Disclaimer: I do not, have not, and will not ever own Harry Potter or any of its subsequent intellectual property. I do, however, intend on manipulating the everloving shit out of it.
A/N: This started as a very, VERY casual way of getting myself back into the habit of writing. Like, at all. Hopefully it'll stick.
Prologue
17 December 2014
Twenty years ago, the streets of North Bromwich would have been full of people.
It wasn't what you would call "urban", it wasn't even what you would really call a "village", more the half-vacated remnants of a coal town in the north of England. Even so, there would have been people; milling about family-owned shops that had been built from stones plucked from the very hills that the village lay nestled in; or people from nearby villages browsing wares at a farmer's market that was without rival for the next seven counties.
Now, there was an eerie calm that lay over the village, and an utter absence of the people who once called North Bromwich home. Especially at 22 Riverside Crescent.
As the frigid wind howled across the moors, Teddy blew heavily on his hands, rubbing the threadbare gloves covering them together in an attempt to generate some meagre amount of heat. He had been crouching amongst the bins directly across the street from the squat little village house for six hours in the dark and cold and snow, and now, with sunrise threatening on the horizon, he made his decision.
Reaching into the pocket of his tattered overcoat, he withdrew his wand. It was a simple thing, nothing ostentatious, ten-and-a-half inches of Scottish yew, with a dragon heartstring core. The smooth wood warmed at his touch. He waved it quickly.
"Expecto Patronum," he whispered, and a faint glow illuminated his tiny bin-fort as a glowing silver hawk materialized in front of him. Touching his wand gently to his throat, he spoke.
"No sign of movement. Forty-five minutes to shift change." He withdrew his wand, lightly tapping the hawk. With a flap of its wings, it soared upward, vanishing in a soft silver glow. Teddy put his wand back in his jacket pocket. He was supposed to look like an everyday tramp trying to find shelter from the godforsaken northern wind and snow, and how many tramps carried wands? Not many nowadays, he thought to himself with no small amount of irony.
Again rubbing his hands together against the cold, he turned his gaze back to the dark, ugly little house across the street. Before constructing his haphazard shelter, he'd made sure to discreetly cast some sensory charms on the immediate area, as a precaution against being snuck up on, but if the information stored in the house was as valuable as his superiors believed, the people guarding it weren't likely to fall for such amateur traps.
As if to prove him right, Teddy suddenly felt a heavy hand grab him tightly by the shoulder and spin him around.
"Jus' wot d'yew think yer doin' here, y'mangy tramp," a gruff, quiet voice behind him demanded. Teddy wheeled and fumbled for his wand, but immediately he found himself staring into crinkling brown eyes almost lost behind a mane of tangled hair and beard.
"Dean!" Teddy uttered, relieved. "Er, sorry. Sergeant Thomas, sir." Dean Thomas clapped Teddy on the shoulder as he crouched down behind the bins, and held a finger to his lips, indicating that Teddy should keep quiet.
"We came as soon as we got your Patronus. There's still been no sign of movement?"
Teddy shook his head. "No, sir. Whole town has been quiet as the grave for two weeks at least. The last guards changed shift at midnight," he checked his watch, "We should have another half-hour."
Dean nodded. He ran a hand through his beard. Any trace of the easy-laughing boy from Gryffindor tower was gone. He was a man. He was granite: scarred and weathered. "Alright then," he murmured to himself. Teddy waited silently until Dean motioned with his hand for him to follow, then clambered to his feet.
They crept away from the makeshift campsite, rounding a corner and climbing a fence, on the other side of which, judging by the squelching beneath his feet, Teddy supposed was either a compost heap or some kind of private bog. Dean approached a small picnic table that stood in the middle of the backyard, and whistled softly. From the surrounding area, six other men seemed to melt from the shadows. Like Dean, they had hard, scarred faces. They approached the table, huddling around it. Teddy scanned them. Two of them he knew - or at least had worked with before - but most were unknown to him, not altogether uncommon given their line of work.
"Alright. The game's on in five. There's been no sign of movement for six hours, new guards arrive in twenty-five. The objective is a safe in the living room, the contents of which are of extreme value to HQ. This is a Priority One mission, boys. No screw-ups, no do-overs. We get one shot at this." A moment of silence followed Dean's words. The men had been through this before. "Okay. Fitz, you sweep. Dustin, breach. Evan, Troy, support. Al, six. Turner, stick by me."
Teddy nodded with the rest of the men. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. He drew his wand, feeling the familiar rush of power it brought to him.
"Okay. Let's go save the world." With those words, the small group of men left the child's picnic table, unsealing their wards as they went.
No distance had ever looked so intimidating to Teddy as the twenty-odd yards between him and 22 Riverside Crescent. He exhaled, a slow, shaky thing, and gave his head a little shake in an attempt to clear the cobwebs. Next to him, Dean gave him a little thumbs up.
A whistle from down the street indicated that Fitz had finished sweeping the approach. The men began to advance.
"Here we go." Teddy muttered to himself, as they fanned around the small cottage door. Dustin, a ballistics expert Teddy had worked with before, advanced on the door, wand at the ready. He gave it a quick, stabbing wave, and shouted "REDUCTO TOTALIS!"
With an almighty BANG, the door exploded inward, reduced to its most base components. Almost immediately, they reversed their trajectory, flying back toward Dustin. If not for a well-placed shield charm, they would have turned him into a pincushion. As it was, they reflected harmlessly away.
Evan and Troy - two men who could not have been less alike, Evan being built like a mountain gorilla and Troy lean like a birch tree; Evan bald as a cue and Troy with a long ponytail - advanced through the hole, and the hallway was quickly illuminated with red and green bursts of light. Every instinct in Teddy's body told him to flee, but instead he found himself following Dean through the hole into the cottage, thick with plaster- and wood-dust.
A half-dozen or so men in dark robes scrambled around in the chaos. One grabbed a wand and aimed at Evan, but with a quick flick of his wand, Teddy propelled him into a china cabinet, where he lay still, buried in someone's grandmother's favourite teacups.
A few more uttered Stupefys, and the room was quiet. The only sound being the glass and wood and furniture scraps crunching under Teddy's feet as he approached the safe embedded deep in the wall over the fireplace. As he drew nearer, Teddy was only slightly aware of Dean giving orders behind him to sweep the rest of the house, and confirm who all they had captured. The safe was the only thing in his world. He felt drawn to it. He reached out with his hand, and-
Again, the heavy weight of Dean's hand on his shoulder shook Teddy back to reality. "What do you think? Can you open it?"
"There's an enchantment on it, certainly. I don't know what kind yet. All I know is that I'd rather risk opening it here than at headquarters. Who knows what kind of nasty tricks that snake-swallower has up his sleeve for people who mess with his stuff."
"Okay," the dark, bearded man said, "Crack it open. You have eight minutes."
Teddy approached the safe. It seemed unassuming enough on its own, but the way it demanded his attention… it made the hair on the nape of his neck stand on end. In Teddy's experience, that never boded well. He decided to start with an oldie-but-a-goodie.
"Finite Incantatem." He murmured, waving his wand before the safe. Immediately, the feeling of dread he had before melted away. The feeling of magic around the safe dissolved. Teddy was stunned. It couldn't have been that easy, could it?
"Dean, I think I've got it." Quickly, he reached out with his wand and tapped the tumbler ever so gently. "Alohomora." The tumblers fell into place with a gentle click. Teddy reached out and grabbed the handle. "Come to daddy." He turned the handle.
Thunk.
Like the door of a jail slamming closed, the safe locked itself immediately. A dark, foul energy began to emanate from the safe. Teddy recoiled. It smelled like death.
"What the hell happened?" Dean whirled around, coughing and covering his nose with his sleeve.
"I don't know! It just locked! Something's wrong." Teddy's veins ran cold as ice when his words were punctuated by a high, cold, cruel laugh, that magically filled the house and their minds."
"Such fools you are, to believe that you could steal from Lord Voldemort without his knowledge. Perhaps my pets will keep you busy until I arrive."
Teddy crouched and covered his ears with his hands, the cackling thunderously loud in his mind, until Dean grabbed him tight by the front of the jacket and gave him a hard shake.
"This is not the time to take a break, soldier! Now get that safe open! The anti-Apparation wards will only keep him out for a few minutes!" Teddy nodded, and turned back to the safe. In desperation, he tried blasting it open, but left nothing but a burn mark on the door. Just as he was analyzing the source of the locking charm, he was hauled off his feet and hurled across the room. Dazed, he noticed the Death Eater he had knocked into the china cabinet earlier lurching toward him, with a slow, unsteady gait.
"Stupefy!" Teddy shouted, blasting the robed man with a column of red light. The Death Eater stumbled back, his hood falling back from his face to reveal the rotting, disfigured face of a corpse, its blue eyes staring right at him. Teddy was vaguely aware of hearing a gutted scream elsewhere in the house, Fitz, maybe, or Troy. "Inferi!" He yelled. "Fire! Fire! Incendio!" The spell engulfed the Inferius's head in flames, but even as the creature crumbled, the temperature in the cottage plummeted, and he was buffeted by hurricane-force winds.
Ice formed on every surface. The softly falling snow from outside was sucked into the cottage and became a blizzard. The flames went out. The Inferius rose. Teddy stumbled to his knees, but found himself hauled back to his feet by a strong hand.
"We have to get out of here!" Teddy yelled to Dean over the screaming wind. "Those things will tear us apart!"
"No! We only have one shot at this!" Across the room, Evan was busy getting his throat ripped out by an Inferius, which quickly turned to face Dean and Teddy. "You have to get that safe open before he gets here! I'll hold them off!" With a flick of his wand, Dean created a bubble around the first Inferius, trapping it in place.
Teddy stared at the block of ice quickly encasing the safe. He already knew he couldn't blast it open. What did that leave?
"Hurry!" Dean yelled. Another scream from elsewhere.
"Incendio!" Teddy's flames burned away the ice from the door just long enough for him to jam his wand in the crack between the door and the frame. "Aguamenti!" A pressurized stream of water filled the crack, the freezing temperatures and frigid metal quickly turning it to ice. The safe door groaned at this new pressure. Metal bent, the safe weakened.
"Get down!" Teddy yelled, pointing his wand at the safe door. "Reducto Totalis!" The blast against the weakened door blew it clean off its hinges. It rocketed around the room like a bowling ball in a tornado, eventually slamming into the last Inferius. With the door defeated, the storm died almost immediately. Teddy approached the safe. Inside, there was a solitary manila file folder, bearing a mark he had only seen on papers and dossiers from years before - the Ministry of Magic seal. Teddy grabbed the folder, and held it out to Dean, who took it.
"Good job, kid. Let's get the hell out of-" Dean was cut off by Al's body being propelled through the door by a blast of green light. "He's here," Dean whispered. He shoved the folder into Teddy's hands, and pulled a thick golden Galleon out of his pocket. He tapped it with his wand, and it began to tick. Numbers on the coin's surface counted down from fifteen. "Time for you to go. Make sure this gets to the Head. Do you understand me?"
"I'm not leaving you!" Teddy yelled.
"Yes, you are. Depulso." The Banishing Charm was so quick, Teddy barely had time to take a breath as he was propelled back through the wreckage of the kitchen, toward the window. He never took his eyes off Dean. Not when a pale, spidery hand raised a wand behind him, not when he was engulfed in green light. He soared out, over the icy river, the galleon growing hot in his hand. A figure in black robes approached the window. It raised a wand, just as he felt an all-too-familiar hooking behind his navel.
The next second, he was gone.
A second after that, he was standing in the War Room at the Auror Office, surrounded by people whose bidding controlled his life, but whom he had never met.
Across from him, a bespectacled woman with silvery-blonde hair, who watched, no, observed, him amusedly. He knew she was the head of the medical service, but he could never remember her name. Next to her stood a woman similar in age, but with fiery red hair worn in a tight braid across her shoulder, and beside her another redhead, a man with a rough beard, and a flabbergasted expression. Teddy knew they were Weasleys, Commanders Ginny and Ron, he guessed. At the head of the table, a woman with short brown hair, who watched him with steely eyes, her lips pressed into a thin line. Head Auror Hermione Granger.
Even from across the table, he could feel her eyes bore into him. She seemed able to read him like a book, her piercing gaze peeling away every deception, every facade, every lie ever told to himself or others. He felt naked under her gaze.
The coin slipped from his hand, forgotten, and clattered against the stone floor. In the silent room, it might as well have been a gunshot. Everyone flinched. Everyone except Head Auror Granger.
"Did you get it?" Her question caught him by surprise. What had they gone to the house to retrieve? It seemed like an entire lifetime ago. He looked around the table, at faces he recognized from newsreels and on wanted posters in downtown London. The most wanted men and women in the country.
Teddy could feel himself starting to shake. The woman with silvery-blonde hair caught his gaze for a moment and gave him a nod and a gentle smile.
"Answer me, Auror Lupin, was your mission a success?" Head Auror Granger asked from the head of the table. Teddy considered that question. Dean was dead. Fitz, Troy, Evan and the others as well. He looked down at the folder he still held tightly in his right hand.
And he nodded.
He set the folder down gently on the table. In the low light, he could barely read the harsh red words emblazoned on the front of the folder:
UNDESIRABLE NO. 1
"Good." Teddy felt immediately better after her gaze diverted to the folder. The redheaded woman picked it up.
"Where is Sergeant Thomas?" The redheaded woman, Ginny, demanded, staring daggers straight at Teddy. If Head Auror Granger was cold and intense, this woman seemed filled with fire. To be honest, he wasn't sure which scared him more.
"H-he, uhh... he didn't-" Images flashed in front of Teddy's eyes. Dean shrinking as Teddy flew away from the window. A raised wand held in a hand like a pale spider. And that laugh.
That high, cold, laugh.
Teddy swallowed down the hard lump in his throat. Losing his composure in front of these people was not an option. "He held off the enemy long enough for me to escape, marm." Around the table, the assembled crowd bowed their heads.
Ginny turned to face Head Auror Granger. "Are you happy now, Hermione? Dean's gone." She turned and stormed away from the table. "You'd better pray that it was worth it." The redheaded man who had been standing next to her turned to Hermione.
"It's not your fault. I'll try to calm her down." He handed her the folder, and then left the table as well, following behind the redheaded woman.
"Thank you, Ron," the Head Auror murmured, taking a deep breath, then addressing the table. "We've lost a great friend, and a comrade here today. Dean Thomas will not be forgotten. He was, and will always be remembered as a true Auror. You are all dismissed."
The general clamour of people leaving snapped Teddy from his half-consciousness. He stood to go, and as he followed the last of the crowd out the door and into the hallway, he looked back to see Head Auror Granger staring at the folder in her hands as though it were poison.
Head Auror Hermione Granger stood alone in the war room. She stared down at the folder in her hand, and slowly, hesitantly, opened it.
She was greeted by a face she hadn't seen in almost twenty years. Unruly black hair. Round, battered glasses. Green eyes which stared at her defiantly, as though even Harry Potter's wizard photo captured his stubborn, rebellious nature, and refused to move even though he could.
Her eyes stung as she read the words stamped across the page in the same harsh red ink that decorated the folder.
DECEASED.
"I pray it was worth it, Ginny. I do." Hermione murmured to herself. She appraised the file for another moment, before forcefully slapping it closed.
A/N: I haven't written a fanfic in almost ten years. I kind of missed it. The idea for this fic came to me when I was rereading the whole series, like I do after every semester of college to remind myself that reading is fun.
Read. Review. Enjoy, hopefully. I'll try to get a new chapter up every couple of weeks, working around schoolwork.