Author's note: Some bittersweet family fluff because we've all earned it and the moon is so pretty I love her. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights
Content Warnings: Canon grief (Ted Tonks)
On The Night You Were Born
"I have something for you," Remus said—sitting at her bedside, once he'd come home from walking her mother out to the safe spot from which she could Apparate to and from their flat.
"Is it a kiss?" she asked.
"No, but I can give you one of those too," Remus said, leaning down and kissing her softly. "This I wrapped it."
"What?" she asked. "Why?"
"So you could unwrap it."
"Why did you get me anything at all?" Tonks asked.
"For Teddy," Remus said, kissing her cheek. "To celebrate having him."
"It's technically his birthday, not mine," Tonks said. The little boy had been born at 1:13 a.m. and she had never been simultaneously as exhausted as she was or as alert as she wanted to be to stand guard by his crib. She'd refused to have him at St. Mungo's, since they'd recently barred werewolves from the premise given Fenrir Greyback's latest atrocities, so he'd been born here with Molly and her mum overseeing the messy and painful process she'd sworn she'd never repeat about seventy different times.
"He wouldn't have a birthday without you," Remus pointed out.
"I still don't think that warrants a present, I wasn't going to be holding him in or anything…"
Remus laughed and reached for her hand. He kissed her knuckles
"Think of it as an early birthday present, then," Remus said. "One that I'm too excited to wait until June to give you."
"Hmm. Well, I suppose it is exactly two months away," she shrugged. "And Teddy's sleeping now, whereas he might not have that kind of generosity on my actual birthday… all right, let's pretend the occasion is today."
"Well, let's not exaggerate," Remus said. "I haven't baked a cake."
"Show me what's got you all excited, smartass," Tonks said. He smiled and quickly circled the bed to take something wrapped in a piece of soft blue silk from his nightstand.
"What is this?" Tonks frowned. "Please don't tell me you went to a lot of trouble for this…"
"Aldrich Alesmith owed me a favour," Remus promised. "Not that I would have been able to help myself, once I figured out what charms I'd need to cast to modify it."
"The antiquarian?" Tonks asked, frowning. She wasn't one for antiques—unless vintage Weird Sisters tour merchandise counted, in which case she was very interested. But as a rule, she was too clumsy to be trusted with objects that were valuable, fragile, or rare, and especially not objects that were all of the above. This was why having a baby was terrifying, even if said baby was slumbering peacefully in the crib only a few feet away. Last time she'd checked, about twelve seconds ago, his hair was shifting from blues to greens to pinks as he slept—like the Northern lights.
"Open it," Remus nudged her. He had the same excited look in his eyes as he did when he was planning to make her favourite dish for supper or had owled into the radio so they'd play her favourite song—whenever he was about to do something utterly precious and adorable. She was pretty sure that she was too hormonal to take it, whatever stinkingly cute thing her husband had done now, but she pulled at the ribbon keeping the package shut and out fell the lunascope. This one was made of brass and if she hadn't seen one before, she would think it was just a telescope with strange dials up and down the cylinder, with bronze loops and arches at the end like the armillary spheres she might have used in Astronomy if she'd been a better student.
"A lunascope? I thought you already had one of those."
"I sold it before I went undercover with the werewolves," Remus said. "Besides, this one is different. Do you see that dial by the end?"
"Yes."
"This lunascope has pre-recorded settings," Remus said. "And do you see how there's no lenses at the end?"
"Yes," she frowned.
"That's because you're not meant to look through it, you're meant to shine a light at the end," Remus said.
Curious, she reached for the wand on her bedside table.
"Lumos," she said, sliding the tip of her wand into the strange contraption. Remus waved his wants to turn off the bedroom lights.
"Turn that dial," he said in that gentle voice that had made him such a good teacher.
She twisted it once and immediately a map of the night sky was projected onto the ceiling—she saw stars, some bigger and brighter than others, and even planets which shone grey or red. A shooting star even slipped across the ceiling.
"Wow," she said, looking at the sky in their bedroom. She could pick out a few constellations, knowing that there were others up there she should recognize but not caring. They were beautiful as they were. "This is impressive. What… What day did you set it to? What sky is it showing?"
"Last night. When Teddy was born," Remus said simply. She smiled.
"That's good, because I was far too busy to lean out the window and have a look myself," she tried to joke even as something caught in her throat. When in Merlin's name had he done this? He'd spent every second at her side from the first contraction to the minute Teddy was born, and after that he'd only left to go bring the news to Shell Cottage. She'd thought that they'd spent every minute that Teddy was asleep sleeping themselves, but he'd apparently snuck away to find the time. That or she'd married a clairvoyant.
Remus slipped an arm around her and pulled her closer. "Turn the dial again."
She did and the sky changed. The metal loops and circlets and beads at the other end of the lunascope rotated and clicked as they rearranged themselves, and a new celestial map appeared over her head as easily as if she was flicking through a slideshow.
"Which one is this?" she asked.
"The night you were born," Remus said. "It starts at 11:54, that's what your mother told me, but if you slide that switch along the side it'll scroll through the entire night—show you everything from sunset to sunrise."
She flicked again.
"That one's mine," he said almost apologetically. "They're in chronological order."
"They're in chronological order…" her heart skipped a beat and she flicked over to the next one.
"That's your dad," Remus said, even more softly. "March 1st, 1943."
Now there were tears prickling in her eyes.
"Your mother's next," he said gently. "December 21st, same year. And then it starts again with Teddy, until you change the order or add more."
She flicked from Teddy's sky to her father's.
"Both were born on waxing crescent moons," she noticed. "And the springtime constellations are up."
"They are," Remus said. He leaned his head against hers and she looked up at the sky.
"I wish… I so wish he was here to meet Teddy," she said. Her mouth felt pasty. That had gone unspoken all day, but she'd felt it in the pit of her stomach as certainly as she'd felt the fatigue in her legs and abdomen. She'd seen it on her mother's lips, when the happiness of her smile didn't match the grief in her eyes. Part of it was in her son's name, really, because why would they have named him Edward if there was already one to sit at the kitchen table and read the comics with over oversteeped tea? But it wasn't in the night sky. The night sky was all about possibility, about something perfect and whole far away from them. But it was theirs, too.
"I wish he was here too," Remus said, kissing the top of her head and keeping his nose buried in her hair for a moment. She breathed in and out with him.
"At least we'll be able to show Teddy how close their skies were one day," she said, cradling the lunascope against her chest.
"Do you like it?" Remus asked, checking in. He didn't get to give presents often, even if he was very—very—good at it, so she knew he was always somewhat nervous.
"I love it," she said.
"I didn't have time to go through all of it, but when I was going through old astronomy almanacs to get the settings right, I read that there was a meteor shower on the night your father was born. We'll see it, if you want to keep watching," he said.
"Please," she said, snuggling into him. "Actually, I'm going to go get my baby to do that…"
"I've got it," Remus said, sitting up before she even finished and kissing her forehead. He lifted Teddy out of the crib so gently that the baby didn't stir, probably because it had been quite an exhausting day of being born. She was exhausted, at any rate, as Remus gently rested the currently blue-haired baby on her chest. She held her breath for a second, hoping he wouldn't wake up. Remus, just as concerned, lowered himself back into bed gingerly. Then he fixed the blankets so that they were all bundled up.
"Okay," he said. "Are you ready?"
"Ready," she said, leaning against him as she set the lunascope back to her father's birthday.
She fell asleep long before any meteors appeared, but lulled to sleep by the twinkle of a now-familiar sky.
WC: 1575