Raise Your Lantern High, chapter 4: Origin Stories
RAISE YOUR LANTERN HIGH
Summary: In which Remus and Tonks fight battles, arrest criminals, befriend werewolves, overcome inner demons and, despite it all, find themselves a happy ending. A love story, and a story of the Order years. (My Remus/Tonks epic, which has been years in the making! This is the second half of the story, set in the Half-Blood Prince year.)
Chapter 4: Origin Stories
Though he binds his wounds in silence
I my own in practiced patience, lest he know
It’s always winter when he goes
-Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, Winter When He Goes
Hogsmeade looked so different to the village of Tonks’ teenage memories. The worst danger anyone had faced here back then was the possibility of a teacher catching them snogging their date at a Hogsmeade weekend, or Filch thwarting their attempts to smuggle the latest Zonko’s craze into the school.
Now, Hogsmeade was sad-looking and shuttered, like Diagon Alley. An air of suspicion hung in the air like a silent, noxious cloud.
The other three Aurors also now stationed in Hogsmeade - Proudfoot, Savage and Dawlish - were all men at least two decades Tonks’ senior, though she was used to that aspect of Auror-hood by now. Dawlish and Savage had got a flatshare in the village, since they both had families they would commute back to when off duty, but Tonks had insisted on finding a place of her own, a tiny flat above the Hogsmeade branch of Twilfit and Tattings.
It was no more than a single, small room with a miniscule kitchenette, but it would do for a single person who would spend much of her time working, anyway. And it was cosy up there under the eaves. When it rained, as it did all that first week, Tonks curled up under her favourite quilt, closed her eyes and listened to the steady thrum of it against the roof.
Maybe her mother wasn’t entirely wrong. Maybe it was good to get away from old familiar places where everything was tangled up with grief, and loss, and Remus.
Remus.
Sirius.
Tonks closed her eyes and listened to the rain, trying hard not to think or remember.
Their first assignment was to check every inch of the security spells and jinxes that protected Hogwarts. Tonks, Proudfoot and Savage walked to the school together; Dawlish didn’t join them, because he was sleeping before taking a night shift on duty in the village.
Proudfoot and Savage traded jokes as they walked, but Tonks stayed quiet. She respected the others, who were good Aurors, but she had so little in common with them. Proudfoot, Savage and Dawlish were all utterly by-the-book, unable to see that what the rules said and what was right were not always the same thing. Not people Tonks would be recruiting to the Order of the Phoenix any time soon, much as she respected them professionally.
Dumbledore met them at the school gates, smiling and twinkling in the sunlight that had finally broken through all the rain, and Tonks felt a jolting aftershock of the anger she’d felt the last time she saw him. Dumbledore, who’d sent Remus off on a dangerous, uncertain mission to the werewolves.
But she couldn’t give way to feelings right now. She had a job to do.
“Aurors Tonks, Proudfoot and Savage,” Dumbledore said, inclining his head politely. “I take it you are here because Rufus Scrimgeour doesn’t trust my staff’s ability to place adequate protections on our own school.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Tonks saw Savage’s chest swell indignantly, and she figured she had about five seconds before he began to bluster. Savage was not the most politic of men.
“With all due respect, sir,” Tonks began, stepping forward slightly so she blocked Savage from Dumbledore just a bit. “This is just to make sure we’re all on the same page. Our duties are in Hogsmeade, but it would help if we could be conversant with Hogwarts’ protections as well, if you’re amenable. We all want to provide the best possible security for the students.”
Dumbledore flashed her the tiniest of smiles, as if she’d passed a test she hadn’t known she’d been set. “Very well,” he said, appearing to think it over. “I’ll show you around the grounds.”
Behind her, Tonks could practically feel Savage and Proudfoot sharing a look of surprise. They’d clearly expected more resistance.
But Dumbledore gave them a very thorough tour of the protective spells, anti-intruder jinxes and other precautions he and the rest of the Hogwarts staff had placed on the school over the summer. Even Savage seemed impressed.
“Knows what he’s doing, Dumbledore, doesn’t he,” Proudfoot reflected, when they were on their way back to Hogsmeade.
“He’s not called the most brilliant wizard in modern history for nothing,” Savage agreed.
“Still, Scrimgeour’s right to want to keep an eye on him,” Proudfoot said. “No one should be operating outside of Ministry-sanctioned systems. Not even Dumbledore.”
Savage chuckled. “Old man seems to have a soft spot for you, though, Tonks.”
Tonks’ head snapped up. “What?” No, it would definitely not be good if they thought she had any connection to Dumbledore beyond that of former student. For the sake of the Order, she needed to remain an utterly unremarkable Auror in the eyes of her colleagues.
“Oh, come on, you saw how he melted when it was you talking to him.”
“It’s true,” Proudfoot agreed, chuckling. “We should make you our liaison whenever we have to talk to the old man. Might actually get him to work with us instead of against us, that way.”
And it all clicked into place.
Dumbledore’s frustration with Scrimgeour wasn’t feigned, but his reluctance to work with the Aurors was, at least partly. He’d wanted the other Aurors to think he was going to be difficult to work with, but that he was slightly more willing to interact with Tonks than with the rest of them. Which provided her with the perfect cover if she ever needed to go up to the castle to talk to him about Order business.
Merlin. Dumbledore was always five steps ahead of everyone else.
For the sake of keeping up the pretence, Tonks scoffed, “Oh, come on. Just ‘cause I was polite at him and he was polite back?”
“Think whatever you want,” Savage smirked. “But I think it’ll be wee Tonks we toss to the dragon whenever he needs a sacrifice.”
“We’ll see about that,” Tonks groused, and was secretly pleased.
They arrived back at their de facto headquarters - the kitchen of the flat Savage and Dawlish shared - to find that a new sheaf of instructions had arrived from Robards by owl.
Proudfoot rolled his eyes and Savage muttered, “Bloody micromanager,” under his breath. Robards, to put it mildly, had not yet settled into his position enough to trust his staff to do their jobs without being instructed at every step along the way. Tonks was glad to be able to duck back out, since she needed to get to sleep early before her morning shift.
But when she curled up under her quilt, sleep stayed stubbornly away.
She’d been running on adrenalin for so many weeks now, first catching up on work after she got out of St Mungo’s, then moving house. Now that she was finally settled in one place, Tonks could slow down enough to let her thoughts catch up with the rest of her.
Frankly, she would have preferred if her thoughts had stayed away.
Thoughts of Sirius were accompanied by a painful twisting in her gut. As much as she hated that he was dead, she might hate even more that he’d spent the whole last year of his life trapped somewhere he hated. Tonks viscerally remembered Sirius skulking around 12 Grimmauld Place, his eyes dark, his shoulders hunched and angry. She pulled the quilt more tightly around her chin, but her stomach refused to unclench.
As rain pattered against the roof yet again, Tonks tried instead to picture Sirius as he had been at the Ministry that last night, thrumming with energy, exultant to be in battle at last, to be fighting for Harry. He’d been happy, that night, she was sure of it. He’d felt alive.
One night out of a whole year. It didn’t exactly make her heart hurt less.
Tonks flopped onto her back and exhaled in frustration. Sleep was miles away. What would Sirius say if he were here right now? she asked herself.
She snorted. He’d tell her to stop moping over him, probably. Then he would tease her about being out here in Hogsmeade, on a supposedly Very Important mission that so far had amounted to a lot of dull hanging around, endlessly patrolling up and down the same streets. Nymphadora Tonks, Auror, now glorified babysitter to a sleepy village. Sirius would have a laugh about that, surely.
And then, Tonks thought, we’d have a good moan together about how impossible Remus is. She managed to smile a little at that thought.
Then she was picturing Sirius as he’d been in the Magic Room at the Department of Mysteries that night, soft light pulsing from his raised wand arm. The image was comforting, and Tonks slid deeper under the covers. She closed her eyes and willed that image to stay: Sirius, strong, beautiful and assured.
I wonder if the Department of Mysteries has a Love Room, she thought hazily. Now there’s a research subject that could keep the Unspeakables busy forever.
Close to the oblivion of sleep now, no longer able to control the direction in which her mind wandered, Tonks’ last conscious thought was, And Remus? Where is he now?
- - - - -
To say the pack were slow to take to Remus would be an understatement.
No one was outright aggressive towards him, of course, not when their Alpha had declared Remus a guest of the pack. But their wariness bordered on hostility.
“You?” demanded young Ronan, who couldn’t have been more than 20. He had the gawky look of a teenager who had suddenly shot up to his full height and was not yet accustomed to his newly long limbs. His messy brown hair only added to the impression of ungainly adolescence. “You won’t last a week out here.”
Remus had been paired with him for the task of gathering firewood, and Ronan wasn’t happy about it.
“You’ve been among them too long,” he went on. “You even dress like them. You look like…like…a teacher or something.”
“I was a teacher,” Remus replied mildly, shifting the load of branches in his arms as he kept pace with Ronan. His back ached, but he wasn’t about to share that fact, not to this young man who was already convinced Remus was a soft city weakling.
Already Remus was learning a great deal about the daily life of a werewolf pack. Nearly all their time was taken up with maintaining the pack’s existence. Scouting for food, scouting for danger, scouting for materials to maintain their makeshift shelters - these activities filled the day. The work of survival never ended.
“Keep up,” Ronan grumbled, then glanced around, because they were nearly back to the camp in the little clearing and he could get in trouble if the Alpha heard him speaking rudely to his elder. Even if that elder was a city-raised interloper in a suspiciously teacher-like jumper.
They reached the camp to find the wizened old woman called Anna seated on the tree stump in the middle of the clearing.
She was by far the oldest member of the pack, stooped and tiny, with pale skin, fluffy white hair like a dandelion clock and soft, wizened cheeks. She was either the Alpha’s own birthmother, or possibly just the woman who had raised him since he became a werewolf. Remus knew better than to pry into a werewolf’s personal history. In any case, she was referred to by all simply as “Mother.”
Remus had never before met a werewolf of such advanced age. Anna likely wasn’t as old as she looked, perhaps not yet even 70, but nature wasn’t gentle to their kind, and to meet an elderly werewolf was rare. The pack were fiercely protective of her, and Remus was curious to see how they would see to her safety at the coming full moon, since surely even as a wolf Anna was too old to run or defend herself.
Ronan set his overflowing armload of firewood at Anna’s feet and bowed his head. The contrast was stark, as the teenager who was so surly when alone with Remus transformed into a sweet, deferential boy before Anna, the pack’s Mother.
“Thank you, Hardwood,” she said, and the young man ducked his head lower in bashful pleasure. “That’s very fine.”
Here was another thing to which Remus was still adjusting: All the pack’s members had two names. That first night, they had each introduced themselves to Remus with their given “human” names in an almost mocking tone, but they’d never used those names again, only the “werewolf” ones. Ronan’s werewolf name, Hardwood, came from some test of strength with another young werewolf when he’d first joined the pack - Remus hadn’t caught the details.
And for some reason, Remus struggled to retain the nicknames, though they were used more often. The human names he retained easily, though he’d heard those only once.
“Anything else I can do for you, Mother?” Ronan - Hardwood - was asking.
“No, child, that’s fine,” Anna said. “You may run along until it’s time for dinner.”
She smiled up at him and he bowed again, then loped out of the clearing, looking eager to be away quickly, before someone could saddle him with the useless city wolf once again.
Arms aching, having waited his turn, Remus stepped forward now with his smaller armload of wood, gathered here and there amongst the few stands of trees scattered about the moor. He bowed his head and set the wood at Anna’s feet. “This is my small contribution, Mother,” he said.
“Thank you, City,” she said, nodding.
To Remus’ chagrin, this had stuck immediately as his own nickname. It hardly seemed fitting, given he’d spent most of his life in small towns or the countryside. But to these werewolves, City Wolf was what he was.
“Very fine,” Anna said again. “We shall have a bonfire tonight, City Wolf. A fire is good for aching old bones, on the last night before a full moon.”
With another nod she dismissed him, so Remus retreated to his own small spot, a piece of canvas in which he could halfway roll himself up at night, against the base of a tree. It wasn’t a comfortable way to sleep, not at all, but Remus had had worse.
Now he settled down onto his bit of canvas, cross-legged, and observed the camp.
It was a simple place, but with shelter enough to keep out the worst of it when it rained. Each member of the pack - there were twelve - had her or his own small sleeping spot, under a piece of tarpaulin or a shelter made of branches. The centre of the clearing was a communal space for cooking, talking, eating.
At the moment, the only pack members present were Anna, and a woman roughly Remus’ age called Serena. She was a black woman with hair that framed her face in neat, tight curls, and she had a delicate, wiry strength. Her pack nickname was “Trouble.” To Remus, the name didn’t seem at all to match her sombre demeanour, but from comments the others had made when she was introduced, it seemed the nickname originated from incidents in her younger days. Reference to that unspecified backstory had elicited a sly giggle from this otherwise serious and watchful woman.
Currently, “Trouble” was weaving a basket from long strands of grass, periodically glancing up to cast mistrustful glances in Remus’ direction. Uncomfortable sitting idle while the others were working, Remus finally called over to her, “Could I help you?”
Her gaze snapped to him again, startled at being addressed directly. “No, thank you,” she said, polite but definitive. So Remus subsided again, watching as her hands went deftly about their work.
He knew he hadn’t seen Serena at Imbolc, the seasonal festival between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, when werewolves from a number of packs had gathered in the south of France. Remus had attended that gathering as one of his scouting missions for the Order. He remembered seeing the Alpha there, of course, and retained a vague impression of two young males who’d been with him, the two Remus now knew were called Narun (or Rapids, his werewolf nickname) and Adair (or Jump). Narun looked to be of Indian descent, dark-haired and slim, while Adair was blonde, a little shorter, and broader chested. Otherwise the two young men were very similar, both restless and athletic and disinclined to sit still.
Anna, still seated on her tree stump, suddenly lifted her head, as if she’d heard or scented something. Remus looked around. Ah, there - Brighid, the Alpha’s mate, was approaching across the rolling, open land of the moor.
Once again, Remus marvelled at these werewolves’ senses. Even Anna with her clouded eyes saw things Remus missed. He wondered if his own senses were blunted by years of reliance on magic.
Brighid grinned widely as she stepped into the clearing. Brighid had a high forehead and high cheekbones, and flowing auburn hair interrupted at her left temple by a dramatic streak of white. Today, she returned with a whole small deer strapped to her back. As they all did, she went first to Anna, bending to kiss the older woman’s hand.
“We’ll have a feast tonight, Mother,” she said. “A feast tonight and a hunt tomorrow night. Perhaps our City Wolf is a good luck charm,” she added, with a sly glance in Remus’ direction. Brighid, whose werewolf name was Fire, was the only one aside from the Alpha and the Mother who didn’t seem to view Remus with mistrust. She had a mischievous manner, but Remus knew better than to mistake Brighid for anything but what she was: a high-ranking pack member, every inch as fierce and astute as her partner the Alpha.
“Very good, child,” the Mother said, and Remus’ heart squeezed softly at the tenderness of the older woman addressing the younger one that way, although Brighid was surely Remus’ age at least. “Shall we start the fire?”
“So it shall be,” Brighid agreed, setting down her burden and beginning to assemble kindling and wood. Serena put aside her half-finished basket and came to help.
Once again, Remus was no help here. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d built a fire with anything but an Incendio charm. And the pack wouldn’t appreciate him doing wizard-style magic anyway, even if he hadn’t left his wand under a rock on the outskirts of the nearby village.
One by one, the pack members returned to the clearing, as the sun slid down towards the horizon. They bore edible berries harvested from the moor, a few wild mushrooms, and a large jug refilled with water from the nearest stream, as well as more grasses for Serena’s basket-making and a few items of clothing almost certainly nicked from some village clothesline. Not that Remus was going to comment on that.
Last to return was Tamara, nickname Blackthorn, a young woman roughly the same age as Ronan, Narun and Adair. She was willowy and looked as though she might be partly of Chinese descent, and she had long, silky dark hair. Along with her, tugging at her hand in her excitement to return to the camp, came little Joy.
Joy was by far the youngest here, six or seven years old by Remus’ guess. She had wide, curious, dark-lashed eyes that never stopped taking in the world around her, and angular limbs in constant motion.
Joy pulled free of Tamara’s hand and darted to Serena, who ran an affectionate hand over the girl’s head and smiled a rare smile, bringing out unexpected dimples at each side of her mouth. Serena and Joy shared little resemblance beyond having roughly the same colouring, but their relationship certainly seemed like that of a mother and child. Again, Remus knew better than to pry into a werewolf’s family, or chosen family.
Serena steered Joy away from the fire so that Jack and Ashmita, an adult pair of mates, could set up a spit there for roasting meat. Joy wriggled free again, and ran to Anna. “A story!” she called. “Tell us a story, Mother.” That title, of course, belonged to the pack’s mother, rather than to any parent of her own.
Anna chuckled and peered down at Joy, who crouched before the tree stump where Anna sat. “You shall have your story after dinner, child. Ask me then.”
Joy pouted as any six-or-perhaps-seven-year-old would, but was quickly distracted by Ashmita’s offer to let her help turn the spit.
Joy was the only child in the pack. The next youngest was Eirwen, a girl Remus judged to be at the young end of teenaged. Eirwen had a small, round face with an angular nose and anxious eyes, framed by wavy chestnut hair, and the pinched look of someone separated from her family too soon. Remus also suspected she was a newly turned werewolf, within the past few months perhaps, from the hesitant way she moved among the others.
To have so few children was rare for a werewolf pack, Remus knew. Some even had more children than adults - Greyback’s pack in the south of England, for example. That was Greyback’s policy: turning children, turning them when they were young enough that he could turn their minds, too. Even here among werewolves, Remus intended to avoid Greyback for as long as he could. He knew Greyback hated when one of his “own” eluded his clutches.
Remus was saved from the grip of these less than pleasant reflections by the call to dinner. He’d expected a hierarchy in the way the pack ate, and perhaps scorn directed his way, not undeserved, for sharing their food when he contributed so little, but he detected none. Everyone present contributed what they could, and took what they needed.
Werewolves, the original Communists. Who knew? Remus thought with a faint, private smile.
As they ate, several pack members informed the others about food sources or other resources they’d found. Then the Alpha announced, “Rapids will stay with Mother this full moon.”
Remus had expected this would be seen as a burden, but from the way Rapids - that was Narun - subtly straightened up at the words, while Tamara and Ronan and Adair slumped down, he saw that it was anything but. So, being the werewolf who had to stay back at the camp and guard its eldest member was considered an honour. Interesting.
As conversation faded from official announcements to quiet chatter, Anna declared in her thin but carrying voice, “I believe someone requested a story.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” Joy chirped, bouncing up and down. “Yes, please, Mother, please.” Laughter rippled around the circle at her enthusiasm.
“Then in honour of the one who asked,” Anna said, her soft voice carrying through the group with authority, “I shall tell the story of How Children Came to Be.”
Joy snuggled into Serena’s lap, and the adults around the fire settled in comfortably, listening. Eirwen, the lone teenager, clutched her knees to her chest, sitting a little apart from the others.
And Anna began.
“Once, long ago, in a distant time, there were no humans and only two wolves. They were the Great She-Wolf and the Great He-Wolf.”
Heads were nodding around the circle, to a clearly familiar refrain.
“The Great She-Wolf and the Great He-Wolf lived on a wide, beautiful plain, with every kind of animal and plant. The sun coaxed the seeds from the ground and the rain came every day to help them grow.
“But the Great She-Wolf and the Great He-Wolf were lonely, for they were the only animals with the power of speech.
“‘It is a strange thing,’ said the Great She-Wolf to the Great He-Wolf. ‘I know all the things you know and you know all the things I know. There is no one to ask or tell us anything new.’
“‘It is a strange thing,’ agreed the Great He-Wolf. ‘We know so much of the ways of this world, yet we have no one with whom we can share our knowledge.’
“That night, curled up in their den, the Great She-Wolf and the Great He-Wolf both dreamt of the same thing: A small wolf who would understand their words, someone who would ask them new questions and tell them new things.
“The next morning, when the Great She-Wolf went to stoke the day’s fire, she blew on the embers and fed them with twigs, and what should spring up from the flames but the First Cub, a child born of the fire and raised from the Earth.
“And the First Cub looked up and asked, ‘Mother, what am I?’
“And the Great She-Wolf said, ‘You are a wolf cub.’
“And the First Cub asked, ‘Mother, what is this thing that is so warm?’
“And the Great She-Wolf said, ‘This is a fire.’
“And the First Cub asked, ‘Mother, how did I, a wolf cub, come from this, a fire?’
“And the Great She-Wolf said, ‘Child, that is the greatest mystery of all.’
“And every day from that day forth, the First Cub asked a thousand questions, and still woke up the next morning with a thousand more. And the Great She-Wolf and the Great He-Wolf were happy, because they learned to wonder at the world anew when they saw it through the eyes of their child.
“And that, Young Ones, is the story of How Children Came to Be.”
No one said a word into the contented silence. Joy was curled up in Serena’s lap, eyes closed. Ronan and Adair leaned shoulder to shoulder. Eirwen was still hunched over her own knees, gazing at Anna, the Mother.
At last, the Alpha said, “And now, it’s time for sleep. Let us sleep long and well before the full moon night tomorrow.”
A pleasant shiver of anticipation rippled through the group. It was a strange thing to witness, when Remus himself had never felt pleasant anticipation at the approach of a full moon.
No, that wasn’t quite true. During those few precious years when James, Sirius and Peter had been his friends and become Animagi for him, a thread of excitement had mingled with the apprehension before a full moon. During those years, Remus had known his friends would keep him safe and, more importantly, keep others safe from him. And that they would tell wonderful stories in the morning about the adventures the four of them had had in the night, even if Remus himself could only vaguely remember them.
Perhaps, Remus thought as he rolled himself up in his bit of canvas and prepared to sleep, that was how it felt to belong to a pack.
(continue to CHAPTER FIVE: Quiet)
Summary: In which Remus and Tonks fight battles, arrest criminals, befriend werewolves, overcome inner demons and, despite it all, find themselves a happy ending. A love story, and a story of the Order years. (My Remus/Tonks epic, which has been years in the making! This is the second half of the story, set in the Half-Blood Prince year.)
Chapter 4: Origin Stories
Though he binds his wounds in silence
I my own in practiced patience, lest he know
It’s always winter when he goes
-Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, Winter When He Goes
Hogsmeade looked so different to the village of Tonks’ teenage memories. The worst danger anyone had faced here back then was the possibility of a teacher catching them snogging their date at a Hogsmeade weekend, or Filch thwarting their attempts to smuggle the latest Zonko’s craze into the school.
Now, Hogsmeade was sad-looking and shuttered, like Diagon Alley. An air of suspicion hung in the air like a silent, noxious cloud.
The other three Aurors also now stationed in Hogsmeade - Proudfoot, Savage and Dawlish - were all men at least two decades Tonks’ senior, though she was used to that aspect of Auror-hood by now. Dawlish and Savage had got a flatshare in the village, since they both had families they would commute back to when off duty, but Tonks had insisted on finding a place of her own, a tiny flat above the Hogsmeade branch of Twilfit and Tattings.
It was no more than a single, small room with a miniscule kitchenette, but it would do for a single person who would spend much of her time working, anyway. And it was cosy up there under the eaves. When it rained, as it did all that first week, Tonks curled up under her favourite quilt, closed her eyes and listened to the steady thrum of it against the roof.
Maybe her mother wasn’t entirely wrong. Maybe it was good to get away from old familiar places where everything was tangled up with grief, and loss, and Remus.
Remus.
Sirius.
Tonks closed her eyes and listened to the rain, trying hard not to think or remember.
Their first assignment was to check every inch of the security spells and jinxes that protected Hogwarts. Tonks, Proudfoot and Savage walked to the school together; Dawlish didn’t join them, because he was sleeping before taking a night shift on duty in the village.
Proudfoot and Savage traded jokes as they walked, but Tonks stayed quiet. She respected the others, who were good Aurors, but she had so little in common with them. Proudfoot, Savage and Dawlish were all utterly by-the-book, unable to see that what the rules said and what was right were not always the same thing. Not people Tonks would be recruiting to the Order of the Phoenix any time soon, much as she respected them professionally.
Dumbledore met them at the school gates, smiling and twinkling in the sunlight that had finally broken through all the rain, and Tonks felt a jolting aftershock of the anger she’d felt the last time she saw him. Dumbledore, who’d sent Remus off on a dangerous, uncertain mission to the werewolves.
But she couldn’t give way to feelings right now. She had a job to do.
“Aurors Tonks, Proudfoot and Savage,” Dumbledore said, inclining his head politely. “I take it you are here because Rufus Scrimgeour doesn’t trust my staff’s ability to place adequate protections on our own school.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Tonks saw Savage’s chest swell indignantly, and she figured she had about five seconds before he began to bluster. Savage was not the most politic of men.
“With all due respect, sir,” Tonks began, stepping forward slightly so she blocked Savage from Dumbledore just a bit. “This is just to make sure we’re all on the same page. Our duties are in Hogsmeade, but it would help if we could be conversant with Hogwarts’ protections as well, if you’re amenable. We all want to provide the best possible security for the students.”
Dumbledore flashed her the tiniest of smiles, as if she’d passed a test she hadn’t known she’d been set. “Very well,” he said, appearing to think it over. “I’ll show you around the grounds.”
Behind her, Tonks could practically feel Savage and Proudfoot sharing a look of surprise. They’d clearly expected more resistance.
But Dumbledore gave them a very thorough tour of the protective spells, anti-intruder jinxes and other precautions he and the rest of the Hogwarts staff had placed on the school over the summer. Even Savage seemed impressed.
“Knows what he’s doing, Dumbledore, doesn’t he,” Proudfoot reflected, when they were on their way back to Hogsmeade.
“He’s not called the most brilliant wizard in modern history for nothing,” Savage agreed.
“Still, Scrimgeour’s right to want to keep an eye on him,” Proudfoot said. “No one should be operating outside of Ministry-sanctioned systems. Not even Dumbledore.”
Savage chuckled. “Old man seems to have a soft spot for you, though, Tonks.”
Tonks’ head snapped up. “What?” No, it would definitely not be good if they thought she had any connection to Dumbledore beyond that of former student. For the sake of the Order, she needed to remain an utterly unremarkable Auror in the eyes of her colleagues.
“Oh, come on, you saw how he melted when it was you talking to him.”
“It’s true,” Proudfoot agreed, chuckling. “We should make you our liaison whenever we have to talk to the old man. Might actually get him to work with us instead of against us, that way.”
And it all clicked into place.
Dumbledore’s frustration with Scrimgeour wasn’t feigned, but his reluctance to work with the Aurors was, at least partly. He’d wanted the other Aurors to think he was going to be difficult to work with, but that he was slightly more willing to interact with Tonks than with the rest of them. Which provided her with the perfect cover if she ever needed to go up to the castle to talk to him about Order business.
Merlin. Dumbledore was always five steps ahead of everyone else.
For the sake of keeping up the pretence, Tonks scoffed, “Oh, come on. Just ‘cause I was polite at him and he was polite back?”
“Think whatever you want,” Savage smirked. “But I think it’ll be wee Tonks we toss to the dragon whenever he needs a sacrifice.”
“We’ll see about that,” Tonks groused, and was secretly pleased.
They arrived back at their de facto headquarters - the kitchen of the flat Savage and Dawlish shared - to find that a new sheaf of instructions had arrived from Robards by owl.
Proudfoot rolled his eyes and Savage muttered, “Bloody micromanager,” under his breath. Robards, to put it mildly, had not yet settled into his position enough to trust his staff to do their jobs without being instructed at every step along the way. Tonks was glad to be able to duck back out, since she needed to get to sleep early before her morning shift.
But when she curled up under her quilt, sleep stayed stubbornly away.
She’d been running on adrenalin for so many weeks now, first catching up on work after she got out of St Mungo’s, then moving house. Now that she was finally settled in one place, Tonks could slow down enough to let her thoughts catch up with the rest of her.
Frankly, she would have preferred if her thoughts had stayed away.
Thoughts of Sirius were accompanied by a painful twisting in her gut. As much as she hated that he was dead, she might hate even more that he’d spent the whole last year of his life trapped somewhere he hated. Tonks viscerally remembered Sirius skulking around 12 Grimmauld Place, his eyes dark, his shoulders hunched and angry. She pulled the quilt more tightly around her chin, but her stomach refused to unclench.
As rain pattered against the roof yet again, Tonks tried instead to picture Sirius as he had been at the Ministry that last night, thrumming with energy, exultant to be in battle at last, to be fighting for Harry. He’d been happy, that night, she was sure of it. He’d felt alive.
One night out of a whole year. It didn’t exactly make her heart hurt less.
Tonks flopped onto her back and exhaled in frustration. Sleep was miles away. What would Sirius say if he were here right now? she asked herself.
She snorted. He’d tell her to stop moping over him, probably. Then he would tease her about being out here in Hogsmeade, on a supposedly Very Important mission that so far had amounted to a lot of dull hanging around, endlessly patrolling up and down the same streets. Nymphadora Tonks, Auror, now glorified babysitter to a sleepy village. Sirius would have a laugh about that, surely.
And then, Tonks thought, we’d have a good moan together about how impossible Remus is. She managed to smile a little at that thought.
Then she was picturing Sirius as he’d been in the Magic Room at the Department of Mysteries that night, soft light pulsing from his raised wand arm. The image was comforting, and Tonks slid deeper under the covers. She closed her eyes and willed that image to stay: Sirius, strong, beautiful and assured.
I wonder if the Department of Mysteries has a Love Room, she thought hazily. Now there’s a research subject that could keep the Unspeakables busy forever.
Close to the oblivion of sleep now, no longer able to control the direction in which her mind wandered, Tonks’ last conscious thought was, And Remus? Where is he now?
- - - - -
To say the pack were slow to take to Remus would be an understatement.
No one was outright aggressive towards him, of course, not when their Alpha had declared Remus a guest of the pack. But their wariness bordered on hostility.
“You?” demanded young Ronan, who couldn’t have been more than 20. He had the gawky look of a teenager who had suddenly shot up to his full height and was not yet accustomed to his newly long limbs. His messy brown hair only added to the impression of ungainly adolescence. “You won’t last a week out here.”
Remus had been paired with him for the task of gathering firewood, and Ronan wasn’t happy about it.
“You’ve been among them too long,” he went on. “You even dress like them. You look like…like…a teacher or something.”
“I was a teacher,” Remus replied mildly, shifting the load of branches in his arms as he kept pace with Ronan. His back ached, but he wasn’t about to share that fact, not to this young man who was already convinced Remus was a soft city weakling.
Already Remus was learning a great deal about the daily life of a werewolf pack. Nearly all their time was taken up with maintaining the pack’s existence. Scouting for food, scouting for danger, scouting for materials to maintain their makeshift shelters - these activities filled the day. The work of survival never ended.
“Keep up,” Ronan grumbled, then glanced around, because they were nearly back to the camp in the little clearing and he could get in trouble if the Alpha heard him speaking rudely to his elder. Even if that elder was a city-raised interloper in a suspiciously teacher-like jumper.
They reached the camp to find the wizened old woman called Anna seated on the tree stump in the middle of the clearing.
She was by far the oldest member of the pack, stooped and tiny, with pale skin, fluffy white hair like a dandelion clock and soft, wizened cheeks. She was either the Alpha’s own birthmother, or possibly just the woman who had raised him since he became a werewolf. Remus knew better than to pry into a werewolf’s personal history. In any case, she was referred to by all simply as “Mother.”
Remus had never before met a werewolf of such advanced age. Anna likely wasn’t as old as she looked, perhaps not yet even 70, but nature wasn’t gentle to their kind, and to meet an elderly werewolf was rare. The pack were fiercely protective of her, and Remus was curious to see how they would see to her safety at the coming full moon, since surely even as a wolf Anna was too old to run or defend herself.
Ronan set his overflowing armload of firewood at Anna’s feet and bowed his head. The contrast was stark, as the teenager who was so surly when alone with Remus transformed into a sweet, deferential boy before Anna, the pack’s Mother.
“Thank you, Hardwood,” she said, and the young man ducked his head lower in bashful pleasure. “That’s very fine.”
Here was another thing to which Remus was still adjusting: All the pack’s members had two names. That first night, they had each introduced themselves to Remus with their given “human” names in an almost mocking tone, but they’d never used those names again, only the “werewolf” ones. Ronan’s werewolf name, Hardwood, came from some test of strength with another young werewolf when he’d first joined the pack - Remus hadn’t caught the details.
And for some reason, Remus struggled to retain the nicknames, though they were used more often. The human names he retained easily, though he’d heard those only once.
“Anything else I can do for you, Mother?” Ronan - Hardwood - was asking.
“No, child, that’s fine,” Anna said. “You may run along until it’s time for dinner.”
She smiled up at him and he bowed again, then loped out of the clearing, looking eager to be away quickly, before someone could saddle him with the useless city wolf once again.
Arms aching, having waited his turn, Remus stepped forward now with his smaller armload of wood, gathered here and there amongst the few stands of trees scattered about the moor. He bowed his head and set the wood at Anna’s feet. “This is my small contribution, Mother,” he said.
“Thank you, City,” she said, nodding.
To Remus’ chagrin, this had stuck immediately as his own nickname. It hardly seemed fitting, given he’d spent most of his life in small towns or the countryside. But to these werewolves, City Wolf was what he was.
“Very fine,” Anna said again. “We shall have a bonfire tonight, City Wolf. A fire is good for aching old bones, on the last night before a full moon.”
With another nod she dismissed him, so Remus retreated to his own small spot, a piece of canvas in which he could halfway roll himself up at night, against the base of a tree. It wasn’t a comfortable way to sleep, not at all, but Remus had had worse.
Now he settled down onto his bit of canvas, cross-legged, and observed the camp.
It was a simple place, but with shelter enough to keep out the worst of it when it rained. Each member of the pack - there were twelve - had her or his own small sleeping spot, under a piece of tarpaulin or a shelter made of branches. The centre of the clearing was a communal space for cooking, talking, eating.
At the moment, the only pack members present were Anna, and a woman roughly Remus’ age called Serena. She was a black woman with hair that framed her face in neat, tight curls, and she had a delicate, wiry strength. Her pack nickname was “Trouble.” To Remus, the name didn’t seem at all to match her sombre demeanour, but from comments the others had made when she was introduced, it seemed the nickname originated from incidents in her younger days. Reference to that unspecified backstory had elicited a sly giggle from this otherwise serious and watchful woman.
Currently, “Trouble” was weaving a basket from long strands of grass, periodically glancing up to cast mistrustful glances in Remus’ direction. Uncomfortable sitting idle while the others were working, Remus finally called over to her, “Could I help you?”
Her gaze snapped to him again, startled at being addressed directly. “No, thank you,” she said, polite but definitive. So Remus subsided again, watching as her hands went deftly about their work.
He knew he hadn’t seen Serena at Imbolc, the seasonal festival between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, when werewolves from a number of packs had gathered in the south of France. Remus had attended that gathering as one of his scouting missions for the Order. He remembered seeing the Alpha there, of course, and retained a vague impression of two young males who’d been with him, the two Remus now knew were called Narun (or Rapids, his werewolf nickname) and Adair (or Jump). Narun looked to be of Indian descent, dark-haired and slim, while Adair was blonde, a little shorter, and broader chested. Otherwise the two young men were very similar, both restless and athletic and disinclined to sit still.
Anna, still seated on her tree stump, suddenly lifted her head, as if she’d heard or scented something. Remus looked around. Ah, there - Brighid, the Alpha’s mate, was approaching across the rolling, open land of the moor.
Once again, Remus marvelled at these werewolves’ senses. Even Anna with her clouded eyes saw things Remus missed. He wondered if his own senses were blunted by years of reliance on magic.
Brighid grinned widely as she stepped into the clearing. Brighid had a high forehead and high cheekbones, and flowing auburn hair interrupted at her left temple by a dramatic streak of white. Today, she returned with a whole small deer strapped to her back. As they all did, she went first to Anna, bending to kiss the older woman’s hand.
“We’ll have a feast tonight, Mother,” she said. “A feast tonight and a hunt tomorrow night. Perhaps our City Wolf is a good luck charm,” she added, with a sly glance in Remus’ direction. Brighid, whose werewolf name was Fire, was the only one aside from the Alpha and the Mother who didn’t seem to view Remus with mistrust. She had a mischievous manner, but Remus knew better than to mistake Brighid for anything but what she was: a high-ranking pack member, every inch as fierce and astute as her partner the Alpha.
“Very good, child,” the Mother said, and Remus’ heart squeezed softly at the tenderness of the older woman addressing the younger one that way, although Brighid was surely Remus’ age at least. “Shall we start the fire?”
“So it shall be,” Brighid agreed, setting down her burden and beginning to assemble kindling and wood. Serena put aside her half-finished basket and came to help.
Once again, Remus was no help here. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d built a fire with anything but an Incendio charm. And the pack wouldn’t appreciate him doing wizard-style magic anyway, even if he hadn’t left his wand under a rock on the outskirts of the nearby village.
One by one, the pack members returned to the clearing, as the sun slid down towards the horizon. They bore edible berries harvested from the moor, a few wild mushrooms, and a large jug refilled with water from the nearest stream, as well as more grasses for Serena’s basket-making and a few items of clothing almost certainly nicked from some village clothesline. Not that Remus was going to comment on that.
Last to return was Tamara, nickname Blackthorn, a young woman roughly the same age as Ronan, Narun and Adair. She was willowy and looked as though she might be partly of Chinese descent, and she had long, silky dark hair. Along with her, tugging at her hand in her excitement to return to the camp, came little Joy.
Joy was by far the youngest here, six or seven years old by Remus’ guess. She had wide, curious, dark-lashed eyes that never stopped taking in the world around her, and angular limbs in constant motion.
Joy pulled free of Tamara’s hand and darted to Serena, who ran an affectionate hand over the girl’s head and smiled a rare smile, bringing out unexpected dimples at each side of her mouth. Serena and Joy shared little resemblance beyond having roughly the same colouring, but their relationship certainly seemed like that of a mother and child. Again, Remus knew better than to pry into a werewolf’s family, or chosen family.
Serena steered Joy away from the fire so that Jack and Ashmita, an adult pair of mates, could set up a spit there for roasting meat. Joy wriggled free again, and ran to Anna. “A story!” she called. “Tell us a story, Mother.” That title, of course, belonged to the pack’s mother, rather than to any parent of her own.
Anna chuckled and peered down at Joy, who crouched before the tree stump where Anna sat. “You shall have your story after dinner, child. Ask me then.”
Joy pouted as any six-or-perhaps-seven-year-old would, but was quickly distracted by Ashmita’s offer to let her help turn the spit.
Joy was the only child in the pack. The next youngest was Eirwen, a girl Remus judged to be at the young end of teenaged. Eirwen had a small, round face with an angular nose and anxious eyes, framed by wavy chestnut hair, and the pinched look of someone separated from her family too soon. Remus also suspected she was a newly turned werewolf, within the past few months perhaps, from the hesitant way she moved among the others.
To have so few children was rare for a werewolf pack, Remus knew. Some even had more children than adults - Greyback’s pack in the south of England, for example. That was Greyback’s policy: turning children, turning them when they were young enough that he could turn their minds, too. Even here among werewolves, Remus intended to avoid Greyback for as long as he could. He knew Greyback hated when one of his “own” eluded his clutches.
Remus was saved from the grip of these less than pleasant reflections by the call to dinner. He’d expected a hierarchy in the way the pack ate, and perhaps scorn directed his way, not undeserved, for sharing their food when he contributed so little, but he detected none. Everyone present contributed what they could, and took what they needed.
Werewolves, the original Communists. Who knew? Remus thought with a faint, private smile.
As they ate, several pack members informed the others about food sources or other resources they’d found. Then the Alpha announced, “Rapids will stay with Mother this full moon.”
Remus had expected this would be seen as a burden, but from the way Rapids - that was Narun - subtly straightened up at the words, while Tamara and Ronan and Adair slumped down, he saw that it was anything but. So, being the werewolf who had to stay back at the camp and guard its eldest member was considered an honour. Interesting.
As conversation faded from official announcements to quiet chatter, Anna declared in her thin but carrying voice, “I believe someone requested a story.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” Joy chirped, bouncing up and down. “Yes, please, Mother, please.” Laughter rippled around the circle at her enthusiasm.
“Then in honour of the one who asked,” Anna said, her soft voice carrying through the group with authority, “I shall tell the story of How Children Came to Be.”
Joy snuggled into Serena’s lap, and the adults around the fire settled in comfortably, listening. Eirwen, the lone teenager, clutched her knees to her chest, sitting a little apart from the others.
And Anna began.
“Once, long ago, in a distant time, there were no humans and only two wolves. They were the Great She-Wolf and the Great He-Wolf.”
Heads were nodding around the circle, to a clearly familiar refrain.
“The Great She-Wolf and the Great He-Wolf lived on a wide, beautiful plain, with every kind of animal and plant. The sun coaxed the seeds from the ground and the rain came every day to help them grow.
“But the Great She-Wolf and the Great He-Wolf were lonely, for they were the only animals with the power of speech.
“‘It is a strange thing,’ said the Great She-Wolf to the Great He-Wolf. ‘I know all the things you know and you know all the things I know. There is no one to ask or tell us anything new.’
“‘It is a strange thing,’ agreed the Great He-Wolf. ‘We know so much of the ways of this world, yet we have no one with whom we can share our knowledge.’
“That night, curled up in their den, the Great She-Wolf and the Great He-Wolf both dreamt of the same thing: A small wolf who would understand their words, someone who would ask them new questions and tell them new things.
“The next morning, when the Great She-Wolf went to stoke the day’s fire, she blew on the embers and fed them with twigs, and what should spring up from the flames but the First Cub, a child born of the fire and raised from the Earth.
“And the First Cub looked up and asked, ‘Mother, what am I?’
“And the Great She-Wolf said, ‘You are a wolf cub.’
“And the First Cub asked, ‘Mother, what is this thing that is so warm?’
“And the Great She-Wolf said, ‘This is a fire.’
“And the First Cub asked, ‘Mother, how did I, a wolf cub, come from this, a fire?’
“And the Great She-Wolf said, ‘Child, that is the greatest mystery of all.’
“And every day from that day forth, the First Cub asked a thousand questions, and still woke up the next morning with a thousand more. And the Great She-Wolf and the Great He-Wolf were happy, because they learned to wonder at the world anew when they saw it through the eyes of their child.
“And that, Young Ones, is the story of How Children Came to Be.”
No one said a word into the contented silence. Joy was curled up in Serena’s lap, eyes closed. Ronan and Adair leaned shoulder to shoulder. Eirwen was still hunched over her own knees, gazing at Anna, the Mother.
At last, the Alpha said, “And now, it’s time for sleep. Let us sleep long and well before the full moon night tomorrow.”
A pleasant shiver of anticipation rippled through the group. It was a strange thing to witness, when Remus himself had never felt pleasant anticipation at the approach of a full moon.
No, that wasn’t quite true. During those few precious years when James, Sirius and Peter had been his friends and become Animagi for him, a thread of excitement had mingled with the apprehension before a full moon. During those years, Remus had known his friends would keep him safe and, more importantly, keep others safe from him. And that they would tell wonderful stories in the morning about the adventures the four of them had had in the night, even if Remus himself could only vaguely remember them.
Perhaps, Remus thought as he rolled himself up in his bit of canvas and prepared to sleep, that was how it felt to belong to a pack.
(continue to CHAPTER FIVE: Quiet)