Remorse

Chapter Fourteen: Not Really Charity

The visitors proved to be Fenrir’s official investigators; they asked rather a lot of questions about whether Remus had seen or heard anything that might shed light on the Martin Miggs affair, but they seemed to accept his story that he had been in a Muggle hospital for the past month. They were ragged, dirty men who had plainly spent nearly all of their lives in the Forbidden Forest. He thought – but was not entirely sure – that they wouldn’t be sophisticated enough to check on the details, and even if they did, the Muggles probably wouldn’t release information about a patient.

He spent most of Wednesday afternoon trying to clean up his hut, wondering if Tonks would really have the courage to return and feeling guilty for hoping that she would.

And then she was there, standing in the bright light of the doorway of the hovel, looking young and fresh and entirely too innocent for this place. She had brought a packet of tea as well as the Wolfsbane this time. “I thought I might stay for a bit and have a cuppa.”

Tea was one of the luxuries he missed most, and although he knew he should tell her to leave the Wolfsbane and get out of there as swiftly as possible, he couldn’t bring himself to refuse. He handed her one of his chipped mugs and they sat down on the steps with the pot of tea between them, as he had little in the way of furniture.

“And you?” he asked. “How are you these days?” It had not escaped his notice that she still looked thin and troubled, though she seemed a little brighter than the last time he had seen her.

“Same old same old. Scrimgeour keeps wanting us to hold innocent people, and we’re all working twelve hours a day with no holidays. I’m still stationed in Hogsmeade, so we get thieves, dementors, cursed artifacts, old ladies panicking because they think they’ve seen a Death Eater in the rose bushes ... bit of everything.”

“Dementors? Are you taking your chocolate?”

She looked guilty. “I know I should. I keep forgetting.”

“Don’t forget. You need to take care of yourself.”

“So do you,” she said. “That reminds me, I brought you your scarf. You forgot it last time you were in Hogsmeade.”

“Oh,” he said awkwardly. “Thank you.”

They sipped their tea for a moment in silence.

“Can I ask you something personal?” she asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“Did you ever sleep with Emmeline Vance?”

He nearly spat out his tea. “Who told you that? Sirius?”

“No, nobody told me. I just wondered if there had ever been something between you, because of the way you acted around each other – sort of stiffly polite, and I’ve never seen you like that around anybody else except maybe Snape.”

“I hope you aren’t about to ask me if I’ve slept with Snape!”

She stifled a giggle. It was a welcome sound in the stillness of the hut. “No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s all right. Yes. We were fairly serious for a while. It was all a very long time ago.”

“She didn’t care about you being a werewolf.”

“As it happens, she did. That’s why it ended.”

“Oh.” Tonks looked so indignant that he was sure she’d have a great deal more to say about Emmeline if she had been alive.

“Please understand that I don’t blame her. She had every right to decide that she didn’t want to deal with that particular burden – it’s a great deal for anyone to handle in a relationship, even with the best of intentions, and I don’t think she understood – I don’t think anyone can understand what it’s like until after they’ve lived with it.”

He thought for a moment that she was about to argue, but to his relief she changed the subject. “Mad-Eye told me you disappeared right after the last war,” she said, “and nobody saw anything of you for years. Is that true?”

He smiled. “Not from my point of view. I don’t recall being invisible.”

“Well,” she persisted, “was it true from the rest of the Order’s point of view?”

“I suppose it may have seemed that way, yes. I did a bit of traveling, and I lived in France for a while – giving private English lessons. Not the Bill-and-Fleur kind, I hasten to add. Nothing so exciting.”

“Why didn’t you keep in touch with people?”

He topped up his mug of tea and stirred it slowly before answering. “I don’t much like being pitied. It stung, seeing that in people’s eyes, and knowing they were treating me with kid gloves as if I’d fall apart if they said the wrong thing. I didn’t need it or want it.”

He’d seen that same look in their eyes last summer, and it occurred to him that leaving for the Forbidden Forest had been a way to get away from all that. Perhaps he’d been running away again; perhaps things would have been different if Sirius hadn’t –. Did it matter? He was doing good work here; he did believe that.

“Is that the only reason why you think people in the Order care for you? Out of pity?”

“Well, when it comes right down to it, I do look a bit like a charity case to most people. Don’t think I don’t know it.”

She shifted a little closer to him on the steps; they weren’t quite touching, but he could feel the warmth of her body. “We care for you because you’re a good person, Remus. One of the best people I know. It doesn’t matter in the least that you happen to be a wolf one night a month.”

“It does matter. You don’t know the truth about what I am.” He struggled for a moment with the words that felt like they’d been sealed behind his lips, by force, for months. “I killed a man.”

“Who? When?”

“I don’t know. It was in October. He was somebody that Voldemort suspected was double-crossing him, and he gave him over to Greyback for prey.” He noticed that Tonks did not flinch at the mention of Voldemort’s name, as she would have done a year ago. “He was middle-aged, and he might have been seeing one of the women Death Eaters in the last few weeks before he died. I – I don’t think his body would have been identifiable, from the condition we left it in. That’s all I know.” Somehow, now that he had spoken the words, the man’s death didn’t seem as monstrous as it had before. It was almost mundane, the sort of thing that happened all the time in wartime. He wasn’t sure whether this relieved or disturbed him.

“I’ll check up on the disappearances from October. If I find out who he was – do you want to know?”

“I don’t know,” he said wearily, feeling bewildered by the question. “Use your judgment,” he said at last.

She nodded. “Remus, you didn’t kill him. He was a dead man the minute You-Know-Who and Greyback made their bargain.”

“I tore his throat out. I hadn’t had much Wolfsbane, but I do remember that. I think that counts as killing him.”

“You hadn’t had Wolfsbane? Oh, for God’s sake – that wasn’t you! That’s like holding somebody responsible for a crime they committed under Imperius!”

“I said I hadn’t had much. And even without it – it is possible to hold back. It takes effort, but it can be done.”

“Not easily, especially if you’re with a pack. I’ve been reading about it.”

“You’ve been reading about werewolves?”

She nodded.

“Good. Keep reading and learn all you can. Then I think you’ll understand why we can’t – well. You know.”

“I think I already understand as much as I need to. You’re scared. And determined to put yourself down.” She drained the teacup and sent it flying into the sink with a flick of her wand. “And I should really go home before we start arguing again.”

“Wait, don’t forget your tea.”

“Your tea,” she said firmly. “I brought it for you.”

“That’s very kind of you – but I can’t accept –”

“It isn’t bloody charity. When are you going to get that through your head?” She turned on her heel, an angry flush on her cheeks, and Disapparated.

He folded the scarf neatly and placed it on the shelf beside the tea.

 

                                                            *          *          *

Remus hadn’t expected to see her again for another three and a half weeks, if ever, but a crash from the front of the hut woke him around midday on the day after the full moon. Exhausted and stiff with pain, he dragged himself to the kitchen to find her rummaging in the cupboards and a number of small orange fruits rolling across the floor.

“Sorry if I woke you. Grace personified, as usual. I was looking for a cauldron to heat up some soup in.”

“Rather a long way to go for one, isn’t it? Haven’t they got any soup cauldrons in Hogsmeade, or wherever it is you’re staying these days?”

“Don’t be silly, I mean Molly’s sent some soup to you. And I brought you some clementines, if you don’t mind picking them up off the floor. They come in these great big wooden boxes, and there are always more of them than I can eat by myself. How are you feeling?”

It was not really charity, he told himself; one always brought people things when they were ill. “No worse than usual. I’ll be fine in a day or two.” Strictly speaking, this was a lie: hunger and lack of proper care were taking their toll, and even before his injury, his recovery from the full moons had been slow and painful. But she didn’t need to know that.

“Well, you don’t look fine now.” She picked up his battered teakettle. “This will have to do for a cauldron. Sit down, and I’ll fix you some soup.”

He felt chilled and achy, and he had been hungry for so long he’d almost forgotten what it was like not to be hungry. He obeyed. “Aren’t you going to have any, yourself?”

“Nah, I’ve just had lunch at the Weasleys’.”

He accepted this, although he would have felt less self-conscious if she had agreed. He tried not to eat too quickly.

“I found out about your dead man from October,” she said after a few minutes.

He wished she had waited until he had finished eating; the old queasiness was back. “Oh?” he said in as neutral a voice as he could manage.

“His name was Caligula Grackle, and he’s suspected of torturing and murdering at least twelve Muggles over the years. And the Ministry declined to prosecute him because of the bloody Statute of Secrecy. It would have meant getting Muggles to testify in large numbers, and Fudge thought it was too much risk of exposure.”

“He was still a man,” said Remus.

“He was a sociopath. He would have gone on to kill more.” She shook her hair out of her eyes wearily. “Look at it this way. Moody’s killed people. So has Kingsley. So will I, I reckon, if I stay in this line of work long enough. D’you think we’re all monsters?”

“No. Of course not.” The idea that she might have to kill a man or woman was new to him, although he supposed he should have known it. He hoped she wouldn’t have to; or at least, that she would have the grace and wisdom to handle it better than he had.

“No more are you.”

The wall between them felt insubstantial, suddenly, like a ghost, or like the white fog the dementors brought with them. He reached out to touch the hair that hung limply at the side of her face. “Thank you.”

She looked up, lips slightly parted, and then away. “How did the Wolfsbane work, by the way?” she asked, although he had the feeling she’d been about to say something else.

“Fine. You’re an excellent potion brewer. Thank you.”

“Last night – was it very horrible?”

“No, not at all. We were meant to attack a village just south of the forest, but I made sure they heard us coming. You can’t stop a wolf from howling, can you?”

He was relieved to see that she returned his smile. “I thought you sounded a bit hoarse. Eucalyptus drop?”

“You do think of everything.”

“You were coughing last time, so I thought I ought to bring you something. You’re not well, are you?”

“I’m no worse off than any of the others. Everyone’s cold and hungry, except perhaps some of the higher-ups. There’s money in it, you know – we’ve got to pay an initiation fee and dues, and it all goes into the pockets of Greyback and his cronies.”

He hoped that didn’t sound like a plea for charity, but apparently she knew him too well to offer, or perhaps her mind was somewhere else entirely. “Do you know where the others live?” she asked.

“Not really. Most of them seem to be scattered through the Forbidden Forest, but there are some in cities. It was in Knockturn Alley that I made contact with them. I have a feeling most of the ones who have been around for a while know where the others live, but they aren’t telling me.”

“I just wondered. I’m in charge of the Montgomery boy’s case, you see. I know who killed him – his mother described the markings, and there are only two Werewolf Registry records that match, and one has an alibi. I don’t know where to find the other man, though, and I thought you might be able to help. The mother thinks the killing was deliberate, by the way – about as calculated as a werewolf can get without Wolfsbane.”

Remus nodded. “That tallies with what I’ve heard around the Lyceum. What’s your suspect’s name?”

“Philandros Craddock. Do you know him?”

“Yes. Slightly. But I don’t know how to find him – I see him at meetings, and he’s been here a few times – to spy on me, I suppose,” Remus finished bitterly. The reason why Craddock had approached him with something that looked like friendship seemed clear to him now, and he silently cursed himself for having sounded out Phil about his feelings concerning Greyback. “I can tell you what he looks like, if that helps.”

“Absolutely. The only photo of him in his file dates from when he was eight.”

Remus gave her a brief physical description of Phil while she took notes. He felt easier with her now that they were working together, partners and friends just like old times, and he hesitated only a moment before making a request of his own. “Er. If you’ve got access to the Werewolf Registry records, can you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“See if you can find out anything about a child, a girl, who was bitten as an infant. I don’t know her real name, but she was probably bitten on the fourteenth of June, most likely in 1982. She says it’s her birthday, but I think it’s more likely the day they stole her.”

Tonks frowned and took a Lunascope out of her pocket. “There wasn’t a full moon on the fourteenth of June, 1982,” she announced after fiddling with it for a moment.

“Then maybe it really is her birth date, although I haven’t a clue how Ferdinand would know it, or maybe I’m wrong about the year. Anyway, there aren’t many infant attacks, let alone ones where the child survives, so she shouldn’t be too hard to identify. I want to know who her parents were and whether they’re still alive, and if they are, see if you can track them down and sound them out about whether they’re willing to raise her. She’s a sweet kid, and I don’t believe she’d be a danger to anybody if she were taking Wolfsbane. Besides, she shows signs of being a gifted witch, and I’m sure there would be a place at Hogwarts for her.” In answer to the unspoken question in Tonks’ eyes, he added, “If she stays here after her next birthday, she will most likely become a sex slave to a man named Ferdinand Calabria, who is as nasty a piece of work as any I’ve seen.”

“A sex slave?”

“They call them ‘owngirls.’ Women are possessions, as far as they’re concerned. It’s a brutal life.” He restrained himself from adding and I’d rather you hadn’t any part in it, as Tonks never seemed to take that sort of sentiment well.

“Ugh, how dreadful. I’ll see what I can find. Look after yourself, all right?”

“And you.”

She stood up, and they looked at each other somewhat awkwardly for a moment until he ventured a half-hug. She felt comfortingly warm and solid under his arm, and after she Disapparated he found that he was glad that she had come, in spite of everything.

 

                                                            *          *          *

A few days later, Remus had another, less welcome, visitor.

“Pinewine?” Phil Craddock offered as Remus let him into the cabin.

“No thanks.” After the news that Tonks had brought, the last thing he cared to do was drink with Craddock. He wasn’t about to let his guard down – among other things.

“Suit yourself.” Craddock took a long draught from his flask. “What d’you make of the boss’s new alliance? Think the Death Eaters are going to keep promise?”

Remus calculated what would be the orthodox, Fenrir-approved reply. “I think they’ll be all right – for as long as we can use them,” he said at last.

Craddock snorted. “If I wanted Fenrir’s opinion, I’d ask him for it. I’m askin’ yours, and let’s not kid ourselves about who’s usin’ who. We’re never gonna be anything but pawns in this game for as long’s we live.”

“I trust Fenrir,” said Remus stiffly. It was hard to make himself say the words, but it didn’t sound much less convincing than it had when he’d told Harry he trusted Snape.

Craddock gave him a searching look. “You didn’t sound so sure about that when you first came here.”

Remus shrugged. “That was then. I’ve seen enough now to know that Fenrir’s got the right idea.”

“If you say so,” said Craddock. He took another long drink of the Pinewine and left.

Remus watched him disappear into the Forest, feeling unsettled. Everything he’d said had been impeccably correct and prudent, and yet he couldn’t help feeling that Severus Snape had been right; he hadn’t the makings of a spy. It was impossible to pretend friendship with a man he knew had murdered a child.