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.
This chapter does mention abortion. I am a pro choice woman, if that offends you skip this chapter altogether.
The End Of The Beginning
Chapter 13-The Good Soldier
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?
"Wow" James said staring at the test results in front of him. Under any other circumstances it would have been funny for Lily to see James Potter stunned into absolute silence but then again this was not any other circumstances and this was not funny. This was dead serious and dead real and right now she didn't need her husband to be stunned into speechlessness. She needed him to be on the ball about this.
"Wow" James said again completely unaware of the mental breakdown that she was having. He was still staring bug eyed at what was in front of him.
"James, you've said that twice, doesn't help"
He tore his eyes away from the test results and looked up at her green eyes wide and shining and she tried to read what he was thinking. It was odd, before this she would have easily said she knew what James was thinking and yet right now she had no idea. Her husband was sat there thinking quietly staring at the test that showed that in the middle of war he was going to be a father and she had no idea what she was going to do.
She didn't know if she even wanted a baby. She had never thought about motherhood, hell she had barely thought about her own mother that much. She had never considered motherhood as something that would be experiencing at nineteen. She had thought that if she and James had made it through the war then they would be able to have children, or even discuss having children. She had never considered having them this early.
And really what was she going to do with a baby? What was she going to be like with a baby on her hip? And even if you swept aside that valid reasoning then there was the fact that she was wanted by the Death Eaters, she was an active participating member of the Order of the Phoenix alongside her husband and she was muggle born.
Which meant as far as she was concerned to the Death Eaters she was less than scum on their shoes.
There were reasons upon reasons upon reasons why they should not do this.
She just wondered why she couldn't say them.
James was now looking at her tapping his wand against the table.
"Lily?"
"Ye…yeah?" she said finally.
"You okay?"
"No" she said staring at him in disbelief, "No James I am not okay"
He paused taking in her expression and then he nodded.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Talk about what?"
"About the baby, about…I don't know…what happens next?"
She looked at him and she saw it then, the hopefulness that was written underneath his face, in his eyes, in the expression he was trying to mask and she realised with a shock that he wanted this.
Lily honestly didn't know why that shocked her but it did. It did shock her and she couldn't understand why. She couldn't understand why it shocked her so much but it did. She had never considered that he might actually want this baby. Not when her own thoughts were so confused about the whole thing.
Merlin wept.
"You want this baby" she said and James who had been staring somewhere at her stomach as if he could see the baby underneath the skin of her belly and she put her hand there to stop him from looking at it but then immediately removed it feeling sick.
She didn't even know if she was feeling sick about the baby or sick in general because of the baby.
Whoever had named it mourning sickness needed selling out to Lord Voldemort at the earliest opportunity. Teach them to be deceptive in their labelling.
Mourning sickness, ha! More like all the day around sickness, and Merlin help James if he tried to cook pork tonight.
"You want this" she said flatly again. "You want this baby"
He turned his head up to look at her and surprise coated his face. He looked adorably young…no…he was young. That was the problem this was too young, too fast, too soon and she knew it so why couldn't James see it?
"You don't?" he asked and it seemed as if that was the first time that he had considered it. That he had considered that maybe she didn't want the baby inside of her.
"James…have you got any idea of how this is going to work?"
"What you mean financially? Cause if your worried about money then we are secure Lil I mean—"
"No not money!" she shouted waving her hands around. "NO NOT MONEY JAMES! I mean have you given any thought to how this is going to work in the real world, you know the one where we are being HUNTED DOWN LIKE DOGS EVERY FIVE SECONDS?!"
"Please don't shout" James said quietly. "And I have thought about that Lily of course I have, I thought about that when I married you. You cannot possibly tell me that you didn't think was a thing that could happen when we got married, we've been having enough sex for it"
"I was taking precautions and—"
"They don't always work" James said in a maddeningly calm voice and Lily would have laughed if it was not so tragic that it was James who was being calm in the face of chaos instead of her. Talk about fucking role reversal.
"Yeah I know that" she said finally trying to get her heartbeat under control.
"I know that James I do it's just…this is the wrong time and it's so sudden. And it's the wrong time, you and me are being hunted, everytime we even go out there's a chance we might not come back and more and more people are dying and if we have this baby then what happens if both of us die"
"Sirius" he said as if it was that simple and she shot him a look and he shrugged.
"Look I admit Remus is probably the more responsible one but the truth of the matter is that the Ministry will never let a child be raised solely by a werewolf, hell they will give the baby to your sister before they let that happen. So Sirius is the best of the bunch. Besides any son or daughter of mine he will love—"
"Oh my God!" she said cutting across him. "You've…you don't…you really want to do this?"
James shrugged. "You don't?" he asked and suddenly she saw the shadow fall on his face. He looked like a kid denied a treat she thought scathingly. "You don't want to do it" he said quietly. "You want to have an abortion"
"I don't know" she said and James made a small noise as if he had been wounded and she sat down at the table running a hand through her red hair and tugging the knots through the fingers relishing in the pain and using it as a distraction.
"I don't know" she said again and James nodded.
"Oh" he said flatly. "I just…oh"
"Yeah. Oh"
"You don't…did you…I mean"
"I want children James I do. I mean I really want your children James I just…we are nineteen year old soldiers in the middle of the worst war that the Wizarding World has ever faced. And it is different for me than it is for you. You are the pure-blood that has been ensnared by the scheming red headed mud blood harlot"
"Don't call yourself that" he snapped immediately hackles raised and she sighed.
It was always that word with James.
Always.
Ever since…well…you know.
And suddenly she needed to go, she needed to get out of this kitchen and out of this house.
"I need to go and…I need to go" she said quietly. "I need some time alone, apart, I need to think James, I need to think and I don't…"
She was at the door before he even got off his seat and she had apparated before he could even call out her name.
She had ended up at the park where she and her sister had played when they were children. It was three in the afternoon, the warm light fading and children were playing and Lily sat on the ground her hand on her belly and tried very hard to both think and not think all at the same time.
Treat this clinically she told herself. Treat this like it is any other problem, it's logic Lily, you have the mind for it now think about it like it was a logical issue.
(It wasn't but this was the only way that she could think about it without having a panic attack)
Did she want this baby?
The truth was if she was being very, very honest with herself…yes…yes she did want this baby, yes she did want this baby very much. But she had learnt the hard way that she what she wanted was not always what was best.
She had scars on her body, on her mind, that had taught her that much.
Did she want this baby, yes. But wanting something and having it were not the same thing. There was so much risk, so much to lose. She had lost both of her parents young, so had James and she felt the ache every day. Imagine what it must be like if the little baby inside of her was orphaned before it had even reached the age of two? What would it be like if James or her were killed and they were left to raise the baby alone? What if, what if, what if.
That was what it was. The never ending circle of what if.
And she didn't know how to break it.
This was the biggest decision of her life and she didn't know how to decide it. She wanted to decide it now and stick to it but it was the agony that was deciding it.
She thought about it leaning back on the grass and staring up at the sky and thinking what the alternative would look like. Sure she could have an abortion, she was allowed one, it was her body and her choice and she was able to go in this world and not be judged for it. She and James could have lots of children when the war was over if they survived it that long.
But then the second she had thought that she thought of something else. James in the kitchen baby on his hip being all happy. The baby looking up at Daddy as if he was great and the little puff of smoke that James did whenever he was near the Weasley children on show for their child who would stand on pudgy legs trying to catch the little things. She thought about what it would be like to feel another life inside of her. She thought about being pregnant and she was still warring her heart with her head when there was a soft pop in the air that told her that her husband had landed next to her.
He sat down next to her and watched her for a second crossing his legs up and resting his hands on his knees.
"I want this baby" he said into the silence.
"So do I" she said quietly.
"I thought…"
"James I don't know if we should, it's got nothing to do with wanting the baby. Of course I want children, your children, of course I want this baby, but there are a million reasons not to do it and you know it. And don't say that Sirius would step up, I know he would. But I don't want to leave our child an orphan, I don't want to find his body crumbled up in the rubble, I don't want him or her to live with parents who have a death sentence against them."
"I get that" he said earnestly. "I do Lily believe me, I know all of the reasons for that, I get that from the practical side of things there is so much that can go wrong but at the same time…at the same time don't you think that it's like letting him win. Like…if we live our lives in fear that one day he might knock down the door we let him control our lives and win. Look Voldemort…is out there, and who knows when or what or how or who will defeat him. I'm sorry but I don't want that freak controlling my life, the life of my wife or any decisions we make together, this baby should be born into a time of peace yeah I understand that. Who says one day it won't be?
She thought about it and then she pushed herself off the floor.
"You want to do this?"
"A hundred percent yes, but I don't want to force you into something you don't want" he took a breathe and then forced himself to look at her green eyes burning and she thought that she could drown herself in them.
"If you don't want too that's fine, we don't have too. I just…I just want you to know, whatever you decide, it's your body I know that. I'll stand by you no matter what"
"I must be insane" Lily said curling around him and he opened his arms and held her cheek nuzzling the top of her hair.
"I must be insane because I want this too"
"Yeah?" he asked breathlessly happy, she could hear it on the cusp of his tongue and she smiled breathless too though that might be for other reasons.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah" she said pulling back to smile at him. "Okay. Let's not live our lives in fear. Let's have this baby"
James started upwards as if he had been hit with a curse and Lily only had half a second to stare at him before he had lifted her up into his arms and was twirling he around laughing and shouting with glee.
"Were having a baby Lily" he said once he put her feet on the ground again and she let him press kisses all over her face pressing some of her own back and she laughed with him as her hand covered his on her belly.
"Yeah" she said feeling despite her misgivings a bubble of joy threaten to take over her.
"Yes James" she said giggling a little. "We are having a baby".
And there you go, we now only have seven more chapters left.
Next Chapter-In which Lily adjusts to being pregnant. James asks Sirius a favour. Bathilda Bagshott shares a secret.
