Nightmares
Monday March 31st, 2014:
The first thing he can remember is the cold. The wind biting his eyes, blurring his vision as he managed to race through brush after brush. An old stump, short enough to dodge his eye-line, just grazes his leg and sends a subtle, almost invigorating burn up his knee. Whether it’s the adrenaline or the fresh air that stubbornly brings him back to his senses, he can’t tear his eyes away from what’s in front of him. His eyes, his ears, his nose, they all seem to lean towards a common goal. Even the sting of his leg seems to whisper to him, begging him to finish the job.
He can’t see past the branches. They seem unrelenting and determined to hide the last hopes of whatever he may be pursuing. Hitting the ground with a newfound vigor, it becomes a competition. At first, it was survival, purpose. Now, it’s a challenge.
He has no idea what he’s following. The only evidence of life is the last rush of movement that can be felt on the passing leaves, the heavy indent in the dirt, the scent in the air. The petrichor of the rain in the night sky is marked by something else. Curiosity peaked, lead gained, he’s only paces behind.
He jumps and finds purchase, almost bittersweet, as if a round of chase with a friend has come to a quick, victorious end. A yelp rings out in the lifeless sound of midnight, resounding triumphantly off the trees like the cheering of a crowd. Confident, he releases his grip and allows his prey to stumble away. He catches a glimpse of what has managed to escape him for far too long.
A black dog. Shaggy, dirt clinging to its remaining tufts of fur. It lamely staggers north, still set on its destination. It’s afraid, the scent of fear coming off it in ribbons as it limps away. The attacker approaches, deciding whether to finish the job or let it heal. With a chase this fun, it becomes almost better to repeat the cycle. Something to look forward to when the moon robs him of the sunlight.
He begins to creep towards the dog, still not fully decided. What’s more important, doing something for the sake of satisfaction, only for it to last until morning? Entertainment? Hunger is more of a fever, never fully satiated. This could be something almost friendly, longer lasting-
Something seems to swell in the back of his mind. Not truly him, but familiar. Feeding on the blood on his teeth, the fear in the air, it becomes impossible to ignore. A parasite. It wants to conquer anything that dares try to run. Tries to best it. This is not satisfaction, this is restoring a balance.
His judgment is horribly clouded, forgetting the possibilities of just moments ago. It forces him to lunge forward, jaws wide as if his mouth was already full. The dog looks back at its predator once more, accepting its fate with its head low. Its eyes are mournful, as if always knowing how this was to end.
He swears he’d seen that look before, giving just a second of hesitation before tightening his grip. This already was a cycle, a game played too many times, always the same ending.
Teddy snaps awake. He sits bolt upright fast enough to give him whiplash. He can still taste the iron in his mouth as he tries to steady his breathing. As his heartbeat begins to stop its restless pounding, the fog of sleep seems to lift away.
Curtains surround him on his four-poster, their usual gold dulled by the thick darkness shrouding the bed. Reaching a hand out, he finds the lip in the fabric and pulls it aside. He’s almost immediately met by a harsh strip of light, pushing through like a slap to the face. He winces and covers his eyes, pulling the curtains all the way back. As the sunlight envelops the bed, it's warm but jarring. It’s morning. Merlin, he hopes he hasn’t slept too late.
Lately, these dreams he’s been having seem to drain all the energy out of him, making him sleep much later than usual, even when he was by no means a morning person in the first place. He even went to bed early last night – something apparently completely unheard of according to the shocked looks on his roommates' faces – all in anxious anticipation of preventing yet another morning of almost nodding off into his eggs and toast. It’s always the same. The woods, the cold, the dog. What was it about that black dog that kept sticking in his head?
He vaguely remembers Colin’s half-hearted musings from divination third year, his prattling on about omens and warning signs. Although, “the grim”, as he explained it, seems a tad too cliché to really be applicable. In his experience, signs of dark times really only came when you were looking for them. Like last year, Diana Burgess got a little too into the whole chapter on omens in class. When she got home for Christmas, her family’s black Scottish terrier was no longer her best friend, but apparently a sign of judgement day. Never mind the fact that Maverick had been in the family for years. She locked herself in her room for days, so Teddy heard, screaming whenever she heard him bark. Needless to say, she spent the next term learning ancient runes, instead.
“Oi! Ted!” He hears a voice shout from the other side of the bathroom door. “Since when are you one to sleep through breakfast?!”
He groans and slumps back into his pillow. The light may be helping him muster the energy to wake up, but that by no means makes him want to get out of bed any sooner. The chill of early spring creeps past the curtains and forces him to accept defeat. Why is it so damn cold in here? Bastards must have left the window open again.
He sweeps the thick quilt to the side in a dramatic flourish, swinging his legs over to hang off the edge of the bed. Rubbing the last bit of sleep out of his eyes, he stretches and stands, languidly looking for his wand.
Where the hell did he put it, he thinks to himself. He checks his bedside table, the drawers, the bedsheets- nothing. He can practically hear his Gran scolding him in the back of his mind. Maybe if he just decided onone place to put things, she would say. Yeah yeah, he’ll find it just fine, thank you very much. Hopefully without having Colin use a summoning charm again.
“And there he is, bright as the morn-“ Colin pauses abruptly as he greets Teddy from the bathroom door, toothbrush in hand and a towel around his shoulders. He breaks into a nervous half-grin as he continues to stare at his roommate. He continues, slower and less sure of himself this time around. “Look, Ted, I’ve seen you try out different ‘looks’, but I don’t know if this one is really your style. Or anyone’s for that matter.” He chuckles to himself, but there’s still a hint of worry in his eyes as he continues to stare.
Teddy rolls his eyes and pads over the cold hardwood towards the bathroom. “Not now, Colin, I’m sure whatever I’ve woken up with isn’t anything you haven’t seen before.” It’s been five years since they met and his friends all still get far too surprised when he wakes up with his hair a different colour than when he’d fallen asleep.
Being a metamorphmagus definitely has its perks. Never had to dye his hair or wait for it to grow out after a particularly bad haircut from Gran. He’s always able to get out of trouble, especially if it wasn’t him who cast a locomotion charm on all of the skeletons in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, just a seemingly taller-than-usual Noah Strout from Gryffindor. Yet, the fact that Noah was in Charms class the entire time didn’t seem to be concrete enough evidence to get him out of polishing trophies for a week.
Although, there are certainly some drawbacks. Like when his sleeping draught erupted first year mid-stir, spraying half the classroom in a foul-smelling blue slime. He swore he was so embarrassed he couldn’t get his hair to change back from scarlet for days. Or not to mention last week when it took twenty minutes into potions class to even realize his hair was a deep green. The fifth-year Slytherins that shared the time block seemed to think it was some sort of insult or lead up to one of his more tasteless pranks. In reality, he was just still hungover from Colin’s birthday celebration the night before.
“No mate, I’m serious. Look for yourself.” Colin interrupts Teddy’s train of thought with a gesture to the bathroom mirror. He walks through the doorway and stops in his tracks, unsure of what he was really seeing. With the remnants of steam still sticking to the mirror in front of him, he could just barely make out that something was different. He wipes a wide stripe through his clouded reflection and his heart skips a beat. Colin was right, this is definitely new.
Dragged along Teddy’s face was a thin, silvery scar, running up from his eyebrow down over the bridge of his nose. Another mark at the top of his collarbone catches his eye. He pulls down the neck of his shirt to find even more hidden under his clothes. Swiftly pulling up his sleeve, he finds an intricate lacework of those same silver slashes. Though rather spooky, the scars didn’t seem to take away from the rest of his features, his eyes, ears, and nose still in their respective places and usual appearances.
He brings a hand up to his face and traces the seemingly old mark at a slow pace, as if trying to find its origin in between the hard stops at either side of his nose. He shakes his head roughly, trying to knock any trace of the scars off his face. He wills his skin to return to normal, and when he nervously looks back into his reflection, it looks as though they were never there in the first place.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he turns back to Colin, who is still eyeing him suspiciously from the bathroom doorway, dark, wet hair sticking up with every strand seeming to point in a different direction. It would be funny if not considering the circumstances. His eyebrows relax as he looks at his best friend.
“Merlin, mate. You really had me through a loop with that one. What in Godric’s name made you want to try out the dark wizard look?”
“Shut up, Colin, you know I don’t do it on purpose.” Teddy sighs as he walks past him, going towards his trunk to grab his school clothes. “This happens all the time, I don’t know why you lot still get surprised.” He starts to dress lazily, content to forget the whole thing altogether.
“Yeah, right. I can handle the hair and the tattoos, but you’ve got to admit it’s never been like that… has it?” He shifts his weight from one foot to another, his mouth pulled back at one end like there’s something he’s left unsaid.
“No, really, I promise you, I’m fine. Can we please just go about our morning without the whole ministry hearing inquisition?” Teddy finds himself almost begging. He really hates when his friends get like this, looking at him like that, like they’re showing him just how much of a freak they think he is. If he’s honest, no, it’s never happened like that before. Yeah, some days he’ll wake up with a shaggy beard, or even a bigger nose, but those have always been something to laugh about with his friends. This morning, all lightheartedness seemed to have left the room with the look on Colin’s face.
“Yeah…yeah, sure. I’ll meet you in the great hall.” He replies cautiously as he turns around and goes back to the bathroom sink to finish brushing his teeth.
*****
With his hair still wet and his shoes decidedly left untied, Teddy walks into The Great Hall with only minutes to spare. He takes in the same cascading tables and windows with that warm, comforting familiarity that always seems to bring a smile to his face. This was the very hall he’d grown to call home in these past five years, and so his father had before him, and so had his father. You couldn’t look anywhere without unraveling thousands of stories of the students who came before.
He looks up at the long, yellow banner hanging over the Hufflepuff table and gets that same, traumatizing flashback of first getting sorted into his house. He was probably the most nervous an 11-year-old could possibly be in those final days before he got to Hogwarts. He was in such a state that his Gran had to actually send him to his room after his hair started involuntarily skipping through colors fast enough to give her a migraine.
To him, Gryffindor was the only option. It was the house of Harry, Ron, and basically everyone he had ever grown up around. Not to mention, it was his father’s house. Every time he asked about his dad or what he was like, he’d hear the same spiel about how much of a Gryffindor he was and how much he exemplified the house up until the end. With all of these great wizards going through the same common room, sharing the same classes, it had to be more than just luck. The people that came out of Gryffindor were brave, dependable, good people. If Teddy got sorted into it too, that had to mean something.
It was also by far the coolest house. They had a lion for Merlin’s sake.
Yet, when the sorting hat was placed on his head, it took exactly two agonizing seconds for that dream to be blown to bits. The abrupt shout of “ HUFFLEPUFF ” echoed across the room, leaving him sitting there, staring at table after table, stuck in that small instance of grueling silence. While the Hufflepuff table cheered and waved him over, Teddy sat there shocked. No hesitation? Not even a brief semblance of a Gryffindor to be found within him?
As he stepped off of the stool, he walked towards his new house, shoulders slumped in true and proper defeat. He remembers feeling embarrassed. Because, honestly, what was actually cool about a honey badger? What made Helga Hufflepuff so determined to make a house for all of the losers no other house wanted? He had read – ok, he had skimmed – Hogwarts: A History , he knew plenty about the house to know its reputation for picking up strays. The only relief was that Harry wasn’t there to watch it all go down.
It was only after sending a rather melodramatic letter to his Gran after his first week that he even found out that his very own mother was sorted into Hufflepuff. “ Your house doesn’t guarantee anything about the person I know you’ll come to be, my love ”, he remembers Gran writing back, “ Just the company that you’ll keep to get there ”.
The very next day, he sat next to Colin at the very same spot he had chosen during what he thought was the beginning of the end. The boy next to him was reading fervently through a huge, musty tome about three times the size of his head. When Teddy sat down, the boy looked up and his eyes automatically filled with adoration.
“Hey, you’re that first year with the red hair! I swear, I’ve been in the library for days trying to find the right charm to do it. Would you mind showing me?” Colin smiled a big, toothy grin at him and he decided there that maybe a honey badger could be pretty cool after all.
Now, looking down at those very same tables, winding down the room like warm brown ribbons, he begins to notice just how much things have changed since then.
With only fifteen minutes left of breakfast, it’s all quickly turned into its early morning scheduled chaos. Echoes of rapid-fire conversations can be heard from every corner. The crowds of students, a sea of black robes and half-tied ties, all frantically preparing for the first day of classes for the week. Answers for the homework being traded for two chocolate frogs and a licorice wand, history notes being passed over shoulders, reams and reams of parchment cover the tables more than the plates. In the midst of the madness, his eyes finally catch his friends at the middle of the Hufflepuff table, and he hurries to catch the last of the free seats as the rest of the students start to file in.
Teddy has recently decided that he doesn’t particularly like being a fifth year so far. With their place at the table always being smack dab in the middle, it feels less important. He liked first year, being at the end facing the tall windows, not having to stretch to look over head after head when Professor McGonagall made an announcement (which in Teddy’s opinion was a tad too often).
When he first got to Hogwarts, he looked down the Hufflepuff table and saw his whole future laid out in front of him. Every year sat one after another like a timeline for what many have told him were to be the best years of his life. Now that he’s trapped in the middle, he just feels like the one stuck between point a and point b. Especially now that he has to think about what’s coming after point b, and that’s been scaring him more than he’d like to admit. If you set something up as the happiest you’ll ever be, what happens when you’re close to the end? When you’re almost past it? And don’t get him started on OWLs. Actually, that was the thing he was actively trying the hardest to avoid thinking about, so maybe it would be best for him to squash that train of thought while he still has the chance.
He finally reaches his friends’ usual spot at the Hufflepuff table and instantly feels some of the tension melt from his shoulders. His mouth breaks into a grin as he takes his seat next to Colin.
“Morning, lads. Hope we all had a much better night’s sleep than I did.”
Colin looks up from his usual bowl of porridge, something he seems determined to have every single morning until it kills him. Teddy always thought he was a madman. Not even a spoon of sugar. He personally would rather die than subscribe himself to such a breakfast of torment, not when there was almost every respectable breakfast food known to man being served each morning at Hogwarts. It was just becoming unsightly at this point.
“You’re damn right, at least we lot didn’t wake up looking like we just got back from the Hospital Wing.” He teases lightly, all his nerves and precaution from earlier seemingly a thing of the past.
George across the table from the two boys perked his head up, eyebrows automatically furrowing into a hard line. “Hospital wing? What do you mean?” His eyes go to Teddy. “Ted, did you wake up forgetting how to grow your thumbs back again?” Even with the humor evident in the question, his face remains eerily serious.
Teddy puts his head in his hands. “George that was quite literally one time and for someone sworn to secrecy, you sure love to mention it a lot. Let’s at least let the man have his breakfast before we continue with the concerned parents brigade.” He looks up to find his roommates all staring at him, all with varying degrees of concern. He doesn’t get why it’s always such a big deal to them when shit like this happens. It’s not like it’s ever been permanent, it’s not like it’s ever put him in pain (well, physical pain that is). The more intrusive thoughts in his head ask him if maybe they’re just waiting for the day he can’t switch back, the day that he’s no longer joking. It unnerves him. Once again this morning he finds himself desperate to change the subject.
“Yes”, he says flatly. “I am perfectly fine. Though your concern is triple noted, it is much more touching when left aggressively unsaid.” Dry humor usually seems to do the trick for breaking the tension between his friends, and as if exactly on cue he sees them all visibly relax and carry on with their breakfast.
“Right” George starts abruptly, clearing his throat. “On that note, anyone in the mood for charity and willing to share their transfiguration notes? I swear if my dog still whistles like a teapot, I’ll never make it through OWLs.” He breaks off the last of the tension with his signature smile, as if determined to charm an answer from anyone he can.
“Yeah, alright, you goon. Have at it.” Colin reaches into his books and pulls out a few sheets of rather well-loved parchment, tossing them across the table to his friend.
“Aces! You’re a bloody lifesaver, Pristley, you know that? What would I do without you?” He returns the favor with a mocking look of affection, feigning surprise as if he hasn’t done this to Colin every morning before double transfiguration block.
“Transfer to Durmstrang, most likely.” Colin rolls his eyes as he takes another sip of his black coffee.
Teddy peeks over the table at the notes George has already started copying, eyes widening at the state of them. They were so absolutely covered in Colin’s neat script that they were near illegible. It looked like there was more ink than there was parchment, by the state of it. He never really understood the concept of diligently taking notes, going for a more intuitive approach to magic. It had never really steered him wrong, except perhaps in history of magic, so why fix what wasn’t broken?
“Good Godric, George, how can you even read that? It’s giving me a headache just looking at it.”
“That’s because good old Georgey here has had more practice copying off Colin’s notes than Colin does.” Eric chimes in with a teasing smirk, keeping eye contact with Teddy as he takes a long drag from his morning cup of tea.
“Yeah but-” George begins to muster up a rebuttal only to be cut off by the sing-song voice that approaches their section of the table.
“Morning, boys!” A fourth-year girl set in Gryffindor colors comes up to the bench, gracefully sliding into the seat right next to Teddy. She smiles brightly as she sits down, her pale blonde hair seems to perfectly sway and shine to match each ebb and flow of her movement, reflecting a soft silver in the light of the morning. It’s like it has a mind of its own, with its only mission being to make her look as poised as possible. He swears, if he had even an ounce of her grace he could be a bloody ballet dancer. She always seems to make things seem so effortless, especially when sitting next to him. While she seems to shine in the unholy hour of 9 AM, he just now realized that he still hasn’t even found the time to tie his shoes.
Teddy breaks into a wide smile as he scoots over to make room. He reflexively puts his arm around her shoulders, feeling that same swirling of nerves in his stomach like the first time he’d seen her.
“Morning, V. How long have you been here?”
Her smile thins as she takes an exasperated breath like she’s gearing up to spill all of her grievances of the past hour. “Well, I was over at the Gryffindor table for a good half hour waiting for you, during which I’m sure you were sleeping until the last possible moment. Why is it that I’m the one who always stays up later studying, but you always seem to be the one sleeping late anyways?” She ends with a chuckle, turning to Teddy with a playful crease of her eyebrows.
Victoire has been spending a lot more time at the Hufflepuff table as of late. She had been since the last Hufflepuff vs. Gryffindor quidditch match, when she ditched her friends at the other stands to sit next to Teddy. She called it “infiltrating enemy lines”, but still ended up cheering louder than any of the Hufflepuffs any time Colin scored against Gryffindor. It was starting to become second nature to him, having her around. She made everything easier. She was always the first to set the mood, whether because of her stellar impression of Professor Trelawney or her helping George tease the absolute life out of Teddy for his more cringe-worthy hair choices for the day. Plus, after just a few weeks of her eating breakfast together, it seemed like the closer he got to her, all of his friends got closer to her too.
The thing was, Teddy loved it. Even when he was the butt of a joke, it felt like she was really just becoming part of the group. He loved being able to have her join them at the Hufflepuff table and not having to worry about the energy changing. It was something he was growing very content with lately.
The only issue with Victoire was what happened after this school year ended. Teddy was dreading even thinking about having to explain to Bill, a man that he’s known all of his life from his summers with the Weasleys, that he is now dating his daughter. Besides how obviously mortifying that conversation is destined to be, he really just didn’t want Bill to look at him differently afterward. He wanted to still be Teddy in his eyes, not just his daughter’s boyfriend.
He always felt rather connected to Bill, spending warm summer nights around a fire with the other kids, listening to him tell stories and read Tales of Beedle the Bard. When it got to be too late for the younger kids to stay awake, he would stay out there with him and ask him questions. Was he ever scared, did he learn any cool curses, how he got each and every scar and mark that ran up the side of his face.
One night, pulling back his long, graying, red hair from his eyes, he showed Teddy the full view of the harsh slash marks that ran up his left cheek. Teddy gasped, only catching glimpses or traces of them before. That was the only story Bill never cared to repeat. Fenrir Greyback, as he had explained that night, had given him that scar. A wound from a werewolf is a treacherous thing, as he explained it. The nights before that first full moon, wondering if his whole life would ever be the same after, and the implications of what others might think if it came down to that.
For Bill, these were just recountings of old memories, but at this moment, Teddy thought he was one of the bravest men he’d ever met. Constantly growing up around people like Harry, the war was rarely ever talked about. It had become like a taboo, especially whenever Teddy was in the room. But there Bill was, full disclosure, showing him the best and the worst of the war all in one moment.
“You see, you and I are more alike than you think.” He had said wistfully. “Though you and I aren’t lycanthropes like your dad was, the moon and all the werewolves that fall under it are more a part of the two of us than you’d expect. We’re connected to it, whether we like it or not.”
With his eyes set on the hard indents of Bill’s scars, Teddy remembers thinking that if he was anything like him, maybe that wasn’t a bad thing at all.
Yeah, telling Bill is going to be so much worse than he had originally thought.
-”Teddy, are you still dozing off there?” Victoire looks at him, a question still present in her eyes.
Teddy blinks and snaps himself back into the present. Maybe the exhaustion really was getting to him. This morning really seemed to be gearing up for a very long day.
“Yeah, maybe just a bit. These nightmares seem determined on sending me to an early grave, at this point.”
“Nightmares, again?” She drops a bit of her previous humor and adopts a hint of concern as she continues to stare at him. “Maybe you should talk to Harry about them. Nightmares don’t really have a great track record for wizards, do they? After all, he is your Godfather, he’d probably want to hear about them regardless.”
At that moment, Teddy kind of hated how she was always right. With Harry’s time at Hogwarts as evidence alone, nightmares were always fairly dubious at best. Yet, at the same time, he would hate to bother him over a few bad dreams about a forest. By a few, of course, he meant that he had already lost count of how many times he’s had them these past few weeks.
“Ok, I’ll send Harry an owl after class. Now, can we please talk about something more fun before today becomes absolutely cursed?”
Victoire’s face relaxes into her usual smile, a blush creeping onto the tips of her cheekbones. “Agreed.”
She shifts a little closer to Teddy and tosses her hair over her shoulder, speaking in a just slightly softer voice. “I was thinking of finishing my assignment for astronomy after dinner. It’s due tomorrow so I was wondering if you maybe wanted to help? Meet at the astronomy tower at around eight?”
At this, she looks up at Teddy from where her eyes were fixated on her hands in her lap, her eyebrows slightly raised as she stared expectantly.
“That’s funny, I could’ve sworn you told me about handing that in on Thursday.” George replies nonchalantly, a knowing smirk plastered on his face as his eyes switch back and forth between the two of them.
“For the love of Merlin, George, I will use the jelly legs jinx on you again! And this time not even Madame Pomfrey will be able to help you out of it!” Victoire snaps back, face practically lighting up scarlet as she feigns grabbing her wand from her robe pocket.
George automatically drops his fork and throws both hands up in surrender, nervously chuckling as he sputters out an apology. “My mistake! Must have been some other assignment! What do I know, anyway?” He looks over at his friend across the table, giving him a look like a cry for help. “You should probably help her out, Ted, preferably before things get too drastic.”
Teddy can’t fight the laugh that bursts out as Victoire eases back into her seat. He pulls her view back towards him with a hand on her cheek.
“eight sounds perfect, V.” He leans in to give her a quick kiss. As he pulls back with a wide grin, he decides he doesn’t even care if there is some sort of elusive astronomy essay, his day is already on its way to making its way back on track.
He feels a nudge on his right side, turning his attention to Colin who is jabbing him in the rib with his elbow. His face looks slightly contorted, obviously not doing a great job trying to hide the smile threatening to peek through.
“Ahem… Ted, you’re doing it again.” Colin clears his throat as he motions above Teddy, unable to get any other words out.
Teddy looks back at Victoire to see that her features seem to have softened into a look of warm affection. Why does she keep looking up at his hair?
“Colin, what are you-Oh for Merlin’s sake.” He huffs and wills a few strands to grow to reach down to his eye level. To his horror, he’s instantly met with a bright, bubblegum pink curl hanging down in front of his face. He swears, this girl was going to be the death of him, one day.
Eric laughs, breaking the brief (but still tremendously awkward) silence.
“You should keep it, it’s just in time for Valentine’s day!” He teases as he reaches over the table to playfully shake his friend’s shoulder.
“Valentine’s day was last month , you great sod. Now I’m going to, out of fear for my own mental health, ask you lot to talk about anything else while I pray to whatever higher power that I don’t have to wear this to class.” He looks down and shakes his head roughly, trying manically to clear any remotely pink thoughts from his head. Brown, darkish brown, brown hair, brown tables , Merlin, he would not survive the embarrassment if this kept happening whenever he was around his girlfriend.
Victoire interrupts his train of thought by grabbing his hand. He looks up at her and sees that same blush threaten to resurface over the freckles scattered across her nose. “I’ll see you after class, yeah?” She leans over to give him a quick peck on his left cheek, lingering as her voice drops to a whisper that none of the other boys could hear.
“I quite like that color on you.”
She pulls away smiling and gets up from her seat at the table, returning to her friends at the Gryffindor table for the last few moments of breakfast. As he watches her walk away, Teddy can practically feel any traces of brown that he had willed back into his hair fade to nothing. Maybe just one class with the pink wouldn’t be so terrible. It’s not like he hasn’t made worse style decisions before.
“Oh great Godric, I swear I would report you both to headmistress McGonagall for improper display of affection if you weren’t so bloody perfect.” Eric chuckles as he rolls his eyes at Teddy, following his eye-line over to the Gryffindor table.
Colin pushes his bowl to the middle of the table before grabbing his books and standing abruptly. “Great timing, actually, we should really get going before you lot get scolded for being late to transfiguration again .”
On that note, Teddy and his friends all gather their belongings and stand up from the table. They head towards the large, ornate doors at the end of the hall, trading quick laughs as they walk to their first class of the day.
“Hey George, what do you think ever happened to that Ravenclaw whose cat you turned into a pair of gloves?”
“...His hands are probably a lot warmer now, at least.”