Not Your Face - Chapter Three
And now Joely sighs with relief. This next chapter of Not Your Face has been through half a dozen rewrites since I first scribbled down my ideas for it, some simply because of plot difficulties and my desperate need to get everything to tie together, others because 
the_portkey nicked my idea for a certain character! ;) But, anyway, it's finished now and ready for the perusal of anybody who wishes to read.
As usual, I love comments and try my best to respond to them! They are the writer's drug, after all... And my wonderful betas for this installment were
gloryforever and
writermerrin. Thank you very much, ladies!
Title - Not Your Face
Author - Joely
Installment - Chapter Three - Dumbledore
Characters - Remus/Tonks
Era - HBP
Summary - After Octavius Pepper's sudden disappearance, Tonks makes a decision.
Darkness was all around. A single candle sputtered a weak flame and cast an even weaker glow around the sparse contents of the rented flat. But inside, Tonks felt like it was darker still. It was as if she were clinging by her fingernails to a precipice, staring down at a black abyss a hundred miles deep. The whisky burned as it slid down her throat. She had taken it from Rosmerta as she had walked, numb, from the Three Broomsticks and headed over to her flat. The thing was, she wasn’t a whisky drinker, never had been, had always found the taste too intense… too much like drinking liquid smoke.
But it had been utterly and definably Remus. Drinking Muggle whisky around the fireplace in the drawing room had been a habit that he and Sirius had developed, or resurrected, in those lonely months at Grimmauld Place last year. They had passed hours together in this way, often in companionable silence, sometimes staying up till the bottle was drunk, or the dawn came.
After Sirius’ death, the first time she’d found Remus in tears was in the drawing room with a bottle of whisky beside him.
For most of the Order, Sirius’ ghost still walked the corridors of Grimmauld Place with the same presence his real life self had always possessed, but for Remus, the ghost paced the shadows of his head in thirty years of memories. Although he’d never actually said so, and certainly never shown as much, Tonks had the feeling that Remus had taken his friend’s death rather less well than had been supposed. In the weeks since the battle at the Department of Mysteries, she’d found at least half a dozen whisky bottles in the drawing room. Like the hundred other little traits and habits that Sirius had passed onto his friend, drinking whisky alone had clearly become just as much a way for dealing with depression for Remus as it had been for Sirius… though she’d only just come to realise it…
Remus had arrived back at Grimmauld Place well after nightfall with all the quietness of an intruder. His entrance was designed to be as silent as possible, but Tonks heard him nonetheless. She’d been lying on one of the spare beds at the time, listening for him. She scrabbled up, ran her hands through her hair and went downstairs, expecting to find him in the kitchen. But he was not there.
After trailing between half a dozen different rooms, she’d found him alone in the drawing room, sitting with his legs crossed in the winged armchair, a crystal glass with a significant measure of whisky in it resting loosely between his thumb and middle finger. She walked towards him, noticed his eyes fly up to hers and was startled by the blankness behind his expression. She thought he had never looked so lost.
A frown formed on her forehead as she observed a newly-opened bottle of Laphroaig whisky sitting on the low-boy. “Hi…” she stated in a quiet voice, “I’ve been looking for you…”
Remus swallowed audibly and looked away from her, as if pained by something. “I’ve been here long enough,” he said simply. Still, his gaze was focused elsewhere, and his fingers lightly spun the glass on the arm of the chair. “What did you want me for?”
Tonks chuckled wryly. Sometimes he could be so ridiculously clueless. Remus looked up, but his face was still impassive. “Well,” she said, rolling the word around her mouth, “We haven’t seen each other in days. You’ve been away meeting with Dumbledore; I’ve been on duty… It’s been days, Remus…”
“I’ve been back barely fifteen minutes.”
Tonks shuffled her feet and, trying hard not to sound annoyed, replied, “Yeah, but I thought you’d want to see me…” She paused then offered him a seductive smile. “I waited up for you.”
Remus didn’t answer. In fact, he seemed to have barely heard her, so she repeated herself in a question, forcing a response. “I’m sorry, Dora, I… wanted some time alone.”
“Alone with that bloody bottle, though! I know what that means!” she heard herself crying before the words had really formed in her mind, before she’d had a chance to bite her tongue and think of something better to say. Remus jumped slightly and looked guiltily at the half-empty glass in his hand.
“I’ve had barely one glass, Tonks…And I’m fine…”
The use of her surname startled Tonks and she took a step back. There were moments when she felt like she barely knew this man, so inconstant was his behaviour. In the last four months, they’d shared the sort of ardent and tempestuous relationship she’d read about in books and only dreamed she’d ever experience, getting closer and closer with every day that went past. Secretly, she’d been proud of the depths she’d uncovered in his character, the insatiable need, the warm humour and the passion. Remus Lupin was a frustrating paradox that few people truly understood, but with every contrast she discovered, she’d found herself falling more in love with him.
Changing her tack, Tonks apologised and moved to kneel in front of him. “I’ve missed you while you’ve been away…”
A light sparked briefly in Remus’ eyes. Despite all the emotional frustrations and aborted declarations of love he was so adept at, Tonks knew he felt something for her. She just knew it. “You did?” he asked, in a low voice.
“I did…”
She watched as he set the glass down on the low-boy then leaned forward a little. She knew he was studying her, planning on kissing her, because there was a familiar look of need spilling like ink across his features. “You missed me…” his voice trailed off and he took her face in his hands and kissed her, slowly.
He tasted of whisky.
As she pulled back, she noticed that he seemed softened, less anxious and perhaps, a little eased. “Cup of tea?” she asked him and he nodded. Holding out her hand, she waited for him to stand, straighten his clothes and take it before she led him to the kitchen.
The kitchen, in the belly of Grimmauld Place, was the coolest room in the house. It was also the darkest, and as Tonks rushed around lighting the candles, Remus conjured a fire in the grate and stoked it to a flaming roar. Moving quickly, as any cessation in movement would cause the chill to grip them both, they hurried to fill the kettle and set it boiling on the Aga, organise mugs and milk and tea. Neither spoke a word, but their hands strayed against each other as they passed.
When the godforsaken chill had been banished and two mugs of steaming tea made, Tonks turned to him and kissed him again. He tensed slightly, just like he had during their first few kisses, but as her tongue slipped between his teeth, she felt him loosen beneath her touch. She pushed her hand underneath his belt and pulled him closer, pressing her hips against his.
Laying her head on his chest, his heartbeat pounding dully in her ear, she breathed in his scent. He smelled of Dumbledore’s office - a sort of sweet, ancient smell not unlike cinder toffee - mixed with his own indeterminable odour. She took a deep breath in. He backed up a little to prop his weight against the sideboard, then turned her around. Positioning her carefully so she was leaning backwards against him, he handed her a mug of tea. They sipped together without saying a word. Tonks could feel his breath tickling the top of her head, warm and steamy from the tea and mused that without thought or design, she could stay like this forever.
When she had finished, Remus took her empty mug, then wrapped his arms around her waist and sought out her hands. He pushed his fingers along her arms then down to trace her fingers. As he made his tender journey, he paused, lifting her left hand and she could sense the frown that was falling on his face.
“What’s this?” he asked in a low voice.
He raised her hand up and looked over her shoulder. Tonks started and tried to tug her hand away. She’d forgotten. She’d meant to take it off before he arrived, but the rush of excitement when she’d heard his footsteps had made her forget entirely.
It was her grandmother’s engagement ring. Evelyn Tonks’s engagement ring, more exactly, as no member of the Black family would ever have even given their half-blood relation the dirt from their garden. This ring had been bequeathed her when her grandmother had died, with the instruction that Tonks was to give it to the one man who captured her heart so he could ask for her hand in marriage.
Several weeks ago, she had dug it out from the back of a drawer and considered showing it to him and imparting the instruction that accompanied it. But she had been unable to summon the courage; and the ring had remained just an idle fancy, brought out every so often to slide onto her finger and dream. Swallowing, Tonks hurriedly covered her left hand with her right, and a furious blush crawled up her cheeks.
Remus turned her around and questioned her again, curious, “What is this? This is new…”
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing…” Tonks replied nervously. She tugged her hand away and started quickly pulling the ring from her finger.
“Obviously that’s not true else you wouldn’t be reacting like this…” Remus observed. Tonks frowned and silently damned his infallible logic. He gently prised her fingers open and took the ring from her, holding it up and studying it. Tonks sighed loudly.
“You’re not meant to be seeing it. I thought I took it off.”
“Why?” His mind was clearly working, and then she heard his breath halt and his eyes fell to hers, coloured suddenly deepest hazel. “This is an engagement ring, isn’t it?”
Pursing her lips, she replied, “My grandmother’s.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, during which Tonks fidgeted and Remus stared at her. She could see a kind of panic forming on his face before he even registered it was there and blanked his expression. “You’ve been thinking about marriage…” he said simply, but his voice was so hollow she felt a shiver run up her spine.
At first, she didn’t reply, unable to form words or even a coherent gesture. The panic she’d witnessed in him had transferred itself to her across the ether and multiplied a dozen times inside her. But his fixed stare demanded a response and she nodded.
Another pause and Tonks felt as if her heart might explode right out of her chest, so madly was it beating. The clock on the wall ticked noisily. “No,” he said, almost too calm. He looked her straight in the eyes and handed the ring back to her. It hit her palm with the weight of a lump of lead. Unbidden, a tear burned down her cheek. She fisted her hand and it fell to her side limply.
“I’ve b-been thinking…” she stammered, “just thinking, that’s all…” She found she couldn’t even look at him. “It’s something I want... in the end.” She finished.
“I can’t marry you,” he told her, his voice firm and carefully measured. For the briefest of seconds, Tonks found herself thinking again of how ridiculous it was that he had the ability to make her feel so young and so incredibly foolish. “I’ve told you this before. I thought you understood.”
Bristling at his tone, Tonks pulled away from him. “You seem to think I’m some kind of idiot, Remus!” she cried. “Like I don’t listen to you or I’ve got the intelligence of a troll. Stop talking to me like that!”
Remus narrowed his eyes at her outburst. “It’s nothing to do with your intelligence. You think you can change me, don’t you? You think that a werewolf can be tamed or made into a decent, respectable human being… that I can somehow get over all the stigmas that have been attached to me my entire life and change the way that people think.” He turned and marched away from her to the other side of the table, placing a very tangible barrier between them.
“You love me! You said so just the other night. You told me you loved me and you never wanted me to leave you! Are you telling me that this is where it ends? We have this incredible… thing… and then it just… ends…” She wiped her face furiously. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that’s what you want!”
“It’s got nothing to do with what I want,” he told her. “I don’t figure in this equation at all. It’s everyone else in the world that decrees what must be. I am a werewolf. I cannot marry you.” His eyes met hers firmly. “And that is the end of it.”
He started to walk away from her. “So is that what this is?” she shouted, “This is the end of it?”
He did not turn back but he stopped quite still. His shoulder shifted beneath his jacket, as if he was summoning a greater strength. “I’m leaving tomorrow. Dumbledore wishes me to work undercover with the werewolves.”
Tonks had been about ready to yell back at him, to try to dissolve his argument in one last desperate flail, but she stopped, open-mouthed, and stared at his back. “What?” she managed.
Remus continued as if he had barely heard her, “I will be gone for nine months. You cannot contact me in any way and you must never try to seek me out.” He turned back to her. “If you do, you place both of us in mortal danger.”
The tears on her cheeks seemed to freeze. She gaped at him, shaking now. “I’m sorry things had to end this way,” he said, his voice softer now. “I had not intended to leave you like this.”
“But you are…” she sobbed, “you are…”
Some of the icy cold exterior Remus had erected melted and he took a few steps toward her. “Nine months is a long time, Dora,” he murmured, “You will forget about me.”
“I won’t,” she asserted.
He kissed her forehead, chastely, the universal symbol of a goodbye, and smoothed her tears away with his thumb.
“You will forget me.”
And this time it sounded more like an order than a resignation.
Whisky would forever remind her of that night. The taste of it in his mouth, the taste of it in hers… The burn of it as it scorched down her throat after he’d left. Now, in the soft light of the single candle, she cherished that burning again, wanted more, and seized up the bottle beside her. Resisting the urge to swig straight from the bottle, as she had seen Sirius do, she tipped another large measure into her glass and instead, drank it as Remus did, in slow sips.
From what she’d seen of both men, their depression took many forms, but this had been a relief, a ritual for dealing with their darkest moments. For her, she hardly expected whisky would chase the visions of Remus and the dead child that would doubtlessly haunt her dreams tonight, but at least it would numb her for now.
She threw herself down on the sofa and closed her eyes. Tomorrow would bring clarity, she prayed, and Dumbledore…
****
The following morning Tonks woke later than usual. She found herself still sitting on the sofa and presumed she must have fallen asleep there the night before. Rolling her neck, she winced when she felt the stretching pain of a crick that would remain the entire day if she didn’t find a potion to banish it soon. She rubbed her eyes and rose to a sitting position, stretching out her body and instinctively trying a morph; but once again, there was nothing, not even the vague fizzle in her bones when her body acknowledged the order from her brain and then failed to comply.
She yawned then climbed stiffly off the sofa. As if to mock her, it was a beautiful spring morning, with barely a cloud in the sky. Sighing, she realised that her unintentional lie-in had cost her dearly; she was late for her scheduled dawn patrol of Hogsmeade. And, of course, her tardiness would not go unnoticed by Dawlish, who hardly needed a genuine excuse to find her falling short of his exacting standards.
She dressed, tucking her unwashed hair behind her ears, grabbed up her wand and cloak and headed outside. News, it seemed, spread fast on the streets of Hogsmeade, and she quickly realised that already people were talking about what had happened the night before. A few straying eyes watched her as she set off down the main road, then leaned into whispered conversations. Tonks kept her gaze fixed straight ahead and steadfastly ignored them all.
As she approached the turning for Madam Puddifoots, she was a little surprised to see both Dawlish and Kingsley appear from out of Dervish and Banges’ green front door. Kingsley merely smiled but Dawlish greeted her with his usual round of tough criticism, “Tonks, you’re late! What time do you call this?” She did not answer him. “But save me the inventive excuses,” he continued, regardless, “and just tell me, honestly, if there was a problem on patrol?”
Tonks’ lip curled and she battled against rising indignation. There was something about Dawlish’s innate sense of superiority, not to mention his love of rules and regulation, which made her blood boil. “No, everything’s fine,” she managed to reply in a passably calm tone. “Nothing out of the ordinary, well, unless you count all the people gossiping about what happened last night.”
“Mm…” Dawlish’s face took on a look of vague contemplation and Tonks briefly wondered if he was measuring her report up to a benchmark for usefulness. “I don’t think we can stop that, unfortunately,” he said. “I’ve just been ‘round the back of Dervish and Banges again. Now it’s daylight I was hoping I’d be able to spot something, but no luck. Whoever it was certainly made sure they didn’t leave a trace of their presence.” He stopped and cleared his throat. “I’m going to go and check up with Savage and Proudfoot. Tonks, go and maintain a position outside the Three Broomsticks.”
With a sniff, Dawlish moved off down the street, leaving Tonks alone with Kingsley. “What are you doing here again?” she asked. “I thought you had to go back?”
“I did, but I was sent back again. I think this incident has left the Ministry nervous. This is the first time Death-Eaters have taken anybody from these streets.” He looked around, gesturing quietly to the nearly-empty Hogsmeade high street.
“Do you think it was Death-Eaters?”
Kingsley shrugged his shoulders. “I think it’d be foolish not to believe that. We’ve known they’ve been after Pepper for a long while. And last we heard they’d identified his animagi form…”
“So why didn’t anybody do anything?” Tonks interrupted in loud amazement. “If we knew he was in danger, why did we let him carry on?”
“Because he wasn’t following Ministry orders,” explained Kingsley and sighed.
“Then whose orders was he carrying out?”
“He was following Dumbledore’s orders.”
The new information took a second to sink in, but once it had, Tonks’s instinctive reaction was outrage. It was not the first time she had questioned Dumbledore’s judgement in recent months, but once again she found herself incredulous. Who knew where Octavius Pepper was now? Cowering in front of Lord Voldemort himself or being tortured into insanity by Bellatrix Lestrange. Whatever it was, it would surely end in tragedy.
“Dumbledore’s losing his mind!” she exclaimed, drawing the attention of a passing wizard. A look of horror flashed across Kingsley’s face and he grabbed her by the sleeve and pulled her into the side street.
“Will you keep your voice down?” he hissed.
Tonks rolled her eyes and continued in a slightly lowered tone, “I don’t know why people aren’t questioning what he’s doing. If you ask me he’s not even sure himself!”
“Well, we may think that, Tonks, but you need to keep your thoughts to yourself while we’re in the middle of Hogsmeade.”
A cloaked woman walked out of Dervish and Banges’ and passed the entrance to the side street, but fortunately afforded them nothing more than a sideways glance. Tonks waited for her to move out of sight, then shook her head, “Kingsley, I’m having a pretty hard time doing that at the moment.”
There was a pause, as if he was considering his next words, and when they came, his voice was confidentially quiet, “I can’t say I’m terribly confident either, but what else can we do? Things are moving in very mysterious ways. Dumbledore hasn’t told anybody about what he’s doing. Not even McGonagall knows. And as far as Pepper is concerned… well, we have to just wait now and hope that he shows up somewhere…”
“And what about Remus?” Tonks mused aloud. “How do we know what’s happening with him?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” replied Kingsley. “But again, we have to trust Dumbledore. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Nothing we can do? Remus might be torn to shreds while we all sit about doing nothing.” Tonks shook her head in exasperation. “Aberforth said Dumbledore was back today. I’m going to find him and tell him what’s happened.”
Kingsley reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. His voice was softer than before, “Don’t you think he already knows?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, with a small shrug, “I really don’t… but I know something. I’m not going to be satisfied until I’ve talked to him myself.”
“Tonks…”
“I mean it, Kingsley,” she interrupted. She inhaled deeply and drained her face of as much emotion as she could manage. “You know what Remus means to me.”
Nodding slowly, Kingsley removed his hand from her shoulder. His eyes seemed firm with a resolution. “Alright, go, I’ll tell Dawlish I’ve sent you with a message.”
“Really…?” She could not help a tiny smile at his offer. Kingsley was probably the Order member she knew the best, besides Remus, and it was clear that he had picked up on her mood and was trying to do what was best for her.
“Really,” he smiled, then his face returned to its usual impassive expression. “But you make sure you tell me everything the moment you get back. Understand?”
A laugh spilled out and Tonks bounced up onto her tip-toes, grabbing his face and kissing him with an undignified smack. For a moment, Kingsley looked utterly shocked, then slowly his face melted into a patient smile and he pushed her away. “Good luck…”
And quick links to previous chapters...
Chapter One - Spy News
Chapter Two - Sudden Disappearances
the_portkey nicked my idea for a certain character! ;) But, anyway, it's finished now and ready for the perusal of anybody who wishes to read.
As usual, I love comments and try my best to respond to them! They are the writer's drug, after all... And my wonderful betas for this installment were
gloryforever and
writermerrin. Thank you very much, ladies!
Title - Not Your Face
Author - Joely
Installment - Chapter Three - Dumbledore
Characters - Remus/Tonks
Era - HBP
Summary - After Octavius Pepper's sudden disappearance, Tonks makes a decision.
Darkness was all around. A single candle sputtered a weak flame and cast an even weaker glow around the sparse contents of the rented flat. But inside, Tonks felt like it was darker still. It was as if she were clinging by her fingernails to a precipice, staring down at a black abyss a hundred miles deep. The whisky burned as it slid down her throat. She had taken it from Rosmerta as she had walked, numb, from the Three Broomsticks and headed over to her flat. The thing was, she wasn’t a whisky drinker, never had been, had always found the taste too intense… too much like drinking liquid smoke.
But it had been utterly and definably Remus. Drinking Muggle whisky around the fireplace in the drawing room had been a habit that he and Sirius had developed, or resurrected, in those lonely months at Grimmauld Place last year. They had passed hours together in this way, often in companionable silence, sometimes staying up till the bottle was drunk, or the dawn came.
After Sirius’ death, the first time she’d found Remus in tears was in the drawing room with a bottle of whisky beside him.
For most of the Order, Sirius’ ghost still walked the corridors of Grimmauld Place with the same presence his real life self had always possessed, but for Remus, the ghost paced the shadows of his head in thirty years of memories. Although he’d never actually said so, and certainly never shown as much, Tonks had the feeling that Remus had taken his friend’s death rather less well than had been supposed. In the weeks since the battle at the Department of Mysteries, she’d found at least half a dozen whisky bottles in the drawing room. Like the hundred other little traits and habits that Sirius had passed onto his friend, drinking whisky alone had clearly become just as much a way for dealing with depression for Remus as it had been for Sirius… though she’d only just come to realise it…
Remus had arrived back at Grimmauld Place well after nightfall with all the quietness of an intruder. His entrance was designed to be as silent as possible, but Tonks heard him nonetheless. She’d been lying on one of the spare beds at the time, listening for him. She scrabbled up, ran her hands through her hair and went downstairs, expecting to find him in the kitchen. But he was not there.
After trailing between half a dozen different rooms, she’d found him alone in the drawing room, sitting with his legs crossed in the winged armchair, a crystal glass with a significant measure of whisky in it resting loosely between his thumb and middle finger. She walked towards him, noticed his eyes fly up to hers and was startled by the blankness behind his expression. She thought he had never looked so lost.
A frown formed on her forehead as she observed a newly-opened bottle of Laphroaig whisky sitting on the low-boy. “Hi…” she stated in a quiet voice, “I’ve been looking for you…”
Remus swallowed audibly and looked away from her, as if pained by something. “I’ve been here long enough,” he said simply. Still, his gaze was focused elsewhere, and his fingers lightly spun the glass on the arm of the chair. “What did you want me for?”
Tonks chuckled wryly. Sometimes he could be so ridiculously clueless. Remus looked up, but his face was still impassive. “Well,” she said, rolling the word around her mouth, “We haven’t seen each other in days. You’ve been away meeting with Dumbledore; I’ve been on duty… It’s been days, Remus…”
“I’ve been back barely fifteen minutes.”
Tonks shuffled her feet and, trying hard not to sound annoyed, replied, “Yeah, but I thought you’d want to see me…” She paused then offered him a seductive smile. “I waited up for you.”
Remus didn’t answer. In fact, he seemed to have barely heard her, so she repeated herself in a question, forcing a response. “I’m sorry, Dora, I… wanted some time alone.”
“Alone with that bloody bottle, though! I know what that means!” she heard herself crying before the words had really formed in her mind, before she’d had a chance to bite her tongue and think of something better to say. Remus jumped slightly and looked guiltily at the half-empty glass in his hand.
“I’ve had barely one glass, Tonks…And I’m fine…”
The use of her surname startled Tonks and she took a step back. There were moments when she felt like she barely knew this man, so inconstant was his behaviour. In the last four months, they’d shared the sort of ardent and tempestuous relationship she’d read about in books and only dreamed she’d ever experience, getting closer and closer with every day that went past. Secretly, she’d been proud of the depths she’d uncovered in his character, the insatiable need, the warm humour and the passion. Remus Lupin was a frustrating paradox that few people truly understood, but with every contrast she discovered, she’d found herself falling more in love with him.
Changing her tack, Tonks apologised and moved to kneel in front of him. “I’ve missed you while you’ve been away…”
A light sparked briefly in Remus’ eyes. Despite all the emotional frustrations and aborted declarations of love he was so adept at, Tonks knew he felt something for her. She just knew it. “You did?” he asked, in a low voice.
“I did…”
She watched as he set the glass down on the low-boy then leaned forward a little. She knew he was studying her, planning on kissing her, because there was a familiar look of need spilling like ink across his features. “You missed me…” his voice trailed off and he took her face in his hands and kissed her, slowly.
He tasted of whisky.
As she pulled back, she noticed that he seemed softened, less anxious and perhaps, a little eased. “Cup of tea?” she asked him and he nodded. Holding out her hand, she waited for him to stand, straighten his clothes and take it before she led him to the kitchen.
The kitchen, in the belly of Grimmauld Place, was the coolest room in the house. It was also the darkest, and as Tonks rushed around lighting the candles, Remus conjured a fire in the grate and stoked it to a flaming roar. Moving quickly, as any cessation in movement would cause the chill to grip them both, they hurried to fill the kettle and set it boiling on the Aga, organise mugs and milk and tea. Neither spoke a word, but their hands strayed against each other as they passed.
When the godforsaken chill had been banished and two mugs of steaming tea made, Tonks turned to him and kissed him again. He tensed slightly, just like he had during their first few kisses, but as her tongue slipped between his teeth, she felt him loosen beneath her touch. She pushed her hand underneath his belt and pulled him closer, pressing her hips against his.
Laying her head on his chest, his heartbeat pounding dully in her ear, she breathed in his scent. He smelled of Dumbledore’s office - a sort of sweet, ancient smell not unlike cinder toffee - mixed with his own indeterminable odour. She took a deep breath in. He backed up a little to prop his weight against the sideboard, then turned her around. Positioning her carefully so she was leaning backwards against him, he handed her a mug of tea. They sipped together without saying a word. Tonks could feel his breath tickling the top of her head, warm and steamy from the tea and mused that without thought or design, she could stay like this forever.
When she had finished, Remus took her empty mug, then wrapped his arms around her waist and sought out her hands. He pushed his fingers along her arms then down to trace her fingers. As he made his tender journey, he paused, lifting her left hand and she could sense the frown that was falling on his face.
“What’s this?” he asked in a low voice.
He raised her hand up and looked over her shoulder. Tonks started and tried to tug her hand away. She’d forgotten. She’d meant to take it off before he arrived, but the rush of excitement when she’d heard his footsteps had made her forget entirely.
It was her grandmother’s engagement ring. Evelyn Tonks’s engagement ring, more exactly, as no member of the Black family would ever have even given their half-blood relation the dirt from their garden. This ring had been bequeathed her when her grandmother had died, with the instruction that Tonks was to give it to the one man who captured her heart so he could ask for her hand in marriage.
Several weeks ago, she had dug it out from the back of a drawer and considered showing it to him and imparting the instruction that accompanied it. But she had been unable to summon the courage; and the ring had remained just an idle fancy, brought out every so often to slide onto her finger and dream. Swallowing, Tonks hurriedly covered her left hand with her right, and a furious blush crawled up her cheeks.
Remus turned her around and questioned her again, curious, “What is this? This is new…”
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing…” Tonks replied nervously. She tugged her hand away and started quickly pulling the ring from her finger.
“Obviously that’s not true else you wouldn’t be reacting like this…” Remus observed. Tonks frowned and silently damned his infallible logic. He gently prised her fingers open and took the ring from her, holding it up and studying it. Tonks sighed loudly.
“You’re not meant to be seeing it. I thought I took it off.”
“Why?” His mind was clearly working, and then she heard his breath halt and his eyes fell to hers, coloured suddenly deepest hazel. “This is an engagement ring, isn’t it?”
Pursing her lips, she replied, “My grandmother’s.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, during which Tonks fidgeted and Remus stared at her. She could see a kind of panic forming on his face before he even registered it was there and blanked his expression. “You’ve been thinking about marriage…” he said simply, but his voice was so hollow she felt a shiver run up her spine.
At first, she didn’t reply, unable to form words or even a coherent gesture. The panic she’d witnessed in him had transferred itself to her across the ether and multiplied a dozen times inside her. But his fixed stare demanded a response and she nodded.
Another pause and Tonks felt as if her heart might explode right out of her chest, so madly was it beating. The clock on the wall ticked noisily. “No,” he said, almost too calm. He looked her straight in the eyes and handed the ring back to her. It hit her palm with the weight of a lump of lead. Unbidden, a tear burned down her cheek. She fisted her hand and it fell to her side limply.
“I’ve b-been thinking…” she stammered, “just thinking, that’s all…” She found she couldn’t even look at him. “It’s something I want... in the end.” She finished.
“I can’t marry you,” he told her, his voice firm and carefully measured. For the briefest of seconds, Tonks found herself thinking again of how ridiculous it was that he had the ability to make her feel so young and so incredibly foolish. “I’ve told you this before. I thought you understood.”
Bristling at his tone, Tonks pulled away from him. “You seem to think I’m some kind of idiot, Remus!” she cried. “Like I don’t listen to you or I’ve got the intelligence of a troll. Stop talking to me like that!”
Remus narrowed his eyes at her outburst. “It’s nothing to do with your intelligence. You think you can change me, don’t you? You think that a werewolf can be tamed or made into a decent, respectable human being… that I can somehow get over all the stigmas that have been attached to me my entire life and change the way that people think.” He turned and marched away from her to the other side of the table, placing a very tangible barrier between them.
“You love me! You said so just the other night. You told me you loved me and you never wanted me to leave you! Are you telling me that this is where it ends? We have this incredible… thing… and then it just… ends…” She wiped her face furiously. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that’s what you want!”
“It’s got nothing to do with what I want,” he told her. “I don’t figure in this equation at all. It’s everyone else in the world that decrees what must be. I am a werewolf. I cannot marry you.” His eyes met hers firmly. “And that is the end of it.”
He started to walk away from her. “So is that what this is?” she shouted, “This is the end of it?”
He did not turn back but he stopped quite still. His shoulder shifted beneath his jacket, as if he was summoning a greater strength. “I’m leaving tomorrow. Dumbledore wishes me to work undercover with the werewolves.”
Tonks had been about ready to yell back at him, to try to dissolve his argument in one last desperate flail, but she stopped, open-mouthed, and stared at his back. “What?” she managed.
Remus continued as if he had barely heard her, “I will be gone for nine months. You cannot contact me in any way and you must never try to seek me out.” He turned back to her. “If you do, you place both of us in mortal danger.”
The tears on her cheeks seemed to freeze. She gaped at him, shaking now. “I’m sorry things had to end this way,” he said, his voice softer now. “I had not intended to leave you like this.”
“But you are…” she sobbed, “you are…”
Some of the icy cold exterior Remus had erected melted and he took a few steps toward her. “Nine months is a long time, Dora,” he murmured, “You will forget about me.”
“I won’t,” she asserted.
He kissed her forehead, chastely, the universal symbol of a goodbye, and smoothed her tears away with his thumb.
“You will forget me.”
And this time it sounded more like an order than a resignation.
Whisky would forever remind her of that night. The taste of it in his mouth, the taste of it in hers… The burn of it as it scorched down her throat after he’d left. Now, in the soft light of the single candle, she cherished that burning again, wanted more, and seized up the bottle beside her. Resisting the urge to swig straight from the bottle, as she had seen Sirius do, she tipped another large measure into her glass and instead, drank it as Remus did, in slow sips.
From what she’d seen of both men, their depression took many forms, but this had been a relief, a ritual for dealing with their darkest moments. For her, she hardly expected whisky would chase the visions of Remus and the dead child that would doubtlessly haunt her dreams tonight, but at least it would numb her for now.
She threw herself down on the sofa and closed her eyes. Tomorrow would bring clarity, she prayed, and Dumbledore…
****
The following morning Tonks woke later than usual. She found herself still sitting on the sofa and presumed she must have fallen asleep there the night before. Rolling her neck, she winced when she felt the stretching pain of a crick that would remain the entire day if she didn’t find a potion to banish it soon. She rubbed her eyes and rose to a sitting position, stretching out her body and instinctively trying a morph; but once again, there was nothing, not even the vague fizzle in her bones when her body acknowledged the order from her brain and then failed to comply.
She yawned then climbed stiffly off the sofa. As if to mock her, it was a beautiful spring morning, with barely a cloud in the sky. Sighing, she realised that her unintentional lie-in had cost her dearly; she was late for her scheduled dawn patrol of Hogsmeade. And, of course, her tardiness would not go unnoticed by Dawlish, who hardly needed a genuine excuse to find her falling short of his exacting standards.
She dressed, tucking her unwashed hair behind her ears, grabbed up her wand and cloak and headed outside. News, it seemed, spread fast on the streets of Hogsmeade, and she quickly realised that already people were talking about what had happened the night before. A few straying eyes watched her as she set off down the main road, then leaned into whispered conversations. Tonks kept her gaze fixed straight ahead and steadfastly ignored them all.
As she approached the turning for Madam Puddifoots, she was a little surprised to see both Dawlish and Kingsley appear from out of Dervish and Banges’ green front door. Kingsley merely smiled but Dawlish greeted her with his usual round of tough criticism, “Tonks, you’re late! What time do you call this?” She did not answer him. “But save me the inventive excuses,” he continued, regardless, “and just tell me, honestly, if there was a problem on patrol?”
Tonks’ lip curled and she battled against rising indignation. There was something about Dawlish’s innate sense of superiority, not to mention his love of rules and regulation, which made her blood boil. “No, everything’s fine,” she managed to reply in a passably calm tone. “Nothing out of the ordinary, well, unless you count all the people gossiping about what happened last night.”
“Mm…” Dawlish’s face took on a look of vague contemplation and Tonks briefly wondered if he was measuring her report up to a benchmark for usefulness. “I don’t think we can stop that, unfortunately,” he said. “I’ve just been ‘round the back of Dervish and Banges again. Now it’s daylight I was hoping I’d be able to spot something, but no luck. Whoever it was certainly made sure they didn’t leave a trace of their presence.” He stopped and cleared his throat. “I’m going to go and check up with Savage and Proudfoot. Tonks, go and maintain a position outside the Three Broomsticks.”
With a sniff, Dawlish moved off down the street, leaving Tonks alone with Kingsley. “What are you doing here again?” she asked. “I thought you had to go back?”
“I did, but I was sent back again. I think this incident has left the Ministry nervous. This is the first time Death-Eaters have taken anybody from these streets.” He looked around, gesturing quietly to the nearly-empty Hogsmeade high street.
“Do you think it was Death-Eaters?”
Kingsley shrugged his shoulders. “I think it’d be foolish not to believe that. We’ve known they’ve been after Pepper for a long while. And last we heard they’d identified his animagi form…”
“So why didn’t anybody do anything?” Tonks interrupted in loud amazement. “If we knew he was in danger, why did we let him carry on?”
“Because he wasn’t following Ministry orders,” explained Kingsley and sighed.
“Then whose orders was he carrying out?”
“He was following Dumbledore’s orders.”
The new information took a second to sink in, but once it had, Tonks’s instinctive reaction was outrage. It was not the first time she had questioned Dumbledore’s judgement in recent months, but once again she found herself incredulous. Who knew where Octavius Pepper was now? Cowering in front of Lord Voldemort himself or being tortured into insanity by Bellatrix Lestrange. Whatever it was, it would surely end in tragedy.
“Dumbledore’s losing his mind!” she exclaimed, drawing the attention of a passing wizard. A look of horror flashed across Kingsley’s face and he grabbed her by the sleeve and pulled her into the side street.
“Will you keep your voice down?” he hissed.
Tonks rolled her eyes and continued in a slightly lowered tone, “I don’t know why people aren’t questioning what he’s doing. If you ask me he’s not even sure himself!”
“Well, we may think that, Tonks, but you need to keep your thoughts to yourself while we’re in the middle of Hogsmeade.”
A cloaked woman walked out of Dervish and Banges’ and passed the entrance to the side street, but fortunately afforded them nothing more than a sideways glance. Tonks waited for her to move out of sight, then shook her head, “Kingsley, I’m having a pretty hard time doing that at the moment.”
There was a pause, as if he was considering his next words, and when they came, his voice was confidentially quiet, “I can’t say I’m terribly confident either, but what else can we do? Things are moving in very mysterious ways. Dumbledore hasn’t told anybody about what he’s doing. Not even McGonagall knows. And as far as Pepper is concerned… well, we have to just wait now and hope that he shows up somewhere…”
“And what about Remus?” Tonks mused aloud. “How do we know what’s happening with him?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” replied Kingsley. “But again, we have to trust Dumbledore. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Nothing we can do? Remus might be torn to shreds while we all sit about doing nothing.” Tonks shook her head in exasperation. “Aberforth said Dumbledore was back today. I’m going to find him and tell him what’s happened.”
Kingsley reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. His voice was softer than before, “Don’t you think he already knows?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, with a small shrug, “I really don’t… but I know something. I’m not going to be satisfied until I’ve talked to him myself.”
“Tonks…”
“I mean it, Kingsley,” she interrupted. She inhaled deeply and drained her face of as much emotion as she could manage. “You know what Remus means to me.”
Nodding slowly, Kingsley removed his hand from her shoulder. His eyes seemed firm with a resolution. “Alright, go, I’ll tell Dawlish I’ve sent you with a message.”
“Really…?” She could not help a tiny smile at his offer. Kingsley was probably the Order member she knew the best, besides Remus, and it was clear that he had picked up on her mood and was trying to do what was best for her.
“Really,” he smiled, then his face returned to its usual impassive expression. “But you make sure you tell me everything the moment you get back. Understand?”
A laugh spilled out and Tonks bounced up onto her tip-toes, grabbing his face and kissing him with an undignified smack. For a moment, Kingsley looked utterly shocked, then slowly his face melted into a patient smile and he pushed her away. “Good luck…”
And quick links to previous chapters...
Chapter One - Spy News
Chapter Two - Sudden Disappearances