Chapter 22:
Despair
The school split over the issue of Vivian Waters that weekend. Did this prove that werewolves were always turnable, always unreliable? Or did it prove that she should have been taken into Hogwarts after the war and trained properly so she could have defended herself?
Predictably, Dad's name came into it, Gryffindors in particular being prone to using it to defend Vivian and lycanthropic rights. A fifth year Hufflepuff - one of Frankie's dormitory mates - got quite involved in the argument when a Gryffindor brought this up, and shouted at the top of his lungs that "Yeah, well even Lupin got sacked! It's in Hogwarts, A History!" Then he'd quite suddenly shut up, and looked directly at Teddy, his mouth opening and closing stupidly. Teddy didn't know what to say to it. It wasn't the first time he'd heard a complete stranger talk about Dad, and it wasn't particularly cruel - Teddy reckoned Dad would have been in this if he were here, and if it had been him rather than Vivian, he'd probably be on the boy's side - but it still felt like he'd been through a boxing lesson with a Dudley who'd forgotten to pull his punches.
By Sunday night, Teddy had taken to his room most of the time. Victoire visited him after supper to play a half-baked game of two-man Tarot poker, bringing Bushy to play with Checkmate. To his relief, she wasn't talking about Vivian or werewolves. She'd got a letter from her father, telling her that the new baby might be born before the end of June. Victoire was terribly sad about this, as she hadn't had to miss any of the others being born.
"I even got to go in and help when it was Muriel," she said, peering intently at Teddy's forehead. She herself had the Ten of Cups facing out at him, which was good, but if he had any of the Major Arcana cards, he could still win. "I got to mop Maman's forehead and tell her how wonderfully she was doing. None of the others were old enough, but I was almost ten, and Dad said I could, as long as I left when I was told to. Did you go when Lily was born? You were ten then, or almost."
"Granny and Uncle Harry reckoned it would be disturbing."
"Well, I wasn't allowed in when there was a lot of blood - you know, at the end. I went in at the beginning. Then I was in charge of watching my sisters until everything was cleaned up and there was a new baby. I wish I could be here for this one. Maybe it will be another boy finally."
"Artie would like that." Teddy touched the card on his forehead, willing it to be high, and tossed a few more Knuts into the pile. "Did your dad say anything else?"
She shrugged. "I told him that Mina Moran likes Kirk Scrimgeour and Kirk said that I could tell Mina that he liked her, too, and she said I should go back and tell him that she'll hold his hand if he wants her to and - "
"You told your dad that?"
Victoire nodded, looking stricken. "Yes! And he said was that I wasn't allowed to go out with anyone until I've passed my O.W.L.s!"
Teddy laughed. Victoire gave him a frustrated little frown. Her card fell off her forehead and he dealt out another hand.
By the time she'd left, he'd put Vivian temporarily out of his mind, but the next morning brought her back. The outer world was having the same argument that was going on at Hogwarts, and each Prophet article seemed to spark a new round. Honoria and the Charmer staff were nosing about at the tables, trying to get students to talk for an article of their own. Honoria raised her eyebrows at Teddy as she passed, the last of the morning post's owls flying off above her head. He shook his head at her firmly.
"Fine," she said. "But it's hardly an article on this without some comment from you." She narrowed her eyes. "You couldn't find those other friends of hers, could you? The other werewolves that I talked to? They didn't tell me how to reach them."
"They're busy, Honoria."
She looked up with avid curiosity at this, but Teddy didn't elaborate. He was just turning back to his breakfast when a huge tawny owl burst in and swooped down at the staff table. It landed in front of Professor Longbottom, who gave it a tired glance, then grabbed it and tore the message it carried away. He put an entire piece of bread in the bird's talons and shoved his own water goblet over, then stood and went to the Headmistress, still reading. Teddy couldn't hear what they were saying - it wasn't that loud in the Great Hall, so he suspected one or the other of them was Muffling the conversation - but Professor Sprout didn't look happy, and Professor Longbottom didn't look like he cared. He stormed out the back door, letter in hand.
"What was that about?" Kirk Scrimgeour asked, looking mystified.
Ruthless - looking after Professor Longbottom with dawning understanding - absently cuffed him, and said, "It's not your business."
Victoire, as aware as Teddy was of what had seemed the case at Christmas, suggested that Professor Longbottom's elderly grandmother might be sick. This seemed to satisfy most of the Gryffindor curiosity seekers. Augusta Longbottom's arrival at the Battle of Hogwarts was the stuff of legend, and her deeds now rivaled those of Godric Gryffindor himself in popular imagination. Teddy supposed Mum's might have as well, if she'd accomplished anything by showing up when she didn't need to.
The curiosity from Hufflepuff hadn't been sated, and as Teddy walked down to the greenhouses with Tinny, Laura, Joe, and Roger, they were debating the subject, wondering if Professor Longbottom would explain himself. Teddy privately doubted it, and wasn't surprised when he came through the door to find the Headmistress herself standing at the head of the class, potting Honking Daffodils as if she'd never left the post.
"Please sit down," she said. "Professor Longbottom has chosen to take today off, and I'll be teaching you." She smiled. "It's been a while, but I think I remember."
Teddy wasn't sure if it was a good class or a bad class, as none of them were concentrating on it. It just seemed wrong not to have Professor Longbottom up there, fussing at his plants, going around to check their work.
After Herbology, Teddy went to Defense Against the Dark Arts, and barely heard Robards going on about a long assignment. When he was told to choose a topic for his next essay, he had to ask what the choices were again.
"Any of the advanced dark creatures or manifestations we've covered this year, Teddy," Robards said. "Seven feet, due before your final examination. History, theory, and control techniques."
Teddy couldn't think of anything, and Robards frowned at him in a concerned way. "Teddy? If you're hesitating because you want to study werewolves, that's fine, it's a perfectly valid topic."
"Revenants," Teddy said, before Robards decided to choose for him. He didn't know why he'd chosen that topic - it was handy, he supposed, and his bookmark was still in the chapter.
"All right. But they're difficult. If you run into trouble, let me know."
Jane asked if it would be all right if she reported on werewolves, as long as Teddy hadn't chosen to. Much to Teddy's relief, Maurice rolled his eyes and said, "Teddy doesn't own werewolves, you know," thereby saving the need for him to do so himself.
He met Ruthless on the way to the Great Hall. She was chewing her lip thoughtfully, and when he got to her she said, "Professor Longbottom and Vivian were good friends, weren't they?"
"Yes."
"Good friends like we are?" Teddy didn't answer, which she took as an answer. She nodded and said, "I hope he's gone off somewhere to absolutely pound someone then. I would, if it were you."
Teddy smiled. "Thanks. I think. But I'm going to have to fight a dragon or something now to keep my reputation as a bloke." Ruthless shook her head in disbelief at such a notion, and Teddy shrugged. "But he can't know who to pound. He'd tell the Aurors."
"No, he wouldn't." Ruthless looked at him blankly. "They'll have to turn her in. They won't have a choice."
This hadn't occurred to Teddy, though he supposed it should have. His mum and Kingsley had hidden Sirius, but Sirius was innocent. Vivian really had made that attack. Would Uncle Harry be forced to drag her to Azkaban, with all of the members of Greyback's pack who'd already been brought there?
He spent the rest of the day thinking about this, and neither Uncle Harry nor Ron came to the school for guard duty to ask. There had to be a reason Ruthless was wrong about it. It wouldn't be fair to arrest her for something she wouldn't have done except for the full moon.
He somehow managed his work through the day, and even got a start on his Revenant essay in the library. Robards was right - they were a complex topic. But it kept his head engaged.
He couldn't sleep when he went back to his room, and he couldn't find a book that could keep his attention. Finally, he drew out the Marauder's Map. Nothing showed red in any of the areas he knew, most of the students were asleep and still (though Frankie still seemed to be down in the 'Puff Common Room). Professor Sprout and Professor Flitwick were having tea in the staff room (or, at any rate, sitting across a table from one another), and Professor Robards was prowling the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Teddy looked out the window and saw him there, a glowing wand point, jabbing into the shadows. Professor Gardner was visiting Professor Trelawney.
Three new dots appeared by the main gate, huddled so close together that Teddy had trouble reading the names. He concentrated, and they seemed to come into focus.
The dot in the middle was labeled "Neville Longbottom." So close beside him that they had to be carrying him were "Evelyn Blondin" and "Robert Alderman."
Teddy didn't bother thinking about or worrying about breaking curfew. He grabbed his cloak and went out to meet them.
The night was cool, but not cold, and late fog passed over Teddy's skin like the hand of a drowned woman, trying to pull him under the surface of the world. The greenhouse ahead of him was surrounded by a fuzzy halo. He was very close before he could see the three figures inside of it, and then only in blurry splashes of color.
Professor Longbottom seemed to be in a chair, a spill of brown and red, flowing down like a willow's leaves, pooling on the greenhouse floor. Beside him was a black rock, its brownish-white top bobbing seriously. The only fully human form was Evelyn Blondin, who was closest to the greenhouse wall. She picked up a blanket and brought it to Professor Longbottom, wrapped it around his shoulders, then began to pick through the plants, looking for something.
Teddy didn't pause before opening the door.
Professor Longbottom looked up at him dully through a mask of clotting blood and said, "It's past curfew, Lupin."
"Is there anything I can do?" Teddy asked Evvie.
"No, I know what I'm looking for. Just go over and make sure he keeps warm."
Teddy went to Professor Longbottom, who watched him come with no further protests about curfew, and allowed him to tighten the blanket. "Are you all right?"
"Fine." He mopped at some of the blood on his face, smearing it around, then said, "Scratches."
"Is Vivian all right?"
"As long as Greyback decides she should be," Professor Longbottom said bitterly, "I saw him carry her away. I tried to get to her, but she ran."
"Neville," Père Alderman said, "that's not because she doesn't care. She cares a great deal." He looked at Teddy and said, "She's just trying to keep you out of it. You know that Lupin did the same to Tonks the whole time he was with Greyback. But they came back together in the end..."
Teddy caught the hopeful look, and knew he was expected to chime in with the great miracle of his own existence, but since the only thing he could think of to say was, "Sure, I'll bet you'll both have a good ten months to live once she gets her head straight," he decided that silence might be better. Instead of picking up his expected role, he went to the cupboard near Professor Longbottom's desk and got out the tea set, then set about brewing some.
"Here," Evvie said, handing Teddy a pinch of something green. "Add this to the infuser. It will help with the bleeding."
Teddy took the leaves and added them, then dipped the infuser into the pot and tapped it with his wand to start the brew, giving it a little twist of magic to speed up the process. He Levitated the teapot and a cup over to the table in front of Professor Longbottom and sat down across from him. Evvie and Père Alderman sat on either side.
Professor Longbottom poured the tea and took a sip, then looked down at his cup. "Thank you, Teddy," he said. "You really ought to be back in Gryffindor Tower. You oughtn't be wandering around the grounds. We still don't know how that bitch is getting around."
Teddy had never heard him swear when he knew a student was listening before, but it wasn't entirely surprising. "What happened? Was that letter about Vivian?"
"It was from Vivian," he said, then fell into a morose silence.
"Where is she?" Teddy asked.
"We don't know now," Evelyn said. "Neville brought us the letter this morning. It came with a Ural owl, and Greyback always had a sort of loose connection to a Romanian werewolf tribe in the Carpathians. We took a guess. We were right, they were there, but - "
" - but so were a lot of others," Professor Longbottom said. "I ran in without looking. I know better than that. I should have got a better feel for the situation. But she said..." He looked at Teddy, and Teddy could almost feel him trying to soften what he meant to say, then just shuddered and went on. "She said she was writing to say goodbye. That she meant to... that if she didn't, Greyback would keep making her do things."
"She meant to hurt herself?" Teddy said, and turned to Père Alderman for confirmation. It didn't make sense. "She meant to kill herself?"
"I think so," Père Alderman said.
"But she was still alive when you left?"
"We can thank Greyback," Evvie told him bitterly. "He'll let her do it eventually if we don't get her back, but for now, he's having too much fun torturing her."
"Whatever the reason," Père Alderman said, "she's still alive. So if we have to thank Greyback for it, we will. And we'll get her away, and take care of her."
Teddy shook his head. "But it's something he's doing. She shouldn't... it's not her fault. It's just something he made her do. She should hurt him! What's she trying to hurt herself for? It's stupid!"
"You'll have no argument from me," Professor Longbottom said. He drew something from his pocket, and Teddy recognized Vivian's wand, the one she'd stolen from Greyback when she'd left him as a child, the one that contained a hair from every werewolf in his pack, including Vivian, Alderman, Evvie, and Dad. Mathilde had batted it away during the confrontation in Hagrid's paddock; Professor Longbottom must have picked it up. "Six months ago, she was going to use this to kill him," he said. "God, I wish I'd been able to get it back to her." He finished his tea, then said, "You really need to get back, Teddy. I'm grateful that you were concerned, but you don't belong here. I'll take you back." He stood, then swayed alarmingly.
Evelyn sat him back down. "You're not going anywhere. You need to send for Madam... er... your school Healer."
"Pomfrey," Teddy said, and sent his Patronus to the infirmary with the message "Professor Longbottom hurt, greenhouse one."
Somewhere, Professor Longbottom managed to find a very small smile. "You know she'll call you on being out."
"Oh, well."
"I'll get Teddy back to the castle," Père Alderman said.
"Yes. Thank you." Professor Longbottom frowned at a cut on his arm. "For everything. Really."
Alderman nodded curtly, then put his hand on Teddy's shoulder and led him back outside. "You know not to tell any of the other students what you saw tonight," he said. "Your professor is in quite enough pain without that."
"I know," Teddy said. "What can I do? About all of this?"
"Nothing."
"No, really, I can't just sit here and..."
"Yes, you can. Because there's nothing else for you to do. Be careful. Keep your eyes open. But beyond that, I can't think of anything else, unless you're religious, in which case, pray."
"What really happened, Father?"
Alderman paused. They were in the darkest spot on the route from the greenhouses to the castle door, the place where the greenhouse lights had ended and the castle lights hadn't quite reached. "Neville came to France this morning with Vivian's note. Evvie and I were working there. The others were all off looking in other places. At first, I didn't think Greyback would be mad enough to go back to an old ally, but of course, there's not much he's not mad enough for, really. Evvie said we ought to try.
"We got there through the creature network - your friend Charlie Weasley got us through and gave us the talismans we'd need to get into the villages in the mountains. There's a reason Romania is known for vampires, you know. Anyway, these particular friends of Greyback's are under a vampire's patronage. They watch over him in the daytime and keep people in terror when he can't act. We had to get to the castle. So we did.
"We got as far as the door, and we saw Vivian at the top of the stairs. He's taken her eye, you know. She looked horrible. But Greyback said that he meant to keep her around. And that he meant to keep us, as long as we'd wandered in. That was when the other pack attacked us. Neville's a damned good fighter."
Teddy nodded. "Everyone knows that."
"I didn't really know what it meant until he took out six of the ones attacking us. But they kept coming. Evvie and I fought them as well as we could, but we were pushed out of the castle. We saw Greyback riding away on a gray horse, with Vivian behind him. Another horse came out. I'm guessing Mathilde."
"Black hair, short robes?"
"Yes."
"That's her."
Alderman nodded. "They got away. I don't know who else is left with him, but he's obviously building up new alliances."
"Well, can't we tell Uncle Harry? Couldn't he get all of them?"
"No. The vampire who this new pack works for is part of the Romanian Ministry, and they're under his protection. Technically, we were breaking in. The British Ministry could complain about them harboring a British criminal, but Harry can't just go in and grab him."
"Great." They started moving again. Teddy felt vaguely sick. "Maybe I could research Romanian magical law," he said. "I'm sure we have books."
"Teddy, you should be doing your schoolwork. Think about other things!"
"I do, that's the problem, I think about too many other things."
"This isn't your responsibility."
"But I feel..." Teddy's stomach did a slow roll.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Père Alderman stopped at the base of the castle's front steps and said, "Teddy, if you need to talk to me, you can."
"A confession?" Teddy said. "But I'm not Catholic."
Alderman smiled. "So that means I can't absolve you. It also means that you don't believe I could absolve you if I were allowed to try. So we'll just call it talking. Sometimes it helps to talk to someone who's outside of things. And I'm more than happy to listen to you."
"Because you owe my father?"
"Because I sort of promised mine," Alderman said, winking up at the sky. "But also because I like you, Teddy. You're a good boy. And I think there are a lot of things you don't say to anyone."
Teddy felt everything wanting to come up - how he was worried about his games and the girls and his marks instead of Vivian, how he was angry about Mum and the battle, how he felt like he couldn't do anything when he was supposed to. But in the end, he just shook his head and shrugged. "I'm fine," he said. "Thanks, though. I'll go in now."
He opened the great door and slipped into the shadows of the entrance, and looked out at the world until the door swung shut on it and Père Alderman.
For the first few days after Professor Longbottom's return, it seemed almost blasphemous to think about anything other than what had happened. Students were gossiping - Teddy and Victoire, who knew the truth about Vivian and Professor Longbottom, and Ruthless and Donzo, who'd figured it out, all did their best to steer questions as far from the truth as possible - and Professor Longbottom himself was hard to miss. Some of the wounds he'd taken during the battle in Romania had apparently been cursed, and he appeared in classes with bandages on his hands and wrists. When they came off a week later, he had clear, round bite scars in several places, and one particularly nasty rip coming back from one of his knuckles. Teddy guessed he'd thrown a punch at one of the Romanian werewolves and caught his hand on a sharpened tooth. The mind might be thrown from it for a moment, but it always came back: Vivian wanted to hurt herself, Greyback was under the protection of a foreign official, and Professor Longbottom had gone out by himself after them because the Aurors would have to take Vivian in as a criminal.
It couldn't be possible to think of anything else.
But of course, it was. First, there was schoolwork. Final exams were coming up quickly, and all of the teachers were assigning reading and review assignments, as well as big projects like Robards' project on Dark Creatures. Professors Firenze and Trelawney assigned separate projects in Divination, and Gardner gave each student a box of objects they were meant to Transfigure before the exam. Professor Flitwick always did a practical exam, and Charms students were going through everything they had learned. Teddy, who had read several years ahead of himself in Charms, went through his third year book carefully, reminding himself of which ones he'd be expected to know for the test.
Then there was the Quidditch final. Gryffindor had been knocked out of the running - barring a really catastrophic loss by Ravenclaw, Teddy supposed - so the last game of the season, Gryffindor-Slytherin, was all but irrelevant. The real decider was between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, who were only a handful of points away from each other. Teddy had friends on both teams, but rooted for Hufflepuff, as his mum and grandfather had been 'Puffs, and no one had been a Ravenclaw. It seemed like as good a rationale as any, and Joe Palmer, their Seeker, was the best flyer in the school. Frankie loaned him some yellow and black clothes for the game. Ruthless was just rooting for low scores on both sides, hoping that, with a lot of luck, they could beat the point spread, and Victoire was madly cheering the Ravenclaws, as she and Story had succeeded in turning the war into a grand alliance, though Madam Hooch had made them take a magical vow that they wouldn't interfere in the Quidditch game.
Most of the goings-out dried up toward the end of the year, as there were no more Hogsmeade visits to plan, and studying for exams seemed more important. There was a rumor that Donzo was looking for a girl to be on his summer tour, and be interviewed by magazines, and he was inundated by girls auditioning for the role, until he finally gave an interview to Teen Witch, in which he said he was far too young to go out with anyone. Teddy thought this might not be a good idea, as quite a few people had seen him going out with Lani and Laura during the year, but Donzo didn't care, as long as total strangers stopped batting their eyelashes at him. "If they come up with it," he said with an ill-tempered snort as they fed lizards to an increasingly large Clabbert, "I'll just tell them that trying it only made me see how young and unready I am. They love that sort of thing." To Teddy's dismay, Ruthless had started wearing the clothes her mother had given her for Christmas (she claimed that all of her "real" clothes had got damaged in Quidditch practices, but Teddy didn't believe her), and several boys seemed to find that they had a lot of business with her. She told all of them that she wasn't going to go out with anyone, but Teddy supposed it was just a matter of time. Maybe until next year, but she would end up going out with one of them, and it made him sad to think of it.
Lessons with Uncle Harry went on, and it was there that Teddy was linked back to what was happening outside the world of his classes and classmates. More than once during April and into May, Uncle Harry let Teddy work on the house before they got started because he had to use the Floo in the living room to check in with Ron or follow up on a lead. The key that opened the system had been hung on a nail pounded into the wood of the fireplace, and Uncle Harry added a charm that would take care of the Incendiary Incantation with the same opening motion. Teddy was not surprised when, in the middle of May, two days after a full moon when the lack of news hadn't comforted anyone, he gave an apologetic look, turned the key, and bent down into the green flames that had appeared.
Teddy didn't have any work to do on the house until he told Granny about it and started moving furniture in. There was still the stain on the floor, but neither he nor Uncle Harry was interested in going near it just yet. So he sat at the kitchen table and took out his pile of library books and a scroll. He was nearly done with his Revenant essay, just looking at the troublesome question of how to expel the rage spirits. They were something like accidentally created ghosts, bits of a person broken off at death - "Think of it," Robards had said, "like skin that gets pulled off if you hold on to a rope you're sliding down." They had some independent consciousness, but it contained only inchoate rage. Revenants generally attached themselves to houses, and Aurors hadn't had much luck finding ways to remove them that didn't destroy whatever they'd occupied. Teddy was expected to explain the differences between a Revenant and a Dementor, though as far as he was concerned, it sounded more like a Horcrux than Dementor. The only thing it had in common with a Dementor was its ability to cause an emotion in living people it encountered. Robards had hemmed and hawed over this, then told him that the books would give him more information on Dementors than Horcruxes, and he should stick with that.
"Sorry about that."
Teddy looked up. Uncle Harry was standing in the kitchen doorway, a ring of ash around the collar of his scarlet robes. His hair was even more haphazard than usual, and his glasses had a faint bit of soot on them. Teddy closed his book. "It's all right. You can stop doing this if you want to. I know it's just for giving me a little time, it's not like we're really doing anything I need to know now."
Uncle Harry grinned and sat down at the table. "Your false premise is that I'm doing it for you. I'm not. I'm doing it for me. It's entirely and completely selfish. I hope you don't mind me dragging you out of the library with exams coming up."
"No." Teddy put his things back into his book bag and said, "Is there anything about Vivian?"
"No."
"Professor Longbottom said she was going to hurt herself. Did she? Do you think she's - ?"
Uncle Harry shook his head. "I think that if anything happened to her, Greyback would make sure we found out in the most painful way possible."
"Will you really have to take her to Azkaban?"
"I don't know. I hope not. Hermione is working very hard to get people to treat transformed werewolves under the same laws as Imperius victims. If she didn't put herself there deliberately, then the blame should fall on Greyback, where it belongs."
They worked more on the Blasting Curse, which they swore every week they were going to give up as a bad job, and Teddy again failed to do much more than make a clay pot shiver and shake a little. Once they were done with that, they practiced Shield Charms and Disarming, then, just to complete the ritual, fiddled with the ancient refrigerator for a while. The Cooling Charm on it was erratic at best.
On the way back to the castle, Teddy asked Uncle Harry if he'd ever had to get rid of a Revenant.
"A Revenant? No. Why do you ask?"
"Just an essay for Robards."
"Mm. I'd say ask Robards that question. When I was in training, Kingsley told me that Robards expelled a pretty nasty one from a house in Liverpool."
It was the last they discussed it, and Teddy didn't think he was thinking about it when he went to sleep, but in his dreams, he found himself in the Shrieking Shack, and it really was haunted. He could see his mother in the kitchen, furiously sanding down the counter tops, and when she looked over her shoulder at him, her face was drawn in a mad grimace. She reached for him with clawed hands, but then the dream changed, and he felt himself caught up on a warm breeze.
It carried him to Tirza's ship, then over the bow and across the moonlit water to the island, where a merry bonfire burned. Tirza was dancing barefoot on the sand, and she took his hands when he came ashore. They danced together, and Teddy knew who she was, and laughed with her while some unseen band played island music. They tripped over each other's feet and fell, still laughing, to the sand. He wanted to stay, but she put him on a rowboat back to the ship, where Ruthless was tightening up the rigging and Victoire was standing in the crow's nest. For some reason, they were both wearing swimsuits. Uncle Harry was at the wheel, and Donzo and the Pondhoppers were playing some kind of silly, happy tune on a stage at the stern. Frankie lowered a rope ladder and he climbed up it onto the ship. He could see Tirza's island in the distance, and she was kneeling at the shore, her head in her hands. No one would go back for her, no matter how many times Teddy asked. Uncle Harry cheerfully said something about accepting things, and Granny, a cocktail in her hand, said that Tirza had always been willful, anyway.
The ship steered past the island, and sailed into the waking morning.
Teddy went on.