Growing Old / Hestia and Remus / Drabble Meme
He sat in the study, in a large high back chair. It was the color of mud, the material ripped and tattered. The wooden features were scraped, and barely looked to be wood at all. The back of the chair was to the door, but she knew he was there. Just as, when she occupied the room she was in her own chair – though hers was much more attractive, the color of forest green and sitting opposite of the room – the same state he was currently in.
The room was lit by a strong fire in the hearth and sparse candles that float overhead. This was the only room that they hadn’t incorporated muggle lighting. For some reason that they had both silently agreed on, this room was better left to lighting of fire.
Hestia’s hair was braided, a long braid that reached the low part of her back. What was once raven was now dull silver mixed with a bright white. Her skin, still pale and milky, now carried wrinkles as well as scars – scars that she had gathered over two wards and forty years as an Auror. Despite her old age, a ripe ninety seven, she still walked as someone half her age, and had yet to lose moments worth of her wit. Something that often caused problems for the two, as his matched hers just as it had growing up.
Despite what many people seemed to think, when they went out, the two weren’t married. Not in the romantic sense, at least. Perhaps in the logical sense, as they had been living together since not long after the fall of the second war and lived the same way that most married couples did. They ate together, read together, lived together in every sense of the married life except for their separate rooms.
Hestia, herself, had never married. She often explained by going back to the notion that she never shared a New Year’s kiss, and should have believed that superstition. Remus, however, had married just prior to the last war. His wife, Nymphadora, had died in the war – after giving birth to their son Teddy.
Hestia had been tempted, for years, to sell the old Jones manor that resided on a tall hill in Wales. Her parents had passed away during the time of the first war, leaving her the home and fortune of one of the oldest Wizarding families in England, but she took a job as an Auror, when offered, and lived in a small flat that often made her mother grimace when she had visited before her death. It wasn’t until the early nineties that she moved in the house, covered in dust and the painful memories of her childhood. She cleaned it up, taking her two years from being on her own and between work. She’d stayed in contact with Remus, after they had reconnected a year after the war, but he wasn’t one to accept help and was often gone finding work where he could.
It wasn’t until five years after the second war when he finally accepted her offer for assistance. She had too big of a home for one woman, and he needed a place for him and his young son to live. Life was easier, this time around, after the war for people like him but not as much as they should be. So she’d offered him shelter, promising him it’d only be temporary and that he could pay her back when he got on his feet.
What was meant to last for a few months ended up lasting for a few years, as she helped raise the young boy who held the same exceptional gift his mother had during her lifetime. She never dared tried to put herself in the position of a mother to Ted, but more of a doting aunt. She became attached, and so whenever Remus mentioned finding a place to live she put it aside as if it was nothing, and would reassure him that he’d do so in his own time and when it was best.
Even after Teddy had left Hogwarts, finding a home of his own, Remus stayed. Perhaps out of habit as well as convenience. Life went on, just as it would have if Teddy was there and away at school. The last time he’d mentioned getting his own place was when they were in their sixties and attending Teddy’s wedding, to that of Albus Potter nonetheless, and she had said the same things she always had “with time, Remus, I’m sure you will. But for now, you have other things to worry about and you will move out when it’s best.”
Now, as she sat a cup of tea on the table next to him, before walking to her own seat, she looked at the man she had grown up with. Grown old with. His brown hair, once filling with grey as early as their school year, was now mostly grey with a coated dusting of brown. His face, more scarred and wrinkled than her own after suffering from his lycanthropy for decades, was more gentle and kind than one would expect from such scars. But, he sat, his gentle face pushed into a look of concentration. His brown eyes skimming the page of a book that was probably as old as they were, if not older, and it took a few moments of her blue eyes watching him for him to look up. “Oh, Hes, I didn’t hear you come in,” he mumbled, pushing up the glasses that lay across his nose long enough to wipe at his brown eyes.
“Of course you didn’t, you old coot,” she joked, pulling her own cup to her mouth as she took a long sip. “Your tea is on the table, Remus. Don’t forget to blow on it, or you’ll scorch your tongue again.”
“I’m old, but I’m not senile. Nor are you my mother,” Remus commented as he picked up his tea. “I don’t need you reminding me how to drink my tea. I can do that very well on my own,” he said before taking a large drink. Doing, just as she predicted, and forgetting to blow on it. He swore as he scorched his tongue, and quickly set down the cracked blue cup.
She opened her mouth to speak but he raised a wrinkled hand. “Don’t say a word, Hestia,” he said in the most threatening tone his voice could muster. He began coughing, and the smirk she had on her face faded. He’d been coughing more and more, as time went on. The old coot refused to go to St. Mungo’s, but she knew that if was reverse she’d be doing the same thing. He stood, coughing into the crook of his arm. She stood, as well, to help him, but he waved her off.
She gave him some time to himself, but she eventually followed, bringing along his tea. She found him in his room, sitting on his bed. His room wasn’t much different than the study, honestly. The walls were lined with shelves that were filled with books and other various objects. He continued to cough, and then she frowned. She sat next to him, gently, on the bed and handed him his tea. “Drink, you’ll feel better,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure if it was true. Not anymore.
He took it, the cup shaking with his hands, and this time blew on it before taking a small drink. For a moment, the coughing stopped.
“See, I’m brilliant. Like always,” she joked, before standing up from his bed and pulling him up as well. She pulled down the sheets and quilts, before taking the tea and shooing him back into it.
“What did I tell you about not telling me what to do?” He questioned, a grumpy look upon his face as he refused to get into bed.
“Not to do it, but we both know that I’m always right so you might as well,” she countered, her hands on her hips as if she were scolding Teddy when he was ten. “Now get into bed, Remus John Lupin.”
“No,” he replied, before letting out another hearty cough.
“Remus John Lupin, get your old stubborn ass into that bed,” she said with a voice raised, pointing a finger at him.
“Oi, must be someone’s time of the month,” he said, before easing into the bed.
“You know, as well as I, Remus, that only one of us continues to have a monthly problem,” she joked, pulling the covers up, “and it’s not me.” Her comment caused him to laugh, which brought a smile on her face. She sat, idly, on the side of his bed, before taking the glasses off of his face and setting them on the night side table next to his tea cup. “Now, get some rest. Don’t need you wearing out on me, Remus. I’ve still got plenty of years in these old bones, and you have yet to pay me back for these years of rent.”
He laughed, again, only stopping when it turned into a cough. His wrinkled hand grabbed hers when she began to stay, and managed to speak before coughing. “Don’t go, I feel like I haven’t seen you all day, Hes.”
This caused her brow to furrow, as she sat back down and held his own hand in both of her own. His words worried her, as he looked as if he believed them thoroughly. This wouldn’t have bothered, as much, if they hadn’t been together the whole day - just as they had been for the past few decades and most of the ones prior to them. “Of course, Remus, whatever you ask,” she whispered, her words catching in her throat.
His eyes closed, but he wasn’t asleep. She could tell by the way his hand squeezed hers every once in a while. When she finally thought he’d fallen asleep she reached up and pushed his thinning hair from his face. His eyes slowly opened, and he smiled. “I’ll pay you back, you know, once I find a place of my own and move out.”
She laughed, and nodded. “When the time is right, Remus, you’ll have a place of your own and you’ll pay me back. All at a time when it’s what’s best,” she commented, giving his hand a squeeze.
He let out a cough and she helped him sit up, so to soothe the pain it brought. When he stopped, he laid back down slowly, letting his eyes fall back shut. “I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, Hestia.”
His words confused her, and she wiped his hair away again. “Wanted what any other way, Remus?” She questioned, though her voice was light.
“This, all of this, growing old with you and raising my son with you. I loved Tonks, I did. And I wish that Teddy didn’t have to grow up without his mother,” he murmured, just loud enough for her to hear.
“Shh, Remus, it’s alright, just rest,” she cooed. He was saying what he thought needed to be said, before the end, and she wasn’t quite ready to accept it.
“No, let me finish,” he said as he gave her hand a light squeeze. “But, he didn’t grow up without a mother, and for that I thank you. I know you always called yourself an aunt, but you were the closest to a mother any boy could ask for, and Teddy would tell you that himself. And, for me, you’ve always been there. Despite that year I left you alone, and the years following in which I denied your help and often lived abroad. You took me and Teddy in when we needed it, and you accepted us as your own.”
As he took a moment to pause, and capture his thoughts, her eyes began to cloud with tears.
“You never asked for rent, not once, and you did everything you could. For both of us, and I couldn’t thank you enough. You are, by far, one of the best things I’ve had the pleasure of having in my life, Hestia Jones, and I don’t feel like you ever knew just how much I cared for you. I loved you, perhaps always, and perhaps not the way you deserved, but I remember loving you when no one would accept me for who I was, and watching you help raise my son. For the longest time, perhaps, I thought of it to be a platonic love, and perhaps that’s still what it is, but it’s a love deeper than I ever let you know. And for that, I apologize.”
His coughing started again and she shook her head, as her own blue eyes closed to hold back the tears.
“Nonetheless, I wouldn’t have asked to grow old any other way. Not with anyone else, and you needed to know that.”
His breath began to fade, and his hold on her hand lessened. She waited, and soon it was gone. Soon, he was gone. She stood, pulling the covers up to his chest. She leaned down, placing a light kiss on his forehead, and pushed back his grey hair for one last time. “I know, old friend. I love you, too.”
