Salazar's Door

Chapter One

Her plans to murder Alastor Moody became more elaborate as the day progressed. By eight o'clock they included strangling, evisceration and, most vehemently of all, shoving the singing plastic Santa Claus he'd charmed fast to her desk right up his cantankerous old--

As if on cue the Muggle decoration sprang to life, launching into its umpteenth round of God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriffs with tinny verve and gusto.

Nymphadora Tonks groaned and pressed her forehead against the cool surface of her desk, hoping to distract herself from such violent thoughts. After all, Moody had only been trying to help, which was perfectly reasonable, given that she'd spent the entire festive season with a face like a kneazle's backside.

"Bugger reasonable," she thought irritably. "Reasonable left my vocabulary sixty-three bloody verses ago!"

She screwed her eyes shut and began counting very slowly to ten. Eventually the Santa Claus stopped singing, but even then she didn't lift her head. There was nothing in her surroundings to inspire such an effort, merely a drab marriage of scuffed parquet floors and ugly brown partitions. After spending the last fortnight holed up in one such partition, writing tedious reports about the lack of dark Wizarding activity in Hogsmeade, Tonks had given serious thought to giving up on existence. She had a nasty suspicion that this would also involve an obscene amount of paperwork.

A familiar weight settled between her shoulder blades. It was so engulfing that she did not hear the doors to the Auror office open, or the footsteps approaching her desk, until it was too late.

"Sleeping on the job, eh?" said a voice in her left ear.

Tonks recognised the voice but decided to ignore it. Hopefully its owner would get bored and go away.

But the voice was tenacious. "Do you have any idea what time it is?"

She scowled into the desk. The voice infuriated her on two counts: firstly because it sounded far too festive for her damp spirits, and secondly because it belonged to the one person in the world she least wanted to see.

Under no account must you engage Bill Weasley in conversation, she had told herself quite sternly some weeks before. Bill might be her best friend, but he could be far too perceptive for his own good. Five minutes alone with him, on any subject, would likely reveal her - and she'd rather not admit that there was anything more to her depression that mere lovesickness.

All she had to do was get rid of him.

"I'm well aware of what time it is," she growled into the table top. "Now bugger off!"

"Don't be such a Scrooge."

Tonks reared up and gave Bill a baleful glare. When this did not seem to faze him she leant back into her seat and folded both arms stubbornly across her chest.

"Bah," she said. "Humbug."

Bill dragged a chair from the next cubicle and sat down in front of her, like a headmaster sitting down in front of a recalcitrant pupil. "Now don't be like that, Nymphadora," he said sternly. "Not after I came all this way from the Burrow just to see you." As he spoke he cast suspicious eyes over the papers that were strewn across her desk. She bundled them up possessively and shoved them into her top drawer.

"I suppose your mother sends her regards," she said snidely, locking the drawer.

"My mother has nothing to do with it! You're not the only one avoiding her, if you must know. Her and Fleur have been at each other's throats all Christmas - a bloke needs a break. And also .." he trailed off, eying her as though she were a basilisk waiting to strike. "Well, I thought you might need a sympathetic ear."

"I've had enough tea and sympathy, thank you very much."

"Actually, I was thinking of something a bit stronger," said Bill with a lopsided grin. "What do you say - can I tempt you to a pint down at the Kneazle?"

Tonks didn't answer but let her gaze trail around the office. She thought despondently of escorting eighty-odd twittering students from London to Hogwarts in the morning, of spending the next six months or more tramping around the grounds of the school and nearby village of Hogsmeade on fruitless midnight patrols, and of the inevitable endurance of the one woman matchmaking campaign that was Molly Weasley. It didn't take her long to find her voice again.

"Sweet Merlin, I thought you'd never ask!" she exclaimed.

***

"I'm telling you these women are driving me insane!" cried Bill. "It's like you can see the disapproval rolling off her in waves, and poor Fleur keeps putting her foot in it, as usual. She hasn't got a bloody clue. Take Christmas Eve: Mum's got Celestina Warblewhatsit on again and she's got us all giving the wireless a standing ovation and then - then - Fleur pipes up with 'Eez eet over?' and starts going on about 'ow 'orrible it was until Dad gets desperate and starts ladling eggnog down our throats and ... sweet Merlin, it's been a nightmare!"

Tonks raised one solitary eyebrow. Mrs Weasley's admiration for Celestina Warbeck was legendary. Open criticisms were only made at the risk of being hexed into next week.

They were slouched in a dark corner of The Bleeding Kneazle, possibly the grottiest Wizarding pub in London, and despite being lured their by the promise of free alcohol, Tonks found that she didn't feel much like drinking. Instead she had spent the evening scowling at Bill across a lone pint of bitter shandy, watching as he became steadily more intoxicated.

"I tried to tell her they only listen to aquatic opera in Veela families, but Mum wasn't having any of it," Bill slurred. "You know how she gets. And besides, she took a real dislike to Fleur, right from the get-go. Can't for the life of me think why..."

Tonks bit down hard on her lip as she watched Bill, who seemed genuinely confused that anyone could find his snooty and downright unpleasant girlfriend anything less than adorable.

"Probably blames her for not being you," he concluded gloomily.

Six months ago, Mrs Weasley had decided that Tonks would be a much better candidate for her eldest son's hand in marriage than Fleur Delacour, and she now wasted no opportunity in airing this opinion to all and sundry, even though her only real proof of their compatibility was a single photograph of Tonks and Bill at the Yule Ball several years before, when they both still at Hogwarts.

Tonks wondered if Mrs Weasley would stick to this conviction if she were to discover that Bill had spent most of that evening in the Forbidden Forest, doing something very room indeed with Artemesia Bones.

"So ... are you going to tell me what's wrong?"

She looked up, startled by the suddenly change of subject. Bill's head - she noticed with a sinking feeling - was tilted to one side, and he was wearing the look of sad wisdom that only a vast amount of alcohol can give a person.

"I don't want to talk about Lupin," she said.

"Not Lupin. There's something else."

"There's nothing else."

With the advantage of drink, however, Bill was not so easily dissuaded. "Oh, yeah? Some furry idiot decides to dump you for the greater good, and you can't even summon the energy to keep your roots from showing?" He gave her mousy hair a disappointed glance. "To be honest, Tonks, I thought you were made of sterner stuff."

She stared at him for a moment, outraged, then slammed down her pint glass and got to her feet. "Listen, it's been great fun watching you get plastered and all that--"

"Woah, woah! I'm sorry..." He rose unsteadily and tried to pat her arm, but she swatted him away. Bill looked crestfallen. "You know I didn't mean it to come out like that."

"It's not you!" Tonks said, in a much louder voice than she'd intended. Several of the pub's customers paused from sipping their own drinks to look curiously in their direction. Lowering her voice, she said, "I'm just tired. That's all. Some of us have work in the morning, you know?"

"But it's Christmas!"

"January," she corrected, pulling on her cloak. "And I have to be up early tomorrow to escort the Muggleborn's back to Hogwarts."

Bill knocked back the dregs of his Firewhisky. When he put the glass down Tonks was already half way to the door.

"Wait up!" he said. "I'll walk you home."

"Actually I'd rather go alone."

"Not at this time of night, you wouldn't" he countered, clearly not so drunk as to forget the Ministry's new safety guidelines.

Tonks pulled a mutinous face. "It's not very far."

"Well, in that case...." He offered her the crook of his arm, an old fashioned gesture which reminded her of Lupin. Feeling a lump in her throat she relented, allowing herself to be led outside into the crisp winter darkness. For several minutes they walked in silence through the city streets, pavements crunching underfoot. Tonks rested an apologetic cheek against Bill's shoulder, feeling a twinge of guilt as she remembered what a good friend he had been for the last fourteen years.

"Well, in that case..." Bill said, offering her the crook of his arm, an old fashioned gesture which reminded her of Lupin. Feeling a lump in her throat she relented, allowing herself to be led outside into the crisp winter darkness. For several minutes they walked in silence through the city streets, pavements crunching underfoot. Despite being about a tactile as a porcupine, Tonks rested an apologetic cheek against Bill's shoulder, feeling a twinge of guilt as she remembered what a good friend he had been for the last fourteen years.

"You know," said Bill presently. "I'm starting to think this shoulder to cry on lark would be a lot easier if I could just buy you a tub of ice cream like any normal girl."

"Since when have I been a normal girl?" Tonks scoffed.

"Since third year at Hogwarts," Bill said, with a sly sideways grin. "Except I was too much of a gentleman to notice."

"Oh, so there was a spark?"

Bill made a face. "Barely a splutter."

"All the same," said Tonks airily. "I'd better tell your mother; it would at least give her and Fleur something to talk about."

Bill opened his mouth to give an outraged reply, but it was another voice that called to them from across the street. They whirled around to see the ghostly form of a lynx lurching towards them.

"Kingsley?"

Reaching them, Kingsley's Patronus rose on its haunches. "Who do you think?! I've been looking everywhere for you two. How far away is Marylebone?"

"Station?" asked Tonks. She looked around for a street sign. "About five minutes. Why, is there something wrong?"

"There's been a derailment. Ministry think Death Eaters might have something to do with it. Are you two good to check it out? We're tied up - Order business."

"Sure, we'll--"

But Kinglsey's Patronus was already fading into the night air.

***

By the time they reached the platform at Marylebone it was already crawling with Ministry staff, headed up by the Obliviators, who were busy tending to a clutch of confunded looking commuters. Tonks scanned the crowds and noticed that a small number of Misinformation Officers had already been despatched to deal with the transport workers in order to prevent the true story - whatever it was - from leaking into the Muggle press.

She made her way to the nearest familiar face, a dour looking wizard called Moreville. Bill trailed unsteadily a few paces behind.

"Kingsley sent us down," she said. "What's going on?"

"Partial derailment," explained Moreville. "Caused by a combination of signal failure and track damage, from what we understand. Usually that falls under the responsibility of the Muggle transport authority, but our sensors went off at the same time. We're not sure what tripped them but the driver saw bright lights and figures in the darkness. Thought we ought to request back-up before going down there."

Tonks followed his nervous gaze to the entrance of the tunnel, where the derailed train half protruded from the yawning darkness. It was surrounded by a faint, yellow-green smoke that curled slowly towards them over the lip of the platform.

"All this talk of Inferi," said Moreville. "You can't be too careful."

"It's not Inferi," she said, recognising the smoke as being the residue of a particularly nasty combative curse; whoever was responsible had engaged in a battle of some kind. "You'd better get the platform cleared before that stuff hits the commuters," she told him. "My colleague and I will do a sweep of the tunnels just in case, but my guess is that whoever's responsible for the smoke and mirrors has already gone."

"I look forward to reading your report," he said flatly, vaguely affronted by the fact this slip of a girl was allowed to order him around, what with his thirty years of loyal service - but he complied nevertheless, turning his back on Tonks to begin herding the now wheezing Muggles up the escalators. Tonks caught his tone but was too exhausted to care either way; she'd just worked a fourteen-hour day, listened to a two hour instalment of the Molly versus Fleur saga - unlubricated, she might add - and she strongly suspected that the tunnel ahead contained little more than a few bits of warped metal and the makings of yet another tedious report. Still, there no reason to let her guard down. With an expression of grim resolve she strode down the platform towards the tunnel's mouth. Bill stumbled after her, catching her elbow as she was about to jump down between the tracks.

"You sure about this?" he asked.

"About what, doing my job?" she asked archly. "Positive." And with that she jumped down into the gap between train and platform. In normal circumstances the gap would have been impossible to fit through, but the derailment had allowed a few inches through which she was able to squeeze into the tunnel itself.

"That's what I mean," Bill continued, climbing down after her. "Investigating under the influence and all that--"

"Says the man who just knocked back nine firewhiskies," she reminded him.

"Yeah, well - urgh!" Bill spluttered as the smoke, thicker in the enclosed space, caught the back of his throat He caught his breath and added, "It smells like a rat's arse down here."

She shot him a scathing glare through the gloom. "Since when did rats fart green smoke?" she asked. "Now, shut-up and follow me. We still don't know what's down here."

"Mutant rats."

"What?!"

"They could fart gre--"

"Shh!" Tonks hissed, exasperated.

She crept forward as noiselessly as possible on the uneven ground, the flicker of lights from the derailed carriage transforming their movements into a creepy stop motion. When they emerged into the wide expanse beyond the last carriage, she noticed with some trepidation that the tunnel curved into total darkness a few metres ahead.

Great.

Pressing her body against the clammy bricks, she felt her way forwards as the darkness shrouded them completely, grateful of Bill's proximity as the noises from the platform were swallowed by the guttural drip and rattle of the Underground. As they moved further even this sound was consumed by a low electrical hum, and the wispy strands around her hairline crackled with static.

She stopped moving suddenly. The wall was hot beneath her fingers, like a rock that had been exposed to the midday sun. Hostility she muttered a lumos and brought the top of her wand to the wall, expecting to find scorch marks.

"What is it?" asked Bill.

"Nothing," replied Tonks, staring at the undamaged bricks in confusion. "Absolutely nothing..."

She glanced around. There was a small heap in the gloom a few metres ahead. As the familiar, copperish scent of blood filled her nostrils, she realised that she was looking at a body on the tracks. She pitched forwards urgently, nearly tripping over the sleepers, and fell to her knees beside the body, putting a hand on its shoulder. The moment her skin made contact she was flung backwards by a powerful jolt of electricity.

She landed with a crack on bare floorboards. Splinters dug into her palms as she struggled to her feet like a drunkard, blood pounding in her ears. She was standing in a long corridor. It had a strangely submarine feel to it, the walls warped and swaying as though she were in the bowels of an antique passenger ship. She took a deep breath and nearly choked on the dust.

Wherever this was, it had clearly been deserted for a long time.

Wallpaper hung in dirty strips behind portraits abandoned by their subjects, somehow more frightening in their emptiness. Candles guttered in blackened lamps, although she saw that their fittings were ornate beneath the years of grime. Everything was steeped in lost grandeur.

There was a door at the end of the corridor. Its polished mahogany stood out in odd contrast to the dingy surroundings, and fixed to the upper panel were two gleaming silver letters.

L.B.

Initials, perhaps? Something stirred in the back of her mind, a long forgotten memory trying to resurface. There was something important behind this door, she thought, something she needed to find.

She lurched forwards with the agonized slowness of dreams, knowing before she reached it that the door would be locked. She tried the handle anyway. It was stuck fast. Spiderish fingers - not her own - traced the letters, mouthing them to herself, as though repetition might dislodge the rogue memory, but the darkness which clouded her mind only thickened. Her other hand moved absently into her pocket, fist closing around something small and hard.

Removing it she was surprised - and intrigued - to find a strange black key resting in the palm of her hand. It appeared to have been cut out of pure jet, or even coal, glittering in the dim light.

She looked at the keyhole beneath the door handle. It must be.

The key slotted into the lock easily enough, but wouldn't budge when she tried to turn it. She sighed in frustration. It was an old house, she told herself - maybe the door was jammed, or perhaps the wood had expanded with damp? So she redoubled her efforts, the sharp handle of the key digging into the palm of her hand as she tried to force it around.

"It won't work like that," came a small voice from behind her.

She spun around with a strangled gasp. A boy was standing at the far end of the corridor. He couldn't have been more than seven or eight years old, with mousy brown hair and bright, mischievous blue eyes.

"Who are you?" she asked.

When he didn't answer she took a step forwards, but the boy recoiled in terror as the candlelight revealed her features.

"Wait, I'm not--" she began, but it was too late. The boy had already taken flight down the corridor.

She tried to run after him but it felt like she was wading through treacle. The pounding in her ears rose to a deafening crescendo, and as she staggered forwards the corridor began dissolving into specks of white light...

"Tonks! Tonks - are you alright?

Someone was shaking her shoulder roughly. Tonks tried to open her eyes, then realised that they were already open. She was in the tunnel again, immersed in the pitch darkness. A lumos was lit and Bill's worried face flickered into view.

"I'm fine," she croaked. "I'm just...."

"What happened?"

She struggled into a sitting position, disorientated, part of her still trying to run down a dusty corridor. She felt like her body was full of pins. "I must have... I must have tripped..."

The body was still lying in a heap a few metres away. She stared at it, trying to make sense of what she had seen. The boy's face seemed to have scorched itself on her mind's eye.

Bill followed her gaze. "Is he dead?" he asked, sobered by the sight of it.

"She..." said Tonks, as a pale, angular face came into focus beneath the girl's jagged fringe. "It's a she..."

Bill knelt down and pressed two fingers gently against the girl's neck. "We need to get her to St Mungo's," he said. "Here, help me levitate her..."

"We can't take her to St Mungo's."

"What?"

"What do you think got her, Bill?" she asked as she scrambled to her feet. "A couple of lethifolds playing with fireworks?"

His eyes scanned the darkness anxiously. The shadows stretching away from their dim lumos were crooked and threatening.

"Death Eaters," he whispered.

"Exactly," said Tonks. "Don't you think Dumbledore ought to know about this before Scrimgeour does?"

Bill was torn. Looking doubtfully at the girl he said, "So what do we do with her?"

Tonks followed her shoulders painfully, as though trying to shake off a lingering fear. Then she took a deep breath and nodded back the way they had come. "Go back to the platform," she said. "Tell them I'm going to walk the tracks to the next station to make sure there's nothing else down here. Tell them ... tell them anything. Just don't tell them about the girl."

"But--"

Tonks didn't walk to the next station. Instead, she hoisted the girl's surprisingly light form into her arms and disparated with a small pop, leaving Bill alone in the darkness.

***

A few moments later Tonks - for whom apparation had never been the most graceful mode of travel - had landed in a heap behind the sofa of her Camden flat. She levitated the girl onto the sofa and stood back, trying to stem the growing feeling of panic in the pit of her stomach.

What the hell was she doing?

Before she could make sense of her actions, the girl stirred and began to make low, croupish noises. Tonks ran into the bathroom but found the cabinet empty except for one dog-eared toothbrush and a half-empty bottle of Opia's Elixir For Dreamless Sleep. Bloody Ailsa! Tonks ran seething into the kitchen and flung open the cupboard doors. Her flatmate was spending the New Year with relatives in Salem, but out of concern for her depressed friend she had removed all sharp knives and potent medications from the flat before departing. Tonks was left with a kitchen full of blunt utensils and strategically placed boxes of uplifting herbal tea.

Ailsa joined Moody on the List of Death.

Luckily a few minutes rooting about behind old baked bean tins and packets of Oxo cubes unearthed a grime-encrusted tincture bottle that had been in the cupboard, from the look of it, since the early Medieval period. She unscrewed the cap for a tentative stiff and sneezed violently, her brain fizzling with the explosively sherbet aroma of a restorative potion that seemed to have greatly intensified with age. Tonks put the cap back on, wiped her streaming nose and blinked the tears from her eyes.

"Should do the trick," she thought.

Someone began to knock frantically at the front door. She pocketed the bottle and hurried to the Muggle intercom. "Who is it?"

"Who do you think?!"

Bill sounded furious. She opened the door with trepidation, expecting a torrent of abuse, but luckily some kind of higher instinct seemed to take over as soon as he caught a glimpse of the girl beyond her shoulder. He pushed past her, crouching next to the sofa where the girl seemed to be having a nightmare.

"You better have a good explanation for bringing her here," he said in a dangerously sober voice. "Merlin, she's filthy. It looks like she's been living down there!"

More unnerved than she cared to admit, Tonks disappeared back into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with a bowl of warm water and a tea towel. She handed them to Bill, who accepted them awkwardly.

"Shouldn't this be your job?" he asked. "I'm crap at this sort of thing."

"Do I look like Florence Nightingale?" Tonks snapped. She clenched her first, still pin-needled from the electric shock.

Knowing better than to argue back, Bill merely raised his eyebrows and began to dab at the girl's face with the dampened tea towel, slowly revealing the features beneath the grime. Shrunk into the squashy cushions she seemed smaller than she had done in the tunnel. Young, too - no more than twelve or thirteen. Her face was strange and gnome-like, pale lips puckered beneath a nose so large it seemed to dwarf the rest of her features. Her skin was sallow and sickly in contrast to the soot black hair that clung to her skill in clumps, as though someone had hacked it haphazardly with a pair of shears. Beneath the oversized coat her limbs were spider-like and malnourished, clad in torn jeans and a thin sweater that reeked of damp and engine oil and the pungent stink of skin that hadn't seen a bath in weeks.

"Now what?" Bill asked.

"Here."

Tonks unscrewed the tincture bottle and wafted it beneath the girl's nostrils. There was a spluttered choke her eyes sprang open, wide and staring. Tonks gasped in spite of herself. Those eyes - pale green and almost luminous - filled her with a horrible sense of déjà vu.

"Sweet Merlin..." she murmured.

The girl was trying to speak but the words came out in a thick croak as though congealing in her throat. Bill held the water to her lips. After the first automatic sip she took a great gulp like a drowning person and fell back, gasping. Her gaze trailed in confusion between her two rescuers, blinking in and out of focus.

"It's okay, we're not going to hurt you," said Bill, in what he hoped was a reassuring tone.

He was interrupted by Tonks, who lurched forwards unexpectedly and grabbed the girls shoulder, shaking them roughly.

"Tell me about the boy! Where is he? When did you..."

She trailed off as the girl's eyes rolled back in their sockets and she slipped once more out of consciousness. Tonks unscrewed the bottle but Bill grabbed her wrist before she could administer it. "What do you think you're doing?!"

"Bill!"

"That stuff could be corrosive--"

"I need to know what she saw!"

His grip on her wrist tightened. "Why don't you tell me?" he demanded.

Before Tonks could protest he had dragged her into the kitchen, where she immediately wrenched free of his grasp. She watched as Bill began to pace back and forth in the narrow space.

"Asking me to lie to the Ministry like that," he muttered. "I never should have listened to you. We should have taken her straight to St Mungo's. We could go both get the sack for this, bringing a Muggle into our home. There'll have to be Obliviators and--"

"She's seen Toby."

Bill stopped pacing and stared at her. Unable to meet his gaze, Tonks looked at the fading patterns on the linoleum, still trying to make sense of what had happened in the tunnels. She could almost hear to cogs whirring in Bill's head.

"Those papers on your desk," Bill said eventually. "You're looking for him again."

She nodded.

"Tonks .... you told me you'd give up on this."

"Well, I didn't."

"So you just told me - the Order - what we wanted to hear?"

"Don't kid yourself," she said bitterly. "You're no more a part of the Order than I am, whatever Dumbledore says. Otherwise we would have been at the meeting tonight instead of holed up in some dingy little pub."

Bill was silent. Seeing that she'd hit a raw nerve, Tonks slipped a glance into the living room, where the girl had fallen into a deep sleep. "They were just some old transcripts. I must have read through them a hundred times. Nothing really. But when I touched the girl ... whoever she is ... when I reached out and touched her in the tunnels it was like being electrocuted. You could feel it, in the air. It was like she gave me a memory. I'm not even sure if that's possible."

"What do you mean?"

"I was in a house ... and I wasn't me. My hands were different. They were her hands. And there was a little boy ... It was him, Bill, I know it was him. She must have seen him somewhere. Please, Bill. I promise I'll tell Dumbledore as soon as I get back to Hogsmeade. Just - just give me tonight."

She met Bill's flinty expression with pleading eyes. After a moment something shifted within his gaze and she saw the tiniest fraction of understanding. "Alright," he conceded. "But if this gets back to the Ministry then just you remember - this had nothing to do with me."

"Bill--"

"Don't." He looked away, as if he didn't know quite what to think. "I have to go now. It's late ... Fleur will be worried."

"Thank you."

He didn't answer. Tonks stood in the kitchen and listened as the front door slammed behind him, leaving her alone with the girl and her impossible memories, if that was what she had seen. The silence was stifling. After a moment she crept back into the living room, taking an old photograph down from the mantlepiece; it was picture of herself as a child, her arm slung around the shoulders of a mousy haired boy. Toby. She put the picture back in its place with a sad smile and came to stand over the girl. A sharp frown was etched between her dark brows, and at that moment Tonks would have given anything to be back inside her head.

She settled down into the armchair next to the sofa. It was going to be a long night.