Hi all, so I am back to this wonderful fandom with a new story! I am taking a delve into a fandom, an era and a couple that has always fascinated me and it's the James/Lily era.

This is the second part of the story that started in the Beginning of the End and these are the moments in the first Wizarding War and the build up to Harry.

This story will be twenty chapters long and some events/events that do take place might be missed.

Also spelling/grammar...not my best thing. Again keep that in mind when you read...please.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.

Please Read and Review.

And on a side note, I like so many other Fanfiction Authors no longer receive notifications via email about reviews/PMs etc. So if you do send any it might be a while, if ever before I get back to you. Please keep that in mind for it is not intentional-If anyone has a fix please let me know

I do not receive PMs anymore, if you have a question stick it in a review and I will answer it in the chapter notes.

The End Of The Beginning

Chapter 12-Ghost Of My Child

Lily contemplates pregnancy after a series of symptoms lead her to believe what Alice Longbottom is telling her to be true.

At first she chalked the sickness down to the sheer volume of sorrow she was under. Sorrow, stress, sickness. All three went hand in hand and you did not have to be a healer or a doctor to tell her that.

The Bones were just the beginning. The Prophet talked about the Wizarding World being at crisis point, that this was the beginning of the end. Lily did not know what to make of that. She tried not to read the Prophet because she was sure that her blood pressure would spike too much and with her body besieged by some kind of illness she did not want to read the words that stared up at her. James most times picked up the thing and read it in one and then threw it into the fire or out the window or on more than one occasion threw it at the owl delivering the paper who would stare down it's beak at him as if to say he was not impressed.

Other than that things were going quite well.

She found that she was enjoying being a wife, and living with her husband. She found that she rather enjoyed living with James. They had never lived together before they had gotten married which looking back in hindsight was a rather stupid thing to do. Maybe it would have been easier if they had lived together and they would have gotten their worst habits would have been realised.

Seriously if he left one more fucking teabag on the counter after he was done with it then she was going to snap.

But it was like playing house. It was like when she was a little girl before she knew that she was witch and she and Petunia had played with their giant doll house. Petunia had always wanted to use that doll house to play elaborate games and plan dinner parties and be the charming housewife making puddings in the salmon pink cocktail dress welcoming guests graciously to her home. Lily had never been into that. Her home had always had a library with a warm fire and the door locked at ten PM. She never wanted to be the graceful hostess pretending not to flinch when someone got to drunk or too grabby.

Fortunately she had not married a man like that.

She had married someone else instead. Someone who did not want that life.

But it was in itself like playing house. She found she liked the fact that she was able to cook food and James would come home and help her. She liked that sometimes their ideas of staying in was just cuddling on the sofa. She liked the fact that they had turned his parents bedroom into theirs. She liked the fact that he had cleaned out his bedroom one afternoon while she chatted with Bathilda Bagshot who had some of the most wonderful stories of her travels.

James didn't…he had claimed one night that he had heard them all before and too be honest Lily had been one of the few people who had thoroughly enjoyed History of Magic at Hogwarts and had not been off putted by Professor Binns dull and dreary voice.

(Of course that had made her exceptionally popular come exams time when she had been the only one—aside from Remus—who had a full set of notes. The two of them had called a truce during this time to sit in the library nibbling at Muggle Easter eggs—here Remus had been thrilled there was a holiday dedicated to chocolate in the muggle world—and had been very, very smug about it)

She had sat there and tried to do her best to focus on other things but the sickness however (which was what had started this whole mess) had kept coming. It was now not just when she smelt roast pork or when she saw scrambled eggs in the pan or when James brought home fresh fruit. It was also affected their sex lives. James and her had fallen into a wonderful little habit of having sex wherever they could (perks of having an empty house if she was being honest) and now everytime he touched her breasts she found she was wincing in pain and not sighing in desire which was not the go to reaction that James wanted from his wife in moments such as these.

She thought about it as she dressed one morning for Alice Longbottom's baby shower. Baby showers were apparently this thing that you did when you got the Mummy to be lots of presents and it was a fairly new thing—certainly Lily had never gone to one before. She didn't even know if she was an Aunt. She didn't really even know if she had brother in law. Conversations between her and her sister were even fewer than few and far between. Lily had gotten Alice's new unborn baby a stuffed owl that chirped when you squeezed it. It was muggle enough for Alice and Frank to consider it a novelty and so she was looking forwards to going.

James had simply said that he had plans with Sirius. She was not sure what it was about him these days but he and Sirius didn't seem to spend their time together doing much. Watching the four of them together it was as if there was a big breakdown in communication between them. Lily looked and thought that they were all hiding secrets from each other. If this was what they were like one year out of Hogwarts what were they going to be like in five years, ten, fifteen?

It made her want to shake the four of them until their teeth rattled. She missed Marlene every single damn day. She missed Mary too. She had made two friends at Hogwarts and both of them were dead one within six weeks of finishing the school and the other within six months of leaving it. Families were being ripped apart, kids being took out of class or coming home to find houses destroyed and people dead on the floor. The Dark Mark was appearing so fast over so many different houses that it was a hard job for the Ministry to cover it up to the Muggles. It was getting more and more obvious to the Muggles that something was going on and if someone, somewhere didn't get a grip soon then she was sure that the entire thing was going to be blown apart and that the Muggles would finally learn the truth about this other world that was hidden nine times out of ten right in front of their very eyes.

Of what that would mean going forwards Lily really couldn't think.

Instead she chose to focus on the good. And even though she knew, she knew, that something was going on with her husband that he was not telling her about she also didn't want to focus on him today either. She and James had come a long way since that afternoon under the old beech tree where he had told Sev to apologise to her. She thought that it was truly something when two people like her and James could come so far in such a short amount of time.

There had been a hell of a lot of growing up to do and there was still a hell of a lot of growing up to do but she thought to herself that morning as she kissed James on her way out of the house, that there was time.

Time.

Maybe she was finally believing in it.

Alice's baby shower was in full swing when she got there. She knew many of the woman there and some that she did not but she found she integrated well. She spoke to a new married woman Mira Patil who was younger than she was but happily speaking of how she had gotten married barely before the last NEWT was done and she found it rather soothing to know that she was not the only person in this messed up, crazy world that had gotten married young.

She also met Sinead O'Finngan who was as crass as fuck (to put it mildly) but Lily liked as well. She eyed Lily up and down for a second as Alice pottered off into the kitchen to show them all what Frank had given her when she had told him she was pregnant.

"So when are you due then?"

Lily blinked aware that several people were now looking at her. Sinead O'Finngan looked at her with raised eyebrows and a face that was not unkind but not kind either. Actually she was not sure what it was. It was hard to put into words.

Actually a lot of things right now where hard to put into words.

"I beg your pardon?" she said quietly. "I don't…I don't understand?"

"Well I assumed it was obvious" the older woman said with an eye roll. "Your what? Three months gone? Certainly that's what my instincts tell me and believe me girl I am the youngest of seven sisters. Pregnancy is something that I know about and know about well. To say nothing of my two boys at home. I know a pregnant woman when I see one."

"I'm not though" Lily said. The idea alone was ridiculous. Okay sure she and James hadn't been using contraception because…well…since their honeymoon they had never really discussed it. She had ran out and trying to get contraception in France had been tricky but she had gone straight back on it when she had gone home. And yes of course she was eating everything in sight and being sick in the morning but that was just stress that came with being in a war and perhaps everything was tender because she was…you know…growing pains?

Wow. Even in her head that last one sounded pathetic.

"I'm not…I don't…I don't know…I mean…I can't be" she said finally. She put her glass on the floor and stood up her hands shaking.

"I can't be" she said and she turned and walked away up the stairs of the little house and into the bathroom where she sat on the closed toilet lid and tried very hard to talk herself out of the panic attack that was coming.

She was not pregnant.

She. Was. Not.

Was she?

The more she sat there the more she thought about it the more that it scared her that she could be right. Because her symptoms did match up and she was late now she thought about it but she had chalked it down to stress, to the constant agony that came with being at war, the stress of wondering weather or not today was the day she was going to lose someone else. The panic when she saw James walk out the door or when he was late and she had to wonder if he was ever coming back and now what? She was supposed to have a baby on top of this? She didn't even know if James wanted children. They had never even discussed it. She had thought their headlong rush into marriage was romantic, that they had defeated the odds but the truth of the matter was now she was thinking that it was stupid. There was so much that they had not discussed. So much that they had not considered. They had not considered children. Why?

And Lily knew the answer. It was that after Marlene they had both thought they would be dead. So what? She had a baby (if she was pregnant) and if something happened to James she would raise it alone? Or James would if she was the one killed? Or God forbid if they were both killed then what? Sirius was raising the child.

Oh Good Lord, McGonagall would never forgive her.

She sat there put her head in her hands trying to envision a future in which she was a mother and it wasn't terrifying to imagine that. She thought about what that would entail even as someone knocked on the door and she found that she was terrifying.

"Lily?"

It was Alice.

This was technically her house so Lily could not justify keeping the door shut. She opened it and Alice waddled in leaning against the wall groaning.

"Merlin I will be happy when this little bugger is out. You know…Frank wants a boy? I'd be happy with whatever but he really wants a boy. Talks about Quidditch a lot but the reality is that he can't fly for a second so I don't know how that is going to work—"

"Do you think I might be pregnant?" Lily asked quietly interrupting her. Alice shot her a look.

"Do you think you might be pregnant?" she said quietly and Lily bit her lip unable to say it. Eventually she nodded. Alice nodded back and walked to the mirror where her drugs cabinet was and opened it throwing a small vial of potion at her which Lily caught as easily as dodging curses and she stared at it.

"Drink it, pee, that's how you know, if it's red then your pregnant, if it's blue your not. And then you go down to the your muggle place and do what they do to make sure, I know you Lily. If you get two responses from two different worlds when you'll know. What you do after that is entirely up to you"

Lily nodded though she barely heard the tough love speech. Alice smiled at her and then she went out the room with a smile back to her baby shower, to her life, to her future and she gritted her teeth staring at the little vial until she was sure that she was going to smash it with how hard that she was gripping it.

She gritted her teeth again and then she chugged it down in one gulp. She didn't have to wait long.

Pregnant.

The muggle test she took on the way home?

Pregnant.

She was pregnant.

Lily Evans was pregnant with James Potter's baby.

And Lily did not have a clue what to do next.

So yeah I introduced a few people...

Next Chapter-James and Lily must decide what to do now that they know that they are pregnant, married young, in the middle of a war and on a hitlist. Having a baby is just stupid...is it?

There will be mentions of abortion in the next chapter, I am a pro choice woman and I make no apologies for that, if this offends you then I am giving you fair warning to skip the next chapter.