Note: Hello once again and welcome to weird and wonderful whirlwind of rambling words otherwise known as My Imagination. Yes, it's that time again...!
I hope you all enjoy this shiny new addition to the Meet the... 'ficverse. For a full list of the stories so far in chronological order, take a look at my freshly updated profile! I've re-organised/deleted a few things so that it is nice and simple. Anyway, this is Meet the Daughter, which is currently the sequel to Meet the Animagus. We will be leaping forward in time quite a way, so it is highly likely that I might eventually get round to writing some one-shots to fill some gaps! In other words, if you want an accurate description of where this 'fic lies within the timeline, look at my profile.
For anybody new, this is an AU 'ficverse in which Remus and Tonks survived the final battle. Everything else will hopefully be explained below!
We rejoin Carrie and Teddy around eight years after the events of Meet the Animagus. I know their ages were a bit confused back then, so I'm going to say that they were probably nineteen, since Carrie had been at University for a year. Consequently at the start of this story they are twenty seven years old. I said it was a big time jump, didn't I? :-)
It only remains for me to say that I hope you enjoy this new story! Thank you in advance to anybody who is kind enough to leave me a review. You really do make me smile!
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
1: Giggling Lumps and Sinister Bumps
As soon as the door to the house was opened, the little girl bounded across the threshold and into the hallway, her mother's murmured reminder to wipe her feet falling on deaf ears as she reached to fling her arms around the waiting woman who had answered the door. She let out a small squeal as the woman stooped to smother the top of her head with kisses. Once released she made a beeline for the stairs, the calls of protest from the women below ignored in her excitement as she bounded up the steps, footfalls loud enough to wake the dead. Once at the top she ran across the landing before reaching to fling a bedroom door open wide as she declared:
"Why Grandad! WHAT BIG TEETH YOU HAVE!"
From his position tucked up in bed, a damp face flannel folded and balanced carefully upon his brow, Remus Lupin blinked groggily against the sudden flood of light puncturing the dim room. As the little girl dissolved into giggles, he reached to pull the flannel from his forehead, plastering a broad grin upon his face.
"Here's trouble!" he observed, stifling a cough into his sleeve, just in time for footsteps to sound upon the stairs and a firm voice exclaimed:
"IMOGEN DORA CAROLINE LUPIN..."
The child gave an exaggerated gasp, before dashing across the room and launching herself onto the bed, making her grandfather wince.
"Quick, Grandad! Hide me! Nana Dora's coming!" She struggled to suppress her giggling as her grandfather reached to throw back the duvet before bundling her underneath, throwing the cover back over the pair of them just in time for his wife to reach the top of the stairs.
"Shhhh! She'll hear you!" he warned, and the small lump beneath the duvet gave one last snigger before falling silent. Remus had just about enough time to plaster a suitably innocent expression upon his face when Dora appeared in the doorway.
The witch eyed both her husband and the lump with a raised eyebrow before inquiring:
"Have you seen Immy, Remus?"
"Have I seen Immy...?"
"Mm. She's our granddaughter, about this high, Mummy's colour hair, Grandad's eyes, Daddy's smile...Nana's inability to behave herself..."
"Oh! That Immy!"
"Yes, that Immy. Have you seen her?"
"No...I can't say I have."
The lump giggled.
"Well," Dora said, lips pursed against a smile. "If you do see her, will you tell her that she's a very naughty girl for waking Grandad up when he is resting, and if she doesn't come downstairs within the next ten seconds Nana Dora is going to eat all of her ice cream?"
"I'll be sure to tell her if I see her." Remus agreed, poking the lump in the side to make it be quiet, but it only giggled even more. Dora had barely turned to head back down the stairs when Imogen flung the covers off of her and scrambled off of the bed with a shriek of:
"ICE CREAM!" As she dashed to the door she paused just long enough to glance over her shoulder at her long-suffering grandfather to ask: "Do you want some, Grandad?"
"No thank you, Sweetheart. You go and eat it all before Nana Dora gets the chance."
"Grandad doesn't have time to eat ice cream, he's supposed to be sleeping!" Dora called as she descended the stairs, and Imogen's eyes widened and she reached to put a finger to her lips.
"Shhhhhhh!" she hissed as her grandfather slumped gratefully back against his pillows. "Grandad's trying to sleep!" And with that she tiptoed carefully backwards out of the room, before promptly slamming the door shut with a bang.
Down in the hallway, Imogen's mother Carrie Lupin winced at the noise, and as her mother-in-law reached the bottom of the stairs, she felt compelled to mutter:
"Sorry about that."
"It's fine, Carrie love." Dora said cheerily, only to turn to watch her granddaughter's stomping progress down the stairs with a muttered: "Sweet Merlin...!"
"Immy stop stamping, Grandad's trying to rest!" Carrie hissed, reaching to grab hold of her daughter by the hand so that she could steer her in the direction of the kitchen. "Come and wash your hands if you're going to have ice cream."
As she helped the four year old to reach the taps, Carrie cast a glance back over her shoulder at Dora, who was busy scooping ice cream into a plastic bowl.
Taking Imogen round to visit her grandparents was always, to Carrie's mind, both a joy and nightmare all rolled into one. It was nice to have somebody to keep Imogen entertained, somebody else to fuss over her or keep her out of mischief. But at the same time Carrie always felt somewhat embarrassed.
Because in truth, Carrie Lupin didn't consider herself to be the World's Greatest Mother. Indeed, she was beginning to think that she wasn't cut out for motherhood at all. There were several reasons for this, the first one being that so far in her short life Carrie's only child appeared to have developed a irrepressible urge to misbehave, especially when she and Carrie were at home alone together. It didn't seem to matter what Carrie said or did, Imogen was notoriously bad at doing as her mother said. Worse still was the fact that Imogen seemed perfectly happy to behave for her father and grandparents, much to Carrie's frustration, and Carrie could only conclude that at some point she had gotten the whole mother thing terribly, terribly wrong.
The second reason for Carrie's inadequacy, to her mind, was the fact that Carrie Lupin was different from the rest of her family...
Or perhaps it was more fitting to say that the rest of her family were not like Carrie Lupin. Indeed, Remus, Dora, Imogen and Carrie's husband Teddy were startlingly different from most people.
Because the rest of the Lupins had a secret that very few people could ever know.
They were magical.
Not the sort of happily ever after kind of magical found in the fairy tales that Carrie read to Imogen at bedtime most nights, nor the sort of magical that could be performed at children's birthday parties.
No, the other members of the Lupin family were magical as in real, proper magic.
Carrie had first met Teddy and his parents one summer when she and her family had moved in next door to them, and it had not been long before ten year olds Carrie and Teddy had become firm friends and eventually some years later something more. Even when Carrie had been forced to move in with one of her aunts after a run in with the darker side of the magical world had left both her parents incapable of caring for their three children, she and Teddy saw one another almost every day when he was home from boarding school. A year later, Carrie had gone away to study History at university whilst Teddy began to look for work, and despite the distance she saw him as often as ever. It was useful, she had supposed at the time, to have a boyfriend who had the ability to disappear from one place and appear in another within the blink of an eye.
Yes, Carrie had married into a family of witches and wizards, a couple of shape-shifters and a werewolf...
And then there was Carrie. Normal, muggle Carrie.
It had never been entirely easy to be the only muggle surrounded by magic, but since Imogen had been born things had been somewhat worse. Carrie couldn't help but feel that her daughter was entirely aware that her mother was different from the rest of the family, that she was in some way an easy target. It had always seemed to Carrie that as soon as Teddy had left for work each morning, baby Imogen would bawl and cry for hour after hour, only to consent to sleep peacefully as soon as her father arrived home from work. As a toddler Imogen would be perfectly contented to sit upon her grandfather's knee at the dinner table on a Sunday afternoon, but would insist on fidgeting dreadfully once deposited in Carrie's lap. Dora had only to speak what Carrie thought to be a few magic words in order to halt her granddaughter mid-tantrum, whilst it didn't seem to matter what Carrie said, Imogen would attempt scream the house down at home. And quite frankly, Carrie felt ashamed by her lack of control over the child.
Such an incident had occurred just that morning when Carrie had been unable to locate Imogen's favorite butterfly hairband; no matter how much she had insisted that they would have to make do with a different one because her searching had been fruitless, Imogen had screamed and shouted until she was pink in the face. Consequently they had arrived at Remus and Dora's house some hour later than planned, for it had taken Carrie so long to locate the missing hairband down the back of the sofa in the living room.
"She just screamed and screamed!" Carrie told Dora as they sat in the kitchen, having sent Imogen and her bowl of ice cream out to sit in the garden. "I offered her FIVE other hairbands, but she wouldn't listen, she had to have the lost one!"
As she poured the two of them each a steaming mug of tea, Dora puffed her cheeks in exasperation.
"Children." she mused as she reached to push one mug across the table for Carrie to take. "They're only any good when they're somebody else's."
Carrie gave a disbelieving huff.
"Well Ted doesn't seem to have any trouble with her." she muttered despairingly. "He thinks she's a little angel."
"Remus used to think Teddy was a little angel." Dora recalled as she leant back in her chair, reaching to sweep the dark brown hair back from her eyes. "Once, the little bugger got hold of my wand and set my work robes on fire five minutes before I was due to leave for work! And d'you know what Remus did? He LAUGHED!" The witch cast a rather accusing look up towards the ceiling before explaining: "It's a dad thing. And it's worse with girls, believe me. What I got away with when I was Immy's age with my dad around...! I shouldn't worry about it, Carrie love. It's all perfectly normal."
"Is it?" Carrie wondered dully, gazing down at the steam that was rising from her mug of tea. "Sometimes I'm not sure..."
"She's a good girl." Dora insisted, rising to her feet and crossing the kitchen in search of the biscuit barrel. "She's full of beans and she can scream for England, but then again so could all the other four year old children I've ever met."
"Maybe if her dad was at home once in a blue moon she might be a little less unruly." Carrie muttered, but Dora merely shrugged and told her brightly:
"Not long now, Carrie! He'll have qualified in few weeks time!"
"If he hadn't gone and got himself sacked, we wouldn't be waiting at all."
Dora frowned deeply, fingers tapping warily upon the biscuit barrel at this rather bitter complaint, and Carrie hurried muttered:
"Sorry. I...shouldn't."
For the first two years of their marriage, Teddy had worked at the Ministry of Magic in the Office of Muggle Communications as a Magical-Muggle Liason Officer. The pay had been relatively poor for somebody of his qualifications, but there had been plenty of opportunity for advancement within the department and the hours had been good. It had been three years since Teddy had arrived home unexpectedly one afternoon with a face like thunder, hair a furious shade of scarlet and paper forms in hand. He'd stormed into the kitchen where Carrie had been midway through attempting to persuade Imogen to eat her vegetables, and flung the papers down upon the kitchen table as he announced:
"I can't take it anymore, I'm joining the Aurors!"
It had taken him some while to calm down enough to admit to the reality of the situation: he'd had a terrible row with his boss about her, in Teddy's mind, unacceptable attitude towards a particularly sensitive case they were working on involving a Squib whose magical parents had abandoned her with a muggle family who lived across the road. The debate had degenerated into a shouting match and Teddy had managed to inform the insufferable woman that she was a disgrace to her profession. Needless to say, she had been deeply offended and had given him the sack on the spot.
Carrie's sympathy had lasted an uncharacteristically short few minutes.
"You can't join the Aurors!" she'd exclaimed as Imogen had succeeded in throwing the bowlful of vegetables all over the kitchen tiles. "We've got a child to think about!"
"What's your point?" he'd asked irritably as he set about scrawling his name atop the application form that he had stormed into his mother's office and demanded a copy of a mere fifteen minutes earlier. "I've spoken to Mum, she and Harry are fine with it."
Carrie had wanted to point out that he had yet to ask whether or not she was fine with it too, but instead she'd told him:
"There's a good reason why people join the Aurors straight out of Hogwarts! Three years of daily training with little if no time off and just about enough pay to eat a decent sized meal once a month! Doesn't scream family security now, does it?"
"We'll manage." he'd grunted, much to her fury. "Besides, we'll be on double my old salary at least once I qualify!"
"D'you think your mum would have joined the Aurors if she'd waited till she and your dad had you?" she'd asked, reaching to prise the spoon that Imogen had been using as a very effective drumstick free from the toddler's grasp.
"No," Teddy had admitted with a dismissive wave of the hand, just as Imogen let out a wail of protest, face contorting miserably. "But then again, I'm not married to a werewolf with two decades worth of debt to pay off."
When they had finally sat down calmly to have a proper discussion about this drastic career change, it had soon become apparent to Carrie that really, she didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter.
Because Teddy had his heart set upon the matter. Dora had been terribly excited and proud at the prospect of her son deciding to follow in her footsteps, and within hours the entire extended family had seemed to know all about it. Teddy's godfather Harry, himself the Head of the Auror Department, and Teddy's Uncle Ron, a third Auror in the family, had already flooed to announce that they planned to throw a party to celebrate the news (the Potters and the Weasleys would find any excuse to throw a party as often as they could), and though Teddy had attempted to explain that really he hadn't made up his mind for certain, Carrie had rather thought they could save time and just skip their discussion altogether.
And that was how Teddy had come to sign up for Auror training.
Carrie felt rather as though she never saw him after that. She woke up each morning just in time for him to kiss her goodbye, and he wouldn't return until late each evening, usually sporting some new bruises and too exhausted to do much beside shovel dinner into his mouth and fall asleep in front of the television. In fact some nights he didn't come home at all. When the Ministry did see fit to give him some time off, they rarely did anything exciting, for they simply didn't have the money to do so. Indeed, money matters were fast growing so dire that just a week previously they had been forced to move out of their house and into a flat the other side of town.
It'll be better in the long run. That was what everybody always told her. But Carrie didn't really care about making things better, she just wanted thing back to the way they had been before. She tried her best not to be bitter or resentful, but at times, especially when Imogen was playing up, it was a struggle to say the least.
And yesterday night, or perhaps it had been the early hours of this morning, Carrie wasn't quite sure which, Teddy had finally arrived back from the Ministry, flopped down upon the bed beside her and made an announcement that had made the whole sorry situation at least ten times worse.
"He wants another one." Carrie mumbled worriedly as Dora dropped back down into her seat, setting the biscuit barrel down between them, and when the witch merely offered her a raised eyebrow, Carrie elaborated: "Another baby, I mean. He said so, last night."
She waited to see Dora's reaction to this bombshell, and was somewhat underwhelmed when the witch merely reached to pull the lid from the barrel and eyed the contents in contemplation.
"And you don't." she said after a sizable pause, reaching to extract a custard cream that had been hiding beneath a couple of chocolate digestives.
It wasn't a question.
Carrie felt herself blush rather guiltily.
"It's not that I don't..." she mumbled, fiddling rather self-consciously with the wedding ring upon her finger. "I mean...I love Imogen...obviously...but...it's just...well..." she trailed off, biting her lip in an effort to explain, only for Dora to shake her head.
"You don't have to explain yourself to me." the witch announced through a mouthful of biscuit. "Or Teddy, for that matter. Explanations are for debates, Carrie love, and you don't debate having a baby. You either both want to or you don't do it." she paused to frown deeply for a moment before muttering: "Except for when it happens by accident, of course..."
Carrie smiled gratefully at this assurance, but couldn't help but wonder:
"Do you think he'll be angry?"
Dora gave a soft snort of amusement as she reached for her tea.
"Teddy? Angry with you? Well that would be a first!"
"But what if he is?" Carrie insisted, frowning at the idea.
"If he does get angry? Well, you better send him round here! I'll give him angry!"
Carrie was about to let out a half-hearted chuckle, only for a loud crashing sound to make her jump. Her gaze instantly snapped over towards the back door, but when she spotted Imogen sat in an unnaturally serene fashion upon the grass, engrossed in eating her ice cream, it suddenly occurred to Carrie that the sound had in actual fact come from upstairs.
Dora rose abruptly to her feet.
"Won't be a moment!" the witch announced, shooting her daughter-in-law a fleeting smile, and with that she rushed out of the kitchen, down the hall and up the stairs.
Carrie stared after her for a long moment, frowning deeply before she was distracted by Imogen shouting:
"Nana Dora, look! The post's here!"
Carrie rose from her chair just in time for a large grey owl to come swooping through the open doorway, landing neatly upon kitchen table. It stuck out an expectant leg, eying Carrie impatiently, and she reached to untie the letter that had been secured to the bird's leg. Glancing down at the envelope, Carrie saw that it had been addressed to Dora, and as she dropped it down onto the table she spotted the crest of St. Mungo's Hospital upon the seal at the back.
"Thank you." she told the bird, crossing the kitchen to retrieve the box of owl treats that was kept beside the bread bin. "Immy! This owl needs a treat or two, are you going to come and help me?"
Stomping footsteps upon concrete announced that yes, Imogen certainly would come to help, and this was perhaps lucky for the owl because when offered the box the little girl grabbed a large fistful of treats before holding them out for the animal to eat. But apparently it was not satisfied with this generous reward because once the box had been replaced and Imogen had skipped back out into the garden, the owl fluttered it's feathers impatiently, before giving Carrie's retreating hand a sharp peck.
"Ouch!" the muggle muttered, hastily pulling her hand out of the bird's reach, but it merely hopped forward on the counter top, straining to peck at her again. Carrie retreated over to the table, reaching to pick up the letter, eying it in consideration. "Perhaps you want paying or something." she decided as the bird flew after her, landing upon the table with an insistent hoot. Carrie made for the hallway, pausing at the bottom of the stairs. She was about to call Dora's name before thinking better of it, for she supposed Remus might have been asleep.
It was at that precise moment that she spied slight movement up upon the landing, the twitch of a shadow, and she heard Dora hissing:
"Come on Sweetheart, wake up!"
In the following silence, Carrie dared creep forward a step, frowning deeply, and she was again just thinking that she might call quietly up the stairs when she heard a gentle tapping noise, growing steadily louder.
"Remus love?" Dora called, louder this time. "Wake up!"
Slowing, shifting movement drifted down the stairs and Carrie felt her chest constrict in sudden worry at the sound of a dull groan, followed by the witch's half-squeak of:
"Thank Merlin..."
"Again...?" Remus mumbled groggily, and at the sound of more stiff movement Carrie could deduce that he was lying sprawled upon the landing floor, and Dora agreed:
"Yes, love. Again...twice today, in fact."
There came the sound of more slow, stiff movement and Carrie spied Remus' hand reach to grasp hold of the bannister as he hauled himself back onto his feet.
"It's getting worse." Dora murmured worriedly. "You're getting worse..."
"It's been full moon." Remus pointed out, and if she leant to press her back against the wall Carrie could just about see the two of them, she chewing fretfully upon a nail and he still grasping hold of the bannister to keep himself steady. "Everything gets worse around full moon." He reached with his free hand to pull his wife's hand away from her mouth, grip firm and reassuring. "You mustn't worry about it, Dora, you really mustn't."
"And if I'm right?" Dora asked, eyes upon him growing wide, panicked. "What if it's not just the full moon? What if you really are getting worse? What if there's something wrong with you..."
"What if, what if!" Remus reached to pull the witch into a firm hug, her face buried with a sigh in his shoulder. "Don't do that to yourself, Sweetheart. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen, there's no point trying to predict it. Wait to hear from Mungo's before you start jumping to conclusions."
"I wrote to them again." Dora told him, withdrawing her face from his shoulder just far enough so that he could see her face contort with annoyance. "I told them exactly what I think of their bloody waiting list..."
"Perhaps it's a good thing." Remus reasoned, at last releasing the bannister so that he could reach to smooth her hair absentmindedly. "I'm pretty sure they would have whisked me away into a ward by now if they thought I was dying..."
Dora flinched, her face visibly paling.
"Don't...don't talk about dying." she mumbled, leaning into his palm as his hand brushed her cheek. "I can't stand it."
Carrie was surprised to hear the Deputy Head of Aurors sound so feeble, so frightened at the prospect of loss or death. After all, having joined the Aurors straight out of school and the Order of the Phoenix just a few years later, Dora Lupin was by now very much accustomed to people dying. To some people, people who have never lost a loved one or been in mortal peril themselves, dying is more of a concept than a reality. It is an idea, something that is going to happen but you don't quite know what will occur when it does. Only when it happens do you see it as a reality, as a given fact. And cold, hard facts are far easier to accept than blind uncertainty, because they are truly there before your eyes, you can reason, justify, explain them.
Accept them.
Understand the pain of them and let it engulf you, knowing that one day it might fade or perhaps it never will, but either way it is there for a reason and you must deal with it. After some practice you learn to speak of it without feeling unnerved, be bordering on flippant instead of afraid...
And yet here was Dora, unshakable and fearless Dora, Dora who when it came to loss had been there, bought the t-shirt and worn it until it had faded and frayed, utterly shaken and obviously afraid.
Because it was different, losing the one you loved above all others. It was different to lose an entire half of yourself. Carrie could barely imagine it, being so utterly empty and alone, living a dull, joyless half life without the love that you had so treasured and adored above all else...
Though Dora had never much flinched at the prospect of her husband's death before, not from what Carrie could recall. And there had been times, during the War and other more recent conflicts that the witch must have realised it could happen, that Remus might dodge a curse one moment and be struck down stone dead by the next.
But that wasn't a given fact. Perhaps he might dodge the next one and then the next, perhaps he would come back safe, there would be no indication that he might not. In contrast illness could be far less hopeful, far more obvious. It was painful to watch a person grow weak and sickly, far more difficult to remain unshaken and so sure that they shall recover...
Carrie found herself staring down at the envelope in her hands, the green stamped crest of St. Mungo's searing her eyes as she heard Remus insist:
"I'm certainly not dying, for Merlin's sake!"
That's easy enough for you to say, Carrie thought, feeling quite cross at him for being so unconcerned when Dora saw fit to crumble at the mere notion. It won't matter to you in the end after all, you'll be dead and it'll be the rest of us left behind with a gaping hole in all our chests. The muggle had an almost unstoppable urge to run up the stairs and demand to know what was going on, what precisely was wrong. If talk had grown this grim, surely she ought to have heard about it? Surely they would have told Teddy if his father were ill...
"Of course you're not." Dora agreed, lips twitching towards a smile. She reached to press a hand to the werewolf's forehead, frowning deeply. "Perhaps you're just dehydrated."
"Perhaps." he agreed, swatting her hand away and pulling her closer to him so that he could press a firm kiss to her forehead. "Perhaps I simply felt like keeping my wife on her toes."
"Perhaps." she murmured, rising up upon the toes in question to brush a kiss to his lips. "In which case, you're wicked."
"I think you'll find the phrase is wicked witch, not wizard."
For a long moment, the couple gazed at one another intently, steeling their nerves, regaining their composure after the latest blow, and slowly, deliberately, she reached to straighten his rumpled clothing, rose up upon tiptoes again to flatten his hair. He reached to wipe a careful thumb across her cheeks, as if to brush away a few stray tears and then they both smiled gratefully at one another and she murmured:
"Perhaps."