It was late August. The balmy summer weather had given way to a crisp hint of Autumn, and Mrs. Weasley insisted on a family get-together before the older children were due back at Hogwarts. The Burrow was more teaming with life than it had ever been. Albus, Lily, and James, underfoot in the kitchen, had been ordered outside by Ginny to play with their broomsticks over the orchard, and Harry, longing to spend a little more time under the waning summer sun, followed after them under the pretext of harvesting the ripened apples for Mrs. Weasley.
While Ron had initially stated he'd join Harry, he and George found themselves called away suddenly when the head of a young, frazzled-looking wizard appeared in the Weasley's fireplace, rambling incoherently about an impenetrable blackout.
"Shop business," Ron had said with an apologetic shrug. "Be back later, mate."
A spill of Peruvian Darkness Powder, Harry figured. So instead, it was Teddy Lupin accompanying Harry out to the orchard as the younger children zoomed overhead, shouting and passing an old, dented Quaffle.
Harry thought Teddy looked a little glum as he lugged the heavy stepladder out from the Burrow's back porch. Behind him, Bill Weasley was using his wand to effortlessly set up the table and chairs for dinner.
"Don't worry, Teddy," said Harry. "You'll be graduating Hogwarts soon enough; then, you can use all the magic you want instead of doing it the Muggle way."
It was only when Teddy blinked and said "What?" that Harry realized his godson must be down about something other than the restriction on his use of magic.
"I don't mind doing things the Muggle way," said Teddy after a moment. They had reached the first tree. The sixteen-year-old opened up the ladder, and Harry helped him position it under a particularly abundant branch. The boy wrinkled his nose a little, surveying the fruit-laden tree above. A wisp of turquoise hair fell upon his pale forehead. "My grandad was Muggle-born," he said matter-of-factly. Then he hesitated. "Gran said Mum like doing things the Muggle way sometimes. Cleaning and laundry. Things like that."
Ah, thought Harry, thinking fondly back to his first meeting with Tonks. She had admitted to him then that household charms weren't exactly her forte, though Tonks had never been known for her housekeeping skills, magic or otherwise. If Nymphadora Tonks had ever been caught doing the dishes by hand, it was only because she couldn't manage by wand. At least she had been reasonably good at the Reparo charm, for the dish-ware usually required it after her failed attempts at Muggle washing. He told this to Teddy, who smiled slightly.
"You seem to have inherited your mum's talent for mess," said Harry with a grin.
"It's not a mess if you know where everything is!" shot back Teddy defensively, and Harry couldn't help but laugh a little.
"Hold the ladder for me, I'll climb up," said Harry, and Teddy obliged.
His head surrounded by the prickling of apple leaves, Harry reflected on the pleasantness of it all. He could hear the shouts of his three children, their game migrating to the southwest corner of the orchard. From the open window of the Burrow drifted the intermingled chatter of Mrs. Weasley, Ginny, and Hermione, occasionally interjected by an exclamation from Fleur, her accent as thick as ever. It was hard to imagine a time when it had been any different… when they hadn't all been scattered, scared, in hiding… the memories of that dark period seemed like another lifetime.
Harry filled the first bucket with apples and gingerly descended the stepladder. Teddy was still holding it attentively, but his eyes were elsewhere, staring far away at nothing in particular. He looked serious, and so much like his father in that moment — right down to the faint crease appearing between his eyebrows. There were no two ways about it, Harry realized; his godson was troubled.
Harry sighed inwardly, remembering what it had been like to be Teddy's age, and said, "All right, Teddy. What's bothering you?"
"Nothing," said Teddy suddenly, blinking and looking at Harry. The boy forced a smile. "Should we move the ladder, Harry?"
Harry looked at him pointedly. Teddy sighed.
"I'm just… apprehensive about… school," said Teddy, though Harry could tell a lie from Teddy Lupin when he heard one.
"No, you're not. Your N.E.W.T. coursework was all you could talk about last weekend."
Harry saw a slightly annoyed expression flit across Teddy's face, as if he were cursing himself for not coming up with a better excuse.
"Look, I just… didn't want to cause an upset, all right?"
"Is something wrong?" asked Harry, regarding Teddy seriously.
"Nothing's… wrong," said Teddy, floundering.
Harry held him in his gaze and did not relent. Teddy shifted and wrung his hands. He picked up an apple from the bucket and tossed it distractedly between his hands. He made to take a bite, then seemed to think better of it. At long last, the boy spoke in a strained voice.
"Did you know my dad left Mum?"
Harry was taken aback. His first instinct was to deny it, but he caught the words in his tongue before they spilled out. The last thing he ever wanted to do was lie to any of his children — or to Teddy. Unfortunately, his hesitation revealed all.
"I knew it," murmured Teddy, closing his eyes in anguish.
Harry took a long moment to collect his thoughts, and, ironically, he found himself thinking how would Remus have handled this?
"What makes you think that he did?" asked Harry slowly.
Teddy sighed.
"I was helping Gran clear out the attic, and I found an old box of my grandad's things…"
Ted Tonks' death had been hard on Andromeda, and to add insult, they had been separated for several months in the chaos of war before his murder at the hands of Death Eaters. The tragedy of losing her only daughter only a few short months later, traded for a helpless newborn to take care of on her own (though Harry and Ginny had helped considerably), hadn't made that sting any easier. Even now, more than sixteen years later, it was unsurprising to Harry that Ted Tonks' belongings had remained in the house, untouched and unsorted.
"And he… he had this journal. Well… I never got to meet Grandad, so I took a look. It was the first time I'd seen anything he'd written, and well—"
"It felt as if he'd actually been a real person when you read it. Not just someone you'd heard stories about," said Harry, knowingly.
"Yeah," said Teddy, a little sheepishly. "Anyway… turns out it was his journal from, you know, the war. And… he wrote about when Mum and Dad got married, how shocked he'd been. They weren't even invited, you know? Gran and Grandad."
"Well, your parents eloped, Teddy, you knew that. I wasn't invited either," said Harry, but Teddy hardly seemed to care about this point.
"I kept reading, and — and… well, on this one page, he was really, really angry. It was like he'd tried to break through the paper with his pen, it was all dented. He was angry, because…" and Teddy took a deep breath, "my dad had — had left my mum with them and walked out. He said — " Teddy looked quite pained now, " — that he was going to… to do in the werewolf tramp who knocked up my mum and left her."
Teddy hung his head; he looked absolutely tormented. "You knew," said the boy, pained rather than accusatory.
Harry felt something heavy sink in his stomach. For years, he'd regaled Teddy with fond memories of his mother and father: Tonks' penchant for facial morphing as a party trick; Remus's clever and practical Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons; how kind and perceptive his father had always been; Tonks' friendly, funny, and clumsy nature, which belied her fierceness in battle; their heroic feats against the Death Eaters; the tough choices and sacrifices they had made in the stand against Voldemort. Harry knew all too well how precious those morsels of Lily and James Potter had been to him, and he — along with Ron, Hermione, and the surviving Order members — could give to Teddy a hundredfold what he himself had received.
Yet he'd never told Teddy the full story of Remus' and Tonks' admittedly troubled marriage; and nor, apparently, had Andromeda.
He thought perhaps he'd explain it to Teddy, when he was older, when he'd experienced some of life's hardships and heartaches for himself and be less apt to judge his father harshly. A part of him had hoped he'd never have to discuss it at all. Yet Teddy, perhaps by virtue of being Harry's godson, appeared to have acquired the unfortunate knack for finding out unpleasant information about his father at far too young an age to understand… to truly understand.
Harry was about to reach out a hand to grasp Teddy's shoulder when a scream reached his ears from the far end of the orchard.
"JAMES! JAMES, STOP IT! HE'S NOT PLAYING FAIR!" shrieked Albus, followed by a high pitched wail from Lily.
Harry bit his lip and closed his eyes. He loved his biological children dearly, but he silently cursed their impeccably bad timing and the sibling rivalry that had heightened amongst them the past summer. He'd have to tell Hermione to send Rose out to supervise more often; the girl took to authority naturally and seemed to be able to keep her cousins' snipping at bay. He sighed, grasped Teddy's shoulder and looked him straight in the eye.
"Look, Teddy, I've gotta go sort that lot out, but we're going to talk about this later, all right? I promise."
Teddy shrugged and nodded morosely, and Harry hurried off through the orchard to disentangle his children.
By the time he'd reigned in his sons' skirmish of egos and calmed down Lily, there was no more time for apple picking, for Mrs. Weasley announced it was time for dinner. ("Don't worry about the apples, dear, I'll tackle them tomorrow!" Mrs. Weasley told him cheerily.) Ron and George had returned from the shop emergency, both looking harried and covered in something soot-like, but they quickly brightened as the extended family gathered at the table.
The younger children congregated at one end, leaving the adults to their own section where they could peacefully engage in what James had dubbed "boring grown-up talk". Harry noticed that Teddy, who usually sat with the youngsters, happy to humor them, seated himself next to Bill. Victoire Weasley slid in gracefully beside him, and Harry saw her elbow Teddy inquisitively, but Teddy's expression remained closed.
Harry tried to enjoy dinner. Mrs. Weasley had cooked up one of her famous storms, followed by a towering caked topped with a replica of Hogwarts castle. However, the knot in his stomach grew. He promised to talk to Teddy later, and yet each of Mrs. Weasley's increasingly delicious courses brought him no closer to figuring out what to say.
He supposed, to put it in Muggle terms, it would have to be like ripping off a band-aid.
He just hoped he wouldn't soil Remus' memory for Teddy.
Following dinner, the Weasleys, Potters, and lone Lupin migrated inside, gathering around the Burrow's hearth. Mr. Weasley sent around glasses of whiskey (for the adults only, despite James' protestations). Harry heartily accepted his glass and feigned enough cheerfulness to toast to the children's good luck in the coming school year.
Teddy leaned against the mantelpiece, looking a little dour. Above his head sat Mrs. Weasley's old family clock, next to a portrait of Fred Weasley, who grinned and jeered at the merry family beneath him. Harry had never liked that portrait, but he had the tact not to say so to any of the Weasleys, not even Ron. It felt eery and indecent to him, the way the fallen twin's portrait remained young, jovial, eternal, while his living mirror, George, had aged into a more sober man. After the war, the clock hands, each named for a different Weasley, had drifted from "Mortal Peril" to more mundane quadrants. Yet Fred's hand had stuck on "Mortal Peril" for a full year after the Battle of Hogwarts; the clockmaker had apparently not thought to include "Dead". It was Ron who finally persuaded a tearful Mrs. Weasley to remove Fred's clock hand, and not a week later, the portrait had appeared in its place.
The war had left many scars.
Harry's eyes drifted from the enchanted effigy of Fred Weasley to the downcast face of his godson. He supposed the others in the room might interpret Teddy's crestfallen expression as the disappointment of being omitted from the rounds of whiskey. He was too young to drink, after all, but only just.
The youngsters were now occupied in an intense game of gobstones in the corner and the adults had settled into the couch. Harry sidled over to Ginny and gently touched her shoulder. She looked up at him with a smile.
"I'm going out for a bit," he murmured, giving her a brief kiss on the side of the head. "Gotta have a chat with Teddy about school."
"Oh, of course," said Ginny distractedly, for she had just been conversing animatedly with Hermione, none the wiser for Teddy's distress.
Then, he came to Teddy by the mantelpiece. "Let's go for a walk," he said quietly.
Teddy nodded once, solemnly, then followed Harry out the back door into the garden.
They walked in silence as the last glimmers of sunset faded into night. A few stars pricked through the sky, and the crest of the moon rose over the horizon, illuminating Teddy's pale face. Harry noticed that the boy's hair had faded from turquoise to brown. Throughout childhood, his hair changed wildly with his mood, but in the last few years, Teddy Lupin seemed to have mastered his Metamorphagus abilities. He was now more able to control his appearance. Harry supposed he'd been putting quite an effort into holding it all in over dinner, and only now had finally relaxed, allowing his natural brown to show.
They came to the top of a knoll outside the boundaries of the Burrow, and Harry plopped himself down on the dewy grass, gesturing for Teddy to do the same. Looking a little wary and still morose, Teddy sat down beside him. Harry stared down at the warm lights of Ottery St. Catchpole. Harry could see, just over the next hill, the top floor or Xenophilius Lovegood's tower, and several scattered wizarding houses besides.
Harry thought for a minute about how to begin, but Teddy surprised him by speaking first.
"So, why did no one tell me?"
"Look, Teddy," said Harry. He hesitated a bit. "Your father did leave your mother. I'm not going to deny that —"
Teddy was bursting to speak.
"It's like everyone's been pretending my father was amazing! That he was a hero. That he and my mother were so in love and defying the odds and all that!"
Harry looked into his godson's anguished face.
"All of that is true," he said firmly. "All of it."
"But —"
Harry cut him off. "Listen to me, Teddy. I'm going to tell you the truth of it. The good… and the bad. And out of respect for your father, who was one of the best friends I ever had, I ask you to hear me out."
Teddy closed his mouth. He looked at Harry expectantly, a steeliness in his eyes. Harry took a deep breath.
"I suppose the reason that I, or your gran, never told you was because, honestly, Teddy, he went right back to your mum, almost right after he left her, alright? It was… it was a blip really. They were barely apart. Your dad stuck by you and your mum, okay? He did. Really. You won't remember these times, but you've heard me and the others talk about them. They were… terrible. Your mum and dad had targets painted on their backs, being members of the Order and all. All the months leading up to your birth, they stayed in hiding together, and your dad did nothing but cast protective charms and ward off Death Eaters who'd caught wind of you."
This didn't seem to satisfy Teddy.
"Then he must've left when we were in danger," said Teddy, doing the math. He looked absolutely crushed, and Harry understood perfectly; it had taken him a long time to come to peace with certain aspects of James Potter's character. "It just… doesn't make any sense… not if he cared about us at all."
Harry clenched and unclenched his hands. It was true; there was no getting around that. Harry thought back to one of his final encounters with Remus, when he'd berated — harshly — his former teacher for abandoning Tonks. He'd only considered it from the perspective where Teddy stood now; it wasn't until much, much later, after the Battle of Hogwarts, that he'd fully grasped the intricacies of Remus' reasonings. He supposed he'd have to now represent Remus' position, which at the time he'd found so unsavory.
"Look… he didn't leave because he didn't love you, or your mum. The opposite, I think."
Teddy looked at Harry, incredulous in the moonlight, but he didn't interrupt.
"He was trying to protect you. Even if it didn't seem that way."
"But he left us," countered Teddy.
Harry thought for a long moment. Then, he finally spoke. "Did I ever tell you about the time I broke it off with your Aunt Ginny?"
Teddy actually turned to Harry, eyebrows raised. "My Aunt Ginny?"
Harry nodded.
"But... but that doesn't make any sense. You and Ginny broken up? I mean, ever since I was a kid, you two were — were —"
"All over each other?" finished Harry a little sheepishly, thinking back to those blissful years when he and Ginny had reunited after the war. Truthfully, it had taken them a few years to learn discretion, they'd been so carried away with each other. A spate of marriages and births had swept the Wizarding World following Voldemort's downfall as the magical community collectively sought to restore their ranks with desperate unions and new life. "Yeah, well... I hope we didn't scar you too much."
"Oh, you did," muttered Teddy.
Harry smiled a little guiltily. "Look," he explained. "You know the history of the war, and you got a bit more than the shorthand version of my involvement in it. Voldemort was after me specifically, and he was willing to get to me by any means necessary… Well, if I'd stuck by your Aunt Ginny at that point, she'd've been in danger. I was afraid Voldemort would have harmed her to draw me out. But all that time we were apart, I didn't love her any less. I just didn't want her… implicated."
"So you dumped her… to protect her?"
Harry nodded. "Ginny wasn't too happy about it. 'Stupid and noble', she called me. Noble… well, alright, I'll take it. But stupid? I still don't think so."
Teddy fiddled with a blade of grass. After a long time, he spoke in a rather unconvinced voice. "Are you trying to say my dad left my mum to protect her?"
Harry shrugged solemnly. "I think he saw it that way. And," Harry hesitated, "honestly, Teddy, he had a fair enough reason to."
"What reason could that have been?" said Teddy, anger returning to his voice. "He wasn't the Chosen One! He wasn't you!"
"Remus had plenty of people out to get him. Your father was a high-ranking member of the Order —"
"So was Mum!"
"—and being a werewolf wasn't so easy."
"So what!" shouted Teddy. "I've met werewolves! One of my prefects was a werewolf! It's no big deal."
Harry smiled wryly. Fenrir Greyback and his followers had been rewarded with prey at the hands of Voldemort, young wizards and witches to infect. As result, several children attending Hogwarts in the past decade had been burdened with lycanthropy. Thankfully, Hogwarts and the wider magical world, in a heartening change, had accommodated these childhood victims.
"It's no big deal these days, Teddy, but it was different back then! Now we have laws protecting werewolves. You can't get sacked for being a werewolf, and wolfsbane potion is freely available from the Ministry — that makes a world of difference! They're even getting closer to finding a cure, Hermione told me." Then, Harry added, wishing to redeem what he could of Remus for Teddy, "Werewolves today can thank your father for all that; he made people see them not as monsters. But in his days, it was… it was terrible. And he still fought on behalf of wizards who despised him."
Teddy's face was stony. He was staring down at the Burrow so hard, it was as though he were trying to burn a hole through its rounded roof. Harry looked at his godson thoughtfully, wondering whether to divulge the next bit of information.
"You've heard of Bellatrix Lestrange?" Harry began slowly.
"She's the Death Eater who killed Mum," said Teddy simply. Harry had never told Teddy that, but it wasn't secret knowledge. Teddy said this next part with derision. "And she was Gran's sister."
"Yeah," breathed Harry. "Well, Bellatrix was intent on offing your mother from the moment she married your father. I don't know if you knew that. Most wizards were at least scared of werewolves in those days, but Pureblood loyalists and Death Eaters thought even less of them. Bellatrix was insulted that her own niece would marry one. Look —" said Harry, seeing Teddy's expression "— as I said, it was different in those days. Well… your father worked out why Bellatrix was after your mum. By then, she was already pregnant with you, and I think Remus thought you'd both be safe from Bellatrix if he broke it off. And, Teddy, to be blunt, he was obviously worried about the ramifications of turning into a full-fledged monster with a pregnant woman or infant in the house."
There was a long silence. Harry heard Teddy sniffle a little. He cast his gaze elsewhere so as to give his godson some privacy if he wanted it.
"How long did he leave her for?" asked Teddy heavily.
"Only a few weeks, I think."
"And why'd he come back, if he was the reason we were in danger?"
It seemed as though Teddy were determined to hate his father this evening. Harry's stomach clenched. He'd just given Teddy almost the same argument Remus had given him that bitter night, long ago, in Grimmauld place when they'd had their row. He'd felt guilty about his behavior then. Had he come to be on Remus' side after all these years? And if so, had Remus done the right thing by marrying Tonks in the first place? And later, by returning to her?
"Remus was a pretty calculating person. He figured you were in danger, regardless, but safer if he was around to defend you, he later realized."
Teddy was still not satisfied. "Well, from the sound of Grandad's journal, he really hurt Mum by leaving her."
"Yeah," said Harry. "He did."
It was getting late. Harry was beginning to realize that any explanation or perspective he could offer Teddy would not heal the hurt and disappointment. He should have known that from the start. At long last, he spoke again. "By all means, Teddy, be angry with him. You have every right to." I certainly was.
Teddy gave Harry a wary look.
"I do?"
"We all get to be angry with our parents on occasion." Harry wrapped an arm around Teddy. A cool, autumn gust engulfed them on the dark hillside as the moonlight and starlight rained down upon them. "Even us orphans."
Teddy wiped his eyes on his sleeve. He looked a little embarrassed to be crying in front of Harry — he was sixteen, after all, and not a child.
"It's getting late," said Harry. "Let's head back to the Burrow. I think Molly was planning on hot chocolate."
Though he could have, Harry didn't mention at that moment how much Remus had enjoyed chocolate when he'd been alive, how it was he who first taught Harry it's power against the effects of dementors, and how Harry had learned that nothing cured a bad mood quite like it. Harry didn't need to press Remus' legacy to Teddy any more today… Harry knew that the chocolate would speak for itself in bringing in a little more cheer.