Entry tags:

*fic, remus, snape, tonks

Special delivery for kereia - Part 2
Title: Never Trust an Epilogue - pt. 2
Author: violet_quill
Recipient's Name: kereia
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Snape/Tonks, Remus/Tonks
Summary: The future that Tonks knows is one where Voldemort still lives in hiding, Death Eaters have resorted to terrorist attacks, and families have been broken and splintered… though also one where she has two wonderful sons and a husband who loves her. But then some powerful dark magic brings her face to face with different futures, including one where Harry Potter lives a normal life with three children, she is dead, and "all is well." What makes one future the "right" one?
Warnings: outdoor sex, some dirty talk, character death (major implied, minor depicted), implied adultery, either AU or epilogue-compliant depending on how you look at it
Word Count: 13,000
Notes: There are parts in this fic that borrow very heavily from the DH epilogue, mostly in structure but at times, complete quotations. This story began as an extremely complicated time travel tale, but after dealing with plot holes that I could drive a train through, this version emerged instead. I know that this is a bit of an unconventional form of EWE, keiera, but I do hope that you enjoy it! Many thanks to S, who listened to me wibble about my plot issues for months, and to the WL mods for truly saintly patience.


Continued from here
The house at Grimmauld Place was just as dark and unwelcoming as Tonks remembered. Even when the Order was using it, she hadn't liked being here; it was as if the house itself recognized her as unworthy of the Black bloodline, like it could feel her father's Muggle blood intermingling with what should be pure. Not to mention Mrs. Black's portrait screaming at her, calling her all those horrible names… She was glad, at least, that that was one thing she didn't have to worry about now. Bless Hermione.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. She hadn't even realized that she'd been holding her breath, standing there in the doorway. "It is just a house, Nymphadora," Severus said. "Nothing but brick and mortar now. I doubt that even much magic remains by now."

"Cool," said Brian as he ducked into the house ahead of Tonks. "This place is creepy…"

"You own this place, Mum?" Teddy asked incredulously as he followed his younger brother, gripping a pair of suitcases. "Did you used to live here?"

"Me? No. Sirius did, though, when he was a kid. And your grandmother spent some summers here. But all I had to do with it was when the Order was using it as headquarters. Well, sometimes I hung around to keep Sirius company; he was so lonely stuck in this horrible place…"

Severus snorted, and Tonks shot him a look. After Sirius had been dead for more than 20 years, Severus still held a grudge. He didn't care to be reminded that he'd married into his sworn enemy's family.

The two of them walked inside and Severus closed the door behind him. Tonks looked around, and ran a finger through a layer of dust on a hanging oil lamp. "Has no one been here in all these years?" she asked.

"The last time that anyone has lived here were when Death Eaters were camping out in case Harry returned," said Severus.

"That's right… I remember Hermione and Ron's story, about how they had accidentally broken the Fidelius charm when Yaxley clung to Hermione while she Apparated here."

Severus nodded. "They couldn't return after that, but a few of the Death Eaters remained here, just in case - until the night of the battle, of course. And after that… well, there was no reason for anyone to come back. The Death Eaters couldn't risk us finding them anymore than we could risk them finding us. And so it's stayed empty."

"They won't think to look for us here," Tonks said, largely for Brian's benefit, since she realized he was listening to their conversation. "I know it's not exactly homey, but we won't be here for long."

"Hey, I could just live here instead of getting my own place!" Teddy suggested cheerfully.

"No," said Tonks and Severus simultaneously.

Tonks cleared her throat and added, "This house has a bad history, Teddy. There might even still be dark magic artefacts here. It's just… not a good place."

"Hey, look at this!" Brian had scampered down the hallway, and was examining the tapestry on the wall.

"Ah," said Tonks dryly. "The Black family tree."

"There's Scorpius!" Brian said excitedly, pointing to where the line dipped down from Draco and his (pureblood) dead wife. "This must be magical, huh?"

Tonks nodded. "The names are added automatically, but…"

"Then why aren't I on here?" Brian frowned, moving his finger up to the line of Black sisters.

"Because your grandmother was burned off before I was born," Tonks said. "The Blacks were blood purists. They didn't take kindly to my mother marrying a Muggle-born."

"Sirius is burned out too," Teddy pointed out.

"He chose the wrong friends," said Tonks. "I'm pretty sure that to his parents, being a Gryffindor was the same as being a blood traitor."

Severus put his hand on the small of Tonks' back. "Come upstairs, boys. You can choose bedrooms and I will do my best with cleaning charms."

Once they disappeared up the stairs, Tonks closed her eyes and leaned against the tapestry-covered wall. She could almost hear Sirius' rare laughter echoing in the hallway. She could hear Remus' voice. See the twinkle in Sirius' eye as he said, "I'll just be heading to bed early tonight…" and leaving the two of them alone in front of the fireplace where they'd made love for the first time. They'd fallen in love in this house.

Tonks did have good memories here, but they were pushed so far back, wrapped up in the grief of loss, something that she'd boxed up and put away when she'd married Severus.

She wanted to be away from this house as soon as possible.

*

The night was cold, even wrapped up in a quilt in the bed Tonks was sharing with Severus. She could hear his steady breathing beside her, and when she turned to look, saw the slow rise and fall of his curved back as he lay on his side facing away from her.

She couldn't sleep, had been lying there for hours. First, unable to stop thinking, about Remus, about the final battle. Reliving the events in her mind, imagining how they might have been. Cursing Dolohov, cursing Voldemort, wondering what she could have done differently. Thinking, thinking. What if. What if.

And then she'd just been trying to ignore the voices in her head. Telling herself that it was only her imagination, that there was nothing whispering her name, nothing pulling her out of bed, beckoning her towards the attic.

She should wake Severus. She should.

But instead, she found herself swinging her legs over the side of the bed and sliding her feet into her slippers. She threw on her dressing gown, picked up her wand from the dresser, and padded softly out of the bedroom, leaving her sleeping husband behind.

The stairs to the attic creaked, and so she stepped lightly. Once there, she whispered, "Lumos," and held her glowing wand in front of her so that she could see. Everything in the attic was covered in a thick layer of dust - furniture, boxes, frames of paintings and mirrors, all manners of knick-knacks and lost things.

Nymphadora…

Child of our blood…

Daughter of Blacks…

She followed the sound of whispers until she saw a strange shadow behind a row of boxes. It settled over the wall, forming an outline, almost what looked like… a door? It was small, about the size of a deposit box, a slot in the attic wall that was most definitely not there before.

Tentatively, Tonks reached out and pressed her hand to it. She felt the wall shift underneath her fingers, like molecules rearranging themselves, and then out of the empty space floated a cloudy orb, smaller than a crystal ball, about the size of a baseball.

It landed neatly in her hands and she peered into the swirling, white and grey clouds. She could still hear it whispering to her. Nymphadora of the House of Black…

And then: Wish.

Wishwishwishwishwishwishwishwishwish.

The command hit her like a violent rush of water. She felt something pulling at her thoughts, probing at the obsession that had plagued her earlier in the night. What if? What if.

Whatifwhatifwhatifwhatifwhatifwhatifwhatif.

What if Remus hadn't died? she thought desperately, almost involuntarily.

And the orb glowed in her hands, burning, radiating white light that spread and spread until it overtook her completely.

two.

Autumn was taking its time in arriving that year. The morning of the first of September was unpleasantly humid, sticky as cotton candy, and as the small family trekked across the station they steered away from hot exhaust that hung heavily in the air. The two parents pushed small trolleys, each topped with a cage. One contained a sleeping white cat, the other a fidgeting brown owl.

A few Muggles turned their heads to watch them, but most eyes lingered on the mother's hair, a violent shade of violet, the mass of wild curls tamed with a pair of chopsticks. But the family took no notice and continued towards the barrier between platforms nine and ten. The two children were trailing behind, gabbing away rather than holding onto their parents' hands as they once had.

"It's not as exciting as last year," Anne said, tugging at the silver necklace around her throat, fingers brushing over the raven charm that her parents had given her after her Sorting.

"It's never as exciting as the first year," her older brother said with a slight air of superiority. "Of course, I doubt much is exciting in Ravenclaw…" Tonks looked over her shoulder and saw his hand in his pocket. He was fingering the shiny Prefect badge there, waiting until they got onto the platform to pin it on.

"Sirius," their father warned, not even turning to look at them, but that tone in his voice was a familiar one.

"Sorry," Sirius muttered, and Anne stuck her tongue out at him.

Tonks tried to keep her lips from quirking into an amused smile. You don't get very far with House rivalries in a family where three children have been in three different Houses. Funny things happen when a Hufflepuff and a Gryffindor breed, apparently. Well, the only thing that hadn't happened was a Slytherin, but that wasn't all that surprising.

"Hi, Anne!" someone giggled as she rushed past them on the way to the platform, "Bye!" Tonks turned just in time to see Rose Weasley disappearing through the barrier, her brother Hugo hot on her heels behind her.

Ron, hurrying after them, paused briefly to give Tonks and Remus an apologetic look. "I told them not to race," he said, rolling his eyes. "Merlin, but I'll be glad when they're both leaving for school." And then he took off after them.

"I'll bet Rose will be in Gryffindor with me," Sirius said, looking a bit smug.

"Weasleys are always Gryffindors," Anne said, rolling her eyes. "How boring!"

"Well if she is, I'm sure you'll take very good care of her," Remus said, patting his son on the shoulder. Sirius beamed at him, and Tonks marvelled for a moment over how much more alike they looked each year. Whereas Teddy had looked so much like Tonks, colour-changing hair and all, Sirius was the spitting image of his father, all soft brown hair and amber eyes.

Anne, on the other hand, with her black pigtails and severe features, resembled Tonks' mother's side of the family. Tonks had been a bit relieved that as she grew older she looked more like a female version of her cousin Sirius than like Bellatrix, despite her colouring.

The four of them approached the barrier, and as it was new to none of them, pushed straight through without any fuss. Anne and Sirius immediately started looking around for their friends.

"Where did Rose and Hugo go?" Anne asked, wrinkling her nose.

"Oh, they're here somewhere, I'm sure," Tonks said.

But the crowd of people was so dense that it was difficult to make out anything. Somewhere, Tonks thought she heard Percy Weasley discoursing loudly on safety regulations, though no one was listening so much now, at least not as closely as they would have a few years ago. She was grateful for the excuse not to stop and say hello to him, especially not in Remus' company. It had been more than fifteen years since that unfortunate incident, but she could still feel the wolf rising up in Remus whenever he got a good look at Percy.

"Look, there they are," Remus said, pointing in the distance where a rather large group was standing near the train. As they approached, Tonks made out all of the faces. Ron standing there with Rose and Hugo, along with his sister Ginny and her five children, the youngest, Freddy, balanced carefully in her arms as the twins expressed animatedly to Rose why Gryffindor was the best House ever.

Sirius pinned on his Prefect badge before approaching them, and as the younger kids ooohed and ahhed over it, Tonks turned to Ginny. "Oh my, he's gotten so big!"

Ginny smiled and bounced Freddy a little. "By the minute, it seems. And he just keeps looking more and more like his father."

Looking closely, Tonks could see the resemblance. "Herbology was Anne's favourite class last year," she said.

"Oh, and Neville raved about her, too. Such a clever girl, I hear!"

Tonks beamed proudly, and looked down at where Remus was kneeling in front of his daughter, retying one of her pigtails. "Is he already back at the school?"

"He is. Something about needing to sort out the greenhouse and plant a few things so that they'd be blooming by the time classes start."

Tonks nodded just as Remus came up to say hello, and she took the opportunity to look around the platform again. For the past few years there had been so many conspicuously missing. Hermione, especially. Draco Malfoy and Scorpius. But this was nothing compared to Weasley family holidays. Ginny kept the Burrow to live during the summers when school wasn't in session, and Tonks could remember a time when it had busted at the seams. Now, even despite all the children, it seemed empty. Without Arthur and Molly, without Charlie, without George, without Percy's wife and daughter…

"Mrs. Lupin?"

Tonks turned, and was somewhat surprised to see Victoire Weasley standing there. "Hello, Victoire," she said gently. "How are you?"

The pretty young woman offered her a small smile and said, "Oh, I'm all right, I suppose. This is the last year I'll be doing this."

Tonks nodded. It was hard to believe the girl was only seventeen; she'd looked grown for several years now, probably an effect of her Veela blood.

"I just wanted to say hello," Victoire continued, and then bit her lip, sadness glinting in her eyes. "I know that you've always said that I'm still welcome at your home, but it's just so hard - "

"I understand," Tonks assured her softly, putting a hand on her shoulder. "We all miss him."

"My parents don't understand. They think that I couldn't have possibly been in love at fifteen, but…"

"I think that you were," Tonks said. "And I know that he loved you. But he would want you to be happy. Okay?" She squeezed Victoire's shoulder.

"Merci." She leaned forward and gave Tonks a small kiss on the cheek, then turned to say hello to Anne and Sirius.

Tonks stood there for a moment, looking out at the train, feeling a bit of a shiver despite the muggy air. She felt an arm around her shoulders suddenly, and tilted her head to lean against her husband's.

"We'll have the house to ourselves again," Remus murmured. "Things will be quiet."

Too quiet, thought Tonks as she watched the children file onto the train. So many people here, and yet not as many as there should be.

How could all be well when they had lost so much to get here?

*

Since it was just the two of them, Tonks and Remus apparated back to their little house in a small wizarding town on the other side of Devon from Ottery St. Catchpole. Once neither of them was working at the Ministry any longer, they had decided to settle down in the country after spending years living in London.

They arrived with a pop in their front lawn, just next to a swing set that Anne had outgrown a couple of years ago but that they still hadn't taken down. Remus turned and brushed his lips lightly against hers.

Tonks immediately felt an electric thrill through her body, just from that simple kiss. It was still like that, after all these years. And a simple kiss was never enough. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him again, tasting his lips, making a small sound of pleasure at the way he pulled her closer.

Finally they broke apart and he murmured, "Let me just go untie Lance and then we can take this inside."

Tonks watched as he walked around to the backyard. Lance was the golden retriever that they'd gotten just after they moved here. Most of the time he had the run of the place but they kept him tied up to this doghouse when no one was home - which wasn't terribly often these days.

Their place in London had been much smaller, too small really, especially after Anne was born, and certainly hadn't had a yard. But after the Battle of Hogwarts, after they'd buried Fred and Harry and rounded up the Death Eaters who hadn't managed to escape with Voldemort, one of the Kingsley's first acts as interim Minister had been to give Remus a job in the Magical Creatures department, ensuring that if he had anything to do with it, werewolf rights would be on the agenda once things settled down. He'd been true to his word, and Tonks had always been grateful to him for that. So even though Minerva had offered her the position of DADA professor at Hogwarts when it was time for the new school year, she'd elected to remain an Auror instead so that she and Remus would both be working at the Ministry.

Those next few years had been incredibly rocky for their relationship, as well as pretty much everything else in their lives. Remus was instrumental in keeping the Order together despite the overall feeling of defeat and depression after Harry's seemingly meaningless death. True, Voldemort was weakened, but if they couldn't find him, that did them very little good. The Death Eaters simply resorted to guerrilla tactics, suicide techniques reminiscent of Peter's explosion that framed Sirius all those years before. There were many deaths in those first three years. Countless Muggles. Charlie. Percy's wife Audrey and their one year old daughter. It was difficult to say whether the Order continuing to fight and search was helping or hurting. The attacks simply got worse, and more people died.

Between Remus' work at the Ministry and his work trying to track down Voldemort, now fuelled by a kind of intensity that Tonks knew could have only come from Harry's death and the end of his last link to all of his childhood friends, he was hardly around at all. Tonks began to feel like she was raising a toddler by herself, and eventually took a leave of absence as an Auror, unwilling to take any further chances that they could both be killed and leave Teddy all alone.

And yet during that time, their relationship hung on by the same thread that it had begun with years ago - pure, raw lust. Even after five years of marriage, every time they had sex it was as heated as that first time in front of the fireplace in the house at Grimmauld Place. God, back then they'd barely been able to be in a room together without something igniting. During the time after Sirius' death when Remus had insisted they end things, Tonks had had to stay away from him, they never would have been able to hold out otherwise. And then after Dumbledore's death, when they'd gone to each other in grief… it hadn't taken much for the passion to return.

They'd gotten married as soon as Tonks had realized she was pregnant. Remus had insisted, always the honourable one. And they did love each other. It was just never a practical love, never steady. Maybe it was more passion and flash than substance, but Teddy's birth was enough to keep them together.

At least, it had been for a while. When Remus' work kept him away so much, he'd be gone for weeks at a time only to return for a day that they would spend locked in their bedroom having mind blowing sex, emerging only to check on Teddy in his crib. During the time she spent alone, Tonks would fall into deep depressions, and then feel guilty for it when those around her were experiencing real grief.

Like Percy, whose family were killed in a Death Eater attack on Diagon Alley. Tonks had begun to spend time with him, helping him through the worst of it. Unfortunately, it was during the worst of Tonks' loneliness as well… and eventually, things had gone farther than they ever should have. Their affair lasted for nearly six months.

It was only when Tonks was pregnant that she broke down and told her husband. His reaction had gone quickly from rage to guilt, and when they confirmed that the child she carried indeed belonged to Remus, she ended things with Percy. And Remus, for his part, had slipped back into the role of father when Sirius was born and let a great deal of his vendetta slip away.

Perhaps the timing was fortuitous because the war that wasn't quite a war just kept getting worse after that. One attack on the Ministry was particularly devastating - Hermione, Draco, and Arthur were all killed. And things just continued like that… until three years ago.

Many people had tried to piece together the events that led up to it, to find some scrap of evidence, some clue that the hero had left behind. But there was nothing. One day Severus Snape had been teaching at Hogwarts, a lowly potions master after having been stripped of the title of Headmaster and Head of Slytherin years before, and the next day he was on a suicide mission that would ultimately end in Voldemort's death. Many said that he truly did simply want to end his life, that he had hung on for far too long with debilitating loneliness, and had simply made a last ditch effort to honour Lily Potter with his death. Others thought that he had planned it all along, that something about the timing was significant. But they would never know. Everything he'd wanted to say, he'd said to Harry before his death all those years ago.

And so Voldemort was finally dead, and all was well. For a while.

It took about a year after that for the Aurors to round up the scattered Death Eaters and throw them into Azkaban. It was during one of those final confrontations, the last hold-outs in the form of Dolohov and his teenage son, that a freshly-trained Auror on his first assignment had been killed in the line of duty. And so Dolohov, who had failed in his attempt at killing both Remus and Tonks during the Battle of Hogwarts so many years before, succeeded in his last breath in killing their son Teddy.

Tonks had never known grief like that before - not when her father died, or her mother a few years after that, or any of the dear friends who had fallen to Voldemort's evil in the previous twenty years. Yet somehow it had brought their small family closer together. It had been so strange last year when Anne had started school for it to be just her and Remus. Tonks finally got around to boxing up Teddy's things and putting them away, and Remus started to write the book about Harry's parents that he'd always wanted to. And now things were quiet. Maybe too quiet.

"Dora?"

Tonks had walked around to the backyard, where Remus had just tossed a stick for Lance to chase. "Hi, darling," she murmured, coming up behind him and wrapping her arms around his waist.

"You looked so lost in thought for a moment there," he commented, twisting around in her embrace so that he was facing her before pressing his lips to her forehead.

"Just thinking about this empty house," she lied, but having his arms around her was enough to make her feel better, and when he brushed her hair out of her eyes, fingertips brushing her forehead, she felt that electric thrill again.

Eager to forget everything for just a moment, she kissed him fiercely, one hand reaching up to tangle insistent fingers in his hair while the other snaked down to his waist, already yanking his shirt out of his trousers. He growled low in the back of his throat, a sound of approval and lust as he devoured her mouth and slid his hands up under her shirt, making quick work of unhooking her bra so that he could lay his palms on her bare breasts.

Sex with Remus usually fell onto one extreme of a spectrum - frantic and hurried or drawn out and teasing, each of which sparked a different sort of intensity. This was obviously the former, and Tonks definitely wasn't complaining.

When his thumbs brushed across her nipples, she groaned and dropped her hands to the front of his trousers, unfastening them with deft fingers. "Fuck me," she gasped. "Now now now."

One thing she loved about Remus, she knew he wouldn't even suggest they pause to go inside.

Instead he just pushed her backwards a few steps so that her back hit the brick wall of their house, just next to a cheery yellow window shutter.

"I've been wanting this all day," Remus growled, reaching underneath her long skirt and grasping the side of her knickers, ripping them off in one clean movement.

Tonks went through a lot of knickers.

Remus was nearly sixty, but you would never guess it. Part of being a werewolf, apparently, but he was in exceptionally good health. He'd seemed prematurely aged when Tonks had first met him, just tired and grey at thirty-five, and now over twenty years later he looked basically the same. Some more wrinkles under the eyes, his hands a bit shakier, but his body was as strong as it had ever been. And Tonks might be in her forties, but at times like this she felt like a girl again. Besides, she wasn't one to abide by grey hair. She cherished every laugh line, though.

"Oh, really?" Tonks laughed lightly as his lips went to her neck and he slid his hand up her bare thigh. "You were thinking about shagging me while we put our children on the train to school, were you?"

"They'd be fairly horrified, wouldn't they?" He bit down gently on her collarbone and she gasped.

"I think that Anne and Sirius are probably beyond that stage," Tonks admitted, wriggling a little against him. "They seem to realize that we have far more alone time than most parents."

"And here I thought we were hiding it so well." He pulled her leg up so that it hooked around his waist, and his hand on her thigh slid over until he slid two fingers cleanly inside her cunt.

"F-f-fuck," she whimpered, head falling back against the wall.

"You're so wet," he whispered against her throat. "You've been thinking about it too, haven't you? About having the house all to ourselves again?"

She made a small sound of agreement as his thumb brushed across her clit.

"By the end of the week you'll hardly be able to walk," Remus promised as he used his free hand to yank down his trousers. She felt his erection brush against her thigh as he bunched her shirt up around her waist. "I'm going to fuck you in every room of the house, starting… mmmm, right here in the backyard. Good thing we have a fence, yeah?"

"Stop talking about it and just do it," Tonks gasped, writhing against him. "Please, Remus…"

He hitched her leg tighter around his waist and then pushed inside her, burying himself deep inside in one clean movement. Tonks cried out and bucked her body towards him, nails clawing at the back of his neck.

"Yes…" Remus groaned. "Oh, bloody hell…"

"Harder," Tonks gasped. "Don't worry about hurting me, harder…"

It was a common refrain, that. Even after twenty years, especially near the full moons, Remus became cautious, afraid of his own strength. But Tonks was strong too, and knew how to handle him, and he'd never hurt her any more than she wanted to be hurt, not in all this time.

He began to fuck her in earnest, and she knew that her back was going to be scratched and bruised later, but she really didn't care. He whispered gorgeous dirty things into her ear as she gasped his name. Harder, faster, ohfuckohfuck…

The angle was perfect, creating pressure on her clit as he thrust in and out and after a few minutes she felt the deep pleasure building up inside her. She buried her face against his neck to keep herself from screaming as she came. They didn't have close neighbours, but she could scream loud.

Only moments later she heard Remus groan loudly and felt his body tense against her, then the slick heat of his orgasm spilling inside her.

"Remus…" she sighed as he carefully pulled away from her, letting her leg down. She felt his come dripping down her thigh as she sagged against the wall.

"I love you," he said, leaning in to kiss her jaw. "Let's go inside, yeah?"

She nodded and slid her hand into his.

*

That night, Tonks brought Remus a cup of tea in the study where he was writing, and then went off to take a quick shower. Once she was finished, she threw on a dressing gown and padded through the house in her bare feet, feeling the emptiness of the rooms.

She looked into Anne's room, which was just as messy as she'd left it, and would stay that way until she came home for the holidays. There were books everywhere, some hers and some filched from her father's study. Tonks quirked a small smile as she picked up a paperback Muggle romance novel from a pile on the floor. They'd have to have a chat about that later…

She closed the door and walked across the hall to Sirius' room. Quite a bit tidier than his sister, but the walls were covered in Quidditch posters and Gryffindor colours. There were still bunk beds, from when he'd shared the room with his brother, only the top bunk hadn't been slept in for years.

Tonks felt a bit of a knot in her chest as she looked at the empty bed. The only other remnants of Teddy in the room were his Hogwarts diploma hanging on the wall, and his prefect's badge pinned to a yellow and black striped tie hanging from the dresser mirror. And, actually…

Curiously, Tonks climbed up the ladder to the top bunk, and pulled something out from underneath the pillow. A worn, plush wolf. A bit of a joke gift from George when Teddy was five or six years old. Remus had never been terribly amused by it, but Teddy had carried the thing around with him until he started Hogwarts, when he was too embarrassed to take it with him. Tonks had never thought about what happened to it, but it made sense that he'd kept it here, for a bit of comfort when he was home, even when he got older.

Clutching the stuffed wolf to her chest, Tonks curled up on the bed, tears stinging at her eyes. Why did it have to last so long? Why did the war have to drag on so long, take so many lives with it? And why did her son have to be the last one taken? How could she have changed things? If only they'd defeated Voldemort the first time, if only they'd ended things, if Harry had never died… what if? What if.

She finally fell asleep, her mind no more at ease.

*

In the attic in the Grimmauld Place house, Tonks gasped and dropped the glowing orb. It rolled to her feet, the light dying into the swirling clouds inside.

She staggered back, falling to her knees, overwhelmed by what she'd just seen. No, not seen. Lived.

Was that what the object did? Showed her potential futures… what ifs? But it had felt so real, not like she was watching a film, or even remembering… she had been the Tonks of that world, the one where Remus was alive, where Severus was dead, where Teddy was dead…

Hugging her knees to her chest, Tonks felt a swell of grief. She wasn't even sure what for… Teddy, Severus, Hermione, all the others who had died in a future where the war had dragged on but then finally ended? Or for Remus, now that she'd had a glimpse of what their life could have been like together?

And both futures shared the same destructive fate, beginning with Harry's death that night at Hogwarts.

What if Harry hadn't died? What if he'd defeated Voldemort instead? Would that have saved all those lives?

Choose, she heard something whisper in her mind.

Choosechoosechoosechoosechoosechoose.

She looked down at the swirling clouds of the orb, and felt herself fall into it again.

three.

Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first of September was crisp as an apple, and as the little family bobbed across the rumbling road toward the great sooty station, the fumes of car exhausts and the breath of pedestrians sparkled like cobwebs in the cold air. Two large cages tattled on top of the laden trolleys the parents were pushing; the owls inside them hooted indignantly, and the redheaded girl trailed fearfully behind here brothers, clutching her father’s arm.

And from behind them in the crowd, Tonks watched them.

She felt strange, insubstantial, as if she didn't really exist here. And somehow she knew, she didn't. She wasn't a ghost, exactly… more like a memory? But she knew that she had been watching for a long time.

The children argued, little Albus Severus worried that he would be sorted into Slytherin, his older brother teasing him mercilessly. Tonks followed the family as they went through the barrier and found the Weasleys.

Ron and Hermione, together with both of their children, seemed as content as Harry and Ginny. They spoke of unimportant things. Easy things.

Tonks moved around the station, pausing to hear Percy Weasley discoursing loudly on broomstick regulations. She was glad she couldn't stop and talk to him, because he seemed so happy.

She saw Draco Malfoy with both his son and his wife.

She heard the children talking about how much they liked Professor Longbottom.

And best of all, she saw her son snogging Victoire Weasley. She felt like a proud mother as she floated above them, watched with amusement as James Jr. interrupted them and Teddy shooed him away as if he were a pesky little brother. Teddy seemed happy. Like he was loved.

She watched the children pile onto the train, watched Teddy make his way back through the crowd.

She knew what was missing here. Remus. Severus. Herself.

But she saw Harry and Ginny standing on the platform, having spent nineteen years without fear. Without death and grief. She watched Harry's fingertips brush across the scar on his forehead. It was the perfect picture book ending.

All was well.

*

Tonks gasped, gulping for air, and she felt someone's arms wrap tightly around her before she even remembered where she was: the Grimmauld Place attic.

She blinked into the dim light and heard Severus' voice, his lips close to her ear. "Thank Merlin…"

"What…?" she mumbled drowsily, her eyes searching for the orb, but it was nowhere to be seen, though there was a strange cloud of white and gray dust lingering in the air around them. "Severus, what happened?"

"Do you not realize what you were doing, Nymphadora?" Severus asked, pulling away from her, his eyes wide with what almost seemed like fright, but his voice harsh. "Do you know what that was?"

She rubbed her eyes. "It was some sort of… crystal ball. It shows you potential futures. What ifs." She felt a knot in her chest just remembering the last one. Seeing Harry's forty-year old face, something she'd never thought possible…

"It's more than that," Severus said, shaking his head. "My god, you just had your hands on one of the most powerful magical objects ever created. The Department of Mysteries has been searching for it for years. They tore this place apart decades ago looking for it after a rumour that it had come into the hands of one of the Blacks."

Tonks shook her head. "It was… it was in some sort of hidden compartment. I felt it calling to me, like it needed someone with Black blood to open it… what do you mean, the most powerful magic object? What does it do?"

Severus put his hands on her shoulders. "It can change reality, Nymphadora. More than showing you what ifs. It lets you choose. You can change a single element, and if you truly choose that change…"

Tonks' eyes widened. "That's impossible. Nothing could be that powerful. It's…"

"Too dangerous? Yes. Oh, god, if I hadn't gotten here…" Severus looked truly distressed, letting his mask of control fall much in the way it had for a moment when they'd spoken of Rose's death two nights before.

The full impact of what he was saying began to sink in. "You mean I… you mean I accidentally chose that future? The last one? Where I was… dead?"

Severus' eyes widened more, and she could see that he'd had no idea what the reality she'd been living actually was. He blinked as if to shake himself out of it and then said, "I found you up here asleep, and I couldn't wake you. The orb was glowing in your hands but getting dimmer and dimmer." He shook his head. "I'm probably one of a handful of wizards who would even recognize the thing, let alone know how to destroy it. That was an incredibly close call."

She knew how true that must be, from how shaken he was. "You destroyed it?"

"I saved you," he said quietly, taking her hand. "Where were you, Nymphadora? Would you have preferred to stay there?"

Tonks thought of both futures, the one with Remus, the one where she was dead. "No, but I can't say that it wouldn't have been better for everyone else. Severus, it was…"

He held up a hand. "Don't tell me. Please."

She closed her mouth, and nodded.

"It's morning," he added, getting up and helping her to her feet as well. "Brian is helping Teddy cook breakfast."

Then she heard Teddy's voice from downstairs: "Hey mom! It's getting cold!"

And as she made her way down from the attic with her husband, she told herself that despite everything, there are just some things you don't change. The reality that she was living in might be flawed, but it was hers, and it was the right one.

zero.

Some time earlier…

Perhaps it was seeing Victoire off to Hogwarts that did it. Teddy had stood on the platform seeing all of the kids and their parents, watching Harry and Ginny say goodbye to James and Albus Severus, the Weasleys doing the same, the family that he was never quite a member of…

But ever since then he'd thinking more than usual about his parents, about what life would have been like if he weren't an orphan, if he'd actually known these people that he'd grown up hearing so much about. He'd been especially curious about his mother, ever since he'd moved into the house at Grimmauld Place at the beginning of the summer. He'd lived with his grandmother during training, but now that he was a full-fledged Auror it had been time to strike out on his own… not that he'd had the finances to do so. So when Harry had offered, he'd jumped at the opportunity - and Harry said he thought it was appropriate anyway, Teddy being related to Sirius and all.

He'd stood in the room with the tapestry, fingertips sliding over the singed spot of cloth where his grandmother's name was, tracing down to where his mother's and his names should be. He imagined her doing the same thing, tried to imagine when she'd first come here, listening to Mrs. Black's portrait call her all manner of names. She'd only been starting out as an Auror, too. Teddy wanted so badly to ask her advice.

And now he was sitting in the attic, having followed the whispers after a dozen sleepless nights. The hidden door had taken him by surprise, but now that he had this strange, glowing orb in his hands, he couldn't help but feel that he knew exactly what to do with it. A wishing ball.

Whatifwhatifwishwishchoosechoose…

I wonder what things would be like if my mother were still alive, Teddy thought, and felt the magic envelope him.

He was alone in the house.

*

Autumn seemed to come early that year. The morning of the first of September was soggy and grey as a melancholy ghost, and as three figures huddled close together made their way across the station, the fumes of exhausts mingled with cold breath and muggy fog in the air. The tallest boy pushed a single trolley with a small cage settled atop it, and beside him, the younger boy held tightly to the woman's hand.

No one seemed to notice the small family as they pushed towards the barrier between platforms nine and ten, even though they made quite a trio, with hair of blue, purple, and black…


Fin.