Disclaimer: Thanks to J.K. Rowling for allowing me to take her characters for a lengthy stroll through my imagination.
One
Prologue
Teddy Lupin had always known his godfather, Harry, to be a troubled man, a man haunted by too many tragedies during the first eighteen years of his life. He’d steadfastly accepted it as part of Harry’s personality in that non-judgmental way all children possess.
Destiny had robbed Harry of his childhood, his grandmother had explained in simple terms a child could understand. But all Teddy knew was that Harry was often sad and lonely as if he didn’t have a friend in the world “ even amid the riotous activity of the Weasley clan. Desolate smiles were often the norm, not deep belly laughs like Teddy often heard from Uncle Ron when his own mischievous offspring had gotten the best of him yet again.
It was more than the fact that his godfather, too, had lost his parents at a very young age. Both he and Teddy were too young to remember that, yet it had given them something in common from the start. As Harry had later explained, it was not the same to miss someone you’d never known as the chasm that opened in your heart when loved ones who had shared your life died before their time.
It was what had led Harry to write long into the night, his grandmother had told him when Teddy was old enough to read the pages of the story for himself. “It was your godfather’s way of not letting the sorrow overwhelm him. An antidote to grief, if you will,” she whispered gently. “He created a world in which events played out differently. In so doing, he gave you a window into your parents’ personalities you might otherwise have never known.”
“But, grandmother,” Teddy had protested, “didn’t you know them as well?”
“Surely, your mother, yes. But she and Remus had only been married for a short time, less than a year really. And it was such a tumultuous time with the death of your grandfather and all, that I regret I never got to know Remus as well as I would have liked. For that I, too, am grateful to Harry for having fleshed him out, for having let me see into the playful part of my son-in-law’s personality that I never really got to know.”
Teddy had known not to press his grandmother further, that her eyes were already pooling with tears to have admitted so much of the heartache she herself had endured.
He never really understood why Harry was always so guarded when he went to stay with him and his wife, Ginny, until he’d overheard the argument with his grandmother late one evening. Grandmother was always so patient and understanding with him, yet Teddy was surprised to hear her voice rising from the floor below. He was so young he recalled hugging a teddy bear to his chest with one arm as he allowed the other hand to guide him down the banister without making a sound. He knew if he were discovered, they would either mask their words with magic, or more likely, turn away with nothing resolved as they trundled him off to bed.
“Don’t you think he sees it?” his grandmother, Andromeda, seethed.
“He’s only a child…” Harry protested weakly.
“How can you be so blind, Harry? Teddy is extremely intuitive -- just like his father in that respect.”
“Don’t, Andromeda,” Harry groaned, his voice thick with emotion. “Don’t you think I see Remus and Tonks in him every time I look, so much so that it hurts unbearably at times?…Oh, Merlin, Remus must’ve felt much the same way…”
Teddy chewed on his bear’s ear in an effort to soothe himself as he heard sobbing from the next room. After a few minutes of this, Andromeda offered softly, “Do you want to talk about it? Will that help?”
“I never really understood before,” Harry admitted wetly. “I was in my third year at Hogwarts; Remus had finally landed a job after who-knows-how-long teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. He was a fabulous teacher, made learning fun for everyone, even those who often fell behind the others. But I didn’t see how much he was trying to put the past behind him by handing the torch to the next generation. No, all I could see in my selfish, myopic way--”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Andromeda interjected kindly. “You were only thirteen.”
“”all I was concerned with was that I couldn’t go to Hogsmeade village with my friends since I didn’t have a permission slip. Remus kept me company that morning, sought me out on the covered bridge where I was wallowing in self-pity by throwing pebbles at the rocks below. I suppose that was the start of our friendship, right there.”
“What did he say to you?”
“Tried to have me see the big picture by telling me that he had once known my parents and that I was so very much like them. Told me how my mum had once restored his faith in himself when he thought he had reached rock bottom. It was a conversation that made his voice quaver with sadness, yet he kept on. It wasn’t until now that I realize how much seeing me must have dredged up all those feelings of loss. Stars, he was so much a better person than me, reaching out to comfort another when his own heart was breaking. Why is he gone and I’m still here?” More sobbing, followed by the sound of shuffling chairs.
“Come sit,” Andromeda suggested tremulously. “A few sips of whiskey will help your jagged nerves… Please don’t think I’m criticizing you, but Teddy thinks you’re sad about something he’s done.”
“As if he could ever disappoint me.”
“He needs to know that, Harry; find a way to convey that. But for the sake of your unborn child, too, you have to move on.”
“Is that what you’ve done with Ted? Moved on?” Harry shot back. “Teddy tells me he knows next to nothing about the grandfather whose name he bears.”
“That’s not fair, Harry. I don’t want him to be distressed at my tears.”
“So you admit how hard it is to recover….” Harry whispered.
“I don’t blame myself, Harry, that’s the difference.”
“Why would you? Not when you have me to blame instead!”
“That’s not true.” Teddy was surprised to discern that his grandmother, too, was crying. She was always so controlled, rarely getting emotional even when it was just the two of them alone. “I blame Voldemort and his Death Eaters, just as I blame them for Ted’s murder. But these are horrors I’d like to spare a six year old.”
“They came to help me,” Harry moaned. “Came to try to catch my back because the fate of the wizarding world depended upon an inexperienced seventeen year old!”
“Don’t forget you were successful in the end,” Andromeda soothed.
“At what cost? They should have stayed by Teddy’s bedside…”
“I know you and Remus argued about that before. But Harry you must accept that it was their decision. Remus was too much of an idealist to let someone else finish the fight that had begun with the murder of your own parents. And as for Dora, well, she was always too impetuous for her own good.”
“Don’t you wish you had heard them that night and tried to stop them?” Harry pressed.
“Revisionist history only works in novels, as you well know,” Andromeda scoffed. “By the time I got the note from Dora to please sit with Teddy that night, she and Remus were long gone. I can’t spend the rest of my life bullying myself because I couldn’t foretell their actions -- and neither can you!”
“If only it were so simple…”
“Let Teddy be your link to the future; don’t dwell so much in the past,” Andromeda suggested in a compassionate tone.
“It haunts me in my sleep, Andromeda. I can’t escape it.”
“They call that survivor’s guilt, a well-documented reaction. Talk to a Healer. I’ll go with you if you feel it will put too much strain on Ginny with her first pregnancy and all.”
Teddy couldn’t say with any certainty what had come of that; somehow he’d never felt it was his place to ask. Besides, Gran would have likely punished him for eavesdropping when all he’d wanted to do was to get to know the two of them better.
He’d heard whispers that Harry was occasionally prone to dark inconsolable days, especially on those occasions when the rest of the wizarding world celebrated the anniversary of Voldemort’s downfall. Teddy suspected that if Ginny couldn’t cheer him up, Ron would soon Floo in to take up the slack. He’d seen the two of them laughing it up like they were back at school without a care in the world. Only it had never really been like that, had it? The threat of Voldemort had loomed over Harry from his first year at Hogwarts, urging him to short-change himself in order to save the world.
Is that what made Harry often excuse himself quietly from family gatherings at the Burrow and wind his way silently up the long staircase? Teddy had often longed to follow and cheer him up, but there was always someone to lay a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“He needs to be alone now,” Ginny would whisper as she’d hug Teddy to her tightly, often eliciting a string of protests from her own children who would clamor to sit in her lap.
More often than not, it was Uncle George who would follow in Harry’s wake, seeking him out in whatever corner of the rambling house he had cocooned himself. It had a certain logic, Teddy had sensed even at an early age. George had lost his twin brother, Fred, in the war and he, too, often found it difficult to participate in the happiness going on around him.
“What do they do up there for hours?” Teddy had once asked Ginny’s mother, Molly.
“They talk to the dead,” she’d replied enigmatically before bustling away to scrub the already spotless kitchen.
Seeking out the advice of Ginny’s father gave Teddy a different outlook. Screwing up his face thoughtfully, Arthur explained, “Only the ruthless find it easy to recover from the horrors of war. Patience, understanding, and above all, time is needed. Harry’s simply bonding with others who have experienced similar upheavals in their lives.”
Undaunted, Teddy had tried a different tack. “Uncle Ron, why do you sometimes join in with Harry and George and other times you don’t?”
Ron’s boyish grin had beamed down at him. “Because sometimes I feel like getting drunk and other times I don’t,” he replied candidly, even though his wife, Hermione, had lightly swatted his arm.
“What kind of an answer is that to give a child?” she hissed.
“An honest one.” Directing his attention to Teddy, Ron elaborated, “Look, scamp, Harry and George find solace in each other somehow. It’s how they deal with the grief neither of them can put aside.”
“But what do they do?” Teddy insisted, seeking an explanation for why Harry sometimes returned in a more melancholy frame of mind than before and why other times he was overly jolly, seeking to make light of even the smallest things.
Ron shook his head sadly. “Dunno.”
So with a few months to go before Harry’s thirty-fifth birthday, Teddy made up his mind to find a way to lure Harry towards a more rewarding life in the same manner his godfather had done for others. If he was successful, it would make a fine birthday present. If not, well, he could always find something in Diagon Alley.
Unlike his godfather who found inspiration in the desolate snows of winter, Teddy let the cottony clouds of the spring sky lead him into that other world where his parents had not died and left him an orphan before the age of one. He’d grown up hearing the fables his godfather had penned about the trials and tribulations of Remus and Tonks as Harry himself struggled to grow into manhood. There was so much truth in this alternate view of life that Teddy often found it difficult to believe events had not truly unfolded as such in the years before his own birth. Now as he sat beneath an expansive oak, he set his quill to the parchment pad balanced upon his knees and took up the tale of the Potter and Lupin clans which had become inextricably intertwined.
The Dark Phoenix by L A Moody
Chapter Notes: Told from Teddy Lupin’s viewpoint, the prologue serves as a bookend to establish the story in proper context.