Losses and Gains
He came into the world at a time when everybody around him was busy leaving it. There are photos of him with the people he would have loved the most, had they all still had the privilege of a beating heart and a warm body. He doesn't have memories and he refuses to cast his eyes upon the vestiges of a past that hasn't continued into the future, except for him.
His grandmother tells him stories of the day he was born, of the way in which his mother was so caught up in the war that she hadn't even realised it was time for her to have her baby. He was born on the very same bed he still sleeps in, and sometimes his hands search the wooden headboard and the sides of the cot for something, anything to connect him to parents he'll never know.
It was a stormy night that brought him into the world, and his mother's hair and flown turquoise for a good few hours before he was born. He hadn't given his mother too much pain, his grandmother told him with shimmering eyes, and he chose to believe her because he was desperate to believe that he had done something, anything good for his parents. He knew that his father hadn't been there when he was just born but had arrived a few hours later, and had been ecstatic.
His wand cast a great shimmering wolf when he uttered the patronus charm and he wondered, for just the passing flicker of a second if he would have been loved as much, had he inherited lycanthropy from his father. He couldn't imagine the pain of two hundred bones cracking and reforming under the harsh cod light of the swollen moon every single night and shed many a tear for his father's misfortune; a misfortune he'd never been allowed to experience.
Teddy Lupin came into the world at a time when everyone around him was busy leaving it. He was a product of the war but not a victim, and just about everybody told him just how lucky he was to have survived the apocalypse. He smiled and nodded a little too enthusiastically, thanking his lucky stars that he was blessed enough to belong to multiple families and was showered with love aplenty.
But as the sun set and the lights dimmed, he couldn't help but wonder how it would feel to have the love of the father and mother who bore him.
Entered in:
The Het-Tastic Drabble-Athon Competition, prompt #18 – love
The Race to the Top of Mount Potter – birth
The Twelve Days of Christmas Style Competition, drabble #2