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Both Blood and Lies and Letters are listed under the community Save The Lupins! I suggest you go look at the stories there, they're all good!

Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J K Rowling, I do not own nothing.

4: Black and White

Two days later, the evening before Teddy would return to Hogwarts for his third year, neither his mother or his father had tried to coax any explanations for his behaviour out of him, for both had been much too busy. Tonks had found herself stuck at the Ministry as reports came in of sightings of a long-searched for criminal. Teddy found that he practically had the house to himself for Remus would stay in his study for hours finalizing lesson plans for the coming year. He was in his study that very evening, whilst Tonks made dinner and Teddy packed his trunk ready for the morning.

Teddy looked around his room, trying to spot anything that he had forgotten to pack. His eyes came to rest on his pillow which hid the letters and, not for the first time, he wandered over and pulled them out to examine. At the sound of his father coughing from the room next door, Teddy decided that he could wait no longer. He had to ask about the letters. Still not comfortable asking his father, he decided that he would ask Tonks instead. With that, he marched downstairs with the letters in his hand and entered the kitchen, closing the door firmly behind him as if to ensure his mother had no chance of escape.

"All packed, Teddy?" Tonks asked, as she stood over a bubbling saucepan, wand raised somewhat uncertainly.

"Yes." Teddy told her, and at his blunt tone she looked round at him. Before she could say anything Teddy held out the letters. "I was wondering, Mum, can you tell me about these?" He asked, forcing himself to sound calm, for being calm had become increasingly difficult recently.

"What're those?" Tonks asked him, her voice suddenly quiet. She did not reach to take them and so Teddy stepped forward and pressed them into her hand. Reluctantly, she took them, but almost as soon as she had glanced down at them she let out a gasp and there came a rustling noise as the letters were scrunched up by her fist.

"Oh Merlin!" She squeaked, her eyes screwed shut. She drew in a large breath before shouting for her husband. "Remus!! Get down here right now!!" She shrieked, dropping her wand so that she could grip the counter behind her as if she feared falling over.

At the sound of thundering footsteps as his father bolted down the stairs, Teddy swallowed hard. Clearly he should have given this all a bit more thought, he hadn't meant to get a reaction like this.

The door flew open behind him and Remus came to an abrupt halt in the doorway.

"What's wrong?" He asked, slightly breathless. He observed his son standing with his shoulders hunched and his wife trembling with tears slowly running down her face. Uncertain fear suddenly gripped him as he forced himself to walk to Tonks' side and put an arm around her. "What's wrong?" He asked again, voice dropped to a whisper.

To both his, and his son's surprise Tonks stepped sharply away from him and gave him a hard shove on the shoulder.

"He found your bloody letter!" She cried throwing the crumpled paper on the floor, as he stumbled slightly in surprise.

"My…letter?" Remus asked, positively baffled. But Tonks merely burst into hysterical sobs, inching back towards her husband uncertainly as if she was unsure whether to run from him in disgust or throw her arms around him in despair.

Teddy backed away slightly as he observed Remus stoop to pick up the letters, slowly unfold them and examine them, the colour draining from his face as he did so. He slowly looked up at Tonks, looking positively terrified, but when he spoke he sounded his usual embodiment of calm.

"You told me you threw them away." He told her.

"I did! I…I did, I…I went out into the woods that night, and…and I…I threw them away!" She whimpered, and Teddy's stomach gave a jolt as Remus rounded on him. But to his relief the werewolf continued to sound perfectly calm.

"And so you found these out in the woods, Teddy?" He asked.

Teddy gave a tiny nod, eyes downcast.

"Right." Remus nodded as if things were now clear enough, and with that he scrunched the letters up once again, strode over to the fireplace and threw the paper into the flames, watching them consume it with a relieved sigh as if that was the end of the problem. But when he turned back around he looked terrified once again.

"For Merlin's sake, Dora!" He cried, the façade beginning to break as he ran a hand through his greying hair in panic. "Why on earth didn't you get rid of it properly?!"

"Why on earth did you even write it?!" She snapped back furiously.

"You know why! You know exactly why! Don't you ask me to explain when you already know…it's hard enough knowing I did all of that, so don't make it worse for me!"

"Well somebody's going to be asking, aren't they?!"

"I don't need you joining in though, do I?!"

As their voices rose to shouts Teddy turned and ran from the room, up the stairs and into his bedroom, whereupon he buried himself under his duvet in the hope of drowning out their voices. He could still hear them, and so he clamped his hands over his ears and hummed loudly. Remus and Tonks argued so rarely that Teddy found it positively shocking, and he could recall no time that they had shouted like this. Tonks once told him that she had spent long enough arguing with his father back before they were married, and that she wouldn't waste any more time doing so now.

Fifteen minutes later Teddy removed his now aching hands from his ears and listened. The raised voices had stopped. He waited a further ten minutes before creeping back downstairs. The kitchen was empty, but from the soft murmured talk coming from the living room Teddy knew that things had clearly calmed down. He slowly poked his head around the door. Remus was sitting on the sofa, Tonks curled up next to him, her arms tightly hugging his arm and her head resting on his shoulder.

"It was bound to happen sometime, somebody would have let it slip or hinted." Remus was saying, once again perfectly calm as he reached up with his free hand to twirl a strand of her pink hair around his finger.

"Yeah, I guess so." Tonks agreed quietly. She sighed heavily and attempted to shuffle closer to him. "Merlin, and I thought that talk about the birds and the bees was bad!"

Remus chuckled at the memory.

"I think you did a good job that time." He assured her, attempting to flatten her now dishevelled hair.

"I dunno, I think I scarred him for life, I mean look at him…you know, when he gets all squeamish if we do stuff?"

He looked down at her with a somewhat roguish smile, one eyebrow arched. Leaning closer he asked:
"What stuff is that?"

Tonks dissolved into giggles and from his position out in the hallway Teddy hastily backed away from the door, not wanting to risk see any "stuff". Why he had to have parents who acted like a pair of hormonal teenagers at any opportunity they could grab was beyond him. Had they not been at each other's throats just minutes beforehand anyway? Parents just didn't make sense sometimes.

There came a loud crash from the other room and Teddy's curiosity got the better of him. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, to find his mother lying sprawled on the floor, having knocked over the lamp that had stood on the cabinet beside the sofa. She was laughing hysterically as Remus got awkwardly up from his position sprawled on the sofa to reach and help her to her feet.

"You weren't supposed to bloody drop me!" Tonks cried through her laughter as he hauled her to her feet.

"No, Dora, you weren't supposed to jump on me like that!" Remus corrected, holding her steady with one hand and drawing out his wand in the other. He levitated the lamp back onto the cabinet and muttered "reparo!"

"I did not jump on you, that was not jumping! I'll show you jumping, Lupin, just you wait and…"

Remus cleared his throat meaningfully as he spied his son standing by the door, looking deeply bemused. To the boy's further disgust when Tonks turned to look at him, she simply burst into laughter again.

"Go and sit at the table, it's time for dinner." Remus told her soberly, and at a second glance at Teddy, Tonks too suddenly fixed a serious expression upon her heart-shaped face and marched off into the kitchen.

"You guys are weird." Teddy told his father, folding his arms across his chest. "One moment I reckon you'll come upstairs and announce you're getting a divorce, the next I think you'll come up and ask me how I'd feel about not being an only child, then you look like somebody died…!"

"Love is not black and white, Teddy." Remus told him acutely, steering the boy towards the kitchen with a hand on his shoulder. "Always make sure that you remember that."

A/N: Please let me know what you think of this chapter, because I'm not all that sure about it! Thanks )