Remorse

Chapter Twelve: Back in the Fight

“Where’ve you been?” demanded Ripper when he dropped by Remus’ cabin after his return.

“In a Muggle hospital,” said Remus. It was the most plausible explanation for his absence that he’d been able to think up. “I was hurt at the full moon before last, and two Muggles found me and took me there. I was too weak to Apparate, and they fed me well enough, so I thought it better to stay put.”

“Did you kill any of ‘em when you transformed?” Ripper asked hopefully.

“No, they let me go on the afternoon before the full moon. I came back here as soon as I could, but everyone was already gone.”

Ripper nodded. “Most all of us were out at the hunt, ‘cos the family lived close to the Forest and we didn’t have to Apparate. Fenrir said he wanted a ‘specially good showing as a revenge for old Stubbe. He’s dead, did you know? He got killed by the kid’s mum last month.” A faintly wistful expression crossed his face. Remus was willing to bet it was not for Peter Stubbe.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” said Ripper. “Only, I wonder what if my mum had ... Never mind.”

Remus weighed the danger of falsely raising the boy’s hopes against the equally grave danger of letting him grow up in despair. “Would you like to go to school if it were possible? A real school, I mean, with normal children. Like Hogwarts, for example.”

Ripper snorted. “They’d hafta put me in the baby classes, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes, probably.” Ripper could do a few spells with the makeshift wand he had made from a twig and a tuft of unicorn hair, but his technique was so poor that he would have to unlearn most of it. He had refused Remus’ offer to teach him better methods, and Remus suddenly realized that the boy might never learn how to read and write. Even with Dumbledore’s expansive admissions policy, Hogwarts might not be an option.

“No thanks. I ain’t a kid any more, and I know all I need to know. I lived in the Forest for years before you ever came here.”

“All right,” said Remus, who knew when he’d been put in his place.

“‘Sides, times are getting better for us. That’s what Fenrir said, ain’t it?”

“Did he?”

“Yeah. You weren’t here at the full moon to hear it, but he says we’re gettin’ our revenge at last. Strikin’ back and lettin’ wizards know what we’re made of.”

“Do you believe everything Fenrir says?”

“It turned out true, didn’t it? We killed a wizard for what they done to Stubbe. Even if’n it were a small one.”

“Was Fenrir happy about that?”

“Nah” said Ripper, “he wanted to raise the kid as one of us. He was angry in the morning, I think. But then he allowed as how killin’ a wizard kid was the next best thing to takin’ one, and it’s early days yet, he said.”

If there had been any doubt in Remus’ mind about whether he had done the right thing by returning to the Forest, these last words settled it. “Angry at whom?” he asked.

Ripper shrugged, and Remus decided not to press the question. He had probably asked too many already.

 

                                                            *          *          *

The day after Remus left for the Forbidden Forest, Linus found a crumpled letter in the wastepaper basket in his room. Dear Dora, it began.

While he would have been hard pressed to identify a single sentence that Remus could not have addressed to his sister or a former student in all propriety, the overall effect was very different indeed.

... Please accept my apologies for not going to see you before I returned to the Forbidden Forest. I know that we did not part on the best of terms and I was unsure whether I would be welcome, but your friendship means more to me than I can say, and I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive me. Someday you will understand why I could not accept what you offered me, though I was sorely tempted. At times the only thing that keeps me from despair is the thought that I am fighting so that you can live and love and raise your children in a more peaceful world than I have ever known, and I couldn’t live with myself if I knew that I had kept you from that better life. You, I believe, will come to think of me less often in time; I shall never stop thinking of you...

He handed the letter to Celia, and she read it in silence. “Oh my,” she said when she looked up. “That poor girl, whoever she is.”

“Poor Remus,” said Linus, who thought that a lifetime of celibacy and self-denial was a good deal more pitiable than a spot of temporary heartbreak. “He tried to talk me out of having a relationship with you, you know – said he didn’t think it was fair to you, or some such rot – but he came round quickly enough when he saw how I felt about you. Can’t he give himself as much respect?”

“More to the point, why can’t he respect her wishes?” said Celia sharply. “I wanted to give him a piece of my mind that morning, I did, talking to you over my head and not asking me what I thought about it. I should have done. What is the trouble with men?”

Linus sighed. “We’re a bundle of irrational protective instincts, that’s what’s the trouble with us, and half the time what we want to protect you from is ourselves, which makes things no end of confusing. Be easy on us.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

“Mrs. Montgomery?”

The woman lifted her head. She had not been crying. Her eyes were sunken and fierce.

“My name is Tonks and I’m from the Auror division. I know this must be quite painful for you, but we were hoping you would be able to assist us. Do you think you would be able to answer a few questions?”

“I want to see justice done,” the woman said in a flat and steady voice. “Have the Aurors got anything to do with justice these days, or are they too busy arresting bus drivers?”

“Most of us still believe in justice, Mrs. Montgomery. We will help you.”

“You’ll see that the people who did this get their due?”

“Yes. I promise.” But even as she spoke, Tonks could hear old Moody’s voice in her ear: You’ve a good heart, lass, but you speak too rashly sometimes. It’s no kindness to make promises you cannot keep.

“Very well.” Yseult Montgomery inclined her head slightly, with the air of royalty granting a favor, and for a fleeting moment Tonks thought the gesture reminded her of someone. But she couldn’t place it.

“I understand that you told the Daily Prophet this morning that you believe you were threatened?”

“Believe, hell!” said Mrs. Montgomery. “I know what she said and what she meant. I didn’t think it would be the children, though. I didn’t think she’d take it out on Gareth. He’s five. Was.” She drew a shuddering breath, and for the first time Tonks was able to imagine this strange, hard woman as a mother.

“Who is ‘she’?”

“She was my friend once. Bellatrix Lestrange.”

That was why the woman’s manner had seemed familiar. Yes; as difficult as it was to picture Aunt Bella having friends, Yseult Montgomery was the sort of person who might once have found her a kindred soul.

“And you spoke to her? When?”

“A week ago Tuesday. She came to visit me in my home.” Mrs. Montgomery gave Tonks’ Auror badge a guilty, sideways glance and then looked up defiantly. “No, I didn’t turn her in. I wouldn’t do that to her. I never thought she would do this to me.”

“That’s all right, Mrs. Montgomery. I understand.” Tonks wondered what her own mother would have done in this woman’s place, and she was not sure of the answer.

“She gave Gareth a sweet before she left.” The mother’s voice faltered for a moment. “She said – she said he was a pretty child.”

A memory stirred at the back of Tonks’ mind, and she shivered. Her aunt had said that about her once, when she was smaller than Gareth had been, and the family had moved the very next day. “I know. She’s a diabolical woman.”

“You know her?” said Mrs. Montgomery.

“We’ve met,” said Tonks shortly. (If she had been quicker on the draw when they fought – if she had dodged that last curse... If, if, if...) “Do you know why Mrs. Lestrange was angry with you?”

“She asked me to help the Death Eaters. Not just by hiding her – I suppose you may as well know that I would have done that, if that were all she asked – but I am an apothecary, and she wanted me to supply them with Potions ingredients and rare poisons. I said no. It’s life in Azkaban, as you well know, and the truth is –” Mrs. Montgomery looked down, as if this were a slightly shameful confession, “– I don’t believe in their cause. Not any more.”

“You did once?”

“I grew up in Slytherin House, back in the sixties,” Mrs. Montgomery said curtly. She didn’t seem inclined to dwell on the subject or engage in further confidences.

Tonks knew at once that she had made a mistake by firing off the last question so sharply. She restrained herself from pointing out that many people from similar backgrounds, including her own mother, had never embraced the Death Eaters’ cause. “What happened after that?” she asked.

“Nothing, until the full moon.” Mrs. Montgomery looked up despairingly. “Must I talk about it again? You can read the report I filed with the Werewolf Capture Unit.”

Tonks considered. Human kindness told her to let it pass; Auror procedures dictated otherwise. “Sometimes, when people tell a story more than once, they remember details they had forgotten at first.”

“Very well.” Mrs. Montgomery’s voice scarcely wavered as she told her story in admirably precise detail. It tallied perfectly with the report Tonks had already read, until she came to the part about the werewolf who had given Gareth his fatal injury. “The thing that you must understand,” she said slowly, “is that he wasn’t in a frenzy like the others. It looked very deliberate – almost as if he were in his right mind. He went for the heart and the throat.”

“What do you remember about his appearance and markings?” Tonks asked. Werewolves tended to resemble the ones who had bitten them, so Greyback’s pack was peculiarly uniform in appearance, but there were always individual variations.

“He was big and silvery-grey – an older male, I think – with a long snout and short fur. His coloring was even all over, except that he had white paws.”

“White paws?” Tonks repeated faintly. “You didn’t mention – that isn’t in the Werewolf Capture Unit’s report.” The other features matched Greyback’s description; this one did not. She knew without looking whose it did match.

“You were right. I didn’t remember then, but I do now.”

“You’re quite sure about that?” With an effort, Tonks managed to keep her voice as emotionless as the bereaved mother’s.

“I remember the moonlight shining on them. And the blood staining them, afterward.”

The quill had been lying idle in her hand; she had not yet entered this last detail into her report, but she knew that she must. She was an Auror. Slowly, she made a note of it.

“You have other children?”

“Yes, two daughters at Hogwarts. Vivian’s thirteen and Elaine is eleven.”

“Right. My colleagues at the Hogsmeade office and I will be looking after them. We’ll check any parcels that are sent to them and see that someone keeps an eye on Vivian when she goes into the village.” (This, at least, was good work and harmless. Her other promise had been rash indeed, and she feared that keeping it might destroy her.) “And, Mrs. Montgomery? I’m very sorry.”

“Thank you.” Again, the slight inclination of the head; and Yseult Montgomery left the room like a proud queen going into exile.

She was alone. There was the report, and there was the fire burning in the grate. No one but herself would ever have to see it.

Nerissa Proudfoot burst into the office just then, and Tonks thrust the report into her hands before she could give in to temptation. “Take this to Dawlish for me. Tell him I’ve gone to London – to check Mrs. Montgomery’s description against the Werewolf Registry files.” She had, of course, no need to do anything of the sort, but she felt as if another moment in the office would stifle her.

Only after Nerissa had taken the paper away did Tonks’ hands begin to shake. She was nearly sobbing as she stumbled toward the gates of Hogwarts in search of Professor Dumbledore.

 

                                                            *          *          *

Dumbledore was away. Almost without noticing it, she found her feet taking her toward a certain room she remembered from her time at school, thinking: I need news. I need the truth. I need for him to be innocent. I need to be a better Auror and stop thinking about doubts and personal desires ... Oh, hell, I don’t know what I need.

She certainly did not need to run into Harry, who knew even less than she did about Dumbledore’s whereabouts and looked at her rather strangely when she demanded to know whether he had heard from anybody in the Order.

“No one in the Order writes to me any more,” he said, “not since Sirius –”

Sirius. She felt a desperate rush of longing for last year, when there were long evenings at Grimmauld Place with the three of them together, and the war was still only a vague abstraction. Even now, she couldn’t help feeling that everything would be different if her cousin were still alive – surely, Remus wouldn’t have cut himself off so completely...

“I’m sorry ... I mean, I miss him as well,” Harry said awkwardly. This irritated her more than it ought to, because he couldn’t possibly miss Remus as much as she did, much less be as frightened for him as she was now. What on earth was he talking about?

She reminded herself that Harry didn’t know anything of what had happened, and managed a “See you around,” which she hoped sounded appropriately casual. He stared at her, and she thought he probably wasn’t fooled.

She tried to reason things out as she walked back to the village. It looked very deliberate, Mrs. Montgomery had said. What if it was? What would make a man like Remus – a good man, one of the kindest and most decent people she knew – choose to kill a child of five?

Dark magic could violate minds and memories and make people act against their will; every Auror knew that. But it hardly made sense to do that to a werewolf, which was in the grip of powerful Dark magic already.

Men have turned traitors before, she thought. Sometimes they set out to fight evil with the very best of intentions, and ended up falling under its spell. She hadn’t seen Remus since the end of December. Who knew what might have happened in those long bleak months of winter?

She stopped still in her tracks under the clear April sky as another thought struck her. Suppose it had been a mercy killing. Suppose he believed – truly believed – that death was better than life for a bitten child. Had he come to hate his own life that much?

It wasn’t like him, she thought, it wasn’t Remus, and that was the worst thought of all. He was the sort of man who always had hope, even at the worst of times, and who shared that hope with others. She remembered him comforting Molly when she faced her boggarts. He’d comforted her, too, in St. Mungo’s, breaking the news about Sirius gently and promising her that, as sharp as her grief was then, she would survive.

Dear God, what had Greyback done to him?

When she got back to the Hogsmeade office, Titus Dawlish had a message for her. “Apparently you’ve had a citation from Robards,” he said in a disgusted voice. “He asked me to pass on his thanks for your kindness to his sister, so I am.”

“His sister?” she asked stupidly.

“Mrs. Montgomery. Robards wants you in charge of the case. I reminded him that it was most irregular, considering your age, inexperience, and family connections with one of the suspects –” Dawlish looked at her as if he suspected her of personally sheltering Bellatrix Lestrange “– but he insisted. Don’t screw it up.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew it was a dream of an assignment, the kind that could make a young Auror’s career. But she was thinking only of Gawain, kind weary Gawain giving her his absolute trust, and of his sister in her fierce grief; and of Remus waking somewhere in the frozen forest with blood on his mouth and hands. It was impossible. She had taken an oath to pursue truth; she had promised Mrs. Montgomery justice, but who was she to say what truth and justice meant? Didn’t she have a duty to Remus as well, even if she should learn the worst? She knew the best of him as well, and who else would there be to speak for him?

She bolted from the room before she could give Dawlish the satisfaction of seeing her burst into tears.