“When Potter’s Eight were given the Albus Dumbledore Award, each member also each given a token to symbolize his role in the battle,” he recalls. “Among Weasley’s was a set of diaries belonging to Snape in the two or three years before the battle against Voldemort. I know this to be true because I was the Auror who presented them to him at the time.”
These diaries were, apparently, strictly for show, not for reading. Weasley was warned not to open any of the books in case they contained a dangerous, undetectable curse.
Thought to contain Snape’s motivations and actions in the days before the battle, the diaries were kept in Weasley’s home for over twenty years.
Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement Uther Smith-Smythe requested last week that the diaries to be turned over to his department so that the cursebreakers could examine them, but Weasley did not comply.
Weasley claims that the diaries are missing and that he had never moved or even looked at them since he first put them away, and that only his immediate family and closest friends know where they had been kept.
Weasley has been instructed that the diaries must be returned within two months, and that he will face legal consequences”namely a short sentence in Azkaban for withholding information from the government”if he does not oblige.”
Emma crumpled the sheet of paper into a ball and kicked it into the fireplace. “Idiot Ministry,” she snarled under her breath, and collapsed back into the sofa, arms folded across her chest.
How could the Ministry be so stupid? Wasn’t it clear that her father didn’t have the diaries anymore? If they’d been stolen, it wasn’t his fault, and they could use Veritaserum or Legilimency to prove it.
She squeezed her eyes shut, rubbing at the prickly goosepimples that were popping up on her arms. Her dad had helped the Ministry catch lawbreakers for over twenty years. Didn’t they realize it was highly unlikely that he’d intentionally break the law? If anything happened to her dad because of that moron Hadrian Bellowes, she was going to… well, she was going to be upset, that was for certain.
But nothing will happen, she reminded herself quickly. It’s okay. Dad’s not going to go to Azkaban or anything. Even the Ministry aren’t that stupid.
“Ermmm… Em? You okay there?” a deep voice asked hesitantly.
She didn’t even need to look to know that it was Tyrone. Why did he have to be everywhere? She almost expected him to turn up whenever she least expected it. He was like the Spanish Inquisition. Or the Spanish influenza.
“I’m fine,” she replied dispassionately, examining her nails. “It’s just… cold in here.” She hadn’t seen or spoken to Tyrone since the ball a few days previously, and she hadn’t really hoped to. Just hearing his voice made her feel awkward and queasy, not two of her favourite ways to feel.
“Oookay,” said Tyrone. “Well. Um. Look, the ball was… weird. I won’t freak you out like that again. Promise.”
Emma gave him a deadpan stare. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Er, right. But anyway, we haven’t gone on a midnight broom ride in awhile, and tomorrow’s a weekend, so I was thinking tonight--”
“No, you don’t.” He was cut off by a low, flat voice from the doorway. Jordan stepped into the room, wearing his Extra-Serious Face.
“What is this, some kind of block party?” Emma muttered. “Why does everyone keep charging in here?”
“Because it’s the Common Room,” her cousin said. “Anyway, you can’t go running off into the Forbidden Forest, especially after curfew. I’ve already told McGonagall and Gauge that I’ve seen some students sneaking out to the forest at night, so if you try anything, you’re both going to be in serious trouble.”
Tyrone shrugged his broad shoulders defensively. “Hey man, if you really, really don’t want us to go into the forest, then we won’t, but what’s the big deal? Why did you have to tell Gauge? That’s really not cool.”
“It’s dangerous,” Jordan spluttered. “You’ll… people have died in there.”
“Really?” Tyrone asked with great interest, leaning forward. “Who?”
Jordan’s face was stony. “That doesn’t matter. In any case--”
“Jordan, just give it a rest,” snapped Emma, standing up and gathering her cloak around her shoulders in the futile attempt to keep them from shaking. “You might be smarter than the rest of the school put together, but that doesn’t mean you can tell us what to do every waking second.” She began to stalk away, then paused and turned around.
“Watch the forest all you like, but you might as well save yourself the time. I’d rather gag myself with my wand than go flying with him anyway.” She looked Tyrone straight in the eye. “And quit following me around like a lost puppy dog, Tyrone. It’s really starting to get on my nerves.”
And with that, she stomped out of the Common Room and down the stairs of Gryffindor Tower. She needed some fresh air.
The grounds were largely empty and already dappled with shadows by the setting sun. She wasn’t sure whether or not that was a good thing. It seemed to her that people were never around when she felt lonely and that no one would leave her alone when she wanted some privacy. What with Jordan acting like some kind of cop whenever she wanted to do something fun and Tyrone popping up everywhere like the bogeyman, she could never get a moment’s peace.
And heaven forbid she actually wanted a brief chat with her best friend, because Haley”crazy, laid back, homework-hating Haley”was too busy working on her stupid Inter-House Unity project with that hideous Slytherin friend of hers.
It was ridiculous, really, how stupid Haley could be. What Slytherin had ever done anything useful? She knew about Slytherins. They were conniving, used dirty tricks, lured people into a false sense of security. It didn’t matter if they seemed nice, if they acted like they genuinely cared about their targets, if they had some kind of sob story to tell. Slytherins were nothing but evil, twisted phonies.
But Haley clearly hadn’t learned. Just that morning at breakfast, Emma had been expecting to tell her cousin an amusing story about how Valencius Twigg who sat next to her in Defence Against the Dark Arts had fallen asleep with his eyes open in a seriously freaky way and had a lively conversation with thin air in his sleep. (Apparently, he was attempting to seduce a supermodel by describing all the different specimens of potted plants he owned.)
But to Emma’s consternation, Haley did not sit down next to her with her usual cheery greeting. Instead, she’d breezed straight by, passed the Gryffindor table all together, and plopped down… at the Slytherin table, directly across from Anatoly Capshaw. “Hey!” she’d exclaimed merrily.
A fourth-year boy had stared at her like she was an alien who had just happily announced her intent to blow up the earth to make room for an intergalactic chicken coop. “This is the Slytherin table!” he’d exclaimed.
“Oh, good, I thought it was,” Haley had replied, her expression earnest, and she’d helped herself to some toast and begun chomping and chatting away, discussing her project with her partner and introducing herself around to all of the Slytherins.
She was absolutely bonkers. Emma wrinkled her nose at the memory as she made her way across the grounds. Haley wasn’t the only one who was spending all of her time in different company, either. Ted and Ivy might as well have lived in an alternate dimension or something, because she almost never saw them apart these days. They had really gotten sappy in the last year or so, and it was disgusting. They were like a mushy little fairy tale pair.
Emma detested mushiness of any kind. And she had never cared for fairy tales.
Ted felt itchy and ill as he stared at his dinner. He could tell that the silverware really was genuine silver, and his well-done steak looked leathery and unappetizing. “The full moon’s coming up in just a few hours,” he thought to himself. Normally, his aversion to silver and cooked meat was nonexistent in human form, but it was very close to transformation time… and it was also getting closer to his seventeenth birthday.
“What’s wrong, Tedward?” Haley asked, prodding him in the arm with her fork.
He winced. The metal felt cold and sickening, and it made his head spin and his teeth itch.
“Why aren’t you eating anything? It’s a big day today… gotta get your energy up.”
Ted smiled, if rather weakly. “It’s the silver,” he explained. “I mean, silver’s not really a problem for me at all unless it gets into, you know, my bloodstream or whatever, and I’m not really sure how that’d happen… usually, I’m okay with it unless I’m a wolf, but I don’t feel great right now. It’s like…” He searched for an appropriate analogy. “You know Superman?”
Everyone nodded, except for Ivy, who looked completely confused. “Who?”
Emma laughed. “You’re such a Pureblood,” she said fondly. “We need to corrupt you more.”
“Superman’s a guy from these old Muggle comic books,” Ted explained. “He’s got all these superpowers, he can fly, he’s got super strength, he can leap tall buildings in a single bound, any of that. But there’s this stuff called Kryptonite, and if there’s any of that around, he gets weak and his powers stop working.”
He shrugged. “That’s what the silver’s doing right now… only I don’t have any superpowers… that you know of.”
He vaguely remembered talking about Superman the previous year, but he’d had no idea Ivy hadn’t known what he'd meant. Of course, she’d never been big on speaking up, but he wished she would to him at the very least.
A whiff of a soft, clean scent with a hint of orange drifted gently up his nose, and he blinked and sniffed the air. It was Ivy, her usual sweet orangey scent. Only a few hours away from the full moon, Ted’s wolfish sense of smell was beginning to kick in, and it was both a blessing (Ivy) and a curse (Tyrone’s gym socks) to be able to smell everything so well. He wondered if perhaps this was how it felt for Jordan, being a Seer, although he imagined that it would be with the sense of sight, not smell”unless Trelawney really had it wrong. Maybe Ted was gifted with the Inner Nose or something.
But of all of the smells around him, his favourite was definitely Ivy’s, and he recalled back to his first-ever transformation at age fourteen. One of the thoughts that had remained in his mind all night long as tried to sleep in his strange new body was how wonderful Ivy smelled. I’m lucky to be a werewolf, he’d thought, or I’d never realize.
Lucky to be a werewolf, Ted thought, and smiled. There were always silver linings for any dark cloud, and as far as he was concerned, there were probably rainbows in any hurricane as well. And this was his, his sense of smell.
There was one smell in the Great Hall, though, that stuck out, his least favourite smell of all. It made his stomach churn more than the nauseating scents of silver and cooked beef put together. It was Professor Zabini, and his clothes, his skin, his fingernails all bore the distinct stench of Wolfsbane.
Ted knew Wolfsbane was a good thing, the ingredient that helped him stay relatively sane on full moons, but there was something in him that cried and howled every time he forced the Wolfsbane down his throat. He was sure he’d smell like Wolfsbane to any other werewolf as well”after all, Zabini seemed to carry the stench with him at all times.
“You need to eat something,” Jordan instructed. “Go to the kitchens and ask the house elves for some sort of alternative meal if you don’t want this one. If you don’t eat dinner, your blood sugar will drop and you’ll go pass out again, and that’s certainly not what you want.”
Ted nodded, getting to his feet. “Good idea,” he agreed. “Thanks.”
I need more than this shoe leather they call meat, he thought. I know what meat’s like, and this isn’t it. It’s not really meat unless it’s fresh and raw and you can taste its blood in your mouth…
He suddenly realized how truly disgusting his mind was being and that a faint purring growl was quietly escaping his mouth. Not gentlemanlike conduct at all, Ted, he reprimanded himself.
Ted cleared his throat, covering up his growl with fake coughing that sounded almost exactly nothing like real coughing. “Right-o, then,” he announced. “It’s time to go hunting. For, er, mac’n’cheese or something.”
Jordan’s eyes were intense as Ted walked away. “Make sure the door to the Shrieking Shack is completely closed before you transform,” he said, his voice dark and purposeful. A small crease had appeared between his eyebrows.
“What? Oh, er, sure,” Ted said carelessly.
He did listen, though. That evening, he made certain to shut the door to the Shrieking Shack (or as Tyrone was fond of calling it, the ‘Love Shack’) before he settled down on top of his bed with a random paddleball game that was lying around.
Over the years, the Shack had become more and more of a portrait of who Ted was. The walls were covered in photographs of his friends and family waving at him and pulling goofy faces. One of his favourites was a picture of him and his friends dressed up for Halloween”Haley as Glinda the Good Witch, Emma as a dangerous looking pirate-ninja-type woman (Ted had been too intimidated by her costume to ask exactly what she was supposed to be), Ivy as a medieval princess, Jordan as a vampire like the previous ten or so years, and Ted as a wacky hippie in a ridiculous wig. Tyrone was lurking on the sidelines, dressed up like Tarzan, or some other jungle-type character that gave him the excuse to wear very little.
The room was bright and cheery, decorated in bold shades of red and blue. In fact, it bore quite an uncanny resemblance to his own bedroom at home, and he always felt just cozy and relaxed in the Shack as he did there. All he needed was some company.
Right on cue, the door swung open and an invisible person stepped inside the room. “Hi,” said Ivy, pulling off her Invisibility Cloak and casting it aside. “It looks like I’m not too late after all.” She smiled. “I’d hate to miss the show.”
She closed the door behind her, remembering her brother’s warning. “Ophidias is the Prefect guarding the door tonight, and I had to be extra careful getting past him. He takes guarding the door really seriously, since he was the Prefect on guard the night Malfoy was going to take over Hogwarts, and he let him in… you know how it is.” She sat down next to Ted.
“Yeah, we’re supposed to guard tomorrow, right?” he said offhandedly, then added, his voice introspective, “Azkaban really changed Ophidias, didn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Ivy nodded sadly. “I just wish it would change my mo… Mrs. Malfoy.”
Ted touched her hand. “You know you can call her your mother, right?” he told her gently. “At least around me-- I’m not going to think bad about you or anything.”
I’m not going to think badly about you, Ivy corrected mentally, but she wasn’t about to make any comments about Ted’s grammar out loud anytime soon unless she somehow magically transformed into Jordan. “I just don’t want to think about being a Malfoy,” she told him. “I guess it sounds stupid, but I””
“No, I get what you mean,” Ted told her. And he did. It was a part of Ivy that she didn’t like to acknowledge, just like that new, stronger wolf inside him. He didn’t much like to think of that bloodthirsty animal as being Ted Lupin.
He glanced at his watch. “Okay, Ivy, I’m about to turn furry and about twenty times cuter than usual in five… four… three… two…”
He felt the moonlight wash over his body and relaxed his muscles, knowing from the experience of two years of transformations that it would make it far simpler and much less painful if he struggled as little as possible as his body twisted and changed. He lay as still as he could and hummed faintly, thinking about anything but the pain of his bones snapping and remolding themselves, his face mutating and bulging, his teeth sharpening, coarse fur shooting through his pores like tiny needles.
And then, he felt the raw, driving hunger in the pit of his belly, the keen but brutal urging to claw something… and he knew that the transformation was over. He was a wolf now.
He sprang deftly onto all fours and padded over to Ivy, now in her Animagus form as a soft white arctic fox. Always much smaller than Ted in human form, the size difference was now almost comical, but they were used to it.
“How was your transformation?” Ivy asked him, her voice echoing in his mind. “You looked okay.” She wasn’t really speaking English ‘words’”it was his mind translating from the canine equivalent the same way Jordan’s brain seemed to translate his dreams now.
Ted always found it amazing that she could watch him in the hideous transition stages between boy and wolf”he’d seen Arden DuBois transform, and it was truly sickening to observe”but then, he thought, Ivy probably got used to it, just as he’d gotten used to actually making the transformation. His first time was horrific, but now it was almost routine.
“I’m good,” he replied, shaking the dust from his fur. “We’re going to have to sweep these floors sometime soon, though.” He hated the gritty sensation of the particles rubbing up against his skin”wasn’t that what his fur was for, to protect it from irritation?
He made his way over to the mirror, the next step in his monthly routine. Every full moon, he always made a point of looking at himself in wolf form to become accustomed to his appearance. It worked well. Nowadays, he hardly felt at all surprised to see a wolf looking back at him from the mirror, and he knew that if he saw his picture in a lineup of wolves, he’d be able to pick out his own face in an instant and say, ‘oh, yep, that’s me.’
He wagged his tail at his reflection playfully, panting. He looked pretty good, he thought”his fur seemed thicker and shinier, and his eyes were bright and clear. The insulin potion he’d been taking was really working well, and it was easy to see how much healthier he was feeling.
Tonight, Ted was restless. He didn’t want to confine himself to the small, stagnant room like he had before, didn’t want to spend the night in a world of beds and chairs and tables and other manmade furniture. It was all dead, lifeless. He wanted to run along through the forest, feel the wind rippling through his fur and smell the cool, crisp air.
And he was hungry, ravenously so, despite the dinner he’d eaten in the school kitchens. That food had been bland, nothing like the excitement and thrill of eating his own prey, a creature that had been alive and running only seconds before. But more than anything, he wanted to share it with Ivy. He wanted to be able to give her the fruits of his hunting, show her that he could be more than just a little tame, house-trained puppy.
He paced the floor, listening to the faint clicking sound of his claws on the smooth wood. Look at me, he thought to himself. What am I doing cooped up in a cage like this? These claws aren’t made for tiptoeing around on wood floors and fluffy pillows. I don’t have these razor-sharp teeth for eating macaroni and cheese and broccoli.
His teeth ground against one another, frustrated at their wasted sharpness, and he let them sink deep into a defenceless Spiderman pillow and tear out its stuffing. It wasn’t good enough. There was no challenge in pouncing on a cushion and attacking it. It wasn’t even alive. It couldn’t fight back.
Ted stalked over toward the door of the shack, desperate to make his escape. Jordan may have told him to keep the door closed, but he’d forgotten something rather important”for a wolf, Ted was quite large, big enough to easily reach the doorknob with his mouth. He gripped it with his jaws and gave it a twist… but just as he was about to wrench it open and make his escape, a voice said,
“Ted? What are you doing?”
He whirled around and saw Ivy standing behind him, her fox’s face wearing an expression of truly human concern.
Human… Ted’s stomach lurched and he snapped out of his gnawing at the doorknob. He felt absolutely appalled at what he had been thinking and doing. It was almost as if he’d forgotten that he was human, retained his human intelligence but let his thoughts and emotions be overwhelmed by the simple and coarse mind of a wolf.
Ted was nauseated by the fact that he’d even thought about escaping from the shack and going hunting. I could have killed Haley or Jordan or Emma, he thought, horrified, and nothing would have stopped me.
He caught a glimpse of his reflection and stared at the wolf he saw in the mirror. It did like him at all all of a sudden. The big paws and gangly legs, the light browny-grey fur, the floppy outsized ears were his, but the eyes weren’t. The light blue eyes that had always remained the same, no matter what form he was in at the moment, were wild and glassy as those of an animal. It scared him, seeing himself like this. What was wrong with him?
“What are you doing?” repeated Ivy, more softly this time, as she walked up to him and nuzzled her head against his chest. His muscles relaxed at her touch, the intensity of the wolf melting away.
“Ummm… I’m teething?” he replied with the closest thing to a lopsided grin that his muzzle could form. “Yeah, I’m feeling really hyper today. I need to move around,” he added, and proceeded to gambol and prance around the room like a drunken dingo.
Ivy eyed him carefully, but said nothing.
“Want to join me?” asked Ted.
“Er… that’s all right. I’d never be able to keep up with you anyway,” Ivy replied. “Your legs are three times longer than mine.”
Ted’s frisky frolicking was more than just an excuse for his strange behavior”it was a way to use the power and energy stored in his lean wolf’s muscles, energy that he knew could be channeled into violence if he wasn’t careful. He knew his father had told him that he could control himself if he was careful, but how careful did he have to be to keep from harming anyone? Was this really what kindly and even-tempered Remus Lupin went through every day?
It seemed bizarre that he’d only been a werewolf for two short years. Pacing back and forth, reciting the things that made him human, he realized that it was oddly difficult to remember what it was like not to be a werewolf. Being a werewolf had slowly consumed his whole life, like it or not, and if he wanted to remain human instead of turning into a feral monster like Fenrir Greyback, he had to make sure it didn’t consume more than that.
He looked over at the small arctic fox sitting in front of him, so beautiful and serene and truly and completely Ivy Potter. Nothing was corrupting her brain. “Ivy,” he said, feeling gratitude and something else slightly unfamiliar pulse through his body as he looked at her. “Thanks for coming here.” He wished his human hands were available, because he wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch her.
“Thanks,” she replied, sounding slightly confused. “Why?”
Ted didn’t know how to say it, so he simply lay down next to her and leaned his head against her. “Goodnight,” he said quietly.
"Ted’s transformation was a little weird last night,” noted Ivy, sitting cross-legged on her bed in the dormitory the next evening when she was sure she and the other girls could be alone.
“What, you mean it wasn’t like the normal way a boy magically turns into a wolf?” Haley asked innocently.
Ivy rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “You know what I mean. He kept running around and acting… well, kind of spastic. I hope he’s okay.” She twirled the end of her braid absently. “We had a nice time, though. I always like just getting a chance to hang out with him by ourselves.”
Haley poked her sister in the arm. “I’m always jealous of you two people,” she said. “You and Ted are so cute.”
“Sickeningly cute,” agreed Emma. “You’re so… happy.”
“What do you mean?” asked Ivy, not quite sure she and Ted had reached the level of ‘sickening’ just yet. “Since when is it bad to be happy?”
Emma was quiet for a moment, trying to piece together exactly what she wanted to say. “Well,” she began, “you know when you see two old people walking together and they’re holding hands and looking all fluffy and lovey-dovey? And they’re just so completely nuts about each other that the bloke doesn’t even notice that his wife has got poofy blue hair and big funky glasses and hideous polyester pantsuit pulled up to her armpits and a turkey neck, and she doesn’t even notice that her husband’s got the world’s fakest combover and liver spots and jowls and trousers that are like three inches too short with stupid-looking socks underneath?”
“Er… yeah…” Haley replied slowly.
Emma grinned. “That’ll be Ivy and Ted in sixty-odd years.”
Ivy blinked. “I think I should be offended,” she informed her cousin, rolling onto her back and hugging her stuffed wolf.
“Don’t be,” Emma told her. “Believe me, it’s a compliment. I know people who’d kill for a life like that.” She paused. “Even though I think it’s pathetic,” she added.
Haley shrugged, bouncing up and down on her bed. “Doesn’t really matter to me,” she said happily. “I go to dances and dates in Hogsmeade and stuff with anyone I want. I don’t really care about having a serious boyfriend or anything. I mean, I’m seventeen. I say live it up.”
“Hmm.” Emma stuck out her tongue. “Eh, boys are all nutjobs,” she said. “Either they never notice you or they won’t leave you alone. I’m glad I don’t have to put up with one.”
Haley attempted, overly optimistically, to raise one eyebrow, although she failed as miserably as always. “Reeeeally,” she said, “because it seems to me that you do an awful lot of… putting up with this one tall, dark, and handsome Gryffindor beater I know…”
“Shut up!” exclaimed Emma, though she was laughing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Oh, I think you do-ooo!”
Ivy smiled to herself as her friends got into a violent argument with much pillow-smashing. She loved being in the company of maniacs. Speaking of maniacs, though, she was more worried about Ted than she let on. There was something strange about the way he’d acted the night before, and when she’d looked at his face, he’d seemed alien, incomprehensible for a moment. That was new. She hadn’t had trouble reading Ted before, simply because he was Ted.
But she didn’t see how that could be possible. Ted had never been anything but human before, even when he looked like a wolf. The weird look in his eyes must have been her imagination.
And then, there was that other look. Right before Ted had gone to sleep, he’d had a strange look in his eyes, as well… but a completely different one. It didn’t look wolfish at all. She didn’t think she’d ever seen an expression so… human before.
“Eurgh, stop! Haley, now you’re just being sick!” Emma said as Haley giggled hysterically. She hurled a pillow at her cousin, but without quite the lighthearted playfulness of before. “Annoying me isn’t going to do anything for you except maybe if you really want to be hexed into oblivion.” She stood up and pulled a jumper on over her head. “I’m getting out of here.”
Ivy looked at her, confused. She must have missed something Haley had said while she’d been worrying about her favourite werewolf. “Where are you going?” she asked.
Emma rolled her shoulders agitatedly. “I’m going for a walk,” she said. “I think I’m going to hang out in the Room of Requirement or something… I just kind of want to chill out on my own for a bit.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Haley chirped. “Everyone likes a little ‘me’ time.”
“Yeah,” Emma snorted. “So long as you don’t call it that.”
Jordan sank into his favourite chair in the Room of Requirement with a sigh, tucking his time-turner back into his t-shirt. Even with the time-turner, it just seemed to him that there weren’t enough hours in the day. In between his huge amount of homework, complete with extra credit (he had to work extra-hard if he wanted to remain top of his class), his Quidditch practice every day, his guitar practice, his Inter-House Unity project, and his correspondence with Giorgi, he barely had any time to spend by himself.
Although at first he’d limited himself to using his time-turner so that he could take Divination at the same time as Muggle Studies, in the past few weeks, he’d changed time to accommodate a rarer fraction of his schedule”leisure time. Even Jordan had to rest sometimes.
At the moment, his other self (an interesting side effect of time travel) was having a project work session with Cecilia, a stressful and aggravating meeting that he himself had finished with over an hour before.
There were two different types of time travel, he’d learned”one to actually change the past or future (he dared not experiment with that one) and one to send oneself back or forward in time in order to do two things at once. Each type of time travel was controlled by a different end of the device. He wasn’t sure exactly what sort of magic caused the time-turner to work”like Merlin had said, it was definitely a logical impossibility”but so, he was learning, were many other things.
Speaking of Merlin, Telemency had been one of many things on Jordan’s mind lately. He’d peered into the memories of great magicians of the past, looked through everything he could about Telemency, but he could find absolutely nothing. After Merlin, the art seemed to have been dismissed altogether; if the most brilliant wizard of all time couldn’t do it himself, appeared to be the common consensus, no one could.
But Jordan couldn’t accept that excuse. He was dedicated to the point of fanaticism to anything that caught his interest, as anyone who had played on the Gryffindor Quidditch team or watched him study could testify, and he was determined to find a way.
He was so caught up in his own thoughts and other wizards’ memories that he positively jumped when the door banged open and a figure stepped inside.
“What”Jordan?”
“Emma?”
Their expressions mirrored those of two lions who had discovered they’d each claimed the same piece of the pridelands.
Jordan sighed. “Emma, I’m trying to do some serious work in here. I wasn’t expecting anyone else to arrive. Is it at all possible for you to find someplace else to go?”
“What, didn’t you See me coming?” Emma shot back archly. She folded her arms in a manner that clearly stated that she meant business. “You just left the Common Room not ten minutes ago to do your dumb Inter-House unity project in the library. How was I supposed to know you’d be here?” She sat down, unbudging. “I’ve got just as much of a right as you to be here.”
Jordan pressed his lips together in irritation. He knew Emma well enough to know that it was very difficult to persuade her to do anything. As if that didn’t completely cement his decision, he noticed that her aura looked wild and turbulent, and sparks were beginning to break free from it in a pretty scary sort of way. “Well,” he said, “I’m attempting to discover Telemency, which nearly everyone agrees is impossible, and I need silence and concentration… unless, of course, you’re volunteering to be a subject.”
“I dunno… what does a subject do?” Emma asked warily.
Jordan found it unthinkable that she could know next to nothing about the theory of Telemency, but he tried not to look exasperated. “Theoretically, Telemency is a branch of magic a bit like the opposite of Legilimency,” he explained. “The idea is to be able to enter another person’s mind and transfer thoughts or memories from one person to another. For example, you could show Professor Zabini what it feels like to have so much Potions homework.”
Emma’s face froze in a curious manner, her jaw tightening, and her freckles standing out on her pale face. “Wait, you want to mess with people’s minds and stick your thoughts in their heads?”
“Well, yes, that’s the idea,” Jordan confirmed nonchalantly.
“No way. No way, I’m not helping you with that kind of mad science.” Emma’s eyes narrowed, and as they contracted, her aura seemed to shrink and tighten around her.
Jordan laughed dryly. “Mad science? I think you’re over-exaggerating just a bit.”
Emma glared at him, curling her legs up in her armchair. “Listen, you stay far away from me whenever you feel like you want to do a bit of mucking around with someone’s mind. I don’t want my mind read every second, and I definitely don’t want you putting your ideas in my head. I… I just don’t want you around me, okay?”
This caught Jordan off-guard, and he looked rather offended and a lot more vulnerable than he usually did. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of me?” he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Jordan, you’ve turned into a freak … And I’m not scared. You just…gross me out a little. And honestly, I don’t care if I’m being rude”it’s high time someone told you how much you’re creeping everyone out.” Her eyes blazed as if daring him to call her scared one more time and see what happened.
Jordan’s face fell. Emma was one of his oldest friends, and now after knowing one another for seventeen years, she didn’t want him around simply because he was weird? What was wrong with ‘weird,’ anyway? He’d always been weird. Emma knew that better than almost anyone else. And the rest of his friends weren’t exactly normal, either. “But what about Ted? Logically speaking, you can hardly call him normal, but you seem to have no problem consorting with him.”
“Consorting? What kind of a… it’s not his fault he turns into a wolf every full moon,” snapped Emma.
“Obviously,” Jordan responded sharply. “It’s not his fault”any more than it’s my fault that I’m Merlin’s heir.” He looked serious. “But Ted’s changing, too”you know what I mean, and you can’t possibly ignore that, whether you want to or not. I can tell just by looking at him, and I’ve never been good at understanding people. Compared to that, I’m hardly all that different, am I?”
He looked up at her, his eyes, so dark and unlike Haley’s now, full of an unfamiliar candid sadness, an acknowledgement of the fact that Jordan wasn’t completely in control of his life anymore. He looked shockingly young.
“Ted’s just having some mood swings because of his insulin potion!” exclaimed Emma. “And he still acts a whole lot saner than you. Anyway, don’t change the subject. You’re a Seer who wants to break into people’s heads, and now you’re acting like you expect me not to get weirded out by that?”
“Yes,” Jordan told her bluntly. “Because it’s just who I am, and it’s who I’m going to be from now on, so I recommend you get used to that. Besides, I would never try to use Telemency on you”you know I’m too intelligent to try anything that idiotic. I know very well by now that people end up getting hurt if they try to get you to do something you don’t want to.” He paused. “And I know there’s more to Ted’s problem than a few mood swings. From what I can tell, he has these… lapses in judgment where he almost forgets he’s human.”
“Really. He forgets he’s a person. Now tell me what that’s supposed to mean, if you can bear to put it into words that regular people can understand?”
“I don’t know,” Jordan said hollowly. “And honestly, there aren’t many things that I don’t know.”
There was a silence, and at last, Emma looked him in the eyes, though her expression was more disapproving than ever. “Were you being totally serious when you said you wouldn’t mess around with my mind?” She pulled the rubber band from her ponytail and shook out her hair absentmindedly.
Jordan looked somber. “What do you think? I’m a man of my word, Emma. Name one occasion when I broke a promise.”
Emma pretended to stroke an imaginary beard. “Hmmm… well, let’s think. Who do we know who you promised you’d work with on your project and ended up being too busy sitting here arguing and dragging me away from Tyrone shouting ‘get away as fast as you can!’ all week?” She smirked. ‘Man of his word?’ Jordan may have been legally of age, but as far as she was concerned, he was just a shrimpy teenager who took himself way too seriously.
Jordan was indignant. This was a gross exaggeration. He had not dragged her anywhere, nor had he shouted. He had simply… taken preventive measures. “Your point is a good one, but it’s still wrong. I didn’t miss working on my project with Cecilia. If I did, don’t you think we would never hear the end of her nagging?”
This made even less sense than anything else Jordan had said since Emma had walked into the Room of Requirement. He could sit in the Room of Requirement with her, or he could work on his project with Cecilia, but not at the same time. “Look, I just don’t like change!” Emma exclaimed. “And there’s a little too much of that going on in my life right now.”
Jordan laughed darkly. “We, as a species, are afraid of change,” he said, his voice turning harsh and bitter. “We talk about innovating the world, but then, somebody actually attempts to and everyone jumps on him. Look what happened to Galileo. Socrates. DaVinci. And the man who concluded that perhaps Muggle doctors should wash their hands between dissecting corpses and helping women give birth? Thrown into the insane asylum, of course.”
He shifted in his seat and continued, his tone turning softer, less sure of itself. “I honestly don’t know what to think about being a Seer. Sometimes, I’m excited, and sometimes, I’m terrified. I just keep thinking about Galileo, Socrates, DaVinci…they changed the world. They’re still household names, even though they’ve been dead for centuries. That could be me. And on the other hand, I could meet the same fate they did. The greatest men aren’t appreciated until after they’ve died… which gives me a lot to look forward to.” Glumly, he conjured an apple out of thin air, then took a big bite.
Emma’s eyes bulged at this casual display of skill. There was something disconcerting about this new Jordan. Jordan Potter should never, ever be introspective. “You called me afraid of change?” she shot back. “I’m not. I’m not really afraid of anything.”
“No,” Jordan said quietly, though he managed to make the single word razor-sharp. “That’s not true. I think you’re afraid of almost everything.”
Emma jumped to her feet. “What do you mean?” she demanded. No one had ever accused her of anything like that before. All of her friends, family, acquaintances, and enemies usually agreed that when it came to Emma Weasley, the one thing that went without saying was that she was totally fearless.
Jordan sighed. “You act the way you do because you’re afraid,” he told her, his voice returning to its usual flat tone. “I’ve never been good at understanding people. Especially girls. But I can… read things now that I didn’t used to be able to see, and I can tell that you’re scared… all the time. At least this year. And believe me, that hardly helps me understand you any better.”
“You”you’ve got that all wrong,” Emma hissed. “Actually, you were right about one part”that one part where you said you don’t get people, because there’s no way you were even close to being right. And I don’t care what you believe, or what your theory is, or what Plato or Merlin or whatever had to say about that. I don’t want to hear anything more from you about me.”
She stormed across the room, heading for the door. “There is one thing I want from you,” she added. “Stay away from me, okay?”
“I would be delighted,” Jordan responded as flatly as he’d ever spoken in his life. “You know I’m right, though,” he said. “I’ve always known there had to be something that makes you so… volatile. And if you told me now, I could stop being such a nuisance to you. Telling me that you’re not afraid isn’t going to fool me.”
The two of them stared at each other across the room, Jordan’s eyes icy and Emma’s fiery. After a gaping silence, Emma spoke at last. “You want to know what my problem is?”
“Yes, I do,” Jordan replied eagerly, leaning forward just a little too much.
“That’s great, because I’m going to tell you right now.” Emma smiled in an odd, twisted way. “It starts with a ‘J’ and ends with an ‘ordan.’”
And with that, she stomped away, taking care to slam the door behind her.
Jordan laughed hollowly. He was still so gullible, even with all of his new knowledge. He should have known better.
He remembered the days when he had always felt overshadowed by his father, had done everything in his power to stand out on his own. Now, he had this special gift that he’d apparently inherited from one of the greatest wizards of all time, and he realized that he’d give anything to be normal instead, or at least to feel like he was part of the same species as the students all around him. Being a Seer didn’t answer all of his questions about the world; it just brought up even more strange, tantalizing questions that he knew he could never find the answers to in one lifetime. There was so much he couldn’t see, and it was so frustrating.
Will I ever feel normal again? he thought.
He replied aloud to no one but himself, “There’s no way.”
Anyone who could see how the future would turn out, remember the past like he had been there, see people’s auras, was definitely a freak by definition. He wondered if he would have any friends at all left by the end of the year. He’d never exactly been the darling of Hogwarts, and the only things he had in common with Tyrone Thomas were a Y chromosome and Quidditch skills, but being a Seer didn’t help these matters any.
The young man got up from his chair, turned off the lights, shut the door behind him and made his way on down the corridor. He felt rather strange, but seeing as that was what he was and always would be, he decided that he’d better get used to it.
Tyrone Thomas was foaming at the mouth.
He spat his toothpaste into the sink with a loud ‘ptui!’ and took a quick gulp of water. Contrary to popular opinion--namely, Emma’s-- he actually did put effort into maintaining his perfect smile, even if he did crunch his candy canes a bit too loudly sometimes.
He grinned at the mirror, running his tongue over his teeth, and licked the beads of water clinging to the fuzzy hair over his top lip. He flexed his bicep, noting smugly that the sleeves of his t-shirt were beginning to feel uncomfortably tight once again. Satisfied by his appearance as per usual, he stepped forth from the bathroom into the boys’ dormitory.
“And he’s set a new world record for longest time ever spent in school loo!” shouted Andy Yang, Tyrone’s friend and fellow beater. “I thought you’d died in there!”
“Shut up, you say that every day,” muttered Tyrone, rolling his eyes. It wasn’t as if he took outlandishly long or anything. Just because he didn’t go without brushing his hair for months on end like Jordan and just because he practiced proper hygiene didn’t make him vain.
A feminine voice said quietly, “Don’t worry, my sister takes loads longer than you do. The girls’ dormitories need at least three more bathrooms.”
Tyrone wasn’t even slightly surprised to see a girl, namely Ivy Potter, sitting on the floor of the boys’ dormitory. She often spent the evenings there doing homework with Ted, presumably because the Common Room was too noisy. Or maybe because quiet, timid little Ivy just got a thrill from sitting on the bed where Ted slept. You never know.
Indeed, just then, Titus McLachlan, one of Tyrone’s roommates, zipped into the room. “Hey, the Lucas brothers are having a hex match in the Common Room. Who wants to watch?”
Immediately, Andy bolted to his feet. “I’m there.”
Ted shrugged sheepishly. “Er, I do, actually. And, er, I should probably make sure nobody gets hurt, too, since I’m a Prefect and everything.” He glanced at his girlfriend. “Do you want to come?”
“In a few minutes,” she replied. “You know how I am… I just have to finish my homework before I do anything else or I can’t think straight. I only have a few inches left to write on this essay, anyway.” She smiled. “You ahead and watch, though, and I’ll stay here and finish up.”
“Well… all right, if you want,” Ted said. He gave her a light little kiss and stepped back with an exaggerated salute. “Until then.” And with that, he followed Andy and Titus to see the Lucas brothers turn one another into grotesque jellies, or whatever it was they did.
“You coming, man?” asked Andy.
Tyrone shook his head. “Nah, I’m really tired. Tell me if Granger-Weasley yells at them, though, ‘cause that’s always fun. Especially when her hair does that thing where it looks like there’s lightning coming out of it. Godric, she reminds me of Emma sometimes.” He smirked. “See you later, then, mate.”
“Later.”
The three other boys zipped away from the dormitory, and Tyrone collapsed back onto his bed, his arms folded behind his head. Normally, he’d love to watch the Lucas brothers duel one another, but on this particular day, he wasn’t feeling very sociable. Valentine’s Day had been days ago, and he hadn’t talked to Emma a single time since, except for when she’d turned down his invitation to go flying.
Still, her words stuck with him, and they stung. She’d compared him to a pathetic little puppy that followed her around and wouldn’t leave her alone. Did he really follow her around? Pathetically? He’d always considered himself very good at not being pathetic.
Andy kept making jokes about how Tyrone spent more time with the ‘superheroes’ than with the ‘guys’ lately (he and Titus, as well as Roran O’ Reilly from Hufflepuff, were the ‘guys’; Emma and her four friends were the ‘superheroes’ as far as Andy was concerned), but Tyrone knew he kept his cool. He wasn’t a stalker or anything”why would she want him to leave her alone? If there was something on her mind, he could help. He’d always put her in a better mood before, at least.
Tyrone decided that a normal person wouldn’t keep thinking about such things three days after they’d happened, but then again, he didn’t take insults well. He’d always liked being liked.
When he was small, his father had insisted on enrolling him and his sister Tabitha in the Muggle primary school that he’d gone to as a boy. Tyrone could only guess that the school had really gone downhill since his dad had gone there, or else his dad hadn’t remembered it well, because the school was awful. It was like something directly out of Charles Dickens, complete with rough Cockney accents.
Tyrone just didn’t fit in there. Puberty hit him like a brick, and by the age of eleven, he’d already had a massive growth spurt and a cracking voice, and even some pretty horrible pimples before he learned to properly take care of his skin. He’d been clumsy and gangly and all-around Tedlike but without Ted’s confidence or social intelligence or loveable goofiness.
Basically, he’d felt like an oak tree growing in the middle of a bonsai forest, and it was humiliating”everyone either assumed that he’d been held back several times and was therefore as dumb as a rock, or that he was just some sort of genetically mutated freak. Most people liked this second option, and he was called ‘Frank’ constantly”short for Frankenstein. It didn’t help that he was teased about his so-called ‘posh’ accent and his not-inconsiderable supply of pocket money, that because of that everyone seemed to think he thought he was ‘too good for them.’
But little things like that weren’t what really set him apart. He didn’t know how to act. It was bad enough that he couldn’t grasp the rules or skills of football if his life depended on it, and he kept accidentally talking about things nobody else could comprehend at all, forgetting that nobody else at his school was magical.
Mostly, though, he was just too immature, despite the fact that he looked years older than his classmates. He’d been desperate and eager for people to like him, which, of course, meant nobody did. I guess I’m still a bit like that, he thought. I thought I’d chilled out since then. But following Emma around like a pathetic puppy? Not cool at all, Ty.
Naturally, things had changed when he’d grown out of his awkward stage and his mother had enrolled him in some kind of Muggle charm school to learn poise and manners and how to move and speak properly. Naturally, he’d embraced it when he came to Hogwarts and was instantly accepted by his peers. Naturally, he’d been flattered when older girls were attracted to his looks, charisma, and talent on the Quidditch pitch. Was it a crime to enjoy the attention that he got? He deserved it, his moment in the spotlight after being an outsider for so long and working so hard to be accepted. Naturally, he was extremely proud of who he’d become”after all, it was such an improvement from Tyrone Thomas Version 1.0
So naturally, he was upset when someone didn’t like him. If someone snubbed him, he was an awkward eleven-year-old all over again, and that wasn’t something he cared to relive. And he was afraid that Emma, whose friendship and grudging admiration he’d finally won, no longer wanted to spend time with him for whatever reason. What was up with her, anyway?
Seized by a stroke of inspiration, he cleared his throat and said, “Ermmm… Ivy?”
Ivy blinked and turned to look at him, clearly surprised to be spoken to. Tyrone smiled slightly, remembering the time he’d asked her to the Valentine’s Day Ball in their fourth year and the look of astonishment on her skinny, pinched-looking face. He’d had no idea that Ted had already asked her and that it wouldn’t be long before she’d end up in a relationship that had already lasted three times as long as any of Tyrone’s own.
“Hey, er, Ivy, have you, you know, talked to Emma lately?” Tryrone asked, his voice sounding weirdly loud in his own ears. Slow down, man, he reminded himself. Not so fast. And PLEASE don’t do that freaky breathing thing like you did when you were little.
Ivy smiled. “Er, yes, every day,” she replied in her soft, precise voice. “Why do you ask?”
Tyrone made a noise like a sick walrus. He knew he would sound ridiculously stupid, spilling his innermost thoughts to a girl he didn’t even know particularly well, but he was also confident that Ivy could keep a secret. After all, hadn’t she kept the rather large secret of being an Animagus from even her closest friends? “Do you…” he hesitated. “Do you think she likes me?”
Ivy blinked again. “Wow.” Ivy looked rather intimidated by his question, and she let out a quiet little laugh. “Wow,” she said again. Haley would probably be a better person to talk to,” she told him. “She’s the expert on that type of thing.”
“Yeah, but you’re the one who’s already here,” Tyrone replied sensibly. “I just… everything was going great when I was at the ball with her, and then she just, like, blew me off, and now she’s ignoring me. It’s weird.”
Ivy brushed her fringe nervously out of her eyes. “She’s been in a bad mood all year long,” she agreed. “It’s her dad”he’s in trouble, and she’s really worried about him. Don’t take it personally.”
Ha. Don’t take it personally. Tyrone had a long history of taking various things a little bit too personally… as did Emma, for that matter.
He lay back on his bed, not particularly comforted by Ivy’s words. He’d hoped for something a bit more definitive. Oh, who was he kidding, he’d hoped for a “Oh, Emma’s madly in love with you! I thought everyone knew!” But even Ted, Mr. Sunny-Side-Up Optimist himself, was never that blatantly unrealistic.
Ivy looked him over, and her pale eyebrows contracted. “You really like her, don’t you?” she asked softly.
Tyrone gave an odd, tight little smile. “Yeah… I thought that was kind of obvious, actually.” He hadn’t exactly been very subtle in his methods. His handsome face looked defeated and confused, like a tiger that had just lost a battle with a mouse. Finally, he said in a quiet, pensive voice, “Ivy… do you think Emma would like me more if… If I…” he swallowed. “If I shaved off my mustache?”
Ivy laughed, and covered her mouth hastily. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “Er… I don’t think that would help. I mean, I can’t say there’s anything you can do to make her like you more… She’s Emma. She’s not really the type you can persuade.”
“Brilliant,” muttered Tyrone.
“But I’ll try and talk to her,” Ivy said quickly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more….” She paused. “I know you’re serious if you’re willing to give up your mustache for the cause.”