Chapter 12: Making Up

It was five o'clock in the morning on the Isle of Skye when Remus awoke and knew himself to be a man again. Short summer nights bred short transformations. Too sore to get out of bed, he lay staring at the cottage's thatched roof, as disconnected, incoherent visions of Neville, Tonks, Sirius, James, and Lily flickered through his head. He wondered what new disasters might have transpired in his twenty-four hours of enforced inactivity. He wondered whether to go first to St. Mungo's or to Hogwarts. The sun was high overhead by the time Remus pried himself from bed and mixed an Invigoration Draught in the cottage's primitive kitchen. This had been the first potion he learned to mix properly; Madam Pomfrey had drilled him in it through three successive chilly spring afternoons in his first year at Hogwarts, as she lectured him on the importance of remedies.

Wearily, he scrubbed the traces of the wolf from the stone cottage—muddy paw prints on the mattress and urine on the floor—sealed it, and left. He apparated to the sloping hillside across from Hogwarts Castle. He picked a bunch of lilies and dispatched an owl to St. Mungo's. He appropriated the Defense against the Dark Arts classroom, reflecting dully that it had been only two years since it was his own. He located Neville.

Neville was not a quick study. As he sheepishly explained, Harry had taught most of Dumbledore's Army to produce Patronuses that spring; even Seamus Finnegan, who had missed all the preceding meetings, had produced a wispy Patronus on his very first try. But Neville, in spite of the progress he had made in other spells and charms, had failed to produce even a vaporous, indistinct Patronus. Remus consoled him and put him through his paces. Neville's technique was surprisingly good; he had improved immeasurably in the two years since Remus had taught him. But nothing happened. Remus questioned him tactfully about what memories he was using, wondering secretly if Neville had, perhaps, no adequately happy memories to use. Neville, it turned out, had a plethora of happy memories: of Hermione helping him with homework, of dancing at the Yule Ball with Ginny, of coddling his Mimbulus mimbletonia, of, most especially, the D.A. But none of them seemed to work. Remus fed him chocolate and promised to return before the end of the term. He felt weak in body and weary in mind. He needed some chocolate himself.

The corridors of St. Mungo's were crowded that afternoon: with Healers, with patients, with Ministry officials, with chatty "visitors" scribbling discreetly inside their robe pockets who, Remus knew at a glance, were members of the press. The Welcome Witch, surveying the hollowed sockets of Remus's eyes and his limping gait (he had thrown a muscle in his transformation) conceived a notion that he was suffering from spell damage and insistently tried to direct him to the intake clinic on the fourth floor. Remus explained his true mission while endeavoring not to say outright that he was a werewolf suffering the usual post-transformation aches and pains. (There was no saying how a stranger would react, and he did not want to get thrown out of St. Mungo's.) He was rescued at last when Kingsley Shacklebolt clapped him on the shoulder and said, "Ah, Remus, we've been watching for you. Room 412."

"You're off?"

"I'm going back to work this evening. That is, I'm meeting Rufus Scrimgeour for a drink. He has some mysterious new mission for me."

"Mended?"

"Madam Pomfrey did a fine job. They were superficial wounds. The youngsters are feeling better, too."

"Good. I saw Neville, and Ginny in passing, but I haven't seen the others. Hermione and Ron were asleep when I was at Hogwarts, and Harry—may need some time to himself."

Kingsley nodded sympathetically. "He fought like an Auror Thursday night. And he lost—like a member of the Order. Like you and Sirius and Molly and Mad-Eye did in the last war. But that comes with the job."

Remus nodded mutely. He hadn't thought much about the prospect of losing Sirius; unlike Molly, he had dwelt more on facing his own death than on facing the deaths of his loved ones. That came from too many years of living alone. Even now that it had happened, he found the hollow ache in his chest distinctly less painful than the mad frenzy of despair that had wreaked such havoc on him following Sirius's apparent betrayal fifteen years before.

Kingsley looked at him and made a mute sympathetic gesture. He added, "Well, Tonks is waiting for you," turned into a fireplace, and was gone.

Tonks was sitting up in bed. Her hair was an odd color, mottled pink and brown, as if the morph was fading strand by strand. Her face was strained and alert. "Remus!" she cried as he softly opened the door.

He went to her and, after a minute, took her hand.

"They told me about Sirius," she said.

"The Healers told you?"

"Molly and Bill were here when I woke up. They told me." She paused. "It was mostly my fault."

"Tonks, it wasn't your fault."

"I gave you very bad advice. I was—trying to hurt you. Just needle you. It was completely uncalled for."

"You gave me perfectly sound advice. I probably would have asked Sirius to come even if you hadn't urged me to. And Sirius would have come anyway, even if we had all told him not to. Nothing in the world would stop Sirius from trying to protect Harry if Harry was in danger. As you said once yourself, his daring was his strength."

"Even if Sirius had come—he needn't have been fighting Bella. I was supposed to being do that. If I hadn't fallen—"

"That wasn't your fault, Tonks."

"I'm clumsy," she muttered. "And inexperienced. It was my first real battle. I've spent most of the last two years juggling paperwork, developing codes, plotting maps. And spying. I was tired—I lost my footing—"

"You did a fine job, whether it was your first duel or your fortieth. And Sirius knew exactly what he was doing when he stepped in. He was a very accomplished duelist. There was no reason why you should have been protecting him."

"No," said Tonks meditatively. "Probably not. But I always felt like I ought to be protecting him. There was this dynamic—big brother, little sister—except I always felt like I was the grown-up. Sirius seemed like a teenager to me—you know, same age as Harry and Hermione, just not quite as mature."

Tonks shook her mottled hair ferociously and looked at Remus. "Did you ever feel like you had to look after Sirius?"

"Well—"

"I always thought he acted like a big teenager around you."

"I think we both acted like teenagers. Reliving the happy days of our youth, before we joined the Order and life got complicated."

"That's what Sirius was doing. I didn't notice it with you." She smiled faintly. "You must have been a more sober teenager than he was."

"A bookworm watching from the shadows."

"And now you're alone."

"Yes," said Remus simply, thinking of the quartet in Gryffindor Tower.

"So am I."

Remus looked at her sharply, sympathy mingled with a sense that Sirius's death could not possibly have left her alone as it had left him.

"The only daughter of the House of Black on Dumbledore's side."

"You're your father's daughter, too. You don't—Tonks, I know it's personal, it was personal for Sirius, that was why he so wanted to fight Bella—but you don't have to be a daughter of the House of Black if you don't want to be. You are not in any way responsible for your aunts and uncles. We'll let it go."

Tonks looked away and said softly, so softly that Remus wasn't sure he had heard, "I will always be a daughter of the House of Black."

Remus did not return to Grimmauld Place that night. Mad-Eye Moody waylaid him en route and informed him, in cursory phrases, that Dumbledore had reason to believe that Bellatrix Lestrange had inherited the house and Kreacher. The house was being monitored. The Order had cleared out. Remus's possessions remained on the fourth floor; he could secure them at his own risk. The sooner the better, but not without back-up. Under no circumstances was he to spend a moment more than necessary in the house.

Bone-tired as he was, Remus made no argument, though he knew—Sirius had told him—that Sirius had willed Grimmauld Place to Harry. He took the Floo Network to the Burrow and fell limply into a spare bed. When he awoke the sun was high in the sky and Molly was bringing him lunch. She didn't know if he had any assignments; most of the schedule had been scrapped in the wake of the battle at the Department of Mysteries. Dumbledore was busy with Fudge and Hogwarts. Minerva and Tonks were still in hospital. Kingsley had volunteered to keep tabs on Rufus Scrimgeour, who seemed to be positioning himself to become the next Minister of Magic; but there was a rumor abroad that Kingsley's responsibilities at the Ministry might be shifted soon. Alastor Moody was hunting Bellatrix Lestrange. Emmeline Vance and Hestia Jones were monitoring Grimmauld Place. Elphias Doge and Dedalus Diggle were trailing Narcissa Malfoy, watching to see if she tried to make contact with Azkaban. Kingsley hoped to get authorization from the Auror Office to raid the Malfoy estate. Bill would accompany Remus to Grimmauld Place and cover him while he got his things, but they would have to go at a "safe" hour and couldn't linger. There would be a grand powwow at a yet-to-be-determined location on July 1st, as soon as the Hogwarts term ended.

Remus spent the rest of the day in bed. At seven o'clock on Monday morning, he went with Bill to Grimmauld Place and packed his belongings. One suitcase of worn clothing he sent to the Burrow; Molly had invited him to stay for the rest of the week, until the children returned from school. After that, he knew, he would be homeless again, with no place to go but the Isle of Skye. He didn't want to send the books there, lest he destroy them in one of his rages. In the end, he left the boxes standing, stacked, against the wall. Bill apparated to Gringotts, and Remus apparated to the lobby of St. Mungo's.

He stopped first to see Minerva McGonagall in the critical spell damage ward. She lay propped up on pillows, in a tartan dressing gown, gray hair escaping from a bun, both palms clutching her ribs. "Four Stunners straight to the chest," everyone was saying, "and she's not exactly young." She had been Remus's head of house when he was a student at Hogwarts; she had taught transfiguration to three-quarters of the Order. Transfigured as a tabby cat, she had stood guard over Harry the night his parents died; she had prowled the grounds of the Malfoy estate and other, less prominent Death Eater homes. She had taken risks and come through every trial unscathed, kept young, she claimed, by the influence of the madcap children she taught. Now, suddenly, she looked her full age, and maybe more.

Kingsley Shacklebolt was standing by Minerva's bedside, dressed in a pinstriped Muggle suit, shiny black shoes, and tinted glasses. Remus did a double-take. Kingsley had always been a snappier dresser than most wizards, but now he looked like the "secret service agent" that Remus's father had pointed out to him in a film at a Muggle cinema they had once visited.

"Congratulate Kingsley," said Minerva faintly, massaging her ribs. "He's been promoted. Or, as the Muggles would say, kicked upstairs."

"I don't know the expression," said Remus mildly, "but it sounds unpleasant."

"They've kicked me right out of the Ministry, they have," said Kingsley wryly, "but who knows? It may be a blessing in disguise."

"What's going on?"

"Rufus Scrimgeour has assigned me to protect the Muggle prime minister. I'm posing as his private secretary, starting this morning. Technically, it's a promotion—it's a responsible position, and well worth doing. It's supposed to be something of an honor. But it has the convenient side effect that I'll be working 70 or 80 hours a week in Muggle settings, and living in a Muggle flat—Scrimgeour insisted on that—so I'll scarcely have any opportunity to make contact with wizards, much less appear at the Ministry. Unless, of course, things reach such a state of crisis that the Muggle prime minister is attacked, in which case we've probably lost anyway."

"Scrimgeour seems to think that Kingsley has been concealing information from the Ministry," explained Minerva.

"He asked me some funny questions on Saturday night," elaborated Kingsley. "He was extremely interested in how you and I and Moody and Tonks found out that Harry and his friends had gone to the Ministry that night. And he also wanted to know how long I had known of Sirius's whereabouts, and why I hadn't turned him in. Seeing as how I was supposed to be in charge of the search and all. I tried to give the impression that Sirius had only just turned up from Merlin knows where and I didn't know the whole story. I put him on to Dumbledore for that. I said that I was having an after-work drink with you and Tonks and Moody, and crazy old Moody got a brain wave that something was wrong, and the three of us went along to humor him. That was pretty lame, and Scrimgeour knew quite well I wasn't telling the truth. So he promoted me."

"The Order is legal," interjected Remus, who didn't like the tendency of this story at all.

"More or less," agreed Minerva, "but the Ministry has never viewed it warmly. I don't know if open warfare will make the climate better or worse. I don't know if a Scrimgeour administration will make the climate better or worse. Worse, from what Kingsley says. Scrimgeour likes to be in charge, and he's a lot sharper than Cornelius Fudge."

"Well, at any rate, I've got to be going," said Kingsley, shaking hands all around. "This may be goodbye for a while. I'll just look in on Tonks, and then I'm off." He picked up a slim leather briefcase and strode out.

Remus sat with Minerva for another fifteen minutes, detailing her students' exploits in the battle at the Department of Mysteries as she listened with wry pride and moist eyes. Remus once again had a sensation that the world had gone topsy-turvy; he was comforting the woman who had been his teacher, his head of house, his mentor.

When the lime-clad Healer arrived, he left her and walked down the glimmering white hallway to Room 412. He could hear that Tonks had another visitor—a woman with an insistent staccato voice.

"—know what he is, don't you? It was in Witch Weekly a couple years ago—you were still in Auror training then and I know you weren't reading the papers—he tried to teach at Hogwarts and got sacked because—"

"Thank you, I know exactly what kind of man Remus Lupin is."

"Well, I don't know what you've been up to in your off hours, and I probably don't want to know, but I think you should think twice about running around with—"

"Werewolves are only dangerous on the night of the full moon. And not very dangerous then, if they're on the Wolfsbane Potion."

There a hissing sound, a sharp intake of breath. "Nymphadora, common sense ought to tell you—"

"What I'm telling you is absolutely the last word in healing research."

"Academic knowledge isn't everything. You always put too much store in books, and not enough in garden-variety everyday good judgment—"

"Well, yes, I have chosen to use my intelligence and my magical abilities. And not just for frosting biscuits."

There was a silence. Remus loitered in the hallway, wondering whether to stay or go or to go and have tea and come back when the staccato-voiced visitor departed. But Tonks called suddenly, "Come in!"

He went in.

Standing on the far side of Tonks's hospital bed, fussing with her blankets, was a dazzlingly handsome witch with ash-blonde hair, piercing dark eyes, and a delicately rose-tinted complexion. Though the incipient crows' feet about her eyes hinted that she would not see forty again, her figure retained a willowy, almost girlish athleticism. She was dressed from head to toe in the best Muggle chic.

Tonks, propped up on pillows and dressed in flimsy pink pajamas with a pattern of telescopes, looked headachy, strained, and tired. Her hair was more mouse-colored than pink. Only her piercing gaze echoed the appearance of the woman standing over her.

"Remus Lupin," said Tonks firmly, "please meet my mother."

He extended his hand. Andromeda hesitated, then shook it gingerly. They eyed each other without enthusiasm.

"You must be pleased to see Tonks looking so much better," said Remus. "Madam Pomfrey was rather worried about her last Friday."

"Nymphadora chose a dangerous line of work," observed Andromeda. "Given her much celebrated intellectual talent, she could have done better."

"My mother was just leaving," said Tonks with emphasis. "She has several errands to run, and she wouldn't want to miss Wanda the Wistful Wandmaker. It's her favorite soap."

"Chuh! Nymphadora—"

"Sirius spoke very highly of you," interrupted Remus, desperately. "He's—" He choked up and broke off. "He's a great loss," was what Remus had meant to say, but the words wouldn't come over the lump in his throat. "He's dead, and we're miserable, and you don't seem to understand at all," pulsed through his head.

"He was a talented boy," said Andromeda regretfully. "I liked him. I am delighted to hear his name has been cleared. But I don't like this cloak-and-dagger business, and I don't see what Sirius accomplished by throwing his life away just when he was on the point of being able to live normally again. He should have known better than to have anything to do with my eldest sister. And there is a great deal about his relations with you, and his relations with my daughter, and your relations with my daughter, that I do not understand."

They faced each other, like two silent, angry tigers, across Tonks's hospital bed.

Tonks took a deep breath and said firmly, "Mother, it is time for you to go."

Somewhat to Remus's surprise, Andromeda went, leaving a trail of frosted biscuits, outdated Witch Weeklies, and "suitable" nightclothes in her wake. "Stay in bed and get plenty of rest," she admonished Tonks as she left. "Don't let the Healers let you leave too soon."

"I'm feeling much better," said Tonks coldly.

"Be sensible, Nymphadora. You're not as healthy as other people." She slammed the door behind her.

Remus didn't quite know what to say. He opened and shut his mouth like a goldfish. The sentence that finally emerged was, "Your mother doesn't know about the Order."

"No," agreed Tonks.

"Sirius used to talk about her very affectionately. I had gotten a completely different impression."

"I gather she was more fun when she was younger. Before the war. The First War."

Sirius, as a young man, had liked fun women. Sirius had liked some women who were downright wild. Sirius had been an exceptionally handsome, virile, slightly roguish young man; he had gravitated towards women not unlike himself, though they never lasted long. But Sirius had never had any truck with cowardice.

"Sirius romanticized her," said Tonks, as if reading his thoughts. "Because she was beautiful. Because she ran away, just like he did a few years later. Because she didn't get along with Bella either, and because she hated the Dark Arts. But for very different reasons. Sirius, nutter that he was, had an innate decency to him. My mother has an innate instinct to eat as many frosted biscuits as possible and die in bed." She sighed. "If you don't mind, I really don't want to talk about my parents."

"You've hardly said a word against them," protested Remus. "I—sensed—that you weren't close, but I had no idea things were so difficult. You have such a fun personality."

Tonks grimaced. "Well, I feel like celebrating every day that I don't have to spend with them," she retorted. "Please talk to me about something else. And not Sirius, either, unless you really want me to start crying."

Remus bit his lip. "Neville," he said after a moment. "Let's talk about Neville. How would you go about teaching Neville to conjure a Patronus?"