I don't own Harry Potter and I'm not making any profit out of this. I had a great time writing it, though.

The large red brick house was quiet, strangely so. From the little information we have managed to gather, we did not expected a large crowd, but I was ready to cast Stunning spells and Memory charms to the handful of Death Eaters that we were supposed to find.

Hidden under Remus superbly casted Disillusionment charm, we approached the front door. Opening it while being not visible to the passer-bys would be revealing, but that was where I had to do my bit.

To cast a Confundus spell on a place, instead of a person was, in the best scenario, very tricky. For me, this time, there was something else that increased the difficulty of the task, and was embodied in the man standing next to me, albeit invisible. Not only this had to do with the task given to us by the Order. For me it was also about proving Remus, once and for all, I wasn't just a young, somewhat clumsy new member, but somebody to take seriously.

An asset.

And a good one at that.

Of course, this was just professional pride and had nothing what so ever to do with the fact that I fancied him. More than I was willing to admit. Nope. I was not to dwell on that, or on that particular and so very pleasant smell of his, which was the only sign I had that he was standing next to me.

Mine was a sad case of having an immensely embarrassing crush on a colleague that was everything I wasn't, including focused on the task.

I squared my shoulders and pointed my wand at the porch of the house.

"Confundus," I thought, non-verbally focusing my thoughts on the image I wanted to project.

"Ok," I whispered, and I saw the door opening, as Remus moved the handle. I looked around. The two people walking on the street did not look in our direction, to cry in alarm for a door that had opened on its own accord.

They were seeing just a closed door. I'd done it.

There was no time to gloat, though, so I went through the open door, hoping that Remus had moved out of the way and I wouldn't bump into him.

The scent of something flowery, and lately very familiar, was the only indication I had that Tonks had followed me inside the building.

A second later, I saw the door closing slowly and silently, and I could imagine her expression of deep concentration.

I knew that expression very well, from seeing it more than once during Order meetings or missions. It was adorable. Not that I'd been paying that much attention, because, of course, that would have been absolutely improper. As it was to think about her other adorable expressions when I laid awake in bed.

It would not do at all to think along those lines, least of all right now, when we were right in the middle of a mission, having walked into what we hoped was a Death Eaters' meeting place.

I looked around to take in the large hall we were standing in. It led to several rooms and a stair; the curtains were closed so the outlines of the furniture were visible but strangely blurred. A very uncomfortable feeling located on the pitch of my stomach. Was this place abandoned? Had all our research and careful planning been for nothing?

I felt something brushing my arm and wished I could see her. There was just one more thing I needed to do first.

"Hominum revelio," I thought, pointing my wand all around the house.

Nothing. There was no bluish outline to tell somebody was there. Not even a shadow.

"D'you think they've left?" Tonks' whisper was barely audible.

"Could be," I said. With a swift movement I tapped my head with my wand and could fell the Disillusionment charm wearing off. Next to me, Tonks was finally distinguishable from the surroundings and I almost sighed out loud. Her bright orange spikes were certainly out of place in this dark, silent place, and yet it was a sight that seemed to conjure tranquillity.

"Let's look around," she said, starting to walk towards the first room to the right. It was a sitting room, containing heavy, old furniture. I headed towards a set of drawers and started looking.

I had to snap myself off my ogling at Remus, searching inside some dusty drawers. He had a way of doing things methodically, carefully, and I'd found out not long ago that I like to look at his slender fingers whenever he is doing something like this. But now was definitely not the moment.

I went to the next room, some sort of studio, and began looking into the drawers too... too aware that I wasn't as methodical or careful as Remus.

Nothing.

Or, to be accurate, there were heaps of things. Papers, bills, parchments, leather-bound volumes, but nothing that would point towards Death Eaters or even petty criminals. With some sort of urgency growing inside me, I tried every revealing charm I knew, on almost every thing I found.

Nothing had been transformed, or hidden, there was simply nothing.

"I'll get to the next room," Remus whispered from the door some time later, making me startle. I tried as hard as possible to hide it and just nodded.

With the frustrating feeling that all of this might as well be pointless, I opened a second set of drawers.

It hit me before I could react.

Something soft, silky, had jumped off the drawer and around my neck, and all I could do was pull at it, trying hard not to choke. No matter how hard I jerked, the thing was pressing harder, and I wasn't even sure of where to point my wand or what spell to cast. I couldn't even get enough air to call for Remus, let alone cry an incantation!

Remus. That was it.

Without much concern of what might happen later, I waved one hand over the desktop, sending a clutter of objects flying loudly around.

Less than a heartbeat later, Remus was rushing inside the room.

"Finite!" he yelled, not caring about keeping it quiet any more.

The silky thing kept on strangling me, if anything even harder than before.

"Impedimenta!" it seemed to work a little. The pressure was still there, but not as strong as before.

"Argh!" I managed, instead of the intended "it's working".

Remus did not waste any more time with spell work. He grabbed the thing around my neck and pulled, and after what seemed to be an infinitely long moment, I heard something rip and the pressure on my neck stopped, as abruptly as it had started.

I had to lean on the desk for a moment, my knees were trembling.

"Are you all right?" Remus said, looking at me with warm eyes filled with concern.

"Yeah," I panted. "Thanks."

"What...?"

"Dunno," my voice was hoarse and weak. "The thing just jumped out the desk," I took a glance at the piece Remus was holding. The second half was lying at my feet and I bent over to grab it.

"It looks like a scarf," I said, still shaky.

He was looking at my neck. "There's something..." he said, "Lumos."

At the bright light emerging from the tip of his wand, clearer than the dim sunlight entering through the closed curtains, I could see he was frowning. And then he extended one hand and very carefully touched the side of my neck.

It was so unexpected that, despite his hand being warm and soft, I shivered.

"You'll get a bruise," he whispered, "it's all red."

"I... Is it?" I stuttered.

Without answering, he traced a path along my neck, barely touching my skin with the tip of his thumb.

"I'll be all right," I said weakly, and he took his hand away, his eyes now fixed on mine.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, sure." At least my voice was now almost normal. "In any case, now we know that we're on the right path."

Remus didn't say a thing. He took the second piece of the scarf from my hands and put it with his piece inside his pocket.

"Come on," I said, trying to sound cheerful. "Let's finish this so we can grab some hot chocolate afterwards."

He looked at me again, and after a moment he nodded, heading back to the next room. The moment he exited, I collapsed on the nearest armchair. I was still shaky and the most unnerving thing was that I realised it was not only because of a cursed scarf nearly strangling me.

My hands were not as steady as they had been before, and I could not get rid of the image of Tonks, almost purple, grasping for air as her own hands moved wildly, trying to free herself from the thing that was now inside my pocket. It had been a close call. How close? I couldn't even say.

I suspected that the lack of sound coming from the room next door was not owed to her being extra careful, but because she was gathering herself. Of course I could have stayed with her until she was calm again, but something had stopped me from doing so. At first there had been this urge to hug her, to make sure she was all right and to comfort her; and then... I felt her shiver when I touched the raw skin of her neck and I didn't know what to make out of that.

So I left.

There was still plenty to do, so I resumed my browsing the cupboards, much more carefully this time, looking for something that would not make all of this futile. I had an almost desperate urge to focus on that thought and not on the fact that, had Tonks been alone, she could very well be death by now.

No, I absolutely refused to contemplate that scenario. I had only helped her, nothing more, she could have freed herself on her own.

It took us several moments to finish with the rooms on the ground floor. Regularly, I cast the Revelio charm, just in case somebody was indeed in charge and had just come back using another entrance. Nothing of the sort happened, we kept on being alone.

A soft intake of air made me look up. Tonks was standing on the door.

"You finished?" she asked, and I could see she was trying hard for her voice to sound calm. She could not fool me, she was still looking quite pale and, as predicted, the bruise across her neck was getting more noticeable.

"Yes," I said, straightening up from where I was crouched, to have a look under the furniture.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"There's still upstairs," she said, and I had the impression she had the same urge I did to make this expedition useful.

"Absolutely," I said.

I walked past her and for a moment I had the idea of stopping and asking her if she was all right, but I thought better of it. It was genuine concern, but maybe she could interpret it as a lack of trust from my part, and that was the last thing I wanted her to think. She was strong and powerful, but I had started to suspect some time ago she was not always sure of herself.

Instead, I headed towards the wooden staircase, grasping my wand firmly.

"Do you think-"

"Wait Remus, don't!"

Her whispered warning arrived a second too late. As my foot reached the second step, I heard something exploding at my back, and I half jumped, half was thrown head first on the steps.

I turned around. I could not see a thing. Light, white dust was floating were the hall was supposed to be.

"Remus?" Tonks weak whisper made me sigh in relief.

"Tonks, are you all right? What happened?"

"Dunno, something exploded... there's a massive hole now. Are you all right?"

"Fine."

"Let me see if I can get closer..."

"Evanesco!" I pointed my wand at the dust and watched, thankful, as it started to dissipate.

Tonks was standing right next to the room we had vacated, all the way across the hall except now there was no hall at all. At her feet there was a large gap that made it look as if a bomb had exploded from the cellar.

"There's something strange about this hole," Tonks was saying, tracing with her wand complicated figures, as she walked up and down the edge. "There's... This is not just a regular gap. I don't think I'll be able to cross it."

"Don't try it," I snapped, the memory of the scarf still burning into my mind.

"I won't," she said. Now that I focused on her instead of the scenario, I notice several small wounds on her arms, undoubtedly product of all the flying debris. I checked my arms to find matching injuries.

"We'll have to split," she said, matter-of-factly, and I felt a heavy weight on my stomach. What? How was I supposed to look after her if we go separate ways? "It's the only way," she kept on saying, "you go on upstairs, I'll see another way to go down to the cellar. And if something... er... weird happens, we'll send a Patronus."

It was the worse idea ever. I hadn't failed to notice her hesitation before the word weird. She had meant something else entirely. Dangerous? Bad? Terrible?

"Come on," she said impatiently, perhaps noting my hesitation, "we have to finish this and just looking at each other across this hole won't get us there."

She was right, of course.

"All right."

"Wait," she said, just as I was about to check for hidden spells on the rest of the stairs. "I don't want to get all Mad-Eye on you but... you know."

"Yes, I know."

Seeing Remus disappear after the explosion had been the most scary thing so far, beating by far that wretched scarf. I can't remember how I even managed to jump back and cover my face to avoid most of the damage the debris had caused, focused as I was then on him.

Seeing his back climbing up that stair, getting away from me, was more than hard, but I knew I was right and the sooner we'd finish searching the house, the faster we'd go home.

I looked at the hole once more. Had it been a regular one, I could have jumped down to the lower level. Only, I was more than certain this was not going to be that easy. I turned around and headed for the kitchen in the back of the ground floor. There was another door there, and outside it, very old-looking stone steps going down. My progression was much slower now. I barely gave a step without checking with every spell I knew for something hidden, whether alive or just some nasty piece of magic.

Sure enough, the outside door of the cellar had some weird protection that took me several attempts to undo. Finally, with a triumphant twist, I opened the handle and stepped inside.

The cellar was divided into two very large rooms. The first one had only a few boxes piled next to one of the walls; they were empty. I crossed it into the second room, dim light came from high windows and from the newly made hole.

And then I saw it.

This was it. Exactly the thing we needed for this to be worthwhile. Scattered across the floor were large pieces of paper and parchment: blueprints. With a jolt of excitement I bent down, my wand casting light around, to see exactly what sort of maps they were.

At first I didn't recognise the places plotted, and there were no useful legends to help me out. Just outlines, doors and windows, and it all was just frustrating. It wasn't until the third blueprint that I finally understood. It was the floor plan of the Atrium in the Ministry of Magic, with every detail carefully drawn, including the fireplaces and even the spot where the security guard usually was.

I went back to the previous maps and overlapped them. Yes, those were of the ministry of Magic as well, only it was an area I had never been to. I could only guess that those were the plans of the Department of Mysteries. But was that possible? Why would Death Eaters want to go there in the first place? I looked around for more plans, but the rest of them belonged to different buildings. Maybe some of them were destroyed in the explosion?

I grabbed the lot, shrunk them and stuffed them inside my pocket. The Order would have a lot of work to do deciphering the rest of the maps and what the Death Eaters would be up to. So far, though, I could not help but grin. Finally, I had accomplish something useful.

Just as a precaution I checked the rest of the room. There was a closed door, and next to it, on a corner there were a couple of files, filled with clippings of the Daily Prophet. In a quick glance at them I saw there all seemed to be about specific people. This was something we would need to carefully study as well, I though as I put them inside my pocket.

A last look around, and some more spell-casting told me that there was nothing else to be seen.

Now I just had to find Remus and help him search the rest of the house.

I tried to open the closed door; it was protected by some spellwork, but now that I'd opened the other one, it was much easier. There were steps behind it as well. Recreating in my mind the layout of the ground floor above, I realised this one would lead me to the other side of that damned hole. I could just follow Remus' path.

Carefully casting a Shield charm around myself, while checking again for hidden spells, I climbed up. Just as predicted, I was right where I had seem Remus disappear, and that thought, mixed with my recent discoveries, made me chuckle softly. This was going good.

And then I heard it. A weird noise, almost like a strangled sob, coming from upstairs.

Not only one, but two. We had had two nasty situations, and that was just two too many. I had been reckless and we had been lucky it had not caused real damage... yet.

Waving my wand around I had finally reached the first floor landing. It was a large corridor, with doors at both sides. I stepped into the first room. It connected with the second one through a door, and that one, with the last one at the end of the corridor. All of them seemed to have been used as offices of sorts, with desks and sets of drawers.

Carefully, I opened the first one. It was empty. The same happened with the desk drawers, and with a large wooden trunk. It was exasperating. Having checked every possible corner, I stepped into the second room.

There I found something that seemed interesting, or had it been just my wish for something that had made me look at it that way? There were two small black notebooks, filled with numbers. I knew something about Arithmancy, but not enough to distinguish if these numbers had something to do with it, or if they were just regular accounts. However, there was something in the way those numbers had been scribbled on the pages that made them look different from what we had found on the other rooms.

So I took them, and after making sure there was nothing else, I crossed towards the third room. This one was the largest, and it seemed to have been used as a meeting room. Several chairs had been placed around a large table. Only, I didn't notice any of that.

Tonks was there, lying on the floor in an awkward position.

Panic tasted bitter in my mouth and with one long stride I was crouching next to her. Something was very, very wrong.

Carefully I took her hand, it was ice cold and very white.

"What? No... no, Tonks!" I hear myself mumbling while searching for a pulse. There was none. "No, Tonks, come on, you can't-"

I couldn't even think about the possibility and yet there it was, not a possibility but something too real, lying right in front of me.

"No, Tonks... Enervate!" Nothing happened, and I found myself pressing my ear against her chest, searching for some sign, the smallest of noises that would indicate that there was a heart still beating inside.

The silence was cold as well.

"Tonks, why? You can't... you just can't... God, Tonks!"

"Remus?"

I jumped and faced the door, my wand pointing at the figure in the threshold. It looked like her but then... I glanced at the corps on the ground and then back at the woman on the door. She was pointing her wand at me and both she and the lying figure looked exactly the same... except... I took a step back, so I could see both at the same time.

The neck on the figure on the ground was delicately white. Unmarked.

As realisation made its way very slowly inside my brain, the Tonks from the door was walking slowly towards me and the figure on the ground.

"No, Remus," she said softly and it was so good to hear her voice, but this... this just couldn't be! Who was on the floor then? "It's me, see? I'm... I'm all right."

Crack!

The loud noise made us both startle and on the ground there was... me. Only, there was something very strange about the figure, something I recognised instantly for I had seen it just moments before. I was dead.

I stared at the two figures in front of me. I was confused, but my initial concern was turning into fury.

"Who are you?" I said, pointing my wand at the one standing there, who had been pointing his own wand at me just moments ago. Without taking my eyes off him, I crouched next to the lying figure. "What have you done?!"

"Tonks... I..."

I groped until a found the neck of the Remus on the ground. The coldness of his skin took me by surprise. Hadn't his hand been warm when he had touched my neck before? There was something else, too. Or a lack of, to be accurate. There was no pulse.

"What?" I said, confused, looking from one figure to the other.

The Remus standing seemed to be as confused as I am, only, unlike me, the hold on his wand had relaxed.

"I think..." he said slowly, "but no... how could it be?"

"What?" I asked again, only this time with exasperation.

Remus sighed, his eyes darting between myself and the figure.

"It just doesn't make sense! This is not what it's supposed to look like..." he said, and then he suddenly prompted. "Quickly, ask me something only I should know. Something personal."

That was a hell of a good idea... and it sounded like Remus, too.

"I er... what were we eating when we first met?" I sounded very silly, but what else could I ask?

He shook his head slowly. "Am I supposed to remember that?"

I shifted my wand, so that it was pointing directly at his chest.

"All right," he said, "I think it was onion soup. I do recall Molly had cooked it, and we were in the kitchen of headquarters. And you were talking with Sirius about childhood memories and... it was the first Order meeting."

It had been just like that.

"Look, Tonks," he said, rummaging in his pocket. He produced the two pieces of silk that had almost strangled me to death not long ago. "I took this from you just a moment ago."

And then I realised it. I stood up and praying I was not mistaken, I moved my wand from Remus to the figure on the ground.

"Riddikulus!"

The figure moved a little but nothing happen.

"I can't make something funny out of this," I said, and it was like voicing out loud something I was not supposed to. "It is a boggart, isn't it?"

"It had to be," Remus said, finally walking towards me, his wand now pointing at his own corpse. "Take a couple of steps back."

I did, and with a loud crack the image was replaced for that other one I'd seen the moment I'd entered the room. I was there, pale, and definitely dead.

Suddenly it hit me. Was I Remus worse fear? My death?

"Riddikulus!" he said. Was it my imagination or his voice was sounding weak as well. The figure twitched but, just as it had happened with me, it didn't disappear.

"Let's get nearer at the same time," I suggested, deciding that making out the meaning of all this could wait for later. "Let' see what it does out of it."

"There's a trunk in the other room," Remus said. "If it doesn't work we could put it inside."

I shook my head.

"It has to work." It was a matter of pride now.

Remus took a couple of steps back to stand by my side. I looked at him, he was very pale but looked determined.

"All right," he said. "One, two..."

With two strides we were next to the corps. It twitched and crack!

The figure lying on the ground was not exactly funny, but it was enough for me to force some laughter. It was still a corpse, only very thin, it's face almost expressionless still looked a little like Remus. The only trait I could recognise was that it had an orange stubble.

At my side I heard Remus laugh as well, rather artificially, and as one, we cried: "Riddikulus!"

The boggart exploded into wisps of smoke and with a final crack! it was gone.

AN: All right, there a a couple of clichés in here but... well... is that really so wrong?

Cheers!