shiiki
in
shiikifics
FIC: The Cycle of Reconstruction (Version 2), Chapter 2
Title: The Cycle of Reconstruction (Version 2)
Author: shiiki
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Remus Lupin, Marauders, Teddy Lupin, Andromeda Tonks, Gen
Fandom: Harry Potter
Summary: Over the years, Remus learns that everything breaks and must be rebuilt, a lesson he passes on to his son even after death.
In this chapter
Chapter Title: Teddy
Rating: PG
Characters: Teddy Lupin, Andromeda Tonks, Weasley Family
Word Count: 2,872
Chapter Summary: Teddy finds the plane and learns more about his father.
Chapter Notes: Thanks again to kp_mushu and MagnoliaMama for looking over this chapter. Also to exartemarte for clearing up the question of what Teddy might plausibly call Arthur!
When Teddy was growing up, he was obsessed with boxes. Gran kept them in the attic: boxes with photo albums, boxes with his mum's old school records, boxes with books that belonged to his dad, boxes with assorted paraphernalia that were relics of the life his parents once had.
Gran didn't like to go up there with him. Whenever he mentioned it, her face took on the same sad look she'd get when his 'relatives' -- though they were technically not related, he'd grown up thinking of Uncle Harry and the Weasleys as cousins of some sort -- told him stories about how wonderful Mum and Dad had been, and how he should always feel proud to be their son. Uncle Harry had explained to him once that it had hurt Gran very much to lose his parents, so the stories and boxes just made Gran upset because she missed them.
Teddy didn't quite understand this - after all, he missed Mum and Dad too, which was why he liked hearing Uncle Neville tell about Dad teaching him to fight the Boggart, and Aunt Ginny reminisce about how Mum was so funny with her faces -- it made him feel as though Mum and Dad were there sometimes. But as time wore on, it began to seem as though his parents were just so two-dimensional. Everyone only ever remembered Dad as a teacher and Mum as a fun older sister.
The boxes made him think of them as real people.
When Gran went out, he always had an assortment of babysitters, but he only went to the attic when it was Uncle Harry, Uncle Neville, or Aunt Luna on her rare visits. They were the only ones who seemed to understand that he needed to be there and they never let on to Gran about it. Sometimes they went with him and helped him to uncover pieces of his parents packed away in the boxes -- faded drawings by his mother; old letters with incredibly neat script from his father. Uncle Harry in particular was as eager as Teddy to discover these precious attic artefacts.
Teddy was ten years old and alone in the attic -- Uncle Harry had gone to answer a call in the fire downstairs -- when he found the box with many pieces of wood inside. It seemed like a funny thing to store away. Curious, he lifted out one piece to take a closer look.
The surface was smooth, lacquered, and it looked like there was some long-faded paint on it. Teddy couldn't quite make out what it was supposed to be, however, so he reached into the box for another piece. That one was a bit splintered, and it looked as though it connected to the first piece somehow. Teddy held the two pieces together, wondering if it was some kind of jigsaw. As he did so, his finger caught on the splintered piece, wood shavings piercing through his skin painfully.
'Ow!' he yelped, dropping the wooden pieces and sucking on his finger. Too late, he realised that the splinter had lodged itself up his skin.
Uncle Harry was of course able to fix him up in no time. He was just as curious as to why Teddy's parents would have had a box of broken wood pieces stowed away. They brought the box downstairs and poured the pieces out on the kitchen table to better examine them.
'Hmm,' said Uncle Harry, moving pieces around with his wand. Teddy wanted to try holding them together again, but after the splinter, Uncle Harry had advised against touching the pieces with his bare hands.
'Those two,' Teddy pointed out two pieces with paint on them, 'put them together.'
Uncle Harry shifted the pieces next to each other, and found that they formed a painted symbol: three concentric circles in blue, white, and red.
'There's another one, look.'
'You're right. It seems to be some sort of symbol ...' Uncle Harry turned it around in the air, cocking his head to one side as he tried to puzzle it out.
'What is it?' asked Teddy.
'I'm not sure.' Uncle Harry frowned. 'It looks familiar, but I can't imagine where from. I expect it's nothing well-known.'
'Would Aunt Hermione or Aunt Luna know?' Teddy had recently come to the conclusion on hearing the two women talk that Aunt Hermione knew everything -- and anything she didn't know, Aunt Luna did.
'Likely.' Uncle Harry let the painted wood drift back down to the table and smiled at Teddy. Then his gaze fell on the tiny clock on a kitchen shelf. 'It's getting late, Teddy. Your gran will be back soon, and I think you'd better be in bed when she does.' He swept the wooden pieces back into the box with a wave of his wand. 'Run along and get ready for bed. I'll put this back where it belongs.'
That night, however, even after Uncle Harry had tucked him in and Gran had come to kiss him good night, Teddy couldn't find slumber. The box of broken wood kept preying on his mind, almost as though it was calling for him to fetch it downstairs. Finally, when it was late enough for him to be sure Gran had gone to bed, Teddy slipped out of his room and went to retrieve the box from the attic.
Without the dusty rays of sunlight that usually shone through the dirty window, the attic was a scary place. The moon was round and full, but it still cast more shadows than it gave light. Teddy almost turned right around and went back to bed.
But the boxes were there, and that gave him comfort. He had to open a number of them and feel around inside -- carefully, because he didn't want another splinter; how would he explain that to Gran at this hour? -- but eventually he found the right box and brought it downstairs to his bedroom.
With the box safely under his bed, sleep came much easier.
---
Teddy liked visiting Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione. Their house was full of books -- 'More than a bloody library,' Uncle Ron often said, although he left out the 'bloody' bit when he thought Teddy was within hearing range. He loved to look in Rose's room where the children's books intended for when she grew older were shelved, and sometimes Aunt Hermione would allow him to take home a book he liked.
On this particular visit, however, the bookcase and its wonderful stories were far from his mind. When Uncle Ron, balancing little Rose on one arm, handed him a plate of biscuits to bring to Aunt Hermione, Teddy was delighted to have his chance to approach her. He had painstakingly drawn out the mysterious symbol and had wanted the chance to ask Aunt Hermione about it.
Aunt Hermione was poring over a thick volume in her study, but the door was half-open, so Teddy went ahead and knocked. She looked up and smiled when she saw him.
'Did you need something, Teddy?'
Teddy set the biscuits down on the table and held his drawing out to her. 'Aunt Hermione, what's this?'
She looked a little puzzled at first as she took the drawing and smoothed it out over her book. Then comprehension seemed to dawn. 'Oh, I think I know this ... Accio!' Her Summoning Charm fetched another thick book from the shelves behind her. She flipped it open, searching. 'Aha! There we are.' She turned the book around so Teddy could see the page, with a picture of the blue, red, and white circle. It was imprinted on what Teddy thought was one of those Muggle machines that Granddad Arthur loved.
'An airyplane?' Maybe that was what the wooden pieces were supposed to form when put together.
'Aeroplane,' Aunt Hermione corrected. 'It says here this model's called a Spitfire, and it was flown by pilots during World War II.'
'Muggles flew these things in the war against Voldemort?' Teddy asked, astonished.
'Not our war, Teddy. This war was just between Muggles -- before you and I were born. Even before your gran was born.'
'Oh.' The wooden pieces hadn't looked that numerous -- these airy-aeroplanes couldn't have been very big. It was hard to imagine Muggles fighting a war with them. Perhaps they exploded like Dungbombs when you flew them into things -- that would explain the pieces in the box. It didn't explain, however, why his parents might have kept a wrecked aeroplane from years before they had been born.
Still, he thought it'd be nice to put it back together, so that it looked somewhat like that picture.
'Aunt Hermione?' he asked. 'Can I borrow this book?'
---
Putting the pieces of a broken aeroplane back together was a lot harder than Teddy had imagined. He sat cross-legged on his bed with the pieces spread out in front of him and the book lying open at the page with the picture. The parts with paint on them were easy enough to fit into place, but once he had done that, he didn't know how to continue.
If only he had a wand! Teddy thought longingly of his eleventh birthday -- not long after it, he'd be off to Hogwarts and able to do magic. But that was almost a year away.
'Why didn't you fix it?' he asked, suddenly frustrated at his parents. 'Or if you didn't want to fix it, why didn't you throw it away!'
With sudden fury, he flung one large piece across the room. It hit the window; fortunately the glass had an Unperturbable Charm on it, or it might have broken there and then. As it was, the wood hit his table: thunk. Teddy made no move to retrieve it.
'Teddy?' Gran must have been passing by on the landing just then. Teddy froze, cursing his bad timing. 'Teddy, is everything all right?'
'Yes, Gran!' he called back, but his voice still wobbled a little with emotion.
He scrambled to sweep the pieces back into their box, resulting in another wood splinter wedging itself in his thumb -- he stifled a cry and clutched at it -- but Gran popped her head in before he could hide them.
'Teddy, what are you doing with those? You'll hurt -- oh, look.' Gran shook her head at his thumb, which he was squeezing with his other hand. 'Accio splinter!'
His thumb throbbed as the splinter flew out and Gran directed it into the dustbin with her wand.
'What are you up to now?' Gran bent over him to examine the wood pieces.
'Nothing ...' He expected that she wouldn't settle for that answer, but he wasn't prepared for the way recognition lit up her face.
'Where did you find this?' Gran asked. Teddy hesitated, but her voice was curious rather than hurt or angry, so he stuck with the truth.
'In the attic. With -- the rest of Mum and Dad's things.' He held his breath, waiting for her face to take on the sad, lost look. Gran's eyes and mouth did droop, but not as wretchedly as it usually did.
'Well, I suppose it would make sense ...' she muttered to herself. 'They would have put it away to ... though I hadn't thought about it since ...'
'Gran? Do you know about this ... well, I think it's supposed to be an air-ro-plane?' Teddy took great care to pronounce the word properly.
'Yes,' said Gran, reaching out to touch the piece with the circle symbol. She closed her fist around it and brought it to eye level. 'It was your father's,' she said slowly, turning over the piece in her hand very carefully. 'He brought it with him when he came to stay with us. It belonged to his grandfather before that.'
'Why is it broken?' asked Teddy curiously. It seemed odd that his father -- and great-grandfather -- would have passed along a broken plane.
The ghost of a smile crossed Gran's face as she looked up from the piece to meet Teddy's eyes. 'You broke it,' she said. 'By accident, of course. You were just a baby then.'
'I ... broke Dad's plane ...' Teddy reached a finger to touch the wood, guilt stabbing at him although he couldn't remember any such incident at all. 'Couldn't it be fixed?'
'I imagine so. But Remus wouldn't hear of it. He said ...' Gran looked thoughtful. 'Well, it's quite a long story. Do you want to hear it?'
'Yes!' It was such a rare occasion that Gran talked about his parents. Teddy looked up to her hungrily.
'All right then.' Gran settled into her seat, a faraway look in her eyes, as though she was seeing his father tell the tale as he had so many years ago. 'When your father was a boy ...'
---
Rebuilding the broken aeroplane became a major project. Suddenly Teddy had more helpers than he thought he'd need. Uncle Harry he'd of course expected help from, and now that Gran was in the loop of things, it wasn't surprising that she'd give a hand. News had spread quickly around the family, however, and the next weekend found a group of visitors crowding round Gran's little kitchen with tools and materials and books and aeroplane manuals -- this from Granddad Arthur, who looked as though he might burst with delight.
Gran explained to everyone that they were going to fix the broken plane without magic, and that Teddy would be in charge. She then looked to him with a smile and said, 'Well, Teddy? Where do we start first?'
'Um ...' It felt a little daunting to see all the adults looking expectantly at him, waiting for him to give them orders. His eyes fell on Victoire Weasley, whose hands were already reaching out eagerly to start. It reminded him of doing jigsaws with her at Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur's house, and gave him a way to start. 'We sort the pieces first. Try to find out which part it belongs to.'
'What parts are there?' asked Victoire.
'Er ...'
'I brought a pretty good book --' began Aunt Hermione.
'Of course,' snickered Uncle Ron, and she elbowed him in the ribs.
'A very good book with details about building model aeroplanes,' Aunt Hermione finished. 'Maybe you'd like to look at it?'
'Yeah,' said Teddy. Aunt Hermione opened up the book to a page she'd already marked. Teddy saw the now-familiar insignia on the corner of the page, next to the name of the aeroplane: Spitfire. It was a good book: there were large diagrams for a step-by-step procedure to create the aeroplane from scratch, which Gran blew up to poster-size and stuck on the wall. Everyone crowded forward to look at it.
'Some of these pieces are probably too old and too smashed up,' Uncle Harry observed.
'Good thing I brought new wood, then!' said Granddad Arthur cheerfully. 'We can make new parts. Sawing and carving -- the Muggle way!' He looked thoroughly excited at this proposal.
And so everyone got to work. Uncle Ron and Victoire started off carrying out an 'inventory' of the pieces, as Aunt Hermione put it: they sorted through them and decided which ones were good enough to stay, which ones needed to be repaired with new material, and which ones had to be replaced completely. The latter two categories were passed on to Granddad Arthur and Gran, who then sawed and whittled away the new wood to make parts, pieces, and joints.
Teddy, Aunt Hermione, and Uncle Harry were the last in the chain -- they collected the completed pieces and put them together according to the instructions in the books. It was harder than it looked: some of those joints only Uncle Harry was strong enough to pop into place.
At last, the Spitfire stood erect in the centre of the kitchen table, glue in the joints drying off.
'It looks funny,' said Victoire, pursing her lips critically.
She was right -- it didn't look quite like the picture in the book: the wings were a little lopsided, the tail stuck out at a funny angle, and it was knobbly at the joints, but it was fixed; it was no longer a pile of broken pieces, and that made Teddy feel like they'd managed a masterpiece.
'I think it's great,' he said firmly.
'It's not finished, though,' said Gran.
'It isn't?'
'We can paint it tomorrow.'
Granddad Arthur's eyes lit up. 'Count me in for that! It'll be fun, won't it, Teddy?'
And it was. Teddy insisted on doing the Spitfire logos by himself, even though Victoire begged to do one. He let her draw a picture of her choice on the cockpit instead, and with that and the number of artists working on it, the aeroplane ended up being much more colourful and with more symbols than it should have.
Teddy found he didn't mind. The finished product was bright and cheerful and a mish-mash of everyone's hard work. It screamed of family to Teddy -- a relic of his father's reconstructed by the people who mattered most to him now. He would have loved it no matter what it looked like.
And his father, he was sure, would have appreciated that.
Author: shiiki
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Remus Lupin, Marauders, Teddy Lupin, Andromeda Tonks, Gen
Fandom: Harry Potter
Summary: Over the years, Remus learns that everything breaks and must be rebuilt, a lesson he passes on to his son even after death.
In this chapter
Chapter Title: Teddy
Rating: PG
Characters: Teddy Lupin, Andromeda Tonks, Weasley Family
Word Count: 2,872
Chapter Summary: Teddy finds the plane and learns more about his father.
Chapter Notes: Thanks again to kp_mushu and MagnoliaMama for looking over this chapter. Also to exartemarte for clearing up the question of what Teddy might plausibly call Arthur!
When Teddy was growing up, he was obsessed with boxes. Gran kept them in the attic: boxes with photo albums, boxes with his mum's old school records, boxes with books that belonged to his dad, boxes with assorted paraphernalia that were relics of the life his parents once had.
Gran didn't like to go up there with him. Whenever he mentioned it, her face took on the same sad look she'd get when his 'relatives' -- though they were technically not related, he'd grown up thinking of Uncle Harry and the Weasleys as cousins of some sort -- told him stories about how wonderful Mum and Dad had been, and how he should always feel proud to be their son. Uncle Harry had explained to him once that it had hurt Gran very much to lose his parents, so the stories and boxes just made Gran upset because she missed them.
Teddy didn't quite understand this - after all, he missed Mum and Dad too, which was why he liked hearing Uncle Neville tell about Dad teaching him to fight the Boggart, and Aunt Ginny reminisce about how Mum was so funny with her faces -- it made him feel as though Mum and Dad were there sometimes. But as time wore on, it began to seem as though his parents were just so two-dimensional. Everyone only ever remembered Dad as a teacher and Mum as a fun older sister.
The boxes made him think of them as real people.
When Gran went out, he always had an assortment of babysitters, but he only went to the attic when it was Uncle Harry, Uncle Neville, or Aunt Luna on her rare visits. They were the only ones who seemed to understand that he needed to be there and they never let on to Gran about it. Sometimes they went with him and helped him to uncover pieces of his parents packed away in the boxes -- faded drawings by his mother; old letters with incredibly neat script from his father. Uncle Harry in particular was as eager as Teddy to discover these precious attic artefacts.
Teddy was ten years old and alone in the attic -- Uncle Harry had gone to answer a call in the fire downstairs -- when he found the box with many pieces of wood inside. It seemed like a funny thing to store away. Curious, he lifted out one piece to take a closer look.
The surface was smooth, lacquered, and it looked like there was some long-faded paint on it. Teddy couldn't quite make out what it was supposed to be, however, so he reached into the box for another piece. That one was a bit splintered, and it looked as though it connected to the first piece somehow. Teddy held the two pieces together, wondering if it was some kind of jigsaw. As he did so, his finger caught on the splintered piece, wood shavings piercing through his skin painfully.
'Ow!' he yelped, dropping the wooden pieces and sucking on his finger. Too late, he realised that the splinter had lodged itself up his skin.
Uncle Harry was of course able to fix him up in no time. He was just as curious as to why Teddy's parents would have had a box of broken wood pieces stowed away. They brought the box downstairs and poured the pieces out on the kitchen table to better examine them.
'Hmm,' said Uncle Harry, moving pieces around with his wand. Teddy wanted to try holding them together again, but after the splinter, Uncle Harry had advised against touching the pieces with his bare hands.
'Those two,' Teddy pointed out two pieces with paint on them, 'put them together.'
Uncle Harry shifted the pieces next to each other, and found that they formed a painted symbol: three concentric circles in blue, white, and red.
'There's another one, look.'
'You're right. It seems to be some sort of symbol ...' Uncle Harry turned it around in the air, cocking his head to one side as he tried to puzzle it out.
'What is it?' asked Teddy.
'I'm not sure.' Uncle Harry frowned. 'It looks familiar, but I can't imagine where from. I expect it's nothing well-known.'
'Would Aunt Hermione or Aunt Luna know?' Teddy had recently come to the conclusion on hearing the two women talk that Aunt Hermione knew everything -- and anything she didn't know, Aunt Luna did.
'Likely.' Uncle Harry let the painted wood drift back down to the table and smiled at Teddy. Then his gaze fell on the tiny clock on a kitchen shelf. 'It's getting late, Teddy. Your gran will be back soon, and I think you'd better be in bed when she does.' He swept the wooden pieces back into the box with a wave of his wand. 'Run along and get ready for bed. I'll put this back where it belongs.'
That night, however, even after Uncle Harry had tucked him in and Gran had come to kiss him good night, Teddy couldn't find slumber. The box of broken wood kept preying on his mind, almost as though it was calling for him to fetch it downstairs. Finally, when it was late enough for him to be sure Gran had gone to bed, Teddy slipped out of his room and went to retrieve the box from the attic.
Without the dusty rays of sunlight that usually shone through the dirty window, the attic was a scary place. The moon was round and full, but it still cast more shadows than it gave light. Teddy almost turned right around and went back to bed.
But the boxes were there, and that gave him comfort. He had to open a number of them and feel around inside -- carefully, because he didn't want another splinter; how would he explain that to Gran at this hour? -- but eventually he found the right box and brought it downstairs to his bedroom.
With the box safely under his bed, sleep came much easier.
---
Teddy liked visiting Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione. Their house was full of books -- 'More than a bloody library,' Uncle Ron often said, although he left out the 'bloody' bit when he thought Teddy was within hearing range. He loved to look in Rose's room where the children's books intended for when she grew older were shelved, and sometimes Aunt Hermione would allow him to take home a book he liked.
On this particular visit, however, the bookcase and its wonderful stories were far from his mind. When Uncle Ron, balancing little Rose on one arm, handed him a plate of biscuits to bring to Aunt Hermione, Teddy was delighted to have his chance to approach her. He had painstakingly drawn out the mysterious symbol and had wanted the chance to ask Aunt Hermione about it.
Aunt Hermione was poring over a thick volume in her study, but the door was half-open, so Teddy went ahead and knocked. She looked up and smiled when she saw him.
'Did you need something, Teddy?'
Teddy set the biscuits down on the table and held his drawing out to her. 'Aunt Hermione, what's this?'
She looked a little puzzled at first as she took the drawing and smoothed it out over her book. Then comprehension seemed to dawn. 'Oh, I think I know this ... Accio!' Her Summoning Charm fetched another thick book from the shelves behind her. She flipped it open, searching. 'Aha! There we are.' She turned the book around so Teddy could see the page, with a picture of the blue, red, and white circle. It was imprinted on what Teddy thought was one of those Muggle machines that Granddad Arthur loved.
'An airyplane?' Maybe that was what the wooden pieces were supposed to form when put together.
'Aeroplane,' Aunt Hermione corrected. 'It says here this model's called a Spitfire, and it was flown by pilots during World War II.'
'Muggles flew these things in the war against Voldemort?' Teddy asked, astonished.
'Not our war, Teddy. This war was just between Muggles -- before you and I were born. Even before your gran was born.'
'Oh.' The wooden pieces hadn't looked that numerous -- these airy-aeroplanes couldn't have been very big. It was hard to imagine Muggles fighting a war with them. Perhaps they exploded like Dungbombs when you flew them into things -- that would explain the pieces in the box. It didn't explain, however, why his parents might have kept a wrecked aeroplane from years before they had been born.
Still, he thought it'd be nice to put it back together, so that it looked somewhat like that picture.
'Aunt Hermione?' he asked. 'Can I borrow this book?'
---
Putting the pieces of a broken aeroplane back together was a lot harder than Teddy had imagined. He sat cross-legged on his bed with the pieces spread out in front of him and the book lying open at the page with the picture. The parts with paint on them were easy enough to fit into place, but once he had done that, he didn't know how to continue.
If only he had a wand! Teddy thought longingly of his eleventh birthday -- not long after it, he'd be off to Hogwarts and able to do magic. But that was almost a year away.
'Why didn't you fix it?' he asked, suddenly frustrated at his parents. 'Or if you didn't want to fix it, why didn't you throw it away!'
With sudden fury, he flung one large piece across the room. It hit the window; fortunately the glass had an Unperturbable Charm on it, or it might have broken there and then. As it was, the wood hit his table: thunk. Teddy made no move to retrieve it.
'Teddy?' Gran must have been passing by on the landing just then. Teddy froze, cursing his bad timing. 'Teddy, is everything all right?'
'Yes, Gran!' he called back, but his voice still wobbled a little with emotion.
He scrambled to sweep the pieces back into their box, resulting in another wood splinter wedging itself in his thumb -- he stifled a cry and clutched at it -- but Gran popped her head in before he could hide them.
'Teddy, what are you doing with those? You'll hurt -- oh, look.' Gran shook her head at his thumb, which he was squeezing with his other hand. 'Accio splinter!'
His thumb throbbed as the splinter flew out and Gran directed it into the dustbin with her wand.
'What are you up to now?' Gran bent over him to examine the wood pieces.
'Nothing ...' He expected that she wouldn't settle for that answer, but he wasn't prepared for the way recognition lit up her face.
'Where did you find this?' Gran asked. Teddy hesitated, but her voice was curious rather than hurt or angry, so he stuck with the truth.
'In the attic. With -- the rest of Mum and Dad's things.' He held his breath, waiting for her face to take on the sad, lost look. Gran's eyes and mouth did droop, but not as wretchedly as it usually did.
'Well, I suppose it would make sense ...' she muttered to herself. 'They would have put it away to ... though I hadn't thought about it since ...'
'Gran? Do you know about this ... well, I think it's supposed to be an air-ro-plane?' Teddy took great care to pronounce the word properly.
'Yes,' said Gran, reaching out to touch the piece with the circle symbol. She closed her fist around it and brought it to eye level. 'It was your father's,' she said slowly, turning over the piece in her hand very carefully. 'He brought it with him when he came to stay with us. It belonged to his grandfather before that.'
'Why is it broken?' asked Teddy curiously. It seemed odd that his father -- and great-grandfather -- would have passed along a broken plane.
The ghost of a smile crossed Gran's face as she looked up from the piece to meet Teddy's eyes. 'You broke it,' she said. 'By accident, of course. You were just a baby then.'
'I ... broke Dad's plane ...' Teddy reached a finger to touch the wood, guilt stabbing at him although he couldn't remember any such incident at all. 'Couldn't it be fixed?'
'I imagine so. But Remus wouldn't hear of it. He said ...' Gran looked thoughtful. 'Well, it's quite a long story. Do you want to hear it?'
'Yes!' It was such a rare occasion that Gran talked about his parents. Teddy looked up to her hungrily.
'All right then.' Gran settled into her seat, a faraway look in her eyes, as though she was seeing his father tell the tale as he had so many years ago. 'When your father was a boy ...'
---
Rebuilding the broken aeroplane became a major project. Suddenly Teddy had more helpers than he thought he'd need. Uncle Harry he'd of course expected help from, and now that Gran was in the loop of things, it wasn't surprising that she'd give a hand. News had spread quickly around the family, however, and the next weekend found a group of visitors crowding round Gran's little kitchen with tools and materials and books and aeroplane manuals -- this from Granddad Arthur, who looked as though he might burst with delight.
Gran explained to everyone that they were going to fix the broken plane without magic, and that Teddy would be in charge. She then looked to him with a smile and said, 'Well, Teddy? Where do we start first?'
'Um ...' It felt a little daunting to see all the adults looking expectantly at him, waiting for him to give them orders. His eyes fell on Victoire Weasley, whose hands were already reaching out eagerly to start. It reminded him of doing jigsaws with her at Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur's house, and gave him a way to start. 'We sort the pieces first. Try to find out which part it belongs to.'
'What parts are there?' asked Victoire.
'Er ...'
'I brought a pretty good book --' began Aunt Hermione.
'Of course,' snickered Uncle Ron, and she elbowed him in the ribs.
'A very good book with details about building model aeroplanes,' Aunt Hermione finished. 'Maybe you'd like to look at it?'
'Yeah,' said Teddy. Aunt Hermione opened up the book to a page she'd already marked. Teddy saw the now-familiar insignia on the corner of the page, next to the name of the aeroplane: Spitfire. It was a good book: there were large diagrams for a step-by-step procedure to create the aeroplane from scratch, which Gran blew up to poster-size and stuck on the wall. Everyone crowded forward to look at it.
'Some of these pieces are probably too old and too smashed up,' Uncle Harry observed.
'Good thing I brought new wood, then!' said Granddad Arthur cheerfully. 'We can make new parts. Sawing and carving -- the Muggle way!' He looked thoroughly excited at this proposal.
And so everyone got to work. Uncle Ron and Victoire started off carrying out an 'inventory' of the pieces, as Aunt Hermione put it: they sorted through them and decided which ones were good enough to stay, which ones needed to be repaired with new material, and which ones had to be replaced completely. The latter two categories were passed on to Granddad Arthur and Gran, who then sawed and whittled away the new wood to make parts, pieces, and joints.
Teddy, Aunt Hermione, and Uncle Harry were the last in the chain -- they collected the completed pieces and put them together according to the instructions in the books. It was harder than it looked: some of those joints only Uncle Harry was strong enough to pop into place.
At last, the Spitfire stood erect in the centre of the kitchen table, glue in the joints drying off.
'It looks funny,' said Victoire, pursing her lips critically.
She was right -- it didn't look quite like the picture in the book: the wings were a little lopsided, the tail stuck out at a funny angle, and it was knobbly at the joints, but it was fixed; it was no longer a pile of broken pieces, and that made Teddy feel like they'd managed a masterpiece.
'I think it's great,' he said firmly.
'It's not finished, though,' said Gran.
'It isn't?'
'We can paint it tomorrow.'
Granddad Arthur's eyes lit up. 'Count me in for that! It'll be fun, won't it, Teddy?'
And it was. Teddy insisted on doing the Spitfire logos by himself, even though Victoire begged to do one. He let her draw a picture of her choice on the cockpit instead, and with that and the number of artists working on it, the aeroplane ended up being much more colourful and with more symbols than it should have.
Teddy found he didn't mind. The finished product was bright and cheerful and a mish-mash of everyone's hard work. It screamed of family to Teddy -- a relic of his father's reconstructed by the people who mattered most to him now. He would have loved it no matter what it looked like.
And his father, he was sure, would have appreciated that.