the definition of family

Things were about normal in the Lupin house. Khaat had been putting on the kettle for a proper pot of tea. Brian was working a double shift, and Khaat's mother was busy rounding up the latest batch of pygmy puffs. This batch had produced some lovely lilac colored ones, and then there had been these two little runt puffs that, for some reason had turned out to be pastel green. These two little buggars were deucedly hard to keep track of, and Khaat's eagle had been eyeing them as potential snacks. Kate was hoping she could find them before that happened.

That left the obvious question of who was watching Abbey? She heard the familiar crackle of apparating, and she was going to call out to ask who it was when she heard her father's voice.

"Oh, for the love of Merlin, what did they do, leave you on your own again?" he was asking. Khaat left the kitchen to go to the living room and saw her father's pictoral guide of magical creatures lying open on the floor, and her three year old daughter who had somehow morphed herself into one of the oddest mix ups of different parts of different creatures she'd ever seen. Khaat gasped, unable to even breathe for a moment, uncertain how Abbey had actually managed it and how to right the child again.

"How many times have I told you that you can't let her have this book yet?" Robert sighed, flicking his fingers at the book to send it back to its proper place on the top shelf in the study.

"I don't know how she got that," Khaat said, still shellshocked at the conglomeration of accidental magic that her daughter had somehow performed. "Is that even fixable?" she asked her father. Khaat was a healer herself, but she'd never seen a blunder quite like that.

"Of course it is," he sighed. "It's only baby magic, after all. It likely would have worn off on its own in short order if she didn't always get herself stuck when it happens. Come on, Poppet, come with Papa. Gotten yourself all out of order this time, haven't you?" He picked up the toddler. "Set me out some berries, Khaat. She drinks the potion easier if I put some crushed up berries in it."  Khaat hurried back to the kitchen and got out a punnet package of mixed berries and was just about to set it on the counter when her father came through with Abbey in one arm and picked up the berries with the other. "We'll be back--eventually," he said, taking the child down to the little lab he had in the cellar.

Khaat took a breath and tried to calm herself. She wasn't accustomed yet to a child who randomly changed shapes. She had had all these notions of wanting to be a perfect parent, and then she found out her child was a metamorphmagus, courtesy of Khaat's ex who, of course, was nowhere around to guide her through this. He'd buggared off and left her, basically, winging it. Fortunately or not, Khaat's own father usually just took it all in stride, but Khaat hadn't quite learned to do that yet. Was this what all parents of a metamorph went through? Why were there no books on it? And for all those muggles who had all those misguided fantasies of a wizarding childhood being endless bliss? Clearly they didn't have a clue about just how nuts a "normal" wizarding household could be.

"Teddy," Khaat was delighted at seeing him, and she returned his hug, glad for his arrival. She was equally glad to see Lily. Teddy looked unchanged. Teddy always reminded her of the perfect blending of Remus and Tonks, and she had no doubt that Remus would have been bursting with pride with the man Teddy had become. "Hello, Lily. It's good to see you too. You're always welcome. Make yourselves at home, both of you." She couldn't remember when she had seen Lily last, but she was glad Teddy had seen fit to bring her along. She was always glad to see more of the family than just her little immediate family. It made the family feel whole and complete when Teddy and the rest came around, and these days, the family felt they were all scattered different directions so she was glad for a get together for any reason.  

When Teddy lifted up the wine and the tupperware, it made her smile. He was always thoughtful. "Perfect," she said, taking them. She read the label on the wine, thinking it sounded delightful, and set the bottle on the counter to peer into the tupperware. "Those look fabulous and they smell amazing. Thank you. They won't last long in this house, that's for sure." The tea kettle began to whistle, and she reached over and turned off the burner on the stove "I did put on a pot of tea. My father has taken an interest in making flavored teas. His latest tea is an almond cookie flavored tea, and, so far, it's my favorite, I think, so that's what I brewed. Mum and Dad will be with us shortly--I think. You know what this house is like. It's never dull."

She got out some wine glasses and also set out some of her mother's handmade pottery mugs. She liked the mugs because she believed things stayed hotter in pottery mugs, and these were large and chunky and were glazed in bright cheerful colors. Her mother had actually placed some in the gift shop at St. Mungo's and they'd sold well. Some wizarding socialite that Khaat had never heard of had wanted Kate to make an entire set of pottery dishes, and Kate was apparently considering it.

"If you happen to see a couple of rogue pgymy puffs, snatch them up, would you?" she asked. "We had a new litter of them about a week and a half ago, and it all went well, except these two little devils, runts of the litter, and, of course, they're not purple like their siblings. These two are teeny weeny and green, for no particular reason, and they're little escape artists. They running loose someplace in the house, and Mum would like to get them before Artan does. He'd rather make them lunch. And my father...well, that's another debacle."  

She realized that there was the time honored belief that tea fixed everything but why would one actually want tea when there was wine?  "I think we need to open the wine and then everyone can have whatever they like. Teddy, would you do the honors? The corkscrew is in the drawer by the stove."

Kate whisked into the room, looking remarkably carefree for a woman trying to outwit a hungry eagle. Khaat was almost frustrated with her for how smooth her mother could make everything look. Kate smiled brightly seeing Teddy and Lily.

"Calm, my darling," Kate stroked Khaat's cheek as she went past her. "Your anxiety is showing. Hello, Teddy, and, Lily, what a lovely surprise! It's so good to see you both. Are you finding everything alright, Teddy?"

To Kate, Lily always seemed to be engaged in a struggle with herself. It reminded her of the struggle that Khaat had had with Kate and Robert when Khaat had been a child, and in many ways it was also the same struggle that Remus had consistently been engaged in up until he had given in to romance with Tonks--the desire to feel he belonged someplace but yet not ever feeling at home in his own skin enough to give himself over to truly allow himself to love. The only exception he had made prior to Tonks was with Khaat.

When Khaat was young she had been so different from either Kate or Robert that she had never gotten on with either of her parents, and when Khaat and Robert tried to get on, it was nigh onto spontaneous combustion. It was slightly better between Kate and Khaat, but Khaat had so much in common with Remus that often it made those who didn't know better question who her real father was. Remus had taken on the task of raising Khaat because the house was not such a battleground when he took her with him. The fighting and the bitterness grew old and tiresome, and Robert had literally given up trying to be the girl's father and let Remus have at it. Robert had sunk himself in his work and emotionally abandoned his only child. It was a move Robert would come to regret, and he would carry the deep scar of it for the rest of his life, long after Khaat had forgiven him. And then Remus's death at the hands of Dolohov had changed the very order of the planets themselves in the Lupin family, and the need to survive the incalculable grief had caused Kate and Robert and Khaat, eventually, to find the bonding that had eluded them for almost Khaat's entire childhood.  

Kate could only imagine the struggle Lily surely had to have found herself in as the daughter of "The Boy Who Lived," the boy who had been chosen to rival Voldemort. Being the child of a legend had to have been a ponderous burden. She was equally sure it actually could not been easy being the daughter of a Weasley because when a family was that well known simply by virtue of the fact that it seemed like there was a gazillion of them, everyone surely would have expected her to behave like her legendary father, and with the love for mischief and mayhem that the wizarding public seemed to believe was so inexorably entrenched in the blood of the Weasley clan.  No wonder the girl always seemed to want to find who she was, legends be damned. That was surely more enough to produce social anxiety on steroids.

"It really is a lovely tea, isn't it?" Kate smiled at Lily. "It may be one of his best so far. I keep telling him he needs to offer some to the chef at St. Mungo's because, for all their fine cuisine, whoever brews the morning tea there really makes the most atrocious tea in all of England. I try to avoid it at all costs."  And then Teddy had asked a question that made Kate think. How was Robert? That made her wonder where was Robert, exactly? She had heard him come in. His new wand had a bit of extra zap to it, and it crackled louder than his old one. His entrances were hard to mistake now.

"Dad's always overworking," Khaat cast Teddy a grin of amusement. "At the moment, though, he's trying to unscramble my daughter's accidental metamorphing. I swear, that child is going to give me a heart attack."

"You should have seen her yesterday," Kate laughed. "She ended up as part bowtruckle with a unicorn horn." Khaat paused, frowning, momentarily forgetting her parental panic while she tried to get a visual of what that had to have looked like.

"A bowtruckle with a horn?" Khaat frowned.

"On her bum," Kate said. "The horn was on her little bum. Your father may be right. We might need to keep that book under lock and key for awhile."

"Or make the reversing potion in a gallon jug," Khaat sighed. "He's got her downstairs trying to undo today's nightmare."

"Is he?" Kate asked rhetorically, looking at Teddy's cookies. She picked one up and took a bite. "They're absolutely wonderful, Teddy. Keep baking things like this, and I'll be happy to keep you well stocked in pans." She poured herself some wine and took a sip. "This is so nice. Why have I never done wine and cookies before?"

"Do you know what Dad has on his mind today?" Khaat asked her mother, curious as to the reason behind Robert's inviting Teddy today, besides the fact that having Teddy over was always a cause of celebration just on it's own.

"Oh, it's that Paris business again," Kate said, taking a seat at the table. She looked at Lily and Teddy "Ever been to Paris, either of you?"

Khaat laughed at hearing the stories of Teddy's childhood stories of changing. She had not forgotten that Tonks' abilities were actually rather famous in the stories she'd heard as a child of the rebel warriors of the second wizarding war. Hearing Teddy had dealt with morphing made her laugh, and it gave her hope.

"So there might be hope for Abbey after all," she said. "She morphs but hasn't begun to learn how to undo it."

"Yes, well, you loved orange, Teddy, so if one turns into what they like most," Kate said, "Abbey is going to end up as a raspberry."

"Now, that is not helpful," Khaat scowled at her. She looked back at Teddy and Lily. "It sounds like you tested your parents a wee bit. Good. They deserved to get a little mischief back. I could tell you stories about some of your parents' Hogwarts days that haven't made it into the local lore but if mischief causes gray hair, Albus Dumbledore never stood a chance with them around." She had been in school with their parents, and in the same house with most of them.

Khaat wasn't entirely surprised it was Paris calling again, but what did surprise her was her father's apparent intention to include Teddy in it, and, by default, now, Lily as well. She looked at her mother, feeling puzzled by it. Kate only glanced briefly at Khaat and then looked deliberately at Lily and Teddy.

"Our family business is in Paris," Kate said. "And by family, I mean not just Robert and me. The family that started this was a deeply committed family of the heart that also included James and Lily, Remus, Sirius and Michael Tremaine--the seven of us. It was before Remus knew Tonks. She knew later, of course, but she wasn't actually involved. The reason you lot haven't heard about it until now was because it has been a very...quiet organization."

"It's been, for the most part, a carefully guarded secret now for three generations," Khaat said. "I didn't find out about it until a couple years ago myself. What I don't understand is why we're discussing this now."

"Because," Robert said, coming in with a now normal looking Abbey who was happily munching on the rest of the raspberries, "I actually need more people for this particular mission." Kate took Abbey from Robert and put the toddler on her lap as Abbey gave a happy little wave to Teddy and Lily. "Hello Lily and Teddy," Robert continued. "I'm glad you're both here. I was hoping he would bring you today, Lily. You both have a right to be involved with this organization if you choose to be." He sat down and poured himself some wine. "You both need a small dose of history before I lay out the current situation, so I will give you the nutshell version. Mind you, even the nutshell version is going to feel like a lot of information to take in, so steady yourselves for quite a tale, all of it true, I promise you."

"There was a group of us that remained friends after we finished Hogwarts," he said, "and, it was around that time that we became aware of a number of wizarding children that had been turning up missing, and as we started to try to look into it, we learned that it had actually been going on back to around the days of our parents. The children were just never found. Gone without a trace, and by the time it reached us, the numbers were going up proportionately. What we couldn't figure out, in addition to the missing children, was why weren't people looking for these children? They were basically just considered, more or less, as write offs. It seemed unconscionable to us, and so we decided to do something about it. The more we looked into it, the more our research kept taking us to Paris."

"We raised the funds," Kate picked up the story, "with some substantial donations from some wizarding notables that supported our work, and we all chipped in with what we ourselves could contribute, and we established a formal, legitimate organization with a hidden base in Paris, and it's been there since 1981. Surprisingly, we are not welcomed by the wizarding ministries in either France or England, and so we remain hidden, and our goal is to find these children and bring them back. The work is dark and exceptionally dangerous, but as long as one of these children is missing, we will keep bringing them home. That's the short of it. That's how we came to be. We're not a large force but we are a tight and efficient operation, and we do manage to pay very well to our operatives for the risks they take."

"It does sound like a far fetched story, we know," Robert said, "but this is as much your birthright to know about it and to be involved with it as any of the rest of us if you want. We've always known that, but we've always somewhat hesitated on trying to determine when the time was right to let you know it even existed, much less involving you in it, but it seems that current events have pushed things to more of an urgent nature."

"Excellent," Robert said, grateful. "Thank you. I can certainly use you both. I would not ask you to surrender your Hogwarts' obligations, either of you. Most of us have other obligations, you'll find, as you begin to meet the other organization members. Teddy's absolutely right, Lily. We can use someone who has potions skills. We have facilities for the children, of course, and we do have a small infirmary that I do try to keep stocked with potions. Sometimes, though, if we get a larger number of children, those potions go very quickly, and right now, there is no one there who can brew potions other than me. I would be very grateful for any help you could give with potions. In fact, my latest project may interest you. I've been working on trying to make some very concentrated versions of certain potions that are likely the sort that a witch or wizard might need to carry with them. I want to be able to formulate a bit of a patch kit for operatives to be able to slip in their pocket in case someone gets hurt during a mission. I have a pain remedy that seems to be testing very well with some of the volunteers I've given it to, and I have a number of others that I have on the list. Some potions are not translating well to being made into concentrates. Some simply don't do well with being left in the cauldrons to reduce into a more concentrated version."

"Didn't you have the wolfsbane done too?" Khaat asked. She knew that it was the wolfsbane that had actually been Robert's inspiration for the concentrated potions. He had always been keenly aware that, with the societal rejection Remus had faced because of being a werewolf, he sometimes found it exceptionally difficult to carry the potion with him for the two or three nights he often needed to stretch it across a full moon cycle. Robert had always wanted life to be better and easier for Remus, and so the desire for an improvement to the wolfsbane formula had burned for years in Robert's brain like a fire that would never burn out until he'd achieved it. His fierce love for his brother had created for him a passionate driving need to try to insure that other werewolves didn't need to be treated the way Remus had been. It was something he would not quit on until he had it right.

"Not like I'd like it," he said. "I have it at double strength, so right now, a witch or wizard would not need to carry so much, but I want it far more concentrated than that. It's a touchy thing. It isn't a difficult formula but it is finely balanced, and it gets very persnickety if someone starts mucking around with it. The aconite goes sideways in it if I take it beyond double strength. Severus's formula is a complicated business that has to be handled with care. I will  get it concentrated, though."

"What he isn't saying as smoothly as he should," Kate said to Lily, "is that you are more than welcome to use the potions lab here to brew things for the organization, or the much smaller lab in Paris, or, if you would like to be involved in any of Robert's constant need to push the envelope, he'd welcome an apprentice. He just hasn't found anyone that has the knack for it."

"Alright, we can venture down that rabbit trail later," Robert said. "That might not interest our new members. Anyway, I will get you both your portkeys and I can take you to Paris for a quick tour and let you get the gist of things. Once you have your portkeys, you can come and go there at will. We won't be moving on this mission until tomorrow night because for some reason they've waited til the weekend apparently is to move the children. There will be more strangers there then, so we have a much better chance of infiltrating them and causing a bit of a distraction so we can move out the children. I know its short notice but sometimes we don't get a lot of advance notice. Are either of your free tomorrow night?"