An: A combination of fanart of Teddy Lupin, Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven and a late night all contributed to this fic. Enjoy.
Just Like Your Mother
Andromeda stared at the baby in her arms, the shock still numbing her soul. She'd once held Nymphadora like this and marvelled at the ever changing colour of her hair. Now it was all she could do to notice that her grandson's hair had turned grass green.
Of course, when her daughter had been born, they'd been living in a tiny flat, struggling to find anything in the centre of London that they could afford. The house she stood in now had a garden, even a bay window. And the baby she cradled wasn't her own, but her daughter's.
She'd never believed her daughter to be grown up, not really. Not even when she joined the Ministry, just like Sirius had. Andromeda had always thought of her as the seven year old, running around in her grandparents' back yard, screaming with laughter as her father chased her with a hose pipe. Definitely not as a woman old enough to fall in love, to marry, to give birth. But she was. Or had been. Old enough to fight against evil, old enough to fall in love with an unsuitable man, old enough to die and leave behind a helpless baby.
Andromeda hadn't approved of Remus Lupin, and had been thankful when he'd told Nymphadora that he was too old, too wrong for her. Andromeda had known Remus since he was a first year, she'd heard the tales of what he and his friends got up to – thanks to Sirius writing to her – and while he'd grown up into a sensible young man, the fact of the matter was that he was so much older than her daughter, so much more weary. Andromeda had never wanted a hard life for her daughter. She wanted her to have a life full of sunshine and laughter and joy, and she didn't think that Remus, with all the pain he carried with him, would give her that. How wrong she was. When Remus gave into her daughter, Nymphadora was as happy as Andromeda ever remembered seeing her. And because of that, she had to accept Remus. Had to allow him to make her daughter happy.
But now they were both gone. Like Ted. She hadn't wanted Ted to run, though she knew it made sense. And then when she'd heard of his death, she'd cried for days. She'd scared her daughter; just as Andromeda had had to realise her daughter was a grown woman, Nymphadora had had to realise her mother was human too. First Ted, then her daughter, and finally Remus had made up Andromeda's entire family. Estranged from her sisters, separated by death from both her cousins, this little family, made up of the oddments of society had kept her safe and secure. And now all that was left was the baby in her arms.
As he slept on, blissfully unaware of his parent's death, his hair faded from green to mousy brown before turning to shocking pink. He would never know how much like his mother he looked.