Resolutions
By Neurotica
Four
The hatred Remus Lupin felt towards hospitals seemed to bring out an impatient side of himself he never knew he possessed. He had the misfortune of discovering this while he and Emmeline sat in a small waiting room at St. Mungo's Hospital. Today would be Emmeline's second check-up since the beginning of her pregnancy, but the first in which they would actually see a Healer—naturally, they'd requested Ted Tonks. The current health of his baby was very important to Remus, but what really had him on edge was that today they would also find out the chances of their child being infected its father's cursed disease. No matter what the results showed, Remus would love his child with all his heart and he knew Emmeline would as well—he just didn't want to see his son or daughter go through the same pain he had as a child. Moreover, Remus knew that children born as werewolves had less of a chance of living past the age of thirty, compared to children who'd been bitten young. How would his child's life be affected if it knew its life was bound to be cut short? Would it resent the father for passing down his illness? Remus didn't think he'd be able to handle that.
"Darling, I do love you, but you're about to break my fingers," Emmeline whispered in his ear.
Remus quickly released her hand, which had turned white when he'd unconsciously increased his grip on her. "Sorry, love," he said quietly as she massaged her fingers.
"You need to stop worrying, Remus. We don't even know anything yet, and no matter what we find out, I'm not going to stop loving you, and this baby is going to adore you. Understand?"
"I understand," he said. "It's just... the Healer's office visits always bring out the morbid thoughts in me."
She kissed his cheek. "I've never been fond of this place either, but we'll be out of here soon enough. And then you're taking us out for ice cream."
Remus raised an eyebrow. "I don't remember agreeing to that."
"You didn't; the baby and I decided, and we outnumber you two to one," she said with a smirk. "Get used to it."
He chuckled as a medi-witch entered the waiting room carrying a clipboard. "Mr. and Mrs... Lupine...?" she called uncertainly.
Remus inwardly rolled his eyes. "Lupin," he corrected her. "That's us."
"Ah, right," the young witch said. "There's a bit of an ink smudge on the paperwork here... Right this way, please."
Remus took Emmeline's hand and they followed the witch through a narrow corridor with identical doors on either side. Their room was the very last on the left, and the witch held the door open for them with a smile. "Healer Tonks will be right in. Just have a seat and make yourselves comfortable. Is there anything I can get you while you wait? Something to drink, perhaps?"
I'll take a shot of firewhiskey if you've got it, said a voice in Remus' head that greatly resembled Sirius. "We're just fine, thank you," he replied with a polite smile. The witch nodded, placed Emmeline's chart on the counter, and closed the door behind her. Emmeline settled herself on the examination table and Remus sat in the stiff wooden chair beside her.
He rubbed the back of his neck as he looked around at the white room, feeling the effects of the upcoming full moon already, though he still had four days until the actual transformation. He had to admit, he was rather curious as to how the full moon would affect Emmeline if the baby did turn out to be a werewolf. She may not feel anything for the first few months, but once the baby started to develop more, would it transform inside her? He blinked rapidly as a disturbing image of a werewolf cub tearing his wife apart from the inside out flashed through his mind.
"Remus? What's wrong?" Emmeline asked concernedly. He'd felt all of the color drain from his face...
"N-nothing... I'm f-fine," he said weakly.
She didn't believe him. "Should I call the medi-witch back to get you some water?" She would have conjured it herself, but magic was not permitted in the hospital by anyone but Healers and medi-witches.
He tried to say no, but Emmeline wouldn't listen to him. She pressed a tiny red call button beside her and a second later, the medi-witch's face appeared in the room. "Yes, Mrs. Lupin?" she asked kindly.
"Could you bring in a glass of water for my husband? He's feeling a bit ill..."
"I'm fine," Remus insisted hoarsely.
"Of course, I'll be right there." The witch's face disappeared with a small pop.
Emmeline turned to her husband. "You most certainly are not fine. I've never seen anybody lose color as quickly as you just did. What happened?"
Remus sighed. "It's nothing," he said quietly. "I told you, hospitals bring out my morbid thoughts. And that's all it was."
"Can you tell me about it?"
He shook his head. "You don't want to know this. Please don't make me repeat it..."
Slowly, she nodded and reached out for his hand. There was a short knock on the door and Ted Tonks entered, carrying a bottle of water. "Afternoon, Remus, Emmeline. Everything all right?" he asked, looking Remus up and down critically.
Remus nodded. "Fine, just felt a little faint, that's all. Thank you," he said as Ted handed him the bottle of water. "How's Andromeda?"
"Oh, she's wonderful." Ted smiled. "We had Nymphadora's new boyfriend, Charlie, over last night—I think you know him. Wonderful young man. You know, I delivered the Weasleys' two youngest, Ronald and Ginevra."
Remus shook his head. "No, I didn't know that."
"Yes, I'd just gotten out of Healer training when Ronald was born. Molly had had the same Healer with most of her children, but when her twins were born—I guess they'd caused a bit of trouble, and the Healer retired before she could have any more children."
Emmeline laughed and Remus shook his head, smiling. "That somehow doesn't surprise me," he muttered, thinking about Fred and George Weasley.
"Alright," Ted said, clapping his hands together. "How are you feeling, Emmeline?"
Emmeline nodded. "Pretty well. I've had a little trouble getting to sleep at night and I've been sick for the past few mornings, but other than that, I'm okay."
Ted nodded. "Excellent," he said. "I'd like to run a few tests, just to check the health of both you and your baby. Feel free to ask any questions you have for me."
Remus stood and moved to Emmeline's other side as Ted lifted the witch's shirt just enough to see her belly. "You seem to have a bit of a bulge around your belly button already," the Healer commented.
"I noticed that," Emmeline said with a furrowed brow. "Is that normal?"
"Absolutely," Ted said. "Some women start to show earlier than others. For example, Naomi didn't start showing until about two months ago. You've got nothing to worry about with this." Ted waved his wand above Emmeline's belly, and a black and white hologram appeared facing him at his eye level. After studying it for a moment, the Healer's brow furrowed. He said another incantation and two more pictures appeared before him, showing different angles. Nodding in satisfaction, he temporarily vanished the holograms. "We'll come back to that, I think."
"Is everything okay?" Remus asked, feeling his heartbeat quickening to an alarming rate.
"Yes, everything is perfectly fine," Ted assured. "But before we discuss what is in the pictures, Sirius mentioned a while back that you've got a few concerns about having children, Remus."
Remus sighed and nodded as Emmeline found the hand he wasn't using to rub gentle circles on her shoulder. "We were hoping you could tell us the chances of our children inheriting my... condition."
Ted smiled in understanding. "Of course," he said, conjuring a small stool to sit on. "You were bitten when you were a child, correct, Remus?" The other wizard nodded. "Well, that in itself will decrease the chances of your children being werewolves at birth. I like to go with the Muggle scientific approach when discussing these things—it's a lot more accurate than the guesswork some of the other Healers use. And it's actually quite simple...
"Since only one of you is infected by the Lycanthropy gene, and not both of you, the chances of your children being werewolves as well are very slim. Your children will carry the gene, and if one day, hypothetically speaking, he decides to marry a werewolf, and they had, say, four children together, one of those children would be a carrier, one would be completely unaffected, but the last two would be werewolves. If one of your children marries a completely healthy person—a non-carrier—and had four children, two would be perfectly healthy, and two would be carriers."
Remus barely heard anything after "chances being very slim." It had taken him every ounce of self-control he possessed not to start screaming and jumping up and down in joy and relief.
"So our baby should be fine?" Emmeline double-checked, smiling at the look on her husband's face.
"Yes," Ted confirmed with a smile of his own. "Which now leads us to this afternoon's findings in the holograms..." He conjured the pictures again. "Now, there are two things I can do for you right now: I can tell you the sex of the children or we can call it a day and I can send you on your way."
While still completely elated by the news he'd just received, something in what Ted had just said didn't sound quite right to Remus. He looked to see if Emmeline had caught it as well, and judging by her furrowed brow and slight frown, she had. "Ted," Remus said slowly. "Did you say 'children'? As in... more than one child?"
Ted's smiled widened. "Indeed I did," he said simply.
"Oh," Remus said weakly. "And just what did you mean by that?"
The Healer chuckled. "You may want to sit, Remus—I've seen fathers lose their balance very easily after hearing this news." Remus did as he was told. "It seems to me," he began painfully slowly to Remus and Emmeline, "that Emmeline is carrying twin boys."
It took a moment for those words to sink through Remus' mind. Once they did, his world seemed to fade around him, and he only distantly felt the impact of the carpet.
Sirius yawned widely as he walked through the front door of Number Twelve after his day at the Ministry. It had been rather uneventful for the Aurors over the last few months—it was as though all of England's dark wizards had gone on holiday. Or maybe they'd all fallen off a cliff onto a very jagged, rocky sea bottom. That would be quite preferable...
The highlight of the Head Auror's day had been calling Rufus Scrimgeour into his office for a yearly assessment. Scrimgeour had obviously been expecting a promotion and large pay raise, judging by the way he'd strutted into Sirius' office, but the Head Auror wasted no time in telling him that not only would he not be getting either of those things, but he was being transferred back to the DMLE and would now be under Mad-Eye Moody's command. Sirius' goal was to infuriate the other Auror to the point that he put in for a transfer back to Australia, but all he'd achieved was seeing Scrimgeour's face turn beat red in an obvious attempt not to strangle his supervisor. It hadn't exactly been what he'd been hoping for, but it was still quite amusing to Sirius.
Tonks received the promotion Scrimgeour had wanted. The young witch would now be in charge of her own team on missions, and was to receive a very significant pay raise. This decision had been made partly after Tonks' arrest of six Death Eaters in January, but mostly due to Minister Bones' insistences that she deserved the position. Sirius had actually wanted to make his cousin second-in-command over the Aurors—he hadn't had one in over a year, since Kingsley Shacklebolt's murder. But Tonks had turned it down; she didn't even want to try to fill her former love's shoes. So the job had been given to Ralph Proudfoot.
Sirius had known Proudfoot for many years—he'd entered the Ministry two years after he and James had—and was a brilliant Auror and an overall great person. Proudfoot had four children—three girls and a boy—and his wife just happened to be Mad-Eye's goddaughter. (That, of course, had nothing to do with the reason Proudfoot had been selected for the job—Sirius hadn't known about the connection between Proudfoot and Mad-Eye until after the fact.)
"Evening, beautiful," Sirius said, quietly entered the drawing room and finding his wife asleep on the sofa, a book open and resting on her rather large stomach. He chuckled, removed the book, and kissed her belly. "And hello to you too," he said tracing the circles on the area he knew his baby to be growing. "Bet you're ready to come out of there, aren't you? Well, I've been ready to have you here for months now. Just don't give your mummy too much trouble when you finally do come out—she's got enough to deal with, having me around."
"Mummy can fix that very easily," came Naomi's sleepy voice. "Do you plan on kissing me at all this evening?"
"Not if you're planning on getting rid of me, I'm not." Sirius grinned, moving to the other end of the sofa. After a rather breath-taking greeting, Sirius sat back on his knees, running his hand through his wife's hair and grinning at the dopey look on her face. "How was your day?"
"Yeah," she said dreamily, her eyes still partially closed. Sirius laughed and she shook her head a bit. "What? Oh, it was fine. I've been reading this book Molly loaned me last week. It's pretty good; you should read it."
He reached over to the coffee table and picked up the book, titled Happy Ending by Valentina Jett. He flipped open the cover to read a few of the reviews. He cleared his throat and spoke in a bad television announcer's voice, "'A fresh new voice, with an understanding of the trials of human life.'" He raised an eyebrow at his wife and read the next one. "'The author's female characters are well drawn and realistic. She clearly knows the truth of being a woman.' Yeah, I'll pass, thanks. Not into trashy romance novels, dear."
"They're not trashy!" Naomi said defensively, slapping him hard in the shoulder. "It's about a couple who have to go into hiding because the man was accused of a crime he didn't commit and the real criminal is out there somewhere, but no one knows."
"That sounds a little too familiar for me, love," Sirius muttered darkly. "How about you just give me the summary when you've finished it? Have you heard from Remus and Emmeline?"
Naomi shook her head. "Help me up, please," she said. Sirius did as asked. "They should be home soon, I imagine. Probably just went out for a dinner by themselves or something."
Sirius noticed she'd tried to be casual about the Lupins going out on a date, but he picked up the hint of envy in her voice. He inwardly sighed; as much as he wanted to take his wife out for a night on the town, it would be far too dangerous for both her and the baby. "Well, how about I make a nice romantic dinner for two—"
"For three," she corrected him with a smile.
He smiled back. "For three, then, and we can spend the night cuddled in bed?"
"That would be wonderful, but Harry should be home soon, and I'm sure he's going to want to spend time with you and Remus."
"Okay," Sirius sighed. "Then we can order in, rent a film, and have a family night in the library."
Naomi smiled brightly and kissed his lips quickly. "Excellent idea."
Sirius shook his head behind her back. First, she seems upset that we can't have an evening alone, but when I come up with a way that we can, she doesn't want that. Now she wants to be around everybody... Women, he thought. Maybe I should read that Valentina Jett book. Maybe she can shed some light on how a woman's brain works.
Just as Sirius set the kettle on the stove to make tea, the fireplace filled with green, and Harry stumbled out, carrying a few shopping bags. He had a large smile on his face as he greeted Sirius and Naomi, and the older wizard reminded himself to thank Emmeline for talking with him the night before. Whatever she'd said had made all the difference and Sirius hadn't seen his godson in such a good mood in months.
"Both Ron and Hermione passed their Apparition tests," Harry said when asked about his day. "Ron had a few points docked, because he'd lost half an eyebrow, but Hermione did perfectly, as if that's a huge shocker. After you gave Tonks that review, Sirius, she and Charlie took us all to lunch for pizza in London, and we went the day checking out all the shops."
"So what's in the bags?" Sirius asked, nodding to said bags.
Harry blushed a little. "Well, I found a few stuffed animals the babies might like, when they're born, of course. Ginny picked them out—" he added quickly. "There's a lion, a monkey, a wolf that looks almost exactly like Remus on the full moon, I swear, and two teddy bears."
Naomi smiled widely. "That was really sweet of you, Harry. Thank you."
Harry only shrugged in response as he picked at the plastic on one of the bags, but Sirius could tell he was still blushing, a small smile playing on his lips. Ruffling his godson's hair, Sirius stood and started making the tea. The three of them sat talking for about an hour before Remus and Emmeline finally returned. At first glance, Sirius thought his best friend looked a bit ill. At second glance, he noticed a faded bruise on the side of his head. Sirius raised an eyebrow. "How did things go at the hospital?"
Emmeline was smiled and Remus tried but failed. "The babies are fine," Emmeline began. "We're all perfectly healthy. And we found out that there is only about a point-five percent chance our boys will inherit Remus' condition."
"Brilliant!" Sirius exclaimed, thumping Remus on the back and hugging Emmeline. "So how did—"
"Wait a second," Naomi interrupted with a slight frown. "You said babies... as in more than one... Does that mean..."
Emmeline beamed. "Twins," she said happily. The happy screams that ensued nearly shattered Sirius' eardrums. Once the two witches finished hugging each other, everybody turned back to Remus. "So what's wrong with him?" Harry asked, smiling as widely as the other adults. "I figured he'd be happy about this..."
"Oh, he is," Emmeline assured him. "After he fainted, he—"
"Whoa!" Sirius said, grinning wider still. "You fainted?" he asked his best friend, laughing loudly. Remus managed a glare at Sirius and made a semi-vicious swipe at his head. "I'm sorry," Sirius said, still laughing. "I just—you fainted!"
"Leave him alone," Naomi said, also slapping the Auror. "Twins, huh? And you said they're going to be boys?" The witches moved to the table to talk while Sirius and Harry moved closer to Remus.
"I really am happy about this, you know," the werewolf said hoarsely.
"Yes, I can tell," Sirius said, still grinning. "Careful, Moony, all this excitement could be bad on your heart."
"Sod off." Remus finally started to smile. "I'm just... shocked, you know? One baby is a miracle, but two... And neither of them will be werewolves."
"That's two more for beings for me to corrupt," Sirius muttered under his breath. Remus raised an eyebrow at him. "To love, I mean," he corrected hastily. "Two more beings for me to love."
Remus shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Ted said in a few months he can do a charm to show us what they'll look like in a few years."
Harry frowned. "I didn't know they could do that."
Sirius nodded. "James and Lily had one done on you, and it looked just like you, without the scar and glasses, of course." Harry rolled his eyes and sipped his tea. "Naomi and I decided to wait a bit longer to get ours; the results are more accurate when the baby is more developed."
"You sound like a baby expert." Harry chuckled.
His godfather shrugged. "I've been reading up on these things. There's some stuff I'd rather not know about, like exactly what happens to a woman's body when she gives birth, but the rest of it is pretty interesting."
Remus chuckled and looked over to the table at Emmeline. "Can you believe it?" he whispered with a shake of his head. "In less than a year, Padfoot, you and I are both going to be fathers..."
Sirius smiled. "The Marauders with offspring... what is the world coming to?"
"An end." Harry grinned. His guardians laughed. "I don't know, I think you both make excellent fathers. I'm still alive and in one piece, aren't I?"
Remus smiled at him and pulled him over in a one-armed hug. Dropping a kiss onto his unruly hair, he muttered, "That you are, Harry. Thank you, that means a lot to us."
Harry shrugged, Remus' arm still resting on his shoulder. "It's true," he said. "You're the best fathers I could ever dream of having."
Sirius swallowed the lump that had suddenly appeared in his throat. "And you're the best son either of us could ever dream of having, kid." Harry's smile widened.
A few minutes later, Naomi and Emmeline called the three of them to the table to decide what to have for dinner.