Title: Born of Magic

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter world or its characters. J. K. Rowling does.

Summary: Nymphadora Tonks's autobiography. Canon-compatible throughout. Implied slash SBRL. Thanks to Entspinster who gave me the idea which inspired this story.

This is my autobiography, and yes, twenty-four is a bit young to be writing one, but this may be the last chance I get. I'll call it "Autobiography of a Fag Hag".

I know, I know. I don't like it either. And I'm not trying to "reclaim" the word, or anything political like that. It's just that I don't know any other words for what I am. Fag-hag. It's a Muggle term. And Muggles don't even know what a hag is. Well, they know what they think it is. Either way, it's pretty insulting. But why should I care? I am what I am, and it harms no one.

I've never bothered trying to find out why I'm the way I am, because it doesn't worry me. I used to be happy being myself. Now – is anyone truly happy in these troubled times? But I do remember the first time I had these feelings. I must have been about four. We had visitors at our house: Sirius and Remus. Mum told me Sirius was her cousin, and so he was my cousin too, and Remus was his friend. I liked them from the start. They were funny and clever and kind. They played with me and made me laugh, and brought me sweets and comic books. The most fun I had when I was little was when they came to visit. But though I liked Sirius and I liked Remus, I liked Sirius-and-Remus better than either of them. It was as if they were two halves of one person, and needed each other to make them whole.

I saw them kiss once. They didn't know I was there. I must have been eight by then. They were upstairs, just inside the bathroom door. Remus was leaning against the wall and Sirius had his arms around him, and Remus's arms were round Sirius's neck, and they were kissing, like Mum and Dad did but for a longer time. And I felt I was in a holy place, like the church Gran and Grandad Tonks took me to sometimes; but this was a silent sacred place where I wasn't meant to be. I backed away quietly and they didn't hear or see me.

After that visit I didn't see Remus again. Sirius came alone twice, but he wasn't even half as much fun as Sirius-and-Remus, and although he brought me little magical toys, it wasn't the same and he knew it, because he looked sad. When he'd gone, I asked Mum why Remus didn't visit any more, and she said it was because of the war. And then the war was over, and everybody was happy; there were owls flying about carrying the good news, and there were fireworks and parties. But neither Sirius nor Remus visited us, and I heard Mum crying in her bedroom, and Dad trying to comfort her.

"I loved him," she was saying. "He was the only one of our whole rotten family that I loved, and he turned out the worst of the lot." I couldn't hear what Dad said. His voice was low and very gentle, and eventually Mum stopped crying and I went to sleep.

Later, Mum told me that we wouldn't be seeing Sirius again, because he'd done a very bad thing and been sent to Azkaban prison, and we should just forget all about him. I didn't understand. Laughing, joking Sirius …. he liked to play tricks on people, but it was all in fun. I couldn't imagine him doing anything really bad. I wanted to ask Mum what it was he did, and how long he would be in prison, but she looked so unhappy that I didn't want to bother her so I just said "Okay, Mum."

And I did almost forget about him, but never quite; now and then I'd come across a Martin Miggs comic that he'd given me, or the tiny teddy bear with a red and gold scarf, singing the Hogwarts school song to six different tunes at once, or the snow globe with a miniature silver castle inside, its little slit windows emitting changing coloured light – and I'd wonder how he was and if he was even still alive. But I didn't say anything.

Then I went to Hogwarts. Oh, that was wonderful. I was in Hufflepuff and it was much the best House to be in. I'd been a bit anxious, because I hadn't been among girls and boys my age before, and I wondered if I'd get on with them. But it was all right – no, it was better than all right; everyone in Hufflepuff was friendly and nice to me, and they were quite impressed by my being a metamorphmagus. None of them had ever met one before and I was much in demand for playing tricks on teachers by making myself look like someone else. It didn't even matter that I was clumsy, always dropping things and falling over things; it made people laugh and I learned to laugh along with them, so that when they teased me it was in fun and not malicious. There was the serious side to it all, too: learning magic. I loved that. It was like coming home, or becoming myself - having a wand and learning spells.

And that wasn't all I learned. I found out at last what Sirius had done; a Slytherin girl took some pleasure in informing me, when she discovered that I was a Black on my mother's side. I learned how he had betrayed his best friend, so that the friend and his wife had been murdered by You-Know-Who, and then he killed his other friend and twelve Muggles with one curse. And Remus had disappeared, and no one knew what had happened to him. Some people thought he had been on You-Know-Who's side along with Sirius, and ought to have gone to Azkaban too; others thought Sirius had killed him as well and hidden the body so that it was never found. I didn't know what to think. It was hard to believe such things about my cousin. And I certainly didn't believe that he had killed Remus. I knew by now what I had seen between them, and it was love. Even if Sirius killed a thousand Muggles, he would never hurt Remus. I held on to that knowledge, and it helped me not to care when Slytherins and Gryffindors were being nasty about me being related to a murderer. The Hufflepuffs were all on my side.

"You're not him, you're our Tonks," they said, "it doesn't matter what your cousin did or didn't do." All except one boy, who said it was – "awesome" I think was the word he used.

As time went on, I picked up bits of information, as you do – knowledge that wasn't taught in the classrooms, but was whispered and giggled about in dormitories and common rooms, facts about boys and girls, men and women, and those people who refused to fit neatly into male-female pairs. "Gays", they were called, and "lesbians".

So that was what Sirius and Remus were. Gay. Something about that made my blood sing like silver bells, and my heart dance to its tune. They weren't the only ones, there were others and always had been, even though there had been laws against it until quite recently. That was so cruel, I thought, to persecute and punish people for being themselves, and for loving. They couldn't help who they were. And yet, I liked to think even if they could, they wouldn't. If some powerful wizard offered to change Sirius and Remus so that they were just good friends, and each loved girls, they would refuse, I was sure of it. They would choose each other's love rather than the easy life.

I read everything I could find about it. Homosexuality, that's what it was called, that was the word to look up in the index. It was in history, both magical and muggle, and in novels and poetry, although there it was often in disguise. No doubt it was quite ludicrous of me, as a thirteen-year-old virgin, to think myself an expert on the subject, but I certainly knew more about it than my sniggering class-mates. And I thought it was beautiful. I built it up in my mind into something perfect, far superior to mere earthly heterosexuality.

When I was in fourth year, there were two boys, seventh-year Ravenclaws, who were rumoured to be a gay couple. They did seem inseparable in public, and there was something about the way they looked at each other that put me in mind of Sirius and Remus. There were others, boys and girls, who people said were gay, but it seemed to me most of them were just unpopular and that made them easy targets for rumours. But those two Ravenclaws…… I took to following them about, wanting to talk to them but not daring to, making do with an occasional smile intended to show my solidarity with them.

"I know you're gay," I wanted to say, "I know you love each other and I think it's great." It would have been too absurd, even I knew that, so I kept quiet and tried to let my face say it for me. They, when they noticed me at all, regarded me with the faintest curiosity, as though I were some small harmless wild animal who shouldn't have been in Hogwarts but was not worth the effort of chasing away. On one occasion, as they came into the Great Hall for breakfast, I stood gazing at them, trying to convey my feelings by facial expression and thought-projection, and as they turned away to join the Ravenclaw table I heard one say "I do believe that little Hufflepuff's got a crush on you." "Me? I thought it was you!" the other answered. They were both wrong, of course. It was the two of them, and the thing they had together, that I loved.

Needless to say, I never felt like that about any heterosexual couple. Them I regarded with the healthy contempt they deserved.

It was when I got to seventh year myself that I realised the situation I was in. I was boxed-in by my own feelings. I would never find love; not the one-to-one love that everybody was supposed to want. I could never love a man who would want me. I could only love the unattainable. Heterosexual men I despised. No, that's not true. I loved my father, I respected the male Professors, I was even quite fond of some of the Hufflepuff boys. It was their heterosexuality I despised. I could never, ever, bring myself to be in a relationship with a heterosexual man. There's a phrase for it now: a gay man in a woman's body. That's how I felt. If only I could be a man, I could find another man to love, and be happy.

In case you're wondering: no, I couldn't. The metamorph ability lets me change my appearance; I can look like a man, I can even produce external male anatomy, but small and non-functional. I wouldn't deceive a real man for a minute, and I wouldn't deceive myself. I had no wish to live a lie. And, while I liked and admired some of the lesbians I met, I knew I wasn't one. I enjoyed having women friends, but that was as far as I wanted to go.

After Hogwarts I went into Auror training, and disillusionment set in. Although the work was intensive and hard, we did have off-duty time, and then I spread my wings. I mixed with all sorts: wizards, witches and Muggles. I went to pubs and clubs, and found out the gay ones. I discovered that gay men were no better nor worse than all men. There were the good, the bad and the scumbags. There were clever, comical ones; intelligent, sensitive ones; the outrageously effeminate, and the ones who looked like shop assistants (and may have been shop assistants, for all I know). There were bikers in leather, and clones with moustaches and checked shirts. There were wistful-looking men on the far side of middle age, with comb-overs. There were spotty boys who swaggered to hide their anxiety. And there were the misogynists, the die-hard woman-haters who didn't want to be reminded that the female gender existed. These resented my presence in their pubs; if there were a number of them and they felt bold enough, a hateful hiss of "Fishshsh….." would be directed at me, and I would pass them with my head high until one of my friends would call out "Leave her alone; come here, Tonks, and let me buy you a drink."

Because, by then, I did have gay friends. Quite a few of them; mostly Muggles, but some wizards. And in spite of discovering the downside of the gay scene, I was still in love with it. Some gay men might be promiscuous, selfish, sadistic even. There might be little or no affection in their casual couplings. To them, I was an unwelcome intruder with an inconveniently thick skin. But that wasn't the whole story. There really were others like Sirius and Remus, like my two Ravenclaws, who genuinely loved each other and in them I saw still the ideal man-to-man union that seemed to me so much more romantic and infinitely more erotic than any man-woman relationship ever could be. And I was always, by the very fact itself, on the outside looking in.

I'm not as naïve as you may be thinking. I do know that some women of my sort (and I had by now realised that I was not unique) seek gay men who are not averse to an adventure on the other side; even tolerant gay couples who find themselves able to accommodate a female in their beds. That was not for me. I didn't even need to try it to know that it wasn't what I wanted. A witty Muggle once said he wouldn't want to join any club that would accept him. I felt rather like that about men. I wasn't interested in bisexuals, and a man showing interest in me turned me off completely. And a gay couple who would be willing to include me in their intimacy would have so degraded themselves in my eyes that I would feel only disgust for them.

So there was Tonks on course to be a lonely old spinster. There was only one thing I really regretted. I wished I could have had children. My sexual instincts may have been unconventional, but the maternal one was right in place. I'd never had much contact with small children, having no brothers or sisters. There was my cousin Draco, but as our mothers were not on speaking terms we rarely met, and had nothing to say to each other when we did. In spite of that I felt I could be a good mother, and could give a baby the love that I couldn't give a man or woman.

I don't want to give the impression that I was unhappy at that time. I had a very busy life. Auror training took up most of my days and I preferred to spend my limited leisure having fun rather than fretting about the future. The future would come soon enough. When it did, it was brilliant. I passed my Finals and became an auror, and Albus Dumbledore invited me to join his secret society, his resistance movement, the Order of the Phoenix.

I had no hesitation in accepting. I was thrilled at the prospect of taking my part in something so important, exciting and dangerous – and now I understood why Kingsley Shacklebolt had been taking so much interest in me, questioning me about my thoughts on every aspect of wizard politics. He'd been sussing me out, making sure I had the right attitude to fit in.

And then the best thing, the thing I never even imagined, let alone hoped for. Sirius escaped from Azkaban, and it turned out he was innocent. He hadn't betrayed his friends, and he hadn't killed the Muggles. He was back in his family home and hating it, but Remus had moved in and spent as much time as he could there. Remus was in the Order too, and was kept busy on mysterious "missions" – I gathered they usually had something to do with werewolves. Oh, didn't I tell you? Doesn't matter, you'll have read it in the Prophet. Remus was – is – a werewolf. I was proud of my cousin for not caring about that, and loving Remus for himself. Lycanthropy is a terrible affliction especially for someone as naturally gentle, intellectual, civilised as Remus, but he bore it with patience and I admired him for it. The law, and wizard society, make no distinction between werewolves who endure their condition stoically, and those like Fenrir Greyback who revel in it. A werewolf is a werewolf, to be regulated, confined, persecuted. But Sirius loved his werewolf, and I loved them both.

He was so strong, Sirius. He had survived twelve years in Azkaban, his mind and body damaged but not destroyed. But even more than that, he was morally strong. Our side – what we like to think of as the "good" side – had thrown him into a vile cage without even a trial. Yet in spite of everything Sirius remained loyal to Dumbledore, who had apparently believed in his guilt and made no effort to investigate the truth of the matter, and who really did not merit Sirius's loyalty. But with that magnanimity which Blacks sometimes are capable of, Sirius forgave everything, and committed himself whole-heartedly to the cause. He hated being pent up in his childhood home of bitter memories, but he endured it.

I stayed in that house with him as often as my auror duties permitted, and sometimes when Remus was away Sirius and I would talk long into the night. I told him something of my feelings about him and Remus, and he seemed to understand. And I told him my secret desire that I had told no one else; my longing to have a child. I expected him to laugh at me or try to talk me out of it; instead, he understood that too and explained that it was by no means impossible, even for someone like me.

"Even Muggles can do it," he told me, "they use spoons or something. I read about it in these Muggle mags that Moony brings me. But of course wizards and witches can do it better, because we have spells. Conception at a distance. Much less messy than the Muggle way."

I'd heard of Muggle artificial insemination, but not the spells. They weren't taught at Hogwarts, and didn't form part of Auror training. "You really think I could have a baby that way?" I asked, feeling dazzled by the prospect.

"Don't see why not," he said. "But you'll still need to find a father, and don't even think about me. Our family is too inbred and eccentric as it is, to put it mildly."

"What about Remus?" I asked timidly, fearing Sirius might get angry or jealous at the suggestion.

"You know," he said slowly and thoughtfully, "I believe he might be persuaded. He likes kids, and he said something once about it being a shame that James was the only Marauder who would have any descendants. And the Lupins aren't related to the Blacks, not in the last two hundred years anyway. I wouldn't raise the matter yet, though, not in the middle of the war. You know how bloody conscientious he is, he'd say now wasn't the right time, when any of us could get killed any minute. But when things settle down – yes, I think there's a good chance."

I pretended to agree with him about the timing, but secretly I thought the war was all the more reason to get on with it. When people were being killed daily, surely we should try to replace them, while we still could? I kept those thoughts to myself, and rejoiced in the possibility that Remus Lupin might be the father of my child. I couldn't wish for anyone better.

Oh, those were happy days. At the time, they seemed full of anxiety and hard work; weeks of boredom interspersed with moments of danger. But when I look back on them, what stands out is Sirius, getting better daily, leaving Azkaban behind and moving into the future, beginning to believe in a time when he would be free and he and Remus would live together in peace. And then, that dreadful day which shattered all our hopes.

I'm thankful I was out of it; I didn't see him fall behind the Veil. Even so, that fall haunts my dreams. I don't know how I could bear it if I had seen it. Remus and Harry saw it, and my heart ached for them, even while I tried to deal with my own grief: grief for my cousin whom I loved, and for the beautiful entity that was Sirius-and-Remus, now broken and lost.

It was my fault things went wrong between Remus and me. It was all right, at first. We were both grieving, and we did our best to put a brave face on and to keep each other's spirits up, and on the surface we managed it. We were the only people who had cared about Sirius, apart from Harry who had gone back to school. We went together to the station, with Moody and some of the others, and together we laid it on the line to the Dursleys about the way they were treating Harry. We were a team. Then I had to go and ruin it.

With hindsight, I can see so clearly my mistake. I put too much pressure on, too soon. If only I'd been more patient, taken my time – but I didn't believe I had time, things were happening too fast, bad things. Emmeline was killed, and Amelia Bones. Next could have been Remus, or me, and then what? My plans would come to nothing. I felt I had to make a move, so I did, and it was a disaster.

We were alone in the house, and had just eaten our breakfast, and it was quiet and peaceful, even Kreacher was nowhere to be seen, and I thought, Now.

"Remus, I need your help. I want to have a baby with you." Oh, I know, I know. I shouldn't have blurted it out like that. So many times since, I went over it in my head: what I should have said, how I should have built up to the subject gradually, explained my reasons, made it clear exactly what I wanted from him. It's easy to be right, looking back. But sometimes, my clumsiness wasn't just in my hands and feet, it was in my speech too. This was one of those times.

It couldn't have been worse. He looked first startled, then wary, then positively terrified. He stood up abruptly and said in a very cold voice "I don't think that would be a good idea." Then he walked quickly out of the kitchen. I had, as they say, blown it.

During the next few months, I tried to talk to him, but he avoided being alone with me and the few times I did manage it, he was cold, almost hostile, and talked about the danger of being associated with a werewolf. I tried to tell him I didn't care about that, but he wouldn't listen and walked away from me. He'd always been so kind before, and now he closed himself off from me. I looked for sympathy elsewhere, and found it in Molly. I confided in her to some extent. I didn't tell her everything. She wouldn't have understood. But she provided the listening ear that I needed, and I don't know how I would have got through that horrible year without her.

It was on the most horrible day of all that things came to a head: the day the Death Eaters got into Hogwarts (thanks, I later discovered, to my wretched little cousin Draco) and Dumbledore was killed, and Bill Weasley mangled by the vile Greyback. And to my shame, I took advantage of that last calamity to make yet another appeal to Remus. I knew I shouldn't, there were infinitely more important things going on than my self-obsessed frustration, but I was glad I did. Because his answers – and the responses of McGonagall, Molly and Arthur – made it clear to me at last that Remus had misunderstood me. He'd thought all along that I was propositioning him – that I wanted a relationship with him – no wonder he had avoided me. He must have thought me deranged, knowing as I did how things were between him and Sirius.

I lost no time in getting him alone, and this time I forced him to listen to me. Yes, literally, forced him. I pointed my wand at him and told him I would have my say, and if he tried to stop me I would hex him. Then I told him how all I wanted from him was the necessary to make a baby; conception without physical contact, though if he wanted to be part of the child's future, so much the better.

Even now, I smile when I remember his reaction. How apologetic, how shame-faced he was. He begged my pardon repeatedly for having jumped to such an unwarranted conclusion, accused himself of intolerable conceit and unbelievable stupidity, and practically grovelled at my feet. I'd got him where I wanted him, and had no scruples about pressing my advantage. He could hardly refuse my simple, reasonable request after that, could he?

He tried. He said, as Sirius had predicted he would, that now was the worst possible time to bring a child into the world, and that we should wait until the war was over. I countered that, on the contrary, it was the best possible time: how could we know we would still both be alive at the end of the war? It could be a case of now or never. We argued for what seemed like hours, but good-naturedly, he making a real effort to see my point of view, and in the end I won, partly because of his remorse for the way he had treated me in the past year, and partly because I played my trump card. I was a Black, the last female descendant of the Noble and Most Ancient House. A child of Remus's and mine would be the nearest thing to a child of Remus and Sirius that could ever be. It would be theirs, as well as mine. He couldn't resist that.

"I agree," he said, "on one condition."

"And what's that?" I asked him.

It turned out that we had to get married first. Regardless of the circumstances of conception, he would not father a child out of wedlock, that was not the way he had been raised. "I've given way to you against my better judgement on the matter of having a baby. Now you must give way to me on this," he told me.

That was fair, after all, and I saw he would not be persuaded otherwise. So, giving him no time to change his mind, we were married without delay. My parents were not too pleased about it; of course they knew about Remus and Sirius, so they thought this was strange behaviour on his part, and were concerned for me. I determined I would tell them the truth about that one day, when I decided the time was right. Then there was the whole werewolf thing. Dad wasn't too fazed by that – I've found Muggleborns generally aren't – but Mum didn't like it at all. Remus of course was a perfect gentleman and treated her with all courtesy, deferring to her on everything, but that only seemed to make her suspicious. It wasn't a happy situation, and it was made worse by the fact that we lived with them. We had nowhere else to go; Grimmauld Place apparently belonged to Harry now, and while he might have been willing to let us live there, neither of us wanted to. It would have been unendurably painful, with all its memories of Sirius, and probably unsafe too seeing that Snape had seemingly changed sides again. I could probably have afforded a small flat, on my auror's pay, but Mum didn't want to let me out of her sight now that I was pregnant, and I was reluctant to go against her wishes. I felt I needed her on my side.

So we survived, living in one room in my parents' house, taking little part in the events of the world outside. We did get away to form part of Harry's escort from the Dursleys'; Mum and Remus were both dubious about my joining in that enterprise, but I talked them round. And we went to Harry's birthday dinner, but had to leave before it really got started, when Scrimgeour turned up. Then there was the Weasley wedding. What a spectacle! I'd never have expected the Weasleys to put on a magnificent show like that. Of course Fleur's family must have paid for it. All I remember is purple and gold everywhere, as if they were royalty. Quite a contrast to my own wedding; not that I'd have wanted anything as extravagant as Fleur's. Nor would I have wanted it to end in pandemonium and mass Disapparation. The next few hours were terrible, being interrogated by Death Eaters, but we all stuck to the story that we didn't know anything, and eventually they left us alone.

Alone, the four of us, in that house, getting on each other's nerves and building on each other's anxieties. Remus and I agreed he should go and find Harry; we knew Harry was up to something, some task laid on him by Dumbledore, of which only Ron and Hermione knew. Mum and Dad were polite, but I knew they were glad to see the back of Remus. I wasn't, but I sent him off proudly; he was so brave, going out to face unknown perils with three teenagers who hadn't even completed their wizard education. I suppose I felt as women have since time began – or at any rate since war began, which is probably the same thing. I knew I might never see him again, and I didn't want to lose him, but he was bearing his part in the struggle to save all our people, and by sending him away, I was bearing mine.

So it was something of an anti-climax when he came back a few days later. Nevertheless, my feelings were mixed but powerful. First the joy of seeing him alive and unhurt; then concern – what went wrong? Had anything happened to Harry? And then, when he told me what had been said in Grimmauld Place, sheer fury. I was literally shaking with anger.

"How could that despicable little worm say those things to you?" I raged. "Who does he think he is, to talk to his elder like that? He knows nothing about us, nothing about life, nothing about anything. He wouldn't be alive if it weren't for you. You taught him the Patronus charm that saved his rotten miserable life twice. And that's how he thanks you. If I had the wretched ignorant little swine in my sight right now, I'd…."

"Take it easy," Remus said with a trace of a smile. "It wasn't all one-sided, you know. I pulled my wand on him and cursed him into the wall. I should never have done that."

"Good," I said angrily. "I'm glad you did."

"No, no, I was wrong. I lost my dignity, I stooped to his level. He attacked me with words, I should have retaliated with words. Besides, I understand him, he has this hang-up about losing his own parents when he was a baby. He wasn't responsible."

"Oh, he bloody well was. That's no excuse." I paused, because something was puzzling me. "Why did you say that about being afraid the baby would be a werewolf?" I asked him. "You know that's not true."

"I thought it wasn't," Remus said, "but I read this book, Bohuslav Kubik, the Werewolf of Bratislava. Apparently Bohuslav was a werewolf from infancy, and the book says the people marvelled at this and asked how he became a werewolf at such a young age. And the answer was, because his father was a werewolf."

"Obviously, that's nothing to do with the curse being hereditary," I said. "It's clear to me he became a werewolf because his father bit him. That's not going to happen to our baby, because I'll make very sure it doesn't. Really, for an intelligent wizard, you can be a bit thick sometimes."

Remus smiled broadly. "You're right, of course, why didn't I think of that? I'd been worrying, you see, thinking we were making a mistake having this baby, and that book put the idea in my head – but it's obvious, now you've pointed it out. That's another thing I have to apologise to Harry for."

"Apologise! You'll do no such thing," I said. "Apologise to that fiend? Believe me, the next time I see that young man, my wand will be so far up his arse, St Mungo's finest won't be able to extract it."

Remus looked at me in astonishment, then he laughed, the first true, honest laugh I'd heard him give since Sirius died. "Dora, I love you," he said.

I laughed too. But I was still angry.

Life settled into a dull routine after that, and the only things that happened were bad things. My Dad had to get away, because they were rounding up Muggleborns and there was no sense him sitting at home waiting to be taken. Remus started working with an underground radio station, Potterwatch, which broadcast news of what was really going on, as opposed to Ministry propaganda. Kingsley was involved with that too, and the Weasley twins and their friend Lee. One of the bits of news they gave out was my Dad's death. I was thankful then that Remus was with us. It would have been awful if it had been just Mum and me. She was very brave, but it hit her hard and I don't know if I'd have been support enough for her. It was a great help having a third person there, and Remus was unfailingly kind and understanding. But it was a rough time for all of us.

Even the roughest of times pass, and one stormy day in April my waiting was over. I had no one to help me but my Mum, and she was wonderful. She knew just what to do. Of course we sent Remus out of the house; I've read that it's the fashion now among Muggles to have the father present at a birth, but we witches know that childbirth is women's business and we keep the men well away. So it was just Mum and me when I held my son in my arms for the first time, and I knew I had been right, and it was all worth it. I felt a kind of emanation of magic from him, and I knew he was going to be a great wizard, equal to or better than Dumbledore. And – this is going to sound like mystical nonsense, or a lot of twaddle, as McGonagall would call it. But I felt I had been meant to have this baby; the time would come when he was needed. Maybe You-Know-Who will be defeated and dead, but in years to come another Dark One may arise, and if that happens, my son will be ready to fight and conquer him.

When we let Remus back in, he was thrilled to see his son. I think he too was aware of the baby's magical potential. When Mum went off to make some tea, Remus said "You were right, about him being Sirius's child too. He has three parents."

And, weird as it sounds, I had to agree with him. Sirius was present with us.

"Now I want to ask you something," Remus said nervously. "Don't be angry."

"No promises," I said. "Try me."

"Would you consider letting Harry be godfather?"

If he'd asked me that the day before, I'd have hit the roof. But now, with my dear baby in my arms, I couldn't hold a grudge against anyone, not even Harry Potter. Nor could I refuse Remus anything. And, if I was going to give in, I might as well do so with good grace.

"Certainly," I said. "No-one better."

Remus's smile of relief and gratitude was my reward.

"And now you'd better go and tell them," I said. "Go and take the news to Shell Cottage."

"I don't need to," he said. "I can send my Patronus."

But I insisted he go. I wanted to be alone with Mum. I had decided it was time to tell her the truth. And, as soon as Remus had gone, that is what I did. I peered at her anxiously. Would she think the whole thing some kind of Muggle-inspired perversion?

She gazed intently at the baby, and held her hand out to touch his head. She smiled.

"He's a very special baby," she said gently. "Magic through and through. Conceived by magic." She was silent for a while, then she said "I owe Remus an apology. All this time I've been thinking he was using you. I've heard about these gay men who think that marrying a woman will 'cure' them. And I thought what a dreadful thing to do to a woman, taking away her human dignity by turning her into an object, a 'cure'. I misjudged him terribly. I should have known he wouldn't do that."

"It's all right, everything's all right now," I said. "We're going to call him Ted."

She beamed.

That was a few weeks ago now, and Ted is doing just fine. He's a metamorphmagus like me. And I'd like nothing better than to spend my life caring for him, but that would be selfish. I'm a trained auror, and all hands are needed at this time. Remus has already gone to Hogwarts to fight, and I will follow him. We'll be fighting for Ted, and for all children and witches and wizards and Muggles, to keep them safe and free. I hope I will come back, but if I don't, Mum will take care of Ted. She loves him to bits, and she'll be a great mother to him just as she was to me. And some day, when he's old enough to understand, she'll tell him about his parents, and what a special child he was. Born of magic.