WHO: Lily Potter & Alice Longbottom
WHAT: DDDD:
WHEN: Today
WHERE: The Potters' new house
"I am so ready to be
done being pregnant." Lily set down yet another onesie on top of an already precarious-seeming stack and leaned carefully back against the cherry-wood crib behind her. "Then again--" she mused as she took a survey of the messy, box-filled room. "I guess I could wait until this nursery actually gets put together."
In between trying to get themselves settled into their new home, the Potters had had to put the project of Harry's nursery on a back burner, and as much as Lily wanted to get it all done, every time she took a glance at the room it seemed all the more impossible to make herself do it. Put it all back together again. It had been almost done, before they moved (they were, after all, two unemployed adults with way too much time on their hands), but then when they had to go into hiding it had had to be taken all down. And it had been---perfect, back at their old house, it had been so perfect and now... well, it wasn't as if this home were
bad, but it wasn't home yet. She still felt more like she was living in a glorified hotel than her own home, and she didn't want her son's nursery to be set up in a hotel.
She knew she was being melodramatic about it, and she'd have to finish this sometime before the end of July, but Lily still didn't
want to. Which is why she needed the moral support---or at least someone to sit around and help to keep her off her arse about the whole thing.
Having another very, very pregnant woman who was also very, very forbidden to go much of anywhere or do much of anything seriously came in handy sometimes. At least when Alice was here she got
some progress made, even if it was just folding onesies. "Thanks again for coming and listening to me whine," she sighed, with a bittersweet smile and a nod in the Longbottom woman's direction.
Alice had decided, quite early really, that she could be pregnant forever.
Of course, this belief came and went with the mood swings and the bloating and the exhaustion, but at the end of the day, she really and truly believed she could have baby after baby, and be quite content with being the gigantic balloon of a woman she was right now. Not that she was
big, really, because---she hadn't been very big to begin with, and to be honest it was frustrating! If she wore anything slightly loose, it just looked like, well, that the shirt was loose! Avis had been questioning Alice's recent choice in clothing, mostly because her shirts consisted of tight, brightly colored tee shirts.
It wasn't
fair. Erin was a good two months
less pregnant than her, and their bumps were about the same and and and---
"It's fine!" she chirped, holding out a particularly cute onesie (it had
snitches on it!) and cooing greatly. Alice smiled greatly at it before folding it up and placing it into the bottom of a drawer. She wasn't sure how she was going to get up from her position on the floor, but she figured they wouldn't have to move much until the boys (men, she supposed) came home from whatever it was. Or she would just have to live on Harry's nursery floor, which she was pretty sure Nigel wouldn't appreciate. Even if they
were going to be the best of friends.
Alice patted down another onesie, this one with...reindeers? "If Frank's mother would let me near Nigel's nursery, I would say you could return the favor, but Augusta
knows what a Longbottom man needs in his early years of development."
"Not that I'm saying there's anything good about not having a mother-in-law, but... well, that's one good thing," Lily joked with a smirk. Although, it really wasn't so much of a joke when she thought about how little she'd like to have Augusta Longbottom for a mother-in-law, with all of her hovering and her controlling nature and... Augusta Longbottom-ness. Not that Lily really knew the woman, but there had certainly been a fair share of stories out of Alice's mouth about her. She hadn't exactly known James' mother
either, so there was really no way to say if she would have been acting the same way, but somehow Lily severely doubted it.
Lily turned back down to folding the onesies again and---
why had they bought all of these? Harry was never going to wear one of these more than once with all of the clothes he had. She supposed they'd just gotten carried away during the early excitement of actually
being pregnant, but Merlin's beard...
"I think I'm going to need a break from this soon," she said, hoping like it didn't sound
too much like she was giving up. "You want to go downstairs and have some lunch?"
"If I can get up!" Alice laughed, but she had become quite good at using her surroundings as helpful tools into her maneuvering about. Her stomach might not be big compared to most pregnancies at this stage, but it was
certainly a change to Alice's thin frame. So--she latched onto the side of the dresser, curling her fingers into the drawer to heft herself up. Frank was constantly hovering, ready to literally pick her up if necessary; she had to be honest,
sometimes she let him, because it was so cute, but most of the time she was able to move about on her own.
Proud that she successfully found herself upright, Alice happily followed Lily out of the nursery and down to the kitchen. Her mood had been greatly affected by the reappearance of Gleny; Alice still wasn't sure if she was allowed to be talking of her survival, but just knowing that her friend was alive helped ease the nearly constant depression she'd found herself in these past few months.
Finally, something good had happened.
"It's really funny though," Alice continued, contemplating sliding up on a stool; probably not a good idea at the moment. She took to leaning against the counter, "Emmeline's been butting heads with Augusta more than I've been--I feel like opening up some of the empty rooms and letting them each design their own room." Which, would probably be easier. The light falling of footsteps caught her attention, but, the Potters had a dog, right? Yes, he'd been their guest for a bit while they were teaching at Hogwarts.
"Well, at least then his bedtime experience will never be dull. Might make Harry a little jealous if his best friend has more bedrooms than he does, though," Lily said as she walked over to the fridge. "Not that he won't be lucky just to get one completed one by the time he's born."
She ducked into the fridge to grab some---hmm, what sounded good for sandwiches today? It was always changing thanks to her, so the Potters certainly had a good variety of normal and not-so-normal ingredients. The avocados looked pretty good, though, and---oh strawberries and... mustard? And maybe some tomatoes too, not that she hadn't been telling James to get those same vegetables out of the house last night due to a lovely sensation of nausea the sight of them had cased, but they
did look pretty wonderful this afternoon, so... Yes, that sounded good.
Lily pulled her head out of the refrigerator to set her choices on the counter, and she had just turned to Alice to give her a chance to do the same when from over her friend's shoulder her eyes locked onto a figure, standing on the near end of the living room, wand raised and staring straight at her--
"ALICE, DOWN!" she screamed, and ducked behind one of the kitchen counters just as a flash of orange caused the one she'd been standing in front of to explode in a storm of splinters.
No! Alice's mind couldn't think of anything else. No! No,
no! This couldn't be happening again! They were supposed to be
safe here! Barely a handful of people knew of the Potter's new whereabouts! Had she been
followed? How were you followed through
Floo? Her head was spinning madly as she ducked around the counter, her hand seemingly working with a mind of its own as her wand whipped out and shot some nasty spells at the death eaters. Death
eaters. There was more than one crazed lunatic in the Potter's living room, and they'd finally realized that
big scenes and
explosions were not the way to sneak up on a person.
"Longbottom needs to be
alive!" one of the masked men shouted from across the room as they continued the rally of spells. Alice felt her heart
stop at the sound of her name, and it felt like time had frozen along with it as she turned to Lily. It was only a split second, it couldn't be more than that with the hexes shooting over their heads, but the amount of emotion poured into that one
look---the baby, they were after the baby. Voldemort had decided that
her son was the one in the prophecy, and he needed her alive to---to what, to---
--to kill them himself, probably. To make sure the job got done.
Alice felt a flush of anger wash over her and she turned quickly, awkwardly squatted against the wall as she sent a volley of the most violent spells she could muster. She had been terrified of the idea of the death eaters targeting her child before, but now that it was actually, physically
happening? The ferocity in which Alice was going to fight for him couldn't be described, and she pushed herself up into a better dueling position, managing to knock one of the figures to the ground. For how long, she couldn't be sure, but it was going to buy them some time.
"Send off a patronus!" she shouted at Lily, not daring to lose eye contact with the remaining death eaters.
A hand clenched tight around Lily's heart at Alice's look shot her way--had she ever felt so hopelessly filled with regret for someone? They didn't have to use words to communicate what they knew the Death Eater's words meant. Voldemort had found reason to believe that the Longbottom baby was the one in the prophecy, enough reason that he would take all the energy and effort to have his men break--
silently--into a thoroughly-warded, thoroughly hidden, thought to be near
impenetrable home just to get her. To get Nigel, and to take care of this problem of his future undoing.
Something inside of her, a terrible thought she hadn't been able to get rid of since this whole prophecy business began, said that she should be happy to know it wasn't her, that it wasn't Harry. But Lily didn't feel happy. She didn't feel relieved. Instead, she suddenly almost wished it
was her, just to never have to have seen that pain and despair in Alice's eyes.
She couldn't let them have her.
If there was one thing that was certain, it was that if someone here ended up hurt, ended up captured or ended up dead, it was going to be Lily. All of her motherly instincts were screaming at her at the top of their lungs--six months pregnant, how could she resolve to do such a thing? Did she not care, had she gone completely insane? But the truth of the situation was that she was not important here. And even as she loathed herself for thinking it,
even Harry was not important here. When it came down to it, it was she and her son or it was Alice and the boy who was destined to put a stop to Voldemort once and for all.
It wasn't fair. It was so bloody--
unfair that her son should have to suffer, for something that
she gotten into in the first place. It had been her choice to join the Order and get herself smacked on the top of a mad murderer's hit list. It had been her choice to try and get pregnant, despite knowing so much better, knowing that something like
this was bound to happen---how had she fooled herself into thinking it wouldn't? Because now that it was happening, Lily wanted to die to think what a mistake this all had been.
Fuck, James was never going to forgive her for this. If she lived, she doubted she would either.
"No, Alice," she answered solemnly, and Lily wondered if she looked half as overwhelmed with heartbreaking sorrow as she felt inside. "You send the patronus. You should be able to sneak out the back door while I keep them distracted--
get out of here."
This could not be happening. This
should not be happening. They were just kids! They were
kids. She wasn't even twenty! How was she
here? How did this war manage to fast forward her life so damn quickly? She was married before she left Hogwarts, she was
pregnant not long after a year had passed, and now she was facing what seemed to be her death before her child was even born. How had this
happened?
Was there really such a thing as fate, and destiny? Alice had always liked Divination, and was sad to drop the class to focus on the core subjects needed to become and auror, but she remembered being so
amazed at the idea that life had already been planned out for you, and you were just---it was a maze, it was something of a maze. The turns you took and the obstacles you hit meant nothing in the long run; you were always going to end up leaving through the exit that had been laid out for you the entire time.
Unless you blast down some damn walls and get the
fuck out of there. Fortunately (unfortunately?) for Alice and Lily, they usually had death eaters doing that for them.
As Alice shouted out a patronus, hoping to drag Lily away from her sure suicide mission, the back door (and wall) of the Potter's home was blown into a million sharp pieces, and a rather large stake of wood embedded itself into Alice's left shoulder. She heaved forward at the sudden pain, eyes wide and mouth gaping at the shock. She felt her left side go limp almost immediately, and now she had
no choice but to leave Lily, or else they'd both be dead in five minutes. The death eaters were recuperating from the blast that shook the whole house (there was
howling from the animals, the poor things---), and Alice stumbled back and out of the newly created hole in the wall.
She fell to the grass, lying limp for what felt like
years but was only a few seconds, and with all the strength she could muster she disapparated, hopefully to the Order House.
It should have been bad, to think that Lily was glad that Alice had gotten wounded. But---she would be alright, it was just her shoulder and it was enough to make her get away from the scene, which was all that Lily really cared about at this point, because she had already had to numb herself from caring about anything else. If she started caring about herself and her baby, then Alice was going to die and Nigel was going to die with her, and no matter what that could
not be allowed to happen. It was all so fucking tragically heroic, she realized, but it had fallen into her hands to save the world, and---
--sometimes she really wished that she had ended up a Hufflepuff.
"Got you again." In the cease of spellfire following the explosion, Lily rose up from her hiding place with a racing heart to face the masked forms of the three death eaters standing in her living room. Her hand clutched tightly around her wand, although at the same time she wondered if she'd have time to use it. How many more dust-filled breaths would she take before they shot her down? She wasn't exactly a bad kill either, all things considered. Whoever got her out of the way wouldn't be suffering tonight, even if they
had let Alice Longbottom escape from under their noses. "You'd think that by now you morons would be smart enough not to look away when you blow a clear escape route in the side of a house."
She heard an angry growl come from the death eater who was standing the straightest, but---nothing more. Even as the other two regained their bearings and brought their wands up to point in her direction, there was.. nothing else. Instead, she sensed... what, did they seem
confused? Surely they weren't
that slow that they hadn't figured out that their prize had gotten away, so what could have them holding back?
And then she felt a swift kick to her abdomen and Lily suddenly
knew. Without even understanding how she had put it together, in an instant it was all vividly, painfully clear. And even if she could have done anything to stop the two death eaters whose hands had in a split second gone from across the room to grasping her tightly and shoving her forward, she wouldn't have, because she was frozen in shock and hopelessness at the realization of what she had just done.
They didn't know. They didn't
know.
She had very likely just delivered the savior of the world to Voldemort on a silver platter, and it was going to take much more than a miracle to save them.
