Remus Lupin has never tucked his shirt in all the way round, he drank comically large amounts of tea from a collection of muggle novelty mugs, and there was always more than one of his fingers covered in ink stains.
All of that, before now, had been forgivable. Every time he tripped up the stairs and woke her up, every time he was nice to her friends, she was able to look past all of it. For the beauty of Remus Lupin, apart from the literal beauty of Remus Lupin, was that his wife was dead.
Pansy didn’t wish any ill will to Nymphadora Tonks, for one Pansy lived in the woman’s house and she was raised to have manners in such situations. When she had first entered that house, tangentially invited by Draco to his remaining cousin’s first birthday party, she had been astonished at how lovely the house was. It wasn’t chic in the cool, unfeeling way her mother had furnished Pansy’s childhood home but it was clearly decorated by a woman with an eye for colour. The woman was a Black after all and half-blood or not, there’s simply no getting rid of a millennia of good breeding.
However there was a huge difference between admiring your, well, admiring Remus Lupin’s late wife and meeting her. The only woman he had ever loved, the mother of his child, the war hero. When Pansy had decided that it might be acceptable to fall in love with a man 19 years her senior, who was also once her teacher, one of his few redeeming features was that he had only ever loved one woman and that woman was dead.
Never would she need to navigate the parental politics of never truly being Teddy’s mother while actually having to parent alongside his mother. She would never bump into Nyphadora at Madam Malkins, or have to listen to Remus’ voice change when he spoke to her.
Now, as they walked across the Hogwarts courtyard, Pansy felt nothing but cold betrayal because Nymphadora Tonks was a fucking ghost and the man she would marry in only 3 weeks had insisted he needed her moral support in facing her. She had sat on the edge of their bed, a bed that had also once belonged to her , with his head on Pansy’s lap as he cried and begged her to come with him. And Pansy, pathetic and in love with him, agreed.
Teddy, a slip shadow of a creature since his last growth spurt, was sitting alone at the Hufflepuff table. Remus let go of Pansy’s hand as they both sat either side of him, Remus’ hand squeezing the 14 year old’s shoulder.
“Mr Lupin,” Professor McGonnagall’s voice called from the entrance to the Grand Hall and both men by that name looked over. Remus stood up, looked into Pansy’s eyes with a sincerity she had spent years believing she didn’t deserve, and walked to follow the Headmistress to wherever the ghost of his wife was waiting.
Teddy sniffed long and noisily as he started to let tears creep down his reddened cheeks. It had only been twenty minutes since they had received the patronus from the Charms Professor explaining that Teddy, while looking for a secret passage his ‘Uncle George’ had told him about, had found the ghost of his dead mother. That couldn’t have been more than an hour ago - she would not begrudge him some tears.
“Edward,” she started, not knowing where she was going with this.
Teddy didn’t answer, he just let his head drop a little as he continued to cry.
Unable to stomach the snot that started to pool above his mouth, she fished a monogrammed handkerchief from her bag and tightly pushed it into his hand. But before she could let go to allow him to wipe his face, he grabbed hold of her hand tight.
She couldn’t look anywhere but at the boy’s ink stained fingers as they vice gripped her.
Inhaling snot with another wet sniff, he whispered, “don’t go, will you Pan.”