Chapter 23: Mother
Tonks brought her forehead down to rest on the edge of the baby basket. Her knees, imprinted on the exact same spot where Remus had knelt, ached to the bone. She breathed in Teddy's sleeping smell and it exploded like fireworks in her brain. Her heart didn't break, it ripped itself down the middle, it oozed, it thumped pain around her body when she raised her eyes to look at him. She longed to pluck him from sleep and cuddle him, to feel the incomparable peace of his soft cheek against her skin, but that would mean disturbing him, distressing him - and if he cried, she would weaken. If he cried, she would fail.
"I have to do it, Teddy," she murmured through chewed lips, "I have to go."
They were too few without her. Kingsley could not hope to hold the castle for long with only a skeleton crew at his command, not against the numbers Voldemort had to strike with. But they only needed to keep the Death Eaters' forces at bay long enough for Harry to do his… thing - and one wand could be the difference, one well-aimed spell could buy a minute, one more fighter could tip the scales in their favour and then…and then…
The possibility of victory was dizzying. Tonks had to clench her fists until her knuckles turned white to steady herself.
"You won't ever have to be afraid, Teddy….This is for you, it's all for you…"
Teddy wriggled in his striped sleepsuit, the tiny muscles in his forehead tensing and then relaxing.
"You are so loved," Tonks shuddered, "so, so bloody loved."
Her body wasn't ready. Her breasts were straining and swollen in anticipation of Teddy's next feed. Tonks dragged a bag of supplies out from under the bed and rummaged for the body temperature bottle she prayed was inside. The incantation instructions blurred together and milk pattered onto the floorboards before she got the hang of it, pumping one breast and then the other. Her chin wobbled as she jammed down the stopper: they hadn't had a chance to try Teddy on a bottle yet, he might not like it at first…it might confuse him, upset him…he would know that the mum feeding him was not his mum and he would wonder where she had gone, why she had left him…
Tonks groaned. "I'm sorry…I'm so sorry…", she leant into the basket and kissed his tiny hand, his round red cheek, "it won't be long, I promise. Me and your dad are gonna make everything alright for you."
She had to force herself away, piece by piece. She lifted her fingertips from his warm little body, raised herself from her knees to the balls of her feet, straightened up on legs that trembled until they managed to carry her across the room. She stripped off her soft clothes and tugged on her old black jeans, expanding the waistline to fit. She pressed her wand tip to the collar of the first pair of robes she found in the wardrobe, drowning the fabric in black dye. No silver fastenings, no insignia, but they were close enough. Tonks found the talisman Remus had made her, kissed it, and tucked it away in a pocket. Her hair she morphed away from her face and into a wildly criss-crossed French plait. She wasn't stupid enough to place a target on her head with her trademark pink, so she let it find its natural sandy mouse instead. She didn't despise that colour anymore. It had been her dad's.
She rolled her shoulders. She flexed her forearms. She tightened her tender stomach muscles. Remus was wrong, she didn't need any more recovery time. She barely bled anymore. She was strong enough for anything - she'd learn that on Teddy's birthday.
Her eyes passed over the pinned photographs on the walls without focusing - she didn't want to meet the delighted, oblivious eyes of the Remus in the picture, or the knowing dark ones of Sirius which reminded her too much of what he'd told her on the day they met, "you could lose everything that matters to you" - until she reached an older picture of a woman, younger than her, with dark red hair and a luminous green gaze. Tonks stared back at Lily for a moment, before turning for the door.
But when she reached that line in the floorboards, she couldn't cross it. Don't look back. Her fingers gripped the doorframe and a splinter thrust itself under her nail. She leant her skull against the wood and ground it from side to side. Don't look back. When Teddy woke she'd be gone, further away from him than he'd ever known. To take a step would be to gouge a wound she wasn't sure she could ever truly forgive herself for. But she took one. And then another. And by the time she reached the stairs, the decision had hardened inside her. It was a steel truss to keep the frayed flesh of her heart together, it was what she needed to stay alive.
Down in the living room, Andromeda was rushing to and fro, supplies dropping neatly into a suitcase on the sofa. Tonks slid her feet into her boots.
"I'm only packing a few essentials, darling. Just so that if - well, just in case. Do you think we'd need any - " Andromeda did a double take and blanched, her voice dropping and hollowing out. "Why are you dressed like that?"
"Mum - "
"No!" Andromeda flung away the bibs she'd been holding. "Nymphadora, no."
"Mum, don't freak out - "
"Don't you even think about it. I forbid it!"
"Listen to me - "
"No! You listen to me, young lady!" Andromeda pointed a slim finger at her. "You gave Remus and I your word. How can you even contemplate going off and risking your life?"
"It's my duty to go."
"Don't you give me that - you are not an Auror anymore! Your duty is to your son! Teddy needs you and you want to swan off, three weeks postpartum, straight into the path of my sister? You've always been rash, but this - this is reprehensible, Nymphadora, it is appalling."
It was no more than Tonks had expected. "The Order's outnumbered," she said levelly. "Harry needs as many people defending him as possible if he's going to have the slightest chance of trouncing you-know-who for good - but it only takes one of us to keep Teddy safe."
"Then you should let me go in your place! You are the mother of a newborn, not a soldier. I will not let you waste your precious life to become another one of Bellatrix's prized corpses. For once in your life, would you please just do as I say?"
"This is war, Mum - "
Andromeda's wrist twitched. Too slow.
" - I'm trained for it," Tonks finished, catching her mother's wand in her left hand, "you're not."
Andromeda closed her eyes. Her delicate chin shook. "You lied to us, didn't you? You knew exactly what you were going to do the moment the summons came."
"Yeah. Not my finest moment, I know. But judging by the looks on your faces, you and Remus were more than willing to bang me up in the basement and I didn't fancy my chances against the two of you at once. I had no choice."
"No choice? Of course you had a choice," Andromeda hissed. "Remus trusted you and it was your choice to deceive him, to deceive us both. You sent him off to battle believing his wife and baby would be safe - "
"Teddy will be safe with you - "
"I am not his mother!"
"There's milk in a bottle upstairs. He'll probably start crying for it in an hour or so. If that runs out, there's some shop-bought stuff in the nursery cupboard, you'd - "
"Don't do this, don't leave us - "
"- better pack it all, just to be safe. Teddy, um, Teddy's never fed from a bottle before - let alone whilst up in the air - so…you'll need to - to be patient, you know? And, um, be sweet with him, re-reassure h-him…"
Tonks had to stop talking. It was suddenly hard to breathe. She groped for the door and leant against it, bending forward to catch her breath.
The anger left her mother's voice. "You don't really want to do this, darling. I know you don't."
Tonks watched Andromeda's slippered feet creep closer along the floor. She spoke as though trying to coax Tonks away from a cliff edge.
"In your heart, I know you want to stay with Teddy - and there is no shame in that. You're not the girl you were, you're a mother now and your baby's needs simply must come first. I know you're scared for Remus, I'm scared for him too, but he is a powerful wizard and believe me when I tell you that he doesn't want you by his side tonight."
"He might not want me, but he needs me. They all do."
Tonks raised her clearing head. Nothing, not even the terrible pain in her heart, could alter her decision. Andromeda snatched back the hand she had been extending. Her nostrils flared in her otherwise frozen face.
"Start flying as soon as I've gone. Don't wait to be told. Chances are we'll win and you'll have to come right back, but I'm not taking any risks when it comes to Teddy. You-know-who will hit the castle with everything he's got tonight so you should have a clear run of it over the sea. When you reach land, stop only to rest, speak to no one. Take the fake passports in case you need to go some of the distance the muggle way. Teddy's grandad Lyall will take you in."
"And what are you going to do exactly?" Andromeda snapped, changing tack. "Stride into Hogwarts and win the war single-handedly? Are you so desperate for a bit of glory you're willing to leave Teddy an orphan?"
"I've got to do my bit to defeat the scum who want us all dead. I don't have it in me to sit on my arse and fly away, leaving my friends to suffer on my behalf. I might not be an Auror anymore, but I swore an oath to the Order of the Phoenix and I won't turn my back on them. I can't let them down, not tonight, not when I can feel it in my gut that this could finally be it, our chance to win after so many killings, so many lives fucked up, so many lies and injustices. The war's bigger than me, but I can still punch a hole in it. I'm one of the best we've got."
"You really think that justifies deserting Teddy?"
"I am doing this for Teddy! Don't you get it? If we lose this battle, we lose everything. Exile's the best we could hope for, a half-life always looking over our shoulder, always knowing they'll track us down eventually, watching you-know-who spread his poison from country to country, stealing closer all the time. Teddy deserves so much better than a life like that!"
"Bellatrix will be at the castle!" Andromeda's eyes were wild. "You know the unspeakable things she wants to do to you, it will be a torture that won't end, my sister is unstoppable!"
"Maybe I've got some unstoppable genes of my own. Maybe it's her who should be scared to run into me."
For a second, Tonks thought her mother would slap her, but Andromeda's hand went to her own chest instead as she coughed out a sudden sob. "H-how did it come to this?"
"Mum…" Tonks hugged her. Andromeda's body felt brittle in her arms as she held her steady, keeping the wands out of grabbing reach.
"Ted buried and now you…my daughter…my only daughter…"
"I'm sorry I've been such a terror," Tonks said into her hair, "not exactly the daughter you expected. But don't despair, Mum. Keep the faith, okay? I'll be fine. I've got every intention of coming back in one piece."
"W-what if…what if…?"
Tonks squeezed her. "I know you'll be strong.
Andromeda's tears trickled down Tonks' collarbone, but they could not move her. The battle was calling to her now, she couldn't resist it for much longer: soon all her waiting would be over. She eased her mother back and kissed the verbena-scented strands of hair clinging to her wet cheek.
"Don't wait, alright?" She repeated. "Take Teddy and go."
Andromeda turned her face away, unable to watch as Tonks opened the front door and stepped out. The leafy perfumed air of the forest at night washed over her, beckoning her away down the path. She was almost gone when she heard her mother's slippers flitting over the grass behind her
"Wait…wait…Tonks, please."
"Don't you call me that." Tonks turned but didn't stop, taking the final step over the apparition boundary backwards before tossing Andromeda's wand back to her. "It's Nymphadora."
x-x
The Hog's Head was empty apart from an errant goat chewing on a tablecloth. After wobbling on tiptoe atop a wooden crate, Tonks clambered inside the mouth of what proved to be a tunnel above the mantelpiece. The torches had died to embers so Tonks had to feel most of her way, her fingers trailing the walls on either side until the darkness delivered her to a door. Shoving it open, Tonks emerged into a cavernous chamber, dazzling after the gloom of the tunnel. It had the look of a room the morning after a party. The ceiling was decked with drooping banners and the floor littered with detritus. It was empty but for Ginny who sat, swaying moodily, on a hammock.
"Tonks!" Ginny leapt down and ran towards her, hugging her tight as soon as Tonks dropped onto the patterned rug below the ledge. "You're here! But Remus said - "
She was cut off by an imperious voice. "Good evening, which way to the battle?"
They looked up to see an astonishing looking woman in a moth-eaten hat appear in the passageway. They quickly helped her down.
"Augusta Longbottom," she announced, clasping Tonks in a crunching handshake.
"Right. Hi. Tonks."
Augusta Longbottom squinted at her. "Are you an Auror?"
"Not really." Tonks turned impatiently to Ginny. "So, what's going on? I haven't heard anything since the first summons from Kingsley."
"All I know is that Snape's legged it, the students who don't want to fight have all been evacuated, and there's going to be a battle. That's it though, I haven't been told anything since. They left and made me wait here like a total numptie."
There was a clatter on the other side of the room: Harry, Ron and Hermione jumped down into the chamber, clutching broomsticks and a bizarre array of differently sized fangs.
"Ah Potter," said Augusta, "you can tell us what's going on."
"Is everyone okay?" Tonks and Ginny asked together, rushing over.
"'S far as we know," said Harry. "Are there still people in the passage to Hogsmeade?"
"I was the last to come through," said Augusta. "I sealed it. I think it unwise to leave it open now Aberforth has left his pub. Have you seen my grandson?"
"He's fighting."
"Naturally. Excuse me, I must go and assist him." Chin set proudly aloft, Augusta bustled away.
Harry frowned at Tonks. "I thought you were supposed to be at home with Teddy?"
Tonks tried not to wince. Hearing his name hurt too much. "Teddy's with my mum, she'll look after him. I had to come and fight. Where's Remus?"
"He was planning to lead a group of fighters into the grounds - "
The front line. Of course, Remus is on the front line. Tonks ran, leaving the Room of Requirement through a passageway that blurred in her peripheries, slamming her palms against the wall for balance as she sprinted through. She burst out into the castle but, before she could get her bearings, was bent double by a hacking cough: the air was thick with dust and smoke. The corridor was trembling. Tonks was seized by a sense of violation, the castle was in distress, its windows smashed, surrounded by the clashing din of a battle already raging.
Flashes danced in her expanding pupils as Tonks stared out at the grounds, struggling to reconcile the view she knew with the chaos she was witnessing: smoke billowed from burning craters, trees sank engulfed in hissing green flame, limp shapes were splayed out all across the grass. Screams, curses, bursts of earth and rock, fused into an ear-splitting cacophony as lines of Voldemort's forces advanced; so close they must surely have broken through the castle's first layers of protection. The Order was even more fucked than she'd feared. Tonks broke into a faster run.
I'm coming, Remus. I'm coming.
"Tonks! Wait for me!"
Tonks skidded into a vibrating wall. "Ginny! You can't be out here!"
"Harry needed the Room of Requirement! I'm here now, I want to fight!"
The wall rumbled and Tonks lurched away from it to yell at Ginny. "Your mum'll murder me if I let you go out there! You're supposed to be waiting somewhere safe."
"And you're supposed to be at home with Teddy!"
Tonks grabbed Ginny by the hood and pulled her away from the window just as a red curse fizzed through the glass and bounced away down the corridor. There was a splitting sound, so deep Tonks felt it reverberate in her molars, and she put her eye to an arrow slit to watch a far turret, shattered by a flying boulder, crumble and fall.
"Ginny, I don't have time for this! If you want to be useful, here's what you can do," Tonks crouched under the shattered window and pulled Ginny down with her, "fire at the Death Eaters from up here."
A giant swerved through the lines below, swinging a gargoyle in a fist the size of a muggle car and roaring.
"Let's hope he steps on some of them!" It was Ron again, flanked by Harry and Hermione.
"As long as it's not any of our lot!"
Ginny sent a fast jinx down into the melee, knocking a masked figure off their feet.
"Good girl!"
Now it was Aberforth who joined them, his grey hair flying behind him as he ran with a group in students in tow. "They look like they might be breaching the north battlements, they brought giants of their own."
"Have you seen Remus?" Tonks shouted.
"He was duelling Dolohov. Haven't seen him since."
Tonks scrambled to her feet and pelted after him, not wanting to hear whatever Ginny was yelling. Her skin was crawling, hot acid was roiling in her stomach, her feet were numb in her boots as they pounded the flagstones. Dolohov. Dolohov who murdered Molly's brothers, who Mad Eye had once called a technical duelling master, who would surely remember Remus getting the better of him beneath the streets of London.
She overtook Aberforth and his crew, ducking and sliding to avoid the curses and rocks hurled through the windows, swearing at herself every time she tripped. She reached the grand marble staircase that led to the castle's main entrance, but stopped short: it was blocked, barricaded by suits of armour and a small cluster of Hogwarts staff and students. East, she told herself, strike from the side.
She headed upwards, vaulting from one moving staircase to another. As she tumbled over one marble bannister, she felt a twinge in her pelvis, but only sucked air in between her teeth and pushed on. She chose a classroom on the third floor and made for its window, swinging her legs out over the ledge, stinging eyes scanning the flashing smog. The fight was concentrated fifty metres to her left. She tapped her wand in a circle on her palms and on the toes of her boots to make them sticky, then swivelled and lowered herself over the drop. She scaled the outer wall until she was low enough to drop to a crouch on the ruined grass.
She gave herself one second - one thump of her pulse high in her throat, one gulp of the foul air, one glance up at the shrouded stars - before she plunged into the battle. All was heat, the tang of blood and fear sweating from vicious bodies, but Tonks was fresh, faster than them, a surprise, and she took two down in quick succession. She fought her way along the sides of the greenhouses, curses flashing green, red, purple, in the glass; illuminating the tangled shapes of plants; seeing the whites of her enemies' eyes just before they fell as she pressed ahead into the crush.
She caught a glimpse of Kingsley - her commander - in the thick of the battle's epicentre in the distance, his jaw tight with effort as he pointed his wand at the ground and three Death Eaters fell, screaming and clutching the boneless flesh of their legs. She saw Yaxley, kicking a dead body at his feet, until her view was distorted by the fiery trail of a boulder skimming their heads and striking the castle, sending knife-sharp chips of stone plummeting down over the mess of bodies. Tonks knew she needed to push on north if she was going to reach Remus and their friends, but for every step she took past the greenhouses, there was another Death Eater; she span and dived, thwarting each one, gnashing her teeth, head butting the chin of a man who pawed at her and shrieked filth into her ear; beginning to bleed again, hardly caring.
There was still no sign of Remus, but she would find him. She wasn't going to let anyone take her good and beautiful husband from her, none of these pathetic excuses for wizards were going to deny them the life they had earned. She would reach him and they would fight alongside each other, like they were always meant to, like they had so many times before; and she would stamp her boot into Dolohov's face, into the face of anyone who would want her Remus or her Teddy dead, of anyone who wanted to break the spine of the country that was their home. Her blood was up, rage surged higher in her veins with every minute that passed without catching sight of him, and every dead body she had to step over only made her wrath spin all the more wildly; she knew the life her loved ones deserved and tonight she was going to take it for them, she was going to find Remus, find him and protect him, find him and -
It was her laughter she heard first. A high lusty cackle that made the sinews of Tonks' wand hand itch. A body fell and behind it, there she was: eyes shadowed in a waxwork face, lips of scarlet, a swarm of curls down her back, a heeled shoe on the lifeless wrist of a girl in Gryffindor robes. They saw one another at the same moment and Bellatrix's laugh curdled at the back of her throat. The hell thundering around them faded as their gazes met in mutual, hate-drenched recognition of inevitability, Bellatrix with a slow, sliding grin of satisfaction. Bellatrix raised her arms and the fighters around them were jolted back, leaving them alone in a circle of churned earth.
Sparks pricked every nerve in her body, but Tonks' mind was calm. She knew what she had to do. There would be no peace with her aunt still living. Bellatrix would haunt every one of Teddy's goodnight kisses, dog every step they took through the world. Tonks' dark dream of vengeance could never fade whilst the vile pulse of Sirius' murderer, her dad's might-as-well-be murderer, her mother's tormenter, Voldemort's favourite Auror torturer, still beat.
Bellatrix's opened her mouth, her tongue stroking its roof, and Tonks knew she was relishing her choice of taunts. But Tonks felt Mad Eye at her back ("a witty Auror's a dead Auror") and wasn't going to make the mistake of waiting to hear them - and she herself had nothing to say that couldn't be better expressed by a curse. So she let them fly. Two twirling stomach-knotters for distraction, followed by a killing curse. Though Bellatrix blocked the first two and succeeded in curving her body to avoid the last, death only missed her by a fraction of a centimetre. She shrieked in outrage, arched her wand arm over her head and they began.
People sometimes described duelling as a dance, but this was anything but. An arrhythmic magical brawl, it did not flow but leapt between brutal volleys. Tonks lobbed curse after curse, never allowing Bellatrix to settle into her favoured graceful style of movement. She realised quickly that she'd never fought better - and she knew Bellatrix knew it too by the way the familiar insults ("werewolf's slut", "shame of my blood") became increasingly breathless. Clods of earth flew from below, chunks of stone fell from above, shards of glass exploded from their left, and soon their robes were slashed, faces bruised, hair filthy. Bellatrix carried off a neat three-step, sending a trio of Cruciatus Curses that Tonks had to bend backwards to avoid, one shooting so close over her nose she felt a brief burn of pain, but that didn't stop her sending another green jet from between her legs. It made a hole in Bellatrix's cloak before it barrelling into the earth behind her.
Tonks didn't recognise the words Bellatrix spoke next. Before she could react, the earth beneath her boots turned to air and she plummeted down, her body trapped in descent through a squeezing tunnel of dirt which filled her mouth and eyes. She couldn't move her arms, but her fingers worked to turn her wand point down and she choked out a spell that set a fire in her boots and propelled her like a rocket upwards and out, too fast for Bellatrix at the mouth of the hole. Their bodies collided and they rolled, wands trapped between them, along the ground; Tonks thrust the heel of her hand into Bellatrix's face, pressing it to the earth studded with broken shards of glass, before Bellatrix blasted her wordlessly backwards with the force of a hurricane, sending her flying away from the fighting to where only the dead lay. Separated by twenty metres, she and Bellatrix staggered, panting, to their feet. Blood streamed from her aunt's cheek and she smeared it up into her hair, fury turning her face monstrous.
Sirius appeared - flimsy as paper, his features imperfect - and was joined by her dad: puppets to distract her, nothing more. Tonks pushed a derisive laugh out of her mouth and sent her next spell straight through the fake Ted Tonks' cloudy chest and into Bellatrix's elbow joint, cracking it. But anger must have precluded all pain because Bellatrix snatched her wand out from her flopping right hand with her left, and soon Tonks was dodging a shower of curses that riveted the ground all around her. One found its mark and blinded her, leaving her with little more than instinct to avoid the others until she managed to cast the counter curse. Bellatrix had healed herself too and it was with her restored wand arm that she slashed upwards, driving an invisible hook to Tonks' navel and flipping her high into the air.
She must have reached a hundred metres in less than a second: the battle spread out below her rippling robes, the spells like city lights, illuminating the surge of tiny figures whose screams still reached her. With a heart slamming her ribs and a stomach melting, Tonks' wrist moved faster than her brain and a whip of pink lightning accompanied her fall, striking Bellatrix on the shoulder just as Tonks came into land on pillow-charmed ground.
Stumbling only once and seizing the advantage, Tonks struck again and again. Bellatrix was on her feet, but only just: struggling to send back any curses in response, retreating, moving closer and closer to the wall of fighters behind. It was only a matter of seconds until one of Tonks' curses stopped her heart - but when that second came and the perfect shot flew green and brilliant towards her chest, Bellatrix shot out an arm and, faster than Tonks would have believed magically possible, summoned a small, black robed body before her. It was into this chest that the curse was swallowed and, by the time Tonks had processed what she had witnessed, Bellatrix had already let her limp human shield - a boy, hardly more than a child - slump to the ground at her feet.
Tonks' scream of horror tore her throat on its way out. Her wand shot from her hand and Bellatrix caught it. Shock made time stretch. Bellatrix fixed her long-nailed hands around each end of Tonks' wand, tilted her head back in pleasure, and broke it, lingeringly. The two halves creaked apart, splintering like bone.
The first crucio filled Tonks before conscious thought could, a pain beyond pain that consumed everything she was, that allowed no memory, no understanding, only empty agony. When it stopped, years upon years within mere seconds later, there was weeping, salty iron clogging her throat, arms cradling her, dark hair falling down her chest and engulfing her, a fragrance she knew. Mum? But of course it wasn't. There was a wand tip at her throat and hateful lips at her ear.
"You're mine now."
