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 17: Worse Than No News

Oh, to see your dear face
To call out your dear name

–Lucie Thorne, When I Get There

The next morning, the Alpha was nowhere to be seen. Given how pensive he’d looked the night before, Remus supposed he’d gone somewhere to claim a bit of silence with his own thoughts.

The rest of the pack went about their usual tasks, but with a new lightness to their movements. Serena smiled at Remus over Joy’s head. Ronan, passing Remus on the way out of the lean-to, ducked his head with the respect due to an elder. And Eirwen, from where she sat in a corner of the lean-to twisting brittle moorland grasses into kindling, watched Remus all day with luminous eyes.

When the Alpha returned to the camp that evening, he summoned Remus to him. “Tell your Alpha in the city I am willing to parley,” he said.

It took Remus, standing with his head respectfully bowed, several seconds to parse that sentence. Your Alpha in the city. Oh: Dumbledore.

“I will meet him on neutral ground,” the Alpha continued. “You may send word to him to arrange it.”

Remus’ head felt light. At long last, he was being asked to do precisely what he’d come here all those months ago hoping to do, bring werewolves and humans together in dialogue.

“Yes, Alpha,” he said. “Thank you, Alpha.”

Tomorrow, he would find his way to a town and send an owl to Dumbledore, telling him that the Alpha of a werewolf pack was willing to meet.

– – – – –

On an icy day in March, within the walls of Hogwarts – those supposedly safe and impenetrable walls – Ron Weasley got himself poisoned by drinking mead intended for Dumbledore.

It made Tonks frantic to think this had happened on her watch, in a place she was supposed to be protecting. Someone was scheming against Dumbledore, but it was a student who had nearly died as a result. This was Katie Bell and that cursed necklace all over again – and both of those things, the cursed necklace and the poisoned mead, traced their origins back to Hogsmeade.

How had that mead got into the castle? Who had sent it? Who had poisoned it? Tonks barely slept for days, interviewing and re-interviewing everyone she could get her hands on. But no one had seen anything. No one knew.

A tearful Rosmerta insisted over and over that no one else but she could have been in the cellar where the mead was stored. No one else had the key.

There were bags under Rosmerta’s eyes and her skin looked ashen, when Tonks interviewed her later in the day after Ron’s near-poisoning. Rosmerta seemed to be taking the breach of her mead supply as personally as Tonks took this violation of the village’s safety under her watch.

In occasional moments of mad desperation, Tonks wondered if she should even suspect Rosmerta herself. But who could possibly have less reason to want to harm Dumbledore than kind and gentle-hearted Rosmerta?

Or could Rosmerta be under an Imperius curse? But her speech was clear and unaltered from its usual cadences, her eyes unclouded by confusion as she went about her work. It would have to be a pretty inexpertly cast Imperius, to affect the victim so patchily, leaving them their own master for much of the time.

And besides, once Tonks started casting doubts on Rosmerta, who’d been a friend to Dumbledore and all the Hogwarts staff for decades, where could she possibly end? In theory anyone in the village could be under an Imperius curse, and by the same token no one stood out as more likely to be compromised than anyone else. Tonks was at her wits’ end, and none of the possible solutions she turned around and around in her mind as she lay awake in her attic bedroom each night made any sense.

Day to day, Tonks stumbled on in a state of exhaustion. Dementors attacked the village with increasing frequency, sometimes several times in a week. Reliving her worst memories over and over, in those first moments before her Patronus charged the Dementors and drove them back, was draining. Tonks heard Sirius’ laughter, heard him shouting and whooping in battle at the Ministry, saw the wild and terrifying fervour in Bellatrix’s maniacal eyes. At night, too, Tonks’ dreams were unsettled, full of dark shapes and lurking menace.

As the weather thawed, the Ministry’s instructors sometimes brought the older students to the village for their Apparation lessons. Regardless of whether she was officially on duty, Tonks took to hanging about nearby whenever a lesson was taking place. She would not let another student be harmed on her watch.

One evening, as Tonks was making her weary way back to her flat after one such Apparition lesson, something caught her eye: a flash of gold amidst the grey cobblestones of the high street, outside the Three Broomsticks.

Was it a Galleon someone had dropped? Tonks thought so at first, but as she stooped to look more closely –

“Oh, goodness!” cried Madam Rosmerta. She’d materialised seemingly from nowhere and now swept in front of Tonks, scooping up the gold coin from the ground and tucking it away in her apron. “One of my regular customers, always so careless with his coins! I’ll make sure this gets back to him.” She gave a strange, high laugh, her hands fluttering nervously.

Tonks narrowed her eyes. This was not like the Rosmerta she knew, who was warm and funny and almost always unflappable.

“Are you all right?” Tonks asked.

Rosmerta laughed again, nervy and on edge, and brushed frantically at a wisp of hair that the cold wind kept blowing into her eyes. “Oh, yes, as much as anyone can be, I suppose. It’s just – oh, the Dementors all the time, and the fear of You-Know-Who, that he could come here any time with no warning, and the constant feeling you’re being watched, do you feel like that too? Like someone you can’t see is monitoring everything you do?” Her voice rose feverishly.

Tonks laid a concerned hand on her arm, and Rosmerta startled at the contact.

“Oh, ignore me!” Rosmerta cried. “I’m sorry, Tonks, listen to me going on and on! I should know better than to bother you, dear. You’ve got so many more important things to do than to worry about old me.”

“It’s my job,” Tonks assured her. “That’s my job, to worry about everybody in this village. Which includes you. Do you want to – to talk, or something? Sit down and chat for a bit?”

Rosmerta shifted her arm gently out from under Tonks’ hand. “No, really, I’m all right, love. You go on home, I’m sure you’ve had a long day, you don’t need anything more to fret about. Go on.” She patted Tonks’ hand and turned briskly back towards the pub. She disappeared inside, the door clacking neatly into place behind her.

Tonks stared after her, wishing she’d thought faster and found some way to be of help. What did it say about the state of the world if even unflappable Rosmerta was starting to crack?

– – – – –

They met on neutral ground, as the Alpha had requested, on an open stretch of moorland far from any village and far from the werewolves’ camp, shortly before the full moon.

Remus stood by the Alpha, beside him but a little behind, and waited. He hadn’t been able to give Dumbledore a more specific meeting time than “when the sun is high in the sky,” seeing as none of them here kept timepieces.

But it was not long before Dumbledore came striding towards them across the moor. Dumbledore had done them the courtesy, Remus saw, of arriving on foot rather than by Apparition, to keep himself and the Alpha on level footing. Remus’ heart leapt in his chest at this little reminder of how attuned Dumbledore was to potential intercultural pitfalls. It made Remus think this meeting could actually work.

Dumbledore reached them and inclined his head in a bow. To Remus’ surprise, the Alpha bowed back. Both men lifted their heads.

“You are the Alpha of this group that would oppose Voldemort,” the Alpha said.

“Yes, my role could be described that way,” agreed Dumbledore, with a slight smile. “My name is Albus Dumbledore. Please feel free to call me Albus.”

“My name is Silver Birch,” the Alpha said, and Remus blinked back his own startled reaction. He himself would never have dared to ask the Alpha his name. Once a werewolf was an Alpha, he needed no other title. Even Greyback, for all he used that name among humans, was simply “Alpha” to his own pack.

“Silver Birch, it is my very great pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Dumbledore said.

“Likewise,” the Alpha said, his voice formal and grave.

“It is an honour to be invited here to speak with you. I know the harm your kind have often suffered at the hands of my kind, and I recognise the great trust required for such a meeting.”

“The werewolf Quiet has vouched for you,” the Alpha said, indicating Remus with one hand.

Dumbledore’s eyes caught Remus’, wry and gently amused. “Indeed. Then I am very grateful to Remus, or Quiet, as you call him.”

These introductions complete, the Alpha proceeded directly to business. “I am not interested in joining your war,” he said. “It is a wizards’ war, and concerns us only when it encroaches on our lives, as it has lately done. It is a strange day when a werewolf rather than a man is the one threatening to take away what little freedom a werewolf has, but we have arrived at strange days. And so I would hear what your side have to say.”

Dumbledore inclined his head. “It would be my pleasure to oblige that request.”

Remus cleared his throat softly and said, “I will leave you to conduct your discussion in confidence. Please call on me if you need me.” Remus was here to serve as facilitator and cultural translator, but it was not his place to hear what the two leaders discussed, unless they chose to share that with him.

The Alpha and Dumbledore both nodded, so Remus walked a distance away across the moor, far enough that he could still make out their figures but not hear their voices.

Remus stood there on the open moor, feeling the brisk March wind sharp on his face, with such elation rising in him that he could barely breathe. The leader of the Order and the leader of the pack were talking. It was more than Remus had ever dared to hope.

The two men had spoken without pause for well over an hour when the Alpha finally raised an arm to summon Remus.

“It has been a great pleasure to speak with you,” Dumbledore was saying when Remus reached them, and indeed he looked quite moved. He extended his hand and the Alpha, to Remus’ surprise, took it in his own and shook it. It was a surprisingly human gesture.

The Alpha released Dumbledore’s hand and inclined his head. “I return the sentiment.”

“Remus,” Dumbledore said, smiling as he turned to where Remus stood a little apart from them. “Silver Birch and I have had a most fruitful conversation. I thank you for arranging it.”

“It has been my honour,” Remus said formally.

“We have been talking not only of the current conflict, but also of protective measures and legal reforms that might make life among wizards more tenable for werewolves,” Dumbledore went on. “There is much still to discuss, and we would like to continue this dialogue we have begun. Since we will not always both be able to leave our respective obligations in order to meet, we have agreed to each appoint a liaison.”

“You shall be the pack’s liaison, Quiet,” the Alpha said. “You know the humans best and you know how to contact Albus, your city Alpha, when necessary.”

“It would be an honour, Alpha,” Remus repeated.

Dumbledore studied Remus over his half-moon spectacles with his uncomfortably all-seeing gaze. “And for my part,” he said, “I shall appoint the Auror Nymphadora Tonks as liaison, since she is currently stationed in Hogsmeade Village. Is that amenable to you?”

For a breathless moment, Remus stared back at his former headmaster and thought, He knows. How in Merlin’s name does he know?

And if Dumbledore did know the complicated history between Tonks and Remus, then how could he think it fair to make them meet one-on-one like this?

But Remus would not say that, of course. Remus would never allow his personal feelings to stand in the way of duty. “That will be fine,” he said instead.

Dumbledore smiled fleetingly and turned to the Alpha. “Silver Birch. All my best to you and your pack until we meet again.”

The Alpha replied, “And all my best to your pack.”

Dumbledore inclined his head in acknowledgement, then turned and strode away. Again, he didn’t Disapparate until he was out of sight.

Remus walked beside the Alpha back to the camp, in silence at first. But after an interval of several minutes, the Alpha said, “Your city Alpha, this Albus Dumbledore, has more sympathy for other Beings than I expected to find in a wizard. I wish to continue the acquaintance.” Abruptly, as though the words were unfamiliar to him, he added, “Thank you.”

Remus nearly tripped over a tuft of grass protruding from the last, late snow. “You’re welcome,” he hurried to say. “I’m very glad to have been of service.”

They said nothing more, but walked back to the camp in thoughtful silence.

– – – – –

Savage, arriving to relieve Tonks at the end of a shift, mentioned carelessly, “Did you hear? There was a five-year-old kid killed by a werewolf last night. Healers couldn’t save him. He died at St Mungo’s from the injuries.”

He said it in the way people talk about news that’s rather sad but doesn’t affect them personally, news they’ll forget as soon as they’ve finished telling it. Tonks, though, felt as if her heart had dropped all the way through her stomach and into the ground.

The werewolf couldn’t be Remus. Surely, surely, it couldn’t be Remus?

Tonks had been looking forward to catching a few hours of sleep, now that she was finally off duty. A horde of seventeen-year-olds were currently Splinching themselves all over Hogsmeade as part of an Apparition lesson, but luckily that was Proudfoot’s responsibility for once, and Tonks’ plans for the rest of the day had involved going back to her flat and collapsing into bed. Now, though, she had no thought but to get news of Remus.

She had to find Dumbledore. Dumbledore would know.

Tonks bade Savage a distracted goodbye and rushed to the school. She raced up stairs and down corridors, tripping over her feet in her hurry, telling herself all the time, It wasn’t Remus who killed a child last night, it can’t have been Remus because Remus would never let that happen. Oh, Merlin, please don’t let it be Remus…

Dumbledore wasn’t in his office.

Tonks bit down hard on her bottom lip and tried to breathe through her panic. Who else could she ask? Would McGonagall know? Might McGonagall at least know where Dumbledore went, when he did these mysterious disappearances of his? Tonks snarled aloud in frustration. Of all the times for Dumbledore to be unreachable!

She flung herself away from the headmaster’s office and rushed back along the corridor, set on finding someone who might know what had happened.

Instead, she found Harry.

He was hopping around in the middle of a corridor and shouting “OUCH!” It appeared he’d just kicked a wall in frustration.

“Harry?” Tonks asked, momentarily startled into a standstill.

Harry spun round, still clutching the toe he’d stubbed, then promptly overbalanced and toppled over. “What’re you doing here?” he demanded, looking embarrassed as he scrambled up again.

“I came to see Dumbledore,” Tonks said. Maybe Harry would know where Dumbledore had gone?

“His office isn’t here. It’s round the other side of the castle, behind the gargoyle –”

“I know,” Tonks cut him off. As if finding the way to Dumbledore’s office were her only worry! “He’s not there. Apparently he’s gone away again.”

“Has he?” Harry tested his weight on the foot he’d injured and seemed to find himself able to stand, if a little lopsidedly. “Hey – you don’t know where he goes, I suppose?”

“No,” Tonks said, feeling her frustration mounting with every passing second. They were going in circles, Tonks hoping Harry might know where Dumbledore was, and Harry hoping she knew. They were all looking to Dumbledore for guidance and Dumbledore wasn’t there.

Harry was still talking, curious now. “What did you want to see him about?”

“Nothing in particular,” Tonks mumbled, too distraught to invent placating lies for Harry. “I just thought he might know what’s going on…I’ve heard rumours…people getting hurt…”

“Yeah, I know, it’s all been in the papers. That little kid trying to kill his –”

“The Prophet’s often behind the times,” Tonks said impatiently. If you were a member of the Order and privy to information that never made it as far as the newspaper, then a nine-year-old arrested for trying to kill his grandparents was unfortunately already old news.

And all the while, icy panic was clawing inside Tonks’ chest. Remus would never, never allow himself to harm anyone, let alone a child, but what if he’d lost control of a situation, or been forced to do something dangerous? If Remus was the werewolf who’d killed a child last night, even through no fault of his own, he would never forgive himself. And Tonks had no way of knowing where he was or how he’d spent the full moon.

Finally, a coherent thought – maybe Harry had heard from him? “You haven’t had any letters from anyone in the Order recently?” she asked.

Harry shook his head. “No one from the Order writes to me any more, not since Sirius –”

To Tonks’ horror, she felt tears threatening to spill from her eyes. If Remus was out of contact from even Harry –

“I’m sorry,” Harry was saying, “I mean…I miss him, as well…”

“What?” Tonks asked. She’d lost the thread of the conversation and all she knew was that she had to find Dumbledore, had to keep moving. She didn’t have a lot of thought to spare for Harry right now, which she knew wasn’t fair, but the other matter on her mind was just too urgent. She left Harry in the corridor with a vague, “Well…I’ll see you around Harry…”

McGonagall wasn’t in her office either. Tonks paced the school all afternoon, losing track of how many times she tried Dumbledore’s office. Finally, in the evening, the gargoyle at the door stepped aside at the password “peppermint bats,” and Tonks entered to find Dumbledore placidly seated at his desk.

“Ah, Nymphadora,” he said, looking up. For the first time in that long day, Tonks pulled up short and pictured how she must look – lank hair falling in her face, eyes raw.

“Remus,” she said, with no energy left to spare for anything else. “Have you heard anything from Remus? It wasn’t him, was it, who – who killed that child?”

Dumbledore gestured inquiringly towards a chair, but Tonks shook her head and kept pacing.

“Set your mind at rest, Nymphadora,” Dumbledore said kindly. “I’ve met with Remus recently, and he is nowhere near where the child was murdered. Won’t you have a seat?”

“You’ve seen –?” Dumbledore had visited Remus, knew he was safe, and hadn’t seen fit to share that information with anyone? Tonks bit down on her resentment, because that wasn’t the important thing right now. The important thing was that Remus was safe.

“Yes,” Dumbledore repeated, sounding a fraction less patient this time. “I have seen Remus, and he is well. In fact, your visit is fortuitous, for I have something I would like to discuss with you.”

Now Tonks dropped down into the chair he’d offered, relief washing through her and leaving her weak.

“I met recently with Remus and the Alpha werewolf of the pack he has joined,” Dumbledore went on. “It was an enlightening tête-à-tête, and we have agreed to remain in contact. Remus will serve as liaison from the pack’s side, and I would be most gratified if you would consent to do the same on this end.”

Tonks, struggling to focus as her body crashed down from its adrenalin high after hours of panic, said, “Sorry, what did you say? Liaison to…the werewolf pack?”

“We will need a liaison here, for times when I am not available. You are ideally suited, being both a member of the Order of the Phoenix and located here in Hogsmeade. May I tell Remus that he can contact you?”

Tonks stared at him. This whole day had been some kind of strange dream, right? Savage casually mentioning a child’s death, Tonks’ fear for Remus and her frantic search for news of him, the bizarre interlude of running into Harry, and now here was Dumbledore politely asking if he could pair her with Remus on an assignment for the Order?

“Er, yeah, okay,” Tonks said. “I can be the liaison.”

“Excellent,” Dumbledore said, in a tone of voice that suggested he would have rubbed his hands together in contentment, if he’d had two functioning hands.

“There’s another thing,” Tonks said, pulling herself out of her dazed relief, because she ought to seize this chance while she had Dumbledore’s ear. “There’s something going on in the village. I don’t know what exactly, but it’s got to be more than coincidence. That cursed necklace in the autumn, then the poisoned mead. Both those things came into the school from Hogsmeade.”

Dumbledore nodded, polite, giving nothing away.

“Someone is trying to kill you!” Tonks burst out, leaning urgently forward to the very edge of her chair. “And kids are getting harmed in the process! Aren’t you concerned?”

Dumbledore’s eyes flashed. “What happens under the roof of this school is indeed my concern, and I dare say you can trust that I will handle it appropriately.”

Tonks startled back in her seat. For a moment, Dumbledore’s eyes had burned with terrifying fire.

She steeled herself, aware she was challenging the greatest wizard of the modern era, a man many times her age. She sat up straight. “I just don’t want to see any more children get hurt.”

Dumbledore’s countenance softened. “Nor do I, Nymphadora. Believe me, nor do I.”

Chapter end notes:

Just thought I'd mention, since I can't remember if I've made specific mention about it before. (Probably I have? If so, apologies!) But:

Those song snippets at the start of each chapter aren't just there for my own amusement. Well, okay, yes they are... But also they relate to the playlists I've made for both halves of this series, "Be the Light in My Lantern" and "Raise Your Lantern High" – one song for each chapter, in some cases simply because a lyric fit the theme of a chapter particularly well, in others because the whole melody and mood of a song fit.

I know, it's kinda dorky matching songs to fics... But I really put a lot of fun and love into the project. So if you want to hear the songs themselves (or even listen to the mix while reading the story – I certainly listened to it a lot while writing the story!) you can find the "Raise Your Lantern High" mix here, or both mixes ("Be the Light in My Lantern" + "Raise Your Lantern High") here.

There are some musical matches there that I'm particularly pleased with, like Lisa Hannigan's achingly nostalgic "Little Bird" for the chapter "Samhain Night," or of course Josh Ritter's anthem of hope in dark times "Lantern," which gave this whole story its title!

Happy listening. :-)

(continue to CHAPTER 18: Scents of Spring)