Bill Weasley had just gotten off of work and he wanted nothing more than to take a nap. But as he walked through the house to his room, he found his wife preoccupied with a large bag and the clothes on the bed that she was putting in it. It wasn't much, certainly nothing more than what could last her through a weekend.
"Hey, uh... love of my life? Darling?" Bill snuck up behind her, gently touching her back. He tried to make light of the situation but he had no clue what exactly it was that she was doing. "Um... what... are you up to?"
Fleur didn't look up as she folded her clothes. "I am leaving 'ou." She said bluntly. "I am leaving 'ou to go and be with the real love of my life." When she turned her head to look at him, he could tell she was joking.
"The real love of your life? Who, Viktor Krum?" Bill wrapped his arms around her middle.
She made a smug expression, flipping her long blonde hair out of her face and over her shoulder. "Why do 'ou alwayz make such bold assumptions about me?"
"Oh really, then pray tell, who is this mysterious lover you plan on running away into the night with?" Bill smiled, kissing her on the cheek.
"A certain auror, by ze name of Nymphadora." Fleur chuckled. "Ve are going to run away to an island somevere in zebmiddle of ze ocean so zat we can drink wine and gossip on the beach all day long."
"Sounds dreamy." Bill laughed. "One thing though, you can't wear any small bikinis while you're gone. I can't have all the other men staring at my wife and her girlfriend."
"No, zat iz the only sing ve vill pack, and ven I am not wearing zem, I will be naked, and you cannot stop me." She declared defiantly, a smile creeping in her face "And she vill love it on me."
Fleur became still and serious. Bill watched her continue to pack. It seemed to only be her necessities for several nights, like an emergency bag for something. "Fleur, what's actually going on?"
His wife shook her head. "Eet iz just in case."
"In case of what?"
She didn't immediately respond. "She iz... going through some 'ard times right now. I sink she may need me more zan ever, and I am packing in case I need to go and stay with her for a bit. Just, you know 'ow it iz, a day or two at a time. Not like I am staying forever. Juzt een case."
"That's... very kind of you, ma douce fleur." Bill encouraged. She was quite amused with his playful compliments. "Do you think she's going to be okay? Even with him gone?"
"She... I don't know." That wasn't a good thing for her to say. Fleur was supposed to know the ins and outs of her best friend's life. They talked about everything under the sun, even things they wouldn't dare mention in front of their husbands. Surely Tonks would have confided her troubles in Fleur of all people if she began to struggle and sink. "I made a promise to 'er a long time ago, and I told her I could keep eet if I needed to."
"Is there something you aren't telling me? Is something going wrong with her?" Bill asked. "You don't think she's going to do anything... rash, do you? Completely out of the ordinary? Could potentially bring harm to the kids?
"Not 'urt the kids, no." Fleur shook her head. "I won't talk about eet until she iz ready to talk about it."
"It?"
"Yes, it! Bill, you know zat I love you, but zis is not my secret to keep." Fleur replied. "Vile we are talking about zis: Elena, what should we do about 'er?"
"I think she wants to go home soon, but I wish Teddy would quite pestering her with it. He's only going to make it harder."
"I feel bad for 'er." She sighed. "I know zat zey shouldn't be fighting, but eet iz harder for her to cool down with him continuing to try and drag 'er back."
"Do you know exactly what they were fighting about?" He asked.
"Yes." She nodded, looking over her shoulder at him. "Zat is what I cannot talk about."
"I see." Bill nodded. He kissed her on the cheek. "I was just thinking that if you're worried about Tonks's safety being alone, maybe that's when we should send Elena back."
"Zere iz a lot more going on zan jus' that." Fleur was very still too passive and distracted for his liking. She kissed him on the cheek. "I'm sorry."
"Fleur, I'm just concerned that we could lose our friend over this. This is serious, love. Do you really think she could be in danger?"
"Bill-" Fleur took a deep breath. "Juzt leave eet alone. I am juzt az frightened as 'ou are and I don't want 'er geeting hurt, but I cannot tell you what's going on."
"You can if this is a matter of life or death!" Bill protested. "I mean, really, have you not considered that before? That maybe she's never going to be the same because she's lost the love of her life like this? I'd be fairly upset myself if I lost you, I can't even imagine what she's going through with the kids. There was nothing we could have done, but it shouldn't have happened! He shouldn't have suffered the way he did!"
"I know zat!" Fleur sighed with frustration. "I know zat zis was unusual and zat she did not deserve for zis to 'appen, and I know zat her safety iz a big concern. Zat is why I am preparing in case I need to go and stay for a while."
Bill shook his head solemnly. "I know her well enough that I don't think she would tell you about that. She would just... do it without warning, I think. I don't think she would even bother with a note."
"Bill-" Fleur turned to stare at the ceiling. "She is pregnant and you did not 'ear it from me."
"She's... what?"
"I do not sink it was planned, eef that iz what you are asking."
Bill got rather quiet. "It... it is his, right? I thought... I mean, I would have thought they were too old. Especially Remus, being in such poor health..."
"'e didn't know, apparently, and zat iz why Elena got angry. Now, I know better zan to wonder eef it was 'is." Fleur said sternly. "I would not ask, with or without suspicions."
"That's odd that she didn't tell him." Bill pointed out. "They've been married for eighteen years now for crying out loud. Of course she was hiding something. Don't you think?"
"William, stop it. Now." Fleur snapped, pointing her finger at him. "I do not care what 'ou sink, she needs support right now more zan anysing."
"I just find it...very peculiar." Bill shook his head. "She's my friend, I should know her better than this, I just... I feel bad for her. I couldn't begin to understand what she's thinking and I shouldn't question it, I know, but... I mean, why now? Why not six months ago? Why not a year ago?"
"I don't know." Fleur cut him off. "But I promised 'er when she was pregnant with Teddy zat I would always help 'er with ze kids when she needed it. You did too. So now ve 'ave got to act like it."
xxxxx
"Jeez, Elena, Elena!" Dominique was completely breathless, struggling to keep up the pace. They had been running down the gravel trail that spanned behind a wooded area near Shell Cottage. She stopped, hunched over on her knees. "Some of us don't play quidditch, you know!"
The girl in front of her stopped running, turning around to go back to her. She smiled and wiped the sweat on her forehead back into her hair. "Sorry." She had her hair up in a long ponytail on her head. Being jealous of both her mother and brother's ability to morph, she had gone through a phase of dying the ends of her hair, mostly sticking with purples and blues. Now the ends of her brown hair were bleached in stark contrast.
Dominique pouted, sitting down on the gravel trail. "You're such a pain sometimes." Dominique was about a year younger than Elena. She had tan skin and curly blonde hair. Her face, chest, arms and legs were covered with freckles like her father and her older sister, Victoire. She was the middle child of three kids, having a younger brother, Louis.
"Yeah, I know. I do that a lot." The girl named Elena Lupin tilted her head, bending down to look at the girl. She had bruises on her knees and shins from knocking into various things. "Come on, we're not that far from the house. What're you sit down for?"
"I'm tired, okay!" Dominique laughed. "I'm going to stop going for runs with you if this is how you're going to act!"
"Well maybe you should learn to run faster." Elena smirked.
"Maybe you should learn to be more considerate." Dominique straightened her back to look at her. Their faces were mere centimeters apart and they were talking down their noses at each other.
Elena was staring at the girl's mouth with big brown eyes, but she didn't stand up. "Dom, I don't think we should-"
Dominique's lips upturned. She had such long eyelashes. Her eyes creased when she was happy, but it always drew more attention to her freckles. Dominique wasn't a huge fan of her freckles, but Elena certainly was. "Think we should what?"
"I thought we were over this." Elena straightened her own back, leaving Dominique sitting on the ground. "I thought you didn't want anything to do with me anymore."
"That's what I thought until we went swimming in the lake last fall in our underwear." They had gone on an expedition on their first day of school, along with Teddy, Victoire, and one of Teddy's other best friends, and timed it well enough to not get caught. Elena had been the most insecure going, but Dominique went with her, and everything seemed... better since then. "I caught feelings again."
"If you wanted something to do with me, why did you have to go and ruin it and say those things about me?"
"I'm not taking back what I said. There's something wrong with you, Lena. You're sick. You need to talk to your mum about what's going on." Dominique cut her eyes at her. "I dunno, I just thought that night was the happiest I've seen you in a while. I keep thinking you're going to get better. You promised me you would get better, but you just get better at hiding it."
"I'm sorry." Elena mumbled. She wanted to try denying the accusation of being sick, but she didn't. At this point, it would just escalate things to a point where she didn't want them.
Among her known several illnesses that she combated, one of them was the near complete deafness in one of her ears, and the beginning of it in the other, her always low levels of blood, and the reoccurring nosebleeds and it was always assumed to have correlation to her father's lycanthropy despite her parents' denial and reassurance. But they all knew why she had those issues. They all knew she was a sickly baby and a sickly child, and now, was an even more sickly young adult.
But that wasn't the sickness Dominique referred to. The one she was referring to was a lot different and only seemed to exacerbate her other problems. It was the reason Elena had even dragged her out at the crack of dawn just to go running. It was the reason why Elena was so strangely strangely thin and always acting weird. She wouldn't mention it to a soul and everyone always assumed it was the lycanthropy gene. Dominique knew there had to be something else going on, and whenever she questioned why Elena was doing more pushups or was eating less for dinner, she shut down. Elena couldn't explain what she was feeling, she she wouldn't do anything at all.
Dominique watched her nervously wander in a circle. "Hey, are we still good now?"
Elena stopped and looked at her. "I thought we were."
They hadn't gone out of their way to tell people that they had been a thing, in fact, it took people a while to tell them that they were a thing. It was completely a joke the first few times they kissed each other and in the time it took them to realize they were dating, they had already broken it off. It wasn't a clean break at first either, with Dominique demanding that Elena finally admit that she was hurting herself, and they spent a long time not talking to each other. But despite how messy it got, they kept it quite personal, and continued to be quite close, even when things were still weird. "Are we not okay? I thought maybe you were trying to suck up to me or something. I don't care, I just don't want to yell at you anymore. I thought we had forgiven and forgotten."
That was a lot for her to say. Elena was not good about letting go of things. She didn't talk to her brother for about a year when he started dating her best friend. Yet apart of her wanted Dominique to be curious, to care about her enough to ask her at meal times if she was okay. Dominique shook her head dismissively. "I dunno. I guess I just still feel... stuff when I see you. I don't even know if I'm supposed to be feeling this stuff. I've asked myself a million times if I know what I'm doing..." She couldn't quite look Elena in the eye. "I know you're over it already. But I'm sorry for the stuff I said to you."
"You're sorry that you said it." Elena said. "But I know that you meant it and that you're going to stand by it. You said you won't take it back."
"I know." Dominique stayed quiet. "I want you to get better."
"You've already apologized plenty." Elena shook her head. "I don't want to hear about this anymore. I'm sorry too, but that's it. You're nice and all, but this isn't going to work out."
"I know, but I miss you."
Elena didn't want to answer at first. "Yeah, I feel like that sometimes too."
"That's the least helpful thing you could've said." Dominique laughed sourly. "You could've just said that you still hate my guts and never want to talk to me again and it would've been a million times easier."
"I don't dislike you though." Elena bent back down to face her. "Maybe we should head back to the house."
"My parents are leaving for work soon." Dominique mumbled, reaching for her hand. "We can stay out and walk around if we want."
"You've got to speak up, Dom." Elena turned her head to put her good ear forward.
"Nothing." She shook her head. Dominique pulled herself to her feet. She was almost as tall as Elena. "If you want to head back, we can head back." The other girl nodded quietly. Facing each other again, and they were almost the same height, but not quite. Their hands brushed against each other. "If you want."
"I think we should go back. They'll wonder where we are." Elena announced.
Dominique squeezes her hand. She nodded her head slowly. "Okay?"
Elena tilted her head. She didn't turn her head down. "That's fine."
Dominique smiled. "Let's go back then."
The two girls were walking upstairs when they saw two figures come out of the adjacent bedroom. "Teddy?" Elena said, shocked. His face was burning bright red. He was dressed in regular clothes, but Victoire was still in her pajamas.
"Elena?" He remarked.
"Why are you here?" Elena demanded.
"I came to see Tori." Her brother said simply.
"Excuse is, we'll give you a minute." Victoire grabbed her sister by the arm and they scurried off to her room. Dominique protested quietly, but they were muttering hatefully at each other in French behind the door.
"Bullshit, you came to talk to me." Elena crossed her arms.
Here he was: again. She was so angry she thought she might actually get into a physical altercation with him if she knew she would win.
She had explained to everyone that she needed a break away from the house, which was true. Remus had been his daughter's biggest motivator and role model, her biggest confident and always the man that was there to hold her when she was crying. In his last moments with her where he could talk, he told her how proud he was of her, how she just needed to find it within herself to keep moving forward.
They spent hours before his death recalling stories of each other. Remus had surprised her with how good his memory was of her as a young girl. He recalled her as a child and how she always insisted that he take her stuffed bear "for protection against the bad guys" during full moons, though he always declined. Just weeks before her twelfth birthday, it was her father she went crying to when she got her first period, not her mother, who in all her auror training, could barely look her daughter in the eye after having "the talk". Remus had to be the one to politely explain that no, she was not going to die. Remus always wrote to the children while they were at school. Even on full moons, the owl would always come and drop them their weekly letters. He would always tell her to save up her money, but since her third year, Elena always sent him chocolate back home on Valentine's Day and he would always send her a card or more chocolates back. He took her to buy her dress robes when Tonks was at work. He was the only person to know about what happened with Dominique, besides Teddy and Victoire, save for the part where Dominique yelled at her.
Elena cried the entire night she lost her father. She could barely get out of bed for the funeral and nearly collapsed, had it not been for Teddy carefully holding her up. She wouldn't move, she wouldn't get out of bed, she wouldn't eat, she wouldn't shower... And then came the baby. And then came the questions. Of course, no kid, especially a grown one, wants to hear that their mum is pregnant. And no kid wants to think about or talk about how it happened, but Elena raised some questions. Did her father know? Did Tonks have the decency to at least let her father know that he was going to have another child? All Elena wanted was to know that her dying father would have had something happy to think about when he passed, that he knew that his family loved him and wouldn't lie to him and let him down in his moment of need. Teddy snapped when Tonks started crying.
And suddenly Elena was the villain. All she had wanted was confirmation that maybe her dad had known, maybe even excited for this new baby. Maybe they had talked about names or a nursery or even what the baby was going to look like. And Tonks has stripped him of those last few happy thoughts.
Elena would have gotten into a physical altercation with her brother for being so mean to her, immediately degrading her feelings and telling her to "get over it." But instead, she put a small hole in the drywall in her bedroom. Currently, a crumpled poster depicting "Liberty Leading the People" with thumbtacks in the corners was covering it at a lopsided angle, but Elena didn't care at that point. She couldn't stand it. She needed fresh air. She couldn't look at any of her family members without wanting to scream.
"Do you really have to talk like that? Does it make you feel all grown up?" Teddy taunted.
"Mind your fucking business." Elena crossed her arms.
"Where were you, by the way?"
"You don't need to know any of my business."
"If it's not a big deal, where were you?"
"Where was I when?"
"Just now. When I came all the way over to see you."
"We were out running."
"Fun." Teddy said smugly. "Well I'm sorry sorry to bother you, but maybe some of us want to keep our family from completely falling apart."
Elena rolled her eyes. "You're so melodramatic! It's like, I leave for a fucking hour to live my own life and do my own things and and you have to act like you're framing me for murder!"
"You're not taking any of this seriously, Lena!"
"Not when you crawl all over my ass like this, I can't! I don't want to talk to her right now!"
"Maybe I'm worried you won't every try and talk to her!"
"That's not true! You know I will!"
"What?" Teddy began raising his voice. "Eventually? In what, five months when she's due?"
"Maybe!"
"Or what, are you going to mooch off the Weasley's until Christmas so you can move out?" He had his hands on his hips.
"Maybe I'm going to stop talking to you too if you're going to bitch at me like this!" Elena tried to push past him, but he shoved her by the shoulder. "Don't touch me!"
"Well you don't even know how to make a proper point, do you, unless you've got a whole slew of cuss words to hide behind!" Teddy exclaimed.
"Fuck you!" Elena shouted back. "You're always like this! You think you're trying to play dad, but guess what, you're pretty shit at it! You think you're all grown up and that you're kind of... I don't know, but leave me alone!"
"Do you not understand how upset Mum is over not talking to you right now?" Teddy demanded.
"We were in mural agreement that I needed to leave! We ALL agreed that we should back off!"
"We need your help, Lena!" Teddy told her. "We need your help around the house like the rest of us, you'll need to get a job like the rest of us, why do you think you're so special? You're always acting so immature! Why can't you just grow up for once!" Teddy shouted. Elena looked and noticed that his hair was turning red. "You need to grow up and stop being so lazy!"
Elena turned and pushed him away from her. "I hate you! All you've ever done was make my life harder! You took my best friend away from me and now you're nothing but hateful for no good reason, and I'm done! Just go away! And don't come back!" Tears we're flooding her eyes as she stormed off into the other bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind her.
xxxxx
Teddy didn't want to go home empty handed. He lost count of how many times he had tried to get in touch with his sister, and how many times his mother advised against it, and it was still inevitably fruitless.
Elena was reckless. One time, she hit him in the face with a bluffer and made him fall off his broom. She refused to talk to him when he started dating Victoire, despite making and agreeing on mutual terms. She couldn't even take care of herself well enough to stay on her feet during class. Teddy covered for her time and time again. He kept their mother from hearing all of the things that would embarrass his sister, even if he knew that it wasn't good for her in the end.
Now she was running off to the Weasley's house, living rent free, with food on the table, a bed to sleep in, clean laundry, and her own bathroom. All of this because she refused to come to terms with their mum being pregnant. What was he supposed to do, let her run away from home with no consequences? Teddy was fuming. She always got whatever she wanted and everyone always sided with her, even since she was a kid. Someone needed to hold her accountable for her tantrums. Being the youngest and being so sickly growing up, no one had ever taught her accountability. She was spoiled and jealous of the new baby and she was going to sit and pout until she got her way, whatever that was.
Teddy didn't count on there being anyone in the kitchen when he got home. His mother was at the stove cooking breakfast for herself, quiet beneath the sound of sizzling bacon. "Hey mum."
"Hey." She yawned. "Sorry. Just got up."
"I got up early anyways." He said quickly. "Went to see Vic."
"You went to bother your sister, didn't you?" Tonks shook her head. "You need to leave her alone. I don't need the two of you picking fights too. Let her be mad at me, I can handle it."
"Why?" He asked stubbornly.
"She's going to do nothing but hate you. She'll stop talking to you too." Tonks could see right through him. "She's not going to do anything until you give her space to think. That's the whole reason she left, before things escalated."
Teddy paused, awkward and alone in the middle of the kitchen. "Mum?"
"Yes?"
"Can I ask you something? And I don't mean to sound rude, I just want to know-"
"Nothing you can say is going to hurt my feelings."
"Why didn't you tell dad? About the baby?"
Tonks felt like she had to say it a million times, but she felt her lip begin quivering. "I... I decided that if he could live to see me have it, I would tell him. When he started declining in May... I couldn't do it. If I had told him, it would have just crushed him. He would never get to see them."
"You don't know that. Maybe... maybe he would have been happy to know." Teddy suggested.
Tonks laughed lightly. She was staring at some microscopic particle in the air. "I told him, you know. I did actually... tell him about it, but he panicked. I... I had to obliviate him."
That was worse news than Teddy expected "Oh."
"He took the news terribly, at first he didn't believe me and then he-well, he actually laughed, because he thought I was joking. I think he was just astonished. He wouldn't have taken it any better if I waited for him to cool down."
"What did he say?"
"He just said something like... he said we couldn't afford to or manage to have a baby right now. It wasn't going to work out and we'd all be miserable." Tonks was stumbling over her words now.
"What does that mean? I mean, what did he think you were supposed to do? Just not be pregnant because he thought it was inconvenient?"
"I don't think he had a clue what to think." Tonks shrugged. "I made breakfast because I thought maybe you were upstairs or something, so I guess congrats on the sneaking out skills. There are clean plates in the sink."
Teddy nodded and went to grab a clean plate while trying to not look so obviously hungry. "What are you going to do now that you're by yourself?"
"What do you mean?" Tonks asked.
"I mean, where are you going to put the baby? Where's it going to sleep?" Teddy wondered.
"Your sock drawer?" She tried to be sarcastic, but even she was befuddled at his implication. "Teddy, I'm not going to take over your old bedrooms just for the baby. You do realize that, right? That's your space."
"I'm going to get a new place with Vic next summer, and most of my stuff'll have to leave anyways. If you can wait, I can clear out my room. I don't care." Teddy insisted. He was patiently waiting for his mother to move so that he could get breakfast too, but she didn't seem like the conversation was over.
"I'm not going to make you do that."
"But where else have you got?"
"I can figure something out." Tonks replied.
"I don't need it anyways."
"I know, but it's still your room since you were a little kid. I'm not taking that away from you." Her voice was very nostalgic. If teddy knew they had any other good options besides cleaning out his room, he would have caved for her. She sounded a bit pitiful, but for just a second, Teddy wanted to hear her emotional response, not the logical one.
"You could downsize? Lena's got what, 'til Christmas before she's an adult, then another year and a half to graduate. You could get your own house?"
"I'm perfectly fine here. I can take care of it."
"Can I at least try and help you?" Teddy offered
"You're my son, not a babysitter." Tonks rolled her eyes. "I won't use you like that."
"What? I could really give you a hand and you would be back on your feet before you know it."
"I'm okay, really." Tonks paused for a moment. "Teddy, I know you're trying to help, but I don't need it. I know I don't have Dad's help this time around, but you and your sister turned out okay, and I did half the work, didn't I? I mean, I was pregnant with a toddler when he went off for nine months for work. I've got this."
"What's going on with you at the Ministry?"
Tonks squinted with thought. "Kingsley knows something is wrong, but I'm not ready for everyone and their brother to know about the baby yet. He said something about writing me off for being unfit to work, so it's on them and not me, thankfully. So I'm going to have to tell him, probably very soon, when his office is open, but I'll still need to get a mental health evaluation, then he'll give me a stack of paperwork or something else to work on and I'll be set until I can take maternity leave."
"How are you going to work if you've got a kid?" Teddy asked. "I mean, like a baby. A newborn-baby-child."
"Teddy, you have a job. I thought you were going to work this afternoon. Look, I know you're trying to be helpful, but you're busy trying to get in your feet and I understand that." Tonks told him. "I promise, I can find other arrangements. It might be hard at first, but I can figure it out eventually. Promise, promise."
Teddy paused. "I'm sorry if it seems like I don't find you capable or something. I don't think that. I just don't want you to be alone with this."
"I'm not alone. I'm okay." His mother said softly.
He shifted uncomfortably. "How are you feeling otherwise?"
Tonks was making her way to the table and teddy tried to subtly scurry over to the stove to acquire the remains that she left in their pans. "What do you mean?"
"I dunno. Like are you... feeling bad?" Teddy wondered. "I dunno... I thought... I thought when you were pregnant, you were sick or something?"
Tonks laughed nervously. "You know at this point? I don't even think I noticed."
