Author's note: Sooo, I posted a story called In Here With Me a while back, in which Teddy and Victoire reconnected while they're locked in St. Mungo's during a dragonpox epidemic. Was it to cope with the real world? Who can tell. Anyways, the story was written from Teddy's point of view so I didn't get to include how Andromeda, Bill or Fleur were dealing with the situation and so I thought I'd adapt the premise for this fic—which works out nicely, because now Tonks and Remus are alive for it. Yay!

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: Pandemic themes (so maybe not for you if you're not coping with the pandemic by making it a fictional character's problem)

The Waiting Game

The door swung open and startled Remus out of the book he was reading. Before he could process the noise Dora had appeared in the sitting room of their small flat.

"Remus—turn on the radio," she said breathlessly. She'd thrown on the yellow trench coat she'd been favouring, and was still wearing her work clothes—a black turtleneck, chunky boots, and burgundy corduroy pants she'd gotten who knows where. Her sunglasses were clipped to her collar and she still wore her Auror badge around her neck, as if she'd left the office in a hurry.

"Dora, what..?"

"Turn on the radio, it's all anyone's talking about," she said. "There's a ward in St-Mungo's with some new form of dragon pox on it, and they've locked it down with everyone inside. Only new patients are going in."

Remus's heart sank into his stomach.

"Is Teddy working today?" he asked.

"I don't know," Dora said quietly. "I went by his place and nobody answered, but that could mean anything, and—"

"I'll send him a Patronus."

"I've tried, he hasn't answered," she said chewing on her lip. She wound a hand in her purple hair.

Remus took a deep breath, not letting himself panic—because it sounded like Dora was also working hard not to panic and if he slipped up, they were both going to go down.

"Did you hear anything while you were in the office?" Remus said. "I mean, the Aurors must be involved for security reasons…"

"They sent me home; they said I was too close to it—and Harry too," Dora said. She frowned. "Teddy would have answered a call if he could have… wouldn't he?"

Remus chewed on his lip. That's exactly what he was afraid of; that Teddy was so good at answering calls. Even if he hadn't been scheduled today, if Teddy had heard that there was trouble at the hospital he may have turned up anyways—to try and help.

"What about Victoire?" Remus asked. "She would know if he was on the schedule, wouldn't she?" This made sense; not only was she also a Healer, but they were roommates.

"Right," Dora said. "Right, but when I swung by the house nobody answered… Fleur—of course, I should send a Patronus to Fleur, she might know…"

As if she'd been summoned, there was a knock on the door—and Fleur was standing there, looking pale, when Remus answered while Dora fiddled with the radio. She was trying to find a channel where they'd be talking about it instead of replaying old Celestina Warbeck songs. Fleur stood in the doorway looking pale. Fleur did not look like she was bringing news, she looked like she'd come looking for information herself. An elegant flowered scarf was tied around her neck but her coat was misbuttoned, like she'd left in a hurry.

"Have you heard from Teddy or Victoire?" she asked in a rush.

"No," Remus said, deflating. "No, we were about to get in touch—we were hoping that you had."

"Putain," Fleur swore under her breath. She ran an elegantly manicured hand through her hair and mused to herself. "I did not know who else to ask. Bill is at work, the children are with their grandparents, and I was alone when I heard. I do not…"

"Come in," Remus said—before Fleur got it in her head to go back home alone, and before he missed too much of the news. "Come in, we're listening to the radio to see what they say."

Fleur accepted gratefully and hugged her arms around herself once Remus took her coat. Dora was leaning against the kitchen aisle, staring at the radio attentively. She'd gone very still as she listened to the report—and Fleur rushed to her side and went very still to listen too. Remus held his breath as the announcer went over the story's main beats—an extremely contagious dragonpox variant, possible spell experimentation gone wrong, 12 dead already, a ward locked down but filling up quickly… a spokesperson for St. Mungo's spoke for a while and said some platitudes about protocols and how excellent their healers were.

"Yes, but which healers are locked down?" Fleur asked, her accent thickening as it usually did when she got impatient or angry. "They will call the families, no?"

"I don't know," Remus said, chewing his lip. "I don't… I'll make tea."

He tried to think of who he knew at St. Mungo's that he could reach out to and ask, to see if they knew if his son was on the inside.

"Bloody hell, is the kettle always that loud?" Dora asked, staring at the red appliance bitterly as the sound of boiling water started obscuring the noise.

"Well, go listen in the living room," Remus said, realizing as the words left his mouth that his worry made him impatient. He took a deep breath. "Sorry."

"No, it's fine, you're right," Dora said. "Tea's a good idea. We might be here a while; we may as well go and sit. And none of this is the bloody kettle's fault."

They huddled in the living room, barely touching their tea. Dora barely sat still for ten minutes before she started pacing the room. The news mostly cycled through the same beats. Only a handful of new information appeared as they listened. Someone from the Auror Department was interviewed and said that they couldn't confirm or deny foul play at this time but had opened an investigation. Some historian of magic talked about the history of dragonpox and Remus, despite his soft spot for strange medical history, decided as soon as this man opened his mouth that he didn't give a flying shit about the history of dragon pox and wanted them to go back to the present. Fleur got up when the news cycle started again to send word to Bill about where she was, so that he didn't get off work and worry. Dora opened a window, so that a Patronus could get in more easily if one came. Sirius called through the hearth, but Remus wasn't much for chatting. The news cycle started again. Fleur started shaking, so Remus squeezed her hand—as he might have if they were getting through a difficult Order meeting.

"This is…" Fleur shook her head. "She just graduated from the Healer Academy seven months ago."

"And she was on the honour roll when she did," Remus reminded her. "If she is in there, she knows exactly what she's doing and she's good at it too."

Harry's stag Patronus appeared and asked them to let him know when they knew where his godson was. He'd tried to go back to the office, but had been sent home again in no uncertain terms. That made Remus increasingly nervous that Teddy was inside after all. Fleur sent an owl to Victoire again and swore that the next one would be a Howler. The morbidity and mortality tolls that they reported changed. Remus made more tea. St. Mungo's cancelled all non-essential appointments and procedures and had started discharging as many patients as possible, moving patients who couldn't leave the hospital to the top floors—away from the infected ward that was working over its maximum capacity.

Bill rang at the flat's door, having come straight from work. He took over holding Fleur's hand even if he looked pale and shaky himself. Dora kept pacing. The news cycle repeated itself, even if it had nothing new to say. A magical law expert spoke about the kind of punishment that unregulated spell experimentation could land someone in.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," Dora said. "Does anybody give a single shit about hypotheticals at the moment?"

Bill and Fleur had a short discussion, half in French and half in English, about whether or not to send word to Dominique and Louis who were in France. They decided not to. Their two youngest children probably hadn't heard the news and having them worried wouldn't help.

Sirius turned up with fish and chips for the lot of them.

"You all look like death," he said. "Eat."

At first they didn't, but then Dora sighed.

"He's right, it might be a long night," she said. "If things keep being this mad, it'll take St. Mungo's time before they can update anyone."

The food tasted like cardboard but they ate. His job done, Sirius simply clasped Remus's shoulder and asked to be updated before slipping away. But they didn't find out anything new, the news cycle just repeated itself yet again. Remus spent a good ten minutes with his head between his knees to try and steady himself, but it didn't work so he made more tea even if nobody had drank any last time and the pot went cold.

Bill and Dora went to go check Teddy and Victoire's place again, to see if there was any sign of the two of them. They even broke in this time, apparently, but no. They were gone.

"We found their schedule on the fridge," Bill said.

"Victoire was only scheduled to work yesterday overnight, and Teddy isn't on the schedule at all. But the hooks by the door were empty," Dora reported.

"They must be in there, then," Remus said quietly, stomach twisting.

"There's no way to be sure," Dora said quietly even if it wasn't particularly reassuring. "But Teddy's favourite mug was in the sink; as if he'd gotten his coffee in that morning and hadn't come home since."

Remus knew she was probably right. Teddy hated dishes piling up; it was one of his pet peeve. He always got so mad that the food dried and the stains got harder to move and… He swallowed hard. He would have been furious had his son not been in the hospital at all, had he just been waltzing around one of the Muggle record stores he liked all day and ignoring them. But he'd been hoping for that too, actually. For a chance to roll his eyes at his son because he was somewhere safe.

She stopped pacing then and sat on the sofa near Remus. He held her hand and she held his and they starred at the radio. They'd heard all the advertisements so many times, they sounded a little bit surreal.

"It's getting late," Bill said.

"That doesn't matter," Dora said.

"We don't want to intrude…" Fleur said.

"You're not intruding," Remus promised. "If you want to go home, by all means, but it's better to be with friends when the news is…"

He didn't finish and Fleur nodded. She reached over to take Remus's hand and squeezed before sinking back into the sofa, curling into Bill. They were quiet for a while, until the clock over their fireplace chimed.

"It's midnight," Fleur said quietly. "Shift change."

"I don't know if the healers will change off," Remus said. "I don't… I don't know that they'll want to expose more people than strictly necessary to the new pox."

"I don't think they changed at 3:30 either," Dora said quietly.

They went back to being quiet after that. Remus's eyes were dry and begging for him to fall asleep, but he knew very well he wouldn't be able to get any sleep even if he tried. This was worse than waiting for news or updates from any Order mission, in either of the Wizarding wars. It was rotten.

"They're going to be run ragged if they've been in there this long," Bill said quietly, to nobody in particular—and so nobody answered him—even if Remus knew he was right. He was exhausted from the waiting and the anxiety alone.

The announcer on the radio began the story anew, but only the numbers had changed. Otherwise, the story was the same. A spokesperson for St. Mungo's asked people to please stop coming to the hospital; promising that families would be notified if their loved ones were moved to the ward and kept updated. The four of them looked at each other, wondering if Healers' families fit into that, but it wasn't clear.

Dora was curled up on the sofa, clasped hands in front of her mouth. He put a hand on her back and she barely registered it.

"I've been trying to remember if the Auror Office has a protocol for this," she said quietly, glazed eyes looking ahead. "For an infectious breakout at St. Mungo's."

"And?" Bill asked, perking up.

"We don't," she said. "Usually St. Mungo's can handle it on their own."

Remus scratched the back of his head. "So there's no precedent of Auror involvement, or of Aurors being needed to…"

"I'm trying to think through legal precedents now, but I don't know," she admitted, chewing her lip. "I should be in the office, I can't believe I'm sitting here—being so useless."

"You're not being useless, Dora," he said. "You're staying out of the way and waiting for news."

"You're being a mother not an Auror right now," Fleur offered gently.

"One's a lot easier than the other," Dora huffed, before retreating back into herself and her mental list of antecedents and cases.

Remus pulled her against him and kissed the top of her head.

"One's far more important to Teddy, wherever he is," Remus said quietly—even if by now there was no real question about where their two children were. Both Teddy and Victoire were sensitive enough to think of reassuring their families that they were okay, unless they were busy and working.

It was almost 1:30 a.m. when Fleur noticed it—the silvery shape coming towards the window. Remus's heart froze in his chest when he recognized Teddy's swan Patronus gliding through the night, but Dora jumped to her feet. The swan dove in through the window before landing on their living room floor and gracefully tucking its wings against itself to sit.

"I'm on the sick ward but alright—tell Victoire's parents that she's here too, she just fell asleep before we could send word. Off to sleep, now. We've got protective charms all over us and we're going to be okay so don't any of you worry. Love you."

Four very big sighs broke out.

"Well, I'm glad we were together while we waited," Bill said. "But let's never do this again."

WC: 2374