Raise Your Lantern High, chapter 7: Enquiring Minds
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 7: Enquiring Minds
You can’t start a fire, sitting around crying over a broken heart
This gun’s for hire, even if we’re just dancing in the dark
-Bruce Springsteen, Dancing in the Dark
Tonks kept knocking at doors and chatting with shopkeepers, and just when she was starting to think Hogsmeade would turn out to be entirely, boringly harmless after all, she surprised herself by turning up a lead.
She’d dropped in at a small bookseller’s shop that was tucked away down a side lane, far from the high street. When Tonks walked through the door of the shop in her Auror robes, the bookseller, a slim-shouldered man with a tidy brown moustache, looked up nervously. And he looked even more nervous when she showed an inclination to hang around and make conversation.
Being nervous wasn’t against the law, of course, but nervousness in the presence of an Auror tended to have a certain indicative quality. So Tonks leaned against the counter next to the old-fashioned till and turned up the charm.
“Nice weather today,” she said brightly, though it wasn’t, particularly. But at least it wasn’t raining, that was something.
“Suppose so,” the bookseller returned unwillingly, shifting from one foot to the other.
Oh, yes, this was part of her job she loved, the mystery-solving part, where she had to use her wits and her training to scent out subtle clues that didn’t quite add up, all without letting the subject catch on to what she was doing.
“This is such a cosy shop,” Tonks chirped. “And it looks like you have a great selection. Do you get many Hogwarts students coming in here?” She turned her body subtly towards the right side of the shop, where a tall shelf labelled HISTORY AND MAGICOPHILOLOGY teetered up to the ceiling.
“No, no,” the man mumbled, but his posture eased slightly. “The kids want sweets and jokes and things. They don’t usually come in here.”
Now, Tonks swivelled her body discreetly to the left. “But the Hogwarts professors, surely? You must get a lot of them.”
The proprietor agreed, “Oh, yes. Plenty of the professors come in.”
Interesting, he still looked more at ease than he’d been when she was facing directly towards him. So whatever he was hiding, it wasn’t to her left or her right. Tonks shuffled to the side, pretending to examine a stack of tomes beside the till, until she’d manoeuvred herself to the point that she could face the back of the shop without also facing the man himself. “Do you sell fiction, too? Or just nonfiction?”
He tensed. “What? Oh, no, no, only nonfiction titles. For novels, you’ll need to visit The Lovely Leaves, down the other end of the village.”
Eureka. Whatever he was hiding, it was somewhere in the back of the shop, in the staff-only rooms beyond the counter.
“Oh, right,” Tonks said, affecting nonchalance despite a rising tide of elation in her chest. “Thanks for the tip. Maybe I’ll drop by there later on.”
“Yes, yes,” the bookseller murmured, relaxing again as Tonks turned away and pretended to survey the titles in the TRANSFIGURATION AND CONJURING section that took up the lower portion of one wall.
She chirped a goodbye as she exited the shop, strolled back along the lane until she’d turned the corner onto the high street and was out of sight of the bookshop - then bolted for the Post Office to send an owl to Arthur Weasley in his official capacity as head of the Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects.
But when she met with Arthur the next evening at the kitchen table in the Burrow, his response was disheartening.
“I’m sorry, Tonks,” he said. “I do understand your impulse, but ‘he was acting shifty’ just isn’t enough justification for me to authorise a full-scale raid. I’ve still got egg on my face over our raid on Malfoy Mansion that came up empty-handed. Another one like that and they’ll stop listening to me entirely.”
Tonks stilled her fingers, which were tapping impatiently against the tabletop. “Arthur, I’m sure of this. There’s something illegal in that shop, probably something fairly Dark. You can trust my instincts - this is what Aurors train for. The guy may not be a Death Eater himself, but I promise you, he’s in league with them.”
Arthur rubbed his forehead, face uncharacteristically weary. “Get me some evidence, then. Any hard evidence I can base this on, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Tonks nodded. “All right. I’ll find a way to get evidence.”
“You’ll stay for dinner, Tonks, won’t you?” Molly broke in, poking her head around the kitchen doorway. Tonks knew her tired features and drab hair were bringing out Molly’s mother hen instinct, and the chance to eat a proper home-cooked meal certainly was appealing. But Tonks finally had a professional puzzle to dig her teeth into, and she couldn’t wait to start grappling with it.
“Thanks, Molly,” she said. “I appreciate it, but I’ve got to get back to Hogsmeade.”
Molly clucked her disapproval, but Tonks was soon waving goodbye and stepping beyond the boundary of the Burrow’s garden to Apparate away.
Back in her attic room, she kicked off her boots, shrugged out of her cloak, then grabbed a quill and parchment and got to work, scribbling down notes concerning what she was already referring to in her head as The Case of the Dodgy Bookseller.
- - - - -
The pack, as it turned out, were not in fact planning to face the winter without a roof over their heads. Remus had been quietly wondering over this for a while, when Ashmita finally filled him by explaining the purpose of a pile of lumber scraps and odds and ends, which had been slowly growing beside the usual supply of firewood stacked to one side of the clearing.
Ashmita laughed out loud when Remus admitted he’d been wondering if the pack planned to continue into the winter living as they were. “Being werewolves doesn’t make us idiots,” she exclaimed. Then she patted him on the shoulder and explained that the pack preferred sleeping in the open during the summer months, but before winter arrived they would build a lean-to from the wood they’d collected. It would be a simple structure, just large enough for all the pack to find sleeping space within it.
“It’s what makes winter such a special time,” Ashmita said, her tone unusually earnest. “It’s cold outside, yes, but winter brings us closer together to share warmth, and share the fire. It’s when we tell our stories, when the young ones learn about our culture and our past. You’ll see.”
Privately, Remus felt they already shared quite close quarters and spent an enormous amount of time together around the fire, but he was curious to see if the change in living arrangements really did have an effect on the social interactions of the pack.
The October full moon passed and the air grew decidedly chill. Winter preparations commenced in earnest, with nearly all daylight hours spent scouting for building materials, along with the usual supplies. These scouting trips ranged further and further afield in search of scarce resources, and Remus thought often how much easier their lives would be if they could Apparate. But of course Apparition training and licencing were privileges not accessible to those who lived beyond the bounds of wizarding society.
Remus also thought often of his wand, still safely stowed - he hoped - beneath a rock outside the village to which he’d Apparated when he first came to the moor. Already, that life seemed a world apart. Remus missed magic, and not only for how much easier it made daily tasks. He hadn’t been without his wand for any significant length of time since he was eleven, and he missed its familiar tingle of magical energy against his palm.
“Keep up there, Quiet!” Narun called back to Remus.
He was out with Narun and Ronan today, this time for nothing more strenuous than collecting firewood. Remus’ muscles still ached from the last few days, which the entire pack had spent hauling away wooden beams from an abandoned barn some of the younger ones had come across in their explorations. No wonder he was daydreaming of wands and locomotion charms.
He was also trying to puzzle out why the Alpha so often sent him out with some combination of the young ones, when Remus could just as easily have been paired with one of the adult members - Serena, Ashmita, Jack, Brighid. Instead, he was once again out for the day with two of the pack’s younger members, who were openly disdainful of his presence. Were they meant to be a good influence on him, or he on them?
Remus jogged a little, to catch up. “You’re right, I was daydreaming,” he said, giving Narun a friendly smile. Narun looked at him blankly for a moment, then turned again to Ronan.
The lion’s share of the two young men’s conversation so far that day had consisted of some mild whingeing about how boring it was to look for firewood all day, and how much more fun it was when it was their turn to hunt the small game that formed an important part of the pack’s diet.
There was no denying the truth behind their complaint - there wasn’t much excitement out here for young adults like these two. Once again, Remus wished these boys had had the opportunity to learn wand magic, and to take advantage of their intelligence and abilities.
“It would sure be something, right?” Narun said to Ronan, having returned to ignoring Remus.
“Yeah,” Ronan said. “But what d’you think it’s like?”
“At this rate, we’re never going to know, are we?”
Remus was now acutely aware that their conversation had moved beyond innocent chatter about hunting rabbits.
Suddenly Narun’s attention was back on Remus. “You’ve been in other packs, right?”
“I’ve never before lived within a pack,” Remus replied, cautious, “but I’ve visited a number of different ones, yes.”
“So you’ve been in some of those ones that aren’t so strict about never harming humans. Where it’s okay to kill them if they get in our way on the full moon?”
Remus had not expected to be asked that question so bluntly.
“I have never spent any length of time with such a pack, nor would I ever choose to join such a one,” he said, keeping his tone carefully non-confrontational. “I believe that if one has the power to do harm, it is all the more reason not to do so.”
“I just don’t see why we should have to hide from them,” Narun said, his increasingly strident tone ringing out in the clear, cold air. “Why are we always the ones who have to keep out of their way?”
They were such a strange mix of elements, these boys - bravado and an urge to prove themselves as adults, mixed with a genuine respect for the hierarchy of the pack and a deference towards their elders, especially Anna, the Mother. Their allegiance to the pack structure was all the more evident in the way they disdained Remus, who might be their elder in years but was nowhere near them in pack status. Yet they chafed, too, at the restrictions placed on them by the Alpha of the pack.
“Besides, we’re werewolves,” Ronan put in. “It’s in our nature. Telling us we can’t attack is like - like putting us in a cage or something.”
“We used to meet with other packs more often, you know. We’re not dumb, we know a lot of them are freer about that stuff,” Narun said, and Remus again remembered having seen both him and Adair in France with their Alpha the previous winter, at a large gathering of werewolves during the festival of Imbolc. “But Alpha hasn’t let us go to any of the big gatherings in ages. Doesn’t want us getting ideas, you know?” He snorted softly, probably the closest he would come to expressing open disapproval of his Alpha.
Shifting the branches he was carrying into his other arm, Remus decided to try a different tack. “How did you first become werewolves?” he asked. “Narun - Rapids, how were you turned?”
This was an indelicate question and one Remus would have hesitated to ask an adult member of the pack, but he suspected the younger ones wouldn’t mind as much.
Indeed, Narun didn’t even blink. “We were on holiday, my birth family and I. Camping in the Black Forest. They were killed and I was turned. You’re probably going to say they were innocent victims and I should feel bad about them and whatever, but there’s no such thing as innocent. There’s just predator and prey, and if you’re stupid, that makes you prey. My birth parents were stupid.”
Ah, yes, the surety of youth. “I don’t see the world in terms of predator and prey,” Remus replied, but he left it at that for now. “Hardwood, what about you? How were you turned?”
Ronan shrugged. “It was an accident, too. I don’t really remember it.”
Remus doubted that. He remembered his own attack vividly, and he had been a very small child then. His impression was that most of the pack’s members had been turned by chance, by the bad luck of being in the wrong place on a full moon, not because they’d been the specific target of revenge, like Remus.
Sometimes Remus honestly wasn’t sure which was worse.
To Ronan he said, keeping his voice light, “Then I suppose I can’t ask you if it was an experience you would wish on any other child?”
Ronan shrugged again, looking uncomfortable.
“I remember the attack that turned me,” Remus said quietly. “I wouldn’t wish it on another living soul.”
The boys were quiet for a while after that. Remus’ words seemed to hang in the air between the three of them, uncomfortably so. But perhaps unsettling them a little in their cocksure beliefs was entirely the point. At any rate, when the boys’ conversation eventually started up again, it drifted to other, less fraught topics.
When they arrived back in camp that evening, they learned that Tamara and Adair had managed to “liberate” an entire roll of tar paper from somewhere, and the mood in the little clearing was jubilant at the thought of all the winter nights in which they would now not be rained and snowed upon.
Construction of the pack’s winter shelter began in earnest the next morning.
- - - - -
Tonks was about ready to tear out her (mousy, brown, persistently un-transformed) hair.
For days now, she’d been trying to come up with a way to see, hear or seize the evidence she needed in order to initiate a raid on her dodgy bookseller, without tipping him off to what she was trying to do.
It was frustrating that such a seemingly simple thing should prove so difficult to carry out. That, combined with the effort of putting on her cheerful-neighbourhood-Auror act, when not in fact feeling cheerful in the least, had Tonks feeling cranky.
So, all in all, she was not best pleased when Dawlish reminded her that the next day would be Hogwarts’ first Hogsmeade weekend of the school year - which meant Tonks would most likely be spending her day preventing thirteen-year-olds from hexing each other, instead of continuing her search for the evidence she so badly needed.
The morning dawned bitterly cold. A blustering wind rattled at Tonks’ attic window, which was rendered opaque by a thin sheen of frost. Lying in bed, Tonks took a moment to mentally hex all the impediments to her investigation, but most especially thirteen-year-olds, then threw off the covers and got dressed.
It didn’t even lift Tonks’ mood when her rounds of Hogsmeade’s heavily sleeting streets brought her directly upon Harry, Ron and Hermione. There wasn’t much time for pleasantries, anyway, given that Tonks arrived to the sight of Mundungus Fletcher Disapparating and an apoplectic Harry hurling invective at the empty air where Mundungus had been.
“There’s no point, Harry,” Tonks said, with little energy to spare for anything more than the bare minimum of facts. “Mundungus will probably be in London by now. There’s no point yelling.”
“He’s nicked Sirius’ stuff! Nicked it!”
Yeah, but being divested of some old Black family junk is really the least of your worries, kid, Tonks thought as she chivvied the three of them on towards the warmth and relative safety of the Three Broomsticks. And anyway, she thought with a pang, Sirius himself probably would have had a laugh to see that Mundungus’ latest get-rich-quick scheme was at his expense, stealing family heirlooms Sirius had never wanted anyway.
Once Tonks had seen the kids safely inside the Three Broomsticks, it was back to patrolling the village streets in the relentless sleet. Until, not an hour later, Savage appeared in front of Tonks with a pop and shouted that a student had been cursed on the way back to Hogwarts. Savage was already twisting the dials on his Aurorlog - the service-issue wristbands that allowed them to communicate urgent situations to their colleagues via the colours and positions of the hands on its face - to summon the others to them.
Things kicked into high gear after that. Savage and Proudfoot went to conduct witness interviews at the Three Broomsticks, apparently the last known origin of the necklace that had cursed the student, while Dawlish did a sweep of town and Tonks, once again, was dispatched to Hogwarts as a liaison to get the rest of the story - the actual story, as opposed to the rumours that were already circulating wildly thanks to other students who had witnessed the incident.
Tonks arrived up at the castle to learn that Dumbledore was away on “official business” (“business,” right - more like secret doings for the Order) and McGonagall was in the hospital wing checking on the cursed student. So Tonks waited outside the deputy headmistress’ office, watching melting sleet drip from her hair until she finally got fed up and Vanished the rest of the damp slush that clung to her head and cloak.
“Ms Tonks.” Tonks looked up to see McGonagall approaching.
“Hello, Professor McGonagall.” Seeing McGonagall always made Tonks feel weirdly formal. McGonagall hadn’t been her head of house, of course, but she’d helped Tonks a lot in her first years at Hogwarts, with the complications of learning Transfiguration as a Metamorphmagus, which was a lot more complicated than people assumed. “I’ve been sent to find out from you what happened, while the other Aurors are investigating in the village.”
McGonagall nodded briskly, stepping in to unlock her office door as Tonks tried awkwardly to step out of her way without bumping into McGonagall or slipping on the wet floor.
Once they were settled on opposite sides of the professor’s desk, McGonagall said, “The girl who was attacked today is called Katie Bell. She is a seventh-year student in Gryffindor house. Whilst at the Three Broomsticks, she was given a package by an unidentified individual, with instructions to deliver it to the school. We’re operating under the assumption that she was additionally placed under an Imperius curse, since the friend who was with her at the time reports she was acting ‘oddly’ and being quite insistent on the necessity of delivering the package, despite the suspicious circumstances surrounding it. Professor Snape is working as we speak to contain the curse, and Miss Bell will be transferred to St Mungo’s as soon as she is stable.”
“She’ll be all right, then?”
“We hope so.”
“And there’s no indication who gave her the package?”
“None so far. If your colleagues in Hogsmeade do discover additional information, we would be grateful to hear about it.”
“Of course,” Tonks said. The Ministry and Dumbledore might be increasingly at odds, but this was a matter of a student’s safety. Both sides should put aside their differences and collaborate as closely as possible.
Tonks glanced again at a row of vials that lined the shelf behind Professor McGonagall’s head. Those vials kept drawing Tonks’ eye, giving her the niggling sense that they connected somehow to something that could help with her Dodgy Bookseller problem, if she could only focus her mind and catch hold of what that something was.
Vials…vials like ones used to store memories for a Pensieve - or to hold sounds caught using a sound-capturing charm…but she’d already rejected that idea. There was no way to get close enough to her target to record him saying something incriminating without him knowing she was there. Not even a distance hearing charm would help - those could magnify faraway sounds, but only if she could get a sightline on the source in order to cast the charm, which again was not going to happen. The guy wasn’t exactly going to let her hang around in his back room listening to him talk.
Sound-capturing charms…sounds that were too far away to capture…wishing she could get her ears close enough to hear those sounds… What was the tantalising connection hovering just beyond her reach?
“Ms Tonks?” Professor McGonagall asked, probably wondering why Tonks was staring fixedly at the air above her head.
“Oh - sorry,” Tonks said, dragging her attention back to the woman in front of her.
Professor McGonagall…that stern expression…stern but fair, giving the same telling-off to mischief-makers even if they were in her own house…a crystal clear memory from Tonks’ own student days, of McGonagall standing in the Entrance Hall with her hands on her hips, dressing down two pint-sized pipsqueaks with flaming red hair and identically unrepentant grins…two pipsqueaks who would go on to become some of Hogwarts’ most accomplished mischief-makers …
“Extendable Ears!” Tonks gasped.
“Pardon?” McGonagall asked, her eyebrows climbing up her forehead.
“Just - sorry, Professor, I think I’ve made a breakthrough in a case I’m working on and I need to go to London, right now.” Leaping to her feet, she added, “We’ll keep you apprised and let you know if the investigation in Hogsmeade turns up anything about the source of the cursed package. I’m so sorry to rush out like this, but I’ve got to get to London before the shops close.”
“Yes, of course, that’s fine.” Professor McGonagall looked nonplussed, but rose smoothly from her seat. “Do drop by any time, Nymphadora.”
Tonks forced herself to slow down and be polite. “Thank you, Professor, really. Thanks for taking the time to fill me in on this. I know how busy you are.”
“Any time.” McGonagall repeated, and looked almost indulgent as she saw Tonks and her flurry of urgency to the door.
Once she was outside the office and striding down the corridor, Tonks pulled out her watch. Yes! There was still enough time to make it to London before the end of business hours and pay a visit to Mssrs. Weasley and Weasley.
Chapter End Notes:
Credit to fernwithy for the idea that learning Transfiguration is actually harder for a Metamorphmagus, not easier - I though that was a really cool idea, so I borrowed it!
Also, I was fascinated ages ago by this story about young Tonks learning to control her Metamorphmagus abilities - and, again, it being less intuitive and more difficult than you might think: "The Shape of Me" by Pandora Culpa. If I remember right, the story is unfinished, but it doesn't leave you with a terrible cliffhanger or anything. And very much worth reading for the exploration of what it's like to be a young Metamorphmagus!
My own story " In the Wrong House" is sneakily the source of the "distance hearing charm" Tonks mentions here. (Remus teaches it to the Marauders for purposes of a prank!)
And here are those werewolves again, to help you keep track:
The werewolf pack:
the Alpha, a male in his 40s, the pack’s leader
Anna, or the Mother, the oldest pack member, symbolic mother of all
Brighid, or Fire, the Alpha’s mate, roughly his age
Serena, or Trouble, roughly Remus’ age
Jack, or Thunderstorm, a little younger than the Alpha, Ashmita’s mate
Ashmita, or Rock Crag, Jack’s mate
Ronan, or Hardwood, young adult member of the pack, perhaps 20
Narun, or Rapids, roughly the same age
Adair, or Jump, roughly the same age
Tamara, or Blackthorn, roughly the same age
Eirwen, or Slither, a young teenager, 13 or 14
Joy, or River Run, the pack’s youngest member, 6 or 7
(continue to CHAPTER EIGHT: Nymphadora Tonks and the Case of the Dodgy Bookseller)
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 7: Enquiring Minds
You can’t start a fire, sitting around crying over a broken heart
This gun’s for hire, even if we’re just dancing in the dark
-Bruce Springsteen, Dancing in the Dark
Tonks kept knocking at doors and chatting with shopkeepers, and just when she was starting to think Hogsmeade would turn out to be entirely, boringly harmless after all, she surprised herself by turning up a lead.
She’d dropped in at a small bookseller’s shop that was tucked away down a side lane, far from the high street. When Tonks walked through the door of the shop in her Auror robes, the bookseller, a slim-shouldered man with a tidy brown moustache, looked up nervously. And he looked even more nervous when she showed an inclination to hang around and make conversation.
Being nervous wasn’t against the law, of course, but nervousness in the presence of an Auror tended to have a certain indicative quality. So Tonks leaned against the counter next to the old-fashioned till and turned up the charm.
“Nice weather today,” she said brightly, though it wasn’t, particularly. But at least it wasn’t raining, that was something.
“Suppose so,” the bookseller returned unwillingly, shifting from one foot to the other.
Oh, yes, this was part of her job she loved, the mystery-solving part, where she had to use her wits and her training to scent out subtle clues that didn’t quite add up, all without letting the subject catch on to what she was doing.
“This is such a cosy shop,” Tonks chirped. “And it looks like you have a great selection. Do you get many Hogwarts students coming in here?” She turned her body subtly towards the right side of the shop, where a tall shelf labelled HISTORY AND MAGICOPHILOLOGY teetered up to the ceiling.
“No, no,” the man mumbled, but his posture eased slightly. “The kids want sweets and jokes and things. They don’t usually come in here.”
Now, Tonks swivelled her body discreetly to the left. “But the Hogwarts professors, surely? You must get a lot of them.”
The proprietor agreed, “Oh, yes. Plenty of the professors come in.”
Interesting, he still looked more at ease than he’d been when she was facing directly towards him. So whatever he was hiding, it wasn’t to her left or her right. Tonks shuffled to the side, pretending to examine a stack of tomes beside the till, until she’d manoeuvred herself to the point that she could face the back of the shop without also facing the man himself. “Do you sell fiction, too? Or just nonfiction?”
He tensed. “What? Oh, no, no, only nonfiction titles. For novels, you’ll need to visit The Lovely Leaves, down the other end of the village.”
Eureka. Whatever he was hiding, it was somewhere in the back of the shop, in the staff-only rooms beyond the counter.
“Oh, right,” Tonks said, affecting nonchalance despite a rising tide of elation in her chest. “Thanks for the tip. Maybe I’ll drop by there later on.”
“Yes, yes,” the bookseller murmured, relaxing again as Tonks turned away and pretended to survey the titles in the TRANSFIGURATION AND CONJURING section that took up the lower portion of one wall.
She chirped a goodbye as she exited the shop, strolled back along the lane until she’d turned the corner onto the high street and was out of sight of the bookshop - then bolted for the Post Office to send an owl to Arthur Weasley in his official capacity as head of the Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects.
But when she met with Arthur the next evening at the kitchen table in the Burrow, his response was disheartening.
“I’m sorry, Tonks,” he said. “I do understand your impulse, but ‘he was acting shifty’ just isn’t enough justification for me to authorise a full-scale raid. I’ve still got egg on my face over our raid on Malfoy Mansion that came up empty-handed. Another one like that and they’ll stop listening to me entirely.”
Tonks stilled her fingers, which were tapping impatiently against the tabletop. “Arthur, I’m sure of this. There’s something illegal in that shop, probably something fairly Dark. You can trust my instincts - this is what Aurors train for. The guy may not be a Death Eater himself, but I promise you, he’s in league with them.”
Arthur rubbed his forehead, face uncharacteristically weary. “Get me some evidence, then. Any hard evidence I can base this on, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Tonks nodded. “All right. I’ll find a way to get evidence.”
“You’ll stay for dinner, Tonks, won’t you?” Molly broke in, poking her head around the kitchen doorway. Tonks knew her tired features and drab hair were bringing out Molly’s mother hen instinct, and the chance to eat a proper home-cooked meal certainly was appealing. But Tonks finally had a professional puzzle to dig her teeth into, and she couldn’t wait to start grappling with it.
“Thanks, Molly,” she said. “I appreciate it, but I’ve got to get back to Hogsmeade.”
Molly clucked her disapproval, but Tonks was soon waving goodbye and stepping beyond the boundary of the Burrow’s garden to Apparate away.
Back in her attic room, she kicked off her boots, shrugged out of her cloak, then grabbed a quill and parchment and got to work, scribbling down notes concerning what she was already referring to in her head as The Case of the Dodgy Bookseller.
- - - - -
The pack, as it turned out, were not in fact planning to face the winter without a roof over their heads. Remus had been quietly wondering over this for a while, when Ashmita finally filled him by explaining the purpose of a pile of lumber scraps and odds and ends, which had been slowly growing beside the usual supply of firewood stacked to one side of the clearing.
Ashmita laughed out loud when Remus admitted he’d been wondering if the pack planned to continue into the winter living as they were. “Being werewolves doesn’t make us idiots,” she exclaimed. Then she patted him on the shoulder and explained that the pack preferred sleeping in the open during the summer months, but before winter arrived they would build a lean-to from the wood they’d collected. It would be a simple structure, just large enough for all the pack to find sleeping space within it.
“It’s what makes winter such a special time,” Ashmita said, her tone unusually earnest. “It’s cold outside, yes, but winter brings us closer together to share warmth, and share the fire. It’s when we tell our stories, when the young ones learn about our culture and our past. You’ll see.”
Privately, Remus felt they already shared quite close quarters and spent an enormous amount of time together around the fire, but he was curious to see if the change in living arrangements really did have an effect on the social interactions of the pack.
The October full moon passed and the air grew decidedly chill. Winter preparations commenced in earnest, with nearly all daylight hours spent scouting for building materials, along with the usual supplies. These scouting trips ranged further and further afield in search of scarce resources, and Remus thought often how much easier their lives would be if they could Apparate. But of course Apparition training and licencing were privileges not accessible to those who lived beyond the bounds of wizarding society.
Remus also thought often of his wand, still safely stowed - he hoped - beneath a rock outside the village to which he’d Apparated when he first came to the moor. Already, that life seemed a world apart. Remus missed magic, and not only for how much easier it made daily tasks. He hadn’t been without his wand for any significant length of time since he was eleven, and he missed its familiar tingle of magical energy against his palm.
“Keep up there, Quiet!” Narun called back to Remus.
He was out with Narun and Ronan today, this time for nothing more strenuous than collecting firewood. Remus’ muscles still ached from the last few days, which the entire pack had spent hauling away wooden beams from an abandoned barn some of the younger ones had come across in their explorations. No wonder he was daydreaming of wands and locomotion charms.
He was also trying to puzzle out why the Alpha so often sent him out with some combination of the young ones, when Remus could just as easily have been paired with one of the adult members - Serena, Ashmita, Jack, Brighid. Instead, he was once again out for the day with two of the pack’s younger members, who were openly disdainful of his presence. Were they meant to be a good influence on him, or he on them?
Remus jogged a little, to catch up. “You’re right, I was daydreaming,” he said, giving Narun a friendly smile. Narun looked at him blankly for a moment, then turned again to Ronan.
The lion’s share of the two young men’s conversation so far that day had consisted of some mild whingeing about how boring it was to look for firewood all day, and how much more fun it was when it was their turn to hunt the small game that formed an important part of the pack’s diet.
There was no denying the truth behind their complaint - there wasn’t much excitement out here for young adults like these two. Once again, Remus wished these boys had had the opportunity to learn wand magic, and to take advantage of their intelligence and abilities.
“It would sure be something, right?” Narun said to Ronan, having returned to ignoring Remus.
“Yeah,” Ronan said. “But what d’you think it’s like?”
“At this rate, we’re never going to know, are we?”
Remus was now acutely aware that their conversation had moved beyond innocent chatter about hunting rabbits.
Suddenly Narun’s attention was back on Remus. “You’ve been in other packs, right?”
“I’ve never before lived within a pack,” Remus replied, cautious, “but I’ve visited a number of different ones, yes.”
“So you’ve been in some of those ones that aren’t so strict about never harming humans. Where it’s okay to kill them if they get in our way on the full moon?”
Remus had not expected to be asked that question so bluntly.
“I have never spent any length of time with such a pack, nor would I ever choose to join such a one,” he said, keeping his tone carefully non-confrontational. “I believe that if one has the power to do harm, it is all the more reason not to do so.”
“I just don’t see why we should have to hide from them,” Narun said, his increasingly strident tone ringing out in the clear, cold air. “Why are we always the ones who have to keep out of their way?”
They were such a strange mix of elements, these boys - bravado and an urge to prove themselves as adults, mixed with a genuine respect for the hierarchy of the pack and a deference towards their elders, especially Anna, the Mother. Their allegiance to the pack structure was all the more evident in the way they disdained Remus, who might be their elder in years but was nowhere near them in pack status. Yet they chafed, too, at the restrictions placed on them by the Alpha of the pack.
“Besides, we’re werewolves,” Ronan put in. “It’s in our nature. Telling us we can’t attack is like - like putting us in a cage or something.”
“We used to meet with other packs more often, you know. We’re not dumb, we know a lot of them are freer about that stuff,” Narun said, and Remus again remembered having seen both him and Adair in France with their Alpha the previous winter, at a large gathering of werewolves during the festival of Imbolc. “But Alpha hasn’t let us go to any of the big gatherings in ages. Doesn’t want us getting ideas, you know?” He snorted softly, probably the closest he would come to expressing open disapproval of his Alpha.
Shifting the branches he was carrying into his other arm, Remus decided to try a different tack. “How did you first become werewolves?” he asked. “Narun - Rapids, how were you turned?”
This was an indelicate question and one Remus would have hesitated to ask an adult member of the pack, but he suspected the younger ones wouldn’t mind as much.
Indeed, Narun didn’t even blink. “We were on holiday, my birth family and I. Camping in the Black Forest. They were killed and I was turned. You’re probably going to say they were innocent victims and I should feel bad about them and whatever, but there’s no such thing as innocent. There’s just predator and prey, and if you’re stupid, that makes you prey. My birth parents were stupid.”
Ah, yes, the surety of youth. “I don’t see the world in terms of predator and prey,” Remus replied, but he left it at that for now. “Hardwood, what about you? How were you turned?”
Ronan shrugged. “It was an accident, too. I don’t really remember it.”
Remus doubted that. He remembered his own attack vividly, and he had been a very small child then. His impression was that most of the pack’s members had been turned by chance, by the bad luck of being in the wrong place on a full moon, not because they’d been the specific target of revenge, like Remus.
Sometimes Remus honestly wasn’t sure which was worse.
To Ronan he said, keeping his voice light, “Then I suppose I can’t ask you if it was an experience you would wish on any other child?”
Ronan shrugged again, looking uncomfortable.
“I remember the attack that turned me,” Remus said quietly. “I wouldn’t wish it on another living soul.”
The boys were quiet for a while after that. Remus’ words seemed to hang in the air between the three of them, uncomfortably so. But perhaps unsettling them a little in their cocksure beliefs was entirely the point. At any rate, when the boys’ conversation eventually started up again, it drifted to other, less fraught topics.
When they arrived back in camp that evening, they learned that Tamara and Adair had managed to “liberate” an entire roll of tar paper from somewhere, and the mood in the little clearing was jubilant at the thought of all the winter nights in which they would now not be rained and snowed upon.
Construction of the pack’s winter shelter began in earnest the next morning.
- - - - -
Tonks was about ready to tear out her (mousy, brown, persistently un-transformed) hair.
For days now, she’d been trying to come up with a way to see, hear or seize the evidence she needed in order to initiate a raid on her dodgy bookseller, without tipping him off to what she was trying to do.
It was frustrating that such a seemingly simple thing should prove so difficult to carry out. That, combined with the effort of putting on her cheerful-neighbourhood-Auror act, when not in fact feeling cheerful in the least, had Tonks feeling cranky.
So, all in all, she was not best pleased when Dawlish reminded her that the next day would be Hogwarts’ first Hogsmeade weekend of the school year - which meant Tonks would most likely be spending her day preventing thirteen-year-olds from hexing each other, instead of continuing her search for the evidence she so badly needed.
The morning dawned bitterly cold. A blustering wind rattled at Tonks’ attic window, which was rendered opaque by a thin sheen of frost. Lying in bed, Tonks took a moment to mentally hex all the impediments to her investigation, but most especially thirteen-year-olds, then threw off the covers and got dressed.
It didn’t even lift Tonks’ mood when her rounds of Hogsmeade’s heavily sleeting streets brought her directly upon Harry, Ron and Hermione. There wasn’t much time for pleasantries, anyway, given that Tonks arrived to the sight of Mundungus Fletcher Disapparating and an apoplectic Harry hurling invective at the empty air where Mundungus had been.
“There’s no point, Harry,” Tonks said, with little energy to spare for anything more than the bare minimum of facts. “Mundungus will probably be in London by now. There’s no point yelling.”
“He’s nicked Sirius’ stuff! Nicked it!”
Yeah, but being divested of some old Black family junk is really the least of your worries, kid, Tonks thought as she chivvied the three of them on towards the warmth and relative safety of the Three Broomsticks. And anyway, she thought with a pang, Sirius himself probably would have had a laugh to see that Mundungus’ latest get-rich-quick scheme was at his expense, stealing family heirlooms Sirius had never wanted anyway.
Once Tonks had seen the kids safely inside the Three Broomsticks, it was back to patrolling the village streets in the relentless sleet. Until, not an hour later, Savage appeared in front of Tonks with a pop and shouted that a student had been cursed on the way back to Hogwarts. Savage was already twisting the dials on his Aurorlog - the service-issue wristbands that allowed them to communicate urgent situations to their colleagues via the colours and positions of the hands on its face - to summon the others to them.
Things kicked into high gear after that. Savage and Proudfoot went to conduct witness interviews at the Three Broomsticks, apparently the last known origin of the necklace that had cursed the student, while Dawlish did a sweep of town and Tonks, once again, was dispatched to Hogwarts as a liaison to get the rest of the story - the actual story, as opposed to the rumours that were already circulating wildly thanks to other students who had witnessed the incident.
Tonks arrived up at the castle to learn that Dumbledore was away on “official business” (“business,” right - more like secret doings for the Order) and McGonagall was in the hospital wing checking on the cursed student. So Tonks waited outside the deputy headmistress’ office, watching melting sleet drip from her hair until she finally got fed up and Vanished the rest of the damp slush that clung to her head and cloak.
“Ms Tonks.” Tonks looked up to see McGonagall approaching.
“Hello, Professor McGonagall.” Seeing McGonagall always made Tonks feel weirdly formal. McGonagall hadn’t been her head of house, of course, but she’d helped Tonks a lot in her first years at Hogwarts, with the complications of learning Transfiguration as a Metamorphmagus, which was a lot more complicated than people assumed. “I’ve been sent to find out from you what happened, while the other Aurors are investigating in the village.”
McGonagall nodded briskly, stepping in to unlock her office door as Tonks tried awkwardly to step out of her way without bumping into McGonagall or slipping on the wet floor.
Once they were settled on opposite sides of the professor’s desk, McGonagall said, “The girl who was attacked today is called Katie Bell. She is a seventh-year student in Gryffindor house. Whilst at the Three Broomsticks, she was given a package by an unidentified individual, with instructions to deliver it to the school. We’re operating under the assumption that she was additionally placed under an Imperius curse, since the friend who was with her at the time reports she was acting ‘oddly’ and being quite insistent on the necessity of delivering the package, despite the suspicious circumstances surrounding it. Professor Snape is working as we speak to contain the curse, and Miss Bell will be transferred to St Mungo’s as soon as she is stable.”
“She’ll be all right, then?”
“We hope so.”
“And there’s no indication who gave her the package?”
“None so far. If your colleagues in Hogsmeade do discover additional information, we would be grateful to hear about it.”
“Of course,” Tonks said. The Ministry and Dumbledore might be increasingly at odds, but this was a matter of a student’s safety. Both sides should put aside their differences and collaborate as closely as possible.
Tonks glanced again at a row of vials that lined the shelf behind Professor McGonagall’s head. Those vials kept drawing Tonks’ eye, giving her the niggling sense that they connected somehow to something that could help with her Dodgy Bookseller problem, if she could only focus her mind and catch hold of what that something was.
Vials…vials like ones used to store memories for a Pensieve - or to hold sounds caught using a sound-capturing charm…but she’d already rejected that idea. There was no way to get close enough to her target to record him saying something incriminating without him knowing she was there. Not even a distance hearing charm would help - those could magnify faraway sounds, but only if she could get a sightline on the source in order to cast the charm, which again was not going to happen. The guy wasn’t exactly going to let her hang around in his back room listening to him talk.
Sound-capturing charms…sounds that were too far away to capture…wishing she could get her ears close enough to hear those sounds… What was the tantalising connection hovering just beyond her reach?
“Ms Tonks?” Professor McGonagall asked, probably wondering why Tonks was staring fixedly at the air above her head.
“Oh - sorry,” Tonks said, dragging her attention back to the woman in front of her.
Professor McGonagall…that stern expression…stern but fair, giving the same telling-off to mischief-makers even if they were in her own house…a crystal clear memory from Tonks’ own student days, of McGonagall standing in the Entrance Hall with her hands on her hips, dressing down two pint-sized pipsqueaks with flaming red hair and identically unrepentant grins…two pipsqueaks who would go on to become some of Hogwarts’ most accomplished mischief-makers …
“Extendable Ears!” Tonks gasped.
“Pardon?” McGonagall asked, her eyebrows climbing up her forehead.
“Just - sorry, Professor, I think I’ve made a breakthrough in a case I’m working on and I need to go to London, right now.” Leaping to her feet, she added, “We’ll keep you apprised and let you know if the investigation in Hogsmeade turns up anything about the source of the cursed package. I’m so sorry to rush out like this, but I’ve got to get to London before the shops close.”
“Yes, of course, that’s fine.” Professor McGonagall looked nonplussed, but rose smoothly from her seat. “Do drop by any time, Nymphadora.”
Tonks forced herself to slow down and be polite. “Thank you, Professor, really. Thanks for taking the time to fill me in on this. I know how busy you are.”
“Any time.” McGonagall repeated, and looked almost indulgent as she saw Tonks and her flurry of urgency to the door.
Once she was outside the office and striding down the corridor, Tonks pulled out her watch. Yes! There was still enough time to make it to London before the end of business hours and pay a visit to Mssrs. Weasley and Weasley.
Chapter End Notes:
Credit to fernwithy for the idea that learning Transfiguration is actually harder for a Metamorphmagus, not easier - I though that was a really cool idea, so I borrowed it!
Also, I was fascinated ages ago by this story about young Tonks learning to control her Metamorphmagus abilities - and, again, it being less intuitive and more difficult than you might think: "The Shape of Me" by Pandora Culpa. If I remember right, the story is unfinished, but it doesn't leave you with a terrible cliffhanger or anything. And very much worth reading for the exploration of what it's like to be a young Metamorphmagus!
My own story " In the Wrong House" is sneakily the source of the "distance hearing charm" Tonks mentions here. (Remus teaches it to the Marauders for purposes of a prank!)
And here are those werewolves again, to help you keep track:
The werewolf pack:
the Alpha, a male in his 40s, the pack’s leader
Anna, or the Mother, the oldest pack member, symbolic mother of all
Brighid, or Fire, the Alpha’s mate, roughly his age
Serena, or Trouble, roughly Remus’ age
Jack, or Thunderstorm, a little younger than the Alpha, Ashmita’s mate
Ashmita, or Rock Crag, Jack’s mate
Ronan, or Hardwood, young adult member of the pack, perhaps 20
Narun, or Rapids, roughly the same age
Adair, or Jump, roughly the same age
Tamara, or Blackthorn, roughly the same age
Eirwen, or Slither, a young teenager, 13 or 14
Joy, or River Run, the pack’s youngest member, 6 or 7
(continue to CHAPTER EIGHT: Nymphadora Tonks and the Case of the Dodgy Bookseller)