I've just realist I spell Arthur differently every time I write it. Sorry about that, I've checked and the correct spelling is Arthur, with a 'u'.
I'm so glad you are enjoying the story, and it is lovely to have some new readers. I'm getting very excited about the order of the phoenix as well, and some more Tonks! In fact I'm probably too excited because I'm writing this instead of my essays!
Chapter 26
I arrived in the Weasley's kitchen fireplace feeling slightly dizzy. I tried to stand up straight but hit my head on the mantle. A cloud of soot consequently shrouded me and I coughed.
"He-hello?" I called. For a moment or two there was no reply. I called again. As I had arrived uninvited a security charm over the fireplace prevented me from stepping into the kitchen without one of the Weasley's granting me permission. I looked at the Weasley's warm cluttered kitchen while I waited for someone to show up. Straight in front of me was their slightly-too-small-for-its-purpose kitchen table with eight chairs around it. The small blue chair had 'Ginny' carved into the back, with 'has a puffskin for a brain' written in black pen underneath. Beyond the table was the sink with the breakfast dishes washing themselves and next to the sink was the kitchen door. I could see through the window of this door Mrs Weasley slowly approaching. She opened the door and gave a shriek when she saw me. I smiled guiltily and waved.
"Goodness! Remus!" She exclaimed clutching her chest with one hand. "What are you doing here?"
"I've come to inquire about last night." I said gently, and rocked on my feet slightly to indicate that I still could not enter the house.
"Oh, come in, come in...would you like some tea?" Mrs Weasley said beckoning me in.
"Er, no thank you Molly, I really can't stay long." I said brushing the soot of my robes and stepping into the kitchen. "Where is everyone?" I added, but as I asked, I looked at the Weasley's very informative clock and saw the answer. Mr Weasley's hand of the clock was pointed at 'work', as was Percy's, the hands of Ron, Charlie, Fred and George were all pointing to 'garden', Bill's was pointed to 'travelling' and Molly's was pointed to 'Home'. None were pointed at 'Mortal Peril' so I felt immediately comforted.
"The children are all out playing quidditch and Arther has gone to work to try and smooth things over." Molly said with a sigh. "The ministry have been blamed for all of it, so there will be lots of complaints to deal with.
"I see." I said simply. "Do you know much about what occurred last night?"
"I only know what Arthur has told me." Molly said gesturing for me to sit down. I took her offer and sat next to Ginny's chair. Molly looked at me with motherly concern, that made me feel uncomfortably exposed. She looked carefully at my eyes and face then inspected my unironed, moth eaten robes.
"You are too thin Remus..." She remarked. Her tone was much more concerned than reproachful, which served to make me feel even more uncomfortable. "Are you sure you don't want some tea?"
"Oh, alright, I will have some." I conceded. While Molly made tea she told me what Arthur had told her. They were woken by screams and the sight of Death Eaters marching across the campsite, with the muggle campsite manager and his family, elevated above the ground and forced against their will to assume all sorts of demeaning positions. The Death Eaters proceeded to blow up tents and try to curse ministry officials while everyone else fled into the surrounding woods. Arthur told the children to wait in the woods for him while he tried to help the ministry apprehend the Death Eaters, to no avail. Then when the Dark Mark was cast, the Death Eaters fled, and Arthur and the rest headed towards the Mark in the hope of catching whoever cast it. In typical fashion, Harry Ron and Hermione were right underneath the Mark, along with Bartimus Crouch's (the head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation) house elf. Said house elf was apparently holding Harry's wand that she had found somewhere, and it turned out that Harry's wand had cast the Dark Mark, which again was typical. Just like James, Harry seemed to be a magnet for trouble.
"Why would a house elf cast a Dark Mark?" I asked, quite baffled by the information,
"unless she was ordered to."
"Yes but her only orders come from Mr Crouch surely, and he wouldn't order her to cast the Dark Mark."
"Of course not, no." I agreed, remembering how when Mr Crouch's own son was sent to Azkaban for torturing Frank and Alice Longbottom to insanity, he hardly batted an eye-lid: the law was the law, he seemed to think.
"Anyway, Arthur said the house elf denied casting the spell, and Ron said that they heard the person casting it and it didn't sound like an elf."
"Hmm, well in that case she must have just picked it up after the real culprit discarded it." I deduced.
"That's what I think too." Molly agreed.
"But surely the elf would have seen something, if she picked the wand up straight after?"
"She said she didn't see anything, apparently." Molly added with a sigh. I sighed too and sipped the tea Molly had set in front of me.
"Whoever cast the Mark can't have been part of the group of Death Eaters. Not if they all disapparated when it appeared, because otherwise they would have known someone was going to cast it. I also think this shows that they weren't there on orders from a higher authority."
"The one who cast it must have been a Death Eater as well though, even if he was there for a separate reason." Molly interjected. "And perhaps he did it because he was ordered to by...by...you-know-who." Molly's face was stiff with fear, as like me, she knew how terrible it would be for Voldemort to return.
"I don't know. There is not enough information to conclude anything." I said, which sadly offered no comfort to Molly or to myself. I gave another irritated sigh, I didn't have enough information to make any conclusions. Molly and I drank our tea in silence for a few minutes then she asked me if I had received her letter.
"I did, thank you." I said. "And I would love to have dinner with you and Arthur, unfortunately I'm tied up with some work Dumbledore has asked me to do." I added being deliberately vague. Molly knew enough about the sort of work Dumbledore used to ask me to do when I was in the Order for this news to cause a worried crease to appear on her forehead, but she also knew better than to ask me more about it.
"I'll let you know when I've finished." I said with what I hoped was a reassuring smile. Molly nodded.
"Will you be bringing anyone?" She asked me with a suggestive and also hopeful raise of her eyebrow. I chuckled masochistically.
"No." I said. As my own mind apparently thinks it amusing to be cruel to me, it reminded me of Sienna's letter, and how apology and pity were the best things I could hope a woman feel for me. "Still quite on that front." I added to Molly who gave an 'oh well' sort of shrug. After I had finished my tea Molly asked me if I wanted to say hello to Harry and the others. I did, but I knew Sirius would be pacing angrily in my kitchen so I decided not to.
I headed back home, and sure enough Sirius was dressed and pacing. I told him that Harry was absolutely fine and that no-one had been hurt, but like myself, he still took the quidditch world cup fiasco as an ominous sign. Sirius still insisted that he was going to come back to England, and I couldn't really stop him. Instead, I promised to help him reclaim Grimmauld Place as soon as I was done in Germany. Then Sirius apparated back to Singapore and I apparated back to Germany.
Over the next few weeks Faustus and I spent almost all our time in a small tent located a shot distance from the Death Eater's hideout. It was risky being so close, even with the protecting and concealing charms Faustus and I had placed on the tent, but we had to stay quite close to the Death Eaters in order to receive signals from the magical bugging devices we had planted in their shack. We didn't hear very much of interest at first because apparently a few of the Death Eaters were no longer staying in the shack, we estimated only five or six remained. We thought perhaps they had given up on trying to persuade Leohnard to join them. But a few nights before the September full moon, we overheard a conversation between the Carrows themselves. Faustus and I sat in our little tent with the remains of our Bratwurst and the speaker of our bugging devices on the table. I charmed my quill to transcribed every word that was said while we both listened carefully.
"Robin you here?" Said a wheezy male voice that I suspected was Amycus'.
"Yes I'm here." Said a disgruntled Albanian accent.
"Well then get over here, you great lump of lard, I want a report." Came Amycus' voice. Amycus and Robin had a small argument in which several Albanian swear words were used. Then, they got down to the important stuff, as my transcript describes:
Robin: It is no good boss, the vampires are not interested, and Leohnard has threatened to kill us all if we don't leave the country. I think we should do as he says.
Amycus Carrow: There must be a way of convincing him!
Robin: There is not! Leohnard is not frightened of the Dark Lord. Of course he could never oppose him, but if Leohnard declined to join sides there wouldn't be a lot even the Dark Lord himself could do.
Alecto Carrow: I think we have pushed our luck with the vampire enough already. He has already killed Portus, we can't risk it anymore! I say we pack up and leave. Tell Macnair we failed.
Amycus: Macnair will not take kindly to that.
Alecto: So what? What exactly could Macnair do? He can't get us arrested because he asked us to do this, he can't kill us because it would look too suspicious.
Amycus: I don't know about that.
Robin: Well Macnair doesn't even know me so I've nothing to loose by leaving.
The sound of a chair scraping across a wooden floor and someone standing up.
Amycus: Shut up and sit down Robin! You do have something to loose, 'cos I'll ring your bloody neck if you don't start showing me some respect.
The sound of Robin giving a yelp of pain, obviously having been cursed by Amycus.
Alecto: The crux of it is, if we stay here Leohnard will defiantly kill us, if we go back and tell Macnair we failed, he might do something nasty but we probably wont die.
Amycus: Alright, alright, we'll tell him it's pointless.
Alecto: I don't know why Macnair is so worried anyway, the Dark Lord's return was only a rumour.
A new voice, deep and raspy, with a German accent: The Dark Lord will return. His servant in England with make sure of that.
After that the Death Eater's conversation turned to how and when they should leave for home and Fautus looked at me with raised eyebrows.
"So, you-know-who has a servant in England." Faustus said. And I swallowed.
"It seems to me that Macnair's attempt to recruit vampires is not to aid Voldemort's return -" Faustus flinched at the name as he always did, but I ignored him and carried on. "- but it still might be on Voldemort's orders."
"But they said even you-know-who wouldn't be able to recruit Leohnard. So if you-know-who did return, at least we wouldn't have a vampire army to worry about as well." Faustus said then he let our a single mirthless 'ha', "We are talking as if you-know-who's return is a definitely possibility now. I cannot believe it. I'm glad I'm old, so that if there is a second war, I'd die early on." I shuddered at the morbidity of our conversation, and felt my heart sting at the prospect of fighting another war.
"Do you think the servant in England is Sirius Black?" Faustus said. For a brief second I almost forgot that most of the wizarding world still thinks of Sirius as a hard and fast Death Eater hell bent on killing Harry Potter, and almost laughed. Luckily I caught myself and shook my head.
"Black is too high profile a convict to be a successful spy for Voldemort." I said hoping Faustus would agree. Apparently he did because he didn't say anything. "If the Death Eaters are leaving Germany we probably wont find out any more, like what the servant in England is doing." As I spoke, my gesticulations were irritated and impatient and Faustus looked at me as if he was worried for my sanity.
"This has not been a complete waste," Faustus said reassuringly, "we have found out some things: like how Macnair is behind it."
"Yes, but we still don't know why Macnair is doing it. All we know is that it is not to aid Voldemort's return – but thats just negative information, we have no positive information."
"Negative information is still information." Faustus said again with wisdom in his voice. "On most of my reconnaissance missions in the past we found out a lot less than this, believe me."
Faustus and I stayed listening to the Death Eaters until we thought they had gone to bed, then we returned to Faustus' cabin went to bed ourselves. Then, the next day, we carried out the same routine. Not very many things of interest were said over the net few days. We learnt that the German Death Eater with deep voice was called Nagel and had killed another wizard sometime in the past month and an English Death Eater called Finley admitted to killing two muggle-borns in 1980. But apart from that, we gained no more useful information.
We decided that the night of the full moon would be our last night of eavesdropping, after that we would report back to Dumbledore and hopefully he would let me go home. After all, I had a mortgage to avoid paying, and money to fail
It was nearing sunset when Fautus woke me. Apparently I had fallen asleep in my chair while we were listening to the Death Eaters drone on about how having sex with muggles was disgusting.
"Hey, Lupin, wake up." Faustus said giving my shoulder a rough shake.
"What did I miss?" I asked.
"Nothing much, besides you looked like you needed the sleep." Fautus said. "I only woke you because you need to get back and take your last dose of wolfsbane before sunset."
"Ah yes." I said running my hand through my hair that was really getting quite long. It almost reached my jaw. "Are you going to stay?"
"I will for a bit I think." Faustus said, while some Death Eater said that Muggle women must have hairy legs because they don't have a shaving charm. "Wouldn't want to miss out on the Death Eaters declarations of stupidity." I chuckled and picked up my cloak from the back of the chair. Over the last week, the pleasant August whether had fled Germany and an Autumn breeze had taken it place rendering it cool enough for a cloak. I put the cloak on and ducked out through the door of the tent. I was about to apparate back to Faustus's cabin when I saw something strange about two hundred yards away. A group of people were standing apparently looking towards the Death Eater's hideout. I took my wand out of my pocket and touched it to my left temple.
"Teleskopos." I said, and a second later I could zoom in on the group of strangers at will. There were five of them all together and they were certainly not Death Eaters. Three of them were wearing the emblem of the German aurors on their robes, the other two were also aurors, though they were not wearing any badge or emblem. I knew them both to be aurors because I had met them both before: one of them was the stocky over-confident auror John Dawlish, and the other was a very beautiful but serious looking Tonks. My heart thrilled when I saw her. Every time I saw her she became more fascinating, and every time I saw her I regretted that I only ever seem to catch glimpses of her. Today her hair was short, as it often was, and a sleek mahogany colour. I zoomed in as close as I could so that I could see her deep brown eyes. She looked determined, and at the same time a little nervous. Perhaps this was her first dangerous mission. I looked back at the Death Eater's shack. There were five of them there tonight: both the Carrows, Robin, the murderer Finley and the viscous sounding German, Nagel. I guessed the five aurors were here to arrest the Death Eaters, perhaps they had also been spying on them. I felt suddenly so anxious for Tonks. What if she got hurt? But, I assured myself, she was a professional, she knew how to look after herself. What's more, whatever the aurors were here for I didn't want them catching Faustus and I at our ilegal espionage, so I ran back into the tent.
"Faustus, we have to leave." I said urgently
"Why? What's going on?" Faustus said standing up.
"Some aurors have turned up, so we better make ourselves scarce lest we end up in Azkaban with the enemy."
"Oh right!" Faustus said whipping out his wand and magically packing away all our evidence. Then we packed away the tent and stuffed everything into the small leather bag I had enchanted with an undetectable extension charm. Faustus shoved the bag over his shoulder and we turned to look back at the Death Eaters shack before we disapparated. Part of me really didn't want to leave. Now that I knew she was here I wanted to help her. But of course, it was a full moon tonight, so I would be of no use anyway. I zoomed in on the aurors and watched them approach the shack while Faustus yanked my arm and asked me what I was waiting for. One of the aurors shouted for the Death Eaters to come out with their wands displayed.
"Come on Remus!" Faustus urged me.
"Alright." I said grudgingly, but then the air was filled with a strange high pitched noise, like a thousand flying mice. I looked up at the orange sky and saw that they weren't mice, but bats. At once, one word entered my mind: vampires. Before I had time to come up with a plan, the mass of bats was dividing into individual clouds. Each cloud swirled closely together and transformed into a single humanoid vampire, with his long fangs bared and ready to fight.
Note: I hope it is clear that each individual vampire can transform into a set of bats.