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In the chaotic month just following the battle (everyone knows what battle they’re talking about) the desperately-reconstituting-itself Ministry is caught between two warring impulses: to put away as many Death Eaters as possible, and to avoid another Sirius. Or, more broadly- to put things back to normal and to change them so this will never happen again. There’s a whole army of captured Death Eaters in a hastily-built Unplottable jail that used to be used by the Order. The Wizengamot is in such a tizzy- what with many of its members arrested and the rest with mud on their faces and blood on their hands from the muggleborn laws- that hardly anyone can tell how exactly the Death Eaters are going to be tried. The deactivation of Azkaban is a fait accompli since the Office has had to set up a whole squad of Patronus casters, including Harry Potter, to run around trying to chase Dementors into the ocean, and the prison itself was pretty much destroyed both by the Death Eaters in their last breakout and then by the Order when it broke the Muggleborns out- Tonks can’t exactly remember the month but it was when she was pregnant with Teddy and thus grounded- but no one knows what’s going to end up replacing it. Half the Ministry is being charged with crimes against humanity, there’s still Death Eaters on the loose, the Floo Network is broken, the Muggle government is making dark imprecations, Wizarding Britain is on no less than five separate travel advisory lists and is still under sanction by the ICW despite the best efforts of the new representative, who was appointed about five minutes after Voldy went moldy due to her predecessor being a Death Eater, most of the population (at least the population Tonks knows) seems to still be under Fidelius, and Tonks can’t remember the last time she slept a full night.
The baby isn’t helping.
It turns out winning a war isn’t what Tonks thought it would be. She’d pictured, if somewhat vaguely, finally spending time with her friends, moving out of her parents’ house, settling into domestic bliss with Remus and the baby and a mid-level caseload with actual hope for career advancement. She hadn’t realized that wars don’t really end. They keep struggling on, leaving behind them a whole mass of crises and complications. This is the war’s weird afterbirth: a thousand crises each day, a population struggling to lift off the weight of fear and grief, a country grappling with its worst self. She hardly has time to feed Teddy before leaving him with Mum for the day, with the half-formed idea of giving her mother something to do that isn’t endless, depressing shifts at St. Mungos or sitting around grieving. Remus left last week to negotiate with the remainder of Greyback’s pack, which is in the middle of vicious internecine strife between Greyback’s supporters who want to hook up with the Death Eater remnant, and those who think Greyback’s death proved allying with humans is folly. Before that he was constantly at the Ministry, lobbying for increased rights for werewolves. She can’t begrudge him using his position as honored war hero to help those less fortunate. The thing is, though, it almost feels like they saw each other more in the war. And when they do see each other now, they fight. She thinks, in her darkest moments, that maybe without the press of the war pushing them together, the urge for comfort, they don’t really work. Not to mention she hasn’t really forgiven him for leaving.
So, all this considered, Tonks is really not happy to be sent on a guided tour of Malfoy Manor: War Edition with her mother’s less-evil estranged sister.
It’s probably, she thinks, the sheer desperation of the Ministry’s situation that this is happening at all as she stands awkwardly at the gate of Malfoy Manor. If there was any other option, Narcissa Malfoy of all people would not somehow be the star witness for the prosecution of about twenty as-yet-unscheduled Death Eater trials. Including that of her husband, which Tonks would probably believe even less if she knew Narcissa Malfoy as anyone other than a person she saw at the Ministry sometimes. (Well, also, she remembers how Narcissa had looked at the battle, frantically searching for her son. And how Mum had said that, worst coming to worst, Narcissa would try to protect Teddy because he was her family. That might be why Tonks is here at all.)
The gate would maybe have been beautiful once, but all Tonks can think of is that is would have been the last glimpse of freedom for people like her father. That her father died at the hands of people who walked through this gate easily, without needing to be specially let in.
The grounds maybe would have been pretty, too, if most of them weren’t on fire. Apparently, Voldemort had been absolutely furious with everyone here for Harry, Ron and Hermione’s narrow escape, and some of the younger Death Eaters had been allowed to use the grounds of Malfoy Manor to “practice their Fiendfyre.” Because, obviously, you should be letting teenagers use the most destructive spell on earth, something that the vast majority of people can’t control and that is considered so dangerous the Auror office has exactly one person trained to use it. In her mother’s few stories Malfoy Manor had beautiful, sterile gardens roamed by, of all things, albino peacocks. Because why settle for regular peacocks when you could have ones as inbred as yourself?
Tonks doesn’t really want to know what happened to the peacocks. If she was telling a story, like to Teddy when he gets older, she’d have them fly away.
At first she almost doesn’t see the woman approaching. The face blends into the dust and smoke and it takes a moment for Tonks to realize the blotch of almost-white she sees isn’t a cloud but blonde hair. Narcissa Malfoy seems smaller, now. Her head hangs low instead of being imperiously tossed. She steps carefully, not daintily but instead almost afraid. She has no wand in her hand, though that doesn’t necessarily mean she doesn’t have one on her person. Her dress has defiantly short sleeves, showing off her bare forearms. Tonks is careful not to relax her guard. She gets the impression that Narcissa Malfoy is good at being underestimated, could almost turn it into an art form. But so is Tonks.
“Come in,” says her mother’s sister. “I am Narcissa Malfoy. A pleasure to meet you.” Her voice is soft, smooth, but with a raw edge. The words feel almost perfunctory.
“Senior Auror Tonks,” Tonks says, keeping her voice smooth and professional even as she thinks if it’s a pleasure to meet me then why is this the first time? Her hand rests casually on her wand.
Narcissa Malfoy stares at her- assessing, maybe? She’s hard to read, sort of like Mum, but there’s a harder edge to Mrs. Malfoy, like she has more secrets and dirtier ones. After a pause that could be almost rude, she says, “You look like your mother.”
Deliberately, Tonks morphs into a mirror image of the woman in front of her. Narcissa makes a strangled movement that might in someone else be a flinch. “I can look like anyone.”
“That must be very useful,” says Narcissa in a sort of distant tone, gazing back at the shell of the manor.
“When things have calmed down some more we’ll send someone to put out the Fiendfyre,” Tonks says, following her gaze to the bright orange flame.
“There’s no hurry,” says Narcissa. “It’s small enough that the wards can contain it. The only people it’s affecting are me and Draco.”
“We can’t exactly have random Fiendfyre burning,” says Tonks, keeping her voice very smooth. She’s not sure what game Narcissa is trying to play, but she doesn’t want to engage.
“It reminds me,” says Narcissa. “Perhaps I need that.” Then, “I keep forgetting you’re not Andy.”
“No one calls her that,” says Tonks at the nickname, careful not to respond to the rest of it. “Andy. Dad always called her Dromeda.”
“I know,” says Narcissa. They start up the path, walking through a veritable forest of dead and dying plants. Malfoy Manor smells like flame and the same dark magic smell Grimmauld Place had. Remus would be holding his nose by now, his lycanthropy coming with a strong sense both for smell and dark magic. Grimmauld used to give him a headache before they spent enough time there that he got used to it.
“How long has the Fiendfyre been burning?” says Tonks. “Do you know who cast it?” She’s here for information, not family bonding, and if Mrs. Malfoy understands that, it’s better.
“Six weeks,” says Narcissa Malfoy. “I believe it was set by Vincent Crabbe, who died in the battle. I don’t know how.”
Tonks nods, absorbing the information. She knows Crabbe Jr. was able to cast Fiendfyre, and it’s a relief to hear there weren’t other young Death Eaters running around casting spells they couldn’t control. At least not here.
“Have you read Anastasie Bellancourt?” Narcissa says after a silence.
Tonks has. Her parents used to read it to her, and then she read it again the year the war started. Seemed fitting. Narcissa Malfoy probably read it in the original French.
“ When the war was won I rode
my hopes home. I passed
through battles made of words
and counted my way
not with milestones
but the markers of graves.
On the road that led home
I passed through fields lit by Fiendfyre
where once there was daylight,
I saw smoke choke the sky
and remembered the sound of a curse
on my chest and on my lips.
This was my homeland, I thought,
before it passed beyond the veil
into the land of mists and dreams.
I am left behind.
No Scourgify can wash the blood
from my hands and Apparition
cannot find me a place to rest my feet,” Narcissa quotes as they reach the door. “She was the finest poet of Grindelwald's War. Better in the original French.” Tonks knew it.
“She was a werewolf,” says Tonks. Since knowing Remus she’s always been sure to mention that tot hose who would take the poetry and erase the woman.
“I’ve realized it doesn’t matter,” says Narcissa Malfoy. “Only took a quarter-century. I doubt you believe me.”
“How many people have died here?” says Tonks, as she pulls open the door. Narcissa frowns and is silent for a moment. She must be counting, Tonks thinks, and is abruptly furious. She feels her hair shift red.
“Thirty-five,” says Narcissa Malfoy. “Including Death Eaters.”
“And you know where the bodies are buried,” says Tonks. She doesn’t add: both literally and metaphorically. If Narcissa Malfoy had turned traitor earlier, the Order would have had a much easier time of it with someone who knew the Death Eaters better than herself, for all she never raised her wand beside them, whispering in its ears. The evidence from Narcissa Malfoy’s depositions thus far has filled a Neverending Scroll.
“Yes,” says Narcissa, looking at the floor. “That I do. The bodies of- I’m sure there are families. And there are some you will want to seize for evidence.”
“I know how to do my job,” says Tonks.
“Of course,” says Narcissa Malfoy. “After all, you are alive, and you are here. I never thought any different.” Tonks has no idea how to take her tone, whether she should morph her hair back to red or take that sentence as a compliment. She wonders how her mother would take it, if Mum still knows this strange woman as well as Mrs. Malfoy knows the Death Eaters.
The tour is just as depressing as Tonks thought it would be. She learns the locations of all thirty-five bodies, be they in the dungeons or out on the grounds, and leaves a marker for herself and the team that will, when they have time, retrieve the bodies.
Tonks is searching one of the bedrooms, which was apparently used by Bellatrix Lestrange, when Narcissa Malfoy exclaims “Oh! I almost forgot. I made a list of,” and here her voice gets softer, “the people who died- their names, personal information, and such. It’s in my room,” which is not included on this search as a sign of respect. Tonks subtly casts a tracking spell as Narcissa leaves.
She almost doesn’t expect the woman to come back, clutching a piece of parchment that appears outwardly to be a list of Herbological implements. “ This was my homeland, I thought, before it passed beyond the veil,” she murmurs, and the ink is soaked up back into the page, new writing appearing. The Order had used the same spell, hiding message behind an innocuous facade and a password, and even before that Tonks’s parents had used it in the first war she dimly remembers. It’s strange to realize that, of course, Narcissa Malfoy would know spells to hide secrets as well, the very same ones. Tonks gets a disconcerting flash of her mother, hiding a forbidden note in a letter home, and Narcissa whispering a password to see her sister’s true message, giggling. On the desk Bellatrix Lestrange used, there is a photograph of Lestrange and Mrs. Malfoy as girls, and Tonks isn’t sure what’s stranger- the thought of Bellatrix Lestrange of all people keeping a photograph of herself and anyone but Lord Voldemort (she vividly remembers Sirius’s Dementor anecdote), or the fact that if she looks at it in the right light, the young Bellatrix Lestrange could be a young Andromeda Tonks. There’s even a jagged edge to the photo, like one of Remus’s school photographs, most of which feature only James Potter because his other two friends had been ripped out at one point or another.
Tonks takes the list. It’s what Narcissa said it was: a list of names, in two different hands- Narcissa and her son? with details added by each one. Sarah Clark, she reads. Loved Anastasie Bellancourt and her brother, five years younger, lives in America, magical as well. Wanted to tell him she wished she had left with him instead of trying to fight. Tonks can’t morph away tears, but she doesn’t want to cry in front of Narcissa Malfoy.
“I thought,” Narcissa says, slowly, “that if I died, I would want to tell people things. I would want the knowledge that someone would remember me.
“I wrote ‘Tonks was here’ with a carving spell under the floor of Lestrange Manor during a raid,” Tonks admits. “I’ll try to contact the people mentioned in this.”
“Let me show you the secret compartment where Lucius kept dark artifacts,” says Narcissa.
Tonks leaves Malfoy Manor with a Bottomless Chest full of dark artifacts, more names of Death Eaters’ victims, and plenty more evidence for whenever they’ve figured out what is happening with the political situation and have the new Death Eater trials (there’s an argument raging about whether or not the Wizengamot should be split into separate legislative and judicial bodies that will probably end up getting tabled til Hermione Granger is old enough to get everyone to listen to her, and also the country is not on fire anymore). She wants to hug Teddy and never let him go. She also sort of wants to have the conversation she and her mother have never had about Mum’s awful, mysterious childhood.
“You know,” Tonks says slowly, consideringly as Narcissa Malfoy walks her to the gate. “I think my mother would have tea with you. If you asked nicely.”
She disapparates to the sight of Narcissa Malfoy’s face, looking, if Tonks is reading her right, as if she’s considering it.