(Author's Note: Hello all. It's been a really long time ... years ... since I've posted a new story. I'm now a professional writer and write my own stories, but I realized this morning that today is the day when Albus Severus goes off to Hogwarts, and decided to write a one-shot in one go. No revisions and no real plan. This will be the last time I write anything on . Thank you for your support and kindness when I was a teen (I turn 30 this month, if you want to feel old). It was this community that taught me I could do the thing. And now I love doing the thing. Now the thing is my life. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have continued writing.
This is seriously unedited, unfact-checked, and so I promise you there will be canon issues. I also went off the canon of "Forever Alive," which means some names and dates changed. But I like what I wrote this morning, enough to post it, even if I am nervous for sure. To go back seems silly, but still something I wanted to do. Also, my God why has fanfiction dot net gotten so hard with its formatting? I know the formatting is legit awful, I have yet to figure it out. So I guess keeping in the same lines as the awful formatting of the original story, here's to tradition.
This isn't the strongest thing I've written, since again it was a one-shot and unedited and cobbled together in two hours. But if you're interested in reading some actually edited and published stuff, check out my profile page for my author website.
Okay, enough disclaimer. Here we go.)
Everyone was going to London for September 1st, so why wouldn't Teddy?
That's the thing with Teddy, he didn't really belong anywhere and so he got shuffled around from one household to another. Grandpa and Grandma were the ones bequeathed him, but they were old and never understood why he would want such blue hair or why he sometimes kicked trash bins when he got angry. "You are usually such an upbeat child," they'd say. "Why must you make this about you?"
They'd lost a daughter, and they dealt with it in their own way. They were family. But they weren't parents.
So that meant Harry's family welcomed him in, with James and adorable Lily and scowling Albus. But he didn't live there with them in that house. He went to dinner four times a week, and Harry said he practically lived there, but he didn't. Did he.
"When are you moving in?" little Lily asked the night before they left for the station, when the kids bounded up the stairs to their own bedrooms. Teddy awkwardly laughed and said:
"Yeah, right."
But he looked at Harry expectantly. Harry didn't look back.
"All right now," he said. "Get on up to bed." He said this to Lily, not to Teddy.
Teddy felt his stomach clench for some reason, and all the smiles on his face went out.
He used to pretend he had two Patronuses in his chest: Dad's and Mum's. Mum's was a beautiful bird, laughing and cawing and flying around changing colors in the sun. His dad's was a melancholy wolf, sitting in the corner of the room curled up by the fire and sobbing to itself.
He'd seen pictures of them: his mother's youth and vibrancy a stark contrast to his father's cut up and sallow face.
That night, before Lily went to bed with her brothers, Teddy had felt the bird rising in him. Laughing at the dinner table, telling them all jokes and laughing about being Head Boy and actually graduating last June, and how Albus was nervous to start tomorrow and James was giving him a hard time because perhaps he'd be in Slytherin. Then once Lily was gone upstairs, Teddy felt that wolf. He didn't know the wolf well. He didn't want to know the wolf well. The wolf had never shown up physically, the wolf had never taken him over, so he was a lucky one. "Your father went through hell and didn't have the choice to be happy," his grandmother told him at least once a month. "You're wasting your luck sulking."
Harry took a seat in his chair in the hearth room again, once his children were tucked in, and he looked to Teddy still sitting in the chair. "Ginny's going to make me a cup of tea. Would you like one or are you heading home?"
"About that," Teddy said. "Lily asked a good question, didn't she?"
Harry's face got that tired look on it, the one where someone poked at his past and he felt drawn to answer any question pertaining to it, because he owed the world for its sacrifice. As much as Harry Potter just tried to be Dad, or in Teddy's case Just Harry, he would always be Harry Potter. There in the firelight, Teddy saw his godfather wither from a tweed-wearing Auror to a scared little boy.
Teddy would not understand this. Ever. Not really. Teddy hadn't been there. He'd heard all the stories, but he was a baby. But that didn't mean he didn't know what it meant to lose things. Just because he and the other kids hadn't "ever experienced anything as horrifying as a Dark Mark" didn't mean they didn't have their own troubles.
"You're out of Hogwarts now," Harry said. "We have a plan for you getting up on your feet and on your own. It wouldn't make much sense for you to move in with us now."
"Then why didn't you take me earlier?"
"You aren't mine to take," Harry said. "Your guardians were deemed your grandparents, by your parents."
Your parents. People who Harry had lauded, spun histories around, shown in pictures. But they were still strangers.
"But they knew how unhappy you were at the Dursleys," Teddy said. "If they knew you'd grow up and have a family, then obviously they'd want me here."
"I don't think you should ever compare your situation to the Dursleys," Harry said.
"What was wrong with me?" he said. "Were you scared I'd turn into a werewolf?"
"Don't be silly, Teddy," Harry said.
Teddy wanted to push the questions further. But he didn't have it in him. The wolf was receding. He didn't want to keep prying and find something out about what Harry thought of him. He needed Harry. He needed him to love him.
"I'll be heading out," he said as Ginny came in with the tea tray. "Thank you for having me again."
"Say hello to Victoire!" Ginny said as Teddy left through the front door into the hot summer night.
That was the other family he sort of but didn't belong to. His girlfriend, Victoire Weasley. Her mother was ... okay. She was French. But her father brought out the best in Teddy, and they'd stay up all night making not-werewolf jokes and playing pranks on the girls.
It was because of her father, Victoire wasn't afraid of Teddy.
But again, this wasn't his family. He wanted to propose. But they were so young. And it wasn't like when their parents were young and they didn't have all the time in the world. Voldemort was dead. The world was at peace. They were so very lucky, et cetera.
This is where he stayed the night before September 1st. Because Victoire would leave for Hogwarts for another year, and he would be alone that whole time with a bunch of owls as their only connection.
Victoire, his best friend and honestly the only person he trusted for such an escapade as the one brewing in his head tonight.
He opened the door. He walked in. He said hello to his maybe-future-in-laws. He went upstairs to the guest room. And then he quietly apparated from his room to hers.
"You scared me," Victoire jumped from her books on the floor.
"You told me I had permission," he said, sitting down beside her. "Besides, I knew you wouldn't be sleeping."
"I should be, and so should you," she said.
"Why? It's not like I'm going to Hogwarts tomorrow," he said. He looked at her homework. "Put it off for the last moment again?"
"Why is your hair all mousy?" she said. "Did you have a rough evening at the Potters'?"
"No," he said. "Want to go on a somewhat illegal adventure with me?"
She looked up from her studies. Her brow cocked. "You are always up to no good, aren't you?"
"I need someone I can trust," he said, taking her hand.
"What is this illegal activity?"
He smiled. "I want to find Grimmauld Place."
...
Harry Potter was a worn out name by the time the papers had overused it back when Harry was only seventeen. Since then, every anniversary or so, they'd run the name again in the Prophet and wear it out again until next time. Harry couldn't remember a time when his name was just a normal set of letters on a Muggle teacher's roster in grammar school. But he never wanted to be that child again, because no matter how little that child recognized the abuse the Dursleys dished out, he was in grave danger and entirely alone and unhappy.
Teddy had never been entirely alone and unhappy.
"Why did he leave in such a rush?" Ginny asked, pulling the covers back.
Harry sighed, and he took off his glasses and rubbed his scar. He still did that, even nineteen years later.
"He asked why he couldn't move in with us," he said.
"Because he's an adult and needs to find his own place?" Ginny said.
"Maybe we should have taken him in when he was a boy," Harry said. "I don't know, Gin, did we do the right thing?"
"You mean steal him from his grandparents?" Ginny said. "Harry, we were children ourselves when he was growing up."
"But we aren't children anymore," Harry said.
Teddy was now the age Harry was when Harry defeated Voldemort. Harry had always felt so much older than seventeen. He couldn't imagine Teddy and Victoire camping out in the woods fighting in a resistance against a genocide. He could imagine Teddy setting the woods on fire with a snap pop wand trick, but ...
"I wish I could tell him more about his parents," Ginny said. "I think it'd help him."
"You barely knew them," Harry said. "That's not your job. It was mine."
"You do realize that you were a teenager, right?" Ginny said. "It wasn't your job to put everything right. It was the adults. And you still take that burden on."
"Yeah, except," Harry said, "that was my job."
These conversations came frequently. They got old. Nothing ever came of them. They never fixed anything. Maybe that's why Ron had stopped talking about it all. Once Hermione had told Harry, "It's like none of it happened, everything is a joke to him. Maybe he did forget some stuff, due to all that Horcruxing?"
No. It just didn't make it go away to talk it to death.
"Do you have Albus's trunk packed?" Because trunks were easier to discuss.
"Yes," Ginny said, seeming to get the hint that the Boy Who Lived roundtable discussion had exhausted itself once again.
"I love you," he said.
"Love you, too," she said.
And they meant it.
...
Teddy and Victoire stopped in a Muggle diner, their feet sore and their mouths dry. It had been hours. There was no Grimmauld Place.
At one point or another, there must have been a Grimmauld Place. But Teddy didn't have any passwords or kept secrets, and maybe the manor was set to rot forever in some hidden pocket of forgotten reality.
They sipped cocoa, even though it was the last night of August.
"My dad will probably figure out we're gone soon," Victoire said.
"He won't care," Teddy said.
"Yeah," she said. "You're right."
Not that Bill wouldn't care, he just would understand.
Why couldn't Harry?
"I don't like it when your hair gets all mousy," Victoire said.
"It's allowed to be mousy once in a while," Teddy said.
"Yeah, but it's turned black since we gave up searching," Victoire said. "What did you want to do in a stinky place like Grimmauld Place? Is this about your parents?"
Teddy nodded. He could talk about this stuff with Victoire. Even when they were growing up and all the adults wanted him to put on a good face and be an adorable little clown and not sad because look how well adjusted he is, Victoire allowed him to cry in her treehouse once in a while. It wasn't a taboo subject between them. He loved her.
"I thought maybe there'd be something for me there," he said.
"They barely spent any time in Grimmauld Place," Victoire said. It did seem stupid. But Teddy and Victoire had, in his second year of Hogwarts, broken into the Shrieking Shack to find it demolished at the end of the caved-in tunnel, and ever since Teddy thought maybe Dad's diary or Dad's secret whatever of something was hidden somewhere else. In the Gryffindor boys' room? In the Room of Requirement? No. Everywhere he went, there were more Harry Potter plaques and Harry Potter portraits. His father was just a smiling face in some background shots of the Order. His dad had given his life, but he wasn't the hero.
He didn't have to say any of this to Victoire for her to know it.
"You know," Victoire said, "My family always treks out to the Battle of Hogwarts memorial in Hogsmeade every few years around Uncle Fred's birthday."
Teddy nodded. "I know. I've been there." It was a gaudy sight, huge gilded statues, three of them, facing against a dark, obsidian pillar. The statues were vague with no faces, but it was clearly three students. Harry Potter, Hermione Granger-Weasley, and her husband, Ron Weasley. Didn't take much deduction to figure that out. On those statues were the names of all the dead, everyone who had fallen not just in the Battle of Hogwarts, but from 1991 onward.
His dad's name was on Harry's left leg, next to his mother's name.
"You want me to take something for you to the memorial when I get into town tomorrow?" Victoire said, wiping her whipped cream mustache onto her sleeve.
She was really sweet. She was beautiful. She was perfect. Teddy smiled. "Nah," he said. "That memorial isn't for my dad. It's for my dad's students."
His father had been a professor. That's another place he'd looked, the Defense Against the Dark Arts room and the professor's study. He just ran into Snape's portrait which proceeded to snarl at him and tell him to "Get. ... Out."
"I guess sometimes people get lost in the shuffle," Teddy said. "I don't want to get lost in the shuffle."
"You won't," Victoire said.
"I'll get lost without you."
"Mon Dieu," Victoire laughed. "Come on, Lupin. Don't get all sappy on me or your hair might just fall off."
Teddy snirked, and he turned his mouth into duck lips and quacked.
"I love you, duck," Victoire said. "And I'll write you every day and Christmas isn't that far away."
"I'm going to sneak in," Teddy said.
"I bet you will," Victoire said.
Teddy looked at his cocoa. "Mum was a lot younger than Dad. They weren't together very long. I read a Quibbler article once that said Dad wanted to go with Harry and them into the woods and leave us behind. Do you think that's true? Do you think they loved each other?"
Victoire nodded. "I do. They died together, side by side. And besides," she said, taking one more drink of her cocoa. "You know why your mum's name is out of alphabetical order on that statue?"
Teddy looked at her. "It is?"
"Sir, how did you get Head Boy and I didn't get Head Girl?" Victoire said. "I love you, but I could turn into a swan in front of you and you wouldn't noti - Edward!"
Ted turned into a swan and honked.
"Turn back! We're in a Muggle establishment!"
"No one is here and the Muggles are all in the back!" the swan laughed.
"I don't want to get expelled the night before my last year and I'm trying to tell you something meaningful!"
Teddy turned back into a boy. His hair blue.
"On memorials," Victoire said, "It is alphabetical. Unless there is a great bond of love, and then the names somehow move to sit next to each other. Your mother's last name was Tonks on the memorial. T is in the middle of the L's. There's no other explanation."
Teddy nodded. "Cool," he said.
"Your hair didn't change," Victoire said.
Teddy nodded again. "Yeah, okay."
Victoire put her cocoa down, finished. "And yes, before you start asking, yes my name would go by yours."
"Well I would hope so," Teddy said, "since I hope by the time we are killed in a horrible war we are at least married and have decided on a last name."
Victoire blushed. "Of course," she said.
"Oh good," Teddy said.
"That's not your proposal," she said.
"No," Teddy said.
"Good," she said. "It was smooth but you can do better."
"Thank you," Teddy said.
Victoire put some Muggle money down, a Christmas present from her grandfather, and she nodded to the door. "Take me home, oh graceful swan boy."
Teddy and Victoire somehow made it back into the house. He kissed her goodnight. But they stayed up the rest of the night talking. In fact, he was awake in the early hours of the morning when Harry Potter knocked on the door.
...
Harry had promised Lupin he'd be there for Ted.
And over the years, Harry had thought about how Sirius had done things and tried to use that as a blueprint. But as he got older, the more torn he got about Sirius, and he decided that wasn't the blueprint he should use. Now he was older than Sirius had been when Sirius had gone through the veil. In a way, Sirius had been a kid himself. And he'd tried his best, but ...
Harry had no idea what he was doing being a father, let alone a godfather.
"Ted," he whispered in the front hall. Ted stood at the top of the stairs. Harry tipped his hat. "I didn't want to wake up her parents. Good, you're here. Come along now, I have something to show you."
Teddy cocked his head. His hair was blue again. At least there was that. "What are you showing me?" he said. "I have to say goodbye to my girlfriend in less than six hours, so I'd rather ... unless this is important."
"I wanted to show you something of your father's," he said.
Ted slid down the banister and grabbed his coat. "Dilly dallying got no one anywhere, Potter."
So he was back to his old self, at least.
They walked down the London streets to a phone booth. They crawled inside. They began their descent. As they did so, Harry said, "You do know I still am connected to Grimmauld Place, and I was alerted yesterday there'd been a near break in."
"Alerted?" Teddy said.
"Just a feeling on the back of my neck," Harry said.
"So your forehead's for evil warlords and the back of your neck is for your land ownership?" Teddy said.
Harry laughed. "And my toes are for each of my children when they get bad scores," he said. And then he realized what he said and he stopped talking.
He didn't have much to give Teddy when it came to a family, just what he could offer over the years. A sentimental ear, an empathetic heart, a good hug, a signed permission slip, a mediation between him and grandparents ... but it never felt like enough. They were close, of course, but he would never be Lupin, and that's who Teddy needed, and it was because of Harry Teddy couldn't have Lupin.
Teddy had never said anything about that, even when he was at his angriest. Maybe it hadn't clicked in Teddy's head, that Harry was the reason and Dad was dead because he abandoned Teddy to save another little boy.
Regardless, the least Harry could do was this. Show Teddy the little bit of Remus Lupin Harry had uncovered.
They walked through the Atrium, took an elevator, and ended up in the Auror offices. Harry hurried him past the doors and desks, and he said, "I discovered this place a while ago, right when I started here. I was peeking around with Ron, and we came upon this odd little room ... here, go in and look. I don't know what it's doing here, but ... here we are." He took out his wand and pointed it at a door's knob. The door was on the far back wall, and almost seemed invisible in the large room. But a large plaque stood on top of the door, reading "MEMORIAL OF THE FALLEN."
...
The door opened, and the two of them walked into a lit room with marble walls, floor, and ceiling. Four torches sat in their holders in each corner, illuminating the room and dancing their shadows on dark marble.
Teddy looked closer at the walls, and he felt his heart drop into his stomach. Covering the walls from top to bottom were engraved names. Each one spelled itself out perfectly in capital letters, one after the other in long lines. On the floor, there were more names. He looked up to the ceiling and read the large words towering over them:
IN MEMORIUM
TO THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES
AND SUFFERED
DURING THE GREAT WAR
1972-1981
AND THE SECOND GREAT WAR
1996-1998
THEY WILL LIVE ON IN FREEDOM'S SPIRIT
"These are the names of people who died," Harry said, somewhat dumbly. "It looks like it's all of them. Before the big public memorial went up in Hogsmeade, there was this one."
Teddy looked for L. He wanted to see his father and mother together, next to each other. But Harry pointed to the P's on the wall. Because everything was about the P's, he guessed.
P.
There it was.
Harold Potter
James Potter
Lily Potter
Olivia Potter
But it wasn't just those names. There were outliers and Teddy saw it immediately. It actually read:
Harold Potter
James Potter
Sirius Black
Remus Lupin
Nymphadora Tonks
Lily Potter
Olivia Potter
"Your dad used to say," Harry said, "that no matter what, the people we love stick with us. They don't go away. I know he's not here, but ... here he is."
Teddy snorted. "Okay." But he could feel his hair changing.
Harry sighed. "I don't know much about your dad," he said. "He was my professor, then he was my friend. But I didn't spend enough time with him, I can't show him to you I just ... I just wanted to let you know he was never alone. His friends were with him the whole time, and then your mother, and ... he wasn't alone."
Teddy sniffed. He couldn't look at Harry.
"And you're not alone, either," Harry said.
Teddy nodded. "I know," he said.
"You're sure?" Harry said.
Teddy nodded. "Yes," he said. Because last night, he couldn't find his dad, but he had cocoa with the smartest witch of her generation. And she was going to marry him. "Yeah," he said. "Let's go."
...
Teddy moved from the room, and Harry Potter stayed a little longer. Harry looked at all the small names stuffed together on the reflective walls. So many names, some he didn't even know, all because of him.
That wasn't fair, Harry knew that. But the weight made him sag in his older age.
He looked at himself in the wall, a mirror of an older man. "When did I get old?" he thought.
But then it was time to get back, because he had three children to take to King's Cross and Albus was already stewing in his head about things. And Teddy needed to spend more time with Victoire. There was the living to attend to. There was another day to step forward and away from all that had happened. It wasn't going to make it easier, but it was really the only reasonable choice to make.
He shut the door. Something bristled on the back of his head, on his shoulders, and he felt like he was being watched. That made no sense, there was no one there. It was so early in the morning, and there was a shut door at his back. It was his nerves acting up.
But he swore he'd felt this before, when he walked into the woods that night nineteen years ago, knowing ghosts of those gone followed him, always and until the end.