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.
Sirius shook his head.
Remus sighed.
But he also started watching Sirius more closely and he noticed that Sirius didn't take a single smoke break the entire afternoon. "Are you out of cigarettes?" Remus asked.
Sirius looked up from where he was curled on the chair, reading the liner notes off the inside of a record. "What?"
"Are you out of cigarettes?" Remus asked again.
Sirius hesitated. "No."
"No? Then why haven't you been out to smoke?"
Sirius hugged the record to his chest, his eyes casting about as though to find the answer to the question written somewhere on the walls. "I --" he paused, "I've decided to put a pause on my addiction to Nicotine for a short time."
Remus nodded. "Okay, so that explains the nail biting... When did this short pause in your addiction to nicotine begin?"
Sirius thought for a moment, "Erm, the other day." Sirius decided to own the moment and he raised his chin, "Remus, I have decided that I am turning over a new leaf."
"Uh-huh, and what brought on this sudden new leaf turning?"
"Do I need a reason?"
"Yes."
Sirius laughed, "You're such a worry-wiggle."
"A worry-wiggle?"
"Mmhm," Sirius replied, and he lifted the record back up and returned to reading the liner notes to himself.
Remus considered him, but decided to let him be.
That was Wednesday night.
Thursday morning, Sirius was at the Potter's, gnawing on his thumbnail and pestering Lily. Lily was nervous. "Do you reckon flooing is safe, really, when you're pregnant?" she asked. "I know disapparation is a no-go but --"
"We'll ask the doctor when we get there. Would you rather take the Knight Bus?" Sirius asked.
"No. Absolutely not. I hate that thing," Lily shook her head. She sighed, "I need to talk to James about getting a muggle car."
"We could use my motorbike," Sirius said, grinning wickedly.
Lily stared at him and chose not to dignify that with a response, instead saying, "I think the floo will be alright today but I should ask and really once we have the baby a muggle car will be most practical anyway..."
"James will never learn to drive a muggle car, he's too thick."
"It's not as hard as you think," Lily said.
Sirius shrugged.
St. Mungo's was busy when they got there, loads of witches and wizards crowded the waiting room. Lily led the way to the birthing center where she was to have an appointment to confirm the pregnancy and get the coveted sonogram. Sirius walked along behind her, turning as he walked, looking at posters and diagrams that covered the walls.
"Merlin's tit," he murmured, staring at a particularly complex diagram of the inner workings of the female body, "You lot are complicated." He stared at it with a look of disgust playing across his lips, "No wonder you're so weird... That is entirely too much plumbing."
Lily rolled her eyes. "Will you sit down, you're making me nervous." He'd been pacing the length of the waiting room over and over and over, and had only paused to stare at the diagram.
Sirius bounded over to her and settled himself into one of the chairs, though not sitting like a normal person might, but twisting his legs all up in the arm of the chair so that it nearly tipped over and he caught himself quickly with a thump of his boot. Lily raised an eyebrow, "Oh my stars Sirius, you're as bad as having a child already."
"Lily Potter?"
She turned around as Sirius laughed and righted himself.
The mediwitch in the doorway was a bit older than Dora, her greying hair pulled back into a low bun, and a warm smile on her face. "Hi!" she said as Lily stood up. "We're confirming a pregnancy I see?"
Lily nodded. "We certainly hope so."
"And is this ....Mr. Potter?" the mediwitch asked as Sirius sprang up, nearly fell over himself again, and managed to catch his balance just as he stepped up beside Lily.
"No!" Lily said.
Sirius snorted, "She wishes."
Lily looked at him.
Sirius grinned.
"He's moral support."
"Hello Moral Support," the mediwitch said.
"Sirius," Sirius grinned.
"About what?" the mediwitch asked.
"Oh gods don't get him going," Lily whined.
Sirius's eyes twinkled.
The mediwitch took them back to the office and Sirius placed about nervously, picking up on every one of Lily's twitchy little worries. He grabbed her hand and held onto it tight for a moment when the mediwitch went to get the screen she needed to do the sonogram. Lily was laying in the bed in the little exam room, her eyes nervous and tapping her foot. Sirius stared into her eyes. "Hey," he said, "All that anxiety and worry you're feeling? Push it off onto me."
"What?"
"Push it off to me. I'm here to take it," he said. "This should be a good moment for you, a happy moment. You should be comfortable and steady and good. Push the anxiety into me." He held her hand tighter. He wished he could siphon the feelings off her, the way she sometimes seemed to do. But Lily was so much better at the love magic than he was, however hard he tried. "Please, let me hold it for you while you just... be in the moment."
Lily hesitated, then she closed her eyes, and she pictured all that stress and anxiety that was slamming about in her chest gathering up together into a ball - a big glowing orange ball that was jittery and jagged around the edges... and she pushed it down her arms into her wrists and out her fingers... into Sirius's waiting palms.
She saw the expression on his face tremble a tiny bit when she opened her eyes, but even as his face lined with worry, it seemed to lift entirely up off of her and she gasped as all that weight and uncertainty left her.
"Oh," she whispered.
Sirius smiled warily, his eyes welling and he nodded, and sat down in a chair. Now his knee was jumping and he was biting the inside of his cheek nervously, but he was glad for it because every ounce of what he felt was that much less that she wasn't feeling.
The mediwitch came back into the room, smiling and humming. She waved her wand and behind her came rolling a pull-down screen on a little stand, which unrolled itself with a flick of her wrist as it settled next to the bed where Lily lay, still clutching Sirius's hand. Sirius watched the screen with wide eyes.
The mediwitch motioned for Lily to lift up her shirt a little and Lily rolled it up to reveal her belly. Sirius kept his eyes carefully trained away from her skin, shifting uncomfortably, leg still jiggling, his boot tapping out a quiet tattoo against the floor as his heel thump-thump-thumped. The mediwitch hummed and took a deep breath, then lowered her wand over Lily's stomach, murmuring a complicated series of spells... and a moment later a thumping that wasn't at all Sirius's boot filled the room.
"What's that?" Sirius asked.
Lily's voice was serene, "Is that - is that my baby's heartbeat?" she asked almost dreamily.
The mediwitch smiled and looked Lily in the eyes. "Mrs. Potter? Moral Support?" she looked at Sirius, then back to Lily, "Congratulations, you're pregnant."
Tears sprang to Lily's eyes and Sirius felt the nervousness sort of melt out of him, too, with the confirmation. The mediwitch moved her wand carefully across the flat plane of Lily's stomach, hovering in the vicinity of her navel, and there on the screen appeared a greyish image. She moved slowly, "Let's see... where are you... ah. Yes, there you are!" she smiled.
On the screen was a blur and a blob, nothing much to speak of, just shades of blurry grey that seemed to jitter ever so slightly.
The mediwitch said, "There it is."
Lily stared at the screen. "Where?"
The mediwitch did a sharp jerk of her wand and the screen seemed to peel away from itself, slowly getting smaller, and then dropped into a small photograph in the mediwitch's palm.
"Cool," Sirius murmured.
The mediwitch stepped closer to Lily and Sirius leaned drastically to look over her shoulder as the mediwitch's finger moved over the print of the sonogram. She outlined a small splotch on the paper that, to Sirius, looked like a wonky quaffle.
"Right here. This is what will grow and become your baby."
"That little splootch?" Lily asked, eyes wide and mouth in a pouty expression of gooey adoration.
"That little splootch," the mediwitch laughed and nodded, smiling at Lily's reaction.
Lily clutched the photograph in her hands and stared and stared and stared at it.
Sirius looked up at the mediwitch, feeling all the gratitude pouring out of every pore of Lily. "Thanks," he said.
The mediwitch nodded happily, "Of course." She paused, then, "Congratulations, Mummy."
"Mummy," Lily gasped. She looked up at Sirius, "I'm gonna be a Mummy."
"That's right," Sirius said, nodding, "You're goin' to be a mummy to a wonky little splootch."
Lily blinked double-fast and then burst into tears of joy, hugging the sonogram photo to her chest.
Sirius looked up at the mediwitch. "Could we get like three more of those?"
"Sure," she laughed and she flicked her wrist to pull the prints from the sonogram that still hung before them, broadcasting the officially confirmed arrival of the wonkly little splootch-shaped Prongsletfetus.