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Wobbly, ink-covered fingertips mar the parchment before her with smudges. She knows she’s ingested an unhealthy amount of caffeine and Calming Draught, but the alternating, jittery shakes and bouts of vertigo are worth it.
Without knowing if Remus has survived another transformation, Tonks relies on potions and coffee to scarcely disguise her despair. No one’s told her if he’s still alive.
May’s full moon coincided with stormy skies. Tonks wonders, throwing her head back from an assault of dizziness, if Remus is laying face-down in the mud, his body cooling and stiff in icy, blood-stained puddles.
“Auror Tonks!”
Scrimgeour’s bark shakes her out of her dismal thoughts.
“Yes, sir,” she croaks, pushing mousy brown hair out of her bloodshot eyes.
“You’re going with Dawlish, Proudfoot, Berrycloth, and Robards.”
She sits up at once, confused she’s being sent with a group of the most senior Aurors. They’re all getting up, and while Tonks shoves her things into her rucksack, Kingsley mutters at her, saying she’s going north for a special assignment that morning. Startled, expecting she’d be sent back to Hogsmeade, her current assignment, she follows Proudfoot to the Atrium and gets the Apparition coordinates.
They land somewhere near a dense forest. It smells of petrichor and decay, moist earth and iron, fresh buds and acrid, burnt flesh. The scents assault her nostrils and she holds onto a large tree trunk, resisting the urge to retch. The long distance Apparition has made her vertigo worse.
“Fan out,” Robards orders. “They’re bound to be here. Use your badge to let us know when you’ve found someone. Rope ‘em up and bring them back to the Ministry. Tap thrice when you leave.”
The Aurors go in five opposite directions. Tonks takes a path through broken branches, focusing her efforts on retaining her breakfast. She feels a fool. She didn’t ask who they’re looking for, why they’re looking for them, or what to do when they find them. Whoever they are, they can’t be terribly dangerous.
Tonks stumbles through the undergrowth of the forest, stopping every few minutes to gasp for air. At every sign of movement, she brandishes her wand, only to find young woodland critters going about their mornings. The Human-Presence Revealing Spell hasn’t produced anything yet.
As she goes through the thicket, she begins to see signs that something is amiss. Parts of tree trunks are torn apart. Shreds of wood and moss decorate the forest floor. Bones, flesh, and fur dot her path.
A distinctly human moan tickles her eardrum.
With her wand raised, she follows the sound, a path of destruction creating an obstacle course that she has no intention of undertaking. She blasts away the branches, cuts through the felled tree trunks, and gags at the sight of a hardly breathing, mangled hare.
She puts it out of its misery and continues.
The moan is clearer. It belongs to a man, she thinks, and the sight of bloodied human flesh several yards away alerts her to her prize.
“I’m coming for you,” she vows, looking forward to a win. She doesn’t know what to expect or what she’ll do with her capture, but her badge hasn’t buzzed, which means she’s likely to be the first to find someone. She could use the victory.
The figure is tangled in mud and branches, but alive, and Tonks casts Homenum revelio. The human before her is the only one in the vicinity, but she expects another isn’t far away.
“Reveal yourself!” she shouts, pointing her wand at the fleshy being before her.
A broken gurgling sound is all she receives.
Torn flesh and exposed muscle finally come into her sight. She retches now, incapable of seeing the contorted man with anything but disgust and pity. It might be a capture, but it’s not going to be a victorious one. The pathetic heap of humanity before her is too weak to fight back.
Wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her robes, she swallows the bile in the back of her throat and moves closer.
It’s definitely a man, and as her eyes travel from his lower body to his chest, she cries out and lunges for Remus Lupin.
“Stay alive, oh fuck, Remus, you’ve got to live,” she begs frantically, her hand shaking awfully as she casts spell after spell over his broken body. The caffeine and potions are catching up to her and she holds him, willing her body to prevent her from fainting. She pushes the words out of her mouth, holding her wand over his broken body.
Vulnera Sanentur.
Remus is hanging on for dear life.
Vulnera Sanentur.
The Aurors have been sent in to capture werewolves.
Vulnera Sanentur.
She won’t let them touch him.
Three Episkeys snap his left femur in place. Several more are needed for his kneecaps. Some ribs are shattered; she snatches the emergency vials from her Auror robes and shoves them down his throat, massaging his bruised and battered chest until they settle into his stomach.
The badge on her robes vibrates several times. Her colleagues have found others and they’re leaving the forest with their captives.
She’s not going to leave without him, but she’s not taking him to the Ministry.
“T-t-t—”
“—don’t say anything, Remus,” she gasps.
“Th-they’re,” he rasps, “c-c-coming—”
Not knowing how else to shut him up, she puts her mouth on his. He tastes metallic and earthy, and she feels more than one cut on his lip, but it’s working and he’s quieting.
“TONKS!”
Dawlish’s voice rings out from behind her, terrifying her out of the clandestine kiss.
“TONKS! YOU THERE?”
“I’M FINE! I FOUND SOMEONE!”
Scarlet robes swish in her periphery. She can’t let Dawlish see Remus.
“OI! I FOUND ONE!”
He sounds pleased with himself, and when the badge vibrates again, she knows he’s leaving.
“Ch-child—” Remus raises his arm, which is covered in glistening, scarlet blood, pointing it away from Dawlish.
The crack of Apparition gives them privacy again; Dawlish has gone.
“There are children?”
Remus’s neck looks sprained and he winces, hissing, as he tries to nod.
“I’ll get them to the Ministry,” Tonks tells him. “They won’t hurt children. I’ll come back for you, I promise.”
“G-go—”
Tonks shoves the last healing potion into his mouth and tosses the vial to the side. Her stores are empty and she grimaces, recognizing a minute too late she could’ve saved one of the vials for a hurting child.
Another Homenum revelio confirms her earlier suspicion; there’s at least one more werewolf in the direction Remus pointed toward.
She casts it again and two figures are revealed. She finds the furthest one, finding a boy looking no more than six years old, and heals him as quickly as she can. In a suffocating twist, she takes him to the Ministry, but before her colleagues can descend on her, she goes back for the other child.
The other one is on the edge of life. He’s got a sweet face, pale, round cheeks, and he’s turning blue. The injuries are too severe, Tonks fears, and rather than taking him to the Ministry, she goes right for St. Mungo’s.
Healers descend upon her as she explains the situation, her father blessedly included, and he urges her to go back to see if there are more. Two other Aurors brought in mangled werewolves, but no other children. They don’t want another Montgomery boy, the five-year-old who died a month ago after succumbing to werewolf-inflicted injuries.
Tonks goes back and finds Remus first.
He’s sitting up, his brow knit together tightly, and he’s moving his limbs.
“Remus!”
He tries to speak but Tonks puts her finger on his lips.
“Where’s your wand? Your clothes? I need to help you, but you’ve got to tell me first, are there other children?” she says rapidly, wrapping her robe around him. It’s too small and it’s beyond dirtied with blood and mud, but he needs warmth.
“Two boys,” he rasps, “found them?”
“Yes, they looked about five or six years old, is that all?”
He hisses and clutches his side.
“Your wand—”
“—Accio.”
Tonks wants to slap herself with stupidity. She casts Accio on Remus’s wand and clothes, and the items fly towards them. She helps him redress; his robes are even shabbier than before.
“Let me take you to Hogsmeade—”
Remus is already shaking his head and she wants to choke him; how is this better than any life he could have with her?
“You’re too weak,” she growls, snatching his wand away. “I’m taking you, I’m helping you, and you can come back to this godforsaken place when I’m through.”
The lump in Remus’s throat bobs and he closes his eyes, clearly pained.
“Okay.”
“Oh, thank Merlin.”
She heaves him up on his feet. He’s thin and scraggly and his tall frame is leaning heavily on her. She wraps his arm around her shoulder and with a concentrated grunt, turns on her heel and lands at the top step in front of her room at The Hog’s Head.
She doesn’t care that he’s filthy and bloodied, or that her own room is a pigsty, a nest of depression she’s worked on for months. She drops him into her bed and pulls out every healing potion in her cupboard, forcing him to consume each one until he can’t keep his eyes open.
“I have to go back to the Ministry now,” she tells him, holding his beloved face in her hands. “I’ll be back. Please, please stay. At least until you can walk. Eat anything you like.”
He’s falling asleep and Tonks gives him one more kiss, watching with satisfaction as his lips curl slightly upwards into a smile.
Later, she returns to a scrawled note, written in his hands, bearing three simple, agonizing words.
You deserve better.
She saved two children’s lives that morning but she couldn’t save Remus from himself. She cries herself to sleep that night and begs for the madness to stop.