The Snow Wolf, chapter 5: Interlude: The Mirror

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THE SNOW WOLF

Summary:

While on his undercover mission to the werewolves, Remus disappears. Tonks sets out north, across countries and islands and frozen terrain, on a quest to find the man she loves and reclaim him from the clutches of a powerful magical beast. Along the way, Tonks meets many who help – or hinder – her quest, until at last she reaches the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard to face the dreaded Snow Wolf himself.

Note: Thank you to nerakrose for multilingual translation help. :-)



Chapter 5: Interlude: The Mirror

Remus opened his eyes.

He was lying flat on his back, staring up into a blank, white and utterly empty sky. When he turned his head to either side, there too he found nothing but a great white vastness that glittered away into the distance. All around him was nothing but ice.

Remus lifted his head from the ground, straining to look towards the sky in the direction beyond his own feet. The sun was there, barely skimming above the horizon and sending long golden rays across the hard-packed ice. At such a low angle, the sun's light would create immensely long shadows if there were any objects around to cast them, but here the light simply glowed across preternatural flatness.

Remus let his head drop back down against the ice, wondering where he was.

He only rested like that for a moment, though. Lying around and wondering wouldn't get him any closer to an answer. Carefully, Remus sat up, mentally scanning himself for any injuries. A lifetime of waking up after full moon nights, battered and bruised but stripped of any enlightening memories, had left Remus adept at assessing his own physical state. He placed an exploratory hand against his head, then his ribs, and found all to be in working order.

There was a curious…blankness about him, though, for lack of a better word. For one thing, he was wearing the same inadequate cloak he'd had during his weeks with the werewolf pack, and most certainly should have felt bitterly cold amidst all this ice. Yet he felt, if not exactly warm, then at least tolerably lacking in a sense of cold.

And while Remus registered that fear would be a sensible response to finding himself alone in an unknown landscape, that awareness was more academic than visceral. He knew the situation should be frightening, yet somehow he didn't feel that fear directly, only knew that it ought to exist.

Well. His emotions might be oddly dampened, but his capacity for logic appeared to be intact. It was time for Remus to start working out where he was and how to get away.

The sun was setting. As Remus had been getting his bearings it had continued its long, slow, nearly horizontal slide. And if the sun was travelling such a low path across the sky, almost parallel to the horizon, then he must be at a very far north latitude.

The slanting light was stunningly golden, setting the ice all around him ablaze. Remus' breath caught at the sight of such beauty and for a second real feeling flared in him. And in that moment came, too, an understanding of how very far away he was from everyone he cared about, from his friends in the Order, from Tonks –

His heart throbbed at that thought, and with it he became aware again of that piercing, the same as he'd felt when the great wolf's claw touched him, like a shard of ice stabbing into his heart.

The wolf! Where had it gone? It must have been the wolf that brought him here, to this strange world of ice, but where was it now? From where he sat, Remus craned his neck in all directions, looking for a sign of the beast.

When he looked in front of him again, there stood the great white wolf before him, where moments before had been only emptiness.

Remus shrank away from it, a pure animal instinct of recoil from a predator. The wolf was even more massive than he remembered. It towered over him, with shaggy white fur so thick Remus could have shoved an arm into those layers and been buried up to the elbow.

Staring down at him with dangerously intelligent yellow eyes, the wolf stretched its maw into a ghastly approximation of a grin and seemed silently to laugh.

Again, Remus experienced the odd sensation of knowing he ought to be far more frightened than he was. His body had certainly reacted to the predator. He'd leapt back at the sight of it, and even now he could feel how the hairs on his arms stood up. Yet his mind registered primarily curiosity: What was this wolf? Why had it brought him here? And where, indeed, was here?

Remus gazed up at the beast that stood before him. The wolf was an impressive sight, silhouetted there against the golden light of the setting Arctic sun. It raised its head until its white throat arched and its black nose pointed towards the sky, as if aware of the striking figure it cut and deliberately posing to allow itself to be admired. Remus simply stared, from where he had fallen awkwardly back onto his elbows – even though he knew he should fear this wolf, not sprawl on the frozen ground marvelling stupidly up at it. There was something wrong here.

There was something very wrong with Remus.

The wolf tossed its head, and Remus must have blinked without knowing it, because when he looked again it was no longer a wolf in front of him but a man. A normal, human-sized man, and yet clearly no normal man at all.

The man's golden hair was a wild mane that tumbled down about his head and over his shoulders, which were clad all in white furs. His face was strong and unlined, yet there was nothing about him that spoke of youth. This man was ancient, powerful and terrible.

He smiled down at Remus, and there were aeons of ice and devastation in that smile.

"Little wolf," the man rumbled. His voice was a deep thrum, a sound that held a purr and a growl at once. "Welcome to my fortress."

There was a deafening crack, and Remus turned to see white walls of ice rising out of the ground behind him. Within moments, a fortress of ice had formed all around them, its walls vast and high but its top open to the sky that now glowed pink with the sunset.

Remus finally remembered he was still resting awkwardly on his elbows, where he'd landed when the wolf first appeared, and he gathered himself and rose to his feet. The man was tall, but not so tall as to tower over Remus. Remus stood and looked him in the eye.

"Who are you?" he asked this man who was no longer a wolf.

The golden-haired man stalked straight at Remus as if he would barrel him over, but at the last moment veered around him instead, pacing in a tight circle with Remus at its centre. Again, Remus felt the hairs on his body stand up at the nearness of this predator. He knew he should be afraid. Why did he not feel afraid?

"You could call me Sneulven," the man murmured, speaking suddenly so close to Remus' ear that Remus jumped. The man prowled on in his unceasing circle, one hand trailing up to almost touch Remus' shoulder, then dropping away. "Snæúlfur, I'll answer to that name. Snøulven. Lumisusi. Snezhnyi Volk. Feeble human names, they are, for what name could be anything more than a mere shadow of what I am? Most familiar to you, perhaps, would be the Snow Wolf."

He stopped suddenly and turned to face Remus, and Remus was struck again by the terrifying intelligence of those luminous yellow eyes, as arresting in the man's face as they had been in the wolf's. Remus felt a shiver travel the length of his body. And yet the emotions that ought to accompany that physical reaction, any sense of fear or caution or even anger at the way this man had brought him here against his will, remained largely out of reach.

Even his body felt nothing much in particular. The only sensation that was clear and present was the cold sharpness in his heart, as if the wolf's claw had never stopped piercing him.

There was one question, though, that Remus knew must be asked. He met the man's eyes and demanded, "Do you work for Voldemort?"

The golden-haired man laughed, but it was a sound like ice floes cracking, nothing mirthful about it at all. "That little pup? I have heard of him. He is a child, grasping feebly at immortality. No, little wolf, I do not work for your Voldemort." He swept his arm up in a sudden, commanding gesture. "Now, walk with me."

Remus obeyed before he knew he was doing so, his body falling into step as the man led the way along a long corridor of ice that now extended both ahead and behind from the spot where they had stood.

The hallway opened at intervals onto great chambers, all of them vast and glittering and empty. Remus had seen the walls of this place rise up around him mere minutes ago, yet looking at it now he could swear the fortress must have existed unchanged for centuries. The walls appeared to have formed from drifting snow, accumulating layer by layer until they formed an impenetrable mass. The doors and windows looked as though they'd been cut by the wind itself, sheared from the rock-solid ice to leave portals that gaped onto the night. And everywhere the roof was open to the sky, which had turned the deep, otherworldly blue of a long Arctic twilight.

"All this is my domain," the man proclaimed, sweeping his hand to encompass everything they passed as they walked on down the endless corridor. "All this and all the north of the world, every place that is touched by snow for even part of the year, all that is my dominion. Your wizard lords, they come and go in the brief gasp of their human lifespans, grasping for a taste of power. But they have never glimpsed the real thing."

He turned and loomed over Remus as he spoke, his golden hair a wild halo.

"I could snap my fingers, and the birds would not fly south this year," he murmured, his voice setting a hum through Remus' bones. "I could brush the back of my hand against the springtime bulbs where they wait in the earth, and this would be the year when the flowers fail to emerge from their winter sleep. But I do none of these things, though they are within my power, because a world out of balance does not serve my purposes. The world as it is suits me quite well. All I ask is a little amusement from time to time."

Remus looked at the man beside him, and understood that his own presence here was meant to be that amusement.

"Why did you take me?" Remus asked quietly. "I am no one special."

The man tossed his golden head and smiled as he walked on, with Remus following. "You are my favourite kind, little wolf," he said, an icy laugh lurking behind the sharp edges of his words. "I do so like your kind, you human wolves. Even though you are so limited, able to transform only with the waxing of the moon."

He stopped suddenly, causing Remus to stumble to a halt lest he crash into the man's side.

"There is so much I can teach you, little one," the man said, fixing Remus again with his canny gaze. There was some kind of want in his voice, the first time he'd shown anything other than cool amusement. "All the magic and power of my world, I will teach it to you. First, though, you must allow your heart to become cold. Even now, it beats in you far too hot and wild. You care so terribly much, little human wolf, I can see that in you. I smell it on you. You must stay here in my fortress until you've unlearned those hurtful human habits that will only bring you grief and loss."

Suddenly, the man spun away from Remus. "Look!" he cried, arcing one arm gracefully out in front of them.

Remus looked where the man pointed and saw that somehow, while still within the confines of the massive fortress, they'd arrived at the shore of a great frozen lake. Its icy surface was shattered into thousands upon thousands of brittle pieces, each one as smooth as glass and interlocking with the others like an intricate puzzle. Dark water swirled beneath, just visible through the fine cracks between the fragments.

"This," the man beside Remus said, "is my Mirror of Reason. It shows all things exactly as they are."

The man sprang forward, and in the instant it took to complete that motion he was a wolf again, leaping lightly from fragment to fragment of the frozen lake, his enormous paws touching down each time for only an instant before he was once more bounding through the air.

Watching from the edge of the lake, Remus rubbed absently at his face with one hand. Then he looked down, startled at the cold touch of his own skin. His gloveless hands were nearly blue, and he hadn't noticed it happening.

That was enough of a jolt to remind him he needed to pay attention and find a way out of here. Remus shoved his hands into his armpits and focused his mind on the problem.

He was in a land of ice somewhere very far to the north, very far from where he meant to be. He should be living with a werewolf pack in Scotland, gathering information in the effort against Voldemort. Every moment he spent away from that mission, he was letting down the Order, and Dumbledore, and everyone he cared about. He knew this to be fact, even if he could no longer feel it. He must hold onto that knowledge if he was to have a hope of getting away from this place.

The wolf bounded back to where Remus stood at the lake's shore, becoming a man again as it landed beside him.

"Where is my wand?" Remus asked, making his voice firm. He squeezed his numb fingers together as a reminder not to forget the things that were so easy to lose track of when he couldn't feel them. "Did you take it from me when you brought me here?"

"That fiddly little stick of wood you profess to do magic with?" The man set out walking again, skirting now along the edge of the great shattered lake. For lack of any better choice, Remus followed. "You won't need that here, little wolf. We two will have far greater powers. I will teach you all the ways of magic that are beyond the knowledge of mere humankind."

"I don't want to know all the ways of magic," Remus said clearly. "I want to return to the people I left behind. I made a promise to them and I wish to keep it."

"Do you?" The man stopped abruptly short, peering at Remus. His face seemed almost to show…was that sympathy? If not, it was a good mimicry of it.

"Look into my mirror," the man whispered. "Look into the Mirror of Reason, and tell me if that is what you truly want."

Remus looked down into the nearest fragment out of the thousands upon thousands that made up frozen lake. In its flawless surface he saw his own face reflected, starkly clear.

Seen so closely, his face unmistakably bore the countless tiny ravages of time and sorrow and illness, each tragedy of his life made visible in the lines of his face. It was the face of a man who had seen and suffered too much, who'd been broken so many times that he could never again be entirely unbroken. It was the face of a man who cared, just as this Snow Wolf had said, far too much, and yet knew he could not allow himself even that luxury, because he would only end up hurting those he cared about.

Because in the final analysis, no matter how much he tried to outrun the fact, Remus was a dangerous Dark creature. Forever ill, forever out of work – Remus had little enough to offer anyone, and that was even setting aside the fact that once a month he turned into a ravening beast apt to maim or kill anyone who came near him.

Remus looked into the Mirror of Reason, this mirror that showed things exactly as they were, and he saw a man who had already once before lost everyone he loved. He'd been a fool to think he might dare to try again; a fool to think that he of all people deserved to love or to accept love in return.

Distantly, the memory squeezing into his awareness despite the coldness in his heart, Remus thought of Tonks. He pictured her the way he most often saw her in his mind's eye: her head thrown back in laughter, her bright hair wild about her face, all of her in motion.

He saw how joyful she was, how good and whole, and with the last flicker of emotion he was able to muster through the chill that had overtaken his body, Remus wanted fiercely for her to be able to stay that way.

Joyful. Whole.

"No," he said aloud. "There is no need for me to return."


(Continue to CHAPTER SIX)

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