HP: Snidgets, Ch. 3
Title: Snidgets Ch. 3
Author: MrsTater
Rating: R
Word Count: 7386 in ch. 3
Summary: When third year Auror cadet Tonks is assigned a special case, it takes her back to school and into the Defence Against the Dark Arts office. The new professor presents her with a few mysteries of his own, which require a good deal more time to solve -- not to mention a few tactics not covered in Auror training.
1. Puzzle Pieces | 2. Leads |
3. Unravelled Threads
As if there had been no break in their conversation, that same lopsided grin stretched across Remus' face when he opened his office door to her the following night.
"You were being hard on yourself when you said you're merely ace at Concealment and Disguise." His eyes swept her as he stepped aside to let her enter.
"Obviously not as good as I thought," Tonks returned, brushing past him quickly in the hope of hiding how furiously she was blushing under his intense -- and flirty -- gaze. "How'd you recognise me?"
Aside from doing her hair in short, tightly coiled blue curls, she'd played a lot with her height and facial structure, so that she wouldn't have to change a great deal for her Hog's Head look.
"Apart from the wotcher, you mean?" Remus asked, shutting the door.
"Oh. I--"
Tonks' flush deepened as she realised that before today, he'd only heard her say wotcher once; if he remembered how she'd greeted him the very first time they met, he must have...noticed her. No, he couldn't have -- it was that he was a professor, and he certainly wasn't having Dumbledore or McGonagall or Snape pass him in the corridor and say wotcher.
"Your eyes," Remus said.
"My eyes?" Tonks' insides were doing very strange things, bringing to mind last night's conversation with Kingsley. He'd asked if she fancied Remus, and she'd given him a vehement no. The answer was still no. Remus was just--
He wasn't teasing, Tonks found when she turned and saw him looking at her, though still with twinkling eyes, his smile was gentle.
"They're very striking," he said softly, gazing steadily at her eyes as he stepped nearer to her, as though for a closer look. "Black is rather uncommon."
"It's my real colour."
"A very lovely real colour."
He was stood so close now that she could feel his warm breath on her face, and she wondered if she'd blinked, because he hadn't. A shiver coursed down her spine.
Stop this, Tonks. Stop it right now. You've got a job to do.
She stepped back from him, and blinked. His steady gaze had no effect on her.
Mostly because he'd broken it, and the intense personal interest was replaced with that teasing look.
"Is either green or blue your real hair colour?" he asked.
Tonks pulled a face at the thought of her natural dull brown, which she loathed as much as her name. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
Remus quirked an eyebrow. "The plot thickens."
"It's got a lot thinner, actually." Tonks flopped down in the chair she'd sat in last night.
With a questioning frown, Remus crossed the room, dodging stacks of clutter, to lean against his desk.
Dragging a hand through her hair, tangling her fingers in her curls, Tonks said, "I just spoke with Granger and Weasley. They never noticed anyone suspicious in the Magical Menagerie on the thirty-first of August."
"So you've no more information about the fellow who approached Madam Dolittle than she gave." He smiled encouragingly when Tonks shook her head. "You've still got Hagrid to speak with. He might have heard something. And you never know what information you'll pick up in the Hog's Head."
"You'll still take me?"
"Absolutely." Grinning, he indicated the heavily patched robes he was wearing. "I've dressed for the occasion." His smile fell, and Tonks watched with some confusion as his Adam's apple bobbed hard, and for the first time she saw him look self-conscious. "Though, erm...not to criticise your Appearance Charm skills, but...blue curls, while very fetching on you, don't precisely look like the typical Hog's Head clientele."
Tonks couldn't resist a smirk. "I haven't quite finished with my disguise. And I think you'll find it difficult to criticise my Appearance Charm skills, since I don't do them."
Merlin's beard, Tonks, you're such a show-off.
If only morphing didn't require so much concentration, she'd have laughed at the look on Remus' face when she scrunched up hers and lengthened the blue curls to a waist-length mane of matted dirty blonde hair.
"You're a--"
"Metamorphmagus, yeah." She conjured a hand mirror. "What looks more hag-like, do you think? Hazel eyes, or grey?" She did one of each, and looked over the top of the mirror at Remus.
"Why not leave them like that?" Remus suggested, "Mismatched?"
"Oh, brilliant!"
Tonks was delighted not so much by the idea as by the way he, having recovered from his initial surprise to be interacting with one of the rarest beings in the magical world, watched her. He was obviously fascinated, yet his expression contained nothing of the gawkiness other people's always had. She reckoned it must have something to do with him being a professor, and being used to seeing strange things with relative detachment.
But there was something more there, as well; something like awe, though not quite. She got the feeling that when Remus looked at her shifting her face, he wasn't seeing what she was, but who she was. Which hardly seemed possible, when they'd known each other for all of a day.
She inspected her reflection. Yes -- the hazel and grey eyes made her suitably creepy, and making her skin a little more leathery and a little more yellow completed the hag look, yet...
Part of her still felt unsure about the disguise.
Glancing up at Remus, she asked, "Are you sure you won't be disturbed?"
"Tonks," he said, "I keep a Red Cap, a Grindylow, a Kappa, and a Boggart in my office. I'm more than reasonably certain I can sit across from a hag with mismatched eyes and not be disturbed."
Looking into the mirror again as she stood, Tonks gave a short puff of a laugh, to brush aside a niggling thought that it wasn't the answer she'd wanted. "True."
"And besides..." He gently nudged her foot with his.
Tonks inhaled sharply. It was the second time he'd done that, and the second time she'd looked up at him after he did, and thought he was adorable, like a half-shy teenager.
What was that you said to Kingsley at lunch about not fancying Remus?
He went on in his low murmur, foot still resting against hers in a vaguely intimate way, "We established just a moment ago that your real eyes are lovely. I don't think I could really see anything but those when I look at you."
Oh God... Tonks felt her robes brush against his as her body, with a distinct light-headed, weak-kneed sensation she'd never experienced before in similar situations, swayed toward him. She had a ridiculous urge to reach up and push that soft-looking light brown fringe back from his forehead, and kiss his cheek.
His gently smiling mouth seemed an appealing option, as well. Were his lips smooth, and careful, like his hands?
The mirror she was still holding suddenly caught the light -- and Tonks' attention. Of all the ridiculous...She was morphed as a hag for Merlin's sake! A beaky-nosed, pointy-chinned, jaundiced crone. Because she was supposed to be going undercover to catch a Snidgetnapper. Who could be at the Hog's Head in right this second, while she was having stupid fantasies about kissing a man who'd laid down a line about her eyes.
A killer line.
But still a line. Hadn't Kingsley told her just a few hours ago, when she'd asked what Remus had been like in school, that there'd always been at least a dozen girls with crushes on him, because he was so very sweet and charming, but he never went out with any of them for longer than a month?
She didn't have a month for this case.
"What about my teeth?" she asked, turning away from him. "Should I morph one away, or just do a couple of snaggle ones?"
In the mirror, she saw Remus shrug. "You don't miss a detail, do you?"
Tonks winced as her front teeth shifted to leave a gap in between, and her bottom teeth crowded together. "That's what they teach us in Concealment and Disguise," she said with a slight lisp.
"Yes. I suppose it is."
The silence was awkward as she transfigured her clothes into her a robe of coarse, greyish-brown fabric with frayed hems and a moth-eaten woollen shawl. Tonks couldn't help but think that somehow, she'd made things wrong between them.
But you didn't do anything!
Maybe it was what you didn't do.
She vanished the conjured mirror and turned to face Remus. "Do I look like the sort of dodgy person who'd be trusted in Knockturn Alley?"
"You will after you've been seen having a drink with me at the Hog's Head," he said, a slight hint of something flirty in his voice, though Tonks keenly felt how he hadn't picked up their joke about this being a date. He plucked his cloak off the tree, then opened the door and stood aside for her to pass through. "Shall we, Madam?"
Tonks raised her eyebrows at him as she stepped out into the corridor. "If you call me Madam in the Hog's Head, I'll never get any underworld credibility."
"This raises an important point," Remus said, waving his wand to lock the door behind him as a few long strides caught him up to her. "I can't call you Tonks in the Hog's Head."
She gave a snort of laughter. "If you think for a second you're going to get my name out of me that easily--"
"I don't, not even for half a second. But it was worth a shot."
Chuckling, Tonks glanced up at him and was pleased to find him grinning down at her. Relief that their easy rapport seemed to have returned brought a spring into her step. Which she immediately forced back, because hags weren't exactly the bouncy type.
"You know it is rather strange," said Remus as they descended the main staircase, "to know you're a Metamorphmagus -- to have seen you change your face -- when I don't even know your Christian name."
"That's because it's not a very Christian thing to name a baby girl." Tonks tugged at the shapeless garment, too short at the wrists and ankles of the taller frame she'd morphed. It added to the whole dodgy effect, for sure, but would it drive her mental?
"Does that mean it's not a girl's name?"
"No, actually, it's ridiculously girly. Emphasis on ridiculous."
"Interesting." Remus darted his eyes sidelong at her. "Only I've got a guess, and it's very girly."
"Have you?"
"Mm."
"Well?"
"You want me to tell you what I think your name is, yet you won't tell me what it actually is?"
Stepping onto the marble floor, she whirled to face him, hands flying to her hips. "You said yourself, you've got to call me something besides Tonks when we're at the Hog's Head."
For a moment he stared at her with pursed lips, and a crinkled forehead, clearly looking as if she'd filed him. Shoulders sloping as he heaved a dramatic sigh, he descended the last stair. "I think you could be an Elphine."
Stopping dead in her tracks, Tonks' jaw dropped.
"That's not your name, is it?" Remus asked, actually looking afraid that it was. "Or have I appalled you?"
"No, you haven't, and Elphine's not it." Tonks shook her head as they resumed their walk. "Though actually I wouldn't mind if it were."
"Why look as if I'd hit you with a Stunner, then?"
For a moment, Tonks hesitated. He watched her very intently as he opened the front door for her. She swore that man could read minds. Legilimens?
What are you waiting for? Remus is clever, but no one's clever enough to add 'Elphine' to 'close' and get a sum total of 'Nymphadora'!
"Because it's bloody close!" she cried.
Squinting as she stepped out into the hazy early evening sunlight that filtered wanly through mounting storm clouds, she told herself that Remus' mouth was not twitching because he had a clue about how that could be close to her name.
He won't jump from elves to nymphs...They're quite removed from each other...
"Same idea my mum was going for. Just less...Black."
Now it was Remus who stopped mid-stride, as the great doors thundered shut behind him.
Tonks turned to face him. "What?"
"Tonks," said Remus, starting toward her again. "I knew your surname sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. Your mother's Andromeda Black? And she married a fellow called Tonks?"
"Yeah, my mum's Andromeda...Dad's Ted Tonks."
"Ted, that's right."
"Why, did you go to school with them?"
"Now, now," Remus said, drawing out the words with a touch of feigned annoyance, "I know I'm a bit grey, but do I look old enough to have attended school with your parents?"
Tonks spread her hands wide. "Well, how else would you know them?"
"I don't know them. I only know of them. Because..."
He glanced around upward, scanning the clouds with his keen eyes. Cupping his fingers, he raised his hand to his mouth, muttered indistinguishable words, and the bluish fire sparked to life in his palm. His eyes continued to watch the sky as they walked on, fire held slightly out in front of him.
Again Tonks was impressed, but she wondered why he took preventative action against Dementors. Not that she was dying for one to swoop down on them. But the most common defence was to conjure a Patronus if one came.
Maybe he had trouble with the strong, happy memory, once the Dementors were upon him? Surely not. He was so cheerful.
Then again, he wasn't the most robust of men.
Abruptly, Remus picked up his abandoned train of thought. "One of my schoolmates was your mother's cousin."
Catching her toe on a loose stone in the path, Tonks stumbled in what she felt sure must be the exact spot she had yesterday. As it had been then, Remus' hand was instantly supporting her by the elbow. This time, the touch brought neither balance nor comfort, but instead made her reel with the thought it somehow physically connected with a horrible part of herself which she had never before acknowledged. She pulled away from him, though the ground felt unsteady beneath her feet.
"Sirius Black," she said flatly.
"How--?"
She quickly relayed to him what Kingsley had told her at lunch -- which hadn't been much, except that he was well-liked, popular even, and very thick with Harry Potter's father and the convicted murder of twelve Muggles, Sirius Black.
"I never met him," Tonks said. "I just remember Mum going mad one night and doing Incendios on a lot of photographs she'd torn out of her old albums, and Dad telling me her cousin had done terrible things like Mum's sister, but not to worry because they would all be locked up in Azkaban forever."
Remus gave a short, sarcastic laugh. "Forever."
They didn't speak anymore as they passed through the Hogwarts gates, and silence, thick and heavy with secrets, pursued them down the road that led to the village of Hogsmeade.
Tonks found herself leaving a wider gap between them as she walked beside Remus. Her brain said that it was because of his connection with the escaped convict; because even if he'd not been directly involved, Remus had to have known all along that his mate had it within him to murder. Her conscience told her not to be a fool.
That's over-simplifying, Tonks, and you know it. Don't pass judgment just because you're afraid to admit to the real reason: that you want to stay detached from Black, and your whole sodding family, as you've always been.
Or as she'd always tried to be. Applying for the Auror programme, and undergoing the rigorous screening processes and background checks, had thrown her heritage in her face. Mad-Eye Moody had trusted her, though, and persuaded Amelia Bones, and eventually Scrimgeour, that they'd be idiots not to take her. Since Black's unprecedented escape from Azkaban, she'd been afraid that side of her family tree would trip her up after two years of the hardest work she'd ever done, especially now that Mad-Eye had retired.
Hence this extra-curricular sleuthing...
The nudge of Remus' arm against hers, and his soft, teasing tones, pushed her out of her dark introspection.
"If you like the name Elphine so much," he said, "you ought to have let me believe I'd guessed correctly." He brushed against her again, and leant his head conspiratorially toward hers. "Because you won't be rid of me, you know, 'til I've found out the truth."
"Will I be rid of you if you do find it out?" Tonks asked, in spite of the flags of suspicion about Remus raised by the talk of Black. Because, as confusing and unnerving as he'd repeatedly been, she really had enjoyed their two encounters. It wasn't every day she met a person who treated her like Tonks whether she had green hair or blue, or wore a hag's face; and if Remus was one of those people, then he would definitely be worth the effort of getting to know him better.
So long as he turned out to be on the up and up.
Could a man with a lopsided grin not be on the up and up?
Please, Merlin...Don't let me be wrong about him...Don't let me be stupid...
"That depends," Remus said.
"On?"
He shoved his hands into his pockets as he looked sideways at her. "On whether you change your mind about a Saturday night fending off Red Caps in a dungeon."
Is he asking you to go out with him? Tonks wondered as she had the first time he'd made that joking offer. It has to be a joke, hasn't it?
"I never said no before," she said.
"You never said yes, either."
"Because you never really asked me!"
There. That's the way to get to the bottom of this mystery, Tonks. Well done.
Except that Remus merely chuckled.
He might not have said the word date, but as confusing and ridiculously male as he was being, Tonks felt like she was on one.
A third year Hogsmeade date, that was.
Entering the Hog's Head Inn, disguised as a hag, Tonks couldn't help but let out a cackle at the memory of the last time she'd come here with a false identity.
"What?" Remus asked as they wove their way through the haphazardly arranged tables toward the opposite side of the bar, facing the front door.
"Nothing."
He raised an eyebrow. "Generally people don't laugh at nothing unless they've gone mad."
"Or have been hit with Rictusempra."
"Ah, but Tickling Charms are something. So you lose, and I win, and you've got to tell me the something that's tickled you."
"Not fair!" Tonks protested as she kicked out a barstool with her foot and plopped down onto it. "If you want to play games, you've got to tell me the rules first."
Remus smiled pleasantly. "Now where's the fun in that?"
"Fine," said Tonks heavily, slumping onto her elbows on the bar. "I'll tell you -- but only because it's a good story, not because you beat me at some nonexistent game by being a sodding little cheat."
He chuckled appreciatively, and continued to do so as she told him of her ill-fated fourth-year Hogsmeade weekend when she'd morphed into her mother so she could find out what all the fuss was about Ogden's Old Firewhisky that had degenerated from a booze tasting to a proper drinking contest with tavern regulars, which resulted in her passing out, back teeth floating, and waking up in the Hospital Wing to the mother of all hangovers, a month's worth of detentions, and a ban from all future Hogsmeade weekends.
Not to mention an earful from her mother -- which had been the worst punishment of all.
"Good work, Elphine," said Remus, giving her a little round of applause. "I was known as a bit of a prankster myself, in my time, but I never got banned from Hogsmeade weekends."
"Does that just mean you were good enough not to get caught?"
Remus tried to smother a snigger behind his hand, but failed miserably.
"Yes," Tonks answered for him, and pinched his side, making him squirm on the barstool. Ticklish, she noted, then quickly said, "Git. And you probably haven't got any sympathy for a poor girl who never got to have a proper Hogsmeade date, like every other girl that's gone to Hogwarts...ever."
"Not really," he said, turning sideways to lean his elbow on the prop his chin on his hand and look at her. "But only because I like the idea of being your first."
Hoping the jaundiced complexion didn't allow Remus to see how red she felt her face must be, Tonks narrowed her mismatched eyes and glared over the hooked nose at him. "You're a right tart, Professor Lupin, flirting with that pretty green haired witch yesterday, and a decrepit old crone like me today."
Remus hung his head, but undermined the contrite posture by peering up at her through his fringe with twinkling eyes. "You've made me heartily ashamed of myself."
The back door opened, and Aberforth shambled through to the bleating of goats. Sitting up, Remus waved to him, and the barman nodded, once, and grunted his acknowledgment that he had customers.
"Pity," said Remus, "that you hadn't the foresight to assume a morph other than your mother's. Engaging in a drinking contest at the Hog's Head would have guaranteed you access to Knockturn Alley."
"Divination was not my subject," Tonks said.
"But I assume since you qualified for the Auror programme, you can brew a potion?"
Tonks stared. "What the hell's that got to do with the price of tea in China?"
"You want tea," growled Aberforth from across the bar, where he was waiting on a customer who'd been sat at the bar since they arrived, "go to that damned Puddlefoots."
Chuckling quietly, Remus touched her knee and leant toward her. "Can you?"
"If I haven't tripped and spilt all the ingredients first. Let me tell you how Professor Snape never let me forget that."
Withdrawing his hand, Remus turned his head sharply to look at her, and Tonks saw his sandy brows had got lost in his fringe. "Severus was your Potions master?"
"Yeah, why? Did you...go to school with him?"
Lines of his face deepening, his eyes sought Aberforth again, with an urgent look. "Mm. He was in my year."
Snape's that young? Her mouth fell open in shock. If she'd been drinking, she'd have choked on her Firewhisky. That means when Snape taught you...He'd have been in his bloody twenties! Impossible! He can't have been that young! Ever!
She registered Remus' expression. Had she made him self-conscious about his age? No, why would he be?
If he's interested in you...
Ridiculous. If he were interested, he'd have thought about the difference in their ages before now.
Unless you seemed more mature than twenty...
"Well," she blurted, "you may be a bit grey, but Snape looks ten years older, at least. Fifteen."
Are you out of your bleeding mind, Tonks? That voice didn't suit your disguise at all, and you don't care whether Remus is interested in you. And if you do care, then you shouldn't be making him feel better about his age, because you should be putting him off, not encouraging him.
Fortunately, he didn't seem to be encouraged, if his short, almost bitter, laugh was any indication. "That's a relief," he said, then nodded as Aberforth at last sauntered toward them.
"Don't look so annoyed, you old sod," said Tonks in her best crone voice. "I'll be payin' ye twice what yer damn whiskey's worth."
Aberforth's eyes flicked toward her, looked her dubiously over, then looked to Remus. "Who's she?"
"Allow me to introduce you to Elphine. She's in Potions."
It was all Tonks could do not to break character to praise the way Remus had thought ahead.
The barman's gaze drifted slowly back to Tonks. "Know anything about goat potions?"
"I should hope I did!" Tonks spat huffily, even though she hadn't the faintest idea what sort of potions a goat would need. Apparently neither did Remus, whose lips were pressed so tightly together to keep from grinning that they'd turned white. Spurred by the look of unmistakable amused admiration in his eyes as he watched her, Tonks impulsively reached for the end of Aberforth's long, white beard and tweaked it. "Oi! Do ye want me money or don't ye? Get me an Ogden's Old."
"I'll have the same, thanks," Remus choked.
Aberforth turned to get their drinks, muttering something about maybe asking her later about goat potions.
Meeting Remus' eye, Tonks cackled again -- making Aberforth jump -- then leant toward Remus. His hand rested lightly on her shoulder as she leant toward him to murmur, "Well that was fun. Are you going to introduce me to the other dodgy customers? Do you even know them?"
"Some," he whispered. "Most by sight only. But you won't need introductions. Being seen is quite enough, and if Aberforth's asking you for potions for his goats, I'd say you're as good as golden to go about Knockturn Alley as if you'd had another drinking contest."
His hand fell away from her as Aberforth turned and shuffled back to plonk their drinks in front of them on the bar. Tonks felt tension creep down her back, as though Remus' touch had somehow squelched her latent niggling thought that he'd skirted the subject of his underworld acquaintances a little too quickly and deliberately. She hoped Aberforth, who was stood staring at her, wouldn't be working up to a chat about goat potions. Because not only did she have no idea whatsoever what she would say to him, but she really wanted to find out a few things about Remus.
Luckily, as she was debating an escape dash for the loo, another tavern patron called out for the barman.
The instant Aberforth was out of earshot, she turned on Remus, who was wiping off the lip of his tumbler on his sleeve.
"How do you know I'm in?" she asked.
"Experience," he said, then raised his glass to his lips.
"But how did you get it? Or why?"
He lowered his drink and looked at her with...amusement?...exasperation?
"Does it matter?"
Tonks stared into her Firewhisky, wanting desperately to take a drink, but knowing she couldn't, not on the job, not when she'd a training session back at the Ministry in less than an hour.
Go on, Tonks. You don't need liquid courage to say what you want to say.
"I just don't see what a bloke like you would have to do with the seedier side of London."
Remus set his tumbler down quite hard, and Tonks heard herself inhale sharply as his mouth was suddenly very close to her ear, breath tickling her neck, sending a shiver down her spine that invaded her insides, as well.
"And what sort of bloke am I?" he whispered.
Her heart stood still, and she forgot to breathe, as the question reverberated in her mind.
What sort of bloke was Remus Lupin?
On the one hand, he was all professor: intelligent, witty, well-spoken, with old-fashioned manners and class. On the other, he wasn't a professor in any sense of the word -- not when she compared him to McGonagall or Flitwick or Sinistra or any of those she'd considered really great teachers. Remus was brilliant, wickedly clever, absolutely smooth, and exuded charm. But that wasn't the only other side. He was also shabby, secretive, and somehow seemed to keep one step ahead of her, all the time. None of it meshed. None of it made sense.
You see, Tonks? You've got too close, and let him confuse you. He can't possibly be that complicated. He's got to be one thing or the other, hasn't he?
"I don't know," Tonks replied, quietly, turning her head to look up at him. "I can't figure you out."
"So I'm a mystery, then."
His eyes darkened in the dim tavern light and with intensity as he took another slow drink. Tonks' gaze travelled downward, watching the roll of the Firewhisky down his slender throat.
"Yeah."
One side of his mouth curved upward slightly, in the faintest ghost of a smile. "But you like mysteries."
There's that charm again. Don't let him distract you.
Tonks wanted to look away, but his gaze held hers. She willed her voice to be steady, even though everything inside her was quaking. "Generally."
Remus blinked. Had she chipped that smooth veneer? She couldn't tell, because she was, ridiculously, noticing that his light blond eyelashes were very long.
A detail she couldn't have noticed if he had not, at that moment, leant toward her, cheek just brushing hers, to speak once again in her ear: "Do you want to solve me, Elphine?"
He had whispered, but it seemed louder -- because, Tonks suddenly realised, the Hog's Head Inn had gone silent.
In the instant of registering this, she saw, in her peripheral, that Aberforth was stood frozen, holding a beer mug in one hand and a filthy towel in the other, glowering in the direction of the front door.
At the same moment, she and Remus snapped to alertness and looked at the person who had just walked in: a squat, unshaven, baggy-faced, stringy-haired man, who gave the impression he'd stolen his clothes off the back of a homeless Muggle. He clenched a vile looking pipe between his teeth, and something about him struck Tonks as vaguely familiar.
She recoiled as her nostrils pricked with an odour -- not booze or tobacco or even goat -- wafting about the room.
"Bloody hell!" she choked. "What's that stink?"
"Mundungus Fletcher," Remus muttered, and a quick glance at him found his nose crinkled.
"I asked what, not who." Tonks waved her hand to clear the air a bit, and when she gasped in a slightly less putrid breath, had the clarity of mind to think she'd heard the name before.
"Interesting he's here," Remus went on as though he hadn't heard her, "as Aberforth put a lifetime ban on him in '76."
"Blimey! You've got to be dodgier than dodgy to get banned from a place like this."
"He's in and out of Azkaban as frequently as I was in and out of detention at Hogwarts."
That was right. She'd seen Fletcher's mug shot in the file room.
Wait? Did Remus just say he'd been in and out of detention at Hogwarts?
But he'd continued talking, a nostalgic smile creeping over his face. "I was here the day it happened. Best bar fight I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing."
After the bit about detention, Tonks shouldn't have been surprised, but it seemed she was fated to a lifetime of doing things she shouldn't. "You like bar fights?"
Remus twitched his eyebrows and gave the grin of a person confessing to a guilty pleasure. "I like bar fights at the Hog's Head. Don't look so surprised, Elphine. Haven't I got to have a dodgy interest or two, if I can run with the Knockturn Alley crowd?"
Tonks opened her mouth in retort, but Remus shushed her.
"What the hell are you doing here, Dung?" Aberforth spat.
Tonks raised her eyebrows at Remus. "Dung?"
"Suits, don't you think?" he whispered back.
Fletcher's beady eyes darted all over the room, and his brow was shiny with sweat in the lamplight as he puffed on his pipe. "You're brother," he croaked, taking a bandy-legged step forward, stench closing in on the bar as he did, "Dumbledore--"
"He ain't the only Dumbledore, you know," Aberforth interrupted.
With a gurgling sound in his throat that might have been a nervous chuckle, Fletcher took another drag on his pipe. "Albus... 'e says you an' me need to let our gones lie by."
Beside Tonks, Remus sniggered into his Firewhisky. Merlin, what she wouldn't give for a drink.
She wished hard for one, for anything, to get control of herself, when Aberforth gave a contemptuous snort and said, "Albus dresses like that Lockhart ponce, and he's a damned fool if 'e thinks I'll lay anything by the likes of you, you filthy snitch."
"What about a business opportunity?" Fletcher bared his teeth in what Tonks could only assume was meant to be a winning smile. "Chance of a lifetime."
"That's what you said about the goats," Aberforth shot back, slapping his towel on the bar. "You're a filthy sodding bastard, Dung Fletcher, and I won't have no part of you're filthy sodding..." He held up his hands, palms out, and wiggled his fingers. "...business opportunities."
Remus snorted into his drink again, and Tonks, doubled over, both with silent laughter and agony at the odour emanating from Fletcher, whispered, "Did he mean to make quotes?"
"The pitfalls of illiteracy," Remus whispered back, sniggering. "Remind me to tell the Headmaster."
They both grimaced as Fletcher scuttled still closer to the bar, an imploring look on his face. "But Abby, mate--"
Drawing himself up to full height, Aberforth, though thin, actually looked as imperious as his brother could, as he crossed his arms over his chest and glowered down over the bar.
Another choked laugh as Fletcher smoked. "Aberforth," he amended. "Only you're so much better than me at Charms. I'll kill the ruddy things, likely as not, and then I'd 'ave to go to the trouble of findin' someone even stupider to buy 'em than I'm already lookin' for."
The furrows on Aberforth's brow turned to arches of interest, and Tonks thought her own expression must match it.
What ruddy things do you want to sell, Fletcher, that you're afraid of killing?
"You're not trying to sell nothin' to me?" Aberforth asked in low monotone.
"Bloody hell, no, mate!" cried Fletcher, dropping his pipe, then falling on his knees on the grimy tavern floor to scrabble for it. "I need you to help me hide the merchandise for a while, till I find me a customer! Just...disguise the little bastards, squeeze a few more goats into your pen--"
"I won' be arrested again for performing inappropriate charms on animals!" Aberforth roared, one hand balling into a fist as the other delved into his pocket for his wand. "Now you get out of my pub, you miserable piece of shite!"
"But Dumbledore said--"
"Albus said if I get myself nicked for inappropriate charms again, he won't look after my goats one more time while I rot in Azkaban. And I won't see 'em packed off to no bleeding dairy farm! Now out with you! And stay out!" Brandishing his wand, Aberforth bellowed, "EICIO DUNG!"
Fletcher's legs kicked madly as the Bouncer Spell levitated him into the air. Arms hooked at either side of him, as if snatched up by two invisible giants, He was swept through the Hog's Head and flung out onto the front porch, landing with a painful thump on his backside.
"What is that smell?" Tonks moaned as the trail of his stench made her want to gag. "It's like...slime...or mould...or...or--Oh!"
Her stool wobbled as she sat bolt upright, but Remus caught the back of the stool, steadying it. His eyebrows were raised in question.
"A marsh!" Tonks said. "A great dirty bog! Like the wetlands where the Sherringham Snidget Sanctuary is!" She slid forward on her bar stool to get up. "Fletcher's the Snidgetnap--"
A crack cut her off.
A crack of Disapparation.
A crack of Mundungus Fletcher, Snidgetnapper, Disapparating from right between her fingers.
"Dammit!" Tonks shouted, and pounded her fist on the bar, rattling the whiskey glasses and making heads turn all over the Hog's Head. Not caring, she plunged a hand in her pocket and drew out her money pouch, fingers shaking, fumbling at the strings. "Thanks for all your help, Remus. I'm sorry to rush, but I've got to--"
His hand caught hers, keeping her from getting to her money.
"Remus--"
"Dung's Disapparated," he interrupted gently. "You can't track him now."
"But I can alert the squad--"
"If the Auror department didn't care about the case before it was given to you," Remus spoke over her again, "then Scrimgeour's not going to send his Aurors out to chase someone who's currently untrackable and will be laying low until he can formulate another plan." He grinned wryly and added, "And I know Dung, it'll take a while."
Twisting to escape his grasp, Tonks argued, "Then I'll go talk to more people, get ahead of him--Remus, let go!"
His fingers relaxed around her wrist, but he didn't let go completely. "When was the last time you forgot about work, Elphine, and spent an evening having a drink with a friend?"
His other hand reached out to cup her face, to weave his fingers into her hair.
He can't mean this, Tonks. You're morphed as a hag. He's not really touching you like that, or looking at you like that, no matter what he said about only seeing your real yes, and he's not talking to you...
...in soft, husky tones. "Or...with someone you fancy?"
The question rang in Tonks ears with Kingsley's from yesterday -- only yesterday? -- and something inside snapped.
"How dare you!"
She jerked her hand away and plunged it into her money bag.
"You don't know me, Remus Lupin!"
Slamming a few coins down onto the bar -- she wasn't even sure which ones or how many -- she bumped her glass and sent a wave of Firewhisky toward Remus' lap.
"You don't know anything about me!"
Blundering back from the bar, she toppled her stool, and barely avoided falling over it.
"You don't even know my bloody name!"
"Sure 'e does," came Aberforth's voice from behind the bar -- and Tonks glanced to find him grinning gleefully. "Said you was called Elphine."
"You don't give a damn about my social life!" she flung at Remus, who'd been sat there rigidly, and not reacted to anything she'd said, or even to the Firewhisky she'd spilt on him. "You don't give a damn about my case, except that you don't want me to solve it!"
At last, Remus reacted -- sort of. Calmly, showing no sign at all of having just been shouted at by a mad crone, he slid off his barstool, cast a drying charm over his robes, then laid a few Sickles on the counter. Tonks thought, for a moment, that he was going to leave her without a word, or without even looking at her again.
The latter he did not do, but he did speak, very quietly: "Shouldn't we take this outside, Elphine, before you destroy your cover beyond all repair?"
Tonks stalked ahead of him to the door, ignoring Aberforth when he called to her that he'd send an owl about goat potions. Once in the street, she span on her heel and folded her arms as she watched Remus stride slowly out of the tavern and shut the door carefully behind him. She recognised his deliberate movements as those of a man battling a temper, and braced herself, physically grinding her heels into the cobbles, for a battle royal.
For some reason, she wasn't prepared for the quiet blue anger in Remus' eyes as he stood almost toe-to-toe with her. "Why, in Merlin's name, wouldn’t I want you to apprehend a thief who stole a flock of rare, endangered birds?"
"Why are you protecting Hagrid?" she shot back.
"Two reasons."
"One?"
"Hagrid is my friend, and has been for a long time."
"And two?"
His gaze flickered from hers for just a split second, so that if she had blinked she would have missed it. There was guilt there, she was sure of it. Every thread of suspicion she'd had about him wove together now to form an irrefutable tapestry.
"Because Dumbledore asked me to," Remus answered. "He trusted the reputation of Hogwarts to me. And you haven't answered my question."
"If I catch the Snidgetnapper," Tonks returned, "MLE brings down the whole underground magical creature trade. If that happens, you've got no one to sell your Kappa to when you've finished..." She raised her hands and made quote marks in the air with her fingers as she said "...teaching with it."
Gaze dropping, Remus blinked, rapidly, and knit his eyebrows.
Good work, Tonks. You've wrong-footed him now. He'll give himself away.
"I told you," he said, "I return my specimens to the places I find them." Meeting hers again, he asked, "You think I lied?"
Tonks had a fleeting thought of being impressed that he could look her in the eye and lie so convincingly, but she said, "Yeah. I do."
The ripple of his jaw muscle as it tensed beneath his pale skin was his only reaction.
Only a liar could be so blank.
"Yes, well," said Remus in clipped syllables. "There is nothing I can do about your distrust, but I can try to correct your flawed logic."
Inwardly, Tonks bristled at his professorial tones, but she gave a dismissive snort. "My logic's not flawed."
"I've got a well-paying teaching position. Why would I need to sell Dark Creatures, or any other kind of creatures, on the black market?"
"Exactly!" Tonks cried. "You've got a professor's salary! But you haven't got children to spend it on, or a wife, or even a girlfriend -- and I know you haven't got one, because if you had, you wouldn't be spending your weekends hunting spent hunting for Dark Creatures. You've got room and board at the school, but you haven't bought yourself a set of decent robes. Explain that, Lupin."
Recalling how warmly he'd asked her to call him Remus, Tonks half-expected him to flinch at her return to the professionally detached surname. But it was the final nail in the coffin. If he'd felt anything for her at all, fancy or friendship, it would have shown on his face then.
"What house were you in, Miss Tonks?"
House? At Hogwarts? What the--?
"Only if I were to guess now, it would have to be Slytherin."
The words, though not in the least cuttingly uttered, pierced Tonks keenly. She had an impression of watching the anger bleed out of her as the snipped threads of the tapestry she -- not truth -- had, so loosely woven together, unravelled.
Oh. Dear. God.
Tonks -- what have you done? Hufflepuffs are just and true, and what have you done? Judged and accused. And--
Hurt him.
She'd hurt him. She saw it in the silvery flash of his eyes as they glanced at her once more before he turned away. Turned, with slumping shoulders, and slowly walked away from the cobbles outside the Hog's Head Inn.
He did care. He'd shown it from the moment he'd first laid eyes on her, in the glow of the magical flame cupped in his hand. The only time he had not shown it was now, when she'd betrayed him, and he'd turned the fire inward to shield himself from the terrible onslaught of her misdirected frustration and anger.
Because he cares.
The sight of his thin frame, in the patched robes she'd criticised, retreating alone toward High Street, sent another stab of guilt through her.
And so do you.
She opened her mouth to call to him, to call Remus, but the words stuck in her throat.
If you care, call to him. It's not too late.
She moved a foot toward, but couldn't go on.
Go after him, you idiot! If he cares, he'll forgive you. It's not too late.
Except that it was.
A glance at her wristwatch told her that she was supposed to have been at her training session ten minutes ago.
She looked at Remus, rounding the corner, toward the brewing thunderstorm.
When he was out of sight, she Disapparated to London.
A/N: Thanks to all who read and commented on the previous chapter. This time, reviewers get a pet name from Remus. :)
Chapter Index
Author: MrsTater
Rating: R
Word Count: 7386 in ch. 3
Summary: When third year Auror cadet Tonks is assigned a special case, it takes her back to school and into the Defence Against the Dark Arts office. The new professor presents her with a few mysteries of his own, which require a good deal more time to solve -- not to mention a few tactics not covered in Auror training.
1. Puzzle Pieces | 2. Leads |
3. Unravelled Threads
As if there had been no break in their conversation, that same lopsided grin stretched across Remus' face when he opened his office door to her the following night.
"You were being hard on yourself when you said you're merely ace at Concealment and Disguise." His eyes swept her as he stepped aside to let her enter.
"Obviously not as good as I thought," Tonks returned, brushing past him quickly in the hope of hiding how furiously she was blushing under his intense -- and flirty -- gaze. "How'd you recognise me?"
Aside from doing her hair in short, tightly coiled blue curls, she'd played a lot with her height and facial structure, so that she wouldn't have to change a great deal for her Hog's Head look.
"Apart from the wotcher, you mean?" Remus asked, shutting the door.
"Oh. I--"
Tonks' flush deepened as she realised that before today, he'd only heard her say wotcher once; if he remembered how she'd greeted him the very first time they met, he must have...noticed her. No, he couldn't have -- it was that he was a professor, and he certainly wasn't having Dumbledore or McGonagall or Snape pass him in the corridor and say wotcher.
"Your eyes," Remus said.
"My eyes?" Tonks' insides were doing very strange things, bringing to mind last night's conversation with Kingsley. He'd asked if she fancied Remus, and she'd given him a vehement no. The answer was still no. Remus was just--
He wasn't teasing, Tonks found when she turned and saw him looking at her, though still with twinkling eyes, his smile was gentle.
"They're very striking," he said softly, gazing steadily at her eyes as he stepped nearer to her, as though for a closer look. "Black is rather uncommon."
"It's my real colour."
"A very lovely real colour."
He was stood so close now that she could feel his warm breath on her face, and she wondered if she'd blinked, because he hadn't. A shiver coursed down her spine.
Stop this, Tonks. Stop it right now. You've got a job to do.
She stepped back from him, and blinked. His steady gaze had no effect on her.
Mostly because he'd broken it, and the intense personal interest was replaced with that teasing look.
"Is either green or blue your real hair colour?" he asked.
Tonks pulled a face at the thought of her natural dull brown, which she loathed as much as her name. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
Remus quirked an eyebrow. "The plot thickens."
"It's got a lot thinner, actually." Tonks flopped down in the chair she'd sat in last night.
With a questioning frown, Remus crossed the room, dodging stacks of clutter, to lean against his desk.
Dragging a hand through her hair, tangling her fingers in her curls, Tonks said, "I just spoke with Granger and Weasley. They never noticed anyone suspicious in the Magical Menagerie on the thirty-first of August."
"So you've no more information about the fellow who approached Madam Dolittle than she gave." He smiled encouragingly when Tonks shook her head. "You've still got Hagrid to speak with. He might have heard something. And you never know what information you'll pick up in the Hog's Head."
"You'll still take me?"
"Absolutely." Grinning, he indicated the heavily patched robes he was wearing. "I've dressed for the occasion." His smile fell, and Tonks watched with some confusion as his Adam's apple bobbed hard, and for the first time she saw him look self-conscious. "Though, erm...not to criticise your Appearance Charm skills, but...blue curls, while very fetching on you, don't precisely look like the typical Hog's Head clientele."
Tonks couldn't resist a smirk. "I haven't quite finished with my disguise. And I think you'll find it difficult to criticise my Appearance Charm skills, since I don't do them."
Merlin's beard, Tonks, you're such a show-off.
If only morphing didn't require so much concentration, she'd have laughed at the look on Remus' face when she scrunched up hers and lengthened the blue curls to a waist-length mane of matted dirty blonde hair.
"You're a--"
"Metamorphmagus, yeah." She conjured a hand mirror. "What looks more hag-like, do you think? Hazel eyes, or grey?" She did one of each, and looked over the top of the mirror at Remus.
"Why not leave them like that?" Remus suggested, "Mismatched?"
"Oh, brilliant!"
Tonks was delighted not so much by the idea as by the way he, having recovered from his initial surprise to be interacting with one of the rarest beings in the magical world, watched her. He was obviously fascinated, yet his expression contained nothing of the gawkiness other people's always had. She reckoned it must have something to do with him being a professor, and being used to seeing strange things with relative detachment.
But there was something more there, as well; something like awe, though not quite. She got the feeling that when Remus looked at her shifting her face, he wasn't seeing what she was, but who she was. Which hardly seemed possible, when they'd known each other for all of a day.
She inspected her reflection. Yes -- the hazel and grey eyes made her suitably creepy, and making her skin a little more leathery and a little more yellow completed the hag look, yet...
Part of her still felt unsure about the disguise.
Glancing up at Remus, she asked, "Are you sure you won't be disturbed?"
"Tonks," he said, "I keep a Red Cap, a Grindylow, a Kappa, and a Boggart in my office. I'm more than reasonably certain I can sit across from a hag with mismatched eyes and not be disturbed."
Looking into the mirror again as she stood, Tonks gave a short puff of a laugh, to brush aside a niggling thought that it wasn't the answer she'd wanted. "True."
"And besides..." He gently nudged her foot with his.
Tonks inhaled sharply. It was the second time he'd done that, and the second time she'd looked up at him after he did, and thought he was adorable, like a half-shy teenager.
What was that you said to Kingsley at lunch about not fancying Remus?
He went on in his low murmur, foot still resting against hers in a vaguely intimate way, "We established just a moment ago that your real eyes are lovely. I don't think I could really see anything but those when I look at you."
Oh God... Tonks felt her robes brush against his as her body, with a distinct light-headed, weak-kneed sensation she'd never experienced before in similar situations, swayed toward him. She had a ridiculous urge to reach up and push that soft-looking light brown fringe back from his forehead, and kiss his cheek.
His gently smiling mouth seemed an appealing option, as well. Were his lips smooth, and careful, like his hands?
The mirror she was still holding suddenly caught the light -- and Tonks' attention. Of all the ridiculous...She was morphed as a hag for Merlin's sake! A beaky-nosed, pointy-chinned, jaundiced crone. Because she was supposed to be going undercover to catch a Snidgetnapper. Who could be at the Hog's Head in right this second, while she was having stupid fantasies about kissing a man who'd laid down a line about her eyes.
A killer line.
But still a line. Hadn't Kingsley told her just a few hours ago, when she'd asked what Remus had been like in school, that there'd always been at least a dozen girls with crushes on him, because he was so very sweet and charming, but he never went out with any of them for longer than a month?
She didn't have a month for this case.
"What about my teeth?" she asked, turning away from him. "Should I morph one away, or just do a couple of snaggle ones?"
In the mirror, she saw Remus shrug. "You don't miss a detail, do you?"
Tonks winced as her front teeth shifted to leave a gap in between, and her bottom teeth crowded together. "That's what they teach us in Concealment and Disguise," she said with a slight lisp.
"Yes. I suppose it is."
The silence was awkward as she transfigured her clothes into her a robe of coarse, greyish-brown fabric with frayed hems and a moth-eaten woollen shawl. Tonks couldn't help but think that somehow, she'd made things wrong between them.
But you didn't do anything!
Maybe it was what you didn't do.
She vanished the conjured mirror and turned to face Remus. "Do I look like the sort of dodgy person who'd be trusted in Knockturn Alley?"
"You will after you've been seen having a drink with me at the Hog's Head," he said, a slight hint of something flirty in his voice, though Tonks keenly felt how he hadn't picked up their joke about this being a date. He plucked his cloak off the tree, then opened the door and stood aside for her to pass through. "Shall we, Madam?"
Tonks raised her eyebrows at him as she stepped out into the corridor. "If you call me Madam in the Hog's Head, I'll never get any underworld credibility."
"This raises an important point," Remus said, waving his wand to lock the door behind him as a few long strides caught him up to her. "I can't call you Tonks in the Hog's Head."
She gave a snort of laughter. "If you think for a second you're going to get my name out of me that easily--"
"I don't, not even for half a second. But it was worth a shot."
Chuckling, Tonks glanced up at him and was pleased to find him grinning down at her. Relief that their easy rapport seemed to have returned brought a spring into her step. Which she immediately forced back, because hags weren't exactly the bouncy type.
"You know it is rather strange," said Remus as they descended the main staircase, "to know you're a Metamorphmagus -- to have seen you change your face -- when I don't even know your Christian name."
"That's because it's not a very Christian thing to name a baby girl." Tonks tugged at the shapeless garment, too short at the wrists and ankles of the taller frame she'd morphed. It added to the whole dodgy effect, for sure, but would it drive her mental?
"Does that mean it's not a girl's name?"
"No, actually, it's ridiculously girly. Emphasis on ridiculous."
"Interesting." Remus darted his eyes sidelong at her. "Only I've got a guess, and it's very girly."
"Have you?"
"Mm."
"Well?"
"You want me to tell you what I think your name is, yet you won't tell me what it actually is?"
Stepping onto the marble floor, she whirled to face him, hands flying to her hips. "You said yourself, you've got to call me something besides Tonks when we're at the Hog's Head."
For a moment he stared at her with pursed lips, and a crinkled forehead, clearly looking as if she'd filed him. Shoulders sloping as he heaved a dramatic sigh, he descended the last stair. "I think you could be an Elphine."
Stopping dead in her tracks, Tonks' jaw dropped.
"That's not your name, is it?" Remus asked, actually looking afraid that it was. "Or have I appalled you?"
"No, you haven't, and Elphine's not it." Tonks shook her head as they resumed their walk. "Though actually I wouldn't mind if it were."
"Why look as if I'd hit you with a Stunner, then?"
For a moment, Tonks hesitated. He watched her very intently as he opened the front door for her. She swore that man could read minds. Legilimens?
What are you waiting for? Remus is clever, but no one's clever enough to add 'Elphine' to 'close' and get a sum total of 'Nymphadora'!
"Because it's bloody close!" she cried.
Squinting as she stepped out into the hazy early evening sunlight that filtered wanly through mounting storm clouds, she told herself that Remus' mouth was not twitching because he had a clue about how that could be close to her name.
He won't jump from elves to nymphs...They're quite removed from each other...
"Same idea my mum was going for. Just less...Black."
Now it was Remus who stopped mid-stride, as the great doors thundered shut behind him.
Tonks turned to face him. "What?"
"Tonks," said Remus, starting toward her again. "I knew your surname sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. Your mother's Andromeda Black? And she married a fellow called Tonks?"
"Yeah, my mum's Andromeda...Dad's Ted Tonks."
"Ted, that's right."
"Why, did you go to school with them?"
"Now, now," Remus said, drawing out the words with a touch of feigned annoyance, "I know I'm a bit grey, but do I look old enough to have attended school with your parents?"
Tonks spread her hands wide. "Well, how else would you know them?"
"I don't know them. I only know of them. Because..."
He glanced around upward, scanning the clouds with his keen eyes. Cupping his fingers, he raised his hand to his mouth, muttered indistinguishable words, and the bluish fire sparked to life in his palm. His eyes continued to watch the sky as they walked on, fire held slightly out in front of him.
Again Tonks was impressed, but she wondered why he took preventative action against Dementors. Not that she was dying for one to swoop down on them. But the most common defence was to conjure a Patronus if one came.
Maybe he had trouble with the strong, happy memory, once the Dementors were upon him? Surely not. He was so cheerful.
Then again, he wasn't the most robust of men.
Abruptly, Remus picked up his abandoned train of thought. "One of my schoolmates was your mother's cousin."
Catching her toe on a loose stone in the path, Tonks stumbled in what she felt sure must be the exact spot she had yesterday. As it had been then, Remus' hand was instantly supporting her by the elbow. This time, the touch brought neither balance nor comfort, but instead made her reel with the thought it somehow physically connected with a horrible part of herself which she had never before acknowledged. She pulled away from him, though the ground felt unsteady beneath her feet.
"Sirius Black," she said flatly.
"How--?"
She quickly relayed to him what Kingsley had told her at lunch -- which hadn't been much, except that he was well-liked, popular even, and very thick with Harry Potter's father and the convicted murder of twelve Muggles, Sirius Black.
"I never met him," Tonks said. "I just remember Mum going mad one night and doing Incendios on a lot of photographs she'd torn out of her old albums, and Dad telling me her cousin had done terrible things like Mum's sister, but not to worry because they would all be locked up in Azkaban forever."
Remus gave a short, sarcastic laugh. "Forever."
They didn't speak anymore as they passed through the Hogwarts gates, and silence, thick and heavy with secrets, pursued them down the road that led to the village of Hogsmeade.
Tonks found herself leaving a wider gap between them as she walked beside Remus. Her brain said that it was because of his connection with the escaped convict; because even if he'd not been directly involved, Remus had to have known all along that his mate had it within him to murder. Her conscience told her not to be a fool.
That's over-simplifying, Tonks, and you know it. Don't pass judgment just because you're afraid to admit to the real reason: that you want to stay detached from Black, and your whole sodding family, as you've always been.
Or as she'd always tried to be. Applying for the Auror programme, and undergoing the rigorous screening processes and background checks, had thrown her heritage in her face. Mad-Eye Moody had trusted her, though, and persuaded Amelia Bones, and eventually Scrimgeour, that they'd be idiots not to take her. Since Black's unprecedented escape from Azkaban, she'd been afraid that side of her family tree would trip her up after two years of the hardest work she'd ever done, especially now that Mad-Eye had retired.
Hence this extra-curricular sleuthing...
The nudge of Remus' arm against hers, and his soft, teasing tones, pushed her out of her dark introspection.
"If you like the name Elphine so much," he said, "you ought to have let me believe I'd guessed correctly." He brushed against her again, and leant his head conspiratorially toward hers. "Because you won't be rid of me, you know, 'til I've found out the truth."
"Will I be rid of you if you do find it out?" Tonks asked, in spite of the flags of suspicion about Remus raised by the talk of Black. Because, as confusing and unnerving as he'd repeatedly been, she really had enjoyed their two encounters. It wasn't every day she met a person who treated her like Tonks whether she had green hair or blue, or wore a hag's face; and if Remus was one of those people, then he would definitely be worth the effort of getting to know him better.
So long as he turned out to be on the up and up.
Could a man with a lopsided grin not be on the up and up?
Please, Merlin...Don't let me be wrong about him...Don't let me be stupid...
"That depends," Remus said.
"On?"
He shoved his hands into his pockets as he looked sideways at her. "On whether you change your mind about a Saturday night fending off Red Caps in a dungeon."
Is he asking you to go out with him? Tonks wondered as she had the first time he'd made that joking offer. It has to be a joke, hasn't it?
"I never said no before," she said.
"You never said yes, either."
"Because you never really asked me!"
There. That's the way to get to the bottom of this mystery, Tonks. Well done.
Except that Remus merely chuckled.
He might not have said the word date, but as confusing and ridiculously male as he was being, Tonks felt like she was on one.
A third year Hogsmeade date, that was.
Entering the Hog's Head Inn, disguised as a hag, Tonks couldn't help but let out a cackle at the memory of the last time she'd come here with a false identity.
"What?" Remus asked as they wove their way through the haphazardly arranged tables toward the opposite side of the bar, facing the front door.
"Nothing."
He raised an eyebrow. "Generally people don't laugh at nothing unless they've gone mad."
"Or have been hit with Rictusempra."
"Ah, but Tickling Charms are something. So you lose, and I win, and you've got to tell me the something that's tickled you."
"Not fair!" Tonks protested as she kicked out a barstool with her foot and plopped down onto it. "If you want to play games, you've got to tell me the rules first."
Remus smiled pleasantly. "Now where's the fun in that?"
"Fine," said Tonks heavily, slumping onto her elbows on the bar. "I'll tell you -- but only because it's a good story, not because you beat me at some nonexistent game by being a sodding little cheat."
He chuckled appreciatively, and continued to do so as she told him of her ill-fated fourth-year Hogsmeade weekend when she'd morphed into her mother so she could find out what all the fuss was about Ogden's Old Firewhisky that had degenerated from a booze tasting to a proper drinking contest with tavern regulars, which resulted in her passing out, back teeth floating, and waking up in the Hospital Wing to the mother of all hangovers, a month's worth of detentions, and a ban from all future Hogsmeade weekends.
Not to mention an earful from her mother -- which had been the worst punishment of all.
"Good work, Elphine," said Remus, giving her a little round of applause. "I was known as a bit of a prankster myself, in my time, but I never got banned from Hogsmeade weekends."
"Does that just mean you were good enough not to get caught?"
Remus tried to smother a snigger behind his hand, but failed miserably.
"Yes," Tonks answered for him, and pinched his side, making him squirm on the barstool. Ticklish, she noted, then quickly said, "Git. And you probably haven't got any sympathy for a poor girl who never got to have a proper Hogsmeade date, like every other girl that's gone to Hogwarts...ever."
"Not really," he said, turning sideways to lean his elbow on the prop his chin on his hand and look at her. "But only because I like the idea of being your first."
Hoping the jaundiced complexion didn't allow Remus to see how red she felt her face must be, Tonks narrowed her mismatched eyes and glared over the hooked nose at him. "You're a right tart, Professor Lupin, flirting with that pretty green haired witch yesterday, and a decrepit old crone like me today."
Remus hung his head, but undermined the contrite posture by peering up at her through his fringe with twinkling eyes. "You've made me heartily ashamed of myself."
The back door opened, and Aberforth shambled through to the bleating of goats. Sitting up, Remus waved to him, and the barman nodded, once, and grunted his acknowledgment that he had customers.
"Pity," said Remus, "that you hadn't the foresight to assume a morph other than your mother's. Engaging in a drinking contest at the Hog's Head would have guaranteed you access to Knockturn Alley."
"Divination was not my subject," Tonks said.
"But I assume since you qualified for the Auror programme, you can brew a potion?"
Tonks stared. "What the hell's that got to do with the price of tea in China?"
"You want tea," growled Aberforth from across the bar, where he was waiting on a customer who'd been sat at the bar since they arrived, "go to that damned Puddlefoots."
Chuckling quietly, Remus touched her knee and leant toward her. "Can you?"
"If I haven't tripped and spilt all the ingredients first. Let me tell you how Professor Snape never let me forget that."
Withdrawing his hand, Remus turned his head sharply to look at her, and Tonks saw his sandy brows had got lost in his fringe. "Severus was your Potions master?"
"Yeah, why? Did you...go to school with him?"
Lines of his face deepening, his eyes sought Aberforth again, with an urgent look. "Mm. He was in my year."
Snape's that young? Her mouth fell open in shock. If she'd been drinking, she'd have choked on her Firewhisky. That means when Snape taught you...He'd have been in his bloody twenties! Impossible! He can't have been that young! Ever!
She registered Remus' expression. Had she made him self-conscious about his age? No, why would he be?
If he's interested in you...
Ridiculous. If he were interested, he'd have thought about the difference in their ages before now.
Unless you seemed more mature than twenty...
"Well," she blurted, "you may be a bit grey, but Snape looks ten years older, at least. Fifteen."
Are you out of your bleeding mind, Tonks? That voice didn't suit your disguise at all, and you don't care whether Remus is interested in you. And if you do care, then you shouldn't be making him feel better about his age, because you should be putting him off, not encouraging him.
Fortunately, he didn't seem to be encouraged, if his short, almost bitter, laugh was any indication. "That's a relief," he said, then nodded as Aberforth at last sauntered toward them.
"Don't look so annoyed, you old sod," said Tonks in her best crone voice. "I'll be payin' ye twice what yer damn whiskey's worth."
Aberforth's eyes flicked toward her, looked her dubiously over, then looked to Remus. "Who's she?"
"Allow me to introduce you to Elphine. She's in Potions."
It was all Tonks could do not to break character to praise the way Remus had thought ahead.
The barman's gaze drifted slowly back to Tonks. "Know anything about goat potions?"
"I should hope I did!" Tonks spat huffily, even though she hadn't the faintest idea what sort of potions a goat would need. Apparently neither did Remus, whose lips were pressed so tightly together to keep from grinning that they'd turned white. Spurred by the look of unmistakable amused admiration in his eyes as he watched her, Tonks impulsively reached for the end of Aberforth's long, white beard and tweaked it. "Oi! Do ye want me money or don't ye? Get me an Ogden's Old."
"I'll have the same, thanks," Remus choked.
Aberforth turned to get their drinks, muttering something about maybe asking her later about goat potions.
Meeting Remus' eye, Tonks cackled again -- making Aberforth jump -- then leant toward Remus. His hand rested lightly on her shoulder as she leant toward him to murmur, "Well that was fun. Are you going to introduce me to the other dodgy customers? Do you even know them?"
"Some," he whispered. "Most by sight only. But you won't need introductions. Being seen is quite enough, and if Aberforth's asking you for potions for his goats, I'd say you're as good as golden to go about Knockturn Alley as if you'd had another drinking contest."
His hand fell away from her as Aberforth turned and shuffled back to plonk their drinks in front of them on the bar. Tonks felt tension creep down her back, as though Remus' touch had somehow squelched her latent niggling thought that he'd skirted the subject of his underworld acquaintances a little too quickly and deliberately. She hoped Aberforth, who was stood staring at her, wouldn't be working up to a chat about goat potions. Because not only did she have no idea whatsoever what she would say to him, but she really wanted to find out a few things about Remus.
Luckily, as she was debating an escape dash for the loo, another tavern patron called out for the barman.
The instant Aberforth was out of earshot, she turned on Remus, who was wiping off the lip of his tumbler on his sleeve.
"How do you know I'm in?" she asked.
"Experience," he said, then raised his glass to his lips.
"But how did you get it? Or why?"
He lowered his drink and looked at her with...amusement?...exasperation?
"Does it matter?"
Tonks stared into her Firewhisky, wanting desperately to take a drink, but knowing she couldn't, not on the job, not when she'd a training session back at the Ministry in less than an hour.
Go on, Tonks. You don't need liquid courage to say what you want to say.
"I just don't see what a bloke like you would have to do with the seedier side of London."
Remus set his tumbler down quite hard, and Tonks heard herself inhale sharply as his mouth was suddenly very close to her ear, breath tickling her neck, sending a shiver down her spine that invaded her insides, as well.
"And what sort of bloke am I?" he whispered.
Her heart stood still, and she forgot to breathe, as the question reverberated in her mind.
What sort of bloke was Remus Lupin?
On the one hand, he was all professor: intelligent, witty, well-spoken, with old-fashioned manners and class. On the other, he wasn't a professor in any sense of the word -- not when she compared him to McGonagall or Flitwick or Sinistra or any of those she'd considered really great teachers. Remus was brilliant, wickedly clever, absolutely smooth, and exuded charm. But that wasn't the only other side. He was also shabby, secretive, and somehow seemed to keep one step ahead of her, all the time. None of it meshed. None of it made sense.
You see, Tonks? You've got too close, and let him confuse you. He can't possibly be that complicated. He's got to be one thing or the other, hasn't he?
"I don't know," Tonks replied, quietly, turning her head to look up at him. "I can't figure you out."
"So I'm a mystery, then."
His eyes darkened in the dim tavern light and with intensity as he took another slow drink. Tonks' gaze travelled downward, watching the roll of the Firewhisky down his slender throat.
"Yeah."
One side of his mouth curved upward slightly, in the faintest ghost of a smile. "But you like mysteries."
There's that charm again. Don't let him distract you.
Tonks wanted to look away, but his gaze held hers. She willed her voice to be steady, even though everything inside her was quaking. "Generally."
Remus blinked. Had she chipped that smooth veneer? She couldn't tell, because she was, ridiculously, noticing that his light blond eyelashes were very long.
A detail she couldn't have noticed if he had not, at that moment, leant toward her, cheek just brushing hers, to speak once again in her ear: "Do you want to solve me, Elphine?"
He had whispered, but it seemed louder -- because, Tonks suddenly realised, the Hog's Head Inn had gone silent.
In the instant of registering this, she saw, in her peripheral, that Aberforth was stood frozen, holding a beer mug in one hand and a filthy towel in the other, glowering in the direction of the front door.
At the same moment, she and Remus snapped to alertness and looked at the person who had just walked in: a squat, unshaven, baggy-faced, stringy-haired man, who gave the impression he'd stolen his clothes off the back of a homeless Muggle. He clenched a vile looking pipe between his teeth, and something about him struck Tonks as vaguely familiar.
She recoiled as her nostrils pricked with an odour -- not booze or tobacco or even goat -- wafting about the room.
"Bloody hell!" she choked. "What's that stink?"
"Mundungus Fletcher," Remus muttered, and a quick glance at him found his nose crinkled.
"I asked what, not who." Tonks waved her hand to clear the air a bit, and when she gasped in a slightly less putrid breath, had the clarity of mind to think she'd heard the name before.
"Interesting he's here," Remus went on as though he hadn't heard her, "as Aberforth put a lifetime ban on him in '76."
"Blimey! You've got to be dodgier than dodgy to get banned from a place like this."
"He's in and out of Azkaban as frequently as I was in and out of detention at Hogwarts."
That was right. She'd seen Fletcher's mug shot in the file room.
Wait? Did Remus just say he'd been in and out of detention at Hogwarts?
But he'd continued talking, a nostalgic smile creeping over his face. "I was here the day it happened. Best bar fight I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing."
After the bit about detention, Tonks shouldn't have been surprised, but it seemed she was fated to a lifetime of doing things she shouldn't. "You like bar fights?"
Remus twitched his eyebrows and gave the grin of a person confessing to a guilty pleasure. "I like bar fights at the Hog's Head. Don't look so surprised, Elphine. Haven't I got to have a dodgy interest or two, if I can run with the Knockturn Alley crowd?"
Tonks opened her mouth in retort, but Remus shushed her.
"What the hell are you doing here, Dung?" Aberforth spat.
Tonks raised her eyebrows at Remus. "Dung?"
"Suits, don't you think?" he whispered back.
Fletcher's beady eyes darted all over the room, and his brow was shiny with sweat in the lamplight as he puffed on his pipe. "You're brother," he croaked, taking a bandy-legged step forward, stench closing in on the bar as he did, "Dumbledore--"
"He ain't the only Dumbledore, you know," Aberforth interrupted.
With a gurgling sound in his throat that might have been a nervous chuckle, Fletcher took another drag on his pipe. "Albus... 'e says you an' me need to let our gones lie by."
Beside Tonks, Remus sniggered into his Firewhisky. Merlin, what she wouldn't give for a drink.
She wished hard for one, for anything, to get control of herself, when Aberforth gave a contemptuous snort and said, "Albus dresses like that Lockhart ponce, and he's a damned fool if 'e thinks I'll lay anything by the likes of you, you filthy snitch."
"What about a business opportunity?" Fletcher bared his teeth in what Tonks could only assume was meant to be a winning smile. "Chance of a lifetime."
"That's what you said about the goats," Aberforth shot back, slapping his towel on the bar. "You're a filthy sodding bastard, Dung Fletcher, and I won't have no part of you're filthy sodding..." He held up his hands, palms out, and wiggled his fingers. "...business opportunities."
Remus snorted into his drink again, and Tonks, doubled over, both with silent laughter and agony at the odour emanating from Fletcher, whispered, "Did he mean to make quotes?"
"The pitfalls of illiteracy," Remus whispered back, sniggering. "Remind me to tell the Headmaster."
They both grimaced as Fletcher scuttled still closer to the bar, an imploring look on his face. "But Abby, mate--"
Drawing himself up to full height, Aberforth, though thin, actually looked as imperious as his brother could, as he crossed his arms over his chest and glowered down over the bar.
Another choked laugh as Fletcher smoked. "Aberforth," he amended. "Only you're so much better than me at Charms. I'll kill the ruddy things, likely as not, and then I'd 'ave to go to the trouble of findin' someone even stupider to buy 'em than I'm already lookin' for."
The furrows on Aberforth's brow turned to arches of interest, and Tonks thought her own expression must match it.
What ruddy things do you want to sell, Fletcher, that you're afraid of killing?
"You're not trying to sell nothin' to me?" Aberforth asked in low monotone.
"Bloody hell, no, mate!" cried Fletcher, dropping his pipe, then falling on his knees on the grimy tavern floor to scrabble for it. "I need you to help me hide the merchandise for a while, till I find me a customer! Just...disguise the little bastards, squeeze a few more goats into your pen--"
"I won' be arrested again for performing inappropriate charms on animals!" Aberforth roared, one hand balling into a fist as the other delved into his pocket for his wand. "Now you get out of my pub, you miserable piece of shite!"
"But Dumbledore said--"
"Albus said if I get myself nicked for inappropriate charms again, he won't look after my goats one more time while I rot in Azkaban. And I won't see 'em packed off to no bleeding dairy farm! Now out with you! And stay out!" Brandishing his wand, Aberforth bellowed, "EICIO DUNG!"
Fletcher's legs kicked madly as the Bouncer Spell levitated him into the air. Arms hooked at either side of him, as if snatched up by two invisible giants, He was swept through the Hog's Head and flung out onto the front porch, landing with a painful thump on his backside.
"What is that smell?" Tonks moaned as the trail of his stench made her want to gag. "It's like...slime...or mould...or...or--Oh!"
Her stool wobbled as she sat bolt upright, but Remus caught the back of the stool, steadying it. His eyebrows were raised in question.
"A marsh!" Tonks said. "A great dirty bog! Like the wetlands where the Sherringham Snidget Sanctuary is!" She slid forward on her bar stool to get up. "Fletcher's the Snidgetnap--"
A crack cut her off.
A crack of Disapparation.
A crack of Mundungus Fletcher, Snidgetnapper, Disapparating from right between her fingers.
"Dammit!" Tonks shouted, and pounded her fist on the bar, rattling the whiskey glasses and making heads turn all over the Hog's Head. Not caring, she plunged a hand in her pocket and drew out her money pouch, fingers shaking, fumbling at the strings. "Thanks for all your help, Remus. I'm sorry to rush, but I've got to--"
His hand caught hers, keeping her from getting to her money.
"Remus--"
"Dung's Disapparated," he interrupted gently. "You can't track him now."
"But I can alert the squad--"
"If the Auror department didn't care about the case before it was given to you," Remus spoke over her again, "then Scrimgeour's not going to send his Aurors out to chase someone who's currently untrackable and will be laying low until he can formulate another plan." He grinned wryly and added, "And I know Dung, it'll take a while."
Twisting to escape his grasp, Tonks argued, "Then I'll go talk to more people, get ahead of him--Remus, let go!"
His fingers relaxed around her wrist, but he didn't let go completely. "When was the last time you forgot about work, Elphine, and spent an evening having a drink with a friend?"
His other hand reached out to cup her face, to weave his fingers into her hair.
He can't mean this, Tonks. You're morphed as a hag. He's not really touching you like that, or looking at you like that, no matter what he said about only seeing your real yes, and he's not talking to you...
...in soft, husky tones. "Or...with someone you fancy?"
The question rang in Tonks ears with Kingsley's from yesterday -- only yesterday? -- and something inside snapped.
"How dare you!"
She jerked her hand away and plunged it into her money bag.
"You don't know me, Remus Lupin!"
Slamming a few coins down onto the bar -- she wasn't even sure which ones or how many -- she bumped her glass and sent a wave of Firewhisky toward Remus' lap.
"You don't know anything about me!"
Blundering back from the bar, she toppled her stool, and barely avoided falling over it.
"You don't even know my bloody name!"
"Sure 'e does," came Aberforth's voice from behind the bar -- and Tonks glanced to find him grinning gleefully. "Said you was called Elphine."
"You don't give a damn about my social life!" she flung at Remus, who'd been sat there rigidly, and not reacted to anything she'd said, or even to the Firewhisky she'd spilt on him. "You don't give a damn about my case, except that you don't want me to solve it!"
At last, Remus reacted -- sort of. Calmly, showing no sign at all of having just been shouted at by a mad crone, he slid off his barstool, cast a drying charm over his robes, then laid a few Sickles on the counter. Tonks thought, for a moment, that he was going to leave her without a word, or without even looking at her again.
The latter he did not do, but he did speak, very quietly: "Shouldn't we take this outside, Elphine, before you destroy your cover beyond all repair?"
Tonks stalked ahead of him to the door, ignoring Aberforth when he called to her that he'd send an owl about goat potions. Once in the street, she span on her heel and folded her arms as she watched Remus stride slowly out of the tavern and shut the door carefully behind him. She recognised his deliberate movements as those of a man battling a temper, and braced herself, physically grinding her heels into the cobbles, for a battle royal.
For some reason, she wasn't prepared for the quiet blue anger in Remus' eyes as he stood almost toe-to-toe with her. "Why, in Merlin's name, wouldn’t I want you to apprehend a thief who stole a flock of rare, endangered birds?"
"Why are you protecting Hagrid?" she shot back.
"Two reasons."
"One?"
"Hagrid is my friend, and has been for a long time."
"And two?"
His gaze flickered from hers for just a split second, so that if she had blinked she would have missed it. There was guilt there, she was sure of it. Every thread of suspicion she'd had about him wove together now to form an irrefutable tapestry.
"Because Dumbledore asked me to," Remus answered. "He trusted the reputation of Hogwarts to me. And you haven't answered my question."
"If I catch the Snidgetnapper," Tonks returned, "MLE brings down the whole underground magical creature trade. If that happens, you've got no one to sell your Kappa to when you've finished..." She raised her hands and made quote marks in the air with her fingers as she said "...teaching with it."
Gaze dropping, Remus blinked, rapidly, and knit his eyebrows.
Good work, Tonks. You've wrong-footed him now. He'll give himself away.
"I told you," he said, "I return my specimens to the places I find them." Meeting hers again, he asked, "You think I lied?"
Tonks had a fleeting thought of being impressed that he could look her in the eye and lie so convincingly, but she said, "Yeah. I do."
The ripple of his jaw muscle as it tensed beneath his pale skin was his only reaction.
Only a liar could be so blank.
"Yes, well," said Remus in clipped syllables. "There is nothing I can do about your distrust, but I can try to correct your flawed logic."
Inwardly, Tonks bristled at his professorial tones, but she gave a dismissive snort. "My logic's not flawed."
"I've got a well-paying teaching position. Why would I need to sell Dark Creatures, or any other kind of creatures, on the black market?"
"Exactly!" Tonks cried. "You've got a professor's salary! But you haven't got children to spend it on, or a wife, or even a girlfriend -- and I know you haven't got one, because if you had, you wouldn't be spending your weekends hunting spent hunting for Dark Creatures. You've got room and board at the school, but you haven't bought yourself a set of decent robes. Explain that, Lupin."
Recalling how warmly he'd asked her to call him Remus, Tonks half-expected him to flinch at her return to the professionally detached surname. But it was the final nail in the coffin. If he'd felt anything for her at all, fancy or friendship, it would have shown on his face then.
"What house were you in, Miss Tonks?"
House? At Hogwarts? What the--?
"Only if I were to guess now, it would have to be Slytherin."
The words, though not in the least cuttingly uttered, pierced Tonks keenly. She had an impression of watching the anger bleed out of her as the snipped threads of the tapestry she -- not truth -- had, so loosely woven together, unravelled.
Oh. Dear. God.
Tonks -- what have you done? Hufflepuffs are just and true, and what have you done? Judged and accused. And--
Hurt him.
She'd hurt him. She saw it in the silvery flash of his eyes as they glanced at her once more before he turned away. Turned, with slumping shoulders, and slowly walked away from the cobbles outside the Hog's Head Inn.
He did care. He'd shown it from the moment he'd first laid eyes on her, in the glow of the magical flame cupped in his hand. The only time he had not shown it was now, when she'd betrayed him, and he'd turned the fire inward to shield himself from the terrible onslaught of her misdirected frustration and anger.
Because he cares.
The sight of his thin frame, in the patched robes she'd criticised, retreating alone toward High Street, sent another stab of guilt through her.
And so do you.
She opened her mouth to call to him, to call Remus, but the words stuck in her throat.
If you care, call to him. It's not too late.
She moved a foot toward, but couldn't go on.
Go after him, you idiot! If he cares, he'll forgive you. It's not too late.
Except that it was.
A glance at her wristwatch told her that she was supposed to have been at her training session ten minutes ago.
She looked at Remus, rounding the corner, toward the brewing thunderstorm.
When he was out of sight, she Disapparated to London.
A/N: Thanks to all who read and commented on the previous chapter. This time, reviewers get a pet name from Remus. :)
Chapter Index