20th of December 1981
It wasn’t long before life got back to a slow running and quiet river. Poppy could only marvel at the normalcy that seemed to have settled around them once more.
After Sirius had finally reunited with Remus and Harry, both he and Remus had been staying at the castle in order to be close to both Lily and the little boy. They had their own quarters in the guest wing of the castle, relatively decentralized from the main areas of student lives, but they more often than not ate their meals with the rest of the faculty. Poppy had expected virulent protests to come from that, but oddly enough, Severus had remained entirely silent on the matter. Something must have happened that she had missed, for never in their school years would those three have behaved with such civility towards each other. Severus and Sirius mostly avoided each other, but would nod somewhat respectfully – if a little stiffly – to one another if they crossed paths. She had even seen Severus and Remus converse a few times. Poppy could only guess that their new-found decorum was mostly for the sake of Harry, and in a sense, Lily.
Speaking of whom, she entered the small and warm room in which the young woman rested. At the eve of Christmas break, her state had so far been perfectly stable, and she was starting to show.
It was quite satisfying to see, in a peaceful sort of way. It seemed to be the perfect illustration for the adage of ‘life always finds a way’. Lily was, considering, as healthy as they could hope, and the baby was developing quite nicely. Poppy had added all the monitoring spells she could possibly think of around both the mother and the baby as to ensure she wouldn’t be missing anything important.
It didn’t prevent her from performing checkup spells quite frequently. Perhaps more frequently than reasonable, but who ever said than added precautions were unreasonable? Poppy moved around Lily’s bed, and performed her routine spells, checking for every single potential pregnancy complications and disease of all kinds, both muggle and wizarding. Everything seemed perfectly fine as usual, but she always felt a little anxious before getting the results. She straightened back up once it was done, a satisfied smile etched on her lips, threatening to widen into a large goofy grin.
Yes, all was good. In fact, more than good for she had acquired new information quite recently that she had wanted to proof scan after some time and Poppy felt elated by the unchanged results. She had been trying her hardest to keep the news to herself when she had not be certain and now that she was, it would certainly prove even harder to keep it quiet. She wasn’t sure whether Lily would want to know, or have anyone know, the gender of her baby and Poppy didn’t want to make the mistake of overstepping if the young woman would have wished to keep it quiet until the little one would be here. Despite the circumstances of Lily's pregnancy, it only felt natural for Poppy to treat the matter as if everything was absolutely normal. Lily couldn't let her know if divulging the information was alright.
And so she kept quiet. Not that she had anything else to do but simply not mentioning anything related to gender in her conversation with other members of staff, for none of the gente masculine concerned with Lily’s well-being were particularly aware that it was a thing they could know in advance. The only ones Poppy really had to be worried about were Minerva, Pomona, Wilhelmina and Sinistra, although only the first one showed herself to be interested enough in the news to pester Poppy with questions that came out as subtle as if blurted out by first-year Hufflepuffs. Beyond the particularly unimaginative ways Minerva had come up with in trying to get an answer out of her, life at Hogwarts was slowly back to a level that could be qualified of uneventful, and it seemed to suit both students and professors alike, quite perfectly.