1st September 2015

The music is blindingly loud, but he doesn't have it any other way. He flicks his wrist against the desk in time to the snare drum, nods his head from side to side with the guitar riff. The vocals kick in and he swirls in his deskchair, stands, stalks across his bedroom in what he approximates to be a kind of sexy way.

He always props his trunk against the door when he starts dancing, make sure Gran can't come in. He doesn't care who hears him sing, but the dancing part is something he's still working on getting over. He'd prefer to be a good dancer than be a dancer that doesn't care how he looks, but he reckons that ship sailed long ago. This morning, the trunk is still propped against the door, but he had to push it into place; it's full of clothes and books. The weight of it is exciting, but strained his back a bit.

It's Muse today, loud and drum-heavy, their Drones era. He loves drums, would have learnt them if both Gran and Harry hadn't been so staunchly against it. He grins as the second verse kicks in, the vocals accentuated on the backbeat with the drummer, and he-

Pause. He takes off his headphones, taps the walls- a failed try, again, with the words this time- 'Silencio', 'silencio', 'silencio', 'silencio', all the way round, on the ceiling and on the floor, and sends his Spotify to his speakers-

-and he sings along.

"Your m-i-i-i-i-ind... is just the program... and I'm the vi-i-i-irus-"

Matt Bellamy hisses the 's' in virus, then wobbles his whole tone around for 'I'm changing the station', and while Teddy can do both those things in his voice, he finds it way more fun to do in Matt Bellamy's voice, and so he does. His vocal chords always buzz a little when he transforms them mid-song, and it kind of hurts, but he doesn't want to skip back the song and he wants to stay on beat.

"I'll turn you into a-"

Teddy stops and listens for a word, then continues. He has no clue what he says at that point. 'Spectral?' He pulls out his iPhone (brand new, a 6 or something, he keeps running his thumb over the bevelled edges) and googles the lyrics. 'Super drone'. That's a stupid lyric, he thinks, still idly singing. The phone buzzes and a notification pops down, and it's from 'gran' and it says 'Breakfast?'

Teddy winces. Gran hates using her phone, so she's probably already called, knocked, sent the- he opens his curtains a little and yes, Dave the owl's sitting there, looking more than a little put out. It taps on the window with its beak again. Teddy closes the curtains, pauses the song (he waits 'til the end of the chorus), removes the silencing charms, kicks his trunk, hops, curses, shoves his really heavy trunk out of the way, and then takes the stairs down two at a time with the confidence of someone who's been doing that ever since his legs were long enough to do it.

He only trips a little bit, and then he's there, in the kitchen, smiling at the Weird Sisters on the radio, sliding open the bread box, popping it in the toaster, and Gran is there watching him, eating her own careful porridge, pausing between bites to signify she's about to say something. Teddy scrapes Nutella on his toast and waits for her to speak.

"I knocked," she says, "and I sent David up."

"Sorry Gran," Teddy says. "I had muffled it, but I saw Dave."

"All packed?"

"Just got to grab my toothbrush."

Gran tilts her head in that way she does when she knows you're wrong, and Teddy figures it out before she even starts talking.

"And my broom," he says, biting into his toast before walking out to the living room.

"Harry has asked to take you," Gran calls after him. Teddy frowns as he jams his broom back into its case.

"How come?" he asks, propping the broom near the doorway.

"I believe he wants you to take care of Albus on the way there."

Teddy walks back into the kitchen. "I forgot he's a first year!"

Gran smiles, twirls her porridge spoon. "It really has gone so fast. I recall him running into-" she points with the spoon- "that cabinet right there. He couldn't have been older than four, running around the place." She smiles absently, in that way she does when she's about to go sad. Teddy cuts across it.

"Are you coming with?"

Gran looks up. "Well! Only if you want me to."

"Of course I do," Teddy insists, waving his toast in the air and self-consciously lowering it when he saw a glob of Nutella hit the countertop. Gran doesn't seem to have noticed. She's looking back at the kitchen cabinet. Teddy hoped this wasn't one of her sad days. He bites into his toast again, taps a rhythm against the countertop, cool granite warming as he tries to copy some documentary he'd seen about shuffle drumming with only four fingers. Eventually, Gran looks up.

"Oh! Harry said he'd be here in-"

She glances up at the clock, a hefty ancient clockwork box that was usually correct, but sometimes resented being taken for granted and would display ridiculous times to ensure you were paying attention. It also didn't like being used as Teddy's metronome, and was ticking off-beat to mess with him.

"Thirty minutes! I lost track of-" Gran stands, flicks her wand to send her porridge bowl to the sink, practically launches herself into the living room, presumably to fix her hair at the big mirror. She's gotten obsessed about her hair going grey, has started to dye it. Teddy had initially made fun of her for being so worried about it, but about a month later, just before she redyed it, Teddy noticed her hair greying in a single silver streak down the front, and had been struck with the reminder of how much she really did look like her sister at times. Gran hated looking like Bellatrix. Teddy had dropped it, much like he manages to drop the toast face down on the floor as he tries to put it back on the plate. He sighs loudly- his wand's upstairs- grabs some kitchen roll and wipes it up hastily, before taking the stairs up two at a time.

Wand- he grabs it— trunk- he opens it, jams a fistful of boxers in, closes it, taps it with the wand and it floats downstairs— backpack- a battered thing, more patches than fabric, and he checks he's got his charger and his DS and his DS's charger and he puts his pencil case in there, his new tuner, a weird glass chicken that Victoire got him that looks like the Nandos logo, chucks it all in the bag and zips it and throws it in the air and hits it with a spell mid-throw and it goes off too— his guitar case, some replacement strings, a loose handful of the picks he can find on the floor inamongst the clothes and trash he's kind of piled on the side as a laundry pile, and he picks that up and puts it on like a backpack and then takes it off and puts on his pin-covered denim jacket and puts his guitar back on, and—

He almost forgot something.

Some things.

They're so special he can't, mentally, include them in a list of 'things'.

He picks up Old Ted. Rubbed fur, poorly mended seams, nothing much to it besides it being an old teddy bear. But Grandad gave it to him and it made it more than a baggy bit of fabric and stuffing made for Toys R Us. It was the last of a man he never knew, the only gift he had of his. He kisses Old Ted's scruffy head, makes the bed, nestles him in a pile of pillows so he watches over the room. Old Ted doesn't go to Hogwarts. Old Ted is the sentinel of his room when he's gone.

But on his chest of drawers, pride of place, centered- that did go with him.

It was in a tarnished silver frame. He owned silver polish but he never used it enough and kind of preferred the oxidised look anyway. It wasn't his only copy of the image, it wasn't even the original because that was too reverent to keep out, to be faded in the sun.

His parents have him in their arms, squished in together so they can kind of share him, and you can see the tail end of him shifting his hair from red to blue. Mum's smiling at the camera, a kind of gentle smirk. She's wearing dark lipstick, eyeliner, her hair is bubblegum pink but with, he's watched it enough to see the subtle shift, a tiny bit of baby blue at the roots. She's young. Dad's not way older, he wasn't in his forties yet, but he looks it, around the eyes, in the set of the jaw, in his greying sandy hair. He's not looking at the camera. He's looking down at the baby. Looking down on Teddy. He smiles and you can see one of his scars move his mouth weirdly. He moves a hand towards Teddy, strokes his blue hair carefully. Murmurs something. Mum hears him, looks down, smiles along with Dad.

Then it resets. End of the show.

Teddy strokes a hand down the frame, picks it up, cradles the picture delicately downstairs to the trunk, awkwardly shifts piles of boxers and robes and books aside, carefully nestles it down amongst the folds of his t-shirts, wraps it in some robes. When he stands up, Gran's there next to him.

"Got everything now?"

Teddy nods.

"And not a second too soon," Gran exclaims, picking up her handbag as through the window, Teddy sees a large car, almost a minibus, pull into the drive. Teddy smiles, waves his wand to pick up the trunk, leads the way from the house as Gran locks up, waving with a smile to the car.


...

...

...

If something breaks the laws of space-time and nobody can see it, did it really happen?

A soft sound of someone locking the door.

A quiet house.

An empty room.

Band posters on the walls, clothes spread out on the floor, a cramped space used to hold too many things. Instax photos blu-tacked on the wall, faded blue wallpaper behind them, fairy lights draped and blinking.

A roughly made bed with white sheets only half-tucked under the mattress.

A teddy bear with a slumping head, too little stuffing in the neck. Faded fur. Loved.

A sound like a crack, and the teddy bear is gone.


The author would like to note that they have never read or seen Cursed Child, but read the plot on Wikipedia and decided it all sounded a bit silly. The author is therefore not counting it as canon. This is a version of what I'd prefer, and if it changes established info about character personalities in CC- well, I followed my heart, not the Wikipedia page. Hope you enjoy regardless!