Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns Harry Potter. She also owns other things, like a house. But that's not quite as important.
Old and Broken Young and Whole
The tragedy in our lives began when I was ten. She was not yet one.
Greyback ravaged me. I don't really remember it. You would think such a traumatic event would permanently imprint itself upon one's memory, but even when I try all I can bring to mind is the horrible, searing pain and the savage look in Greyback's eyes as he advanced on me... And then nothing else until days later, waking up in the hospital, my mother sitting beside me, grasping my hand like she was drowning, and my usually stony-faced faced father sitting on the end of my bed, his head in his hands.
"I'm thirsty," I rasped. My mother gave out a cry and hugged me so tightly even thinking about it hurts my ribs. My father stood up from the end of the hospital bed, and then collapsed onto his knees on the floor and dissolved into tears.
As for Tonks, she was born.
My mother often told me the story of my birth when I was younger- it was my favorite story.
Mum and Da were in Diagon Alley, shopping for furnishing for my room when my mother's water broke. Da couldn't get her to the hospital by himself, so the nearby and helpful Arthur Weasly, who'd gone through the same thing with his own first child just days previous, helped Floo my mother to the hospital. My mother used to joke that I was almost born in a nowhere-place, along the Floo network. When my mother, my father, and Mr. Weasly arrived at their destination, they were rushed into the wrong room and ended up an already occupied hospital room- it belonged to a boy who'd just be attacked by a werewolf: the boy who I would one day know as the man Remus Lupin. Mum gave birth to me right there on the floor of the long-term ward-Mungo's having not been built until two years later. The first person to hold me was Mum, then Da.
The third person to hold me was Remus Lupin.
When I held Nymphadora Tonks in the long-term ward, looked into her small eyes- they were blue-grey, the only part of her face she would never change, I felt our lives were intertwined. As her small, pale fingers curled around my own, I knew our lives did the same.
But then she was whisked away to a place with her family, and I was left alone with my own, breaking family.
"You were that cute once, Remy," Mother hugged me. "You're even cuter now."
She never called me Remy ever again.
After I was swept from the long-term ward, Mr. Weasly left. A few hours later, Mum, Da, and I left the hospital, too. No one from Mum's family had come to visit her.
Mum was not surprised, but after weighing her options she chose to seek out her favorite cousin, Sirius.
At this point, my mother always stopped, but many years later Sirius would fill me into the details. When my mother and father entered the household of my great-aunt, she at them, and hexed them and cursed them and they were forced to flee home. My mother and father continued to sever contact with Mum's family, but for Sirius. And many years later-8 years, exactly- I would once again meet Remus Lupin.
A/N: So, do you think this is worth continuing? Please R + R, my friends.
