Chapter Two – "Coming Home"
"Ted?"
"Hm?"
Nola wrinkled her nose uncomfortably and closed her Transfiguration book. "I think my brain just exploded."
Ted laughed and thumped her on the back of her head. "Nope, sorry, I think it's all in tact." He went back to his essay, his quill scratching away a mile a minute (he had always been weird like that, able to be ridiculously goofy one minute and then the most studious young wizard you have ever met the next; his godfather suspected it was the conflicting genes from his parents trying to fight for dominance). When she made no move to reopen her book and work on her own homework he gave up and threw his quill over his shoulder. "Fine! We'll do this over break."
"Thank Merlin!" Nola squealed, ruffling his now ginger-colored hair. With an elaborate flourish of her wand, her book, parchment, quill, and ink zoomed into her bag.
"Impressive," Ted acknowledged, "but what do we do now?"
In response, Nola shrugged. "You're the 'cool' one, then; why can't you think of anything?"
"And you're the one who didn't want to work on our essays," he grumbled. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to locate my quill." He made to stand up, but Nola pulled him back down.
"There has to be something for us to do. It's the night before the holidays start! C'mon, Teddy, put that fat brain of yours to use."
"You know, I resent that! Is that all I'm useful, Finola Endicott-Hepburn? My unfailing intelligence, wit, charm, and good looks?"
"You forgot your amazing Quidditch skills."
"Good save, B.F.F.!" he said boisterously, patting her on the shoulder. "But anyway—" Ted paused as someone from behind the couch they were situated on tapped his own shoulder. He and Nola turned around to see Molly Weasley, the eldest daughter of Percy Weasley and his wife, Audrey.
"Hey, Molls, what's up?"
"Mail-time," she said, sighing and pulling a thick wad of various folded pieces of parchment from out of her back pocket of her pants.
"Mail? Why? S'not like we won't see everyone tomorrow..." Ted said to Molly, as she flipped through the stack of letters.
She snorted derisively. "Have you suffered a bludger to the head lately, Teddy?"
"Erm, no, I don't believe so. Why?"
"You seem to have forgotten how Ma Weasley is," she stated simply and handed him a letter of his own. She then traipsed across the Gryffindor common room to deliver one to Victoire, her older cousin.
"She has a point."
Ted refrained from acknowledging his friend's fairly astute commentary and opened the letter, scanning it. With a short "hmph," he threw it over the head of three first years and into the fire.
"How bad was it?" Nola questioned sympathetically, leaning towards him without even realizing it.
His hair changed to a startling deep blue. "I've had worse. Just her being overbearing…as usual. It's not like I don't have the whole lot of them breathing down my neck most of the time…" Ted paused, seeming to realize the dull mood that had suddenly descended upon the two of him. In response, his hair changed a sandy brown, mirroring the color of his father's in the pictures that his godfather had given to him. A pleasant grin also took the place of his frown.
Just as he was good at disguising his features, he was also talented with masking his more desolate moods. Nola was experienced in all matters of Teddy Remus Lupin, however, and could tell by the small imperfections in his magical mask that he was feeling at least a little discontented – the ever-so-slight furrowing of his eyebrows, the gentle downward lilt of one corner of his mouth.
"You probably don't want to, but I'm here if you want to talk," Nola insisted. "You know that, right?"
"Are you turning sappy on me?" he groaned, slouching in his seat.
Nola refrained from being offended or, worse yet, hurt; he was just being a stupid boy. And she probably was getting too sentimental with him. She backtracked, attempting to get out of the hole she was digging for herself – she and Teddy had a strict no-mushiness reputation to uphold. "No, I was just, you know—"
Ted leaned over and patted her on the knee. "It's okay. Just don't let it happen again," he said and shook a finger at her in jest.
She offered a tight smile. "I won't."
----
Harry met the two on the platform the next afternoon when they got off the train, their trunks already magically-shrunk and stowed away in their pockets.
"Wotcher, Harry!" Ted shouted, drawing the attention of a few parents nearby as they collected their young. The two embraced and Nola ambled towards them through the crowd.
Ted's godfather looked over, saw Nola, and grinned wide. "Miss Endicott-Hepburn," he said (picking on her long, jointed surname was a usual pastime of his), "my kids are more excited to see you than to play with James' new toy broomstick. Frankly, it's a crime. Ginny, though, is especially keen on having another female presence in the house, I think." He drew her to his side for a quick hug and the trio (after pushing a disoriented young Molly Weasley, who had fallen asleep on the train, towards Percy and Aubrey – and successfully evading what would have turned into a lengthy, drab conversation with the latter) Side-Along Apparated away.
They appeared in the middle of a copse of trees, approximately half a mile behind the Potter's newly-built home in Godric's Hollow, which the family had just moved into over the summer. The walk to the house was filled with Harry asking various questions about how the fall semester of their seventh year had gone and Teddy and Nola answering as honestly as they could (while Harry was pretty lenient with Ted as compared with his Grandma Andy, he still frowned upon the young Metamorphmagus causing too much ruckus).
The three arrived at a fenced-in yard and Harry unlocked the back gate with a tap of his wand. In the enclosure, the two youngest Potter children, Lily and Albus, were ooh -ing and ahh-ing as they watched their older brother zoom around them on his new toy broom, his toes barely skimming the lofty grass. Harry went in first, followed by Teddy and Nola.
"Daddy!" little Lily squealed, launching herself towards her father. He picked her and spun her around and set her on his hip. Throwing her arms around his neck, she finally spotted her favorite god-brother and her squeals were renewed. "Ted-Ted-Ted!" she chanted, reaching for him over Harry's shoulder. He gave into her request and handed his youngest over.
Albus jumped up at the commotion and ran to Nola, who stooped down to give him a big hug.
James, meanwhile, devoid of any captivated audience members, jumped off his toy broomstick and stamped his right foot into the dirt, kicking up blades of grass. "Hel-lo!" he called, evidently aggravated. "Can't you see what I can do? I can fly now and I'm going to be a better seeker than both Dad and Ted!" His declaration was met with a snort of jest and derision from the latter.
"That's not possible, Jamesie," Ted insisted with an exaggerated grin, Lily still clinging to his neck, "because I'm the best there ever was and ever will be."
James Sirius Potter never backed down from a challenge. "Oh, yeah? I'll show you!"
Teddy threw his head back and laughed, his hair changing to a playful turquoise. He handed Lily off to her father (with insistent promises he would play dolls with her soon when she didn't want to let go) and gave chase to James across the lawn.
"Al, why don't you show Nola where your Mum said she was going to be sleeping while she's here."
Nola was towed into the house by Albus' tiny hand latched around her wrist. The décor inside was mismatched but homey, and obviously a mix-up of Ginny's humble up-bringing in the Burrow surrounded by a caring family and Harry's fat wallet. There were various odds and ends everywhere – Ginny's Holyhead Harpies kit hung in a shadowbox on the wall, Harry's trunk from his school days was sitting in a corner, a framed picture of the original Order of the Phoenix sat on one of the coffee tables, the entire family's stockings hung from the mantle over the fireplace (she was also incredibly touched when she noticed two extra stockings: one for her and Ted) – and the effect was that their newly-claimed home looked like they had lived in it for years. She greatly preferred the new house to the original flat that Harry and Ginny had first moved into together when the former had proposed.
"Do you like your new home, Al?" Nola asked as he tugged her up the stairs to the next floor.
He nodded enthusiastically. "'Course I do; I don't have to share a room with James anymore. And Dad even took us to go see the house he lived in when he was a baby. It was really cool." Albus generally wasn't all that talkative, but he seemed genuinely interested in the subject and continued explaining everything about the neighborhood – how there were Muggles that lived around and how they all had to be careful to not do magic in front of them; how the monument in the town square was dedicated to Harry and his parents; and how, while Muggles lived in the area, it was mostly dominated by wizard-folk.
Albus brought her down one of the hallways upstairs, still happily chatting, and stopped at one of the middle doors on the right-hand side.
"This'll be your room," he told her, turning the knob and leading her by the wrist inside.
The guest bedroom was nicely furnished, a queen bed covered by a thick patchwork quilt (no doubt one Ma Weasley's) in the center of the room and opposite of that, against the wall, a wooden dresser. A nice lamp sat on a matching bedside table and there was even a wind-up alarm clock too.
"The bathroom is across the hall," Albus informed her quietly, slipping back to his usual shy personality. But Nola knew he would warm back up to her in a day or so when he got used to her being around.
"Thanks, Al," she said as he shut the door behind him.
Left to her own devices, Nola pulled her shrunken trunk out of her pocket and put it back to its original size, setting it at the foot of the bed. She glanced inside, making sure none of her robes or other clothes had been harmed or wrongly-stretched by the spell (unfortunately, she had experience in the area and it had cost her almost an entire wardrobe one time a few years ago). Seeing that everything appeared to be in its original condition, she shut the trunk and headed downstairs to see what Ginny was up to.
After wandering around downstairs for ten minutes she found the redhead in the kitchen standing in front of the open stove and up to her head in smoke. She waved her hands trying to flap the smoke away rather unsuccessfully.
"Ginny? Everything okay?"
"Er, yeah, everything's fine!" she exclaimed in response, her voice an octave higher than usual, possibly due to the dilemma before her: a blackened roast that she had just pulled out of the oven. "I can just…ugh! I can never seem to get this stupid roast to cook like Mum's! My mum's always turn out perfect and this is a far cry from being anywhere near edible."
Nola opened the window above the sink, the better to let the smoke evacuate the kitchen, and joined Ginny by the stove. "I wish I could offer some sort of incredibly helpful advice here, but I'm not domesticated in the least."
Ginny shook her head despondently. "No, I rather think I'm not either. I could do something loads more productive on any Quidditch pitch. But anyway…" She shook off her oven mitts and pulled Nola into a big hug, rocking the teenager from side to side. "It's good to see you again, dear. I was so pleased when Ted said you would spend the hols with us."
"This was much preferred to the alternative. Besides, I would never miss an opportunity to spend time with my favorite Potters."
Ginny motioned her into the adjoined dining room where they both sat down with mugs of steaming hot chocolate. "The alternative?" she questioned. "What're your parents up to?"
"Mum and Pop are off to visit some of his family in Germany. They'll be gone through the new year."
The older woman frowned, a crease in the middle of her brow becoming more defined. "How did a girl as sweet and faithful as you get stuck with such rotten parents?" she asked bluntly, but then put her hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry, that was uncalled for."
"Oh, no, it really isn't," Nola assured her.
Ginny, she mused, was one of the few people who knew of her poor relationship with her mother and father. She had never been especially close to either of them because neither party involved had ever put forth the effort to get to know one another. They all lived in the same house, sure. But while Nola was busy studying Hogwarts at to become a fine witch, her parents were off travelling who-knew-where for their job (her half-blood mother and Muggle father, the latter of whom was aware of his wife and child's magical-upbringing, took adventurous non-magical folk on group tours of the world's great cities and destinations). To her rather acute memory, Nola could not recall either of them ever asking if she would like to travel with them. It was really just easier for all three of them if they never put forth any effort in erecting or maintaining any sort of relationship. They just accepted it, as they were accustomed to doing.
So while Ginny was, for the most part, aware of Nola's goings-on at home, Teddy had no clue. Sheltered since birth by the presence of a loving grandmother and a devoted extended family, the young Metamorphmagus had no clue that not everyone he met would be so fortunate. Nola thought it kinder to just let him go on believing that, rather than exposing him to the harsh real world, but Ginny severely disagreed.
"I really wish you would just tell Ted," she would insist, and she took the opportunity to do so then. "He's your best friend, Nola. He deserves to know."
"No," she disagreed, as she always had. "Teddy's happier in his little bubble. He knows family and friends and Quidditch and classes and that's all he needs to know right now."
Ginny sighed and gave up her argument, for then at least. "And how's your grandmother doing? Well, I hope?"
Nola nodded, glad for the change of subject. "Yeah, she's doing great. I think I'll Apparate over and see her tomorrow."
Her maternal grandmother, Carol, was Nola's rock. Well-aware of her daughter's horrible approach to motherhood, Carol had made sure to have a strong relationship with her only granddaughter from when she was a baby and they remained unfailingly close to the day. In fact, Nola, when not at school or with the Potters, spent most of her time at her grandmother's modest house in the English countryside, surrounded by a lush garden and gently-sloping hills.
She would go visit her tomorrow. Hopefully that would dissipate the heavy, gray cloud that had descended on her mood after her conversation with Ginny.