Riddle Me This

Remus Lupin's first impression was that time had not been kind to Peter Pettigrew. The man that stood before him was of a hunched, small frame, and he was balding in the back. Then again, Lupin considered, as his senses slowly began to return to him, the only part that was considerably different from his days at Hogwarts was the hairless spot in the back of his scalp.

Peter did seem to loom over Lupin though, surely he couldn't have grown...? No. Lupin blinked his eyes slowly, very slowly, as if he was not entirely sure they would open again, and, as his sight was momentarily extinguished, he felt cold, hard stone against his legs and shoulders, and chilling dampness soaking into his robes and trousers. He was half-sitting on the floor of some sort of some small, stone room, and the air was dank and wet in his nostrils.

When he opened his eyes, Peter had turned around.

"Hello, Moony."

It was the same squeak of a voice that Lupin remembered from the time he had spent walking the halls and grounds of Hogwarts, and he was suddenly struck by a funny notion that all of the natural processes of puberty had halted right in the middle of Peter's adolescence.

I wonder if he shaves, he thought to himself vaguely, and, although it hurt to think, he allowed a faint, dry laugh to escape his cracked lips.

"Something amuses you, Moony," Peter said, and the old nickname that had once sounded so familiar on the man's tongue now sounded odd and foreign.

"Mmmmm...." Lupin replied and tried to push himself further up against the wall with his leg.

"What is it?" Peter looked down on him with the smallest of smiles. "What could cause you to laugh now, on such a day as this?"

"Such a day as....?" Lupin trailed off, searching for the missing threads of his memory that he knew were there. How did he get here........? He began to fumble in his mind, and had begun to make a little progress when he heard a loud, distinct snap.

His head jerked up painfully at the noise, and he saw Peter standing over him, the smile on his pointed little face wider now, holding one half of a wand in each thin hand.

Lupin's hand groped into his robes, though he knew there would be nothing there even before he found the inside pocket empty. Peter obviously enjoyed the sight, and there was laughter in his shrill voice when he next spoke.

"It isn't there, Moony....but I think you know that." He waved the broken wand between his fingers delightedly when Lupin looked up at him. "I was supposed to destroy it the first chance I had. But I thought it might be amusing...to wait until you came to, so you could watch." He sighed a little. "You weren't watching. Pity. Still, though, I do believe it got your attention."

He had certainly done that. For the first time, a pang or warning shot through Lupin's mind, and, as the mental numbness he had been experiencing began to wear off, he could feel fear coursing through his veins.

How had he come to be in this position, this most horrible of positions? How had he come to be half-lying, struggling to get his legs under him, at the despised Peter Pettigrew's feet? Where were the rest of the Order of the Phoenix? At the very least, where was Mad-Eye? Tonks? Why was he alone...with Pettigrew?

"Moony!" Wormtail's suddenly sharp voice cut like a razor through his thoughts. "Do pay attention." Something of a smile appeared on his lips. "I would think you would be as excited as I at this meeting. Two old friends, you and I. Or have you forgotten?"

"Forgotten?" A searing hatred welled up inside Lupin, and he had to focus to get his words out properly. "No..." he said slowly. "No, Wormtail, I've not forgotten. I've just....revised my views a bit over time. Had to change some feelings....shifted my friendly affections elsewhere..."

"Ah, yes," Peter said quietly, after a moment's pause. "But to shift them away from me? After all the times we spent together at Hogwarts. I would've thought that you would have had more...affection...to go around after James's, and now Sirius's, deaths. "

Lupin made such a sudden effort to stand that Peter jumped back a bit, but there was no need for him to do so. Lupin's strength was spent with one movement of body, and he fell back against hard stone, whimpering a little.

Peter's confidence was back in a heartbeat. He stepped forward again, smirking a little, as if he had not been afraid, as if he had known from the start that Lupin would not be able to rise. "You oughtn't to bother, I'm afraid, Moony. You're too weak to do anything but lie there and wait--"

"Don't call me that," Lupin broke in. "Don't you dare call me that."

"What? Moony?" Peter giggled. "Haven't I always called you 'Moony'? And Sirius 'Padfoot', and James 'Prongs'?"

"I doubt very much," replied Lupin hoarsely, "that you referred to James as 'Prongs' when you betrayed him to Voldemort."

Peter did not speak, and so Lupin continued. "Let me remind you that we are not friends, Wor--Peter. And since 'Moony' was a nickname, devised to be used among friends, I would prefer that you not use it."

"Well," said Peter after a moment's pause. "Then allow me to remind you of something. What you prefer no longer matters, as your situation is now out of your control. Or had you forgotten....Moony?"

Ah....he had.

Lupin sat at the kitchen table at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, his chin in his hands. He had just finished poring over the Daily Prophet, which now lay folded on the table. There was little news of Voldemort today, but, as always, nearly everything written contained dark undertones that seemed to whisper ominously of him.

He grew more and more uneasy as the days went by with no word of Voldemort. Voldemort did not rest, would not rest until he had all that he wanted, and, as surely everyone must know, he had, at present, not half of what he wanted: total control. So, wherever he was then, he must be plotting, planning something big, something important...something dreadful.

If only The Order of the Phoenix knew where he was, where he hid himself from the rest of the world. Perhaps then something could be done, something that could stop this bloody war before it really got a chance to get started, before Voldemort killed yet again...

But where could he be? Surely not at the old Riddle house, that had been searched time and time again. Maybe somewhere in the mountains, with the giants...?

"Well, I see you're taking a bit of a break. And it's about time, too. Mad--Eye's gone out to find Mundungus. Old chap's off picking up a shipment of stolen Firebolts. I heard him talking about it over dinner yesterday."

Lupin was jerked out of his thoughts. He had not heard the door open or close, and yet here Tonks was, standing by the sink, pouring herself some tea, smiling over at him pleasantly.

Lupin did not return the smile.

"Tonks," Lupin said, his voice almost trembling as he tried to control the sudden, violent, inexplidable anger he felt toward this woman who stood, one hand poised in the air holding a teapot, before him, eyebrows raised in anticipation of what he was about to say. "Must you interrupt me when I am thinking?" After this was said, he glared malevolently at her for a split-second, watching her face register surprise, then dropped his gaze back to the old, worn wooden table.

He did not look up again, but jumped when Tonks slammed her cup down onto the table beside him, drops of tea sloshing over the side. She leaned in close and he could feel the heat of her breath against his ear as she spoke.

"Now listen here, Remus. I've let this slide for quite a while, me and everyone else in the Order. But I, for one, am getting a bit bloody sick of your personality."

He clenched his jaw and willed himself not to lash out at her, though at the same time, a small part of him was groping for a decent retort. After a few seconds of breathing furiously in his ear, Tonks straightened, picked up her tea, and withdrew from the kitchen.

He tried to continue the train of thoughts he had been on before Tonks had arrived in the kitchen, but it was no use. His mind kept returning to Tonks, insisting stubbornly that that was where it wanted to be, even as Lupin argued inwardly with it.

He tried, tried so very hard, to convince himself that it was guilt that caused him to think of her now, and maybe that was it. Guilt that he felt now because he had snapped at her so unfairly, when he had tried to engage him in a friendly chit-chat. Guilt that he had been so rude, when she had only wanted to allow him to pretend, for a moment, that the world was not as dark as it was. But there was another kind of guilt there, too, mingled with something else, something much stronger that he could not quite, or perhaps did not want to, put his finger on: guilt that a part of him had loved the feeling of her breath misting against his ear; guilt that, for a minute fraction of a second, he had imagined (had he imagined it?) that her lips had brushed against him...

Now, sitting on the stone floor, coldness seeping into him, Lupin would have given nearly anything to be back in that kitchen, with Tonks standing beside him, seething, sharing her warmth with him.

Tonks....

Where was Tonks? Where were the others? He couldn't ask, he couldn't, but he had to.

"Where...?" he began slowly.

"Are your little friends?" Peter finished sqeakily. He smiled. "Poor, poor Moony. Worrying about your friends when you're so close to the end...very noble of you. You always did try to be noble, even if you didn't always succeed." He let out a sort of high-pitched sigh.

"Where are they?" he said again, as forcefully as he could under the circumstances.

"Oh, don't worry, Moony. It was only you and the girl in the house.

The girl. Tonks. The girl....

"We managed to bring you in, but the girl...well, that was a different story."

No. No, she isn't dead, she isn't hurt, she can't be, they don't have her.

"Relax, Moony," Peter said, as if he could read Lupin's thoughts. "The girl is fine. We didn't capture her."

Good. So Tonks had escaped. That made him feel slightly better. He had been so afraid for an instant that Tonks was caught...or worse.

He raised a tremoring hand to his ear, the ear that Tonks had spoken into, and brushed his fingers across it, hoping in a pathetic way to imitate the warmth she had conveyed there. Instead, he pulled his fingertips away instantly, and looked at them. They were sticky with blood.

"Ah, yes, Moony," Peter spoke, seeing Lupin's confusion. "You took a nasty fall when I hit you

with a stupefying curse. I'm afraid you hit your temple over a rather sharp dresser edge when you fell. You'll be pleased to know the bleeding has stopped."

Lupin opened his mouth to ask the question he needed to ask, though he feared it would not be answered, and feared even more that it would be.

"What am I doing here, Peter....Wormtail?" It was such a frank, straightforward inquiry, though, as he saw Peter inhale, he dreaded the answer with every fiber of his being.

"The Dark Lord wishes to speak to you, Moony. He has wished to speak to you for some time now. He knows you have information that could be quite valuable to him."

Lupin shuddered involuntarily, and it had little to do with the cold. He did not want to think about what Voldemort would do to extract information from him. He had no wand, he was so weak, he had no way of defending himself....it was over. He was over. How, how had this happened?

"I'll be going to fetch the Dark Lord now," said Peter. "It's time--"

"How did you find Grimmauld Place, Wormtail?" Lupin interrupted. "Was it Lucius Malfoy? Did he tell you the way? Surely Narcissa must have known...."

At this, Peter appeared positively delighted. "Malfoy? Oh, no, Moony, no. Surely you must remember. Come now, think...."

He rose from his chair and left the Daily Prophet on the table. He would find Tonks now and apologize. He had to. It was the only way he would be able to stop thinking of her, and thus wipe away his guilt, and with it, he hoped, the odd sensation she had left in the pit of his stomach, the odd heat that felt strangely like desire.

"Tonks?" he shouted, "Tonks!" Before he knew it, his feet were pounding up the stairs, carrying him toward the room he knew very well that Tonks slept in during nights spent at the Grimmauld Place, nights after long Phoenix meetings.

He reached it, and, finding the door cracked, gave it a slight push with his hand and let it swing open. He realized with his first glance that Tonks was not in this room, but he found himself drawn into it anyway. Forgetting his good intentions, he contented himself with closing Tonks's bedroom door behind him and examining her room.

There was not much evidence of her in this room, since she did not reside her consistently, yet, beneath the perpetual musty odor that the old house carried, he could catch a faint trace of her scent, young, strong, and yet....feminine.

Remember the 'young' part, Remus, he told himself. Stop thinking of her....and you'd best get out of her bedroom.

But it was too late. He was standing beside her bed now, and his hand reached down to touch her pillow, which still bore a slight indentation from the night before.

He would love to spend a night with her....

"Remus?" Her voice drew a gasp from him. He felt petrified, as if she had caught him at some awful deed, as if she had somehow read his mind and knew what he had been thinking when she entered.

"T-Tonks," he stammered. "I was just looking for you."

"Well, I'm here....now," she said, and he caught a vague hint that she'd seen him, looking around while she was not present.

"I wanted to apologize, Tonks, for--" He stopped suddenly. She had closed the door behind her and crossed the room. She was standing barely a foot from him. He could have reached out and touched her.

"For what, Remus," she said, almost purred, and a pang shot through him when her hand reached out and trailed a finger along his arm.

"For--For being so short with you earlier. In the kitchen. When you spoke...." He wrenched his eyes away from her finger and looked into her eyes, but discovered too late that they were even more dangerous. His breath quickened, and his blood, which had for so many days been pumping so very numbly and monotonously through his veins, began to race feverishly.

She closed the space between them. "It's alright, Remus. You've been so worn out lately. You've not given yourself a break." She leaned in close, too close, he was sure she could feel his heartbeat, and when she spoke again, it was in a low, husky whisper. "Don't you want to go to bed?"

Go to bed? No, she couldn't be saying what he thought she was saying, coulding be implying what he thought, no, what he wanted her to be implying.

"Tonks," he said, and he did not know for what reason he said it.

"Yes," she replied, and then her mouth was on his, and his hands were on her body, and her hands were fumbling inside his robes, and it was madness, but it was good, so good.

Too good. No. Wait.

"Tonks," he said, pushing her away. "This can't--we can't....You're too young, Tonks."

She laughed. "I'm not that much younger than you, you know. Sometimes, Remus, I think you fancy yourself a bit older than you really are...." Her voice trailed off invitingly as she began to trail light kisses against the line of his jaw, letting her lips wonder up to the graying hair she found at his temple.

It was more than he could take, and yet he wanted so much more. He felt drugged, intoxicated, and he was past stopping. He forgot everything, forgot why he was here, forgot, even, that Mad-Eye Moody could be back any moment and could see without any effort what was going on.

He groaned a little, and began to push Tonks insistently toward her bed, when the door flew open with a crash that made them both jump.

Lupin's eyes flew to the door.

It was not Moody, nor was it Mr. or Mrs. Weasley, or Shacklebolt, or any other member of the Order of the Phoenix.

It was Wormtail.

Lupin instinctively shoved Tonks aside and stepped in front of her, He thrust his hand into his inside pocket for his robe, but....this couldn't be. Where was it?

In his confusion, he almost did not see Tonks step around him and extend her hand toward Wormtail. And in it, he saw, as his eyes lowered to her palm, was the unmistakable, undeniable form of his wand.

Wormtail took it, but Lupin barely noticed. He was looking at Tonks.

"I'm so sorry, Remus," she said, and, for just and instant, as he gazed into her eyes, he let himself believe her.

He did not see Wormtail raise his wand.

"Stupefy!"

"Tonks." It was spoken as a statement, nothing more, nothing less, and Lupin was not sure he wanted to make the connection between the name and the person. Not now. He couldn't handle it now, seeing her face in his mind.

"Yes, Moony," said Peter, a rat-like smile on his pointed face. "Nymphadora Tonks."

He was shocked. He couldn't think. He didn't want to think. It couldn't be. But it was.

And still he could not find it in him to blame her. Somehow, he couldn't.

She should never have been in the Order, he told himself. She was too young. Too young, damn it.

Young. The word seemed so empty to him, and yet so meaningful. He had been young once, he must have been, so why could he not remember what it felt like?

Peter suddenly gave an audible gasp and clutched his arm. "The Master!"

As if on cue, Lupin heard a lock click. Wormtail jumped aside, and, behind him, a heavy iron door swung open.

Voldemort stepped into the room.

He was swathed in black, which contrasted horridly with his pale, white skin. His eyes glowed luminously in the dim light, red with slits for pupils. He was horrifying, but....

Somehow, Lupin felt none of the terror that he should have. He was watching Peter, and felt only vague amusement. All of Peter's strength and confidence had fled at the sight of the Dark Lord. He was now cowering, hunched slightly, eyeing his master with a mix of awe and apprehension.

The truth his Lupin lightly, and it was no great shock to him, so he could only guess that he must have known all along, though, before, it had seemed of the utmost insignificance. Now, however, it seemed fascinating.

Peter Pettigrew was still young. Certainly not physically, no, but...in every other way, he was exactly as he had been years ago, when their days had been spent on the sunny grounds of Hogwarts.

He was the same, small, frightened boy, so eager to please and yet so inadequate all the same.

A smile stretched its way across Lupin's face.

"Oh, Wormtail," he muttered.

Peter looked anxiously at Voldemort before responding. "Y-y-yes, Moony?"

"Your whole life, Peter," Lupin said, his voice bitter beneath its amusement. "Your whole life."

"Yes, M-moony?"

"You gave your whole life to this man....just to please him." A dry, grating laugh escaped his lips. "You betrayed your friend....just to be important. You let James and Lily die....just so this man would tell you--" another laugh "--what a good boy you were."

Peter looked livid, but he dared not to speak, because Voldemort had held up his hand for silence.

"You know you are defeated, Remus Lupin," he said in that horrific, high voice. "That is why you say these things."

"Hey, Peter," Lupin went on. "Wormtail. I'll bet he was pleased, wasn't he? Huh? When you told him? Tell me--did he pat you on the head?"

Lupin was lost in his own ugly laughter for a moment. Then, leaning forward on his hands, and with the air of one speaking in the utmost confidence, he lowered his voice and said, "Hey, Peter....did you get to see him smile?"

"Silence!" Voldemort hissed, and Peter squeaked. Lupin found himself obeying as his eyes wondered up to Voldemort, and he made eye contact with pure evil.

"Tell me, Remus Lupin," Voldemort said, red eyes flashing. "What did you think of my little spy?"

All laughter was gone in an instant, vanished by the cold, cruel words of the man before him, erased by the high, hideous quality of his voice.

"It was quite ingenious, was it not?" Voldemort continued. "Quite...unexpected....I'm sure."

Lupin forced himself not to tear his eyes away from Voldemort. If he had to face him, then he would do just that: face him, head on, eyes focused. "What did you do to her?"

"Not a thing," Voldemort answered. "Oh, you might say I have my own way of....recruiting. But, I assure you, in the end, she did join my group of followers and I of her own free will. She's still at Grimmauld Place now. Very useful, as I'm sure you can imagine."

He could imagine. She would speak to everyone in the Order. Voldemort had inside access now. It would surely be over soon. They would lose. How could they not? She would bring Voldemort many others. He had been but the first.

Oh, Tonks. So young....

He realized that he had ceased to maintain eye contact with Voldemort, and he looked up again now, into those deep, red, satisfied eyes. He felt a spasm of hatred inside him, but as quickly as it had come, it was gone. He let the smile touch his face again.

"I'll tell you nothing, Riddle," he said and knew it was true.

"Do not call me that name!" shrilled Voldemort. "You, lowly half-human, you will call me 'Lord Voldemort'."

"I will call you Tom Riddle," said Lupin, and as he gazed into those awful eyes, he realized that long ago, once upon a time, Voldemort had been young as well. And maybe, just maybe, there was a bit of that left in him....

"That's your name, you know," said Lupin, and now his eyes bored into Voldemort's with a renewed fervor. "Tom Riddle." He saw a flash of fury in Voldemort's hollow eyes as the man pulled out his wand in a threatening manner.

At this, Lupin felt a surge of strength he had not felt since waking up. With this, he managed, slowly and painfully, to push himself to his feet, and, though he staggered a bit and had to lean against the wall, he was happy, relieved, that at least he would not die lying on the floor.

"Tom," he rasped, "Riddle me this." He laughed again. "Do you get it, Tom: 'Riddle me this'? Well, anyway, here goes. What do you get if you trace back through the Dark Lord's history?"

He could tell that he was about to push Voldemort over the edge.

"Do you get a young pure-blood, basking in his own young power and glory? Is that what you get, Tom?" Lupin paused for a moment. Voldemort's wand was pointed directly at his chest. He shook his head. "No.... I'll tell you what you get. You get a lonely half-blood, crying on his bed at the orphanage.... And why is he crying, Tom?" Voldemort's wand trembled dangerously. Lupin's smile grew, but there was no mirth in it. "He's crying because his Muggle father didn't love him."

Lupin had only an instant to laugh before Voldemort shouted, "Crucio!" and his body seemed to burst into flame. White-hot pain coursed through him, and Lupin could hear himself screaming. His heart pounded faster than ever before, humming in his chest at the pace of a freight train.

Beneath the agony, underneath the consuming anguish, there were images. He saw pictures from every point of his life. Scenes rushed by, some blurred, some easily decipherable. His heart was beating impossibly fast now. Surely it could not keep this up much longer.

At that moment, in all his pain, he could have forgiven anyone for anything. He could have forgiven Peter for betraying James and Lily, could have forgiven Voldemort for being the monster that he was, but he did not. He forgave Tonks. He forgave her because she was young, because of the tender, albeit deceitful way, she had said his name, because of that one instant in which he had seen the faintest regret on her face.... He forgave her simply because he could.

Remus Lupin's heart exploded.

End