Note: Dedicated to FireLily25, for such wonderful and detailed reviews which have made me smile recently, despite my ills and hideous workload. Which is worse than ever, as it happens. So much so that I decided to abandon it for the evening and finish writing this...

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

10: Graveside Visit

There was a fierce wind blowing that morning as Teddy and Harry made their way slowly through the churchyard gates and up the pathway amongst the gravestones, gravel crunching under their feet.

"I do this every year." Harry recalled, hands shoved deep into his pockets against the chill. "Usually Ginny and I, we leave the kids with Molly and Arthur and come together. She was dead fond of your mum, Ginny was...she cries! Every year, even after all this time, I bring her here with me and Ginny just...cries..." The Head of Aurors sighed heavily, shaking his head as he recalled: "It was such a shock, when we found out. We weren't expecting it at all...nobody told us, back then. Nobody told us Tonks was that sick. Of course Ginny was stuck at Hogwarts and she didn't hear much news from anybody...the odd letter smuggled in by Aberforth, I suppose. And that's how she found out. Molly wrote one day and mentioned that Tonks was feeling ill...under the weather, she said, nothing more. So Ginny wrote to Tonks to cheer her up...sent her a Get Well Soon Card or something..."

"Did Mum write back?"

"Oh yes..."

"What did she say?"

"I don't know...something cheery and dismissive...cracked a joke or two...typical Tonks, really. And the next thing Gin knows...she's dead!"

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. Molly wrote again...awful letter, Ginny says she cried for ages, hid herself in the Room of Requirement and skipped lunch and dinner..."

"That must've been awful."

"Yeah, not the best way to find out. But at least she did find out. I didn't know your mum was gone for weeks! Because of course nobody knew where Ron, Hermione and I were, not until we showed up at Shell Cottage that time...it didn't...didn't quite seem real to me, then. Because of course we'd just lost Dobby..."

"Do you theenk we should tell 'im?" he'd heard Fleur whispering from the kitchen as he sat sprawled in an armchair, gazing blankly up at the ceiling. "So soon after the elf?"

"Maybe we should tell him." Bill suggested worriedly. "I mean...perhaps he...he might've heard from...you know...and we need to know, don't we? Everybody's half mad looking for him..."

"But Bill, 'e is in no state! Look at 'im in there!"

Harry squeezed his eyes shut.

He wasn't sure he could possibly care about anything they could tell him just then. He didn't think he could feel more awful than he already did. Any worse...any more empty...

And yet...

"What is it?!" he called, forcing his eyes open and swallow the large lump in his throat. "What don't I know?!"

There was a long pause, as if Bill and Fleur were considering whether or not to respond, before the two of them came almost tip-toeing into the sitting room, Bill reaching to rake a hand through his hair.

"We were just wondering," he said after eying Harry in consideration for a long moment. "The Order's been wondering, that is...if...well..."

"If what?" Harry asked, failing not to sound rather defensive. He couldn't seem to help it, he was too weary for their constant questions, especially when there was so much he could not admit to them.

But then Fleur said:

"We were wondering if you 'ad 'eard from Remus at all?"

Harry felt his chest constrict anxiously.

"What?" he said, hurriedly sitting a little straighter in his chair. "Why? Why should I...why don't you...he's...he's with Tonks, isn't he? They're at...at her parents' house or...or something, aren't they?"

"Then you've not heard from him?"

"Of course not...I've not heard from him or Tonks or...or anybody! Why? Don't you know where he is? Is he...is..." he had to pause to suck in a deep, steadying breath in order to ask: "Is Remus missing?"

Bill and Fleur exchanged a look.

And then Fleur promptly turned away, her face contorting miserably as she snapped:

"I told you! I told you, didn't I?! 'E doesn't know anything! 'E has no idea...'e doesn't even know about the baby! Oh Bill...!"

"What baby?" Harry asked, struggling to order the sudden confused mix of thoughts in his head, only to manage to slot a few of them together, leading him to conclude... "Wait...is Tonks...are they having a baby?!"

And Bill frowned deeply and said, with an air much too somber for such an announcement:

"They've had a baby. A little boy...Teddy. Teddy Remus Lupin..."

Harry opened his mouth to make some sort of happy exclamation, but for some reason he couldn't quite manage it, there was something...wrong...

Very wrong...

"We should get Ron and Hermione," Bill pointed out, "That way you can all...all hear about it together..."

But Harry didn't feel as if he could wait. Not even when Ron and Hermione were only upstairs...

"Just tell me." he insisted, leaning anxiously forward in his chair. "Tell me what's going on..."

Bill sighed heavily, stepping to drop down into the seat opposite him and folding his hands carefully in his lap. He stared down at them for a long moment, fidgeting before explaining:

"Tonks was...was very ill, Harry..."

"Was?" Harry repeated, feeling utterly bemused. "But now she's better? What's the..."

"Remus got injured earlier in the year," Bill said, only bemusing Harry further for this seemed somewhat irrelevant, unconnected. "Bellatrix got him something rotten...he should have died..."

"But he didn't." Harry pointed out impatiently, only for Bill to run a weary hand through his hair again.

"It's...complicated, Harry." the eldest Weasley sibling said, trying to explain yet again. "Tonks...Tonks saved Remus' life using...a branch of ancient magic called Blood Magic."

"What's Blood Magic?" Harry asked, heart beginning to hammer in his chest. He had never heard of such a thing before, but he couldn't help but not like the sound of Blood Magic. Nothing he had ever come across in the magical world that had anything to do with blood ever seemed to be good...

"Put simply, Blood Magic saps the life from one person and...and gifts it to another." Bill explained a little stiffly, and Harry felt himself give an involuntary little shudder. "It's very powerful and...and dark magic. It...it saved Remus' life but...but left a curse. Remus couldn't...couldn't touch Tonks without sapping more life from her..."

"It was all utterly alien to me," Harry recalled as he and Teddy turned off the path and onto the grass, careful not to step on a bouquet of flowers that had been left to rest against a headstone. "But I just knew it was awful...and Bill kept...kept speaking in the past tense...and then when he said your mum had fallen pregnant I just...I knew what was coming, I don't know how but I just knew it..."

"She's...gone, Harry. She's...dead."

Harry simply stared.

"Mad-Eye's left the baby with Andromeda."

He felt...utterly numb...

"Remus...he...well...we don't know where he is, he...he panicked, I suppose...couldn't cope..."

He felt worse. How could he feel worse? After Dobby he'd thought it impossible...

"We're all worried about him, it doesn't do to just disappear in times like this, anything could happened to him..."

Completely and utterly...numb...

"That's...that's why we wondered if...if you had heard from him."

The numbness stung.

"Harry? There's...there's something else..."

It was all consuming.

"Remus came to a Order meeting a month or so ago. He said he and Tonks had been talking..."

He felt as if he had just plunged into the icy depths of the lake after the Sword of Gryffindor all over again.

"...about the baby. About choosing godparents, I mean."

It just...stung.

"And they said they wanted it to be you, Harry."

It throbbed.

"That's what Remus and Tonks wanted. They wanted you to be Teddy's godfather. You've got a godson, Harry."

It hurt like Hell.

The graveyard was eerily quiet as they slipped past the last gravestone to rejoin the gravel pathway, so much so that Teddy almost jumped to catch sight of a silent figure sat down upon a damp wooden bench some short distance away. The figure, swathed in a heavy taupe coloured great coat, collar turned up and head ducked against the wind, made for a somewhat grim observer as Harry and Teddy passed by, and Teddy turned to focus upon the large bouquet of multicoloured flowers that he held in his hands, the vivid petals somewhat comforting amongst the grey confides of the churchyard.

His mother's grave, tucked away up against the low churchyard wall, escaped Teddy's notice for a moment as he and Harry came to a halt before it, for instead the boy's gaze was drawn to the headstone to the left.

"They've done it, then." he observed a little numbly, gazing at the fresh letters carved into the pale marble, spelling out his grandmother's name underneath that of his grandfather. "They're together now, Gran and Grandad."

"All three of them, I expect." Harry said, and at this Teddy's gaze shifted to look down at his mother's own grave.

He blinked.

A large bunch of striking pink roses had been carefully arranged to rest against the headstone, and as Teddy dropped down to inspect them he wondered:

"Who d'you suppose left these here?"

"Could be anybody, Ted." Harry mused, leaning to set his own bunch of pale pink lilies down at the roses' side. "Ron and Hermione, maybe? Molly and Arthur, Bill and Fluer, or maybe Kingsley got up at the crack of dawn and popped over here! Or Ginny might've come, if she knew I was come with you this year...Merlin knows, Teddy. There are a whole lot of us who loved and miss your mum. It's easy to miss her, you know. Even for me, and let's face it I didn't see her all that often..."

He'd been keen to keep his distance from every familiar face that evening, despite having been starved of company all summer.

Because he wasn't finished feeling angry at having been left in the dark by them all, not even if Dumbledore was so certain it had been for the best.

Part of him wanted to sit down in the kitchen with them all, talk to Sirius for the first time in ages, properly, face to face. Or talk to Remus because it had been even longer...

But they were all so pleased to see him, glad that he had made it to Grimmauld Place safely that he didn't want to spoil it for them by being in a bad mood. He'd been keeping up appearances for a week now, but he couldn't quite stand it anymore. So he'd mumbled some sort of an excuse and gone for a wander.

Despite having been there for some while, Harry felt rather as if he were exploring the grim interior of Grimmauld Place for the first time as he made his way up a staircase towards the drawing room, careful not to wake the sleeping portrait of Sirius' mother in the hallway below. He felt glad to slip through the door atop the stairs, and turned to shut it behind him with a small sigh of relief, only to jump when a voice behind him called:

"Wotcher, Harry."

He turned to find Tonks sat in an armchair by the fire, her back to him as she peered at herself in a small handheld mirror, apparently spying his reflection.

Harry rather wanted to turn around and walk back out again, but supposed it would be rather rude. Forced to share his place of refuge, he wandered forward to sit down upon the moth eaten sofa opposite her, murmuring:

"Hi Tonks."

As she paused in her squinting to offer him a bright smile, he spotted the thin yet lengthy gash upon her cheek that she had been examining, and murmured:
"Ouch."

Tonks gave a soft huff of amusement, reaching to jab a finger into a pot of gloopy looking cream that she had balance precariously upon her knee.

"Sirius tells me you fancy being an Auror." she told him as she smeared the cream generously over the wound.

"Yeah, I do." Harry agreed, and the Auror offered him an exaggerated wink and told him:

"You'd best not like your face looking pretty like that, then. We all end up looking like Mad-Eye if we live long enough!" Frowning a little as she paused to rub the last of the cream into her cheek, she mused: "Some of us would rather die, mind you. Take Kingsley, for example, he's a right pretty boy! Have you seen his head recently? I reckon he's started to polish it..."

And despite his mood, Harry found himself sniggering.

"I don't suppose Remus is still downstairs, is he?" Tonks asked, as if she hadn't uttered anything amusing in the slightest, and Harry had to cough to halt his laughter before recalling:

"Yeah, he's helping Molly and Ginny with the dinner." Feeling quite cheered by her presence Harry found himself asking hopefully: "Are you staying to eat with us, Tonks?"

And as she reached to flick the mirror back open to peer at her reflection again, Tonks mused:

"D'you know, I think I might..."

"Every time I saw her," Harry recalled as he gazed down at the gravestone, "life had always taken some sort of turn for the worst, things were always more and more grim. But she was nearly always bright and cheery...she had her moments, I suppose, but overall I usually felt like...like the War never got her down. Like somehow she'd always be smiling...she'd find a way to look at that awful world of ours...and she'd laugh at it."

And the thought made Teddy smile as he reached to set his bunch of flowers down upon the grave.

Indeed, the thought of his mother's laughter made him smile on his visit with Harry the following year.

And the year after that.

And yet the following year, when eighteen year old Teddy Lupin went with his godfather to lay flowers upon his mother's grave, such thoughts did not make him smile.

Indeed, that year Teddy's thoughts were barely of his mother at all.

Because quite suddenly they became preoccupied by somebody else entirely...