Prompts #2 & #21: Untouchables
Title: Untouchables
Author: MrsTater
Format & Word Count: one-shot, 6985 words
Rating: PG-13
Prompts: #2; #21 - I If you gave me nothing / Nothing more than this / I would have the / memory to keep / Let me make a simple wish / As we fall asleep / Let me wake with you by my side ("Always" by the October Project)
Warning: abusive language, post-torture condition
Summary: Remus and Tonks run from birthday parties and wedding receptions, but bigotry catches up with them. So do the side effects of pregnancy. (Sequel to Water Falls and Once)
Author's Note: My attempt at dealing with why Remus and Tonks run away from Harry's birthday party and everything from Chapter 11 with the caveat that Remus' crisis not be quite like, well, like a crisis. Hopefully my version of things still works within the parameters of canon. The excerpt at the beginning of the fic is from Deathly Hallows Chapter 7, and one line from Chapter 11. Concrit and feedback are welcome. Many thanks to my awesome beta-reader, cheerleader, and sounding board, Godricgal.
Untouchables
A streak of light came flying across the yard and onto the table, where it resolved itself into a bright silver weasel, which stood on its hind legs and spoke with Mr. Weasley's voice.
"Minister of Magic coming with me."
The Patronus dissolved into thin air.
"We shouldn't be here," said Lupin at once. "Harry--I'm sorry--I'll explain another time--"
Dora is a pink blur in Remus' periphery as, in one swift motion, he pushes his chair back from the table of gawping birthday party guests, stands, and grabs his wife's wrist. He turns away to leave, pulling her after him. Above the pounding of his pulse in his ears, there is the clatter of a goblet striking the table. He glances over his shoulder to see Dora's sleek pink bob flying wildly into her face as she stumbles out of her chair and over the legs of his.
Remus' conscience chides him for the un-gentleness of his haste, but, breathless as he is, he hopes that releasing her wrist and capturing her hand conveys the sentiment his urgency prevents him from speaking. At least she isn't resisting, Remus thinks as they bound across the Weasleys' freshly mown lawn, nor does she pause to take leave of their hosts or offer an explanation for the hasty departure. She must be of the same mind as he that they would do better not to be seen by the Minister of Magic.
At the fence bordering the Apparition point, Dora catches her toe on a post, hisses an ouch under her breath. Remus stops, suddenly remembering that he is dragging his pregnant wife along at this careening pace, in the manner of a Neanderthal. He gives her a hand up over the stile, and she watches from the other side as he climbs over after her, pulling the Invisibility Cloak they recently inherited from Mad-Eye out of his pocket. He throws it around them both, wraps an arm firmly around her waist, then Disapparates.
CRACK.
They materialise in the front garden of their new house in Ickenham--Mad-Eye's house--a cosy two-bedroom bungalow tucked between larger houses, hidden from Thornhill Road by high shrubberies, which Remus cannot see without a measure of resentment, though he shrugs off that negative emotion and focuses instead on practicalities. The garden is an ideal Apparition point for the wizard and witch living among Muggles. The bungalow itself is protected by security spells invented and installed by Moody, independently of the Ministry of Magic. Mad-Eye bequeathed the house to Dora in such a way as prevents his solicitor speaking of the will to any but its beneficiary. Only one person knows of their move: their secret keeper, Arthur Weasley.
But though they are ensconced by bushes and wrapped in an Invisibility Cloak on this property, though his trust in Arthur and the Fidelius Charm is unwavering, Remus' heart still palpitates irregularly at the niggling fear of an ambush. It does help to look down and see that Dora has her wand drawn. He checks that the Cloak still conceals them properly, then, his own wand raised in readiness, they shuffle across the wide front lawn in an eerie parody of a three-legged race. His eyes rove over his side of the garden, but drift over to Dora's half even though he is sure she, too, is scanning every shadow for danger.
When they reach the door, he steps slightly in front of her, though he allows his body to brush against hers as much to reassure himself that she is still with him as to keep the Invisibility Cloak around them both. He reaches one hand back to settle on her hip, and hers finds the small of his back. He inhales sharply to feel the coldness of her fingers through his robes; is this a sign of her fear?
Without further hesitation, he touches his wand to the sturdy oak door.
A series of clicks and clanks, locks unlatching and unbolting, chains rattling, lasts for a solid minute and makes entering number twelve, Grimmauld Place in the old days seem like a casual stroll into a shop by comparison. As the door swings open, a light in the entry hall flashes on, gleaming off dark green tiles.
"Hominum revelio," Remus mutters, and sweeps his wand wide.
The spell detects no human presence in the house apart from their own, but as Dora locks them in for the night, Remus slips from beneath the Invisibility Cloak and proceeds further into the house, using his wand to turn on every lamp in the living room to one side of the hall, and to light the kitchen on the other. He casts the Detection Spell in each room and checks that the windows are secure.
Leaning over the kitchen sink to scan the window overlooking the front garden, a touch on his back makes him jump.
"Is paranoia catching?" Dora asks. "Is it something in the air here?"
He turns and finds her looking up at him with a quirked mouth and shimmering eyes.
"Am I going to have to start calling you Mad-Eye Moony?"
There is a slight hitch in her voice that makes Remus, wand still to hand, put his arms around her and pull her against him as he leans back against the counter.
"Not unless I lose an eye," he says, a little surprised by the tightness in his own voice.
Their chuckles are very quiet and fade quickly. Dora leans heavily against him, leaning her head on his shoulder; Remus kisses her soft hair, then rests his cheek on the crown of her head.
She lets out a shuddering breath. "I'm sorry, Remus."
He lifts his head. "You're sorry? Whatever for?"
"For us having to leave Harry's party. You didn't even have a chance to give him his present."
For the first time since leaving here not an hour earlier, he thinks about the gold-wrapped gift in Dora's handbag, which must be hanging on the hat stand in the hallnow. On each of the Marauders' coming of age, Mr. and Mrs. Potter had given the traditional pewter tankard, Goblin-wrought and personalised: Remus', which he still has, is engraved with Grindylows, Red Caps, Hippogriffs, and all manner of Magical Creatures, for his avid interest and achievement in the subject. (Sirius got one with a Muggle motorbike, which must have bemused the Goblin craftsmen.) For Harry, Remus selected a particularly elegant tankard with an elaborate lion prancing across; at Dora's insistence (she hadn't had to twist Remus' arm), the Goblin artisan set garnets into the highly polished pewter for the lion's eyes. The tankard is charmed to keep beer the perfect temperature, and it also comes with a single dose of Felix Felicis which will surely prove useful to Harry.
But, shoving aside his twinge of regret at not being there for Harry, and guilt that Harry must feel forgotten by his father's last surviving mate, Remus tells Dora, "It couldn't be helped. I'll try and catch a moment with him at the wedding tomorrow."
His thoughts turn dark at the mention of the wedding, but before he can begin to properly brood, Dora squeezes him tighter. Sniffs.
"All the same, I'm sorry. I know how important Harry's coming of age is to you. I hate that you had to miss it because of me."
"Because of you?"
Releasing her waist, Remus lays his hands on Dora's shoulders and pushes her gently back from him so he can look her in the eyes.
Her gaze, however, is downcast.
Heart heavy again, and racing, he says, "This doesn't just have to do with Harry, does it?"
With a sigh, Dora ducks from beneath his hands, her posture hunching protectively in on herself as she trundles to the breakfast bar. Her back is to him, but he sees her arm move, hears the scuff of parchment against the wooden surface of the table, and knows it is today's Prophet that rivets her attention even without her saying:
"It's these laws. I've made life worse for you than it's ever been. You saw this coming, but I pushed and pushed."
Remus' speeding heart comes to an abrupt heavy thud. The interval before it beats again seems eternal as he struggles to process what his wife has just said. He still feels bewildered and flummoxed when he speaks, almost involuntarily:
"First of all..." His voice sounds like it's coming from the end of a long tunnel, or from beyond the house. "...I never saw anything quite like this coming. Not even from Umbridge."
In order that there shall be no discrepancy in the classification of lycanthropes, Werewolf Support Services shall be transferred to the Beast Division of The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. The Werewolf Code of Conduct, laid down in 1637, shall be amended to ensure compliance with the Ban on Experimental Breeding, as recommended by Newton Scamander in 1965. The Ministry of Magic shall grant no license for the marriage of a lycanthrope to a human. Any lycanthrope discovered so associated with a human, and any human discovered so associated, consensually, with a lycanthrope, shall be subject to penalty of law in violation of the Ban. Impregnation of a human by a lycanthrope shall result in--
Unspeakable evil.
He crosses the room to stand behind Dora and wraps his arms around her waist, spreading his hands across her abdomen as if that will keep their child safe. (As if a werewolf's touch can do anything but curse...) It seems impossible that her slender frame contains a life at all, and the timing strikes Remus as almost coincidental. Could Dora really have conceived mere hours before this hateful legislation was written? But he couldn't have dreamt two positive pregnancy tests, or spending this morning hauling crates of Defence Against the Dark Arts books and Auror manuals and all manner of Dark Magic Detectors up to the attic because Mad-Eye's study is going to be converted into a nursery, once they've got the baby furniture from her parents' attic.
"Second of all," says Remus, hoarsely, over the whisper at the back of his mind that delights in reminding him that he is providing nothing for wife or child, "while I quite agree that I am powerless against your charms, I entered into this marriage of my own volition."
He leans in to kiss her temple. Out the corner of his eye he watches the fine pink hairs on the back of her neck stand, as though charmed, as he murmurs in her ear.
"My not only very willing volition, but my very eager volition as well, if you recall our wedding night."
Smiling, Dora turns in his arms and slides her hands up over his chest and shoulders to drape her arms around his neck.
"Mm, I do. And our engagement night."
She pushes up on her toes, her breasts brushing against his robes as he dips his head to touch his lips softly to hers with the sweet shared memory of that night. But he tastes Elderflower wine on her lips and is intoxicated by the sensations of her. His body and heart remember being swept away by her that night, how she took him away from the hopelessness of Dumbledore's death and the horrible year underground to a place where there was a tangible promise of happily ever after. Now he wants Umbridge and Bellatrix and laws and bloodlines and his own cursed status and his poverty to vanish into oblivion.
Dropping his guard completely, his wand clatters to the tiled floor as he takes her heart-shaped face perfectly between his palms. He deepens their kiss, burying himself in her warm openness. She moans into him, and her pink-lashed eyelids flutter shut; but even as Remus feels his own eyes grow heavy-lidded with the intensity of the kiss, he keeps his open, lets all other imaginations be overcome by the vivid blur of pink that colours this very small, very wonderful world they alone occupy.
Somehow, in that moment, clarity comes to him.
He breaks the kiss, but allows his mouth to hover millimetres above hers as his fingers rake into her hair.
"Thirdly, if you think I regret marrying you, Nymphadora Lupin--"
Her lips part in protest, but he silences her with a quick kiss, breathless and giddy as the day two weeks ago the little man in the Registrar pronounced them Mr. and Mrs. Remus Lupin.
"Think again," he says, and kisses the tip of her nose, each cheekbone. "The law might judge me more harshly than before, but my life is a million times better than it ever has been."
He kisses her eyelids.
"I'd face anything to be your husband, and the father of your children. Knowing what they've done, I'd marry you again. Nothing can touch me, as long as I've got you. Or if it does, you'll soon make me forget with your touch--"
He leans in to claim her lips again, but her hand on his chest holds him back.
"I know you know how I feel, Remus." Her eyes are dark, pink brows knit together, the pale skin above lined. "Would you marry me again knowing I'd be sacked for it?"
It is as if the floor beneath his feet has shifted. He steps back from Dora, gripping a chair for balance, but her question falls on him with such weight that he cannot stand under it. He pulls out the chair and almost falls down upon the cushion. To answer no would be to renege on every promise he made her; yet yes denies his deepest instinct to protect her from humiliation and harm. He sits ashamed that he can even consider yes, at a loss to know how any decent human being couldn't. (He won't be a Beast, he won't, and isn't the vow of a husband to protect?) He loathes himself for hurting her again, as his silence must wound as acutely as any answer.
And then Dora's arms go around him, cradling his head against her breasts.
"You're not meant to answer."
She strokes his hair.
"It's not as simple as would you or wouldn't you, and thank Merlin we've already made our choice. I just wanted you to know that I understand how you felt, how you might feel now. I'd lose my job for you all over again, though. And I feel right sorry for Fleur."
"Fleur?" Remus looks up at her, blinking. "What's Fleur got to do with anything?"
Dora smiles down at him and tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. "She's getting married tomorrow, and thinking she'll be the happiest woman in the world. But she's wrong. I'm the happiest woman in the world, because I'm married to you."
Remus can't quite summon a smile to return for her brilliant grin, but she's turned away and doesn't see it. There's a spring in her step as she moves to the stove, where she picks up the kettle and asks if he'd like tea. She uses her wand to fill it with water, then taps it and it whistles shrilly, emitting a blast of steam.
"Talking of Fleur getting married tomorrow," says Remus as Dora pours the boiling water over teabags in a pair of mugs bearing slogans that are ridiculous in the best of circumstances, but absolutely ludicrous now, "I don't like the idea of this wedding. At all."
"Because we're supposed to be laying low?"
Nodding, Remus replies, "I would hate to be the cause of any unpleasantness on someone's wedding day."
He doesn't elaborate that he is almost more afraid of the prospect of a wedding guest cutting Dora than of her former colleagues turning up to place her under arrest for violating the Ban on Experimental Breeding.
He rubs his temples. "And because it'll be a security nightmare."
Dora sets a steaming mug before him, bearing the slogan, If only wizards were at satisfying as chocolate, seating herself next to him sipping from one that reads, Give a witch the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.
"Which is exactly why we've got to be there," she says, loading her tea with heaping spoonfuls of sugar. "Kingsley's can't get away from work, and with Mad-Eye gone, that leaves me as the one trained professional the Order can provide. I won't go pink-haired and recognisable, if that makes you feel any better."
Remus looks at her wryly over the rim of his mug. "Yes, I much prefer everyone to think that werewolf Remus Lupin is running around on his new bride with some blonde."
"Blonde it is, then." Dora clinks mugs with him. "Cheers, Mad Moony."
But while Dora arrives at Bill and Fleur's wedding blonde and smiling, neither blonde nor smiling does she stay.
When the Death Eaters appear out of the air in the midst of the dance floor and Remus and Dora fly apart, wands drawn, casting Shield Charms to allow the wedding guests to Disapparate to safety, Remus catches his wife morphing her askew hair out the corner of his eye.
"It's no fun if dear Auntie Bella doesn't recognise me, is it?" she quips; indeed, if not for her signature hair, Remus himself is not sure he would know her, so alien are her features to him, hardened in combat as she studies the cloaked and masked figures for the tall figure of Bellatrix Lestrange.
Bellatrix, however, is not among the Death Eaters who unmask themselves before the handful of Order members they subdued--only the Weasley family, and Rubeus Hagrid, apart from Remus and Dora. Remus thinks his wife's vivid hair colour fades somewhat at this realisation; it certainly does as hours of interrogation drag by, during which Dora, in particular, is verbally assaulted with the worst sort of derision only her psychopathic aunt could top.
By the time they are released, without explanation, long past dinner, Dora is mousy brown and sports a deep purple bruise across her cheekbone, which she is too agitated to allow Remus to treat when they return home to Ickenham.
"Nobody was injured," she says, pacing around their bedroom which is mostly furnished with Dora's things from her flat, except for a hulking bureau with a Talking Mirror opposite the window which informs them when enemies are on the street--generally, when the Muggle postman is about the neighbourhood. "That was the most half-arsed interrogation I've ever heard of--not that I expect much from that lot. Where the hell were Voldemort's star pupils? Dolohov? The Lestranges? Pettigrew? Snape?" She spits the last.
"Taking over the Ministry, I expect," says Remus. "Frankly, I'm not sorry we were spared the pleasure of being Crucioed."
Not that it could have been much worse than how it had felt to sit, bound and silenced, while Lucius Malfoy flung verbal filth at Dora:
Did you marry the beast because you like it on all fours? Do you morph into a dog for him, bitch? Will the pups come in litters? Do you beg him to bite you?
Remus had nearly vomited; nausea rolls over him even now, hearing the drawling voice in his head.
Dora, of course, was no passive victim of the mockery. She effectively silenced Malfoy by rejoining, How does Auntie Narcissa feel about you sucking Voldemort's dick? Which had inspired an uproar of laughter from Fred and George, and even cracked grins on the stupid faces of Crabbe and Goyle, who roughed the twins up for their sense of humour, to hide their own amusement at Malfoy's expense. It would have been horrible enough to see Lucius retaliate physically against Dora, but Draco is responsible for the bruise marring Dora's pale face. Draco, who used to mock Remus' shabby robes and barely squeaked by with passing marks in Defence, and who shrank away in cowardice and revulsion when he saw his former--werewolf--teacher's eyes on him.
Remus strides across the bedroom and catches Dora by the shoulders, steering her to the bed.
"Please sit down and let me see to this for you. We are extremely lucky not to have been inflicted worse damage than this, but even so, I hardly like the reminder of watching a boy strike my wife. And you need to rest. All this stress can't be good for the baby."
She sits at the edge of the bed and holds still as he sits and turns her cheek to him; she wines as the cold Anti-Bruise Paste touches her skin and at the light pressure of his fingers on her injury.
But the pain doesn't distract her from musing over the events at the Burrow in true Auror fashion.
"I don't know how lucky we are," she says. "All I can see is that Voldemort's trying to intimidate the Order. He doesn't see us as a threat. He didn't need us for information about Harry. The interrogation was a diversion."
Remus' hand hovers over her cheek, globs of ointment falling from his fingers onto the duvet. He flicks it off and sits beside her, absorbing her theory.
"They were pretending to interrogate us about Harry to keep us away from where they thought the real source may be?" he says.
"Exactly. But where...?
For a moment they sit in silence, mulling over who Voldemort would look to beyond the Order for information regarding Harry's whereabouts.
"They searched the Burrow," says Remus, "but they clearly didn't expect him to be there. What about other Order homes? Our safe houses?"
His heart plummets at the same moment Dora's eyes round. "Oh my God--Remus, my parents...Bellatrix..."
They leave at once.
They are braced, upon arrival at Ted and Andromeda's house, to do battle with Bellatrix. When they find only the evidence of her having recently been there, Remus is not sure whether it is a relief or not. Certainly he is relieved by the absence of a Dark Mark, but there are fates worse than Death.
Opening the back door to the kitchen, which has been left standing ajar, the doorknob and locks blasted off, they are not greeted by the usual pleasant hospitable aromas of Andromeda's cooking, but instead are nearly knocked down with the acrid stench of fresh blood and vomit and filth.
Cautious as they were approaching the house, certain that Voldemort's spies guard the place, specifically waiting for members of the Order of the Phoenix, Dora bolts from beneath the Invisibility Cloak and back out the open door into the August twilight air, and empties her stomach into the flower bed beside the step. Eschewing vigilance, Remus goes out after her, supporting her and pulling her hair back from her face as she retches. She chokes out a request for water, and he darts back into the kitchen, which he notices looks as if a herd of Hippogriffs stampeded through, and finds a glass that isn't broken amid the wreckage of Andromeda's cupboards. He fills it with his wand, and rushes back outside in time to find Dora straightening up and wiping her mouth with her fingertips.
He offers her his handkerchief with the water, and as she rinses her mouth, he asks, "Would you like to wait here under the Invisibility Cloak while I go in first and see to your parents? Judging from the smell, their condition won't be pretty."
But Dora throws her shoulders back and juts her chin. "I'm okay. I'm sure it's just being pregnant. Only, it's supposed to be morning sickness, isn't it?"
Her defiance actually brings the slightest of smiles to Remus' face. "As I recall, Lily Potter and Alice Longbottom both repeated that as their mantra as they were ill for entire days."
"Hm. Well, we don't have all day, do we? And I'm not the first Auror in history to have a baby."
Stepping around him, Dora raises her wand, draws a deep breath, which she holds, and re-enters her parents' house.
A whimper, not audible until they reach the middle of the kitchen, directs them to Ted's study just off the hall. Dora's footsteps quicken, the heels of the strappy pink shoes she wore to the wedding scuffing and sliding on the hardwood floor.
"Dad? Mum? It's me, Nymphadora. Oh, great Merlin..."
She stops dead in the doorway of the study, hands clutching the mouldings. Remus peers over her shoulder into the dark room and sees that, like the kitchen--and, he suspects, the rest of the house--it is in a shambles: furniture is toppled, books flung from shelves, bindings cracked and pages littering the thick brown carpet, Ted's collection of Manchester Manticores pennants and posters ripped from the panelled walls.
The mess is by far the least disturbing part.
The smell is almost overwhelming in here; Dora is green, and Remus fears he, too, may be sick. He points his wand at a cracked window, security be damned, and raises it to let in some air; he casts a Muffliato Spell to ensure they will not be overheard by any spies lurking outside.
In the centre of the room, Ted lies curled in a foetal position, convulsing and whimpering. His hands curl against his chest, and Remus notes that some of his fingers are bent directions they ought not--broken. Saliva glistens on the corner of his mouth and down his chins, and his eyes, fixed on some unseen horror, are watery red with broken blood vessels. Remus cannot help but think of poor Frank and Alice Longbottom, tortured into madness, and pleads silently that Dora will not lose her father to that fate.
Beside Ted, propped somewhat upright on one elbow, a deathly pale Andromeda, her soft brown hair fallen loose from her usually sleek coif, points her wand with a trembling hand.
"P-prove..." She coughs, but continues raspily, "Prove to me you're my daughter..."
Dora scrunches her face and changes her hair to pink--though, Remus notes, only on top, and the ends are faded. But it is enough for Andromeda, whose hand falls to her side, fingers releasing her wand, and her heavy-lidded eyes close in relief.
"And this really is Remus," says Dora, stepping into the room. "I haven't taken my eyes off him all day."
With a flick of her wand, she cleans the soiled carpet with a Scourgify that belies every claim that she's inept at householdy spells, and drops to her knees beside her parents.
"Oh mum." The words are a sob in her throat as she embraces her mother, kisses her forehead, but then she draws back, composed and intense. "Was it Bellatrix?"
"M-my own s-sister used the...C-cruciatus Curse."
Another paroxysm of coughs, and Remus refills the glass Dora drank from and kneels to help his mother-in-law drink. Her eyes wander to Ted.
"Your father got the worst of it. I'm fine, please see to him."
Remus does, first cleaning Ted's robes, then mending his fingers and casting what revival spells he knows while Dora rights an overturned leather chaise and helps her mother onto it.
"Dora, your face," says Andromeda in concern, indicating the same spot on her own cheek.
"We were ambushed at the wedding, and I said something not very ladylike to Lucius Malfoy. My dear little cousin Draco heard and hexed me one. Brat. But I don't appreciate people calling my husband a beast."
"But he is one!"
They all startle as Ted snaps suddenly out of his stupor and sits bolt upright.
"The Prophet says! Werewolves are Magical Beasts!"
"Dad!"
Dora springs to him, hooking her arms around his girth from behind, and attempts to pull him into a reclining position on her lap.
"You've been tortured," she croons to him. "You're not well. Please lie still and don't try to talk."
But Ted struggles against her and continues, oblivious to his daughter's plea, as if compelled by a curse:
"Beasts not allowed to marry human girls...Violation of the Breeding Ban...They said Dora was sacked because of you, you filthy--"
"Lies, Ted," Andromeda says. "They talked lies while they were torturing us. That's the worst part of it."
"Actually that's true," says Remus quietly. "Dora did lose her job because of me."
Ted growls, and Dora looks hexes at Remus, then glances over her shoulder at her stunned-looking mother.
"I'd have been sacked regardless. The Ministry's fallen. Remus," she adds, almost savagely, tightening her hold on Ted. "Go to the kitchen and bring me whatever's left intact of Mum's potion kit. I've got to sedate him."
Remus scrambles to his feet, only too glad to leave this scene, if only for a moment.
Ted's voice follows him into the kitchen:
"If you were a decent human being, you'd leave her. But you proved you're nothing but a monster by making her an outcast! Her own cousin hurt her because of you--"
"Draco's a bigoted little shit," says Tonks. "Sorry, Mum."
"Ted, please--"
Remus returns with the cauldron full of potion supplies to find Ted has broken free from Dora's hold and pushed himself upright. But he stumbles over the coffee table and into Remus.
"Get out of my house, werewolf." He grabs the lapels of Remus' robes in his thick fingers, shaking him. "You disgust me--"
"Silencio!" Dora's voice rings out, then, levitating an armchair directly behind her father, she uses her wand to make him sit.
"He doesn't know what he's saying," she says to Remus in a low tone, hefting the cauldron into her own arms. "I'm sure he's just repeating what Bellatrix said when she was torturing them. Bitch. I'll kill her."
"I should..."
Remus doesn't know what he means to say.
"Someone ought to go see how our other connections have fared," he chokes out. "Those Order members who weren't at the wedding. That is, if you'll be all right here, with your parents."
Dora nods. "Yes, go. You should try and find out where Harry's got to. He trusts you, ask what Dumbledore asked him to do so we can help."
"Nymphadora..."
Andromeda's voice diverts their attention to Ted, struggling against the charm that keeps him seated. His mute mouth forms angry words. Dora sets her potion things on his clutter desk, sweeping paperwork on the floor to clear a workspace.
"I'll be fine here," she says. "Go, Remus. Harry's most important now. Without him we're all lost."
Remus drapes the Invisibility Cloak over the desk chair. "You keep this in case you need to go out."
She picks it up and thrusts it back at him. "Don't be stupid, I can morph."
"But they can't," says Remus, covering her hands around the folds of the garment, inclining his head to indicate her parents.
Dora's expression changes to one of concession on this point, but turns dark eyes up to him in which fear threatens to break through her crisis mode strength.
"Neither can you."
Remus touches her cheek; the bruise is fading to greenish-lavender. "I know how to run."
She nods, and arches up to peck his lips. "Be safe. I love you. No matter what anyone says. So nothing can touch you, okay?"
He returns the sentiment, kisses her, and touches her stomach.
But when he Disapparates, his father-in-law's words not only touch him, but clutch at his heart with iron fingers.
A week later finds Remus stood once again at the doorstep of the Tonks house, more afraid what Dora's father will do to him than of the Death Eaters who might be watching from the shadows around the building.
For the first time since he fled Grimmauld Place four days ago, he pauses to consider why he chose to run here, of all places. It is not lost on him that even after his impulsive offer to go with Harry--without Dora--his instinct upon Harry's rejection--and judgment--was to go straight back to his wife.
He is here, he supposes, to check in on her, to see how she's faring with her parents, if they are recovered, if she is well and if her bout with nausea was an isolated incident or the first side effect of her pregnancy. As to what will happen after...
What Remus said to Harry about Dora and the child being better off without him leapt from his tongue without forethought, though part of him is sure he must have been thinking it deep down all along. Would you marry me again? Dora asked him, and he had no answer. Does that mean he does have an answer, that it is no, he wouldn't, and in fact he means to make it as if he never had married her?
But he cannot make it so, no matter how much he or anyone else wishes it, not now that there is a child. In his heart he knows he doesn't wish it at all; every time he cast a Patronus these seven days on the run through the Dementor-occupied country, it's been with the memory of his wedding day, or of saying, We made a baby. But the rotten fingers grasped and the foul mouths yawned to steal that hope and happiness and bereave him of all but the despair he carried into Grimmauld Place and brings here to this doorstep, where Ted Tonks' voice echoes with the law of the land and Remus' own words to Harry:
If you were a decent human being, you'd leave her...The Ministry of Magic shall grant no license for the marriage of a lycanthrope to a human...Don't you understand what I've done to my wife and my unborn child? I should never have married her, I've made her an outcast!
Not knowing what answer he will receive, Remus raises his hand and knocks on the door.
"Who's there?" comes a muffled woman's voice--Dora's--almost at once, as if she's been sat by the door waiting. "Declare yourself!"
"It is I, Remus John Lupin, werewolf, husband to Nymphadora who prefers to be called Tonks...or Dora...and father to the child she conceived ten days ago."
A series of clicks and clanks and rattles. The door swings inward, just enough for Remus to slip through. He leans back against the door to shut it behind him, and in a blur of pink Dora does up the locks, then steps back and faces him, arms akimbo.
"You're bloody lucky I already made that little announcement," she says in her best no-nonsense Auror tone that once shut up an ecstatic Stan Shunpike--but abruptly her authoritative posture slumps, and her hair fades and her gaze, her eyes suddenly very large in a pale face, bends.
"Mum knows, anyway," she says softly. "Dad...He's gone."
Remus cannot readily find his voice. "Gone?" he rasps on a second attempt. "You mean...He didn't make it? I thought--"
"No, he's alive," says Dora. "At least as far as I know. I mean he's literally gone. Left. The day the Muggle-born Registration Commission was founded."
"Have you seen the papers, Remus?" Andromeda steps out of the shadows, wand clasped at her side.
"I've managed to keep up-to-date on current events. Andromeda...I'm so sorry."
"Thank you. I'm glad you've come back safe and sound to Nymphadora. Although you look like you could badly do with a cup of tea."
"Yes, thank you."
Andromeda disappears into the kitchen, and Remus stands unmoving and mute as Dora, unbuttoning his travelling cloak for him, tells him how Ted raged all that day after the news broke about his principles, about how he refused to register, and how he left in the night.
"He left a note." She sniffs, and blinks. "I never got to tell him about the baby."
"Did he give a reason for leaving? To avoid arrest for not registering?"
Tonks shakes her head and moves behind him to tug his cloak from his shoulders. "He didn't care about that. He said it was to protect Mum. She's pure-blood so they won't hurt her if he's gone."
"But that's absurd," Remus blurts. "Nothing Ted can do will make Bellatrix forgive your mother for marrying a Muggle-born wizard. He's better off here, protecting her with his wand!"
And then it hits him like a Bludger how absurd his own line of thinking has become. His cloak falls from Dora's hands as he turns and enfolds her--them, wife and unborn child--who, if he has cursed them, he must stand by and do all in his power to protect. Whether he can give them anything but his unyielding love and his wand as a shield is irrelevant, and something he will simply have to learn to live with. He, by no means, must cast them out.
Although Dora, as usual, is not one to sit back and let anyone else, husband or not, fight for her.
"Did you find Harry, then?" she asks, drawing back from his embrace. "It's been all Mum can do to stop me climbing the walls, I'm so bloody ready to get back out in the field and finish Voldemort and his thugs once and for all."
She looks ready to leap into a battle now, and though Remus admirers her fortitude, a shiver creeps along his spine as he thinks of Sirius cooped up for a year in Grimmauld Place, and how he'd been downright thrilled to go to the Department of Mysteries, which had surely done him no favours in combat. But he shakes off the sudden terror with the thought that unlike Sirius, Dora is a trained soldier, level-headed enough in a crisis to meet even Mad-Eye's approval.
"I spoke to Harry," Remus tells her, "and he remains adamant that Dumbledore means this task to be his alone."
He wonders, fleetingly, what Harry would have said if he'd offered his and Dora's service, although he is quite certain Harry would still have said no, especially with a baby on the way.
"He does have the help of Ron and Hermione--"
"But--"
"The last words Dumbledore said to me are that Harry is our best hope. Strange as it seems," Remus goes on, more quietly, "much as my instinct is to protect my best friend's son, I do trust in Harry. With the Prophet and the WWN slandering him at every turn, I say the Order's got a battle of our own getting the truth to the people so Harry will have a better chance." His fingers stroke Dora's stomach. "So our child will have a better world to be born into."
Dora covers his hand and looks up at him with eyes that are at once sad and hopeful. "A world where Muggle-borns survive?"
Remus squeezes her hands. "We will do all we can to help them, to find your father and bring him home. I swear it."
Dora's grim nod is cut off by her mouth suddenly yawning wide. She sways into him, and rests her head heavily against his chest.
"First, can we go home, Remus? I haven't slept properly since you left, and it can't be good for the baby."
"Oh, Dora--"
"I just couldn't bear the thought of something happening to you while I was asleep." Glancing up at him with a wan smile, she adds. "Also it's not easy to fall asleep when you're curled up on the bathroom floor clutching the toilet bowl."
Remus strokes her hair and neck in sympathy. "Are you sure you want to go home and hug our toilet bowl? Who knows what sort of security sensors Mad-Eye put on it to prevent intruders coming in through the plumbing."
Dora chuckles a little against him, but squeezes him tightly. "It's a risk I'm willing to take."
Much as Remus would love to Disapparate home with his wife without further discussion, the blast of the kettle in the kitchen, and the clinking of china, reminds him that they alone are not the only family whose lives are in need of re-ordering.
"Will your mother be all right here alone?" he asks.
"I will be, thank you," answers Andromeda, sweeping into the hall with the promised cup of tea for Remus. "Nymphadora and I have spent the better part of the last several days setting new security spells in anticipation of her leaving with you to go off with Harry, or to go home in the case of your being able to convince her that expectant mothers have other interests than going off on adventures."
"Looks like we're both getting our way, Mum." Dora slips her arms around Remus' waist as he, colouring slightly, takes a drink of his tea. "I'll be going home, though I'm sure to have some adventures."
Andromeda raises an eyebrow, and Remus thinks her lips might just curve upward in the slightest of smirks before she turns back to the kitchen, murmuring something about giving them a moment together whilst she packs an herbal nausea remedy to send home with Dora.
Alone again, Remus sets down his tea on the console table and turns to Dora, taking her heart-shaped face in his hands. "I'm looking forward to many more adventures with you, as well, but all joking aside, Dora, I can't give you and the baby shelter, or...or anything."
"You give us your open arms, where no one can touch us. That's everything."
It seems impossible, but as he rests his cheek against her head, and sees out the corner of his eye that she is, once again, vividest pink, he can only believe that it is so.
She looks up at him. "And holding my hair out the way when I'm sick."
He chuckles, brushes her fringe off her forehead and kisses her. "That," he says, "I can do."
"Remus," she says, a question in her voice.
"Hm?"
"Can you do it now?"
Author: MrsTater
Format & Word Count: one-shot, 6985 words
Rating: PG-13
Prompts: #2; #21 - I If you gave me nothing / Nothing more than this / I would have the / memory to keep / Let me make a simple wish / As we fall asleep / Let me wake with you by my side ("Always" by the October Project)
Warning: abusive language, post-torture condition
Summary: Remus and Tonks run from birthday parties and wedding receptions, but bigotry catches up with them. So do the side effects of pregnancy. (Sequel to Water Falls and Once)
Author's Note: My attempt at dealing with why Remus and Tonks run away from Harry's birthday party and everything from Chapter 11 with the caveat that Remus' crisis not be quite like, well, like a crisis. Hopefully my version of things still works within the parameters of canon. The excerpt at the beginning of the fic is from Deathly Hallows Chapter 7, and one line from Chapter 11. Concrit and feedback are welcome. Many thanks to my awesome beta-reader, cheerleader, and sounding board, Godricgal.
Untouchables
A streak of light came flying across the yard and onto the table, where it resolved itself into a bright silver weasel, which stood on its hind legs and spoke with Mr. Weasley's voice.
"Minister of Magic coming with me."
The Patronus dissolved into thin air.
"We shouldn't be here," said Lupin at once. "Harry--I'm sorry--I'll explain another time--"
Dora is a pink blur in Remus' periphery as, in one swift motion, he pushes his chair back from the table of gawping birthday party guests, stands, and grabs his wife's wrist. He turns away to leave, pulling her after him. Above the pounding of his pulse in his ears, there is the clatter of a goblet striking the table. He glances over his shoulder to see Dora's sleek pink bob flying wildly into her face as she stumbles out of her chair and over the legs of his.
Remus' conscience chides him for the un-gentleness of his haste, but, breathless as he is, he hopes that releasing her wrist and capturing her hand conveys the sentiment his urgency prevents him from speaking. At least she isn't resisting, Remus thinks as they bound across the Weasleys' freshly mown lawn, nor does she pause to take leave of their hosts or offer an explanation for the hasty departure. She must be of the same mind as he that they would do better not to be seen by the Minister of Magic.
At the fence bordering the Apparition point, Dora catches her toe on a post, hisses an ouch under her breath. Remus stops, suddenly remembering that he is dragging his pregnant wife along at this careening pace, in the manner of a Neanderthal. He gives her a hand up over the stile, and she watches from the other side as he climbs over after her, pulling the Invisibility Cloak they recently inherited from Mad-Eye out of his pocket. He throws it around them both, wraps an arm firmly around her waist, then Disapparates.
CRACK.
They materialise in the front garden of their new house in Ickenham--Mad-Eye's house--a cosy two-bedroom bungalow tucked between larger houses, hidden from Thornhill Road by high shrubberies, which Remus cannot see without a measure of resentment, though he shrugs off that negative emotion and focuses instead on practicalities. The garden is an ideal Apparition point for the wizard and witch living among Muggles. The bungalow itself is protected by security spells invented and installed by Moody, independently of the Ministry of Magic. Mad-Eye bequeathed the house to Dora in such a way as prevents his solicitor speaking of the will to any but its beneficiary. Only one person knows of their move: their secret keeper, Arthur Weasley.
But though they are ensconced by bushes and wrapped in an Invisibility Cloak on this property, though his trust in Arthur and the Fidelius Charm is unwavering, Remus' heart still palpitates irregularly at the niggling fear of an ambush. It does help to look down and see that Dora has her wand drawn. He checks that the Cloak still conceals them properly, then, his own wand raised in readiness, they shuffle across the wide front lawn in an eerie parody of a three-legged race. His eyes rove over his side of the garden, but drift over to Dora's half even though he is sure she, too, is scanning every shadow for danger.
When they reach the door, he steps slightly in front of her, though he allows his body to brush against hers as much to reassure himself that she is still with him as to keep the Invisibility Cloak around them both. He reaches one hand back to settle on her hip, and hers finds the small of his back. He inhales sharply to feel the coldness of her fingers through his robes; is this a sign of her fear?
Without further hesitation, he touches his wand to the sturdy oak door.
A series of clicks and clanks, locks unlatching and unbolting, chains rattling, lasts for a solid minute and makes entering number twelve, Grimmauld Place in the old days seem like a casual stroll into a shop by comparison. As the door swings open, a light in the entry hall flashes on, gleaming off dark green tiles.
"Hominum revelio," Remus mutters, and sweeps his wand wide.
The spell detects no human presence in the house apart from their own, but as Dora locks them in for the night, Remus slips from beneath the Invisibility Cloak and proceeds further into the house, using his wand to turn on every lamp in the living room to one side of the hall, and to light the kitchen on the other. He casts the Detection Spell in each room and checks that the windows are secure.
Leaning over the kitchen sink to scan the window overlooking the front garden, a touch on his back makes him jump.
"Is paranoia catching?" Dora asks. "Is it something in the air here?"
He turns and finds her looking up at him with a quirked mouth and shimmering eyes.
"Am I going to have to start calling you Mad-Eye Moony?"
There is a slight hitch in her voice that makes Remus, wand still to hand, put his arms around her and pull her against him as he leans back against the counter.
"Not unless I lose an eye," he says, a little surprised by the tightness in his own voice.
Their chuckles are very quiet and fade quickly. Dora leans heavily against him, leaning her head on his shoulder; Remus kisses her soft hair, then rests his cheek on the crown of her head.
She lets out a shuddering breath. "I'm sorry, Remus."
He lifts his head. "You're sorry? Whatever for?"
"For us having to leave Harry's party. You didn't even have a chance to give him his present."
For the first time since leaving here not an hour earlier, he thinks about the gold-wrapped gift in Dora's handbag, which must be hanging on the hat stand in the hallnow. On each of the Marauders' coming of age, Mr. and Mrs. Potter had given the traditional pewter tankard, Goblin-wrought and personalised: Remus', which he still has, is engraved with Grindylows, Red Caps, Hippogriffs, and all manner of Magical Creatures, for his avid interest and achievement in the subject. (Sirius got one with a Muggle motorbike, which must have bemused the Goblin craftsmen.) For Harry, Remus selected a particularly elegant tankard with an elaborate lion prancing across; at Dora's insistence (she hadn't had to twist Remus' arm), the Goblin artisan set garnets into the highly polished pewter for the lion's eyes. The tankard is charmed to keep beer the perfect temperature, and it also comes with a single dose of Felix Felicis which will surely prove useful to Harry.
But, shoving aside his twinge of regret at not being there for Harry, and guilt that Harry must feel forgotten by his father's last surviving mate, Remus tells Dora, "It couldn't be helped. I'll try and catch a moment with him at the wedding tomorrow."
His thoughts turn dark at the mention of the wedding, but before he can begin to properly brood, Dora squeezes him tighter. Sniffs.
"All the same, I'm sorry. I know how important Harry's coming of age is to you. I hate that you had to miss it because of me."
"Because of you?"
Releasing her waist, Remus lays his hands on Dora's shoulders and pushes her gently back from him so he can look her in the eyes.
Her gaze, however, is downcast.
Heart heavy again, and racing, he says, "This doesn't just have to do with Harry, does it?"
With a sigh, Dora ducks from beneath his hands, her posture hunching protectively in on herself as she trundles to the breakfast bar. Her back is to him, but he sees her arm move, hears the scuff of parchment against the wooden surface of the table, and knows it is today's Prophet that rivets her attention even without her saying:
"It's these laws. I've made life worse for you than it's ever been. You saw this coming, but I pushed and pushed."
Remus' speeding heart comes to an abrupt heavy thud. The interval before it beats again seems eternal as he struggles to process what his wife has just said. He still feels bewildered and flummoxed when he speaks, almost involuntarily:
"First of all..." His voice sounds like it's coming from the end of a long tunnel, or from beyond the house. "...I never saw anything quite like this coming. Not even from Umbridge."
In order that there shall be no discrepancy in the classification of lycanthropes, Werewolf Support Services shall be transferred to the Beast Division of The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. The Werewolf Code of Conduct, laid down in 1637, shall be amended to ensure compliance with the Ban on Experimental Breeding, as recommended by Newton Scamander in 1965. The Ministry of Magic shall grant no license for the marriage of a lycanthrope to a human. Any lycanthrope discovered so associated with a human, and any human discovered so associated, consensually, with a lycanthrope, shall be subject to penalty of law in violation of the Ban. Impregnation of a human by a lycanthrope shall result in--
Unspeakable evil.
He crosses the room to stand behind Dora and wraps his arms around her waist, spreading his hands across her abdomen as if that will keep their child safe. (As if a werewolf's touch can do anything but curse...) It seems impossible that her slender frame contains a life at all, and the timing strikes Remus as almost coincidental. Could Dora really have conceived mere hours before this hateful legislation was written? But he couldn't have dreamt two positive pregnancy tests, or spending this morning hauling crates of Defence Against the Dark Arts books and Auror manuals and all manner of Dark Magic Detectors up to the attic because Mad-Eye's study is going to be converted into a nursery, once they've got the baby furniture from her parents' attic.
"Second of all," says Remus, hoarsely, over the whisper at the back of his mind that delights in reminding him that he is providing nothing for wife or child, "while I quite agree that I am powerless against your charms, I entered into this marriage of my own volition."
He leans in to kiss her temple. Out the corner of his eye he watches the fine pink hairs on the back of her neck stand, as though charmed, as he murmurs in her ear.
"My not only very willing volition, but my very eager volition as well, if you recall our wedding night."
Smiling, Dora turns in his arms and slides her hands up over his chest and shoulders to drape her arms around his neck.
"Mm, I do. And our engagement night."
She pushes up on her toes, her breasts brushing against his robes as he dips his head to touch his lips softly to hers with the sweet shared memory of that night. But he tastes Elderflower wine on her lips and is intoxicated by the sensations of her. His body and heart remember being swept away by her that night, how she took him away from the hopelessness of Dumbledore's death and the horrible year underground to a place where there was a tangible promise of happily ever after. Now he wants Umbridge and Bellatrix and laws and bloodlines and his own cursed status and his poverty to vanish into oblivion.
Dropping his guard completely, his wand clatters to the tiled floor as he takes her heart-shaped face perfectly between his palms. He deepens their kiss, burying himself in her warm openness. She moans into him, and her pink-lashed eyelids flutter shut; but even as Remus feels his own eyes grow heavy-lidded with the intensity of the kiss, he keeps his open, lets all other imaginations be overcome by the vivid blur of pink that colours this very small, very wonderful world they alone occupy.
Somehow, in that moment, clarity comes to him.
He breaks the kiss, but allows his mouth to hover millimetres above hers as his fingers rake into her hair.
"Thirdly, if you think I regret marrying you, Nymphadora Lupin--"
Her lips part in protest, but he silences her with a quick kiss, breathless and giddy as the day two weeks ago the little man in the Registrar pronounced them Mr. and Mrs. Remus Lupin.
"Think again," he says, and kisses the tip of her nose, each cheekbone. "The law might judge me more harshly than before, but my life is a million times better than it ever has been."
He kisses her eyelids.
"I'd face anything to be your husband, and the father of your children. Knowing what they've done, I'd marry you again. Nothing can touch me, as long as I've got you. Or if it does, you'll soon make me forget with your touch--"
He leans in to claim her lips again, but her hand on his chest holds him back.
"I know you know how I feel, Remus." Her eyes are dark, pink brows knit together, the pale skin above lined. "Would you marry me again knowing I'd be sacked for it?"
It is as if the floor beneath his feet has shifted. He steps back from Dora, gripping a chair for balance, but her question falls on him with such weight that he cannot stand under it. He pulls out the chair and almost falls down upon the cushion. To answer no would be to renege on every promise he made her; yet yes denies his deepest instinct to protect her from humiliation and harm. He sits ashamed that he can even consider yes, at a loss to know how any decent human being couldn't. (He won't be a Beast, he won't, and isn't the vow of a husband to protect?) He loathes himself for hurting her again, as his silence must wound as acutely as any answer.
And then Dora's arms go around him, cradling his head against her breasts.
"You're not meant to answer."
She strokes his hair.
"It's not as simple as would you or wouldn't you, and thank Merlin we've already made our choice. I just wanted you to know that I understand how you felt, how you might feel now. I'd lose my job for you all over again, though. And I feel right sorry for Fleur."
"Fleur?" Remus looks up at her, blinking. "What's Fleur got to do with anything?"
Dora smiles down at him and tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. "She's getting married tomorrow, and thinking she'll be the happiest woman in the world. But she's wrong. I'm the happiest woman in the world, because I'm married to you."
Remus can't quite summon a smile to return for her brilliant grin, but she's turned away and doesn't see it. There's a spring in her step as she moves to the stove, where she picks up the kettle and asks if he'd like tea. She uses her wand to fill it with water, then taps it and it whistles shrilly, emitting a blast of steam.
"Talking of Fleur getting married tomorrow," says Remus as Dora pours the boiling water over teabags in a pair of mugs bearing slogans that are ridiculous in the best of circumstances, but absolutely ludicrous now, "I don't like the idea of this wedding. At all."
"Because we're supposed to be laying low?"
Nodding, Remus replies, "I would hate to be the cause of any unpleasantness on someone's wedding day."
He doesn't elaborate that he is almost more afraid of the prospect of a wedding guest cutting Dora than of her former colleagues turning up to place her under arrest for violating the Ban on Experimental Breeding.
He rubs his temples. "And because it'll be a security nightmare."
Dora sets a steaming mug before him, bearing the slogan, If only wizards were at satisfying as chocolate, seating herself next to him sipping from one that reads, Give a witch the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.
"Which is exactly why we've got to be there," she says, loading her tea with heaping spoonfuls of sugar. "Kingsley's can't get away from work, and with Mad-Eye gone, that leaves me as the one trained professional the Order can provide. I won't go pink-haired and recognisable, if that makes you feel any better."
Remus looks at her wryly over the rim of his mug. "Yes, I much prefer everyone to think that werewolf Remus Lupin is running around on his new bride with some blonde."
"Blonde it is, then." Dora clinks mugs with him. "Cheers, Mad Moony."
But while Dora arrives at Bill and Fleur's wedding blonde and smiling, neither blonde nor smiling does she stay.
When the Death Eaters appear out of the air in the midst of the dance floor and Remus and Dora fly apart, wands drawn, casting Shield Charms to allow the wedding guests to Disapparate to safety, Remus catches his wife morphing her askew hair out the corner of his eye.
"It's no fun if dear Auntie Bella doesn't recognise me, is it?" she quips; indeed, if not for her signature hair, Remus himself is not sure he would know her, so alien are her features to him, hardened in combat as she studies the cloaked and masked figures for the tall figure of Bellatrix Lestrange.
Bellatrix, however, is not among the Death Eaters who unmask themselves before the handful of Order members they subdued--only the Weasley family, and Rubeus Hagrid, apart from Remus and Dora. Remus thinks his wife's vivid hair colour fades somewhat at this realisation; it certainly does as hours of interrogation drag by, during which Dora, in particular, is verbally assaulted with the worst sort of derision only her psychopathic aunt could top.
By the time they are released, without explanation, long past dinner, Dora is mousy brown and sports a deep purple bruise across her cheekbone, which she is too agitated to allow Remus to treat when they return home to Ickenham.
"Nobody was injured," she says, pacing around their bedroom which is mostly furnished with Dora's things from her flat, except for a hulking bureau with a Talking Mirror opposite the window which informs them when enemies are on the street--generally, when the Muggle postman is about the neighbourhood. "That was the most half-arsed interrogation I've ever heard of--not that I expect much from that lot. Where the hell were Voldemort's star pupils? Dolohov? The Lestranges? Pettigrew? Snape?" She spits the last.
"Taking over the Ministry, I expect," says Remus. "Frankly, I'm not sorry we were spared the pleasure of being Crucioed."
Not that it could have been much worse than how it had felt to sit, bound and silenced, while Lucius Malfoy flung verbal filth at Dora:
Did you marry the beast because you like it on all fours? Do you morph into a dog for him, bitch? Will the pups come in litters? Do you beg him to bite you?
Remus had nearly vomited; nausea rolls over him even now, hearing the drawling voice in his head.
Dora, of course, was no passive victim of the mockery. She effectively silenced Malfoy by rejoining, How does Auntie Narcissa feel about you sucking Voldemort's dick? Which had inspired an uproar of laughter from Fred and George, and even cracked grins on the stupid faces of Crabbe and Goyle, who roughed the twins up for their sense of humour, to hide their own amusement at Malfoy's expense. It would have been horrible enough to see Lucius retaliate physically against Dora, but Draco is responsible for the bruise marring Dora's pale face. Draco, who used to mock Remus' shabby robes and barely squeaked by with passing marks in Defence, and who shrank away in cowardice and revulsion when he saw his former--werewolf--teacher's eyes on him.
Remus strides across the bedroom and catches Dora by the shoulders, steering her to the bed.
"Please sit down and let me see to this for you. We are extremely lucky not to have been inflicted worse damage than this, but even so, I hardly like the reminder of watching a boy strike my wife. And you need to rest. All this stress can't be good for the baby."
She sits at the edge of the bed and holds still as he sits and turns her cheek to him; she wines as the cold Anti-Bruise Paste touches her skin and at the light pressure of his fingers on her injury.
But the pain doesn't distract her from musing over the events at the Burrow in true Auror fashion.
"I don't know how lucky we are," she says. "All I can see is that Voldemort's trying to intimidate the Order. He doesn't see us as a threat. He didn't need us for information about Harry. The interrogation was a diversion."
Remus' hand hovers over her cheek, globs of ointment falling from his fingers onto the duvet. He flicks it off and sits beside her, absorbing her theory.
"They were pretending to interrogate us about Harry to keep us away from where they thought the real source may be?" he says.
"Exactly. But where...?
For a moment they sit in silence, mulling over who Voldemort would look to beyond the Order for information regarding Harry's whereabouts.
"They searched the Burrow," says Remus, "but they clearly didn't expect him to be there. What about other Order homes? Our safe houses?"
His heart plummets at the same moment Dora's eyes round. "Oh my God--Remus, my parents...Bellatrix..."
They leave at once.
They are braced, upon arrival at Ted and Andromeda's house, to do battle with Bellatrix. When they find only the evidence of her having recently been there, Remus is not sure whether it is a relief or not. Certainly he is relieved by the absence of a Dark Mark, but there are fates worse than Death.
Opening the back door to the kitchen, which has been left standing ajar, the doorknob and locks blasted off, they are not greeted by the usual pleasant hospitable aromas of Andromeda's cooking, but instead are nearly knocked down with the acrid stench of fresh blood and vomit and filth.
Cautious as they were approaching the house, certain that Voldemort's spies guard the place, specifically waiting for members of the Order of the Phoenix, Dora bolts from beneath the Invisibility Cloak and back out the open door into the August twilight air, and empties her stomach into the flower bed beside the step. Eschewing vigilance, Remus goes out after her, supporting her and pulling her hair back from her face as she retches. She chokes out a request for water, and he darts back into the kitchen, which he notices looks as if a herd of Hippogriffs stampeded through, and finds a glass that isn't broken amid the wreckage of Andromeda's cupboards. He fills it with his wand, and rushes back outside in time to find Dora straightening up and wiping her mouth with her fingertips.
He offers her his handkerchief with the water, and as she rinses her mouth, he asks, "Would you like to wait here under the Invisibility Cloak while I go in first and see to your parents? Judging from the smell, their condition won't be pretty."
But Dora throws her shoulders back and juts her chin. "I'm okay. I'm sure it's just being pregnant. Only, it's supposed to be morning sickness, isn't it?"
Her defiance actually brings the slightest of smiles to Remus' face. "As I recall, Lily Potter and Alice Longbottom both repeated that as their mantra as they were ill for entire days."
"Hm. Well, we don't have all day, do we? And I'm not the first Auror in history to have a baby."
Stepping around him, Dora raises her wand, draws a deep breath, which she holds, and re-enters her parents' house.
A whimper, not audible until they reach the middle of the kitchen, directs them to Ted's study just off the hall. Dora's footsteps quicken, the heels of the strappy pink shoes she wore to the wedding scuffing and sliding on the hardwood floor.
"Dad? Mum? It's me, Nymphadora. Oh, great Merlin..."
She stops dead in the doorway of the study, hands clutching the mouldings. Remus peers over her shoulder into the dark room and sees that, like the kitchen--and, he suspects, the rest of the house--it is in a shambles: furniture is toppled, books flung from shelves, bindings cracked and pages littering the thick brown carpet, Ted's collection of Manchester Manticores pennants and posters ripped from the panelled walls.
The mess is by far the least disturbing part.
The smell is almost overwhelming in here; Dora is green, and Remus fears he, too, may be sick. He points his wand at a cracked window, security be damned, and raises it to let in some air; he casts a Muffliato Spell to ensure they will not be overheard by any spies lurking outside.
In the centre of the room, Ted lies curled in a foetal position, convulsing and whimpering. His hands curl against his chest, and Remus notes that some of his fingers are bent directions they ought not--broken. Saliva glistens on the corner of his mouth and down his chins, and his eyes, fixed on some unseen horror, are watery red with broken blood vessels. Remus cannot help but think of poor Frank and Alice Longbottom, tortured into madness, and pleads silently that Dora will not lose her father to that fate.
Beside Ted, propped somewhat upright on one elbow, a deathly pale Andromeda, her soft brown hair fallen loose from her usually sleek coif, points her wand with a trembling hand.
"P-prove..." She coughs, but continues raspily, "Prove to me you're my daughter..."
Dora scrunches her face and changes her hair to pink--though, Remus notes, only on top, and the ends are faded. But it is enough for Andromeda, whose hand falls to her side, fingers releasing her wand, and her heavy-lidded eyes close in relief.
"And this really is Remus," says Dora, stepping into the room. "I haven't taken my eyes off him all day."
With a flick of her wand, she cleans the soiled carpet with a Scourgify that belies every claim that she's inept at householdy spells, and drops to her knees beside her parents.
"Oh mum." The words are a sob in her throat as she embraces her mother, kisses her forehead, but then she draws back, composed and intense. "Was it Bellatrix?"
"M-my own s-sister used the...C-cruciatus Curse."
Another paroxysm of coughs, and Remus refills the glass Dora drank from and kneels to help his mother-in-law drink. Her eyes wander to Ted.
"Your father got the worst of it. I'm fine, please see to him."
Remus does, first cleaning Ted's robes, then mending his fingers and casting what revival spells he knows while Dora rights an overturned leather chaise and helps her mother onto it.
"Dora, your face," says Andromeda in concern, indicating the same spot on her own cheek.
"We were ambushed at the wedding, and I said something not very ladylike to Lucius Malfoy. My dear little cousin Draco heard and hexed me one. Brat. But I don't appreciate people calling my husband a beast."
"But he is one!"
They all startle as Ted snaps suddenly out of his stupor and sits bolt upright.
"The Prophet says! Werewolves are Magical Beasts!"
"Dad!"
Dora springs to him, hooking her arms around his girth from behind, and attempts to pull him into a reclining position on her lap.
"You've been tortured," she croons to him. "You're not well. Please lie still and don't try to talk."
But Ted struggles against her and continues, oblivious to his daughter's plea, as if compelled by a curse:
"Beasts not allowed to marry human girls...Violation of the Breeding Ban...They said Dora was sacked because of you, you filthy--"
"Lies, Ted," Andromeda says. "They talked lies while they were torturing us. That's the worst part of it."
"Actually that's true," says Remus quietly. "Dora did lose her job because of me."
Ted growls, and Dora looks hexes at Remus, then glances over her shoulder at her stunned-looking mother.
"I'd have been sacked regardless. The Ministry's fallen. Remus," she adds, almost savagely, tightening her hold on Ted. "Go to the kitchen and bring me whatever's left intact of Mum's potion kit. I've got to sedate him."
Remus scrambles to his feet, only too glad to leave this scene, if only for a moment.
Ted's voice follows him into the kitchen:
"If you were a decent human being, you'd leave her. But you proved you're nothing but a monster by making her an outcast! Her own cousin hurt her because of you--"
"Draco's a bigoted little shit," says Tonks. "Sorry, Mum."
"Ted, please--"
Remus returns with the cauldron full of potion supplies to find Ted has broken free from Dora's hold and pushed himself upright. But he stumbles over the coffee table and into Remus.
"Get out of my house, werewolf." He grabs the lapels of Remus' robes in his thick fingers, shaking him. "You disgust me--"
"Silencio!" Dora's voice rings out, then, levitating an armchair directly behind her father, she uses her wand to make him sit.
"He doesn't know what he's saying," she says to Remus in a low tone, hefting the cauldron into her own arms. "I'm sure he's just repeating what Bellatrix said when she was torturing them. Bitch. I'll kill her."
"I should..."
Remus doesn't know what he means to say.
"Someone ought to go see how our other connections have fared," he chokes out. "Those Order members who weren't at the wedding. That is, if you'll be all right here, with your parents."
Dora nods. "Yes, go. You should try and find out where Harry's got to. He trusts you, ask what Dumbledore asked him to do so we can help."
"Nymphadora..."
Andromeda's voice diverts their attention to Ted, struggling against the charm that keeps him seated. His mute mouth forms angry words. Dora sets her potion things on his clutter desk, sweeping paperwork on the floor to clear a workspace.
"I'll be fine here," she says. "Go, Remus. Harry's most important now. Without him we're all lost."
Remus drapes the Invisibility Cloak over the desk chair. "You keep this in case you need to go out."
She picks it up and thrusts it back at him. "Don't be stupid, I can morph."
"But they can't," says Remus, covering her hands around the folds of the garment, inclining his head to indicate her parents.
Dora's expression changes to one of concession on this point, but turns dark eyes up to him in which fear threatens to break through her crisis mode strength.
"Neither can you."
Remus touches her cheek; the bruise is fading to greenish-lavender. "I know how to run."
She nods, and arches up to peck his lips. "Be safe. I love you. No matter what anyone says. So nothing can touch you, okay?"
He returns the sentiment, kisses her, and touches her stomach.
But when he Disapparates, his father-in-law's words not only touch him, but clutch at his heart with iron fingers.
A week later finds Remus stood once again at the doorstep of the Tonks house, more afraid what Dora's father will do to him than of the Death Eaters who might be watching from the shadows around the building.
For the first time since he fled Grimmauld Place four days ago, he pauses to consider why he chose to run here, of all places. It is not lost on him that even after his impulsive offer to go with Harry--without Dora--his instinct upon Harry's rejection--and judgment--was to go straight back to his wife.
He is here, he supposes, to check in on her, to see how she's faring with her parents, if they are recovered, if she is well and if her bout with nausea was an isolated incident or the first side effect of her pregnancy. As to what will happen after...
What Remus said to Harry about Dora and the child being better off without him leapt from his tongue without forethought, though part of him is sure he must have been thinking it deep down all along. Would you marry me again? Dora asked him, and he had no answer. Does that mean he does have an answer, that it is no, he wouldn't, and in fact he means to make it as if he never had married her?
But he cannot make it so, no matter how much he or anyone else wishes it, not now that there is a child. In his heart he knows he doesn't wish it at all; every time he cast a Patronus these seven days on the run through the Dementor-occupied country, it's been with the memory of his wedding day, or of saying, We made a baby. But the rotten fingers grasped and the foul mouths yawned to steal that hope and happiness and bereave him of all but the despair he carried into Grimmauld Place and brings here to this doorstep, where Ted Tonks' voice echoes with the law of the land and Remus' own words to Harry:
If you were a decent human being, you'd leave her...The Ministry of Magic shall grant no license for the marriage of a lycanthrope to a human...Don't you understand what I've done to my wife and my unborn child? I should never have married her, I've made her an outcast!
Not knowing what answer he will receive, Remus raises his hand and knocks on the door.
"Who's there?" comes a muffled woman's voice--Dora's--almost at once, as if she's been sat by the door waiting. "Declare yourself!"
"It is I, Remus John Lupin, werewolf, husband to Nymphadora who prefers to be called Tonks...or Dora...and father to the child she conceived ten days ago."
A series of clicks and clanks and rattles. The door swings inward, just enough for Remus to slip through. He leans back against the door to shut it behind him, and in a blur of pink Dora does up the locks, then steps back and faces him, arms akimbo.
"You're bloody lucky I already made that little announcement," she says in her best no-nonsense Auror tone that once shut up an ecstatic Stan Shunpike--but abruptly her authoritative posture slumps, and her hair fades and her gaze, her eyes suddenly very large in a pale face, bends.
"Mum knows, anyway," she says softly. "Dad...He's gone."
Remus cannot readily find his voice. "Gone?" he rasps on a second attempt. "You mean...He didn't make it? I thought--"
"No, he's alive," says Dora. "At least as far as I know. I mean he's literally gone. Left. The day the Muggle-born Registration Commission was founded."
"Have you seen the papers, Remus?" Andromeda steps out of the shadows, wand clasped at her side.
"I've managed to keep up-to-date on current events. Andromeda...I'm so sorry."
"Thank you. I'm glad you've come back safe and sound to Nymphadora. Although you look like you could badly do with a cup of tea."
"Yes, thank you."
Andromeda disappears into the kitchen, and Remus stands unmoving and mute as Dora, unbuttoning his travelling cloak for him, tells him how Ted raged all that day after the news broke about his principles, about how he refused to register, and how he left in the night.
"He left a note." She sniffs, and blinks. "I never got to tell him about the baby."
"Did he give a reason for leaving? To avoid arrest for not registering?"
Tonks shakes her head and moves behind him to tug his cloak from his shoulders. "He didn't care about that. He said it was to protect Mum. She's pure-blood so they won't hurt her if he's gone."
"But that's absurd," Remus blurts. "Nothing Ted can do will make Bellatrix forgive your mother for marrying a Muggle-born wizard. He's better off here, protecting her with his wand!"
And then it hits him like a Bludger how absurd his own line of thinking has become. His cloak falls from Dora's hands as he turns and enfolds her--them, wife and unborn child--who, if he has cursed them, he must stand by and do all in his power to protect. Whether he can give them anything but his unyielding love and his wand as a shield is irrelevant, and something he will simply have to learn to live with. He, by no means, must cast them out.
Although Dora, as usual, is not one to sit back and let anyone else, husband or not, fight for her.
"Did you find Harry, then?" she asks, drawing back from his embrace. "It's been all Mum can do to stop me climbing the walls, I'm so bloody ready to get back out in the field and finish Voldemort and his thugs once and for all."
She looks ready to leap into a battle now, and though Remus admirers her fortitude, a shiver creeps along his spine as he thinks of Sirius cooped up for a year in Grimmauld Place, and how he'd been downright thrilled to go to the Department of Mysteries, which had surely done him no favours in combat. But he shakes off the sudden terror with the thought that unlike Sirius, Dora is a trained soldier, level-headed enough in a crisis to meet even Mad-Eye's approval.
"I spoke to Harry," Remus tells her, "and he remains adamant that Dumbledore means this task to be his alone."
He wonders, fleetingly, what Harry would have said if he'd offered his and Dora's service, although he is quite certain Harry would still have said no, especially with a baby on the way.
"He does have the help of Ron and Hermione--"
"But--"
"The last words Dumbledore said to me are that Harry is our best hope. Strange as it seems," Remus goes on, more quietly, "much as my instinct is to protect my best friend's son, I do trust in Harry. With the Prophet and the WWN slandering him at every turn, I say the Order's got a battle of our own getting the truth to the people so Harry will have a better chance." His fingers stroke Dora's stomach. "So our child will have a better world to be born into."
Dora covers his hand and looks up at him with eyes that are at once sad and hopeful. "A world where Muggle-borns survive?"
Remus squeezes her hands. "We will do all we can to help them, to find your father and bring him home. I swear it."
Dora's grim nod is cut off by her mouth suddenly yawning wide. She sways into him, and rests her head heavily against his chest.
"First, can we go home, Remus? I haven't slept properly since you left, and it can't be good for the baby."
"Oh, Dora--"
"I just couldn't bear the thought of something happening to you while I was asleep." Glancing up at him with a wan smile, she adds. "Also it's not easy to fall asleep when you're curled up on the bathroom floor clutching the toilet bowl."
Remus strokes her hair and neck in sympathy. "Are you sure you want to go home and hug our toilet bowl? Who knows what sort of security sensors Mad-Eye put on it to prevent intruders coming in through the plumbing."
Dora chuckles a little against him, but squeezes him tightly. "It's a risk I'm willing to take."
Much as Remus would love to Disapparate home with his wife without further discussion, the blast of the kettle in the kitchen, and the clinking of china, reminds him that they alone are not the only family whose lives are in need of re-ordering.
"Will your mother be all right here alone?" he asks.
"I will be, thank you," answers Andromeda, sweeping into the hall with the promised cup of tea for Remus. "Nymphadora and I have spent the better part of the last several days setting new security spells in anticipation of her leaving with you to go off with Harry, or to go home in the case of your being able to convince her that expectant mothers have other interests than going off on adventures."
"Looks like we're both getting our way, Mum." Dora slips her arms around Remus' waist as he, colouring slightly, takes a drink of his tea. "I'll be going home, though I'm sure to have some adventures."
Andromeda raises an eyebrow, and Remus thinks her lips might just curve upward in the slightest of smirks before she turns back to the kitchen, murmuring something about giving them a moment together whilst she packs an herbal nausea remedy to send home with Dora.
Alone again, Remus sets down his tea on the console table and turns to Dora, taking her heart-shaped face in his hands. "I'm looking forward to many more adventures with you, as well, but all joking aside, Dora, I can't give you and the baby shelter, or...or anything."
"You give us your open arms, where no one can touch us. That's everything."
It seems impossible, but as he rests his cheek against her head, and sees out the corner of his eye that she is, once again, vividest pink, he can only believe that it is so.
She looks up at him. "And holding my hair out the way when I'm sick."
He chuckles, brushes her fringe off her forehead and kisses her. "That," he says, "I can do."
"Remus," she says, a question in her voice.
"Hm?"
"Can you do it now?"