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Coming of Age (Female Potter)	By : stargazer67 Category: HP Canon Characters paired with Original Characters > Het - Male/Female Views: 11700 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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The following day, she makes a trek to Spinner’s End, but really finds little of ‘him’ there either. She has Kreacher box up the books, she’ll look through them sometime later. She also has him take a well-worn leather chair, that retains a perfect impression of him; she can easily picture him sitting in it, reading. The only other thing she spies of importance is a Snitch, on his bedside table. She knows that he was never a Quidditch player himself; nor was he particularly invested in it from a spectator standpoint, other than just his support of his own House.
She knows as soon as she sees it that it’s one that she caught, and confirms it when she picks it up and it whirs to life at her touch. Snitches retain a physical memory of the person who caught them, in case there is any question about who touched it first if one Seeker manages to wrest it from the other before the referee gets there. She wonders how long he’d had it, assuming that Dumbledore probably gave it to him at some point after he’d admitted to caring about her, and pictures him focusing on it just before his eyes closed in sleep.
She looks in the closet and her breath catches as she sees one of his black woolen frock coats hanging in it. She takes it down and puts her face against it, breathing in the faintest traces of his scent that remain on it. She lays it across his bed, laying down with her face against it, recapturing the same tactile memory of the wool against her cheek that she had anytime he held her close. She also tries to imagine the feel of his arms around her and the sound of his beating heart under her, and she can almost get there, but not quite.
Tears leak from her eyes slowly, as she wonders how she is going to go on without him. She’s thinking that she really needs to get up and see if there’s anything more when Kreacher returns to get another box of books, and tells her that Remus is at the house, with the children; and with a sudden and very strong desire to see her children again, she quickly Apparates back to Grimmauld Place.
Once home she sees the children first, playing together in the living room, and sees that Teddy is also with them; she just watches them for awhile, deciding not to disturb their fun even though she desperately wants to grab them up and hold them all as close as possible. Remus comes in and looks at her for a moment, and then puts a comforting arm around her and steers her towards the kitchen.
He sits down with her, and says, “Perhaps this isn’t the time to bring this up, Evie; but, we are both in the same situation here. Both suddenly single parents who have lost the person who mattered most to us. Our children are already accustomed to being together, since they’ve been together for the past several months. I think maybe we ought to combine our households, and help each other through this, at least for right now. Plus, I have to admit that my condition also presents a problem, I certainly can’t be a fit parent when transformed. Ted and Andromeda of course are willing to help, but they’re getting up in years and I don’t want to lean on them too much.”
Evie sees the sense in this, and says, “I think it’s a good idea. Pick out a couple of empty rooms, there are plenty; and I’ll have Kreacher make them ready.”

One day not long after Remus and Teddy have settled in, she is struck by the thought – Severus was a Headmaster at the end, he’ll have a portrait at Hogwarts now. Just as she’s ready to go flying off to see him, Remus comes in and asks what’s happened, seeing the wildly hopeful look on her face.
She tells him and he grabs her arms, turning her to look at him and saying that she needs to stop and think for a minute. She struggles, wanting to be gone and not understanding why he’s preventing her. He has to drag her, fighting him all the way, over to Phineas’s portrait (now back in its accustomed place in the study) and calls him to it, still holding onto her as she struggles.
When Phineas appears, Remus tells him quickly what’s going on, and Phineas shouts at Evie for the first time ever, commanding her to stop and listen. Surprised by his tone, she stops struggling with Remus and waits.
Phineas considers what he’s going to say for a long moment, and says, “Do you remember what Dumbledore told you that very first year, when you found the Mirror of Erised and were spending all your time with it?”
She cries, “Yes, but that wasn’t the same, you know it wasn’t. The Mirror was just an illusion. I can talk to Severus the same way I’m talking with you right now.”
Phineas looks at her sadly and says, “And then what? You stay under Headmistress McGonagall’s feet on a daily basis, so you can spend all your time with Severus’s portrait? And in the meantime, you are just putting off your period of mourning, which is going to make both you and your children suffer more and for far longer than you already will.”
She shakes her head, not wanting to hear this, but he goes on. “You need to let him go first, Evie; the time to go and talk to him is when you don’t want it so desperately as you do now. Our portraits are not as fully alive as you may think, typically not even as alive as a ghost is. We can react to the world and people around us, but the main part of us is still not really ‘here’ and things of the world don’t touch us the same way they would if we were alive. You cannot get from his portrait what it is you’re really wanting right now, and you’re risking exactly the same sort of danger that Dumbledore warned you about with the Mirror, of being caught forever in the past and forgetting to live in the present - trust me on this.”
Evie is still not fully convinced, so Phineas adds one more argument, one that very few among the living know. He tells her that there’s also another danger, especially for the newly departed. The more of themselves they invest into their portraits emotionally, especially early on, the less of themselves that will remain in the afterlife. He says that for him, it’s not a problem to be more fully here than most – there’s really nobody elsewhere that he wanted to spend an eternity with anyway. But he’s pretty sure the same isn’t true for her, or Severus either. And what would Severus do when her time comes, and he has to see her go where he cannot follow, because he is too much in his portrait?
She begins to weep bitterly, and Remus holds her, looking his thanks to Phineas over Evie’s head. Phineas nods gravely back at him, and then leaves to go back to his own portrait at Hogwarts. Eventually Evie quiets, and Remus leads her to the couch. He takes her hand and says, “I’m sorry I had to be a little rough with holding onto you, looks like I might have even given you a few bruises on your arm. But even without knowing what Phineas just told us, I knew it couldn’t be good for you. Trust me, if such a portrait existed of Tonks, you’d probably have had to stop me the same way, I know how you feel. I’m sorry, Evie.”
Feeling newly bereft again, from the sudden hope of seeing Severus and then having that hope dashed so quickly, she does at least see what they’re trying to tell her, and nods. The logical side of her can picture herself being a pest to McGonagall constantly, even neglecting her children, to spend all her time in a sort of half-life with a portrait of someone that she can never touch, nor hold in her arms. And if he invests too much of himself in order to be with her more now, then when she’s gone, he will have to remain without her – and she, without him.
She pictures a stern, headmasterly portrait in her mind’s eye anyway; maybe someday, she can go and visit it, but however much she doesn’t want to agree with Remus and Phineas, ultimately she knows that they are right. It can’t be today, nor anytime soon either.

Slowly over the following couple of years, she and Remus put their lives back together; and the laughter of the children playing together can’t fail to make them smile sometimes, too. Remus is gentle as a teddy bear with all of them, and she thinks to herself that there is probably no other man who would have accepted all the children as equally as he does. Teddy is his, and he is the twins’ godfather; but he really owes nothing in particular to Albus. But even so, he cares for and treats them all equally.
She also finds some measure of healing in re-establishing her relationship with her children, and also establishing one with Teddy. She finds James to be nearly a miniature copy of Sirius both in looks and personality, full of twinkling mischief. Lily seems more a combination of both her and Sirius; also mischievous like her twin, but with a better grounding in logic and sense than he has. Albus is a sweet child, with her green eyes and Severus’s black hair; quiet and shy and with a smile that just melts her heart. Teddy has clearly taken to Albus as well, protecting him fiercely from anything that frightens or threatens him, including his half-siblings. She’s glad that Teddy will be in the same year with Albus when they go to Hogwarts, and hopes they both get Sorted into the same House.
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Coming of Age (Female Potter)