Chapter 7:
The Whole Story
"Are you all right, Lupin?" Frankie asked. He'd stood up, and looked deeply serious.
Teddy nodded and handed him the newspaper. "Do you have any Floo powder? I need to call home."
Frankie waved his wand, and a covered casserole flew out from one of the burrows that led to the Hufflepuff dormitories. Teddy caught it, lit the Common Room fireplace, and tossed in a handful of the sparkling powder. "Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place."
He dropped to his knees and put his head into the green flames, which cinched tight around his neck. His head went spinning into the network, and came out in the cellar kitchen of Uncle Harry's house. Lily was in her high chair, picking at a bowl of cold porridge with her fingers. She clapped sloppily and said, "Teddy!"
Something clattered, and Aunt Ginny appeared in Teddy's field of view, her hair tied back with a scarf. "Teddy! What a surprise!"
"Is Uncle Harry there? I read the Prophet this morning... I suppose he's at work..."
"He's about to go in - despite it being his day off - but he's still upstairs. I'll get him. I've been baking biscuits. Would you like some dough?"
"No, thanks."
She looked surprised, but went upstairs. He heard her call for Uncle Harry. A thunder of light footsteps beat Uncle Harry downstairs, and James and Al raced one another to the fireplace. James was carrying his squirming cat, Checkmate's littermate Martian.
"Hi, Teddy," James said, dropping down to sit. "I've got Martian to do a new trick. Would you like to see it?"
"I got him to do a trick," Al said. "You just watched."
"I did not!"
Uncle Harry's shiny shoes appeared between them, then he crouched down. "Boys, let me have a word with Teddy alone."
"But - "
Uncle Harry gave James his impression of a stern look, then Aunt Ginny scooped them up and shooed them upstairs. She picked up Lily and followed, and Teddy heard the door shut behind them.
"I take it you saw what happened."
Teddy tried to nod, but ended up with a mouth full of ashes. He coughed. "I know you're working on catching Greyback. You shouldn't listen to Rita Skeeter."
"You called to tell me that?" Uncle Harry smiled. "Thank you. But I have long experience with Rita."
"What's going to happen to the little boy? Are James and Al and Lily staying inside? What about Victoire's sisters and Artie? Is Granny safe?"
"One at a time," Uncle Harry said, keeping his voice calm. "Neil is going to be all right. I can't tell you where he is on an open Floo line, but there are people who are glad to have him, and they'll look after him. James and Al and Lily are certainly staying inside - except for the courtyard - and they're quite annoyed about it, but I've put age lines at every exit, even the ones they think I don't know about."
"Did you get the vent in the back of Kreacher's cupboard? I promised I wouldn't tell, but - "
"I got it, Teddy."
"Good."
"Fleur has taken the younger children abroad for a few days - tell Victoire they're fine. And I'm checking on Andromeda every single day before I come home. I've tweaked the Apparition security so that she can Disapparate from inside if she needs to, though Apparition in is still blocked. All right?"
"Right." Teddy sighed. "What am I supposed to do? I feel like I should be doing something."
"You should be doing your homework, staying with your friends, playing that game of yours, whatever it is you want to do. We'll take care of it."
"But - "
Uncle Harry frowned. "I know you want to do something, Teddy, but there's nothing. We have people on the job. You just stay safe. Please."
Teddy agreed, feeling like there were a million things to say, unable to think of any of them. He said goodbye and pulled his head out of the fire.
Frankie asked if he should cancel the game, but as Teddy didn't have anything to do, he shrugged and suggested that they go ahead, though he wasn't very interested. He didn't bother with any adventurous rolls, and let Ruthless lead them out of their bombed out church. Victoire, fretting over Neil Overby, didn't bother responding in character at all. After, he walked back to Gryffindor with the girls, both of them quiet. He went to his room for the rest of the evening, skipping dinner, doing his homework, sealing up the story to send to James. He wished Uncle Harry would trust him with something - it wasn't like Uncle Harry, of all people, thought that a thirteen-year-old was useless.
He didn't light his lamp as the sun set. He just lay on his bed, his hands tucked behind his head and his elbows pointed out to the edges of his pillow. Checkmate padded up onto his chest and made a nest for herself and went to sleep purring, but he didn't pet her.
He didn't read, and his dreams, when he finally went to sleep, weren't of Ruthless or of Tirza swashbuckling her way to the Antipodes. Instead, he dreamed of Neil Overby, trapped among the werewolves, then Neil became Remus Lupin, small and scared. Teddy tried to reach out and snatch him away, but a hand fell on his shoulder, and he turned to find Vivian Waters, her face unscarred, her eyes intact. "Anyone who stepped out of line," she said, "got a reminder about who was alpha."
Teddy woke up in the thin light of dawn, not feeling rested. Dad had stepped out of line, Vivian had told him. And Greyback had given him a reminder. The sort of reminder he'd given the Overbys, and meant to give the Malfoys? The sort of thing he had in mind for Teddy himself?
He slipped into the library as soon as Madam Pince opened it, but he was already too late - apparently, yesterday's news had been quite the impetus to read. The entire shelf on werewolves was empty, and Madam Pince told him that even the books in the Restricted Section were gone, taken by older students in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Over the next two weeks, Teddy scrounged the newspaper every day, looking for anything he could find, hoping something would come to light for him that the Aurors were missing, trying to wrap his mind around who and what Greyback was. In his Patronus lessons for two Wednesdays, he was barely able to get a light mist, and Uncle Harry seemed distracted by the search as well. They had supper together both nights - sent by Aunt Ginny - and Teddy barely remembered what they talked about by the time he got back. Neil Overby continued to haunt him. The library continued to have a shortage of books. More than once, he overheard other students trading facts they'd found about Greyback the way they might trade Quidditch statistics. How many had he taken? Did you hear about that girl they found in 'seventy-eight? What did Voldemort use him for in the war? Did you hear what he did to the Muggle-born girls? Was it boys, too?
On the last Wednesday in September, he sat in the kitchen of the Shrieking Shack, across from Uncle Harry, staring at a savory pie Aunt Ginny had sent.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't seem to do it."
"I know, Teddy. I've seen you in school. What are you trying to find out about Greyback?"
"I don't know."
Uncle Harry nodded and poured himself a cup of tea. "I asked Vivian to come. She's a better source than anything Madam Pince is squirreling away. I hope you don't mind. There are things I might need to know about the time your dad spent with them - I thought you'd do well to hear them, too, though she says it's not all particularly cheerful."
"I can't believe I didn't think to ask her," Teddy said.
"I'm still not entirely sure you need to know all of it."
Teddy turned at the sound of the voice and saw Vivian coming up through the trapdoor, which they'd left open when they came in. She looked grim.
"I don't know if it will help you at all. But I suppose the whole story can never hurt. Except when it does," she said. She came into the kitchen, but didn't sit down. Instead, she went to the window and looked out at the waxing moon. "October is the Harvest Moon," she said. "At least here. I understand that the names are different in other places. Why do they name them? November is the Hunter's Moon. December is the Oak Moon. February is the Wolf Moon, believe it or not." She turned. "You know that Lupin rescued us. Lupin and Tonks and Bill and the rest. But he was with us for months. Greyback tried to break him. And succeeded."
Finally, she sat down, and told the tale. She'd been taken when she was three years old, her family killed just as Neil Overby's had been (though her father had been left alive as a werewolf, but abandoned). She'd forgotten her name by the time Dad had got there. The others had come around her - she'd asked for a friend, and the next thing she knew, a girl named Evelyn had come. "We still don't know who Evvie is," she said. "Greyback could have Conjured her from thin air for all we know. No one even reported her missing." Then had come Hamilton, a girl called Coral, and finally Nate Blondin, a Muggle-born boy whose name had come from a list stolen by Lucius Malfoy. Alderman had come a year before she did, and was thoroughly brainwashed by Greyback's ways at the time. "He says now that your dad saved his soul, just by being patient with him and putting up with his nonsense. Just showing him a different way to be a man - a way that wasn't Greyback's. A way that was human. It's what he did for all of us, and that's why Greyback will never forgive him. He taught us how to not be monsters most of the time." She sniffed. "Of course, Lupin, being Lupin, only thought about the times Greyback won that year. Greyback had to trick him to break him, and he only managed it twice, but it ate at him. He made it so hard on himself, and on poor Tonks, who had nothing to do with any of it. But they made it through, lucky for us." She smiled at Teddy.
"What do you mean, Greyback broke him twice?"
"Greyback knows how to control werewolves. He's done it his whole life. He tricked Lupin into eating part of a forest ranger he'd killed, then tried to trick him into killing me by - " She looked down. "By mistreating me while we were transformed. But Lupin got us here, and got me safely shut away."
"Shut away from - ?" Teddy stopped, not really wanting the answer that was forming in his mind. "Is there anything that can help find him?"
"We've looked all the places I know," she said. "But if he's starting to build a pack again, we'll need to look for the ways he breaks people - dead animals, even suspicious murders, though he's not nearly as stupid as he seems, so I imagine he'll look for people who won't be missed if he tries it. He's likely to keep moving, and they don't Apparate or use Floo powder, or even use much magic at all." She smiled rather horribly. "In fact, I stole Greyback's wand the night he tried to kill me. Ollivander was forced to make it. It has a hair from everyone in the pack. I think Ollivander was more annoyed at being forced to use an unorthodox core than with giving a wand to a murderer."
"But you still have it?" Teddy asked. "With... With Dad's hair in it?"
She nodded, and held out her wand. "Frankly," she said, raising an eyebrow, "I'm hoping Greyback gets to see it again before he dies."
There was no reason that Vivian's story should have eased Teddy's mind, nothing in it that should have led there, but as he pulled himself up the stairs to his room, he felt a weary sort of acceptance of Greyback and what he had done. All his life, he'd heard that his father had been nervous about getting married, had wanted the best for his mum but been convinced that she ought to look elsewhere, had even tried to bow out after they were married. Both Granny and Uncle Harry had made sure he knew those things before someone unkind could tell him in a less than understanding way. But what Greyback had done - making him try to hurt Vivian, making him eat a person... For the first time, Teddy didn't feel like forgiving Dad for being a bit flaky around the edges, which was what Granny and Uncle Harry seemed to want. Instead, he felt a fierce sort of pride that Dad had come back at all, and that Mum had stuck by him. Teddy thought he'd probably be flaky around more than the edges if that had happened to him. He knew why Mum had stayed, and decided that he would have stayed as well. It wouldn't have been fair not to.
Feeling a great wave of affection for Mum, he dug To the End of the Earth out from the pile of homework it had got buried under for two weeks. If she was watching, he thought, maybe she'd get a chance to finish the story this way. He tipped the book up to the ceiling in a salute, then settled in to read about Tirza and her pirates battling the evil hit-wizards, Summoning a cyclone and using it to hurl their ship forward, working together to give it enough of a Hover Hex to fly for nearly three hundred miles and escape their pursuers. Teddy suspected that this wasn't actually possible, but it was a delightful way to end up at Port Elizabeth, with a strong wind blowing them east, toward where Holt was being held in some sort of horrible prison. He supposed she would eventually rescue him, then they'd sail off into the sunset and live happily ever after, maybe sailing with the pirates and a whole shipload of children, but he wanted to see how they'd get there.
After he'd finished two chapters, he put it aside and played with Checkmate for a bit, then did his homework. For Professor Firenze, he was tracking history along the paths of the stars, which all seemed very impersonal. Would any of it have changed if Dad hadn't gone to Greyback? Greyback had nothing to do with his parents' deaths. But maybe they could have had one more happy year together. Maybe Teddy would be a year older, or have an older brother or sister who he could read about Tirza's silly adventures with, and wonder what Mum and Dad had really been like with. He knew a lot - he'd made it his business to find out - but he didn't know where knowledge left off and imagination started.
Everyone except for Donzo was waiting outside classroom eleven before Divination the next morning, comparing one another's assignments.
Tinny looked at hers, then at Joe Palmer's. "Are you sure that's where Mars was during the Crimean War? I had it there during the Boxer Rebellion. With the Boer War going on as well..."
"But that's just the Muggle stuff," Joe said. "During the Crimean War, there was also all sorts of wizarding stuff going on, what with that mad Icelandic witch trying to put half the wizards on the island under the Imperius Curse. And there was another one in" - he checked his paper - "Tierra del Fuego. A wizard. He wanted to set up an all wizarding country in Antarctica, so he was going all out making Muggles stay away."
"Yes, but still, that wasn't so many people..."
Teddy checked both papers, a little concerned, as he'd thought Mars would have taken on the solar aspect closer to the Great War. Of course, until he took lessons from Professor Firenze, he'd thought the sky just moved about once a year, but apparently, it was a much longer term.
Donzo ran up, out of breath, just as Professor Firenze opened the door, and didn't offer an explanation for his tardiness. The class went in, lay down on the luxurious grassy hillside, and looked up at the magically rendered twilit sky while their teacher scanned their assignments.
"You've done good work," he said.
Tinny sat up. "But we all had different answers!"
"The ways of the heavens are slow. What is a difference of seventy years in a universe where billions of years have passed and billions more will? Ephemera! You must learn to widen your view."
Maurice leaned over to Teddy and whispered, "If my view gets any wider, I'm going to fall off the world."
Roger raised his hand. "Professor Firenze?"
"Yes, Mr. Young?"
"If all of this goes over billions of years, then what did the stories say when we were all just plankton?"
"I beg your pardon?"
Roger shrugged. "You know - when evolution was just getting going, and there wasn't anyone really making any decisions about things for the stars to tell the story of?"
"Your terms are unfamiliar," Professor Firenze said, frowning.
"It's Muggle science," Jane said. "And don't tell Geoffrey he doesn't know."
Geoffrey Phillips was a Muggle-born pill who always complained about how backward the wizarding world was in all things. Teddy wouldn't dream of giving him ammunition, but in this case, he did feel a bit stupid and slow as Jane, Roger, and Joe proceeded to explain the Muggle theory, and tell the class about animals called dinosaurs. Roger - who seemed to have an inordinate interest in them - kept saying that he was going to take his friends to a museum to see these things, but somehow, it had never happened.
Professor Firenze took it philosophically. "You mistake the teachings of the stars if you assume they are matters of choice alone. What a great conflict you describe, and such glorious beasts! Surely, Mars was bright then."
Roger grinned. "If all times are one time, maybe we could magically hop through and collect a dinosaur for the Forbidden Forest."
"Hagrid'd like that," Corky said.
"This is an unwise direction for conversation," Professor Firenze warned.
"Well, what about just Divining?" Tinny asked. "You said we might be able to read the past. Or maybe we could see what it would be like if they hadn't died. Scry it in a crystal ball or something."
The class generally agreed that this would be a fabulous idea, but Professor Firenze cut it off with an irritated swipe of his tail. "This is nonsense scrying. Perhaps Professor Trelawney would find such a plaything interesting. I do not."
Teddy didn't care about seeing a world with surviving dinosaurs - from the sound of it, there'd only be big lizards, and no people at all - but he did take notice of exactly what Professor Firenze said - "nonsense scrying" and "unwise direction." He didn't say it was impossible. After class, Teddy waited for the others to leave, then went to him.
"Professor?"
He turned. "Yes, Mr. Lupin?"
"Is it possible to see different ways the present might be? I don't mean with dinosaurs."
"Please sit down, Mr. Lupin." Professor Firenze indicated a rock that was probably a desk when the classroom wasn't magically transformed, and Teddy sat on it. The Centaur frowned deeply. "You wish to see a world in which your parents, rather than dinosaurs, survived."
"Well - thirteen years. If seventy-five is ephemera, thirteen could hardly make a difference at all. If all times are one time, it's got to be close. I mean, if it's possible to see other presents." He shrugged. "I just fancy knowing what my brothers and sisters might have been like."
Professor Firenze took a deep breath, and sighed it out thoughtfully. "You have a mind for this, Teddy, and you ask wise, if dangerous, questions. There are those in your Ministry who study such things. I am not one of them, nor would I choose to be. What you speak of isn't Sybill Trelawney's fortune telling tripe, but a mystery of Time itself. Mysteries are rarely tame."
"I don't mean to change anything, though..."
"Not at present." He cantered over to the window. "Within the Ministry, such studies lead to devices of great power. There was once a Mirror, here within the walls of the school, which your godfather could discuss with you."
"The Mirror of Erised? No, Uncle Harry said that didn't have truth. It just showed what he wanted most."
"And you don't find this to be a form of truth?" Professor Firenze shook his head. "The Mirror toyed with the mystery of Identity. You propose to toy in an even more volatile mystery. What good would it do to know what never can happen?" He looked back at Teddy. "I am sure you recall what happened to your friend Mr. Apcarne when he was swallowed by a mystery that was too large for him."
Teddy remembered. Frankie had got obsessed with finding the soul of one of his parents' friends, and Teddy'd ended up needing to pull him out of a battle with Red Caps and a raging Forest Fire. He started to protest that he only meant to scry, but he guessed that Professor Firenze wouldn't be impressed with the distinction. And he guessed that maybe there was a point. It wasn't like he'd ever be able to reach through the surface and meet the siblings he was quite sure he was meant to have, or get a scolding from Mum for being careless, or see his own father's excuse for looking stern.
It wasn't fair - not after everything they'd been through - but he knew what Uncle Harry would say: Accept. Learn to accept, Teddy, even when it's hard.
He felt oddly old for the rest of the day. It wasn't entirely unpleasant. That night, he went back to his room and opened the Marauder's Map, tapping it with Dad's wand. He knew how to make it insult him, but he thought he'd rather just talk to Dad. He frowned at it.
"I'm, er... well, Dad, I'm sorry it didn't all work out."
The Map did absolutely nothing.
Of course. The Map was full of high-spirited fun. It didn't know that all of its creators were dead, and lived in its own perpetual state of amusement with the world. Which actually sounded better than moping about. He watched the dots moving around the corridors. Filch and his cat, Master Norris, were in the dungeons. Professor Longbottom was talking to Vivian in his office. The Aurors on duty were posted at the door now that curfew had all the students inside.
Teddy smiled to himself and headed downstairs, thinking that a little jaunt around the school with the Marauders would be just about exactly what he wanted. He didn't have any particular goal in mind, but it occurred to him that he could even set up a prank. He hadn't really tried that yet.
"Teddy?"
He stopped by the portrait hole. Victoire was standing at the bottom of the girls' staircase, looking mutinous. She was wearing a dressing gown, but it was open, and showed a nightgown that had been Charmed with garish flashing lights, not Victoire's style at all. She closed the dressing gown. "My roommates thought it was funny," she said, then looked at the Map. "Is that the... you know?"
Teddy had enlisted her help with the Marauder's Map two years ago, but they hadn't had an occasion to use it since. "Yes. Do you want to learn to use it?"
She brightened and nodded.
"Do you have your little bag of tricks?"
She shifted something around, and he saw that it was slung over her shoulder. "It's my purse. I don't leave it behind."
"Excellent." He gestured to the portrait hole. "Ladies first!"
If she'd been Ruthless, this would have got him a punch to the arm, but Victoire just clambered happily through the hole, barely waiting for him to get through with the Map before heading off into the shadowy corridor.
Teddy coughed as the portrait hole closed, and gestured for Victoire to stop. She did, shifting from foot to foot. Teddy winked up at the Fat Lady, who conspicuously looked away, then went to join Victoire.
"Here." He pointed his wand at her nightgown. "Finite incantatem." The flashing lights disappeared.
"Thanks."
"What did you do to end up glittering?"
"Nothing!" she said, drawing her eyebrows together. "I didn't do anything. I cleaned up, and I even made us a system to keep the whole dormitory neat, and give all of us the same amount of space."
"Oh," Teddy said.
She gave him a bruised sort of look. "You think I was wrong."
Teddy squirmed. "I think perhaps... well, you're not the eldest sister, they might..." He shrugged. "Well, maybe they were just trying to get you to lighten up. You ought to make their shoes sing Christmas carols or something in the morning."
"I don't have anything that does that."
"I think there's a Charm in the book Ron and Hermione gave me for Christmas. We'll try it before we go back."
"You don't think that would make them madder?"
"If it does, then they're not worth worrying about." He opened the Map. "Do you want to use your wand, or Dad's wand? Dad's makes it do a few different things."
"I'll use mine," Victoire said. "I think that only the person who's Map-master should use the maker's wand."
This struck Teddy as a nearly perfect rule, and he decided that, as soon as he figured out a good spell, he'd work it into the Keys to the Castle, which controlled the Map. Perhaps he'd even start his own list of spells, though he supposed he'd need a nickname if he was to be a proper Marauder. He imagined passing the Map on to James after school, and James adding his own spells, then the Map-master after James - maybe little Fred Weasley - adding more, and he thought the Marauders would like that. He grinned. "All right, then," he said. He handed her the Map. Dad's wand was magically tethered, but when it flew in her direction, she just tucked it into the pocket of her dressing gown. He indicated to open it, and waited until she'd raised her wand. "The incantation is, 'I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good.'"
She straightened her shoulders, tapped the Map with her wand, and said it. The spidery lines of writing appeared, the formal greeting to other magical mischief-makers. She smiled widely and lit her wand. "Does anyone else know about this?"
Teddy nodded. "Frankie. And I told Ruthless last year. But you're the only one who knows about the Keys to the Castle."
The castle began to appear, then the little moving dots that represented all the people in it. Victoire had seen this before, but she still looked delightedly surprised. "We're right here, Teddy!" she said, pointing to the two dots labeled "Ted Lupin" and "Victoire Weasley." She ran her finger back into Gryffindor Tower. "And there are all of my dormitory mates. Oh, Mabel's out of bed, by my bed - I'll have to check and make sure she hasn't hexed anything... And there's Ruthless, pacing around..."
"She does that a lot," Teddy said, and, unbidden, he imagined Ruthless in a short nightdress, wandlight playing over her face, pacing back and forth among her sleeping roommates.
Victoire bit her lip, started to say something, then shook her head. "Oh, look, Vivian is visiting Neville."
"Professor Longbottom," Teddy reminded her. "It's hard to remember if you don't do it all the time."
"Professor Longbottom," Victoire corrected herself. "So, what shall we do?"
"What do you have in your bag?"
She pulled her bag around in front of her and opened it, rooting around inside with a look of concentration. "Three or four dungbombs, a box of Canary Creams..." She fished under her wallet and a string of pictures of her sisters and brother came out, draping itself over the zipper. Aimee and Marie Weasley waved frantically at Teddy and Artie walked on his hands across the bottom of his. "...a bottle of U-No-Poo, I think I've got a Portable Salt-Marsh in here..."
Teddy shook his head in admiration. "Did George give you any Portable Daydreams? They're small enough that we could hide them in things."
She nodded enthusiastically. "He's made them into sprinkles, so you can have them with breakfast. I've been putting them on my porridge before History of Magic."
"I wonder if we could get them into the teachers' food..."
Victoire wrinkled her nose. "I like to have them for myself, thanks."
"Oh. Right." He shrugged. "Maybe something will come to mind. Let's have a look around."
"Oh, yes! Let's go see Nev - Professor Longbottom and Vivian. I think they like each other."
"Er... I don't know..." Teddy contemplated this odd notion, then gratefully latched on to the obvious problem. "Vivian can see through walls. We oughtn't go there."
"Oh. Where shall we go?"
"Have you ever been in the Great Hall when it's empty?"
She shook her head. "Is it empty now?" She flipped the Map up with great aplomb. "Nearly Headless Nick is in the entrance hall..."
"Nick never says anything."
"Madam Rosmerta's... in the kitchens, right, near Hufflepuff?"
Teddy came around behind her to look at the Map right side up. "Looks clear, other than Nick. Let's go." He waited for her to fold the Map, then, keeping to the shadows, led her downstairs.
Nearly Headless Nick saw them when they got to the entrance hall. "Ah," he said, "a bit of late night mischief?"
Teddy nodded. "Want to come along?"
"Alas, other business occupies me this evening. I am composing a petition to the Society For Redress of Ghostly Grievance, on behalf of the fair Madam Rosmerta, who feels she ought to have leave to haunt her own place of business. The dear lady has not been one of us long enough to know the twisting paths of Post-Mortal Justice."
"Why can't she haunt her pub?" Victoire asked.
"Her faithless son, to whom she left it, found it tiresome to be informed of his mistakes in operating it. She was therefore restricted to Hogwarts, where she crossed over, or merely High Street, in Hogsmeade."
"You seem fond of her," Victoire said eagerly. "Can ghosts get married? Perhaps the Fat Friar could help."
"There would be little point," Nick said delicately, and floated off, nose in the air.
Victoire deflated. "Oh, I think I've hurt his feelings."
"You'll get used to the ghosts," Teddy said, and shrugged. "They can be a little touchy. Have you met Myrtle yet?"
"No."
Teddy opened the door to the Great Hall, and led her inside. The candles were dark, but moonlight streamed through the windows and the enchanted ceiling showered everything in silver. "Come on," he said. "Let's go to the high table."
She giggled and followed him up to the table at the front of the room.
"Madam Headmistress?" Teddy said, and pulled out Sprout's chair.
"Oh, thank you, dear boy."
Teddy settled himself in the padded chair that Slughorn used. "Really, madam, I was just speaking to Ginny Potter, of the Holyhead Harpies, and she was telling me that Kirly Duke - you'd know him from the Weird Sisters - was meeting with Fifi LaFolle, who let me read the first copy of her new book..."
She laughed and spread the Map out on the table. "Let's see, who else is up... Madam Pince is in the library..."
"She's always there one night a week. I think that's when she Hexes up the new books."
"Mm. Oh, there's Hagrid coming out of his cabin. Why can't we see inside Hagrid's cabin?"
Teddy shrugged. "They liked him. I reckon they decided he ought to have some privacy."
"Oh, all right." She scanned further. "Oh, they're having a game or something in Hufflepuff. There's Frankie and Tinny and Roger and Bernice and Zachary, all down in their Common Room. They must play without us sometimes."
"It's a different thing," Teddy said. "Frankie says they never play Muggles and Minions without inviting everyone."
"Oh, then what are they doing?"
"I don't know. Hufflepuffs can be really secretive when they want to be. Maybe they're inventing a way to make ships fly off on cyclones."
"What?"
"Never mind."
"Oh, look! It's Donzo! Who's that he's with?"
Teddy looked up at the corner of the Map that showed Ravenclaw Tower. Donzo was headed down the stairs with a dot labeled "Melania Khetran," who Teddy thought was one of the second years who'd congregated in Ravenclaw the way his own year had tended to congregate in Hufflepuff. "They must be friends," he said. "Looks like they're headed down here. Come on, let's meet them."
Victoire got up and folded the Map - Teddy checked one last time to make sure no one else was headed down to the entrance hall - and they went between the long tables, their feet making soft slapping sounds on the stones. They reached the doors, and Teddy put his finger to his mouth; Donzo would probably be down by now, and not expecting anyone to be here.
He pushed the door open and let Victoire out, then looked up the stairs where he saw something that distracted him entirely from Marauding, from Victoire, even from the notion that Fenrir Greyback was out there somewhere and coming after him.
Halfway up, Donzo - his friend, from his year - was holding hands with a pretty, dark-haired girl. He was taller than she was, but when he took a step down, he looked back at her, and she kissed him.
Suddenly, the girl jumped, her hand to her heart. "Donnie, there's someone downstairs!"
