Chapter Nine
A/N: No reviewers.
Another four years had passed, and within that time, two children had been born to Harry and Ginny, to keep company the two children they had had since before they were married. The children, both boys, had been named James Sirius, after Harry's father and godfather, two of the Marauders, and Albus Severus, named for the two headmasters, one Gryffindor and one Slytherin, of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Despite their opinions to the contrary for the first few weeks of both the boys' lives, the twins had not been treated with any less respect or love, and had been treated just as well as the trueborn children of the Potters, even though they were only two children who had been adopted when their parents had died in the war. They were not certain of this fact, but the couple had never thought of the children as being merely that and, though they had never allowed it to come to a point that Remus and Tonks had been forgotten, they had always believed that, since the night following the Battle of Hogwarts, they had two children of their own to care for, and always would do.
However, although their hands were still full with the two younger boys, who had not reached an age where they could be a little independent, the twins had reached a far more important age. They had reached the age of eleven, meaning that, as the family settled down to breakfast that very morning, an owl had arrived, clutching two scarlet sealed letters in its beak. Neither Harry nor Ginny needed to view the seal to know that it bore a lion, a serpent, an eagle and a badger, the four House symbols of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, pressed into the wax. The time had come.
"Teddy, Selena." Harry called, and when the two traipsed into the room, James tagging along as he always did, he was reminded of the time when his wife had called for them, so that they could inform the pair of the arrival that the youngest of the trio was about to make. Immediately, Selena had caught sight of the envelopes, her eyes lighting up as she did so, but she said nothing, sitting down in silence and waiting for the explanation that her guardian was likely to give them, as they would not have called them otherwise, unless something else had happened that they needed to be made aware of.
"What is it, Uncle Harry?" asked the elder of the two, his head shifted slightly to the side in his confusion, while his sister rolled her eyes a little at his ignorance. Being the little scamp that he was, James immediately copied Teddy's expression, adding in the eye roll of Selena's, making him look rather deranged for a young boy, and forcing his father to bite his cheek to stop himself from laughing out loud, something which would have most likely made the boy cry, as he detested having fun made out of him.
"Well, Teddy, your Hogwarts letter has come. And yours as well, Lena, but I suspect you already knew that." he added, having noticed immediately that Selena's eyes had flown to the seal on the envelopes, assessing the situation in a matter of moments, a skill that she had inherited from her father, or so Harry had assumed, as Lupin had probably been the cleverest man he had ever known, Dumbledore aside, of course.
He handed over the pieces of parchment just as his wife entered the room, smiling as she saw him do this, a beautiful smile of pride at the fact that the twins were growing up so visibly, their invitations to attend the magical school being the first tangible proof of this that they had ever really had.
The two opened the letters in unison, a skill that they had always had, to able to do things so in tandem that, at the time when they were almost identical as young toddlers, it would have looked as if one had been standing beside a mirror, rather than the two of them being separate people. For many in the world, such a thing would have been a little frightening, but not for the Potters. They found it lovely, and a symbol of the bond shared between twins, fraternal or otherwise. Every time they did something in sync, Harry knew that she was thinking of her poor brother Fred, who had died in the Battle of Hogwarts all those years ago, and of the broken twin, George, that he had left behind. He often wondered if, subconsciously, he was doing precisely the same thing himself.
"Are they what you thought?" Harry questioned, and was answered with two swift nods. True, when the letters came into his own hands, the format of them had not changed a bit, nor had the list of requirements, although, funnily enough, first years were now permitted to bring a broom to Hogwarts, but were only permitted in special cases to play on the Quidditch teams. Professor McGonagall had said to them, when they had discussed it at length, that it was purely for the purposes of fairness, given that one first year had already played in the Quidditch team. Both Harry and Ginny were fully aware of this, naturally, as the former remembered the time quite well.
However, when he returned his gaze to the twins, it seemed to be only Teddy who was as gleeful as they had expected, in fact, if anything, Selena looked a little saddened by the letter. Because of this, Harry immediately sent the elder of the twins away, his own son following closely behind him, as he had expected him to do. Once they were gone, he sat the younger down on his knee, while Ginny wrapped an arm around her.
"What's the matter, Lena?" he questioned, touching the girl's face gently, a method that had always worked in making her confess anything that was troubling her.
"I don't want to leave you." she answered, the fear as evident in her voice as it was in her eyes. "I'm frightened that if I leave here, you'll all forget me, and when the holidays come around, you won't know who I am."
"Lena, we could never forget you. Either of you." Ginny told them, speaking only the truth, and when the girl wrapped her arms around her shoulders, she shared a common thought with her husband.
'Just like we never forgot your mother or father.'
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