Chapter 2

Lily barely noticed the speech that washed over the mostly attentive crowd; after all, it was most political and she couldn't stand politics. Instead she spent her time watching the four men and women on the stage beside the Supreme Mugwump and wondering who the people beneath the masks were.

She had asked her Dad and he had quietly replied that they were recruited from various countries versions of the Auror Corps, or the Magical Law Enforcement Squads. He said that that was all he knew, but Lily doubted it.

Had Teddy really left everything behind to join a group of people he didn't know? Lily couldn't fathom it and stared harder at the man in the blank mask, wondering if Teddy was, right now, hidden beneath it and staring back. Could it be possible? Would he even recognise her?

If it was him, how could they get a chance to speak to him?

On the balcony above and behind the Potters a grim-faced man stirred in the shadows.

The speech went on far too long for Lily's liking and she noticed that her mother shared her restlessness. It seemed to be coming to a close however, when an arm slipped around her waist and a voice whispered in her ear, 'Hey, Sis.'

She turned, grinning, to greet her older brother, 'Al! What took you so long?' she whispered back, hugging him fiercely.

'Only just got off duty; Pendicot made us do "one last sweep of the perimeter". Completely unnecessary, obviously; the number of wards we have up is ridiculous,' he replied with a lopsided grin.

Albus Potter, known more commonly as Al, was in his final year of the Auror Training Program. As such, he was tasked with real assignments; including security supervision at tonight's Ball.

As he whispered greetings to their parents, a thought occurred to Lily; would Al know anything about the Phantoms? Would he know any more about Teddy?

The speech came to a close with the Minister for Magic, Reginald Halflinger, stepping up to the podium beside the Supreme Mugwump and thanking everybody for attending. Lily ignored him though and tugged Al's sleeve, but he was having a close conversation with her dad about the wards that had been set up.

Instead she turned and watched the Minister and the Supreme Mugwump shake hands for a photographer, noting with surprise that the four 'Phantoms' had vanished. She also noticed that her mother too, was glancing round the room, looking for them.

Then it was announced that the banquet was to begin and that they ought to take their seats; Lily made to follow her parents but upon reaching the tables, found there were name places set out and hers was not to be seen. So she left with Al and they went to find their own spaces among the multitude on the balcony; she was just hoping that she wasn't going to be left on her own next to smarmy git or worse, someone who would try to hit on her.

Thankfully she found her name place on a table that also included her brother's and a couple of names she recognised; Danton Tamra and Charlotte Lovall. They both had gone through Auror Training with Teddy, although Charlotte, or Charlie, had not completed the course. Lily had heard she had taken a post in the Hit Wizard Squads; catching ordinary magical criminals rather than the Dark Wizards. Danny was an easy man to pick out of the crowd as he approached; he wore an eyepatch and when he turned his head you could see the gleam of metal.

Lily waited for Danny to arrive and kissed him on both cheeks, feeling the strange, hard warmth of what could only be described as living metal that made up the right side of his lower jaw. Auror Tamra had suffered a cursed knife wound to the face; an attack that had cost him an eye and ripped away his lower jaw. Healers at St Mungos had managed to replace the shattered jaw with a metallic construct and the skin had even grown back over the area that the knife had not passed through. This meant that from the left hand side, in profile, he looked completely normal, but from the left, Lily's friend had once said that he looked like "The Terminator". The silvery gleam of his lower jaw could be seen where the skin would not grow and when he smiled it was obvious that the teeth on the lower left side of his mouth were made of the same metal.

'Lily! I haven't seen you for a while; not since Teddy left at least!' he said enthusiastically, returning her kisses, 'Al! I haven't seen you for at least-'

'Ten minutes?' her brother replied with a wry grin.

They shook hands anyway and Danny checked the place names, nodding to himself when he saw Charlotte's name and shrugging at the rest.

The man in shadows had moved on, knowing that everyone would assume he was just another guest of the British Ministry. Everyone had seen the Aurors scattered around the building; the visible ones at least, and anyone with any talent would have felt the wards buzzing around the exterior of the building. To him though; the "security" was a joke. He had slipped through far tighter nets than this one and with far greater pressure being brought to bear upon him; it had been too easy.

He lifted a briefcase and walked down the balcony stairs, against the flow of the crowd, toward a side entrance where a discreet sign indicated the toilets could be found. He paused for a moment to look back around the room before slipping out; the world's greatest and most powerful men and women arrogantly gathered here, and arrogantly they would die.

Two other relatively young men and a young woman joined their table, filling all but Charlie's place at the table. They consisted of a Norwegian attaché, the Tibetan Foreign Advisor's assistant and a French woman who seemed to have met Al before and kissed him warmly on both cheeks, much to his delight, Lily noticed. She stored that fact away for later blackmail purposes; he did have a girlfriend after all, even if she wasn't supposed to know about her. Al then introduced the woman as Clara Laurent, the daughter of the French Minister for Magic.

Introductions were performed and Lily was about to order her food from the menu in front of her when she noticed something over the heads of the now seated assembly of soon-to-be banqueters. The four Phantoms had reappeared; two on the balcony itself, standing guard apparently; and one on each of the sets of stairs leading upward to the balcony from the main floor. They stood like statues; but apparently poised for anything.

She turned back to her table, menu still in her hands, and asked, 'Danny? You wouldn't happen to know who the people accompanying the Mugwump are, do you?'

It was strange to see the half-frown that was all he was capable of giving her, 'Why do you want to know?'

'Les Fantômes?' the French woman, Clara, asked.

Lily nodded.

'I 'ave 'eard that they practise forbidden magics,' she replied.

Danny shook his head though, 'They're the official bodyguard of the Supreme Mugwump; have been since the time of Merlin, I've heard. There's only supposed to be two guarding any one official at a time, but Ansiledes had a bill pushed through so he could have four. He's supposed to be jumpier than rabbit when it comes to security.'

'So he's got enemies?' Al asked.

'He's the most powerful wizard in the world; influentially, at least. Of course he has enemies.'

The conversation was moving away from where Lily wanted it though and so she brought it back to her initial line of enquiry, 'But the Phantoms? What do they do?'

Danny shrugged, 'They protect the highest members of the International Confederation of Wizards,' a strange look came over his face, 'I remember Teddy once said something about the original Phantoms coming from Avalon before it was destroyed.'

'Avalon?' Lily queried.

Danny had evidently said something he hadn't meant to and shook his head a little too quickly, 'It was just speculation.'

It was Lily's turn to frown at him, 'I thought Avalon was myth.'

He only looked down at his napkin though, 'I don't know the details; it was just something he said.'

For an Auror, he was terrible liar.

Lily pressed him, but he wouldn't say any more and the conversation moved on to what looked like the best choices on the menu.

They had moved on to politics by the time they had got round to the main course; a topic of conversation that everyone could join in with, although Lily's knowledge was a little hazy. Instead she asked the Tibetan about his home country and he smiled, evidently happy to talk about something other than his job.

He began to describe life in the Himalayas; the mountains, the temples, the history and Lily was more than happy to listen.

Part of her brain wasn't listening, however, instead it was still wondering about Teddy; nearly four years! Why couldn't she just get up and ask? The nearest Phantom; the woman in the harlequin mask was not more than ten metres away; staring down across the Hall.

Her Father's daughter, she excused herself from the conversation and stood up; she wanted to know. Immediately the rest of the men at the table stood up too; etiquette demanded it, she balked a little as people from other tables looked around, but she managed to mutter something about needing to refresh her makeup and began to move away. They sat down and she lost most of the attention she had garnered.

Instead of heading for the stairs and the toilets, however, she began to make a beeline for the harlequin Phantom.

Ginny leant across to her husband and whispered what they had both been thinking since the Supreme Mugwump had appeared, 'Do you think there's any chance?'

Harry's lips pursed and he turned to her, 'I don't know.'

If Ginny hadn't known better, then she would have said he looked almost nervous.

'Look,' Harry began with a sigh, 'if he is here and he wants to talk, then he knows he can. I'm not going to force him to talk to us though, not if he doesn't want to.'

Ginny raised an eyebrow, 'If?'

Being a metamorphmagus had granted their Godson the ability to change his appearance at will; he had surpassed even his mother, who herself had been extremely talented in that respect. There had always been three people who had been able to pick him out of a crowd, no matter what he looked like; Andromeda, his Grandmother; Luna Scamander, who had been able to pick Harry out of a crowd while using a Polyjuice Potion and had odd talents like that; and Harry himself, who knew his Godson better than anyone. Even after his Auror Training, Harry had been able to detect a disguised Teddy from a good fifty meters, stating that, "There are some things about a person that you cannot change; little tells that give you away." Teddy had spent months trying to eliminate his tells, but he had never been able to slip past his Godfather.

On seeing the fully masked Phantom, Ginny had immediately assumed it was Teddy and that he did not want to be recognised by old colleagues or his family. Harry, though, was implying that Teddy might not be here at all. In a private setting she would have asked for an explanation, but in the middle of a Ministry banquet, it simply wasn't appropriate. Instead she tried to analyse Harry's words for a clue; he had said "if" and Harry was only ambiguous when he had to be. That meant that he didn't recognise Teddy as either of the men, or even the apparent 'women' who were the Phantoms.

In itself that could mean one of several things; simply, that Teddy wasn't there, or one of two other options if he was. The first being that he had managed to eliminate whatever it had been that had given him away to Harry in the years he had been away, the second being that he wasn't visible.

From what she had heard from Harry, who had shared every scrap of information he managed to gather on the Phantoms after Teddy had been recruited, she knew that they were all incredibly magically gifted. Therefore, she supposed; if Teddy didn't want to be seen, then there were a dozen ways in which he could go about avoiding them, even if he was here. That didn't make her miss the opportunity, to even catch a glimpse of him, just to see that he was well.

"If", though; that made Ginny suspect that Harry thought Teddy was here, despite all of her reasoning.

Harry, on the other hand, was in a bit of a dilemma. He always been able to pick Teddy out of a crowd, no matter what; he himself assumed it was down to Godfatherly instinct, it was simple like being able to do magic: you could or you couldn't.

He hadn't recognised his Godson as one of those making up the contingent of bodyguards surrounding Joran-Ansiledes, but he also knew his Godson well enough that he could conceal himself in other ways. Upon joining the Auror Corps himself, Harry had made it his main objective to begin introducing Muggle intelligence techniques to Wizarding Law Enforcement and, at first, they had had incredible success. Finger-printing and DNA testing had advanced Magical Law Enforcement by years and they had caught several escaped Death Eaters through those means.

Unfortunately, the Magical criminal community were just as sharp and they moved on too. A new generation of Magical-Non-Magical advancement had been born and it moved like an arms race. Several times had Law Enforcement squads, and even Aurors, been caught in Muggle made booby traps; simply because they were undetectable through conventional, magical means. Harry had even heard of an entire French NCI Squad, the equivalent of the Auror Corps, being wiped out in a trap which had involved the use of nerve gas; completely undetectable using magic at the time. Five elite men and women, as well as several hostages, had been killed by a gas that was odourless and colourless.

The event had nearly sparked a major panic in the Magical Community across Europe and had highlighted the need for strong Muggle relations dramatically.

Therefore, with the rise of outside the box thinking, Harry couldn't be sure if his Godson was here at all. Something in his gut said that Teddy wasn't far away though, and for Harry, that was enough. To tell Ginny that though, was something else; she would demand proof, and right now he didn't have it.

He was just going over his train of thought when he saw his daughter get up and begin to walk towards the nearest Phantom.

Lily reached out a hand to tap the woman's elbow and said, 'Excuse me,' at the same time, but the woman was already turning before she had begun to speak.

She was tall; nearly, if not, six feet and from what Lily could see, she would be beautiful. A delicate jaw framed full lips that were still drawn upwards in an almost smile and her eyes looked out from behind the mask with violet amusement.

'Yes?' came a soft voice, tinged with some foreign accent that Lily was unable to identify, that meandered forth from between those scarlet lips.

'I… I…' Lily was suddenly incredibly nervous and aware that people were beginning to look at the girl who had dared to approach one of the Phantoms on guard.

Then she drew herself up; she wasn't going to be nervous just because people were looking at her. People were always trying to look at her; she was Harry Potter's daughter for Merlin's sake.

She drew herself up and took a breath, 'Do you know who Teddy Lupin is?' she asked.

As the question fell from her lips though, some sort of commotion began in the Hall below; someone had just stumbled and fallen through one of the side entrances. She turned and recognised the uniform of a Law Enforcement Officer.

As she stared in consternation he struggled to his hands and knees and vomited blood across the polished floor.

A/N: Thanks to those of you who have reviewed! Keep them coming, am exploring ideas here as they come, so feel free to comment on which parts you like/dislike and leave your opinions. By the way, the current Teddy Lupin and the Phantom Queen is a part re-write; the old version also contains 'canon' info for this story, but is set earlier in Teddy's training. If people want it back, I can repost it, although, neither version is finished and will not be unfortunately... so any repost would only be for people who want a little more background info. So leave a comment/review if you want it.

Cheers!