Chapter 21:

Unspeakable

News of the attack got around, of course. A few parents decided to pull their children out of Hogwarts until the issue of protection was addressed, but there weren't many, and none of them were in Teddy's circle. Most seemed to accept that if Hogwarts wasn't perfectly safe, nowhere else was going to be safer.

On Wednesday, Professor Longbottom appeared at Hagrid's for Teddy's Care of Magical Creatures lesson, looking contrite. He'd left his first years with Professor Sprout, he said, because he owed the class an apology. Aurors had examined the spellwork, and - aside from any natural inhibitions - Mathilde had cast an Apathy Enhancing Spell. They hadn't deserved his outburst. No one held it against him. Donzo, Tinny, Maurice, and Jane were all giving him looks of deep pity. He didn't seem to mind any guesses they were making.

There was no word of Vivian.

Uncle Harry had to cancel Thursday's lesson, as he was working with Père Alderman and the others to start searching. Hamilton had offered himself as bait, kicking off a flashy publicity tour for his book. The others would be planted in the audience, hoping that Greyback or Mathilde would give it a try. Meanwhile, they were moving about, beyond the sanctuary - Neil Overby had apparently been temporarily placed with Fleur's grandmother, Valeska - meeting lone werewolves, following clues that only they might find. Uncle Harry himself had studied the Marauder's Map and asked Teddy for the Keys to the Castle as well. He didn't need all of the Map's tricks and personality, but he wanted to create a very basic form of it, solely to alert Aurors to any new presence, the moment it appeared on Hogwarts grounds.

"We're also all studying Streaming Spells," he added grimly when he told Teddy that they'd need to cancel the lesson. "And until they're mastered, every Auror will be patrolling with a fast broomstick."

Teddy heard this all quite solemnly, until he realized that Uncle Harry had just decided to equip his entire Division with the latest Firebolts.

Uncle Harry caught him smiling and seemed irritated for a minute, then laughed at himself. "Well, it'll be the first good Firebolt I've had for a long while. Maybe you'd like to take it up once this is over? It's better than a school broom."

Teddy thought of his hawk Patronus, and of his accident with his eyes, and thought there might be some sort of flying he'd like to do... but it wasn't on a Firebolt. "That's all right, Uncle Harry," he said. "I'll just fall out of a tree or something to remind myself how it feels."

Uncle Harry shook his head and sighed dramatically. "I try, Teddy. I try so hard. But you're still so odd."

"Maybe Dudley's mum should throw a frying pan at me."

"Absolutely. It cured me of my abnormality brilliantly, as you can see."

After Uncle Harry left, Teddy went up to the castle for lunch. Ruthless had a test in the afternoon, and had her books spread around her, and Victoire was plotting some kind of attack with Kirk, so once Teddy got his food, he moved over to the Hufflepuff table, where Frankie was magically copying his notes onto color-coded study cards, but otherwise didn't seem to be terribly occupied.

"Ted!" he said, by way of a greeting. "This is a good idea. You should try it. I can quiz myself by flipping them over to a question, then checking whether or not I remembered it right."

"Did you get it from Victoire?"

"Yes. She found it in a book in the library, and said it might help me study for my O.W.L.s. How did you know?"

"Wild guess."

"She's quite smart, you know."

"Scary smart," Teddy agreed. "So, everyone's wondering, about you and Tinny..."

"Tinny's a third year," Frankie said, in a tone that told Teddy that the subject was closed. "So, is there any news about Viv..." He trailed off, his brows knitted together. "What on Earth?"

Teddy turned his head to see what Frankie was looking at, and found himself equally flummoxed.

Frankie's mum, Maddie Apcarne, was working her way up between the tables. She waved to them and sped up. Her expression was cheerful and welcoming, but she had no business here, and was wearing her identification tag from the Department of Mysteries. She patted Frankie's shoulder and went up to the high table, where she spoke to the Headmistress.

"What's she doing here?" Frankie asked. "It's not natural."

Teddy shook his head, baffled. "Looks like work."

"Doing what? The Greyback business isn't exactly the sort of mystery Unspeakables study, you know."

Teddy had a better notion of what the Department of Mysteries did than most people, but no clear idea of what Unspeakables actually did there. Maddie had once told him, and Frankie, that a lot of what she wasn't telling them wasn't because she was under orders to keep it secret, but because there were no words, and it couldn't be spoken. Teddy wasn't entirely convinced of this. After all, if something didn't have a word, one could always be made up for the occasion.

Maddie finished her conversation with Professor Sprout, then turned and came bouncing back to the table. "May I sit down, Frankie? Oh, I've missed this table."

Frankie made room for her, blinking owlishly.

"We used to sit at the far end," she said. "Your dad, and Tonks and Sanjiv and me. Usually a good crowd of others. We'd bring games in. How are you, Teddy? Don't you belong a couple of tables over?"

"I, er..." He shook his head. "Maddie, what's going on?"

"Mm. I'll explain later, as well as I can. Suffice it to say that I need to collect you and the rest of your Care of Magical Creatures class as soon as you've finished eating." She smiled tightly, then said, "Oh, just a bit of that treacle tart, Frankie? I know you could get another..."

Frankie got used to her being there by the time she'd stopped nicking his food, and they were catching up on Carny and Mac (both in Daffy's office for the day) when Teddy finished his lunch. Other students were looking at her oddly, but with an Auror presence on the grounds all year, she didn't draw as much attention as she otherwise might have.

She noticed he was done and stood up. "Come on. Let's get the others. Hagrid said he doesn't have a class this afternoon, since it's when the N.E.W.T. levels were scheduled, and he doesn't have any N.E.W.T. students this year."

Teddy found the other students and Maddie got them started on the path down to Hagrid's cabin. She put her hand on Teddy's shoulder to slow him down.

"Hermione called in the Department," she said.

"You do protective spells?"

"You know I'm not going to answer that." She smiled. "But I can tell you that she wants to try and reconceptualize the question of Mathilde Dubois. We've been operating under the assumption that she's been breaking through security, but there's one rather shocking piece of evidence."

"What's that?"

"The security wards have never been disturbed."

"But how..."

"We think they're doing something entirely different. And if we're right about that, it's very good, because instead of dealing with some brilliantly powerful anti-security spell, we just have to find her new method and create a new counter."

"Am I really allowed to know that?"

"Your godfather wants you in the loop. And I'm just as glad, but you know, of course, that it's not something to be discussed generally."

Teddy nodded. "Well, what sort of thing might they be doing?"

"No idea. It's usually useless to go in with a preconceived notion of what you'll find."

"But it would be something that's not like anything else we use." She nodded, and Teddy frowned, trying to eliminate all the ways he knew wizards traveled. Flying, Apparating, Flooing, normal Muggle methods like walking or cars (since a fishing skiff had penetrated Azkaban, the Ministry was being more careful about these).

"What about water? Are there ways to travel through the lake? I heard about the Durmstrang ship..."

"Yes. Water goes through the whole world, and the Russian wizards got particularly adept at using hidden waterways, as they didn't have any warm water ports to work with. But Dumbledore was aware of those ways, and the school is protected."

"Mm." Teddy went on a bit longer, then said, "I really can't think of anything."

Maddie smiled. "It's all right, Teddy. That's sort of my job."

"Oh. Right."

She laughed as they reached the paddock, then told everyone to take the positions they were in when Mathilde had appeared. For the next fifteen minutes, she moved them around, peering in the direction Mathilde had come from, examining the ground where Mathilde and Vivian had disappeared. She seemed quite frustrated with the explanation of whirling lights going upward, which made sense if the Hogwarts security showed no signs of being breached. She kept drawing little tubes from her bag and scraping things into them.

Finally, she straightened up from a barrel of mead she'd been examining, and shook her head. "I'd like to collect everyone's memories for a Pensieve, so my colleagues can get a better view back in London."

"Are you trying to catch Dubois?" Jane Hunter asked, looking avidly at the now-filled bag of samples. "That looks like crime scene forensics. I've seen it on television. I'd love to learn to do that."

"Er... if it's what I think it is, that's something Aurors might do. I'm doing something rather different. May I take each of your memories?"

Maurice shifted uncomfortably. "Would you be able to see what we were thinking about?"

"Why, Maurice?" Corky asked innocently. "What could you have been thinking about when a pretty witch in a short robe showed up?"

Maurice glared. "I was not thinking about... that."

Maddie pressed her lips together to avoid smiling and said, "We won't be able to see anything inside your head. It's like taking a picture, except that we can change the focus and have a look around."

The students all looked at each other awkwardly, then Jane took a deep breath and said, "I'd like to see how it works, anyway."

One by one, they came forward, and Maddie took the thoughts from their minds and stored them in neatly labeled vials. Teddy looked at his own thoughts, which were a pink-tinged silver like the sunset clouds in Dad's memory of camping in Scotland, and wondered if she would give them back later, just so he could have a look at himself from the outside.

Then he remembered that her business was deadly serious. There was one witness whose memories she couldn't take.

He silently wished her luck as she walked away.

Uncle Harry kept the Marauder's Map until the next Thursday, handing it over when Teddy set his book bag down on the kitchen table at the Shrieking Shack.

"Could you make an alarm?" Teddy asked.

Uncle Harry shook his head, discouraged. "There are too many places I don't know. I even asked George to help with the Forbidden Forest - you'll notice that there's more of it mapped out now - but there's still a lot out there. And I got the dots to appear, but without Dad's identity spell, it won't identify threats."

"Wouldn't it just show someone who Apparated, when you're not supposed to be able to do that?"

"Good thought, but the house elves Apparate around Hogwarts all the time."

Teddy frowned. "Could Mathilde have studied house elf magic?"

"I'm not sure," Uncle Harry said, blinking. "I hadn't thought about that. I'll have to ask Kreacher about how it's done. I assumed that it was something only house elves could do, but it's worth a try. Nice thought." He Conjured another large clay ball, and for the next half hour, they worked on the Blasting Curse, which Teddy couldn't seem to wrap his head around properly. He managed to Transfigure it twice, make it shiver, and once, with a particularly hearty shout of "Confringo!", to cover it in a network of fine cracks.

"Sorry, Uncle Harry," he said. "I guess this isn't really my spell."

"Don't worry. I had to have Hermione tutor me for hours to pick up a Summoning Charm."

"A Summoning Charm?" Teddy asked incredulously. They were technically in the fourth year book - he'd read ahead - but most wizard-born students were attempting them from the first week on, as they were useful, and most Muggle-borns had at least tried by second year. Ruthless had joked that, in the fourth year class, the lesson on Summoning Charms was treated as a break from a real class.

"I know. It's quite pathetic, really." He shook his head. "You'll get it. Do you want to move on to something else, or do some work on the house? I brought you the wood you were talking about, for book shelves."

"You did?"

Uncle Harry shrugged. "Shall we work on it? I've never tried building furniture before."

They went up to Teddy's bedroom and laid out all the planks. Teddy still had the book out of the library, so he could get it from his room with a flick of his wand and a muttered "Biblio." Between them, they got the planks sorted out, and the shapes cut into them. Teddy noticed that the two supporting sides were uneven, and lay them down beside one another to trim the bigger one while Uncle Harry cut a curlicue sort of decoration in the top.

"Your birthday's coming up," he said. "Is there anything you want for the house?"

Teddy looked around. "I don't know. Maybe some pots and pans and dishes for the kitchen. All I've got at the moment is one coffee mug full of knives that no one bothered to take."

"We'll see," Uncle Harry said. "James wants to write a story. I said it would spoil the surprise if you knew, but he wanted your permission to write about Julia and Raymond." He looked carefully at Teddy. "Your granny was over when he said to ask you about that. She looked like someone had kicked her. Is there anything you want to tell me?"

"I didn't mean to upset Granny. It was... well, they were... they would have been my brother and sister. Or maybe if I'd been a girl, I'd have been Julia. I found the names. I made a story about them. I guess James liked them, but if you don't think he should make up stories about them..."

"I don't mind if it doesn't bother you. Are you sure you want James writing one of his little treasure adventures with those names? They're kind of special."

"I don't mind," Teddy said. "It's not like anyone else is using them." He turned the plank he was working on, and a splinter jabbed the side of his finger. He drew in his breath harshly. "I think I ought to be kept away from wood, though."

Uncle Harry seemed to accept this as the close of the conversation, and they cobbled the book case together over the next hour. When they finished, the right side was an inch higher than the left, and the shelves alternated angles in a zig-zagging pattern. Teddy advanced the opinion that neither of them ought to try opening a magical furniture building business. Uncle Harry laughed. "There goes my retirement plan, right out the window."

On the way back to Hogwarts, the real world seeping back in a little at a time, Teddy asked about the search for Vivian. There were no leads. The Magical Law Enforcement Department at Nurmengard had searched the woods near the old camp, and found no sign of habitation. There had been no attacks, or threats. No one had even reported thefts of food and clothing lately, which were often signs of nearby werewolves, as, in human form, they often needed things that weren't easily available in the forest and had no money to buy them with. Uncle Harry was worried about the other werewolves, as he thought it would please Greyback to "make an example" of someone like Père Alderman, but there was no stopping them.

"But they haven't done anything?" Teddy asked. "Anything at all?"

"Not since they took Vivian. At least not to anyone else."

"Will Professor Longbottom be all right? He seems very worried. And he yelled at Laura Chapman for dropping a Hiccuping Hyacinth. Laura doesn't take being yelled at very well, and I think Professor Longbottom felt bad about it, but... should I do something? It's weird to, you know, try to talk to a Head of House about his problem."

"And you shouldn't do it," Uncle Harry said. "He's got friends who are helping him. Don't embarrass him."

"All right," Teddy said. He was relieved that this wasn't meant to be one of his responsibilities, though he still felt guilty about not trying to say something nice to Professor Longbottom, who'd helped him when he'd got very upset his first year. "Do you think that they'll do anything at the full moon? Do you want me to watch the Map?"

Uncle Harry nodded, but said, "I don't think they'll try Hogwarts again. We have very strong protective spells up on every side, and from above. Since Mathilde came by herself, and untransformed, I doubt that whatever she did to get through the other day is something she can repeat under a full moon. At least I hope not, though we'll have patrols."

"What do you think they're doing?"

"I don't know, Teddy. They took the new werewolves in February, and now they've taken Vivian. They may be regrouping. Re-building the pack and training people. We've done some damage to them over the year, you know. Dragging off as many as we have has to have some effect on the way they do things."

"But Greyback doesn't seem very bright. Wouldn't he just keep going after what he wants?"

"Greyback is alpha in a group of untrained werewolves," Uncle Harry said, "but when Voldemort came along, he rolled over and obeyed himself. He may see Mathilde as stronger than he is. She may be controlling things now."

He didn't sound hopeful, and Teddy knew why. He'd seen McGonagall's memory of Greyback's house, Astrid's body lying on her bed, blood splashed all over the walls. Whatever reason he'd fallen into line with Voldemort, it wasn't because he thought he'd lose power over his werewolves... and Voldemort had been a wizard, not a witch.

Of course Mathilde might think differently, and if she made it all sound good, Greyback might be going along with her, which - for the purpose of catching them at least - made the question of whether or not she was in charge pointless.

They reached the gate, where Professor Longbottom was waiting. There was a blond woman with him, and when he opened the gate, she slipped out.

"Why open it twice?" she said nervously. "Hi, Harry."

"Hannah! It's good to see you."

"It seems," Professor Longbottom said coolly, "that some members of Dumbledore's Army have spontaneously decided I need more company than usual this year."

"Yes, it's a strange coincidence, isn't it?" the woman called Hannah said. "I think Ernie and Susan were planning to come up next week, and Justin's going to try to make it over the weekend."

Professor Longbottom sighed. "When, exactly, did Hufflepuff decide to adopt me? Come on, Teddy. It's time to get you back up to the castle." He let Teddy in and closed the gate, then turned back to Uncle Harry and Hannah. "Tell Justin not to bring Pansy, though. I can handle any number of things, but I can't handle Parkinson trying to be polite."

"I'll pass it on. Though I should warn you, he pays no attention to us when we tell him that."

"I'll see if I can find an antidote for him before he comes," Professor Longbottom said testily.

Hannah and Uncle Harry smiled, and after a moment, so did Professor Longbottom. He led Teddy up to the castle without talking much, and straight to the Fat Lady, who let him in. Teddy left the portrait open until he saw Professor Longbottom disappear down the corridor.

The days passed, and March became April. Professor Longbottom's round face began to take on a thin, hopeless look, and frequently, Teddy would see other people in his office or in the greenhouses. His angry outbursts in class had stopped after he'd yelled at Laura. Laura had decided that something deeply tragic had happened to him, but apparently didn't connect it to Vivian. At Muggles and Minions, Tinny said that Laura was driving her quite crazy with dormitory speculation about the matter. "Never occurs to her," Tinny said when most of the group was occupied with something else, "what it might really be. Pretty girls never think that the rest of us might have anyone interested."

Teddy suspected she was looking for confirmation of her suspicion, and decided to change the subject instead. "You're pretty enough."

"No I'm not. If I were pretty, Laura wouldn't spend half her life trying to improve me." She closed her eyes and raised her eyebrows, stretching her eyelids out so that Teddy could see very horrible wedges of alternating pink and orange powder. "She found it in Teen Witch. I can't believe I let her do it."

"Me, either," Teddy said.

Tinny seemed a little nonplussed by this, and Teddy was quite glad when Frankie decided to move the game's action back to the campus, where Tinny played an archivist who was helping Maurice's computer expert break a code. She seemed happy to be back at it as well.

Teddy found himself going on with his normal life more than he thought he ought to. He sometimes stumbled over a thought of Greyback, or Mathilde, or Vivian, and it would consume him, wondering how he hadn't been thinking about it, but then it would go away, and he'd be back in the life of the school. He wondered if this was how it had been during the war. All of the pictures he'd seen of his parents during the last year of their life - the worst year of the war - showed them looking deliriously happy. That was right for them, as they only had that year and wouldn't get another chance to be happy, but Teddy felt that he really ought to be thinking of the important things more than he actually was. They just made his brain tired.

Victoire and Story were in peace talks over the hex war, but what Victoire really wanted, she said during a long, lazy conversation by the Gryffindor fireplace, was a grand alliance to take on Slytherin and Hufflepuff next. Ruthless was asked out by Chet Fleming, the fifth year Chaser, who she'd always detested, and they'd ended up hexing each other and getting detention. Victoire's dormitory mates all seemed to think they would come back from detention engaged - Teddy guessed they were reading Fifi LaFolle, too - but they just came back covered with dragon dung fertilizer and cursing at each other quite colorfully. Teddy was relieved by this. There were essays and tests, and a particularly nasty quiz in Professor Firenze's Divination class that nearly everyone failed, as the goal was to divine the place of divination in the universe. A week before the full moon, Teddy found Professor Slughorn looking miserably at an empty cauldron, and another thought of Vivian came from nowhere. He had no reason to start brewing Wolfsbane Potion this month.

As Teddy's fourteenth birthday rushed up, he began to have nightmares about opening packages from Fenrir Greyback, each of them containing a piece of someone's body. He thought they were Vivian's at first (one, in fact, contained her magical eye), but the more he unwrapped, the more he knew who was really in them, and when he opened the last package, containing Dad's long fingers and a lock of Mum's pink hair, he'd wake up sweating. The first time, he thought he might have actually cried, but if he had, Checkmate had licked up the tears too quickly for him to really notice. He decided that he'd prefer not to know.

The last of these dreams came the night before his birthday, and he stayed in his bed for a long time while the sun rose, afraid of any owls that might start to come. Finally, he just braced himself. Greyback wouldn't know it was his birthday, after all; if he meant to send something, he'd have sent it before.

The owls started arriving halfway through breakfast. The first was from the Potters. Uncle Harry promised to bring a cake on Thursday (along with his present, which wouldn't be a surprise), though Aunt Ginny had sent one this morning as well. Aunt Ginny had given him a book of household spells. Al and Lily had drawn him pictures. James sent a very carefully written story, in which Julia and Raymond encountered a kelpie in the ocean off the island. Someone had apparently told him that kelpies only lived in fresh water, as, at the top of a page, he'd laboriously added, "And this was a special kelpie who lived in the sea and was much more dangerous." An old witch at the island's Ministry gave them special permission to use magic, and they did Bubblehead Charms to swim underwater to the kelpie's cave, where they fought it, and found out that it was guarding not a treasure - somewhat to Teddy's surprise - but "the most beautiful princess in the world." Said princess was described as having long curly red hair and light brown eyes. She also played Quidditch and was a Beater, and ended up tied up with Raymond and Julia for a time. He'd got Al to draw a picture at the mostly empty bottom of the last page, which showed Raymond, Julia, the princess, and the kelpie all waving cheerfully. Either Aunt Ginny or Uncle Harry had charmed it so that they were actually waving.

He grinned - the names had stung less, coming surrounded by one of James's stories instead of his own - and passed it over to Victoire to read, as two more owls had come while he was going through it. One of them was from Granny, who'd sent him a new book bag and a blank, leather-covered journal. The other was from Professor McGonagall, who'd sent a curious book on accidents in human Transfiguration, which showed some soberingly disgusting pictures. Ruthless sidled over and gave him a photograph of the pair of them at Weird World, which she'd found a frame for somewhere. In it, she had her arm hooked around his neck. They looked more like they were wrestling than going out, but it was still a cheerful sort of picture.

"To memorialize the temporary insanity of your thirteenth year," she said, then checked quickly to see if anyone was looking. She darted her head in and gave him a quick kiss, then drew back and said, "That was just for your birthday, so don't get thoughts."

Teddy nodded, and decided that a visit to her house was in order for her fifteenth birthday in August. He looked up and noticed that Victoire had finished the story, and looked about ready to throw something at him.

"Oy, Lupin!"

He looked up to find Frankie coming toward him with two packages, one large, one quite small. The Apcarnes had generally only given him one gift from the whole family since the year he was six, and had been so enchanted with the thought of presents that Maddie had carefully wrapped each piece of a chess set, and split them among family members, even baby Carny, to give to him. "Hey," he said, moving over to give Frankie room at the Gryffindor table.

Frankie put the presents down. The big one turned out to be a board game - "Dad thinks you should take it to your Common Room and spend some time playing it with the other blokes there." Teddy rolled his eyes. The small one was purely from Maddie, and Frankie was as interested as he was in what she'd sent. He tore away the black and yellow paper and pulled out a smooth silver box.

"What is it?" Teddy asked.

"It's a puzzle," Frankie said, looking confused. "Mum's got one like it. I played with it for a long time when I was little, but I couldn't get it open. I decided I had better things to do. Teddy, I hate to say it, but I think my Mum might be out to drive you crazy, giving you that."

Teddy laughed. He got several presents from other people during the course of the day, but Maddie's puzzle was what he kept coming back to. He didn't get it open, and finally set it aside at night to pick up the next time he had a few minutes to do away with.

The full moon rose two days later, and Teddy again went to the Astronomy Tower. He thought of Mathilde, hatching her plots, and Greyback... he didn't want to think of what Greyback might be doing. He thought of Vivian, and, judging by the light that burned long into the night in greenhouse two, he wasn't the only one. Mainly, he thought about how stupid life was, which wasn't a very productive thing to think about. Stupid. All of it. Living here in his little bubble, protected on every side (and from above, of course), worrying about his birthday when the first child his parents had dragged in from the darkness together was going through things that didn't bear thinking of. He didn't sleep, and thought about not doing his homework, but of course, the homework needed to be done. The only thing more petty than doing Trelawney's Divination homework would be trying to get out of it by using Vivian's disappearance as an excuse.

He went down to breakfast as soon as he could. It was crowded, as it had generally been after full moons this year, and tense until the owls swooped in, carrying the day's news. Teddy decided he ought to subscribe himself, but Ruthless handed him hers without looking at it herself first. He unfolded it, and the headline told him the bad news immediately: "WEREWOLF ATTACK!"

The worse news was in the article itself. It had been a brutal, bloody attack, leaving two small children dead and their elder sister - entrusted with their care for the evening - broken, bloodied, and cursed.

The worst news came at the end. Rita Skeeter had managed to interview the victim at St. Mungo's somehow. The girl was hysterical, according to the article, and couldn't describe much, but one thing she was absolutely sure of, one thing that seemed to her to define everything she'd seen: The werewolf who'd attacked them had only one eye.