Expecto Patronum

Harry James Potter collapsed in his favorite armchair by the fire, letting his eyes fall shut, praying for a few moments of silence. It was nine at night, and the Potter family had just finished up their final Christmas meals with the Weasleys. Ron, Hermione and Rose, and Hugo had just left, Ginny was cleaning up, Lily was asleep, and James and Albus were off playing games somewhere. His mind began to wander as he breathed deeply…

“Harry? Umm… Harry? Can I talk to you?”

Harry slowly opened his eyes and ran a hand through his continuously messy black hair. He looked over to see who had spoken to him and saw not his wife or one of his children, but his godson, Teddy Lupin. For being just thirteen, Teddy was getting pretty tall. He had the same worn look as his father, but the same face and spark in his eyes as his mother. His hair was a messy aquatic teal today, and his eyes light gray.
“Yes Teddy?” Harry asked, giving his godson a warm smile.
“So, um, I was doing a little reading over break for Care of Magical Creatures, and I came across… Dementors…”
Harry waited for a moment, then asked, “Well… and? What about Dementors?”
“Well, it told me that you have to make a Patronus to get them away from you, and when I asked Ginny about it, she said you’d be able to help…” Teddy blushed slightly, thinking this was a ridiculous thing to ask of his godfather.

Harry was silent for a moment, thinking. “So… you want me to teach you how to make a Patronus?” he asked slowly. Teddy nodded a few times. Harry let out a slight chuckle.
“What?” Teddy asked with a slightly raised voice. “You don’t think I can do it?”
“No, it’s not that,” said Harry. “It’s just funny.”
“WHAT is?”
“The fact that YOU’RE asking me how to cast a Patronus, when your father was the one who taught me how to do it.”
Teddy’s head cocked to the side slightly. “Really?” he asked in slight wonder.
“Yeup,” replied Harry, standing up from his chair and stretched. “Well, you won’t be able to do magic now, but I’ll show you how and when you get back to school, you can practice. But mind you, it’s easy to do without a Dementor. I learned with a Boggart…” This didn’t deter Teddy, for he stood firmly by Harry’s side, gripping his wand in his left hand.

“Alright, so, what did your book tell you Dementors do?”
“Um…they suck the happiness from you?”
“Exactly. Now, what a Patronus does is create kind of a shield between you and the Dementor. The Dementor feeds off it instead of you, and a really powerful Patronus can drive away a Dementor.”
“So, if the Dementor feeds off it, it must be made of happiness, right?”
“Good,” complimented Harry. ‘Boy, this kid is sharp,’ he added in his head. “In that case then, we need two things to make a Patronus; the incantation, Expecto Patronum, and a really strong, happy memory. The memory is the most important part. So pick the strongest one you can think of.”
“What do you think of, Harry?” Teddy asked as his face screwed up in concentration.
“When I first started out, I thought of my parents. They were the only happy memory strong enough to produce a full Patronus,” Harry stated, reminiscing back to the end of his own third year. Teddy merely nodded, and continued concentrating.

“Alright, when you have a memory, you keep focused on it while saying, ‘Expecto Patronum,’ like this.” Harry cleared his throat, pulled out his wand, and uttered, “Expecto Patronum.” A slivery stag blossomed from the tip of his wand and pranced around the living room, fading slowly into a mist. Teddy’s jaw nearly dropped out of his skull.
“Holy Fizzing Whizbees! How long did it take you to do that?”
“About half a school year to get the full Patronus,” said Harry, turning to look down at Teddy, “but this is incredibly difficult magic. There’s lots of adult wizards who have trouble with it. But, I think, with a little practice, you’ll at least get the basics of it.” He pocketed his wand and kneeled down to place a hand on his godson’s shoulder. “Teddy, you’re the son of two incredibly gifted wizards. I don’t think you’ll have any problems at all with this.”
Teddy’s eye’s shown with that determined spark again. “Don’t worry, Harry, I’ll master it by summer! And then I’ll show you!” Harry matched Teddy’s grin with one of his own.
“Good. But for now, to bed. Grandma Meda will be here after breakfast to pick you up.” And with that, Teddy was off and up the stairs to the spare room where he slept whilst at the Potter’s house.

Harry wandered into the kitchen where Ginny was just putting away the final dish and starting to make some tea. She looked up and saw him, raising her eyebrows. “What did Teddy want? He searched the house for you.”
“He wanted to learn how to produce a Patronus.”
Ginny’s fire-red eyebrows rose even higher. “Oh really? That’s funny, wasn’t Lupin the one who taught you?”
“That’s right,” Harry replied, accepting the cup of tea from his wife.
“Well, he’ll get it in no time then,” Ginny decided, and starting singing under her breath, “Think of something happy, think of something happy, it could be complicated, or it could be short and snappy...”