Cassie slipped along the back wall of the greenhouse, her objective in sight. Past three more tables—two more—one more—
"Uh-oh," said the person on whom she'd been creeping up, reaching down to catch her by the wrist. "Looks like we've got an infestation of little cousins. Neville, do you know how to treat one of those?"
"I think you're supposed to give it back to its mum." Neville raised his hand, catching this lady's attention from her place by the soil sample trays. "Either that or let it stay, if it wants to help. We've got a bunch of samples still to test, and Professor Sprout did say we could work together to get them all done in time."
"Hmmm." Mal frowned, as though he were thinking deeply about this problem. "How about it, little cousin?" he asked Cassie, one eyelid dropping down in a brief wink. "Do you want to help?"
"Yes, please." Cassie smiled, widening the expression to include her mum, who had arrived at Mal and Neville's working table with her arms folded, looking less than impressed. "May I, Mummy? Please, may I?"
"Asking for permission works better before you're already in a place you're not supposed to be, young lady," said Cecilia sternly, but Cassie could see a soft light in the back of her mother's eyes. "As long as you don't get in the way, you may stay and help just this once. And be sure to say thank you afterwards."
"Yes, Mummy." Cassie allowed herself one small bounce, then turned back to Mal. "What are you testing for today? Pests and parasites, or just finding out about the soil?"
"More of the second one. How many minerals it has, what it's made out of, that kind of thing." Mal motioned Cassie to the left of the table, where several labeled jars sat next to empty sample trays. "If you fill up two more of these, that should be all we need. Want me to show you how?"
"Yes, please." Cassie watched closely as Mal took the lid off the first container and dug the scoop into the soil within, plopping it into the compartment on the sample tray labeled #1. "Just like that with the other jars too?"
"That's right, and then when you're done, you can help us look up the results we get from them on the color chart, and figure out what they all mean…"
At the table, Neville dripped one of the testing potions across a row of samples, not bothering to hide his smile.
His parents had made sure, before he left for Hogwarts, that he understood how all the pieces of his friends' unusual family fit together.
XxXxX
Harry poured two teaspoons of iguana gall into a beaker and set it down beside his cutting board, then picked up his stirring stick and began to scrape it along the bottom of his cauldron. The steam rising from the surface of the potion and the heat of the fire over which it hung were both welcome, given that it was December in the dungeons.
"Where are you going over the holidays, Pansy?" asked Theodore Nott across the room, a little more loudly than necessary. "Switzerland again?"
"No, we're visiting Mother's family at their chateau in France. What about you?"
"Father's booked us a suite at Molta Menorca. You know, the all-wizarding beach island in the Mediterranean. Sunshine and white sand, free airspace for broomsticks, not a snowflake in sight…" Nott sighed deeply. "I feel sorry for anyone who has to stick around this drafty old place instead."
"Show-offs," muttered Ron, dumping powdered spine of lionfish into his own cauldron. "Just ignore them, Harry."
"It's fine," said Harry, because, in truth, it was. His Christmases at Privet Drive had generally involved cleaning up after his aunt's cooking binges, finding places to hide from Dudley which weren't already filled with mounds of Dudley's presents, and being shunted off to his cupboard during his uncle's business dinner parties. A Christmas at Hogwarts, with no classes or chores to worry about, the entire castle to explore, and Ron and his brothers to hang around with (Ginny's last letter had bubbled with excitement about going to visit Charlie in Romania and possibly getting to see a dragon hatch) sounded worlds better than that.
Maybe not better than Tudor Lane, but then, I'll get to have that too. He smiled, pulling the stirring stick out of the cauldron and setting it aside. Picking out just the right Christmas tree, strong enough to hold all the ornaments but prickly enough that River and Firefly won't try to climb it. Going to the Christmas market down in Market Square and getting spiced cider or hot chocolate to drink while we look at the light displays and the store windows. Helping Aunt Gigi bake cookies to exchange with all the neighbors, and accidentally-on-purpose sticking my thumb into a couple of them so they're too ugly to give away and we just have to eat them ourselves…
He picked up the beaker from its place beside the cutting board and started to pour it into the cauldron. Absently he glanced at its contents.
Then he took a hasty step back, the dark-colored liquid he'd been about to add to his potion instead splattering on the flagstones at his feet.
"Ugh!" "Phew!" "What is that?" Complaints rose around the room, students fanning the air in front of their noses or covering their faces with their sleeves. Ron coughed and backed away, and Millicent Bulstrode, on Harry's other side, glared at him as though he'd personally insulted her whole family.
"Potter." Snape stalked down the aisle towards Harry's cauldron and snapped his wand towards the dark stain on the floor, which rose up into the air to float between them. "I was unaware that 'ingredient for a Silencing Solution' had been added as a thirteenth use for dragon's blood. Would you care to tell me how you came to this fascinating conclusion?"
"I don't know, Professor." Harry set down the beaker on the desk he was using as his prep table. "I put my iguana gall there, but when I went to pour it into the cauldron, the dragon's blood was there instead. I'm not sure what happened."
"Ten points from Gryffindor." Snape swirled his wand towards the beaker, replacing the dragon's blood inside it. "Five for causing this incident, and five for refusing to take responsibility for your own carelessness in causing it. Now, continue with your work, and pay attention to what you are doing rather than drifting off into daydreams…"
"But the thing is, I wasn't daydreaming," said Harry later in the library, gathered around a table with his friends. "I mean, I was a little, but not enough to get something that wrong."
"I'd say not." Hermione shook her head. "How could anyone mistake dragon's blood for iguana gall? They're not even the same consistency, to say nothing of color and smell!"
"Could any of the Slytherins have got close enough to your table to swap them?" Draco wanted to know. "Trying to make you look bad, maybe get you detentions over the holidays?"
"I don't think so." Harry looked over at Ron. "Did you see anyone?"
"Not sure." Ron rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I feel like I saw something moving near your desk once, but it wasn't big enough to be a person." He looked across the table at Neville. "Trevor's not been down in the dungeons lately, has he?"
"He hates it down there. It's too cold for him." Neville tucked his hands under his arms. "Could Professor Snape have changed your ingredients himself, Harry? With his wand, maybe? Ron might have seen the beakers moving around."
"I don't know if he'd do that." Harry frowned. "I feel like he respects making potions more than he doesn't like me? If that makes any sense. I don't know if it does."
"No, it does." Draco drummed his fingers in a specific pattern on the tabletop. "And I think you're right about it. Snape's happy to take points off when you do something wrong in class, or even when you don't, but he wouldn't meddle with your brewing. So we'll just have to wait and see if anything else happens."
"On a much happier note, has everyone bought all their presents?" Hermione reached into her bag and pulled out a colorfully illustrated magazine. "I brought this along if not, it's an Owl Order catalogue, there are forms in the back so we can fill it out right here…"
"Can I have a look?" asked Harry, and Hermione beckoned for him to come closer. He did so, stepping over Orion's tail in the process, and seated himself once more beside her as Ron, Draco, and Neville began to discuss the possible outcomes of the next day's Quidditch match between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and their effect on the standings for the House Cup.
"So it's a lot like mail order in the Muggle world, if you've ever done that." Hermione tore out one of the forms and slid it over to Harry. "You write down what you want to buy and how many of them, and where they ought to be delivered if it's not for yourself, and the form will do all the calculations and tell you how much you need to pay. You can either send in the gold for payment along with it, or you can write down your Gringotts vault details at the bottom here, and the goblins will pay out the proper amount to the vendors."
"What'd stop you from just writing down any old number you pleased?" asked Harry, flipping through the catalogue's pages and folding down the corners as he spotted things he thought would do well for his friends.
"Magic." Hermione pulled the form towards her. "Watch. If I even start to put anything down…"
She picked up her unloaded quill and set its tip on the line labeled "vault number". Immediately, her eyes flooded, and she let out a huge sneeze, making Orion yip in surprise.
"Bless you." Harry pulled a tissue from his pocket and handed it to her. "Is that because you don't have a Gringotts vault?"
"That's right." Hermione blew her nose. "So the form can tell that I'm not permitted to access any vault at all, and it won't even let me begin. I know you have one, so that won't be a problem, and we can always ask Professor McGonagall what the number for it is if you don't happen to remember…"
XxXxX
"You sad not to be going to Romania for Christmas?" Henry asked Ron in the Quidditch stands, pulling his blocky orange hat down over his ears as the wind whistled up.
"Maybe a little bit." Ron shrugged. "I mean, not about Romania specifically, but I always sort of wanted to see what Christmas is like somewhere else."
"Somewhere else, huh?" Mal tucked in the end of his black-and-yellow scarf. "How'd you feel about America?"
"You don't have to rub it in." Ron scuffed the heel of one shoe against the toe of the other.
Jean sighed, handing over her side of a "Fly Eagles Fly" banner to Mandy Brocklehurst. "What they're trying to ask," she said patiently, "is, 'Ron, would you like to come to America with us for Christmas?'"
"Wait. What?" Ron stared from one to another of his friends. "Me? Come with you? Are you sure?"
"Mom already checked with your parents." Pearl bounced up and down, half her braids beaded in blue, the other half in yellow. "And they said they're fine with it as long as you want to go. So? Do you want to go?"
"Nah, I think he'd rather stay here," Mal put in before Ron could answer. "Have Fred and George pick on him all through vacation."
"Maybe go over lists of rules with Percy," suggested Henry. "Be prepared to follow in his footsteps as a prefect, once he's old enough."
"Shut it, both of you." Ron was grinning so widely Henry suspected his friend's face would hurt later. "I'd love to come. But you'll have to help me remember what I'm not supposed to talk about in front of the Muggles."
"We'll be right there the whole time," Pearl promised. "And Neville, you said maybe you and your parents could come too, just for a couple days?"
"Some of it depends on work." Neville waved up at Cedric Diggory, who was circling high overhead. "Dad's pulling extra shifts ever since that weird Dark magic outburst in Yorkshire a few weeks ago, but he says he'll try to get a few days off around New Year's. And Mum's tied up in something involving Gringotts but she can't talk much about that, you know how goblins are…"
"Welcome to the International Portkey Travel Center, Liverpool branch," droned the wizard standing by the Floo fireplace as Henry stepped out of it. "North American gates to the right, South American to the left, please keep moving and don't block the fires, thank you very much…"
Henry hurried to the right to join his family, hiking his backpack a little higher on his shoulders. Behind him, the Floo fire flared again, and Ron stumbled out, coughing. Pearl, just behind him, grabbed his hand to tow him out of the way.
"And that's everyone," said Thea, looking around the little circle. "Come on, let's find the gate for Pittsburgh, it should be up the concourse a little ways."
"Wait." Ron blotted his eyes with the handkerchief Jean had handed him and looked around. "Where's Professor Reynolds, and Mr. Blake? Aren't they coming?"
"Dad's headaches flared up again this morning, so he can't travel yet." Mal popped open his water bottle and took a long drink. "Uncle Ryan volunteered to stay with him until he's better."
"This close to Christmas? That's rough." Ron tucked the handkerchief into his own pocket when Jean waved it away. "Hope he doesn't miss it."
"He should be well enough to travel by Monday," said Aunt Gigi, making little shooing motions with her hands. "But we won't be traveling ourselves if we don't get to our gate on time, so move the feet, please."
Ron gazed around with interest as the Blakes and Reynolds made their way along the North American concourse. "Are those all places?" he asked, nodding to the signboards above the waiting areas with their lines of padded chairs, half-filled with dozing wizards and chattering witches. "Tallahassee…Chattanooga…Mississississ…"
"Mississauga," corrected Jean, laughing. "It's in Canada, north of where we live."
"Your house is outside a village called Ottery St. Catchpole," Henry pointed out. "That's at least as funny-sounding as Tallahassee or Mississauga."
"Yeah, but I'm used to that."
"True."
Aunt Gigi snapped her fingers. "Sleeping arrangements," she said to Thea. "Did we ever settle them?"
"No, but it's simple enough." Thea looked over her shoulder. "Boys, you'll be using the upstairs bedroom. Henry and Mal have their own beds, and that leaves the big one for Ron. Girls, you have Ryan's writing room downstairs. Settle for yourselves which bed is which."
"Dibs on the upper bunk," said Pearl promptly.
"Fine by me." Jean dug into her pocket for a candy cane, which she snapped into pieces and offered around the group. "There it is, Mom, I see it. Just past the gate for Louisville…"
Henry lay flat on his own upper bunk, one hand rubbing between Firefly's ears as her deep purr rumbled through his side. Mal's bedcurtains were shut beneath him, marking his cousin's need for some quiet time after the hectic nature of the Portkey crossing, and Ron was sprawled across the big bed on the room's other side, waggling the feather end of a quill for River to attack. Pearl and Jean's voices were vaguely audible from the writing room in the basement (the soundproofing charms must not be active at the moment, Henry thought lazily), Aunt Gigi was humming in the kitchen over the sound of a pot being filled with water, and from the living room—
A melody rose over the little, comfortable sounds of everyday life at 2319 Tudor Lane, played on the highest notes of the glossy upright piano which had sat against the side wall for as long as Henry could remember. It rose and fell like the sweeps of an owl's wings, at first moving in comfortable steps, then taking unexpected chromatic turns, and Henry smiled as he rolled onto his side to listen better.
Mom always was good at putting places into music.
That sounds just like Hogwarts.
He closed his eyes and let himself drift away.
Waking or dreaming, this was going to be a merry Christmas, and he couldn't wait to get started.
XxXxX
Dear Remus,
Do you think you could pop out to Hogsmeade sometime this week to meet up with me? I've got another tricky magical question. Your head's probably been bad again the last day or two, but if you could swing it before Christmas, I'd really appreciate that. Let me know.
Thanks in advance,
Tonks
Dear Tonks,
I can make Christmas Eve work. Shall we say one o'clock, at the Hog's Head? And yes, as it happens, I had a flare-up over the weekend, but how did you guess?
Confusedly,
Remus
Dear Remus,
I have ways.
See you then.
Tonks
"'I have ways'?" Remus seated himself across from Tonks, not without a wince. The Wolfsbane Potion sheltered him from the werewolf's furious need to cause harm, but the forced transformations were painful in their own right. "What does that mean, exactly?"
"It means I can read a calendar, and my mum's a Healer. One who works on special potion projects a lot." Tonks met his eyes levelly, though her hair was shading deeper red by the second. "And I'd always wondered how you got that nickname Cousin Sirius used to call you by. Plus I have…" Her cheekbones flushed with color now. "Yeah, well, never mind that. What matters is, I know. Or I think I know."
Laying one hand on the table, she gazed at it. It developed a thick coat of hair across its back, reforming itself to look like a wolf's paw, before reverting to its slender, well-shaped self. "Yes?" she said, raising her eyes to meet Remus's once more.
Remus exhaled a long breath. "Yes," he confirmed, firmly suppressing his shiver of fear for what else this might mean. "And either I'm getting worse at disguising it, or you're very perceptive. I used to be able to go years before people would figure it out. You caught on in just a few months."
"Like I said, I've got advantages." Tonks shrugged, though Remus could tell she was pleased with the compliment. "And it's not like I care. You're a good man, Remus. Thoughtful, friendly, willing to lend a hand and share what you know. That doesn't change because of something that happens one night a month, and it's not like you'll forget when it's coming around. I suppose you might get careless about it, anyone can make a mistake, but it'd have to take something pretty extreme for that to happen. Maybe if you saw something impossible, something that shook your entire world…"
"Severus Snape, being fair to Gryffindors?" Remus suggested mildly, and Tonks snickered. "Though I shouldn't be rude to him. He's agreed to make the Wolfsbane Potion for me while I'm here, which does make my full moons quite a lot easier."
"Glad to hear it." Tonks twisted in her chair, stretching her back. "Most important for me, though, is that Mal trusts you. He's not always easy around strangers, which I can't fault him on, he's had to be so careful most of his life to keep Uncle Lucius from figuring him out, but with you…" She snapped her fingers. "Instant connection. And I can't even imagine what he or Harry, or any of the others, would do to me if I got their favorite teacher sacked. All of which is a long-winded way to say that nobody's hearing about this from me."
"I do appreciate that." Remus smiled a little. "Since most of the world would not be nearly so understanding. I know I was terrified, back in my second year, when James, Sirius, and Peter pulled me aside one afternoon, that they were about to have me expelled from Hogwarts over something I couldn't control…"
A few carefully edited anecdotes later, Tonks reached into her bag and produced a sheet of parchment, smiling ruefully. "I'd better get to why I'm actually here, or we'll talk all afternoon and never get anywhere," she said, spreading it out between them. "Ever seen one of these before?"
"That's a vector diagram, isn't it?" Remus leaned over to study the cryptic notations and lines which had been sketched onto the parchment, outlining what appeared to be a street with a large number of circles on it, each labeled with a letter or number. Arrows moved from one to another, though several of them tangled around one another, connected to nothing at all, or pointed to obviously incorrect locations. "A recreation of the magical forces at work in one particular place and time. Usually crime scenes or the like."
"Precisely. Kingsley pulled out three for me to work on, and anonymized them so I can't cheat by looking up the answer. The first two came clear pretty fast, but this one isn't making any sense, no matter what I try." Tonks sighed, shaking her head. "I've got a bit of background on the scene, but I thought I'd show it to you cold, just to see what you thought about it. Sorry if that's rude."
"It'd only be rude if you were withholding it for fun. And if I think it'll help me, I'll ask for it." Remus took a deep breath and let it out slowly, closing out his surroundings, letting his attention narrow to the world depicted on the parchment before him. If this came from there, then that had to come from here, and then—
"I think I see the problem," he said, and drew his wand, carefully tapping several of the notations on the parchment, specifying that they were to move as a unit. "You've got a couple of your sources mixed up. So if we just do this—"
He slid his wand's tip two inches to the right, and the snarled lines all unwound, converging on a single node in the center of the street.
"There we have it." Remus tapped his wand against the parchment, anchoring the lines in place. "Looks a bit better now, doesn't it?"
"I'll say it does!" Tonks traced the clear lines with her finger, laughing under her breath. "To think, it was just that simple all along—oh, bloody hell." She sighed again, sitting back in her chair. "Maybe I should've told you everything to start with. This can't be right."
"It can't?" Remus frowned. "Why not?"
"Well, you weren't wrong when you said what vector diagrams are used for. This one's showing all the magical traces recorded at a crime scene. And I already know that this spot, here—" Tonks laid her finger on a circle marked 3. "This marks the person who did the crime. Murders, by the way, a whole bunch of them. But the way you've got it laid out, nothing connects to him at all. Look, everything's coming together on this other spot, in front of him here." She moved her finger to an X-mark labeled with a 2. "And that's one of the people who died. So what kind of sense does that make?"
"Good question," Remus began, then stopped short, a sudden suspicion rushing over him. Slowly, he bent over the diagram again and began to count.
"What're you doing?" Tonks asked, her eyes narrowing. "What's wrong?"
Remus waved her to silence, focused on the numbers in his mind, not sure if he were hoping more to be wrong or right. Eight, nine, ten, eleven—
"Twelve," he whispered, lowering his hand to the table.
"Twelve?" Tonks craned her neck to see what he'd been counting. "Oh, yeah, I see that. Twelve outliers, and then that one in the center. Quite a nasty curse, that must've been."
"I'm sure it was." Remus sat back, feeling equal urges to laugh out loud and find the nearest toilet immediately. "Tonks, do they put any identifying information on these diagrams? Places, dates, names?"
"Not names or places, no, that'd give too much away. We're supposed to be figuring it out just from the traces. But dates, that they do." Tonks tapped a set of symbols in the upper left corner of the page. "It's how our mentors keep track of which ones they've given us and which they haven't. Supposed to be in code, so we can't use that to get more information than we're meant to have, but…"
"You've all broken it long ago, and passed it around the Office," Remus finished when Tonks trailed off. "Can you translate this one for me?" Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a scrap of parchment and a quill, loaded the quill with a tap of his wand, and scribbled down a string of numbers, folding the parchment in half when he was done. "Here's what I think it is. Let's see how close I am."
"You all right?" Tonks peered across the table with concern before turning her attention to the coded symbols on the parchment. "You don't look so good."
"I'll manage." Closing his eyes, Remus visualized a peaceful forest scene, snow falling quietly across fields and trees, a lone horse and sleigh the only sign of humanity anywhere to be seen. Whose woods these are, he recited silently to himself, I think I know. His house is in the village though; he will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow…
"Got it," announced Tonks, bringing Remus's eyes open again. "Whatever this is, it happened on 1 November, 1981."
A shudder ran down Remus's spine, and he exhaled slowly, unfolding the parchment and pushing it towards Tonks.
"That's a match, all right." Tonks frowned. "But wh—" Mid-word, she froze, and her eyes widened. "No."
"Yes." Remus laid his fingers gently against the circle in the center of the diagram, the circle from which no spell traces emanated at all. Inside his mind echoed a voice, the voice both of Ryan Blake and of the man he represented in the waking world.
"If you should ever happen to come across some solid proof one way or another…"
(A/N: I did promise Christmas would be eventful.
The song Thea plays in the middle of the chapter is Hedwig's Theme, and the poem Remus recites is Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
More soon.)
