Four
The air is misty, cool, and black, and Jonathan tugs on his hand as they gaze upon the casket.
The sun shines above them, dimly, dully, in the cloudy blue sky, but all Teddy can see is the black shroud laid, spread out, before him, covering, blanketing her up, the short little black dress of his wife, accenting her sad eyes and pale cheeks. He cannot think of how beautiful she is today; she only looks like another tragedy. The blackened bruises of his grandmother's skin swim before his eyes – though they are no longer visible to him, they are always, always there, the spots where she was too frail, where she bruised much too easily. And then he looks down, to see himself and the child in his arms, the two of them wearing black robes, formal robes. Jonathan had complained about having to put them on…
His wife had asked if it was prudent to bring him here, such a little boy, to a funeral like this. Wasn't he too young to understand? Wouldn't he interrupt the service? Wouldn't it have been better to leave him with his aunt Dominique, like his little infant sister? He was only four…
But Teddy remembers being four.
-x-
It is sunny, and the air tastes of strawberries, that day, when they have somehow slipped away from the Burrow and the bonds of supervision, into a field nearby, a patch of hillside outside the old apple orchard where wild berries grow in tangled, unorganized lines.
There is something tangible in the feeling of freedom, the taste of it on the tongue, and they must feel it then, little Victoire who is almost three and Teddy who is almost five, as they laugh and play and roll about the grass.
It probably only lasts for about five minutes, but to him, then, it feels like hours before Fleur comes running out of the house, screaming for her daughter, her long silvery hair flowing behind her. Bill follows along in Fleur's wake, laughing at the little runaways when they are spotted, but his wife can only gasp like a wide-mouthed fish, a hand over her heart.
Victoire runs to them immediately, all thought of freedom evaporated with the sight of her maman and daddy, whose leg she clings to as soon as she reaches him, as her mother scolds her in a mixture of French and English, the best indicator, as Teddy, who trudges along behind his friend, knows, that Fleur is upset.
"Victoire, you must never do that again, chérie; you must never run off without telling me or your daddy…" She goes off in French, incomprehensibly, waving her hands, before reverting back to English. "… good children must always tell their parents where they are going…"
"But Teddy doesn't have a mummy and a daddy," Victoire says, curiously, taking her face out of her father's leg, her eyes blue and curious, as though she has only thought of this for the first time.
"Teddy must tell his grandmother, then," Fleur says, looking down at him, not unkindly, her anger quickly dissipating.
"Why?" Victoire asks, like she has before, about so many other things, trivial things, in exactly the same unconcerned manner.
Bill bends down, so one knee is in the dewy grass, so he is on their level. "Teddy is an orphan, honey. But he's got his grandmother to care for him and love him and read him bedtime stories…"
And even though Bill's scarred face – which has never really frightened him; he was too used to it – is torn with pity and compassion, even though he reaches out his arms for the little orphan boy, pulls him into a hug along with his daughter, this is the first time Teddy really remembers feeling different, really remembers feeling alone…
"Am I an orphan, Grandma?" he asks her, later that night, when the sky is twinkling with little stars, when she comes to tuck him in.
She stops a minute, looks at him, her face suddenly lined and old. It scares him.
She has told him before about his mother and father, about how brave they were, about how they had to fight against Voldemort, for him, to keep him safe, because they loved him so much… but they had not been able to come back, though she knew that they wished so much they had been. Even at four, he knows that, because that is his world, that is his reality. But he has never before realized how few children lived in such a place as this, how few lacked mummies and daddies to run screaming after them when they slip away…
Teddy has never before realized that his world is not the world, has never before attached the word orphan to his own skin.
Maybe the words that describe all that come to him later – but those feelings, he can trace back to that moment, to the weight in his chest, the tears in his eyes, brushed away with his clammy little hands.
"Yes," his grandmother breathes, destroying the stillness of the room; he watches as dust spins in the air. "But Teddy, honey, sweetie…" She has never used such words as this before when she takes him up in her thin, bony arms. "… They loved you so much, Teddy, so much. Like I do. And I'll always be there for you. Always."
"Promise?" he asks, like a childhood chant, as he smiles, snug in the comforting warmth of her embrace.
She smiles back, stretched a bit, perhaps, a touch of sadness in her eyes, but a smile nonetheless. "Promise."
-x-
"Daddy?" Jonathan says, after the service, as they are walking out. People keep coming over to seek him out, tell him how sorry they are, and though he knows they mean well, he'd like nothing better, right now, than to just go home. "Why did Grandma have to leave?"
He hesitates, begins to answer; she was old, he almost says, old and sick and tired, that it was her time to go. But then he thinks of his parents, young and brave and seemingly so infinite, thinks how much he hated to be told, as a child, that it was their time to go, by strangers, for his grandmother never said it.
"I don't know, Jonathan," he tells the boy, his son. "We'll all miss her, won't we?"
Jonathan nods.
"But you don't have to worry," Teddy goes on. "Because I'll always be here for you, and I'll always love you. So will Maman. Promise."
He takes the boy up his arms, like his grandmother once did to him. It might seem like an empty, broken echo, now, a morbid one, proved false this very day… except that it can seem to him nothing but the purest truth. She loved him. She loved them all. Teddy knows that.
As Jonathan puts his head on Teddy's shoulder and Victoire places a hand on her son's forehead, Teddy thinks that like four is not too young to begin to feel real loss, it is not too young to understand real love.