The door to their room was slightly ajar, letting a single bar of warm light from the hallway rest on their bed. He stepped softly and stood by the door for a few moments, watching the light bend as her form under the blankets rose and fell. This was an image he'd become accustomed to over the last few months: his wife, curled up in a mess a sheets, her stomach much too round for her small frame, breathing evenly with a peaceful expression on her face. It looked good on her, motherhood. She was young, too young, he'd always thought, but the idea and the picture fit her perfectly.
He pushed the door as lightly as he could and the bar of light grew to reveal her face, much rounder than before, like her stomach. Her hair was the same mousy brown as his and had been this way for months. She looked tired, as he always did, but not the same kind of tired. Hers was not the exhaustion of leaving early each morning to research and negotiate and battle with wands when it came to that, and returning late each night to a sleeping house. No, her features were weathered in a different way. Hers was the look that came with never escaping the confines of a home too small for her adventurous spirit, of wanting to be out there too but having to hide. It was important now more than ever that she hide. Her instinct, of course, was to fight. But it was too risky now that there were two lives to be lost. He wouldn't allow it.
She fought him at first. But the calm negotiating tone soon became one of anger, frustration, and eventually of defeat, of strained words and a tear-stained face. But she was safe. She was with her mother. He told her that his overprotection was not just for him. Her mother had already lost her husband to this retched regime; how could he let her lose her only daughter and unborn grandson as well?
As he crept into the room a floorboard creaked beneath him and he stopped, suddenly, to silence the air again so as not to wake her. But the deed had already been done and she raised her head just the slightest bit. He watched as her sleepy brown eyes blinked open and her lips spread into the tiniest, most delicate smile as she spotted him above her. She began to speak, but he stopped her, reaching a hand to her head and stroking her hair.
"Shh," he sank to his knees on the wood floor and let his hand travel down her side to the roundness of his son. "Hello," he whispered so his wife could hardly hear and closed his eyes, breathing in thoughts of the beautiful baby boy.
"Remus," he looked back to her face and let her go on this time. She smiled, "let's call him Ted."