prologue
Fuck.
Lily tried not to think about the test that was lying on the sink next to her. She anxiously tapped her right leg on the floor from where she was sitting against the edge of the bath and stared off at the wall when she heard the - ping! - of the timer. Inhaling sharply she wiped her hands on her blouse in a last ditch effort to compose herself she stood up and peered down at the stick. Two lines. Positive.
She was pregnant.
“Shit.” Moving backwards to sit on the closed toilet seat behind her, Lily squeezed her eyes shut. This wasn’t happening. It was all just a dream. A really bad dream.
Not even a week back from her honeymoon, and already pregnant. Nearly two months along if her estimations were correct and they very likely were, a fact that made her swear under her breath, her auburn hair fell in front of her face though couldn’t bring herself to care.
She was barely twenty and pregnant in the middle of a war that she was fighting in.
“Idiot.” She swore again, combing a hand through her curls. “Godrics hairy bollocks, I’m such a fucking idiot.”
She got up and started pacing the small bathroom, pregnant. She was pregnant and her husband wasn’t the father.
James couldn’t be the father, they’d both been tired to do anything more than a smile towards each other in the mornings and before bed, so they’d decided to go on a short break before their wedding to focus, Lily on her potions mastery and James on his Hit Wizard training, without distraction.
No, she knew who the father was but it wasn’t possible not by nature or biology, but there was nobody else. She had met him while in Manhattan on a girls trip with her friends. He’d been watching her and with Amelia’s encouragement she’d approached him and they’d gotten to talking, his name was Klaus, he’d told her he was a hybrid - both vampire and werewolf - after discovering she was a witch. The conversation had led to dancing which led to what she would later blame on the whiskey.
America had sounded perfect at the time, it was far away enough from the blood war that they hadn’t had to worry about safety and New York was a place she’d always wanted to go and have fun. Making it the only place to go to celebrate and forget about the wars and familial troubles.
The war was getting worse, sides were being chosen, and Lily felt suffocated. She was a muggleborn, a muggleborn who carried the wolf gene and is married to a pureblood. One side tolerated her at best and she just knew they were hoping for a better wife for James, and the other side thought people like her were nothing more than last week's garbage just because her parents weren’t like theirs.
And yet for some reason Lord Voldemort had offered her a place in his ranks. Her and James twice.
They had turned it down, of course they had, why wouldn’t they? Lily would never join a cult that targeted people based on her blood, who hated her absent father for being a werewolf and her amazing mother and awful sister for being muggles. It was disgusting, seeing the wizarding world repeat the history of another. James and Sirius didn’t get it, this war was a new type for the magicals, but those muggle raised understood.
There was already talk of a public register for muggleborns.
No, Lily would not let her children grow up in a world where genocide was considered a democracy. She would crush Earth itself before then, with her loving husband and friends at her side. Because while they hadn’t grown up in war - they knew enough to have a well balanced sense of justice in her eyes. They were good people, her Jamie and his group of animals.
Which is why they had joined the other side.
The Order of The Phoenix, led and founded by their former headmaster.
Albus Dumbledore fought for the greater good. And while she didn’t completely trust him, there was something about the twinkle in his eyes that made her uneasy, being in the Order felt like her James were doing something productive.
Still the war rages on, getting angrier by the day, everyday the Daily Prophet provides a new list of those dead.
It was stressful to say the least.
Splashing cold water on her face, Lily tried to calm and unwind the spiral of her mind. “This isn’t happening. It’s a false positive, those happen all the time, right?”
But Lily knew that was a lie. While yes, the test was a cheap one, her wolf could sense it. Sense that there was someone new to grow and protect - a cub.
Of course she hadn’t known about her wolf until a few years prior, she had been fresh out of Hogwarts and new in the Order. Albus had sent her on a stake-out with Fabian Prewett when they had been cornered by Death Eaters and she’d killed one, whose name she doesn’t remember, in the fight. As for the next full moon. Well, let’s just say she won’t be forgetting that night, ever.
Still, what is she to do?
It’s not like James doesn’t know about her night with Klaus, she’d told him when she’d gotten back. He’d been upset about it, obviously, but he wasn’t mad. And they had talked about children, both agreed that they wanted them somewhere in the far future, but what if there wasn’t a future for them? It is a war after all, and people all around them are dying.
No, she can’t get rid of this baby, she decided, even if she has to raise them alone then so be it.
There’s still the matter of Klaus though, would he want the child? Would he believe Lily when she told him it was his? She certainly wouldn’t in his position, vampires aren’t supposed to procreate after all.
Vampire. Fuck.
How could she have forgotten? The child would no doubt be part vampire? Would they need to drink blood? Lily doesn’t know the first thing about vampirism for fucks sake, and now she’s having a vampire baby! Well, not all vampire at least, there would be magic from her and lycanthropy from both of their parents, so a hybrid? A tribrid? Is that even a thing? Is that even possible? Well it is now.
The Wizarding World wouldn’t accept such a thing, they would lock them in the Department of Mysteries to experiment on, but what they don’t know won’t hurt them, right?
And what of Albus? Yes, the man talks of creature rights, but this was something wholly different. A baby bore of vampire blood that carries the wolf gene all while being magical? He would classify it as a threat if he knew the truth, they all would, they wouldn’t understand. Questions swarmed her mind. Would they try to kill it? Can it be killed?
It was then that Lily swore she would do whatever it takes to keep her unborn miracle child safe. Even if she dies in the process.
Her miracle. Her Hope.