Teddy Remus Lupin. It was a good name, Andromeda decided. It was just a pity that he would never know his parents.

She felt unreasonably calm. The news had come just an hour before, and yet she didn’t feel the grief, the pain, the sorrow. Not yet.

She had always dealt with death like this. She was used to death. The first war had brought so much of it, although not to her immediate family. Her cousin Regulus had been killed, but the rest had survived. Bellatrix and Sirius had both gone to jail, though, and that was almost the same. They were dead now, too.

Andromeda could never feel any grief right away. Even when Ted had died, she had stayed calm, not cried for an entire day. She had put that down to Dora, though. Dora had always been more excitable, more emotional, more passionate than her mother, and being pregnant at the time didn’t help. When the news came that Ted had died, Dora had cried for three days without stopping, and it was all Andromeda could do to comfort her daughter. Remus had helped as best he could, and he had mostly been successful, but the strain of their marriage had made it necessary for Andromeda to put her own grief on hold for a while.

Now Dora was gone, and Remus with her. There was nothing to distract Andromeda from grieving, and yet she didn’t. Not yet.

A few days, a week, and she would be bawling at every opportunity. Her own little girl… gone. Killed.

If only Dora wasn’t so impulsive..! But she was impulsive. She was passionate. She couldn’t have stayed home knowing her husband was out fighting. She had to go to him, and Dora had been an Auror, it was in her blood to fight. Andromeda knew that. It was what made Dora so special.

Andromeda looked back at the baby in the crib. He lay there, so soft, so innocent. He would never know Dora, her passion, her impulses, her emotions and fun and inquisitiveness. He would never know Remus, his serene manners, his gentility, his understanding and devotion and kindness. The boy would never know Ted, his cool attitude, his laughter, his sweetness and courage and love. The boy would never know any of them. They were all gone.

Maybe it was better that Teddy not know them, really. Since he didn’t know them, he couldn’t feel the pain of losing them, the emptiness of the house without Ted’s awful jokes and Dora’s laughter and even Remus’s gentle comebacks, brief though Remus’s presence had been.

Andromeda still wasn’t crying. Even thinking of everything that was missing, even thinking of how Teddy would never know, she didn’t cry. She never cried right away.

When Sirius had died, Andromeda had accepted it without hesitation. He had been marked to die ever since he could talk. Everyone in the Black family had realized that Sirius would meet an early end. Bellatrix had been the same way. It had taken longer, but the moment she became a Death Eater, everyone knew her fate. Not that Andromeda mourned Bellatrix. It was just as well that she was dead. Andromeda had mourned Sirius, but she had been mourning him for fourteen years before he met his end.

Now her husband, her daughter, her son-in-law… they were all gone. She mourned them. But she did not cry for them.

Teddy began to stir. Andromeda watched as his little eyes opened. They were brown at the moment, the same brown as his father’s. The little eyes looked around, and although they couldn’t focus on anything or see what was going on, Andromeda thought that Teddy understood. His eyes may have been unfocused, but she felt that he could see that his mother and father were not there, and she thought that he knew that they wouldn’t come back. It was going to be so hard to raise him. And yet she relished the challenge, embraced it as a way of keeping her daughter alive. Teddy was Dora’s baby, and now he was Andromeda’s.

She thought about doing it all over again as she summoned milk for Teddy to drink. She thought about all the scrapes Dora had gotten into, all the trouble, all the worrying and fussing and the reluctance to finally let go. She would have to do it all again, and this time she would do it alone, without Ted to laugh and play with the child and be with her at the end of the day to reflect on the child, to laugh at the silly things that had happened, to solve a problem or just to hold her. No one would be beside her this time.

And yet…

A knock sounded on the front door just as she had given Teddy the bottle. Andromeda rose wearily to answer it. She should have expected visitors with condolences, but she had hoped that they would wait a little longer.

Therefore, she was considerably unsurprised to see Harry Potter himself standing on her doorstep. Harry had been one of Remus’s students, a friend of Dora’s, and had been chosen as Teddy’s godfather. She had been expecting him from the moment the owl arrived telling her the news of the battle.

“Hello, Harry,” she said quietly. “I suppose you want to meet your godson.”

“I would, indeed,” Harry said, stepping into the house. Andromeda handed him the baby, still sucking contentedly at his bottle. Maybe he didn’t realize that his parents weren’t coming back.

“He’s perfect,” Harry said, looking in the tiny face under turquoise hair. “I’m sure you’ll do just fine with him, but if you want my help… I’ll be sure to visit as often as possible.”

Andromeda nodded. It was well known that Harry Potter had been brought up by an aunt and uncle who didn’t care for him much, and she figured that he would want any child he had the slightest control over to have a much happier time than he had.

“When… when is the funeral?” she asked.

“That’s up to you,” Harry said gently. “She was your daughter, and as far as I know, no one else is responsible for Remus…” He trailed off, looking miserable.

Andromeda nodded. “I’ll arrange it then,” she said, and left the room. She could feel the tears coming at last. It would be such a relief to cry.

Harry looked down at the boy in his arms. Teddy Remus Lupin. It was a good name.