Note: Once again I'm very sorry for the slow update! Anyway, I hope it was worth the wait!

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor am I making any profit from this piece of writing.

26: One Way Out

By dinner time, Teddy had yet to regain his appetite, and yet he still wandered down to the Great Hall with Chester and Victoire, pouring himself a meagre bowl of tomato soup and chasing little chunks of bread around the little orange pool, trying his best to look busy. A few glances up towards the teacher's table suggested to the young metamorphmagus that Remus was making a similar effort, indeed he did not touch the food upon his plate, preferring instead to sip his goblet of pumpkin juice, hunched and subdued in his chair. When pudding was served, the werewolf gave up on the facade entirely, getting slowly to his feet and heading for the double doors.

Teddy counted to ten before setting off after him, and as he reached the entrance hall, he just about caught sight of his father slipping out of the main doors that led out into the grounds.

There was a chilly breeze in the air that evening, and as Teddy hurried softly across the grass after Remus, he reached to draw his black school robes more tightly around him. By the time they reached the cool shade of the trees beside the lake, the young Gryffindor wished that he had been wearing a cloak. He took cover behind a nearby tree, and watched his father sink down upon the damp grass at the lakeside, and his stomach clenched worriedly when, after a long moment of staring aimlessly out across the dark water, Remus reached to bury his face in his hands with a heavy sigh.

Soft padding footsteps drew Teddy's attention, and the boy hurriedly dropped into a crouch as they drew nearer beside him, only to stop just short of his hiding place as a voice announced:

"Harry says you don't want to see me."

As Remus slowly removed his face from the refuge of his hands, Teddy watched Tonks step out of the shadows of the nearby trees, her arms folded across her chest as she wandered forward, a soft chuckle escaping her lips.

She stopped dead in her tracks when her husband told her:

"He's right. I don't."

The Auror considered this distinctly hostile reception for a long moment, only to conclude that the best course of action was to simply ignore it.

"Harry sent me to talk to Minerva about the Seventh Years' conference. He says he'd like me to do it, once my suspension's over, because he's got too much to do as it is without worrying about a school visit."

"I'd rather you didn't."

"That keen to stay clear of me, are you?"

"Yes."

Tonks went to stand at Remus' back, lips pursed together thoughtfully as he stared determinedly out across the lake, refusing to turn and face her.

"Very good, love." she concluded at last, a smile creeping back onto her lips. "Very in character, you even had me going for a minute there..."

"I'm not acting."

Teddy could only assume that true understanding had begun to dawn, for his mother drew a deep breath, and began pacing up and down, hands clasped together before her until they grew red from the effort.

"Alright, alright...I admit, this hasn't exactly turned out well, and I get it, you're mad..."

"Mad?" At long last, Remus turned to face her, expression so utterly furious that Teddy was pretty sure that he had never seen such anger in his whole entire life. "You think I'm MAD? I'm not MAD, Dora, I'm COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY LIVID! Do you have even the slightest clue what you've done? Do you even realise...has it even occurred to you just what you've done to me? Do you know what I've had to do? Can you even imagine what it felt like? To tell Harry...to tell him that my wife has been having an AFFAIR? An affair with a man he thinks is a absolute bastard? Do you have any idea how utterly humiliating and difficult that is? And it wasn't even bloody true! It was a LIE! A bloody stupid one, too! I've lied to HARRY, I've lied to the MINISTRY, I've lied to MINERVA, to ELIJAH...Merlin, I've even lied to my own SON! I've lied so much today that I'm not even bloody sure what's a lie and what isn't! And why? Because you had to come up with some sort of insane reason why I should KIDNAP somebody the Ministry's looking for! Because you had to come up with the most elaborate and ridiculous lie that I've ever heard in my whole entire life! And what am I going to do now? What am I going to do about Elijah? What am I supposed to do with him? What am I supposed to do about US?"

"We'll figure it out," Tonks insisted, head bowed shamefully at his outburst. "We'll think of what to do, together..."

"No we won't." Remus complained, turning back to stare at the water, reaching to rake a frustrated hand through his hair. "We can't...I can't...just...just go home, Dora. Go home."

There was a long, pained silence, and for a horrible moment the despair that passed across his mother's face convinced Teddy that she would burst into tears. But she drew in a deep, steadying breath and asked:

"Where's Elijah?"

Remus was silent for long enough that Teddy thought he might be attempting to ignore her, but at long last the werewolf consented to mumbling:

"In the Shrieking Shack...absurd place to leave him, I know...but it was the first place that came to mind. It's not better than Mungo's, that's for sure. It's a million times worse."

Tonks frowned thoughtfully, and despite him casting her a suitably disapproving look, she went to drop down upon the grass beside him, drawing her knees up towards her chin.

"How've you persuaded him to stay put?"

"Sleeping draught...I stole it from one of the potions' storerooms."

"Clever."

"Mm."

There was a long silence before he finally turned to peer at her through the gathering darkness as he murmured;

"Dora...?"

"Hm?"

"I'm in trouble."

"Yes..."

"Serious trouble."

"There's no doubt."

"I don't see a way out of this one."

"Me neither." Tonks reached to sweep the hair back from her eyes, only for it to fall back again when she dropped her gaze to her shoes. "This is all my fault." she mumbled dejectedly, and to Teddy's astonishment, Remus leant back to lie flat upon his back, gaze upon the heavy rain clouds above them, before agreeing:

"Yes. It is."

The mousy haired witch promptly burst into tears. Her husband sighed wearily, his eyes drifting closed as he mumbled:

"Go home, Dora. I'll owl and confess in the morning. Then it will all be over, one way or another."

"What...do you want to go to bloody Azkaban?" Tonks asked him somewhat shrilly, only for Remus to tell her:

"Why not? It'll be a relief!"

"What about Teddy? If you confess they'll know I've lied to them! They'll sack me on the spot...they might even lock me up for a little too if they feel like it! And where would that leave our son? Both parents jobless, his father in prison for Merlin knows how long...! You can't do that to him, Remus!"

"Perhaps you should have thought of all of that before you decided we should put some other person's child before our own..."

"Are you calling me a bad parent?"

"The best we can do now is set Teddy a good example, confess everything and take the consequences."

Tonks visibly bit her lip against whatever protest came to mind, and there was silence for a moment as she attempted to halt the flow of tears down her cheeks in vain. Teddy watched her swallow the lump in her throat before lying back upon the grass beside her husband, leaning upon one side so that she could gaze down at him with watery, pleading eyes.

"I...I wouldn't be able to stand it...if you were to be gone." she whispered, reaching to lay a tentative hand upon his arm as he stared forlornly up at the clouds. "Honestly, Remus, sod the jobs and the money and everything, I couldn't give a toss but...but you...in Azkaban...for the love of Merlin please don't do that to me..."

The werewolf let out a somewhat choked laugh, reaching to pass a weary hand across his eyes.

"Sweet Merlin, when on earth did I marry somebody so utterly self-absorbed? After all he did you wanted me to help Artemis for you so that you didn't feel guilty about him! You wanted me to spend time locked up in Azkaban for you. You guilt tripped me into kidnapping Elijah away from the Ministry so that you didn't feel quite so bad about Artemis dying! Then you forced me into this utterly ridiculous facade and made me tell Harry all sorts of lies, and if you have your way I'll be lying constantly for the rest of my life, you don't care what it does to me, you don't care how stressful it is just as long as I'm around to keep you company whilst I do it! Well forget it, Dora, I won't play along anymore, for once in my life I'm going to do what's best for me. I should have done it ages ago, if I had what's best for me wouldn't turn out to be a few months locked up in a concrete cell in the middle of the North bloody Sea!"

There was a long, pained silence as Tonks struggled to find her voice, before she managed to murmur:

"But...but that's not best for you!"

"It really is."

"No it isn't! They'll...they'll deny you Wolfsbane..."

"Wolfsbane wasn't invented until I was in my late twenties, Dora, I didn't get to take any until I was in my thirties, I think thirty years is plenty proof enough that I can survive without it..."

"You weren't sick when you were younger..."

"I'm not sick now."

"You can't have professional qualified healers knock a decade off your life expectancy and still tell me you're not sick."

"It's irrelevant."

"Irrelevant? How is it irrelevant? What happened to all those conversations we had after you left the hospital? You told me not to be frightened, that you'd be around for years and years, that you weren't going to leave Teddy and me, not ever! And now you're just going to...to waste away in prison for a few months, see if you can knock off a few extra years and prove the healers horribly wrong!"

"Dora they said roughly a decade off of my entire life, not that I had only one decade left! And what do they know anyway? I'm not going to just...just drop dead..."

"No? What about the morning of the fire? What did you do then?"

"I'm still here. Besides, there's no point thinking like that. We never consider the fact that you're more likely to drop dead one day than I am, do we? We never talk about how many Killing Curses you dodge per day, or whether or not you might not dodge fast enough tomorrow. And why not? Because we can't live life like that, we never have, not even during the War. For Merlin's sake, let's not start now! That's no way to live a life, and neither is lying constantly to hide Elijah. I'll confess in the morning...I'll go to the Ministry instead of owling, it'll cause less of a fuss."

"Please, Remus..."

"Don't."

"But please..."

"I said don't. Just don't."

"I'm begging you..."

"You're wasting your breath."

"Think of Teddy! Of the three of us!"

"I am."

Tonks leaned forward until she could fix her husband with the most imploring look that she could muster, tears dripping from her face into a sorry looking damp patch upon his shirt collar.

"Remus," she said, voice suddenly firm. "I swear, if you love us, you won't make me show up in the Great Hall tomorrow morning to drag our son away from his friends and into an empty classroom to tell him that his father is being sent to prison. If you love us you won't hurt him like that, you won't leave me to pick up the pieces because I won't do it. I...I can't."

Teddy felt his heart hammering in his chest and he reached to clamp a horrified hand over his mouth as he waited for his father's response. He both dreaded and welcomed Remus' words, for the anticipation was painful enough in itself.

But when Remus finally turned his head to look away from his silent contemplation of his wife's tear-stained face, his next words were like a plunging dagger into his son's heart.

"I swear," the werewolf whispered, staring off into the darkness. "If you loved me, you wouldn't be trying to emotionally blackmail me into yet more lies. If you loved me, you wouldn't hurt me like that. I'll leave you to pick up the pieces because you will do it. It's your mess, Dora, you must do it."

And so it was that at precisely eight o'clock the following morning, Remus Lupin stepped into the telephone box at the visitors' entrance to the Ministry of Magic and, when prompted, provided his name and reason for visiting.

"Remus Lupin. I'm here to...confess. Hand myself in."

There was a soft click as a visitor's badge slid out into the dish in front of him. He reached to pick it up, holding it up to read:

Remus Lupin

Spineless Failed Criminal and Werewolf

For a long moment, Remus simply stared. For some reason he found himself marveling at the absurd wording and as the telephone box gave a small lurch, leaving him to struggle to keep his balance, he mused that had he not been the only one of the four remaining he would have put it down as a Marauders' practical joke, it was rather funny...

The door swung abruptly open and Remus found himself staring down the long, grand space that was the Ministry's Atrium.

And quite suddenly he was no longer laughing.

He stood, frozen for a long moment by an abrupt surge of doubt. At least, he thought despairingly as he drew in a deep, steadying breath, he had stayed resolute up until this point. Had doubts pounced upon him the night beforehand, he might just have given in to them...

Dora was startlingly good at making him give in. Sometimes Remus wondered if he were ever entirely in control of his own actions. Despite this, and despite his anger, he had dared to go home the previous night, dared to creep up the staircase and across the landing into the bedroom to find his wife lying motionlessly in bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling. At the sound of him shuffling through the doorway, she'd sat bolt upright in bed, drawn breath to speak, but he had silenced her with a raised hand.

Don't say anything.

He couldn't risk it. He couldn't trust her, couldn't trust himself. They could say nothing all night, not a single word just in case he crumbled.

He'd climbed into bed beside her and told a last lie or two. He told himself he wasn't angry, that it wasn't her fault, that she wasn't crying into his shoulder again. And then he'd kissed the tears away, because all the best lies are made convincing by destroying contrary evidence. He'd kissed her till the tears were gone, till they were both too breathless to sob or weep and for a while it had been just the two of them, nothing else in the world, and he'd not a care for the tightness in his chest because the smooth touch of her skin under his fingertips had made him forget himself entirely. It had been dangerous, he'd supposed, because he might have lost his nerve, she might have changed his mind. And yet she had not said a word to try and sway him. He hadn't given her the chance. After a time they had lain in a tight knot of limbs and discarded clothes, and he'd made sure to disentangle himself before he finally fell asleep.

It had made it easier to sneak out of the house the following morning without waking her.

And that was how he came to be standing, staring through the doorway and into the Atrium, dressed in clean clothes and yet disheveled. He felt sweaty. He'd not dared take a shower or even fill the sink for fear of waking his sleeping wife. He'd liked the image of her tucked up asleep in bed as a final picture to recall, he hadn't wanted a scene.

He drew in another deep, calming breath, only for the voice in the telephone box to demand:

"Well go on then! Out you get!"

Remus gave himself a little shake and stepped out into the Atrium. The vast room was swarming with people going to and from the numerous fireplaces that lined the walls and the werewolf fixed his gaze resolutely upon the desk at the far end of the room, just to the left of the elevator.

He started to walk, speeding up as he went just in case he'd not make it and make a dash for the nearest fireplace instead. He dodged people as he went, keeping his gaze fixated upon the desk, only to come to an abrupt halt a few meters before it, causing a witch to walk straight into the back of him. Whether or not he remembered to mumble an apology he didn't really know.

Remus eyed the wizard sat behind the desk, heart beginning to thud in his chest.

He was a small, squat man with sleek dark hair that had been swept back from his sallow face, into which were impressed a pair of dark, piercing eyes. Had he not been so preoccupied, Remus may have mused upon his uncanny similarities to the late Severus Snape.

Remus took a few uncertain steps forward until he was stood just in front of the desk and as the man looked up from the papers he was examining to offer the werewolf a questioning look, he swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. He paused long enough to make the man frown rather impatiently as he inquired:

"Yes? Can I help you?"

Remus reached to shove his hands deep into his pockets. He managed a rather uncertain:

"Um..."

In all honesty, this hadn't really been how he had envisaged this process going. He'd intended on striding boldly up to the desk and announcing his purpose in a suitably bold and distinctly not pathetic manner.

He cleared his throat determinedly and drew breath to try again, only he didn't get any further for it was at that precise moment that he heard a very familiar voice behind him shouting:

"REMUS!"