XI.

September 1998

Thea and her family lived in Toronto for a year. Thea used the year to spearhead the Crossroads Toronto opening, prepping an all-Canadian team to take over the business there. She also spent a lot of time by the lake, writing essays for the When Days are Dark series to send back home. Rhys went back to lecturing in cities across Canada and America, though not as prolifically as he had done in Europe. When he was home, he took an active role in the education of the children, as both he and Thea had always done.

Things got better. After about two months, Andrew and Riley stopped having nightmares. Alice still had them, even after a year, but they had become sporadic, and shorter. And eventually, Rhys stopped asking Thea where she had been when she came home. Instead, he started asking her to go places with him again. They started calling in a sitter once a month, and going out. They talked like they hadn't done for months, and laughed like they hadn't done for years. And then, one humid sunny morning in the summer of 1998, Thea woke up, and thought that maybe it might be safe to go home.

The Davisons returned to England in August of 1998, and Thea didn't know how she knew it, but she knew things had gotten better. The fog had gone. And when she checked the back-issues of the national news, she saw that there had been a blow-up in daytime owl-sightings and fancy dress parties back in May. But there was no letter addressed to her with a quill pen when she collected the mail that hadn't been forwarded to Toronto. There wasn't anything out of place in or around the house. Thea shrugged it off. Remus was married now, and the war was over. He was probably busy.

The kids enrolled back into their respective schools. Riley would turn eleven in December. Next year, he'd be headed off to Rhys' old alma mater. Alice and Andrew were growing, too. Andrew would be seven soon. He corrected anyone that called him a little boy now. It made Thea smile, seeing him answer back so smartly with three teeth missing. But he was right, too. He wasn't a little boy, anymore. Soon he'd be a boy proper, and his older siblings would turn into monsters for a time as they navigated the murky waters of puberty. Thea was not looking forward to that.

So she smiled, that morning in September when her children filed out with their father to head to school, and they still let her kiss them good-bye. She kissed Rhys, too. He'd be heading to a meeting at a university concerning the translation he was currently working on, and probably wouldn't be back until late. As for her, it was her day off.

Thea sang a little snatch of a tune as she headed back inside her house. She sat down at the piano—Rhys played quite well, and Alice was learning, but the best she'd ever done was to learn one note from another. Still, she had her song books, and she took one out and plunked out the melody happily enough. Then the doorbell rang.

Thea frowned. She hadn't been expecting anyone today. No one had called. Their address wasn't a listed one, either, so it was unlikely to be a salesperson. Nevertheless, Thea shut the song book and got up from the piano. She walked to the door and peeked out the peephole.

A stranger was standing on the step, nervously shifting from foot to foot. Thea blinked, and opened the door. "Yes, can I help you?"

The tall, slender young man on the step looked down at her through his round spectacles, and he smiled somewhat awkwardly. "You're Thea Ramora Davison. I remember you. Er…I…"

Thea stared at him. He looked somewhat familiar, but before she could do more than feel a little awkward and defensive the young man had brought up the object he was holding. He held it out for her to see.

Thea recognized the book, even though she was having trouble placing the man. It was one of hers—one of the silly little children's books she'd written early on in her career. About ten, eleven years ago now. It hadn't been a particularly inspiring one, just a bit foolish, this one about Sylvia. But this copy had been read so many times the cover was falling off. Thea could barely make out the title. Threads poked out at the top of the disintegrating spine. Thea took the book from the young man gingerly and opened the creased pages. They had been stained; it looked like, by many, many late night secret snacks. Thea took in a long, shuddering breath. There had been people, over the years that had written to tell her how her work had inspired them. She had done her school visits, even lectured a few places, though she was still nowhere near as popular or as widely read as her husband. But she could think of only one person that would care enough to seek her out and show up on her doorstep with this particular book in this semi-creepy way.

Thea read the words on the first page of the book, written in ink in her own hand. They were faded, as if someone had run fingers over them countless times.

One day, Harry. I promise. Your Friend, Thea Davison

Thea looked up at her visitor. He regarded her with anxious green eyes and ran a hand through his very, very messy black hair. His fringe parted, just briefly, and Thea looked down before she saw the lightning scar.

Thea closed the book and handed it back to Harry Potter. She bit her lip. Her stomach had suddenly turned into a rock, and it weighted her down and nauseated her. There could be only one reason Harry Potter had come to her doorstep today, after everything, with a book she had given him when he was eight years old. There could be only one reason why he would need to.

There was a long pause. "Give me a moment," she managed at last.

"Sure," Harry said. Thea didn't look at him. She heard in his tone that he knew she knew.

Thea left her front door open and went back to the kitchen. She grabbed a sticky note and scribbled on it.

Out. Will be back before eight. Call if you need anything. I love you, Thea.

Then she grabbed her jacket and headed back towards the entrance. Harry was standing awkwardly in the hall, but she shook her head. "Not here. Just—I can't hear it here. Do you mind moving this to town? I can drive…"

"Yeah," Harry said. "No problem." The right corner of his mouth turned up, but his eyes were sad. Thea knew that he was humouring her now, out of plain and simple kindness.

He climbed into the passenger seat of her car without comment. Thea looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He ought to be eighteen now, she remembered, but he looked so much older. He looked…he looked like Remus had looked, seventeen years ago. Like he'd fought beyond human endurance, and lost more than could be borne. His shoulders drooped as if they bore the weight of the world, and his eyes carried the sorrows of the ages.

He eyed her, too. But they were ten minutes down the road before Harry broke the silence. "After I got to Hogwarts, when I thought about you, and that book, I thought you must be a witch. Everyone else I met that knew who I was back then was one of us."

Thea forced a smile. "Yes. I heard you weren't as fond of the attention as one might've expected. I reckon it's even worse now, though, now the war's won. Is that why you came? To get away from the crowds?"

Harry grimaced. "No," he said. "Where are we going?"

"A park on the wrong side of town," Thea said. "Mel's shut down a few years back. I think there's still a hamburger stand, though. I'll get you one."

"Mrs Davison—I—"Harry stammered.

She shook her head. "It's fine. Do you know about that, though? Mel's, and the park?"

Harry's hands tightened into fists. "That's why I came," he said quietly. "I don't know, but I was hoping you would tell me."

Thea was silent. She felt like laughing and crying at the same time. She didn't speak to Harry until they pulled into the car park at the park and got out. "It was careless of him to keep the letters," she said, more harshly than she intended to. "I didn't. I didn't want them to find any evidence if they ever…" she broke off. Harry had followed her into the park and onto the path. Now she stopped and turned to him.

"What happened?" she said. "When did he die? How did he die?"

Harry didn't hesitate. Thea got the feeling that he'd had many conversations like this one before, and it only saddened her further. "Voldemort had taken over," he said quietly. "But some of us were still fighting. We found—we found a weakness. Something we could use against him. We made plans. We set him up. And then he found out. There was a battle on May 7 at Hogwarts. We won. We took back our world. Voldemort was killed and his Death Eaters were too. Or they surrendered. Or they were captured and put on trial. But there were casualties. A lot of good people died." Now he hesitated. "Remus and Tonks were two of them."

His voice shook, but only a little. They hadn't been just good people to Harry. Thea realised Harry Potter had loved the Lupins, and loved them well. But he was so used to death, and had said something similar to someone's friend, or family member, or lover so often, it barely touched him anymore. Thea couldn't feel like that, though. She was devastated.

"Dora, too?"

"There's more," Harry admitted. He pulled out his wallet, and opened it. He showed Thea the picture inside. Thea blinked, at first not comprehending. The picture was of a tiny baby boy, one with amber eyes and chubby little fists that waved at Thea, as wizarding photographs were wont to do. As she watched the kid's little shock of hair changed from bright red to jet black to turquoise to purple. She blinked.

"He's a Metamorphmagus," Harry explained. "They can change their appearance at will. Tonks was one, too."

All at once Thea got it, and her knees buckled. Harry caught her elbow and led her over to the nearest park bench before the first racking sob hit. "How—how old?" Thea asked him as tears streamed down her face.

"He was days old. 's name is Teddy Remus Lupin, after his grandfather, and his father. He lives with his grandmum. She lost everything but him." Harry spread his hands helplessly then. "I'm godfather."

Thea swallowed, and nodded. She wiped her eyes with the shirt sleeve of her jacket. "'There is nothing new under the sun,'" she quoted. "The war is over, and a brave couple died defending their kid. That child is an orphan now, and some other know-nothing kid's stuck as godfather."

"Yeah. I know," Harry said. The bitter ironic amusement he packed into those three words made Thea look up at him.

"November," she said quietly. "November 1981. I was a waitress at a café called Mel's, trying to make ends meet. A university student. Common as the cold. Except Whit Blake left that night, so I took over serving the last customer in the café. It was late. I was curious, and a little bit lonely. So I talked to the guy. I let him stay late. He came back three weeks later, and we talked again. And again, and again."

Harry's hands clenched again. "The first letter Andromeda Tonks found was from December 1983," he told her. "You knew him right after the war, then. After Voldemort killed my parents."

"And Sirius went to Azkaban. That's right. Remus didn't trust the Order at the time. They'd thought he was the spy—I think because he was—"

"Because he was a werewolf," Harry finished, looking very angry. He swore under his breath, viciously. "He told you all of it? You knew everything?"

"Not right away," Thea explained. A breeze blew, and Thea watched the leaves blow off the trees and down the path. "He was very strong, and he didn't want to break the law. Mostly, I think—mostly because he wanted to keep me out of trouble. But…" she shrugged. "He was alone. And I was there. He told me his friends had died about two months in, and that one of his friends had gone to jail for something horrible. I worked out that it had been Sirius Black. That was before your people had quite finished the damage control, modified everyone's memories, and gotten the cold case investigators to rule that those thirteen—well, twelve—deaths had actually been down to a gas explosion, and not a bombing. It's probably still in the old papers in libraries someplace—you can tell them, if you like, though I don't suppose anyone cares, now.

"When I told him I knew about Sirius Black, that I didn't care, he told me about you, and your world." Thea jerked her chin towards the grove. "There are fairies that live in there, or there used to be. They never come out when I come alone. I haven't seen them in—oh, sixteen years. But that's where he told me. He never told me he was a werewolf, though."

"I don't think he ever told anyone," Harry said, quietly. "You worked it out?"

"With a little help from your dad and Sirius, actually," Thea told him. "…and Pettigrew, though I don't suppose you like talking about him. They'd written in his old textbook. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. As he was lying across from me on his couch, recovering from the full moon he'd missed my party for, it wasn't a really difficult leap.

"That was maybe a year after I met him," Thea said. "We really only knew each other for another year after that. Then your Ministry passed some laws, and he left. He came to my wedding. We wrote, on and off again. He and Dora saved me and my family from Death Eaters last year. I found out then that he'd been looking after me all that time."

Harry was looking at her with eyes that seemed to see right through her. "You looked after him, too," he told her. "I've read the letters. You sent him stuff, made sure that he ate. At least when you could do something about it. That year Sirius was down south—it was you again, wasn't it? He lived at your family's place. And me—you were—you didn't even know me."

Thea kicked at the ground in front of the bench. "No one ever gave Remus a break. But he was brave, and he was good." She swallowed again.

"Yeah, he was," Harry said. "You and he never—Andromeda thought maybe—"he broke off. Thea looked over at him, and he was blushing.

She laughed. "I loved him," she admitted. "Always. There wasn't a place for me in his life, he was bad for me, and I love the life I have now, but I loved him. He—I don't know how he felt about me. I was all he had, I think, for a while. He never forgot it. But he loved your friend—Dora Tonks—he cared more for her than he ever did for me. Enough to forget that martyr complex of his, get married, and have a kid against his better judgment. I never thought he'd do that." She looked over at Harry, suddenly desperate to know. "In the last letter I ever had from him, he said he was certain he would go to hell, but he couldn't regret choosing her. Did he—was he happy, in the end?"

Harry smiled then, a real, honest-to-goodness smile. "Y'know? I reckon he was. The night Teddy was born and he made me godfather was the happiest I ever saw him. Teddy won't be a werewolf, and I think Tonks convinced him in the end that she wasn't an idiot to marry him."

"Good." Thea said. "Good. That was all I ever wanted for him, you know. Thank you, for coming to tell me. How about that burger now, huh?"

She stood up and walked towards the stand. It had been renamed many times since '82, but it was still there just across the way. Harry followed her. Thea ordered her burger—cheese, with lettuce, tomato, extra pickle, and catsup. He ordered his with everything on it. Thea paid for them both and they strolled off.

Thea remembered this, walking in this park with a wizard after a war. She missed Remus, and she sighed, to keep from crying again. She took a bite of her burger. "It's different for you, isn't it?" she asked suddenly. "You have friends, a place to go?"

"Yeah," Harry said. He laughed, but there wasn't any mirth in the sound. "Hard to name someone who isn't my friend or a place I'm not welcome."

Thea nodded slowly, chewing. She swallowed. "But there are people that you can be yourself with, aren't there?"

Harry sighed. "There are, yeah. This is really good."

Thea smiled. "It was good then, too." She pressed her lips together and wadded up her burger wrap. "It's over," she told Harry Potter, tossing the wrap into a trash receptacle. "I'm just a Muggle woman, now. No ties to your world. Remus Lupin was the extent of my involvement. I can sign a secrecy act, or something, if you like. For the Ministry, or whatever is left of it."

"Not much," Harry told her. "But Kingsley Shacklebolt is working on that." He finished the last bite of his burger and tossed his wrap, too. "But I'm not going to undo what Remus did, Mrs Davison. I don't want to get you in trouble. I just—Andromeda and I thought you should know, about Remus. And we'd hoped one day—"he shrugged. "I was thirteen and he was thirty-three when we met. He was my teacher. Andromeda and Remus weren't on the best of terms. She regrets that, now. Everyone else who knew him really well was dead. So we were wondering—one day, when Teddy wants to know who his dad was, not during the war, but before then. When he was young. Could we look you up?"

For a moment Thea couldn't speak. Her eyes had filled with tears again. "Of course. Anytime. Always."

They had made their way back to the car park, and Thea somehow knew this was where Harry Potter would say goodbye. Thea reached into the car and got out his book. She gave it back to him without a word.

He tapped it. "You know, Mrs Davison, there's an animal in the magical world called a ramora," he said thoughtfully. "Learned about it once, in Care of Magical Creatures. It's this big silver fish. It anchors ships. Protects wizards and witches from drowning. No one really knows why. There's no reason for it. It just sort of…does. You're a Muggle. Perfectly normal woman. You're married, you've got a family, and you got into all this purely by accident. Except a normal woman would've run, or forgotten us. And you didn't. You held on. I didn't find those essays you wrote during the end of the war till it was over and Andromeda found your letters. You wrote them for us, didn't you? For Remus, and for Tonks, and for me, but for all of us fighting, really."

Thea shrugged and looked down. Harry smiled, then, and she caught that. It was a big, bright, proud smile. And for some reason, though it came from a teenage boy some eighteen years her junior, she felt as if she'd just received a medal for valour from the queen, or something. She looked up, and realised just who was talking to her, approving of her, and what he'd done, and felt very, very strange. Because Harry Potter wasn't a child. He was the general and hero of the victorious side in a war. He held out his hand, and Thea shook it.

"You're brilliant, you know that?" Harry Potter told her. "Thanks. And…I'm sorry."

"So am I," Thea Ramora replied. Then she got in her car, and drove away. Behind her, she heard a crack. Harry Potter had Disapparated. But she knew she would see him again, on some happier day. And perhaps, she would meet Remus Lupin's son, and she could tell him a story about a brave, good young man that had stayed late one night in the restaurant where she had worked. She could tell him about his strength, and his intelligence, and his quiet, sarcastic sense of humour. She could tell him about all that Remus Lupin had gone through, and about all she had seen him gain, over the years. And the sun would set, and the sun would rise, and tonight she would grieve. Winter would come. Harry Potter and his friends would grieve longer, and they would rebuild their world. Then Spring would come, the flowers would grow, and it would be a better world, and a brighter, that Teddy Lupin grew up in than the one in which Harry Potter had grown up before him.