Teddy Lupin
and the Forest Guard
Chapter Thirteen:
Revelo Lupinus
by FernWithy

James held his chin up bravely, though Teddy could see it was trembling. "I'll write a whole letter to you," he said.

"I'll be waiting for it," Teddy told him, then glanced over James's head and saw a group of familiar faces. "Would you like to meet my friends before we go?"

James's eyes widened, and Teddy led him over to Maurice, Donzo, Bernice, Zachary, Roger, Tinny, Ruthless, and--surprisingly--Corky, who had apparently all been waiting on the platform to gather up the group.

"Frankie's saving a compartment," Corky said, then added, "Dad had business in London, so I got him to add me to the Portkey so I could take the train back."

"That's good," Teddy said. "I'd like you all to meet James Potter. Hogwarts had best watch out when he gets there."

Each of them shook hands with James in turn, exchanging names (James marveled at Corky's accent), then Uncle Harry came over with Granny. Bernice and Maurice seemed a bit awed, but the rest accepted his presence easily. "I think the lot of you best get on the train before James decides to go back with you, and I'm not quite ready to let him, yet." He picked James up and balanced him on one hip. "Watch out for kappas," he advised them, "and mind the school motto about dragons as well."

"We'll be sure to follow your example," Ruthless said smartly.

"See that you do, Scrimgeour." Uncle Harry winked solemnly at her and she laughed.

After they said their goodbyes (all of Teddy's friends dutifully including James, who waved them on, wide-eyed), they boarded the train and found their way to the compartment Frankie had saved. Ken was already there, but he seemed to have broken up with Bernice, as they weren't talking now. Frankie watched this nervously, so Teddy distracted him with the new Muggles and Minions book he'd bought as a Christmas present and forgotten to give Frankie on the day they went to St. Mungo's. This led to a talk about computers, and exactly what they did. According to the book, you could communicate considerably faster than with Floo powder, and with more people, and Tinny and Donzo speculated on exactly how this worked. Roger tried to explain--he said he spent most of his summers "online"--but Teddy couldn't quite visualize what he meant by it. By the time they'd got close to Hogsmeade, Frankie was in a better mood, though he hadn't wanted to start a game.

"When are we going back to the Forest?" Roger asked. "I read all about Dark Creatures over hols. Someone said there were werewolves in there, but I don't see how there could--" He stopped. "Sorry, Teddy."

"There aren't werewolves in the Forest," Teddy said. "At least not until the end of the month." He considered mentioning that he was aware that this January had two full moons, one of which had been a few days ago, in the interest of telling them that he wasn't too fragile to think about werewolves, but decided it might be overkill. He didn't always keep track of full moons, but he'd noticed the blue moon this month and thought it was interesting.

"I don't think there's anything evil in the Forest," Frankie said suddenly.

"What?" Bernice shook her head, confused. "But you said..."

"I was wrong. I shouldn't have." He shrugged. "We can still go look around, if you want. But I don't think there's anything evil there."

Teddy let this pass on the train, but caught a carriage back to the castle with just Frankie and said, "What made you change your mind?"

"You did. You were right. There's power, but it's not evil." He scratched indifferently at an itch under his arm, then said, "It's more powerful than anything in London. I think Mum's looking in the wrong place. What happened to Sanjiv is too magical for anything in the city. I think the answers are up here, where the magic is still too strong for anything to interfere with it."

Teddy started to question this, but Frankie changed the subject, and started going on about the film they'd seen, and talking about his parents making up on New Year's Day ("Urgh, and I thought the fighting was disturbing..."), and complaining that Carny had already broken two of his Christmas presents, and by the time they reached the school, there wasn't really an opportunity to bring up the Forest again.

The teachers seemed to take the return from holidays as a sign to add more and more work, so Teddy found less time to lounge around the Hufflepuff table during the first week, and the subject of Frankie's new views on the Forest faded further away. Teddy managed to ascertain that Frankie was entertaining the notion of the Forest as a magnet for lost souls these days, as Frankie was rarely seen now without a library book on the subject of either magical places or the nature of identity, but Frankie just shrugged and said it was nothing to worry about, just something interesting to think about. Teddy wasn't sure he believed him.

He was thinking about this on Friday night when he came back to his dormitory, Checkmate running excitedly around his feet. He'd tried to bring it up with Ruthless, but her notion that he should just let Frankie get the craziness out of his system didn't sit all that well with him. He opened the door, and Checkmate ran inside, then stopped with a hiss.

A large post owl was tapping at Teddy's window, a letter and a box tied to its leg.

Teddy let it in; Checkmate took a swipe at it, then hid under the bed when it swooped at her.

"Hey!" Teddy grabbed it from the air and set it down on his work table, untying the package and taking the letter. "You're not meant to attack pets," he told it.

It looked balefully at Checkmate, who had, of course, started it.

"I'll talk to her later," Teddy muttered, and gave the owl some cat treats and a sip of water. It ate with studied nonchalance, then flew out the window into the night.

Teddy opened the box first. It contained Dad's wand, the Keys to the Castle, and the Marauder's Map. Teddy ran his hands over them, not really doing anything with them, just glad to have them back, then picked up the letter. It was addressed to him in Uncle Harry's handwriting.

Dear Teddy, Sometimes, the most obvious things don't happen to strike us at the right moment. Do you remember when I said that I wished Sirius or your dad had thought to bind me to the Map? Apparently, one of them did. I assume it was your dad, as Sirius never had the Map to himself again, and your dad had it for months. He probably thought I'd found all of the interesting new things it did years ago, but they made a mistake with the spellwork. I know--we spent so much time admiring it, I think we both forgot that they weren't much older than you are, and sometimes didn't think things through entirely.

I realized that I must have been bound to it when I tried the Revelo Figularis spell, because it picked up things I know belong to me. As those things were left deliberately, I've removed the marks from the Map--I created a spell to do that, and added it to the Keys. I realize that most of the finding spells were Wormtail's, but oddly, I chose to add it to my father's list instead. Because I share my father's family name and was bound to the Map, it picked up my lost things as well. I have bound you to the Map--I had Victoire there to double-check my French pronunciation, under the guise of a day at the Auror Division--so, since you also share your father's name, now you should be able to find anything you've happened to lose using the same spell. If James passes the Map on to little Fred Weasley--who is also part of its lineage; the twins rescued it and gave it to me--then they'll need a new spell, but we'll worry about that when the time comes.

I love you (I know, you're wincing and making sure no one is looking over your shoulder), Uncle Harry

Curiously, Teddy picked up the Map, then both of his parents' wands. He trained Dad's on the parchment and said, "I solemnly swear..." and the Marauders' totems appeared, bringing the map out to the corners.

Then Teddy picked up Mum's wand--his own wand--and said, "Reficio."

The lines faded, and Teddy had a moment of wild fear that he would be rejected again, but then they came back strongly and began to rearrange themselves, adding walls here and there, subtracting walls in other places. Dumbledore's tomb appeared on the lake shore, and an extension ran out behind Hagrid's hut, where he'd expanded the paddock over the years. Around the edge, a new border seemed to have appeared. It was purely decorative, and Teddy couldn't imagine why it had been included in an updating spell. It was mainly swirls of black ink, broken at regular intervals. A tiny bird of some sort fluttered in the top left corner, and a second stag, about the size of Teddy's fingernail, looked up at it from the bottom right.

He shook his head and pointed the wand at the wolf. "Revelo Lupinus."

The wolf leapt first to Robards' office, leaving its mark in the living quarters again, then jumped to Gryffindor Tower. It left a paw print where Teddy's bed was, and Teddy looked under it. The fourth-year Charms book he'd taken from the library to figure out how to remove the stone in the Common Room was lying forlornly beside Checkmate, a curl of dust blown up against its pages.

Teddy went back to the Map. It had found something he'd left in the Hufflepuff Common Room, probably during a game, and...

He froze.

The wolf had jumped to the top of the castle, on the north side, and dropped to the ground far below, leaving a solid footprint at the base of the wall.

Under the north battlements, a place Teddy had assiduously avoided since coming here.

Find what's yours, Teddy. Find what was always meant for you.

"Dad," he whispered.

Sleep was a long time coming that night, and at least six times, Teddy thought he might just slip out and have a look, curfew be damned, but he didn't want to be caught. He thought, close to midnight, of asking Ruthless for help, but she was in her dormitory, her dot on the Map moving only minutely as she tossed in her sleep. He told himself that he wasn't doing it because he was afraid of being caught, and couldn't think of a good lie to tell the Fat Lady, but it rang false. He knew that what he really feared was finding something pointless--a button, a rotting scrap of a robe, a spare Knut--and not what his heart was telling him would be there.

So he told himself it was late, it was silly to go out at night so close to the new moon, when there was barely any light to work with, that he needed sleep, even that what he feared might true, that it was nothing at all.

But the thought of what it was, what it had to be, gnawed at him, kept him turning over in his bed until Checkmate finally fled to the pillow he'd set up near her litter tray, and when he did finally sleep, his dreams were plagued by thoughts of his father's thin fingers, of a gold band slipping off of one of them. He awoke several times, his mind racing around the idea. He had never thought much of the manner of his father's death, of what had happened before he made the decision to give his life to protect a former student, but now his imagination began to search for details. Had Dad, in a moment of desperation, flung himself physically at Dolohov, jarring his hand and sending his wedding band flying into the night? Or had it fallen earlier, unnoticed in the heat of battle, nudged off a ledge by someone who had never seen it? Or had someone come along after Dad was dead and taken it from him, flung it away from the cooling body with contempt? In Teddy's mind, a hulking figure with glinting eyes did this, a monster from a child's storybook, grinning maniacally as the ring flew out into the night.

Whatever had happened, it had been lost, fallen onto the ground that had been broken up and pummeled by rampaging giants only moments before. Had there been a rainstorm soon after? Had the ground opened up to swallow it? Teddy imagined it sinking, season by season, deeper beneath the earth as the soil loosed and shifted around it. Had it been fully under when Teddy had spoken his first word? ("Granny," of course--though he suspected it was more like "Gan-Gan"--as there had been no "Mama" or "Dada" to call for; "Unka" had been hard on its heels.) Was it twisted around with grass roots when Teddy had cried himself to sleep at the age of five, having finally understood that his beloved Uncle Harry had gone away to live somewhere else and wouldn't be coming back after his holiday with Aunt Ginny? Had a bug crawled through it as Teddy was Sorted in the Great Hall, so close by?

The last time he looked at his watch before he dropped off in exhaustion, it was four-thirty, and the wind was beginning to pick up. By the time he woke up three and a half hours later, the worst storm of the winter was raging outside, throwing half-frozen, viscous raindrops against the window. The ground below was shrouded, the Quidditch pitch entirely invisible and the greenhouses only blurry boxes. The snow was pockmarked and dirty, and Hagrid's path to the castle from his cabin was a river of gray slush. As Teddy watched, chain lightning arched across the sky.

Unlike the first snowfall, there was nothing beautiful about this storm. When Teddy got down to the Great Hall for breakfast, the candles were actually lit against the uninviting light that came from the enchanted ceiling. Professor Sprout announced that the storm was likely to last all day. Students were to remain inside unless accompanied by a teacher (or in the case of years five to seven, went out in a group of three or more), as the Red Caps would make short work of anyone who fell on the quickly-developing sheet ice and lost a wand. "Right," Ruthless muttered, "because I really fancied going out in the freezing rain today."

Teddy smiled at her weakly, thinking of the map and the paw print by the battlements.

Tinny suggested that it was a perfect day for a game, but Frankie said he had other plans, and Teddy couldn't have concentrated if he tried, so the Guard did without them, Zachary taking over Frankie's urban planning duties. Teddy followed Frankie to the library, but didn't bother him when he saw the stack of books on enchanted places.

It wasn't something he was meant to do with a partner, anyway.

The teachers kept a watch on the entrance hall, reminding older students to stay in their groups, sending back younger students who weren't out with a teacher. Teddy sat on the steps for a long time, watching Neville Longbottom do this for a time, then Hagrid. He drifted back up to Gryffindor Tower before lunch and stared at the Marauder's Map, at the teasing paw print, and gritted his teeth. He should have found the spine to sneak out last night. He could only hope that the storm would be shorter than they thought, and end before curfew.

In the meantime, he unpacked his book bag and put the Marauder's Map, Dad's wand, and the knife Uncle Harry had given him inside of it. Granny had cast an Impervius Charm on it before she gave it to him, so his books and papers wouldn't get sodden going back and forth to the greenhouses, and he'd found a simple Umbrella Charm in a second year book to keep himself dry if it started again. Thunder crashed outside the window, and Teddy jumped. Checkmate crawled onto his lap and started kneading at his thigh, her sharp claws pricking through his jeans.

All of this seemed to be happening to some other boy while Teddy waited, the only thing in his mind that paw print, and his own imaginings about how it had got there. He saw his father die in his mind, over and over, the ring knocked loose somehow.

By two o'clock, he was fully miserable, and crept down to the Common Room with his book bag, less because he had a plan than because he thought he'd go mad if he stayed alone any longer. The floor around the fireplace was quite crowded with Gryffindors trying to stay warm, and people were draped over one another on the sofas, wrapped in bright blankets that older students were practicing Conjuring. Priya Patil and two other seventh-years came in, looking like drowned rats, and hung their soaking long cloaks over the hooks by the door.

Teddy looked at them for a long time, a thought beginning to dawn on him.

He ran back up to his room and put on his loosest robe, opting to put nothing beneath it, then belted it so it didn't look odd. He walked slowly down to the Common Room, where he pretended to take a great interest in Priya's cloak. He looked at it carefully, squeezing at the wet wool, until Priya finally noticed him.

"Did you need something in my cloak, Lupin?"

"I just wondered," he said, "if you'd mind if I practiced my Drying Charm on it. I haven't burned anything for weeks."

"Please feel free," Priya said. "If you muck it up, I can practice my repair charms."

"Thanks!" Teddy said, and took it from its hook. He asked an older boy whose dripping boots still hadn't been seen to if he might try them as well, and got a positive response. Both dripped as he carried them out through the portrait hole. He checked the Map quickly as soon as he was away from the Fat Lady--there weren't many empty rooms, but there was an empty broom closet on the ground floor. He made for it.

The Drying Charm was easy, and as soon it was done, he unbelted his robe, took off his shoes, then put Priya's cloak over his shoulders and the boy's boots on his feet. Priya was a tall girl, and it pooled out a foot beyond his feet. He thought she was around Charlie Weasley's height.

Teddy closed his eyes. Morphing by color was easy, and thinning himself down was nearly as simple, but this would take a bit more work if he was going to be unnoticeable. He decided to use Charlie as a model, and broadened his shoulders, thickening the muscles in his arm, making his neck wider and his nose and jaw broader. The height was different--he didn't want to just grow his legs, which would make his gait seem off, so he had to grow himself proportionally, a bit here, a bit there. His bones ached at the stretch, especially in his feet, where they pressed against the still damp leather. The hem of Priya's cloak finally pulled up the boots, then exposed their tips. That was the best he could do.

He checked his reflection in a mirror on the back of the door, and the boy who looked back at him seemed at least sixteen. He was built like Charlie, but his face was a warped version of his own. He thought he looked like he'd drunk a Swelling Solution, and deeply hoped that he wouldn't look like this as an adult.

He drew up the hood, put his book bag over his shoulder, then waited in the shadows, watching for a group of older students going by. Luck favored him--Professor Trelawney was patrolling the hall, and if anyone was likely to let an unknown older student pass, it would be her. It didn't take long before a group of three Hufflepuffs came out of the Great Hall, laughing about braving the great danger of bad weather. Teddy carefully slipped in behind them, trying not to attract their notice.

Trelawney let them pass after counting them absently. Teddy followed the 'Puffs until he was sure she was no longer looking, then cut away, running against the wind to the side of the castle. A curtain of freezing rain pinned him against the wall. He ignored it, turning his face inward, inching, bit by bit, around the vast building, finding his way to the north. A Red Cap rushed at him and he hit it with a Tarantallegra hex, and it danced away, slipping on the ice. Teddy continued. When he thought he'd gone far enough around the building and was clinging to the north face and trying not to slip down the hill, he cast the Umbrella Charm and opened his book bag, calling up the marks on the Map. His dot was nearly on top of the paw print. He moved until he was actually on top of it.

A thin scree of ice had formed over the mud, and Teddy broke through it with the knife, shattering it into shards. There was no sign of the ring.

"Further down," he muttered to himself. "Come on, Dad, I'm trying."

He clawed at the ground with his fingernails, setting his wand down beside him, but it was nearly frozen. His fingertips were so numb that he didn't notice they'd started to bleed until he happened to look down at them. He pulled the knife out again and started cutting furrows in the earth, trying desperately to loosen it. The first chunks came out whole, and he imagined the ring lodged in one of them, frozen. He would have to take them back with him, thaw them, see--

The knife turned over another bit of soil and Teddy saw the edge of it, a mild gold band, its beveled edge filled with grit. Carefully, he hooked the tip of the knife under it, prying it from the ground, holding it up to the cleansing rain. For a long, long moment, the world stopped.

Something struck him from the side, and he barely had time to recognize the Red Cap before it was on him, battering him with its iron tipped club. He shoved it away, and then noticed several more around it, creeping up the hill on the ice, their sharp teeth bared, their caps dripping blood over their ears.

"Stay away!" he shouted, grabbing for his wand, pointing it with one hand while the other still held the knife, Dad's wedding band precariously balanced on the tip. "Stay away!"

One scurried forward. Teddy blasted it back with a Petrifying Curse. More climbed over it.

"Petrificus! Tarantellegra!"

They backed him up against the wall, and the knife clanged against the stone. Dad's ring fell back to the ground and a Red Cap went for it.

"No!" Teddy leapt at it, not caring that there were more, only wanting its filthy hands far from the ring. He shoved it, then lost his footing on the ice, sliding down the hill, his wand jarred from his hand.

He felt the skin on his legs ripped against the ice, and his chin left a trail of blood as the Red Caps dragged him down the slope. His wand had rolled after him for a few paces, then lodged against a rock. The ring and knife lay at the base of the wall, forgotten by the Red Caps in light of more interesting treasure.

"Get off!" he shouted, forcing himself onto his side, grabbing one of them by the throat. He threw it away, but another jumped into its place, waving its club wildly. The iron tip came down on Teddy's cheekbone with a sickening crunch, and the world started to go black and red.

"EXSICCO MAXIMUS!"

The shout came from somewhere far above him, and three of the Red Caps fell away, clutching at their heads. The ice crumbled and fell into dust. It came again.

"EXSICCO MAXIMUS! Priya, I have them, get Teddy!"

Arms pulled Teddy up, and the world swam back into focus. Priya Patil was dragging him up the slope. "Wand," he managed to say.

She pointed her own wand at it, and it flew to Teddy. He tried to get away from her, to get to his knife and the ring, but he couldn't, and to his horror, they were gone, lost again--

"I have them, Teddy," Neville Longbottom said softly. His wand was still aimed at the retreating Red Caps, and Teddy's book bag was hooked over his shoulder. More Red Caps, Teddy saw, were starting to come up from the gully. "We have to get out of here. Priya, help me get him to the hospital wing, and let's do it without attracting undue attention. There's a door here, and I swear I'll Confund both of you and the whole student body if I hear about it being used for little jaunts." He turned quickly and pointed his wand at an apparently empty spot on the wall. The stones moved and revealed a wooden door. Professor Longbottom led them through it, and then Teddy was being led to the hospital wing by routes he didn't know, through the dungeons and the cellars, but not near Slytherin or Hufflepuff. They saw no other students.

Madam Pomfrey jumped to her feet as soon as they got him inside, and guided them to a bed. Priya set up privacy screens while Madam Pomfrey and Professor Longbottom got him settled. While Madam Pomfrey did the initial diagnostic spells, Professor Longbottom went to Priya and said, "We'll keep this among us, all right?"

She nodded, looking pale, then came to the bed. "You'll be all right, Teddy," she said.

Madam Pomfrey touched an injury on Teddy's arm and the pain flared up, waking him entirely. He fought not to scream. "Sorry..." he told Priya "...about your cloak."

"Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with it that I can't fix. I'll bring Bangs's boots back as well. We'll say you... I don't know, fell down the stairs or whatnot. I'll fix the boots."

"Thank you."

She smiled at him nervously, took her cloak and the boots, and scurried off.

Professor Longbottom stayed quietly while Madam Pomfrey took care of Teddy's injuries, muttering darkly to herself as she repaired each one in turn. "Red Caps... bloody-damned... told them we should get rid of them, the injuries since they came..." She finished up in fifteen minutes and re-cast the diagnostics, making sure she'd got everything, then pointed her finger sternly at him. "You're staying here tonight, Mr. Lupin. I don't care if everything is healed, you're in no shape--" She stopped and put her hand on her head. "You're staying here for the night, Teddy," she said again, then went back to her desk.

Professor Longbottom waited until she was sitting with her head bent over her papers, then took Teddy's knife and Dad's ring from a pocket in his own cloak. He set them down on the night stand.

"Priya's a very bright girl," he said. "When she realized you'd also absconded with a pair of larger boots, she understood what you must have done, and she came to me. You may think your House-mates take no notice of you--Ruth Scrimgeour duly excepted--but they all notice you, Teddy. Andrew Stephens came to talk to me about you specifically, because he thinks you're hiding away, and he's worried that people are doing something wrong because of your situation."

"What? No. I just... well, they all have friends already, and I have friends as well, in other Houses..."

"I know, Teddy. You're in an awkward place, and I told Andrew that trying to make up events to include you in was hardly going to make you feel less awkward. He admitted that when people socialize normally, you seem willing to join in. I only mean to tell you that you're not as alone in Gryffindor as you seem to think you are. When you do something, people notice it." He Conjured a chair and sat down, picking up the ring from the night stand. "I'm not going to ask how you found it. I have a lot of theories, most of them quite ridiculous, but I don't think it's my business."

Teddy had a wild urge to tell him everything, and if he'd just been Uncle Harry's friend Neville, he would have. But he was also Professor Longbottom, Head of Gryffindor House, and if he knew about the Map, he'd have to take it away, and Teddy had a feeling that he'd feel just as bad about it as Teddy himself would. So he just shook his head. "Thank you for picking it up."

Professor Longbottom nodded and looked across at the window. The gray rain cast shadows over his face, and Teddy thought of the writhing flame-shadows on the Sorting Hat. "For years, my mum used to give me bubble gum wrappers when I visited her at St. Mungo's," he said. "I pretended that she used to like chewing it, before she was hurt, and that she would let me pop the bubbles, and that's why she always gave them to me. She stopped doing it when I was twenty. I don't know if it's because she realized I was grown, or because she's entirely forgotten who I am." He looked at Teddy sheepishly. "Luna took the last few and put them in a frame for me. It's in my desk drawer."

Teddy didn't know what to say to this declaration, so he said nothing.

"I think your father would be grateful to you for getting the ring back, but more than a little annoyed that you went out when you were forbidden to do so and ended up getting into exactly the sort of trouble you were warned about. It was there for a long time, Teddy. You could have waited until the storm broke."

"I couldn't."

"I suppose I know that," Professor Longbottom said. He handed Teddy the ring. "I polished it a bit in my pocket to get the grit out of it."

Teddy took it, feeling its weight and its reality. He knew that the paw print would be gone from the Map now, and he knew that, for whatever reason, the Map considered the ring to be his now, rather than Dad's. It hadn't shown up until he was bound. The gold was plain and unadorned except for a gently beveled edge. There was no inscribed message on the inside, no magical sense of union with his father. It was just a wedding band, lost for eleven years, now found.

The tears rushed up before Teddy had a chance to stop them, and he closed his fist around the ring to keep from flinging it away again. He thought of the dream he'd had of his father, about seeing him there in the starlight, talking to him, feeling the non-weight of his hands. All of his life, Teddy had been loved and cared for by every adult he knew, and when the other children came, he had become "their Teddy," and he loved being their Teddy, didn't care that James called him this because, as he'd put it, "he's not the same a brother, but he's still mine." Uncle Harry was devoted to him and genuinely liked him. Ron and the Weasley brothers made sure he had a life full of rowdy fun, Arthur Weasley did his best to be a grandfather. But no love he'd got, no caring for, had fallen on his ears like his father's voice, no pummeling with affection had felt like those ghostly hands on his shoulders, and he'd never been as hungry for a smile as he was for the one his father had given him there, so like his own when he was unmorphed and calm. Getting the ring, getting what had been meant for him, had seemed like the most important thing in the world, the thing that would make that smile stay, that would make him feel that touch again, but here it was, and it was no more than a ring, no more than a memory, like the funny Muggle pictures and the crumbling crayons in his drawing box.

An arm came over his shoulders, and it was the wrong arm, and he drew away from it.

"Teddy, here," Professor Longbottom said, and Teddy opened his eyes to find a handkerchief. He took it and wiped his face, which was swollen and hot. He was suddenly aware of his surroundings again, aware of the privacy screens (Professor Longbottom had apparently pulled them closed so Madam Pomfrey wouldn't see), and of the continuing rain outside.

He blinked and swallowed hard, trying to stop the painful spasms that were twisting through him. "I'm... I'm sorry... I know... lucky..."

"Yes, you're overflowing with luck," Professor Longbottom said. "I always think that when I see a child whose good parents were stolen from him when he wasn't even a month old--how lucky he is. You were cheated, Teddy. It's all right to be angry about it sometimes, as long as you don't let it run your life."

Teddy sniffed and wiped his face again. "I hate crying."

"Would you like some tea? I have a fresh pot in my office, I can call it here."

"Yes, thank you."

Professor Longbottom waved his wand, and the teapot appeared and poured out two cups. The sugar, milk, and tongs appeared right after, and Teddy sweetened and lightened his. Professor Longbottom took it black. "I'm going to have to give you detention," he said. "Otherwise, the other students will ask a lot of questions I don't think you want them to ask."

"Yes, sir."

He sighed. "Would you like to work on the Whomping Willow with me? It needs some pruning, and as long as you know the secret of how to stop it..."

"I'd like that, thank you."

"Good." He turned his cup, then said, "Teddy, you know I've been talking to you more as Neville than as Professor Longbottom, and I know you won't say anything to anyone about bubble gum wrappers."

"Of course not!"

"But Professor Longbottom does have one very big concern, and I have to address it."

Teddy gulped and set his tea on the night stand. "Yes?"

"The way you got out today--morphing older--you know perfectly well we can't stop you from doing any morph you like. Even if the Ministry became a dictatorship again tomorrow and started tracking magic, they wouldn't be able to stop you, because it's outside the realm of what we can control."

"I know."

"But I want your word of honor that you won't do that again. Morph as you like otherwise, but don't use your talent to slip away from the people who are meant to be looking after you."

"I won't do it again. I looked sort of stupid anyway."

"Not exactly a word of honor, Teddy."

Teddy opened his hand. The ring was still there. He held it up for Professor Longbottom to see, closed his hand around it again, and said, "I promise not to morph older to get away from the teachers again."

"Thank you." Professor Longbottom smiled faintly. "I'll release you from that if it turns out that a teacher is evil. You can use anything you want to get away from one of those. I did." He stood up. "I'll expect you for detention Monday at nine. Meet me at greenhouse two."

Teddy watched him leave, then looked down at the ring again. He slipped it over the third finger of his left hand, where it hung like a loose necklace. He held it level with the other hand, morphed his finger to fill it so that it wouldn't fall off, then tucked his hand under his pillow and dropped off into a dreamless sleep.