A/N: Hello, everyone! Just a little heads up for all my followers of Bubble-gum Pink Moon and By My Side, I'm still working on those, I'm just having a hard time focusing on one thing to do, but the next chapter should be up soon! Thanks for all the messages and the support. In the meantime, enjoy this little one-shot.
The Art Of Interruptions
'Are you sure about that?' Remus asked arching an eyebrow.
'We'll give it a try, Rem. See how it goes,' Tonks replying, shrugging. Why he was so adamant about being the sole storyteller for their son, she did not know.
'You know he's just turned two. What if he gets scared?'
'Oh, wow, Remus! I didn't know our son was this young, honestly. I thought we had a teenager in our hands already.' She folded her arms over her chest and shot him a knowing look. He was being the overprotective father again. Typical. 'We'll go with the flow. How hard can it be?' And she strode towards the baby's room, with her husband following her closely.
'You don't know the tale … and your faces can be pretty realistic.'
'I'm not gonna turn into some psychopath villain who wants to eat children or something, Remus! Good Merlin! And even if I did, he'd probably not know.'
Blimey, but how good can someone look when they are almost angry at you? It did seem fair that his wife looked so beautiful. Remus couldn't help the small smile.
'I don't know about some psychopath villain, but there's an evil mermaid that wants to steal a young woman's voice so she can have the prince for herself, but then she grows huge in the end and the prince stabs her with his broken ship —'
Dora stopped mid-way through taking Teddy from the cot to bring him to her arms, frowning heavily at her husband.
'Wa-wa-wait. What?! '
A light chuckle escaped his lips and Remus pocketed his hand, bringing the other one to his mouth, admiring her confusion.
'It's not as bad as it sounds,' he assured her.
'Sure … but that's still what happens?'
'Well, yes,' he shrugged, 'I'm not lying to get you to stop or anything. I quite like your faces, you know that.'
'And it's a fairy tale for children?'
In the meantime, Teddy had become impatient with his parents arguments over whether they should go on with telling him the story while Tonks impersonated the characters in a whole new way. He gave a few soft whimpers and raised both his arms, hoping that they would finally get him out of the cot.
'Come on now, love,' Remus started taking the boy in his arms and reaching for the book on the bedside table. 'You don't think I'd choose something to scare him right before bedtime, do you?' he reasoned then as if his son could understand him, he added in a whisper, 'Not when we're finally sleeping through the night, huh?'
'Mummy!' Teddy leant towards her undoubtedly ready for his last feed before he finally slept.
Tonks snorted, smiling amused at him.
'Of course not.' With a little bit of luck, her son would be asleep before the stabbing bit. Though if Remus had something else in mind other than sleeping, she wasn't sure. She took her seat on the armchair, placing Teddy on her lap while she readied herself for the feed and offered her breast to him when Remus finally opened the book. He scanned through the story then placed it back on the bedside table.
'He's tired, I'll sum it up,' he explained then cleared his throat. Teddy's eyes were focused on him rather than on his mother as it was the usual while he fed. 'Once upon a time there was a mermaid, she lived in the deep ocean and liked to — No, no, she had red hair,' he said as Dora morphed to a blonde mermaid.
'How was I supposed to know?' She rolled her eyes and the following second changed her hair to red.
'She liked to watch the ships that passed by her father's kingdom and on that day there was a storm. The mermaid saw a prince trying to save his ship. He was so handsome that she fell in love with him from afar.'
'Are you sure we want to tell him a story about a woman who falls in love with a prince just because he's handsome?' asked Tonks, who was now wearing the prince's features.
'Well, he was brave too,' Remus explained, but wondered if Dora was going to try to find logic behind each story he tried to tell their son while Teddy looked from one of his parents to the other.
'Go with brave then.'
'He was so brave that she fell in love with him from afar, but the prince was thrown out of the ship. The storm had made the sea so agitated that he passed out and was about to drown, but the mermaid couldn't bear to watch him die right before her eyes and saved him. She couldn't let him know it was she who saved him, however because her father was the sea king and didn't want them interfering in the humans' lives. She brought him to the beach, sang to him until he woke up and left —'
'… Why did you stop?'
'Um, you look rather cute pretending to sing,' he admitted.
'Teddy thinks it's boring though,' Tonks added, glancing downwards to their asleep son and slowly walked to the cot, placing him in there carefully so not to wake him up.
'Oh, no,' Remus whispered, shaking his head and helping her tuck their son in, 'he quite liked the mermaid face. It's amusing how he looks at you morphing. I'm pretty sure his roots turned red when you changed your hair.'
Dora let out a small chuckle and held his hand as they walked out of the room.
'If your Muggle tales put him to sleep so quickly, we should start telling them to Teddy every night.'
'Perhaps I should tell them to you before we go to him, so there are fewer interruptions.'
'How do you propose to keep my attention while you're telling me children fairy tales?'
'Well,' Remus got her hand and put it behind his neck, wrapping his around her waist and smirking, 'something tells me you'll be quite interested while I show you what the prince did to the mermaid after their wedding.'
His smirk didn't last long though, her lips soon crashed upon his.
