She lay in the sun And soaked up the rays
The witch was quite young, Or so the hags say
The wolves found her there, Asleep in the field
Her skin was quite fair. She'd make a nice meal
But wait, said the alpha We cannot eat her
Why not? asked the others. Because there's no meat here
She looks appealing, The alpha explained
But 'tis an illusion It would be in vain
Her arm would not feed One small little cub
Her thigh would not satisfy Any one of us
So let us find prey Worthy of the fight
And leave this witch here To wander the forest at night
"Wolves and Witches" by Wulfric the Weird
Translated from Old English by Bathilda Bagshot
The bed was as hard as a rock.
"Yes, Dumbledore asked me to go over all this with you since he had other matters to attend to. I've also become something of the designated organizer, but I don't really know how that happened."
Tonks watched as Remus sorted through the parchment on the desk. "Sorry I didn't come down earlier. I lost track of time."
"It's fine, really," Tonks said, feeling more awkward than she probably ever had in her entire life. "I, er, heard you were ill."
He chuckled quietly. "Something like that. Ah! Here we are."
He handed a piece of parchment to Tonks. He ran his wand across the page. Columns and rows appeared.
"These are the dates we're all signed up for. Moody's disgusted that it's all written down, but there needed to be order to the system. Plus Moody's always cantankerous, so in for a knut, in for a galleon, I say." Remus pointed with his wand as he explained. "Generally, there are two of us on guard duty at the Ministry at a given time, shifts of four hours each. It may soon turn into eight. Dumbledore would like for it to be covered twenty-four hours a day, but it's rather difficult, and only people that work at the Ministry have a somewhat decent cover story for being there."
"We're guarding the whole of the Ministry?" Tonks asked, surprised.
Remus shook his head. "No, just the Department of Mysteries."
"Why?"
Remus paused. And then, "Something to do with a prophecy. I gather that Voldemort's interested in it, and Dumbledore doesn't like that."
Tonks hadn't been expecting this shabby bloke to say the Dark Lord's name, and it caught her off-guard. If he noticed the way she blanched, he didn't say anything.
"Anyway, we also guard Harry, but that's a less strenuous experience. Arabella Figg is a Squib who lives down the road from him, and we usually check in with her, make sure all is well.
"Feel free to pick some times that are good for you. I must suggest that you keep in mind that the last thing you want to do is rouse suspicion, so don't overextend yourself. You don't want to make yourself too tired for a work, or so your parents notice."
Tonks flushed, feeling ridiculous. She really didn't have an excuse to live at home anymore, now that she was actually getting paid for her work. She really should look into getting her own flat.
Shaking that thought from her head, Tonks looked back at the parchment. "Where are Arthur and Bill Weasley right now?"
Remus had returned to writing at his desk, and he tilted his head to prove he heard her. "Arthur's at the Ministry; Bill's watching Harry."
"Oh," Tonks said. She looked at the times. She was most interested in guarding Harry. She wanted to see what he was like. She wanted to be friends with him. She hoped he wouldn't think that she was just another star-struck witch. She had never even thought twice about him until now, but she was suddenly very convinced that she and The Boy Who Lived would get on quite well.
Unfortunately, most of the times involving Harry were full. Tonks didn't even realize that Remus was staring at her until he said, "We mostly need help with that one." He pointed at the Ministry column.
Tonks sighed. "I want to see Harry."
He gave a crooked smile, and Tonks noticed just how worn-out he appeared. It looked like he hadn't slept in days. "You and everyone else in the Order."
"Mrs. Weasley said he was kind."
"He is. He's a good kid."
"You know him, too?"
"Yes."
"Does everyone?"
"He is rather famous ..."
"You know what I meant," Tonks said. She turned back to the sheet. She didn't know where to put herself. She scratched at her chin with the quill feather.
"You can guard with me your first time, if you'd like. I wouldn't be averse to having someone from the Ministry there." He pointed with his wand at the name Remus Lupin, written under 8:00pm-12:00am on July 23rd. Tonks thought about it for a moment, and then nodded.
He took the parchment back from her and wrote something on it.
"Does Arthur usually guard alone?"
"I think he prefers it. Bill sometimes does it with him, but he guards Harry a lot." Remus smiled at her. "I suggest you ask Bill to give you one of the days he guards Harry; I'm sure he won't mind."
Tonks nodded gratefully. "I might just. But what about you? You don't like to guard alone?"
He shook his head. "I like having someone there to poke me when I fall asleep."
"So what do we do, just stand in the middle of the hallway?" Despite working at the Ministry, Tonks actually knew very little about the Department of Mysteries, and she found herself growing increasingly intrigued by this new project.
Remus shook his head again. "No, we stand against the wall." He gave her a grin, and Tonks realized he was joking, but it was a bit hard to tell from his tone. "Under Moody's invisibility cloak. Fortuitously, there aren't any guards in the Department of Mysteries, so it's usually quiet and boring."
Tonks hated to think about what would happen if You-Know-Who really did break into the Department of Mysteries while she was standing guard... She fervently hoped that wouldn't happen.
Remus didn't look back at Tonks or say anything else to her, and for a few moments, she wondered if she should go downstairs for dinner. She didn't know proper secret society etiquette, especially with someone you'd just agreed to spend four hours huddled under a cloak with.
Tonks was about to damn it all and just leave when something poked its head in the door. A large, shaggy, black dog sauntered into the room, head cocked, staring at her with a very inquisitive expression.
Tonks had never seen a dog like that. It seemed both too big and too small. Its fur seemed too faded and too shiny. And, most peculiarly, it seemed to be scrutinizing her as well.
Remus frowned at the dog as if he were annoyed with it. "I thought you were going to stay in your room all night and sulk."
The dog didn't respond, and Tonks wondered if she were mad for expecting it to. Remus looked at her and then back at it.
"Of course you'd want to see the newest member."
The dog didn't respond to that, either, and just slowly made its way to Tonks. It pushed its wet nose against the hand she had resting on the edge of the bed and began sniffing.
From that angle, Tonks inspected the dog's profile. The eye she saw was a fascinating color. Grey.
"What's its name?"
"His name's Snuffles," Remus said. The dog growled in the back of its throat, and Tonks yanked her fingers away. "He's just mad at me," Remus assured her.
"Oh?" Tonks asked, as she began to scratch the dog behind his ears.
"Actually, he doesn't like that –" Remus began, but then stopped when he noticed the way the dog leaned into Tonks's touch. He smiled and shook his head. "Only when a girl does it ..."
Tonks didn't quite understand the statement. "So, er, this is your dog?"
Remus turned away from her, and rested his head against his desk. She was afraid she had offended him, or that his illness included crippling, painful migraines brought on by questions about this dog. But then she saw his shoulders shaking, and she realized he was laughing - quite hard.
Once he caught his breath, he turned back around, and, wiping the tears from his eyes, said, "Do I own you, Snuffles?"
The dog growled again.
"I don't think he likes you very much," Tonks said, and the dog licked her hand as if agreeing with her.
"Not at the moment, no," Remus said easily. "We had a row."
"You have rows with him often?" Tonks asked, trying not to sound too suspicious.
Remus grinned. "Only when he's being particularly insufferable."
Tonks raised her eyebrows. "I had a cat for ten years, and aside from some petty fights over who got the chair in the parlor, we never argued."
Remus's smile widened. "Ah, but see, Snuffles already knows that I've reserved all the comfortable sitting areas in the house."
The dog growled once more, a slow-growing growl accompanied by the most hostile glare Tonks had ever seen on an animal.
Remus smirked at him.
Tonks scratched at Snuffles' ears again, as if trying to dissolve the tension between the two. "So, Remus," she said, grasping for straws. "I feel like you and I haven't really been introduced properly."
"Probably because we haven't been. Sorry about that. I'm a mess at the moment." Remus looked back at the parchment cluttering his desk.
"Work for the Order?" Tonks asked.
Remus paused again, like he didn't want to have to tell her, and Tonks wondered if being in the Order would be like being an Auror, and if people would always be hesitant to tell her things at all. Remus surprised Tonks when he said, "Sort of."
Tonks knew better than to press the matter. "Well, all right then," she said, scratching Snuffles behind his other ear. "Do you prefer to go by Remus, or Lupin?"
Remus shrugged. "Either's fine by me."
Tonks expected him to ask if she preferred to go by Nymphadora or Tonks. It was a trick she had learned during Auror training, a useful way of bringing up her name without bringing it up at all.
He didn't.
"So, Nymphadora," he said, picking up his quill and writing some more, "do you think you'll be around headquarters for a while?"
Tonks cringed at the name, but he couldn't see her behind his back. "I suppose so. Why?"
"I was going to suggest that if you wanted to learn more about Harry, introduce yourself to the kids – Hermione and Ron, in particular."
"Ron's his best friend, according to Mrs. Weasley. Hermione is ...?"
"His other best friend. She's not a Weasley, she's Ron and Harry's other friend. Brilliant witch for her age."
The bark Snuffles made sounded like a laugh, and Remus frowned at him.
"I understand you're frustrated about Harry's situation, but don't go taking it out on Hermione."
The confusion must have been evident on Tonks's face, because Remus elaborated. "Snuffles wishes Harry was here. He doesn't think it's fair that Hermione gets to be here and Harry doesn't."
"...Oh," Tonks said, because she couldn't really say anything else.
"I'll probably need to talk to him. You're staying for dinner?" Remus asked. Tonks gave something resembling a nod. "Why don't you head downstairs? Molly's a fantastic cook."
As soon as Tonks was out of the room, the door slammed behind her. There was definitely something strange going on. She wondered if secrecy was something she should just expect from a secret society, but, on the other hand, Remus and that dog were giving her a weird feeling in her gut – the kind of gut feeling that, as an Auror, she knew it was her duty to follow up on.
Vowing to investigate further (and maybe question Kingsley) later, she decided to head to the kitchen. She was at the top of the stairs when there was a loud pop.
She had reached for the wand in her jeans pocket before even realizing that the people who had Apparated in her midst were two teenage boys standing on either side of her.
"Wow, George," the one of her left said, looking down at her. "Something's different about you."
"That's not me, Fred," the one on her right said. "Or, at least, I don't think it's me."
"You're not George, are you?" the one on her left asked.
Tonks looked at both of them, with their freckly boyish complexions, and she was reminded of Charlie, and she smiled involuntarily, releasing her wand. "I don't think so."
"Do you want to kill yourself?" the one on the left asked. "That's what I'd want to do if I were George."
"Hey!" the one on her right interjected. He smiled at her. "Are you Tonks?"
"You're not as stupid as you look, George! She must be Tonks!" the one on her left said, and he smiled at her, too. "You're the Metamorphmagus, right?"
"That's right," Tonks said. "But how do you two know about that?"
"We've been eavesdropping at the Order meetings," the one on her left, Fred, said. "If you could do us a favor and enunciate, we would really appreciate it."
"It's only fair," the one on her right, George, said. "We are of age."
"Yes, we're adult enough to spy. Are you staying for dinner?" Fred asked.
Tonks shrugged. "If there's any food left, I wouldn't mind."
"You'd better hurry," George said. "Our brother Ron's in there."
"Bloke eats more food than a Romanian Ridgeback," Fred added. He patted the top of her head. "Is pink your natural color?"
"Do you make a habit of invading people's personal space?" Tonks wished she could stop grinning, so she could sound truly threatening.
"No, not at all," Fred said, hardly phased. "You should feel quite flattered."
"We're heading downstairs; I'll try to save a piece of bread for you," George said.
"If you knew our brother, you'd know how much of a sacrifice that truly is." Fred winked, and then, with another pop, they were gone.
Tonks had to admit, being accosted by what appeared to be Apparation-happy Weasley twins was just icing on top of the surreal cake. She was about to take the stairs like a normal person, when something the twins had said hit her.
She walked back to Remus's doorway, and then, almost against her better judgment, pressed her ear against the door.
She heard nothing at first, so she cast a slight Amplification Charm.
Remus's voice was muffled, but understandable. "I feel like we keep having this conversation."
And then there was another male voice that Tonks didn't recognize. "Of course we do. It's because nothing's changed. Nothing's going to change."
"Far be it from me to criticize you for moping around as a dog –" Remus said, and the pieces fell into place.
An Animagus. Of course! Tonks knew something had been off about the dog, but she'd tried to give it the benefit of the doubt. Babou, for example, rarely acted like a completely normal cat.
And of course they'd want to keep it a secret from her – turning in unregistered Animagi fell under her jurisdiction, and he most likely was. Tonks wondered if Moody and Kingsley knew about the not-dog, if anyone in the Order knew. But didn't Remus say he knew Harry as well ...?
She thought of the way she'd scratched the stranger's ears and frowned. She had thought Fred Weasley touching her head had been forward!
The Animagus continued. "Why not, Moony? You criticize me for everything else, anyway."
"I'm not criticizing you, I'm pointing out the flaws in your logic. Namely, your insistence that you're not contributing anything. Old friend, you're letting us use your house."
Tonks certainly found that interesting. She looked at the decorative snake curved around the top of the banister; she looked at the sleeping portrait. Kingsley definitely should have told her whose house this was.
The other bloke exhaled. "Yeah, Moony," and Tonks had to wonder why Remus was given that particular nickname. "That was a lot of effort on my part."
"Clearly you don't know that definition of the word 'contribution.' It has nothing to do with effort whatsoever."
"It's easy for you to say I'm contributing. You get to be out there. You get to do things. I'm stuck here. Dumbledore's scrambling for people to guard at the Ministry, and I'm right here –"
"And what, Padfoot? You want to guard? It's not like it's particularly glamorous, and if you're caught, you're dead. You're worth much more to the Order here, and you need to understand that. I'm sympathetic, I really am, but I wish you'd stop moping just because things don't go your way."
"You keep using that word, you must love it."
"It describes you perfectly. You're acting seventeen. No, fifteen. When you were fifteen, you were awful and just like this."
"I was awful because — Fuck, I hate being here!"
"So I've heard."
"I can't believe Dumbledore's so hard up for help he's recruited Andromeda's daughter."
Tonks pressed her ear harder against the door.
"I can't believe she's grown," the Animagus went on. "I remember ... I remember hearing about her birth. I'd fallen out of touch with Andromeda at that point, not that I'd ever talked to her that much, anyway ... I remember my mother mentioning it at dinner in that voice ... I remember it all so clearly, and now that baby's grown up into an Auror, of all things!"
There was a silence, and Tonks found that she was holding her breath.
"She's a looker, huh?"
Tonks breathed out.
Remus laughed. "Barking up the wrong tree, aren't you, Snuffles? Or maybe just a rather personal one."
"Fuck's sake, Remus," Padfoot said. "Is everything with you some pun or double entendre or double meaning? No wonder you never found a bird."
"That's funny coming from you, considering that joke about your name went on for years."
"I never joke about my name. I'm serious."
"That is exactly what I meant by 'particularly insufferable' earlier."
"No, it isn't. That's me being as insufferable as usual. You were talking about the fact that I locked myself in with Buckbeak yesterday, and not even your piss-poor tea could draw me out."
Remus's voice took on an amused lilt. "I won't pretend that you didn't hurt my pride and that you didn't break my heart, but I will say that I'm glad you're out now. And getting back to your bark and your trees ... When are you going to talk to Tonks?"
"I don't know. Can't really walk downstairs and wave at her, can I?"
"It wouldn't be one of your best decisions, but then again, you're the one who went skinny-dipping with Charlotte Boroughs."
"That was a good idea, what ruined it was you bastards, spying and stealing our clothes ..."
"Yes, I remember when Pete —"
Remus stopped rather abruptly, and there was more silence between the two men. But this silence was tense, and for the first time since she'd started eavesdropping, Tonks felt like she was intruding on a personal conversation.
Remus cleared his throat. "You should probably talk to her soon, considering she's now a member. How about if I ask her to come up after dinner?"
"Yes, probably should. If she's even still here. May have gone home."
"Don't think yourself that lucky."
"I don't think myself very lucky at all, actually."
"Are we having this conversation again?"
"You just seem so very fond of it, Remus."
"I realize that asking you to look at this situation logically is a lost cause, but I'm still tempted to do it."
"You and your bloody logic! Remus, I'm a fucking prisoner! There's no getting around that!"
Remus spoke slowly and calmly. "We all have to do things that we don't want to do, old friend. Dumbledore needs you to stay here. Harry needs you here. It's just for now."
"'Just for now?' ...I've been telling myself that for the better part of twenty years."
"Then things have to work out for you at some point, don't they?"
"When did you become a bleeding optimist?"
"Aren't they all?"
"Oh, for fuck's sake, sometimes I want to just give you a good slap about the face."
Remus laughed. "Come down to dinner. You know Molly loves any excuse to complain that we don't eat well."
"I'm not really hungry."
"I didn't ask if you were."
"You're going to start mothering me now?"
"Clearly you didn't get enough of it in life. Did you hear your mother go off earlier?"
"Did she? I can tune her out, you know. Useful skill."
Mother? Tonks thought.
"It's a pity that book tried to eat my hand because I'm almost certain it could've told me how to undo a Permanent Sticking Charm," Remus said.
"Admit it, Moony. The dangerous books are your favorite. Don't act like James and I didn't know why you snuck off with his cloak. You and your Restricted Section fetish."
"First of all, the Restricted Section was always James's forte, and secondly, the Hogwarts collection pales in comparison to the library of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black."
It was not Tonks's best decision, to fling open the door then and there and demand to know what the hell was going on. And Tonks had never fainted before in her life, but when she saw Sirius Black standing there, she suddenly felt light-headed, and she couldn't quite stand up, and every time she blinked there was all these dots. And then she fortuitously fell into Remus's arms.
She kept casting spells and leaving burnt spots on walls and Sirius kept saying, "You don't understand!"
And then Remus said right into her ear, "You're being hysterical."
But Tonks kept casting hexes. She got Sirius with a good one that made his nose turn into an elephant trunk.
Then someone said "Stupefy!" and the world went black.