Author's note: Listen, life is hard and there's no serotonin left in this economy. Sometimes you just need your favourite characters being cheesy in an Everyone!Lives AU, so here we are. I'm also not marking this as "complete" because I might add more chapters and snippets as I need to make things warm-and-fuzzy in my soul.

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 #3, Magical Law Enforcement Task #2: Write about someone who always assumes the worst

Warnings: NA


We're It

Again, you're gone, off on a different path than mine

I'm left behind, wondering if I should follow

You had to go, and of course it's always fine

I probably could catch up with you tomorrow

But is this what it feels like to be growing apart?

When did I become the one who's always chasing your heart?

Now I turn around and find I am lost in the woods

North is south, right is left, when you're gone

I'm the one who sees you home, but now I'm lost in the woods

And I don't know what path you are on

I'm lost in the woods

Up till now the next step was a question of how

I never thought it was a question of whether

-Lost in the Woods, Jonathan Groff

"You're lucky you came back on your own because I hadn't decided if I was going to go after you yet," Dora said evenly, standing tall in the doorframe of the flat they had moved into only months ago. Her hair still fell in the long curls she had been wearing the last time he'd seen her, which only added to the way that she seemed to be swimming in the oversized sweater she was wearing. The sleeves engulfed her hands, but he could tell that her fists were clenched.

"And you had every right not to," Remus said. His throat was raw and his voice was hoarse, even if he had practised the words he had so carefully chosen all morning. "That's what I came to say. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have run off."

He nearly stumbled on the words, but then he forced himself to say them, even if it was really quite simple. He forced himself to say it all at once to own the awful thing he'd done head-on, if nothing else.

She closed her eyes, which were their usual stormy gray today, and took a deep breath.

"I... I thought you might be dead," she said, her voice cracking. Remus thought that may have been better—wasn't that exactly what he'd thought, when he had gone to find Harry, Ron, and Hermione? That he would be of more service to this child, whatever it ended up being and becoming, dead in the name of a better world than alive as a werewolf in this one? But now was not the time to get into that, he only had the same two words on his lips.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. He had no idea how to show how badly he meant it, to make this I'm sorry different from the I'm sorry's that came from forgetting something from the list at the shops or bumping his hip into hers when they were both puttering around in the kitchen on a busy morning.

"I just…" she took a deep breath. "I just can't… I just don't know what you had going on that was so bad that you couldn't tell me, that you had to..."

He saw her struggle to find the word leave and part of him was glad he didn't have to hear her say it.

"I tried explaining it to you," he said with a dry mouth.

"You told me you didn't plan on having children when we started seeing each other Remus, not that you would vanish the second a pregnancy potion turned blue," she snapped. He winced again and took an even deeper breath.

"When I told you I didn't want children, it was because I don't know what—I don't know what that child's life will be. I don't know what it does to a child, to be half-werewolf, either in the eyes of the world or in the life it will have. I don't know, Dora, and I didn't want to be the reason someone had to find out," Remus said. He'd practised how he would say that too, and those were not the words he had chosen. They were just the ones that came out as anxiety bubbled up in his chest again. "I didn't want it to be my fault that another werewolf came into the world, one way or another."

"Merlin, you could have said that!"

"I didn't think I had to," Remus said. "I thought I could just trust that you would listen..."

"I didn't miss a dose of my birth control potion on purpose—"

"I know," Remus said, frustrated that this was all coming out wrong now that he was in front of her. "I know you didn't, I know. But when I tried to explain myself you panicked and I panicked and I didn't know what to do and I did… I did the worst thing possible and I'm sorry."

"You didn't think that I was panicking too?" Dora asked, crossing her arms. "You didn't think that maybe we could panic together because, Merlin, I don't know how to be a mother or anything of the sort—especially not in a bloody war!"

"I was panicking in a different way, in a million ways," Remus said. "But I just... this runs deep. That's what I'm trying to say. I just need… I'm sorry I couldn't take it all at once and have a perfect reaction to… to it."

"No," she interrupted. "No, it doesn't run deep, it's very simple actually. It's like everything else, with you. You just don't think of yourself as a fully-fledged, fully-realized, fully deserving human being so the second you're treated even remotely decently or normally you fall apart. And I don't know how to love that out of you, Remus. I just—I don't."

Her eyes started to water then and her breath shook.

"And when you act like that, when you act like you're unlovable and broken and wrong, it hurts because that's my husband you're talking about. That's the person I think of as the love of my life. And that's my child you're talking about, not an 'it.' So when you act like that it just... it hurts, alright? Because you're not in this alone. That's what I'm trying to tell you."

"What I'm trying to tell you is that I'm trying, honestly I am, but I have been alone for a long time. I can't change the way I think overnight," Remus said. "I'm the way I am because of things that have happened and things I've had to do for—for years. It doesn't matter if my fears and my anxiety make sense to you or not, they're real to me."

"But—"

"No, I need you to listen when I try to tell you about these things because I can't just drop the things that have happened to me and the habits I have because of them all at once, just because I love you and want to. If I could we wouldn't be having this problem or this fight or whatever this is," Remus said, since he was about to start crying as well which would only make the situation deteriorate more rapidly than it already was.

"Well you're not alone anymore and we're about to be even less alone," Dora said. "So something's going to have to—"

Before she finished snapping out her sentence, Dora faltered and turned slightly green. Her eyes widened slightly with panic. Without a word, she darted back into the apartment and Remus had the sense to catch the door before it slammed. His hunch was confirmed when he saw her disappearing into the bathroom and heard her throwing up. He wasn't sure if she'd kick him out immediately, but he walked in and let the door shut behind him to join her in the bathroom.

He gathered her magenta hair while she seemingly threw up everything she had ever eaten, hugging the toilet bowl. He hesitated before running his hand in circles on her back as she heaved. One hand still in her hair, he managed to stretch and grab a face cloth from under the sink and run it under cool water without letting go of her curls. He wrung out the extra water as best as he could single-handedly and then lay the cloth on the back of her neck. That had always helped Lily, he remembered, from holding her hair for her.

It was maybe thinking back to Lily, thinking back to the last time he'd watched someone he loved make a baby from scratch and throw up every morning because of it, that it all became more real to him. Not the reality that his wife was pregnant against all odds, that they had slipped up somewhere somehow—that had been painfully and horrifyingly clear for a week now. But the reality that at the end of the day, she was making a baby. That at the end of the day, no matter how much Remus catastrophized and spiraled and panicked, that was what this was. Not because that wasn't massive, but because it didn't have to be more than that since that was massive enough to be enough. A baby. Remus didn't have to add to the moment. This could be enough for now, until they actually had bridges they needed to cross.

He stepped back when she sat up from the toilet and twisted so she could sit with her back against the wall, tipping her head back and closing her eyes. She reached back to push the cool cloth against her skin some more and took deep, even breaths. He flushed the toilet for her and sat on the floor too, his back to the bathtub and the porcelain cool against the back of his arms. Then another idea came to mind, another trick he remembered from helping Lily, and he got up to rummage in the medicine cabinet for the pack of gum he had tucked away there, for mornings after his transformations when he came home too exhausted to clean up but hated the taste in his mouth. He handed her a stick and she blinked before taking it and unwrapping it carefully. He sat down again and watched her chew for a few seconds.

"I won't call the baby 'it' anymore," Remus said finally. He had done so much wrong, he had so much to answer for and earn forgiveness for and fix, but this one thing seemed manageable. This was a promise he could both make and keep. "Both with you, and on my own if you want me to leave. I promise."

"I don't want you to go," she said, her voice still hoarse. She chewed her gum. "I... I'm still mad at you. Bloody furious, actually. I think it's clear we have things to work on, both of us. But I want you here to do it. I want us to work on our own shit and then each other's. I still think we're stronger together and I think that this baby will be too, no matter what their life ends up looking like."

Remus, to his own surprise, felt relieved. Maybe because Harry's words were coming back to him now. Parents should be with their children. He hadn't told Remus he would be a good father, which was fair, or that he had nothing to worry about since that would have been a lie. He had just told Remus that he needed to be there, and here was Dora, ready to give him another chance.

"I'll be here," Remus said softly. "With you and... not it."

"Not it," Dora said, nodding in satisfaction.

Remus smiled. "Like tag."

"Tag?"

"When you're not it," Remus said, distinctly aware of how stupid that was. It was the kind of thing he would say quietly under his breath at Order meetings, knowing it wasn't worth more decibels than that, and only she would pick up on it because she was sitting by his side.

She looked at him long and hard after he said that.

"I'm going to throw up again," she announced. But then she started laughing and Remus finally let himself smile about his stupid joke because... well, because this was almost normal, as far as they were concerned, so maybe they could find a normal again. Maybe they would be okay. It would be on him and only him if they weren't, but Merlin did he hope they would be okay.

"Tag," Dora mused. "That encapsulates how we're becoming parents anyways. Tag, you're it."

Remus's shoulders softened again, as she acknowledged the suddenness and shock of the transition. They could speak the same language, if not the same words. They could be okay.

"I like it," she said finally. He watched as she lay her hand against her midriff, now that her stomach had calmed down and she could relax. "Tag. We're it."

"We're it," Remus echoed. He hesitated but held out his hand across their narrow bathroom, and she took it with her free hand. And, most remarkably and luckily and astoundingly, she did not let go.


WC: 2161