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When Teddy was five, Victoire’s family returned to Britain to show off Victoire’s baby sister, Dominique. Victoire must have been three.
Teddy thought Victoire was the prettiest thing, and within a second the usual short, brown hair (easily manageable and still soft) had grown several inches and paled to a platinum ginger, like pink gold.
Fleur had laughed, and cried “’ow delightful! You’re so pretty!” and touched Teddy’s hair.
Teddy’s hair stayed long. “Can you plait it like Victoire?”
Fleur blinked, then, “Oui, oui, of course.”
Teddy’s appearance had a tendency to change during dreams and emotions, so when the Voictoire-hair was brought out it was always a little different: it faded away from Victoire’s actual hair as Teddy’s memory of her faded, as the Weasley-Delacours had returned to alternating between France and Egypt.
XXX
By the time Teddy was seven, the Victoire-hair had shifted to silver-brown curls that stopped at the shoulder, half from Teddy’s own aesthetics, half from the blurred memory of Fleur’s delicate hands creating a plait that Teddy was still certain Andromeda wasn’t as skilled at yet.
But Teddy was always changing anyway, borrowing appearances from around the table at every lull in the conversation. Teddy had basically never had a conversation stay awkward for longer than a few seconds. And when other people’s appearance wasn’t working, appearances of celebrities, historical figures, and inanimate objects replacing facial features always worked as a backup.
Baby Fred’s face was especially expressive, any emotion conveyed with Baby Fred’s face always garnered empathy as well as a laugh.
Teddy understood why Tonks was always described as having short hair, because it was really hard to change to a hair style, easier to change and style by hand, and that was tiresome when you changed as much as Teddy liked to.
XXX
When Teddy was nine, there was a family trip to France. (Teddy was completely unaware of the slightly awkward event in which Ron counted Bill’s trips home and jokingly demanded his hospitality twice over to repay, and then nothing anyone could say could retract the self-invite, and everyone had turned up at the Delacour maison insisting they didn’t have to stay if Bill couldn’t have them.)
Fleur had breezed around the maison, being a brilliant but laid back host, who’s children, Teddy could tell, the adults thought were far better behaved. Teddy tried to live up to them. It felt weird, being with the Delacour children, it felt like Teddy was the young one, feeling intimidated by and impressed by and jealous of them.
Then they were ordered to swim, and the Delacour children stripped off and ran naked into the sea.
“Off you go, Teddy,” Fleur said.
At the looks of the British adults other than Bill, she added, “What? It’s a private beach? They’re children.”
Teddy turned to Harry, who always knew what was right, even if it wasn’t always the same ‘correct’ as Andromeda.
“I suppose. Go swim, Teddy.”
“Okay.”
Teddy stripped off and ran after the others, Freddy running after, screaming at the top of his voice in delight at being rude.
(Behind them, Fleur suppressed a wince, and George avoided feeling the British embarrassment at French parenting standards by being George, and then everyone else did it for him. Teddy was unaware.)
It was that day Teddy noticed the difference between girls and boys. Andromeda had once tried to explain it, but Teddy had been poking the chess pieces and hadn’t listened. It didn’t seem applicable to Teddy, who could change between boy hair and girl hair at will, and therefore didn’t have to choose. The other differences Andromeda had tried to impart had been vague, changed for a child’s ears and hadn’t been nearly as interesting as the red pawns screaming inventive (but not obscene) insults at the green king Teddy held just out of their reach.
And in the evening, Teddy sat in one of the guest four posters, with a child’s Lumos Wand for light and the curtains shut, and looked down and focused the shape-shifting elsewhere.
Then Teddy screamed.
It hurt.
It hurt so much.
There were three lungfuls of scream, before there was enough control to reduce it to sobs, and then Teddy looked down and tried to change back, focus on the old shape, breathe slowly, calm.
Within two seconds of quiet sobs Teddy was back.
The door opened with a bang.
Teddy pulled the covers up, and wiped the tears away.
The curtains to the bed were pulled back, and the light from the corridor glanced in from behind Harry. Others were crowded around the door. (Harry explained later that Andromeda had been taking a walk with Victoire in the garden, trying to tire her.)
Harry smoothed the (blonde, curly) hair back from Teddy’s forehead.
“Hey, hey, what just happened? We thought something was hurting you.” He didn’t stop carding fingers through Teddy’s hair.
Teddy spotted Aunt Ginny in the doorway, looking at Harry.
“I hurt myself,” Teddy said.
“How did you hurt yourself?”
Teddy glanced at the door, and said, “I didn’t think it would hurt.”
Harry looked back at the door, made eye contact with Ginny, and she ushered everyone away, saying “It’s ok, he’s not hurt,” and closing the door behind them.
“Ok, what happened? What didn’t you think would hurt?”
“I tried to copy . . . ” Teddy stopped that sentence, because it hadn’t been a copy, it had just been another one of Teddy’s invention appearances, like one of Teddy’s noses, or Teddy’s hairs or eyes.
“I tried to change . . . ” Teddy finished that sentence with a pointed finger. It was actually quite awkward sitting there with the knowledge that there were no robes or trousers or underpants under the covers.
Harry’s expression changed, but that was just Harry’s ‘concerned at new information’ face Teddy thought. Not a bad face.
“I see. But it hurt?”
Teddy nodded.
“I think you better not do it again if it hurt, ok? When you . . . Everyone at the door was very worried that you might be hurt, we don’t want you to be hurt, ok?”
Teddy nodded again.
“So, I don’t think you should try that again, ok?”
“Ok.”
“Good.” Harry’s strokes in Teddy’s hair morphed into a ruffle and disappeared. “I’m going back downstairs, are you going to come, or are you going to bed now?”
“I want to go to bed.”
“Ok, sleep tight.”
“Night, Harry.”
“Goodnight,” Harry said, as he softly closed the door behind him.
(Harry only told Ginny what had actually happened, and prevented her from telling Andromeda or anyone else. Ginny, a woman with a tendency to only properly express her opinion when it differed, nodded, and Harry was never sure why either of them thought this was the best course of action.)
XXX
Teddy tried once more - in Hogwarts, age twelve - this time in the boys dorm, alone, bed curtains pulled, silencing charms up, looking carefully at the picture of the naked witch given by an older boy who had laughed a lot at Teddy’s interest in the picture.
It hurt again.
Not as bad as last time, though maybe that was just the effect of time making demons bigger than they had been.
Teddy didn’t scream this time, though there was a single tear before turning back. It wasn’t something that could be kept up, like a nose or a hairstyle, and Teddy didn’t know why.
XXX
In Hogwarts, as Teddy had been warned, it was best to keep to at most one appearance a day, lowered to about as often as most people’s hair changed length (because of both cuts and growth) and usually just as subtle.
Teddy’s default was pale brown hair, lighter than it had been at five, curled to just touch the shoulders. Soft features, not effeminate, not masculinized. (Teddy instinctively knew it couldn’t be too feminine, because Teddy was a “boy”, and for some reason girls were bad and good in different ways in the other boys’ eyes. Bad to be like. Good to like. Teddy wanted to do both, but knew not to try yet. Luckily, none of the other “boys” had clocked that Teddy appeared feminine by choice, rather than just the chance that had been dealt to the rest of the class.) The choices of details were mostly based on photos of Tonks and Lupin Harry had found and put into an album for Teddy.
The eyes were werewolf’s eyes, though Teddy wasn’t.
XXX
When they were almost at the end of their second year, Teddy’s year were taken into the great hall and shown a presentation on how babies were made, and what would happen as they all started to go into puberty.
It sounded horrifying.
The only slightly interesting part was the cartoon of their insides they put up on the board. In cartoons, with black outlines and pink insides, the professors showed what was inside Teddy, and what was inside the “girls”.
Teddy wondered if it was the answer as to why it had hurt so much to change the outside, because the insides hadn’t changed.
But the cartoon image in the board didn’t really help, it was a cartoon, it was pale pink, where Teddy knew people’s insides were mostly red, and it used lines to define the edges of things, which things in real life didn’t.
XXX
Hermione was the one who accompanied Teddy and Fred to the bookshop each year before school started. If she and Uncle Ron hadn’t been some of the saviors of the wizarding world (and therefore hadn’t received a share of the bounty on Voldemort’s head) she probably wouldn’t be allowed, but as it was, she took them, and found them books which were ‘relevant to their extra-curricular studies’ and Teddy had always loved the experience far more than it was cool to let on.
“What do you want this year, boys?” she asked smiling.
“Circus stuff,” Fred said instantly.
“I want to know about people’s insides,” Teddy said, trying to sound uncaring, trying to be certain that Harry had forgotten, or hadn’t told anyone what Teddy had tried to do in France, because if anyone could figure it out if was Hermione, who was pregnant, but it so far had only made her paranoid and therefore cleverer. And two years in a “boys’” dorm had convinced Teddy that this was going to be a secret forever.
“Oooh, biology, brilliant. I do wish Hogwarts taught the muggle science curriculum . . . mmmm.” She wandered down one of the stacks.
Teddy padded after her, looking and cataloguing the direction to the right section, in case Hermione picked a useless one.
She passed over one that she considered to be slightly above the third year reading level, because that’s what Hermione did for the children in her care.
Teddy flicked through it.
It didn’t have any actual bloody organs in it, but the pictures were of 3D models of organs, which, at least, didn’t have lines around the edge.
Teddy smiled, and scanned the pages, turning them over and over.
Hermione smirked, and pulled the book away. “We need school books too.”
The woman had obviously taken to the ‘you want what you can’t have’ method of making the children want to read, but Teddy wanted this one so much it wasn’t as funny as it would otherwise have been.
She found one called ‘101 Things You Didn’t Know About The Circus’ for Freddy.
XXX
The book didn’t quite work, though it let Teddy know that the idea of knowledge was the right one.
It hurt this time, but there was no crying, no tears. When Teddy moved, however, to stand up, to try this out, the pain grew again, leaving Teddy panting on the bed.
Teddy read all the words on that page and tried again, but it didn’t get better enough to move.
Then there was the index, a skill Hermione had drilled into Teddy and Freddy (a coupling George only sniggered at when someone pointed out how unfortunate it sounded) when they were Pre-Hogwarts.
Teddy looked up every other page with a reference, and it was in doing this that the ‘Gender and Sexuality’ half page near the back of the book was found.
The book didn’t say anything useful but what it did say lead Teddy to be hopeful.
XXX
Over the next term, Teddy searched the index cards for every word that could lead to something more expansive than the two columns in the book Hermione had bought, which just stated that gender and sexuality was a thing that might be different in different people.
There wasn’t much. There were actually only four books that should, in Teddy’s opinion, have been indexed as anything to do with gender or sexuality, despite the list of twenty. The rest only had brief mentions, like Teddy’s book did.
But even these were useless.
One of them was Dumbledore’s biography, for Merlin’s sake!
Another was a book of famous homosexual and bisexual wizards and witches from history, which seemed to only have been written to make those parts in Dumbledore’s biography be respectable, as they came as part of a tradition of respected people and their behavior.
One was an explicit short story about Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff, which, on closer examination, appeared to be student made and added to the index card by someone other than Mr Smith, the sarky, mean librarian.
The last was fairly useful, but completely useless at the same time. It was a part of a ministry published series on self-development and unity and all the other things that people wanted to promote after the war.
It had sentences like “Sometimes, people don’t fall in love with people of the gender they expect.”
It had cartoon drawings as illustrations. On every page.
It said it was ok to dress up as the other gender. Teddy wondered if that was where the ok-ness stopped for society, or even if, with metamorphosis, morphing might just be extreme dressing up.
But that was all, so Teddy had to put them all back and do something else.
XXX
The next week was spent researching female anatomy; hormones, ovaries, cycles, the differing shapes of other organs and bones.
Teddy hadn’t realized bodies were so complicated.
XXX
At the end of the week, Mr Smith loped over (he was a tall man, with his head always slightly bowed to an imaginarily low ceiling) and slipped Teddy a pamphlet with a conspiratorial wink and a whispered “You can come and talk about anything with me, if you want.” Then there was an awkward smile and Mr Smith turned away.
“Thank you, sir,” Teddy said, vaguely surprised that Mr Smith could say things that weren’t insults or veiled threats (which he seemed to prefer to actual threats or orders like most members of staff used).
Teddy slipped the pamphlet inside the current biology textbook, and tilted the book up, so no one could see it from the other side.
The pamphlet was helpful. It explained things, and then there was the brilliant paragraph at the back.
Transgender/Transsexual
Some individuals have the experience of being born the wrong biological sex for how they feel inside (their gender). Some transgendered people will choose to live as their own gender, rather than their biological sex. They may change their name, ask people to use different pronouns for them, and change their appearance to suit how they feel on the inside.
The pamphlet had one more short passage on human rights, equality and respect, which were such familiar phrases to all wizarding children after the war that Teddy’s eyes just glossed over them. At the bottom, there was a short list of phone numbers and websites for more information.
Teddy closed the book carefully around the pamphlet, and took it to the desk to check it out.
Mr Smith stamped the book.
Teddy replied, “Thank you.”
Mr Smith nodded.
XXX
In the dorm, Teddy read the pamphlet through again.
Teddy tried the pronoun thing, imagining life as a book.
She sits cross-legged on the bed.
Her name is Teddy.
Yeah, that worked.
She smiled.
XXX
She went back to the library the next day, pulled the Dumbledore’s biography from the shelf, and sat somewhere in the shelves skimming it.
It was a new book, not Skeeter’s version, something else, written two years after the war under the watchful eye of Hermione Granger.
The quotes were quite nice.
Teddy especially liked ‘It is our choices that define what we truly are, far more than our abilities’.
True, it was in the section where Dumbledore had talked about house unity, and house strengths. Teddy didn’t care.
XXX
It was the Spring term when Teddy successfully morphed her reproductive organs without pain.
She spent a whole day that way. And the next day. And the next day.
She shifted back to use the bathrooms, and hated it. But she didn’t want her dorm mates to catch a peek and suspect anything. Not that she’d ever been naked in front of anyone since she was nine, but just in case.
It was also about the time her year mates suddenly became extremely comfortable talking about breasts, and Teddy had decided she’d like some of those. She wouldn’t be able to do anything visible, but she wanted the ability.
She headed back to the library, but was sidetracked by the sight of Mr Smith, and the memory of his offer.
She coughed slightly to make her presence by the desk known and said, “Hello, sir.”
Mr Smith smiled (that sure was odd on him) and said “Hello, Teddy.”
“Um, I wanted to say thank you for that pamphlet.” She shifted her bag a little.
“That’s no problem, Teddy. I know the library is painfully under stocked on such matters. And I had a selection sent over to my residence some years ago for my partner. He went to Durmstrang.” Mr Smith said this last statement as though that explained things. Despite the fact that it still seemed Hogwarts students needed them just as much.
Teddy gave a slow nod.
It was nine am on a Saturday, there were only three Ravenclaws in sight, on the other side of the room. And presumably others in the stacks, but they were also out of earshot, so it didn’t matter.
“Have you told anyone?” asked Mr Smith.
Teddy shook her head.
“When I was in my first year, the song the sorting hat sang had a line in it that went, said Hufflepuff, ‘I’ll teach the lot, and treat them just the same’. And I didn’t know back then, but I knew I wanted somewhere like that. Sort of as a just in case.” Mr Smith paused, and then said, “So, you’re in a good house for it.”
Teddy looked down at the yellow and black robes.
“Thank you,” she almost accidentally whispered, and corrected to normal volume halfway through.
Mr Smith nodded, Teddy thought he was uncomfortable with being this nice.
She nodded back, and turned to the rest of the library.
She only spent half an hour there, before returning to the Hufflepuff common room to observe the rest of Hufflepuff house.
XXX
(What has been left out of this tale so far is Teddy’s relationship with her year mates. This is not because of the lack of any relationship, the entire house considered each other friends, some closer than others. If any member of another house said anything about Teddy, every Hufflepuff in earshot would respond in some way, even if it was only later, to say they were on her side, or to silently move into the space, and make their presence known. As Teddy would do for any of them.
The boys in her year were good people, and good friends when they weren’t talking about girls, which they had started to tone down around her, some because they clocked her discomfort, some unnoticing, just going for the things that would get a laugh, knowing girls never do from Teddy.
The girls were good too, they had a sincerity that Teddy appreciated, and felt she also had.
Teddy could sit next to any of them in class or in the common room or at a party and have a conversation that would make both of them smile and laugh. Once or twice she’d been honoured enough to be chosen for a ‘deep conversation’.
It’s just the ingrained gender in all of them that sometimes makes Teddy uncomfortable.)
XXX
In the end, Teddy’s choice was sort of made by other people.
Jim Thomas, the sixth year prefect, either representing the Hufflepuff mentors/prefects, or off his own back, asked to have a chat.
Teddy nodded.
Jim was nice; quiet, studious, and somehow ridiculously kind. Sometimes Hufflepuff would wake up to find a massive argument had been solved while they weren’t paying attention, and it was because of Jim.
“How are you, Teddy?” Jim asked after sitting them at a pair of high backed soft chairs in a corner of the common room. The walls of the chair kept out the rest of the room, and the fabric absorbed a lot of the noise of their conversation.
And it sort of just came out.
Jim promised not to say anything, because Teddy asked him not to yet, and was generally nice and sympathetic.
Teddy wondered how many secrets Jim held for other people.
She kind of loved that the entire conversation had happened so quietly: she hadn’t cried, she may even have come across confident, composed. And Jim hadn’t even appeared that shocked, he just nodded, and asked questions when Teddy hadn’t fully explained what she was saying.
Teddy grinned, and felt her hair grow into happy brown ringlets next to her cheekbones.
Jim smiles at them.
“When you’re ready to say, the Hufflepuff prefects will stand behind you,” Jim promised, and Teddy wondered if there was an edge to Jim that could make him so sure that he could make other people do the right thing. “And they will make sure the whole house knows to. We’re loyal and honest, right? No-one will be allowed to punish your honesty.”
Teddy couldn’t keep the stupid grin off of her face.
That was a good day.
XXX
Teddy didn’t say anything to anyone else at Hogwarts that term.
She got off of the train after most of the rest of the students, not stopping, but taking her time.
She got off with a tiny curve to her body, dark blonde curls, and a Tonks-heavy face. (She’d never managed to call Tonks ‘mum’, not when no-one else did.)
No-one said anything directly about her appearance. They all hugged her back when she went for one, Harry took her trunk, George took Freddy’s.
Andromeda stroked her hair back from her face, and looked conflicted and uncertain.
Teddy had had a vague daydream hope (that came of desperate avoidance to actually talk to her family) that they would take her appearance in their stride, figure that shape-shifting blurred gender lines anyway and accept it.
That obviously wasn’t going to happen.
The car ride back to The Burrow (where they all were spending the first two weeks of summer) was awkward, and Teddy couldn’t fix it. Her one go-to de-awkwardizing thing she refused to use, because it would involve losing her appearance, which she needed right now. If she changed her appearance now to diffuse the tension, she couldn’t help but feel her family would take this as a sign of weakness in her resolve to be a girl.
She didn’t really understand their response to her appearance of . . . it was a kind of stiffness.
She’d always had different hair or a different nose, or different eyes. They’d never thought it bad when she’d copied women’s appearances and imitated them, but this was hers and it wasn’t to entertain, and suddenly they were . . . weird.
Teddy felt a tiny surge of hate for Jim, because his promise suddenly felt like a lie. She tried to force it back. He’d promised for people he could talk around, he’d promised for Hufflepuff. She wondered if the rest of her (living) family had a different understanding of how to accept each other. Hufflepuffs, in her experience, would ask or accept, confront or champion one another. (Once Uncle Ron had said something about Mr Smith, about how his challenges to Harry when they had all been younger hadn’t been ‘nice’ and ‘Hufflepuffian’ and Teddy had thought, no, they sound completely Hufflepuff.) Maybe Gryffindor acceptance took a different journey.
Harry, who was driving the massive car that somehow looked like a tiny red fiat, kept the ‘conversation’ going by stating thing like “Percy isn’t arriving until tomorrow,” and “Molly has been experimenting with muggle recipes, so please don’t say anything accidentally rude about dinner.” All of which were ok to know, but didn’t start a conversation.
Teddy was hyperaware of everyone.
She knew Andromeda and Molly and Harry were the ‘important’ opinions being expressed in the kitchen, and that Ginny, Hermione and Ron were adding theirs, but occasionally felt bored or frustrated or were needed and left the kitchen, only to return.
Teddy spent the evening aware of this, but sitting in the living room with Baby Hugo, and Lily (who was two). She played with them, and considered how if most people did as little as they did it would be dreadfully boring, but somehow babies just held your attention. She supposed it was a kind of power babies had to have, in order to be looked after while vulnerable. Despite the fact that everyone else’s fingernails were extraordinarily boring, Hugo’s, wrapped around her finger, were beautiful.
Teddy fed Lily at dinner (Hermione took Hugo) and thus avoided having to converse.
Then she went to bed.
XXX
It was just after breakfast, which Percy and Mrs Percy (as George once called her and it stuck) and Molly and Lucy joined them for, that the bust-up happened.
Teddy, failing to acquire a child without the powers of speech to look after, had retreated to a corner of the living room with the copy of Dumbledore’s biography she’d taken as a long-term loan from the library.
“What do you mean you haven’t decided? You can’t allow a boy of his age to play dress up like that full time!” came Percy’s voice.
Teddy’s throat constricted, and she forced her mind to not listen to her body, tense and ready to run or break down crying, and thought, determinedly, Percy’s job relies on appearances, he’s sensitive to those things, and tried to forget and sort of forgive, because it was better to do that than wait for an apology that would never come, to hold a grudge that would only hurt her because Percy wouldn’t care.
There was a high pitched ringing – possibly the radiator Arthur had tried to install, possibly just Teddy’s head – and Teddy listened to that instead of the cadence of Harry sounding quiet, Hermione shushing and then adding something with her own carefully pronounced vowels.
The wall had kept everything before Percy’s outburst contained, and Teddy trusted it not to betray anymore, because she didn’t want to know if anyone else thought that about her. She’d prefer to just love them.
Except then Harry and Andromeda came into the living room, and Harry squatted in front of Teddy and raked a hand through his hair, and Andromeda pulled up a chair.
“Um, Teddy,” Harry started, stilted, “We, we were wondering why you . . . why you look . . . why you’ve – uhh . . .”
Feeling kind of acidic inside, Teddy spat out, “Fear of a name only increases the fear of the thing itself.”
She wasn’t even sure what it was, but it was a response to the blatant mistrust she’d received from her family since coming home, when they knew what was worthy of mistrust and this couldn’t be it. She wasn’t Voldemort.
Harry looked shocked for a moment, then glanced at the book in Teddy’s lap, then looked Teddy in the eyes, with all the sincerity and surety of someone who had had a clear idea of the right thing to do since he was eleven. (To compare, Freddy’s friends had taken to drawing dark marks on each other in their sleep in their first year.)
“Why have you looked like a girl since you came home, Teddy?” Harry said, sure and calm and confident and maybe kind of kind? Andromeda looked unreadable.
“Because, in my head, I am a girl. So this is me being honest.” Teddy said, shocked at how quiet she sounded. She’d expected to just be talking, and it came out smaller than a whisper.
Harry nodded once. “Okay. Good. I see. You’re a girl?”
Teddy nodded back.
Harry nodded. “Well, that solves that, then.”
Teddy wasn’t sure if that was correct, but she didn’t follow Harry back into the kitchen so that she could try and believe him.
Andromeda gave a smile with watery eyes, and stroked Teddy’s hair and kissed her forehead. Teddy wrapped her arms around her, and was hugged fiercely back.
XXX
Freddy came to see Teddy later and said he knew she was a girl now.
Teddy smiled.
Freddy said he was just warning, but he didn’t know if everyone agreed, but Uncle Harry had said so, and Freddy’s dad had said Harry was right, and also Harry had said that Dumbledore said that the things that are in our heads are real and therefore Teddy was right that she was a girl in her head and therefore everywhere else.
And in all the stories Freddy’s dad had ever told him, whenever Harry thought he was right and other people disagreed, the other people gave in later and agreed Harry was right.
Teddy gave Freddy a one armed side-hug, because she was holding Hugo when Freddy told her all of that.
XXX
Hufflepuff were kind of easier after that, because Teddy knew what to expect, and also, now she knew that Harry Potter thought Dumbledore would be on her side, and he was on her side, and everyone knew it was just a matter of time before people would come to stand with the great and the good.
~fin~
“You fail to recognise that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.” – Albus Dumbledore