A/N: Sometimes, in fandom, we get very attached to relatively minor characters. Then the author kills them off at the end of the series, for the sake of some sort of cosmic balance. This random snippet is my take on what could have been, if JK Rowling hadn't decided that symmetry required Teddy Lupin to be orphaned in the moment of Harry's triumph...
In other words, AU around the end of Deathly Hallows.
JKR owns the characters, although she decided to put them in a decidedly different state at this point in her story.
In the cheering, jubilant tumult following Harry's triumph over Voldemort, Remus stood in shocked silence. Dora, to his right, was cheering and clapping almost violently, despite her bruised ribs and wrenched elbow. She turned to him, face ablaze with exultation, and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him soundly. He raised his own arms, but rather than embracing his wife in return he grasped either side of her waist and gently moved her away from himself. Seeing the look in his eyes, her smile faded.
"Dora, what in the world were you thinking," Remus burst out, "coming after me like that? You could have been killed!"
Dora brow furrowed, and then she looked incredulous.
"If I hadn't come, Remus, you would have been killed! I didn't want our son to grow up without his father!"
"We talked about that, Dora, we decided together that you would stay behind, with Teddy and Andromeda." Remus' voice, hoarse from inhaling dust from the demolished walls, shook and came close to cracking, "We decided that I would be the one to join the battle, that I was more -"
At the last, his voice failed him, but Dora finished for him, sadness in her voice, "Expendable? Remus, that's not what we decided, and you know it."
"Essentially, though," he responded, dropping his hands to his sides and looking at the floor, "that's the truth, and you must see it. If Teddy had lost his mother, had lost you, that would have been far worse than losing me. And your mother, what would I have said to Andromeda if I had come back to her home with your body, after we had agreed you were to keep yourself, and her and the baby, safely away?"
Remus looked up, to see that his wife's face was set stubbornly, refusing to accept his arguments. She shook her head and turned away, walking toward the doors of the Great Hall.
Reaching after her, he called out, "Dora, wait!" and this time his voice did crack, "Where are you going?"
She didn't turn back to face him, but stopped moving away, as she responded, "I'm going home to feed my son. And to tell him that his Daddy loves him very much and is happy to be alive, even if he is too stubborn to admit his skinny arse is worth saving. And that Daddy will be home soon to tell him just how much he loves him and is grateful to be able to watch him grow up."
"Dora, I -" Remus tried to interrupt, but she continued, her voice tight.
"And then I'm going to tell Teddy just how thick his Daddy can be sometimes, but that Mummy loves him anyway, so much that she had to follow him into danger because if he hadn't come back she wouldn't have been good for anything anymore, she loves him so much and couldn't stand to lose him."
With that, Dora continued walking out of the castle, down to the edge of the Apparition wards. Remus remained standing in the Great Hall for a full minute, his mind echoing with his wife's words. Then he walked slowly after her, favouring the knee he had twisted at some point in his battle with Dolohov. It wouldn't do to arrive at Andromeda's too soon after Dora. It seemed as if she had things to say to their son, and he wanted to hear them again.