Author's note: Well, well, well. For chapter 30 and to celebrate 100 reviews, I wanted to do something special and so I figured I would call back to a chapter you folks seemed to enjoy very much. 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

Warnings: Chronic/terminal illness; hospital setting

The Most Important Role

When the door of the examination room opened, it wasn't Remus' Healer who walked in but Teddy. Remus sighed from his hospital bed, where he was making the best of scratchy sheets and stiff pillows.

"What the hell happened this time?" Teddy asked, shutting the door behind him and hurrying over.

"Teddy…" Remus said. He'd known that Teddy would find out shortly once he'd been admitted, but hadn't quite thought of something to tell his son.

"Don't 'Teddy' me," his son muttered, shutting the door behind him and hurrying over. The back of his hand automatically grazed Remus' forehead, searching for a fever, before he took Remus' pulse. "How could you not call me?"

"You're my son, not my Healer," Remus said—not for the first time and definitely not the last.

"Either or," Teddy mumbled. He whispered a quick lumos and flashed a light in Remus' eyes, seeing how his pupils followed the motion. He paled at the result.

"That," Remus said finally. "That is the reason I didn't call you."

Teddy tucked his wand into the light blue pocket of his healers' robe. He crossed his arms and looked at Remus with angry, sea green eyes—a colour he was favouring now to match his daughter's eyes. Once Teddy had graduated from Hogwarts and moved out of home, it had become a sort of game to guess what he would look like the next time they saw him. Sometimes he and Dora placed bets. The turquoise hair he was currently sporting, the natural freckles he was allowing to show, and the pierced nose and cartilage were a fairly regular look. They probably spoke to a busy and chaotic morning in his household and a quick dash out the door and to work.

"I'm allowed to worry," Teddy said. "Especially… especially since it's never been this bad before."

"You're right," Remus said. "It hasn't."

Quite simply, he had woken up this morning, after the full moon, and only one of his eyes had returned to its human form and shape and colour. His left eye sat in its socket unseeing, amber and rounder than it should be. It wasn't entirely wolfish—thank Merlin—but it wasn't quite human either. The fact of only having one functioning eye had thrown off Remus' balance and, combined with his usual post-transformation exhaustion, had led to a botched apparition home. He had splinched his hand just badly enough for Dora to march him to St. Mungo's before he'd even had a chance to argue or ask to take a nap or a shower first. They were in-between Healers now and so she'd gone up to the café to get them coffee.

"Who healed your hand?" Teddy asked, gently raising Remus' bandaged hand to examine what he could see of it.

"A healer in training named Sanchez," Remus said.

"They made you see a healer in training?" Teddy scoffed. He softened soon after. "Well, Sanchez is good."

"He was," Remus said. "How's Margo doing? And Victoire?"

"Don't distract me by asking me about my very pregnant wife or my adorable daughter who is doing very well and eating mushy peas like a champ," Teddy said grumpily. He looked up at Remus, meeting his gaze. "Dad, this is much worse than you had told me."

"It's never been this bad," Remus said. "I never lied to you."

Teddy sighed and ran his hands over his eyes.

"Can I read your chart?" he asked.

"No," Remus said. "Absolutely not."

"Then will you at least tell me what Healer you're waiting to see?" Teddy asked.

"Healer Applebridge," Remus said. "Do you approve of him more or less than you approve of Sanchez?"

Teddy sighed.

"Dad, that's the head healer," Teddy said. "He rarely sees patients anymore, he only consults on difficult cases."

"I'll try not to be too difficult," Remus promised—but Teddy wasn't having it.

"Dad," he repeated.

"Teddy, I'm sick and exhausted and nauseous and hot and cold all at once," Remus said. "I know how ill I am. I know how bad of a shape I'm in. I know that lycanthrope does not age well. I don't need you telling me these things."

"I'm the only Healer who goes out of their way to see lycanthropic patients," Teddy said. "I'm the only one who tries to understand how werewolves' bodies are affected by the changes, during and after full moons, and who tries to specialize to help them."

"I know," Remus said. He put his good hand on Teddy's shoulder and squeezed. "I've sent many people in need of kindness your way."

"Then let me help you too," Teddy said, swatting Remus' hand away. He sat on the edge of Remus' beds and one of his hands wound itself in the bedsheets. "Take my help. There… there isn't a whole lot known about what lycanthrope looks like when people age because… because people die young and they don't trust medical systems. But I can help if you let me, I know I could. I do what I do because of you, Dad, let me do it for you."

Teddy's voice cracked and Remus' resolve nearly did as well.

"Teddy, I don't want to be your patient, I want to be your father," Remus said. "We both know that I couldn't be both and the latter… the latter's the most important thing to me. It's been the pride of my life, Teddy."

Teddy looked away, blinking. Remus reached out and took his hand.

"No matter what happens to me and my body, I… I want to be your father," Remus said. "Just that. We'll find out, month by month, how bad the transformations become and what I may need to weather them. We'll find out how badly they're affecting my body and what limit there is to how much I recover every time. But no matter how much good you could do as a Healer, which I'm sure would be an awful lot, you would do so much more by being my son."

Teddy took deep, even breaths to even out his rocky breathing. Then he looked back to Remus.

"Can I ask as your son how you're doing, then?" Teddy asked. "And if I… if I go take my Healer robes off and ask for the day off and stay with you…"

"I would be so incredibly grateful," Remus said.

Teddy nodded.

"Okay," Teddy said. "Okay, when Mum… when Mum comes back and can keep you company, I'll go do that."

"Okay," Remus said. They sat in quiet after that, until Dora returned from the hospital's café—sporting worn jeans that hung too low on her hips, the first sweatshirt she'd pulled off the ground, and a pink ponytail streaked with grey, since she hadn't bothered to color in her hair today yet. She was going to say something but paused when she saw the two of them. She put down the two cups of coffee she was holding on the tray of instruments by the door and crossed the room. She wrapped an arm around Teddy and leaned her cheek against the top of his hand, reaching out to Remus with the other. The three of them stood in silence for some time.

"We'll manage this," she said finally. "We're a strong little family."

"We are," Remus said again. "I've never been more thankful."

Word count: 1225