Werewolves Are Not Popular Dinner Guests

Werewolves Are Not Popular Dinner Guests

Part the Second:

In Which the Previously Mentioned Wolf Expresses Surprise Over Numerous Issues

"Mistress says Kreacher is to make sure the shabby-looking one leaves," said a bullfrog-like voice from behind Remus, "on time."

Remus sat up straight and tried to pull face that resembled something close to annoyance at having been interrupted in the middle of his chess game, though in fact he was a bit relieved, as he had already been foreseeing another terrific loss on his own part.

The house-elf was in a crouching position in the doorway of the parlor. Remus would say that he looked particularly sullen today, if it weren't that measuring the degree of sullenness on Kreacher's face on a daily basis was a bit like measuring how hot the sun was; the temperatures on the outer rim were already pretty hot and Remus didn't particularly like being burned.

"What's that?" asked Remus, expressing his surprise on several counts. One was seeing Kreacher out of his den at all. He'd been spending most of his time hidden away, and as most of Grimmauld Place's inhabitants had never possessed much inclination hold a conversation with him in the first place they had mostly let him be, save periodic checks that he was still in the house.

The other was that Kreacher had mentioned his "Mistress." As far as Remus knew, the only thoughts Mrs. Black had expressed (or, more accurately, shrieked) about him lately were why oh why that awful werewolf was here creating such a great stain on the purity of her house, oh the shame of it, and had therefore expressed no concerns about his punctuality at all.

"Kreacher's filthy half-blood Mistress," continued Kreacher, "is wanting Kreacher to make sure the filthy half-breed is leaving the house on time. Kreacher is only too pleased but is very disappointed when he finds out the filthy half-breed comes back later."

"You know," said Fred from the sofa, where he was perusing an issue of the Quibbler upside down (Fred was upside down, not the Quibbler), "you use that word, filthy, so much. We do take baths around here."

Kreacher spouted a few well-chosen words on that that Remus really didn't feel like responding to in the vague, impersonal manner he usually used when dealing with Kreacher. He had just realized what Kreacher was talking about when he referred to his "filthy, half-blood Mistress."

A few months before he had died, Sirius had apparently managed to convince Kreacher to take orders from Tonks. His reasons for doing this had never been adequately explained to Remus, as he'd been away at the time. " 'Cos I felt like messing with his head," was how Sirius would respond absently when asked, showing, to Remus at least, that he'd done it mostly because arguing with Kreacher was the only thing around to do and he had been bored, but that made sense. It seemed the reason Sirius did most of the things he did. Or had done. (Remus hated having to convert everything to do with Sirius into a past tense. That had to be one of the worst things about death.)

Now Remus couldn't help but wish Sirius had taught himself how to play the accordion or something, like normal people did when they were bored. Tonks had apparently told Kreacher to tail Remus incessantly to make sure he made good on his promise.

"All right, Kreacher," said Remus, turning back to the chess board, where Ron's knight was, completely to Remus's surprise, taking out his queen.

"I really hate knights," mumbled Remus.

"Eh?" said Ron vaguely, as he organized the small army Remus's chess pieces he had collected.

"What with their tricky little L-shapes, smug little--"

"Your move, Professor."

"Right." Remus prodded his castle, which moved forward to take out, quite unspectacularly, one of Ron's many remaining pawns.

Several minutes later:

"That's checkmate," said Ron, smiling and sitting back, his hands behind his head.

"What?!"

"Right there, the bishop's taking out the king."

"Oh. So it is." Remus couldn't help but notice how hostile his old chess pieces had gotten towards him lately, and also how docile they were getting in the face of defeat; they were hardly putting up a fight anymore. He supposed this all had to do with all the times he had gotten them hit over the head in the past few weeks. He looked at his watch and sighed heavily. "Well, I'd better go." He stood up. "Good-bye."

"Have a nice time," said Hermione from an armchair, where she sat curled up with a book (one Ginny had lent her, a rather salacious memoir of a teen witch called Dabbles with Dragons and Other Hot Magical Creatures that Hermione didn't seem to like at all, for every so often she would wrinkle her nose and snort in disgust at it.)

"Oh, I will, don't worry..."

* * *

After Remus had left, Ginny said, "He didn't look very happy, did he?"

Hermione shrugged. "Can't be that bad, can it? Going to the Tonkses' for a little dinner party? Wonder why he looked so down."

Ron let out a laugh. " 'Course he's upset! I just beat him for the...what number we on now?"

"Sixteen," chorused Fred, George, and Harry.

"Sixteenth time," Ron continued. "Merlin, he's persistent, isn't he? I would've given up long before that if I was him. Sixteen times..."

Remus was reflecting on this number as he arrived at the Tonkses' large house in the country. He'd been so good at chess when he was younger, dammit. The sight of him with a chessboard had been enough to make the entire Gryffindor common room scatter! (Well, at least Remus liked to think it had been the chess board.) What had happened? He must be losing his touch, he concluded as he entered the foyer. Yes, that must be it...

Chess-related thoughts, while not particularly glamorous, were on Remus' mind as he entered the living room. The room itself was quite nice, with a large number of bay windows that looked out over a blue lake, but the people in it were what made Remus' mind revert back to chess and how he lost his place as a cunning strategist in the game.

"Remember when I said all my parents' friends were old and crusty?" said a voice from behind him.

Remus was torn away from thoughts of how he had foolishly squandered the opening to Ron's queen and he turned around. Tonks stood there in sleek black robes, her hair a dismal brown and swept up in the back. She looked, all in all, very glum.

"Yes," he said. "I remember you saying something like that."

"I'm afraid I wasn't quite accurate in that statement. Unfortunately. Turn around."

He did and saw, much to his surprise, Percy Weasley had appeared by the punch bowl laughing loudly with an old warlock Remus didn't know (but based on how much Percy was laughing, Remus guessed it was someone important) with a rather nervous young woman with curly hair Remus remembered from Hogwarts as Penelope Clearwater.

"He works in the office with my mother. It's good I didn't ask Bill or Arthur or Molly to come. Suppose I thought I'd spare them of it all, out of common humanity."

Remus pointed out with some indignation that she had invited him to come and asked if her idea of showing common humanity didn't extend to those who got a little hot under the collar around the full moon. He smiled to show that he was joking, but she looked, if possible, even more unhappy after he said this.

"You're right. It was rather mean of me to subject you to all this." She cast a hand around the room of people that landed on Percy Weasley, who had caught sight of his former teacher. So had Penelope Clearwater, but when she had started over to say hello Percy had grabbed her by the sleeve of her mauve dress robes and together they inched slowly in the opposite direction. Remus turned his back to them.

"Now really, I do think you're being a tad rough on this ol' shindig. It's not nearly as bad as some parties I've been to."

"Oh?"

"I remember New Year's Eve...it must've been the year before Harry was born, we had a party at Sirius' flat."

"How'd that go?"

"Pretty badly. He didn't even have a clock."

She snorted. "What happened to it?"

"I think Sirius threw it out the window. Why? I dunno, he thought it was a Frisbee or something, how should I know? I don't claim to be in a real solid state of mind at the time either."

Remus laughed but stopped when he realized who he had been talking about and noticed Tonks had as well. He then tried to back-track out of the pit of melancholy he often felt he slipped into while thinking about Sirius. He really didn't feel like going through it all now, when he had managed to have a moderately pleasant conversation with someone who wasn't sixteen years old and beating the hell out of him in chess. Before he or Tonks could flounder any more in the awkward pause in their conversation, there was a yell from across the sea of heads.

"Nymphadora! Come here, Cookie's here! Ooh, and is that Remus? Both of you, come now, you can't hide by the punch bowl forever, you know!"

Tonks shuddered, though whether it was because of her mother calling her over or being called by her hated Christian name or the mention of this Cookie woman or perhaps a mix of all these things, Remus didn't know.

Nevertheless, he followed her after seeing that Percy seemed to have spread word of his identity to the surrounding people and that now they, too, had taken to edging away from him cautiously.

* * *

"Cookie is my godmother," Tonks explained as she led Remus through the crowd. (He felt a bit like Moses crossing the Red Sea, with all these people giving him such a wide berth.)

"Do you know," added Tonks, "how hard it is to show respect to a woman named Cookie?"

"I could only imagine."

"Don't even try. It's very hard. Especially when you're six years old."

Tonks' godmother Cookie was a woman with small feet and a small head but with a very wide waist. She was sort of shaped like one of the spinning tops Remus' father had showed him when he was very young. She wore too much lipstick and had very large hair. Her eyes narrowed when she saw her goddaughter arrive with a strange man she didn't know. ("Aunt Cookie's very into most social gossipy-things." Tonks had told him. "She'll be very put out she doesn't know you.") But Andromeda's face lit up. She threw her arms around him, taking him by surprise.

"Remus, it's good to see you. You never come 'round anymore."

Back when he had first ran away from home, Sirius had been invited over quite often for dinner and had often brought Remus along with (" 'Cos Moony's always in need of a good meal," Sirius would say, grinning), and they had both always enjoyed it. After the war had ended Remus had stopped the visits, thinking that he was a rather tragic reminder of a man they really didn't want to remember.

Andromeda was now introducing him.

"This is Remus Lupin, he was a very good friend of my late cousin."

"How do you do?" asked Cookie absently. She didn't wait for an answer before turning back to Andromeda. "If you don't mind, I must find Prudence, she's gotten off again, little scamp. I'll see you both at dinner."

Remus thought he should add that he would be at dinner too, but then realized that there was no point in making her unhappy with the information.

Tonks was staring at her godmother's back in horror. "Prudence? She didn't mean--,"

"P.K.'s here, and don't look so horrified," said her mother sternly.

"Horrified? I'm not horrified, I'm simply fearful for all the guests' welfare, if that little hellion is here..."

Andromeda gave her a rather stern look. "There's nothing wrong with P.K. She's just rather..."

"Evil," Tonks finished for her.

"Who's this now?" asked Remus, rather amused at how perturbed Tonks seemed to be.

"Prudence Katherine," Andromeda explained. "She's Cookie's daughter. She's going into Hogwarts next year and she and Nymphadora have never quite hit it off..."

"Understatement of the century," muttered Tonks. "You'll want to watch out for her, Remus. She's a menace."

Andromeda rolled her eyes again. "I've got to go see that dinner's ready. We should be eating in a few minutes, I'll see you both at dinner."

Remus watched her go and then turned back to Tonks, who was eyeing the whole room warily.

"I find it funny that a Ministry-trained Auror like yourself seems to be in fear of a nine-year-old girl," he said, unable to keep the amusement out of his voice now.

Tonks glared at him. "She's ten. And it's simply because I'd like to keep this evening as it is now, merely an unpleasant drudge through some of the Ministry's less than savory personnel, than what it could be with P.K. around."

"What's that?"

"Hell," replied Tonks, who then sighed heavily, and swept away.

Remus looked around. He couldn't think of anything else to do but follow her in her mad search for the girl.

It was going to be, he decided, an interesting night.