Author's note: Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

Hogwarts: Assignment #7, Zoology Task #3, Write about a family

Warnings: NA

Shipping Wars

Ship (Team): Nymphadora Tonks/Remus Lupin (Technicolour Moon)

List (Prompt): Fall Big List (Sharing a Bed)

Big Kicks

Remus was just about to roll over and reach out into the dark to blindly throw an arm around his wife when—

"Oh," Remus said when he accidentally grabbed a fistful of hair instead.

"Careful," Dora muttered.

"I thought he was on your side of the bed," Remus said apologetically.

"Yeah, was," Dora mumbled. "He gets around, you know."

"As the man who chased him down when he decided to make a break for it at the Burrow today, trust me, I'm aware of how deceptively fast those little legs are," Remus said.

"So many words, so late at night," Dora grumbled.

"Sorry," Remus said. He readjusted and made another shot at reaching out to put an arm around Dora when the little ball of heat that had crawled into bed kicked him square in the stomach.

"Oof—"

"You okay?" Dora muttered though she didn't sound all that interested.

"He's strong," Remus complained. "How are his tiny legs so strong?"

"He's always been like this," Dora said. "Just be thankful that he's not coming at you from the inside, where you keep all your organs..."

"You have my full sympathies for that," Remus said.

"Mmm," Dora said. "It's okay. Wasn't that bad. I'd do it again."

"Hmm," Remus said. Then he actually registered those words and what they meant because, yes, that was how words worked. He pushed himself back and leaned on his forearm.

"Really?" he asked.

Dora made an inaudible and barely human sound.

"Do you mean that?" Remus said. "You'd do it again?"

At that point Dora seemed to also remember how basic communication worked because she also flopped over to face him. For the beat that she was quiet, he could feel her taking in her own words and reconsidering them. She reached out to grab her wand and produced a quick lumos that cast a faint light on their bedroom—on her face, on his, on the little boy who had crawled into bed. They had their favourite blanket thrown over them, a log house quilt that Molly had made, and their favourite human being laying perpendicularly between them, taking more room than the pair of them combined.

She propped her head up on her hand and seemed to ponder this.

"I don't know," Dora said. "That's just a thing I said, but I'd… I'd do a thousand and one things for that little boy, making him from scratch is the least of it all."

"Right," Remus said. "Of course… but would you do it again? Have another baby?"

"That I don't know," Dora admitted. She rubbed at her eyes and then looked down at Teddy. "I'm sure it'd be easier to have a baby when it wasn't, well… and we'd know that he'd be healthy."

"We would. I'd be better," Remus said.

"I know. Besides, our kid is pretty great. He's like running a marathon. It's like motivation, you know? To run another one, to..." Dora mulled it over for a second. "Should we make another? You know, double the joy."

Remus laughed quietly. "I… we've never talked about this."

"We never had to, Teddy just happened. I know kids were never the plan but we made one and he's kind of addicting."

"He is," Remus said. It made the next thing he said less crazy. "We could have another."

"We could," Dora said. "I mean, I'm on track to be Head Auror at the moment… and you make time to come home and bring him over to the castle as much as you can, but you're busy too. The timing's a bust. Then again, Teddy was born in a war, so what do I know about standards?"

"What do we know," Remus echoed.

Dora ruffled Teddy's hair. "Sometimes I worry that he'll be lonely. I mean, were you lonely as an only child?"

"I would have been lonely anyways," Remus said. "You?"

"No," Dora said. "Big family, lots of cousins, made friends at school easily…"

"You would," Remus said. "Well, we occasionally release him unto the Weasley clan which will inevitably quadruple."

Dora smiled. "That's true… we've already given him a family. We have a family."

"We do," Remus smiled.

Teddy kicked him again.

Stacked with: MC4A; Shipping Wars; Hogwarts

Individual Challenge(s): Black Ribbon; Black Ribbon Redux; Small Fry; Gryffindor MC; Hufflepuff MC; Brush; Seeds; Tiny Terror; Times to Come; Old Shoes; Themes & Things A (Family); Themes & Things B (Joy); Themes & Things C (Blanket); True Colours; Rian-Russo Inversion; In a Flash; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux

Word Count: 700