Promise

"Lily?" James shouted from the hallway.

"Coming," she replied, "two seconds." Quickly she slipped the pregnancy test into the deep pocket of her jeans and splashed some cool water on her face. She looked in the mirror; it wasn't too obvious that she's been crying and besides it's wasn't like James' would notice, he'd been on the night shift for a week and she doubts he'll be up for anything other than crashing on the sofa right now.

Silently she moves into the hall. James is leaning against the wall, flanked on either side by Sirius, who wears an ugly look, and a long scratch along the side of his face, and Hestia whose pink tinged eyes suggest that Lily isn't the only one who has been crying.

"Who?" Lily asks in a strangled voice, her green eyes meeting James' hazel.

James sighs, "Edgar Bones," he whispered, shaking his head slightly, "Him and his whole family."

Lily blinked, "All of them?" she asked sadly, wiping a tear from where it had formed in the corner of her eye.

"All of them." Sirius confirmed, "Edgar, his wife… I always forget her name…"

"Mellissa." Hestia injected quietly

"Yeah," Sirius agreed, "Mellissa, Bee – "

Lily put a hand to her mouth; Edgar's eighteen year old daughter Beatrice (or Bee as everyone called her) had been a Hufflepuff two years bellow them at school. After graduating, and much to her father's annoyance, she had joined the order and even accompanied Lily on a few missions.

"By the looks of it they tortured her pretty badly first – We think she must have been trying to let the other get away." Sirius continued brusquely, "Fat lot of good it did them, Kyle got a few metres up the stair and Angie a little bit further, but –," he broke of a disgusted look on his face, "God, I swear they're getting worse. Angie, well, they messed her up pretty badly." Sirius paused, "What kind of sick bastard uses the cutting curse on a nine year old?

Lily felt the bile rise in her throat, was this really the kind of world she wanted to bring a kid into? Would she want her baby to suffer the kind of fate that Edgar's family had? She moved closer towards James who pulled her tight into his chest and gave her a small peck on her cheek. With his free hand he gestured to the living room door and they four teenagers trouped in and sat, crammed together on one of the sofas.

"I've never seen Mad-Eye so upset." James said after a moment, breaking the heavy silence. He addressed Lily, "He arrived just after we did, apparated straight inside and ran upstairs. I thought he'd gone mad, since when does Mad-Eye ever enter a building without giving it the once over?"

"They were his god kids" Lily told him. "He and Edgar were old friends, some of the first members of the order."

"God," Hestia muttered burying her head into Sirius' shoulder, "Oh god… when are they going to stop…? It's so bloody horrible. "

James gave her a wry smile, "You remember last year, at Christmas, when everybody was going on about how the war was going to be over soon, that we'd win. Nobody talks like that anymore…"

Sirius nodded, glancing down at his watch, "we'd better be off." He said, "Coming Hest?"

"Sure." She smiled getting up and hugging Lily, "See you tomorrow?" she asked hesitantly.

"Yeah," Lily agreed, "I'll floo you in the morning."

Sirius snaked an arm round Hestia's waist, "We'll pop by Moony's on the way back, tell him… tell him the news." Sirius told James.

A few minutes later Sirius and Hestia sailed off in a cloud of motorbike exhaust and Lily and James picked their way up the stairs to their bedroom. They cuddled down together under the thick duvet, listening to the sounds of the cars going past in the street below their window. "James," Lily said her voice laced with worry, "Promise me that that will never happen to us."

James didn't hesitate, "I promise." He said

A/N – Hello and thanks for reading! Does anyone think that I should continue this past three chapters or should I just end when she tells James she's pregnant? Review and tell me!