I am the sort of person who is difficult to miss. I can stand out in a crowd, if I choose to, the one Harry Potter mentions at every speech he gives, the son of two members of the Order of the Phoenix, the werewolf's son. The War Orphan, a symbol of what everybody was fighting for. It's been that way all my life and I am used to it being like that. It makes me glad, truth be told, because somebody had to be put upon a pedestal beside my godfather. Somebody had to show the war for what it really was, and if letting my grandmother coax me into some smart clothes and making me attend a few boring Ministry functions to listen to Harry speak helped to do it, then so be it. Looking back on my childhood, Harry always says he never meant it to be that way. He hadn't wanted me to be so singled out. It just sort of happened.

It used to happen.

And it's ironic, don't you think that years later after all that effort, people take one look at me and simply think: I know that man from somewhere. They never quite know where. I've been labelled as the drummer from the Weird Sisters, a distant relation of somebody's brother-in-law and an old classmate from Durmstrang Institute. And it's more ironic still, don't you suppose, that when I correct them with my name they finally recall who I am: Teddy Lupin. Harry Potter's boy. They never say I'm yours.

Sometimes I think Harry and Ginny are worse by far. Sometimes I wonder if they've forgotten I'm not actually theirs. Even now, when I've left home and am on the verge of marriage and even beginning a family of my own, there isn't a Sunday that passes without me going to dinner at the Potters. It's been years since I've bothered telling them that I'm coming, but there is always a place set at the table for me anyway. Sometimes I wonder if, had you both lived, I would still be going round to Harry's every week. Perhaps you'd be going with me. Or perhaps I'd be going round to eat dinner with you instead.

Grown up as I am, I still imagine sitting around the table with you both. We chat about mundane, everyday things, what you got up to at work, Mum, or how things are between Victoire and I. You ask Mum to pass you the salt, Dad, and she promptly drops it. Gran always says she was clumsy. It spills out all over the floor and Mum sighs in exasperation as we laugh at her. You look so much younger when you laugh, Dad. Harry used to say you did. Mum can scowl for England, she does so then across the table at us and tells you, Dad, that she ought hex you for having a bad sense of humour. I tell her not to be so over-sensitive, even though I know it's all a joke, and remind her:

I love you, you know.

When I was younger I dreamt of you all the time. Dad reading me bedtime stories, Mum teaching me to ride a broom instead of Harry and the three of us going shopping in Diagon Alley for my school supplies, bickering about which house I was going to be sorted into. I ended up in your house, Mum. I don't think Dad would mind. After all if you hadn't been so loyal, Mum, you'd never have stood side by side with Dad and been so unwaveringly brave. Who needs Gryffindor Courage if loyalty can bring you strength like that?

A few times I've caught myself thinking foolishly that my dreaming and imaginings aren't enough; when I'd speak of you to the other children at school and they would ask: How do you know? When my imagination conjures up too many possibilities and I realise that I don't know which one is most true to the two of you, when Harry and Gran packed me off to my first year at Hogwarts and imagining you standing on the platform beside them as the train drew away only brought tears to my eyes.

But then I remember the great sacrifices that you made for me, all that you did to keep me safe and to give me the chance for a better future. I remind myself that it doesn't matter if I can't guess what sorts of food you did and didn't like or know for sure what you would think of my girlfriend. None of that truly matters because I know the most important thing of all: You both loved me. More than life itself. The best thing about remembering this is that it makes me love you even more.

I don't just love you, not really. I love you unquestioningly. I love every shred of your memory that I can lay my hands upon, every passed down possession, every frozen memory captured in a photograph, every trait or habit that I'm told I must have inherited from one of you. I love your struggle and I love your triumph and the very idea of the two of you and all that you stand for is nothing to my mind but glorious. Glorious. There can surely be no other word grand enough for my love for you both, my pride in you and all the others. I hope you know exactly what you have done. It can't have been more than a mere notion back then, a vain hope because you knew you might have died for me and have Voldemort triumph all the same. But you won. You truly did. And the world is a better place for it. It is perfectly mundane and carefree and the worst I have to worry about is whether or not I'll sleep through my alarm clock and be late for work in the mornings. Sometimes I look at my life and wonder if you could have ever fitted into it, if you could have coped with such normality. Perhaps you never would have, perhaps it would have all been far too risk-free. My world is nothing like yours. Your world was made of nightmares that I can barely imagine. Sometimes it makes you seem like a pair of mythical beings, so far removed from everything else and able to cope with such things that I cannot comprehend. You're not like those who survived the War. Or rather they aren't like you. Not anymore. They're all so normal that I cannot imagine them flung into conflict. Not like the two of you. Not like my heroes whose whole lives revolved around struggle. I can't imagine either of you during peacetime, even if you enjoyed a few years of it every now and again.

I love the way everybody still says your names, almost as if you were still alive. If Tonks ever heard you say such a thing she'd have laughed herself hoarse! Where did you learn a trick like that? Remus taught me, years back. You have your mother's eyes, did you know that Ted? Keep on growing like that young man and you'll be as tall as your father! You're a proper Lupin, Teddy. You read more books than you eat hot dinners...

That last one was always one of my favourites because I couldn't decide which of it's meanings was more significant; that you read a lot of books, Dad, or that you didn't always manage regular hot dinners.

I love the way I think myself silly for feeling such a leap in my chest every time somebody mentions one of you in passing, because in truth it isn't very silly. In truth it means I love you, and it doesn't matter that I have no memories of you myself, I'll love you forever and borrow everybody elses'.

It's silly that I once thought I didn't know either one of you as well as I should.

I should have known better than that. Because if your sacrifices weren't telling enough, your obvious love for me would be.

And we never have and never will truly be parted, for such love is something that the three of us wholly understand. There is no way to destroy it, to destroy us. Not even death managed that. You shall never be invisible to me. Not for a single second. Not ever.

Finish.