Be the Light in My Lantern, chapter 6

[starfishstar]

BE THE LIGHT IN MY LANTERN

Summary: In which Remus and Tonks fight battles, arrest criminals, befriend werewolves, overcome inner demons and, despite it all, find themselves a happy ending. A love story, and a story of the Order years. (At long last, my Remus/Tonks epic, which has been years in the making!)

Chapter 6: The Classics Reimagined



Tell me what’s the point of light
That you have to strike a match to find?

–Josh Ritter, Lantern



"Ms Tonks," said a voice.

Tonks' drooping eyelids snapped open. She hadn't been on the verge of dozing off at her desk in the middle of the day after a long night of guard duty, no, she hadn't…

"May I ask," continued the voice, from just behind and to her left, "whether you plan on reading that report today, or only gazing into space over it?"

Tonks whipped around to face her boss, imposing as always with his mane of hair and severe expression. He reminded her of a lion – a decidedly unfriendly lion. "Mr Scrimgeour," she said. "Sir. I'm so sorry, I just –"

And then inspiration struck. Dodge and feint, Arthur had said.

"It's just that, well – I've met someone." One of the many fabulous things about being a Metamorphmagus was the ability blush on cue. "It's all very new, and I guess my mind was wandering for a moment there…"

It wasn't even entirely a lie. She'd met many new people, since joining the Order. And there was even truth to the implication that one person in particular was occupying her thoughts lately, though the individual in question might be surprised to find himself suddenly designated her boyfriend.

"I know I've been a little unfocussed lately, sir, and I’m sorry. I promise I'll have my feet back on the ground soon!"

Scrimgeour blinked at her. "Well. See that you do."

Tonks breathed a sigh of relief as he left. She made sure her boss was out of sight, then scrambled off to find somewhere she could get a good Muggle-style double shot of espresso.

– – – – –

The truth was that being a member of the Order of the Phoenix – while a great honour and a not inconsiderable learning experience and often even a reasonable amount of fun – was not quite as swashbuckling as Tonks might have hoped.

They took their turns at guard duty, huddling under an Invisibility Cloak overnight outside the Department of Mysteries, hoping to keep Voldemort and his cronies away from the Prophecy he so clearly wanted.

They met for occasional large meetings and more frequently in smaller groups, discussing and re-discussing everything they knew about the Death Eaters, everything they suspected about which way the goblins might lean or how things were unfolding among the giants.

They studied blueprints of key buildings – the Ministry, Hogwarts, St Mungo's – learning their layouts backwards and forwards, just in case it should ever come to fighting there. They did inconspicuous sweeps of Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley, on the lookout for suspicious behaviour. They listened to Snape's reports of Voldemort's half-formed plans and discussed how they might thwart those plans without jeopardising Snape's position by seeming to know too much.

Sometimes Dumbledore asked one or another of them to do specific reconnaissance – as Remus was always being sent off to do, Remus with his gentle touch and steely determination that made him so right for the job – or they staked out known Death Eater gathering points in the hope of gleaning something new. They tried to spread the truth and to keep Voldemort from gaining any more followers, though in reality, their ability to do either of those things was limited.

Mostly, it was watching and waiting. An enormously frustrating amount of watching and waiting.

Which was precisely what she was doing now, finally on her first Order stakeout mission as a sidekick to Mad-Eye Moody, watching an abandoned factory building where they’d heard a couple of Death Eaters were supposed to meet with a contact from abroad.

They waited through very long hours of bitter November cold, tucked behind the dustbins in a dank alley, watching their breath in the air, before finally seeing…nothing. No one showed.

After giving up the mission at last and retiring to a bar some distance away – or more accurately, after giving up the mission and sneaking through the darkness to a nearly identical alley several streets down, then Apparating three or four times to different spots around London just to throw off any nonexistent tails, then casing every joint until they finally found a dingy bar that passed Moody's muster as nondescript yet crowded enough to provide a safe place to talk once aided by several complex charms he cast to protect their conversation from prying ears – after all that and after she'd bought herself a Firewhisky to keep pace with Moody and his hip flask, Tonks flung herself back down in her seat and asked, "Mad-Eye, is there really a point?"

Her former mentor regarded her shrewdly. "You were expecting a bit more adventure when you signed up for the Order?"

"No! Okay, yes. But I don't just mean that. I want to feel we're actually changing something. Are we?"

Moody shrugged in that infuriating way of his. "We're doing what we can."

"I want to do more."

"I'm sure you do."

"Mad-Eye," Tonks whined. The really great thing about her relationship with Moody was that she could be as irritating as she liked and he'd never entirely give up on her. In fact, she suspected he secretly enjoyed their banter. "Give me something more here. I feel like we're just doing figure eights over the pitch. …That's a Quidditch metaphor, by the way, and it means –"

"Yes, Tonks, you feel we're not getting anywhere. I do get the picture."

"We're letting You-Know-Who call the shots. He plots, we just watch. He takes action, all we do is respond."

"And what would you have us do?"

"Find them! Fight them now!"

"And that would lead to…?"

"Lots of casualties on our side," she grumbled. "Because we're still outnumbered and we haven't got the Ministry with us."

"And what would happen then?"

"Harry left unprotected, Order weakened, no improvement at the Ministry. Etcetera. Your Socratic method is annoying, Mad-Eye."

He granted her a rare smile, which looked frankly weird on his heavily scarred face. "Good girl, Tonks. Knew you had the answers."

"It just seems like – couldn't we be doing something a bit more…active? I know the layout of the Ministry now so well I could walk it in my sleep backwards, but You-Know-Who's still out there and we're hardly even trying to catch him."

"Things will change once he's acting in the open. If nothing else, the Ministry will see sense. Perhaps they’ll even make themselves useful."

"Oh, goody, I'll just look forward to You-Know-Who's big coming out party then, shall I?"

"Yes, and make sure while you wait that you’re as damn well prepared as you can."

Tonks grumbled and slurped her drink.

"Patience, Tonks."

"Haven't got any."

"Then you might want to learn some," Moody growled at her. "This is not a war for the impetuous. Just look at Potter – if we left that boy to his own devices, he'd be getting himself killed every other day."

"I'm pretty sure a person can only get killed once per lifetime, actually."

"You get my point. You-Know-Who doesn't play nice. He's going to fight dirty and he's going to use every weapon he can get his hands on. It's our job to be just as prepared, to know at least as much about him as he knows about us." Moody swivelled to fix her with the full force of both his eyes, the normal one and the magical one that often seemed to bore not just through walls but also into its quarry's thoughts. "I can fairly well promise you there will come a time, soon, when you will have the opportunity to put your life on the line for this cause, if you so choose. And I can absolutely assure you that not all of us will come out of this alive. I hope that will prove a satisfactory adventure?"

Tonks could only gape at him. And Moody seemed to take the fact that he’d actually managed to get her to shut up as a sign that his message had got through.

– – – – –

Well, if they couldn't have adventures, Tonks decided after the night of the non-eventful stakeout, they could at least have some fun.

"I think we should have a film night," she announced to Sirius the next time she was back in his basement kitchen, doing her usual bit to badger him into forgetting to be melancholy.

Sirius fixed her with a stare of superior disbelief, an expression he’d clearly perfected over the years. "A what, Tonks?"

"A film night. Or, you know, a games night or something. A social event. You guys are practically the only people I see anymore anyway, so we might as well occasionally have fun instead of just sitting round muttering about Dark wizards all the time. I can make popcorn…" Her cousin was still staring at her as if she’d been hit with a Disfigurement Jinx. "What part's not getting through? The popcorn? Oh, it's a Muggle thing, I always forget you're such a pureblood…"

"I know what popcorn is," Sirius growled.

"Good, then it's settled!"

Sirius opened his mouth, but for the moment seemed incapable of speech.

"What's the problem, Sirius?" came Remus' amused voice from the doorway. "I've never seen you turn down a girl who wanted to watch a film with you. Or did your policy on that change?"

Tonks turned to glare at the newcomer. "I did not mean it like that, as you very well know. And since you're invited too, it's hardly a date. Have you two entirely forgotten how to have fun?"

"Yes," said Sirius.

"Almost," said Remus.

"Utterly hopeless," said Tonks. "And irritating," she added, for good measure.

She was rewarded with one of those gentle Remus smiles that always made her stomach swoop just the tiniest bit. He turned to Sirius, "What do you say, Padfoot? Can we bear to give up just one night of our curmudgeon-hood?"

Tonks was pleased to see the two of them looking more light-hearted, not to mention Remus using a nickname for Sirius for once. They'd both seemed tense lately, but when she'd asked Remus about it, he'd only said, "It's a difficult time of year," and left it at that. Tonks hadn't pushed him to say more. She was getting better, slightly, at not being so nosy.

Sirius' about-face came so fast, she didn't hear what he said the first time round. "Wait, what?"

"I said, only if we get to pick the film."

"That's a yes!" she rejoiced. Then, "Wait, should I be worried?"

Sirius just looked secretive. "How about Friday?"

"I'll make the popcorn."

Both men, having experienced Tonks' attempts at cooking, looked concerned.

"Maybe I should take care of that…" Remus murmured.

"It's just popcorn," Tonks said. "How much can go wrong?"

She discovered how much could go wrong on Friday, before finally throwing up her hands in defeat and retreating from the smoke-filled kitchen where inexplicably the popcorn kernels had started magically – and rapidly – multiplying themselves. Remus took over and had the situation back under impeccable control within five minutes.

"Show-off," she muttered when he emerged a short while later with perfect, golden bowls of popcorn. He just smiled.

They'd settled on the drawing room for the evening and Sirius had lit a crackling fire, which went quite a long way towards making the stiff old room seem cosy. The two housemates had obtained an old Muggle video recorder from who knows where – and actually, Tonks decided as she surveyed the device, she didn't really want to know where. The thing was so ancient, it looked as if it might disintegrate at the slightest touch.

Sirius patted it fondly – and gently. "Ah, Muggle technology in my parents' home," he said. "I think it would be worth it even if the thing doesn’t turn out to work at all. I’d happily just sit here and watch the blank screen for two hours."

"Please tell me that's not actually what's on the programme for the evening," Tonks said.

In answer, Sirius popped the video into the player, making a big show of not letting her see the title. Then they arranged themselves on the settee against the far wall, Tonks squeezed in next to Remus, who was next to Sirius.

"Ready?" Sirius asked, pointing his wand at the video recorder.

Within moments, Tonks was craning her neck round Remus to stare at her cousin. "Seriously, Sirius? This is your big, secret surprise? The Wizard of Oz?"

She'd seen the film before, of course, thanks to her dad, who was into Muggle classics. And she liked it well enough, but it didn't seem quite equal to all the build-up and secrecy on Sirius' part.

"Not only," he replied.

"We do a…special version," Remus said. "In fact, unfortunately you're not actually going to get to hear any of the original soundtrack at all." As Remus spoke, Sirius flicked his wand at the screen again, muttering a silencing charm.

Tonks was at sea. "Wait a minute, Sirius, how do you even know Muggle films?"

"A certain infuriatingly highbrow werewolf of our mutual acquaintance used to make us sit down and watch old Muggle films over summer holidays. To keep from dying of boredom, James and I had to invent our own version of the procedure."

"All right," Remus interjected. "Let's get this straight. Lily is still Dorothy, isn't she?"

"Always."

"Is James still Toto?"

A snigger. "You bet."

"You assigned your friends roles in the film?" Tonks asked, once again trying to keep up with all the history these two men shared.

"Filling in their lines as we see fit," Sirius added.

"You did once say you wanted to know more about our friends," Remus said, sounding apologetic.

"And James agreed to be the dog?" Tonks wondered.

Remus considered. "Well, at first he was Dorothy – he did always like being the main character in everything we did – until Lily came on the scene and he got demoted. But by that point he was so smitten with her, he pretty much did anything we told him to."

"Not true," Sirius interjected. "He was always trying to get us to let him be the Wizard himself. Which is absurd, of course –"

"Because the Wizard is… can you guess?"

Tonks broke into a grin. "Dumbledore!"

"And I imitate a good Dumbledore, if I do say so myself," Remus agreed.

"Look, there are the Potters," Sirius interrupted.

"James' parents," Remus explained in an undertone. "They really were very much the kindly-auntie-and-uncle type."

Sirius was muttering dialogue under his breath, in what Tonks could only assume were the voices of long-dead James' longer-dead mother and father. It didn't mean much to her, but it seemed to be making Remus wrestle with an increasingly irrepressible grin, and that was a sight Tonks was glad to see.

"Ah, there we are," Remus said fondly. "Or will be, since they're still only Kansas farmhands at this point."

Of course, she realised, the four friends had been the four main characters. "So, who's who?"

"Well, that's easy," said Sirius. "Remus is the Tin Man."

"Why the Tin Man?"

"Are you kidding? Wouldn't harm a Doxy but still doesn't believe he's got a heart?"

"And Sirius is the Scarecrow because he has no brain," Remus shot back.

"That's me," Sirius agreed cheerfully. "Always tumbling about with no common sense."

"Who's the lion?" Tonks asked, cautious.

"He was a coward after all," Remus said, "and he's since been written out of the story." That was the last any of them said about that.

"Ooh, I can see down Lily's blouse," Sirius murmured in the voice of James-Toto, as Judy Garland sang and the dog watched her from atop a piece of farm machinery. "Wonder if there's a hex that would make her forget I'm an arrogant prat? Then maybe I could get her to marry me…"

"Next time, James, I'm going to let the Wicked Witch steal you," Remus replied as Lily-Dorothy. Then in his own voice: "Right, Sirius, because marriage was really the first thing on James' mind at seventeen."

"Well, he acted high-minded enough, when he was mooning about over her." Sirius cast a sly look across the settee. "Much like you about What's-Her-Name, that Ravenclaw girl."

Tonks felt Remus stiffen beside her. "Sirius, surely you're not actually trying to tease me about a schoolboy crush I had two decades ago?"

"Well, yeah, if it works," Sirius answered, unrepentant.

Tonks was surprised by a sudden desire to know what this unnamed Ravenclaw had been like. What kind of girl had interested a school-aged Remus? Had he really hoped to marry her, like James had Lily? Was it being a werewolf that held him back? In fact, would Remus be long since married with kids, if not for that one inconvenient fact?

"Look, it's the Witch!" Sirius crowed in delight, oblivious to the angst taking place down at the other end of the settee.

Tonks gave herself a mental shake and returned to the present. "Okay, so who's the Wicked Witch of the West, then? McGonagall maybe, if Dumbledore is the Wizard?"

"Don't be ridiculous!" Sirius said. "The Witch is Snape!"

"Snape?"

"Always was and always will be," Sirius said happily. "Oh, look at him, peddling along in that ridiculous dress. I love it. I can't wait till he melts."

"Okay, fine, the Witch would be somebody you saw as a bad guy in real life," Tonks agreed. "But then wouldn't the actual bad guy have been…well…You-Know-Who?"

"Hush," Remus said. "We were highly self-centred youths."

"There goes Snape again," Sirius fairly squealed a bit later, as Dorothy's house crushed the Wicked Witch of the East.

"But I thought –?"

"Snape is both witches," Remus explained with a slight shake of his head. "It's just the way it's always been."

So she sat back and let them entertain her, comfortably wedged in against Remus' shoulder and munching on popcorn. Sirius certainly had creative dialogue at hand for the various characters, but to her surprise, Remus was the better mimic and had her in stitches with his wise and inscrutable Dumbledore. She hadn't laughed so hard in a long time, and suspected the two of them hadn't either.

As the end credits rolled, Tonks found herself wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. "You two…" she said. "You're absolutely mad."

"You should see what we can do with some other old classics," Sirius suggested with a glint in his eye.

But Remus said firmly, "I think we've subjected Dora to enough for one night, Sirius."

Tonks could fairly see Sirius' sharp ears perk up at this unexpected new nickname, but at least he had the grace not to ask. Tonks concentrated on not letting her cheeks turn red and hurried to distract them with the suggestion that they try to find some kind of game to play.

"My parents owned common, childish games," Sirius marvelled, when they'd unearthed a battered Gobstones set from one of the room's dusty cupboards. "Who knew."

"I haven't played this since Hogwarts," Remus said, shaking his head.

"Neither have I," Tonks agreed.

"Yes, but that was –"

"More recent than for you. I know, I know."

They were just setting up the pieces on a low table by the fire when the quiet was interrupted by a magically amplified knock at the front door.

"Expecting visitors, Sirius?" Remus asked.

Sirius shook his head, looking baffled, and they all trooped downstairs to investigate.

"Bill!" Tonks squealed, still slaphappy from the evening's entertainment, when they opened the door to reveal the eldest Weasley son on the top step. "Come and join the party!"

"I swear, she hasn't even had anything to drink," Sirius deadpanned from behind her, stepping forwards to usher Bill inside and close the door.

"And here I was, afraid it would be too late in the evening to stop by," Bill said. "What's the occasion?"

"No occasion," Remus said.

"The occasion of not talking exclusively about Dark wizards for once," Tonks said.

"I'll drink to that," Bill agreed.

"Which, now that you both mention it," Tonks mused, "is actually a good idea."

So Bill joined them in the drawing room for a cup of mead Sirius unearthed from somewhere and a round of a game they had all last played in their days as callow schoolkids. Tonks had forgotten how very silly Gobstones was, with the pieces squirting liquid all over the place and the good-natured arguments about whose stones were which.

"That was yours," Tonks yelped in protest, as Sirius ducked out of the way and his Gobstone caught her full in the face with a jet of foul-smelling liquid. He simply shrugged and gave her a maddening grin.

By the end of the game, of course, Tonks looked as though she'd met with the bad end of a Potions class explosion, while Remus looked as unruffled as if he'd done no more than sit and read a good book by the fireside the entire time. Sirius and Bill fell somewhere in between.

Tonks grouched and grumbled as she left the room to find somewhere to rinse her hair and face, but secretly she was pleased. She'd rarely seen such a relaxed mood hold sway in this house, and she was pretty sure she'd never seen Remus and Sirius look so at ease.

"Well, actually I came by to ask a favour," Bill was saying as she re-entered the drawing room. Sirius arched an eyebrow when he seemed reluctant to continue. "Mates of Charlie's agreed to bring over some ingredients we might need – there's a potion Dumbledore mentioned and Emmeline Vance has been wanting to try out. The stuff's not exactly illegal, but – well – I wouldn't want my mother to find out," he finished, abashed.

Sirius clapped a hand on his shoulder. "We quite understand. But where do we come in?"

"They're passing through England tomorrow night and dropping the things off. I'd planned to meet them, but now I've been assigned a night shift at Gringotts that can't be changed." He looked round at them apologetically. "I need someone to wait at the drop-off point…which is outdoors, unfortunately, in a field in Sussex, in the middle of the night."

"I'll go!" Tonks said, the word Adventure! flashing before her mind's eye.

"I can do it," the ever-dependable Remus said at the same moment.

There was a brief pause where neither of them looked at the other.

"That'd be great, actually, if you'd both be willing to go," said Bill, unaware of the undercurrents in the room. "I don't imagine it'd be much fun hanging round in that field alone. They said – well, they said they'd make it there sometime between midnight and three in the morning." He grimaced in sympathy.

"No problem," Remus replied levelly.

Bill gave them the coordinates of the meeting place, and Tonks thought she saw Sirius smirk maddeningly into the sleeve of his robes.

– – – – –

(continue to CHAPTER SEVEN)

Note: In the continued interest of noting where other R/T stories would (theoretically) fall within the timeline of this story... It's not technically part of this timeline, of course, but "Nymphadora Tonks and the Marauder's Box," the co-written story stereolightning and I had a ton of fun putting together for the rt_morelove exchange last year, would fall somewhere around now, in the autumn of OotP!

Comments

[bets-wilcox.livejournal.com]

I'm really enjoying this fic, although I haven't commented on the other chapters yet. I especially like your Tonks - she's really starting to feel real for me in this chapter. I like how we get to see different sides of her (and get insight into her complex thoughts/feelings) through her interaction with different characters.

[starfishstar]

Oh, thank you so much! Lovely as always to hear from you, and certainly no need to comment on every chapter! (There's a lot of them...) So glad Tonks feels real! Of all the main characters in this story, she's probably the one least similar to me, so it's been a good challenge for me to write this much about her. :-)

[bets-wilcox.livejournal.com]

I've never "gotten" Tonks either, so I think that's why I appreciate your characterization of her so much. I mean, in the books she's simply supposed to be funny, and then suddently she gets sad about Remus... it was pretty hard for me to wrap my head around her. I think you've done a really great job of balancing her introversion (I mean, she must have some of that hidden in her, to have been so upset in HP6, and to be able to connect with Remus) with her liveliness.

[starfishstar]

Believe me, trying to find a way to keep Tonks in character as we know her (from book 5), while remaining accurate to those few glimpses we get of her in book 6, has been one of my main motivations while writing Part 2 (the HBP part) of this story!

"Tonks mopes for the entirety of book 6" never made any sense to me. Honestly, I think it's just a plot structure/narrative arc thing – JKR wanted to seed little clues (and red herrings!) throughout the story, then have a big reveal at the end. But in doing so, she ended up sacrificing character for the sake of plot, because it meant showing Tonks in moping mode over the entire course of a year-long book. That - very unfortunately - turned a lot of readers off from Tonks as a character and Remus and Tonks as a pairing, so one of my driving motivations in writing Part 2 has been finding plausible, in-character reasons for Tonks to be the way we see in canon.

I'll be very curious to see whether you and others think I've succeeded, if/when I ever get Part 2 up to the point of being ready to be posted!

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

Oh, of COURSE the Marauders had their own voice-overs for classic films! I love that idea. And it's wonderful to get to see Remus and Sirius having so much fun for a change. I suspect Tonks didn't mind a bit being wedged into the settee next to Remus, and I bet he didn't mind, either. ;)

Really liked the Moody and Tonks interaction, too -- especially when his Socratic method made her grouchy, heh. But it makes sense that she'd be itching to prove herself and do things to make visible progress, while Mad-Eye would be taking the long view thanks to bitter experience.

So, next chapter will have Tonks and Remus alone in the dark late at night, eh? ;)

[starfishstar]

Hee, hee. I have way too much fun writing Remus and Sirius' friendship sometimes!

Yes indeed, *only* 7 chapters in, finally a midnight rendezvous...