Who:NymphaDora Tonks & Remus Lupin What: Reunion of the formerly dead lovebirds Where: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry, Harry Potter's office When: 5 June 2020 (backdated I guess) Warnings: Talk of being dead (but that's the whole game, so) Status: Completed
The space of Harry's office felt too large with her mother gone. Tonks' eyes trained on the plate of food she had spilled – beans on toast, all over the nice carpet – only for Andromeda to swoop in and clean up her mess. There was a time, and it didn't feel that long ago, where she would have found that action mildly annoying. Now it, and the pictures of her son, and the favourite jumper she had brought that had gone unworn for seven years, felt like raw reminders of love. Sitting there, feeling bruised by the world, here was little more that she wanted than to be mothered like she was a small child, completely incapable of fending for herself. To have Andromeda hold her, and decide things for her, and clean up her spills. It felt like that sort of comfort might mute a lot of pain.
Tonks wasn't to be so lucky. As it was, there was a small child who needed that kind of attention, and he was to be taken home in her place and without her, blissfully unaware of his mother's return until the proper moment. She was to sit with her sacrifice and her ruined meal and do her best to breathe.
Her mind wandered to Remus, eyes falling to the gold band on her left hand. It was hard to stem the flow of images to her mind – as much as she didn't want to, she couldn't help but picture him at her graveside with his knuckles wrapped around a small, sad bunch of flowers. The thought at least it was just a few months hits, and when she realises the implication behind it of better that than seven years she feels sick with herself. Of course she wouldn't rather that. Better that neither of them had bloody died in the first place.
Despite knowing it would be masochistic of her to try and search for the memory of that decision, the last one either of them ever made, she desperately wanted to know how it happened. Her thoughts were achey, blurred, trying to grasp it felt like pulling out a bad tooth with her fingers. She closed her eyes shut tight, thought she could make it out for a moment and then it was gone. A badly remembered dream. They had made it, they had decided, they had died. That was all she could be certain of.
Remus had been waiting for the message for months. He would be reading a book or washing up, and his eyes would turn to the next open page of his journal, hoping to see Harry’s handwriting. Most of the time, when Harry wrote, it was to do with Teddy, which was at once a thrill and a disappointment; for all that he loved to hear about his son and needed near constant reassurance of their plans together, he missed Dora dearly. His breath would catch and his hopes would crash, but he would be glad to be talking nonetheless. It was different this time.
Tonks is back. She's in my office at Hogwarts. She's met her mum already and wants to see you before going to the RRC.
Remus closed the Daily Prophet roughly, disregarding the folds, and shouted for Regulus’s benefit that he would be back in an hour (if he were within earshot - and if not, he probably wouldn’t notice his absence anyway). He apparated to Harry’s flat as invited, thanked him for the message, and then ran for the castle.
It was always strange, coming back. Even in 1993, Remus had been amused by how small the castle seemed, despite how impossibly large it actually was. Now, he was back for Dora, who was herself back. Finally. He couldn’t wait to see her again.
And yet, once he got to Harry’s office door, he wasn’t sure how to open it anymore. He didn’t remember much of anything about their last day, even months after reoccurring. Everyone talked about the battle; it was the focus of most of the talk at the RRC during his rehabilitation, and everyone seemed to want to talk about it (or avoid the subject altogether) once he was out, but for all that, he didn’t know what to expect when he saw her again. She would know… what had happened. Harry had mentioned that she’d seen her mother, and surely Andromeda wouldn’t have made it through the entire conversation without bringing it up. Not to mention Harry - he would’ve said something too. So she knew. But… without knowing what he’d done just prior to the battle, much less during, Remus didn’t know what behaviour he might have to excuse, which apologies to make.
How had he not prepared for this in the months since he’d been back??
Coward that he was, Remus knocked before cracking the door, hoping for a peek at her hair for a clue as to how she was feeling.
“Dora?” Brown. He opened the door wider, stepped inside and closed it or behind him, his eyes caught on hers. She’d been crying. He took a breath to speak, but didn’t know what to say. Nothing felt appropriate, much less what he wanted to say.
The last concrete memory she could salvage from before was the two of them on her mother's sofa, her ankles in his lap as Teddy curled up to her chest. It felt like a very short time ago, and she very much wished it was, and that this could all be chalked up to them cracking open her dad's whiskey. Wasn't alcohol supposed to hit you harder after having a baby? It was nice to imagine it: war forgotten for an evening, old photographs poured over, bad jokes made. Maybe she had played him her favourite records. Maybe they had danced. It would be easy if that was the explanation for her bad head and the memory loss and the empty stomach. If it was, maybe he wouldn't be looking at her like that.
"Remus," she replied, her voice breathy and sad.
Normally, she might have been affronted by his stillness. Here she was, pale and sad, and his arms were terribly far away and not around her like they should be. But she could forgive him. Given the death part. A horrible, ugly feeling crawled its way up her throat again. The death part. Christ.
She rose quickly, before it could claim her, making short work of the distance between them to practically slam her body into his, flinging her arms around his neck. "Remus."
The breath holding him upright left him all at once. He sagged around her, arms wrapped tight enough around his wife to absorb her into his chest if it had been possible. Whatever her mother had told her, the blame he obviously deserved for her death, hadn’t been enough to wash away whatever fondness she still had for him. Or maybe it was just the heartbreak at finding out that they had died and left their son orphaned for seven years, and the rage would follow.
If only he knew why they were both there. If only he knew what he’d done to cause her death.
“I missed you,” he whispered, moving a hand to her hair, still brown. Probably for a long time. But it smelled the same. She felt the same. Blimey, he’d missed her. “So much.”
When her mother had collapsed into her, shattered with sobs, she had felt some responsibility to hold her up, to support her through her grief. With Remus it felt more like a mutual melting into each other, both of them reaching for bits and parts to hold close, blurring the line between his body and her's. His warmth enveloped her, and she heard her blood pump in her ears.
"I missed you too," she said, and then felt instantly stupid. It had been hours. It had been seven years. It had been a matter of months. For her though, it had been hours. The words felt flimsy and meaningless. That image of him at her grave flickered back and she instantly felt like she should apologise.
Instead, she just clutched him tighter, the pads of her fingertips paling white with pressure. "I --," she found herself cut off by a sharp inhale, her chest heaving in a dry sob. "I love you."
“I love you,” he echoed, clutching her tighter in return, wishing he had the power to soothe her pain.
He’d had months to get used to the idea, though how ‘used’ someone could become to the notion that they had died and then somehow returned seemed questionable. Still, time had done something to dull the pain and the confusion; he hardly ever cried anymore, and usually only after a few too many, in the solitude of the Black patriarch’s study. Remus wondered if that made him cold, or if Dora would also eventually be allowed some reprieve from the guilt and the grief.
“He’s perfect, you know.” An innocent statement meant to act as some sort of balm, and yet the tears it brought choked him, caught painfully in his throat. Remus clenched his teeth to get the rest of the words out. “He keeps asking after you. Wanted me to promise you’ll come back- from the stars.”
If he had hoped that she might right herself and disentangle the pair of them, letting them speak properly, it was the wrong thing to say. Dora let out a strangled whimper, her knees feeling weak.
"Mum showed me photos." Andromeda had given her a few to keep and she had tucked them inside the pocket of the bag brought for her. His bright turquoise hair danced around the shots, even the photograph version of him refusing to say still. Her half-real son: made up from adjectives (cheeky, energetic, good, like her) and images she could only hold in her hands. Tonks wanted to clutch him in her arms, feel how big he had grown, have him hold her little finger with his whole hand just one more time, even if the proportions would all be wrong now.
"I'm going to see him once I'm out." Her voice sounded quiet and sober. When she pulled out of the hug enough to look at him her jaw was tight. "I have to wait."
Remus’s eyebrows twitched, a frown interrupted when Dora pulled away. The lump in his throat dissolved.
“She w-” He shook his head. The notion that Andromeda would make Teddy wait three more weeks before allowing him to see his mother seemed unconscionable. Would she tell Teddy that his mother was back but that she needed to spend three weeks away? Or would she not tell Teddy right away, expecting Remus to keep that secret from his son until she was ready to introduce them to each other? “Why won’t she bring him here? He’s been waiting for you. He’s been asking.”
"She did. He stayed with Harry. It isn't – we can't ask a seven year old to be patient for three weeks. What, he sees me for ten minutes and then I'm gone again?" Dora bit down on her lip, worrying away at tiny chunks of skin. Already she felt hollowed out by the idea, she wasn't certain that she could manage three weeks of it. When it came down to it though, what choice did she have? The only thing she was really certain of, in her short stint of it, was that motherhood demanded sacrifice.
"C'mon, Remus." Her tone was gentle, but something hidden underneath it was nudging him. As much as she admired that emotional driving force, and appreciated his indignation on her behalf, she needed some other more responsible instinct to pull through. A frown worried her brow as she remembered what Andromeda had said about him not knowing how to talk to a child that age. There were going to be growing pains for all involved.
“I know, but-” His confusion overrode Dora’s silent nudge. Why couldn’t Teddy see her at the RRC? He’d assumed that Andromeda had kept Teddy away while he was there because she hated him, not because she wanted to keep Teddy from his parents. He wasn’t so sure anymore. “I see him once, maybe twice a week. You’d get to see him just as often if he visited you there. We could all have the visit together.”
"Mum says it isn't the sort of place you take kids. And what, I meet him while I'm locked up somewhere and they're poking me to see if I'm gonna croak it? His first glimpse of his mum is in some weird dead people retreat?" She made a face.
With a sigh, her arms dropped away from him and she pulled them tight around her stomach, trying to hug the empty feeling out of herself. When it didn't work she leaned forward into him again, forehead to chest. She had been dead for seven years. What was three more weeks? The only difference was that she felt it now, could point at the gap in the world she had left and see all its rough edges.
Remus sighed, wrapping his arms back around his wife, and pressed a kiss to her hair. He was being selfish and he knew it, but he needed them all together. He needed to see the joy on his son’s face. He couldn’t lie to him. And he knew he needed to be there for Dora now, but his mind kept returning to his son’s face, the eager ‘Have you heard from mum?’ he’d be sure to get almost first thing when he saw him next. Andromeda would expect him to lie, would she? Because as often as Teddy made Remus promise he would be there at their next scheduled visit, she had damned well better not keep them apart for the duration of Dora’s ‘rehabilitation’; Teddy wouldn’t forgive him for disappearing again and Remus would never forgive her.
He clenched his jaw and took a deep breath before pressing another kiss to Dora’s part and pulling away. Taking her hand, he pulled his wife to the nearest seat and took one for his own, turning to face her, hand on her arm.
“It’s not the best place,” he finally conceded, sadness taking indignation’s place. He didn’t like the thought of her being stuck there for three weeks, with or without getting to see Teddy; he doubted she would handle it well. All that energy needed somewhere to go, and he was reasonably worried that Dora would take it out on herself, the way the Wolf did when it was stuck on its own in tight quarters. “But there are worse. I’m not sure what they’re doing with any of the data they’re collecting, but they don’t seem the type to go out of their way to hurt us.”
Remus' kisses triggered small soft exhales and Dora closed her eyes, thanking the stars that he was here. She filed the thought away to feel guilty about later. In the present moment she wanted little more than his solid warmth. His touch made her feel a little more real.
Once sitting she reached for his free hand, lacing her fingers through the gaps in his, pushing her palm forward, closing her grasp over his knuckles; an outlet for her nervous energy. "It doesn't sound dangerous, it sounds bloody stupid. And just like the old Ministry to be caught up in some bullshit protocol, tripping over their own arses. Things didn't improve after the war?"
“It’s hard to tell by how much,” he replied with a shrug, his voice quiet. Now that they were sitting, it felt a bit more normal to have her back, and his voice took on the old timbre of comfortable quiet moments at home. He watched Dora’s hand try to engulf his much larger one without success and squeezed his fingers, pulling her palm in tighter. Maybe it only felt more normal because they were talking about people who had it out for them again. “We get a version of what happened at the RRC but it’s not everything. It never is. They have me registered twice over, but at least they’re providing the Wolfsbane.”