HP -- May 2, 2002
Title: May 2, 2002
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Remus Lupin, Teddy Lupin, Sirius Black
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,394
Prompt: A contest by Slinkers on deviantART: to rewrite the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Warnings: cuteness? XD
Summary: Remus tells his son how things came to be.
Author's Note: eltea's entry rightfully won the contest, because it was frigging legit. So go read that. Mine I wrote between midnight and 2:30 AM. And don't be confused if canon isn't quite like you remember it. 8D
MAY 2, 2002
Afternoon sunlight slanted idly downward, flirting with the apple-green leaves of the enterprising trees that stretched skyward on either side of the cemetery gate. A mild breeze whispered through the wrought iron and ruffled a little boy’s bright turquoise hair, soft like a caress, as he squinted up at the church steeple.
Teddy Lupin didn’t know exactly why his daddy and Uncle Sirius had brought him here. His mum had stayed home; she was ill again, though when she’d seen the angle of his bottom lip and the line between his turquoise eyebrows, she’d cheerfully reassured him that it was only because his sister was even more of a troublemaker than he had been. Then she’d kissed him on the forehead and told him that if he was very good, Uncle Sirius might take him on a motorbike ride.
He was glad Uncle Sirius had come along. He liked to show Teddy silly magic while Daddy’s back was turned, though Teddy sometimes suspected that the ensuing glimmer in his father’s eye meant that Daddy knew exactly what was going on. Teddy didn’t really mind; it felt safer that way.
His father set a bouquet of white roses in front of a gravestone. Teddy looked at the curving petals intently for a few moments, and then he closed his eyes and concentrated hard, holding the color firmly in his mind. When he opened his eyes again, he looked up as far as he could. Sure enough, his bangs were white.
This was why Teddy Lupin hated haircuts.
Beaming in response to his father’s indulgent smile, he returned his attention to the speckled gray granite of the headstone, which was perfectly smooth but for the three lines of text carved evenly into its face. When Teddy peered at them, he could distinguish the letters, but he wasn’t very good at stringing their sounds together just yet. He glanced at Uncle Sirius, who was standing off to the side with his arms folded across his chest, looking intently at the church window without seeing it at all.
Remus Lupin brushed his son’s disheveled hair (which was a very pale turquoise now, as he’d forgotten to focus on it) back into place.
“I’d like to tell you a story,” he announced quietly, smiling.
Teddy pursed his lips and glanced at the grave. “Whose is it?” he asked, seeking the answer, as always, in his father’s eyes.
Remus sat down in the grass with a shaft of sunlight at his back and beckoned to his son, who curled up next to him obligingly. Daddy’s stories were the best. He had the voice for it; gentle and warm and low and just the littlest bit scratchy. His heroes were uncertain at first, but their virtue and their determination to do what was right always pulled them through in the end. The villains were dark and cruel and terrifying, and Teddy would hug the covers tight up under his chin and shiver, but when they’d been properly vanquished, and when the hero showed them mercy, it always turned out that they’d just been wronged a long time ago, and that they really weren’t so bad after all.
“This is a story,” Remus began, “about a very brave young man. He was born in a dangerous time, to a mother and a father who loved him very much. But a prophecy had been made that this particular young man would end the reign of a hurt, mistreated man who turned that hurt into anger and that anger into aggression, and who took it out on people who hadn’t done anything wrong.” Remus’s voice dropped to hover not far above a murmur. “And so this angry man came to the boy’s house to kill him. He killed his parents-” Teddy’s grip on his father’s arm tightened. “-and he went to kill the little baby lying in the cradle, but when he tried to, he succeeded only in destroying himself almost completely.” Remus paused to clear his throat, and his eyes flickered towards Uncle Sirius, who was leaning against the fence, his arms still crossed, his head bowed, his long, dark hair trailing to obscure his face. “But this very bad man,” Remus went on, softly, “wasn’t quite finished. And as the brave young man’s life went on, the bad man started to rebuild. Eventually, he had rebuilt so well that the dangerous times came back just like before.”
Remus looked out over the sea of headstones, a field of arched monuments rising haphazardly from the grass, no less upright for their lack of order. He drew in a deep breath and smiled.
“This brave young man knew that he was a very special young man as well. He knew that if he tried hard enough, if he really believed in himself and his friends and all the good people around him, if he fought no matter what happened and never gave in, the bad man would lose. And so that’s what he did: he fought. He was extraordinarily courageous, as were a great many others-like Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione, and Aunt Ginny, and, although Uncle Sirius chooses to deny it, Uncle Draco as well.”
Uncle Sirius snorted, but Daddy merely smiled a little more.
“This, Teddy,” he reported, “is because Uncle Sirius is a cranky, bitter old man who can’t get a girlfriend.”
“I heard that,” Uncle Sirius remarked, “and I would like to remind you that I have had at least three times as many girlfriends as a certain graybeard I know.”
Remus persisted in smiling blithely. “Everyone,” he went on, “was very, very brave. The young man and his friends were willing to fight for a world in which little boys wouldn’t have to grow up wondering who their parents had been, trying to understand who they were if they didn’t have a mum or dad to look to. They fought so that people like you could sit here right now, Teddy, with your dad and your Uncle Sirius, who still hasn’t stopped glaring at me despite the fact that I have done absolutely nothing wrong.”
Uncle Sirius muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “Prat.”
Teddy searched his father’s face, trying to read the fine lines at the corners of the eyes and around the mouth, and then looked at the gravestone. “What happened then?” he asked.
At that point, Daddy sighed, though he was still smiling-sadly now. “Then,” he said, “then… Teddy, sometimes… we have to lose things that we know are very wonderful in order to be able to gain something that is better for everyone. And that’s what we had to do. We had to lose that very brave young man so that we could have peace, and so that we could have a world that was safe for you, and a world that will be safe for your sister. Sometimes very good things and very bad things balance each other out, and they destroy each other, but believe me, Teddy, when I say that what blooms from the wreckage is always more good.”
Teddy gazed raptly up at his father. Daddy smiled and stroked his hair gently. “That’s the story,” he said. “Would you like to go see the shops before we go?”
As tiny footsteps pattered on the cobblestones towards the statue in the square, which mesmerized a pair of sparkling brown eyes for a few long moments, Sirius pulled the gate to behind them and then ran his hands through his hair. He turned to the man who had helped to give him one more thing to live for.
“So your daughter,” he said.
“Yes?” Remus prompted, waving obligingly as Teddy climbed up onto the statue’s base and flailed both arms for attention.
“Are you going to name her Harriet?” Sirius inquired.
Remus smiled. “No,” he replied.
“Not quite as sophisticated as ‘Theodore’?” Sirius conjectured airily.
Remus shook his head, smiling still. “It’s not that. It’s just… I don’t need to repeat the name to remember what it stands for.”
Behind them, nestled into the blades of swaying grass, stood a slab of marble dappled by the shadows of the leaves. Teddy Lupin hadn’t been able to read it, but he understood what it meant well enough.
Harry James Potter
July 31, 1980 - May 2, 1998
The Boy Who Loved
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Remus Lupin, Teddy Lupin, Sirius Black
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,394
Prompt: A contest by Slinkers on deviantART: to rewrite the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Warnings: cuteness? XD
Summary: Remus tells his son how things came to be.
Author's Note: eltea's entry rightfully won the contest, because it was frigging legit. So go read that. Mine I wrote between midnight and 2:30 AM. And don't be confused if canon isn't quite like you remember it. 8D
MAY 2, 2002
Afternoon sunlight slanted idly downward, flirting with the apple-green leaves of the enterprising trees that stretched skyward on either side of the cemetery gate. A mild breeze whispered through the wrought iron and ruffled a little boy’s bright turquoise hair, soft like a caress, as he squinted up at the church steeple.
Teddy Lupin didn’t know exactly why his daddy and Uncle Sirius had brought him here. His mum had stayed home; she was ill again, though when she’d seen the angle of his bottom lip and the line between his turquoise eyebrows, she’d cheerfully reassured him that it was only because his sister was even more of a troublemaker than he had been. Then she’d kissed him on the forehead and told him that if he was very good, Uncle Sirius might take him on a motorbike ride.
He was glad Uncle Sirius had come along. He liked to show Teddy silly magic while Daddy’s back was turned, though Teddy sometimes suspected that the ensuing glimmer in his father’s eye meant that Daddy knew exactly what was going on. Teddy didn’t really mind; it felt safer that way.
His father set a bouquet of white roses in front of a gravestone. Teddy looked at the curving petals intently for a few moments, and then he closed his eyes and concentrated hard, holding the color firmly in his mind. When he opened his eyes again, he looked up as far as he could. Sure enough, his bangs were white.
This was why Teddy Lupin hated haircuts.
Beaming in response to his father’s indulgent smile, he returned his attention to the speckled gray granite of the headstone, which was perfectly smooth but for the three lines of text carved evenly into its face. When Teddy peered at them, he could distinguish the letters, but he wasn’t very good at stringing their sounds together just yet. He glanced at Uncle Sirius, who was standing off to the side with his arms folded across his chest, looking intently at the church window without seeing it at all.
Remus Lupin brushed his son’s disheveled hair (which was a very pale turquoise now, as he’d forgotten to focus on it) back into place.
“I’d like to tell you a story,” he announced quietly, smiling.
Teddy pursed his lips and glanced at the grave. “Whose is it?” he asked, seeking the answer, as always, in his father’s eyes.
Remus sat down in the grass with a shaft of sunlight at his back and beckoned to his son, who curled up next to him obligingly. Daddy’s stories were the best. He had the voice for it; gentle and warm and low and just the littlest bit scratchy. His heroes were uncertain at first, but their virtue and their determination to do what was right always pulled them through in the end. The villains were dark and cruel and terrifying, and Teddy would hug the covers tight up under his chin and shiver, but when they’d been properly vanquished, and when the hero showed them mercy, it always turned out that they’d just been wronged a long time ago, and that they really weren’t so bad after all.
“This is a story,” Remus began, “about a very brave young man. He was born in a dangerous time, to a mother and a father who loved him very much. But a prophecy had been made that this particular young man would end the reign of a hurt, mistreated man who turned that hurt into anger and that anger into aggression, and who took it out on people who hadn’t done anything wrong.” Remus’s voice dropped to hover not far above a murmur. “And so this angry man came to the boy’s house to kill him. He killed his parents-” Teddy’s grip on his father’s arm tightened. “-and he went to kill the little baby lying in the cradle, but when he tried to, he succeeded only in destroying himself almost completely.” Remus paused to clear his throat, and his eyes flickered towards Uncle Sirius, who was leaning against the fence, his arms still crossed, his head bowed, his long, dark hair trailing to obscure his face. “But this very bad man,” Remus went on, softly, “wasn’t quite finished. And as the brave young man’s life went on, the bad man started to rebuild. Eventually, he had rebuilt so well that the dangerous times came back just like before.”
Remus looked out over the sea of headstones, a field of arched monuments rising haphazardly from the grass, no less upright for their lack of order. He drew in a deep breath and smiled.
“This brave young man knew that he was a very special young man as well. He knew that if he tried hard enough, if he really believed in himself and his friends and all the good people around him, if he fought no matter what happened and never gave in, the bad man would lose. And so that’s what he did: he fought. He was extraordinarily courageous, as were a great many others-like Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione, and Aunt Ginny, and, although Uncle Sirius chooses to deny it, Uncle Draco as well.”
Uncle Sirius snorted, but Daddy merely smiled a little more.
“This, Teddy,” he reported, “is because Uncle Sirius is a cranky, bitter old man who can’t get a girlfriend.”
“I heard that,” Uncle Sirius remarked, “and I would like to remind you that I have had at least three times as many girlfriends as a certain graybeard I know.”
Remus persisted in smiling blithely. “Everyone,” he went on, “was very, very brave. The young man and his friends were willing to fight for a world in which little boys wouldn’t have to grow up wondering who their parents had been, trying to understand who they were if they didn’t have a mum or dad to look to. They fought so that people like you could sit here right now, Teddy, with your dad and your Uncle Sirius, who still hasn’t stopped glaring at me despite the fact that I have done absolutely nothing wrong.”
Uncle Sirius muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “Prat.”
Teddy searched his father’s face, trying to read the fine lines at the corners of the eyes and around the mouth, and then looked at the gravestone. “What happened then?” he asked.
At that point, Daddy sighed, though he was still smiling-sadly now. “Then,” he said, “then… Teddy, sometimes… we have to lose things that we know are very wonderful in order to be able to gain something that is better for everyone. And that’s what we had to do. We had to lose that very brave young man so that we could have peace, and so that we could have a world that was safe for you, and a world that will be safe for your sister. Sometimes very good things and very bad things balance each other out, and they destroy each other, but believe me, Teddy, when I say that what blooms from the wreckage is always more good.”
Teddy gazed raptly up at his father. Daddy smiled and stroked his hair gently. “That’s the story,” he said. “Would you like to go see the shops before we go?”
As tiny footsteps pattered on the cobblestones towards the statue in the square, which mesmerized a pair of sparkling brown eyes for a few long moments, Sirius pulled the gate to behind them and then ran his hands through his hair. He turned to the man who had helped to give him one more thing to live for.
“So your daughter,” he said.
“Yes?” Remus prompted, waving obligingly as Teddy climbed up onto the statue’s base and flailed both arms for attention.
“Are you going to name her Harriet?” Sirius inquired.
Remus smiled. “No,” he replied.
“Not quite as sophisticated as ‘Theodore’?” Sirius conjectured airily.
Remus shook his head, smiling still. “It’s not that. It’s just… I don’t need to repeat the name to remember what it stands for.”
Behind them, nestled into the blades of swaying grass, stood a slab of marble dappled by the shadows of the leaves. Teddy Lupin hadn’t been able to read it, but he understood what it meant well enough.
Harry James Potter
July 31, 1980 - May 2, 1998
The Boy Who Loved