Tonks,

Remus

Tonks turned the note over, wondering if there was something else on the back of it, if he'd charmed it somehow to hide an actual message, but there was nothing but the terse response, so unlike him.

And addressed to her by her surname.

Errol pecked at a stale biscuit, and looked up at her expectantly. She pulled a clean piece of parchment out from under the avalanche of files on her desk, started to write "Dear Remus" then changed her mind and wrote, "Dear Molly." The message consisted of three words: "What is happening?"

She sent this off to the Burrow, watching Errol until he disappeared in the southern sky, then sat back down with her files, switching from the local Dementor attacks to the information Maddie had been able to get about the gates to the Fortescue files to a long list of dealers Mundungus Fletcher might use. Robards had provided this last while she was in London, and had opted not to ask her any questions about it. She'd also obtained a copy of Fortescue's book about water sprites and how they might silently figure in magical history, and it was open at the edge of her desk. It was the way Sirius had read and studied--she'd seen him at it last year--but she couldn't seem to derive the manic energy from it that he did. By the time the sun was setting, she'd nearly convinced herself that Mundungus was going to sell Fortescue's maps to a water sprite to help her build a gate for Dementors who were after Remus.

Annoyed, she raised her wand and Banished all of the files to shelves, and headed downstairs for something to eat. Aberforth's food itself wasn't half as bad as she'd anticipated, though she always took a moment to make sure nothing was alive on the plate before she ate. She took a seat at the bar and ordered soup, a beef sandwich, and a pint of mulled mead. She was just tucking in when someone sat down beside her.

"Ah. Nymphadora."

She looked up. "Oh. Professor Dumbledore! I didn't know you were here...! Oh, I suppose I should. I'm keeping track of you coming and going, aren't I? I knew you were gone, but I hadn't heard that you'd come back--"

He raised his wounded hand and smiled gently as Aberforth brought him a glass of mead. "I've just returned, Nymphadora. You haven't missed my arrival."

"I'm sorry. I... oh, I got a very odd note from Remus, and..." She stopped. Dumbledore's face had gone still and mask-like. She put her hand to her mouth. "What is it? What's happened? Is he all right?"

Dumbledore waved his hand wearily, and Tonks guessed that he'd wandlessly cast a distraction spell. "Physically, he is well. He's had a very bad experience, and will need all the patience you can spare for him."

"A bad... what?"

"It is not for me to share with you. I think he will tell you, eventually, but it is for him alone to decide on the time and place. Will you be patient, Nymphadora?"

"I'm always patient with Remus," she said. "I've always been patient with him."

"Yes. Yes, I suppose you have."

"But he's all right? I mean, he's not hurt? He's... what's wrong? I mean, if you can't tell me what's happened, can you at least tell me what's wrong?"

"To the best of my ability to ascertain, Greyback has chosen to try and undermine various beliefs and habits that Remus has picked up in human society, and he did so in an effective manner this time. Remus is badly shaken." He frowned at his injured hand on the bar. "I seem to choose which information to share rather badly. I thought you should know, if he's writing mysterious notes. But I can tell you nothing that would ease your mind, and the full truth belongs to Remus. I can tell you nothing more, and it may have been better to tell you nothing at all."

A muscle twitched beside his eye, and Tonks noticed that he looked ancient and tired. She put her hand on his shoulder. "No, you were right. I would have gone off and demanded answers if I hadn't known anything. I did demand one from Molly."

"Molly is aware of precisely as much as I've told you."

Tonks nodded, forcing away all the questions she had, forcing herself not to cry for answers he wouldn't give. She found herself unable to speak at all, and she took a few spoons full of soup, though she wasn't hungry for it.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his good hand move, then she felt a tug at the hair beside her face. "I rather miss the pink," he said. "I am sorry for all this has done to your life."

"I miss the pink, too," Tonks said. "And purple and blue and green. It's a bit dreary to be stuck with this. I thought about getting a dying potion. But then I'd be stuck with something else. Or I could do an appearance charm, but they fade if they're anything extreme." She shrugged and did not ask what kinds of habits and beliefs Greyback was trying to excise from Remus, or how badly he was "shaken." "As casualties go, my grooming regimen is hardly a serious loss. And you know what Mad-Eye would say--don't you be sorry. That all lands on the person who's doing all of it. Though he'd say it more colorfully."

Dumbledore smiled. "Thank you, Nymphadora. And I'm quite sure you're right about Alastor's advice. I nevertheless wish things were different."

"I'll drink to that idea." She raised her glass, and he raised his in return. "I asked Robards for a list of places Mundungus might try selling," she said. "I hope you don't mind."

"It sounds like a wise course of action. I must ask you again to trust your judgment. I do."

"Have you still got someone on him in London, with Kingsley as busy as he's been?"

"Kingsley is still keeping a watch on him, and Alastor has been helping. If you have information to share with them about London contacts, please do so."

"Right. I'll send him a list tonight. I should have asked before."

"You seem to have any number of concerns to attend to." Dumbledore took a swallow of his drink. "How are you? I know you're quite worried about Remus, and I've asked you to keep track of several matters, and you have your job."

"I'm fine. A bit scattered, but I'm all right. I just need to focus. If I could take eight classes at school, I can handle six assignments now, right?"

"An interesting perspective."

"I just feel like I'm not getting enough of a handle on anything. I start one thing and move on and it's not done." She sighed. "It's a bit frustrating. But I guess you understand that, working for the Order and dealing with the Ministry and running the school--does it ever all start seeming like parts of the same life?"

"Eventually." He finished his drink. "I spoke to Kingsley earlier. He said you'd been to headquarters."

"I needed to speak to Phineas, and it's easier to get there than into your office." She bit her lip. "It's a bit of a mess there, isn't it?"

"Kingsley said you were upset."

"No, no. Not really. Surprised. It wasn't... you know, it wasn't what I remembered it as. I shouldn't complain. Sirius hated the bloody place. He'd probably be glad to see it in complete disarray. It's not like it was ever home for him. He'd probably be helping Dung sell things if he were still alive."

"I've left instructions that the house is to be better cared for."

"Thank you. Er, well. It's not mine to thank you for that. It's Harry's, and I'm sure he doesn't care all that much about housekeeping. I don't know anyone of sixteen who cares all that much--"

"It is neither an office nor a store house."

"--and of course, no one is living there." Tonks stopped. "I really miss Sirius."

"We all do."

"Is that while they're shoving the furniture around and piling up his house with boxes?" She winced. "I'm sorry. Uncalled for. And Sirius would just hate it if I started treating that place like it was him somehow. I can't think of anything he'd hate more."

"Quite true. But we have what we have, Nymphadora. And I will make sure that someone sees to the state of the house."

"Thank you."

Dumbledore tried to pay Aberforth, who waved it off, then wished Tonks good night and left. She finished her dinner, and when she got back upstairs she was able to make at least a modicum of sense of Dung's contact list. Tomorrow, after her shift, she would start to put tracers on few of them.

She went to sleep and dreamed of Remus, alone and literally shaken, falling apart, his eyes collapsing back into his head and his hair falling out in graying clumps. She tried to touch him to hold him together, but he ran from her, and when she caught him at last, the touch of her hand shattered his limbs and he fell away screaming.

She woke long before dawn and wept until it was time to start the day's work.

Three days after Dumbledore's return, Tonks finished up her shift (two Dementor attacks in Perth, a disappearance from the countryside around Hogsmeade--no disturbance and possibly just a single man on an unannounced holiday--and a stash of dark objects in an unoccupied shack) and Apparated to Maddie and Daffy's home for dinner. Sanjiv had beat her there by a few minutes and was already monopolizing the baby, crawling in circles around him and making funny faces that little Francis goggled at.

Daffy was in the kitchen, running among several oversized cooking cauldrons and covered with splatters of sauce. He gave Tonks a one-armed hug.

"Can I help in here?"

Daffy assumed an exaggerated protective pose in front of the fire, pointing a wooden spoon at her like a wand. "Away from my cooking, Tonks!"

"Oh, thanks a lot."

He smiled and kissed her cheek. "Maddie wanted me to send you right into the study. I guess she's got something going in there. But you can't go by here without tasting." He dipped the spoon into a creamy white sauce and held it out to her.

She tasted it. "Daffy," she said, "if I'd known you could cook like this, I'd have never broken up with you."

"You're a foolish girl," he said agreeably. "I turned out to be quite easy to domesticate. Your loss."

"I shall mourn it every day. Where is the study?"

He blinked. "You don't visit us enough. It's upstairs, right next to the baby's room."

Tonks ruffed Sanjiv's hair on the way up, which caused him to imitate a dog, much to Francis's amusement. They were both laughing when a door at the far end of the upstairs corridor popped open and Maddie leaned out. "Oh, Tonks. Good," she said. "I think I've got something."

Tonks went into the room, which was less like a study than any room she'd ever been in. There was no desk, and what books that were present were all open and on the floor. Rolls of parchment were draped haphazardly over cheap furniture and tacked clumsily to the wall. A plastic box tacked up beside the door held an assortment of chewed-on quills, and a child's play-table held several open bottles of ink. It looked very much like Maddie's corner of their dormitory had looked for seven years.

Maddie was straightening out one of the longer bits of parchment already, gesturing at it with her wand to make various passages glow. "The first thing I had to do," she said, "was find out how the charm worked. It had to be a remarkably stable charm to keep the gates open--something that makes Portkeys look like playthings, really--and it had to interact with magical creatures without interacting with magical humans. It's impossibly complex, really. Oh, hello, by the way."

"Hello."

"Right. So I looked into it. It went into a few divisions--Universe, of course, for the spatial displacement, and Identity for the narrowing down of it all. There was even some involvement from Time, though I haven't been able to track down what they contributed. Perhaps just making intelligent guesses as to the best places to put them, where they'd be most needed." She frowned abruptly. "You look tired, Tonks. Are you up to this?"

"I'm fine. I'm not tired."

Her fine eyebrows drew inward and she pursed her lips. "You're not fine and you're not sleeping. I'm not going on with this until you tell me the truth."

Tonks shrugged. "I'm not sleeping much. End of story. What did you find out? Do you know who did the charms? Who built them?"

"Why aren't you sleeping?"

"Nightmares. Is the person still alive? I suppose that would be too much to hope for."

"Mmm." Maddie bit her lip. "Are you really all right to go on with this? Would you rather talk?"

"I'd much rather do this."

"All right." Maddie tapped the parchment and it flew up to her. "The witch who initially built the gates was an Unspeakable called Kate Prewett. She lived to be quite old, but she's gone now. I don't think we need her--I finally tracked down her notes. They'd got buried in the Beauty division, of all places." She rolled her eyes. "The escape gates--the ones that creatures could use to get into the havens--were all initially built to keep Dark Creatures out, but there was an argument about their right to reach safety as well, some bloody thing about a lethifold's right to exist, and it ended up that a few of them were opened. It was a bit of a nasty spell that did it. The usual dark business--blood and oaths and I think a bit of bone. That was pulled up from a graveyard, I should say, and buried underneath the gates. They had to get special permission from the Wizengamot to do dark spells. Phineas Nigellus refused to allow it for any gates that led to the Forbidden Forest."

"Good for Phineas."

"Yes, quite." Maddie took a deep breath. "Your friend in the Forbidden Forest... she was certain a new gate was being built?"

"Yes."

"How queer. The old gates could still be opened, and I don't have the idea that people building one to let Dementors into Hogwarts would scruple at a dark spell or two."

Tonks closed her eyes and rubbed at her forehead. "I don't have the faintest idea," she said. "I don't understand why they do any of the things they do. I mean, I understand what they think they're trying to accomplish, but the tactics are mad."

"Maybe there's another charm. They're powerful magic. It may be something that repels dark creatures. Maybe it's just easier for them to build fresh. Maybe they want it in an area Dementors already go." Maddie sighed. "It's the best I could do, Tonks. I couldn't find all the answers."

"What? Oh, no, Maddie, this is fantastic. It's a lot more than I had before I came." Tonks smiled. "I'm sorry. I should be more enthusiastic. You were right. I am tired. But this is good information. If you could find the spell they used to open them, I can be on the lookout. And do you know where the other gates are?"

"Oh, yes! I almost forgot." Maddie rooted around in a pile of parchment, gave up, and raised her wand. "Accio gate list." A small piece of parchment struggled out from underneath the pile and flew into her hand. She gave it to Tonks. "That's all of them that lead to Hogwarts. I'm going to see if I can come up with a charm that will trace them, so I can make a visual web--you know, a map of sorts, on paper--and then see if anything else shows up trying to get to the same place. I'm close to it now. It shouldn't take long."

Tonks scanned the list, which showed thirty different locations in Great Britain and Ireland, fourteen of which, Maddie noted, had been destroyed in the interim, often by the very Muggle developments they'd been built to provide an escape from. She looked up. "I'm glad I asked you to help," she said. "I hope I'm not causing you any trouble at work."

"No more than you have."

"In that case," Tonks said, thinking of her colleagues' collective cold shoulder, "I apologize profusely."

Maddie started putting the room in order, which involved straightening the open scrolls and closing a few of the books. "What are you going to do about them, though? Are you going to seal them?"

"No. They still have their uses. I really don't know, Maddie. Now that we have them, what do we do with them?" She groaned. "I'd really like something to wallop. Just one thing. You know. No questions asked, just start hexing. I don't think it's too much to ask, do you?"

"Don't ask me. I live for asking questions."

They smiled at each other, and went down to dinner. Daffy had put the baby in a bouncing seat. It had a charm that would let the baby direct it to swing gently, and Francis was using it to avoid the spoon full of squash that Sanjiv was trying to get to his mouth. Maddie took this operation over (her practice in the area only got marginally better results), and Tonks helped the boys bring out dinner.

Daffy and Sanjiv got talking about their jobs. Maddie avoided it as always, but eventually Tonks was drawn in, which naturally led to questions about things they'd seen in newspapers--was this true, what was the real story behind that, and so on. Tonks had to plead ignorance on most of what came out of London.

"And what about Stan Shunpike?" Daffy asked. "I remember him. They can't be serious."

Tonks put down her fork. "I don't agree with them keeping him," she said. "I think the best way to punish him for what he did is to point and laugh, since all he did was tell a huge lie. But he did tell it. You can't just walk around playing at being a Death Eater. Stupid idiot should have had the brains to recant, but I suppose he hasn't, and I can't do anything about that."

"No one said you could," Daffy said, looking at her oddly. "Let's talk about something else."

They let the conversation drift, and for the first time, Tonks noticed the way they were steering things. At first, it was just carefully avoiding the Shunpike issue, but then she noticed that they were all checking one another at various points. Daffy talked about a book he was editing, only to have Sanjiv change the subject when it became clear that there was a chapter on love potions. Sanjiv started talking about the political cartoons he drew and had no market for, but when he started talking about strange Ministry decisions, Maddie suddenly in on Francis's teething. This led to waxing poetic about parenthood, which Daffy cut off with an awkward segue into a totally unrelated work story.

Tonks had contributed at first, but the more she noticed it, the more she stayed out of the conversation altogether, and when Daffy rambled on about an author who "really was able to work the Homorphus--" only to be interrupted by Maddie making a joke about the man's table manners, she slammed her fork down. "Oh, bloody hell," she said.

They looked at her.

"Sanjiv, how far ahead of me did you actually get here?"

"Er..."

"Long enough to have a little conference? Subjects it's all right to talk about and things we absolutely can't say in front of Tonks?"

"Well..." Maddie started. "Well, you... I tried to talk to you upstairs, but you said you didn't want to talk, which we sort of expected, so--"

"Let me guess. Love affairs, stupid Aurors, and werewolves."

"Well, the stupid Auror thing was on the fly," Daffy said. "We didn't know you were worried about that. It was mostly the love affairs and werewolves. I can't believe I started talking about the Homorphus Charm."

"Your author is a fraud. It doesn't work for more than a few days, and only on one strain, and it kills the werewolf." She stood up. "Look, I'm going to go. I don't want you lot tiptoeing around me like I might explode."

In his bouncy chair, Francis hitched a deep breath, and let out a howl.

"Wonderful," Tonks said. "Now I've frightened the baby. I'm sorry, Maddie. And Francis." She turned on her heel and left, but wasn't surprised to hear footsteps before she reached the point outside the fence where she could Apparate.

Daffy caught up with her easily and put his hand on her arm. "We were just trying to give you a pleasant evening. That's all."

"I know," Tonks said. "I'm sorry, really. I'm going to go, though. I'm clearly not fit for company right now."

"You're not going anywhere. Come back inside. I have a wickedly good pudding, and we plan to secretly lace yours with a sleeping draught so you get some rest."

"I should just march out there and Apparate."

"Mm-hmm," Daffy said, and led her back to the house.

As threatened, there was a simple sleeping draught in the pudding. Tonks switched her dish with Daffy's and he switched back. Sanjiv proposed a shell game with the four dishes and set them dancing around one another for two minutes and had them each grab one at the end.

She ended up deeply asleep. The nightmares went on all night, and she didn't feel particularly rested when she woke up on Maddie and Daffy's sofa. For hours in her mind, she'd trailed Remus, who kept vanishing. Sometimes Sirius had been with her, helping, but any time she tried to turn around and see him, he flickered out of sight. At some point in the dream, she became lost in the Forbidden Forest, stumbling into McGonagall's glade by luck only see the gate open and Fenrir Greyback leap through it, teeth bared. Remus followed him and looked pained as he watched the attack, but did nothing to stop it. Sirius was gone by then. She'd fought to a thin waking then--the clock by the bedside read three-seventeen, she noted for no reason--but fallen down into another dream, and this time it had been Remus under attack (sometimes he seemed to be transformed and others, he didn't), and Dumbledore had been leading the attackers. Mum and Dad had their sleeves rolled up and were settled in for the long haul as well, and Daffy had brought along food to watch from the sidelines. Sanjiv kept going in and daring Remus to bite him, while Maddie nattered on about the mysteries of lycanthropy. Each wound they inflicted on Remus showed up on Tonks as well, but she tried to hide them, knowing that she was meant to be ashamed of feeling them. Her cousin Draco appeared for some reason and sneered that it proved Snape was right, and she was weak. "Oh!" he had mocked in a high falsetto. "I'm so sensitive, look at me bleed!" And then he had bled, and the blood had run into the shape of Sirius's face as Draco collapsed to the ground, and Tonks had shaken herself awake and found Maddie watching her with great concern, and she felt guilty about portraying her friends badly in a dream.

"You're crying," Maddie said.

"I slept."

Maddie sat down beside her and held her tight. "You need a dreamless sleep potion. I can't brew one, but I know you can. Will you brew one tonight?"

"I just need to get hold of myself. I'm not like this. This isn't me."

"Will you brew the potion?"

"I can do it."

"Tonks."

"I'll brew the potion."

"And drink it?"

"Tonight. But it's idiotic to make a habit of it. I need to handle it better, that's all." She took a shaky breath. "I'd best get back to Hogsmeade and get ready for work. Thank you. For everything."

"I'm sorry you dreamed badly."

"So am I."

She Apparated back to Hogsmeade and did manage her shift better on a full night's sleep, however bad it had been. She brewed the potion and got a more restful night, but decided the next morning that it would be an utterly wretched idea at this of all times to start depending on sleeping potions, so she just let the nightmares go on for the rest of the week.

During her waking hours, she took as much work as Dawlish could give her, hoping it would simply tire her out. She tracked Dementor sightings around the countryside, talking to relatives of victims, and reading Muggle accounts of people who had been mysteriously traumatized. A favorite theory was that a psychopath was going about in dark alleys and forcing victims to watch him do something vile to someone else, which would explain their state. That no one had ever found a physical victim of the criminal seemed a remote fact unable to stop the spread of the rumor. She helped the family that owned Zonko's board up the shop before the first Hogsmeade weekend brought students into town. The man had sat on the front steps and cried, saying he had never dreaded the coming of the students before and wanting to know when the Ministry was going to get rid of the Dementors who had attacked his cousin. Tonks had comforted him as well as she could, and he'd gone back to his relatives in Germany, leaving the once warm and familiar shop an alien shell. After he was gone, Tonks and Proudfoot had put several trapping jinxes around the premises, hoping against hope that it would prove irresistible to a wandering Death Eater looking for a hideout. None of the jinxes ever tripped.

On Friday morning, Dawlish called her to his room. "We need to be ready for some kind of emergency control of the Dementors," he said. "In case they show up while the students are here next week."

"Patronuses work quite well."

"Yes. First resort, of course. I'd like alternatives as well, though. I want you to go out to Azkaban and talk to the head human guard. Name of"--he squinted at a piece of parchment--"Leonora Graves. Find out what their emergency measures were. They may not have been terribly effective, but any port in a storm, you know."

"I don't think--"

"Not a request."

Tonks nodded and went back to get her broom. She hadn't gone out to Azkaban since her training, and then she'd been accompanied at all times by Mad-Eye. She'd seen no prisoners, and found the scant human administration particularly unhelpful. She doubted there would be any value whatsoever to a trip out there, but she supposed it was at least a change of pace, and the air over the North Sea was, to put it mildly, bracing. Furthermore, it occurred to her as she flew that she might be able to interview her uncles--Lucius Malfoy and Rodolphus Lestrange--to see if either of them had information he was willing to share about where Bellatrix might try to purchase Dung's stolen property. She had no idea how to bring this up, but she intended to try.

By the time she got there--close to noon--her arms were numb up to the elbows, and she let a warming charm thaw them while she spoke to Graves. The woman was, at least, willing to share their methods, but as Tonks had suspected, most of the spells they'd used were cruder than the Patronus charm. The sea had been the greatest control over them.

"Mostly," she said, "we'd just Apparate away from them if they were getting sprightly around us. As long as you're not in a cell, you can get around the island."

"And the prisoners who hadn't been sentenced to a kiss?"

"Well, they were in their cells, weren't they? The Dementors couldn't go through the bars very well."

"And you just allowed them to be terrorized if the Dementors were... feeling sprightly?"

"They were mostly past that point, Miss. Couldn't feel much fear, if you take my meaning. These new ones could still feel it, but the Dementors are gone now." She sighed, seeming quite saddened by this information.

"Are any of the older prisoners coming around--getting any better--now that the Dementors are gone?"

"Some. A few more all the time. They talk quite a lot more now. The ones that were out for a time are almost normal." She shuddered. "Or as normal as the maniacs ever are. Dolohov makes the most obscene threats when we patrol the corridors. We never had to do that before." She frowned, again looking horribly dissatisfied at the new state of affairs, in which she had to see her charges. Tonks supposed she was glad they hadn't always--Sirius could hardly have kept his transformations secret if human workers had made a habit of roaming outside the cells.

"Did they have any way of handling the Dementors?" she asked, seeing a way to get in and speak to them.

"I should think not, Miss!"

"May I speak to them?"

Graves looked stunned. "You're an Auror, Miss. You can do as you like. But it won't do a bit of good. Prisoners know nothing about fighting the Dementors. That would have made them useless!"

"Will you show me to their cells, and then leave us to talk?"

"You should have a guard with you."

"They're in their cells, aren't they? I can keep my wand away from them."

Dubiously, Graves stood up and led her out of the tiny front room and down into the dungeon-like labyrinth of the prison. "We don't use the top level much," she said, breezing past empty cells. "Just for light matters, and they don't really send people here for light matters anymore." She lit her wand (indicating that Tonks should do the same) and headed down a narrow staircase. Damp walls dripped filthy water onto the floor. Tonks could hear voices coming from some cells, many just moaning, but others forming words, often obscene. They passed a long, blank section of wall with a single empty cell set into it. "That was Sirius Black's cell," Graves said. "We don't fill it, on account of still not knowing how he got out of it. Someone else might be able to."

Tonks marveled at how little of the fallout of the battle of the Department of Mysteries the woman seemed to have absorbed, and as she passed the cell, she looked into it. It was dank and dark and miserable.

Then they were past it and into a more populated area. There would be two or three cells with slack-faced occupants, interspersed with livelier ones, and abruptly as they rounded a corner, an inmate came rushing forward. "We're out of here soon, you worthless bint!"

"Shut up, Lestrange," Graves said, leveling her wand at him. "Or I'll bind your tongue for another day."

Rabastan Lestrange rolled his eyes and went to the back of his cell, laughing. Others joined, from a distance.

"Well, we're here," Graves told Tonks. "Are you sure you don't want me to stay?"

"I'm sure."

"Right. Well, you've met Rabastan here. His brother is around the corner and up a bit. Rookwood is around in the other direction."

"And Lucius Malfoy?"

"He wasn't here when the Dementors were, Miss. I still can't believe it."

"Where is he?"

She pointed vaguely up past the intersection of two corridors. "The more wide-awake ones are in this section. Five to six cells apart. They can hear noises, but they can't talk to one another. We're careful about that."

From the snort of derision on her left, Tonks surmised that Rabastan was not impressed with the level of their care.

Graves left.

Tonks turned to Rabastan. "I see the Dementors are wearing off of you."

He spat through the bars.

She rolled her eyes and went around the corner in the direction Graves had indicated for Rodolphus, and found him crouched in front of the bars, looking coiled and ready to leap. His eyes were closed.

"Bella?" he whispered. "Bella, you've come?"

"Sorry," Tonks said. "It's just me."

He looked up and stood with a disgusted grunt. "The little half-blood freak. Andromeda's monster."

"I usually go by Tonks," she said and leaned against the far wall, out of reach of his long arms.

"You look like Bella," he said, sounding disgusted. "The hair's wrong, but the face is the same. You have no right. You smell like her." He reached through the bars, grasping at her and sniffing the air. "No right to look like her. Smell like her. No right at all."

"Having smelled Bellatrix recently, I assure you that I'll shower as soon as I get home."

"You've seen her? You've seen my Bella?"

"Not since the Department of Mysteries. Though I've been looking for her. I imagine you'd like to see her again?"

"Mmm..." Rodolphus made an obscene rocking motion, and Tonks looked away from him.

"I don't suppose you'd want to tell me where I could find her to bring her to you? Where I might meet her?"

"The sky. In the thunderclouds. In the whirlwind. In the lightning and the floods." His voice dropped to a growl. "BELLA. Bella, Bella, Bella..." His arm swept at Tonks in a lazy way, then he fell back into his cell.

"He'll tell you nothing useful."

Tonks glanced toward the voice, coming from the next block of cells. "Uncle Lucius?"

Silence. "You will never address me in such a manner again."

"Bella..." Rodolphus growled again, and Tonks decided he was a lost cause. She headed down to the corner, slipped around it, and found herself looking at Lucius Malfoy.

He was dressed in a shabby gray prison robe, but sitting perfectly calmly on the edge of his bed, smoothing his fingernails with a rough stone. He looked like a bad actor in a play about prison that had been written by someone who had never visited one. He nodded curtly to her. "You're looking well, Miss Tonks."

"As are you, Mr. Malfoy."

"You're trying to find Bellatrix."

"Of course I am."

He laughed. "You'll have no luck. Certainly not with Rodolphus. He was not, shall we say, N.E.W.T. material in any subject. As far as he's concerned, Bellatrix is a goddess."

"And you?"

"She's my wife's sister. And a loyal follower of the Dark Lord. As I intend to be."

"Yes, we noticed how little of the information you gave us last year turned out to have anything to do with reality. Quite a good time waster, though."

"Shacklebolt actually trusted what I said?" He laughed. "Well, that's an accomplishment."

"He thought it worth looking into."

"Has your mother seen my wife? I know she would turn to her sisters, and she is certainly not fool enough to have Bellatrix with her still."

Tonks wasn't entirely sure of this--any bond that would have Mum talking to Narcissa after learning that Narcissa had left her barren was probably strong enough to overcome pragmatic objections about safety, even for Slytherins. "Yes," she said. "Narcissa has been to see Mum."

Lucius took a deep breath. "She is well?"

"She's lonely and quite sad, as I understand it."

"And money? She is comfortable?"

"I don't know anything about that."

"Is there word of my son?"

"He's at Hogwarts. I've heard nothing."

"Nothing," Lucius repeated, stunned. "Nothing."

"I believe Bellatrix is trying to reacquire stolen Black family property. Where would she look?"

It was a gamble, being direct, but Lucius just smiled. "Even exchange, Miss Tonks? You give me next to no information about those I love, and I'm to respond by handing you the Dark Lord's devoted acolyte? I think not. But a worthy approach. You should have withheld the information until I'd told you what you wanted to know. I've had none at all. I wanted it more than you did. Now you have no bargaining position."

"Well, I did see Draco on the night the Hogwarts Express came in. He'd had an encounter with Harry Potter."

Lucius looked at her warily. "What sort of encounter?"

"You shouldn't have taught me until I'd told you everything."

"She would work through someone. She's mad, but not a complete idiot. I imagine she would send a Death Eater who has never been identified."

"Like?"

He shook his finger at her. "My son," he reminded her. "You mentioned my son."

Tonks gritted her teeth, wishing she hadn't brought the subject up, belatedly feeling guilty for using it as a bargaining chip. It was low. "He broke Harry's nose."

Lucius lay back on his bed and laughed merrily. "Not at all subtle, my Draco. He's got a bit of Bellatrix in him, I think."

"I don't doubt it."

He sat up. "I don't know who Bella would use. If she uses my wife, please send her here and allow me to kill her myself. It would do no harm. But I'm certain Narcissa is wiser than that." He grinned. "Of course, Bella's quite accomplished with the Imperius Curse. She could use anyone she wanted. She could use your mother. What could be more natural than the disowned child trying to steal back her heritage? Perhaps I'll see Andromeda here instead."

"Mum can deal with the Imperius Curse." Tonks turned to go.

"It won't be a long chain of people," Lucius said. "Bellatrix--if she is doing this--will want to keep the number of involved persons small. She doesn't want filthy hands all over her treasures, you know."

Tonks nodded and started to walk away. She didn't turn, but she did stop. "Narcissa is unhappy because she loves you."

"I don't need you to tell me that, and you'll have nothing in return for it."

"I wasn't asking for anything. She's my aunt. And I thought she'd want you to be told. Though I haven't spoken to her. I just... assume that she would want you to know."

Lucius said nothing more. Tonks heard him breathing steadily as she left him behind.

Rodolphus was still making guttural sounds as she passed his corridor, and Rabastan laughed at her brutally as she went by his cell. She finally came up the long blank wall with its single cell door--the dank, miserable room where Sirius had spent twelve years.

She went inside.

It was as sparse as Lucius's cell, with a bowed-in bed off to one side and a chamber-pot in the corner. She let the light from her wand play over the walls, wondering if he'd ever tried to carve his name or leave a mark, finding nothing. She sat down on the bed, in the place where it was most bowed, thinking that he had sat here the most, looking at the damp walls, watching the Dementors glide by. Maybe he'd curled up here as a dog, his claws tearing at the thin canvas of the mattress from time to time. Her hand traveled over the cloth, and her fingers rolled over something thin. She looked down.

A single black hair.

Maybe it was from his head, maybe it was from Padfoot. She didn't care. Either way, it was some solid evidence that there had been a man called Sirius Black, and that he'd been here in this place. She put it in her pocket, then just sat with her back to the stone wall for a long time.

He must have slipped between the bars across the way--she slipped out the door--and gone down the corridor, maybe weaving between Dementors, down to the narrow, barred window at the far end. She went to it. The jump down to the ground was nearly fifteen feet, and the collar of land was very narrow before an even longer jump down to the sea.

But he had done it.

He'd got away from the Dementors, because he had to. Because he had a job to do, a person who needed him without even knowing it.

"Miss?"

She turned. Leonora Graves was waiting at the top of the staircase that led up to the administrative offices. Tonks went up, thanked her for her time, then got her broom and headed for home.

There were no nightmares that night.