Disclaimer: This world and its characters belong to J.K. Rowling

Once a werewolf

Prologue

When Remus Lupin, one dead in a row of far too many, stirred from what had to be mere unconsciousness after all, some people resented him.

George Weasley did, for instance, because Remus wasn't his twin brother but merely a friend of the family. Andromeda Tonks did, because Remus was neither her daughter nor her husband, but merely her daughter's husband - who was possibly going to claim the baby she had barely begun to think of as hers. Even Minerva McGonagall resented him a little, as she had only just informed the Creeveys of their elder son's death and knew that bereaved parents suffer much more deeply than bereaved infants, and Remus more than twice Colin's age.

However, by the time they took him to the Hospital Wing, their astonishment at his survival prevailed over their resentment. He had not been breathing when his and Tonks's bodies were found on the battlefield, yet he could not have been truly dead, for the dead do not return. Maybe it was a werewolf thing. Someone suggested they throw an Avada Kedavra at the captured Fenrir Greyback to see if he would survive it. This idea was rejected - not in the last place because no one could say with any certainty it was an Avada Kedavra that had felled Remus Lupin, or what curse it could have been instead, but also because Harry Potter would not agree.

As it turned out, Remus did not seem to remember anything that had happened to him since Greyback had turned him into a werewolf. He had been five years old at the time, and his recollections were limited to images of loving parental smiles, to fragments of softly sung lullabies, to brief visions of shoving unwanted food from the table, to flashes of grubby little hands digging in black soil, snowballs in a white yard, and red candles hovering above the branches of a huge Christmas tree.

But I'm much older than that, am I not?' he said tiredly after exhausting this reservoir of childish memories. They all agreed solemnly, exchanging glances all the while. Someone had to tell him who he was, what he was and what he had lost. No one was looking forward to it. Staring at their faces he only asked his name, as if he feared to find out more. They did tell him, briefly, about the war, and that it was won, and he sighed, perhaps in relief.

It was Andromeda who eventually agreed to take him to the Spell Damage Ward at St. Mungo's for examination. Maybe they'd be able to find out if it was an Obliviate that had caused the memory loss, or something else. Maybe they'd even be able to treat him, though she wasn't optimistic about that. Her daughter was beyond help but would have wanted her to aid Remus.

On discovering he would be sharing a room with Frank and Alice Longbottom, both considered to be incurable, she had second thoughts. It was Remus who had told her about their son Neville, raised by his daunting gran. It was her own sister who had tortured Frank and Alice into insanity. Her son in law was not insane, merely suffering from amnesia. He was agreeable, and eager to please. Andromeda decided to take him home, even when he claimed he didn't want to be a burden; he and Dora had lived with her before, after Ted was killed. The Healers at St. Mungo's were far from sorry to see him leave again, though they would have taken him in if she had insisted.

She had not told Remus about Nymphadora yet, who ought to have been alive in his stead. Nor had she mentioned the existence of a baby son. Stepping out of the fireplace and wondering where to begin, she realised he probably didn't even know he was a werewolf - or what it meant to be one. Neither did she, for that matter. At this, she almost returned to the hospital. Only her pride prevented her from doing so: she could handle this.

When she told Remus he had a son he looked both surprised and a little apprehensive. But no sooner did she lay Teddy in his arms than his eyes lit up, and for one hopeful moment Andromeda thought he recognised the child.

Then he asked her if she was the mother, and she broke down and sobbed her heart out.

&&&

He'd had a wife, and lost her, and he couldn't remember anything about her. Her name had been Nymphadora, but she'd preferred Tonks, though her mother spoke of her as Dora. She had been thirteen years his junior. Photographs told him she'd been lovely and cheerful, and a metamorph to boot; her mother told him she'd been fiercely loyal, brave and stubborn. She'd given birth to a son who was a metamorph as well, and then she'd left him with her mother to join her husband in the fight for a better world - which had left her mother very embittered, he noticed, though she did not say it in so many words.

Had Dora Tonks been heroic, mad, or just madly in love with him? The mirror showed him a thin, hollow-eyed man who looked ten years older than they'd told him he was, older than Andromeda said she was. How could a young woman be madly in love with such a man? It was beyond baffling.

He was a wizard, but the wand he had been holding when they found him lying on the battlefield felt like an alien thing to him. It lay heavy in his hand, and he didn't know what to do with it. When he asked Andromeda about it she supposed he had also forgotten how to do magic, and would have to relearn it. She offered to help him, confident that his skills would return in due time. Later perhaps,' he said. It didn't seem very urgent, as everything in the household requiring any form of wand-waving was done by Andromeda.

He did not ask many more questions, nor did she volunteer a great deal of information. She did tell him, however, that Dora had been killed by her own aunt, who had fought for the enemy, one Riddle who called himself Voldemort. The gap between a world in which such things happened and the hale world of his childhood memories was unfathomable. That the aunt had been killed as well before the end brought little relief. And nothing could ease his guilt for being unable to mourn his wife the way she deserved, because he did not remember loving her. Andromeda, who did remember, was suffering a grief he could not truly share, try as he might. Knowing that his presence made it even worse and seeing her cast furtive glances at the calendar as if she hoped his stay would soon come to an end, Remus considered leaving for a while.

Then Dora's funeral came. People he didn't know lined up to offer their condolences to Andromeda and, somewhat more reluctantly, to him. They probably didn't know about his memory loss, or they would have realised Dora's mother had to be in much deeper mourning than her husband was, and saved their most heartfelt sentiments for her.

That same evening, he asked her tentatively if she would feel better if he removed his presence from her house. It had been a difficult decision, for how could he possibly leave his son behind, this sweet little boy with the changing hair colours who had stolen his heart in a heartbeat? Yet how could he possibly be cruel enough to take him away? When Andromeda told him haughtily that fleeing (again, she added, and Remus resolved to ask her one day how much of a coward he was) was out of the question, he realised he had to accept being the price she was prepared to pay for Teddy. After all, he had a price of his own to pay for being where he was: strange dreams of being dead and happy. They visited him every night and left him slightly disconcerted once he woke up, as he could not have been dead if he was alive now. The dreams would cease after a while, he supposed, uncertain whether this was something to look forward to or not. He would cope.

Yet there was something going on, for even though she told him to stay, the glances at the calendar did not stop. If anything, they seemed to increase. Apparently, he had misjudged her - which made him feel a bit of a fool - but in that case, she must have a different reason to do it.

Almost two weeks after his inexplicable resurrection, sitting at the breakfast table with Teddy in his lap, Remus summoned the courage to ask Andromeda about it.

TBC

A/N: I can promise more dialogue in the next chapters - a lot more