"So," Dora said, shifting uncomfortably in her chair. "What am I doing here?"
Here was Mad-Eye's surprisingly...normal-looking sitting room. If she didn't know better, she'd say he'd just commandeered some random muggle house for their meeting, it was in the middle of a muggle suburb, after all. But she'd felt the wards examine her when she entered, and there were no electrics anywhere. There were also no pieces of furniture that anyone could hide behind or under or even on top of — the book-shelves set into the corner went all the way to the ceiling. Tables were glass and the chairs were all spindly, modern-looking things. The bed (when she'd claimed a need to use the loo and gone snooping) was set directly on the floor, and the shower had a glass stall rather than a curtain. There were no blinds or curtains on any of the windows (one-way obscuring charms hiding their goings-on from anyone outside) or doors on the closets (or cupboards) and foe-glasses were set in various corners of the ceiling, allowing one to observe the entirety of any room one happened to be in from any spot, even if one didn't have a creepy enchanted eye that could see through the back of one's head. After all, the Mad Eye wouldn't help him identify someone under polyjuice or any number of other disguising potions and enchantments.
It was definitely Moody's house, is what she was trying to say. Which, it was really fucking weird that he'd asked her to come here, he never told anyone where he lived, claimed it was part of the price you paid if you wanted to live past the age of forty in this business. (Some people had to know where he lived, of course, but probably only like, Dumbledore, and maybe Lady Bones.)
Moody engaged the privacy wards on the room before he answered, a few flicks of his wand bringing oppressive, stifling magic down on them, so suddenly Dora had trouble breathing there, for a second.
"Bloody hell, Mad-Eye. Overkill much?"
"No such thing, Tonks," he growled. "You're here because I've got an offer for you. An offer that I'll deny ever having made, if you turn it down."
Er... "Are you trying to get into my knickers? All you had to do was ask, you know."
Mad-Eye gave her a look, like that was the stupidest thing she'd done since she'd ambushed him looking like Bellatrix Lestrange (which wasn't nearly so funny in hindsight, now that she was out), but didn't even address her guess. Which had only been partly facetious. She really couldn't imagine what he might have to say that warranted this degree of secrecy.
"I'm retiring next week," he said, rather abruptly.
Well, that was...
Seriously?
Okay, the thing was, he'd been planning on retiring three years ago. He'd stayed on specifically to train Dora, or so Kingsley had told her, once, after a particularly shite day of training, when she'd been venting to him about her sadistic SA and his insane standards. Which was, on the one hand, kind of flattering. But on the other hand, she'd kind of always thought she'd just been a convenient excuse.
She'd honestly figured he'd keep coming up with reasons to put off leaving until he died on the training field, because he'd also almost retired back in Eighty-One, when the War ended and Sirius, who had been his junior partner at the time, was revealed to have been a traitor, and Adamant Smith put his foot down and declared that anyone with as many years and injuries under his belt as Moody really shouldn't be an active field agent anymore — he'd managed to parley the play to stick him behind a desk into training the fresh recruits and stayed on because he was convinced that Smith, a Death Eater sympathiser, was trying to force him to quit.
Then in Eighty-Four, Turpin had cleaned house and Amelia Bones had become the Head of the DLE. She tried to promote him to Head Auror, aka Head Paper-Pusher, only backed off when he threatened to quit first — she really did want to keep him around to maintain order through the transition period. And in Eighty-Six, Scrimgeour had begun to object to some of the not-strictly-regulation practices and procedures he'd been training the new recruits to observe. (Moody had lost that one, been forced to stop teaching new recruits to resist torture and take excessively paranoid measures to maintain mission security. Though he'd still put her through Unforgivable resistance training, under strictest secrecy. She could only assume he'd done the same for others he trusted not to rat him out.) In Eighty-Nine, after a rather nasty training accident had left him in hospital for a month, Bones had tried to force him into a more advisory role, leaving the active training to younger mages. With more of their original limbs. (Dora didn't know how he'd avoided that one.)
He had celebrated his forty-fifth anniversary with the Aurors on Lammas of Ninety-One (because the entire department had forced a party on him). In the months leading up to it, Dumbledore had convinced him to call that a good run, or so she'd heard. Until he'd realised that there was a Black metamorph in that year's incoming cohort of trainees, according to Kingsley. (Never mind that she wasn't a Black.)
The only time she'd legitimately thought he might do it was last year, when she'd brought him the file she'd put together on Sirius. It had been a hell of a blow to his confidence, learning that his former partner had been innocent the whole time, but she'd thought he deserved to know before she'd brought it to Bones. He'd spent months going over old case files, reassuring himself that he hadn't accidentally condemned anyone else to a lifetime of hell on earth.
"But... What about Bellatrix?" Because killing or recapturing Bellatrix was, she'd thought, their highest-priority project, she couldn't imagine Moody wasn't going to finangle his way onto the task force, even if it was in a completely paper-pushing, advisory role, because he'd made it perfectly clear to Dora that he didn't believe anyone else capable of tracking the bitch down. He wasn't entirely confident that he would be able to do it, or that he'd be able to take her down when he did — he wasn't nearly as young as he once was — but he was confident that he had a better understanding of Dora's insane auntie (and what she was likely to do now that she was at large) than anyone else in the Corp.
His twisted old face creased slightly on one side, the lines around his eyes crinkling in what would have been a sardonic smile on a more expressive, less scarred man. "The Aurors are never going to apprehend that madwoman. She's gone to ground on the Continent."
"What? How—?"
"Just got word from a friend of mine in Rome. Pair of Hunters slaughtered tracking Greyback's pack somewhere east of Warsaw. Known associates. Might even call them friends, if the Blackheart had friends. Signatures were faded, took the damn fools too long to follow up when communication ceased, but they're not inconsistent with the records we have on Black, and the memories of the scene itself... It was her. I'd know her work anywhere, fucking nightmare bitch."
Dora didn't ask him to elaborate. She'd seen the memories they'd screened for the Aurors, and the aftermath of her escape. And Snape had had...very ambivalent things to say about Bellatrix when she'd asked him to tell her what they were up against. She was pretty sure he'd been trying to be objective, but it wasn't really a secret that Snape had joined the Death Eaters because he'd been a stupid, angry teenager obsessed with dark magic.
Or, well, most people probably didn't know that, actually, but he'd let enough hints slip over the years to put it together. Mostly when he'd been talking her out of doing something incredibly stupid herself when she was an angry teenager. Like murdering Damien Stryke, or that fucker Maccabee. Sure, she would have had to flee the country afterward, but she'd probably have gotten away with it. It was infamously difficult to track down a metamorph who didn't want to be found.
Whatever, the point was, she was pretty sure that when Snape told her that Bellatrix and the Dark Lord had considered the War a game (one that the Light had taken all too seriously, and still not been able to win); killing an art; and torture an act of intimacy, something to be savored, when he said she was the most talented killer he'd ever known, and the most dangerous, Dora was pretty sure that there was some degree of admiration and respect beneath his hatred for her, and that thin facade of principled condemnation.
And it took a lot to impress Severus Snape. Even more to get him to admit it.
"So, she's not in Britain, she's not our problem, you're actually going to retire and– and what? Raise kneazles? Take up horticulture? You'd actually go mad inside a month!"
The old warlock's smirk broadened into a recognisable grin. "Never had a hobby, Tonks, and I'm too old to start one now. But no one ever said I had to spend my retirement in Britain. I hear Poland's supposed to be nice this time of year. Maybe Belarus."
What. "You— Oh, my God. You're going after her yourself? But, why are you telling me?"
"Well. That's the question, isn't it. See, if I were thinking of looking up an old...friend while I was in the area, I might be in the market for a travelling companion. A travelling companion who has her own reasons to want a sabbatical, one who's been questioning whether she knows what she wants to do with her life, maybe."
Dora found herself sitting down on one of the spindly modern chairs much more quickly than she intended. "What? I— You want me to go with you? Me. Why? And— No, just why."
Moody chuckled. "You broke secrecy. You told Andromeda about Black's escape."
"Wha—? She told you?!"
"I told her. And asked her to let me know when you got around to telling her. Three days?"
"Two," she admitted, trying not to sound as guilty about that as she felt. "I wasn't read in until the day after it happened."
Moody gave her a one-shouldered, half-hearted shrug. "Can't say I expected you to get there so quickly. But then, you have been turning it over for a while now, haven't you. Duty and conscience. Aurors or family. Could've told you, Blacks always choose family, in the end."
"I'm not a Black," Dora pointed out. She'd been telling people that pretty much since the first day she'd come to Britain, and no one ever believed it.
"Is that so? What would Bella's little girl have to say about that?"
"Lyra?" Dora had been under the impression that Moody was certain Bellatrix had never had a child.
"Seen any other miniature Bellatrixes running around Britain lately?"
"She's not— Never mind. I don't see what her opinion has to do with anything. I'm not a member of her House. Not even under their matrilineal recognition rule. Mum left them before I was born." Yes, they'd recognise her in a heartbeat if she agreed, Lyra had already offered, but she liked her independence, thanks very much.
"She still named you after one of them. Taught you to fight and think like one of them. Paddy all but admitted it, once — a family like that, you can leave them, but they never really leave you."
The conversation stalled, fell into an uneasy silence. Dora couldn't really deny that, after all. Even if she wanted to, which she wasn't entirely sure she did. After a moment she said, "Anyway, if I was one of them, and they always choose their family over everyone else, shouldn't you want me as far from Bellatrix as possible?"
Moody shrugged. "Paddy also told me that you can't choose your family, best you can do is kill off the ones you don't like."
Dora snorted at that, trying not to laugh. Mum had told her that, too, after the first time she'd met Narcissa Malfoy. "So...you want me to– to come to fucking Belarus with you to hunt down a psychotic mass murderer, who I happen to be related to, because I chose my family over my duty to the Aurors."
"No. Not because you chose family over the Aurors. Because you chose to follow your conscience rather than the rules." He offered her another almost-smirk. "Doesn't hurt that you've got more potential than any recruit I've trained since they dissolved Foreign and Domestic."
Foreign and... "The Office of Foreign and Domestic Affairs? You were a fucking Black Cloak?" No wonder he was such a paranoid old hardarse. And even less wonder the Aurors had given him so much latitude over the years. Dora was sure no one else would have been able to get away with Imperiusing new recruits as a training exercise, or deputising half a dozen civilians to storm a vampire den, or blackmailing known dark wizards into serving as unofficial personal informants.
"Never did like that nickname. Operations Agent. Still am, if it comes down to it. A Lord can call his Left Hand whatever he likes, the job doesn't change."
That was...a hell of a way to put it, really. Not an inaccurate one — the Black Cloaks had, basically, been the Left Hand of Magical Britain when it came to dealing with the muggle British Empire and the magical communities it encompassed. Just...
The Office of Foreign and Domestic Affairs had been disbanded almost fifty years ago. "The job doesn't exist anymore, Mad-Eye."
"As long as problems like Bellatrix exist, it does. I took my vows in Nineteen Nineteen. Swore to uphold the Statute, protect the people, and keep the peace throughout the Empire. By whatever means necessary, until my last breath. The Head of Operations, the Minister, even the Queen Herself doesn't have the authority to release me from those vows, short of demanding my life. Most of us kept on when they decommissioned us — the Agents who escaped Grindelwald's purge, I mean. A couple dozen of us, all told. Joined the Aurors or the Diplomatic Corp. A few struck out on their own, doing what needed to be done outside the letter of the law. But none of them retired. None of them quit. They died as they lived, upholding the Statute, protecting the people, and keeping the peace. I'm the last of us left, now, and I intend to do the same, because the job still needs doing. The job will always need doing," he said, fixing her with the hardest, most challenging glare she'd ever seen from him, the Mad Eye drilling into her own as though he was examining her very soul.
Was he— He couldn't possibly be asking what she thought he was asking.
"And you... You want me to come with you." He nodded. "And...and be like...an apprentice Black Cloak. Operations Agent, whatever."
He nodded again. "Some people aren't cut out for enforcing the law, but that doesn't mean they can't do a lot of good in this world, if they're willing to get their hands dirty. I won't lie to you, it's a hard life. Spying. Killing. Takes a toll on you. On your soul. You'll do things you never thought you could, make choices you hate yourself for making. And it's lonely. Friends, family, they're liabilities. Working in the shadows to help the light, you make a lot of enemies on both sides. But the work needs doing. Are you in or out, Tonks?"
Dora snorted, just a little, at his overly-dramatic tone. Didn't he just say he'd asked her because he already knew she'd do what she thought was right, no matter the consequences? She could be fired for telling Mum about Bellatrix's escape. She should be fired for not telling the Aurors who Lyra really was, especially since Dora was — when she was willing to admit it to herself — about ninety percent sure Lyra was a black mage, the same as Bellatrix. Not to mention, she hadn't actually told anyone (other than Snape, who obviously already knew) that Lyra was lying about not remembering what had happened to her, or Harry. That was actually obstructing justice. Forget being fired, she could actually go to Azkaban for that.
And she'd spent the better part of the past fifteen years coming to terms with the idea that she was going to outlive all her friends and family by millennia. (Potentially. Assuming she didn't do anything really stupid. Which...wasn't really guaranteed, Mum did say that an unhealthy disregard for personal safety ran in the family. Both sides — Dad had married her, after all.) The thing about being functionally immortal was...well, after a few centuries, a person didn't really belong anywhere, anymore. Isolating herself to do a job would...probably only make it easier, honestly, at least for the first few lifetimes. At least it would be a normal reason to avoid making close connections with people. Well...normal-ish. And if she decided she did want to try to do the whole friends and family thing at some point, it wasn't like she couldn't live two entirely separate lives.
This was probably the sort of thing she should think about a lot more than this, one of those major, life-changing decisions. Especially since, well... She'd probably think a lot more about actually swearing those vows of Moody's — life-long commitments were a big deal when you were going to live as long as she (probably) was. But just...going with him, helping him stop Bellatrix? She didn't have to think about it, really.
She had joined the Aurors in the first place because she'd wanted to help people. Protect people who couldn't protect themselves. And there had been times already, in just a couple of years on the force, that she'd found herself thinking that she could help a lot more people if they could just...do things. Work outside the system instead of having to follow protocol.
There was a part of her that thought — had always thought — that it would be better to just kill some people, not give them a chance to escape justice just because they had money or connections, or because people couldn't quite prove they were guilty, even though everyone knew. People like Malfoy or Nott or any of the other Death Eaters who still held power and influence in Britain. People who tortured and killed and terrorised people for kicks like Bellatrix or Greyback. Rapist pedophile bastards like Maccabee. Damian Stryke. If Lockhart hadn't managed to destroy his own mind last year, he wouldn't have been convicted for his crimes. He would have been humiliated, his career ruined, but he would never have seen justice for the people whose deeds and memories he had stolen. If Moody thought she wouldn't sleep just fine, killing people who needed to be killed, he was giving her too much credit.
(Of course, it probably said bad things about her character that she was so very certain of that, but that didn't mean it wasn't true. If Snape wasn't such a nosey bastard she would have offed Maccabee back in Eighty-Seven. Hufflepuff prefects took the safety of their underclassmen very seriously.)
And besides, who hadn't wanted to be a Black Cloak when they were a kid?
She grinned. "Oh, I'm in. I'm so in."
Maccabee was the Defense professor of '87/'88, Dora's fifth year. Assaulted first and second-year girls. Dora found out about it because one of her ickle firsties asked her prefect what to do about not wanting to go to Defense, and, well... the only reason she didn't kill him was Snape convincing her that death is too good for someone like that. He's currently in Azkaban.
Damian Stryke, a Gryffindor in Dora's class, poisoned a Hufflepuff girl with a poorly-brewed love potion the next year. Dumbledore let him off with a slap on the wrist because he didn't want to ruin the boy's life over a single poor choice. Snape and Sinistra poisoned him with a potion that caused him to be obsessed with his reflection, almost pining to death before his roommates finally dragged him to the Hospital Wing. —Leigha
So...that's two people Dora nearly murdered before leaving Hogwarts. And she claims she isn't a Black. Sure, Dora. Sure. —Lysandra
It would have taken Dora all of two seconds to join the Order, so, something like this was always going to happen. Just a little early this time. —Leigha
