EIGHTEEN
(Even More Saturday)
They trailed down an ancient spiral staircase, thick black soot stirring and dancing in their wake. It was silent as the grave – or at least it was once Snape had covered her with noise muffling spells – and, despite the fact that they were really only a few metres down, it was hard to believe that they were still in London. The place looked as if it had lain undisturbed for years. Unless the Death Eaters had levitated, they had not arrived this way. Tonks read the signs as they descended; mostly warnings from the Muggle Ministry of Defense about danger and impending death. It was a cheery sort of place, she decided. Unfortunately, it was also enormous. She got the feeling they could spend hours exploring the moldering rooms.
There was something quintessentially Muggle about the Underground. Wizards generally didn't need it as a method of transportation, so they tended to avoid it. That was part of the reason, Tonks supposed, that it was so special to her, almost sacrosanct, even. It was strange to think that Death Eaters had invaded. It felt wrong and she very much wanted to punch someone in the nose over it.
"Careful!" Snape hooked her by the elbow. "There's a drop there."
"How could you possibly manage to spot that?" She looked down to where the floor ought to be and saw only blackness. Maybe it was some sort of Death Eater super power, she speculated.
"The door has a large sign posted on it that says: 'Danger: Sheer Drop Behind Door. Warning.' I confess that was my first clue."
"It's this bloody mask." Tonks tugged at the Death Eater mask that obscured not only her visage, but also a good bit of her field of vision. It had been a dinner plate before she'd transfigured it, but it had more or less the shape of the thing. "How's anyone supposed to see through this thing? And why in the name of Io's six teats would you wear something you can't see properly out of? The advantage of having good peripheral vision should not be discounted in a duel."
"We all suffer for fashion. I don't think this leads to the platform."
"Oh I'm sure it does," Tonks disagreed blithely. "One just wouldn't necessarily be alive when one got there. Or at least not for long."
He ignored what she considered her impeccable logic. "Let's go back to the staircase."
They traveled deeper down into the darkness until they reached a locked gate at the foot of the staircase. The platform would be beyond the gate and down the short flight of stairs. And the platform was where she had seen the face. "Alohamora," she whispered.
Snape caught the heavy lock before it could clatter to the ground and they greased the hinges with as many spells as they could think of before easing the gate open. Although they had gone back several hours to before the call had gone out, that didn't mean Voldemort had left the place entirely unprotected. That just wouldn't be like him at all.
Snape extinguished his lumos spell.
"You think it's a good plan for me to wander around a disused station in the dark?" Tonks asked. She felt the stir of hot air and the rumbling of a passing train beneath her feet. "Have you even met me?"
"Unless you happened to bring a Hand of Glory along, we'll have to."
"Alas, I left it in my other set of Death Eater robes."
"Hold on to my cloak if you must."
"This is bloody ridiculous," she muttered, but she took hold of his cloak anyway.
Tonks had never been afraid of the dark. Then again, it was easy not to be afraid of the dark when you'd never really known it. It was quite something else altogether, she considered, to be able to say: "Hello Darkness, my old friend," and not just think you were quoting the lyrics to an old Muggle song.
Darkness was different when you couldn't make it go away with a swoosh of your hand and a muttered spell. It was somehow more dangerous. Somehow more dark. Hell, it was blinding. And it was bloody annoying that it didn't seem to bother Snape one whit.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" she asked him as they slowly edged down the staircase toward the platforms. For her part, she was rather confident that she didn't have the first clue what she was doing, in many senses of the word.
"Not entirely." He didn't sound particularly disturbed by that.
"Oh lovely." Her nose itched. "Hold up. I think there's a ward up ahead. Ah, just a Muggle-Repelling Charm. Sally forth, Sarks."
She disarmed a pair of Sensing Spells, one targeted toward enemies and another toward those using stealth. For his part, Snape wasn't entirely useless; in addition to being her seeing-eye-Death Eater, he caught a Caterwauling Charm moments before Tonks would have set it off.
The platforms were largely deserted and empty of anything obviously suspicious. There was, however, one last nasty little curse which would've drawn anyone who encountered it over the edge of the platform and out onto the tracks. After completing another sweep for good measure, Tonks and Snape finally agreed that the place was clear. Clear of spells, clear of enemies... and clear of anything remotely resembling containers of Garroting Gas.
"We must've missed it somewhere," Snape said.
Tonks shook her head. "Can't have. The only ruddy place we didn't search was the bottom of those shafts."
"That's it."
"Bloody hell. They're ventilation shafts."
Indeed, at the base of one of the shafts they found the containers of Garrotting Gas joined up to what looked like ancient ventilation blowers. Tonks helped sweep out the spells and then left Snape to do whatever it was that Snape did. She returned to the platform and set up some spells of her own, then locked them into abeyance until she spoke the code word. She wanted the strategic advantage of surprise. What seemed like almost an hour later, but probably wasn't even half that, Snape rejoined her on the platform.
"I've neutralized the gas in the three vats we found, but there is a place for one more container to be hooked up to the ventilation systems."
"Oh bugger that." It meant Snape would have to neutralize the last container on the sly, likely with the whole place already filled with Death Eaters. So much for showing up ahead of time to save the day. "Damned procrastinators. This is going to be tricky, isn't it?"
"I suspect so. We've done as much as we can do for now. We might as well find ourselves a spot to wait out its arrival."
"Over here." Tonks gestured to one bricked up half-moon of the platform. She'd left it free of jinxes and other nasties. "Is that a cinema screen on the wall?" It certainly looked like one. Her vision, it seemed, had finally adjusted to the darkness.
"What's a cinema?"
"I think I've just figured out how we're going to survive our marriage."
"Let's start with surviving the night," Snape returned.
They waited under the cover of a Dissimulus charm and nearly every other concealment spell either of them could think of. Tonks felt they were well-nigh undetectable. No matter what others might think, she hadn't gotten top marks in Concealment and Disguise purely on the basis of her natural gifts.
Occasionally a train went by, but, without her schedule, she couldn't really keep track of what that indicated about the time.
She rested her head against the grimy green and brown tiles and closed her eyes, but didn't dare keep them closed for long. Odds were good she'd fall asleep if she made that mistake. "It feels like today's been three days long already."
"Not quite three," Snape disagreed. "But it is certainly longer than most days."
"What d'you suppose we're doing now? The other us, I mean."
"I'm working. You're scarpering around the school in your knickers."
"Not long now, then." She paused to reconsider. "Or possibly 'not long then, now."
"Indeed."
"This timey-" she waved a vague hand "-wimey stuff always confuses me. Are we now or are we then?"
"Both, I would think. Are you invariably this philosophical on stakeouts?"
"Typically. Consider yourself lucky it's not avalanches this time."
"It's the first one to fall."
"What is?"
"The snowflake that begins the avalanche. It begins with the first flake that falls. Everything else accretes from there."
"But it's not an avalanche until the snow moves."
"If that's how you define it."
"Seems like we've got a bit of an ontological conundrum."Tonks chewed on a fingernail. "If that's true, you're implying that every snowflake carries with it a slice of potential avalanche, as if it's some quantifiable wossname."
"I suppose."
"What if it melts?"
"Then that potential goes away."
"Hrm," Tonks considered. "Maybe it's structural. All right then. How do you feel about trees in forests?"
Snape snorted. "I'm reminded of our time in the Forbidden Forest. Tell me – which antidote did you choose to employ that night?"
She raised an eyebrow at him, though she wasn't entirely certain he could see it in the dark. "Academic curiosity?"
"Something like that."
"The laurel-based one."
"No powdered orris root?"
She shook her head.
"A wise choice."
"I'm not a complete fool, Snape. I'm well aware that half of all antidotes to love potions are prone to act as love potions if they don't have a potion to counteract. I was careful."
"As was I."
Tonks chuckled dryly. "How horribly dull of us."
"We're huddled in the dark waiting for a battle royale between Aurors and Death Eaters where the lives of countless Muggles weigh in the balance. Meanwhile, at more or less this very same moment, we are being married and soon our ginger doppelgangers will be wreaking havoc upon the Ministry's worst and dimmest."
"What's your point, Sev?"
"We may indeed be many things, but we can hardly be considered boring."
The pop of Apparation rang out like a shot through the darkness, and, despite all her training, Tonks jumped. Some of that training showed up and made itself known with the speed in which she got hand to wand. And then she stopped moving and became as still and silent as the dust.
Tonks squinted and tried to see if the two black-robed figures were carrying a container of Garrotting Gas. They were.
"I can't get it out of my head." One shadowy figure was complaining.
"What?"
"A song. A stupid Muggle song. It's wedged in up there and it won't go away. Blasted Muggles going about singing and dancing about macaroons."
"Macaroons?"
"I don't understand it either. But it's bloody insidious, the way it just worms its way into your brain and never leaves."
"Sounds horrible."
"It bloody well is."
"Damned Muggles."
"What can you do?"
"We could always kill them all."
They both laughed. "Right. Let's get this stuff where it can do some good."
Tonks stepped out past her wards. Her long, shining black hair whipped back in forth in a wind that was unique to her and darker shadows curled out around her. "You there! Stop dithering like fools and get that canister where it belongs." She snapped at Snape. "Show them."
The Death Eaters gaped at her. "B-b-you?"
"My Lord commanded me to oversee the proceedings."
"I didn't think..."
"Clearly. For now he will do your thinking for you." She pointed at Snape again. "Go with them. You, fools, listen to him. Obey him - or face my wrath."
She watched Snape lead the pair of canister-toting Death Eaters off to the ventilation shaft and hoped that Snape wouldn't be unmasked. That last bit was probably a bit over the top, she privately conceded, but her auntie wasn't exactly known for her subtlety.
Before Tonks could sneak back into her warded hiding place, another pop of Apparition rang out.
"Ah, Bellatrix."
Tonks turned and executed that strange coquettish something between a bow and a curtsy that Bellatrix was always doing in her wanted posters. "I am my Lord's most faithful servant."