In Peace, by MrsTater
Title: In Peace
Author: MrsTater
Rating & Warnings: G, religious themes
Prompts: cooking, "Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace." (Josef Mohr)
Word Count: 4145
Summary: Remus has long since moved on from thinking his marriage was a mistake for which Tonks has paid too dearly, but when the war brings grim tidings for his family on Christmas Eve, he realises that his life is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle. [Deathly Hallows]
Author’s Notes: I made the deadline, and it's not an epic! As always, many thanks to Godricgal for beta reading! Feedback is welcome and very much appreciated -- as is concrit, particularly about the pregnancy details, as I've not been pregnant and am relying heavily on research and guess-work, not to mention canon that's kind of vague about when Tonks got pregnant and had Teddy!
In Peace
"Who's there?" comes the woman's voice from the other side of the cottage door, muffled by the wooden barrier and pinched with anxiety.
"It is I, Remus John Lupin." His own voice is raspy from overuse on the earlier radio programme, but tight from his prolonged silence since then; the words are visible as puffs of cloud in the cold night air between him and the door. "I am a werewolf; I am the husband of Nymphadora, who prefers to be called by her maiden name or Dora; and I am the father of the unborn child that has not allowed her sleep these past three nights because he or she is apparently attending a Weird Sisters concert in Dora's womb, which she is deeply disappointed not to be able to attend. Last night I swore an Unbreakable Vow to my wife, with you presiding, that if our child is a girl I shall not suggest we call her Nymphadora the Second--"
With a series of clicks and rattles from within, the door opens a crack, just enough to reveal loose brown hair framing the pale face of Andromeda Tonks. Grey eyes, ringed with purple and lined at the corners, peer around him, over his shoulder. Searching.
"Is there anyone else...?"
Before Remus can shake his head or tell Andromeda he is sorry, her face falls. For just a moment she looks so like her daughter -- his wife -- that his heart gives the jolt with which he has grown too familiar this year, with each loss he has watched Dora endure: her mentor, her career, her father who slipped away in the night even after she raged at him not to be a noble prat and to stay home where he belongs so he can see his grandchild born. Remus' hand goes out to console Andromeda, but falls to his side again as her face reverts to a mask of aristocratic calm most of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black are now too mad to affect.
She lets him in, and while he re-sets the wards, she wordlessly clips to the kitchen, from which wafts the hearty aroma of Ted's favourite cottage pie.
Remus swallows painfully. If Andromeda was so hopeful, then Dora...He looks over his shoulder into the lounge, but she is not there; nor is she across the hall, in the kitchen.
"Nymphadora went up to bed after Potterwatch," says Andromeda, as if reading his mind. "Take off those wet things, Remus, and come have a cup of hot chocolate while I bake a batch of chocolate biscuits for you to take up to her. I'm sure she'll wake when you go in, and she'll be hungry."
Her words are followed by the blast of the kettle, then she pokes her head out the door, regarding him with that level grey gaze he cannot disobey. He wipes his shoes on the mat, then toes them off as he unbuttons his Muggle-style overcoat, worn in lieu of his travelling cloak to blend in with the parishioners in the church where he has been for the past few hours since Potterwatch. Padding into the kitchen in his socks, he sits at the table with the steaming mug of hot chocolate Andromeda presses into his frozen hands whilst scolding him for not casting proper drying and warming charms on his gloves.
As he gingerly sips the drink he watches her bustle about his mother's kitchen, tending half a dozen things all at once with precise flicks of her elegant little wand; briefly, he is transported back two Christmas Eves ago, to the Grimmauld Place kitchen, where Molly Weasley threw herself head first into housewitchery to distract herself from worries over her husband.
"Do you think Nymphadora's Kneazle would eat this cottage pie?" Andromeda asks. "I'd save it for lunch tomorrow, but it's Christmas and we won't want it. I hate to waste, in times like these. I was silly to make it, not knowing whether Ted..."
Her faltering words are lost in the clang of the oven door as she puts in the biscuits. She stands there with her back to him, oven gloved hands gripping the handle, her normally proudly erect shoulders slumped.
Abruptly, she straightens up and turns to him wearing a placid smile, once again hiding everything. She flicks her wand at the wireless, and a carol sung by a choir crackles over the airwaves:
Silent night, magical night,
All is calm, all is bright...
"Ted always loves the WWN's Christmas Eve broadcast." She casts a preservation charm on the cottage pie, then conjures a square of tinfoil to cover it. "He may surprise us yet."
"He may," says Remus hoarsely, and with a tight smile, because what else can he say or do?
He glances into the hallway, to the narrow staircase leading up to his and Dora's bedroom. He wants to go up to her because Andromeda, alone and hoping against hope for the man she loves, is Dora last year. He needs to hold her and reaffirm to her -- and to himself -- that he is here to stay. For better or for worse, she will not wait for him again, unless he is called off to battle.
But Dora is asleep now, so he remains in the kitchen for a while with Andromeda. Neither hears the succession of songs of joy and peace on earth and goodwill toward men that play over the wireless, and the cocoa, forgotten, grows cold.
"You're awake," says Remus in some surprise when he opens the bedroom door with a spell because his hands are too full of warm milk and chocolate biscuits to turn the knob. Soft light tumbles out into the hallway from within; a candle glows on each of the bedside tables, and Dora sits up against the pillows, a book open, spine up, on his empty space beside her.
Remus apologises. "I tried to be quiet on the stairs..." The old steps thunder when you walk at a normal pace, and creak when you go slowly, attempting to keep quiet.
"You didn't wake me," Dora tells him.
Remus notices that her eyes are wide and alert, not hazy from having just stirred from slumber; most telling of all, her hair is pink instead of the natural brown to which she reverts in sleep. He doesn't miss the anxiety for her father etched around her eyes and mouth, making her look older than her not-quite twenty-five years.
But then her bravery and humour take over as surely as Andromeda's poise did as she hastily adds, "And I really tried not to wait up after Potterwatch like you said, but this little Marauder..." She runs her hands over her rounded stomach, the ring on her left hand catching the candlelight. "....seemed intent on keeping me up till his daddy got home. He absolutely refused to let me get comfy lying down."
Remus has to smile as he crosses the room to her. Dora is so beautiful, radiant and heavy with the baby; though he cannot remember when they began to speak of their baby with the male pronoun, they both do, consistently, and he can't deny he does hope for a boy, a son -- this time, anyway.
Setting her midnight snack on the bedside table, he leans in to kiss her and runs his hand over her baby bump. A tiny fist or foot punches or kicks him in greeting.
"What've I told you, sir," he teasingly scolds, "about not letting your mummy get her beauty sleep?"
"It's all your fault," says Dora, folding her arms across her chest in playful petulance.
"For not being able to resist your beauty and having to make love to you and being too overwhelmed by you to remember about particular charms?"
"I'm saving that for the delivery," she says with a smirk, reaching for a biscuit. "This..." She pops the biscuit in her mouth and rubs her belly again as she chews. "...all started when you came on Potterwatch. I swear, Remus, he knows your voice."
There is a whisper of awe in her voice; Remus' heart misses a beat and now he is too overwhelmed by blessedness of his life to remember to breathe. He burns just underneath his skin with the memory of those terrible words he spoke to Harry: It will be better off, a hundred times so, without a father of whom it must always be ashamed. Such foolish, ignorant thoughts, he'd realised not many weeks after, when bedtime conversation was interrupted by Dora suddenly sitting up in bed because the baby was jumping and pressing against her; resting his hand on the then barely visible swell of her stomach, there had been no denying for Remus that the child was responding to his voice with excitement and...
...love.
"Of course you know your old dad's voice," he says, choked. Seating himself at the edge of the bed, turned slightly to face Dora, Remus leans low and pushes up her pyjama top (which is in fact one of his pyjama tops, pilfered when she'd outgrown hers) to kiss the bare skin of her belly, faintly mottled with stretch marks and veins. "You're brilliant. Just like your mummy."
Dora's hands with their swollen fingers cover his on the baby bulge. "Just like your dad, as well. And your cousin twice-removed Sirius."
They laugh, quietly -- not at all as Remus imagines Sirius doing, wherever he is; surely he and Prongs roll on the floor at the idea of Moony's children being Padfoot's blood kin, a new branch of the Black family tree sprouting from the burnt-off one.
"Yes," he tells their child, "having shared a dormitory with your cousin twice-removed for seven years, I would say keeping people awake was rather a specialty of Sirius'. But it would be very nice if you would not take after him, and stop moving about and let Mummy sleep. She'll need to have all her energy when you come out."
"Unfortunately I think labour will--oof!" Dora winces in conjunction with the sharp kick Remus feels against his palm. "I don't think your request helped much."
"His little burst of energy couldn't have anything to do with that chocolate biscuit you just ate, could it?"
Dora's dark eyes are impish, until they close with the huge yawn that escapes her; when they open again, she looks at him blearily.
"Okay, you," says Remus, getting up shift the pillows, "it's time to lie down and try to get some sleep." He yawns, too.
As Dora settles on her side, snuggling down under the quilt, she arches pink eyebrows at him. "You were speaking for the both of us? Only I think it's definitely time you get out of those clothes and into bed with me."
"Best idea I've heard all day."
He starts to peel off his jumper, but stops, fingers clutching at the hem, when Dora asks, "How's Mum? I heard you talking. Did she go to bed?"
"Cooking." He hesitates, not wanting to break their mood and talk about troubling things before sleep, but neither wanting to trivialise her pain. He says, "Christmas dinner shall be ready in time for breakfast."
She doesn't smile at his poor attempt at humour. "She needs to sleep more than--ow! You can't weigh more than a pound or two. How is it you're so bloody strong? Take after your grandpa the beater, do you?" She rubs her hand over the place where the baby shifted as she tried to roll onto her side, gently pushing the knee or elbow out of an uncomfortable position. "Maybe if you sing to him."
"Sing?" Remus, having just pulled off his jumper over his head, pauses with his hair askew to gawp at her. "Me? To calm him? You really think that might work?"
"Maybe."
Remus un-tucks his shirt and sets to work on the buttons. "I should think it would rather make him run away." He pushes his trousers down over his hips and steps out of them.
"I don't think you really have to worry about him running anywhere."
"This is true -- thanks," he says when Dora pulls his pyjama bottoms from beneath his pillow and throws them at him. He puts them on quickly and moves round to his side of the bed as she puts her book away in the bedside table. The old springs screech with his weight, and the mattress sags toward the middle, forcing them to lie close together. Not that either of them minds.
Tucking one arm beneath his pillow, Remus lays his other hand on the swell of her stomach. Again he pushes up the hem of her top, tracing the dark line that runs down from her navel with his index finger.
"How do you get about in there, little one?" he asks. "Swim? Do you take after your mummy, and have you morphed fins and flippers?"
Now Remus is the one getting a nudge from a knee.
"Please sing?" Dora asks. "I won't run away."
There is a pleading note in her voice, and her dark eyes reflect the candlelight on his side of the bed, which illuminates the sadness and fear she's barely keeping at bay. Remus knows the pain that will etch her features once they finally talk about her father, and, wanting to see her smile for a while longer yet, he leans in to kiss her nose and teases her.
"I know you won't run away -- you, my love, will waddle."
This earns him a kick in the shins and a rather hard pinch from her remarkably strong toes, so he surrenders.
"All right, then. What shall I sing?"
"Dunno." Yawning again, Dora snuggles in to him, close as the baby bump will allow, and he slides his hand round to the small of her back. "Lullaby...or a Christmas carol."
Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin mother and child
Holy infant, so tender and mild
Even if it had not played earlier on Andromeda's wireless, the carol is fresh in his mind from the Muggle Christmas Eve church service from which he's just come. He'd never paid much attention to Muggle Christmas, with its nativities and religious versions of songs and stories, but tonight, even as he'd kept watch for Ted, his thoughts had not been on job at hand -- convincing Ted that his wife and daughter would be in no more danger with him hiding at home than they were already, and indeed, had too great burdens of fear to carry without adding anxiety for his life to the load -- but rather fixated on the hymns and Scriptures about the young mother and her child, surrounded by the peaceful imagery of angels and shepherds and gentle farm animals. And yet those were turbulent days, too, weren't they, for people like Mary and Joseph? In his own experience as a father-to-be, he can honestly say that while many a dark day has passed, since they first felt their child move, not one has passed that hasn't been lightened with laughter and hope at the new life growing so strong and spirited inside of Dora.
Actually, this change in his perspective of domestic life from mistake to miracle began farther back. If Remus is honest, he was not quite certain when he decided to stay that it really was the best course of action to take for his family. But as he observes the subtle changes each passing day brings to Dora as the tiny life grows within her, he at last is beginning to understand what she has been trying, for the past year or more, to make him see. Her skin glows and her hair shines and the light in her eyes has not been extinguished by resentment for him for the things others had done to her because of him; when her expanding waistline brought the need for new clothes they cannot afford thanks to their lack of income, she has only ever expressed her joy at carrying this piece of him inside her.
Not that she is Saint Dora, a blissful mother with a halo glowing round her head. There are negative thoughts, which she expresses verbally -- though never so vehemently as in those first three months when she was so ill that he wondered what idiot had termed the affliction "morning" sickness. It didn't take long for Remus to see that Dora has her own set of insecurities about parenthood: she cannot fully believe that that someone as clumsy and un-domestically inclined as she could make a good mother; she harbours guilt for her negligence in taking the proper precautions, which cost the Order one of its most highly trained soldiers. Instead of taking blame upon himself, Remus has found himself changing even in these moments as he sees how, despite his having nothing physical to offer her, he quite successfully calms her nerves and soothes her anxieties, tending her when she is sick and sleepless. Knowing how she was during their previous year's separation, he cannot not honestly say he believes she would have found solace in others had he left her a second time. (She is pink now, always pink.) Certainly he would not be at peace, cut off from her, doing no more for her than protecting her -- them -- from the taint of his association, yet essentially doing nothing for his wife and unborn child. Marching off to war is noble, but his family needs something more personal than nobility and idealism.
Dora's pregnancy is the most intensely personal experience of his life, next to simply being with her. The baby is so present -- a minute force with the power to alter the natural rhythms of Dora's body, to make her breasts and belly swell. After reconciling himself to being a permanent and tangible figure in their lives, it has been impossible for Remus to detach himself from this tiny person; he cannot help but love him. In loving him, Remus knows that as his own parents did not abandon him, if the child shares his affliction, he will love him all the dearer, protect him all the more fiercely; and if the child is not touched by his curse, then perhaps that means the curse does not hold him as deeply as he has always thought, if he can have an equal part in making something with Dora that is so perfect.
Yes, they hide in this house from the warring forces of Dark, but here, this young family is calm, their future bright.
So Remus clears his throat and sings:
"Silent night, magical night
Please be calm, don't punch and fight."
He grimaces at the spontaneous lyrics he's mingled with the real ones, but Dora giggles, and the baby flails about in what Remus can only take as appreciation, so he continues:
"Don't kick your mother, you feisty wee child
Fidgety infant, please try to be mild
Give your mummy some peace
Give your mummy some peace.
"Silent night, magical night
Son of Tonks, till morning's light
Radiant beams shine on Mummy's face
Please don't wake her till Christmas Day breaks
Let your dear mummy sleep
Let your dear mummy sleep."
Glancing down, he thinks Dora actually is doing just that: her eyes are closed, the lashes dark smudges against her fair, high cheekbones; her breathing is deep and even, her full lips curved softly, peacefully.
But then they move, murmuring, "S'nice."
"I suppose," says Remus, "if by nice you mean off-key and completely daft."
"Course I do. S'why I married you." She tucks her head under his chin and curls her hands against his chest. "I like feeling your breath on my face. And your song did the trick with this little chap."
Remus moves his hand back to her stomach, and sure enough, there is no movement beneath his palm. He looks into Dora's wide eyes for a moment. "But it didn't do the trick for you."
She smiles with her lips, but her eyes pool. "Was it that Dad wouldn't come home, or...?"
"He never turned up, Dora," he tells her, as he told Andromeda not half an hour ago. It is no easier the second time; in fact it is far more difficult, for he feels his wife's hurt with her where he merely hurt for her mother. He takes her hand and draws it to his mouth, kissing her fingers as they curl around his. "I waited until they would not let me stay in the church any longer...I would have stayed outside, but it wasn't safe in the open, and I knew you would worry..."
"We don't even know if he got your Patronus asking to meet him. He could be..."
She does not finish her sentence, nor does he, even in his own mind. "We must hope for the best," he says, "that Ted is simply keeping silent and lying low for your safety, and your mother's -- and the baby's."
But she sniffs as she nods, and when Remus kisses her, he tastes the salt of her tears on her lips. It is not the best, this stubborn insistence on protecting those who are in enough danger for being themselves and doing right, for not fighting hatred by staying together in spite of it, defying anything but death to part. That is what family means.
Which is not, he is well aware, the tune he was singing five months ago, reeling from the Death Eaters' discovery of their marriage...the termination of Dora's employment at the Ministry because of her liaisons with Dark Creatures...the warrant put out by Umbridge for investigation into the marriage of such dubious legality...the unplanned pregnancy...the interrogation at Bill Weasley's wedding at which Remus had been powerless against the disgrace and ridicule heaped on Dora by their captors for his sake...
Ted was the sole person who had had fully supported, even encouraged, Remus' decision to leave as he expressed his own intent to do the same; he had, in fact, though neither Dora nor Andromeda knew it, admitted to Remus that he shared some of those same feelings of guilt and regret for the danger he posed to his family. Would the message about coming home have been better received if Ted had heard from wife or daughter, rather than from the son-in-law with whom he has a tenuous relationship, at best? How well Remus recalls the confusion and disappointment -- not to mention the anger -- etched on Ted's face when he told him he was going to stay with Dora, after all; if Ted remains as immutable in his decision to run away as the day he left, then he may not yet understand how Remus can have changed his mind when he had been so certain of this course being the right one.
The fact remains, though, that Remus is more certain of his decision to stay than he ever pretended to be about leaving. He has seen Andromeda alone, and cannot describe it as being for her own good. And the apple did not fall far at all from that tree; it is Andromeda who passed Dora the gene for loving men the world does not deem suitable. Now with the added perspective of impending fatherhood...Remus meant to tell Ted all of it tonight -- he will do, if ever he should get the chance. For every thought he has pondered in his heart these five months culminated as he sat in church and listened to the vicar read of Joseph, who, instead of acting on the impulse to leave Mary when he learnt of her pregnancy, married her anyway, taking part in the scandal that his fiancée had conceived out of wedlock, not parting from her when her own family might have done better for her than the cow stall in which a poor carpenter's wife was forced to bear her child.
"What?" Dora whispers, looking up at him, her tears dry and her face inquisitive.
"I didn't say anything."
"You hmmed."
"Did I? I was just thinking how brilliant our baby is. He's not even been born yet, and already he's taught me...well, everything."
Dora regards him steadily, and draws his hand down to her stomach. "That's rather the message of Christmas, isn't it? Through one little baby, all men see? Oh, bugger it! He's moved again"
Helping his wife settle into a different position to attempt sleeping in, Remus doesn't know about all men -- though he hopes it is not too late for Ted -- but he knows, as the smell of Christmas dinner drifts up from the kitchen below, that one man, one mother-to-be, and their unborn child, if not sleeping, would be sung of with words of heavenly peace.
A/N: Reviewers will be serenaded by Remus with their favorite Christmas carol. ;)
fthpfthpfthp has done a stunning illustration for this fic. Many thanks to her for lending her artistic talent!
Author: MrsTater
Rating & Warnings: G, religious themes
Prompts: cooking, "Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace." (Josef Mohr)
Word Count: 4145
Summary: Remus has long since moved on from thinking his marriage was a mistake for which Tonks has paid too dearly, but when the war brings grim tidings for his family on Christmas Eve, he realises that his life is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle. [Deathly Hallows]
Author’s Notes: I made the deadline, and it's not an epic! As always, many thanks to Godricgal for beta reading! Feedback is welcome and very much appreciated -- as is concrit, particularly about the pregnancy details, as I've not been pregnant and am relying heavily on research and guess-work, not to mention canon that's kind of vague about when Tonks got pregnant and had Teddy!
In Peace
"Who's there?" comes the woman's voice from the other side of the cottage door, muffled by the wooden barrier and pinched with anxiety.
"It is I, Remus John Lupin." His own voice is raspy from overuse on the earlier radio programme, but tight from his prolonged silence since then; the words are visible as puffs of cloud in the cold night air between him and the door. "I am a werewolf; I am the husband of Nymphadora, who prefers to be called by her maiden name or Dora; and I am the father of the unborn child that has not allowed her sleep these past three nights because he or she is apparently attending a Weird Sisters concert in Dora's womb, which she is deeply disappointed not to be able to attend. Last night I swore an Unbreakable Vow to my wife, with you presiding, that if our child is a girl I shall not suggest we call her Nymphadora the Second--"
With a series of clicks and rattles from within, the door opens a crack, just enough to reveal loose brown hair framing the pale face of Andromeda Tonks. Grey eyes, ringed with purple and lined at the corners, peer around him, over his shoulder. Searching.
"Is there anyone else...?"
Before Remus can shake his head or tell Andromeda he is sorry, her face falls. For just a moment she looks so like her daughter -- his wife -- that his heart gives the jolt with which he has grown too familiar this year, with each loss he has watched Dora endure: her mentor, her career, her father who slipped away in the night even after she raged at him not to be a noble prat and to stay home where he belongs so he can see his grandchild born. Remus' hand goes out to console Andromeda, but falls to his side again as her face reverts to a mask of aristocratic calm most of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black are now too mad to affect.
She lets him in, and while he re-sets the wards, she wordlessly clips to the kitchen, from which wafts the hearty aroma of Ted's favourite cottage pie.
Remus swallows painfully. If Andromeda was so hopeful, then Dora...He looks over his shoulder into the lounge, but she is not there; nor is she across the hall, in the kitchen.
"Nymphadora went up to bed after Potterwatch," says Andromeda, as if reading his mind. "Take off those wet things, Remus, and come have a cup of hot chocolate while I bake a batch of chocolate biscuits for you to take up to her. I'm sure she'll wake when you go in, and she'll be hungry."
Her words are followed by the blast of the kettle, then she pokes her head out the door, regarding him with that level grey gaze he cannot disobey. He wipes his shoes on the mat, then toes them off as he unbuttons his Muggle-style overcoat, worn in lieu of his travelling cloak to blend in with the parishioners in the church where he has been for the past few hours since Potterwatch. Padding into the kitchen in his socks, he sits at the table with the steaming mug of hot chocolate Andromeda presses into his frozen hands whilst scolding him for not casting proper drying and warming charms on his gloves.
As he gingerly sips the drink he watches her bustle about his mother's kitchen, tending half a dozen things all at once with precise flicks of her elegant little wand; briefly, he is transported back two Christmas Eves ago, to the Grimmauld Place kitchen, where Molly Weasley threw herself head first into housewitchery to distract herself from worries over her husband.
"Do you think Nymphadora's Kneazle would eat this cottage pie?" Andromeda asks. "I'd save it for lunch tomorrow, but it's Christmas and we won't want it. I hate to waste, in times like these. I was silly to make it, not knowing whether Ted..."
Her faltering words are lost in the clang of the oven door as she puts in the biscuits. She stands there with her back to him, oven gloved hands gripping the handle, her normally proudly erect shoulders slumped.
Abruptly, she straightens up and turns to him wearing a placid smile, once again hiding everything. She flicks her wand at the wireless, and a carol sung by a choir crackles over the airwaves:
Silent night, magical night,
All is calm, all is bright...
"Ted always loves the WWN's Christmas Eve broadcast." She casts a preservation charm on the cottage pie, then conjures a square of tinfoil to cover it. "He may surprise us yet."
"He may," says Remus hoarsely, and with a tight smile, because what else can he say or do?
He glances into the hallway, to the narrow staircase leading up to his and Dora's bedroom. He wants to go up to her because Andromeda, alone and hoping against hope for the man she loves, is Dora last year. He needs to hold her and reaffirm to her -- and to himself -- that he is here to stay. For better or for worse, she will not wait for him again, unless he is called off to battle.
But Dora is asleep now, so he remains in the kitchen for a while with Andromeda. Neither hears the succession of songs of joy and peace on earth and goodwill toward men that play over the wireless, and the cocoa, forgotten, grows cold.
"You're awake," says Remus in some surprise when he opens the bedroom door with a spell because his hands are too full of warm milk and chocolate biscuits to turn the knob. Soft light tumbles out into the hallway from within; a candle glows on each of the bedside tables, and Dora sits up against the pillows, a book open, spine up, on his empty space beside her.
Remus apologises. "I tried to be quiet on the stairs..." The old steps thunder when you walk at a normal pace, and creak when you go slowly, attempting to keep quiet.
"You didn't wake me," Dora tells him.
Remus notices that her eyes are wide and alert, not hazy from having just stirred from slumber; most telling of all, her hair is pink instead of the natural brown to which she reverts in sleep. He doesn't miss the anxiety for her father etched around her eyes and mouth, making her look older than her not-quite twenty-five years.
But then her bravery and humour take over as surely as Andromeda's poise did as she hastily adds, "And I really tried not to wait up after Potterwatch like you said, but this little Marauder..." She runs her hands over her rounded stomach, the ring on her left hand catching the candlelight. "....seemed intent on keeping me up till his daddy got home. He absolutely refused to let me get comfy lying down."
Remus has to smile as he crosses the room to her. Dora is so beautiful, radiant and heavy with the baby; though he cannot remember when they began to speak of their baby with the male pronoun, they both do, consistently, and he can't deny he does hope for a boy, a son -- this time, anyway.
Setting her midnight snack on the bedside table, he leans in to kiss her and runs his hand over her baby bump. A tiny fist or foot punches or kicks him in greeting.
"What've I told you, sir," he teasingly scolds, "about not letting your mummy get her beauty sleep?"
"It's all your fault," says Dora, folding her arms across her chest in playful petulance.
"For not being able to resist your beauty and having to make love to you and being too overwhelmed by you to remember about particular charms?"
"I'm saving that for the delivery," she says with a smirk, reaching for a biscuit. "This..." She pops the biscuit in her mouth and rubs her belly again as she chews. "...all started when you came on Potterwatch. I swear, Remus, he knows your voice."
There is a whisper of awe in her voice; Remus' heart misses a beat and now he is too overwhelmed by blessedness of his life to remember to breathe. He burns just underneath his skin with the memory of those terrible words he spoke to Harry: It will be better off, a hundred times so, without a father of whom it must always be ashamed. Such foolish, ignorant thoughts, he'd realised not many weeks after, when bedtime conversation was interrupted by Dora suddenly sitting up in bed because the baby was jumping and pressing against her; resting his hand on the then barely visible swell of her stomach, there had been no denying for Remus that the child was responding to his voice with excitement and...
...love.
"Of course you know your old dad's voice," he says, choked. Seating himself at the edge of the bed, turned slightly to face Dora, Remus leans low and pushes up her pyjama top (which is in fact one of his pyjama tops, pilfered when she'd outgrown hers) to kiss the bare skin of her belly, faintly mottled with stretch marks and veins. "You're brilliant. Just like your mummy."
Dora's hands with their swollen fingers cover his on the baby bulge. "Just like your dad, as well. And your cousin twice-removed Sirius."
They laugh, quietly -- not at all as Remus imagines Sirius doing, wherever he is; surely he and Prongs roll on the floor at the idea of Moony's children being Padfoot's blood kin, a new branch of the Black family tree sprouting from the burnt-off one.
"Yes," he tells their child, "having shared a dormitory with your cousin twice-removed for seven years, I would say keeping people awake was rather a specialty of Sirius'. But it would be very nice if you would not take after him, and stop moving about and let Mummy sleep. She'll need to have all her energy when you come out."
"Unfortunately I think labour will--oof!" Dora winces in conjunction with the sharp kick Remus feels against his palm. "I don't think your request helped much."
"His little burst of energy couldn't have anything to do with that chocolate biscuit you just ate, could it?"
Dora's dark eyes are impish, until they close with the huge yawn that escapes her; when they open again, she looks at him blearily.
"Okay, you," says Remus, getting up shift the pillows, "it's time to lie down and try to get some sleep." He yawns, too.
As Dora settles on her side, snuggling down under the quilt, she arches pink eyebrows at him. "You were speaking for the both of us? Only I think it's definitely time you get out of those clothes and into bed with me."
"Best idea I've heard all day."
He starts to peel off his jumper, but stops, fingers clutching at the hem, when Dora asks, "How's Mum? I heard you talking. Did she go to bed?"
"Cooking." He hesitates, not wanting to break their mood and talk about troubling things before sleep, but neither wanting to trivialise her pain. He says, "Christmas dinner shall be ready in time for breakfast."
She doesn't smile at his poor attempt at humour. "She needs to sleep more than--ow! You can't weigh more than a pound or two. How is it you're so bloody strong? Take after your grandpa the beater, do you?" She rubs her hand over the place where the baby shifted as she tried to roll onto her side, gently pushing the knee or elbow out of an uncomfortable position. "Maybe if you sing to him."
"Sing?" Remus, having just pulled off his jumper over his head, pauses with his hair askew to gawp at her. "Me? To calm him? You really think that might work?"
"Maybe."
Remus un-tucks his shirt and sets to work on the buttons. "I should think it would rather make him run away." He pushes his trousers down over his hips and steps out of them.
"I don't think you really have to worry about him running anywhere."
"This is true -- thanks," he says when Dora pulls his pyjama bottoms from beneath his pillow and throws them at him. He puts them on quickly and moves round to his side of the bed as she puts her book away in the bedside table. The old springs screech with his weight, and the mattress sags toward the middle, forcing them to lie close together. Not that either of them minds.
Tucking one arm beneath his pillow, Remus lays his other hand on the swell of her stomach. Again he pushes up the hem of her top, tracing the dark line that runs down from her navel with his index finger.
"How do you get about in there, little one?" he asks. "Swim? Do you take after your mummy, and have you morphed fins and flippers?"
Now Remus is the one getting a nudge from a knee.
"Please sing?" Dora asks. "I won't run away."
There is a pleading note in her voice, and her dark eyes reflect the candlelight on his side of the bed, which illuminates the sadness and fear she's barely keeping at bay. Remus knows the pain that will etch her features once they finally talk about her father, and, wanting to see her smile for a while longer yet, he leans in to kiss her nose and teases her.
"I know you won't run away -- you, my love, will waddle."
This earns him a kick in the shins and a rather hard pinch from her remarkably strong toes, so he surrenders.
"All right, then. What shall I sing?"
"Dunno." Yawning again, Dora snuggles in to him, close as the baby bump will allow, and he slides his hand round to the small of her back. "Lullaby...or a Christmas carol."
Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin mother and child
Holy infant, so tender and mild
Even if it had not played earlier on Andromeda's wireless, the carol is fresh in his mind from the Muggle Christmas Eve church service from which he's just come. He'd never paid much attention to Muggle Christmas, with its nativities and religious versions of songs and stories, but tonight, even as he'd kept watch for Ted, his thoughts had not been on job at hand -- convincing Ted that his wife and daughter would be in no more danger with him hiding at home than they were already, and indeed, had too great burdens of fear to carry without adding anxiety for his life to the load -- but rather fixated on the hymns and Scriptures about the young mother and her child, surrounded by the peaceful imagery of angels and shepherds and gentle farm animals. And yet those were turbulent days, too, weren't they, for people like Mary and Joseph? In his own experience as a father-to-be, he can honestly say that while many a dark day has passed, since they first felt their child move, not one has passed that hasn't been lightened with laughter and hope at the new life growing so strong and spirited inside of Dora.
Actually, this change in his perspective of domestic life from mistake to miracle began farther back. If Remus is honest, he was not quite certain when he decided to stay that it really was the best course of action to take for his family. But as he observes the subtle changes each passing day brings to Dora as the tiny life grows within her, he at last is beginning to understand what she has been trying, for the past year or more, to make him see. Her skin glows and her hair shines and the light in her eyes has not been extinguished by resentment for him for the things others had done to her because of him; when her expanding waistline brought the need for new clothes they cannot afford thanks to their lack of income, she has only ever expressed her joy at carrying this piece of him inside her.
Not that she is Saint Dora, a blissful mother with a halo glowing round her head. There are negative thoughts, which she expresses verbally -- though never so vehemently as in those first three months when she was so ill that he wondered what idiot had termed the affliction "morning" sickness. It didn't take long for Remus to see that Dora has her own set of insecurities about parenthood: she cannot fully believe that that someone as clumsy and un-domestically inclined as she could make a good mother; she harbours guilt for her negligence in taking the proper precautions, which cost the Order one of its most highly trained soldiers. Instead of taking blame upon himself, Remus has found himself changing even in these moments as he sees how, despite his having nothing physical to offer her, he quite successfully calms her nerves and soothes her anxieties, tending her when she is sick and sleepless. Knowing how she was during their previous year's separation, he cannot not honestly say he believes she would have found solace in others had he left her a second time. (She is pink now, always pink.) Certainly he would not be at peace, cut off from her, doing no more for her than protecting her -- them -- from the taint of his association, yet essentially doing nothing for his wife and unborn child. Marching off to war is noble, but his family needs something more personal than nobility and idealism.
Dora's pregnancy is the most intensely personal experience of his life, next to simply being with her. The baby is so present -- a minute force with the power to alter the natural rhythms of Dora's body, to make her breasts and belly swell. After reconciling himself to being a permanent and tangible figure in their lives, it has been impossible for Remus to detach himself from this tiny person; he cannot help but love him. In loving him, Remus knows that as his own parents did not abandon him, if the child shares his affliction, he will love him all the dearer, protect him all the more fiercely; and if the child is not touched by his curse, then perhaps that means the curse does not hold him as deeply as he has always thought, if he can have an equal part in making something with Dora that is so perfect.
Yes, they hide in this house from the warring forces of Dark, but here, this young family is calm, their future bright.
So Remus clears his throat and sings:
"Silent night, magical night
Please be calm, don't punch and fight."
He grimaces at the spontaneous lyrics he's mingled with the real ones, but Dora giggles, and the baby flails about in what Remus can only take as appreciation, so he continues:
"Don't kick your mother, you feisty wee child
Fidgety infant, please try to be mild
Give your mummy some peace
Give your mummy some peace.
"Silent night, magical night
Son of Tonks, till morning's light
Radiant beams shine on Mummy's face
Please don't wake her till Christmas Day breaks
Let your dear mummy sleep
Let your dear mummy sleep."
Glancing down, he thinks Dora actually is doing just that: her eyes are closed, the lashes dark smudges against her fair, high cheekbones; her breathing is deep and even, her full lips curved softly, peacefully.
But then they move, murmuring, "S'nice."
"I suppose," says Remus, "if by nice you mean off-key and completely daft."
"Course I do. S'why I married you." She tucks her head under his chin and curls her hands against his chest. "I like feeling your breath on my face. And your song did the trick with this little chap."
Remus moves his hand back to her stomach, and sure enough, there is no movement beneath his palm. He looks into Dora's wide eyes for a moment. "But it didn't do the trick for you."
She smiles with her lips, but her eyes pool. "Was it that Dad wouldn't come home, or...?"
"He never turned up, Dora," he tells her, as he told Andromeda not half an hour ago. It is no easier the second time; in fact it is far more difficult, for he feels his wife's hurt with her where he merely hurt for her mother. He takes her hand and draws it to his mouth, kissing her fingers as they curl around his. "I waited until they would not let me stay in the church any longer...I would have stayed outside, but it wasn't safe in the open, and I knew you would worry..."
"We don't even know if he got your Patronus asking to meet him. He could be..."
She does not finish her sentence, nor does he, even in his own mind. "We must hope for the best," he says, "that Ted is simply keeping silent and lying low for your safety, and your mother's -- and the baby's."
But she sniffs as she nods, and when Remus kisses her, he tastes the salt of her tears on her lips. It is not the best, this stubborn insistence on protecting those who are in enough danger for being themselves and doing right, for not fighting hatred by staying together in spite of it, defying anything but death to part. That is what family means.
Which is not, he is well aware, the tune he was singing five months ago, reeling from the Death Eaters' discovery of their marriage...the termination of Dora's employment at the Ministry because of her liaisons with Dark Creatures...the warrant put out by Umbridge for investigation into the marriage of such dubious legality...the unplanned pregnancy...the interrogation at Bill Weasley's wedding at which Remus had been powerless against the disgrace and ridicule heaped on Dora by their captors for his sake...
Ted was the sole person who had had fully supported, even encouraged, Remus' decision to leave as he expressed his own intent to do the same; he had, in fact, though neither Dora nor Andromeda knew it, admitted to Remus that he shared some of those same feelings of guilt and regret for the danger he posed to his family. Would the message about coming home have been better received if Ted had heard from wife or daughter, rather than from the son-in-law with whom he has a tenuous relationship, at best? How well Remus recalls the confusion and disappointment -- not to mention the anger -- etched on Ted's face when he told him he was going to stay with Dora, after all; if Ted remains as immutable in his decision to run away as the day he left, then he may not yet understand how Remus can have changed his mind when he had been so certain of this course being the right one.
The fact remains, though, that Remus is more certain of his decision to stay than he ever pretended to be about leaving. He has seen Andromeda alone, and cannot describe it as being for her own good. And the apple did not fall far at all from that tree; it is Andromeda who passed Dora the gene for loving men the world does not deem suitable. Now with the added perspective of impending fatherhood...Remus meant to tell Ted all of it tonight -- he will do, if ever he should get the chance. For every thought he has pondered in his heart these five months culminated as he sat in church and listened to the vicar read of Joseph, who, instead of acting on the impulse to leave Mary when he learnt of her pregnancy, married her anyway, taking part in the scandal that his fiancée had conceived out of wedlock, not parting from her when her own family might have done better for her than the cow stall in which a poor carpenter's wife was forced to bear her child.
"What?" Dora whispers, looking up at him, her tears dry and her face inquisitive.
"I didn't say anything."
"You hmmed."
"Did I? I was just thinking how brilliant our baby is. He's not even been born yet, and already he's taught me...well, everything."
Dora regards him steadily, and draws his hand down to her stomach. "That's rather the message of Christmas, isn't it? Through one little baby, all men see? Oh, bugger it! He's moved again"
Helping his wife settle into a different position to attempt sleeping in, Remus doesn't know about all men -- though he hopes it is not too late for Ted -- but he knows, as the smell of Christmas dinner drifts up from the kitchen below, that one man, one mother-to-be, and their unborn child, if not sleeping, would be sung of with words of heavenly peace.
A/N: Reviewers will be serenaded by Remus with their favorite Christmas carol. ;)
fthpfthpfthp has done a stunning illustration for this fic. Many thanks to her for lending her artistic talent!