The Snow Wolf, chapter 7: In the Snow Wolf’s Fortress
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.
Note: The final chapter!
Chapter 7: In the Snow Wolf’s Fortress
The wind carried them north at tremendous speed, raging in Tonks' ears as she clung to Hindrun's back. It was dark all the time now, an utter Arctic winter that had descended over the world. Tonks hated to think how many weeks or even months must have passed since she'd left London in the autumn, and how long that meant it was since Remus had disappeared.
The cold ocean was a blur of darkness beneath them. The only light in all that long crossing came from the stars that shone overhead, and bursts of colour when the northern lights ripped across the sky, eerie and silent. Nothing in the world felt familiar anymore except for Hindrun, solid beneath her. And even Hindrun would have to turn back and leave Tonks when they reached Svalbard.
Tonks first knew they were descending through the dark night by a dropping in her stomach. Then Hindrun's hooves clattered onto hard-packed ice.
Tonks climbed down from the reindeer's back, stiff after the long ride. The ground that stretched out ahead of them was covered completely in ice and the air was bitterly cold. Beside Tonks, Hindrun shook herself and transformed back into her human shape.
"I have to leave you here," Hindrun said.
Already the magical wind that the lighthouse keeper had conjured was shifting, reversing its direction, impatient to carry Hindrun back south.
"You've done so much for me," Tonks said, stricken to lose this staunch friend. "And you didn't even know me! I was just some stranger who stumbled into your woods."
Hindrun laughed, though her teeth chattered. "Ah, Tonks, you don't have to be so grateful. I told you, I'm a sucker for a foolhardy adventure, and you've certainly given me one of those. Now I'll head back home to my merry band and weave them a tale of our ride over the Arctic seas in the saddle of the night wind. What more could a wandering reindeer wish for?"
"Oh, Hindrun!" Tonks flung her arms around her friend.
Hindrun laughed and hugged back. "Silly girl," she said fondly, when she released Tonks from their embrace. "Go on, go find your lad. I believe in you. You're going to find him and bring him back, do you hear me?"
Tonks nodded, trying to take in Hindrun's certainty and make it part of herself. "I'll find you again," she said. "On our way back, once I've got Remus away from here and we're on our way home, we'll visit you and your band, so you know we succeeded. You'll like him, you'll see."
Hindrun grinned, her teeth chattering in earnest now. "I know I will."
The wind was buffeting about Hindrun's legs, trying to lift her up from the ground.
"Lykke til, Tonks," Hindrun said. Then she pursed her lips and added, "Pass godt på deg selv, nå!"
Tonks didn't have to ask what that meant. The concern in Hindrun's eyes was clear enough. Take care of yourself.
Hindrun shook her head and shoulders, and even as she moved she was already transforming, elongating into the strong-legged reindeer with the shaggy muzzle and the soulful eyes.
Tonks reached out and rested a hand against Hindrun's humped shoulder one last time. Then the reindeer gave a little leap, and the wind swept her up and out over the dark water. It carried her away until she was only a speck in the distance, and soon she was not even that. Tonks watched Hindrun until she disappeared into the darkness of the winter sky.
Then she turned to face the icy land ahead of her.
The moon was rising now, half-full and waxing. Tonks sucked in a breath of harsh air as she stared at that rising moon, so many questions jostling in her mind. Moonrise and moonset times were vastly different this far north. Now, at half full, the moon still rose and set. But when it was full it would stay in the sky for days without setting, opposite to the sun that never rose. What were transformations like for Remus here, without moonrise and moonset to define their beginnings and ends?
But there was time until the next full moon, and Tonks was determined to find Remus long before that.
She started out over the expanse of ice. Snowflakes swirled towards her, blowing not down from the sky but across the ground. As they came faster and faster, Tonks realised with dawning horror that the snow seemed to be working deliberately to slow her down. Soon she was barely moving forward at all, because all her effort was expended in dodging banks of snow that billowed up around her ankles and needles of ice that drove at her face.
Suddenly, Tonks' vision cleared, the snow no longer in her eyes. When she looked up, the snow that had been attacking her was drawing back, all of it coalescing into a single shape: the form of a wolf.
The Snow Wolf himself? Tonks wondered with a sharp indrawn breath. But no, it was still only snow. Snow animated by some kind of spellwork, to protect the Snow Wolf's lands.
The wolf reared on its white hind legs. Its jaws, made of snow crystals, opened and silently snarled, and Tonks could see the fierce power in its tensed form. Non-sentient though it must be, animated by magic was still animated. From between diamond-sharp teeth the creature expelled a breath of crystalline ice into the frozen air, readying itself to attack.
Then, jaws gaping wide, it leapt.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Tonks cried, with her wand outstretched. Her own beloved shaggy silver wolf burst forth from the tip of her wand, its teeth bared, and charged forward at a dead run.
Silver met white in an explosion of light, and for a moment the world was too bright to see anything at all as the two shapes clashed. Then the wolf of snow shivered away into a dusting of flakes that sifted down to settle in a fine layer around Tonks' feet.
Tonks' Patronus, no longer needed, faded decorously from sight.
Tonks looked down at the scattered snow around her and blew out a breath. "Right," she said aloud. "Okay, then."
Nothing else attacked as she went on. The air was clear and the stars above shone with a still, white light. And all the time she walked, the moon traced its wide, low arc across the sky. It was sliding towards the horizon at last when Tonks came to a vast wall of ice.
She approached cautiously, her wand at the ready. The pale ice jutted high into the night, disappearing into the black of the star-drenched sky. This could be nothing other than the Snow Wolf's fortress. It glowed an unearthly deep blue, reflecting starlight, and the chill the ice gave off was intense.
Tonks set out along the length of the wall, looking for a doorway. What she found wasn't a door at all but only an empty, gaping space, as though a piece had been sheared out of the wall by an unimaginably fierce wind.
She raised her wand and stepped through. Inside, a single corridor of ice stretched out ahead of her. There was no other way but forward.
So she walked. It was what she'd done all along, wasn't it? Since the day Dumbledore had brought the news to Grimmauld Place, she'd walked across mainland Scotland and the Shetland Islands, then been carried by Hindrun through Norway and over the Barents Sea. And now she'd crossed Svalbard, here to the Snow Wolf's fortress.
The air was crushingly cold, as Tonks walked on in silence down the corridor of ice. Even wearing the cloak, mittens and fur-lined boot that had served her so well through the onslaught of winter, she felt the cold now like never before. And somehow Tonks knew this was a cold no warming charm could defend against.
She passed great chambers of ice, glimpsed through gaping doorways to either side of the corridor, all of them enormous and empty. For the first time, Tonks wondered about the Snow Wolf not only as the malevolent force that had stolen Remus away, but about the being himself. What was it for, all this nothingness? Who would want to live in a palace of nothing?
Then the corridor opened onto a vast space taken up almost entirely by a frozen lake. Its surface was a shattered puzzle of interlocking ice, with dark water visible below.
At the near side of the lake, low to the ground, was a smudge of colour. It looked like a cloak pooled around a human form kneeling by the shore of the lake.
Remus.
Tonks dashed forward.
She flung herself to her knees and reached out to touch him, carefully, mindful that she had no idea what condition she would find him in.
He was cold. So cold. Tonks patted Remus' face, his hands, and he didn't move. He was like a statue - no, worse than a statue, he was like something cut from a block of ice. Tonks felt at his neck for a pulse and found one, but it was slower than should be possible for any human being who was still alive.
Tonks swallowed down the panic that was fighting to rise. She wasn't a mediwitch. She wasn't equipped for this. What was she supposed to do if she came all this way and found Remus at last and then he was frozen like this and she couldn't revive him?
"Remus," she whispered. She said it louder. "Remus!"
He didn't move.
Carefully, so afraid she might somehow break him if she moved too fast, Tonks slid closer to Remus on the ice. She fumbled to unfasten her cloak, then draped it around both of them. Maybe she could warm him with her own body heat? It was hard to hug someone whose body didn't give at all in reaction, but she pressed her body to Remus' and wrapped her arms around him.
Not knowing what else to do, Tonks started talking. Her jaw bumping against Remus' unresponsive shoulder, she told him her story from the start. About Dumbledore, and the young werewolf who'd been so afraid but had helped Tonks anyway. About the woman with the garden and the fisher with the boat, the mage and her partner, Hindrun and her band of Animagi. The Muggle village, the woman with the lighthouse, Hindrun's heroic leap across the frigid sea. And then this place. But Remus knew this place. He was already here.
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. Tonks felt them drip from her face down onto Remus' clothing, and she didn't know if that was good because at least they were warm or bad because tears were just another thing that would freeze in the Arctic air. Tonks pressed her face harder against Remus' chest.
One minute. She would let herself indulge in one minute of utter, wretched despair, and then she would pull herself together and figure out what to do.
"Tonks?"
She jerked her head up. Remus hadn't moved, and Tonks couldn't be sure she'd really heard him speak. Maybe it was nothing more than her own desperate wishing.
She glanced down again and saw that the wetness of her tears had fallen exactly over Remus' heart.
What had Hindrun and the woman in the lighthouse said about the power of love in facing ancient foes? Could the breaking of a spell truly be that easy?
Tonks looked up again into Remus' face, searching for a sign that he really did know she was here. Slowly, looking like it must cost him enormous effort, Remus blinked. Nothing more than that, just a slow motion of his eyelids and then once again total stillness.
"Remus," Tonks said. She realised she was gripping him hard around the middle and eased off a bit, though she still held onto him. "It's Tonks. It's me! Can you hear me?"
There was an excruciating pause. Then Remus blinked again. "Tonks?" he repeated. He sounded confused.
Right, first things first. The most important thing was to secure his physical safety; she could sort out his mental state later. "Can you move at all? Do you think you can move your head?" Tonks cupped one hand against the back of Remus' neck, hoping the warmth might help him loosen up enough to attempt movement.
With painful slowness, Remus' muscles began to bunch and contract beneath Tonks' hand until at last his neck turned, and his head moved, and then they were looking at each other face to face.
"Hey, Remus," Tonks breathed, with his nose suddenly mere inches away from hers. Instead of oceans and continents and seasons away. "Wotcher."
Remus' eyes still looked clouded and confused. "I -" he began. His voice was raspy with disuse. "You weren't meant to -" He frowned, the first expression she'd seen on his long-frozen face. Then, when he spoke again, his voice rang out terribly clear in the stillness. "Tonks, you shouldn't have come here."
Those words were like a stab of cold at Tonks' own heart. But she wasn't going to worry about that right now. Physical wellbeing first, she reminded herself, and anything else could come after.
"Do you think you can stand up?" she asked, moving her hands down the length of his torso, trying to feel whether he'd come any more unfrozen.
He didn't protest, so Tonks stood and gently pulled Remus up with her. To her great relief he did stand, letting out a groan but moving without too much difficulty. She wrapped her thick winter cloak around him and took his inadequate one for herself, and fitted her mittens onto Remus' hands. The icy chill bit at Tonks bitterly, wearing Remus' too-thin cloak, but he needed her warm one more. She caught his mittened hands in hers and rubbed them firmly to get the blood moving. Then she looked up to catch his gaze.
"Remus," Tonks said again, because still she could barely believe he was here in front of her. So many people had told her she would fail in this quest. And if she'd refused to believe them, it was only because to believe for even a moment might make failure possible.
But they'd all been wrong. She'd found Remus and it was going to be okay.
"Tonks," Remus said. His voice still had a raspy edge, but it was firmer now. He slid his mittened hands carefully free of her bare ones, and she felt the chill on her skin where he no longer touched her. "Leave here. Go back to London, as quickly as you can."
Tonks was starting to shiver, and she didn't know if it was from the Arctic air and the inadequate cloak, or from the weird, flat certainty in Remus' eyes as they met hers.
"Yeah," she said. "That's the plan. But I'm taking you with me."
"You're not listening," Remus said, still in that strange, firm voice. "You need to return to safety. For me, it's all right that I'm here. Perhaps it's even for the best. I'm a werewolf, Tonks. I'm dangerous. You've always known that. I am a broken old dangerous beast, and it's right that I be taken out of the way where I can't harm anyone. But you must get back to safety."
Tonks gaped at him. They'd had this conversation before, oh, yes, many iterations of it. They'd had the argument where Remus worried he was too old and too poor for her, and insisted that the dangers of his lycanthropy were an insurmountable obstacle, and Tonks told him just as insistently that those things didn't matter when you cared about someone enough. They'd had this conversation. But Remus had never sounded so horrifyingly certain about it as he did right now.
"'Taken out of the way'?" Tonks demanded. "'Dangerous beast'? Remus, what? Even if the rest of that were true, that you're so terrible and dangerous - which it isn't - why would that mean you should stay here and freeze to death? Just let me get you away from here, and we can talk about the rest of it after!"
It was like he didn't hear a word she said, standing there stiff as a statue and pushing on with his remorseless argument. "I mean this, Tonks. You're better off without me, surely you realise that. Go home. Be happy. That's all I've ever wanted for you. If I have to sacrifice myself to make that true, it's such a small price."
He said it sincerely, simply, as if there could be no doubt that what he said was right. He spoke like Remus always did at his most kind and rational, the way he sounded when discussing strategy late into the night with Kingsley or Moody, or giving Harry his thoughtful advice. Careful, kind Professor Lupin - that was how he sounded now as he told Tonks to leave him in this wasteland of ice.
Was he still frozen inside, even though his body was able to move again? Was it the cold magic of this place that made him sound like himself and yet so like a callous stranger?
Tonks reached out to him - maybe she just hadn't warmed him enough, maybe she could wrap him up even tighter and this wrongness would right itself - but he stepped back, evading her touch.
"Go," Remus said again, his voice harder than before. "I told you. This place isn't for you."
Only a few feet of icy ground separated them, but somehow it had become a distance they couldn't cross. Tonks stared desperately at Remus, not knowing how to reach him but not willing, never willing, to give up and walk away. And Remus met her gaze placidly, just stood there and looked at her like he was prepared to wait as long as it took for Tonks to see sense and agree with him.
They'd stood a long time like this, stock still in their stalemate, when Tonks became aware that someone else was there with them by the shore of the shattered lake.
She turned her head just slightly, not wanting to let Remus out of her sight, and saw it out of the corner of her eye: a white wolf, shaggy and enormous. A real wolf this time, terribly real, a beast of flesh and blood and muscle, no mere phantasm of snow. This was the creature she'd been warned about throughout her long journey.
The Snow Wolf.
As soon as she made that small motion of her head and saw it, the creature shifted shape. Now it was no longer a wolf that stood there, but a tall, lithe man dressed in white furs, with golden hair that flowed over his shoulders.
Tonks sucked in a hard breath, despite how fiercely she was trying to keep still. The Snow Wolf could take human shape. Why had no one told her that? Remus, who was sometimes a wolf, had been kidnapped by a wolf who was sometimes a man. Was this why Remus didn't want to leave? Was he happier here, with someone who could understand that part of him?
And if so, who was Tonks to tell him he was wrong to want that?
Or maybe she had it backwards, maybe the wolf had used this thing they had in common to trick Remus somehow. Somewhere here, too, was a dangerous, magical mirror, the that one the woman with the lighthouse had described. Was it the mirror making Remus so certain that he wanted Tonks to leave him? If so, Tonks wanted nothing more than to find that mirror and smash it.
The man stalked towards them. He stopped an arm's length away, but Tonks could feel his breath gust on the side of her neck. She hadn't felt truly afraid of his presence until that moment, when she realised that the air he breathed came out not warm but cold.
"So," the man murmured, and his voice, too, was chill and cruel and laced with a terrible amusement. It was the voice of a man who would conjure a palace of yawning emptiness out of ice and populate it with one sole captive. "This, then, is the human who's the cause of all that suffering and caring, little wolf?" He laughed, but his laughter was not a nice sound. It was the sound of a glacier cracking apart and unleashing a tidal wave into the sea. "How very touching."
Remus' body was taut, attuned to the Snow Wolf's every motion, although he barely turned his head to look at him. "Don't harm her," Remus said. "Let her go."
"Harm her," the Snow Wolf laughed. "I don't care about her. Convenient, though, that she's dropped by to visit us. What a trite little reminder of all you left behind."
The Snow Wolf moved suddenly, and Tonks saw Remus flinch. But the Snow Wolf didn't come closer. Instead he stalked away from them, to the edge of the frozen lake. He prowled along its border, looking down at the jagged, reflective ice, then he flicked his gaze up at Remus.
"Do you remember what that was like, little wolf?" The Snow Wolf's voice began as a low growl and rose as he stalked back and forth along the border between the frozen water and the frozen land. "All the passion, the uncertainty, the ever-present risk of loss! You give away your whole heart and then it's dashed away in a day! You love your friends and then they betray you! They leave you! They die!"
The Snow Wolf went suddenly, preternaturally still and pointed one long arm at Remus.
"Or worse still, it's you, dangerous you, who harms them. What would happen to this pretty young thing if she let herself be linked with you, hm? Do you think that would go well for her? Would it help her to succeed with her career? Improve her social standing, would it, to be known as the consort of a Dark creature, there amidst small-minded human society? But of course, that's all assuming you yourself don't rip her throat out some full moon when you mistake her for your prey."
The Snow Wolf suddenly bared his teeth in Tonks' direction and she saw how Remus tensed, ready to leap in front of her if the Snow Wolf moved. She clung to that as a sign that there was still some feeling in Remus after all.
But sacrificing himself or staying here alone in the Snow Wolf's frozen palace wasn't the kind of feeling she wanted from Remus, not for her sake or for his own. She wanted all of him, all the conflicted, messy, real feelings that made him the person he was. Not the narrow range of emotions that allowed for nothing but noble self-sacrifice.
All the while, Remus didn't look at Tonks. He just kept watching the Snow Wolf with a steady gaze, like he thought what the Snow Wolf said made sense.
The Snow Wolf smiled a smile that was all teeth. As with everything else in this world of ice, the Snow Wolf's hair and teeth and the furs he wore all shone a pale blue in the reflected starlight.
"Oh, yes, my little wolf," the Snow Wolf drawled. "You might have your fun with your human friend for a while, if you wished. But in the back of your mind, all the time, you would be terrified. In fact, you already are. You remember. You're remembering right now, how much it hurts to care. Why would you return to all of that? Stay here with me, little human wolf, and together we will be magnificent. And I promise, here with me you need feel nothing."
The Snow Wolf dropped his gaze once more to the shattered puzzle pieces of the frozen lake at his feet. Remus' gaze followed, as though he couldn't stop himself from looking. The Snow Wolf whispered, "You have looked into my mirror. You know who you really are."
And finally, Tonks understood.
A mirror, the witch in the lighthouse had said, so Tonks had been picturing a mirror like the ones she knew, an old-fashioned wizarding glass with a gaudy gilt frame and an attitude about your hairstyle.
But this in front of her was more terrible than any mirror Tonks had ever encountered in her studies or her years of confiscating Dark objects as an Auror. This mirror was the entire lake. And Remus had looked into it and somehow that had changed everything.
The Snow Wolf laughed, startling Tonks out of her thoughts so badly that she jumped, then silently berated herself for it. She knew better than to give away her reactions in front of the enemy.
"Caught on at last, have you?" he chortled. "Yes indeed, what you see before you is my Mirror of Reason. It shows all things exactly as they are. Your dear friend here studied his reflection in it some time ago, so I'm afraid there are certain truths he understands that you can't hope to match."
Tonks thought fast. The witch in the lighthouse had described this mirror: It shows anyone who looks into it the worst possible version of themselves. She'd also said that what the mirror showed was at least partly truth, and that was what made it so formidable. If Remus believed what he'd seen, it was because nothing the mirror had shown him was entirely untrue.
Which meant he also believed the awful thing he'd said to Tonks: that he was a beast who should be kept far away so he couldn't hurt anyone.
Whatever terrible version of himself the Snow Wolf's mirror had shown him, now it was all Remus could see. And how could Tonks help him fight it, when she could only guess what it must be like to look at such a twisted vision of oneself that nonetheless contained a grain of truth? (Remus was, in fact, a werewolf; Remus did, in fact, consider himself a dangerous beast, much as Tonks hated that fact.)
Tonks turned and looked squarely at the Snow Wolf. "I want to look in the mirror."
"No!" Remus cried. He moved at last, but it was only to rush forward and clamp his hand around Tonks' arm, to hold her back from the shattered lake.
And the Snow Wolf laughed.
Had Tonks thought before that his laugh sounded like ice cracking? It was more than that. It was whole worlds breaking apart, rocks shrieking against each other as continents ripped to shards. It made Tonks want to put her hands over her ears and scream.
Instead, she stared down the Snow Wolf and said, "You heard me. I want to look into your 'Mirror of Reason'. If it's so special, let me look, too."
"Tonks, no!" Remus said, low and urgent. "What are you doing?"
She turned to him. Even here, strange and cold and unreachable, Remus looked at her out of the same dear face she'd fallen in love with. He was beautiful to her in spite of, or maybe because of, the worry lines that told of the hard life he'd lived and the grief he'd survived. Here was a man who, against all odds, had emerged a kind-hearted person despite the hell his earlier years had put him through. There was no way in the world she was leaving him here to the Snow Wolf's mercy.
"I'm going to look in that mirror," Tonks told him. "Of course it's a terrible idea, I don't need you to tell me that. But it changed you and I need to understand how, and you don't seem to be in any state to explain it to me. And I don't trust that creature" - she jerked her head towards the Snow Wolf - "any further than I can throw a hippogriff. So I'm going to do what Aurors are trained to do and collect evidence with my own senses. I am going to look in that mirror, so let go of my arm, please."
Once more, they were left staring at each other. Tonks wondered if she was going to have to wrench her arm out of Remus' grasp.
"Remus," she said, with a lot of weight in that one word. It meant, I'm trying to save you and you're making it very hard. It also meant, I love you, but if you go on like this you are going to break my heart.
Remus stared a moment more, his eyes wide and fixed on Tonks. Then he let her go.
Tonks could have sworn she saw the brief sparkle of a tear running down his cheek as he stepped away from her, but surely that couldn't be right. Remus had shown himself too frozen for anything so hot and human as tears.
There was no time for doubt. She'd only been able to come up with this one plan, and she had to do it before she could second-guess herself.
She ran from Remus the few steps to the shore of the lake. The Snow Wolf stepped obligingly out of her way, smiling that smile full of teeth, and Tonks threw herself to her knees at the lake's edge.
Her eyes sought her reflection in the lake's broken shards. Each piece was jagged around its edges but had a smooth and reflective surface. And there, framed neatly in the nearest one, was her own face.
What struck her first was her extreme youth, unmistakable in the perfect clarity of the ice's reflection. Tonks didn't spend much time in front of mirrors except to confirm that her hair looked the way she'd meant it to look when she transformed it, so she often forgot just how much younger she looked than the people she spent most of her time around: her Auror colleagues and the members of the Order. Forced now to give herself a good look, Tonks was uncomfortably reminded that compared to her friends and colleagues, she was practically still a schoolgirl.
How naïve to think that she of all people could take on the Snow Wolf.
The longer Tonks looked at herself, the more appalled she was by her own hubris. Here she was, this apple-cheeked child with the wacky hair, barely out of Auror training yet charging out into the world uninformed and unprepared (had she really left London with nothing but a cloak and her wand?), yelling to everyone she met about how she was going to find and rescue her love. She cringed as she remembered each of the people she'd encountered along the way, and what they must have thought of her. How kind they'd been to humour her in her foolish quest.
And Remus. Tonks stared at her own youthful face, so untested by the trials of the world, and wondered what in the name of all magic she'd been thinking, to throw herself at Remus. Kind, caring Remus with his lifetime's worth of hard-won wisdom, what would he see in a mere girl? When Remus insisted he was too old for Tonks, that wasn't for her sake he was talking. Remus wanted a partner who could match his wit and experience, and Tonks didn't blame him in the least. Here she'd been flinging herself at him, chasing him clear across the world, and all along he'd been trying as gently as possible to explain that her affections were comically misplaced.
She'd wasted so much of his time already. The least she could do was tell him that she finally understood.
"Tonks. Tonks."
She tore her eyes from her reflection in the ice to find Remus' face directly beside hers. He'd dropped to his knees and his hands were on both her shoulders. The mittens lay on the ice between them - Remus had stripped them off so he could reach out to her directly with his hands.
"Tonks? Can you hear me?"
"Yes!" she gasped. "I'm sorry - I'll explain - I've been such a fool."
It was mortifying, the concern with which Remus was looking at her. As if she deserved his concern.
Tonks forced her words out, humiliating though they were. "Look at me chasing you all over the place, as if you would want someone as useless as me! I was stupid to follow you, but not because you don't deserve rescuing. Only because it was stupid to think you would want me to be the one to do it. But I'm going to stop assuming I know better about you than you do yourself. I can't believe I've been running around acting like I know better." Now her nose was running, of all stupid things. Tonks sniffled, feeling about seven years old. Merlin, could anything drive her point home more clearly? "Now I'm just embarrassing myself. I'm sorry. I'll go. You must be so tired of me stumbling around ruining everything."
Somewhere behind her, Tonks was distantly aware of the Snow Wolf's chuckle. "How charming," he rumbled. "Humans. You're all the same in the end. I'll leave you to it, shall I?" His harsh laughter cracked out again, then footfalls receded away and into silence.
Then it was just the two of them left on the ice by the lake.
Remus' hands slid down from Tonks' shoulders to grip her hands. "No," he said. "Tonks, no. You don't ruin things. And I could never be tired of you."
But Remus must think those things! What the mirror had shown her was the truth, Tonks was sure of that. And Remus was too intelligent not to see it: how foolish she was, how unworthy of him.
And yet Tonks also knew with absolute certainty that Remus wouldn't lie.
Slowly, painfully, she pushed logic at the problem. It would be so easy to declare that one or the other must be lying, the mirror or Remus, but that wasn't good enough. She dug deeper.
It was the mirror that had showed her such a pitiful version of herself. Hadn't the woman in the lighthouse warned her of that? The mirror was dangerous not because it lied, but because it told the truth. But the truth it told was only a sliver of the whole.
Tonks looked again to her own reflection in the ice.
Looking at herself was like looking at pictures painted on layers of glass, each one transparent enough to leave the next visible below it. Tonks was many things. She was the determined Auror she knew herself to be, who'd set out on a quest and wouldn't take no for an answer. She was also the inexperienced young woman she saw reflected in the smooth lake ice, tangling with forces beyond her knowledge. Those could both be true without conflict.
And Tonks loved Remus, that was a true thing that burned inside her. But she looked in the mirror's cold reflection and saw all the times he'd tried to express his very real doubts, while she'd barrelled past him with youth's certainty that love can always conquer all. She loved Remus, yet how could she claim to love someone she refused to really hear?
Tonks closed her eyes and focused. With effort, she could hold all these layers of herself in her mind's eye at once, and each could be true without causing the others to be lies.
But the mirror's pull was strong. If she looked into it again, she might well have to start all over again with the work of remembering. How much worse must it be for Remus, who had spent so much more time in front of the mirror, and had so much more about himself that he already believed was not worthy of love.
Tonks opened her eyes, careful to look only at Remus, not down at the mirror of ice. "Please, listen to what I'm going to tell you," she begged him. "Listen to this all the way through, because I want you to understand what I see. Is that all right?"
Remus nodded, his eyes fixed on hers.
She gazed back at him, clutching his hands. "When I look into this mirror, I see someone who's young and naïve - a clumsy, clinging child who's so far out of her depth that she doesn't even know it." Remus started to protest, but she squeezed his hand, asking him to wait. "That's not most of who I am, I know that. But there's that little bit of it that's true. There is. And this mirror finds that one tiny part and twists it and makes it bigger, until when I look in the mirror, that's the only part I can see. And if I sat here long enough, if this mirror were all I could see, of course I would come to believe this one tiny part is all that I am."
Tonks was gripping Remus' hands so hard that her knuckles ached in the freezing air. She didn't know if he understood, but he was listening.
"That's how the mirror sees me," she said gently. "Now, I'd like to ask: how do you see me?"
He didn't hesitate at all. "I see someone selfless and brave. Someone who fights for what's right no matter the cost to herself, and who never lets anyone tell her no, not when lives are at stake." There was still a rasp of hoarseness in Remus' voice from long disuse and he had to clear his throat to go on, but he wasn't finished speaking. "When I look at you, I see the person who is my idea of joy."
Tonks' cheeks burned. She hadn't meant to make him list out her praises.
"Right," she hastened on, before he felt obliged to add more. "And all those really flattering, lovely things you just said, they sound like they couldn't possibly belong to the same person I saw in the mirror, right? But they do, all of those different things can be true about one person. Does that make sense? That the mirror could show one thing about me, the very worst of me, and it still doesn't make the things you believe about me not true?"
Slowly, Remus nodded. "Yes," he said. And then, "Yes, of course. If the mirror shows only part of you, then that's only part of the truth."
Tonks took a deep breath. Now the hard part.
"Would you look in the mirror?" she asked.
Beside her, Remus shuddered.
Tonks shivered too, in sympathetic pain. How long already had he knelt here alone, staring into the frozen lake, seeing and believing the worst of himself?
"This time, I'll be here with you," she said.
He nodded tightly. Tonks released one of his hands, so he could turn to face the smooth surface of the lake, but she held onto his other hand. Not being alone when he looked at this terrible reflection, that had to count for something.
Remus gazed into the ice in silence.
Tonks asked, and hated to ask, "What do you see?"
"Tonks -" Remus' voice broke over her name. "You know what I see. Please don't make me repeat it."
"Remus -" Her voice quavered and she had to start over. "Remus. Okay, you looked in the mirror. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Now, look at me. Please."
Slowly, he turned away from the ice and looked at her. His eyes were sad and so very weary. Tonks reached up her free hand to cradle his jaw.
"Now I'll tell you what I see," she said softly. "I see a dear man who is so kind to his friends and so generous with his students. Someone who's willing to think the best of people even when, frankly, they don't always deserve it. Someone who's been torn down by life, not once, but again and again, and somehow keeps getting back up stronger than before. Someone who's never lost his wicked sense of humour. Who's clever and capable and, yes, gorgeous - no, shut up -" This because Remus had given a snort of disbelief - "And all those things are true, Remus. What you see when you look in the mirror may be true, but what I see when I look at you is also true. Do you see?"
Remus was silent for a long time. Tonks remembered how hard this was, overlaying the seen on top of the remembered. She waited.
"It's very difficult," he said at last. His eyes flicked to the ice and the reflection it showed, then back to Tonks. "I've been living with my truth a long time."
Tonks fought down the urge to argue, to shout and debate until she convinced Remus that her truth was just as real as his own. But that wasn't fair of her. He had to see it for himself.
All she could do was hope he hadn't spent so long in front of the Snow Wolf's mirror that he could no longer see anything else at all.
At long last he said quietly, "I want to believe you."
Again Tonks had to fight against the desire to shout, Then do it! Just believe me!
Instead, she pressed her hand against his cheek and made herself speak as quietly as he did. "What would help you to believe?"
Remus leaned into her hand almost unwillingly, like he couldn't keep himself from seeking the warmth of that comfort. "Time, I suppose. Enough time to hear it many times and practise trying to believe it. Maybe more time than the world has to offer." He gave a wry, unhappy laugh that turned worryingly into a cough halfway through, and Tonks was reminded yet again how long he had spent here in the cold.
"We have time!" she said. "That's something we have. And I will keep telling you how I see you as often as you need to hear it. Believe me, it's no hardship." She reached down and took both his hands in hers again.
Remus looked down at their joined hands, then up to meet her eyes. He said very seriously, "Tonks, I will always be a dangerous Dark creature. That will never change."
"You're a werewolf, yes, I know. It's not like you'll ever let me forget it." Tonks heard how flippant that sounded and bit her lip. "Remus, I'm sorry. All the time I've known you I've been trampling over your concerns, telling you they didn't matter. I get that they matter. I get that you have very real things in your life that make this hard. I'm sorry I acted like we could just skip past the part where we talk about the hard stuff. But I want you to know that there is nothing about you that scares me away. And I will never stop telling you that I choose you anyway."
As she spoke, Tonks could see her breath forming fog in the air between them, but she'd stopped feeling the cold on her skin at all. That was probably a bad sign.
Remus looked at her and said, "You're shivering."
Tonks shook her head, even though it was true.
Just as she had done for him before, Remus now pulled open the folds of the thick winter cloak and wrapped it around them both. They were both still kneeling on the ice, but inside the cloak Remus wrapped his arms around Tonks and pulled her to his chest. Warmth returned to her, and she could feel the wild pounding of Remus' heart where her body pressed against his. His heart was not frozen now.
His voice muffled against Tonks' hair, Remus said almost musingly, "The creature who brought me here, the Snow Wolf, promised I could stay with him and learn to feel nothing. When you've lost everyone you cared about, when you've failed the people you loved and lived ever since with the grief and guilt, that's a seductive offer."
Tonks could still feel his heart pounding, but he felt otherwise calm in her arms.
"And yet," Remus said with wonder, "I don't want to feel nothing. I want to keep living, no matter how much pain it brings. Does that make me a fool?"
"No," Tonks said softly. She pulled back, just enough to see him. She wanted to be able to see him. "It makes you human, Remus."
He smiled at that. There was a reason Tonks had always loved Remus' smiles best of all. They transformed his face from one that was kind but weary into one that was beautiful.
"Strictly speaking," he murmured, "I'm not human, I'm -"
"A werewolf, I know. And you're still a person. The best one I know. So will you come home, Remus, please?"
Remus gazed at her. She waited, her chest tight and her heart in her throat, as she saw his mouth silently test out the shape of that word. Home.
Because Remus never said home. The old Black family house was Grimmauld Place or Sirius' house or Headquarters, never mind that Remus too had lived there for a year before Sirius died. Remus was so certain in his belief that he belonged nowhere, and he was careful, always, not to let slip the slightest hint that he might wish it were otherwise. Remus never laid claim to anyone or anywhere.
Slowly, like he couldn't quite believe it himself, Remus smiled. "Yes," he said. "Let's go home."
And Tonks' chest unclenched at last. All the terror she'd been carrying inside her melted away. She laughed aloud, giddy with relief, and pulled Remus close and kissed him. Remus wrapped his arms tightly around her and kissed her back and it was the best and easiest and most dazzling thing in the world.
Behind her, something snarled.
The sound of it shook the ground and sent a shudder of animal fear through Tonks' bones. In that first moment she felt Remus' arms tighten instinctively around her, then their training kicked in and they were both on their feet, the cloak falling away from their shoulders as they spun around to face the threat.
The Snow Wolf had returned in wolf form. He stood in front of them, all four massive legs planted wide and his teeth bared. The lake was to their backs and they were trapped.
Tonks had drawn her wand from the moment she stood, but Remus was empty-handed. "Do you have your wand?" she muttered out of the side of her mouth.
"He took it away when he brought me here," Remus murmured. "But it doesn't matter. Tonks, there isn't a lot a wand can do against a wolf like this."
But Tonks raised her wand, because no matter what she was going to try anyway.
"Wait!" Remus said. Tonks glanced over at him, quickly, not wanting to take her eyes from the wolf. Remus looked stricken. "Please. Don't put yourself in danger. This is my fight."
Tonks grimaced at him to show what she thought of Remus confronting the Snow Wolf without even a wand. But pain was visible on his face at the thought of Tonks endangering herself for his sake, and that was enough to make her hold back and listen to whatever alternate plan he had. She held her wand high and kept her body poised to attack, but she waited.
Remus stepped closer to the wolf.
"You don't want me," he said. His voice was soft and unthreatening. "Don't you see how full of love my heart is? How hot and messy with human feelings? I care so much, you said it yourself the day you brought me here. You said it as if that were a weakness, but I don't believe it is. Yes, it brings me grief and suffering. Yes, I have lost friends and mourned them. And yes, I have sometimes thought I would be better off dead, or far away, than bringing any more grief to the people I care about. A part of me believed that, and when I looked in your mirror I believed it was the only truth."
He took a step even closer to the Snow Wolf, so he stood nearly nose to muzzle with the huge beast. Tonks shivered and clung to her wand, but she knew she could do nothing to help him, only stay still and watchful.
"I don't believe that anymore," Remus told the Snow Wolf. He sounded very gentle when he said it. "I don't believe that's the only truth. You must surely be able to see that I'm of no use to you, because my heart will never freeze the way you want. You might as well let me leave."
The wolf pulled his lips back further, revealing the full length of his terrible teeth. Tonks tensed. But the wolf didn't move, only stared at Remus with his yellow eyes.
It seemed an aeon that they stood there, the Snow Wolf and Remus.
At last the wolf growled, low in his throat, and Tonks felt all the hairs on her body stand up. The wolf tossed his head and gave one wild snarl.
Then he turned and stalked away.
Two steps, three, then with a bounding leap he was out onto the frozen lake and darting away across the shattered ice. In no time at all he was far in the distance, then gone down another long corridor at the far end of the lake.
Tonks turned to Remus, grinning as relief crashed over her. She opened her mouth to congratulate him - he'd talked down an ancient beast with only the power of his words, how was that for success? - when the ground beneath them shook so violently that she stumbled and cried out.
Remus staggered too, as the frozen ground lurched from side to side. The two of them managed to flounder towards each other and grab one another's arms, holding themselves steady as the world swayed around them.
"What -?" Tonks gasped.
A deafening roar sounded from every direction, and Tonks looked up to see the high ice walls of the fortress crumbling.
"Get down!" she cried, and they did, dropping to the ground as the world around them convulsed. They clung to each other as it went on and on, the clamour of all that massive ice cracking and splintering.
The noise stopped. Cautiously, Tonks slid free of Remus' arm and lifted her head.
The fortress of ice had disappeared. The shattered lake was gone. There was nothing left but a great empty expanse of ice under the dark sky full of stars.
Remus sat up. He reached for Tonks' hand, and she squeezed back gladly.
"Is it gone?" she asked. It seemed impossible that something so huge could simply disappear.
Remus shook his head. "I don't think so. I think it's simply…returned to some other state it abides in when no one's here. This is how this place looked when I arrived. Only emptiness and ice."
A few feet away from them, something thin and dark rested on the pale ground. Tonks checked instinctively for her wand, but it was still safely in her hand. She nudged Remus' shoulder and pointed at the wand that could only be his.
He jolted to his feet and rushed to pick it up. Tonks knew how desperately she would want her own wand back if she were without it for even a short time, let alone for months of captivity. When Remus turned back to look at her, his wand safely returned to his hand, his face was radiant.
"Lumos," he murmured, holding his wand reverently, and a corona of light expanded from its end, all the brighter for being set against the surrounding darkness.
The light cast a soft glow on Remus' face, transforming his tired lines into something gentler. Tonks' heart throbbed with love for this man who had suffered so much, yet still could cast the simplest of spells with such genuine wonder and joy.
With a rippling overhead, as if in response to Remus' charm, the northern lights began to dance. Bright greens and purples and pinks and blues, more colours than Tonks had seen in all the long Arctic nights of her journey, swept across the wide sky. Tonks felt the hair at the nape of her neck prickle with the otherworldly beauty of it. She gasped and grabbed for Remus' hand to share her delight.
"Nox," he whispered. The light of his wand went out and they were alone under the symphony of the northern sky.
With Remus' hand in hers, Tonks craned her neck up and gazed into those arches of colour, shifting endlessly into new formations of wild, glorious brightness.
"I can see," Tonks said, when she could finally catch her breath again, "why people live up here. Despite everything."
Remus squeezed her hand.
She squeezed back. "But let's go home."
Tonks stooped to pick up the winter cloak that had fallen when the Snow Wolf appeared and draped it once again around Remus' shoulders. It sat well on him, and Tonks thought she'd try to talk him into keeping it. That was to say, if the mage and her partner didn't want it back.
"Listen," she said, "the only hard part is getting off this island, but I've got a hunch that if we walk back to the southern edge, there will be a wind waiting to carry us across the ocean. Once we get to the mainland there's a lighthouse, and even if we can't find the lighthouse, I know a woman in a village nearby who can give us directions south. Because I have a friend in the south of Norway I really want you to meet. From there, I can probably Apparate us home, but if not, Hindrun will show us the way."
Remus was looking at her with amazement. "Exactly how many adventures did you go through to find me here?"
"That's barely half of them!" Tonks laughed. It felt good to be able to laugh about it.
With a note of caution in his voice, Remus said, "The full moon is only a few days away. If we won't make it back to England in time, it might be better to wait, or to travel separately, if -"
Tonks thought of Hindrun's merry woodland band of outcasts. A band of Animagi, capable of taking animal form and thus in no danger should they happen to encounter a werewolf in their woods. And she thought of the convivial atmosphere, with hearty stew bubbling over a campfire and everyone gathered close and sharing stories. An ideal place for convalescing after a taxing physical transformation.
"I know exactly where we can stop for the full moon," she told Remus, and she said it with such conviction that he didn't even protest, just looked at her and nodded.
Tonks gazed out ahead of them over the expanse of ice. The northern lights had faded now to a glimmer of green, sliding in slow, sweeping arcs. The icy ground shimmered with a faint reflection of that colour, a ghost of the green night sky.
She sensed they were facing south, but cast a directional spell just in case. Yes, magic confirmed what instinct had told her: she and Remus stood looking south at last. Towards the lighthouse keeper who could harness the winds. Towards Hindrun and her band. Towards friends and Hogwarts and London and the Order of the Phoenix.
Tonks tucked her wand carefully inside her cloak, keeping it in easy reach just in case, and Remus did the same. She took Remus' hand, because after all their time apart, this felt like a small but necessary extravagance: to allow themselves the luxury of walking hand in hand.
Remus again swept the warm winter cloak wide, so it spread over both of them. He turned to smile at Tonks, and she smiled back, so widely that her face hurt with happiness. Remus' hand squeezing hers was warm, not ice. His heart beating in his chest was not ice. She'd made sure of that, and he'd done the rest by standing up to the Snow Wolf, and they would figure the rest out in time.
"Shall we?" Remus asked. His voice was gentle and kind and a little bit hoarse, and just hearing it made Tonks ache with gladness.
"We'd better," Tonks agreed. "I think the Order needs us."
Then they set out walking, side by side. Going home.
~The End~
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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.
Note: The final chapter!
Chapter 7: In the Snow Wolf’s Fortress
The wind carried them north at tremendous speed, raging in Tonks' ears as she clung to Hindrun's back. It was dark all the time now, an utter Arctic winter that had descended over the world. Tonks hated to think how many weeks or even months must have passed since she'd left London in the autumn, and how long that meant it was since Remus had disappeared.
The cold ocean was a blur of darkness beneath them. The only light in all that long crossing came from the stars that shone overhead, and bursts of colour when the northern lights ripped across the sky, eerie and silent. Nothing in the world felt familiar anymore except for Hindrun, solid beneath her. And even Hindrun would have to turn back and leave Tonks when they reached Svalbard.
Tonks first knew they were descending through the dark night by a dropping in her stomach. Then Hindrun's hooves clattered onto hard-packed ice.
Tonks climbed down from the reindeer's back, stiff after the long ride. The ground that stretched out ahead of them was covered completely in ice and the air was bitterly cold. Beside Tonks, Hindrun shook herself and transformed back into her human shape.
"I have to leave you here," Hindrun said.
Already the magical wind that the lighthouse keeper had conjured was shifting, reversing its direction, impatient to carry Hindrun back south.
"You've done so much for me," Tonks said, stricken to lose this staunch friend. "And you didn't even know me! I was just some stranger who stumbled into your woods."
Hindrun laughed, though her teeth chattered. "Ah, Tonks, you don't have to be so grateful. I told you, I'm a sucker for a foolhardy adventure, and you've certainly given me one of those. Now I'll head back home to my merry band and weave them a tale of our ride over the Arctic seas in the saddle of the night wind. What more could a wandering reindeer wish for?"
"Oh, Hindrun!" Tonks flung her arms around her friend.
Hindrun laughed and hugged back. "Silly girl," she said fondly, when she released Tonks from their embrace. "Go on, go find your lad. I believe in you. You're going to find him and bring him back, do you hear me?"
Tonks nodded, trying to take in Hindrun's certainty and make it part of herself. "I'll find you again," she said. "On our way back, once I've got Remus away from here and we're on our way home, we'll visit you and your band, so you know we succeeded. You'll like him, you'll see."
Hindrun grinned, her teeth chattering in earnest now. "I know I will."
The wind was buffeting about Hindrun's legs, trying to lift her up from the ground.
"Lykke til, Tonks," Hindrun said. Then she pursed her lips and added, "Pass godt på deg selv, nå!"
Tonks didn't have to ask what that meant. The concern in Hindrun's eyes was clear enough. Take care of yourself.
Hindrun shook her head and shoulders, and even as she moved she was already transforming, elongating into the strong-legged reindeer with the shaggy muzzle and the soulful eyes.
Tonks reached out and rested a hand against Hindrun's humped shoulder one last time. Then the reindeer gave a little leap, and the wind swept her up and out over the dark water. It carried her away until she was only a speck in the distance, and soon she was not even that. Tonks watched Hindrun until she disappeared into the darkness of the winter sky.
Then she turned to face the icy land ahead of her.
The moon was rising now, half-full and waxing. Tonks sucked in a breath of harsh air as she stared at that rising moon, so many questions jostling in her mind. Moonrise and moonset times were vastly different this far north. Now, at half full, the moon still rose and set. But when it was full it would stay in the sky for days without setting, opposite to the sun that never rose. What were transformations like for Remus here, without moonrise and moonset to define their beginnings and ends?
But there was time until the next full moon, and Tonks was determined to find Remus long before that.
She started out over the expanse of ice. Snowflakes swirled towards her, blowing not down from the sky but across the ground. As they came faster and faster, Tonks realised with dawning horror that the snow seemed to be working deliberately to slow her down. Soon she was barely moving forward at all, because all her effort was expended in dodging banks of snow that billowed up around her ankles and needles of ice that drove at her face.
Suddenly, Tonks' vision cleared, the snow no longer in her eyes. When she looked up, the snow that had been attacking her was drawing back, all of it coalescing into a single shape: the form of a wolf.
The Snow Wolf himself? Tonks wondered with a sharp indrawn breath. But no, it was still only snow. Snow animated by some kind of spellwork, to protect the Snow Wolf's lands.
The wolf reared on its white hind legs. Its jaws, made of snow crystals, opened and silently snarled, and Tonks could see the fierce power in its tensed form. Non-sentient though it must be, animated by magic was still animated. From between diamond-sharp teeth the creature expelled a breath of crystalline ice into the frozen air, readying itself to attack.
Then, jaws gaping wide, it leapt.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Tonks cried, with her wand outstretched. Her own beloved shaggy silver wolf burst forth from the tip of her wand, its teeth bared, and charged forward at a dead run.
Silver met white in an explosion of light, and for a moment the world was too bright to see anything at all as the two shapes clashed. Then the wolf of snow shivered away into a dusting of flakes that sifted down to settle in a fine layer around Tonks' feet.
Tonks' Patronus, no longer needed, faded decorously from sight.
Tonks looked down at the scattered snow around her and blew out a breath. "Right," she said aloud. "Okay, then."
Nothing else attacked as she went on. The air was clear and the stars above shone with a still, white light. And all the time she walked, the moon traced its wide, low arc across the sky. It was sliding towards the horizon at last when Tonks came to a vast wall of ice.
She approached cautiously, her wand at the ready. The pale ice jutted high into the night, disappearing into the black of the star-drenched sky. This could be nothing other than the Snow Wolf's fortress. It glowed an unearthly deep blue, reflecting starlight, and the chill the ice gave off was intense.
Tonks set out along the length of the wall, looking for a doorway. What she found wasn't a door at all but only an empty, gaping space, as though a piece had been sheared out of the wall by an unimaginably fierce wind.
She raised her wand and stepped through. Inside, a single corridor of ice stretched out ahead of her. There was no other way but forward.
So she walked. It was what she'd done all along, wasn't it? Since the day Dumbledore had brought the news to Grimmauld Place, she'd walked across mainland Scotland and the Shetland Islands, then been carried by Hindrun through Norway and over the Barents Sea. And now she'd crossed Svalbard, here to the Snow Wolf's fortress.
The air was crushingly cold, as Tonks walked on in silence down the corridor of ice. Even wearing the cloak, mittens and fur-lined boot that had served her so well through the onslaught of winter, she felt the cold now like never before. And somehow Tonks knew this was a cold no warming charm could defend against.
She passed great chambers of ice, glimpsed through gaping doorways to either side of the corridor, all of them enormous and empty. For the first time, Tonks wondered about the Snow Wolf not only as the malevolent force that had stolen Remus away, but about the being himself. What was it for, all this nothingness? Who would want to live in a palace of nothing?
Then the corridor opened onto a vast space taken up almost entirely by a frozen lake. Its surface was a shattered puzzle of interlocking ice, with dark water visible below.
At the near side of the lake, low to the ground, was a smudge of colour. It looked like a cloak pooled around a human form kneeling by the shore of the lake.
Remus.
Tonks dashed forward.
She flung herself to her knees and reached out to touch him, carefully, mindful that she had no idea what condition she would find him in.
He was cold. So cold. Tonks patted Remus' face, his hands, and he didn't move. He was like a statue - no, worse than a statue, he was like something cut from a block of ice. Tonks felt at his neck for a pulse and found one, but it was slower than should be possible for any human being who was still alive.
Tonks swallowed down the panic that was fighting to rise. She wasn't a mediwitch. She wasn't equipped for this. What was she supposed to do if she came all this way and found Remus at last and then he was frozen like this and she couldn't revive him?
"Remus," she whispered. She said it louder. "Remus!"
He didn't move.
Carefully, so afraid she might somehow break him if she moved too fast, Tonks slid closer to Remus on the ice. She fumbled to unfasten her cloak, then draped it around both of them. Maybe she could warm him with her own body heat? It was hard to hug someone whose body didn't give at all in reaction, but she pressed her body to Remus' and wrapped her arms around him.
Not knowing what else to do, Tonks started talking. Her jaw bumping against Remus' unresponsive shoulder, she told him her story from the start. About Dumbledore, and the young werewolf who'd been so afraid but had helped Tonks anyway. About the woman with the garden and the fisher with the boat, the mage and her partner, Hindrun and her band of Animagi. The Muggle village, the woman with the lighthouse, Hindrun's heroic leap across the frigid sea. And then this place. But Remus knew this place. He was already here.
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. Tonks felt them drip from her face down onto Remus' clothing, and she didn't know if that was good because at least they were warm or bad because tears were just another thing that would freeze in the Arctic air. Tonks pressed her face harder against Remus' chest.
One minute. She would let herself indulge in one minute of utter, wretched despair, and then she would pull herself together and figure out what to do.
"Tonks?"
She jerked her head up. Remus hadn't moved, and Tonks couldn't be sure she'd really heard him speak. Maybe it was nothing more than her own desperate wishing.
She glanced down again and saw that the wetness of her tears had fallen exactly over Remus' heart.
What had Hindrun and the woman in the lighthouse said about the power of love in facing ancient foes? Could the breaking of a spell truly be that easy?
Tonks looked up again into Remus' face, searching for a sign that he really did know she was here. Slowly, looking like it must cost him enormous effort, Remus blinked. Nothing more than that, just a slow motion of his eyelids and then once again total stillness.
"Remus," Tonks said. She realised she was gripping him hard around the middle and eased off a bit, though she still held onto him. "It's Tonks. It's me! Can you hear me?"
There was an excruciating pause. Then Remus blinked again. "Tonks?" he repeated. He sounded confused.
Right, first things first. The most important thing was to secure his physical safety; she could sort out his mental state later. "Can you move at all? Do you think you can move your head?" Tonks cupped one hand against the back of Remus' neck, hoping the warmth might help him loosen up enough to attempt movement.
With painful slowness, Remus' muscles began to bunch and contract beneath Tonks' hand until at last his neck turned, and his head moved, and then they were looking at each other face to face.
"Hey, Remus," Tonks breathed, with his nose suddenly mere inches away from hers. Instead of oceans and continents and seasons away. "Wotcher."
Remus' eyes still looked clouded and confused. "I -" he began. His voice was raspy with disuse. "You weren't meant to -" He frowned, the first expression she'd seen on his long-frozen face. Then, when he spoke again, his voice rang out terribly clear in the stillness. "Tonks, you shouldn't have come here."
Those words were like a stab of cold at Tonks' own heart. But she wasn't going to worry about that right now. Physical wellbeing first, she reminded herself, and anything else could come after.
"Do you think you can stand up?" she asked, moving her hands down the length of his torso, trying to feel whether he'd come any more unfrozen.
He didn't protest, so Tonks stood and gently pulled Remus up with her. To her great relief he did stand, letting out a groan but moving without too much difficulty. She wrapped her thick winter cloak around him and took his inadequate one for herself, and fitted her mittens onto Remus' hands. The icy chill bit at Tonks bitterly, wearing Remus' too-thin cloak, but he needed her warm one more. She caught his mittened hands in hers and rubbed them firmly to get the blood moving. Then she looked up to catch his gaze.
"Remus," Tonks said again, because still she could barely believe he was here in front of her. So many people had told her she would fail in this quest. And if she'd refused to believe them, it was only because to believe for even a moment might make failure possible.
But they'd all been wrong. She'd found Remus and it was going to be okay.
"Tonks," Remus said. His voice still had a raspy edge, but it was firmer now. He slid his mittened hands carefully free of her bare ones, and she felt the chill on her skin where he no longer touched her. "Leave here. Go back to London, as quickly as you can."
Tonks was starting to shiver, and she didn't know if it was from the Arctic air and the inadequate cloak, or from the weird, flat certainty in Remus' eyes as they met hers.
"Yeah," she said. "That's the plan. But I'm taking you with me."
"You're not listening," Remus said, still in that strange, firm voice. "You need to return to safety. For me, it's all right that I'm here. Perhaps it's even for the best. I'm a werewolf, Tonks. I'm dangerous. You've always known that. I am a broken old dangerous beast, and it's right that I be taken out of the way where I can't harm anyone. But you must get back to safety."
Tonks gaped at him. They'd had this conversation before, oh, yes, many iterations of it. They'd had the argument where Remus worried he was too old and too poor for her, and insisted that the dangers of his lycanthropy were an insurmountable obstacle, and Tonks told him just as insistently that those things didn't matter when you cared about someone enough. They'd had this conversation. But Remus had never sounded so horrifyingly certain about it as he did right now.
"'Taken out of the way'?" Tonks demanded. "'Dangerous beast'? Remus, what? Even if the rest of that were true, that you're so terrible and dangerous - which it isn't - why would that mean you should stay here and freeze to death? Just let me get you away from here, and we can talk about the rest of it after!"
It was like he didn't hear a word she said, standing there stiff as a statue and pushing on with his remorseless argument. "I mean this, Tonks. You're better off without me, surely you realise that. Go home. Be happy. That's all I've ever wanted for you. If I have to sacrifice myself to make that true, it's such a small price."
He said it sincerely, simply, as if there could be no doubt that what he said was right. He spoke like Remus always did at his most kind and rational, the way he sounded when discussing strategy late into the night with Kingsley or Moody, or giving Harry his thoughtful advice. Careful, kind Professor Lupin - that was how he sounded now as he told Tonks to leave him in this wasteland of ice.
Was he still frozen inside, even though his body was able to move again? Was it the cold magic of this place that made him sound like himself and yet so like a callous stranger?
Tonks reached out to him - maybe she just hadn't warmed him enough, maybe she could wrap him up even tighter and this wrongness would right itself - but he stepped back, evading her touch.
"Go," Remus said again, his voice harder than before. "I told you. This place isn't for you."
Only a few feet of icy ground separated them, but somehow it had become a distance they couldn't cross. Tonks stared desperately at Remus, not knowing how to reach him but not willing, never willing, to give up and walk away. And Remus met her gaze placidly, just stood there and looked at her like he was prepared to wait as long as it took for Tonks to see sense and agree with him.
They'd stood a long time like this, stock still in their stalemate, when Tonks became aware that someone else was there with them by the shore of the shattered lake.
She turned her head just slightly, not wanting to let Remus out of her sight, and saw it out of the corner of her eye: a white wolf, shaggy and enormous. A real wolf this time, terribly real, a beast of flesh and blood and muscle, no mere phantasm of snow. This was the creature she'd been warned about throughout her long journey.
The Snow Wolf.
As soon as she made that small motion of her head and saw it, the creature shifted shape. Now it was no longer a wolf that stood there, but a tall, lithe man dressed in white furs, with golden hair that flowed over his shoulders.
Tonks sucked in a hard breath, despite how fiercely she was trying to keep still. The Snow Wolf could take human shape. Why had no one told her that? Remus, who was sometimes a wolf, had been kidnapped by a wolf who was sometimes a man. Was this why Remus didn't want to leave? Was he happier here, with someone who could understand that part of him?
And if so, who was Tonks to tell him he was wrong to want that?
Or maybe she had it backwards, maybe the wolf had used this thing they had in common to trick Remus somehow. Somewhere here, too, was a dangerous, magical mirror, the that one the woman with the lighthouse had described. Was it the mirror making Remus so certain that he wanted Tonks to leave him? If so, Tonks wanted nothing more than to find that mirror and smash it.
The man stalked towards them. He stopped an arm's length away, but Tonks could feel his breath gust on the side of her neck. She hadn't felt truly afraid of his presence until that moment, when she realised that the air he breathed came out not warm but cold.
"So," the man murmured, and his voice, too, was chill and cruel and laced with a terrible amusement. It was the voice of a man who would conjure a palace of yawning emptiness out of ice and populate it with one sole captive. "This, then, is the human who's the cause of all that suffering and caring, little wolf?" He laughed, but his laughter was not a nice sound. It was the sound of a glacier cracking apart and unleashing a tidal wave into the sea. "How very touching."
Remus' body was taut, attuned to the Snow Wolf's every motion, although he barely turned his head to look at him. "Don't harm her," Remus said. "Let her go."
"Harm her," the Snow Wolf laughed. "I don't care about her. Convenient, though, that she's dropped by to visit us. What a trite little reminder of all you left behind."
The Snow Wolf moved suddenly, and Tonks saw Remus flinch. But the Snow Wolf didn't come closer. Instead he stalked away from them, to the edge of the frozen lake. He prowled along its border, looking down at the jagged, reflective ice, then he flicked his gaze up at Remus.
"Do you remember what that was like, little wolf?" The Snow Wolf's voice began as a low growl and rose as he stalked back and forth along the border between the frozen water and the frozen land. "All the passion, the uncertainty, the ever-present risk of loss! You give away your whole heart and then it's dashed away in a day! You love your friends and then they betray you! They leave you! They die!"
The Snow Wolf went suddenly, preternaturally still and pointed one long arm at Remus.
"Or worse still, it's you, dangerous you, who harms them. What would happen to this pretty young thing if she let herself be linked with you, hm? Do you think that would go well for her? Would it help her to succeed with her career? Improve her social standing, would it, to be known as the consort of a Dark creature, there amidst small-minded human society? But of course, that's all assuming you yourself don't rip her throat out some full moon when you mistake her for your prey."
The Snow Wolf suddenly bared his teeth in Tonks' direction and she saw how Remus tensed, ready to leap in front of her if the Snow Wolf moved. She clung to that as a sign that there was still some feeling in Remus after all.
But sacrificing himself or staying here alone in the Snow Wolf's frozen palace wasn't the kind of feeling she wanted from Remus, not for her sake or for his own. She wanted all of him, all the conflicted, messy, real feelings that made him the person he was. Not the narrow range of emotions that allowed for nothing but noble self-sacrifice.
All the while, Remus didn't look at Tonks. He just kept watching the Snow Wolf with a steady gaze, like he thought what the Snow Wolf said made sense.
The Snow Wolf smiled a smile that was all teeth. As with everything else in this world of ice, the Snow Wolf's hair and teeth and the furs he wore all shone a pale blue in the reflected starlight.
"Oh, yes, my little wolf," the Snow Wolf drawled. "You might have your fun with your human friend for a while, if you wished. But in the back of your mind, all the time, you would be terrified. In fact, you already are. You remember. You're remembering right now, how much it hurts to care. Why would you return to all of that? Stay here with me, little human wolf, and together we will be magnificent. And I promise, here with me you need feel nothing."
The Snow Wolf dropped his gaze once more to the shattered puzzle pieces of the frozen lake at his feet. Remus' gaze followed, as though he couldn't stop himself from looking. The Snow Wolf whispered, "You have looked into my mirror. You know who you really are."
And finally, Tonks understood.
A mirror, the witch in the lighthouse had said, so Tonks had been picturing a mirror like the ones she knew, an old-fashioned wizarding glass with a gaudy gilt frame and an attitude about your hairstyle.
But this in front of her was more terrible than any mirror Tonks had ever encountered in her studies or her years of confiscating Dark objects as an Auror. This mirror was the entire lake. And Remus had looked into it and somehow that had changed everything.
The Snow Wolf laughed, startling Tonks out of her thoughts so badly that she jumped, then silently berated herself for it. She knew better than to give away her reactions in front of the enemy.
"Caught on at last, have you?" he chortled. "Yes indeed, what you see before you is my Mirror of Reason. It shows all things exactly as they are. Your dear friend here studied his reflection in it some time ago, so I'm afraid there are certain truths he understands that you can't hope to match."
Tonks thought fast. The witch in the lighthouse had described this mirror: It shows anyone who looks into it the worst possible version of themselves. She'd also said that what the mirror showed was at least partly truth, and that was what made it so formidable. If Remus believed what he'd seen, it was because nothing the mirror had shown him was entirely untrue.
Which meant he also believed the awful thing he'd said to Tonks: that he was a beast who should be kept far away so he couldn't hurt anyone.
Whatever terrible version of himself the Snow Wolf's mirror had shown him, now it was all Remus could see. And how could Tonks help him fight it, when she could only guess what it must be like to look at such a twisted vision of oneself that nonetheless contained a grain of truth? (Remus was, in fact, a werewolf; Remus did, in fact, consider himself a dangerous beast, much as Tonks hated that fact.)
Tonks turned and looked squarely at the Snow Wolf. "I want to look in the mirror."
"No!" Remus cried. He moved at last, but it was only to rush forward and clamp his hand around Tonks' arm, to hold her back from the shattered lake.
And the Snow Wolf laughed.
Had Tonks thought before that his laugh sounded like ice cracking? It was more than that. It was whole worlds breaking apart, rocks shrieking against each other as continents ripped to shards. It made Tonks want to put her hands over her ears and scream.
Instead, she stared down the Snow Wolf and said, "You heard me. I want to look into your 'Mirror of Reason'. If it's so special, let me look, too."
"Tonks, no!" Remus said, low and urgent. "What are you doing?"
She turned to him. Even here, strange and cold and unreachable, Remus looked at her out of the same dear face she'd fallen in love with. He was beautiful to her in spite of, or maybe because of, the worry lines that told of the hard life he'd lived and the grief he'd survived. Here was a man who, against all odds, had emerged a kind-hearted person despite the hell his earlier years had put him through. There was no way in the world she was leaving him here to the Snow Wolf's mercy.
"I'm going to look in that mirror," Tonks told him. "Of course it's a terrible idea, I don't need you to tell me that. But it changed you and I need to understand how, and you don't seem to be in any state to explain it to me. And I don't trust that creature" - she jerked her head towards the Snow Wolf - "any further than I can throw a hippogriff. So I'm going to do what Aurors are trained to do and collect evidence with my own senses. I am going to look in that mirror, so let go of my arm, please."
Once more, they were left staring at each other. Tonks wondered if she was going to have to wrench her arm out of Remus' grasp.
"Remus," she said, with a lot of weight in that one word. It meant, I'm trying to save you and you're making it very hard. It also meant, I love you, but if you go on like this you are going to break my heart.
Remus stared a moment more, his eyes wide and fixed on Tonks. Then he let her go.
Tonks could have sworn she saw the brief sparkle of a tear running down his cheek as he stepped away from her, but surely that couldn't be right. Remus had shown himself too frozen for anything so hot and human as tears.
There was no time for doubt. She'd only been able to come up with this one plan, and she had to do it before she could second-guess herself.
She ran from Remus the few steps to the shore of the lake. The Snow Wolf stepped obligingly out of her way, smiling that smile full of teeth, and Tonks threw herself to her knees at the lake's edge.
Her eyes sought her reflection in the lake's broken shards. Each piece was jagged around its edges but had a smooth and reflective surface. And there, framed neatly in the nearest one, was her own face.
What struck her first was her extreme youth, unmistakable in the perfect clarity of the ice's reflection. Tonks didn't spend much time in front of mirrors except to confirm that her hair looked the way she'd meant it to look when she transformed it, so she often forgot just how much younger she looked than the people she spent most of her time around: her Auror colleagues and the members of the Order. Forced now to give herself a good look, Tonks was uncomfortably reminded that compared to her friends and colleagues, she was practically still a schoolgirl.
How naïve to think that she of all people could take on the Snow Wolf.
The longer Tonks looked at herself, the more appalled she was by her own hubris. Here she was, this apple-cheeked child with the wacky hair, barely out of Auror training yet charging out into the world uninformed and unprepared (had she really left London with nothing but a cloak and her wand?), yelling to everyone she met about how she was going to find and rescue her love. She cringed as she remembered each of the people she'd encountered along the way, and what they must have thought of her. How kind they'd been to humour her in her foolish quest.
And Remus. Tonks stared at her own youthful face, so untested by the trials of the world, and wondered what in the name of all magic she'd been thinking, to throw herself at Remus. Kind, caring Remus with his lifetime's worth of hard-won wisdom, what would he see in a mere girl? When Remus insisted he was too old for Tonks, that wasn't for her sake he was talking. Remus wanted a partner who could match his wit and experience, and Tonks didn't blame him in the least. Here she'd been flinging herself at him, chasing him clear across the world, and all along he'd been trying as gently as possible to explain that her affections were comically misplaced.
She'd wasted so much of his time already. The least she could do was tell him that she finally understood.
"Tonks. Tonks."
She tore her eyes from her reflection in the ice to find Remus' face directly beside hers. He'd dropped to his knees and his hands were on both her shoulders. The mittens lay on the ice between them - Remus had stripped them off so he could reach out to her directly with his hands.
"Tonks? Can you hear me?"
"Yes!" she gasped. "I'm sorry - I'll explain - I've been such a fool."
It was mortifying, the concern with which Remus was looking at her. As if she deserved his concern.
Tonks forced her words out, humiliating though they were. "Look at me chasing you all over the place, as if you would want someone as useless as me! I was stupid to follow you, but not because you don't deserve rescuing. Only because it was stupid to think you would want me to be the one to do it. But I'm going to stop assuming I know better about you than you do yourself. I can't believe I've been running around acting like I know better." Now her nose was running, of all stupid things. Tonks sniffled, feeling about seven years old. Merlin, could anything drive her point home more clearly? "Now I'm just embarrassing myself. I'm sorry. I'll go. You must be so tired of me stumbling around ruining everything."
Somewhere behind her, Tonks was distantly aware of the Snow Wolf's chuckle. "How charming," he rumbled. "Humans. You're all the same in the end. I'll leave you to it, shall I?" His harsh laughter cracked out again, then footfalls receded away and into silence.
Then it was just the two of them left on the ice by the lake.
Remus' hands slid down from Tonks' shoulders to grip her hands. "No," he said. "Tonks, no. You don't ruin things. And I could never be tired of you."
But Remus must think those things! What the mirror had shown her was the truth, Tonks was sure of that. And Remus was too intelligent not to see it: how foolish she was, how unworthy of him.
And yet Tonks also knew with absolute certainty that Remus wouldn't lie.
Slowly, painfully, she pushed logic at the problem. It would be so easy to declare that one or the other must be lying, the mirror or Remus, but that wasn't good enough. She dug deeper.
It was the mirror that had showed her such a pitiful version of herself. Hadn't the woman in the lighthouse warned her of that? The mirror was dangerous not because it lied, but because it told the truth. But the truth it told was only a sliver of the whole.
Tonks looked again to her own reflection in the ice.
Looking at herself was like looking at pictures painted on layers of glass, each one transparent enough to leave the next visible below it. Tonks was many things. She was the determined Auror she knew herself to be, who'd set out on a quest and wouldn't take no for an answer. She was also the inexperienced young woman she saw reflected in the smooth lake ice, tangling with forces beyond her knowledge. Those could both be true without conflict.
And Tonks loved Remus, that was a true thing that burned inside her. But she looked in the mirror's cold reflection and saw all the times he'd tried to express his very real doubts, while she'd barrelled past him with youth's certainty that love can always conquer all. She loved Remus, yet how could she claim to love someone she refused to really hear?
Tonks closed her eyes and focused. With effort, she could hold all these layers of herself in her mind's eye at once, and each could be true without causing the others to be lies.
But the mirror's pull was strong. If she looked into it again, she might well have to start all over again with the work of remembering. How much worse must it be for Remus, who had spent so much more time in front of the mirror, and had so much more about himself that he already believed was not worthy of love.
Tonks opened her eyes, careful to look only at Remus, not down at the mirror of ice. "Please, listen to what I'm going to tell you," she begged him. "Listen to this all the way through, because I want you to understand what I see. Is that all right?"
Remus nodded, his eyes fixed on hers.
She gazed back at him, clutching his hands. "When I look into this mirror, I see someone who's young and naïve - a clumsy, clinging child who's so far out of her depth that she doesn't even know it." Remus started to protest, but she squeezed his hand, asking him to wait. "That's not most of who I am, I know that. But there's that little bit of it that's true. There is. And this mirror finds that one tiny part and twists it and makes it bigger, until when I look in the mirror, that's the only part I can see. And if I sat here long enough, if this mirror were all I could see, of course I would come to believe this one tiny part is all that I am."
Tonks was gripping Remus' hands so hard that her knuckles ached in the freezing air. She didn't know if he understood, but he was listening.
"That's how the mirror sees me," she said gently. "Now, I'd like to ask: how do you see me?"
He didn't hesitate at all. "I see someone selfless and brave. Someone who fights for what's right no matter the cost to herself, and who never lets anyone tell her no, not when lives are at stake." There was still a rasp of hoarseness in Remus' voice from long disuse and he had to clear his throat to go on, but he wasn't finished speaking. "When I look at you, I see the person who is my idea of joy."
Tonks' cheeks burned. She hadn't meant to make him list out her praises.
"Right," she hastened on, before he felt obliged to add more. "And all those really flattering, lovely things you just said, they sound like they couldn't possibly belong to the same person I saw in the mirror, right? But they do, all of those different things can be true about one person. Does that make sense? That the mirror could show one thing about me, the very worst of me, and it still doesn't make the things you believe about me not true?"
Slowly, Remus nodded. "Yes," he said. And then, "Yes, of course. If the mirror shows only part of you, then that's only part of the truth."
Tonks took a deep breath. Now the hard part.
"Would you look in the mirror?" she asked.
Beside her, Remus shuddered.
Tonks shivered too, in sympathetic pain. How long already had he knelt here alone, staring into the frozen lake, seeing and believing the worst of himself?
"This time, I'll be here with you," she said.
He nodded tightly. Tonks released one of his hands, so he could turn to face the smooth surface of the lake, but she held onto his other hand. Not being alone when he looked at this terrible reflection, that had to count for something.
Remus gazed into the ice in silence.
Tonks asked, and hated to ask, "What do you see?"
"Tonks -" Remus' voice broke over her name. "You know what I see. Please don't make me repeat it."
"Remus -" Her voice quavered and she had to start over. "Remus. Okay, you looked in the mirror. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Now, look at me. Please."
Slowly, he turned away from the ice and looked at her. His eyes were sad and so very weary. Tonks reached up her free hand to cradle his jaw.
"Now I'll tell you what I see," she said softly. "I see a dear man who is so kind to his friends and so generous with his students. Someone who's willing to think the best of people even when, frankly, they don't always deserve it. Someone who's been torn down by life, not once, but again and again, and somehow keeps getting back up stronger than before. Someone who's never lost his wicked sense of humour. Who's clever and capable and, yes, gorgeous - no, shut up -" This because Remus had given a snort of disbelief - "And all those things are true, Remus. What you see when you look in the mirror may be true, but what I see when I look at you is also true. Do you see?"
Remus was silent for a long time. Tonks remembered how hard this was, overlaying the seen on top of the remembered. She waited.
"It's very difficult," he said at last. His eyes flicked to the ice and the reflection it showed, then back to Tonks. "I've been living with my truth a long time."
Tonks fought down the urge to argue, to shout and debate until she convinced Remus that her truth was just as real as his own. But that wasn't fair of her. He had to see it for himself.
All she could do was hope he hadn't spent so long in front of the Snow Wolf's mirror that he could no longer see anything else at all.
At long last he said quietly, "I want to believe you."
Again Tonks had to fight against the desire to shout, Then do it! Just believe me!
Instead, she pressed her hand against his cheek and made herself speak as quietly as he did. "What would help you to believe?"
Remus leaned into her hand almost unwillingly, like he couldn't keep himself from seeking the warmth of that comfort. "Time, I suppose. Enough time to hear it many times and practise trying to believe it. Maybe more time than the world has to offer." He gave a wry, unhappy laugh that turned worryingly into a cough halfway through, and Tonks was reminded yet again how long he had spent here in the cold.
"We have time!" she said. "That's something we have. And I will keep telling you how I see you as often as you need to hear it. Believe me, it's no hardship." She reached down and took both his hands in hers again.
Remus looked down at their joined hands, then up to meet her eyes. He said very seriously, "Tonks, I will always be a dangerous Dark creature. That will never change."
"You're a werewolf, yes, I know. It's not like you'll ever let me forget it." Tonks heard how flippant that sounded and bit her lip. "Remus, I'm sorry. All the time I've known you I've been trampling over your concerns, telling you they didn't matter. I get that they matter. I get that you have very real things in your life that make this hard. I'm sorry I acted like we could just skip past the part where we talk about the hard stuff. But I want you to know that there is nothing about you that scares me away. And I will never stop telling you that I choose you anyway."
As she spoke, Tonks could see her breath forming fog in the air between them, but she'd stopped feeling the cold on her skin at all. That was probably a bad sign.
Remus looked at her and said, "You're shivering."
Tonks shook her head, even though it was true.
Just as she had done for him before, Remus now pulled open the folds of the thick winter cloak and wrapped it around them both. They were both still kneeling on the ice, but inside the cloak Remus wrapped his arms around Tonks and pulled her to his chest. Warmth returned to her, and she could feel the wild pounding of Remus' heart where her body pressed against his. His heart was not frozen now.
His voice muffled against Tonks' hair, Remus said almost musingly, "The creature who brought me here, the Snow Wolf, promised I could stay with him and learn to feel nothing. When you've lost everyone you cared about, when you've failed the people you loved and lived ever since with the grief and guilt, that's a seductive offer."
Tonks could still feel his heart pounding, but he felt otherwise calm in her arms.
"And yet," Remus said with wonder, "I don't want to feel nothing. I want to keep living, no matter how much pain it brings. Does that make me a fool?"
"No," Tonks said softly. She pulled back, just enough to see him. She wanted to be able to see him. "It makes you human, Remus."
He smiled at that. There was a reason Tonks had always loved Remus' smiles best of all. They transformed his face from one that was kind but weary into one that was beautiful.
"Strictly speaking," he murmured, "I'm not human, I'm -"
"A werewolf, I know. And you're still a person. The best one I know. So will you come home, Remus, please?"
Remus gazed at her. She waited, her chest tight and her heart in her throat, as she saw his mouth silently test out the shape of that word. Home.
Because Remus never said home. The old Black family house was Grimmauld Place or Sirius' house or Headquarters, never mind that Remus too had lived there for a year before Sirius died. Remus was so certain in his belief that he belonged nowhere, and he was careful, always, not to let slip the slightest hint that he might wish it were otherwise. Remus never laid claim to anyone or anywhere.
Slowly, like he couldn't quite believe it himself, Remus smiled. "Yes," he said. "Let's go home."
And Tonks' chest unclenched at last. All the terror she'd been carrying inside her melted away. She laughed aloud, giddy with relief, and pulled Remus close and kissed him. Remus wrapped his arms tightly around her and kissed her back and it was the best and easiest and most dazzling thing in the world.
Behind her, something snarled.
The sound of it shook the ground and sent a shudder of animal fear through Tonks' bones. In that first moment she felt Remus' arms tighten instinctively around her, then their training kicked in and they were both on their feet, the cloak falling away from their shoulders as they spun around to face the threat.
The Snow Wolf had returned in wolf form. He stood in front of them, all four massive legs planted wide and his teeth bared. The lake was to their backs and they were trapped.
Tonks had drawn her wand from the moment she stood, but Remus was empty-handed. "Do you have your wand?" she muttered out of the side of her mouth.
"He took it away when he brought me here," Remus murmured. "But it doesn't matter. Tonks, there isn't a lot a wand can do against a wolf like this."
But Tonks raised her wand, because no matter what she was going to try anyway.
"Wait!" Remus said. Tonks glanced over at him, quickly, not wanting to take her eyes from the wolf. Remus looked stricken. "Please. Don't put yourself in danger. This is my fight."
Tonks grimaced at him to show what she thought of Remus confronting the Snow Wolf without even a wand. But pain was visible on his face at the thought of Tonks endangering herself for his sake, and that was enough to make her hold back and listen to whatever alternate plan he had. She held her wand high and kept her body poised to attack, but she waited.
Remus stepped closer to the wolf.
"You don't want me," he said. His voice was soft and unthreatening. "Don't you see how full of love my heart is? How hot and messy with human feelings? I care so much, you said it yourself the day you brought me here. You said it as if that were a weakness, but I don't believe it is. Yes, it brings me grief and suffering. Yes, I have lost friends and mourned them. And yes, I have sometimes thought I would be better off dead, or far away, than bringing any more grief to the people I care about. A part of me believed that, and when I looked in your mirror I believed it was the only truth."
He took a step even closer to the Snow Wolf, so he stood nearly nose to muzzle with the huge beast. Tonks shivered and clung to her wand, but she knew she could do nothing to help him, only stay still and watchful.
"I don't believe that anymore," Remus told the Snow Wolf. He sounded very gentle when he said it. "I don't believe that's the only truth. You must surely be able to see that I'm of no use to you, because my heart will never freeze the way you want. You might as well let me leave."
The wolf pulled his lips back further, revealing the full length of his terrible teeth. Tonks tensed. But the wolf didn't move, only stared at Remus with his yellow eyes.
It seemed an aeon that they stood there, the Snow Wolf and Remus.
At last the wolf growled, low in his throat, and Tonks felt all the hairs on her body stand up. The wolf tossed his head and gave one wild snarl.
Then he turned and stalked away.
Two steps, three, then with a bounding leap he was out onto the frozen lake and darting away across the shattered ice. In no time at all he was far in the distance, then gone down another long corridor at the far end of the lake.
Tonks turned to Remus, grinning as relief crashed over her. She opened her mouth to congratulate him - he'd talked down an ancient beast with only the power of his words, how was that for success? - when the ground beneath them shook so violently that she stumbled and cried out.
Remus staggered too, as the frozen ground lurched from side to side. The two of them managed to flounder towards each other and grab one another's arms, holding themselves steady as the world swayed around them.
"What -?" Tonks gasped.
A deafening roar sounded from every direction, and Tonks looked up to see the high ice walls of the fortress crumbling.
"Get down!" she cried, and they did, dropping to the ground as the world around them convulsed. They clung to each other as it went on and on, the clamour of all that massive ice cracking and splintering.
The noise stopped. Cautiously, Tonks slid free of Remus' arm and lifted her head.
The fortress of ice had disappeared. The shattered lake was gone. There was nothing left but a great empty expanse of ice under the dark sky full of stars.
Remus sat up. He reached for Tonks' hand, and she squeezed back gladly.
"Is it gone?" she asked. It seemed impossible that something so huge could simply disappear.
Remus shook his head. "I don't think so. I think it's simply…returned to some other state it abides in when no one's here. This is how this place looked when I arrived. Only emptiness and ice."
A few feet away from them, something thin and dark rested on the pale ground. Tonks checked instinctively for her wand, but it was still safely in her hand. She nudged Remus' shoulder and pointed at the wand that could only be his.
He jolted to his feet and rushed to pick it up. Tonks knew how desperately she would want her own wand back if she were without it for even a short time, let alone for months of captivity. When Remus turned back to look at her, his wand safely returned to his hand, his face was radiant.
"Lumos," he murmured, holding his wand reverently, and a corona of light expanded from its end, all the brighter for being set against the surrounding darkness.
The light cast a soft glow on Remus' face, transforming his tired lines into something gentler. Tonks' heart throbbed with love for this man who had suffered so much, yet still could cast the simplest of spells with such genuine wonder and joy.
With a rippling overhead, as if in response to Remus' charm, the northern lights began to dance. Bright greens and purples and pinks and blues, more colours than Tonks had seen in all the long Arctic nights of her journey, swept across the wide sky. Tonks felt the hair at the nape of her neck prickle with the otherworldly beauty of it. She gasped and grabbed for Remus' hand to share her delight.
"Nox," he whispered. The light of his wand went out and they were alone under the symphony of the northern sky.
With Remus' hand in hers, Tonks craned her neck up and gazed into those arches of colour, shifting endlessly into new formations of wild, glorious brightness.
"I can see," Tonks said, when she could finally catch her breath again, "why people live up here. Despite everything."
Remus squeezed her hand.
She squeezed back. "But let's go home."
Tonks stooped to pick up the winter cloak that had fallen when the Snow Wolf appeared and draped it once again around Remus' shoulders. It sat well on him, and Tonks thought she'd try to talk him into keeping it. That was to say, if the mage and her partner didn't want it back.
"Listen," she said, "the only hard part is getting off this island, but I've got a hunch that if we walk back to the southern edge, there will be a wind waiting to carry us across the ocean. Once we get to the mainland there's a lighthouse, and even if we can't find the lighthouse, I know a woman in a village nearby who can give us directions south. Because I have a friend in the south of Norway I really want you to meet. From there, I can probably Apparate us home, but if not, Hindrun will show us the way."
Remus was looking at her with amazement. "Exactly how many adventures did you go through to find me here?"
"That's barely half of them!" Tonks laughed. It felt good to be able to laugh about it.
With a note of caution in his voice, Remus said, "The full moon is only a few days away. If we won't make it back to England in time, it might be better to wait, or to travel separately, if -"
Tonks thought of Hindrun's merry woodland band of outcasts. A band of Animagi, capable of taking animal form and thus in no danger should they happen to encounter a werewolf in their woods. And she thought of the convivial atmosphere, with hearty stew bubbling over a campfire and everyone gathered close and sharing stories. An ideal place for convalescing after a taxing physical transformation.
"I know exactly where we can stop for the full moon," she told Remus, and she said it with such conviction that he didn't even protest, just looked at her and nodded.
Tonks gazed out ahead of them over the expanse of ice. The northern lights had faded now to a glimmer of green, sliding in slow, sweeping arcs. The icy ground shimmered with a faint reflection of that colour, a ghost of the green night sky.
She sensed they were facing south, but cast a directional spell just in case. Yes, magic confirmed what instinct had told her: she and Remus stood looking south at last. Towards the lighthouse keeper who could harness the winds. Towards Hindrun and her band. Towards friends and Hogwarts and London and the Order of the Phoenix.
Tonks tucked her wand carefully inside her cloak, keeping it in easy reach just in case, and Remus did the same. She took Remus' hand, because after all their time apart, this felt like a small but necessary extravagance: to allow themselves the luxury of walking hand in hand.
Remus again swept the warm winter cloak wide, so it spread over both of them. He turned to smile at Tonks, and she smiled back, so widely that her face hurt with happiness. Remus' hand squeezing hers was warm, not ice. His heart beating in his chest was not ice. She'd made sure of that, and he'd done the rest by standing up to the Snow Wolf, and they would figure the rest out in time.
"Shall we?" Remus asked. His voice was gentle and kind and a little bit hoarse, and just hearing it made Tonks ache with gladness.
"We'd better," Tonks agreed. "I think the Order needs us."
Then they set out walking, side by side. Going home.
~The End~
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