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 #11, Transfigurations Task #4, Write a fic from a creature's pov (or part-creatures)

Warnings: NA

Welcome Home

When Remus pushed the door open, he didn't expect the balloons to come tumbling down from above. The fact that Dora and Teddy started laughing as soon as they did, however, did not surprise him half as much.

"Hello," Remus said, stepping into their flat now. He smiled as he found a balloon-free spot to lay down his trunk, which was full enough of books to be heavy despite the feather-light charm he had cast on it. A late balloon fluttered down and Remus caught it.

"What's all this for?" he asked.

"Mum put balloons up for me and I thought you should get them too," Teddy explained. Before Remus could respond to that, Teddy had weaseled his way across the avalanche of balloons and wrapped his arms around Remus' waist—ignoring the fact that Remus was soaking wet and from the rain.

Remus threw an arm over his shoulders and kissed the top of his head before looking up to see Dora. She was wearing a denim skirt and a sweater that was bulky and worn enough to probably be his. Her hair was an aquamarine color that Teddy quite liked and she'd piled it on top of her head messily. Behind her, Remus saw a picnic blanket laden with a bottle of wine, soda for Teddy, and boxes of pizza whose warm and comforting smell was filling up the flat. It made him smile; Dora always knew how to make special occasions joyous.

No matter how hungry he was after spending the last three days closing up the castle for the summer with the other Hogwarts professors, he couldn't look away from Dora and the smile on her face.

"Welcome home," she said, opening her arms.

Remus kissed the top of Teddy's equally aquamarine hair again before gently nudging him away so that he could throw off his coat, leaving it on the ground, and make his way to Dora. She was shorter than he was today, and his hug was so vigorous that her toes nearly left the ground. She laughed against his button-down shirt and only looked up when he put her back down.

"Hi," she said simply and happily.

"Hi," Remus said, smiling down. He knew that he missed Dora when he was teaching at Hogwarts, but when he came back to her or when she came to visit over Christmas or Easter, or on the first day of summer like this one… well, Remus realized just how much he really missed her. He was thankful to have work (meaningful work that he actually enjoyed and that actually made a difference to), not to mention that he loved seeing Teddy during the school year. Still, there was a lot of Dora to miss.

He leaned down and kissed her. She tasted like vanilla lip balm and coffee (probably from spending her entire work day chugging the stuff).

"How was your trip home?" she asked, pushing a piece of hair back behind his ear.

"It was fine," Remus said. "I'm happy to be home."

"I can tell," Dora smiled. "Maybe I didn't need to get pizza after all."

"Oh no," he said. "Pizza is good."

"It's been smelling good for ages," Teddy whined.

"So impatient," Dora said, clucking her tongue though the look she shot Teddy was fond. "Alright, give your dad a chance to change and we'll dig in."

Once Remus was wearing dry and more comfortable clothes, they had their pizza picnic in the living room—listening to the sound of the rain against the windowpane and to stories about each others' days. Teddy had been enjoying his first few days back from school by sleeping in. The neighbourhood children had been playing pick-up football at the park and he'd been out and about on his bicycle a lot. Dora had been working on a new program the Auror Department had launched to help survivors of Dark magic brush up on Defense Against the Dark Arts skills. It was taking up quite a bit of her time but she did seem to love it, and she got to work with Harry quite a bit.

Teddy put away dishes and retired to his room to play videogames, a Muggle pastime they had nudged him towards so that he would have something to talk about with the extended Tonks cousins and the other boys who lived in their apartment building. The two of them stayed behind in the living room, and with Teddy gone, Dora scooted across the picnic blanket to come sit on his lap and curl up against him. He leaned against the wall and pulled her hairpin out of her hair so that he could play with it. The smell of her shea butter shampoo was a plus; the Full Moon was close enough that Remus' nose was especially sensitive to it, but far enough that it didn't give him a headache or overwhelm his senses.

"I missed you," Remus told her again—even if she already knew. He wrote it into most of his letters and greeted her with that reminder every time they met in the village for a drink or every time he snuck away from the castle when he wasn't on call as Head of Gryffindor House to see her.

"Of course you did," Dora teased. Remus laughed and his fingers kept lazily tangling in her hair.

"I miss you so much, sometimes I wonder if it's all worth it," Remus said. "To be away from you for so long…"

"Of course it is," Dora said again with that no-nonsense Auror tone of hers. "You wouldn't get to come home if you didn't go."

"I suppose that's true," Remus said.

"These are some of my favourite moments with you," Dora said. She nuzzled into his chest.

"Really?" Remus asked.

"Yes," Dora said. "It's like spring becoming summer again."

Remus smiled and his stomach twisted with appreciation and love.

"I love coming home to you too," he said.

Shipping Wars

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

List (Prompt): Spring Medium 1 (Pizza)

Word count: 995