Lucy shut the door behind her, the summer evening air buzzing on her skin. Shell Cottage was remote enough that when she looked out to the horizon she could see the stars, and it calmed her after the manic energy of her cousin and sister.

She saw Teddy sitting by a flowerbed just a little way from the house. He'd slipped out a few minutes ago, eldest of their sleepover gathering. He was, she'd been told, a member of the family, and expected to be treated as such. His hair had been as red as hers to underscore the point, but he'd changed it to gray since coming outside, catching the moonlight.

"Are you doing okay?" Lucy asked, coming to sit next to the boy. "Molly and Vic are tearing the pillow fort down and starting again."

Teddy gave her a smile, practiced and reformed to perfection. "They're okay, just different from home. I don't think I've got the energy to keep up with a Weasley through a whole day, let alone the nighttime too."

Lucy nodded. "Hard to calm them down when they have an idea in their head. Easier to go along with what they want to do."

Teddy didn't reply, turning his attention back to the sky. Lucy shivered a little from a breeze, repositioning to block it with a stone. Glancing at it, she noted a carved inscription.

"Do you know who Dobby is?" she asked.

"Harry mentioned him," Teddy said. He paused, then said, "it's a full moon."

Lucy looked up with him.

"My dad was a werewolf," Teddy said.

"Oh?"

"Every full moon, I think about how much he must have been afraid of it. The moon."

Lucy hesitated. "It's pretty, though. It's romantic, in books at least."

"Not for him, I expect," Teddy said. "I know he's up there now, looking over me, but-"

"You don't want him to be afraid anymore," Lucy said.

"I hope that he's further than the heavens. Over and beyond the moon," Teddy said. "Where it won't bother him anymore."

"You miss him," Lucy said.

"I never got to meet him, really."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Teddy said, looking at her. "Harry said it was nice that he can rest, that he's free." He turned his attention to Dobby's gravestone. "Maybe it's the same for Dobby, being free."

Lucy struggled to find comforting words. Her dad had lost a brother before she was even born, but she couldn't imagine never having met her dad.

She remembered what her dad had said to Molly and her, that he would always be there to listen to them, to support them in whatever they wanted to do.

Maybe she just had to listen.

"Tell me about him," Lucy said.

"Uh, okay," Teddy said. He met her eyes for a moment, then looked back to the moon.

After nearly a minute of silence, he said, "he was a prefect at school, but he still pulled pranks in this group he was in-"