It was an inside joke within the Auror's Department, but nothing she could say was going to lighten Bill's mood.
There were only four interrogation rooms. The Auror's conference room had been placed at the end of the hall, and most times after a harsh meeting led by Head Auror Robards, everyone felt like they had been interrogated. The most secure room within the heart of the Auror's Department was the best place to wait for the results from his blood test.
Which, by the way, was taking longer than Tonks expected. The Hospital Laboratory had just gotten an influx of Transylvanian Flu samples and had been put on the clock to produce as much vaccine from it as possible. Moving Bill out of St. Mungo's made sense anyway, just in case someone let slip to the wrong people that he had been there. He wasn't in any shape to deal with a three ring circus that was the belligerent press, ready to pin a werewolf attack on a bloke who wasn't even a full werewolf.
Bill wasn't in any shape to deal with anything, period. Once he was aware that they were going to test his blood against his wife's crime scene evidence, he'd basically sunk so far into himself that he'd stopped talking.
Tonks was worried for him. She could blame herself all day long for not being with her husband at the Battle of Hogwarts, looking out for him, not fighting at his side, but at the end of the day, the hex that had taken him down was not from her wand. Remus Lupin's death was unequivocally not her fault.
If she was in Bill's position, if by some chance, there was any way to prove that she had been directly responsible for killing her husband, she surely would have lost her mind.
Fighting with Bill Weasley against the prejudices of his condition and the questionable evidence that made him look responsible for murder was giving her the chance to make things right, even if it was only within herself.
She led him down the long hall, past the four interrogation rooms, to the long room at the end. At the door, she dismissed the guards – Bill wasn't going anywhere – each step he took was a reluctant stagger, as if she was leading him to his execution. She transfigured the long table into a couch and chairs to make the space more comfortable for him.
Then she sat him down.
"Hungry?" she asked. It was nearly ten in the morning, and they'd been up all night. Surely, he needed something.
No answer.
"Thirsty?"
Nothing.
"Tired? I could get you a blanket."
Bill just sat, staring at nothing.
He had basically shut down. Tonks remembered with a tight pang in her chest how Remus would sometimes act after a particularly bad transformation. The times when he'd been unusually destructive in his were-form, he'd come out of it morose and apologetic, and stupidly try to create unnecessary distance between them in a futile effort to run her off. But that never worked. She would just wait it out until he came around and let her close to him again. It was hard for Remus to accept comfort and affection when he was at his lowest moments – the moments when he felt so strongly that he didn't deserve any kind of comfort or anyone's affection.
Looking at this man, she read the hollowness behind his eyes, longing to be anywhere but here. Longing to go back and change the unchangeable.
She still didn't believe that he killed his wife – definitely not on purpose at the very least – and by the way that he must have loved her, it was possible that he hadn't done it by accident either.
From the personal experiences she'd had with Remus's were-form, she could attest to the uncanny sense of recognition and sudden awareness that a werewolf can have when confronted with a human that he knew and cared about. It was one of the arguments they'd used against Greyback's defense team who claimed that werewolves have no sense of awareness after the transformation. Like hell, they didn't.
Which was also why she didn't buy into the details of Bill's story. He'd gone home, and then he'd blacked out. Afterwards, he couldn't remember the attack at all, and only knew it had happened when he'd seen his wife's body.
Maybe it was the Wolfsbane keeping the human consciousness intact, but Remus had always been aware during, and especially after his transformations. Not only could Tonks see the reasoning behind his eyes during the full moon, but afterwards, he'd always been able to recall everything about the nights he spent in his Were form, and he never, ever blacked out. Even on the nights where the Wolfsbane hadn't been effective, or in those rare cases when they didn't have any, Remus still remembered everything, even when he wasn't in control. She was taking a gamble by exposing Bill to the blood testing, but one way or the other, they all needed to know for certain what had happened.
And she'd stand with him either way. She couldn't be there with Remus, but she could be here for Bill. He would get whatever support she could give him. Especially if he didn't want it, because that meant he needed it more than ever.
Bill was still staring at nothing in the corner when there was a tap on the door.
Outside, through the glass wall, Williamson wore his Official Auror face. He held a small file between his fingertips, looking damned near unreadable.
"Give me something before I open this door, you arse," she whispered under her breath. It was tense enough waiting around for the verdict, but then Williamson was always like this. He never gave anything away, depositing the evidence and retreating before the fallout happened.
Coward!
She opened the door, and Williamson's gaze shifted to Bill and then back to her. "Just a heads up. They're coming for a statement."
When the door closed, Tonks was acutely aware that she was holding Bill's sanity in her hands. Up until this moment, she thought she could turn off her own feelings and just deal with whatever came down the line. But seeing Bill like that – completely unwilling to acknowledge anyone or anything – even before the results came in – having given up all hope of a positive outcome – was heartbreaking.
Tonks almost couldn't bring herself to open the file. Part of her was already thinking up crazy scenarios where she could sneak him out of the Ministry, steal a portkey and whisk him out of the country. Anything less than a full pardon would break him – and she suddenly didn't want to be any part of that.
But it was too late. Here she was, laboratory results in hand, the very thing that would tip the scales for the broken man in front of her. If she didn't reveal it to him, then someone far less sympathetic, like Williamson, would.
"Okay, here we go," she said.
Bill still hadn't moved. Hadn't blinked. Tonks sat down, took a deep breath, and opened the file.
The test results were circled in bright red marker, with the letters 'undisputable' scrawled on the top and bottom of the parchment.
"He's not… Bill!" She stood up and grabbed his shoulder. "Bill, oh my Merlin! It wasn't you!"
Bill didn't respond with anything but closing his eyes.
Tonks waited a full beat, but there wasn't any indication that he'd even heard her.
"You didn't do it."
Still nothing. It was like talking to a wall.
"You're not listening. You didn't do it. The test came back negative. Your blood wasn't anywhere at the crime scene. Your prints… fingerprints, footprints… wand residue… nothing was on her body or anywhere around it. Believe me, they test these things very carefully. If it was you, they'd have come up here by now and I'd be fighting off a whole lot more than Hermione Granger and the waves of misplaced self pity rolling off your shoulders!"
She squeezed herself between the wall and his chair to see his face, trying again to get his attention.
"Bill," she said. "You didn't kill your wife. She was dead before you got home that night. Now that we have the whole timeline, they know. It wasn't you."
His lips were moving. "It wasn't… I didn't…"
Tonks moved closer and touched his arm. Tears ran down his face, and a sob escaped his lips.
Behind him, she saw two Ministry officials coming with scrolls of parchment and quills. "Not now," she mouthed, waving them away. They warily looked between her and the man who was slowly crumbling to pieces, and turned back down the hall.
Thank Merlin, Tonks thought. If they had not backed off, she'd have had to put up a fight, and she didn't think Bill would have handled it well. He wasn't handling anything, much less his moment of redemption, at all. He could sign the statements that closed the case against him later.
Suddenly, the man sprang into motion, taking her by surprise and knocking her a little off balance. She flailed against the wall for a second, and then he crushed her into a hug. She held him while he shook and cried.
Right now… right now, he needed a different kind of closure. She never got the chance to do it for Remus, but she was going to do it for Bill, no matter what it took.
"We'll find them," she said to him. "We'll find whoever did this, and make them pay."