Wolfish

Chapter 1: Monday

Teddy could never fully be sure if the way he looked was natural, or if it was some part of his subconscious controlling him. He knew from photos that he looked an awful lot like his father, practically identical to him, but he couldn't say if that was genetics or if some part of his mind had chosen to make him look like that. He couldn't know what his natural hair colour was, only that it mimicked the bright hues he knew his mother used to turn her hair. He thought about these things every time he caught himself in a mirror.

People would always tell him how amazing and cool his abilities were, or how they just wished that they could be a metamorphmagus, and Teddy would always smile and nod politely. He would never tell them how inconstant it made him feel. Sometimes he'd wake up in the morning with a different hair or eye colour, surprising himself in the mirror. It would take him a few seconds to recognize himself, and those were seconds that he hated. He wanted to be able to look in a mirror and know he was looking at himself, exactly the way he was supposed to look.

He finished tying his tie and ran a hand through his hair - cyan blue that morning, which almost seemed to be the default for him. Victoire had already left for work and it was him alone in their small house, staring at himself in their bathroom mirror and listening to the loud grandfather clock in the living room tick on. He pushed himself onward, out through their bedroom and into the living room and to the kitchen. He poured himself a mug of coffee from the pot his wife had made that morning and shuffled on back to the living room to use the Floo network. He greatly preferred it to Apparition.

Even without the fact that his appearance seemed to be a mimicry of his parents', it seemed like so many aspects of his life were just unconscious efforts to get to know them better. Not being able to remember them, he sought out every scrap of information he could on them. He'd listen to stories from his grandmother and Harry, write letters to people who went to school with them, and he read every book he could get his hands on about the wars with Voldemort in the hopes that he'd get some mention of them. He was a metamorphmagus, a Hufflepuff, an Auror; just like his mother. A bookworm, sometimes a troublemaker, and wolfish; just like his father. Of course, he wasn't actually a werewolf. Lycanthropy wasn't hereditary, it was inflicted. Yet Teddy still felt that pull of the moon, and that was another thing he couldn't be sure if it was intentional or not - another subconscious effort to know his father better, or just the way he was.

Teddy entered the bustling Auror offices and made his way to his desk. He said hello to the few people he passed on his way like Herb Welker and Harland Burke, who had been in training with him when he first started.

"Morning, Teddy!"

He hadn't been at his desk for a full minute before Lysander Scamander came bounding up to him, full of enthusiasm despite how early it was. Lysander was a relatively new recruit, and Harry had assigned them as partners almost immediately. Some sort of 'family sticks together' mentality from his godfather. Teddy was married to Harry's niece, and Lysander was engaged to another one, which meant that they had to stick out for one another at work. Teddy didn't dislike the man, but he was just... new. He had only been an Auror officially for a few months at that point and was still so goddamn excitable about it. Being partners with Lysander felt reminiscent of babysitting, which wasn't helped by the fact that Teddy had literally babysat the Scamander twins multiple times when he was a teenager.

"Morning, Lysander," Teddy replied, drinking from his mug and still not entirely awake.

"Harry- er, I mean, Auror Potter wants to see us in his office at eight," Lysander said, looking very excited at the prospect. Teddy tried to relate, tried to pull back to when he was a new Auror. He knew that he had probably been just as eager and potentially annoying as Lysander was now.