Disclaimer: As I have said before, I don't own Harry Potter, but I don't want to. It's Remus Lupin I can't wait to get my teeth into.
A/N: So you don't need to have read Gospel but it might help. Basically, just before his death, Remus writes his son a series of letters to be opened on his thirteenth birthday. This is Requiem fic-verse. You don't need to read that. Just know it's A/U.
It was cold and dark. The power had blown again and Emma sighed, hating being the only underage witch in the house. Scratch that, the only underage person in the house. Her brother, having just turned seventeen, was Apparating everywhere, to and from his bedroom mostly - just around the house. As long as he didn't do it around their father, Teddy got away with it without being told to buck up his ideas and stop being a lazy git.
Still, as big brothers went, he wasn't so bad, she supposed. Poor Albus had James Potter to handle. It could be a lot worse.
Emma cursed irritably and unable to see where the hatch was in the darkness, she decided to sit down and wait for her father to figure out that the CD player wasn't working. Knowing his constant need for music, she wouldn't be waiting long.
But why did everything had to Muggle made? What was the obsession? Muggle artefacts were temperamental and while living forty yards from a glorious beach had its obvious advantages, the winter Arctic storms wrecked havoc with the electricity.
"For God's sake," she hissed, sitting on a box and waiting impatiently for someone to realise she was missing from her usual haunts. Her mother ought to bloody well start looking for her since she had sent her up there for fairy lights. Emma slammed her hands onto her knees and shrieked as the cardboard collapsed beneath her. She felt around her and heard the distinct crinkling of parchment. She tried to sit up and fell back onto it.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."
Pop!
"I don't know whether to thank God or pretend I'm dead. Who is it?"
Teddy laughed. "It's me. What the hell are you doing? Lumos." Seeing his spunky little sister writhing round in a pile of a least twenty envelopes made him have to fight to stand as he clutched his side.
"Don't just stand there and laugh, idiot."
Teddy offered her a hand which she gratefully accepted and heaved her to her feet. "Mum wondered what had happened to you."
"The lights have gone again."
Teddy rolled his eyes. "Well, I don't know how to fix them. You'll have to wait until Dad gets back." His wand lit the space where she had been lying and he read Teddy Remus Lupin: read at your own risk in a small, spiky hand that he recognised easily as the same that wrote 100%. Must Do Better! on his Charms mock.
"Look." He nudged Emma and pointed to the pile of letters all addressed to him with various captions under his name, spread across the floor, rumpled by his sister's fall. "They're written for me."
Emma frowned. "That's Dad's writing." Teddy rolled his eyes. "I mean, dipshit, why would he be writing to you? You live together. If he wanted you to read them, why didn't he give them to you?"
Teddy ignored her and leant down, handing over his wand. "Don't try anything." He flicked through the envelopes, pulling out the first one he had seen. "Read at your own risk," he repeated. "Well, that means I should read it then I suppose. The best things are to be done at your own risk, after all." He ripped open the envelope and frowned.
"What's he saying?" Emma asked, kneeling beside him, and ducking under his arm so she could see. "Vitamin A? What the f-?"
"Emma!"
Emma leapt to her feet, knocking her brother sideways. "Dad!"
"What are you doing?" He flicked his wand at the light bulb and it flickered into life. Downstairs, his Complete Punk started to blare.
Body screaming fucking bloody mess
And the sounds of her mother's outrage drifted up three floors. "REMUS! WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT THAT GOD AWFUL SONG?"
Lupin smiled sheepishly. "You were supposed to be five minutes. You've been fifteen."
Emma sighed. "The light went off. I shut the door and-"
"Don't ever do that!"
"Yes, Dad, I know. So I sat down for a bit and I fell because the box collapsed and then Ted came and…yeah…" She glanced briefly at the lit wand in her hand. "And he did that. This is his wand. I had nothing to do with it. I haven't done any underage stuff."
Lupin nodded. "I know. I gathered." His face paled. "Ted, can you put that down please?"
The look in Teddy's eyes stirred memories of the night four years ago when he had discovered his father's abandonment and stormed out. Still, he had matured now. He hoped it was a bright letter and not one of his depressive ramblings about girls and Lycanthropy and Potions. Or, please God no, the letter about girls or puberty or…he was blushing even remembering them. He didn't think he was going to be around to witness his son's expressions.
"Why didn't you write to me then?"
He glanced back at his daughter and said softly. "I didn't have you to worry about in the middle of a war, my darling. Why don't you take those lights down to your Mum. She's getting pretty stressed."
Emma sighed in frustration, picking up the lights and storming across the attic with a murmur of, "Never tells me anything."
"And can you nip into my office and turn that off? Thanks, Emmy."
She left the door open and Lupin made his way towards his son, reading over his shoulder.
"Teddy, please understand-"
"Why didn't you give them to me anyway?"
Lupin met his eyes, staring into them; wide and confused, bright silver and too much like Sirius' had been to bear. He smiled softly. "I don't know," he rasped. "I meant to. For your thirteenth. Like a present; but then I couldn't bring myself to so I said for your fourteenth but you got too old to need them."
Teddy's eyes dropped back to the letter. "I don't see an age limit on telling me about your detentions and your friends."
"Ted, they're written for a thirteen year old but like you're a friend not a son. I thought you'd have a father figure and you wouldn't want me treating you like he did. But I'm your Dad, Ted, and that makes some of these awkward."
Teddy frowned and shifted the letters into a pile. "Awkward? What do you mean awkward?"
"Awkward like explaining that I had drunken sex on a sofa with my best friend's ex-fiancée. That's awkward, wouldn't you say?"
Teddy's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. "Can I read them?"
Lupin sighed. "Ted, one of them is about being a punk, one is about choosing your friends and one is about what happens downstairs and I was too embarrassed to write the word erection. I really don't want you to read them." He grinned this time. "Ted, you don't need them."
"I know I don't, but can I?"
Lupin rolled his eyes. "If you absolutely must."
"Dad?" Teddy hovered in the doorway, watching his father write. "More letters?"
Lupin glanced up and smiled warmly before returning to his parchment. "Not for you and not a sexual reference in sight."
Teddy laughed. "Thank God for that." He bit his lip. "Dad, I've been reading some of the stuff about me…as, you know…as a baby."
Lupin smiled and nodded. "I don't tell you enough."
"Dad, you tell me at least once a day." He stood beside his father, leaning on the chair. "I love you too, even if you are hopeless with girls." He grinned and nudged his father.
"And cats."
"And Potions."
Lupin laughed. "Indeed. Next?"
Teddy frowned, confused. Emma tapped the door, dressed in her pyjamas and wearing her auburn hair in plaits. The ballsy façade was gone. She smiled sheepishly at Teddy who winked back.
"I'll go."
"Ted?"
Teddy swung round, already half way out the door. "Yeah?"
"Sorry for hoarding them."
"And for being morbid?"
Lupin laughed bitterly. "You don't know how close you came to needing them, mate." He flicked the door shut behind his son. "You look about eight."
Emma smiled and moved behind her father, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and resting her chin on the top of his head. "I found the ones you wrote me."
"When?"
"When you used to leave me behind when you went to Hogwarts."
Lupin took her hand and pulled her round to face him, pulling her down onto his lap and resting his head in the crook of her shoulder. "Just because I was convinced I was going to die when Ted was six weeks old, doesn't mean I think any less of you."
Emma sighed. "I'm just-"
"-at that age." He kissed her shoulder. "I love you, Emma."
"Why?" she asked quietly. "I'm not like Ted. I'm just…unremarkable."
He scoffed. "You? Unremarkable? Yes, and I'm a Death Eater." He smiled at her, his eyes twinkling. "Why don't you think I share anything with you?"
"Well, you put me down in Charms all the time and you wouldn't let me have the map and James gets a map and an invisibility cloak, and Teddy gets an owl and you let him keep Artemis but I wasn't allowed a hamster, and I don't and…people notice him and not me." She stared at her feet. "I sound like such a brat, don't I?"
Lupin softened. "Not at all. What makes you think I put you down?"
"You never tell me I do well. You always nitpick and then when Ellie messes up you tell her she's fantastic."
Lupin nodded. "Duly noted. The map's a strictly boys affair, Em, and Ted got an owl because he was made Prefect, not because I wanted to get at you. You can't have a hamster, Art would kill it and I don't think that's fair."
Emma rolled her eyes. "I was five, Dad. I don't want one anymore."
Lupin ignored her. "And as for people not noticing you. Two words. James Potter." He leant up and kissed her cheek. "And remember when you melted a cauldron? People certainly noticed you then."
Emma grinned. "Yeah, Horace still leaps out of my way when I pass him."
Lupin frowned. "That's Professor Slughorn, Em."
She rolled her eyes but at least she was smiling. "And since Prefect is out of the question. Will I get an owl if I get Captain?"
Lupin shifted her. "We'll see. It's late. You should be in bed, my girl."
He waited for his kiss goodnight and for the sounds of her bedroom door closing before he headed into the living room, poured himself a whiskey, collapsed onto the sofa beside his wife and promptly changed his mind.
"What?"
Lupin grinned. "Let's just go to bed. I'm on a roll."