Author's Note: This idea popped into my head last night and I felt like I had to write it. It's a bit longer than what I would usually write, and I'm a bit uncertain about the dialogue, but I guess I'll improve with practise. I will be updating "These Small Hours" soon, and possibly "Mirror, Mirror"and "Deathly Musings" but I wanted to post this first. Thank you for reading!
home. Noun: an environment offering security and happiness.
Lost and adrift, that is how Remus feels when he flees 12 Grimmauld Place that day. And, a split second later, ashamed and overcome with remorse. He hadn't meant to hit Harry, it was his magic exploding out of him unbidden, his usually buried emotions rising uncontrollably to the surface. Accident or not, his behaviour had been abominable, and he resolved to make it up to Harry any way he could. All this comes later, in the aftermath of his escape there is no room for rationality, he is consumed by blind fury, by a tidal wave of feeling.
Disapparating without a thought for his destination, he emerges at a lonely house in the Scottish countryside, the place where he grew up. He has many memories of this place, spent so much time there in years long gone, but it is not his home, not in the true sense of the word. He has never had one of those, not really.
In this moment, he's not looking for a home, just a place to think, and this one is as good as any other. Remus begins to unravel the mess his life has so suddenly become, one thread at a time. What he had said about marrying Dora being a mistake was a lie, perhaps the biggest he'd ever told, one he hopes she'll never have to hear. No matter what happened, in his heart of hearts, he could never regret a second spent with her, even if he always feared she might, and suffer her regret in silence.
But to have made her pregnant, to have infected her, to have damned an innocent child! No – he cannot wander down that path again, that endless cycle of blame. James would expect better of him. James, who would have talked him out of this madness long ago, who would not, Harry rightly pointed out, have approved of his abandoning his wife and child, which was, when you looked beneath the layers of his excuses, exactly what he had done.
Harry had been wrong about one thing – he had not, and nor would he ever aspire to fill Sirius' shoes. Sirius' loss was with him every day, and it would probably be so every day for the rest of his life. Yet this did not change the fact that Remus had a greater sense of his own inadequacy when around Padfoot. Sirius and James had always had a bond that was stronger than, and somehow separate from, the rest of the Marauders. Until he'd met Tonks, Remus had resigned himself to being second best, even to his closest friends.
Something about this whole situation feels distinctly incongruent and just plain wrong, and Remus realises that it's because his values and his actions clash directly, and this awareness is his conscience telling him, none too quietly, to make things right. But how? How can he ever go back to her now? How can he expect her to forgive him for this, when he can't even fathom how to begin forgiving himself?
They are the same circular thoughts that have been plaguing him ever since he left her sleeping peacefully on their bed, but now, with Harry's words a barrier between his own self-loathing and what he wanted, and knew he had to do, he was able to consider the issue differently.
Remus has always believed in treating people fairly, with grace and goodness, despite, and perhaps because of, the unthinking prejudice that he faced on a daily basis. In leaving Tonks, he had not treated her fairly, not given her the benefit of the doubt, or even the opportunity to tell him properly how she felt. He had merely assumed, and left. It was, in effect, a repeat of their well-versed dance of the previous year, with he too reluctant to let her in, and she doggedly determined to make him. Except this time, he can't be sure she will follow the steps.
He vowed to Dora, and himself, when he appeared on her doorstep all those months ago, that he wouldn't behave like this, at the mercy of his own self-defeating beliefs, and with that recollection comes a fresh stab of guilt. He realises yet again – for this is a process, this unfamiliar attempt to meet his own needs, he will fall down, and he will get back up again – that the only way to escape his shame is to confront it, to go back to the only place he ever really wants to be - with her.
Andromeda answers the door, checking and double checking his identity before letting him in.
"Remus. Welcome back. How are Harry and his friends? Dora told me you'd gone to make sure they were okay." Only the way her steely gaze does not leave his face and the curtness of her tone indicates she knows this to be a lie, but she is tactful enough not to say anything.
"They're alive, which is all we can ask for at the moment. I saw them at Grimmauld Place. Is Dora -?"
"Upstairs, sleeping, I think. She tires quite easily now, with the baby, you know."
But of course, he didn't know, because he hadn't been there. "Can I see her?"
"Let me go and check on her. I'll be right back."
He waits in the sitting room, uncharacteristically impatient, feeling like an intruder rather than a member of the family. After what seems like an eternity, Andromeda returns.
"She's resting in your room, but I know she'd like to see you."
"Thank you Andromeda." They both know he's not just talking about right now.
With a sense of trepidation, and fighting the urge to run away again and avoid this painful confrontation, he ascends the stairs.
His Dora is facing the window, turned away from him, but he doesn't need to see her face to know that she's upset. She is tensed and slouched, bowed under the weight of a burden she alone can see. Hearing his approach, she turns around.
"You lied to her." They are the first words that come tumbling from his mouth, and Tonks doesn't have to ask who he's talking about.
"I did. I hope you don't need to ask why."
He doesn't. She lied to her mother for the same reason her hair had reverted to the short, mousy brown he had hoped to never see on her again, the same reason she was deigning to talk to him now, willing to overlook every single one of his flaws: because she loved him.
He ponders, not for the first time, how he could feel such immense appreciation, and wishes he had the skill of Shakespeare, so that he might somehow be able to give form and meaning to something so intangible and real. But not even Shakespeare, Remus thinks, could encompass this. He settles, as always, for empty words that are nowhere near enough.
"Thank you." Then, thinking his actions might voice what his speech cannot, he goes to hug her.
"Don't," she says, pushing him away.
He takes a step backwards, knowing she has every right to distance herself from him, and hurting all the more for that knowledge. What if this distance between them lasts forever? What if she stops loving him? His panic makes him ramble, and he's probably not making any sense, and it doesn't matter because Merlin, he just has to make her understand!
"I'm sorry Dora, I'm so sorry – I just couldn't, how could I have done that to you? What if – what if it transformed inside you and then you-you - ,"he can't bear to finish the thought, so he starts another one. "And even if that didn't happen, the likelihood of a child surviving the transformation every full moon, let alone a one month old baby is impossible! All my fault – you deserve better – I'm sorry – please."
"Okay, firstly, it is our child. He or she obviously hasn't transformed inside me, and even if they had, don't you think I would prefer to have you here with me, rather than Merlin knows where? If the child didn't survive, then that would be unimaginably terrible Remus, but again, something we would face together. Those things aside, how do you know the werewolf gene is hereditary? You don't! But you left me – and our unborn child – anyway! And as to it being all your fault, it takes two to tango, as you well know."
He can feel himself inadvertently smiling at her joke, but his next question returns him to solemnity. "And – can you forgive me?" He feels pathetic even asking.
"What do you want me to say, Remus? I mean, I love you, of course I do. And I'm glad that you're alive in front of me. But I'm also hurt and angry and sad and pregnant and horribly confused. I can't – we can't just go back to how things were overnight."
He doesn't respond straight away, but takes his time and chooses his words with care, desperate to mend the hole between them, and simultaneously to let her know that she can take all the time she needs. In the end, those are the words he presents to her.
She bristles at the implication that time was his to give, holding her tongue only because she doesn't want to start a fight. Instead, she nods. "It's late, Remus, and I'm tired. Mentally and physically. I'm going to bed."
"Good night then, Dora."
When she doesn't move, he realises she's waiting for him to leave, one more sign of the way things have changed between them. He closes the door on her and goes down the stairs. It is dark; Andromeda must have gone to bed. There is a pillow and some blankets waiting for him on the couch, an unspoken instruction.
Clearly, she doesn't want him with her, and he can't blame her for that. They've been apart so long though, he doesn't want it to be any longer. Grabbing the pillow and blankets, he walks, quietly as he can, to her – their – room. Inching open the door, he can see that she's asleep, and even in that altered state of consciousness she appears unhappy, with one hand resting protectively across the bulge of her belly.
He lays out his makeshift bed on the floor at first, but after some time of tossing and turning uncomfortably, he lies down beside Tonks.
She stirs, and in her sleepy state, her earlier anger is gone. She looks across at him with a face full of contentment and hair creeping back to pink. "You're home."
He thinks about those words and all their implications, and he is content. Because home is something we spend our whole lives searching for, failing to realise that home is, quite literally, where the heart is. This solace we seek, this place of refuge, is one we must be prepared to grant ourselves before we can ever find it with, or accept it from, another. Home is not a place, but a state of being, and Remus has just found it.
"Yes," he says, completely truthful for the first time, "I am."