Full Moon

On the day of their engagement, they decided that she would come to his place that evening, because he assured her that although his place was depressing, it was not as depressing as Twelve Grimmauld Place. At least, being much smaller and much less enchanted, it would be easier to fix.

Although Lupin was skilled at using magic in all kinds of dangerous situations, as well as using it to perform all kinds of sly tricks, he had less practice in using it for domestic chores, since for him to do this in the Muggle world would have raised suspicions. He knew such spells, but did not want to take any chance on messing something up, so partly from force of habit, he set out to clean his little rooms like a Muggle. He still had some Muggle clothes, and he tore up a shirt for rags and wiped down the counter and table in the kitchen, and the cabinets inside and out. He checked that no one was passing below and shook his blankets and mattress out at the window. He even used his Cleansweep broom to sweep the floor, something no normal wizard would have done, but he was not on any Quidditch team, and he did not see how it would impair the broom's ability to fly. Given the uncertainty of a werewolf's life, and the need to seize any happy moment, no normal wizard could rival a werewolf in love.

He went to Diagon Alley to shop for food. He passed by the butcher shop, having no wish to see or think any more about bloody carcasses, cut up or otherwise. He found a store where a witch was selling produce from the countryside, including dairy products. He picked up a basket at the door and filled it with milk, eggs, cheese, butter, carrots, greens, potatoes, a piece of fish, a bunch of roses, and some tea. But when he brought the things over to where the witch was sitting, he realized he did not have the money to pay for them, because he had been living hand-to-mouth, and had not thought to ask Tonks for any money. He put down a few knuts and asked if he could have the rest on credit, if he paid her tomorrow.

She looked affronted, because she had never seen Lupin before, and he did not look to her like someone worthy of credit. "I'm sorry, sir," she said haughtily, "but I can't give you credit unless you have an account at Gringotts."

"But I do have an account at Gringotts!" he said, for he suddenly remembered that when he ran out of money two years earlier, he had thought it prudent to keep his account open, and had left a golden Galleon in it. And he found a scrap of parchment in his pocket and wrote his name and address and vault number on it, for he still remembered it.

She looked at it doubtfully. "Do you have any identification, Mr. Lupin?"

He took out his wand. "Do you see this wand?"

"Mr. Lupin--"

He pointed it at a champagne bottle on a shelf on the opposite wall. Out popped the cork, and the foam bubbled out of the bottle and ran down its sides. Then he flicked the wand, and the wine flowed back up into the bottle, and the cork popped back in.

"Mine is the only one that does that," he said, and during her moment of confusion, he hastily gathered his groceries and slipped out the door.

When he got home he conjured a vase for the roses. They were red when he bought them, which was probably best, but he tried turning them pink, then white, then yellow. He decided that yellow after all was best, since it did most to brighten the room.

Toward evening there was a knock at the door. He opened it and she stepped in, knocking against the table, and the vase of roses fell over with a crash.

"Reparo!" he said, pointing his wand, and leading her into the middle of the room, because the room was very small. She looked around and saw a teapot on the counter, and he drew her closer, away from that.

"You said it was depressing," she said. "It's small, but I don't think it's that depressing."

"Well, I've been working all day on trying to make it into a home."

"It would be a home to me, whatever it looked like," she said as he put his arms around her, "because you're here."

"Thank you, Tonks. That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."

For one happy week they lived together, planning their future. They decided to get married sooner rather than later, because either of them might be killed at any moment, and they wanted to get married while they were both still alive. Lupin would go to Dumbledore and resign his mission. He had given it his best effort, and he could not influence the werewolves. Dumbledore had said he could come back when he needed to. He would hold Dumbledore to his word.

It only made sense to plan their future on the assumption that they would win the war, because if Voldemort won they were certainly both dead. Their biggest problem, of course, would be his transformations. He would probably have to tough it out the way he had been doing until the end of the war, but after that she would not hear of him Apparating to Scotland.

She could support them if necessary, since apart from higher-ups, Aurors were the best-paid workers at the Ministry, but they believed that Lupin would be able to earn some money too. They would buy the Wolfsbane Potion at any price when it became available, but they knew that would take some time in a war-damaged society, considering the difficulty of getting the ingredients, and the fact that there might be no one left who already knew how to make it.

She was still optimistic about the momentum for positive change that would follow the war, and what that would mean for the status of werewolves. Lupin was not optimistic at all, because the werewolves were seen to be siding with Voldemort, and he expected a backlash, especially since witches and wizards were seeing Greyback as the ugly face of the werewolves.

"Well, you'll just have to show them your own pretty face," said Tonks. "You'll be a hero of the war."

Until they could obtain the potion, they thought they could put their magical heads together to create another safe house like the Shrieking Shack, only they would make some effort to make it more comfortable, and would do a better job with muffling and silencing charms, because they thought people would not tolerate another such haunted house in Britain, unless perhaps they moved to the wildest part of the Scottish Highlands, which they had no intention of doing. Lupin agreed that one night of suffering would be more than compensated for by twenty-eight nights of healing, as well as the knowledge that he was not harming anyone.

There was only one subject on which they did not agree, and Lupin was afraid to tell her so. Whenever she started to talk of having children, he would not meet her eye and would try to change the subject. He thought it was unwise for him to have children, given his peculiar condition, but she wanted it so much that he was afraid she would leave him if he told her so. There would be time later, after they were married, for him to explain. If she wanted children, they could adopt.

They were sure that Dumbledore would be tickled pink by their engagement, but he was worried about Tonks's parents. "Would you marry me without their consent? Won't they be terrified for you?"

"I'll explain everything to them. They know you've been with us for two years, and anyone in the Order will vouch for you. We'll explain our plans to them. I think their reaction will surprise you. After all, they were a mixed couple."

"Ha! That's not the same at all, and you know it."

"Well, it was enough to get my mother's name burned out of the Black family tree, which she regretted about as much as Sirius did."

"Your mother's family was very special."

"You don't know the half. Those burn marks on the tapestry are just the tip of the iceberg. There were whole galaxies of Muggle-loving Blacks who disappeared under suspicious circumstances into something known as The Black Hole. My great-great-aunt Betelgeuse Black..."

He had realized she was joking, and covered her mouth with his to put a stop to it.

***

Then came the catastrophe.

Dumbledore was dead? Dead? Severus did it? Severus had fooled Dumbledore? Dumbledore? How could Dumbledore be dead? How could anyone have fooled Dumbledore? How could Severus have done it? Lupin hadn't felt this bewildered since the death of the Potters and the accusations against Sirius.

Lupin remembered the words Sirius had once spoken to Harry: they didn't see what they thought they saw. In this case there had been only one eyewitness for their side, and by his own account Harry had just come back from some exhausting mission and been under a Freezing Charm at the time. Lupin knew that Harry hated Severus. He did not doubt for a minute that Harry was telling the truth about what he thought he saw, but could it be that what he saw was not what he thought he saw? Still, it was hard to mistake someone pointing a wand at someone at close range and saying "Avada Kedavra."

Severus had left with the Death Eaters and had returned to Voldemort. He had not communicated with anyone in the Order. If he were still working for the Order, someone would have known. He would have told someone what had really happened. No doubt he was loyal to Voldemort. He had never changed sides after all.

Who would stop Voldemort now? He had already been gaining strength, and now would become much more powerful. Dumbledore was the only wizard who had known as much magic as he did, and the only one he had ever been afraid of. Lupin knew that Dumbledore had confided most in Harry, but he could not have expected the weight of the world to fall on Harry's shoulders so soon. The boy was not yet seventeen...

"What will we do now?" he said to Tonks.

"How about getting married?"

***

Their marriage was a quiet affair, for it was a somber time, and their friends were regrouping for the battle ahead. But their friends were very happy for them, and Tonks's parents welcomed Lupin as a son-in-law. Tonks in particular, but her parents as well, seemed to rather enjoy the thought of the shock and outrage that their union would cause to Andromeda's two sisters, those proud descendents of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

Tonks said that unless Voldemort killed her, he was not going to stop her from living her life, and she did not want to put it on hold. And in his eagerness to please, Lupin let his guard down and got her pregnant, and he immediately regretted it. He had never heard of a werewolf fathering a child. What if he had created another werewolf? As the days passed, his apprehension grew. It was impossible. What woman would bear the child of a werewolf? Maybe she was mistaken. No, every day it became more apparent. Maybe he was not the father. No, that was ridiculous, they had hardly been out of each other's sight since they were engaged.

Lupin had been among the werewolves, and he knew there was no hope for them. They were now seen to be siding with Voldemort, and at the moment it was true, because at the moment that was the side that seemed to be winning. If Voldemort won, they were doomed, and if he lost, the werewolves would be more despised than ever. There would be no effort to integrate them. His child would live a cursed life. He would suffer as Lupin had, for having them as parents he would have a human conscience, but he would have even less of a chance than Lupin had, for there would never be another Dumbledore or another Tonks.

And supposing, as was likely, the child was not a werewolf? He or she would be terribly stigmatized by having a werewolf as a father. The other kids would make fun of his child, and their parents might advise them to stay away. There would always be rejection and discrimination, though it might be subtler. People would think they were all freaks. Tonks thought it did not matter now, but she would change her mind when she saw the suffering of her child, because no mother can stand to see the suffering of her child. She would regret having married him and borne his child.

If he tried to explain this now, she would not let him go, but if he did, she would be better off. She could just say that he was an ordinary wizard who had been killed in the war, and the child could have a normal life. It would not even be too late for her to find someone else, if she wanted to. And supposing the child was a werewolf? She might want to get rid of it somehow, for witches had ways of accomplishing such things, and she would not be able to do that if he were there. He would make it easier on her by leaving her now.

It occurred to Lupin that he might be needed somewhere else, for he knew that Dumbledore had entrusted a secret mission to Harry and his friends that would determine the outcome of the war. Maybe he did not need to know what the mission was in order to help them. He knew that they were the most hunted of fugitives and that, extraordinary as they were, they were only seventeen. Lupin remembered the list of his particular skills that Sirius had once enumerated to him in the cave.

They would need to camp far away from people. Lupin knew very well where such places were, and how to survive in them. They would be constantly pursued by their enemies, and the need for constant vigilance would exhaust them. Lupin, with his sharp senses, would be the perfect sentry. If any of their wands were lost or stolen, they would not be able to replace them, and he could help with his knowledge of wandless magic. He had twenty years on them, and had fought in the last war, and had had exposure to more strange Dark Magic than they had.

He went to seek them out at number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

***

He had been afraid to tell Tonks that he thought it was a bad idea for him to father a child. He had been afraid to tell her that he thought the child might be a werewolf. He had been afraid to tell her how he thought the child would be stigmatized by having a werewolf as a father. He had been afraid to tell her why he thought he should leave them, or to hear her answer. He had been afraid even to say goodbye. And that young man whom he so admired, who was as brave as the lion of Gryffindor, had thrown a word in his face that somehow he had felt hanging over him all his life: coward. And while Harry had only attacked him with words, Lupin, wretch that he was, had fired his wand at him.

But Harry had only been half right. He had not just wanted a glamorous adventure. He really had thought that he could help them in their mission, and that the fate of the world depended on it. Had Dumbledore really put all his eggs in one basket? Did he have a back-up plan?

Lupin could remember Dumbledore saying that their biggest advantage over Voldemort was that they knew the value of love, which Voldemort could not feel or understand, and that it was love that would defeat him. Lupin had always thought that since they had the ability to empathize with other people, which made their creed inclusive while Voldemort's was exclusive, in the long run more people would be on their side. His recent mission had struck doubt in him. But did Dumbledore mean that personal, individual love relationships would defeat Voldemort, such as those between parents and children and lovers and friends? That was so Dumbledore. But he thought of Lily...

And his mind rolled back twenty years to the time when he had watched his arrogant, handsome, uncontaminated friend James snap up the only girl at Hogwarts who had shown him nothing but sympathy when she found out he was a werewolf, instead of recoiling in fear, mistrust or disgust the way other girls did in his youth. She had once held James in contempt, and never himself, as far as he knew, but he would not have dared to approach her in a million years. Would not have dreamed about it, unless he were asleep.

When Lily had defeated Voldemort, she had not been fighting any battle or using any magic that she knew of. She had not protected Harry because she knew he would become a great wizard, or that he would ever defeat Voldemort. She had protected Harry because she loved him. And she had loved him simply because he was her child.

Lupin had had family relationships twice in his life, and both times he had run away out of fear of what he was and what that would mean for his family. What was he? His mind was in turmoil. Another memory was tugging at him, but this one from his wolf mind, perhaps the memory of a memory, perhaps an echo of someone else's, an echo that had bounced back and forth he knew not for how many times or from where, more fraught with loss that any thought his human mind had yet allowed. By being a husband and father he would defeat...Voldemort?

She had never thought she was doing him a favor by accepting him. She had never abandoned him to hopelessness or danger, or left him to guess what she wanted from him. She had not been judging him, only trying to encourage him. Her belief in him had been more persistent and unconditional than Dumbledore's had ever been. It was he, whom she loved, who had abandoned and betrayed her. He would go to her and beg her to take him back.

But she would not take him back. How could she? He had abandoned her when she was pregnant; he was obviously an unfit husband and father. He would still accept his friends' supposition that the good he did as a human outweighed the harm he did as a werewolf, and he would continue to serve the Order in whatever capacity they saw fit. No doubt they would send him somewhere where she need not see him again, and he would carry out his mission until the Death Eaters killed him, for surely they would kill him, without Tonks the Auror there to protect him. He would make no romantic exit through the Artic. He would die in service. But he would not be forgiven.

He would not be forgiven, because he was the same as them...no he wasn't, he was a soldier against Voldemort...death would come, and with it the numbing of pain...had she always been right about him? It would not be for him to decide. He owed it to this woman who had offered him everything to face her and do the same.

Where was she now? Probably at her parents' house, where he had left her. She was pregnant and would not be running around in hiding like most of the members of the Order. Her father had already gone into hiding because he was a Muggle-born wizard. But wasn't she in just as much danger? Everyone knew she was a member of the Order. Everyone knew she had married him, and was carrying his child. Her aunt Bellatrix, the most loyal and cruelest of Voldemort's followers, was particularly eager to wipe out this unprecedented blot on her family's pure-blood reputation. Lupin's blood ran cold at the thought of the danger that he had left her and her family in, but he had no time to lose.

Maybe they had been smart enough to hide the house with the Fidelius Charm. In that case he would have his answer. There were already powerful protective spells around the house, and if his key to them no longer worked, he would have his answer. He landed his broom outside the perimeter of the charms surrounding the house and took out his wand. It still worked.

He walked up to the door and knocked. He was relieved that Tonks answered it, because he needed to talk to her first. When she saw him she looked surprised, then angry.

"Remus, where on earth have you been? You've been gone for two weeks, and it hasn't even been the full moon! Did you get some assignment from the Order that was so dangerous you thought I wouldn't let you go? Don't you know I'm an Auror? Don't you know I'm in the Order too? Don't you know I'm always in as much danger as you are? What were you thinking?"

"I'm sorry," he said, "I got lost." This was not an untrue statement.

She looked incredulous.

"We're in the middle of a war. I'm pregnant. My father is a fugitive. My aunt is trying to kill me. In fact, she can't wait to put the Cruciatus Curse on me until I miscarry and then kill my prospective baby before my eyes. And my husband the Wolf Man, with his infallible sense of smell and direction, got lost?"

He was prepared for this. He had resolved to tell her the whole truth, because if she accepted him without knowing what he really was, he would never know whether she had really accepted him, and he would be alone for the rest of his life anyway.

"I didn't think it was a good idea for me to have children, and I was afraid to tell you so. I was afraid I might have created another werewolf. I couldn't face what I had done, and so I ran away. I went and offered to help Harry and his friends with their mission, but Harry reminded me of what it had meant for him to lose his parents in his infancy, and he called me a coward and refused my help.

"I thought that if the child was not a werewolf, you both would be better off without me, because the child would be stigmatized by having a werewolf for a father, and if I were gone you could say I was an ordinary wizard who was killed in the war, and the child could have a normal life."

Could he tell her the worst? He had resolved to tell her everything. "I thought that if it was a werewolf, you might want to get rid of it somehow, and you would not have that option unless I were gone."

He felt that he had never played the customary part of a man in their courtship, not that anyone cared about such things now, but if he wanted her to know that he had finally heard her, it might become him to try something traditional. He got down on one knee.

"I want to be your husband, Tonks, if you will have me. And, unworthy as I am, I want to be the father of your children. And if you take me back, I will struggle for my right and the right of all werewolves to live and work in the world of other humans, and to obtain the means to stop harming others. I will do my best to set an example for the other werewolves, and for my children, and to leave a better world to them than the one that I inherited.

"And if you will not take me back, which would be perfectly justified and which I will perfectly well understand, I will keep serving in the war until I--until we win, and then I will still try to live my life the way you wanted me to, although you need not see me again if you don't want to. And--" very strangely, a line from one of those old Muggle plays popped into his head. "As you hear of me, so think of me."

Tonks looked a little bewildered.

"Of course you can come back, Remus. It's only been two weeks. But it's a good thing you didn't wait any longer." And then she did about the last thing he was expecting. She smiled.

"I know you very well, Remus. You could have come up with an alibi for such an absence. You could have said that you were captured, and then escaped, or some such thing. Anything could happen at a time like this. But do you know what you did? You chose to tell the whole truth to the person most wronged about the most shameful thing you ever did in your life.

"So get off your knees, Remus Lupin. And don't ever let anyone call you a coward again."

***

The night that Remus Lupin appeared at Shell Cottage to proudly announce the birth of his son, he was flush with the idea that for once he had made the right decision in his personal life. For while the decision to marry Tonks and to have a baby had been hers, and the decision to return to her had been Harry's, the decision to name Harry as the child's godfather had been his own, and there were several good reasons for it.

Harry had shown how much he cared about the child in their row at Twelve Grimmauld Place, and who would know better than Harry what a child would need from a parent, or would suffer from the loss of one? The child was likely enough to lose his father, for Lupin stood a good chance of being killed in the war. Harry, he believed, would survive, because Lupin had become convinced that both Harry and Voldemort could not survive, and if it was Voldemort who survived, they were all--no, now that he was a father, he could not bear to think it.

There was yet another reason, perhaps a small one, though it was not small to Lupin. While all the violence was ebbing from his dreams, painful memories from his human life were returning to him in his waking state, and there was a troubling one that had haunted him like a shadow for four years, which had recently reappeared to him more clearly. He saw a certain werewolf holding a certain map in a corridor in Hogwarts, cruelly and hypocritically berating a thirteen-year-old boy about disregarding the thing that was most painful to him in the world, the voices of his dying parents pleading for his life, the thing with which dementors were trying to drag him under forever. Something only Lupin had known about, because Harry had confided in him and trusted him. Lupin believed Harry had forgotten it before he realized there was anything to forgive, if he would have realized it anyway, he was so generous. So Lupin was not sure by whom, but he hoped that when he made his offering to Harry, somehow in that moment he would finally be forgiven.

On that occasion Lupin had little time and said he could not stay, but his friends convinced him to stay and have some dinner. They noticed that he ate and drank little, but attributed this to his excitement, for none of them knew that he had recently become a vegetarian, or that he had ever had a drinking problem. But Hermione, who watched him closely all evening, had a suspicion of the truth, for she noticed an involuntary shiver flit across his face as he saw Bill Weasley raise a knife to cut the slab of very rare London Broil before him. Later that evening, Hermione found an occasion to discreetly take Lupin aside and inform him that his child was not a werewolf.

"How do you know? There hasn't been a full moon yet."

"I've researched the subject. There have been no female werewolves sighted anywhere for hundreds of years, and they were the only ones who ever bore werewolves. There have been cases of male werewolves impregnating women who did not know they were werewolves, and if the woman bore the child, it was never a werewolf. There have also been cases, especially in the foothills of the Himalayas, of werewolves in their wolf form mating with wolves, and their offspring have always been wolves."

Lupin was astounded, because he knew how the kids had been living, and though Hermione had never ceased to amaze him, he didn't see how she could possibly have done this research since the last time they met. "When did you have a chance to find this out?" he asked.

"I already knew when you came to Twelve Grimmauld Place, but I didn't say anything, because I didn't want you to think I was trying to give you false security, or to suggest that it would not be alright if the child were a werewolf. I didn't think it was my business to get involved when you and Harry were having a row about the thing that was most painful to each of you."

Lupin, who was in high spirits, flung his arms around her and kissed her, and then returned to the dining room. Hermione looked after him thoughtfully. Although the occasion called for high spirits, she thought she was seeing a bigger change in him than would be accounted for by a single event, however momentous. And this thought shone on an idea germinating in her mind about the future direction of her life.