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“Fucking fuck, this is awful.”
Lily tries, really tries, to express her frustration in a low voice, but her wonderful stepson has an excellent sense of hearing and, to be honest, he’s just right behind her on the stairs, so it’s only logical that he’s able to hear her.
“What?” he asks, immediately, voice filled with worry, sounding exactly like his dad. “What’s wrong? Are you hurting? Do I need to call someone?”
Lily rolls her eyes, thankful that he can’t see her.
“I’m fine,” she replies, before turning back and facing Harry’s anguished stare. “You try walking up the stairs with a watermelon tied to your stomach – it’s bound to make you lose your breath.”
“Stupid, fucking landlord,” Harry mutters. “This fucking lift has been broken since fucking forever.”
He’s always been a little bit too prone to swear, maybe because he’s been raised by a man who is barely twenty years older than him, and this greatly dismays his grandmother Euphemia, who could probably go to Buckingham Palace and teach proper etiquette to the royal family.
James’s always been a cool dad, though, and Harry takes great pride in this. Lily can’t help but wonder if her husband’s parenting is going to be different, now that he’s about to become a father many, many years later since his firstborn.
The baby in her belly, as if hearing her inner thoughts, rewards her with a well-placed kick to her ribs.
“This sibling of yours is already making me regret the decision to become a mother,” she sighs, before taking a few more steps towards their landing. “Maybe I’m just too old to be pregnant.”
“You’re not old,” Harry pinpoints, following her. He’s carrying the three shopping bags they got at the supermarket and he’s patiently waiting for her to crawl her way up to their apartment. “You’re thirty-eight.”
“Geriatric,” she declares.
“Lots of people have children in their forties, Lily.”
“I never should’ve given in to your dad’s wish,” Lily bemoans. Their door is now just a few steps away from them. “Maybe he asked me to have a baby only because he wanted to have more sex. All in all, it’s a win-win situation for him. He isn’t the one carrying a future kickboxing champion.”
“Please, don’t – I don’t want to hear about my dad’s sex life.”
“Well, he has one. Or had. It’s not like you can get a lot of action going with a belly as large as mine –”
“Lily,” Harry groans, half-laughing, just like his dad does when he’s severely aggravated by her, and she can only chuckle.
They have finally reached their apartment. Harry swiftly breezes past Lily, balancing the three shopping bags and going straight to open the door, while she tries to regain her breath, slowly rubbing her protruding stomach.
When they get inside, Harry insists on helping her sort out their groceries in the kitchen.
She suspects James threatened to return the brand-new car they got him for his eighteenth birthday if he didn’t coddle and take care of her while he was away on an unexpected business trip, because Harry isn’t exactly fond of household chores, but she gladly accepts the help anyway. She entered her last month of pregnancy just a few days ago and everything, even the smallest task, is slowly becoming an unsurmountable feat for her.
It’s nice, all in all, to have a miniature James with her, even when her husband is away for work. Harry is a great stepson and they get along extremely well.
After they have dinner together – during which James interrupts them FaceTiming from a wonderful fucking beach in Spain, the lucky bastard – Harry gets ready to go out with his girlfriend, while Lily curls up on the couch and starts perusing the Netflix catalogue.
“Don’t wait up for me,” Harry says when he’s about to go, one hand already on the door’s handle. “And call me if anything happens, all right?”
“You know, Harry – I am the adult here,” Lily points out, amused. “I feel like I should be telling you to be careful and come home early, not the other way around.”
Harry just grins. “I promise I’m not going to come home early tonight.”
“Well, at least don’t do drugs,” Lily shrugs, an ironic smile stretching her lips. “And don’t accept drinks from strangers.”
“Oh, no, that’s exactly what I was planning to do,” Harry mockingly sighs, before backtracking and walking towards her. He quickly and absent-mindedly kisses her on the cheek – because, even if he’s wonderful, he’s still a teenager – and then skips happily out of the apartment.
“Bye, Lily.”
“Bye, sweetheart.”
*
She wakes up many hours later, when she hears the sound of keys jangling in the silence.
Everything around her is dark – she must have fallen asleep on the couch – but the light coming from the stairs briefly outlines her stepson’s shape, as he makes his way into the apartment.
“Lily?” he whispers, before shutting the door behind him. “Are you awake?”
Lily stretches her sore back and yawns. “Barely,” she replies. “What time is it?”
“… three in the morning?”
She bites down a laugh. “How wonderful to be eighteen,” she comments. She sees him shrug off his jacket and kick his shoes somewhere in the corridor. “Did you have fun?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s Ginny?”
“She’s good. She says hi, by the way.”
“I like her,” Lily declares. “I don’t know why you waited this long to ask her to be your girlfriend.”
Harry chuckles in the dark. “Well,” he drawls, moving closer to her. “There was this small problem of her brother being my best friend, you see…”
Lily softly laughs. Then, she reaches out with her arms towards him. “Please, help me up – I swear this couch has started to swallow me up…”
Harry chortles again, but his hands firmly grip hers and in a second she is pulled upright.
And then she feels it.
“Oh, God,” she whispers. “Oh, God. Oh no, no –”
“What’s wrong?” Harry immediately asks, voice more alert than ever. “What happened?”
“No,” Lily begs, hands flying to her belly. “It’s – it’s too early. I’m not even thirty-six weeks –”
“No way,” Harry blurts out. She feels him crouch down to touch the floor. “Oh, fucking fuck, no, please. Tell me it’s a joke, Lily.”
Lily squeezes her eyes shut. Her hands are shaking.
“Something’s wrong,” she whispers. “I – this can’t be it –”
“I think this is it,” Harry replies. He sounds terrified. “Your waters have broken.”
“But – but it’s too early!”
“I know, but it’s true. The floor is wet.”
He walks back and then the light is switched on.
Lily immediately looks down at her feet and finds them in a puddle of water.
“Oh no,” she cries, softly. She shakes her head. “I’m not – I can’t be in labour. I don’t want to, it’s too early, your father is in fucking Spain –”
“Where is your hospital bag?” Harry asks.
Lily can’t stop staring at the floor in disbelief. “In my wardrobe, where I keep my coats.”
She hears him run away, but she doesn’t find the voice to ask him where he’s going.
She’s in shock. She’s going to be sick.
Harry returns in what feels like three seconds. He takes her hands and gently helps her step away from the puddle on the floor. Then, he tries to make her wear her cardigan.
This has the power to shake Lily off her reverie.
“What – what are you doing?” she asks, breathlessly.
“I’m bringing you to the hospital,” he replies. He has a strange, determined look on his face. He looks more like James than he ever did. “Come on, Lil.”
“It’s too early!”
“I know. It’s exactly why we have to go to your OB/GYN.”
Lily’s eyes fill with tears.
Harry sees it. A second later, his arms are around her shoulders and he’s tightly hugging her.
“It’s going to be all right, Lily. I promise.”
Then, softly, “I’m with you.”
Lily closes her eyes and decides to trust him.
*
“He’s so tiny.”
James’s whisper is full of awe.
Harry looks at his brother’s small arms and legs, which he’s wildly flailing around in his incubator, and smiles softly.
“He’s an impatient little shit,” he says, but he can’t help but sound fond. “Couldn’t wait a few more weeks, apparently.”
His father carefully slides his hand through the incubator’s hatch. His fingers are enormous in comparison to his secondborn.
“How’s Lily?” Harry asks, watching him gently brush his thumb over his little brother’s head. “They didn’t let me see her. They said she was sleeping.”
“She still is,” his dad replies, without tearing his gaze away from his newborn son. He looks amazed. “She’s probably going to stay at the hospital a bit more than expected. They told me it wasn’t an easy labour.”
“It wasn’t,” Harry confirms.
His dad finally looks back at him, brows scrunched in confusion.
“I was there,” Harry explains. “You know… when she was giving birth.”
“You were with her?”
“Yes. I mean – I didn’t want to leave her alone and she said she’d be glad to have me at her side, so…”
His father’s eyes suddenly become very, very teary.
“Oh, God,” Harry mutters. “Please, don’t cry on me. I just had to see your wife push a baby out of –”
“Thank you,” his father whispers, heartfeltly, and his free hand firmly grips Harry’s shoulder. He looks very emotional. “For being with her.”
“Of course,” Harry immediately replies. Then, he smirks. “I really, really need that car, you know.”
His father lets out a choked laugh.
“Well, you have done a most excellent work,” he declares, before going back to staring at his second son. He seems incapable of doing anything else and Harry finds it incredibly endearing. “Consider yourself the rightful and eternal owner of your car.”
“Yes!” Harry whisper-shouts, gaining an amused look from his father.
They smile at each other and then they turn their gazes back to the newest addition to their family.
He’s a wild, little thing, Harry’s brother. He looks exactly like he did when he was a baby, with tousled black hair already springing from his head and a scrunched-up nose that is by now an official Potter signature. He doesn’t resemble Lily a bit, but Harry thinks he saw a fleck of green in his eyes, right when he was placed in his mother’s embrace. He’s tiny, almost too much, since he decided to get out of the womb a whopping four weeks before the right time, but the doctors say he’s perfectly healthy.
“We’re going to have a wonderful party when you come home, little one,” Harry’s dad whispers. His index finger is now firmly gripped into the baby’s chubby hand. “And I’m probably going to buy a very expensive gift for your big brother.”
“Don’t forget Lily’s push present,” Harry reminds him, even though the words big brother have lit a warm, fond feeling in his chest.
“Your brother thinks your old man is a simpleton,” James singsongs, talking through a big smile. “I bought your mother a big, sparkly ring the day we found out about you.”
“Your old man forgot their wedding anniversary, last year.”
“Hey, not fair!” his dad protests. “It's not like I was capable of doing anything at the time - I was sick as a dog. And she forgot it, too, so I’m excused.”
“She did not,” Harry replies. “She just didn’t want you to feel bad about forgetting it.”
His father looks at him, blinks a few times. Realisation hits him quite slowly – but since he just arrived from Spain after being woken up by a call in the middle of the night, he’s surely excused.
“I don’t deserve her, do I?” he asks softly, a little, self-deprecating smile spreading on his lips.
Harry shrugs, but he smiles back at him.
“I think you do,” he replies, then looks at his brother. A warm, happy feeling has bloomed in his chest and it seems like it’s not going away any time soon.
“We’re two lucky kids,” he whispers to him, loud enough for his father to hear.
“They’re not so bad, you know - as parents come.”