Vault 712:
A Harry Potter Treasury
PenPatronus
Chapter / List Eleven:
Secrets: Teddy Lupin

1) His Boggart was a wolf…

…and so was his Patronus.

2) His first kiss was with Victoire when he was fifteen. He was focusing on her so much that his Metamorphmagus ability changed his hair from red to silvery blonde. She laughed uproariously, and they didn't talk again for a year.

3) When he "came of age" the first thing he did was change his name. He added his godfather's name to his parents' and became Ted Remus Lupin – Potter. He and his wife Victoire named their first son Harry Remus Lupin-Potter.

4) The first time he ran away was the night that Harry and Ginny brought home their newborn son, James. Teddy was beyond jealous that Harry's attention was now divided. He hated that James looked like Harry and he didn't. He hated that "aunt" Ginny didn't have time to teach him some new Quidditch moves. He hated that "grandma and grandpa" Weasley came to visit the baby, not Teddy.

One afternoon while James was being passed around from lap to lap, Bill Weasley asked Teddy to take a walk with him. Bill knew how Teddy felt, what it felt like to be the firstborn and to have to share his loved ones with siblings. Teddy admitted what he was really feeling: "Harry's always with the baby. He doesn't love me anymore."

"I felt the same way when Charlie was born," Bill chuckled, but not in a patronizing way. "Sometimes I wanted to stuff him down a gnome's hole just so Mum would pay attention to me. But Teddy, a parent's love isn't like a cake that gets divided into pieces. It's not like you had all of Harry's love and now you only have half. It's a strange phenomenon but love always multiplies. He loves you both with all of himself."

Bill wrapped his arm around Ted's thin shoulders. "We all do, kiddo."

5) He never actually transformed into a werewolf when the moon was full but he was – as Hermione described it – "PMS-y." And, like Bill, he preferred meat that was almost raw.

6) Teddy never told anybody but Harry about his first adventure in the Forbidden Forest. He snuck out of Gryffindor tower at three in the morning. He slipped by the House-Elves who were monitoring the halls by using a decoy detonator that "uncle" George had given him. Hagrid's snores drowned out the sound of his sneakers as he sprinted into the woods. He told himself that he wanted to see a unicorn, but what he was really looking for was a werewolf.

Teddy wouldn't have seen the black stone if the gag of clouds covering the Man in the Moon's mouth hadn't parted at just the right moment. The moonlight illuminated everything in the forest except for a small rock that seemed to absorb the light. Ted picked it up. He rolled it around in his hand. He wondered if someone had dropped it and if it was valuable.

At first he didn't recognize them. But then the man gave Ted a proud smile and he saw that the woman's hair was pink. From the photos he kept at his bedside he thought his mother was taller and that his father had bigger muscles. He didn't think that Remus was that old or that Nymphadora was that young. He had never noticed that he and his father had the same hands. He had never noticed that he and his mother had the same heart-shaped face.

They spoke to him, said his name. His father seemed weary but proud. His mother was bouncing excitedly on her toes. Ted tried to talk but he didn't know what to say. There was no word or combination thereof that was appropriate for seeing your dead parents. So he just nodded and waved and listened and cried.

He sent Harry an owl the next day, and Harry himself visited that evening. He brought a book of fairy tales with him tried his best to explain to Teddy what he witnessed.

7) When he was sixteen he jumped off the Hogwarts Express. A moving Hogwarts Express that was taking the students home for Christmas. Ted had learned to Apparate and wanted to see if he could get home before his grandmother left to pick him up. Lucky for him, "Uncle" Ron Weasley intercepted the alarm that activated because Ted had used magic outside of school. Ron found him in the snow alongside the tracks and returned him to the train before he was missed. Ron promised that he wouldn't tell on him if Ted agreed to help him find the right Christmas gift for Hermione.

8) Harry upgraded Fabian's watch when he gave it to Ted for his seventeenth birthday. It had the time, but also the Marauder's Map.

9) He loved it when Victoire called him "Teddy Bear."

10) He died young. Young for a Muggle, let alone a wizard. His blood was poisoned with a type of cancer that not even magic or Dr. Luna Lovegood's potions could cure.

He was 38.