PlEASE R&R


Lily lay on the bed with a book open in front of her but she wasn't reading it. She could hear muffled voices carrying up the stairs and through the open doorway. Rain pelted the window, lightning flashing beyond the warmth and comfort of the indoors. She flipped the pages of the old book carelessly.

She had always loved rain. She could remember playing in it with her sister when they were children, jumping in mud puddles, wearing brightly colored galoshes, joyfully getting soaked to the bone. So long ago. It had began to rain the day that she had discovered her pregnancy and hadn't stopped in over a week. She could sense the restlessness of everyone in the house, including herself, the desire to be out there, doing something, finding their lost friend. They had heard nor seen anything of Caradoc and had all but given up hope.

Lily dropped the book to the floor where it lay dejectedly, still open on the page that she had had it on, the spine broken, the faded cover against the floor where she couldn't see it. She reached down, annoyed, slammed the book shut properly and shoved it under the bed to join the multitude of other things that she or James had been too lazy to store properly in the weeks that they had been living there. A small dust cloud emerged, disturbed from the ground, making her sneeze.

She flipped over onto her back and drew several of the lumpy pillows up under her head. She examined the gold band that James had placed on her finger several long weeks before and then with a sigh at her own impatience, she reached down and pulled up the old shirt of James' that she was wearing, only to find herself looking once again at her very flat, though tanned stomach. There was nothing like weeks on the beach to make you look as not pregnant as possible. She ran her hand over it several times but came up with nothing, no telltale signs of a baby growing inside of her. The only sigh she had was the nausea and exhaustion. Wonderful.

She heard the footsteps on the stairs but she didn't look up until they entered the room.

"Hey Lily, I was just looking for the ...uh..."

Sirius broke off midway through his sentence.

"Um, Lily?"

She didn't pull the shirt down. She ran her hand over her stomach once again and looked up at her friend.

"What do you think?" she demanded, gesturing to her body.

"Er... umm..." He glanced from side to side as if he was afraid that he was about to get caught doing something inappropriate. Lily laughed and pulled the shirt down. He looked immensely relieved.

"What were you looking for?" she asked but he seemed to have forgotten why he had come up. He crossed to the bed and spread himself out on his stomach next to her, with his legs dangling over the end. She wondered if he would ever stop growing.

"So what's up?" he asked her casually but she could hear the concern in his voice and could see it reflected in his handsome brown eyes. Once again, he seemed much more serious than his usual joking self and she realized that she missed the old Sirius, padfoot, the person that she had hated for six years. She sighed deeply and readjusted the pillows beneath her head. She didn't know what to say. Lightning flashed outside the window and the rain began to pound harder against the window. She wondered if it was possible for the water to break through the glass.

"Your worried."

He stared at her expectantly as if he had asked a question.

"The baby?"

Obviously. She didn't know that she had thought of much else since she had found out. Every possible emotion had run through her. Ecstacy, joy, excitement, panic... But she seemed to have gotten stuck somewhere between happiness and worry, closer to worry. She pulled the shirt up again, as if expecting there to have been a change in under a minute.

"There's so much danger. Too much." She paused. "I don't know what I'm doing."

"By that do you mean with the whole being a good mother thing, or the protecting the kid from evil thing?" he asked curiously.

"Everything!"

She found herself gripping at her hair like a crazy person and Sirius had to gently reach up and pry her fingers from her head before she did any damage.

"Lils" he said gently, in the voice that one would use to calm an upset child. "You'll be a great mother." He didn't say anything about the evil part of the equation but she didn't point that out, knowing there was no genuine answer that he could give her about that. She raised herself up onto one elbow and looked at him.

"I don't know anything about kids. I've never even held a baby before" she said, her eyes daring him to find ways around those issues. He just grinned and shrugged.

"No biggie. You'll figure it out. Your one of the smartest people I know. Heck, your almost as bright as me" he said jokingly. Then " Have you talked to James about this stuff?" he asked slightly uncomfortably and more seriously.

"Gee, you're so helpful" she muttered sarcastically, ignoring his question. She hadn't made any of her thoughts known to her husband because she hadn't wanted him to be anything but happy about their child. Was she sheltering him?

She grabbed a pillow from behind her and shoved it in Sirius' face. He laughed, but didn't retaliate, pulling the pillow under his chin and folding his arms under it.

"Any other major issues you need to talk about?"

"Ya. I can't exactly fight in these battles when I'm huge, can I?"

"So what?"

"So what! What am I supposed to do while you lot are all off fighting evil?"

"Learn to cook?" he suggested lightly, ducking out of the way of the blows she aimed at him. "Joking, joking! We'll figure out something, we always do, you can still be helpful" he added hastily under her glare.

"Hehem."

They both looked around to find James standing in the open doorway, arms and legs crossed, watching them with mild interest.

"It's not what it looks like, I swear!" Sirius cried dramatically. He reached over and yanked Lily's shirt back down over her ever exposed stomach, jumped up from the bed with his hands in the air and tripped over his own feet. He fell back onto the bed with a thump, bouncing the headboard against the wall and lay there, gasping for breath. Lily and James both burst out laughing.

He leapt back up more carefully and sashayed across to the door. James moved past him into the room and Sirius reached out one hand, quick as a shot, and rubbed his knuckles on his friends head. James waved him away and with a deep bow to the room at large Sirius closed the door and was gone.

Still laughing, James yanked his t-shirt up and over his head, throwing it to the ground to join the last weeks worth of clothing and took the spot that Sirius had just vacated.

"Geez, and I thought we would be married at least a year before I found you in bed with another guy."

He grinned and reached up to run a hand through his messy hair but Lily beat him to it, pushing her fingers through his dark hair. He rested his head on the pillow and closed his eyes. She watched his serene expression for a moment but Sirius had been right before. She couldn't just talk to anyone. She wanted, no she needed, to talk to him, even if he had even less idea about what they were doing than she did, it would help to talk to him. She had married him for a reason, after all.

"James, what are we doing?"

She hadn't meant for it to come out in that way and she knew it wouldn't make sense to him, out of context as it was.

He blinked a number of times, thinking, but couldn't seem to make her words fit. "Huh?"

"With this?"

She pulled up the shirt she was wearing for the third time, running her hand over her stomach again. James grinned and placed a hand over hers. He looked like a little boy at christmas time, greedy and in awe, as if he had just received the most amazing gift that he could have ever asked for, the same look that he had had for her on their wedding day. She didn't want to be the one to wipe that look from his face.

"What are we doing?" she repeated, pushing his hand away gently, so that he would focus on her face instead, and listen to what she was saying.

"What do you mean?" he asked, clearly still confused.

"I'm worried James. This could go so badly wrong. We put ourselves in danger everyday, Lord Voldemort wants us dead and we don't even have a home. Are we going to raise our child here at headquarters? Were about to have a baby for christ sake and I don't know the first thing about children. Were homeless James, homeless and were about to have a baby!"

James was staring at her bewildered and she found herself hyperventilating, the worry having expanded past the happiness to the panic level. She was repeating herself over and over again. Her body and her mind ached.

"Hey, Everything's gonna be great, trust me" James said, trying to regain his composure and catch up to her. He reached out and stroked her hair gently. "Ya, were gonna have a kid, but not yet. We have so much time to figure all this stuff out, Lils." Like Sirius, he had reverted to using her old nickname in an attempt to calm her and was speaking to her as if to a child. At least they would all have plenty of practice with that she thought bitterly, wondering if her current mood had anything to do with the pregnancy as she had never been so panicky before, never been farther from calm. She took deep, steadying breaths. James looked relieved as she began to relax.

"Listen to me, we'll figure everything out, we'll get a house with a yard to play in, and maybe a cat or something." His voice was so gentle and reassuring even though she knew he was making it all up to placate her. He pulled her close to him and she pressed her back against his warm chest, his arms encircling her, his chin resting on the top of her head as he continued to resite everything that they would accomplish and how much time they had to do it. Everything would be great.

Deeply asleep an hour late, she didn't notice him pulling gently away from her, and she didn't hear him tiptoeing quietly from the room.

****

"Lily! Lily! Wake up!"

She was being shaken, and she was ice cold and shivering. Lily groaned, turned her head, and buried her face more deeply in her pillow, simultaneously fumbling for a blanket and trying to get back to the dream she had been having, the dream that she couldn't quite remember. She cursed under her breath and opened her eyes into the pillowcase. He was still shaking her.

"I know your awake Lils" he pestered obnoxiously.

She rolled over, planted both palms on his chest and gave a shove. James hadn't been expecting it and toppled over backwards off of the bed. She returned to a sleeping position but James' fall didn't seem to get the hint across as she had intended it too.

"I've found us a house Lily" he was saying enthusiastically from the floor. "In Godric's Hollow, where I grew up. Not quite like the farm, it's just a little cottage in town. It's wonderful though, the perfect place." Then he stopped and there was a long pause. "I should have asked you if you wanted to live there" he said finally. "If you don't want to, thats fine, but you were talking about a home and I remembered and I just thought since...you know"

She groaned again, feeling slightly guilty, and sat up. He was grinning at her. He must have stayed up most of the night to get things worked out. She could tell by his bloodshot eyes, disastrous hair and five o'clock shadow that made him look like a hobo that he hadn't gotten much, if any, sleep that night.

"You found us a house?"

James nodded.

She couldn't quite conceal the joy she felt that they wouldn't be raising a child at the headquarters of the order of the phoenix. Living there short term was one thing, but making a life in the old house was quite another. She returned James' sloppy grin.

"Thats great!" she said joyously. "But can I hear about it in the morning?" she asked, fluffing one of her pillows, hoping to beat out the lumps.

James chuckled. "It is morning Babe."

She glanced around, surprised, and saw that he was right. The shades were drawn down over the one window in the room but light filtered through around the edges and she realized that she could hear birdsong outdoors. It must have stopped raining too.

" You know, you look kind of frightening right now" James said casually, still on the floor. "Your hairs sticking up all over the place and-"

He stopped talking abruptly as she lunged herself at him, pinning him to the floor.

"I still love you! And just cause your frightening doesn't mean your not still hot!" he pleaded stupidly, his voice muffled by her hair.

A pounding noise from their left made them both freeze.

" Could you lot shut up?" Peter called through the wall.


SO I THOUGHT THIS WAS GONNA BE A REALLY SHORT CHAPTER BUT IT TURNED OUT TO BE ONE OF THE LONGEST, WHICH IS WEIRD, CAUSE THERE AREN'T EVEN ANY FIGHTS OR ANYTHING. HOPE YOU ENJOYED IT. PLZ REVIEW.