It was late by the time Remus stood on the doorstep of the little cottage, damp with rain and crushed with curdling shame.
Tonks stood in the doorway. She hadn't returned to her parents after all. She ran her eyes over him. Judgemental eyes. Scalding eyes. The kind that said he'd better be prepared to grovel.
Remus tried to screw up his wretched courage to apologise, but she cut him off before he could speak.
"Are you back?"
He nodded mutely.
"Right." She pulled a folded envelope out of the pocket of the cardigan she was wearing over her pyjamas- his cardigan, the grey one- and held it up. "Do I need to read this?"
Remus stared.
She hadn't read it.
The letter he'd written before he'd left her, all the awful, tragic, miserable things he'd written, the embarrassing self-justifying garbage… she hadn't read it.
"Remus?" She was talking to him like he was a badly behaved toddler.
"You didn't read it?"
"No. Do I need to?"
The old familiar feelings of hope and despair warred in his chest. She hadn't read it. She- wait-
"Why didn't you read it?"
She cast him a deliberately irritated look.
"Well, obviously, I was hoping you'd come to your senses and come home," she said, glaring slightly, "And unless you're just here to collect your cardigan and that pair of green socks with the hole in the heel, you have come to your senses. So, I'll ask you again, do I need to read this?" She flapped the battered envelope at him.
"No," he said, on a rush of breath, "No. Please don't read it. Unless… perhaps you should know how awful I am-"
She made an impatient sound, seized him by the front of his robes and hauled him inside.
"When will you get it through your thick head, Remus Lupin, I already know exactly how awful you are." She flung the door shut and stalked across the small room to throw the envelope in the fire.
"I'm so sorry, Dora, I-"
"Are you injured?" she demanded.
"No, I-"
"Good. Remus, I like you. That's why I married you. I want you around. And, if you remember, I told you you'd walk out on me at least once, and probably more than once. I know this about you, because I know you. So, no apologies, I don't want to hear them. It's not your fault most of the people you love got killed."
Remus flinched.
"Now, you are going to put the kettle on, and make tea, and tell me many reassuring things, because I am pregnant and absolutely terrified. And also I just spent several days imagining you'd been captured and tortured to death. And I thought the stress of it might make me miscarry so I've spent a stupid amount of time with my legs up the wall, and don't tell me that's not a thing, I don't care!"
She flumped down on the faded couch and pulled a lurid crochet blanket across her lap defensively.
Remus hesitated, then silently went into the little kitchen and busied himself making tea.
He was home.
He was being yelled at, but it was nice yelling.
He took his time with the tea, waiting for it to steep properly and tidying the kitchen as he went. The large glass jar that usually contained all manner of wonky homemade biscuits was empty.
Remus considered the pantry and managed to scrounge the end of a loaf, some cheese, and a bruised tomato. He set about turning it into cheese-on-toast, sprinkling it liberally with salt, and cutting it all up into small pieces that he stacked on a yellow plate that was a little too small. He sent the plate floating over to hover by the sofa, and poured the tea into two mugs. One had been a welcome gift when he'd started teaching at Hogwarts, earthenware with the school crest stamped into the side. The other was a mass-produced muggle mug, pearly pinks and purples and overlaid with silver lines to suggest scales: a sort of over-the-top muggle-mermaid aesthetic. It had 'magic is real' written on the bottom of it in swirly writing, along with 'made in China' and a company logo.
Tonks took the Hogwarts mug from him with a cranky sniff and glared at the plate of cheese-on-toast. He sat down beside her on the sofa.
"We're going to make excellent parents," he said quietly, "Because we know each other so well. I've no intention of leaving again, however, if that were to happen, you know that I will come back. Because I know that I have to come back, or you will die of scurvy,"
She gave a puff of laughter, burst into tears, stopped crying almost immediately and kissed him hard on the mouth, sloshing tea onto the floorboards. She tucked her head in against his neck, curled into his side and took a sip of tea.
They sat quietly for a while, by the fire, eating cheesy toast in silence, settling back together. Eventually Tonks gave a wobbly sigh, and Remus' heart let go of that last bit of panic.
"Beelzebub," she said, "What do you think?"
"Sorry?"
"For the baby. As a name."
Remus blinked.
"Emphatically not," He said, "Aristophanes,"
"Gertrude,"
"Ghastly. Sounds like a great aunt. Daisy,"
"The cow? No. Gwendoline."
"Barbarella,"
"Piotr,"
"Myfanwy,"
"Zircon,"
"Howell."
She turned and looked up at him, eyes sparking, expression mock surprise.
"Did you just make a werewolf joke? How appalling, Remus Lupin, how outrageous! You should know lycanthropy is no laughing matter!"
He narrowed his eyes at her. She was suppressing an impish grin, and her hair was starting to turn purple with glee.
"Dora…?"
"What you have to bear in mind," she said as she flicked her wand and sent the dishes to the kitchen, "Is that I have been very angry with you." The coy look she cast him from under her lashes could probably have melted his clothes right off. She danced over to the bedroom, confident that he would follow.
Remus stood in the doorway and blinked.
Gone was the brightly coloured mushroom patterned duvet cover. It hadn't been replaced with the other one, printed all over with slices of oranges and lemons and limes.
No.
This was the kitschiest, most appallingly awful duvet cover he had ever seen.
Midnight blue, with dark pines around the edge and snow at the bottom, a massive howling wolf took up the entire centre of the bed, emblazoned against the enormous full moon.
Tonks sat down on the bed and grinned at him, a tad defiantly.
"I was really mad," she said, reaching down beside the bed.
It wasn't quite as big as an actual wolf, but as far as stuffed toys went, it was fairly large. Tonks wrapped her arms around the cuddle-sized fake wolf and rubbed her face on its grey fake fur.
Remus tried to keep his expression neutral.
"Dare I ask what you have named this monstrosity?"
Tonks lifted the wolf toy up to expose the tag sewn into the seam of its hind leg.
Remus Lupin A.K.A Jerkface
"Ah," he said, suppressing a smile.
"Ah, indeed," said Tonks, squeezing one of the wolf's paws.
Plasticky recorded howling filled the room.
"Is this to be my punishment?" he asked mildly.
"No," she said, a sombre look descending. "This has been my comfort. But if you'd like to be punished, try the dresser,"
He cast her a quizzical look and went to investigate.
The duvet cover had clearly been part of a range. There was a pair of flannelette pyjamas with a recurring motif of the wolf against the moon, interspersed with aaaarrroooooo! written in pale grey writing.
Remus changed into the dreadful pyjamas at once.
"Come to bed," said Tonks, imperatively, tossing the wolf toy back to the ground and holding out her arms.
"I should really explain-"
"You don't get to explain," she said, in a tone that seemed stroppy on purpose, "You get to be loved. Quit trying to do penance, and just surrender already! Explaining would only make you feel all tragical and earnest and I'd have to try to make you feel better, and frankly, if anyone ought to be making anyone feel better it ought to be you making me feel better because as we've established, I'm pregnant and my husband is a jerk. Also, there's a war on, and we're all gonna die. Though the two may not be related."
This was one of the unfortunate things about having Nymphadora Tonks in your life, Remus reflected. You could spend time in absolute agony trying to work out how to do the right thing, and she'd somehow call bullshit on it.
Remus got into bed.
"Your husband is a jerk," he said cautiously.
"How dare you! I love him."
"He does have a certain elusive charm," he offered, and she cuddled into him, "If you like cardigans,"
"I do like cardigans," she said piously, "Continue,"
"He's quite good at darning socks,"
"An invaluable quality in a man,"
"He can make a tea bag last for days,"
"Disgusting. Try again."
Remus rubbed his fingers through her mulberry hair. She wedged a fuzzy foot between his ankles and slipped a hand up the back of the awful wolf shirt. Her hand was warm and restless, stroking hotly across his skin, pulling him closer.
"He's had twenty-seven different jobs and counting,"
"Multi-skilled, see, interesting and useful. Add more colour,"
"Oh, he doesn't have a lot of colour. He's more like… dust on a piano."
"Dust on a piano?"
"He has a way with words…"
"Dust on a piano?"
"… the soul of a library book, and the raw sexuality of a rhododendron…"
Tonks snorted.
"Rhododendrons are not inherently sexy-"
"… a flaw he more than amply makes up for with dirge-like correspondence executed with impeccable penmanship…"
"Oh, well, if he's got nice handwriting…"
"Oh, he does. He went through an embarrassing phase at the age of fourteen and insisted on writing everything in copperplate."
"Cute."
"It really wasn't. He read a lot of Keats- well, mostly just Ode on Melancholy: it has wolf's bane in the second line- and spent far too much time up the top of the astronomy tower thinking beautiful thoughts about his 'posthumous existence',"
There was silence for a moment, as Tonks considered him with large dark eyes.
"Because of how being bitten by a werewolf is like dying tragically young?"
"More or less."
Another pause.
"Then what happened?"
"His friends found him up there at two in the morning and pelted him with handfuls of black forest cake until he was no longer melancholy, just sticky and cross and un-romantically slathered with cream and bits of sponge and horrible glacé cherries."
"I quite like those,"
"There is absolutely no accounting for taste,"
She flashed a grin at him, but it faded.
"Tell me," he said, heart in his throat.
"I got the results back,"
A cold stone of dread in his stomach.
"And I could tell you. I can tell you, if you want to know, but… I feel like, I want to know that you love our kid whether it's a werewolf or not. Whether it's a metamorphmagus or not. Whether it's a squib or not. And it did occur to me that if you don't know, it might, you know, push you to get over yourself a bit. Plus, you're a sucker for mental torment, so."
It's not a werewolf.
Flooding relief.
"Remus," she was smiling now, hand stroking his cheek, affectionate, patient, sad, "My favourite person in the whole world is a werewolf. My very favourite."
Ice slipped through his veins.
It's a werewolf.
It was possible she had a point.
He swallowed.
"You'd better not tell me," he said, "I love this child so much already- it's why I left, I think- but you're right, the prospect of having passed on lycanthropy... It's not an easy life."
She frowned again.
"Isn't that the point of On Melancholy?"
"Sorry?"
"Life sucks, but it's also beautiful? Or something?"
"Oh. Probably. I think I was more preoccupied with the mood than with trying to understand it. I didn't realise you had an interest in the romantic poets,"
Tonks stretched luxuriously against him and flicked out the lights.
"Oh, I don't especially, but you don't have a monopoly on teen angst," She kissed him gently and snuggled close, "Why do you think I'm so freaking good at eyeliner?"
Remus lay awake in his wife's arms long into the night, hoping his child was not a werewolf, and hoping he could stop hoping that.
"Stop fretting," Tonks murmured, sometime in the very early morning, rolling over and pulling him half on top of her, "You've got months to get your head around it, I'm not expecting a miracle overnight,"
"I'm trying-"
"Stop trying."
"Dora- I- I'm just afraid it will suffer,"
She gave a sleepy groan.
"That's because you're a parent, you idiot. If it's not lycanthropy, it'll be something else. Life's brutal. Think of Harry. You wanna talk about suffering, that poor sod's had a world of it, and he's healthy as a bean,"
Harry's name sent a jolt through him. All that pain, all that rage.
Our child will have parents. At least… I hope it will…
It was a chilling thought, but a much better hope.
We will be here for you, little one… I will be here for you… and if you're a werewolf… then, at least you'll have a dad who knows what that's like. That's got to count for something, even if you hate me…
Remus couldn't remember falling asleep, but when he woke the midday sun was pouring into the room, golden, swirling dust motes, and the warm smell of chocolate biscuits filled the air. He slipped into the bathroom and showered, letting the hot water burn away as much of the grime of overwrought emotion as possible. He pulled on an ancient pair of jeans he rarely wore, and with a reluctant smile, slipped into the t-shirt she'd left out for him, dark grey, and printed with the phases of the moon.
Her face, when he wandered into the kitchen… her face lit up, and the blaze of love made his chest ache.
"Oh my god, you're adorable!" she said, waving an oven mitt at him, "I can't believe I've never seen you in a t-shirt before, you're just- you look-"
She had a smudge of flour on one cheek. Her hair was a vivid aquamarine. She was wearing baggy overalls with only one side done up, and a pale pink top with a little cartoon wolf on it.
"- you look younger- no wait, I don't mean that exactly-"
"Thanks,"
"No, I just mean- did you have a rock phase?" she demanded suddenly. "After the romantic poets. I mean, I know Sirius used to swan about in a leather jacket, but were you still up the astronomy tower, smoking nasty little cigarettes and pondering the meaning of life and letting your hair curl around your ears?"
Remus tried not to look too sheepish.
"You sneaky- we trawled though Sirius' record collection, and you said nothing!"
"At that point, I was still trying to impress you with my urbane sophistication. I had no idea you'd be interested in my falsetto,"
Her eyes went round.
"Ok, we are revisiting that later!" she said, tossing the oven mitt on the counter, and hooking her fingers through his belt loops, pulling him in for a wildly indulgent snog. "But first we have to go get some groceries. Did you know there isn't a single vegetable in this house? Not a single one, Remus! We're gonna starve!"
They toddled off to a muggle farmers' market on the other side of the country, and spent a beautiful afternoon on buses, eating hot samosas, choosing bunches of silverbeet and crumbly feta, and tumbling back into their little cottage with the honeymoon glow of being back together.
Theodore was born shortly after the full moon in April, so it wasn't until May that Remus had a definitive answer to the question he was still slightly dreading. But Teddy took after his mother.
Voldemort was defeated, and Tonks went back to work, and two years later, on the darkest night in December, Remus held his newborn daughter in his arms. She was so tiny, a dark mop of hair from the Black side, and no other recognisable family features- though Tonks said she had his eyes- and he knew. He knew, as she curled her little hand around his finger, that this was a child who would never know what it was like to be free of the curse. There would be no reprieve. This child would never see the full moon with human eyes.
Remus let the pain of that wash over him, and held her close and stroked her hair.
"She needs a name," said Tonks, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder, "In all seriousness, we can't keep calling her 'the baby' forever,"
Remus swallowed hard against the well of tears.
"Selena," he said quietly.
Tonks froze.
"You know!" she said, "How do you know? Is it a smell thing? She just smells like baby to me," she put her nose against her daughter's tiny head and sniffed. "Are you making werewolf jokes to let me know you're ok?"
Remus shook his head.
"It's not a joke." He said, croakily, "It's a blessing,"
There was a pause, while she took this in.
"Oh, she's got you wrapped around her little finger already. You're going to spoil her rotten,"
"I'll try not to-"
"Oh really? I don't believe you. I can see you're going to be thick as thieves. Me and Ted are going to be left out of all your secret wolf business. I can see it already. I'm telling you now, in advance, you owe us chocolate ice-cream," she grinned at him, "Now, when we tell everyone we're calling her Selena, do we pretend we have no idea it means 'moon goddess' or do we admit we're setting her up for school-yard bullying?"
"We named our firstborn Theodore, and insist on calling him Teddy," Remus said, smiling, "I think they know we're heartless monsters,"
A few years later, Remus buried his face in the pillow, and cried helpless tears of laughter.
"You all right?" Tonks stood in the doorway, Selena on her hip, sombrely chewing her own hand. "Ted said you lost Jerkface in the park,"
Remus choked with laughter.
"Jerk- Jerkface is never leaving home again," he said in between spasms, "We spent twenty minutes searching for him," he wheezed, "All of us calling out Jeerrrrrkfaaaace at the top of our lungs… and while an excellent lesson in finding things the muggle way-"
"Derkface!" put in Selena happily, recognising the recurring theme of the day.
"-his public appearances will have to be limited to the Christmas card in future. Half the- half the people in the park joined in- we- he- I don't quite- the park was full of people rummaging about in bushes and yelling 'Jerkface' and most of them didn't know- didn't know he wasn't a dog! They were whistling, Dora, calling out 'here boy!' and suggesting we put up missing posters. Ted explained- very politely to an elderly lady in pearls, that Jerkface wasn't his real name, that his real name was- and then- she was roaming about calling out- calling 'Reeemus Loooooopin! Also known as-"
"Jerrrrkfaaaace!" Supplied Tonks and Selena.
Remus collapsed into helpless fits of laughter.