18
Tonks's poor nails were already bitten down to the quick. She nibbled at their frayed, formed edges like a famished mouth, hardly paying attention to a word her cellmate Cate said while she was escorted to the visitors' lobby to see Remus in forty-minute minutes.
A muscle twitched involuntarily at the corner of her right eye, her mouth forming a rigid grimace.
With her arms folded tightly across her chest, she tapped her foot furiously as her cellmate took one look at her pale and peaky face and guided her towards one of the spare chairs in the lobby.
"Sit down before you keel over and pass the hell out before your husband gets here," Cate murmured, glancing around for a prison guard, and not seeing one, furrowing her brows in a frown. "It's just nerves, you know. You'll be fine. I'll go see if I can get you a cold drink."
Tonks nodded, though something in her cellmate's tone gave her pause, and before Cate Greengrass could turn on her heel and leave her alone here in this strange, unfamiliar room to wait for her husband by herself, Tonks half-rose from her chair and shot out an arm to catch her.
Cate halted her movements, slowly turning around at the waist to regard the slightly older witch, blinking owlishly at Tonks in utter shock.
"What?" she asked, her frown deepening as Tonks sat back down, suddenly feeling sheepish. "You sick or something? What's the matter?"
Tonks waited, biting the inside wall of her cheek as she struggled how best to phrase exactly the question that was on her mind and at the tip of her tongue, just begging for her cellmate to give her an honest answer.
She emanated a tense exhale and slowly lifted her gaze to Cate's.
"Why are you being so nice to me? By rights, you shouldn't. I'm an Auror, Cate. Over half the other prisoners in here are ones I've had some kind of hand in arresting. Most of these people know my face. What if…" she paused, her voice trailing off. "What if I really was guilty, then, Cate?"
Tonks shook her head and forced a nervous smile, allowing a skittish chuckle to escape her lips as she watched her cellmate toy with a lock of wavy brown hair, seemingly startled by her cellmate's question.
She was grateful that Cate Greengrass was being welcoming, and she wanted at least one other person in this prison besides the Warden to be nice to her, but not in a frightening way.
She'd had more than her fill of frightening experiences last night in Echo Alley, and then again, this morning when she'd been on the receiving end of the Morning Killer's unexpected surprise visit into her and Cate's cell when Cate was absent.
Cate seemed extremely eager to talk to her and had barely been able to shut up at breakfast, which had been little more than some canned applesauce, two pieces of burnt toast with grape and strawberry jam spread, and two scrambled eggs on each plate with a glass of orange juice.
Not that Tonks had minded. She had welcomed the distraction while she forced down the food, though her mind was so scattered and unfocused, thinking about seeing Remus and Teddy today, that she had hardly been able to keep up with whatever Greengrass prattled on about.
Tonks blinked as her cellmate finally seemed to find her voice. "I know who you are," Cate chirped, shrugging her shoulders in a nonchalant way. "I got a second cousin in here with us, two twice removed or something that you arrested a few months back for selling illegal items in Knockturn Alley. It was your buddy Shacklebolt that arrested me for my bogus potions," Cate sighed, nervously toying with a lock of her hair.
Tonks winced, visibly shirking back into her chair as much as the chair would allow her to, hoping her nervousness wasn't displayed on her face.
"So, why then, are you going out of your way to help me adjust here? What if I really was the Morning Killer, Cate? You'd still be nice to me?" Tonks challenged hotly, not really sure where this was coming from, but what she did know was though she was a day into knowing her cellmate and already wanting to know the truth, though Tonks was glad Cate seemed willing to make an effort to try to be friends, or at least be cordial.
She was surprised when Cate made an odd little strangled noise at the back of her throat and rolled her eyes in jest at her cellmate's quip.
"Everybody except for you isn't in here because they were doing things right. We all messed up, hard, or else we wouldn't be in this place. I got a month left before I'm finally released, and I don't intend to waste my second chance. I think I might try to get a decent job. Maybe in Diagon Alley or something. Maybe the Ministry, if the Warden could put in a good enough word, once Everett thinks I'm 'reformed' enough," Cate sighed. "And as for you being the Morning Killer? Don't make me laugh. You're not him," Cate murmured darkly, pursing her lips into a thin line as she raised her dark eyebrows in alarm at Tonks. "I know that. I'm not stupid, Tonks. His murders are all over The Daily Prophet, and besides, you couldn't be him, because I heard the cooks in line at breakfast talking about this morning's edition of the paper. They found another body seven hours after you were already in here with me, so it can't be you. Not unless you have a Time-Turner and can be in two places at once. Trust me. I've been in here a few months and I know this guy's m.o. The way he positions his victims suggests a sexual interest in the women and people he takes, not that a witch couldn't, but it's just not the kind of crime women tend to favor, you know? And more to the point, besides, the few eyewitnesses that claim to have seen the guy's shadow around downtown London at night, it's clearly a guy. They found a size eleven boot print at the last crime scene and judging by your feet, you're an eight. Eight and a half, at best. And as for why I'm helping you?"
Cate sighed and pinched at the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. Cate felt her expression change only just slightly. She straightened her back and folded her hands behind her back as she regarded her new cellmate, thinking Tonks almost looked embarrassed.
Merlin only knew why. Cate frowned, puzzled by the shift in the older witch's countenance.
The Auror had no reason to be nervous around her. She wasn't going to do anything to her, not when provoking her or starting something would cause her sentence to become extended, she'd have to be pretty stupid to jeopardize her near-freedom in another month.
Well, of course, the witch would ask her that, what else was Cate thinking Tonks would say?
To be quite honest with herself, she was not sure why she was practically bending over backward to help Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin adjust to life in Azkaban Prison, whether she was here for two days, two weeks, or a year.
Cate could tell when the Warden had introduced the two of them last night that this young woman was innocent.
The Morning Killer had framed her somehow, some way, and Cate couldn't prove it, of course, but at the very least, she could be nice to her. Why was she being so nice to Tonks? Was it to ask her questions?
No. Cate gave her head a curt little shake to try to clear her mind.
That was the last bloody thing the witch and Auror needed right now when she was focused on getting back home to her husband and brand new baby.
She pondered this question for a moment. Maybe…maybe Cate was here to help Tonks in some way, and that was why the Warden had chosen to put Tonks in the same cell with her, though in what way, she didn't know how she could possibly help the witch get out of here, innocence notwithstanding.
They didn't have their wands.
All she knew was she was tired of the way people here talked about Mrs. Lupin, as if she were some kind of accursed wretch for being the first known human to date, marry, and have a brand new baby with a fully-fledged werewolf.
Cate blinked and forced her attention back to Tonks. Perhaps it was that reason that caused her to answer her new cellmate honestly.
"It's been a long time since I had a roommate, especially another witch close to my own age. It gets lonely in this place enough as it is with just the guards and Dementors around," she growled, letting a shudder journey down her back at the thought of those wretched creatures. "Let's hope you don't run into one. We're screwed if we do since we don't have our wands, though the guards do a decent job of keeping those foul creatures at bay. At least…they're supposed to," Cate sighed. "But, uh, that's not the point. Back to your question. Why am I helping you? I guess…maybe I'm just really looking for a friend," Cate confessed, her voice hushed, though a tiny smile crept onto her features.
Tonks stared, her lips parted open in shock, to which Cate merely smirked at her cellmate and offered another shrug of her shoulders as she tossed her mane of dark hair over her shoulder and out of her face.
She was aware she was looking shellshocked, but less so than she had initially expected she would be. She had not anticipated that would be her answer.
"I'm a good observer. Got a keen eye for this kind of thing. I know when someone's trying to screw me over, and I know quite a few of our fellow inmates. You stay here long enough; you start to pick up on the signs. What to look for. Body language, eye contact, you can tell if someone's lying because they look to the right, that kind of thing. Plus, Everett says it's only a matter of time before your guys in the Auror Office catch him." Cate crinkled her nose in slight disgust. "When's your appointment?"
"Six-thirty," Tonks answered, feeling a churning feeling begin in the pit of her stomach.
This was the second time her new counselor, Everett, had been brought up in front of her, and the third or fourth time Cate had given her this look of utter revulsion whenever the counselor's name was mentioned.
He must really be something else, Tonks thought wildly.
Cate clucked her tongue in disappointment. "You don't want to meet him." Cate furrowed her dark eyebrows in a frown. "He's a pervert."
Tonks swallowed down hard past the growing lump in her throat and nervously glanced at the clock on the wall.
Thirty more minutes to wait.
And then I'll see Remus and Teddy again, she thought nervously.
"Oh." She stammered, feeling her nails dig into the skin of her palms, not sure what else to say, feeling a stab of a fear prick at her heartstrings.
Just great. He's a pig, then.
"Well, I—my husband is supposed to be coming with the Hogwarts Headmaster today to hopefully get me out."
Cate nodded, and Tonks couldn't be certain for sure, but she swore she saw the briefest flickers of jealousy flit through the woman's light green eyes.
Though as quickly as the emotion had darted through her cellmate's orbs, the look was gone, and Cate plastered a smile on her face. Though they both knew it was fake.
It didn't reach her eyes. Cate heaved a reluctant sigh and Tonks watched as her shoulders slumped forward in defeat.
"You're lucky if that's the case. You don't want to be in his office any longer than you have to, Mrs. Lupin. Trust me on that one, if nothing else. There are…rumors among the other witches in this place he raped a young girl last year." She fixed Tonks with a pointed stare. "One of your distant relatives. I can't remember her name. Lestrange. I think she was around our age. Rena or Renata. Started with an R, but I wasn't here then, so I don't know the full details. A rumor's just a rumor, and nobody could prove it, and like it or not, Everett's one of the best counselors the Warden has on staff, so he's well-protected in this shithole of a place."
Tonks nodded mutely, her face a mask of calm, though it did not stop the feeling of pure terror surging through her veins, icy daggers straight to her heart.
The fear she felt this morning staring into the narrowed, listless green eyes of the Morning Killer was nothing to what she felt now.
This…was almost worse.
As despicable of a man as her new counselor sounded, the fact that he was protected by the system was abhorrent, and Tonks already knew that without physical and viable evidence, nothing would come of those claims, if what Cate said was true.
"Good to know," Tonks managed to croak out in a nervous laugh, surprised at how hoarse her voice sounded as her throat constricted. She turned her head to the side and covered her mouth to let out a cough.
"Damn," Cate swore through gritted teeth, bringing her palm to her forehead and smacking her head with her hand. "Water. I was going to go grab you a drink."
She turned on the heel of her shoe, though not before she paused in the doorway, a hand on the knob to steady herself, risking one last glance over her shoulder at her cellmate.
"I'll be back. I'll go grab you that drink. Your counselor is kind of a creep, I'm not going to lie to you, Tonks, but if he says or does anything inappropriate, tell someone. Tell me," she urged, a muscle in her jaw twitching and behind her eyelid.
"Okay," Tonks quietly agreed, hoping Cate was just exaggerating and repeating whatever gossip circulated through this rumor mill of a prison.
She had not yet met Everett, but so far, the way her cellmate talked about the man made her want to avoid her appointment at all costs.
"I don't think he'll try anything with you. Something tells me you're smart enough you won't fall for his charms. You're an Auror, after all. Something tells me even without your wand, you can handle yourself. But if he does, tell me, and we'll go tell the Warden. Together," Cate growled.
Tonks nodded, feeling at a loss for words as to what to say, so for lack of a better phrase, she simply copied her new cellmate and friend's sentence, offering the younger witch a polite smile as she waved.
"Together." Tonks watched as Cate Greengrass promptly turned her back on her and turned on the heel of her shoe down the hallway, leaving her alone in the eerie silence of the visitors' lobby by herself.
Memories, Tonks knew as she sat waiting in her chair with bated breath, trying not to shiver through gritted teeth as she waited for Remus to walk through the open doorway and to see her for the first time since her false imprisonment, were often invoked by a fragrance.
For her, it was the scent of pinewood, which she swore she could smell coming closer. They said that the strongest link to sparking a memory was through one of the six senses—not sight, taste, or touch, not even sound—but smell.
Her brows furrowed. The scent was coming back, stronger this time, and Tonks closed her eyes and gently inhaled. Yes.
There it was. It was real, all right.
The young woman didn't know how she came to have such a strong sense of smell growing up, but it only occurred on people's scents.
She knew Moody's scent, he smelled like his flagon of Fire Whiskey. She knew her father's scent. Rigid like old pine. Dumbledore smelled of parchment paper.
And her husband had always smelled of the forest. To her, Lupin smelled like autumn, like fresh almonds, acorns. Remus brought her back to climbing old elm trees as a little girl in the park her parents would take her to, he smelled of pine wood. He smelled like dawn.
Remus? Tonks thought, feeling her nostrils flare and her ears perk up at the sound of approaching footsteps, unable to quell the sudden warm feeling rising within the confines of her chest.
Her husband always smelled of the forest, and Tonks was forced back to recall those early days of their partnership, a few days after she had found him on his knees and had come to the conclusion on her own that her new partner and her now-husband was a fully-fledged werewolf and had been on the brink of death that night.
Her brows furrowed into a frown as she closed her eyes, thinking of how in the early days of their partnership with one another, Remus had that shy look that quiet, reserved men often wore, melancholy and morose.
Always behind those slightly pursed lips was a smile just waiting to be tempted out, that Tonks had somehow managed to coax from Remus.
Sometimes, Lupin would look her way and she would generally pretend not to notice. Too much interest in her new partner who was a man almost ten years her senior and Tonks thought he would have run.
But whenever she did return Remus's glances, she found she didn't have to try to smile, it just came to her naturally over those long weeks.
That night after she had found him in a state of semi-consciousness and had guided him back to his bed, Tonks decided to take a chance on Remus and had started to learn how to trust her new partner for the better.
That fateful night was the night Tonks saw something flicker in those light brown orbs of Remus Lupin's that she never wanted to die.
Lupin's hands clutched at the walls of his bedroom in Grimmauld Place, trying to maintain his equilibrium, which was a futile effort.
Merlin's Beard, he had spent the last five minutes just trying to stay on his own two feet, when he seemed incapable of being able to walk around much at all.
His broken, bruised, bitten, and scratched body was starting to reach a point of exhaustion where he just couldn't do it anymore. His body could not continue to handle dealing with this torture for three nights every month.
He wanted nothing more than to break down and weep at the fact that no intellectual genius like Dumbledore had managed to find a cure for lycanthropy at all.
If there were, he would have been the first one in line. Remus struggled to focus his blurred, hazy vision more than a few feet in front of himself, dazed and in pain as his battered body was.
A soft whimper of pain escaped him as his legs faltered and he fell against the wall, having no choice but to use it as a support brace and lean heavily against it while he tried to regulate his labored, raspy breathing back to normal.
Remus walked back to his bed like his limbs no longer belonged to him and each step was a negotiation rather than an order. Everything hurt.
Lupin felt his eyes squeeze shut as his scarred face twisted and contorted into a pained grimace. Never before had he experienced such intense pain in his entire life.
As he collapsed onto the bed, Remus could feel his head spinning ultimately as he let himself lay back on the mattress.
His jaw clenched as he tugged on a lock of his hair in fistfuls, pulling on it so hard the roots screamed in protest, but it helped to ease the pains. The door to his bedroom opened, making him jump.
His monthly nightmare had ended last night on the third night of this month's full moon cycle, and Remus had somehow managed to remain in one piece.
And yet, he didn't feel whole.
Everything felt battered, bruised. He could feel a figure coming closer, and he drew in a sharp breath that pained his lungs as the young woman knelt at his bedside, a lock of red hair tumbling in front of her face, though she brushed it aside with one fell swoop of her thumb. Lily.
Lovely Lily. He felt his cracked, bleeding lips part, struggling to say even the first syllable of her name, though she raised a finger to his lips, effectively silencing him.
"Shh." Her voice was succulent and soft. "Don't try to speak, Remus. You're hurt. You need to lie back and rest."
Lupin felt his blurry vision slowly fade away as black spots appeared at the edges of his wolfish line of sight, and everything was still tinted yellow as his irises reverted from their green hue when the Wolf came out, to his normal color, his father's inherited light brown eyes.
"What…" He gazed at Lily briefly before allowing the young redhead to gently push him back onto the mattress, and he almost snapped at his old friend before some initial semblance of cohesive thought and reasoning returned. "Why…are you…doing this…?" he managed to gasp out hoarsely.
She merely proceeded to look at Remus in silence for a moment, rubbing her blood-stained fingers together as she poked and prodded at a wound near his collarbones with the delicate pad of her fingertips.
Remus swallowed down hard past the growing lump in his throat, trying to put on some form of the mask of gratitude, to silently convey his thanks to his friend.
"Lily. Look at me. Please."
He was begging with her now, pleading with his old friend to look. She startled as her name tumbled unchecked from his lips, and she froze, her movements stilled as she carried a small wooden bowl with medical supplies underneath one arm, and a heavily laden breakfast tray, complete with eggs, bacon, toast with jam, an English muffin, and a scone, no doubt prepared by Molly, in the other hand, which she set down quickly on his small night table next to his bed and sat down.
Lily's inquisitive eyes went down her arm, stopping at the outline of Remus's wand tucked underneath his overly large and tattered t-shirt.
"You won't be needing that, Remus." Remus watched as Lily reached out her hand expectantly, and with an unfounded sense of trepidation and reluctance, he handed his wand over, for a fleeting moment, wishing he could jinx her with it, just to see if she was really here, that this was not another phantasm of his mind playing a sport.
Lily took his wand and set it aside the breakfast tray in his night table.
Lupin opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get another word in edgewise, his eyesight started to blur again, but not because tears were welling up, though they were.
"I…miss you," he whispered softly. "And James."
Everything became fuzzy as Remus struggled to keep his eyes open, and then he saw nothing at all. His consciousness was floating through an empty space filled with a horrible kind of static.
Throughout this inky space, his heartbeats pounded loudly, echoing in his ringing eardrums, alongside fading pleas for help. And then the feeling in his body drained. Lupin heard Lily say something to him, though she sounded faint, far away, and muffled, as if underwater.
He allowed herself to succumb to sleep.
All went black.
The situation did not look good at all. Tonks hadn't intended to open the door to her partner's bedroom and to find him so utterly exhausted, much less attempting to get out of his bed when it was much too soon, and since he had passed out again, he hadn't moved an inch.
He'd called her Lily.
Tonks furrowed her brows in a frown and glanced at her reflection in a little mirror that hung on the opposite wall.
Just because she'd chosen to wear her hair a rich dark auburn red color this afternoon didn't mean that she was shooting to resemble his friend, who had been dead now for years, far from it.
The man was not exactly a pretty sight, she thought, biting the wall of her cheek as her tongue ran along the top wall of her teeth as she raised her wand and lit the candle on the man's bedside to provide what warmth and light it can.
Remus John Lupin's scars were not at all a pretty sight, the ones that marred his face were an eyesore, and Tonks hated thinking along these lines, though there was no denying the truth.
She perched herself on the edge of his bed and reached over and placed a gentle hand on his forehead. Still feverish.
Waves of heat seemed to course through the man's bloodstream, as a cold sweat glistened on his gaunt, peaky features.
His eyes sunken in and his skin sallow, it looked as though everything ached, and his body lacked the strength.
Maybe that's why he passed out, Tonks thought with furrowed eyebrows. Even under the light cotton sheet, Lupin was radiating heat like a brick right out of the oven.
Fires burn, fevers consume. Tonks saw Lupin being eaten from within by the virus that intends to cook him, scorching his usually pale skin so red.
Tonks decided she had never seen her new partner so lacking in life spirit and the fear of losing him on her watch bit down hard. Tonks moved to hold Lupin's still fingers only to drop them in fright, shocked by his inner furnace.
Her sharp gray eyes drifted over the three diagonal lines on his face that gave the features of Remus John Lupin's face a twisted, somewhat grotesque appearance as the thick, jagged red and pink lines were truly shocking against such pale skin, the ending lines of the three scars tugging his lip slightly downward in that permanent-looking scowl of his, hardening what otherwise should have been, in Tonks's mind, handsome features. Tonks let out a sigh.
Tonks allowed the pad of her thumb to just barely graze itself over the narrow bands of pinks and reds that were the scars on her new partner's face.
They smoothed over the streak, and Tonks drew in a pained breath. She fought the nervous swirls that braided in her weak stomach, trying to look at something alternate, something that had no recollection or knowledge of how such horrific-looking scars came to be birthed onto and mar this man's poor face.
But she couldn't. Tonks couldn't undo the images that were now permanently embedded thickly in her troubled mind.
Remus is…a werewolf.
Yet, despite this newfound revelation that her partner suffered from uncurable lycanthropy, and given his now apparent crippled physical state, there was no doubt in Tonks's mind that Remus John Lupin was a strong man, possessing a great physical strength that she knew stemmed from the Wolf.
Even underneath his t-shirt, the man seemed to be made purely of muscle. Just last night, she'd had one hell of a time escorting him back to bed on her own.
Perhaps it was for the best, Tonks thought, that he passed out shortly after she had arrived with the breakfast tray and medicines to help aid his recovery.
She did not want to have to keep pretending to be Lily Potter while he was awake and in a half-lucid state, and as it so happened, this strange interlude of peace and quiet allowed Tonks to get perhaps what was her first truly good look at Remus John Lupin up close, considering when the man was awake, he preferred to keep Tonks at a safe distance, more than an arm's length away, and this moment of solitude, while he slept through the worst of his fever, was an opportunity for Tonks to get used to his unusual appearance and Lupin's scars.
If he had woken up earlier and had managed to find it within himself to recognize her, Remus surely would have noticed Tonks's initial apprehension to come and check on the man given the way he had treated her last night when she had found him, how he had adamantly refused the offer of her help.
And that, Tonks knew, was the last thing that Lupin needed right now. Besides, now that she was here sitting perched at the edge of his bed like this, her new partner's initial appearance was not nearly as shocking as she had found him when she first laid eyes on him that night he'd stopped her fall outside.
True, Remus Lupin wasn't that much to look at, but he possessed the same characteristics as anyone else in her life.
Two legs, two arms, all his digits in the right places. The young man and werewolf was simply different, to put it rather politely, and different, as her parents had taken great care to teach Tonks growing up, did not necessarily make a person bad. It made them unique.
And his eyes. Oh, Merlin's Beard, Remus had the most unusually striking pair of light brown eyes she had ever seen in a wizard before.
Lupin's eyes were perhaps the most redeeming physical quality, aside from his thick tuft of light brown hair flecked with bits of premature gray sprinkled throughout.
Her partner's eyes were bewitching.
It was as if their roasted-coffee-bean rim had diffused into a cream-hued iris—mixing until it was the color of sun-dried beech wood, and Tonks could not seem to be able to get enough of his eyes.
And so horribly haunted. Tonks, try as hard as she might, could not seem to shake the memory of how he had looked at her only moments ago when she had called him Lily.
An inexplicable warm feeling began to spread throughout her chest and limbs as envy coursed through her veins, envy, and insecurity.
The fire in Tonks swelled as she remembered how there was unshed glistening moisture in the man's brilliant brown orbs had been, and Tonks froze, pondering to herself why it was that she had not bothered to correct Remus.
Why hadn't she? She hadn't bothered to tell him that no, she wasn't Lily and that Harry Potter's mother, his friend, was dead.
She had played along with it instead, which was, in all honesty, the last thing she had expected she'd do.
Tonks almost laughed in disbelief, a bitter laugh to herself though she halted the noise that formed in her throat, clamping a hand over her mouth, and biting down on her knuckles to still the noise.
Tonks knew if she laughed here and now, it would wake up Remus. Nevertheless, the young Auror was starting to worry over her partner's welfare.
It had been well past noon by the time Tonks had the idea to go up and check on him after staying awake with him almost all night last night.
He had been unconscious for hours, and she could tell her was dehydrated and malnourished. If he did not wake up soon, there was a possibility that Lupin could be in danger.
You poor man, Tonks thought as she contemplated over his scarred and slightly disfigured face.
She had so many burning questions for Remus churning in her mind that caused her stomach to give a painful lurch.
What unimaginable hell had he suffered through his life? Who had been the werewolf who turned him? How old had he been? And why was he seeing Lily? Who are you, Remus John Lupin? Tonks silently asked him. Tell me.
Her partner willed the man to wake of his own volition and open those riveting eyes again so she could look into him and see those untold stories.
Who are you?