Title: Things We Said Today
Author:
Recipient: violet_quill
Pairing: Teddy/Bill, mentions of Teddy/Victoire, past Remus/Bill and Remus/Sirius
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~19000
Warnings: Some dirty talk, some bondage, some D/s
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: A discovery in Andromeda Tonks' attic sends Teddy Lupin on a quest to find out the truth about his father. He is led to Bill Weasley, and he gets more questions than answers
Author's Notes: Thank you to the lovely mod of this exchange and to my beta who really pulled out all the stops to go through this with me. Vi, I really hope you enjoy this-- it was a very different story for me, and I was delighted to write it for you! There is a sequel in the works, which will be entitled "Bill and Teddy's Excellent Adventure" because I cannot help myself...

The dust particles rose up so thickly it almost looked like it was snowing in front of the large, round window in the attic. Teddy covered his nose instinctively. His allergies were always close to the surface, easily set off-- he'd never understood how in the thousand-odd years of recorded Wizarding history, no one had ever worked out a potion to get rid of dust- and pollen-related allergies.

The attic looked like a miniaturized Hogwarts, a model built entirely of old boxes and trunks. Turrets rose here and there, one teetering so precariously, it looked like it might do a Pisa at any moment. And all around, the snowflake-sized dust motes danced, disturbed from their years-long slumber by Teddy's intrusive presence.

He remembered coming up here when he was very small, and Nana had wanted to show him pictures of his mother when she was very small. Nana, who did not resemble Teddy's mother in any way that Teddy had ever been able to discern, had placed a significant emphasis on how much he resembled Nymphadora Tonks. Beyond the very obvious, the fact that they were both metamorphmagi, Teddy also had her naturally mousy brown hair and brown eyes, whenever he actually let them stay natural. Which wasn't ever for long. She had been much shorter than he was now, though, and he'd always had an impression, not of dumpiness or even plumpness, but of a roundness to her, a softness. He knew he must take after his father in his gangliness, his too-long limbs. He sometimes wondered about the keen sense of smell, too. He actually figured he knew more about his namesake, Grandpa Ted, than he knew about Remus Lupin.

There were surprisingly few pictures of his father around. Nana had banished them from the house, even going so far as to blast his little moving likeness out of the few family photographs she'd kept around. In those images, a late-twenties Tonks could be seen staring worriedly off to the side, as though the banished-Remus was lurking just out of sight. The baby Teddy never seemed that concerned. After all, the baby Teddy in those photos had no idea that he would grow up not knowing his parents, outside stories of staggering heroism and classroom hijinks.

If he hadn't been up here since he was nine or ten-- he knew it was before he'd gone to Hogwarts for the first time-- it looked as though his Nana hadn't either. Everything looked about the same as he remembered it, only dustier and, through adult eyes, just a little bit smaller. He wasn't sure why exactly he'd prowled up here beyond a natural, insatiable curiosity. When his grandmother had asked him to house-sit for her, his first thought had been about as far from snooping through old boxes as it could get-- it had, in fact, involved snooping under Victoire's robes, if she would let him.

And she wasn't in the mood to let him, yet again. Even though this was the best chance they'd have to be alone together in who knew how long-- Teddy still lived with his Nana, who was nearly always home. Victoire was off with stupid Blythe Shacklebolt, though, that pompous, posturing git who thought he was so great just because his father had been Minister for Magic for something like a decade. So sodding what, was what Teddy wanted to know. Clearly, being the son of two fallen war heroes, being the spawn of a werewolf, and being able to turn his hair blue and morph cool scars across his face, which he damned well knew she liked, just wasn't good enough for her.

Women.

The floorboard under his foot creaked in protest, an almost human groan beneath his weight. He walked softly, on the balls of his feet, across the attic. The window was covered with a filmy grime, years of neglect made tangible. It proved a stark contrast to the rest of the house, which was so meticulously upkept. Perhaps he could clean it out for her. If she would like that.

He danced his fingertips lightly along the edge of the nearest box. In a spray of ink, it was marked "spellbooks-- Nymphadora's." He smiled slightly at the remembrance of these-- Nana had tried to convince him that he didn't need new books for his first year at school, that he should be proud to carry his mother's bleeding thirty-year-old textbooks into a classroom full of kids who would already think he was a freak for about eighty different reasons.

Uncle Harry had talked her out of the notion, after a tearful fire-call one evening to appeal to him. Teddy had always gone to Uncle Harry-- his favourite uncle, if truth be told-- when these sorts of things came up. It had nothing to do with Harry's last name and everything to do with the fact that no one else understood quite so well what it was like to have two parents killed in a war, leaving you an orphan without a single memory of them, and leaving you with a legacy of magical skill and history that the entire school knew about before you'd even learned your classmate's names.

Reaching into one of the many inner pockets he'd sewn into his black robes, he removed his favourite pocket knife. Its ivory handle, fashioned from a walrus' tusk, was curved exactly to the palm of his hand. He kept the blade killingly sharp, striking it every few days against a rock and watching the sparks spray away from the violent contact. With the care of someone who had done this a time or two in the past, he sliced away the twine holding the box closed and popped off its top. Inside reposed the textbooks of a school-aged Nymphadora Tonks, untouched by the intervening years. Lovingly, he lifted the first one out, running a practiced finger down its leather spine. The book was in terrible shape, misused for at least a year or two. His mother had been a klutz and must have had no respect whatsoever for books. The spine was creased, the binding frayed, and he could see at least three huge stains on the front cover alone.

Still, the leather was in decent condition, and while many of the pages had been crinkled-- and sweet Merlin, she'd dog-eared pages. How could a mother of his dog-ear a page?-- they were all legible. He dug his glasses out of his pocket and perched them on the bridge of his nose. The Standard Book of Spells Level 5. He thumbed gently through the tome, pausing each time he glimpsed her handwriting. It was a script he knew well, from years of reading old letters and notes she'd left behind. A part of her that he could hold onto, when there was nothing else left but other people's stories. She'd been a doodler, and had inked some truly crude cartoons in the margins. He smirked at one that seemed to involve Albus Dumbledore and a goat, and another that had to be Flitwick not being allowed onto a Ferris Wheel at Wizarding Disneyworld because he was too short to ride the ride.

She'd inscribed Douglas Whittleby's name on several of the pages, sometimes surrounded by a heart, sometimes crossed out. He made a note to look into the name and see what the story was there, and then he placed the book beside him and reached in for the next one.

He spent an hour or so mentally cataloguing her books, all in rough but usable shape. He couldn't bring them to the Muggle bookseller that signed his paycheque, obviously, but he wondered if his Nana would very much mind them being rescued from obscurity in a box and placed on his own shelves. If he transfigured a new shelf above his headboard and maybe moved the Muggle astronomy section over to one of the window-side bookcases...

He moved on to the next box, but it was only old dress robes. He waded through the piles, deeper into the attic. He'd never played this far toward the back wall as a child, and he didn't know what he would find in these boxes. They were unmarked, and some of them tingled with magic.

Well, his grandmother was a Black, when all was said and done, and he knew better (from experience) than to touch any of her enchanted things without express permission. He'd already spent one weekend in St. Mungo's having five Venus Flytraps removed from various places from whence they'd sprouted out of his body. If he didn't have the ability to change his appearance, he'd still have a scar directly between his eyebrows.

In the corner lay a heap of rolled up parchments, some small and some quite large. He gazed at them hungrily, and without thinking he unfurled the nearest. A map of some sort-- a Muggle subway system, perhaps? Or--

He blinked. The vaults of Gringotts. He was sure of it. These were train tracks, certainly, and he didn't think the tube system was numbered like this, or went down so deep into the earth. Had his Nana been planning a heist of some sort? He wouldn't put it past her, at least in her younger days. He opened the next parchment and found another set of plans, this one outlining a forest somewhere. He felt a shiver of awareness traverse his spine. These were Order documents, he was sure of it. He'd thought they had all been secreted away, into some museum or department at the Ministry.

He lifted a third parchment up, and saw that the whole pile had been stacked not against the wall but against a column of books. Behind the parchments lay a stack of heavy leather-bound journals. He itched to grab them and run, claiming them for his own. Instead, he sat down on the floor and plucked the first one off the top.

Order plans. Minutes of meetings. Copies of correspondence An aborted attack on Malfoy Manor in 1995. Vitriol about the traitor Severus Snape. Musings about Dumbledore's will, and whether his portrait might provide any clues to the fate of the Order.... Teddy didn't immediately know whose hand had written these journals, but the script looked familiar. Old Blott, Junior would pay a fortune to display these in his shop. Even a conservative appraisal would put this volume alone at hundreds if not thousands of galleons.

He flipped through the entire tome, nearly photographic memory copying every word he read into his brain. This was a book of war, a first-hand account of the desperate days before the final fall of Voldemort. Forgoing the need to explore the rest of the attic, he swished his wand at the journals, levitated the whole stack, and directed them back down the stairs. He had all weekend before Nana returned from her conference. He wanted to read these at his leisure. And he wanted a veal sandwich.

~*~

Teddy had tried the vegetarian thing for a while, around the same time he'd started adding just the smallest hint of eyeliner to his lower lids. He wasn't sure whether his Nana hated the makeup or the new eating habits more. The eyeliner had gone by the wayside. So had the vegetarianism. He blamed the werewolf genes for making him love red meat-- not that he changed into a wolf or even got grouchier than usual around a full moon or anything remotely cool. He'd lasted seven months and three days on a diet of lentils, vegetables, fruits, and grains before succumbing to a barely-cooked roast beef his Nana had placed in front of him. Formidable woman that she was, she nearly always got what she wanted. It surprised him a little, though. He'd have thought that she would like him getting away from an obviously Remus trait. She was never subtle about her dislike for Teddy's father, or her disappointment that her only baby girl had run off with an out of work half-human when she could have had the likes of Bill or Charlie Weasley.

That put him into weird territory, he thought as he munched his thick, juicy sandwich. If his mum hadn't married his dad, there would be no Teddy (though he'd done the math, and he knew that they must have been married so soon after their courtship began because she'd already been pregnant). And if his mum had instead married Bill Weasley, there would be no Victoire, or else it made him hypothetically, metaphysically related to her, or something, and you didn't want to be related to your girlfriend.

And she was his girlfriend, even if she didn't bloody well act like it at times. Or ever. Except she was incredible in bed (he'd had sex with two women and one other bloke, so he knew what he was talking about), and she was gorgeous and she knew it. Uncle Harry had commented more than once that she was exactly what you would expect from two parents who were both good looking and both damned proud of it.

He turned the page of the third volume. It had taken him half of the first journal to figure out that these had been kept by Molly Weasley-- he could tell by the affection bestowed on any Weasley appearing in the narrative, by the ire shown toward Sirius Black, and from the fact that he'd seen her handwriting on twenty years of Christmas jumpers and birthday cards.

It was difficult to divine Molly's attitude toward Remus in the journals, though it was clear she'd liked Tonks. Tonks' ideas and reports were documented with care, and more than once a side comment had appeared regarding how very well Tonks got on with Bill Weasley.

Remus, though, appeared at first mostly in commentary about how Sirius needed to be restrained and talked out of fights in the middle of meetings, and the fact that he lived at 12 Grimmauld Place and so usually could be found there, even when no one else was around. Teddy ground his teeth in frustration. Apart from Uncle Harry's stories of the year that Remus had taught Defense and shown him how to drive away a Dementor, he knew achingly little about his father. No one had pictures. No one could tell him anything as basic as what the man's favourite colour might have been, or if he'd had a dog growing up. Remus' family, apart from Teddy himself, were all dead, and so were his friends. What knowledge there was of him existed in that vacuum reserved for legends about heroes. Exaggerated, vague, and not even a little bit edifying.

At least the minutes of meetings gave him a little bit of his father's dialogue. He didn't know what Remus' voice might sound like, but he could see that Remus spoke most to Severus Snape before the supposed betrayal, to Bill Weasley, to Sirius Black, and to Albus Dumbledore before either of their deaths. Oddly, he almost never interacted with Tonks in these pages until the wedding was alluded to in volume 4. But Bill... Bill was the only person left alive whom Remus seemed to have had any rapport with at all.

With an absent but powerful Accio incantation, Teddy summoned parchment and ink to him, and retrieved a bit of quill nib from his back pocket. He wasn't sure where exactly Bill was these days-- somewhere in Australia, he seemed to remember Victoire mentioning, supervising a treasure-hunting expedition for Gringotts. His owl, Burroughs, was a resourceful creature though, and he had every trust that his message would reach its intended recipient.

Bill,

While cleaning up for my grandmother, I came across some evidence that suggests you were mates with my dad. Please let me know if that's the case. I don't know much about him, but maybe you do. Would like a chance to talk to you about it.

Cheers,

Teddy Tonks-Lupin

~*~

"Theodore Lupin, you will not walk away from me while I'm talking to you!"

Teddy growled under his breath as he stomped down the stairs-- well, stomped as best he could, consider the stairs were made of dense, hard concrete and didn't reverberate well. "I don't want to have this conversation yet again!"

"Well, you're going to have it!" Nana hollered down into the cellar. "No grandson of mine is going to waste his potential in some ridiculous Muggle hole in the wall when--"

"I'm not answering!"

"--he got he most NEWTs of his entire seventh year class!"

"Can't hear you, Nana, in the cellar!"

"And when his mother was so bright!"

With a flick of his wand, Teddy slammed the cellar door and cut off any of his grandmother's further shouts. After a moment or two of silence, it became apparent that she'd either taken the hint or assumed he'd Disapparated. Shaking his head, he slumped into a dank, cobwebby corner, glowering at a small spider who was somehow hardy enough to survive down here. He was so sick of this same old conversation. He wasn't living up to his name, he was disgracing his mother's memory, he could have a brilliant career at the Ministry, and on and on it went. It wasn't Teddy's bloody fault that he'd done so blindingly well on his NEWTs. He was just a good test-taker. It came naturally to him, as naturally as his love of musty old books.

And speaking of which, as his eyes adjusted to the almost total darkness, he realised he was sitting next to a pile of them. He cast a Lumos spell and peered around. The cellar was in even worse shape than the attic had been. Who'd have ever guessed that Andromeda Tonks was such a pack rat?

He held his wand up to the pile of boxes that he was inadvertently leaning against. Each had a label scribbled across it in ink: "Old dishes," "Nymphadora's baby clothes," "The end." Teddy arched a brow at that-- what of his mother's would be in a box with such a label?

Pushing himself to his feet, Teddy ripped the twine off the box and flipped it open. Inside were stacks of parchment, some covered with writing, some blank. This box was a veritable treasure trove, everything that his grandmother hadn't wanted him to see, or maybe hadn't wanted to look at herself. His mother's diaries, sealed Order parchments, notes from friends, notes from Remus. These he stuffed into the pockets of his robe for later, for leisurely reading. He didn't want his Nana to remember what was down here and confiscate it before he could return.

Underneath all of that... Teddy sucked in a breath. Remus' personal effects. He'd always wondered where his father's things had gone, had always assumed that most of what had been in their little cottage had been destroyed in the war or looted in its aftermath. Indeed, there was pitifully little here. A framed picture of Sirius Black, who had been his uncle, grinned rakishly at Remus. Several shabby old Muggle novels reposed therein-- Teddy blinked in surprise to see that his father had not only been a reader of Muggle fiction, but had apparently liked some of the same authors that Teddy did. Allen Ginsberg, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charlotte Bronte. The last one especially surprised him.

And at the very bottom, another stack of correspondence, letters to Remus. Some were Tonks' handwriting, but most were in other hands. These, too, Teddy pocketed. He replaced the box, used a spell to redistribute the dust over it so it looked untouched, and Disapparated from the cellar. He reappeared behind the bookshop he worked at, and made his way in through the back door.

The old Muggle who ran the store, Mrs Jenkins, didn't look up as Teddy entered, and Teddy didn't acknowledge her either. They got along well because neither of them bothered the other and both loved the books to which they tended. Mrs Jenkins was used to Teddy coming and going even when he wasn't scheduled to work. The store was simply too good a place to get away from his Nana, his relations, and the various and sundry witches and wizards who called him friend because of his heritage and parentage.

He ascended the rickety metal spiral staircase at the back of the store that brought him up to the second level, a mezzanine-style half-floor that overhung the rest of the shop. Curling up in one of the slightly mouldy, overstuffed beanbag chairs in the Manga section, he slid his glasses on. Shuffling through the yellowed parchment, he ran his gaze over the signatures in the stack of letters to his dad. Most were from Sirius or Tonks, a few from Snape-- he set those aside to discuss with Harry-- and a couple from Harry himself. Several were signed only with initials. He assumed KS was Kingsley Shacklebolt and MM was Minerva McGonagall, though he wasn't sure about WA or LJ.

The letters for his dad ranged from dead boring to... well, interesting to say the least. The notes from Sirius Black were mostly word play and thinly veiled innuendo, reminiscences of old times and bitterness about Sirius' current situation. They revealed much about Sirius' state of mind but little about Remus', and Teddy set them aside.

Correspondence from McGonagall, Dumbledore, and Snape were all pure Order business, and the first few from the mysterious WA were as well. But as Teddy read on, he began to detect a note of friendship, or at least of amiability between the writer and his father.

Remus,

The Big Cat has called off the Lightning Strike. Return to base at once.

WA

Remus,

Do you require back-up tomorrow at GB?

WA

Remus,

Thank you for your counsel on the FG matter. It's cleared up now, and everything is moving forward as planned.

WA

Remus,

No, really, the matter is resolved. As my mother suggested, it's just about putting it out of my mind and concentrating on what's ahead of me. Plans haven't changed, and my convalescence is nearly complete.

WA

Remus,

Meet me at the LC tomorrow, midnight. I can't stand this, I want to tear my skin off. Fleur doesn't understand-- how can she? I need your help after all.

WA

Fleur? Teddy froze. WA. William Arthur Weasley. "Well fuck me," me murmured. His hunch about Bill and his dad had been right after all. But almost a month had gone by and he'd heard nothing from the man.

Waving away a dust bunny that rolled tumbleweed-like from under the nearest bookcase, he devoured the rest of the Bill letters.

Remus,

I don't know how I'd have got through that without you. "Just a craving for raw steak" my left arse cheek. Are you sure about that ointment? I've got enough scars as it is.

WA

Remus,

I heard the news-- congratulations, and fuck anyone who has a problem with you and Tonks. I love you both, you know that, and you deserve each other. Make her happy, and tell her she has me to answer to if she doesn't make you happy too.

WA

Remus,

I'm sorry. Fuck, I don't know what came over me. I'm really, really sorry. I don't know what to say-- is it the moon? Please don't tell anyone. God, what can I do to make it right?

Bill

And there the letters ended. Teddy ran the tip of his index finger over the twenty-year-old ink. The twenty-year-old anguish. What on earth had happened there, and why didn't any more letters come?

Well, one more letter would be sent on the matter. Teddy had to know what had happened. He would send his owl to Bill come nightfall, once he was sure his grandmother was in bed.

~*~

"Bonjour, ma petit chou."

Sitting at Uncle Harry's kitchen table, Teddy was utterly unprepared for the voice of his sort-of-but-not-really-related-through-marriages-and-notions-of-extended-family, sometimes-girlfriend Victoire. Harry glanced up from a section of the Prophet at the same time as Teddy, the two of them looking into the dying embers of the kitchen hearth.

Since Victoire had turned down his housesitting invitation two months ago, they'd been on again and off again twice, and apparently now she wanted to be on again. "How'd you find me?" Teddy asked, grateful that his uncle was too obtuse, too solidarity-minded, or maybe just too nosy to get up and grant them a bit of privacy.

"Your grandmere," Victoire said, and somehow managed to shake her sheet of hair becomingly, even with her head in the middle of a fireplace. "She said that if you were not at home, you would be at work or lolligagging about with votre oncle."

That was one thing Teddy hated about Vicky, that liberal salting of her very proper English with French words-- he hated it except when he liked it, which was when she was very close to him and he could smell that cinnamon/floral something about her and then he thought it was sexy as all fuck. Otherwise, she sounded like a Muggle character he'd come across in the used VHS bin at work. Of course, if he told her that her linguistic quirks reminded him of a puppet named "Miss Piggy," he'd never have sex again.

"Sod off," he said, crossing his wiry arms across his Shags-t-shirt-clad chest.

She clucked her tongue, fiery eyes sparking with their own inner light. "Now, now, mon cher, do not be an asshole. I thought you might want to take me to lunch."

"Why, is Gentry Harkiss sick with the Fool's Flu?"

"Be nice, Teddy."

"Maybe Blythe Shacklebolt's busy today, what with his head being shoved up his own arse?"

Harry snorted at that, but remained silent. Vicky, on the other hand, glared at him imperiously. "Blythe is a good friend, and far more a gentleman than you are, Theodore Lupin."

"I thought you liked that I'm not a gentleman," he shot back viciously.

She opened her mouth to snap at him but paused, tilting her head as if listening to something off to the side. She rolled her perfect blue eyes and said, "Mama wants you to come to lunch here instead. Both of you."

Teddy's gaze flickered toward his uncle, who was staring longingly at the Saturday morning fry-up they had made for themselves. He ran a hand through his hair-- dark green today, and spiked into a miniature mohawk. "We're busy, thanks. Aunt Gin's out of town on business and Harry's got all of the sprogs off to school and Saturday breakfast to himself. We've got bangers, we've got mash, and we've got Ogden's Old. What we don't need is you."

Which wasn't entirely true because she was pouting, damn her, and she knew what that did to him. "Drinking at eleven thirty in the morning? Mais non, you will come here at once." Seconds later, a very similar face appeared beside Victoire's, and Fleur Delacoeur-Weasley chimed in.

"Mais non!" she repeated. "You must come to lunch, both of you. Our Bill is home and we wish to celebrate. You will come, oui?"

Harry got to his feet and let his back crack twice. "I suppose," he said, but Teddy knew from the grin on his face that Harry wanted to see Bill. Teddy was a different matter. He hadn't known that Bill was back, and he hadn't asked anyone else about the journals he'd found-- he hadn't breathed a word about them yet. He'd sent Bill two owls, and Bill hadn't bothered to owl him back or even try to contact him. He was hacked off at the older man, but he was also still curious. Might as well go straight to the hippogriff's mouth and find out for himself what kind of relationship Bill had had with Remus Lupin.

"Yeah, I s'pose we'll go," he muttered, glaring at the women in the flames. "Shove over, Vick, we'll come through."

With a bit of Floo Powder and a quick, awful spinning sensation, Teddy found himself sooty and irritable in the Delacoeur-Weasley sitting room. Harry appeared on his heels, nearly falling over as he stumbled out of the fireplace. Fleur caught him and slipped her arm gaily through his.

"Our Harry does not visit nearly enough, does he?" she sing-songed.

"He does not," Victoire chirped, ignoring Teddy entirely in favour of taking Harry's other arm. Teddy rolled his eyes. If she wasn't so animalistically good between the sheets....

A man stepped through the doorway and interrupted his thoughts, scarred face stretched into a smile. Bill Weasley, father of the most infuriating woman on earth, was back from Tasmania. His hair, lighter than Aunt Gin's from all the time spent under the bleaching sun, was pulled back into a ponytail that was cut off at the shoulder. His skin was tanned, so much so that his freckles were barely visible. Vicky had inherited her mother's complexion, though her hair was a very light strawberry blonde, rather than blondish silver. She hadn't a freckle to her name, though Teddy strongly suspected that she used makeup to cover the dusting of freckles he remembered her having when they were teenagers at Hogwarts. Bill, though, was another matter.

"Harry," Bill said, apparently also choosing to ignore Teddy. The younger man glowered. Typical. Just because you were twenty and you hadn't lived through a bleeding war and didn't have people lining up to kiss your ass, no one even thought to say hello. He glared at the marred face before him. Who cared if Bill had been friends with Remus Lupin? Teddy just wanted to go back to his own room and read.

"And Teddy," Bill said with a light smile, after he'd prised Harry away from the female cohort of his family and given him a bear hug. "Still dating my daughter, I see?"

"Depends on her mood," Teddy said with a shrug. Not even a word about the letter? Stupid Bill.

Bill nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, that's about right for a Delacoeur woman."

"Papa," Victoire giggled, smacking her father's biceps. "You are awful."

"And wise," Fleur added. "Come in, all you men. Come and have lunch with us, and we may hear tales of Bill's time in Australia."

Fleur wouldn't think of allowing Harry or Teddy to help with lunch, which was just as well because Teddy wasn't offering. Instead, he chose a seat in the corner and slumped down, glaring at pretty much everyone. Well, everyone who wasn't Harry. Harry rarely pissed Teddy off, though the way he was trailing almost puppy-like after Bill was just a little sickening. Had his uncle not totally wasted Voldemort? That seemed like a bigger deal to Teddy than telling a couple of goblins where to stick their shovels.

Now that he was here, Victoire was pretending that he wasn't, also fawning over her father. Bill, meanwhile, was moving with a slight limp through the kitchen, helping his ex-wife in spite of her protests that he should sit and rest his knee.

"Can I ask you something?" Teddy said, watching the older man's lopsided shuffle.

Bill paused, a plate of ham balanced in one hand, his wand in the other directing a bread knife to chop up a rustic, thick loaf. "Fire away."

It was Teddy's turn to pause, noticing that not only had Bill stopped and focused his attention on Teddy, but so had everyone else. Teddy flushed under the scrutiny of the Delacoeur women, unsure how to ask about his father in front of everyone. Tongue-twisted, he muttered, "What happened to your knee?"

Bill smiled at Teddy again, that light, non-committal smile. "Manticore."

Teddy suppressed a real flare of interest and said, sounding bored, "Oh, one of those."

"Yep. One of those." Bill started up the break knife again. "You want to hear the story?"

"No," Teddy said, but the chorus of yeses from everyone else in the kitchen drowned him out. He sat in sullen silence for the rest of the prep time, ignoring the great heroics of Bill the Treasure-Finder (big deal that the said manticore had been guarding a horde of sapphires in the Sahara, and anyway, anyone could have survived a horn through the thigh in Teddy's opinion), Bill the Bounty Hunter (how on earth was Harry Potter impressed by the tales of Bill tracking a renegade Death Eater wannabe through a live volcano?), and Bill the Ladies' Man (which Teddy thought was in particularly poor taste, considering that the man's ex-wife and daughter were in the bloody room). It wasn't until everyone was seated and generous portions of French-English hybrid dishes were being passed along that Bill looked at Teddy directly. "Are you working, Teddy?"

The question caught him off-guard after the barrage of Bill-centric stories. "Excuse me?"

"Working. You know, earning a living, making enough sickles to treat my daughter as she should be treated?" Bill's eyes were twinkling, but Teddy was in no mood for noticing such things.

"I'm saving up for my own place, if that's what you're driving at," he snapped, biting viciously into a bit of baguette. He swallowed and said, "And I've got a fine job, thanks." His glare was so ferocious that Fleur and Victoire exchanged bewildered glances.

Bill shrugged. "Just curious. Harry, how's the Auror business treating you? Ron sent me a picture of that Theo Nott's jinx victims-- yikes."

~*~

Teddy bolted after the meal, disgusted by the way everyone fell all over Bill, and by Bill's overly paternalistic attitude-- who the hell was Bill Weasley to act like Victoire's guardian when he didn't even live in England anymore? And further, who did the man think he was, not addressing Teddy's owls even once?

Irritated by life in general and Bill in particular, Teddy decided to seek out the solace and solitude of his bookstore, a shabby Muggle affair that resided to the left of the Leaky Cauldron-- or, to Muggle eyes, directly beside a used record store. He didn't have a shift today but he often stayed at the store anyway, helping out or burrowing into a corner and reading for uncounted hours. He slipped into the gardens behind Shell Cottage, intending to Apparate to the Leaky Cauldron.

Fleur had gorgeous gardens, Teddy had to admit. And he didn't just think so because he'd shagged Vicky against at least three of the large trees growing here, and behind that rose bush. He still had a scar on his arse where he'd rolled into some nasty thorns.

He could hear the women's voices weaving gaily together, and he frowned. Stupid part-Veela women thought they were so bloody fantastic. He didn't know how Bill put up with their shit for so long, but it didn't surprise him that he'd finally relocated to a different continent permanently. He didn't know if Bill had moved because of the divorce or divorced because of the move.

He stalked further into the labyrinthine gardens. He just needed a good spot to Disapparate, and then he could forget this stupid idea that Bill might know something interesting about Remus Lupin. The guy's head was shoved so far up his ass, and the asses of his adulating fanbase, that he probably through the sun shone out of his own rectum.

His dark thoughts were were interrupted by a shadow falling across his path. He frowned up into the shadow's source.

"I take it you and my daughter are off again?" Bill asked, lips twitching into a half-smile. The scars on his face, older than Teddy was, were a mottled, muted pink. No longer angry like they must have been two decades ago, they seemed an almost natural part of his features now. They blended with his skin, scything one eyebrow in two, trailing across his nose and left cheek, tugging the corner of his mouth upward at all times.

"What makes you say that?" Teddy muttered, glaring defiantly at the older man.

"It's been awhile since I saw you last. You seem surlier than I remember you."

Teddy didn't expend the energy to roll his eyes. "Have you ever read Muggle comic books?" he asked, ignoring the query entirely.

Bill leaned easily against a tree, brushing a low branch aside. "A few," he said.

"There's one I like-- we sell a lot of them at my shop." Teddy traced the patterns of bark absently. "The hero is pretty dark. He's cool because he uses all of his money and a ton of ingenuity to create gadgets that do all the things Wizards can do with magic."

"I think I know which one you mean."

"Well, one of the villains is called Two-Face."

Bill's marred face twisted into a scowl. "I have the feeling I'm about to be insulted in my own former home."

I was going to say your scars are cooler than his, but whatever."

Bill snorted and touched his ruined cheek. "They're almost legend now, aren't they. I don't think your generation even know how I got them."

"A duel, we know." Teddy shrugged. "It's more that no one really cares anymore."

"Oh really?"

"I don't care."

Bill tumbled carelessly into the grass, leaning back on his elbows. "I'm glad you don't let Victoire push you around too much."

Teddy snorted at that. "Oh, she pushes. I just push back now and then."

"I suppose so."

"Look," Teddy said, tired of this witless small talk. He carefully found his wand under his robes. "Nice chat and all, but I must dash. If you can think of anything worth talking about, you know where to find me."

Before Bill could answer, Teddy Disapparated faster than he'd ever done in his life. He had some satisfaction in the startled expression on the older man's face before he disappeared.

~*~

Bill,

You're an arrogant arse-wipe. I just wanted to be sure you knew that.

TRL

~*~

Dinner at Aunt Gin and Uncle Harry's the next night promised to be a quiet affair, at least. Of all of his family, Teddy liked them best, and he liked that their house was quiet, without a thousand other friends and relatives underfoot. And his grandmother had never particularly warmed to Harry, which meant that she wouldn't be accompanying Teddy to dinner.

He was still prickling with anger at Bill's total snub, and his hair was a bright cerise to match his temper. No matter what had happened between his father and Bill, it was no excuse not to say anything at all. Even a "None of your business, kid," would have been better than silence.

He knocked on his aunt and uncle's door, wondering what restaurant Sunday dinner had been ordered from. Rebelling against their own childhoods, for different reasons, neither of the Potters went near their kitchen, if they could help it.

After a few moments, the door swung open to reveal a beaming Aunt Ginny. "Teddy! We were just talking about you."

"Oh?" Teddy slouched out of the darkness and into the house. He could hear his uncle chatting up a storm with someone in the parlour, and he felt a dragon's egg start sinking in his stomach.

"Yes, Harry's brought Bill by for a visit! I didn't even know he was back in England." Ginny looped an arm through Teddy's and dragged him down the hall. They entered the parlour and Ginny marched right in, though Teddy lingered in the doorway.

"You ran off rather suddenly yesterday," Harry said. "Everything all right, or are you and Victoire at it again?"

Bill cleared his throat. "I'm afraid it's my fault, Harry. I asked Teddy to go fetch something from Andromeda for me. Is your grandmother well, Teddy?"

"She is. She thinks I should keep my hair shorter and get a real job." Teddy scrutinized the older man. Why was Bill covering for him?

"I know what that's like," Bill said.

Teddy shrugged. "If she didn't complain, then I'd know something was wrong. Aunt Gin, do you mind if I just run to the loo?"

She nodded assent, but her attention was already absorbed by her older brother-- and Teddy could hex himself for not realising that Bill would come by to see his baby sister. All he'd wanted was a quiet evening. Instead, The Great and Daring Bill Weasley Who Couldn't Be Bothered to Answer His Mail was here.

Turning into the spare bedroom next to the loo, Teddy collapsed on the bed, back to the door. He had only a few moments to himself before a voice interrupted his seething thoughts.

"Why did you run off yesterday?" Bill Weasley asked. Teddy didn't look up. Instead, he concentrated on resettling his features, letting his hair darken until it was so black it was reflective. He blended his eyes to match. The black/black combination unsettled people. He'd picked it up from a the portrait of Severus Snape in the headmaster's office at Hogwarts.

"I had things to do, and clearly you're too busy and important to spare me even a word."

"I? I'm not the one who sends inquiries he clearly cares nothing about. You're just like your father. He never answered important letters either."

"I sent you two different owls," Teddy fumed, "and you answered neither of them."

Bill shook his head. "You sent one and I sent you four replies."

At that, Teddy rolled up into a sitting position and gave Bill a considering look.

Bill flinched. "What did you...?"

"I said--"

"I heard what you said. Why did you do that to your face?"

Teddy fought the urge to stick his tongue out at the infuriating older man. "What do you mean?"

"You look nothing like you did ten minutes ago." Bill took a step into the room, reaching out as if to touch Teddy's face from five feet away. "I know you're a metamorphmagus like your mum was. Are you doing that deliberately?"

"Obviously. You like?" he asked sarcastically, fighting not to smirk in triumph.

"Your mum used to change her hair all the time," Bill not-quite-answered, crossing the floor and gestured at the bed. "It made your dad smile. May I?" He sat down next to Teddy without waiting for a reply. "I wrote you four owls, asking you why you thought I knew your dad, what evidence you'd found. I didn't hear back from you."

"I never received those letters," Teddy began, and then he froze. Of course. "Nana."

"What about her?"

Teddy cursed under his breath. "She's a Black, that's what about her. She's a Black, and she's never wanted me to know about my father."

"She's been intercepting your mail?" Bill asked, frowning. His scars forced his mouth into a deeper grimace.

"Wouldn't be the first time," Teddy said, remembering the confiscated letters from Jake Thomas two years ago-- because members of the Black family didn't write letters like that to members of their own gender, no matter what had gone on in the prefects' lavatory. "So you got my original letter, huh?"

Bill was studying him intently, worrying his lower lip between his teeth. "Yeah, I did. What do you know about your dad?"

Teddy rummaged in one of his deep robe pockets and handed over a couple of the old letters. "Not much: werewolf, Marauder, teacher for one year, big war hero, my grandmother hated him, he died. Every one of his friends are dead too, except you. If you were his friend."

"I don't know if you could call us friends." Bill lounged backward on his elbows, the way he'd done in the grass yesterday. "Your dad was pretty preoccupied with this issue and that. He was hard to get close to."

"But you were close to him?" Teddy leaned forward, trying to contain his boyish excitement. "What did you know about him? What was he like? Did you have a falling out?"

Bill took a breath, but was interrupted by footsteps. He jumped to his feet, looking almost guilty as Ginny appeared in the doorway.

"There you two are. We were wondering what happened to you." She gave Bill a stern stare, reminiscent of Molly Weasley. "You're not antagonizing the poor boy, are you, William? It's not his fault your daughter is a handful."

"She'd better not be his handful," Bill said, tone light but mocking.

"I've got to go," Teddy said, gathering the parchment off the bed and stuffing it into his robe. "Really not feeling well, but thanks, Aunt Gin. I'll see you next Sunday dinner, yeah?"

"All right," she said, frowning at them both. "Next Sunday it is."

~*~

An owl was waiting on his bedroom window, looking most impatient. He opened the pane and creature held out its leg daintily. It was a smallish brown bird, and as soon as the missive was off its leg, it made the most peculiar barking sound and flew out the window.

Teddy held his breath, waiting to see if his Nana had heard the commotion, but he suspected she was long since asleep. Formidable she may be, but she was also pushing seventy and a heavy sleeper. When no inquiring old woman appeared at his door, Teddy smoothed open the parchment, recognizing Bill's handwriting from the older letters to Remus.

Teddy,

Thank you for asking me for careers advice. I think it's admirable that you finally want to take a step into a proper Wizarding vocation, and I'd be delighted to let you in on the answers to some of the questions you posed to me tonight. Why don't you meet me in at the Leaky Cauldron tomorrow at 11 a.m.?

Cheers!

Bill

Teddy grinned in spite of himself. Even if his grandmother had intercepted this, she could hardly complain about its contents. He resolved to leave it lying on the kitchen table tomorrow morning before he left for work.

The next day, he took his lunch break early and slipped next door into the hidden pub. The Leaky Cauldron was nothing like it had been in decades before. Seamus Finnigan had bought the place ten years after the war and, as Harry liked to say, classed it up. Solid oak, self-cleaning tables ran the length of the hardwood floors, enchanted never to become sticky no matter how much beer was spilled on them. Wall sconces every few feet kept the place bright and cheerful, and the fully stocked bar supplied every drink one could think of, not just the same Ogden's Old. Apart from the sometimes-raucous karaoke parties the pub held sometimes, it was a respectable place to dine or do business.

Bill Weasley was already sprawled in a chair by one of the big, cozy fireplaces, unlit because it was still fairly warm for autumn. He was chatting with a laughing, middle-aged man sporting dark dreadlocks, who Teddy vaguely recognized as Lee Jordan. Lee nodded his good-bye as Teddy walked forward.

"Careers advice, huh?" he asked, taking the seat across from Bill.

"You're a lost boy, in need of answers," Bill said philosophically. "Who better than the manticore-killer to give you those answers." He glanced at Teddy's features, but didn't comment on them. Teddy had gone for a David Bowie-influenced look, right down to the mismatched pupils.

"Answer me this," Teddy returned. "Who was my father, and how well did you know him?"

"Right to the point. I like it. That's more your mum than your dad," Bill said. "I knew them both fairly well, and I was pretty ecstatic when they got married. Your dad had some doubts-- that's probably not something I should tell you, though."

"Why not?"

"Well, it was more prompted by you than by anything else." Bill's lips twitched into a sarcastic smile.

"Yeah, I've done the math on that one," Teddy said. "But come on, whose parents didn't get married because of pregnancy in those generations? What was my dad like?"

"Don't you know?"

Two glasses of water shimmered into being on the small end table between them, followed by a house elf dressed in a black-and-white waiter's uniform. Teddy thought the little creature looked like a penguin.

"Good afternoon, sirs. I is Schmoopsie, and I will be serving sirs today. May I take sirs' orders?" The elf had a quill and parchment poised in his hand.

"Come back in ten minutes, will you?" Bill said, not taking his eyes off Teddy. The house elf bowed low and disappeared with a loud POP.

Teddy tossed the letters he'd found in the cellar onto the table. "Clearly you're WA. Were you friends before these? What happened in them?"

Bill stared at the parchment. "My God, I'd have thought these long destroyed." He was silent for a lingering moment. "Yeah, we were mates. Your dad mostly only had time for Sirius, when I first got to know him. But he was a decent bloke. Took his tea black, liked to read with almost no light-- probably enhanced eyesight from the lycanthropy. Do you--?"

"I see pretty well in the dark, but I need glasses to read," Teddy said. "I don't think I inherited any major werewolf traits, if that's what you're asking."

"I was curious," Bill admitted. "I wondered what sorts of traits Victoire would inherit, too."

"She's pretty Veela," Teddy said. "And she knows it. Is that all you can say about my dad?"

"I don't know what you want to know."

"I don't know anything!" Teddy shouted, rising to his feet. "Do you know what that's like, not knowing a thing about your own father? You know everything about your dad! You know what his laugh sounds like and that he likes to take televisions apart in your tool shed! You know the way he looks at your mum, and the way he carried you on his shoulders when you were small! I don't even know how tall my dad was, let alone how he liked to spend his evenings or how he felt about politics or my mum or anything!"

Lee and Seamus, at the bar, were staring at them, as were several other patrons who had filtered in for an early lunch. Bill rose slowly to his feet, took Teddy firmly by the shoulder, and steered him off to the side, where the private parlours had been refurbished. He shoved the younger man in without a word.

"Remus' voice was soft but confident," Bill said after he shut the door. "He had a way of looking at you that made you think he understood the way every cog in your head cranked. He would read for hours and hours every evening, and he liked to cook. He was the only one who could control Sirius after Sirius came back. He was passionate about werewolf rights, but he was also downtrodden, weary from a life of being told he was a second-class citizen at best and a monster at worst."

Bill hadn't let go of Teddy's shoulder, but his grip relaxed. "Your dad helped me through a time in my life so rough that not even Fleur knew what I was going through. Don't you know how I got these scars?"

Teddy shook his head. "Wizarding duel with a Death Eater the night Dumbledore snuffed it, is what they say in History of Magic. Though I could never figure out what sort of hex would leave scars like that."

Bill snorted, letting go of him. "Same old Ministry, covering up past mistakes. They don't want to admit they let a psycho like Fenrir Greyback roam free for so long, so they wrote him out of the textbooks. He was a werewolf, Teddy, the same one who turned your dad. Only unlike your dad, he lived for mayhem and for killing. He attacked me when he was in human form, and did this to me with his bare hands and blunt teeth."

The thought sickened Teddy, a sudden, vivid image of a huge, hairy man throwing Bill to the ground and raking his teeth across Bill's face. "So you got mauled by the same bloke who turned my father. That's kind of twisted. Wait, does that make you a werewolf too?" He'd never thought of that before, and tried to remember if he'd ever seen Bill on the night of a full moon. Did that make Vicky part-werewolf, like Teddy was? It would explain her monster hormonal mood swings.

"It gave me wolf-like tendencies. Like the first month, when I cut furrows in my arms with my own nails. It felt like I was trying to shed my own skin and I couldn't stop from scratching." Bill drew one sleeve up, showing faded scars all along his forearms. "It was your dad who talked me into drinking aconite tea and applying mandrake lotion. And who got me meditating. Your dad got my head screwed back on straight, and helped make sure I actually made it to the altar. I might not have married Fleur otherwise. I was too afraid of what I was becoming."

Teddy studied Bill's features. The scars, which had seemed so commonplace all his life, stood out livid against Bill's skin now, set into sharp relief by their history. He tried to think of what to ask next when a huge old grandfather clock standing in the corner tolled its stately bell.

"Bloody hell, I've got to get back to work," Teddy muttered. "Look, meet me for dinner, all right?"

Bill winced. "Thing is, I have to get back to work too. I'm leaving tonight for a dig in Nepal."

"But I need to talk to you!"

"Write me. I'll try to answer what you want to know, and I'll send my letters here for you, all right? Seamus has been good in the past about playing post office for me."

Teddy nodded, and Bill squeezed his shoulder again lightly before striding out of the room.

~*~

He started going through the Leaky Cauldron before work each day, rather than Apparating to the bookshop's back lot. A letter was waiting for him almost immediately.

Teddy,

Can I ask about your grandmother? She refused to go to your parents' wedding, but surely she's not still upset about it?

You'll find the address of the camp where I'll be staying in Dhulikhel at the top of this parchment. Your letters will find me there. I admit, I don't know very much about your dad's upbringing, other than some school exploits I expect you've already heard about from your Uncle Harry. But we had some times in the Order, the second time around. I can try my best to tell you about them.

There was this one time we single-handedly rerouted a shipment of dragons' livers from China, destined for Voldemort's poisoned cauldrons. Your dad caught wind of it from Snape, and the Order couldn't decide what to do. So your dad came up with the idea to re-letter all of the signposts along the road between the seller's Apparition points. He ended up in Wales, where we posed as Muggle highwaymen and robed him at gunpoint with two children's water pistols. Good times.

Cheers,

Bill

Same old Bill, Teddy though, stifling a snicker. Couldn't resist telling the tale like it was a high adventure with himself as the star. Teddy rifled through his robe pockets, ignoring the battered copy of V for Vendetta and the newest edition of Jacques Derrida's Dissemination until he found some parchment and a ballpoint pen from the shop. Quills might be more elegant, but they made writing on the go difficult.

Bill,

What kind of food did my dad like to eat when you were off adventuring? You said he liked to cook-- was he the one who cooked for Order meetings, and what did he like to make? Did you know Sirius well, and what was their relationship like? Uncle Harry has said more than once that he thought it hurt Remus to see his old best mate as damaged as he was after Azkaban.

TRL

A week passed, and Teddy pretended he couldn't hear his grandmother lecturing about how well the Weasley children were doing in their studies, and how excellent the Potter children's prospects would be for positions of importance in the Wizarding world. He took to changing his appearance at least once or twice every day, which unnerved her, and made his aunt and uncle stare at him at Sunday dinner. Bill's reply arrived on Teddy's day off, but he'd come by the pub anyway, just in case.

Teddy,

You're not kidding about having questions. There's a misconception that your father was a chocoholic, spread by none other than the great Harry Potter. Your dad used to feed him chocolate during the year he taught at Hogwarts because Harry was especially susceptible to Dementor attacks and the anitoxidants in chocolate help to restore the body's balance after an encounter with them. I expect Harry's told you that story himself. But really, your dad liked spicy food, the hotter the better. He was a curry fanatic, and insisted on getting bad take-out whenever we were on, as you say, an adventure. He didn't have much of a sweet tooth and he never baked. He and my mum fought for dominance in the kitchen at 12 Grimmauld.

Bill

Teddy made a face at that. Well, it was half of his questions answered. He sent another letter straight away, and as the winter chill enveloped London and Christmas drew closer, letters flew back and forth between them on the north wind.

- Tell me about my father's taste in books.

- He was a Milton fan. You work in a bookshop, don't you? You inherited the literature bug from him.

- It's a living, but it doesn't pay enough to get me out of my grandmother's house. Which is ironic, considering that if I just listened to her and took a Ministry job, I could afford to get out. Tell me about what kind of music he liked.

- Does she disapprove of your choices as much as she did your mum's? She was pretty relentless about Remus, but Remus didn't care. He said that he hadn't had a family all his life, he didn't need one now that he was married. He wasn't much for music. Your musical tastes come from your mother, who, if I remember rightly, had a Sex Pistols tattoo under her left shoulder blade and a Weird Sisters tattoo above her right knee.

- It's disturbing to think of one's deceased mother with punk tattoos. Meanwhile, my grandmother hates anything to do with my father. I know nothing about him, which is why I sought you out when I found that old Order stuff and I saw a connection between you two. It looked like you and Sirius were the people he favoured most. I asked you once before about Sirius. How were they together? Whenever I picture my father, I picture a loner with a book, not unlike myself.

-I don't know how to say this to you in a letter, but I think your dad and Sirius had been more than friends when they were in school. No one ever talks about it, but there used to be some pictures at Grimmauld, in Sirius' old room, of the two of them, sometimes with James Potter and Peter Pettigrew and sometimes alone. They just always looked at each other with something deeper than friendship. I hope that doesn't come as a shock because I know the Ministry has likely quashed any possible talk of deviancy in their war heroes. When Sirius came back, he was like a teenager still, and your dad had lived with grief and guilt for more than a decade. They weren't the same people and they never reconnected the same way.

Bill

He sat at the bar in the Leaky Cauldron, holding the letter numbly in both hands. His dad and Sirius... his dad had been...

Somehow, Teddy wasn't shocked and that was what was shocking him. His dad had married his mum, but Sirius had been his... had Sirius been anything to his dad? And what did that say about Teddy's own brief flirtation with Jake? His grandmother had swooped down on him with a fury and made it more than clear what happened to Blacks who strayed from the straight and narrow-- literally. But fucking hell, Sirius had been a Black, and if what Bill conjectured was true, what did that mean about his whole past, his family history, his present now?

He wanted to ask Harry but he doubted Harry would know. Harry, drunk once several years ago, had let slip to Teddy that his dad had almost abandoned his mum when she was pregnant in order to help Harry defeat Voldemort. Harry had tried to dress it up like it was a heroic act but Teddy had read between the lines and seen a terrified father-to-be leaping at any escape route with even a shred of nobility attached to it.

He didn't want to ask Harry. But who else would know? No one living, except, perhaps, Nana herself. The thought struck Teddy: what if she'd known? What if that, more than prejudice against half-humans or a belief that Remus was too old, had influenced Andromeda Tonks' negative opinion? What if she'd known about Remus and her nephew, and that was why she disapproved of Remus and her daughter?

Teddy's pen flew across the parchment, returning the missive immediately:

Bill,

Do you have proof? Do you know that my dad was what you say he was? Did others know? And does that mean my mum was a mistake? Harry told me something that made me wonder once. Is that what you two fought about? I found the letter you wrote to him, apologizing for something.

What the hell happened, Bill?

Teddy

The reply came only three days later, which was good because Teddy had barely slept since the revelation. His dreams had been plagued with shadowy figures, with muscular limbs and flat stomachs, of teeth against his throat and long hair running through his fingers. Just the possibility that his father had had those leanings negated everything that Teddy's Nana had said about upholding the moral integrity of Wizarding Kind.

Last night, he'd dreamed that he was in Fleur Delacoeur's gardens, his back against a large oak tree. He could feel the bark scraping his shoulder blades. He hadn't been able to open his eyes in the dream, and then he'd realised he was blindfolded. Someone's tongue thrust into his mouth, leaving no room for argument. Large, strong hands pinned his shoulders to the tree, and a hard, sinewy body covered his own. He'd awakened this morning pale and sweating, harder than he'd been in months and confused. That was no replay of his frantic tumbles with Victoire. It was something else entirely.

And anyway, Vicky had been ignoring him for so long that he wasn't sure if she was even in England. Shaking his head, he slouched into the pub, where he was hailed by Seamus.

"Mate, this came in through the Floo Network for you this morning. Looks important." Seamus held up a paper tied with twine. Bill's writing curled across the front, along with a "Do Not Bend" and an "Urgent."

"Thanks," Teddy muttered, tearing into the package. Inside was a letter and a photograph. Teddy slid his glasses over the bridge of his nose and devoured the contents with his eyes: Teddy's father and his mother in a portrait of what had to be their wedding day. He'd never seen this image before. He didn't think any other evidence of the marriage existed anymore. Tonks was dressed in knee-high ivory stiletto boots and a mini-dress in white. Her hair cascaded down her back, morphing through a psychedelic array of colours every few seconds. She was beaming, her expression absolutely radiant.

Teddy touched his nose thoughtfully. It was exactly the same shape as his mother's. At this point, he didn't know if they naturally shared a nose, or if he'd become accustomed to keeping his nose looking just like hers in her photographs.

His eyes wandered to his father's older, more weathered visage. He knew his mum had been younger than his dad. Harry had told him the story of how they'd finally become a couple, the night that Professor Dumbledore had been murdered. He knew the "I'm too old" speech by heart, though he'd admit it to no one. The Remus in this picture looked battered by life. Teddy hadn't realised that his father had scars across his face, or that his hair would be so grey on his wedding day. He looked almost ill, but content-- a strange word, Teddy, thought, considering your wedding was supposed to be the happiest day of your life. Had his father really wanted to marry Tonks, or was his heart elsewhere, laying dead and untouchable in Sirius Black's empty grave?

His father waved gamely up at him from the photograph, but Teddy didn't wave back. Instead, he studied his father's eyes for a few moments, and then, with a centring breath in, he concentrated on his own features, imagining that his skin and muscle and bone were no more than malleable clay, suggestible to the touch of his mind. He pictured first the way a claw would rake through skin, leaving furrows in its wake, and the way the skin would try to heal itself over time, raised, off-colour, mismatched with the rest of his face. Then he pictured his eyes, which had started the day out a startling indigo. He imagined them shifting, brightening. It wasn't too hard a look to maintain, and he knew it would piss his Nana off just enough.

He cast his eyes over Bill's now-familiar scrawl.

I'm guessing you've never seen this, if your Nana did away with anything Remus-related. This is your parents' wedding day. I have no doubt that they loved each other very much. Your dad was worried about what the world say about their union, but your mum didn't care.

I don't know if your dad and Sirius were ever lovers, or if your dad just wanted more than Sirius could give him. I know that he was open to such things, and that he was one of the best men I ever knew. He loved your mum, and he loved you.

Bill

He looked up at Seamus, who was inconspicuously polishing the bar a few feet away. "This came through the Floo Network?"

Seamus nodded. "Yep. Just about ten minutes before yeh got here."

"Can I use your fireplace?" He was already on his feet, pocketing his glasses and heading toward the big hearth at the back of the pub.

"Powder's in the ceramic hipogriff," Seamus answered. Teddy didn't see him smile.

~*~

When the whirling sensation deposited him in the hearth in Bill's Dhulikhel headquarters, something blocked his way forward. He swiped at the soot cloud obscuring his vision. The green flames from the Floo powder were subsiding, to be replaced by normal orange-- and scorchingly hot-- fire. Teddy shoved the wrought-iron grate but it wouldn't budge. He was stuck, and the flames were licking his heavy leather boots.

"Oi!" he shouted, trying to stamp out the fire around him. "Oi, who left the grate on!" The fire seemed to dance around him, flaring higher in spite of his efforts. The hem of his robe flickered and caught fire. He kicked at the grate, which seemed welded to the hearth.

"Help!" he called. It was deadly silent around him. Where the hell was everyone? Fumbling for his wand, he aimed a steady blast of Diffindo at the wrought iron, and with a wrenching explosion, the thing skyrocketed across the room and landed against the far wall with a crash. Teddy rolled out, shooting Aguamenti at himself to douse the flames.

Seconds later, the door burst open and a tall, angry man marched in, flanked by two goblins. "Who the hell is making all that racket!" Bill Weasley bellowed.

Starting to push himself to his feet, Teddy found himself hauled off the floor by Bill's fists on his collar. "Hey!" Teddy said, trying to twist away. Bill held on.

"You don't coming barging uninvited into a camp like this!" Bill shouted. "You've ruined everything and you could have gotten us all killed!"

"You could have got me killed, blocking an active Floo-connected fireplace!" Teddy retorted, wrapping his hands around Bill's wrists. "Let me go!"

"Nookwink, Crickshift, go oversee the site. I'll be with you in a minute," Bill barked, and the goblins, muttering to each other and giving Teddy evil looks, obliged. Bill loosened his grip on Teddy's robes. "Do you have any idea what your shouting and your spells have done?"

Teddy swiped at his face, which was covered in soot and ash. "You should have put up a temporary magical block on the damned hearth if it was such a big deal. Anyone could have come through there!"

"No magic could be used, I just told you that." Growling, Bill found an old rag in a desk drawer and tossed it to Teddy. "We've been trying to coax a Chinese Fireball out of her cave for the last month, and she's magic-shy. We nearly had her, and with your little magical outbursts, she's gone further back than she started out! Not to mention the fire she sprayed at us before she retreated."

"You're sitting on a live dragon's den and you're mad at me? You're out of your tree, mate," Teddy said, wiping his face clean.

"I wasn't expecting any children in the camp today," Bill shot back. "I-- what happened to you?"

"I was nearly burnt alive and then thrown across a room by a crazy treasure-hunter," Teddy said, wiping his hands next.

"Not that," Bill snapped impatiently. "Those scars, and your eyes. Are you doing it on purpose?"

"Doing what?" Teddy asked, playing dumb.

"You look so much like him."

"Who, my father?"

"Your father." Bill stepped forward, long, freckled fingers reaching out unconsciously. Teddy flinched but held his ground. "You look just like him like that. Your eyes. I used to think his eyes looked like the sky." Bill's fingertips made contact with Teddy's cheek, tracing the scar tissue Teddy had morphed there.

Teddy's eyes narrowed. "I wanted to ask you about the wedding portrait," he said, knocking Bill's hand away. "But now I'm wondering just what you knew about my dad and the way he felt toward other men." Bill's touch had unsettled him, its gentle curiosity sending a strange thrill to the pit of his stomach. "I've never heard a bloke talk about another bloke's eyes like that before, if you know what I'm saying."

He felt the whiz of disturbed air before he actually saw the fist raising to connect with the cheek that Bill had stroked just a second earlier. Teddy bobbed out of the way and threw a punch of his own. Bill caught his wrist and shoved him against the wall. The older man was stronger than he should have been, and it dazed Teddy for a moment.

The moment was all Bill needed to descend, trapping Teddy's body against the wall with his own. Teddy felt a dizzying sense of deja vu, and then Bill's lips were on his. Demanding, not asking. Teddy gasped as teeth bit hard on his lower lip, as long, strong fingers tangled in his hair. He tasted soot as his mouth opened, and Bill's tongue thrust forward, curling against his own.

It was over before it had really begun, Bill retreating to the other side of the room. "Go home," he said, breathing heavily. "Fucking hell. Go home right now. I've told you everything you want to know."

Teddy's body was pulled as tight as a harpstring, still vibrating from the collision with Bill. Numbly he walked to the fireplace and tossed some Floo powder in. He didn't look at Bill as he stepped inside.

~*~

Every sound made him jump that day, every dropped book or tinkle of the copper bell above the door. He was useless at sorting the battered books and scratched CDs that had been swapped by patrons for other titles, and he couldn't managed to alphabetize the second-hand vinyl records (still popular, even with all of the other music-listening gadgets Muggles kept coming up with). He was shaken, so much so that he couldn't maintain his morphed features and his hair colour.

Bill. Father of Victoire, whom Teddy dated and fucked and maybe loved, sometimes. War hero, almost thirty years Teddy's senior. Supposedly straight, just like Teddy. And imbued with werewolf-like tendencies. That was the unfair part. Teddy should have had a legacy like that, some small part of his father that he could identify with in himself. The ability to smell blood, or more chest hair, or the ability to howl at the moon. Bill was the one who felt like he had a wolf inside, and Bill was the one who had known Remus Lupin. And Teddy had nothing but an old wedding portrait and vague stories of Remus' heroics.

But what had Remus been to Bill, and where did that leave Teddy?

When his day was finally over-- and for once, Mrs Jenkins was happy to see him leave-- he headed home to sort through the letters Bill had sent Remus all those years ago. Without his father's replies, it would be difficult for Teddy to piece together the truth, but at least it was a start. Perhaps it would explain the hunger in Bill's eyes, or the shocking, irrepressible need he'd felt between them the moment Bill's lips had made contact with his own.

His Nana was out for the evening, thank goodness. If this were any other day, he would likely fire-call Victoire and ask her over, but Victoire was the furthest thing from his mind. He went straight to his room, which was nearly as large as a master bedroom. The walls weren't visible behind huge mahogany bookshelves, which Teddy had transfigured for himself in his third year, using the bookcases in Andromeda's library as a model. Two thirds of the room was devoted to books of every subject imaginable, from Muggle philosophy to veterinary science to Magical history to a huge range of fiction from both worlds. Piles of books were stacked against the bookcases as well, waiting for their turn to be shelved.

Teddy sat down amongst the piles and reached behind the books on the bottom shelf beside him, the French literature section. His fingers alighted on a large manila envelope, which he'd taken from the shop. Inside were all of the correspondence he'd found. He shook everything out onto the floor and sorted through the "WA" letters.

Remus,

I'm sorry. Fuck, I don't know what came over me. I'm really, really sorry. I don't know what to say-- is it the moon? Please don't tell anyone. God, what can I do to make it right?

Bill

What had Bill done? The letter was dated March 1998. Teddy had been born in April that year. Only months later, Teddy's mother and father were destined to die. And no more letters had come. A thought struck him, the look on Bill's face when he and Teddy had first realised that Andromeda had been intercepting the letters. "You're just like your father," Bill had said. "He never answered important letters either."

At work the next day, Teddy photocopied the letter and scribbled on the bottom, "Bill, what the hell happened?" He tucked it inside a fourth-hand first edition book and on his lunch break sent it through Seamus' Floo. He wasn't sure what he was trying to accomplish, beyond getting some sort of response. And he didn't have long to wait. Only a few hours later, as Mrs Jenkins was getting ready to close up shop for the evening, the copper bell tinkled and a tall man with silver streaks in his red hair stalked in. Teddy, at the front desk, nearly dropped a pile of used CDs on the floor.

Even if he didn't know Bill Weasley, if he didn't now know the story behind his scars, he would have thought that a wolf had entered the store. His hackles raised as he watched Bill's powerful, confident stance over the rims of his glasses, studied the feral, hunting look in Bill's dark eyes, the crinkled concentration written in his eyebrows. Bill was wearing knee-length shorts and a tight, sleeveless t-shirt. Teddy could actually see the sinew, the muscle, rippling along Bill's arms and calves. He wondered if he'd notice such things if yesterday morning hadn't happened. He wondered if he'd always noticed, but hadn't let himself think about it.

"Mr Weasley," he said casually, stacking the CDs next to the cash register. He could hear Mrs Jenkins bustling around on the second floor. "I can't say I was expecting to see you here. May I help you with something?"

Bill held up the book clenched in his right hand. "I believe I ordered the wrong book."

"Le Fantome de L'Opera," Teddy said, feigning puzzlement. "Are you not a Gaston Leroux fan, sir?"

Bill slammed the book down on the counter. "What the hell did you mean by this?"

"Oh, you know. Crazy, disfigured, older gentleman stays away from the public at large, yet stalks a younger person with whom he has an inexplicable obsession. It seemed apt."

Bill's wand was out only a millisecond before Teddy's, the tip pressing against Teddy's throat. Teddy's wand stayed in his hand, useless for now. "That's a lie. I'm trying to help you."

"You're in Muggle London. You might want to put that thing away," Teddy said, achieving a calmness of tone that did not match the shiver that ran through his whole body. Bill's eyes were flashing, his jaw clenched. Teddy couldn't turn away. He felt like he was looking into the eyes of a basilisk, a staring contest that was as mesmerizing and almost certainly as dangerous.

"What have I done but try to help you?" Bill rasped, lowering the wand a fraction. "Why are you tormenting me like this?"

"Everything all right down there, Ducks?"

Bill and Teddy both flinched as the kindly voice of Mrs Jenkins slammed into their stand-off. Bill dropped his wand farther, and Teddy reciprocated by pocketing his own. "Fine, thank you. Just discussing old French authors with a customer," he called back.

"All right, Theo, dear. Why don't you head home once you're done. It's been very quiet today."

Teddy and Bill hadn't torn their eyes from each other. With a steadying breath, Teddy reshaped his face, regaining the Remus-colouring and scars he'd worn the day before. He was rewarded by Bill's gaze flicking away.

"Why are you doing this to me?" Bill said again, and no hint of his bravado remained.

"I just want to know who my father was," Teddy whispered. "You knew. You know."

He was already leaning forward even as Bill's hands cupped Teddy's face, coaxing him closer. Their lips met on a gasp for air, as though this kiss was oxygen, was more important than oxygen. They strained over the counter toward each other, lips opening, Bill's tongue sliding into Teddy's mouth and meeting its mate. Their tongues entangled, Teddy tasting salt and something darker, more desperate underneath. He wanted more, he could feel the darkness flooding through him, finding something answering inside him that he didn't recognize.

He broke away with a groan. "Can't stay here," he said, eyes wide and wild. Bill was dishevelled, mouth half-open and lips glistening with Teddy's saliva. "The Leaky-- we can go to the Leaky."

Bill grabbed Teddy's wrist, tight enough to bruise, and with his wand in his other hand once more he Side-Along Apparated them right out of the shop. Teddy's shout of protest was lost in the nameless void of Apparition and before he could regain his bearings he found himself stumbling, Bill's body bearing down on him. The back of his knees hitting something and he began to topple backwards but Bill caught him, powerful arms wrapping around his waist and pulling him close. Teddy's eyes fluttered closed behind his lenses, his mouth finding Bill's again in a move so instinctive he wondered for a crazy moment if he'd been kissing Bill Weasley all his life.

Hands were in his hair, nails raked his neck, teeth nipped at Teddy's lips. Bill's fingertips traced Teddy's morphed scars, threw his glasses aside and smoothed over his eyelids, memorized the contours of his lips. And all the while, a hard, solid body blanketed his, constantly moving and rubbing against him. Teddy wanted to cry out but Bill's mouth blocked any sound, swallowing Teddy's desire, consuming him utterly. Nothing compared to this, nothing in his whole existence had ever inflamed him like this. Bill flooded his senses even as his body overwhelmed Teddy's defences. Teddy's mouth opened under his, sucking Bill's tongue in, biting back, harder.

Escalation. Bill's hands tearing at Teddy's robes, their hips pressing together, fitting together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Teddy was barely aware of what was happening, too many impulses and sensations overcrowding his mind at once. All he knew was that he couldn't break this embrace if he wanted to, and he didn't want to. He'd been waiting for this without knowing it for years.

Bill's hands were at Teddy's fly, not fumbling. He'd done this before, of that much Teddy was sure. Teddy's head fell back, exposing his throat as a groan rumbled out of him. The crush of Bill's hands against his cock was excruciating. He wanted more, wanted it now. Bill delivered, practically ripping Teddy's trousers off his body in an effort to get him unclad. Teddy helped, twisting his slim hips, letting the rough fabric of his jeans torque down his legs.

And then Teddy was being torqued himself, spun around and bent forward. He was against a desk, as solid and unyielding as Bill's body behind him. His elbows hit the flat surface of the desk, bracing himself, and before he could think or gasp for breath, he felt warmth pressing against him, flooding through him.

Bill spoke for the first time. "Have you--" His voice was ragged with need and desperation. "I should--"

"Just... Lubricatum," Teddy growled with impatience. "There, just do it." He undulated his torso against Bill. "Do it."

Biting back an oath, Bill's restraint wore thin and all at once Teddy felt the head of the older man's cock against him, thrusting. Entering. Teddy gritted his teeth, his fingers splayed on the desk and unable to find an adequate grip. He squared his shoulders and breathed hard, pushing backward with as much force as Bill's forward momentum. He could hear Bill behind him, panting. Bill's hands curled around Teddy's hips, snapping him hard against his body.

"Oh God," Teddy gasped. He'd used magic to lubricate himself, and the spell had a minor relaxing effect on his inner muscles but he also hadn't done this since Hogwarts and Jake. He felt like his entire body was spasming, clenching down around the intrusion even as Bill began to move. Perspiration broke out across Teddy's forehead and the back of his neck. The surprising ache inside was turning inside out, though, inverting itself and coming back around as something different. Something better... oh, better. Bill's rhythm was sharp and punishing, and with each renewed stroke Teddy found himself thrusting back, demanding more. The pleasure... it was almost too much to be called pleasure, too charged with emotion. Too big for just pleasure.

Bill ran his left hand through Teddy's hair, and then abruptly made a fist and pulled him upright. Teddy's back hit Bill's chest, changing Bill's angle and at last Teddy did cry out. He writhed against the older man. Bill laughed, and ran his tongue over the nape of Teddy's neck.

"Do you like that?" Bill whispered in his ear, scraping his nails over Teddy's still clothed pectorals. "Is this what you wanted?"

"What kind of twat starts talking in the middle of this?" Teddy growled, even as a jolt of pleasure shuddered through him. "Just do it."

Bill whispered something, sinuous-sounding words that Teddy had never heard before, and he felt something wispy and warm wrapping around his cock. He tried to look down but Bill yanked his head back again.

"I want you to come for me," Bill hissed. "I've been waiting for this. I want to watch you scream."

"I don't scre--eam." Teddy's word broke in two as the misty something tightened around him and began to turn and stroke him. "Oh. Oh, I won't, I--" The thing cupped his bollocks at the same time it caressed the head of his cock. Bill renewed his onslaught, his thrusts in time to the twisting, turning, tingling whatever-it-was and Teddy bit down on his lip as his orgasm wrenched through him. He fell forward, the aftershocks of it pulsing through his bloodstream even as he felt Bill empty himself inside Teddy.

They stayed still for a heartbeat, and then Bill withdrew. Teddy could feel sticky warmth leaking out of himself, and in his mouth he could taste blood where he'd bit his lip too hard. They stared at each other.

"I can help you clean up," Bill said, his tone for the first time uncertain.

"Evanesco," Teddy said with a careless wand-wave at himself. He felt instantly cleaner, if still sweaty, still aching perfectly. "What the hell was that, old man?"

"Old man?" Bill paused in the middle of doing up his trousers. "I don't know what that was, boy."

"Was it me, or was it this?" Teddy waved his hand at his face, which so resembled Remus' on his wedding day. "Is that what you apologized to him for? Am I the second Lupin you've bagged for yourself?"

This time he didn't duck the strike aimed at him. Bill backhanded him but Teddy's feet stayed firmly planted. He reeled backward but quickly regained his equilibrium, his cheek throbbing. "That all you've got?" he asked, his tone lewd and suggesting that he meant more than just the blow.

"Your dad was an awful lot like you," Bill said, softly but with iron underlying it. "He asked questions but he didn't always want to hear the answers. He spent his life skulking in society's shadows, being less than he could have been, until the end. He didn't have a choice in that."

Teddy slid his robe back over his shoulders. "Too bad for him."

"Funny how the mandrake root doesn't fall far from its leaf." Bill twitched his wand and was gone.

Teddy stared at the empty air where the older man had been. Stared as sunlight stretched the shadows through the unknown windows, waning until it left Teddy in darkness. He didn't know where he was or what the hell had happened. And he had to get home. He didn't bother exploring. Instead, he focused on his bedroom and Disapparated from this unknown office.

~*~

A month passed. A month without letters, without books, without photographs. Victoire started paying attention to Teddy again, and Teddy didn't once ask about her father. She was turned on by the scars he'd been wearing all month, and she liked to be seen with Teddy on her arm.

He went through the motions with her, and it was pleasant enough. She could do incredible things with her mouth when she kissed him, and when she trailed kisses down his chest, across his hips, and down farther still. But every time her perfectly pouting mouth touched his shaft, he couldn't help but imagine that odd spell that Bill had performed, the mist that had enveloped Teddy's cock even as Victoire's father buried himself deep inside Teddy's body.

It was driving him mad. Everything felt wrong. Off. As though he were enacting a part in a play, rather than living his life. Each fight with his Nana about where he was going and what his potential was rang empty. Every kiss, every fuck with Victoire left him wanting. Even days at the bookshop, which had always fully occupied his attention the past, seemed pointless. He hadn't been the same since the encounter with Bill Weasley.

The problem was, he didn't know what to make of it. He didn't know if he'd been used by Bill, or if Bill had had an affair with Remus, or if Bill had a thing for Teddy himself. None of it made sense, and at the end of the day, he still thirsted for more knowledge about what had happened during the war. How many other secrets had been kept by the Ministry? How many other kids didn't know how Bill Weasley got his scars, or which other heroes had fallen, unnamed and unaccounted for? How many other kids had been told that it wasn't all right to feel what Teddy had felt for Jake Thomas?

Teddy wasn't sure if he knew his father any better than before he'd contacted Bill Weasley. He knew details, to be sure. He knew that his father had loved Sirius Black, and had maybe been with Bill also. He knew that he and his father liked the same books but that they would have disagreed loudly about music. He knew his father's eye colour, and the origins of his lycanthropy. And he knew, from Bill's last words, that his father had wanted more out of life than life had been willing to give him.

Maybe that was why he'd married Nymphadora Tonks. Maybe he'd thought it would bring him respectability, when nothing else had. Maybe he'd truly loved her. Teddy didn't know, and wasn't sure if he'd ever find out.

And what of Bill Weasley? The man was a legend who was never in England long enough for the Ministry to give him another tiresome medal. He'd divorced his wife and left his child and the rest of his extended family behind to move to a content as far away as it was possible to get while still staying on the same globe, and clearly he still harboured.... something about what had happened two decades ago during the war.

Teddy didn't know what to make of it, and he hadn't been able to sleep since their liaison had occurred. The bits of dream he could catch in his fevered tossing and turning were all highlights and replays of Bill, of the older man's teeth on Teddy's earlobe and his hands on Teddy's arse, dragging him closer. Three more weeks of sleepless nights and waking self-torture and self-doubt passed before Teddy finally came to a decision, spurred on by Mrs Jenkins, his employer at the Muggle bookshop.

"Do you think you might want to apply to university, lad?" she asked one day.

Teddy glanced up at the non sequitur. The old bird had been talking about inventory all morning. "Where did that come from?"

"Yer not yerself, is all." The old woman shrugged, the movement sending her musty old shawl skidding down her shoulders. "Yer bored. And I didn't think I could keep ye here forever. Young man like you needs to get out in the world, make something of hi'self."

Teddy frowned at her. "That's what my grandmother keeps saying."

"Yer grandmother talks sense. Bring these skin magazines up to the second floor."

The old woman was right. He was bored with a life that he hadn't known had fallen into a rut until Bill Weasley had shaken him out of it. And the truth was, he didn't want to end up like his father, middle-aged and looking back at wasted decades. So, after a week more of mulling, as the snow flew and Christmas barrelled down on him, he plotted.

Christmas eve was no different than previous years. They were all rounded up and sequestered at the Burrow, whether they wanted to be or not. Anyone who had even a passing familial connection to the Weasley clan was there, including all the kids off at Hogwarts. Even for the Burrow, it was a crowded place. Teddy spent his time in the attic for the most part, away from the noise and the prying smiles and the helpful suggestions that he should get a job and a decent place in the Wizarding world, and make an honest woman of Victoire at last.

He'd been there two days when his prey arrived. Teddy had never really thought of himself in terms of a wolf before, but when Bill Weasley stepped through the door, his white-streaked hair made whiter by soft snow resting on fiery strands, he knew that the hunt was on. Aunt Molly, bent with arthritis but as active as she ever was, bustled him into the kitchen for a hot toddy and a nice bit of banana bread before dinner. Teddy disappeared back up to the attic before Bill saw him and set his plan in motion.

He waited for less than an hour before he heard a heavy tread on the stairs. With a flick of his wand, Teddy dimmed the lights and applied a modified version of Severus Snape's Muffliato incantation, effectively making the attic sound-proof.

The moment Bill entered the attic, the door swung shut behind him and sealed itself with a squelching Colloportus spell. Bill blinked in the darkness, his wolf-like eyes quickly adjusting to the lack of light. Teddy waited until recognition blossomed on Bill's face, and then he flicked his wand again. Ropes slithered out from the insulation and lashed themselves around Bill's wrists, pulling him tight against the door.

"What the hell is going on here?" Bill rasped, arching away from his bonds. They held firm. "Teddy, what the fuck is going on?"

"I've been doing some thinking," Teddy said, approaching with slow, measured steps. "And I want you to tell me a few things. Then I'll let you go."

"What is this, kidnapping or extortion?"

Teddy's eyes followed the ripple of shoulder muscle as Bill strained against the ropes. He smirked his most confident smirk, though he was less certain of himself than he let on. "Just answer some questions, Mr Weasley." He leaned forward and inhaled Bill's scent, almost nuzzling him with his Remus-shaped nose. Bill smelled masculine, like sawdust and clean sweat. It conjured memories of Bill's tongue on Teddy's sweaty neck, and it went straight to Teddy's groin. He mimicked Bill's actions from their last encounter, leaning farther forward and pressing a kiss that was more of a bite against the pulse-point in Bill's neck. He could feel Bill's heartbeat snapping like a snare drum beneath his lips.

Bill turned and caught Teddy's lower lip between his teeth. Their gazes caught, cohering and holding fast. Neither looked away, even as their lips met properly in a searing kiss. Neither blinked as they tried to ensnare one another's tongues.

"Do you want this?" Teddy asked mockingly, repeating Bill's earlier words. "Is this what you want?" He ran a hand through Bill's hair, untangling it from its leather tong and letting it cascade past his shoulders. He threaded his fingers through the river of auburn strands, and then dragged Bill's head forward for another hard kiss.

"First," Teddy whispered, catching Bill's earlobe between his teeth for a second, "I want to know what you and my father were to each other."

"Do you really want to know?" Bill's voice was ice, his body rigid.

Teddy licked Bill's jaw bone. "Yes."

"I was in love with him."

The words were a sucker punch against Teddy's gut, and he stumbled backward. "Are you serious?"

"I almost didn't marry Fleur because of it," Bill hissed, resigned but angry. Teddy's saliva still glistened on his jaw. "Had Remus shown me any interest, I wouldn't have. But your dad was lost in memories of Sirius Black, and there was nothing I could do to break the spell. Even after the werewolf attack, I wasn't enough to attract his attention. I was just a shadow to him."

" So what was that apology letter for?" Teddy stood firm, though he could feel all the colour draining from his face. It was almost enough to make him lose his morphed looks, but he held them steady, remaining a mirror image of a younger Remus Lupin.

Bill looked him over slowly, eyes following the tall, slim build, and flicked across Teddy's assumed scars. "Because I went to congratulate him on the birth of you and I ended up making a pass at him instead. He never spoke to me again, and neither did Tonks."

"How did my mum know?"

"She walked in on us as I tried to crawl on top of your dad." Bill shook his head, his eyes and the twist of his mouth haunted, grief-stricken. "I wasn't used to the pull of the moon yet. I couldn't control my actions the way your father could." He spat on the floor at Teddy's feet. "Am I free to go now, or are you going to keep my locked in my own childhood bedroom?"

"So that's all I was to you after all," Teddy said, turning away. The room seemed to be closing in on him, floorboards folding up on themselves and walls constricting around him. "The fuck you never had with Remus Lupin."

Bill surged against the ropes. "How dare you? How dare you! I got over that crush a long time ago, mate!"

"Oh did you? Then why was it only after I did this to myself," Teddy waved his hand at his face, "that you felt the need to jump me? What the hell was what happened over that desk? Either you were on a nostalgia trip or you wanted to sample the goods and make sure your daughter was getting the best."

He really thought Bill was going to rip through his bonds this time. The man shot forward, twisting and tearing at the ropes and giving himself nothing but strained muscles and burned skin for his efforts. Teddy watched his Adam's apple working viciously as he sucked in air, his eyes darting wildly around the room.

"It was neither!" he shouted.

"What was that?" Teddy's own anger was binding around his throat, leaving an ugly taste in his mouth.

"It was neither-- I don't know what it was, but it was about you and no one else." Bill growled, a sound so low that at first Teddy thought he'd imagined it. "Let me see you, Teddy."

Now it was Teddy's turn to be thrown off-balance. "Excuse me?"

"Let me see you. Not some pale imitation of a man you never knew." Bill gritted his teeth. "I want to see who you are underneath it all. You owe me that, at least."

Teddy disagreed about owing Bill anything, but his defences were down and it was harder to maintain a morph in a state of emotional upheaval. Lost, drowning in questions, and with nothing left to lose Teddy let go of his liquid musculature and let it melt back and reform itself at will. He wasn't entirely sure what he looked like, but Bill's breath caught.

"There you are."

"What?"

"That is what our last encounter was about," Bill said. "The man I've become friends with over a season. The man in front of me."

Teddy felt like he was going to cry, something he hadn't experienced since he was thirteen years old and Libertine Portnoy had called him a parentless half-breed. "I don't know him," Teddy said brokenly. "Why do you know every Lupin better than I do?" With a flick of his wand, he released the bonds. Bill's arms fell to his sides and he immediately brought his own wand up to soothe away the rope burns.

"Just go," Teddy said, retreating to the large, round window across the room. The Burrow's attic was so similar to the attic where this whole ridiculous charade started and all Teddy wanted to do was retreat back to his own attic or his own bedroom. Just anywhere but here.

The hands on his shoulders were totally unexpected, and the lips on the side of his neck even more-so. "What are you--"

"Just shut up," Bill said, turning him around. He brushed his lips against Teddy's. "Shut up."

~*~

Four months later....

This time when the ropes encircled Bill's wrists, his feral grin betrayed his willingness to be there.

"Love what you've done with the place, Teddy," he said, a shiver coiling through him as his shirt disappeared. Teddy, wand in hand, circled around him. He wasn't used to Bill showing up at random, at least not yet. He wasn't sure exactly what the hell they were doing. He hadn't even fully broken it off with Victoire yet, though she was doing a good job of ignoring him right now anyway.

"Funny what adding a full-time Ministry salary to a part-time book clerk's wages can do for a person's standard of living," Teddy said. His glasses were perched on his nose, a copy of The Tao of Pooh tucked under his arm. "My Nana, you can imagine, is so thrilled with me that it's almost worth quitting the Ministry gig and losing my new flat."

"Ah, teenage rebellion," Bill said, snarky smirk showing off his gleaming incisors. "Is there nothing better? But surely no self-respecting Royal Wizarding Museum Archivist would consider quitting to spite his grandmother's pride?"

"I'm not exactly a teenager," Teddy pointed out, running the tip of his wand over Bill's exposed chest. He circled Bill's nipple and shot off a couple of innocent sparks that made the older man gasp with surprised pleasure. "I seem to recall you referring to me as a man once or twice before."

"That was when I was still stationed in Nepal and I didn't have to suffer the consequences of such brazen statements." Bill leaned forward, trying to coax Teddy into a kiss and failing. Teddy ran his wand lower, sliding it teasingly in and out of Bill's navel a few times.

"As opposed to living in Spain now and trying to pretend that that means you've rejoined English Wizarding society? Not to mention giving job references to irascible young malcontents." He set his book aside and regarded Bill with a truly evil expression.

"Would you shut the fuck up and snog me, boy?"

Teddy was never inclined to do as he was told, and instead he dropped fluidly to his knees and caught Bill's zip with his teeth. Bill sucked in a strangled breath as Teddy drew the zip downward and nosed the fly open. It wasn't surprising to see that Bill wore nothing underneath the dragon-hide trousers. He was half-aroused, and Teddy spent a few seconds letting his breath ghost across Bill's cock, watching it bob and stand more fully at attention.

"s'more like it," Teddy said. He leaned forward, looking up at Bill through his glasses, and danced the tip of his tongue along the side of Bill's shaft. Bill's eyes half-closed, his head falling back against the door. With his arms tied above his head, the position put his muscular frame on display. Teddy did his best not to be distracted by the sight, and let the tip of Bill's cock slide over his lips. It left a salty trail against his skin, and he licked it away, his tongue flicking against Bill's cock as well.

Bill groaned, a half-word that might have been "more" or might just have been a growl. This time Teddy did follow the suggestion, taking the head into his mouth as his left hand came up to cup Bill's bollocks.

He pulled back just long enough to ask, "Is this what you want?"-- their own private joke now-- before sucking Bill into his mouth, taking him in as fully as possible. He released him again a second later. "You're going to have to do some of the work, Mr Weasley. I realise you're exceedingly old, but--"

Bill thrust forward, shutting him up. His eyes watered even as he hollowed his cheeks and fought to keep from grinning. He kneaded Bill's bollocks, keeping his head still and encouraging Bill to set the rhythm, urging him with hums of pleasure to fuck Teddy's mouth. He curled his tongue around the base of Bill's shaft, adding to the tight, wet heat. He breathed in Bill's scent, let it fill his nostrils, and then broke away and rose to his feet.

"Damn you!" Bill said, twisting against his bonds. "I was about to--"

"Come all over my glasses? Why do you think I stopped?" Teddy asked, unbuttoning his shirt and letting it fall to the floor. "I'm not in the mood to top tonight, so you're going to have to do it. I know what a bother that is for you, but do try to put some oomph into it."

He caught sight of himself in the mirror over the sideboard just before he disappeared through the bedroom door. His hair was bright green, but his face was his own. "So if you ever manage to break free of those ropes, you can meet me in here."

No, Teddy didn't know what it was that he and Bill were doing. He didn't think this was a relationship, and he certainly wasn't about to announce the liaison over dinner at the Burrow. But that didn't mean the sex wasn't fantastic. The sex and the connection to... something deeper.

Behind him, he heard the ropes breaking. Superhuman strength was an interesting characteristic in a lover. He hadn't even made it to his bed before Bill was behind him, beside him, and tumbling onto the mattress with him.

Yes. For now, this was enough.

Fin