The Snow Wolf, chapter 1: To the North
THE SNOW WOLF
Summary:
While on his undercover mission to the werewolves, Remus disappears. Tonks sets out north, across countries and islands and frozen terrain, on a quest to find the man she loves and reclaim him from the clutches of a powerful magical beast. Along the way, Tonks meets many who help - or hinder - her quest, until at last she reaches the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard to face the dreaded Snow Wolf himself.
(A fairy tale fusion, bringing together the world of Harry Potter with the plot of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. Or: in which I took a 19th century fairy tale that's surprisingly full of strong female characters, and added even more of them.)
Characters: Tonks, Remus, original characters/characters drawn to varying degrees from The Snow Queen, brief cameos from Dumbledore and Mad-Eye Moody
Words: 31,100 / Chapters: 7
Notes:
A fusion with The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. (Snippets of inspiration also drawn from Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu, a modern-day retelling.) You don’t need to know The Snow Queen to read this - though if you do know the original, I hope you’ll enjoy the nods and parallels throughout!
This is an AU, but takes place during HBP and slots pretty much into the chronology of canon, as long as you subtract the bits when Harry crossed paths with Tonks or Remus during HBP - they’re on a different adventure here. (Also, ignore Pottermore; in my mind, Remus and Tonks had begun at least the tentative unfurling of a romance by the end of OotP.)
My greatest of thanks to
gilpin25 for betareading in such detail and being so thoughtful in response to my many questions; also to
huldrejenta and
nerakrose for fielding questions about Norwegian geography and language, and Scandinavian names, respectively; and to brickspace friend E for betareading early sections. An early, partial version of this story posted at
rt_morelove (over a year ago!) but a lot has changed and grown since then, so I invite anyone who’s interested to read along again!
Read here, or on AO3.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Chapter 1: To the North
One moment, all was calm in the werewolves’ camp. The autumn wind was chill, and Remus leaned closer to the fire, grateful for its warmth. A moment later, everything was chaos.
Screams came from all directions, too many different voices to distinguish. Old and young alike scattered in panic, trying in vain to conceal themselves somewhere in the open, unforgiving terrain of the moor. Someone’s flailing elbow or shoulder knocked into Remus as they rushed past, and he landed hard on the bare ground with the wind knocked out of him.
He felt the presence of the predator even before he opened his eyes to see it: standing over him, massive forelegs braced on either side of Remus’ chest, was a great white wolf, twice the size of any Remus had ever seen.
It was a werewolf, Remus saw that immediately.
Even though that shouldn’t be possible, because it wasn’t the full moon and no werewolf could transform at will when the moon wasn’t full, that was only the stuff of legends, so how -
The wolf growled, low and fierce from the depths of its throat, its canny yellow eyes never leaving Remus’ face. Accustomed though he was to the presence of wolves, Remus felt every hair on his body stand on end. This wolf poised above him was the very essence of predation.
Remus froze, willing his muscles to perfect stillness. He didn’t stand a chance in a fight against this beast, but perhaps he could make himself uninteresting as prey. What could a werewolf want, anyway, with a man who was already a werewolf?
Gracefully, almost gently, the wolf lifted its right foreleg until its paw dangled in the air above Remus. Then it lowered that paw until one fearsome claw just barely grazed Remus’ chest, precisely above his heart. The wolf pressed down, so gently, until the claw penetrated the fabric of Remus’ shirt and pricked his skin.
Though the claw barely broke the surface, Remus felt as if a dagger of ice had stabbed straight into his heart. Despite his determination to stay still, he gasped.
At that sound, the wolf looked into his face and seemed almost to smile.
Then it opened its jaws and blew a gust of breath into Remus’ face - not hot, but icy cold, and so strong that Remus had to close his eyes against the force of it. Ice seeped through his body from the claw at his heart and the wind at his face, a chill so intense he couldn’t summon the energy even to shiver. He struggled against it, trying to draw together what power was left in his muscles long enough for one desperate surge of motion up and away from this beast. But his body was losing strength faster than Remus could summon it back.
He gasped in one last gulp of breath-taking cold and the world went black.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Tonks wasn’t in the best mood by the time she wrapped up her latest debriefing with Mad-Eye Moody in the basement kitchen at 12 Grimmauld Place. They’d covered the usual topics: the Order’s attempts to keep tabs on known Death Eaters, and all the obstacles that stymied those attempts. So much of the time they could do little more than trail after the Death Eaters, blocking actions here or there but unable to stem the movement as a whole.
Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame all of her irritation on the frustratingly slow pace of their work. Her foul mood undoubtedly also came from how much she hated being at Grimmauld Place now, remembering Sirius and how miserable he’d been while confined within these walls.
So when Dumbledore’s head poked unexpectedly round the doorframe, all flowing white beard and twinkly eyes and looking, as ever, as if he’d just trotted forth from a convivial chat with some of the more whimsical Hogwarts portraits, perhaps Tonks was already spoiling for a fight.
“Ah, Alastor, Nymphadora, I’m glad to catch you here,” Dumbledore said. He sailed across the flagstone floor, midnight blue robes fluttering behind him, and settled into a chair across the table from Tonks. “I bring grave news.”
Tonks tensed. Was it Remus? She always thought first of Remus, now, when anyone in the Order arrived with news. It was only a few weeks since he’d left on his risky, clandestine mission to infiltrate a werewolf pack, but Tonks felt like she’d been holding her breath ever since.
Remus had agreed to this mission at the worst possible time. Not that there was ever a great time to risk your life by joining a potentially hostile werewolf pack. But right now Remus’ grief over Sirius was still so raw. He’d continued about his duties for the Order with a grim-jawed determination, but Tonks saw how he braced himself around that private pain.
And he’d started shutting Tonks out, though it was painfully clear he felt the pull that had been growing between them over the past year just as much as she did. They’d had several miserable, messy rows before he left, about the danger he was putting himself in. Remus couldn’t seem to comprehend that a danger to himself might also impact the people who cared about him.
And then all too soon he’d been gone, swallowed up into his undercover mission, with everything still unresolved between them. As a matter of security, only Dumbledore was allowed even to know where he was.
So Tonks went to work in the Auror Department and did her work for the Order, and watched brave, powerful witches and wizards being murdered around her by Death Eaters, and went quietly out of her mind with the awfulness of not knowing what might happen next.
She looked at Dumbledore now across the kitchen table, and dug her fingernails into her palms as she waited to hear what he would say. She told herself she was ready for anything. Surely anything was better than the agony of not knowing?
Dumbledore looked directly at Tonks and said, “My news concerns Remus.”
She had thought she would panic when this moment came; instead, Tonks felt herself go very calm. She heard how her voice came out sounding capable and professional as she asked Dumbledore, “What’s happened to him?”
“He failed to appear for one of our regularly scheduled rendezvous,” Dumbledore said. There was none of the usual twinkle in his eye now. “Which is not necessarily an indication that anything is wrong, but it does strike me as very unlike him.”
Mad-Eye, silent until now, grunted his agreement.
“Where is he now? Did you find him?” Tonks demanded, her calm deserting her as panic rose in her chest.
Dumbledore, not to be rushed, went on, “I enquired, as discreetly as possible, with one or two members of the werewolf pack, particular individuals Remus had indicated were less likely to react with volatility at being approached by a stranger. But no one was willing to speak. Frankly, they seemed traumatised by some recent event and too frightened to say anything about it. All I could ascertain for certain is that Remus is no longer there.”
Tonks burst up out of her seat before she knew she was doing it. “And that’s it?” she shouted. “You found out he’s missing and that’s all the investigation you can be bothered to do about it?”
Dumbledore rose, too, so they were once again facing each other across the expanse of the kitchen table. “No, Nymphadora,” he said, with a gentleness that only fanned the flames of her anger. “You misunderstand me. I am not abandoning Remus. But the direct approach has not proved fruitful. We may need to bide our time and pursue more subtle lines of enquiry.”
Tonks pressed her hands down hard against the surface of the table to steady herself. “No. Tell me where the pack live and I’ll go there. I’ll get someone there to talk to me. I’ll find him.”
“Lass -” Moody began, also getting to his feet, his wooden leg clunking against the floor.
“No,” Tonks repeated. “I’m going to find him.” She was glaring at Dumbledore, all her frustration of the last weeks spilling out. “You obviously know where this werewolf pack lives. I’ll find it one way or another, but we’ll save a lot of time if you tell me now.”
Dumbledore studied her over his half-moon glasses. Finally he said, “The pack make their winter encampment on a stretch of moorland in Scotland. I can give you a description detailed enough to allow you to Apparate there. But you must be careful, Nymphadora. Don’t forget that you shall be a lone human among werewolves who have been given no reason to think upon humans as their friends.”
Tonks nodded tightly. She was trying to focus on being grateful that Dumbledore had been so unexpectedly forthcoming. It was better than letting herself give way to panic and fear over where Remus might be. “Fine,” she said. “Tell me now. Because I’m going there right away.”
Dumbledore nodded. They both took their seats, and he carefully described to her how to find the place.
Tonks left 12 Grimmauld Place soon afterwards, supplied with nothing more than her wand and the light autumn cloak she’d been wearing when she went to Headquarters to meet Moody. It was morning still, but she was able to find a narrow side street where no one was around to see her Disapparate. She concentrated hard on the description Dumbledore had given her, the exact sights and sounds and scents of the particular bit of moor where Remus had last been seen. Then she closed her eyes, raised her wand, and spun.
She first knew she’d been successful by her sense of smell. The wind was fresher here and bore the scent of pine, and there was a chill nip to the air. Tonks opened her eyes, still holding her wand steadily aloft to meet whatever she might find.
The landscape that rolled out before her was stark yet quietly lovely, an endless stretch of muted brown-gold colour made up of grasses and low, scrubby plants under scudding clouds. It would be a good place for quiet contemplation, or a long walk in the bracing air. But all Tonks could think was that Remus was supposed to be here, and now he wasn’t.
Look for the small stand of trees, Dumbledore had said. The pack made their makeshift home where a cluster of birches offered some slight protection from the elements.
Tonks could see those trees in the distance, but she also knew better than to approach the pack’s encampment directly. They would perceive her as a threat, and rightly so.
What, then? Scout around the area, try to find one or two werewolves on their own, separate from the rest of the pack? What little Remus had related about werewolf packs told her that at the moment most of the pack were most likely out hunting small game and scavenging for food. Perhaps she’d be lucky enough to find one person, out scavenging on their own, who she could approach and talk to. Of course, that was assuming they didn’t smell her coming a mile off, this human intruder, and find a way to conceal themselves. She knew so little of werewolf magic.
Tonks clutched her cloak around her against the chill wind and set out across the moor.
It took until well into the afternoon, but Tonks did, almost entirely to her surprise, manage to find a werewolf.
It was a young woman, perhaps only eighteen or nineteen, perhaps not yet as skilled as she ought to have been at evading the non-werewolves of the world. The woman was bent down, gathering sticks of firewood from the ground beneath a few evergreen trees clustered on the slope of a low hill. She looked up in terror at Tonks’ approach.
“Don’t be frightened,” Tonks pleaded, holding out her hands to show they were empty. She’d stowed her wand well out of sight in her cloak before beginning her search. It was another of the things she knew from Remus: most werewolves didn’t carry wands. They’d never had the opportunity to learn wand magic, and consequently were mistrustful of those who did.
The young woman dropped low to the ground in a protective crouch, staring up at Tonks with wide, dark eyes.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Tonks said urgently. “I don’t want anything from you. I just want to ask you one question. Is that okay? Can I ask you a question?”
Very slowly, never breaking eye contact, the woman nodded.
“My friend -” Tonks began, her voice almost breaking on that word. Remus was so much more than a friend. Even though they’d still been struggling to figure out what, precisely, they were or could be to each other, when Remus had left on this mission. Still, the word didn’t do him justice. “My friend, Remus. You might know him by a different name, a werewolf name, but I think you’ll know who I mean. He came to live with your pack, just last full moon. And now he’s - disappeared.” She steeled herself. Best to ask the worst first. “Is he dead?”
The young woman’s eyes had widened and widened in fear as Tonks spoke. By the time Tonks asked her question, the woman looked as though she might keel over from fright. She stared in silence for so long, Tonks thought she wasn’t going to answer at all.
But Tonks could stay silent too. She gazed back at the woman crouched on the ground in front of her, trying to convey compassion with her eyes, but also a determination that she wasn’t going to leave. Not until she found an answer.
Finally the woman spoke. Soft and quavering, she whispered, “He is not dead.”
Tonks felt a wave of relief crash over her, so powerful that she stumbled a step forward. “Where is he?” she burst out, momentarily heedless of the timid woman in front of her.
The woman flinched, cowering lower to the ground, then shook her head vehemently. “I can’t -” she gasped. ”It’s too terrible - I can’t.”
Tonks was more than ready to demand an answer, to stand there and argue for as long as it took - but she looked at the young woman in front of her and saw that she meant it: she really couldn’t. She was trembling bodily with fear, shaking like a last withered leaf clinging to a tree in an autumn gale. Then Tonks pictured what she herself must look like, towering over this young frightened thing, and was ashamed of herself.
Slowly, making no sudden movements, Tonks lowered herself to the ground as well, holding her hands out to her sides as she moved to show that they were still empty and no threat. She came to rest somewhat awkwardly on her haunches, but at least now she and the woman were at the same eye level.
“I’m sorry,” Tonks said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I see that you can’t tell me what happened. It’s all right. But maybe you can tell me which way I need to go, to look for my friend? I’ve got to find him. I just - I have to find him, that’s all.”
The woman still stared at Tonks, but then she blinked, slowly. Tonks wondered if it was the first time she’d allowed her eyes to close for even that brief a moment in Tonks’ presence.
“North,” the woman whispered.
Tonks looked at her, baffled. “North…what?”
“Go north to find him.”
“Just…go north? How far north?”
“The wind will show you the way. Follow the wind to the north.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand.”
The woman blinked once more. “No,” she agreed softly, perhaps speaking only to herself. “You are not a werewolf. You do not know our magicks.” She tilted her head almost imperceptibly, considering. “Do you bear a wand?”
No point in not admitting it now. “Yes.”
“Can you do a spell that will show you the way the wind is blowing, and allow you always to follow the wind?”
Still baffled, Tonks said, “I suppose I could figure out something like that, yes.”
The woman nodded sharply, the first decisive movement she had made. “Then do that, now. Go.”
Tonks knew a dismissal when she heard one. And she knew she’d learned all she was going to learn from this woman - more, really, than she could have dared to hope. She stood, feeling again the chill wind that gusted past her along the hillside. Surprisingly chill, in fact, for only early autumn.
Follow the wind. Right, well, it was the only clue she had, and she would take it.
“Thank you,” she said to the young woman where she crouched on the ground with her meagre bundle of firewood sticks. “You’ve helped me a lot, when you didn’t have to. I appreciate it.”
The woman nodded slowly, but said nothing more. So Tonks stepped quietly away from her and started walking in the direction she judged to be north.
She waited to use her wand until she was out of sight of the young woman, not wanting to cause her unnecessary alarm. But once she was standing alone on the open moor, Tonks withdrew her wand from the folds of her cloak and raised it in front of her. The wind was whipping around her now, snapping her cloak against her legs.
She’d had time to think over possible spells, and decided a combination of a directional spell and an advanced summoning charm might approximate what the woman had described, and that a nonverbal spell suited the situation best. Fascinating to think werewolves could do this sort of thing as a matter of course, and without the aid of a wand. So much about werewolf magic was unknown to anyone but themselves.
Tonks lifted her wand higher, raised her eyes to the billowing underbelly of the cloudy sky, and focused hard on her two chosen spells. All the while she was thinking, too, of Remus and her desperate need to find him. She pulled that into her spellwork, that awareness of Remus and the danger he might be in, which thrummed like a steady pulse beneath everything she did.
Tonks knew the spell had worked when the wind gusted against her back with a force that nearly knocked her off her feet, and at the same time she felt a strong impulse to run in the direction it blew. She didn’t hesitate. She stowed her wand away and took off running, the wind at her back urging her on.
She ran, never stopping, feeling as if she were flying. Though Tonks’ feet never left the ground, the wind seemed almost to carry her, rushing her forward on its current like a great invisible river. Evening came, dusk fell, then dark, and still Tonks ran on, up and down great hills and fells, exhausted but exhilarated, her mind clearer now that she knew she was moving in the right direction, towards her goal.
She’d left London so precipitously. Dumbledore had brought the terrible news that Remus was missing, and everything inside Tonks had seized up in terror. This was what she’d been dreading every moment since Remus had left on his mission: that his noble propensity for risking himself for the sake of the Order would put him in true danger.
She should have taken time to think through a plan. Should have packed supplies, should have sought advice beyond merely accepting Moody’s terse admonition to keep her wits about her. She didn’t even know where she was going, beyond “north,” or what had happened back at the werewolf pack to frighten the young woman so badly that she couldn’t even speak of it.
All Tonks knew was that if Remus needed her help, she was going to give it.
(Continue to CHAPTER TWO)
.
Summary:
While on his undercover mission to the werewolves, Remus disappears. Tonks sets out north, across countries and islands and frozen terrain, on a quest to find the man she loves and reclaim him from the clutches of a powerful magical beast. Along the way, Tonks meets many who help - or hinder - her quest, until at last she reaches the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard to face the dreaded Snow Wolf himself.
(A fairy tale fusion, bringing together the world of Harry Potter with the plot of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. Or: in which I took a 19th century fairy tale that's surprisingly full of strong female characters, and added even more of them.)
Characters: Tonks, Remus, original characters/characters drawn to varying degrees from The Snow Queen, brief cameos from Dumbledore and Mad-Eye Moody
Words: 31,100 / Chapters: 7
Notes:
A fusion with The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. (Snippets of inspiration also drawn from Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu, a modern-day retelling.) You don’t need to know The Snow Queen to read this - though if you do know the original, I hope you’ll enjoy the nods and parallels throughout!
This is an AU, but takes place during HBP and slots pretty much into the chronology of canon, as long as you subtract the bits when Harry crossed paths with Tonks or Remus during HBP - they’re on a different adventure here. (Also, ignore Pottermore; in my mind, Remus and Tonks had begun at least the tentative unfurling of a romance by the end of OotP.)
My greatest of thanks to
gilpin25 for betareading in such detail and being so thoughtful in response to my many questions; also to
huldrejenta and
nerakrose for fielding questions about Norwegian geography and language, and Scandinavian names, respectively; and to brickspace friend E for betareading early sections. An early, partial version of this story posted at
rt_morelove (over a year ago!) but a lot has changed and grown since then, so I invite anyone who’s interested to read along again!
Read here, or on AO3.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Chapter 1: To the North
One moment, all was calm in the werewolves’ camp. The autumn wind was chill, and Remus leaned closer to the fire, grateful for its warmth. A moment later, everything was chaos.
Screams came from all directions, too many different voices to distinguish. Old and young alike scattered in panic, trying in vain to conceal themselves somewhere in the open, unforgiving terrain of the moor. Someone’s flailing elbow or shoulder knocked into Remus as they rushed past, and he landed hard on the bare ground with the wind knocked out of him.
He felt the presence of the predator even before he opened his eyes to see it: standing over him, massive forelegs braced on either side of Remus’ chest, was a great white wolf, twice the size of any Remus had ever seen.
It was a werewolf, Remus saw that immediately.
Even though that shouldn’t be possible, because it wasn’t the full moon and no werewolf could transform at will when the moon wasn’t full, that was only the stuff of legends, so how -
The wolf growled, low and fierce from the depths of its throat, its canny yellow eyes never leaving Remus’ face. Accustomed though he was to the presence of wolves, Remus felt every hair on his body stand on end. This wolf poised above him was the very essence of predation.
Remus froze, willing his muscles to perfect stillness. He didn’t stand a chance in a fight against this beast, but perhaps he could make himself uninteresting as prey. What could a werewolf want, anyway, with a man who was already a werewolf?
Gracefully, almost gently, the wolf lifted its right foreleg until its paw dangled in the air above Remus. Then it lowered that paw until one fearsome claw just barely grazed Remus’ chest, precisely above his heart. The wolf pressed down, so gently, until the claw penetrated the fabric of Remus’ shirt and pricked his skin.
Though the claw barely broke the surface, Remus felt as if a dagger of ice had stabbed straight into his heart. Despite his determination to stay still, he gasped.
At that sound, the wolf looked into his face and seemed almost to smile.
Then it opened its jaws and blew a gust of breath into Remus’ face - not hot, but icy cold, and so strong that Remus had to close his eyes against the force of it. Ice seeped through his body from the claw at his heart and the wind at his face, a chill so intense he couldn’t summon the energy even to shiver. He struggled against it, trying to draw together what power was left in his muscles long enough for one desperate surge of motion up and away from this beast. But his body was losing strength faster than Remus could summon it back.
He gasped in one last gulp of breath-taking cold and the world went black.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Tonks wasn’t in the best mood by the time she wrapped up her latest debriefing with Mad-Eye Moody in the basement kitchen at 12 Grimmauld Place. They’d covered the usual topics: the Order’s attempts to keep tabs on known Death Eaters, and all the obstacles that stymied those attempts. So much of the time they could do little more than trail after the Death Eaters, blocking actions here or there but unable to stem the movement as a whole.
Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame all of her irritation on the frustratingly slow pace of their work. Her foul mood undoubtedly also came from how much she hated being at Grimmauld Place now, remembering Sirius and how miserable he’d been while confined within these walls.
So when Dumbledore’s head poked unexpectedly round the doorframe, all flowing white beard and twinkly eyes and looking, as ever, as if he’d just trotted forth from a convivial chat with some of the more whimsical Hogwarts portraits, perhaps Tonks was already spoiling for a fight.
“Ah, Alastor, Nymphadora, I’m glad to catch you here,” Dumbledore said. He sailed across the flagstone floor, midnight blue robes fluttering behind him, and settled into a chair across the table from Tonks. “I bring grave news.”
Tonks tensed. Was it Remus? She always thought first of Remus, now, when anyone in the Order arrived with news. It was only a few weeks since he’d left on his risky, clandestine mission to infiltrate a werewolf pack, but Tonks felt like she’d been holding her breath ever since.
Remus had agreed to this mission at the worst possible time. Not that there was ever a great time to risk your life by joining a potentially hostile werewolf pack. But right now Remus’ grief over Sirius was still so raw. He’d continued about his duties for the Order with a grim-jawed determination, but Tonks saw how he braced himself around that private pain.
And he’d started shutting Tonks out, though it was painfully clear he felt the pull that had been growing between them over the past year just as much as she did. They’d had several miserable, messy rows before he left, about the danger he was putting himself in. Remus couldn’t seem to comprehend that a danger to himself might also impact the people who cared about him.
And then all too soon he’d been gone, swallowed up into his undercover mission, with everything still unresolved between them. As a matter of security, only Dumbledore was allowed even to know where he was.
So Tonks went to work in the Auror Department and did her work for the Order, and watched brave, powerful witches and wizards being murdered around her by Death Eaters, and went quietly out of her mind with the awfulness of not knowing what might happen next.
She looked at Dumbledore now across the kitchen table, and dug her fingernails into her palms as she waited to hear what he would say. She told herself she was ready for anything. Surely anything was better than the agony of not knowing?
Dumbledore looked directly at Tonks and said, “My news concerns Remus.”
She had thought she would panic when this moment came; instead, Tonks felt herself go very calm. She heard how her voice came out sounding capable and professional as she asked Dumbledore, “What’s happened to him?”
“He failed to appear for one of our regularly scheduled rendezvous,” Dumbledore said. There was none of the usual twinkle in his eye now. “Which is not necessarily an indication that anything is wrong, but it does strike me as very unlike him.”
Mad-Eye, silent until now, grunted his agreement.
“Where is he now? Did you find him?” Tonks demanded, her calm deserting her as panic rose in her chest.
Dumbledore, not to be rushed, went on, “I enquired, as discreetly as possible, with one or two members of the werewolf pack, particular individuals Remus had indicated were less likely to react with volatility at being approached by a stranger. But no one was willing to speak. Frankly, they seemed traumatised by some recent event and too frightened to say anything about it. All I could ascertain for certain is that Remus is no longer there.”
Tonks burst up out of her seat before she knew she was doing it. “And that’s it?” she shouted. “You found out he’s missing and that’s all the investigation you can be bothered to do about it?”
Dumbledore rose, too, so they were once again facing each other across the expanse of the kitchen table. “No, Nymphadora,” he said, with a gentleness that only fanned the flames of her anger. “You misunderstand me. I am not abandoning Remus. But the direct approach has not proved fruitful. We may need to bide our time and pursue more subtle lines of enquiry.”
Tonks pressed her hands down hard against the surface of the table to steady herself. “No. Tell me where the pack live and I’ll go there. I’ll get someone there to talk to me. I’ll find him.”
“Lass -” Moody began, also getting to his feet, his wooden leg clunking against the floor.
“No,” Tonks repeated. “I’m going to find him.” She was glaring at Dumbledore, all her frustration of the last weeks spilling out. “You obviously know where this werewolf pack lives. I’ll find it one way or another, but we’ll save a lot of time if you tell me now.”
Dumbledore studied her over his half-moon glasses. Finally he said, “The pack make their winter encampment on a stretch of moorland in Scotland. I can give you a description detailed enough to allow you to Apparate there. But you must be careful, Nymphadora. Don’t forget that you shall be a lone human among werewolves who have been given no reason to think upon humans as their friends.”
Tonks nodded tightly. She was trying to focus on being grateful that Dumbledore had been so unexpectedly forthcoming. It was better than letting herself give way to panic and fear over where Remus might be. “Fine,” she said. “Tell me now. Because I’m going there right away.”
Dumbledore nodded. They both took their seats, and he carefully described to her how to find the place.
Tonks left 12 Grimmauld Place soon afterwards, supplied with nothing more than her wand and the light autumn cloak she’d been wearing when she went to Headquarters to meet Moody. It was morning still, but she was able to find a narrow side street where no one was around to see her Disapparate. She concentrated hard on the description Dumbledore had given her, the exact sights and sounds and scents of the particular bit of moor where Remus had last been seen. Then she closed her eyes, raised her wand, and spun.
She first knew she’d been successful by her sense of smell. The wind was fresher here and bore the scent of pine, and there was a chill nip to the air. Tonks opened her eyes, still holding her wand steadily aloft to meet whatever she might find.
The landscape that rolled out before her was stark yet quietly lovely, an endless stretch of muted brown-gold colour made up of grasses and low, scrubby plants under scudding clouds. It would be a good place for quiet contemplation, or a long walk in the bracing air. But all Tonks could think was that Remus was supposed to be here, and now he wasn’t.
Look for the small stand of trees, Dumbledore had said. The pack made their makeshift home where a cluster of birches offered some slight protection from the elements.
Tonks could see those trees in the distance, but she also knew better than to approach the pack’s encampment directly. They would perceive her as a threat, and rightly so.
What, then? Scout around the area, try to find one or two werewolves on their own, separate from the rest of the pack? What little Remus had related about werewolf packs told her that at the moment most of the pack were most likely out hunting small game and scavenging for food. Perhaps she’d be lucky enough to find one person, out scavenging on their own, who she could approach and talk to. Of course, that was assuming they didn’t smell her coming a mile off, this human intruder, and find a way to conceal themselves. She knew so little of werewolf magic.
Tonks clutched her cloak around her against the chill wind and set out across the moor.
It took until well into the afternoon, but Tonks did, almost entirely to her surprise, manage to find a werewolf.
It was a young woman, perhaps only eighteen or nineteen, perhaps not yet as skilled as she ought to have been at evading the non-werewolves of the world. The woman was bent down, gathering sticks of firewood from the ground beneath a few evergreen trees clustered on the slope of a low hill. She looked up in terror at Tonks’ approach.
“Don’t be frightened,” Tonks pleaded, holding out her hands to show they were empty. She’d stowed her wand well out of sight in her cloak before beginning her search. It was another of the things she knew from Remus: most werewolves didn’t carry wands. They’d never had the opportunity to learn wand magic, and consequently were mistrustful of those who did.
The young woman dropped low to the ground in a protective crouch, staring up at Tonks with wide, dark eyes.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Tonks said urgently. “I don’t want anything from you. I just want to ask you one question. Is that okay? Can I ask you a question?”
Very slowly, never breaking eye contact, the woman nodded.
“My friend -” Tonks began, her voice almost breaking on that word. Remus was so much more than a friend. Even though they’d still been struggling to figure out what, precisely, they were or could be to each other, when Remus had left on this mission. Still, the word didn’t do him justice. “My friend, Remus. You might know him by a different name, a werewolf name, but I think you’ll know who I mean. He came to live with your pack, just last full moon. And now he’s - disappeared.” She steeled herself. Best to ask the worst first. “Is he dead?”
The young woman’s eyes had widened and widened in fear as Tonks spoke. By the time Tonks asked her question, the woman looked as though she might keel over from fright. She stared in silence for so long, Tonks thought she wasn’t going to answer at all.
But Tonks could stay silent too. She gazed back at the woman crouched on the ground in front of her, trying to convey compassion with her eyes, but also a determination that she wasn’t going to leave. Not until she found an answer.
Finally the woman spoke. Soft and quavering, she whispered, “He is not dead.”
Tonks felt a wave of relief crash over her, so powerful that she stumbled a step forward. “Where is he?” she burst out, momentarily heedless of the timid woman in front of her.
The woman flinched, cowering lower to the ground, then shook her head vehemently. “I can’t -” she gasped. ”It’s too terrible - I can’t.”
Tonks was more than ready to demand an answer, to stand there and argue for as long as it took - but she looked at the young woman in front of her and saw that she meant it: she really couldn’t. She was trembling bodily with fear, shaking like a last withered leaf clinging to a tree in an autumn gale. Then Tonks pictured what she herself must look like, towering over this young frightened thing, and was ashamed of herself.
Slowly, making no sudden movements, Tonks lowered herself to the ground as well, holding her hands out to her sides as she moved to show that they were still empty and no threat. She came to rest somewhat awkwardly on her haunches, but at least now she and the woman were at the same eye level.
“I’m sorry,” Tonks said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I see that you can’t tell me what happened. It’s all right. But maybe you can tell me which way I need to go, to look for my friend? I’ve got to find him. I just - I have to find him, that’s all.”
The woman still stared at Tonks, but then she blinked, slowly. Tonks wondered if it was the first time she’d allowed her eyes to close for even that brief a moment in Tonks’ presence.
“North,” the woman whispered.
Tonks looked at her, baffled. “North…what?”
“Go north to find him.”
“Just…go north? How far north?”
“The wind will show you the way. Follow the wind to the north.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand.”
The woman blinked once more. “No,” she agreed softly, perhaps speaking only to herself. “You are not a werewolf. You do not know our magicks.” She tilted her head almost imperceptibly, considering. “Do you bear a wand?”
No point in not admitting it now. “Yes.”
“Can you do a spell that will show you the way the wind is blowing, and allow you always to follow the wind?”
Still baffled, Tonks said, “I suppose I could figure out something like that, yes.”
The woman nodded sharply, the first decisive movement she had made. “Then do that, now. Go.”
Tonks knew a dismissal when she heard one. And she knew she’d learned all she was going to learn from this woman - more, really, than she could have dared to hope. She stood, feeling again the chill wind that gusted past her along the hillside. Surprisingly chill, in fact, for only early autumn.
Follow the wind. Right, well, it was the only clue she had, and she would take it.
“Thank you,” she said to the young woman where she crouched on the ground with her meagre bundle of firewood sticks. “You’ve helped me a lot, when you didn’t have to. I appreciate it.”
The woman nodded slowly, but said nothing more. So Tonks stepped quietly away from her and started walking in the direction she judged to be north.
She waited to use her wand until she was out of sight of the young woman, not wanting to cause her unnecessary alarm. But once she was standing alone on the open moor, Tonks withdrew her wand from the folds of her cloak and raised it in front of her. The wind was whipping around her now, snapping her cloak against her legs.
She’d had time to think over possible spells, and decided a combination of a directional spell and an advanced summoning charm might approximate what the woman had described, and that a nonverbal spell suited the situation best. Fascinating to think werewolves could do this sort of thing as a matter of course, and without the aid of a wand. So much about werewolf magic was unknown to anyone but themselves.
Tonks lifted her wand higher, raised her eyes to the billowing underbelly of the cloudy sky, and focused hard on her two chosen spells. All the while she was thinking, too, of Remus and her desperate need to find him. She pulled that into her spellwork, that awareness of Remus and the danger he might be in, which thrummed like a steady pulse beneath everything she did.
Tonks knew the spell had worked when the wind gusted against her back with a force that nearly knocked her off her feet, and at the same time she felt a strong impulse to run in the direction it blew. She didn’t hesitate. She stowed her wand away and took off running, the wind at her back urging her on.
She ran, never stopping, feeling as if she were flying. Though Tonks’ feet never left the ground, the wind seemed almost to carry her, rushing her forward on its current like a great invisible river. Evening came, dusk fell, then dark, and still Tonks ran on, up and down great hills and fells, exhausted but exhilarated, her mind clearer now that she knew she was moving in the right direction, towards her goal.
She’d left London so precipitously. Dumbledore had brought the terrible news that Remus was missing, and everything inside Tonks had seized up in terror. This was what she’d been dreading every moment since Remus had left on his mission: that his noble propensity for risking himself for the sake of the Order would put him in true danger.
She should have taken time to think through a plan. Should have packed supplies, should have sought advice beyond merely accepting Moody’s terse admonition to keep her wits about her. She didn’t even know where she was going, beyond “north,” or what had happened back at the werewolf pack to frighten the young woman so badly that she couldn’t even speak of it.
All Tonks knew was that if Remus needed her help, she was going to give it.
(Continue to CHAPTER TWO)
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