Chapter Twelve

Homecoming

"Hey, Matt!" she called out, waving as she stepped out of the carriage at the front entrance.

"Tonks!" Matt cried out gladly, and ran forward into her welcoming arms. Matt was a reserved boy, but he'd never forgotten how she'd carried him from his burning home with her hand over his eyes. She ruffled his hair and exclaimed over his height as she embraced him, saying he'd grown inches since she'd seen him last Christmas.

Matt finally straightened up, and looked up at Remus Lupin, who was smiling at the two of them. "Hello, Uncle Remy," he said.

"How are you, Matt?" he asked warmly, holding out his hand. Matt ignored the hand and moved past it to hug him, too. Uncle Remus had spent too many years as a werewolf and had gotten too used to avoiding physical contact as a part of his lifestyle. He'd claimed last Christmas that he got enough hugs, joking punches, and so on when he was around "family" to make up for a lifetime. And he was indeed part of Matt's family now. Matt had a huge adopted family, a group of people completely unrelated but brought so close by the war that those bonds would never be broken. Matt had spent last Christmas with not only the Lupins but Hagrid and Luna Lovegood, editor of The Quibbler. Normally it would have been Grandma and Grandpa Weasley, too, but they'd gone to France to visit his Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur. Aunt Hermione and her husband and their kids had stayed in Canada to spend Christmas with his family. This year, they were planning on having everyone, which was really a staggering number.

However one chose to define family, Matt was glad to see the Lupins, and secretly glad to see them now. He was getting worried about the Dark wizard Tyrell. He still wrote letters home every week, asking about the situation, but the only communication he was getting back was reading the statements Dad gave to The Daily Prophet. Tyrell was still at large. He almost certainly had friends. They had no clue where to begin looking for him. A third person had died, but they were no closer to stopping it than they were after the boy had killed his father Rodney. He hoped having Uncle Remy and Aunt Tonks here would help. They had experience, lots of it.

Matt saw Ran Edwards walking with a third-year student named Simon Crupp. Simon was one of the few people who didn't believe Ran was going to tear him to shreds any minute, and he didn't mind talking about Quidditch. Matt caught Ran's eye and waved his hand. Ran frowned, looked at the arriving guests, and his eyes widened. Matt had told him when the plans had been confirmed, but they hadn't been expected until tomorrow. Ran gave Simon a hurried and unintelligible apology and dashed over, grinning. Well, loped over, Matt thought. He really did move with something—a set to his shoulders, a certain gracefulness—that other boys didn't.

Obviously Uncle Remus noticed it, too, because he was smiling and holding out his hand. "You must be Randolph Edwards. Matt's told us so much about you."

"Please call me Ran," the boy replied, shaking his hand enthusiastically. "I'm so glad to finally meet you."

Uncle Remus chuckled softly as he took his hand back. "Matt must have forgotten to mention that I'm actually very boring," he said dryly, but he winked at his wife so obviously that Ran just laughed.

"Are you kidding, sir? You're a war hero!"

Uncle Remus had gotten a serious look, and Matt rolled his eyes. "I do a lot less spellwork and a lot more talking, these days. Canada has gotten far behind us as regards werewolf rights."

"But you're improving it, aren't you?" Ran asked earnestly.

Remus smiled a little. "I credit Hermione with that more than myself. She's tireless."

"That's Ambassador Granger-Simpson, right? The one that helped Harry Potter kill Voldemort."

"It is indeed."

"Matt," Ran said, turning to him suddenly, "you know the coolest people."

They all laughed.

"Well, you change your last name to Potter, and see what happens," said another voice, jovially. "Welcome back to Hogwarts, Mr. and Mrs. Lupin."

Professor Smith was striding forward from the school, a bright smile on his face, his perfect blond hair seemingly armoured against the effects of the chilly early November breeze. Headmistress McGonagall followed more sedately, on the arm of her aide Fayne Forsythe. He shook hands with the Lupins, joking in his usual sort of pompous way.

"Now, it's no good trying to butter the Headmistress up, I've got the job fair and square," he chuckled. Uncles Remus chuckled back obligingly, but Matt could tell that he didn't really like Professor Smith. Well, Matt thought to himself, nobody really liked Professor Smith. He was a good professor and all, but he was just so . . . well, when he'd assigned them all lines for a round of poor marks on another essay, Milt had asked him what crawled up his butt and died. He'd gotten detention, of course, but it was a pretty good diagnosis of the man's problem, Matt thought.

Then the Headmistress was there, and she surprised all of them by breaking her usual severe demeanor by reaching out and pulling the Lupins into a warm embrace. "It's good to have you back," she said with perfect sincerity. "I'm still not ready to admit we need the extra protection here, but I've been feeling very nostalgic. It's almost like having the Order back together."

There was a brief moment where all the adults went silent and still. Ran looked confused, but Matt knew a lot more about the Order of the Phoenix than Ran did, so he understood. The Order would never be back together. Many of them were dead, including the young ones who'd only been inducted when the war started. Sirius Black had gone, then of course there had been Albus Dumbledore, which had been devastating. After that, it went in waves. Alastor Moody had been a huge loss, but the heartbreaking losses were the youngest. The Weasley boys, Seamus Finnigan, Neville Longbottom . . . Dennis Creevey had only been sixteen. None of them liked to think of some of the people that they had fought against, either. Gregory Goyle, Theodore Nott, and Millicent Bulstrode might have been stupid and on the wrong side, but they too had been very young.

"Let's go inside, shall we?" the Headmistress was saying to the Lupins. "Your things will be taken to the room I've had made up for you."

"You look a bit wrung out," Professor Smith added. "I'm sure you'd like some tea and a few minutes to rest before we discuss anything."

The adults headed into the castle, and Matt headed off to find Basil so they could work on their homework. He'd have plenty of time to see the Lupins later, after all. He wanted Basil and Bear and Milt to meet them, when they had time.

---Break---

Tonks—for so she still thought of herself and insisted everyone call her (well, she couldn't very well go by "Lupin" now, could she?)—rolled her eyes at McGonagall's question. They never gave up, did they? She and Remus had talked about it. He didn't really want kids, and she didn't really want to give him any, but that didn't seem to be an acceptable answer. She gave another answer that was almost as honest and seemed a lot more convincing.

"We have kids, in a way," she said, trying to make her voice sound earnest despite how repetitive the question had gotten. "We've got Maggie and little Jean-Luc back home, and then there's Matt and Sirius and Charlotte, and of course Georges and Rose when Bill and Fleur visit . . . there's a lot of kids running around, and between them and all our work, we don't miss having kids of our own. It's just that much more that we can give to the rest of the family."

McGonagall could no longer read facial expressions, which pained Tonks, but she could certainly read the agitated tone in her voice, and she dropped it. The meeting was breaking up, and McGonagall headed off to catch Gregory Kilburne before he left. Tonks thought she liked the young and sober Kilburne, who was chatting with Drew Stevens about something. Now Stevens . . . Tonks headed over to talk to him as McGonagall interrupted his talk with Kilburne. She had a few things she wanted to say.

"Mrs. Lupin," he said guardedly as she approached. "What can I do for you?"

"You may know already that you've got a few people concerned about your background, Professor Stevens," she said, keeping her tone light.

His face remained closed, but not guilty. "I see they've made you aware of it," he said in an almost lazy tone.

There was something so disturbingly familiar about the man, Tonks thought, and it was driving her mad. She must have run across him back when they'd first moved. "I don't really do all this secretive stuff," she said plainly. "Harry asked me to check into it."

"That's understandable."

"I'm not questioning your story, it does check out, it just makes me wonder why on earth you decided to come over here and become a teacher."

His smile was wry. "I don't seem the type, do I? I'll be honest with you, since you've been so honest with me. I never liked what I was doing. When you're young, and you hear the speeches and meet all those impressive people, it sounds grand and glorious. Then you start actually pointing a wand at people and all your fantasies go up in smoke." He shook his head, and Tonks knew he couldn't be faking the pain in his eyes. "I got as far away as I could when it was over. I needed some time to recover, after what I'd done. And then, I found that I wanted to do something . . . well, as clichéd as it sounds, I wanted to do something worthwhile." He smiled again, and it was a little more genuine. "Imagine my surprise when I realized I'm a decent teacher and I'm enjoying this. I even like kids."

Tonks found herself smiling back, and thinking about what this man had been asked to do. She'd most seen the aftereffects of that work, but she'd been involved in a couple of raids herself, back when they first arrived. Her husband had been enraged by the whole thing, and she still had nightmares. She understood why Stevens needed distance, and maybe even why being surrounded by kids felt so good. These kids, at least, weren't being asked to fight. At least not yet. And, please God, this new threat would be stopped before it got that far.

"Kids have a way of changing your perspective on things," she agreed after a minute. She'd observed Stevens with that Ran Edwards earlier. It looked like she wasn't the only one adopting other people's kids as replacements for her own. Although Stevens was certainly taking on a lot more responsibility than Tonks did with the kids in her life. After all, she could send them back home when they got too annoying.

Still, despite that nagging sensation that she'd met Stevens before, she found herself trusting the man. She didn't think they needed to give him any more grief. He was, if nothing else, on their side.