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Not for the first time that evening, the sound of a young boy crying echoed through the large estate of Grimmauld Place. On the top floor, in the Master Bedroom, two young adults and very inexperienced guardians stirred and groaned at the noise.
“It’s my turn,” said a voice through the darkness.
The light from the lamp on the bedside table illuminated Harry Potter’s face as he sat up in bed and reached blindly for his glasses. When the room came into focus, he looked down at his alarm clock and found that it was nearly five in the morning. He groaned at the thought that he would have to get back up again in just a few hours and get ready for work.
He glanced over his shoulder at the young woman who was sharing the bed with him. She had turned back onto her side to face away from the light and try to get back to sleep, his eyes traced down over the curly brown hair that went past her shoulders, across the line of her back and down to her pyjama bottoms, which had slipped and – he felt himself tense up – had begun to reveal the round of her—
“Harry…”
Her voice was firm and authoritative. It was almost like she knew somehow that his eyes had wandered, and he had forgotten what he was up for. He cleared his throat, climbed out of bed and headed for the bedroom door without looking back. Harry made his way down several flights of stairs in the dark. It didn’t matter how long they had been there, or how hospitable they had made it, or how clean and bright the walls, ceiling and floor were.
Grimmauld Place was always going to be an eerie place to live.
Harry reached the landing outside of the room that had once belong to Sirius Black, his Godfather. It was now occupied by Teddy Lupin, Harry’s Godson, and it was taking the poor boy a lot longer to get used to his new surroundings than Harry would have liked. Teddy was five years old now. He was still too young to understand all of the terrible things that had happened to him, and Harry had never felt more helpless.
How was he ever going to explain to Teddy the reason why he had no parents?
Harry still asked himself that sort of question to this day. And it was worse for Teddy, he had lost his parents in the war and then his grandparents within five years afterwards and it was all so terribly heartbreaking.
“I want nana and grandpa!” Teddy cried out painfully in his Godfather’s embrace, once Harry had reached the bed and asked what was wrong.
“I know, mate,” was all Harry could say in response, pulling him into a hug, holding him tightly and gently rubbing his back as he cried.
This is what every night had been like since Teddy had come to stay at Grimmauld Place. During the day, he was a reasonably happy kid most of the time, who loved his Godfather to death, because Harry had always made sure to be in his Godson’s life and given him the sort of attention that Remus and Tonks would have wanted him to give.
Now that he was all that Teddy had left, he was going to do right by him, he was going to give him the childhood he deserved, the one that he – Harry – had been robbed of. And he certainly wasn’t going to let Teddy spend another Christmas like that last one, in the hospital, hopelessly watching day after day as his nana slowly slipped away.
“Come on,” Harry whispered into Teddy’s ear as he picked him up easily, “you can come sleep with us.”
Teddy continued to weep into the nook of Harry’s shoulder as he carried him upstairs to the Master Bedroom. Hermione Granger had heard them coming and was sat up in the bed expectantly, with a look of real concern on her face as the crying from the young boy didn’t stop.
“Oh dear, little buddy,” she said, holding out her arms so Harry could hand him over. “I wish I could fix your pain, little one.”
Hermione pulled him into one of her world-famous hugs, she rested his head against her bosom in a very motherly way and her eyes darted worryingly back at Harry, who shrugged and felt just as helpless about it all as she was. Harry crawled back into the bed with them and together they managed to get him to stop crying and he drifted off back to sleep between them.
At least, in sleep, he could be peaceful.