Chapter Text
── ✵ ──
Teddy Lupin had graduated Hogwarts and moved out of the country, occupying a small flat in New York, when he received a phone call one morning. It was his stepmother, Ginny. She explained briefly the situation and went out of her way to dissuade him of any concerns, tacking on a “this could be exactly like last time, when it turned around in a day,” at the end of it.
Something, however, was beginning to unravel. It started when Teddy had left Britain several years ago in a manner similar to escaping a burning building. This decision, impetuously made, to abandon all family and history may have been owed to the fact that Teddy was an orphan and therefore a liminal presence in the lives of the people who adopted him—neither “family” nor “not family.” Ginny, however, hushed after she finished speaking, clearly waiting for his reaction, and Teddy remained silent.
“She thinks this isn’t a big deal,” she said. “But I thought, all things considered... you'd have the right to know.”
The next day, after mulling it over, Teddy took an international Floo to London.
His destination was somewhat off the beaten path, in the countryside at the border of Wales and England. Andromeda Black lived in a cottage covered in vines. It had been purchased, so they said, by a member of her family—some elder uncle Alfred, who had occupied the place intermittently throughout the years, so as to continue his illicit affairs—and became hers when he died. Contrary to the aesthetics of the Black family, which was both indulgent and overbearing, the cottage was bare. For several minutes, Teddy stood on its stoop, knocking incessantly, before remembering the spare key. He let himself in, shutting the door behind him, as the familiar scents of dried herbs and coppery magics swirled in his nostrils.
The witch, far from being appreciative of his surprise visit, was characteristically indignant.
“I told Ginevra I'm fine.”
Andromeda, when Teddy found her, was lying on a chaise lounge in a room surrounded by plants. Her waist-length curls, which had been styled in the same way for as long as he could remember, were equal parts gray and jet black. “Truly, I feel stifled by them,” she said. “The executives get worked up over nothing.”
“Could be a sign they care.”
Teddy sat down. Through the windows, there were rolling hills and crab apple trees, the grasses littered with rotten fruit. The scene was vibrantly, serenely bucolic compared to the shadowed indoors.
“Mum said you didn’t want me to come,” he said.
“That’s not true. I always cherish your visits, but would prefer if they weren’t arranged under false pretenses.” She sniffed. “Besides—as I told both Ginevra and Harry, these things are genetic and therefore completely unextraordinary. My mother suffered fainting spells, as did my younger sister.”
Teddy shrugged and said that he was hoping to see how she’d been.
Andromeda eyed him. “I’ve been a terrible grandmother,” she said, as though taking in his appearance for the first time. He had chosen, on that occasion, to dress in Muggle jeans and a white shirt. It wasn’t so dissimilar from what his father had worn in photographs—even the way that the tee-shirts hung off their bony collars was the same. “I'll fetch tea. But first, and I feel dreadful asking this as you’ve only just arrived... I’m afraid I must demand of you one favor.”
He was brought to her kitchen. Andromeda, not particularly light on her feet, tottered around before rummaging in a cupboard. From piles of old linens behind stacks of parchment, she procured a single, small cauldron. This was propped on the table and set up with various potions ingredients. In short order, Teddy set up a fire and had a brew boiling merrily.
“My hands shake so much now I can't hold the knife steady.” She hovered by his shoulder and inspected his work. “Even directing my wand with precision,” she said, “is becoming increasingly difficult.”
The recipe for a pain potion was straightforward, at least. Making the thing took an hour and filled the kitchen with bitter-smelling steam. Teddy was no expert at Potions, but he had passed his O.W.L.s with decent marks, and he found to his surprise that the process was soothing.
As he worked, Andromeda poured tea from a kettle and told Teddy bits and pieces about her healing regiment.
“These things are irreversible, when you get to a certain age. There’s no curing it, only mitigating the symptoms. Thankfully I don’t have to worry about the long-term effects of taking potions.”
Teddy’s grandmother had long complained of symptoms resulting from her use of Dark magic during the First Wizarding War. Theoretically, Dark magic could be deconstructed within the body if it were dealt with immediately, but the passage of time had caused the darkness to metastasize and transform. There was little to be done except manage her pain.
“It was a quick spell while I was walking up the stairs.” She told him about fainting. In her words, the “executives”—a term reserved for Harry, Ginny, Uncle Ron, and Aunt Hermione, whose decision-making power within the family far outranked her own—overreacted to her injury. “Still... I can’t complain if this is my reward.” She pursed her lips. “I wish they hadn’t scared you about it. You should visit me more often, when your employer allows it.”
As Teddy sprinkled fairy wings, the final step in the potion-making process, Andromeda stooped over his shoulder.
“Concentric circles,” she said.
“What?”
“Concentric circles.” She put her hand in Teddy’s to take a pinch, then distributed on top of the bubbling liquid. “Potions theory relies on fundamentals of magic from runology. The application of runes, I’m sure you’re aware, are specific about direction and shape.”
Upon close inspection, Teddy made out the formation in which she sprinkled the wings.
“Western scholars are neglectful of this aspect of magic,” she said, as the potion transformed into periwinkle. “It’s more intuitive in the East... for wizards writing in Chinese or Japanese. These are written languages in which the meaning of a character will change depending on the direction of your brush stroke.”
“I see.”
“It’s not so different. Runes are exact. Many of them appear similar, but their effects change depending on the skill of the witch or wizard. Potions benefit from this sort of thing... Doing this precisely will augment its potency.”
Teddy made several comments, more out of politeness than anything, as he set his wand down and finished up. His grandmother, he knew, had studied curse-breaking extensively; she attended one of the Old Dark Guilds in Egypt prior to enlisting in Dumbledore's Resistance. He hadn’t been aware that this sort of thing would have interrelated with potion-making, though he supposed that advanced studies in any subject tended to become more abstract at high levels.
After the potion set, Andromeda ladled a small amount into her tea. He watched as relief fanned across her face, relieving tension that she’d carried in her jaw and brow.
As she whipped up a quick supper, a house-elf refreshed Teddy’s drink. None of the interior lights were on and the world outside their windows was blue-coated and glowing. While he ate, Teddy mostly spoke to fill the silence. Andromeda, aside from being highly prickly and standoffish, was occasionally prone to withdrawing completely into her thoughts.
He glanced at the cauldron, still simmering.
“It’s an interesting antique.”
“What, this?” Andromeda glanced at it.
The cauldron was more beautifully constructed than anything Teddy had previously worked out of. The body was obsidian, refracting light, and it was propped on tiny, silver feet shaped in the way of a cat’s. The object must have had inlaid charms as the silver had not tarnished in the time it was stored in the closet. “Yes, well,” she said. “It’s not mine. Antiques from my family are far tackier... you’ll notice the considerable lack of serpent motifs.”
Andromeda sipped her tea. The low light, aside from casting the space in a cool tint, had taken years off her face. For a second, Teddy was confronted with the image, however dreamlike, of his grandmother when she was young.
“It belonged to someone I knew,” she continued. “I believe it was originally commissioned for an old professor, someone who died early during the First War. It was the possession of Harry’s mother.” This made Teddy blink. “To this day, I’m not certain how she got her hands on it.”
He mulled over this information in his mind.
There had been much known, in the years since the end of the First and Second Wizarding wars, about Harry’s father—James Potter, who had been a war hero and General in Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix. James was exalted, a fact that was aided by his inheritance of an insurmountable fortune and, simultaneously, having descended from one of the longest pureblood lineages in history. Lily Potter, in contrast to her husband, was an unknown figure. Very little had been recorded about her role in the war. She appeared in sculptures and plaques, but her accolades were limited to her having saved Harry in 1984.
No one knew who she was.
That Andromeda should have something that belonged to Lily was a surprise, although Teddy wondered if this was an incorrect reaction. After all, Andromeda had been in her twenties at the beginning of Voldemort’s reign, only several years older than Lily had been. There were many things that his grandmother did not share with him, or anyone, about this period of her life. Perhaps her relation with Lily Potter was one of these things.
Andromeda had been a General and distinguished in Dumbledore’s chain of command. Teddy knew little else.
“Will you be heading to London in the morning?” she asked. Her expression was indiscernible. To date, she was probably the most unreadable person Teddy had known in his life.
“I’m invited for dinner at Grimmauld tomorrow. The day after, I thought I'd apparate to Hogsmeade.”
“So, you'll need stay the night. Flopsy can set up a room.”
“Is it an imposition?”
“Not at all.” Andromeda was staring through the window above the sink, in which the farmlands were cast in darkness. “I once received visits twice a week from Ginevra, before she got caught up at the Ministry,” she mused. “Terribly busy, that witch, I feel awful for needing her. Now Hermione is sending her eldest girl, that Rose.”
She glanced at Teddy, a wickedness permeating her gaze.
“I'll admit that I’m lonelier than ever.”
“Oh, really?”
“Indeed.” She looked grave. “She’s inherited her father’s intellect, that one.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It is.”
“Not one for stimulating conversation?”
“Oh, it’s too stimulating.” For the briefest of moments, a smile quirked the corners of her lips. “She chatters endlessly about one thing or another. Makes an awful racket. I am grateful to have the excuse of my poor health to get away—otherwise, I fear it would be nigh impossible to escape.”
──
The next morning, Andromeda had another favor to ask.
“It would take up no longer than an hour,” she said, over a spread of fresh pastries, toast, and jams. That particular morning at her cottage was overcast, with streams of golden light interrupting sifting, silver fog. “It's only a short distance from here,” she added. “Not too terribly out of the way. There's a place I'd like to visit, only briefly. I would go by myself, but the wards have made it inaccessible by Floo or apparition... and I would be stuck walking, which is a great difficulty considering my rheumatism.”
When Teddy inquired about this location, Andromeda replied that it was a memorial, one that she had visited on numerous occasions over the years. This was one of several places in Britain where the excess Dark magic from the First and Second Wars had rendered it uninhabitable. Even decades later, the residual curses had an intoxicating, corrosive effect. Casting spells in such areas would invariably lead to backfiring or accidents. This memorial, however, had historical significance and therefore was open to the public.
“Where is it?”
“A short distance south of here, by way of Cornwall.” Andromeda drummed her fingertips on the table. “Godric’s Hollow. It was the place where Harry lived as a baby, you know, and where the Dark Lord attempted to kill him. I don’t intend to be long.”
“I know Godric’s Hollow.”
“Of course you do.”
“Is it medically advisable?”
Andromeda stopped drumming. “Oh, it would be fine, as our exposure would be limited. Besides, the magic there recognizes me.”
Teddy wasn’t entirely sure what this meant. In fact, he had the faintest suspicion, resulting in a prickling of the hairs on his neck, that his grandmother was lying to him. Without any sense of the lie’s significance, however, he agreed to her plans. Ginny wouldn’t like it, but she wasn’t there to stop him, nor did she need to know anything.
Besides, Teddy thought as he studied his grandmother’s face—no matter how wispy Andromeda became in old age, there was something about her reminiscent of steeliness. He believed, for some unknown reason and deep down, that this witch would be very difficult to kill.
──
It was past the peak of autumn. Teddy apparated them to a Muggle location a mile away from the Hollow and the two set to walking down a rambling, dirt path. Andromeda, who was not one to admit any sort of weakness to anyone, clearly struggled to move on her own. She leaned heavily on Teddy’s arm and muttered curses when she tripped.
Though Andromeda’s complexion—resulting perhaps from the vestiges of pureblood vanity and glamor—was reminiscent of her former beauty, her body certainly betrayed her age. She felt stiff and shriveled beneath his touch. Teddy held her arm as they passed thickets of wild bushes and trees.
Godric’s Hollow was a beautiful village, comprising a dozen or so cottages across a lolloping meadow. As they approached the perimeter, Teddy could make out the sunken faces of houses, partially absorbed into the ground. Once a whimsical place with a storybook-like character, the structures had become dilapidated and rotten.
They passed a wrought-iron gate, which bore a plaque. Some people had left flowers, including carnations that magically spelled out “long live the boy who lived.” This was apparently of little interest to Andromeda, who kept her eyes trained forward. They were making their way towards what was probably the largest and grandest of the houses, located centrally at the top of a hill.
To see it with his own eyes was shocking.
Despite knowing what transpired there, Teddy had expected, in some way, that the Potter House would have been better preserved with time—if only because it was of great significance to Harry, the international hero he was. This proved not to be the case. The entire second floor of the villa was blasted apart. Slabs of the walls and roof were intact, jagged and broken, around a crater. Everything was darkened with moss and mold. To Teddy’s impending unease, this was precisely where Andromeda intended to linger.
“Now, this will only take a minute,” was what she said as she left him on the street, unhooking her arm, and shuffled straight into the house.
Teddy, who was now conscious of the fact that he was alone, took to pacing back and forth. There was yet another plaque, which he ignored in favor of procuring a cigarette from his chest pocket. Smoking was a habit he had picked up from working in the Muggle publishing industry; he puffed at it guiltily, as though expecting at any moment to be told off. Typically, this was something that he did when he was attempting to look busy. Something so that other people would find him unapproachable and leave him alone.
Two, maybe three minutes passed. His sense of discomfort increased.
At some point, a cloud moved across the sun and Teddy glanced up at the house. Within seconds, all the blood had drained from his head and he was stumbling backwards. He felt as though he had been kicked in the chest.
In the center of the crater was a woman. She was standing eerily still, unaffected by the breeze and tousling of leaves on branches. Her expression, from the great distance that Teddy regarded her from, was one that he had never seen before in his life and made the breath freeze in his lungs. He began coughing raggedly and his cigarette slipped out of his fingers before extinguishing itself by his shoe.
When he looked up again to see if she was still there, the woman was staring at him.
Eventually, a tide of nausea subsumed him and Teddy stumbled off, retching into a bush and pinching his eyes shut until his heart finally slowed. He felt ill. He felt insane. It was in this position that Andromeda eventually found him, crouched toward the periphery of the overgrown gardens, when she had finished doing whatever it was that she did.
“What’s gotten into you?” She was shielding her eyes from the sun. “Did something happen?”
Teddy walked, more hurriedly now, towards the exit. Somehow, his ears had begun to ring, rendering the world deaf at the same time colors swirled and became saccharinely vivid. It was as though he had entered a dream state, simultaneously slow-moving and saturated. His thoughts were scattered, dropping off before he was able to think them through to completion. The walk back to the anti-apparition line felt a million times longer than arriving, and Teddy had to fend off the extremely ludicrous urge to abandon his grandmother and run full pelt towards the trees.
This he did not do, which demonstrated great restraint on his part.
“Your hair's turning blue.”
It was then that Teddy realized Andromeda was watching him out of the corner of her eyes.
“Happens sometimes.”
“It was an issue for Nymphadora,” Andromeda commented. Her tone was artificially nonchalant. “Of course, her shapeshifting abilities were more powerful—and volatile, too. Her hair changed whenever she was angry or upset.”
Teddy said nothing.
“You know what I’m talking about?”
“I don’t care.”
“Won't you tell me what happened?”
Teddy was silent.
Andromeda made a small noise to indicate she was thinking. “You are... considerably less open with your feelings than your mother was. I suppose that is your father’s influence to blame.”
Now that they had put distance between themselves and the Hollow, the upset in Teddy’s stomach was easing and translating into what could only be described as agitation. The jitters were beginning to settle, igniting a small fury in their stead.
“So,” she sighed at last, as though forced to reveal her cards. “I take it you’ve had the chance to meet Lily.”
Teddy stopped walking, removed his arm from hers, and stared at Andromeda.
Perhaps having been orphaned and adopted by his godparents at a young age had affected him more than he realized. In truth, when he thought about it, Teddy had always harbored dislike for the dead. They were not an abstract concept to him as they might have been for others; the deceased were familiar and unfamiliar—people he knew from stories and likenesses in appearance, and yet didn’t, because they were taken. For as long as he lived, Teddy had not conjured the slightest wish to find out about his parents beyond the spare details Harry had shared. Furthermore, when it came down to it, he detested superstitions. Going so far as to contact spirits, convening with ghosts—particularly those who did not choose to become phantoms, but by some wrathful tether were bound to mortal life—all bordered on Dark magic and was highly taboo.
All this was to say that the longer Teddy stared at Andromeda, the angrier he became. So, his grandmother had known about the ghost—about Lily. Did she know that meeting a phantom, as he had just done, was an omen? He was marked. There was an outsized chance, now, that he would be visited by spirits again in his life—possibly more malevolent and dangerous ones, though little was known about how this worked.
He felt that his entire head had turned blue.
Of course, Teddy had known that his grandmother kept secrets. What he hadn't expected was the kind of treachery this was.
Andromeda, compounding his irritation, was observing him with interest. “You're not the first person I’ve brought here,” she said. “How curious it is. All this time—” Now her tone began to meander. “Lily didn't reveal herself to the others, not even those directly related by blood. I wonder why that is.”
Teddy told his grandmother that they ought to leave, biting down on the impulse to say something regretful. At the end of it, returning to her cottage, he bid her farewell, explaining that he didn’t expect to see her again before he was set to leave the country. Andromeda became reserved at this, saying that was fine and she hoped he would stop by again.
At some point, during this exchange, her expression had become stone.
──
Time passed in New York. Teddy, by this point, had distanced himself considerably from his family. Work had become an all-consuming and corrupting whirlwind his life. As his publisher was bought in a merger, he found employment for a handful of smaller, Muggle journals and accepted a workload that was somehow fast-paced, overwhelming, and interminably boring. Harry and Ginny were worried about Teddy, or perhaps felt obligated to, and he in turn harbored annoyance for causing them any such concern. He found his letters kept getting shorter and shorter. There were fewer things to say.
On occasion, he received correspondence from Albus or Rose, pleading for him to find work in Wizarding Britain. After all, didn’t he know that Harry Potter would serve as a reference, ensuring any job would be his?
Teddy turned twenty-eight and received a sweater, plus chocolates, by owl. For a while, life passed in a shimmer.
It was at this point when he might as well have severed his connection to the motherland when, in early spring, a letter arrived by way of a handsome, barn owl. The envelope which plopped in his lap was finely made—creamy parchment, thick and luxurious—and revealed itself to be an invitation to a wedding. Victoire Weasley, with whom Teddy had been briefly entangled during his youth, was engaged to the son of a Death Eater.
This invitation was promptly set on fire.
Months later in mid-summer, Teddy received a phone call out of the blue. It could only be Ginny. As she only called on him using the Muggle contraption for emergencies, Teddy flew across the apartment—tripping as he went and leaving the shower running behind him. She seemed surprised by the gruff manner he spoke into the receiver.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Teddy?”
By now, Teddy realized that he had been shouting and muttered an apology. Ginny had no time, however, to waste. “I don’t mean to interrupt if you’re busy. I heard from Andromeda. She’s had another spell. I’m told she’s recovering, after a brief stint in the hospital, and the healers say that she’ll make a gradual recovery.”
“Oh.”
Emotion rose in him, but he couldn’t name what it was, exactly. Teddy had stayed in contact with his grandmother only distantly in the past year. The letters they sent were cursory updates, typically about work, and devoid of any flowery language of affection. “Do—” he cleared his throat. “Is she alright now? D'you think I should come?”
Ginny paused.
“I don’t know. I just don’t feel comfortable making that decision for you.” Another beat. “Well, I wanted to let you know in case you were coming. I know she asked about you recently.”
“She did?”
“Yes. Between you and me, I think her mind might be failing. She was scattered the last time I visited.” She didn’t mention when this was.
Teddy, who had sprung out of the bathroom with only a towel, sat on the sofa, dripping water.
In the time that he lived in the States, he had scarcely done anything to his apartment, leaving the place in much the same state it had been when he'd accepted the lease. The studio was empty, almost sterile, and could have belonged to no one. Once, a woman he’d brought back had walked in, burst into laughter, and uttered that Teddy “must be a psychopath” to “live this way.”
In any case—there was an odd, uncomfortable emotion wriggling inside of him as he sat there, clutching a telephone that connected him with the place he once lived. Growing up, Andromeda had barely played the part of his grandmother, set to the peripheries of both the Potter and Weasley clans. Something about her, perhaps resulting from the war long ago, had cut off her maternal instincts—rendering her remote as an island. Teddy hadn’t been certain, for the longest time, that she liked him. Only gradually did he suspect that she approved of him, in her way.
Eventually, Ginny began talking again. “I also wanted to say... you hadn’t responded to the inquiry by owl. It’s been several months. We’re selling the Evans house; you know, the one that was Harry’s mother's.” A faint thrill of recognition made its way down his spine. “Whatever we make from it, which I’ve been told will be very little, will be split between the kids. That means you, James, Lily and Albus.”
A breeze ruffled Teddy’s hair. He had left the window open.
“Hello? Can you hear me?”
“Yes, I’m here. Thank you, Mum.”
“So, are you planning on coming?”
“I—” He glanced around. “I've got commitments on Tuesday.” Oh, what the hell, Teddy thought. “But… on Wednesday, I'll come. You know, I’ve told Fleur not to expect me.”
Ginny sighed. “Yes, I know, dear. I’ve timed this because it’s the only time we’ll all be together again. I can pick you up from the Ministry.”
They said their good-byes. Shortly after, the line clicked dead. Teddy stood there, for many moments afterwards, wondering what was pulling him to the opposite edge of the world.