Sunday 16th August 1981

Marauder Flat, 11:00

"Mum, mum I swear we're coming over in two weeks, I promise."

Marlene was talking to her mother via the floo at the moment, which was why Sirius was sitting it the sofa in front of it, holding Cassie on his lap. The last thing they needed was for her to run straight into the flames (something which she'd had a fascination with recently) and either burn herself or, in the case of the current green flames, transport herself somewhere by accident. Now, if she did it right now all that would happen is that she'd end up at her grandparents, something that he was sure would be incredibly welcome for both Cassie and the grandparents. But still. She nearly ended up in wherever or whatever Moody called home the other day because they nearly didn't grab her in time.

"Yes, Lily gave birth. And yes, it's a sweet, little baby girl. Did you not get my letter? I even sent pictures!"

Sirius didn't need to have werewolf hearing to know that Marlene was now getting soundly told off by her mother.

"Yes," Marlene said in exasperation. "Her name is Amaryllis. James And Sirius are already calling her Rylli, of all things."

"It's cute," Sirius felt like he had to defend himself.

Even though men really shouldn't be saying or thinking things were cute. It wasn't his fault that a lot of things could be described this way! Cassie, obviously, was cute (actually, the proper word was adorable, thank you very much). The way Marlene's eyebrows came together when she was thinking was cute. The way Lily and James looked at each other was cute. But that was really more leaning towards the soppy end of things.

He just knew that Marlene rolled her eyes at him, despite him not being able to see her face, but she couldn't even mouth something in return because her mother took up all her attention.

"Come on, mum, j am not a bad child. It's just works been so busy recently! No, I'm fine. We're all fine. Not injured or anything, honestly. Yes, I promise I'll call more often and I'll try to come home more often. But no promises, okay? No promises."

Sirius winced as he heard the scolding she got from across the room.

"Never ever annoy your grandmother," he told his daughter, holding her in a way so that they were nose to nose. "That's your mother's mother, not my mother. You're never going to see my mother of I can help it."

"Granny!" Cassie pronounced, not understanding the seriousness of this at all.

"Yeah, that's granny talking to mummy," he said, pressing a kiss to her head and pointing at the fireplace.

Which, of course, she immediately reached for.

"No, not there," he said, holding onto her more tightly so he didn't drop her.

"No there?" Cassie said pitifully.

"Not there."

His daughter pouted at that, looking particularly adorable as her curls fell across her face. He brushed them back and hoped (again) that they didn't fall straight as she got older like he heard that happened to a lot of babies.

"Yes, mum, I'll pass on your congratulations to her," Marlene said. "Look, I- oh, you have to go? Okay. Bye. Love you. Bye."

Finally, Marlene's head emerged from the fireplace and she got back to her feet, stretching as she did so.

"She was asking for you," she said, taking Cassie off him.

"And she didn't want to talk?" He asked in a mock offended tone.

She rolled her eyes. "A cow was trying to get into the kitchen so she was a bit distracted by that.

Sirius let out a bark of laughter. Oh, he would have paid good money to see that.

"We definitely have to go over."

He loved Marlene's parents. And her family. They were always good fun even if their whole family dynamic still sometimes confused him. It was a good sort of confused though.

Sighing, Marlen nodded and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. "I know. We definitely do but we need time off for that and who's given that these days?"

Which was true. There were so few Aurors now and far too much work that people had to fight tooth and nail just to get one day off. Or even just half a day. Which was depressing. Onto more happier thoughts.

"What did she think of Rylli?" Sirius asked.

"That she's adorable and has the chunkiest cheeks. And then hinted that we should have another one."

Sirius spluttered at that. "What?"

Marlene shrugged. "Yeah. She wants Cassie to have a little brother or a sister."

"She already has five grandchildren now! What does she want another one for?"

"I wouldn't put it past Jacqueline or Oonagh to be pregnant again. We McKinnons are a fertile bunch."

That was true. Only the Weasley family notoriously had more children than any other family. They always had, through the generations. Not that anyone was really challenging them.

"I think it's more along the likes of her thinking that Cassie needs a sibling," Marlene continued. "She's always a bit suspicious of only children."

Sirius snorted. Oh, he could see that being true. Marlene's mum was just the type. Oh, he had to tell James that. Or Severus. Or even Remus. And Peter. Huh, a lot of his friends were only children, it turned out. Huh, he hadn't thought about it like that before. Weird.

"Don't worry, I don't want to get pregnant any time soon," Marlene assured him.

Sirius let out a breath he didn't realise he'd been holding.

"Thank Merlin. I mean, maybe one or two more eventually but..."

"Not right now."

"Exactly."

"Also, I think Lily's labour has scarred me for life."

"She's very lucky that McGonagall was a fully qualified midwife." Sirius said.

The original plan was to use Molly Weasley when the time came, if they could. But she had literally just given birth to a daughter of her own (the first one in seven generations of Weasleys, if he remembered correctly from his Noble Families lessons) days before so obviously couldn't even be asked. The woman was recovering! Even asking would be downright rude.

He felt like he should probably have been surprised that McGonagall was midwife trained but found he really wasn't. This was Minerva McGonagall, after all. The woman could do anything.

"And that Madam Pomfrey could be contacted," Marlene added with a nod.

Because it turned out that little Amaryllis Lily Potter had been born breech, something that McGonagall didn't feel fully confident with so got Pomfrey to help.

But everything had turned out fine, if a little stressful near the end. Trust a Potter to make an entrance. She came out a skinny, lanky little thing. Longer than what Cassie had been. Again, already had a typical Potter physique. Poor kid.

But at least she had been okay and healthy and was doing really really well, despite being born into hiding. Which sucked even if babies weren't exactly aware of such things.

Lucky them.

Wednesday 19th August 1981

Tonks Home, 12:00

"No go!" Teddy cried when he realised that Remus was leaving.

Of course, he didn't quite understand that he was leaving for quite a long time. Well, perhaps. No one was entirely sure how long kg this mission would take, after all. No, Teddy didn't understand that concept. It was just that he had recently developed a case of separation anxiety that neither he or Dora knew how to deal with. Teddy wouldn't let either of them leave a room of he was watching them. He had to be with at least one of them, though preferably both of them, at all times. It was pretty hard to deal with and nothing seemed to be working. Nothing that didn't make him shriek loudly in dismay.

It was heart breaking to hear and Dora knew that it was only going to get worse. Teddy had turned into a complete daddy's boy. Which was the sweetest thing ever but it made this moment all the more difficult. And heart breaking. Had she mentioned heart breaking? Because it was.

Oh, she knew that this was Remus' specialty within the Order. And there was really no one else who could do such a thing (not even Dung). Of course, she knew that it was useful. And that Remus felt like he was actually doing something productive and useful - he did sometimes feel left out because he couldn't help the Order with his normal job like the rest of them could.

But it didn't make it any easier to cope. Or to even expect it to happen. Which sucked. It really sucked.

"No goooooo!"

Oh, that wail. It hit her right in the gut.

"I have to go, Teddy," Remus tried to explain but Teddy was having none of it.

"Noooo!" He wailed as loud as he could, his hair changing colour at a truly rapid pace.

Oh, wow. Was this how her hair looked when she was feeling all of the emotions and her body couldn't settle on just one? Because it was really disconcerting. One bad thing about Teddy now having enough hair to see actual colours it was turning. Useful for trying to figure out his emotions but then something like this happened.

"Teddy..." Remus said with a sigh, trying to carefully prise Teddy's fingers off him.

Which he succeeded at. It was just that as soon as his fingers were freed, Teddy simply latched onto somewhere else on Remus' front. Stubborn and persistent. The best of both of them.

And, let's be honest she kind of wanted to do the same thing. Except she couldn't. Because she was a mature and responsible adult who knew that this was necessary and unavoidable and... Oh, Merlin, she really didn't want him to go.

Without any sort of hesitation, she basically flung herself and Teddy at him. Thank Merlin for Remus quick reflexes because he managed to catch then both and position them all in a way so Teddy wasn't squished.

She breathed heavily in an effort not to cry. She had promised herself long ago, when all of this first started, that she wasn't going to let Remus have the last thing he saw be of her crying. No. That just wasn't going to happen. It wasn't fair to him.

This couldn't have come at the worse time. They were trying to sort out their own place and Dora's Auror Training was really stepping up. The Auror Department was hoping to graduate her class at the end of the summer. And it had only been two years? Something like that. Her year had been a bit weird for Training, too many things had changed to keep track of and it was like the Department didn't know what it wanted for them. Did they want more Aurors faster? Except that didn't work because it meant that new Aurors weren't trained as well and were more of a liability than usual, as seen with James' and Sirius' year. Or did they want them fully qualified like before the war? Except that wasn't realistic because they needed more Aurors. Desperately. So, some of Dora's training had been in depth and some of it had been rushed. And no one seemed to know if that had been done to the wrong skills or not. It was all rather worrying.

And now it didn't help that Remus was leaving. She didn't need another thing to worry about! Except that she was going to just have to deal with it. She knew that she couldn't stop him from going. Nor did she want to. He needed to do this. The Order needed to do this.

But they needed him too. They did. Their family wasn't whole without all of them here. And who knows how much things would change, what the world would be like? What about her? What about Teddy?

She shook her head. Merlin, just how selfish was she? Was it always going to be like this when he had to leave? Was it ever going to get any better?

Remus grimaced as Teddy went from whimpering to full on crying.

"Maybe this was a bad idea..."

She scowled at him as she bounced Teddy in an attempt to soothe him. Remus had wanted to leave when Teddy was having a nap and just disappear like that with no fuss but Dora had nixed that idea. One, she knew that he wanted to say goodbye to Teddy properly with a hug and a kiss and whispered words and two, he couldn't just vanish from Teddy's life like that! He'd be all confused!

Everything was bad enough as it was, they didn't need to make things worse. Though, she winced as Teddy's cries got louder, was this the better option? She wasn't sure anymore. Was any of this right?

She felt Remus' grip loosen from her and she couldn't hold back the tiny whimper at the loss of his body against hers. See? She really was pathetic. What was also pathetic was the fact that she kept her eyes closed so she didn't have to see him. Maybe if she didn't see him then she could pretend that none of this was real. See? Pathetic.

"I have to go," he whispered apologetically.

She shook her head and blindly reached for him but he stubbornly stayed out of her grasp. And then she remembered she had her baby in her arms so stopped doing that. Making them both go splat on the ground was not how she wanted to send Remus off, thank you very much.

"Dora."

She made a whining noise, not wanting to be sensible and reasonable. Those were two things she definitely did not want to be.

"Dora."

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes, meeting his amber ones. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair.

"I love you" she said hoarsely.

"Love you" Teddy hiccuped, having apparently cried himself out.

Remus closed his eyes like he was in pain and took a deep breath.

"I love you both too."

Friday 21st August 1981

Godric's Hollow, 15:00

"Baby," Harry said proudly, patting Lily on the knee because he couldn't reach Amaryllis from this position.

"Yes," Lily congratulated tiredly. "She's your baby sister."

"Baby small. Harry big."

"You are! You're such a big boy!"

Harry looked inordinately proud at that. The expression made him look extremely like James. It was extremely adorable and Lily couldn't help but coo over him.

She had been oh so worried about how Harry would take having a little baby in the house but so far it had been great. No tantrums or behaviour regressions or anything. Oh, sure, he'd tried to poke the baby but he didn't want to hurt her, he was just curious about her and looked like he couldn't figure out whether Amaryllis was a toy or an actual, real baby.

"Small baby," he said with no small measure of satisfaction. "Small, small baby."

"Yes, she's really tiny, isn't she?"

Quite frankly, Lily couldn't wait until Harry's language exploded. Or, at least grew a little bit more. It was so fun to hear him talk but it was the same things over and over again. And there weren't many things he did say so it got repetitive very quickly. She just wanted to know what was going on it that small head of his.

Amaryllis made a soft squeaking noise that made Harry's eyes widen.

"Baby!"

"Am-ah-ryll-is" she sounded out for him. "Can you say Amaryllis, Harry?"

He scrunched up his nose at her.

"Baby."

She should have known better. That was too many sounds.

"Rylli? Can you say Rylli?"

"Ree!"

Okay, that was close enough. And it was very cute.

"Ree's talking to you."

"Me?"

Harry leaned closer to Amaryllis so his nose was almost touching her. Of course, that didn't go well when she jerked her head up, bumping into him. That made him start crying which, of course, set her off as well.

Lily tried not to groan. What was that about being very grateful that she wasn't having issues between her two children?

"Shh, shh, you're both okay," she tried to sooth.

Which, of course, had absolutely no effect on the volume of their cries. Actually, it might have made them even louder. Merlin, how could cries even be that loud?