"I don't know about this whole professor thing," Junior Auror Tonks complained as I strolled with her and Percy through Diagon Alley. She'd finally been promoted out of the apprenticeship program, and had to deal with the hurdle she'd missed while she was concerned with graduation: how to keep dating Remus Lupin while he was a live-in professor at Hogwarts. "Do I just go to Hogsmeade after work, walk up to the gates, and ask to see my boyfriend? Do any of the professors have spouses? Do they even date?"
"You could have probably used the secret passages," I told her, "but I think McGonagall filled all of them in while Dumbledore was paralyzed."
"She'd better have, or Mad-Eye will go spare," Tonks agreed. It was interesting getting to spend time with the only-slightly-older auror outside of her just being over at my house because she was my landlord's girlfriend. She was the current auror-on-deck to watch my back until I went back to school, because the Longbottoms wanted to spend more time with their kids the week before school, and occasionally had to go into the office.
I still wasn't entirely sure why the Weasleys and Longbottoms had decided to spend the last week of summer vacation taking rooms at the Leaky Cauldron rather than going home. It suited me, because Remus—it was going to be really hard getting used to calling him Professor Lupin—had already shut his house up and moved into his Hogwarts accommodations so I would have had to figure something out regardless. Unfortunately, only Hermione had convinced her parents to let her stay as well, so the rest of our friends had gone home to spend a last week with their families.
After a month of basically spending every waking moment with our girlfriends, as well as Oliver and Alexis, Percy and I were a little at loose ends just rambling around the alley without anything specific to do. And while it was interesting to spend more than a couple of hours in the Victorian shopping mall that was Diagon Alley, a week was too long when you'd already blown through your summer funds and were back to being broke. We'd browsed ourselves out at the bookstore, finished all of our summer homework, done a bunch of work on our next Apology spell development, and even spent time looking at the brand new Firebolt racing broom at the quidditch store even though neither of us cared about quidditch. So we were on to strolling and talking, after we'd gotten bored with sitting and talking, and loitering in shops and talking.
"I still find it hard to understand the rationale for leaving so many tunnels off the grounds for so long," Percy complained. "I could understand one or two heavily warded exits in case of siege, but to just have unmonitored exits that students can find and use…"
"Just because your brothers thought they were unmonitored doesn't mean they were," I disagreed. "The longer I know Dumbledore, the more I think he really enjoys students thinking they're getting away with something. I'd bet you a lot of the time students thought they were sneaking out of the castle, he had some scheme or other they were assisting. I half expect he's already dug a couple of new tunnels over the summer that we'll be allowed to find out about when it's important."
"Dresden! You don't half trust the old man, do you?" Tonks asked. We were still on a last-name basis. She tried to stay on a last-name basis with everyone, because she didn't like people calling her by her first name. It didn't mean we weren't getting to be friends. She may have still been on a last-name basis with Remus, her boyfriend.
"Oh, I trust him plenty. I just think he's manipulative," I shrugged. "Just because I expect he's manipulating people to try to ensure something good happens for everyone doesn't mean I have to like knowing it. He swore he was going to try to play things a little bit more straight with me this year, but we'll see. I mean– what in the world is that!?"
I'd been distracted by the rising-third-years exiting the pet store. Neville, Ron, and Seamus (who'd managed to show up for the shopping day) looked slightly nonplussed as Hermione happily cooed at an orange pile of fur half as big as she was. "I thought she was going to get a post owl so her parents could write her at school and she could write her friends over the summer?" Percy asked. He'd always been proud of his own owl, even though most of his friends could just floo over to hang out during the summer and he had no use for Hermes at Hogwarts except to write home, which he could have used a school owl to do.
As we got closer, I was able to tell that the new pet was an enormous cat, awkwardly held by the young witch. The thing must have been at least half-kneazle, a breed of mystical cat, and was basically twice as big as any housecat I'd ever seen. It regarded me from a smushed face that looked like it had survived dashing into a wall at high speed.
"Hermione, who is that?" I said, stopping to regard the immense ginger beast. "And do you think he'll let me rub that giant floofy belly?"
"Isn't he gorgeous?" she beamed. "His name is Crookshanks. The lady said for some reason he'd been there a long time and nobody before me wanted him. Can you believe it?"
"I can believe it," Ron muttered, rubbing his head. "He fell on me!"
Given that the boy basically had a hollow leg with as fast as he was growing, I'd bet he had all kinds of snacks secreted about his person that the cat would go after. I ignored him and focused on the cat. He'd climbed up onto Hermione's shoulders to get a better look at me. Despite my question, I knew better than to immediately go for a belly rub: with the claws on the big guy, I'd need a tourniquet. Instead, I held my finger out for him to sniff. After a moment of pretend-haughtiness, he inclined his head to me to scratch.
He could probably tell immediately that I was a sucker that it was good to be friends with. He was probably right.
"Oy!" Seamus suddenly said. "Please tell me I'm not th'only one seein' that! It's a bleedin' Grim! Like right out of th'Divination book!"
We all turned and, confirming it wasn't just Seamus, the cat jumped down in front of Hermione and raised his hackles hissing. Across the street, lurking by the steps into a home good store, was an immense black hound that looked diseased and deranged. It eyed our group hungrily, took a step forward, and then apparently reconsidered taking on three grown wizards, four kids, and an immense cat. It turned and rushed off into Knockturn Alley, Crookshanks spitting and chasing it a few feet before deciding the dog had been successfully intimidated and walking proudly back to the group. "Such a brave boy!" Hermione gushed at her new familiar.
"It's a bleedin' Grim! It's an omen of death!" Seamus kept muttering. As far as I knew, he and Ron were the only two of the four who'd decided to stick with taking divination class (Seamus adding ancient runes, at my insistence). Ron was also taking care of magical creatures and muggle studies, Neville both of those plus runes, and Hermione was the only one taking arithmancy (instead of creatures class).
"I think it was just an alley dog," Tonks corrected, though she seemed to be papering over a bit of concern at how big it had been.
"Were… were its eyes glowing red?" Ron asked.
"Probably just reflecting the light," Tonks shrugged. I hadn't really noticed that, because it was in the sun enough that even if they had been glowing it would have been hard to make out.
I was suddenly struck by a thought and asked, "So… dementors sense your mind, right? And in transfiguration last year, McGonagall mentioned that an animagus in their animal form is much more like the animal, mentally, than a normal human transfiguration. Which might mean a dementor could have a harder time seeing or affecting an animagus?"
"That sounds like a very reasonable supposition," Percy allowed. "Why?"
I talked slowly, working it out as a I spoke. "I really wish I'd have figured this out earlier, and Remus never actually wants to talk about it for sure but… what do you think the chances are that Canis Major, the kid from his books who turns into a black dog, is literally because his friend, Sirius Black, was an animagus that turns into a black dog? Seems kind of on the nose, right?"
Tonks groaned, her pink hair flickering hues before settling on an embarrassed red. I still wasn't totally sure what was up with that, though I had heard of wizards born with a natural metamorph ability, so that's what I figured. "I am going to kill that dear, stupid man for keeping a secret this big. Damn. I've got to call this in! Expecto nuntius! Tell Scrimgeour: Potential Black sighting fleeing into Knockturn Alley. May be a black dog animagus!" Her silvery jackrabbit patronus dashed off toward the Ministry with the message.
"We should find the rest of the families," Percy nodded, prefect reflexes kicking in. "We can get somewhere safe so you can join in the hunt."
"Thanks," Tonks sighed, her hair fading to a muted auburn. "This is going to be a long afternoon."
"Need me to stick around to explain it?" I asked her.
She shook her head, saying, "No. I've read all the books now, and could have figured it out, too. I should have dug more into what Lupin knew about my cousin after the escape, but we didn't have much time together this month with the search and his classes." More quietly, just to me, she added, "And it's almost his time of month now, so he's going to be prickly about it… You might actually get him to fess up before I can. Just keep your head on a swivel."
"At least Black's form is big so it makes it hard for him to sneak into places," I nodded. "Just think if the traitor in that friends group had been the one who could turn into a rat."