More Than Friends (Part Two)
After a very enjoyable meal, Remus and I started on sorting out the Book Lice.
“They’re fairly easy to get rid of,” said Remus as we entered the dining room, “Especially if you catch them early, which we haven’t, unfortunately. Dad can’t bear to exterminate them - he thinks they’re interesting. Never marry a Magi-zoologist, Tonks; you’ll spend your life overrun with pests.”
What did that comment mean? Was it just another flirtatious remark, or did he actually mean, “Never marry a Magi-zoologist, Tonks, because I’d rather you married me”? But of course I didn’t voice my questions, instead I asked, “What exactly are Magical Book Lice?”
“Basically, they’re small insects a fraction of an inch long that live in the spines of Wizarding books” he replied. “They feed on the magic in the binding and if they’re left too long the book will fall apart completely.” He was in full ‘professor mode’ now, explaining the ins and outs of Magical Book Lice with a skill and enthusiasm that I had to admit was rather attractive. “The spell to get rid of them is quite simple, but the process is time consuming, because you have to cast the spell on each book individually.”
I must have looked appalled, because then he said: “I’m sorry, I did warn you it would be tedious, but we can talk about your case at the same time if you like.”
So, after he’d shown me how to do the charm, we started working our way through the books in the dining room, and I outlined my investigation.
“It’s obviously some kind of slow-acting curse,” I concluded, “and I think it’s most likely to have come from an object, rather than a direct spell, because of the protections already on the victims’ houses. But the thing is, it’s not like any curse I’ve ever seen before. All the victims became ill at different times, but they all died on the same day; that’s what alerted us to the fact that the deaths were suspicious.”
“I can only think of a couple of curses like that,” said Remus. “What were the symptoms?”
“Tiredness, weakness, anaemia, weight-loss, an increasing inability to cast spells, and eventually, death.”
“All the symptoms of Systemic Magical Dystrophy, then?”
“SMD? Yes, that was what they were all originally diagnosed with.” I was surprised; SMD isn’t a very common disease, and as far as I knew, Remus had never studied anything related to Healing. “What do you know about it?”
“Quite a lot, actually. It’s what killed my mother.”
“Oh Remus, I’m so sorry,” I said, shocked. ”That must have been awful for you.” How had I not known? And now I’d put my foot in it, just like I always do. SMD is a horrible disease; people with it literally waste away, slowly and painfully. There’s no cure - the Healers can only try to control the pain. It must have been so hard for Remus to watch his mother die like that.
He looked down at the book he was holding, absently tracing the symbols on the spine with his thumb. “It was worse for my father; I was busy teaching for most of her illness. I wasn’t there for them as much as I should have been.” He paused, his expression becoming unreadable again, and then took a deep breath and changed the subject.
“This curse, though, I saw a few like it when I was in Italy; the Italians are experts at this sort of thing. I think you’d do well to look there for your source.”
I did my best to switch my mind back to the case. “So I’d be looking for a person over here with Italian contacts, probably.” I thought for a moment as I put a pile of books back on their shelves. “You know, there’ve always been rumours about Lucrezia Zabini - she’s Italian by birth. The Auror Department were suspicious about the deaths of her husbands, but they’ve never been able to prove anything; and Moody always said slow-acting curses were the hardest dark magic to prove.”
“That’s a distinct possibility. There were some dark wizards in Florence who Mrs Zabini would be distantly related to.”
We worked in silence for a minute or so; the monotonous rhythm of picking a book up off the ‘contaminated’ pile, casting the extermination spell, and putting it down again on the ‘clean’ pile made it surprisingly easy to think.
“But why would she want to kill these people?” I said, thinking aloud now. “I can’t see a motive; she’s interested in money, from what I can tell, and I don’t see how she’d profit from their deaths. There’s no obvious connection between her and them.”
“Could it be Voldemort?”
It was the obvious question. Voldemort was the Moriarty-figure in the centre of Britain’s web of dark magic; everything usually did lead back to him somehow, however much the Ministry tried to deny it.
“If he is involved,” I said, “it’s in the background. There’s no specific evidence that points to him, other than the fact that this is right up the death-eaters street. Was Zabini allied with him in the first war?”
“Not so far as I can remember,” said Remus. “Like you say, she’s motivated by money not politics.” He paused. “Having said that though, the Death Eaters have always had a peculiar talent for finding people’s weaknesses and exploiting them. Zabini’s politics are probably neutral enough that if they offered her the right temptation, she’d help them. I think she’d certainly be worth investigating. What kind of people were the victims?”
I couldn’t help but wonder what he knew about the Death Eaters’ coercion methods. Had they tried to exploit what they perceived to be his weaknesses? Or did he simply know what they had offered Peter Pettigrew in return for his information? However, Remus’ clearly deliberate change of subject stopped me from pursuing it any further. He obviously didn’t want to talk about it and it would be pointless to try to force him to given that when it comes to avoiding awkward conversations, he’s the master.
“Three worked in the ministry,” I said. “None of them were that important though, they all had mid-level jobs. Another worked at St. Mungo’s; he was quite important, actually, he was Head Apothecary. None of them would be any threat to Voldemort though.”
Remus considered this, but didn’t seem to come to any conclusions. “The way they died is interesting though,” he said. “Usually, the point of using slow-acting curses is that they’re hard to detect; the deaths just look natural, but it was the very nature of the curse that brought the deaths to your attention, wasn’t it?” I nodded. “Why use a curse that kills on a specific date then,” Remus continued, “when the usual kind, which simply runs its course, would conceal the crime so much better?”
He was right. The curse was so unusual that its effects had to be the key to the case. I thought for a moment as I transferred a pile of books from one arm to another, supporting them with my hip.
“Unless that was the point,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“OK,” I said, returning the books to their shelves one by one. “Suppose it is Voldemort who’s behind these deaths. What if he wanted people to know that the victims were murdered, without causing too much of a stir? I mean, what he really wants right now is supporters; workers and spies in the right places,” I continued, picking up three more books, repairing the damage to their binding and slotting them in next to the ones that were already there. “So what if the victims refused to help? What if others have refused too? This would be the perfect way to make an example of them, because object-based curses are really hard to trace, and the deaths are suspicious enough for people to notice, but not so suspicious that they’ll make the front page. It’s the perfect way to send a message to the other doubters; if you refuse, this is what’ll happen to you.”
Remus looked at me with such admiration that my heart almost stopped. “You’re right,” he said, “and the beauty of using Zabini to distribute the cursed objects is that she’s the expert; no-one has ever been able to prove anything against her, so the mystery would be unlikely to ever be solved. As it is, the evidence against her is barely circumstantial.”
“I know,” I sighed, “I’ve got my work cut out with this one. And if it is Voldemort, which it looks like it is, no-one at the Ministry is going to swallow it.” I took the book that Remus passed me and squeezed it onto a shelf, frustrated that I was probably never going to be able to officially solve my first real case. “We can still investigate it within the Order though. If nothing else we need to find a way of protecting the other people the Death Eater’s are trying to coerce.”
The books in the dining room were all decontaminated by that time, so we switched to the living room, discussing how we should bring the issue up at the next meeting as we went. According to Remus, there wasn’t much of an infestation in here; the Book Lice were limited to one bookcase in the corner. We should be able to finish before dinner.
“Do you play?” I asked Remus, indicating the piano that I’d spotted on my earlier tour of the house.
“A little,” he replied. “My mother taught me when I was quite young; she was of that generation that thought every home should have a piano, and she played beautifully herself.”
“Ooh, would you play me something?” I asked. Remus looked uncertain. “Please?” I said, batting my eyelids theatrically.
He laughed. “I’m rather out of practice,” he said as he sat down on the stool, “I haven’t played for years, so you’ll have to excuse my mistakes.”
I watched the elegant movement of his fingers as he played a slow, mournful little tune, entranced by the beauty of the music and the hands that created it. Remus was completely absorbed in the piece, really feeling the music; it was a side of him I’d never really seen before and if he made any mistakes, I certainly never noticed them.
“That was beautiful,” I said when he finished. “Can you read music too?”
“Not really. My mother did teach me, but I mostly played by ear, so I’ve forgotten how to over the years.” He stood. “We should get on if we want to be finished in here before dinner.”
The books in the living room were quickly freed from lice, and we chatted easily as we worked. Remus told me stories from his childhood and I told some from mine. It was nice to talk about things other than Sirius or the Order for a change; something we’d not had much of a chance to do lately, and the time passed quickly.
* * * *
After a quick shower (it had been a warm day, and I was hot and dusty from the work) I sat down with Remus and his father to a welcome dinner of roast chicken and salad. Ralph was a quiet man, but both Remus and I were never at a loss for something to say, so the conversation flowed quite easily. The two men reminisced about the trouble Remus and his friends had got themselves into as teenagers and Ralph told me about his work as a Magizoologist and Magi-ecologist, which actually sounded pretty interesting.
We talked for so long over dinner, that it was late by the time we’d washed up and cleared away. I was very tired from my early start and all the insect extermination, so I went upstairs soon after that and judging by the sounds on the stairs, Remus and his father weren’t far behind.
Despite my tiredness though, it was a long time before I slept. My mind was racing, going over and over the events of the day. It was clear that I’d come to think of Remus as more than a friend; all day I’d been admiring some aspect of him or other. The way his eyes lit up when he was explaining something, the elegant flick of his wrist as he cast a spell, the way he instinctively managed to put people at ease, and, oh Merlin, that piano playing, those fingers.
Could I really call what I felt love though? It wasn’t like any kind of love I’d experienced before, and certainly nothing like the kind of love you read about in books. There’d been no love at first sight, no instant all-encompassing passion, not even a vicious hatred that became a burning desire; just friendship, respect, and a slow-growing attraction that I’d barely noticed until this weekend. Was that a good enough basis for a romantic relationship? Could I really call that love?
We certainly got on very well together, shared the same sense of humour, ideals and a lot of interests. And talking to Remus was never difficult; we could chat for hours on end without ever running out of things to say, and yet we could sit in silence without it ever becoming awkward. We worked well together too. Hadn’t we pretty much solved my case, just by bouncing ideas off each other? Surely all these things were as good a basis as any for a relationship, whether it was a friendship or something deeper.
But could pushing our friendship further ruin the relationship we already had? I was far from certain that Remus shared my feelings. Sure, it was a suspicion that he felt something more than friendship towards me that had made me realise I was attracted to him, but had I seen much evidence to support that idea? On the one hand, he’d invited me into some private areas of his life; shown me where he grew up, introduced me to what family he had left, and spoken incredibly candidly about his feelings surrounding his mother’s death. Yes, that revelation had to be quite significant. It was the first time Remus had told me anything so personal, and it surely demonstrated a great deal of trust between us.
On the other hand though, Remus was still very much a closed book. He could be completely impenetrable when he wanted to be, and he often still was in my company. Close as we were, I could never have asked him what he knew about the Death Eaters’ ability to prey on peoples weaknesses, or found out any more about his feelings about his mother’s death. There was still a distance between us, and it was Remus that created it.
But still, I didn’t think I could overestimate the extent to which Remus had invited me into his life this weekend. He’d revealed more about himself in this short space of time than he ever had before and we’d certainly become closer as a result. That had to count for something, didn’t it?
I drifted off to sleep without reaching any real conclusions. It was a puzzle, and to solve it, I would probably have to take a huge risk, and jeopardize our friendship in the process.
* * * *
The next day passed in a similar way to the previous one, with pleasant meals and more extermination. It was bright and sunny once again, and after a leisurely breakfast, Remus and I tackled the books in the kitchen. The infestation was more pronounced there and it took until mid-afternoon before we got it sorted. After a late lunch, Remus and I packed our bags, said our goodbyes and headed outside into the lane.
“Thanks for helping me with the investigation,” I said as Remus closed the gate behind us. “It made a real difference; I’d never have worked it all out without speaking to you.”
“It was a pleasure,” he said, “And thank you for helping with the Book Lice; I know you don’t get many days off and I’m sure dealing with insects wouldn’t be your first choice of leisure activity.” He slung his bag over his shoulder. “Are you going to head straight home?”
“No, I thought I’d stop by Headquarters first - I haven’t seen Sirius in nearly a week. Shall I see you there?”
He nodded and we Disapparated one after the other. In London I undid the charms on the door and Remus followed me into the dingy hallway. As we hung our bags on the hooks by the door, my thoughts returned to the issue that had been on my mind all weekend; Remus and our relationship. Officially, nothing had changed between us, despite my certainty the day before that something would. But somehow, despite this lack of obvious change, it felt like everything was different; we were so much closer now than we had been a month ago, or even just a week ago. I’d begun to see him as someone who could be more than a friend, someone I’d like to know more intimately. However different to the great passions of books and fairy tales my situation seemed, I was increasingly sure I could categorise what I felt as love.
One thing was clear though; we couldn’t stay in this no-mans-land between friendship and romance for long. It would send me mad. Someone needed to take some action, to make a decision; if I wanted, I could make that turning point happen. It was time to take that risk. I took a deep breath, stepped forward, and kissed him.
And you know what? He kissed me back.
( Part One)