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So much
So young you can’t even remember, you brush your finger over the picture of yourself with Nymphadora Tonks. Your mother. She looks at peace. Content. Your hair matches her shade exactly. You ache to know the woman you have never met.
“Teddy?” A voice beside you startles you out of control of your hair. It shifts to reddish brown tinged with an embarrassed pink edge. Andromeda crouches and then sits carefully. “I miss her too, you know?” She smiles at you tenderly. Carefully, she pulls you and the book onto her lap so you can walk down memory lane together. She flips the pages to the beginning.
Here is a picture of a young Andromeda with a very young Nymphadora. The picture is black and white but you try to match the shade of your mother’s hair. You want to be like her. Strong and caring. Andromeda points to the picture. “This was when your father was still in school. My cousin loved to come visit.” It was hard talking about all the people she had lost in the First and Second wars. Her own sister had killed her daughter as well as her favorite cousin. Molly Weasley avenged your mother’s death, slaying Bellatrix Lestrange on the same day. Regulus had vanished in the First War, confirmed dead years later. While your Aunt Narcissa still lived, your gran found it difficult to be around her. Her husband, your Grandfather, was killed by Snatchers before you were even born. All she seemed to have left was you.
Her finger moved to
another picture of herself and your mother, who clutched a teddy bear. “She loved that bear.” That bear rested on a shelf in this room of memories. Sometimes, she even lets you snuggle it. “Her Grandma Tonks gave it to her when she turned four.” You didn’t see the tears that dripped from her cheeks, but she pressed on, determined to let you know your mother if only in this way.
You are seven now, again with the book perched on your lap. Your eyes are drawn to the picture of a young orange haired boy snuggled up with an orange cat. You know Mango. He is the best cat ever and still around. He was a kitten your mother rescued mere months before the Battle of Hogwarts. He follows you around like a duckling even when you were a baby gnawing on his ears. Your adoptive family tell you that when you were this small, you asked to be held by what color your hair was at the time. Only red brought the panic of trying to find out which Weasley baby Teddy wanted. His hair changed now as he looks at the pictures. He keeps flipping the pages until his hair turns blond.
But one of a great many pictures of your favorite people, this picture is one of your favorites. It’s just silly but you still like it because you both look like you’re having so much fun. And you did have so much fun. All of you and your cousins did. You couldn’t ask for a better family than the Potter-Weasley clan, though your Gran is still the best, hands down.
The book is worn now. You’re ten and better at controlling your appearance. This picture causes a lift in your lips and warmth in your chest. Andromeda is the only mother you ever known and you love her dearly. This is your last year being home with her full time. Next year you leave for school. A part of you doesn’t want to go. None of your other family is going yet. Vic will be the first to get there after you but it will be two years before that happens. Through the majority of your life, you’ve lived between houses. Not in the shoved around way but in the ‘I have a minimum of six homes and How do I split the time’ kind of way. In this photo album, at the back where it’s less worn, are the yearly Christmas cards from all the Weasleys as well as the one with your own Gran that held the respective families plus the addition of one Teddy Lupin. You can’t remember who started it and how it picked up so quickly, but you do remember there being some friendly arguing about the fairness of one family including you when the others hadn’t. You were roped into all the other family photos quickly. How could one feel lonely with so many families claiming you as their own?
This picture is at the start of a new book. It marks the year you entered Hogwarts. The year the had sat on your head and declared you a Hufflepuff like your mum. As the hat lifted off your head, the clapping paused, shocked by the yellow and black of your hair. You ran to your table. You smile, remembering. It was four years ago now. This book is filled with your first three years of school. It’s almost time to start a new one. Vic is a second year now. There’s a certain sparkle about her you aren't sure about. Other girls don’t seem to have that sparkle but it’s probably because her mum is half Veela… Right?
Your finger touches the picture of your family, the only one taken of them all together. It hangs on the mirror in your room. You try making yourself look a little more like them. You mum’s nose. Your dad’s eyes. You know it’s temporary but still. The summer after your sixth year just ended. It was a good summer. You got to go with your family to the Quidditch World Cup. The annoying Rita Skeeter dampened the mood with her suggestions of you and Vic sneaking off to make out. Sure. You’d flirted. But it wasn’t like you had even snuck off together beyond going to get snacks for the family.This summer had told you what you hadn’t known in your fourth year. You had a crush on Victoire Weasley.
It was taken before you started dating. It was secret. Nobody really suspected it. Infact, you kept it under wraps so well, your families hadn’t even found out about it(or so you assumed). Seventh year is studying but perhaps it’s also a little studying each other. Victoire Weasley is fire and ice. She is the lightning in the storm. She is beauty and wonder. You stare at the picture in your book, a smile on your lips because you are each others and you always will be.
It’s over. You’re out of school for good and the summer is fading and Vic is going back to school. You’re worried about the distance, because you’re bad at letters and honestly, you’re a bit worried because Vic is gorgeous and how many guys would love to take your place? But it will be fine. It will. It has to be.
This year has been a montage of you alone traveling. All the others are still in school or too young. Your grades could have gotten you many jobs and yet you wander the world, picking up jobs here and there. You are awful at writing. You miss Vic, but being thrust into the adult world while she still remains in the sheltered world of Hogwarts has its strain on the relationship. That strain is relieved for Christmas break and then summer. Summer is rekindled passionately but like a flame guttering in the wind, is snuffed out by distance. You can't say exactly what went wrong but you know it has to do with your inability to hold up a long distance romance. You still love her, but you can barely look at her. And yet, it’s also all you want to do.
Even after she graduates, you both are so busy with work that you never have time to talk anything out. The awkwardness persists. She starts dating someone else. So do you. The relationships fall apart, barely lasting four or five months. Always before the holidays. Every holiday, you can barely look at each other. Yet when the pull grows too strong, you’re back together like fire and ice if only for a moment. Then the cycle starts over again.
bonus features
He uses his father's wand.
His birthday is April 18th, 1998.
He is a feind for taking pictures of animals and hexting them to cousins. "I FOUND A CAT!"
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