Occlumency in Azkaban

She never really had herself in the first place - never had one face or even one name, when the Auror training was done. But when she looks in the mirror, now, she sees strangers every day. Sometimes she plays people she knows. Other times she is an amalgamation of faces. Occasionally she branches out, does her best to turn herself into a tree or a pole or a fence, although this is difficult and her approximations are never very exact.

Tonks always thinks of her mind like a map, but now the map feels shredded. This is the place she should have grown up; this is the life she might have lived. She has come into this place, all elbows and knees and Cockney slang, and found that it doesn't fit her, no matter what her blood is. "Wotcher, Harry," she whispers to herself. "Blood traitor."

She holds a book in her hands, carefully covering the title, as though she doesn't want to think about what is written within. Carefully, she puts it on a table, its binding to the wall and its front downwards, and burns it, using Muggle matches (an idiosyncrasy she has carefully cultivated) but dousing the flame with a spell. It's what Sirius would have done, she thinks, and is satisfied.

The door to the attic shuts with a bang behind her when she leaves, smiling again. The air pressure in this house is odd as a result of the many wards. Nobody particularly notices; the house is too large for sound to carry well, although too small for ten people to live in it really comfortably, as they try to do now. The breeze from it flutters the ashes where they lay, and a scorched but legible piece of parchment floats up and hovers in the air before settling back again and coming to rest.

The unobscured portion of it reads Toujours Pur: A Black Family History, or, The Rise of the Noble and Ancient House of Black. A spidery hand has written and Fall in between "rise" and "of." In the darkness, the red ink looks like blood.

She had a way of narrating her life that unnerved people, but it didn't bother her, of course. So she whispered it to herself when she was alone, as she was now. Grimmauld Place was silent and dusty that fortnight after Sirius Black's death, as no one had the heart to continue cleaning. There were any number of people staying there, but none of them seemed to walk the corridors with regularity.

It was the attic she was looking for. That attic held treasures innumerable - treasures to her, in any case, books and old family things and portraits. Most of it was what Kreacher had salvaged, what no one had the heart to throw out. Grimmauld Place was silent, now, the sounds of busy Muggles in the streets not reaching up to the top floor. There was a layer of dust over everything; nobody bothered to clean anymore except Mrs. Weasley, and she couldn't take care of all the messes herself. Tonks tried to keep things orderly, but there was little she could do to fight the encroaching dirt of day-to-day life.

When she reached the top of the last staircase, she looked down. The house was designed so that the staircase ran at the very far side of it, all the way up the several stories to the very top. One could fall flights from there, down steps with bare spots worn in the runners from too much use. At the top of the staircases, the house's grandeur and disrepair was obvious: there were light colored places where portraits once hung, sconces not filled with candles or torches, rough areas in the handrail where it became obvious it had not been polished for years.

The door swung open, seemingly of its own accord, behind her. Tonks walked into the attic, she thought to herself. She looked around, seeing nothing different from the first time she came, so many weeks ago. The bookcases caught her eye - But that was where her internal monologue came to a halt. The room was not unchanged after all. There, where there had only been an empty space in the corner of the long, low-ceilinged storage area, was a trunk, quite dust-free.

There was nothing for it but to open it and see what was inside. It was of fine materials but very scuffed and battered, as though whoever bought it couldn't really afford the expense but liked having nice things and therefore used whatever they had till it fell apart. The silver nametag was too worn to decipher. Inside, it seemed, was nothing but personal effects: some books, a keyring, a wand (whose wand, she wondered; what wizard would give theirs up before they died? And Sirius took his with him - but that was not something that bore thinking about), a few unlabeled boxes. The one truly noteworthy item within was a Pensieve, simply carved from dark wood. The runes banding the edge were in a sure hand; it had been made by someone who knew their enchantments.

Pensieves are incorruptible, she remembered from Auror training. The only danger they pose to a trained Auror is that the memory might be frightening, or take a long period of time to complete, thus slowing one down in one's mission. The thoughts inside swirled enticingly, golden-green and glowing. She pushed back her hair nervously - she had bushy brown hair like Hermione Granger's today, though it was tinged with pink and much better kept than Hermione's usually was - and reached one finger out to touch the surface of the memories.

The disorientation was much less than she had ever before experienced using a Pensieve. Perhaps it was because the room she found herself in was not so different from the room she had just left - a little smaller and even dustier (if possible), but both had the same feeling. Both rooms felt like they were filled with castaways, the flotsam and jetsam of peoples' lives, tossed aside and forgotten.

There was one major difference: the room the memory unveiled was inhabited. A teenage boy, perhaps seventeen, tucked his gangly knees up to his chest as he read, nestled between two large boxes. He was immediately recognizable: thin face, beaky nose, dark hair that was cut to mid length and stringy even then.

Oh, no, Tonks thought. I've gotten myself into Snape's Pensieve! "Well, he can't see or hear me," she said. "Rather nice, eh, Tonks? Got yourself into a tough spot."

But nothing seemed to be happening in the memory beyond the quiet turning of the pages. She climbed up on one of the boxes to see what he was reading, confident that they would hold her weight whether they would in real life or not. They did, but she nearly fell off of them herself when she caught a glimpse of the words Snape was poring over.

And therefore we have issued a Call to Arms - a Call to Arms to all young pureblooded wizards and witches everywhere, and those of mixed blood who regret their parents' poor judgment. Only when this world is PURGED of the Mudblood invasion, only when our separation from Muggles is COMPLETE and TOTAL can wizards truly come into their full potential away from polluting influences!

"Son of a bitch," she whispered to herself, but quickly something jerked at the back of her neck and she was pulled out of the memory. Her nose had been almost touching the shimmering surface of the memories, and she hadn't noticed. But more importantly, the hand pulling her back was Snape's, and he was shouting at her in an angry voice.

"You had best have a good reason for being here - who are you? How did you find this house?" His eyes were truly filled with fear. She did not immediately realize why. Then she noticed that she stood a great deal taller than usual. Looking down, she found that she had unconsciously transformed herself into a carbon copy of a young Snape.

So that was why my nose was so close, she thought dryly to herself, nearly grinning. Stupid man. Takes everything so seriously. It's a miracle my clothes didn't rip - skinny little thing, wasn't he? "Keep your wig on, Sevvie," she interjected in her normal tone of voice. That was the only thing that didn't change when she altered her appearance. "I'm morphing as fast as I can."

The look on Snape's face, for one moment, was priceless, but she would have enjoyed it more if she hadn't been obliged to focus on changing her appearance back to the pixie-faced, pink-haired young woman she normally was. She also would have enjoyed it more if he hadn't immediately turned stony cold and expressionless. She had seen that expression before, seen it on people who were perfectly sane and perfectly capable of coldblooded murder.

"What did you see?" he asked.

"Nothing!" she responded defensively. "You were reading. It looked like - a Death Eater manifesto, I suppose. Were you afraid I'd -"

She thought better of baiting him just a moment too late. He knew she was about to say something unforgivably derogatory. "Don't tell anyone about this," he ground out. His voice was very good for issuing threats and overall there was more implied in that single phrase than Tonks could have convinced anyone she meant in a five-paragraph essay. She noticed that he wasn't menacing her with a wand, though, which added a little levity to the situation; instead, he shook a beat-up, battered old pencil in front of her nose. It was surprisingly effective, all things considered; mostly this was due to the fact that she had finished her transformation and was now nearly a foot shorter than he was. "You snooping little piece of Hufflepuff trash! Didn't anyone tell you that private things are private and not to be looked in? If I could, Nymphadora, I would take fifty points from your House. Some things are not to be seen by near-students, such as you!"

"Oh, gerroff," she muttered, grabbing the pencil. He didn't seem to want to let go of it. "Why d'you think anything about your life is interesting to me? You're tall, dark, and mysterious, all right, but d'you really think that anyone cares about the greasy bat of the dungeons?" She hadn't spoken to Snape, really spoken to him, since she was his student. He had told her she wouldn't pass her Potions N.E.W.T. Wouldn't pass! she thought indignantly to herself, gathering steam to have a full-blown shout at him. I got the highest mark in the class! "And furthermore," she said, "your teaching method is utter shite. So many students hate you, you pompous sneaky Slytherin son-of-a -"

Under normal circumstances, she would have gone on her tirade, they would have had a massive row, and Snape would have avoided the house on Grimmauld Place for awhile. Just as she was about to start in on exactly what Snape's students wanted to do to him, however, she felt a familiar jerk in the area of her stomach and a sudden whirling sensation.

She barely had time to think to herself Pencil! Portkey! before they were at the destination, sprawled unceremoniously across a very expensive Oriental rug, with her aunt Narcissa looking coldly down at them.