Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Didn't They Care?

By: ChoCedric

Teddy Lupin lies in his Hogwarts bunk bed on his first night there, feeling very distressed. He has been sorted into Hufflepuff, and he knows his godfather Harry will be pleased. However, that is not the thing that is on his mind. It is something a student said to him on the train, something he himself has wondered about over the years.

"Your parents didn't care about you," the student taunted. Teddy knows he was just saying it to be nasty, but he cannot help but think there is a modicum of truth to it. The student goes on: "Weren't they Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks?"

"Yes," Teddy mumbled.

"Well, think about it. They both went to the Battle of Hogwarts and died there. You'd think that if they cared about you, at least one of them would have stayed behind."

Harry has told him that his parents loved each other very much, and his father even told his mother to stay at his grandmother Andromeda's house, but instead she went to the battle, looking for him. Harry also said that they died to make the world a better place for their son. He reassured Teddy that it wasn't because they didn't love and care for him as well as each other.

But the eleven-year-old boy cannot help but feel extremely angry with his parents sometimes. Couldn't his mother have done what his father told her to do? True, she would have been devastated to find out her husband had died, but couldn't she, Andromeda, and Teddy have gotten through it together? Teddy knows he was just a baby then, but sometimes he feels like he was an accidental birth, a baby neither of them wanted. They could just go and throw their lives away fighting in a battle so they wouldn't have to think about him.

Teddy also found out some other information that he isn't supposed to know. His best friend Victoire's uncle, George Weasley, invented something called Extendable Ears, and little was Harry to know that when he was talking to Andromeda one day, Teddy was listening outside the door because he knew they were talking about him. He learned that his father had tried to leave him and his mother, tried to abandon them so he could go on an escapade with Harry, Victoire's uncle Ron, and her aunt Hermione. Apparently his mother didn't mean to get pregnant, it was a mistake, and his father was acting like a coward and didn't want to deal with the wizarding world's reaction to a lycanthrope breeding.

Teddy understands prejudice and how society usually responds to werewolves, so he can sympathize with what his father went through. But at the same time, didn't the man have enough love in his heart to not want to abandon his own son? He confronted Harry about it, and Harry was very upset that his godson found out. He assured him over and over again that his father was a good man, that he only wanted to leave his mother and him out of love, not because he didn't love them. Teddy was too upset at that point to be rational, so he screamed at his godfather that that wasn't true, that everything he'd heard about his father was a lie.

And now, he has what that student said on the train on top of it. He partly blames Harry, although he'll never tell him that. His parents loved Harry, and they wanted to fight by his side, so he can't help but feel Harry took them away from him. And everyone here at Hogwarts knows who Harry Potter is, everyone knows he's Teddy's godfather, and everyone knows both Teddy's parents died in the Battle of Hogwarts.

The boy begins to cry softly into his pillow, hoping nobody else in the dorm can hear him. As much as he loves Harry and Andromeda and the Weasleys, he wishes that at least one of his parents were there to give him a hug, ruffle his hair (even though it would have been embarrassing but he'd take that any day because he'd rather have one of them here with him), and wish him luck in his first year at Hogwarts. Jealousy explodes inside him when he sees other children being embraced by their mothers and fathers. Doesn't Teddy have the right to have living parents as well? "It's not fair!" he whispers through his sobs. "Didn't you love me, Mum, Dad? Why did you have to leave me?" He wonders this over and over again as he tries to sleep, but the more he tries to stop his mind from churning, the less he succeeds. He lies awake sobbing for what seems like forever, questions buzzing through his mind. Where in the school did they die? How did they die? Did they suffer? Were they in pain? Harry said he found them by each other's side, did they die at each other's side as well or were they just put there when their bodies were found? Would the last few months of their life together have been better if he just didn't exist? Sometimes he wishes he didn't. Sometimes he thinks that if he had a time-turner, he'd go back in time to before he was born and change things so that the pregnancy never happened. It would then stop his mother's misery and cause her to not have time apart from the man she loved because he was too guilt-ridden to face up to the fact that he was to be a father.

He wishes he could have one day, just one day where he could ask his parents the questions he needs to know, and get the bare and honest truth. Why did his father want to leave him and his mother alone? Why did they both insist on going to fight the final battle? He vows to himself that if he ever becomes a father, he will show his child all the love they deserve, and tell them how much they're loved every single day. Sleep finally does claim him, but it is filled with nightmares of taunting Death Eaters, flashes of green light, and his parents' bodies falling to the ground. And their last words are always the same: "No, Teddy. We didn't care."