Occlumency in Azkaban

Several emotions flashed across Snape's face in quick succession, although Tonks couldn't put a name to each of them. He quickly pulled himself together again, standing up almost gracefully, hiding the shabby old pencil up his sleeve and somehow not needing to brush off his frock coat. Tonks followed his example, although she was in complete disarray. Her clothing wasn't suited in the least to her surroundings, anyway; they had landed in a very elegant sitting room, filled with old furniture that must have all been family heirlooms. Everything seemed to be made of heavy carved wood and upholstered with hand-embroidered cushions. It could only be Malfoy Manor.

"I came to meet you, as you requested, cos," he said. Cos - it took her a moment to recognize the form of cousin - seemed to transform into a title when Snape used it.

"I did not mean you." Narcissa was the sort of woman who had always looked thirty years old and would always look thirty years old. Tonks knew, however, that she was thirty-five, and that the color of her elegantly coiffed hair was not natural. I wonder what she knows about me? she thought, squelching several flippant quips that came to mind.

Snape's mouth thinned more than usual, if that was possible. "Don't you know your own niece, Narcissa? Meet Nymphadora. She has a desire to learn more about her more glorious heritage."

The glance the older woman gave Tonks was frankly appraising. "The hair - she's not much, is she? I heard about you, girl. You're a Metamorphmagus."

"Yes," Tonks replied.

"And your mother called you Nymphadora. Well. Andromeda never had any taste. She wants to join my husband's party, Severus? An Auror?"

"I have been cultivating her. I thought she might be useful. She has gained access to Dumbledore's inner circle through her parents' urging, but she has quite different feelings on the matter than most there. I believe her father is somewhat boorish," he said delicately.

"I go by Tonks," she managed to cut in, and immediately regretted it. Narcissa, who had been halfway out of the room already, stopped in her tracks and turned around to pin her with a cutting glare.

"Not if you wish to know your real family, Nymphadora. In my presence, you shall be referred to as Nymphadora Black. Perhaps simply Dora, if the name is so distasteful to you. We will learn of your discretion by how well you keep our meeting secret, I suppose?" she asked Tonks, though she was raising one perfectly shaped eyebrow in Snape's direction.

"That was my intention, yes," he replied, as though he was admitting something embarrassing.

Narcissa was silent for a long moment, turning to face the fireplace and staring at the portrait above it. The portrait stared back, but said nothing; it was of a veela posed before a palace. Tonks had to clamp her self-control down hard to prevent herself from morphing into a carbon copy of the compelling face in the painting. Finally, her aunt spoke. "The Dark Lord will do nothing to aid Lucius," she said softly. Lucius - Lucius Malfoy, in Azkaban, Tonks remembered.

"What do you expect me to do about it?" Snape's voice was low and dangerous.

"Nothing - nothing about the Dark Lord, in any case. His wisdom is far beyond our own." The last was spoken in a tone of voice that made it clear that it was merely a formality. "But I can help him. I know I can. You know the artifact of which I speak."

As she spoke, Tonks's eyes wandered the room. The portrait was almost the only thing of note, but there, on the mantlepiece below it, lay three objects: a wand, a bracelet, and a small stone cube. Snape crossed the room and selected the cube, turning it over in his long, thin fingers. There was an indentation in the top, no larger than a man's thumbprint. Tonks was suddenly reminded of the biscuits her father made, baked the Muggle way, with jam filling a thumbprint on the top. Tonks refused to let the memories distract her, she thought to herself, trying to focus on the situation at hand. It was her best-kept secret that the way - the only way she could have passed the Auror stress tests - was to allow herself to be distracted, to let reason go and instinct take over. She had dueled enough that if a situation was not life and death, she could block spells without truly focusing on her opponent, and that was all they truly tested.

But in this case, where her safety hung on how well she could pick up on Snape's clues and the lies he told her aunt, it was much harder to be so sure of herself. She knew she would miss something. She always had in practice.

"You want me to concoct the activation agent for the Wiltshire Stone." Rather than respond, Narcissa nodded, holding out her hand to take the artifact back. Snape turned away from her, still fingering it. "You want me to do this without the Dark Lord's express permission. There will be a price, you know."

"If you were loyal -"

"I am loyal to my master, not to Lucius Malfoy," he said smoothly. "You will pay for my ingredients, I assume. I think a fair exchange would be the portrait for the potion, don't you?"

"Eléonore?" Narcissa exclaimed, glancing over her shoulder at the veela in the painting. "You don't know what you're asking for."

"Oh believe me, I do." They seemed to have forgotten Tonks was even in the room. She stood dumbly, watching them haggle. "Do you think the price is too high?"

"Hardly. Eléonore is useless to you. You know that her riddle has gone unsolved for ages, Severus, and without all that goes with her she's useless. Even with it she's useless. Generations of Malfoys have never coaxed the answer out."

The gleam in Snape's eye was familiar. It appeared in Potions classes almost daily, whenever he knew he had a student trapped in indisputable wrongdoing. "Riddle me this - who else can and will make your potion for you without asking you why? Why do you need Lucius back so badly, Narcissa? Just a month ago I heard you whisper that you wished he was gone for good. No price is too high for my discretion."

She pressed her lips together into a tight, thin line. "Done," she said. "Eléonore, when you have a batch of the potion created." Suddenly, as though she was just noticing her niece again, she spoke in a brighter voice. "Nymphadora! I've been dreadfully ignoring you, haven't I? But there's no time now. I'll expect you to return soon, if you'll send me an owl, and you can meet your cousin Draco then, too. He'll love to see you."

"Thank you," Tonks ventured. "It's been lovely - I mean, it's been a pleasure to finally meet you." It was Tonks's childhood dream realized, meeting the family she never knew, she narrated to herself. But her eyes couldn't help but stray from Narcissa's face to the portrait above her, to Eléonore. Slowly, carefully, as though it was an effort, her painted eye winked.

Tonks's distraction was not so great, of course, that she didn't hear what her aunt whispered to Snape: "Don't bring her back until she's taken the Mark; I may be suspicious, but I won't have Draco in danger. And make her presentable next time." She could ignore it, though, without much effort. As she followed Snape out of the sitting room, her mind did not focus on her family or her past. Instead, she considered Eléonore, the Wiltshire Stone, and what might possibly be worth Snape's price.

"Do you know where Albus is?" Snape asked quietly. "I must speak to him."

Freed from the restraint of being undercover, even accidentally undercover, Tonks put her foot down. "And what about me?" she asked loudly, glancing over her shoulder to make sure the door was closed on any eavesdroppers. "We were just at Malfoy Manor, weren't we? That portrait was creepy, wasn't it? What was it?"

"Silence!" Snape roared. "You are a foolish girl who should never have succeeded in graduating from Hogwarts, much less passing your Auror training! I shall speak with the Headmaster, and he shall find a way to deal with you. Together, perhaps we can discover a way to get ourselves out of this mess you've landed us in!"

But he had overlooked the presence of Molly Weasley. Like a red-haired cannonball she jumped between them, putting her hands on her ample hips and scolding right back at him. "I haven't the least idea what's been going on, but if I ever hear you speak that way to someone again, I will personally hex you until you wish your mother had never met your father!" (Tonks almost thought she heard Snape mutter "I already do wish that" under his breath, but it was too indistinct to really make out). "Now, you may believe that tough love is best for your students, but Tonks is not a student! She is a member of the Order of the Phoenix and you will address her as such! Whatever is going on, she has a right to know about it!"

There was a long moment of silence. Snape looked shell-shocked. Molly straightened her hair. Then, quietly, she turned to Tonks. "I'm sorry, dear. I was just baking a cake. Would you like a slice before you go see Albus? He's in his office at Hogwarts. You can take the Floo."

"No, thank you, Mrs. Weasley," Tonks replied. She always felt very awkward around Molly. She was supposed to call her Molly, but she remembered when Charlie Weasley was the suave, cool, Quidditch champion seventh-year, and it was hard to squeak his mother's given name out. She had thought she was improving, but with that display of motherly anger, she was sure to experience setbacks. "We'll just be going, I think."

Snape raised his chin and said nothing.

Dumbledore's office, when they arrived there, was cool and dark. The Headmaster himself blended in to the gadgets and doodads at first, in the dusky light filtered through high windows. Music played, very softly, from some hidden source. As Snape explained their situation, with interruptions from Tonks at regular intervals, Dumbledore sat behind his desk and smiled up at them. He looked far more rested than he had at the end of school, when Sirius died. In fact, he seemed downright amused at all that had occurred - or perhaps he was merely amused at the expression on Snape's face, which was downright outraged.

When the Potions master finally ran out of things to say, some time later, the Headmaster had offered Tonks five different types of Muggle candy and called a house-elf to bring them tea and cake. "Are you quite finished, Severus?" he asked. Instead of waiting for an answer, though, he smiled absently and went on. "Well, then. Miss Tonks here told you what no one has dared to for years; you accidentally Portkeyed to Malfoy Manor, where you made a deal which may win you fame, should you be able to solve the mystery of Eléonore; you made arrangements to place another double agent within Lord Voldemort's ranks - and you really think there is nothing good to be said about your actions?"

"I am a Metamorphmagus," Tonks remarked softly. "You-Know-Who might want to use my talent -"

"I am aware," Dumbledore said. "But you must admit that the situation is not nearly so dire as Severus would like us to believe. I suspect that his grouchiness stems from the fact that if all you have told me is true, he may be gaining a lab assistant whether he wants one or not."

Snape's voice came out less angry than strangled when he spoke again. "I'm sure we can find another solution!"

"No, Severus. You've cooked your own goose now, I'm afraid." And happily humming, the Headmaster leaned back in his chair, clearly not willing to say more.

So... what? Tonks thought. Tonks had to have missed something, or else she would likely be angry. The Headmaster seemed to be expecting anger, but all she felt was curiosity. "What? What - Snape, what did he mean?"

The fact that Snape was little more than a silhouette against the brightness of the windows, from Tonks's perspective, made his deadpan delivery of an explanation even more effective. "I believe that Albus means that in order for the lies I told your darling Auntie Narcissa to hold up under scrutiny, you and I shall have to remain close to each other for a while. Close meaning that you shall be the newest inhabitant of the Hogwarts dungeons."

"Well isn't that lovely?" she replied. But her sarcasm was only on the surface. Underneath, her thoughts flew from the house on Grimmauld Place to Malfoy Manor to the comfortable little apartment where she had grown up. She stood and considered her Aunt Narcissa, and it seemed that a part of her she had never dared examine too closely stirred to life, the part that came from her mother and her mother's mother and farther and farther back into the beginnings of wizardry. "Yes," she repeated. "Absolutely lovely." This time, her tone was absolutely serious.