Chapter 7. Teddy Remus Lupin.

Harry walked out of the fireplace as quietly as the Floo Network allowed. He used his wand to clean ash and soot off his clothes and froze for a moment, listening to the silence.

Harry rubbed his eyes tiredly and glanced at the clock – it was half past one in the morning. A nice vacation, indeed. He entered the living room and smiled faintly: Ginny was sleeping on the couch, wrapped in a tartan. He face was in the shadows and she was breathing evenly into the cushion.

He caught movement to his left. Harry turned sharply and breathed out in relief. His godson was looking at him from a chair. Lupin held his wand firmly in his hand, but he looked neither alarmed nor tired. Harry nodded toward the kitchen and both men left the living room quietly, careful not to wake Ginny.

Harry lit candles and conjured hot tea for Teddy and himself. After the young man walked in, stretching – stiff from all the sitting – Harry cast one-way sound-proofing charm on the kitchen. Now they could hear any sound from the outside, but nothing said in the kitchen would carry to the outside of it.

Lupin sat at the table, looking at his godfather enjoy sipping the hot tea. Harry Potter looked tired and worried. Teddy had not seen that expression on his godfather's face for a long time.

"Thank you for staying here," Harry said quietly, looking past Teddy. "Were there any problems with Amanda?"

"With Amanda, no," Teddy smiled slightly, brushing ash-blonde locks from his face. He did not often use the trait he inherited from his mother, but he still changed his hair and eye colour about once in half a year. For variety's sake, as he put it. During the last few months he had ash-blonde hair and blue eyes. He had his father's smile and his mother's spunky look in his eyes. "But that relative of yours almost killed me when I walked out of the fireplace with a sleeping child in my arms. I never thought that fear improves Muggles' aim so much… He threw some strange contraption at me."

Harry smiled:

"Well, that's a Dursley for you."

"He threatened to never let his daughter go anywhere, since you were so cavalier about your promise to deliver her home right after the shopping trip."

Harry merely waved off the threat. He couldn't add the concern for insulting Dudley's fatherly sensibilities to all his other woes. He twisted the inconspicuous bracelet on his wrist. The bracelet was still warm.

"Will you tell me what happened?" Teddy finally also started on his tea, "Ginny was going out of her mind, and Jim kept trying to stand guard downstairs.

Harry smiled again – a tired and somewhat detached smile.

"An emergency summons to the Ministry, I take it. Now what?" Teddy very much wanted to know what prompted his godfather to become so concerned about his family's safety for the first time in five or six years. The summons happed before as well – his godfather was an Auror, after all. But for the summons to result in the tightening of the home security system – this hadn't happened in a long time.

Harry nodded, unsure whether he wanted to think over everything that happened today and the causes of it all. A multitude of images swarmed inside his mind.

"Harry."

The man flinched and looked at Teddy's concerned face. His godson was already twenty one; he had recently graduated Hogwarts with honors, and immediately got a job in the "Magical Printing-house". Teddy was marrying Marie-Victoire in the spring. He often said that he considered himself a lucky bloke: a Metamorphmagus with a wonderful grandmother who raised him, and a godfather – his best friend who was both a father and a brother to him.

"There has been an escape from Azkaban. The special section," Harry was staring down at his fingers, twisting a teacup.

"The special section?" Teddy's eyes narrowed – he started to catch on, but he wanted to hear it all from his godfather.

"Yes, that very one," Harry nodded at the tabletop, avoiding Teddy's eyes.

"I remember that section being established. Five years ago, right?"

Harry nodded again, now looking at his godson's calm (too calm) face.

Harry leaned back, letting the memories from five years ago flood his mind. He tried to get away from them all day, but to no avail.

"The case of the werewolves. Remember?"

Teddy nodded, clutching the teaspoon. The teaspoon clanged against the teacup. A son of a werewolf himself, Teddy felt compassion for all members of this strange class.

"I didn't know the details," Lupin said quietly.

"No, not many did, aside from those directly involved."

"You?"

"Yes, it was assigned to my team," Harry sighed, remembering that day almost five years ago. "Everything started with articles in the Muggle newspapers: they started finding bodies of children killed by dogs. Six in all, in one month. All died in the same manner – bitten on the neck and bled to death. All cases were claimed to have happened at full moon or close to it. Our experts were allowed to examine the bodies."

"Werewolves?"

"Yes, all children were bitten to death by werewolves."

"That is, they were bitten to kill, not to be made werewolves?" Teddy clarified. He was pale, his eyes full of despair.

"Those who bit them could not control themselves," said Harry, "Anyway, they assigned this case to my team. We waited for the full moon. There were six more dead Muggle children in one night. We did manage to capture one werewolf, right here in London. A teenager, a fifteen-year-old."

Teddy sat straighter in his chair:

"Fifteen?!"

Harry nodded, glancing at the kitchen door. He didn't want anyone else to hear this story.

"It was Voldemort's plan, carried out by Fenrir Greyback. To create a population of werewolves who could transform at will, not involuntarily and only during the full moon. This population would become part of Voldemort's army. Each werewolf was to conceive a child with a witch – a non-bitten witch. When a child was born, the werewolf would bite the mother and the baby."

Harry retreated into his thoughts, remembering the terror he felt after learning of this. Teddy was taking deep breaths, seemingly lost in his own personal thoughts.

"Was this plan ever realized?"

"Yes. As we found out, by the time of Voldemort's death, about twenty such children had been born. The werewolf families lived on a reservation in the mountains, waiting for their time to act. As part of the plan, the children were given Wolfsbane Potion, so that they wouldn't know the taste of human blood. The settlement was closed to the outsiders. After Voldemort's downfall, the remaining werewolves hid on this secret reservation. They carried on what they had started with Riddle. They decided that they would create enough werewolves to defeat the wizards."

"The same old agenda," Teddy said bitterly. The pallor began to recede from his face.

"Yes, Greyback left his mark on history. Anyway, they lived quietly and circumspectly in the mountains, occasionally attacking animals and passersby. They lived in secret until the children grew up and decided that they were tired of the quiet living."

"How many were there?"

"About thirty, between ten and sixteen years of age. All of them werewolves, none of them with any moral code. They did not obey anyone anymore and wanted to go their own way. They managed to escape their parents' control and began attacking children. We caught one of them."

Harry fell silent again, remembering the face of their captive – a charming boy with an earnest eyes and a child's blood on his face and clothes. The man shuddered.

"You caught them, right? It was in the papers."

"We caught them," Harry echoed. For the first time he was on the verge of telling the truth about the events in the werewolves' gorge. This knowledge was limited to a narrow circle of Ministry workers. "We surrounded their settlement three days before the full moon. The adults tried to resist, although many of them did not have wands. And then they joined the fray. The teenagers, the outcome of Voldemort's experiments. Werewolves, who could transform outside of the full moon."

Teddy looked at his godfather, aghast. What Harry was relating was terrifying.

"They could transform at will and, as you know, werewolves are practically impervious to usual spells. Only the Avada Kedavra worked, but even it most often failed to kill, only to stun or maim, at times. However, there were many of us, and we were people with experience. Their number kept shrinking when this happened." Harry closed his eyes remembering the gorge: the twilight, the screams and growls around him, green and red spell flashes, dilapidated shacks, and him. "A werewolf rushed at me. I barely managed to raise my wand when one of my comrades shouted the spell. However, nary a moment beforehand, a woman stepped in between the werewolf and the green jet. It was his mother."

Harry's voice broke and he buried his face in his hands. That woman's scream still echoed in his ears. And her eyes. The eyes of the mother who stood between her son and death.

"She died instantly," Harry forced himself to continue, "I was in a real stupor, as if paralyzed. The werewolf instantly transformed into a boy – could not have been more than thirteen – and dropped to his knees, hugging his mother's body to him. Then he threw himself at me – a child, with his small fists and his teeth bared. The hood fell off my head. Then the others grabbed him and led him away."

"He saw your scar, didn't he?" Teddy asked quietly, mechanically taking sip of his already cold tea.

"I think so," Harry nodded, and he stirred on his chair, trying to push away the memory of the eyes full of hatred, the eyes that promised revenge. "Those who survived – ten teenagers-werewolves – were sent to Azkaban, to the special section. It was created for them. A cellar with only a hatchway in the ceiling. There was no light, no air, nothing at all. Just a hole in the ground, with them in it. The guards threw food and the Wolfsbane Potion down through the hatchway. No one was allowed to contact them – they were deemed dangerous. The Ministry feared that someone would gain knowledge of the new breed of werewolves or that they would escape and somehow enter the wider world. Cruel, wasn't it?"

Teddy saw the bitter smile on his godfather's face and felt momentarily sorry for those boys.

"So, they did escape."

"Yes, the Ministry was right at least about that. They escaped. When a guard who brought them food did not hear anything below, he sounded alarm. When the others went into the cellar, they found nothing, save the dead body of one of the boys and an underground passage. They didn't take the potion for five years and clawed their way out. The passage connected the cellar with the seashore. They must have swum from there. We found the spot on the mainland where they came ashore, I was there three hours ago. There were three more dead bodies there."

Teddy looked askance at his godfather.

"No, that boy's body was not among the three. He is alive and free. And five others with him. And they are not children any longer."

All became silent in the kitchen.

"Will you tell Ginny?"

Harry shook his head:

"Not everything, only certain facts. I don't want to scare her."

"But she must know that you are in danger!"

"No. She tends to worry over nothing, as it is. I don't want to place an even bigger burden on her," said Harry and broke off abruptly. His last words suddenly brought back the memory of the grey-bearded wizard crying in his study. His Teacher said almost the same thing the night Sirius died. "I will not frighten her."

Teddy shook his head in disagreement, but he didn't say anything. He stood up and reached out to shake his godfather's hand:

"I must be going, I promised Marie to return home. If you need me, you know where to find me."

His godfather nodded as he shook Lupin's hand. He then patted him on the shoulder and walked him to the fireplace, marveling all the while at how much the son resembled his father. Never having known Remus Lupin, Teddy Remus Lupin followed his life's path with the same inner light as his father.