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James awakes to the sound of crying. It isn’t unusual for Lily to cry, just about last week she cried in James’ arms because she couldn’t find the ice-cream she usually eats. So awaking to the sound of his wife, crying, wasn’t unusual. What freaked him out was the unusual stillness. The lack of movement. The quiet sobs. James opens one eye, searching for his wife, but his vision his blurry. In a state of panic, he realizes that after 21 years, he still can’t see without his glasses. He forces open his other eye to look for his glasses, rummaging through his nightstand filled with various objects from his time at Hogwarts: a snitch, the two way mirror he shared with Sirius, and the glasses Lily charmed with an unbreakable spell in Seventh Year during one of their Head Boy and Girl round. He grabs them and quickly puts them on as he sits up, looking towards Lily’s side of the bed.
James doesn’t find his wife on the bed, no, instead Lily is sitting in a strange position on the floor, her hand on her pregnant belly. Clutching it like her life depends on it.
James can’t help but smile at the sight of his wife, he does’nt believe his luck. He got the girl of his dreams, and is going to become a father. Life could not get more real for them. Unfortunately, dreams aren’t made to last, and James quickly remembers what stirred him awake, he searches Lily’s face, analyzing every emotion flickering through her eyes. It’s only when he see the tears streaming down her face that his heart stops.
Her sobs gets louder and James is up in an instant, running to his wife side to help her stand up.
“Lily,” James pleads, taking her arms and trying to stand her up, but she won’t — No can’t budge. Instead she is stuck to the floor, her hands clutching their baby as she cries harder and mumbles nonsense. James’ only logical train of thought is helping his wife. He quickly comes to the conclusion that she must have fallen while sleeping and perhaps hurt herself in doing so.
“Please, Lily. Let me help-"
His mouths shuts. As quickly as it opened. Because he can’t believe his eyes. There, on their wooden floor is an unmistakable shade of red. Crimson. Scarlet. James almost screams. He remembers falling asleep the night before, and he is sure, even certain that their wooden floor isn’t red. It’s simply not.
He counts to three, closing his eyes and tries to breathe. He tries to gather himself because his wife needs him. He can’t break down. He can’t make conclusions. Even with his eyes closed and mind filled with images of his wife, James panics. He opens his eyes in a flash, analyzed the situation. Lily on the floor. Her hand on her round belly. The blood in between her legs. The tears streaming down her cheeks. The sickening sound of her crying.
He looks down at the floor, then sobs.
No.
No.
Blood, everywhere. Lily’s legs are soaking red, leaving red marks all over their floor and onto her own clothes. James sweeps his gaze at the bed, he doesn’t know how he didn’t see it but the sheets are almost maroon. He stumbles backwards, his back hitting the wall as he realizes what is happening right in front of his eyes. What is happening to his lovely, unresponsive and shocked wife.
In five months time, Lily Evans won’t give birth to their son. No, Lily Evans won’t. Because she just had a miscarriage.
“You need to eat, honey,” Lily can hear James’ voice so clearly for the first time in weeks. He’s sitting next to her as she’s laying down, tears streaming down her cheeks filling up her ears. She’s watching their ceiling, decorated with stars that light up in the night. She can’t bear the thought that comes. The one reminding her why they exist in the first place. She quickly shuts down her eyes and forces herself to get back here, in the moment. With James.
She can taste the salt on her lips, bruised by dehydration. “Just a sip, I made your favorite. It’s butternut.”
She opens her eyes and just stares in disgust at the full mug in front of her and wonders if she will ever feel hungry again. Right now, she wants to throw up, just like she had so many times before during her first trimester. How pathetic, missing something she used to dread so much.
The healers, back at the hospital, had done everything in their power to save their baby.
Magic can’t fix everything. Apparently. She’s digusted by it. The unfairness of their world. She was born a muggle, and she knows how their world works. She belonged to that world for so long. But when she found out her talent for flying, healing, and making flowers flourish wasn’t usual, she thought for a while that perhaps magic was the solution to everything. It could heal, it could make you fly, it could hurt, it could do everything.
That night as she stared at the words, “We did everything,” leaving the mouth of the head healer in St Mungo, Lily knew. Magic isn’t some sort of great discovery. It gives you hope, then tears it apart the moment you need it most.
Now Lily feels like an empty shell, who was thrown at the sea for the sole purpose of finding her other half. But her other half was her baby. The one she will never meet.
She looks at her husband. Her poor, broken, lost husband who had done nothing but help her during this difficult time. He’s heartbroken, which is completely normal and logical. But he doesn’t know what it feels like to have a round belly, with no one living inside it.
She misses the weight of her son like the shore misses the waves during low tides.
“Not hungry,” she mumbled, the words leaving her mouth before her brain can even register anything.
“Honey, I’m sorry but you really need to eat, it’s been days,” James begs, his voice shaking with emotions Lily doesn’t have time to decipher. A spoon approaches Lily’s mouth. Lily sits up and closes her lips around the spoon, leaving it inside her warm mouth as she tries to swallow down the first taste of food in a week. She starts crying again as she realizes the irony of it all.
This isn’t just a husband taking care of his wife. No, this is a father mourning his child and Lily, in a rush to mourn her son, took that away from him.
She throws up right there, on her bed. Her stomach is so empty that it hurts, blood billowing out of her mouth and onto herself. But nothing can hurt more than the crashing devastation of never being able to meet what should have been her baby. Her son.
James quickly stands up and goes to squeeze Lily. He sits down behind her, his back crashing onto the pillows as he slowly rocks Lily to sleep.
She falls asleep to James horrible and off key humming. The quiet “I love you,” haunting her mind as she drifts off to sleep.
“I’m searching for mandrakes roots, perhaps you have some?” Lily asks the potion maker, June, in Diagon Alley on a random Friday night. She is bored out of her mind, she needs something to get her moving. And apparently Dumbledore requested for Lily to make potions for the aurors. The war is over, Voldemort was killed by an angry and well prepared Alice Longbottom the night he broke in to try and kill their baby son. Declaring himself the most powerful wizard in the world as long as he killed the baby who would have defeated him at some point.
Lily’s old headmaster, still requests potions from time to time, Voldemort might have died but the death eaters are still very much present and some of them are harder to catch than others.
“It’s in the back, don’t forget to grab the ear protection!” June informs Lily, as she busies herself with other clients.
Lily goes off to the back but stops in her tracks. A beautiful woman with long blond hair is standing in front of her, she is cradling her tiny baby in her arms and singing lullabies as she looks for soothing potion for newborns.
Lily’s heart won’t stop pounding, she can’t stop looking at the baby. It is so tiny, barely two months old. Lily then looks at the woman who is joined by her partner, holding the hand of a two year old toddler.
Lily drops her tiny cart, the potions she grabbed before scattering with a loud thud on the floor. The toddler startles, with that the crying of the tiny baby joins the mistery of the situation.
Lily sobs too. This is unfair. This is so unfair. There she is, minding her own business and a perfect little family comes to haunt her, to remind her of the life she lost a few months prior.
She tries to look somewhere else, but it is impossible. The baby is still crying and a sudden urge invades Lily’s mind. She needs to hug the baby, to protect it from everyone.
“Ma’am?” The blonde haired woman asks as she sees Lily stepping toward them. She isn’t scared, but curious. The baby stopped crying, calmed by the soothing cradling of her mother. That’s perhaps what takes Lily by surprise, she approaches the woman and pleads with her eyes to touch the baby, to acknowledge its existence.
“C-Can I?” Lily begs, her voice firm but calm. “Please.”
The blond haired woman squints at Lily before nodding. Lily touches the baby’s cheek, gently stroking it with her index finger. Her body relaxed immediately, the feeling feels so natural to her. It is almost impossible to imagine a world where Lily didn’t give birth to her baby. She was born to be someone’s mom. And for a tiny second she was.
Before Lily can squeeze the baby’s tiny fingers, it starts crying. The crying gets worse when she tries to comfort it, so she simply stumbles back, slipping on the spilled potions on the floor. She almost falls down, but doesn’t. She stares at the mother and its baby, and runs away as fast as she can.
Her hands are sweaty, and her eyes floods with tears. But she can’t cry, not yet.
Remus is visiting Lily for the first time since the miscarriage. She feels emptier than ever and James thought that having company while he’s at work, would help Lily. But this just feels awkward. What used to be fun outings and calm reading parties are now boring and awkward meetings. They don’t know what to say to each other. Lily remains an empty shell, there are no reasons for her to be here. Yet there she is. Stuck and lost.
“You okay Evans?” The ongoing jokes of calling Lily with her old last name don’t even make her smile, instead she stares at her best friend and tries her best not to break down crying.
Remus frowns and busied himself with a quick smoke. Lily wants to say something, anything, but what is there to say? "I’m sorry I lost my kid and wasn’t present for you during the full moons!” What a bunch of nonsense.
A few months ago she would have told him not to smoke for the baby, even though she knows that magic is far too powerful to allow a baby being harmed by the aftereffects of cigarettes. But still, it’s the though that counts and Lily wanted to make motherhood funnier.
There was no baby, anymore. No reasons to bother Remus with the smell of his fags and the state of his eyes. Tired.
“Sirius and I are adopting,” Remus breaks the ice after long minutes of simply staring at each other. “I’m sorry.”
Lily doesn’t know what to say, she probably should have said anything because the next minute Remus is hugging her. He squeezes her, almost breaking her bones but she just stands there, staring at the wall behind Remus’ shoulder thinking of something to say, something that won’t sound fake.
But Lily can’t fake her happiness so she allows herself to cry. She cries and cries in the arms of Remus, he squeezes once more and lets her go, leaning down in front of her and putting one strand of hair behind her ear.
“Do you want to talk about it?” He asks, taking her hand and squeezing it three times, she squeezes back and shakes her head. There is nothing to say. “Do you want to show me, then?”
Lily’s entire body shuts down for a second, she blinks a few times before nodding.
She goes up the stairs of her house, Remus following close by, she opens the door in front of James and her’s room allowing the fresh scent of laundry to haunt her nostrils.
Remus can’t refrain from letting the gasp espace his mouth as he walks in the room. What was once a small, ordered, and cute nursery is now a nightmare to look at. The crib is in a thousand pieces, the toys are scattered all around the floor, and the walls… The walls are flaked and worn out by Lily’s nails trying to scrape the three coats of paint away.
“Lily, you need to see someone. This is not normal.”
Remus approaches Lily, tilts her chin up and stares directly at her soul.
“I know what you’ve been through is something none of us can understand, but there are groups for that. Life is unfair. Don’t I know it, but please don’t give up,” he whispers, looking for something that isn’t here in her eye. “I need you. Sirius needs you. James — Your husband needs you.”
Lily nods, turning her gaze towards the messy room and letsherself acknowledge what happened to her for the first time in months.
“What if I don’t want to get help?” She whispers to no one in particular. She can’t stop but remembering the night she lost it all. James had been so sweet, holding her hand and saying the right things but Lily had been horrible, crying and sobbing and never once acknowledging that perhaps he had lost a baby too. She never apologized. She doesn’t know if she wants to. A selfish part of her screams at her that she has nothing to apologize for, he wasn’t the one who hadn’t been woman enough to have a baby. Lily hates herself for being so weak.
“Evans, I love you more than anything. But you can’t say things like that and expect me to brush it off,” Remus chided Lily, squeezing her at the same time. It’s weirdly comforting. “Tomorrow you’ll go with me, I’m signing up to one of these groups, and tonight you and James need to talk. Okay?”
She sobs, “He hates me.”
“No he doesn’t. He’s grieving his baby. And you are too. And somehow what should have brought you two closer, only did the contrary.”
“I don’t know how to look at him without breaking down or hating myself for taking something away from him.”
“You didn’t take something away from him. You didn’t. Stop telling yourself that. Talk to him, you guys share the same bruise.”
She sniffs and nods, wiping her nose on Remus’ ugly jumpers. She chuckles when he pushes her off, grimacing as he stares down at the snot.
“You and Sirius then?” Lily asks shyly. “I thought you weren’t ready for a baby yet?”
Remus acknowledges and smiles at Lily’s efforts to talk about newborns and kids, that’s probably why he steers the conversation away saying, “No I wasn’t actually ready to have a dog and a baby. Do you know he still sleeps in animal form?”
Lily laughs and gets out of the room to make tea.
“James, please! Do it for us! For me! I need it. It’s closure!” Lily yells, her husband is sitting on one of the kitchen’s chair, staring at the Daily Prophet. She knows he’s not reading, because James can’t see without his glasses, which are currently at the top of his head. If she wasn’t mad, she’d find it cute.
His hair looks messy — when is it not — and he seems tired. Lily thinks he looks older than a few months ago, when everything was right.
“It’s been 6 months, Lily.”
“Don’t you think I know this? You think I don’t wake up everyday and wish that I was someone else?! I’m trying to move on! I’m trying to be a better wife, to forget everything horrible that happened to us! So please let me do this one thing!” She paces around the kitchen, pointing fingers at James while begging him to pick up a fight. “It’s like you don’t even care.”
She knows it was a low blow, she knows it the moment the words leave her mouth, leaving a bitter taste of regret. The worst part of it all is that she truly means them. James moved on, he never talks about their baby and whenever Lily does, he simply stares and sets his lips into a straight line.
Lily is about to apologize, she lost a baby already, she can’t dare losing a husband, too. But before she can, James bursts out in anger.
“Do you really think that, Lily?” James suddenly yells, the walls vibrating with his anger. Lily wonders when is the last time he called her honey. She misses him. “I wake up everyday to a wife that won’t even look at me without flinging! I wake up fearing that my wife will be covered with blood! Bloody hell, I can’t even look at anyone too because each time I do I swear I can hear them telling me I wasn’t good enough to be a father!”
Lily’s drops open as she comes face to face with her husband’s pain.
“I’m not finished!” James adds, standing up, putting his glasses on his face. “Do you know what I did when some knock head told me we were lucky the Prophecy wasn’t about us? I bloody hexed him! And if Dumbledore wasn’t surveying my every move I would have definitely used the Cruciatus Curse on that poor man! For what?! A stupid comment! That’s how much I care, Lily! Now stop your nonsense!”
He stops and the only thing that can be heard inside the kitchen is the breathing of James and the pounding of Lily’s heart, crashing against her chest.
She doesn’t think twice before crashing herself onto her husband. She kissed him on the lips and everywhere, all at once. James is startled at first but then he reciprocates the kiss by pulling Lily’s legs up around his waist. He carries her to the bedroom and when they finish sharing love words and excuses, Lily asks again.
“Would you do it, then?” Her voice is small and scared, because she can’t imagine a future without doing it. Without her husband agreeing. Deep down, she knows she can’t and won’t move on without this.
James thinks about it, he’s stroking Lily’s belly, where he left love bruises all over her scars.
“What are your suggestions?” He says, looking up at Lily.
“I think-“ She starts thinking, but she already knows her answer and James did too. They agreed on it a year ago. Right before they even knew they were going to be parents.
“Harry.”
Lily looks at James, right then. She smiled, kisses his cheeks and starts crying. She doesn’t know why because she was happy, right there, in her husband’s arms. It’s not lost on her that this is unfair, whispering baby names like it’s a secret. Like they’ll be punished for even thinking about it.
People expect them to move on. To simply forget. But the weight of their loss remains unknown to strangers. Ironically, the loss of their baby added an invisible string in their relationship, tying them together in a way they didn’t agree to.
“Yes, Harry,” she smiles, kissing James. God, she missed this feeling. The intensity of the kiss makes magic look like a kid’s invention. There is no competition, if she had to choose between magic and James, she would always choose James.
“Our baby was named Harry. And I want to scream!” Lily laughs, tears streaming down her face, the taste of salty water invading her lips.
Teddy Harry Lupin is born on a random Wednesday. Nympadora, a friend of Sirius and Remus, when she found out she was pregnant was far from happy but she couldn’t say goodbye to the feeling of having life growing inside her. Something she shared in secrecy with Lily, who after an intensive month in therapy, was happy to hear about. Dora thinks Sirius and Remus will make great parents. Loving Teddy with love and without any hesitation.
Lily is the one to throw the welcome party, she has to. Her best friends are now parents and she can’t wait to be made a godmother, that might sound selfish of her but she will spoil this kid as if he’s her own.
James decided to offer Sirius a motorcycle, hence why it is quietly standing in the middle of the middle room, something Lily judged dangerous for the kids. But she can’t say anything, because for the first time in a year, the word “baby” don’t make them panic nor cry. No, far from it. They grew past that, their wound will never truly heal but their therapy did help. Lily is still seeing the group Remus signed her up into. And James is now working from home, taking the necessary time to be ready for the field again.
A month ago, they got a tattoo with what should have been Harry’s birth date according to the healers. Beside James and Lily’s wedding rings lies the date: 31/07. A reminder that they survived the worse, and will survive much more things.
Lily stops in her tracks to charm a chair onto an ice cream maker, she turns her gaze to James who is putting up the welcome sign with Teddy’s name on it. She smiles as she realizes that the t-shirt he is wearing is the same t-shirt Lily gifted him during Father’s Day when she was pregnant.
World’s greatest wizard dad
is all it says. And to Lily, it means so many things.