The Smurfs in the Attic

The Smurfs in the Attic

"Come on, Sirius, it'll be fun!"

"Fun?" He stared at her incredulously before returning to the paper in his hands. "I've been up there before, Tonks... Not really my idea of fun."

"All right, you've seen it before, but not with me!" She gave him her most flashing smile, but he just snorted and shook his head. She couldn't help but be slightly disappointed with him; not that she was afraid, far from it -she was a trained Auror for crying out loud. But the attic was an enormous room, filled to the brim with cobweb, spiders, doxies and items of dark magic; the ominous atmosphere set down on you like a heavy unseen weight. Involuntarily she had to admit that the thought of lurking up there in the shadows didn't appeal to her very much. "Anyone else?" she muttered and looked around the room.

Remus was reading a book and didn't even seem to hear her, Arthur Weasley was dissecting a portable Muggle CD player, and Molly was down in the kitchen, preparing dinner. The children had been sent to Hogwarts the same day, and now the house felt empty without their chatter and the cracking sounds as the twins Apparated from one room to the next.

Her eyes fell on the sofa, on the man hidden beneath the blanket; a low soft snoring rose and mingled with the other sounds in the living room. Impatiently, Tonks grabbed the blanket by his feet and pulled it halfway down his chest, but the man just covered his eyes with his arm to keep the light out. Sighing, she tickled him under his arm, and he jerked awake.

"Bless your maker I ain't the grumpy kind," he muttered and rubbed his eyes. "If I was, you'd be dead by now..."

"Why don't you sleep at night, like everybody else?" she asked.

"Where's the fun in that?" Dung Fletcher hauled himself up in a sitting position, reaching out for his pipe on the table; when he discovered he was out of tobacco he let out a long tirade of swearwords.

"There's some fags in the cupboard," Sirius muttered without taking his eyes off the newspaper.

"Thanks..." Dung walked with heavy steps over to the cupboard and picked out the pack of cigarettes, after taking out one he let the pack unconsciously slip into the pocket of his Muggle overcoat. He found some matches in his other pocket, and with a frown he blew a feeble little ring of smoke. "Dry and perfumed... Lupin! When did you get here?"

Remus lowered the book and gave the man a little smile. "Two hours ago," he replied quietly.

"I've been sleeping for two 'ours? I was just having a little nap! You should have woken me up, Sirius!"

"Five hours, actually," Sirius replied with a shrug. "Looked like you needed it."

"Blimey."

Tonks grew restless listening to the conversation, and decided to get things moving. "Well, are you coming or not?" she asked. When Dung looked questioningly at her she snorted. "To the attic! I need to find something, and I asked you earlier if you'd come with me."

"And what did I answer...?" He peered at her as if he was trying to remember.

"You said yes," she lied, and Sirius grinned into the paper behind Dung.

"I did, did I? Honestly, Tonks, you can't ask a sleeping man things like that, it ain't fair." Dung leaned against the wall and tilted his head while gazing at her with pleading eyes, as to ask for understanding and mercy.

She crossed her arms in a stern manner. "Going back on your word, are you?" she growled. "I thought a wizard's word was worth more than that."

Dung closed his eyes for a second and admitted defeat. "'Course not..."

"Great! Let's go!" Her expression changed from the unfamiliar frown to a flashing smile as she turned around and walked out the door. "Last man up is a pickled toad!"

Dung stared after her with his mouth open, but with a heavy sigh he pushed himself from the wall and followed her. "A pickled toad," he muttered.

"What Tonks wants, Tonks gets," Sirius muttered as Dung staggered through the doorway. He stopped and lingered for a second, turning back to Sirius with a dark expression on his face.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing." Sirius shrugged and returned to his paper.

"Have I been set up?" Dung muttered on his way out. "I do believe I've been set up..."

Tonks hurried up the stairs to the attic before he had time to ask any more questions, and soon she could hear the creaks in the stairs as he ascended. With mixed emotions she stood outside the door to the attic, no quite able to explain to herself why she didn't want to touch the silver doorknob. Then Dung appeared next to her, and unceremoniously he grabbed the handle and pushed the door open to walk inside.

"Not exactly the cosiest place I've seen," he muttered as he entered the room, which had to be the understatement of the year. If the rest of the house was in a bad condition the attic was a nightmare. How on earth was she supposed to find anything in this mess? Dung stood ten feet inside of the door, brushing cobweb out of his hair as he turned to her with an expression of impatience. "Well?"

"Well what?" she asked, still hesitant to cross the threshold.

"What you looking for?" he replied with a snort before turning and spreading his arms out towards the room. "You want a nice comfy chair to sit in?" He walked further in; kicking at a rotting armchair that stood in his way. "Or a new set of robes, maybe?" A swarm of moths attacked him as he passed a stack of robes and cloaks hanging from the ceiling. "This could perhaps be a good present for your Dad and the owl he doesn't have." He picked up a rusty birdcage with dangerously looking steel spikes sticking out on the side. "He could use it as a defence weapon, you know -if the Death Eaters show up, he could throw it at them! If the spikes don't kill them, they'll die from tetanus within a few hours."

"If you're going to be a sour-faced bitch you might as well just go back downstairs!" she barked at him; the sudden rash of anger made her take a step forward and thereby entering the attic.

"At least I managed to get you inside," he grinned before he took a deep sigh and started to cough from all the dust in the air. "Can't you please, please tell me what you're looking for? That way we might actually find something, you know..."

She looked around, as if she was hoping to find the desired objects waiting right in front of her. "Smurfs," she muttered.

"Beg pardon?" Dung stared at her with his mouth half open in surprise.

"Smurfs!" she exclaimed loudly. "Little blue men in funny hats. Sirius said he'd hid them over there, in the corner." She pointed her finger and started walking over to the hiding place Sirius had talked about; with an expression of utter scepticism Dung followed her. "It's some Muggle comics," she explained with a more friendly voice.

"Oh..." Dung chuckled softly. "I was starting to worry."

"Sirius told me he brought them home from Hogwarts after his second year, but hid them up here because of his parents. So I thought I'd see if I could find them."

"Here I was, thinking you wanted to do some passionate snogging," he replied dryly. "But now it seems I've been defeated by a group of fictional blue men in strange hats. That's just my luck."

Surprised, she turned to him, but in the dim light she could see little more than the outline of a grin on his face. "Er...I think we need more light," she mumbled. "Lumos."

The light revealed the attic in its full dreariness, and Tonks made an involuntary jerk as a bat flew over her head; she hated bats, somehow she always had this irrational fear that they would land in her hair. Dung hit the little creature with a light confundus charm, and the animal stumbled from the air and into his hand. "Look, it's the Potions Master," he snickered and took a closer look at the tiny bat. "Hello there, little one." Affectionately he petted it on the back, but the animal did not seem to approve of the treatment.

"I don't think it is," she replied, more cocky than she really felt, and dared to touch it with a trembling hand. "Look at the nose; it's all flat... Now let it go, poor thing."

Five seconds later the bat continued its journey across the room, and Tonks turned her attention back to the heap of rubbish and rejected household items in front of her. "How am I supposed to find anything in here?" she mumbled, feeling her spirits fall to the ground like a stone.

"Only one thing to do, innit?" he answered and folded up the arms of his overcoat.

****

One hour later Tonks appeared in the living room downstairs, interrupting Sirius and Remus in their cardgame. They looked up at her with startled faces. "Have you been playing on the rubbish tip?" Sirius asked, incredulously. "You look like you've been dragged down the chimney."

"Thank you, dear cousin, I love you as well," Tonks replied, her voice dripping from sarcasm. "Now, where did you put those comics?"

"You haven't found them yet?"

"If I had I would be lying in the bath tub by now...with your precious comics, making sure to thoroughly soak the paper after reading them!" She was so irritated her hair had turned into nasty black spikes.

"Now, now... I'm sure Dung is of good help."

"If he pinches my butt one more time, I'm going to fucking kill him," she sneered. "Now. Where. Did. You. Hide. Them."

Sirius leaned back in his chair, idly scratching his chin and humming while he pondered her question. "I do remember now. I went up there once afterwards to reread them; I hid them behind the third brick in the wall next to the chimney, bottom left-"

Without a word Tonks marched out, and once more she found her way up the stairs. She hesitated for a second on the threshold, not wanting to go inside, but then she took a deep breath and passed through the doorway. "A change of plans," she said to Dung, who was standing with his head down inside a huge trunk, picking through several ruined lunascopes.

"I think I can fix this one," he muttered and held up one of them for her to see.

"Then bring it downstairs later," she barked in irritation. "The comics isn't there, they're on the other side of the room."

"The comics? Oh, 'course, the comics!" He grinned sheepishly.

"That's why we're here, remember? You haven't been looking out for them at all, have you?"

"Course I have! But they're not here, you just said so. How can I find anything if there's nothing to be found?" He carried the lunascope with him as he followed her over to the chimney, watching her intently as she bent down on all four to examine the bricks in the wall.

Carefully, Tonks counted the bricks, and just as Sirius had said, the third brick was loose. She started to wriggle and push the brick, and soon it began to give away under her hands. Dung made a humming sound in appreciation, and quickly she sat up on the floor, giving him an angry glare.

"What?" he exclaimed loudly. "I didn't do nothing!"

She didn't take her eyes off him, and with an impatient snort he turned around and walked back to the trunk on the other side of the room. Sighing, Tonks returned to the brick and with a hard tug the brick was in her hand, revealing a gaping hole in the wall in front of her. Her heart made a little jump -finally! But the hole was not appealing... was that the shadow of a spider, or a doxy? Those doxies could be nasty. She swallowed heavily before steeling herself; with a resolute expression she bent down once more, and with her eyes closed she stuck her hand inside the hole. And almost screamed when she touched something soft and furry.

"Dung?" Her voice sounded thin and childlike in the great void that was the attic of Grimmauld Place. "Could you give me a hand? Please?"

Dung had been rummaging through the trunk to find spare parts for the lunascope, and stretched out his back before slowly turning towards her. "What? The Auror needs my help?" His voice was mocking in the semidarkness. "Don't want to get her hands dirty, does she?" He came over to her while brushing off his hands on his cloak, giving her a challenging stare.

"Just...do it, okay?" she replied, gritting her teeth. "Please..."

He let his eyes linger on her for another few seconds before getting down on the floor, sticking his arm into the hole. "Just a mouse-nest," he muttered. "Can't feel anything else in here. No, wait..."

She felt like cheering loudly when he pulled out some curly sheets of paper, then his arm went back in and came out with more. The heap of magazines became quite impressive, but after a while Dung sat up. "That's it, I think." He stacked the magazines in a pile, got on his feet and gave them to her.

"Thankyou, thankyou," she breathed out between her teeth, her eyes glittering as she let her hands caress the smooth surface of the paper. She surprised even herself when she leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek.

"Hmm! What would be the reward if I'd brought you a real Smurf...? Want to see if there's more of them in there?" Dung grinned, but she shook her head.

"This is enough to last the whole night," she replied and walked to the door.

"Wait, I'm just gonna fetch the lunascope," he muttered and hurried over to the trunk. "I have no desire to stay here longer than I have to." Half a minute later he was back with the object in his hand and some spare parts stuck into the pocket of his Muggle overcoat.

Soon they were out in the stairway again, and Dung firmly closed the door behind them before walking down the stairs. Tonks was leafing through the pile of magazines in her arms, and the frown got deeper with each front page. "What the..." Slowly, she followed him.

Dung opened the door to the living room and showed his discovery to the two men. Arthur had left the room, but Sirius and Remus were still sitting in the chairs with their cards on the table between them. "Look what I found. I can fix it for you if you want."

Sirius looked closer at the lunascope. "I really have no need for such things," he muttered. "Remus?"

The werewolf shook his head. "I already have one. Unbreakable; gift from Dumbledore."

"Well, if you can make it work, Dung -it's yours."

"Wicked. Always wanted one of these..." Dung brought the lunascope over to the table and started to pick it apart, spreading out all the little pieces on the copy of the Daily Prophet before him.

Tonks approached her cousin with badly hidden anger in her eyes. "You said there would be the Smurfs. You promised the Smurfs. I wanted to read the Smurfs." She threw the heap of Muggle comics in Sirius' lap, and with a startled expression he leafed through them. Remus got up from his chair and walked over to examine them with him.

"Batman!"

"And this is one of the first editions of Superman." Sirius picked up one of the magazines and opened it. "Merlin, it's been so long..." While his friend's eyes devoured the first pages, Remus picked out several copies of Batman and brought them over to his chair where he too started reading.

"Oh, bugger yourselves!" Tonks sneered. "I'm going down to Molly and Arthur in the kitchen! Maybe I can help her with something," she added to herself.

"Yeah, you do that, sweetheart. I'm sure Molly would be delighted," Sirius muttered into the tattered comic. The room was quiet now; the only sound came from the quiet rustling of pages turned and the soft scraping of wood against paper. Then Dung started humming a little tune as he found the cigarettes in his pocket.

She turned in the doorway. "Men!" she spat at them before closing the door with a bang.