Author's Note: This began as a mystery story and morphed itself into an angsty story of unrequited love without my meaning it to. I hope that doesn't mean that it fails on both levels, and that it makes sense to those that don't know the backstory that's still firmly in my head.

Written for Fred (Intervigilium) as part of the Teachers' Lounge winter exchange.

Moving Under Water

"The Moon Under Water" was a derogatory term used by more radical werewolves to describe those affected by lycanthropy who did not fully embrace nor identify with the reality and darkness of their state. It was particularly used during the Werewolf Rebellion of 2002-3, when the underground werewolf movement began to try to force such individuals to join them, by coercion occasionally, but more often by public "outing" or by force.

In response, those lycanthropes and semi-lycanthropes who refused to accept the dark side of their condition, and who continued to live as peaceful and productive members of our community, adopted the term as their own, referring to themselves proudly as, "Fellows of the Moon Under Water", and fighting with the rest of us against the werewolf underground. With their special knowledge and insight, several were major players in the ultimate defeat of the Rebellion (see chapters 19 and 20).

During the Rebellion, there was also a campaign of violence directed at those that the werewolf underground thought were their rightful property – those to whom they felt a higher than usual degree of resentment for any reason, and those whom they felt should have been added to their numbers in the past but who had escaped. These people were referred to by the movement as "Under Water Targets". Some were killed, and many more were bitten, but to their eternal credit, few of these elected to join the werewolf underground, identifying instead with The Fellows of the Moon Under Water.

A History of Wizarding Britain 1990 – 2018

Lisa Turpin and Amanda Brocklehurst

Bronze Eagle Press 2019

I

August 20th 1997

Dear Charlie,

I shouldn't be writing this to you. You're the last person I should be saying any of this to. It isn't fair of me. I know how you still feel about me. About us.

But you're the only person who ever really understood me, apart from Dad, and I can't say any of this to him. He wouldn't be able to keep it from Mum, and she'd revel in saying "I told you so, dear" and giving me that look. You know the one. The one that makes her look like dear Aunt Cissy confronted by a Muggleborn or a nasty smell.

And I know you. You love me enough to forgive me for sending this to you, and rubbing salt in whatever wounds you still carry for me. Forgive me, Charlie.

I think I've made the worst mistake of my life.

I should never have married Remus.

It's not like he didn't warn me. He fought me every step of the way, and when he finally gave way it was only because I bullied him into it. I thought I loved him enough that what he is wouldn't matter. But I've found out that it does.

I still love him. I love him more than I've ever loved another person. (Sorry. Shouldn't say that to you.) But I can't ignore the fact that he's a werewolf.

We think we're modern enlightened witches and wizards. We think that things like that shouldn't matter. But they do, Charlie, they do. At his best, Remus is a lovely kind gentle man. I know he loves me. But there are times when I look at him and I don't know him. Something in his eyes… And not just around the full moon either. It can be any time. And sometimes, if he's tired or worried, he'll snap at me for no reason, and it's not like it would be with anyone else; it scares me Charlie. It feels like he's one step away from hitting me or worse. And I know he feels that too. When that happens, he'll walk out and not come back for hours, or he'll lock himself in his room, the one he uses at full moon. I know he's scared too.

I should never have married him, Charlie. I don't know what to do.

Dorie xxxx

Charlie sat on his bed in the hostel in Romania and re-read the letter for the sixth time. He'd tried starting a reply to it earlier, but everything he could come up with seemed trite and useless. What he really wanted to do was to Portkey over to England, turn up at Nymphadora's door and whisk her away from the monster she had married. No, that wasn't fair. Remus wasn't a monster. Charlie liked what little he knew of him, and knew that he must have something special to make Nymphadora fall for him. She wasn't one to fall easily, as Charlie well knew. But she wasn't one to scare easily either. She was an Auror, for heaven's sake. If she was scared of her husband it must be for a good reason. Perhaps being a werewolf for so long had to affect who you really were in the end, however good a person you were underneath. It seemed that Remus had understood that better than Nymphadora had.

Charlie stood, and began to pace to and fro in his tiny room. Why had Remus given in to her? Why had everyone – his own mother included if the accounts he had heard were true – backed Nymphadora up? Charlie had to concede that he couldn't really blame Remus for weakening in the end. To have a girl like her in love with you… Well, he wouldn't be able to resist it for one, and he'd never lived as an outcast on the edge of society as Remus had. To someone like that, having someone who really loved you must be even harder to say no to. Charlie reached the window and looked out at the dark Romanian night. It was late, well after midnight. He saw a dragon, one of the Norwegians, soaring over the trees, and smiled despite the turmoil in his mind. After all, he knew all about monsters. He turned and sat down heavily on his bed, pulled out a sheet of parchment and wrote a reply to the only girl he'd ever really loved. He told her he would help her in whatever she chose to do. He told her that he would come and get her in a heartbeat if she wanted him to. He told her that he was sorry that she was hurting and was scared. He told her that she had to make her own decision. But he didn't tell her that he still loved her. That, by Charlie's lights, was cheating.

He didn't get a reply.

II

A couple of weeks later, he heard from Bill that Nymphadora was pregnant, and that Remus had left her. No one knew where he was, though Bill said he thought he might have got back into the werewolf underground again, as he'd done a couple of years previously, trying to find out information that might help the Order. "Either that or he's off with Ron and Harry and Hermione," Bill's letter said, and Charlie couldn't work out if his brother really believed that might be the case, or if he was joking.

A week or so after that, Charlie had a letter from Nymphadora herself. She told him that she was pregnant, and that Remus had walked out after an argument.

Remus said we should never have got married, and certainly should never have risked having a child. The thing is, Charlie, I didn't think we were risking it. Remus said someone like him couldn't father a child. Well, he was wrong there. He even suggested getting rid of it, once we were sure, but I couldn't do that. Whatever it is, this is our baby, mine and his.

"Whatever it is". There, I've said it. What if this baby is a monster, Charlie? What if he or she is born as a werewolf, or worse? Remus spent hours looking at books to see if he can find any information on children of werewolves, but there doesn't seem to be any. No one else thought they could have children either. Or maybe no one believed anyone would want to have a child with a werewolf.

We had a week or so after we found out, a week of crying and shouting and him spending hours at the library. And then he suggested I should get rid of it, as if it were something I'd bought and changed my mind about, not a real live baby. It was after that row that he walked out. I don't know if he'll come back. I'm not even sure if I want him to come back.

Dad's gone too. He says he's not hanging about to be registered as Muggleborn by "some bloody jumped up committee". He reckons that going on the run is safer than staying put, and that it will almost certainly make sure that Mum's okay. I'm staying with her; we're both lonely. And she hasn't said "I told you so" once, which I suppose is something.

Thanks for listening, Charlie.

Dorie xxxxx

How do you respond to a letter like that? When what you want to do is drop everything and tell the girl you love to forget about her no-good husband and take you instead? When that would be totally the wrong thing to say? Charlie had never been good with words at the best of times. In the end, he resorted to sending Nymphadora flowers (daisies, not roses – too much meaning in roses) and a note saying he was sorry, that he was sure that the baby would be fine, that his offer to come and get her if she wanted him to still stood.

Again, there was no reply. Charlie was sorry. A large part of him had hoped that with Remus' defection, and in her desperation, Nymphadora might accept him as a second best. Not that he wanted to be second best with her, but it might be a start of something more. As for the baby… well, he would have dealt with that, even if it was a monster as Remus believed and Nymphadora feared. Charlie wasn't scared of monsters after all. (He suppressed the thought that the ties of a baby and a real family terrified him. "Not with Dorie," he told himself. "She's different. It wouldn't feel like being trapped with her.")

III

14th December 1997

Dear Charlie,

I shouldn't unload all my problems on you, but I know you will listen and try and understand, and keep things to yourself. Even better, you won't try and give me advice. You don't know how much I appreciate that.

Remus came back, a few nights ago. I heard a noise downstairs, and – I'll admit it – I was scared rigid. There are so many tales now of Snatchers after Muggleborns, and even if Mum is a Pureblood and I'm half, she married a Mudblood and I did worse by You Know Who's reckoning, so I don't reckon we're exactly safe. Or it could be more official than Snatchers – someone from the Ministry itself, perhaps with an arrest warrant on some trumped up charge. (Or none, they don't seem to care much for the niceties these days, as you'll have gathered.)

Anyway, I didn't wake Mum – she's no good in this sort of crisis – and I grabbed my wand and tiptoed downstairs, and there was Remus, just sitting in the kitchen at the table. He looked dreadful, Charlie, thin as anything, with a cut on his face and his clothes in rags.

I'll spare you the details. The upshot is that he's back, and we're going to try to make a go of things. He'd been with the werewolf underground – Bill said he thought he might have gone back to them – and he'd found out some stuff about them that might help our cause. He didn't tell me much at all, but I could tell he'd had a bad time. He did say that they – the werewolves – have a thing about those who've been bitten but who try and live a normal life in wizard society. They call them "moon under water" or something equally daft. They think they're letting their own kind down, that they should fight for You Know Who, because he'll give them rights and even let them loose on those he doesn't approve of. Scary stuff. Remus said someone like Bill might be in danger from them, that because he's been bitten by that scum Greyback the werewolves think he should become one of them, werewolf or not.

Remus said that was what made him come back. He realised that Greyback and his lot would want our baby, and he couldn't let that happen. He came back to protect us.

I do hope we can work it out.

I missed your birthday. Hope it was a good one, Charlie.

Happy Christmas, and a better new year for all of us.

Dorie xxxxx

Charlie didn't reply to the letter. He didn't even send a Christmas card.

But he did get appallingly drunk on New Year's Eve.

IV

Remus and Dora Lupin

are happy to announce the birth of

Teddy Remus Lupin

on

5th April 1998

Nymphadora had scribbled a note on the back:

He's so gorgeous, Charlie. And he seems to be completely normal (apart from the fact he's a Metamorphmagus, but that doesn't count, does it?) I'm really happy and so's Remus. I didn't think I could be, not after Dad was killed and with the war still on. I think we can make this work, Charlie. I think we can be happy. Thanks for being there for me. D. xxxx

Charlie tried to send a note of congratulations. He even wrote it. But when it came to it, he just couldn't send it. He screwed up the parchment and threw it on the fire.

V

It was eerily quiet now. There was a low hum of voices, but none of the shouting and sobbing and crying of earlier. Nymphadora was sitting on her own at the end of one of the long benches, her baby held closely to her. From where he sat, on the other side of the Great Hall, Charlie could just see a tuft of turquoise hair poking out from the scarlet and gold blanket. He didn't know what he was going to say to her, but he had to say something. He couldn't put it off for ever. He took a deep breath and crossed the Hall to join her.

"Hey," he said quietly, as he sat down beside her on the bench.

Her mouth quirked in something that was almost a smile. "Hey yourself, Charlie Weasley."

They sat in silence for some minutes. Charlie's mouth was dry, and he felt his eyes prickling with tears again. Merlin knew, he had cried enough tonight already. He felt Nymphadora's hand on his arm.

"I'm sorry about Fred," she murmured. "How's your mum holding up?" Charlie shook his head, trying not to start bawling again.

"She's not," he said gruffly, and swallowed hard. "And George…" He left it hanging. What was there to say, after all?

Nymphadora nodded. "I know. I'm sorry." The baby in her arms began to whimper and she unhooked her blouse and put him to her breast. Charlie felt his face reddening, and looked away, over to the other side of the hall. Percy was there, and Bill and Fleur. He didn't know where George was; that bothered him.

"I'm sorry about your mum," he said, still not looking at Nymphadora. "And – and about Remus. Really I am."

"I know," she said quietly. "At least he's at peace now. He hadn't been…" Her voice broke, and it was some time before she controlled herself enough to speak again. "Not for a long time," she finished at last, her voice little more than a whisper. She swallowed hard. "And Mum has Dad back now. She was lost without him." Her voice broke and she began to cry, quietly and hopelessly. She leant against Charlie then, baby Teddy still at her breast, and somehow he found himself putting his arm around her. They sat like that for a long time, saying nothing.

For both of them, it helped a little.

VI

Christmas 2001. In some ways, the War seemed a lifetime away. In others it seemed so close that it was hardly possible that it was over. Some scars seemed as fresh as they had three and a half years ago when Voldemort died and it was finally over.

For Charlie, the worst of the scars was Nymphadora's absence. She had done what was expected of her in the weeks after their victory. She endured the separate funerals for her mother and her husband, holding baby Teddy closely to her through both, like a shield against the world. And then, in the summer, she sat stoically through the long memorial ceremonies at the Ministry and at Hogwarts, when her parents' names and her husband's were added, with so many others, to the plaques commemorating those who had died fighting the Dark. At the Hogwarts ceremony, she even reached out a hand to Charlie and gripped his when his self-control failed him as his little brother's name was read out.

And then, suddenly and abruptly, she was gone. The Auror office, sending tentative queries about whether she would consider returning to work, received no reply. Invitations to lunch at The Burrow were ignored. There was no response to enquiries from Harry about when he could visit his godson. All of Charlie's notes went unanswered. And when Charlie and Harry finally became tired of waiting, each for their own reasons, and turned up on the doorstep of the cottage Nymphadora had shared with Remus, it was shut up with no sign at all of recent habitation. Her parents' house proved to be the same.

Bill made discreet enquiries at Gringotts. The Lupins' account had been emptied the day after the Hogwarts memorial, but the transaction had been carried out by owl post. No one at the bank had seen Nymphadora Lupin herself.

Charlie was desperate. He looked up every friend he could think of that he and Nymphadora had had at school; he quizzed acquaintances and colleagues; he sent owls addressed to Nymphadora almost daily; he even resorted to putting notices in The Prophet asking her to contact him. There was no response, and eventually Charlie was forced to admit defeat and give up. But he never gave up hope that one day Nymphadora might walk back into his life as if she had never left it.

The annual Christmas party, thrown at the Leaky Cauldron for those members of Dumbledore's Army and the Order of the Phoenix who cared to attend, was now a habit that was rapidly becoming a tradition. The party on Christmas Eve of 2001 had the air of new beginnings about it. Several witches were sporting sparkling rings on their left hands, and there were several more romances begun since last year's gathering. And while the only child the two groups had as yet, Victoire Weasley, was tucked up safely in bed at home under her grandmother's care, there were more babies on the way. It was definitely a night for looking forward, not back.

And Charlie was trying, really he was. He joined in the good-natured bantering at Harry's bravery at proposing to a girl with so many brothers to defend her honour should he let her down; and he told his sister-in-law mock seriously, that if she didn't name the new baby Carlotta in his honour, that he would refuse to be godfather.

"Who said we were going to ask you anyway?" his elder brother asked him with a lopsided grin, but Charlie shook that off.

"Fleur would, if you wouldn't. She's nicer than you."

Bill didn't deny it, merely pulling his wife onto his lap and kissing her hard.

Not for the first time, Charlie felt a pang of jealousy, not only of Bill with his happy marriage and growing family, but of all the others who were managing to make a life for themselves and move forward. Even George, in the midst of a noisy group by the bar with his arm slung around Luna Lovegood's shoulders in a way that was undoubtedly proprietorial, was going on with his interrupted life, maybe not in the way that he had imagined a few years back, but still going on. Only he seemed stuck, unable to move or to make any plans beyond staying where he was, waiting and hoping.

He sighed, drained his glass and stood up to make his way to the bar. Maybe tonight was a night for drowning his sorrows.

For some reason that Charlie couldn't fathom, Neville Longbottom was serving behind the bar at the moment.

"This came for you, Charlie," he said, as the older man approached the bar. "Sorry, I forgot it earlier in all the excitement of Seamus and Lavender getting engaged. The owl came just before we started."

Charlie was no longer listening. He recognised the writing on the parchment Neville was holding out to him.

Nymphadora.

Five minutes later, he was running down the unfamiliar Muggle street to something that Nymphadora had described as a "Tube station". It had been hours since the owl came. He hoped that he was not too late. He hoped that she had waited for him.

Postscript

"Can a werewolf retain any vestiges of humanity? Is it possible for those affected by lycanthropy to any degree to remain of sound character over an extended period of time? Discuss, with special reference to the Second Wizarding War 1995-8 and the Werewolf Uprising and Rebellion of 2002-3 and the consequences of both."

Teddy Lupin-Weasley regarded the question with disbelief. He knew that, with his scrupulous regard for honesty and fairness, his godfather the Head Auror would have had no part in setting the exam questions for those hoping to enter the service this year, but the question might have been written for him. The werewolf father he had never known; his Uncle Bill, scarred by Greyback for life, and ill at every full moon for years; Lavender Finnegan, the bravest woman he had ever known; even himself, restless and feverish when the Full Moon rose. And most of all, the man he called "Dad", his stepfather Charlie Weasley, who had come without question when his mother called out to him in desperation. The man who, for love of his mother, had risked death and become a werewolf himself to rescue him from the clutches of the werewolf underground. "The Fellows of the Moon Under Water" – he knew all about them. And he knew that each and every one of them was about as human as you could get.

Fin