i. i have died every day waiting for you
Hermione had never expected to love parenting. The fact that she'd never given birth to the sweet little boy she considered hers didn't even register now, two years after she'd taken over his care. Teddy was the product of love, after all, and if that love hadn't been between Hermione and his father, well, that was hardly his fault. She had loved his father, first as a role model, then as a colleague of sorts, in the Order-and then, embarrassingly, wretchedly, as a man who would never be hers, a man married to someone else. She never said anything, because of course she hadn't. Tonks was also a colleague, one who could have been a friend but for the way Hermione had kept herself coldly friendly and distant from the other witch. It wouldn't do for Tonks to ever realize Hermione's secret, especially because of the fragile nature of the relationship between Tonks and Lupin. He'd deserved to be happy, after all, and his repeated protestations of being too old for the Metamorphmagus had just driven home to Hermione exactly how rejected she'd have been had she ever attempted to tell him how she'd felt. The two of them had been happy, and she'd settled for that, focusing her energy on the war instead of her foolish emotional attachment.
But now they were gone. Even now, if she shut her eyes Hermione could still see Teddy's vibrant mother lying motionless on the floor, another irreplaceable casualty of that awful battle. She'd looked for Lupin then, selfishly, horribly needing to be the one to break it to him, feeling as though it had to be her, the only other person on the planet who loved him anywhere near as much as Tonks had. She'd searched for hours, becoming more frantic as the minutes slid past, fingers rubbed raw from lifting rubble and scratching through piles of earth. Only Molly Weasley had managed to stop her, Ron and Harry's cajolery having fallen on deaf, numb ears.
"It's time to look after yourself, dear," Molly had said.
"Teddy needs him." Hermione hadn't even turned around, her wand supporting a large block of masonry while she shifted smaller, ragged pieces of rubble from around a man's leg. I need him, she didn't say, even as she and another wizard she didn't bother to acknowledge dragged free the crushed body they'd liberated from the wreckage. It wasn't Lupin, she'd known that, but she'd had to be sure.
"Teddy doesn't need the lot of us so hurt and exhausted that there's no one fit to comfort him while he waits for his parents to never come home!" Molly had sobbed, reaching out with hands empty of her own lost child.
Her words had shocked sense back into Hermione, and despite her rush of indignation at the older witch's assumption that Lupin was dead, she had conceded the point and gone back to the Burrow with Molly. Besides his family, tiny little Teddy was most comfortable with Molly or herself, and babies were so perceptive. He'd know something was wrong if the adults he felt the most safe with weren't the ones with him. So she'd cleaned herself up and followed the tired, whiny cries that told her right where he would be. Tonks' mother was holding him to her chest, her face streaked with tears and her hands shaking against his little body. Their eyes met, and Hermione knew the older woman needed to grieve her own loss. Hermione had reached out, telling her in a choked, quiet voice how very sorry she was. Andromeda had placed the little boy in her arms, a visible relief washing over her as Teddy had nuzzled Hermione's shoulder and hiccupped, falling asleep right away.
"Your turn," Hermione had said. "Rest, if you can?"
Andromeda had looked directly into her eyes, and with a shaken, wretched voice she'd said, "How?"
Edward Lupin had lost three members of his family that night. Andromeda Tonks had sunk into a hysterical misery at the loss of her daughter and son-in-law, unable to care for herself, much less an infant. Hermione had been declared the most stable, responsible person to care for Teddy, and she couldn't find it within herself to argue. She'd devoted herself to him, and in her spare time she spent all of her energy trying to find his father.
Days, weeks, then months of searching for Lupin had resulted in nothing but an unsubstantiated rumor that Fenrir Greyback had been seen dragging a man's body away in the midst of the chaos of the final battle. Hermione had done everything in her considerable power to find evidence of this, but all she'd come away with was a clump of fur and flesh clinging to a boulder at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. She'd even persuaded a Muggle friend of hers to DNA test a sample of it, but for all the foolish risk she'd taken to do so, the results had come back as an indeterminate mixture of human and animal blood.
So here she was, a single mother to the most precious little boy imaginable, a boy who had no idea that his adoptive mother was coming to the decision she'd never expected to-she was about to give up looking for Remus Lupin.
Hermione looked at the stacks of file folders, faded parchment, and ink-spotted pages in front of her and sighed. The wind whistled through the shutters outside, making her grateful that she'd remembered to cast a silencing charm at Teddy's windows tonight. It was cold, wet, and miserable outside, and Hermione felt a kinship to that misery as she started placing her research into Lupin's disappearance into a thick cardboard box. Her son had awakened early from his nap that day, climbing up onto her lap and grabbing at those precious pages with the confidence only three year-olds can have. He had clearly sensed her frustration was more than just a reaction to his special brand of chaos, and Hermione had told herself there was only one thing she'd ever keep from him if she could help it, and this wasn't it. It was time to put her obsession away and refocus on the living, breathing child of the man she'd failed to find. She wasn't planning to fail Lupin twice.
The pain of having no answers to mend her empty heart stilled her hands, and when she heard the sound of the rain double in intensity outside, she walked toward the front door and opened it. Hermione stopped only to slip her socks from her feet before she stepped outside into the cold night, heedless of the thick raindrops on her head or the way the cold seeped into her, ground up. Walking down from the porch and onto the lawn, she let her hands hang loose at her sides, tipped her head back, and wept.
Twenty minutes later, Hermione finally acknowledged that she was human enough to be chilled to the bone and in need of warming up, no matter how much punishment she wanted to inflict on herself for her failures. She rubbed her wrinkled fingers against her sodden shirtsleeves as she mounted the stairs toward the front door of her small house. There, resting on the Teddy-sized chair on the porch, was a package she was certain hadn't been there when they'd returned from food shopping that evening. Hermione pulled her wand from her trouser pocket with difficulty, casting a detection charm with a soft voice that shook with cold and concern. Surprisingly, the package endured the charm with a soft yellow glow that told Hermione that all was well within it.
Hermione bit her lip and looked around, but all she could see was rain and the shadows formed around her by the familiar trees and bushes surrounding her small cottage. Impulsively, Hermione decided that casting a protective charm around herself and the small alcove at the front of the house would be enough, and she lifted the package and took it inside.
It was heavy, but not overly so. The box was covered with brown paper and tied with rough twine that fell apart almost the second Hermione touched it. Before lifting the loose lid that covered the box's contents, Hermione searched for any note or indication of where it had come from, but there was nothing, not even faint impressions of quill marks on the packaging. When she lifted the lid off of the box, though, she drew a quick breath before reaching inside to lift its contents with hands that trembled.
It was a trench coat, worn with use and thin from age. Hermione didn't even need to shake it out fully to know whose it was. She could smell the familiar tang of wool with an undertone of chocolate and pine needles. It was Remus Lupin's coat; she recognized it as the one he'd been wearing the last day she'd seen him. She'd searched all across Hogwarts' grounds for any glimpse of that coat, as rumpled and dirty and covered in blood as she herself had been. This coat, with its recognizable scent and well-worn collar, though-this coat was clean. In anxious disbelief, Hermione remembered something and hastily laid out the garment on the boot-bench, running her hands lightly along the bottom seam until, yes, there. Right where the coat had a natural break in the fabric, the seam had unraveled a bit as though it had caught on something. The something had been the railing of #12 Grimmauld Place, when Sirius as Padfoot had pushed past Remus in a rush to head inside for whatever reason. Hermione had promised Lupin she would fix the hem when she'd seen it happen, but he'd brushed her off, noting that it would hardly be noticed, so shabby was the rest of his clothing.
That meant this coat was his, really his, and someone had left it on her doorstep with no indication as to why. It would be one thing, Hermione thought as she lowered her protective wards and carried the trench coat carefully in to sit inside with it, if it were dirty and bloody and ripped, but this, this is well cared-for. Is Remus out there somewhere, cared for?
An ember of faith flared back up inside her, buried as it was in the very depths of her heart.
Morning came, and with it a break in the weather. Hermione had hung the coat against the back of her room door where the first sunlight of the day hit it, shining on a neat seam along the top of the right sleeve. Someone repaired it, she realized, the knowledge chasing all remnants of sleep from her. Hermione allowed herself a minute to picture Remus, needle in hand sitting in a dingy room Merlin knew where, sewing a rip in his own sleeve until she shook her head and got up, roughly shoving her feet into her slippers. No, Remus would not have carefully boxed up his old coat to give his son after two years of absence, and Remus would not have managed these straight, tiny stitches, either. Someone else was doing this, sending her a message that somehow, impossibly, he was alive and well.
Strangely, this was more comforting to her than if it had been Remus to leave the package. It meant someone was meddling, pushing. If left to himself, Lupin probably would never have revealed himself, she guessed. This unknown benefactor represented hope. A strange sort of calm filled her as she dressed for the day. Hermione decided she would talk over this new development with her friends that evening at the Burrow, as long as it wouldn't upset Harry on his birthday, that was.
"Mummyyyyyyy" called a muffled voice from Teddy's room. Hermione hurried to the hallway, wandlessly opening his door and peeking her head in to grin at him. At first it looked as though there wasn't anyone in the room, but then the pile of blankets and pillows by the window shook and giggled. Hermione swooped in, lifted up a rectangular pillow, and hugged it, patting it fondly on the 'head.'
"Good morning, my Teddy!" she said sweetly. "Time to get dressed!" There were more giggles from the comforter pile. "Would you like to wear green today?" Without waiting for an answer, Hermione opened a drawer and pulled out a green t-shirt and a pair of soft brown shorts. She sat on the rocker and started pulling them onto the pillow.
"Yes, tanks Mummy," said the pile of blankets.
"Splendid. And did you want to visit Grammy Weasley today?"
"Shoes no fit!" Teddy said, peeking at her.
"Oh, it's nice and warm after the rain, Teddy, we can just bring along your shoes," Hermione said, studiously ignoring the real Teddy in favor of the fake one in her lap. There was silence for a long moment before Teddy uncovered his head to grin at her.
"My goodness!" Hermione said, setting down fake Teddy and reaching over to lift up the real one. "This giant pillow has no pillowcase!"
"Green one! Green one!" Teddy crowed.
"Green for certain," Hermione said, quickly grabbing a separate green outfit and whipping out a large green pillowcase. She carried Teddy under her arm as though he were a sack of potatoes, slipping on her shoes and snagging her beaded bag to tuck into the larger changing bag. Teddy's non-pillowcase outfit and a pair of his shoes went in next. Without warning she whipped out the green pillowcase and began tucking Teddy into it, schooling her face into bemused exasperation at how difficult it was to clothe the giggling 'pillow.' Once Teddy was more or less pillowcased, Hermione grabbed a handful of Floo powder and they were stepping out of the fireplace at the Burrow not long afterwards.
"Oh lovely, I was hoping you'd come early," Molly Weasley said, coming into the room to greet them.
"Maybe not quite this early," Hermione guessed, but she set Teddy the Pillow down on the sofa to kiss Molly on the cheek. "I thought maybe we could help with birthday preparations?" As Molly's face lit up, Ginny stepped through the fireplace and immediately went over to the sofa.
"What's this, a new pillow?" she said, sitting down and stretching out her head on Teddy's belly, shaking from side to side to tickle him with her hair.
"Oh that old thing?" Hermione teased. "Much too lumpy if you ask me!"
"-and hungry," Ginny added, turning to rest her ear against Teddy's growling belly.
"Now the real reason comes out!" Molly said, hands at her hips. A few guilty looks from Hermione and a stack of hastily-made pancakes later, Teddy the Pillow was happy, sticky, and turned back into a Real Boy, ready to head outside to play. Hermione and Ginny followed him, transfiguring themselves some chairs to sit and shuck ears of corn for the dinner that evening. Muggle shucking trumped the frankly awful spell for corn shucking.
"Ginny, the strangest thing happened last night," Hermione said, unconsciously playing with the fake wedding ring she always wore on her left hand.
"You fell asleep without worrying about something?" Ginny teased lightly. Hermione conceded the point with a rueful eye-roll.
"I'm serious though, I found a package on the porch, and Ginny-"
"You mean you destroyed a dangerous, unwanted item and need my help to discover which previously undiscovered Death Eater needs us to track him down and lock him away?" Ginny said, sitting straight up, a hard edge to her voice.
Hermione glanced over at Teddy quickly, but the blue-haired boy was lying on his back talking to the fuzzy caterpillar on his knee.
"I don't think a Death Eater sent me Remus Lupin's old coat," Hermione said in a low voice.
"Oh!" Ginny exclaimed, covering her mouth in excitement but clearly very aware of Teddy innocently playing so near to them.
"It was… oh Ginny, it was clean, freshly washed-freshly worn, I'm sure of it," Hermione said with a catch in her voice. Her friend had been more perceptive than Ron or Harry had when it came to how attached Hermione had been to Remus. "And I just know that he wouldn't have left it, I mean, oh, I should just get it and show you," Hermione said all in a rush.
"Go on, it's not like we have another thirty ears to clean," Ginny said, only half serious. "Honestly though, maybe we can figure out something in time for Harry's party. I'll keep an eye on Newt over here." She nodded over at Teddy who somehow now had three fuzzy caterpillars on his legs. Hermione felt the familiar surge of love for the little boy as she looked at him, seeming ridiculously comfortable with both legs pointed skyward populated with caterpillars.
"Thanks, Gin. I'll be right back with it," Hermione said, grabbing a basket of finished corn cobs and rushing into the house before her friend could complain about her taking all the credit for their shared work.
