The Tenth Part of a Gift

Chapter One: Tin Soldiers and Fairy Tales

It had been more than a week since his conversation with Edmund, but Remus couldn’t get the child out of his head for some reason. Doped up on Wolfsbane and curled nose-to-tail in a nest of old blankets, he dreamt of small boys with ink-stained hands and an irreverent gift for caricature.

He told his two older daughters a story as he was recuperating, their small brown heads nestled against the folds of his dressing gown.

“Once upon a time, there was a boy who had a gift for drawing. He drew trees and animals and the faces of the people he loved. It was the sort of gift that should have made him a great artist, if he had trained and cultivated it, and brought pleasure to people all over the world. But just as the boy was growing up to be a man, there was an evil wizard who rose to power and started a great war, and gathered servants and followers to fight on his side. He demanded that his servants give up everything that was dearest to them, as a test of their loyalty, and one of the things he demanded of this young man was his gift for drawing. And so the young artist sold his talent for nothing more than the chains of servitude ...”

“How can you sell a talent?” asked Irene, who was six.

“That’s a good question. In this case, he had to sell his entire right hand.”

“Oh. Did that mean the bad wizard could draw as well as he could, after that?”

“No. It was a senseless bargain for the bad wizard. All he cared about was destroying everything that was good and beautiful in the world, and in particular he destroyed everything good in his followers.”

“Did he have lots and lots of followers?” asked Celia, who was four.

“Yes. He lied to people and threatened them and made false promises, so many of them joined his side.”

“A billion trillion?”

“Not that many. So this man who had been an artist took his place among the evil wizard’s other servants, and he did many terrible things – he spied on good people and betrayed them, and he even killed some of them with his own hands –”

“How did he kill them?” asked Celia.

“I don’t know. Avada Kedavra, I think.”

“Oh.” Irene sounded disappointed. “That’s boring. Mum told us a story about a man who killed a troll by strangling it with his underpants.”

There was a short interruption while Irene and Celia debated the mechanics of strangling a troll with your underpants, and whether it would be better to get its head caught in one of the leg-holes, or take the elastic out and garrote it.

“Anyway, the last and worst thing the artist did was to help his master start another great war. But all this time he had kept back a tenth part of his gift, just enough to help him take revenge on his master, who had never done anything for his servant but heap abuse and contempt on his head. He could still draw a bit with his left hand – not well, but well enough. Working in secret, he was able to produce a map of the village his master used as headquarters, enchanted to show the positions of everybody who was there. He disguised it as an ordinary napkin, and he wrote a coded message on it that only one particular friend from his boyhood would understand.

“When the people fighting on the other side found this napkin, they thought it was a worthless bit of trash and they were about to throw it into the fire, when the artist’s old friend realized at the last possible moment what it was and snatched it out of the flames. He spoke the magic words and saw the map come to life before his eyes: it showed the streets filled with the enemy’s forces, the terrible creatures they had set as guardians, and the evil wizard’s stronghold on the hill. He called together the other good people who were fighting with him, and they attacked the village and killed the evil wizard and most of his followers, and sent many of the others to Azkaban. In the battle the village was destroyed. The map, too, became nothing but a tattered scrap of paper that showed a heap of smoldering rubble, and no one who looked at it would have known it for what it was: the last work of a great artist.”

“How did the artist die?” asked Irene.

“Oh ... well, he didn’t, actually. As far as I know, he’s still alive somewhere.”

“Mum tells better stories,” said Irene. “Hers have more duels and monsters in them, and she thinks of interesting ways to kill all the bad guys, not just some of them. But yours are OK too.”

Remus sighed. “Your mum’s an Auror. She has lots of experience to draw from. I just read big books.” (He didn’t bother to mention that most of those books were chock-full of gruesome ways to die, as he didn’t see any reason to encourage his daughters in their incipient taste for bloodshed.)

“Talking of big books,” said Tonks, who had just come into the room with a package under her arm, “Theo told me to give you this. Happy early Christmas. Don’t read the whole thing at once, or we won’t see you until January.” She bent down to kiss Irene and Celia on the tops of their heads, bumping her nose in the process. “You two cubs run along and let your dad rest for a bit, OK? Uncle Harry’s home.”

As the girls raced each other down the hallway, Remus unwrapped the package. It was a thick, handsomely bound volume: A History of the British Wizarding War, 1970-98, by T. W. Nott. None of this “first and second war” business for Theo; the generation raised in the temporary peace of the quiet years had looked back and seen that it was no peace at all.

“So he finished it at last,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“We’re quoted,” said Tonks. “Heaps of times. As well we should be, after he made me spend days going over the Malfoy files with him. Would you mind if I invited Theo over for Christmas dinner, by the way? He hasn’t got anybody to spend the holiday with, as far as I can tell.”

“Of course I don’t mind. But don’t be too disappointed if he declines.”

“Why?”

“Pride.”

“What is it with men and pride?” she asked, a trace of exasperation in her voice, and he was unable to tell her.

“How did the substitute teaching go?” he asked.

“You’d better hurry up and get well,” she said, rumpling his hair, “so I can go back to dealing with grown-up criminals. They’re a lot less trouble than the junior branch.”

“Uh-oh. What happened this time?”

“Well, among other things, I caught Mercer and Daumier-Smith doing a lively business in customized excuse notes. Pros stole some school letterhead from the Headmistress’ office, and Edmund apparently has quite a gift for forging professors’ handwriting.” She took a sheet of parchment out of her pocket and spread it out on the bedcovers. “Here’s a sample. It might amuse you.”

To who it may concern, Stephen was just helping me unpack my new Chimaera and they got into a bit of a ressling match. Shimmy would’nt hurt a fly but he does play a little rough sometimes. Please excuse Stephen from the next month of classes while he gets out of the hospital wing. Yrs, Rubeus Hagrid.

“Alarmingly plausible, isn’t it?” Remus suppressed a smile. “I’d better tell Theo to have a word with them.”

“I’ve already had a word with them. You and Theo are far too nice for that sort of thing. I think I threw the fear of God into them – practically channeling Moody, I was. Told them exactly what’s going to happen to the bloke we brought in last week for forging Ministry documents. Of course, I didn’t bother to mention that Edmund is better at it than he was.”

Remus studied the imitation of Hagrid’s scrawl on the note and nodded. “There’s talent there. Pity we haven’t got any resources for channeling it in a productive direction. I’ve been meaning to get in touch with Dean Thomas and see if he’d be willing to give Edmund lessons, but now that I think of it, there’s another thing...”

He put on his slippers and walked, stiffly and painfully, to the wardrobe. Tonks gave him a swift, sharp glance, got to her feet, and slid her arm under his elbow. Feeling slightly ashamed, but nevertheless grateful, he found himself needing to lean rather heavily on her.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“This,” he said, taking a small wooden box out of the recesses of the wardrobe. He dusted off the lid and undid the clasp.

Peter’s mother had given him the box in 1981, saying that she couldn’t bear to look at it any more. He emptied the contents onto the bed: a set of Exploding Snap cards, a few butterbeer corks (which he handled gingerly, remembering that they were charmed to shoot into people’s eyes at the slightest provocation), a nearly fossilized bar of Honeydukes’ best chocolate, a Pocket Mermish Phrasebook and Artificial Respiration Manual (Waterproof Edition), and the items he had been looking for – a small sketch pad and pencil set.

Tonks looked at the front page of the pad. “This is good-quality parchment,” she observed. “It’s not yellowed at all ... Why, that’s you, isn’t it? You look so young.”

He’d forgotten that the sketch pad was partly used, which meant it wouldn’t work as a present for Edmund, but the charcoal sticks and neatly sharpened colored pencils were only slightly worn.

“I thought I might give these to Edmund,” he said. “I suppose it’s bending the rules a bit, but it’s not as if I’m actually spending money on him, and somebody may as well get some use out of these.”

“Are they yours?”

“No. But the person they belong to won’t be coming back for them.” He stopped short, hearing his own words echo in his head: As far as I know, he’s still alive somewhere.

Actually, he knew exactly where Peter Pettigrew lived, and it wasn’t so very far away.

“On second thought,” he said slowly, “maybe I’d better buy him something new. I know Minerva’s done it before, even if she won’t own up to it. Do you have any idea if Scrivenshaft’s stocks art supplies?”

“I think they do. If they don’t, I could pick up something in London for you... Is that the baby? Wait a sec.” She went out of the room and returned a minute later with a small pink-blanketed bundle in her arms.

Caroline was a pretty baby, with dark curls and long-lashed eyes that were beginning to be more grey than blue. She looked, in other words, like a hundred generations of Black women before her – dark beauties, most of them, before prison or violence or madness had destroyed their looks. Even Phineas Nigellus had acknowledged the resemblance, grudgingly, when Remus brought her to work one day, although the fact that his great-great-great-great-grandchild was a half-blood and a girl had tempered his enthusiasm. He had proceeded to favor Remus with a great deal of advice about how to conceive a son, much of which bordered on the pornographic.

It had been wasted advice for two reasons: Remus liked little girls just fine, and at forty-six he had no intention of having any more children. Even now, he watched his young wife playing with the child and felt a twinge of a vague fear that he couldn’t quite bring himself to put into words.

You could never tell with children, he thought. You wondered whether they were here to redeem the past or to repeat it, and by the time you knew for certain, it was too late.

 

                                                            *          *          *

Christmas dinner was nearly over; the adults were picking at their second slices of pie and finishing off the wine, while Irene and Celia amused themselves at the ever-popular occupation of scattering their Christmas presents all over the floor. Remus watched them and wondered why on earth his wife had chosen so many toys with small parts. There were whole armies of tin soldiers charmed to obey a small general’s commands, and a set of blocks suitable for building towers and castles, although the girls seemed more interested in discovering who could make the biggest crash when they knocked their creations down. Neither was paying attention to the dolls Gran Andromeda had sent, or to the Little Witch’s First Make-Up Kit, although he was pleased to see that Celia, at least, showed some interest in the picture books he had chosen so carefully.

He had, with difficulty, persuaded Theodore Nott to accept Tonks’ invitation, and the conversation had drifted into a lively debate about the finer points of A History of the British Wizarding War, 1970–98.

Remus struggled to make sense of what they were saying about Voldemort’s plans at the time of the final battle. He had never been much of a strategist, himself. He was a natural diplomat and a good manager of people, but throughout the war he had relied on others to tell him where to station his troops and when to strike.

“We don’t know for certain what they would have done,” Theo was saying, “but I’ve made a guess that seems to make sense. Putting together what my father and the other captured Death Eaters said about their individual orders, the general picture I get is that they were planning to pick off several of our lieutenants one by one over the next few days, and then launch a major strike against Hogwarts.”

Remus frowned. “But that would have been suicide, wouldn’t it? Everybody knows Hogwarts is meant to be the safest place in Britain.”

“Who ever said Voldemort was sane?” said Harry.

Theo shook his head. “He may have been crazy like a fox, actually. Look at it this way.” He sat down on the floor and began building a castle, encircling it with three rings of blocks. “This is Hogwarts. The mighty fortress ringed with impregnable defenses. Except, by June of 1998, they weren’t.”

He pointed to two of the tin soldiers. “Excuse me, would you gentlemen mind taking that first ring of blocks away?”

The soldiers stood stiffly at attention, but made no move to obey.

“The red ones are only Charmed to listen to me,” Irene explained, “and the blue ones only listen to Celia.”

“All right. Madame General, would you mind telling your soldiers to –”

“You there, take those blocks away,” Irene ordered, and the tin soldiers began hauling them away.

“Stop there, just the ones on the outside, please,” said Theo after the outer ring was gone. “All right, so they’d succeeded in undermining many of the protection spells around the village and the castle grounds, but the ones around the building itself are holding firm. At this time, Lucius Malfoy and some of the others became aware of a crucial weakness in the school’s defenses, namely the six secret passages leading from the village of Hogsmeade into the castle. Celia, could you bring me some more blocks?” Theo began constructing tunnels. “See, let’s say Hogsmeade is over here, and this is the Whomping Willow...”

“Wait just a minute,” said Remus. “Why didn’t they already know about those passages? Why hadn’t Peter told them years before?”

“We don’t know,” said Tonks. “I only know what Malfoy said when I interrogated him, and he was quite definite about the fact that he had to wait for his son to come up with the information. But I think the natural inference is that Pettigrew wasn’t telling anybody how much he knew about the layout of the castle.”

Remus considered the implications of this. He had always assumed that Peter’s decision to betray his master had come at the last minute, although he had no idea whether it sprang from a genuine change of heart or a disinclination to be caught on the losing side. Now it sounded like the man had been playing two sides for quite some time, for reasons he couldn’t fathom.

“If they had all seven – excuse me, six – passages covered, it would have been a bloodbath, wouldn’t it?” he asked.

“It would have been a death trap,” said Tonks bluntly.

Theo nodded, and told Irene to send some of her soldiers through the tunnels underneath the inner rings of blocks. “The other great weakness in the castle’s defenses,” he explained, “was that they were all configured to keep intruders out. Once they were in, the students would have been trapped inside with them. Oh, there’s no question some of them would have been killed as well, but we would have been up against an army of trained Death Eaters, and they weren’t taking any prisoners.”

“I would have been in the thick of it,” he said slowly, feeling dazed. Minerva had talked him into returning to his old teaching position after Severus Snape’s death, only days before the last battle.

Tonks and Harry exchanged a swift, troubled glance over his head, but said nothing. It was the sort of look he remembered well from his school days, the old Potter and Black brand of protectiveness.

“I think,” he said quietly, “that if I was first on Lord Voldemort’s hit list, I am old enough to know about it by now.”

There was a long moment of silence, which was broken when Caroline began to fuss.

He picked the baby up and stroked her dark hair, almost absently. “We owe Peter more than I realized, then. A great deal more.”