Fic, Challenge #32
Title: The Very Definition of Unexpected Pregnancy (Or, Why Hogwarts Needs Sex Ed Classes)
Summary: In the middle of a sudden rain shower, Remus gets some surprising news: Sirius is pregnant and it's his.
Characters/Pairings: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Madam Pomfrey James Potter, Peter Pettigrew
Genre: Drama/gen
Rating/Warnings: PG 13 / teenage pregnancy, Sirius is trans and his family sucks
Medium: Fic
Word Count: 3832
Can the Order post to Tumblr?: Sure
If yes, your Tumblr username: spookygondolier
He had probably picked the worst time and place possible to make his confession, but behind Greenhouse 3 just after Herbology was the only time and place he could think of that Sirius could get Remus alone for a few minutes to admit his concerns without anything seeming suspicious or out-of-place. He’d made sure to make enough suggestive eyebrow wiggles at James and Peter on the way out the door that they probably assumed their friends were sneaking off for a quick snog, which wasn’t particularly unusual.
It’s just his luck that it started raining almost as soon as they were alone. There is no overhang in the back to shield them from the rain as they lean against the glass of the greenhouse and Sirius scowls into the middle distance, not letting himself look at Remus’ face imploring him to make this quick as their robes start soaking up water and weighing heavier on their shoulders. Rain be damned, this is a conversation that will take as long as it needs to. He takes a deep breath and shakily admits his worst pregnancy suspicions.
Remus blames himself for it, of course.
“I should have asked James for a condom,” he says to himself as he starts pacing the now-damp grass frantically, running hands through his hair until he has ruffled it nearly into a mohawk and Sirius is impressed, even though it doesn’t stick for long until the rain has plastered Remus’ hair down against his head. “It would have been mortifying, yes, but then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I thought if I just, you know, got out soon enough… but clearly that didn’t work.”
“I mean, it could be a false alarm,” Sirius tries to comfort him, though he has a sinking feeling in his gut that this is the real deal. He’s never been this late before. “But next time, just to be on the safe side, let’s do it in the ass instead, eh?”
Remus stops pacing for a second to give him a withering glare. “I don’t see how you can joke about this right now. This is a very serious situation.”
“Oh, I am being very Sirius.”
“That was a pun, wasn’t it? I could hear it in your voice. I can’t believe you’re doing this now, of all times...”
“Well what else am I supposed to do?” Sirius feels as though he will fall to pieces if he stops joking. He wants to punch walls and scream at the sky and maybe cry a little but at this moment he has the good sense to realize none of that will accomplish anything and will only make Remus fuss over him more, so he falls back to humor instead.
“Oh, I don’t know, go see Madam Pomfrey perhaps? Get a test to make sure this is really happening? Hold on, she does know, doesn’t she?”
“Well she knows about you, doesn’t she? Of course she knows. Sweet Poppy is an old hand at keeping students’ dirty little secrets.”
“Don’t call her Poppy, that’s weird.”
“Why is it weird when I call her Poppy but not weird when we call McGonagall Minerva?”
“That’s also weird, I’ve just never said anything about it because I knew James would never shut up about it if I told him to stop calling her Minerva.”
“What else do we do that you secretly find weird?” Sirius asks in a mock-offended voice.
“You’re changing the subject. No. We need to work through this first.”
“Seems to me that you’re changing the subject away from how much you secretly judge the rest of us.” Sirius tries to put on a good pouty face but Remus isn’t even looking. He’s walked a few steps away to stare morosely in the direction of the Whomping Willow. “Fine, let’s talk about it. What is there to say?”
“I am so sorry,” Remus starts, but Sirius interrupts almost immediately.
“Don’t apologize, this is on both of us.”
“But it was my idea to do it… the way we did it.”
“The straight way, you mean,” Sirius offers, and Remus looks away.
“You know I didn’t… think of you that way when we were doing it. I just…”
“Wanted to get some practice in case you find a nice girl to settle down with later?”
Remus flushes. “No, not practice. That makes it sound like you’re, I don’t know, some toy but you’re not. You should have told me if you weren’t okay with it.”
“Calm down, I was fine with it. It felt great. Besides, you did ask about a million times beforehand what I didn’t want you to do. I’m not trying to guilt trip you about it, just offering up some food for thought.”
“Can we not talk about who I may or may not want to sleep with in the future? I think there are currently more pressing issues. I mean, obviously if this is real then I’ll have a certain obligation to…”
“Don’t even go to the obligation place. We’re sixteen, isn’t it a bit soon to be talking about marriage? Anyway, we don’t even know if this is real or not yet.”
“And this is why you need to go be checked out by Madam Pomfrey! I will personally escort you to the Hospital Wing this very second if need be.” Remus approaches and puts a purposeful hand on Sirius’ shoulder to punctuate his point.
Sirius wriggles away from under the hand. “God, no. This is going to be embarrassing enough already without you there hovering about, wringing your hands like…”
“Like a father-to-be?” Remus suggests and Sirius visibly squirms.
“Don’t. Don’t say that. Not yet. I will, though, go be checked out.”
“Now?” Remus prompts. “Please? I can’t handle this not-knowing-for-certain.”
“Fine, now. But alone.”
Sirius storms toward the castle, too distracted to even check if Remus is following him or not.
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“I think I might be pregnant.”
The words tumble out of his mouth in such a blur that Sirius is surprised Madam Pomfrey understood him. As soon as he says the word out loud, the one he just spent his entire conversation with Remus trying to avoid, he suddenly feels as though he’s going to be ill. He sways on his feet slightly and tries to take a deep breath. He concentrates on the rivulets of water running down his body and dripping on the floor of the Hospital Wing. There is water dripping from his hair into his face, too, but he doesn’t bother to wipe it away from his eyes. He still feels like he might start crying and he wants to be able to disguise the tears with the convenient excuse of rainwater if necessary.
“Sit down, Mr. Black,” Madam Pomfrey tells him and he obediently drops into the chair by the desk in her office. “You’re soaking wet, what have you been doing?”
“Walking back from Herbology,” Sirius mutters. His throat aches dully.
She tsks at him. “Well, you’ll catch something nasty if you keep yourself wet like that. There’s a nasty spring flu going around.”
Madam Pomfrey casts a Drying Charm on him and the sudden wave of warmth sweeping over him comforts Sirius a little.
He takes another moment to collect himself. Once he calms enough to feel that his lunch is no longer in danger of coming back up, he feels the need to explain himself before she can ask questions.
“It was only one time but we didn’t have a condom and he wanted to try it, you know, from the front and he tried to pull out before, you know, but apparently that didn’t work and I haven’t had a period in two months…”
“Breathe,” Madam Pomfrey prompts.
Sirius gulps in air then lets it out in a sort of hiss when he realizes he doesn’t know what else to say. He stares expectantly at her.
“There’s a very simple charm to test,” she explains. “It’s painless and will only take a moment. I need you to hold very still…”
At the thought of being told to hold still, Sirius instinctively starts fidgeting, but stops at her stern look. He grips the arms of the chair very tightly as she mutters something quietly and waves her wand in a sweeping motion across his torso. He feels a faint tingling sensation and then sees a sort of golden haze appear over his stomach area.
“Is that a good thing, or…”
Madam Pomfrey purses her lips.
Sirius feels ill again. “Probably not, then.”
“You have some serious thinking to do, Mr. Black,” she tells him. “There is, of course, your own opinion to take into account but also that of the child’s father, and the ramifications to your educational and professional life, and the wishes of your parents…”
He grimaces at the mention of his parents. He knows they would probably enjoy this, bets they’d make pointed comments about his body showing his true nature or something equally awful.
“In most cases, I advise students that the easiest option is to stop the pregnancy before it can progress further. Perhaps in your case even more than most.”
“You can do that? I thought that once the baby was there, you were just in it til the end.”
“It’s an embryo, Mr. Black, not a baby yet. That’s why it’s possible to end the pregnancy before it has a chance to grow. The embryo isn’t remotely human yet, it would feel no pain.”
Sirius thinks she seems remarkably calm about the whole thing, talking about killing babies while he’s still lost feeling like his world is ending.
“Does that sound like something you would be interested in? I advise you to think very hard about this.”
He opens his mouth instinctually, then realizes he doesn’t actually have an answer yet. So he does as Madam Pomfrey advised, and thinks. Ending it now would be the easiest solution. Remus wouldn’t feel any stupid obligations, Sirius wouldn’t have to be pregnant, they wouldn’t have to figure out what to do with the baby, the rest of Hogwarts wouldn’t have any excuse to call him a girl, and they could all put the whole thing behind them and pretend it had never happened. But he would still feel like he was killing a baby before it even had a chance, and it occurs to him suddenly that this might be his only chance to create another person with his own body. As soon of he’s of-age and his parents can’t do anything about it, he plans to take hormones to fix his body and that means bye-bye baby-making capabilities. Which had never seemed like a problem until now, when he’s actually faced with the opportunity of producing a baby.
“I…” he pauses, reconsiders, strengthens his resolve, then continues, “I think I want to keep the baby.”
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Madam Pomfrey tries to talk him out of it but Sirius is very difficult to convince once he has made up his mind. As he leaves the Hospital Room, nervous but determined with a pocketful of pre-natal potions and a list of things to do and not to do, he notices Remus sunk down on the floor against a wall, looking very pale and still damp with rain.
“Alright down there?” he asks in a friendly tone that is only a little forced.
“I can’t believe...There was a way to stop this and you didn’t take it. I should’ve come in with you, I should’ve…”
Sirius slides down the wall to sit beside Remus. “Shh, no. This isn’t your fault, remember? It’s my body and I made a choice. I couldn’t just let it die, Moony.”
“But you heard Madam Pomfrey, it isn’t even human yet! And this isn’t just about you, either. We both have to deal with your choice. We’re not ready to be parents! You can’t even go two weeks without detention, how do you expect to care for another person? What will people say? It’s not every day that boys go around getting pregnant.”
“I know!” Sirius snaps, and Remus goes from indignantly panicked to silent and withdrawn in an instant, his whole posture dropping at Sirius’ raised voice. “You don’t have to be part of this if you don’t want to, you know. You’re not the one who has to carry the bloody thing inside you, or face the fact that everyone you know is probably going to start questioning your gender identity all over again because obviously boys don’t get pregnant. So if you want out, if you don’t want to be a parent, now’s a great time to get out!”
Remus waits a moment, until it’s clear that Sirius has finished, before he starts apologizing. “I’m sorry, I should have thought that through before I said it. You’re right that you have more of the burden to bear but that still doesn’t erase my involvement in all this. Even if no one else does, I’ll always know that it happened. What if I passed my… what if the baby is like me? Oh, god, why didn’t I think of that earlier? Sirius, you can’t bring a baby like me into the world. Is there a way to test for that?”
Sirius shrugs. “Maybe. Seems there’s a test for everything else. But even that doesn’t change my decision. I want to bring this baby into the world. So, are you in or out?”
Remus hesitates for a long moment, his face screwed up in agonized indecision until, with a sigh, he says, “I’m in.”
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Sirius decides to keep it a secret between himself, Remus, and Madam Pomfrey as long as possible. His plan starts to fall apart when he starts getting ill in the bathrooms between classes and James and Peter start to get suspicious about why he keeps going to see Madam Pomfrey seemingly for no reason. They confront him about it in the dormitory near the end of April when he is, according to Madam Pomfrey, about 3 and a half months pregnant. When they bring up his visits to the Hospital Wing, he sighs and slumps down in his bed, half-heartedly trying to pull the curtains closed around him before James yanks them out of his hand and sits down on the edge of his bed with a concerned expression.
Sirius has managed to keep it secret for, what, two and a half? Three weeks? Fairly impressive, he thinks, considering how little privacy they all have around each other. But he did know he wouldn’t be able to keep it to himself forever.
“If you’re sick or something, you’d let us know, right?” James asks. “No secrets among Marauders, remember?”
“Yeah, I know.” Sirius looks away from James’ concern only to see Peter’s look of pity as he stands on the other side of Sirius’ bed, so he stares straight ahead toward the wall instead.
“We’re just worried,” Peter tells him. “If you’re going to drop dead in the middle of Potions or something, we don’t want it to be a surprise.”
Remus rolls his eyes. He’s sitting on his own bed, pretending to read a textbook so he doesn’t have to join the conversation, but now he looks up and meets Sirius’ eyes, giving him a slight nod. It’s time to tell them. “He’s not sick and he’s not going to drop dead in the middle of Potions,” Remus replies. “Hopefully.”
“Wait, does Moony know what’s going on?” James’ expression of concern shifts and his voice picks up a touch of hurt. “You told him before you told me?”
“Well it’s his baby, so I figured he ought to know,” Sirius mutters under his breath.
James is sitting close enough to hear at least some of that. “Baby?” he squawks in surprise, leaping backward off Sirius’ bed. “Did you just say baby? Did you say Remus’ baby?”
“What’s going on?” Peter asks in shock. He’s gaping at Sirius now as James glances back and forth between Sirius and Remus with narrowed eyes.
“Surprise, I’m pregnant,” Sirius announces with flat sarcasm. He stares down at his hands so he doesn’t have to see his friends reacting in whatever stupid, embarrassing way they are sure to be reacting.
“But, how?” Peter sputters.
“Oh, the normal way. You know, stick the wand in the cauldron and nine months later a baby pops out,” Sirius still doesn’t want to look at Peter and James but he chances a glance at Remus, who is silently staring down at his textbook, eyes unmoving.
“But you’re a boy!” Peter exclaims.
“Yeah, one with girl bits down there,” Sirius replies bitterly.
“With Remus?” James asks stupidly.
“You knew we were dating, no need to sound so surprised.”
They’re all quiet for a moment as they take it in. Sirius finally looks up from his hands and sees that James and Peter are just standing there, brows wrinkled.
“Did you tell your parents?” James finally speaks up.
Sirius barks out a short, humorless laugh. “Of course not. They’d enjoy it too much. I don’t want to give them that pleasure. Mum’s always going on about how much she wants grandkids… I reckon they’ll find out when I’m home for the summer. Don’t know what they’ll do about it. Stick me in Mum’s old maternity robes probably and parade me about for the rest of the family. Make comments about how I’m finally embracing my womanhood or some rubbish.” He shudders.
“That does sound awful,” Peter says sympathetically.
Remus slams his textbook shut with a bang that makes them all jump a little. He looks furious. “Damn it, Sirius, I can’t let that happen. It’s bad enough I got you into this mess and you have to deal with the physical part of it, but to let your parents treat you like that…”
“Whoa, calm down,” Sirius says in his best soothing voice. “There’s no guarantee that’s how they’ll take it. I don’t know for certain how they’ll react. And I got myself into this mess, too, remember. I was the one that made the choice to keep it.”
“I didn’t know you had a choice of whether or not to keep a baby,” Peter murmurs, slightly puzzled.
“But, knowing your parents, however they react is bound to be awful,” Remus persists.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” James suggests. “Why don’t you just stay at my place over the summer? Me and you, it’ll be brilliant. Then you won’t have to deal with your parents.”
“But what about your parents?” Sirius asks.
James shrugs. “I’m sure they’ll be fine with it. They’re cool.”
Sirius really doesn’t need much convincing to agree.
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By the time exams have concluded, Sirius has started to put on some weight but manages to pass it off with jokes about stealing too much food from the kitchens and getting fat. The only part of the weight gain that really bothers him is that his tits are getting bigger and are more work to bind. He makes arrangements with Madam Pomfrey to have her pop by James’ house every few weeks for check-ups. She warns him that coming back to school for his last couple months will be very challenging, but he refuses to compromise on the matter. He doesn’t want to be a teenage pregnancy statistic and a dropout. Anyway, it’ll only be for a couple months and then the baby will be out and Remus’ parents have agreed to take care of it while the boys are still in school. They were delighted to learn they would be grandparents, despite the unusual circumstances, and are far less worried about the baby inheriting Remus’ lycanthropy than Remus, who could never seem to shut up about it recently.
He talks about it for ten minutes on the train to London before Sirius reaches over, places a hand on his mouth, and says, “Moony, stop. Worrying about it won’t do anything. If it happens, it happens and we figure out what to do about it then. But nothing has seemed to happen to the baby during the past couple full moons, so I reckon we’re probably in the clear.”
“But Madam Pomfrey says she doesn’t know…” Remus starts.
Even James has started to get fed up with all the worrying the past couple days. “Can we talk about something cheerier, like how awesome my summer with Padfoot is going to be?”
The conversation shifts and the boys are all laughing when the train pulls in at King’s Cross.
Sirius finds Regulus and walks with him to where their parents are waiting. His mother looks disapprovingly at Sirius’ round stomach.
“I’m pregnant,” Sirius announces and pushes on as his family gasps in shock. “And I will not be coming home this summer. I’m staying with James.”
He walks away from them as they start shouting questions after him.
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The summer goes swimmingly and Sirius comes back to Hogwarts in high spirits. However, he realizes rather quickly that Madam Pomfrey was right on when she said it would be ‘challenging.’ Snape’s gang of Slytherins take to calling him a girl at every possible opportunity and some of his professors seem confused about which pronouns to use for him, despite the fact that they’ve never seemed to have a problem with it in the past. He finds it hard to concentrate in classes because his back hurts and his ankles hurt and he has to pee every twenty minutes and he has the disconcerting feeling that a parasite is growing inside him.
It’s on an ordinary day in mid-October when he starts getting contractions in the middle of Charms.
He hisses in pain and Remus, sitting next to him, leans over and whispers, “Is the baby kicking you again?”
“No, it’s worse this time,” Sirius replies through gritted teeth. “I think this is it.”
Remus pales and his hand shoots up, shaking a little. “Excuse me, Professor Flitwick. Sirius is feeling ill and I’m going to take him to the Hospital Wing.”
“Yes, by all means,” Professor Flitwick squeaks, and the two boys hurry out the door as James and Peter watch them go with impatient concern.
They get Sirius into a bed and Madam Pomfrey starts running around shouting things like, “Someone should contact Lupin’s parents!” and other things that Sirius doesn’t hear because he’s preoccupied with the pain. He wonders if this is how Remus feels at the full moon.
It feels like an eternity of pain, but when it’s finally over and he hears a baby crying and then Madam Pomfrey places the tiny being wrapped in a towel into his arms, it feels like it was worth it. Sirius looks down into the scrunched, pink face and feels like he has never loved anything in the world so much.
“Congratulations,” Madam Pomfrey says, sounding tired but pleased, like a milder version of what Sirius is feeling. “You two are fathers.”
3,382 words + 5 for challenge = 135 125 points for Gryffindor
Summary: In the middle of a sudden rain shower, Remus gets some surprising news: Sirius is pregnant and it's his.
Characters/Pairings: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Madam Pomfrey James Potter, Peter Pettigrew
Genre: Drama/gen
Rating/Warnings: PG 13 / teenage pregnancy, Sirius is trans and his family sucks
Medium: Fic
Word Count: 3832
Can the Order post to Tumblr?: Sure
If yes, your Tumblr username: spookygondolier
He had probably picked the worst time and place possible to make his confession, but behind Greenhouse 3 just after Herbology was the only time and place he could think of that Sirius could get Remus alone for a few minutes to admit his concerns without anything seeming suspicious or out-of-place. He’d made sure to make enough suggestive eyebrow wiggles at James and Peter on the way out the door that they probably assumed their friends were sneaking off for a quick snog, which wasn’t particularly unusual.
It’s just his luck that it started raining almost as soon as they were alone. There is no overhang in the back to shield them from the rain as they lean against the glass of the greenhouse and Sirius scowls into the middle distance, not letting himself look at Remus’ face imploring him to make this quick as their robes start soaking up water and weighing heavier on their shoulders. Rain be damned, this is a conversation that will take as long as it needs to. He takes a deep breath and shakily admits his worst pregnancy suspicions.
Remus blames himself for it, of course.
“I should have asked James for a condom,” he says to himself as he starts pacing the now-damp grass frantically, running hands through his hair until he has ruffled it nearly into a mohawk and Sirius is impressed, even though it doesn’t stick for long until the rain has plastered Remus’ hair down against his head. “It would have been mortifying, yes, but then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I thought if I just, you know, got out soon enough… but clearly that didn’t work.”
“I mean, it could be a false alarm,” Sirius tries to comfort him, though he has a sinking feeling in his gut that this is the real deal. He’s never been this late before. “But next time, just to be on the safe side, let’s do it in the ass instead, eh?”
Remus stops pacing for a second to give him a withering glare. “I don’t see how you can joke about this right now. This is a very serious situation.”
“Oh, I am being very Sirius.”
“That was a pun, wasn’t it? I could hear it in your voice. I can’t believe you’re doing this now, of all times...”
“Well what else am I supposed to do?” Sirius feels as though he will fall to pieces if he stops joking. He wants to punch walls and scream at the sky and maybe cry a little but at this moment he has the good sense to realize none of that will accomplish anything and will only make Remus fuss over him more, so he falls back to humor instead.
“Oh, I don’t know, go see Madam Pomfrey perhaps? Get a test to make sure this is really happening? Hold on, she does know, doesn’t she?”
“Well she knows about you, doesn’t she? Of course she knows. Sweet Poppy is an old hand at keeping students’ dirty little secrets.”
“Don’t call her Poppy, that’s weird.”
“Why is it weird when I call her Poppy but not weird when we call McGonagall Minerva?”
“That’s also weird, I’ve just never said anything about it because I knew James would never shut up about it if I told him to stop calling her Minerva.”
“What else do we do that you secretly find weird?” Sirius asks in a mock-offended voice.
“You’re changing the subject. No. We need to work through this first.”
“Seems to me that you’re changing the subject away from how much you secretly judge the rest of us.” Sirius tries to put on a good pouty face but Remus isn’t even looking. He’s walked a few steps away to stare morosely in the direction of the Whomping Willow. “Fine, let’s talk about it. What is there to say?”
“I am so sorry,” Remus starts, but Sirius interrupts almost immediately.
“Don’t apologize, this is on both of us.”
“But it was my idea to do it… the way we did it.”
“The straight way, you mean,” Sirius offers, and Remus looks away.
“You know I didn’t… think of you that way when we were doing it. I just…”
“Wanted to get some practice in case you find a nice girl to settle down with later?”
Remus flushes. “No, not practice. That makes it sound like you’re, I don’t know, some toy but you’re not. You should have told me if you weren’t okay with it.”
“Calm down, I was fine with it. It felt great. Besides, you did ask about a million times beforehand what I didn’t want you to do. I’m not trying to guilt trip you about it, just offering up some food for thought.”
“Can we not talk about who I may or may not want to sleep with in the future? I think there are currently more pressing issues. I mean, obviously if this is real then I’ll have a certain obligation to…”
“Don’t even go to the obligation place. We’re sixteen, isn’t it a bit soon to be talking about marriage? Anyway, we don’t even know if this is real or not yet.”
“And this is why you need to go be checked out by Madam Pomfrey! I will personally escort you to the Hospital Wing this very second if need be.” Remus approaches and puts a purposeful hand on Sirius’ shoulder to punctuate his point.
Sirius wriggles away from under the hand. “God, no. This is going to be embarrassing enough already without you there hovering about, wringing your hands like…”
“Like a father-to-be?” Remus suggests and Sirius visibly squirms.
“Don’t. Don’t say that. Not yet. I will, though, go be checked out.”
“Now?” Remus prompts. “Please? I can’t handle this not-knowing-for-certain.”
“Fine, now. But alone.”
Sirius storms toward the castle, too distracted to even check if Remus is following him or not.
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“I think I might be pregnant.”
The words tumble out of his mouth in such a blur that Sirius is surprised Madam Pomfrey understood him. As soon as he says the word out loud, the one he just spent his entire conversation with Remus trying to avoid, he suddenly feels as though he’s going to be ill. He sways on his feet slightly and tries to take a deep breath. He concentrates on the rivulets of water running down his body and dripping on the floor of the Hospital Wing. There is water dripping from his hair into his face, too, but he doesn’t bother to wipe it away from his eyes. He still feels like he might start crying and he wants to be able to disguise the tears with the convenient excuse of rainwater if necessary.
“Sit down, Mr. Black,” Madam Pomfrey tells him and he obediently drops into the chair by the desk in her office. “You’re soaking wet, what have you been doing?”
“Walking back from Herbology,” Sirius mutters. His throat aches dully.
She tsks at him. “Well, you’ll catch something nasty if you keep yourself wet like that. There’s a nasty spring flu going around.”
Madam Pomfrey casts a Drying Charm on him and the sudden wave of warmth sweeping over him comforts Sirius a little.
He takes another moment to collect himself. Once he calms enough to feel that his lunch is no longer in danger of coming back up, he feels the need to explain himself before she can ask questions.
“It was only one time but we didn’t have a condom and he wanted to try it, you know, from the front and he tried to pull out before, you know, but apparently that didn’t work and I haven’t had a period in two months…”
“Breathe,” Madam Pomfrey prompts.
Sirius gulps in air then lets it out in a sort of hiss when he realizes he doesn’t know what else to say. He stares expectantly at her.
“There’s a very simple charm to test,” she explains. “It’s painless and will only take a moment. I need you to hold very still…”
At the thought of being told to hold still, Sirius instinctively starts fidgeting, but stops at her stern look. He grips the arms of the chair very tightly as she mutters something quietly and waves her wand in a sweeping motion across his torso. He feels a faint tingling sensation and then sees a sort of golden haze appear over his stomach area.
“Is that a good thing, or…”
Madam Pomfrey purses her lips.
Sirius feels ill again. “Probably not, then.”
“You have some serious thinking to do, Mr. Black,” she tells him. “There is, of course, your own opinion to take into account but also that of the child’s father, and the ramifications to your educational and professional life, and the wishes of your parents…”
He grimaces at the mention of his parents. He knows they would probably enjoy this, bets they’d make pointed comments about his body showing his true nature or something equally awful.
“In most cases, I advise students that the easiest option is to stop the pregnancy before it can progress further. Perhaps in your case even more than most.”
“You can do that? I thought that once the baby was there, you were just in it til the end.”
“It’s an embryo, Mr. Black, not a baby yet. That’s why it’s possible to end the pregnancy before it has a chance to grow. The embryo isn’t remotely human yet, it would feel no pain.”
Sirius thinks she seems remarkably calm about the whole thing, talking about killing babies while he’s still lost feeling like his world is ending.
“Does that sound like something you would be interested in? I advise you to think very hard about this.”
He opens his mouth instinctually, then realizes he doesn’t actually have an answer yet. So he does as Madam Pomfrey advised, and thinks. Ending it now would be the easiest solution. Remus wouldn’t feel any stupid obligations, Sirius wouldn’t have to be pregnant, they wouldn’t have to figure out what to do with the baby, the rest of Hogwarts wouldn’t have any excuse to call him a girl, and they could all put the whole thing behind them and pretend it had never happened. But he would still feel like he was killing a baby before it even had a chance, and it occurs to him suddenly that this might be his only chance to create another person with his own body. As soon of he’s of-age and his parents can’t do anything about it, he plans to take hormones to fix his body and that means bye-bye baby-making capabilities. Which had never seemed like a problem until now, when he’s actually faced with the opportunity of producing a baby.
“I…” he pauses, reconsiders, strengthens his resolve, then continues, “I think I want to keep the baby.”
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Madam Pomfrey tries to talk him out of it but Sirius is very difficult to convince once he has made up his mind. As he leaves the Hospital Room, nervous but determined with a pocketful of pre-natal potions and a list of things to do and not to do, he notices Remus sunk down on the floor against a wall, looking very pale and still damp with rain.
“Alright down there?” he asks in a friendly tone that is only a little forced.
“I can’t believe...There was a way to stop this and you didn’t take it. I should’ve come in with you, I should’ve…”
Sirius slides down the wall to sit beside Remus. “Shh, no. This isn’t your fault, remember? It’s my body and I made a choice. I couldn’t just let it die, Moony.”
“But you heard Madam Pomfrey, it isn’t even human yet! And this isn’t just about you, either. We both have to deal with your choice. We’re not ready to be parents! You can’t even go two weeks without detention, how do you expect to care for another person? What will people say? It’s not every day that boys go around getting pregnant.”
“I know!” Sirius snaps, and Remus goes from indignantly panicked to silent and withdrawn in an instant, his whole posture dropping at Sirius’ raised voice. “You don’t have to be part of this if you don’t want to, you know. You’re not the one who has to carry the bloody thing inside you, or face the fact that everyone you know is probably going to start questioning your gender identity all over again because obviously boys don’t get pregnant. So if you want out, if you don’t want to be a parent, now’s a great time to get out!”
Remus waits a moment, until it’s clear that Sirius has finished, before he starts apologizing. “I’m sorry, I should have thought that through before I said it. You’re right that you have more of the burden to bear but that still doesn’t erase my involvement in all this. Even if no one else does, I’ll always know that it happened. What if I passed my… what if the baby is like me? Oh, god, why didn’t I think of that earlier? Sirius, you can’t bring a baby like me into the world. Is there a way to test for that?”
Sirius shrugs. “Maybe. Seems there’s a test for everything else. But even that doesn’t change my decision. I want to bring this baby into the world. So, are you in or out?”
Remus hesitates for a long moment, his face screwed up in agonized indecision until, with a sigh, he says, “I’m in.”
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Sirius decides to keep it a secret between himself, Remus, and Madam Pomfrey as long as possible. His plan starts to fall apart when he starts getting ill in the bathrooms between classes and James and Peter start to get suspicious about why he keeps going to see Madam Pomfrey seemingly for no reason. They confront him about it in the dormitory near the end of April when he is, according to Madam Pomfrey, about 3 and a half months pregnant. When they bring up his visits to the Hospital Wing, he sighs and slumps down in his bed, half-heartedly trying to pull the curtains closed around him before James yanks them out of his hand and sits down on the edge of his bed with a concerned expression.
Sirius has managed to keep it secret for, what, two and a half? Three weeks? Fairly impressive, he thinks, considering how little privacy they all have around each other. But he did know he wouldn’t be able to keep it to himself forever.
“If you’re sick or something, you’d let us know, right?” James asks. “No secrets among Marauders, remember?”
“Yeah, I know.” Sirius looks away from James’ concern only to see Peter’s look of pity as he stands on the other side of Sirius’ bed, so he stares straight ahead toward the wall instead.
“We’re just worried,” Peter tells him. “If you’re going to drop dead in the middle of Potions or something, we don’t want it to be a surprise.”
Remus rolls his eyes. He’s sitting on his own bed, pretending to read a textbook so he doesn’t have to join the conversation, but now he looks up and meets Sirius’ eyes, giving him a slight nod. It’s time to tell them. “He’s not sick and he’s not going to drop dead in the middle of Potions,” Remus replies. “Hopefully.”
“Wait, does Moony know what’s going on?” James’ expression of concern shifts and his voice picks up a touch of hurt. “You told him before you told me?”
“Well it’s his baby, so I figured he ought to know,” Sirius mutters under his breath.
James is sitting close enough to hear at least some of that. “Baby?” he squawks in surprise, leaping backward off Sirius’ bed. “Did you just say baby? Did you say Remus’ baby?”
“What’s going on?” Peter asks in shock. He’s gaping at Sirius now as James glances back and forth between Sirius and Remus with narrowed eyes.
“Surprise, I’m pregnant,” Sirius announces with flat sarcasm. He stares down at his hands so he doesn’t have to see his friends reacting in whatever stupid, embarrassing way they are sure to be reacting.
“But, how?” Peter sputters.
“Oh, the normal way. You know, stick the wand in the cauldron and nine months later a baby pops out,” Sirius still doesn’t want to look at Peter and James but he chances a glance at Remus, who is silently staring down at his textbook, eyes unmoving.
“But you’re a boy!” Peter exclaims.
“Yeah, one with girl bits down there,” Sirius replies bitterly.
“With Remus?” James asks stupidly.
“You knew we were dating, no need to sound so surprised.”
They’re all quiet for a moment as they take it in. Sirius finally looks up from his hands and sees that James and Peter are just standing there, brows wrinkled.
“Did you tell your parents?” James finally speaks up.
Sirius barks out a short, humorless laugh. “Of course not. They’d enjoy it too much. I don’t want to give them that pleasure. Mum’s always going on about how much she wants grandkids… I reckon they’ll find out when I’m home for the summer. Don’t know what they’ll do about it. Stick me in Mum’s old maternity robes probably and parade me about for the rest of the family. Make comments about how I’m finally embracing my womanhood or some rubbish.” He shudders.
“That does sound awful,” Peter says sympathetically.
Remus slams his textbook shut with a bang that makes them all jump a little. He looks furious. “Damn it, Sirius, I can’t let that happen. It’s bad enough I got you into this mess and you have to deal with the physical part of it, but to let your parents treat you like that…”
“Whoa, calm down,” Sirius says in his best soothing voice. “There’s no guarantee that’s how they’ll take it. I don’t know for certain how they’ll react. And I got myself into this mess, too, remember. I was the one that made the choice to keep it.”
“I didn’t know you had a choice of whether or not to keep a baby,” Peter murmurs, slightly puzzled.
“But, knowing your parents, however they react is bound to be awful,” Remus persists.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” James suggests. “Why don’t you just stay at my place over the summer? Me and you, it’ll be brilliant. Then you won’t have to deal with your parents.”
“But what about your parents?” Sirius asks.
James shrugs. “I’m sure they’ll be fine with it. They’re cool.”
Sirius really doesn’t need much convincing to agree.
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By the time exams have concluded, Sirius has started to put on some weight but manages to pass it off with jokes about stealing too much food from the kitchens and getting fat. The only part of the weight gain that really bothers him is that his tits are getting bigger and are more work to bind. He makes arrangements with Madam Pomfrey to have her pop by James’ house every few weeks for check-ups. She warns him that coming back to school for his last couple months will be very challenging, but he refuses to compromise on the matter. He doesn’t want to be a teenage pregnancy statistic and a dropout. Anyway, it’ll only be for a couple months and then the baby will be out and Remus’ parents have agreed to take care of it while the boys are still in school. They were delighted to learn they would be grandparents, despite the unusual circumstances, and are far less worried about the baby inheriting Remus’ lycanthropy than Remus, who could never seem to shut up about it recently.
He talks about it for ten minutes on the train to London before Sirius reaches over, places a hand on his mouth, and says, “Moony, stop. Worrying about it won’t do anything. If it happens, it happens and we figure out what to do about it then. But nothing has seemed to happen to the baby during the past couple full moons, so I reckon we’re probably in the clear.”
“But Madam Pomfrey says she doesn’t know…” Remus starts.
Even James has started to get fed up with all the worrying the past couple days. “Can we talk about something cheerier, like how awesome my summer with Padfoot is going to be?”
The conversation shifts and the boys are all laughing when the train pulls in at King’s Cross.
Sirius finds Regulus and walks with him to where their parents are waiting. His mother looks disapprovingly at Sirius’ round stomach.
“I’m pregnant,” Sirius announces and pushes on as his family gasps in shock. “And I will not be coming home this summer. I’m staying with James.”
He walks away from them as they start shouting questions after him.
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The summer goes swimmingly and Sirius comes back to Hogwarts in high spirits. However, he realizes rather quickly that Madam Pomfrey was right on when she said it would be ‘challenging.’ Snape’s gang of Slytherins take to calling him a girl at every possible opportunity and some of his professors seem confused about which pronouns to use for him, despite the fact that they’ve never seemed to have a problem with it in the past. He finds it hard to concentrate in classes because his back hurts and his ankles hurt and he has to pee every twenty minutes and he has the disconcerting feeling that a parasite is growing inside him.
It’s on an ordinary day in mid-October when he starts getting contractions in the middle of Charms.
He hisses in pain and Remus, sitting next to him, leans over and whispers, “Is the baby kicking you again?”
“No, it’s worse this time,” Sirius replies through gritted teeth. “I think this is it.”
Remus pales and his hand shoots up, shaking a little. “Excuse me, Professor Flitwick. Sirius is feeling ill and I’m going to take him to the Hospital Wing.”
“Yes, by all means,” Professor Flitwick squeaks, and the two boys hurry out the door as James and Peter watch them go with impatient concern.
They get Sirius into a bed and Madam Pomfrey starts running around shouting things like, “Someone should contact Lupin’s parents!” and other things that Sirius doesn’t hear because he’s preoccupied with the pain. He wonders if this is how Remus feels at the full moon.
It feels like an eternity of pain, but when it’s finally over and he hears a baby crying and then Madam Pomfrey places the tiny being wrapped in a towel into his arms, it feels like it was worth it. Sirius looks down into the scrunched, pink face and feels like he has never loved anything in the world so much.
“Congratulations,” Madam Pomfrey says, sounding tired but pleased, like a milder version of what Sirius is feeling. “You two are fathers.”
3,382 words + 5 for challenge = 135 125 points for Gryffindor