Remorse

Chapter Fifteen: The End of Innocence

Tonks came back a week later with a basket of sandwiches (“Molly insisted, and she’ll be hurt if you don’t want them”) and some unwelcome news.

“I can’t find any records at the Werewolf Registry that might be your girl. No girls born after 1978, except for a few who were bitten last year, and they’re all accounted for except for one Muggle teenager. And nobody bitten or born on the fourteenth of June at all.”

“The date isn’t so important. For all I know, she or Ferdinand made it up. She can’t have been born in 1978, though – that would make her eighteen or nineteen, and this girl is just a child. I have a hard time believing she’s as old as fourteen, to tell you the truth, but Greyback’s meant to have been under Ministry surveillance between 1982 and last year.”

“If she’s Muggle-born, she might not have made it onto the Registry at all. I could check the Muggle records of missing children, but there are ever so many more of them, and it’ll be tedious work getting permission.”

“Please do. I want to get her out of here by June.”

“What if we can’t find the parents, or they’ve been killed?”

Remus considered. June could stay at Hogwarts during the Christmas and Easter holidays, but not the summer. He could hardly ask the Weasleys to take in another child, especially one who might bring the fury of the Lyceum upon the whole family, and it was hard to think of anybody else in the Order who might make a suitable foster parent for a lycanthropic adolescent with no experience of life outside the Forbidden Forest.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “We’ll work something out. Perhaps Dumbledore will have an idea.” He picked up one of the sandwiches and started chewing on it absently. “Tea?” he offered.

“Sure.”

He went to fill the kettle, and Tonks followed him into the kitchen. “Oh, look!” she exclaimed, rushing to the window.

He followed her, more slowly, and saw that a unicorn was grazing at the edge of the trees, its white coat dappled with the sunshine that filtered through the new spring leaves.

Very quietly, she eased the door of the hut open, taking care not to let the rusty hinges creak. “I didn’t know unicorns lived around here,” she whispered. “Have you seen them before?”

“Just once, back in the autumn. There were three of them then.”

A little gold form, half-hidden by leaves, stirred in the forest. “Ohh! She’s got a foal with her, and it’s ever so tiny, it must be nearly new.”

They stood in the doorway, transfixed, as the mother and baby edged closer and cropped the weeds between the stepping stones. His hand was resting on the small of her back now, as if it had always belonged there.

He couldn’t have said how long they stood together, just watching; he would have been content to stay forever, but the spell was broken in an instant by the snap of a twig and the crash of a man’s footsteps. The unicorns fled into the forest and were gone.

Ferdinand Calabria, the last man on earth Remus wanted to see, was coming up the path.

“Quite the charming host lately, are we?” sneered Ferdinand. “I suppose this is another of your new recruits.”

“As a matter of fact, she is,” said Remus, trying to keep his voice steady.

“Maybe we should make you the new Lyconian. Smithfield doesn’t seem to be bringing in too many these days. Of course, perhaps we’d better wait until you actually sign somebody first.”

“She needs a bit of talking round. I’m trying to convince her that the Ministry propaganda about us isn’t true.” He gave Tonks a sideways glance; fortunately, nothing she was wearing gave away the fact that she was the Ministry. And she looked thin and pale enough to pass as a werewolf, these days...

“I trust she won’t object if I ask to see her scar,” said Ferdinand with calculated malice.

Tonks shut her eyes and went still paler. There was an expression of intense concentration on her face, and Remus wondered for a moment if she were praying.

“She’s a lady. Let her have her privacy.”

“There’s no modesty for the likes of us, Roper. She knows that already – if you’re telling the truth.”

With a sudden, convulsive motion, Tonks ripped her robes from her left shoulder. The flesh above her breast was disfigured with the marks of jagged teeth.

Ferdinand was positively leering at her. “I see. Nice one. Well, carry on, Roper, and try to sign her in time for the next Lyconference. We could use more good-looking women.” He turned away and walked up the path.

Tonks fumbled with the top of her robes. She was shaking and her face was beaded with sweat.

“Dear God,” said Remus, trying to hide how unnerved he felt. “Is that real? You haven’t been bitten –”

“No. Metamorphosed. I’m still having a hard time with it, it makes me dizzy...”

“Cover yourself,” he said sharply, and immediately wished he had been gentler. He put his arm around her and helped her to the only chair in the hovel. “Stay there and rest for a minute. I’ll get you some tea.”

He stood by the window as he waited for the tea to steep, torn between fear and desire and a traitorous feeling that some things would be so much simpler if that bite scar had been real.

She had stopped shaking when he returned from the kitchen, and she had mended her robes, though not very skillfully.

“Dora? Is ‘Dora’ all right, by the way? I know ‘Nymphadora’ is rather dreadful, but I have a hard time thinking of you by your surname sometimes.”

She nodded. A little color crept into her cheeks, and he realized that he had just revealed a good deal more about his feelings than he’d meant to.

“Are you feeling more like yourself?” he asked, handing her the tea.

She nodded again.

“I – I’m sorry if I was a bit snappish a minute ago,” he said, “but that looked very real, and it was rather disturbing. How did you know what werewolf bite scars look like?”

“I’ve seen photos. And I saw yours once, remember? That time Sirius decided to try using the Augean Stables method to clean out Kreacher’s den, and you both had to wade in and put the pipes back in place before they flooded the house.”

“Right. I’d forgotten about that.” He rarely took his shoes off in company; but by the end of last year, she had stopped feeling like company and started feeling like part of the family. “I need you to understand something. I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you.”

She gave an exasperated sigh. “I don’t think you could live with yourself if you hurt anybody. That’s why I am going to keep brewing the potion for you, whether you like it or not.”

“I know. I’m glad that you’re so determined to look after me. But I also need you to look after yourself. That means you mustn’t stay longer than you need to deliver the potion.” He looked at her face and added, “It hurts me to give up your company, too. You can’t imagine how much. But I can’t let you take the risk.”

“Some things are worth a few risks,” she said defiantly.

“Wait,” he said. “When the time comes to risk everything, you’ll know it and I will know it. Until then, be patient. Will you do that much for me?”

She nodded.

“Goodbye, then,” he said firmly.

“Goodbye. I’ll see you before the full moon.”

He smiled and touched her shoulder. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

Tonks spent more than a week searching through Muggle police records before she found what she was looking for. Remus had confused the issue by overestimating the child’s age by three years, and the case did not fit the typical profile of a Greyback victim. Lila Elizabeth Tomkins had been born in Leeds on 14 June 1985 and disappeared ten months later. It had not been the night of a full moon. The police concluded that she had been kidnapped by her father. Lila’s mother had split up with him before the baby was born and subsequently accused him of stalking her. No one had seen him in the ten years since Lila’s disappearance.

Although the birth date was an interesting coincidence, the case wouldn’t have registered on Tonks’ radar if it had not been for the father’s name. It was Ferdinand Calabria.

So Remus was wrong about what Ferdinand wanted with the child – or if he was right, it was even viler than he had imagined.

She made a copy of the record and Apparated to Leeds.

According to the police records, Julie Tomkins had been only nineteen when her daughter was born, which made her just over thirty now. She looked careworn and older than her years, and she opened the door only a crack when Tonks knocked. Every gesture marked her as a woman who had learned the hard way not to trust people. Tonks had often seen that attitude and posture in wizards, far less often in Muggles.

“Ms. Tomkins? I’m a law enforcement officer, and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about a man named Ferdinand Calabria.” Tonks showed the badge Aurors were supposed to use when questioning Muggles, which had an impressive number of embossed initials but no magical components.

“Have they caught him?” A flash of eagerness transformed the woman’s face for a moment, making her look years younger.

“Unfortunately, no. But we have some idea where he is, and we think your daughter is with him.”

“Lila’s alive?”

Tonks did not miss the implications of the woman’s inflection. She had believed – no, she had sounded absolutely certain that her daughter was dead. But surely most fathers who kidnapped their children did not intend to kill them.

“Well – yes. We think so. But we have reason to think that he may have ... hurt her.”

Julie Tomkins tensed slightly, but did not seem altogether surprised. “Hurt her how?”

“I’m afraid this will probably sound quite incredible – but Ferdinand is a werewolf. We think that he has probably bitten her and made her one as well.”

“A werewolf?”

“I realize this must be hard for you to take in, but I must ask you to think back. Ferdinand had a nasty-looking scar somewhere on his body, didn’t he? It would look like some of his flesh had been torn off by an animal with large teeth, and it probably caused him pain at times.”

“Yes, he did. On his right thigh. But –”

“Did you ever see him on the night of the full moon?”

“How the hell would I remember that?” Julie Tomkins buried her head in her hands for a moment, as though afraid that it might explode, and then looked up with the expression of one who has reached a decision. “I’ve listened long enough. This is ridiculous. You came here to mock me, and I pray to God you’ll never understand how cruel this is, because until you lose a child of your own –”

Tonks swallowed heavily. Standard Auror procedure dictated the use of a subtle Persuasion Charm at this point, but she was reluctant to use mind-altering magic as anything other than a last resort, especially under this particular set of circumstances. She wondered about the ethics of using magic to persuade Julie to take in a child who might pose a danger to her own mother, and in any case, she felt as if it would not be quite ... well, not real, somehow. She thought of Harry, and wondered what would have happened if Dumbledore had used magic to compel his aunt and uncle to treat him as their own son. If it would have made things better, she supposed he would have done it.

No; one could not force trust or hope or love. The most she could do was give Julie Tomkins the truth and an opportunity to choose.

“Call this number,” she said, handing Julie a business card that read “Law Enforcement Special Services” but actually held the contact information for the Aurors’ Muggle Liaison Office. “My colleagues there can verify what I’ve told you, and put you in touch with me if you want to talk again. Any hour of the day or night.”

 

                                                            *          *          *

Spring came late to the northern reaches of the Forbidden Forest, and it was a hungry time. Remus had used up his meager stash of dried berries and nuts, sharing the last of them with June during her impromptu magic lessons, and he found himself wandering farther and farther afield in search of edible greens.

He had misgivings about leaving his hut for so long. He returned home once to find that the place had been searched; cupboards had been flung open and a stack of firewood pulled apart. He had no possessions that might raise suspicion, unless you counted a packet of rather good tea from Tonks and the Deluxe Skiving Snackbox from the Weasley twins, and he might plausibly claim to have stolen those. Still, the fact that anyone cared to search the place at all made him uneasy. Perhaps, he told himself, it was just Ripper or June making mischief. He knew in his heart that it wasn’t.

All in all, he was not greatly surprised when he came back one evening, a week before the full moon, and saw that somebody had slid a note under his door. It was written on birch bark in the careful, labored hand of someone nearly illiterate.

R,

I think you shud know your being watched. Tell that lady friend of yours to stay far away if she wants to be alive after next full moon, the same for any other wizard you been talking to.

P.S. Ide look in the rubbish heap behind Greyback’s cabin if I was you, but dont let him see you.

Beneath the postscript was written a set of Apparation coordinates.

Perhaps the R stood for “Roper.” He had a feeling it didn’t.

For a brief, desperate moment, he clung to the hope that the writer might be Hagrid, but of course Hagrid wouldn’t refer to Tonks as “that lady friend of yours.” Ripper and June knew him only as “John.” One of the adult werewolves, then. Was he – or she – a friend or an enemy? And was the postscript a crude attempt at entrapment, or a hint to something important?

After only a moment of deliberation, he decided to investigate. He guessed that none of the other Lyceans would know much about Disillusionment Charms. It was highly advanced magic, the sort of thing people only learned if they had been through Auror training, or if they’d had to take care of a hippogriff in an urban environment. (By a fortunate twist of fate, Remus fell into the second category.) A wizard with a trained eye could spot the outline of a Disillusioned person, like a shimmering aura, if he knew what he was looking for, but the odds were that Greyback wouldn’t.

Feeling as if the walls had eyes, he locked himself inside the bathroom, Disillusioned himself, and Disapparated to the part of the forest where Fenrir Greyback lived.

The Lupus Maximus’ cabin was the largest of the dwellings that were scattered throughout the forest, and Fenrir had made some effort to decorate it after his fashion; he had erected a number of crudely carved tree trunks around the yard like totem poles. Each had what was most likely an attempt at a wolf’s head at the top, and the tallest was a good thirty feet in height. They were not, however, impressive enough to draw a visitor’s attention away from the essential squalor of the place. Bones lay scattered on the barren ground, and in the back of the house there was a vast midden of evil-smelling refuse.

Remus didn’t care to investigate the rubbish heap too closely, but it didn’t take him long to find the broken cup that was lying on top of it. He picked it up and ran his fingers around the inside of the rim. The trace of liquid inside had the telltale sour-milk smell of the Wolfsbane potion.

So Greyback, who pretended to despise Wolfsbane, was taking it on the sly. That could mean only one thing: he was trying to work out who had cheated his pack of their prey on several occasions. He would have the advantage of a clear mind and sharpened senses at the next full moon – and Remus realized, with a lurch of the stomach, that he himself would not. It did not occur to him to disobey the mysterious warning.

If only he knew where they were going hunting, he might be able to get a message out to the Order; but asking questions would be as good as confirming Fenrir’s suspicions.

He Apparated to another part of the Forest before coming home, mindful that the note had said his hut was being watched, and sent a Patronus off to Dora.

 

                                                            *          *          *

Tonks rested her elbows on the windowsill of her room at the Hog’s Head and leaned her head out into the cool of a spring evening. The days were sunny now and the dark mass of breeding dementors had, at last, moved away from Hogsmeade. Swallows filled the sky, swooping in great circles around the village rooftops and the steeple of the little church, whose whitewashed boards seemed still whiter against the rose- and flame-colored clouds.

She knew that this was only a respite. They would be back, as the long nights of fear and danger would be back, until they won this war or died trying. But lately things had been quiet and the village went about its business almost normally, although the displays in the shop windows were subdued and the voices in the Three Broomsticks hushed.

She watched two little girls feeding ducks in the brook that wound through the village. It was good to see children out again, playing and living normal lives; they were a reminder of what she and the other Aurors were fighting for. If they could only keep the children safe, their work would be enough.

And tomorrow, she thought happily, she would see Remus again, however briefly. She had been to the apothecary’s for aconite and wormwood, and although Dawlish kept demanding that they work ever-lengthening hours, she thought she would have enough time for potion-brewing before the midnight shift began. Sleep? Who needed it?

She thought back to the last time she’d seen him: the pressure of his hand on her back and the sunlight shining through the new green leaves of the Forbidden Forest. When she shut her eyes she could still hear him: I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you. You mustn’t stay longer than you need to deliver the potion. But his last words had been as good as a promise that things would be different someday.

I’ll be waiting for you.

When she looked up again, a silvery shape among the swallows caught her attention, and she shaded her eyes as it flew closer. A dove. His Patronus; he’d told her once how much he hoped for and hungered for peace. It fluttered toward her window and she cooed to it encouragingly.

But it wouldn’t come closer. Once it was sure it had her attention, it swooped through the air and spelled out the words Stay away.

“That’s your message?” she exclaimed in fear and frustration before she could stop herself. “Wait, come back! Tell me more!”

But the dove had shot back toward the Forbidden Forest and was swallowed up by the blaze of the setting sun. She turned away, her eyes stinging.

 

                                                            *          *          *

“Hello, June,” said Remus. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

The girl shook her head, her eyes on the floor. “Ferdinand wouldn’t let me come,” she whispered.

“Did he – He hasn’t hurt you?”

June wrapped her arms around her knees. “He ain’t touched me yet,” she said fiercely. “He can’t, not ‘til I’m his owngirl.”

Oh, Christ – he’d forgotten that it was less than two weeks before June’s birthday. He’d hoped to get her out from, Ferdinand’s clutches long before this, but it seemed increasingly unlikely that he’d be able to do so without risking both of their lives.

Remus tried to come up with a plan. He had taught her a few basic defensive spells, such as the Full-Body Bind, but he hadn’t been able to get her a wand of her own. All he could think of was a stopgap measure that might keep Ferdinand from assaulting the child as soon as she came into his hands. He took the Skiving Snackbox that Fred and George had given him down from the shelf. “Listen,” he said. “Let me give you some of these.”

June’s face lit up when she saw the sweets, and it was only with great difficulty that he managed to communicate that she shouldn’t eat them unless she needed to pretend that she was ill. And if she could slip any of them to Ferdinand instead, so much the better.

He filled her pockets with Fever Fudge and Puking Pastilles, but they seemed a thin and poor defense against a man who was undeniably evil. Magic would be a better one, but he feared that surrendering his own wand might be little short of suicide.

I must. I don’t know when I’ll see her again, and she needs it more than I do. And I can still Apparate without it.

Slowly, he drew his wand out of his pocket, but June interrupted him before he could give it to her. “I heard Ferdinand talkin’ with Fenrir about tomorrow night,” she said. “Fenrir said he was gonna take the older folk what could Apparate for a run near Merlin’s Fork, and it was too bad Ferdinand couldn’t come. Is that far away, Merlin’s Fork?”

“Yes, it’s very far. It’s near Glastonbury,” Remus replied absently. What a stroke of luck, that June should give him the very information he needed to warn the Order.

And then it dawned on him that it might not be luck at all. June hadn’t looked him in the face since she had come to visit, and her eyes kept darting from one corner of the cabin to another.

He’d seen that look before. Peter.