SPIN OFF
AN: This is a spin off from `Moving On'… appropriately called `Spin Off'. It pick up in Africa, shortly after Lily's accident in the Jeep. It was written at the request of a few readers and it is a one shot. Please read and review, if you so like. Obviously, it is completely AU.
Disc: I own nothing.
Spin Off
Lily had fallen against the gearshift on a sudden stop, Alice having tumbled onto her. Once the group was back at their base camp, Lily had gone straight to bed at James' insistence. Lily didn't mind being bossed around a little by the father of her twin daughters, and she enjoyed his attention. She remained in bed, listening to the others talk just beyond her tent.
Lily was bored in bed, staring at the ceiling of the tent. She could see the flashing of the fire on the roof of the tent. She was feeling a bit sore from her flying dive into the front seat of the jeep. She stood and suddenly felt dampness on her skirt. Her first fear was that she had lost control of her bladder, something that had been threatening since the girls got big enough to tap dance on her bladder. Lily reached below her stomach and glanced at her hand in shock.
Blood dripped from between her fingers. In the firelight, the blood looked redder and quite ominous. She felt pain rip across her abdomen, and she doubled over. She felt a hand on her shoulder and she looked to see James looking quite horrified. She assumed that she must have called him, but she didn't recall doing so.
"I'm going to take her to St. Mungo's," James told the others, struggling to get Lily to her feet. "You come when you're done dealing with the guides."
James paced the waiting room of St. Mungo's before they allowed him entry into the room where Lily was staying. She was asleep at the moment, a mask drawn over her face. Bags of liquid dripped into her and she was still. The healer, a man in seventies entered with a look of dismay. He looked at James.
"Are you her husband?" The Healer asked quietly not to disturb Lily.
"The babies' father," James said quietly. He looked at her worried. "Is she going to be ok?"
"I don't think so," the Healer said. "She refused to let us take the babies, and that would be her best chance at survival. We've tried to talk to her, but she won't listen. She says that she'd rather die."
"I could try to convince her," James murmured quietly as he took her hand.
"We've given her our complete arsenal of potions to halt her labor, but we fear that it is an inevitable progression. She's going to deliver these babies, and there's no stopping it."
James tried talking to her for three hours, their friends coming in and out, but Lily wouldn't have it. James begged her, crying, afraid that he'd lose her too, but Lily remained unyielding to the suggestion. She wasn't far enough along. She couldn't deliver her daughters knowing that they'd die. She knew if she could make it to thirty weeks, they'd have a fighting chance. She could hold them in for eight or nine weeks. She knew it despite the words of others.
With that, her mind set, she kicked James out of her room. She couldn't explain it, her rationale behind that. She just couldn't take his negativity and fear. She knew she could hold them in a bit more. If she had to lay still for the rest of the pregnancy, she would. If she had to breathe through the mask and never move, she would do it. She knew she could have her cake and eat it too. James knew she was determined, but when Lily crashed twice, nearly dying, he knew he couldn't take it any longer. Scared, he fled to the comfort and safety of his mother's house.
James only left her for those few days, and by the time he was secure and ready to fight for his babies, by the time he headed back to St. Mungo's hospital, Lily was gone. He stood looking at the doctor as the man told James that Lily had left St. Mungo's on her own, against medical advice, and was in danger of bleeding to death. James was scared, for the babies and for Lily. No one seemed to know where Lily had gone, or what had happened to Lily.
For weeks, James searched and scoured the muggle hospitals before learning that no one would tell him anything unless he was certain she was there. James knew Lily had to be at one of the hospitals, but he couldn't find her. He worried, lost and confused. Even Sirius, who had offered him so much comfort, was of no use to him. Alice had only mentioned that she had received word from Lily that she was staying with her sister, Petunia, and her husband, Vernon, for a stretch.
As suddenly as Lily had disappeared, she was back, looking obviously not pregnant, right around the Christmas Holiday. He had been making his rounds, passing in front of the Dursley house when he saw Lily standing outside, laughing with her sister as Vernon climbed a ladder to string some white lights. James continued to drive, the feeling of a heavy weight in the bottom of his stomach. Lily was obviously not pregnant any more, her stomach flat under her parka.
He saw her again, New Years Eve, at the Ministry New Year's Gala. She was standing near the punch bowl, wearing a long black gown. Fear rooted James from asking of the twins from Lily. She looked so happy and beautiful, whatever her horror, she was back. James wasn't about to dig up the past when she had obviously went to great lengths to separate things. She had left to do it alone.
"James," Lily said with a slight smile playing on her lips. James swallowed, uncertain if he should shake her for leaving like she did or embrace her. He swallowed again.
"Hey Lily," James said darkly. "Long time, no see."
"Yeah," Lily said quietly. She glanced over across the room and wave. "We should find some time to talk soon."
"How about the old park on Amberdale?" James asked quickly while he had the nerve. "Say in twenty?"
"S-sure," Lily stammered. She hadn't expected James to be so well put together and she parted from him quickly. She thought that she'd have time. She had only been at the ministry for about a week, eager to get her life on track. She didn't think she'd have run into James in the flesh so quickly.
Lily had her coat wrapped around her as she took a seat on a big boulder next to James. The air was cold, yet there was no snow. It had been disappointing to a good many who had wanted a white Christmas. Snow threatened but none delivered. Lily focused on the ground beneath her feet, her shoes dangling on her toes as her feet slipped from the straps.
"It wasn't that I wasn't going to tell you, James," Lily said as she continued to focus on the ground beneath her feet. "I just never could find the right time. I was so happy to see you after that incident with Lord Voldemort in the parking lot, and then I insisted on going to Africa. When we thought we all but lost the babies and we grew distant, I thought that it was just God's will to be apart."
"But Lily, our daughters. They were ours," James said as he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "You could have told me. I would have stayed."
"And had you, you would have hated me," Lily insisted.
"I wouldn't have hated you," James said.
"Why did you disappear, then?" Lily demanded as she wiped away her own tears.
"I was scared," James said. "I was so scared I'd lose you."
"So you just left?" Lily cried. "You left me!"
"I didn't leave you, I just left," James explained. "When I came back, you were gone. Alice told me that you were living with your sister and I came by a few times, but it was obvious that you weren't pregnant anymore."
"I saw you," Lily said quietly. "I had just had the girls three days prior in a muggle hospital."
"Y-you had them?" James asked. "Recently?"
"Almost three weeks ago," Lily said quietly as she let the information flood over James. "I did what you didn't think I could, James. I carried them to near-term and I gave birth to them."
"Where are they? How are they?" James asked suddenly.
"They're at the hospital, still," Lily said quietly. "They're still early, and small, but they are doing fine. They'll go home in a few weeks."
"Our daughters are alive?" James asked.
"The girls are," Lily said quietly. She looked up at him. "I only tell you now because they'll be going home to their parents."
"We're their parents, Lily," James insisted. Lily looked away.
"We're just eighteen, James. What do we know about being parents?" Lily asked. "What can we offer them?"
"We have us and each other," James said.
"Us," Lily said quietly as she wiped away a tear. "The parents I chose are what's best for our girls, Cristina and Hannah. I don't want to raise them in a broken home, James, I just can't do that."
"Lily," James said as he wrapped his arms around her.
"You have to understand, James," Lily cried. "We have to do what is best for them. Amanda and Drake McLaggen will provide them everything that we cannot."
"I don't want strangers raising our children, Lily," James said quietly.
"Please, James," Lily begged. "Support me on this."
"Lily, please," James begged as he held her.
James stood with Lily behind glass, looking into the nursery at the muggle hospital. The girls were tiny and sickly looking to James, despite Lily's insistence that they were healthy. He watched as the mid thirties couple cuddle and held his daughters, and for moment James couldn't help but be torn. On the one hand, the girls were his daughters to raise. He didn't want someone else doing it for him, even if they seemed to genuinely care about them. On the other, secretly, James was terrified. He had never cared for anyone in his life. Lily was set on surrendering custody, and if he did not, it would be him responsible for these two small girls.
"I don't want to be selfish," James whispered to her.
"Me, neither," Lily said as she cried a little.
"Eighteen is too young to be raising kids by ourselves," James told her slowly as realization washed over him. "We're not even married."
"We're not even dating," Lily reminded him. James looked at her and nodded.
"This is for the best?" James asked as he forced tears from his face.
"This is for the best," Lily said with a shaky voice. James nodded and took the pen Lily had been holding, signing his name to the form. Cristina and Hannah were no longer their daughters. They belonged to the McLaggen family now, and one day they would know that all James and Lily ever wanted for them was the best life possible.
"I don't plan on losing you just yet, Ms. Evans," James said quietly as the two walked out of the hospital, hand in hand. "But I'm willing to start slow. How's dinner on Friday and a June wedding?"
"Only you would be able to make me laugh at a time like this," Lily laughed through her tears. She nodded. "Alright, dinner on Friday and I reserve my judgment for a June wedding."
"It's all I ask," James said as he looked at the hospital sign. He made a face. "What made you choose Harry Memorial Hospital?"
"I liked the name," Lily said. "It made me think of the Marauders and their furry little problem, and it made me laugh."
"We should memorialize it," James said. "When you move in with me in March, we should get a dog and name him Harry."
"Now I'm moving in with you?" Lily laughed.
"I told you, I'm not giving up on us, Lily," James said. "It took me how many years to get you to go out with me? If it takes me twice as long, I do plan on making you my wife."
With that, the snow began to fall…
The story was not one commonly known outside of Lily and James' close circle of friends. James and Lily both thought often of their daughters who were being raised afar from them, occasionally getting a picture here or there. When James and Lily wedded, there was a moment when the couple stood facing each other at the altar during the vows, Sirius standing as James' best man, when the world seemed to pause and the couple could only think of the twins. They shared that moment together, gazing into each other's eyes, knowing that they had made the right decision. It was a hard decision, one they doubted sometimes, but ultimately, they knew they did the right thing.
One day, their daughters may return and ask them why they were given up, and neither Lily nor James would hesitate to answer that they were given up because both James and Lily loved them so dearly. The girls would have had a wonderful life from the beginning, raised by parents that didn't have growing up to do themselves.
When Lily learned that she was expecting again, it was with trepidation she told James, but she need not have feared. He had grown and matured, continuing to do so until his son's birth July 31. As the couple looked down at their son, who looked like a minute James with his tuff of jet black hair, a smile crossed James' face.
"I have the perfect name for him Lily," James said quietly as they gazed at their perfect sleeping son. "Now don't say no until you hear it."
"Please not James the Second," Lily laughed as she snuggled him closer.
"No," James said shaking his head. "Let that be our future grandson's name. I was thinking a little closer to home. How about Harry?"
"Harry?" Lily asked quizzically. "Really?"
"Well, we never got the dog to name it," James reminded her lightly. Lily looked at her son.
"Welcome to the world Harry James Potter. As long as I live, I will never let sadness I have known touch you," Lily murmured as she kissed his tiny forehead.
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