Must try harder.
This is the one where 'Chicken Soup' alters Tonks' base form whereupon she morphs into a dragon.
She has been warned, by Remus' fiancé Lucy, that Snape is being blamed for the fact there was only one werewolf educated at Hogwarts. Right now she's at Saint Mungo's to visit Snape (who's now a Director there) to find out why.
'What brought you down here?' Nott was looking considerably more relaxed than he had when she had last seen him. He stopped and, bowing slightly, ventured a smile. 'Let me guess. Reception sent you to see the egg?
At least he wasn't fleeing in terror; she could afford him some courtesy. Briefly, she returned the bow. He straightened and the smile grew wider. 'Egg?' she enquired.
'Sorry. Legal department. Otherwise known as the "Evil Green Glasses". "Of Doom" if you're actually required to interact with her.'
Right, thought Tonks. Even occasional proximity to that would explain the absence of fear when faced with an occasional dragon. 'What is she?'
Nott pulled a face. 'Possibly a vampire, except that vampires tend to be more . . . umm swishy?'
'Flamboyant? They were starting up the stairway out.
'That'd be the word. Clearly too intelligent for an inferius, unless something's found a way to occupy one. If it's a seriously nasty wasting curse, it's combined with unusual longevity. She's been here centuries. Literally. I'll have a word with reception. Next time just let them know you're here and come on through. Avoiding the lower levels, so we don't have to come and fetch you. I don't like that lecture theatre one bit and it's the only way out.'
'How did you know I was here?' Tonks asked.
'Anyone arriving in "Lost and Found", and not cancelling the alarm, sets off a bell and a light; first in Mortuary and then in Reception. Anything that goes missing in Saint Mungo's fetches up in "Lost and Found". It's best just to let yourself wander; that way you're back up in the shortest time.
'Ok. But why the Mortuary?'
Nott sighed. 'Because we, and I quote, "benefit most from people being able to walk out of their own volition".' He took a deep breath and opened the door to the abominable lecture theatre releasing the stink of incendio'd ancient wax anatomy model and curtains. 'Spontaneous combustion,' Nott said, sounding regretful. 'They really should clean down here more often.' Tonks noted that the place was gleaming, if horrible. 'Next time it might burn down completely and then, perhaps, we could replace it with something useful. Or at least less unpleasant. A "Gift from a Generous Donor". It came from a Muggle School of Anatomy when the place was demolished. Snape says magic hasn't done it any favours, but can you imagine? No pain relief; just straps to hold them down and then hacking each other up? And, after that, sewing what's left back together with needles and cat's innards?' The pitch of Nott's voice had risen steadily but he finished with a whisper. 'There are tools. In the cupboards.'
'They've had anaesthetics for some time now,' said Tonks, following him as he fled up the stairs towards the back of the lecture theatre and opened a door that had been invisible from below. In the light from the corridor, Nott's face was pale. 'They don't have magic,' she continued. 'Should they just let people die?
'No, but . . .,' said Nott holding the door and closing it behind them, clearly on automatic. 'Muggles.' He shook his head. 'They might look like us . . . ..'
'They're just like us' said Tonks. 'My granny is one of the kindest people I know.' Nott looked at her, plainly shocked. 'Thanks for rescuing me.'
He pulled himself together 'You'd have got out.'
'Of course. And it would, no doubt, have been interesting but you've saved me some time. And quite a bit of walking.' Glancing about, she recognised the corridor. 'Decontamination?'
'Experimental Potions. Longbottom's attempting a practicum. Fortunately there are magical barriers and big, thick walls.'
It took her a moment to place the name. 'Blows things up?'
'And how. Snape's got a theory.'
'Potions prodigy?
'He's mad. They're both . . . mad. In here.'
'In here' turned out to be a smallish room off the corridor between, on the one side, the smaller of Saint Mungo's decontamination suites, and on the other a laboratory. Between these was something she recognised from TV as an airlock. Separating them from the laboratory was a mid height wall of dimensions appropriate to medieval warfare. There were gauges set into it and, above it, what was, given its thickness, astonishingly clear glass.
Within the laboratory, a young wizard was circling a selection of cauldrons. 'Aren't they just a little close together?' Tonks suggested.
'Distances exceed the internationally recommended minimum.'
She took that as a 'yes'. Movement drew her attention to someone in the robes of an Unspeakable in the far corner just as Snape slid into view from where he'd been hidden by a broad column between the glass and the airlock.
The wizard she'd identified as Longbottom moved away, concentrating hard on the next cauldron.
'Who's the Unspeakable and why the practicum?' queried Tonks.
'Calls herself Madam Quatermass. We think it's an alias. As to the practicum: those supplying herbs for potions are supposed to understand them. A NEWT is the minimum and he doesn't have one. Snape asked how he could be trusted to provide materials when he couldn't even be expected to complete the most elementary kind of practicum; so if course Longbottom volunteered. It's usually one difficult potion and a couple of easier ones. Points given for difficulty. He has to make a minimum of twenty one.'
'He's got five cauldrons there.'
'Snape, very generously, permitted a variation. So Longbottom has a fertilizer, two highly specialised herbicides and something that looks like the Draught of Peace; the other is custard.'
Custard?'
'Apparently a good egg custard nets you four points. Damn.' He was staring at a display that as she watched extended upwards from lime green towards yellow. He glanced at her. 'Chance of a non trivial explosion in the next thirty seconds. Be ready to duck.'
As Snape stalked towards the circle of cauldrons, the display dropped back into a band of emerald green at the bottom of the display. To its left an identical gauge activated displaying red almost to the top but dropping towards yellow. 'Chance of a non trivial explosion in the next minute – falling.'
'How does it work?' asked Tonks.
'Don't ask me. Some sort of time-turner-y thing. I could lend you a book?'
'That,' Snape could be heard saying through a speaker, 'is not a bay leaf.'
'Similar effect,' contested Longbottom.' A bit spicier. It's in several cookbooks including . . . .'
'Cookbooks.'
'Well, you wouldn't let me put brandy in it!'
'Naturally not.'
'But it'll be tasteless!'
'As I have already explained, as long as it has the correct consistency, you will be awarded the points. Not even in Saint Mungo's is anyone likely to swallow it.'
Longbottom's jaw clenched. There was a slight splash as a spoon dropped into a cauldron.
'Was that the wrong cauldron?' Tonks enquired.
'The fertiliser,' replied Nott, idly. 'So: yes.' From end to end the displays shifted into the red. Already casting a shield charm, Snape reached for Longbottom who leapt away, tripped and fell amongst the cauldrons. Tonks found herself being seized by the back of her robes and dragged down. There came a muffled thrump, and, moments later, a loud crack and prolonged splatter as the glass overhead was coated in something yellow-brown and viscous. 'Sorry.' Nott looked sheepish. 'Just . . . well, it's Longbottom.' He got up and checked the Decontamination side of the Observation Room. 'It's Ok. Snape's got him.'
She followed Nott out into the corridor and, from there into Decontamination, the door opening to a horrifying scream. Someone, Longbottom she supposed, was in the nearest glass shower cubicle entirely covered in green foam, thrashing and shrieking. He stopped to draw breath, choked and lunged causing the door to swing clattering outward as he fell to the floor. There were things moving in the foam. Not cockroaches, as had been her first, sickening, thought, but, as she discovered when the fallen wizard spat one out in order to draw breath, hundreds of tiny scrubbing brushes. Snape cast a silencing spell. The little brush reorientated itself and scuttled back into the foam.
Horrible,' said Nott, 'but better than the alternative. Makes you feel as if your skin's been ripped off and then you itch for days. Unless you're a metamorphmagus.'
'And how would you know that?'
'Auror Fortinbras. You know some of us are on License from Azkaban? We get people coming round, checking up on us. Most of them aren't very friendly. She's Ok.'
'She talks about me?
'She was talking to Professor Snape.'
'And you overheard?' There wasn't an answer. Longbottom was up and lunging at Snape again before being Levicorpus'ed to hang by an ankle swinging, biting and scratching at the empty air, still trying frantically to reach the Potions Master who swung him back in under the still running shower and leant on the door.
'Marvellous,' said Quatermass who'd been observing. 'With those materials that should simply not have been possible.' She flipped Longbottom, scrabbling violently against the class, the right way up. 'Mysteries will take it from here.'
'Finder's fee?' enquired Snape and was duly handed an envelope which he opened. 'No.' he said, after one glance at a slip of parchment with Gringott's insignia down one side. The envelope and contents were thrust back towards the Unspeakable.
'We have an agreement,' she protested.
'For payment commensurate with risk and inconvenience; which this is not.'
How, Tonks wondered, could he simply stand there like that? How hadn't he noticed? How hadn't any of them noticed? Inside the shower cubicle Longbottom's bare feet hung above the last of the foam. Physically, he'd stopped struggling but from him sheer, insensate fury, all bound up with magic, was blaring like a psychedelic fog horn.
It was generally thought that it was a sort of sixth sense of immanent danger that kept magicals in the gene pool, rather than common sense as was generally the case with muggles. She had rather supposed the former spy to have had both. Incredibly, stupidly, Snape just wasn't paying attention, and before she could do anything to warn him, opened his mouth. 'Evanesco', he said. Smugly. The envelope vanished. There was a kind of magical back draft and what felt like a sudden burst of pressure enveloping, crushing and then exploding as the ground shifted and shuddered beneath them.
When it had finally stopped and Tonks was able to get up, she discovered that that the spells disguising the airlock and observations room had failed and the doors on the far side of the airlock were missing. As indeed was the support pillar, the thick glass and the wall beneath. In their place was something billowing, iridescent, seemingly diaphanous, except that, when a disturbance within caused it to bulge sideways, where it touched, whatever it touched, and rather particularly, most of the wall of the Decontamination suite, vanished.
'And that is our alkahest,' said the Unspeakable, from the floor, bleeding slightly but still game.
'Alkahest? Madam Quatermass,' Tonks rasped, dry throated, feeling that any sort of clue might be useful.
'Universal solvent.'
No. That really hadn't helped. She could now see underneath the thing and she didn't think it was shrinking. 'What's above here?'
'Street beside Saint Mungo's', muttered Nott. 'Left as you face in. Does that look to you as if it's rising? We're not far below ground level. What's supporting . . ..
Tonks apparated to the corner of the hospital and, crossing the road, laid down a one way barrier and muggle repelling spell. Racing towards the other end of the street, she pulled her communications mirror from her pocket and began calling in a warning. 'Auror Tonks reporting: Condition red. Breach of Secrecy immanent outside Saint Mungo's.'
No reply. She put the mirror to her ear but not only was there no response; she couldn't hear anything at all from the communications device. It was as if the line were dead. She let the pink hair fade. A flick of her wand and she was wearing the uniform of a police officer. On the street, things still appeared normal.
'Tonks here. Outside Saint Mungo's. Condition red.' Having reached the far end of the street, she placed another barrier/repeller. No obstruction would be visible to muggles leaving but, from the other side, the street would appear to have been blocked off. She turned to find that she had been followed. 'Nott. Get to the Ministry. You know the Auror apparition point? Get help.'
'They won't listen to me.'
'Give them this.' She forced the communications mirror into his hand. 'Ask why it's not working. Go.' Unhappily, Nott went.
