Author's Note: Rereading Deathly Hallows once you know about Teddy makes the timeline and the little clues dropped here and there painfully obvious, and methinks it all starts when Remus and Tonks have to run away from the Ministry at Harry's birthday dinner — which is one of the saddest scenes in the series that we don't talk about enough. Anyways, enjoy!

Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

Warnings: NA

Stacked with: MC4A; Terms of Services; Shipping War; Shower of Words

Individual Challenge(s): Gryffindor MC; Hufflepuff MC; Short Jog; Seeds

Representation(s): Auror Tonks; Harry's coming-of-age

Bonus challenge(s): Middle Name; Tomorrow's Shade; Second Verse (Pear-Shaped); Chorus (Not a Lamp)

Word Count: 1409

Shipping Wars

Ship (Team): Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin (Technicolour Moon)

List (Prompt): Micro 2 (Dating Disaster)

Easier Than You Realize

I think that love is so much easier than you realize,

If you can give yourself to someone,

Then you should.

Cause it's a little bit of everything,

The way you choke, the way you ache,

It is waking up before you,

So I can watch you as you wake.

So in the day in late September,

It's not some stupid little ring,

I'm giving a little bit of everything.

-A Little Bit of Everything, Dawes

Remus rested his forehead against the flat's door once they were back inside.

"Love?" Dora asked tentatively.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so, so sorry we couldn't stay longer. We didn't even make it through dinner. Dinner at the Burrow, out of all the lovely and welcoming places. We can't even do that anymore."

"It's alright," she said. "It's not your fault. Harry's going to understand, and we'll see him at the wedding… You can explain to him, if you want."

She reached out and touched his arm. When he didn't react, she slid her hand down and took his hand, intertwining their fingers.

"You're okay," she promised quietly.

"It could have gone very badly," Remus said, turning around to face her. "If Scrimgeour had seen you, with the largest gathering of blood traitors and Order members since Dumbledore's funeral, and me around…"

"Scrimgeour knows who I married," Tonks said insistently. "And so do I."

Remus took a deep breath and chewed his lip. Tonks took his other hand and squeezed.

"I signed up for this," she reminded him softly. "You don't have to be so skittish, as if any little thing is going to scare me off. I knew what I was getting into, Remus, and I like it. I'd skip any number of fences to run away with you."

Remus looked at her, shaking his hand.

"I knew I wouldn't be able to take you to most restaurants, most shows, most events," Remus said. "I didn't expect things to get much tighter than that."

"It's fine. Dating's a hassle," Dora shrugged. "Let's get that old VCR working and run down to the library to borrow some tapes, next time. We can get takeaway if we're really feeling posh."

"That's where we are," Remus noted. "Going to a family dinner is a date because our options are so limited. And we've been married three months."

"Yes, and like I told you: next time, let's do something that doesn't require me showering and shaving my legs," Dora said. She squeezed his hands again and took a step closer to kiss his chin and rest her head against his chest. "It'll be fine."

Remus' arms closed around her, but clumsily—so she could tell he was still upset.

"Remus?" she said softly.

"Sorry," he said. "I'm in my head."

"I can see that."

"I suppose it's not just the fact that we were interrupted, » Remus said. "It's also that it was Harry's coming of age party, out of all things. I'm the… the last of us around, who could have been there as he grew up, but I couldn't stay."

"Right," she said.

"I know you'll tease me for being old, but I remember the day that he was born," Remus said. "That was the first baby any of us had ever dealt with."

"Was he a cute baby or a potato baby?"

"Definitely a potato—but cute, because we knew who he was, and we'd been excited to meet him."

"That's adorable," she said.

"It was exciting," Remus said. He smiled fondly at the memory.

"It could be exciting again," Dora proposed.

With her head against his chest, she could hear his heartbeat. She could feel hers in her throat as she prepared to spit her words out, and though she couldn't feel the second heartbeat beating away inside of her, she knew that it was there by now. And she wondered if maybe a piece of good news like the one the Healers had confirmed only three days ago could salvage this night…

"What do you mean?" Remus asked.

Dora stepped back, keeping his hands on her hips.

"I'm going to need you not to panic."

"Why, what's happened?"

"It's not so much happened as happening," Dora said.

"That makes everything easier to panic about. Are you okay?"

"I'm more than okay," she said. "And I promise I will continue to be okay, and you will be okay, and everything will be okay even if we did not explicitly discuss or plan this. Not yet, anyways. And I'm happy about this. I'm happy about all of this. I'm really going to need you to get that into your thick skull Remus Lupin. Understood?"

"Understood," he said suspiciously. "What's going on?"

"I'm pregnant," she said.

And by the way that his face fell, she knew that this had not been the right time to tell him after all.

He recovered well.

"Wow," he said softly, looking genuinely lost. "Umm, wow, yes. And you said you were…"

"Okay," she confirmed. She ran her hands up his arms. "I'm okay, I'm feeling… I'm feeling fine. You're on the green side, so maybe I should be asking you…"

"No," he said. "No, don't worry about me."

He was quiet for a second.

"Remus?" she checked in again.

He kissed her, quite possibly to shut her up, and her arms slithered to their familiar place, looped around his neck.

"Remus?" she asked, this time in his ear. "Remus, I need you to talk to me."

"Dora, we can't even be seen together in public," he said quietly. "How are we going to… to raise a child, to make this world decent for it, to make this world safe…"

"It doesn't matter," she said. "We just will. We'll find a way, we'll think of something, we'll just do it."

"I'm not sure that's how it works," Remus said. "I'm not sure that…"

"Well I am," she said fiercely, biting down on her lip. Emotions bubbled in her chest. "Are you going to be happy about this?"

He kissed her again, which wasn't an answer, but she let herself go soft in his arms because it was just better and easier and simpler than admitting that this night really had turned into the disaster he'd feared.

Remus could barely meet her eyes.

"I won't stay if you don't want me to, but I did have to apologize," Remus said, looking at the floor.

She leaned against the flat's doorway. He'd been gone 28 hours. Long enough for her to decide a thousand times to put to work those long-term tracking skills she was so reknown for in the Auror department, and to decide a thousand more times to stay put and wait. Give him time. Worth noting was also that in this day and age, 28 hours was enough time for him to get murdered about a thousand times too. That she didn't bring up.

"Where were you?" she asked softly.

"Like I told you," he said. "I went to find Harry."

"And?"

"I found him. He's okay. He's with Ron and Hermione, like we thought he'd be."

Dora swallowed.

"It took you awhile," she pointed out.

He couldn't look up.

"I offered to stay with him," Remus said. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked up—finally meeting her eyes. "I offered to stay with Harry and do what I could to protect him, help him, and facilitate whatever this plan Dumbledore had given him was."

Dora bit her lip.

"I see."

"He said no," Remus said. "He called me a coward, and he was right to do it. I was angry, it took me some time to… to understand what he meant. Of course he was right. But I… I honestly believed that the best thing I could do for this child would be to leave it. To let it grow up without my shadow anywhere near it. And I thought that if I could at least help make this world a better place for them to grow up in, well that was just… the most generous and kindest thing to do."

"And what if you died?" Dora snapped. "What if you died doing this and we just never heard from you again?"

Remus didn't answer.

"Merlin's Beard," she said. "Do you really think that that would be better for a kid? To grow up orphaned than with you around?"

He didn't answer again, which was answer enough.

"Love is so much easier than you realise," she said, shaking her head. "It just happens, Remus. It happens, and you don't need to earn it every minute of every day. But sometimes you do have to just take it."

She ran a hand through her hair. "Thinking the best thing you could do was leave…"

"Please," he said. "I have no right to ask you this, or anything really, but please tell them that if they ask about me."

"I'm not telling them anything, tell them yourself," Dora said. He looked at her, lost and confused. "You absolute lunatic... I'm not throwing you out."

He exhaled, and one of his hands grabbed his hair. With the other he reached for her, and buried his face in her shoulder.

Remus was humming, as he puttered around the kitchen fixing breakfast. The baby was particularly active, and Dora let him know.

"He likes your singing," she said. He grinned, and rolled his eyes. "No, I'm serious, love. He does this all the time."

"It's true," Mum chimed in from where she sat. They'd been having her over every Sunday ever since Dad had gone into hiding, to keep her out and about, and out of the Ministry's suspicion. "The baby will be able to hear music and voices and pick favourites by now…"

"Favourites, hmm?" Remus said, turning back to her with a smile. He put the man he'd been frying onions in down and crossed the kitchen quickly to kiss the top of her head and gently rest a hand over the swelling baby bump.

"Don't get cocky about it," Dora teased.

"Nothing to get cocky about, I'm just his favourite," Remus said back with a smile, making his way back to the stove. The ease with which he said it and the smile and height with which he held himself…

Well, Dora told herself that maybe he finally was getting it.

She kissed his cheek in the middle of breakfast.

"What?" he asked.

"You're just my favourite," she said.

"Okay," he smiled back.