Chapter 100: The End
The door to Dora's room was propped open and Remus could hear her laughter from halfway down the corridor. He smiled in response. His selfish moment of grief couldn't have done too much damage if Dora was laughing.
Remus and Lyall poked their heads into the room to see Andromeda removing the baby from Harry's arms and returning her to Dora.
Dora's eyes met Remus'. "You just missed it," she said merrily. "Harry was all right with holding her until she opened her eyes and moved, and then he was begging Mum to take her away."
"I wasn't begging, exactly," said Harry. He seemed to consider it. "All right, I was begging." Harry, too, seemed to have found the incident amusing.
"Maybe you'll hold her while she's awake when she's a little bit older," Remus suggested. "She'll be twice as old tomorrow as she is today, after all."
"I hadn't thought of it quite like that," said Dora, beaming down at the baby. "That's wild, isn't it?" She looked up from her daughter's face just long enough to greet Lyall. "I'm glad all of her grandparents are here," she said.
Not all, of course. He missed Hope all over again. He supposed a person never stopped missing his mother. He supposed Teddy would never have stopped missing Dora.
"Did we miss anything other than Harry finding his limits as a baby-holder?" Remus asked rather than voicing his thoughts.
"My parents debated whether you left because you were horrified that the baby is a girl."
Remus couldn't help laughing. "My dad asked me the same thing." He circled the bed and, for the first time, truly drank in the sight of his daughter.
Happily, she looked like Dora.
"The answer is no," he said as he ran his finger over his daughter's impossibly delicate cheek. "This little girl is perfect, and the more any child of mine can resemble Dora, the better."
"She looks like you," Dora objected. "The shape of her eyes, the curve of her lip…"
"Be that as it may." Remus waited for Dora to look at him. "I'm sorry, Dora. I did panic, and I handled it poorly. I apologize. You had more reasons to worry than I ever could have, and you had no way of running out of the room. You deserved to have me here waiting on you hand and foot. I assure you this will not become a pattern."
Dora raised her eyes to look at her parents, Lyall, and Harry. "He's very good at apologizing, isn't he?"
She kissed him on the cheek. He knew he was forgiven. He also know that she would be asking for a more detailed explanation the moment they didn't have quite so much of an audience. "I knew you didn't really want to behead me because we have a daughter instead of a son," she said.
"What? Behead you?"
"Mum said that that's what the Muggle kings used to do."
"Why?" asked Lyall wonderingly.
"It was complicated," injected Ted. "I believe technically Henry VIII executed his wives for adultery. And even though he did eventually get the son he wanted, the boy didn't live very long. As it happened, his daughter Elizabeth made a wonderful queen. She ruled for almost fifty years and is loved to this day."
"The Muggles still make films and write books about her," Harry chimed in.
"Elizabeth," Dora mused, turning the name over in her mouth. She cocked her head to look up at Remus. "It's a good name, isn't it? For the magical world or the Muggle one. Not something she'd have to spend the rest of her life explaining." She looked down at the baby. "Would you like to be called Elizabeth?"
The baby seemed neither to consent nor object. Her wide eyes were fixed but unfocused as she looked at Dora.
"Elizabeth it is, then," said Remus. A wide grin split his face. Elizabeth Lupin. Lizzie Lupin. His daughter, Elizabeth. His princess. His daughter Elizabeth and his wife Dora. Yes, he liked the idea very much.
Dora tugged on the gold necklace that lay against her collarbone. "Elizabeth Hope."
Remus reflected, not for the first time, that he had never expected to be so happy. He wished his mother could have seen it. Dora couldn't change that, but she could make certain that Hope was remembered on the day her granddaughter was born.
And when Sirius arrived with the Pensieve, Remus could make certain that Teddy, too, would be remembered on the day his sister was born.
He introduced Sirius to his goddaughter properly and thanked him for bringing the Pensieve. Then he asked for a moment of privacy, explaining that he had something to show Dora.
Sirius and Harry seemed to know what he meant to do. The others did not, but they acquiesced all the same, suggesting that they needed to visit the nearby shops for gifts now that they knew Elizabeth's name.
Remus sat at the foot of Dora's bed; Dora propped herself up at the head. Elizabeth and the Pensieve lay between them.
Dora eyed the Pensieve with a mix of distaste and curiosity. Remus couldn't blame her. The last time he'd shared his memories with her, the ensuing conversation had gone poorly to say the least.
"I think you've realized,"he said quietly, "that I wasn't upset to have Lizzie." He stroked the baby's shoulder with one finger. She sighed in her sleep but didn't otherwise respond. "I was devastated to realize that we would never have Teddy. Not that that excuses my actions."
"I know."
Simple. Straightforward. I know.
"As we move on with our lives— the three of us— I wanted you to see the person who won't be there. You can say no, of course."
There was a tiny strangled noise in her throat but her voice was steady. "I won't refuse to see my son."
Remus nodded and drew his wand. It wasn't difficult to focus on one of his few memories of Teddy. It was fitting that his very last memory came to mind first.
Remus sat in a rocking chair in the corner of the nursery in Dora's parents' house. Teddy's eyes fluttered open.
Remus used his wand to conjure circles of smoke to amuse Teddy. Teddy was still too young to grab for the circles, too young even to follow their movements with his half-focused eyes. But when Remus tinted the smoke so it was turquoise, Teddy's hair suddenly flashed turquoise as well. Chuckling, Remus tinted the smoke pink, then golden, then a deep blue-purple. Teddy kept pace enthusiastically.
Dora entered the nursery, drawn by Remus' laughter.
"Enjoy it now," she teased, a smile lighting her beautiful face. "Metamorphmagi are nothing but trouble. Ask me how I know."
"I'm looking forward to every bit of it," Remus returned easily. "I hoped he would look like you, and now he can look like all of the yous."
"It wouldn't have been so bad if he'd looked like you." Dora strode across the room and attempted to perch on the edge of the rocking chair. She slipped and fell to the floor with a pained thud.
Remus hurried to settle Dora in the chair with Teddy in her arms while he perched against the windowsill and admired them.
"Well, I certainly hope he inherits his father's ability to walk across a room without knocking anything over," said Dora merrily as the color returned to her pale face. She shifted Teddy in her arms to see if he would nurse. After some hesitation, he did.
"I hope he has your spirit," said Remus. "And your loyalty. And your openness."
"And I hope he has your humor. Your intelligence. Your ability to follow the rules once in a while so maybe he'll have a shot at making prefect in school."
"I hope he follows the rules just often enough," Remus decided…
The memory faded and remade itself. Remus was in the kitchen now, cradling Teddy's warm, fragile head with one hand and telling him that he would always be loved. Then he was kissing Dora and reminding her that she had not yet recovered from childbirth and that she was in no condition to fight. He promised that he would take down enough Death Eaters for the both of them. He swore to her that he would do everything he could to come home in one piece because he adored her and was not stupid enough to make the mistake of leaving her twice.
The mist faded away.
Remus never again saw Teddy.
He never again saw Dora— not that Dora.
At the other side of the bed, Dora swiped tears away from her eyes impatiently. "You know there's no way I listened to you, right? There's no way I stayed there."
"You didn't," Remus agreed. "So Harry tells me. I never saw you again."
"You're seeing me now." Her voice was rough with unshed tears.
He remembered the last time they'd looked into the Pensieve. She'd been adamant that the woman she'd seen hadn't been her. He'd been adamant that she was. Now he wasn't certain. But she seemed to be.
Then he remembered what his father had told him. I used to look at a photograph of you sitting in your mother's lap. I would look at it and think, oh, there's Remus. As if I hadn't seen you in the flesh that very day. Now, you would have grown and changed even if you'd never been bitten…
If he and Dora had both lived, they would have grown into different people. Not the people who had said goodbye in Andromeda's kitchen. Not the people who sat quietly with their daughter now. Different, and yet not.
"Teddy was beautiful," said Dora. "Lizzie is beautiful." In the midst of a thousand emotions, Remus felt yet one more: a jolt of pleasure at Dora's tacit acceptance of the nickname. "There are so many paths, so many choices, so many worlds we'll never know and people we'll never meet." Her eyes locked with his. "Which is all the more reason to relish every moment of this path and this world and the people we have here."
"I do," Remus told her. "But I will never forget Teddy."
"Do you think I will?" Tears spilled down her cheeks; he could feel tears on his own cheeks, too. She gestured toward the Pensieve. "Show me again."
Dora looked wearily at the Pensieve after they had replayed Remus' final memory for the final time.
Then, seeming to decide that time for tears had passed, she dried her eyes and grabbed Remus by the hand. "I've decided," she said.
"Decided what?"
"That Sirius really must be shagging Badeea."
Of all the things Remus had thought she might say, that hadn't been any of them. He choked on his laughter and it was a long moment before he was able to suggest that Dora call Sirius back into the room and ask him.
"He's not still out there, is he?"
Remus shrugged. "I expect that he is. The last time he had a godchild, the state of the war was…" How to explain? Was an explanation needed? "I think he'll have decided to stand guard out of an abundance of caution." He slid from the bed and opened the door.
He had been correct; Sirius and Harry were slouched in a pair of chairs near the door, talking quietly. Their heads shot up and they looked at Remus as one.
"The grandparents are still buying tacky baby gifts," said Sirius.
"Sirius wants to buy her a pink motorcycle jacket," said Harry.
"Sirius and Harry, come back in here where I can see you," Dora called from behind Remus.
Sirius and Harry jumped to their feet and hastened to obey.
"Is everything all right?" Sirius's gaze swept over Dora, taking in her swollen eyes and flushed cheeks. (Harry, for his part, pressed himself against the far wall of the room. Harry had never done well with crying women.)
Dora grinned. "Remus wanted me to ask you if you were shagging my friend Badeea."
Sirius didn't miss a beat. "Remus should be more careful about his language around small children," he said, his face perfectly expressionless.
"She's a few hours old. She doesn't understand."
"I meant Harry," said Sirius.
Harry rolled his eyes, but suddenly looked much less concerned.
"We still want to know what's going on with you and Badeea," Dora pushed.
Sirius visibly considered his options before, to Remus' slight surprise, choosing to answer. "I've been renovating Grimmauld Place so it can be used as emergency housing for Hogwarts students who don't have a proper home to go to during school holidays. I needed Badeea's skills as an artist. The portraits are all behaving themselves and I don't think a Muggle-born would be permanently scarred by walking inside now. The dark objects have gone to the Ministry, been sold, or been destroyed as appropriate." He smirked thinly. "I melted down the silver goblets and they practically funded the project on their own."
"That's magnificent, Padfoot!" Remus exclaimed.
"Why didn't you tell us?" asked Dora. "We asked why you were hanging around Grimmauld Place often enough."
"I told you when there was something to tell. I didn't know whether it was even possible to turn that… house… into something useful. It was the place I wanted to escape from when I was at school. I didn't know whether it could ever be a place someone could escape to. But thanks to Badeea it's almost unrecognizable. Other than leaving the family tree on the wall, of course." He beamed down at Elizabeth. "We'll get her name on when you come over to see it."
"It looks really good," Harry confirmed. "You can open the door and not worry about tripping over a troll's leg footstool or being mauled by doxies."
Sirius glanced sideways at Harry. "I'm just sorry that a place like that didn't exist when you were starting school. I was too late to give you the home you deserved, but—"
"No," Harry interrupted. "You gave me all the home I ever wanted. The last few years might have been… unusual, but I never did that well with a normal family anyway. Speaking of family…"
Harry withdrew a well-folded, well-loved square of parchment from beneath his robes. "I have a present for Elizabeth." He grinned. "Her legacy as the next Marauder."
Remus smiled. He wasn't certain that he'd even seen the map since he and Sirius had asked the Weasley twins to unmask Barty Crouch, but he hadn't doubted that it had found its way back into Harry's hands.
And now Harry had brought it to its next rightful heir.
The room seemed to flood with color and light and potential.
It was one of the happiest days of Remus' life.
THE END
