Family Ties Part Two
Title: Family Ties Part Two (of Two)
Author: jesspallas
Format & Word Count: 1962
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: 29 “There will come a time when believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.” - Louis L’Amour
Summary: Set in the Portalverse of A Little More Time: He saw it. He saw the answer in her eyes an instant before her lips parted and softly said again the words that had once rocked his world to its core.
Author's Note: This story is set within the Portalverse established in my previous story A Little More Time, a couple of years after the events in the Department of Mysteries. A list of salient things to know if you haven’t read it can be found with Part One, which was posted for prompt 23.
Part Two
He saw it. He saw the answer in her eyes an instant before her lips parted and softly said again the words that had once rocked his world to its core.
“I’m pregnant.”
There was a definite judder. His world gave a distinct lurch but this time the shocked surprise gave way not to the swamp of fear and self blame that had so cruelly swallowed up the half-second’s worth of soaring joy he’d felt before but to a sudden dawn of stunned happiness. It was true they had discussed having another child, but Dora was so happy in her career and knowing that they now had all the time in the world had taken away any kind of urgency they might have felt. He’d been more than content to wait until she decided she was ready.
But the wait was over, whether they’d intended it to be or not.
Pregnant.
A baby.
A baby he’d get to see grow up, rather than meeting again fully grown after a few seconds of bright red light had swallowed up twenty whole years…
He started to smile but one look at the outright miserable look on his wife’s face halted its progress sharply.
“And that’s… bad?” Remus sensed this was a venture into troubled waters but it had to be done - it was with no small amount of irony that he realised that the last time this scene had played out, their roles had been almost exactly reversed. “I know it’s unexpected but I’m certain Harry will be more than happy to make every accommodation with your work if…”
“This isn’t about work!” Five years of marriage had left Remus more than used to being regarded as though he was an idiot, but on this occasional he couldn’t help but feel that she was being a little unfair, especially since her logic had apparently wandered well out of his range of husbandly detection and was probably legging it over a fence a hundred miles away by now. “This is about Teddy!”
Yep, over the fence and heading for the horizon… “Teddy?”
“Yes, Teddy!” A small fist thumped against his chest. “How do you think he’s going to feel about this?”
It was possible that the sudden surge of happiness running rampant through his brain had interfered with his usually more accurate ability to interpret Dora’s direction of thought. The word hormones did flit across his mind, but he also knew with a grim certainty that if it crossed his lips, he wouldn’t be making any more babies for many years to come. Bravely, he waded into the confusion.
“I would imagine… happy?” he ventured.
“Oh, he’ll say he’s happy.” Abruptly Dora pulled herself out of his grasp, striding halfway across the room before wheeling on one heel to face him. Luckily, she regained her balance after only a couple of seconds of flailing. “I know him. He’s like you.” A finger stabbed in his direction almost accusingly. “He won’t want to upset us so he won’t admit it! He won’t admit how he feels! Remus, barring accidents, misfortunes or fate being even more a bastard than it’s already managed, we are going to have this baby and raise it all the way to adulthood!”
“Well, that’s the normal arrangement…”
“But not with Teddy, was it? We weren’t there for him!”
Aha… The logic had slipped in around the back door and finally come knocking. The old guilt, that he hadn’t been there for Teddy, that leaving him to go and fight had cost them twenty years together, rose briefly to stab at his heart and knew at once that Dora’s assassin was far more potent. She’d come to terms with those lost years in the end but he knew that no matter what anyone said to her, she’d never quite forgiven herself…
“I mean, how’s he going to feel?” Dora ran one anxious hand through her limp hair as she paced in a nervous little circle. “Seeing us with a baby, raising a child, sharing all those little moments we didn’t share with him! We couldn’t have that with him so we’ve brought in a reserve? He’ll feel like we can’t love him as much because we didn’t teach him to walk or talk or wave him off to school! He’ll feel like he’s being abandoned. He’ll feel like he’s being replaced!”
There was really only one thing that Remus could reasonably do. He strode over and engulfed his wife in another hug.
“I never thought I’d be the one saying this to you,” he said affectionately. “Especially since it’s usually your job to poke me about it. I think you’re over thinking this.”
Dora buried herself back into his chest once more. “Remus, I couldn’t stand to hurt him,” she whispered, her voice betraying the resurgence of deeply buried anxieties. “I let him down so much when I left him to fight. He lost the chance to be our little boy. I can’t be happy at his expense, I just can’t…”
“You won’t be.” Remus tightened his hold. “I know him too. He knows how much we missed having the chance to raise him. He knows how much we love him now. And he knows that nothing will ever change that.”
“But we’ll be flaunting what he didn’t have with us! He’ll feel left out!”
“Then we won’t let him. We’ll prove that we love him as often as we need to. And Dora, I think you’re forgetting. There’s more than just the three of us to think of now. The new baby - what about his or her feelings about being raised in the shadow of a brother that mummy feels she let down? We can’t slight one to please the other - in either direction. Teddy would never resent us happiness - he sacrificed a career he loved so that we could have this life! And he would hate it more than anything else if he thought he was in some way responsible for ruining our joy.” Gently, he tilted her head so that her dark eyes could not escape his and pressed his lips softly against hers. “We’ll be a family, Dora, a bigger family, with all the hang-ups and issues that come with it. But we’ll manage. And I know that our Teddy will love being a big brother.”
A hint of a smile curved across Dora’s lips. “I suppose he will. I can just see him holding our baby and playing games and singing songs…”
Remus smiled in spite of himself. “You know, the way he and Victoire are going, it probably won’t be long until we’re gra…”
A finger slapped down across his lips, cutting off the rest of his sentence. Dora glared up at him sharply.
“Don’t say it! We do not use the g-word! I am too young for the g-word!”
He was risking life, limb and a night on the sofa, but Remus really couldn’t help himself. “Well, you could always go with Nan instead…”
The beating of fists against his shoulder stopped after about twenty seconds, with no real bruises but to his pride, to Remus knew she hadn’t really meant it. It was a strange thought though. In years lived, he was just venturing into the murky waters of his early forties, a little late, if not excessively old for second-hand fatherhood and early, but not ridiculously, for grandchildren. But technically, in years passed since his birth, he was knocking around sixty and grandparenthood was nothing to be ashamed of. But Dora was physically not even thirty yet. To have a smiling little face call her grandma seemed outright silly.
Mummy, however…
A baby. They were having a baby…
“We’re having a baby.” The words slipped out almost unbidden and oh yes, Dora was actually smiling, smiling with him and the joy reached up to her eyes…
“I know,” she whispered slipping her arms back around him. “And I am happy. I really am.”
“Me too.” He rested his head against her hair, noting the small strands of pink and purple that were creeping their way up from her crown as he closed his eyes. “And Teddy will be too, I promise. We can tell him tonight. I’m sure that he will…”
“Dad!”
Remus jumped about a foot and he was certain that it was only his grip on Dora that prevented her from taking a violently startled tumble. Wheeling sharply, he stared at the green flames that had burst into life unheeded in his fireplace and found the disembodied head of his son staring back at him with wide eyes and pale cheeks. If it were not for the vivid turquoise of his hair, he would have been almost the image of his mother when she had first rushed through the door what seemed like an eternity ago.
Remus found his mind racing. What had they just said? How much had Teddy heard? They’d wanted him to know, but not like this…
“And Mum too!” A nervous smile flashed briefly across Teddy’s features. “You’re both here! That’s great! That’s… two birds with one stone… that’s…”
Oh, not again. Rather babbled out, Remus decided to cut to the chase. “Teddy! I didn’t think you were back until tonight. Is something wrong?”
Teddy shook his disembodied head, eyes flicking from one parent to the other almost anxiously. But he couldn’t know, we’ve barely found out ourselves, and I was so sure he wouldn’t mind…
“I’m not back. I’m still in Bruges, but I borrowed a Floo. I needed to talk to you - well, one of you, and I didn’t know where Mum would be so I… Well you’re both here and that’s great! It’s great!”
Dora looked as bewildered as Remus felt as she exchanged a glance with her husband. “We’re flattered, Teddy, but it couldn’t have waited a couple of hours? You said you’d be back by six…”
“I know, I know! And I can’t be long, Victoire’s outside and she doesn’t know I’m doing this but I’ve decided I want to and this is the place I want to do it, but I couldn’t just go ahead without talking about it with you because it’ll affect you too. The thing is…” Teddy paused a moment, puffing his cheeks as he took several what must have been very smoky breaths. “I’ve decided to propose to Victoire.”
And with Dora’s guilt stricken logic still wedged in his mind, Remus saw at once where Teddy’s words were heading. And she says he takes after me…
“But of course that means we’ll be getting a place of our own and I’ll be moving out and we’ll maybe even be having children of our own in a few years time. But the three of us - well, we’ve had relatively little time together as a family and the last thing I wanted you to think was that I was abandoning you or leaving you behind because I’ve got something better, because that’s not the case at all. I love you both so much and we lost so many years we should have had together and I can hold off asking her for a while if you think it hasn’t been enough…”
Remus couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing.
Teddy stared at him with bewildered horror. Dora regarded him rather more wryly.
“Sorry, Teddy,” Remus heard her say. “I think your dad is formulating some manner of hysterical statement on how very alike we are.”
“I am indeed.” Still grinning broadly, Remus reached out and took his wife’s hand as they dropped as one to a crouch in front of the fireplace and their son’s confused face. “Teddy, for goodness sake, you don’t have to worry about us. In fact…” He glanced at Dora and revelled for a moment in her suddenly radiant expression, at yet another strange new beginning for their strange little family. “I think there’s something you ought to know…”
THE END
Author: jesspallas
Format & Word Count: 1962
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: 29 “There will come a time when believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.” - Louis L’Amour
Summary: Set in the Portalverse of A Little More Time: He saw it. He saw the answer in her eyes an instant before her lips parted and softly said again the words that had once rocked his world to its core.
Author's Note: This story is set within the Portalverse established in my previous story A Little More Time, a couple of years after the events in the Department of Mysteries. A list of salient things to know if you haven’t read it can be found with Part One, which was posted for prompt 23.
Part Two
He saw it. He saw the answer in her eyes an instant before her lips parted and softly said again the words that had once rocked his world to its core.
“I’m pregnant.”
There was a definite judder. His world gave a distinct lurch but this time the shocked surprise gave way not to the swamp of fear and self blame that had so cruelly swallowed up the half-second’s worth of soaring joy he’d felt before but to a sudden dawn of stunned happiness. It was true they had discussed having another child, but Dora was so happy in her career and knowing that they now had all the time in the world had taken away any kind of urgency they might have felt. He’d been more than content to wait until she decided she was ready.
But the wait was over, whether they’d intended it to be or not.
Pregnant.
A baby.
A baby he’d get to see grow up, rather than meeting again fully grown after a few seconds of bright red light had swallowed up twenty whole years…
He started to smile but one look at the outright miserable look on his wife’s face halted its progress sharply.
“And that’s… bad?” Remus sensed this was a venture into troubled waters but it had to be done - it was with no small amount of irony that he realised that the last time this scene had played out, their roles had been almost exactly reversed. “I know it’s unexpected but I’m certain Harry will be more than happy to make every accommodation with your work if…”
“This isn’t about work!” Five years of marriage had left Remus more than used to being regarded as though he was an idiot, but on this occasional he couldn’t help but feel that she was being a little unfair, especially since her logic had apparently wandered well out of his range of husbandly detection and was probably legging it over a fence a hundred miles away by now. “This is about Teddy!”
Yep, over the fence and heading for the horizon… “Teddy?”
“Yes, Teddy!” A small fist thumped against his chest. “How do you think he’s going to feel about this?”
It was possible that the sudden surge of happiness running rampant through his brain had interfered with his usually more accurate ability to interpret Dora’s direction of thought. The word hormones did flit across his mind, but he also knew with a grim certainty that if it crossed his lips, he wouldn’t be making any more babies for many years to come. Bravely, he waded into the confusion.
“I would imagine… happy?” he ventured.
“Oh, he’ll say he’s happy.” Abruptly Dora pulled herself out of his grasp, striding halfway across the room before wheeling on one heel to face him. Luckily, she regained her balance after only a couple of seconds of flailing. “I know him. He’s like you.” A finger stabbed in his direction almost accusingly. “He won’t want to upset us so he won’t admit it! He won’t admit how he feels! Remus, barring accidents, misfortunes or fate being even more a bastard than it’s already managed, we are going to have this baby and raise it all the way to adulthood!”
“Well, that’s the normal arrangement…”
“But not with Teddy, was it? We weren’t there for him!”
Aha… The logic had slipped in around the back door and finally come knocking. The old guilt, that he hadn’t been there for Teddy, that leaving him to go and fight had cost them twenty years together, rose briefly to stab at his heart and knew at once that Dora’s assassin was far more potent. She’d come to terms with those lost years in the end but he knew that no matter what anyone said to her, she’d never quite forgiven herself…
“I mean, how’s he going to feel?” Dora ran one anxious hand through her limp hair as she paced in a nervous little circle. “Seeing us with a baby, raising a child, sharing all those little moments we didn’t share with him! We couldn’t have that with him so we’ve brought in a reserve? He’ll feel like we can’t love him as much because we didn’t teach him to walk or talk or wave him off to school! He’ll feel like he’s being abandoned. He’ll feel like he’s being replaced!”
There was really only one thing that Remus could reasonably do. He strode over and engulfed his wife in another hug.
“I never thought I’d be the one saying this to you,” he said affectionately. “Especially since it’s usually your job to poke me about it. I think you’re over thinking this.”
Dora buried herself back into his chest once more. “Remus, I couldn’t stand to hurt him,” she whispered, her voice betraying the resurgence of deeply buried anxieties. “I let him down so much when I left him to fight. He lost the chance to be our little boy. I can’t be happy at his expense, I just can’t…”
“You won’t be.” Remus tightened his hold. “I know him too. He knows how much we missed having the chance to raise him. He knows how much we love him now. And he knows that nothing will ever change that.”
“But we’ll be flaunting what he didn’t have with us! He’ll feel left out!”
“Then we won’t let him. We’ll prove that we love him as often as we need to. And Dora, I think you’re forgetting. There’s more than just the three of us to think of now. The new baby - what about his or her feelings about being raised in the shadow of a brother that mummy feels she let down? We can’t slight one to please the other - in either direction. Teddy would never resent us happiness - he sacrificed a career he loved so that we could have this life! And he would hate it more than anything else if he thought he was in some way responsible for ruining our joy.” Gently, he tilted her head so that her dark eyes could not escape his and pressed his lips softly against hers. “We’ll be a family, Dora, a bigger family, with all the hang-ups and issues that come with it. But we’ll manage. And I know that our Teddy will love being a big brother.”
A hint of a smile curved across Dora’s lips. “I suppose he will. I can just see him holding our baby and playing games and singing songs…”
Remus smiled in spite of himself. “You know, the way he and Victoire are going, it probably won’t be long until we’re gra…”
A finger slapped down across his lips, cutting off the rest of his sentence. Dora glared up at him sharply.
“Don’t say it! We do not use the g-word! I am too young for the g-word!”
He was risking life, limb and a night on the sofa, but Remus really couldn’t help himself. “Well, you could always go with Nan instead…”
The beating of fists against his shoulder stopped after about twenty seconds, with no real bruises but to his pride, to Remus knew she hadn’t really meant it. It was a strange thought though. In years lived, he was just venturing into the murky waters of his early forties, a little late, if not excessively old for second-hand fatherhood and early, but not ridiculously, for grandchildren. But technically, in years passed since his birth, he was knocking around sixty and grandparenthood was nothing to be ashamed of. But Dora was physically not even thirty yet. To have a smiling little face call her grandma seemed outright silly.
Mummy, however…
A baby. They were having a baby…
“We’re having a baby.” The words slipped out almost unbidden and oh yes, Dora was actually smiling, smiling with him and the joy reached up to her eyes…
“I know,” she whispered slipping her arms back around him. “And I am happy. I really am.”
“Me too.” He rested his head against her hair, noting the small strands of pink and purple that were creeping their way up from her crown as he closed his eyes. “And Teddy will be too, I promise. We can tell him tonight. I’m sure that he will…”
“Dad!”
Remus jumped about a foot and he was certain that it was only his grip on Dora that prevented her from taking a violently startled tumble. Wheeling sharply, he stared at the green flames that had burst into life unheeded in his fireplace and found the disembodied head of his son staring back at him with wide eyes and pale cheeks. If it were not for the vivid turquoise of his hair, he would have been almost the image of his mother when she had first rushed through the door what seemed like an eternity ago.
Remus found his mind racing. What had they just said? How much had Teddy heard? They’d wanted him to know, but not like this…
“And Mum too!” A nervous smile flashed briefly across Teddy’s features. “You’re both here! That’s great! That’s… two birds with one stone… that’s…”
Oh, not again. Rather babbled out, Remus decided to cut to the chase. “Teddy! I didn’t think you were back until tonight. Is something wrong?”
Teddy shook his disembodied head, eyes flicking from one parent to the other almost anxiously. But he couldn’t know, we’ve barely found out ourselves, and I was so sure he wouldn’t mind…
“I’m not back. I’m still in Bruges, but I borrowed a Floo. I needed to talk to you - well, one of you, and I didn’t know where Mum would be so I… Well you’re both here and that’s great! It’s great!”
Dora looked as bewildered as Remus felt as she exchanged a glance with her husband. “We’re flattered, Teddy, but it couldn’t have waited a couple of hours? You said you’d be back by six…”
“I know, I know! And I can’t be long, Victoire’s outside and she doesn’t know I’m doing this but I’ve decided I want to and this is the place I want to do it, but I couldn’t just go ahead without talking about it with you because it’ll affect you too. The thing is…” Teddy paused a moment, puffing his cheeks as he took several what must have been very smoky breaths. “I’ve decided to propose to Victoire.”
And with Dora’s guilt stricken logic still wedged in his mind, Remus saw at once where Teddy’s words were heading. And she says he takes after me…
“But of course that means we’ll be getting a place of our own and I’ll be moving out and we’ll maybe even be having children of our own in a few years time. But the three of us - well, we’ve had relatively little time together as a family and the last thing I wanted you to think was that I was abandoning you or leaving you behind because I’ve got something better, because that’s not the case at all. I love you both so much and we lost so many years we should have had together and I can hold off asking her for a while if you think it hasn’t been enough…”
Remus couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing.
Teddy stared at him with bewildered horror. Dora regarded him rather more wryly.
“Sorry, Teddy,” Remus heard her say. “I think your dad is formulating some manner of hysterical statement on how very alike we are.”
“I am indeed.” Still grinning broadly, Remus reached out and took his wife’s hand as they dropped as one to a crouch in front of the fireplace and their son’s confused face. “Teddy, for goodness sake, you don’t have to worry about us. In fact…” He glanced at Dora and revelled for a moment in her suddenly radiant expression, at yet another strange new beginning for their strange little family. “I think there’s something you ought to know…”
THE END