Disclaimer: The characters here and the world they inhabit are the creation of JK Rowling and her assigns.

Perseus was the son of Jupiter and Danaë. His grandfather, Acrisius, alarmed by an oracle which had told him that his daughter's child would be the instrument of his death, caused the mother and child to be shut up in a chest and set adrift on the sea. (Bulfinch's Mythology, Book XV)

August 12, 1964

Theodore Tonks was born into a normal post-war family. He had both an older brother and an older sister. His dad was a middle manager for a company that manufactured parts that were used by some other company to make various machines. His mum was a housewife who occasionally taught at the local school when a substitute was needed. He was therefore the son of neither a god nor a king's daughter.

Neither was his appearance likely to inspire thoughts of heroes and great deeds. He was an average-looking child of the suburbs. His hair and eyes were brown, and his face, although friendly, rarely inspired a second look. He was on the short side of average, a bit portly, and wore glasses. And yet sometimes those who looked at him did go back for a second look. Sometimes, by trick of the light or some witchery, his eyes gleamed a different color, his hair looked curlier or straighter, or his nose took on a different shape. By the time the observer looked again, whatever had happened reversed itself and the observer would shrug. After all, Ted was just a regular boy.

It turned out that he wasn't just a regular boy, however. On the eleventh birthday of Theodore Tonks, an odd visitor came to the family's house. He showed up out of nowhere and wore a coat cut in a style not seen since 1947. He walked down the street, looking at the neighborhood as though he had never seen houses before. As cars drove past, he would stop and look, his face shining with excitement.

When he arrived at the Tonks house, this personage stood for several minutes, staring at the little button next to the door with an odd smile. Finally he pushed it. The little man's name was William Morgan, and he stayed at the Tonks house for exactly twenty six and a half minutes. When he left the Tonks house, whistling and smiling to those he passed, he left two very stunned people in the house behind him.

The Mother Tonks and Father Tonks looked at each other, trying to assess their thoughts, for a long minute. Finally she said it. "We always knew..."

They always knew that she put the stuffed bears and ducks properly away when she put baby Teddy in the baby cot at night. They always knew that the strange lights under Ted's door weren't lightning, playing with the lamp, or a torch. They always knew there was a reason they found mice in the house, tossed the mice into the garden and later found their teacups among the marigolds. They always knew there was something about the way his face would change for an instant of time now and again.

They had been discussing options for school in the coming year, and Professor Morgan had presented them with another option. Before he left, they had known they would have to choose it. Ted had met Professor Morgan and spent a rapt ten minutes telling him about the odd things he could do. The wizard had explained that they were all perfectly normal, but now Ted must avoid doing that sort of magic until he was a grown-up wizard. When he came to Hogwarts, he would learn to use magic properly.

Ted sat on the couch between his parents, looking from one to the other hopefully. Father looked down upon him and sighed. "You want to go to this school, then, Ted? To leave your mum and me?"

He lifted earnest eyes to his father and said, "Well, Dad, I don't want to leave you, but I don't fit in with the kids in school. I try not to do the magic an' all, but it does itself sometimes an' then they look at me funny. I don't really have any friends. Even Tommy and Sue like each other better'n me. I might like a place where ev'ryone's all the same."

Mother gasped, her heart suddenly broken. "You never said. Do the children treat you different because of the magic? Why wouldn't you tell us?"

The boy shrugged. "What good was it? I thought I was just strange, like they said. I didn't want to be a crybaby."

If they had wondered what to do about his education before, they now knew. If Ted had this all-too-real ability, he should have the opportunity to learn how to use it and make friends with similar skills. So at the ages of forty-three and forty-one, Father and Mother Tonks traveled to a part of London they had never known existed: Diagon Alley.

The succeeding four hours was a wonder-filled, exciting and thoroughly frightening experience. Their first stop was the bank, where small green strangely human-like creatures exchanged their hard-earned currency for gold and silver coins that were too big for the Tonks family pockets. Mother put the bag they had been given into her purse, which was large and now was heavy.

Following the suggestions Professor Morgan had noted for them, they stopped first at the Wandmaker's shop. Mr. Ollivander was an interesting wizard, who never stopped moving. First he started measuring Ted and then he started looking through the long skinny boxes on his shelves. Back and forth the boxes went until the wizard found one he wanted. He took a wand out of it and handed to Ted, telling him to wave it around a bit. A puff of smoke came from the wand and then nothing. More boxes went back and forth, and Ted was given more wands to try. Finally there was one that slid into his hand like two magnets sliding together. He waved it, and golden sparks flew from the end of the wand. "There you are, young wizard. That's the wand for you." His parents settled the bill, and they continued on to the next bit of shopping.

They stopped at the second-hand robe shop and purchased some robes that were his size and then went to Madam Malkin's for the others that were just a bit large, hoping they would fit for the entire school year. Mother and Father would never have found the small door on Charing Cross Road without him, and it was doubtful that they would be able to obtain new robes if he suddenly needed them.

From there, the shopping was a bit more straightforward. They bought all of his books at Flourish and Blott's bookstore. Then they stopped at the stationery store, where several little girls squealed over a selection of pink quills. Then they stopped at the apothecary for his Potions class supplies. Following Professor Morgan's recommendations, the family backtracked to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor and had ice cream.

While savoring his hickory nut and butterbeer ice cream, Ted watched some of the little girls he had seen earlier come into the ice cream shop. The leader of the girls was a pretty, dark haired girl of thirteen or fourteen. She walked in as though she owned the place. The next girl looked like she was about Ted's age. She looked very much like the big girl, who must be her sister, except that her hair and eyes were lighter and brighter in color. The smallest girl was only seven or eight. She was very blond and had blue eyes. Although her features were identical to those of her sisters, they were much more delicate in size. Ted couldn't take his eyes from the girls and watched them as they ordered their ice cream and sat far away from the Tonks family.

The big girl sniffed. "Don't breathe too deeply, Cissy. You might choke on the smell of Mudblood!"

The littlest girl giggled while the middle one looked around. "You shouldn't talk like that, Trixie. You might offend someone..." Ted couldn't help staring. Her hair was brown, just like his own, but there was so much of it, and it seemed alive. He couldn't stop looking at her face. Her little sister was definitely prettier, but there was something about the middle sister that kept his eyes on her.

"What can they do to me, Andie? They're Muggles."

"You never know, Trixie. They might be from the Ministry, dressed up or something. Uncle Alphard says—"

"You know our parents hate Uncle Alphard. You better not go 'round quoting him." The big girl must have thought about what her sister said, however, because she bent her head toward her sisters when she spoke with them next. Every so often, all three girls giggled.

Ted looked at his parents and wondered what they had heard. He hoped nothing. He didn't know what the girls were talking about, but sensed it was not complimentary and he didn't want anything to interrupt his chance to go to Hogwarts. He had never heard of the place a fortnight before, but now he couldn't wait to get there. He couldn't believe it would still be a week and a half yet before he could go. Fortunately, Mum and Dad were too busy trying each other's ice cream and deciding which they liked better.

On the way back to the Leaky Cauldron and reality, the Tonks family stopped at Eeylops Owl Emporium. They looked in the window a long moment while they tried to decide if Ted wanted an Owl for school. Since the boy kept flinching whenever one of the animals in the window flexed and flapped its wings, Mother decided that was something that could wait until the following summer. They wandered back out into the London world of buses and automobiles, the child with excitement and anticipation and the adults with worry and apprehension.

It was all too soon, in Mother Tonks's opinion, that the first of September came along. Tommy and Sue were already in their schools, so Mother, Father, and Ted traveled to King's Cross Station in London together. They stood between platforms nine and ten and wondered what to do. As they waited and watched to see if something would present itself, a pair of red-haired youths came up to the small family.

"Are you trying to find Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, then?" one of the boys asked. "What you do is walk directly at that barrier, and there it will be."

As Ted watched, the other boy pushed his cart of luggage at the barrier—and disappeared. "Whoa!"

"See you on the train, then," said the boy, following his brother.

"Well, I suppose we need to try it," said Father. Together the three of them pushed the luggage cart toward the barrier, and somehow never hit it. The next thing they knew, they were standing at a platform they never imagined could exist.

The platform was a mixture of odd and normal. The people were all dressed oddly in robes and cloaks, yet the parents were bidding their children farewell just as any parents would. The train was a bit old-fashioned, but it still looked like a train. Boys were running up and down the platform as mothers bestowed last-minute kisses and directions to be good. Girls were waving from windows on the train as little sisters and brothers waved back.

Ted's dad helped him lift his trunk up the stairs into the rail car and then hugged him quickly goodbye. Mum held him as though she would never see him again. A small pocketful of coins was transferred from the parents to the boy with directions to spend it wisely, since there was no way to send more. Ted took his trunk and worked his way toward the compartments on the train.

On the platform, Mother and Father watched as the conductors gently pushed the kids toward the compartments and the parents away from the rails. The doors were shut and the whistle blew. The Hogwarts Express slowly moved away from the platform and then gained speed as it left the station.

As Mother Tonks watched the train carry her boy away from her, she worried that she was setting him adrift, somehow. The thought was foolish. If anything, he would be adrift in her world, since he didn't really belong. Still, he was her boy, and she knew that he would not come back the same. Things would go back to normal over the summer, but really they wouldn't and another school year would go by and Ted would come back even more different. Within about seventy seconds, Mother lived the next seven years, imagining what it would be like as her son slowly grew away from her. She knew from experience with the older two that this was inevitable, yet this case seemed a bit more of a break and a bit more permanent. She sighed and put her hand in Father's. Together they walked back out into the regular train station and on toward the trains that would take them home.

The two red-headed boys introduced Ted to some other kids. Together they all sat in a compartment and shared sandwiches, biscuits from home, and treats from the food cart. He saw two of those sisters from Florean Fortescue's. The younger one opened the door of their compartment and peeked in. Ted didn't recognize her at first; the glorious hair was tightly pulled into braids. The other one loudly said, "Heavens, no, Andie, can't you tell they're all Mudbloods and blood traitors?" The one called Andie made a face and pulled the door quickly shut behind her.

"There's another one of those awful Black girls, I guess," said one of the red-haired boys. Ted had learned his name was Gideon. Maybe it was Fabian. He wasn't sure.

"Oh? Who are the Blacks?" asked a boy on the opposite seat. His name was Todd.

"Pure blood royalty," said the other one. Fabian, unless it was Gideon. "The older one is Bellatrix Black. She rules Slytherin House and tries to rule the rest of us.

"What's a 'Mudblood'?" asked Ted.

"It's an ugly name for Muggle-born," responded one of the brothers, whom Ted was sure was Fabian. "The amount of magic a person has doesn't seem to depend on how many magical relatives one has. They say that even Dumbledore is a Half-blood, and he's about the most powerful wizard alive. Do you have any magical relatives?"

"Not that I know of," responded Ted.

"We're pure-blooded," said Gideon. "It's a bit of a curse, I think."

"Well, our other problem is that we're so handsome," said his brother. "No one can stand it."

"That's true," was the answer. "We get mobbed by the girls and can never get our work done."

The other resident of the compartment, a quiet fourth-year boy whom Ted had met by his last name, Shacklebolt, rolled his eyes and shook his head quietly.

"So why does it matter?" asked Ted.

"It really doesn't," responded Shacklebolt. "Some of the pure-bloods think it matters, so they try to enact certain laws and to make it hard for Muggle-born witches and wizards to mingle in Wizarding society. The Ministry won't let it go on forever, though."

"You're such an idealist, Kingsley," responded Gideon.

"Maybe I am," he responded, "but maybe I intend to do my share to help."

Ted learned that the brothers, whose last name was Prewitt, were in Gryffindor House while Kingsley Shacklebolt was in Hufflepuff. All three tried to impress him and Todd with the virtues of their own houses and warned the boys away from Slytherin. The consensus of the upperclassmen was that Ravenclaw would also be a good choice as long as they didn't end up in Slytherin.

The evening passed Ted by in a blur. He met a man who was simply enormous, who led boatloads full of the first-year students to the school across a lake. He and his classmates were faced by a rather stern woman who explained the house system to them. They then waited in a room where Ted met his first ghost. Actually he met several of them. Of the whole group he most liked the Fat Friar, who seemed pretty jolly. The ghost with his head mostly cut off was a bit strange, and the Bloody Baron gave him the creeps. The Gray Lady seemed a bit offish. She kept her distance from the three male ghosts.

Having been catechized in the differences between houses, Ted had thought perhaps Hufflepuff would be his first choice. When the first years went into the Great Hall, he could hardly take in all the sights and sounds. He watched as first the girl named Andie was sent to Slytherin. She sat next to her sister, who didn't hug or greet her but smiled in satisfaction. Todd was sorted to Ravenclaw. A while later Ted was summoned to the chair and told by the hat that he would do very well in Hufflepuff. Ted agreed and took his place at the table. Further down, Kingsley Shacklebolt smiled and waved to him. Thus the young man cast adrift on so fragile a crate as a steam train found a safe landing.

A/N: This story was written during the month of November 2009 for the Nanoship competition on The Dark Mark archive. Special thanks go to Trickie Woo for beta reading for me.