Through Children's Eyes

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and places belong to J. K. Rowling.

A/N: Reviewers, I love you all! You make my day! Thank you. Also, The Journal Entry doesn't follow the timeline of the story, it is from much earlier, as you'll be able to tell. It might seem kind of random, but it will tie in and I put it there to serve a purpose.

Excerpt from the Journal of Remus Lupin

I have always thought the world was a very different place from the vantage point of a child. Everything's new and exciting, and they are never afraid to be honest, as so many adults seem to be. Maybe there's more to childhood innocence than one can possibly explain or even comprehend again once it is lost. My lycanthropy effectively robbed me of a childhood, though I recovered a vague semblance of it with Sirius, James and Peter. It is the birth of James's first child that brought me to these musings. A little boy; he looks just like his father, but has Lily's eyes.

There was an uneasy silence for a moment as Lupin and Tonks both stared at the muddy boots and the full significance hit home. Lupin raised a finger to his lips and walked forward cautiously down the hall. Tonks followed a little way behind, her eyes lingering on the filthy and cobweb streaked walls. Ahead, she heard Lupin comment in a voice barely above a whisper, "That explains the smell."

"What does?"

He lit his wand nonverbally and pointed as something that appeared to be a sickly green color skittered across the wall and onto the floor. "Bundimun. It also explains how muggles could have lived in this house so recently with the horrible state it is in now. Bundimun look like patches of fungus and secrete a foul-smelling substance that causes decay. Usually a simple 'Scourgify!' do the trick, but this looks like it may be beyond that." Lupin paused, seeming to realize it was starting to sound like a lecture. He turned to look at her and gave a small smile. "Besides, we didn't come here to clean up."

An expression of amusement flickered across Tonks's face. "We could have stayed at Grimmauld Place for that. "

Lupin chuckled. "Indeed."

They had come to the end of the hallway. There was one huge room before them, empty except for a few dilapidated chairs in one corner. From that room there were two doorways, though neither one had a door, one on the left and one on the right. "Do you think we should split up?" Tonks asked.

"I did before I saw those boots. But I won't underestimate a fully-trained Auror. Signal if you see anything suspicious—or anyone."

Tonks nodded and took the left doorway, alert but unafraid. He watched her disappear into the shadows, then went the opposite direction. The next room was once a dining room, and would have been elegant had it been kept up. A rusted chandelier hung crookedly above a dusty but fairly sturdy table. The peeling pain from the walls showed hints of burgundy and gold. Broken remnants of fine china remained on display.

But what caught Lupin's eye was the mirror. It was so dusty the reflection hardly showed, but it was huge, taking up most of the top half of one wall, and its frame was delicately carved from silver, now tarnished, into the shapes of serpents. He reached out and began to wipe off some of the dust, but something made him take a step back. It took him a moment to place what it was. Something moved behind the surface of the glass. A white shadow was the description that came to his mind, although it didn't really make sense.

It happened again and the eyes of the serpents along the frame glowed red. The dust just fell away. The frame writhed and the glass shifted, until there was an entrance large enough for Lupin to enter. Just as he was about to walk through, with a small alarm going off in his head about some serious dark magic, he heard Tonks scream. He whirled around in the general direction it had come from, and his balance faltered, half-poised as he was to climb through. Lupin slipped and hit his head against the frame. Sinking to the floor, unconscious, the last thing he saw, in blurred vision, was the passageway sliding closed and the sinister scarlet eyes of the snakes.

Tonks had begun to think the whole mission was a waste of time as she rummaged through the desk of an old office room. There was nothing to indicate any wizard had ever set foot in this house, and certainly no presence of dark magic. She was about to give up on this room when she saw something a little out of place. Underneath the desk she had just been rummaging through, there was a sock. It was clean, which was glaringly obvious against the given background, and she wondered how it had escaped her notice.

That question was answered a moment later, when the toes wiggled and it slipped back out of view. Somone is hiding under the desk! Taking a shaky breath, she built up her resolve to look under it, but screamed at the sudden flurry of movement as the person attempted to push her out of the way and run past. It was more a scream of surprise than the sharp, shrill voice of fear, but it stopped the person in their tracks.

Auror instinct taking over, Tonks grabbed the little girl by her shoulders so she wouldn't escape. Laughing in nervous relief, and gradually letting go as she decided the little girl could not run very far, she asked, "Who are you?"

"My name's Aurore Leclerc," she answered with a soft French accent. Her chestnut hair came just past her shoulders, and she brushed a shorter piece away from her face as she spoke. Hazel eyes swept to the entrance, wide with alarm.

Lupin came running in, grimacing in pain from where he'd hit his head and looking a little disoriented. He blinked slowly at the girl after ascertaining no immediate source of danger and glanced askance at Tonks. "She startled me," came the defensive reply. "She was hiding under the desk and rushed out when I noticed her."

He merely continued to look at Aurore, amber eyes dark with some veiled emotion. Whether it was suspicion or concern, Tonks couldn't tell, and neither emotion showed in his tone. "Why are you here?" Lupin asked, then continued grimly, "This is no place for a little girl."

She didn't look any older than ten or eleven. Chewing on her bottom lip, eyes downcast, she mumbled something. "Didn't quite catch that," Tonks prompted.

"You said it already!" Aurore said, much louder, eyes flashing in anger and fear. Her gaze was fixed firmly on Tonks now, narrowed accusatorily. "I was hiding."

"From…?"

Aurore tried to pout and sulk at Lupin to make him stop asking, but it didn't work. Although he didn't speak again, he crouched so they could see eye to eye. She became less intimidated and decided to share after all.

"My father. He doesn't like that I'm a squib, and when he gets angry…." Aurore stopped, apparently thinking she'd said too much.

"Those aren't your boots in the front hall," Tonks said, tactfully changing the subject. They were men's boots, she had noted earlier. The girl looked very relieved that there was a new topic of conversation.

"No." There was a glint in her eyes for a moment that could have added an implied sarcastic 'really?' but it was gone so fast Tonks couldn't be sure. "They're my brother's. I borrowed them. Couldn't find mine."

"What do you do here?" Tonks asked, guessing correctly that the girl came often.

"Read the Muggle fairy tales. The ones that the books still hold together. There's a whole collection in the library." The girl answered happily. She stopped, and tilted her head, a confused expression on her face. "Why are you here?"

Both Lupin and Tonks froze for a second. They couldn't well tell her of the Order. Fighting an inner moral battle about lying to a child, Tonks impulsively said, "We were considering buying the house." She shot a look at Lupin, "Weren't we, dear?"

His mouth gaped open for a second, but he managed to school his features and add, "We decided to see how bad the damage was first."

Aurore looked horrified. "You can't! You can't move in! Not when I've finally gotten—oh, where will I go?"

Exchanging a look with Tonks, Lupin did a little guesswork and worded his next question carefully, though directly. "Have you been scaring Muggles away from this house? Trying to keep them from moving in? I've heard they think it's haunted."

No answer came, but it was unnecessary. The guilt on her face said everything. "I see. Well, you won't have to worry about us. I don't think we'll be moving in." Lupin's gaze shifted to Tonks. "Unless you've got your heart set on it?"

"Nah. I don't think I'll be too heartbroken. Let's go." She grabbed his hand and led him out of the room. She didn't want to leave the child, but she couldn't kidnap her either. The girl did have parents, or at least mentioned a father. There were no signs she'd been treated roughly as far as Tonks could tell. I'll get someone at the ministry to find out where she lives and check into it, anyway, just to be sure.

Once back in the main hall, they apparated back to the alley just before Grimmauld Place. There was a comfortable silence as they walked back, until Tonks said, "Sorry about that…I couldn't come up with any other excuse."

Lupin smiled. "Doesn't matter. It worked."

Something else was clearly bothering her, but Lupin waited for her to bring it up. "I'm going to send someone from the ministry to make sure she's alright. It's the least I can do. I don't feel right leaving her in a place like that."

"But she feels safe there. Imagine that. To us the world seems so skewed through children's eyes."

Despite herself, Tonks smiled brightly. Her concern eased. "Why, Remus, that was almost poetic."

Later, Mad-Eye found Remus and Sirius cleaning up Grimmauld Place. Tonks had returned to her flat. Finished with the library, the two were debating whether there was a ghoul in the attic. "We can go and look, but I think it can wait until tomorrow," Sirius was saying. He was bored with housework; being confined forced him to do more of it than he would like.

"Remus, how'd the assignment go? Anything unusal about that house or just a bunch of Muggle nonsense?" Mad-Eye inquired.

"Nothing involving any Dark Magic," Lupin assured him, unwilling to relate the whole story about the squib girl.

For a moment, the back of his head gave a small protest of pain, but it subsided. He tried to remember how exactly he had gotten hurt, but it eluded him. All Lupin knew is that it happened when he heard Tonks scream. Age does terrible things to your memory, he sighed inwardly. And head injuries don't help, either.

"About that ghoul…" Remus turned back to Sirius.

The latter grinned mischieviously, knowing he would hit home with Mad-Eye's paranoia. No doubt the man was wondering if they could even properly dispose of the creature. Well, he wasn't going to miss an opportunity to get out of that one. "Mad-Eye, would you care to show us how it's done?"