Spring is for Spring cleaning, which means digging up and polishing off the content of all the random Word documents in the bowels of my computer, even if they're overly wordy, mushy, slice-of-life post-war musings. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.
Warning: Bereavement, talking to young children about death
Spring Bingo entry information:
Space Address : 3B
Prompt: Childhood
Word Count: 2043
Stacked with: Gryffindor MC, Brush (Bonus: HP is the brusher), Short jog, Tiny Terror
Lost Boys
Harry's schedule had developed a pleasant consistence as familiar as the specific way that the stairs in Grimmauld Place squeaked when Ginny came in late, the way Fabian Prewett's watch skipped a beat at 3:45 twice a day, or the beating of a heart. Of course, the Auror Department was utter madness and chaos which made every day a surprise—but every weekend Harry had Teddy, and that was what mattered.
He and Mrs. Tonks had agreed ages ago on this: a routine break would help her manage the baby and give her time to run errands, arrange her affairs, take care of aging family on her husband's side, and keep Teddy from getting antisocial and scared of change. And so, on Friday nights, Harry picked Teddy up, sometimes staying for dinner at Mrs. Tonks' and sometimes feeding Teddy ice cream for supper—which he felt was an okay thing to do since Sirius absolutely would have. One of the advantages of becoming a war hero was that you got to negotiate details like "I get weekends off to look after my grandson." On the few occasions that the world really had turned upside down, Teddy was always welcome at Shell Cottage or the Burrow. Once, he'd sat under Harry's desk and drawn on the back of outdated Wanted posters, making a right mess with the ink.
Every Sunday, Mrs. Weasley wielded the immense power she held over the lot of them to round up her children and adopted cases for dinner. She's insisted on this ever since the war, and the only Weasley to have successfully avoided this was Fleur—and only because she'd been giving birth to Dominique, at that.
On this particular Sunday, they were at the Burrow earlier than usual—Victoire had had chicken pox and been in containment, and Fleur and Harry agreed that she and Teddy should have a chance to run around the fields and attempt to scale the apple trees together. The two of them, meanwhile, sat on the front steps of the house supervising, drinking coffee, and occasionally coaxing baby Dominique back to sleep. The French Aurors were up to some interesting departmental reforms that gave them plenty to talk about, as did the fact that Percy was supposedly bringing a girl to dinner.
Midafternoon, Fleur called Victoire over.
"Viens ma belle, il faut rentrer à la maison… On va voir Papa et revenir pour le souper, c'est bien?"
Victoire tried to put up a fuss about leaving early, but Fleur shut it down in no time.
"Dit au revoir à Teddy," Fleur said, which prompted Victoire to hug Teddy goodbye. She still looked rather displeased.
"Hey," Harry said poking Victoire's arm. "By the time you get back, Aunt Ginny will be home from work. Do you think she might be in the mood to give broomstick rides?"
Victoire's face brightened up.
"You have to come home and wash up first, or maybe I will say non," Fleur told Victoire.
Victoire nodded. Realistically, Harry could have brought them flying that morning, but Ginny loved doing it and being married meant letting your spouse do all the fun stuff, apparently.
"Oui maman," Victoire said obediently.
Once the two disappeared, Harry brought Teddy in to feed him lunch like a good godfather and asked him what he wanted to do with the afternoon. The Burrow was a magical place for Teddy: they could go feed the chickens in the coop, climb on the bales of hay in the barn, pretend to drive Mr Weasley's parked car, ask Mrs. Weasley if there were vegetables that needed picking, try to catch frogs in the pond, count garden gnomes, play in the sandbox, draw on the fence with chalk, steal Ron or Hermione away from wedding planning and into some sort of game… Teddy usually had a million new ideas to add to the list, which Mrs. Tonks referred to as "his Dora showing."
Teddy sat at the kitchen table and looked pensively at the people around the table.
"Let's play questions," Teddy said.
"What's that?" Harry asked.
"It's- umm- it's a game where I ask questions and you have to answer," Teddy said.
"I'm not sure that's a game, but alright," Harry said.
"Alright," Teddy echoed. "Why does Victoire call you Uncle Harry?"
"Because I'm her uncle," Harry said. "That means I'm married to Ginny, and Ginny is Victoire's dad's sister."
"He's going to need a bloody graph," Ron muttered.
"And you're not my uncle?" Teddy asked.
"I'm your godfather," Harry said.
"Does Victoire have a godfather?" Teddy asked.
"Yes," Harry said. "It's Charlie."
"But Charlie is Bill's brother."
"Right," Harry said. Drawing a graph didn't seem a wild idea now. "He's both."
"Do I have an uncle?" Teddy asked.
"No," Harry said carefully. Suddenly it felt as if he'd been lured in a very efficient trap.
"But why does Victoire get to have two?"
"Victoire has six uncles," Harry said.
"Six!"
"Tell me about it," Ron said.
"Every family is different," Harry promised Teddy.
"Do I have any brothers?" Teddy asked.
"No," Harry said, shaking his head. "But don't worry, I don't either."
"Can I get some?" Teddy asked.
"Getting brothers is complicated," Harry said. "It's not like when Ginny tells me to get milk and I go to the store. Your parents need to make them for you."
"Oh," Teddy said as if this sounded vaguely familiar. "So why does Victoire have some of those and I don't?"
And, there it was.
He was keenly aware that everybody's eyes were on him.
"You know what, Teddy?" Harry said. "That's such a good question that it deserves a walk."
"A walk where?" Teddy asked.
"I don't know," Harry said. "Let's go find out."
Nobody questioned or said anything as he helped Teddy hop off his chair and put his plate in the sink, so the enchanted sponge could begin to scrub it clean. They thanked Mrs. Weasley for lunch on their way out, and Harry kept a hand on Teddy's back as they walked outside.
They walked around the property for a bit and picked blueberries to eat before sitting on the back porch. There was a chair there, not quite a rocking chair though it was really comfortable. Ron had called it his "leave me alone, I destroyed a bunch of Horcruxes" chair until it had been poached by a pregnant Fleur. More recently, Ginny had spent most of last summer there nursing her broken ankle after a bad fall. Now, Harry sat there, pulled Teddy onto his lap, and told him the truth. He told him that his parents were dead.
When Aunt Petunia had shared this piece of information with Harry, she had told him that his parents had gotten themselves blown up. He must've been five, Teddy's age, and she had been quite impatient about it. He'd gotten all these mixed messages, so many words: blown up, car crash, accident, reckless, drunk, orphan, dead… He would have liked to hear it all at once, because it had been so confusing that he had only really understood what was happening once he'd gotten to school, and a teacher had explained to Harry why his Mother's Day crafts would be a bit different. He must've found out that his parents were dead dozens of times before it really made sense to him. Someone, anyone, should have just told him, honestly and fairly. He could and he would do better than they had.
Harry liked to think that Teddy had one thing he didn't: someone on his side who knew what that was like. Maybe that was why Remus and Tonks had chosen Harry as godfather, because if something happened to them he would understand. He was like Teddy; one of the children whose childhoods could never exist independently from the scary shadows of grown-up things. Maybe they were lost boys, but they had each other. A million times, holding Teddy had reminded Harry of what was real after the war. Now he could only hope that he'd be able to make real things less scary for Teddy in return.
So, he told Teddy all at once. Mrs. Tonks might murder him when he dropped off her grandson that night, but he really hoped she would understand.
"So when will they stop?" Teddy asked. "Being dead?"
"That's not really something you can stop," Harry said.
"So why do people want to be dead?" Teddy asked.
"It's not something that people chose," Harry said. "Do you remember how you got hiccups one time, and couldn't stop hiccupping?"
"If I get the hiccups again, I'll die?" Teddy asked.
"No, no," Harry said. "It's different, just like that. Your parents didn't want to die. If they could have chosen, they would have wanted to stay here with you. But they were very brave, and somebody hurt them."
"Badly?"
"Badly," Harry said.
"And then they died?"
"And then they died," Harry said. He tried to focus on the little boy so that his memory wouldn't flood him with images of his parents, side by side in the Great Hall where Harry had never been able to eat again.
"So I won't have parents forever?" Teddy double-checked.
"Yes," Harry said.
Teddy's eyebrows knit themselves together. He looked quite distressed and glanced up at Harry before turning away again.
"I don't want that," Teddy said.
"I know," Harry said. "I'm sorry, Teddy. Nobody does."
And Teddy cried, because he was four years old and all of a sudden, he was an orphan. He curled up against Harry's chest to cry, and Harry just held him close until he was done.
Harry kissed his hair. "Your parents love you so much. They told me and Grandma how much they love you, so that if something happened to them we could keep loving you."
"Please don't die too."
"I won't," Harry said. He ran a hand across Teddy's hair.
Teddy snuffled. "Does being dead hurt?"
Teddy had exactly one notable experience with the concept of 'getting hurt,' in a fight during which some kid at the playground had smacked him across the face with a plastic shovel and given him a black eye because toddlers were monsters with uncanny super-strength.
"It's like falling asleep," Harry said. "It doesn't hurt."
"And after that?" Teddy asked.
"I don't know," Harry said quietly. "I didn't go."
"Go? Go where?"
"Think of… Think of a place for all of the things you lose, where they all go together. Like, imagine there was a drawer somewhere that had your green marble, the ribbon that used to be in Victoire's hair, every left sock in the world, and your whistle."
"Are my parents in the drawer?" Teddy asked.
"I don't think we can open the drawer, and I don't think it looks like a drawer," Harry said. "But imagine that there's a place where the lost things go. When we need the lost things, we find them, but not in the way we expect or want them or used to have them. Your dad and my dad are there right now, and our mums are there too, and Grandpa Ted too, and even one of Victoire's uncles. And I think they're happy that we're together. I'm happy that we're together, Teddy."
"Me too," Teddy muttered, curling up against Harry.
And they sat in the chair together for a while longer. Just inside, Ginny and Mrs. Weasley were standing in the kitchen and trying not to eavesdrop, which actually had the opposite effect of silencing them and making everything Harry and Teddy said louder.
Ginny felt herself release a very deep breath that she didn't know she'd been holding, waiting for Teddy to be okay. Her mother's eyes were swimming with tears, and she was trying to cut carrots to hide it.
"He's so good," Ginny said quietly, looking at the door. "That would have been impossible to me. He's going to be such a great dad."
"He will be," Mum agreed. Then all of a sudden, all the knives and various pieces of cutlery she'd set into motion froze midair. "Wait a minute. Ginevra Weasley Potter, what made that thought pop into your head right this second?"
Ginny's eyes sprawled.