Rating:
G
House:
The Dark Arts
Characters:
Teddy Remus Lupin
Genres:
General Inspirational
Era:
In the nineteen years between the last chapter of
Spoilers:
Deadly Hallows (Through Ch. 36)
Stats:
Published: 07/30/2007
Updated: 07/30/2007
Words: 1,338
Chapters: 1
Hits: 981

Of Broken Hearts and Broken Plates

Vitil

Story Summary:
This morning, the dawn had come not long ago. The light crept into the bedroom, glistened on the photographs- photo after photo framed and covering the walls of the room. As long as Teddy Lupin could remember, his life had been spattered with images of the three people he would never have known otherwise.... A story of love, loss and, recovery.

Chapter 01 - Of Broken Hearts and Broken Plates

Posted:
07/30/2007
Hits:
981

This morning, the dawn had come not long ago. The light was gentle- a little blue, a little golden. It crept into the bedroom, glistened on the photographs- photo after photo, all framed and covering the walls of the room- because as long as Teddy Lupin could remember, his life had been spattered with images of the three people he would never have known otherwise.

Perhaps there were a lot of families who coped with loss by shutting it out- by gathering possessions in a box in the attic, never again to be opened except by their children’s children in years to come.

That was not how Andromeda Tonks mourned. Her daughter had changed that. On the day she heard the news that her father was never coming home, Nymphadora had firmly refused to remove even one photograph of him from the walls, as her mother was inclined to do. She’d done quite the opposite. She had gone through the attic, through her old room, through her parents room, and she had pulled out every picture she could find and hung them everywhere- over the mirrors, on the closet doors, on the fridge, over the dressers.

At first, this had been painful. Andromeda had doubted her daughter’s ideas. It seemed that they were always crying a little- at her home, at her daughter and son-in-law’s home. Even when Nymphadora went to get a glass of pumpkin juice from the fridge, she’d return with the glisten of tears in her eyes. Over the weeks, though, she came to love those photographs. It reminded her that Ted was still with her, made her feel as though he was there and approving, smiling over every memory and every step towards moving on.

That’s why, when she lost her daughter and her son-in-law and realized that she was now Teddy’s mother, she did not hessitate. She went into the sleeping baby’s room and hung up all the pictures she could find.

Teddy couldn’t even remember the first time he’d seen the two of them, the first time he’d been told ‘this is your mommy, Teddy, and this is your Daddy. They died saving our world.’ It was amazing how many pictures his parents had accumulated in barely a year of marriage- even more amazing the volume of pictures they’d collected of all three of them (Teddy and his parents) in the mere weeks they’d all been alive together. It was almost like knowing them, seeing all those pictures. There were pictures of his mother smiling and pointing gleefully at her enormous abdomen; of his parents sitting on a sofa in their house (which looked small, but warm), his mother whispering into his father’s ear, beaming as he attempted (and failed over and over again) to remain serious. His father looked like a very worried man, even when he was smiling, in most of the pictures from their marriage and through the pregnancy. With the next swell of pictures, however, the solemn man was positively transformed. It was as though some gleeful, glowing being had burst from inside him. These pictures, Teddy loved. There was a picture of his father holding his newborn self, oblivious to the camera, glowing at Teddy as though he were a flawless star which had fallen from the heavens into his arms. There was a picture of his parent’s kissing over him, his tiny fist reaching between them. There was a picture of his mother rocking him and humming, her hair absent-mindedly changing to match each of her son’s whimsical choices.

Of course, there were still plenty of pictures of his grandfather as well. The pictures of his parents had only added to them, craming the walls, filling the house. Ted Tonks and his daughter falling over each other (very nearly literally) with laughter, the whole family together at the dinner table at the Tonkses’ house. Sometimes, he could almost imagine that he remembered those moments which he was too young for, or hadn’t been there for. He could pretend that he remembered his parents swaying in their living room and the way his mother closed her eyes when she rested her head on his father’s shoulder, remembered sleeping on his father’s rising and falling chest, remembered his mother poking his nose, making his hair burst into especially eccentric colors if she caught him by surprise, remembered his mother being so happy on her wedding day that she would’ve fallen repeatedly if her clearly stressed and delighted husband hadn’t steadied her gently with a hand on her arm or an arm around her waist, remembered his father kissing his mother’s stomach, he could even imagine that he remembered kicking back joyfully.

It was to a room filled with these memories that Teddy awoke each morning, and it was he who reminded his grandmother of them, every day. Though he likely didn’t know it, Teddy was a kind of paradox- an illogical mix of two vastly different people. He had his father’s rather long and very serious mouth, his boney and slightly hawkish nose, but his mother’s electric black eyes and incredible hair. This added up to create an endearing set of face- solemn and perhaps worried, but energetically attentive- and a smile that flashed so suddenly, if his eyes and mouth took off at the same time, that it very nearly swept your feet out from under you every time. A rather eccentric personality also was born from this combination. Teddy was a very concerned, very clumsy, very studious boy who was apt to break into positive hysterics (and always knock something over) when presented with anything funny. He could maintain calm like no one else when it was really needed, but when he let go everyone knew exactly how he felt. Amdromeda felt a bit protective of him, mainly because when he loved (friends and lovers alike) he fell hard, and fast, and forever, just as her daughter had; and again- when his lips and eyes agreed on what they felt, his look of sorrow was devastating for his grandmother. Of course, Teddy didn’t think he needed protecting (again, like his mother), but rather saw it as his duty to protect his grandmother. He put up with (on occasion resentfully) her protectiveness for the same reasons Nymphadora always had- he loved her madly.

Their tiny family was somewhat of a miracle, actually. A healthy, happy pair living in a house filled to the brim with beautiful memories, bittersweet smiles, and painful loss. They were a family which matured faster into that symbiotic relationship which is true love, because they had to. They were a family which sometimes seemed to have everything- even more than everything, and sometimes seemed to have lost three fifths of their world. They were a family which laughed even through broken hearts, but sometimes cried through broken plates; which kissed photographs good night or managed somehow not to look back; which held each other up or fled from the memories in each other’s eyes. They were a family, perhaps, of lost things,

but mostly of those things which will never never abandon us, and which emerge from the shatterings of cruelty somehow, gloriously, barely, painfully, everlastingly whole.

Teddy Lupin opens his eyes. His past surrounds him, but his future rises before him like a light, and he is loved, and carries nothing which weighs him down.