Baby on Board

Disclaimer: I do not wish I were J. K. Rowling, but I do wish I owned Harry Potter!

Thank you, saiyanwizardgurl from www.fanfiction.net, for editing this chapter. Thank you so much!

WARNING: In this story, I refer to my beloved Ariel the Little Mermaid. Yes, I know it came out in 1989, but I just love it too much, so I included it in my story that take place ten years earlier.

Chapter 1

The dark-haired woman hesitated for a moment before pressing the button on the wall next to the door. Immediately, she heard a sound emanating from the button. So, that's what Muggles call a door-bell. She smiled. I can hear it, but what if it's defected and they can't hear it from inside? To be sure, she pressed it again, and then again, enjoying the sound more and more.

"For God's sake, there aren't any deaf people in here!" a female voice came from inside, and not even a moment later, the door was opened. "Good morning," the woman said, more politely. "Can I help you?"

"I'm not sure," Liz said hesitantly. "I thought that Remus Lupin and Angela Black lived here - "

"They do," the other woman assured her, and stepped aside. "Come in, come in. Which one of them do you want to see? I'm Julia Lupin, by the way; Remus' mother."

"Oh! Nice to meet you, finally. I'm Elizabeth Potter, and who is that?" she asked, looking at the big crib in the living room. "Oh, but he is the cutest little thing - "

"True," Julia Lupin agreed, smiling. "That's my grandson, Arion. He's eight months old."

Liz looked at her. "Can I hold him?" she asked. "Or is he going to be afraid of me?"

"No, he'll come to you. Most babies are afraid of strangers, but he isn't. I don't know why."

Liz reached for the baby. The little boy smiled at her and immediately got a hold of her long dark hair, putting a lock in his mouth and sucking at it. She laughed. "He is adorable."

"Take a seat," Julia Lupin told her, sitting on a chair. "I suppose James gave you that address?"

"Yes, I wanted to meet Angela."

"You weren't at the wedding," the other woman said.

"No, I was visiting my sister in Spain just then, and I couldn't make it back in time, but now, I want to make up for it. Oh, is that her?"

"Yes, it's her," the girl that had just entered, answered. "I'm Angela Peters."

"Black," Liz added. "You are Angela Peters Black now. I'm really glad to meet you, Angela. James has told me so much about you."

"Nice to meet you too, Mrs. Potter," the young woman answered, and looked at Mrs. Lupin. "Is it time for us to leave?"

"We still have a few minutes."

"Good," Angela said, and crossed the living room. Liz examined her carefully. So, this was Sirius' bride. The girl he had married only because of the baby. James had told Liz that Angela was very pretty, and she really was - dark hair, olive skin, and perfect facial features. Her pregnancy was obvious, but if she had to give birth soon, then who was the baby that she was holding?

"Oh!" Liz gasped. "You have twins!"

"I have twins?" Julia Lupin laughed. "I'm a bit too old for that, but it's true that they are twins. This is my granddaughter, Arielle, and I am her babysitter for today, or at least, I was until now. I'll take Angela to the doctor's, so the kids are going to stay with Remus."

Liz looked at the baby girl. Unlike her brother, Arielle was wriggling and screaming in Angela's arms. Liz looked fascinated at the huge amount of red hair on her head and tried to remember whether James had been this noisy as a baby. Of course he was. He still is.

"You're taking Angela to the doctor?" she asked. "That is some kind of Muggle Healer, right?" She remembered that Remus' mother was a Muggle.

"Yes," Angela said. "The Healers tell me that everything is fine with the baby, but I want to be entirely sure."

"Does Sirius know?"

The young woman shrugged. "I didn't think he would be interested," she said nonchalantly, but Liz noticed the sad expression that crossed her face for a moment.

"He'll come around, Angela," she said awkwardly, "you'll see."

Angela shook her head. "He doesn't want either me, or the baby; he's made it perfectly clear. I just won't let that ruin my life. I'm going to have a baby and I'm capable to take care of it by myself." She was rocking Arielle tenderly. "Shhhh, little one, stop crying. Are you wet? Is that the problem? We're going to clean you and you'll be happy again. You'll see."

"She's not wet," Julia said. "She's just hungry. When we leave, Remus will give them their bottles."

"I'll do that," Angela said immediately. "I'd better get used to it. Being a mum. It begins in less than two months and it won't stop until I die."

"We don't have the time," Julia reminded her, "we have to leave in three minutes."

"Can I accompany you?" Liz asked excitedly. "I've never seen a Muggle doctor!"

"Sure, why not?' Angela shrugged. "We'd better go now."

They all stood up - Angela with a little difficulty, giving Arielle to Julia - and then Liz remembered about the present she had brought with her. "This is for you, Angela," she said, giving her the package.

"Has James told you that I was always hungry?" Angela asked when she unwrapped the gift and saw that it was an enormous bar of chocolate.

The two older women laughed. "No," Liz said, "but he might have mentioned your - err - liking of chocolate."

"The baby likes chocolate," Angela corrected her, and then suddenly laughed, too. "James should know everything about that. After all, he and Remus took shifts to fly to the window of my dormitory in the night and give me the chocolate bars they had nicked from - well, I don't want to know from where. Thank you, Mrs. Potter; I will eat it when we come back."

Julia snatched the chocolate out of her hands. "Hey!" Angela protested.

"I'll give it to you after you've eaten your lunch," Mrs. Lupin promised. "If we leave her alone, she would live on chocolate only," she explained to Liz.

"It's not me, it's the baby!" Angela objected.

"Never mind, I'm not giving you chocolate until you've eaten your lunch."

"Grandma!" a child's voice shouted, and a black-haired six year old burst into the room. "Where are you going? Can I come, too?"

"John, be nice!" Julia scolded him. "We have a guest. Greet her. Elizabeth - "

"Liz."

"Liz, this is my eldest grandson, John Lupin. John, this is Mrs. Potter."

"I am glad to meet you, Mrs. Potter," he said, carefully pronouncing every word. She smiled at him.

"I am glad to meet you too, Mr Lupin."

"That's my sister," he explained, pointing at Arielle. "She's a baby, but Dad says she becomes bigger and bigger each day. And prettier. She's got red hair, just like Arielle the little mermaid."

"It's obvious," Liz smiled again. Ariel the little mermaid? Who is she?

As if she had understood that they had been talking about her, Arielle stopped crying and gave them a curious look. Her grandmother placed her in the crib beside her brother, thus leaving the chocolate in her hands in sight. John, of course, spotted it immediately. "It's so big, Grandma," he exclaimed with shining eyes. "Is it for me?"

"No, it is not. It is for Angela's baby."

"But I want it!"

"Yes, but Angela's baby wants it too. You are so big and it is very little, so it needs the chocolate more than you do."

"Is your baby smaller than Arion and Arielle?" John asked curiously, looking at Angela.

"Yes, much, much smaller."

"Oh." He nodded. "Than you have to eat the whole chocolate, so the baby can grow bigger."

"Yes, I will," she promised, laughing. "Now, if you are good and don't make Remus angry, I'll give you a bar of chocolate when I come back. We'll have lunch, and then you can have chocolate."

"Great!"

"You are a good kid," Julia smiled, and then looked at Angela. "You are a good kid, too. Remus, we are leaving!" she called out.

"Okay," he answered from the other room.

"Do not give John sugar," she said, blew a kiss at her grandson, who made a move as if he caught it, and the three women went out.

"What is the doctor going to do?" Liz asked curiously. "How can he see whether the baby is fine or not, when he can't use a spell?"

"He'll use a machine," Angela replied. "He'll be able to hear the baby's heartbeat and say how it is."

"He can hear his heart?" Liz asked, excited. "Can I hear it, too?"

Julia laughed. "No, he can hear it only by the machine. But you can see the echograph image."

"What's that?"

"It's something like a picture of the baby."

"Before his birth?" Liz asked excitedly. "We can see what color his hair is?"

"Maybe not that, but we don't need it. His hair will be black. Both Sirius and Angela are dark-haired."

"But why can't we see the color of his hair?"

"Because it won't be a real picture, just - " Julia tried to find a way to explain the situation but she had to realize that the witch would not understand her. Even Angela knew what she was talking about only because she had already been to the doctor.

"Your grandchildren are great," Liz said.

"Yes, they are," the other woman smiled with pride. "I adore babysitting for them."

"Remus won't adore it this much," Angela said, "not when all three of them are there. They'll drive him mad."

"Angela!"

"Yes?"

"You're looking at chocolates again!"

The young woman guiltily averted her gaze from the shop window. "It's not me, it's the baby here!"

"I know, honey, but you can't feed the baby with chocolate only."

"Well, I can try," Angela muttered.

"No wonder why you and Remus are getting along so fine," Julia said, amused. "We're almost there," she added. "What's wrong?"

Angela had gone slightly pale. The two older women followed her gaze and saw Sirius, who come out of the shop and had stopped dead next to them. His eyes passed from Angela's face down to her disfigured body and expression of disgust appeared on his face for a moment. "Hello, Mrs. Lupin, Mrs. Potter," he said. "How are you?"

"Fine, Sirius, thank you," Julia answered awkwardly.

"And how are you, Angela?" he asked again, making it perfectly clear that he was just being polite, nothing more.

"Because you're asking so nicely, I will tell you - we are both fine, your baby and I."

"Good," he said indifferently and went on his way.

"That's the man who the two of you think will come around," Angela said bitterly.

"He'll come to his senses, eventually," Liz said firmly. "Meanwhile, we are going to take care of you and the baby. I hope you don't mind that Henry and I want to visit you often."

"No, not at all. I'll be glad if you do."

"If you need something, you just tell us."

"Thank you," Angela smiled with gratitude. Liz looked at her with sympathy. Being neglected by your husband was painful, no matter the circumstances that had led to the marriage.

"Sometimes I pray that Raymond really kills him," Angela said angrily. "And I often think of saving him the trouble!"

"Raymond wants to kill him?" Liz repeated. She had never met Remus' elder brother, but she had heard that he had quite a temper, not unlike Sirius' own. If those two meet, there'll be flames sparkling!

"That's been his idea from the very beginning, after my parents threw me out and Sirius went beside himself to make me understand that he wanted neither the baby nor me."

"But Remus keeps putting a veto on his brother's favorite solution." Julia took the word. "He says, 'No, Raymond, you are not going to kill him. How are you going to explain to the baby that you've killed his father?'"

Liz tried to suppress her laughter. "Come on," she said, "let's go and see the picture that isn't actually a picture."

-----------------------------------

"And you call that a picture?" James asked in disdain. "It's just a puddle. Where is the baby?"

"It isn't a real picture, James, and the baby won't look this way once it is born."

"I hope not," Henry Potter murmured. "You know, Lizzie, this time I agree with James. Are you sure that this is the right picture? It really looks like a plash. I can't see the baby there."

She threw a secret look at Sirius, who was reading the Daily Prophet without even looking at them. "Look," she said to her husband and son. "Look here: it's the head, the hands, the legs - And here is the heart. The heart of Angela's baby."

Sirius still wasn't looking at them. "She doesn't have preferences of its sex," Liz continued, "and I can see her point. It's hard to decide that. Today, I saw two babies there - a boy and a girl. Both of them were just adorable - do you know who Ariel the little mermaid is?"

"No; sorry to disappoint you."

"No idea."

Sirius didn't even bother to give an answer.

"So, who were the kids?" Henry asked.

"Raymond Lupin's six year old son and baby twins. Julia said that he and his wife often left them to her because they both worked - he was a Healer at St. Mungo's, and his wife was an Auror."

"Sylvie Lupin, I've heard of her," Henry said. "I was still working at the Ministry when she came here from France. Alastor trained her for a higher rank, or something like that."

"Moody?" James asked, and Sirius' ears perked up, almost like a dog's.

"The very same one. There was some story about her and the young Avery."

"Avery?" James asked disdainfully. "She was involved with one of those Averies?"

"Oh yes. No matter what we think of them, they can trace their line at least four centuries back. She is a pureblood too, from a very influential family. Beauxbatons, lots of money and everything, and of course, the arranged marriage to Avery."

"An arranged marriage?" James asked, and his father shrugged.

"Actually, I can't say that. It was all rumors; all we knew for certain was that she had agreed to marry him. There was a big engagement ring, plans for the wedding, every detail was arranged. Sylvie Sent Claire looked as much in love with Avery as he was with her. But she went to the wedding of one of her friends in Kent. Raymond Lupin, too, was invited there, and that was the end of it. She came back a week later, married to Lupin."

"A week later?" James repeated. "Remus really told us that his brother married quite suddenly, but I never imagined that they had known each other for only a week!"

"No one thought their marriage could last long," his father said. "But here they are, still married, both very successful in their professions, and if your mother is right, with three children."

"Sometimes the random marriages turn out to be the happiest ones," Liz said, looking pointedly at Sirius who still refused to look at them.

"So, it's not a puddle but a baby," James said, looking at the picture-that-wasn't-a-picture again. "You didn't tell us how they were, though, only showed us the image, Mum."

Sirius' ears perked up again, though he was still looking at the newspaper. Liz secretly smiled. "They're fine," she said in a whisper.

"I couldn't quite hear you," James complained. She opened her mouth again, and Sirius leaned his head in her direction, so he could hear her better.

"They are both fine," she repeated, not much louder.

"Louder, please!"

This time Sirius gave up on his pretence of reading and came closer. "They are both fine," Liz said, in a normal voice this time.

"Couldn't you say it like that from the very beginning?" James wondered aloud.

"Come on, let's have a dinner," Liz said cheerfully, and James and Henry headed for the kitchen. She followed them, but when she reached the door, she turned back. "Sirius, are you coming?"

"I have to go," Sirius said.

"Won't you stay for dinner?"

"No, I really have to go. Goodbye, Mrs. Potter." He kissed her cheek and Apparated. Liz looked at the living room and smiled: the picture-that-was-not-a-picture was now missing.

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A.N. If I receive an indication of your interest in the form of reviews, I'll make this a story with several chapters about Sirius and his feelings - and their possible change - about his unwanted marriage and unwanted child. Thank you for reading!