Fic: Caricature (Harry Potter)

[keep_counting]

 Title:  Caricature
Characters/Pairings: Neville Longbottom, Teddy Lupin, mentions of Harry Potter, Remus Lupin & Tonks 
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Spoilers for DH
Genre: Family/Hurt-comfort
Word-count:  1,138
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. I'd really like Neville though
A/N: Guess what? I GOT INTO POTTERMORE. And I have a fever, so I'm not really psyched at all. Just tired. And sort of snotty.
Summary:  Everyone tells Ted about his parents. Everyone says the same things. 

First year and there’s an eleven-year old boy with bright blue hair standing in line for the Sorting Hat, eyes flickering in the candle-light, searching the crowd, smiling at familiar faces – smiling brightly, and nervously, hands wrung in his cloak and shoulders hunched a little forward as if trying to protect himself from something. But when his name is called, he stands tall and marches up there, his hair taking on a startling shade of red for just the briefest of moments, a moment of defiance and indecision and belonging, somehow.

He looks like his father as he sits there, all nervous, the hat covering the blue hair and most of the soft features of his face, brown eyes just peeking out under it. He looks like his mother as the Hat shouts out Ravenclaw, something proud and fierce in his eyes, even if it isn’t his mother’s House or his father’s House.

At least the hair match, Neville thinks, not the bright red or gold of Gryffindor or pale yellow of Hufflepuff. Not his father or his mother. Just Ted.

The boy catches his eyes and waves and Neville wonders, not for the first time, why he feels like he’s seen all this before.

oOo

“You are happy enough in Ravenclaw, yes?” Neville, Professor Longbottom, asks, eyes looking down at the thirteen-year old boy with an eye displaying all the colours that his hair usually did.

Teddy Lupin sulks and shrugs and looks exactly like his mother.

“I like Ravenclaw. Why, you don’t think I’m smart enough to be there?” His eyes flash and his teeth are bared and Neville wonders – truly wonders, because he’s never seen one before, except for maybe Greyback, who was a wolf even when in human form – if this is what it looks like just before the transformation.

But Teddy hasn’t inherited his father’s lycanthropy. He’s just a boy with no parents and a stark blue eye that tells of conflict and misunderstanding.

“No, I didn’t say that,” Neville mutters, thinking of a young eleven-year old in Gryffindor’s common room, refusing to stand down when he thought his friends where doing wrong. “But do you honestly think that starting a fight was a smart move? Not very Ravenclaw-like. I would’ve expected better of you.”

Ted has the gall to be ashamed. And that’s when Neville makes a mistake.

“What don’t you think your parents would say?”

The boy is out the door before the words are even finished and Neville feels like he’s just kicked a kitten and killed someone, all in one sentence.
 
oOo
 
It’s in sixth year that he gets a small chance to remedy that. Maybe it’s the first time he realizes that Ted is actually a constant in his life: that Ted is with the Potters and so is Neville and he has to watch the boy go home with his grandmother after every holiday, and he wonders if he ever looked as happy as Ted did, and he doubts it, and wonders if his own grandmother ever resented him for that.

There aren’t replacements for people. There are stand-ins and father figures and sort-of-sisters and almost-cousins. There are godfathers and godmothers and smiling teachers and friends. It’s not an ever-going road that you have to travel alone, there is always someone.
But Teddy’s parents are still dead and nothing in the world can change that.

In Teddy’s fifth year, he’s stopped getting into fights, but he’s also stopped smiling. Somehow. Most of the time. He’s still his mother’s son after all, and a smile seems to be a permanent expression for a Tonks, but its fading and his hair isn’t blue or red or green or any shade of neon anymore and Neville gets a sickly sense of déjà vu.

“You knew my parents, right?” He hadn’t even noticed that Ted had stayed after class, the greenhouse already empty of all other students. He’s standing tall and straight, completely unyielding, but the book in his hands is trembling slightly.

“Yes. They were amazing people.”

“Everyone keeps saying that.”

Neville smiles, just slightly, at the almost accusing tone. It reminds him of another boy, one he knew long ago.

“It’s the truth,” he says and thinks of gum-wrappers and Skt. Mungo’s and how his mother’s trembling hand would sometimes come out to pat his head, her eyes not even seeing who was there.

“Really?” The tremble is in Teddy’s voice now.

“Ted, have you ever faced down a Boggart?”

“Yes, we did in fourth year. Why?”

Neville blinks slightly, not even sure why the words fell out of his mouth in the first place. It’s like it’s been nagging away at him, an insistent drumming in the back of his head. DumDumDumDumDumDumDumDum.

“Did Harry ever tell you about the prophecy? The one about him and Voldemort?”

Ted doesn’t flinch at the name and that settles something, like the final test, like when he reached his hand into the Sorting Hat and pulled out the sword and knew that he could do anything, because everything was possible if you just stood your ground.

Ted doesn’t like sixteen; he looks a hundred, his eyes ancient and tired and he nods. “Yes. He said it could have been about you. He told me about your parents, that you’d grown up with your grandmother too.”

And there’s that.

“Your parents were good people,” He repeats. “Amazing. In fact, it was your father that taught me how to face down my own fear.”
“Really? I never knew,” Ted’s face slips into a smile. “I figured you were born without fear. You’re a war-hero too, after all.”

Neville almost snorts at that, but settles for a shrug instead. “Believe me, that is not the case. Really really not the case. But I think… it’s pretty safe to say – I wouldn’t have been able to kill that snake, if it hadn’t been for your father. For allowing me just one moment of success.”

It’s hard for someone to hear about something they’ve lost. It’s hard to hear tales of war and suffering, knowing that you’re still here, when so many others are dead. It’s hard to hear about heroes and be told that they’re your parents, because heroes aren’t real people, they’re icons and gods and something more. And how can you relate to something like that, when what you see before you is just an empty shell of a human or a cold stone over a grave? They’re out of your reach in the first place and the fact that everyone speaks their names in hushed reverence takes them even further.

“You knew my parents,” Ted Lupin’s face breaks into a grin as he slings his bag over his shoulder, ready to go out again.

Neville smiles back. “Yeah. I knew your parents.”