Eleven Years Later: Bedtime Story (2/2)
Title: Eleven Years Later: Bedtime Story (2/2)
Author: kanedax
Spoilers: Deathly Hallows & Previous Chapters
Characters/Pairings: Harry/Ginny, The Potter children, Teddy, Andromeda, Lupin/Tonks
Rating: R for language and graphic violence
Word Count: 4,712 words
Summary: Teddy wants some answers
Notes: This section was originally supposed to be attached to the previous chapter, Special Delivery. But in the end I decided that it deserved to be a stand-alone. It’s also extremely reliant on continuity and timelines of Deathly Hallows. If I screw anything up, I’m just writing it off as AU.
I don’t own any of these characters. They all belong to JK Rowling.
Bedtime Story (1/2) / Previous Chapters / Unprecedented
“Good girl!” roared a figure running through the door toward them, and Ginny saw Aberforth again, his gray hair flying as he led a small group of students past. “They look like they might be breaching the north battlements, they’ve brought giants of their own!”
“Have you seen Remus?” Tonks called after him.
“He was dueling Dolohov,” shouted Aberforth, “haven’t seen him since!”
“Tonks,” said Ginny, “Tonks, I’m sure he’s okay-“
But Tonks had run off into the dust after Aberforth.
Ginny turned, helpless, to Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
“They’ll be all right,” said Harry. “Ginny, we’ll be back in a moment, just keep out of the way, keep safe - come on!” he said to Ron and Hermione, and they ran back to the stretch of wall beyond which the Room of Requirement was waiting to do the bidding of the next entrant.
She watched in silence as Harry walked back and forth past the blank wall, his face tight in concentration. On the third pass, the door materialized.
Harry opened the door. Stepped inside. Ron and Hermione followed.
The door closed.
The door vanished.
And Ginny was alone.
“Oh, God,” Ginny muttered to herself helplessly. She stared at the wall, took a look in the direction that Tonks and Aberforth had run.
If I stay here, she thought, I’m in no less danger than anywhere else in the castle. And infinitely more useless.
I could follow Harry, but I don’t know what room they’re in. And I don’t know how I feel about him, but I definitely don’t want to give him the satisfaction of telling me off again.
I could follow Aberforth, but the last thing he needs is another person to order around.
That left only one choice. If Harry wasn’t letting her help, wasn’t letting her be with him, then she’d go to someone who would need help. Someone who was alone.
“Tonks!” Ginny yelled, running down the hall. “Wait for me!”
She tried her best to listen for Nymphadora, or Aberforth, or anyone. But everywhere she turned, she heard nothing but the roar of great beasts, the sound of spells connecting with the stone walls of Hogwarts, and the screams of the injured and the dying.
She reached a point where a hall crossed hers, and stopped in the middle. The dust in the air was so thick at this point that she could barely see in any direction. She just barely avoided three bodies that ran toward her.
“Luna!” she yelled, grabbing the arm of the pale blonde, who was running towards who-knew-where with Seamus Finnigan and Ernie MacMillan.
“Oh, hello, Ginny,” Luna said, as though they were just meeting in the hall between classes. “How are you?”
“I could be better,” she said. “Have you seen Tonks?”
“Tonks?”
“Nymphadora,” Ginny said, not remembering if the two had ever been introduced. “Professor Lupin’s wife.”
“Oh, yes,” said Luna. “She passed us, going that way. Was looking for Professor Lupin.”
“Okay,” said Ginny. “Thanks.”
“Come with us, Ginny,” said Ernie.
“Yeah,” said Seamus, with the smirk of someone who loved being in the fight. “We’re gonna break some heads.”
“I need to find Tonks,” Ginny said. “She left Teddy at her mother’s house. I need to make sure she’s okay.”
“I understand,” said Luna, giving Ginny a quick kiss on the cheek. “Stay safe.”
“You, too,” said Ginny, giving Luna’s hand a quick squeeze before running in the direction that the trio had just left.
Come on, come on, come on, she repeated to herself as she sprinted down the hall, leaping over fallen suits of armor and fallen black-cloaked figures. Someone give me something to work with…
“Dora!”
Ginny skidded to a halt, throwing her arms out to regain her balance after nearly wiping out on a particularly thick patch of dust.
That’ll do.
She turned to her right, down a short flight of steps, to see Lupin and Dolohov, still dueling, just like Aberforth had said. Only this time Dolohov wasn’t the only Death Eater, as another was teaming up against Remus, and two more joined the fray as Tonks ran toward her husband.
“Dora, you’re not supposed to be here!”
“Shut up and fight, love,” Dora said, throwing her hex into the circle. “We’ll complain later.”
Ginny had seen Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks in action before. In the first Battle of Hogwarts, the night Dumbledore died, she saw them fight against the invading Death Eaters. Although Harry never spoke of it, Neville was more than pleased to tell everyone about the battle at the Department of Mysteries, calling them ‘a sight to behold.’
But eleven years later, sitting at a table with their son, his grandmother, and her husband, Ginny Potter could barely describe what young Ginny Weasley had seen that night. Fighting together, Remus and Nymphadora Lupin were a force. His animal senses, her Auror training, co-existed as one. It was like a dance. Like choreography. They knew how the other moved, where the other was focused. One would kneel while the other spun and took out a Death Eater from the rear. They would fight four Death Eaters back-to-back. They would fight five face-to-face. They would split apart as a sixth arrived, only to come back together again as the number was reduced once again to four. And then three.
Ginny had followed Nymphadora because she wanted to help. But standing at the top of those stairs, listening to Dolohov bellow orders as husband and wife fought silently, she realized the best thing that she could do now was just to duck behind the collapsed pillar beside her and watch.
To join this battle would only worsen the odds. The same would hold true if Merlin himself had entered the fray. They fought on another level that night.
But it still wasn’t enough.
Nymphadora was the first. Ginny couldn’t tell if it was a mistake made on her part, or if it was a momentary slip of Lupin’s attention. Or it could have just been dumb luck on the part of the nameless, faceless Death Eater grunt. Just like a botched play in Quidditch, a death in battle can be blamed on no one and everyone.
All she knew was that a green bolt of energy flew from the wand of the Death Eater. It connected with Dora’s side. She collapsed, bowling over Lupin moments after he had reduced the number of opponents to two. He fell down, her light frame suddenly turned to dead weight on top of him.
Lupin flipped over onto his back and saw who was on top of him. His eyes widened in shock. His mouth hung open. He didn’t see the Dolohov behind him, moving in for the kill.
But Ginny did.
“Protego!” she screamed, standing and pointing her wand at Lupin. The air around him wavered like a burst of heat. The green hex ricocheted in mid-air, blasting the head of a stone gargoyle from its body.
The attack brought Remus back to reality. Gripping his wand tightly, he spun around, arcing a blue flame from its tip. The flame spread outward, blasting Dolohov out of the window to the grounds below. He was the lucky one, as the blue fire reached the nameless Death Eater, the killer Death Eater, and removed his head cleanly from his body.
Although her unconscious mind would bring the image back to her for years afterwards, she barely registered the decapitated body crumpling to the floor. She was too focused on Remus Lupin, who had fallen to his knees in front of his wife.
“It’s over, Dora,” he whispered. “It’s over. You can wake up now.”
“Remus…” Ginny breathed, willing herself to travel down the steps.
“It’s over,” Lupin repeated, pressing his hand to Nymphadora’s ribcage, feeling for a heartbeat. “Dora, you don’t have to pretend anymore…”
Pretend? Ginny thought. She remembered Tonks telling her and Hermione about the specialized Auror training that she had gone through. About how she could thicken her breastbone, her neck, her wrists, to mask any pulse. To adjust her lungs to require less oxygen, so that she could go ten, maybe twenty minutes without breathing.
To play dead.
Don’t fool yourself, Ginny thought. She’d be back by now if she were faking it.
“Remus, please…” Ginny said, walking forward and lowering herself to her knees before him. “Professor Lupin…”
“I’m Remus John Lupin,” he continued, his voice rising, “ son of Jonathan and Rhea, father to Theodore. I met you in the summer of 1995, married you in the summer of 1997 in a small ceremony at Godric’s Hollow, your patronus is a werewolf and you have to wake up!”
“Remus, she’s gone,” Ginny said. Hearing the words in her own ears, she felt as though the air was pressed from her lungs. Nymphadora Lupin, the bright happy klutz who would sit at the table at number twelve and make faces by request (the pig’s snout was always Ginny’s favorite) was now lying on the cold stone floor of Hogwarts, and would never awake.
Remus Lupin collapsed on top of his wife, lifting her lifeless body and pressing his face into it. Ginny knew that the tears were flowing down her own face, and she put her hands on Lupin’s shoulders, trying the best that she could…
But she also knew that it wasn’t over yet… and because the cries of pain, the howlings of grief, weren’t coming from him, Ginny knew that Lupin felt the same way.
“Remus…” she whispered. “Remus, she’s gone. We… we have to…”
Have to do what? her rational mind cried out. What is there to do? What are you supposed to do? Seek revenge? Tell him you both have to keep fighting? Get him killed and make Teddy an orphan? What are you supposed to do?
“Remus, you have to go back,” she said. “Teddy’s at Andromeda’s. You can’t stay here…”
Remus lifted his head. His cheeks were dry. His face was set.
The time for tears is later, Ginny saw in his eyes.
“Do you still love him, Ginny?”
Harry. They were kneeling together over the body of his dead wife, and he was asking her about Harry… And as soon as he asked the question, Ginny knew that was where she needed to be. Who she needed to see more than anyone else in all of this death and chaos. It hit her like a Bludger to the stomach.
“You don’t need to answer,” Remus said. “I can see it in your eyes.”
He looked back down at Nymphadora, rested his hand on her cheek.
“I asked him to be Teddy’s godfather,” said Remus quietly. “But my son just lost his mother. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I can’t leave now. Not after this. Her death cannot be meaningless.
“If I don’t make it…”
“Remus…”
A huge explosion erupted somewhere in the distance. The building shook with its intensity, and Ginny had to put her hands down to make sure she didn’t topple herself.
“If I don’t make it…” he said more firmly, taking Ginny’s hand and squeezing it so tightly that it hurt. “If I don’t make it, I know that Harry will be a good father for my son. But he will need a mother in his life…”
He looked into Ginny’s eyes. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with you and Harry,” he said. “I don’t think you even know what’s going to happen. In the end, it doesn’t matter. I just want you to promise me that Teddy will have a wonderful mother in you. Can you promise me that, Ginevra?”
Ginny didn’t even need to think about it. She nodded. “I promise,” she said. “I promise that he won’t be alone…”
“I know he won’t,” said Lupin. “But I needed to hear it.”
Lupin slid his arms beneath Nymphadora’s body, lifted her up, and carried her into the corner.
“You’ll be safe here,” he said quietly, setting her down and kissing her lips. Ginny removed her own jacket and laid it across Dora after Lupin stood again. “I’ll be back soon, my love.”
Ginny knew that she was close to crying again, but steeled herself. Tears come later, she said. Not now.
“Where’s Harry?” asked Remus. “Ron? Hermione? Have they found what they were looking for?”
“The diadem,” Ginny said. “I don’t know. They asked me to leave the Room of Requirement. Switched it, and went back in. That’s where I saw them last.”
“Then that’s where we’ll go,” said Lupin. “Come on.” Ginny nodded, and followed Lupin as he ran up the stairs.
Ginny was amazed that they hadn’t found any more resistance in their journey to the hallway housing the Room of Requirement. But when they reached the hall, she realized that the massive pile of rubble, the wall blasted inwards, probably had a lot to do with it. She saw arms and legs twisted beneath the fallen stone.
“Oh, God,” she breathed.
“Well, now we know why we didn’t find any Death Eaters,” said Lupin.
“Harry, please don’t be under there,” Ginny gasped. “Please, God, still be alive.”
“Try the door,” Lupin said. “You see if he’s still inside, I’ll watch your back.”
Ginny nodded and faced the blank wall.
I need to go where Harry is, she thought, I need to go where Harry is…
Back and forth she walked. Back and forth, back and forth. She looked up. No door.
“Nothing?”
Ginny shook her head. Take me to where the diadem is hidden, she thought. Back and forth three times again. Still no door.
“Maybe he already found it,” said Lupin. “They’re probably already gone.”
“They couldn’t go this way,” Ginny said, nodding to the debris. “Unless this happened after they left. We must have missed them.”
“I concur,” said Lupin, studying a broken wand he picked up by the opposite wall. “They probably left in the direction we came from. Gone down one of the other hallways.”
Ginny nodded, turning around and running back towards the intersection.
But within moments she was airborne, lifted by her ankle. She raised her head to the floor, now nearly ten feet below, to see a gray blur sweep past her and collide with the wall.
“Are you okay, Ginny?” Lupin called out, and Ginny looked to see that his wand was pointed at her, and she realized that he had used a Levicorpus on her to protect her from…
“Good move, my boy,” came a snarling voice from beneath her. “You have good reflexes.” Lupin twitched his wand, and Ginny was whisked away, far from the reach of Fenrir Greyback. She landed twenty feet away, but still close enough to hear what was being said.
“Reflexes nothing,” said Lupin. “I could smell you.”
Fenrir pulled himself to his feet. “Of course you did,” he said. “You’re one of my brood. Powerful instinct.”
“What are you doing here, Greyback?”
“Looking for the Potter brat, are you?” Fenrir said. “Heard you and the little bint talking about him. You already missed him.”
“And why should we believe you?” said Lupin.
“You don’t have to,” said Fenrir with a nasty smirk, wiping blood from his lips. “Little Muggle cunt took me off my dinner. Fuckin’ Four-Eyes knocked me for a loop with her tenpin ball. Then Dolohov pulls me up and tells me that you were the one who knocked him down a peg. I couldn’t resist a little family reunion.”
“It would take a lot for me to call us ‘family,’ Greyback,” said Lupin, his wand still at the ready.
“Well, such as it is,” said Fenrir. “Been waiting to do something about you for a while, my little traitor. Plus I think I found a better dinner, anyway. The last girl had too much fat on her. This one looks nice and lean…”
He turned around and stared at Ginny with hungry eyes, his wolf-like tongue flicking out and licking the blood from his lips. Ginny hoped that she never knew whose blood that was. She heard a crack from behind Fenrir, and the werewolf was pulled backwards by his ankles, falling flat on his face. He turned around with a snarl to see Remus glaring at him, his wand raised like he had pulled Fenrir with a bullwhip.
“You don’t look at her like that,” Lupin warned. “Ever.”
“Well, that’s quite a shame, Lupin,” Fenrir said. “Your bitch isn’t even cold yet and you’ve already found-“
Fenrir wasn’t allowed to finish that thought. Remus was on top of him, his wand forgotten. The fight that Remus and Dora had waged against Dolohov and the Death Eaters was a dance. This was the opposite.
Tearing. Scratching. Biting. Snarling. Slamming into walls. Beating heads against the marble floor. This wasn’t humanity. It was simply two animals, pretending to be human, trying to kill their opponent. Ripping of the jugular would be a preferred victory for either of them. With their own teeth, if possible.
Ginny kept her wand at the ready, hoping that Remus and Fenrir would release each other long enough for her to get a shot in. She knew what Remus would say: “This isn’t your fight!” But she didn’t care. This was war. War wasn’t fair.
And Teddy needed Remus Lupin to win.
They were beasts without fangs.
Wolves without claws.
But, unfortunately, some animals were still more prepared than others.
Ginny saw the flash of metal. She cried out in warning, but wasn’t sure if any words came out. The blade slashed. Remus cried out. Fenrir stood above him triumphantly, knife stained red to match the color blooming across Lupin’s abdomen.
“NO!” Ginny screamed. Fenrir snapped his head to attention, and Ginny felt sheer panic start to overcome her.
“Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood,” Fenrir said in a psychotic sing-song. “You sure are looking good.”
“Stay… stay back…” she said, raising her wand, knowing that it was useless, that the spells wouldn’t come.
And Fenrir knew that she knew. He smiled and took a step towards her. “You’re everything that a Big Bad Wolf could want…”
“I said… you don’t look at her…”
Fenrir turned around. Remus was standing behind him. He held his arm over his cut, and Ginny was terrified to realize that he was doing his best to hold his insides inside.
“You’re in no position to talk,” Fenrir snarled. “I just neutered you, boy.”
Lupin smiled through the grimace of pain. “This puppy still has some bark left in him…”
Remus Lupin’s speed still astounded Ginny until the day she died. He removed his arm from his wound, reached up, grabbed Fenrir’s collar with his blood-soaked hand. His other hand was raised in a fist.
It drove down.
Fenrir Greyback let out a bestial howl of agony as the fragment of wand, which once belonged to another of Voldemort’s nameless minions before he was buried in a pile of rubble, pierced his eyeball. Lupin released him and dropped to the ground, and Fenrir, his mind blinded by pain, ran off, his hands covering the oozing hole. The dog-like yelping noise he was making would have almost been comical in other situations.
But not now.
“Remus!” Ginny yelled, sprinting towards the fallen Order member.
He looked up at her, his eyes far away. The last bit of exertion seemed to suck the energy out of him. “Ginny…” he whispered, blood pouring from his mouth.
“Remus, I’m here,” Ginny said, falling down beside him. “We’re going to get you help…”
Lupin shook his head. “Too late…”
“No!” Ginny cried out, putting her hand behind his neck, pointing her wand at his wound. “No, it’s not too late…Episkey… Episkey…”
“Don’t forget… your promise…”
“SOMEBODY!” Ginny screamed into the empty hallway, her throat straining. “SOMEBODY HELP!”
Lupin grabbed her collar, forcing her to look at him. “Ginny…” he gasped, one eye strangely off-kilter. “Promise me…”
“I promise!” Ginny said, tears pouring now. “I promise, I promise, please don’t die…”
“Make sure… Teddy’s happy…”
“I will… Remus, please…”
“Don’t worry about…”
And as Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger made their way into the Shrieking Shack, Remus Lupin died in Ginny Weasley’s arms.
“Nooo…” Ginny moaned in agony, clutching the former Hogwarts professor to her. “No, God, not you too…”
She looked around helplessly. Where is everyone? she thought. Why isn’t anyone helping?
You’re on your own now, she thought.
No… No, I can’t leave him…
You have to find someone. Someone who can help move…
Don’t…
Move the body.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, her face red and blotched from her tears. “Oh, God…”
But she knew what she had to do. Her mind was having difficulty focusing on it, but she knew what she had to do. She knew that Fenrir had run down the hall. That left the other direction. Over the rubble. Maybe someone was over there…
You can do it, she thought. You’re strong. You can do this.
“I can do this,” she said. “I’ll be back for you, Remus. I promise.”
She gently lowered Lupin’s body to the floor and pushed herself to her feet. She walked toward the demolished wall and slowly climbed her way over it.
See? Her rational mind, encouraging to the last, said as she made it to the other side. There has to be people over here. That was easy. Now just go find…
Ginny saw something out of the corner of her eye. In a niche in the wall.
A body.
With red hair.
“And that’s when I found Fred,” Ginny Potter said quietly. “And that’s when I completely lost it.”
“Oh, my God,” Harry breathed. Not only to see Tonks and Remus, but to have found her brother where Harry and the others had left him…
“How…?” Teddy asked, his eyes wide and red.
“He died in the wall collapse,” said Harry. “The three of us, Fred, Percy, were all there when it happened. We had moved the body to a safe place.”
“I don’t know how long I was there,” said Ginny, her affixed to her hands, clutched in front of her on the table. “But Percy and Bill found us. Percy had brought him to help move… to help move Fred. Percy helped me, and Bill found Remus. Cleaned him up, sealed the wound because, I don’t know, he didn’t want to cause any more panic by bringing a body in that condition into the Great Hall.”
“And my daughter?” Andromeda breathed.
“Fleur and Pomona found her,” said Harry. “But they didn’t know what happened.”
“And I never told them,” said Ginny, sniffing. “I never told anyone. Your daughter died bravely in battle. Her husband saved my life twice that night. And five minutes later I forgot that they existed. Once I saw Fred… there was nothing else. And I hate myself for it, for forgetting about them. For letting everyone think that they died alone…”
“Ginny,” Harry said quietly.
“I couldn’t tell anyone,” Ginny continued. “Because… because I know I could have put up a Shield Charm for Tonks, or… or maybe I could have saved Remus if I had only moved faster, or gotten a shot in on Fenrir. I might have hit Remus, sure, but that only would have knocked him out and knocked him clear, so I could get to Fenrir and I know that it wouldn’t matter what I said, or what anyone else would say to me, that I’d know it myself that I could have done better for them… for you…”
At this she looked directly into Teddy’s eyes.
“They loved you, loved each other, more than life itself,” Ginny said to him. “Everything they did was to make sure you lived in a better world, that you grew up happy…”
“I know,” said Teddy.
Ginny, Harry, and Andromeda sat in silence, wondering if Teddy had any more to say. His eyes had fallen away from Ginny’s, and were staring blankly at the table.
“Teddy…” Ginny said. “Are you…?”
“I don’t know,” Teddy said, shaking his head. “I don’t know how to take all of this. I… I don’t hate them for what they did that night. I can even understand why they did it. But I don’t know if I agree. Or if I… God, I don’t know…”
He rested his elbows on the table, dropped his head into his hands. Ginny and Andromeda both reached out, touching his shoulder. He didn’t pull them away, but he didn’t look up at them, either.
“I know it’s a lot…” said Ginny.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Teddy. “I wanted to know what happens. Now I know. And I don’t blame you for any of it, Ginny. From what you said, there was nothing else you could have done short of stunning them or petrifying them and carrying them back to the Room of Requirement. And that would have gotten all three of you killed.”
“They were good people,” said Harry. “Two of the best I’ve ever had in my life. Your father was the best teacher I ever had. He taught me more about magic than anyone, and I owe my life to him countless times over for that. And your mother was… was just this spark of energy that lit up every room she was in.”
“That’s what I’ve gathered,” said Teddy. “I just… I just wish they were here. I wish I knew them better.”
“That’s partially our fault,” said Andromeda. “I… I haven’t been the best grandmother. I’ve been trying to raise you. But I guess I just wasn’t ready, even ten years later, to help you know Nymphadora.”
“You’ve done great, all of you,” Teddy said, looking around the table. “And, Ginny, you have to know that you did something right.”
“What’s that?” Ginny asked.
Teddy grinned sadly. “You’re one hell of a mum.”
Ginny smiled back through the tears. “That was the easy part,” she said. “Even if Harry and I hadn’t ended up together it was an easy promise to keep. You’re an easy kid to love.”
Ginny reached out. Teddy stood, and the two of them hugged each other tight.
“I love you,” Ginny whispered, kissing Teddy on the cheek.
“I love you, too,” Teddy replied.
Harry glanced over at Andromeda. “So how are you doing?” he asked. “This has to be a lot for you, too.”
Andromeda shook her head in wonder. “You didn’t know about this? Any of this?”
“Not a word…”
“It is a lot,” she said. “But at least now I know. At least now I can move on, knowing that my Nymphadora didn’t suffer. That she went out fighting, protecting what was hers.”
Harry nodded. “I suppose that’s all we can really ask for in the end…”
“It is,” Andromeda nodded in agreement before standing up. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take my grandson home for the night.”
Ginny released Teddy, who looked over at Andromeda and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I’m ready to head out.”
“You and I have some talking to do,” she said, taking his hand. “And I have some photo albums to show you.”
“Of Mum and Dad?”
“Ones I’ve been keeping hidden away,” Andromeda said sadly. “I haven’t been able to bring myself to pull them out, but now I think I’m ready.”
“That would be… that would be cool,” said Teddy.
“Good,” Andromeda said with a nod as Ginny took Harry’s hand. “Now, what would you like to see first? Wedding pictures or baby pictures?”
Teddy Lupin smiled.
“I want to see everything.”
Bedtime Story (1/2) / Previous Chapters / Unprecedented