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“You see, one can live without having survived.”
— Carolyn Forche, Blue Hour
Monday, June 30th, 1997
He rebuffs her, again. Outside the hospital wing.
"I can’t do this." he mutters, voice laced with ice. "Please try to understand."
“You’re being an idiot," she insists, but she already knows it's too late. Already knows that her words are falling on deaf ears.
Because he’s made up his mind. And there’s nothing she can do to change it.
"I know how this ends for us, Dora," and then, in a quieter voice —
"I’m sorry."
She hates him. Or rather, she wishes she could.
Saturday, July 5th, 1997
She attends Dumbledore's funeral alone.
If she catches his eyes on her, well, she ignores it.
This is the choice he's made. Now he needs to learn to live with it.
She continues to spy for the Order. What’s left of them, anyways.
But it's not the same.
Friday, August 1st, 1997
Bill and Fleur's wedding is a beautiful event.
He doesn't attend.
In hindsight, a good decision. Given what happens next.
With the fall of the Ministry, the Death Eaters come after her parents.
Torture them for hours on end, for information about Harry Potter and the Order. Information about her.
In the end, they're fine. Shaken up, but fine.
She knew that they'd never give in. What else is family for?
Sunday, August 3rd, 1997
After the incident, she wants nothing more than to stay close.
But living with her parents is too dangerous. Especially given what the Death Eaters know about the Order.
So as much as it breaks her heart, she stays far, far away.
Friday, October 31st, 1997
Her father goes on the run.
He stops by her flat one last time, and she's taken aback by how different he looks, in two short months. The toll it's taken on him.
He's thinner than she's ever seen him, and his eyes are sunken in, dark circles etched beneath them. She's terrified by how damn fragile he looks.
He won't listen to her requests to let him stay with her. Too risky, he insists. He won't put her in harm's way, no matter what.
Loyal to a fault. She knows because she got it from him, of course.
And yet. As a once-Auror, she's never felt so powerless in her life.
So she begs him to be safe. It's the least he can do.
He laughs, then. Kisses her cheek and says he'll do his best.
She prays that it will be enough.
Thursday, December 25th, 1997
She spends Christmas alone.
Thursday, January 1st, 1998
There's nothing worth remembering today, either.
Saturday, February 14th, 1998
She cleans up her flat a bit. Puts on Remus' old jumper, one he'd left behind. It's a way of keeping him close, even though he's God-knows-where these days.
They'd had one Valentine's Day together. All she can remember is how happy they were.
Romance, back then, was splitting a tacky box of overpriced chocolates. Staying up late, kissing underneath the stars.
How quickly and suddenly things had changed.
But there's no point in contemplating the past. And certainly no point in reminiscence, either.
Friday, March 13th, 1998
It's a full moon. On Friday the 13th, of all days.
She has to laugh. What miserable timing.
She stares out the window for a few minutes, as if she might see him in his werewolf form, wandering out in the distance.
Though of course, she knows she won’t.
Sunday, March 15th, 1998
Her father dies two days after the full moon.
Killed by Snatchers. A cruel, meaningless death.
One among hundreds, but it's the one that hurts the most.
She puts a Silencing Charm on her room, drops to her knees, and screams.
He shows up on her doorstep that same night. Brings curtains of pouring rain and darkness along with him.
For a moment, she's dumbstruck. Convinced that what she's seeing is simply not real.
But it is. He's in front of her, looking wan and worse for wear.
And then, Tonks comes back to her goddamn senses.
“Why are you here, Remus?”
Her voice breaks into a tremor before her next words —
"Why, after all this time? Where have you been?"
He doesn’t answer her questions. She didn't expect him to, either.
"I heard about Ted." he murmurs, eyes not leaving hers. "I came to say that I'm so very sorry, Dora."
You weren't here! she wants to yell. You weren't here for any of it!
But her own selfishness — a different kind — wins out.
"Come inside," she whispers. "You need to get out of the rain."
Remus looks pained. Conflicted.
"I can’t, " he insists. Stays firmly rooted where he is, the water coming off in rivulets from his coat.
So she takes two steps forward. Lets the freezing rain soak into her hair, her skin.
Dares to get closer, closer, closer, until she's got her forehead pressed against his.
(It's the first time she's touched him in almost a year.)
She closes her eyes and tries to memorize the feeling. For a moment, that's enough.
He's got his eyes closed, too. Takes a slow, ragged breath, as if every movement hurts.
“What do you want from me, Dora?”
The words are as much a defense as an invitation. Both, at once.
She regards him steadily. Suddenly quiet, hopeful.
“Help me forget,” she whispers, and then she's pulling him down so his lips, hungry and unyielding, cover her own.
When they part — they’re both naked in the moonlight, mouths swollen, eyes dark with desire.
Water from his coat and her clothes trail across her apartment floor, long since forgotten by them both.
They're both ghosts of the people they first fell in love with. Thinner, sadder, more tired. Yet ferocious all the same.
Which is why she doesn't have the patience for waiting. Why she can’t bear the distance between them for much longer.
“Please, Remus,” she says, the words out before she can stop them, “Fuck me.”
He’s not gentle, then. Lifts her onto the desk and presses into her. Moves them into a pace that's hard and fast, one that leaves her crying out into his shoulder.
By morning, he’s gone. Exactly as she’d expected.
She can’t ever pretend not to be in love with him. No matter how many times he breaks her heart.
Saturday, May 2nd, 1998
The next time she sees him, it’s at the Battle of Hogwarts.
What they share — it's not even a conversation. It's a handful of words, in passing.
"After all this is over," he shouts over the smoke and din, "Let’s try."
"What? "
She plays it off as if she hadn't heard him, but her body gives her away. Suddenly, her heart's thudding out of her chest, because surely, he can't mean? —
Remus crosses over to where she's standing, and there's a look on his face she's never seen before. Resolute. Unwavering.
He takes her face in his hands. Kisses her, something quick and fierce. Silences any other questions she might have had, before dashing off.
It's not a binding promise, or an Unbreakable Vow.
But it's something. And that's enough.
Later, she imagines, she watched him die.
A hero’s death, she’s sure.
That’s not the truth.
The truth is, she never sees him die.
In the grey of the corridors, amidst the smoke and the smelling of rotting flesh, she finds him. Laying dead in the Great Hall, his skull crushed for added measure.
She stays upright long enough to hear someone say that it was Dolohov who murdered him. Hit him with a Killing Curse, when his back was turned.
He never even saw it coming. Never stood a chance.
Then all she remembers is the sensation of falling to her knees, watching as the world went dark.
It’s a few hours before she wakes again. She passed out from the shock, and they all let her.
Were convinced she was too volatile to fight in the battle. A danger to herself, and to the others, too.
Turns out, they didn't need her. They manage to tie up the loose ends, anyways.
Molly kills dear Auntie Bella. Flitwick kills Dolohov.
She should be happy, knowing he's been avenged. That it wasn't all for naught.
But instead, she feels nothing but white-hot fury in her throat.
It should have been her, she thinks.
She should have been the one to kill them both.
Oh, and Voldemort is dead. Not that it matters to her, anymore.
Time collapses in on itself, after that.
She attends his funeral, alongside Harry and the Weasleys. Whether it's a week or a month later, she's not sure.
She'd been asked to say a few words, and declined it, too.
Because truthfully, she has no words to offer. No prayers left to say.
God abandoned him and her a long time ago.
All she has left are psalms of her grief.
She holds it together until the reception.
That's when she realizes, amidst comments from mourners going on about how wonderful Professor Lupin was, how he saved a group of students during the battle, how, despite being a werewolf, he was brave until the very end —
She simply can’t take it anymore.
Then she's staggering to the garbage bin, mumbling a faint sorry right before she throws up.
She’s sick again the next morning.
Then the one after that. Then the one after that.
She keeps throwing up. It's the toilet in The Burrow's guest bathroom that takes most of the damage, really.
Molly holds her hair back, pats her head after it's over. Bill looks increasingly worried at the state of her health. Everyone else seems to be in the same camp.
But no one says anything. Perhaps for fear of setting her off, of making things worse.
Fleur, it turns out, is the only one to finally make a suggestion that actually makes sense.
It’s been a little over six weeks since that night with Remus.
Sometime in between, she'd missed a period.
It had seemed meaningless, then. She hadn't even registered it.
But now, staring down at a positive pregnancy test, it's suddenly incredibly, terrifyingly important.
The universe is playing a cruel joke on her.
And Remus is somehow the one who's gotten the last laugh.
It's later, staring up at the stone cold stars, that she finally confronts the realities of pregnancy.
What would nine months mean to her?
Waiting for a baby that was his, but not him.
She's not sure. Not sure of anything, anymore.
She does just what she needs to sustain herself and the baby. No more, no less.
Treats herself to a cup of sleep, a few fleeting crumbs of sorrow.
But no indulgences in pity. She can’t bear the taste, not any longer.
By late summer, she’s showing. Sits outside the Burrow with her slowly-swelling belly, the surrounding fields high with foamflower, fleabane, and a dozen other plants she can’t be bothered to remember.
Beside her is her mother, Andromeda. She'd never even met Remus.
But she'd known what he'd meant to her daughter. The toll he'd taken, on her health, on her powers, on her very sense of self.
How, after all that, he'd still managed to ruin her, one last time.
Saturday, December 5th, 1998
The baby is healthy, bouncing, beautiful. He looks just like his father.
Within an hour of his birth, his hair turns blue. Light blue, the color of the summer sky.
A paltry victory, she thinks, as she stares at the still-brown hair of her reflection. But at least it's something.
She names him Teddy Remus. After the two men she’s loved and lost.
It takes the Ministry several months to break the enchantments on his tiny cottage.
He had no will. Left his earthly possessions to no one.
Kingsley lets her know through a letter. Sends her the spells needed to get in, and tells her to give the place one last look-over.
Later — much, much later — she goes through his things.
In life and in death, Remus was a man of few belongings.
She's flipping through his old DADA books — annotated with notes Teddy might want to read, one day — when she sees it.
A light pink rose, pressed into the pages of a thick book. Next to it, a small note, written in his distinctive scrawl —
For Dora. Soon.
She doesn't know how long she sits there, staring at it.
Tears fill her eyes. How apt and miserable it is.
His final promise, hidden in a book.
Gone, just like him.
There’s so little of him left after his death that she wonders if she might one day forget him entirely.
People tend to do that, after their loved ones die. It's natural, really. Time starts to erode at memories of the dead. Questions that were once simple to answer become impossible to recall.
Be that as it may, she’s terrified of forgetting.
Forgetting his smile, his kiss. The wonky curve of his smile, so rarely shown to the outside world. The sound of his voice, low and calm and soothing.
The easy way he’d stolen her heart, then torn it to shreds.
She visits his grave for the first time when he gets the posthumous Order of Merlin.
No one visits him with her. It’s better, that way.
Going there becomes a strange act of comfort, oddly enough.
An old witch comes up to her as she's leaving the graveyard, one night. Offers her some sage advice.
"There’s no point in putting much stock in the dead, my dear. All they ever do is disappoint you."
"Ah." Tonks gives her a half-hearted grin.
"He disappointed me while he was alive, too."
She loved someone who was always bound to disappear on her, in one way or another.
She understands that, now.
After Voldemort's fall, there’s no grand story left for her to fulfill.
No more battles to be fought, no more wars to be won. No parts left to play.
She quits her job as an Auror.
Alastor had left her his inheritance, at the time of his death. It's enough to support a simple, quiet life.
Giving up her career is not what anyone would have expected of the late Auror's protege.
Still — she likes to think Moody would understand her choice. Even if no one else does.
Teddy is her love, her light. The only person who keeps her going, these days.
But some days, that's not enough.
Some days, she wants to die.
Other days, she’s possessed by a strange and unusual desire to live as long as the world itself. To watch the many ways it will continue to change and unfold, leaving her story behind.
Just as it left him behind, too.
For ten long years, she goes to his gravestone.
Strews it with wildflowers. Stays with her young son, until the sky grows dark and the fireflies come out.
Then one day, an owl from Harry changes all that.
Teddy's about to turn eleven, you see.
And Harry has someone he would like him to meet.
The power of the Resurrection Stone — to bring the dead back to life, if only for a few fleeting moments — is not something she was ever prepared to witness.
Certainly, not like this.
Remus looks younger and happier in death than he ever did in life, and she resents him for it. Wants to hurt him, wants to see it all burn.
Love has a strange way of curdling into violence, like that.
“You left me.”
It’s not a question. Not even an accusation, really.
Just a statement of fact.
“ Ah, ” he murmurs, like he'd been expecting to hear it. “But you lived.”
And there’s something about the way he says it — like by staying away from her, by toying with her heart, he’d somehow spared her — that makes her furious.
Death would have been better than a life without you! she wants to scream at him. Don't you see what I've become?
Anger subsides into sorrow. Tinges her next words.
“If you'd stayed…” she says, voice wobbling, “we both would have lived.”
“Perhaps.” he agrees. “And perhaps not.”
She wants to press it further. But she knows there’s no point.
So she turns to what she can say, still.
The words she’s waited to say, for far too long.
“I loved you.” she whispers.
And then, an admission —
“I still do.”
In life, Remus might have argued. Hedged his words.
In death, he seems to have finally found the courage to say it back:
“I love you, too.”
She doesn't speak to him again.
In the end, it’s for the better.
Her hair never changes back.