Chapter 12:

The Lost Treasure

Teddy let out a scream, and so did the small thing on the sofa. Its scream was high-pitched, then broke into a word, "TEDDY!"

"Lumos!" someone said, and the lights came on.

James Potter was on the sofa, wearing bright red pajamas with different kinds of cartoon dragons flying around on them. He flung himself at Teddy and kissed his cheek with a great smacking sound. "Happy Christmas!"

Teddy blinked and said, "Er... happy Christmas, James." He looked up to find Uncle Harry leaning in the kitchen doorway, smiling. "I didn't know you'd be here already."

"James wanted to surprise you. I asked your Granny if we could just come here from Romania."

Granny went over to him and kissed his cheek. "Did you have a nice trip?"

"I saw dragons!" James said. "All sorts of dragons! Uncle Charlie let me feed one of them."

"Where's Ginny?"

"Giving Al a bath upstairs. Lily's in the nursery. I hope you don't mind."

Teddy shook his head. "No. Does she like the pictures?"

"She loves the pictures."

Teddy's father had decorated the nursery during the months they waited for him to be born, and the walls were covered with beautiful moving drawings. Teddy had left the room when he got too old for them rather than painting over them. His parents - until close to the end - had had their own flat, but it had been hard to secure, and they'd spent almost all of their time at Granny's, especially after Granddad died. Teddy had been born in the very bed he slept in at home now. He was glad that Lily was in his cot. He had no use for it, but it always seemed a little silly to explain why he didn't just get rid of it.

"Sorry we're late," Granny said to Uncle Harry. "They wanted to exchange gifts after the concert."

"We listened on the wireless," James put in. "You were really, truly there?"

"I was."

"And that was really your friend Donzo, who has karate?"

Teddy laughed. Donzo's Muggles and Minions character was an expert in martial arts, and he'd spent a long afternoon explaining it to James the summer before last. James had listened patiently - a rarity - and come out of it understanding that Donzo had the power to kick a brick wall and make it fall down. Nothing could shake him from this belief, and he thought it a good deal more impressive than a music career. It had even made its way into one of his stories about Martian.

As if Summoned by thought, a ball of brown fuzz leapt over the back of the sofa and started to attack the bright buttons on Teddy's jacket.

"'Lo, Martian," Teddy said, plucking him down and handing him to James.

"Where's Checkmate?" Uncle Harry asked.

"Professor Longbottom said he'd take care of her for a couple of days. Bushy, as well. He'll bring them tomorrow. Victoire thought they might be scared to be in a big new place by themselves with all sorts of strange people."

Uncle Harry nodded soberly. "Very conscientious of her."

Aunt Ginny appeared at the bottom of the stairs, looking flustered, a towel-wrapped Al balanced on one hip. She went to Granny and kissed her cheek. "I'm so sorry to have just taken over your house. We were going to wait as good guests, but the children got quite sleepy, and then Al managed to spill hot chocolate all over himself. I'd have used a spell, but quite honestly, he was getting grimy and I thought he needed a real wash."

"It's quite all right," Granny said. "But oughtn't small boys be in bed by this hour on Christmas Eve? There could be other visitors out there who are waiting for them to be sound asleep!"

James sat up, looking quite alarmed. "Oh! I forgot. Daddy, can Father Christmas get through the security?"

"I cleared him personally," Uncle Harry said. "But now that you've seen Teddy, you really must go to bed."

"Couldn't I have a story?" James asked, looking eagerly at Teddy. "Just a little one."

"Sure," Teddy said. "Where are you sleeping?"

"I set up the twin beds in the big guest room before I left for the Dukes'," Granny said.

James wanted to be carried up. He was getting big for it, but Teddy didn't mind. Aunt Ginny followed along, and got Al into his pajamas while Teddy told the story of the Three Wizards and the Star. Al contributed a sub-plot about earning stars of his own in Mum's lessons, and James helpfully informed him that he'd missed the point. The point, according to James, wasn't the star - "Well, not your star, anyway" - but the presents they were carrying, though he thought the baby might have liked a toy broomstick better than a couple of smelly potions.

"What else do you suppose they should have brought?" Aunt Ginny asked.

"Gingerbread," James suggested after a great deal of thought. "And a kitten."

Aunt Ginny nodded. "What about you, Albus? What do you think they ought to have brought?"

Al frowned in deep concentration, then said, "A little sister, like Lily."

"Other people can't bring you little sisters," James said testily. "Only Mummy and Daddy can do that."

Teddy thought of his parents sitting on the garden wall, making up names for children who would never be born. He forced a smile and gave the boys each a kiss, then helped Aunt Ginny tuck them in.

"They'll never sleep," she said.

Teddy shrugged as they passed the nursery door. "May I go in and kiss Lily?"

"Try not to wake her."

He nodded. Aunt Ginny went downstairs, and he heard her starting to to speak softly to Uncle Harry and Granny. Teddy pushed open the door and slipped inside.

The nursery was full of starlight, and Dad's drawings moved gently around him. A hippogriff swooped down, bending at the right angle by the door, and crouched above the skirting board. He bowed to it, and it bowed back, then he touched its head as if it were as real as Buckbeak. It flew back to the ceiling above where Lily Potter was asleep.

He went to the cot. Lily was a little too big for it - she was three - but Aunt Ginny had expanded it enough for her to fit in. She was sleeping soundly, little bubbles of spit gathering at the lower corner of her mouth. Her red hair had grown since the summer, and someone had put it into a braid tied off with a little green yarn bow. Judging by the sloppiness of the braiding, Teddy was willing to guess it had been Uncle Harry. He leaned down and kissed one chubby cheek. She made a comfortable sort of sound.

The cot itself was made from a desk that Mum had bought for Dad. Her own cot was long-since gone, and it hadn't been safe to shop for baby furniture during the year she was pregnant, so she'd spent her time taking the desk apart, magically re-shaping it, using its pieces to create a wholly new thing. The drawer handles still served as decoration, and one deep drawer left in the base had once held Teddy's nappies.

He tiptoed over to the rocking chair and sat down. People had once watched him sleep from this chair - his parents, Granny, Uncle Harry. Uncle Harry had told him this shortly after James was born, when Teddy had caught him sitting in James's nursery, looking fascinated as he watched the baby do nothing at all. Teddy supposed it must be true - there was no reason to lie about it - but watching Lily, he mostly felt restless. There was a little book shelf behind him, where Granny had kept his story books when he was little. A few of them were still there, gathering dust against a cardboard box that had been there for as long as Teddy could remember. He'd asked what was in it once, and Granny had just said, "Old books that you wouldn't like."

Having discovered The End of the Earth, he suspected what sort of books they were, and why Granny couldn't bring herself to throw them out even though she thought they were rubbish. He got down on the floor and drew the box to himself, careful not to make any noise. It wasn't sealed, and he just lifted the flaps. As he'd expected, it seemed to be filled with Enchanted Encounters novels, all of them showing beautiful witches pining away on seashores and mountaintops. He could imagine his mother sitting in the chair, either pregnant or holding him, restless as he was, picking up her pretty imaginary world and enjoying a little escape into some frivolous world where everything always came out right in the end. Teddy reached in and pulled a few out, then smiled. A few down from the top of the pile, he saw a familiar cloud of curly red hair, tossed in the ever-present breeze, improbably cradling a very large chest, upon which rested a garishly red ruby pendant.

The Treasure of Tirza Malone, the title said. Part One of the Trials of Tirza, by Fifi LaFolle.

Teddy plucked it up out of time and pocketed it. Part Two (Holt's Harriers) was only a little below it, and, to his delight, the final section, The Lost Treasure, was lying along the side of the box. It was shiny and new looking, but there was a bookmark in it, and it was past the end of the story, in a preview for what was to be the next Fifi LaFolle novel. Mum had got to read the whole thing. He pulled out the bookmark. She'd written the names on it at some point. The name "Ted" had been written in large block letters and circled. Then Julia. Orion. Mira. Carina. John. Raymond. She'd put an arcing two-headed arrow between "Orion" and "John," and he wondered if she meant that they were to be mixed as first and middle name somehow. He wondered, particularly, if she'd meant it to be "Orion John" or "John Orion."

Which was a stupid and pointless thing to wonder about.

He put the bookmark back into The Lost Treasure and took all three Tirza books back to his own room, then went downstairs to have hot chocolate and gingerbread with his guardians.

Teddy woke up on Christmas morning feeling out of place and guilty.

For the last two years, he'd been at Uncle Harry's all day - the whole school holiday his first year, and most of it last year - and before that, he and Granny had always opened presents, had a quick breakfast (though she made a special breakfast cake each year, which they never had on any other day, to mark the occasion), then Flooed to Grimmauld Place. It had been that way since Uncle Harry had finished his apprenticeship and got married. That had been when Teddy was four, and the last Christmas he'd spent here at Granny's was Teddy's third. He didn't really remember it.

Christmas was at Uncle Harry's because it was the day that everyone wanted to see him, to pass the time, to reminisce about their harrowing lives. It was on Christmas that Teddy tended to come face to face with otherwise disembodied names like "Parvati" or "Ernie" or "Susan" or "Seamus." He'd once met a pretty woman named Cho, who was the only one of Uncle Harry's school friends who always seemed uncomfortable with him. She'd gone quickly. His favorite intermittent visitor by far had been Oliver Wood, who'd come the year he was ten and gone on for a long time about Uncle Harry's Quidditch exploits... and managed to not mention the war even once. Oliver was fun. It had been Christmas the year that he was nine that he'd met Dean Thomas, the boy his father had died to save, who apparently saw Hermione regularly and Uncle Harry reasonably often, but who had seemed utterly terrified to so much as speak to Teddy. Teddy had no idea what he did, though he, like Dad, was a hobby artist, at least. He made drawings for all the Potter children's doors each year, and had done an especially nice one of Dad in his classroom for Granny to hang on the parlor wall here. Teddy had no idea how he was meant to feel about Dean, and wasn't sorry not to see him again.

These temporarily embodied wraiths would drop in, spend ten minutes with Uncle Harry and a cup of tea, and then drop back out until the next time they had the urge to regroup. It always seemed to brighten Uncle Harry's day up.

Thanks to Greyback, none of them would come this year. Uncle Harry had decided to move Christmas away from Grimmauld Place so no one would have to be turned away; they'd just find him not home. The Burrow and the Romp were also on people's visiting lists. And he'd wanted to make it somewhere comfortable for Teddy, even though there were more children at Shell Cottage and not many people would think to drop by there. So here they were, at Gran's, for the first time in ten years, and Teddy felt sure he'd managed to spoil the day for everyone before he even got up.

There was a soft pop, and his presents appeared at the foot of his bed. He'd barely reached for them when the door cracked open. A puff of brown hair and a pair of hazel eyes peeked in. "He's up," James whispered in a tone of voice so full of importance that Teddy knew he was speaking to Al and Lily, for whom he made all laws. "Teddy, Al and Lily want to know if we can open presents with you. Daddy said we were to wait until you were up."

"I'm up. Come in. Happy Christmas."

James grinned and pushed the door open. He led in his siblings, Al looking around anxiously, Lily toddling along with a determined look on her face. Bundles of packages bigger than they were floated after them, and landed on Teddy's bed, followed by three bouncing Potters. James had to help Lily up, but she made up for it by jumping avidly up and down until she tumbled cheerfully over Teddy's right leg. She looked up at the Muggles and Minions poster of the chemist girl in her short, low-cut robe and said, "Pehty."

Teddy wasn't entirely sure how to explain the poster, so he diverted their attention by handing out presents.

James was delighted with the book Teddy had got him, and immediately started to read it - after a fashion - to Lily. Teddy dug into his own pile. James had written him another story. This one featured Teddy himself working with Checkmate to track down Greyback, who they defeated by flying a dragon down at him, picking him up, and dropping him back at Azkaban, where none of the other prisoners would play with him at all. Al and Lily had helped Aunt Ginny make biscuits, and decorated several in Gryffindor colors for Teddy. There were new clothes from most of the adults, including a roomy new red jumper from Molly; he deduced that Uncle Harry had told them that Teddy seemed to be outgrowing quite a pile of clothing.

"Where are - " Uncle Harry leaned in the door, looking exasperated. "James, I told you to wait until Teddy was up!"

"I was up," Teddy said.

Uncle Harry rolled his eyes. "Did he give you a chance to actually get up and wash?"

"Well... I invited them in."

"Of course." He looked at James. "Take your brother and sister downstairs; Granny Andromeda has a special breakfast ready."

James pouted, but he rarely disobeyed when he was put in charge of an operation. He helped Lily slither down, then marched the other two out.

"I have another present for you," Uncle Harry said, looking serious. "It's just between us."

"Oh." Teddy got out of bed and sat down at his desk. He pulled over another chair for Uncle Harry, who waved his wand and pulled a scroll out of the air.

"This is the deed to the Shrieking Shack. I have it in trust, since you can't own it until you come of age, but it legally belongs to you." He showed Teddy his name on the deed, which seemed quite unreal. "It was bought with money that's yours, anyway - at least as far as I'm concerned - so by itself, it's not a gift. The gift is little. The deed, a few things you'll find to help fix it up - "

"Will you help?"

"I'll help." He grinned. "We'll consider that a present as well. And this." He produced an iron key ring, with three keys dangling from it. "The big one is for the front door, the middle one is for the gate. They both have all of the charms you need to get in, even from the Hogsmeade side. The last one is just a key in appearance. Press it into the mantel - you'll see the spot - to connect to the Floo network. It doesn't make sense for it to be hooked up full time with no one living there, but in case of an emergency, you'll be able to get in and get away. And, though you're absolutely not to tell anyone this, you may Floo directly to Auror Headquarters from there, security be damned. Don't try to take anyone else through. Now, let's make sure the keys don't get away from you. Hold up your hand."

Teddy did as he was told, and Uncle Harry did a complex sort of tethering spell - "Not worth it when there's no good reason" - which attached the keys to Teddy himself, so that he could always reach out and find them. "Professor Longbottom helped come up with this spell," Uncle Harry said. "It's related to the spells that used to be on the Room of Requirement. He still hasn't figured all of them out, but we thought this might at least be useful. If you feel you need the keys, think very hard about needing them, then close your fist three times and they should show up somewhere nearby, even if you've left them under your bed here."

"Wow," Teddy said. "Thanks. Where should I keep them?"

"I'd put them in your trunk. Seems safely away from questioning eyes."

There was a great crashing noise downstairs, then someone said, "Rosie, you have to wait until you're out of the fire before you take your dolly out of the box!"

"Sounds like Ron and Hermione are here," Uncle Harry said. "I'll let you get dressed."

He left, and Teddy cleaned up and dressed in some of his new clothes, including Molly's jumper. By the time he got downstairs, Percy Weasley and his family had arrived, and Bill and Fleur were in the process of coming through. Fleur was carrying baby Muriel and proudly wearing her own jumper, which was a pretty light blue with some fluffy, silvery yarn worked in. She always seemed the most pleased by the yearly gift.

Victoire came spinning gracefully out of the fireplace, wearing a light purple jumper with a fussy sort of neckline that must have taken Molly forever. She shook her hair out and dusted herself off, then came over to Teddy to wish him a happy Christmas.

Bill finally came through with Artie, and the flames went from green to red as everyone greeted everyone else. Teddy looked out the back window and saw Professor Longbottom and Vivian Waters coming up from the Apparition point by the pond, each of them carrying a basket with a cat in it. Victoire ran out to get Bushy, and Teddy followed, glad to see Checkmate again. While they were still outside, Molly and Arthur Weasley Apparated in, and they all walked back to the house together. They got in just in time to see the flames in the fireplace go green again.

George Weasley appeared, baby Freddie clutched in his arms. Angelina came a moment later, laden with presents and baby things. George came over to Uncle Harry, who was standing not far from Teddy, and said, "There's one more back there. Says he really wants to come and see Teddy."

Teddy wasn't at all sure who George meant. Uncle Harry looked surprised, but shrugged and took a handful of Floo Powder and said, "Number Fifteen, Wisteria Walk." He disappeared for a good deal longer than George did, and when the flames went green again, he came back dragging the most terrified looking Muggle that Teddy had ever seen.

Dudley Dursley took several harsh breaths, shook his finger at Uncle Harry, and said, "I'm not going back that way!"

Dudley made a point of saying hello to Teddy, but mainly spent the morning huddled on the sofa, looking warily at the pastry tray until Uncle Harry promised him that there were no Weasley products on it. The pair of them talked awkwardly for a little while, sharing only one actual laugh, when Dudley mentioned his father bellowing about "unnaturalness" when George had come over with a singing poinsettia. Dudley did an imitation of said bellow, and Uncle Harry laughed crazily, though Teddy didn't think it was an especially funny thing. From what Teddy could gather, Dudley had decided to leave with George and Angelina on the spur of the moment, and didn't expect his parents would miss him until four o'clock, when they would serve dinner and expect him there. He'd heard enough commentary about a girl he happened to be going out with, and also wanted to avoid an appearance on his father's "blog."

"Goes on it every day, and talks about drills, except when he's talking about work around the house, and how well his drills do for it. He had designs to put the camera on me and show me putting up a new door."

"He'll catch you tonight, you know," Uncle Harry said.

"With luck, he and Aunt Marge will break out the sherry, and he'll forget about it."

"Aunt Marge is there?"

"Oh, yes. She asked about you. Dad told her you spend your days with a lot of criminals."

"Undoubtedly from my years at St. Brutus's," Uncle Harry said.

Teddy didn't follow most of this. It was their shared secret language. It didn't seem to have much in it, or to be used to say anything pleasant, but it was theirs, just as Aunt Ginny and her brothers had a language from growing up in the Burrow, or the way Victoire and her sisters could finish each other's sentences even while they were fighting. Teddy wondered who he'd talk to at Christmas when he grew up, and amused himself by imagining his friends and enemies, all old, dropping by. Of course, he imagined that a visit from Dudley would be rather like Honoria Higgs happening by his own house, trying to make conversation about the time she'd misquoted Teddy in the Charmer and nearly lost him his best friend.

He cast about for someone else to join, but the little children were all comparing their new toys, and he'd feel out of place with them, while Victoire and Marie had become quite girlish, doing some complex thing with one another's hair that involved braiding in some new things they'd got for Christmas. He drifted over to Professor Longbottom and Vivian, who were talking to Ron and Hermione, but it was too strange to spend time with a teacher outside of school, so he moved on to George, Bill, and Fleur, who were talking about George's plan to trap Greyback. Teddy would have very much liked to stay in this conversation, but Granny, deeply frustrated, broke it up, saying that she didn't care to have Fenrir Greyback in her house for Christmas, and if she'd wanted him, she'd have invited him.

The pastry tray and cut vegetables faded neatly into a huge buffet lunch, and James gave up comparing his toys to Rose and Aimee's in order to sit with Teddy and describe all of them, even though Teddy had been right there as he'd opened them. Teddy was feeling slow and full, and he hoped that Granny was planning a very late supper. He suggested going out to the garden, and James thought it a grand idea.

They walked along the path, deeply inside the security spells, and looked at uninteresting December plant life. James sniffed a rose bush and pretended that it smelled good.

Teddy sat down and glanced at a shallow stone basin that had been built to resemble a birdbath, though the bottom was strewn with moonstones. It had been his grandfather's Scrying dish. He didn't think Firenze would make much of it - purely a fortune-telling device - but Trelawney would probably approve. Granny said that Granddad's attitude toward Divination was rather lackadaisical for a Seer, but that he'd had plenty of good information from the dish. It needed a wand, so Teddy had never tried it himself. He wondered if it would work for him.

"Is that a Seeing Bowl?" James asked eagerly. "Mum found one in the attic, but she won't use it. She says that it belonged to someone bad and might show her bad things. I want to see the future, though. Could I see the future in this one? Could you see yours? What are you going to be when you grow up?"

"I don't know."

"Do you want to be an Auror?"

Teddy shook his head. "No. I don't want to be a teacher, either."

"Why would you want to be a teacher?"

"My dad was a teacher. My mum was an Auror." He'd always felt slightly guilty that neither career appealed to him much.

"Really?"

"What do you want to be?"

"An Auror, like Daddy," James said, and jumped onto a garden bench, grabbing a twig to wave around. "You stop right there... you're not going to get away from me!" He sat down. "Did you want to be an Auror when you were six?"

"No. I never wanted to be an Auror."

"What did you want to be when you were six?"

"A dustbin man," Teddy said. "I thought it would be fun to see what everyone threw away."

This career path had apparently never occurred to James, and he immediately started to spin a story about it, in which he was a heroic dustbin man who found a treasure map in someone's rubbish. He was about to tell the Queen about it when Dudley Dursley opened the back door and took a few tentative steps into the garden. He stopped just short of Teddy and James and said, "Er, I thought I'd... well, that is, I talked to Harry and he reckons it's not a bad idea."

"What's not?" James asked.

"Well - this bloke who's after you, he got out with people using normal ways. Boats and such, not magic."

Teddy frowned, not sure where this was going. "Right."

"If he gets your wand away from you, you might run into trouble getting away. I asked Harry if I could teach you how to win against someone bigger than you without magic." He seemed pleased to have got through the sentence, and smiled. "I was a boxer," he added. "Your mum and dad saw me fight once."

"How did that happen?"

"He was at my school to make sure nothing happened to me. Your mum came along for the ride, I think. They helped a lot. He did something to my memory to make me forget, but he warned me that he wasn't very good at it. It sort of came apart a couple of years later, and I remembered everything. I'm glad he wasn't very good at it."

Teddy shook his head. He knew the story of his Dad going undercover at Smeltings, but somehow, he'd entirely forgotten that it had anything to do with Dudley. He didn't think that learning how to box with Greyback was going to make any difference, but he knew the look on Dudley's face - the "I will give something to Professor Lupin's son" look. He'd once complained to Uncle Harry after a woman named Lavender had insisted on making sure he knew how to do his sums when he was eight, and Uncle Harry had been cross with him. "She's honoring your dad, Teddy," he said. "And she needs to do it. It won't hurt you to spend an hour at your sums, and it will make Lavender happy."

Teddy hadn't been thrilled about it, but after he finished the problems Granny had set for him and Lavender praised him, he saw that she was happy, and he rather liked feeling that he had helped. It didn't happen often, and was nearly always about Dad (Mum's friends didn't seem to feel that the scales were out of balance in the way that Dad's former students tended to, though Berit Ollivander had helped Teddy on Mum's account once), so when it did, Teddy felt that he could take with good grace whatever they felt it necessary to give. If Dudley wanted to teach him how to box, it could even be interesting, though he doubted it would ever be particularly helpful.

He shrugged. "I could do that," he said. "But we'd best keep it back here. I don't think Granny would like bringing Greyback into the house."

Dudley looked delighted. "That's fantastic! We can start, well..." He looked at James.

"Couldn't I stay?" James asked. "Perhaps I could be a boxer." He punched the air with tiny fists.

"If it's all right with Teddy," Dudley said. "But don't start using it on your brother. I don't think Harry would take to me teaching you to do that."

"I never hit Al," James said righteously, though Teddy knew for a fact that the pair of them pummeled each other on a regular basis for some reason.

Dudley didn't look like he believed this for a second, but didn't question it. "You're too small to really try it," he said. "You can stay here on the bench to watch. Teddy, you need to come out here." Teddy did so. Dudley towered over him. "Now," he said, "the first thing you need to remember is that you can't let him get hold of you. If a bigger bloke gets hold, you're sunk before you start. So you need to be fast..."