Chapter One
"No way, I'll believe that Brandon went all the way with Juliet the day I believe that the Chudley Cannons will win the world cup," Teddy argued with his dorm mate Matthew as a group of his four closest mates passed around a cigarette while lounging on his bed in their dorm.
"It's true!" His best mate, Brandon Malfoy, argued indignantly, "She begged me, couldn't get enough. Told me that it was exactly the way she imagined her first-"
"Well then it has to be a hoax, doesn't it? No way did Juliet Lawson hold out sixteen years!" One of Teddy's mates, Rodger, said through booming laughs.
The four friends barked loudly with laughter as the cigarette butt burned Teddy's fingers. With a sigh and a cast of his wand the cigarette and all traces of smoke vanished.
"Who the hell knows how those Muggle blokes get away with smoking, you can smell it from the common room," Matthew stated as he began digging under his bed.
"My brother, Jonathan, said they use Febreeze at his school," Rodger, the only Muggle born from the bunch, said and Teddy nodded, accepting a new cigarette that Matthew had dug out from under his bed.
"What's Febreeze?" Brandon asked, taking a hit from the cigarette as Teddy passed it around.
"It smells like a bunch of condensed flowers, kind of like that love potion that Lillian Bolgers made during 5th year. The one that actually ended up being a toxin."
Brandon nodded in understanding, lying down so that his head was upside down over the edge of the bed.
"Can't believe terms over, seems like just yesterday we were doing our first bit of potions work."
"It was just yesterday," Teddy laughed along with the rest of his Gryffindor mates, before the laughter died off with the rest of the last cigarette.
Teddy laid his head down on his pillow, lazily lifting his wand to cause the smoke to vanish again. Without a word his mates all slowly edged away to their own bunks, and Teddy continued to stare at the ceiling.
The closing of the school year was always bittersweet. He always wondered, after the end of each year, if he had done well enough. His grandmother always praised everything he did, he could take a shit and make earrings out of it and she'd think he was perfect. What he craved was his father's approval and his mother's admiration. He craved exactly what he couldn't have, typical.
"Ted?" Teddy rolled over on his side, staring at Brandon who was sitting in almost the same position Teddy was. "You think they'd be proud?"
Teddy rolled back over onto his back with a smirk. Leave Brandon to think exactly what he was thinking. Both of Brandon's parents were gone, his mum died in childbirth, they said she was just too old to handle the stress of another baby. His father was rotting in Azkaban, the old bastard, after taking out his grief on 'The Infant Who Murdered His Wife'. Teddy though it was sickening that Brandon still wanted his father's approval.
"Yeah Bran, they're proud," He whispered and he saw Brandon nod slightly. Teddy's eyes slipped closed and he drifted off into sleep, the calm before the storm.
-o-
Their compartment jostled as the Hogwarts Express screeched to a halt, sending the small Brandon flying out of his seat and into Matthew's lap.
"G'off!" And Brandon came plunking down in the aisle, bleach blond hair falling over his eyes.
"Not my fault the drivers a bloody git," he mumbled, accepting Rodger's hand as he was hauled onto his feet.
Teddy grinned, pulling down his trunk and leading the four into the hallway.
"Out of the way 7thyears coming through," Brandon yelled, stopped by a third year who stood about two inches taller then him.
"You're not 7th years yet Brandon," Lucy Weasley corrected and Teddy reached down and ruffled his surrogate cousin's hair.
" You show him Lucy, where's Molls?" He reached down and grabbed Lucy's trunk as well, ushering her and his three friends out the door.
"She ran off to find dad, probably to brag about some grade she got on some paper, little suck up," Lucy mumbled the last to herself as they stepped out onto the platform, "Daddy!"
Teddy smirked as the redhead went barreling to his Uncle Percy, who already had his arms around Molly. Percy looked up at Teddy and nodded as Teddy pointed to Lucy's trunk that he had set down.
Turning back to his friends he found Matthew who was already walking away with both his fathers, Rodger who was being pulled away by his six younger brothers and Brandon who was trying to see above the crowd to spot his brother.
"This way then," Teddy said to Brandon and the two dodged through clusters of people before stopping at Draco, Astoria and Scorpius Malfoy.
"Hello Mr. Malfoy," Teddy greeted kindly and Draco nodded, smiling slightly, but stiffly, at Teddy. He then turned to Brandon and rested his hand gently on Brandon's shoulder.
"Got a lot taller I see," he said jokingly and Brandon shrugged, smiling a little as he looked up at his older brother.
"How was your term Teddy?" Astoria asked kindly and genuinely and Teddy grinned.
"Hard," He answered truthfully, "But way more fun then I'll ever give it credit for."
"Did you kiss any girls?" Scorpius piped up and Teddy grinned down at him as Brandon ruffled his hair.
"No we didn't kiss any girls," Brandon said loudly to his nephew, "Girls have cooties."
"Except for Juliet Lawson," Teddy said seriously, looking Scorpius in the eye. He then clapped Brandon on the shoulder and nodded at Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy before turning into the crowd to find his own family.
"Who's Juliet Lawson?" Draco's voice trailed behind as Brandon dodged into the crowd again.
Spotting his family wasn't entirely hard, they all had red hair, and there were about a hundred of them. When he was younger he used to transform to make himself more of a Weasley, until he realized that he really truly had no desire to be a ginger.
"Oi! Teddy!" Teddy had barely turned before his godfather, Harry Potter, pulled him into a hug. Not a second before Harry had let go Lily, Albus, Rose and Hugo had attached themselves onto him.
"We missed you!" They all screamed and he grinned ruffling their hair and rolling his eyes as Rose complained he was 'messing it up'. "You're too young to have to worry about looks, and don't worry, you look good enough as it is. Going to give your dad a heart attack, you will," he joked and Rose rolled her eyes playfully.
"Teddy!" Ginny cried, and he leaned over the kids and kissed her on the cheek, "It's so nice to have you home. You haven't seen Jamie have you?"
Teddy shook his head, "No, but I know he got on the train, so you can rest easy. Where's Gran?"
Ginny stepped aside, revealing his tall, elderly grandmother who quickly flung her arms around him. Teddy gripped onto her tight before pulling away and grinning, his hair transforming to match his grandmother's pure white.
"Teddy!" his grandmother scolded, slapping his arm playfully and laughing. She wrapped him in another quick hug before pulling back to admire him. "I can't believe how grown up you are, just seventeen and already a big strong man. You look just like your father, except for your nose, you have your mothers nose."
Teddy swallowed back the lump in his throat and instead grinned playfully, "You say that every year Gran."
Andromeda Tonks just tisked as she grabbed Teddy's elbow, pulling him back into the mess of Weasley's.
James was bouncing up and down, no doubt on a sugar rush, as he recounted his first year of Hogwarts to his younger siblings, and Harry looked up from James's raising an amused brow. Teddy just shook his head at James's exaggerated stories as his eyes fell on Victoire Weasley.
The tall, fifteen year old beauty…er, girl, was arguing quietly with her father. Her blond hair swooshed behind her as she shook her head angrily, and her perfectly manicured hands flew about as she tried to make her point.
His Uncle Bill's vein in his head had started to throb, almost comically, and with a whoosh of his wand Victoire's quite words were cut off completely by a silencing charm.
"I think we'll be heading off now, see you at the burrow?" he asked the group rhetorically, as if the masses of relatives ever did anything different the first day of Summer.
Teddy watched as Victoire dawdled behind her family, frowning as she muttered silently to herself. No doubt there little argument was about Victoire's sudden interest in Robert Greysber, the stupid prick, and her poor grades.
"Oi, Teddy!" James barked and Teddy turned, looking down at his cousin, "Dad says your coming with us, your grandmother has something about a..a…Dad! Why's Teddy coming with us?"
"Because his grandmother has a client in the America's who she has to meet with, he'll stay with us tonight," Harry more or less directed as Teddy, and as Teddy looked around he realized that his grandmother was indeed gone.
Frowning slightly at her sudden, and silent, disappearance Teddy shrugged it off allowing Harry to rest a hand on his shoulder as he was steered off through the barrier and to the mugggle car that Harry drove.
He slid in first, claiming one of the window seats, grinned as Lily climbed in next, scooting as close to him as she could without actually sitting on him. He sighed as he slipped an arm around her shoulder and stretched his legs out, enjoying, once again, the benefits of Magic over Muggle.
He rested his head against the window, and watched as building and people zoomed by, his eyes growing heavy as last night's lack of sleep caught up to him.
He was almost fully asleep when he felt a searing pain on his left arm.
"Augh!" he moaned, opening his eyes and pulling his sleeve up. He looked down at a new, searing red, scar on his wrist. It felt like it was on fire, and he quickly covered it back up with his jacket, rubbing the cool cloth on it to try to relieve the pain.
Disregarding it's cause and the pain, after concluding that he probably just nicked it on something in the train, and it had just now started hurting, Teddy closed his eyes, and fell into real sleep.
"My lord the child is marked," a snake hissed as it coiled up in front of a chair.
"Excellent, then all is according to plan, I assume?" The person in the chair asked, and the snake hissed in agreement.
"Yes my lord, now we must wait," it hissed, and the person in the chair stood up slowly, reaching down and taking the snake into his hands. Outside the moon shifted from behind the clouds, and the stream of light through the window, revealed an aged version, of the dark lord himself.
"Yes, now we wait."
Teddy sprung up with a soft yell, banging his head on the car's window. Whatever conversation the Potter's were having ceased as they all turned and looked at Teddy questioningly.
"You alright there Teds?" Harry asked, looking over his shoulder at his godson, forehead creased in worry.
"M'fine," Teddy muttered, blinking the rest of sleep out of his eyes, trying not to recall the odd dream. "How much longer?"
"Don't ask him Teddy, every time we do all Dad does is yell," Albus said and Harry sighed loudly from the drivers seat.
"I didn't yell, I scowled, and only because you ask every two minutes. We're only about ten minutes out, Teddy," Harry answered and Teddy nodded quietly, rubbing his still stinging wrist.
"Did you have a bad dream Teddy?" Lily asked innocently, and before Teddy could reply both James and Albus had jumped in.
"Yea, did you have a bad dream, teddy bear?" James mocked.
"Teddy's don't have bad dreams," Albus said seriously, no doubt in his mind, and Teddy just shrugged.
"It was nothing," he mumbled, forcing a satisfying smile for Lily who grinned back.
The rest of the trip we relatively calmly, although James's sugar high had crashed, making him crankier than an infant. And Al and Lily were both squeezing their legs together dramatically, claiming that if they didn't make it to the loo soon they were going to wet themselves. Nonetheless, it was calm in the sense that no unexplained nightmares or scars appeared.
As Harry pulled the car to a stop, in front of their house in a Muggle subdivision, both Lily and Al crawled over Teddy in order to make it to the house as quick as possible. Teddy climbed out slowly, stretching his long limbs and cracking his back before he reached into the trunk of the car, picking up his shrunk trunk.
As he reached up to pull the trunk closed, his sleeve slipped and he looked down at a new scar that had grown right next to the other one, this one as red and inflamed as the one next to it. He traced the two slowly, wincing at the pain, before shrugging the worry off and slamming the trunk shut.
When he walked into the house both Lily and Al were gone, probably in the loo and Harry and James were having a lovely shouting match in the middle of the living room.
"I don't need a nap!" James was yelling loudly, and Harry remained calm, just resting a hand on James's shoulder and pushing him gently up the stairs.
"Just a couple of hours Jamie, your don't going over to Granma and Grandpa's house acting this cranky, it'll make your Uncle Percy feel the need to give me parenting books again," Harry said gently, and Teddy followed the two up the stairs, stopping at the guestroom he had become accustomed at staying at.
Tossing his mini trunk on the floor and flopped down on the wooden bed, laying his dead down on one of the blue pillows. His mind drifted back the his scars and his dream, he knew if he had any sense he'd tell Harry, but…but, it couldn't be anything.
It was probably just some old scars he was just now noticing, and the Voldemort dream had just been exactly what Lily had said, a 'bad dream'.
He hoped.
Without much more thought on the matter, Teddy drifted off again, this time dreamlessly.
-o-
"Nice try kid," Ron said as he took the Muggle beer that Grandpa Arthur had bought, out of Teddy's hands.
"I'm legal," he protested, trying to grab the drink back, but Ron just laughed, taking a sip of it.
"In the Wizard World, not in the drinking world," he said, as he sipped the beer, "Your Gran would kill me if she knew I let you drink."
Teddy rolled his eyes, leaning against the drink table and watching Victoire. She was sitting on the grass, braiding Lily's hair as the two talked aimlessly. The thought of Victoire and Teddy together, it made Teddy almost sick to his stomach. Because he wanted it so badly, but knew that it could never happen, no matter how bad his want was.
"Your Uncle Bill would kill you," Ron muttered to Teddy before patting him on the shoulder, leaving a flushing Teddy behind.
No way could he ever be that obvious again. Uncle Bill really would kill him.
"Teddy!" Teddy looked around, his eyes falling on Louis and Fred who were grinning and waving him over. With a long sigh, and a last longing look at a beer, Teddy strolled over to the two.
"Hiya Teddy!" Fred greeted eagerly, his hands held tightly behind his back.
"What's behind your back Freddy?" Teddy asked, but Fred just shook his head silently, still grinning. "Alright," Teddy sighed, turning Louis, "What's behind his back Louis?"
His approach was successful as Louis, the one Weasley who couldn't lie to save his life, struggled to form an adequate answer. Teddy was afraid the kid was about to pop under the pressure, before Louis's shoulders sagged dramatically.
"A Crybaby Carmel," Louis muttered.
"Louis!" Fred hissed sharply.
"Ah, and does Uncle George know you've been stealing his prototypes again?"
Louis and Fred shared a long glance, before Fred slowly placed the Crybaby Carmel in Teddy's outstretched hand.
"Thank you," Teddy said, tossing the candy into his pocket. The two cousins rolled their eyes, looking dejected, before their eyes lit up and they ran off towards the other cousins. Deciding that running interference wouldn't be worth it, Teddy let the dynamic duo go sabotage the younger cousins and he himself walked over the where Victoire and Lily were sitting.
"Hi Teddy," Lily greeted as she twisted grass around while waiting for her hair to be done.
"Hello ladies," he greeted as well, looking at Victoire as she focused on weaving Lily's red hair around and around.
He watched silently as Victoire focused on her work, eyes never meeting Teddy's. Teddy watched contently, almost eerily, but Victoire didn't seem to mind. When she finished she kissed Lily's cheek before the red head went off to show her mother and Victoire turned and grinned at Teddy.
"Well Teddy, fancy some braids?"
So Teddy sat down in front Victoire and allowed her to began to braid his hair into short stiff braids. With the summer crickets chirping, the night's breeze blowing, and Victoire's cool soft hands working their way through his hair, Teddy was positive that Summer was off to a killer start.
Review. Peace and Love.
