‘He can’t be serious.’ Tonks’ eyes widened, an immature giggle bubbling up in her throat. ‘Dumbledore can’t honestly expect us to…’
She trailed off, unable to drag her gaze from the bed.
The single bed.
The single bed she was supposed to be sharing with Remus for an entire year.
Not that it would be horrible, a smug voice reminded her, and her stomach dropped, as if she had skipped a step on the stairs. She swatted away the voice harshly. This wouldn’t be any easier if Remus had to deal with her pining after him like a lost puppy. She was done with him. So what if they had to sleep in the same bed? It wasn’t like that implied anything in her mind… it meant absolutely nothing, nothing whatsoever. But why couldn’t she get herself to believe that?
‘Divido.’ A flash of light erupted from Remus’s wand, and Tonks jumped; she hadn’t heard him approach the doorway in which she leaned. The bed split evenly in two and both halves slid apart, the sheets adjusting themselves accordingly.
Oh. Well. Tonks mentally slapped herself for not thinking of magically dividing the bed.
‘I guess this one can be yours,’ Tonks said lamely, gesturing at the one closest to the door as Remus aimed his wand at the wardrobe, smoothly parting it in two. ‘I s’pose they don’t get a lot of professors who teach as couples.’
Two seconds too late, her brain processed the words her mouth was blindly spewing. She shook her head hastily. ‘Not that – I mean – we’re definitely not a couple – but they probably don’t –‘
Remus was ignoring her. Tonks bit her lip, one foot hovering in the air, unsure of what to do. This is going to be a long year.
‘I’ll just go… check out the spellbooks. Start planning lessons and whatnot…’ She waved her hand vaguely in the air as she trailed off. Remus still didn’t look up. She darted around the corner and slammed the door shut. She stood there, back pressed up against the door and breath leaving her as fast as a runner. Her heartbeat drummed out an impossible beat as she closed her eyes.
Get a grip, Tonks, she told herself – specifically, her throbbing heart – firmly. He’s not going to like you any better if you keep stumbling over your words like a Jarvey.
Tonks took a deep breath, attempting to compose herself, before starting down the hallway. Her statement to Remus, intended solely to get her out of the awkwardly silent room, actually didn’t seem like half bad idea, and she headed towards the small study where she thought she had seen a pile of spellbooks.
Sure enough, a mound of literature as tall as she was awaited her. Balancing precociously at the very top was a slip of parchment. Tonks raised herself up onto her tiptoes and snatched for it; it was a time table, enchanted so the current day (Monday, apparently) glowed a bright blue. Tomorrow, Tuesday and their first day of classes, began with a lovely Double period of seventh years: Gryffindors and – Tonks groaned out loud – Slytherins. The phrases ‘The Standard Book of Spells, grade 7,’ ‘A Compendium of Common Curses and Their Counter-Actions,’ and ‘The Dark Arts Outsmarted’ were all listed below the class heading in parentheses: the textbooks assigned for the course. Tonks scanned down the pile of spines and, typical to her luck, found the required books at the very bottom. She groaned again. Slowly and painstakingly, she started moving the books on top to one of the two cushioned armchairs besides her.
It took her several minutes to reach the spellbooks she sought. Victorious, she dropped down unceremoniously into the vacant chair with The Standard Book of Spells, grade 7 and started to read.
The time comes, now that one has progressed into the darkened world of advanced sorcery, where one must declare their intentions for the immense expansion of knowledge which lurks, just ahead, down the path of learning. Amongst the many thoughts one might broach at this concept are two basic ideologies: that of the commonplace pupil, who learns simply because he is told and holds nothing he has learned deep in his respect, and that of the true scholar, who learns for the sake of mental enlightenment. It seems, indeed, that only the scholar will excel when faced with challenging and complicated spellwork, whereas the run-of-the-mill student will...
Run-of-the-mill... if only Tonks’ life was that easy... all of this bloody time-travel confusion was absolutely exhausting... maybe she’d be back at home, snuggled under a blanket and watching the Muggle telly with her dad while sipping hot chocolate from her favourite blue chipped mug...
It seems, indeed, that only the scholar will...
The scholar... that was Remus, of course... Merlin, was there anything the man didn’t know? How far you’ve fallen for him, an annoying little voice in her head told her... but that was history now...
It seems, indeed, that only the scholar will excel when faced with challenging and complicated spellwork...
Challenging and complicated spellwork... like the Killing Curse. Even Dumbledore was powerless against it... powerless against his most trusted ally... Snape... was Snape here, too? He was Remus’s age, she knew; they had been at Hogwarts together... but, then again, so had Peter Pettigrew. Funny, wasn’t it, how much people changed?
It seems, indeed, that only the scholar will excel when faced with challenging and complicated spellwork, whereas...
Whereas the run-of-the-mill...
Whereas the....
Whereas...
Whereas...
‘Nymphadora! Nymphadora! Nymph –‘
Tonks’ eyes snapped open and her hand flew to her wand. ‘What’s happened? Where’s Voldemort?’
‘It’s alright, nothing’s wrong, it’s just me, Remus.’
Tonks yawned and rubbed her eyes blearily, digging out the goo buried in the crevices. Absentmindedly, she reached up to trail her fingers through her hair, only to have her hand find unfamiliar tresses. Right. New locks. Time-travel.
‘Sorry,’ she apologized tiredly. ‘I must’ve... just... dozed off for a second or something...’
‘Better students than you have been put to sleep by Miranda Goshawk’s ramblings,’ Remus answered with a hint of amusement... or, at least that’s what she thought it was; his new beard, which appeared to have grown even in the time she had been asleep, made it even more difficult than usual for her to decipher his expressions. His eyes scanned her body, alighting on her undoubtedly tousled hair and her wrinkled and tearstained Auror robes. ‘You might want to get ready... our first class meets in an hour and a half.’
Tonks gasped. ‘Oh, hell, Remus, the lesson plans! I have nothing! Oh, hell, oh, hell, oh, hell, oh, hell...’
She leapt out of the chair as quickly as her sleep-infused limbs would allow and scrambled to pick up the various spellbooks she had been attempting to peruse, but they were nowhere to be found. She started sifting through the enormous pile, sizing up each to make sure she hadn’t misplaced them.
‘Nymphadora...’
‘What?’ Tonks whipped around, and Remus pressed all three seventh-year tomes into her arms.
‘I’ve got it,’ he said gently, pulling a scroll of parchment out from the pocket of his robes. ‘The seventh years are going to duel in partners... nothing too dangerous, just enough that we can see where their strengths and weaknesses lie... we have a free period after that, before the fourth years – Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs – come in... we’ll discuss what they know about curses... and our final class is first years. A basic introduction to the Dark Arts will work. And, the House Elves appear to have left a stack of toast in the kitchen.’
Tonks sighed, looking up at him with grateful eyes. ‘Remus, you’re a lifesaver. Tomorrow’s on me, I swear...’
She headed into the bedroom; true to Dumbledore’s word, a stack of black professors’ robes were tucked neatly into the wardrobe on her half of the room. She slipped a pair over her head, discarding her old robes in a messy pile on the floor. She could easily deal with them later – or not, as it typically played out in her small flat.
Once she was acceptably ‘freshened up,’ Tonks snagged a piece of toast from the kitchen counter. She gulped it down quickly and went back into the study to wait for Remus.
She sprung up as soon as he entered the room. ‘Are you ready?’
Remus chuckled quietly, almost to himself. ‘Am I ready to teach my seventeen-year-old self and two of the best friends I ever had, knowing both of them will be dead before the age of forty? Am I ready to be in a room with the man who killed them? Am I ready to meet the boy who destroyed the only teacher I knew who ever fully trusted me?’ He smiled sadly. ‘Will I ever be?’
Tonks, having no idea how to react to the first emotional confession he had made to her in months, was silent. She opened and closed her mouth several times, unable to think of anything even remotely profound or comforting to say.
‘Sorry... that was a bit melodramatic, wasn’t it?’ He grinned apologetically at her. ‘It’s just all so... muddled inside my head. It’s hard to grasp...’
He shook his head and ran his fingers through his thick mop of black hair. He glanced at the watch on his wrist; it was Sirius’s, Tonks realized with a shock, given to Remus as a birthday present the year before his death. It was battered, and the leather was scratched and torn in several places, but it still shone proudly in the candlelight. Tonks wondered if he had taken it off for even a moment since Sirius had died.
‘We should probably start heading down to the room... class starts in half an hour...’ Remus said, tearing Tonks from her nostalgia. He moved for the door, and Tonks followed him.
The Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom was located conveniently close to the staff quarters. It took them less than a minute of weaving through halls and passageways to reach it.
The room was empty, aside from the typical teacher’s desk and the thirty-some school desks and chairs, and blank, devoid of the unique character Tonks associated with her DADA teachers. Indeed, the professors for Tonks’ fifth, sixth, and seventh years had seen fit to spell the room to be a constantly-moving and perpetually dizzying array of colours (‘Because Dark Wizardry can be extremely distracting,’ Professor Babcock had said), a memorial of the first war listing names of the dead (‘Because only the past can truly prepare us for the future,’ Professor Alaran had stated solemnly) and an animated mural of Celestina Warbeck (‘Because what softens the Dark Arts up like a highly attractive witch?’ Professor Manwick had proclaimed).
‘You’re right,’ Tonks spoke up, after several moments of silence. She dragged her hand along the wooden desks thoughtfully.
Remus’s head snapped up from where he had been perusing his lesson plans. ‘What?’
‘You’re right. About it being hard to grasp, all of this time-travel.’ She stopped before a desk in the back left corner of the room. ‘I charmed my name onto this desk every year I was at Hogwarts... they fixed it each summer, of course, but in my seventh year I learned how to make it permanent. I even checked on it when Scrimgeour told the Aurors to patrol Hogwarts last year – still there. And now... it’s like I was never even here.’
‘Well, you weren’t,’ Remus replied truthfully. ‘Not yet, at least.’
‘That’s exactly what frightens me,’ Tonks admitted, rubbing her hand over the desk’s smooth surface. ‘I don’t even –‘
Tonks cut herself off as a student, a girl clad in Slytherin robes, entered the classroom. Her dark eyes scowled at the two of them before she took a seat in the back. Tonks swept back to the front of the room, coming to stand over the desk with Remus as more teenagers entered. When, finally, the final bell rang out, there were roughly fifteen students talking loudly amongst themselves in the room. In the second-to-last row, positioned right smack in the middle, were the four boys they had encountered in the hallway.
Tonks held in a gasp. Now that she knew who they were, it was impossible to not see the resemblances. Remus was obviously Remus; that much she had seen from the start, and James was the spitting image of Harry, sans his scar and green eyes. Sirius was slightly trickier to place. He had an air of almost-casual haughtiness and superiority that Tonks had never seen on his face; he had been older the last time she saw her, more exhausted. Because he thought he killed them.
Unconsciously, her eyes flickered to the boy next to Remus. She had never met Peter Pettigrew, and had only seen his picture once, in a faded photograph of the old Order that Mad-Eye had showed her, but this was undoubtedly him. His watery eyes were fixated over his rat-like nose in awe at James, who was prattling on about something Tonks couldn’t hear. Tonks wondered if he was a Death Eater yet.
‘Good morning.’
Tonks’ eyes jumped to Remus as his voice rang, confident and strong, over the chattering students, who silenced themselves abruptly. There was a rustle as a dozen pairs of hands reached into their respective schoolbags and started to pull out a pile of spellbooks.
‘You won’t need those today, I’m afraid,’ Remus said, stopping their movement instantly and causing every single pair of eyes to land dutifully on him.
‘Who’re you?’ the boy with black hair and an elitist expression asked, rather belligerently. Sirius, Tonks reminded herself.
‘Professor?’ Sirius added, as an afterthought.
‘I’m Professor Alphard, and this is Professor Woolf,’ Tonks leapt in, feeling rather useless as Remus had instantly commandeered all of the attention. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw James elbow Remus and snicker. ‘We’ll be the Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers for this year.’
‘Couples teaching?’ a red-haired girl in the front row asked, not impolitely, wrinkling her nose sceptically.
‘We’re not a couple,’ Tonks answered automatically, as Remus said hastily, ‘We’re not together.’
Tonks flushed as whispers and raised eyebrows ran throughout the room; James and Sirius locked eyes with each other and smirked. Remus-the-boy’s hand flew up, and Tonks pointed to him hastily, willing to accept any and all distractions.
‘Yes, Mr. Lupin?’
Tonks realised her mistake as soon as the words left her mouth. The teenager, on the other hand, didn’t seem remotely surprised that she already knew his name; after all, Tonks reasoned to herself, all of his previous teachers had probably been warned by Dumbledore in advance of the Hogwarts werewolf.
‘You said that you’ll be the Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers this year... why just a year?’
Of course Remus would catch that... only five minutes into class and already someone had found a flaw in their cover. His intelligent amber eyes blinked up at them, waiting for an answer.
‘Personal reasons,’ elder-Remus answered smoothly.
‘Any more questions?’ Remus added. The class glanced around at each other mutely, shaking their heads and returning their gaze to the professors; respectfully, in the case of the Gryffindors, and rather impertinently, in the case of the Slytherins. ‘Then we’ll begin. If you would, divide yourself into pairs...’
There was a brief period of shuffling and rustling robes as they broke into partners, and, as she observed the distinct proverbial line drawn between the Slytherin and Gryffindor sides of the room, Tonks was glad Remus had let them choose their pairs rather than assigning them in hopes of spawning Inter-House unity. A full-fledged Light-versus-Dark battle was definitely not something Tonks wanted to host.
‘Wands out, please, but don’t do anything just yet,’ Remus called out. Sixteen wands snapped out in near perfect unison. The Slytherins obeyed a bit slower and more hesitantly, but obeyed nevertheless; they obviously hadn’t had too many practical DADA lessons. Remus swished his wand; the desks whooshed smoothly to both sides of the room, leaving a large open area in the middle. He leaned in to Tonks, who tried to ignore the fact that her heart was beating a thousand times a minute at his proximity. ‘Would you care to introduce the exercise? Duelling is your area of expertise, isn’t it?’
‘I – well, I – s’pose...’ she shrugged in attempt at nonchalance. He thought she had expertise. That had to be worth something on the relationship scale, didn’t it? She cleared her throat.
‘Expelliarmus. Protego. Petrificus Totalus. Incarcerous. Charms you could probably cast in your sleep, right? I bet there are even first years who know them.’
‘Even Hufflepuff first years?’ Sirius asked in disbelief.
‘Even Hufflepuff first years.’ Tonks grinned at them, encouraging them to laugh, and a few of them did. ‘But when you actually use them, actually have to apply what you know... it’s not that easy. Because when the only thing between you and your body lying on the ground is your wand, every single thing you’ve learned flies right out the window.’
The easygoing smiles had slid off of the faces of the room. In Tonks’ mind, a reel was playing, a film strip of chaos; she was at the Ministry of Magic, flinging every spell that came to mind around the room in a frenzy of light and panic. Dodge a Killing Curse here, shoot up a Shield Charm there, and, a split second later, whip around to throw another curse at Bellatrix Lestrange. Remus was right behind her, covering her back as he engaged in a sort of twisted magical tango with a Death Eater whose face she couldn’t see.
‘You can’t remember how to block... you can’t remember how to hex... hell, you can’t even remember your own name...’ Her own voice sounded far away, as distant as the images that continued to assault her mind. She was reckless now, jabbing her wand into any opening she could find, which were getting rarer and rarer as her efforts continued to have no effect on Bellatrix whatsoever.
‘... because if you stop to think for a second, a moment, a heartbeat, you’re dead. You’re dead before you even hit the floor....’
There was an explosion from behind her. Remus, her mind had thought wildly, and before she could consciously stop herself she had turned to look back at him. A loud bang! resounded emphatically, and she was thrown back. Her head collided forcibly with the stone steps, and a rush of blood obscured her vision as she sank into unconsciousness.
‘... and, unlike in class, where the only person impacted by your abilities is yourself, you’re not the only one that can get hurt by an instant’s distraction, a breath’s hesitation...’
Remus was sitting by her bed in Saint Mungo’s, his face as pale and white as the sheets that covered her. She could barely hear his voice over the roaring in her ears. Disjointed words reached her through the fog... Sirius... Bellatrix... veil... gone...
A hand settled on her back, soft and soothing. Tonks blinked herself back to the present, sucking in air forcefully; she was shivering, as feverish and as shaky as if she had just vomited.
‘And that’s why today’s lesson will focus on duelling,’ Remus finished for her, his bass voice drawing attention from her own quivering soprano one. ‘The partners you’ve chosen are your opponents. As we are still in school, there are, naturally, a few guidelines: first, all illegal curses are still illegal.’
There were several chuckles at this, and more than a few dark mutters from the Slytherin half.
‘Secondly, you are forbidden from casting any spells that inflict harm or pain. And, thirdly, you cannot interact with anyone outside of your pair. As the consequences of these, or, at least, the first two, are more dangerous those of other school rules, anyone who refuses to comply will be sent to the Headmaster’s office immediately.’
Silence fell, every single pair of eyes focused intensely on Remus.
‘As setting everyone against each other at once would be a highly chaotic and uncontrollable idea, we’re going to have you duel one at a time. At the end, your peers will give you constructive feedback – an idea of where your strengths and weaknesses lie,’ Remus informed them. They nodded dutifully, eager expressions dotting the faces of the majority of the class. ‘Is there anyone willing to volunteer to go first?’
Hands shot into the air, including all four Gryffindor boys and a collection of Slytherins who looked exceedingly familiar... if only she could place them...
‘Yes, Misters...?’ she trailed off questioningly, pointing at the two Slytherin boys whose countenances tugged most at her memory.
‘Marcus Wilkes,’ the taller of the two, Wilkes, replied, his voice silky smooth, ‘and Evan Rosier.’
Tonks barely held in a gasp.
Wilkes and Rosier.
She could see their faces clearly now, aged by only a few years and sneering up at her from the cover of the Daily Prophet. She was only seven years old when her father had come home with the paper, beaming and heartily kissing his wife for the first time in years. The bolded heading, which Tonks could see perfectly in her mind, proudly proclaimed, Two Down, Hundreds to Go: Death Eaters Wilkes and Rosier Killed by Aurors.
They were Death Eaters. And they would be dead within twenty-four months.
‘Right. Wilkes and Rosier.’ Her voice wavered more than she liked, squeaking on the ends of the words like a field mouse. ‘Step into the centre, please... everyone else, give them room.’
A wave of bodies parted, their owners lounging on desks and sitting down on the floor in childlike anticipation. They are still children, after all, Tonks thought. Eighteen years, though enough to qualify for adulthood in both the magical and Muggle worlds, was hardly enough to have gained any sort of aged wisdom whatsoever.
Only children.
Lying, crying, dying children.