cis male / he, him. ┊ if you’re looking for EDWARD ‘TED’ TONKS, you’ll probably find HIM in the HUFFLEPUFF dorm with the rest of the SIXTH years. they’re the TWENTY year old MUGGLEBORN who looks kind of like KEDAR WILLIAMS-STIRLING. they seem STEADFAST, GREGARIOUS & INSIGHTFUL to me, but apparently they’re also INSECURE, EXPLOSIVE & STUBBORN. maybe that’s why they remind me of soft eyes and hard fists, taking what you can while you can get it, scuffed shoes and calloused fingers on wool, spilling the sugar as you make your tea, biting your nails until they bleed, a booming laugh cutting through dead silence and covering your head with the duvet, trying to stay warm and trying to breathe.
MURDER / VIOLENCE / PARENTAL DEATH UNDER THE CUT !
edward tonks took his first breath as the last of the summer winds blew through london. michael and maggie tonks wrapped their son in the only good blanket in the house, and a mere four hours after his birth, while he was sound asleep in a bedside drawer turned crib, the new parents were fixing the same leaking tap they were before their son decided to make an appearance.
living in east manchester meant that there were too many PEOPLE, too many mouths to feed, but not enough money and not enough jobs. the tonks’s twenty year old council house was crumbling down around them, and ted’s parents job at the local factory meant that they were the lucky ones, and they seemed to be the only people in beswick who managed to hold down a steady job and keep their dingy dwellings.
ted was never at home much. one of his parents would work during the day while the other slept and this would swap during the night, so his time was much better spent outside. it’s not that his parents didn’t want him milling around the house, but wherever ted decided to roam was never a quiet place for long. indeed it seemed that ted had the whole of manchester in the palm of his hand, and he intended to roam every alleyway and slip road, every ginnel and byway, even if it was just to ensure his mum and dad got some rest. there were WORSE reasons people were on the streets.
ted was a GOOD KID, truly he was. he was polite, and any trouble that followed him never passed his front doorstep. he held open doors for people and helped anyone who needed it, yet despite this, his quasi-nomadic tendencies often offered a less than savoury pathway, and once ted took one wrong turn down it, it seemed he couldn’t get off it. he quickly turned to petty crime, yet he was never sure if it was out of necessity or boredom. he would pinch food from local shops at first, but then it turned to toys, sheets, soap and other things he could slip into one of his dad’s old jackets. he’d then trek the long walk to ashton market once a week to flog his wares. ( the extra couple of pounds he made a week were stored in an old wine bottle his grandma had gifted them one christmas, and when it was filled it was left for his parents. )
it was at the age of nine he witnessed his first fight, and he ran home soon afterwards. the image of the boys he looked up to, the misguided idols of his youth, bloodied and bruised scared him stiff, and the faint wail of police sirens was the final push to send him running. it dawned on him, under the scant safety of his rough duvet, that he was going to end up exactly like them. he would loiter and steal his way through his teenage years, and if he was lucky, he’d spend adulthood behind bars instead of six feet under. the realisation lay heavy on his shoulders, and the first time he ever prayed the same way his mum did every night, he wished and wished for a way out, for some miracle to come to him to save him from the backstreets. this miracle came two weeks before his eleventh birthday, in the form of a tall man with a grey beard sitting on his couch, sipping cheap tea from a chipped mug and eating the good biscuits with the chocolate on that his mum saved for when the priest came round.
he hadn’t even batted an eyelid before ted found himself sat on the hogwarts express, in the first new uniform he had been bought since he was eight, fitting almost perfectly, but there was still some room for him to grow into his jumper. tears sprang into his eyes when he saw the castle, his NEW beginning, and he was quickly sorted into hufflepuff. within a few weeks, he had proudly garnered a reputation as being loud, happy-go-lucky, and in one rare slip up from one professor, ballsy. a small part of him knew it was too good to be true, but ted drowned it out with potions and gobstones, and pumpkin juice.
that was, until, his third year, when his perfect illusion was shattered. he was called out of his astrology lesson and was asked to make his way up to dumbledore’s office. when he got there, he found dumbledore, mcgonagall and his head of house, a mixture of PITY and HURT present on their faces. when dumbledore stepped aside to reveal his parish priest, rosary beads in hand, dressed in black, he fell to the floor, tears streaming down his face, a scream caught in his throat.
his father had been killed in an explosion at the factory, dumbledore explained, caused by faulty, cheap wires. his tears had just about dried when he got to his mother; the portkey from hogwarts didn’t reach his house quick enough in his opinion. for the first time in forever, ted was silent. he felt like a chunk of his heart had been wrenched from his chest, but he still couldn’t find an excuse for the feeling that something was wrong and that somebody wasn’t telling him SOMETHING
he returned to hogwarts sixth months later, and there was no denying that ted just wasn’t TED anymore. he didn’t want his grief to change him, and he let on that everything was fine, but his laughs were forced and the twinkle of amusement seldom lit up his eyes anymore. he was barely going through the motions, and his whole life was a dull cycle of eat, sleep, pretend, repeat.
life got easier for ted. his grief, as grief does, faded from a sharp pain to a dull ache, and eventually, the light returned to his eyes and his days became a lot easier to get through. until it wasn’t.
his mother told him what really happened, what DUMBLEDORE had told her had happened. that ted’s dad wasn’t killed in an explosion- he was followed home from work and struck dead. the couple who witnessed it spoke of green light and long, thin weapons, and were written off with shock by the muggle police. the aurors who came along after took one look at the body, at the MUGGLE SCUM carved across his forehead, to know exactly what had happened.
his mum had barely finished speaking before ted left the house. what happened after that was a blur. he KNOWS there was a pub, and a crunch of a nose under his fist, and he woke up in a holding cell. how fucking TYPICAL, that he gets an out, finds a way to a better life, and nobody wants him to fucking have it. he got out of the station two days after and didn’t go home. he was drifting between to worlds, the one he left for and the one he left behind, stuck in purgatory with no way out.
he almost doesn’t returns to hogwarts. the only thing that pushed him over was the fact that he didn’t want to go home to his mum. not like this. he snuck in while she was at work and took his trunk and made his own way to kings cross, jumping the barrier at piccadilly station and fighting tears the whole way to london.
he’s different now, and there’s no point in hiding it any more. he’s quick to anger, slow to soothe, and done fucking PRETENDING. there’s a change in the air, knows it as sure as the streets of salford, as sure as he’s failing charms, and as sure as he knows he doesn’t belong anywhere.
character inspo : steve mcbride / shameless uk , eggsy unwin / kingsman , nathan young / misfits , jackson marchetti / sex education , vinnie o’neil / brassic , erik lehnsherr / x-men , nick miller / new girl
