Raise Your Lantern High, chapter 8: Nymphadora Tonks and the Case of the Dodgy Bookseller
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 8: Nymphadora Tonks and the Case of the Dodgy Bookseller
She is fast, thorough, and sharp as a tack
She is touring the facility and picking up slack
-Cake, Short Skirt/Long Jacket
A garden gnome chuckled above Tonks’ head as she stepped into Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, which seemed a fitting touch for a shop owned by the Weasley twins. Tonks looked around the place and felt her eyes pop. She’d been in here only once, shortly after Fred and George had first opened it in the spring, and she’d forgotten how colourful it was, how full of strange shapes and baffling noises and bright sparks of light. It was an oasis in dreary Diagon Alley.
“Tonks!” Fred was striding towards her down the middle of the shop. “It’s an honour! What brings you here?” He reached out and pumped her hand, grinning.
“Hi, Fred,” Tonks said and, as always, he looked a little put out that she could tell him and his twin apart so easily. Honestly, it wasn’t hard to distinguish Fred’s brashness from George’s slyer sense of humour. Tonks had never understood why others seem to struggle with it. But then, maybe they were only looking at the boys’ features, and not the expressions those features bore. A Metamorphmagus learned early not to rely on appearances.
“What can I do for one of my favourite crime fighters?” Fred asked. “Edible Dark Mark, perhaps, for that immediate gratification of revenge? Instant Darkness Powder for confounding your enemies? Portable Distraction Charm to win even the most capable Auror an extra few seconds of precious time? What’ll it be?”
As he spoke, he ushered her further into the shop, sweeping his arms about to indicate the products he named, and Tonks smiled. Fred’s enthusiasm was infectious.
“Do you still have those Extendable Ears you kids were always mucking about with at Headquarters last summer, trying to overhear our conversations?” she asked.
Fred put on a wounded look. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. Mum told us to dispose of those, so that’s exactly what we did.”
“Right, Fred. Pull the other one.”
He grinned again. “Yeah, they’re over here.”
He led Tonks to a narrow shelf along one of the side walls of the shop. The sign above the shelf read “AUGMENT YOUR SENSES - IT’S A SENSE SENSATION!” and the Extendable Ears Tonks had previously only ever seen scrunched up in the kids’ hands or being hastily shoved into pockets now looked very professional indeed, neatly coiled inside sleek, transparent packaging.
“Nice,” she acknowledged, reaching up to take a package off the shelf. She turned it over in her hands and Fred beamed.
“Highest quality, high-strength tensile pseudo-aural device, self-directing and capable of extending up to 20 feet, slim enough to slip beneath nearly any door, sensitive enough to pick up even whispered conversation. The perfect choice for the nosey - or should I say ear-y - among us. How many Weasleys’ Patented Extendable Ears will you be needing?”
Tonks laughed. “Just the one’ll do, Fred, thanks. But that’s a good sales pitch you’ve got going there.”
She followed him to the register and he rang up her purchase, insisting on giving her what he termed “our Order of the Phoenix discount.”
“Dare I ask?” Fred said as he handed over her purchase in an eye-wateringly vivid orange bag. “What do you, a respectable and grown-up person, need Extendable Ears for?”
Tonks grinned. “If I said it was official Auror business, would you believe me?”
“Nah, probably not.”
“Well, then.”
The sound of Fred’s pleased chuckle followed her out the door of the shop, and Tonks left feeling lighter than she had done in days. Weeks? Months?
She Apparated back to Hogsmeade to find dusk falling. The autumn days were growing shorter, and Hogsmeade was so far north. But for once, Tonks was glad of these long Scottish winter nights. More night-time meant more opportunity to observe her target under the cover of darkness.
She popped back to her attic flat just long enough to pull on warm clothes and brew some strong tea. She poured the tea into a lidded mug, adding sealing and warming charms that she hoped would be enough to keep it warm-ish for a while. Household-y spells were, as ever, really not her strong suit.
Then Tonks returned to the Dodgy Bookseller’s bookshop, circling around to the back of the building. She cast a Disillusionment Charm on herself for good measure, and sidled up into the shadows surrounding the back entrance.
It wasn’t a big building. Whatever back room the bookseller was using as a covert hiding place undoubtedly was within twenty feet of where Tonks now stood. Close enough to be within range of the Weasleys’ patented product she’d just purchased, in other words. Tonks slipped the Extendable Ear from her pocket, placed the hearing end of it on the ground, and whispered, “Go.” The flesh-coloured string wriggled itself beneath the door, and kept going until its whole length stretched away from her, taut. Success! Tonks put the listening end to her own ear. There was nothing to be heard at the moment, but that didn’t dampen her spirits in the least.
I don’t mind, she thought. I can wait as long as it takes.
- - - - -
It took Remus inexcusably long to realise that when members of the pack sometimes disappeared for days on end with no explanation, they were not just scouting for supplies.
First it was Jack and Ashmita, the mated pair most senior in the pack after the Alpha and his own mate Brighid, who were gone for five days with no one asking why.
Next it was two of the younger ones, Tamara and Narun, who disappeared for several days, then were summoned to the Alpha for a private conversation on their return.
They weren’t collecting food or useful items for the pack, Remus finally realised. They were collecting information. They were the Alpha’s scouts, sent out into the wizarding world to keep him informed.
It was rare for Remus to catch the Alpha alone, so he seized the chance when he found such an opportunity late one afternoon, in the little lull that sometimes fell between the day’s activities and the evening fire. Though he soon began to wonder if the Alpha himself might not have arranged their seemingly chance conversation.
“Alpha, may I speak?” Remus asked, approaching the man with deferential posture.
The Alpha was sitting on a stump at the edge of the clearing, whittling bits of wood into what appeared to be pegs. Finishing touches, perhaps, for the lean-to that was daily growing more complete. The Alpha inclined his head. “You have questions.”
Remus sank to his haunches in front of the Alpha. His knees protested for a moment, but they were growing more accustomed to this position. “I suppose I do,” he agreed. There was no need to obfuscate with the Alpha - and frankly, no sense in trying. “You send pack members on scouting trips. You seem very much the isolationist, concerned only with the day-to-day survival of your pack, but at the same time you’re keeping a close eye on the outer world, aren’t you?”
“I would be a fool not to do so, Quiet,” the Alpha said. “I am no fool.”
Remus nodded. The Alpha said nothing and continued to whittle, barely needing to keep his eyes on his work as his deft hands flew. Finally, Remus said, “You send the young ones out, as well. Not only the senior members of the pack. Do you -” He stopped.
Do you trust them? Remus wanted to ask. Do you trust them not to be seduced by the Greybacks of the world, who will promise them power and glory, where you can offer only quiet stability? But posing a question like that wasn’t his place.
The Alpha, though, answered the unspoken thought. “If I don’t let them explore the world, they will find another way to go. I prefer to have that youthful exploration occur on my terms.”
Remus nodded. That made sense.
“You remember that you saw us, earlier this year, when a number of packs gathered to celebrate Imbolc,” the Alpha continued. “You’ll surely have noticed we haven’t attended another such gathering since then, not even at Midsummer. This is a dangerous time, with much hanging in the balance. I choose ‘isolationism,’ as you term it, because it is the only steady course. Yet even an isolationist must remain informed about the actions of others.”
“And you never think of taking a side?”
The Alpha fixed him with a powerful stare. Remus, remembering his place, dropped his gaze.
“You may think this is your war, City Wolf,” the Alpha said, and Remus noted the return to the older nickname. “But I know it is not mine. It is no concern of mine who rules over the wizards, for we are not wizards.”
“But you know what Fenrir Greyback is doing,” Remus pressed, careful still to keep his body language deferential. “He’s trying to raise an army. He turns children deliberately, so he can be the one to take them into his pack and turn their minds as well. And all the while he’s drawing more followers thanks to Voldemort’s empty promises of power for werewolves. Voldemort will never give werewolves power. He’ll only use us to perform his savagery, then cast us aside. So doesn’t this conflict concern us?”
“Greyback is a monster,” Alpha said, his deep voice still implacable. “He gives every werewolf a bad name. But simply because Greyback has chosen one side in this wizarding war, it does not stand to reason that I must choose the other.”
“And you see no appeal in fighting for rights for werewolves from within wizarding society, rather than staying outside it?”
“I don’t peg you for a fool, Quiet,” the Alpha said, turning that intense gaze on Remus again. “But sometimes you talk like one.”
Remus made one last try, keeping his tone as quiet and submissive as possible. “I know it sounds naïve. Believe me, I know well how slow wizarding society is to change its prejudices. But surely there’s a better way than living apart from society entirely, always on the edge of hunger and the cold winter. You’re a reasonable man -”
The Alpha growled low in his throat. “I am not a man. Do not mistake me for one.”
Remus felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. “Forgive me, Alpha,” he said, lowering his head as far as he could do without toppling forward out of his crouched position. “I meant no insult.”
“The problem with you, City Wolf,” the Alpha said, leaning forward from his seat on the stump until he loomed over Remus, “is that you don’t know what you are. You are no more a man than I am. You are a wolf. I don’t blame you for your confusion, having lived long among humans as you have done. But you won’t be much use to anyone until you know who you are.”
Remus kept his head down, waiting for permission to move or speak.
“You may go,” the Alpha said. It was not cold or dismissive, simply a statement of fact.
“Thank you, Alpha.” Remus stood, keeping his eyes carefully downcast, and stepped away.
There was storytelling around the campfire that night. Ashmita had been right: As the cold set in, the pack drew closer together. Nearly every evening, little Joy begged for a story, and even the adults listened spellbound to old Anna’s lyrical voice as she wove tales handed down through generations of werewolves.
This particular night, the Alpha himself requested a story, an old one that everyone in the pack clearly knew well: the tale of The Wolf Who Thought He Was a Man. Remus listened, knowing the message was meant for him.
- - - - -
On her third night of watching the bookshop, Tonks’ patience paid off.
She’d finished her daytime Auror duties and come straight to the bookshop, taking up her position in the shadows behind the building as it closed for the evening and casting a warming charm around herself to stave off the chill. She’d just slipped the Extendable Ear under the door when she heard something through it for the first time: the unmistakable sound of footfalls. From the sound of it, two people had walked into the back room of the shop.
Tonks slid effortlessly into the heightened state of focus that delicate Auror work required. She touched the Extendable Ear to make sure it was seated securely in her own ear, then reached into the inner pocket of her robes, pulled out a small vial and unstoppered it. With her other hand, she brought the tip of her wand to the listening end of the Extendable Ear and whispered the first incantation, the one that would make sound hang in the air like smoke, solid enough to capture.
All she needed now was for someone to utter an incriminating statement.
From the sound of it, the two people inside were opening some kind of crate or box. Then one of them, a man, said, “I don’t like it, having contraband here. We’ve had this stuff far too long. When are they coming to get it?”
Tonks’ stomach clenched with eagerness and she gripped her wand tightly.
“Tomorrow, supposedly,” the other man grunted, shifting something heavy as he spoke. Tonks thought it sounded like the proprietor himself, the nervous man with the moustache. “In the evening, after we close. That’s what the message said.”
There, an unambiguous statement of time and place - and that crucial word “contraband,” too. Tonks whispered the final capturing incantation and watched avidly as the visible sound whooshed into the vial, turning the air inside it opaque. Quivering with excitement, Tonks stoppered the vial.
She now had the evidence she needed.
Not wanting to call attention to her presence through even the subtle movement of the Extendable Ear slipping back out of the room, Tonks waited there in the shadows until the two men had left the shop, after they’d finished checking their contraband and refastening the lid of the crate in which it was stored. Only once they were gone, exiting the shop through the front, did Tonks carefully reel the Extendable Ear back in and stow it in her inside pocket along with the precious vial of captured speech.
She checked her watch and was elated to see it was still early evening, not at all too late for an impromptu visit to the Burrow. Tonks closed her eyes, clutched one hand over the evidence safe inside her pocket, and spun.
She landed just outside the border of the protective spells that surrounded the Weasley home and fairly ran through the garden to the back kitchen door. “Wotcher!” Tonks called, knocking eagerly. “It’s me, Tonks, Metamorphmagus, Hufflepuff, er…I don’t know. Ask me a security question.”
“What’s your favourite kind of biscuit?” came Molly’s voice from inside the door.
Tonks smiled. “Butterscotch. With those amazing little toffee nibs you put in them.”
Molly opened the door, ushered Tonks inside and enfolded her a hug. Then she held Tonks out at arm’s length and looked her over critically. “If you’re back so soon, I imagine it means you have evidence you want to show Arthur.”
“Got it in one, Molly. Is he home?”
“I’ll just get him, dear. Have a seat.”
Tonks took the evidence vial carefully from her pocket and set it on the kitchen table. Then she shrugged out of her cloak, narrowly avoiding knocking a stack of plates off the table with her elbow, and leaned against the worktop, too excited to sit down.
Arthur was in the kitchen within a minute, looking eager despite the caution he himself had urged on her. “Hello, Tonks. What have you got for me, then?”
Tonks grinned, leaning forward to pick up the vial and hold it aloft triumphantly. “Captured sound in which a man inside the bookshop clearly mentions contraband, as well as the fact that ‘they’ are coming tomorrow evening after the shop closes to pick it up.”
She pressed the vial into Arthur’s hand and he gazed down at it, an assessing look on his face. “Do I even want to know how you got close enough to them to hear this?”
“If you have to ask, then probably not.”
“Did it involve breaking and entering?”
“Nope.”
“Good enough for me, I suppose.” But he still frowned.
“Come on, Arthur,” Tonks said. “I know for a fact that you went on less than this when you raided the Malfoys’ place based on Harry’s tip. Whereas that’s hard evidence you’ve got in your hand there.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Arthur assured her. “I’m just thinking how we should best do this. Tomorrow evening someone’s coming to pick it up, you say? That means my department can get our contraband, and you and the Aurors potentially catch a Death Eater. Sounds like a win for everyone.”
“I can get the Aurors on board by tomorrow evening, if you’ll coordinate from your side.” Tonks said, giddy excitement rising in her chest.
They stayed a while longer, hammering out a plan. Then Arthur took the evidence vial and Tonks returned to Hogsmeade, to unapologetically rouse Dawlish and Savage at their flat, and Proudfoot on his duty rounds, to inform them they would be conducting a raid the next night.
“I’ll go down to London first thing in the morning and get Robards to sign off on the plan,” was Savage’s response. “Shouldn’t be a problem. He’s eager for a win, something we can show Scrimgeour.”
Tonks resented, thoroughly, the unspoken implication that Savage should be the one to go down to London and present the plan to Robards, because their supervisor would be more likely to listen to Savage than Tonks - even though the whole thing had been her idea and her legwork. The Aurors were such an old boys’ club sometimes. But she let it slide this time, in the interest of making sure this raid happened.
And so it was that the next evening found four Aurors, Arthur Weasley and three of his staff taking up position around the bookseller’s shop as dusk fell.
They didn’t have to wait long. Barely ten minutes after the shop’s official closing time, a man in a hooded cloak Apparated into the narrow alley behind the building, mere feet from where Tonks and Dawlish stood, hidden in the shadows and Disillusioned. The man rapped three times at the shop’s back door.
Tonks shook her head at Dawlish, cautioning him that they should wait - entering a business after hours was not a crime, but leaving it with contraband was - and he lifted his chin to show he understood and agreed.
The door opened and the hooded man stepped inside.
They waited.
The door opened again and now two men came out, carrying between them what looked to be a heavy trunk.
“Drop your wands!” Dawlish shouted, as he and Tonks stepped in front of the two suspects, Savage and Proudfoot running in to join from the other side. “Put down the trunk and drop your wands!”
The trunk thumped to the ground, followed by the clatter of two wands as the men raised their hands in the air. Savage secured them both with a Binding Spell. As soon they were safely disarmed and bound, he signalled Arthur and his team, who came pounding up the alley and burst into the shop, Savage following them as back-up.
Dawlish spun the two bound men around to face them. As he did so, the hood slipped off the man who had entered the shop a few minutes before, revealing a young, peaked and very confused-looking face.
Tonks’ heart sank.
“Damn it,” she cursed. “I don’t think that’s a Death Eater.”
The young man who was almost certainly not a Death Eater was progressing rapidly from baffled to terrified. “I don’t understand,” he said, voice shaking. “I’m just picking up these books like I was told to do. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Tonks reached out and pushed the man’s left sleeve up his arm - no Dark Mark.
“Imperiused, or at least Confunded,” Dawlish said, keeping his eyes trained on the two men.
“Just like Death Eaters not to risk their own necks, but let someone else take the fall,” Tonks agreed bitterly. She turned to the other man, the Dodgy Bookseller himself, the one whose nervous behaviour when she’d first interviewed him had set this whole operation in motion. “How about you? You going to claim you have no idea what’s in that trunk?”
“I was asked to store this for a friend,” the man said stiffly. “I do not know what it contains.” A light rain was now spitting down on the odd group assembled there in the alley.
Savage came back out the shop’s back door. “All clear inside,” he said. “Weasley and his team are securing the rest of the evidence. Let’s have a look inside this one, shall we?” He crouched down in front of the trunk, examined the lock, then tapped it with his wand and muttered. The lid sprang open and Savage whistled. “Not bad, Tonks,” he called, and waved her over to look.
The trunk was full to its brim with Dark artefacts. There were also little paper packets that looked the right size to contain potions ingredients, as well as some very suspicious-looking jewellery. It was a treasure trove of exactly the sorts of things one didn’t want ending up in Death Eater hands. They’d done well to intercept it, and this would certainly rate as a success for Arthur and his division.
And yet…
“We didn’t get the Death Eater,” Tonks said, straightening up from the crate.
“But we got his minions, here,” Dawlish said, pointing at the men in front of them. “Robards will be pleased enough with that.”
Robards might be, but Tonks wasn’t. What was the point of it, if they didn’t catch the Death Eaters who were behind this? They would just move on and use some other hapless person’s shop to store their goods.
“Who’s the other man in on this?” Tonks asked the bookseller.
He glared back at her. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“There’s another man who was in here with you last night, who also knows you’re hiding this stuff. We both know he was here. And I will find out who he is.”
She still had the captured sound of the two men’s voices. Maybe they could identify the other man from that.
Arthur and one of his team members appeared at the door, another trunk between them. “Here’s the second, and there’s a third one coming out,” Arthur said. “Then that’s the lot of it. Thank you for the tip-off, Auror Tonks. This is more than we’ve seized all autumn.”
“You’re welcome, Weasley,” Tonks said automatically.
Arthur’s two other team members emerged from the building with the third trunk and set it down beside the other two.
Dawlish nodded at them. “You lot can head out. We’ll see you at the Ministry anyway, when we take these two suspects in. Need a hand with those trunks?”
Arthur shook his head. “Thanks anyway. We’ve got it.” He nodded to his team, who took hold of the handles of the trunks, then Disapparated all together.
The four Aurors looked at each other.
“I’ll stay and cover Hogsmeade,” Proudfoot said.
Savage nodded, then turned to Tonks and Dawlish. “I’ll take point,” he said. Dawlish cast a last binding spell, linking the two suspects together, then took hold of the young man’s right arm. Tonks took the bookseller’s left arm. Savage raised his hand, gripped Tonks’ shoulder, and Apparated all five of them to the Ministry.
Chapter End Note:
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 NINE: From Different Angles)
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 8: Nymphadora Tonks and the Case of the Dodgy Bookseller
She is fast, thorough, and sharp as a tack
She is touring the facility and picking up slack
-Cake, Short Skirt/Long Jacket
A garden gnome chuckled above Tonks’ head as she stepped into Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, which seemed a fitting touch for a shop owned by the Weasley twins. Tonks looked around the place and felt her eyes pop. She’d been in here only once, shortly after Fred and George had first opened it in the spring, and she’d forgotten how colourful it was, how full of strange shapes and baffling noises and bright sparks of light. It was an oasis in dreary Diagon Alley.
“Tonks!” Fred was striding towards her down the middle of the shop. “It’s an honour! What brings you here?” He reached out and pumped her hand, grinning.
“Hi, Fred,” Tonks said and, as always, he looked a little put out that she could tell him and his twin apart so easily. Honestly, it wasn’t hard to distinguish Fred’s brashness from George’s slyer sense of humour. Tonks had never understood why others seem to struggle with it. But then, maybe they were only looking at the boys’ features, and not the expressions those features bore. A Metamorphmagus learned early not to rely on appearances.
“What can I do for one of my favourite crime fighters?” Fred asked. “Edible Dark Mark, perhaps, for that immediate gratification of revenge? Instant Darkness Powder for confounding your enemies? Portable Distraction Charm to win even the most capable Auror an extra few seconds of precious time? What’ll it be?”
As he spoke, he ushered her further into the shop, sweeping his arms about to indicate the products he named, and Tonks smiled. Fred’s enthusiasm was infectious.
“Do you still have those Extendable Ears you kids were always mucking about with at Headquarters last summer, trying to overhear our conversations?” she asked.
Fred put on a wounded look. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. Mum told us to dispose of those, so that’s exactly what we did.”
“Right, Fred. Pull the other one.”
He grinned again. “Yeah, they’re over here.”
He led Tonks to a narrow shelf along one of the side walls of the shop. The sign above the shelf read “AUGMENT YOUR SENSES - IT’S A SENSE SENSATION!” and the Extendable Ears Tonks had previously only ever seen scrunched up in the kids’ hands or being hastily shoved into pockets now looked very professional indeed, neatly coiled inside sleek, transparent packaging.
“Nice,” she acknowledged, reaching up to take a package off the shelf. She turned it over in her hands and Fred beamed.
“Highest quality, high-strength tensile pseudo-aural device, self-directing and capable of extending up to 20 feet, slim enough to slip beneath nearly any door, sensitive enough to pick up even whispered conversation. The perfect choice for the nosey - or should I say ear-y - among us. How many Weasleys’ Patented Extendable Ears will you be needing?”
Tonks laughed. “Just the one’ll do, Fred, thanks. But that’s a good sales pitch you’ve got going there.”
She followed him to the register and he rang up her purchase, insisting on giving her what he termed “our Order of the Phoenix discount.”
“Dare I ask?” Fred said as he handed over her purchase in an eye-wateringly vivid orange bag. “What do you, a respectable and grown-up person, need Extendable Ears for?”
Tonks grinned. “If I said it was official Auror business, would you believe me?”
“Nah, probably not.”
“Well, then.”
The sound of Fred’s pleased chuckle followed her out the door of the shop, and Tonks left feeling lighter than she had done in days. Weeks? Months?
She Apparated back to Hogsmeade to find dusk falling. The autumn days were growing shorter, and Hogsmeade was so far north. But for once, Tonks was glad of these long Scottish winter nights. More night-time meant more opportunity to observe her target under the cover of darkness.
She popped back to her attic flat just long enough to pull on warm clothes and brew some strong tea. She poured the tea into a lidded mug, adding sealing and warming charms that she hoped would be enough to keep it warm-ish for a while. Household-y spells were, as ever, really not her strong suit.
Then Tonks returned to the Dodgy Bookseller’s bookshop, circling around to the back of the building. She cast a Disillusionment Charm on herself for good measure, and sidled up into the shadows surrounding the back entrance.
It wasn’t a big building. Whatever back room the bookseller was using as a covert hiding place undoubtedly was within twenty feet of where Tonks now stood. Close enough to be within range of the Weasleys’ patented product she’d just purchased, in other words. Tonks slipped the Extendable Ear from her pocket, placed the hearing end of it on the ground, and whispered, “Go.” The flesh-coloured string wriggled itself beneath the door, and kept going until its whole length stretched away from her, taut. Success! Tonks put the listening end to her own ear. There was nothing to be heard at the moment, but that didn’t dampen her spirits in the least.
I don’t mind, she thought. I can wait as long as it takes.
- - - - -
It took Remus inexcusably long to realise that when members of the pack sometimes disappeared for days on end with no explanation, they were not just scouting for supplies.
First it was Jack and Ashmita, the mated pair most senior in the pack after the Alpha and his own mate Brighid, who were gone for five days with no one asking why.
Next it was two of the younger ones, Tamara and Narun, who disappeared for several days, then were summoned to the Alpha for a private conversation on their return.
They weren’t collecting food or useful items for the pack, Remus finally realised. They were collecting information. They were the Alpha’s scouts, sent out into the wizarding world to keep him informed.
It was rare for Remus to catch the Alpha alone, so he seized the chance when he found such an opportunity late one afternoon, in the little lull that sometimes fell between the day’s activities and the evening fire. Though he soon began to wonder if the Alpha himself might not have arranged their seemingly chance conversation.
“Alpha, may I speak?” Remus asked, approaching the man with deferential posture.
The Alpha was sitting on a stump at the edge of the clearing, whittling bits of wood into what appeared to be pegs. Finishing touches, perhaps, for the lean-to that was daily growing more complete. The Alpha inclined his head. “You have questions.”
Remus sank to his haunches in front of the Alpha. His knees protested for a moment, but they were growing more accustomed to this position. “I suppose I do,” he agreed. There was no need to obfuscate with the Alpha - and frankly, no sense in trying. “You send pack members on scouting trips. You seem very much the isolationist, concerned only with the day-to-day survival of your pack, but at the same time you’re keeping a close eye on the outer world, aren’t you?”
“I would be a fool not to do so, Quiet,” the Alpha said. “I am no fool.”
Remus nodded. The Alpha said nothing and continued to whittle, barely needing to keep his eyes on his work as his deft hands flew. Finally, Remus said, “You send the young ones out, as well. Not only the senior members of the pack. Do you -” He stopped.
Do you trust them? Remus wanted to ask. Do you trust them not to be seduced by the Greybacks of the world, who will promise them power and glory, where you can offer only quiet stability? But posing a question like that wasn’t his place.
The Alpha, though, answered the unspoken thought. “If I don’t let them explore the world, they will find another way to go. I prefer to have that youthful exploration occur on my terms.”
Remus nodded. That made sense.
“You remember that you saw us, earlier this year, when a number of packs gathered to celebrate Imbolc,” the Alpha continued. “You’ll surely have noticed we haven’t attended another such gathering since then, not even at Midsummer. This is a dangerous time, with much hanging in the balance. I choose ‘isolationism,’ as you term it, because it is the only steady course. Yet even an isolationist must remain informed about the actions of others.”
“And you never think of taking a side?”
The Alpha fixed him with a powerful stare. Remus, remembering his place, dropped his gaze.
“You may think this is your war, City Wolf,” the Alpha said, and Remus noted the return to the older nickname. “But I know it is not mine. It is no concern of mine who rules over the wizards, for we are not wizards.”
“But you know what Fenrir Greyback is doing,” Remus pressed, careful still to keep his body language deferential. “He’s trying to raise an army. He turns children deliberately, so he can be the one to take them into his pack and turn their minds as well. And all the while he’s drawing more followers thanks to Voldemort’s empty promises of power for werewolves. Voldemort will never give werewolves power. He’ll only use us to perform his savagery, then cast us aside. So doesn’t this conflict concern us?”
“Greyback is a monster,” Alpha said, his deep voice still implacable. “He gives every werewolf a bad name. But simply because Greyback has chosen one side in this wizarding war, it does not stand to reason that I must choose the other.”
“And you see no appeal in fighting for rights for werewolves from within wizarding society, rather than staying outside it?”
“I don’t peg you for a fool, Quiet,” the Alpha said, turning that intense gaze on Remus again. “But sometimes you talk like one.”
Remus made one last try, keeping his tone as quiet and submissive as possible. “I know it sounds naïve. Believe me, I know well how slow wizarding society is to change its prejudices. But surely there’s a better way than living apart from society entirely, always on the edge of hunger and the cold winter. You’re a reasonable man -”
The Alpha growled low in his throat. “I am not a man. Do not mistake me for one.”
Remus felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. “Forgive me, Alpha,” he said, lowering his head as far as he could do without toppling forward out of his crouched position. “I meant no insult.”
“The problem with you, City Wolf,” the Alpha said, leaning forward from his seat on the stump until he loomed over Remus, “is that you don’t know what you are. You are no more a man than I am. You are a wolf. I don’t blame you for your confusion, having lived long among humans as you have done. But you won’t be much use to anyone until you know who you are.”
Remus kept his head down, waiting for permission to move or speak.
“You may go,” the Alpha said. It was not cold or dismissive, simply a statement of fact.
“Thank you, Alpha.” Remus stood, keeping his eyes carefully downcast, and stepped away.
There was storytelling around the campfire that night. Ashmita had been right: As the cold set in, the pack drew closer together. Nearly every evening, little Joy begged for a story, and even the adults listened spellbound to old Anna’s lyrical voice as she wove tales handed down through generations of werewolves.
This particular night, the Alpha himself requested a story, an old one that everyone in the pack clearly knew well: the tale of The Wolf Who Thought He Was a Man. Remus listened, knowing the message was meant for him.
- - - - -
On her third night of watching the bookshop, Tonks’ patience paid off.
She’d finished her daytime Auror duties and come straight to the bookshop, taking up her position in the shadows behind the building as it closed for the evening and casting a warming charm around herself to stave off the chill. She’d just slipped the Extendable Ear under the door when she heard something through it for the first time: the unmistakable sound of footfalls. From the sound of it, two people had walked into the back room of the shop.
Tonks slid effortlessly into the heightened state of focus that delicate Auror work required. She touched the Extendable Ear to make sure it was seated securely in her own ear, then reached into the inner pocket of her robes, pulled out a small vial and unstoppered it. With her other hand, she brought the tip of her wand to the listening end of the Extendable Ear and whispered the first incantation, the one that would make sound hang in the air like smoke, solid enough to capture.
All she needed now was for someone to utter an incriminating statement.
From the sound of it, the two people inside were opening some kind of crate or box. Then one of them, a man, said, “I don’t like it, having contraband here. We’ve had this stuff far too long. When are they coming to get it?”
Tonks’ stomach clenched with eagerness and she gripped her wand tightly.
“Tomorrow, supposedly,” the other man grunted, shifting something heavy as he spoke. Tonks thought it sounded like the proprietor himself, the nervous man with the moustache. “In the evening, after we close. That’s what the message said.”
There, an unambiguous statement of time and place - and that crucial word “contraband,” too. Tonks whispered the final capturing incantation and watched avidly as the visible sound whooshed into the vial, turning the air inside it opaque. Quivering with excitement, Tonks stoppered the vial.
She now had the evidence she needed.
Not wanting to call attention to her presence through even the subtle movement of the Extendable Ear slipping back out of the room, Tonks waited there in the shadows until the two men had left the shop, after they’d finished checking their contraband and refastening the lid of the crate in which it was stored. Only once they were gone, exiting the shop through the front, did Tonks carefully reel the Extendable Ear back in and stow it in her inside pocket along with the precious vial of captured speech.
She checked her watch and was elated to see it was still early evening, not at all too late for an impromptu visit to the Burrow. Tonks closed her eyes, clutched one hand over the evidence safe inside her pocket, and spun.
She landed just outside the border of the protective spells that surrounded the Weasley home and fairly ran through the garden to the back kitchen door. “Wotcher!” Tonks called, knocking eagerly. “It’s me, Tonks, Metamorphmagus, Hufflepuff, er…I don’t know. Ask me a security question.”
“What’s your favourite kind of biscuit?” came Molly’s voice from inside the door.
Tonks smiled. “Butterscotch. With those amazing little toffee nibs you put in them.”
Molly opened the door, ushered Tonks inside and enfolded her a hug. Then she held Tonks out at arm’s length and looked her over critically. “If you’re back so soon, I imagine it means you have evidence you want to show Arthur.”
“Got it in one, Molly. Is he home?”
“I’ll just get him, dear. Have a seat.”
Tonks took the evidence vial carefully from her pocket and set it on the kitchen table. Then she shrugged out of her cloak, narrowly avoiding knocking a stack of plates off the table with her elbow, and leaned against the worktop, too excited to sit down.
Arthur was in the kitchen within a minute, looking eager despite the caution he himself had urged on her. “Hello, Tonks. What have you got for me, then?”
Tonks grinned, leaning forward to pick up the vial and hold it aloft triumphantly. “Captured sound in which a man inside the bookshop clearly mentions contraband, as well as the fact that ‘they’ are coming tomorrow evening after the shop closes to pick it up.”
She pressed the vial into Arthur’s hand and he gazed down at it, an assessing look on his face. “Do I even want to know how you got close enough to them to hear this?”
“If you have to ask, then probably not.”
“Did it involve breaking and entering?”
“Nope.”
“Good enough for me, I suppose.” But he still frowned.
“Come on, Arthur,” Tonks said. “I know for a fact that you went on less than this when you raided the Malfoys’ place based on Harry’s tip. Whereas that’s hard evidence you’ve got in your hand there.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Arthur assured her. “I’m just thinking how we should best do this. Tomorrow evening someone’s coming to pick it up, you say? That means my department can get our contraband, and you and the Aurors potentially catch a Death Eater. Sounds like a win for everyone.”
“I can get the Aurors on board by tomorrow evening, if you’ll coordinate from your side.” Tonks said, giddy excitement rising in her chest.
They stayed a while longer, hammering out a plan. Then Arthur took the evidence vial and Tonks returned to Hogsmeade, to unapologetically rouse Dawlish and Savage at their flat, and Proudfoot on his duty rounds, to inform them they would be conducting a raid the next night.
“I’ll go down to London first thing in the morning and get Robards to sign off on the plan,” was Savage’s response. “Shouldn’t be a problem. He’s eager for a win, something we can show Scrimgeour.”
Tonks resented, thoroughly, the unspoken implication that Savage should be the one to go down to London and present the plan to Robards, because their supervisor would be more likely to listen to Savage than Tonks - even though the whole thing had been her idea and her legwork. The Aurors were such an old boys’ club sometimes. But she let it slide this time, in the interest of making sure this raid happened.
And so it was that the next evening found four Aurors, Arthur Weasley and three of his staff taking up position around the bookseller’s shop as dusk fell.
They didn’t have to wait long. Barely ten minutes after the shop’s official closing time, a man in a hooded cloak Apparated into the narrow alley behind the building, mere feet from where Tonks and Dawlish stood, hidden in the shadows and Disillusioned. The man rapped three times at the shop’s back door.
Tonks shook her head at Dawlish, cautioning him that they should wait - entering a business after hours was not a crime, but leaving it with contraband was - and he lifted his chin to show he understood and agreed.
The door opened and the hooded man stepped inside.
They waited.
The door opened again and now two men came out, carrying between them what looked to be a heavy trunk.
“Drop your wands!” Dawlish shouted, as he and Tonks stepped in front of the two suspects, Savage and Proudfoot running in to join from the other side. “Put down the trunk and drop your wands!”
The trunk thumped to the ground, followed by the clatter of two wands as the men raised their hands in the air. Savage secured them both with a Binding Spell. As soon they were safely disarmed and bound, he signalled Arthur and his team, who came pounding up the alley and burst into the shop, Savage following them as back-up.
Dawlish spun the two bound men around to face them. As he did so, the hood slipped off the man who had entered the shop a few minutes before, revealing a young, peaked and very confused-looking face.
Tonks’ heart sank.
“Damn it,” she cursed. “I don’t think that’s a Death Eater.”
The young man who was almost certainly not a Death Eater was progressing rapidly from baffled to terrified. “I don’t understand,” he said, voice shaking. “I’m just picking up these books like I was told to do. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Tonks reached out and pushed the man’s left sleeve up his arm - no Dark Mark.
“Imperiused, or at least Confunded,” Dawlish said, keeping his eyes trained on the two men.
“Just like Death Eaters not to risk their own necks, but let someone else take the fall,” Tonks agreed bitterly. She turned to the other man, the Dodgy Bookseller himself, the one whose nervous behaviour when she’d first interviewed him had set this whole operation in motion. “How about you? You going to claim you have no idea what’s in that trunk?”
“I was asked to store this for a friend,” the man said stiffly. “I do not know what it contains.” A light rain was now spitting down on the odd group assembled there in the alley.
Savage came back out the shop’s back door. “All clear inside,” he said. “Weasley and his team are securing the rest of the evidence. Let’s have a look inside this one, shall we?” He crouched down in front of the trunk, examined the lock, then tapped it with his wand and muttered. The lid sprang open and Savage whistled. “Not bad, Tonks,” he called, and waved her over to look.
The trunk was full to its brim with Dark artefacts. There were also little paper packets that looked the right size to contain potions ingredients, as well as some very suspicious-looking jewellery. It was a treasure trove of exactly the sorts of things one didn’t want ending up in Death Eater hands. They’d done well to intercept it, and this would certainly rate as a success for Arthur and his division.
And yet…
“We didn’t get the Death Eater,” Tonks said, straightening up from the crate.
“But we got his minions, here,” Dawlish said, pointing at the men in front of them. “Robards will be pleased enough with that.”
Robards might be, but Tonks wasn’t. What was the point of it, if they didn’t catch the Death Eaters who were behind this? They would just move on and use some other hapless person’s shop to store their goods.
“Who’s the other man in on this?” Tonks asked the bookseller.
He glared back at her. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“There’s another man who was in here with you last night, who also knows you’re hiding this stuff. We both know he was here. And I will find out who he is.”
She still had the captured sound of the two men’s voices. Maybe they could identify the other man from that.
Arthur and one of his team members appeared at the door, another trunk between them. “Here’s the second, and there’s a third one coming out,” Arthur said. “Then that’s the lot of it. Thank you for the tip-off, Auror Tonks. This is more than we’ve seized all autumn.”
“You’re welcome, Weasley,” Tonks said automatically.
Arthur’s two other team members emerged from the building with the third trunk and set it down beside the other two.
Dawlish nodded at them. “You lot can head out. We’ll see you at the Ministry anyway, when we take these two suspects in. Need a hand with those trunks?”
Arthur shook his head. “Thanks anyway. We’ve got it.” He nodded to his team, who took hold of the handles of the trunks, then Disapparated all together.
The four Aurors looked at each other.
“I’ll stay and cover Hogsmeade,” Proudfoot said.
Savage nodded, then turned to Tonks and Dawlish. “I’ll take point,” he said. Dawlish cast a last binding spell, linking the two suspects together, then took hold of the young man’s right arm. Tonks took the bookseller’s left arm. Savage raised his hand, gripped Tonks’ shoulder, and Apparated all five of them to the Ministry.
Chapter End Note:
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 NINE: From Different Angles)