A New Kind of Love
Remus lay on the sofa and looked down at his son Teddy, a warm bundle asleep on his chest, tiny hand curled tightly around one his shirt buttons.
Six months ago, he thought, I might have said I knew everything there was to know about love. I have loved parents, friends, mentors, and students. I have known the pain of losing them. I have loved a woman. I have feared love, twisted love, rejected love, and embraced love. And sometimes I've wondered if I've examined the subject more intensively than anyone else on the planet. But this--
His eyes traced a swirl of pale hair on small scalp. It was an indescribable feeling, really. A sudden tightening around his heart that left him breathless. A fierce, even overwhelming, surge of protectiveness. A shiver along his spine. In its intensity, it felt more like terror than like love. And yet it was love. A new kind of love. He closed his eyes, feeling an unexpected prickle of tears. If something ever happened to him, how could I-- how does anyone live with that?
How does anyone live with that? The shift in perspective came so suddenly, he felt almost dizzy. Old memories, but illuminated by a spotlight shining from a different angle. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I am-- I was-- my parents' son. This insight, if something so self-evident could be called insight, grew in his mind, tickling long-forgotten memories. They felt this way for me.
If something ever happened to Teddy... He held this thought up to the spotlight and examined it. For my parents, something did happen. He tried to imagine the two of them, as they were then, more than 30 years ago. Two people far younger than he was now. How had they coped, afterwards? How had they found a way to live with what had happened to their child? To me. I wish I could talk to them now.
He had always divided his memories of his mother into two neat compartments: Before and After. Before, a jumble of images held in a small compartment: Mummy's soft lap. Stories. Hugs. Chocolate biscuits. After, a bigger compartment: Her angry outbursts, never anticipated and impossible to avoid. The tears and apologies that followed. Stacks of books. She seemed always to be reading, searching for a cure. The endless potions, salves, and therapies. Much later, the useless amulets and charms, pressed upon him during his increasingly rare visits. Items surely bought only by the truly desperate, by those who clung to hope against all odds. As a grown man and in a moment of rare candor, he had once told his father that he felt as if, in her eyes, he was an object to be fixed first, and then cherished. But he had never been fixed. And his father had cried. His father, who had known his mother as he never could, had sat with tears running down his cheeks and said nothing.
The air moved, carrying the scent of lavender. He opened his eyes.
"I can't believe it, Remus. You actually got him to sleep. A man full of unexpected talents." Tonks, clad in bathrobe and a towel turban, knelt beside him and kissed his nose. "Thanks. I really needed that shower." She looked into his eyes. "Thinking about something?"
He smiled. "How can you tell?"
"Can't, but you always are. Anything interesting?"
"Just remembering how much my mother loved me."