They rode for hours, for the better part of the night, charting each sight. They rode until Victoire's fingers turned cold and she hid them under his jacket. The wind was turning, he could smell that rain would come soon. But it pulled at him—like an anchor, a tether buried in his navel—drew him from crumbling street corner to abandoned trainer factory.
You kept wrapped chocolate in your pockets. Loved Jane Austen for your mother. Laughed loudest when Mum's hair was pink.
It dwarfed him, loomed colossally, as he stood before the last and largest of the graffiti. He watched as the paint twisted and coiled frightfully from a young boy mid-transition, a teenager no older than himself, a young man, now a middle-aged man, now—. Each face rent in two by the staggering agony of transformation.
"Why does it stop there…" he whispered, hadn't realized he'd said it aloud until Victoire replied quietly.
"They very rarely live past 40."
10-3-1960. 2-5-1998.
38.
Your mother's name was Hope. Your father's name was Lyall.
He turned to her, kissed her forehead almost absentmindedly, and breathed, "Let's go."
Your mother was a muggle. Your boggart was the moon.
I could count on my fingers what I know for certain about you.
At first, she thought it was anger that rippled just under his skin, and leaned in tighter so he could take the turns as wildly as he pleased.
Then, when the wind whipped around them 'til his ears turned pink, she brought her arms beneath his jacket so he could have her warmth.
It was not until she laid her head between his shoulders, her cheek along his spine, that she heard the staggered staccato beat of his shallow breath, punctuated by hiccupping sob.
When they finally arrived home, he didn't rise from his bike and follow her to the door, only swung his leg over to better lean against the seat.
She turned at the lack of his warmth by her side, saw him slumped, crumpled, and returned to him in one quick step.
"Come inside," she whispered as she wrapped him in her.
He lay his head against her breastbone, and she ran her fingers along his neck, his back, through his hair. He relaxed slowly, his head cradled against her chest.
"Come inside," she said, her warm breath tickling his ear. "Come to bed."
He murmured something against her skin, but she couldn't hear, it was lost to her as his mouth turned to find hers.
It began gently, with the soft touch of his hand at her lower back, splayed out along her skin beneath her jumper—and in that way, was very much like getting pulled under by a wave. The light tug of the current, the slow rhythmic pull of his fleeting touch, her grasping hands. Her fingers curled around the collar of his jacket, raising him to her, and at the gentle drag of his teeth along her bottom lip a high, breathless sigh crested, escaped her.
At this teasing slip of sound Teddy gripped her closer, fingers tangling in her hair, lips working desperately against hers. My love, my love, I don't have the words—
And as he descended to her neck, panting, she thought, I would happily be swallowed up—slip beneath the surface and learn to breath beneath water—in you, in us. Let me teach you, let me remind you, let me show you how…
His cheek was wet where it met her skin, and at this she swept up his face in her hands, brought his forehead to rest against hers, and held him there under her watch.
His hands at her waist, fingers in her hair tightened, and he let out a choked cry before nodding, the tip of his nose brushing against hers.
She leaned forward, barely an inch, and laid her mouth against his cheek. "Come to bed, Teddy."
It always struck her, the ambient, audible quiet of early morning. She felt it first, a blanket hum that coated her skin and made quick work of goosebumps. It hinted, promisingly, of the possibility of the day, in what could be discovered in the cool hours before the rest of the world woke.
Her eyes parted slowly and came to focus on the dust that swirled silently above her, filtered through the grey light cast by Teddy's window.
Her hand stretched out across his bed—seeking, searching—but found only a rumpled dip in the sheets, faint evidence that Teddy had at one point lain next to her.
She wasn't surprised. He'd hardly slept since they'd arrived in London.
The sole of her foot flexed against the cool wood floor as she rose to look for him, his blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She heard nothing from the direction of the kitchen, and instinct encouraged her to look upward.
She climbed the first set of stairs, padded carpet springing up beneath her toes, and it occurred to her that she had never been in this part of the house before. Only the first floor ever seemed to exist in her mind—Teddy's room, the kitchen, the hearth where she tumbled out when she first arrived.
This space was distinctly his Gran's. The carpet beneath her was a deep forest green, patterned with silver leaves. The walls were covered with photos of a fair-haired, big-bellied man she assumed was Teddy's grandfather, and a teenage girl, about Teddy's age—his mother, it must be—with bubblegum pink hair.
Victoire stopped on the landing to watch the photo move, and the hum of early morning seemed to rise in her ears. He was so like her, same crooked smile, same dark, sparkling eyes. And beyond that—she recognized the easy-mannered warmth in the way the girl moved, the absolute refusal to behave herself in the set of her jaw. She traced her finger along the edge of the frame, and the bright-hearted girl waved to her.
She took another step on the landing, and nearly fell over, had accidentally backed into an overstuffed armchair. Laid across it was a cozy woolen throw, woven with blue and yellow tartan. She wondered if it had been there since his Gran passed, if she was the last to touch it. It didn't seem like something Teddy would do.
Her fingers slipped over its surface, and it felt vividly familiar. Far less soft than it looked, it reminded her of the many hand-knit scarves her own Gran would wrap around her every Christmas.
A soft thud drew her eyes upward again, to the second set of stairs. Smaller and narrower than the first, they lead not to another hallway, but directly into a room where the roof slanted into the very top of the house. And from where she stood, she could just spot Teddy's sock-covered foot jutting over the edge of the stair.
No wonder he liked the ghoul's old room at the Burrow, she thought as she climbed. The ceiling was taller, this room was wider, but it had the same feeling—a left-alone nest at the top of the world.
The rain pattered softly at the round window, and she found him lying on the floor, back against the bed post with such an air of familiarity she was sure he'd spent countless hours in this position as he grew.
She ran her big toe along the arch of his foot, extending her leg forward from her spot in the doorway. The rings under his eyes had grown darker. He hadn't slept at all, she'd bet, not since the day before.
"Morning," he said quietly in reply. "You sleep alright?"
She nodded, and knelt down beside him. Her head came to rest against the yellow patch-work quilt that hung off the foot of the bed, and she looked up to find faded posters of The Weird Sisters and the Hollyhead Harpies taped to the slanted ceiling.
It plainly hadn't changed since it was his mum's room, covered in stacks of records and haphazardly strewn books. Despite the rain, the room seemed to emit a golden glow.
"How long have you been up here?" she asked, wrapping the blanket tighter around her shoulders.
"Before the sun came up," he admitted, and his hand tapped absentmindedly at the stack of books at his side.
Micine's Lycanthropy and Legend, Abalone's Werewolf, Witch and Wizard, Batnold's The Lunar Cycle, Cadwell's Consideration of Lycan, she read from their spines, and wondered if Teddy compiled this collection, or if it was left behind by his mother.
"I used to hide up here a lot," he said before a ghost of a grin quirked at the corner of his mouth. "Not sure how good I was at it. I'd always blast The Weird Sisters on her record player—not especially stealthy, was I?"
"No," she said, nearly a whisper, but smiling all the same. Her eyes traced the lines of his face as if they might reveal new meaning to her, but it was the scarf tied around the bed post behind him that caught her attention. "I didn't know your Mum was in Hufflepuff."
"Yeah," he said, glancing briefly up at it. "Sorting Hat nearly put me in there too."
"And why didn't he?" she asked, quietly curious.
"I'd heard a lot about her time in Hufflepuff from my Gran, and I had the letters she sent home… She wasn't one to leave out a detail, Mum. Even if it might've gotten her into trouble," he said, and she watched bits of countless stories play out across his face.
"But I didn't know," he said and stopped. "Hardly knew a thing about—"
He nodded down at the books beneath his fingers in acknowledgement, and she understood.
Wordlessly, she reached over, gathered the books in her arms one by one, and held them close to her.
We'll find him, it promised willfully, with the blazing look unique to her.
He raised his hand to her cheek, swept his thumb over the sharp curve of bone—a quiet gesture of great loving—and asked with a crack in his voice that gave him away, "are you hungry?"
A great crack of thunder broke over the morning, echoed in the din surrounding them as they entered the kitchen. Teddy took her hand, and noticed she was nearly shivering. Wordlessly, he flicked his wand, and the kitchen fire roared to life, filled the room instantly with a blazing heat the thawed her toes.
She leant against the counter and watched him as he moved—drawing bread, beans and eggs from the cupboard. She nearly reached out to walk her fingers down the lines of his back, chart the differences present now. It seemed as if an indefinable shape had fallen from him. He stood straighter now, shoulders set back with almost ease. The palpable grief of the night before had quieted into a deep stillness, if not an outright sense of purpose.
She kept her fingers where they were, wrapped beneath his blanket around books and parchment. She did not want to disrupt him, cause a ripple in calm water.
As she set about arranging her copy of Gilbert Gudley's notes, his Mum's books, and the letter from Uncle Harry across the kitchen table, she heard the crack of an egg, the whish of a whisk he set to work in a bowl, and realized she didn't know he could cook. She'd watched him help her Gran make dinner at the Burrow countless times, imagined that he must've known how to look after himself that summer he spent on his own. But to watch him now—quite at ease, spine straight with intention—seemed like catching a brief flicker of his future, of his life beyond school that he now seemed more than ready to embrace.
He looked over his shoulder and caught her staring, and to her surprise she found herself blushing.
He eyed her thoughtfully. "Coffee?"
She nodded and crossed the room to him, wrapped her arms around his torso to feel him soften against her touch. But his shoulders stayed set, and she thought, there you are, there's the shape of you I've felt in the dark.
She reached around his right arm for the spare bit of butcher paper the bread had been wrapped in, and when he quirked his brow at her questioningly, she smiled and said, "you'll see."
She smoothed it out over a corner of the kitchen table, flattening most of the wrinkled paper before tapping it in the methodical rhythm of the Homonculus Charm. She had just finished inking the parchment with a map of London, the points of the graffiti standing out the like pendants, when a plate soared past her shoulders, and landed, clattering, on the bare stretch of table before her.
When he joined her at the table, his own plate in hand, his eyes widened at the stacks of parchment.
"You stole his notes?" Teddy asked, eyeing the many sheets covered in Gudley's particular scrawl, and she fixed him with a look of disbelief.
"Duplicated them," she corrected. "I'd never leave such a massive sign we were there by taking them."
And when she saw him set his food down—his blood-shot eyes focused fully on the map, no intention of sitting, of eating—she jumped in.
"They're gathering," she said quickly, and watched him 'til he sat, continuing only when he reached for his fork. "That, I think, is the greatest reason for Uncle Harry's concern. It would unsettle quite a few to know that there's actually a rather large population settling in London. Even people who consider themselves comfortable with werewolves would be frightened—our kind has always felt assured by the fact that they tend to prefer living in forests or small villages and live incredibly isolated lives."
"But that's changing," Teddy said through a bite of toast, and she nodded.
"There are a few mentions of groups in Liverpool and Glasgow, in addition to London, but I expect those are only the groups they're aware of," she continued. "They've never gathered before. Not here, at least—but it's not uncommon in America. They don't live in cities there, only out in the country, but they have what they call 'packs.' They have communes where they live together… A few even raise families."
He nodded consideringly, and reached for her hand as he looked over the notes, his thumb tracing the contours of her palm—running up her life line, her curve of Saturn, her mount of Venus.
"I thought the American muggles were notorious zealots," Teddy said thoughtfully.
"They are. Wolf hunts were just as common as witch hunts for centuries—longer even," she said, clearing her voice when her breath hitched at this simple touch. "That's why MACUSA's supportive. They're out of sight, out of mind. The muggles don't have any interest in poor backwoods families, and the werewolves don't tend to be as violent when they turn—they follow a self-imposed code of behavior so as not to draw attention, and the 'pack' mentality tends to temper the more vicious instincts. They're also quite lucky in that the ingredients for the Wolfsbane potion grow far easier there than anywhere in Britain, they can even find them growing wildly, and as part of their code, they share it with each other."
"Why don't we know about all of this in Britain? Why hasn't that kind of thinking made its way here?" Teddy asked.
"Well, now it looks like it has," she said, shuffling through the notes.
He looked up at her, found the bone-bracing determination so natural to her alive in her face now. Delicately, he raised her palm to his mouth, and left a kiss where her fate and head lines crossed.
"If you keep on like that, we'll hardly make it through breakfast," she said quietly, her pulse quickening and eyes clouding with feeling.
He smirked against her skin, and in concession tapped his wand against her plate, warming her food before pushing it toward her. "You haven't started."
Once she'd eaten half her eggs, he asked, "So they're creating packs?"
She nodded, chewing. "I think so. It would explain why they've spread the graffiti all around the city."
He looked down to where his hands rested in his lap, and realized he had been curling and uncurling them beneath the table. "I thought of that last night—how many would be drawn to it… I would be, if I were in their place. Even last night I couldn't stop myself. I had to see them."
Her head crooked to the side in thought, and she ran her foot along his calf, reflexively searching for him. "There's not mention of it in the notes, but they'd make natural markers for safe houses… It'd explain why they're so protective of them."
"You noticed that too?" he asked, his voice low in his throat. "That we were followed?"
"After the third," she said. "He left after we saw the sixth at the trainer factory."
He stared at the map for a long moment while she tucked into her beans on toast.
"But if the American werewolves tend to live in rural places, why would they come together in London? It can't be easy to find space."
Her head whipped away from her breakfast to land on him, her brow knit with confusion. "What? Do you still underest-"
She rifled through the towering stacks of parchment 'til the note they found the night before emerged, and she slid it across the table to him, her pointer finger landing on 'More likely someone took up the lead after he set the precedent.'
"You didn't paint Foxcroft's face all over the side of a building in Aberdeenshire," she said, and Teddy gave a mirthless laugh.
"No, I didn't."
"You are probably the only person who could've done it and not gotten into trouble for it," she continued vehemently. "When people see it, they think of you and your parents—war heroes. From you, this wasn't a threat, but a call to action to think differently."
"I was drunk," Teddy said under his breath. "I never expected anyone would answer."
"Well, plainly, they have."
His eyes settled on Harry's letter. For ages, he had looked forward to opening them, even found it a comfort to see the impatient script scratched across the page—he never had gotten used to quills. But now, it irked him.
"'…clear of the werewolves' intention,'" he said softly. "He knows better than anyone—"
"He knows your father," Victoire countered carefully. "And he knows most of the werewolves sided with Voldemort during the war. I don't think he carries any prejudice, but not much has been done to clear the Fenrir Greyback stereotype from our world."
Teddy heard her, but her words did not sink past his skin. "…I would think knowing my Dad would be enough."
She waited a long moment, let the sentiment linger, before saying, "I noticed you spent quite a while looking at Aunt Ginny's desk last night."
He looked up at her almost sheepishly, but there was a mix of pride and amusement there too. "Nothing gets by you."
He retrieved it from his pocket, cradled the small photo with care between his fingers.
"There is so much I don't know about him," he said restlessly. "It feels as if he's just out of my reach. I know they came together slowly, that my Mum loved him almost immediately, that they got to know each other while on missions."
She closed her hand over his, ran the pad of her thumb over the rise and fall of his knuckles.
"They met at the Order, spent so much time there. She wrote about it often in letters to my Gran, but I had no idea what it looked like until I saw this picture, not really."
He glanced up at her to see a thought blooming behind her eyes.
"How long do you think it's been since anyone's been there?" she asked with deceptively innocent inquisition.
"Not since Harry, Ron, and Hermione fled there after your parent's wedding," Teddy answered. "Harry's never gone back."
"I'd imagine the Fidelius Charm is remarkably weak by now, with dozens of Secret Keepers, and decades having passed," she said, pondering her theory.
Curiosity sparked, whooped in his belly. "I'd imagine we'd count as Secret Keepers now too since they've told us the location," he replied.
At the look of excitement in his eyes, a thrill went through her. She could not stop the smile that transformed her face, could not attempt even the notion of subtlety when she turned back to him.
"Oh, look at that," she said elatedly. "It's stopped raining."
They were lucky to land with sure feet, as the ground beneath them began to rumble the moment they Apparated onto the doorstep of 12 Grimmauld Place.
"I wonder if they've realized what they did," Victoire said when the splintered door revealed itself to them, barely managing to stand straight in the crumbling grey-stone archway. "Uncle Harry and Uncle Ron, I mean, when they told us."
"They probably never thought we'd have reason to come," Teddy said, his arm still wrapped tight around her waist despite the safe landing. Already they could hear the house creaking, straining against its neighbors, desperate to expand farther.
He tapped his wand against the door, paint chipping at the point of gentle impact. In answer, they heard a series of metallic clicks and the clatter of a chain before the rasping grate of the door swung open.
They stepped forward, and Teddy noticed her complete lack of the trepidation that swallowed him whole. The door swung shut behind them, and she bounded forward, unconcerned, while he hoped she didn't notice the chill that rose in him at the enveloping darkness.
With the sound of strangled breath, the gas lamps flickered to life dimly beneath the decades-old layers of soot and grime, illuminating the long, narrow hall before them. Teddy's eyes adjusted slowly to the dull, muted light, the grey pallor they cast feebly, and Victoire took another small, experimental step.
When nothing happened, she clutched his hand tighter in reassurance, but in the same instant she began to cough, clutched at her throat as a gust of biting air swept over them.
Teddy had just enough time to bellow "Protego!" before his tongue curled sickeningly back on itself.
"Tongue-Tying Curse," Victoire rasped, retching now at the sensation, and her eyes grew wide.
"Are you alright?" Teddy asked, grasping her by the shoulders once his tongue righted itself, his own voice sounding raw.
She stared upward, fascinated, her eyes following the effects of his spell—the lingering blue flash that continued to rattle the upper floors and shudder the rafters. Delicately, she extended a finger forward to examine the dust silently descending toward them.
When she did not answer, he shook her carefully. "Victoire, are you all right?"
"Course I'm alright," she said, studying him now. "Teddy—"
But a shift in the shadows caught their attention. A curious gathering of dust took shape, rose ominously over the carpet and took form in what could only be the figure of Albus Dumbledore.
It glided noiselessly, rapidly toward them—its wasted arm outstretched, the gaunt, expressionless face parting in a gruesome attempt to form words, waste-length hair flapping lifelessly in its wake.
Without a whisper of fear, Victoire said solemnly, "we did not kill you, Albus." And the figure disintegrated in a great puff of grime.
Faintly, the sound of car alarms going off outside reached their ears—a strange reminder of the muggle world—and the curtains hanging over Mrs. Blacks' portrait thrashed open.
Before she could get so much as a blood-curdling "stains of dishonor" out, Teddy raised his wand, silencing her with a bang and a burst of red sparks.
"That was incredible," Victoire said, watching him still.
"Yeah," said Teddy, taking a step down the hall, testing for any further onslaught. "It's mental, to think ages after he died Moody's counter-curses are just as strong."
"Not that," Victoire said, moving forward when no new jinx met Teddy's step. "Your Shield Charm. It's quite rare to cast such a large one. Most people never will, and even those that do are usually under extreme duress when it happens."
Teddy edged around what appeared to be an umbrella stand made grotesquely out of a troll's leg knocked over on its side. "Yeah, Professor Flitwick wasn't too keen during my O.W.L.s. I shattered about three of the windows in his classroom."
"You've done it before?" Victoire asked, stopping short, her hard footsteps disrupting what must've been a mouse nearby from the answering scurry and squeak.
"Yeah, loads of times," Teddy said, almost amused by the shock that colored her face.
"'Loads of times,'" she repeated. "Teddy, that is exceptionally rare magic."
He smiled briefly. "And this from the girl who experiments with forbidden magical substances."
She opened her mouth to argue with him, make him see what astonishing magic it was, but her eye settled on the dark rings beneath his eyes, the tufts of hair standing at all angles, the goosebumps racing up his neck, and realized he was not ready for this brand of clarity.
Instead, she wound her arm through the crook of his elbow and laced her fingers through his. "C'mon, it looks like the kitchen's this way."
"The kitchen?" Teddy asked, a deeper curiosity dawning. It seemed nearly sudden, to have been staring at the photo this morning and standing in the room hours later.
They descended into the room, narrower than it appeared in the picture, and filled with a palpable subterranean chill. A feeble draft of light leaked from the back-garden window, but it did nothing to quell the feeling of sunken decay.
Victoire leaned gingerly against one of the more stable looking chairs and began to rustle through her bag.
"Do you remember," she began as he looked around. It appeared as if the home had been ransacked, although a very long ago. "When I said I've been experimenting with combining a few charms?"
"Yes?" he said, turning back to her. She'd brought the Marauder's Map with them, he saw, and laid It out in front of her, its unfolded edges curling upward with age. His heart beat faster to see it.
"I—" she began, and hesitated, but the whole of her was suffused with the insuppressible potential of a new discovery. He loved her for it, grew warm at the sight of it. "It's, in many ways, uncharted territory."
He could not stop the grin that curved the corner of his mouth. "I would expect nothing less."
It was like watching a wave leap, a force of nature just barely able to contain herself—she moved quickly, beside herself, as she reached for her wand, twirled it between her fingers.
"The deposition, and the way it reacted, gave me an idea," she said, fingers moving all the faster. "See, it was stronger when I first tried the spell in the Library, which is very close to the classroom where Sirius Black was held. The figures were larger and their voices were clearer."
Teddy nodded, remembering how at times is sounded as if they were speaking beneath water.
"At first, I thought maybe that was the case because it was the first time the book had been opened—the magic was at its freshest, so to speak. But then, when I showed it to you, certain words were much louder—words, I realized, related to your father. And I started to explore the idea that perhaps memory charms can act like a potion, in that certain affects are heightened, or outcomes more probable, depending on the ingredients you add. The vessel, in this case, that contains them is not a cauldron, but the boundaries of whatever room it's released in."
He watched her, hair kicking up as if by an unseen wind, or perhaps the sheer speed with which her arms moved as she spoke, hands flexing in instinct to perform the charm.
"They're very malleable materials, memories, and in that sense a little unstable too." She grinned when he sat at the table beside her. "So they're extraordinarily susceptible to additional influences. And this happens because the soul is constantly leaving a sort of residue behind in moments of extreme feeling, and this residue is especially vivid when it comes from a magical soul. It's what leads to what muggles consider incorporeal hauntings—like the unshakable heartbreak and grief of a battlefield. And in considering the soul's capacity to leave such a strong imprint of memory behind, whether intentionally or unintentionally, I looked into what I could find on horcruxes—"
"You what?" Teddy cut in, his face darkening with concern.
"Don't worry," she said, waving her hand nonchalantly. "Naturally, I couldn't find very much, and a piece of the soul fractured by murder is far different than a memory. There is no break here. It's a deposit, much more like a pensive. Except, as far as I've figured, its container is a space or an object—something the memory can attach to. I think by bringing together both an object—in fact, multiple objects—and a room that contains heightened memories of a specific person, we can amplify the end result."
"Multiple objects?" he asked, curiosity peaking.
"The Marauder's Map and the photograph of your parents, if you're comfortable with it," she said, her eyes rather large as she looked him over searchingly.
"Of course," he said, placing it on the table without a thought.
She preened, thrilled, and set it beside the Map.
A faint mark appeared on her forehead as she began murmuring in a language Teddy didn't understand—a birthmark, one he only saw when she emerged after hours in the greenhouse—or just before she was about to come. His skin prickled, flushed and grew warm at the memory of her in his bed the morning before, sun soaking her skin, and his eyes lost focus on the soft sulk of her bottom lip.
Her left brow raised in question, but even when he smirked guiltily, she did not break the incantation. It was increasingly complicated, required turning her wand clockwise, then counter clockwise every few measures.
Ancient runes, he realized, that was the spell, with a smattering of French, it sounded like. After several minutes, the air was very still, but the whip of catching wind engulfed them. Dozens of whispers, immutable murmurs, snippets of sound, a skip of voices he thought he may recognize rang in chaotic cacophony around them until it broke with the sound of a knife splitting the air and the crack of a familiar voice.
"FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE! THERE WAS NO NEED—I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS—JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE ALLOWED TO USE MAGIC NOW YOU DON'T NEED TO WHIP YOUR WANDS OUT FOR EVERY LITTLE THING!"
"Is that Gran?" Victoire asked, laughing. "From the summer they lived here, maybe?"
"We're just trying to save a bit of time! Sorry Sirius, mate—didn't mean to—"
"That sounds like George," Teddy said at the new voice.
"Honestly, Ronald!"
"We know who that is," Teddy added, Victoire laughing all the more.
"They're not giving anything away yet. I still can't work out if they believe he's back or not."
"Sounds like my Dad," Victoire said, her eyes narrowing at the unseen speaker before it descended into the unintelligible.
An odd snorting sound, quite like a goose, bounced in the air around them, followed quickly by a peel of giggles.
"Do that one like a pig snout, Tonks!"
"I think that's Aunt Ginny," Victoire said, but Teddy had frozen at Tonks.
"My Mum?" he said almost inaudibly.
"Wotcher, Harry. I haven't shown you this one yet."
"Personally," said a new voice, quiet and thoughtful. "I think it's best Harry get the facts—not all the facts, Molly, but a general picture—from us, rather than a garbled version from… others."
"Thank you, Remus. I completely agree."
"Remus?" Teddy said, his head snapping up toward the ceiling where the sound seemed to emanate.
But the next voice that met them was as shrill as a train whistle, ear-splitting in its volume, and Teddy winced.
"HOW DARE YOU SAY SUCH A THING IN THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS! HOW DARE YOU DEFILE OUR NAME!"
It came faster now, too quickly to separate one voice from another—there were two boys arguing, the distinct pop of a house elf Apparating, doors slamming, a warbled drawl of "Master likes his jokes," more shrieking from what must've been Mrs. Black, laughter now from a few boys, different boys, a raucous call of "to Mooney, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs!" that nearly hurt to hear, a bellowed shout of rage "I'm gone!"
And then the kitchen was still.
They could hear the voices receding, shrinking back into the rafters, echoing as they withdrew.
Victoire tapped her wand against the Marauder's Map—jabbed, really—once, and then again. The ink eddied and billowed, leapt up to meet the tip of her wand, but no sound followed.
"I'm sorry," she began breathlessly. "That wasn't—"
"I've never heard their voices before," Teddy whispered, eyes dazed.
"But it should've been more!" she cried out, exasperated, and looked under the map as if something may be hiding.
Teddy reached out for her, drew her hands away from the map to rest in his. "It's more than I've ever had before."
