The Great Snowball War of 1995
Title: The Great Snowball War of 1995
Author: jenulus
Rating & Warnings: G, may need a Fluff warning.
Prompts: Pumpkin Juice, Sirius & Fred & George, Stop, Action/Adventure
Word Count: Fic; 4,282 words
Summary: She convinced him that not only did he want to win The Great Snowball War of 1995, he wanted Nymphadora to win every snowball war she ever participated in from this day on.
Author’s Notes: Well... I started this story for the Christmas Advent challenge with my second prompt (which was enchanted snowballs) but never got too excited about it and didn't finish it. Then, I tried to write some Bellatrix/Lupin/Tonks angst with my prompts for this one but it just didn't work out (read: it failed SPECTACULARLY.) So I had decided to bow out of this round when I saw this story in my files and realized it had two of my four prompts and thought I'd take another try at it. I'm moderately happy with the outcome. I guess I'll just have to give Lupin a year's supply of Honeyduke's Finest, because I couldn't fit his birthday in anywhere. :)
"You, sir, are coming with me."
Before Remus could register who exactly was speaking, or more importantly, who had used a wet, cold hand to grab his and drag him towards the front door, he was descending the stairs after Tonks. The pink hair, even with the spikes iced over, was a dead giveaway.
To be honest, Remus wasn't exactly thrilled at this turn of events. He had been actively not hiding in the attic for three hours now, hoping to avoid a certain wild-haired Auror at all costs. Not that he didn't like the sight of her, because he did. And not because he didn't enjoy her company, because he did that too. It was the fact that he did enjoy being around her that forced him to remove himself from any place she was. He liked her. Too much. Just last week, he had found himself flirting with her over a rather unfortunate article in one of his periodicals about mistletoe and the ethics regarding informing Muggles of its magical properties. Flirting, for Merlin's sake. About Mistletoe. What had he been thinking?
It was that sad event that had caused him to seek out the rare book that he had an inkling Kreacher had hidden in the attic. It was simply poor timing on her part that her arrival coincided with this very important search. He was not hiding. He was looking for an important book. It may even hold the answer to defeating Voldemort, especially if defeating Voldemort somehow involved 14th century wizards and their attempts at breeding a plague-spreading species of magical mold. And maybe it did. He'd never know if he didn't search for the book immediately, regardless of any pretty witches that may have come to visit and were likely to stumble into Troll-foot umbrella stands downstairs in a quite appealing manner.
But all of his avoidance tactics were for naught, now-- Tonks still gripped his warm hand in her cold, wet one, and continued to march down the stairs towards the front door. She stopped briefly at the coat hooks just inside the door and removed not his own cloak, but the thickest, warmest one she could find and thrust it at him before continuing to escort him outside.
Once on the walkway at the front of the house, 12 Grimmauld Place disappearing quickly behind them, Remus put his left arm through the sleeve on the cloak, somewhat awkwardly since Tonks still had a firm grip on his right hand. Does asking for one's own hand, currently commandeered by an extremely attractive witch, qualify as flirting? Because Remus was not allowed to do that anymore. The full use of his hand would indeed be necessary to put on the cloak, and the cloak was even more necessary on an unbelievably cold day in London, and clearly the attractive witch in question needed something from him that involved being outdoors, so he decided to ask for his hand back. "Err... Tonks?'' Remus asked, holding up their joined hands.
She didn't drop his hand, instead pulling him closer to her and wrapping her arms around him. She had barely spoken the words, "We're apparating," before Remus found himself standing in the middle of a large, empty, snow-laden park.
"Consider yourself officially recruited into the Army, Remus," she said with a twinkle in her gray eyes as she dropped his hand. He struggled to put the cloak on fully, now that both hands were available. "I'm in dire need of an accomplice, and Sirius is under house arrest. The twins are kicking my arse at this snowball war. And the winner gets a year's supply of Pumpkin Juice, so you can see why I'm in desperate need of help. I love Pumpkin Juice."
Wishing she had mentioned the war before leading him outside so he at least could have directed them towards a cover of some kind instead of standing in the middle of a very large, very flat section of the park, Remus was hit squarely in the back of his head with a well-packed snowball immediately following her statement. He quickly threw up a shield charm around the two of them, deflecting a volley of five more, while she shrugged slightly and chuckled through what Remus considered to be a half-hearted apology.
He grabbed her hand and quickly led her to a small grove of trees in order to seek some small amount of protection while they formed an attack strategy. "Ok, so what have you tried so far?" he asked, after he dropped the shield and pointed his wand at a pile of snow that had collected at the base of a tree, casting a charm to form several dozen perfectly formed snowballs.
Tonks eagerly cast the same charm on a neighboring pile of snow. "I landed a near perfect one on Fred's left shoulder..."
"What kind?"
"What do you mean, 'what kind?'" Tonks asked, looking confused.
"What kind of snowball?" Remus was confused at her confusion.
"Well," Tonks began, "it was made from snow from by the fence over there, and was about the size of my fist..."
"Just a plain snowball?"
"Yes," she responded with a small amount of irritation in her voice. "Just a plain snowball."
"Well, you'll never win like that. You've got to challenge them. Try a Welt-Maker."
"A what?"
"Did you, or did you not, attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?"
"I did."
"Then how is it that you don't know how to make a Welt-Maker?"
"I'm going to assume that a Welt-Maker is some particular kind of snowball and just answer that perhaps my time at Hogwarts was better spent studying and doing other useful things," Tonks responded with her hands on her hips and a half-playful glare in her eye.
"And perhaps that's complete bollocks, coming from someone who told the entire Order that she was deemed to be lacking the certain necessary qualities required of a prefect. Surely that included enchanting snowballs at some point."
"Fine. I've never been in a proper snowball fight, are you happy now? Knowing my secret shame?" Her voice sounded wounded, but the corners of her lips were fighting a losing battle against a smile.
"How is that possible? Hogwarts has weeks of snow each year and you were there seven years," Remus could easily recall at least five snowball fights on Hogwarts grounds between the Marauders that could be considered Legendary. He was sure there had been more that would at least be classified as Epic.
"I had detention a lot, especially in the winter. I got bored being stuck inside the castle all the time."
As much as Remus wanted to continue this voyage of discovery into Tonks' childhood (images of a very bored, mischievous blue-haired teenager getting into all kinds of trouble would haunt him for weeks) clearly he was going to have to bring Tonks up to speed, and fast, if they had any chance of returning to headquarters without frostbite, let alone as victors.
"Throw up a self-sustaining shield charm, please," Remus instructed her as he looked around the park for any sign of red hair. Seeing none, and now surrounded by a pale blue sphere cast expertly by his Auror accomplice, Remus began a rapid instruction of the rules governing Wizarding Snowball Wars, while he continued making more snowballs, stacking large piles of them at the base of a tree. "There are no such things as time-outs. Any request for a cessation of hostilities is essentially surrender, and therefore we lose. You are, however, allowed to use shield charms, but no more than three. We, unfortunately, have already used two, so only use the last if in dire need, and please only use it if we both get to benefit from it. Beyond that, anything is fair game. Where did you last see the twins?"
At this last sentence, he looked up from his snowball stacking to look at Tonks. She was staring at him.
"What?" he asked, now completely self-conscious.
"I just... well... Sirius said..."
At those words, Remus' heart fell into his stomach. What had Sirius said? He hoped it didn't resemble anything close to what Sirius had been saying to him lately, which included crass remarks about what Sirius thought Remus wanted to do with Tonks in a secluded bedroom somewhere. Had she overheard any of that?
"Sirius said you were the person to recruit, but I thought he was just moping around and didn't want to help. I didn't realize he really meant you were good at this," she said awkwardly.
Remus felt himself blushing at her comment, which he knew was ridiculous since it was at most a backhanded compliment. He fought his foolishness by returning to what he knew best: instructing. "A Welt-Maker," he began slowly, "is an enchanted snowball designed to begin lashing out whip-like snow appendages when it enters a two-meter proximity to the victim and continues to do so until the body of the projectile reaches impact with the target. Its advantages include pain and multiple hits per throw but can usually be countered by a Finite spell, so they are less successful against an opponent with a quick draw."
When Remus finally looked over at her again, she was charming more stacks of snowballs. When she met his eyes, she nodded in what seemed to be both an acknowledgement of his speech and an encouragement to continue. "So, Professor," she said genially, "what's the incantation?"
Take a deep breath, he suddenly realized that he was not, in fact, a seventeen year old boy on the grounds of Hogwarts in the midst of a Legendary (or even Epic) snowball war between the Marauders but was, in fact, a 37 year old man who hadn't been involved in one of these in 20 years. And that realization led to the further realization that Tonks was three when he last threw a Welt-Maker. Maybe she was just being kind by allowing him to think that she didn't know how to make one instead of the truth that Welt-Makers had fallen out of fashion back along with bell-bottoms and mutton chops. Did he even remember the incantation? Was he about to make a right fool of himself? Maybe he should lose on purpose, just to ensure that there would be no repeat invitations whenever Tonks was in need of an accomplice.
"Remus?" Tonks drew him from his thoughts. Seeing the mischievous, expectant look on her face drove all thoughts of ages and sacrificing the competition far away.
"Nivalis Plaga," he enunciated carefully to her, before picking up a snowball and demonstrating.
"Wicked!" She breathed softly. "Any others?"
Remus quickly showed her the other most commonly used enchantments. Homing Beetles, Insta-Melts, Tidal Waves ("That must be the one that sent me looking for help," Tonks said through clenched teeth), Typhoons, Carrier Pigeons and White Washers, among a few others. Tonks picked all of them up quickly, soon performing them with ease.
"So that's it, then? We just trade enchanted snowballs back and forth until someone surrenders?"
"Well, the real question is whether you want to win the war, or simply survive it."
"Win," she answered immediately, as Remus knew she would.
"Well, to win a snowball war takes good strategy, which I'm counting on you and your Auror training to provide," She nodded briefly at this. "It also takes a broad repertoire of enchanted snowballs, which I'm proud to say you now have. But more than that, it takes imagination. You have to develop a trademark, something that makes your opponent stop in his tracks in awe."
"I see. Am I to assume each Marauder had one?"
"Indeed. James developed the Slingshot-- utilized tree limbs, eventually he got to the point where he could hit anyone, anywhere. Once, from the Forbidden Forest, he pelted Peter in the face while he was hiding in the Quidditch stands. I think he got the idea from the Whomping Willow. And Peter was known for the Duck Shot, which essentially is one snowball that breaks apart into a million pieces of ice. Painful as hell, especially in the face."
Tonks was grinning at him, and Remus grinned back. "And you, Professor?"
"Head Swallower."
She laughed aloud. Her laugh was glittering and clear and seemed to shatter in the cold air and fall around him before settling into the snow. "All I have to say is that you'd develop it too if your two best friends had the loudest mouths to ever grace Hogwarts School. It's the only time I had a moment's peace."
This made her laugh harder for a few moments, hands on her knees and her back heaving. "Runs in the family, I'm afraid," she said after a moment. "And Sirius?"
He stumbled over his answer, nearly choking on his laughter before he could get the words out. "Well, er... " Giving in to his urge to flirt shamelessly, even if just for a moment, he leaned closer and whispered in her ear, "The Fire Hydrant."
"Fire Hydrant?" she said, eyes sparkling on the brink of laughter. "Am I to conclude..."
Meeting her eyes again, delighting in the mirth he found in them, he dead-panned, "That your dear old Animagi cousin combined a Typhoon with a rather unfortunate bodily fluid? Yes. His favorite proverb has always been 'Beware the Yellow Snow' so it seems rather appropriate, actually."
Before they succumbed to the laughter welling up between them, the shield charm surrounding them deflected several snowballs back towards the twins, who were now standing on a nearby hill apparently having grown tired of waiting for their competition.
The shield began to shimmer, a sure sign that it would be fading in a few moments. "Ok, Remus. If you can send a long barrage at them to hold them off, I'll charm our piles of snowballs to follow us. I think if we can push them back over that hill, they'll be forced into an indefensible position," Tonks offered, already charming the piles. "And then, we can really give it to them."
Remus flicked his wand and instantly fifteen snowballs hovered in a line over his right shoulder. With a quick nod to Tonks, he signaled for her to remove the shield. As it died around them, Remus launched the barrage at the twins who were caught flat-footed, apparently having assumed that their opponents were going to wait for the shield to fade instead of removing it early. Advancing all the while, Remus continued to attack, with Nymphadora at his side throwing her own attack as well. As the last snowball of the first blitz sailed into action, Remus summoned another fifteen directly after them. When a string of three hit George in the face, causing him to retreat, Remus felt a distinct thrill of triumph course through him. He had forgotten the joy of a well-thrown snowball.
"Remus! Roll left!" Tonks yelled, interrupting his small victory. He obeyed immediately, diving to his left and narrowly avoiding the six-foot wave of snow Fred had sent his way. She sent a Tidal Wave in return, which buried Fred's legs after he tripped trying to get away. He quickly sent a warming charm at the pile of snow covering his legs and escaped, running over the crest of the hill and following George out of sight. "You go up the left flank," she called to him, before morphing her hair white and her skin so pale that it was almost translucent, making her look, in Remus' mind, like an Ice Maiden. A quick incantation turned her formerly black snow-covered cloak in a white snow-covered cloak, and she seemed to almost disappear into the background of the snowy park. "I'm going straight ahead," she stated matter-of-factly. "There's nowhere for them to go really; over the hill it slopes down to a pond. We have the advantage." She dropped to the ground then, and began to crawl up the hill with her elbows, a large stack of snowballs following her.
Remus crouched low and headed straight for a small patch of bushes on the left flank of the crest of the hill that would provide a bit of cover. Once there, sat down with his back against one of the bushes and caught his breath. Slowly, he turned around and peered over the top of the shrub. The twins were huddled directly below him, obviously strategizing their comeback. Tonks had been right: they had the definite advantage, as the boys were backed up against the pond that seemed to wrap itself around them and into the hillside, blocking off any exit except for back up the hill. He waited for Tonks to arrive at the top of the hill. After a few moments, he saw her pale face peering back at him. Looking back to the twins again, they were still huddled together and clearly had not seen their opponents advancing.
Remus indicated that he planned to charm the twins growing pile of snowballs with a Boomerang charm, but needed Tonks to provide a distraction. She nodded firmly, pulling her self up into a crouch. She threw a series of perfect Duck Shots that ended up not only hitting Fred in the face, but some of the ice shrapnel also hit George in his neck, causing them both to hunch over and giving Remus enough time to cast the charm unseen. Tonks followed with two Welt-Makers that hit the twins perfectly in their backs as the hunched over. George recovered first and angrily launched several snowballs towards Tonks, who was now running across the crest of the hill to join Remus in his shrubbery fortress, a running cloud of white. The snowballs though, now enchanted, simply flew five feet away only to return with greater force. Tonks dove over the top of the bushes in time to hear George call out in anguish.
She giggled madly, out of breath but gleeful. Were her cheeks not deathly pale from her morph, Remus was sure she would be flushed with joy. "That was brilliant! What do you say to finishing them off?"
"I say, 'Excellent.' Any ideas as to how?"
"I think I've come up with my signature," she whispered, leaning into him before peering over the shrubbery at their opponents. "Looks like they've started a new pile," she said. "Why don't we stand up-- you throw another rapid fire volley at them, and I'll follow with The Hippy?"
"The Hippy?"
"You'll see."
"On the count of three, Fair Maiden?"
"Is there any other count?" She whispered, winking.
"One," he started, lining up a large amount of snowballs at his shoulder again. "Two."
"THREE!" they shouted together, standing up to begin their final attack.
But in the middle of his incantation, Remus was forced to stop and watch, and it seemed that Nymphadora was similarly inclined. Slowly sailing up the hill and finally stopping to float over their heads was a Quaffle-sized, glittering blue snowball. After it floated over their head for a second, it burst into what seemed like half of a firework show and half of a snow flurry. It was harmless, but beautiful, and Remus would have been content to watch the snow falling onto Nymphadora's pale skin and white hair and beautiful smile all day. Had it had not been for Fred's tell-tale snicker, audible in the cold winter air, Remus just might have given in to the distraction. As it was though, Fred's laugh gave Remus a split-second of warning, which he used to tackle the still-gaping Tonks to the ground, just before two huge snow-boulders went sailing directly over the place they had just been standing.
"That's it!" Tonks said forcefully, pushing Remus off of her and standing quickly. "The pumpkin juice is mine!" Tonks declared before laughing in a rather mad sort of way and yelling loudly "NIVALIS FUCATA!" and sending four snowballs at the twins.
At the sound of the impact, Remus shifted to a sitting position and crawled to peek over the bushes at the twins. He was greeted by the sight of the twins who now stood shell-shocked, skin and clothes and snow all around them dyed a bright pink color. After a few seconds of shocked silence, the twins lifted their hands in identical signs of surrender.
"We won, Remus! We won!!" Tonks half-sung, half-yelled giddily before tackling Remus to the ground with her arms around his neck. "We won!" He ended up flat on his back from the force of her tackle. Both of their torsos were now on the ground at the base of the bushes, and he managed to scrape the back of his neck on one of the branches in the collision. She was half on top of him, half next to him, laughing.
It was at that moment that Remus felt something shift within him. He stopped thinking of how silly it was of him to want this woman (and want her he did); or how impossible any relationship with any woman would be, let alone an Auror many years his junior; or how the woman in question would have to be severely imbalanced to even entertain such a notion. This moment with this beautiful, white-spiked, grey-eyed chameleon who had years of advanced training in the art of war convinced him that not only had he wanted to win The Great Snowball War of 1995, not only did he want Nymphadora to win every snowball war she ever participated in from this day on, he wanted her to win the real war, to survive. To overcome evil with her sheer ability to live. And, despite all of his arguments against it, all of his reasons for why it shouldn't, couldn't, or wouldn't happen, he wanted her life to be entangled with his. He wanted to stop fighting himself.
The sheer selfishness of his thoughts struck him breathless and stopped his heart for a moment.
Before he could talk himself out of it, before he could mentally list all of the reasons for why this was the absolute wrong time to ask such a question, Remus asked her what he had been longing to ask her since September, when after a mission together he had realized he liked this witch now above and beside him. "I was wondering if, perhaps, you might like to go to dinner sometime?"
She stared at him.
"As a date," he added. "With me, in case that wasn't clear."
Tonks started to laugh. And it was not just a chuckle, or a giggle of amusement, but full-on raucous, shoulder-shaking laughter.
Rolling her off of him and onto the ground beside him, Remus flushed to the roots of his hair but tried to regain some of his shredded dignity as he sat up. "Well, yes, of course. Ridiculous idea, really. Sorry to impose," he mumbled.
Tonks' laughter died in her throat. She flushed as well before saying, "Oh Merlin, Remus... I wasn't laughing at you." At his snort of disbelief, she continued. "I wasn't! It's just..." A giggle escaped despite her best efforts. When Remus tried to stand, Tonks grabbed his hand and forced him to stay. "Please, Remus, just listen. It's just that Sirius said..."
Oh holy hell, Sirius HAD said something to her about what Remus wanted to do with her in a secluded bedroom somewhere.
"When I came into to recruit you, he said that it was the flimsiest excuse he had ever heard and asked why I didn't just ask you out already," she said quickly, looking at her hand covering his. "I was getting ready to ask you out when you beat me to it, so I just laughed out of surprise, I guess."
Remus turned his hand over and laced his fingers through hers. Both hands were cold, and had snow stuck to them that melted in their combined body heat, but Remus found he didn't truly care. "Oh," he whispered when he realized she might be waiting for him to respond to her declaration.
"Oh, indeed," she replied, apparently content to hold a wet and clammy hand as well.
At that moment, two pink redheads leaped over the bushes and stood before them.
"Fine. You win, Tonks. How do we return to our normal skin tone?" Fred said, hand on his hips.
"No clue," she responded, chuckling. She looked bashfully at Remus. "I wasn't told I had to come up with a reversal spell as well."
"You don't," Remus added. "It's the whole point of winning."
"We'll send that Pumpkin Juice along to your flat, then, Tonks," George said as he watched Fred try a quick cleaning charm to no avail. Up close, Remus noticed the pink had formed in a distinct tie-dye pattern.
"Don't bother, I hate the stuff," she said cheekily. Remus looked at her sharply.
"So you didn't win anything, after all!" Fred said cheerfully.
Tonks looked Remus in the eye as she replied, "Oh, I wouldn't say that."
"I wouldn't say that at all," he agreed solemnly before they both broke into laughter.
Author: jenulus
Rating & Warnings: G, may need a Fluff warning.
Prompts: Pumpkin Juice, Sirius & Fred & George, Stop, Action/Adventure
Word Count: Fic; 4,282 words
Summary: She convinced him that not only did he want to win The Great Snowball War of 1995, he wanted Nymphadora to win every snowball war she ever participated in from this day on.
Author’s Notes: Well... I started this story for the Christmas Advent challenge with my second prompt (which was enchanted snowballs) but never got too excited about it and didn't finish it. Then, I tried to write some Bellatrix/Lupin/Tonks angst with my prompts for this one but it just didn't work out (read: it failed SPECTACULARLY.) So I had decided to bow out of this round when I saw this story in my files and realized it had two of my four prompts and thought I'd take another try at it. I'm moderately happy with the outcome. I guess I'll just have to give Lupin a year's supply of Honeyduke's Finest, because I couldn't fit his birthday in anywhere. :)
"You, sir, are coming with me."
Before Remus could register who exactly was speaking, or more importantly, who had used a wet, cold hand to grab his and drag him towards the front door, he was descending the stairs after Tonks. The pink hair, even with the spikes iced over, was a dead giveaway.
To be honest, Remus wasn't exactly thrilled at this turn of events. He had been actively not hiding in the attic for three hours now, hoping to avoid a certain wild-haired Auror at all costs. Not that he didn't like the sight of her, because he did. And not because he didn't enjoy her company, because he did that too. It was the fact that he did enjoy being around her that forced him to remove himself from any place she was. He liked her. Too much. Just last week, he had found himself flirting with her over a rather unfortunate article in one of his periodicals about mistletoe and the ethics regarding informing Muggles of its magical properties. Flirting, for Merlin's sake. About Mistletoe. What had he been thinking?
It was that sad event that had caused him to seek out the rare book that he had an inkling Kreacher had hidden in the attic. It was simply poor timing on her part that her arrival coincided with this very important search. He was not hiding. He was looking for an important book. It may even hold the answer to defeating Voldemort, especially if defeating Voldemort somehow involved 14th century wizards and their attempts at breeding a plague-spreading species of magical mold. And maybe it did. He'd never know if he didn't search for the book immediately, regardless of any pretty witches that may have come to visit and were likely to stumble into Troll-foot umbrella stands downstairs in a quite appealing manner.
But all of his avoidance tactics were for naught, now-- Tonks still gripped his warm hand in her cold, wet one, and continued to march down the stairs towards the front door. She stopped briefly at the coat hooks just inside the door and removed not his own cloak, but the thickest, warmest one she could find and thrust it at him before continuing to escort him outside.
Once on the walkway at the front of the house, 12 Grimmauld Place disappearing quickly behind them, Remus put his left arm through the sleeve on the cloak, somewhat awkwardly since Tonks still had a firm grip on his right hand. Does asking for one's own hand, currently commandeered by an extremely attractive witch, qualify as flirting? Because Remus was not allowed to do that anymore. The full use of his hand would indeed be necessary to put on the cloak, and the cloak was even more necessary on an unbelievably cold day in London, and clearly the attractive witch in question needed something from him that involved being outdoors, so he decided to ask for his hand back. "Err... Tonks?'' Remus asked, holding up their joined hands.
She didn't drop his hand, instead pulling him closer to her and wrapping her arms around him. She had barely spoken the words, "We're apparating," before Remus found himself standing in the middle of a large, empty, snow-laden park.
"Consider yourself officially recruited into the Army, Remus," she said with a twinkle in her gray eyes as she dropped his hand. He struggled to put the cloak on fully, now that both hands were available. "I'm in dire need of an accomplice, and Sirius is under house arrest. The twins are kicking my arse at this snowball war. And the winner gets a year's supply of Pumpkin Juice, so you can see why I'm in desperate need of help. I love Pumpkin Juice."
Wishing she had mentioned the war before leading him outside so he at least could have directed them towards a cover of some kind instead of standing in the middle of a very large, very flat section of the park, Remus was hit squarely in the back of his head with a well-packed snowball immediately following her statement. He quickly threw up a shield charm around the two of them, deflecting a volley of five more, while she shrugged slightly and chuckled through what Remus considered to be a half-hearted apology.
He grabbed her hand and quickly led her to a small grove of trees in order to seek some small amount of protection while they formed an attack strategy. "Ok, so what have you tried so far?" he asked, after he dropped the shield and pointed his wand at a pile of snow that had collected at the base of a tree, casting a charm to form several dozen perfectly formed snowballs.
Tonks eagerly cast the same charm on a neighboring pile of snow. "I landed a near perfect one on Fred's left shoulder..."
"What kind?"
"What do you mean, 'what kind?'" Tonks asked, looking confused.
"What kind of snowball?" Remus was confused at her confusion.
"Well," Tonks began, "it was made from snow from by the fence over there, and was about the size of my fist..."
"Just a plain snowball?"
"Yes," she responded with a small amount of irritation in her voice. "Just a plain snowball."
"Well, you'll never win like that. You've got to challenge them. Try a Welt-Maker."
"A what?"
"Did you, or did you not, attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?"
"I did."
"Then how is it that you don't know how to make a Welt-Maker?"
"I'm going to assume that a Welt-Maker is some particular kind of snowball and just answer that perhaps my time at Hogwarts was better spent studying and doing other useful things," Tonks responded with her hands on her hips and a half-playful glare in her eye.
"And perhaps that's complete bollocks, coming from someone who told the entire Order that she was deemed to be lacking the certain necessary qualities required of a prefect. Surely that included enchanting snowballs at some point."
"Fine. I've never been in a proper snowball fight, are you happy now? Knowing my secret shame?" Her voice sounded wounded, but the corners of her lips were fighting a losing battle against a smile.
"How is that possible? Hogwarts has weeks of snow each year and you were there seven years," Remus could easily recall at least five snowball fights on Hogwarts grounds between the Marauders that could be considered Legendary. He was sure there had been more that would at least be classified as Epic.
"I had detention a lot, especially in the winter. I got bored being stuck inside the castle all the time."
As much as Remus wanted to continue this voyage of discovery into Tonks' childhood (images of a very bored, mischievous blue-haired teenager getting into all kinds of trouble would haunt him for weeks) clearly he was going to have to bring Tonks up to speed, and fast, if they had any chance of returning to headquarters without frostbite, let alone as victors.
"Throw up a self-sustaining shield charm, please," Remus instructed her as he looked around the park for any sign of red hair. Seeing none, and now surrounded by a pale blue sphere cast expertly by his Auror accomplice, Remus began a rapid instruction of the rules governing Wizarding Snowball Wars, while he continued making more snowballs, stacking large piles of them at the base of a tree. "There are no such things as time-outs. Any request for a cessation of hostilities is essentially surrender, and therefore we lose. You are, however, allowed to use shield charms, but no more than three. We, unfortunately, have already used two, so only use the last if in dire need, and please only use it if we both get to benefit from it. Beyond that, anything is fair game. Where did you last see the twins?"
At this last sentence, he looked up from his snowball stacking to look at Tonks. She was staring at him.
"What?" he asked, now completely self-conscious.
"I just... well... Sirius said..."
At those words, Remus' heart fell into his stomach. What had Sirius said? He hoped it didn't resemble anything close to what Sirius had been saying to him lately, which included crass remarks about what Sirius thought Remus wanted to do with Tonks in a secluded bedroom somewhere. Had she overheard any of that?
"Sirius said you were the person to recruit, but I thought he was just moping around and didn't want to help. I didn't realize he really meant you were good at this," she said awkwardly.
Remus felt himself blushing at her comment, which he knew was ridiculous since it was at most a backhanded compliment. He fought his foolishness by returning to what he knew best: instructing. "A Welt-Maker," he began slowly, "is an enchanted snowball designed to begin lashing out whip-like snow appendages when it enters a two-meter proximity to the victim and continues to do so until the body of the projectile reaches impact with the target. Its advantages include pain and multiple hits per throw but can usually be countered by a Finite spell, so they are less successful against an opponent with a quick draw."
When Remus finally looked over at her again, she was charming more stacks of snowballs. When she met his eyes, she nodded in what seemed to be both an acknowledgement of his speech and an encouragement to continue. "So, Professor," she said genially, "what's the incantation?"
Take a deep breath, he suddenly realized that he was not, in fact, a seventeen year old boy on the grounds of Hogwarts in the midst of a Legendary (or even Epic) snowball war between the Marauders but was, in fact, a 37 year old man who hadn't been involved in one of these in 20 years. And that realization led to the further realization that Tonks was three when he last threw a Welt-Maker. Maybe she was just being kind by allowing him to think that she didn't know how to make one instead of the truth that Welt-Makers had fallen out of fashion back along with bell-bottoms and mutton chops. Did he even remember the incantation? Was he about to make a right fool of himself? Maybe he should lose on purpose, just to ensure that there would be no repeat invitations whenever Tonks was in need of an accomplice.
"Remus?" Tonks drew him from his thoughts. Seeing the mischievous, expectant look on her face drove all thoughts of ages and sacrificing the competition far away.
"Nivalis Plaga," he enunciated carefully to her, before picking up a snowball and demonstrating.
"Wicked!" She breathed softly. "Any others?"
Remus quickly showed her the other most commonly used enchantments. Homing Beetles, Insta-Melts, Tidal Waves ("That must be the one that sent me looking for help," Tonks said through clenched teeth), Typhoons, Carrier Pigeons and White Washers, among a few others. Tonks picked all of them up quickly, soon performing them with ease.
"So that's it, then? We just trade enchanted snowballs back and forth until someone surrenders?"
"Well, the real question is whether you want to win the war, or simply survive it."
"Win," she answered immediately, as Remus knew she would.
"Well, to win a snowball war takes good strategy, which I'm counting on you and your Auror training to provide," She nodded briefly at this. "It also takes a broad repertoire of enchanted snowballs, which I'm proud to say you now have. But more than that, it takes imagination. You have to develop a trademark, something that makes your opponent stop in his tracks in awe."
"I see. Am I to assume each Marauder had one?"
"Indeed. James developed the Slingshot-- utilized tree limbs, eventually he got to the point where he could hit anyone, anywhere. Once, from the Forbidden Forest, he pelted Peter in the face while he was hiding in the Quidditch stands. I think he got the idea from the Whomping Willow. And Peter was known for the Duck Shot, which essentially is one snowball that breaks apart into a million pieces of ice. Painful as hell, especially in the face."
Tonks was grinning at him, and Remus grinned back. "And you, Professor?"
"Head Swallower."
She laughed aloud. Her laugh was glittering and clear and seemed to shatter in the cold air and fall around him before settling into the snow. "All I have to say is that you'd develop it too if your two best friends had the loudest mouths to ever grace Hogwarts School. It's the only time I had a moment's peace."
This made her laugh harder for a few moments, hands on her knees and her back heaving. "Runs in the family, I'm afraid," she said after a moment. "And Sirius?"
He stumbled over his answer, nearly choking on his laughter before he could get the words out. "Well, er... " Giving in to his urge to flirt shamelessly, even if just for a moment, he leaned closer and whispered in her ear, "The Fire Hydrant."
"Fire Hydrant?" she said, eyes sparkling on the brink of laughter. "Am I to conclude..."
Meeting her eyes again, delighting in the mirth he found in them, he dead-panned, "That your dear old Animagi cousin combined a Typhoon with a rather unfortunate bodily fluid? Yes. His favorite proverb has always been 'Beware the Yellow Snow' so it seems rather appropriate, actually."
Before they succumbed to the laughter welling up between them, the shield charm surrounding them deflected several snowballs back towards the twins, who were now standing on a nearby hill apparently having grown tired of waiting for their competition.
The shield began to shimmer, a sure sign that it would be fading in a few moments. "Ok, Remus. If you can send a long barrage at them to hold them off, I'll charm our piles of snowballs to follow us. I think if we can push them back over that hill, they'll be forced into an indefensible position," Tonks offered, already charming the piles. "And then, we can really give it to them."
Remus flicked his wand and instantly fifteen snowballs hovered in a line over his right shoulder. With a quick nod to Tonks, he signaled for her to remove the shield. As it died around them, Remus launched the barrage at the twins who were caught flat-footed, apparently having assumed that their opponents were going to wait for the shield to fade instead of removing it early. Advancing all the while, Remus continued to attack, with Nymphadora at his side throwing her own attack as well. As the last snowball of the first blitz sailed into action, Remus summoned another fifteen directly after them. When a string of three hit George in the face, causing him to retreat, Remus felt a distinct thrill of triumph course through him. He had forgotten the joy of a well-thrown snowball.
"Remus! Roll left!" Tonks yelled, interrupting his small victory. He obeyed immediately, diving to his left and narrowly avoiding the six-foot wave of snow Fred had sent his way. She sent a Tidal Wave in return, which buried Fred's legs after he tripped trying to get away. He quickly sent a warming charm at the pile of snow covering his legs and escaped, running over the crest of the hill and following George out of sight. "You go up the left flank," she called to him, before morphing her hair white and her skin so pale that it was almost translucent, making her look, in Remus' mind, like an Ice Maiden. A quick incantation turned her formerly black snow-covered cloak in a white snow-covered cloak, and she seemed to almost disappear into the background of the snowy park. "I'm going straight ahead," she stated matter-of-factly. "There's nowhere for them to go really; over the hill it slopes down to a pond. We have the advantage." She dropped to the ground then, and began to crawl up the hill with her elbows, a large stack of snowballs following her.
Remus crouched low and headed straight for a small patch of bushes on the left flank of the crest of the hill that would provide a bit of cover. Once there, sat down with his back against one of the bushes and caught his breath. Slowly, he turned around and peered over the top of the shrub. The twins were huddled directly below him, obviously strategizing their comeback. Tonks had been right: they had the definite advantage, as the boys were backed up against the pond that seemed to wrap itself around them and into the hillside, blocking off any exit except for back up the hill. He waited for Tonks to arrive at the top of the hill. After a few moments, he saw her pale face peering back at him. Looking back to the twins again, they were still huddled together and clearly had not seen their opponents advancing.
Remus indicated that he planned to charm the twins growing pile of snowballs with a Boomerang charm, but needed Tonks to provide a distraction. She nodded firmly, pulling her self up into a crouch. She threw a series of perfect Duck Shots that ended up not only hitting Fred in the face, but some of the ice shrapnel also hit George in his neck, causing them both to hunch over and giving Remus enough time to cast the charm unseen. Tonks followed with two Welt-Makers that hit the twins perfectly in their backs as the hunched over. George recovered first and angrily launched several snowballs towards Tonks, who was now running across the crest of the hill to join Remus in his shrubbery fortress, a running cloud of white. The snowballs though, now enchanted, simply flew five feet away only to return with greater force. Tonks dove over the top of the bushes in time to hear George call out in anguish.
She giggled madly, out of breath but gleeful. Were her cheeks not deathly pale from her morph, Remus was sure she would be flushed with joy. "That was brilliant! What do you say to finishing them off?"
"I say, 'Excellent.' Any ideas as to how?"
"I think I've come up with my signature," she whispered, leaning into him before peering over the shrubbery at their opponents. "Looks like they've started a new pile," she said. "Why don't we stand up-- you throw another rapid fire volley at them, and I'll follow with The Hippy?"
"The Hippy?"
"You'll see."
"On the count of three, Fair Maiden?"
"Is there any other count?" She whispered, winking.
"One," he started, lining up a large amount of snowballs at his shoulder again. "Two."
"THREE!" they shouted together, standing up to begin their final attack.
But in the middle of his incantation, Remus was forced to stop and watch, and it seemed that Nymphadora was similarly inclined. Slowly sailing up the hill and finally stopping to float over their heads was a Quaffle-sized, glittering blue snowball. After it floated over their head for a second, it burst into what seemed like half of a firework show and half of a snow flurry. It was harmless, but beautiful, and Remus would have been content to watch the snow falling onto Nymphadora's pale skin and white hair and beautiful smile all day. Had it had not been for Fred's tell-tale snicker, audible in the cold winter air, Remus just might have given in to the distraction. As it was though, Fred's laugh gave Remus a split-second of warning, which he used to tackle the still-gaping Tonks to the ground, just before two huge snow-boulders went sailing directly over the place they had just been standing.
"That's it!" Tonks said forcefully, pushing Remus off of her and standing quickly. "The pumpkin juice is mine!" Tonks declared before laughing in a rather mad sort of way and yelling loudly "NIVALIS FUCATA!" and sending four snowballs at the twins.
At the sound of the impact, Remus shifted to a sitting position and crawled to peek over the bushes at the twins. He was greeted by the sight of the twins who now stood shell-shocked, skin and clothes and snow all around them dyed a bright pink color. After a few seconds of shocked silence, the twins lifted their hands in identical signs of surrender.
"We won, Remus! We won!!" Tonks half-sung, half-yelled giddily before tackling Remus to the ground with her arms around his neck. "We won!" He ended up flat on his back from the force of her tackle. Both of their torsos were now on the ground at the base of the bushes, and he managed to scrape the back of his neck on one of the branches in the collision. She was half on top of him, half next to him, laughing.
It was at that moment that Remus felt something shift within him. He stopped thinking of how silly it was of him to want this woman (and want her he did); or how impossible any relationship with any woman would be, let alone an Auror many years his junior; or how the woman in question would have to be severely imbalanced to even entertain such a notion. This moment with this beautiful, white-spiked, grey-eyed chameleon who had years of advanced training in the art of war convinced him that not only had he wanted to win The Great Snowball War of 1995, not only did he want Nymphadora to win every snowball war she ever participated in from this day on, he wanted her to win the real war, to survive. To overcome evil with her sheer ability to live. And, despite all of his arguments against it, all of his reasons for why it shouldn't, couldn't, or wouldn't happen, he wanted her life to be entangled with his. He wanted to stop fighting himself.
The sheer selfishness of his thoughts struck him breathless and stopped his heart for a moment.
Before he could talk himself out of it, before he could mentally list all of the reasons for why this was the absolute wrong time to ask such a question, Remus asked her what he had been longing to ask her since September, when after a mission together he had realized he liked this witch now above and beside him. "I was wondering if, perhaps, you might like to go to dinner sometime?"
She stared at him.
"As a date," he added. "With me, in case that wasn't clear."
Tonks started to laugh. And it was not just a chuckle, or a giggle of amusement, but full-on raucous, shoulder-shaking laughter.
Rolling her off of him and onto the ground beside him, Remus flushed to the roots of his hair but tried to regain some of his shredded dignity as he sat up. "Well, yes, of course. Ridiculous idea, really. Sorry to impose," he mumbled.
Tonks' laughter died in her throat. She flushed as well before saying, "Oh Merlin, Remus... I wasn't laughing at you." At his snort of disbelief, she continued. "I wasn't! It's just..." A giggle escaped despite her best efforts. When Remus tried to stand, Tonks grabbed his hand and forced him to stay. "Please, Remus, just listen. It's just that Sirius said..."
Oh holy hell, Sirius HAD said something to her about what Remus wanted to do with her in a secluded bedroom somewhere.
"When I came into to recruit you, he said that it was the flimsiest excuse he had ever heard and asked why I didn't just ask you out already," she said quickly, looking at her hand covering his. "I was getting ready to ask you out when you beat me to it, so I just laughed out of surprise, I guess."
Remus turned his hand over and laced his fingers through hers. Both hands were cold, and had snow stuck to them that melted in their combined body heat, but Remus found he didn't truly care. "Oh," he whispered when he realized she might be waiting for him to respond to her declaration.
"Oh, indeed," she replied, apparently content to hold a wet and clammy hand as well.
At that moment, two pink redheads leaped over the bushes and stood before them.
"Fine. You win, Tonks. How do we return to our normal skin tone?" Fred said, hand on his hips.
"No clue," she responded, chuckling. She looked bashfully at Remus. "I wasn't told I had to come up with a reversal spell as well."
"You don't," Remus added. "It's the whole point of winning."
"We'll send that Pumpkin Juice along to your flat, then, Tonks," George said as he watched Fred try a quick cleaning charm to no avail. Up close, Remus noticed the pink had formed in a distinct tie-dye pattern.
"Don't bother, I hate the stuff," she said cheekily. Remus looked at her sharply.
"So you didn't win anything, after all!" Fred said cheerfully.
Tonks looked Remus in the eye as she replied, "Oh, I wouldn't say that."
"I wouldn't say that at all," he agreed solemnly before they both broke into laughter.