The staid, controlled façade of Number Four, Privet Drive looked down at Teddy. It felt imposing in its rigidity. Teddy never visited this part of Surrey; his godfather wanted little to do with his childhood 'home,' and only occasionally met with his cousin Dudley in London. What became of the elder Dursleys was never clear to Teddy.

"Petunia and Vernon are going to hate you," Sirius said calmly. "Don't let them put a damper on our day. Dudley's scared shitless. Harry's going to love you."

"This is so weird," Teddy muttered, as they walked up to the front door. He was going to meet his 11-year-old godfather and take him to Diagon Alley with Sirius. It was his turn to be an older brother figure for another young Potter.

Sirius knocked on the door, looking cool and casual in his Muggle attire. Teddy was similarly attired, but he had his jet-black hair neatly parted to one side, knowing the Dursleys wouldn't appreciate his colors.

A woman with a long neck and a suspicious scowl answered the door.

"Who is this?"

"This is my nephew, Teddy," Sirius answered.

"It's nice to meet you, ma'am," Teddy said, offering his hand. "Your hydrangeas are lovely."

The woman—presumably Petunia Dursley—opened the door a little wider.

"Come inside and don't touch anything," she ordered, ushering them off the porch.

Teddy gawked at the formulaic, drab interior furnishings. A portly boy poked his head into the foyer, and though Teddy tried to smile and wave, he ran off with terror in his eyes.

"Right, then," Teddy muttered, just as a scrawny, messy-haired boy with brilliant emerald eyes came downstairs.

Harry's thin face lit up upon seeing Sirius, which squeezed Teddy's heart, but the boy's gaze grew wary upon seeing Teddy.

"Harry," Sirius said, "this is my nephew, Teddy. He's coming with us to Diagon Alley today. Is that all right?"

"Hi, Harry," said Teddy, crouching down to meet his godfather's eyes, which hadn't changed from one generation to the next, "I'm Teddy Howell. It's so nice to meet you."

"Are you a wizard too?" Harry asked quietly, after glancing over his shoulder.

Teddy grinned, scrunched his eyes, and let his hair go from black to turquoise. Harry gasped.

"I'm a Metamorphmagus," Teddy replied. "I'm a wizard, like you, but I was born with this rare gift. There are only a couple of us in Britain."

"Wow."

"Wow indeed," said Sirius. "If you're ready, we're going to go."

Teddy changed his hair back to jet-black, earning another surprised gasp from Harry, and after promising Petunia that Harry would be home by nightfall (she didn't seem to care), they went out to the street.

"Knight Bus?"

Sirius grinned at Teddy and stuck out his wand arm.

The entire trip on the Knight Bus was filled with Harry marveling at the magical transportation method and asking Teddy about being a Metamorphmagus. Teddy played all his usual tricks, changing his nose, his hair, and his facial features, much to Harry's delight. Teddy settled on his usual turquoise quiff and warm, honey brown eyes before they stopped in front of the Leaky Cauldron. When they stepped inside, an immediate hush went over the busy pub.

Teddy had forgotten that for the wizarding world in 1991, Harry had vanished for ten years, and coupled with Sirius's exoneration, they were celebrities. They met Professor Quirinus Quirrell, who Teddy was sure wasn't possessed yet, as Harry shook his hand without issue, and then proceeded to Diagon Alley.

Teddy hadn't visited the magical shopping district yet, wanting to distance himself from running into his family, although he didn't want to avoid Diagon Alley forever. He insisted on joining Sirius and Harry for the special shopping day, as he wanted to find the snowy owl that would become Hedwig. In Harry's original time, Hagrid was the one to take him shopping, but with Sirius's release, everything changed. Teddy didn't want Harry's first owl to change, so when Sirius took Harry to Ollivander's to get his wand, Teddy meandered to Eeylop's for an owl.

"The snowy owl, up there," said Teddy, pointing to the cage above, "is that a female?"

"Aye," said the shopkeeper. "Just got her in."

"You don't have any other snowy owls?"

"You want a male?"

"No, no," said Teddy, grinning. "She's beautiful. She's a gift for my friend."

While Teddy waited for the shopkeeper to package the other things—owl treats, a new cage, and a book on owl care—he noticed two blonde figures walk into the shop.

Stifling a gasp, he immediately recognized the younger versions of Narcissa and Draco Malfoy. Narcissa's eyes fell on Teddy.

"Hello," Teddy said nervously. Narcissa turned her nose up at him and Teddy almost laughed. Draco, however, looked at him with curiosity.

"That'll be 15 Galleons, young man," said the shopkeeper, once the not-yet-named Hedwig was ready. Teddy dutifully handed over the gold, and before he left the shop, met Draco's eyes, changed his hair to emerald green, and watched as the boy's jaw dropped.

Sirius and Harry were still at Ollivander's when Teddy came to the shop. Deciding not to go in, he looked at the owl and smiled.

"Is it all right if I tell Harry you're called Hedwig?"

The owl hooted softly.

"You liked the name before," Teddy murmured. "Harry's very special. You'll take good care of him, I hope. He loved you."

Hedwig bobbed her head. While they waited for Harry to be done, Teddy looked out on the street. Diagon Alley was bustling with activity. Many faces were familiar, but in a peculiar way; where Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes ought to be, there was an empty storefront. Teddy didn't know what he'd do when he saw the Weasley twins. There was only George, with one ear, but now there would be two of them, each with intact ears. Like most of his grim thoughts lately, he wondered if Fred had to die so George could marry Angelina.

The depressing thought left him when Sirius and Harry walked out of Ollivander's.

"You got another owl?" asked Sirius.

"No, this is for Harry," said Teddy, watching Harry's green eyes widen. "This is Hedwig, a young snowy owl. She'll send letters for you. What do you think?"

"You didn't have to get me anything," Harry said quietly, looking at the softly hooting owl. "Sirius says I've got money at the bank—I can pay you—"

"—no. No need to pay me. Consider it a birthday gift." Teddy smiled down at Harry. "You remind me of my brothers. I've got a feeling you'll be like a younger brother to me, and this is what big brothers do."

Harry, awed and seemingly touched by the gesture, reached out to pet Hedwig's head.

"Bookshop next?" Teddy suggested to Sirius. "Victoire asked me to get her some new books."

"Who's Victoire?"

"My wife," Teddy replied, feeling a grin on his lips. He knew it wasn't real, but calling Victoire his wife filled him with deep satisfaction.

"You're married?"

"Newly married," said Sirius, turning Harry around to walk to Flourish and Blotts. "You'll meet her and the boys soon enough. Today's all about you, Harry."

Harry's precious wonder at the magical bookshop led to more knowing smiles between Teddy and Sirius. It was remarkable how young and innocent he looked. Teddy had shown Sirius several memories of an adult, weathered Harry, who was still joyful, but had a difficult childhood and adolescence. This Harry was all wonder and curiosity, and shy smiles at Sirius and Teddy's generosity.

When they were in the queue at the bookshop, the Malfoys came in. Narcissa instantly locked eyes with Sirius. Teddy froze, watching the two cousins glare at each other from afar, but unlike Narcissa, Sirius decided to engage.

"Narcissa."

"Sirius," Narcissa said primly. "I'm here with my son, Draco."

"I'm here with my nephew, Teddy," Sirius said, gesturing to Teddy, "and my godson, Harry."

Draco's lips parted upon seeing Harry. Teddy's hair was still emerald green, and Draco's eyes widened a little in recognition. Narcissa's gaze drifted to Teddy. She reminded him of his gran, but only when his gran was cross.

"Hello," said Teddy, stepping forward to offer his hand. "I'm Teddy Howell." Looking up at the emerald fringe that fell into his eyes, he added, "I'm a Metamorphmagus."

"You are?" Draco's face betrayed his interest.

"I am indeed." Teddy scrunched his eyes and changed his features to match what Draco looked like as an adult. Narcissa made a funny half-gasp, half-squawking sound before Teddy returned to his previous appearance.

"Wicked."

"Howell . . . " Narcissa murmured. "I'm unfamiliar with that family name."

"It's a Muggle name," said Teddy, without hesitation. Draco took a step back. "My father was a Muggle and my mother was a pureblood, Miranda McKinnon. I'm not related by blood to Sirius, if you're asking."

"Teddy is a very talented wizard," Sirius declared. "He's a Healer trainee at St. Mungo's and was homeschooled."

"Very unusual," Narcissa said, her eyes narrowing. "Almost unheard of, these days."

"Special circumstances," Sirius continued. "My sons will be at Hogwarts."

"Yes, I heard about your sons. Congratulations . . . your mother would have been proud. Pureblood twin boys, no?"

Sirius gritted his teeth. "Yes, and they'll be first years with Harry and Draco. We should be going now."

Draco looked as if he wanted to stay. Harry was moving his head between Sirius and Narcissa with wide, confused eyes. Teddy tried not to bang his head against the nearest surface at the inanity of his gran's sister.

They paid for their purchases and tucked everything into Harry's new trunk. Sirius paid for everything, telling Harry that he did have a small fortune at Gringotts, but it would stay put until he was of age. Before they went back to Privet Drive, Teddy suggested they have dinner at a Muggle restaurant.

Harry peppered Sirius with questions about Narcissa and her comments. He was already well versed in the true story of his parents' death. Sirius had seen to it immediately, that Harry knew the truth about Voldemort, the first war, and the circumstances that led to Harry's orphanhood and Sirius's imprisonment. The trip to Diagon Alley had been Harry's first adventure into the magical world, and between his warm welcome at The Leaky Cauldron and Narcissa's cold behavior toward Sirius, he had more questions.

"'Pure blood' means nothing, Harry," said Sirius. "It's a complete coincidence that Scorpius and Al, my sons, are purebloods. Your mother was one of the brightest witches I'd ever met, and she was a Muggleborn."

"Even Voldemort was a half-blood," Teddy added, as Harry's jaw fell slack. "It's not something that was common knowledge, but he was. The most dangerous wizard in recent history was a half-blood, like you and me. Wizards would've died out if they hadn't married Muggles and Muggleborns. You'll see when you get to Hogwarts. Blood status doesn't mean anything."

"I saw that boy at Madam Malkin's," said Harry. "He said he was going to be a Slytherin."

"He probably will be," Sirius said, rolling his eyes. "His family, the Malfoys, are an ancient wizarding family. Families like his tend to go to Slytherin. Families like mine did, too, until me."

Harry lowered his gaze. "Will your sons be Slytherins?"

"I've got no idea." Sirius flitted his eyes to Teddy. "What do you think?"

"I don't know," Teddy replied truthfully. "I got to try the Sorting Hat and I'd be a Hufflepuff. All the houses are good in their own way, or so I've read."

Harry didn't look convinced. "I want to be a Gryffindor, like my mum and dad and Sirius."

"My dad was—" Teddy cleared his throat, feeling a sting from trying to tell the truth. "—would've been a Gryffindor, if he wasn't a Muggle. That's what everyone said. My mum was a Hufflepuff." Teddy was grateful that Miranda McKinnon had, in fact, been a Hufflepuff, while Marlene McKinnon had been a Ravenclaw.

"It's not something you need to worry about yet," said Sirius. "Eat your supper. I won't be able to see you tomorrow, as I'm taking the boys to Diagon Alley for their supplies, but I'll be back the day after."

Harry frowned. Teddy felt sorry for him, knowing he was all alone at Privet Drive, and said, "Would you like me to come see you, Harry?"

"You want to see me?"

"Of course, I do. If you'd like . . . I can bring my wife?" Teddy met Sirius's eyes. He nodded, and Harry beamed.

They made their plans. This time the next day, Teddy and Victoire would come see Harry and keep him company for the evening.

By the time he returned to Grimmauld Place, Teddy wanted nothing more than to sleep. Meeting his eleven year old godfather and spending the day in Diagon Alley had sapped him of his energy, and he needed rest. The next morning, he'd be contending with Sirius and Dumbledore over what to do about the horcruxes, and what the boys needed to know before starting at Hogwarts.

Teddy ascended the stairs to the bedroom he shared with Victoire. He almost wished they had stayed in separate bedrooms, or even separate beds. When they moved into Grimmauld Place, they cleaned up three bedrooms as quickly as they could. Sirius returned to his childhood bedroom, Regulus's was off-limits, as were the rooms that had belonged to Walburga and Orion, but the remaining bedrooms were available. For a week, Scorpius and Al shared one room, while Teddy and Victoire shared the other, with the original double beds within those rooms being split into singles.

As cleaning in the old house progressed, the boys split up, and so did Teddy and Victoire, until Victoire returned to Teddy's room one night and asked if they could still share a room. She'd claimed she was lonely and spooked in the bedroom at the end of the corridor, and as she'd never had her own room, she didn't like the feeling of being alone. Teddy couldn't refuse her. Though he'd offered to split the double bed, she insisted she didn't mind sharing with him.

He wouldn't have minded sharing a bed with Victoire if it didn't mean he didn't have to carefully maneuver out of bed every morning. Even though it was perfectly normal to wake up hard, he wanted to avoid the possibility that she'd see him. He hadn't been able to get the image of the morning after their one-night stand out of his head: she'd taken one look at his naked body and stuffed her face into a pillow. But sharing the bed with Victoire had its advantages. The sheets were always clean and smelled like her; Teddy loved the intoxicating blend of wildflowers, citrus, and vanilla. Teddy looked forward to the familiar scent, despite knowing that he and Victoire had agreed they were friends.

Just friends, he corrected in his mind, and then admonished himself for feeling bitter. Gran taught him to be a gentleman, and Victoire was too important to him to ruin their friendship by wanting more.

When Teddy stepped through the door to his room, he saw that the subject of his dreams was waiting for him on their bed, with her hair up in a messy bun and thick books open all around her.

"Teddy!" She smiled and hopped off the bed. "Finally! I've been waiting all day for you!"

Teddy smiled back at her. His stomach did several backflips when she hugged him tightly, and he was too tired to prevent himself from smelling her hair, even if he knew it was wrong.

"What was he like?" Victoire asked, after she released him.

"Hmm?"

"Uncle Harry, silly! What was he like?"

Teddy blinked several times, remembering that he spent the day with Harry, while Victoire was cooped up in the old house with the boys.

"He's . . . tiny?"

"Tiny like Lily-Lu is tiny?"

Teddy thought back to the last time he saw the Potters' youngest.

"Harry's a little bigger, but not by much," Teddy replied. He took off his shirt and hung it over the back of a chair. "I knew he said his aunt and uncle deprived him of food sometimes. I didn't think they'd been starving him."

"But Sirius is there now," Victoire said slowly, letting her hair down from its glittery clip. "He's making sure Harry's got enough to eat, isn't he?"

"Definitely, but a few weeks isn't enough time to undo years of malnutrition."

"You're a Healer—" Victoire tilted her head to the side. "Couldn't you send him some of those nutritional potions they brew for sick kids?"

"I could," Teddy said, shrugging, "but they taste terrible, you've got to have a Healer's note to take them out of the lab, and that means I'd have to tell Ted why I need them. I just don't want to deal with that."

"Deal with what? Asking for help?" Victoire flopped on the bed and started gathering her books.

"Ted—my granddad—is friendly. Really friendly. I almost can't believe Gran married him. He's like a golden retriever and she's like . . . a really judgmental cat."

Victoire giggled into her hands. "Your gran isn't that stern! She's no McGonagall! And what's that got to do with nutritional potions?"

"I know, I know, Gran isn't that bad, but Ted keeps inviting us over to his house for dinner and I keep telling him we can't go because—"

"Teddy!" Victoire scolded. "We have to go! Don't you miss your gran?"

"Obviously I do, but she's not going to be my gran anymore." Teddy shuddered and grabbed his sleeping trousers from the foot of the bed. "I don't want her to dislike me. It's hard enough that Mum thinks I'm a prejudiced freak. I don't want Gran to—" He sighed and let his trousers unfold over his hand. "She's the only real family I had. Harry and Ginny and all the Weasleys, you were all like family to me too, but Gran . . . she really was family."

"I'm sorry, Teddy." Victoire's voice dropped low. "I shouldn't have—"

"Maybe one day," Teddy said, to ease Victoire's embarrassment. "I just don't want to go asking Ted for favors and have him think we're more than colleagues. He keeps calling me 'son' and I don't have the heart to tell him to stop it. The truth is . . ." Teddy sat back on the bed and slumped against the pillows. "I'm afraid if we go, I'll blow our cover, or say something stupid, like I did with Mum. Then I won't have anyone."

Teddy felt the mattress shift underneath him. Victoire wrapped her arms around his chest and leaned her head on his shoulder.

"That's not going to happen. One day, we'll tell everyone who we are. They're going to understand why we did what we did. Your mum and dad are going to love you. You'll see."

Teddy's sandy brown fringe fell over his eyes. He closed them and thought of his Gran. The Andromeda Tonks he knew from his childhood wouldn't be the same one he would meet in the nineties.

"Vic, I feel so guilty . . . I spent all day with Harry and you know what hit me when we were talking about his mum and dad? He understood what it was like for me, growing up without my parents. He knew what it felt like to not know them. But now I've got this chance to meet my parents and he . . . he doesn't. He's always going to be an orphan."

Victoire sighed on his shoulder. Her warm breath tickled the hairs on the back of his neck and the heat from her skin warmed his. If they had been anywhere else—or back home—Teddy might've hoped for more.

"You're being hard on yourself, you know," said Victoire. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're not getting your parents back. Not really. I had to tell Al and Scorp about that today and they, erm, didn't take it well."

"You what?" Teddy sat up and turned around to find Victoire's guilty expression.

"Teddy, don't look at me like that. You weren't stuck here for hours and hours while these kids kept talking about all the things they'd do with their dads when they met them."

"We were going to talk to them tomorrow! What did you tell them?"

"Nothing—" Victoire blew the air out of her face and scowled at Teddy. "Nothing they shouldn't already know! They didn't get any information about the horcruxes or—"

"What did you tell them?" Teddy repeated.

"I told them everything we keep reminding them of! That their dads aren't going to be their dads! That everyone they know won't exist as they remembered them, or even at all!" She poked him in the chest, hard, and put her hands on her hips. "What's your problem, anyway? Do you not trust me?"

Teddy groaned and rubbed his hands through his hair. "It's not that . . . will you just tell me exactly what you said?"

"You trust me, but you need me to tell you every last word I told them?" Victoire's face was reddening in her ire. She looked just like Auntie Fleur did right after Teddy ran into a priceless heirloom vase and smashed it to irreparable smithereens. Victoire continued, jabbing her finger into Teddy's chest as she spoke. "You don't think I've noticed that you, Sirius, and Dumbledore are always having those chats while I get to be a babysitter? I'm in this too, and it's not fair! Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I'm useless!"

"I never said you were!"

"Then how come you never have to watch the boys?" Victoire demanded. "How come you get to make decisions while I get to play Mummy?"

Teddy wanted to scream into a pillow. "You don't know everything, Vic—"

"Whose fault is that? I may not have been Harry's goddaughter, but I'm in this for the long haul, just like you! Why aren't you telling me everything?"

"You do know everything! It's just—it's that—"

"You know what, Teddy?" Victoire flicked her wand at her clothes. They folded themselves and landed in a pile on the bed. "I'm going back to the other room. Maybe I'll even bunk with Al if I get lonely. Who cares, right? I'm just a kid. May as well embrace it."

"Wait, Vic, no—" Teddy scrambled off the bed but Victoire was already out the door. She slammed it behind her, leaving sprinkles of dust all over the floor.

Teddy flumped face-first into the bed. He really should've insisted they keep separate rooms.