Marauders - Always - Part One

A Wonky Little Splootch

Lily didn't know why she was so nervous all week leading up to her appointment at St. Mungo's on Thursday, but she found herself unable to concentrate on anything. The simplest things and her mind was wandering away, her eyes were staring off into space - or most often the backyard through the window over the sink - and James kept giving her funny looks.

"Alright, Evans?"

She nodded, "Mmhm," she answered, but her mind would immediately wander again.

Top it off, he was convinced she was truly, properly ill. She kept getting up in the mornings with morning sickness - and so was Sirius. He floo'd in after James had left each morning, shoving his head through the embers on the fireplace to check he'd gone, and running upstairs to complain.

"It isn't my uterus that's growing a Prongslet!" he complained.

"You don't even have a uterus, you bastard," Lily gasped between the rise and fall of waves of nausea.

"All the more reason why this is your fault," Sirius accused.

"It's James's fault, really," Lily said.

"Yes, that's true. That fucker," Sirius shook his head.

But the illness and the dissociation was hardly what Lily was nervous about. No, rather she was nervous about Harry.

"Why?" Sirius asked. "You already know the Prongletfetus is in there."

"Because what if it was wrong and I'm not really pregnant and I've gotten my heart set on something that's not even in there, that's not even real?" Lily whimpered.

Sirius shook his head, "You've seen Harry. I've seen Harry - through you. I know what you saw. He's real."

"But what if he's not real yet?" Lily pressed, hand laying across her belly.

Sirius said, "He is. I can smell him."

And as weird as that statement was, that was what Lily held onto when her nerves acted up and she was certain the test had been wrong.

Meanwhile, in the Flat in East London, Remus was getting worried about Sirius who was picking up on Lily's nausea and was bitterly cranky.

"What in the hell is wrong with you?" Remus demanded after Sirius threw a complete and total fit over Remus coming home late from his art classes one day. Granted, Remus had indeed been late - doing a second set of sketches in his book so that when Sirius asked what he'd drawn that day he could answer honestly, and he'd gotten a bit more into the task than he'd expected and ended up drawing longer than he'd intended to.

Sirius perched himself on the couch and was biting his fingers.

Remus suddenly narrowed his eyes, "Have you been biting your nails?"

"No!" Sirius said, taking his fingers out of his mouth as he said it.

Remus grabbed Sirius's hand, looking at his nails which were all chewed up. "Let me rephrase it, why are you biting your nails?"

Sirius stared at his fingers with a look of honest confusion, "I - didn't realize I had," he answered.

Remus raised an eyebrow. "You've been exceedingly cranky and melodramatic, even for you - which is saying something, honestly... and now this." He held up Sirius's hand. "What's going on? Are you feeling sick?"

Sirius shrugged.

"Honey, I can't help what you don't tell me about."

Sirius stared at Remus and Remus could see there was something there that Sirius was holding back. "Love?" he asked.