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He is five and his mother takes him to the muggle market. (His father is a wizard, but the family lives a largely muggle life in respect to his mother and her family. His father doesn't mind. He says he wasn't the most magical wizard anyways.) Caradoc falls in love with the baby dolls and pink wraps, and begs his mother for one. She buys him the doll with little hesitation, but the woman who sells it to them makes a comment, and Mother won't tell him what it means.
He is seven and overhears Grandmother hissing, it just isn't proper! when he runs to show her his tiara and Little TykesTM wand that shoots glitter sparks if he waves it right. He doesn't understand. Father's parents always love his tiaras. Mother explains that muggles don't always understand either, and Grandmother grew up when boys and girls had to follow strict rules. He doesn't get to take his tiara to Grandmother's again.
He is nine and the children at primary school don't like his dress. He sits on the stoop, mud splattered over the ruffles, and Father explains that sometimes it is better to blend in, so long as you don't give up who you are inside. Caradoc doesn't understand, but Father assures him that both he and Mother love Caradoc no matter who he is inside, so Caradoc agrees. Grandmother gives him a hug when she sees him wearing trousers at Easter.
He is eleven and he paints his nails under the covers at his new school. A boy smells the varnish, and offers to paint his left hand. The boy doesn't think nail varnish has anything to do with what's proper, who on Earth gave him that idea? He sends his brand new brown owl, Figgis, to his parents with a letter that night, ecstatic that he can be as girly as he likes in this new place.
He is thirteen and meets a wixen who says they aren't a boy or a girl, as if that's something normal to say. Something stirs in his gut and he thinks he might not be a 'he' at all.
They are fifteen and they kiss their first girl. Alice and Frank and Gideon and Fabian nearly throw them a party, but quietly, they think they might not like girls as much as they want to be one. They say as much to Alice later in the week, and she throws her arms around them. She's going to teach them how to put on makeup.
They are seventeen and they kiss their first boy. Edgar doesn't mind that they're not a boy or a girl, and gets confused when told about their grandmother, and they don't tell Frank and Gideon and Fabian, but they do send Figgis to Alice. They go to Hogsmeade with Edgar and hold hands, to the Three Broomsticks and share a Butterbeer, to the Shrieking Shack and get distracted from hunting ghosts for kissing against a dead tree in the garden. They think they might love Edgar.
They are nineteen and testing to be a Healer, they are twenty-one and applying to a clinic in London, they are twenty-three and Alice's Maid of Honor, they are twenty-five and settled in their flat and their job and their life is good and they're happy.
They are twenty-six and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is gaining followers, and the Ministry won't do anything, and Dumbledore is assembling an Order. They offer up their clinic should anyone get hurt (so many people get hurt - ). They are twenty-seven and they plan out raids and ambushes (even if they aren't that good at Defense, they know strategy - ). They are twenty-eight and Dumbledore says they have a mole (not Remus, he's just a kid, they're all just kids - ) and they are fighting, fighting, fighting and they are losing -
They are twenty-nine and Alice and Frank are in St. Mungo's, their baby gone. They are twenty-nine and Fabian is dead.
They are twenty-nine and Gideon barely speaks to anybody and they are twenty-nine and the Ministry has fallen and they are twenty-nine and Hogwarts is gone and the Order is falling apart and it was Peter and James is dead, Lily is dead, baby Harry is dead, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has control of the useless Ministry, the war is lost -
They are twenty-nine and they refuse to give up. They are twenty-nine and they look at their clinic, the shambles of the Order, their grieving friends, and swear that they will do anything in their power to make things right.