Note: Written at the end of possibly the worst day of my year thus far. Hence the angst! Sorry about that everybody...

I rather fell in love with the idea of the letters. I hope I've still managed to make the plot clear...not really sure how successful I've been!

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

30: Broken

Remus,

Won't be home until ten tonight – I'm going over to finish off some of Ron's paperwork for him at his house whilst he makes enquires with the German Ministry.

Keep an eye on Teddy and the other two, won't you? I hope Chester can keep his mouth shut for once in his life. Are you quite sure Minerva believed you when you told her they were trying to sneak back from Hogsmeade when you found them? I think she might be more angry with you than she is with the children since you've been away from Hogwarts so much recently. Here's hoping she doesn't give you too much grief, Sweetheart.

Love,

Dora

Remus,

No news from Ron yet, he won't be at the Ministry until this afternoon. I'm not hopeful – if he had much news I expect he would have owled me. Or you. Did he owl you?

Will you be home this evening or are you still on patrol duty?

Much love,

Dora

Love,

The roof's leaking again – would you pop home at lunch and sort it out? You remember as well as I do what happened last time you left it to me.

I miss you.

X

Remus,

I'd say thanks for sending Arthur round, but in all honesty you have me worried. You've not been home for days. And don't think I didn't notice the missing clothes from the wardrobe – I'm not blind you know. Did you fetch them yourself or did Arthur get them for you? I hope you didn't ask him – what in Merlin's name would he think? Molly would get it out of him too, you know she would. If you want a day or two to yourself that's perfectly fine, but let's not cause a scene for the whole family to gossip about. They think badly enough of me already.

Dora.

PS. Perhaps that's what you want.

Remus,

Ron's found them. It's only a matter of time now.

Mum knows something. She came round this morning, she kept asking after you and I couldn't get rid of her. I don't know what to tell her, I don't know what to tell anybody, least of all myself.

What I said yesterday – I'm not right, am I? You're not doing this to simply make me look awful, are you? You know how dreadful I feel about what's happened, don't you? I'm perfectly capable of making myself look and feel bad all on my own, I don't need your help you know.

The Wizengamot are extending my suspension due to "complex circumstance." I don't think I can stand it, I'm climbing the walls as it is.

For the love of Merlin Remus, come home. It's been days, but it feels like a lifetime and I miss you so dreadfully. I'd floo over and drag you back myself if I had the nerve. But I don't. I don't have the nerve, the strength or the confidence. In fact I'm not sure I have anything much anymore. You've broken me, my love.

Dora

Teddy Lupin simply stared in dismay, a sickening twisting sensation gripping ahold of his insides and twisting them into fearful knots.

It had been six days since his parents had frog-marched him, along with Chester and Victoire, out of the Shrieking Shack and back to Gryffindor Tower. Six days since his parents had bombarded him with an odd mix of scolding and praise before promptly stealing his friends' Master Plan as their own.

It had also been six days since his father had last set eyes upon his mother. Five days since their unnaturally tentative hug goodbye...

It had been five days since Harry had smuggled Elijah out of the Shrieking Shack and off to a location that Teddy was forbidden to know about.

Five days since his mother had started to send regular owls to his father. And five days since his father had seemingly been verging on ignoring them.

Four days since Teddy had caught sight of Mr. Filch dragging a familiar looking trunk along the corridor towards his father's office and the Defence teacher's living quarters that had not been slept in for a number of years.

Fifteen minutes since Teddy had barged into the newly occupied bedroom to discover his father nowhere to be seen.

Fourteen minutes since he had found the letters littering the bedside table.

Nine minutes since he had finished reading them.

Thirty seconds since he had finished rereading them. Twice.

Teddy was just making an effort to remind himself that he was beginning to get much too old to curl up upon his father's bed and sob like an infant when he heard the door behind him opening and he spun around just in time to see Remus step across the threshold. As the werewolf reached to push the door shut behind him, he told his son:

"I've been searching high and low for you. I was beginning to think you'd run off again..." he trailed off as he turned to spot the displaced letters at Teddy's side and his eyes immediately narrowed.

"Have you been reading my letters?"

"No..." Teddy answered much too quickly, and yet as Remus raised an eyebrow the young Gryffindor found that he was suprisingly unabashed to be caught, for he promptly asked: "Have you been reading your letters?"

When Remus' face contorted in a mixture of despair and anger, Teddy felt rather furious himself as he accused:

"Have you left Mum?"

For a moment, Remus looked quite stunned.

"Don't be ridiculous, Theodore." he muttered when he finally found his voice, striding over and scooping up the pile of letters. As Teddy watched him shove them unceremoniously into the drawer below, he gave his foot a furious little stamp.

"Well what's this, then?" he asked as Remus pushed the drawer shut and set about shrugging off his robes, walking to the wardrobe to hang them up. "What're you doing packing a trunk and...and staying here at night? That's...that's leaving, isn't it?"

"Leaving and spending a few nights away are two entirely different things, Ted." Remus said, sounding unnaturally short-tempered, but Teddy barely noticed, he was much too upset.

"Go home, Dad!" the boy cried, throwing his hands up in the air, his eyes widening pleadingly. "Right now! Go home!" When he was offered an utterly incredulous expression for attempting to give out orders, Teddy was forced to add a rather feeble: "Please?"

As he set about hanging up the robes, Remus was silent for a long moment, apparently suppressing the urge to lose his temper.

"Listen to me, Teddy," he said at last as he pushed the wardrobe door shut and turned around to regard his son seriously. "What goes on between your mother and I is entirely down to us. It may well affect you, but nevertheless it's our marriage, our relationship, our ups and downs and therefore you stay well clear of it. You being nosy and purposefully getting yourselves caught up in the middle of us is going to do nobody any favours. You have no idea about marriage or being in love. Don't tell me to go home or do anything for that matter when you can't possibly understand the situation that we're in."

Teddy felt his cheeks warming and for a long moment he eyed his shoes thoughtfully.

"Will you tell me one thing?" he asked, biting his lip a little as he finally dared look up at his father again. "Do you...do you still love her?"

To his surprise, Remus' lips twitched towards a sad smile.

"I always will, Teddy." the werewolf murmured, reaching to rake a hand through his silvery hair. "More than life itself. That's what makes things complicated. You'll understand one day."

Before Teddy could say another word, the werewolf had reached into his pocket and drawn out a neatly folded sheet of parchment, and as he set about unfolding it, Remus said: "I've had an owl from Harry. Ron's finally managed to get hold of Elijah's relatives in Germany. They've agreed to take him in."

"That's good." Teddy murmured blandly, and Remus sounded equally as non-plussed as he agreed:

"Yes, it is." The professor gazed down at the letter for a long moment, before heaving a sigh. "I expect they'll move him first thing in the morning."

"And at the same time Mum'll morph into Elijah and get herself caught and banged up in St. Mungo's?"

"That's the plan."

Teddy gave a irritated sniff. He had been quite proud of his and his friends' plans to trick the Ministry of Magic into believing that Elijah had simply wandered off of his own accord and had been wandering the streets of London for the past few days. The notion of a kidnapping would soon be forgotten, especially once Elijah would abruptly disappear from St. Mungo's after an hour or two, supposedly off on another little wander. It would throw the Ministry completely off track.

"You make it sound like it was your plan!" he grumbled. "I still don't see why Mum has to do it. I could've done it just as well...better, even!"

"Oh really?" Remus turned to the small fire that was crackling in the grate to their right, throwing Harry's letter into the flames. As the parchment curled and crackled, he turned back to fix his son with a disbelieving raised eyebrow. "What makes you think that?"

Teddy felt his cheeks warming a little and he shifted his feet, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"I dunno..." he mumbled. "Mum's...too busy..."

Remus gave a disbelieving snort.

"On the contrary, your mother has more spare time on her hands right now than she knows what to do with." he shot the bedside table a meaningful glance as he added: "As you well know."

Teddy chewed his lip self-consciously for a moment, before deciding to ignore this last comment.

"That's not what I meant," he said, dropping down to perch upon the edge of Remus' bed. "Mum's...preoccupied. Unfocused. In fact I'm glad the Wizengamot extended her suspension, aren't you?"

"She'd be better off at work, I suspect."

"She'd be awful at work right now! She'd get herself hurt or killed or...or something..."

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps? For Merlin's sake, Dad! Don't you care?"

"Not particularly, Ted. After all, she isn't at work..."

"I don't mean it like that! I mean don't you care about...about MUM?"

"Of course I care..."

"Well then! Why won't you go home? If you care that she's in such a state, why won't you go to her?"

"I believe we're straying back to those things you can't understand..."

"Well explain it to me, then! Explain to me why you've left home, Dad! Explain to me why you won't go back, even when you've reduced Mum to a complete and utter wreck..." Teddy halted abruptly at a sudden scraping sound, and he jumped a little when the armchair set beside the window came scuffing across the stone floor, until it came to a half just before him.

Remus sat down, hands arranged carefully in his lap. After a sizeable pause, he leant forward a little in his seat and fixed Teddy with a firm stare.

"Let me point out the first thing that you don't understand, Ted." he said, voice so grave that Teddy shuffled back upon the bed so that he could draw his knees up towards his chest, hugging them tightly. "I am not solely responsible for the state that your mother is in right now. For half of it at the very least she has nobody to blame except herself. Another thing that you don't understand is that it doesn't matter how much she's hurting or whether or not I care. Me going home wouldn't make things any better. Not yet."

Teddy felt the beginnings of tears prickling at his eyes and he hastily blinked them away, shaking his head.

"Yes it would...you...you'd make her...you'd make her better...tell her...tell her everything's going to be alright, that you're not angry with her...because you're not! You can't be, not when she's so sorry!"

"It's not just a matter of being sorry, Ted."

"She's more than sorry, she's devastated!" Teddy cried, eyes widening in frustration, and he felt utterly appalled to see Remus' gaze to fall to the hands in his lap, lips curving into a smile. "What's there to smile about, Dad?" the boy asked, staring at his father in bewilderment, and he felt more bewildered too when Remus merely shook his head and admitted:

"Devastation can seem to be a glorious thing, if one can be entirely honest with themselves."

"No it can't." Teddy snapped, but Remus only smiled more.

"Not to you, no." the werewolf agreed. "Because you aren't being honest. We're not saints, Teddy, not a single one of us. If we're honest we'll all admit that on occasion the misfortunes or pains of others brings us pleasure. The German's have a word for it: Schadenfreude, schaden meaning harm, and freude meaning joy."

Teddy felt quite stunned

"Mum being upset makes you happy?" he finally asked rather hesitantly, and Remus rolled his eyes.

"Of course not, I'd much rather her life were all sunshine and rainbows, Ted. But it isn't. She's upset, she feels guilty and she misses me. Show me a man who can't derive at least a shred of pleasure from the fact that his wife loves him enough to feel so utterly low, and I'll eat the Sorting Hat."

For a long moment, Teddy simply stared at the werewolf, brow crinkling in disapproval.

"That's horrible." he announced at last, only for Remus to insist:

"That's human nature."

Teddy took another long moment to digest this frank piece of information before he asked:

"So...what are you going to do? Stick around here until she totally loses it because it'll make you feel better or something?"

Remus let out a rather dark chuckle.

"I can assure you that sitting here and waiting for your mother to lose it, as you put it, would bring me absolutely no pleasure at all. I'm not staying here because I want to make her feel wretched, Ted. I'm staying here because I want to make myself feel a little less wretched."

Again, there was a long pause as Teddy frowned down at his feet, before he concluded:

"I don't think I ever want to fall in love or get married, Dad. It all sounds utterly silly and ridiculous if you ask me."

This time, Remus' chuckle was genuinely amused.

"Perhaps your right, Ted!" he said with a grin. "After all, they say love makes fools of the lot of us."

"Well it won't to me." Teddy muttered, and Remus reached to run a hand across his face, seemingly wiping the amusement clear form it.

"The thing is, Teddy," he began slowly, "your mother...your mother has done a very hurtful thing to me...very hurtful, and I can't honestly say that I've forgiven her for it."

Teddy felt as if he had been punched in the stomach, and he drew a deep breath to protest, only for Remus to hold up a hand to silence him.

"But that makes me feel wretched." the werewolf admitted, sinking back into his chair with a sigh. "Utterly wretched. There's nothing more awful than thinking badly of the person you love, Ted. Because you want more than anything to forget it, to let it be water under the bridge, you don't want to hold a grudge or make them feel any more dreadful than they already do. But the problem is...sometimes you feel so very hurt that simply being forgiving isn't that easy. And that's why I'm here, Teddy. Because I'll do more harm than good at home, more harm than being away will do. I don't trust myself to be around your mother, not until I am sure I can forgive her. I don't want to make her feel resented or...or I don't want to end up saying things I'll regret. I don't want her to know how I'm feeling or what I'm thinking. And I don't want her to provoke me into doing anything foolish, either. I want a nice, clear thinking head and I don't want to act or pretend because I know she's watching me, she can read me like a book and it'll be a hurtful read to say the least. I simply need to be away from her. For both our sakes. Do you understand?"

Teddy turned this explanation around in his head a couple of times before sighing heavily and wondering:

"How long?'

And Remus frowned deeply and decided:

"As long as it takes."

Teddy leant to bury his face in his knees.

"Mum's broken you and you've broken Mum." he observed wearily into his faded denim jeans. "And I think you'll both break me."

"Patience, Ted." Remus murmured, reaching to lay a comforting hand upon the boy's shoulder. "That's all you need. Besides, nobody's hit rock bottom yet..."

It was at that precise moment that there came a loud knock upon the door, before it was opened without invitation to reveal a rather flustered looking Harry Potter.

Teddy straightened up and hastily wiped at his watery eyes, but Harry didn't seem to notice him as he strode into the room, coming to an abrupt half and pointing an accusing finger at Remus' chest.

"You need to go home!" the Deputy Head of Aurors announced firmly, eying the werewolf challengingly through his rounded glasses. "Immediately!"

Remus sunk back in his chair again, gaze drifting wearily up towards the stone ceiling.

"Harry..." he began to protest, but Harry shook his head.

"I mean it, Remus, you have to!" the dark haired wizard insisted. "If you don't go home and fix things the entire plan for the morning is going down the drain!"

Remus' gaze dropped from the ceiling to fix his former student with a deep frown.

"That's...a rather desperate and cruel choice of blackmail..." he observed, only for Harry to shake his head again.

"I'm not trying to blackmail anybody!" Harry cried, throwing his hands up in frustration. "I mean it LITERALLY!"
"What are you talking about?" Remus asked, yet more bemused than ever, and Harry appeared to bite his tongue in exasperation for a moment before informing the werewolf:
"It's Tonks, I've just been over to see her. If you don't go home and sort things out the plan's never going to work."

"Why not?"

At long last, the frustration faded from Harry face, only to be replaced by a deeply despairing look as he admitted:

"She's having trouble morphing."