[FIC] The Art of Walking Backwards [ROUND 3]
Title: The Art of Walking Backwards
Author: cobalt_violet
Characters/Pairings: Teddy, Andromeda, Harry, mentions of Remus, Sirius and Tonks. (Mild Remus/Sirius, Remus/Tonks)
Rating: PG
Warnings: Nothing much, unless pretentiously short scenes count. Written more as a series of linked drabbles. Liberal use of prompts.
Disclaimer: Whilst I solemnly swear that I am up to no good with these characters, I'll give them back to Ms Rowling when I'm done.
Prompts: #26: Teddy finds out about his father and Sirius and that their relationship was more than friends. #53: Teddy starts to unconsciously make himself look like Sirius, without knowing who he is.
‘To speak the name of the dead is to make that person live again.’
- Ancient Egyptian proverb
It begins innocuously enough.
He’s bored. Eighteen and stupid and staying with Gran for the summer holidays, he’s taken to digging around in the attic in search of some books. It has never been particularly well organised, up here, and he’s slipping and sliding over photo albums and untouched boxes of ornaments in search of something, anything interesting. It’s quiet and he can hear the rain drumming on the roof, so he spends a moment just listening to the soft plink and trickle as water runs down the guttering, his hair turning a deep, damp blue.
A sneeze breaks his concentration and he rubs his nose, eyes watering. Really, for such a neat person, Gran’s somehow managed to leave an awful lot of mess up here. Maybe he should tidy it up, he thinks. It’ll give him something to do anyway, and it’s that or the Potions essay he’s been set.
Decided, he squeezes around a chest of old robes - all stiff lace and dusty fabric - and nearly trips over a pile of books that are stacked directly in his path. His shin bumps them, sending one or two crashing to the floor and he winces, waiting for the inevitable ‘Teddy Lupin!’ that is sure to come.
It doesn’t.
Breathing out a sigh of relief he crouches awkwardly, one hand pressed against the remains of the stack, the other dragging the books over so he can peruse them. One is an extremely heavy looking tome on the rehabilitation of Muggles after a curse or hex. The other, oddly enough, is thin, light and bears the odd title of: ‘101 Things You Always Wanted To Know About Magically Induced Explosions, But Were Legally Prohibited From Asking About’. He grins to himself: must have been one of mum’s books. He has seen pictures of his dad; heard stories about him, and he doesn’t seem the type to nurture an interest in causing explosions. Too law-abiding for one thing - he simply can’t imagine dad, from all Harry has told him, causing public explosions.
More out of idle curiosity than anything else, he flips open the cover and glances at the index. There are several interesting headings, but that is not what catches his eye. In small, neat print at the top of the page is stamped an odd little message.
‘For Sirius Black, on the occasion of his eighteenth birthday, and in the vain hope he will read this book and not put into practice all he learns from it.’
More out of idle curiosity than anything else, he takes the book downstairs and starts to read.
“Who’s Sirius Black?” he asks Gran one day, and she looks up from her cauldron in surprise.
“Sirius? He was my cousin.” She smiles to herself, absently stirring. “My favourite cousin, at that. The rest of them were mad.” She laughs at his expression. “Alright, he was too; and he had a temper to rival mine - I think it’s Black family genetics. It got him killed, in the end, about two years before the second war ended.” She shrugged. “It was before you were born so I’m not surprised you’ve never heard of him.”
“Did he know dad?” He watches, fascinated, as her hand pauses for a moment - a slight hitch in her monotonous stirring - before she continues with her task, her attention bent fiercely to it. She doesn’t look at him as she plucks a packet of dried mandrake roots off the shelf.
“Of course. He was great friends with Remus.”
She never, Teddy notes, calls his dad anything other than ‘Remus’. It’s almost like she’s trying to deny he was part of the family at all. Sometimes it almost feels like he isn’t. He never knew him, and Gran’s the only one left and she doesn’t seem to have liked him. But sometimes, just sometimes, he wishes she’d talk about him - tell him stories; tell him what his dad was like, and if he loved him and whether he ever told silly stories and got drunk at Christmas. She must have known, he thinks with some desperation.
“Would he have been my godfather?” he asks, because he doesn’t know what else to say when faced with her fierce determination not to look at him. “Sirius Black, I mean.”
“No,” she says abruptly, moving her cauldron from the fire and placing it on the table with a resounding thud. “Because if Sirius Black had lived, you would never have been born.”
It’s an odd thing to say, Teddy thinks, and he wants to ask her what she means by it, but she’s slamming cutlery around now with the determined air of one who will do anything to end the conversation. He’s old enough to take the hint, so he keeps quiet.
But he doesn’t forget.
It begins with a change of hair colour.
Not unusual - it’s always changing anyway, but this time it’s a conscious effort on his part. He’s still immature enough that he wants to look dashing, and in order to look dashing he needs black hair. He’s not being ridiculous, he assures himself as he turns this way and that in front of the mirror, it’s just an unspoken rule. People like Merlin and Arthur and…well, even Harry - they don’t have hair that’s green or blue or blonde. No, their hair is black, and so if you have black hair you are a hero.
It suits him, he thinks, running his fingers across his reflection. It’s just long enough to make him look suitably heroic: shaggy, slightly unkempt and interesting. He won’t be topping any ‘most handsome wizard’ polls, but he looks dashing enough for his purposes. He’s let his eyes turn a warm grey as well, modelling them on the clouds outside his window. He tilts his head, gazes at himself in the mirror and then ruins the pose by grinning foolishly when his reflection whistles at him.
“It’ll do,” he tells himself.
The new look certainly has worked perfectly, he thinks sometime later. It’s like he’s a new person; someone daring and charming and a little bit reckless. The way he’s being looked at in the street (the slight flicker of eyes before witches and wizards do a double take; some blushing, some grinning and some winking in open appreciation) is a balm to his ego and really, he thinks, really he should have tried this whole heroic thing a long time ago.
He feels slightly invincible by the time he’s finished his drink in the Hogshead; giddy with euphoria and drunk on the sense of being someone who is handsome and good looking and really everything he has always believed he couldn’t be. It’s the kind of feeling that makes him want to buy a leather jacket, ride a motorbike and take up smoking.
A rational part of his brain is telling him this is stupid; ridiculous; he should grow up get a haircut and stop pretending to be something he’s not. The rest of him is asking why not? Why shouldn’t he take this chance to be someone else - to be everything he’s always wanted to be? And besides, what if this is who he is, really? He’s got Gran’s colouring and Harry’s charm and his mum’s sense of humour. (He just wishes he could have something of his dad’s, but then what is there? His calm and patient nature? Hardly heroic…) It’s everything good from the people he loves. He likes being this new person, he thinks.
On the way home he buys a leather jacket.
“Hello,” says Harry, letting him into the entrance hall of Grimmauld Place, “haven’t seen you in a while.” He raises an eyebrow at the sight of Teddy. “Does Andromeda know you’ve taken up smoking?”
“Sorry.” Teddy shrugs and stubs his cigarette out before he steps inside. “And no, she doesn’t. For Merlin’s sake don’t tell her or there’ll be hell to pay.” He grins at Harry’s chuckle and kicks his boots off in the hall by the hat stand. “Is Aunt Ginny in?”
“She’s out, sorry.” Harry leads him into the kitchen and heats the kettle with a flick of his wand. “One of the guests has an allergy to strawberry jam, so she’s had to go shopping.” He pushes his glasses up his nose - a gesture Teddy remembers well - and sets two mugs on the table. “Anything bothering you?” he adds casually, dropping a couple of teabags into the teapot. He doesn’t look up at Teddy as he asks.
“Why would anything be wrong?”
“Well you haven’t been around for a while and I wondered whether there was something…troubling you.”
There is a long pause as Teddy ponders this for a moment. He watches as Harry settles down in the chair opposite him, fingers steepled in front of him, his expression patient and infinitely kind. He can’t help but feel a sudden burst of love for his godfather, who always makes time for him despite his busy schedule and numerous children. Sometimes, he thinks, he really is lucky to have someone with such wisdom to go to.
“Sirius Black,” he blurts out before he can stop himself. “He…I was talking to Gran about him a while ago and, well, why has no one ever told me about him?”
Whatever Harry was expecting, it clearly wasn’t this. He sits back in his seat, expression bemused as he watches his godson, who fidgets uncomfortably but holds his gaze.
“I…don’t know,” Harry says slowly after a moment’s consideration, and Teddy feels his heart lurch with disappointment. Harry isn’t going to talk about Sirius either. But his godfather surprises him by frowning, as though he is trying to make sense of Teddy’s words. He is, Teddy thinks, at least wondering whether to talk about this man, this elusive figure. There is a moment’s silence as Harry pours the tea.
“Maybe it’s because Sirius isn’t that important to you,” he suggests at last. “That’s why nobody thought to tell you about him. After all, we all assumed you’d be far more interested in your mum and dad than my godfather.”
“He was your godfather?”
“Of course.” There is a sly grin on Harry’s face at the surprise in Teddy’s voice. “Did no one tell you that either?” He laughs at the emphatic shake of his godson’s head. “Well he was. He left me all of this…” he gestures expansively with the teacup. “The last remaining house of the Noble and Most Ancient Blacks.” There is, Teddy thinks, something in Harry’s voice that implies capital letters.
“Tell me,” he says, leaning forward eagerly. “Tell me all about him.”
So Harry does.
Two months after his conversation with Harry, and the subsequent stories, Teddy comes to a very important realisation.
He wants to be Sirius Black.
He hasn’t seen a picture yet, but he knows Sirius was handsome. Knows too that he was brave and kind and mad and dangerous and unswervingly loyal and loving. He sounds like something from a novel and yet he was real, real, and honestly, Teddy thinks with some regret, if only he had lived. They could have had adventures together. (Because he has no doubt that Sirius would have looked after him if his dad had died, the same as he had for Harry. And Sirius wouldn’t have had a boring job, no; it would have been dragon taming or curse breaking or something, anything that wasn’t mundane.)
Sirius Black, Teddy knows, is everything anyone should want to be.
Gran takes one look at his hair and eyes when she opens the door to him and steps back abruptly, shock clear on her face.
“You -” She says, then places a trembling hand to her mouth. “You gave me quite a scare.”
“Why?” he asks, and she doesn’t reply. Instead she stares at him as though she has seen a ghost and it is not until he has sat her down and made her a cup of coffee that she beings to look like her normal self again.
“You used to go suddenly quiet, sometimes, as a baby,” she says without warning as he returns with a plate of biscuits.
“What?” He’s confused, but willing to listen because this is the first time she’s volunteered any information since she opened the door, and he’s not about to discourage her.
“When you were born,” she says wearily, “you used to scream and scream. No apparent reason for it, you just liked screaming.” Her lips twitch in a small, grudging smile at the memory this has provoked. “It used to drive your mum mad. Even Remus couldn’t keep you quiet - you were a miserable little boy.” She sighs and doesn’t look at him. “But sometimes you’d stop. Just stop. It’d frighten the life out of your mother because she’d think you’d somehow choked to death.
“You never had, though. You’d just be laying there in your cot, good as gold.” She looks up at him and can’t hide the flinch in her eyes. “Your mum always used to joke that it was just a miracle - that your guardian angel had sung you to sleep, or made you smile. Remus, though…” She ignores his look of surprise. “Remus would never say a word, because I think he knew.” She sets down her coffee cup with shaking hands as he watches her, frightened. “I think I knew.”
“Knew what?” he asks, as she stands, retrieving a photo album from the bookcase behind her. “Gran? Knew what?”
Wordlessly, she opens the photo album, leafing through until she comes to one particular page, holding it up so he can see.
A man is standing in the middle of a tiny kitchen. His shirt is half unbuttoned and he’s holding a bowl, presumably of cereal. He’s grinning at the camera, handsome face showing a devil-may-care attitude; grey eyes holding a softer, warmer light. One hand is raking through his rumpled black hair and his head is tilted to one side. He’s young and carefree and Teddy feels knot of icy fear developing in his stomach, because the face staring up at him is his own.
“You see?” Gran’s watching him closely as she snaps the photo album shut. “How can you mimic a face you’ve never seen? There was no guardian angel, but Remus and I, we knew who was there instead.”
He is walking in a dead man’s shoes.
The thought is morbid and despite his cheery surroundings, he can’t shake the feeling he’s doing something he shouldn’t. Wearing someone else’s face, being someone he’s not. Isn’t he just mimicking a dead man? He’s just practicing the art of walking backwards - recreating someone who died when they shouldn’t have, making them live again through a cruel parody of person. He feels sick; can’t stand the looks he’s getting now because really, they’re not for him. They’re for a face that shouldn’t even be looking out on the world.
Because Sirius Black is dead, and he is just Teddy Lupin.
The worst of it is, he’d still rather be Sirius.
“Why didn’t Gran like my dad?” he asks Harry at the annual Potter-Weasley Boxing Day dinner. (He gets invited along because it is the Right Thing To Do. Aunt Ginny’s very big on that.)
“Maybe because he was a werewolf?” Harry chews thoughtfully on a mince pie. “I mean, it would have been difficult for your mum, living with a registered dark creature.” He shrugs. “Mind you, Bill and Fleur have managed quite nicely.”
“I don’t think it was that,” Teddy mutters, “she’s a Black, after all, she’s got no call to be prejudiced."
Harry looks at him thoughtfully then sets down his fork. Around them, dinner goes on as normal with the other kids squabbling - fighting over leftover turkey - and the grownups discussing something from Witch Weekly over small glasses of port. Teddy is uncomfortably aware of no longer fitting in with the kids and not being old enough to join in with the adults. It makes him feel helpless, caught between two worlds.
“You’ve got to understand,” Harry says, “there was a war going on. Everyone was living with the assumption that they could well be dead the next day. The impression I always got was… well, your mum loved your dad madly. I know, I saw them together. But their marriage was a bit hasty.” He looks as uncomfortable as Teddy feels. “And then before they knew it, you were on the way. I sometimes think Andromeda would have been a bit more accepting if she’d had time to get to know your dad a bit more. He was older than your mum and not, perhaps, the most ideal son-in-law.” He pats Teddy on the shoulder, hand heavy and comforting, “But he was your dad, and for what it’s worth, I admired him terribly.”
“Thanks,” Teddy says hoarsely, and stares down at his plate with a mixture of embarrassment and pride. “I just wish I could have met him.”
Harry smiles sadly. “I wish you could have too. Believe me, I understand that all too well.”
“Yeah.” Teddy's heart lightens a bit as he considers this. He’s not alone; Harry understands. “Yeah, I know you do.”
He’s stopped changing his hair colour and doesn’t wear his leather jacket any more.
His girlfriend complains, asking why he has to have his hair blue, or green, but never black. Black, she says, is much more respectable, and dashing and…interesting. He wishes he could ignore her, because really how many boyfriends can change their hair with nothing more than a thought? Surely that counts as interesting? But it hurts a little, and he hates the fact that she seemed to like him far more as someone else.
He’s careful not to let his eyes morph into grey, either; but sometimes it happens on its own, when its raining and dark they change before he can stop them, and he has to excuse himself and go and wait somewhere away from water until they are a nice, healthy brown again.
None of it helps though. He can feel Sirius like a living, breathing consciousness just under his skin. Sometimes it gets too much and he stands at home in his bedroom and watches his own reflection as it turns into someone else - someone better than him.
He’s beginning to hate Sirius Black.
“Why did you never like dad?” he asks Gran one evening, not long after his conversation with Harry.
She looks up at him, and he wishes her expression was surprised, but it isn’t. She just looks tired, as though she has been expecting this conversation but had been half hoping they would never have it. Slowly, carefully, she sets her book to one side and takes off her spectacles, placing them on the table with precise care. Then she sits back and looks at him, as though wondering where to begin.
“Perhaps I should make one thing clear,” she says, “I never disliked Remus. Never. I just thought my daughter was making a monumental mistake in marrying him.”
“Because he was a werewolf?” Teddy bursts out. “Gran, that’s not -”
She holds up a hand forestalling his protestations. “Don’t be silly, Teddy. Of course it wasn’t because he was a werewolf. I just didn’t think your mother was…the right person for him. She thought differently and we had rather an argument about the whole thing. Remus, I would like you to know, kept completely out of the whole row - didn’t utter one word in his own defence.” She purses her lips at some remembered conversation and looks at him with her cool grey eyes. “He never loved my daughter enough,” she says.
“What do you mean ‘enough’?”
Andromeda stares at him for a moment, as though weighing up the consequences of her next words. “Remus loved your mother,” she says at last, “don’t misunderstand me. He just loved someone else as well; and my silly, wonderful, caring baby girl thought she could help him get over this person.” She sighs. “Needless to say it didn’t really work.”
“But he loved her,” Teddy says desperately, feeling his treasured dream of an ideal father slipping further and further away.
“Of course he did,” Andromeda says, “he just loved Sirius Black more.”
He stands in front of the mirror and looks.
“I hate you,” he whispers to the storm grey eyes and the rough black hair. “I hate you.” He’s lying and he knows it. You can’t hate a hero, even one as mad as Sirius Black. He wants to, though, because Sirius has ruined everything. “Why couldn’t you have never existed?” he asks, and doesn’t look at the way Sirius’s lips shape the words. “Everything would have been perfect. Mum and dad would have loved one another, and I wouldn’t be pretending to be someone else. Someone I’m not.”
“I hate you,” he says again, and tries to pretend he believes it.
“Sirius wasn’t a hero,” Harry says, looking surprised. “I mean, I thought he was when I was a kid, but…he wasn’t. Not really.”
Teddy feels a weird kind of relief at this, and tries to pretend it has nothing to do with envy and dislike, and everything to do with making Sirius more human.
“But he was a good man,” his godfather continues. “And a kind one. He loved unconditionally - would have given his life for anyone he loved; anyone who was one of his special people.” He smiles sadly. “I suppose he did in the end. But that was Sirius for you; it’s only as I’ve grown up that I’ve realised how much of an idiot he was. Of course your dad knew and stuck with him anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Teddy snaps, the topic of Sirius and his dad still too raw to be anything other than hurt.
Harry raises an eyebrow then shrugs. “They were good friends,” he says, bemused. “As far as I know your dad looked after him when he was trapped here in Grimmauld Place.” He tilts his head, considering his godson. “You know, if he’d been alive when you were born, you would have been another one of his special people. He’d have loved you.” There is an odd, bittersweet expression on his face. “He probably does, actually.”
“I wouldn’t have been born if he’d been alive,” Teddy says bitterly; echoing Gran.
“Maybe.” Harry shrugs. “Maybe not. But I bet he loves you anyway.” He stares at Teddy without really seeing him. “Besides,” he whispers, and he’s smiling, “the dead never leave us. It’s best to make your peace with them if you can.”
“I want to hate you,” Teddy confesses to the empty air a few weeks later. “I really do. But I’m not sure I can.”
He is crouched on the beach at Southgate, some distance from Andromeda who is idly picking up pebbles and tossing them into the iron grey sea. Beneath his trainers the sand crackles and shifts, and he turns his head, half hoping to catch a glimpse of someone, anyone out of the corner of his eye.
He doesn’t.
“You see,” he continues, “you’re everything I could ever want to be, and yet you’re the man who…” he trails off, feeling silly. “Well, you didn’t really break up my family, did you? You, I don’t know, broke up the idea of my family. That’s bad, because you’ve got to leave kids like me with the ideal imaginary parents, and you didn’t. I wanted a brave and heroic dad and a sweet and caring mum, and I got those. But I got you too, and you’re not part of the family deal. You never were. But I’ve got you, and I’m stuck with you. I don’t really want to make peace with you, but, well, I do.”
There is a loud splash as Andromeda hurls another pebble at the ocean and Teddy glances up sharply before looking away.
“I don’t think Gran ever made peace with dad,” he confesses, “and I think she’ll always regret that. She had the chance to accept him and she didn’t, and now she never can.” He draws a deep breath. “But I don’t have to make the same mistake as her, and you are, after all, still family. So here it is, me making peace with you.”
There is a long moment during which he feels something should happen, but it doesn’t. Isn’t that always the way though? If this were a book or a film there would be a meaningful moment when the deceased would appear, or something magical would happen to show he was forgiven. But there is nothing, only the echoing cry of the wheeling gulls and the soft shush of the waves running up the sand, frilling on the toes of his shoes.
It doesn’t matter anyway, because he feels slightly better.
“But just so you know,” he says, straightening and taking a step back to stop his feet getting wet, “just so you know; you were a right bastard leaving dad when you did. I don’t think he ever got over it.” He sticks his hands in his pockets and grins at nothing as the bitter wind ruffles his hair. “There. Now you really are a member of the family, I’m allowed to swear at you.”
As he walks away, the wind sounds like laughter.
“Nice hair,” Harry says as he sits down with Teddy in the Hogshead after a Quidditch match. “I forgot to say so earlier.”
“You like it?” Teddy runs an uncertain hand through its length, grimacing as he picks a long black hair out that gets wrapped around his fingers.
“Yeah, black suits you.”
As Harry flags down the barmaid to order a round of drinks, and the rest of the Potter clan clatters into view through the front door, Teddy sits quietly and thinks about his dad, and his mum. And the man he never met.
“Nice choice of hair,” Aunt Ginny says, startling him out of his reverie as she ruffles it before he has a chance to dodge her roving hands. “Very you. Much better than that blue you insisted on when you were twelve.” She grins as Teddy groans at the reminder and winks. “So what inspired it?”
“Huh. Nothing much.” Teddy picks up his drink, catching Harry’s eye as he does so. They share a knowing look. “Let’s just say black hair is a bit of a trait in my family.”
He’s not his dad, he thinks as James and Lily start an argument over which team had the better Chaser. He’s not patient and kind and gentle. But he does love books. He’s not his mum either - he doesn’t like loud rock music and he’s not overly emotional, but he does seem to have her temper. He’s not Sirius either; he’s not proud and loyal; he doesn’t love to the exclusion of all else. But maybe, he thinks, he has a bit of Sirius’s courage.
Perhaps then, he’s the sum of all these parts; of all the people who have loved him. This means he’s also Harry and Ginny and Gran, and all of his family. He’s not one person, he’s all of them; a patchwork person made of love and giving. He rather likes that idea. Carefully, he plucks a bit of hair away from his face and observes it. He’s not unique: he has black hair and grey eyes. He wears a leather jacket and smokes (probably too much). But he’s not Sirius Black and now he’s never going to be. But that’s ok, it really is, because he’s something better, something new.
He’s Teddy Lupin, and for once he doesn’t want to be anyone else.
Author: cobalt_violet
Characters/Pairings: Teddy, Andromeda, Harry, mentions of Remus, Sirius and Tonks. (Mild Remus/Sirius, Remus/Tonks)
Rating: PG
Warnings: Nothing much, unless pretentiously short scenes count. Written more as a series of linked drabbles. Liberal use of prompts.
Disclaimer: Whilst I solemnly swear that I am up to no good with these characters, I'll give them back to Ms Rowling when I'm done.
Prompts: #26: Teddy finds out about his father and Sirius and that their relationship was more than friends. #53: Teddy starts to unconsciously make himself look like Sirius, without knowing who he is.
‘To speak the name of the dead is to make that person live again.’
- Ancient Egyptian proverb
It begins innocuously enough.
He’s bored. Eighteen and stupid and staying with Gran for the summer holidays, he’s taken to digging around in the attic in search of some books. It has never been particularly well organised, up here, and he’s slipping and sliding over photo albums and untouched boxes of ornaments in search of something, anything interesting. It’s quiet and he can hear the rain drumming on the roof, so he spends a moment just listening to the soft plink and trickle as water runs down the guttering, his hair turning a deep, damp blue.
A sneeze breaks his concentration and he rubs his nose, eyes watering. Really, for such a neat person, Gran’s somehow managed to leave an awful lot of mess up here. Maybe he should tidy it up, he thinks. It’ll give him something to do anyway, and it’s that or the Potions essay he’s been set.
Decided, he squeezes around a chest of old robes - all stiff lace and dusty fabric - and nearly trips over a pile of books that are stacked directly in his path. His shin bumps them, sending one or two crashing to the floor and he winces, waiting for the inevitable ‘Teddy Lupin!’ that is sure to come.
It doesn’t.
Breathing out a sigh of relief he crouches awkwardly, one hand pressed against the remains of the stack, the other dragging the books over so he can peruse them. One is an extremely heavy looking tome on the rehabilitation of Muggles after a curse or hex. The other, oddly enough, is thin, light and bears the odd title of: ‘101 Things You Always Wanted To Know About Magically Induced Explosions, But Were Legally Prohibited From Asking About’. He grins to himself: must have been one of mum’s books. He has seen pictures of his dad; heard stories about him, and he doesn’t seem the type to nurture an interest in causing explosions. Too law-abiding for one thing - he simply can’t imagine dad, from all Harry has told him, causing public explosions.
More out of idle curiosity than anything else, he flips open the cover and glances at the index. There are several interesting headings, but that is not what catches his eye. In small, neat print at the top of the page is stamped an odd little message.
‘For Sirius Black, on the occasion of his eighteenth birthday, and in the vain hope he will read this book and not put into practice all he learns from it.’
More out of idle curiosity than anything else, he takes the book downstairs and starts to read.
“Who’s Sirius Black?” he asks Gran one day, and she looks up from her cauldron in surprise.
“Sirius? He was my cousin.” She smiles to herself, absently stirring. “My favourite cousin, at that. The rest of them were mad.” She laughs at his expression. “Alright, he was too; and he had a temper to rival mine - I think it’s Black family genetics. It got him killed, in the end, about two years before the second war ended.” She shrugged. “It was before you were born so I’m not surprised you’ve never heard of him.”
“Did he know dad?” He watches, fascinated, as her hand pauses for a moment - a slight hitch in her monotonous stirring - before she continues with her task, her attention bent fiercely to it. She doesn’t look at him as she plucks a packet of dried mandrake roots off the shelf.
“Of course. He was great friends with Remus.”
She never, Teddy notes, calls his dad anything other than ‘Remus’. It’s almost like she’s trying to deny he was part of the family at all. Sometimes it almost feels like he isn’t. He never knew him, and Gran’s the only one left and she doesn’t seem to have liked him. But sometimes, just sometimes, he wishes she’d talk about him - tell him stories; tell him what his dad was like, and if he loved him and whether he ever told silly stories and got drunk at Christmas. She must have known, he thinks with some desperation.
“Would he have been my godfather?” he asks, because he doesn’t know what else to say when faced with her fierce determination not to look at him. “Sirius Black, I mean.”
“No,” she says abruptly, moving her cauldron from the fire and placing it on the table with a resounding thud. “Because if Sirius Black had lived, you would never have been born.”
It’s an odd thing to say, Teddy thinks, and he wants to ask her what she means by it, but she’s slamming cutlery around now with the determined air of one who will do anything to end the conversation. He’s old enough to take the hint, so he keeps quiet.
But he doesn’t forget.
It begins with a change of hair colour.
Not unusual - it’s always changing anyway, but this time it’s a conscious effort on his part. He’s still immature enough that he wants to look dashing, and in order to look dashing he needs black hair. He’s not being ridiculous, he assures himself as he turns this way and that in front of the mirror, it’s just an unspoken rule. People like Merlin and Arthur and…well, even Harry - they don’t have hair that’s green or blue or blonde. No, their hair is black, and so if you have black hair you are a hero.
It suits him, he thinks, running his fingers across his reflection. It’s just long enough to make him look suitably heroic: shaggy, slightly unkempt and interesting. He won’t be topping any ‘most handsome wizard’ polls, but he looks dashing enough for his purposes. He’s let his eyes turn a warm grey as well, modelling them on the clouds outside his window. He tilts his head, gazes at himself in the mirror and then ruins the pose by grinning foolishly when his reflection whistles at him.
“It’ll do,” he tells himself.
The new look certainly has worked perfectly, he thinks sometime later. It’s like he’s a new person; someone daring and charming and a little bit reckless. The way he’s being looked at in the street (the slight flicker of eyes before witches and wizards do a double take; some blushing, some grinning and some winking in open appreciation) is a balm to his ego and really, he thinks, really he should have tried this whole heroic thing a long time ago.
He feels slightly invincible by the time he’s finished his drink in the Hogshead; giddy with euphoria and drunk on the sense of being someone who is handsome and good looking and really everything he has always believed he couldn’t be. It’s the kind of feeling that makes him want to buy a leather jacket, ride a motorbike and take up smoking.
A rational part of his brain is telling him this is stupid; ridiculous; he should grow up get a haircut and stop pretending to be something he’s not. The rest of him is asking why not? Why shouldn’t he take this chance to be someone else - to be everything he’s always wanted to be? And besides, what if this is who he is, really? He’s got Gran’s colouring and Harry’s charm and his mum’s sense of humour. (He just wishes he could have something of his dad’s, but then what is there? His calm and patient nature? Hardly heroic…) It’s everything good from the people he loves. He likes being this new person, he thinks.
On the way home he buys a leather jacket.
“Hello,” says Harry, letting him into the entrance hall of Grimmauld Place, “haven’t seen you in a while.” He raises an eyebrow at the sight of Teddy. “Does Andromeda know you’ve taken up smoking?”
“Sorry.” Teddy shrugs and stubs his cigarette out before he steps inside. “And no, she doesn’t. For Merlin’s sake don’t tell her or there’ll be hell to pay.” He grins at Harry’s chuckle and kicks his boots off in the hall by the hat stand. “Is Aunt Ginny in?”
“She’s out, sorry.” Harry leads him into the kitchen and heats the kettle with a flick of his wand. “One of the guests has an allergy to strawberry jam, so she’s had to go shopping.” He pushes his glasses up his nose - a gesture Teddy remembers well - and sets two mugs on the table. “Anything bothering you?” he adds casually, dropping a couple of teabags into the teapot. He doesn’t look up at Teddy as he asks.
“Why would anything be wrong?”
“Well you haven’t been around for a while and I wondered whether there was something…troubling you.”
There is a long pause as Teddy ponders this for a moment. He watches as Harry settles down in the chair opposite him, fingers steepled in front of him, his expression patient and infinitely kind. He can’t help but feel a sudden burst of love for his godfather, who always makes time for him despite his busy schedule and numerous children. Sometimes, he thinks, he really is lucky to have someone with such wisdom to go to.
“Sirius Black,” he blurts out before he can stop himself. “He…I was talking to Gran about him a while ago and, well, why has no one ever told me about him?”
Whatever Harry was expecting, it clearly wasn’t this. He sits back in his seat, expression bemused as he watches his godson, who fidgets uncomfortably but holds his gaze.
“I…don’t know,” Harry says slowly after a moment’s consideration, and Teddy feels his heart lurch with disappointment. Harry isn’t going to talk about Sirius either. But his godfather surprises him by frowning, as though he is trying to make sense of Teddy’s words. He is, Teddy thinks, at least wondering whether to talk about this man, this elusive figure. There is a moment’s silence as Harry pours the tea.
“Maybe it’s because Sirius isn’t that important to you,” he suggests at last. “That’s why nobody thought to tell you about him. After all, we all assumed you’d be far more interested in your mum and dad than my godfather.”
“He was your godfather?”
“Of course.” There is a sly grin on Harry’s face at the surprise in Teddy’s voice. “Did no one tell you that either?” He laughs at the emphatic shake of his godson’s head. “Well he was. He left me all of this…” he gestures expansively with the teacup. “The last remaining house of the Noble and Most Ancient Blacks.” There is, Teddy thinks, something in Harry’s voice that implies capital letters.
“Tell me,” he says, leaning forward eagerly. “Tell me all about him.”
So Harry does.
Two months after his conversation with Harry, and the subsequent stories, Teddy comes to a very important realisation.
He wants to be Sirius Black.
He hasn’t seen a picture yet, but he knows Sirius was handsome. Knows too that he was brave and kind and mad and dangerous and unswervingly loyal and loving. He sounds like something from a novel and yet he was real, real, and honestly, Teddy thinks with some regret, if only he had lived. They could have had adventures together. (Because he has no doubt that Sirius would have looked after him if his dad had died, the same as he had for Harry. And Sirius wouldn’t have had a boring job, no; it would have been dragon taming or curse breaking or something, anything that wasn’t mundane.)
Sirius Black, Teddy knows, is everything anyone should want to be.
Gran takes one look at his hair and eyes when she opens the door to him and steps back abruptly, shock clear on her face.
“You -” She says, then places a trembling hand to her mouth. “You gave me quite a scare.”
“Why?” he asks, and she doesn’t reply. Instead she stares at him as though she has seen a ghost and it is not until he has sat her down and made her a cup of coffee that she beings to look like her normal self again.
“You used to go suddenly quiet, sometimes, as a baby,” she says without warning as he returns with a plate of biscuits.
“What?” He’s confused, but willing to listen because this is the first time she’s volunteered any information since she opened the door, and he’s not about to discourage her.
“When you were born,” she says wearily, “you used to scream and scream. No apparent reason for it, you just liked screaming.” Her lips twitch in a small, grudging smile at the memory this has provoked. “It used to drive your mum mad. Even Remus couldn’t keep you quiet - you were a miserable little boy.” She sighs and doesn’t look at him. “But sometimes you’d stop. Just stop. It’d frighten the life out of your mother because she’d think you’d somehow choked to death.
“You never had, though. You’d just be laying there in your cot, good as gold.” She looks up at him and can’t hide the flinch in her eyes. “Your mum always used to joke that it was just a miracle - that your guardian angel had sung you to sleep, or made you smile. Remus, though…” She ignores his look of surprise. “Remus would never say a word, because I think he knew.” She sets down her coffee cup with shaking hands as he watches her, frightened. “I think I knew.”
“Knew what?” he asks, as she stands, retrieving a photo album from the bookcase behind her. “Gran? Knew what?”
Wordlessly, she opens the photo album, leafing through until she comes to one particular page, holding it up so he can see.
A man is standing in the middle of a tiny kitchen. His shirt is half unbuttoned and he’s holding a bowl, presumably of cereal. He’s grinning at the camera, handsome face showing a devil-may-care attitude; grey eyes holding a softer, warmer light. One hand is raking through his rumpled black hair and his head is tilted to one side. He’s young and carefree and Teddy feels knot of icy fear developing in his stomach, because the face staring up at him is his own.
“You see?” Gran’s watching him closely as she snaps the photo album shut. “How can you mimic a face you’ve never seen? There was no guardian angel, but Remus and I, we knew who was there instead.”
He is walking in a dead man’s shoes.
The thought is morbid and despite his cheery surroundings, he can’t shake the feeling he’s doing something he shouldn’t. Wearing someone else’s face, being someone he’s not. Isn’t he just mimicking a dead man? He’s just practicing the art of walking backwards - recreating someone who died when they shouldn’t have, making them live again through a cruel parody of person. He feels sick; can’t stand the looks he’s getting now because really, they’re not for him. They’re for a face that shouldn’t even be looking out on the world.
Because Sirius Black is dead, and he is just Teddy Lupin.
The worst of it is, he’d still rather be Sirius.
“Why didn’t Gran like my dad?” he asks Harry at the annual Potter-Weasley Boxing Day dinner. (He gets invited along because it is the Right Thing To Do. Aunt Ginny’s very big on that.)
“Maybe because he was a werewolf?” Harry chews thoughtfully on a mince pie. “I mean, it would have been difficult for your mum, living with a registered dark creature.” He shrugs. “Mind you, Bill and Fleur have managed quite nicely.”
“I don’t think it was that,” Teddy mutters, “she’s a Black, after all, she’s got no call to be prejudiced."
Harry looks at him thoughtfully then sets down his fork. Around them, dinner goes on as normal with the other kids squabbling - fighting over leftover turkey - and the grownups discussing something from Witch Weekly over small glasses of port. Teddy is uncomfortably aware of no longer fitting in with the kids and not being old enough to join in with the adults. It makes him feel helpless, caught between two worlds.
“You’ve got to understand,” Harry says, “there was a war going on. Everyone was living with the assumption that they could well be dead the next day. The impression I always got was… well, your mum loved your dad madly. I know, I saw them together. But their marriage was a bit hasty.” He looks as uncomfortable as Teddy feels. “And then before they knew it, you were on the way. I sometimes think Andromeda would have been a bit more accepting if she’d had time to get to know your dad a bit more. He was older than your mum and not, perhaps, the most ideal son-in-law.” He pats Teddy on the shoulder, hand heavy and comforting, “But he was your dad, and for what it’s worth, I admired him terribly.”
“Thanks,” Teddy says hoarsely, and stares down at his plate with a mixture of embarrassment and pride. “I just wish I could have met him.”
Harry smiles sadly. “I wish you could have too. Believe me, I understand that all too well.”
“Yeah.” Teddy's heart lightens a bit as he considers this. He’s not alone; Harry understands. “Yeah, I know you do.”
He’s stopped changing his hair colour and doesn’t wear his leather jacket any more.
His girlfriend complains, asking why he has to have his hair blue, or green, but never black. Black, she says, is much more respectable, and dashing and…interesting. He wishes he could ignore her, because really how many boyfriends can change their hair with nothing more than a thought? Surely that counts as interesting? But it hurts a little, and he hates the fact that she seemed to like him far more as someone else.
He’s careful not to let his eyes morph into grey, either; but sometimes it happens on its own, when its raining and dark they change before he can stop them, and he has to excuse himself and go and wait somewhere away from water until they are a nice, healthy brown again.
None of it helps though. He can feel Sirius like a living, breathing consciousness just under his skin. Sometimes it gets too much and he stands at home in his bedroom and watches his own reflection as it turns into someone else - someone better than him.
He’s beginning to hate Sirius Black.
“Why did you never like dad?” he asks Gran one evening, not long after his conversation with Harry.
She looks up at him, and he wishes her expression was surprised, but it isn’t. She just looks tired, as though she has been expecting this conversation but had been half hoping they would never have it. Slowly, carefully, she sets her book to one side and takes off her spectacles, placing them on the table with precise care. Then she sits back and looks at him, as though wondering where to begin.
“Perhaps I should make one thing clear,” she says, “I never disliked Remus. Never. I just thought my daughter was making a monumental mistake in marrying him.”
“Because he was a werewolf?” Teddy bursts out. “Gran, that’s not -”
She holds up a hand forestalling his protestations. “Don’t be silly, Teddy. Of course it wasn’t because he was a werewolf. I just didn’t think your mother was…the right person for him. She thought differently and we had rather an argument about the whole thing. Remus, I would like you to know, kept completely out of the whole row - didn’t utter one word in his own defence.” She purses her lips at some remembered conversation and looks at him with her cool grey eyes. “He never loved my daughter enough,” she says.
“What do you mean ‘enough’?”
Andromeda stares at him for a moment, as though weighing up the consequences of her next words. “Remus loved your mother,” she says at last, “don’t misunderstand me. He just loved someone else as well; and my silly, wonderful, caring baby girl thought she could help him get over this person.” She sighs. “Needless to say it didn’t really work.”
“But he loved her,” Teddy says desperately, feeling his treasured dream of an ideal father slipping further and further away.
“Of course he did,” Andromeda says, “he just loved Sirius Black more.”
He stands in front of the mirror and looks.
“I hate you,” he whispers to the storm grey eyes and the rough black hair. “I hate you.” He’s lying and he knows it. You can’t hate a hero, even one as mad as Sirius Black. He wants to, though, because Sirius has ruined everything. “Why couldn’t you have never existed?” he asks, and doesn’t look at the way Sirius’s lips shape the words. “Everything would have been perfect. Mum and dad would have loved one another, and I wouldn’t be pretending to be someone else. Someone I’m not.”
“I hate you,” he says again, and tries to pretend he believes it.
“Sirius wasn’t a hero,” Harry says, looking surprised. “I mean, I thought he was when I was a kid, but…he wasn’t. Not really.”
Teddy feels a weird kind of relief at this, and tries to pretend it has nothing to do with envy and dislike, and everything to do with making Sirius more human.
“But he was a good man,” his godfather continues. “And a kind one. He loved unconditionally - would have given his life for anyone he loved; anyone who was one of his special people.” He smiles sadly. “I suppose he did in the end. But that was Sirius for you; it’s only as I’ve grown up that I’ve realised how much of an idiot he was. Of course your dad knew and stuck with him anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Teddy snaps, the topic of Sirius and his dad still too raw to be anything other than hurt.
Harry raises an eyebrow then shrugs. “They were good friends,” he says, bemused. “As far as I know your dad looked after him when he was trapped here in Grimmauld Place.” He tilts his head, considering his godson. “You know, if he’d been alive when you were born, you would have been another one of his special people. He’d have loved you.” There is an odd, bittersweet expression on his face. “He probably does, actually.”
“I wouldn’t have been born if he’d been alive,” Teddy says bitterly; echoing Gran.
“Maybe.” Harry shrugs. “Maybe not. But I bet he loves you anyway.” He stares at Teddy without really seeing him. “Besides,” he whispers, and he’s smiling, “the dead never leave us. It’s best to make your peace with them if you can.”
“I want to hate you,” Teddy confesses to the empty air a few weeks later. “I really do. But I’m not sure I can.”
He is crouched on the beach at Southgate, some distance from Andromeda who is idly picking up pebbles and tossing them into the iron grey sea. Beneath his trainers the sand crackles and shifts, and he turns his head, half hoping to catch a glimpse of someone, anyone out of the corner of his eye.
He doesn’t.
“You see,” he continues, “you’re everything I could ever want to be, and yet you’re the man who…” he trails off, feeling silly. “Well, you didn’t really break up my family, did you? You, I don’t know, broke up the idea of my family. That’s bad, because you’ve got to leave kids like me with the ideal imaginary parents, and you didn’t. I wanted a brave and heroic dad and a sweet and caring mum, and I got those. But I got you too, and you’re not part of the family deal. You never were. But I’ve got you, and I’m stuck with you. I don’t really want to make peace with you, but, well, I do.”
There is a loud splash as Andromeda hurls another pebble at the ocean and Teddy glances up sharply before looking away.
“I don’t think Gran ever made peace with dad,” he confesses, “and I think she’ll always regret that. She had the chance to accept him and she didn’t, and now she never can.” He draws a deep breath. “But I don’t have to make the same mistake as her, and you are, after all, still family. So here it is, me making peace with you.”
There is a long moment during which he feels something should happen, but it doesn’t. Isn’t that always the way though? If this were a book or a film there would be a meaningful moment when the deceased would appear, or something magical would happen to show he was forgiven. But there is nothing, only the echoing cry of the wheeling gulls and the soft shush of the waves running up the sand, frilling on the toes of his shoes.
It doesn’t matter anyway, because he feels slightly better.
“But just so you know,” he says, straightening and taking a step back to stop his feet getting wet, “just so you know; you were a right bastard leaving dad when you did. I don’t think he ever got over it.” He sticks his hands in his pockets and grins at nothing as the bitter wind ruffles his hair. “There. Now you really are a member of the family, I’m allowed to swear at you.”
As he walks away, the wind sounds like laughter.
“Nice hair,” Harry says as he sits down with Teddy in the Hogshead after a Quidditch match. “I forgot to say so earlier.”
“You like it?” Teddy runs an uncertain hand through its length, grimacing as he picks a long black hair out that gets wrapped around his fingers.
“Yeah, black suits you.”
As Harry flags down the barmaid to order a round of drinks, and the rest of the Potter clan clatters into view through the front door, Teddy sits quietly and thinks about his dad, and his mum. And the man he never met.
“Nice choice of hair,” Aunt Ginny says, startling him out of his reverie as she ruffles it before he has a chance to dodge her roving hands. “Very you. Much better than that blue you insisted on when you were twelve.” She grins as Teddy groans at the reminder and winks. “So what inspired it?”
“Huh. Nothing much.” Teddy picks up his drink, catching Harry’s eye as he does so. They share a knowing look. “Let’s just say black hair is a bit of a trait in my family.”
He’s not his dad, he thinks as James and Lily start an argument over which team had the better Chaser. He’s not patient and kind and gentle. But he does love books. He’s not his mum either - he doesn’t like loud rock music and he’s not overly emotional, but he does seem to have her temper. He’s not Sirius either; he’s not proud and loyal; he doesn’t love to the exclusion of all else. But maybe, he thinks, he has a bit of Sirius’s courage.
Perhaps then, he’s the sum of all these parts; of all the people who have loved him. This means he’s also Harry and Ginny and Gran, and all of his family. He’s not one person, he’s all of them; a patchwork person made of love and giving. He rather likes that idea. Carefully, he plucks a bit of hair away from his face and observes it. He’s not unique: he has black hair and grey eyes. He wears a leather jacket and smokes (probably too much). But he’s not Sirius Black and now he’s never going to be. But that’s ok, it really is, because he’s something better, something new.
He’s Teddy Lupin, and for once he doesn’t want to be anyone else.