2: Making Luck
Luck, it seemed, had backhanded Teddy a little advance. The potions lab was deserted.
Getting into the Ministry had been no problem. Eric the Watch Wizard was so used to his evening comings and goings by now that he’d barely glanced up from packing away his wand-weighing equipment for the night and waved him absently through with a brief admonishment to lock up when he was done. He’d met Penny in the ninth floor corridor bustling home after working late on a report, but she’d obviously been too preoccupied in getting home to her family to comment on his presence and simply offered an understanding smile and a gentle goodnight. And apart from a brief glimpse of Edgar Fortescue, the deputy head of the Unspeakables, turning off the stars in the universe room, he saw no one else as he wove his way through the Department of Mysteries and into the experimental potions lab.
Hurdle number one had been successfully cleared. But herein lay Hurdle number two.
Where in the heck was the Felix Felicis kept?
Cauldrons bubbled and stewed unattended over self-fuelling flames ranging from big, imposing and belching steam to tiny, tinkling and misty-wreathed. To his right lay a counter that was covered in scribbled scrolls, chopping knives, empty vials, a decanter that looked as though it was filled with molten gold and a leather-bound green tome propped against a reading stand. The wall opposite him was lined with shelves filled with a plethora of potion ingredients; ugly looking plants in hues ranging from sludge green to vivid purple, strange glittering crystals that glinted in the faded light, the lifeless petrified remains of this or that piece of insect life and jars full of eyeballs in murky syrup that he could have sworn were following him as he stepped into the entrance of the room. And to his left, more shelves, this time filled with numbered vials in their hundreds, no, their thousands, stretching from floor to ceiling, wall to wall and several vials deep, each containing liquid of a different colour and consistency, some bubbling cheerfully within themselves or swirling almost like bottled mist, others gloopy, sludge-like and thick or quietly vibrating to themselves.
Teddy could feel his heart sinking in the general direction of his knees. His advance had just run out. He could see even from where he was standing that the potions were in no kind of order that he was familiar with. It was going to take him hours to search through this lot.
If only he could remember what Felix Felicis looked like. He had never precisely been bad at Potions, but it’d certainly not been his forte either and he’d only taken it as far as NEWT level because he’d had some vague idea about trying out to be an Auror like Harry and his mother, until a Coming-of-Age trip into a Pensieve and a fascinating Easter visit discussion with Penny about the newly completed Portal had turned his ambitions in other directions. By the time they’d reached a lesson that included mention of Felix Felicis towards the end of his sixth year, he’d been on the verge of dropping the subject altogether in favour of History of Magic and hadn’t really been paying much attention.
Which was a bit of a bugger, under the circumstances.
There was the summoning spell, he supposed. But if his accio called one of the vials at the back of the shelves, it would send those before it flying and probably fling them to the ground with a smash. Edgar would come running at the noise and how was he supposed to explain what he was doing?
Sorry, sir. I was summoning a potion I’m not supposed to touch without about fifty different kinds of permission to make sure that my attempt to illegally rescue my dead parents from the past was successful…
That’d go down a storm.
No, he would have to search by hand. Alas.
Something, anything, even just remembering the colour would narrow it down…
“You all right there? Lupin, isn’t it?”
Teddy jumped about a foot at the touch of fingers against his arm and half-wheeled in shock. Edgar Fortescue was smiling over his shoulder.
“I assume you’re here late to use the Portal.” Edgar’s eyes filled with the inevitable whisper of sympathy. “Penelope told me she given you… special dispensation. Sorry if I startled you, I was just checking around before I lock up. I thought I was the last one here.”
Fortunately for Teddy, the one detention-evading talent he had always been ecstatic to possess was the ability to think on his feet.
“Yeah, me too,” he replied with a smile and a shrug that was as offhand as he could make it considering the speed at which his heart was racing. “I was on my way to the Portal room and saw the light on. I came down to check but as you can see, there’s no one here but us.”
Edgar was smiling as he shook his head. “Don’t worry. Elijah Whistler never remembers to turn the light off in here so I always nip down to check before I go. I swear he’s inhaled over one too many cauldrons sometimes.”
“It…er…it looks like it.” Teddy gestured to the higgledy-piggledy mass of vials of the shelves before them. “I know we shouldn’t criticise our colleagues and all but…”
“But those shelves look like the most pointless, chaotic mess you’ve ever seen?” Edgar laughed jovially. “Elijah is trying to test, catalogue and create a sample of every potion recorded in wizarding history. Not much of a job, huh?” He chuckled and Teddy, starting to relax now chuckled with him. “I asked him to explain how he finds anything once and he told me he’s got a system. He gives them a code to do with their ingredients and effects and records them all in his catalogue.” He gestured to the heavily bound leather book Teddy had noticed earlier. “Though sometimes I do wonder whether he remembers to record them all …” Edgar’s voice broke off abruptly, his eyes suddenly fixed on the counter beside the book. “Oh, for goodness sake,” he declared with a certain air of weariness. “Not again. I told him to lock that away as soon as Auror Woodvine left. That man has smoked all of his brains straight out of his ears…”
Brushing past Teddy, he moved over to the counter and lifted the decanter full of golden liquid from the table even as a chorus of alarm bells sounded in Teddy’s mind. He’d seen Auror Woodvine in the atrium on Friday talking to Harry about conditions in Brazil and though Bert Croaker had joked about it, Teddy knew that Felix Felicis might be approved for a case as significant as this…
A little cauldron bubbling away in the Potions dungeon as he entered, his mind on the catch-up reading for History of Magic he’d need to do if he was to get permission to swap. A little cauldron full of gold…
That was it. That was it.
It’d been right there in front of him. And Edgar Fortescue was about to lock it away out of reach all because he had a memory like a bloody flobberworm and didn’t recognise what was staring him smack in the face…
He had to do something. Now.
But what could he…
Yes.
His fingers curled around his wand as Fortescue turned, moving towards the heavily padlocked cupboard in the corner. One flick, a quick non-verbal and…
The small bubbling cauldron to Fortescue’s left lurched on its stand, hiccupped slightly and then slumped reluctantly sideways, emptying its contents all over Fortescue’s shoes.
“Ack! Curses! Bloody…” Swearing fluently, Fortescue jumped out of the puddle and stared with a mixture of incredulity and shock as his shoes and robe hem began to grow teeth. “What in the…”
“Wash it off!” Teddy darted forward and grabbed the decanter from Fortescue’s teetering grasp as he gestured frantically towards a heavy sink in the far corner. “Wash it off, quick!”
Edgar didn’t need telling twice. Even as he rushed off, Teddy span, grabbing an empty vial from the counter as he yanked open the neck of the decanter. Don’t let him turn around, don’t let him see me, please, please, please… He could hear splashes and more swearing behind him as he tipped out a dose of the golden potion, which remarkably didn’t spill in spite of how clumsily he’d poured it, closed the decanter and shoved the vial into his robes.
He was only just in time.
Edgar Fortescue returned, wiping down his trousers with a grimace. There was still a hint of ivory around his shoelaces.
“Damned clumsy of me, knocking that cauldron,” he muttered, righting the offending item and the remains of its contents with a frown as Teddy stepped forward and offered him the decanter back. “Thanks for grabbing that, Lupin. There would have been hell to pay if it got smashed and it was hard to remember that when those damned things were biting my ruddy toenails.” Accepting it carefully, he smiled. “Why don’t you get up to the Portal room now? I’ve held you up long enough with my blather. I’ll lock up the rest of the Department so just give the doors a rotate when you leave, won’t you?”
Teddy nodded, his mind spinning, hardly able to believe he had just got away with blatant theft of a restricted potion under the nose of his deputy department head.
“Thanks, sir. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight Lupin.”
He could feel the cold shape of the vial in his pocket as he moved down the corridor away from Fortescue and the sound of padlocks clanking. Maybe, just maybe, he didn’t need Felix Felicis to be bloody lucky.
But all the same, he was glad he wasn’t taking any chances.
* * *
Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was quiet. Abnormally so.
It really was quite disconcerting.
Harry Potter wasn’t used to quiet. By day, in his job as Head of the Auror Office, he was used to the hustle and bustle of his colleagues, the investigations in the field of this or that act of dark magic, the shouts of discovery or irritable mutterings in the office that told of uncovered clues or old ladies wasting their times with claims that Voldemort’s ghost had possessed their cat. Out of the street, he was recognised at every turn. And by night, he was a father of three children with Weasley blood in their veins and in receipt of frequent visits from their cousins, his friends and his godson. Oh and he also shared his house with three owls, two kneazles and a very old pygmy puff called Arnold.
No. Harry Potter was not used to quiet.
Especially not in the school holidays.
But Ginny had taken the children and both kneazles, if not the owls and the very old pygmy puff with her to watch her old team the Holyhead Harpies play the Chudley Cannons so that Harry could finally finish some long overdue paperwork in peace and now the house lay still. And it felt so wrong, even worse that chaos, more irritating, more distracting than the constant noise and chatter to which he had become accustomed. He wasn’t used to working in quiet anymore. For a moment, he had even caught himself staring at the ceiling and contemplating removing a couple of the carefully charmed muffling bricks in the wall they’d built to cover the redoubtable portrait of Sirius’ mother, just to hear a few of her charmingly irate screams and wails to break the quietude. The thought made him almost nostalgic.
Harry smiled ruefully to himself. He’d always known he wasn’t destined for a quiet life. But still…
Paperwork.
Paperwork.
Come on now…
He set his quill to the paper…
And heard the rush of the Floo in the kitchen below, the sudden tramp of footsteps on the stone steps and a voice, a voice calling…
“Uncle Harry? Are you here? Uncle Harry!”
What the…?
“Victoire?” Rising from his desk, Harry moved towards the door of his study, pulling the door open to be met by a rush of blonde hair and wide, anxious eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be in France?”
“We just got back.” Victoire waved the question away as she brushed past Harry into the room, her white knuckled hands clutching a messy cluster of crumpled papers as she wheeled away from him and began to pace frantically around the room. “And he’d said he’d meet me straight away, he promised, but he wasn’t there and so I went over to his house to find him, to find out why he broke his promise but he wasn’t there and Uncle Harry, I swear I never meant to read them, I was just looking for a piece of paper to write on but I found these on his table and Uncle Harry, look!” She thrust the wodge of papers into his face. “Look what he’s going to do!”
Still reeling slightly from the quick fire barrage of words, Harry took the papers tentatively from Victoire’s grasp and glanced down. It was only when he recognised Teddy’s handwriting that things began to slot into place. And when he read the words…
Need to double check precise date and time of death/flicker… neither mum or dad’s wands found in past so could grab either to use for Geminio… practice Geminio first maybe to ensure good quality fake corpse? …must time breaking of passivity field in Portal exactly to minimise intrusion into past… must get firm grip on both mum and dad and pull both through Portal together…
Harry didn’t know the full details of Teddy’s work. But he knew enough to see where this was going.
He can’t… He can’t be serious! Those trips back were supposed to set his mind at rest not…
Oh bloody hell, Teddy!
His heart lurched. He had to stop him. He knew that. He had to. Playing with time like this would get him arrested, get him locked up for life…
But.
What if it worked?
What if he really could save Lupin and Tonks?
What if…
Violently, sharply, he forced the thought, the tiny, flickering glimmer of long forgotten hope away. No. NO. They’re dead. Lupin came to you in the forest, remember? It’s not going to work and I can’t let Teddy wreck his life over it.
I owe him too much. I owe his parents too much.
They’d never forgive you if you let their son ruin his life over their memory. You know that.
You know it.
You have to stop him.
“Uncle Harry?” He’d almost forgotten Victoire was there. She stared at him now, her eyes wide and frightened. “Uncle Harry, what are we going to do?”
Fighting to control the ice cold fear that was welling up in his chest, Harry laid a hand gently against his niece’s shoulder and forced himself to smile.
“Thanks for bringing this to me, Victoire,” he said with an air of fake calm he was sure even Lupin would have been proud of. “I know Teddy saw his parents’ deaths recently while he was working…” Victoire’s gasp of horror told him that this was not something his godson had chosen to confide in his girlfriend about, “…and he’s been dwelling on it more than he should. I don’t think he seriously plans to go through with this but just in case, I’ll have a word with him. You go on home. I’ll tell him to call you when I find him.”
It was a lie. Harry’s brain was screaming at him to find Teddy, find him now, stop him before he did anything stupid, but there was no point in traumatising the boy’s girlfriend in the process. As he’d expected, Victoire offered up a vigorous protest at being bundled out of the way, but eventually, somehow, Harry succeeded in getting her down the stairs, into the fireplace and, after receiving one last very-Fleurish glare of mingled concern and annoyance, sent her home to her parents.
And the moment she was clear, Harry rushed to follow.
Teddy wasn’t home. Victoire had said so. But if he really meant to try and go through with this madness, there was only one place to go that really mattered.
He had to get to the Department of Mysteries. Now.
Floo powder flared emerald. Harry stepped into the roaring flames.
“Ministry of Magic!”
* * *
Well. This was it.
Teddy stared into the Portal. He tried to evade the feeling that it was staring back.
He had waited until he was sure that Edgar Fortescue had left completely before he’d worked up the courage to step forwards into the Portal room, to secure his amulet in place in the leather holster that wrapped around his wrist, to reach up and readjust the tiny range of hourglasses that ran along the Portal’s right hand edge one after another, from century, to decade, to year, to month, to day, to hour, to minute, to second until he knew, he was certain that he would emerge half a minute before his parents were due to die. He set the location next against the map imbedded into the left hand upright, zooming in more deeply at each request; Scotland, Highlands, Hogwarts, North Battlements, eastern end…
All set. All ready.
And now all that was left was…
He reached up, his hand touching against the smooth glass of the largest hourglass set firmly at the highest point of the Portal’s gentle arch. He took a deep breath.
And then with a shove, he set it in motion.
Slowly at first, but then quicker, quicker, ever quicker, the hourglass turned over and over and over until it was nothing more than a glassy, silvery blur that almost seemed to hum as it hurtled round and round and round. Light and shade, colour and shape flickered in the Portal’s maw as it raced backwards through time, through space to the location he had chosen, to the time, to the place where he was going to save his parents lives.
Was he ready?
He looked down. A vial filled with molten gold glittered between his fingers.
In one swig, he swallowed the contents whole.
He was now.
The Portal slowed, calmed, settling, solidifying, until the familiar, flickering curtain of dark red light rippled into place to announce to any that knew its ways that the Portal was connected to the moment chosen. The instant he stepped through, the instant he broke that wall of light, history would begin before his eyes.
You do not touch. You do not change. You do not interfere. We watch only.
Not this time.
Not if he had his way.
He could feel the Felix Felicis working through his body, calming him, relaxing him, filling him with confidence. He was going to do this. It would be easy.
He was going to save their lives.
It was time.
Shoulders squared and jaw set, Teddy Lupin crossed the threshold and stepped into the past.