There's a fire crackling in the Grimmauld place library and Remus loosens his collar in an attempt to fight the heat. Sirius has been on a mad spree in his attempts to cheer up his dreary childhood home, and though his attempts are well placed with the arrival of the Weasley's set for the end of the week, Remus thinks the blazing hearth fires at the end of June are a bit much.
He'd much rather Sirius spend his efforts uncharming the main floor toilet so the lid stops slamming down at inopportune times.
Or perhaps deal with that pesky grandfather clock.
He rubs absently at the spot on the back of his head where he was pegged with a rather rusty looking bolt.
"You too," Sirius says, breaking the suffocating spell in the room.
Remus turns to find Sirius leaning against the doorframe, rubbing the back of his own head, and cocks an accusing eyebrow at him.
Sirius simply shrugs, sips the condensing glass of whiskey in his hand, then promptly moves the glass to the back of his head and sighs.
The relief drops him into the nearest armchair and asks, "What's that you got there?"
Remus unfurls the roll of parchment, admiring the loopy, disjointed script. "An interview with your cousin, it appears."
The grin that splits Sirius' face is knowing and taunting all in one and suddenly Remus feels those same boyhood nerves he used to fight in the common room when Sirius suggest he buck up some courage and go snog Eloise Hammle; for the record he never did snog the poor girl. "Oh, you're not gunna get all ploty are you?"
Remus clears his throat and pockets the note. "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."
"You know," Sirius drawls. "Plan. Practice. Rehearse. Research. The same way you go on about everything."
"I do not do that."
"Whatever you say, Professor. Once a prefect, always a prefect." Remus scoffs and Sirius merely smirks into his cup. "Go on then, tell me what you've already found out about her."
Tuesday morning arrives faster than Tonks imagines. It's not that her weekend was full of anything of great importance, though she feels just as run off her feet.
She whiled away Friday evening at her parents, much to her chagrin, having wished to spend a relaxing evening alone. They were insistent and looked so utterly despondent as she contemplated their faces in her fireplace. You're our only child, Nymphadora, and you don't even have the decency to owl. We're not getting any younger, you know. Don't you care about us anymore? The guilt eventually won out, compacted by the promise of her mother's apple crumble, and she had flooed over.
The rest of her weekend comprised of sharing half a cheese croissant with the pigeons on her kitchen windowsill, catching up with her old Hogwarts friend Amelia (now an accomplished Medi-witch), dodging insistent owls from Kingsley about preparing for the Lupin interview on Tuesday, and actually gathering up her scraps of loose parchment and getting her reports finished before they were considered late and Scrimgeor fired her for tardiness.
By the time she arrived at work on Monday, she was just glad to be coherent for the meetings.
But now it's Tuesday and her file pad of questions for the known werewolf, Remus Lupin, whose whereabouts were technically unknown after a year long stint as a Hogwarts professor, is surprisingly short.
The sorts of questions she figures to ask seem either completely inappropriate coming from an Auror, or so far out in left field that she already forgets what Kingsley had wanted her to find out in the first place.
She arrives three minutes late for the meeting, which is actually quite early by her usual standards.
Remus Lupin is already sitting in the interview room, a shabby tweed coat around his shoulders, his top collar button undone. He's got brown hair, streak liberally with grey by his temples; something about it makes him look distinguished, especially set against the youth she sees in his face. The youth behind the worry lines and history of scars.
His gaze sweeps across the room, forever studying.
With a steadying breath, Tonks pushes inside.
He stands when she enters and watches her deposit her things on the table with what she might guess is quiet amusement. She's not sure though because it's the look in his eyes, blue like the sky at sea, and not the pull of his face that she picks it up from.
"Morning, Mr. Lupin."
"Ms. Tonks," he says reaching out his hand.
She takes it, surprised at the warmth and the gentleness with which he shakes.
She sits quickly, feeling more at ease once she has the table to support her: her sometimes clumsy movements and her less than organized thoughts. She isn't exactly sure what she expected of him, but this seemingly polite, unassuming man isn't it. But maybe she's getting ahead of herself. Letting first impressions guide her instead of taking in the facts. There's some small reminder from her time spent with Moody beeping in the back of her mind. Facts first, Nymphadora. Won't do us any good to judge.
Sometimes the darkest of people turned out to be the ones that smiled the most. And sometimes they didn't.
"So, you know why you're here then?" she says and he nods. "This meeting will be recorded. Is that alright?"
"Of course." He adjusts in his chair, shifting his weight and the length of his limbs. He's a tall man. At least a foot on her. But whether it's nerves or comfort that drives him to move she's not yet sure.
She sets her wand between them, gives it a spin, and it hovers an inch off the table, soaking in the quiet moments of pre-conversation.
"Mr. Lupin, under wizarding law you are required to answer truthfully to any and all questions asked of you today."
"I understand."
"Please state your full name for the record."
"Remus John Lupin."
"And your date of birth."
"March 10th, 1960."
"Can you tell me about the night Lily and James Potter were murdered?"
His voice is a register lower when he answers. "What do you want to know?"
"Anything you can remember." The account is almost word for word with what he said ten years earlier. She follows up with the next logical question. "Do you believe Sirius Black to be the reason they were murdered?"
"No."
She pauses then. That was different from last time. "If not him, then who?"
"Another man I once called a friend. A long time ago."
"And his name is?"
"Peter Pettigrew."
Her eyes narrow as she makes a note in the file. "Pettigrew is dead."
"Voldemort was supposed to be dead." He looks across the table to the abandoned Prophet some Ministry official has discarded after their morning coffee. "Some say different now."
This stumps her and for a long moment she's silent. So silent in fact that he asks her a question.
"Do you believe friends can betray friends?"
She licks her lips, eyes stretching up from her notes to meet his. "I think there's right and wrong and that's what we're here to figure out."
Remus smiles to himself. "But that's not what you believe." He pulls a paper from his jacket, one of the notices that are constantly flying around the Ministry these days. Dumbledore's picture stares at her. Remus flattens it carefully across the table. "Sometimes the people we put faith in, the one's we trust, turn out to be the ones that hurt us the most."
She swallows. His words burn somewhere in her chest, in the place that tingles when she hears Fudge speak of crimes against the Ministry. When she sees laws passed to infiltrate Hogwarts. When she thinks of a man and a boy who are plastered on the front page of the Prophet with a tale of warning that no one seems to be heeding.
She shakes her head. Why is he asking her these things? How is it he seems to know the way she thinks? The concerns that flit through her mind about her own department.
Why are the Aurors, the ones dedicated to bringing down dark wizards not doing more to investigate the Triwizard tragedy and the claims of Voldemort's return? Is that not their job? How is it that Dumbledore and Harry Potter are the subjects of interest? A man who has dedicated his life to serving the wizarding world, a man who watched her through seven years of schooling, who recommended her to the Auror program. And a boy whose only fault in life was being on the other end of a death curse?
"Are you presently in contact with the known fugitive, Sirius Black?" she asks him bluntly.
Remus does not answer, but draws his lips between his teeth, folding the image of Dumbledore, those blue eyes twinkling up at her over half-moon spectacles, with focused precision.
Her heart skips a beat. His silence is telling.
"Mr. Lupin, do you know the current whereabouts of Sirius Black?"
"I think we're done here." He waves his hand and her wand stops spinning, stops recording.
She expects him to rise, to leave in a hurried rush. He doesn't though, just clenches the fist that still hovers over her wand. "You don't really believe the gossip the Ministry is forcing upon the public?"
"I am a Ministry employee," she feels obligated to say, thought the waver in her voice might betray otherwise.
"But you don't believe it, do you? That a wise old man wishes to succeed the Ministry? That a fifteen year old boy wants anything more than the latest issue of Quidditch Weekly?"
"This isn't about what I believe." She reaches for her wand but his hand beats her there and for a second she's nervous. Not because she's outwanded, two to none, but because he looks at her with such desperation, like he's willing her to say the right thing, that she's suddenly very aware of the sound of her watch, ticking on her wrist, and the creak of the ceiling fan, running on endless magic.
"If you don't believe those things, then you plainly believe the alternative."
That Voldemort is back, she thinks.
"It's dangerous being on the outside," Remus says. "Going against the mainstream."
"What are you saying, Mr. Lupin?"
"Nothing, only that someone has to."
"Be on the outside, you mean?"
He nods. She swallows, brow pinched. "I'll take my wand back, Mr. Lupin," she says, carefully, measured, palm up.
He places it in her hand, more gently then she expects, looking slightly apologetic as he ducks his head, the brown fringe falling into his eyes, suddenly cloudy.
"So you've said everything you have to say?"
He looks up at her then, meeting her gaze and there's a twinkle in his eye, one that's challenging her. "Oh, no. I'm not finished."
"But—"
"When you can answer me my question, I'll be back to finish the interview."
"That's not how this works!"
"Good-day, Miss Tonks. It's been a pleasure."
He's out of his chair and through the door before she can protest. Before she even knows what she wants to say next. How one man has the ability to completely unnerve her she doesn't know. Was it the fact he was questioning her? Dragging information out of her the same way she should have been doing to him?
And what exactly had she come up with?
Absolute bollocks.
"How'd it go?" Kingsley asks her later when the department has emptied for lunch.
Tonks is busy shooting down the office memos that zoom around the room with a rubber band. More pictures of Dumbledore and Harry Potter flutter to the ground. She furrows her brow in response. "I don't know, actually."
"That well, huh?"
"Mmm." She grabs her mug from her desk and sips her tea, watching the enchanted windows in her cubicle turn from blue to grey as a storm approaches. "I think he's going to be a bit more work than I bargained for."
How is she supposed to do this? Work for people when she no longer shares their views? She watches Kingsley out of the corner of her eye and for some strange reason, she thinks he's smiling. Not his usual shark smile, but that friendly one he reserves for the rare times he offers advice.
It's two days later when Tonks sends Remus Lupin her next owl. It's not written on Ministry letterhead; instead on a square bit of parchment. She requests another meeting, this time at a local café, far away from the prying eyes and ears of the Ministry. A necessary precaution, she thinks.