Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

13: Back From The Dead

It was strange, she thought as she herded her two bickering sons down the lane towards their house, wincing a little when the older one struck the other in the shoulder with a hefty paper shopping bag, the images that stuck in your head. As she gave her daughter a gentle tug on he hand to persuade her away from the deep puddle they were approaching, she again thought of the two youngsters she had spotted in Diagon Alley an hour previously; a boy, a girl and an ice cream sundae with a single spoon, smiling, giggling, dreamy-eyed and triumphant that they had found each other. She found herself smiling a little, casting her mind back to when she was their age, back when she had thought she knew all about love too.

Ginny Potter had thought the whole dating and boys thing was a piece of cake when she had been their age. She'd had a boyfriend or two whilst she had been at school and it hadn't seemed that difficult, she hadn't seemed to have had trouble finding herself one...

And Merlin, she'd been clueless!

She always smiled, now she was older, to see youngsters playing at love, because she had been naïve like them once too, only for the whole facade to crack several years earlier for her than it did for anybody else.

Because she had realised, during her fourth year at Hogwarts, that she didn't just rather like Harry Potter. She loved him. She was absolutely head over heels...

She could still remember the panic that such a realisation had thrown her into, and she'd spent several weeks in a state of pure confusion and helplessness.

She hadn't known what to do. What was the proper thing to do, when you realised somebody was the love of your life?

She had supposed that she should probably ask her mother, and she had spent an entire morning shortly after coming home for the summer, sat in her bedroom, staring at herself in the mirror, willing herself to have the nerve. By the time she felt she could just about manage it she had felt in an odd way that she was about to burst, and she had rushed downstairs, bursting into the kitchen, ready to mindlessly shout her love from the nearest window.

Except Molly hadn't been there. Instead, to her surprise, Ginny had found a mousy haired Tonks sat hunched at the table, clutching a large mug of tea as if her life had depended on it. And Ginny had been so fit to burst, so desperate for help, that she found herself musing that quite frankly anyone would do, and in fact Tonks would likely do better than most. She liked Tonks, liked to think they were something approaching good friends despite their difference in age. Tonks was rather like a big sister, and spilling secrets to a sister was, as is well known, easier than to a mother by far...

And so she had skidded to a halt beside Tonks' chair, which had barely startled the Auror at all for she seemed quite lost in thought, and blurted everything in a mumbling, bumbling, uncertain monologue that had seemed to span an age but in reality had been squeezed into a few frantic seconds.

Ginny had never quite gotten over Tonks' response.

The Auror had leant back in her chair, looked the girl up and down in distinctly grim consideration. And then she had said:

"Oh dear."

There had been a long pause and Ginny's cheeks had grown as red as her hair, and then Tonks had sighed and reached to pull out a chair from under the table.

"You're much too young to be in love, Gin." she'd said, patting the seat to indicate that the girl ought sit down beside her. "You're supposed to wait until you're legally old enough to drown your sorrows in something stronger than orange squash."

Ginny had scowled at the fruit bowl upon the table in front of her and mused that if this was Tonks' idea of humour these days she was not amused in the slightest.

"What am I supposed to do?" she'd asked bleakly, and Tonks had frowned down into her mug of tea for a long moment before deciding:

"I can't really tell you that."

"Why not?!"

"Well it's not something I know very much about."

It had occurred to Ginny then that really Tonks was probably the last person in the world who wanted to be having a conversation like this just then, she'd been eavesdropping on the Auror's visits with Molly for the past few weeks and knew that when it came to having a firm grasp of her love life, Tonks' grip was slipping and she was fast plummeting towards rock bottom.

"Have you heard from Remus recently?" the girl had asked despite herself, and the mousy haired witch had sighed and said:

"It's a long game, Ginny. Love, I mean."

Ginny had fidgeted a little in her chair, her stomach twisting into knots when Tonks had gone on to admit:

"And it's terribly destructive and it drains the very life out of you, and sometimes you can't even breathe...but before you know it you've forgotten what it was like before it happened...it consumes your entire life and yet you have absolutely bugger all idea what to do about it...it's all you can do not to scream! But then sometimes, Ginny...sometimes even wanting to scream becomes too much..."

And with that the Auror's eyes had shone with sudden life and she'd risen abruptly from her chair, holding a hand out to the girl with a grin that Ginny hadn't seen in weeks.

"So," Tonks whispered as the girl had simply stared numbly at her. "What's a witch to do?"

And before she'd known it, Ginny had found her hand snatched up and she was being dragged up out of her chair, out of the kitchen and up the stairs, their feet stumbling and footfalls noisy as they raced to the top of the house, the girl's mind racing as they burst into Ron's attic room. And Tonks reached to fling the window open wide, and announced breathlessly:

"Sometimes, Ginny, you just have to scream!"
And with that the witch had grasped hold of the window sill and leant so far out of the window that it had made Ginny flinch.

And Tonks had screamed and screamed at the top of her lungs, and for the briefest second Ginny had thought her hair seemed ever so slightly brighter.

"Go on," the Auror had said a moment later, her outburst over and done with, replaced by laughter instead. "Try it, you'll feel better, I promise!"

And Ginny had sniggered a bit, but had consented to taking Tonks' place at the window. She'd gasped in a deep breath and screamed out at the world until her throat grew sore and throbbing.

"D'you feel any better?" Tonks had asked from just behind her, and the girl had given a breathless little laugh and admitted:

"No, not really...it's just given me a sore throat..."

And as she led the way up the garden path, reaching to unlock the front door of the Potter house with a discreet tap of her wand, the children bundling into the house, the boys racing into the sitting room and Lily darting up the stairs, Ginny was so lost in the memory that she could practically hear Tonks' laughter, practically feel the witch's breath warm upon her face when the Auror had leant forward to whisper in the girl's ear.

"That's because," Tonks had whispered, as if she were about to impart some deeply secret and vital piece of knowledge, "you're doing it wrong."

Ginny had sniggered and informed the witch:

"You're mad, you know?"

"You reckon?"

"It's just screaming, Tonks. There's no right or wrong way to do it."

"Well that's where you're hopelessly wrong, Ginny." the Auror had insisted, still whispering into the girl's ear. "What you have to remember is why it is that you are screaming."

"Because I'm lost...because I...I'm frustrated..." Ginny had mumbled, feeling her face warm in embarrassment, and the metamorphmagus had given a huff of laughter and told her:

"Well you'll never get anywhere if you scream because of that."

Tonks had given the girl a small push forward until they were both leaning somewhat precariously out of the window, and then she had said:

"It's not a scream of frustration, Ginny. It's not a scream of despair, of failure, of hopelessness or anything of the sort. It might feel like it, sometimes, but you have to tell yourself otherwise."

"Then what do you tell yourself?" Ginny wondered dully, and she could tell that behind her Tonks was grinning as she said:

"It's a scream to rally you, Ginny. It's a call to arms! It's a war cry!"

And at such a notion, Ginny couldn't help but feel that in a bizarre way, put like that, screaming might just help. The noise, the burning in her throat, the pounding of her heart, the sheer fierceness of it all to jump start her vital organs, drive away the numbness of uncertainty and make her feel alive...

She thought she might take on the world, take on the unknown, take on love and win!

And with that she'd leant out of the window again, sucking in the deepest breath she could muster, hearing Tonks do the same beside her, and the two witches had stared out over the quiet fields of the world beyond the Burrow's back garden. There had been the slightest pause.

And they had screamed...

And, stood in her hallway, midway through pulling the boots from her feet, Ginny Potter could hear them...

At the sound of the high pitched scream sounding from somewhere upstairs, Ginny yanked the final shoe from her foot and made a run for the stairs, James and Albus appearing in the hallway behind her as she took the steps two at a time.

"Lily?!" she called as the high-pitched shriek of alarm finally faded away, and as she reached the top of the stairs she very nearly ran into her husband, who, having himself dashed out of the bathroom at the end of the landing, was forced to throw himself sideways against the wall to stop a full on collision.

"Ginny!" Harry greeted breathlessly, sounding distinctly alarmed. "You're back early..."
Before Ginny could so much as open her mouth to respond, let alone think of something suitably damning to utter at his apparent lack of panic to hear their daughter's distress, a blur of red hair came shooting out of Lily's bedroom and attached itself to the front of Harry's robes.

"Daddy!" Lily shrieked, eyes wide as snitches as her brothers cluttered to a halt behind their mother upon the stairs. "There's a...a man in my bedroom!"

"Is there really?" Harry said, sounding remarkably unmoved by such an alarming announcement, and Ginny again made to scold him, reaching instinctively to draw her wand, only for a voice from downstairs to call:

"Is...is everything alright up there?"

"Teddy!" Lily exclaimed, turning to eye the young man who had appeared in the hallway below with horrified eyes. "There's a strange man in my room! He's in my BED!"

"You're all home rather early, aren't you?" Teddy commented, reaching to scratch his head in a distinctly sheepish manner, and Ginny felt her face growing hot in fury.

"Harry!" she hissed, rounding on her husband so that she could shoot him an utterly livid look. "What in Merlin's name is going on?!"

"Um..." Harry began, reaching to detach Lily from the front of his jumper so that he could edge towards the child's bedroom door. "It's alright...don't panic..."

"Who is it?!" Ginny hissed as Teddy dashed up the stairs, squeezing past the two boys and Ginny until he was stood at Harry's side. Ginny, though somewhat relieved that their lack of alarm made her strongly suspect that Lily's mystery intruder was nobody threatening, nevertheless felt suspicious when the two wizards came to block the doorway.

"It's just a...friend..." Harry began uncertainly, and Teddy nodded and whispered:

"He's not very well, you know..."

"So we thought we'd look after him for a little..."

"Lily's room was closest..."

"Yes and you put clean bedding on her bed this morning, so it just seemed best..."

The pair trailed off, exchanging a glance that suggested they were rather pleased with their explanation, and Harry held up the dripping wet face flannel and a bottle of alarmingly orange potion that he had retrieved from the bathroom, as if this made their mumbling more believable.

"Who is it?" Ginny asked again, taking a step forward, yet more suspicious when the two wizards stepped back a little.

"It's..."

"Nobody."

"Yes, it's nobody."

"And you can't go in there."

"No, you can't. He's very ill..."

"It's contagious."

"Exactly, and you aren't even supposed to be home for...for two..."

"Three!"

"...three hours!"

"Yes, you're not supposed to be home for three hours and you should all just go downstairs because he's trying to sleep!"

There was a long silence as Ginny glowered at Harry and Teddy, and Harry and Teddy merely stared somewhat pleadingly back.

"Please, Gin..." Harry implored, eyes widening meaningfully...

But then from somewhere inside the room there came a horrible coughing sound and Ginny's inner-Molly seemed to take over and she breathed:

"Merlin, he does sound sick!" And with that she demanded: "Let me see him!"

"But Ginny..." Harry began as Teddy mumbled similar protest, but before they could stop her she had half-barged her way past them into the bedroom beyond...

Ginny Potter stopped dead in her tracks.

It was him.

It was actually him.

He was thin and sickly and his hair had gone thin and silvery, and his eyes were sunken and framed by dark circles, and his lips were chapped and oh Merlin...

It really was him.

Lying tucked up in Lily's bed, the room swimming around him...

The room was swimming...

Ginny stumbled sideways into the wall, eyes fixated upon the long lost werewolf as Harry reached to grasp hold of his wife's elbow to steady her. She felt positively faint at the sight of him, blinking to try and bring world more clearly into focus.

Perhaps when it did Remus Lupin would disappear. Because he couldn't possible be here, it seemed entirely impossible, she wasn't supposed to see him ever again, he was supposed to have disappeared, he was supposed to be dead...

She wanted him to say something. Anything. Just to prove he was actually there, to prove it was actually him. But he was staring at her in a distinctly startled fashion that made the whole thing seem less and less plausible.

Remus didn't get startled like that. At least the Remus she had known as a child certainly hadn't. This man before her was more like some ghost of his former self, some broken whisper, some empty shell...

Ginny attempted to plant her feet more firmly upon the floor, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. When she opened them again, Remus was still there.

"Remus...!" she finally said, voice odd and squeaky from the effort of forcing sound from her lips.

Remus visibly flinched.

Ginny pulled her arm free from Harry's grasp and crossed the room in a series of quick yet stumbling steps, reaching to grasp hold of the werewolf by the arm.

"I...we...everybody thought...you...we..." she tried to construct a coherent sentence but couldn't seem to get her mind in order.

Remus gave a distinctly stiff smile, lips curving vaguely up at the corners.

"You're...looking well, Ginny..."

Ginny wanted to scream.

"Well so are you!" she exclaimed, reaching to grasp fistfuls of red hair as behind her Teddy and Harry exchanged a disbelieving look, only for the witch to exclaim: "Considering we all thought you were dead!" She sounded utterly furious and yet she promptly lunged forwards to throw her arms around him, burying her face in his shoulder.

She had never hugged Remus before. He had, after all, been her teacher for a year at Hogwarts and he was the sort of family friend with whom her father had shaken hands instead of slapped upon the back and it would have just seemed vaguely unacceptable...

Somehow having him back from the dead made hugging him the only acceptable thing to do in the entire world.

"Where have you been?!" she hissed into his ear as he went positively rigid at her sudden embrace. "The Order searched everywhere! They searched the country mile by mile, they really did!"

"I've been...here and...and there..."

"Why?! For the love of Merlin, why didn't you visit or...or write?! I mean...Teddy...!"

"It's alright, Ginny..." Teddy interrupted, only for Ginny to round abruptly on the two wizards in the doorway.

"Did you know about...about this?!" she demanded to know. "Did you know he was...he was alive?!"

"No." Teddy said, shaking his head, but beside him Harry shifted awkwardly and mumbled:

"I...had a hunch..."

"What?!" Ginny cried, eyes widening quite madly, and Harry winced and insisted:

"It wasn't my idea to keep it secret..."
"It was necessary." Remus put in, only to pause to cough violently. "It was...for the best..."

"How in Merlin's name could it be for the best?!" Ginny exclaimed wildly, spinning round to look at him again, and her shock very nearly struck her all over again. "Best for who?! Certainly not you! Look at you..."

"Best for Teddy." Remus half-whispered as if the phrase took him some effort, and Ginny simply stared at him in disbelief, only for Harry to interject:

"It's not as simple as you think, Gin."

"You can be quiet!" Ginny snapped furiously, pointing an accusing finger in her husband's direction. "I'll bloody well get to you in a minute!"

"It's really not Harry's fault, I made him promise..." Remus began half-heartedly, only to squeeze his eyes shut when Ginny demanded:

"Don't defend him! You're both as bad as each other! How can the pair of you conspire to...to hide all this from...from the people who care about you?! How can you both let your friends, the people who...who love you believe such...such an awful lie?! How can you both let us...how can you let Teddy think his only surviving parent is dead?!"

"Let's not...let's not get into all that right now!" Harry suggested, reaching to shove the sodden face flannel and potion bottle into Teddy's hands, and with that he strode forward to tell his wife: "I'm sure we'll all sit down and have a proper talk about all this later. But right now Remus really needs to rest!"

As he reached to rest a hand upon her shoulder, Ginny narrowly avoided the urge to reach and push it off. Despite her fury, however, she sighed heavily and told Teddy:

"Pass that here, Teddy." As the young man shuffled forward to offer her the flannel and potion, the witch eyed the werewolf despairingly and wondered: "How long have you been like this? How long have you been ill?"

"I don't know..." Remus mumbled as she reached to uncork the bottle with a vague pop. "A while..."

"A while?" Ginny asked, reaching to push the bottle into his hand before setting about rearranging his blankets.

"A week. Perhaps."

"Merlin..." the witch muttered, hastily reaching to press the flannel to his forehead as if suddenly the action had tripled in urgency. "You should be in hospital, Remus!"

"Have you ever tried to get yourself admitted to hospital when you've been legally declared dead for almost a decade?" Remus wheezed, face contorting at the mere thought. "Dreadful business...the whole place would be in uproar, there would be Ministry officials snooping around and...and they'd contact a next of kin!"

"You're an idiot." Ginny informed him frankly, feeling quite strange for doing so because she would never dream of speaking to him in such a manner before. "You'd better drink all of that, all the good it'll do you! We need something much stronger!"

It felt better, she supposed, to have something to focus on. Something to chase away the faintness and the disbelief. She tucked the blankets so tightly around him that he could barely move a muscle before bustling out of the room, shooing the children downstairs and commanding Teddy to set up a cauldron in the kitchen. She went to the master bedroom to search for extra blankets, feeling an odd stab in her chest to hear Harry follow her.

"Ginny..." he began, voice already swimming in guilt, but as she wrenched open the wardrobe she told him:

"I don't want to talk to you. Not right now."

"He made me promise, Gin..."

"I don't want to know, Harry."

"He was...he still is in...in no decent frame of mind! He's...he's a complete wreck..."

"It doesn't matter!" Ginny snapped, spinning round to face him as she yanked a blanket off a shelf. "For Merlin's sake, Harry! Couldn't you trust us?! Couldn't you have just told us he was alive?! D'you think you couldn't trust us to keep our mouths shut and...and leave him alone if he wanted us to?! He would never have had to know!"

Harry looked rather stunned.

"Ginny," he said after a disbelieving pause. "Can you honestly...honestly imagine that if your mother or...or Hermione or...or if Andromeda had known he was alive they'd have just sat back and...and let him go away like that?! Honestly?!"

"Yes!"

"I don't believe you."

"I...I don't care, Harry! It's...it's cruel! It's cruel to all of us!"

"We were trying to protect Teddy. It's complicated..."

"There's nothing complicated about a child needing his father, Harry! Absolutely nothing!"

Their voices were growing louder and Harry very nearly bit through his tongue when he exclaimed:
"He can't touch him, Gin! Remus can't touch Teddy, it burns him! Just like it burnt Tonks!"

There was a long silence. Husband and wife seemed to be attempting to catch their breath as the grim truth hovered like smog in the air between them.

At last, Ginny muttered:

"No...!"

"It's true." Harry insisted bleakly. "I've seen it, Ginny, it's...it's awful! When he found Remus, Teddy...Teddy went straight up to him and...and touched him! And it burnt him! And...and he doesn't care, he's just like Tonks, Ginny! He doesn't care if it hurts he just...just wants his father, I can tell! I can see it on his face when he looks at him! And...and can't you see?! If Remus had stayed it would've been just the same! He'd have sucked the life out of that boy before he'd even gotten to Hogwarts! Because Teddy doesn't care! I...I thought the same as you before, I really did! Remus and I argued about it, I was...I was so angry with him! But now I've seen Teddy...now I've seen how...how determined he is...Remus had a point! It was safer, Ginny! Teddy was safer with Andromeda and...and with us as his family!"

Ginny dropped down to sit upon the edge of the bed, gaze upon her feet, her heart sinking in her chest when Harry told her:

"Family isn't all about blood, you know."

"Family isn't all about blood, you know." Tonks had said one wintery morning shortly after Christmas as she stood with Ginny upon the back steps of the Burrow, watching for the return of Alastor Moody from one grim mission or another. "In fact in the grand scheme of things blood has bugger all to do with it." The Auror had leant back against the door behind them, fingers tapping impatiently against the wood, before muttering: "You can all make me sick to the stomach with worry, you know. You Weasleys and the rest of the Order. Standing here like this..."

"If you were related to Mad-Eye, I wouldn't be surprised." Ginny had told her with an impressive air of innocence, and Tonks had glanced sideways and asked:

"Oh yeah? Why's that then?"

"Because the pair of you are both barking mad, Tonks!"

And Tonks had promptly grinned and reached to give the abruptly laughing girl a firm shove sideways, leaving her to narrowly avoid falling flat in a large puddle gathering beside the back steps.

There had been the distinct pop of apparation and the amusement was wiped from Tonks' face as she reached to draw her wand, arm raised and eyes darting around searchingly as she reached forward to drag Ginny back up the steps, pushing her towards the back door.

"You're about as bloody irritating as a blood relation too!" the metamorphmagus muttered as her gaze came to rest upon a figure stepping out from the long grass some distance away. "The similarities are uncanny! Now quick, get back inside until I'm sure that's really Great Uncle Alastor!"

And both Tonks and Harry were right, Ginny supposed when she returned to Lily's bedroom a few minutes later with the blankets. Perhaps Remus at least might be forgiven for his absence all these years. Because Teddy had had his grandmother for many years, and a father in Harry and a mother in her, they had always treated him like one of their own. And he was one of their own. Because blood had nothing to do with it.

"He's a good boy, isn't he?" Remus had murmured as she tucked the blankets tightly around him, and at her questioning glance, he'd added: "Teddy, I mean."

"He's grown into a very kind and very well-rounded young man." Ginny had agreed with a small smile, and had turned to head downstairs, instructing: "Now try and get some sleep..."

She'd been halted by his hand reaching to grasp hold of her arm, his grip surprisingly tight, and when she turned back to look down a him, Remus whispered:

"Thank you. For loving him."

And Ginny had shaken her head and told him:

"He's part of our family, Remus. And we all love Teddy. Even you."

She could tell from his eyes that, despite his desire to keep away that she was without a doubt correct.

Despite his loss and despite his pain, Remus loved his son.

And as she left the room a moment later, Ginny couldn't help but worry that this was only going to make the coming days infinitely worse...