267Disclaimer: See First Chapter
A/N: This would have been too fun, but perhaps too obvious, to set in a literal classroom environment and guess who I didn't write a huge amount of in this series but love intensely…
36: Lesson
2007
"Good morning."
The knock at his bedroom door has roused Teddy before his mother's head pokes around the frame. He is sat up against the pillows, but he is blurry-eyed and sleepy-warm still, rubbing his heart-shaped face with his hands and his yawn sounds like a whimper.
"I know it's early, I'm sorry, but I thought we might do this just the two of us."
Teddy nods, still incapable of speech, and swings his long legs out from under the duvet. A deep frown line forms in the middle of his forehead, growing deeper still at Tonks' gentle laughter.
"Come on. I'll make you some breakfast and we'll get started."
The smell of burning toast is not the lure it was clearly intended to be and as Teddy steps into the kitchen, a plume of thick smoke billows from the AGA.
"I'm sorry. I can't believe it's been ten years and I still can't work this…this bloody thing."
He thinks she's going to give it a good strong kick. "Are we going to have to get Dad?"
"Absolutely not, no. We're going to open a window," she says, leaning over the sink to push one and opening the top half of the stable door into the porch. "And we're going to give our toast to the birds and have a nice biscuit instead."
"Biscuits? For breakfast?"
In the nine years he has lived in this house, breakfast has consisted of oats like he is a prize thoroughbred. Porridge and golden syrup from a green jar in the winter, a meal for which he has gained a new appreciation since discovering that while his is made with milk, his father regularly eats it with only water and salt as though he is some kind of prisoner in his own home. In summer, dreaded muesli. Biscuits is completely new territory.
And it feels like Christmas.
"Most importantly, we're going to keep this to ourselves."
Teddy nods briskly, eyes already on the jar. Once he has selected something smothered in chocolate, nibbled it, treasured it, licked it off his fingers, the lesson begins.
"The first thing I need you to do is work your way back to your natural state."
Teddy only looks at her, wide-eyed.
"I didn't really know what mine was until I was about your age either. You have to clear your mind. Let me think. Um…what is the sound of a tree falling in the forest?"
"Easy." Using his hand to demonstrate the descent, Teddy makes an eerie creaking sound followed by a great puff of air and the cawing of birds.
"That is incredible, but it wasn't what I had in mind. Follow me."
Tonks leads him to the bench wrapped around the oak tree. He is still in his pyjamas, barefoot, and Teddy wonders if she has failed to notice.
"Close your eyes."
He does so obediently, head titled to the early morning sunshine.
"What can you hear?"
"The – "
"No, it's OK. Don't tell me. Just think."
The sea is unusually quiet. The waves lap at the cliff when he expects them to be crashing in April. Seagulls cry to one another on the beach, but closer, in the garden, are the sounds of small, tweeting birds; sparrows, he supposes. A soft breeze rustles in the trees.
"What can you smell?"
Salt. Always salt. His home smells blue, the colour of the seaside, and his hair briefly flashes turquoise. But now that he thinks about it, the smoke has not quite cleared and the recently cut grass smells like summer.
"And what can you feel?"
Dew between his toes, long grass under foot. The wooden bench, firm and steady.
"Open your eyes for me."
He knows he has done well; his mother is beaming down at him.
"We're going to start with a face you resemble," she tells him. "I used to use my dad, but that's not going to work for you. And anyway, you don't look like a Tonks, you're a Black. So. Close your eyes and think what colour is Nanny's hair?"
Teddy screws his eyes tightly shut before his hair begins to turn a deep pewter colour.
"And how long is it? Can you make it grow?"
Teddy shakes his head, eyes still firmly closed.
"I want you to imagine how heavy her hair feels. It's very thick and long, isn't it? Can you imagine it sitting heavy at your elbows?"
Teddy shudders as long, thick hair begins to sprout not from his head, but the elbow itself. Opening his eyes, he leaps from the bench, squawking like a chicken spotting a fox in the coop.
"Teddy! Ted, it's all right. It's all right."
His hands are shaking. The hair has stopped growing, but it still hangs limply, swishing against his thigh with every involuntary tremble.
"I can't make it go away, Mum. I can't get rid of it."
"Yes, you can. You put it there and you can morph it away." Tonks pats the seat beside her. "I promise you can do this, but if you can't, I will remove it. Now, breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Close your eyes again for me. I want you to remember how those elbows usually feel. What do they feel like? They're smooth and they're a bit sharp when I try to give you a cuddle."
Teddy laughs through his nose and when his mother tells him to open his eyes, the wayward hair has vanished. He considers himself far too big now for her demonstrative affection, but forgetting himself, he throws his arms around her.
"Watch those spiky elbows," she tells him with a little wink. "Do you want to call it quits for today or are you ready to try again?"
He bounces to his feet, turning his hair the exact shade of grey he has seen on his grandmother, lengthening it slightly at first.
"Good, good. Don't think about it being heavy from anywhere else but your head."
The idea of Andromeda's thick and heavy curls framing his own face is surreal, but Teddy cannot help but grin. It is the first element of control he has mastered. "I don't have to think about it."
Tonks shakes her head. "Only when you're actually morphing. If I had to focus on my hair all day in my line of work, it doesn't bear thinking about."
"What's next?"
"Usually I'd say eyes, but you're very lucky and you've inherited hers, so we can leave eyes for another day. Tell me about her eyebrows."
Teddy's face screws up in concentration. "Um…they're very dark and I don't think they're very thick?"
"And they're quite high on her face. There's a big arch, isn't there?"
He concentrates on thinning his own thick eyebrows, lifting them a little, then turning them a rich, dark chocolate colour.
"Not quite," his mother tells him. "Try focusing on the very top – just where the eyebrow juts down. Push it up a bit."
"Skin?"
"Skin is the hardest, hardest thing to do. You're a little bit darker than Nanny, but we're not going into hues and folds and scars today. That's honestly months if not years away."
Teddy tries to hide his disappointment. He cannot help but want this session to end in a perfect impersonation. His mother, he thinks, must sense this.
"But we will do noses. I always thought noses were the best."
Teddy scrunches his in response. "Why?"
"Because people are very odd about them."
Teddy, whose own nose is inherited from the Lupins, thinks this is a very easy thing for someone with a perfect little nose to say, but he keeps quiet.
"Can you copy my nose?" asks Tonks. "You're going to need to make your own a bit shorter and then where yours just travels straight down, right at the bottom, you're going to turn it up a little."
His long nose has been made short and squat, tip far too high and resembling a snout.
"You cheeky little git."
"Sorry, Mum. I really couldn't control it."
But she cannot keep up the façade and her giggles are contagious. Teddy's nose shifts back to its usual shape, albeit shorter and softer than usual. Catching sight of his reflection in the open window, he is pleasantly surprised.
"Your mouth is just right too," says Tonks. "But your face is my face, so it needs to be a bit longer and a bit thinner in the cheek department. Bone structure is quite difficult; it helps to think of your face as being made out of clay."
He knows he has succeeded when his mother gasps.
"Honestly, Ted, there's a lot of fine-tuning to do, but you've done so, so well. It's a really close likeness and it's only your first go at a controlled morph. You should be so proud of yourself."
He is. This first face is the baseline, the form from which he will judge the speed and success of all other morphs and he will perfect it. One day, he thinks, this will be funny. There is no greater lesson his mother can teach him.
2012
They are, Teddy knows, extremely lucky to have their father home for Christmas when so many students opt to stay at school for the holiday. Emma was so little when their father absented himself for so much of the year that he benefits from a more lenient contract than initially expected and sometimes Teddy wonders whether the same exceptions would have been made for an eight-year-old.
Their family and friends Apparate behind the chicken coop, a beach-goer blindspot, and peering out of the kitchen window into the gloom, Teddy can just make out his father now. It is not his favourite method of travel and the exhaustion and constant ache is apparent on his haggard face.
"Oh," he says, removing his scarf and placing it neatly on the peg marked with his name in the little rectangular porch. "I wasn't expecting you. I think Nymphadora is going to be quite late actually."
Teddy opens his mouth before he realises that he has spent much of the afternoon wearing his grandmother's face to unnerve his sister. It is best, he thinks, to say nothing. He is dressed in his own clothes, but he is happy to note it is not immediately obvious.
"So…did you want to stay? I'm sure the children are here somewhere. It's the last day of term."
Teddy shakes his head, desperate to remove himself from this nightmarish scenario, and makes for the kitchen door.
"I would have thought," says his father softly, "that by now, I might have proved myself."
Teddy stops, back ramrod straight, too afraid to turn around. For as long as he has known them, there has been an uneasy atmosphere between his father and his grandmother. His mum's mother does not see them as often as his dad's, whose presence is almost ubiquitous. He has not thought much of it, but here, at last, it has been spoken.
"I'm sorry I left. I was a complete coward, but it's been almost fifteen years."
Slowly, Teddy turns on his heel, perfectly arched eyebrow already as high as he thinks he can get it.
"This family is more than I deserve and not a day goes by that I am not aware of it. It was a moment of terror. I honestly thought they'd have a better life without me. I know you think she was an imbecile to allow me to come home, but you surely cannot hold it against me still."
"You left us?"
Andromeda's hair is crimson, shortening as though it is falling out into thin air. She shrinks, but her shoulders are broader, her nose long and straight, her brows thick and copper-coloured.
Emotions Teddy barely recognises flit across his father's face – fear, desperation, resentment, even anger. He wants his green hair back. If he can just control his appearance in this moment, he thinks, he can gain control of his situation, but his mask is slipping, though he tries desperately to clutch at the advice his mother gave him. Focus on small details; what can he hear? Ragged breaths in an otherwise silent kitchen. No good. What can he smell? Mince pies he had been warming in the AGA. Christmas. Ruined. What can he feel? Disappointment, white hot rage, a deep resentment of his own.
His father has opened his mouth, but he cannot make a sound. When Teddy looks closely at him, he can see his tongue pressed to the back of his front teeth, poised, but petrified. His eyes are wide, horrified, completely betrayed. Teddy imagines his look much the same.
"What do you mean you left us?" He sucks in a breath. "Not us though, eh? Me. Doesn't take a mathematician, does it?"
His father only shakes his head slowly, softly.
"Say something. What was it about me? I'd just like to know."
Finally, his father manages to make a sound; a small, breathy sob. Far too late, Teddy has seen his father's feet of clay and for the first time, he wishes he was born with dull copper hair and dark grey eyes, a Greek nose he cannot wish away in the morning, and a heart-shaped face he cannot elongate.
He wants to get out, but there is nowhere to go. He could ask his mother to come home, but she has been complicit in the cover-up. He briefly contemplates asking Harry to collect him under a flimsy pretext, but he doesn't think he can face anybody at the moment, let alone a trio of beloved children, so disgustingly sure of their father's love. He could, he thinks, go back to school. Erin's mother is in Albania for work, so she and Galatea are spending the festive season at Hogwarts. This seems an ideal solution until he remembers there is no respite. He will have to share a space with his father again in only a fortnight. So together, they are trapped in this house. Upstairs, he can hear Emma playing Christmas music, oblivious to the emotional earthquake occurring in the kitchen. Teddy hates her for it.
He turns on his heel and storms out of the kitchen into the cold.
It is regrettable that this should have happened at Christmas, thinks Teddy, aimlessly traipsing along the seafront. July would have been better; warm, sunny, full of distractions. An icily cold wind on a deserted beach, tide drifting in as darkness falls, is no cure at all for a growing chasm in the heart. There is not even the amusement of watching tourists screech as seagulls swoop to steal their chips, ice creams and, in one memorable case, wallet.
He would like some time to sit and think, but he knows how quickly the tide will trap him on the rock he is eyeing up longingly. He has to keep moving. Despite himself, he is most disappointed that he was not followed.
"Ted?"
He turns despite himself, cursing inwardly as he reveals his weakness.
"Ted, wait!"
And now he has to stop; he knows she has seen him looking at her and his mother is not guaranteed a smooth and graceful descent down the rocky cliff path to the sand.
"What?"
Tonks' grey eyes blaze. "What do you mean what? Have you got any clue how long I've been looking for you?"
Teddy shrugs. "Can't have been that long. It's not even fully dark. Couldn't be bothered to come and get me himself, could he?"
"Did your dad never show you Jaws?" she asks, nodding toward an enormous moon. "I'm not sure the local economy would ever recover."
Despite himself, a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. A wolf stalking a teenager along Mouthwell Sands would make a far better story for the tourists than pickpocketing seagulls.
"I think we should talk about this at home," says Tonks, taking the opportunity to clasp her son's hand. He has not let her do this since he was seven, but today he is grateful for her touch. "Just you and me. Emma's been under the impression that her nan's been at the house most of the afternoon, so she didn't take much convincing to take her some forgotten mince pies."
Teddy's budding smile becomes a grimace. "I've never been so stupid, have I?"
Tonks rolls her eyes. "Neither has your dad. Come on. It's absolutely freezing out here and some stories need to be told where you can lock the doors, I think."
"I'm not very good at household bits and bobs and I still can't work that thing that looks like an oven, but is definitely not," Tonks tells him, placing a warm blackberry and damson cordial in Teddy's hands. "So it's not the hot milkshake your father would make you, I'm afraid, but it's the best I can do."
"Thank you."
She waves a hand at the fireplace and it jumps to life with a woosh that makes Teddy jump. "What do you want to know first?"
"I think the obvious."
With a deep sigh, Tonks collapses into the seat opposite him. "You have lived a very sheltered life. And to your father's immense credit, he has worked impossibly hard to ensure it. It's not a safe world when you're a werewolf even now, Ted, but when you were born, it was…"
Teddy leans forward in his chair.
"What?"
"When I got married, I was at risk of losing my job. I had to keep it a secret from everyone but my closest friends and family because I would be ostracised by anyone who didn't know your dad. Possibly by some people who did. I was scared it would lead to actual imprisonment. People didn't generally go out and marry werewolves and certainly, at least to popular knowledge, nobody had tried to have a child with one."
"Oh, but you were a pioneer."
"Please don't get smart with me because I am really not in the mood for it."
Fighting the urge to roll his eyes, Teddy says softly, "I just don't see what this has to do with him deciding he didn't want to be around me."
Tonks' response is barely more than a whisper. "Don't you?" She leans back in the chair and runs a hand over her face. Her eyes are bloodshot, full of unspilled tears and Teddy feels like a monster. "Can you imagine if we had lost that war? No, of course you can't. You have grown up with an incredible privilege."
Teddy squirms in his seat.
"Do you know what they did to my mother, our family? Because she married your granddad, who just happened to have been born to a couple of Muggles, they blasted her face off the family tapestry and refused to have any further contact with her. Can you imagine what those people would have done to me? To you?"
Teddy shakes his head, but he thinks he probably can and he has no desire to conjure it up.
"I'll be totally honest with you. You could never be classed as a mistake. You were the greatest little miracle I could ever have been blessed with, but your timing wasn't great."
Teddy smiles sadly at her. "Still isn't really."
"No. You'd be twenty minutes late to your own funeral, but just this once, you were early. If you want to know the difference between you and Emma, it's war and peace. He was living in terror – we both were. But he thought you and I could walk away from it and when I refused to do that, he took matters into his own hands. I'm not ever going to justify his actions and I'm certainly not going to agree with them, but I want you to understand that he wasn't walking away from a cottage by the sea with his children and a job. He has scratched out this life for us with his bare hands."
"But – "
Tonks holds up her index finger. "If you think your father doesn't love you, I'm going to have to have your head checked. I wasn't exaggerating when I told you that you were born into a completely different world than Emma. I couldn't see a midwitch, I had to deliver you in my bed at Nan's house, and we could have absolutely no outside help. Your father's hands were the first human touch you knew." She smiles at him and this time, when the tears pool, she catches them. "I had the hardest job putting you to bed because you lived in his arms. He'd settle your little face in his neck so his heartbeat would send you to sleep and he looked at you like, who the hell is Harry Potter because I've got the chosen one here in my arms. Whatever you think of him right now, Ted, please don't ever doubt that he would die for you. For all of us, but especially for you."
Through tears of his own, Teddy mutters, "Emma's his favourite."
"Oh, pfft, please." Tonks smirks at him. "By which I mean, of course, that neither of us has a favourite. However."
Teddy wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and manages a small laugh for her.
"Maybe the reason he wasn't so afraid of Emma doesn't just come down to a home and a change in the law and a decent wage. You made him the man he always knew he could be."
Teddy sniffs. "I still want to talk to him about it."
"I'm sure he would want you to. I just wanted to be sure you were going in with all of the…" His mother raises her eyebrows pointedly. "Shall we say necessary knowledge."
Teddy nods and gets to his feet. In three days, they will be sat here, swapping presents in a room lit only by pink fairy lights and fire, trying to stuff in a last turkey sandwich before bed, rooting around a tin of sweets, all trying to avoid the dreaded liquorice wand. He is not completely certain he can do it.
"I know you're hurt, Ted," says Tonks quietly. "It's very fresh now because it feels like it happened this afternoon."
"It did."
"No, you found out this afternoon." She cocks her head, eyebrows almost hidden in her fringe. "It happened in the '90s. Teddy, he absolutely adores you. I want you to know that you have never known anything but his love. And whatever damn fool ideas he had about our safety and our happiness, neither have I."
The moon is still dimly visible in the sky when Teddy emerges for breakfast. His stomach is churning and, having refused dinner yesterday evening, he chooses to believe it is merely protesting this. Better, he thinks, to raid the kitchen for a day's worth of snacks when he will be undisturbed, then he can sit in his attic fortress and await developments.
He listens for the whistle of the kettle atop the AGA while he places four pieces of bread under the grill and begins rooting around the cupboard for the box of chocolate fingers he suspects has been completely forgotten about.
He's just pouring water onto a bag that looks suspiciously like one of his mother's disgusting peppermint teas to which he should not have added a sizeable slug of milk, when the kitchen door opens and the light is turned off.
"I'm not made of money, you know."
Teddy drops the mug in his hand. Usually, his father would catch it completely wandlessly, but this morning it hits the stone slabs with an almighty crash, splintering into barely salvageable pieces. The tea seeps out onto the floor, mint and milk combining into a sickening smell.
"Merlin! I…I wasn't expecting you."
He is expecting a retort; to be reminded that his name is not Merlin, but Lupin only offers a small, sad smile.
"How are you feeling?"
"I've been better. I've been worse." His voice is rasping and already deep bruises begin to bloom in the few pieces of skin exposed. Teddy shudders. "Is there um…is there any chance of you making another tea?"
"Yes!" Teddy makes to step toward the kettle, but makes a guttural noise of disgust as he comes into contact with tepid tea. "Let me just…"
But even as he reaches for a towel, the floor is clean and dry; the cup is whole, if a little worse for wear, on the table.
"You've nothing on your feet again."
"Do you want me to wake Mum? I think she'd be up and about now, but we were up quite late last night. She was telling me about all of the incredible privileges I enjoy." He lifts the kettle. "Did you want mint or like, correct tea?"
"Correct tea please. Black. There's a piece of lemon somewhere. I'll…"
"It's OK. I know where it is."
If this, thinks Teddy, is what Christmas is going to be like, he really will go back to school. He cuts a slice of lemon, almost throws it into the cup, and places it in front of Lupin with a small thud.
"Right, well I'm going back to bed now, so…"
"Yes, I think…before you do, would you take a seat?"
Teddy pulls out a chair before the smell of blackened bread under the grill becomes overwhelming and he leaps toward it, taking hold of the hot pan with his bare hand and screaming in pain.
"Under the tap."
Teddy hisses as cold water hits his palm. "Jesus, shit, fuck. This…Jesus."
"All right, it's Christmas. Let's ease up on the blasphemy. Let me look at you."
On reflection, Teddy is amazed by how quickly he turns his palm over to his father. His hands are calloused, but his touch is gentle, and the soft whisperings of a healing charm immediately resolve the pain.
"It's going to be sore for a while. I think I might have to dress it."
It is only as he catches sight of a pronounced limp that Teddy begins to feel guilt. "No, it's OK. I'm OK, honestly. You don't have to…"
Lupin turns to him, brow furrowed. "I don't have to, what? Care for you? Heal you? Love you? Yes, as a matter of fact, I do."
Teddy flinches. "You shouldn't have to love me."
"Of course I have to love you. Who could help but love you?"
And so, sinking back into his seat at the kitchen table, Teddy allows his hand to be rubbed with salve and bandaged in thick cotton until he thinks he resembles the mummy they visited at the British Museum.
"I'm still angry," he says as Lupin releases his hand. "But Mum…she's taught me a lot. I'm not sure I'm angry with you."
Lupin nods slowly, almost sadly.
"I hate this." Teddy clears his throat, determined that he is not going to cry. "I hate seeing you in pain and I always have, but more than that, I hate what it's done to us."
"Do you think it's irreparable?"
"What, my hatred of a society that teaches people they don't deserve nice things for absolutely no valid reason whatsoever? I'd say it is actually, yeah." Teddy gets to his feet and pushes the chair under the table with a scraping finality. "You do deserve nice things, Dad. You deserve me and I deserve you and let's…"
But he cannot finish his sentence before he is enveloped in his father's arms, squeezed until it is almost uncomfortable.
"You're a bigger man than I."
"This is very nice, Dad, but you're smothering me."
"Let's say someone has not quite finished their Christmas shopping."
At the head of the table, Lupin rubs his temple, eyes tightly closed. "By Christmas Eve?"
Teddy wishes he does not take pleasure in visible evidence of his father's exasperation with her. He wishes it was not something he now notices.
"Hmm, yes, but that someone is aware that the shops are still open."
"Is this someone you, Emma?"
Emma takes the seat beside him, drawing out her answer in a plaintive hiss. "Yesssssss."
"Well, I can't take you," says Tonks. "I've got an interview to prepare for."
"On Christmas Eve?"
"If you want me to be free for sarnies and Exploding Snap tomorrow, then yes."
Tonks waits until her husband and daughter have disappeared through the fireplace before she wiggles a mug at Teddy.
"Peppermint please. You seem OK, the two of you."
Teddy shrugs. "He's my dad, isn't he?"
Tonks laughs. "What are you trying to say?"
Teddy rolls his eyes at her. "I did a lot of thinking the other night after you went to bed. If he'd never come back, it wouldn't hurt. It would just be. But I'm angry because I…because…well, I love him, don't I?"
"And he loves you."
"Yeah, I know." Teddy waves his bandaged left hand at her. "He was black and blue, but he took care of me first. I suppose I realised then that he always has."
Who could help but love you?
It still fills him with a warm glow.
"You remember learning how to morph?"
Teddy nods. "Of course I do."
Tonks hums. "I didn't cover this because I thought it went without saying, but you start with the face of someone you know to practice change. You don't wear it around the house and go about your life."
Teddy, whose talent for parroting extends well beyond changing his appearance, finds the practice far too useful to heed this advice, but he nods.
"And I hope you've learned your lesson. It's far more trouble than it's worth."