Ted Tonks was by no means a closed minded man. Hell, he was the husband of Andromeda Tonks, a Slytherin and descendant of one of the vilest families in the world. At least, that's how most people saw it as.
But nevertheless, he had been open minded. He'd been friendly to Andromeda even though their houses and his blood status would have suggested otherwise. He had respected her and cared for her and in the end; he had deemed her the love of his life and married her.
They'd had a daughter. Born in 1973 and that was his second love of his life for all the different reasons.
Watching Nymphadora grow up had been possibly the most thrilling and exciting experience he could name. There wasn't a day that went by when she was younger that didn't result in something new and unexpected to happen. While Andromeda had frowned at most of them Ted had been the supporting father by telling her daughter that she could be whatever it was she wanted to be. Do whatever it was she wanted to do.
He'd laughed at the broken silverware, the stains on the priceless rug and, as she got older, the notes from school telling them about the time his daughter had set fire to the boys washroom or when she'd "accidentally" charmed all the library books to attack their owners.
In the end, while his wife fussed and scolded Nymphadora on behalf of both of them, he'd pat her gently and reminded her that it was just their baby girl growing up, trying new things, opening up her mind to the different possibilities. "And besides," he'd say optimistically, "it certainly makes life more interesting,"
And interesting it had been. Tonks had taken his father's words to heart. She'd breezed by school with NEWTs in all her subjects. She'd applied for the prestigious Auror program and gotten apprenticed by none other than the infamous Mad Eye Moody.
And she'd gone off to fall head over heels in love with a werewolf.
It wasn't hard for Ted to notice the change. For most of the year, when Tonks visited her parents, her smile lacked warmth and her hair was its usual mousey brown. When asked, she'd shrug and say she just liked it better that way. The first time had been believable. The three after that hadn't been.
It had taken some time but Ted and Andromeda had finally managed to corner their daughter about it over Sunday dinner with the family.
"We just want to know if everything's alright," Andromeda had insisted and an ugly flush crept over Tonks' face.
"Come on kiddo," Ted said light heartedly, "we're your parents. We want to help that's all," he insisted and finally Tonks spoke.
"What would you do..." Tonks started, setting her fork down and placing her hands into her lap, "what would you do if you loved someone so much you'd give your life away for them?"
"And this person doesn't love you back?" Ted interrupted only to wither slightly at Tonks' glare.
"No. He loves me. Or at least I think he loves me. He's just so...so...bloody selfless,"
Ted raised an eyebrow but refrained from commenting, instead he gave a glance in his wife's direction before their daughter continued.
"He says he's too poor and too old and too dangerous and he won't accept the fact that I love him for who he is and I don't care about any of that and then Dumbledore's sent him on some stupid mission and I don't even know when I'll get to see him again but he's probably avoiding me like the plague anyways because he doesn't think he deserves me and that I should be looking for someone better and it's just not bloody fair!"
And with that Tonks burst into tears.
Andromeda immediately went to her daughter's side to comfort her while Ted just sat there. That had happened waaaay too fast.
Not to mention there were too many questions but Ted didn't feel like now was the time to ask them.
Finally, after a few more awkward comforting, Tonks seemed to have calmed down and Ted muffled a sigh of relief.
"Ok..." Ted started cautiously as if Tonks was a rabbit and he was afraid of startling her, "...I think...your mother and I have...a few questions..." he finished lamely, shooting his wife a look begging her to take over from here.
"Does this man have a name?" Andromeda finished and Ted nodded. That seemed to be the most sensible place to start.
"Remus. Remus Lupin," Tonks replied easily and Ted nodded, taking the information and filing it away for future use because he knew that this wouldn't be last time he'd hear of that name.
"Right. And when you say he's too poor I take it he doesn't have a steady job," Ted went on and Tonks turned to glare at her father, "it wasn't a reprimand!" he defended holding up his hands, "I was just saying..."
"Just drop it dad," Tonks mumbled.
Ted dropped it.
Instead he turned back to the other questions, "So...how old is old?" he asked a bit awkwardly and Tonks' mumble was too quiet to decipher.
"What was that love?" Andromeda asked, face slowly looking concerned.
"Thirteen years," Tonks said only slightly louder.
Had Ted been drinking something he would have chocked and spluttered till he'd quite effectively ruined the mood of the dinner. Thankfully he wasn't drinking and instead only managed a large widening of the eyes.
He did the mental math. This Lupin fellow was only about eight years younger than he was.
"And by dangerous?" Andromeda asked, mouth set into a grim line. She didn't seem to be enjoying this one bit.
"It doesn't matter," Tonks protested, crossing her arms stubbornly, "I'm an auror. Remus is an expert at defensive magic. He takes precautions every month and-"
"Dora..." Ted interrupted and Tonks sighed in defeat.
"He's got a...medical condition..." Tonks said and Ted's eyes narrowed.
"And just what is the condition?" he pressed and Tonks shot him a glare before taking a deep breath and replying in an equally determined voice:
"Lycanthropy."
The room was so silent you could hear a pin drop. Ted swore that his wife beside him had stopped breathing.
"Dear. Please don't tell me you're risking your life by chasing after a werewolf," Andromeda stressed and Tonks' face grew fierce.
"You don't get it either mum!" she shouted and both parents jumped.
"He's a good man! All you people just have a stupidly closed mind about his condition. Just because he's a werewolf doesn't mean that he should be treated any less by the rest of society," Tonks defended.
"It's not just that dear," Andromeda went on, "he's not even from your generation. He went to school with Sirius," she stressed. Apparently she'd done the mental math as well.
"Sirius agrees with me on this," Tonks said venomously and Andromeda paused.
"Remus was the one that saved Sirius' life that day at the Ministry," Tonks continued.
On that fateful day when Harry and his friends had gone down to the Ministry only to be attacked by Death Eaters, Sirius had taken a stunning charm to the chest by Andromeda's own sister and almost fallen to his death through the veil. Tonks had told both her parents the story but it hadn't occurred to Ted that this Remus Lupin was the same Lupin who had almost thrown himself into the veil himself and pulled his best friend back out on that day.
"Still..." Ted started only for his daughter to round on him.
"Why can't you just give him a chance?" she sighed sadly before getting up.
"It doesn't matter anyways," she finished, back turned to her family as she set the dishes to wash themselves in the sink.
"He takes what people like you say about him to heart anyways. He'll never accept me. Not when he knows that he can hurt me," Tonks mumbled as she stalked out of the room.
Ted was just about to race after his daughter and argue with her that they'd never said she couldn't be with him but one look at Andromeda's closed face put an end to that plan.
Torn between the first and second loves of his life he sighed and silently sent his own dishes to the sink.
"You don't approve do you," he asked his wife, sitting back down at the table and pouring both of them a glass of wine.
"Do you?" she replied and Ted frowned.
"We've always told Dora to have an open mind about things," he replied slowly only to force a small grin, "I guess we should have know that it would eventually come to bite us in the butt."
Andromeda gave her own small smile.
"What are you thinking?" she asked after a long comfortable silence.
"I don't know," Ted finally concluded, sighing a bit sadly, "I just don't know."
Suffice to say, that was the last of Dora's visits to her parents for a while.
Ted and Andromeda never spoke to each other about it although they did send a letter to her one day inviting her for dinner once more.
They didn't get a reply and Ted could only hope that her daughter still thought about them like they did for her.
And then in June 1997 they had another thing to worry about: The death of the Headmaster of Hogwarts Albus Dumbledore. The rumour around the country had been that Severus Snape had killed him, that he was working for the Dark Lord and among the inner circle, they knew that he was also a member of the Order of the Pheonix. Snape was someone their daughter had been working with.
Sick with worry, Ted and Andromeda had sent out another letter asking if she was alright and if she wanted to talk about it they'd be right here. Ted tried to get the point across that they still cared for her and that she was still their daughter, werewolf boyfriend or not.
Surprisingly enough, whatever magic Ted had worked in the letter had worked because Tonks sent a letter back the next day saying she was fine if not a tad depressed but she seemed to have finally gotten through to Remus. The letter ended with the simple line: "Dumbledore would have been happy to see a bit more love in the world."
Ted and his wife re-read that sentence a good fifty times before Ted offered a suggestion and Andromeda, a bit grudgingly, agreed.
And Ted wrote the letter, inviting their daughter once more to dinner with them on Sunday only this time he added the one simple sentence: "We'd like to meet him."
That Sunday had been surprisingly anti-climactic. Remus was not what Ted had been expecting. Far from it. He had imagined someone with wild hair, metal in his face and a terrible attitude with obeying the rules. Someone who resembled his daughter; a rebel.
It that was what he was hoping for then he got just the opposite. This Remus Lupin that his daughter thought so highly of didn't look like much; a bit tall and much too thin and the greying streaks in his hair made him look older than Ted gave him credit for.
But, soon, Ted started to see why his Dora loved this man. Upon entering the house he gave a polite smile and a firm handshake. He offered to set the table and engaged in intelligent, engaging conversation during the meal. He spoke truthfully about his condition without any signs that he wanted pity and, thin as he was, didn't take more than he was offered (although Andromeda forced him to eat another plate anyways). He had a good sense of humor, sarcastic wit and he was a great story teller. He was charming and intelligent and he was, what Ted thought, everything a man should be...if you ignored a certain furry little problem.
But it wasn't just that. Tonks seemed to be practically glowing. Her pink, vibrant hair was back and the shine in her eyes whenever they met Lupin's made Ted realize that this was serious. Tonks was the total opposite to what Ted had been given on her previous visit. This wasn't the depressed Auror on the verge of tears from before. This was the rebellious, Weird Sister loving Tonks who didn't give a shit about what society thought about her. The real Tonks was back.
And that had been Lupin's doing too.
"There's no such thing as a perfect man," Ted realized near the end of the meal as Lupin helped clear the table, "But Lupin. Lupin's the closest we're ever going to get."
"Right, who wants something to drink?" Ted asked and Tonks leaped to her feet in eagerness.
"I'll get the Butterbeer!" she said as she ran down the hall to the basement stash of Butterbeer.
Ted had just barely managed to sit back down and start up another conversation when they heard the horrifying crash of Butterbeer falling out of their cases and rolling down the corridor.
"It's alright!" Tonks' voice shouted from down the hall, "I've got it...Ouch! Bloody bu-"
Ted sighed. He guessed his Dora would always be the clumsy one, depressed or not.
But what surprised him more was how Lupin politely excused himself from the table and followed the source of the noise.
After a few more seconds, Ted followed.
He got there just in time to see Lupin replace the last few Butterbeer bottles into the case.
"You didn't have to get up Remus," Tonks said a bit embarrassed.
"Course I did. If I didn't you'd manage to fall down the stairs or worse," came the reply, "What happened in that second part anyways?" he asked, eyes evident with concern.
"Oh, I was reaching down to pick one up and I bumped my head on the door that's all," Tonks said with a blush.
"Does it hurt?"
"Oh come on now Remus it was just a little bump," Tonks started but then she seemed to get an idea.
"Why don't you kiss it better?" she asked rather seductively.
And to Ted's surprise, Lupin didn't laugh at how silly Tonks was being; didn't ignore her completly; he didn't comment at all really.
Instead Lupin wrapped his arms around Ted's daughter and gave her a delicate kiss on the temple.
"Better?"
"Hmmm, do it again," Tonks said as she moved to bury her head in his shoulder.
Lupin kissed her again.
"One more time?" Tonks asked and Lupin's face broke out into a grin.
"Certainly," he replied as he got out of Tonks' embrace, lifted her chin slightly and gave her a full out kiss on the lips.
Nymphadora Tonks was kissing a werewolf in the middle of the Ted's corridor and by the look of pure bliss in his daughter's eyes was enough for Ted to put all things aside and give a small smile at the couple.
But that smile soon faded when he realized that they were taking an extremely long time for this and so, ever the overprotective father, Ted decided to make his presence known.
The slightly forced cough was enough to make Remus and Tonks separate in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, the sudden separation caused Remus to back up so quickly that he tripped over the case of Butterbeer still sitting innocently on the floor and pitched backwards, falling head first down the basement steps.
Tonks surprised shout was muffled when she looked almost ashamedly at her father but Ted could only smile.
"Well go on then. That sounded painful. I'm sure he'd want you to 'kiss it better'" Ted said as he grabbed the case of Butterbeer and turned to walk back down the corridor.
And his smile turned into a grin as Tonks' face lit up and, with a triumphant shout of delight, she raced down the basement steps at breakneck speed after her boyfriend.
When Ted got back to the table with the grin still plastered over his face Andromeda gave her husband a raised eyebrow.
"Don't worry. Everything's fine," Ted reassured, handing his wife a Butterbeer.
"What are you thinking?" she asked after a beat and Ted sighed.
"I'm thinking…." Ted started with a thoughtful look in his eyes, "That this Lupin fellow doesn't sound too bad and if our hard-headed daughter really thinks he's the one..." Ted frowned into his half empty bottle before giving a shrug and a wide grin, "Well we're gonna have to invest in a nice, sturdy wedding dress. One that can withstand a few tumbles mind you."
Reviews are again greatly appreciated!
The Chocolate Alchemist may review again as well :P
