“I’ll understand if you can’t confirm this, Harry, but the Order is under the impression that Dumbledore left you a mission.”
“He did,” Harry replied, “and Ron and Hermione are in on it and they’re coming with me.”
“Can you confide in me what the mission is?”
Harry looked into the prematurely lined face, framed in thick but graying hair, and wished that he could return a different answer.
“I can’t, Remus, I’m sorry. If Dumbledore didn’t tell you I don’t think I can.”
“I thought you’d say that,” said Lupin, looking disappointed. “But I might still be of some use to you. You know what I am and what I can do. I could come with you to provide protection. There would be no need to tell me exactly what you were up to.”
Harry hesitated. It was a very tempting offer, though how they would be able to keep their mission secret from Lupin if he were with them all the time he could not imagine.
Hermione, however, looked puzzled.
“But what about Tonks?” she asked.
“What about her?” said Lupin.
“Well,” said Hermione, frowning, “you’re married! How does she feel about you going away with us?”
“Tonks will be perfectly safe,” said Lupin. “She’ll be at her parents’ house.”
There was something strange in Lupin’s tone; it was almost cold. There was also something odd in the idea of Tonks remaining hidden at her parents’ house; she was, after all, a member of the Order and, as far as Harry knew, was likely to want to be in the thick of the action.
“Remus,” said Hermione tentatively, “is everything all right . . . you know . . . between you and —”
“Everything is fine, thank you,” said Lupin pointedly.
Hermione turned pink. There was another pause, an awkward and embarrassed one, and then Lupin said, with an air of forcing himself to admit something unpleasant, “Tonks is going to have a baby.”
“Oh, how wonderful!” squealed Hermione.
“Excellent!” said Ron enthusiastically.
“Congratulations,” said Harry.
Lupin gave an artificial smile that was more like a grimace, then said, “So . . . do you accept my offer? Will three become four? I cannot believe that Dumbledore would have disapproved, he appointed me your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, after all. And I must tell you that I believe that we are facing magic many of us have never encountered or imagined.”
Ron and Hermione both looked at Harry.
“Just — just to be clear,” he said. “You want to leave Tonks at her parents’ house and come away with us?”
“She’ll be perfectly safe there, they’ll look after her,” said Lupin. He spoke with a finality bordering on indifference. “Harry, I’m sure James would have wanted me to stick with you.”
“Well,” said Harry slowly, “I’m not. I’m pretty sure my father would have wanted to know why you aren’t sticking with your own kid, actually.”
Lupin’s face drained of color. The temperature in the kitchen might have dropped ten degrees. Ron stared around the room as though he had been bidden to memorize it, while Hermione’s eyes swiveled backward and forward from Harry to Lupin.
“You don’t understand,” said Lupin at last.
“Explain, then,” said Harry.
Lupin swallowed.
“I — I made a grave mistake in marrying Tonks. I did it against my better judgment and I have regretted it very much ever since.”
“I see,” said Harry, “so you’re just going to dump her and the kid and run off with us?”
Lupin sprang to his feet: His chair toppled over backward, and he glared at them so fiercely that Harry saw, for the first time ever, the shadow of the wolf upon his human face.
“Don’t you understand what I’ve done to my wife and my unborn child? I should never have married her, I’ve made her an outcast!”
Lupin kicked aside the chair he had overturned.
“You have only ever seen me amongst the Order, or under Dumbledore’s protection at Hogwarts! You don’t know how most of the Wizarding world sees creatures like me! When they know of my affliction, they can barely talk to me! Don’t you see what I’ve done? Even her own family is disgusted by our marriage, what parents want their only daughter to marry a werewolf? And the child — the child —”
Lupin actually seized handfuls of his own hair; he looked quite deranged.
“My kind don’t usually breed! It will be like me, I am convinced of it — how can I forgive myself, when I knowingly risked passing on my own condition to an innocent child? And if, by some miracle, it is not like me, then it will be better off, a hundred times so, without a father of whom it must always be ashamed!”
“Remus!” whispered Hermione, tears in her eyes. “Don’t say that — how could any child be ashamed of you?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Hermione,” said Harry. “I’d be pretty ashamed of him.”
Harry did not know where his rage was coming from, but it had propelled him to his feet too. Lupin looked as though Harry had hit him.
“If the new regime thinks Muggle-borns are bad,” Harry said, “what will they do to a half-werewolf whose father’s in the Order? My father died trying to protect my mother and me, and you reckon he’d tell you to abandon your kid to go on an adventure with us?”
“How — how dare you?” said Lupin. “This is not about a desire for — for danger or personal glory — how dare you suggest such a —”
“I think you’re feeling a bit of a daredevil,” Harry said. “You fancy stepping into Sirius’s shoes —”
“Harry, no!” Hermione begged him, but he continued to glare into Lupin’s livid face.
“I’d never have believed this,” Harry said. “The man who taught me to fight dementors — a coward.”
Lupin drew his wand so fast that Harry had barely reached for his own; there was a loud bang and he felt himself flying backward as if punched; as he slammed into the kitchen wall and slid to the floor, he glimpsed the tail of Lupin’s cloak disappearing around the door.