Chapter 27

Hogwarts castle was a pandemonium of terrified students. Prefects hurried around their respective common rooms in mad attempts to calm the worried students. Teddy and Angelina were kept constantly on their toes, running around the school until eventually, they couldn't take it.

Teddy sat down heavily on Angelina's desk, his hair light grey and streaked with red, "We can't keep running around like this," he said, "We'll die of exhaustion."

The two had been around the castle all day, tending to various students worries and needs. Neither of them had sat down all day.

"Let's get everyone in the Great Hall together. It'll be easier to control that way," Angelina suggested.

"But a whole lot louder," Teddy mumbled as he headed off to fetch the students.

Half an hour later, all the students, a few missing their arms, sat glumly on the benches in the Great Hall. Bringing everyone together had in fact silenced the school, as they children sat huddled in groups, sobbing silently or whispering miserably to one another.

Teddy's heart broke for them all. He desperately hoped that as long as he, George and Angelina remained 'sane', then they'd all be fine, but at the same times, something inside him told him that that wouldn't work out. Fred jnr. seemed to be the only source of hope for anyone. He sat amongst his fellow Gryffindors, comforting them and wafting his arm at them to show his father was out to help them. His encouragement seemed to be helping until George himself burst into the hall angrily.

"It's gone, Mol!" he shouted, "The shop isn't there!"

Molly's jaw dropped, "No," she mouthed in shock, "It… it has to be there."

"I looked," George said, "I looked and I looked and I looked. Nothing. Nothing at all. No freaky shopkeeper, no dodgy potions or edgy looking shelves. There's. Nothing. There."

Teddy's heart fell. He looked around the hall to see the students' eyes filling with fresh tears. On the table in front of where George now sat were two pieces of paper. Teddy stepped down from the staff table and headed over to his friend, peering over George's shoulder. A smile tugged at his lips when he saw the photo of Angelina, Fred and Roxanne but the grin vanished again when he saw the other sheet. He'd seen it before, he knew he had. Teddy could vaguely feel the familiar tingle of his hair changing colour, but what shade it had become, he didn't know. Snatching the sheet from the table top, he ran from the hall, Angelina, George, Molly and Fred jnr. hot on his heels.

First, he ran to his office, pulling apart his bookshelf in search of the book he needed. He cursed when he didn't find it. He must have returned it. Teddy took off again in the direction of the library, ignoring the questioning comments from the four following behind him.

Sprinting past the shelves so quickly that the books were probably confused, Teddy reached the restricted section of the library.

"Alohomora," he chanted quickly and continued through to the dingy part of the school. This room still gave him chills, so he could see why it was out of bounds to the students.

When Teddy had still been a student at Hogwarts, he and his friends had heard in class of a potion which allowed you to change one of your features. Being the 'genius' students that they were, they'd decided it would be a brilliant idea to try and recreate then edit said potion so they could all be metamorphagi like Teddy.

So, one night, Teddy had morphed himself to looked vaguely like Professor Flitwick, just in case, and crept out after curfew to retrieve some potions books from the restricted section of the library so they could execute their plan. Needless to say, the potion didn't quite work to plan when the boys added lizard eggs instead of lizard legs (an easy mistake to make) and Teddy's friends had ended up in the hospital wing for weeks with rather enlarged facial features.

But the book which they'd retrieved the potion from had also included some other interesting recipes including a potion to melt your enemy's insides temporarily, a mind-reading potion and a 'potion for your wildest dreams'. It had been that particular set of instructions which had stopped Teddy from returning the book immediately; he wanted to know what having real parents was like and the potion claimed to be able to do so. And it was that set of instructions which was gazing him in the face.

He recognized every inch of the parchment- from the scrawled writing to the diagram in the top corner. But he also knew that this wasn't the full sheet. He specifically remembered the recipe taking up two pages one containing the method, the other, how to properly use it and the antidote. Teddy marched quickly through the aisles until he reached the shelf where the book sat. He could put his hand on the spine in seconds and was soon passing the heavy book to George.

"It's in there," he said, "Everything you need. The antidote, how to reverse it, everything."

George looked down at the book in his hands. After days of searching, he finally held the answers.