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De Mortuis~
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Disclaimer: If I owned HP, the Epilogue (and a lot of the rest) of book 7 would never, EVER exist. Not even if I were given real Marauders to slash however I like.
Warnings: little AU (Sirius-comes-to-life and Teddy-snogging-Victoire-never-happens, everything else is canon as far as I can tell), slushiness, post-DH but pre-epilogue
Pairings: Sirius Black/Teddy Lupin
A/N: I've been in love with this pairing ever since that tiny little 'what if' occurred to me (guess I'm just unable to accept death of several HP characters, so I choose to ignore it ;)) and finally I managed to write something with these two crazy guys… hope you like it X3
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Teddy Lupin was looking forward to his stay at the Burrow. It's been a madhouse most of the time, with so many people living in the magically extended building, but Teddy always liked it a lot more than the careful sterility of his supposed home at Gran's. Of course, he'd never say so, especially not to his Grandmother Andromeda. Teddy loved her, but sometimes knowing it was best for him didn't make her overprotectiveness any less bothersome. At times like that it was easiest to escape to the homely chaos of the Burrow, with Teddy's joking Godfather, Harry, with Aunt Ginny who always nagged him about being too thin and with his three crazy cousins who weren't even his real cousins and called him 'big brother' just to annoy him.
Yes, Burrow was definitely a place to look forward to, and Teddy felt a smile on his lips as he strode towards that big messy house to enjoy his last real summer. Next year he'd pass his NEWTs and then be a responsible adult… it sounded alien and unreal to Teddy, but he didn't want to spoil his summer with thoughts of future. Shaking his turquoise head to get rid of unwanted thoughts, Teddy pushed open the front door and entered the well-known kitchen, expecting at least one of the kids spotting him and jumping at him with a high-pitched scream of delight.
Instead, he encountered dead silence, and after a second of engaging his sensitive ears (a genetic gift from his father), he could make out hushed voices in the living room. Teddy, never really being one for discretion, dropped his backpack to the nearest chair and walked through the kitchen, curious about the weird stillness in the house. Just as he stepped over the threshold of the living room, Ginny looked up to him, her eyes widening slightly. But before she could say anything, Teddy's gaze fell on the man who sat on the couch, a man who was a complete stranger to Teddy and yet, he knew who he was. Seemingly broken but still visibly handsome, the man was about the same age as Harry, long wavy hair dishevelled as if he had run through them with his long, slim fingers many times recently, and grey eyes with haunted look to them... Ted remembered that man from the photos his Grandma had shown him many times, so he would know the face of his father. But along with the pleasantly smiling, scarred face of Remus Lupin, Teddy got to know another man, got to know him as well as he ever would know his own father, for that aristocratic, yet kind face with sparkling eyes grinned at him from most of his Dad's photos.
Unconsciously, his mind swirling with the old yellowish pictures of people long dead, Teddy could feel his hair changing to a dark golden colour he remembered from those pictures as his Dad's. It felt as if he was being pulled back several decades, to the times when his father was still alive – the times when the man sitting on the couch wouldn't seem so misplaced here, like a ghost of the past.
"Sirius Black," Teddy whispered, and the man's head whipped around to face him, and it WAS that face, only a little thinner and paler than Teddy remembered from the photos, the hair a little less shiny, but it was him, the dead Azkaban escapee, the godfather of Teddy's godfather... the best friend of his father.
The grey eyes widened, and Teddy felt his heart squeeze with unnamed pain when the thin, dry lips whispered:
"Moony..."
Oh, Teddy knew what that meant. How many times had he heard tales about Marauders, about his father and his friends, tales that seemed so unreal that Teddy wondered if they really ever happened, if his Dad ever was a real person? And now, a tale come alive sat on the old couch Teddy knew so well and addressed him by that unreal nickname, pulled him further into this weird vision and Teddy briefly thought that this was all just a dream, that he'd wake up soon and all the ghosts from the past would go back to where they belonged.
But Harry spoke, and his voice, reasonable and a little quiet, broke the illusion of the moment.
"Sirius, this is Teddy. Remus' son."
"Oh."
The weird disappointment in the man's voice irked Teddy, but he didn't say anything, just stepped further into the room and sat next to Ginny, on the couch opposite Sirius Black. Harry looked like he was taking a breath to ask Teddy to go upstairs, but Teddy threw him a defiant look and his godfather must have understood.
To the surprise of all involved, it was Sirius Black who stood up.
"I need to go outside for a moment."
"But..."
Teddy was very glad those grey eyes didn't look at him. They seemed empty and resigned, and showed something broken deep down inside that man that couldn't be healed with soothing words.
"Harry, I might've missed twenty years, but I do know how to walk and breathe. I'll be back in a few minutes."
With that, he walked out and Teddy's eyes followed his thin, tall frame until the man disappeared outside. There was something about him, something guarded, lonely... Teddy couldn't quite put it to words, but it drew him to that man, as if his mind started quietly wondering whether his dad would have the same feel about him, were he still alive. That man, that stranger by the name of Sirius Black was the closest thing to Teddy's father, the only one who could tell him more about Remus Lupin than the well-known stories... and Teddy wasn't going to pass up the opportunity.
"I guess it'll be even harder than we thought..."
Teddy snapped out of his thoughts when he heard Harry speaking. His godfather was adjusting his glasses, a gesture he usually made only when upset or nervous. Teddy raised one dark golden eyebrow at him.
"What happened? I thought he was dead."
Harry sighed:
"So did we. But my squad found him at the Ministry several hours ago – he managed to curse two Aurors until he realized that the fight's already..." Harry sighed again, and his voice got very quiet as he looked up at Teddy again: "For Sirius, not even a day had passed. Not even an hour. When he saw me, he called me James, just like he called you Moony right now. There's nothing wrong with his mind, though... he... just needs to adjust to the idea that in a blink of an eye, twenty years have passed."
Teddy stared at the wall behind Harry's ear. He couldn't even imagine how it would feel, to just blink and loose twenty years of his life. Or even worse – to suddenly realize that the world has aged so much, while he stayed the same. All his old friends dead... suddenly it struck Teddy:
"Does he know Dad's dead?"
It wasn't painful to talk about that, not for Teddy who lived with the fact his parents are not here anymore for his whole life. But it was surely different for Sirius Black – it was hard to start thinking about him as anything else than Sirius Black, in messy scrawl and black ink, just letters with no real person behind them.
Harry nodded.
"We've told him the most important things. That Voldemort was defeated, that Moody and Remus are dead... But there wasn't much time – actually we've arrived from St. Mungo's just a little while before you came. They wanted to check him properly... but he's fine."
"Physically, that is," Ginny said, with a sigh just like her husband's. Teddy's eyes strayed to the back door he could see from his seat.
"Can I go talk to him?"
He saw how Ginny and Harry exchanged glances, and frowned. He hated it when they did that, communicated just through looks and little gestures only they could interpret. It always felt like he was left out, and that was the feeling he hated most, feeling like he didn't really belong anywhere from time to time. Teddy knew it was foolish, that he always had the door open to either Harry and Ginny's place, or Ron and Hermione's, that they all loved him like their own son, and in a way, he was, he was the first child they all had together and took care of when his father died, they all felt responsibility for him... but still, sometimes Ted couldn't help but feel he belonged in a different era. Like he had missed something important, a piece of his past connected to his parents that would make him whole... he had heard enough stories about his Mom from his Grandma, but there was still an air of mystery around his father that no one could lift.
No one, until now. Until the dead man from the photos was revived.
"I'll go talk to him," he jumped up from his seat, and Ginny smiled at him:
"Go. But if he wants to be alone, just leave him, okay? Maybe he needs a little more time to adjust to this whole... thing."
"I'm not a kid," he pouted, his young age betraying him anyway. He might have been an adult already formally, but sometimes he still felt like a kid, like he couldn't ever grow up completely. He walked through the kitchen and opened the door, expecting the man to just stand there, or maybe to be already far off in the distance. What he didn't expect was a big black dog curled up close to the wall, staring to nowhere.
The animal lifted his head when he noticed Teddy, but didn't bother with more, and the big head settled back on the black paws.
Teddy considered leaving, but the dog didn't snarl or growl at him and Teddy took that as a silent invitation. He sat down in one of the chairs on the porch, and looked curiously at the dog. There was nothing about the animal that would betray his original form, and Teddy, an animal lover and a-little-bit-of-a-werewolf had to resist the urge to pet the thick fur.
The dog's eyes strayed a little to the side to check whether Teddy was still looking at him. After several attempts like that, when the silence was just crossing the 'someone should say something' line into the territory of 'uncomfortable', the dog changed back – it didn't take as long as Teddy always imagined it would. At one moment, there was a big dog standing up, and in the next second there was a man straightening his back to his full height. And his eyes still had that curious dog look – except there was much more weariness in them now.
"What do you want?" Sirius Black asked, in a voice that wasn't rough or barking as Teddy always imagined it. He wondered briefly what else had he imagined wrongly, and a little pang of fear sprang up in his mind – what if the image he had of his dad was all wrong?
"Could you tell me something about my Dad?" he tried, because he wasn't really sure what he wanted from Sirius Black. Only thing Ted knew was that he wasn't going to let Sirius Black off the hook easily. He'd make the man tell Teddy anything and everything he could remember about Remus John Lupin, and then he'd maybe loose this weird unreal feeling.
Sirius Black laughed, and this time it did sound like a dog's bark. Teddy found himself looking down the man's back to search for a wagging tail, and immediately brought his eyes back to that pale face, ashamed of himself for the stupid idea.
"Teddy, was it?"
Hearing his name from this man's lips got Teddy thinking about his Dad again, his mind quietly trying to assign this deep voice to a fatherly figure. Maybe his Dad's voice sounded a little like this... though Teddy couldn't really say he felt something more than what he usually felt when hearing his name.
"Yes. Teddy Remus Lupin, that's my whole name."
He didn't know why he felt that urge to tell this man his whole name, to tell him the name he shared with his dead father – just as he didn't know why this man laughed at that, and extended one thin hand towards him.
"Sirius Black. Though I assume you know who I am..."
When Teddy took his hand and shook it, those grey eyes lingered on him a little longer, that disconcerting gaze holding something alien to Teddy, something he couldn't quite read. Then, Sirius Black pulled his hand away and looked to where the sun was beginning to set behind the grassy hills, his face coming alive with the warm colours of the sunset for that moment.
"You look so much like him."
For some reason, that quiet sentence stirred deep down in Teddy's stomach like a snake trying to find a comfortable position.
"If it bothers you, I can look different," Teddy said quietly, suddenly not wanting to be an image of an unreal person, someone he didn't even know. Maybe it was just the fear that his Dad wasn't the same person he had dreamed out according to what people told him, but nonetheless Teddy had his reasons why he didn't go around looking like his Dad all the time.
Sirius Black just smirked, but Teddy wiped that grin off his face when his facial features shifted a little and his hair changed colour to his now-favourite turquoise.
"Better?" he asked, unable to suppress a smirk himself, while Sirius Black just stared at him.
"Tonks was your mother?" he asked, and the slight disbelief in his voice told Teddy that this man probably wouldn't be able to tell tales about the love between Teddy's parents. It seemed like it was a shock for him, and Teddy raised an eyebrow, but before he could say something, Sirius Black waved his hand dismissively.
"Go back inside, Teddy, I need more time before I can talk about things like this."
Something in his voice stopped Teddy's protests, but before he went in, he'd swear he heard a quiet "much more time" added.
Then, there was a big black dog again, and Teddy went in with a sigh.
~*~*~*~*~*~
He spent the rest of the evening answering Jamie's endless questions about Hogwarts – the boy was going next year, and after several rather upsetting things he had heard from the older boys in the neighbourhood, Teddy had to try hard to persuade James that really, there was no troll involved in the sorting ceremony, and indeed, it wasn't a habit that first-years got initiated by sleeping in the corridors with angry poltergeists. Then, Quidditch was mentioned, and Harry joined their little debate, and before Teddy knew, Ginny was urging the kids to their beds, accompanied by the usual howling and whining along the lines of 'just five more minutes, Mom'.
Teddy's eyes strayed to the back door:
"Is he going to sleep out there?"
Harry smiled softly at him, but Teddy could see it was more of a reassuring smile than a reassured one.
"Once, he told me that he had survived Azkaban and kept his sanity only because he changed into a dog. That being a dog dulled his emotions so that Dementors couldn't feed off him. I guess that's what he's trying to do now – dull all this so he won't go mad."
Teddy was glad Ginny was upstairs with children – that meant Harry could be this honest with him. Ginny was always like a mother to Teddy – which also meant a little – or a lot – of that sometimes annoying overprotectiveness. And that included giving information that could be 'disturbing' for him.
"He seemed pretty upset when you told him who my Dad is."
Harry just shrugged at that:
"I never had time to get to know Sirius very well, Teddy. But I think he blames himself for missing yet another of his best friends' children. He was in Azkaban when I was growing up – and maybe he is upset because he missed your childhood, too."
It seemed rather improbable to Teddy – somehow, that disturbed look in Sirius Black's eyes didn't correspond with just being sorry for missing his childhood. There was something more to those grey eyes, and Teddy was determined to find out what it was.
"Just go to bed, you must be tired," Harry spoke again, and gave Teddy a genuine smile. He stood up, patted Teddy's shoulder and left him to think about things he knew nothing about.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Later that night, Teddy was sleeping in James' room which had two beds from the times Harry and Ginny believed James and Al could share a room – later, it was proved that leaving those two alone together begged for a catastrophic scenario, but the old spare bed remained for the times when Teddy came to visit for more than a day, just like now.
It took Teddy a few seconds to realize what woke him up – it was a hushed conversation from the outside and Teddy shifted closer to the window to hear what they were talking about – he could make out Harry's voice, and he had no doubts that the other person was Sirius Black. Teddy could hear better than normal people, especially when the full moon was so close. He wasn't a true werewolf, but he had inherited a few traits – just like better hearing or a keen sense of smell, but also headaches that usually hit him on the day before full moon. In school, his friends sometimes made fun of him, asking him whether it was 'his time of the month'...
Teddy snapped out of his memories and focused on listening to the conversation – especially when he heard his Dad's name involved.
"...and Remus died like a hero, during the Battle of Hogwarts."
There was a deep sigh, and the voice of Sirius Black sounded tired, just like his eyes had looked earlier that day when Teddy talked to the man.
"It's hard to accept, Harry. For me, it was just a month ago that we talked to you through the Floo about your Dad, and suddenly he's dead and you're older than me. It's... like I don't belong here. You know... I lost almost half of my life to Azkaban, and when I thought it was getting better... this happens."
"You do belong here, Sirius. You can't imagine how happy I am you're here, alive. When you... when we thought you died, I felt like I lost the only family I had left."
A bitter, barking laugh, then silence for a while. Teddy thought Sirius Black wasn't going to answer, but he did at last, so quietly Teddy almost couldn't hear.
"The catch is, I never died from my point of view, Harry. I didn't spend twenty years somewhere, trying to get out. I just... blinked, and suddenly everything I knew was gone. It's not that I'm not glad I can be with you, see your kids grow up and so on... but... I just feel like... I'm useless. I couldn't do anything to protect your parents, and then I failed with Remus, and now there's nothing I can do about that."
"You didn't fail, Sirius. It was just an unlucky coincidence."
"Snape was right after all. I wasn't involved in anything important."
The bitter tone made Teddy take a deep breath. The old photographs really weren't good witnesses to a person's true self – in the pictures, he always saw Sirius Black as a cheery fellow with a spark of mischief in the grey eyes, and the man down there with Harry was just a tired, regretful old man.
"Think about it as being lucky, Sirius. You could've fought and died in the war."
"But I did, didn't I? For twenty years."
Another bitter laugh, and Teddy's imagination brought him ideas of how it would feel to close his eyes, then open them and see everyone age so much. How it would feel to suddenly see James and Al and Lily in their thirties, while he, Teddy, still remained seventeen. How it would feel to realize all his friends are dead, and he could've done something about it if only he wasn't somewhere far away without even knowing he was there. And Teddy felt sorry for Sirius Black, for the shadow of that smiling, winking teenage boy he knew from the photographs, because of what he had turned out to be.
Then he heard his own name, and that brought his attention back to the conversation he most definitely wasn't supposed to hear.
"Teddy thinks you're upset about him."
"I'm not."
"Sirius..."
"A little. But it has nothing to do with him personally. More like..."
"More like with the fact he's Remus' son?"
"A little," Sirius Black repeated and Teddy fought an urge to get up from his bed and open the window a little so he could hear better. Maybe he'd find out what it was that disturbed this man so much about him... maybe he'd learn something about his father even.
"You know, you can still be a father to him."
There was another laugh, this time a little more high-pitched and a lot more bitter.
"I don't want to be a father to him, Harry. I tried that with you, and I failed, exactly because you were James' son. I saw him in you – heck, I see him in you now; you look even more like him... With Teddy, it'd be even more complicated..."
"Because you missed twenty years?"
"Because this morning, I believed no son of Remus would ever exist, and suddenly Moony is dead and my kind-of-nephew is seventeen."
Teddy exhaled slowly – it was the first time it really occurred to him that Sirius Black wasn't only his father's best friend, but also his mother's uncle. Or something like that... Grandma sometimes mentioned her favourite cousin Sirius, but to this moment Teddy never really imagined a real person behind all those stories. Never thought he'd MEET that person.
"You believed... you thought Remus wouldn't find a woman because he was a werewolf?"
A snort, then a chuckle.
"I'd never even think about it like that. It was because Moony..."
There was a pause, as if Sirius Black didn't really know what to say, and after a while of silence Harry must have made some inquiring gesture, because the man continued dismissively.
"I don't want to talk about it. It's in the past anyway, isn't it?"
"Sirius..."
"Leave it, Harry. There are things you don't know and it better stays that way. No need to dig up the past."
"I'm not a boy anymore, I can handle whatever it is-"
"You think I haven't noticed?! Yes, you are even older than me now, but it's still hard for me to adjust to that fact! And you're still my best friend's son, which means I'd like to keep some things private."
Teddy couldn't see Sirius Black's face, but from the tone of his voice he could imagine that the man didn't allow any further discussion. After just a few seconds Harry must have got the hint too, because the back door to the house closed with a quiet slam. Teddy settled into his pillows with determination to find out more first thing in the morning. There were obviously things about his father Sirius Black knew, and Teddy would make him share even if it would be the last thing he did.
~*~*~*~*~*~
After breakfast, Teddy was sitting through another Beauty Salon session with Lily, which meant that he grew his hair past his waist and let Lily play with it, entertaining the little princess by changing the colour of the tiny braids on request. He was her favourite "brother" exactly for this, and he couldn't help but smile as he felt how careful she was not to tug his hair too much.
It was then Sirius Black appeared, making Teddy remember what he had heard last night. He looked a little less haunted than when Teddy first saw him the day before, but he was still too pale, too thin, too... Teddy suddenly wondered whether those were the marks Azkaban had left on this man. From what Harry had told them, for him it's been just three years since he escaped from the dreaded prison, clearly not enough time to wipe the traces of twelve years from his face.
As he looked at Lily and Teddy, a smile appeared on his lips, which brought him back to the realm of living people in Teddy's eyes – that smile was the first thing that made Teddy believe that this man was more than a faint echo of an old photograph, more than two words in ink, Sirius Black. And when Lily suddenly lost interest in Teddy's hair and stepped from behind his chair to scrutinize the man under the careful gaze of seven-year-old eyes, Teddy couldn't help but feel curious about how this man would react.
He just looked at the little girl, a small smile still on his lips as he sat down heavily on the nearest chair and grabbed a toast from the plate on the table.
"Uncle Sirius?" Lily asked tentatively, and his smile widened - instinctively, that much Teddy was sure about.
"Yes... Lily?"
The name sounded a little rough coming from him, and Teddy remembered that this man knew Harry's parents, went to school with them. He was supposed to be in his early sixties, probably, or very late fifties, an old man with his own children or even grandchildren... it was really all screwed-up.
"Daddy told me you could change into a dog," Lily continued, unaware of the heaviness Teddy could sense in the air. Or maybe he was just overly sensitive, trying to catch any clue about how to understand Sirius Black.
The man grinned, and for a second a flash of that mischievous teenager from the old photos returned to his thin face.
"Wanna see?"
Lily clapped her hands happily, her smile even wider than his, and for that moment before a big black dog took his place, it seemed to Teddy that Sirius Black almost looked young again.
When the little girl threw her arms around the big dog's neck and squeezed, and the dog gave her a long, slobbery lick up her cheek, followed by her happy laugh, Sirius Black, the unreal character of tales and photographs became a real 'Sirius' in Teddy's mind.
~*~*~*~*~*~
By the afternoon, it seemed as if Sirius was always a part of their family. He carried Lily around on his back in his dog form, making her squeal from delight. He let the boys ask endless questions about Marauders and the mischief they had done in their times, and even though Ginny swatted his arm and admonished him about teaching her two 'innocent little sons' bad manners, she listened with just as much interest and laughed here and there. It made her look like a schoolgirl again, and Teddy couldn't help but feel that Sirius was charming his way to his own heart as well. It also made him feel the loss of his own parents a little more than usual – he wondered whether his Dad would be like this too, a little crazy, but warm and caring like a big dog. But he let the darker thoughts pass unnoticed through his mind – Sirius was really good at amusing people when he wanted to, and when Quidditch was mentioned and Harry suggested a little match, Teddy got to know that Sirius was a decent player as well.
It was an uneven match, and not because a team of two (girls, as Jamie had pointed out, giving Teddy's still braided and long hair a mocking look), Teddy and Ginny went against three, Harry, Sirius and James, but also because Harry proved again to be a terrible Keeper and Ginny didn't seem keen on the idea of 'letting her poor abused husband keep at least some dignity' (as the said husband put it when she scored for the sixth time and Sirius threatened to bite Harry's ankles when they got to the ground if they lose).
Sirius, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy the mere feel of flying more than the game itself, as Teddy could see the older man was quite reckless with the Quaffle, the only ball they had in this improvised game (because of the lack of players, and because of the lack of Ginny's approval to let her kids anywhere near a Bludger that could break their bones in an instant. Though it seemed to Teddy she was more concerned about the health of other people if Jamie got hold of something so dangerous.).
When they landed, all sweaty and tired and hungry like wolves, Ginny disappeared in the kitchen to whip up at least a pretence of dinner, while Harry was practically dragging Jamie behind to apply some potion to the place on James' forehead that had collided with a tree branch during a particularly impressive stunt that would've been more impressive if said little flyer looked out for inanimate objects. Teddy had just flopped down to the ground, landing in the thick grass and breathing heavily from laughing too hard and flying around too long, and it wasn't long before he heard rustling of the grass nearby that told him Sirius had followed his example.
"So... you alright now?" he asked, and then mentally kicked himself – it was as if he had just said 'so you don't worry about losing twenty years of your life and most of the people you knew anymore?' – but he never really was one for diplomacy. Grandma used to tell him he got that from their side of family as his Dad used to be a really polite person.
Sirius looked at him, but instead of that hollow gaze from yesterday, there was still that spark in his eyes, followed by a soft smile.
"Not alright, but it's getting better. Somehow I'm beginning to see a brighter side to things."
"For example?" Teddy smiled back, and Sirius laughed – it was the first time Teddy heard that sound coming from the depths of Sirius' chest like something heavy was lifting off. It was a light, happy laughter, nothing like the quiet bitter chuckles he gave yesterday, and it made Sirius look so different that Teddy wondered whether it was the same person just a few hours ago talking to Harry.
"For example I'm not yet too arthritic and senile to beat your sorry ass in Quidditch, kid."
"We girls beat you by fifty points," Teddy threw his hair over his shoulder theatrically, and Sirius laughed again.
"Just you wait when I whip Harry into proper Keeper shape. You won't stand a chance."
"Right. By then you WILL be arthritic and senile." Teddy saw Harry play so many times he knew there was nothing that could be done for his godfather's Keeper skills. He could be a decent Chaser if he wasn't in the mood for letting his kids win easily against him, but as a Keeper he was hopeless.
"Hey, I'm famous for fooling the natural course of time, if you haven't noticed," Sirius winked, and Teddy felt his heart squeeze. Somehow it wasn't right. Sirius was joking and smiling, and there was nothing that would betray he wasn't really as happy as he looked, but that comment woke Teddy's sixth sense. He could always tell when someone was feeling down, that is if he tried to look underneath the smiling facades, and right now, that same sense was tingling with the feeling that indeed, Sirius was trying to look like everything was fine, but there were some things that bugged him.
"You know... I'd still like to hear about Dad from you. If you ever want to talk about him."
He said it quietly, tentatively, and the smile on Sirius' face withered a little, but didn't disappear completely when the grey eyes looked into Teddy's own, right now soft brown to match Ginny's and give them a 'team look'.
"One day I'll tell you all about him, I promise. Just... not right now. For me... yesterday this time I was still able to talk to him, and now... you know."
Sirius sat up and ran his hands through his long, slightly tangled hair. Teddy resisted the urge to pat his shoulder – he couldn't imagine how it must feel to lose the best friend. Except his parents, no one so close had ever died on him, and he had been too young then to really remember the time they died. He lived with that fact for so long that he usually didn't feel their loss so much, but the knowledge someone had talked to his father just yesterday was so bizarre it almost felt as if his Dad could come alive too, walk through the door of Burrow anytime soon and just wave and smile as he did on Teddy's old photos, play Quidditch with him like Sirius just did... but it was an illusion. Teddy's Dad didn't disappear behind a mysterious veil – he died in the Great Battle of Hogwarts, a hero, and his body was buried six feet under the firm ground of an old wizard cemetery, near his own parents and side by side with Teddy's mother.
Suddenly an idea struck him as a sad feeling of shared loss came over him when he looked at Sirius.
"Do you... do you want to visit his grave?"
For a moment, Sirius was quiet. Then he turned his head and looked at Teddy, and Teddy got scared he had overstepped some invisible boundary of privacy, but Sirius just nodded, his face solemn.
"Might help me to get used to this time and place," he said quietly, and Teddy nodded back as both of them got up when they heard Ginny calling them for dinner.
~*~*~*~*~*~
The rustling of the trees was the only sound disturbing the profound silence of the small cemetery. Most of the graves were so old that if there wasn't magic involved, the little engraved letters would be already unreadable – but magic was present even in this dead place, and here and there Teddy could see those three words carved into stone, words that were nothing but a phrase to him, a person who grew up in peaceful times. Hero of War.
The words appeared also on the tombstone Teddy and his Grandmother visited from time to time, usually on one of his parents' birthday, and then on the anniversary of their death. Grandmother always said that visiting the graves wouldn't bring back the dead, and it only brought sadness to the living. Teddy grew to agree with her on that point, though for him, there was no real sadness involved now. He used to come here since before he could remember, and to be honest to himself, Teddy couldn't really imagine how it would feel to have his parents with him. He could 'imagine' it according to what he saw in other families, but the thought of him as a part of such family was... unreal.
But this was something different – this wasn't just a usual mourning trip or an attempt to decorate the graves of your family better than the neighbours. Teddy wasn't sure if he was right, but he thought this visit should help Sirius somehow come to terms with the reality he was a part of now. He expected the older man to cry, even though he didn't know why – Teddy never saw any adult cry, but somehow it seemed appropriate in a situation like this. However, Sirius' eyes remained dry as he stared at the names engraved in the stone. Remus John Lupin. Nymphadora Tonks. For Teddy, those names weren't much more real than the photographs he knew, but for Sirius, they must have meant real people – people he had seen just the day before. Teddy couldn't even imagine that.
"They weren't married?" Sirius suddenly spoke, and his voice seemed quite normal, not broken or rough as Teddy had expected.
"They got married quietly. In August, ten months before they died. Grandma told me that Mom kept her maiden name so Death Eaters wouldn't know, and wouldn't use it against them."
Teddy spoke almost mechanically, just repeating a distant tale he heard, but it still brought a small smile to Sirius' lips, his eyes never wavering from the stone:
"I bet it was his idea."
Teddy shrugged: he didn't really know anything about that. He didn't look at the grave – didn't need to (he could just close his eyes and imagine it perfectly, with every unevenness of the stone, every chipped corner, ever since he had spent that one whole day when he was fourteen just staring at the tombstone, trying to feel something.). Instead, Teddy looked at Sirius, studying his features and wondering what this man thought, with his expressionless face betraying nothing at all.
They stood like that for a while, until at last Teddy got a little impatient. Being able to keep quiet and still wasn't what he was known for, even though his reputation of being crazy and wild was just an exaggeration of some of his better pranks.
"Should I... leave you alone with them?" he asked tentatively, but Sirius looked at him with a smile and shook his head.
"Not really. It's just a stone. I still don't feel like he's dead, and standing here won't suddenly change that."
Then, for the first time Teddy realized that when Sirius did talk about his dead parents, it wasn't 'them'. It was just 'him', just Teddy's Dad... and that only proved Teddy's guess that Sirius knew something about his father. He couldn't guess what it was, but it was something, sure it was.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Teddy noticed Ginny's knowing looks when they got back, and also the way Harry raised one eyebrow a little, just like he did every time one of his kids was about to ask something unpleasant.
But Sirius kept quiet, at least when it came to the unpleasant things, and through the dinner behaved a lot more normally than what was expected of him in that situation. He asked a few things about the War, but seemed to cope well with all the information he got – though it was true that he didn't get any ugly details, as Ginny's warning glances told Harry to keep the brutalities in his answers to the minimum while children were in hearing distance.
Teddy's hearing distance, however, was a lot wider, and fortunately for him, most of his family seemed to forget about this little fact more often than not. So when they were outside, enjoying the last sunrays of the late July evening, he was able to hear another part of the tale that was supposed to stay a secret, at least for him.
Sirius was in his dog form again, making especially Lily ecstatic, what with her love for animals. Teddy remembered how Ginny sometimes joked during Christmas break, with all the Weasleys and their families gathered in the crowded Burrow, that if Charlie didn't get married soon and have his own kids, she'd give him Lily and they could play around with weird beasts all day long together. Now, looking at her red hair flowing freely in the air as she ran after the big black dog, laughing and yelling usual dog orders after Padfoot, Teddy truly understood what her mother meant by that.
The dog and the girl ran over the meadow like in an idyllic Muggle movie Teddy saw once, and then disappeared for a while in the small forest not far from the house. When they emerged again, Padfoot's fur was all tangled and full of thorns, leaves and thistles, which made Lily laugh even louder as she ran back to the house, seemingly tireless.
"Daddy, Daddy, can I brush Padfoot's fur?"
Harry just raised an eyebrow at the big black dog questioningly, but with the small approving nod of the large head, he transfigured the nearest old boot into a suitable brush and handed it to the girl.
No pained wails echoed through the clearing in the next twenty minutes, which meant that either Sirius was divinely patient, or that Lily was good in combing out thistles from animal fur. Teddy would bet on the first option, but he didn't have enough time to look anywhere as Al was getting dangerously good at Exploding Snap, and even for someone who could morph his looks anytime, it wasn't that pleasant to have his eyebrows burned.
When the sun set almost completely, the boys managed to talk Ginny into 'ten more minutes', while Lily stomped away pouting that she wasn't allowed to sleep with Padfoot. Ginny was still suppressing chuckles as Harry took their youngest child inside with a promise of a good-night story if she'd drop the idea of animals – and especially animagi – in her bed. With the corner of his eye, Teddy saw the dog transform into a man again – it seemed that the good brushing of a dog took some effect on his human hair as well. They weren't as tangled and seemed a little softer, but Teddy was forced to focus back on the dangerously vibrating cards in his hands again. Then, he heard Ginny speak, and made his best effort to hear what they were talking about while still saving his eyebrows from their coming doom.
"You need a haircut."
"Has anyone ever told you that you've come to resemble Molly a lot?"
A chuckle from both, and Teddy didn't hear Ginny's answer because Jim's card exploded and he just barely saved his fingers. But when he glanced back over his shoulder, Ginny was already aiming her wand at Sirius' head, and the man was sitting down, already resigned to his fate. Through the quiet snapping of the cutting spell, Teddy could hear the next part of the conversation.
"You can't be a dog forever."
"Why not? Lily seems to like me."
"We all like you. But it'd be nice if we could talk to you without you chasing your own tail."
"I don't chase my tail," Sirius' voice was playfully offended as he tried to save his dignity. Ginny just chuckled.
"That's not the point. You're still young-"
"I'm not."
"Do you want me to charm your hair green? You're exactly the same age as me, and if you're calling me old…"
"Technically, I'm fifty-eight."
"De facto you're thirty-five, which means you have about fifty years to go, maybe more. That's an awfully long time to spend as a dog."
"I already pulled off twelve in Azkaban."
"This is not Azkaban. And we're not Dementors."
For a while, there was just silence filled with the snapping sounds of the spells and the crackling of Exploding cards, and an occasional mutter from one of the boys. Then, Ginny called them inside, and when Teddy came closer, he saw that Sirius' hair was now shorter, falling to his eyes and barely brushing his shoulder. It made him look younger, almost boyish, and Teddy hurried upstairs to his bed, hoping to hear more. When Jim was finally settled and Teddy held his breath so he could catch what was happening outside, the important things seemed to have been said already.
"…and it's not so uncommon nowadays. I mean it wasn't even that uncommon when I was at Hogwarts," Ginny was saying, and Teddy frowned a little. That didn't seem to have anything to do with him.
"That may be so. But it's still different to accept it about a friend than know it about his father. I don't see any point in telling him. And… I'd rather you don't tell Harry either."
"He won't bite your head off."
"I know."
"And he won't think less of you."
"I… yeah, doesn't seem like him. But…"
"I won't tell."
"Thanks."
Then, the door croaked, and Teddy frowned in the direction of Jim's bed, where the boy was already sound asleep. If only Teddy could hear the whole conversation… it seemed that Ginny now knew something important, something Teddy didn't… and something Teddy craved to know. He swore to himself he'd try to find out soon, and fell asleep, dreaming of dogs chasing something he couldn't get a hold of.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Next few days were a whirlwind of visits from the people who once knew Sirius Black – mostly, they were members of the Order, each of them carrying a status of hero. Teddy knew them all, and spent the first few visits within the hearing distance, trying to catch something that might give him a clue what was the big secret about his father. But when these first attempts failed, Teddy gradually realized that either he'd manage to somehow make Sirius tell him personally, or he wouldn't ever know.
And then, an opportunity came after the visitors stopped coming and Teddy almost forgot the secret altogether, too busy trying to follow Sirius' explanations when the older man helped him with his Transfigurations homework. Uncle George showed up and persuaded Sirius to come to his shop and help him with his new project, which was something loosely based on the old Marauders' Map. Teddy immediately came up with an excuse to go to the Diagon Alley with Sirius, and though Ginny's look was a little too knowing, she didn't say a word as the two of them Floo-ed to the wizarding district.
Sirius seemed torn between 'awed' and 'disturbed', seeing the Alley, and Teddy, though he didn't share the sentiments, understood him a little. From what he knew, Diagon Alley used to be a much smaller, private place once, a real street, but now, it was more of a district, with several streets crossing the original alley and stretching far to both sides. There were many shops, most of which sprung up only in the last decade, and also many apartment buildings, which was quite surprising for Sirius when he learned that fact. Teddy himself couldn't even imagine a smaller Diagon Alley – which was sometimes called Diagon Valley now for its size and also for its shape, reminiscent of a small, shallow valley because of some magical measures taken so it could become a bigger place.
But Sirius' initial surprise was nothing compared to his slack-jawed expression when they stood before the bright yellow building called 'Order of the Phoenix Museum – War History in Twelve Rooms'. There was a whole room dedicated to 'Harry James Potter, The Chosen One, Saviour of the Wizarding World' and in the other eleven, there was basically everything connected to the war. Tactics and information which were once classified, moving pictures showing how the Battle of Hogwarts went, replicas of horcruxes, lists of traitors, spies for the Light, Death Eaters (and how they met their end, or at least what punishment they received), and the last one was the Memorial Room, full of photographs of those who had fallen as heroes during the War. This room was the largest, and to Teddy, it was a little disturbing every time he went to this Museum, to see how many good people died – but it was history for him, nothing but names which filled him with distant awe at their bravery. Sirius took almost a whole hour to look at the smiling, waving photographs of the dead, and Teddy could see him wince here and there as people he could still talk to several days ago were now reduced to a name plate and 'Died During the Battle of Hogwarts' or 'Tortured to Death'.
After that, Sirius seemed almost too keen on leaving that bright and colourful, yet sad place, and they went for a big ice-cream to the parlour that used to be there even forty years ago when Sirius went to Hogwarts.
"At least some things never change," Sirius winked at Teddy over his chocolate and berry ice-cream, and Teddy felt that indeed, some things didn't – like the wink he knew from his Dad's photos.
Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes was a big building occupying almost half of a small alley, bright purple with large golden letters, and Teddy had to grin just at the sight of it. He loved the shop – and George was one of the coolest semi-relatives Teddy had, even if at times, he switched to a darker modus operandi as he remembered his dead twin. But those times were few and all kids of the Weasley family loved Uncle George a lot. Teddy hoped he could cheer Sirius up, as George didn't have time to come to Burrow and see Sirius since he got back.
But when George, several inches shorter and already getting on the plump side, saw Sirius, he just hugged the man warmly, and Sirius' wide eyes said he didn't expect that. The hug didn't last for more than a few seconds, and then George smiled, a little 'darkly' as Lily once put it – it was that kind of smile older people used sometimes, people who had seen the War and lost someone in those battles.
"I know it's bad now. It'll take one hell of time, but it'll all fade eventually."
Somehow, Sirius smiled, genuinely and warmly, and Teddy couldn't help but feel that these not-very-encouraging words helped the older man a lot more than all the phrases from other people. And then George put on his 'business look' and patted Sirius' shoulder, steering the man to the back of his shop:
"See, there's this thing that keeps bugging me about the Tracking Spells you might have used on the Marauders' Map..."
Teddy spent at least an hour in the shop, just looking around over the shelves full of magical toys and sweets, but also protective charms and some harmless, but useful things like Stain-Cleaning Quills. Then Sirius came out from the back of the shop and there was still a smile on his face and a glint of life in his eyes.
TBC...
CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM VERY MUCH APPRECIATED, as I'm a little stuck with this story right now...