A/N here is my sorta depressing but sorta happy fic about remus and teddy. Yay! Except… not… its more of an 'awww' but still… yay! Okay, well, I hope you enjoy it :D please review!
Regrets
Remus Lupin's greatest regret as he saw the flash of green light in slow motion was that his son would never know him. Had he been killed in the department of mystery, his dying thoughts would have been of Sirius and only Sirius. He would have wept for the time they could have had when he had foolishly doubted his lovers innocence for thirteen years and wept that he would never get a chance to make up for that time. In the same position at Bill and Fluer's wedding, he would have hated himself for turning a young, beautiful, lively woman into a widow, robbing her of all the brilliant life she had left to live. He would have never forgiven himself, even in death, at the thought of Tonks mourning him. If there was one thing that didn't suit the wife he was so fond of, it was sorrow, and he wouldn't have been able to bear having put her through it. But as the circumstances were, his thoughts were only of his beloved Teddy, how his hair had been half blue and half blonde last time he had held him and his tendency to subconsciously change his eye color every time he blinked or opened his eyes.
He even remembered the first time he had held his son. He had been at Gringotts, trying in vain to sort out the chaos with the rest of the Order. They were trying to keep up with Harry, Hermione and Ron by figuring out what they had been doing there, and at the same time trying to control the swarm of death eaters that had flocked to the trouble to terrorize the pedestrians more still, or to attempt to rob the goblins by way of the dragon-sized hole than now marred the marble building. It was mid-afternoon when a wheezing man he recognized as a new member of the order, but whose name escaped him, came pushing through the crowd, fear in his eyes as he tried to avoid the flying spells. It was with breathless urgency that the man informed Remus of the birth of his son, and Remus had looked around with a pained expression to make sure the others had things under control before dissaperating, hastily adding a thank you to the man that was probably drowned out by the loud CRACK noise that accompanied his disappearance.
He arrived directly in the room in which his wife lay, having memorized it's exact location incase he ever needed to hurry to her bedside. She smiled at him, her eyes tired and drooping, and her hair a drab brownish color and frizzy texture that only ever came of extreme exhaustion. He hastened to her side and sat down, grabbing her outstretched hand and rubbing it absent-mindedly with his thumb.
"Why didn't you call me earlier?" he asked in a hushed voice, loosening his grip as though her was worried that in his nervous state he would deafen or crush her accidentally. She muttered something about not wanting him to worry or have to stay there the whole time but stopped suddenly, her eyes fixing on a spot over Remus' shoulder and her face positively glowing at the sight of whatever it was.
Remus turned slowly, eyes filling with tears as he saw what he knew to be behind him. A healer wearing a white robe had just entered and in her arms lay an infant carefully wrapped in a plain, white blanket. The woman approached, a smile on her face at seeing Remus' awestruck expression, and she held out the child to him.
"I've already held him," said Tonks when he looked at her as if asking for permission. "Go ahead."
The tears flowing freely now, the older man accepted the baby, cradling it delicately in his arms. "Him," repeated Remus in barely more than a whisper, his voice cracking slightly. The couple had agreed not to know the sex before hand, and this was the first he had heard. "Him…" he repeated once more. The little child was so perfect. Remus would not pretend to be able see resemblance between himself and the child, but for this he was grateful. The child was, however, as close in appearance to his mother as he supposed possible, in that the aforementioned appearance seemed to be refusing to settle. The way his hair seemed to be shifting constantly but slowly, in such a way that he could go, within the space of minutes, from redheaded to black-haired without you noticing until it was done. If Remus had been clutching Tonks' hand as if it were glass, he was clutching his new closest blood relative to him as if he were a delicate flower that would be crushed under the slightest pressure, but blow away in the wind if he didn't hold it close; he watched him like he had never seen something so beautiful; when he whispered quiet endearments to him, he spoke as if he were praying.
The healer waited patiently while Remus bent over so he could show the infant to his wife, and they could fawn over him together. After they seemed to have finished with their moment, she stepped forward. "I'm sorry, but we do have some tests to run because of both of your… conditions," Remus nodded, understanding, but being endlessly terrified on the inside. "Well," continued the young healer, "I think he has inherited his mother's metamorphmagism, but we will need to register her and… well…" she made eye contact with Remus, "it is unlikely that he has inherited your lycanthropy,"—'no it isn't,' thought Remus gravely. 'it's fifty fifty.' He had done his research.—"but of course it will be necessary to test him so we can take certain precautions now before next week's moon." 'Thank you for reminding me,' thought Remus. 'because of course a werewolf looses track of the moon's cycle. Right.'
He voiced none of his thoughts. Instead he said "yes… yes of course… thank you," and handed over his son after giving him an affectionate kiss on the forehead, wanting nothing more than to deny his own lycanthropy and keep his son clutched to his chest. But of course he made no move to take back his son once he was back in the arms of the healer, and watched calmly as he was removed from his presence. It was Tonks' turn to rub his hand soothingly.
"He'll be fine," she said, sounding as sure as she could. "Our… our Teddy will be fine," she said again, sounding more confident and this time attracting her husband's attention.
"Teddy?" he asked again, still in a slightly shocked voice.
"Yes," she said. "Ted Remus Lupin," she announced proudly.
"I love it," he said weakly, exhausted from the ordeal at Gringotts and the emotion he was feeling now. He took a seat at his wife's bedside and slowly she dosed off, followed shortly by Remus himself.
It was late when Remus awoke. He looked around and suddenly saw that another person had entered the room. He gazed at his son lying asleep, with hair longer than last time he had seen him. Despite the change, something about Teddy was still distinctly… his. Remus could've seen this child he had just met in a line of a hundred look-alikes and pick him out as his own. Remus made no move to pick up the child, but stared at him from above, face pale, and tried to work up the courage to find a healer and ask… for the results. He didn't know how long he tried to work up the nerve but eventually the decision was made for him when the same healer from before appeared at the door.
"I thought it better not to wake you," she said plainly, "but you may want to wake her up for this," she added, gesturing to the sleeping Tonks, whose hair had become adorned with vivid orange streaks in her sleep, a sign of her usual vivacity returning. Remus nodded, trying to read the healer's face. He supposed, as he gently shook Tonks awake, that the healer didn't look particularly upset or apologetic, but it gave little away nonetheless.
"The tests," she started once they were both upright and attentive, "came back negative," she finished, a grin on her face.
Tonks let out a squeal of joy that was nearly matched by her husband and was suddenly swept into his arms for a somewhat awkwardly angled hug considering she was still in bed, but a joyous one nonetheless.
"Congratulations," said the healer, touched, but feeling a little out of place in the couple's affectionate display.
Remus remembered it all fondly. He remembered thinking that he had had nothing left to live for, his marriage hardly seeming a legitimate reason to him as it caused him nothing but regret and worry. He had been left by his closest friends. James and Lily, Sirius, the love of his life, Dumbledore, and Peter had all died and Harry, Ron and Hermione didn't need him anymore. He was alone. But suddenly he had something. He wanted to know Teddy. He wanted to see his son grow up healthy and a stranger to war. He wanted grandchildren. He wanted Teddy to grow up beautiful like his mother and to never know fear like he himself feared the moon. He wanted—really wanted—for the first time to survive the war. He had accepter, before, that he was probably going to end up as a nameless, faceless casualty of war that would be remembered in history books as one of thousands that lost their lives, but now he wouldn't settle for that. He didn't want his son not to know him, and he wanted—oh how he wanted—to raise his son. His life had gone from meaningless to critical in mere minutes. He would still fight to the death with anyone who had the nerve to call themselves "death eater," but now he was fighting for something: a better future for his son and a chance to raise him in it.
Remus was slightly awestruck by how quickly someone so small and seemingly meaningless could become his very reason for living so quickly, but Teddy had.
Now, as Remus felt the relentless wave of death and nothingness sweep through him as if he were nothing more than a curtain through which a draft came, he thought of how he had died for his son; he had been fighting for his son; but dying for Teddy meant he couldn't live fore him. Teddy would be alone. Remus would never get to raise him in his better world that he had fought for just for Teddy. Worse still, he wouldn't even get to see how it ended. He would die wondering if his son would be killed by death eaters, wondering if he would live in enslavement under the rule of Voldemort, wondering if he would get a better world at all, and wondering if he would ever know what his father had sacrificed for it. Maybe he had sacrifice for nothing. Maybe, thought Remus, he should have let the others fight the war. With both his parents fighting for him, he had no one protecting him. Oh god, why had he failed so as a father, he asked himself. The war didn't need a weak, prematurely-aging werewolf. But his son needed a father.
And then the frantic last thoughts were gone. Then Remus John Lupin was dead.
He never knew that his son's first word was 'moon,' or that he was brought up by the combined efforts of Andromeda, Harry and Ginny, or that when he grew up he got a tattoo of a wolf on his back. He never saw his son marry Victoire. He never even met Victoire. But Teddy knew why. Teddy understood that his parents had died for a better world, and because of that, he got to live in it. And Remus never knew it, but Teddy never thought any worse of him for leaving him so young; instead he felt nothing but pride and unwavering affection for the two beings that existed, to him, as blurs in his memory from what seemed like a different life, and the pictures that he kept with him at all times.
A/N okay, so I didn't really know how to end this so I just sorta… stopped writing. So yeah. The end. Hoped you liked :) PLEASE REVIEW! XOXOXO