A/N: Write a story that spans someone's entire life.
Title: Shooting Stars
Author: hpjkrowling4ever
Shooting Stars
When Teddy Lupin is born, all he knows is the love of his parents. Without even realising it, baby Teddy takes that love for granted, never knowing that within a brief month of knowing that love, it will be torn away from him
When Teddy Lupin turns one, he is an orphan. His cries of 'Mama' and 'Dada' are met with shaking heads and 'No, Teddy, it's Uncle Harry,' or 'No, Teddy, it's Granny'. But despite being firmly told otherwise, Teddy keeps crying out for Mama and Dada. Because they were there. They were just there.
When Teddy Lupin reaches the terrible twos, he knows that no one will respond to his cries of 'Mama' or 'Dada'. Despite this, he knows that he is loved. He's not quite sure why Mama and Dada aren't there, but he trusts Uncle Harry and Granny. He can never doubt their love.
Teddy develops a mischievous streak that never quite leaves him when he turns three. He only refines it in the next two years, so that when he turns five, Teddy knows the naughty corner of Uncle Harry's house very well. He also knows that if he looks hard enough at Aunt Ginny, she'll cave and give him a biscuit. He never tells Uncle Harry.
At six, Teddy feels abandoned. Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny coo over this little baby in this little cot and Teddy hates him. He hates that the baby learns that his cries of 'Mama' and 'Dada' will be answered when Teddy is now old enough to know that he'll never be able to say those words. Not to anyone alive.
But then one day, when Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny have been called away quickly by Ron, Teddy hears the baby crying. The baby's cries of 'Mama' and 'Dada' are not answered, and as the baby gets more and more hysterical, Teddy suddenly feels sad that he hated the baby so much. He walks over to the cot, stands on his tiptoes and peers over the bars. The baby stares up at him, surprised by his appearance. Teddy gives him a solemn little smile.
"It's okay," his smile grows. "Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny love you very much."
That's when he realises that this little baby shouldn't be the receptacle of all Teddy's anger for something the little baby never did. He promises himself that he will look after the baby.
Teddy's best friend is Victoire, but it is when he is seven that he realises that she's a little bit more fragile than he is. From then on, when Teddy plays with Victoire, he makes sure to be extra careful not to hurt her. He stands up for her, earning himself the nickname 'little gentleman' from the adults. Teddy likes the nickname and decides that since he's the oldest of the kids, he's going to protect them all.
It's what his Uncle Harry did for all the witches and wizards, and since Uncle Harry is the best person in the world, Teddy's going to do it for his cousins.
When Teddy is eight, Albus is born. He realises almost immediately that James is feeling the same things that he was when James was born. Teddy does his absolute best to distract James all the time, by bringing him outside and playing with him. It's that year that he and James find some of the best hidey-holes in the forest near the Potters' house in Godric's Hollow. These hidey-holes later become the meeting place for all the Weasley cousins.
At nine, Teddy decides that being a Metamorphmagus is the best thing in the world. It used to be the worst thing in the world, but now he's decided that it's the best. It's the easiest way to make adults laugh when he's in trouble (that's often), and the best way to entertain his cousins when they're all bored. It's not so fun when his nose gets stuck in a shape, but otherwise it's the best thing ever.
It's even better when he realises that little Lily loves his best because of his ability to change his hair. It annoys James and little Al until they, too, realise that Teddy only does his 'special' hair colours for them.
A year before Teddy goes to Hogwarts, the fact that he has no parents hits him hard. He's never noticed it before, not properly, though he knows about his parents. He's sitting in his bedroom at the Potters' house, curled into a ball, when Harry walks in.
"Ted," his godfather sighs upon seeing him. Instead of saying anything more, Harry walks over to his bed and lies beside him. Teddy uncurls himself and puts his head on Harry's chest.
"I miss them. Not them because I didn't know them, but the idea of them, you know?" And when he says this, he knows that Harry does know, and he curls himself tighter against Harry's chest. His godfather's hand strokes his hair, which turns black.
"I know, Ted, I know," Harry murmurs.
"I can't even miss them properly, because I don't know them!" Teddy bursts out, hitting his fist against his mattress. Harry hums under his breath for a moment, before suddenly sitting up and pulling Teddy with him.
"I think you're old enough to come with me," Harry says cryptically. Teddy frowns, but follows his godfather outside the house. For once, he doesn't protest when Harry wraps his arms around him and they Apparate away.
Teddy realises immediately where they are when the world rights itself. It's on the grounds of Hogwarts, but he's not sure where on the grounds it is. He looks around – he can see the castle, but he's still confused.
"Harry?" he asks. His godfather puts a finger to his mouth and leads him into the woods. Teddy feels a rather unearthly silence fall onto them, and doesn't say a word.
Suddenly, they come across a large clearing, where the trees bend over and the light streams through the leaves, turning the clearing a golden-green. Beautiful bluebells grow all over the ground, and Teddy feels like he's stepped into a different world. He soon realises why they're there; there are gravestones dotted around the clearing, in no discernible order. He swallows and glances up at Harry.
Instead of speaking, Harry brings him to the other end of the clearing, and kneels in front of two gravestones. Teddy catches sight of Remus John Lupin and Nymphadora 'Dora' Tonks before his vision blurs. He wipes his eyes angrily.
"Hey Remus, hey Tonks," Harry is saying. "I've brought someone special to see you today. He's been missing you recently, and I wanted to introduce him to you."
Harry takes Teddy's hand and Teddy kneels next to Harry on unsteady knees.
"What do I say?" he asks.
"They're your parents. Tell them anything you want," Harry answers. "I tell my parents everything I think they'd want to know." Harry pushes himself up and ruffles Teddy's hair before going to another gravestone in the clearing, leaving Teddy alone.
"Erm, hi. Hi Mum, hi Dad. Er – I don't know if you can hear me, but –" Teddy pauses, feeling his eyes well up again. He hisses angrily under his breath. "Why?" he cries out. He doesn't know where all this anger comes from, but all he wants to do is get angry at them. "Why'd you leave? I just – I want you with me, here! Not wherever you are! I'm your son! And I've got Ginny, and Harry, and James and Al and Lily and Victoire and Dominique and Rose and Hugo and Louis and Fred and Roxie but I don't have you!" Teddy can feel the tears running down his face, but he ignores them. It feels good to finally get this out and feel like his parents can hear him. "I want to be a son, not a godson, or a cousin, or a pseudo-cousin or whatever the hell else. Mummy, Daddy –" he whispers brokenly. He stumbles up and races over to Harry, who's standing a few metres away. He wraps his arms tightly around his godfather, who's the next best thing to a father he has, and sobs.
But once Harry's calmed him down, and the tears aren't pouring down so fast, he murmurs a thank you to his godfather, because at age ten, it was finally time for him to meet his parents and tell them what he wanted to all along.
Hogwarts is the best thing that ever happens to Teddy. He loves the castle; it's his second home. He's in Hufflepuff, and he gets to meet all the teachers his godfather talks about all the time. He writes enthusiastic letters home and throws himself into everything that comes his way. He gains a reputation as a bit of a prankster, and he knows that his gran's half-exasperated, half-delighted with the letters of rebuke that come her way. He excels in DADA and Transfiguration, and McGonagall adores him, which allows him to get away with a lot. Potions is his favourite subject, though, and for some reason he and the portrait of Severus Snape hit it off and he unofficially becomes Snape's protégé. He knows that Harry's not quite sure what to think of that budding relationship.
He's a Keeper on his house Quidditch team, and as he gets older, he steadily becomes the school's heartthrob. Once Victoire arrives, she joins Gryffindor as a Chaser and they develop a brilliant rivalry. It's the matches with Gryffindor he enjoys the most, especially once the rest of his family starts arriving at Hogwarts. It's like playing Quidditch in the Weasleys' back garden all over again.
His first girlfriend, Yvonne, is pretty much everything he hoped for in a girlfriend, except for the fact that she's not Victoire. It takes him his full seven years at Hogwarts to work it out, but finally he catches on – though it's after a particularly vicious pranking streak against Victoire's boyfriend that he works it out. His best friend, Kieran, heaves a huge sigh of relief when he works it out. He thinks that most of Hogwarts does as well.
The thing that Teddy loves the most, though, isn't the friends he makes, or the fun he has, or the lessons, or the pranks, or the gossip. It's the fact he's so close to his parents. He visits them three times each week, and he forms a sort of one-sided relationship with them. When he brings Kieran to meet them, his best friend doesn't make a single joke and kneels seriously at their graves and promises to be the best friend possible to him. He thinks that he should have realised that he loved Victoire a lot sooner than he did because she's the only girl he ever brings to his parents' graves.
When he graduates with his Dux in Potions, he can almost feel them there with him.
It takes a long time for Teddy to decide what he wants to do with his life. He spends a year shadowing Harry, but decides that being an Auror really isn't cut out for him. Age twenty, he migrates to Ginny in the Daily Prophet, and gets a job as a junior assistant. He sticks it for two years before he bails.
It's a conversation with thirteen-year-old Lily, though, which pushes him in the right direction.
"Teddy?" she asks. It's Christmas, and they're both lying next to the fire blazing in the Potters' grate. He can hear his gran and Ginny laughing in the kitchen, and James and Al are arguing about something upstairs, though by the sounds of it, it's one of their friendlier arguments – they're still calling each other by their first names.
"Yes, Lil?" he rolls over onto his side and looks at Lily. She'll be a stunner when she's older. Her red hair has this shine to it that Ginny's has when she brushes up for Ministry events. Her eyes shine with a light of their own. Teddy's happy that he's not at Hogwarts with her, because any boy who so much as looked at her would hear all about it from him. Of Al, James and himself, he's the most protective of her.
"D'you ever think about how lonely Ollivander's got to be?" she asks. Teddy's not sure where the question comes from.
"Why d'you ask?"
"S'just we were in Diagon Alley getting present and stuff, and his shop was open and all and he was in it, but he was all by himself. No one ever talks to Ollivander," Lily answers pensively. "I made Daddy go into it with me and have a chat with him. I gave him some tinsel."
"That's very kind of you, Lil. I'm sure he appreciated it," Teddy answers.
The conversation stops there, because Harry strides in and they play a game of charades, which ends up involving the whole family. Victoire rocks up halfway through the evening, and Teddy's sure it's one of the best Christmases he's ever had.
But it's when he goes back to his flat in Diagon Alley that he remembers Lily's question. He detours by Ollivander's, where he sees the old man sitting on a rickety chair in his shop. He's polishing a wand, and some tinsel hangs across the counter. Teddy pushes open the door and it's the start of something brilliant.
Teddy is twenty-seven when he finishes his apprenticeship with Ollivander. It's probably one of the proudest moments in his life when Ollivander changes the sign on his door to say "Ollivander & Lupin, Wandmakers". He knows that he adds some vibrancy to Ollivander's. He undertakes a massive spring clean, and turns the shop into a more open, bright place. He and Ollivander find kindred souls in each other; Ollivander's wife and family was killed in the war with Grindelwald. He's a different mentor than Harry is to Teddy, more like a grandfather, and Teddy loves Ollivander.
Making wands and then selling them is a wonderful experience. He loves watching young children wave a wand for the first time, and feel the thrum of their magic through their arm. He loves how their faces light up and grins spread across their faces. Equally, he loves seeing people's faces relax in relief when he manages to fix their broken wands.
Ollivander's is his third home.
He proposes to Victoire when he turns thirty. She's just started working as a freelance play critic, having spent a while at The Daily Prophet building up a reputation. Teddy thinks that she's quite a vicious critic, but stays silent. It's wiser that way, and in fact she's hysterically funny in her criticisms.
Of course, Teddy tries to make the proposal as romantic as possible. He knows that Victoire's a romantic soul, for all her hard exterior, and so he brings her to her favourite play one evening, and then wrangles an invitation to visit the actors backstage. After that, they escape to a small, inexpensive (but excellent) restaurant in Diagon Alley that had been their favourite teenage haunt. The manager, who knows them intimately, gives them a wonderful meal at half price. Teddy then Apparates himself and Victoire to the beach near Shell Cottage, where they love going regularly. It's there, as they build a sandcastle and then watch the light of the setting sun dance on the waves, that Teddy proposes to Victoire.
She says yes, and the emotions that overwhelm Teddy then are as strong as when he first met his parents.
Their first child is called Remus. He's born when he turns thirty-three, and is a quiet, serious little baby. For the first time, Teddy understands why his parents sacrificed themselves, why they went out and fought. He brings his gurgling son to his parents' grave and apologises to them for not understanding before. He thinks that they'll understand.
Their second child, born three years later, is called Zoe. Zoe, from the outset, is radically different to her brother. She's full of life and noise, and fascinates Remus, who takes a great shine to her. Often, Teddy finds himself moving Remus' cot into Zoe's nursery because his son refuses to go to sleep without being able to see his sister.
Every night, when Teddy curls up next to his wife, he's convinced that his life could not get much better than this.
Of course, there's heartbreak as well. Teddy doesn't know if he'll be able to feel again when his grandmother dies. He spends days locked up in the wand shop, throwing himself into his work. It's Harry and Ollivander combined who bring him out of his funk. They bring him to Andromeda's grave, and Teddy falls to the ground sobbing beside it. He's never felt such pain in his life, and he doesn't know if he'll ever recover.
But Teddy does recover. For a while, he goes to Andromeda's grave every day. It's there that he meets a frail Narcissa Malfoy and Draco Malfoy. He's met Scorpius; he's Al's best friend. He and Narcissa form a bond between them that's soon broken by her death. He goes to her funeral, which is much sadder than Andromeda's. He comes away from it and hugs Harry hard because he loves Harry like a father and isn't sure what he'll do when Harry dies.
But of course Harry does die and Teddy finds out. It takes him a lot longer to recover from his godfather's death, and he doesn't ever really fully recover. Victoire is there for him the whole way through, and he's never been more thankful for his wife.
When Teddy is seventy-seven, and he's standing in front of Harry's grave, he discovers just how fragile life is.
Teddy dies just after his one hundred and fifth birthday. He doesn't know what the reaction of his family is, but when he opens his eyes, he's standing at a train station.
There's a compartment right in front of him, which for some reason he knows he has to walk into. When he does, he's met with a wide smile from a rather dapper man sitting in there, and a laugh from a woman with bright pink hair.
"Hello, Teddy," his mother says.
Death is a whole new adventure for Teddy.
A/N: Hope you enjoy it!