Notes from the Author: Hi, all! This is a songfic, kinda, based off of Jason Robert Brown's song of the same name from the musical Parade. I really recommend looking at the lyrics. Some of them are included, at the end, in the second paragraph of Remus' letter.

For Heidi, since I've been telling her I would write this story for like, a year and a half now.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Remus or Tonks or Teddy, nor do I own Jason Robert Brown's wonderful music. Give credit where it's due!

Enjoy!

All the Wasted Time

Slamming the door helped. Not a lot, but a little of the anger had been taken out and left behind on that shadowed, dilapidated stoop. Slamming the door and Apparating carefully away, to some deserted Muggle street helped. Just not enough.

That – that – boy! He was incapable of seeing the whole picture, too much like his father for his own good! He had no idea what he was doing, headstrong and foolish and thoughtless and reckless and –

And right, said the firm voice in the back of his head. And those two words stopped Remus' angry strides. His footsteps slowed, and the only sound to be heard on the deserted street was the sound of his own heavy breathing. He stood, frozen, in the middle of the street, breathing heavily through his nose, shaking hands clenched into fists in his robes as he tried desperately to hold on to the anger now leeching out of him like sand through open fingers.

As the anger left him, the panic set in, and he was bombarded with voices, echoes.

Remus, I'm pregnant...Of course I'm happy, Dora. What else would I be?...

Dumbledore would have been happier than anyone to think that there was a little more love in the world...

So do you accept my offer? Will three become four?...I'm pretty sure my father would have wanted to know why you aren't sticking with your own kid, actually.

It will be better off, a hundred times so, without a father of whom it must always be ashamed!...So you're just going to dump her and the kid and run off with us?

With an incoherent growl, Remus clutched at his head with both hands, his face a mask of pain, and began to run. He didn't know where he was going or what would happen when he got there, but he needed to get away, to outrun the voices.

But the running wasn't working. If anything, the voices fell into rhythm with his loping gait, Harry's words echoing in his head, louder and louder.

You reckon he'd tell you to abandon your kid to go on an adventure with us...fancy stepping into Sirius' shoes...I'd be pretty ashamed of him...the man who taught me to fight dementors – a coward.

He had to get away. He forced himself to concentrate on the other things that Harry had said, the information he needed to get to Kingsley and the Order.

Death Eaters in Muggle London, a new way of – taught me to fight dementors, a coward – no! The Death Eaters! Muggle London, a new way of tracking Harry, could track – abandon your kid to go on an adventure – could . . . could track the rest of us, might – want to know why you aren't sticking with your own kid – a coward – dump her and the kid and run off? – a coward –

He couldn't stop the voices. And eventually, there was nothing he could do but give in to it. He Apparated away, just away, not caring if there were Muggles around to see him disappear, not even knowing fully where he was going. As he felt the familiar tug and compression, he had no idea where he would land. He half wished he would splinch himself, if only to have something else to concentrate on, something to get Harry's voice out of his ears.

But he had done this too many times, and his body was too accustomed to the commands, and so he Apparated without incident.

He fell to his knees where he landed, and allowed everything to just wash over him. He curled into himself, face buried in his hands, eyes burning but not watering, deep, panicked breaths racking his body, but no sobs.

What had he done? How could he fix this? Did he even want to? And what was he supposed to do now?

The questions were overwhelming him, and there was nothing he could do about it. Sitting back on his heels, he threw his head back to the night sky and closed his eyes against the stars. He took several deep breaths and tried to force his thoughts into some form of order. He'd always been the rational one, always. The most irrational thing he'd ever done in his life was get married, was allow her into his life, into his heart. He loved her. Maybe he always had; he didn't know. He loved her, and he'd allowed that to silence all the rational thoughts.

He still wasn't convinced it hadn't been the biggest mistake he'd ever made. The happiness he'd felt with her, overwhelming the first day he'd been able to call her his wife, had been fleeting, and when it was gone, he was faced with the stark, harsh, inescapable reality that he had put her at risk. He'd left rational thought behind, and he knew they would both end up paying for it.

He didn't understand how this had happened. He'd worked so hard to keep it from happening, but she'd worn him down, somehow. Somehow, she made him forget rationalities. And he'd almost gotten to the point where he believed that wasn't a bad thing, almost gotten to the point where he would gladly have traded all rationales for his life with her, when she'd uttered those two words, just two words that threw the stark, harsh, inescapable consequences of his lapse straight into his face.

I'm pregnant.

A child. His child. Their child. He didn't understand how this had happened, how they had let it happen, how he had let it happen. He had sworn – but he had sworn a lot of things.

He didn't know what to do. He hadn't thought this far ahead, something that proved just how much she had robbed him of all rational thought; even now, after making the decision to do what had to be done, to leave, for her sake and the child's, even now, he still was not thinking clearly. Unmarried Remus would never have gone to Harry without a backup plan. But married Remus – married Remus had not imagined for one instant that Harry would actually turn him away.

Which is how he came to be on his knees in the middle of a field without any idea what he was going to do next.

The sun was truly gone by the time he staggered to his feet and looked around. Somehow, he was not surprised to find himself in a field very near the small house he shared with his wife. He tried to pretend that he was, but somehow, he couldn't say he hadn't expected to end up here. Normally, he would try to figure out why his blind Apparition had taken him here, but under the circumstances, he didn't want to think about much of anything.

Wearier than he was after any full moon, he made his way home. He needed time, and solitude, before he could decide what to do next. Pulling his wand from the pockets of his robes, he undid the wards hiding the small house from anyone who didn't already know it was here.

Barely even thinking about the spells he was casting, he lit the lamps and locked the front door once he was inside, renewing the wards that only he and Dora knew. He made his way to the kitchen, waving his wand now at the kettle on the stove. Steam began to issue from its spout, and he busied himself making tea, grateful for the excuse to not think.

As he sipped the hot liquid once the tea had finished brewing, he slowly started to re-energize. And as he did so, he began to become aware of the fact that he was not alone in the house.

With that realization, he became instantly alert. Slowly, so slowly, he set his mug down and reached once more for his wand, listening intently for the footsteps and the faint creak of floorboards that were also slowing, showing that whoever was in his house was as aware of his presence as he was of theirs.

Then, the footsteps stopped altogether. He waited two heartbeats, then whirled, wand in attack position, a curse on his lips –

Only to come face to face with his wife, a wand likewise pointed at his throat, and a look of fiercest anger on her face.

She's not supposed to be here! was his first, panicked thought. And it was that fact that made him suspicious. She was supposed to be at her parents', not standing in the doorway of their kitchen.

"What did you tell me two days ago just after I got home for lunch?" he asked her. Without moving a single inch, she responded.

"I told you I was pregnant. What was the first thing you said to me the morning after we were married?" Remus closed his eyes, feeling distinctly as if he'd just been slapped. He could hardly bring himself to say the words.

"I said that I was done running, that I was where I wanted to be, and I wasn't going to leave," he whispered. His wand arm dropped to his side.

"So you are my husband," she said, her voice hollow with a nasty sort of edge to it. He opened his eyes to find that her wand was still pointed at his throat. "I don't know if that makes things better or worse for you."

He swallowed, and then, as much to stall as to accomplish any other purpose, he said, his own voice ragged and his eyes looking anywhere but at hers, "You're supposed to be with your parents."

"And you're supposed to be with Harry," she said. His eyes snapped to hers then, and the panic reared up in him again as he stared at her.

"How–" he started, but she cut him off.

"I'm not stupid, Remus," she spat, sheathing her wand in one swift, cutting movement. He felt his heart freefall to land somewhere around his shins. "You've been avoiding me since I told you about the baby – and in a house this size, that's pretty hard to do – once we got to my parents' house, you shut yourself up with Dad for almost four hours, you're sending owls back and forth with Kingsley all day long, and you haven't really met my eyes for days. It was pretty obvious."

He closed his eyes against the accusations and the pain in her voice, as if by closing them tightly enough, he could keep the words from coming or holding any meaning. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. He was just supposed to quietly disappear. She wasn't supposed to know.

"So what was it?" she asked, crossing her arms, her voice bitter and biting. "Your conscience get the best of you at the end?" He focused his gaze on her fingertips, white from the strength of her grip. "Or were you just too much of a coward to go through with it?"

Her words were designed to cut him, to wound him. But the truth was that her anger and pain didn't seem to be able to hurt him anymore than Harry's or his own. Or maybe he'd just become so numb to the pain that this little more didn't have much of an affect.

"Harry wouldn't take me," he said, his voice quiet. She nodded, looking up and away, blinking furiously to keep the angry tears in her eyes from falling. There was a long silence while she struggled to compose herself.

"And what were you going to do next? Come back and pretend like it had never happened? Or find yourself another suicide mission?" she finally asked.

"I don't know." She let out a laugh that was mostly a sob.

"At least you're honest," she whispered harshly.

The most oppressive silence of his life descended then, as both avoided making eye contact with the other, neither knowing what to say next. Remus relished the exquisite agony of watching her pain, wanting to go to her and try to fix it, but knowing that she wouldn't allow it, knowing he had given up the right to comfort her.

Finally, he couldn't take the silence anymore. He had to speak, though he had no idea what he was going to say. "Dora–"

"How dare you," she hissed through clenched teeth, as though she had been waiting for him to try and speak before letting out everything she seemed to have been holding in. "How dare you. You knew this wasn't going to be perfect, Remus, we both did, but we were supposed to talk about it when things got hard. You promised me that. But the minute things got a little rough, what did you do? You shut down! You hid away inside yourself and you pushed everyone away! And I don't know what you want me to do anymore. I'm sorry about the baby! I know we said we wouldn't, but guess what? Life happens, and I don't think you can blame this entirely on me!" And she turned away from him, to hide the tears she was no longer able to keep from falling.

Remus looked toward the floor, knowing this was when he needed to speak, but he had no idea what to say. "Tell me what to do," he said, very quietly."Tell me to go, and I will. Tell me to get out of your life, and I will."

"And remove all responsibility from you? No, Remus." Her voice was thick with emotion and tears. "Whatever you choose, it's your choice. Yours. You can't put that on me." Remus' eyes flicked toward her. He hadn't expected that.

"Why didn't you come after me?" he asked softly, delaying the moment when he had to make the decision. "If you knew. Why didn't you come after me?"

Slowly, so slowly, she turned to face him. What he saw nearly broke his heart. She wasn't angry, not anymore. She looked weary and broken. Her face was red and wet with tears, and her eyes were bloodshot. But what was worse, far worse than that, was what she had to say.

"Because I'm done chasing you," she said with a voice as heavy and weary as she looked. "I've tried to be enough, but it seems that I'm still not. And maybe I can't be; I don't know. But if everything I've given for you, given to you, given you, if all that still isn't enough, then the only thing left for me to give you is your freedom. And if that's what it takes, if that's really what you need, then I won't be what holds you back." She looked down, then, closing her eyes against new tears. "I love you, Remus, and I know that you love me, but I also know that sometimes loving someone isn't enough. And I'll respect that fact. I'll live with it. But there's something you have to do, too, because there's only one way I can live with it."

When she opened her eyes again, the fire in them had been renewed, and she took a few steps toward him, until she was right up against him. "You choose now," she said, eyes blazing up at him. "You choose now, and it's your final choice. You choose to go or you choose to stay, but whichever you choose, you can't change your mind. You have to promise me that, because I can't do this anymore. I can't spend every day wondering as you walk out the door whether or not you're going to come back. I can't wonder every time the door opens again if it's you coming back to me. You choose. Either you stay here with me, and you stay, no matter how hard it gets, or you walk out that door, and you're gone. For good."

On the last word, she jabbed him in the chest with her finger, and then turned sharply away. There were a few moments of silence before she finished. "I'll respect whichever choice you make, but you have to promise me that it's final. Because I can't do this anymore."

Before that moment, he never would have believed that his mind could be that full of turmoil and emotion and activity without a single coherent thought in any of it, but that was indeed the state he found himself in. And all he could really, consciously think about was the fact that she was asking him, demanding him to choose, and he had no idea how he could. Didn't she see that it wasn't that simple? He'd been certain of his choice when he'd turned her away the first time she'd said she was in love with him, and he'd been just as certain of his choice when he'd married her? How on earth could she expect him to choose and guarantee that his mind wouldn't be changed sometime in the future?

Because she deserves that, said the voice in the back of his head that sounded irritatingly like Sirius. And somehow, it cut through all the turmoil and emotion and activity, and he couldn't ignore it. She would let you go, freely, and this is all she's asking for in return. It's a reasonable request, Moony, and you know it. And it's more than you've given her, and you know that, too. She's given you love and devotion and a family, and you've given her grief and stress and hardship, and she would still do this for you? You accept her conditions, period. She doesn't want to get hurt again, and she doesn't want her child to go through life wondering why its father is only ever halfway there. You owe her that, you selfish bastard, and you know it!

Remus gripped the counter behind him until his knuckles turned white, trying to shut out the voice, his throat tightening and his resolve weakening with every moment. He forced himself to speak. "What – would you have told the child?" he managed to choke out. "When they got old enough to ask?"

She faced away from him, looking through the kitchen and sitting room doorways to focus on the blue-black sky. "That their father was lost in the war," she said finally, her voice so soft he had to strain to hear it. "That he fought against demons every day of his life for us and our lives. That he did what had to be done and sacrificed his own happiness and well being so that we could have a better life."

That broke him. Unable to stand any longer, he sank to the floor below the sink, pulling his knees up to his chest. One sob escaped him, then another, then another as what she had said and what it all meant really, truly hit him.

This was what he had never really dared to dream of someday having. This is what he had wasted so many months of his life refusing to believe he had received. This is what he had never truly understood, and this was what he had never fully been able to let himself give. This was what he had never been willing to admit that he needed beyond all else.

But now . . . to have found this deep level of devotion, to have found someone who, even if he chose to take the coward's way out and run from what was hard and then cover his escape with excuses and rationalities, was willing to accept that part of him along with the rest, willing to let him go and even willing to allow him to save face with his unborn child . . . to have found all that in one person, who had proved time and time again how much she loved him . . . it broke down and tore away every barrier that he had convinced himself didn't exist or stand in the way. They were gone now, and that left him as vulnerable as a child, which, considering he had begun building them at the age of eight, was no real surprise.

And she knew. She knew, and she understood what had just happened to him, and so, mad at him as she was, when she saw him sobbing uncontrollably on the floor, she didn't hesitate. In the next moment, she was there, on the floor beside him, her arms around him, fresh tears flowing freely down her face, rocking him gently back and forth.

"After everything I've done," he gasped, the words melding with his sobs so that they took ages to get out, "after everything I've put you through, you would still . . ." He couldn't finish. He didn't have the words to express it. He didn't know how to say it, didn't know how to even start. "I don't deserve you," he whispered.

He'd said it before, under a thousand different contexts, but this time, instead of refuting it, instead of trying to counter the idea, she just sighed sadly and said, "Maybe you don't. But, God. If we all got what we deserved in life, we'd all be sorry wretches indeed."

His hand found hers then, and he gripped it tighter than he had ever held anything, and she gripped back with the same intensity, and for a while, it seemed that their two hands, locked tightly together, were all that existed in the world.

And somehow, Remus knew he had just made his choice, without really thinking about it, without needing to tell her. She was what he needed, was what he had always needed, and he was finally going to accept that.

Neither of them could really say how long they'd sat there, holding onto each other, but when the kitchen had descended into silence and stillness for a very long time indeed, Dora stood stiffly, pulling her husband along with her. "Come on," she whispered. But before she could take a step toward the doorway, he had pulled her back to him, and captured her mouth roughly with his, and used the kiss to communicate everything he didn't know how to say.

She smiled up at him, sadly, showing him with her eyes that she'd understood. "I love you," he whispered, his voice raw and ragged from the anger and the tears. "And I'm going to prove it to you this time. I'm not going anywhere."

"I know," she said, running a hand across his forehead, sweeping his hair to the side. "But I hope you don't think you're sleeping in the bed tonight."

Her words startled a laugh out of him. "No," he said, with his first genuine smile since he'd learned about the baby, and he headed for the sofa in the sitting room.

He'd been lying in the dark for a long while when a small crash and muffled curse brought him to a half-sitting position. Peering through the darkness, he watched a figure make its way over to the sofa. "Budge up, I'm not that small," came Dora's voice as she sat herself beside him.

"What are you doing?" he asked, bewildered, even as he made room for her.

"I said you couldn't sleep in the bed," she murmured as she spread a blanket over both of them. "I never said I wouldn't sleep with you." Remus, startled, slowly smiled into the darkness and held her tight against him. He was home.

It was eight months later that Remus received the urgent Patronus from Kingsley telling him the battle had begun, that Harry was staging his confrontation and all the Order had been called up to fight. He grabbed his wand from the kitchen table and moved toward the stairs to wake Dora, but halfway there, he stopped. Five days ago, his son had entered his life, and now Remus had a purpose more concrete and strong than any he had ever known before.

And so he turned back to the kitchen, grabbed parchment and quill and wrote the hardest note of his life.

Dora, it read.

The battle has started at Hogwarts, and I've gone to fight. I'm begging you not to follow me. Take Teddy to your mother's and stay there, please. When all this is over, Teddy is still going to need someone to raise him. Someone will let you know when it's over. I pray that it will be me, but I can't make promises. If the worst should happen, take Teddy and run. If I go to die, I want at least to know that the people I love are safe.

I will never understand what I did to deserve you, Dora. And I know I will probably never be the man that I'm supposed to be. Should I live through this, and a thousand lifetimes more, I will never understand why you did all you did for me. Just look at you. How could I not be in love with you? And what kind of fool would I have to be to have taken you for granted for so long? When I think of all the wasted time, all the million hours that I spent pushing you away and building up my walls, all the days gone by I used to glare and pout and push you out –

I never knew anything at all.

Remus

With one, final glance toward the stairs and his sleeping wife and son, Remus grabbed his cloak and headed out the door, leaving them behind him.

He stood on his porch, the chill spring wind whipping his robes around him, and turned his stony and determined gaze in the direction of Hogwarts. He would come back. He'd meant what he'd told her – he was done running. He would be back. He would go to the school. He would find Harry. And he would fight, for his son and his son's godfather, for Dora's father and his old friends, and they would win. And then he would return to his family and start a new life in a better world.

They would all be all right. They had to be.

Review, please!