TWENTY
(Yup, still Saturday)

The first thought that ran through Tonks' head unprintable. The second was, ridiculously enough: Must not think of Dark Lord in conjunction with pants of any sort, moldy or otherwise. Her the third, likewise ridiculous, was: Poor Snape, widowered before he's even married. The fourth, following very closely at its predecessors' heels as if it were trying desperately to overtake them, was: Apparate, you damn fool, while your viscera's still on the inside.

But something rooted her to the spot. Logic, probably, hex its eyes. Her sudden disappearance would undoubtedly give everything away. It wouldn't take the evil overlord-wannabe before her too long to connect the dots. Shape would be discovered and odds were low he'd survive this time. And then their tampering with the vats if Garroting Gas would be uncovered. The trap would be tripped. Aurors would Apparate into a trap of their own. In short, lots of other people would die.

Or she could just carry on her little charade long enough to buy everyone some time. Seemed simple enough, really. Her fifth thought, which made its appearance somewhat more belatedly, was: If I make it through this, Snape's going to have to eat his words about my acting skills. And I will find a way to make that literal.

So, yes, the Dark Lord stood before her, flanked by another masked Death Eater that she didn't recognize. It was rather hard to tell them apart without their masks off.

"I trust everything is well in hand, Bellatrix?"

"Yes, my Lord," Tonks said, imitating her aunt's oddly childish voice. Sometimes it might seem like she took a round-about route to get places, but the thing was that Tonks was much faster than she was usually credited for. For instance, it had occurred to her almost immediately that any fear on her part was bound to be fatal, so she pushed it all aside and threw everything she had into her role. There was plenty of time to be afraid later if she survived. At present, however, she loved her Dark Lord with a dog-like devotion. "The last vat is being put into place now."

"Excellent, excellent." He turned to the other Death Eater. "I have been given high hopes for the success of your endeavor, Mulciber. Do not disappoint me."

"I would sooner die, my Lord."

Voldemort cocked his head to one side as he paused to consider that. "Sooner or later, yes. Bellatrix will report back to me on your failure or success."

Even in the sooty darkness Tonks could feel the look of pure hatred that Mulciber was giving her. She shot the same back at him. Bellatrix would be insanely jealous of anyone else who had her Lord's eye. She would almost certainly make full use of what she had of his ear. "Every detail, my lord."

"I do not doubt that in the slightest. Call the others to you when I have gone."

Then, without so much as an evil cackle, he Disapparated.

Tonks allowed herself a momentary enjoyment of the heady sort of elation that comes from having faced Voldemort and, rather inexplicably, lived. It was intoxicating. She felt like she'd just won the Quidditch World Cup, been named Magical People's Witch of the Year and Minister of Magic all at once. No wonder Harry Potter kept flinging himself headlong into mortal peril. It was bloody addicting.

She didn't really worry about Mulciber. She could handle his sort. What she had failed to consider, however, was that Voldemort hadn't been at all surprised to see Bellatrix Lestrange there.

Tonks was surprised when that very witch Apparated in front of her.

Bellatrix, to be fair, was also likely surprised to Apparate in and find herself already there. Her reaction, however, was more vicious and instantaneous than Tonks' might've been in her position – she flung a wave of pure green light at her double. With an unprecedented nimbleness born out of desperation and narrative convenience, Tonks just barely managed to fling herself out of the green lightning's path. As a result, however, she stumbled into the path of a curse that Mulciber would have otherwise sent wide of her, but whatever it was wasn't immediately apparent.

She scrambled to her feet a second later and flung two highly-crumpled serviettes out of her pockets. "Desubite!"

She didn't look back to see the short-lived flight of the attack swans, although from the sounds of it, one of the Death Eaters had been less successful than the other at disabling his aviaform opponent.

The ground seemed to pitch and lurch under her feet, and the absence of any sound from a train and the unlikeliness of a coincidentally-timed earthquake hitting the Greater London Region at the same time she was being hexed by Death Eaters led Tonks to the conclusion that Mulciber had probably hit her with some variant of the Vertiginous Divergens curse, which seemed like such a solidly stupid choice that she was momentarily almost grateful to him. That she didn't happen to know the counter-curse was immaterial; for most of her life Tonks had operated without an operating sense of equilibrium. A nasty case of vertigo wasn't going to noticeably affect her. Just because being successfully hexed vexed her, however, she risked a pivot in his general direction and aimed at his wand. "Nari sinistri!"

Bellatrix was aiming her wand at her own forearm. Bloody effing hell. Tonks needed cover, fast. It took a bit of rummaging, but she found what she needed in another pocket. She'd swiped the Portable Swamp from the twins on her way out the door. She rather figured Dumbledore would thank her for that.

More and more pops of Apparition sounded as the dodged behind a fungus-covered deadfall. In point of fact, each pop of Apparition was coupled with a splash and one or more indignant complaints.

"What the bloody hell is this, now?"

"My shoes! Merlin's beard, they were brand new."

"Blast it all, what are we all doing in a swamp? I thought we were headed to some underground thingy."

"You know how much those shoemaker elves charge these days."

"Did you see that?"

"It's practically criminal, it is."

"There's something..."

"Silence, you fools!" Bellatrix commanded. "There is an impostor here!"

"...out there..."

"Well it's not me."

"She's posing as Bellatrix," Mulciber added in a nasally voice. Tonks wondered idly if he'd managed to get his wand out yet. "Clearly she is attempting to stop my marvelous plan and should be... well, stopped." Mulciber, Tonks decided, did not have a future as an orator.

"...swimming. Did you see that?"

"It's only a log."

"She must still be nearby!" There was a splooshing noise, as if Bellatrix was attempting to stride out in search of Tonks.

"It has big teeth for a log."

"What did you say?"

"Big teeth. Lots of 'em. My what big teeth it has..."

"What does?"

"The log."

There was a low, moaning bellow.

"Gringott's nuts, man! That's a bloody crocodile."

"I think it's likely an alligator," another hazarded in an airy, almost-academic tone. "It's the shape of the nose, you see."

"How fast – Aaagh!"

In the pale blue light of fool's fire, she could just barely make out the black shapes huddling together and another black figure splashing about, apparently unconcerned that anything more dangerous than her could be skulking about in the muck and the darkness.

"I think what Rowle meant to ask before he lost all powers of elocution and wet himself is: what would you say is the, er, aquatic velocity of an unladen alligator?"

"What do you mean - American or Chinese Alligator?"

"LUMOS MAXIMA!" Bellatrix cried, apparently having lost all patience with her cowering compatriots. "Quit your blithering and kill it, you fools!"

There were several answering cries of: "Avada Kedavra!" and one belated: "Oh right!" In the end, anything even remotely crocodilian in shape was blasted with green light, including several logs and at least one rock. In fairness, Tonks supposed, it had been a very scary-looking rock. Tonks rather hoped that the alligator(s) in question had simply submerged to escape the massacre.

"Now, then," Bellatrix said. Tonks wasn't sure which one she actually meant, but figured it probably wasn't all that important. "You three clean this mess up. Mulciber, you and Gibbon go ahead with your allegedly marvelous killing gas. The rest of you find my impostor!" Bellatrix, it seemed, had taken the wearing of her face rather personally. Then again, she struck Tonks as the sort of person who'd stab anyone who showed up to a ball wearing the same dress as her in the literal as well as the metaphorical back.

"Has anyone got a mop?" One sad-sounding voice asked before he was cuffed by the Death Eater next to him.

Tonks let out a short sigh. She didn't want them potentially ambushing Snape, so she set off the first of her abeyant jinxes. In this case it raised anti-Disapparition barriers. It was shortly followed by a barrage of Apparition pops.

"You're surrounded!" Kinglsey Shacklebolt bellowed in his resounding baritone. "Throw down your wands and surrender!" Indeed, there was a ring of Aurors around the edges of the platform area. Tonks had spent a full quarter of an hour getting those illusions up to snuff.

There was an answering splash or two and Tonks quickly hissed the command: "Accio wands!"

Bellatrix, however, was apparently unimpressed by the suggestion of surrender in the face of overwhelming odds. "Death first!" She flung a flash of brilliant blue light right at Kinglsey. He didn't flinch as the light went right through him. He did get a bit wibbly around the edges, though.

"You're surrounded!" He repeated. "Throw down your wands and surrender!" Tonks hadn't really had time to give him much of a repertoire.

One further Death Eater dropped his wand at this second command. "They're bloody invincible!"

"Illusions!" Bellatrix spat to convey her disdain. She dispelled them with a desultory flick of her wand.

It hadn't lasted that long, but at least Tonks had disarmed three Death Eaters with her trickery. She rather hoped that the three she got weren't particularly gifted at wandless magic. Surreptitiously, she aimed a Tongue-Tying Curse at Mulciber and a Jelly-Fingers Curse at the fellow beside him. One problem was that any of these robed figures could be Draco Malfoy, and she didn't want to actually do anything too nasty to him.

The other problem was that her short stint at hexing gave away her position, though it was bound to be given away eventually. After that, she had to block the hexes and curses thrown her way as she slogged through the swamp in the direction she'd last seen Snape. She generally assumed he could handle himself, but it had been awhile since she had last seen him and she had very recently made some legally-binding promises concerning his welfare. "Partis paludis!" The swamp parted for her much like the Nile had in that Muggle movie Grampy Tonks had made her watch, then closed up behind her to hold back her pursuers – or at least it did until someone finally broke the spell and suddenly Tonks lurched onto dry land again. The floor seemed to pitch and lurch precipitously beneath her feet as she ran full-tilt in the direction she'd seen Snape go off in.

Her husband – now that was a strange way to be thinking about Snape, she thought as she blindly hurled Impediment Jinxes behind her – appeared to materialize out of the shadows. He mad a mad grab for her as she neared him. "Duck!"

Tonks ducked. She felt her hair sizzle as whatever it was passed safely overhead.

"Wotcher Sev. What's the time?"

"You're asking that now?" Snape returned incredulously. He flicked a purple spell out at the approaching mob of Death Eaters.

She grinned at him and flung a knee-reversal hex at the Death Eater in the lead. It hobbled him and tripped up two of his fellows before they got themselves straightened out again. "Glad to see you're alive. The time?"

"Langlock! It's perhaps quarter to nine."

"They were right!" There was a rhythm to carrying on a conversation while engaged in a duel. It was a bit harder with multiple opponents, but Tonks was fluent in duelese. "Obscuro!"

"Who? Protego!"

"The Centaurs! Orchideous!"

Snape rolled his eyes. "Levicorpus! Clearly it is a coincidence. Speaking of the time, your co-workers are about due, aren't they?"

She cast a silent shield spell and then followed it with a Babbling Curse. "Depends on whether someone could get a message to them, I suppose."

"Expelliarmus! We have to assume he did."

"Then they'll be here." There was a fusillade of Apparition pops. "Right about now, I should say."

"You're surrounded!" Kinglsey Shacklebolt bellowed. "Throw down your wands and surrender!"

Tonks felt completely justified in sniggering just a little.