starfishstar

RAISE YOUR LANTERN HIGH

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. (My Remus/Tonks epic, which has been years in the making! This is the second half of the story, set in the Half-Blood Prince year.)

Chapter 3: To the Wolves

Give me all your lonely nights
I'll keep them here with mine

–Lucy Kaplansky, Promise Me

Even with the longer daylight hours of the Scottish summer, it was well past nightfall when Remus opened his eyes at the edge of a tiny village, the last landmark to which he could Apparate accurately. He would cover the small remaining distance on foot.

It might sound foolhardy to approach the pack at night – and here Remus had been vague to Molly and Arthur concerning his precise plans– but night was a werewolf's element. Night protected and concealed.

Remus glanced up. The moon, half-hidden by scudding clouds, was nearly full. This could be the best time to befriend unfamiliar werewolves, or he might find them edgy and combative. There was no way to know until he tried.

He left the sleeping village behind him, stopping to hide his wand and his few other possessions under a rock beside the path that wound out of the village and into the open moorland. Remus could scent the presence of werewolves already. Sometimes it astounded him that Muggles could remain so blissfully ignorant of such things. Lucky indeed for the residents of this village that their local werewolves were not known for bloodlust.

The legends about heightened werewolf senses, as much as they tended to be exaggerated, did have some basis in fact. Especially this close to the full moon, Remus had no trouble scenting out his own kind, an earthy, animal smell that nonetheless carried with it the clean scent of pine trees and night air.

He followed a faint track, barely visible, that branched off from the main path. A quarter hour's walk out from the village, the light of the moon revealed a small stand of trees, evergreens whose angular shapes stood out starkly against the rolling contours of the moor.

Even at this distance, Remus felt his skin prickle. Werewolves might not use wands, but they had their own powerful magic. If a werewolf marked a piece of territory and didn't want humans to find it, well, then humans wouldn't.

Remus stopped short of the trees and allowed himself a few deep breaths before he continued. Then he made his way between the tree trunks, and stepped into a clearing at their centre.

By the light of the moon, Remus saw that there were a number of small makeshift shelters within the clearing, branches and tarpaulins cobbled together under the trees. He could just make out the forms of the people sleeping under them.

There was also a man, seated on a tree stump in the middle of the clearing, precisely at the spot where a shaft of moonlight cut through the trees to illuminate his face. He was broad-shouldered, with tanned skin and a full head of dark hair, and he sat tall and straight on the stump that was his throne, conveying an impression of great, still, solid strength. He was looking at Remus.

"Stranger," the man said. It was neither welcome nor dismissal, simply an acknowledgement of Remus' presence. This was the Alpha of the pack.

"Alpha," Remus responded.

Something about the man's mouth twitched – it might almost have been a smile.

"I come in peace," Remus continued, offering the sight of his outstretched, empty hands.

"Well, I know that," said the man.

Remus realised all at once that the others in the clearing were by no means asleep. All of them were listening, alert and only feigning sleep. Ruefully, Remus wondered just how far off they had sensed him coming.

Now, the Alpha rose and approached Remus. Remus stood still, but bowed his head in deference as the man grew close.

"Interesting," the Alpha said, circling slowly around Remus. His gaze was sharp, his eyes wise in a commanding face. "You are a werewolf, but a city-dwelling one. Yet you understand how it is in a pack." Then, before he had quite completed his circle, the Alpha stopped short. "I know you," he said, very close to Remus' face.

There was a shifting around them, the shadows and crannies now soft with subtle movements. No one was pretending to sleep any longer.

"You were at the Imbolc gathering this year, in France. You came from nowhere, attached to no pack. Some of the others thought you were a spy and attacked you. That was you."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes," Remus said, head still bowed. "That was I."

Someone hissed in the darkness.

"And are you here to spy now, City Wolf?" the Alpha asked.

"No, Alpha, I am not," Remus said, grateful to be able to speak this as the truth.

The Alpha began again to circle him. "What, then? What brings a city wolf to the wilderness? What brings a wolf who thinks he's a wizard back to live among wolves?"

"I want to learn from you," Remus said, head conscientiously bowed. "When you saw me in France at Imbolc, I still hoped I could be privy to your thoughts without being one of your number. If that's what it means to be a spy, then that's what I was. Now I wish to live here and learn as one of your pack."

"Learning, spying," the Alpha mused. "What is the difference, I wonder?"

Unsure if this question was directed at him or rhetorical, Remus said softly, "I'm not looking to reveal anyone's secrets. I simply seek to understand."

"But there are others where you come from, city wizards, who would be interested to know what you 'learn'."

"Yes, Alpha, perhaps. But I've made my own choice, to leave them and come here."

"Do you work with Voldemort?" the Alpha asked, so casually that Remus nearly stumbled backwards in surprise.

"Merlin, no!" Remus exclaimed, before he could think better of it. "Never Voldemort."

Somewhere in the shadows of the clearing, someone tittered.

"We don't swear by Merlin here, City Wolf," the Alpha said, his tone almost gentle. "We swear by the Mother, or by the Moon."

"By the Mother, then," Remus agreed. He should have remembered that. "I swear I do not work for Voldemort."

"Good. We want no rabble-rousers here."

"I have no love for Voldemort," Remus said firmly.

That earned him a sharp look from the Alpha. "We want no rabble-rousers on either side. We are peace-loving beings, whatever your friends in the city might believe. We have no interest in agitators and recruiters. Is that clear?"

"It's clear, Alpha."

"You may stay and live among us, if you wish. You may 'learn,' if you wish. But you will not turn our young ones' ears to talk of war."

"Yes, Alpha. Thank you, Alpha."

"And when you join the pack, you follow our rules. Not those of the city."

"Yes, Alpha."

"Sit," the man said, abruptly, and Remus found himself dropping down to crouch on his heels before he'd consciously decided to do so. There was a reason this man was the Alpha.

"You may think you can come here, gather what you want to know and leave unchanged, but the simple fact of living among us will change you," the Alpha continued. "Are you prepared for that, City Wolf?"

"I'm aware and have made my choice."

"Hmm," the man said, a drawn-out sound that gave no hint what he was thinking. Remus waited, deferential and bowed.

Then the Alpha laughed. He tipped his face towards the sky. "So be it! Let night be day and sun be moon, let the wizard-wolf come to the moor. So it shall be." He lowered his head and gazed around at the rest of the pack, still hidden in the shadows around them. "Come," he said. "You may greet our visitor."

The shadows dissolved into human shapes as the members of the pack stepped forward.

– – – – –

Hearing a tap at her kitchen window, Tonks wasn't surprised to look up and see Cessna, the Weasleys' newer, sprightlier owl, purchased after Arthur's promotion. (And named, of course, by Arthur.) Likely the owl brought another dinner invitation from Molly.

Tonks was not expecting to let Cessna in the window, unroll the letter he carried and find herself confronted instead with Remus' handwriting:

Dear Dora,

I feel badly about the way things have ended between us. I haven't handled this well, and I'm sorry. But I believe it to be the only option. I wish you all the best. Please – take care of yourself and keep safe.

Yours,

Remus

Tonks sat down hard on a chair, and pushed a dish of water distractedly at Cessna. She re-read the note and felt the tickling sensation of her hair turning red in anger, starting from the nape of her neck and working upwards. Her Metamorphmagism hadn't kicked in spontaneously like that in years. Lately could barely transform her appearance even when she was trying.

Oh, so he felt "badly" about cutting her out of his life, did he? Tonks had half a mind to cast an "Incendio" on the note and revel in watching it burn. Or flip the parchment to its reverse side and scrawl a vindictive reply, telling Remus exactly where he could shove his polite apologies.

But Tonks was an Auror, and she knew better than to act in anger. She took a few deep breaths – recommended technique for Aurors before taking any decisive action – and recalled that it was nearly the full moon – if Remus had written her, it was because he was already on his way to join the werewolves. No owl would reach him now, where he was beyond any permanent address and within the bounds of the werewolves' own protective magic. Sending a Patronus might be possible, but that would draw attention, and thus danger, to Remus.

He had gone where none of them could reach him.

Tonks' anger dissolved. She didn't know the Scottish moors and she certainly didn't know the habits of werewolves, not wild ones. She couldn't picture what Remus' life would be like there, couldn't know what danger he might be in. All she knew, really, was that werewolves were hierarchical and territorial, often savage to outsiders, and celebrated the full moon instead of fearing it. Also, she remembered too well that Remus had once come home to her with lacerations, bruises and cracked ribs, because werewolves at a gathering he'd visited had scented him out as a spy.

In comparison to Remus risking his life for the Order, getting angry over a letter was petty.

"There's no reply to deliver," she told Cessna, who cocked his head at her. "Go on home."

The owl gave what could only be described as the owl equivalent of a shrug, then spread his wings and glided out the open window. Tonks gazed after him, trying in vain to hold onto her earlier anger, because the alternative to anger was worry, endless worry about where Remus might be now.

Tonks tossed and turned that night, too restless for sleep at the thought of Remus out somewhere on the moors. So the next morning, when she went to send a routine message to Moody and her Patronus came out a completely different shape, Tonks figured it must be sleep deprivation. Or something. Because what came out of her wand when she cast the charm wasn't her beloved, playful dolphin. In fact, it looked an awful lot like a bloody great wolf.

Well, I can't send THAT to Moody, she thought.

She tried the charm again, casting back for a happy memory that absolutely didn't involve Remus at all, so that the thought of him couldn't possibly affect the way the Patronus came out. The day she'd got her acceptance letter to the Auror training programme, there, that would do it. Few things in her life had thrilled her more, and the memory dated from well before she'd met Remus.

Tonks closed her eyes and cried, "Expecto Patronum!" And opened her eyes to the silvery shape of a great, shaggy, yet somehow endearing…wolf.

"Damn it all to Avalon," she muttered.

She relayed her message to Moody anyway, starting with an apology for her Patronus' irritating new form, then tried to push the matter out of her mind as she got ready for work, already running late.

The moment Tonks set foot in the Auror Office, Robards looked up from his corner office and beckoned her over.

"Auror Tonks," Robards said when she reached his office. "Have a seat."

She did so.

"I'd like to offer you a special assignment," he said, fixing her with a stern stare. This could turn out to be a thrilling new placement or relegation to a task no one else wanted, Tonks couldn't tell. She hadn't learned to read Robards yet, not like she'd been able to do with Scrimgeour.

"Yes, sir?" she said.

"I need Aurors stationed in Hogsmeade. Full-time, you understand – we'll set you up with a flat there, so you can live on location. You'd be there to keep an eye on the village and the school, that sort of thing. Keep up morale, watch for any signs of Dark magic."

In all the rest of the mess of her life, Tonks had forgotten Dumbledore's request at that Order meeting weeks ago, but now his words floated back to her. There's a possibility that a few select Aurors will be asked to take up a position elsewhere… Might I ask if you would be amenable?

This must be what Dumbledore had been talking about – he wanted one Auror in Hogsmeade he knew could count on.

"Yes, sir," Tonks said to Robards. "I'll go."

He blinked. "You will?"

"I'd be glad to. I enjoy fieldwork. When do we start?"

Robards' eyebrows rose – he probably hadn't expected his pitch to go over so easily – but he rallied quickly. "Very good. That's you and Savage, then, Proudfoot's going to think about it, and I'm having a chat with Dawlish next. You'll head up a week before the Hogwarts term starts, get yourselves set up, and be there to meet the students off the Hogwarts Express."

Tonks did the mental calculation. "You want us to move…next week?"

"Yes," Robards said. "Is there a problem?"

"No sir, no problem."

As Tonks made her way back to her own desk, she was already drafting a mental list of everything that needed to be done in order to move house in less than a week.

– – – – –

"They're sending you where?" Tonks' friend Ariadne demanded, her hand pausing halfway between two racks of Madam Malkin's Self-Ironing Daily Wear Robes.

"Hogsmeade," Tonks repeated. "Come on, it's not like it's the far end of the Earth. And hello, we're witches. We can still visit each other any time, just by closing our eyes and wanting to."

Ariadne snorted. She was Tonks' best friend from Hogwarts, though they no longer saw each other very often, not since Tonks had signed over her life to an Auror's erratic working hours, then added responsibilities for the Order of the Phoenix on top of that. Still, Ariadne was one of her anchors, someone who existed in the real world outside the Order. Tonks had asked her along as she did some last-minute Diagon Alley shopping before moving house to Hogsmeade.

"Right, like you'll ever have time to Apparate down for a visit, with the hours you work," Ariadne said. She frowned at the amber-coloured semi-formal robes on which her hand had come to rest, then pushed them aside. "And your boss gave you only a week's notice, to pack everything up and go?"

"Ar, that's what we do. We have to go where we're needed, and right now the Ministry needs a presence in Hogsmeade."

Tonks, too, frowned at the robes in front of her, a set of formalwear in a revolting cooked-asparagus shade. Normally, she would be doing her usual Diagon Alley rounds – perusing the eclectic T-shirt collection crammed into the basement room of Warbler's Wizard Rock Shop, or foraging for strange sartorial treasures at The Sorcerer's Second Hand – but this time she'd bowed to Ariadne's unfortunate but sensible suggestion that she should probably get some professional robes, if the whole point of her new posting was to be the serious, trustworthy face of the Auror Office in Hogsmeade.

Being an adult was so dull sometimes.

"So you'll be staying the whole year, then?" Ariadne asked, not very casually.

"I don't know exactly. As long as I'm needed." Tonks pushed the awful asparagus robes away.

"It doesn't seem right," Ariadne murmured, her hands flicking deftly through the rows of clothing. "They're always throwing you in the path of danger." She glanced up and looked straight at Tonks across the tumult of colourful fabric between them. "But then, that's where you like to be, isn't it?"

Tonks blew out a frustrated puff of air. "That's not fair. It's not that I want danger. I just want to do something. I need to do something. I can't sit on my hands when there's a war on!"

Ariadne winced and returned her attention to the row of robes between them, and Tonks regretted her choice of words. Ariadne was fun and clever and sweet and one of Tonks' favourite people in the world, but she wasn't exactly the throw-yourself-into-the-fray type. Not the way Tonks was. And Tonks sometimes caught a hint of wistfulness there, like Ariadne wished she too were doing something dangerous but momentous, instead of quietly repairing old books at the Magical Archives every day.

"Look," Tonks said, because they'd been having this same discussion for years, she and Ariadne. Since the day Tonks declared her intention to apply for the Auror training programme, if not before. "We all do what we can do, in whatever way we can do. And for me, I don't know, I have to be out there trying to do something. There's – oh, there's so much more happening than what makes it into the Daily Prophet." Tonks instinctively lowered her voice, although they were the only customers in this particular wing of Madam Malkin's labyrinthine shop. But these days, even casual conversation was dangerous. "People are disappearing all the time, the Dementors are breeding like mad, Death Eaters keep making stealth attacks and then getting away before we can get there –"

She made herself stop. Ariadne knew all this already. No need to belabour the point of how different their two lives were.

"I have to try to help," Tonks concluded lamely. "I can't not try."

Ariadne met her eyes across the clothing racks, pensive. "I worry about you."

"I know," Tonks said. Then she added, "I'm sorry."

Ariadne smiled wryly. "You're you. I know that." Suddenly, magically, her deft hands plucked one set of robes from all the rest and held them aloft for Tonks' inspection. Deep magenta, a demure cut such as an Auror could wear on assignment in a small town, but a colour that was fun enough that Nymphadora Tonks wouldn't die of boredom when she caught sight of herself in a mirror.

"Yes," Tonks said. "Yes, perfect, I'll take those, and now please can we get out of this stuffy shop and go look at brooms?"

"Flourish and Blotts," Ariadne counter-proposed. "And the stationery shop; I need some Permanent Preservation Spellotape."

Tonks rolled her eyes. "Of course you do. Okay, we can be boring in a paper shop if we also drop by Warbler's after."

"And the Apothecary?" Ariadne suggested. "Tell me you're at least going to make sure you've got all your healing potions and things fully stocked before you go."

Tonks nodded. "And that weird sweets shop round the back of the Muggle newsagent in the next street over, where they give out the revolting free samples?"

Ariadne laughed. "Oh, yes." They'd been daring each other to try horrible things at that shop for years.

Tonks smiled, though she could feel the smile turning bittersweet. She would miss this, having a friend nearby to drag her out of herself when work overwhelmed her. Hogsmeade was a blank slate; Tonks couldn't picture what her life would be like there.

But Tonks banished those thoughts for now, in favour of enjoying this afternoon together. "Yeah," she said. "That means we've got, what, half a dozen shops to go? So let's get cracking!"

Ariadne draped the magenta robes neatly over her arm, and Tonks followed her out through the labyrinth of Madam Malkin's.

– – – – –

"It's for the best, don't you think?" Andromeda asked, her arms thrust to the elbows in a crate of dishes on the kitchen floor of Tonks' flat.

Tonks made herself count to ten. Her mother had been coming by each evening to help Tonks pack for moving house to Hogsmeade. And Tonks was grateful, she was. Her mother was adept at household-y spells, zipping things into neatly sorted crates with the merest flick of her wand. But she was also getting enormously on Tonks' nerves.

"What's for the best?" Tonks asked, though her better judgement said to let the comment slide.

Andromeda shuffled the plates inside the crate into a more perfect stack, then Conjured soft swaths of squashy padding around them. "Moving house, a fresh start in a new place. I've never understood why you felt you had to live in London, and don't tell me it's because you work at the Ministry. You're perfectly capable of Apparition."

Like they hadn't had this conversation a thousand times before. "I like London, Mum."

"Well, in any case, it's good to make a clean start. Put all of this behind you."

Tonks put her hands on her hips, feeling the tingle of anger starting to burn at the nape of her neck. "And by 'all of this,' of course you mean Remus."

"Darling, I'm sorry this has been a hard time for you, truly, but don't you think this will turn out to have been for the best?"

"Remus breaking up with me?" Tonks demanded, taking the packed crate from her mother with more force than necessary and shoving it over to join the other crates by the door. "That's your idea of 'the best'?"

Andromeda sighed even as she glanced around the room, looking for the next thing in need of packing. "Remus is a very nice man. I like him, I do. But is that what you would have wanted for the rest of your life?"

"That being what, that he's a werewolf? Or that he hasn't got much money?"

Tonks glowered at her mother, but Andromeda could match her look for look.

"Don't put words in my mouth, Nymphadora. I said neither of those things. I have no objections to Remus himself. But his life hasn't been an easy one, which means a life with him wouldn't be easy for you, either. I would hate to see you shouldering his burdens. You take on enough without that."

Through gritted teeth, Tonks said, "Don't talk about Remus like he's some mistake I'm lucky to have left behind."

"I didn't say Remus was a mistake," Andromeda snapped. "I said life with him would be difficult. And you are being wilfully obtuse."

"You don't understand –"

"For Merlin's sake, Nymphadora, I only want you to be happy."

Tonks bit hard against her lip, and did not shout at her mother. Instead she said, "Yeah, okay, input duly noted. I'm gonna start packing the bedroom."

All in all, Tonks wasn't sorry it would soon be time to leave London.

Chapter end notes:

Imbolc is a Celtic/Gaelic/Pagan seasonal festival halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox (at the very beginning of February); if you divide the year in half by the winter and summer solstices, then in quarters by the solstices + equinoxes, you can further subdivide it into eight with the seasonal festivals Imbolc (Candlemas/Groundhog Day), Beltane (May Day), Lughnasa, and Samhain (Halloween).

(continue to CHAPTER FOUR: Origin Stories)