41: Buried Deep
Golden eyes met golden eyes. The air between the two werewolves seemed to burn.
Neither moved.
Carefully, almost absently, Remus assessed his situation. Dolph was not Kane. That much was blatantly clear “ he lacked the rangy muscularity that had characterised the older werewolf’s full moon form, not to mention the absence of killer gleam behind those golden eyes. But there was more to consider here. Kane had been a feral “ a human intellect driven by a werewolf’s vicious instincts and desires. But Dolph; yes, he was a Death Eater, yes, he was dangerous, but he was also a werewolf on Wolfsbane, a man in wolf’s clothing, as inexperienced and uncertain in command of his lupine form as Remus used to be. Probably more so in fact; almost since he had been bitten, Dolph had lived here at the Institute passing his full moons doped up and restricted by the bars of those cramped cages. To humans, he would have proved a difficulty.
But to Remus?
As a Death Eater, he was clearly a threat. But as a fellow werewolf…
He had no wand here. He had no weapon he was experienced in using. He had no support. He had nothing but a body he barely knew how to control.
What he did have was bravado. And for that Remus saluted him.
But Peter was getting away. It was time to call Dolph’s bluff.
And since the simple approaches tended to be the best, Remus drew back his muzzle, snarled through his teeth and charged straight at him.
Run away, run away, just bloody run away…
But Dolph didn’t move. Remus could almost smell the indecision that surged through him, the war that briefly raged within as his enemy closed him down. Intense hatred battled in his eyes with confusion, fear and a strong urge not to get ripped to shreds by a werewolf that he had no guarantee was controlled by a human mind. For a single, foolish instant, it seemed to Remus that he was bracing for a fight.
Five yards, four yards, three yards…
Just run!
He snapped his teeth. His claws scratched against the floor. And then, deep in his throat and breathing heavily, Remus managed a chilling howl.
A werewolf’s howl. The most primal of primal sounds. No human who heard could ever dismiss the shadows of the night with ease.
Especially at close range.
For what many people tended to forget was that inside every werewolf was a person who had been bitten by a werewolf. A werewolf was the stuff of its own worst trauma-riddled memories, buried deep but never, ever forgotten.
And Dolph, it seemed, was remembering heavily. Turning tail like a frightened puppy, the other werewolf scrambled backwards and hurled himself clumsily up the stairs.
For a moment, Remus almost hesitated, his own indecision tearing at his mind.
Peter went down, Peter went down, Peter the traitor, the killer, the liar, went down…
But Dolph went up. And he can’t bite you again…
It can’t be long until moonset. I just have to keep him busy, to trap him maybe…
He glanced back briefly, saw Tonks rushing forward with her face intense, the borrowed sabre in one hand and her wand in the other, saw Harry’s furious eyes as he grasped Croll’s ebony wand between his fingers and charged towards the stairs. Determination and anger flowed from them in waves.
Peter’s fate was in good hands.
But Dolph could still be a danger to them. Unless…
And so, with only a moment’s pause, Remus turned and bolted in pursuit of Dolph’s desperately gyrating tail.
Harry and Tonks will deal with Wormtail. Now let’s see what I can do with you…
* * *
“Move, move, move!”
Tonks had to hand it to Remus. Who else would have guessed that Dolph was so lacking in werewolf-ish spine?
But now was not the time for gloating. Now was the time to play rat-catcher.
Pied Piper of bloody Hamlin, that’s me. Rats fleeing before me and children trailing behind…
Her eyes jerked briefly as Remus, after the briefest of pauses, bolted up the stairs after Dolph. For an instant, a part of her longed to call him back, to tell him not to play the hero, not to be so Merlin-cursed stupid and race off alone. But the solid, practical part of her that had got her through Auror training was telling her quite emphatically that not only was Remus the best of all of them to take on a werewolf Death Eater, he was also more than able to look after himself.
Trust him. Just trust him.
And don’t let him down either. Stop the bloody rat!
Run, move, quick!
Stairs loomed ominously before her. Stairs at speed were not something that Tonks relished, since they had an unpleasant habit of leading to lost footing and long and bruising tumbles to the ground floor. But nevertheless, she plunged forward, the cold hilt of the sabre biting against one hand, the smooth wood of her wand gripped in the other as she scrambled downwards in pursuit of the jiggling little worm-like tail that bounced and flicked perhaps ten or twenty steps in front of her, Harry’s wand still clamped between its jaws. Behind her, over the cacophony of the still blaring alarm, she could hear the rapid footsteps and harsh breathing of Harry, Ron and Hermione as they followed her pursuit of the pattering little feet of the Order’s greatest traitor down step after step after step.
Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, don’t trip, don’t trip, don’t trip, don’t trip…
She had to stop this soon. She wouldn’t be able to keep her footing much longer…
Gritting her teeth in determination, Tonks flashed her wand in the direction of the fleeing rat and his burden.
“Accio waaaaaannooooo…!”
Her treacherous left heel scuffed the step and slipped away. Her right foot took the chance to follow.
Pain ricocheted through her arm as she slammed against the wall with bruising force, right ankle turning painfully as gravity robbed her of her balance and hurled her around and inevitably downwards. Her left hip impacted the steps in a flare of pain, the sabre flying from her grasp to vanish over the banister but at least it freed her left hand to slam down against the step below and save her from worse damage on the rebound. Her elbow twisted with an agonising jolt as she topped and rolled once more, smacking with a jarring thud against the landing just below. The wall halted her tumble with vicious finality.
For a moment, she could do nothing but lie motionless, winded and gasping for breath, slowly but distinctly registering the swelling throb of her arm, the roar of her hip and the scream of her elbow. The blaring siren that continued to ring out all around was nothing to the noise of her bones.
That. Bloody. Hurt.
And then came the footsteps, faces rushing over as they stared down at her, filled with horror and shock.
“Tonks!”
“Is she…should we…?”
She tried to speak, tried to command them onwards, downwards, but her voice was no more than a winded gasp, her gestures no more than jerking. Don’t wait for me! Go on, go!
And then blessedly, wonderfully, Hermione’s voice snapped across Ron and Harry’s indecision. “You go on! I’ll see to her! You have to stop Wormtail!”
The mention of that hated name was enough for Harry. With a clatter, he wheeled and rushed away down the stairs once more. A moment later, Ron was dashing in pursuit.
Hermione’s bushy haired face filled Tonks’ rather blurry vision. Her lips were already muttering spells.
Abruptly, the pain faded to a dull as air found its way back into Tonks’ lungs once more. Instantly, she dragged herself to her knees, wincing as her still sore hip gave a mighty throb.
“I’m sorry!” Hermione’s hands caught her shoulders, helping her quickly upright. “I only know the basic healing spells…”
“I know more. Lots of experience.” A few waves of her wand, some well placed episkeys and a few bruise soothing charms magicked away the worst of the pain almost instantly. “Now let’s go!”
Hermione’s steadying hand rested against Tonks’ arm for the rest of the descent. She chose not protest.
There was no need to wonder which way to go when they burst out of the fortuitously unsealed grill at the foot of the stairs, presumably opened by virtue of Croll’s wand. Harry’s shouts and the whiz of spell-fire were telling enough.
“Accio wand!” It was Ron’s voice that rang out but Harry who shouted in triumph “ as Hermione and Tonks bolted round the corner side by side, they found themselves confronted by Ron, his wand outstretched in a threatening manner and Harry, his own wand now grasped in his hand once more, advancing on the man who betrayed his parents with grim death in his green eyes.
So that’s Pettigrew?
For a moment, Tonks could only stare, stare curiously, angrily, disgustedly at the sorry form of the man who had caused so much sorrow to Remus, Sirius and Harry of course, through a betrayal of friendship for servitude. Remus’ old school friend was backed up against the wall next to a door that glowed with the soft, electric blue glow of a wand seal. He was himself once more, his wasted features sagging, his colourless hair, what was left of it, dishevelled and messy, his pointed, rodent like nose twitching almost frantically. His small watery eyes were filled with a maelstrom of emotions so conflicting as to be utterly unreadable. The hand in which he extended his wand before him gleamed a solid silver in the dull light of the globes.
“N…now Harry…Let’s be reasonable…” Pettigrew’s stuttering voice was pitched several octaves higher than was apparently natural “ Tonks couldn’t help but note that it wasn’t actually all that different to Cymone’s.
“Reasonable?” Harry’s retort snapped like a gunshot. “Reasonable? Is it reasonable to lock up all those werewolves and then Kiss away their souls? Is it reasonable to chuck one of your ex-best friends in with them? Is it reasonable to create a werewolf army so as your freak of a master can kill thousands of innocent people? Is that being reasonable?”
Pettigrew’s chin was quivering. “Harry….I didn’t mean…it wasn’t my idea…Please I…”
“SHUT UP!” Harry’s wand hand was shaking furiously now, his eyes burning like a forest in flames. “Just shut up! Stop whining, you pathetic, lying…” He gulped sharply, fighting for breath. “When I think of all you’ve done, I…” He glared furiously as random sparks crackled around his wand’s tip. “Sirius lost his freedom because of you! My parents lost their lives! I lost my family! Professor Lupin lost his friends! Did you ever even care about any of them? Have you ever cared about anything but saving your own sorry skin?”
An expression of anguish, brief, rapid but strangely sincere flickered sharply across Pettigrew’s features. “I cared,” he whispered softly, emptily, almost to himself. “But they…”
“Were what, in the way?” Harry’s intrusion slashed away whatever words Pettigrew might have intended to speak. “On the wrong side? Not worrying enough about you?”
Pettigrew’s lips snapped shut. He swallowed hard.
Harry was slowly shaking his head. “You know what?” he said, his voice soft but edged with dagger blades that seemed to cut the air to ribbons as they passed. “I was going to take you in alive. But they’ll only send you to Azkaban and without the Dementors, Azkaban is nothing. And nothing is far too good for you.”
Harry’s grip on his wand tightened. His eyes gleamed.
Pettigrew shrank back, his face filled with terror. Tonks felt her eyes widen. Oh Merlin!
“Harry, no!” she screamed wildly.
But it was too late.
“Reducto!”
There was a deafening boom as light flared through the corridor; Pettigrew vanished, though not in the hail of chunks that Tonks had half expected “ instead, she caught a glimpse of the hem of his robes as he dived frantically to the floor. Harry’s hurried spell instead smacked against the wall “ the wall that Harry himself had reinforced against any kind of destructive spell only a few hours before in order to hold in the Death Eaters.
The spell bounced.
Oh, not good!
“Shit!”
It was pure instinct. Fastening her hands around the back of Hermione’s robes, Tonks dropped like a stone, dragging the young woman with her as the flare from Harry’s ricocheted spell catapulted past their heads like an arrow.
And then the wall behind them exploded.
“Protego!” If there was one thing that Tonks couldn’t fault, it was Hermione’s sense of timing. A curtain of bricks and masonry engulfed them, rebounding and bouncing less than an inch from their skin against the invisible wall of the young woman’s rapid Shield Charm. Grey dust surged through the air, choking, cloying as it dragged the world into a haze of fog that consumed every inch of breathable air around them. Stones and fragments rained down all around, pitting the floor with cracks and hollows as the force of their impact dispersed, piling one atop the other as the entire wall, not to mention a good portion of the ceiling above settled into a new home on the ground.
And not just on the ground.
Slowly, the dust settled. The masonry lay still.
Tonks opened her eyes. Hermione’s wide eyes stared back.
And then she looked up.
Rubble. Nothing but dusty chunks of rubble slowly settling across their bodies as Hermione’s spell flickered away into nothing. They were quite definitely trapped.
Oh that’s just great.
Tonks sighed, deep, weary and resigned. “Is it me,” she said quietly, “or has Harry just buried us alive?”
Hermione gave a shaky smile. “It’s not you.” Her wand arm, pressed against Tonks’ shoulder, shifted slightly. “Should I…”
“No magic!” Tonks’ interruption was slightly sharper than she had intended. “Not yet. It might still be unstable. We have to be careful to...”
Somewhere overhead rocks tumbled sharply, cutting away the rest of her words. Someone coughed violently.
“Tonks? Hermione? Hermione?”
“Ron?” Hermione’s voice was shrill. “Ron, over here!”
“Where?” This time it was Harry’s voice that answered. “Where are you?”
“Follow the sound of my voice swearing loudly!” It had to be said that being buried alive was not something that was inclined to leave Tonks in the best of moods. “Harry, what the bloody hell did you think you were…”
“All right, I’m sorry!” The genuine contrite chagrin in the young man’s tone was enough to simmer the Auror down slightly. “I didn’t mean… I was just so angry!”
“Anger’s good. Controlled anger is better.” Overhead, Tonks could hear the clink of moving stones as chinks of light began to wind their way down to the entombed pair. “Did you bury Pettigrew as well?”
The chagrin in Harry’s voice turned slightly sick. “No. He got away. Went rat and scarpered before half the ceiling came down.”
Tonks fought down a hot surge of disappointment. “I’m surprised you didn’t chase him.”
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.” A chunk of masonry the size of a doorstop was lifted away to reveal the dust streaked face and half-shattered glasses of the young man in question. He sighed deeply. “Not yet anyway. The corridor’s blocked with rubble, Tonks, and the rest of ceiling doesn’t look that safe. I would have used magic but after what just happened…” He pulled a face. “I’m really sorry. But until we can break through that debris, we’re trapped in here.”
Tonks stared at him. Trapped. Pettigrew’s on the loose. Moonset is coming. Remus is on his own with Dolph the Death Eater. And where’s the cavalry? Buried under half a building about to dig for freedom.
“Well,” she said with deceptive quietness, coughing slightly as the disturbed dust rose once more. “Isn’t that just fan-bloody-tastic?”