Baaaaaabies
Edited because of a load of cuts last time. O_o
I was going to put this as a reply to this post but decided it had gotten so long it deserved its own post. It's just a long rant about the stupidity of having a baby at this time.
Oh hi, I'm Linda Lupos, long time Remus-lover (since I read PoA in 2000!) and Remus-writer (since my first fic in 2001). I cried my eyes out when I read Remus and Tonks had died in TDH - in fact, I scared myself with how violently my reaction was to it. I'm sort of in denial right now, but I bet that will be 'remedied' once I 'write' it in my HP-from-Remus's-POV fic - yes, I do intend to eventually get to the (... Remus's) end of TDH.
Anyway... that's for another post.
The baby rant!
(Mind, this was a reply to
prismatic_marie)
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You're totally right about getting married and having Teddy (as adorable as he is) in less than a year being totally out of character for both of them.
Here you have Remus Lupin, werewolf and thus discriminated against for as long as he can remember. He fought in the first war and lost most of his friends there (the few he had, actually). He's the best teacher Harry ever had and generally liked and lauded for his intelligence and common sense by both characters and readers alike.
Here you have Nymphadora - sorry! - Tonks, Metamorphmagus. She's an Auror, which means that although she's young, she's not to be trifled with - McGonagall said nobody had been taken on as trainee Auror for four years or something, meaning that Tonks was (one of) the last. She has to be pretty kick-ass to do that. Although she is clumsy, she's also capable and responsible when she needs to be, even earning enough respect from frigging Mad-Eye Moody to be considered his favourite and protegé (see TDH).
So imagine being Remus or Tonks.
Remus: hm, I'm a werewolf. I'm 13 years older than Tonks, so although I love her this is kinda awkward.
Tonks: don't frigging care.
Remus: ... ok.
I can accept them getting together (hey, I ship R/T, R/S AND R/S/T! I'm cool with anything. :p). BUT THEN.
Remus: hey, a war is going on, the 'sequel' to one I fought in before, against the same enemy, the DARKEST WIZARD EVER. ... Let's have sex.
Tonks: let's marry!
Remus: ok! It's not as if we'll die.
Tonks: nah. And hey, if we do, at least we will have married. By the way, let's get married days/weeks after your former mentor died and we got back together, in secret.
Remus: sure.
... O_o Okaaaay.
Remus: let's have sex!
Tonks: again?
Remus: ... hmpf.
[Alright, so this is kinda getting into parody territory. :p]
Tonks: let's have a baby!
Remus: I'll protest for a while because oh yeah I have an inferiority complex but then I'll be totally ok with it and shout about it to anyone who wants to hear! (And anyone who doesn't!)
Excuse my French, but... WHAT THE FUCK.
Remus should have known better. They're married for, what, a few weeks? They GOT TOGETHER for, what, a few weeks? Their previous discussions on 'is this a good idea?' were still on 'too old, too poor, too dangerous for a relationship' - and suddenly they have a kid?! I'd consider too old, too poor and too dangerous even better arguments against a KID than against a relationship! (Really, who's going to support this kid? Especially once Tonks is incapable of working because she's so heavily pregnant? And how about when Tonks has to work (once the kid is born) and Remus is having one of his 'monthly problems'? What if the kid snuck into the basement where daddy was locked up, discovered a 'big fuzzy!' and disaster struck? I don't think Remus would EVER forgive himself...)
And besides that: even in peaceful times I'd be hesitant about it, but there's a WAR going on. O_o Remus of all people should know what can happen to parents with little kids during wars. He KNOWS about war orphans: Harry! This is not a time to jump lightly into having a child. 'Oh, we were afraid we wouldn't have any time left to have it once the war was over' is no excuse since Remus wasn't THAT old (even for Muggles, 38 years is a perfectly acceptable age to be a first-time father , let alone wizards, who after all live longer) ) and Tonks is even younger. And honestly, I can't imagine the wizarding world not having ANY contraceptives. And even if they don't, 1990's Muggle England had plenty of condoms to go around. Sheesh... Use some common sense. It adds insult to injury that he apparently went quite happily along with it (alright, so it MIGHT have been a spur-of-the-moment thing) but then when it actually happened (the pregnancy, that is) he went all emo and 'woe is me'. -_-' He just seemed to have lost his brains as soon as he married Tonks or something. Maybe werewolf's brains deteriorate with age? :p I have no idea. It was just... weird.
(As an aside: I also hate this bit as a fanfiction-writer, especially one who writes the books from Remus's point of view. I've thoroughly enjoyed 'writing' the previous books, as I'm very like Remus myself so it's almost like writing myself at Hogwarts, But in HBP and now TDH he's been acting so... stupid! I just can't get into his head why he would be such a drama queen about things, especially about having a kid. Worse: there's hardly any plot for Remus in TDH. In HBP I at least had him spying on Greyback. In TDH it's... 'marry, sex, some canon appearances, find out about pregnancy, freak, make up, stay with wife/inlaws, get on the wireless, baby born, fight at Hogwarts, dead'. I can't fill 100 pages with that... But anyway.)
Tonks isn't blameless either. First of all I'm having problems with at how young an age the HP witches get pregnant. Lily was all but... 19 or something when she got pregnant of Harry. Narcissa was probably only a few years older when she got pregant of Draco, same with Andromeda with Tonks; Molly must've been fairly young too. Ginny was about 22-ish (I think James was about 13 or something, in the epilogue?), which makes Tonks the OLDEST we know at the ripe old age of 25! (Honestly, I was surprised when Fleur didn't turn out to be pregnant in the end. Guess Jo couldn't reasonably fit that one in...) I don't know about you, but I'm 24 and I'm in no hurry at all to get pregnant, even if it is with Remus. Tonks strikes me as the same: she was so playful in OotP, I can't imagine that being turned 180 degrees around in about two years. She's so young to settle down! Imagine her walking around with the kid in her arms and tripping. O_o
Then there's also the whole 'there's a war going on you twit, think of the kid' thing that was also with Remus. It sort of counts double for Tonks because it's also 'there's a war going on you twit, think of YOURSELF'. Tonks is both an Auror AND in the Order of the Phoenix. Don't you think they might want to have every capable fighter they can get? But what does Tonks do? She gets pregnant, meaning she'll be utterly incapable of fighting (and, around the birth, anything at all except walking around in the house - although I'm not an expert on pregnancies so this is a guess) for, I dunno, three months or so. THIS IS STUPID. IT'S IRRESPONSIBLE. I don't want to think what Moody would say! Yeah, sure, true love and all, but during a war, ESPECIALLY when you're an Auror AND in the Order, something else is supposed to be on your mind but baaaaaaabies. Contraceptives are there until the end of the war. It's not as if Voldemort made them unavailable. USE THEM.
And for God's sake, both of you, don't blame it on the other. Tonks, you can take contraceptives or kick Remus out of the bed. Remus, you can use contraceptives or keep it in your pants. But having a baby at this time, at your positions? Bad, bad, BAD idea.
...
Tonks: yay baby!
Remus: yay Teddy!
Tonks&Remus: *die*
Teddy: ... waaaaah!
Me: ... I agree with Teddy. (*cuddles* ;))
(I also had trouble with the timeline of the pregnancy - either Tonks found out REALLY quickly or the pregnancy was longer than nine months - but that's a whole other rant.
What is it about Remus and Tonks in TDH that makes you want to rant? :p)