Chapter 29:

Clearing the Way

"James!" Teddy ran to the far door, not really expecting anything. He poked his head out of the other side of the tent, and saw only the empty courtyard. Al came around, holding Lily's hand.

"Is something wrong?"

Teddy nodded. "Take Lily inside." He went back into the tent, hoping Al would obey him, and sent his Patronus to Uncle Harry with the message, "Come outside. Something's happened. I can't find James." He couldn't think of another way to put it. He went to the little crate that Molly Weasley had turned into a desk, and searched it, not really believing that he'd find James or anything useful, but needing to do something. On top of it, the little crystal paperweight was glowing a cheerful, cherry red. Teddy picked it up. He wasn't sure if he meant to smash it or try to see into it.

There was no answering Patronus. Uncle Harry just Apparated in.

"What's happened?"

"This thing," Teddy said, "when did Kingsley give it to him?"

"Er... I don't know. Just after the Quarantine."

"It was already in the building, then..."

Uncle Harry took him by the shoulders. "Teddy, what's happening?"

Teddy shook his head. "I don't know, Uncle Harry. I... it's the Maze... it broke, and..."

"I know! Where's James?"

"I DON'T KNOW!"

Teddy pressed his fingers against the paperweight. "Maddie said it was going into all the things that had phantasms. A bunch of things on Kingsley's desk did. If... Uncle Harry, who charmed it to glow?"

Uncle Harry shook his head. "I don't know... Teddy, what is this?"

"It's crystal," Teddy said. "I think... the Maze... a crystal ball at the center... I..." He noticed he was breathing too fast, and the light in Fort Potter had taken on a queer sort of starpoint quality. "Uncle Harry, it pulsed here. And I think James went in!"

"What?"

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I never meant to let anything happen to James, not ever, I never meant for anything bad to happen, and - "

"How do we fix it?"

Teddy tried, without much success, to swallow the panic that seemed to have lodged in his throat. "I don't know. How can..." He stopped talking to take several quick, shallow breaths.

"I'll send for Croaker," Uncle Harry said.

"Croaker won't know, either!"

Uncle Harry took a step back, and buried his hands in his hair. "James!" he called. "James, dammit, come out!"

There was a frightening moment after that which Teddy could never remember in detail - Uncle Harry tearing through Fort Potter, pulling things off the wall, yelling for James. Teddy backed away, his mind clouded. He backed into the desk and sat down on it, hard, his weight shattering the old, moldy wood that had been the crate. Papers spilled out of it, and a large glass marble rolled away. Teddy almost disregarded this.

Then he recognized the handwriting on the papers.

"It's Phineas!"

"What?" Uncle Harry asked.

"Phineas Nigellus! It's his. And that - " He made a grab for the marble, which was rolling toward Meg the doll's cradle. "It's Ariadne's thread. We can use it to get James out!"

Uncle Harry shook his head, not understanding.

"If he got in through the paperweight, then we can, too. We can take the thread and get him out! The only way out is in!"

"Do it," Uncle Harry said.

Teddy raised his wand.

Uncle Harry grabbed his other arm. "I'm coming with you."

Teddy didn't even want to say no. Instead, he said, "Stay with me. The spell is 'Sulci Numine.'"

Uncle Harry nodded.

Teddy turned to the paperweight and cried, "Sulci Numine!"

He heard Uncle Harry call the spell out with him, and then the world changed. They were on the deck of the Accursed, in Teddy's storm-tossed sea. James stood placidly before them, and Uncle Harry reached out to grab him.

Teddy grabbed him. "This is a Guide. Not the real James. Don't touch him, you'll get hurt." He looked at the Guide. "Where is the real James?"

The Guide went to the prow of the ship and pointed ahead, through a sea full of triangular waves. Teddy couldn't see anywhere that James might be.

"James!" he called.

It seemed to take a long time, but, very faintly, he heard, "Teddy-eddy-eddy-eddy..." coming back over the water.

"We have to get to him," Uncle Harry said.

"I know." Teddy frowned, trying to think around his fear. It wasn't easy. He imagined James seeing visions of monsters, trying to fight them or run from them, being swallowed up as he himself had been on the night he'd tried to kill Bellatrix. "I can't do the sea," he finally said. "I don't know how to sail. I always have to use the thread. It needs to be something else... someplace I can find James... someplace... I'm sorry... I'm sorry..."

"I let him have the thing," Uncle Harry said. "I'm supposed be watching for odd things, and it was in my own courtyard. You told me to watch." He looked at Teddy with desperation, but no rejection, no anger.

It calmed Teddy a bit. He forced himself to take a few deep breaths. It was the Maze. He knew his way around it. "I need... someplace I can find James. Someplace we both know." He concentrated, and stared at the Guide.

The Guide grew, became tall and lanky, with long black hair and a devil-may-care grin. Around him, the water became a sea of green trees, strung with vines, and the ship became only a high hill from which they were all looking down on the expanse of jungle.

"Sirius," Uncle Harry whispered.

"It's the story James and I were writing," Teddy said. "He's lost in the jungle. James will know this place, too." Teddy started down the hill.

Uncle Harry caught him. "Are you sure, Teddy?"

Teddy shook his head, but said, "I think. But I think I'm right."

Uncle Harry looked at him for a long time, then nodded soberly. "Then I think that's the best we can do."

"James!" Teddy yelled again.

Again, far away, "Teddyyyy!"

Teddy looked out over the trees in the direction the sound came from. A mountain - a volcano, of course - reached up above the canopy. Steam came out of the cone. "There's the center," he said.

Uncle Harry nodded. "How do we get there?"

"We get through the Maze. The Guide will help." Teddy nodded to the vision of Sirius.

"I hate mazes," Uncle Harry said. "Is there any way to get broomsticks?"

"I don't know. I never thought of it. But..." He concentrated as hard as he could on becoming a hawk, but nothing happened, other than his eyes changing. Now, he could see the details of the canopy, the birds moving, the monkeys swinging through the vines.

"James!" he yelled. "Climb a tree!"

There was a pause, then motion from one of the taller trees. It was halfway to the mountain.

"Are you all right?" Uncle Harry called.

"Fi - !"

The answer was cut off by the shriek of a wild animal.

Uncle Harry lurched forward. "James!"

"Don't touch anything!" Teddy yelled into the forest, then followed Uncle Harry down into the Maze.

There was no polite investigation in the flight through the jungle, no fascinating exploration of by-ways. The Guide, as Sirius, led them into the tangled undergrowth, and Uncle Harry slashed it viciously with his wand to get it out of the way and keep them moving quickly. The Guide changed partway through, becoming the first James Potter. Uncle Harry had ceased to notice this, and Teddy didn't point it out. James led them toward the muddy shore of a river, which twisted through the land, with trees coming close enough to it to block off some paths of the Maze.

"We have to be getting close," Uncle Harry said. "JAMES!"

"Daddy?... addy... addy... addy?"

The return scream came from the far side of the river, beyond a hill. Uncle Harry ran toward it, but stopped at the water's edge. He looked over his shoulder. "The river's a Maze barrier, isn't it?"

Teddy nodded. "Don't try going through. I don't know what would happen."

"How far upstream can you see?"

Teddy peered through his hawk's eyes - Uncle Harry hadn't even commented on them - and saw a blocking wall of vegetation not far ahead. "We'd get forced further away," he said. "We need to find a way across. A - " He turned downstream. The path was clear, and far off, just at the limit of his vision, he saw the too-regular shape of a bridge. "This way!" he said. "We can cross further down."

Uncle Harry didn't argue. He let Teddy lead, but not by far.

The bridge was closer than it had looked - Maze-space was deceptive. Relief washed through Teddy as they came around a bend in the path. The pilings of the bridge were visible, and he came around them. They just needed to go across and -

Something dragged him backward, and he realized Uncle Harry had a hand on his shoulder.

"Stay back, Teddy," he hissed.

Teddy looked up.

In the middle of the bridge, in a bar of bright tropical sunshine, was a huge gray werewolf.

"It's Greyback," Teddy said, unnecessarily. "He's been in the Maze before. He blocked my way." Uncle Harry didn't say anything, so Teddy looked over his shoulder. He was pale and his eyes were sunken. Teddy shook his head. "We have to get past. He should be a guide. He should act like the others."

"You said he didn't," Uncle Harry said. "Teddy..."

There was a crash and a scream on the other side of the river, and the discussion of the Guide, tenuous to begin with, ended. Uncle Harry ran forward.

"James!"

The answer was much closer. "Dad?"

"James, be careful!" Teddy yelled. "We're coming! Can you see the river?"

"No!"

The werewolf took a step forward, snarling, saliva dangling from its long, pointed teeth. Its claws made ominous clicking sounds on the bridge.

"Think of it!" Teddy looked around quickly. "It's muddy and it has piranha, and there's a bridge."

A moment later, James called, "There it is! I'm coming!"

The werewolf looked over its shoulder, then looked at Teddy with malicious cunning. It turned toward the far side.

"No!" Teddy nearly threw Ariadne's Thread - which was clasped in one of his sweaty hands - at it, but thought better at the last minute and drew his wand instead. He didn't want to try cursing a Guide, as he didn't know where it would end up, but he wasn't going to let it go after James.

It stopped and turned again, seeming to smirk.

"We're going through," Uncle Harry said. His voice was low and authoritative.

The werewolf growled, far back in its throat, and the growl became a horrible, high-pitched laugh as it rose onto its haunches and became Bellatrix Lestrange, black hair tossing back in the wind (it was, for some vile reason, tied back with the pink tulle headband Teddy had found in Mum's wardrobe last summer), a long knife in one hand. She mimed grabbing someone and slitting his throat, then began to bleed herself, a horrible flow that came from her neck and flowed out over the edge of the bridge into the water, turning it red, to flow into the blood-red sea.

Uncle Harry set foot on the bridge.

Teddy flicked his wand and pulled him back.

"Don't touch her!" he said. "That's how I got hurt."

The trees on the far side of the river parted, and James burst out. He looked frightened, but exhilarated. "I did it!" he said. "Teddy, I'm here!"

Bellatrix smiled obscenely, licked her knife, and turned.

Teddy didn't think this time. Thinking would have been too slow. He simply removed the bridge from his mind.

It took perhaps a second - James and Uncle Harry were holding it as well - but it was Teddy's Maze. The bridge shimmered, then disappeared in a burst of dust, sending Bellatrix down into the water. She screamed, and became a blur of red, until only the tulle headband remained of her.

Teddy Summoned it, not caring, for the moment, what would happen, just wanting to stop that particular obscenity. He caught it, and his fingers went numb. There was no chance of keeping it. Carefully, he set it down on a rock.

"Teddy!" James called. "Daddy, can I swim?"

"No!" Uncle Harry called, then turned urgently to Teddy. "How are we going to cross? Can you get the bridge back?"

Teddy tried to imagine it, and it started to form, shadowy images of struts and pylons.

The river surged, and washed it away. Water sloshed up onto the banks.

Teddy took a step back. "The river's rising," he said.

Even as he said it, he could hear it flowing hard and fast. The red flood drenched then buried reeds and vines. On lower ground, downriver, Teddy could already see it making inroads into the jungle itself.

"Get to high ground!" he shouted.

"Get there yourself!" Uncle Harry pulled him backward, dragging him up a sloping rock that rose up from the river bank. "James! Climb back in the tree!"

James didn't answer.

Teddy peered across the growing river. James had climbed the tree already, but the river was raging beneath him, and he was clinging for life. Uncle Harry was grasping Teddy hard under the shoulders, but his eyes were on his son.

"Teddy... how?"

Teddy shook his head and pulled free, scrambling further up the rock. The river of blood was already lapping at the bottom. It had picked up the tulle headband again, and tossed it upward, where it glimmered and grew and began to take shape again.

"Uncle Harry, move away! Bellatrix is coming back."

Uncle Harry backed up.

The Guide-shape shifted like a flame tasting firewood, licking upward and twisting itself into a female shape. Her mad smile came first and Teddy braced for an attack when there was nowhere to go. Next came her high cheekbones, the flame settling into her eyes, and the bright lines of her hair. Her pink hair.

Gratefully, Teddy let down his guard and started toward her, hoping that Mum as a Guide would lead him out, but Uncle Harry cut in front of him, wand drawn. "Let him be!"

Mum laughed, but it was still Bellatrix's laugh, still her mad eyes.

Teddy stumbled backward up the rock. "No..."

"It's not her, Teddy," he said. "We have to get out of here. Now. All of us."

"I don't know... how can... no, it's not..." Teddy sat down hard, his hand flying up to the chain around his neck, where Dad's wedding ring rested. He grasped it tightly, more for security than any hope of help, but somewhere, faintly, another world formed in his mind, a memory world, a day at falconry. He could feel his mother's/grandmother's arms steadying him, and the heavy leather gauntlet on his/Dad's right arm.

"Stay back," Uncle Harry warned the Guide. She was crawling up now, crabwise, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth. She'd been blocking the way. All along. It was her ship, not Brimmann's. It was always her. Always them.

Teddy shook his head against it. The Maze was only his own mind, they weren't hurting him, but how could he make them into monsters like this? Uncle Harry had to hate him, seeing what was in his mind. He'd murdered Greyback, and now he was murdering his own parents, and...

The memory tried to come in again, the cool wind on the sea cliff, the moist stone of the wall. But this time, he was seeing through the hawk's eyes, as he had in his dream, and he saw Dad there, saw the eyes of the small, ill-used boy starting to light up in wonder at the creature resting on his arm.

"Fly," the boy said. "Go!"

What went through his mind came not in words, but in images. Donzo had told him, there were no words, but he'd tried to make it words anyway. That had been the mistake, the thing that had kept him on the ground. He saw himself on Dapple's back, high above the Forbidden Forest. He saw the world through his hawk's eyes, as he'd first seen it two years ago, when he'd stood guard with Lee and George, and simply tried to morph. He saw himself with blood on his hands, and he saw Dapple with a bloody rat dangling from his beak. He saw Dad's hawk, flying out over the North Sea, and he saw his Patronus bursting from his wand for the first time.

"Teddy? Are you all right?"

He looked up. "I know what to do. Hold her here. I think she'll follow me, but if she doesn't, just don't let her touch you."

"Teddy?"

"I know what to do," he said.

And transformed.

Uncle Harry's eyes widened, but Teddy found that he couldn't say anything. His mouth was hard and strange, and his arms felt too large and powerful. He could see everything - the weak morph he'd done on his eyes before seemed child's play. There were planes and angles he'd never suspected, crisp shadows and sharp edges. The red of the river was a thousand reds, a million, and he could see motes being violently pushed along its raging current. On the far side, he could see James, a small figure moving in the tree. He wanted to get there; his instinct was to hunt the thing that was moving, but he still had his own mind, his own sense of it being James, who he was protecting.

Something flashed in the sun, and he saw Ariadne's Thread slip out from under his wing, toward the convulsing thing that no longer looked like Mum at all. In the hawk's vision, it was just an extension of the poison river.

Teddy scrambled forward, knowing that there was no time to fumble in this form. Years of shapeshifting had taught him to adjust more quickly than Donzo had been able to. He stuck out one foot, with its powerful talon, and grasped the little glass marble in it. He looked at Uncle Harry.

"Go," Uncle Harry said tersely. "Go, Teddy."

He spread his wings, as he'd watched Dapple do all year, and ran across the rock, feeling the wind beneath them as he moved them powerfully down against it.

He gained the sky.

On Dapple, he'd thought of flying as something like swimming through the air, but that wasn't even close to the sense he had now, the feeling of riding currents of air over the roiling river. He had to veer around some of them, but some part of him - some part of his hawk's mind - could sense those before he hit them. He rose high over the river, avoiding the surface currents, and found a cooler column to circle down on.

He reached James's tree and landed on an upper branch. There was no question of flying down low enough in the branches, and he wasn't at all sure what he meant to do now. James was too heavy to fly with.

I have to go back to myself.

And with the thought, it was so. He had the presence of mind to reach down and catch Ariadne's Thread before it fell from his now-human foot.

"James!" he called down. "I'm going to get you out of here."

"Can I fly, too?"

"I don't think so."

"I didn't mean to come in. I just looked in my paperweight and I saw the volcano."

Teddy nodded, distracted, trying to think of what to do. He didn't think he'd be able to build a bridge again, and the river was a Maze barrier, so he doubted he'd ever be able to control it, no matter how much he imagined. He had to get James out, get down to him with Ariadne's thread, then go back for Uncle Harry and -

The tree rocked wildly, and the upper trunk cracked. Teddy looked down. The werewolf was back, battering at it, trying to shake them free. Across the river, Teddy could see Uncle Harry, now backed up against the deeper jungle, but not holding off a Guide anymore.

"Teddy!" James called.

"I'm coming."

But the Maze made a liar of him.

The werewolf took another run at the tree, and it shook crazily. Teddy's weight pulled down on the treetop, and a mighty breaking sound rose over the sound of the river. Teddy felt himself pulled down, thrown into another tree. A drowsing snake awoke with a hiss. He fought to hold onto Ariadne's Thread.

"Teddy, help!"

He pulled himself up.

James had climbed to the broken top of the tree, but the werewolf was climbing steadily up after him.

There was no choice.

Teddy steadied himself and braced himself with his legs, then took his wand in one hand and Ariadne's Thread in the other.

"James, catch!"

James held out his hand, and Teddy Levitated the Thread across the chasm. He waited until James had his fingers wrapped around it, then yelled, "Home!"

James had time to look up, his face a circle of dazed surprise, when Ariadne's Thread glowed white, then simply disappeared. As he went, Teddy noticed part of the canopy disappearing around him - just small things here and there, but the part of the Maze that had been James's creation, to which Teddy himself had paid no attention until they vanished.

"He's safe!" Teddy called across the river.

"Are you all right?" Uncle Harry yelled.

There wasn't a simple answer to that question, so Teddy didn't answer it. Instead, he braced himself to turn back into a hawk to get across the river. He expected it to come with a great fanfare of images and memories again, but instead, his body seemed to know it instinctively, as it knew how to walk across a room, or climb stairs, or eat when it was hungry. He spread his arms and they became wings, and he was aloft.

This time as he flew, he looked down river, the direction he and Uncle Harry had come from. The river had flooded out much of the Maze. They couldn't go back the way they'd come.

He landed on the rock beside Uncle Harry and transformed back to human shape.

Uncle Harry raised his eyebrows. "How long have you been doing that?"

"First time," Teddy said, looking away. "James should be fine. I lost the thread. We have to find another way out. The way back is flooded."

"Teddy... I'm not going to tell anyone."

"Maybe I could only do it in the Maze, anyway. I might not be breaking the law - "

"I don't mean about the hawk business, which as an Auror I will take your word is just a side effect of the Maze, until you come of age and register. I meant..." He nodded toward the far side of the river, where the werewolf Guide was still prowling.

Teddy looked at it. "It's not Greyback, is it?"

"I can't say for sure," Uncle Harry said. "You never saw either of them transformed, so it's just a general idea of a werewolf, but..." He sighed. "I don't think it's Greyback. Just because of the other."

Teddy felt shamed tears rising, and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes to stop them. "I don't think of them like that, Uncle Harry. I don't! I swear I don't."

There was a long pause, then he heard Uncle Harry come over, and a heavy hand fell on the back of his shoulders. "Of course you do," he said.

Teddy shook his head.

"I tried to kill Bellatrix when she killed Sirius," Uncle Harry went on conversationally. "I chased her up through the Ministry, and I tried the Cruciatus Curse on her, and I very genuinely wanted her dead."

"I wish you had killed her."

"So do I, for a lot of reasons that came later, your mother first on the list." Teddy looked up, surprised that the lecture hadn't been about how glad he was he hadn't done it. Uncle Harry sighed went on. "But it wouldn't have helped with Sirius, would it? It would have felt like just as much of a cheat after as it did before."

Teddy thought about kicking Greyback through the fireplace, destroying the man who'd destroyed Dad's life. He shook his head. "It wouldn't have changed anything."

"But you think about it a lot, don't you?"

"No! I never think about Greyback."

Uncle Harry didn't even acknowledge this. "You shouldn't have had to do that."

Teddy swallowed hard and got to his feet. "You shouldn't have had to deal with Voldemort, either, but someone had to. We should find a way out."

He thought Uncle Harry might push the subject, but he didn't. Instead, he got up and said, "Can you fly over and find a path?"

"I could try."

"You don't sound hopeful."

Teddy shook his head. "No. Phineas's journals - and the letter from Dumbledore's dad - "

"The what?"

"Oh, right. He and Phineas worked on this together. Gordon Burke, too, and a bunch of others. They got in a mess with it, and Apis - that's Percival Dumbledore - said 'The only way out is in.' That doesn't sound like flying around and looking for a different path out." Teddy hoped his voice sounded more confident than he felt.

"Was that before or after he went to Azkaban?"

"Before. But he did use it to handle Azkaban better."

"You said that the volcano is the center of the Maze. What's going to be there?"

"I don't know. I never made it to the center. But I think that's where we need to go." He bit his lip. "It'll probably erupt."

"Either that, or there'll be a giant spider and a Portkey." Uncle Harry shuddered. "You could fly that direction."

Teddy shook his head. "The river's still rising. And if I go there and find a way out, the whole thing could come down. You have to get out with me." He considered it. "I could fly ahead a little at a time, though. That way, we won't run into walls."

Something nudged Teddy's foot, and he looked down. The river had come up the rock, and the red rapids were tugging at his trainer laces. Downriver a few meters, he saw something struggling to gain solid ground.

"We'd better go," he said, trying not to let any fear into his voice. "Before Granny shows up as Voldemort or something."

Uncle Harry gave him a shrewd look, and Teddy wondered if he was thinking it wasn't a joke, that Teddy was imagining Granny as a monster as well. If he was thinking that, he didn't say it. He just said, "What's the best way to higher ground?"

Teddy looked around, then remembered that he had a better option and transformed again, taking off on a warm current rising from the rock. The land on the far side was higher, and a brief rise led back to the path they'd been on. He looked ahead, and saw a dead end if they didn't turn deeper into the jungle, but he thought he'd be able to spot the turn on the ground. The whole jungle was rising to the roots of the mountain, which looked peaceful at the moment, though Teddy didn't trust it in the least.

He swooped down and landed atop one of the Maze's barrier lines, trying to get a sense of things. Through his hawk's eyes, he could see the breakage in the Maze, the damage that he'd somehow caused that first night, when he'd grabbed at Bellatrix's throat and held on, trying to choke the life from her, or at least choke off the laughter that had come from her after she'd killed Mum. In this shape, he could think of it dispassionately. He had wanted to kill her, as he'd killed Greyback. No internal mechanism expressed horror in the hawk, which was, after all, a killer in its own right.

But it had broken the Maze somehow, broken along the lines of Teddy's own anger, and now it was spilling into the world, into things it had no business touching, rising like the river overflowing its banks below.

Teddy blinked this away. It was amazingly easy in this shape; he could understand Sirius now, transforming in his cell to stay sane. He looked ahead, over the tangled lines of the jungle Maze, toward the volcano. Near the summit, he could see something glinting in the sun, the glare too bright to see precisely what it was.

But he knew that, whatever it was, it was the place they needed to be, and the only way out.

He did his best to memorize the lay of the Maze to get to the mountain, wishing he had a Marauder's Map here to remind him and tell him where the dangers would be, then flew back to the rock and transformed. "I know where we're going," he said.

Uncle Harry nodded. "Then let's go. Lead the way."