're going to have a baby together, and soon they'll be magically cut off from everyone they might have wanted to share the experience with. On pain of death.

"It might not be for long," Lily says. "We might be able to come back one day."

Unconsciously, all three of us take to looking around the room, taking in all its precious details, as if we were all already moving away. I suddenly feel like I've lost something, when not long ago I felt like the luckiest werewolf in the entire world. And that this should happen at Christmas, of all times...

Then again, why should I be the one to worry? I'm not the one having a child. And it is against the spirit of friendship to show a negative attitude at times like these.

"We'll try to finish the war as soon as we can, then," I say, in a tone which might be joking and might not.

It also occurs to me suddenly that in the midst of our gloom at losing the house we've forgotten that the reason for it isn't all that bad. It's actually quite wonderful.

"Congratulations," I say, sincerely. "On the baby."

That seems to drive away the last of the tension. They both relax and look more like their normal selves, though James's hand is still over Lily's. She looks happy.

"Thank you," she says. "I've not been to the Healer's yet, but if I've worked it out right, it's not due 'til the middle of summer. Which seems like a very long way away now, but I bet it'll come round in no time."

James gives me an amusing look, as if to say; "Yeah, what she said."

What else do you say when your friends announce something like this? I don't know. I'm nineteen, it's not something I've ever been through.

"What will you call it?" I ask.

They burst out laughing. "God knows," James says. "We've only just got our heads around the fact that there is a baby, let alone that it's got to have a name."

Lily giggles. "You know that huge parcel I got yesterday, Moony? It was from my mum. She's written a small forest's worth of lists. She also tells me repeatedly that she likes the name Desmond. Desmond, I ask you."

This makes me laugh, and suddenly it's as if nothing's changed. I hope that, if someone ever writes all this down, they remember that behind all the battles and strategies, and all our values and the prices we paid for them, we were still no more than ordinary British teenagers. We were just trying to settle down in a changing world. Except, perhaps, we had to go a bit faster than we would have done under normal circumstances.

One day James tells me, away from Lily, that the day they told Sirius (which was the same day they told me) as soon as she was out of the room Sirius said; "Mate, did you...mean to do that?". Of course that would normally be a horrifyingly inappropriate question to ask expectant parents, except that it was Sirius Black asking James Potter, so it wasn't.
"And what did you say?" I ask, incredulously.
"Well," he responds, "I told him the truth. Which is that while we weren't exactly trying for a baby, we weren't exactly trying not to have one, either, if you know what I mean?"

This is the war for you. You can't always afford to make compromises on what you want. I can't fully understand the spirit of it myself, but then I'm used to compromising.

Lily, of course, has her own feelings to share on the subject. She's already stocking up on pregnancy guides, baby books, photo albums, pre-natal supplements, maternity clothes, and more.

"I can't stop thinking about it," she says. "Every morning my first thought is that in August I'm going to be a mum. I'm going to have a baby, James and I are going to have a baby! There are moments when I just can't believe it's real," she laughs, "but that won't last long, if my pregnancy is anything like my mother's. But it's...it's phenomenal, in a way, isn't it, Remus?"

I laugh quietly. "It is. I could never do it myself."

Over the next two weeks I'm living in three different worlds. During the day I work in the Muggle café which is decorated with tinsel, and the people there talk about things they're buying for their children. A couple of the old women as me, as a teenager, about what's fashionable, and when I have no idea what to say Maureen laughs and says "He's from the Falklands!" and for some reason a few customers think this is absolutely hilarious. I think it must be some comedy only Muggles understand.

Then there's the war. This time two years ago I would have been horrified at myself for summarising it so shortly but it's gone on so much you I feel like I can. It is still the same fight for glory, for freedom, for my rights and the rights of people I love, for safety, health, for...life, really, if you get to the bottom of it. The same thing that I cheerfully offered to die for. And I don't think I'd have my life any other way even when I think I'm going to die a random, painful death, because it's the only thing I want to do.

But it's much harder at Christmas. Especially when your third world - the one that would be the best - is becoming emptier every day.

The Potter house is a Christmas-free zone. James and Lily are moving on the twentieth and so have made a decision not to put up any decorations. I think they're reluctant to get into the Christmas spirit when they've got so many other things to think about. When I come back after the cheery Muggle world into the house, which has a bit less furniture every day, I feel like the world's gone dark. The only thing in the house to remind us of Christmas is our advent calendars, which, like Lily's pregnancy books and the clock in Dumbledore's office that I still see sometimes in my dreams, seem to be counting down to something far more important than some little festivity. Goodbye, Christmas. See you next year?

And so what, I say to myself. It's just Christmas. In Britain especially we do the same things every year. Eat Christmas pudding, eat sprouts, worry about gaining weight. Go shopping. Joke to ourselves about Santa and his reindeer (James says he does not know how he will explain the reindeer's look to his son or daughter, because any child of Prongs will know that deer lose their antlers in the winter). Listen to Slade (many times). Pull crackers. Muggles, I learn, have a passion for fictional death on Christmas Day. This is completely incomprehensible to me.

It's only Christmas. There is more to life. Christmas 1977 there was a full moon and I spent most of the day ill in bed, so really that wasn't a great jolly holiday either.

...Except that the house was still decorated, Dad still read to me, and Maman still cut up and fed me my dinner when I didn't have the energy for it myself. So even then, we worked something out.

Christmas 1979 could be the last Christmas I ever have. God forbid, it could be the last for James, Lily and their unborn baby as well. I've got to do something. I cannot let it slip by.

But how do you celebrate Christmas in an empty house? What's Christmas when after it, you know two of your best friends will be hidden from you at the risk of their own lives? I go over ideas in my head whenever I can. It serves as a useful distraction on patrols, or certainly better than singing that Muggle song in my head that makes me think of Dorcas. Last Christmas I gave you such good chocolate it might as well have been my edible heart. And this year? Humbug.

One slow morning at the café Maureen invites me to join her in the back room for tea. In the space there is a kettle, a fridge, a noticeboard with Christmas cards and Health & Safety advice pinned to it and a round plastic table. The only thing that I've never seen before is on the table. It looks like some kind of biscuit, formed into an incomplete house shape like a little country cottage. Its like she's building a sort of edible sculpture. The only kind of edible sculptures we have in the wizarding world are made of ice - which isn't edible, but Sirius chipped off a bit of the sculptures at James and Lily's wedding to put in our drinks.

I look at it closely. I haven't seen one of these since I was four and Mama took me to Strasbourg for the Christmas market. It was before I was a werewolf so it was easy for my parents to take me places. A whirl of memories come back. I remember receiving a free sample piece of gingerbread into my mitten-covered hands and nibbling it very, very slowly like it was a gift. My mother then bought me a gingerbread Father Christmas for a gift, which I was supposed to take home, but I ate it all in one go. She was too amused to be cross. That was a happier time.

Maureen notices me examining it with curiosity and says "Do you not have those in the Falklands?"
"No," I lie, then honestly say; "I haven't seen a gingerbread house in a long time."

"Well," she says, "I make these every year for my children. I used to make them here so they wouldn't see and try to eat it before it was finished, and even now that they're grown-up they still don't want it in the house 'til it's ready. So, this is my little workshop."

"Will you decorate it?"

"Oh, of course. It wouldn't be a proper house if I didn't decorate, now, would it?"

Much like another house I know, I thought.

"It's funny, isn't it?" I say, as my thoughts begin to run on out of control, "I mean, houses don't have any direct link with Christmas or the Christmas story or anything but for some reason this gingerbread house has become as much a motif as, I don't know, chocolates in advent calendars. I guess it's just because we enjoy it. Or maybe, going on that...I guess the house...represents another comfort, doesn't it? I mean Christmas...is about being happy even in the littlest way, isn't it, and so when you make a little house to eat, you're..."

"It's based on Hansel and Gretel, love, that's all," Maureen says, laughing. She senses I'm an intellectual - she asked me once if I went to boarding school, funnily enough. My posturings don't belong in the café however, so all I do is laugh apologetically and ask for my tea.

All through that afternoon I can't stop thinking about that gingerbread house. It was just a plain thing - even burnt a little at the edges - but it haunts me. It's reminded me so much of home and Christmas and happiness that I can't help playing with it in my mind. If only I could have one of my own! The more I think about it, the more tempted I am to go to the nearest bakery and buy a gingerbread house, even though they're so expensive, sit in my room in the Potter house and deliciously destroy it, from floor to ceiling.

Then suddenly it hits me. A cold empty house is a cold empty house whether it's made of gingerbread or bricks and mortar. They're not so strong, either. The best kind of houses are the ones you put heart into.

I think I know how to celebrate Christmas with Lily and James.

One Saturday afternoon the sky is white with the cold. James has a mission to do and says he'll be back sometime late in the evening. Lily, not wanting to hang around the house (which is now very empty) alone, goes to see her mother, because before long she won't be able to do so without risking her life. I'm left alone. As soon as I hear Lily leaving I open a secret box in my room and take out flour, sugar, eggs, ginger and so on.

Making the mixture is a beautiful experience. I'm the son of a professional cook. Cooking to my mother was a natural and comfortable action, in the same vein as putting your favourite clothes on, and so it is for me, a little bit. I love the feel of the flour under my finger tips - in my imagination it's the same flour that made innumerable pie crusts on our dinner table, and the butter is the same butter that made fluffy fairy cakes that we took on picnics in wicker baskets like the Little Red Riding Hood I never liked. The ginger is a poignant mixture of old and new - my younger self liked gentle tasting ginger, but my older self appreciates its stronger qualities. And the texture of the dough is so soft and touchable, it's like a plaything. It's sensual. I can knead my thoughts and my hopes into it.

Push. How on Earth is it our Prongs is going to be someone's dad, when only two years ago he was trying to dye Snape's hair pink? Stretch. Now really, Remus, you didn't think those sounds at night were from the heating, did you? Pull. God bless us, everyone, but especially baby Potter. Pinch. And I'm not being ironic here.

Push. God, why did I have to go to war? Stretch. Because I was made to, as this house is made to be eaten, I was made to die. Anyway, I don't have anything better to do. Pull. I don't know whether I'm afraid of that or not. Pinch. Christmas, don't die on me, just in case I die on you.

When it's baking the whole kitchen fills with the smell. The oven belonged to James's mother, it's a masterpiece of a machine, though she wasn't any more of a cook than James is, sadly. I feel like I've achieved something. Sometimes I wonder about the origins of cooking - Cavewizards on a fire, you know. Who found all the things we love now? What did it feel like to taste gingerbread for the first time in history? But most importantly this smell is now a smell of Christmas, and I feel its special, tickly joy in my heart. It seems right that Christmas should come from something organic, especially this year when our Marauder family has a baby on the way.

Then to the decoration. Since moving into the Potter house I've gotten to know it very well, even the outside of the house, which I unfortunately got to know from the sunrise after the full moon. On a few moons Prongs hasn't been around to keep me in check, as it were, and so I've had to lie on the grass outside before Lily wakes up, letting my humanity come back to me as I stare at the beams of the house and the reflection of the sky in the French glass windows. I try to imitate the house as much as I can. The French windows are made of melted lemon drops - the yellowy tinge could be a lamp or the sun.

This gingerbread house is no more empty than the Potter house, for the next few days at least. I've crafted a family too. I didn't have any man-shaped cutters and so had to squish them together, but that gave me some room for creativity. Gingerbread James is wiry and has big shoulders and a big head. He's stood at the door, looking out at everyone. Gingerbread Lily has a wide dress on - partly because I'm lazy and partly because Real Lily's already getting into the habit of wearing large jumpers and plucking the fabric around her stomach area. She's peeking out of the window, because she's in the warm with Gingerbread Baby. Gingerbread Baby - yes, call me sentimental, but it's family too - has a squashy face where it got a bit undercooked. Say it's got its mother's plump cheeks. And then there's Gingerbread Me, even scrawnier than Gingerbread James, stood outside with Gingerbread Sirius and a suitcase made of Liquorice Allsorts.

By the time we close the café for the night, it's ready.

Once again, we have a family dinner. It's different these days because we only have three plates and three sets of cutlery unpacked, and Lily's appetite varies a lot, and we don't go shopping for too many perishable ingredients. Today we've got baked potatoes with a pile of cheese, and some bacon on the side.
"How was the mission?" Lily asks James, quietly.
"Unproductive," he says. "So, it could be worse. How's your mum?"
"Fine. Still insistent on 'Desmond'. I really don't think it matters if our baby's name goes with Dudley. It's not like they're going to grow up together."
I decide not to mention that Sirius has nicknamed Frank and Alice's baby 'Neville', and plans to nickname this baby 'Algernon'. They don't ask me anything, as they're entirely engaged in their own conversation and for once, I really like that, because once I'm finished I sneak off and, like the fantastic waiter I am, bring the gingerbread house to the table.

They don't say anything at first, they just look slightly confused, so I feel obliged to break the silence and introduce the meal - again, like a good waiter!

"I made this for us," I said. "I thought it was something Christmassy to do."

"Oh yeah," James says dryly. "Round here, you'd hardly know it was Christmas." But he doesn't take his eyes off of it.

"Oh, Remus…it's absolutely gorgeous," Lily says, slowly approaching her fingers towards all my little delicate handiwork. "It must have taken you hours. You're brilliant!"

"Hey, it's got people!" James says. By now he's also poking around the house, and he says this with the tone of a child discovering a new toy. "Are these little people us?"

"Yes," I said. "They're us. Peter's on the roof in rat form. I kind of forgot him as I was baking. Say he's waiting for Father Christmas."

James laughs, and moves his own fingers over the candies and decorations. "Hey look, Lily, we've got a gingerbread baby."

He pulls Gingerbread Baby out through the door and makes it dance on the path, which makes Lily laugh. "I'll eat it," she says. "The real baby's bound to enjoy the taste." Her own fingers pluck Gingerbread Me from his comfortable stance in the 'snow'. "And this is you?"

"Yes," I say. I'm stood awkwardly at the table, my arms hanging at my sides just as uselessly as they are on my gingerbread self, stood in the icing snow.

"We're not watching you leave our gingerbread house, are we?" James asks. His voice has the usual Marauder's joking tone, but at the same time I sense he's genuinely concerned about what I'm trying to say. I know that they love me as much as I love them, and try as I might to prove that I'm OK and I can deal with anything that comes our way, and that I genuinely am glad they're having a child together, they still feel slightly guilty for throwing me out so quickly. That, or offended that I'd think they are kicking me out.

"No," I say, honestly. "This house is the house of the Gingerbread Potters, and all three are very happy, and the other Gingerbread Marauders are perfectly content to leave them on their own. Except around Christmas time, when they come together - if only for a moment - for old times' sake. And then, maybe, OK, they go away again, but as long as they have these moments...especially at Christmas because Christmas is…special…they know that whatever happens they'll always find something to keep them together. In this case, ridiculous quantities of jam and icing."

Those tiny tears are on Lily's cheeks again, but this time I know she's better. She invites me to sit down.
"Remus, thank you. Really…I never thought we'd get the chance to say goodbye"
"Or have a Christmas," James said. "And while I'm apparently supposed to be a grown man and that, I did just keep wanting to break the decorations out. It seems so odd that we've just found out we're going to be a family and we're not even…"
"But we are now," Lily says. "You know, I don't think the decorations were the thing we were forgetting, guys"

I don't really need to go into much more detail about what we said, and did. All I can tell you is that we did what we needed to do - we stopped. Stopped thinking about time, time, time, for our lives and the baby's life and the war. Stopped thinking about the things we were losing and sacrificing. Christmas, like so many other things, doesn't last long, so sometimes you have to stop and watch, and love the situation you're in while it lasts. Because if you can just do that, then the time afterwards doesn't seem quite so bad.

The gingerbread house is suspended in time, just like we are. The Gingerbread Potters and Gingerbread Marauders will be happy forever and ever. Maybe the real ones will too, who knows? We can watch them for a moment, think about them, admire them. But they have to go, they have to, there's no way around it, so we might as well enjoy the journey.

We take apart the house together. James and Lily feed each other pieces, and while they're distracted I take the chimney for myself. I'd wanted to save it but it's all gone before we know what we're doing. Again, like a lot of things.

But it was delicious, and we wouldn't change a thing.