Nymphadora can feel her excitement rising when she walks through the doors to Grimmauld Place and looks at herself in the mirror. She has a feeling that something incredible is going to happen in the next few months; something that will change her (and Remus') life forever. A smile dances across her lips and half even emigrates up to her eyes. She's beaming. It is this moment that she decides there is to be no more morphing; that she will stay the same for the next nine months for fear of any more complications than might happen normally considering the parentage of the small being that might be growing inside of her. As she stares into the mirror, she crosses her fingers and toes, closes her eyes and murmurs a prayer to whatever deity might be up there and willing to grant the desire of one hopeful metamorphing witch.

She has had signs; she's missed it, and due to the fact that she and the resident werewolf aren't exactly celibate it's certainly a plausible hope and idea. Nymphadora turns to the side to examine her still rather flat stomach, placing a hand protectively on it despite the fact that there might not be anything there and this just might be her imagination or dreams running away with her mind. She wonders what he will say; she chews on her lip thoughtfully as she wonders how on earth she might broach this subject to a self-hating werewolf who is so completely sure that he's too old, poor and dangerous for her and who at the back of his mind believes that any day now she is going to up and run off with some good-looking auror with the world at his feet.

There are two ways that this could go.

a.), she thinks to herself, he tells me it's the happiest day of his life, and that he is so incredibly happy he will never doubt either of us again. Then his eyes will fill with tears and we'll embrace and then who knows what else might happen. Naughty Tonks, she is letting her mind drift off to lands of nostalgia, thinking of the last night they had before he was sent back out to the underground when she really ought to be predicting his reactions and finding ways to counter each (unless it's good of course, then she has naught to worry about).

Or, b.), her nose wrinkles automatically as she gauges this reaction miserably. He tells me that this is impossible, that it's either not his, or that he cannot possibly be a parent during the war, and that the fact he is a werewolf will harm me or the baby or both of us. Damn. She knows it's probably going to be the latter, Remus and his damned nobility. She thinks it's funny however, that he would say he's taking the higher point in the case here, that she deserves better and that he is not the sort of man who would make a good parent, when in fact he's just going to a bleeding hypocrite by leaving her and their unborn child.

Nymphadora will make sure that if there is a baby, it will have both parents.

Grumbling to herself at how stressful this is going to be, and how hard she's going to have to work in order to make him see what a ruddy idiot he's being, she decides to take a preemptive strike, and make herself as drab and dreary as she was when he kept refusing to love her. That way she'd beat him to the depression before morphing became perhaps a bit too dangerous.

Down went the red hair to bleak brown, her eyes were the same muddy colour, but they still held her sparkle and light; this time he wouldn't be able to rid her of those.

Nymphadora has not told a soul about this yet. Well, apart from the muggle department store clerk when she took her lunch break to look for funky maternity clothes just in case. She made a point of telling him, "I might be pregnant…" casually, to which she received a knowing smile as if the man had seen many women in her position in the same giddy-disguised-as-calm state.

She decides she can't wait until she's big enough to wear them.

She has also told the deaf old lady with the mole who runs the checkout stand at the Chinese restaurant down the road. The only difference being here that the woman doesn't understand a whit of English, and she only nodded and handed her the rice and fortune cookie she had ordered.

Nymphadora is holding the takeout in her hand as she peers into the kitchen, finding that no one has returned home today. This is good she supposes, since she can sit and eat in peace, read her fortune and then nip upstairs for perhaps a little nap before anyone else gets in.

Her mind is wandering already, and she begins to wonder what the child will be like. Will it have Remus' kind eyes? Her sense of adventure? Their acceptance of things diverse? The smile creeps back up onto her face, and she's staring dreamily into the small box of rice as images of babies and Remus and cradles and other such things cross through her mind.

She takes another bite and wrinkles her nose. She wonders what she might have cravings for and desperately hopes that it's Chinese since she gets a discount and loves it so much. She overheard some expectant mothers in the department store earlier saying that they had wanted kippers and asparagus, and borscht with toast throughout theirs. She makes a face as she recalls this and prays that she doesn't want anything too odd; she's very picky when it comes to food, and if she finds out later she had wanted kippers or borscht, she might just die.

Lost in her thoughts, she doesn't hear the front door creak open, the sound of rain pouring down flooding the inside of the foyer in echoes. An umbrella is tapped against the doorway and propped up in the claw-foot stand as the man steps inside and removes his sopping shoes. He is exhausted and swears that his hair is greyer and there are more wrinkles around his face than ever before. He knows he has new scars and really doesn't want to have to show them to anyone, especially her. She deserves someone intact and it breaks his heart every time she gazes upon his broken body because he wishes so greatly to be that whole man, but knows deep down that he never can be and very much believes he doesn't deserve her, this, anything.

Remus sees her in the kitchen, a dazed look on her face as her toes curl around the leg of the chair while she eats her takeout. She's a picture of perfect loveliness to him; even now with her dull appearance, something he will have to ask her about later, later when he tells her what he really needs to say.

He quietly removes his shabby coat, hanging it up upon the rack that she so often trips over and a crooked smile crosses his lips and half of him wonders how he'll ever survive without her quirky and endearing qualities. The other part scolds it quickly, saying he'll go on as before and he will live, even though none of him believes that wholly.

Lupin glances down at his right sock, watching as his toe peeks out of a hole he has yet to mend knowing that if he mends these socks any more they will fall apart. Much like everything else he owns or loves. Except her, which is why he cannot have her any longer, or she will too, and he couldn't have that. His intention renewed, he decides that he really needs a good rest more than anything else, and begins to walk up the stairway.

Nymphadora hears and leans to look out the doorway and into the foyer.

"Remus? Is that you?" She asks softly, knowing that it is and she wonders why he hasn't spoken a greeting, or at least sneaked up behind her to giver her his usual tired embrace.

"It is."

His response is so hushed that she barely hears it, but the tone cuts her heart in half before she even realizes it.

"Oh?" She bites her lip and pushes some rice around in the box with her plastic chopsticks. "Why don't you come in and sit down? I'll make you some tea…" She offers meekly, knowing subconsciously that it's going to be refused.

"I'm going to go have a quick kip…" He murmurs to the wall, forehead against it as he tries not to break his resolve there and then before he has even talked to her.

"Oh. Ok." Nymphadora nods and hears him walk the rest of the stairs, and duly notes that the door closing is not the one to their shared bedroom, but to the one across the hall that he used to inhabit before Sirius' death, before they were together. Her heart catches in her throat and it seems that her good news and joy are dashed before she even gets a chance to share them with the other half of the tango.

She wrinkles her nose to keep the tears from leaking down her pale face, taking one of the chopsticks and stabbing the fortune cookie miserably. She has lost her appetite. She glances down and sees the lucky numbers on the back of the thin strip of paper. Not even bothering to read it, she trudges into the living room to lay on the couch, not even able to bear being on the same floor as him in case he is about to say what she thinks he is.

The lonely fortune stays crumpled on the tabletop professing:

A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.

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Ok! This is the first chapter to my sequel, please review so I knowif it's worth continuing, xD

The last quote of the fortune cookie is a quote I found on some website, by Stanislaw Lem. (I think, that's what it says there). I thought it fit rather well there, and seemed better than making up a corny one of my own!

Anyway, Disclaimer, you all know I don't own them even though I wish I did. :D