A/N: Thank you all for the follows, favs and lovely comments. Thanks Christmas95 - I always try to keep them in character - Tonks is logical but fair. bookdiva - I can't thank you enough for all you're doing right now, you are an utter superhero! I am so glad you're able to find some solace in fics at this time. I'm going to post some fluff Remus/Tonks fics so you'll have plenty to read. Take care of yourself! And thanks to anyone else reading who is a key worker. Here we are... Chapter 28.

Chapter 28 – She was holding in her hands, a cover up.

The files Tonks had copied in the ministry were detailed.

Too detailed.

She'd been an Auror for two years, trained for four before that – she didn't want to think how much of the last six years of her life, since the age of 18, when most of her friends were drinking and partying each evening; she had spent reading case files.

Detail was important and Aurors knew that any report should be detailed enough to answer any and all questions. It should contain all pertinent information in a logical, easy to follow format – Tonks could practically recite the entire textbook.

The file Tonks had spent much of the day staring at, whilst Remus looked at another, was not logical and easy to follow and the thousands of pages of reports Tonks was scanning through were certainly not all pertinent.

Someone was trying to bury something.

The file she was concentrating on, should have been a comprehensive report on the murder of Peter Pettigrew. Instead she had already read through 38 pages of mind numbingly boring tripe about Peter's parents, childhood, his school days… Tonks ploughed on, she couldn't skip anything. If someone was trying to bury something, it would be there, right amongst the mundane.

"That makes no sense." Remus had been muttering on and off all afternoon.

This time, mainly just to give her eyes a break from reading, Tonks decided to question him, "Remus…have you found something?" He looked up but for a few seconds looking as though he had forgotten Tonks was there.

"Hmm? What? Oh yes, well no, I don't know." He sighed loudly and rubbed the back of his neck. "The timeline for the night of…well the night they… Halloween." Tonks hated the pained expression on his face, his slumped shoulders, his scruffy appearance, all highlighting just how distressing this was for him. "The timeline just doesn't add up. Witness statements say that they heard the explosion," he paused and Tonks could see him trying to steady his breathing, "at 7.45pm," he traced the sentence with his finger, "but we know at the height of the war, secret keepers could only pass information person to person, not in writing, and that information would only last for 10 minutes."

Tonks nodded, but felt like Remus was talking more to himself than to her. "But I found a witness statement from Hagrid" he shuffled papers around on the desk, searching for the statement in question, "yes here it is - that said at 7.30pm he was with Sirius and though he states that he doesn't know how long they were together, he said it was at least half an hour."

Tonks conceded that it was tight – but she thought warily, not impossible. Sirius could have verbally passed the secret over to Voldemort at 7.20pm and then apparated straight to meet Hagrid. If Voldemort had arrived at the Potters just before the information wore off – 7.30pm – Tonks shuddered, well he wouldn't just walk in and hit them both with a killing curse would he. Hadn't Mad Eye told her time and time again that Voldemort and his followers liked to tease their prey before they finished them off. She couldn't share any of these thoughts with Remus of course.

"It does seem unlikely" she hedged, "but it still doesn't really help us make sense of what happened that night – and how on earth Peter could still be alive." Remus nodded and went back to the file he was holding.

The pair continued shifting through papers all afternoon, moving only to fill up tea cups. Tonks popped down to grab them some dinner, Remus periodically stopped reading and rubbed his neck whilst he stared out into the Hogwarts grounds; but accumulatively they had probably only stopped reading for about 20 minutes all day.

Rubbing her eyes with her fore and middle fingers, Tonks flicked the page, her eyes roaming over a page that detailed, laboriously, on Peter's neighbours' thoughts about him before moving illogically and without ceremony to muggle witness statements.

The file was a mess… why was she looking at witness statements?

She had already read witness statements from wizards and witches present at the bridge incident – these muggle statements should have been with them. As she began to read, she was quietly certain that this was it – this was what the Auror writing this file had been trying to bury.

'It was utter chaos, so I couldn't be certain of anything. There were lots of people in brightly coloured cloaks, we were in London so we assumed it was probably some acting group or other – they all seemed incredibly happy, they were all embracing each other, some were even crying. My husband and I thought they must have just finished a show or that it was some kind of street performance – those are always happening near the Playhouse Theatre. We went into Corinthia's hotel for a drink, to avoid some of the bustle and when we came out, those in coloured cloaks were running in all directions. There was a rather handsome, tall man with long dark hair – he looked livid, he was shouting at another shorter, plumper man, something about the shorter man should have known he would kill him for betraying Lily and James, it was so loud and clear, like it was being amplified above everything else on the street. By this point my John and I had decided it was definitely street theatre, so we wondered off – it wasn't until we got onto Whitehall Place that we heard the explosion. All those poor people. There were so many children…'

Tonks reread the account several times. From the photos she had seen and the laboriously detailed description she had read of Peter Pettigrew, she felt pretty comfortable surmising that the 'handsome' man was Sirius and the 'plumper man' was Peter. He was accusing Pettigrew of killing Lily and James? Tonks glanced up at Remus – she didn't want to tell him what she had just read until she had more evidence and could paint a clearer picture.

As she continued to read through witness statements, she noticed that a theme emerged. There were tons from muggles, who all largely said the same thing – Sirius had arrived on the bridge chasing after someone. He had clearly, from the descriptions, magically amplified his voice and told Pettigrew that he would kill him for betraying James and Lily.

She read yet another similar statement from a teenage muggle boy.

'…We thought it was some play or sommat but when that man, the taller one shouted, there was something in his voice – he shouted, well he didn't shout, but what he said was really loud. He said that he would kill the other man for killing James and Lily, I think the other man spoke, but I didn't hear what he said, it was when the tall man replied that I realised something wasn't right – he didn't sound like he was acting, he sounded like a proper hurt man. He said, he would have died for his friends. Then I dunno there was like an explosion or sommat and I was flown back onto the street.'

The statements, Tonks realised had been categorised, which in and of itself wasn't that unusual. In every case with lots of witnesses, there were always some that weren't that helpful, some that just contained a lot of waffle and those few that were actually useful. Only in this file, they hadn't been separated into pertinent and waffle or anything similar – they seemed to have been separated into statements that made no reference to Sirius' outburst and those that did. Those that mentioned him telling Peter he would have died rather than betray his friends – or something to that effect, and that Peter should have known he would kill him, were at the back of the folder, marked Witness Statements INEF – which meant they had been checked and were ineffectual and not useful to the case. These would therefore not have been presented to the Wizengamot. Those that had been presented, those marked Witness Statement COR – the supposedly corroborated ones were any that didn't mention shouting at all.

Tonks sat back in her chair, still holding the last witness statement she had been reading from the COR file which stated that 'The tall man blew up the bridge. It all happened so fast and I don't know how he did it, but there was lots of screaming and crying afterwards. I think I hit my head.'

Tonks had decided at the age of 9, rather emphatically, that she wanted to become an Auror, after meeting one on a rare trip to the Ministry with her Father.

Mad Eye Moody.

She had been fascinated by him and he by her. Most people who saw her morph for the first time jumped in surprise or seemed a little unsure about her afterwards. Not Auror Moody. He had laughed as she'd turned her own face into a mirror of his own. Clomped over and spoken to her Dad and told him he had a very clever daughter. He'd chatted to her about her abilities, complimenting her on her control at such a young age and offered to lend her a book he had in his office on Metamorphmegus'. It was a book she still treasured. As she had listened her Dad tell her that Auror's, like Moody, chased after bad wizards and sent them to prison, she had thought there could be no higher calling. Whilst other girls had run around pretending to be princesses or teachers or healers, Tonks had run around her parents' house in one of her Fathers old robes, arresting their cat and interrogating him for crimes against the ministry.

As she'd gotten older and started at Hogwarts her conviction that the only career path for her was that of an Auror had only grown. She'd dreamed of bringing to justice those who had committed the worst possible crimes. And, as she had gotten even older, she relished in having a career where her morphing abilities would be utilised, unlike at school where they only ever got her trouble.

She had spent two thirds of her life believing that there could be nothing nobler than to work for the Ministry of Magic, especially as an Auror.

Though of course some of those grander delusions had been squashed as she'd started training and realised the Ministry was an organisation, like any other – with those on the ground who worked bloody hard and knew what they were doing and those at the top who often, had little idea what on earth those on the ground did, but felt perfectly happy making decisions for them anyway.

However, she had clung on to the fact that as an Auror she was still one of the good guys. She and her colleagues were putting the guilty behind bars, revealing justice for families and victims and protecting the innocent.

She massaged her neck and shoulders, feeling slightly queasy.

She had no doubt that Sirius Black was a murder. He had senselessly killed a bridge full of Muggles with one flick of his wand.

However, she now firmly believed he had not been the person to betray Lily and James Potter. No, that crime belonged to Peter Pettigrew.

It was all there, clearly, if you read for long enough, in the file. The Auror collating this could not have missed it. She was holding in her hand a cover up.

She could see how it could have happened. Her Mother had told her, on the few times she had opened up about those years, just how bad things had gotten. Faith in the Ministry was destroyed. Voldemort had brought the wizarding world, at least in Britain, to its knees. The file in her hand told the story of a Ministry who had seen the opportunity to blame everything they could on someone who still alive, who could be made an example of, who could face trial and be sent to Azkaban. Voldemort had disappeared – believed to be dead by many – the Ministry needed to save face, make it look as though they had played some part in saving the wizarding world – hide from the truth – that the wizarding world had actually been rescued by a 1 year old.

It was a cover up. The evidence was all there but if it didn't fit the story the Ministry had created around some of the facts, then it was placed in the INEF file and buried.

Sirius Black was a murderer alright – but she was pretty sure with a good lawyer he would have been locked up in St Mungo's not Azkaban. He had killed so many muggles, but he had done it during a fit of rage having learnt that his best friends had been murdered. A temporary insanity plea would have spared him from the Dementors at least.

Her brain scanned the files again – she still couldn't understand how any of this led to Peter still being alive.

She glanced up at Remus, not knowing how to tell him what she had found. How to say the words that needed to be said. She took a steadying breath and put her hand on his across the table.

"Remus, do you want another cup of tea? Or something a bit stronger? I've found some things I think you need to read. There is so much I've made some notes summarising everything."

She slid him a piece of parchment on which she had concisely written out her theory and the overwhelming evidence that backed it up and, as he had only nodded at her offer of the tea or something stronger, she decided to just fetch both. She stopped as she reached the back of his chair and placed a hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

Checking the shelf where she kept her whisky, she remembered that her and Remus had finished it off a few weeks ago. "I'm just going to pop down to the kitchens and see if I can sweet talk one of the house elves into giving me some of their cooking whisky. I won't be long"

Remus nodded, not taking his eyes from the paper she had given him.

A/N - Well this fic is coming scarily close to the end... in the next chapter, we might just meet the Notorious Mass Murderer himself...maybe. I'm currently writing the final chapter and it is not playing ball with me HA! So reviews, follows and favs would be appreciated! Oh and if you would like a Remus/Tonks fluffy humourous one shot - check out my new complete fic - Everyone Deserves a Someone. Keep safe everyone.