'I really shouldn't have said that,' muttered Tonks.
Snape looked amused. 'So,' he murmured, 'how did you end up in the soup?'
'What?'
There was something almost Dementor-like about that glide. 'I hear that most Aurors keep their best uniforms at the Ministry against the possibility of accident and having to face the music.' He stopped beside her. 'I suppose it is not altogether unreasonable to wish to at least appear competent.'
Git thought Tonks. Her skin flared as his fingers ran down her arm. Dammit, that's really not fair. She'd been half expecting some sort of emotional rebound from her break-up with Remus but reacting like this to Snape, of all people, argued extreme spite on the part of Fate.
'You are wearing new robes.' Snape continued leaning in. 'You smell of Ministry soap and . . .' he turned her hand palm upwards, fingertips sliding under the webs and into the gaps between her fingers, 'your skin is wrinkled, implying prolonged immersion.' She found herself listening to his voice and paying very little attention to the words. 'This would suggest that you have been exposed to something unpleasant and, since it can be scarcely more than an hour since I last saw you, . . ..'
Tonks forced herself to shake her hand free; her fingers tingling. 'Ok, Sherlock,' she muttered.
'Elementary, my dear Tonks.'
As he walked away, Tonks wondered if Snape had been angry at all. 'One of the sous-chefs chucked a ham bone into the swamp-soup,' she explained. 'Just to see what happened. What happened was it leapt off the stove and exploded.'
With a gesture Snape lit candles around the room, before lifting one of a number of parchments from a rather battered and worn table of some dark coloured wood. 'Ah, the scientific method,' he mused, transfiguring the parchment into a red-splattered chair. 'Well. Sit down.' A plate of food together with a glass of water appeared on the table. 'Pie. Your favourite.'
The House-Elves at Hogwarts took the idea of 'comfort food' to the limits and then pushed it, screaming, over the edge and the pie had, indeed, been her favourite. 'How did you know?'
'Three helpings?' Snape settled into a chair opposite her and unrolled another pale sheet of vellum to reveal something that looked as though it might have been produced by a number of ink dipped spiders under the influence of 'Tantallegra'. If I didn't know better, I might think that you were greedy.'
Tonks sat down and picked up a fork. 'Why was Bel Fortinbras so sure you'd help?' she asked.
'Because, having been present, should things have gone wrong, I would have found myself answering questions with most of those who might be inclined to actually listen to the answers unable to do so.'
He was right, as usual. With most of the Aurors who had been in the Order of the Phoenix out of the way it would be all too easy to scapegoat Snape. Tonks took a bite of her dinner. She closed her eyes for a moment and the memory of that rather odd little scene rose into her mind. 'What was it with Bel, anyway? Was she making a pass at you?'
'She does that.'
Tonks grinned. 'Did you ever think to take her up on it?
A sharp glance. 'I find myself disinclined to be anyone's dirty little secret.'
'But . . .' Tonks shut up and continued eating. She needed something neutral to talk about. 'So,' she hazarded, 'a meeting of the Board of Governors?'
Snape looked up. 'Actually, yes.'
'What's she after?'
'I beg your pardon?' He had gone back to scrawling a verbal mauling across what had to be some poor sod's attempt at an essay.
Tonks finished chewing and swallowed. "If McGonagall's got 'Persuasion Pie" on the menu, watch out, she's after something. We Aurors know this.'
'Ah.' Snape sketched a red box around the final offending paragraph and added 'See me' in spiky, red letters.
'Something to do with the Wizengamot?'
Snape said nothing and Tonks finished her dinner. 'It's wrong,' she began. 'You should demand a proper trial.'
'Ever been to Azkaban?'
Tonks had been to Azkaban.
One year into her training, she and her two year mates had taken a Portkey from the holding area in the Ministry basement to the smaller of the pair of volcanic islands that comprised the prison of Azkaban. They had found themselves on what was little more than a stump of basalt protruding from grey and turbulent water. At the top of a steep boat slip hunched the grey hulk of a capstan and, around it, an endless loop of chain stretched out from the landing point towards the dark fortress of Azkaban itself.
As they approached the capstan it had begun to turn, clunking as it pulled in and payed out chain. There was a thump, the rotation slowed and the sound changed as a metal boat was pulled out of the water and up the slip, water pouring from holes in the boat's bottom as it rose. The Auror Cadets had waited as the boat drained, holes closing over as the surface fell, until just a small pool remained slopping at the lowest end. It was a measure of their state of mind that none of them thought to 'evanesco' it and so they would all end up with wet robes. Climbing into the boat had been one of the hardest things Tonks had ever done. With a shudder, she forced herself back to the present. 'I've been to Azkaban,' she said.
'Just before you get there, the boat stops,' said Snape.
Tonks remembered that too.
It had felt as though all the generations of misery that were Azkaban has somehow been concentrated by the structure itself and focussed onto that sullenly heaving patch of water, almost black in the shadow of the island. The experience had been all but intolerable. Oddly, it had been Gates, the Gryffindor that they had had to prevent from attempting to jump out of the boat and trying to swim back. Or perhaps not. At least, as he'd explained afterwards, he'd have been doing something. Of course the prisoners wore heavy iron fetters and, for them, swimming would never be an option. Even so, some tried.
'Would you have any idea,' Snape enquired, 'of the numbers of those failing to complete their journey?'
'I imagine I could find out.'
'And those who don't jump but still don't arrive?'
'What?' Tonks blinked. 'Just what are you implying?'
'Extrajudicial execution of the inconvenient,' said Snape softly, continuing to correct schoolwork.
'Bollocks!' Tonks stood and then sat down again suddenly as the world swayed around her and then she was sprawled facedown over the table with Snape beside her, shaking her.
'Tonks! Wake up.'
This, thought Tonks, was worse than the time she'd gone drinking Scrumpy with her muggle cousins. It was similar though. She'd felt fine until she tried to stand up.
'Tonks, have you taken anything other than the potion I gave you?'
'Some green glop. Tasted like rancid broccoli and toothpaste.'
'Golpalott's Green,' said Snape disgustedly. 'Wonderful. Weren't you warned to go directly to bed?' He was trying to get her to stand up but her legs were refusing to work.
'Can't I just sleep on your sofa?' she begged.
'No.'
Tonks slipped bonelessly down onto the floor. 'Dammit,' breathed Snape and then levitated her. Rocking gently in midair, she waved goodnight to the octopus and closed her eyes.
