This felt kind of rushed, I'll admit that, but it was publishable. For the John Green Appreciation Competition on HPFC.
"Nymphadora, come out."
She hides in her room, curled up with the covers pulled over herself and tears smearing her face. It embarrasses her to no end; after all, she's Tonks, she's strong and smart and she shouldn't be reduced to this just because—no. She can't even think the thought.
Her mother's voice is stern and demanding, but also tinged with pity. Tonks hates it, but she supposes she deserves it. God, she's pathetic.
"Nymphadora!" Andromeda snaps when there's no response. "I am serious. You're about to have a baby and this depression isn't doing it or you any good. It's been two days since you've eaten anything and there are people who need you!"
A wail rises in her daughter's throat, choking itself on the way out. Her fingers shake slightly as she reaches for the box of tissues and pulls the last one out, rubbing her face so vigorously she rips it apart.
Grief doesn't make you any less clumsy, apparently.
"Nymphadora Tonks!"
She knows her mother well enough that uncertainty laces her thoughts behind that door, that she thinks maybe her daughter needs more time to grieve and she's pushing her too hard (she isn't sure herself, actually). Yet there's nothing but anger in her voice.
Then she sees the water pooling on the floor.
Tonks has been glued to the bed for the past two days, although right now she's leaning a little off the edge. She huddles in her blankets, eyes wide with fear, at the water. She knows what it means, and even though the baby won't appear for hours, she starts screaming.
Andromeda whips out her wand and yanks the door open with a word.
When he comes later, he looks more like her than his father.
Good. She doesn't need any reminders that Remus is dead.
Tonks does something no mother should do in the first hour—she lets the baby go. She watches Andromeda cradle the baby, careful as can be, watching her daughter with tender eyes. She knows that this is a big event for her mother, that she's a grandmother now. Tonks feels a stirring of understanding in her, but it's quickly buried beneath more sorrow, more guilt, more wasn't I good enough for you?
When she closes her eyelids, the only thing she'll ever see is Remus' face when he says good-bye.
Pain still stings her lightly as her mother fusses over her and the baby, getting cloths and casting spells and such. Really, Tonks is fine—pain stings her lightly at the moment, and it wasn't much worse when giving birth. She knows it should have been horrible, but her eyes were squeezed shut the entire time and she was still screaming and she really couldn't process anything at all.
Or maybe the physical pain just got lost trying to cut through the emotional pain.
"Teddy."
The word comes out like a rather tentative offer, startling her into speaking. "What do you mean, 'Teddy?'"
"That's what you could name your baby," says Andromeda, stroking the barely visible fuzz on his head. There's an odd, wrong-but-right light in her eyes, and her daughter knows she misses her husband. Tonks misses him, too, but he's probably safe. He's not really a priority, a harsh truth next to Remus' death. Caught by Death Eaters.
She wonders how painful it was, if they tortured him or just flung a quick Killing Curse and that was all.
No. Don't think about him.
"That's a great name," she says. Why not? It's certainly not the type of name a child is bullied for, except for maybe teddy bear. Though that's hardly something to make fun of—teddy bears are delightful things. Other than that, she isn't too worried over his name. It's no Nymphadora.
Caring returns to her a few hours later, when the pain dulls into something that isn't total apathy. Progress, she thinks drily as she offers to hold Teddy. He's sucking on a plastic bottle with milk inside—either a baby formula or a baby equation. Something like that. Tonks hadn't really paid much attention to the specific details that came with having a child.
"You're a Metamorphmagus, aren't you, little baby?" she coos, trying to sound like a mother. To be honest, Remus or no Remus (no, don't think his name), she hadn't ever been ready to be a mother, and the coo sounds more like the shrills of a young girl. Admittedly, the fact she hasn't dropped Teddy on his head already is more than she could have ever hoped for.
Teddy gurgles in response as his hair changes to neon green. The color reminds her of glowing city lights and rather unsettling eyes.
Andromeda is baking cookies, a familiar gesture that used to make both of them relieved no Tonks would be burning up the house that day and one that mostly makes her remember him eating them the many times he'd stayed at her house. She pushes it back. Her mother can't be expected to remember every little thing that she associates with him. She tries to coo again. "Want a cookie? Momma will give you one once you can chew."
Just then, there's a knock on the door.
For a moment, fear pierces her. What if it's a Death Eater? What if she gets the same ending as him? What if—
She locks the thought inside a chest and chucks it out the window. Well, technically, the window is closed and the metaphorical trunk would shatter the glass, but she ignores that as she reminds herself it's unlikely Death Eaters would knock on the door. She can hold her own; her parents did, and now she will. Even if she was falling to pieces hours ago and still might be doing so right now. She gets up, setting the baby on the table, and opens the door.
A young, vaguely familiar-looking man, maybe in his twenties, stands there. He rushes in immediately, asking, "Is this the Tonks residence? Where's Andromeda?"
He stands there in the dining room as her mother comes out, a scolding readied for Tonks that you don't just put babies on tables unattended. Tonks later learns that he's just a messenger, that he isn't a threat at all. The man explains in a hurry that a battle is coming—Hogwarts is under attack and they need all the help they can get—
"I'll go."
The words are out of her mouth before she knows what she's doing, but once she hears them, she can't bring herself to think it's crazy. The man just said that they need help, and she certainly qualifies as help, even if she conceived a baby hours ago. She's an Auror, a witch, and she's already helped through this war. Tonks plans to stay consistent.
Andromeda knows better to protest, but her eyes are fixed on Tonks' face. She opens her mouth, then closes it, but her daughter's barely waiting for her reaction because damn it, she's going to pull herself together now. She pulls on new robes, stuffs her wand into her waistband, and turns around to face the oddly silent man. "So. Let's go."
"Oh!" he replies, distracted. His eyes are fixated on the baby as he gives her directions, saying he needs to talk to her mother in private, and she's so busy telling herself that yes, she's ready, she doesn't bother interrogating him on what this is about. She kisses Andromeda's cheek and (chokes out) says a good-bye and tosses in I love you, something Remus hadn't told her when he left.
As soon as Tonks leaves, the man starts talking. He's saying something about how they would have delivered this message earlier, something about broken radios and Death Eaters and getting lost, and the excuses pour out of his mouth like they're rehearsed but now he's slipping up. The messenger has something to hide, but Andromeda doesn't push it. He'll spit it out in his own time.
He spits it out too soon.
"Mrs. Tonks, your husband is dead."
Tonks comes home triumphant, scrapes and bruises decorating her body but a smile on her face that quickly melts away.
The Tonks family can see fireworks exploding in the sky as other wizarding families celebrate their victory, but tonight there will be no celebrations in their household.
"People are supposed to care. It's good that people mean something to you, that you miss people when they're gone."
This is what the nurse tells the family as Teddy bawls into his mother's lap. All three of them want to leave, flinching slightly at the too-gentle tone of the woman's voice. She's newly employed at the hospital and doesn't know squat.
"So," Tonks says briskly. It actually sounds real, even though she's thinking she couldn't care less about how good it is for her heart to be tearing itself apart every day. "Do we have post-traumatic stress disorder or anything like that?" The words rattle off her tongue in a steady rhythm, even though she wants to call it PTSD because the name's too long otherwise. She's no good with abbreviations and would just pronounce it like pit seed instead, though.
"Nope. You hardly came away unscathed, though." Pity is in her gaze. She's clearly never had to face the war like the Tonks family had to.
Tonks nods and then manages a (slightly broken) smile. "Is the doctor ready to check up on Teddy now?" She's actually grown quite fond of her son, even though the prospect of diapers and shopping and all that is still kind of terrifying. When it comes to family, yes, maybe the nurse is right. She doesn't plan to miss anyone, though; the one good thing is that the war is over and her baby won't die anytime soon.
"Oh, yes." The nurse picks up Teddy and squints. "I've seen Mr. Lupin in newspaper photos. Your son resembles him quite a bit."
Tonks nods again, a little too quickly, and crosses her fingers that Teddy will lose Remus' face soon. He had seen a photo of him on the fireplace mantle when leaving for the hospital and must have changed himself to look like that.
When she gets home, she's losing that photo to the attic.
People come to visit after the war—Harry, Hermione, all the rest. Tonks certainly doesn't mind the company as they ooh and aah over little Teddy, then start bringing their own babies. She finds Victoire Weasley, Fleur and Bill's child, particularly interesting since she's nearly Teddy's age. Tonks isn't quite ready to go out into public for the first few months, face the fame she just might end up with (even though it's dwarfed by Harry's), so for that time in particular, Victoire and Teddy. . .don't quite play, but attempt to crawl and gurgle at each other.
Andromeda keeps every single photo of Ted up, unlike her daughter, who locks away every photo of Remus that she can. She knows that when Teddy grows up, he's probably going to come to her with questions about his father and why everyone else has one, but she's delaying for now. Anyway, she hardly needs a photo to remember what he looks like; every detail is engraved into her eyelids. They're a little blurred, a little faded, as time goes on, but they're there.
Maybe she holds onto them. Just a little bit.
After all, people are supposed to care. She'll never forget Remus or Ted entirely.
For the next decade and a half, Teddy is the apple of her eye. He's a calm, intelligent child like Remus, with the friendliness from his mother that she never one hundred percent got back. They live with Andromeda, even if the house has so many memories the air strangles her sometimes, and she bakes cookies and dusts photos off. Ted is always smiling out from them. Victoire keeps coming over and his mother decides to torment him on purpose with you're too young to have a girlfriend remarks.
On his fifteenth birthday, she gives him the fireplace mantle picture of Remus and says, "This is your father."
Teddy only knows vague inklings of him, saw blurry black-and-white pictures in practically ancient newspaper clippings. He had never pushed Tonks on the subject, but he stares at the photo like it's the most beautiful thing to ever grace this earth. It probably is.
As he observes the photo, Tonks leans back into her chair and closes her eyes.
Remus is there, as always, barely faded. He tells her what he hadn't so many years before.