Disclaimer: See first chapter.
A/N: This was suggested to me a little while ago when I first started writing these little snapshots ("It's just something about the idea of Tonks going through hers with Lupin teasing in the background that makes me chuckle").
This may or may not have something to do with a recent birthday that turned me into a serious adult.
9. Midlife Crisis
August 2013
"I'm forty tomorrow."
Lupin lowers the Weekend Supplement and removes his reading glasses, too conscious of revealing a high forehead to push them up. "What would you like to do for it?"
Tonks shakes her head. "Forty, Remus."
Lupin nods. "We don't have to fill the house with people if you'd rather not, but it's a pretty big milestone. Perhaps we could ask everyone to just drop in for cake. How does that sound?"
She sighs. "I wouldn't mind ignoring it actually, if that's all right with you."
"Well, now that you ask, no. No, that is not all right with me. I told you several times that I didn't want a fuss for mine and there was a, frankly, ridiculous amount of pomp involved."
Tonks sniggers despite herself. "I thought the smoking jackets were a nice touch."
"But you won't let me organise yours?"
Tonks merely looks at him, the slight raise of her eyebrows conveying far more than speech.
"What? Why not?"
"Why do you think?"
"I'm good at themed parties."
"Yes, I know. That's my point. You'll think of something you find hilarious."
Lupin is almost affronted. "I'm jolly good at hilarious."
"Too good."
He grins, his eyes shining copper, and Tonks thinks she can hear the cogs whirring round her husband's head.
"Oh, for goodness' sake, what?"
"You're having a midlife crisis, aren't you?"
Tonks hits him with the newspaper. "I'm fine. I just don't want fifty-three people smoking pipes and drinking brandy in the living room at my fortieth."
"Your mum's feeling a bit low. The hill is beckoning her over it."
Teddy is halfway through demolishing a mountain of toast, much to his sister's disgust.
"Ted, maybe you should rest to breathe for a bit?"
"Excuse me? I'm a growing lad."
"Yeah, wider."
Teddy shrugs. "You're one to talk. You might want to lay off the birthday cake or you'll be waddling around Hogwarts next month."
"Well at least I'll still have the hips of a fifteen year old boy."
"That's enough, both of you. What are we going to do about your mother?"
Emma frowns, both her brow and nose wrinkling. "Why do we have to do anything? It's just a birthday, isn't it?"
"She won't admit it, but she's feeling terrible."
Teddy's smile is too wide, too reminiscent of Sirius, and the familiar flitter of terrified anticipation courses through Lupin.
"What?"
"I was wondering what you wanted when you were having a midlife crisis?"
"I was about sixteen, Ted; I don't count."
"So a racing broom and a girlfriend then?"
Lupin's glance is reproachful. Teddy meets his eyes and holds his gaze. Tonks' fear rather suddenly makes a great deal of sense to him. They're all getting older much too quickly.
"Yes, Ted. And I got neither."
Teddy's responding smile is almost smug.
"And your having both does not give you the right to look at me like that."
Teddy laughs, but he doesn't apologise.
"Right. Tomorrow night, we're having a small party."
"What's the theme?" asks Emma.
"I haven't thought of one yet. Oh, and what do we think of lemon and raspberry cake?"
"I think it's not chocolate cake," replies Teddy, "and that's unacceptable."
"Your mum doesn't like chocolate cake."
"No," says Teddy, grinning, "but I do."
"I just want to talk about it."
"Well I don't," replies Tonks, focusing on the crossword her husband had half-completed in bed with tea and toast. "Oh come on, Remus, how can you not know this one?"
Lupin, heating the last of the raspberries and adding sugar to make jam for tomorrow's birthday cake, is too immersed in the contents of his saucepan to question which squares she has filled.
Their children are out; Lupin suspects their activities may involve the dog who has been absent all afternoon. The kitchen is eerily quiet. He works long hours, between teaching, patrols, and detentions, coming home for full moons, birthdays, and every fourth weekend, negotiated because he took the job when his daughter was only four years old. Now, he and the children are at school, and he cannot imagine how lonely mealtimes must be for her in an empty house.
"I can't cure you of your aversion to forty."
Tonks looks up from the paper. Her husband is still concentrating on making jam. "I don't have an aversion to forty."
Lupin ignores her denial. "But I think I know what the problem is."
"What's the problem then?"
"You're feeling old."
Tonks frowns. "Do you think I'm old?"
For the first time, Lupin looks up and meets her eyes. "Do I think you are old?"
"I found a grey hair last week."
Lupin smiles grimly. "I found my first at seventeen. I had a crisis about it and Peter put peroxide on my hair while I was asleep. You will get absolutely no sympathy from me on the subject of grey hair. You will also not get peroxide. Every cloud…"
Tonks can't help the smile pulling at one corner of her mouth. "You're avoiding my question, you know."
"Because you know I don't think you're old."
"At forty-two, you had a daughter. At forty-two, the only thing I'll have is hot flushes."
"You've been giving me hot flushes for the last eighteen years so really, it's only fair."
Tonks runs a hand through her shoulder-length brown hair. "I worry about it. That's all. If I should want to, I can look twenty-two forever, but I don't want to and I'm worried people are going to think I'm a bit bonkers for that. Worse, what if they think I'm trying and then they say, 'Isn't it a shame about poor old Tonks?' and everyone else nods? And I think mostly, I'm so angry that I'm not forty, am I? I'm thinking like I'm fourteen, but I'm a bit worried I'm not going to be able to give you hot flushes anymore and if I ensure that I can, am I objectifying myself? And if I am, how can I expect Emma to have any amount of respect for me? And in five hours, I am officially going to cease to be the thirty-something mother who got away with pretty much anything and be the forty-something mother who's desperately trying to cling onto who she used to be. Jesus, Remus, how did you do it?"
Lupin shrugs. "I bought four more cardigans."
Tonks glares at him.
"I don't know what to say. I don't mind what you look like. If you want liver spots, just go ahead. As long as you think you look fine, who cares what anyone else thinks? Certainly not you. You never have."
Tonks sits back in her chair. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that you can be relied upon to say the wrong thing at the right time, that you dress inappropriately for every occasion, and that, as a result, to me at any rate, you are perfect. You've a blatant disregard for order and anything considered to be the norm. And I love you for it. You don't and, for the life of me, I cannot fathom it."
"But –"
"Emma adores you and I would like to think that she's been raised better than to belittle you because you're fond of neon hair." He turns back to his jam and addresses the bottom of the saucepan. "And for what it's worth, you will give me hot flushes until the day I die."
She's woken up with cake and moderately priced champagne for breakfast. A collection of owls are perched on her windowsill, each carrying a card and a small gift. A long, thin parcel is propped against the wardrobe doors and it just has to be a broom; has to be.
"Happy birthday."
As Tonks rubs the sleep out of her eyes, she reluctantly prises them from the neatly wrapped broomstick and toward her family. The three of them are dressed in smoking jackets. Emma is twirling a monocle. Her son is holding an unlit cigar with an alarming amount of poise.
"You said you didn't want pomp and ceremony," says Lupin, "much as I said of my fortieth and seeing as most of my friends arrived looking as though they'd recently returned from a fox hunt, I thought –"
"– that you'd give your son a cigar?"
"Yeah, but unlit!" Teddy protests. "I'm in recovery."
Lupin rolls his eyes. "You are not 'in recovery'. Would you stop telling people that?"
"I say, old boy, there's no need for that tone. There's a birthday going on here."
Bunting hangs low from the tree branches in the garden. The sea breeze is warm and the air tastes salty. They're soaking up the last of the summer sun, spooning leftover lemon buttercream into their mouths and drinking the last of the now flat champagne. Ted and Emma are playing a particularly violent game of chess, both refusing to remove their quilted jackets despite the heat. Andromeda, having cast off her jacket, naps in the swing-chair under the Oak. The chickens are scouring the lawn for worms while the dog, too old and too hot to terrorise them, sleeps under the table.
"That broom had better not have cost more than a month's expenses."
Lupin grins mischievously. "No comment."
"Tell me it didn't come from a man in the pub. That's all I want to know."
"I'm afraid I can't do that."
Emma's queen takes Teddy's last bishop and they squabble good-naturedly.
"If you've got a cigar, I don't see why I can't have a pipe."
"I think I know what happened to a couple of them. Come on. I'm not leaving you alone with the board. I dread to think what would happen to my knight."
The children disappear into the gloom of the passage and Tonks spoons the last of the buttercream and leftover raspberry jam from the bowl.
"When I was at school and I imagined what my life would be like at forty, I didn't even think about them."
Lupin shakes his head. "No, nor did I."
"Or a husband who actually makes his own jam." She smiles sadly. "I thought I was going to be very lonely actually, and now I'm surrounded by noisy chickens, I'm fairly sure my son is off somewhere lighting that cigar, and no doubt I am about to be lectured on the many ways in which jam making might be considered a life skill."
Lupin only smiles wryly.
"Can I tell you something, honestly?" asks Tonks, watching the chickens peck around her feet. "I have never been happier than I am right now."
