21: Decisions
Tonks only managed to catch a half-glimpse of the medium-sized, bench-lined chamber into which they had all just been ushered before she was utterly engulfed by a mass of greying red hair and the breath-stealing embrace of a powerful pair of arms.
“Oh, Tonks! Oh, my dear, I can’t believe it’s you! And you’re standing here and you’re alive and you don’t look a day older than I remember you! It’s amazing, it’s wonderful, oh, and I can’t believe it…”
Smiling to herself, Tonks reached out and wrapped her arms around the familiar, plump, knitwear-covered form that was clinging to her, returning the embrace with enthusiasm.
“Hi Molly,” she replied fondly. “It’s good to you see you too!”
Molly’s reply, muffled against Tonks’ robes, was half laugh and half sob. Pressing her cheek against the side of her motherly friend’s head, Tonks caught a glimpse over her shoulder of Arthur and Bill taking it in turns to grasp and pump Remus’ hand, of Kingsley standing and shaking his head with a slight smile as he watched, of Harry and Andromeda standing side by side and looking, by turns, both slightly amused and deeply worried and of Teddy…
Teddy.
Tonks stiffened. Her son had just slumped down on one of the cushioned benches in the far corner of the room, his head clasped in shaking hands, his whole body shivering uncontrollably. Victoire, her face filled with concern, had dropped down next to him and was in the process of taking him awkwardly into her arms.
Oh, Teddy…
Gently, apologetically, Tonks extricated herself from Molly’s embrace, and her single glance in her son’s direction answered the question in the older woman’s eyes. As Molly stepped back with an understanding smile, Tonks caught Remus’ eye and, as her husband followed her gaze, he too made quick excuses and moved after her across the room.
Teddy did not look up at his parents, approach, lost within his own palms as Victoire frowned and rubbed comforting circles across his shoulders, meeting the eyes of her boyfriend’s mother with concern. Tonks did not hesitate as she stepped forward and laid her own hand on Teddy’s shoulder. She felt him stiffen and tense.
“Teddy?” she said softly. “Teddy, what’s wrong?”
There was a long moment of silence as Teddy’s fingers clenched reflexively against his hairline. And then slowly, shakily, he raised his head.
His face was wet with tears. But his eyes…
His eyes were furious.
“What’s wrong?” The despairing venom with which her son expelled those two words startled Tonks. “What’s bloody wrong? What do you think is wrong?”
“Teddy…” Remus’ quiet voice was calm water against a maelstrom and was quickly tossed aside as his son’s almost painfully intense stare wheeled round upon him.
“And you!” Shrugging aside Victoire and his mother in one swift motion, Teddy shot to his feet, his eyes burrowing into his father’s face like fiery embers. “How could you do that? Why did you do that? You didn’t have to do that, you didn’t have to barge in and ruin everything! It would just have been Azkaban, just months or a couple of years at the most, and no one would ever have known about you if you’d just sat still and stayed quiet! You would have been safe and fine and happy and had a future and now you’ve blown it all! You saw the looks on their faces! The Wizengamot don’t get it! They don’t understand the theory, they don’t understand that they can just let you go on and everything will be fine! They’ll want to try and send you back; I know they will, because they don’t understand that you don’t need to die! They don’t understand that sending you back isn’t necessary, it’s murder! And if you’d have just stayed quiet…”
Although Remus was fighting to keep his face impassive, Tonks could see the guilt, the regret and the sorrow straining at the edges of his features, and in the depths of her mind, a part of her was screaming good, was still screaming you idiot and look what you’ve done. But at the same time, she knew full well that Remus “ that she “ could never truly have lived the hidden life that staying silent would have entailed, and that in spite of her rage at his acting so emphatically without her, of his being a noble prat yet again, a secret corner of her heart had been relieved to have it all out in the open. In spite of her talents in that area, Nymphadora Tonks was not a woman built to hide. The last year “ or the last year before the Portal, at any rate - had taught her that. It led to overwhelming frustration, to foolish impulses and running off to battle…
“I couldn’t.” Remus’ soft words broke into her musing. “Teddy, I couldn’t just stay quiet, you must know that. Sproule was trying to set you up and I couldn’t let that happen…”
“Why not?” Anger was giving way to weary despair on Teddy’s face. “I did the crime, dad. I broke the first rule of the Portal for purely selfish reasons. I put Penny into a coma. I deserve to be punished. But you don’t.”
Remus closed his eyes. “Teddy…”
Fresh tears were trickling down Teddy’s face as he slumped abruptly back into his seat and Victoire’s quietly waiting arms. “You didn’t need to do it,” he repeated softly. “All you’ve done is make things worse.”
“He’s right, you know.”
Tonks saw Remus wince visibly at the dark tone in Harry’s voice. The saviour of the wizarding world was staring at his former teacher with a cold mixture of disappointment, frustration and resignation.
“You promised me.” Harry’s eyes glittered like grim emeralds. “You promised me when I took your wife upstairs that you weren’t going to barrel in there and do exactly what you did. That was the only reason I let you out of my sight, Remus. And what the hell did you drink, because it certainly wasn’t the Polyjuice…”
Tonks sighed, her mind darting back to Harry’s office, staring at photos of Ginny as she tried to match the vivid tone of Harry’s wife’s hair just right. She remembered the way her stomach had plunged and how she’d lurched to her feet when Harry had told her of the conversation that he’d just had with Remus, and the promise he’d had him make, because she knew Remus, knew him all too well, and knew that if he’d set his mind upon something, he’d find a way around that oath somehow…
“I promised I wouldn’t do anything stupid.” Remus’ face was apologetic but underwritten with steel. “And it wasn’t stupid, I was trying to protect my son…”
And there’s the get out clause…. She’d known there would be one. Remus would never have broken a promise made in good faith outright, but he’d bend the edges as far as they’d go, if he had a way to justify it to himself.
Harry’s sigh was immense. “Of course not. Magnificent. Like father, like son, I see.”
The stubborn set of Remus’ shoulders was all too familiar. “I’m sorry, truly sorry, I deceived you, Harry. But even now, whatever the outcome, I honestly believe this was the right thing to do…”
Harry’s snort cut away the rest of the sentence. “The right thing? Remus, if your son wasn’t facing a prison sentence, he certainly is now. Hermione, Ron, Ginny and I are all going to have to explain why we didn’t mention the small fact of your return sooner, though I’m hoping for at least one vaguely understanding ear…” He glanced at Kingsley, who had settled on a bench on the other side of the room and acknowledged Harry’s statement with an upturned eyebrow. “And as for you “ you must have known Tonks would never sit back and let you martyr yourself again…”
“Damn right.” Tonks fixed her husband with a pointed glare, from which he had the good grace to wince. “Did you really think after everything we’d been through that I would let you get away with that?”
Harry nodded to her, his eyes suddenly, inexplicably sorrowful. “Exactly. And so, whatever your intentions, in stepping forwards you revealed both yourself and your wife to the Wizengamot. And now….” He sighed suddenly. “And now, Merlin knows what they’ll decide to do. Teddy’s right, Remus. All you’ve done is make things worse.”
There was a long moment of silence. Tonks found her eyes drifting around the room, to Harry’s grim, sad eyes, to the bizarre mixture of confusion and understanding on the faces of Molly, Arthur and Bill, to her mother’s frightened face, to Teddy, resting his head against Victoire’s shoulder in weary misery, to Remus’ half steely, half-stricken face.
And finally, she looked to Kingsley, sitting there in his plum-coloured robes, a strange amalgam of the comforting presence of her old friend and colleague and the imposing sternness of the Minister for Magic. She could almost see the torn edges of his thoughts fluttering behind his eyes, so glad to see his friends alive, yet keeping his distance against the pain of possibly losing them again so soon; half joy and half sorrow, half the glory of rediscovery, half the shadow of potential loss. She could tell he was itching to rush back into the chamber, to hurl himself into the debate, to plead their case, but she knew also that he would never do that - for she knew that was not his way, from his own admissions of how he came to join the Order, back in the days when his first doubts about Sirius’ conviction were starting to surface. Kingsley Shacklebolt had always known when to speak out and when to keep his own counsel and wait. And Tonks knew, as he must know, that the Wizengamot had to be seen to reach their decision fairly. If it went in their favour and he was involved, the likes of Rita Skeeter would slip the words bias and favouritism into their by-lines and the reputation for fairness and honesty Teddy had told them Kingsley had garnered would be tarnished for good.
Even if it meant the lives of two long lost friends.
Tonks fought not to shiver. She hadn’t thought, not really, about the true impact of her actions when she’d barrelled down into the courtroom and abandoned her disguise in the name of giving her stupid git of a husband what for. She hadn’t properly considered it, for she’d been too angry with him to waste time in bracing herself for the possible consequences of her actions. Oh, she’d spoken the words, meant the words, but it was now, as the adrenalin seeped away, as her thoughts sharpened and focussed in this chamber full of her nearest and dearest, that she began to realise just what it would mean if the Wizengamot ruled they had to return to the past.
They would die.
And Teddy would lose them again. And this time, he’d feel it truly.
Remus’ words in the courtroom stabbed at her heart. She had chosen her husband and the fight ahead over her son for the second time. She had never, ever intended to, hadn’t even thought about it, so furious was she when she’d seen what Remus had done. But would Teddy see it like that? No wonder he was angry with them.
Because he’d risked his future to save their lives only to face losing them both again.
There was no getting around it. She’d listened to the proclamations of Teddy’s friends from the Time Division, had quietly absorbed Remus and Hermione’s temporal debates as they’d worked around the case. And from her understanding, the past was the past. Stepping into the past would only create the outcome already known, changed from what it could have been but not from what history said it was. And history said they were dead.
Who was to say for sure it really was a pair of fake corpses Harry had seen in the Great Hall that day? Who was to say those graves that Teddy had visited really didn’t contain their real bones? Who could say for sure that this trip into the future was anything more than an interlude, delaying the truth of their inevitable fate?
Death. They’d tricked their way out of it once. But who was to say that face she’d seen bathed in green light for that brief second before Teddy had pulled them away hadn’t been her future self? Or what if they tried to send them back into the Portal and couldn’t? What if they ended up dead on the floor of the Portal chamber, or lost forever, torn to pieces, body and soul, by that horrible crimson light?
She didn’t want to die. Who could honestly say they did? And yes, the last few weeks had been painful and confusing at times, but it was a hell of a lot better than oblivion. But what was worse, so much worse, was how helpless she felt. Tonks was an Auror, a warrior, a woman of action; she couldn’t stand the thought of her fate not being held in her own hands. Her actions, her decisions, were what defined her and yes, there were times when her actions and decisions were downright bloody stupid, but at least they were her mistakes to make. But standing here now, waiting for a bunch of plum-robed wizards and witches to decide whether or not she should die, and knowing that there was nothing, absolutely nothing she could do about it…
To be willing to give your life in battle was one thing. To be told you have to go and give it at an appointed place and time was another.
Never had Tonks had so much respect for Harry.
“Do you think they’ll send them back?” It was Andromeda’s voice that broke the lingering silence, her gaze fixed upon Kingsley. “Do you think they’ll be able to do that? To send two innocent people back into the past to die there?”
“They can’t.” Molly’s voice was rife with disbelieving horror. “That would be murder, plain and simple. You can’t just send two young people to their deaths for no reason at all…”
“They can if they decide they’re dead already.” Kingsley pulled himself slowly to his feet, his expression suddenly very tired, and for the first time Tonks saw a glimpse of the weight of twenty additional years upon her friend. “Or that they have to die in order to preserve the past. History says that Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin died in that battle. The Wizengamot could decide that since that’s what history says, that’s what history has to get. If I’ve understood all this quagmire of temporal theory correctly, time travel can only make things the way they are. The Wizengamot may see this as proof that they’re only fulfilling history as it should be…”
“But I made sure!” Teddy’s voice burst out from the corner. “I left fake corpses behind! They don’t have to die for history to be correct!”
Kingsley nodded in slow thoughtfulness. “I think I see that now. But what I see doesn’t matter anymore. It’s for the Wizengamot to decide.”
“I’m sure there’s been no damage.” Harry’s eyes had drifted over to Remus but there was a whisper of the faraway in his emerald gaze. “I had an…encounter back at the Battle of Hogwarts that pretty much proves it.” He swallowed hard. “And I’ll go before the Wizengamot and tell them so, if they’ll let me. But history can manage itself perfectly well if Remus and Tonks stay here. I’m certain of it.”
“I… I’m sorry to interrupt but…” There was something strange in Molly’s face too, an odd mixture of confusion, concern and the tiniest hint of an almost painful hope, as she uncomfortably adjusted her cardigan and fingered her handbag almost convulsively. “It’s just… I think I’ve got this right… Teddy used some kind of time Portal in the Department of Mysteries and pulled Remus and Tonks from the past. And this didn’t change history because he left fake corpses behind?”
The hope was growing, spreading, a glimmering light within her eyes, and Tonks felt a cold, sharp plunge in her chest as her mind darted back to a too-familiar name engraved upon a golden fountain in the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic…
Oh Molly, no, please don’t…
Arthur too had clearly seen which way the conversation was turning “ his jaw clenched, and he moved over to his wife and rested a gentle hand against her shoulder.
“Molly…” he said softly. “Molly, don’t…”
But Molly did not turn and made no acknowledgement of her husband’s gesture, ploughing on with a momentum that bordered upon desperation, her hands shaking, her breaths short and shallow, her voice wavering.
“It’s just…I thought…If it worked once…And I know it’s wrong to ask, I do, but I have to…he was my son…My Fred…And if there’s any chance…”
The long, low, despairing groan was Teddy’s “ Tonks saw her son slump even lower in his seat, his face buried in his hands once more. Kingsley’s expression hardened grimly as Remus half-started towards Molly, compassion shining in his eyes. But Arthur was closer, his arms reaching out as his wife’s eyes glistened with tears.
“Molly…” He whispered again.
“I’m sorry…oh, I’m so sorry!” Molly’s head was shaking as she allowed herself to be pulled into his embrace, burrowing into his shoulder as she clasped his robes reflexively. “I shouldn’t…I’m sorry!”
“Molly, it’s all right.” Remus voice was soft. “He was your son. No one can blame you for hoping.”
Bill had joined his father now, patting his mother softly on the back, his scarred face full of old, familiar sorrow. “We all miss him,” he added quietly. “But Mum, Percy told us he was staring him in the face when he died. He saw it happen. That can’t have been a replacement… Trying to pull him out now wouldn’t work…”
Molly’s tears redoubled into sobs as her husband and son carefully guided her over to a nearby corner to sit, settling on either side of her as they offered their support. But for the sound of her crying, the room was silent once more.
“And there’s the other problem.” It’s was Kingsley’s slow, deep voice that broken the moment of quiet. “Dennis Creevey and now Molly have just demonstrated the additional danger here; what happens when word of this miracle goes public? What will people say when they find out two people twenty years dead have been brought back via the Ministry’s time Portal?” He sighed deeply. “We’ll be swamped with relatives demanding the same favour for their loved ones “ bring back my husband, my wife, my mother, my son… And when we tell them no, they’ll demand, just as Dennis did, to know why one person is allowed this gift, when all others are denied. If even someone like Molly feels compelled to ask, where will it end? And when you consider that there are still some few out there who might think Voldemort or Grindelwald had the right idea…”
“The Wizengamot won’t want this made public.” Remus’ voice was level, but his eyes were grim. “They won’t want us made public.”
Tonks could feel the cold in her chest welling up once more as she spoke. “So even though we’ve come forward, we’ll still have to hide. And even then, if someone finds us…”
“The truth will still come out.” Remus was at her side now, his fingers threading carefully through hers and squeezing with a gentle reassurance that utterly failed to dispel the fear in Tonks’ heart. “And even if the Wizengamot do accept that history does not need our deaths, it might still make an excellent excuse to nip any outcry in the bud. Send us back, destroy the Portal, and that’s the end of any risk it could happen again…”
“That’s barbaric!” To Tonks’ slight surprise, the indignant exclamation belonged to Victoire. “They can’t just kill Mr and Mrs Lupin to keep this quiet!”
“It’s been done before.” Andromeda’s voice was cold. “My research into Wizarding and Muggle families has shown that every so often, a person can prove inconvenient. I can think of two or three in the Black line alone…”
“And then there were the likes of Dolores Umbridge.” Remus’ tone was fraught with ice as he nodded in Harry’s direction. “I’m willing to bet she wouldn’t have shed too many tears if the Dementors she sent to provoke Harry had silenced him for good.”
“But that’s not now!” Victoire’s face was furious. “They couldn’t… they wouldn’t!”
“They might.” Bill met his daughter’s gaze from the far side of the room, silencing her angry splutterings. “But we can only hope they’re better than that.”
“Matilda is.” Kingsley was staring blankly at the ceiling. “And a good number of the others. But I couldn’t vouch for everyone in that room feeling the same.”
“So, whatever happens, we’re screwed.” The words slipped out almost before Tonks was aware of them. “We go back and die or we hide away for the rest of our lives. Nothing’s changed from this morning but the power to make that choice ourselves.”
She felt Remus’ fingers stiffen in her grasp, saw the guilt in his eyes as he glanced towards her. But the half-expected anger she had felt before did not emerge again “ instead she simply tightened her hold upon his hand once more and leaned silently into his shoulder.
Well, whatever they decide, she pondered silently, talking a moment to breathe in his so-familiar scent, to press against the bony outline of his shoulder beneath his robes and feel his fingers clasped in hers. At least we’ll be together.
There seemed little more to discuss. And so they waited. Waited for the summons back, waited for the news, waited for something, anything as they talked quietly amongst themselves about everything and nothing. Painful minutes turned into agonising hours.
And then came the knock at the door.
Everyone froze. The icy tendrils that had snaked around Tonks’ heart tightened harshly as Harry squared his shoulders and marched over to the door, pulling it open to reveal the man that Kingsley had introduced as the Court Scribe, what felt like decades ago.
“Terry,” Harry greeted softly. “What’s up?”
Terry gave a wan smile, his eyes drifting absently, oh Gods, guiltily in Remus’ direction. He took a shallow breath.
“Madam Breakspear sent me to fetch you,” he said awkwardly. “Harry… Professor Lupin… It’s time for the verdict. The Wizengamot is ready to vote.”