I wake up, and I am immediately filled with a sense of determination. I am going to find out why Edith acted the way she did, and I will find it out today.
I had shown Jason how to play Gobstones, but I don’t think I explained it very well, because my mind had been spinning around what Edith had done.
I clumsily dress, still a bit drowsy from sleep, and throw a pillow at Jason, who grunts and jerks awake.
“Wha’?” he yawns at me.
“Breakfast “ I want to get there early so I can talk to Edith.”
“Why?” Jason looks genuinely confused. “She’s an idiot.”
“Who’s an idiot?” asks Alfie, sitting up in his bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“That Edith girl.”
Alfie scowls. “Glad you realised! I met her a couple of years ago “ but I couldn’t remember her name yesterday “ and she was an idiot then too. Attention seeking. Tried to tell me she was an undercover Auror.”
“Well, she suddenly decided she didn’t want to talk to me yesterday, got up, and left,” I say, still dumbfounded. “I’m going to march up to her and demand-”
“You’re going to march up and demand something of someone?” smirks Jason.
I frown at him. “Yeah. What’s so funny about that?”
“Nothing, it’s just that you don’t sound the sort to march up to someone and demand something.”
“Oh, really?” I growl, rather offended. “What kind of person do I seem like, then?”
“Well… a ‘lets talk it through and be responsible about it’ type person.”
Alfie bursts into peals of laughter, falling back onto his bed and clutching his stomach. To be honest, I think that it’s a little over-the-top.
“Stop that,” I scowl at him. Then I glare back at Jason. “I’ll show you!”
I stand around, impatiently, waiting for the other two to get dressed, and then we make our way downstairs.
When I enter the Great Hall, I spot Edith, elegantly cutting a kipper, and make a beeline for her. I tap her on the shoulder, and she breaks off the conversation with the second-year boy opposite her, to look up at me. Her eyes zone in on my turquoise hair and her blue-grey eyes widen. Only one person in the school has mad hair. Me.
“Don’t touch me, werewolf!” she shrieks, hitting my hand away.
I blink in shock. “W-what?”
“Is it true?” demands the boy. “Was your father a werewolf?”
“Yeah. So what?” I ask. I have no idea why they are acting like this “ werewolves aren’t bad, but they’re acting like they’re some sort of... of…
“You’re a monster! A werewolf!” spits the boy. “No one wants a werewolf in the school! It’s dangerous!”
“I’m not a werewolf!” I say. “And even if I was, it wouldn’t matter. There’s nothing wrong with werewolves!"
They look at me in disgust. “You’re lucky that no one else believes me,” says Edith. “You’re lucky they all think I’m jealous of you “ ha! As if I would be jealous of a monster!”
“I’m not a monster!” I say sharply. “And neither was my father.” I turn on my heel, and leave the Great Hall, Jason and Alfie trailing awkwardly behind me. I feel dizzy, light headed. Like my knees could buckle underneath me at any moment.
“Why do they think that?” I burst out to Alfie and Jason as we head back up to the Common Room. “What… why… I don’t understand! They don’t know anything about him “ why do they think he was a monster? Harry, my Grandma and all the Weasley’s always talk about him being a werewolf “ it’s no big deal! I don’t even think about it most of the time!” I can hear my voice becoming more and more distressed, and Jason looks just as confused and angry as I do, but Alfie, on the other hand, looks awkward.
“So… you don’t really know what people think about werewolves?” he asks me awkwardly.
“What could they think? What could they possibly think? There’s nothing to think about!”
“Look,” he starts, and his voice is surprisingly gentle “ more caring than I’ve ever heard it before. “I don’t agree with them at all “ I’ve been educated well enough to understand that it is not the persons fault if they are werewolves, and I understand that you are not one, because there was a full moon a couple of days ago, and you slept in the same dorm as us and we’re all fine. But…”
“But what?” I ask, and his face looks even more awkward as he hears the growling edge to my voice.
“Well… I’m not saying your father was a bad man… but a lot of werewolves… well, there are some nasty stories.” I shake my head, and I begin to feel light headed again. “Take Fenrir Greyback, for example-”
“Greyback was a one off!” I snap. “I know all about him “ Bill Weasley is scarred because of him!”
“There are more stories than Greyback, Teddy. I’m sure there were some good werewolves, and I’m sure your father was one of them. But… I think it’s best that, in the future, you don’t admit that your father was a werewolf. It will make your life a lot easier.”
“I don’t want to,” I say stubbornly. “My father was a good man, and a werewolf. Why should I try to hide that?”
“Because you’ve just seen what people are like, Teddy! People don’t understand that there were a few good ones-”
“There weren’t a few good ones; there were a few bad ones!”
Alfie sighs. “Look, Teddy. Just… just keep your head down, okay? Edith’s reputation precedes her - it looks like I’m not the only one who knows she always wants to be part of something big. But… just don’t encourage more people to act like that, okay?”
I silently admit defeat, and walk up the staircase.
“Aren’t you going to have breakfast, Teddy?” I hear Jason call up.
“No. You two go ahead. I need to send a letter.”
***
Dear Grandma,
I
My quill hovers above the parchment for a moment, before I sigh, and put it down. I crumple up the parchment, and pull an other sheet from my trunk.
Dear Harry,
No. I couldn’t write to Harry. He was the one who had always told me that werewolves were good people with a terrible curse, and now that I had been told otherwise… well, I want to be sure that get the truth.
Dear
I sigh, and crumple up yet another piece of parchment. I roll onto my back (I’m lying on my bed, leaning the parchment against Hogwarts; A History) and gaze at the photograph on my bedside table.
In the photograph, I am a tiny baby, maybe only a week old, and I am lying in my mother’s arms, asleep, while she smiles down at me. My father is crouching by her side (she is sitting on a worn carpet), a hand on her shoulder, also grinning down at me with glorious happiness. Every now and again, one of them will glance gleefully at the camera, but their eyes will snatch back to the baby me in my mother’s arms.
What was he really like? No doubt everything that had been said to me had been sugar coated. If my father had really been like Fenrir Greyback, they wouldn’t have said so anyway. They are, and always have been, just names. Just faces in photographs, just old stories told to me before bedtime.
Stop it I tell myself. Stop thinking stuff like that. He was a good man, you know he was. Look at him in that photograph. He was obviously a loving, caring man, just like I’ve always been told.
I am a Metamorphagus, just like my mother. I can change everything about my appearance. But I never change my eyes. Sometimes I might change the shade slightly, but I always keep them a warm brown. They will always stay like my Dad’s.
Teddy by dumbledorefluertwins
Chapter Endnotes: A/N Aren't you so glad the queue's up and running again? Thank you mods!!
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