Part III

Teddy had been having dim dreams about wandering through endless tunnels when he was jerked back to consciousness by the searing pain from his shoulder.

Blinking confusedly around the blinding pain, he saw that he was in his bedroom at home, everything lit with grey light that peeked in from around the shades. Uncle Harry must have taken him home.

On the bedside table, he saw the faint outlines of the potions bottles the Healer had given him. Reaching for one blindly, fingers slick with cold sweat, he downed a gulp and prayed it was a pain relief potion.

The pain in his shoulder did seem so fade a bit, but another wave of drowsiness, as strong and inevitable as a rip tide, washed over him.

"Teddy?"

He thought he saw Victoire standing in their bedroom doorway, outlined in the gray light like a ghost.

"Teddy," he heard her say again, and her voice was distant and silvery, as if he was in a dream.

More than anything, he wanted to be awake and see Victoire, hold her, talk to her, make sure she was safe, but he was fighting a losing battle with his eyelids.

The potion he'd taken was pulling him down, down, down into a deep, dark, dreamless sleep.

The next time he woke, it was to the soft sound of fluttering curtains.

Someone, probably Victoire, had opened the window while he slept and Teddy was glad for it. It was obviously morning and the sunlight was pouring through the shades, coloring the blankets in thick citrus stripes and making the room almost uncomfortably warm.

Teddy's shoulder and chest still ached, along with his head, and he groaned, throwing his good arm over his eyes to block the light.

"Are you too hot?" Victoire's voice came softly from the other side of the bed. "Should I shut the blinds?"

Her palm felt cool as it pressed against his forehead and brushed back some of his hair. He shook his head, not trusting his voice yet. What he really wanted was something to take away the dull ache that seemed to permeate his whole body.

"It's the blue bottle," Victoire said, her voice closer to his ear than before, and he thought she might have pressed a kiss to his cheek. "And the red bottle is the replenishing tonic."

He felt the mattress lift as she rolled away and heard her footsteps head off in the direction of the bathroom. Leaning over towards the bedside table, Teddy squinted at the bottles and grabbed two of them. He took a gulp of each of the potions and the pain began to gradually recede to the edges of his mind.

"Take some of the other one too," Victoire called from the other room. "The green one. You need more rest. The dreamless sleep potion should help."

And so Teddy took a sip of that too, feeling the waves of sleep start to pull him under again, and it was suffocating. He almost wished he hadn't taken it, hating how heavy it made his head as his eyelids shut out the sunlight.

He was asleep before Victoire came back into the bedroom.

The man had come from nowhere.

Teddy had been on a walk, escaping from the flat for some fresh air while Victoire was out for a bit, when he suddenly felt an arm around his neck, a stranger's wand pressing painfully into the hollow of his throat.

"Put your hands where I can – "

Before Teddy could even think, his Auror training had kicked in and he shoved his good elbow back into the man's solar plexus while slamming the back of his own head into his face simultaneously. There was a crack of his nose breaking and a scarlet spurt of blood, and the man dropped like a rock to the ground, his wand rolling away uselessly. Teddy stepped on it, breaking it in half and looked down at the man on the concrete.

What he saw made his blood run cold.

The man's eyes were wide and empty, staring blankly up into the night sky as the blood continued to flow out of his broken nose, and his arms and legs jutted out awkward angles in a way that reminded Teddy of a rag doll and had his stomach turning.

Teddy scrambled over to him, kneeling and gripping his wrist, praying for some kind of pulse, but the man's body was still, his heart beating more and more slowly as his life drained away.

Teddy realized that he had killed him.

The moonlight was glimmering off the wet pool of blood that was gathering around the man's head and Teddy felt sick.

His mind was unraveling, he could feel it, like the unbound ends of an old sweater. The man's hand finally went limp in his and Teddy felt the cold start to seep into his stomach like an ice cube.

He was an Auror, meant to protect people, and he had killed someone. Dropping the man's hand, Teddy scrambled up to his feet, wanting to run, to get as far away as possible from this –

"It was an accident," said Victoire's voice from behind him. He turned to look at her and she was a vision etched in silver and white against the dinginess of the alley. "And even if it wasn't, it was justice. Don't you think?"

He opened his mouth, uncertain as she took a step towards him, her eyes looking from his face to the body lying at his feet. "I – "

"One criminal's death to prevent the hundreds of crimes he might have committed in the future. To make up for the ones in his past." The corners of her mouth lifted into almost a smile and the whites of her eyes seemed brighter than usual in the night. "Justice."

Teddy's mouth felt parched and he had to peel his tongue off the roof of his mouth.

He parroted her: "Justice."

This time Victoire did smile, lips spreading wide to show her teeth, and for a moment her incisors seemed strange, sharp and horrifying, until Teddy caught sight of her dimpling cheeks. Just a trick of the shadows, of the starlight, he thought, deciding that the aftershocks of adrenaline must be making him see things.

Then he realized that she was out on the street in the dark. "What are you doing out? It's not safe – "

He motioned to the body behind him, guilt sliding back down into his stomach, and she gave a tinkling little laugh that almost sounded to him like the breaking of glass.

Teddy shook his head. The cold night hair was really messing with him.

"With you around to protect me, I'm not afraid." Smiling, she reached forwards and ran her fingernails against the line of his jaw. "But I was worried. You weren't at home and you didn't leave a note, so I came to look for you. And I found you."

She was wearing a white sundress that ruffled around her legs in the breeze and the top of it left her neck and collarbones bare to the moonlight.

"Come home, Teddy," she said, holding out her hand towards him. "He's just some criminal. No one of consequence. Such justice is above the law. Nobody needs to know about this but us."

"Nobody but us," Teddy repeated.

And she sounded so sure, so positive, that he took her hand and let her lead him away down the street.

Out of the corner of his eye, Teddy thought he saw something move, a shadow against more, inky black shadows and he almost turned to investigate. But when he tried, Victoire smiled at him again and held his hand tighter.

"Come home with me, Teddy," she repeated, and the way she said it, floating, metallic, like sunlight cutting through mist, gave him no choice but to follow.

When he finally got to go back to work, it was almost a relief.

After that first day at home and that night in the alley, he hardly saw Victoire. She was gone a lot, working with the rest of the St. Mungo's staff as they tried to rebuild everything that had been lost in the fire and he had taken to using the dreamless sleep potion to pass the time while she was gone. And he found that the more he slept, the more he was able to forget about what had happened with the mugger that night in the alleyway.

He knew it was probably an unhealthy thing to do, but listlessly sitting around their empty flat, waiting for Victoire to get home with only his own thoughts for company was hardly good for him either.

The office looked exactly the same as always, crowded cubicles covered in parchment and bottles of ink, too many people gathered around the water cooler in the corner by the kitchen gossiping, and Owen lounging at their shared desk scribbling away at some paperwork.

"Oh," Owen said when Teddy reached him and he took his feet down from where they had been propped up on the desk. "I didn't know you were going to be in today."

"I couldn't stand another moment at home. I need something to do to keep me distracted from – " he gestured to his injured arm, " – everything."

"Okay," Owen said slowly. "Are you doing alright? You look exhausted."

"I've been having some trouble sleeping actually. Never was very good at sleeping on my back, but it's kind of impossible not to with my shoulder." Owen was still eyeing him warily, as thought he expected Teddy to begin falling apart. "Look: I'm fine. Give me something to do or I think I'll go crazy."

Nodding, Owen pulled out the other chair for him to sit in.

"I've been looking into the St. Mungo's fire while you've been gone, and it looks like whoever started it was targeting the coroner's office."

"The coroner's office? You mean the morgue?"

"I know. I thought it was odd too. At first, I figured that maybe they thought starting from the basement would ensure that the whole building would be destroyed, but no matter where they set the Fiendfyre, it wouldn't have stopped until it burned the whole place to the ground." Owen leaned in, as thought he didn't want anyone to overhear what he was about to say. "I don't know why, but I keep getting this feeling like this is all connected to those alleyway murders."

"You mean – "

"What if someone set that fire to get rid of the body we found? Fiendfyre is really Dark magic, which is something most people stay as far away from as possible these days. But obviously the person killing and performing that ritual – if they're willing to dabble in Sorcery, Dark Magic is probably like child's play."

"So there's been nothing more other than the fire since I've been gone?"

"No. I looked into the Muggle woman, but nothing really jumped out at me to indicate a pattern."

"Mind if I take a look?"

"Everything the police gave me about her is in that file right there." Teddy pulled it towards him and began to flip through it. "It's not much but – "

"This is her?" Teddy held up a picture of a pretty woman with long dark hair, probably in her early twenties.

"Yes."

"Don't you think she looks a lot like – "

"Charlotte? Yeah, they look a lot alike. But I asked her and she said there was no relation. Speaking of… " Owen called over Teddy's shoulder. "Char, love. How are you today?"

Teddy turned, steadying himself with his good arm, and saw her walking towards down the aisle towards them. She was wearing blue robes today, a deep cerulean color that made her skin look even more olive than usual.

"Fine. Thanks for asking, Owen." She smiled at them both. "Teddy, do you think I could talk to you alone for a moment?"

"Of course."

He followed her into the archives room, the door closing behind him to shut out the noise of the office.

"I didn't think you would be back to work so soon. Are you okay?" She was looking up at him earnestly, dark eyes wide and Teddy sighed.

"I wish everyone would stop asking me that. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't." Agitated, he ruffled his hair. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

Looking shy, she said, "I just wanted you to know… If there's anything you need, anything at all, just let me know."

He saw her shift in the dim light and was startled by the feel of her lips on his cheek.

"What are you – "

She stopped his mouth with her hand and smiled at him almost coyly, dark eyelashes fluttering. "Remember. Anything at all."

The door opened and shut behind her as she left Teddy standing, bewildered, with the mark of her kiss still burning on his cheek.

The moment Teddy caught sight of the apartment door the next night he knew something was wrong. It was slightly ajar, a small slip of parchment lying in front of it. Drawing his wand, he scooped up the paper and edged inside the door.

The bookshelf that he usually placed his keys on had been overturned, the books strewn over the floor, some of them in pieces, mixed with the stuffing that had been hacked out of the furniture and glass from the broken side table.

Someone must have broken in and trashed their flat. Unfolding the parchment in his hand, he saw his name had been written and then crossed out, with a skull and crossbones drawn over it crudely with blood-red ink. He suppressed a shudder. The person who had done this obviously didn't like him very much.

He looked around at the mess, taking in shattered picture frames and overturned furniture, and jumped when he caught sight of Victoire standing in the middle of the living room, staring straight at him.

"Hello Teddy."

He clutched his chest, heart pounding in his throat. "Victoire. What happened? Did you see who – "

"Who's Charlotte?" Her face was completely blank and Teddy began to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Charlotte?" he asked, confused. "She's Uncle Harry's secretary. Why…?"

"Just Uncle Harry's secretary? There's never been anything between you two? Nothing for you to feel guilty about?"

He remembered earlier that day in the archives room, her coy smile and her lips on his cheek, and swallowed.

Victoire's voice went cold and hard. "I knew it. I knew there was something." She began to pace, each footstep punctuated by the crunch of broken glass. "No wonder you always work such late hours. If there's something pretty there for you to look at then there's no reason for you to come home – "

"It's not like that! She came on to me, but I never did anything – "

"I can't believe I was ever so stupid to let the fact that you never could say you loved me go like it didn't mean something. Of course it meant something."

There were tears in her eyes now and she was beginning to sound a little hysterical. She picked up the picture frame that sat on the coffee table, a snapshot of the two of them waving cheerfully at the camera on Victoire's last day at Hogwarts, and threw it at the wall. The glass shattered, exploding into a shower of sharp pieces, and Teddy recoiled. "You can't say you love me because you don't. You never did!"

"No, that's not true! I lo – " The word caught in his chest and he was having a hard time breathing. He just couldn't say it.

"See! Even now, you won't say you love me!" She let out a moan that was midway between anger and sadness and Teddy flinched at the sound. "What next? Are you going to leave me for her?"

"Victoire, how can you say that?" he pleaded, as if to call her back to her senses. "After all this time, how could you even think – "

"I don't know what to think!" Her eyes had somehow gone from deep blue to tawny and the angles of her face were sharp and furious in the light. Her voice broke as she snarled, "You care more about your work that you do about me. More about justice than the woman waiting for you here at home!"

Her skin seemed strange all of a sudden, lined, patterned and broken, as if it were about to burst into pieces, and she pulled at her hair wildly.

"You never loved me and I – I – " Victoire seemed to choke on the words and she clutched at her throat as though she couldn't breathe.

Suddenly, she screamed, head jerking back and eyes slamming shut, pain written in every line of her face. Then, just as unexpectedly, as if every muscle in her body had gone limp, she fell silent and dropped to the floor in a heap.

Teddy stumbled forward towards her, horrified, and shook her shoulders.

"Victoire? Victoire!" He cradled her head in his arms, holding her to his chest, and felt the slight shift of her ribcage has she took in a faint breath.

She had just passed out then. He let out a sigh of relief and stroked her hair until it was smooth again. Once she came to, they could talk this out and things would be okay again.

And he would try to say he loved her. He would try as hard as he could to make it true.

Once, Teddy had run across the Veela entry in one of the encyclopedias that was kept in the Unspeakable's library. It had been an accident, with the book falling open to that page randomly and honestly, he had quite forgotten that the Veela was even considered a beast in the first place. He had known Aunt Fleur and her and Uncle Bill's children for so long that he would never have connected the idea of Veela with something inhuman.

The entry wasn't long, only a few paragraphs, but it was the illustration that had caught his eye. It had been enchanted to move, like in most magical textbooks, and showed a woman, stunning and silver haired with eyes like sapphires, and Teddy's first though had been that she was the spitting image of Victoire. Slightly different from her mother's face, with her kindly rounded jaw and cheekbones, or her brothers, who both had their dad's long nose and thin lips, Victoire was all beautifully sharp angles that looked like they could have been carved out of diamond.

The woman in the picture had seemed to smirk up at him, her liquid starlight hair fanning out as if it had been caught in a breeze, and Teddy had been enraptured. He thought he could have looked at that image forever, drinking in the bowed perfection of her lips, the smooth curve of her waist, her swanlike neck. Her flawlessness almost hurt his eyes.

After a moment though, the woman began to change. Her eyes seemed to glaze as the pupils dilated and dilated, until they covered the whites and had grown beady and bulbous, too large for her face. But that too had begun to shift, the angles becoming even sharper as the straight patrician line of her nose protruded forward until it seemed to break the skin, revealing the sharp shape of a beak underneath.

The silver hair had begun to stick to itself, spreading, smoothing down her back and arms, less silver and more a dirty gray, and that was when Teddy had caught sight of the woman's hands.

Her slim, feminine fingers had tapered into terrible talons, claws that looked sharp enough to cut through skin taking the place of fingernails, and he hadn't been able to stop a shudder at the thought of those talons tearing into flesh.

The sheet of what had been hair had now covered almost her whole body like a grey blanket and suddenly her every muscle seemed to tense, as if all her nerves had been pulled painfully tight like a rubber band. She threw her head back, beak-like mouth torn open wide in a horrible silent scream, pain mingled with ecstasy, as a pair of wings burst from her shoulders and the whole silver coating of her body erupted in a flurry of feathers.

Teddy had stared down at the book in horror.

The flawless woman from before had transformed into some kind of many-taloned bird and somehow, her glassy black eyes had seemed to look through the page into his. Her beak opened in another scream and Teddy could almost hear it that time as her feathered wings had flapped, propelling her up towards him, talons extended as though she meant to gouge out his eyes, to tear at his skin.

Teddy had slammed the book shut and nearly shoved it off the table, blocking the bird-woman's horrible beady bird eyes from view, but he couldn't seem to get them out of his mind. He had seen the murder in those eyes. The terrible blood lust.

He had seen something that was not human at all.