Chapter 5:

The Moon and the Stars

Checkmate mewed plaintively when Teddy locked her in his room the next morning.

He'd set several of her toys running around, and made sure her tray was clean and her bowls full, but she took no interest in any of it. She poked her paw under the door, claws up. He tapped them. "I'll be back at lunch, Checks. I'm sorry, but I don't want someone to take a bite out of you."

She gave a long whine.

He winced, then ran down the stairs to breakfast, morphing his hair into red and gold streaks as he went. Professor Longbottom was handing out class schedules when he came in. Teddy's first class was Divination, to be held in classroom eleven today and the North Tower on Wednesday. With only fifteen people in his year, they'd opted to have all of the electives held with merged houses, which simply felt wrong to Teddy, but he supposed with the big years following, the teachers might have to split them up more.

Victoire slipped in beside him. She looked a little bit low. "Hi, Teddy."

"Hi. How was your first night in Gryffindor?"

A few other first year girls passed and Victoire smiled at them eagerly. They nodded back politely and moved on down the table.

She sighed. "Fine," she said. "I... well, it was fine. They're all very nice. Mina Moran and Abby Ryan were best friends already. And Janice Connerly met the other Muggle-borns. They had to take them into Diagon Alley together because there were so many." She shrugged. "They have friends already."

"Well, so do you," Teddy said. "Do you want that scone?"

She took it from her plate and handed it to him. "I'll have the apple, if it's all right with you."

He tossed it over to her.

"The pair of you do realize you can just ask for things of your own, don't you?" Ruthless asked. She plopped down on Teddy's other side. Kirk had taken a seat down the table with the other first year boys, who seemed to be gearing up for a food fight, and she looked irritated for some reason.

"Why waste it?" Victoire asked. "I'd probably not have eaten the scone, and Teddy always leaves fruit behind. It makes more sense to split up what's here, if we want things from one another's plates. Would you like anything, Ruth?"

"Chocolate," Ruthless muttered. "Lots of chocolate. Chocolate-covered chocolate, if they've got any." She pulled her Clear-Eye Concoction out of her bag and chugged it. "And this stuff will never catch on if they can't make it last longer than an hour at a time!"

"So why not just wear your glasses?" Victoire suggested. "You could buy prettier frames, if you want to. Something that suits your face better."

"I take this so I don't have to worry about losing my glasses on the Quidditch pitch. It's not about how it looks."

"Oh." Victoire twirled her hair. "Well, I have chocolates, anyway." She opened her purse and pulled out a silver box. "Here."

Ruthless looked at her suspiciously, then took the box, apparently deciding it was a peace offering. Teddy noticed the Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes logo - subtly embossed on the side - just a moment too late. As soon as Ruthless took a bite, she exploded with puffy white rabbit fur.

Victoire grinned. "Bunny Bonbons," she said.

Ruthless, still in her sour mood, was less than amused. Teddy decided it was a good time to go catch up with the second years. He took his plate and slipped out from between them, going down the table to sit with Aaron and his dormitory mate, Harris Decker. Someone tapped his shoulder, and he turned to find Uncle Harry, in uniform. "May I have a look at your schedule?"

Teddy fumbled around and produced it from under his plate.

He scanned it. "Do you think you could meet me on Thursday nights?" he asked. "To work on what we talked about?"

"The Pat... the spell?" Teddy smiled. "Sure."

"Good, I'm off duty at six. Meet me in the entrance hall."

"Where will we go?"

"I'm working on a place."

He didn't say any more. Teddy finished his breakfast and went to classroom eleven, where he queued up with Corky, Tinny, Donzo, and Maurice, as well as Jane Hunter from Slytherin and Lizzie Richardson from Ravenclaw. Joe Palmer, Laura Chapman, and Roger Young, from Hufflepuff, rushed up just before the door swung open, and a palomino tail flicked away into the dimly lit room.

Teddy had been in classroom eleven only once before, in his first year, when he and his friends had found a kappa that had escaped from Robards' office. It had been a normal classroom then. Now, it had been magically transformed into a forest glade at twilight. On a tiny hill that stood where the teacher's desk had been, a large centaur stood with his back to the gathering class. An old woman with flyaway hair and skinny arms draped in bangles came forward.

"Oh, welcome! I'm so glad to meet you all in the physical world! Please take a seat on the, er... floor."

"Sit down, please," the centaur said, sounding irritated. He looked over his shoulder as they sat. "I am Professor Firenze. This year, you will take lessons from Professor Trelawney and myself, to give you an overview of both true Divination and" - he snorted - "fortune telling. Should you continue, years will alternate between the two subjects."

"I was crystal-gazing last night," Trelawney said, her voice sing-songy and excited, "to see with whom I would be communing today. Oh, there are great things ahead for all of you - love, fame, adventure... and death!" She turned on Teddy. "I see death in your future!"

Teddy had been warned about this - Ron had wanted to bet Uncle Harry that it would be Teddy she picked for the year's death omen, but Uncle Harry had refused to take the bet, as he'd be sure to lose - so he just smiled politely. "Thank you, Professor Trelawney. I'll keep that in mind."

"Good news for the rest of us, though," Maurice whispered when she was gone. "Apparently, we're all immortal."

Teddy laughed.

Professor Firenze flicked his tail impatiently, and the various chatterings in the room stopped. "Time," he said, "is written in the skies. The planets tell us the story of what has been and what shall be, the great motions of the universe, not the mere foibles of humans. Here, you will learn to read the motions of the past and the future. You will..." He frowned and checked his class list. "Yes, Miss Gudgeon?"

Tinny nodded. "Excuse me, sir, but why would we want to read the past? In the stars, I mean. Isn't that History of Magic, rather than Divination?"

"History classes," Professor Firenze said, "are the fortune-telling of the past. Mere trivia. Wars, deaths, kings, ministers... ephemera."

"If none of that matters," Corky interrupted, "then what does matter?"

Professor Firenze turned very slowly. "Manners, Mr. Atkinson. Manners matter. Including the raising of one's hand before speaking."

"Right," Corky said. "Sorry. So what matters, if nothing matters?"

"The present. And the understanding that all times exist in one time."

Corky raised his hand. "And why does it matter if we understand that or not?"

"Humans," Professor Firenze hissed, then shook his head. "Things matter for themselves, Mr. Atkinson."

The conversation went on, but Teddy's mind caught on what he'd said: All times exist in one time.

He raised his hand. "If everything exists at the same time," he asked, "then how is it kept separated?"

Professor Firenze nodded solemnly. "A wise question, though you lack the requisite knowledge to understand the answer as of now."

Professor Trelawney took over the class after this (Teddy assumed, given how much they loathed each other, that the remaining classes would alternate between them rather than being shared), introducing them to different means of fortune-telling she intended to teach. Teddy's grandfather, for whom he'd been named, had been a Seer, good with the crystal ball, but more comfortable scrying in pools as Teddy understood it, and he was anxious to see if he'd ever See anything himself. Granddad had actually Seen Granny before he left for Hogwarts. Teddy had tried staring into puddles many times, but hadn't Seen anything yet.

After Divination, Teddy had Potions. Professor Slughorn invited him to a party, then regretfully said it would have to be a small one, as the Aurors weren't letting him invite adults onto school grounds until Greyback was captured. He appeared to consider this a grave injustice, especially when imposed by one of his favorites. He assigned a simple Brightening Brew, to get them back into the mode of thinking they needed to be in for school. Teddy found that, in the rush through the apothecary, he'd managed to forget billywig stings. Slughorn sent him to the classroom stores.

Inside the small closet, Slughorn had a cauldron of his own set up, brewing over a magically protected fire. There was a bottle of dragon bile on a small table beside it, and a live plant with triangular purple flowers. A few leaves had been pulled from it and crushed. Teddy reached toward them.

"Don't!"

He looked up.

Slughorn was standing in the doorway, his hand up. "Don't touch that. The juice is poison."

"You're brewing poison?"

"I'm brewing something for a fellow staff member," he said. "The plant is aconite. Also called monkshood. And," he raised his eyebrows in a significant way, "Wolfsbane."

"Oh," Teddy said, and drew his hand back.

"I trust you not to discuss that."

"I promise."

Teddy took one more look, then got his billywig stings and went back to class.

At breakfast the next day, Hagrid invited Teddy, Victoire, and any friends either of them wanted to bring - Victoire looked stricken, but Hagrid didn't notice - to come to tea. "Yeh'll be righ' there, Teddy," he said. "Fresh from yer first Care o' Magical Creatures class. Got something fun for yeh." He smiled fondly at whatever he had in mind. Given the reputation of Hagrid's first classes, Teddy's interest was definitely piqued. He spent Herbology and Arithmancy wondering if they'd have an Acromantula, or maybe a Hairy McBoon.

He headed down to the paddock after lunch, with Donzo, Maurice, and Corky. Tinny, Roger Young, Franklin Driscoll, and Jane Hunter met them there. Hagrid had a large cage, covered with a black blanket. He was dangling a lizard into the shadows behind the bars. "Here yeh are! Doesn't that look nice?"

A green hand shot out and grabbed the lizard, and a moment later, there was a final-sounding crunch.

"Wicked," Maurice said.

Hagrid turned to greet them. "All here, are yeh?" he asked, grinning. He pulled the blanket off like a broom salesman revealing a new model. Inside the cage were either two green monkeys, or two giant frogs with tails. "Brought 'em in just for you lot."

"Clabberts!" Corky said. "I've seen these!"

Hagrid looked crestfallen. "Yeh have? I thought they were from a bi' south o' where yeh're from."

Corky climbed the fence, grinning. "I took a trip down to North Carolina. Asheville - it's half magical, even though no one notices. They have a clabbert preserve there." He made a screeching noise, and the clabberts in the cage screeched back. Bright red pustules on their foreheads pulsed.

"See that there?" Hagrid said, pointing at the pustules and still seeming disappointed that anyone had seen the creatures before. "That lights up when the clabbert thinks he's in danger. American wizards used ter keep 'em as alarms, but Muggles noticed 'em too much." He picked up a large wooden box piled up with dead lizards. "We're going to feed this pair today. Get yeh used to bein' around magical creatures."

"Ew," Jane Hunter said.

"My mum's best friend is a zookeeper at the London Zoo," Roger said, reaching in. "He let me feed sea lions once when the place was closed. Do you toss them?" he asked Hagrid.

"If yeh like." Hagrid opened the cage, and the clabberts sniffed tentatively toward the door. Teddy could see sharp teeth. One was still holding the lizard Hagrid had given it. The wind blew from the cage and carried a sharp, unpleasant smell.

Roger went forward with a lizard, dangling it just out of reach. "Come on, now. Come on out and say hello. Mm, tasty!"

The first clabbert came out. It was about waist-high to Roger. It stared at the lizard for a long time, then shot its hand out quickly to grab it. Its friend followed, and the class started to reach into the lizard box. Roger tossed one for a clabbert to catch, and it leapt into the air. This proved amusing for everyone - clabberts included - so the whole class took to the game, until Tinny threw her lizard high enough to lodge in a nearby pine tree. The clabbert scampered up it, then seemed to notice, for the first time, the Forbidden Forest stretching beyond. Before anyone realized what it meant to do, it had jumped to another tree.

"Whoa!" Hagrid yelled. "Come down, now!"

The clabbert didn't listen.

"You lot" - he grabbed Tinny, Jane, Franklin, and Roger, who were in reachable distance - "grab some of the lizards. Teddy, yeh're in charge o' the other one 'til we get it back."

He rushed off. Teddy turned to the other clabbert... or to where the other clabbert had been. "WAIT! HAGRID!"

The clabbert had taken advantage of the distraction to make its own bid for freedom, and it made straight for the tallest tree it could see.

The Whomping Willow.

"Get it!" Teddy yelled, running after it, but by the time Maurice, Corky, and Donzo had picked up on what was happening, it had already grabbed a swinging branch and started to climb.

"Watch out for the branches," Donzo said as they entered the general area.

"Really?" Maurice said, eyes wide. "Do you think we need to?"

Something flew out of the tree and splattered onto the knee of Corky's robes. "Oh, great!" he said. "The one thing they have to really be like monkeys about!"

Teddy looked at the stain on the robes. It looked like a handful of greenish mud, but there was no mud in the Whomping Willow. The clabbert, now ensconced on a swinging branch, reached under his tail, and another missile came flying. Teddy ducked it just as he realized what it was and shouted.

"I think Gryffindor should lose points for language," Maurice suggested.

"I don't think it counts when you're just naming what's being thrown at you," Donzo pointed out, trying to level his wand at the clabbert.

Teddy crouched, trying to get a good view of where it was, wondering if he should attempt the Stunning Spell he'd found in a fifth year book, not really wanting to knock it out where the branches could hit it.

The clabbert held tight to a moving branch, squatting its way along it, giving itself an arsenal. The boys fanned out, all of them aiming their wands tentatively, none of them trying any incantations. The clabbert moved again, and suddenly the front of Donzo's robes was smeared. He sat down on the ground, laughing, looking very unlike his publicity photographs.

"Shame Honoria didn't take this, really," Maurice said, ducking another handful of clabbert dung. "I think she might finally have a kindred spirit here."

He wasn't as lucky with the next missile. The clabbert had scrambled up to a higher branch of the Whomping Willow and flung the dirt hard, and it landed squarely on the shoulder of Maurice's robes.

Corky laughed. "I'm going to like this cl - Oh!" He wiped the mess off the side of his face.

Teddy briefly considered stopping the branches; he was sure that Corky and Maurice wouldn't tell how. But he'd promised back in his first year not to share that, and he wouldn't. Professor Longbottom had pointed out that students who knew the Whomping Willow could be stopped would be more likely to challenge it trying to do so.

Besides, he was sure they were having more fun than Jane and Roger and Tinny. Their clabbert hadn't picked a moving tree. Teddy's clabbert, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy the game of swinging on the moving branches, using them to launch itself around. He wasn't at all sure how they were going to get it down.

"Hey, green-boy!" Corky yelled, picking up the last handful of filth it had thrown down, and tossing it back up. "Come on, you haven't hit Lupin yet! Give it a try."

"I don't think so!" Teddy said, and ducked under both an aggressive branch and the return fire. "Come on down, now, you need to eat if you're to re-load." He waved a large lizard in the clabbert's direction, trying Roger's tactic. "Isn't this delicious-looking? Mmm-mm!"

"Why not take a bite of it for him, Lupin?" Donzo asked. "I mean, as long as you're putting on the pantomime anyway? He might not get the point otherwise."

"I think I should try to climb it," Corky said.

"You won't even get to the trunk," Teddy told him.

"We could grab one of these" - he ducked a swinging frond - "and take a swing for it."

Maurice rolled his eyes. "You and Lupin need to switch Houses, I think."

"Hey!" Teddy interjected.

"What?"

Donzo got to his feet, wiping the muck off his face and flinging it aside. "What we need is a plan. What does it want to do?"

"I think it wants to make a nest up there," Corky said. "They have a lot of these things down south in the States. When I saw them at the preserve... man, you can't get them out of the trees."

"Thank you," Teddy said. "That's a very helpful observation. Should get us far."

"Don's right," Maurice said. "We ought to have a plan. We should toss it some of Hagrid's treacle tarts. That should weigh him down."

"Wouldn't that be against some animal cruelty law?" Corky asked.

"Good point."

"Could we stun it?" Donzo asked, but no one was enthusiastic about the idea, as they all rather liked the clabbert. Maurice suggested more lizards. Corky stuck stubbornly to trying to swing their way up. Teddy was coming around to that way of thinking when the vast crowd of first years emerged from the greenhouses. Two of them broke off and headed across the fluxweed patch, and Teddy recognized Victoire Weasley and Story Shacklebolt.

"Wow," Story said, when they got close enough to see, "this looks like a fun class." He set his books down on the ground and took up a spot beside Maurice. "What are we doing?"

"Trying to get the clabbert down."

"Hey, Victoire," Corky said, "got anything in your purse to turn this into a bunny?"

Victoire was already digging around in her bag. "I don't know. We could smoke it down," she said, offering a Smoking Sardines. "But it would have to eat those. I have dungbombs."

"Toss us one," Donzo said. "Play it his way."

He lobbed the dungbomb up at the clabbert, but it just hit the Whomping Willow, which retaliated. Donzo jumped away.

Victoire pawed further down in her belongings, then suddenly smiled. "Portable Rainstorm!" she said. "Uncle George meant it to throw over someone having a snit." She leaned far back and lobbed something small and gray into the tree. A tiny rainstorm appeared over the clabbert, miniscule lightning arcing in a gray cloud. It ran for cover, but the storm followed it. Confused, it scrambled toward lower and lower branches, thinking it could get away, but the Portable Rainstorm was meant to follow its target. At last, it hit the ground, soaked and miserable. Teddy held out the lizard, just beyond the Willow's reach. It shuffled forward, looking like little Lily Potter, about to start crying from sheer sleepiness, insisting that she didn't need to go down for a baby nap. It took the lizard and started eating it like a chocolate bar.

"Righ' then," Hagrid said, coming down from his cabin with a lead and collar. Tinny and Roger were with him. Jane and Franklin had apparently had enough. "Good job. Now, who's for tea?"

No one was particularly hungry, which was perfect for tea at Hagrid's, so they all tromped down. Vivian was waiting there. She raised her wand and cleaned them off without comment. Teddy and Victoire had seen her closely before, but the others were all making a great effort to avoid looking at her scars.

"Yeh'll be joinin' us fer tea, then?" Hagrid asked her.

"Well, I seem to have missed the opening events in the beauty pageant, so I thought I'd come here instead, at least for a few minutes before I have to go."

Hagrid grinned. "Professor Longbottom comin' along soon?"

"I really don't know."

"Mm-hmm." Hagrid put out the tea, with enough cups for an extra person, and as it happened, Professor Longbottom did come along, charming the dirt out from under his fingernails as he walked. Teddy took a seat opposite the window. In the distance, he could see the uppermost branches of the Whomping Willow, waving at a passing post owl.

Roger Young was biting his lip anxiously, looking at Vivian's eye, and he finally said, "What is that? I'm sorry to be rude, but I just... what is it?"

"It's just a magical eye," Vivian said. "To replace one I lost a long time ago. By the way, your ink bottle is leaking into your book bag."

Roger picked up his book bag and seemed very surprised to find that this was true. He checked his robes, then put his book bag in front of himself, blushing.

Vivian laughed. It was a strangely pretty sound. "I only see through what I decide to look through," she said. She went to the window, where the red light of late afternoon was streaming through. "Well, I... I just wanted to say hello." She smiled at Hagrid and Professor Longbottom, and waved to the students. "I'd best get going now. I have..." Her smile wavered, and Teddy realized that the moon was going to be full tonight. "I have work to do."

"I'll get you started," Professor Longbottom said, confusing Teddy utterly. He walked out with her, and Hagrid launched into an entertaining story about Buckbeak's adventures on the run with Sirius Black. Teddy was looking out the window during this, and wasn't surprised to see the branches of the Whomping Willow go suddenly still.

After Teddy finished his homework that night, he played with Checkmate for a little while, then rubbed her belly until she fell asleep. Once she was curled up and purring, he opened his trunk. In the top compartment was a sheet of yellowish parchment and an old ash wand. The wand had belonged to his father. The parchment was the Marauder's Map, a wonderful bit of magic that Remus Lupin and his friends, the Marauders, had created together at Hogwarts. He'd learned first year that having one of the maker's wands opened up new levels of magic in the Map, and over that summer, he and Uncle Harry had worked out a loose but permanent binding spell, as Dad's was the only one of the maker's wands to survive. Now, it would move with the Map, be passed down with the Map when it was time. It had been a wrench to decide on that, but Teddy thought Dad would like it, and he had Mum's wand for himself. He'd used it to etch Dad's name on the barrel of the ash wand, and the others' names at the base. Opposite Dad's name, he'd etched all four of their nicknames: Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. (He'd asked Mr. Ollivander about this before doing it - it wouldn't help anyone if the wand changed its nature - and been assured that a little decoration had never hurt any wand.)

Now, he opened the map, tapped it with Dad's wand, and said, "I'm Teddy Lupin. Third year. Talk to me."

The Marauders hadn't been fond of orders, and had designed the Map to respond to them with insults. It didn't really matter what the order or the insult was - Teddy just made a habit of it to keep in touch with them. He read the four lines that swam up from the map, grinned, and left them alone. He leaned the Map against the side of his trunk, then pulled out a clean sheet of parchment and took Dad's ring from the chain around his neck. The Map had led him to the ring, which Dad had lost in the battle where he'd died. It was charmed with memories of the best parts of Dad's life, as well as a few of the best of Mum's. At first, it had been random, but slowly, he'd been learning to control it, to find the memories he wanted, to enjoy some of his own favorites over again. It was a question of concentrating, finding the path his mind wanted to follow. He thought about the branches of the Whomping Willow, and bent his energy toward the tree and the house at the end of it, the Shrieking Shack, hoping for an adventure with the Marauders.

He set the ring down in the center of the parchment and said, "Cordis Patronum."

The soft candlelight of his room blazed into bright summer sunlight, and he knew he hadn't found an adventure. He was in his father's mind, and he knew he was older now, that more had happened. James Potter and Sirius Black were dead, Peter Pettigrew was turned, Dumbledore was dead. There were rumors that the Ministry was about to fall, and they would need to get Harry out of Little Whinging before he came of age. But none of that mattered. Not here, not now. He was in his own garden, planting a rosebush, and it was a high summer day, and his wife was inside, trying to get a particularly stubborn floor in the spare bedroom to flatten itself out. He could see his wedding ring on his finger, reflecting the sunlight. He had been wearing it for just short of forty-eight hours. Teddy knew that within the next day or two, they'd be chased from the house, when the Ministry passed anti-werewolf legislation calling in all debts, repossessing everything Dad owned. Mum and Dad would destroy the Shrieking Shack again rather than give their hard work to the goblins. But for now, it was their home - bright and sunny, recovering from its ancient wounds. Everything was ahead of them. They'd talked about children. Dora had been picking out which rooms they would have, and had already decided that the room she was fixing would belong to their son, who would go through a teenage rebellion and paint it black. He would have sisters who would tease him unmercifully about it. She'd painted the word picture last night in bed (Teddy blushed at the thought of this, though Dad had been very, very careful not to put in any memories that would be disturbing in context), and he planned to draw it for her later, a gift...

The kitchen door opened, and Dora came out, her pink and black hair morphed long and braided. A floppy straw hat was on her head. She had two little clips with plastic flowers on them, and she was dusty from the housework. She looked like a goddess. And she was his wife. She came to him and took her hat off, dropping it onto his head. They laughed, and talked about nothing at all, lying back, side by side, looking up at the house they would share and grow old in. Teddy was aware of the dull anger that always seemed to live inside him when he thought about what had been taken from them - and from him - but from Dad, there was a simple, warm happiness, and Teddy did his best to feel that instead. It was a better feeling, and he wanted it. He stayed with the memory for the full half hour that the ring allowed, listening to his parents spinning tales to each other and feeling the warmth of a long vanished sun.

When the spell ended and he returned to his room, he felt calm and peaceful. He looked out the window at the full moon, and thought of Vivian again. Slughorn was brewing her Wolfsbane Potion, so she wouldn't do a lot of damage to herself, but Teddy had read a lot about lycanthropy, and he thought she'd probably still hurt in the morning. Mum - and before her, Sirius - had brewed an analgesic potion. It wasn't hard. Struck with inspiration, he pulled out his potion kit and cauldron, Conjured a small fire, and started in. He finished it around midnight, and set it to brew for four hours. He set a spell to wake himself up at four in the morning, and fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

When he woke up, he nearly forgot why he'd meant to get up so early, but Checkmate jumped on his chest and started licking his chin vigorously, bringing him fully up from his sleepy daze. He rubbed at the sensitive area that she'd been licking. It had a rougher feel than he was expecting, and he wondered if facial hair might not be imminent, but close examination in the mirror didn't reveal any suspicious shadows. He found a goblet in his trunk and poured the potion into it, then pulled on an autumn cloak and slipped downstairs and out of the castle. The sky was dark gray, and the moon was down.

He went to the Whomping Willow and sat on a rock just beyond the reach of the branches. The sky lightened, and just as it began to be threaded with brilliant orange, a hand appeared among the roots, groping for the knot that immobilized the tree.

The branches went still.

Vivian Waters pulled herself up. Her hair was tousled and fallen over the scarred half of her face, and she limped gingerly as she got to her feet. Teddy rushed forward and offered her his hand.

She blinked her good eye, and he realized she didn't have the other one in yet. "Teddy?" she said.

"Hi." He held out the goblet. "My mum used to brew this for my dad the morning after. For the aches."

She looked at him strangely.

"You can trust me," he said. "I'm good in Potions."

She took it and drank the potion down. "Thank you, Teddy. That was thoughtful. And it doesn't taste nearly as bad as Wolfsbane Potion."

Teddy smiled, and offered her his arm to lead her out from under the tree. "Did you really come to help with Greyback?" he asked. "If so... well, thank you."

"You're more than welcome. I want him put away." She winced as she tripped over a root. "Or put down." They got out from under the umbrella of the Willow, and she gave Teddy a tired smile. "Don't mind me. I'm only bitter and vengeful the morning after."

"It was bad, living with him, wasn't it?"

"With Greyback?" She shrugged, sitting down on the rock where Teddy had waited. "It wasn't as bad as you'd think on the surface. What Greyback did - he terrorized us sometimes, but not always. We enjoyed ourselves. But what he wanted was to break us. To re-make us. He thought we belonged to him. Anyone who stepped out of line got a reminder about who was alpha. When..." Her eye went cloudy, and she shook her head sharply. "It could get bad then."

"Did my dad step out of line when he was with you?"

She nodded, then suddenly smiled and stood up. Teddy turned.

Professor Longbottom was heading down from the greenhouses. He looked surprised. "Teddy. I wasn't expecting you to be here."

"Teddy brought me a painkiller potion," Vivian said.

"Good," Professor Longbottom said. "Well... they should be starting breakfast, if you're up to it."

"Oh, I definitely want to show my face in the Great Hall," Vivian said. "Allay the rumors about full moons as long as I can..."

Teddy walked up to the castle with them, a few steps behind, not really talking to them. He wondered what had happened to Dad when he'd crossed the line, and if Vivian might have told him. He somehow didn't think he'd find anything about Greyback saved on the wedding ring.

He was the first student at the Gryffindor table, though a few teachers were at the high table, sleepily gulping at coffee. Professor Vector from Teddy's Arithmancy class blinked owlishly at him and mumbled "Good morning." Vivian and Professor Longbottom sat together, and Hagrid came in to join them after a few minutes. Teddy felt deeply out of place until the doors opened and the Gryffindor Quidditch team came in, bleary-eyed, from a morning practice. Ruthless, her Beater's bat still trailing from her hand, sat down beside him. "All right," she said, "I have to be up, thanks to Tiller." She glared at Naomi Tiller, the new captain. "What're you doing here?"

Teddy shrugged and said, "Couldn't sleep." A bowl of melon appeared in front of him, and he reached for the salt just as Ruthless did. His hand brushed against hers, and he suddenly felt quite awake, though he couldn't quite explain why.

She drew back quickly, her face red. "Well, we had to go through our paces. It should be a good season, though."

More students started to come in, and the Great Hall started to look more normal. The morning's run of post owls arrived at eight, several of them carrying copies of the Daily Prophet. One stopped by Ruthless, and she shoved it, unopened, toward Teddy. "My dad actually thinks I'm going to start caring about Ministry politics if he sends me this. Do you want it?"

Teddy had finished his breakfast, so he took the paper and unrolled it. A headline screamed at him under a picture of the full moon: "WILTSHIRE MANSION INVADED: WEREWOLF ATTACK?"

Teddy sighed and read the article. It was the Malfoy home, but it had been empty. A reporter had interviewed Draco Malfoy by Floo in Wellington, where he said the family was taking a long holiday. "I trust," he said, "that the Aurors will give this matter their full attention before we return." The rest of the article was speculation about where Greyback's people were hiding, and an excoriation of Uncle Harry for not having already caught Greyback. Teddy was about to roll it back up again when he noticed a blurb, misspelled and clearly added quickly, saying that the Shrieking Shack was showing renewed signs of haunting. "The vicious wailing, unheard for decades, has returned to Britain's most haunted dwelling..." Teddy glanced up at Vivian, who was reading her copy with no expression. The daily Aurors arrived, Uncle Harry among them, and met briefly at the end of the high table before fanning out for guard duty. They looked very tired, but Uncle Harry made a point of coming to Teddy, batting the back of his head, and saying, "Don't forget to meet me at six."

Teddy nodded and smiled, glad he had a Patronus Charm lesson to look forward to tonight, not to mention just some time to talk to Uncle Harry. He moved on to Defense Against the Dark Arts for the morning, and there was no escape from the discussion of werewolves. Honoria brought up the (possible) attack, Corky wanted to know about curse scars, Brendan Lynch complained that they ought to be put down (losing Slytherin ten points, and getting himself hexed by Maurice Burke), and Jane Hunter wanted to know if Muggles could be infected. Teddy let Robards go about the business of answering the questions, though he could have answered most of them himself. It was the year they were supposed to learn it. Brendan echoed the Prophet's sentiment that it was outrageous for a "half-trained idiot like Fenrir Greyback" to elude justice for so long.

Werewolves continued to haunt Teddy's day, through Herbology, Divination, lunch, and History of Magic. He did some of his homework at dinner, then went down to the entrance hall. Uncle Harry was waiting for him by the doors, smiling.

"Come on then," he said, and led the way out. A Red Cap scampered across the path, and he hexed it (mostly, as far as Teddy could tell, out of spite - they were finally starting to disappear on their own, and were only dangerous in packs). He went down the hill toward Hagrid's, and Teddy wondered if that was where they would have lessons, but he stopped halfway, at the Whomping Willow. He Summoned a stick and levitated it over to the knot among the roots, freezing the branches, then glanced over his shoulder and grinned. "Well," he said, "are you coming or not?"