Chapter 19:

The Stain

The werewolf attacks were the front page of the next day's Daily Prophet, of course. Altogether, the Aurors had caught eight werewolves, and interrogation of the imprisoned members of the pack suggested that there were fewer than a dozen left. "But their ranks," Rita Skeeter wrote ominously, "were nearly restored by the end of the night, with four healthy British children stolen away in the dead of night..."

The children's names were not familiar to Teddy, except in the way names of pure-blood families nearly always were - a Fawcett, a Catchlove, a McDougal, and Derwent. None of them had any particular reason to be targeted, and hadn't done anything to protect themselves. The Derwent family had been slaughtered. The Fawcetts were interviewed, and seemed to blame the Aurors for not being there, and complained that they, like the Overbys, had been hit for being too close to a target's home (in their case, the Burrow). Several other families, who'd been saved by the Aurors, were also interviewed, but of course, they didn't get Rita Skeeter's byline. At the Ravenclaw table, Geoffrey was expounding to the first years about what sort of business had probably gone into the interrogation, at least until Franklin - Teddy was quite thankful for this - told him to shut his trap for once. In Charms, Franklin came to work with Teddy, and said that he understood the situation better now, though he still wished werewolves were treated better. Teddy shrugged and said, "You'll have no argument from me," then got another rock, as the first one they'd been trying to charm had scampered off the table and was presently hiding under a dusty cupboard.

The next day, letters had poured in from families all over Britain who'd called Aurors and been saved. One of the editors used them to make a map. They estimated at least eight different paths. The one at Hogwarts was singular, and another attempt, involving two werewolves, had been made on Ministry headquarters. Like Hogwarts, it had been left in the care of non-Aurors; in the case of the Ministry, Maddie's department - the Unspeakables - had trapped both attackers in a mirror. The picture of this in the Prophet was frightening indeed, though the text said that both had reverted to human form, and were now trying to arrange a release. Single wolves had roamed the countryside, looking for victims in the Cambrian Mountains, on the Bodmin Moor, outside Donegal, near Loch Shin, in the Pennines, and on the Isle of Wight. There was no rhyme or reason to these choices, at least according to the paper. They were just "soft." Whatever that meant.

"I can't imagine what they thought they were doing on the Isle of Wight," Uncle Harry said as they walked toward the Shrieking Shack. "It's not as though it's on the way to somewhere, and there's no reason for her to have started them there."

"Maybe they were looking for a holiday home," Teddy suggested. He was walking on a series of uneven stones at the side of the road, slowing them down, but more determined than he had been to cure himself of his clumsiness. It had been nothing but good luck that had kept him from jumping straight into Konrad the werewolf. "You know, pretty scenery, lot of tourists to hunt for sport if they go during the Bestival."

"The what?"

"The Bestival. It's a music thing at Robin Hill. Muggle. The Weird Sisters have been there a few times. Everyone dresses up on the Saturday it happens. I don't really think Greyback's people would have much use for it."

Uncle Harry shrugged. "It's as reasonable as anything else I can think of." They stopped at the gate, and Uncle Harry waited for Teddy to open the house. "I've decided not to lecture you," he said as they went in. "You know where you went wrong, and I'd rather work on your Stunning Spell. Also, Ginny said she was quite explicit in her scold."

"She was right." Teddy closed the door and looked around. "Lee said she was there when my mother went off onto the grounds. That she tried to stop her."

"Yes."

"Does she know why Mum left?"

Uncle Harry frowned. "I've told you everything we've been able to piece together. Your mum was fighting beside Ginny. She saw something down below and ran off."

"D'you think it was Dad?" Teddy asked. "I mean, do you think she ran off because she thought she could save him?"

"I don't know. They were found together, and Dean saw her running out, but no one knows if that's why she came out of the castle."

"I, er... heard that she really liked these stupid romance books, where the heroines are always rushing off to save the heroes. Do you suppose she ran off because she thought it would be like the books?" Teddy did his best to keep his voice even, but Uncle Harry still looked suspicious.

"I think," he said, "that if your mum liked that sort of story - and I didn't know that about her - that it was because that was the sort of person she was. She believed in jumping right into things. Trying to help."

"Oh."

"She's quite a lot like someone else I can think of just now."

"Only Lee and George were otherwise occupied when she did it."

Uncle Harry sighed and sat down on one of the parlor chairs they'd repaired. "Teddy, your mum was a skilled Auror, not a thirteen year old who hadn't mastered a Stunning Spell yet. Whatever happened, it wasn't because there was no one to rescue her. My suspicion is that Bellatrix caught her in a weak moment, not that Tonks did anything she oughtn't have. She was just overwhelmed, like all of us were."

Teddy nodded, then took a deep breath. "You said we'd work on Stunning Spells."

"Right." Uncle Harry looked troubled, but didn't push the subject any further. They spent the next two hours Stunning each other, and by the end, Teddy thought he'd mastered it fairly well. Uncle Harry said that it wouldn't work against a transformed werewolf, which was a powerfully magical creature, but that it should work perfectly well against Greyback if he showed up in human form.

Teddy thought that the subject of Mum and what had happened on the night of the Battle of Hogwarts had been safely left behind, but as they walked back to Hogwarts in the damp February night, Uncle Harry seemed to brace himself, and said, "Teddy, are you angry?"

"At what?"

"At your mother."

"No," Teddy said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Because she was a good woman, and brave woman, and she loved you and your dad."

"And bad romance novels," Teddy said.

Uncle Harry stopped, his eyes narrowed. "Yes. I suppose, if you say so. She also liked wearing her hair pink, and collected used clothes at Oxfam. Your granny once told me that she had six Muggle wedding dresses."

"I know. I've seen them. I don't know what I'm meant to do with her wardrobe."

"You could give it back to Oxfam."

"No."

"Or you could wait until you grow up, and pass it on to a daughter to play with. Tonks would like that a lot. Teddy, she's not dead because she liked bad books, any more than she's dead because she tripped on her trainer laces. She's dead because it was a war, and she was fighting it. Stop driving yourself mad trying to come up with some other reason."

"I was reading one of them," Teddy confessed. "It was what she was reading right before the battle. She still had a bookmark in it!"

"Did you enjoy the book?"

"Well... yes."

"Do you think she did?"

"I guess so. She read the whole series."

"Then that's something good and nice to know about her. Hold onto it."

"But - "

"Teddy."

He looked very stern, and Teddy relented. "All right."

Uncle Harry hooked an arm around his neck. "All right, then. Teddy, do me a favor."

"What?"

"Re-read the book. Try to think of who she was, and why she liked it, instead of coming up with silly notions about her trying to copy it. She wasn't."

"Are you sure?"

"Teddy, you read it and liked it. Were you thinking about copying it when you jumped in front of a werewolf?"

This hadn't really occurred to Teddy. He shook his head. They reached the gate and walked up to the castle, where they said goodbye at the door. Teddy went upstairs, and opened up The Lost Treasure, which was still lying on his desk. A few minutes later, he was lost in its nonsense plot, enjoying the pirates and the battle, and the absurd island with its peace draught. He stayed up until two finishing it again, skipping some of the slow parts, but deciding to read the ending without thinking, just like it was any other book. And he liked it. It was a better ending than the one she'd actually got. He imagined her on the island, pink hair braided over her shoulders, sunning herself and drinking some silly drink from a coconut shell. Better, he put Dad there as well, in a house on stilts (to protect them from tigers, of course), and Julia and Raymond and all of the others there with them, along with Tirza, Holt, the pirates, the islanders, Sirius and Regulus Black, James and Lily Potter, Peter Pettigrew, Fred Weasley, and the Malacquis family (as it wouldn't be very interesting if no one challenged them). He overslept and missed his first class on Friday, but made it to the second one, and had a perfectly nice lunch with Ruthless and Victoire, who had been making an effort to get along since Fleur had tied them to one another during the battle.

After his last class, he went back to his room and wrote a story for James, about Julia and Raymond, a brother and sister who lived on a special island. A Lethifold came and ate everyone, but they tracked it down and magically made it cough everyone back up. Then they captured the Lethifold, which was a large, flat black thing that mimicked a night-time shadow before slipping over people in their beds and leaving no trace of them behind. With all of their brothers and sisters and friends, which the Lethifold had sicked up, they killed it, then dyed it bright yellow and decorated it with pink and purple spots and smiling stick people. And forever after, he finished, it waved a friendly welcome to everyone who came to visit. The end.

He decided that next Thursday, after his lesson, it would be time to get serious about cleaning up the Shrieking Shack.

Teddy's next two lessons were Stunning Spells and housekeeping. The latter, he studied during the week, haunting a part of the library that seemed populated entirely by fifth and sixth year girls with dreamy expressions on their faces. He learned how to properly clean stains from the wallpaper (it was Ron's Abluo Clementis spell, modified with a Charm meant specifically to keep the paste from crumbling), and how to repair rips in the net curtains upstairs. He moved on to a more comfortable area on magical construction, populated by both boys and girls, where he learned how to even up steps on the old staircase and repair the large furniture. During the game at Hufflepuff on Saturday, he asked Frankie for any broken furniture they might be keeping, to practice on while they played. He fixed two bright yellow armchairs (one of which immediately became the "official" Urban Planner's chair), a lopsided table, and a wardrobe Frankie Charmed to come dancing down the corridor on its splintered claw-feet. At the Shrieking Shack, he carefully repaired the bed in his room, then - trying not to think too closely about the subject - his parents' bed. The end tables in their room were smashed and it took help from Uncle Harry to get them straightened out. They worked on the banister the next week, each carved slat getting attention in turn.

Uncle Harry presented Teddy with the drawings he'd given to the pups, who had all used duplication spells on them and given Teddy back the originals. Uncle Harry had had them framed, and they put them up carefully, Teddy adding photographs of himself and Granny and Uncle Harry, as well of Uncle Harry's family and the various Weasleys. The Wall was beginning to look quite crowded. He thought about asking Granny to send the portrait Dad had drawn that belonged over the fireplace, but he wanted to have the place looking more like a home of his own rather than a fantastic phantom before he let her in on it.

The blood stain remained on the floor near the trapdoor, and each time Teddy came in, his eye was drawn to it. He briefly tried Abluo Clementis before he and Uncle Harry started practicing Shield Charms, but it didn't do anything, nor did Evanesco. Teddy hoped Uncle Harry would bring it up on his own, rather than needing to be asked. He obviously needed more time to deal with getting rid of Snape's blood.

The third Thursday after the werewolf attack, Teddy had finished working on a strong Banishing spell, and his Patronus was flying cheerfully around the house (or at least as cheerful as it was possible for a hawk to look). He was in the kitchen trying to use the stair-leveling spell to get the warped flooring under the sink to stay flat when Uncle Harry, who was trying to get the vermin out of the cupboards, glanced out the window and declared that it was nearly curfew, and time for Teddy to get back to Hogwarts.

Teddy, who had lost track of time entirely in his losing battle with the linoleum, swore before he remembered that he was with an adult. He looked up sheepishly. "Sorry, Uncle Harry."

"I've heard worse. But we're walking a thin line with the school here, and it's best if we don't try the Headmistress's patience by getting you back late."

"Saturday is a Hogsmeade weekend," Teddy said. "Could I come here instead?"

"Not by yourself." He shrugged. "Sorry, Teddy, I can't come up on Saturday - Al's favorite little chum is having a birthday party, and Ginny can't take him, as she has to cover a game in Ballycastle - and the Aurors will be watching the village."

"Oh," Teddy said.

Uncle Harry considered it as they left the house and locked the gate. "Maybe Vivian could come with you. I know she's been meaning to find some corner of the cellar to transform in, so she doesn't disturb your work."

Teddy winced. "Oh, I forgot completely! I didn't mean to cramp her up in a basement!"

"She doesn't mind. But if all you mean to do is work on the house, it's connected to the grounds, and - with a particular sort of stretch - could be considered part of Vivian's job, so she'd have some reason to have a student here helping her. I don't suppose you've done anything warranting a detention with her lately."

"Sorry, no. I could sneak into the restricted section of the library and get some books on Animagi that Professor McGonagall told me about."

Uncle Harry's eyebrows went up. "Interesting. But that would just end you up in Madam Pince's detention." He walked down the road for a moment, looking amused. "Are you thinking of becoming an Animagus?"

"Oh, no," Teddy said. "Of course not. I'd have to have an outstanding O.W.L. in Transfiguration and register with a proper teacher at the Ministry. I'm surprised you don't know that, being the head of the Auror Division." He grinned.

"Mm-hmm."

It turned out not to require a detention. Vivian was pleased to help, though she said that Père Alderman meant to visit on Saturday, if Teddy wouldn't mind the extra company. Teddy didn't.

He spent Friday evening practicing cleaning spells in the Common Room, and Ruthless tipped her head at him curiously. "Lupin, have you gone around the bend?"

He smiled at her. He felt like he was floating. "You drove me around it. Leaving me, you know. I'll never recover."

Her skeptical expression turned breezy. "First of all, Teddy, you were the one who did the breaking up, though I notice you don't tell it that way. Second, you'd best be heartbroken. You clearly know you let a good thing slip through your fingers." She fainted melodramatically onto the nearest sofa, then peeked up cautiously. "Is it good to joke about it?"

"Sure."

"Good. I'm going into Hogsmeade with the crew of non-going-out people. Are you coming? Or have you decided to break some new girl's heart? I understand Jane Hunter has her cap set for you."

It took Teddy a moment to remember Jane, the Slytherin Muggle-born who'd broken up with Roger Young because they disagreed on the weather. He shook his head. "I don't think so. I'm doing something else on Saturday."

"What?"

He shrugged. "Housekeeping."

"I can see why you wouldn't want to miss it for mere hanging around with your friends."

"So, who's in the non-going-out crew now?"

Ruthless caught him up on the news, which he'd started to ignore once he no longer had a girlfriend or any interest in a new one. Corky had gone out with (and broken up with) Connie Deverill, and was now testing the waters with an older woman - Ruthless's dormitory mate, Kate Sands. Donzo had impressed Laura Chapman during the werewolf attack, and they'd been seen snogging near the greenhouses. Maurice was still annoyed at how many people were playing this silly game. Nearly everyone other than Frankie and Tinny was speculating on whether or not Frankie and Tinny were going together, or just going together. Teddy wondered how he'd managed to get absolutely none of this.

"Don't know how you missed it," Ruthless agreed. "But if you can tell me how, I'd like to know. I'm starting think about joining Maurice in some grand campaign against it all. I feel like I'm living in a Teen Witch article, and I hate that magazine."

They continued talking until lights-out, Victoire joining them partway through, which meant that the whole thing kept being interrupted by first year boys claiming to need her advice on classes. Mina Moran came over once, and the pair of them seemed to be negotiating some delicate communication with someone they called "K." Teddy didn't follow the code, and decided he really ought to be friends with more Gryffindor blokes, as they generally just spoke English.

The next morning, he watched his classmates leave, then went down to the Whomping Willow, where Père Alderman and Vivian were waiting just behind the reach of the limbs. He hadn't taken the tunnel for several weeks, and had a moment's trouble actually hitting the knot on the roots, but a moment later, all three of them were crawling toward the Shrieking Shack. Vivian told them about her first time coming through it, when Mum and Dad had brought her to Hogwarts to hide with a water sprite who lived in the Forbidden Forest. The sprite had sealed herself away tightly during the war with Voldemort, and was now sleeping, so Vivian couldn't get back, which bothered her.

They got to the Shack several minutes later, and Teddy let them in nervously, wondering if they would think he'd done as good a job as his parents once had.

Vivian looked around eagerly. "Look how much work you've done! Oh, and Alderman, look the pictures!" She pointed at the now-framed pictures on the wall, and they patted his back warmly over the decoration.

"I'm going to work in the pantry," Teddy said. "I'll see if I can get it clean enough to store some food in."

"I brought lunch for today," Vivian told him. "But I need to Charm the basement to make sure I can't dig my way up or out. I swear the digging is worse than the biting. Every month I wake up with enough dirt under my fingernails to fill up one of Neville's flowerpots! Or splinters, if I'm in here and working at the floor."

"The Wolfsbane Potion doesn't help with that?" Père Alderman asked.

"It manages to make me feel very silly for doing it while I'm doing it, but I can't seem to stop. It's so comforting."

Père Alderman looked at Teddy. "Do you need help getting started?"

"No, go ahead."

The pair of them disappeared into the cellar, and Teddy listened to them talking and laughing together as they set up for Vivian's transformation. He couldn't make out their words through the floor, but he imagined them being comfortable and easy together.

Eventually, he got more absorbed in the work of getting rid of mouse droppings in the pantry drawers, and he didn't notice that the voices had stopped until he turned to find Père Alderman standing in the doorway.

"You really have done a remarkable job here," he said.

"Thanks." Teddy Vanished a pile of ancient waste and decided the drawer he was working on was good enough for now. He moved on to the next. "I found a simple construction book. I think I'm going to buy some wood, or maybe ask Professor Longbottom if I can have something pruned from the Whomping Willow, and make a book case for my room upstairs. I could buy one, but I think I'd like to try making it. There's a whole box of Mum's books that I could put out."

Alderman gave him an odd look, but didn't comment. "It sounds like you're enjoying the house."

"I am."

"Maybe you've found what you were meant to be."

"Well," Teddy said, "I can't be entirely there, as I was meant to have brothers and sisters, but I can get the house proper, at least." He saw Père Alderman's eyes narrow, and quickly added, "I know I can't bring them back."

"I wasn't going to say that, Teddy."

"It's not a waste of time. It's a good thing to do."

"I wasn't going to say it wasn't. I think you've discovered something that makes you feel good. Have you considered doing magical construction?"

Teddy laughed. "I don't think so. I don't want to work on someone else's house. How would I know what someone else wanted?"

"According to Blondin, they usually tell you."

"Oh. Well, I still don't think so. It's not what I want to be."

"What do you want to be?"

"I don't know." Teddy shrugged. "I just want my house."

"Then you're doing what you need to do," Père Alderman said. "Though there's a stain near the trapdoor."

Teddy frowned. "I know. I'll get to it. I think it might need Holy Water or something. Did you happen to bring any?"

"I don't think Rome would approve of using Holy Water as sanctified Scrubbing Solution." Père Alderman leaned against the door frame. "It's blood, isn't it?"

"From a murder," Teddy said. "Voldemort killed Snape here. But I won't let Voldemort have my house." He squared his shoulders as heroically as he could in a cramped pantry.

Père Alderman nodded, and let him get back to work.

"Do you think they'll come again?" Teddy asked the next Thursday, just before the March full moon. "I mean, they must be angry."

Uncle Harry shook his head. "We've been doing some interrogation at Azkaban. Mathilde apparently never thought of teaching them to resist Veritaserum. We don't know how she got past the barriers - they didn't understand it - but apparently, Greyback wasn't entirely happy with her plan. Not personal enough. I think you're safe, but trust me, the Division is on alert. Try it again."

Teddy leveled his wand at a ball of dried clay that Uncle Harry had Conjured. "I'm a little worried about blowing up the kitchen if I overdo."

"The Blasting Curse isn't as easy as you think. And if you blow up the kitchen, we'll just build it again. It's used to it by now."

"All right." Teddy took a deep breath and focused his energy, then said, "Confringo!"

The clay ball trembled.

"You need to put more in," Uncle Harry said.

Teddy tried again. This time, the ball sprouted honking daffodils. He frowned. "Could you show me? I don't think I've got it right."

"I don't know. Honking Daffodils might have been enough to confuse Nagini when she came after us in Godric's Hollow."

Teddy raised his eyebrows and waited.

"All right," Uncle Harry said. He raised his wand and said the incantation, and the ball exploded into tiny fragments. Teddy and Uncle Harry went under the table to avoid being cut.

"Would that work on Greyback?" Teddy asked.

Uncle Harry turned to him, face ashen. "No, Teddy, this only works on objects. And I don't want you thinking of killing Greyback."

"Do you really think he'll be taken alive? And do you really want to?"

"I don't want you killing anyone. Leave it to the Aurors."

Teddy noted that this didn't exactly answer the question, but let it pass. Uncle Harry put the ball back together, and Teddy managed to get it to crack in half before they ended the lesson and started looking for things to do with the house. Teddy went upstairs to look, leaving Uncle Harry in the kitchen. It didn't exactly look like a palace, but the major work was done, and it was clean, except for the blood stain, and when Teddy came downstairs, he wasn't surprised to find Uncle Harry by the trap door, looking at it, troubled.

"I tried Evanesco and Abluo Clemente on it," Teddy said.

"I tried Scourgify."

"Is blood always this hard to get out?"

"No." Uncle Harry paced around the edge of it, looking at it like it might resolve itself into his old Potions Master and start lecturing him on his inadequacies. "Snape was bitten by Nagini, and she was venomous. She was also a Horcrux. Mixing all of that together may have some unusual properties."

Teddy was surprised at the mention. He knew the story - or most of it, there was a part that Uncle Harry was waiting until he was older to tell - but the Horcruxes weren't something Uncle Harry talked about frequently or easily. "You were a Horcrux," Teddy said tentatively. "Did your blood permanently stain things?"

Uncle Harry smiled faintly. "If it had, half of Hogwarts would be painted reddish brown. But to the best of my knowledge, I wasn't venomous on top of it." He shook his head sharply, and his eyes came into focus. "Right. Let me try modifying the Scouring Spell." He bent to the woodwork and did the spell nonverbally. Teddy saw the floor lighten considerably - around the stain. The stain remained as it had been, but now looked darker in contrast.

"Abluo," Teddy tried, without much hope that removing the gentling charm would help. It didn't.

"We could try it the Muggle way," Uncle Harry suggested. "I had to sand Aunt Petunia's stairs once when Dudley gave me a nosebleed on them." He waved his wand, and two pieces of coarse sandpaper appeared, wrapped around wooden blocks. He handed one to Teddy and said, "Go with the grain."

It seemed odd, especially when there was a Sanding Spell, but Teddy supposed that if it was resisting magic, a bit of Muggle technique might be just the thing. He bent over and started working at the edge closest to the trapdoor. The plank became very smooth, but Teddy didn't notice any lightening of the stain.

"I don't know if we'll be able to do this," Uncle Harry said.

"We can." Teddy stood up, casting around for a solution. A little rug was rolled up under the parlor sofa, and he dragged it over and put it over the stain, which poked out under the edges. He tried to move it, but another bit poked out.

He ground his teeth and went to the kitchen, where his book bag was sitting on the table.

"What are you after?" Uncle Harry asked.

"The knife you gave me a couple of years ago," Teddy said, finding it at last, folded up under the Marauder's Map and an essay for Robards. "If we pry up the planks, we can just turn them over, can't we? Then we could finish them, and you wouldn't even notice anything was wrong."

"The stain would still be there," Uncle Harry pointed out.

"Does it matter if I can't see it?" Teddy didn't wait for an answer. He popped the tip of the knife under the edge of the nearest board and leaned on it for pressure.

A huge chunk of wood popped out, looking like a clumsily made toy sword, but the board remained firmly fixed in the floor.

"Teddy, I don't think - "

"I can do this," Teddy said, moving around, trying to find a new place to start with the knife. The end of the board had been a bad choice. Maybe somewhere in the middle of its length...

The knife, which he'd dug between the floor slats, flew out of his control, slicing his hand open beneath the thumb, adding his own fresh blood to Snape's. Pulling away, he dragged the wound over the sharp piece of the floor that he'd managed to break off earlier.

Uncle Harry was over in a flash, grabbing Teddy's wrist. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," Teddy said, reaching for the knife, which had skittered under an old wardrobe.

"Wait a minute, let's get this healed."

Teddy didn't care about the bleeding. He tried to pull away.

Uncle Harry pulled him back sharply. "Teddy, that's enough." He tapped Teddy's hand with his wand, and the cut burned with pain as it magically healed. Teddy went for the knife again, but Uncle Harry continued to hold him still. "Teddy, I think it's time to get back to Hogwarts."

Teddy blinked at him. He looked his version of stern, which was something like he looked when Lily was about to toddle down the stairs and needed to be caught. "I'm not four," Teddy said. "I can - "

"It wasn't working," Uncle Harry said.

"It will. I just have to try harder. Isn't there a spell for it? For taking out floorboards? I'm sure there is. There must be..."

"I said, it's time to stop."

Teddy drew back, rubbing his wrist. Uncle Harry had been holding it hard enough that his red fingerlines were drawn on Teddy's skin. "You don't want me to fix it."

"I want you to pull back a little bit. I know the house is important to you, but you're waving a knife around and cutting yourself."

"You don't want me to get rid of Snape's blood. You never did. He's more important to you than my parents."

"I'm not having this conversation, Teddy."

"You were here eavesdropping on him while they were dying, and now you want him to keep their house."

"Are we here, then?" Uncle Harry asked. "I have a prepared speech about this, but I find I'm more angry than guilt-ridden, so the mood's all wrong."

"You're angry."

"Yes. Believe it or not, you don't have a monopoly on it. You're not the only person who lost something that night."

"I know that!"

"Then why are you acting like no one can possibly understand you? What have I ever done that makes you think I don't understand?"

Teddy felt the blood rush up to his face. Of course there was nothing. Of course. Uncle Harry had always been there for him. Been kind. Generous.

Because poor Teddy was an orphan, after all.

He raised his wand. "Accio cloak."

"Teddy!"

Teddy's heavy cloak flew in from over a chair in the kitchen, and he put it on and started jabbing the fasteners together. He pulled up the trapdoor and tossed his book bag into the tunnel, then jumped in after it.

"Teddy!"

He didn't listen. He dropped to his hands and knees. A knife in his brain was turning merrily, and it felt good to be angry, good to just crawl away.

He winced as the heel of his hand, where he'd cut it, hit the ground, and drew in a sharp hiss of breath.

"What is it?"

"Nothing," Teddy spat back.

He started to hobble down on one hand and both knees, Levitating his book bag ahead of him. From behind and above, he heard Uncle Harry swear at something, then there was a thud as he also dropped down into the tunnel.

"Teddy, come back here."

"You said it was time to go back."

"I don't want to Summon you, but I will if I have to."

Teddy stopped and looked over his shoulder, horrified. Uncle Harry had Summoned him once, at Bill and Fleur's, when he'd been climbing the cliff and was about to go off of it and into the sea. He'd been six. "You wouldn't."

"Try me."

Reluctantly, Teddy twisted himself around in the tunnel and crawled back to the space under the trap door. "What?"

"You weren't putting your hand down."

"It didn't heal right. I'm going to have to see Madam Pomfrey."

"The healing was fine," Uncle Harry said. "But I think you have something stuck in there. Give it to me."

Teddy held it out. In the center of the palm was a ragged circular scar where, during his first year, a pebble and his father's wedding ring had cut him deeply during a fire.

"This one's turning into more scar than hand," Uncle Harry said mildly, his former anger not evident, though Teddy thought it was still there somewhere. He tapped Teddy's hand and the cut opened again. "Accio splinter."

"Ow!" Teddy gasped as something sharp pulled through his flesh. A small wedge of wood, covered with his blood, emerged from the cut.

Uncle Harry caught it and healed the wound again. He held the splinter up. Under the fresh blood, Teddy could see that it was deeply stained with the old. He tossed it aside, wrinkling his nose. "We need to find a new way to deal with that. We've both been breathing in the dust. It must still be impregnated with Nagini's venom."

Teddy felt something heavy fall down in the center of himself. "That's why I was angry?"

"I doubt it's the whole reason, but it may have made you less inhibited about it. Blocked out anything that might have stopped you."

"And it made you say those things, too?"

"No, Teddy, I said those things because I was angry."

"So you want to stop lessons?"

"What?" He shook his head. "No. Don't change the subject. You know I'm not going anywhere. I'm beginning to understand what made your dad want to hex me across the room, though."

Teddy nodded curtly, feeling somewhat better. After all, that had happened, according to Granny, because Uncle Harry had been telling the truth and Dad hadn't been ready for it yet.

Uncle Harry sighed. "Come on, Teddy. I'll get you back to school. Clean slate next time I see you. Deal?" He held out his hand.

Teddy examined the old scar on his own hand, then the new, thin scar that was forming where the splinter had come out. He shook Uncle Harry's. "Deal."

They didn't talk on the way back, and Teddy decided that he'd try the carpentry books to learn how to take out an old floor and put in a new one.