Expecto Patronum

Expecto Patronum

We often sit here at the end of the day, on the stone steps leading down to the back garden of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. My house, now. My inheritance. Sometimes I find half a dozen members of the Order gathered when I come home from work, talking and passing around a bottle of firewhiskey and getting lightheaded off the clouds of mandrake-leaf smoke from Dung Fletcher's pipe.

Other times it's only Remus.

He still lives here. We don't talk about the fact that he's got nowhere else to go and no money to pay the rent. Well, the Blacks - like most old aristocratic families - were born to dispense charity. It goes hand in hand with the temper, the sarcasm, and the taste for severed heads as interior decoration.

The problem is, the Lupins weren't born to take charity.

Sirius took the sting out of the thing by long friendship and sheer force of will - another thing the Blacks are good at. But I'm not a proper Black, just the half-blooded cousin none of the respectable members of the family talk about, and I have never so much as told him that he is welcome. To say as much would be to acknowledge that he is a charity case, and I expect he would quietly pack his things and slip away before morning.

I sit down beside him on the steps and look out over the unweeded garden. A gust of wind sends a drift of yellow leaves over the family gravestones - for Blacks are not buried in common cemeteries.

My cousin will never be buried here. Just as well. He would have hated it.

We both shiver a little, and edge closer together for warmth.

"What's the latest at Auror headquarters?" he asks.

"Not good news, I'm afraid. We don't know exactly what he ... Voldemort ... is planning. But Scrimgeour thinks we should be prepared to take on a whole lot of dementors. Had us practicing the Patronus charm all afternoon."

"Are you good at Patroni?"

"Not half bad." I close my eyes and think of the day I learned my cousin was innocent. "Expecto Patronum!"

A silvery chameleon shoots out of the end of my wand and scuttles off toward the wrought-iron gate at the edge of the garden, almost stumbling over its long curly tail.

Beside me, I hear a soft laugh. "I should have known. It suits you."

"Yeah. I'm fond of Camille."

"Camille?"

"Doesn't yours have a name?"

He shakes his head, and a slightly closed look passes over his face.

"I suppose it's a wolf?"

"No," he says shortly, as if holding something back. "I've only known one person who had a wolf. And it wasn't me."

"D'you mean you can't -" I blurt out, and then feel like biting my tongue. With the life he's had, why hasn't it ever occurred to me that he might have trouble casting a Patronus?

He looks straight at me now and smiles. "Oh no. I've never had that problem. I've been lucky, really."

Funny thing about Remus. He's the only person I know who could say that without irony under the circumstances, and now I realize why I'd never thought for a moment that he could possibly have that problem. He's got a smile that warms you up inside, like taking a swallow of hot chocolate laced with Old Tituba's Voodoo Rum.

"It's just that the form of my Patronus is a bit ..." He swallows. "Well, it's something of an embarrassment, to tell you the truth."

"Hissing cockroach?" I guess. "Giant slug? Intestinal parasite?"

He laughs. "No. Nothing like that." He slides the tips of his fingers along his wand for a moment, hesitating. "All right, I'll show you. Expecto Patronum!"

A silvery shape takes form: pointed nose, whiskers, sleek body, long tail.

"Is that ... him? Wormtail?"

"Yes. Well. You can see why I don't go around showing that off around headquarters."

"What d'you suppose it means?"

"It doesn't mean a damn thing." His voice is sharper than I've ever known it to be. "Just that there were a couple of kids who were best friends once, and they spent such a long time practicing the spell together that they ... sort of rubbed off on each other, I think. Patroni tend to be set in their forms after you cast them for the first time. It takes a lot to change them."

The silvery rat turns, nibbles at the end of its own tail and scurries back toward us. That's when we see that it's missing one front paw.

A little color comes into his face. "Right, so I'm lying my head off. Either this story's going to end in a way none of us can predict, or whoever's in charge of these things just has a twisted sense of humor." He takes a deep breath as the Patronus fades. "Either way, he's still a part of me, I suppose. You're right, it does mean something. And I don't understand it, and I'm not sure I want to."

Something about this strikes a chord, and without thinking too hard about it - "Remus," I say. "Look over there for a moment. Over by the garden wall."

It takes me a moment to remember how to relax the muscles about my face. It's been so long since I've done it, and I haven't done it regularly since I was nine. Not since the morning after the Longbottoms were tortured.

This isn't your fault, my mother said when she tried to explain. But it will always be your burden. She said some less restrained and stoic things too, late that night when she thought I wouldn't hear.

"All right. Look back." I gaze at him through the tangle of thick, dark hair that falls into my eyes, trying to gauge exactly how revolted he is.

"Good Lord, Tonks. Is that the face you were born with?"

"Yes." I shake my hair back and force a laugh. "You're dead right, whoever's in charge of these things has a twisted sense of humor. Spitting image of my Death Eater aunt who doesn't think I've got the right to exist, can you beat it?"

He regards me for a moment, face tilted to one side, and says, "No."

"No?"

"I'd say you favor your convicted-mass-murderer cousin. Who always thought you had every right to exist."

"You really think so?" I'm flattered, and a little surprised. Nobody has ever said that before. Of course, I haven't known too many people who would consider it a compliment.

"Yes. It's the eyes mostly, and the smile. You remind me quite a lot of him, before ... before Azkaban." We are silent for a moment. "I don't suppose looking like either of them made growing up any easier."

"It didn't. Not that anybody had to know, as long as I was careful. My parents thought I was bloody lucky to be born with my particular talent. Everybody else just thought I was born with brown hair and freckles." I push another stray strand of hair out of my face. "But in the end, it's not the sort of thing you can hide forever. It's like you and Peter, I reckon. It's part of me whether I like it or not."

"Well," he says softly. "Thank you for sharing that."

I look out over the dead leaves and the gravestones, and the late asters blooming like frosty stars. My heritage, for better or worse.

Perhaps I am a proper Black, after all. Might as well give it a go.

I turn to him. "You are very welcome."