The Enemy of my Enemy

The Aftershock

"In the days that follow, I discover that anger is easier to handle than grief."

On Christmas morning Teddie awoke in her bed at Flint Manor. She sighed and rolled over, kicking her legs out from under the comforter and stretching. Her head felt fuzzy and her body numb, while she had slept the previous evening, it still felt like she was half asleep. For two month's her dreams had been plagued with nightmares, but for the last few nights there had been nothing.

Her mind had all-but deserted her, leaving her to run over the last week's events without interruption. Her parents were dead - her loving and innocent muggle parents, who had done nothing in this world but raise two children to the best of their abilities were now gone - taken by the very people that had tortured Teddie at the beginning of the Summer holidays.

Aside from being numb, Teddie was angry. Every fiber in her body was telling her to hunt down those responsible and make them pay for what they had done, but there was one thing stopping her - Mason.

Mason had already lost his parents. Parents that had birthed him and given him a life that, in their minds, he didn't deserve. To Robert and Rose Green both Teddie and Mason deserved a life that they couldn't provide, but yet they did their absolute best to make sure that their children had everything that they wanted, and now, because of reasons beyond their control they were dead.

Ursula and Mo had been amazing to Teddie and Mason since they became orphans. While they had already invited them into their home and their lives, given them a place to stay and treated them like their own family, they also didn't push or force the siblings to face the consequences of their parents deaths. They had just left them to grieve in their own way.

After Dumbledore had revealed the horrifying truth, he had Flooed them straight to Flint Manor, as stated Ursula was waiting for them and immediately, she pulled Mason into a bone-crushing hug, holding him as he started to sob again. Teddie, however, was still numb from the reveal and merely stepped out of the fireplace, she accepted the hug from Ursula, but she didn't feel anything other than numbness.

The same numbness she felt now.

In the following hours, Theo arrived with Mo. He found Teddie in her room and was stunned by her attitude towards the truth. He was stunned to find that she hadn't cried yet, in fact, she hadn't spoken at all. It was like she was still processing what had happened and didn't believe what she had been told.

Teddie pushed herself off the side of her bed and padded across the cold wooden floor to her door. She opened it and stepped out, listening to the silence that filled the manor - it was still early, according to her watch, but she couldn't sleep anymore. She was more awake now that she had ever been.

Creeping down the stairs, Teddie entered the living room and found a great Christmas tree decked out in baubles and lights, all of them still twinkling from the night before, and beneath them a horde of presents with different names on the tags.

Teddie knew better than to start opening Christmas presents with her brother, and so settled into a corner of the large couch and waited for the rest of the house to wake up. She rested her head on a pillow, and allowed her mind to wander, although she refused to think about her parents, not wanting her emotions to cloud her judgement and force her to confront the reality that had befallen her.

She wasn't ready to face her parents death and would do anything to put it off for as long as possible.

~X~

The date of the funeral was set for the New Year - three days after Mason's birthday, to be exact.

If Teddie thought Christmas was hard that year, she hadn't been ready for Mason's birthday. Despite the Flint's going all out to celebrate his fourteenth including a grand party, including a cake and tons of presents, Mason still hid himself away in their library and sobbed into his books.