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Remus is the one who takes the photo, his smile half hidden behind the plastic of a Polaroid camera that Lily’s had for years. Charmed to magical as her final project in Seventh year. (Slughorn remains fond of the fish, but her camera, Lily thinks, was something a bit more her.)
It’s autumn and they’ve officially been adults for months, moments, nothing more than a shift of a season, really.
They’re all supposed to be adults, really.
But as James swings her around and she feels her eyes close against the blur of the world, the scent of him beneath her nose mixed with the dirt and leaves and cold-tipped air, she feels like they’re still schoolchildren. Like they’re in the courtyard of Hogwarts, like the bell between classes should be going at any minute and reality will shift back into focus and—
But it won’t.
Hogwarts exists soundly in polaroids and memories, in Dumbledore and McGonagall’s voices at Order meetings, in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments when the five of them are pressed together at one end of the long table that gathers the members of the Order of the Phoenix.
(Sometimes, she closes her eyes and pretends it isn’t war caught in the hollows of Albus’ voice, but the welcome speech at the start of the year. A smell in the air that’s fire-tipped from the hearth, the Great Hall filled with the hum of students.)
It’s a silly thing to do, she knows, but she just—
Sirius’ laugh breaks through her thoughts, the world rights as James tugs her closer still, his arms a steadying weight as the world stops spinning.
.
She watches the fire burn in the round of James’ glasses. The flickering flame hides the eyes beneath, twists orange and white and red and it’s hypnotising even as Moody is yelling that they need to go.
There’s a mask on the ground and she watches James pick it up, watches the dirt beneath his nails, not dirt, she realises, blood. (Because he’d pressed his hands against the gash in Marcus’ neck, hold on, he’d said, hold on—)
There’s a crack, a splintering sound like lightning, like an approaching storm rolling into a war drum in the distance.
But it’s just a cracked beam, the roof of the house collapsing in on itself, wood creaking, snapping, nothing more than twigs and embers as the fire eats away at it.
The mask glows orange in the light, the same flickering, shifting colours as the ones in James’ glasses.
Moody yells, leave the dead—
Lily blinks, watching the house crumble. Heat flares, nearly painfully hot, her eyes watering from the burn of it.
The mask glints again in the corner of her eye, James turns it over, a hollow-eyed thing, gilded platinum.
"James," she says, and watches him stare at the mask, turning it in his hands; watches the dark crescents beneath his nails, the violence caught in pads of his fingertips. His wand still clutched tight in his fist.
“I’m pregnant.”
.
She doesn’t cry until the first time she feels a heartbeat.
.
There’s an itch in her, some days, as her belly grows, as it becomes harder and harder to ignore that she’s carrying—
She’s carrying—
It’s a boy, James whispered, his eye’s lit in the blue light of the medi-witch’s charm. The oddly shaped thing that was supposed to be their child—
Their son.
It’s a boy, she writes on the back of a Polaroid, snapped in a flash of white by Sirius, this time. The sound of his laugh a sharp noise in the quiet of the hospital.
She sends it off to Petunia, she isn’t sure why, at first. And then realises later that she meant to send it to someone else entirely.
It’s a boy, she writes, I wish I could tell you. I wish I could—
Sometimes I hope you’re dead. Sometimes I dream about peeling masks off dead faces and each one is you.
It’s a boy, and my first thought was how much I wanted to tell you.
I hope your dead, Severus. I hope I never see you—
I hope I never see you under one of those masks.
.
“M-maybe we should just lea-leave,” Peter stutters out one night after they’ve been out hunting for pieces of Benji Fenwick. They’ve all got bits of him, like he’s less a body than he is a puzzle they have to put back together.
She’s pretty sure Peter’s gripping onto a bunch of fingers from Benji’s right hand.
“We can’t leave, Pete,” Sirius sighs, dropping into the chair in the living room his boots thunk against her coffee table, Lily thinks to tell him to get his feet off—
But it sounds like her mother in her head, tables are for tea and scones, not shoes and feet!
Remus walks by Sirius on the couch, a hand out absently to brush through Sirius’ hair as he passes, a small, thoughtless comfort, like it’s as much for himself as it is for Sirius. His nose already in a book, looking for locating spells because there’s something about leaving a man in pieces that bothers them.
Moody had told them off, he’s dead, ya hear, he’s dead and you’re not. Let it go.
“B-but, Sirius, we—”
She turns and watches James’ shoulders as he heads down the short hallway to the kitchen.
The drum of water hitting the bottom of the sink fills the quiet, and the dark outside the windows, presses against the glass like it’s a molasses-dark thing trying to break into their home.
Lily leans against the counter, crossing her arms over her stomach, feeling the thudding of two heartbeats.
She blinks, soothing the tips of fingers over a small circle of her belly like she can ease the thumping heart of the boy inside of her. A pressed promise that’s half a prayer, we’re okay, baby boy, we’re okay, hold on, just a little while longer.
She listens to James scrub his hands, watches him yank off his shirt, watches the flex of his shoulders, the shifting of his arms as he scrubs the soap over his forearms, chasing dirt and blood and the singed-electric burn of hex spells barely missing their mark.
It’s on the third scrub, the skin beneath the soap pink and rubbed raw, that she takes his hand and presses it over the slowing thump of the heartbeat in her belly. His hand slick with soap, wet enough to soak through her t-shirt, leaving an imprint of his hand in the dark of the fabric.
James goes still, his eyes downcast, his glasses smudged, another hex mark on his cheek that makes Lily’s heart skip a beat and in reaction—
James’ fingers spread wide, slowly like he’s afraid to move too quickly, like there’s something sacred beneath his palm and deserves worship in the quietest of ways.
Nothing more than a whisper, lips to a rosary.
Hold on, Harry, he says, hold on.
.
And then Dumbledore comes and he's no more than an old man and he’s holding an orb in his palm and he says, prophecy, seventh month—
Harry.
.
She thinks, before that moment, hold on was a promise, was a picture not yet taken, an end to war and snapshot of all the things to come. A promise to an unborn boy that things would be better if he could just hold on.
If they could all just hold on.
But now, now when James sinks down in bed beside her every night, and his mouth touches the curve of her stomach and he whispers like he’s in a confessional—
Hold on, Harry, hold on.
Please, he whispers. Please.
It’s July.
(Not yet, he says, not yet, Harry.)
.
There’s a red circle on the calendar stuck to their fridge in Godric’s Hollow, August 1st is circled red.
But there’s only an X on July 31st, breakfast dishes on the kitchen table, a teapot still steaming.
.
The first time she holds him, there’s more sorrow than joy in the hollows of her heart.
Her face sweaty, hair stuck to her forehead; James’ hand had stroked through it, but his hand was shaking too badly and it’s Remus who presses a hand to her forehead now, who soothes the hair back, who doesn’t bother to say anything at all because there’s nothing at all to say.
(Because in the kitchen that morning she had begged her baby not to come and refused to go to the hospital until James had picked her up and carried her. Because the seventh month was still dying and she wants it dead and buried, she wants it covered in a red X, she wants it gone.)
Peter and Sirius are standing behind Remus, shoulder to shoulder. Peter grips onto the camera in his hands because it was supposed to be a wonderful thing, wasn’t it?
James’ hand rests on the dark tuft of hair on Harry’s head, his thumb brushes through it, over the pale pink of their baby’s smooth forehead.
Remus’ grips her hand; she's been holding onto it since her first screaming push, a joke at the time, it’s alright, Lils, werewolf strength, squeeze as hard as you want.
He lets her hand go now, so she can stroke a finger over the soft of Harry’s cheek, so she can run a fingertip down the curve of his nose, the moue of his lips, so she can press her finger into the small of her baby’s fist and watch him blink at her with her own eyes.
Peter lifts the camera, snaps a photo. And then another.
He steps back, the camera against his eye, he says, hold on, I want to get you both in the picture.
.
Harry giggles, pushing his hands into the pulp of the pumpkin insides, a squeal as it squelches out between his fingers.
She laughs, shaking the polaroid in her hand, watching the black get chased away by colour, by Harry; watching the picture form, the pumpkin’s grinning face and James’ legs on either side of them.
She folds herself down beside them, pulling Harry into her lap, watching James scoop out more of the pulp from the second one, gonna give this one antlers, he laughs, flicking a seed at Harry who giggles and squirms in her arms.
“Have you heard from Peter or Sirius yet?” she asks, using a cloth to take the goop of Harry’s fingers.
James shrugs, lips quirking, “Nah, I think Sirius is huffy about Remus missing Halloween, he’ll be by later though, I’m sure.”
He leans into her, pressing his mouth to hers, a quick kiss, a stolen one, as Harry reaches up and smears sticky fingers over their chins.
They break apart with a laugh, Harry grinning up at them, giggling.
“Pete should be by later though,” James says as he turns back to the pumpkin. “Though he didn’t answer when I tried to Floo call him earlier.”
.