#about ted

She used to pretend to be a dragon when we were little and I’d be a wise wizard who found and helped her get revenge for lost kin; when she annoyed me I became the knight who slew the mighty beast. She imagined a world much deeper than I did from the start. She’s just two years younger, bright hair with more ginger than blond and brilliantly pale green eyes. And she absolutely hates that I’m the one with magic and not here, because she’s never needed help believing in this sort of world. But she’s good at school, a writer in the making and a fair hand at science, and she’s kind and quiet where I’m not but forceful and astute on top of it.

Common Saying

Ted knew very little about his parent’s lives. Like many of their generation they were tight-lipped about the sufferings they had gone through. The most Christie and Sachairi Tonks had ever told her children about what it was like being a teenager during the 1940s in Britain was “It was wartime” and they “did what needed to be done.”

Still, Ted had absorbed a general idea of things through photos, dates inscribed in the family Bible and the occasional reference to his parents’ childhood. The facts were these:

One. Christie Tonks - McGill at the time - along with her brood of siblings, left Aberdeen shortly after the Blitzes began. They lived with Ted’s Great Aunt, Sister Emmanuel, in her convent in the English Countryside. Two. The village had taken in innumerable young refugees. Including a German brother and sister, Franz and Alida Bosch. The Bosch siblings were treated, at best like outcasts and at worst like enemy soldiers. Three. Shortly after Christie received word that her father, Ted’s Grandfather, had been killed in action in North Africa, she took the Boschs under her wing. Four. After the war was over the Boschs moved to Aberdeen with Christie and the remnants of their family. Franz and Alida were welcomed like long lost cousins. Five. Sachairi Tonks met Christie McGill after he had beat Franz black and blue for having the wrong name and accent. Five years later, Franz was the best man at their wedding. Six. Ted grew up calling the Boschs “Uncle” and “Aunt” and they nearly always made an appearance at Christmas and Easter.

Growing up with a German Aunt and Uncle in a rather poor area of Aberdeen in the wake of WWII made Ted attune to prejudice and bigotry from a young age. He recognized it, understood it and hated it. He was, at his core, his Mother’s son.

So when Ted was eleven and thrust into a completely new culture and school system, surrounded mostly by English children with strange accents and where “soulmates” were a common topic of conversation, Ted had many more things to think about who was hated and how much. But he still picked up on it. People looked at him, spoke to him, treated him differently. He recognized the glances, the whispers, the pointing fingers and the venom behind certain words that he had never heard before but understood right away were slurs.

On his first Christmas after four months at Hogwarts, his Mother had asked him what his fellow classmates are like. Trembling slightly, Ted had taken a sip of his ginger tea and looked up at her from his mop of dirty blonde hair.