Until There's Nothing Left Of Us

Your son will start Hogwarts tomorrow, and Remus will hold you so tightly you will almost feel it.

Back there, his grip would have left angry welts, purple bruises that clashed horribly with your hair, but here, somehow, the tighter he holds on, the more you convince yourself that you are actually feeling his warm fingers, that his leathery smell is more than faint memory.

But since you are a memory yourself, since you ceased to be in the dictionary-definition of the world eleven years, four months ago, that makes his smell, the scratchy sensation of his woolen sweaters against your arms, his rough, delicate lips stealing your smile…

A memory's memory, is what they are. The most unsubstantial thing one could possibly think of. (For you are the only one who knows what it sounds like, Remus Lupin's hoarse I love you between sheets and stars; the only one who knows the calloused, scarred shoulders, how they arch and open for you, the deeply lined face and how some of the gouges dissapear when you kiss his eyelids until they flutter shut and he sleeps and dreams, to wake in the morning).

Your son will start at Hogwarts tomorrow, and you will be elsewhere, perhaps.

You wonder if he has forgiven you by now.

---

He shows his first signs of magic on a summer's morning on the back porch of Grimmauld Place, making an egg levitate and crash on the orange cat's head, hoping that it will make baby Albus laugh.

Al just looks puzzled, but then James bursts out that Teddy can make eggs fly, and Harry surfaces from his newspaper and the adults make a big fuss. Sirius comes to tell you, somehow –you still haven't figured out how that works, because you could have sworn that you were there to see it all, but you're also sure that Sirius came…

It's all so puzzling here, so fleeting. It drives you mad, how nothing's sure, nothing's dependable.

You're not sure Remus is really here, even when he is.

And even that is nothing like how it was back there, when he was gone –off with Greyback's pack, or just retreated into a dark corner of his mind where you knew better than venture- because there, he always came back to you.

And he would here, only you're not sure you're really here, and not somewhere else.

---

You get confused with the way it should be and the way it is, it's all confusing and the boundaries are far more blurred than they should be.

For instance:

When Teddy crashes that egg over the Potters' cat, you think that maybe that never really happened, maybe that's just the way you imagined it to happen. Maybe your son's magic will be nothing like yours, not clumsy and havoc-reeking, but slow and deliberate, or maybe even malicious, intending not to make Al laugh, but to cause that poor animal pain.

You have no way of knowing whether your son is a bit of brat or not.

He may have even inherited your Auntie Bellatrix's tempter.

Irony, after all, bites hard. This is, one might say, the story of your life. (Although the story of your life has much less to do with irony and tragedy, and much more with head-strong stupidity and overconfidence in the strength of your shield charms in precicesly the wrong moment).

But the confusing thing is that in your heart of hearts, you know that he has his father's kindness and your sense of humor, that he doesn't like cheese except for gouda, that he likes to read aloud to the various Weasley children and that his hair smells of paper, dust and faintly of milk. You know that he still sleeps with a blankie his Gran fashioned him out of an old T-shirt of yours and a shirt of his father's, and book under his pillow, because he firmly believes that the book will whisper it's story into his ear as he dreams.

You know all of this, and yet, you don't.

It's confusing.

It's frustrating.

It's killing you. Or it would be.

---

They say you have to let him go. But he's your son, and he just wrote his name for the first time, with the beautiful oil pastels Dean brought him for his birthday, T-E-D-D-Y in scrawled letters and you cannot let him go.

You hover.

You can't –or won't? or wouldn't? You've forgotten again…- come closer to him than this, but what are you talking about? You've come so close you could gather him up in your arms right now, let him squirm in your embrace as all little boys do, the bruise from where he fell off his bicycle last week bright red on is knew.

He's right there.

(But you've remembered again- it's not he's who's gone. You are.)

---

He's walking. Stumbling through the backyard of the Tonks' cottage, trying to catch a bright soap bubble which George Weasley is testing on him, and he gets on his two feet and walks a couple of steps. His grandmother notices and calls out and holds him close and sheds a few tears at the miracle of this toddling boy with the bright-orange hair, taking staggering steps on an autumn day.

He is a miracle, every step he takes is a miracle, and if you could cry, where you are, hot tears would stream down your cheeks, but you can't cry.

You can't writhe and scream with agony at the unfairness of it all.

You can't smash plates against walls, pound your fist into whomever responsible, hex them into a slug with all your pain and anger.

You can't reach out and bounce him on his legs, cover him in kisses for being the cleverest little boy ever to walk through this garden.

You can't hide your face in his father's shoulder, his arms encircling yours, whispering something sweet and honest into your luminous, ridiculous hair.

Remus's whispers linger on the frays of your consciousness, and whatever he's saying, some of it might be lost in translation, and you'll never know.

---

There are moments when you are sure you made the wrong choice –although it wasn't really a choice, the choice was never really offered to you, or rather it never presented itself as an actual choice, something you think is both flattering and incredibly unfair- in not going back.

Because at least Teddy could have seen you.

At least you could have told your mother that he hates lullabies, that her off-key renditions of Strawberry Fields Forever are making him cry harder, rather than soothing him; that he likes to be kissed on the nose, and that his hair only changes green when his diaper is full or his stomach is empty.

You could have apologized to your mother for making her do this and later, apologized to him.

You could have made sure he knows who you are.

You're terrified he might not recognize you.

---

It's the second night, you think, you're trying to count and keep track of their time, his time, which is very much not your time any more (because your time will from now on be measured in infinities, because as they say, forever is a damn long time) and he's crying, and even here, you can hear him.

You want to go back, you need to, you need to tell your mother that there is no "Nym-", no unspoken dash, no choking sound, in Teddy's name.

You struggle, as though swimming upstream, because you want to get to him so badly, and then Remus is there, or at least you think of this, and you know that you're remembering his hand in yours and his steering you away, away from Dumbledore's funeral, away from your Dad's coffin, and you hate him, at this moment, for leading you away…

(Where else?)

---

"I have to go back!"

You can still talk, although you have a feeling that speech is being drained out of you like water out of a sink, and soon, all that remains of your voice will be stray flecks of foam, gleaming in a thousand colors until they too are washed down the drain.

"You can't." And there's Remus voice, feeling much more substantial than your own, and yet much farther away.

"But he needs-"

"You can't."

"You could." She tries to keep the accusation out of her voice, but fails. "You could go back. Just now, you went… "

"That was different," he sighs. The argument so mundane, so familiar, "Why did you leave?" and "It's different" and "What are we doing?" and all the things they said and did to each other, echoes from their fights for the life together which they never dreamed would end so abruptly, before it had even properly started, that it belies everything around them. "Harry called me back, it was…"

"You could have least checked on Teddy," you accuse, and you think you might still be able to cry.

"No, I couldn't have," he says, wearily. "I'm sorry."

"Try being me."

---

"Oh, shit," are the first words you utter when you realize he's there too.

You both are –or rather, you both are not, that seems to be the point of the matter- here, and while you haven't quite figured out what the here is, the important point is that it's not there, that it's a lifetime away from Teddy.

You realize the irony of the phrase the minute you've thought it.

"No," he whispers hoarsely. "No, no, what are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Did you leave-"

"I couldn't stand-"

"But we talked-"

"But I had to-"

"Role was going after some kids, Dean Thomas and-"

"Voldemort told Bellatrix to go after me, she was too quick for me-"

"I had to jump in, I didn't see Dolohov, I thought I'd stunned-"

"The shield charm, she just burst it, I've never seen anything-"

"I thought you were-"

"I thought you'd be-"

"- safe." You finish, at exactly the same time.

You stare at each other, and you notice that he seems much more substantial than you are, that while you seem to be rapidly fading away, he seems to be growing stronger, and you want to do nothing more than run into his arms and feel them to be solid and real, protecting you from this horrible, horrible nightmare you have strayed into.

"We left him," you whisper. "Fuck."

---

You open your eyes and find yourself in a room that looks almost like your bedroom from earliest childhood.

Not the nice room at Tonks' cottage that grew up with you, with it's Weird Sisters posters and photographs of Sirius, but the tiny bedroom you spent the first few years of your life in, when your parents where spending the first war hiding from Voldemort and Bellatrix and the world in a tiny flat in Nottingham. That small room, with the pink wall, the army of stuffed animals, the Dora-sized bookshelf your Dad built out of banana trays as you watched and tried bouncing around, morphing your hair yellow with black stripes and insisting they call you Tigger, that's the room you see.

It's a strange sensation, because your body seems there, but also not, and you don't dare pinch yourself because then the horror hits and you realize you have gone and done the one thing they all warned you not to do.

You've gone and gotten yourself killed.

"Dora!" Your Daddy's voice is there, and you think you can see him, right there, with his apple-cheeks and broad belly, laughing broadly and picking you up and twirling him around in his arms, like he used to when you were small. "Dora, you're here!" He pauses, and you think he's frowning. "But it's too soon, isn't it? Isn't it far too soon?"

"Yes," you whisper, burying your head in his shoulder and thinking of little Teddy and how you'll never read him Winnie-the-Pooh, and how Remus won't even know about it and your mother will get Eyeore's voice all wrong, because she always did. "Yes, it's too soon."

---

Colors.

Colors and lights and you think you can hear Sirius and your father's laughter and it's enough colors to even make you feel ill.

Try to keep your eyes open, but no avail- too many colors, too many lights, like a lifetime's worth of New Year's Eve's exploding in a second in front of your eyes, and you close your eyes and there's a strange kind of suction, and you seem to feel your body fall.

---

"You filthy little blood traitor, you disgusting abomination- tell me, will your mother cry when she finds out I've killed you like I killed that freak kitten of hers? CRUCI-"

"PROTEGO!" You roar, and the shield charm seems to unsteady Bellatrix for a second. "STUPEF-"

Bellatrix deflects the curse, lazily, and it slashes an occupied portrait instead. The dark-red curtains on the canvas seem to bleed for a second.

"Yes," she drawls, "your mother had far to much affection for disgusting things, and look where it landed her. Once I've killed you, she will be all alone, won't she?"

"STUPEFY!" You try again, and again she ducks, with a loopy grace that very nearly reminds you of Sirius.

"Is that all you can do, little Nymphie, beast-loving freak? Stunning me is all you can think of? Let me give you some ideas, shall I? CRUCIO!"

You deflect the curse with enormous effort, and behind you, a suit of armor falls to its knees with an ear-splitting groan of rusting metal. You flinch, and she notices, and even as you yell "PROTEGO!", even as the invisible shield goes up, you see her raise her wand and you see her lips for the words, and you try to duck but there's a piece of rubble caught on the floor that makes you slide and the last words you hear are a jeering, self-satisfied, "AVADA KEDAVARA!"

---

In the middle of a raging battle, you meet, and Remus grabs your hand, lunges a Confundus charm at two Death Eaters following you and drags you into what seemed like solid wall, but is in fact a hidden staircase.

"What do you bloody think you're doing?" You gasps, running after him.

"Bellatrix is hunting for us. Do you think I want Teddy to become the next Neville Longbottom, with parents who don't recognize him, and a grandmother who-"

"I'm not hiding from her!"

"Oh yes you are," he says, darkly.

"Oh no, I'm not! She killed Sirius, she's tried to kill my parents- I am not hiding from her!" And you tear past him, up the staircase-

"Tonks! No! Come BACK!" He's behind you, running to grab your hand, but you snatch it away and round on him, pressing him against the wall on a step that's far too narrow for two people facing each other unless they're all too close. You catch a whiff of his leathery smell, your arm grazes the familiar skin on his face that you've fallen asleep looking at every night for the past year, and then he catches your eye. Teddy's eyes look exactly like this when he wakes up from naptime- confused but kind and inexplicably gentle, and somehow- understanding. And then you think of the way your baby son smells, of the way his lips form the perfectest little O when he yawns, you think of his strong grip on your pinky finger; and the thought surges through your- What if this isn't worth dying for anymore?

"Remus," you whisper, forcing yourself to act on this new impulse. "Get- out- of –here," you hiss. "Teddy-"

"Teddy would never forgive me if I came home without his Mum. I'm not going anywhere."

"Oh yes, you are!"

He raises his eyebrows. "Are you pushing me away?"

And your eyes fill with tears and you kiss him and breathe in every last detail of him and, hand in hand, you run back towards the battle.

"Remus!" Kingsley comes running by, "Come out into the grounds, we need to help some the kids still fighting. Tonks- see if you can secure the Entrance Hall with Minerva. GO!"

You stare at each other. "I'll see you later," you say.

"Tonks, I-"

"See you later," you repeat, stubbornly, refusing to even consider any possibility other than this one.

"I love you," he calls, running after Kingsley.

A voice in the distance has recognized the pink hair. "THERE YOU ARE, YOU LITTLE FREAK!"

---

You tear through the chaos around you, through curses flying like fireworks, almost slipping down the marble staircase. Regaining your balance -sort of- you hurtle through the entrance hall, and there, in a thicket of fighters he is, throwing curse after curse; his patched cloak having come undone in the struggle. You stare at him, transfixed, feeling like your heart's about to explode, until a cry of "CRUCIO" brings you to your senses.

"PROTEGO!" Your shield charm knocks his attacker backwards, and you act before he can get back on his feet. "STUPEFY! INCARSERUS!" And he's bound up on the floor, still as a statue, and you turn around to greet your husband with self-satisfied grin.

"What are you doing here?" He asks, completely nonplussed.

"Saving your sorry arse, apparently," you grin, ducking a curse from behind you, yelling "STUPEFY!" in the general direction.

"Why aren't you--"

"Oh, let's see. I'm a fully trained auror, my husband and all my friends are out there fighting the people who killed my favorite cousin, my dad, my mentor and two of my friends- yes, why would I possibly be out here fighting with them?"

"Tonks-"

"Are we doing this again? 'Cause right now is a really bad time."

He smiles at you. "You're right. STUPEFY!" Together, you sprint to the aid of Luna Lovegood, fighting off Alecto Carrow.

This is the stupidest thing you've ever done, a voice inside you says. But you ignore it. Your stubbornness has never lead you astray before, after all.

---

You apparate into the Hog's Head just as Augusta Longbottom is making to seal the passage into Hogwarts. "WAIT!" You call, scrambling through. The old lady looks at you, a disapproving crease etched between her eyebrows. "You shouldn't be here," she says, sternly. "You've just had a baby, haven't you?"

"Yes and that baby will never forgive me if I let the one person who can calm him down when he's got a tummy ache get himself killed," you snap back, closing your eyes against the bitter taste of panic already rising in your throat. How could he ever talk you into staying behind?

The old lady shakes her head. When you squeeze past her into the passage, she calls after you: "Your mother won't thank you for this, you know. I should know."

---

Sitting in your kitchen at home, at your Mum's house, which is still very much your parents' in your mind, you shake and drum your feet on the table and stare into the night and think your going mad. Teddy's awake, prattling away happily in his Moses basket on the kitchen table, and his Gran is making a chewtoy hover to amuse him, but her heart doesn't really seem to be into it, and every time Teddy squeals, you flinch, as though what you're hearing is his father, being tortured by Bellatrix, being hunted by Greyback…

You rise so quickly you knock over your chair. Your mother looks up with a resigned expression on her face. "I've got to go."

Her mother says nothing.

"I've got to. I'm the one who's the trained Auror, I'm better that is than he is."

Andromeda sighs. "I knew you'd say that."

"You did?"

She nods. "Are you… are you sure?"

"Yes," She says, squaring her shoulders. "Look, it'll be fine. I can't just sit here and wait for my husband to come back to me. You didn't raise me to be that girl."

"I know," Andromeda sighs. "I should've sent you to finishing school when I had the chance."

You look at each other and smile, then you fly into your mother's arms. "Don't worry, Mum. I'll come back. I pro-."

"Don't promise," your mother says, sharply. She kisses you, and whispers, "Take care of yourself. You're all I have left."

"I will," you nod. You bend over your son, who has been looking faintly disgruntled at the disappearance of the flying chew toy. "I'll be back soon, Teddy," you tell him earnestly, kissing him gently. "With Daddy. And then we'll have won and you'll grow in a world where you don't have to be ashamed of what your Dad is." He reaches out a pudgy hand and clumsily reaches for your nose.

"I love you, Teddybear," you whisper. "See you in a few hours."

---

Fin