Disclaimer: See first chapter.

A/N: Requested by Lara140122 and happily coinciding with prompt fourteen.

14: Consequence

2014

It's hot; too hot to think. Ted blows cold air toward his forehead, but the exercise only succeeds in sending his fringe flying about his head like an acid green halo. Usually, when calling upon his father, Ted dispenses with formalities and climbs the short staircase separating his classroom from his office and strolls past the desk into Lupin's quarters.

This evening, the door to Lupin's inner sanctum is closed and Ted does not want to knock. He is perfectly aware of the trouble he is in and wishes he was sprawled on the half-dead grass beside the lake, his skin burning, with his friends.

"Tell me," says Lupin, closing the door leading to his office behind him, "what was I doing in the Charms corridor at half-past two this morning?"

Ted shrugs. "You're asking me?"

"Professor Loveland and I apparently had a very interesting conversation."

Ted bites back his smile, pressing his lips together until he bites too hard as his father slams his hand against the desk, and his lower lip is bleeding. His father does not speak, merely looks intently at him until Ted can feel the skin stitching itself. He winces, his hand flying to the cut.

"You picked the wrong night. I was at home, Ted. I was tucked up in bed in the South Hams and yet, miraculously, I was wandering the halls of a Scottish castle well past student curfew."

Ted shrugs. "Mirage?"

Lupin smiles pleasantly. "Oh, you'd think so, wouldn't you? But I happened across Professor Loveland during my nocturnal adventures and, instead of carrying on my own sweet, merry way, I had the gall to approach him."

Ted openly grins.

"And proceeded to offer him several back issues of a publication called Gimp Weekly. Now, I can guess what it is and I have no idea where you've stumbled on them, but if I come across one…" The threat hangs between them and Ted wants to assure him he's not a sexual deviant, but the words will not form.

"Just wipe it off. No-one will know."

They stare at one another, both equally mortified, and the silence is so great that Ted thinks the speed of his mouth running away with him might have broken the sound barrier.

"Who do you think you're talking to?" hisses Lupin.

Ted gawps. "I…I…I'm sorry. It just sort of, sort of tumbled out of my mouth. I –"

Lupin's eyebrows are raised so high that they are hidden behind his fringe. "You are in trouble like you wouldn't believe."

Ted stuffs his hands into the pockets of his robes and stares at his shoes as though he's just discovered a rare and interesting pattern in the stitching.

"I didn't speak to my dad like that and I know your mother didn't either. I'm not your friend, Ted. I'm your father. I'm your teacher. And I'll thank you for a little respect."

Ted, unable to concentrate on morphing his cheeks back to their usual colour, blushes a furious shade of crimson.

"And that joke is pitifully old. Sirius used to use it, so it's what? At least, thirty, forty years old? You're going to need some new material."

Ted's rarely been lectured like this. His father assures him he would have made an excellent addition to their little group at school, but while he's mischievous, he's not usually in this sort of trouble. He's not even sure why his father has blown this so far out of proportion. He impersonated him in much the same way he impersonates everybody he knows – even Harry when there is the possibility of a discount.

"Look, I'm sorry about 'Gimp Weekly', but he's your friend. He knows you're not a deviant. And I didn't talk to him for long. I didn't mention Mum or anything. It didn't get personal or creepy."

Lupin glares at him. "I think you're missing the point."

"Dad, I –"

"Sir."

"Sorry?"

"Sir."

Ted wonders if he's joking. He laughs weakly. "Yeah, I'm not calling you that."

"You don't show me any respect at home and I let that slide, but you'll bloody well respect me here. If you won't respect me as your father, you'll respect me as your teacher. So you'll 'Sir' me and like it."

"You earn respect. You don't just demand it."

Ted meets his eyes, his eyes morphing back to their natural silver. Much like Sirius' when he was furious, they are now the colour of storm clouds. He says nothing, content to stare his professor down, using the same defence mechanism that the Potions master regularly writes home to complain about.

"I have never laid a finger on you," says Lupin quietly. "I stopped your grandmother smacking you when I probably shouldn't have. I don't believe in it and I've never seen the need for it, but I want you to know that I have never been closer to knocking the sense into you than I am at this moment."

Ted grins, but it doesn't reach his eyes. His smile is brazenly malicious, empty. "Careful, sir, I might report you."

"I'm either your father or I'm your professor. You can't have it both ways," Lupin tells him.

"And what sort of a dad just walks out on his son then?"

For a moment, Ted genuinely believes his father will hit him, really swing for him, but the fire in Lupin's eyes burns low and he nods his acknowledgement. "Ted, we've talked about this. Once you agree to bury the hatchet, you can't just dig it back up and use it to hack at me every time you know you're in the wrong."

Ted sighs, world-weary.

"It's a low blow and I thought I'd raised you better than that."

The sun is almost setting. He's missed the chance to burn by the lake with his friends. He can metamorphose, giving himself a tan Erin McCormack would give her left leg for, but it's not the same. From the window, he can just make out Tom and Galatea, identifiable by her ice-blonde hair spread out a whole foot behind her on the grass.

"Look, can I go now?"

Lupin nods curtly. "You'll be back here on Thursday night at eight."

Ted storms down the steps and through his father's classroom, slamming the door hard enough for the sound to reverberate.

"I'd be careful if I were you, Mr. Lupin," says his Transfiguration professor as Ted stalks along the hallway. "Damage to school property would be taken very seriously."

"You'd love that, wouldn't you?" Ted spits.

Loveland raises an eyebrow and Ted, too intimidated to take a stand, is forced to apologise.

"Lupin, I didn't mean to get you into trouble. I made an innocent remark to your father and he was forced to take action. I'm sorry that you've taken this so personally, but you oughtn't to have been out of bed, least of all impersonating a professor."

Ted rolls his eyes. "Honestly? You can spare me the lecture; I've just had the mother of all bollockings and now my Dad hates me. So yeah, cheers."

Loveland shrugs. "You humiliated him, you realise that? And aside from the objections I have to you wandering about the castle as the mood takes you, your father is my best friend and I won't have it." He softens at the pain in Ted's expression. "He doesn't hate you. He's just pretty upset about it. I've no idea why. I'm sure he'd suit a gimp mask." Winking, he ushers Ted along the corridor.

"Oh, so it's all right for you to say things like that, but when I –"

"Lupin, for pity's sake, learn when to hold your tongue."

Lupin's classroom, usually filled with such noise that it is a relief he is the sole teacher who uses the third floor, is eerily quiet. The desks have been pushed against the walls creating a small circular clearing in the middle of the room; Loveland deduces the last lesson was practical.

The door leading to the empty office has been left wide open, presumably so that Ted could be sure his father would get the full effect of his door slamming downstairs. The door between his office and his private rooms is firmly closed and Loveland hovers outside, wondering whether it is wise to interject.

He knocks before he can talk himself out of it.

"Come."

It's not the greeting he was expecting, but it's clear he's not the visitor Lupin was expecting.

"Have you come to apol–" His face falls, but he has the grace to immediately muster a smile.

"Look," says Loveland, "I'm not going to beat about the bush. He's in a bit of a state, I think." He catches Lupin's eye and wishes he'd come up with a better opening line. "I know it's none of my business, Remus, I just… I'm worried that I've perhaps landed him into a great deal more trouble than he might have been in otherwise."

Resting his elbows on the desk, Lupin puts his head into his hands and shakes it vigorously. "Oh, it's not the talk of a bizarre pornography stash. It's not even his impersonation. I taught him to parrot when he was little. I thought it would be funny, I had no idea it would become a life-skill."

Loveland laughs and takes the seat on the other side of the small round table, the seat usually reserved for Ted. It was not designed for a man of Nicholas Loveland's stature. At six feet and six inches, very few pieces of furniture, up to and including door frames, are designed for a man of Nicholas Loveland's stature.

"It's the way he looked at me, with so much hate in his eyes."

Loveland gets to his feet. "If we're going to be serious, I can't sit on a chair made for fucking goblins." He crosses the room and settles himself on Lupin's bed as comfortably as he would his own. "I think you're being a bit paranoid. Why would he hate you?"

Lupin knits his brow. "I…when his mother…before he was even born…I…I made a mistake and he's never let me forget it."

Loveland sits up, suddenly curious. "What sort of mistake? An easy mistake or 'I gave the kneazle cocaine'?"

"I dread to think what sort of mistakes your son's going to hold against you."

Loveland winks. "He'll find something, because that's what boys do when they're fifteen. I'm going to enjoy my remaining years of peace and weather the storm with the knowledge that the testosterone levels will eventually even out."

"I'm not sure I don't deserve it."

Loveland rolls his eyes. "Spare me the pity party; I've got mocks to mark. I'll see you at dinner."

He's pleased that as he enters the Gryffindor boys' dormitory, having briefly knocked the door marked 'fifth years', the boys leap to their feet. The frenzied closing of curtains is a little worrying as is his son's practised nonchalance.

"It's all right," Lupin assures them. "I'm not here to conduct an investigation." He nods in Ted's direction. "A word?"

Without so much as a glance at either of the Lupins, the three boys make hurried excuses.

"You'll have to be quick if it's supposed to be private," Ted warns him. "Tom's in the shower."

"I don't want to hear of what happened last night happening again."

Ted makes a guttural sound in the back of his throat. "I'm sure we've already had this conversation."

Lupin's expression is reproachful and his son sighs irritably, leaning against his bedpost and conceding with poor grace.

"But I think I over-stepped the mark. I might have over-reacted, Ted."

Ted grins. "So I don't have detention on Thursday?"

"Oh, you have detention on Thursday and if you're not there for it, that'll be the last time I give you so much as an inch." He sighs softly. "You were in the wrong, Teddy. I want you to admit it. Not to me, I'm not going to be smug about it, but to yourself. All right?"

Ted nods. "I've said I'm sorry. I don't know what else I can do."

"I know you did, and I didn't let it rest. I pushed it and, when I'd pushed you too far, you fought back and that's understandable."

Ted mumbles his apology to the chest of drawers, unable to meet his father's eyes.

"I'm sorry too." Lupin smiles indulgently. "And you were in the wrong, ambling around the school after curfew, regardless of how you pulled it off, but it would be hypocritical of me to punish you for it."

Ted's gaze darts fleetingly to his bedside cabinet in which he keeps a battered, seemingly useless piece of parchment.

"So I'm going to put that hour to good use." His smile is broad, genuine. "We'll start work on some pretty nifty little charms."

It's still an extra hour of school work when the heat wave is due to last well into next week, but Ted thinks he can tolerate it.

"Can you teach me a –?"

But the bathroom door swings open and Ted's best friend emerges, lamenting his inability to perform cosmetic charms as he towel dries his mop of hair.

"I'll discuss this with you on Thursday." He's halfway out of the door when a thought strikes him and Lupin turns back to his son. "Oh and, Ted?"

"Yeah?"

"There are always consequences to being caught."

Tom waits for his professor to be safely out of earshot before asking, "Was that a slap on the wrist?"

"I think," says Ted, smiling to himself, "that was a 'Don't get caught'."

Tom grins. "So where are we going tonight?"

"No idea, but I think I've perfected Loveland's walk. Do you reckon we can pull a fast one on Filch?"