The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Friday, December 9th, 2005 04:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
orange_crushedI love Tonks, and she is just so good to everybody. I mean really ! Too nice. So here she is, starring in her own Auror adventure. This is possibly the weirdest (not the strangest, no, that's different) idea I have ever had. Tonks, Kingsley, Snape. PG-13 for very bad language.
There's a fire in the room, but it's doing little good. Drafts are almost as common as mice in the house, and the mice could set up a Parliament. Altogether there's too many squeaks and rattles when the wind blows; and the streaky, dusty windows upstairs don't afford much of a view of the garden, covered as it is in ice. No, there's really only one reason why one would leave the comfort of the kitchen, the smell of hearty stew and the conversation around the stove; and that's for privacy.
Small wonder she can't remember Sirius anywhere but by the pantry and the library. And now she understands what Remus meant when he said he rattled in a room alone. She tries to read, but there's something about the words on the page that are making her eyes cross.
"Gahh, holy hell !" Well, that's that.
In one of those coincidences that the universe seems to have a nasty fondness for, the pair of letters in her hands have given her nearly identical orders; and vanished in nearly identical puffs of security-charm smoke. Her hands look as though they've been dipped in pastry flour. Tonks looks at the window (bolted) and the door (shut) and is suddenly sorry that nobody can share the joke.
"Pastrylicious leviosahhr." she murmurs to herself, and draws the wiggling outline of a sticky bun on top of what is probably the most expensive table in the room. "Bollocks."
The Ministry of Magic requires that you perform the service of finding Severus Snape, and placing him in Auror custody until such time as a trial can be arranged. That's one down, and easier said than done. But the other letter, the one with the spindly schoolmarm's handwriting on it, made itself perfectly clear: Find Severus Snape and don't kill him, unless it becomes necessary. There may be things at work here which we will need to understand. I will put you in touch with anyone you may need. And for God's sake don't let Harry kill him.
Dumbledore would have known where to start, but- file that away under open next year, or open never. There's no room for wishes and horses. In situations like this, Tonks feels, it is always best to go to one's mother and ask for advice.
Besides, Grimmauld Place in winter is a horrid place to be.
"He'll go to ground." she says confidently, twirling a peppermint in her mouth. "He'll go to ground somewhere that he knows, somewhere familiar and safe."
"Lord, Nymphadora- you're not tracking a Hufflepuff." Andromeda leans forward in her chair, and picks at an errant thread on her dressing-gown. "Hufflepuffs go to ground. That's why they're badgers, sweetheart."
"So ?"
"So he'll run. He'll cast elaborate glamours and never stay three nights in the same hotel. When you do turn him over, it's going to be with a foreign passport and a beard; and a bear-skin coat."
"Are you serious ?" Tonks has dropped the peppermint and is trying to imagine Snape as a burly Russian. It's not helping matters. "That's the Slytherin way ?"
"We do our best, Dora dear." Her mother smiles and strokes her hair, which turns the color of ripe apples beneath the gentleness of her touch. "And so will you."
If Kingsley is confused by the muggle money, it doesn't show. He folds it all in half, fives over twenties, and sticks them in his left-hand pocket. Tonks reads the boards and tries to forget that she's eaten dinner with her quarry, the murderer. Well, near is more like it. And it's not like he ever bothered to praise Molly for the chops.
"Tonks, that's us." Kingsley nods towards gate eleven. "Got everything ?"
"Tickets, bag, wand. Extra shoes. Hairbrush ?" She rummages for a moment in the canvas bag slung against her stomach. "Hairbrush." Briefly in her search she touches the only good-luck charm that her limited superstition will allow her: a pocket mirror compact, from Remus. Not in the habit of giving impractical presents, he's charmed it to form a powerful ward in her favor if broken. She rests her hand against it, cool and steel-slick.
"Did you eat a good breakfast ?" he asks, deadpan; and she's just about to answer him when a foolish grin creeps across her face. Tonks reaches out and hits him thoughtfully with a tennis shoe dangling from the shoulder-strap.
"Jerk." He rubs his arm. "Let's go."
In the station bathroom she becomes a blue-eyed blonde, with crow's feet starting to track around her eyes; and at the sides of a generous, handsome mouth that Tonks has often admired on her mother, but did not inherit. Outside Kingsley looks at her, or rather doesn't look at her, in that particular way that usually follows her transformations; like he's trying to see little bits of her that might have escaped the change. On the train she sleeps against his shoulder, while he drums his fingers against the windowpane and goes over the few (very few) leads they have collected.
The last few months have been a blur of Harry and gravesites and Harry and moldering tombs and Harry and holes in the ground. Everything Tom Riddle has touched seems to retain a slight stink about it, like toads mating. Old farts underwater. Harry's search hasn't really led him in the direction of ice-cream shops and fine hotels. It's been Tonks's duty thus far to protect him, and protect him she has, fiercely, as she believes Sirius would have done.
It's strange to be away from him and his oddly grim, but boyish, humor. She didn't mind the hardship associated with sleeping in tents and trying to unravel the hidden secrets of the dark lord; not when Harry was managing to keep such a brave face. Ah, well. He has his friends and his odds-and-ends of an adoptive family, not to mention the Order watching his every move. And Tonks realizes that in a hunt situation, she's their best option. Light, fast, utterly chameleon. It's why she got the job.
"You got the job because you don't complain." Kingsley clarifies for her. "And everyone else, myself included, would have."
"Look, this is the glamorous side of Ministry business." She inspects the lining of a rabbit-fur jacket and turns her hair a light auburn. "We could be pushing papers or wiping Scrimgeour's bottom, never forget that."
Snape is not an easy beast to tree. He's been seen in Italy, or a man of his description, crossing into the mountains. Contact with a potion (of which he is the only known maker) accidentally gave a woman bright blue hands, minutes from the Hague. And three elderly wizards in the Trossachs claim that he is renting a room in their inn. The clear hoaxes went into one pile and the rest were carefully checked and cross-checked.
The elderly wizards recieved a fruit basket and a certificate for locating a known criminal, one T. Albert Harkness, wanted for an unrelated magical burglary. Tonks began to believe that she was actually losing her mind, until Kingsley hit the jackpot in an old contact of Karkaroff's. They are headed that way now, through the endless winter that spreads out beyond the train windows. She doesn't think that she will speak to him when they corner him at last; she'll just stupefy him and turn him into a snuffbox; and carry the bastard back to the Ministry wrapped in dirty tissues.
They find him, of course. It's like every awful cop movie Tonks can remember her father watching, bellowing with laughter at the pork-pie hats on the informants and the yelling Sergeants with purple veins in their neck. It's as easy as squeezing an address out of an overly narrow squib and obliviating his customers. Honest to God, Tonks pulls a fast one on the landlady and knocks his door down.
Severus Snape doesn't bother going for his wand, because Kingsley's is already aimed at the back of his head, and Kingsley is a notorious dead shot. "You're wanted for questioning." she tells him.
"Don't play games." He snapes back like an adder, and she has to keep herself from pulling back reflexively. "You and your little friends have already played judge and jury. You're here to kill me, so kill me ! "
Tonks stares at him for about forty full seconds, not speaking, before she lowers her wand. Kingsley is good enough not to tell her that she is crazy in front of the prisoner, but his eyes speak volumes. Big talk about this later, they seem to say. Snape continues to try and boil her alive with the power of his eyeballs.
"Seriously, answer a question." She sits into the stiff-backed chair that is closest to hand, and puts a hand over her face. "Does everyone in your generation have a martyr complex ?"
Snape considers this a moment.
"Yes." he says.
He can't be put in close proximity to Harry, because God knows what Harry would do; and what Snape would say to make it happen. He would probably call Harry 'stupid boy' and end up all kinds of dead, or worse, take an arm off the Boy Who Lived in self-defense.
"I don't see how that's worse." Snape says quickly.
"That's because you're a horrible person." Tonks unlocks a small door and holds it open for him. "Go ahead, go on. There's a bedroom and a washroom and a main room with a fireplace. It'll only be a couple of days before we can sort this out."
"This isn't safe. I'll be found."
"Suddenly afraid of the big bad wolf, huh ?" She gives him what she thinks is a sneer. In actuality, it's a quite charming grimace, but he gets the point. "Afraid your old buddy, your old master is out looking for you somewhere ?"
"Not for me, idiot girl. For Draco."
"Draco ?"
"When they find me, they find the boy and his mother. That is in my best interest not to allow."
"Draco." She stares at him, a little dumbfounded. "Draco Malfoy ? The bratty Junior Death Eater ? I assumed he ran to his father, like Harry says he's always threatening to."
"He refused to take the Mark." Snape says, his eyes never leaving her shoulder. "After that night, on the tower."
"Well, too bad !" The blood in her hands seems to have run out, at the mention of the hateful sigil; and she clenches them into fists. "He signed up with that lot, and he can burn with them, for all I care."
"It was Dumbledore's wish that the boy be spared and brought to safety."
"Don't !" she cries out. It's shrill in her ears, like a scared and angry cat. "Don't you say his name." She's shaking. By his face she can see that he's angry, maybe even furious.
"I did what he asked." he says. "So go to hell." He turns his back to her. They stand that way while the sun dips behind a sudden cloud. Tonk's shadow fades into the woodgrain of the floor, and re-emerges in those minutes. She can see a twisted shape in the knots, like the three joined hares that mean fertility, fecundity, renewal. Or running about in a circle forever, depending on which meaning you prefer.
Snape clears his throat. "I'll stay here for the night, but tomorrow I must see Minerva. Do you understand ?"
"Yeah." She takes a deep, shuddering breath; and the fury slips out of her, from underneath her fingernails maybe; or like steam from the top of her head. "Alright." Tonks has the uncomfortable sensation of seeing a human being standing where Snape ought to be; and so she shuts the door.
McGonagall tells her to be patient; that somebody has caught wind of the fact that it is Tonks who has gone for Snape, and that the best thing to do is lie low a little longer. Lie low a little longer. Tonks thinks bitterly that this should be the phrase under the coat-of-arms for the Order. Remus oftens says that he waits professionally, which has never failed to make her laugh.
Moody's letter actually says fucking Snape fuckity-fucking things merrily all to fucking hell but from long years of translation she knows that he means sorry, and keep your head down.
They move to a safe-house in Dublin, where Snape complains about the wasted days until Kingsley tells him he can scrub the floors to pass the time, if he likes, or else be quiet. When Tonks is asleep Kingsley feels he can speak more clearly: "She's in more danger with you near than she ever was before, dark wizards or no dark wizards. We both are. So try to appreciate that."
"My saviours." Snape takes a pull from his glass and stares moodily into the fireplace. Kingsley has a sudden urge to push him out of his chair and sit on him, a feeling he has not experienced towards anyone since the fourth grade.
"Hey. Guess what ?" Snape does not respond, but Kingsley continues. "I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt because she's given you the benefit of the doubt. I'd just as soon take you on a vacation to Azkaban and accidentally leave you behind."
"I believe they have a program for that, Mr. Shacklebolt. Duly noted."
"How's the firewhiskey ?"
"Old." Snape gives him what might actually pass for a wry smile. "A noble attempt, but unfortunately it hasn't aged well. It's actually fairly shitty."
"But better than Azkaban ?"
"Most things are." They drink the rest of the bottle anyway, and afterwards Snape is even persuaded to play gin rummy.
It could have gone on like this; travelling and lethargy and drinking and cards and setting and re-setting wards; but it doesn't. Not for much longer. They are eating breakfast in a companiable silence when the doorbell downstairs chimes loudly, and then is perfectly still.
"Do we have a doorbell ?" Snape asks, with half a slice of buttered toast dangling from his left hand.
"No." Tonks draws her wand, and motions Kingsley to take position at the top of the stairs. "It's a ward, set about ten meters out from the front stoop."
Snape says nothing in response, just sets the toast down delicately, wipes his hand on the napkin, and draws his own wand. He stands up beside Tonks and she gives him a look reserved for the very stupid. "Are you joking ? Get into the back room, it's the most heavily protected."
"Don't be ridiculous." he snaps back. "I'm not going to twiddle my thumbs while you two take care of this."
"You're going to do as I-"
"I will not." The corner of his mouth twitches upward suddenly, and Tonks realizes that he finds this somehow funny. "And yes, I know what I sound like."
"A fourteen-year-old boy ?"
"A fourteen year old boy." He smiles at her, and she gives him a respectful nod.
"Okay. Take the back windows, and try not to be seen. They have to know they've tripped something, and I want to see what directions they're coming from." There is a thump on the roof, and a sound like stones rattling down a well. Kingsley, last seen creeping down the stairs, gives a shout from the front rooms. Snape sniffs the air. "Do you smell something ?"
"Sulfur." He says. "The fucking chimney." They say together, and then all hell breaks loose.
Tonks can see her own hands in front of her face. It's a start. She doesn't light her wand, because in all the ash and smoke she'd be like a beacon. Something large looms in front of her, and she hits it as hard as she can with a chair leg, and hexes it still.
It's a Crabbe, probably, judging from the girth. She pulls the mask off and tosses it away. She can hear Kingsley yelling curses downstairs and that makes her heart glad. A part of the floor underneath her begins to sizzle, and she steps off of it, into another body.
Hands come up, the thumbs aimed at her eyesockets, but she falls into the kitchen cabinet in time to keep her sight. The nails of the hands still go across her face, drawing blood. Tonks screams, and hexes upwards as she hits the floor.
"Baby cousin !" Bellatrix says, with a mouth full of blood. "How happy I am to see you !" She aims her wand and Tonks has a split second to think Mom and then Aunt Bella is flying sideways with an unpleasant expression on her face. Snape's shoulder seems to be leading the charge. He reaches out a hand and Tonks takes it, and together they make for Kingsley, and clear space to apparate.
Halfway down the stairs there is a triumphant scream, and it appears that Bellatrix has regained her footing. Tonks looks at her aunt, and at Snape, and shoves him down the stairs in the direction of safety. Bellatrix aims her wand and begins the curse; but Tonks is faster, her wand already an arrow in the other woman's heart.
"Avada Kedavra." she says, and a green light erases the world.
She awakens, not for the first time, in a hospital bed.
"Good morning." Remus smoothes a hair from her forehead and gives her a rueful smile. "Really, you turn up in all the best places."
"Remus." She pulls him into her and lets herself breathe the air hovering around his jacket- old soap, old blood, new thread. "Please tell me if I'm alive."
"You're alive." he says, into her hair.
"And Kingsley ? Snape ?"
"Fine. Both of them. Kingsley got hit on the head by some falling plaster, but nothing serious. He's finishing the report for you as we speak."
"Fucking hell." Tonks falls back onto the pillow and lets her eyes shut. There are tears in them, and she squeezes them away. "I've taken bets on his invulnerability, and I'd hate to be wrong." She smiles without opening her eyes, and listens to the warm, dry sounds of his laughter.
"You did break Snape's arm, apparently."
"What ?"
"Healed now, of course, but it's all he'll talk about. He says you pushed him down the stairs." Tonks tries to remember, and can't. There is smoke and fire in her brain, and a woman with eyes very much like her mother's, except for the bright green hatred.
"I think I killed her."
"You did." Her eyes open, and he searches her face. "Are you alright with that ?"
"Very." She is, and she isn't. Oh, Sirius. Tonks misses him and his clarity at times like this. She misses what the world used to be like. "I think I want to sleep for a little longer." He kisses the top of her head and sits back in his chair, and she drifts off to the sound of him rustling the newspaper.
She is packing her bag to leave when a second visitor arrives. Snape stands in the doorway like a self-conscious stick of licorice.
"Come in." she says. His arm is still bandaged, though no longer in a sling. She remembers breaking her arm in second grade, and begging for a cast even after the bone was magically mended, so that her classmates could sign it. It's a silly thought, in the context of Snape, but she thinks it anyway.
"You look well."
"I feel pretty awful. But thanks for not saying it."
"I'm legendary for my tact." he says, pursing his narrow mouth; and he has the grace not to look offended when she laughs out loud. "Thank you."
"I didn't mean to laugh, it's just that-"
"No, not that. Never mind that. At the house, you put my safety above yours. It was a foolish act, but I'm not going to cheapen it with ingratitude. So thank you."
"You're- welcome." She drops her hairbrush into the bag and pulls it out again, and tugs at her jumper. And smiles at him, a real one, with her eyes. "If I'd known that pushing you down the stairs was the quickest way to make friends, I'd have done it the day we met."
He stares at her for what becomes a very awkward minute.
"I didn't." he begins, and draws a second breath. "I didn't know that we were."
"Oh, shut the hell up." He appears glad to be given the opportunity to end that thought. She swings the bag at him. "And carry this for me."
There's a fire in the room, but it's doing little good. Drafts are almost as common as mice in the house, and the mice could set up a Parliament. Altogether there's too many squeaks and rattles when the wind blows; and the streaky, dusty windows upstairs don't afford much of a view of the garden, covered as it is in ice. No, there's really only one reason why one would leave the comfort of the kitchen, the smell of hearty stew and the conversation around the stove; and that's for privacy.
Small wonder she can't remember Sirius anywhere but by the pantry and the library. And now she understands what Remus meant when he said he rattled in a room alone. She tries to read, but there's something about the words on the page that are making her eyes cross.
"Gahh, holy hell !" Well, that's that.
In one of those coincidences that the universe seems to have a nasty fondness for, the pair of letters in her hands have given her nearly identical orders; and vanished in nearly identical puffs of security-charm smoke. Her hands look as though they've been dipped in pastry flour. Tonks looks at the window (bolted) and the door (shut) and is suddenly sorry that nobody can share the joke.
"Pastrylicious leviosahhr." she murmurs to herself, and draws the wiggling outline of a sticky bun on top of what is probably the most expensive table in the room. "Bollocks."
The Ministry of Magic requires that you perform the service of finding Severus Snape, and placing him in Auror custody until such time as a trial can be arranged. That's one down, and easier said than done. But the other letter, the one with the spindly schoolmarm's handwriting on it, made itself perfectly clear: Find Severus Snape and don't kill him, unless it becomes necessary. There may be things at work here which we will need to understand. I will put you in touch with anyone you may need. And for God's sake don't let Harry kill him.
Dumbledore would have known where to start, but- file that away under open next year, or open never. There's no room for wishes and horses. In situations like this, Tonks feels, it is always best to go to one's mother and ask for advice.
Besides, Grimmauld Place in winter is a horrid place to be.
"He'll go to ground." she says confidently, twirling a peppermint in her mouth. "He'll go to ground somewhere that he knows, somewhere familiar and safe."
"Lord, Nymphadora- you're not tracking a Hufflepuff." Andromeda leans forward in her chair, and picks at an errant thread on her dressing-gown. "Hufflepuffs go to ground. That's why they're badgers, sweetheart."
"So ?"
"So he'll run. He'll cast elaborate glamours and never stay three nights in the same hotel. When you do turn him over, it's going to be with a foreign passport and a beard; and a bear-skin coat."
"Are you serious ?" Tonks has dropped the peppermint and is trying to imagine Snape as a burly Russian. It's not helping matters. "That's the Slytherin way ?"
"We do our best, Dora dear." Her mother smiles and strokes her hair, which turns the color of ripe apples beneath the gentleness of her touch. "And so will you."
If Kingsley is confused by the muggle money, it doesn't show. He folds it all in half, fives over twenties, and sticks them in his left-hand pocket. Tonks reads the boards and tries to forget that she's eaten dinner with her quarry, the murderer. Well, near is more like it. And it's not like he ever bothered to praise Molly for the chops.
"Tonks, that's us." Kingsley nods towards gate eleven. "Got everything ?"
"Tickets, bag, wand. Extra shoes. Hairbrush ?" She rummages for a moment in the canvas bag slung against her stomach. "Hairbrush." Briefly in her search she touches the only good-luck charm that her limited superstition will allow her: a pocket mirror compact, from Remus. Not in the habit of giving impractical presents, he's charmed it to form a powerful ward in her favor if broken. She rests her hand against it, cool and steel-slick.
"Did you eat a good breakfast ?" he asks, deadpan; and she's just about to answer him when a foolish grin creeps across her face. Tonks reaches out and hits him thoughtfully with a tennis shoe dangling from the shoulder-strap.
"Jerk." He rubs his arm. "Let's go."
In the station bathroom she becomes a blue-eyed blonde, with crow's feet starting to track around her eyes; and at the sides of a generous, handsome mouth that Tonks has often admired on her mother, but did not inherit. Outside Kingsley looks at her, or rather doesn't look at her, in that particular way that usually follows her transformations; like he's trying to see little bits of her that might have escaped the change. On the train she sleeps against his shoulder, while he drums his fingers against the windowpane and goes over the few (very few) leads they have collected.
The last few months have been a blur of Harry and gravesites and Harry and moldering tombs and Harry and holes in the ground. Everything Tom Riddle has touched seems to retain a slight stink about it, like toads mating. Old farts underwater. Harry's search hasn't really led him in the direction of ice-cream shops and fine hotels. It's been Tonks's duty thus far to protect him, and protect him she has, fiercely, as she believes Sirius would have done.
It's strange to be away from him and his oddly grim, but boyish, humor. She didn't mind the hardship associated with sleeping in tents and trying to unravel the hidden secrets of the dark lord; not when Harry was managing to keep such a brave face. Ah, well. He has his friends and his odds-and-ends of an adoptive family, not to mention the Order watching his every move. And Tonks realizes that in a hunt situation, she's their best option. Light, fast, utterly chameleon. It's why she got the job.
"You got the job because you don't complain." Kingsley clarifies for her. "And everyone else, myself included, would have."
"Look, this is the glamorous side of Ministry business." She inspects the lining of a rabbit-fur jacket and turns her hair a light auburn. "We could be pushing papers or wiping Scrimgeour's bottom, never forget that."
Snape is not an easy beast to tree. He's been seen in Italy, or a man of his description, crossing into the mountains. Contact with a potion (of which he is the only known maker) accidentally gave a woman bright blue hands, minutes from the Hague. And three elderly wizards in the Trossachs claim that he is renting a room in their inn. The clear hoaxes went into one pile and the rest were carefully checked and cross-checked.
The elderly wizards recieved a fruit basket and a certificate for locating a known criminal, one T. Albert Harkness, wanted for an unrelated magical burglary. Tonks began to believe that she was actually losing her mind, until Kingsley hit the jackpot in an old contact of Karkaroff's. They are headed that way now, through the endless winter that spreads out beyond the train windows. She doesn't think that she will speak to him when they corner him at last; she'll just stupefy him and turn him into a snuffbox; and carry the bastard back to the Ministry wrapped in dirty tissues.
They find him, of course. It's like every awful cop movie Tonks can remember her father watching, bellowing with laughter at the pork-pie hats on the informants and the yelling Sergeants with purple veins in their neck. It's as easy as squeezing an address out of an overly narrow squib and obliviating his customers. Honest to God, Tonks pulls a fast one on the landlady and knocks his door down.
Severus Snape doesn't bother going for his wand, because Kingsley's is already aimed at the back of his head, and Kingsley is a notorious dead shot. "You're wanted for questioning." she tells him.
"Don't play games." He snapes back like an adder, and she has to keep herself from pulling back reflexively. "You and your little friends have already played judge and jury. You're here to kill me, so kill me ! "
Tonks stares at him for about forty full seconds, not speaking, before she lowers her wand. Kingsley is good enough not to tell her that she is crazy in front of the prisoner, but his eyes speak volumes. Big talk about this later, they seem to say. Snape continues to try and boil her alive with the power of his eyeballs.
"Seriously, answer a question." She sits into the stiff-backed chair that is closest to hand, and puts a hand over her face. "Does everyone in your generation have a martyr complex ?"
Snape considers this a moment.
"Yes." he says.
He can't be put in close proximity to Harry, because God knows what Harry would do; and what Snape would say to make it happen. He would probably call Harry 'stupid boy' and end up all kinds of dead, or worse, take an arm off the Boy Who Lived in self-defense.
"I don't see how that's worse." Snape says quickly.
"That's because you're a horrible person." Tonks unlocks a small door and holds it open for him. "Go ahead, go on. There's a bedroom and a washroom and a main room with a fireplace. It'll only be a couple of days before we can sort this out."
"This isn't safe. I'll be found."
"Suddenly afraid of the big bad wolf, huh ?" She gives him what she thinks is a sneer. In actuality, it's a quite charming grimace, but he gets the point. "Afraid your old buddy, your old master is out looking for you somewhere ?"
"Not for me, idiot girl. For Draco."
"Draco ?"
"When they find me, they find the boy and his mother. That is in my best interest not to allow."
"Draco." She stares at him, a little dumbfounded. "Draco Malfoy ? The bratty Junior Death Eater ? I assumed he ran to his father, like Harry says he's always threatening to."
"He refused to take the Mark." Snape says, his eyes never leaving her shoulder. "After that night, on the tower."
"Well, too bad !" The blood in her hands seems to have run out, at the mention of the hateful sigil; and she clenches them into fists. "He signed up with that lot, and he can burn with them, for all I care."
"It was Dumbledore's wish that the boy be spared and brought to safety."
"Don't !" she cries out. It's shrill in her ears, like a scared and angry cat. "Don't you say his name." She's shaking. By his face she can see that he's angry, maybe even furious.
"I did what he asked." he says. "So go to hell." He turns his back to her. They stand that way while the sun dips behind a sudden cloud. Tonk's shadow fades into the woodgrain of the floor, and re-emerges in those minutes. She can see a twisted shape in the knots, like the three joined hares that mean fertility, fecundity, renewal. Or running about in a circle forever, depending on which meaning you prefer.
Snape clears his throat. "I'll stay here for the night, but tomorrow I must see Minerva. Do you understand ?"
"Yeah." She takes a deep, shuddering breath; and the fury slips out of her, from underneath her fingernails maybe; or like steam from the top of her head. "Alright." Tonks has the uncomfortable sensation of seeing a human being standing where Snape ought to be; and so she shuts the door.
McGonagall tells her to be patient; that somebody has caught wind of the fact that it is Tonks who has gone for Snape, and that the best thing to do is lie low a little longer. Lie low a little longer. Tonks thinks bitterly that this should be the phrase under the coat-of-arms for the Order. Remus oftens says that he waits professionally, which has never failed to make her laugh.
Moody's letter actually says fucking Snape fuckity-fucking things merrily all to fucking hell but from long years of translation she knows that he means sorry, and keep your head down.
They move to a safe-house in Dublin, where Snape complains about the wasted days until Kingsley tells him he can scrub the floors to pass the time, if he likes, or else be quiet. When Tonks is asleep Kingsley feels he can speak more clearly: "She's in more danger with you near than she ever was before, dark wizards or no dark wizards. We both are. So try to appreciate that."
"My saviours." Snape takes a pull from his glass and stares moodily into the fireplace. Kingsley has a sudden urge to push him out of his chair and sit on him, a feeling he has not experienced towards anyone since the fourth grade.
"Hey. Guess what ?" Snape does not respond, but Kingsley continues. "I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt because she's given you the benefit of the doubt. I'd just as soon take you on a vacation to Azkaban and accidentally leave you behind."
"I believe they have a program for that, Mr. Shacklebolt. Duly noted."
"How's the firewhiskey ?"
"Old." Snape gives him what might actually pass for a wry smile. "A noble attempt, but unfortunately it hasn't aged well. It's actually fairly shitty."
"But better than Azkaban ?"
"Most things are." They drink the rest of the bottle anyway, and afterwards Snape is even persuaded to play gin rummy.
It could have gone on like this; travelling and lethargy and drinking and cards and setting and re-setting wards; but it doesn't. Not for much longer. They are eating breakfast in a companiable silence when the doorbell downstairs chimes loudly, and then is perfectly still.
"Do we have a doorbell ?" Snape asks, with half a slice of buttered toast dangling from his left hand.
"No." Tonks draws her wand, and motions Kingsley to take position at the top of the stairs. "It's a ward, set about ten meters out from the front stoop."
Snape says nothing in response, just sets the toast down delicately, wipes his hand on the napkin, and draws his own wand. He stands up beside Tonks and she gives him a look reserved for the very stupid. "Are you joking ? Get into the back room, it's the most heavily protected."
"Don't be ridiculous." he snaps back. "I'm not going to twiddle my thumbs while you two take care of this."
"You're going to do as I-"
"I will not." The corner of his mouth twitches upward suddenly, and Tonks realizes that he finds this somehow funny. "And yes, I know what I sound like."
"A fourteen-year-old boy ?"
"A fourteen year old boy." He smiles at her, and she gives him a respectful nod.
"Okay. Take the back windows, and try not to be seen. They have to know they've tripped something, and I want to see what directions they're coming from." There is a thump on the roof, and a sound like stones rattling down a well. Kingsley, last seen creeping down the stairs, gives a shout from the front rooms. Snape sniffs the air. "Do you smell something ?"
"Sulfur." He says. "The fucking chimney." They say together, and then all hell breaks loose.
Tonks can see her own hands in front of her face. It's a start. She doesn't light her wand, because in all the ash and smoke she'd be like a beacon. Something large looms in front of her, and she hits it as hard as she can with a chair leg, and hexes it still.
It's a Crabbe, probably, judging from the girth. She pulls the mask off and tosses it away. She can hear Kingsley yelling curses downstairs and that makes her heart glad. A part of the floor underneath her begins to sizzle, and she steps off of it, into another body.
Hands come up, the thumbs aimed at her eyesockets, but she falls into the kitchen cabinet in time to keep her sight. The nails of the hands still go across her face, drawing blood. Tonks screams, and hexes upwards as she hits the floor.
"Baby cousin !" Bellatrix says, with a mouth full of blood. "How happy I am to see you !" She aims her wand and Tonks has a split second to think Mom and then Aunt Bella is flying sideways with an unpleasant expression on her face. Snape's shoulder seems to be leading the charge. He reaches out a hand and Tonks takes it, and together they make for Kingsley, and clear space to apparate.
Halfway down the stairs there is a triumphant scream, and it appears that Bellatrix has regained her footing. Tonks looks at her aunt, and at Snape, and shoves him down the stairs in the direction of safety. Bellatrix aims her wand and begins the curse; but Tonks is faster, her wand already an arrow in the other woman's heart.
"Avada Kedavra." she says, and a green light erases the world.
She awakens, not for the first time, in a hospital bed.
"Good morning." Remus smoothes a hair from her forehead and gives her a rueful smile. "Really, you turn up in all the best places."
"Remus." She pulls him into her and lets herself breathe the air hovering around his jacket- old soap, old blood, new thread. "Please tell me if I'm alive."
"You're alive." he says, into her hair.
"And Kingsley ? Snape ?"
"Fine. Both of them. Kingsley got hit on the head by some falling plaster, but nothing serious. He's finishing the report for you as we speak."
"Fucking hell." Tonks falls back onto the pillow and lets her eyes shut. There are tears in them, and she squeezes them away. "I've taken bets on his invulnerability, and I'd hate to be wrong." She smiles without opening her eyes, and listens to the warm, dry sounds of his laughter.
"You did break Snape's arm, apparently."
"What ?"
"Healed now, of course, but it's all he'll talk about. He says you pushed him down the stairs." Tonks tries to remember, and can't. There is smoke and fire in her brain, and a woman with eyes very much like her mother's, except for the bright green hatred.
"I think I killed her."
"You did." Her eyes open, and he searches her face. "Are you alright with that ?"
"Very." She is, and she isn't. Oh, Sirius. Tonks misses him and his clarity at times like this. She misses what the world used to be like. "I think I want to sleep for a little longer." He kisses the top of her head and sits back in his chair, and she drifts off to the sound of him rustling the newspaper.
She is packing her bag to leave when a second visitor arrives. Snape stands in the doorway like a self-conscious stick of licorice.
"Come in." she says. His arm is still bandaged, though no longer in a sling. She remembers breaking her arm in second grade, and begging for a cast even after the bone was magically mended, so that her classmates could sign it. It's a silly thought, in the context of Snape, but she thinks it anyway.
"You look well."
"I feel pretty awful. But thanks for not saying it."
"I'm legendary for my tact." he says, pursing his narrow mouth; and he has the grace not to look offended when she laughs out loud. "Thank you."
"I didn't mean to laugh, it's just that-"
"No, not that. Never mind that. At the house, you put my safety above yours. It was a foolish act, but I'm not going to cheapen it with ingratitude. So thank you."
"You're- welcome." She drops her hairbrush into the bag and pulls it out again, and tugs at her jumper. And smiles at him, a real one, with her eyes. "If I'd known that pushing you down the stairs was the quickest way to make friends, I'd have done it the day we met."
He stares at her for what becomes a very awkward minute.
"I didn't." he begins, and draws a second breath. "I didn't know that we were."
"Oh, shut the hell up." He appears glad to be given the opportunity to end that thought. She swings the bag at him. "And carry this for me."
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no subject
Date: Friday, December 9th, 2005 02:10 pm (UTC)I adore your style -- your pace and knack for description are a delight to read. The storyline's fantastic, too. Awesome job, as always.
Thank you for a great read. - LB
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Date: Sunday, December 11th, 2005 01:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Friday, December 9th, 2005 06:15 pm (UTC)It was the mental image of the Auror's going for their wands instead of guns, Snape (under protective custody) acting stubborn and foolhardy, and that "Oh fuck" moment when they all look around to the chimney. Beautiful.
Thank you. :)
Date: Sunday, December 11th, 2005 01:18 pm (UTC)And I don't know why. Maybe this is just Snape's secret vice. Sitting at home in boxer shorts, eating doritos and cheering for the Hill Street Blues.
On second thought, eww.
Re: Thank you. :)
Date: Sunday, December 11th, 2005 10:46 pm (UTC)GodfatherDark Lordliness.cool!
Date: Saturday, December 10th, 2005 01:30 am (UTC)I'm on my way out - but i like your Tonks.
Honestly.
Re: cool!
Date: Sunday, December 11th, 2005 01:19 pm (UTC)Joy. Always a pleasure to get your encouragement.
no subject
Date: Monday, January 23rd, 2006 12:55 pm (UTC)"Seriously, answer a question." She sits into the stiff-backed chair that is closest to hand, and puts a hand over her face. "Does everyone in your generation have a martyr complex ?"
Snape considers this a moment.
"Yes." he says. "Unfortunately."
These are the best lines - they sum up everything, I guess. I laughed out loud when I read them and then the "omg this is so true" thought popped into my mind. And there are many paragraphs that made me think this.
The characters are nicely fleshed out. The mice that could set up a Parliament cracked me up in the very beginning. And then it turned out even better. Deatheaters going down the chimney - like a wicked Santa Claus, really. Also, Tonks sleeping with her head on Kingsley's shoulder is a nice touch. Oh, I could go on like that forever (with Moody's letter and Kingsley's urges to sit on Snape).
I've already liked your "Charmbreaker" but I can see you treasure other nice things to read. :)