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The little white and pink plastic device sat in the middle of the kitchen table where Lily had set it down after dropping the biggest news of their lives on them. A tiny screen displayed a single word: Pregnant. There’d been shocked embraces and happy tears and more than a little panic. They were going to have a baby. The four of them were going to be parents. Together.
After emotions had simmered down some, Remus had gotten up to get them some coffee. Merlin, he certainly needed it. Sirius had just gotten in from an overnight shift at Saint Mungo’s when Lily accosted him and dragged all of them to the kitchen to share her news. Meanwhile, James was a tangled ball of nerves so having something to hold would probably do him some good and distract him from rambling their ears off. Lily herself was surprisingly calm but Remus wasn’t sure he trusted that; he certainly didn’t trust his own present calm.
“But who’s the father?” James asked, his knee bouncing as he accepted the cup Remus floated to him. Remus froze beside Sirius, about to take back his seat when that question brought the world to a grinding halt. He wanted to say the answer to that question didn’t matter, that they’d love this kid no matter what, but it did. It mattered a lot.
“Well, it’s certainly not mine,” Sirius answered around a yawn. He snagged his own cup with one hand and dragged Remus to sit down again so he could rest his head on his shoulder.
James looked at Sirius and rolled his eyes. “No shit. You only sleep with me and Moony. Which means the kid’s either mine or Moony’s.”
Lily’s eyes settled on Remus and she gave him a gentle if worried smile. She took her floated cup in both hands while she watched him. “It’ll be fine, either way.”
“We were always so careful,” Remus answered in little more than a whisper. They’d set some pretty firm boundaries when this all began. He couldn’t get Sirius pregnant no matter how hard they tried but when Lily and James joined the mix, things changed. Sirius had no sexual interest towards Lily but encouraged Remus to rekindle the feelings between them that had never really gone away after they’d both split off to their respective partners in seventh year. They’d decided then and there that they weren’t going to risk anything and always used protection. The same went with her and James once things got serious between the four of them. If they were going to have a child, it would be intentional and it would be James, not Remus. This was an absolute disaster.
“Oi, you’re spiralling, mate,” James noted from across the table, his bouncing knee coming to an abrupt stop. He set down his cup and stood, taking Lily’s hand and pulling her along with him.
In the time it took them to walk around the table, Sirius had sat up and turned to pull Remus into his arms and then Remus was in the middle of a dog pile. Another head was resting on his shoulder from behind, someone’s fingers were in his hair, arms were wrapped around him from all sides and gentle lips were kissing his face while assorted reassuring whispers sounded from the group. At some point in the tricky mess of reignited emotions, there were tears all around and they eventually found themselves tangled up on their oversized sofa with blankets, chocolate and a movie playing on the television. By then, Sirius had fallen asleep on one shoulder, Lily was curled up against Remus’s other side and James was laying with his head in her lap and his arm draped across her to touch his leg. It was a decent way to spend a Saturday morning even if their world had completely tilted off its axis.
-:-:-:-:-
Full moons with just Padfoot became the norm and they’d likely remain that way for the foreseeable future. Remus missed the stag and the doe joining him each month but they couldn’t risk it while Lily was pregnant and then one of them would have to stay with the baby unless they got grandparents involved. Between three sets, that was very much a possibility but it was also a lot to ask and they didn’t live particularly close to any of them. So, James opted to stay with Lily while Sirius went with Remus. Other than the first moon after they’d learned they were going to be parents, the wolfsbane potion kept the wolf relatively calm and Sirius was able to handle him just fine on his own.
With just a month to go, it was time to get their flat ready. That meant completely rearranging literally everything and in true Marauder fashion, they’d all procrastinated it to such a degree that even magic wasn’t all that helpful in getting what needed to be done done.
Remus found himself on the floor in the middle of what used to be his study with pieces of a cot scattered across the floor all around him. Lily was sitting in a cushy armchair by the window with the instructions and the two of them were trying to make sense of it since their James had absolutely no idea, even now, how to use muggle tools and Sirius had decided that trying to fit a carseat into the back of their sedan was a better use of his time. He’d also made noise about putting one on his bike but Lily and Remus had immediately shot that one down with death glares alone. He grumbled and decided that he’d just put the kid on the bike when they were older instead; they hadn’t fought him on that… yet.
“Why is this so difficult? I can teach a child to cast a protection charm or capture a boggart but I can’t put together a bloody cot,” Remus complained. Surely he was doing something wrong. It couldn’t be this complicated.
“Are you sure you have part E and not F?” Lily asked, frowning at the paper in her hands. “They look pretty similar.”
Remus confirmed that he did, in fact, have the right part and after some further trouble shooting noticed a tiny notch on one end that meant he was holding it upside down and that’s why it wouldn’t fit. Lily stifled giggles as Remus swore at it in Welsh and he couldn’t help but smile. He’d always liked the way she laughed. Something about it was just so innocent.
It took the better part of another hour to get the cot in place. Lily spent most of that time laughing at him and when he finally got it done he crossed the small room and leaned over her where she sat in the chair watching and directing him.
“You know, Evans, if you weren’t carrying my child, I would be inclined to make you pay for just sitting around making fun of me,” he taunted as he grinned just inches from her face.
“Well, it’s a good thing I am, then, Lupin, because I don’t think you’d be able to make me pay anyway,” she countered, smirking up at him and leaning forward to touch her forehead to his.
“Is that a challenge?” Remus asked, matching her smirk with his own.
“Maybe I’m just trying to save you the humiliation of defeat.”
“Save your pity for Potter. He’s the one with an ego to stroke.” Remus kissed her as she burst into laughter again. She wheezed her agreement before he playfully shoved her back against the pillows and straightened up. He left the room with a wink while she tried to stop laughing.
Still grinning, Remus went to enlist help from the others to get the changing table and dresser combo into the room. They came back to discover that Lily had decided to start putting up decorations and lining the windowsill with lots of cuddly toys they’d been gifted at her baby shower last week. Their kid was certainly well loved, that was for sure.
-:-:-:-:-
Four grown adults trying to choose a name for their little boy had been an absolute nightmare. James had been the one to suggest his first name, the first option that any of them could actually agree on. Middle names in all of their families had been inherited names, though, and without giving the poor kid a name as long as Dumbledore’s, they found themselves going round and round on how to actually honor his vast heritage. Sirius insisted that he didn’t want any of his own family’s names passed on and Remus didn’t particularly get along with most of his family either, his parents excluded. Lily suggested that they pick a Welsh name to give their child some sort of connection that way instead and so, after cycling through a list that Remus offered, they settled on one that would honor the both of them. Just days before his due date, Harry Seren Evans finally had a name to call his own.
He was born at 11:57 PM on July 31. Sirius was the first person to hold him, as Lily insisted he be the one to deliver their child. Despite being completely out of his depth with a speciality in emergency healing magic, he was not one to deny his lover a request like that. He went to fetch Remus only after everything was cleaned up since Remus had stepped out to avoid complete sensory overload. The sights, sounds and smells of childbirth were overwhelming, to put it lightly.
“Time to come and meet our kid,” Sirius told him as he approached him in the waiting room. The smile on his face was of a man so completely in love that there were no words to describe it.
Sirius had always wanted kids. They’d gone back and forth about adopting so many times it made Remus’s head spin. They’d always settled on ‘maybe,’ even when they joined James and Lily and the possibility of actually having one of their own became a reality. Now, by complete accident, it was their reality. And Remus was, after a long time fighting with himself for the past few months, actually okay with that.
Remus took Sirius’s hand as he stood. Sirius pulled him close to kiss him and then dragged him to the room where Lily and James were waiting with Harry. There he was, their son, snuggled up against his mum’s chest with his dad cooing over him in a display of adoration that was so very typical James Potter that it would have been funny had Remus not wanted to do the exact same thing.
Lily somehow managed to be the perfect picture of beauty even while rightfully exhausted and completely disheveled. She gave Remus a tired but radiant smile and beckoned him over to join them on the bed. She rested her head against his shoulder when he sat beside her and then put Harry into his arms.
“There’s your tadu,” she said to Harry. They’d gone back and forth about what to call the three men around Harry since they couldn’t all be refered to as ‘daddy.’ Remus had suggested what he called his own father as a kid, ‘tadu,’ and the others had all immediately loved it. Sirius was a bit more difficult to find a name for but in a moment of otherwise ridiculous teasing one night over a game of cards, James had modified Remus’s suggestion to ‘padu’ and it had just stuck. The baby didn’t seem to care who was holding him at present, though, and just snuggled up to whichever warm body he was placed against.
“Being a dad suits you, Moony,” James told him. He reached across Lily to settle a hand in Remus’s lap, squeezing his leg affectionately when they met eyes. Sirius draped himself across Remus’s shoulders from behind and murmured his agreement with a kiss to his cheek while Lily nodded against him, her eyes on Harry.
Remus could not have smiled wider if he tried.