Chapter 10:
Reparo
The words remained on the page for a long time, then sank back into the parchment. Writing began to scroll across it, in different hands, some on top of one another, in crazy, cock-eyed angles. It looked like a tangle of graffiti on a wall for a moment, then the mad jumble started to organize itself, each hand gathering in its own space, all of the notes turning upright, sailing to the corners of the scroll, forming somewhat neater lists. There weren't enough words to account for everything Teddy had seen flash by, and he guessed that all of it was layered inside.
He shook his head, trying to remind himself that the boys who made this had only been a few years older than he was.
The top left corner was in his father's hand, and it was labeled "Moony's Charms." The list beneath it was mostly Latin incantations having to do with appearance and detection. Teddy wasn't altogether sure what any of them would do precisely, but if he had to guess, he was looking at the charms that made the map appear and disappear... and updated it. He would need to look up the Latin to find out for certain, but it felt right.
In the upper right corner, "Prongs's Charms" were almost entirely in English, and Teddy realized with a start that James Potter must have actually invented most of them. They were simple and to the point-"Identify," "True Name," "Conjure mark"-but Teddy couldn't begin to understand the magic that had to have gone into making them work. He marveled at this, looking at the Map itself, and feeling slow and stupid in comparison. James Potter's spells, still working, found and identified everyone on the Hogwarts grounds. How could it find and name people born long after the original spell-caster died? But there he was himself, a dot on the fifth floor of Gryffindor Tower, labeled "Ted Lupin." Not Edward or Theodore, not even Teddy, which he always used, but Ted, just as it was on his birth scroll. And there were all of the other students, spread out through the school, some of them the children of children who hadn't been born yet when the Map was new. (Teddy supposed he qualified for this as well-Mum would have only been a baby, no bigger than Hugo and Lily-but he guessed the Map would think of him as his father's son, as much as maps could think.)
The lower left corner was taken up by "Padfoot's Protections," mostly in French for some reason. Teddy barely spoke enough to get the essence of them (and most of that, he picked up from the Latin Granny'd had him study carefully at home), but he guessed that he was looking at the spells that were responsible for the impenetrable walls that had gone up around the Map. He wondered if Sirius Black had picked up some of the security spells at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, and cheerfully re-applied them here. The final list was "Wormtail's Secrets." It was in a mix of languages, including what Teddy thought were ancient runes, and the few that he could decipher seemed to be about finding things... apparently, it had been Wormtail's spell that found their lost items. Teddy wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that.
Tentatively, he touched the spell that he thought would update the Map. In the center of the parchment, between the lists, his father's handwriting scrawled out a complicated sort of spell with a Latin incantation-Reficio-along with some theory that Teddy didn't understand, and an absolute condition (this had been inserted in Sirius's hand) that the person using the spell must "Pass 'Identify.'" In large, block letters beneath it, it said, "PURVEYORS' USE ONLY."
Teddy's heart sank-the Map did identify him... as "Ted Lupin." Distinctly not one of the Purveyors of Magical Mischief, no matter whose wand he was using.
"Oh, come on, Dad," he said. "Give me a hint."
He hadn't really expected a response and didn't get one.
Ten minutes later, the portrait hole opened and the Gryffindors poured through it, jubilant at their first win of the Quidditch season. An elated older boy swept into Teddy's dormitory and grabbed him, saying he didn't care who was at the match, everyone was to be at the party.
The party lasted until dinner time, and Teddy put all thoughts of the Map out of his head. A seventh-year girl who was the team's new captain, Priya Patil, had got a holiday-in-a-box from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes for her birthday, and she turned the Common Room into a dance club for three hours, complete with wandering fireworks and a band (the band was strictly an illusion, and played popular music straight from recordings Teddy had heard on Wizarding Wireless, but it was a good bit of magic nonetheless). Food was nicked from the kitchens, though it didn't seem right to call it "nicking" when Winky brought it herself and was asked to dance by Elliott March, who the girls all seemed to think very good-looking. Teddy asked Ruthless to dance, but she said she only danced alone (and when he saw her, he could see why, as she looked a bit dangerous to be close to), so instead, he danced with one of her dormitory mates and then with Priya herself, who had decided to celebrate the victory by dancing with every boy in Gryffindor. Somehow, Teddy ended up morphing for the amusement of the rest of his House, each of them in turn saying, "Oh, can you do my face, Teddy?" He was a little tired of it by the end, but he still felt warm and good when they all went down to dinner together, and happily re-did his hair in scarlet and gold for the occasion.
Professor Longbottom came by the table, telling them with deep sincerity that they should comport themselves with dignity and good sportsmanship, though this was largely drowned out by the lion roaring from his hat. "Priya gets it now," one of the older boys told Teddy as Longbottom, indeed, put it on Priya's head. "Longbottom got it from some friend when he became Head of House, and now the captain always wears it after the first win."
The lion roared; the Gryffindors cheered it.
During pudding, Frankie came by, breaking his yellow and black rule in honor of the occasion by wearing a Gryffindor rosette. "Good game," he said. "Kind of thought you'd be there."
"I think I might go to the next one," Teddy said. "I don't usually like Quidditch but-"
"Right, it's not about Quidditch." Frankie smiled. "We're all meeting in the library tomorrow to... study." He flashed a piece of parchment that said, "Slipping outside." "We'll be there around eleven."
Teddy nodded, and Frankie ceremoniously gave him back to the Gryffindors.
The next morning, Gryffindor Tower was given to furious work, as no one had touched an assignment all day Saturday. The roaring hat was returned to Professor Longbottom, as it was distracting everyone. Teddy got up as early as he could and finished all but his Potions homework for Slughorn, then went to the library an hour before he was supposed to meet Frankie. He went to the desk and asked Madam Pince for dictionaries in French and Latin, and if she happened to know of any spells which would identify a language so he could translate it properly. To his surprise, she got him the books without comment, though she said there was no truly reliable spell for language identification. "If you've a sample of the text you mean to translate," she offered, "I'm familiar with several myself."
He smiled uncertainly, never having heard of Madam Pince being generous, but said, "I'll have a go at the French and Latin first."
Her mouth grew tight and sour again, and she waved him off with no further comment.
Teddy started with his father's spells in Latin, but most of the ones he needed referred him to other spells, including James Potter's complex English ones and several of the protective ones from Sirius. There was no chance of him understanding Potter's, so he tried translating Sirius's spells-Je lie ceci, "I bind this"-seemed to be the one that was most often in his way; it was definitely the spell that kept anyone other than the Marauders from changing the map. But "Prongs's" riddle had suggested that they could also "bind more"-that new people could be added. Teddy wondered briefly if they'd always meant to pass it to their sons, but he guessed they really meant to give it to another group of students after they left school. He doubted any of them were exactly thinking about sons who wouldn't be born for years. They hadn't been anyone's fathers then, he reminded himself. They were just like him-students at Hogwarts.
Really smart students at Hogwarts.
He ground his teeth and tried to translate backwards, to find the spell that would bind him in, but he got lost in a nest of security spells that he couldn't make kettles or cauldrons of. Frustrated, he cleared the scroll and put it into his bag. He pulled out his Potions book. It caught on something solid, and before he recognized it, his ink bottle was tumbling out. It crashed to the marble floor and shattered.
"Tergeo," someone said, and Teddy looked up to see Frankie, who was pointing his wand at the spreading pool of ink. It disappeared. He shifted focus to the bottle and said, "Reparo." The shards flew back together, and Frankie grinned. "Just learned that one," he said. "I've been practicing. Do you have anything else that's broken?"
"Sorry, no." Teddy looked around. "There's a crack in the window, though." He pointed at one of the narrow panes.
Frankie looked at this with great delight and repaired it with a flick of his wand and a firmly pronounced incantation. "They must not have noticed it yet," he said, then sat down beside Teddy. "We're going to have a jaunt out in the forest before curfew," he said. "We're allowed outside then..."
"Not in the Forest."
"It's such a shame that it's so easy to take a wrong turn." Frankie grinned. "Come on. The others are waiting over by the creature shelves."
Teddy followed Frankie around several sets of high shelves to a little nook amongst the books on animals. Dragons and phoenixes swooped up and down the spines, and a gold-leaf werewolf prowled the length of an encyclopedia of Dark creatures. It growled menacingly at Teddy. Teddy rolled his eyes at it and sat down at the table where Roger, Tinny, Bernice, Ruthless, Donzo, Zachary, and Ken were huddled. Frankie looked up, squinting into the stacks. "You, back there!" A pause. "Yes, you. Are you looking for us?"
"Saw Teddy," Maurice Burke's voice said. "I'll go."
"Is this a friend of yours?" Frankie asked.
Teddy nodded. "It's Maurice. He's all right."
"Can you keep secrets?" Frankie asked as Maurice slipped out of the shadows.
Maurice shrugged. "I'm a Slytherin. What do you think?"
"Oh, good. Full set of the Houses," Donzo said.
"The Sorting Hat will be so pleased," Zachary added solemnly.
"Where are we going?" Teddy asked.
"Just a quick patrol," Frankie told him. "Bernice thinks there may be something brewing. We should look into it."
"Saving the world and all," Zachary said.
Donzo raised an eyebrow. "And we're sure it's not going to turn out to be something Longbottom's growing for Herbology students, or Hagrid's raising for his classes?"
They all laughed, remembering the kappa. Frankie organized them into a loose group, and they headed out of the castle casually, trying to look like they meant to go to the lake. Hagrid, who was feeding the giant squid, gave them a suspicious look, then shook his head and looked away.
Something hard and sharp hit the side of Teddy's knee and he tripped into Maurice. The Red Cap grinned at him wickedly and raised its club for another blow. Teddy hexed it back-everyone in school got Red Cap lessons from the first day on-and it retreated.
"Couldn't we work on getting rid of those things?" he muttered to Frankie.
Frankie shrugged. "They'll fade out on their own eventually. Place was overrun with them during the goblin uprising of 1612, at least according to Binns. Mind, he wasn't quite old enough to have actually seen it, but I reckon, as obsessed as he is with goblins, that he probably knows what's what."
"You'd think their caps would be dried out by now."
"What?"
"When you dry the blood in their caps, they're supposed to die or disappear."
"Oh. Right. It's magic. Doesn't dry unless you force it, and you practically have to burn them up to do it, which half the time ends up with the rest of them attacking, so there's more bloodshed, and the next thing you know-"
"More Red Caps," Teddy finished.
"I saw Longbottom dry out a handful of them once when I was a first year-they'd got a really stupid fourth year girl cornered-but I guess most of the teachers have just decided to let them die out on their own." He flicked his wand at one that was trying to come through the undergrowth and muttered a Curse; it scuttled back. "They're just a bother, really, as long as you can see them and have your wand. It's Muggles who have to worry about them, as they can be beaten half to death without ever seeing them."
They'd entered the outer fringe of the Forest now, and Frankie signaled for the others to come close.
"All right," he said. "Stay in pairs, at least. No one alone. I'm with Lupin. No one's-"
"-seen the spiders for years," Zachary said impatiently, "but watch out for them anyway."
"And don't try to fight with them if you see them," Tinny added.
"Fine, go then. Look for anything odd."
They all split up. If it was anything like the last forest jaunt, they'd come back with weirdly shaped pine cones and maybe a strangely colored rock.
"Frankie, do you really think there's something evil in here, or is it just a game?" Teddy asked as soon as the others were out of earshot.
Frankie stopped. "I don't know. There's something really weird, though. Come on." He nodded down a shadowy path, indicating that Teddy should follow him. Teddy did so. "I saw this last time, but I didn't show the rest. I don't want Bernice trying to burn it."
"Burn what?"
"We're nearly there. It's up where the old spider nest was. You can still see where the webs were." He bent and went under a low branch, then said, "Here."
Teddy followed him. He hoped that Frankie knew the way back; he'd got entirely twisted up on the way here. At first, he couldn't see anything strange at all. The glade was full of a very pale ivy, growing in great profusion over old stumps, winding its way up the trees. It was just a pretty sort of forest glade. "What is it?"
"I've never seen leaves this pale," Frankie said. "They're nearly white."
"I don't know every plant there is..."
"Also, Teddy, it's the sixth of December. This is fresh growth. I may not be the best Herbology student in my year, but I know that doesn't entirely match."
Teddy bent and reached out to touch the creeping vines, which were almost beautiful. "I think it's fine," he said.
Frankie yanked him back. "You don't know it is. Don't stick your hand into it."
Teddy almost suggested taking a leaf back to Professor Longbottom, but the thought of pulling a leaf of this plant seemed somehow horrible to him. Far back, one leaf shivered. "Well, maybe we could-oh, bloody... watch out." Another leaf had shivered, further up, then a third. He raised his wand just as the Red Cap pounced up out of the ivy, waving its club. It fell back with a cheated sort of squeal. Teddy looked at Frankie. "Thanks for not letting me in there; it's probably crawling with the things."
"I didn't see that coming," Frankie said.
"The leaves were shaking."
"If they were, it was about as much as a mouse would shake them. You have eyes like a hawk."
Teddy morphed his eyes to look like a raptor's eyes, and Frankie laughed. They walked around the edge of the strange growth-keeping their eyes out for Red Caps-and saw nothing else that seemed suspicious. Teddy made a mental note to find out what this kind of plant was.
They picked their way back along the dark forest path, and found Maurice and Tinny hunched over some large mushrooms, which they all decided not to gather up. Tinny checked her watch; to Teddy's surprise, it was already late afternoon. He couldn't remember spending so much time in the old spider's nest. Frankie raised his wand and sent up a shower of sparks, and a moment later, the other groups wandered in. Bernice and Ken were sure they'd seen a ghost they didn't know, but couldn't tell anyone anything about it. Donzo, who'd been off with Roger, Zachary, and Ruthless, leaned over to Teddy conspiratorially and said, "We passed them. She didn't see a ghost unless she was looking up his nostril for one."
"What?"
"They were kissing."
Teddy looked at them, not quite believing it, then shook his head. "All right. I guess."
"Well, at least she didn't burn anything this time."
They got back to the castle just before the doors closed for the night and there would have been trouble for still being outside, and separated to their House tables for dinner. Teddy ate with Ruthless and wondered if she had kissed anyone, which seemed like a very strange thing to wonder about.
When he got back to his dormitory, Checkmate ran to him eagerly to confirm that he was there, then hid under the bed to pout until she thought he'd been properly punished for not being here. He settled in to do his Potions work, and had got about halfway through when he heard something tapping at one of the narrow windows. A post owl was perched there, and he let it in. It had started to rain outside, and the bird brought in a rush of water. It was carrying a letter addressed in Victoire's "fancy" writing, which was her regular, round handwriting with a lot of curlicues added around it. Teddy dug around for something to feed the owl, finally settling on some of Checkmate's cat food and a bit of pumpkin juice he'd brought up from the Great Hall, then taking the letter.
Dear Teddy, she'd written, I asked if I could be the one to tell you, and they said it was all right, even Uncle Harry, as it's my own sister in question.
Maman had the new baby. Artie is very angry, as it is another girl. Maman has named her Muriel, after old Aunt Muriel, since she's the first girl born in the family since Aunt Muriel died. Maman doesn't seem happy about the name, but I think she is a very sweet baby, much nicer than Aimee, and I was allowed to hold her. Artie tried to switch baskets with Uncle George so that we could have baby Fred instead, but they caught him at it, and it was sort of silly, as Muriel was only two hours old and not in her basket.
I hope you are still happy at Hogwarts and you don't need to answer, as it will be Christmas soon, and you can meet Muriel and say hello yourself.
Your friend, Victoire
A picture slid out of the envelope, showing Victoire holding something that was red and squirming. Teddy stuck the picture beside the stick figures James had drawn of the rest of the family.
He smiled at it and finished his homework, then settled on the floor beneath it to spend a cheerful hour accomplishing nothing at all with the Marauder's Map.
Two days after the trip to the Forest, Teddy awoke before dawn to the sound of howling wind and snow scraping against the stones of Gryffindor Tower. Through his window, he could see billowing curtains of white against the black sky, caught by the light of the waning moon.
"Hey, Checks," he said. "Look at this!"
Checkmate meowed sleepily and let him pick her up and take her to the window, but seemed unimpressed at the storm. As soon as he sat down on the chilly window seat, she buried her nose in the crook of his elbow and went back to sleep. Teddy leaned back and watched the snow until the sky turned muddy gray, enjoying the play of shapes in the air. A face seemed to appear once, only to be ripped apart and whipped into a swirling Catherine wheel, then pulled up into a towering Christmas tree. Another sheet of snow blew by with a leaping deer that became a waterfall, and exploded down into a blazing white bonfire. On mornings like this at home, he and Granny would curl up by the big parlor windows and drink hot chocolate and tell one another what they saw-he remembered, once when he was very small, Granny cuddling him because he was frightened of the storm and saying, "The wind makes the snow into a shapeshifter, just like you." Then she'd told him that his mum had been the one to say that first, when she'd been five, and then they'd started looking for all the shapes they could find, and everything had been all right. Teddy had never been afraid of storms again, and had always felt, in some strange way, that Mum was there with them when the wind howled. For the first time in weeks, Teddy missed Granny painfully, and was glad that the holidays were nearly upon him.
He got dressed when he heard the other Gryffindors start to stir, and went to breakfast with them, forcing himself not to look up at the show on the enchanted ceiling. Hagrid announced that his Care of Magical Creatures classes were canceled for the day, but said he intended to use it for "a bi' o' decoratin'," which caused the older students to cheer.
"Christmas trees," Ruthless said. "He means he's going to get them. In the middle of this." She pointed at the ceiling, and shook her head in a way that could be considered as either disbelieving of his carelessness or admiring of his courage. Teddy rather suspected the latter.
The holiday spirit continued in Transfiguration class, where Gardner had brought in several wooden balls, and the class was meant to transfigure them into glass ornaments. He did several himself-wonderful little confections with little moving figures inside of them-while the class worked. Geoffrey tut-tutted about being forced to participate in a religious holiday. Franklin Driscoll, with the air of a long-suffering saint, imposed himself as Geoffrey's partner then began a stream of holiday cheerfulness that even Geoffrey couldn't entirely resist. Donzo, to Teddy's surprise, decided that he desperately wanted to work with Lizzie Richardson, so Teddy himself ended up working with Connie Deverill, who he hadn't really talked to before, and she turned out to be quite nice.
"I'll try to get it dark blue and gold," she said. "With Puddlemere bullrushes."
"Sorry," Teddy said. "If I don't go with Holyhead colors, I may go without Christmas dinner."
She laughed. "Well, you can't very well starve, can you?"
Of course, neither of them quite managed to be so particular straight away, as changing wood to glass was, in itself, quite enough of a challenge. After fifteen minutes, Connie picked up her wooden ball and made a hissing sound at it. "Come on, you! All you need is a bit of shine!"
Teddy, who had let his attention drift and was presently doing a Charm that made the ball dart around like a Golden Snitch rather than actually working on it, smiled. "That's it, Connie. Give it a lecture." He flicked Mum's wand toward his own and brought it up to face level. "Now, now, all you have to do is this." He morphed his nose into a ball shape and made it a bright, glittering green.
"I can't believe you can do that to your nose, but not a little wooden ball," Connie said. "Your nose is all sorts of things..."
Teddy shrugged. "It's different."
"Not necessarily," Gardner said thoughtfully, coming up beside them. "It's still changing the nature of a thing. Try thinking of the ball the way you just thought of your nose."
"It's not really part of me," Teddy said. "I don't think it can morph for me."
"I'm trying to get you to think of it differently. Will you humor me and try? I've never tried teaching a Metamorphmagus before."
Teddy didn't think this was a very useful approach. He concentrated on the ball, but nothing happened.
"Now try it with your wand and the incantation," Gardner said dryly. "I didn't mean you could actually Metamorphose it, Teddy. Just think of it as... wanting to change."
"Oh," Teddy said sheepishly. He tried to imagine the ball as a part of his body, wanting to go into the shape he needed, the pattern he wanted, and he raised the wand at it and said, "Vitreus."
The ball shone brightly for a moment, then turned a shiny green.
"Good," Gardner said, looking excited. "That's what you needed to think about. Think of what you're Transfiguring as wanting to change. All of you try it now, if you're having trouble." He bent and looked at Teddy's ornament. "It's not quite glass, though. It just looks like it. That's probably because I told you to think of it the way you think of yourself, and I don't imagine you actually make yourself glass."
"No."
"Now just take one more step. Think of it as wanting to be something else, rather than just look like something else."
"Like the difference between putting on a cat nose and actually being an Animagus?"
"Exactly."
Teddy screwed up his concentration and pointed the wand again.
"Teddy, you're going to burn it," Gardner warned.
He nodded and pulled back a bit, then said "Vitreus" again, trying to hold the image of what he wanted in his head.
With a bright flash of light, the ball in front of him changed. The dark green, shiny surface turned brittle, and Teddy knew without picking it up that it was hollow. To his even greater delight, a little talon-the Harpies' symbol-appeared on top with a hook to hang it by. "I did it!"
"You certainly did."
"May I have another?"
Gardner laughed and gave him another wooden ball. This one, he made Gryffindor colors, but when he got a bit too ambitious and tried to then Charm it to travel around in little figure-eights, it got overexcited by all the magic and burst apart, reverting to little chunks of wood when it shattered.
Teddy took them down to the Great Hall for lunch anyway, figuring Frankie would want to put it back together, and in this he wasn't disappointed. Frankie fixed the wooden ball with an ostentatious swish and flick of his wand, and a carefully pronounced "Reparo." He then hunted for broken rungs on chairs, bent quills, and cracked branches on the twelve Christmas trees Hagrid had brought in, claiming that no magical skill was more important than the ability to repair things that had been broken.
Teddy re-Transfigured the wooden ball into a Gryffindor ornament, which he hung on a repaired branch, then looked for something else to Transfigure. Now that he had the feel of the thing, it seemed like too much fun to leave in class. Unfortunately, he didn't have the proper spellwork mastered to make more than glass, needles, and buttons, but that was enough to keep him entertained until it was time for Charms.
The breakthrough in thinking about Transfiguration was just in time for the end of term tests, and Teddy nearly flew through them the next week. He toasted his mum at the feast the elves made for them the night before the Hogwarts Express was scheduled to take them all home by tapping her wand against a glass of pumpkin juice. He didn't know if he'd end up top of his year-Lizzie was still ahead of him, as far as knew-but he thought he might be in fairly good shape.
The Forest Guard met as the feast wound down, all gathering around Frankie at the Hufflepuff table. They'd all agreed not to exchange presents unless they saw one another over holidays (Teddy knew he'd see Frankie; they had a standing holiday trip to make), and proceeded to invite one another wildly around the country in impossible schemes. Donzo had to say no to everyone; he would be in rehearsals until a concert the Weird Sisters were doing on the Wizarding Wireless Network on Christmas Eve. Tinny had a huge family to visit and Ruthless cited a long list of family traditions she claimed to find boring, but no one failed to notice that she didn't try to get out of them. Teddy had no intention of leaving Uncle Harry's for longer than a day with the Apcarnes and a trip to Diagon Alley with Granny, but invited a few of them who were in London to come by. (He'd always had standing permission to invite friends when he was staying at Uncle Harry's, though he'd never used it before.) Maurice, who had dragged Corky over, allowed that he wouldn't mind visitors if visitors didn't mind that his flat overlooked Knockturn Alley. Corky was catching a Portkey back to Toronto. He offered to bring everyone maple syrup. They were talking until curfew, when their respective Heads of House shooed them all back to their dormitories.
The next morning, sleighs arrived, drawn by thestrals that most of them couldn't see, to take students and their small, traveling suitcases back to Hogsmeade Station, or into Hogsmeade itself, where some parents were waiting to take them by Floo or Side-Along. Honoria's parents were among these, and Teddy thought they looked incongruously cheerful at having to see her again. Corky waved forlornly and followed Professor Slughorn to the Three Broomsticks to catch a ten o'clock shoelace home.
The ride back to London was much jollier than the ride to Hogwarts had been. Bernice and Ken, who had finally admitted to kissing one another, were chased up and down the train by charmed mistletoe, and Donzo entertained the Guard's compartment by leading them in slightly fractured Christmas carols. Teddy was happy to be with them, but kept looking out the window, waiting for his first glimpse of London's outskirts, imagining the smell of Molly Weasley's cooking and the sound of Granny singing. By the time the train finally pulled in at platform nine and three-quarters, he couldn't wait to get off it, and he wasn't the only one. There was a great deal of jostling in the aisles before he was finally able to get to a door and climb down into the steam.
Something thudded through the white, and he'd barely managed to turn around when someone waist-high barreled into him at top speed, grabbing him around the middle and knocking him over his suitcase so that he slammed his elbow into the stone floor.
"My Teddy!"
Lying on the floor of the platform, Teddy started to laugh, despite the pain in his elbow, and another, taller shape emerged from the mist. Uncle Harry smiled. "We knew if we let James go, he'd find you in the crowd." He held out his hand and helped Teddy up, prying James off long enough to let Teddy find his feet. "Come on," he said. "Everyone's waiting."