Hooray, I made it! =D

[eltea]

Title: Lost and Found
Author: eltea
Rating & Warnings: K+, none
Prompts: The ha'penny in the Christmas pudding, and:
And in despair I bowed my head,
"There is no peace on Earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of Peace on Earth, goodwill to men."
Word Count: 4235
Summary: The Time: Christmas Eve, Order of the Phoenix era. The Place: Grimmauld, Number Twelve. The Mindset: Wizard of Oz meets The Nutcracker, with a sprinkling of fairytales.
Author’s Excuses: You have been warned. Hopefully this will provide a nice break from, you know, sane people. ;) And much love to tierfal for a very last-minute beta. =)


Nymphadora Tonks hates cooking - possibly almost as much as it hates her.

“You’re supposed to be thickening, you bloody- AUGH!” She dives out of the way as the tomato sauce she has been stirring bubbles and splatters, sending drops scalding through the air like molten lava. She thinks she hears the hissing of sauce burning a hole through the rug, but perhaps it’s just her imagination. Or perhaps it’s one of the small, unwanted inhabitants of Grimmauld Place hissing at her from a nest in the ceiling. You can never tell.

“Thickening, thickening…” she mutters to herself as she straightens up. Her mother has always used flour to thicken cake batter - perhaps the same will work here? After all, she doesn’t want the sauce to be too thin - she can’t very well surprise everyone with an extra dish at Christmas Eve dinner if it’s one nobody wants to eat.

Mrs. Weasley will be arriving in less than an hour to cook the main dinner. Tonks makes her decision and reaches for the flour.

When the sauce starts turning black, the string of expletives she releases is loud enough to draw Sirius into the room.

“What’s wrong, dear cousin?” he wants to know. “Why is it that, in the season of peace and forgiving, I hear such violent language coming from the kitchen?”

“Season of peace, my foot,” Tonks grumbles. “Kitchens hate me. This sauce hates me. It’s mocking me.”

Sirius wanders over and peers into the pot, then gives a low whistle.

“Tell you what,” he suggests. “Why don’t you go buy some cookies at the supermarket and tell everyone you made them? I’ll keep quiet about it, I promise.”

Tonks raises a sardonic eyebrow at him.

“Keep quiet about what?” a voice calls from the hallway. “Is there some kind of Christmas Eve crime being perpetrated in the kitchen?”

Remus Lupin sticks his head in and smiles pleasantly.

“Yes,” Sirius informs him solemnly. “That.” He points to Tonks’s sauce. Remus wanders over and raises an eyebrow at it.

“Er… this is…”

“Pasta sauce,” Tonks explains earnestly. “I thought I’d surprise everyone with an extra dish, but it isn’t going so well.”

“Well… er…” Remus winces. “I’m afraid it may be beyond rescue. I think Mrs. Weasley has enough planned for dinner, anyway. Why not make some kind of dessert?”

“That’s what I said,” Sirius explains. “I said she should go to the supermarket-”

“How about gingerbread?” Remus suggests. “I know a good recipe from my mother; I’d be glad to help out.”

Tonks smiles gratefully. “That would be wonderful,” she replies.

That night, for the first time ever, Nymphadora Tonks serves people second helpings of her cooking.

Normally Tonks has trouble falling asleep, because there are so many things circling her mind, but tonight is especially difficult. She tosses and turns, thinking about cooking and Christmas and winter and wondering whether everybody will like the gifts she found for them. And just when she finally seems to be falling asleep, she’s woken from her doze by a strange tapping on her door.

Hurriedly, she rises and grabs her bathrobe, wondering faintly whether she forgot and washed it with something very red - because she doesn’t remember its being this pink. Come to think of it, she doesn’t remember its having little bows around the sleeves, either.

When she staggers over to the door and opens it, a motherly-looking woman with red hair and a kind smile is standing outside. She looks very familiar, but somehow, Tonks can’t place her, and she’s wearing a long golden dress which seems to have slits in the back for her large, fluttering, translucent wings.

“Hello, dear,” the woman says pleasantly.

Tonks, however, is not listening. Instead she is gaping. Behind the woman, where the hallway used to be, is an enormous, snowy grove of pine trees. Leaning out, she feels a cold breeze biting at her face and sees tiny, glittering snowflakes drifting down from the sky.

“Er… dear?”

Tonks mutely directs her gaze to the woman. For once, she can think of absolutely nothing to say.

“Welcome!” the woman sings happily, her wings fluttering a bit harder as she speaks. “And who might you be?”

“Er… Tonks,” the young woman finally manages a bit hoarsely. “Where… am I? And who are you?”

“I’m the Fairy Godmother,” she is told. “And you’re at the edge of our village - this little cottage had been abandoned for the longest time, and then last night, one of my children said the windows were lit! I hurried over this morning to see if someone had moved in and to welcome you to our village.” She frowns slightly in concern. “But you don’t seem to be very warmly dressed, dear. Perhaps we should find you some more sensible clothing?”

Tonks agrees gratefully - if a little bewilderedly - and the woman pulls out her wand, which has a star on the end. As she begins to cast spells that change Tonks’s bathrobe and pajamas into a warm dress, leggings, boots, and a hat - albeit all rather sparkly - she asks, “And where are you from?”

“London,” Tonks explains ruefully. “But I have no idea how I got here, and I’m not sure how to get back. I just went to sleep in my bed and woke up here.”

The Fairy Godmother considers.

“Perhaps you should talk to the Prince,” she suggests. “His palace is in the center of the land, and if anybody knows where your London is, it will be him or his advisor, the Wise Wizard. I’ve never heard of it, myself.”

“How do I get to his palace?” Tonks asks curiously.

“Well,” the Fairy Godmother explains, “you start by going through the Candy Floss Forest, then over the frozen lake, then across the sledding fields. You should see the palace by sunset - but first, won’t you join me and my family for dinner? We’d love to have an extra guest.”

Tonks agrees hesitantly, and soon, she is seated in a small, brightly lit cottage, at a table full of cheerful, chattering redheaded children. The boys sport large dragonflies’ wings, and the girl’s resemble a butterfly’s, like her mother’s. The dinner is delicious, and everyone is eagerly devouring the pudding their mother has made when Tonks bites down on something hard.

“Mmph!” is the closest approximation of “Ow!” (or perhaps something a little less suitable for the children’s ears) she can manage, and nine heads turn to look at her.

“You got the sickle!” the young girl exclaims as Tonks gingerly removes a silver coin from her mouth. “That’s good luck!”

Tonks smiles weakly and nods, and the rest of the dinner proceeds without incident. After it’s over, she sets off for the palace with a bag full of food the Fairy Godmother has provided and the good wishes of her family.

As she passes through the Candy Floss Forest - one where the trees, instead of branches and leaves, have large pink puffballs on the top of their trunks - she has the strange feeling that she’s being watched. A few times, she thinks she sees a shadow flitting between trees - but every time she looks, it’s gone. She winds the scarf she was given a little tighter around her neck and walks faster, but nothing disturbs her. In fact, despite a sign at the entrance warning that it’s easy to become lost, she finds her way rather easily; apparently trying to escape the shadow has led her in the right direction.

After emerging from the woods, she arrives at the edge of the frozen lake. It’s enormous and icy and glassy, and she can see skaters gliding across it, twirling and laughing. She rents a pair of ice skates and attempts to set out, but, almost immediately, she’s flat on her back. When she tries again, the same thing happens. Her third try is a little more successful, but her wobbly glide is just starting to fail when all of a sudden…

Someone catches her upper arms from behind and steadies her. She starts to glance over her shoulder but then loses her balance, so she simply looks ahead while her mysterious rescuer gently helps guide her across the ice. Soon enough, she is taking little steps to push herself, and by the time she reaches the other side of the lake, she feels confident enough to keep skating when the hands release her arms. She turns around once she reaches the safety of the snowy path, but the ice is empty for a long ways - her friend is gone.

Turning in her skates on the far side, Tonks begins the last part of her trek, one that quickly leads her to the sledding fields. These are a series of tall hills between the spot where she stands and the palace, ones on which children are playing and laughing. Those who want to travel across the fields are sledding down each hill before riding a rope lift up the next one. Tonks borrows a sled, promising to return it on the other side as she did the skates, and warily ascends the first hill. She sits down in the seat (which is padded and rather comfortable), then carefully pushes off, shrieking with delight as she flies down the hill. At the bottom, she directs the last of the slide to take her to the base of the lift, then lifts the rope that has been sitting in her lap. One end is attached to the front of the sled; the other has a large metal hook with which she catches one of the metal rings on the machine’s rope. A moment later, it has moved enough to pull her rope taut, at which point the lift begins hauling her sled up the hill. She then detaches her hook at the top before starting downward once more.

Forty minutes or so of this gets her much of the way to the palace, but then, all of a sudden, a storm begins to rise. The clouds, which have been growing gradually more grey and ominous with each passing minute, loom threateningly overhead; the snowflakes begin to fall thicker and faster; and the cold wind begins to whip up into a gale. Before she knows it, it is too snowy and dark to see further than a few meters, and she is caught in the middle. She casts around for the next lift but can’t find it, and, very worried, huddles in her warm clothing and hopes the blizzard will pass.

However, all of a sudden, she sees a dark shape in front of her sled. Before she has time to figure out what it is, the rope is being pulled out of her lap, and the thing - it looks like an animal of some sort, possibly a dog - has taken it in its teeth and is pulling her sled.

Several times, she attempts to get a glimpse of whatever is taking her through the storm, but it’s always hidden by the swirling snow. As the blizzard begins to let up a little, it disappears, and when the air has finally cleared enough to see, she realizes that it has left her at the top of the last hill. Wondering once again who her mysterious savior is - and if the incidents were at all connected - she slides to the bottom, turns in her sled, and starts down the road that will take her to the Prince’s palace.

The palace is a tall, beautiful collection of walls and towers and spires of shimmering pearly white, though it bears a striking resemblance to a certain stone castle that Tonks knows she’s been in before. When she’s shown in to see the Prince, she discovers that he himself is a very handsome man with long black hair and a charming smile.

“Pleasure to meet you, Miss… Tonks, you said?” he greets her, shaking her hand. “You know, except for the pink hair, you look a little like my long-lost cousin Dora… But no matter! You wanted to ask my advice on something?”

“I come from London, England,” Tonks explains. “And I’m trying to find the way back. The Fairy Godmother who lives past the Candy Floss Forest to the south suggested I speak to you.”

“Hm…” the Prince considers. “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of London, I’m afraid…”

“You haven’t?” Tonks asks, her heart sinking. The Prince shakes his head.

“No, but we’ll figure something out. I mean, if you came here, there must be a way to get back. We just have to find someone who knows how you can…”

“The Wolf King.”

“What?” Tonks glances over to the edge of the room, from where the voice came, and sees an old man standing in the doorway. He wears long robes, a pointed hat, and half-moon spectacles, and he has cheery, twinkling blue eyes.

“I am the Wizard, advisor to the Prince,” he explains. “I have heard of this London place of which you speak, but I do not know how to reach it - however, the Wolf King will know. He and his people inhabit the land neighboring ours, a dark and frightening one, but in spite of fear and rumor, he has a kind heart. I do know that your London does not exist in our world, which means you must have been transported here from another - and the Wolf King knows all about transportation and transformation.”

“How do I get to his land?” Tonks asks tentatively.

“I’ll lend you my Steed,” the Prince offers with a smile. He turns and whistles, and a moment later, a horse has trotted in from one of the balconies - except that it’s a rather unusual horse, because it has a beak, claws, and enormous wings. Tonks bows nervously by way of acknowledgement, and it inclines its head regally in return.

“There, see?” the Prince demands happily. “He likes you!” He turns to address the horse-bird-thing. “I need you to take Miss Tonks to see the Wolf King, all right?”

His Steed whinnies in agreement and crouches down to allow Tonks to sit on its back. She does so warily, and it rises and strides out onto the balcony, preparing to take off.

“Good luck, Miss Tonks!” the Wizard cries, waving as she cranes her neck to catch a last glimpse of them. The Prince throws her a friendly wink and salutes, she smiles back and waves, and then, before she has time for another thought, the Steed has leapt into the air and they are flying.

The land spreads out below them like a village of dolls, like the display of an elaborate toy shop, like a Christmas card. It is growing dark, and the gathering twilight stains the white snow a quiet blue as colored lights begin to appear sprinkled throughout the little villages.

As they fly farther and farther away from the city, the houses start to thin out into soft white fields of untouched snow that glisten silver in the moonlight, and solitary pine sentinels begin to dot the landscape. At last, as they approach and cross a range of mountains that shimmer with magic and cold, the kingdom of the Wolf King comes into view.

Rather than white and blue, this one is brown and tan and illuminated with a dim yellowish glow, the trees bare as leaves wither on the ground, the color slowly leaching out of them. The air is slightly warmer but smells crisp, and mist hangs in pockets of the jagged cliffs and hills. The full moon still shines high above, but rather than white and cold, it seems to glow a golden orange and smile down like a giant Jack-O-Lantern, and wisps of cloud float across it like specters. In this land, Tonks realizes, it is autumn - and she wonders if there are others, if there is a land where things are green and young and flowers grow on the hillsides, and perhaps one where it is warm and lazy and peaceful and shallow streams meander through flaxen fields and the afternoon daylight stretches out into evening.

However, her wondering is interrupted as the Wolf King’s home comes into view. Perched high on a cliff that juts out over a flat field, it is unreachable by land but for a small peninsula of rock that connects it to the main part of the large hill, and it appears to be some kind of fortress built of dawn-colored sandstone. The horse-bird-thing she is riding flutters down onto a balcony, and, hesitantly, she dismounts.

“This way, Ma’am,” says a quiet voice. She looks up to see a sentinel, dressed in a scarlet uniform accented with gold, beckoning her forward. She follows him into the building and down a hallway, into an open courtyard, and then he points to a doorway covered by a thick crimson curtain.

“Through there,” he tells her. “He’s expecting you.”

Hesitantly, Tonks pushes the curtain aside and slips through into a dark room lit by yellow flames. A man wearing a scarlet cloak stands with his back to her, and, as she enters, he speaks in a voice that is low and hoarse but kind.

“Nymphadora… a pleasure to meet you at last.”

Tonks is a bit too intimidated to correct him about her name (and also a bit too busy wondering how he knows it), and she doesn’t really mind hearing him say it. It reminds her a little of the way ‘thee’s and ‘thou’s normally sound silly but, coming off the tongue of a majestic period actor, just sound right.

“Er… y-you too, Your Majesty,” she stammers. “I - er - the Wizard in the next kingdom said you might be able to - to-”

“Help you get back to London?” the King asks kindly, his back still to her.

“Yes,” Tonks replies, relieved. “Is - do you - can you?”

“Yes,” he replies after a pause, still in his deep, quiet voice. “But I am afraid I cannot at the moment. If you are able to help me, however, I will then be able to help you.”

“Er… all right,” Tonks agrees hesitantly. “What help d’you need?”

Wordlessly, the King turns, and Tonks gasps as a beam of moonlight from the high skylight strikes his face. His eyes are yellow, his nose is elongated into a snout, and his mouth is fanged. Greying brown fur covers his face, his ears are pointed and poke out of the top of his neatly brushed brown hair, and a tail shows around one of his lean legs. For the first time, Tonks realizes exactly why this man is called the Wolf King.

“I frighten you?” he asks gently and with what seems like a bit of resigned sadness in those golden eyes of his.

“I… no,” Tonks decides resolutely, stepping closer to him in defiance of her earlier fear. “You - you startled me a bit, but no harm done. I’ve known stranger-looking blokes than you.”

Oh, wonderful, she tells herself sarcastically. That’s sure to make him feel better.

But the King’s lupine lips are curling into a smile, and his eyes are dancing slightly with what she hopes is laughter.

“I am cursed,” he explains gently. “An evil magician - a brutal, cruel one, one who works for the Dark Emperor that is threatening our lands - put this curse on me when I was young, and I was told that only a kind and beautiful young woman who would someday visit from far away would have the power to break it.”

“I… you - you think that’s me?” Tonks asks weakly.

“I think so, yes,” the King replies with a kind smile. “The Fairy Godmother contacted me immediately after you left her home, and I’ve been following you and trying to help you all the way. I didn’t want to approach you, though, in case you were the wrong person - I knew that if you were truly the one whose help I needed, you would find me here.”

“So… what do I do to break the curse?” Tonks queries, biting her lip.

The Wolf King smiles pleasantly.

“It’s really rather simple. All I need is something of yours - even something you’ve only had for a little while, as long as you’ve touched it - that’s made of silver.”

Tonks considers, thinking back along the course of her journey, and then she has an idea. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the silver sickle that she found in the Fairy Godmother’s pudding.

“Will this do?” she asks. The King’s smile widens.

“Perfectly,” he says.

When she hands it to him, at first, nothing happens. Then he kisses the coin and slips it into his pocket, and a moment later, the hair fades from his face, his fangs shrink into teeth, and his eyes fade from golden to hazel, leaving a kind and mild-looking man standing before her. He looks a little familiar, but she can’t quite place him.

“Thank you!” he tells her joyously. “I can’t possibly tell you how grateful I am - I’ll do anything I can to reward you for rescuing me.”

“Glad to help,” Tonks grins. “All I really want, though, is to find my way back to London.”

“Of course,” the King smiles. “I can send you back there right now. There are two ways to return to your world from ours, both of which will get you back safely and immediately.”

“What are they?” Tonks asks curiously.

“The first,” he tells her, eyes twinkling slightly, “is to kiss somebody who was born here. The second way to leave is to die in this world. Whichever you find less distasteful will take you directly back to London.”

Tonks smiles a bit nervously. “If it’s all the same to you,” she remarks, “I’d really rather not die. I mean, whether or not I’d wake up in London, it just sounds a bit scary.”

“All right,” the King replies kindly. He cups her cheek in a callused but gentle hand, and then he leans down to kiss her softly.

Through the warmth and the confusion and the sudden floating feeling in the pit of her stomach, Tonks realizes that she is falling through what feels like sunlight, and drowsiness hits her so quickly that she barely has time to register it before she has fallen asleep.

Tonks wakes the next morning to a polite knocking on her door and the strange feeling that she is forgetting something. When she rises and opens it, Mrs. Weasley is standing outside, smiling.

“Happy Christmas, dear!” she says. “The children are eating breakfast downstairs, and Ginny was asking after you. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Er… no,” Tonks lies. She throws on some clothes and hurries down the stairs to find the Weasley family gathered around the kitchen table. When she enters the room, Ginny jumps up eagerly.

“Tonks!” she exclaims excitedly. “You have a secret admirer! He asked me to give you this!” She shoves a bundle into Tonks’s hands, and the pink-haired witch looks down at it bewilderedly to discover that it is three things taped together - a chocolate bar, a rose the approximate shade of her hair, and a simple necklace with a little silver charm in the shape of a heart. She stares at it a moment, and then she frowns and stomps up to the top floor, where Sirius is feeding Buckbeak.

“Is this some kind of joke?” she demands. “You know as well as I do that the kinds of men who send flowers never fancy me. And there are only a few people in the world - your being one - who know me well enough to know my favorite kind of candy bar.”

Sirius looks confused for a moment, then smiles somewhat wickedly. “No, that’s not from me, dear cousin. Though rest assured, the man who did send it will never be hearing the end of it.”

“But who-”

“Try the library,” a pleasant voice suggests from the doorway. Tonks looks over to discover that Dumbledore is watching her, eyes twinkling. “I just stepped in to wish everybody season’s greetings,” he tells them calmly. “And Nymphadora, I really do suggest you follow my advice.” He disappears.

A bit confused, Tonks makes her way to the library. She doesn’t see anybody at first, but then, as she peers around the doorway, she sees Remus curled up on the sofa with a book.

Remus who’s always polite to her, even when she’s in her foulest of moods.

Remus who’s patient and kind and looks out for everybody before himself.

Remus who not only helped her bake cookies, but always seems to have time to help out.

Who likes the same kind of chocolate she does, compliments her hair color, and listened to her whine when she lost the cereal-box locket she’d had since she was a little girl.

“Er… Remus?” she hazards tentatively.

He looks up and smiles.

And there is no doubt in her mind as to who has loved her silently and supportively since the moment they met, but now she knows something else:

She loves him, too.