AN: As always, thank you so much for your reviews & favorites! I'm always so happy to see others are enjoying the story! As for updating, I'm trying to keep on a schedule of every ten days or so, but you should all know that when I'm not writing I attend college and work full time, so if I am late in updating I hope you'll all be able to forgive me!
Chapter Four: The Nameless Owl
As Harry had suggested, Jamie was more than enthusiastic about helping Teddy name his owl. He followed Teddy around the entire evening, launching names at him with a dogged persistence that impressed Teddy- but only just a little.
"Krum!"
"No, Jamie."
"Beedles!"
"No."
"Jamie!"
"No, Jamie."
"Krum!"
In the end, Teddy decided to barricade himself in Harry's office with Bronte, where he spent much of the night pouring over the books lining the wall's shelves. There were histories of the wizarding and Muggle worlds alike, as well as old Auror reports and medical histories and some old schoolbooks of Harry's. When Uncle Harry came in to tell him it was time for bed, Teddy sat up from where he was lying on the window seat, Bronte on his feet, and announced:
"This is hopeless."
Uncle Harry chuckled. "Take it easy, Ted." He whistled a short note and Bronte hauled himself, panting, off of Teddy's feet and made the short leap from the cushioned sill to the carpet on the office floor. "You don't need to name him right away."
"I don't think he'll ever have a name," Teddy moaned. "It's hopeless. I'm hopeless. He's going to be the nameless owl for forever."
Uncle Harry rolled his eyes. "Come off it." Then he smiled suspiciously. "Though if worst comes to worst, you could always call him Krum."
Teddy glared.
Aunt Ginny insisted that the new owl sleep out in the owlery over the barn, with Krum, Wynfor, and Gabir, but Teddy made sure to keep his attic window open all night long. When he woke up the next morning, he was thoroughly chilled and his owl was roosting atop his mirror.
They were to go to Shell Cottage that day, as Ginny had an appointment with someone at the Daily Prophet and Harry wanted to go along with her. They were still eating breakfast when the Floo roared to life and Ron called out: "Hello, Potters!"
Jamie and Al squealed and slithered off their chairs, making for the living room. Teddy remained where he was, eating his oatmeal. Outside, on the windowsill over the sink, his owl stared forlornly through the window at him.
"He looks very sad out there," he hedged, quietly, and Aunt Ginny sighed.
"He's fine. The last thing I need is feathers all over the breakfast table."
"They let the owls on the tables at Hogwarts," Teddy pointed out, and Uncle Harry snorted into his cup of coffee. Aunt Ginny glared at him, then Teddy.
"They've also got about a thousand house-elves to help them clean those tables too. I've got none."
Teddy sighed but gave up. Just then Ron came through the doorway into the kitchen, Jamie on his back and Al and Rosie in his arms.
"Everyone ready to go?" He asked, and then, catching sight of the owl: "New owl?"
"He's mine," Teddy told him. "Uncle Harry got him for me yesterday."
Ron whistled, low and long. "He's a beaut, he is. What've you called him?"
"The Nameless Owl," Harry drawled, and Teddy glared at him.
"I haven't picked one out yet," he said. "I'm still thinking."
"Call him Krum!" Jamie demanded over Ron's shoulder, and both Ron and Uncle Harry burst into laughter.
"Go on, Teddy," Uncle Harry said when he was finished choking on his coffee. "Ron's taking you kids over. We'll be along later."
Teddy slid off his chair and went upstairs, where he dressed in his usual Quidditch jersey and shorts. After a long moment of consideration, he fixed his hair so it was black and wild atop his head, and took his wand out of its box on the top of his dresser and balanced it behind his ear, as Harry often did. It looked a bit silly, he thought, as it was so long and his head still so small, but in the end he decided that he didn't care and went downstairs. In the parlor, Uncle Harry was trying to wrestle Jamie into his trainers, and Al and Rosie were fighting over who got to carry Al's rucksack. Aunt Ginny came around the corner, carrying Lily, as Teddy descended the stairs, and she stopped in her tracks.
"For Merlin's sake, Teddy," she said with a laugh, "I thought you were Harry for a moment."
"I haven't got glasses," Teddy pointed out, and Aunt Ginny nodded.
"True enough." They continued together into the parlor, where Uncle Harry took one look at Teddy and said firmly:
"Wand stays here, Ted."
"I won't use it," Teddy protested. "I just want to show Vic and Dom."
"Teddy-"
"Oh, come on, Harry," Aunt Ginny interrupted, much to Teddy's surprise. "Bill and Hermione will be there to keep an eye on him. And besides- look how cute he is. You're practically twins."
Cute wasn't the look he was going for, but if it meant he could take the wand, he would take it. He turned his attention back to his godfather as Uncle Harry said, "Fine. But if it gets used- or broken- or lost, you're not going to Hogwarts."
Teddy gaped; Jamie and Al cheered. Uncle Harry rolled his eyes at them and amended, standing, "I'm kidding. But in all seriousness, Ted- nothing wonky with it, you hear me?"
Teddy nodded gravely. Al and Jamie looked altogether too thrilled with the idea of Teddy staying home from Hogwarts, so he opted instead for holding Rosie's hand as they stepped up to the Floo. Aunt Ginny scurried to give a flurry of good-bye kisses, then Ron threw in the powder and they stepped through.
They tumbled through into the kitchen of Shell Cottage, where Hermione and Fleur were drinking tea at the long, white ash table that filled most of the small room. Everything in Shell Cottage was nearly white: the smooth grey stones of the walls were imbedded with broken, pastel sea shells and the wooden floors were white-washed and sanded smooth. A driftwood fire was burning pleasantly in the grate on the wooden stove, and the sun shone brightly through the open windows. Hermione smiled at them.
"I see you've made it safely," she commented to Ron, who shook a bit of Floo powder from his hair, showering the surrounding children with it, and went to kiss his wife.
"Harry and Ginny'll be along sometime after lunch, I expect," he told her and Fleur. "When's Mum getting here?"
"Anytime now." Hermione took Lily from Ron and gave her a kiss; Lily gurgled. Rosie pulled her hand out of Teddy's and ran after Jamie and Al into the parlor. Hermione smiled at Teddy. "Is that your wand?"
"Yes." Teddy took it from behind his ear and crossed the kitchen to show it to Hermione. "It's cherry and unicorn, like my mum's."
Hermione took it from him, delicately. "It's beautiful, Teddy," She said. "I expect the girls will be terribly jealous." She winked at Teddy, who grinned.
"Here's hoping-"
"Teddy!"
Teddy turned, startled. In the kitchen doorway, Victoire was frowning. She was dressed in an oversized t-shirt that he assumed was her father's. From beneath the collar poked a pink bathing suit strap. "Come on, Papa is taking us to the beach!"
Teddy sighed and followed her out into the parlor, where a whole cluster of children were anxiously watching out the door onto the veranda, where Uncle Bill was levitating wooden beach chairs and baskets of towels out of the garden and down over the edge of the cliff. Teddy stuck his wand back behind his ear and had just made up his mind to go and join him when Victoire snagged ahold of his arm and jerked him backwards, towards the stairwell.
"Vic-"
"You've made the front page, Teddy," Victoire giggled. In the shadows of the stairwell, she picked up a copy of The Daily Prophet off of the floor, shook it off, and presented it to him with a smug smile. His stomach sinking, Teddy took it. He was dismayed to see that Victoire was right: there, on the front page, a moving mural of Harry leading Teddy out of Eyelops was situated under the headline CHILDREN OF THE WAR PREPARE FOR HOGWARTS.
"Do you want to read it, Teddy?" Victoire asked, and Teddy bunched it in ball and threw it on the ground.
"Forget about it," he snapped, and Victoire sniffled at him, very disdainfully.
"You oughtn't throw things at ladies," she said, and Teddy scoffed.
"I didn't throw it at you, and you're not-"
The paper had fallen apart when it'd hit the ground, and one of its pages caught Teddy's eye now. Spilling out from a back page, bold black letters proclaimed: Missing children in slaughtered family still remain unfound.
Teddy dove for the paper before Victoire could make a grab for it. Quickly, he separated the page from the rest of the paper and skimmed the article in the dim light under the stair well.
The mystery of the missing children in last week's attack on the Duberre family still remains unsolved. On July 26th, Aurors reported to the Duberre family farm in Eastern Wales, where the mutilated remains of Aaron Duberre and his wife Cynthia, as well as their youngest daughter Claudia, aged thirteen months, were found. "The house was a disaster," Auror Ruth McNeill reported. "There appeared to have been a terrible struggle. It looked like a slaughterhouse in there."
Head Auror and hero of the First and Second Wizarding Wars, Harry Potter, was among the first to arrive at the scene. Though he refused to comment officially, he did remark that the site was "too grisly for the public eye" and was not above musing that the attack may have coincided with the cycle of the moon. Some speculation that Ernest Rotteger – general under notorious werewolf criminal Fenrir Greyback during the Second Wizarding War– may be behind the assault, though there has so far been no official word on the matter. "We're monitoring the situation very closely," Auror Ronald Weasley commented. "We've been tracking the wolves for some time now and we aren't going to let an act like this go without consequences."
Missing from the family's farm were the Duberre's two oldest children, seven year old Clementine and five year old Wheeler. No official proclamation has been made, but Aurors are asking those in the Wales countryside to keep an eye out for the children. Head Auror Potter is quick to assure readers that as of now, the pack's activity is contained to beyond the Wales border, and he is confident that they will be able to establish contact with them soon.
Below the article, two smiling, freckle faced children slung their arms around each other and stuck out their tongues at the camera. They looked strikingly similar, with dark, narrow eyes and messy brown hair. Both were red cheeked and grinning. Teddy felt sick.
"This is what they were talking about, the night of the party," he said to himself, and Victoire frowned.
"What-"
"Are you coming?" Aunt Hermione ducked her head under the stairwell, startling Teddy. "Bill's looking for you, and Percy's just arrived."
Teddy reluctantly dropped the paper to the ground and followed Hermione and Victoire out of the cottage. On the veranda, he discarded his trainers and socks before going with them to the edge of the cliff, where a staircase – built by hundreds of slabs of speckled grey ocean slate and magicked into place by Bill himself- wound carefully down the cliff face. Below them, on the wide expanse of the sandy white beach, Teddy could see the children romping at the edges of the waves and various aunts and uncles setting up chairs and blankets. Uncle Ron was directing a long white tent into place, Hugo perched high on his shoulders.
The end of the summer picnic at Shell Cottage was always a strictly family affair, though that rule was often studiously ignored. Luna Lovegood – now Scamander, Teddy told himself – often showed up. Bill and Fleur, he'd been told, had a special interest in Luna, and in Dean Thomas, who sometimes also came. It was right here, in the cottage by the sea, that Bill and Fleur had nursed Garrick Ollivander back to health during the war, and where they'd held secret meetings, after Grimmauld Place had been compromised. It was here that his father had burst through the front door, shouting that he was a father; it was here where he'd asked Harry to be godfather. It was here too, where Dobby the Free Elf had died and been buried a hero. Shell Cottage, Teddy thought, was supposed to mean a lot of things to a lot of people.
"Come in the water, Teddy!"
Teddy blinked down. Six year old Molly Weasley grabbed at his hand and pulled. Her brown hair, tight and curly like her father's, was tied up on top of her head in a bun that looked altogether too big for the rest of her. She grinned at him, revealing two missing front teeth. "Come on!"
"Hold on, hold on." Teddy wrangled his hand free and slithered out of his jersey. He spotted the Potter's wicker beach basket on a nearby table, and he headed towards it. After a second of deliberation, he pulled his wand off of its perch behind his ear and offered it to Aunt Hermione, who was sitting nearby, cuddling a sleeping Lily on her chest. "Would you hold this for me?" He asked, and she smiled at him. Once upon a time, he'd been smitten with her. But that was a long time ago, when he was very little. Just the thought of having a crush on her – she was practically his aunt- sort of made him want to shudder now.
"Come on, Teddy!" Molly cried again, and Teddy smiled his thanks at Hermione and turned to Molly.
"All right, all right-"
"Blue!" Jamie came running up from the water's edge. He was panting and drenched, his teeth chattering. He grabbed Teddy's hand and swung it wildly. "Blue, Teddy!"
Teddy turned his hair and bent down to allow Jamie to scramble onto his back before following Molly to the sea's edge, where Percy's Muggle wife, Audrey, had started a rousing game of Marco-Polo in the sea foam.
As the morning dragged on, more family arrived. Nana Molly and Grandad arrived a little before eleven o'clock with a resounding pop! Teddy was shocked to see with them Andromeda, wrapped in a dark green shawl and bearing a basket of sandwiches. Teddy shook Louis off of his back and ran to her, shouting.
"You didn't say you were coming!"
Andromeda smiled warmly at him. Grandad conjured up a plush rocking chair behind her, and she sank into it with a small moan of delight. "Thank you, Arthur," she said, and he nodded as he conjured another for his wife, before ruffling Teddy's hair and setting off across the sand, where the tent had half-collapsed in the wind on top of Percy.
"I wouldn't miss this for the world," Andromeda told him. "You know how much I look forward to this picnic- and besides, I already missed Harry's party! It's only right of me to show up to at least one family event this summer!"
"Are you well enough to stay?" Teddy asked seriously, and she tutted.
"How you worry so! Enough of that, Teddy. Tell me- what did you name that glorious bird I saw you with in the Prophet this morning?"
With a jolt, Teddy remembered the article, and the slaughtered family, the house that was "too grisly for public eyes", the missing children, and the teenager in Madame Malkins who thought he was a werewolf, and just like that, his good cheer was gone.
"I haven't got a name for him yet," he told his grandmother glumly. "He's nameless."
He didn't want to have to answer anything else, so he wandered away to where Lily was tossing sleepily on a blanket in the shade of the cliff. Behind him, he heard Jamie's shouts of "Nana! Grams!" but he ignored them and stretched out on the blanket next to Lily. She was sleeping restlessly, her small pink lips puckered around her thumb and her pale blonde eyelashes fluttering on her cheeks. She had no freckles, not yet, but there was time for them to come in, Ginny had told him. Even now, at just seven months old, Lily looked remarkably like her mother: big blue eyes, bright red hair, and a complexion of porcelain. Teddy propped himself up on his elbow and used a fingertip to tease one of her curls, swaying gently in the ocean breeze.
Before long, he was interrupted by Aunt Hermione, who came to lay Hugo on the blanket next to Lily. "She sleeping all right?" She asked, and Teddy nodded. Hermione kneeled down beside him and with a happy sigh, clasped her hands in her lap and looked out over the ocean.
"It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" She said aloud, to no one in particular. Teddy didn't reply, and, after a moment, Hermione looked at him, softly but shrewdly. "Are you excited for Hogwarts?"
"Yes." Teddy hesitated. "I'm a little scared too, though."
"Oh, I expect you are. I was simply terrified when I had to go for the first time."
"You were?"
"Naturally. I'd no idea any of this even existed, you know, not until I was eleven years old." She smirked. "Of course, I couldn't let anyone know that I was scared. I was a little bit of a show off, then."
"Just then?" Teddy asked, and she laughed. She reached down and brushed a speck of sand from Hugo's downy red curls. Teddy rolled over onto his back and, squinting into the sunny blue sky, asked, "Did you know about the missing children in Wales?"
Aunt Hermione was silent a moment. "Yes."
"Uncle Harry lied to me about it. He said there was just some activity, nothing to worry about-"
"There isn't anything to worry about, Teddy," Aunt Hermione interrupted gently. "Do you really think that we would let anything happen to you, or anyone else here?"
Teddy closed his eyes. "Someone made that same promise to you too once, I bet," he said, and Aunt Hermione replied:
"They did, yes. But that was a different time. Try as he might, Ernest Rotteger is not Lord Voldemort. He never will be. Harry and Ron and Minister Shacklebolt are very good at their jobs. They will do whatever it takes to keep this danger from spreading."
"What if it's not enough?"
"Then I expect we'll cross that bridge when we come to it." Teddy felt her hand, soft on his forehead. "You know, I think I've seen you in blue often enough that it almost looks entirely natural on you."
"My mother favored pink. It's pink in her wedding picture."
"She did. She was beautiful, wasn't she?"
For some reason, talking about his mother with Aunt Hermione was not hard. It was with Uncle Harry oftentimes, and with Aunt Ginny, who had been very fond of his mother, it was nearly impossible at times. But Hermione, despite her vigor and straightforward fierceness, was a gentler and more accepting soul than the others that Teddy knew. She had real horrors in her past, he knew: parents she had never been able to find, parents she had loved very much; and a scar, white against her summer dark skin, screamed a word that Teddy dreaded to even read.
"What do you think my father would think of what's happened?" He asked. He heard Hermione shift on the sand. One of the babies whimpered – Hugo, he thought – and she quieted him before answering.
"I think he would be very upset about how some of it is being handled," she said honestly. "Not by your godfather, or by Ron, but by some of the media. We all know the folks at The Prophet are no more than fear mongers and vicious gossips. They want to strike fear into every one who reads their words, until the very thought of someone who is an alien to the norms of society induces terror."
"Harry says the wolves are dangerous."
"Rotteger's pack, certainly. Those that ran with Greyback during the war did terrible things, Teddy, awful things. But that is not to say that all of them are like that. We as people have a horrible habit of assigning blame to a whole based on the actions of some singular individuals."
"My father was the only good werewolf you knew, though."
"Your father's story was uncommon. Not every werewolf had been shown the sort of love he was. Not all of them had the same chances to prove themselves in the way that he did."
Teddy remained still on the blanket. He wondered, not for the first time, what it would have been like had his father lived. Would he have the same rosy picture of him that he did now? He supposed not. It was something like he and Uncle Harry, he supposed; everyone else in the world had such a glorious picture painted of the Boy Who Lived, but they didn't see him behind the scenes, when he was tired after work or arguing with Ginny or scolding one of his children. Uncle Harry was a very good man, Teddy thought, and a wonderful father and godfather and husband – but he was also an ordinary man, much more ordinary than everyone else seemed inclined to believe.
Beside him, Lily started to fuss. Teddy opened his eyes and sat up. She was waking, and with a short cry, reached her arms up to him. He carefully picked her and up and held her against her shoulder, the way Aunt Ginny had showed him. "Do you think I could take her to the water?" He asked, and Aunt Hermione nodded.
"But just sit with her," she cautioned. "If you need help, I'll be watching."
Teddy clambered to his feet and found a spot on the very edge of the water, where the sand was marked with a dark line from the rushing swells. He sat carefully and arranged Lily on the sand in between his legs, with her head against his stomach. The water came rushing towards them, but by the time it reached them, it was only high enough to cover their legs, and not very cold. Lily screamed with delight and slapped her hands against her thighs.
More popping sounds announced the arrival of others, and when Teddy turned his head to see who it was, he was delighted to see Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny. They'd both changed before they'd come, into their swimsuits and beach robes, and Jamie and Al went charging to their parents with a scream. Aunt Ginny waved at Teddy, then went to say hello to Nana Molly and Andromeda, while Harry, Al and Jamie dangling off his arms, made his way over to Teddy.
"All right, Captain?" He asked, and Teddy nodded. Harry knelt to kiss Lily, who pushed his face away with sandy hands, and he laughed. "Have you been in the water all morning?"
"Most of it." Teddy wanted to ask about the article in the Prophet, but he thought he should wait till the little boys were away. "Grams came."
"I saw." Uncle Harry stood again and took Jamie by one hand and Al by the other. "Are you coming out with us?" In the water, George (who had arrived some time ago), Ron, Bill, and Grandad had children piled atop their shoulders. Teddy shook his head.
"Lils and I are okay here," he said. Harry smiled again, then headed out into the water, stopping to lift Albus onto his shoulders while Jamie splashed water at them. Teddy sat back, being careful to keep his hands around Lily, and watched while they frolicked. Out in the water, Uncle Harry stood a head or shorter than each of his brother in laws. Teddy guessed that the Ravenclaw jerk had been right: he was much taller in the papers.
After a while, Aunt Ginny joined them in the water, along with Angelina and Fleur and Percy. Audrey stayed on the beach with Lucy, who was crying; behind him, still underneath the cliff's shadow, Aunt Hermione had fallen asleep, curled up with Hugo.
Soon, it was lunchtime, and Nana called everyone over to the tent. Uncle Harry sent the boys ahead, then came over to relieve Teddy of Lily. "You know, you don't have to watch her. There's more than enough people here who will so you can play."
"I don't mind." He didn't. There was a special place in his heart, he thought, that was supposed to be filled only by giggling red-headed baby sisters. "Lils and I are having fun, aren't we?"
Lily, perched against Harry's bare chest, stuck out her tongue and shrieked. Teddy laughed and Harry jostled her up and down till she giggled. Then he cocked an eyebrow at Teddy. "What happened to the black? And where's your wand?"
"Aunt Hermione's holding it for me," he replied. "And Jamie wanted blue."
"You know, at some point, you're going to have to stop giving him everything he asks for."
"As if you're any better."
Harry laughed. They were nearing the tent, where everyone was crowding together along a long picnic table, and where he was very surprised to see Luna and her husband, Rolf, sitting in between Fleur and Arthur. Harry waved to her, then said to Teddy, "I rather fancied the black myself. But I know I'm nothing next to Jamie…"
"Oh, stop it," Teddy said, flushing.
He ate lunch squeezed in at his grandmother's side, with Charlie Weasley on the other. Charlie was very adamant that Teddy call his owl King. "King?" Teddy asked, and George shouted from down the table:
"King Weasley, after Ronnie!" Everyone laughed and Uncle Ron turned a bright flaming red and when lunch ended, Teddy was nowhere near closer to having a name for his owl than he had been that morning.
After lunch they played out in the water again, and this time everyone came, save Nana and Grams, who stayed under the tent with Hugo and Lily. Luna, who was so pregnant that she looked as though she were about to burst, was less active than the others, and in time even she grew tired and retired to the tent. All too soon, it seemed, the sun was sinking in the sky and the adults began collecting children and passing out towels and levitating furniture back up the length of the tall cliff. Up at Shell Cottage, Teddy knew, Beexie, the cottage's paid Elf, would have a delightful dinner laid out, and they would eat under the stars in the garden and then listen to the Weird Sisters on the wireless until the children had fallen asleep and would be ready to be Apparated home…
As he started up the stairs after Bill, Teddy was surprised when Dominque slipped to his side and placed her hand in his. "We won't see you till Christmas, now," she said sadly, and Victoire crowded in on his other side. "I wish you could be a squid," Dom went on, and ahead of them, Bill chuckled.
"It's a squib," Teddy told her. "And it's not that long of a time, I promise. You won't even notice I'm gone."
"I'll notice," Victoire said sadly. "It's all I'll notice."
Teddy was unsure what to say to that, so he just smiled and held out his other hand to her. She took it gratefully, and as they climbed the cliff stairs up into the red sky above them, Vic whispered in his ear:
"You ought to name your owl Absalon."
He glanced at her. "What?"
"Absalon," she said again. "It's what Aunt Gabby said we ought to name Louis."
"What's it mean?" Teddy asked dubiously, and Victoire grinned at him.
"My father is peace," she said. Teddy smiled softly and rolled the name around on his tongue.
"Absalon," he said. "It's perfect."
Victoire smirked. "It's better than Krum, at any rate," she said, and they both laughed.
