hello! it’s not been a full 24 hrs yet since i’ve finished reading the long and winding road but i’m still very much still thinking about it… especially teddy! i guess since he was a pretty major point of resolution (for both remus and sirius) by the end. i have the softest spot in my heart for characters who were given the most unfortunate dices right when they were born (him being birthed by parents who were completely absent from his life) but still managed to have the tenderest heart in them to extend some sort of kindness to the world (really enjoyed the way you write him to grow into the happy fold of normalcy for a 12yo boy)…
(also i get a little bit so sad thinking about his dynamic w remus, that scene you wrote when he held teddy for the first time and the vivid comparison of the state of his mind when holding his own son vs holding harry as a baby was just so poignant…)
I wish I could invest more time into answering this but I am a little short on that. As soon as you said you’d read that story and ended it thinking about Teddy, I thought “me too!” 😂 Writing it I got more and more interested in Teddy and I didn’t even really feature him as much as I wish I would have. I could have weighted the story onto him more. But I think at the time I was focused on wolfstar cause really writing it was just a pleasure cruise for me, that’s what all my stories are. And they were my interest. But by the time it was over I was thinking I could go on and write a whole story about Teddy. I tried to read other people’s stories about him but I stopped after a few. If you find any feel free to shoot me a link. I don’t care for any canon post Deathly Hallows/HP7. So, all my interests about him are founded on the core 7 books and where he came from in that. And it sets you up for a really rich and fascinating character, especially since Remus, Tonks, and Harry and Ginny and Andromeda all create this rich and complex tableau of influences. I also just have a personal interest in adoption and sometimes I just look up people talking about what it’s like to be adopted or to adopt a child so I can hear. But I think I actually wrote all of this before I got to that stint where I was taking in a bunch of people’s reports. So I don’t know at all what I was talking about; the only thing I put into the story about adoption which was a reflection of any personal experience with it was the part where everyone is honest with him about his background. And that’s one of my personal adorations over Sirius, that he was depicted as direct and transparent with the kids. He didn’t choose to hide things from someone just because it was either painful to hear or the recipient was a child. I like thinking of him choosing to be occlusive about certain information at times as well, he can certainly keep a secret. (Yikes, oops.) And he’s a natural atexclusivity and privacy. But I just mean there’s a large part of his character that is just direct, honest, and he’s not going to protect people from the truth. I think he feels it’s his right to be told the truth as it pertains to him and so he wants to afford that right to the people he cares about as well, and I think he’s always felt strong enough to handle the truth and believes that other people deserve the chance to handle it just like he has been doing since he was a child as well. Sorry, I’m getting on a tangent about Sirius as you can see he’s my favorite but anyways. Yeah, Teddy, it’s been at least 2 years since I really thought about him in depth but I find him a really fascinating potential study. I just felt like it was a time and effort I didn’t want to put into studying. I’d have to study who he was around as a child, what his environment would’ve been like, who was involved, where did he live, what other kids were around, what might he have grown up to do. But yeah in my story I kind of slotted him into the what made sense in that AU. It isn’t rooted in what he’d be in canon, of course, but I found myself so interested in him. And who is he if you quit focusing on nurture and focus on his nature? Idk. I like who I made of him. And look, the character limit for me to reply here is not big enough. I don’t have the space or time to think much more about Teddy but I wish I did and I wish I could do it justice. Someone else could probably do him justice. He would be such a fun and rich character to write. No wonder, since he comes from such fascinating people. I wish that Tonks and Remus lived to raise him either partnered or separated, either is fine. I’d read that. Or him being raised by Harry/Ginny plus grandmother with no living Marauders left. I’m not clever enough to write all that but someone is. I wish I knew where that story is so I could start reading it! It’s honestly just been a couple years since I thought about him. And these days I don’t even think about wolfstar as much and I always fell short of my own best attempts to depict them.
