Never Let Go by majestic_ginny
Chapter Notes: Hey, folks! Guess who's back from the dead? It's been around 10 months, I know *cringes*. All I can say is I'm sorry. I really am. At least I have the next chapter written, so you wont have to wait long for the next chapter!
So, as usual, I'm not JKR and I don't own Harry Potter, but this plot is mine and like any other author, I do hope you will enjoy this chapter, hehe.
A week had passed since the visit to the graveyard. James was slowly turning back to normal, or as normal as one could be when their girlfriend and child had died, but at least his relationship with Teddy was slowly mending. The same could be said for Teddy's relationship with Ginny. When James had come home after visiting Lucy's grave, Ginny had been relieved to see that he was in a better condition than when he had left. She had pulled Teddy into a hug once James had gone up to his room, and to Teddy's immense relief, she had let him know that she had forgiven him completely. For the first time in a long while, Teddy had truly smiled; his family was mending, little by little.
However, their good luck hadn't been included in their hunt for Zachary Williamson. The boy, it seemed, was rather like a ghost. It was like he had disappeared off the face of the planet. There was no sign of him, and not even the joint forces of the Aurors and Hit Wizards could find out any clue about his whereabouts, despite their extensive search all across the country. Not a single person had heard from him or even seen him.
Eventually, Harry had decided to involve the Muggle police in their search as well (this had, however, raised a fair bit of objection in the Auror Office, though the Minister had shot them down immediately), and their reports had been slightly more promising. A Muggle truant in Bath had claimed to have seen someone looking like Zachary, but that had been two months ago, fifteen days after his escape in June. Their only lead was two months cold -- and that was only if that Muggle had been correct in his assumption. One's memory was bound to get a little fuzzy after a month and a half. Nevertheless, extra reinforcements had been deployed to try and find more leads near the general vicinity of the area he had indicated.
Their big break came after they had searched through Williamson's house. Though Williamson had raised hell while they had turned up at his doorstep (and Teddy was a reliable source, having been there to witness it personally), he eventually had to back off after Harry had shown him the official warrant. He had, however, grumbled and muttered the whole time the Aurors had been inside his house, and it sufficed to say that he had not been cooperative at all.
While searching through his library, one of the trainee Aurors had found a piece of parchment tucked away in one of the books.
"Auror Potter!" he called. Harry, who had been rummaging around the living room, quickly abandoned his search and went through the narrow connecting door into the library. Curious, Teddy followed him.
"Yes, Dawson?" Harry asked, walking up to the scarlet-clad Auror. "You find anything?"
The Auror in question nodded. "I think so, Sir," he said, handing Harry a parchment.
"Where did you get this?" Harry asked.
"In this book right here, Sir," he answered, holding up a ragged copy of Tips and Secrets of Magizoology: How To Raise Your Own Krups for Harry to see. "I was looking through some of the books, and it fell to the ground when I was flipping through the pages. Do you think it might be important, Sir?"
Harry scanned through the paper, his brows rising further upwards with each line he read. By the time he was done, he was grinning. "Macfarlane, I think this is exactly what we were looking for." He beamed at the man, who looked quite pleased with himself. "Good work," he said, patting him on the shoulder.
"What does it say, Harry?" Teddy asked curiously, trying to read the parchment over Harry's shoulder.
"Hmm? Oh, here you go." Harry handed him the paper. It was a letter that looked like it had been hastily scribbled down. Teddy read:
Dad,
You might know by now, but I've kind of run away from the prison. Yes, yes, I know it was stupid and no, I won't tell you how I did it cause you'll probably strangle me if I did. I'll tell you, though, that it was hard, but the help I had was rather smart. Anyway, I haven't got much time. I'm heading towards our old home in Newquay. I'll let you know when I'm there, okay? You've got to come and get me. It's difficult to run around the country without any magic like a common Muggle. I wanna come home. I miss my bed. And you too, kind of.
Zach.
Teddy's stomach did a somersault as he finished. We know where he is! He's in Newquay!
Harry was barking out orders to the Aurors. "O'Neill, tell all forces to converge on Newquay. Cauldwell, get out Williamson's file. I want to know where their Newquay home is. Lupin," he said, turning to Teddy as the other two Aurors dashed off. "Send an owl to the Minister. Let him know we will have our culprit in custody by tomorrow."
"Yes boss," Teddy grinned. Just one more day, he thought as he headed to the fireplace. One more day and Lucy's killer would be behind bars.
By the time Teddy had drafted the letter to Percy and had send it through the appropriate channels, he saw Harry returning to his office, looking rather frazzled and, judging by the way he was snapping at his secretary, in a very grumpy mood. Teddy, who was returning to his own cubicle, changed course and headed for Harry's office instead.
He knocked on the door twice, waiting for Harry to respond.
"Come in!" Harry's voice called.
Teddy pushed the door open and peeked in. "Is it safe to come in?"
"Teddy, yes, come in. Close the door behind you," Harry instructed as he unfastened his travelling cloak and draped it over his chair with more force than necessary.
Teddy obliged, entering the office and snapping the door shut.
"Sit," Harry ordered.
Teddy lowered himself onto a chair as Harry sat on his own. "What did Williamson say?" Harry had supposedly been in interrogation five, where Williamson had been brought in after the raid.
Harry scowled. "Yelled at me for a while, swore it was nothing like that, demanded his son's freedom... the usual nonsense he spews. Says Zachary hasn't reached Newquay yet, or the house-elves would've let him know. That's not important, though. This is." Harry slapped the paper down in front of him. "Notice what's funny?"
"He is headed for Newquay, and was found in Bath two months before."
Harry shook his head. "Well, that's important, too, but that's not what I meant." He paused, his eyes calculating. "Anyway, elaborate on your theory."
"Well..." Teddy hesitated. He had to read through the letter again to comprehend what Harry was trying to point out. "I'm just not sure whether he would take so long to reach Newquay."
"Go on," Harry encouraged.
"The math's all wrong, isn't it?" Teddy tried to explain. He had been wondering about it while penning the letter to Percy, and had actually been waiting for an opportunity to talk to Harry about it. "If you think about it, really; I mean, he goes from the middle of the North Sea to Bath in about fifteen days, but he still hasn't been able to reach Newquay? Newquay is closer to Bath than Azkaban. It's been two months and he still hasn't reached there yet. Counting the distances and everything, he should've already been there."
Harry pursed his lips, his brows furrowed. "You do have a point there," he agreed. "But I think we may have our answer in this letter. Read it."
Teddy picked up the letter and read it again, slower this time. He had to read it again before it clicked. "'...but the help I had was rather smart.' That phrase right there, it's a bit odd, isn't it?"
Harry's eyes twinkled. "Exactly. That makes it sound like the help he had..."
"Was more of a person than an object!" Teddy said loudly, waving around the paper for emphasis. Merlin! he thought. "They had help on this! There's someone else involved in all this!"
Harry slammed his fist on the table. "Good job, Teddy," he said, smiling proudly. The smile was replaced immediately, however, by a frustrated look. "And that means we have more work to do. We can't sit around and just wait for them to find Zachary."
Teddy slumped. "And here I thought we were done with the hard part."
"Welcome to my life," Harry muttered. Teddy grimaced; of course, his godfather had it much harder than everyone else. He had heard the story of how he got into trouble every school year. Well, that was exactly what happened when you had the world's greatest dark wizard trying to do you in every school year.
Harry grabbed a light pink parchment from his table, and started to scribble on it furiously with a quill. Teddy wondered what Harry was doing. Once he was done writing, he folded it up into a paper plane and released it. The memo went zooming through the air and out of the door.
"Whoever that help is must have contacted Zachary in Azkaban," Harry said, rubbing his scar. It was more out of habit, Teddy knew; Harry had mentioned once that his scar hadn't truly pained him in years. "I want the names of all the people who had ever visited him there."
"So that memo was --"
"Yeah," Harry answered his unasked question. "I sent it to Auror Corner, the Head of the Azkaban guards. I asked him to send me the log files of Zachary's tenure in Azkaban. Who came to see him, his behaviour reports, every single detail."
"That would take a couple of days, right?" Teddy asked. They didn't have days. The longer it took, the farther they would be from Zachary.
Harry made an affirmative grunt. "It's the best option we have."
"How on Earth could he have broken out of Azkaban, though?" Teddy mused. "It's so well secured, and all those enchantments -- anti-Apparition wards, anti-thievery spells, all sorts of blood wards to keep the prisoners in... it's impossible to get around all of them."
"Breaking out of Azkaban isn't impossible," Harry said. He leaned backwards in his chair, reaching out towards a small Sneakoscope on his desk and fiddling with it. "Back in the day, when it was guarded by dementors, there had been two massive breakouts. One, when Sirius got away, and the other followed soon after Voldemort's return, when ten of his most trusted followers had managed to escape. Both of those were from the most highly secured cells. Compared to the protection around those, Williamson's cell isn't that strongly guarded."
"But Harry, dementors can be fooled by Animagi, or bought by the dark side," Teddy pointed out. "Azkaban is guarded by Aurors. Wouldn't it be harder to hoodwink them long enough to escape?."
Harry absentmindedly rolled the Sneakoscope between his palm and the tabletop. "It's possible that Williamson had lowered some of the wards for his son the last time he'd gone on an inspection." He cursed. "Damn that man. I shouldn't have let him go for the rounds. He had family in there, he was bound to try and help his son. How could I have overlooked that?"
"You had no way of knowing, Harry," Teddy said.
"It was my damn job to know!" Harry snapped. Then he sighed, taking off his glasses with one and rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger of the other. "I shouldn't have yelled at you, I'm sorry."
Teddy shook his head. "No, it's okay, Harry. I know how frustrating this case is."
Harry looked up at him wearily. "We will find Zachary, won't we?"
Teddy tried to smile in what he hoped was an encouraging manner. "Definitely," he replied.
Damn and blast, Teddy thought as he looked at himself in the mirror. He'd worn his shirt inside-out. Cursing his bloody luck, he unbuttoned the shirt completely and shrugged it off, turning it over and pulling the sleeves through the circular hole for the arm to pass through, so that the correct side was outside, before wearing it all over again. He looked at himself in the mirror again. The blue shirt looked good with his hair, which he'd decided to turn a less-eye-catching dark brown for the occasion. Pulling on khaki slacks over his boxers, he buttoned it and did the fly before tucking in his shirt and put on a belt. Finally, once he'd rolled his sleeves up, he decided that he looked quite presentable.
He looked at the clock, cursing again when he realised he was due at Shell Cottage in five minutes. Fleur and Bill had invited him over for dinner, and while he was looking forward to spending the time with Victoire, he was also dreading it. He knew that Victoire's parents approved of him and his relationship with their daughter, but the prospect of meeting one's girlfriend's parents was bound to be a little frazzling, no matter how much they liked him. Not to mention, Victoire's dad frightened him. Just a little bit. Sort of. A lot.
Teddy quickly went downstairs to the living room and picked up his jacket and the bouquet of flowers from the table. He'd especially bought it for Fleur from a Muggle vendor that afternoon while coming home from work; simply conjuring up flowers felt rather cheap to him, and besides, he wasn't really good at that particular branch of Transfiguration, either.
He waved his wand around to check whether the wards were properly in place or not, and once he was satisfied, he stowed his wand back into his jacket pocket and took up a fistful of Floo powder from the jar in the mantelpiece. He threw it into the blazing fire, which turned bright green immediately. Teddy stepped into the fire and said loudly, "Shell Cottage!"
Chapter Endnotes: Any thoughts? Please leave me a review. --Nadia.