22 June 1981
Potter Cottage, Godric's Hollow

The Marauders had had many a-sleepover together over the years spending most of their holidays at either the Potter Manor or the Hogwarts castle, itself. And the eligible bachelors had brought home many a-dame without a name throughout their later years, to share their bed for the night. But this time, it was for a far different reason that they gathered around the Potter living room, filling the cottage with the scent of just-this-side-of-burnt tea leaves as they discussed what to do next.

Taking a deep breath, James curled up around the steaming mug in his hands and drank in the hot steam that billowed from it. Their sitting room wasn't exactly large—especially with two oversized man-children and a bedraggled witch sprawled across the floor—but the "Game Plan" parchment which had been spread across the floor, didn't exactly help matters. Remus has been the one to draw up the pros & cons list (just like the one he had done when his best mates had decided to become animagi just so he wouldn't be alone on the full moons) and had spent most of the morning wildly jotting down & gesturing to the two sides as he tried to make his point. At his elbow, Sirius argued back with (arguably) good counterpoints, whilst Lily sat back a little and happily bounced Harry on his knee, keeping him occupied with small illusions to bat at & fingers to gnaw on.

From his perch, he watched as his wife settled their infant son in front of him, back to her chest, and caged him there with loosely wrapped arms around his middle that kept him in place. Leaning back against James' legs, the Potters simply sat and watched, chewing over what to do about the strange witch upstairs. There were just so many questions that still remained unanswered and, according to Tilly's examinations, they had to wait for the fever to break before they even got far enough to ask any of those.

Heaving a quiet sigh, James gently nudged the witch in front of him. "Lils, what are we gonna do with her?" He asked quietly, entirely unsure what his wife was thinking. She—much like his friends & the rest of the Gryffindors—had a habit of being rather unpredictable, but she also had a cunning streak that she would deny to her dying day, was very Slytherin of her. But that was usually seen during her pettiest moments (usually with her sister or Snape), so he wasn't expecting to see it in this kind of situation.

Lily blinked blankly up at him, chewing at her lower lip in thought. "Do with her, Jim?"

"Yes, love, do with her" James nodded. "Do we intend to hand her over to the Ministry? Y'know, to see if they can find her family? Or do we tell Dumbledore about all of…this? Get him to sort it out?"

Given the puzzled expression that furrowed the witch's brows at the question, Lily had intended to neither of those. James could only assume that it was because of a certain kinship that his wife felt, being a muggleborn herself, that the thought to give this child up had never even crossed her mind. There were so few muggleborns around these days, thanks to the war. Most had either fled overseas or been slaughtered in their beds. So, it made a sort of sense for the redhead to be protective of the mysterious witch. The fact that she was apparently a Gryffindor certainly helped matters.

"No, no, I don't think so" She hedged, gaze turning back to focus on the curious one year old in her lap. Harry seemed to have grown tired of the illusionary butterflies and was now, quite contently, drooling all over her fingers. "I was thinking that we get her some dry clothes—those ones she arrived in were practically rags—maybe transfigure one of the end closets into a bedroom? Or keep her in the nursery until we can find someplace a little bigger. We'll need to have a look in that bag; clearly there's something in there if its warded up like that and hopefully she can answer any other questions that we have when she wakes up"

James' eyebrows rocketed up towards his hairline. "You're speaking like you intend to keep her, Lily…!"

Slightly embarrassed, Lily's shoulders hunched up around her ears which coloured around the edges, when she was called out. She had never been the most subtle of mages (then again, neither had James). "Not—not forever! But she clearly has nowhere to go! And, I mean, I've always wanted a daughter and Harry could have a big sister! Plus, we don't even know what happened to her parents! She's apparently muggleborn, so for all we know, they could be dead in a ditch, somewhere!" Which was unfortunately true and highly likely considering what had happened to other muggle(born)s in the past.

James pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes as he swallowed a strangled sigh and tried to reign in his moral dilemma. On the one hand, Lily was right; muggleborns were quickly becoming an endangered species thanks to You-Know-Who & his followers, and it wouldn't do them any good to just let the witch go. But on the other hand, this witch wasn't someone they could just keep like a pet! She had to have a family that was looking for her!

"Let's be real, Lils" James sighed, "We can't just keep a child that turned up on our doorstep; she's not a pet! People will ask where she came from or what she is even doing here! And that is before we even begin to discuss the fact that she may very well already have parents of her own!Ones that could very well be looking for her!"

Lily rolled her eyes at that, "Well, clearly she has parents, it's not like the fairies just dumped her on our doorstep"

"But what if she has parents who want her back—?"

"—What if something horrid had happened to her parents or her caregiver?"

"Lily! For Godric's sake, you're not making any sense!"

Lily turned slowly to face her husband, as an impressively blank look stole over her normally expressive face. "You saw the state she was in when she arrived, and surely if someone was after her, they wouldn't have let her take that bag with her. A bag, mind you, that is charmed to the teeth with wards & jinxes; in particular an exceptionally complicated Snitch jinx!" She gestured to her forehead where the boil cure salve had done little to rid the spelled acne from her face. "Plus, who-knows-what-else! Nor would they have put her in such a telling shirt—that thing clearly looks offical, and that has to mean something!"

Lily paused in her rant to take a deep breath, "One must assume that whomever aided in her escape, meant for her to come & find us. I can only assume that Peter was involved somehow, because these two—" She gestured to the strangely quiet canine pair who currently looked more like children eavesdropping on their parents. "—Are about as subtle as a brick through a glass window, and couldn't organise their way out of a paper bag"

"Say Wormtail was involved" James hedged, "That still doesn't explain how she got here! Or knew where to find us! Or even got through the ward!"

"Again, I refer you to our friend & Secret Keeper, Peter Pettigrew. Who clearly thought it prominent to share the location of the cottage with a child in distress. Clearly, he's involved in some tricky stuff to stumble across someone in that kind of state"

James had to concede that that was a good point. Peter had been getting shelved with a lot of solo infiltration missions thanks to his ratty half. "Okay, fine! So, Peter found her and sent here! But why can't one of the others take her? We don't exactly have the room and did you forget the part where we are in hiding?!"

"Well, I'm not taking her!" Sirius piped up, hands up in defence.

"And why not?" Lily scowled, turning on the wolfhound with an equally sour glare. Sirius' hands rose higher up, as if begging for forgiveness from the fiery redhead.

"Aside from the fact that she's clearly too old to be my kid?" Sirius replied, "Can you imagine the kind of scandal that would cause?"

"Scandal? I would've thought that was right up your alley" Lily huffed, "Isn't 'scandal' your middle name?"

"Actually, love, I have it on good authority that it's 'handsome" He grinned, running a hand through wavy locks.

And Remus couldn't help but add his own two cents. "Actually, it's Orion, but carry on"

"I'm just saying, you know I'd love a scandal as much as any other rebel" Sirius continued, sparing a half-hearted scowl in the wolf's direction as he leant back on his hands, "But with a child in the works, Mother would be breathing down my neck to be reinstated into the family for the chance at an heiress. Nevermind the fact, that if I spun it as a bastard child or what-have-you, she'd be labelled & discriminated against for the rest of her life"

"Discriminated against?" Lily puzzled, "Other than being muggleborn?"

"There have been a few people from the older families that have been quietly shipped off or abandoned at the discretion of their Heads of House in order to avoid such a scandal" James acquiesced. "You remember how Mum & Dad made such a big deal out of us not eloping, right?"

"Yeah…?"

"Us eloping together, would've of been considered a scandal and the Potter name would've been ruined because of it"

"But—but that's so last century!"

"It's just how it is" Sirius shrugged before turning to James, "D'you remember those rumours about how Genevieve Fawley, had taken up with a Parkinson, despite being married to a Zabini?"

"Vaguely" James hummed, teeth clinking against the edge of his mug.

"What are you talking about?" Remus prodded.

"Brutus Zabini, the late husband of Genevieve Zabini (neé Fawley) was promised to her from birth in a Cradle Match. But Merlin knows that Genevieve has been known to let her eye wander, so we can only imagine what's going on there. Anyway, not too long after their marriage, Brutus suddenly died, leaving his entire fortune to her. Shortly after that, she started courting Pieter Parkinson and quickly gained a considerable amount of weight" Sirius gossiped, "The ladies' rumour mill implied that it was Zabini's kid, but those two couldn't even be in the same room as each other for longer than ten minutes and they hadn't ever produced an heir in his lifetime, so the ladies couldn't be sure"

Sirius sighed, tossing his head back as he turned his gaze up towards the ceiling where the reflection of tea waters danced there. "If Mother is to be believed—and Godric knows that woman has always had an uncannily accurate gossip—Parkinson suspected that the babe was Zabini's and arranged for the boy to be sent away, to live with squib relatives of his, whilst he & Genevieve continued to live happily, here in the Isles. But then, he too, died of uncertain circumstances, leaving his fortune to Genevieve & her unborn son. She was banished to the Zabini ancestral home, if I remember rightly, in Ireland" He paused as a thoughtful expression stole over his face as he tried to remember what had (supposedly) happened to the witch's second husband. Eventually, he just shrugged it off. "But that witch is known for her cunning, so Circe knows if she stayed there, or even left Britain in the first place"

"Okay, but what about this witch?" Lily pursued, "Could, I dunno, Peter take her? Or someone else in the Order? The Weasleys have the room, don't they?"

"Barely" Remus scoffed, having visited the squashed stack of bricks on occasion to pass on messages and such. "You'd have better luck asking the Longbottoms"

"Eeeeh…" Lily was hesitant to ask the Longbottoms for aid after what had happened to Alice & Frank only a few months prior. After their attack at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange (at the behest of You-Know-Who), the unrelenting Longbottom matriarch, Augusta Longbottom, had all but snubbed the Order and pulled her family's funding from the organisation as she took to raising her grandson, Neville.

Not that Lily could blame her. "…The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord…Born to those who have thrice defied him…as the seventh month dies…" was a pretty ambiguous clue as to whom was the child of prophecy. Still, there were two only children in most recent years born around that time, who fit that criteria: Neville Longbottom and Hardwin Potter II. Which was why the Death Eaters had sought out the Longbottoms first, and the Potters had gone into hiding. It was all thanks to that blasted prophecy that people were vying for babies to end a war that they had been relentlessly fighting.

It was a ridiculous notion and Lily would be damned if she let anything happen to Harry because of something so obscene. She could only assume Alice & Frank felt the same way about Neville because they had downright refused to relent to Bellatrix's ministrations, landing them in the Janus Thickey ward at Saint Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries for the foreseeable future. Neville would have to grow up without a mother or a father, instead raised by his elderly grandparents thanks to that deranged witch.

"What about you, Moony?" Lily turned to the wolf. "Could you take her?"

"Pete's still on a mission" Sirius mused before Remus could reply, "And anyway, Moony's scheduled to be headed for the Moors soon"

"Dumbledore's still trying to get ya to win 'round the Packs?" James asked.

"Yeah…" Remus sighed dejectedly, shoulders slumping forward at the reminder. He'd always hated having to interact with the likes of Fenrir Greyback. "Least the pups are good fun"

"So, that's it then" Lily stated as if it were final. "We are keeping her"

James sat up. "Now, Lily—!"

"—'Sides" Lily interjected, "Don't your Family Charters stipulate for me to bare an heir and a spare? As in children—plural. This way, it's a win—win. You get an heiress sooner than expected, and Harry gets to be a child for a little bit longer" She sighed tiredly, before conceding slightly. "And if it does come to light that she has family who want her back, then we can, I dunno, do joint custody or keep in touch, or whatever. 'Sides, what was it your mother always said? 'Daughters are for advantageous alliances with other prominent families?"

James rolled his eyes. "Oh, that's real classy, using my own mother's words against me!"

"James"

She turned to watch James, searching his face for any sign of a response. She knew what she was asking was up bit up there; because, come on, it's not like she was asking to keep a stray animal, this was a person. Real and whole, and living, and muggleborn. Just like her. It's why she was so adamant about keeping her around, because she could only imagine what had happened to the poor girl and though she knew that James was only thinking logically, she would hope that if she was in the same situation, someone else would do the same for her.

James just stared down at her, his own gaze searching hers for compromise of some kind; but there was none. That was the problem with stubborn mages; they either attracted or repelled each other, like magnets. There was no in between. Unable to think of anything to say in retort, James just sat there opening & closing his mouth a few times; sitting there like a fish gasping for air. Eventually he gave up trying to find the right words, or anything further that he could say to the contrary and his jaw snapped shut with an audible click & a heavy sigh hissed out of his nose like a fed up dragon.

Clearly having won the argument for the time being, Lily returned to her original seat and smiled, Harry bouncing happily on her lap, "Tilly!"

At her call, the Potter house-elf, Tilly, appeared garbed in a crisp sunflower yellow pillowcase, emblazoned with the House Potter crest and a damp flannel clamped in her hands. "Yes, Missus Lily? Hows can Tilly bes helping?"

"The witch? How is she?"

"The young Missy's fever is near breaking, Missus Lily" Tilly chirped, "It won't bes long now"

"Good, that's good"

Wringing the damp wash cloth between her hands, Tilly peered up her before warily asking, "Is we be keeping the new young Missy, Missus Lily? Tilly has been wanting more younglings around the house"

Gently bouncing Harry in her lap as he peered up at her with big beautiful green eyes that mirrored her own. "We hope so, Tilly"

At her shoulder, James softened a little when he saw how happy both of them were at the idea of a new family member. "We'll let you know if the witch is staying" He added, garnering Lily's attention.

Recognising her dismissal for what it was, Tilly nodded briefly and popped out of the room with parting giggles that made her sound like an excitable hamster.