Raise Your Lantern High, chapter 5: Quiet
Jan. 11th, 2016 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starfishstarRAISE 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 5: Quiet
I’m on the other side of the bridge and nowhere yet
–Halla Norðfjörð, The Bridge
Remus woke to a hand touching his face and for a moment his half-asleep mind made it into a gentler touch – Tonks’ touch – and he sighed.
Then a voice said, “City? Hey, City Wolf.”
Remus opened his eyes to see Brighid grinning down at him, her auburn hair a bright halo around her head. “Ah, there we go. River was afraid you were dead.” River, short for River Run – that was little Joy. Brighid chuckled, turning away, then called back to him, “Breakfast, if you want it.”
Staring up into the tree branches that were mostly managing to stave off a drizzling rain, Remus took stock of his body, as he always did after a full moon. He found no aches and pains beyond the usual, and no new injuries. It seemed running with a pack agreed with him.
He winced, uncomfortable at that thought.
Pushing himself carefully up from the ground, Remus made his way to the fire, where the pack were gathered. Breakfast turned out to be actual toast, which added a bizarre but homey touch to the morning. Remus couldn’t imagine where they’d got the bread from, but skewering it on sticks and holding it over the embers did well enough to turn it into a passable approximation of breakfast toast.
Remus collected a piece of bread and settled down to toast it next to Narun and Tamara, who were leaning together next to the fire and chatting about…what they’d done the night before. The chases and the games, the hunting, all that they’d experienced while transformed.
Remus stopped still with surprise. “You remember what you did last night?” he blurted out, before his tired brain had a chance to catch up with his mouth, and yes, damn it, there were distinct disadvantages to living in the wild without caffeinated beverages.
Narun and Tamara stopped talking and stared at him. In fact, everyone around the fire was now staring at him.
“Er, yeah,” Narun said, after an excruciating pause. “What, you don’t?”
Remus was astounded. He’d never kept his own mind and memories during a full moon, beyond the vaguest of sense impressions, except with the exceedingly difficult to procure Wolfsbane Potion, and surely they didn’t have that here. How, then, could these werewolves retain their memories of what they’d done in the night?
That question was followed by a further uncomfortable thought: If Remus had done anything untoward or unacceptable to the pack while transformed, everyone here would remember it –except him.
He cast a glance around the circle. Brighid caught his eye, read his face in an instant, and smirked. “Don’t worry, City, you behaved. Seems you play well with others.”
Collecting himself, Remus nodded and returned his attention to his toast. He would have to find an opportunity to ask more about this, how the pack were able to remember their full moon nights.
The day after a full moon was a rest day for the pack, Remus learned, the one day of each month when their busy hands could still. As the rain lightened, the pack’s members began to drift away from the fire. The younger ones moved with enviable ease, as if their bodies hadn’t been torn apart in the night, though those who were Remus’ age moved with the same ginger care as he did.
And Anna, the Mother, where was she? She hadn’t been at the fire for breakfast. Remus looked around and spotted her tucked away in a hammock strung between two trees. Only her hands were visible, waving above the sides of the hammock as she talked with several others who crouched nearby in keen attendance.
Bringing his attention back to the fire, Remus found he was the only one still sitting there aside from Serena, who had Joy cuddled dozily in her lap.
Well, how was he to make progress here if he didn’t dare to speak to the others?
“River’s a very sweet child,” Remus said, trying to find something non-confrontational to say. But even that caused Serena’s head to snap up with suspicion. “The full moon isn’t a frightening time for her?”
“No,” Serena answered shortly. “She’s used to it by now.”
Remus ached to ask more – how long had that been, how long had the child been a werewolf? Instead he dared at last to ask, “Is she your daughter?”
That earned him another glare. “No. My sister’s.” Serena’s features tightened unhappily as she said sister, and now Remus had another mystery to wonder about. “Werewolves can’t bear children. Surely even you know that?”
Serena dropped her gaze back to the child in her lap, and Remus decided discretion was the better part of valour, and perhaps he ought to take his unwelcome presence elsewhere for now. He stood, joints aching, and looked around. Most of the pack seemed to have scattered to their own pursuits, although the Mother was still in her hammock, with Narun and Adair at her side.
As Remus watched, Anna’s hand gesture from within the hammock, and in response Narun called Eirwen over to them. Anna said something Remus couldn’t hear, but he saw Eirwen settle down on her heels next to the hammock, and Anna’s hand reached out to stroke Eirwen’s hair gently back from her face.
Remus was glad to see that sign of affection. That the pack should be slow to accept him – an adult werewolf with a suspect background – was understandable. But that they should be slow to accept Eirwen, who was so young, seemed unkind and a little strange.
Seeing as he didn’t seem to be needed at the moment, Remus stretched his aching limbs and set off for a gentle walk, through the small stand of trees and out to the open moor.
It was lovely countryside, at least when it wasn’t raining. And Remus supposed it was good to get away from the grit and smog of London.
All right, yes, he was stretching it, struggling to find reasons to be glad to be here. Remus was no particular fan of cities as a whole, but it had been perilously pleasant to live in London, near to so many people he could call friends.
He’d got too accustomed to life within the artificial protection of the Order, that was all. He should never have allowed himself to forget that this was who he really was, a werewolf. And here, with a werewolf pack, was where he could be useful.
His mind wandering thus, Remus found himself following roughly the route he’d taken the other day with Ronan while gathering firewood. After twenty minutes or so, he came to a spot he remembered, where the ground level dropped suddenly by perhaps a foot, leaving a vertical slice of earth exposed between the higher and lower stretches of grass-covered land. With the soil here so saturated, water seeped out where the ground was exposed, trickling down out of the grass-covered earth with a gurgle and forming rivulets that eventually joined into a small stream that wound away across the moor. It was as if Remus could look right under the skin of the moor, into the beat and flow of its watery heart.
Crouching down beside this spot, Remus let himself go still, and breathe. He hadn’t allowed himself to fully feel how exhausting it was to be among strangers at all times. Now, listening to the trickling of the water, he let his shoulders sink in relief.
Oh, it was good to be alone and quiet.
As Remus closed his eyes, letting the constant watchfulness of life with the pack ebb away, he felt a stab of longing. Just loneliness, he told himself. Missing London, the company of the Order. Not…anyone in particular.
But try as he might, he couldn’t stop himself from seeing Tonks in his mind’s eye, her quick smile and quicker laugh, her lovely, lively face, the expressive gestures of her hands as she related some story she knew would make him laugh. Remus tried at first to fight the longing, but finally he gave up and let it come, bowed his head there where the moor poured out its secret heart and allowed all his regrets to surface.
Finally, when he felt able to stand again, Remus rose to his feet and continued on over the moor.
When he made his way back to the camp, late in the afternoon after a far-ranging walk, Remus found the clearing nearly empty except for Anna, still ensconced in her hammock but sitting upright now, and Ronan and Tamara, seated a little way off but clearly keeping an eye out for the Mother’s safety.
Now was as good a time as any to attempt a conversation. Remus approached the hammock, bowed his head and asked, “Mother, may I speak?”
She waved him closer. “Yes, child, speak.”
Remus stepped in, then squatted down so he was below her eye level, and spoke deferentially. “How was this full moon for you, Mother?”
“These bones are old and I can’t run like I used to,” she sighed. “But I can still feel the tides in my blood when the full moon rises. And as long as I can feel that, I know I’m alive.”
“Does the transformation become more difficult, over the years?”
She gave a gentle shrug. “Each transformation is the small price we pay before and after for the hours of running free in between.”
Remus drew a fortifying breath. “I hope I’m not too impertinent in asking, but there’s something I’m curious about…”
The Mother chuckled. “You were quite surprised this morning, weren’t you, City Wolf, to learn we retain memories in our human minds from the time we spend in our wolf bodies?”
“I – yes. I was surprised to hear that. Wolfsbane Potion is the only way I know to retain the human mind during the transformation.”
Anna shook her head impatiently. “Not the human mind. The wolf mind. We inhabit the wolf mind during transformation, no longer bound by human restrictions. But, with training, one can learn to carry over into the human mind certain sense memories experienced by the wolf mind.”
“So, they’re not full memories, then?” Remus asked, trying to understand. “Not a factual recollection of what happened, but only sense impressions?”
Anna laughed again. “I don’t know about you, City Wolf, but my sense impressions serve me more than well enough as memories. I remember precisely what the grass felt like under my paws, how far I ran, every creature I encountered, how the forest smelled after a light rain. What is more factual than that?”
“But you don’t retain your human mind. I mean – you can’t control what you do, stop yourself from attacking someone.”
“My wolf mind is more than capable of governing interactions with other creatures I encounter. I don’t need a human mind for that.” Her tone was disapproving.
“But you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from attacking a human, no matter how well you might remember it afterward?”
She shifted in annoyance within her hammock. “We don’t set out to attack humans, City Wolf, no matter what you may believe. If a human strays into our territory despite the repelling enchantments we use specifically for their protection – that is not our fault. Any human who makes it into werewolf territory on a full moon night despite our magic can only have done so through deliberate effort and disregard for our privacy. No, I’m not concerned about such humans, and I see no reason to give up my wolf mind for their sake.”
“And you don’t mind giving up control?” Remus asked, honestly curious. “Giving over your mind and body to something you can’t control?”
“Oh, City Wolf,” she said. “Is that how you live in the city? Always afraid to lose control, afraid to let your wolf mind free?”
“I would never forgive myself if I hurt someone,” Remus said. He shivered at memories of the times, too many times, when he had nearly done so despite his best precautions.
“This is what comes of living among humans,” Anna said, gazing down at him. She sounded honestly distressed. “How terrible. It’s good that you’ve found your way to us now.”
Remus didn’t know what to say to that. “Everyone in the pack can do this, then? Retain the memories of what their senses experienced while they were transformed?”
Anna shook her head. “It takes time to learn it – River Run is still too young to have fully mastered the art. Trouble is teaching her, bit by bit after each full moon, to seek back into her wolf mind and recall. It takes years of practice to learn it well, but it is one of the most important skills each generation passes down to the next. Eirwen, too, has joined us too recently, she hasn’t learned this yet.”
Remus noted the use of Eirwen’s human name, no nickname. Another sign she was not yet fully accepted by the pack. He wished he dared ask something as impertinent as why the pack were so slow to accept a young and seemingly harmless girl.
Anna asked a question instead. “You’ve been out wandering today, haven’t you, City Wolf? I can smell the wind of the open moors on you.”
“Yes, Mother,” Remus said. “I was exploring a bit, getting to know the landscape.”
“And it was good to have some solitude,” she suggested shrewdly.
“Yes, I suppose that’s true as well. I meant no offence, Mother. I’m not yet accustomed to living in a pack.”
Anna peered down at him from her hammock, her gaze astute despite her cloudy eyes. “You miss them, the humans.”
“I – no – yes, I suppose I do. But that doesn’t mean I plan to leave here.”
“You wish, though, that you could return to them.”
“No, Mother.”
“Hmm,” Anna said, not agreeing. She closed her eyes and leaned back. “Why don’t you rest, City Wolf, until the others return.”
Remus knew he had been dismissed. “Yes, Mother. Thank you, Mother.”
Quietly, Remus left her and went to sit on his small bit of canvas at the foot of the tree where he slept each night.
– – – – –
In front of her mirror on the day the Hogwarts Express would arrive to bring the students back to school, Tonks turned all her focus to trying to change her appearance. She wanted to turn her hair purple or something, some little sign of cheer for Harry and the other kids. But no matter how she concentrated and screwed up her face, nothing changed, and Tonks couldn’t begin to guess what she ought to be doing differently. She’d never had trouble transforming. She’d always just done it, without thought.
“Damn it,” she growled at her persistently mousy reflection in the mirror. The drizzling grey day outside wasn’t helping her mood, either. Foul-tempered, Tonks ran a hand through her limp hair, grabbed her cloak, and banged out the door of her flat.
She was on patrol duty in the village all afternoon, until the Hogwarts Express arrived, so Tonks set out to patrol the streets. Hogsmeade looked grim, there was no denying it, with so many of its shops shuttered under the leaden sky. Even Zonko’s Joke Shop, scene of so many happy hours for Tonks and her friends during their school days, was boarded up. It caused Tonks a pang each time she saw the wooden planks nailed over what should have been a brightly lit doorway.
Other shops were still doing business, but even they had a subdued look about them, their signs and window displays less eye-catching than in years past, as if in the hope that being unremarkable would keep them safe.
Some shopkeepers nodded politely as Tonks went by; others pretended not to notice her. The young shop assistant at Scrivenshaft’s, busily arranging a window display, was the only one who gave Tonks a cheery wave when she passed.
Tonks kept herself just short of physical misery with the help of frequent warming charms, but there was no helping the fact that patrolling Hogsmeade’s streets was a bleak task, walking up and down dreary streets for hours on end with nothing much to think about except how disheartening Hogsmeade looked these days. It was a relief when dusk fell and it was finally time to meet the train.
Tonks stayed to one side of the station platform, unobtrusive but watchful, waiting for Harry to emerge amidst the tumult of teenagers streaming from the doors of the train.
But Harry wasn’t among them.
Tonks puffed a frustrated breath through the limp hair that hung in her face. Right, a boy with an Invisibility Cloak and a knack for, if not finding trouble, then certainly trouble finding him: Where would he be?
Tonks jumped aboard the train and started a methodical sweep along its length, moving quickly now, knowing she needed to locate Harry before the train departed again for London. When she came to a compartment with its blinds drawn down, she knew she had the one.
The train lurched, its engine rumbling to life, and Tonks yanked open the compartment door. It looked empty, but that didn’t mean much. She groped her way through the compartment, her hands taking over the search now, quick but thorough.
There, on the floor, a solid form that shouldn’t be there, invisible to the eye. For a moment, Tonks flashed back horribly to the night at the Ministry, Kingsley discovering the inert form of Hestia Jones outside the door to the Department of Mysteries, unconscious and concealed under an Invisibility Cloak.
Tonks yanked at the Cloak covering this particular inert form – which of course turned out to be Harry. She breathed in relief to see he wasn’t even unconscious, just Petrified.
“Wotcher, Harry,” she said briskly. She cast a strong Finite Incantatem and Harry sat up, wiping blood from a bruised-looking face. No time to deal with that now, though. “We’d better get out of here, quickly,” Tonks told him. The train was starting to move, steam billowing past the windows. “Come on, we’ll jump.”
She led Harry into the corridor and flung open the first door they came to. The train was still moving slowly, the platform gently sliding away alongside them. Tonks jumped, knowing Harry would follow.
He landed beside her on the platform, only slightly off-balance, and glanced after the train as it pulled away. His face looked even worse than Tonks had realised in the dim compartment on the train. Whatever – or whoever – had caused that injury, Harry’s pride probably wasn’t doing so well either.
He looked at her and Tonks saw him flush with embarrassment. “Who did it?” she asked.
“Draco Malfoy,” Harry grumbled, looking annoyed.
Tonks, though, was glad to hear it had been nothing more than a schoolboy scuffle – not, say, Death Eaters who’d covertly boarded the train somewhere along the way.
“Thanks for… well…” Harry fumbled.
“No problem,” Tonks answered, sparing him the need to articulate it. Then she added, “I can fix your nose if you stand still.” Minor healing spells she could do practically in her sleep, after years of being both clumsy and an Auror.
She mended Harry’s nose with a flick of her wand and a quick “Episkey,” and now it was Remus she was thinking of, Remus the night he’d come to her after a run-in at a gathering of werewolves, when she’d patched him up and tucked him into her bed… No, she shouldn’t let herself think of that now.
Harry was touching his nose gingerly, looking surprised to find it healed. “Thanks a lot!” he said, and Tonks thought she ought to tease him for having no faith in her abilities, but found she couldn’t summon the energy.
“You’d better put that Cloak back on, and we can walk up to the school,” she said instead.
While Harry was occupied with his Cloak, Tonks cast her Patronus to send a message to Hagrid. She hoped she’d managed to do it quickly enough that Harry might not notice her Patronus’ new form… No, sure enough, he was staring after it. “Was that a Patronus?” he asked, looking thoughtful.
“Yes,” Tonks said, supressing the urge to try to explain it away. She’d only draw more attention to her changed Patronus if she started babbling on about it. Instead she said, “I’m sending word to the castle that I’ve got you, or they’ll worry. Come on, we’d better not dawdle.”
They started along the lane from Hogsmeade Station to Hogwarts. Harry asked how Tonks had found him on the train, and she explained. Then they walked on in silence.
The gates to the school grounds were locked, as always. The sight of Harry attempting Alohomora on a lock enchanted by Dumbledore himself should have struck Tonks as funny, but again, she couldn’t seem to muster the energy. No wonder Harry was making a face like he was finding Tonks terrible company.
Fortunately, within moments Tonks spotted a lantern bobbing down from the castle. “Someone’s coming down for you,” she said. “Look.” She peered through the darkness, expecting to see Hagrid’s familiar bulk looming along the path.
But the figure that emerged out of the night wasn’t Hagrid. It was Snape.
And Snape didn’t waste a moment before he having a go at Harry for his tardiness, his appearance and seemingly anything else that came to mind, even as he was opening the gates to allow the boy in to safety. Tonks would never understand the mind of Severus Snape.
Then he turned to Tonks and had a go at her, too, for the silver wolf that had borne her message. “I was interested to see your new Patronus,” Snape sneered, as he swung the gates shut in Tonks’ face. “I think you were better off with the old one. The new one looks weak.”
Tonks reeled back in shock. It was one thing for Tonks herself to disparage the new shape her Patronus had taken. She did that regularly, frustrated to no end by its transformation and her inability to make it change back. But for Snape to insult her Patronus, which so unavoidably represented Remus, when Remus was one of the few people who unfailingly remained civil in the face of Snape’s rudeness and his petty slights…
She might well have hexed Snape if Harry hadn’t been there.
While Tonks stood frozen, Harry and Snape had started up towards the castle. “Good night,” Harry called back to her. “Thanks for…everything.”
“See you, Harry,” Tonks answered automatically, glad to see him inside the gates and heading up to the castle and safety. Even if it was at the side of that hateful old bat.
She stumbled back to the village and up to her attic flat, anger still pulsing in her veins. Anger at Snape for his cruelty, anger at Remus in absentia for allowing himself to be the target of that cruelty. Then anger at herself for being angry at Remus when the problem wasn’t him, it was Snape.
Getting angry at yourself for being angry? she thought, as she slammed the flat’s door behind her, defiantly blocking out the world. Now who exactly is that going to help?
Tonks stalked to the mirror again and glared at her reflection with its limp, mousy hair. She hated that she looked like this. She hated that she felt like this. Worn down by grief over Sirius, over Remus, over everything that had happened in the last few months to the world as she’d thought she knew it. And a little frightened by her inability to simply snap out of it, like she always would have done before.
She needed work, that’s what she needed. She needed something meaningful to do.
Early the next morning, Tonks strode to the flat Savage and Dawlish shared, next to the Post Office. Dawlish answered to her knock, looking surprised and only newly awake.
“Tonks,” he said. “We hadn’t planned a meeting for today, had we?”
“I have a plan,” she said. “And I figured I should run it by someone before I start.”
Dawlish blinked. “All right, then, come in.”
Inside the flat, Tonks outlined her idea. “We’re supposed to make ourselves experts on everything that happens in and around Hogsmeade, right? But we don’t know much about the village’s residents, really. I want to work on that systematically, by interviewing or observing every single person in the village individually. I’ll get Magical Census data from the Ministry, then make a point of meeting everybody, one by one.”
“That’s a lot of people,” Dawlish pointed out sceptically. “Hogsmeade looks small, but more witches and wizards fit in this place than you might suppose.”
“That’s fine, time’s one thing I’ve got,” Tonks said. “And I’ll do this on my own time,” she added, in case that hadn’t been clear. “I just think we’d do well to get a sense of where people’s loyalties lie. I’m not going to ask them outright, obviously, but I can get a good sense of things just from chatting with people. I’ll be that nosy, friendly, well-meaning one who’s eager to get to know everybody.”
Dawlish laughed, likely thinking that Tonks was all those things already. And she smiled, knowing she’d gained his approval for her idea.
Setting the plan in motion was as easy as popping next door to hire a post owl and sending off a request to the Ministry’s Magical Census subdivision. Then came an aggravatingly long wait, during which Tonks started to wonder if her time might be better spent going down to London to badger the Census wizards herself. Finally, though, an owl tapped at her attic window late one evening. She hurried to open the latch and let it in.
The parchment scroll the owl carried was disconcertingly small, given that it was meant to contain all of Hogsmeade’s current census data. But Tonks unrolled the scroll to find it had been subjected to a clever little diminishment charm, and came with precise instructions explaining the countercharm to make it grow again. Maybe the Census wizards weren’t quite as useless as she’d been uncharitably thinking.
Tonks scanned the parchment, taking in the several hundred names of Hogsmeade’s residents with a growing sense of gladness at having such a clear task ahead of her. Good, this would keep her busy for a while. And maybe even turn up something useful, too.
(continue to CHAPTER SIX: Knocking on Doors)
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 5: Quiet
I’m on the other side of the bridge and nowhere yet
–Halla Norðfjörð, The Bridge
Remus woke to a hand touching his face and for a moment his half-asleep mind made it into a gentler touch – Tonks’ touch – and he sighed.
Then a voice said, “City? Hey, City Wolf.”
Remus opened his eyes to see Brighid grinning down at him, her auburn hair a bright halo around her head. “Ah, there we go. River was afraid you were dead.” River, short for River Run – that was little Joy. Brighid chuckled, turning away, then called back to him, “Breakfast, if you want it.”
Staring up into the tree branches that were mostly managing to stave off a drizzling rain, Remus took stock of his body, as he always did after a full moon. He found no aches and pains beyond the usual, and no new injuries. It seemed running with a pack agreed with him.
He winced, uncomfortable at that thought.
Pushing himself carefully up from the ground, Remus made his way to the fire, where the pack were gathered. Breakfast turned out to be actual toast, which added a bizarre but homey touch to the morning. Remus couldn’t imagine where they’d got the bread from, but skewering it on sticks and holding it over the embers did well enough to turn it into a passable approximation of breakfast toast.
Remus collected a piece of bread and settled down to toast it next to Narun and Tamara, who were leaning together next to the fire and chatting about…what they’d done the night before. The chases and the games, the hunting, all that they’d experienced while transformed.
Remus stopped still with surprise. “You remember what you did last night?” he blurted out, before his tired brain had a chance to catch up with his mouth, and yes, damn it, there were distinct disadvantages to living in the wild without caffeinated beverages.
Narun and Tamara stopped talking and stared at him. In fact, everyone around the fire was now staring at him.
“Er, yeah,” Narun said, after an excruciating pause. “What, you don’t?”
Remus was astounded. He’d never kept his own mind and memories during a full moon, beyond the vaguest of sense impressions, except with the exceedingly difficult to procure Wolfsbane Potion, and surely they didn’t have that here. How, then, could these werewolves retain their memories of what they’d done in the night?
That question was followed by a further uncomfortable thought: If Remus had done anything untoward or unacceptable to the pack while transformed, everyone here would remember it –except him.
He cast a glance around the circle. Brighid caught his eye, read his face in an instant, and smirked. “Don’t worry, City, you behaved. Seems you play well with others.”
Collecting himself, Remus nodded and returned his attention to his toast. He would have to find an opportunity to ask more about this, how the pack were able to remember their full moon nights.
The day after a full moon was a rest day for the pack, Remus learned, the one day of each month when their busy hands could still. As the rain lightened, the pack’s members began to drift away from the fire. The younger ones moved with enviable ease, as if their bodies hadn’t been torn apart in the night, though those who were Remus’ age moved with the same ginger care as he did.
And Anna, the Mother, where was she? She hadn’t been at the fire for breakfast. Remus looked around and spotted her tucked away in a hammock strung between two trees. Only her hands were visible, waving above the sides of the hammock as she talked with several others who crouched nearby in keen attendance.
Bringing his attention back to the fire, Remus found he was the only one still sitting there aside from Serena, who had Joy cuddled dozily in her lap.
Well, how was he to make progress here if he didn’t dare to speak to the others?
“River’s a very sweet child,” Remus said, trying to find something non-confrontational to say. But even that caused Serena’s head to snap up with suspicion. “The full moon isn’t a frightening time for her?”
“No,” Serena answered shortly. “She’s used to it by now.”
Remus ached to ask more – how long had that been, how long had the child been a werewolf? Instead he dared at last to ask, “Is she your daughter?”
That earned him another glare. “No. My sister’s.” Serena’s features tightened unhappily as she said sister, and now Remus had another mystery to wonder about. “Werewolves can’t bear children. Surely even you know that?”
Serena dropped her gaze back to the child in her lap, and Remus decided discretion was the better part of valour, and perhaps he ought to take his unwelcome presence elsewhere for now. He stood, joints aching, and looked around. Most of the pack seemed to have scattered to their own pursuits, although the Mother was still in her hammock, with Narun and Adair at her side.
As Remus watched, Anna’s hand gesture from within the hammock, and in response Narun called Eirwen over to them. Anna said something Remus couldn’t hear, but he saw Eirwen settle down on her heels next to the hammock, and Anna’s hand reached out to stroke Eirwen’s hair gently back from her face.
Remus was glad to see that sign of affection. That the pack should be slow to accept him – an adult werewolf with a suspect background – was understandable. But that they should be slow to accept Eirwen, who was so young, seemed unkind and a little strange.
Seeing as he didn’t seem to be needed at the moment, Remus stretched his aching limbs and set off for a gentle walk, through the small stand of trees and out to the open moor.
It was lovely countryside, at least when it wasn’t raining. And Remus supposed it was good to get away from the grit and smog of London.
All right, yes, he was stretching it, struggling to find reasons to be glad to be here. Remus was no particular fan of cities as a whole, but it had been perilously pleasant to live in London, near to so many people he could call friends.
He’d got too accustomed to life within the artificial protection of the Order, that was all. He should never have allowed himself to forget that this was who he really was, a werewolf. And here, with a werewolf pack, was where he could be useful.
His mind wandering thus, Remus found himself following roughly the route he’d taken the other day with Ronan while gathering firewood. After twenty minutes or so, he came to a spot he remembered, where the ground level dropped suddenly by perhaps a foot, leaving a vertical slice of earth exposed between the higher and lower stretches of grass-covered land. With the soil here so saturated, water seeped out where the ground was exposed, trickling down out of the grass-covered earth with a gurgle and forming rivulets that eventually joined into a small stream that wound away across the moor. It was as if Remus could look right under the skin of the moor, into the beat and flow of its watery heart.
Crouching down beside this spot, Remus let himself go still, and breathe. He hadn’t allowed himself to fully feel how exhausting it was to be among strangers at all times. Now, listening to the trickling of the water, he let his shoulders sink in relief.
Oh, it was good to be alone and quiet.
As Remus closed his eyes, letting the constant watchfulness of life with the pack ebb away, he felt a stab of longing. Just loneliness, he told himself. Missing London, the company of the Order. Not…anyone in particular.
But try as he might, he couldn’t stop himself from seeing Tonks in his mind’s eye, her quick smile and quicker laugh, her lovely, lively face, the expressive gestures of her hands as she related some story she knew would make him laugh. Remus tried at first to fight the longing, but finally he gave up and let it come, bowed his head there where the moor poured out its secret heart and allowed all his regrets to surface.
Finally, when he felt able to stand again, Remus rose to his feet and continued on over the moor.
When he made his way back to the camp, late in the afternoon after a far-ranging walk, Remus found the clearing nearly empty except for Anna, still ensconced in her hammock but sitting upright now, and Ronan and Tamara, seated a little way off but clearly keeping an eye out for the Mother’s safety.
Now was as good a time as any to attempt a conversation. Remus approached the hammock, bowed his head and asked, “Mother, may I speak?”
She waved him closer. “Yes, child, speak.”
Remus stepped in, then squatted down so he was below her eye level, and spoke deferentially. “How was this full moon for you, Mother?”
“These bones are old and I can’t run like I used to,” she sighed. “But I can still feel the tides in my blood when the full moon rises. And as long as I can feel that, I know I’m alive.”
“Does the transformation become more difficult, over the years?”
She gave a gentle shrug. “Each transformation is the small price we pay before and after for the hours of running free in between.”
Remus drew a fortifying breath. “I hope I’m not too impertinent in asking, but there’s something I’m curious about…”
The Mother chuckled. “You were quite surprised this morning, weren’t you, City Wolf, to learn we retain memories in our human minds from the time we spend in our wolf bodies?”
“I – yes. I was surprised to hear that. Wolfsbane Potion is the only way I know to retain the human mind during the transformation.”
Anna shook her head impatiently. “Not the human mind. The wolf mind. We inhabit the wolf mind during transformation, no longer bound by human restrictions. But, with training, one can learn to carry over into the human mind certain sense memories experienced by the wolf mind.”
“So, they’re not full memories, then?” Remus asked, trying to understand. “Not a factual recollection of what happened, but only sense impressions?”
Anna laughed again. “I don’t know about you, City Wolf, but my sense impressions serve me more than well enough as memories. I remember precisely what the grass felt like under my paws, how far I ran, every creature I encountered, how the forest smelled after a light rain. What is more factual than that?”
“But you don’t retain your human mind. I mean – you can’t control what you do, stop yourself from attacking someone.”
“My wolf mind is more than capable of governing interactions with other creatures I encounter. I don’t need a human mind for that.” Her tone was disapproving.
“But you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from attacking a human, no matter how well you might remember it afterward?”
She shifted in annoyance within her hammock. “We don’t set out to attack humans, City Wolf, no matter what you may believe. If a human strays into our territory despite the repelling enchantments we use specifically for their protection – that is not our fault. Any human who makes it into werewolf territory on a full moon night despite our magic can only have done so through deliberate effort and disregard for our privacy. No, I’m not concerned about such humans, and I see no reason to give up my wolf mind for their sake.”
“And you don’t mind giving up control?” Remus asked, honestly curious. “Giving over your mind and body to something you can’t control?”
“Oh, City Wolf,” she said. “Is that how you live in the city? Always afraid to lose control, afraid to let your wolf mind free?”
“I would never forgive myself if I hurt someone,” Remus said. He shivered at memories of the times, too many times, when he had nearly done so despite his best precautions.
“This is what comes of living among humans,” Anna said, gazing down at him. She sounded honestly distressed. “How terrible. It’s good that you’ve found your way to us now.”
Remus didn’t know what to say to that. “Everyone in the pack can do this, then? Retain the memories of what their senses experienced while they were transformed?”
Anna shook her head. “It takes time to learn it – River Run is still too young to have fully mastered the art. Trouble is teaching her, bit by bit after each full moon, to seek back into her wolf mind and recall. It takes years of practice to learn it well, but it is one of the most important skills each generation passes down to the next. Eirwen, too, has joined us too recently, she hasn’t learned this yet.”
Remus noted the use of Eirwen’s human name, no nickname. Another sign she was not yet fully accepted by the pack. He wished he dared ask something as impertinent as why the pack were so slow to accept a young and seemingly harmless girl.
Anna asked a question instead. “You’ve been out wandering today, haven’t you, City Wolf? I can smell the wind of the open moors on you.”
“Yes, Mother,” Remus said. “I was exploring a bit, getting to know the landscape.”
“And it was good to have some solitude,” she suggested shrewdly.
“Yes, I suppose that’s true as well. I meant no offence, Mother. I’m not yet accustomed to living in a pack.”
Anna peered down at him from her hammock, her gaze astute despite her cloudy eyes. “You miss them, the humans.”
“I – no – yes, I suppose I do. But that doesn’t mean I plan to leave here.”
“You wish, though, that you could return to them.”
“No, Mother.”
“Hmm,” Anna said, not agreeing. She closed her eyes and leaned back. “Why don’t you rest, City Wolf, until the others return.”
Remus knew he had been dismissed. “Yes, Mother. Thank you, Mother.”
Quietly, Remus left her and went to sit on his small bit of canvas at the foot of the tree where he slept each night.
– – – – –
In front of her mirror on the day the Hogwarts Express would arrive to bring the students back to school, Tonks turned all her focus to trying to change her appearance. She wanted to turn her hair purple or something, some little sign of cheer for Harry and the other kids. But no matter how she concentrated and screwed up her face, nothing changed, and Tonks couldn’t begin to guess what she ought to be doing differently. She’d never had trouble transforming. She’d always just done it, without thought.
“Damn it,” she growled at her persistently mousy reflection in the mirror. The drizzling grey day outside wasn’t helping her mood, either. Foul-tempered, Tonks ran a hand through her limp hair, grabbed her cloak, and banged out the door of her flat.
She was on patrol duty in the village all afternoon, until the Hogwarts Express arrived, so Tonks set out to patrol the streets. Hogsmeade looked grim, there was no denying it, with so many of its shops shuttered under the leaden sky. Even Zonko’s Joke Shop, scene of so many happy hours for Tonks and her friends during their school days, was boarded up. It caused Tonks a pang each time she saw the wooden planks nailed over what should have been a brightly lit doorway.
Other shops were still doing business, but even they had a subdued look about them, their signs and window displays less eye-catching than in years past, as if in the hope that being unremarkable would keep them safe.
Some shopkeepers nodded politely as Tonks went by; others pretended not to notice her. The young shop assistant at Scrivenshaft’s, busily arranging a window display, was the only one who gave Tonks a cheery wave when she passed.
Tonks kept herself just short of physical misery with the help of frequent warming charms, but there was no helping the fact that patrolling Hogsmeade’s streets was a bleak task, walking up and down dreary streets for hours on end with nothing much to think about except how disheartening Hogsmeade looked these days. It was a relief when dusk fell and it was finally time to meet the train.
Tonks stayed to one side of the station platform, unobtrusive but watchful, waiting for Harry to emerge amidst the tumult of teenagers streaming from the doors of the train.
But Harry wasn’t among them.
Tonks puffed a frustrated breath through the limp hair that hung in her face. Right, a boy with an Invisibility Cloak and a knack for, if not finding trouble, then certainly trouble finding him: Where would he be?
Tonks jumped aboard the train and started a methodical sweep along its length, moving quickly now, knowing she needed to locate Harry before the train departed again for London. When she came to a compartment with its blinds drawn down, she knew she had the one.
The train lurched, its engine rumbling to life, and Tonks yanked open the compartment door. It looked empty, but that didn’t mean much. She groped her way through the compartment, her hands taking over the search now, quick but thorough.
There, on the floor, a solid form that shouldn’t be there, invisible to the eye. For a moment, Tonks flashed back horribly to the night at the Ministry, Kingsley discovering the inert form of Hestia Jones outside the door to the Department of Mysteries, unconscious and concealed under an Invisibility Cloak.
Tonks yanked at the Cloak covering this particular inert form – which of course turned out to be Harry. She breathed in relief to see he wasn’t even unconscious, just Petrified.
“Wotcher, Harry,” she said briskly. She cast a strong Finite Incantatem and Harry sat up, wiping blood from a bruised-looking face. No time to deal with that now, though. “We’d better get out of here, quickly,” Tonks told him. The train was starting to move, steam billowing past the windows. “Come on, we’ll jump.”
She led Harry into the corridor and flung open the first door they came to. The train was still moving slowly, the platform gently sliding away alongside them. Tonks jumped, knowing Harry would follow.
He landed beside her on the platform, only slightly off-balance, and glanced after the train as it pulled away. His face looked even worse than Tonks had realised in the dim compartment on the train. Whatever – or whoever – had caused that injury, Harry’s pride probably wasn’t doing so well either.
He looked at her and Tonks saw him flush with embarrassment. “Who did it?” she asked.
“Draco Malfoy,” Harry grumbled, looking annoyed.
Tonks, though, was glad to hear it had been nothing more than a schoolboy scuffle – not, say, Death Eaters who’d covertly boarded the train somewhere along the way.
“Thanks for… well…” Harry fumbled.
“No problem,” Tonks answered, sparing him the need to articulate it. Then she added, “I can fix your nose if you stand still.” Minor healing spells she could do practically in her sleep, after years of being both clumsy and an Auror.
She mended Harry’s nose with a flick of her wand and a quick “Episkey,” and now it was Remus she was thinking of, Remus the night he’d come to her after a run-in at a gathering of werewolves, when she’d patched him up and tucked him into her bed… No, she shouldn’t let herself think of that now.
Harry was touching his nose gingerly, looking surprised to find it healed. “Thanks a lot!” he said, and Tonks thought she ought to tease him for having no faith in her abilities, but found she couldn’t summon the energy.
“You’d better put that Cloak back on, and we can walk up to the school,” she said instead.
While Harry was occupied with his Cloak, Tonks cast her Patronus to send a message to Hagrid. She hoped she’d managed to do it quickly enough that Harry might not notice her Patronus’ new form… No, sure enough, he was staring after it. “Was that a Patronus?” he asked, looking thoughtful.
“Yes,” Tonks said, supressing the urge to try to explain it away. She’d only draw more attention to her changed Patronus if she started babbling on about it. Instead she said, “I’m sending word to the castle that I’ve got you, or they’ll worry. Come on, we’d better not dawdle.”
They started along the lane from Hogsmeade Station to Hogwarts. Harry asked how Tonks had found him on the train, and she explained. Then they walked on in silence.
The gates to the school grounds were locked, as always. The sight of Harry attempting Alohomora on a lock enchanted by Dumbledore himself should have struck Tonks as funny, but again, she couldn’t seem to muster the energy. No wonder Harry was making a face like he was finding Tonks terrible company.
Fortunately, within moments Tonks spotted a lantern bobbing down from the castle. “Someone’s coming down for you,” she said. “Look.” She peered through the darkness, expecting to see Hagrid’s familiar bulk looming along the path.
But the figure that emerged out of the night wasn’t Hagrid. It was Snape.
And Snape didn’t waste a moment before he having a go at Harry for his tardiness, his appearance and seemingly anything else that came to mind, even as he was opening the gates to allow the boy in to safety. Tonks would never understand the mind of Severus Snape.
Then he turned to Tonks and had a go at her, too, for the silver wolf that had borne her message. “I was interested to see your new Patronus,” Snape sneered, as he swung the gates shut in Tonks’ face. “I think you were better off with the old one. The new one looks weak.”
Tonks reeled back in shock. It was one thing for Tonks herself to disparage the new shape her Patronus had taken. She did that regularly, frustrated to no end by its transformation and her inability to make it change back. But for Snape to insult her Patronus, which so unavoidably represented Remus, when Remus was one of the few people who unfailingly remained civil in the face of Snape’s rudeness and his petty slights…
She might well have hexed Snape if Harry hadn’t been there.
While Tonks stood frozen, Harry and Snape had started up towards the castle. “Good night,” Harry called back to her. “Thanks for…everything.”
“See you, Harry,” Tonks answered automatically, glad to see him inside the gates and heading up to the castle and safety. Even if it was at the side of that hateful old bat.
She stumbled back to the village and up to her attic flat, anger still pulsing in her veins. Anger at Snape for his cruelty, anger at Remus in absentia for allowing himself to be the target of that cruelty. Then anger at herself for being angry at Remus when the problem wasn’t him, it was Snape.
Getting angry at yourself for being angry? she thought, as she slammed the flat’s door behind her, defiantly blocking out the world. Now who exactly is that going to help?
Tonks stalked to the mirror again and glared at her reflection with its limp, mousy hair. She hated that she looked like this. She hated that she felt like this. Worn down by grief over Sirius, over Remus, over everything that had happened in the last few months to the world as she’d thought she knew it. And a little frightened by her inability to simply snap out of it, like she always would have done before.
She needed work, that’s what she needed. She needed something meaningful to do.
Early the next morning, Tonks strode to the flat Savage and Dawlish shared, next to the Post Office. Dawlish answered to her knock, looking surprised and only newly awake.
“Tonks,” he said. “We hadn’t planned a meeting for today, had we?”
“I have a plan,” she said. “And I figured I should run it by someone before I start.”
Dawlish blinked. “All right, then, come in.”
Inside the flat, Tonks outlined her idea. “We’re supposed to make ourselves experts on everything that happens in and around Hogsmeade, right? But we don’t know much about the village’s residents, really. I want to work on that systematically, by interviewing or observing every single person in the village individually. I’ll get Magical Census data from the Ministry, then make a point of meeting everybody, one by one.”
“That’s a lot of people,” Dawlish pointed out sceptically. “Hogsmeade looks small, but more witches and wizards fit in this place than you might suppose.”
“That’s fine, time’s one thing I’ve got,” Tonks said. “And I’ll do this on my own time,” she added, in case that hadn’t been clear. “I just think we’d do well to get a sense of where people’s loyalties lie. I’m not going to ask them outright, obviously, but I can get a good sense of things just from chatting with people. I’ll be that nosy, friendly, well-meaning one who’s eager to get to know everybody.”
Dawlish laughed, likely thinking that Tonks was all those things already. And she smiled, knowing she’d gained his approval for her idea.
Setting the plan in motion was as easy as popping next door to hire a post owl and sending off a request to the Ministry’s Magical Census subdivision. Then came an aggravatingly long wait, during which Tonks started to wonder if her time might be better spent going down to London to badger the Census wizards herself. Finally, though, an owl tapped at her attic window late one evening. She hurried to open the latch and let it in.
The parchment scroll the owl carried was disconcertingly small, given that it was meant to contain all of Hogsmeade’s current census data. But Tonks unrolled the scroll to find it had been subjected to a clever little diminishment charm, and came with precise instructions explaining the countercharm to make it grow again. Maybe the Census wizards weren’t quite as useless as she’d been uncharitably thinking.
Tonks scanned the parchment, taking in the several hundred names of Hogsmeade’s residents with a growing sense of gladness at having such a clear task ahead of her. Good, this would keep her busy for a while. And maybe even turn up something useful, too.
(continue to CHAPTER SIX: Knocking on Doors)
