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Euphemia and Fleamont Potter died together, one after the other, in April of 1980, just after Gwen and James celebrated turning twenty years old. Fleamont succeeded his wife by four minutes and James stayed by the both of their sides until the very end. Their disease, it had turned out, as denied very plainly by the Healers at Saint Mungo's, was fatal and had been all along, so while Euphemia and Fleamont grew worse for the wear James was only resolute that they would come out the other end just fine.
Toward the end, though, Gwen had to wake him up from this tragic fantasy he had reverted to: His parents were dying, and he needed to be there for them once it happened.
So he was.
It wasn't long later—only two weeks' notice—that Orion Black died, as well, though this news didn't break up Sirius so much as that of what he called his real parents, Mr. and Mrs. Potter. He shut himself in his room and Gwen did not hear him say a word for a week straight.
James, naturally, had fallen into a right state; even the news that Gwen was already four months now did not do well to cheer him up, which she had not expected it to, but was still saddened by, nonetheless. Her husband had fallen into a worse manner than, say, Peter, who had stopped showing up to any friendly gatherings and only to mandatory Order meetings, looking worse than ever with less hair every time he was seen and more sweat on his forehead than seemed possible for a man so shivery all the time.
Lily, whilst she had lost the Healer's position at St. Mungo's to that nutter Gwendolyn Blythe, seemed to be doing well enough; she had moved far from her old house in Spinner's End and now resided in a small flat just a stone's throw from Gwen and James's new house in Everglade. Sirius, too, had moved; he and Remus together weren't all that far from the rest of them, naturally. Peter was the only one still living with his mum. After a good month and a half straight of no word from him, though, Gwen thought it kind to pop in and give him a word of encouragement or two.
"Brought some biscuits," she greeted his mother when the front door crept open, and Gwen held up the tin in her hand. "I'm Gwendolyn, by the way, Graham—Don't know if—"
"You're a Pureblood?" the woman demanded, first thing, her glare sharp.
"Half," said Gwen coldly, already growing quite indifferent to Peter's mother. "Though that shouldn't matter in the first place, should it, Mrs. Pettigrew?"
"Another of Pete's friends?" Edwina deduced in a sharp voice. She still had a hand on the door and regarded Gwen from the other side of it, her face screwed up with suspicion, eyes cloudy as they watched her every move. "I said it last time; he's out again."
Gwen's lips twitched down at the corners, and her arm holding the tin of sweets lowered. "He isn't in? But Shacklebolt says..." Her brow furrowed and she bit the insides of her cheeks, thoughtful, almost impervious to the impatient stare of Peter's mother. "I heard he hasn't left his house in a—"
