Many thanks to emansil_12 for all of her help, beta work and suggestions. I just wish that I had had enough time to include all of her ideas, this would have been the better story for them. Thanks also to the mods for running this bigbang for a wonderful and under-represented pairing in fandom.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. All works posted at this community were created entirely for fun without making any profit. No copyright infringement is intended.
Warnings/content: Intimations of homophobia, oral, anal, angsty.
Teddy
He stared at the monument to Harry's parents. There was a similar statue to his own parents in Hogsmeade. As a tiny kid, he'd kind of thought that was what real parents were: a statue and a plaque. He touched Lily Potter's ankle for luck and opened the garden gate.
The gravelled path ran between high holly hedges, skirting around the cottage where Lily and James had died. Behind it there was an orchard, just a small one with low, young apple and cherry trees in it. The blossom had fallen and fruit was just beginning to come out as tiny apple-shaped buds. He inhaled the scents of England. Beyond the orchard was the house. Motionless, he stared at it and tried to decide.
He hadn't been sure whether he'd be welcome here. While he'd been gone, Harry had owled him regularly and – just as he had throughout Teddy's childhood – he'd remembered every birthday and significant anniversary. It seemed to Teddy that if he was going to be welcome anywhere in Britain then it would be in Godric's Hollow. He sure as hell wasn't going to risk going anywhere near Shell Cottage.
The church had been booked for a Saturday in June a little over three years ago. It had been packed with the cream of Wizarding society (according to the Prophet) and Victoire had looked radiant. Teddy hadn't seen any of this for himself because he had spent the morning curled up under his bed, willing himself to move, to dress, to travel to the church. Those were the things which he had had to do, and yet they were the things which he could not possibly do. Then there had been the knock at his door. In a panic, he had grabbed his wand and purse and Apparated to the first place he thought of. He had opened his eyes on a ferry which was just about to set off for Sweden.
The life he'd made for himself in Finland – which was where he'd eventually ended up – had been comfortable enough but lonely. It had taken him a long time to understand why he had run from the closest thing to family that he had ever had. It took even longer for him to begin his hesitant explanations to anyone else. The first person had been Harry. He had filled parchment after parchment before setting fire to them all. Eventually he had found the words, written them down, and owled them quickly before he could change his mind.
The reply had taken a week or two to come, but when it had, it had said:
Teddy,
That must have been a difficult letter to write. Thanks for trusting us. It makes perfect sense. You need to stop blaming yourself now. We'd love to see you some time. Please don't stay away for ever,
yours with love,
Harry and Ginny
That had given him the courage he needed to make contact with Victoire and to try to explain it all to her. She deserved at least that.
He didn't just have to explain to her that he was gay; he had to find reasons for why he had hidden that and why he had tried to hide behind her. He hoped she was happy now. He really did like her, but he didn't expect that he would ever see her again. He had never received a reply from her.
There were no lights on in Harry's house because it was the middle of the day. He wondered whether they were all having lunch in there together, round the kitchen table which he remembered so well. Perhaps Harry was the only one at home. His invitation had been so vague. Not an invitation really, Teddy had invited himself, Harry had only agreed.
He had agreed, though. He had offered Teddy a place to call home as well as a base from which to launch his new British life. Teddy took a deep breath and forced his feet in front of each other. He kept on down the path with his eyes on the door knocker. It was brass and shaped like a phoenix. He pictured himself grasping it and rapping firmly with it. Turning around and running away was an option he could just as easily envision.
In the end, he didn't get the chance to do either, because the door opened before he reached it and Ginny came racing out, with a young woman running behind her. Ginny embraced Teddy and he sank into her arms.
"So good to see you again," Ginny said.
Teddy looked over her shoulder at the second woman, wondering who she was as she grinned at him.
"We're really glad you're back," she said.
Then Harry appeared in the doorway and put a hand on her shoulder and Teddy realised that she must be Lily Luna. Only it couldn't be, because Lily Luna was a little girl. Harry never held onto anyone else that way, though. Her eyes were the same. Her hair was shorter and darker but similar. She had breasts. Little Lily Luna couldn't have breasts.
"Ok, you can put my wife down now," Harry said with a chuckle.
Ginny wiped at her eyes as she backed off. Teddy looked away, embarrassed. He held out his hand for Harry to shake it and found himself pulled into rough, manly hug. That didn't go on for as long and included lots of back-slapping. It wasn't necessary, Teddy wasn't about to mistake contact with Harry for anything sexual. Then Lily Luna looked as though she was about to hug him, too. Teddy looked at Harry. He didn't know whether he was allowed to touch Harry's daughter, what with the breasts and everything. He decided to ignore her development and ruffled her hair as though she were still eight.
"I don't know where the boys are," Ginny was saying as they walked into the house. "Are you hungry? What was your journey like? Harry still has trouble with Portkeys, don't you darling? Shall I put the kettle on?"
He smiled and nodded or shook his head, allowing her to fill the silence, not sure what to say himself.
"I wonder whether the boys have finally decided where you're going to sleep," Ginny mused. "Just pop your bag down here for now. They both wanted you in with them and they said they had some way of settling it."
"Some things never change!" Harry said with a chuckle.
Teddy found his eyes heating and filling up. Because it had all changed completely since the two boys had been scamps and he had been their honorary cousin. Did they not know about his sexuality or did they not care? He would have been more comfortable with a room of his own, but the acceptance was so touching that he wasn't about to mention any of that, nor reject the offer.
He sat and chatted and drank his tea for a while. They needed to plan his re-entry into society. Bill might be ready to hex his head off (and according to Ginny he still was) but everyone else was apparently open to persuasion.
Just then there was a noise on the stairs.
"At last!" Ginny said. "Did you not hear me calling, boys?"
Teddy was relieved to see that Albus was still unmistakably the same person he had been when Teddy had left the country (although he was not still wearing the page boy suit of course). He was taller, skinnier and there was a dusting of stubble on his chin, but he was easily recognisable.
"I lost", Albus said with a familiar lip-twist. He leaned over the kitchen table and stuck out his hand to Teddy. "You have to sleep with my brother, I'm afraid."
Teddy carefully grasped Albus' hand and grinned back at him. Suddenly, though, he was flooded with an awareness of the possible double meaning of that sentence when a golden young man strode into the room, shirtless, looking like a magazine spread. One of those in the secret magazines he'd made himself leave behind in Finland so that he could have a clean slate in this new life. Teddy swallowed. The gorgeous vision had James' face and his pale blue eyes. He had his bright red hair, but it wasn't just on his head anymore, it was all across his chest and trailed down to his waistband like an arrow. Teddy worked hard at not staring.
"Will you get dressed?" Ginny snapped. "We've got a visitor!"
"It's only Teddy," James whined. "Teddy doesn't mind." He turned slightly as though he was going to ask Teddy whether he did mind.
Teddy didn't know what his own answer would have been if he had been asked, but luckily Ginny intervened first. "Well, I mind! You're showing us all up. You can't have run out of clean shirts already, I only did a wash yesterday!"
James just sighed and left the room, yelling out, "Welcome back, Teddy! With you in a minute!"
Albus and Lily grinned like Teddy had seen them do as tiny children, in that way which meant that they were happy because they weren't the ones in trouble.
"We made scones," Lily said excitedly. "And last Autumn I made jam and there's still some left, isn't there, Mum? Damson jam. Do you want some?"
The Potters were all lovely to him and he didn't think that he deserved it, but he was grateful to accept it. James looked far less distracting and more familiar when he came back again fully dressed. Teddy's duffle bag was sent up to James' room and he was allowed to acclimatise himself to family life again.
It wasn't until dinner that he started to think through the implications of sharing a bedroom with James. He thought he caught the eldest Potter glancing at him across the table, but that could well have been his imagination. James was a man now, just as Lily was a woman. He had missed the transformation. He didn't know how to respond to the results.
There was alcohol after dinner and a fireside armchair for him to sit in as he caught up on family news, and they chatted long into the night, putting the world to rights,. Teddy went to bed before James did and fell straight to sleep.
He woke in the morning, with his eyelids slowly unpeeling themselves from each other. He found himself looking straight at the backs of James' bare legs. James stood in the middle of his bedroom, on the narrow strip of carpet between the beds, wearing nothing but boxer shorts. Teddy hadn't woken with an erection, but he felt a sudden stiffening now. Unaware of his audience, James stretched and yawned, showing off his muscular back. Teddy closed his eyes. This was James he was looking at, Harry's son. He thought hard about the ginger toddler James had once been, with a nappy full of sand and a cheeky grin. James had welcomed him, trusted him. This was no way to repay that. And yet his lids refused to stay together.
James turned towards the window, giving Teddy a profile view of the shape of his body inside his underwear. The sun glinted on the red hair on his flat belly. James ran one hand down his opposite arm, giving Teddy goose-bumps. Then he walked out of the room and Teddy tried not to watch his buttocks as they shifted inside the cotton with each stride.
Teddy rolled over, pressing his erection into the mattress. No. This was not going to happen. He was not going to destroy his relationship with this family all over again.
Teddy concentrated his attention on Harry and Ginny. He had long, serious talks with them both. They began to take him round to see other Weasleys and influential friends. They spent Saturday in Ron's box at the Chudleigh Canons ground. The team played painfully badly, but it was worth being there for the welcome, and to watch Ron sinking his head in his hands over and over again, claiming, "They're never usually this bad."
"They are," Ginny whispered.
George even gave him a part-time job at the Wheezes branch in Godric's Hollow, but the expansive generosity was accompanied by a growled "Don't make me regret this," in his ear.
It was only at bedtime and in the mornings that Teddy had to muster his self-control. As long as he didn't watch James dressing and undressing then he could convince himself that he was going to be alright.
After a couple of weeks, things were going so well that Teddy was included in the Potters' invitation to Seamus Finnigan's birthday party. Ginny warned him not to drink anything Seamus offered him. Her children had clearly been given this warning many times before judging by their smirks.
James had just started Apothecary training. His classes on the Friday of the party had gone on so long that he'd had to meet them there after the party was already well underway. When he arrived he slumped down in the chair next to Teddy and sighed deeply.
Adults Teddy had known all his life were behaving like adolescents all round him. He had slunk into a dark corner to hide. He knew that he was a grown-up, too, these days – hell, even James was one strictly speaking – and he knew that sometimes he got drunk and made a bit of a fool of himself, but he couldn't help thinking of these people as the real grown-ups, the parents, the establishment. This was their one night of the year, apparently, for completely reverting to an adolescent idiocy which he knew that, in reality, they were unlikely to have actually achieved during their own teenage years amid the dangers which they had faced then. Ginny might have warned her kids off Seamus' home brew, but she'd sunk a good few glasses of it herself and was now performing a very loud and tuneless version of I'm only a Hag from Harleston, but my Teeth are Made of Gold with two of her brothers.
Teddy felt like the foundations of his life were shifting and losing solidity. His steady people, the ones who had always formed the bedrock of his life, were behaving recklessly. He needed their stability, more so now that he had behaved so badly himself; they were meant to be the ones setting him right again.
He was grateful for James' company. He knew where he was with James, even if where he was, was in the centre of a battle against his irresponsible desires.
James closed his eyes. "Think I'm gonna fall asleep," he said,
"You drunk?" Teddy asked, panicked. He didn't want to have to look after a drunk James, but there was nobody else there who was sober enough to do it. He was pretty sure that he wouldn't take advantage, but then at one time he had been certain that he was going to marry Victoire, so he no longer trusted himself entirely.
James lifted the bottle he was holding. "Nah. I'm on the water. End of a long week, that's all."
"Doing something new always takes it out of you." Teddy nodded.
"Hope that's it. Can't keep this up for three years if it's all gonna be like this." James closed his eyes.
James leaned back on the chair and his T-shirt rode up a little over his flat abdomen. Teddy couldn't tear his gaze from the corona of auburn hair around his belly button, much as he knew that he had to. James tilted his head towards the ceiling and, when Teddy managed to look up, he found himself trapped there by the accentuated sight of James' Adam's apple jutting from his throat.
"I'm not up to this," James said. "Gonna go home. Leave them to it."
"I'll come with you."
"You don't have to."
"I don't mind. Let's get you home." He grasped at the opportunity to escape, only realising with a sickening lurch of his stomach as he stood that it would result in him being alone in Harry's house with James.
In order to get to the Floo, they had to push past Hermione who was teaching Dean and Neville to cancan. James raised his eyes and giggled at them as he shoved them to the side. Teddy averted his eyes, wondering how he was ever going to face any of the three of them again.
Teddy woke at dawn to a silent house. He wondered what had woken him, then felt the shift of his mattress as someone sat on the foot end of his bed. He hoped to goodness it wasn't one of his inebriated elders come to lecture, console, or convert him. He opened his eyes.
James was naked. The curtains were half open and the orange light of sunrise fell onto his skin. Bare skin. So young. Manly somehow at the same time. He had a serious expression. For a moment they stared at each other. Teddy began to wonder whether James was sleep-walking. Then James leaned forward.
"They'll be sleeping it off for hours," he said softly.
He ran his hand over the blankets which covered Teddy's shin.
"They'll never know," he said.
Teddy's mouth dried. He wondered whether he was having a rather inconvenient erotic dream about the boy in the bed next to his. He didn't want to speak in case James heard him calling out inappropriate phrases in his sleep.
"Don't you want to?" James asked.
"Want to what?" Teddy asked, needing to get this straight.
"I'm cold," James said instead of answering. "Can I climb in?"
Teddy looked over to James' bed and wondered why he'd got out of it. Then he nodded, slightly and slowly. James stood, very deliberately, and Teddy watched his dark pink dick in its nest of ginger curls, bouncing against James' pale thigh as he walked the length of the bed. Teddy scooted back towards the wall and pressed his back against it as James lifted the covers and slid in underneath.
"I'm not a virgin," James said. "I know my own mind. I know what I like." He rolled towards Teddy and fitted his body to Teddy's front.
"What do you like?" Teddy's voice croaked. His hand rose, but he made it hover over James' skin, did not allow it to touch. James didn't feel cold at all. The warmth of his body heated Teddy's chest and belly and thigh.
"I like you, Teddy." James' arm went over Teddy's side towards his back. "I want you. You want me." There was a pause, James squeezed tighter. "You do want me."
"I do." Teddy admitted defeat.
James' face split into a grin, but Teddy only glimpsed it for an instance, because then they were kissing. He finally allowed his hand to fall onto James' naked skin. James' hands pushed up Teddy's T-shirt. There was a brief gust of cold, and then heated skin warmed him. Even with James so close, so naked and so willing, Teddy's arousal felt inappropriate. He edged back. James grabbed Teddy's hand and pulled it down onto his own full erection. That was quick, Teddy thought, until he realised that he was the same. James' taut, hot skin was in his palm. Slowly, he closed his hand around it.
He was so focussed on James' flesh, that he only noticed that he was now almost naked, too, with his shirt covering only his elbow, when James took a firm hold of Teddy's cock. He pulled up with determined strokes, and ran his thumb over the head. After a few minutes spent surrendering to the bliss, then Teddy thought to move his hand, too. Neither of them lasted long, but for as long as they did last, the pleasure was blinding, deafening, overwhelming.
They dozed. He thought that they had only dozed for a few minutes. The poke of James' new erection against his thigh woke him. Teddy found he was hard again, too. They were lying hot and close and naked. James' face was beside his, just staring at him. Teddy planted a little kiss on the end of his nose.
James chuckled. Then his face stiffened into an expression of utter seriousness. "Please. Teddy. Can we...? I mean, I want to... I want you to..." He swallowed. He was blushing.
Through a mind addled by sleep and lust, Teddy found himself answering, "Anything."
"Have sex. I want you to go inside me." He looked away, as though it were a more embarrassing thing to say those words than it had been to seduce Teddy in the first place.
"You've done this before?" Teddy checked.
"I told you, I'm not a virgin," James snapped. Then he looked appalled and his hand flew to his mouth. "Sorry," he said. "Bit nervous." He sniffed at his fingers. "Your come smells great."
"What are you nervous about?"
"That you might say no." James looked intensely into Teddy's eyes.
"How could I do that?"
