For the wondering mind, the loving heart, and and the reaching passion to be condemned to the penitentiary of the body is a cruelty. It is a horror and a sadness. The body is a trammel, a traitor, a failure and a sybarite. It will humiliate every one of us in the end.
Fear not this humiliation. Fear not this end. The unblessed man wastes his life locked in lonely, brutal combat against it. But for he who has found the light within, it is no enemy. The finder of the light knows that at the point where the ethereal self touches the vulgar flesh there is a strength, a purpose, and an ecstasy that is as deathless and unbreakable as the force that pulls the waves to shore. It is both ineffable and tangible. It is what exalts a man above a beast. A childlike mind might even call it magic.
- Charles Oplichter, Finding Your Inner Light: The Science and Art of Will
Tonks must have slipped into his room because she was in his bed. They were facing each other with their mouths close, shuddering breath hot in between. His hands had already gone to her cool satin slip and were sliding up the curve of her back, and her leg was hooking over him and her warm little foot was rubbing at the back of his knee. And with an underwater smoothness he was turning her over and she was under him and he was inside of her. At that moment she looked at him and she said, with hooded eyes and in a purr that made a vibration travel all the way along his spine and to his hips, "I'm coming after you."
He bowed his head to the bend of her neck and was lost in pleasure. He gripped her shoulders to push himself deeper, harder, ravenous for the heat of her.
There was a gnawing in his side and it made him open his eyes, and when he did, he made a strangled noise and pulled his face back from her neck, recoiling. She had morphed her hair into the same springy ginger curls as Dymphna's. She was beaming at him, Dymphna's hair all fanned out on the pillow around her, moving against it with his driving rhythm. He wanted to stop and get off her but he couldn't, his body was moving without him, the want of her pushing him past the edge of control. The headboard hammered against the damask-papered wall, the nag in his left side was becoming a scream, and he knew without looking that she was digging her dinner fork into his ribs from below as she grinned and giggled. He flung an arm out to grab her wrist and -
- he woke to a thock and an electric current of pain down his forearm as his wrist connected with the bedside table. Golden morning streaming in the big window. The nettling cackle of birds. He sat up and a ragged tear stitched across the left of his chest. He pressed his hand against it and the bad rib gave a little under his probing fingers, crepitus bubbling where it met his sternum.
Tonks's voice in his mind: three to five days before that one breaks down. After that you'll need real Skele-Gro.
He wrenched around to look at the wall with the nauseous thought that Tonks must have heard the headboard pounding on it. Then he shook his head: still jumbled with the horror of the dream. Tonks was probably still curled asleep in bed, safe from his voracious lust and unsuspecting of the filthy way his mind had conjured her.
He stepped into his trousers, grabbed his wand and went to Tonks's room.
The door was ajar. He pushed it open: empty. The only sign of her was the disheveled bed. He went and pushed open the bathroom door, but there was only a rumpled towel on the floor and the clean smell of her. He stooped to pick up the towel, still damp and warm, without knowing why.
"She's gone foraging with Sister Dymphna," said the Minister from the doorway behind him. Remus dropped the towel and rounded on him with his wand drawn.
The Minister smirked, leaning against the doorjamb with a sweaty brown beer bottle in his hand. A terrible nervousness trilled in Remus's chest, like he'd been caught doing something unsavory.
(Like the time Sirius had caught him bending to touch his nose to the place her sleeping head had lain on the settee cushion in the library of Number 12. Pervert! the hateful voice in him had snapped. Well, well, Moony, Sirius had smarmed. It was long before they had ever touched each other, when just her lingering floral scent, or a stray pink hair, or the crinkled white smudge of her lip balm on the rim of a cup could evoke in him a tremulous and confusing fascination that he'd found both sordid and titillating).
"Easy now," the Minister said. "I've only come to give you the tour."
He swigged from the beer, eyes locked on Remus.
Tonks and Remus had been sitting in a tree, legs just touching, in the wood that skirted the Yaxleys' country estate in Berkshire. It was early days for them and he was still skittish about that kind of contact; his thigh muscles had jumped against her when she'd settled next to him. It had taken her a long time to really get him talking, but after a while he was grinning and chuckling along with her and elbowing her back when she nudged him. She'd been wearing one of her favorite t-shirts and he, with the faintest ghost of a proud smile on his face, had asked her if she knew where The Weird Sisters had gotten their name. She'd tilted her head in mock curiosity and then he'd told her about MacBeth and described the plot and the theory that Shakespeare had been a woman, maybe even a witch. All the while she had just grinned to herself, because of course she had known where their name was from. Even if she hadn't read all their many interviews in Sonorous magazine, boys and men had been trying to impress her with that particular bit of trivia since her school days. It wasn't like her to just let him have it like that, but she hadn't had it in her to say something that might vanish that barely-there smile. He still wouldn't kiss her for weeks, but she had known that night that one day he was going to be hers -
"You're thinking about him," said Sister Dymphna.
"Was I?" lilted Tonks, and then she closed her eyes, pursed her lips, and blew out a long breath. Remus's smiling face, still gaunt and jaundiced from the full moon, was swept from her mind. She opened her eyes to the present: pink morning light was only just beginning to dapple through the whispering trees, and a chill white mist still seethed over the damp ground.
Dymphna wrinkled her nose, looking up at Tonks from where she kneeled by the fibrous gray trunk of a fallen juniper.
"You're very funny." She held up the mushroom she had just cut from the tree with her pocketknife. "Chicken of the woods," she pronounced. "To keep a wound from infection, mash it in a poultice with white clay, thyme, garlic and cloves." She tossed the frilly orange fungus into her white wicker basket.
"Sounds delicious," chirped Tonks.
"It is quite nice fried in butter. But it makes my lips tingle. It's slightly poisonous."
Tonks had to squash the absurd urge to make a dirty joke.
"So, how d'you know where to find them? Fallen logs and all that?"
"No, the ground shows me."
Tonks raised her eyebrows. "Oh? How does that work?"
"I learned in the fall that they would be here this summer. That's how I find them before the wild pigs do."
"Learnt how? How does the ground, er... show you?"
Dymphna didn't answer. She ran her free hand over the hairy rotting juniper, finding with her fingertips a faint, eroded carving, a rune that Tonks didn't recognize. With the knife she dug an X over the existing rune and next to it carved another.
"They won't be here next year," Dymphna whispered, and there was something almost nervous in her voice that Tonks didn't quite understand.
She felt a tug of longing deep in her chest: Remus would know about these runes, what they meant and what questions to ask about them. When Dymphna had woken Tonks this morning (bending over her bed in the heathery twilight, apparitionlike, the tips of her long curls swinging near Tonks's face), Tonks had been so startled both by her stealth and her cold imperiousness that she had barely thought about Remus until she was dressed and leaving. She'd cast her patronus on the way down the stairs, whispering a message to it and watching it slip through his closed bedroom door. She'd had no idea if Remus was even awake.
Sloppy work, Auror Tonks, her inner Mad-Eye had growled as Tonks had hurried to catch up with Sister Dymphna across the vast dewkissed lawn. Looking back at the house, she had seen one of the upstairs windows lit with the bluish glow of her patronus. Dymphna had paused right then, at the edge of the wood, looking up into the canopy with big eyes. Tonks had almost run into her as she'd stumbled to a halt.
"Something here is quite angry with you," Dymphna had said. With a scolding look back at Tonks: "You ought to be careful."
Tonks had felt a pulse of annoyance at first, but as they'd walked into the cool dark of the forest there had been a strange prickling on her forearms and the back of her neck, and a self-consciousness that was like being watched from behind. The leaves and twigs seemed to buzz and chatter against themselves all around her.
Her inner Mad-Eye had taken out his eye, polished it on his sleeve, and popped it back in.
Constant vigilance, he had told her.
Here and now by the log, Tonks crouched next to Dymphna to look closely at the carved rune. Their faces were close and she could smell the cool mint of the girl's breath.
"Is this something you do for the church?" asked Tonks, doing her best to sound casually interested.
Sister Dymphna made an affirmative hum. "If Charles is pleased with one of them I may show them where and when it will be good to plant. Or when the last frost will come. And once when he was displeased..." She giggled to herself. "I showed them where to graze their sheep that they became sick and stopped eating and bit at themselves."
"And... what do the runes - the symbols mean?"
Dymphna looked at her like she was very stupid.
"I don't know." She shook her head and prised off another mushroom.
Again, Tonks thought of Remus. He had to be up by now and looking for her. In her mind she saw his worried brow, his restless fingers. He wouldn't be so lost right now - he was so good with things in books, codes, languages. When they were still new to each other he used to tease her by suddenly speaking in Welsh or French and then looking at her as if he expected her to answer. Once she'd been genuinely peeved at it and launched into a litany of her vulgarest curses. He'd scoldingly clucked his tongue, held up a hand to stop her, and said "en français, s'il vous plait," in his sing-song professor voice, which had made her laugh so hard she'd forgotten she was angry. His grin at that had made him look ten years younger.
"The men sent us away so they could make their plans," Dymphna whispered.
Tonks turned to look at her. "I'm not worried about it," she said. "I trust Miles."
Dymphna smiled sadly. "You shouldn't."
"Why not?"
The girl looked into Tonks's eyes for a long moment, and an uncomfortable crawling sensation spread under Tonks's scalp.
"You should always check the underneath of these," Dymphna said, turning her face away and running her pale first finger over the rim of one of the mushrooms that still grew on the side of the tree. "They've got little teeny dots on. There's another called the jack-o-lantern that looks almost the same. But it's got ruffles on the bottom." She pursed her lips as if holding back a smile. "And if you eat it it'll hurt you."
"Tell me why I shouldn't trust Miles," Tonks repeated firmly.
"Oh, you shouldn't ever trust a man." Dymphna jimmied the other mushroom off the tree with the point of her knife and threw it in the basket.
"Why?"
Dymphna looked up at Tonks. There was a softness in her face that was almost pitying, but her voice had a cold, sharp edge when she spoke. "A man's only faith is to his own hunger."
The girl stood, folded up her knife, and wiped her hands down the front of her linen dress. Picking up her basket, she told Tonks over her shoulder: "There'll be penny buns and chanterelles on the other side of the creek."
She started to skip off into the wood, but stopped with a lurch and turned back to Tonks.
"On your left," she said urgently.
"What?"
But she didn't have time to answer before Tonks had to leap out of the way of a falling branch, which landed in the bracken to her left with a loud crunch and a small explosion of dust and twigs. Tonks almost forgot herself and drew her wand, but froze instead with her arms raised stupidly, panting and staring at the spot where she had just stood.
"Quite angry," clucked Dymphna, as if she was scolding the forest itself, and then she turned and left Tonks standing in the clearing alone.
The Minister led Remus through the tall front doors into dazzling sunlight. Cones of topiary pointed up at the clear sky and ranks of pleached trees flanked the portico. In the distance Remus could see the concentric rings of a rose garden.
"Was any of this already here," Remus asked. "Or did the Elder have it built?"
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree," quoted the Minister in a disdainful drawl. With a heavy-lidded look at Remus, he went on. "Though now you two've come it's more like Last Year at Marienbad." At Remus's blank face, the Minister elbowed him in the side, sending a flame of pain licking deep into his chest. "You wizards really ought to try and enrich yourselves. Muggle cinema is one of a very few bright spots in this wretched world."
Remus followed him down the flagstone path, which meandered around a baroque stone fountain. Three shapely marble naiads gracefully tipped a jug into the tiled center of it, dyed-blue water gurgling endlessly. Their smooth faces were frozen in ageless joy.
"Do you... not consider yourself a wizard?" Remus asked carefully.
The Minister smiled and stopped in his tracks.
"Sharp. I love it." He fixed Remus with a stare. "He already told you I didn't finish school."
"That's right," Remus hedged. "I didn't want to assume anything -"
"Here we have the menagerie," interrupted the Minister, spreading his arms theatrically as they rounded to the back of the house. His arms abruptly dropped to his sides. "Currently not much of one, actually. It was much better when we had the giraffe. Chuck's been working a lead on a three-toed sloth." The Minister raised his eyebrows at Remus. "He loves his little animals almost as much as his little muggles."
The Minister rested a hand on his hip and stood silently watching the nervous herd of zebras. Remus wanted to keep asking him questions, but something about the man's posture seemed angry and he thought it best to wait. He thought of Tonks, brashly shaking her zebra-striped hair in the game room. She'd have blurted something out to break the tension. She had a way of blundering past courtesy and into the point that was effective and disarming.
(It had certainly disarmed him. Like on their first mission together, hiding in the shadowy closeness of a garden shed on the grounds of Malfoy Manor, listening to the tinny sibilance of Death Eater voices through a surveillance spell. He'd been trying all night not to let any part of his body touch her, because she was a witch and he was a werewolf, and he knew from humiliating, demoralising experience that a witch would not want to be touched by a werewolf. He'd leaned away from her until a rake dug into his neck. But she had been chilly in her t-shirt in the drizzly June night, and after a couple of hours of hugging herself and rubbing her arms she'd abruptly slumped over against the side of him, her body pressed along his arm and her head on his shoulder, and groaned sorry, you're just so warm, promise I'm not on the pull or anything, is this all right? At first he'd only been able to stammer apologies, but she'd cut him off: Speak up,Lupin, is it all right or not? And madly, incomprehensibly, he'd found himself nodding and mumbling yes, yes, it's all right, and she'd spent the whole evening snuggled there on his arm. His muscles had trembled, his skin was in gooseflesh, and he thought he would remember the alien warmth of her and the terrifying joy he took from it maybe until he was in his grave.)
"You're awfully quiet, 'Miles.'" The Minister made speech marks around the name with his fingers. "Don't you have questions?"
Remus cleared his throat and tried to clear his mind, blinking away the thoughts of Tonks. "I understand that he - that the church has entertained offers from... other interested parties. Is that true?"
The Minister paused for a long time.
"Voldemort," he began, saying the name like it was foreign to him, "has made some rather entertaining offers, yes."
"And what does he want from the church?"
"I think he sees potential. A loyal flock of muggles. Pious and eager to die for a cause. Kill for it. Lie down in front of the tanks, and what have you. Religious fervor is a lot less messy than the imperius curse."
Remus shook his head. "Why recruit muggle cannon fodder when he could be courting wizards, someone powerful -"
"Some of these muggles are powerful. Chuck's not just a con man. He is on to something. Well, you've met Dymphna." The Minister chuckled mirthlessly. "I know you're a skeptic, Miles, any wizard would be. Until I met Chuck I thought the same. In the States they call them No-Maj: no magic. But it's just not true. Chuck's mostly grasping at straws with his techniques, but even in this shit little town he's managed to find a few who can... access something, I suppose? Power that a muggle shouldn't have."
"What kind of power?"
"To move things. Change things. Start a fire. There's a little girl -" The Minister cast a shrewd look at Remus. "- who, a few weeks ago, managed to shatter Chuck's coffee cup right in his hand at the Sunday service. You should have seen the way they all shushed. Hilarious." The Minister chuckled, but then his expression hardened, and he leaned in and told Remus in a low voice: "She'll be the next Dymphna, if all goes to plan."
Something cold seemed to slide down Remus's throat and into his stomach. "And what is your goal here, exactly?" he asked. "You hope to get out without -" Remus lowered his voice. "- without facing prosecution?"
An illegible mix of expressions squirmed across the Minister's face.
"I want it stopped," he said gravely. "I never meant to - I didn't think it would go so -"
The Minister broke off and sucked his teeth bitterly. Abruptly, he drained the last of his beer, hauled back his arm, and threw the bottle hard against the concrete cave that housed the lions. Remus tensed slightly at the sound of breaking glass, and the lion's choppy growl tore through the crisp morning stillness.
In the cellar beneath the kitchen, the walls were lined with cinderblock shelves and each was filled with rows of jars. Varicoloured powders, translucent syrups, and indistinguishable clumps. Drying fruits and flowers braided down the concrete walls. The perfume of citrus, pear, peppermint, fennel and clove. And, faintly underneath, decay.
"And these pretty pinks," Dymphna continued, hoisting a jar of crumpled flowers in the air, "bring down swelling in the legs, bubbles in the chest. I make a tea for Mrs. Morrison's husband every week. And yarrow, wee little white flowers, good for a bad tooth or a stomachache or a fever." She fingered a jar of ochre-coloured dried leaves. "All the children here take yarrow when they're ill. We haven't had a doctor in for months." She paused and frowned. "Months? Perhaps a year. However long it's been since I left Mum's."
"Do you still see your Mum?" asked Tonks.
"She's gone now," Dymphna said quickly. She tapped on a jar of purple blossoms. "Monkshood, such a lovely colour. And stinging nettle, wonderful for skin if you boil them." She turned a jar of greenish powder by its lid. "Mugwort. It'll start your bleeding again, if it stops." Her eyes slid sideways to Tonks. "Not that you'd want to," she added.
Tonks wasn't listening; she was thinking about Professor Sprout, her round cheeks pink in the stifling heat of the greenhouse, telling Tonks and all the little Hufflepuffs sitting cross-legged around her, There is magic here, in every grain of soil, every blade of grass, every root and stalk and bud -
"Miss Jane," Dymphna said, and she laid a hand on Tonks's forearm, startling her. Her green eyes were terrible in their penetrating closeness. "Listen to me now. Don't drink the wine. Keep your wits about you. And don't have any of the canapés."
Tonks's eyes narrowed to slits. "Tell me why."
Dymphna smiled in a way that made her seem suddenly much older, somehow.
"Trust me," she said.
After the kitchen (another bottle from the silver fridge) and Dymphna's vine-strewn conversatory (the irrepressible image of Tonks, hiding in a hedgerow with green hair and skin, the white sliver of her smile as devastating as the moon), the Minister ushered Remus into the dim mahogany-shelved library. Above the fireplace there was a looming portrait of the Elder and Sister Dymphna in oils: her seated and looking even younger than she had at dinner; him standing behind her with a suntanned hand on her brittle little shoulder. Her eyes seemed to follow Remus as he walked in.
"I'm meant to tell you," the Minister said offhandedly as he sprawled himself lazily into a shiny leather armchair. "Chuck wants you and 'Jane' onstage with us at the Sunday service tomorrow. Come up with something." He smirked at Remus. "Wizard stuff."
Speak up, Lupin, said Tonks from within him.
"Why don't you consider yourself a - what kept you from finishing school," he demanded, startled by the firmness in his own voice.
The Minister blinked and regarded him for a long time with a look that gradually seemed to smoulder with anger.
"Well," he said at last. "I made it through the fall of fifth year. Then my mother snapped my wand into little bits and hired a private tutor. Then it was seminary, Westcott House. She was a muggle."
Remus nodded and waited for him to continue, but he was still staring at Remus like he was ready to fight him.
"My mother was a muggle as well," Remus volunteered carefully. "I was fortunate in that she was quite supportive -"
"Well, mine was supportive too," the Minister interjected. "'Til I got caught fucking someone."
Remus frowned. Half the students in his year had been caught fucking someone.
"Surely you weren't expelled? Not for -"
"Not expelled."
Remus waited. It took a very long time for the Minister to meet his eyes, and when he did, there was a foul resentment in them that Remus recognised.
"Mother pulled me out," said the Minister quietly. "To get me away from him."
It took Remus a moment to understand. After a cautious pause, he said, "I'm very sorry." And to his surprise, he found that he really was.
"Yeah," the Minister said dismissively.
For a while there was only awkward silence.
"What's your plan," the Minister finally asked. He looked at Remus with narrowed eyes. "If things go bad here."
Remus narrowed his eyes right back. "Why would things go bad?"
The Minister smiled bitterly. "A prudent man forseeth the evil and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished."
Remus stared at him. The Minister stared back, chewing the inside of his cheek, as if he was deciding on something. Finally he spoke, in a low voice that Remus had to lean in to hear.
"There's a place in Shetland. On the Point of Fethaland, mainland. Little wizarding settlement there. I've an arrangement with the publican in town. He's an old... well, let's say friend. Should things fall through for me here, that's where I'll go."
Remus was silent. The Minister went on:
"It's a safe place. Unregistered with the Ministry. He -" the Minister jerked his head toward the Elder's portrait. "- won't know to look there. Just have to get past the treeline to apparate."
Before Remus could ask why he was telling him all this, the Minister set his bottle on the floor and stood.
"Anyway, I'm late for my office hours." At Remus's look of confusion, he clarified with a smirk: "At the Shrike & Marten. You and Jane should have the run of the place until tonight, I don't believe Chuck'll be back until late. Feel free to avail yourselves of the, er -" He flapped a hand around vaguely. "- everything. Some rather good wine and cheeses in the kitchen, I believe."
He stood to take his leave, but at the doorway he turned back to Remus.
"Don't forget about Sunday. It's your chance to show you're more useful here than gibbering at the docks in Inverness. Or rotting in a hollow log. He'll want to see Jane do her thing, of course."
He left Remus alone in the library. Remus turned to the books, reaching out to brush his fingers over the spines without thinking, as if to comfort himself. Most of the titles were unfamiliar; it seemed to be all muggle nonfiction: Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus. Obedience to Authority. He recognised one: Dianetics, which he'd seen somewhere on Tottenham Court Road, in a storefront offering personality tests. He picked up another, The Structure of Magic, and leafed through it briefly, but it seemed to be some kind of muggle psychiatry and he slotted it back onto the shelf.
There was a soft shuffling noise from behind him, and before he could turn around a soft little hand slipped into his. A sighing breath left him suddenly, as if he'd been holding it without knowing, and as warmed by a flush of relief. His face broke into a grin as he turned to face Tonks.
But it wasn't Tonks. It was Dymphna: her smile serene, her hair a cuprous wild cascade. (And, sickeningly, the image returned of it moving across the pillow to his feverish beat. He almost retched.)
"It's time for our reading," she said softly.
A chill crawled over Remus like frost on a window.
Dymphna's warm thumb stroked his knuckles, over and over. With her other hand she reached up and skimmed her fingers over the skin of his face, the stubble on his jaw, the long thin scar that broke his eyebrow. He had to hold back a shudder; it was like a spider crawling over him. He flinched automatically as her fingertips brushed the tips of his eyelashes.
"Hold still now," she admonished gently. She gave a soft, satisfied hum. Her eyes seemed to glaze over and stared, fixed, at dome point over his right shoulder. "You're in pain," she mused, as though remarking on the weather. "But you're quite used to pain, aren't you? What a stain it has left on you. Brown-black like dried blood."
Remus's sore rib announced itself with a throb as if answering her. His heart pounded and pinpoints of sweat broke out on his forehead and hands, smearing under her roving fingers.
Dymphna smiled slightly, her eyes still wide and shiny and staring without focus. "Don't worry though. Not much longer. Only ten more. I don't know what that means, but it seems it should be a relief to you."
Remus shook his head. "I don't -"
Dymphna brushed her fingers over his lips and shushed him. Her hands smelled herbal, floral, peppery.
"Listen to me," she whispered, and as if towed by a string his head leaned down so he could hear her clearly. "I can see that you're very afraid of making a mistake. Your mistakes have brutalised you. Stolen from you. Very soon, you will make another terrible mistake. Almost unforgivable. But when you right the wrong you've done, you will be forgiven." Dymphna blinked her shining eyes and a tear rolled down the side of her nose. "And then you will know a beauty of such power it will feel almost like pain."
Dymphna's pupils contracted and she blinked away the mist in her eyes. Her hands pulled away from him and he felt somehow even colder once they were gone.
"She's coming," Dymphna said flatly. She turned and flounced out of the library, her giggle sounding as she slipped into the hall. Her voice seemed to echo inside him, bouncing around and around: a terrible mistake. Unforgivable. He thought of that ginger hair on the pillow again. Then Tonks's pallor and huge sparkling eyes when she'd opened her door to him the day after Christmas. Then, with a fluttering rush, her pale mouth and sleepy eyes when he'd woken in the night after their first time together, when he'd panicked and gagged and frantically apologized and she'd sat astride him, her weight pinning him and her hands gripping his, her voice firm and steady and telling him no. Not a mistake. It's special, wonderful, until he'd calmed down and started to breathe again. And the scary wonder that had started to spread inside him then, that this might be something he could have: the solid warmth of someone else's flesh and the dizzying freedom to touch it. The pleasure and release that obliterated, momentarily, the treachery of his body and the pitiless hiss in his mind. The fondness in her eyes that had seemed until almost that very minute like an error, an impossibility, something he'd found and selfishly kept though he knew it must belong to another.
As if called to him by his need of her, Tonks tripped through the library door.
Big thanks to turanga4 for betaing this! Check out her work! Cover art by Rielles96 on tumblr. 😀