Harry Potter and the Dynasty of the Wand by Lady Snuffles
Chapter Notes: Christmas Break Part Two: Harry finally gets that conversation with Lupin.
Disclaimer: I’m afraid of lawyers......please don’t sue me! It’s not mine...you can’t!
She woke up to find that it was quarter to midnight and she really needed a glass of water. She walked across the hallway to the kitchen where she ran headlong into something moving. “Whaaaa!”
“Hoaa!”
“Harry! You scared me,” Tonks said sleepily. “What are you doing up this late?”
“I was waiting for Lupin to get back. I have a few things I wanted to discuss with him.”
“Anything I can help you with?” Tonks asked grabbing a glass out of the cupboard.
“No...at least I don’t think so. It’s guy stuff.”
“Guy stuff?” She dropped a few ice cubes into the glass and went to fill it up.
“Well girls have girl stuff that you really don’t like to talk to guys about and believe it or not, guys have guy stuff that they really don’t like to talk to girls about.”
“Really? I didn’t know that guys had guy stuff,” she said leaning against the counter.
“Mm-hm.”
“Alright then. I’ll just head back to bed. Remus should be home in a few minutes anyways so you shouldn’t be lonely too much longer.”
“Okay, good night.”
“Night.”
Harry then found his way to the living room where he sat in front of the hearth waiting for Lupin to return home. In no more than seven minutes, there was a popping noise announcing that Lupin had just apparated beside him.
“Hello Harry. Were you waiting for me?”
He nodded his head. “Yes, I was hoping we could talk.”
“About?”
“Nothing....anything...everything.”
“Me too.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
For hours Harry and Lupin talked about everything they could think of. Most of it having to do with Sirius or Harry’s parents.
“...then she started screaming and ran away,” Lupin laughed sadly. He had just finished telling Harry about the first time the Marauders went to Hogsmeade on a full moon. “Every full moon after that James was as excited as I wasn’t. He, for some odd reason, liked to scare people out of their wits. But his favorite part of all was the transformation. If James had actually thought about it, he probably would have found a way to use his animagus to help him romance your mother.”
“How did my Dad finally convince my Mum to go out with him anyways? Last I heard she would rather have gone out with the giant squid,” Harry asked, thinking about the incident in Snape’s memory the previous year.
“It was on a whim really...it’s a very good story. I still crack up thinking about it.” Here Lupin laughed reliving the memory in his mind. “Your parents had ended up being partners for a long term project in their sixth year. It was Charms I think. Most of it was out of class really, so they had a lot of “alone time” together. Your dad asked Lily to go on a date with him every single time they met to work. One night when they were in the common room working, James was really irritating your mum and she snapped. I’d never seen Lily so vexed in my life. She told James that if he’d shut up and stop asking her out she’d kiss him,” Lupin paused, giving Harry the feeling that he wasn’t going to go on.
“And?” Harry asked impatiently.
“Well, she kissed him...and he kissed her back, for a very, very long time. Sirius, Peter and I, who happened to walk in the room at the wrong time (no, we were not spying), were afraid that your parents were going to asphyxiate themselves. All I can say on that matter is that quite a few third years never acted the same way after seeing that.....after that night it was really hard to get them apart. The only time we really saw James without Lily was during the few classes they didn’t have together and on full moons.”
“Where did their relationship go from there?” Harry asked bemused. He was surprised on how much it was like his and Ginny’s beginning. It all started with a kiss.
“All through seventh year they were dating and about three months after Hogwarts James popped the question. That’s quite a funny story too, actually.”
“How did he propose?”
“Oh boy...where to begin is the question. Let’s see...oh yes. It was the day after your Dad’s parents, would have been, 23rd wedding anniversary. He was very upset because they had died only a five months prior. That night Peter, Sirius, Lily and I threw your grandparents an anniversary party to cheer your dad up. It helped a lot. He was even dancing with your mum a little. Everyone fell asleep in Lily’s living room and her parents woke us up. They were very, shall we say, disturbed...by the fact that Lily had spent the entire night with four men in the same room with her. One of which she was laying on when she woke up.”
“That must have been strange. How angry were my grandparents?”
“Pretty furious. After Sirius, James, Peter and I left your mum’s house James was ecstatic though. We all thought he had flown the coop. He had just been scolded by his girlfriends parents and he had never had a bigger smile on his face. When we asked him what was up he said he was going to propose to Lily. Then when we asked him why, James said it was because of something Lily’s parents had said to her. It was along the lines of “You’re not even engaged to him yet.” So he figured Lilly wouldn’t want to be yelled at for the same problem again. We thought it was a very sensible reason, coming from James.
“That night Lily came to my house, which was where your dad was staying for a while, and he proposed when dessert was brought out. James had put the engagement ring in the piece of chocolate cake so that the, rather...eh-hem...large, diamond was the only part sticking out. She looked from the cake to your dad and back to the cake again. When she looked at your dad for the second time she was almost in tears. He pulled the ring out of the cake and knelt down on one knee. I will never forget the words he said either.”
Lupin reminisced on the moment before continuing. He recited as if it were a poem. “Lily Evans, the love of my life. You’ve made me realize what love really is and you changed my life in that first kiss back in sixth year. You have made all my dreams come true. No matter where life might take me now, I could never imagine a day of it going by without you in it. I thought something this special could never come true, but for the past few years I've waited, and I'm so thankful I did because then we wouldn’t have this moment right here, and now. I can hardly wait for the day you walk down the aisle because from that day forward you would be forever by my side. I'll be there when your happy and sad every step of the way. I look forward to the memories we will make, and the family we will have. There is one final thing I want to say to you and that is, from now to the end of time I have committed myself to you. I love you Lily. Will you marry me?” Lupin looked at Harry when he was done reciting.
“My dad really said that?”
“Yep.”
“Wow, you weren’t lying when you said that he was a sap...how did Mum react?”
“She started crying less than half way through his proposal. When he finished she could barely mumble. Your mum just kept nodding her head saying uh-huh. When your dad put the ring on her finger she said “Ask me again!” James said “Lily, will you marry me?” “Yes! Ask me again.” and he asked her again and then from that point forward until the day she died she never took off that diamond.”
“Where is her ring? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in my vault at Gringotts.”
“I know that she wasn’t buried with it on account of, I was at the funeral. When I said my last goodbyes, I placed my hand on hers and I know that I didn’t see or feel it. That might be another something to look for up in the attic here.”
“Speaking of...what else have you found up there?”
“Well, I really haven’t been looking too hard. Just every once in a while when I think of something that I know Sirius had. I found boxes of pictures from Hogwarts, old books, letters from his girlfriend....”
“Sirius had a girlfriend?”
“Most definitely. The only one he ever had.”
“What happened to her?”
“She and her family went into hiding when Voldemort came around the first time. He never admitted it to my face but I read in the Daily Prophet that she was killed in an attack at their hiding place by the Death Eaters...her father was next in line to be the Minister of Magic so he was an obvious target. Such a shame. She was such a nice girl. Very pretty...never put anyone down, always had a smile on her face. Once she died, Sirius was never really the same around any girls other than you mother. Lily really did help him through a lot of his grief.”
“What was her name?”
“Adhara Major. We thought that they made the perfect couple just because of their names.” Harry looked at Lupin confused. “I can tell that you don’t have much of a memory when it comes to Astronomy. Sirius and Adhara are the two brightest stars in the constellation, Canis Major.” Lupin laughed slightly before asking, “Do you know what the constellation makes up?” Harry shook his head this time. “A dog. Specifically “The Greater Dog,” one of Orion’s two hunting dogs. We told them to get married and call their child Canis Minor. I’m sure that was on Sirius’s mind every second he was parted from Adhara, because in the last moments before she left him, she said that if he was still waiting for her when the war was over, she would marry him. Sadly, that never happened. But he still waited. He waited until the end,” Lupin finished looking down at the floor casually.
“Is that why I don’t have a godmother then?” Harry asked changing the subject somewhat.
“In a way yes. The other reason is just because, we were in war...it was hard to keep connections with the few friends we still had alive. If anyone would have been you godmother it probably would have been one of your mother’s closer friends.”
“Do you know why my parents picked Sirius as my godfather? Why not you or Pettigrew?”
“I’m not one hundred percent sure, because I know that for a fact, Sirius was your father’s best friend. But I was closer to your mother than Sirius was so that could have had an effect if I hadn’t been...well...well, the problem was...I was unconscious in a hospital bed when you were born.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s a stupid reason really. I lost control of my broom when I was flying to my parents house. I don’t remember the falling part too much, but I remember colliding with a large stone wall and then hitting the solid stone concrete of my parents backyard patio.”
“Why hadn’t you just apparated?”
“Apparating to my parents’ house was like trying to apparate into Hogwarts. It just wasn’t possible....but anyways. I was unconscious for three days before you were born and six days after. They still don’t know what was wrong with me but I just wouldn’t wake up. When I did, I opened my eyes to the smile of one of the cutest babies I’d ever seen. He also had more hair than a newborn is supposed to have.”
“Speaking of children.....are you and Tonks going to be expecting anytime soon?”
“Harry, you may be treading very close to dangerous waters. No, we won’t be having kids anytime before we are married and that won’t be until after the war at least. Same question to you....same answer too, I hope.” Lupin cringed at the thought of what he said.
“Absolutely not. I’d never forgive myself if I died and Ginny was having my child. No, we definitely won’t be having children until after the war.....if I even make it through the war.”
“Now Harry, even if you don’t think you can make it through...I know you will. The entire Order knows that you can defeat Voldemort. I’m even going to assume that you are doing something about the whole issue right now.”
“As a matter of fact....I am. Now here is a question for you. You remember the whole ‘it’ thing before I went to Hogwarts this summer?” Lupin nodded his head. “Well thanks to Ron and Hermione, we’ve come to a decision about a few things. Some of which are pretty obvious and others that took much more time to come to a conclusion.” At this point Harry went into how Ron discovered that “it” was a place, not a thing. Then he went on to the morning of the train ride back to London and about the real Potter Manor. “And now...because you are the only living friend that my parents have left...I was wondering if you could tell me if my parents had a real house before Godric’s Hollow,” Harry said very business-like. “and if so....what happened to it?”
A/N: This is the shortest chapter in my trilogy.....the last one’s coming up next, obviously. Here’s the quote: “Did you boys have a good slumber party?” -Tonks