Author's note: Me? Posting again? Can you tell I have a deadline coming? Please comment to help me not regret grad school. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights

Hogwarts: Assignment #10, Lineage Studies Task #6: Write about living up to your namesake

Warnings: Mentions canon character death/loss

You Wear It Well

"What was grandpa like?" Teddy asked. The first time he had asked that question, he had been six years old and doing his homework at the kitchen table. He thought it was silly that his parents sent him to Muggle school while Victoire and other Wizarding kids were allowed to get writing lessons from Grandma Weasley and play in the waves at Shell Cottage all day, but Mum had told him that if he argued about it one more time she'd put him in summer school. So whatever. He did his stupid homework. Today, he had to fill in a family tree and write fun facts about each of his parents and grandparents. He was kind of happy he didn't have any aunts or uncles, unless you counted Sirius (but there wasn't a spot on the worksheet for your godfather's godfather so Teddy didn't think that his teacher would–plus the whole dog thing was complicated).

Mum was packing away leftover pizza since that's what they'd had for supper. She was working a lot and so they'd had pizza twice this week. It rocked. When he asked, she looked over her shoulder, quietly wandered over, and looked at his homework. Her eyes, which she had turned bright amber today, skimmed his homework.

"His favourite colour was blue," she said. "You can write that down."

"Okay," Teddy said, writing down B-L-U-E.

"Do you need help spelling that out?"

"No."

"Of course you don't… Your father's son, you are."

"But what was he like?" Teddy asked again.

Mum pondered that for a second.

"He was a very, very gentle person," Mum said. "One time, when I was little, there was a bowtruckle nest that fell out of the tree in our backyard. Bowtruckles have very, very fragile limbs–especially baby ones. Do you remember when you and Victoire found that nest at the Burrow, and your father told you not to touch them? Anyways, your grandfather managed to put all the little baby bowtruckles back in their nest without a single one of them being hurt. You always felt very safe with him."

Teddy was pretty sure bowtruckles was one of those magical things he wasn't allowed to talk about in Muggle school, so he finished writing the thing about his grandpa liking blue, but he liked that he knew that story.

He asked again when he was ten years old. This time he asked Gran herself. They had gone over to Gran's house for Sunday dinner, like they always did, and Mum and Gran had hugged while looking at the photo frames over the fireplace. He'd thought he'd heard his name, but really Gran had said 'Ted,' not 'Teddy.' They were talking about Grandpa.

"I forget how good it is to talk about him," she had said with a small smile on her face that looked strange to Teddy but was a smile nevertheless. Since Gran said it felt good, Teddy had gone and asked her more questions.

"Gran, what was Grandpa like?" he'd asked her.

She looked down to him and then back at the photos above the mantle. There were pictures of everyone up there, but she was looking specifically at Grandpa's–the one of Grandpa holding his diploma from St. Mungo's Healer Academy, one of Grandpa helping Mum mix a cake when she was a little girl, a photo of Grandpa showing the camera a massive zucchini he'd grown in his garden, Grandpa hugging Mum in her Auror robes, another of Grandpa at his retirement party when he'd retired from the hospital…

"He was like sunshine," Gran said with a sad little smile. "He always made you feel warm and better, just by being by you. He knew how to make you feel loved. He loved making everyone around him feel loved... He would have spoiled you rotten, Teddy. He would have loved you so much… come here, sweetheart."

Teddy went in for the hug and felt like Gran was maybe holding onto him to keep her hands from shaking. So he didn't ask any other questions, but he did think a lot about what it meant for a person to be like sunshine and how that could even be possible.

Now he was twenty years old, wearing the sky blue robes of a Healer for the first time. His valedictorian speech was burning a hole in his pocket and the freckles on his left arm were shifting around his skin as they always did when he was nervous. He hadn't been nervous at all until now–what had there been to be nervous about? He had exhausted Victoire by practising the Healer's Oath he would read, and he'd already earned the diploma and accepted the job offer St. Mungo's had offered. It was a good day; his parents had even put together a not-so-secret surprise party to celebrate his graduation. But he was nervous now that he had found all the class portraits of previous graduating classes as he wandered the hospital before the ceremony began. It didn't take him long to find the portrait from Gran's graduating class, which of course meant that his grandfather was also in the picture. He was standing in the last row of graduates, so he must have been a tall man. Teddy hadn't known that about him. His smile looked as effortless as Mum's, but much less mischievous. His hair was neatly combed and his face was clear-shaven, which only showed off his dimples.

"There you are," a voice said behind him. Teddy turned around and saw Dad, wearing one of his nice sets of robes and a bright smile. "I wondered where you had wandered off too…"

Dad looked quickly at the portrait Teddy was looking at and, after seeing the year the photograph had been taken, looked at the last row of Healers. He must have remembered how tall Ted Tonks had been.

Teddy had gotten used to hearing about his grandfather when he had begun his Healer training–all of his teachers, the Healers he had interned for, and everyone else had talked long and hard about how well his grandmother could guide labouring mothers and had sung praises to her burn-healing balms. But his grandfather? People had always had so much to say about Ted Tonks–about how calm he could stay in a bustling emergency room, about how comforting he was to patients and their families, about how he could bring back witches and wizards from the absolute brink of death after a spell went wrong and all else failed… About how gentle he was. About how warm he was. He was a Healer like no other, Healer Friedmann–the oldest and most ancient of all his professors–had said decisively. And now Teddy was going to be a Healer too. Teddy was finally going to be tested against how good of a Healer Ted Tonks had been.

"What was Grandpa like?" Teddy asked his dad. "And don't say something I already know."

Dad tucked his hands into his pockets and gave it a think.

"When your mother and I told your grandparents that we were expecting you, I was terrified," Dad said. "I had, as you know, made quite the mess of things myself and I had no idea how they would react. I was still scared out of my mind about what your life would look like since none of us knew. I was staring at my shoes when your mother told them that we were going to have a baby. I looked up just in time to see her toughen her chin and say 'and we're happy about it.' And before anyone could say anything else, your grandfather said 'of course you are, that's wonderful.' It had taken me so long to believe your mother when she had told me so. It had taken me so long to let myself be happy, and I still wasn't quite there. But I believed your grandfather instantly. It was wonderful. You were wonderful. I believed him."

Teddy couldn't quite look away from his father, and his father couldn't quite look away from the photograph of his grandfather.

"He gave your mother the biggest hug, and then shook my hand and pulled me into his arms too," Dad said. He chewed his lip. "I think he saw I was terrified. After dinner that night, we sat on the back porch and he told me everything he thought I should know about having a father–with the caveat that I would be out of luck if you turned out to be a boy, although some of his advice on braiding hair did come in handy after all. Then he let me talk about how scared I was, and we talked about whether or not you would be a werewolf yourself. He talked about it matter-of-factly, without judgement, as if it would all be okay, one way or another. And he was right, of course. You are wonderful. And so was he."

Teddy didn't know quite what to say for a second.

"You never told me that story," Teddy said.

"I've never told anyone," Dad shrugged as if this was just occurring to him. He cleared his throat self-consciously, like whenever he had to talk about himself. "Anyways, all that to say… that's what your Grandpa was like, Teddy."

When he said that last part he looked at Teddy fondly, with so much pride in his eyes that Teddy felt self-conscious himself now. Dad extended an arm and wrapped it around him.

"You wear his name well," he said.

And at that, Teddy relaxed.

WC: 1597