8: Damage
Remus couldn’t help but feel it had been an odd kind of ridiculously early morning. He’d been woken from a dream/memory in which he had recalled going for a wander on the astral plane while his body suffered terrible agonies, and then he’d talked to three dead friends and his son’s godfather. He had flirted shamelessly with Dora in his son’s distinctly embarrassed presence and now…
And now he knew far more about Teddy’s personal life than he really wanted to because his wife just had to know.
And it wasn’t even 6am yet.
“He’s scarred for life?” With a mighty frown, Tonks hurled herself down onto the bedspread, staring with distinct disquiet at the door through which Teddy had just fled in horror from his mother’s not so discreet inquiry. “Good God, Remus, weren’t you listening? Did you not catch the subtle implication? Our son…”
“…Is not a virgin.” Remus shrugged his shoulders slightly. “Yes, I was paying attention.”
Tonks’ dark eyes regarded him balefully from the folds of the eiderdown. “And this fact doesn’t bother you at all?”
“Well, it’s rather bruising to my ego to know he beat me by at least a good decade and a half but…”
The pillow slapped him in the face with rather more force than Remus felt was necessary and stung slightly against his still fresh bruises. A heart-shaped face thrust in to fill his sight once more, her eyes alight with the same array of conflicting emotions that had worried him so much in the Atrium the night before.
“Our son, Remus!” There was an edge to her voice that immediately got his attention. “The baby we held in our arms! He has a sex life! He’s old enough to have kids of his own! Sweet Merlin, we’ve barely become parents! We’re too young to be grandparents too!”
Remus felt a twinge of mathematical correctness he probably should have resisted. “Well, technically, I’m not…”
“Take that sentence any further, Lupin, and I will beat you to death.” The sincerity of her gaze put paid to any hope Remus had of trying to lighten the mood, or swing the conversation in the direction of quiet reason and a much needed talk about their circumstances. He sighed.
It was strange. He’d have been a liar of the highest order to say it wasn’t. The whole situation was so far beyond any comfort zone he’d ever known that it was almost laughable. But when all was said and done, Teddy was still his son. And he was happy, he was clever, he was well adjusted and well grounded… After the intensity of his fears during the pregnancy, his horror of the life of prejudice and ill-treatment Teddy might face growing up as a werewolf’s son, to have him standing before him, fully grown, well employed, in love and just fine…
He could live with strange. In exchange for that, he could live with anything.
“…with Victoire Weasley.” It took Remus a moment to realise that his wife had continued the conversation without him, crossing her arms over her chest as she settled upright on the bed once more with a truculent look on her face. “I mean that’s got to be Bill and Fleur’s daughter, hasn’t it? And I mean Bill’s okay but Fleur… I mean, she’s not so bad these days but there were times when she could be such a spoiled brat of a princess and if someone like that has got her hooks into my baby…”
“He’s not a baby, Dora.”
“…I’ll tear out her liver with my teeth and feed it to you next full moon…”
His hands caught her wrists, stilling her gesticulations. Her voice tailed away into nothing as her dark eyes reluctantly rose to meet his intent stare.
“Dora,” he repeated softly. “He’s not a baby. Not anymore. And I know it’s tough, but you’ve got to accept that.” He squeezed her wrists gently. “We haven’t got much choice.”
Turbulence roiled within her eyes, a maelstrom of emotion tumbling, battling, unable to settle and calm into any one stream of feeling. Their look seemed to last a small eternity.
And then, out of nowhere, she lunged.
Remus felt the back of his skull strike the headboard with a painful crack but the sting, along with the aches of battle, vanished sharply from his mind as her lips crashed down on his, searching, invading and her hands were roaming suddenly over his body, under his clothes, against his skin and ohsweetmerlin…
“Dora!” Remus barely realised that he had pushed her away until he saw the sharp surge of hurt in her eyes, and felt the vigorous complaints of his body about the sudden loss of contact. The several months of enforced celibacy that had recently followed in the wake of last year’s glorious renaissance in their love life were hammering ruthlessly at certain parts of Remus’ anatomy, demanding that he shut the hell up, lie back and think of England. But his conscience and the profound disquiet that nagged at it had found a larger drum to beat.
Because as much as he wanted it, it just didn’t feel right. It was like Teddy had said “ he couldn’t stay with Victoire when he’d been lying to her. And after the talk he and Tonks had had on this very subject just two days ago…
“Dora,” he repeated, fighting to bring his breathing back into some kind of order. “What are you doing?”
An eyebrow arched. “Remus, it hasn’t been that long. And besides, it’s like riding a broomstick…”One small hand came to rest once more against his chest; slowly, but surely, it drifted south. “You never forget how…”
Life is just not fair sometimes.
Regretfully, he caught her fingers before they could stray into dangerous territory. “Forgetting is not the issue,” he informed her, rather proud of the level edge he instilled into his tone. “Remembering is. And I’m remembering the conversation we had in bed a couple of nights ago. The one where you said you hoped I didn’t mind you not feeling ready to resume a physical relationship just yet because you still felt a bit odd about it after giving birth to Teddy?”
Something flickered in her eyes but it passed too quickly for Remus to accurately read. Her free hand, which had until that moment been resting on his upper leg, began to make an equally perilous journey north.
Scratch not fair. Downright bloody cruel is closer…
“But it wasn’t a couple of days, was it?” She was smiling, but he found no joy in the expression because something about it seemed off balance, forced, not quite her somehow. “It was twenty years ago plus a long couple of months. And that, Mr Lupin, is an awfully long time for someone to go without…”
The ruthless advance of the second hand was hurriedly halted at the gates. “I’ve managed it before.”
“Until you met me.”
“That didn’t mean I’d never wanted to, that I’d never had the chance. I resisted because I knew it was the right thing to do. I tried to resist you, if you remember.”
“You didn’t know what you were missing.”
He couldn’t help himself. “I found out.”
Her smile deepened. “I think you need a reminder.”
He’d let go of her hands. It was a mistake.
For the second time in as many minutes, Remus felt his skull ricochet painfully off the headboard. It was just the reality check he needed.
“No! Nymphadora!”
The calculated use of her hated full name was just the distraction he’d hoped for. As her eyes snapped up furiously, he grabbed the covers and scooted rapidly to a safe distance.
He could feel her eyes upon him. He could feel the burning of her hurt.
Why did she have to do this? Why did she have to make me say no?
“You don’t want me anymore.” Oh please no, don’t take it that way… “Is that it? You don’t find me attractive now I’ve popped out your kid? You…”
There was no way he was prepared to let her build up a head of steam on that angle. “Dora, continue that line of thought and it’ll be my turn to beat you to death. That’s not what this is about and you bloody well know it.”
The force of his tone sucked the indignant-fuelled wind from her sails. “Then what the hell is the problem?”
He stared her straight in the eyes, unflinching. “You’re not ready for this.”
There was a long moment of silence. It was Tonks who broke it, forcing out an incredulous laugh; but it was a half-hearted effort at best, as if sensing the futility of resistance. “You were paying attention to the part when I tried to seduce you, right?”
He allowed himself a half-hint of a smile. “Oh, I was. I definitely was. Several parts of me were quite demanding in their need to give you their full attention.” She returned his wan smile with one of her own, but her eyes were suddenly sad. “But I think you know that this isn’t really what you want. You told me as much a couple of days ago. You weren’t feeling up to it then, and twenty years or not, physically I can’t see what would have changed. I think you’re trying to hide how you’re feeling behind wanting to make love to me. And if I go along with that…” He shook his head. “Dora, I’d just be taking advantage. And how could I do that to you?”
And Tonks burst into tears.
He closed the distance between then instantly, pulling her into his arms as she collapsed against his chest, sobbing as though her heart would break as she clung to his pyjamas, her face burying itself into the crook of his neck once more. He could feel her body shaking against him as he held her close, rocking her gently and waited for the words he knew, just knew would come.
“I don’t want to feel the same!” He heard her gasp the sentence out between racking sobs, her voice muffled against his pyjamas but not enough to matter. “I can’t stand feeling the same! I want to feel different! Why can’t I feel different?”
“Different how?” Merlin, it was hard seeing her suffer like this but she’d been teetering on the edge since they’d got here and she had to let it out, had to let it go or she’d never be able to move on…
“It’s telling me baby!” He could feel her gasping for breath as the tears soaked his shoulder. “Every fibre of me is going baby, baby, baby! Find the baby, hold the baby, protect the baby, feed the baby; my chest is killing me and I keep leaking frigging milk everywhere, it’s ridiculous! But there is no baby! There’s no baby, Remus, just a grown man and I keep telling myself that but my body won’t listen to me, why won’t it listen? And I don’t know him! He’s my baby and I never saw him grow up and I can never hold him or feed him or look into his eyes and imagine his future because it is his future and he got here without me! He wanted to meet me, he cared enough to save me, but he doesn’t need me, not like he did, not anymore! His life’s happened and I’ve missed it! I didn’t hear his first words or see his first steps! I didn’t watch him open his Hogwarts letter “ gods, I don’t even know what house he was in! And he seems so wonderful and I want to know him so much but every time I look at him, I feel my body going find the baby, feed the baby and I can’t stand it, I just can’t! It’s like I’ve lost him, like I’m mourning him but he’s still alive and I don’t know what to feel or what to do! And so I thought… I thought maybe if I could make love to you, if I could feel like a wife again, I’d stop feeling like a mother who’s lost her baby boy…”
There was nothing he could say. How could he relate to this? How could he say he knew, it was all right, he understood and all the other platitudes when he didn’t have a clue?
So he just held her tight against him and let her cry until the tears ran dry.
It was all he had to offer. But when she finally drew back from him and smiled wanly through her tear-stained face, gazing up at him with eyes full with sorrow, grief, loss but relief and acceptance too, he knew it had been enough.
She wasn’t fine, not yet. It was too soon for that.
But he knew now that she would be.
* * *
Perhaps volunteering to make breakfast hadn’t been such a good idea.
It had seemed sensible enough at the time, in spite of the achy protests of his body at the prospect of doing anything remotely involving effort until at least next Christmas. Teddy, after all, had to get ready for work and Dora and the kitchen had never mixed particularly well when she was in the best of moods, never mind when she was so fragile emotionally. And though Remus was hardly a gourmet chef, twenty years of bachelorhood had given him a certain degree of kitchen survival skill to fall back on.
But right now, it wasn’t helping, because he couldn’t find a damned thing that he needed.
It had been overoptimistic to assume that everything would be much as he’d left it. But still, it had been rather disheartening when he’d first opened the low-level cupboard where they had chosen to store the crockery, pots and pans at a nice safe, bounce-not-break level for Tonks’ sake, and found instead tins and cereal. The cupboard where the mugs and glasses had always been contained plates. The cupboard where the tins and cereal had been was rigged with the cooling charm to preserve fresh items. There was no sign of the pots and pans at all.
Fortunately at that moment, Teddy had appeared fresh from the shower, wrapped in his dressing gown and drying his hair with a rainbow striped towel, and after settling at the table with his mother, had kindly offered directions.
“Frying pan?”
“Left cupboard above the stove.”
“Bacon?”
“Chill-charmed cupboard under the window.”
“Tomatoes?”
“Basket by the windowsill.”
“Eggs?”
“Haven’t got any. I can’t stand them.”
“I knew my son would have good taste.” Tonks grinned with apparent sincerity at him as she sipped the glass of milk she’d just retrieved at Teddy’s direction, tapping it with her wand to activate the Magic Choco-Swirls “ just tap and taste! advertised on the carton. “I can’t stand them either. Remus just laps them up but me? Urgh, no thanks.”
Remus shot his wife a playful look of reproach and she replied with a grin. If Teddy had noticed the blotchy red stains on his mother’s face that morning, he’d been diplomatic enough not to mention them; and Remus could tell that after the release of frustration and grief Dora had indulged in the night before, she was now making a concerted effort to ignore the commands of her body and get to know the son she had, rather than mourn a baby lost. And it was so easy here in their old kitchen to slip back into old habits and old ways, even if nothing was exactly where they’d put it and a strange-but-familiar young man sporting bright purple hair was toying with a milk carton at the table.
Teddy smiled as his eyes flicked over to where Remus was lurking by the stove. “Are you sure you don’t want me to do that?” he asked in sudden concern. “You must be tired and I don’t exactly feel like much of a host.”
Remus shrugged slightly. “And I don’t want to feel like a guest. Besides, breakfast seems a small price to pay to someone who saved my life.”
Teddy flushed distinctly but did not comment on the observation. “Still...” he started. “You were in a battle yesterday. All I did was go to work and break a few laws of time.”
Tonks chuckled into her milk. “Put it like that and our battle sounds deathly dull. Let him cook, Teddy. He’s not happy unless he’s pottering about doing something and you’ll never get him to sit on his backside and be waited on. It’s not in his nature.”
With a spitting sizzle, Remus deposited three strips of bacon into the hot frying pan. “Thank you for that astute summation of my character, darling.”
Tonks gulped down a milky Choco-Swirl with a grin. “Don’t mention it, dearest. I live to sing your praises.”
Glancing over his shoulder from the stove, Remus spotted the enormous grin his son was sporting. “Are we amusing you?” he asked cheerfully. “That’s it, isn’t it? You brought us back for the free entertainment.”
“No, no.” The grin grew, if possible, even wider. “It’s just…” He laughed suddenly. “You’re here. I’m sitting down having breakfast with my parents and you’re laughing and smiling and joking about eggs and messing around… And it’s family. I mean I love Gran so much but she’s never been one of life’s great jokers, and Harry and the Weasleys have always been so good to me but I never quite felt I was theirs somehow, I was always slightly outside even though they never meant me to be. But this…” He laughed again, a sound of pure delight. “It’s my family. And I only met you properly yesterday and I know we’ve got so much still to work out but Merlin, it feels so right. And I’m so happy.”
Remus could feel his own grin stretching as he stared into his son’s joyful face, but it was Tonks who reacted first; abandoning her chair, she moved quickly and only stumbled slightly before she reached Teddy and flung her arms around his neck.
The joy on his son’s face at that moment could have lit the world from pole to pole.
Breakfast moved quickly after that, and Remus’ rather burnt bacon and singed tomatoes were nonetheless consumed with great gusto by all concerned. Teddy had been distinctly reluctant to go into work and leave them, especially when they still had so much to discuss, but Tonks talked him out of owling in sick by suggesting an even better scheme.
“Just morph some spots,” she told him cheerfully. “And add more every half an hour or so. And then make yourself paler, maybe add a tinge of green and by the time a couple of hours have passed, they’ll be sending you home sick as fast as they can. No awkward questions, no checking up and you can play the martyr, say you’re fine and you just want to press on but no, they’ll insist, you’re not well, you need some rest and no one’s going to wonder because they’ve seen it for themselves. Trust me.” She winked broadly. “It works every time.”
Remus fixed her with a long, slow look. “Why do I suspect I’m hearing the voice of experience?”
Tonks beamed at him. “Because you’re a smart man, Remus, that’s why.”
Remus shook his head, fighting to hold back a grin. “I married an evil woman,” he remarked mournfully.
Tonks laughed outright. “Well, maybe that’ll teach you to succumb to my wicked blandishments, won’t it?”
Teddy was smiling too. “I’ll give it a go. Here, how’s this?”
Several nasty coloured spots popped into place on his cheeks. His skin turned an interesting mixture of puce and pale green.
Tonks examined his effort critically. “Tone it down a bit,” she advised. “You can go for the money after you’ve been there for a short while.”
Remus shook his head in weary resignation. “I’m going to finish my reading. You two enjoy your plotting.”
He had been settled on the sofa in the lounge for perhaps ten minutes with Wizarding Britain: A Recent History when Teddy appeared from the kitchen looking just slightly revolting.
“What do you think?” he asked happily, giving his father a mock twirl. “Sick enough?”
Remus regarded Teddy with serious eyes. “Teddy, when it comes to your mother, nothing is sick enough.”
Fortunately for his persona of illness, Teddy had managed to stop laughing before he stepped into the Floo and disappeared to the Ministry in a flare of emerald.
Tonks flopped down beside Remus on the sofa and offered a gentle smile. “It’s going to be all right, isn’t it?” she said softly. “He’s a good lad. And he’s right, this morning felt so much like family…” She sighed deeply. “I still feel bloody strange about everything though. And I can’t keep morphing my chest to release the pressure of this ruddy milk or I’m going to end up looking like a cow with two enormous udders dangling from her…”
Wincing slightly, Remus hurriedly raised one hand. “Too much information, love,” he informed her, shifting uncomfortably as she gave a quiet laugh, apparently amused by the look on his face. “Isn’t there a spell or a potion or something you could use to ease that?”
Tonks frowned, her nose wrinkling slightly. “I’m not sure. I didn’t exactly want to tempt fate by looking up spells and potions to use if the baby didn’t…” She broke off and sighed again, her expression fraught with awkward disquiet; putting his book to one side, Remus reached over and pulled her into an embrace. “I saw all our baby books up in the attic when I got my pyjamas. I guess I could take a look and see what I can find.” Shifting in her arms, her eyes rose to meet his and in their depths he found a sincerity and desperation so deep it was almost staggering. “I want to feel all right, Remus,” she whispered intently. “I want to feel normal again. I don’t want my stupid hormones to get in the way of us being a real, proper family.” She snorted slightly. “A weird as hell family, but a family all the same. I want us to be okay.”
Tenderly, he tightened his grasp upon her, resting his chin gently in her soft hair as he felt her nose burrow against his neck. “Don’t worry,” he murmured gently in reply. “We will be. We’re going to be fine.”
* * *
The first test of that statement came an hour later.
After raiding the attic for their old baby books, Tonks had settled down on their bed upstairs to seek out a spell or potion that might at least help ease her discomfort. So Remus was alone, settled with his reading material in the lounge, when the fireplace had flared emerald once more. When Teddy had first stepped out of the Floo, Remus had started to smile as he’d set the book aside, had half-opened his mouth to compliment his son on the effectiveness of the ashen face and colourless hair in his deception. But then he’d seen his trembling hands, his wide horrified eyes, and all thoughts of levity had been abandoned.
“Teddy.” His hands caught his son’s shoulders at once as the deathly pale features snapped up to face him. “Teddy, what’s wrong?”
For a moment, his son’s mouth could only work soundlessly, his body shaking like a leaf, his face riddled with horror, sorrow and overwhelming guilt. But Remus’ firm grasp upon his shoulders seemed to calm him as he gasped for air and finally managed to speak.
“I…” he stammered. “Dad, I…oh Merlin…”
Alarm was flooding through Remus body. “What’s the matter?” he repeated softly. “Teddy, what’s happened?”
And then Teddy met his eyes, his gaze so stricken that it almost knocked Remus backwards.
“Dad,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “I think I might have just got Penny Weasley killed.”