CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
Lupin did not know how long the two of them sat in silence like this, with Tonks clinging onto him as though the young witch thought he'd disappear.
All Remus could do for her at this point until he was certain she was well enough to move was offer what he hoped were soothing, reassuring words, to whisper them into the shell of her ear and a soft yet firm embrace as Tonks continued to cry into his sweater and drench his collared shirt with her tears.
Poor Dora practically trembled in his arms as her cries didn't seem to show any signs of stopping anytime soon. She was in shock; he could recognize that.
Lupin could have waved his wand and conjured a cloak or a blanket for her, though that would mean signaling an end to their embrace, and something within the back of his mind told him that Dora would not appreciate that at all.
So, he told himself that staying put like this was more than justified, keeping his arms wrapped as tightly as he could around her waist, trying to be careful to be mindful of her injuries, enveloping Tonks in a tight embrace, and hopefully, just being this close to her, not to mention the fire that the centaurs had lit was still going strong, was apt to warm her up in the process. He hoped.
Eventually, Tonks's wild, hysterical, wailing sobs tapered down into soft sniffling's and her breathing calmed and resembled something more normal.
For a split second, Remus could not help but wonder, in Dora's state of shock, both in body and mind, if his fiancée had succeeded in crying herself to sleep.
"Tonks? Dora?" he murmured lowly, pulling back slightly to study her face, furrowing his brows into a frown as he glanced down his nose at Tonks.
Due to the somewhat awkward way that the two of them were sitting, and the way the slowly waning flames of the campfire flickered, he could make out the details of Nymphadora's face.
She was so still, that for a moment, he felt a panic swell in his chest, thinking how lifeless she looked, though the sign of her steady rise and fall of her chest and hearing how light and faint her breaths sounded gave him relief, and he exhaled shakily, raking his hands through his tuft of light brown hair.
He was sure after all of this, that the stress was going to be his undoing, constantly worrying over Tonks like this, and the nature of her unexpected pregnancy; Remus would be shocked if he didn't have a few more gray hairs.
"A—are they gone?" Tonks whispered quietly, her soft, hoarse voice muffled by the fact that her face was still buried in his shoulder, in his sweater. "Did the centaurs? Did they—are they gone? Did they leave? H—how did…?"
But Tonks's voice cracked, and she fought back a fresh wave of tears.
Lupin flinched, biting down on his bottom lip as he pulled back even further to try to gauge Tonks's facial expression, though not wanting to relinquish his grip on his fiancée yet either.
He needed comfort just as much as she did.
The insurmountable stress he'd been under when he'd woken up to find Dora not on the log next to the campsite where he and Norah had seen her last.
Knowing that any number of Dark creatures that dwelled in this Forest could and almost had done irreparable harm to her and their unborn baby had very nearly sent poor Remus over the edge and into a full-fledged panic attack.
"They're dead, Dora," Lupin murmured, tightening his grip around Tonks's shaking shoulders. "Norah killed them. With the…the sword of Gryffindor." Even as he said the words, he himself was having trouble believing the carnage that he had stumbled upon with his own two eyes. Their guide through the Forbidden Forest was truly a remarkable young werewolf indeed.
It still remained a mystery how exactly the young blonde She-Wolf managed to obtain the sword, but then it quickly hit him that…he didn't exactly know which House Norah Jameson had belonged to in Hogwarts.
If she had even gone to Hogwarts at all! Though she possessed a wand and was a gifted and talented young witch and woman, if not a bit short-tempered.
Lupin flinched as Tonks let out a tiny hiss of pain and he recoiled slightly, afraid that he was doing further damage by holding her like this, but she made no comment as to what exactly it was that was bothering her and causing her pain.
He wasn't sure just how hurt Tonks was just yet, not until they got back to their own campsite and he'd have Norah and Ollie's assistance in checking her over for further injuries would he truly know the extent of the damage.
Though he could not simply ignore Dora's trembling and clinging fingers and obvious desire to be close to him at the moment, needing comfort.
"I wouldn't have let the centaurs leave this campsite alive even if they'd wanted to," Lupin growled in a wolfish snarl, his statement almost an afterthought, and he couldn't help but add, "and Miss Jameson had no intentions of letting them ever take another breath, by the…state of things."
Tonks made a muffled strangled noise at the back of her throat that sounded like a cross between a half-choked sobbing wail and a light laugh.
"Th—there were four of them, Remus," Tonks confessed in such a faint voice that at first, Lupin wasn't even sure that Dora had spoken at all, thinking her words to have been carried away on the cool night air, but then she spoke again, and this time, her voice was a bit stronger, more resolute.
Her grip on Remus's sweater tightened, and it became clear to Lupin that she needed solid confirmation that each and every one of her captors and would-be-killers was dead and would no longer be bothering her or Ollie ever again. "Four, Rem."
"And all four of them are dead, Dora," Lupin reassured her, resting his chin on top of her hair and continuing to keep his arms wrapped around her back, the pads of his fingers stroking her spine gently and eliciting a tremor.
He was grateful that Norah had come to Dora and Ollie's aid when she had because if she had been waiting on Remus to save her, he feared he would have been too late.
Yet another thing that the two of them owed Norah for.
"I—I'm so sorry, Rem," Tonks cried, her voice a mere hoarse whisper. She sounded on the brink of another mental breakdown, and utterly exhausted.
Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke, cracking and faltering, as was her resolve. Tonks's normally sweet, reserved tone was even softer and more subdued than before, and hoarse, as though she'd been screaming and crying.
Which, Lupin could tell, judging by her red-rimmed irises and tear tracts that had dried and stained her pale cheeks, Tonks had been. He didn't blame her.
He swallowed down hard past the growing lump in his throat as she spoke.
"I—I suck at keeping watch, Rem. E—even as an Auror, I—I hate keeping surveillance," she whispered, lowering her head, sounding utterly ashamed. "I—I was trying to—to collect more kindling for the firewood, a—and those four centaurs, they—they just showed up out of nowhere, Remus!"
"Shh," he soothed, sensing the beginnings of another oncoming panic attack, watching as Tonks's breaths started to quicken and rapidly accelerate.
Though as he regarded his fiancée, at seeing her broken and anguished state, he shook his head to clear it as he silently pulled the young witch closer.
The details of what exactly had happened to Tonks and Ollie were a mystery, and he did not particularly care to know the details just yet, and even how he had gotten into the Forbidden Forest was a mystery to him, though he suspected that Professor Dumbledore and Mr. Scamander were successful in their endeavors to remove the Obscurus attached to his soul, otherwise he would not be back at the campsite with Norah waiting for them to come back.
Although Remus was more concerned about Tonks's wellbeing at the moment than anything else, Lupin still could not help but wonder just how in the name of Merlin's Beard did Tonks manage to get herself into such a precarious predicament without him or Norah waking up from sleep and hearing some kind of struggle? A scream, a shout, cry of pain, anything…
It's the Forest playing tricks on you, Moony, James advised, sounding unusually grim and uncharacteristically serious, which Remus thought strange.
It wants to divide you up, separate you all from each other, cause you to turn on one another when the only way to get out of these woods alive is to stay strong, believe in one another, and for Merlin's sake, stick together, Rem!
Lily, as always, Merlin rest her soul, was right. Lupin furrowed his brows into a frown and pulled back to study Tonks's face in the dimming light of the waning campfire, which was casting a strange glow across her pale features.
Her skin was amber against the flames, and even battered and broken as she was, to him, she was still so beautiful. He let out a tired sigh and pressed his lips to her forehead before reluctantly pulling apart.
"Why didn't you call for help, sweetheart? Why did you go deeper into the Forbidden Forest when we told you…" But Remus paused, his breath catching in his throat as his temper flared.
He could not yell at Tonks. Not right now, when she so clearly already felt immense guilt for what had happened and was in far too much physical pain than another human being should have to suffer.
"I—why didn't you, Tonks?" Lupin swallowed down hard past the lump in his throat, cringing as he heard the faltering crack in his voice, and he found himself blinking back tears of his own.
Three times—three times in one night—he had almost lost Tonks.
He just could not understand why Dora continuously, whether she was self-aware of this increasingly bad talent of getting herself into trouble or not, kept putting herself in harm's way while they were here in the thick of the Forest.
Surely, Tonks had to know, as an Auror, that attempting to take on not just one, but four adult male centaurs alone and unarmed sans wand was foolish?
So, why then, had Dora done it? Vanity? Was it her wounded pride? What? Was she afraid that Norah and he would have been angry if Tonks had woken them up? Was that it? That Norah would somehow think what Tonks had seen was just another figment of her imagination, a dirty trick of the wood?
Or did she, out of some misguided sense of independence, think that by asking either him or Miss Jameson for help, that Tonks would lose his respect?
Lupin ground his teeth and closed his eyes shut for a moment, willing himself to take slow, deep inhales of cold fall air, trying to quell the awful rolling nausea in his stomach that he knew was manifesting out of his unbridled anger.
"You should have woken me up, Dora," he snapped, unable to keep the note of bitterness of his quiet, reserved tone as Lupin practically felt and heard the anger dripping from his words. "You—you know that I would have helped you. The whole concept of keeping watch and securing the perimeter, Tonks, is not to watch for danger and then try to deal with it all on your own, Dora!"
Tonks pulled back slightly and blinked, and it was as if she were seeing Lupin in a brand new light in a way that she had not been able to see before. She furrowed her brows in a confused frown, and Remus could practically hear the frown in Dora's sweet voice.
"I—they had us outnumbered by one, Rem. There were way too many of them, a—and none of them noticed you both."
She paused and exhaled a tense, shaking breath through her nose and glanced down, wincing at the immense heat that now emanated from the broken appendage that was her wand hand, not to mention her dislocated shoulder.
"I—I was too far away from camp to alert you and Norah without them noticing that you were there, too. They'd have gone after you both!"
Lupin stared with widening eyes, and the shock must have been evident on his face as he felt what little color was left in his already pale face, to begin with drain, and his cracked lips parted open slightly to speak.
"You—I still would have helped you, Dora!" he cried, exasperated, well aware that his voice was rising, though Remus knew that not even Tonks could stop it happening. "This is why we're traveling together as a group, you, me, Norah, and Ollie now, too. We look out for each other, defend one another, have each other's backs if it comes to it. What you did tonight could have gotten you three killed."
His words escaped him as a low growl, and before he even knew what was happening, his hand not wrapped around Tonks's waist to keep her firmly rooted in his arms drifted and settled on the flat of her still very flat abdomen.
Tonks's bottom lip quivered, and for a moment, he wondered if she was about to burst into tears, and he suddenly felt incredibly guilty for snapping at her and losing his temper. "I—I didn't want you to…get hurt, Remus."
Her words escaped her lips as a hoarse whisper, and she did not seem able to meet his gaze, for she did not look him in the eye, but down at her lap.
Lupin frowned, hearing himself let out a tired sigh. "I am more than capable of handling a few centaurs, Dora. So is Norah, and between the three of us, plus Mr. Brennan, now, too, I suppose, the four of us would have had a greater chance at success in taking on all four centaurs than you had alone."
"I…" Tonks's voice cracked as she blinked back tears and swallowed down hard past the lump in her throat. "I know that, Rem." She still could not quite bring herself to meet Lupin's piercing, judging stare. "B—but I figured, they'd caught me anyways, a—and I wasn't going to make it, so…if there was a small chance that I could save your life, then…it would have been worth it to me. It would be better off for them to just kill me by myself than all three of us."
Lupin closed his eyes and felt his stomach give a painful little lurch in his already churning stomach like a coil in his gut twisted and flipped, as he thought about her words.
He did not think he could bear to live in a world without her.
"Do not ever do that again, Dora," he growled, practically urging his fiancée at this point. He kept his eyes closed, though he pulled Tonks close and rested his chin on top of her shoulder, taking some small measure of comfort for himself as he felt Tonks bury her head in the crook of his shoulder once again.
Recognizing that his voice came out gruffer than he meant it to, he felt Dora flinch away in surprising hurt at how clipped his tone sounded, and he sighed.
"I—I would rather risk getting involved than leaving you alone, Tonks. I don't want you ever getting hurt again or killed just for my sake, Dora. Don't."
Tonks blearily opened her eyes and looked at Lupin with an exhausted, defeated expression as her shoulders slumped in resignation and she nodded.
"All right," she finally relented in an exhausted, confused tone. "I won't."
Lupin nodded, and pulled back slightly, though still keeping a firm grip on her shoulders, looking over Tonks's battered form once more. "I—I know about your shoulder and your hand, darling, but where else did they hurt you?"
He fixed Tonks with a hardened, piercing stare as his light brown eyes practically darkened in anger as he looked over the worst extent of her injuries. His blood boiled in his veins at what the centaurs had done to his fiancée, and Merlin help them all if he ever ran into another of their kind again, for he was not about to be kind, the existent treaty between their race and wizards be damned.
"Tell me the truth, Tonks. I need to know exactly what they did to you. Tell me what they did, where they hurt you, and if you think our baby might be…might be in danger." His voice cracked on that last part of his statement and he swallowed down hard past the lump in his throat, though he fought it back.
Dora was the one who needed him to be strong right now.
"Being injured is nothing to be ashamed of, no matter how it happened, and I don't want you trying to hide anything from me for the sake of appearances."
Tonks's brow furrowed into a frown as she glanced down at herself, finally relinquishing her grip on fistfuls of Lupin's sweater and collared shirt underneath that she had been gripping onto tightly for support while she cried.
She flinched and bit down on her bottom lip as her one good arm clutched onto her dislocated shoulder, blinking back a fresh way of salty, stinging tears.
"I—I don't know," Tonks whispered hoarsely in a fearful and uncertain voice. Lupin waited, recognizing that Dora was still probably in a state of shock.
The young witch glanced down at her chest and allowed the pads of her fingertips to trace along with the small, shallow cut near her right collarbone.
"I—I don't think our baby is in any…any danger," she admitted, swallowing hard. "I—I think I would have f—felt it," Tonks stammered, blinking back the onset of fresh tears.
Lupin nodded mutely, not sure what to say, though he could not quell the prick of fear that pierced his heart at the thought of losing their baby.
"It hurts, Rem," Tonks moaned through gritted teeth, letting out a tiny groan as she bit down hard on her lips and allowed a painful spasm to wrack its way through her body and send a shiver down her spine. "It really hurts!"
Remus tried his hardest to avoid focusing on the sole face that poor Tonks seemed so emotionally broken and distraught over what unsaid things had happened to her and Ollie as he leaned forward to closer inspect the slash mark near Tonks's collarbone, wondering how it was that he could have missed it.
Tonks continued to speak to Remus in a soft, low, shaking tone. "They—they wanted to know how I wound up here in the Forest, who I was traveling with. I—I wasn't going to rat you and Norah out, which made them even angrier with me, and…each time I refused to answer their questions, it only provoked them further. They…hit me, kicked me, b—but then…it put its claws on me, a—and it felt like bunches of tiny razor blades along my chest. It hurt, Rem, it hurt so much, and…I—I just wanted the centaur to stop. I lied to them, told them Ollie and I were with the Ministry sent here to deal with a troublesome vampire that was attacking humans in the London area, but their leader knew that I was lying, a—and then he hurt me even worse than before."
Dora finished her winded, long, rambling explanation as her fragmented sentences seemed to tumble from her lips as one long strung together sentence.
Whatever had happened to her, it had clearly shaken her to her core. Remus frowned, lifting one of his hands and allowing the pads of his fingers to just barely graze the surface of the cut along her collarbone that he had missed.
"This one doesn't look too dangerously deep, Dora. I can mend those same as I did your other wounds, but…" He paused and glanced towards her dislocated shoulder and a broken wrist. "This, on the other hand, is problematic."
Tonks nodded and flinched, wincing as her good hand cradled her injured one, and her lips parted open in shock.
No doubt she felt the extreme heat emanating off the appendage and was in such a state of shock, Remus wondered if Dora could even feel the immense pain that was no doubt wracking its way through her entire body.
"The—their leader kept grabbing my wrist, and…" But her voice trailed off, and she shook her head once to clear her mind and swallowed down hard past the lump in her throat and continued. "One of them noticed that I was already not feeling so hot," she mumbled, a light pink blush speckling along her cheeks, which caused Remus's frown to deepen.
Was there more to this than Dora wasn't telling him? What was she hiding? "May I?" Lupin asked, gently nodding his head towards Dora's injured wrist. "I'll have to wait to tend to your shoulder when we get back to camp, but I can at least mend your broken wrist. Dislocated shoulders, on the other hand, are a bit more difficult to mend with magic but not entirely impossible."
Tonks nodded, though she hesitated, glancing down at her broken wrist and considered her fiancé's words for a moment, though something within her seemed to give way, as perhaps she realized that leaving her wrist in its current injured state was not at all ideal, and the best course of action would be to mend it, no matter how painful it was going to be, and finally offered her arm.
"I—I think it's broken. Again," she huffed in frustration, sticking out her bottom lip in a slight pout and brought her brows together in hurt confusion.
Lupin nodded, though he did not say anything. In truth, he was having trouble coming to terms with all of this. He found it rather strange that Tonks's countenance could shift so quickly, her demeanor changing almost in the blink of an eye.
Only minutes ago, she'd been near the point of hysterics, sobbing into his chest as though whatever the centaurs had put her through had devastated her, both in mind and body.
And now, here she sat cross-legged in his arms on the forest ground, speaking so blasé about her injuries like she was telling a story of what had happened to her in a totally different time and place.
Remus had always known that Tonks was exceptionally resilient and brave.
She had to be, considering her line of work as the best Auror in the office, and certainly the youngest, and for one brief moment, he wondered why the former Hufflepuff, given the immense courage she had shown throughout his time of knowing her, first as her partner, and then as a lover, and soon to be her husband, why Tonks had not been sorted into Gryffindor while at school.
Perhaps that was what he was witnessing now. Either that or Tonks was still in such a state of emotional shock that she did not quite know how to process what it was that she was feeling.
Regardless of whether or not that was indeed the case, it was still incredibly disconcerting for him to witness how his wife-to-be and mother of their unborn child's concern for her own physical well-being was so rapidly depleting. He wondered if the Forest affected her.
Remus frowned as he carefully ran his fingers over Tonks's wrist, being mindful to be as gentle as possible while assessing the damage with a trained eye.
"Well, it's definitely dislocated. I can pop your shoulder back into place in a moment, love, but I'm not going to lie. It's going to hurt, and I'll have to put it in a sling so the rest of your bones can heal properly for a few weeks, but…" he paused, finishing up running his fingers carefully over Tonks's arm. "Your wrist, on the other hand, I don't think it's broken, love. Maybe a bit more swollen than before, but count yourself lucky, Dora. You and your…talent for trouble got off much better than you could have. I don't know that I've ever encountered a centaur before who'd have not delighted in treating a human female witch like a…"
Remus couldn't say it. He coughed once to clear his throat, and Tonks blinked, seeming to get his message.
"They—they would have if—if Ollie a—and Norah hadn't come when they did," Tonks sighed, emanating a tense exhale as she closed her eyes, while Lupin continued to stare incredulously at the young witch who held his heart, unable to stop himself as he shook his head to clear it.
Did Nymphadora not understand?
Did she not realize what those centaurs had come so incredibly close to doing, and would have succeeded were it not for Ollie helping her when he had?
And Norah, his conscience reminded him as his brows furrowed in a frown, wondering if the young blonde werewolf had calmed down ever since she'd gotten back to camp, though he shoved aside thoughts of Norah Jameson for right now.
Centaurs, most of them, from what he knew of them, from Hagrid, Professor Dumbledore, and during his time as Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts, were incredibly violent and lustful beasts, not known to show kindness or mercy towards humans, especially not that of human females.
He could only imagine their vested interest in keeping Tonks alive as a tiny, fragile, defenseless humans, perhaps even all of them taking turns with poor Dora.
Lupin ground his teeth in anger, not aware he was sending a shower of blue sparks from his wand into the air until Remus felt Tonks' small hand on his arm.
Remus paused and promptly lowered his wand. Tonks had no idea what those monsters were capable of. Lupin felt his temper surge within his veins.
He wanted to yell at the young witch, to tell her never to wander off alone on her own without him or someone else present again, to scream at her for scaring him like that, and for putting herself, their baby, Norah, and Ollie at risk.
That while yes, the centaurs had been tough on Tonks, rough and cruel, judging by her current physical state, it was nothing close, nowhere near compared to what could have happened to her if Ollie hadn't come when he did.
Tonks needed to understand that, but he knew that conversation was best saved for another day, when Tonks was in a more coherent state of mind and not recovering from so many injuries and bruises and able to think more rationally.
Right now, however, his fiancée was looking absolutely miserable, and in more pain, than he could possibly imagine with her sprained wrist and dislocated shoulder, and a stern talking to and him yelling at her was not what she needed.
He started by waving his wand and conjuring a spare handkerchief out of midair and took great care to dab at the blood welling from a cut on Tonks's bottom lip. Tonks's eyelids fluttered open and stared at Remus as he worked, finally finishing in cleaning the blood away from the cut on her lip, waving his wand and the now-bloodied and soiled handkerchief vanished from his hands.
"Undo the buttons on your shirt, love. I need to take a look." Recognizing his voice sounded curt, he sighed and lifted his chin to meet Tonks's gaze, and when he saw the nervousness and trepidation laced through Dora's gray eyes, he felt something within him shift. "It's just you and me out here, love. Alone."
She nodded, after some hesitation and relented, fumbling with the buttons on her simple red collared shirt and showed no hesitation in exposing what Lupin had already seen for himself to him for a second time, though this time, in better lighting. Remus felt his frown deepen as he took a better look at Tonks's wounds.
Her chest and abdomen were covered in blackening blue and purple bruises, one of them near her pelvis in the shape of a hoof-mark, which sent his temper aflame in his veins for a third time in one night, though Lupin tampered it down.
Though it was her dislocated shoulder that was worrying Remus the most.
"I need to…I need to pop your shoulder back into place, Dora," he suggested, carefully wrapping his fingers around her arm, biting down on his bottom lip.
Tonks let out a tiny moan and squeezed her eyes shut. "It's going to hurt, isn't it?" she guessed with a pained grimace, peeking one eye open to look at him.
She exhaled a tense breath through her nose and jerked her head towards her arm. "I guess it can't be any worse than my Splinched arm, Rem. Just do it."
Remus nodded and offered Tonks what he hoped was a sympathetic smile.
"It will, love, but not any worse than leaving your arm untreated as it is. You feel ready?" Lupin watched as Tonks offered the tiniest of nods, clenching her jaw shut and squeezing her eyes tightly, holding her breath as Lupin gripped her dislocated arm as gently as possible and with a sickening pop, set it right again.
Tonks let out a whimper and allowed a single tear to roll down her cheek as her fingers gripped onto fistfuls of Remus's jacket sleeve for support as her shoulder was popped back into its socket, her body rocking and forth with the pain, though her movements became still after a moment, and she opened her eyes, letting out a tense and relieved breath, her eyes wide and huge as she stared at Remus. "Th—that wasn't so bad. Th—thank you, Rem," she whispered.
"Good as new." Lupin forced a smile, though he knew it did not reach his eyes. Tonks had no idea, the profound effect she had on him, on the others.
How she had worried all of them tonight, especially him, and he was going to have to come up with some way to make her understand that she had been in the wrong, going off on her own like that. Lupin frowned as he helped her up, draping one of her arms over her shoulder, though not before conjuring an arm sling and helping Dora ease her dislocated shoulder into it. "You'll have to wear this at least a couple of days. I'd try not to move it around too much if you can, Dora."
Tonks nodded mutely, biting down on her bottom lip as she allowed Lupin to take her by her uninjured hand now not in the sling and guide her back to their campsite.
She could sense the irritation and anger emanating off him in waves.
Though he wasn't coming outright and saying what was bothering him, Tonks knew that she was the root cause of his agitated, fretting state of mind.
And somehow, Tonks knew that accident or not…it was all her fault.
