23: A Night in a Cage
The cell was cold and cramped, a cube of four stone walls punctured only twice, once by a high, barred window that offered a scattering of starry sky that mocked his incarceration and once by a hefty iron bound door that sealed away the world. A lone, battered plank was all the furniture on offer. If it had not been for the now reverted drape that had doubled for a cloak in The Howling, he would not even have had a blanket. Werewolves, it seemed, did not deserve luxuries.
But at least he was alone.
He needed to be alone. He needed to think.
How had it happened? How had he come to this?
Just a week ago, he had known that his only feral incident had been a brief moment of drunken madness, driven by the intensive grief for the loss of the friends that had been his life. Now he found himself having barely avoided a third.
Was it true, the Ministry’s assertion that one feral incident made a werewolf more vulnerable to others? He had never really believed it, until now.
Or perhaps it was simply the sheer weight and volume of intense emotion that seemed to play havoc with his life. He certainly seemed to have seen more than his share of it.
He had been moments away from turning, in that instant of ignition in the club. Kane’s goading, the thought of his mother… Remus shied sharply away from the perilous territory that such thoughts represented. He had given the wolf an inch and barely managed to prevent the yard. And that had been exactly what Kane had wanted.
His father had expressed concern that Kane might still want to turn him feral and Kane’s actions, both in Hogsmeade and The Howling appeared to back him up. But why? Did he really miss the thrill of a partner in crime? Or was it simply the glorious and vengeful irony of turning another grandson of Rafe Lupin into the very thing that he had despised the most?
But whatever his motivations, Remus could not avoid the worrying truth of the matter. Kane had nearly succeeded.
Would he have been able to pull the wolf back a second “ a third “ time if matters had gone that far? He had managed it before, horrified realisation overcoming grief and alcohol in the stunning instant when he had struck out at Alastor Moody in 1981. But just how many times could he venture into such murky waters? Was his lifeline, his sanity, strong enough to take the strain?
Until that evening he would have said yes without hesitation. His self-control had always been a trait he had valued highly and been proud of. But that had been before he had been so easily manipulated into anger.
The words spoken by Tonks in the Hospital Wing “ had it really only been a week since then? “ haunted his mind alarmingly. But he must have thought you were viable, or he wouldn’t have risked it. Do you think You-Know-Who suggested it? Wants you on his side, maybe? A feral with the memories of a senior Order of the Phoenix member would be pretty valuable to him.
A frightening thought indeed. For if he were in danger of being turned, what would that mean for his friends? For Harry? For the Order itself? The number of people his potential insanity and defection could endanger was staggering. His feral self would not care for his friends “ indeed, the mind of a wolf combined with the inherent vindictiveness of the human mind would most likely mean that he would target them specifically. And with friends such as his, such a vendetta would endanger the entire Wizarding world.
And the Order… If his feral self were to be persuaded onto Voldemort’s side, as Kane had nominally been, the damage he could do to the Order of the Phoenix through his knowledge was too appalling to contemplate. He had no desire to seem arrogant or self-important, but with the inside secrets he could provide, the Order would be doomed. His weakness could lose them the war. He could destroy the very world by it.
But what could he do, aside from retreat to a mountain top monastery and never be seen again? Or possibly shoot himself?
Remus gazed up through the barred window at the scattering of stars beyond. Amazing. He had never realised just how much a prison cell could take brooding to new levels. No wonder poor Sirius had been so guilt-stricken after his escape. He’d honed his brooding skills for a full twelve years in Azkaban.
With a sigh, Remus laid back slowly along the uncomfortable plank bed, pulling the ragged drape across his body for warmth. If he could brood this much in just one night, he wouldn’t have lasted a week in Azkaban. Thank God for Tonks.
It was time to sleep. Brooding did no good to anyone. His mother had always said that.
Mum.
No. Sleep now. No more brooding. Enough.
Sleep.
Staring at the stars and trying not to think was a difficult way to pass the long hours until sunrise. But Remus somehow managed it.
* * *
“Well? Where is he?”
A echoing shout and the pounding of footsteps outside his cell wrenched Remus forcefully from his lack of sleep. Tearing his eyes way from the gradually lightening sky outside the bars, he pulled himself upright, creaking with leather and weariness as he cast aside his makeshift blanket and rose uncertainly to his feet as keys rattled in the lock of his cell. He ducked his head self-consciously in the growing light as the cell door flung open to expose a figure in Auror robes and…
Good Grief.
Felisha Hathaway?
But no. The eyes were not brown but impossibly violet, the hair far frizzier and wilder than Felisha would ever have allowed and the face not quite right, almost as though…
As though someone aged her after they copied her from a picture.
Remus gritted his teeth. If Sirius Black had still been alive, he would have taken great pleasure in killing him. What had he been telling people?
The Auror who had escorted the fake Felisha was grinning. That was ominous.
“Your wife’s posted bail, Mr Moony,” he said with a smirk. “I’ll leave you in her capable hands.”
“Thank you,” The apparent Mrs Moony nodded graciously to the Auror before abruptly turning on her so-called husband with an infuriated scowl. “As for you, you stupid layabout! Do you have any idea how much I had to stump up to get them to free you? Do you? And all the money you’ve been spending in that place, on those ridiculous clothes! Oh! Ever since that bite, you’ve been impossible, it’s time to grow up and stop experimenting like a teenager! Here!”
Remus found himself forcefully smothered as a vast and voluminous travelling cloak that he recognised at once as belonging to Alastor Moody smacked him across the face.
“Put that on and cover yourself up at once! I don’t want the neighbours seeing the state of you!”
Obscenely tired, slightly bemused but nevertheless obedient, Remus pulled on the cloak. It all but engulfed him, but anything that hid his face whilst crossing the bright reception of the Ministry Detention Area’s reception was no bad thing. Which was why he suspected the estimable Mrs Moony had brought it.
With a sigh, he emerged blinking into the brighter corridor. Much as he’d expected, he found himself seized sharply by the arm as his fake wife dragged him along the corridor, berating him loudly all the while.
“All the times I’ve looked after you, all the effort I go to, to make you happy! Well don’t think you’ll be sleeping in the bedroom for the next six months, let me tell you! The sofa is made up and count yourself lucky it isn’t the roof!”
The broader reception area opened out “ Remus remembered it well from the hours he had spent filling out forms and untangling red tape in order to free his father the previous Christmas; there had been a wearisome and protracted debate as to whether or not a werewolf qualified as next of kin. Now it was full of disgruntled looking werewolves filing past, signing for their possessions and occasionally their wands as those lucky enough to have a person in their life who could afford and were willing to pay the extortionate bail were freed from custody. Staring at the queue, Remus thanked his stars he had given his wand to Tonks before he was searched.
But werewolves and Aurors alike were sharing a smirk at the predicament of this apparently unfortunate husband and his extremely vocal wife. Lowering his head self-consciously, Remus grimaced and prayed that his heavy hood was as concealing as it felt.
“Drinking yourself into a stupor, probably flirting or worse with some werewolf floozy! After all I’ve done for you! Do I complain when you shed on the rug? No! When you ate the neighbour’s cat, did I say a word? I even offered to help with the housetraining! But oh, no, you have to go out and make a fool of yourself anyway, don’t you? You always know best! Well not this time! This time things are going to change!”
With an emphatic thump, the doors were hurled open. Snickering echoed from behind as Remus felt himself dragged into the gathering light of the alley between a pub and a boarded-up office into which they had emerged from a battered old door, painted with peeling red paint and daubed in white with a skull and crossbones. A moment later, a small scruffy street with a dirty skip and a battered old-fashioned red telephone box opened out before them. They were outside the visitors entrance to the Ministry of Magic.
The haranguing flood of words ceased abruptly as Mrs Moony checked carefully left and right. And then, finally certain that no one was watching, the fake Felisha’s features melted away into a cap of tight blue curls and a heart shaped face, adorned with an enormous grin.
Remus regarded Tonks with eyebrow raised. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
The grin spread. “Very much.”
Side by side, the two Order colleagues began to move towards the sullen, boarded, more deserted end of the street that faded against the dawn light as though dying before it. They could not afford to apparate back to Grimmauld Place in view of potential witnesses.
“I knew it.” Remus stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket as he eyed the grinning Tonks from beneath the shadow of his hood. “That kind of performance can only be achieved by pleasure. But why on earth did you make such a scene? I thought the whole point was to keep me inconspicuous.”
“And I did,” Tonks informed him brightly “ Remus couldn’t help but feel that she was far too cheerful for someone who had just come off a trying night shift. “Because now whenever someone says Romulus Moony, everyone at Auror HQ will think of his barking wife. They won’t even remember you. And if they don’t remember you, they won’t even consider associating you with a unmarried Hogwarts professor and upstanding member of the community, now will they?”
Remus stared at her for a moment with a mixture of incredulity and respect. “I stand by assertion of sick and deranged. I may even raise you to evil genius.”
Tonks laughed at that, a cackling mockery of a screen villain’s delight that made Remus laugh in turn.
“All right, barking Mrs Moony I understand,” he admitted. “But why on earth did you decide to come and collect me looking like a knocked off version of Felisha Hathaway?”
Tonks chuckled wickedly. “Because Sirius showed me a picture of her at Easter when we were helping him sort through his things. And he told Bill Weasley and me about the time in your sixth year when he tricked her into the Prefect’s Bathroom whilst you were having a bath and locked the door on you both. Left you alone there all night, he said.” Her eyes twinkled. “He also informed me with some glee that whenever he asked you about it afterwards, you always blushed and refused to say a word and that you’d never meet her eye in the corridor without going either scarlet or white. He said it was hysterical watching the pair of you on Prefect patrol. So I guess I just wanted to see what would happen if she came to “ ahem - pick you up.”
In spite of his absolute determination not to do so, Remus realised he was blushing again. At Tonks’ infectious burst of laughter, he smiled through his embarrassment and swatted her irritably on the shoulder.
“Sirius was a git,” he informed her. “Both for telling you and for doing that to me in the first place. And don’t you think I’ve been punished enough?”
The sudden apprehension that swept over Tonks’ previously merry face pulled him up short. He fought a sudden chill.
What does she know?
“Tonks?” he said warily.
The young Auror sighed. “I had to tell them, Remus. I’m really sorry but I didn’t have a choice.”
Remus lowered his head. “Moody and Dumbledore.”
Tonks nodded. “They’re waiting for you at Grimmauld Place. I’m under orders to see you there then bugger off so you can face the music. Sorry.”
Remus shook his head “ he had been expecting some kind of reception and he certainly wasn’t going to blame Tonks for doing the right thing. “It’s not your fault. If I hadn’t been such a prat, neither of us would have been caught up in this mess.”
She smiled awkwardly. “Well, I can’t expect you to go in unarmed. Here.”
Reaching into her cloak, she extended her hand and offered him back his wand. With a tenuous smile of relief, Remus accepted it and slipped it securely into his pocket.
Tonks glanced around. “Well it seems pretty quiet. Ready to apparate?”
Remus nodded quietly. “Three, two one…”
A moment later, Grimmauld Place opened out before him, grim and shrouded in the first creeping light of dawn. The ominous dark, serpent headed doorknocker of Number Twelve glistened with spiders webs and dew.
He turned to Tonks. She smiled wanly.
“All the best, mate,” she said softly. “I’ll see you soon.”
And then with a resounding crack, Remus was alone.
With a long sigh, he ascended the steps and tapped the door with his wand. Ominously, it creaked open.
And there, waiting, silhouetted in the hallway by the glow of light gleaming up from the distant basement kitchen, Remus met the furious and disappointed stares of Alastor Moody and Albus Dumbledore.
This was not going to be pretty.
A/N: Regarding the mysterious Felisha and the Bathroom Incident…. The cameo appearance by Tonks as a “knocked off version of Felisha Hathaway” is a small tribute on my part to a fic that I am now certain I will never write. The story of Remus and Felisha was an idea I had back in the days when I hadn’t read much fanfiction, and therefore was unaware that the RemusOC Marauder-to-present fic was a genre that had been done, redone, repeated, hashed out, beaten to death and then had its limbs ripped off to be hammered over the head with the soggy ends until nothing remained but a small stain on the carpet that was then quietly teased and moulded in order to be stamped on some more. In other words, it’s been done. Don’t get me wrong, I am very fond of many of those stories but there are so many and I hate the thought of repeating someone else’s work when I strive to at least try and be original in my writing and my plot; hence I decided to relegate that tale to my mind and my mind alone and write Oblivious instead. That I can’t write romance to save my life without making it either dreadful or cheesy was also a contributing factor in its demise, but I have preserved one small event from that tale to be repeated here second hand as a kind of nod to it. Hence, the aforementioned reference to the Bathroom Incident. :)