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bronze_ribbonsChapter 3
Chapter 4
The following afternoon, bottles of mead and jars of honey safely stowed in the saddlebags of Tonks's motorcycle, Snape and Tonks sat facing upstream on an ancient clapper bridge, mounds of pinecones to either side of them. At the count of three, they each dropped a cone into the river. They then simultaneously twisted around to watch the cones bob and dance in the water as they "raced" each other; the two wizards had charmed each of their cones to explode into coloured sparks upon reaching the drop twenty feet from where they sat.
After watching a particularly impressive arc of hot pink sparks, Tonks lay down with a happy sigh, enjoying the autumn sunshine. The old granite slab was narrow enough that her head dangled off its downstream edge, her knees anchoring her to the upstream side.
Snape watched her with a small smile on his face; he was considerably more relaxed now that they were off the motorcycle. He reflected she should have looked incongruous where she lay, given her spiky hair, midriff-baring t-shirt, ripped-up jeans, and battered boots. She was practically a poster girl for streetwise, twenty-first-century London, and it amused him inordinately to see her looking so at home, lazily sprawled across the crude crossing medieval farmers had laboured to set into place centuries before.
As if in counterpoint to his thoughts, Tonks idly murmured, "One might imagine you were trying to blend in, Severus. Forest green and mud brown fireworks -- it doesn't get any more boring than that."
"What would you expect from a former spy?" Snape said lightly. "Rainbow-coloured pinwheels with aural cascades of tinkling bells?"
"Well," Tonks said, "the last time we played this, you went wild with the Slytherin green and silver."
"I will remind you that the last time we indulged ourselves like this, Lupin was with us, and he insisted on terrorising the pilchards with his garish reds and golds."
"Ah," Tonks said. "I never got all that attached to my House."
"Healthy of you," Snape observed. "Unlike, for instance, most of the Malfoys."
Tonks steepled her hands above her chest. "There's definitely something diseased among the lot of them. Not that the Blacks are known for staying hinged."
Snape lifted a cone from his pile and peered at it. "No, you are not. However, I would venture to say that your line has retained more of its vitality. The Malfoys have inter-bred themselves into frail and foppish shadows."
Tonks spread her hands to suggest the shape of large breasts. "Violet Bonnefaux looked solid enough to me."
Snape said abruptly, "If Violet Bonnefaux is merely who she appears to be, I'll eat my cloak."
Tonks raised her head up to look at him, frowning. "You, too? Her records were all in order -- transferred from Beauxbatons earlier this year -- but something about her. . ." She laughed uneasily. "Aside from her deplorable taste in boys, of course."
Snape flipped the cone he held up into the air, Transfiguring it into an apple as it descended back into his palm. "I think she was acting," he eventually said. "God knows your average schoolgirl is brainless --"
Tonks interrupted him. "It never fails to amaze me you lasted at Hogwarts as long as you did."
Snape stuck to his theme. "Even Hermione Granger -- book-smart, boy-stupid --"
"I'll be sure to convey your compliments to Ron next time I stop by his department."
"Do." Snape twirled the apple by its stem, and its colour changed from red to green.
Tonks rolled onto her side, propping herself up on an elbow. "Violet Bonnefaux. You think she's dangling herself at Draco as bait?"
Snape tossed the apple to her, which she caught without a blink. "Even if she is, that doesn't make it a crime. Once she's of age, I can't think of anyone still alive with adequate reason to object to such an alliance."
"Which doesn't mean there won't be unreasonable objections --"
"Starting with the excessively doting Uncle Tristan."
Tonks curled herself back up into a sitting position. She murmured Revertiro and squeezed the apple, upon which it resumed its original shape as a pinecone.
She handed it back to Snape and reached for one of her own. "On the count of three?"
"No more, no less, and five is right out."
"One . . . two . . . three!" They lobbed their cones into the water, and watched them travel downstream in silence. When it reached the drop, Tonks's cone shot up into the air and descended in a shower of cobalt blue sparks. A few seconds later, Snape's cone burst into a magnificent fountain of jet-coloured confetti.
Tonks tilted her head. "That's lovely, Severus. Weird, but lovely."
"I am loath to bore you, madam."
Tonks's smile held a tinge of bitterness. "If only it were all up to you. I've got the deadliest, dreariest heap of reports on my desk --"
"I graded your colleagues' equally uninspired essays for years," Snape said gravely. "Permit me to suggest you will likewise survive the ordeal."
In the tone of a mock threat, Tonks said, "Perhaps I should suggest you join my office as a reader."
Snape shook his head. "I have never acquired a taste for contemporary fiction."
Tonks let out a hoot of unhappy laughter. "Oh, Merlin, how I wish I didn't find that funny. Even the dossier for this case -- Remus had a right old field day ripping it to shreds --"
"I wish --" Snape began, then stopped, his face bleak.
Tonks looked at him in concern. "What do you wish?"
Snape picked up another pinecone. "I want to be back in London," he said. "The full moon rises eight days from now. Hudson does his best, but he's nowhere near capable of reining Lupin in. You know the blasted man will be working twenty-three hours out of each twenty-four if one of us isn't around to Stun or distract him."
"Hell and damn." Tonks pressed her palms against her knees, as if preventing herself from curling them into fists. "I'd thought he was doing better, but I take it that was you...? Perhaps I should pick up a flask of knock-out potion --"
"No!" Snape's lip curled. "I'd drink your melon sugar-water before I'd trust the cack in the shops."
"Maybe I'll just use that on Remus, then. Brain him with the bottle, if nothing else. The schedule I'm on, I may have to miss the shower anyway."
"And yet here you are, lolling away your Tuesday."
"A girl can't work ten days straight without a break."
"You did all the time, at the end of the War."
"The War is over. Not even Hermione Granger flogs herself that hard these days."
"But Lupin does. And Alastor Moody."
"You can't count Moody, he hasn't been sane in decades. That man is going to wake up dead some day and not even realise it."
"No, I don't count Moody," Snape said quietly. "The thought of losing Lupin, though, is one I do not want to bear."
Tonks bit her lip. Then she said, "Pinecone?"
"Pinecone," Snape answered. They counted to three, and hurled another pair of cones into the water.
After the pink and brown sparks dissolved into nothingness, Tonks reminded Snape, "Violet Bonnefaux was deeply upset by Conrad Baskerville's death, at least according to Minerva."
"That proves nothing," Snape said. "Lupin's half out of his mind after most of his kills."
"No, he's not," Tonks objected. "Half-addled from exhaustion, sure --"
"You heard his appalling nonsense Saturday night --"
"I've heard his bloody ramblings every assignment, Severus. He knew what he was agreeing to when the Ministry set this up, as did I. We half-breed commoners can't afford to be fastidious about our souls."
Snape swallowed the bile that rose at her jibe. It was nothing more than he deserved, after all. Instead, he said, "Tristan Bonnefaux strikes me as the fastidious type."
Tonks gazed into the distance, thoughtful. "The rabbit-faced ones often have the sharpest and pointiest teeth."
Snape impatiently spun a cone into the water without waiting for her. "And still waters run deep, and watched pots don't boil, and horses can be led but you cannot make them drink --"
Tonks ignored his mockery, watching the cone ripple out into a ring of shimmering orange starbursts. "They make so much more noise than you would expect, given their size." She picked up one of her own cones and flung it into the air instead of the water; it cascaded down as a firefall of turquoise sparks. "I wonder... are the Bonnefaux more than they seem, or less? Is she really a schoolgirl, or just playing one?"
"Playing..." Severus echoed -- and then sat straight up. "Tonks. Oh, Salazar, it's straight out of a Victorian melodrama." Snape leapt to his feet and strode toward the motorbike.
"What -- what? Severus, what the hell --?"
"His wife, Tonks. Or paramour -- I will bet you Galleons to Knuts that the woman we know as the niece isn't a niece at all, and that's why Tristan Bonnefaux graced us with his tantrum yesterday."
"She could be the wife and the niece," Tonks cynically pointed out. "Pureblood interbreeding at its finest --"
"She looked far too healthy. That is what wasn't sitting right with me -- there isn't any hint of Malfoy in her features whatsoever. Her 'uncle', however --"
Tonks swung her leg over the bike and started the engine. "A vorpal rabbit, you think?"
Snape slid onto the pillion seat and tightly gripped the bars on its sides. "Rabid, at least, to judge from last night. But this is all theory without sufficient evidence. We need to get back to the Hall -- I need to owl Lupin now --"
"I'll have you there within minutes," Tonks said. As she opened the throttle and kicked the machine into gear, she commanded, "Hold on tight --"
"I already am!" Snape yelled at her back, but his words were lost within the crescendo of noise.
--O
When they roared into the courtyard of Baskerville Hall, they found Neville and Irene Longbottom waiting in front of the entrance. As they disembarked from the bike, Neville said, "Wasn't Draco with you? We'd thought we were to meet him tonight for dinner, but no one answered the door --"
"Stupid brat likely forgot his staff isn't here to answer it," Snape muttered, undoing the wards with his wand. "You rang the knocker only once, I presume?" He hurried inside, with Tonks on his heels and the Longbottoms lagging slightly behind.
When he'd departed with Tonks in the morning, he'd left Draco ensconced in the library, diligently working through another chapter of the book McGonagall had loaned to him. When Snape entered the room, neither Draco nor the book was still there. Instead, he found a note:
Tonks had craned her head over his shoulder to read the message. Before he even finished crumpling the parchment in his hand, she snapped at Neville and Irene, "Stay. Here. No time to explain, but we're all too likely to need you. Neville, owl Remus. Severus?"
As he stepped into the curve of her outstretched arm, Snape said to Neville, "If Draco does show up before we get back, make that stick of yours useful and thrash him. No matter what he thinks, this isn't any excuse for forgetting you were to meet."
Tonks drew him against her, muttering, "The one good thing about that dossier -- at least I know where all the houses are. Here goes, love. Do try not to throw up on me." They Disapparated from the room, leaving the Longbottoms staring at the space from which they'd vanished.
--O
As they landed on the flat roof of Tristan Bonnefaux's house, Snape concentrated on fighting off the violent nausea and dizziness that being Apparated side-along had brought on. Tonks and Lupin had quickly learned to resort to it only for emergencies; the potion that had put an end to his ability to Apparate on his own had also crippled his ability to tolerate being Apparated, and as he doubled over, gasping and retching, he briefly, desperately wished Tonks had taken the trouble to Stun him before leaving the Hall.
Once he looked up, however, Snape's attention was riveted to the sight of a petrified Draco Malfoy teetering close to the edge of the roof. A giant black hound crouched but a few feet away from him, poised to spring and its jaw dripping with an eerie froth. On Draco's left, Violet Bonnefaux shakily held the dog at bay with her wand, copper tendrils escaping from her chignon. Draco's wand lay on top of a blanket on which he and the Bonnefaux had apparently shared part of a meal; among the overturned teacups, the spilled cream, and the litter of sugar cubes, Snape also glimpsed a half-loaf of bread that bore the imprint of a heel, as well as scattered slices of apples, their flesh become an unappetising brown.
Tonks approached the tableau slowly, her wand in her hand. "Easy, Rover," she said to the hound. "God knows I know he's a prat, but what's he ever done to you?"
"Oh, Miss Tonks," Miss Bonnefaux breathed, "thank goodness you're here. I don't have much more --"
At that moment, as if sensing a dilution in her focus, the giant hound lunged toward Draco; Tonks simultaneously dove for him. The girl shrieked and shoved Draco away from the edge of the roof; as he helplessly fell forward, Tonks scooped him up and Disapparated with him as the hound barrelled into Violet.
Still panting from the residual effects of being Apparated there, Snape shook his wand loose from his sleeve and aimed it at the dog --
Only to have it expelled from his grasp by Miss Bonnefaux. She smoothly rose to her feet and smiled a most unpleasant smile at him, all semblance of shakiness suddenly absent from her demeanor.
"We meet again, Severus Snape, for the second and last time."
As she advanced toward him, the dog by her side, Snape answered, "I share the hope, madam, but why so confident?"
"You cannot Apparate. You now lack your wand. Your precious werewolf's whore isn't here to help you."
"True, true, and not quite true. She isn't here, but she isn't his whore."
Violet Bonnefaux laughed, a harsh and ugly sound incongruous with her beauty. "Semantics, Snape -- they aren't going to save you. I don't know who Tonks and Lupin slept with to get their way, but it's not important now. All that matters to me is removing you from mine."
"Your way, madam? How have I been in your way?"
"How have you not?" she spat. "You and your do-gooding, half-blood double-crossing ways. You're a traitor, Severus Snape, and you should have been done away with before I was born. The first Dark Lord was a fool to keep you around -- he must have had a weakness for you greasy-haired pets. Look at where that got him. A spell to the head and poof! no more milk for all the kitties, no more meat for the mangy little doggies.
"Uncle told me all about it, even before he agreed to be my uncle. You're a good uncle, aren't you?" she crooned to the hound. She flicked her wand at Snape, and he staggered under the fresh wave of pain that drenched him. "This is uncle's house, and you shouldn't be in it. Since you came here anyway, uncle can do what he wants with you. Uncle's not a fool, not at all, and he'll be the first of all the lords of the night when they reign. He was so, so close -- so ready, years ago -- but someone he'd been counting on conveniently failed to help him out, and he had to go hide among the rocks and the fishies." She sneered at Snape, "So many times you wormed yourself free using your precious school as your story. Tsk tsk tsk, Professor Snape -- teachers shouldn't ever make excuses..."
Her script's all scrambled, Snape thought, scanning for routes of escape even as they crowded him closer and closer to the edge of the roof. Malfoy or not, she's as mad as the rest of them.
Violet Bonnefaux continued to rant at him, her voice rising into a sing-song chant. "Once uncle does what he wants with you, I can do what I want with Draco. Such a pretty, pathetic puppet of a boy -- it's going to be grand, how much I'll get to play with him." The giant dog barked at this, to which she responded with an out-of-tune laugh. "Uncle doesn't like that, but uncle doesn't get his way all the time. Uncle wanted Baskerville Hall, but sweet old Uncle Conrad got it first. Uncle Conrad had better papers. It's all about the papers, you know, Mr. Snape. Papers and proofs, drawers and boots, shake out the spies and poison their roots. . ."
They were almost at the edge now. Two steps more and he'd have nowhere to go. He had nowhere to go now -- Violet stood to his left, ready to curse him, and the dog to the right -- why is it always, always a damned black dog? he mentally raged.
Snape took a deep breath and silently willed a message across the moor. Tonks, take care of Lupin . . . Without letting himself think any further, he launched himself at the hound.
As his hands closed on its fur, he was nearly overcome by the stench of its breath, and a searing pain shot through his arm where the Dark Mark had been etched. Ah, thought Snape, sold your soul to acquire this form, did you? The creature's claws ripped grooves into his flesh as it struggled to dominate him, and his hands grew slippery with the grime and drool that coated its pelt as he grappled with it. It was only a matter of time, he thought dimly, before they either reeled over the edge together, or his strength gave out and those jaws closed in on --
A heavy body crashed against them both, knocking the wind out of him and blurring his vision. He could hear the hound howl in frustration and then in agony, as if it were being torn apart alive. The rational part of his mind registered that all this had happened within the space of a few minutes, but the creature's terrible death-cries seemed to linger on and on.
He became conscious of Tonks's arm around his shoulder, a flask to his lips. "Drink," she ordered. "It's proper brandy, promise."
Snape obediently tilted his head back, allowing her to pour a thimbleful down his throat. The fiery restorative burned away the haze of shock that had descended upon his nerves.
Shrugging off Tonks's arm, he got to his feet, assessing the mess around them. A few feet away from him, the corpse of the hound lay in a pool of blood and fur. The gibbering form of Violet Bonnefaux cowered in a corner, flanked on one side by a chimney, and on the other by the werewolf that had killed her uncle. Her wand had rolled away from her, into one of the puddles of blood and spittle that spattered the surface of the roof.
Tonks looked at their captive and sighed. "This won't do," she said to Severus.
"No," he agreed. "Summon my wand, please?"
As soon as it was back in his grip, Snape aimed his wand at Violet Bonnefaux's, lifting it up and then rapidly chain-spelling a series of cleaning and vanishing charms through it. Within a matter of seconds, he'd erased almost all of the gore and scuff-marks and other indications that a conflict had taken place.
Tonks had chain-appropriated the dead wizard's wand. Pointing it at Miss Bonnefaux, she softly said, "Obliviate," thrust it into a pocket, and then cast a Stupefying charm using her own instrument.
As she did so, the werewolf transformed back into Lupin, dressed in black robes and a long, dark cloak. His face pale and drawn, he said, "Scene almost set?"
Tonks nodded. "'Uncle' and 'niece' have altercation over Draco. Uncle hexes niece and then turns into a rabid beast. Niece inflicts mortal blows in self-defence; uncle falls to his death."
Tonks levitated the hound's body and casually dropped it off the edge of the roof. Her voice was level as she continued, "Not really knowing what to do next, niece cleans up the mess. Acting upon a tip-off from Dr. Irene Longbottom -- a physician tending a sudden onset of delirium in Draco Malfoy -- Auror Nymphadora Tonks visits the Bonnefaux residence several hours later, upon which she discovers the uncle dead and the niece deranged --"
"Crouched among the rotting morsels of canine snacks and other detritus," Snape muttered, surveying the remaining debris with distaste.
"And so, it'll be to St. Mungo's with her," Lupin concluded. "And thus we close the case of the Bonnefaux and the Baskervilles." He kneeled next to Snape and systematically began to cast healing charms on the wounds the hound had inflicted.
Tonks said, "Neville won't like this at all. Will we have to memory charm the Longbottoms as well as Draco?"
Snape broke in. "If nothing else, he'll hold his peace for Lupin's sake."
Lupin shook his head. "He'll hold his peace to do right by Sir Conrad." Caressing Snape's clothing back into place, he stood back up and tucked his wand back into his sleeve. "Conventional justice had no interest in finding the murderer -- Neville won't have forgotten that."
"Especially --" Tonks's voice sounded choked. Snape followed her gaze to a niche in the chimney next to Violet Bonnefaux. Squinting through the gloom -- night had fallen as they were speaking -- he could make out the remains of a small animal, tufts of curly hair visible among fragments of bone.
"Poor Quibbler," Tonks said.
"Poor Neville." Lupin Transfigured a scrap of paper into a towel and then walked over to her, his face impassive as Tonks gingerly transferred what was left of the spaniel onto the makeshift shroud. When she had finished, he folded and knotted the fabric so that it securely enveloped the dog's remains.
"Thank you, Remus." Cradling the bundle in her arm, Tonks kissed him on the brow and then stepped toward Snape.
"I'll see you at the Hall?" she said. He nodded and gently thumbed a tear on her cheek. Embarrassed, she ducked into his palm, lightly brushing it with her lips before hastily Disapparating.
As the echo of her departure faded into the darkness, Snape turned back to Lupin. The lines on his lover's face were harsher than he'd ever seen them.
"You," Lupin said, "do not ever get to lecture me again about suicidal recklessness."
"You," Snape growled, "do not get to decree to what degree I love you."
"No. No, I don't," Lupin said at last. He stared into Snape's eyes, his gaze utterly and uncharacteristically naked. "This is a choice, then? Your choice? In spite of all this?"
In the entirety of his life, Snape had never felt this sure of himself -- had never before believed such a declaration was truly his to make. "Without 'all this,' I wouldn't have you. If there had never been a war . . . if you or I had never been ordered to kill . . . if we had been whole to start, what would have driven us to find each other's truth? Out of everything broken and blasted and betrayed -- out of all the lies we must carry to our graves -- somehow 'all this' has brought me to you, and I will not, cannot let you treat yourself as anything less than my home."
Lupin's voice was nearly inaudible. "Home. Is that what I am to you -- tatterdemalion soul and all?"
Snape held Lupin close -- held on for dear life -- pressing his lips against his lover's coarse grey hair. "Home," he answered, his voice clear and firm. "You are my hearth, and where I most belong."
Chapter 4
The following afternoon, bottles of mead and jars of honey safely stowed in the saddlebags of Tonks's motorcycle, Snape and Tonks sat facing upstream on an ancient clapper bridge, mounds of pinecones to either side of them. At the count of three, they each dropped a cone into the river. They then simultaneously twisted around to watch the cones bob and dance in the water as they "raced" each other; the two wizards had charmed each of their cones to explode into coloured sparks upon reaching the drop twenty feet from where they sat.
After watching a particularly impressive arc of hot pink sparks, Tonks lay down with a happy sigh, enjoying the autumn sunshine. The old granite slab was narrow enough that her head dangled off its downstream edge, her knees anchoring her to the upstream side.
Snape watched her with a small smile on his face; he was considerably more relaxed now that they were off the motorcycle. He reflected she should have looked incongruous where she lay, given her spiky hair, midriff-baring t-shirt, ripped-up jeans, and battered boots. She was practically a poster girl for streetwise, twenty-first-century London, and it amused him inordinately to see her looking so at home, lazily sprawled across the crude crossing medieval farmers had laboured to set into place centuries before.
As if in counterpoint to his thoughts, Tonks idly murmured, "One might imagine you were trying to blend in, Severus. Forest green and mud brown fireworks -- it doesn't get any more boring than that."
"What would you expect from a former spy?" Snape said lightly. "Rainbow-coloured pinwheels with aural cascades of tinkling bells?"
"Well," Tonks said, "the last time we played this, you went wild with the Slytherin green and silver."
"I will remind you that the last time we indulged ourselves like this, Lupin was with us, and he insisted on terrorising the pilchards with his garish reds and golds."
"Ah," Tonks said. "I never got all that attached to my House."
"Healthy of you," Snape observed. "Unlike, for instance, most of the Malfoys."
Tonks steepled her hands above her chest. "There's definitely something diseased among the lot of them. Not that the Blacks are known for staying hinged."
Snape lifted a cone from his pile and peered at it. "No, you are not. However, I would venture to say that your line has retained more of its vitality. The Malfoys have inter-bred themselves into frail and foppish shadows."
Tonks spread her hands to suggest the shape of large breasts. "Violet Bonnefaux looked solid enough to me."
Snape said abruptly, "If Violet Bonnefaux is merely who she appears to be, I'll eat my cloak."
Tonks raised her head up to look at him, frowning. "You, too? Her records were all in order -- transferred from Beauxbatons earlier this year -- but something about her. . ." She laughed uneasily. "Aside from her deplorable taste in boys, of course."
Snape flipped the cone he held up into the air, Transfiguring it into an apple as it descended back into his palm. "I think she was acting," he eventually said. "God knows your average schoolgirl is brainless --"
Tonks interrupted him. "It never fails to amaze me you lasted at Hogwarts as long as you did."
Snape stuck to his theme. "Even Hermione Granger -- book-smart, boy-stupid --"
"I'll be sure to convey your compliments to Ron next time I stop by his department."
"Do." Snape twirled the apple by its stem, and its colour changed from red to green.
Tonks rolled onto her side, propping herself up on an elbow. "Violet Bonnefaux. You think she's dangling herself at Draco as bait?"
Snape tossed the apple to her, which she caught without a blink. "Even if she is, that doesn't make it a crime. Once she's of age, I can't think of anyone still alive with adequate reason to object to such an alliance."
"Which doesn't mean there won't be unreasonable objections --"
"Starting with the excessively doting Uncle Tristan."
Tonks curled herself back up into a sitting position. She murmured Revertiro and squeezed the apple, upon which it resumed its original shape as a pinecone.
She handed it back to Snape and reached for one of her own. "On the count of three?"
"No more, no less, and five is right out."
"One . . . two . . . three!" They lobbed their cones into the water, and watched them travel downstream in silence. When it reached the drop, Tonks's cone shot up into the air and descended in a shower of cobalt blue sparks. A few seconds later, Snape's cone burst into a magnificent fountain of jet-coloured confetti.
Tonks tilted her head. "That's lovely, Severus. Weird, but lovely."
"I am loath to bore you, madam."
Tonks's smile held a tinge of bitterness. "If only it were all up to you. I've got the deadliest, dreariest heap of reports on my desk --"
"I graded your colleagues' equally uninspired essays for years," Snape said gravely. "Permit me to suggest you will likewise survive the ordeal."
In the tone of a mock threat, Tonks said, "Perhaps I should suggest you join my office as a reader."
Snape shook his head. "I have never acquired a taste for contemporary fiction."
Tonks let out a hoot of unhappy laughter. "Oh, Merlin, how I wish I didn't find that funny. Even the dossier for this case -- Remus had a right old field day ripping it to shreds --"
"I wish --" Snape began, then stopped, his face bleak.
Tonks looked at him in concern. "What do you wish?"
Snape picked up another pinecone. "I want to be back in London," he said. "The full moon rises eight days from now. Hudson does his best, but he's nowhere near capable of reining Lupin in. You know the blasted man will be working twenty-three hours out of each twenty-four if one of us isn't around to Stun or distract him."
"Hell and damn." Tonks pressed her palms against her knees, as if preventing herself from curling them into fists. "I'd thought he was doing better, but I take it that was you...? Perhaps I should pick up a flask of knock-out potion --"
"No!" Snape's lip curled. "I'd drink your melon sugar-water before I'd trust the cack in the shops."
"Maybe I'll just use that on Remus, then. Brain him with the bottle, if nothing else. The schedule I'm on, I may have to miss the shower anyway."
"And yet here you are, lolling away your Tuesday."
"A girl can't work ten days straight without a break."
"You did all the time, at the end of the War."
"The War is over. Not even Hermione Granger flogs herself that hard these days."
"But Lupin does. And Alastor Moody."
"You can't count Moody, he hasn't been sane in decades. That man is going to wake up dead some day and not even realise it."
"No, I don't count Moody," Snape said quietly. "The thought of losing Lupin, though, is one I do not want to bear."
Tonks bit her lip. Then she said, "Pinecone?"
"Pinecone," Snape answered. They counted to three, and hurled another pair of cones into the water.
After the pink and brown sparks dissolved into nothingness, Tonks reminded Snape, "Violet Bonnefaux was deeply upset by Conrad Baskerville's death, at least according to Minerva."
"That proves nothing," Snape said. "Lupin's half out of his mind after most of his kills."
"No, he's not," Tonks objected. "Half-addled from exhaustion, sure --"
"You heard his appalling nonsense Saturday night --"
"I've heard his bloody ramblings every assignment, Severus. He knew what he was agreeing to when the Ministry set this up, as did I. We half-breed commoners can't afford to be fastidious about our souls."
Snape swallowed the bile that rose at her jibe. It was nothing more than he deserved, after all. Instead, he said, "Tristan Bonnefaux strikes me as the fastidious type."
Tonks gazed into the distance, thoughtful. "The rabbit-faced ones often have the sharpest and pointiest teeth."
Snape impatiently spun a cone into the water without waiting for her. "And still waters run deep, and watched pots don't boil, and horses can be led but you cannot make them drink --"
Tonks ignored his mockery, watching the cone ripple out into a ring of shimmering orange starbursts. "They make so much more noise than you would expect, given their size." She picked up one of her own cones and flung it into the air instead of the water; it cascaded down as a firefall of turquoise sparks. "I wonder... are the Bonnefaux more than they seem, or less? Is she really a schoolgirl, or just playing one?"
"Playing..." Severus echoed -- and then sat straight up. "Tonks. Oh, Salazar, it's straight out of a Victorian melodrama." Snape leapt to his feet and strode toward the motorbike.
"What -- what? Severus, what the hell --?"
"His wife, Tonks. Or paramour -- I will bet you Galleons to Knuts that the woman we know as the niece isn't a niece at all, and that's why Tristan Bonnefaux graced us with his tantrum yesterday."
"She could be the wife and the niece," Tonks cynically pointed out. "Pureblood interbreeding at its finest --"
"She looked far too healthy. That is what wasn't sitting right with me -- there isn't any hint of Malfoy in her features whatsoever. Her 'uncle', however --"
Tonks swung her leg over the bike and started the engine. "A vorpal rabbit, you think?"
Snape slid onto the pillion seat and tightly gripped the bars on its sides. "Rabid, at least, to judge from last night. But this is all theory without sufficient evidence. We need to get back to the Hall -- I need to owl Lupin now --"
"I'll have you there within minutes," Tonks said. As she opened the throttle and kicked the machine into gear, she commanded, "Hold on tight --"
"I already am!" Snape yelled at her back, but his words were lost within the crescendo of noise.
When they roared into the courtyard of Baskerville Hall, they found Neville and Irene Longbottom waiting in front of the entrance. As they disembarked from the bike, Neville said, "Wasn't Draco with you? We'd thought we were to meet him tonight for dinner, but no one answered the door --"
"Stupid brat likely forgot his staff isn't here to answer it," Snape muttered, undoing the wards with his wand. "You rang the knocker only once, I presume?" He hurried inside, with Tonks on his heels and the Longbottoms lagging slightly behind.
When he'd departed with Tonks in the morning, he'd left Draco ensconced in the library, diligently working through another chapter of the book McGonagall had loaned to him. When Snape entered the room, neither Draco nor the book was still there. Instead, he found a note:
Mr. Bonnefaux invited me to supper. Violet's visiting, overnight pass. Join us when you return? DM
Tonks had craned her head over his shoulder to read the message. Before he even finished crumpling the parchment in his hand, she snapped at Neville and Irene, "Stay. Here. No time to explain, but we're all too likely to need you. Neville, owl Remus. Severus?"
As he stepped into the curve of her outstretched arm, Snape said to Neville, "If Draco does show up before we get back, make that stick of yours useful and thrash him. No matter what he thinks, this isn't any excuse for forgetting you were to meet."
Tonks drew him against her, muttering, "The one good thing about that dossier -- at least I know where all the houses are. Here goes, love. Do try not to throw up on me." They Disapparated from the room, leaving the Longbottoms staring at the space from which they'd vanished.
As they landed on the flat roof of Tristan Bonnefaux's house, Snape concentrated on fighting off the violent nausea and dizziness that being Apparated side-along had brought on. Tonks and Lupin had quickly learned to resort to it only for emergencies; the potion that had put an end to his ability to Apparate on his own had also crippled his ability to tolerate being Apparated, and as he doubled over, gasping and retching, he briefly, desperately wished Tonks had taken the trouble to Stun him before leaving the Hall.
Once he looked up, however, Snape's attention was riveted to the sight of a petrified Draco Malfoy teetering close to the edge of the roof. A giant black hound crouched but a few feet away from him, poised to spring and its jaw dripping with an eerie froth. On Draco's left, Violet Bonnefaux shakily held the dog at bay with her wand, copper tendrils escaping from her chignon. Draco's wand lay on top of a blanket on which he and the Bonnefaux had apparently shared part of a meal; among the overturned teacups, the spilled cream, and the litter of sugar cubes, Snape also glimpsed a half-loaf of bread that bore the imprint of a heel, as well as scattered slices of apples, their flesh become an unappetising brown.
Tonks approached the tableau slowly, her wand in her hand. "Easy, Rover," she said to the hound. "God knows I know he's a prat, but what's he ever done to you?"
"Oh, Miss Tonks," Miss Bonnefaux breathed, "thank goodness you're here. I don't have much more --"
At that moment, as if sensing a dilution in her focus, the giant hound lunged toward Draco; Tonks simultaneously dove for him. The girl shrieked and shoved Draco away from the edge of the roof; as he helplessly fell forward, Tonks scooped him up and Disapparated with him as the hound barrelled into Violet.
Still panting from the residual effects of being Apparated there, Snape shook his wand loose from his sleeve and aimed it at the dog --
Only to have it expelled from his grasp by Miss Bonnefaux. She smoothly rose to her feet and smiled a most unpleasant smile at him, all semblance of shakiness suddenly absent from her demeanor.
"We meet again, Severus Snape, for the second and last time."
As she advanced toward him, the dog by her side, Snape answered, "I share the hope, madam, but why so confident?"
"You cannot Apparate. You now lack your wand. Your precious werewolf's whore isn't here to help you."
"True, true, and not quite true. She isn't here, but she isn't his whore."
Violet Bonnefaux laughed, a harsh and ugly sound incongruous with her beauty. "Semantics, Snape -- they aren't going to save you. I don't know who Tonks and Lupin slept with to get their way, but it's not important now. All that matters to me is removing you from mine."
"Your way, madam? How have I been in your way?"
"How have you not?" she spat. "You and your do-gooding, half-blood double-crossing ways. You're a traitor, Severus Snape, and you should have been done away with before I was born. The first Dark Lord was a fool to keep you around -- he must have had a weakness for you greasy-haired pets. Look at where that got him. A spell to the head and poof! no more milk for all the kitties, no more meat for the mangy little doggies.
"Uncle told me all about it, even before he agreed to be my uncle. You're a good uncle, aren't you?" she crooned to the hound. She flicked her wand at Snape, and he staggered under the fresh wave of pain that drenched him. "This is uncle's house, and you shouldn't be in it. Since you came here anyway, uncle can do what he wants with you. Uncle's not a fool, not at all, and he'll be the first of all the lords of the night when they reign. He was so, so close -- so ready, years ago -- but someone he'd been counting on conveniently failed to help him out, and he had to go hide among the rocks and the fishies." She sneered at Snape, "So many times you wormed yourself free using your precious school as your story. Tsk tsk tsk, Professor Snape -- teachers shouldn't ever make excuses..."
Her script's all scrambled, Snape thought, scanning for routes of escape even as they crowded him closer and closer to the edge of the roof. Malfoy or not, she's as mad as the rest of them.
Violet Bonnefaux continued to rant at him, her voice rising into a sing-song chant. "Once uncle does what he wants with you, I can do what I want with Draco. Such a pretty, pathetic puppet of a boy -- it's going to be grand, how much I'll get to play with him." The giant dog barked at this, to which she responded with an out-of-tune laugh. "Uncle doesn't like that, but uncle doesn't get his way all the time. Uncle wanted Baskerville Hall, but sweet old Uncle Conrad got it first. Uncle Conrad had better papers. It's all about the papers, you know, Mr. Snape. Papers and proofs, drawers and boots, shake out the spies and poison their roots. . ."
They were almost at the edge now. Two steps more and he'd have nowhere to go. He had nowhere to go now -- Violet stood to his left, ready to curse him, and the dog to the right -- why is it always, always a damned black dog? he mentally raged.
Snape took a deep breath and silently willed a message across the moor. Tonks, take care of Lupin . . . Without letting himself think any further, he launched himself at the hound.
As his hands closed on its fur, he was nearly overcome by the stench of its breath, and a searing pain shot through his arm where the Dark Mark had been etched. Ah, thought Snape, sold your soul to acquire this form, did you? The creature's claws ripped grooves into his flesh as it struggled to dominate him, and his hands grew slippery with the grime and drool that coated its pelt as he grappled with it. It was only a matter of time, he thought dimly, before they either reeled over the edge together, or his strength gave out and those jaws closed in on --
A heavy body crashed against them both, knocking the wind out of him and blurring his vision. He could hear the hound howl in frustration and then in agony, as if it were being torn apart alive. The rational part of his mind registered that all this had happened within the space of a few minutes, but the creature's terrible death-cries seemed to linger on and on.
He became conscious of Tonks's arm around his shoulder, a flask to his lips. "Drink," she ordered. "It's proper brandy, promise."
Snape obediently tilted his head back, allowing her to pour a thimbleful down his throat. The fiery restorative burned away the haze of shock that had descended upon his nerves.
Shrugging off Tonks's arm, he got to his feet, assessing the mess around them. A few feet away from him, the corpse of the hound lay in a pool of blood and fur. The gibbering form of Violet Bonnefaux cowered in a corner, flanked on one side by a chimney, and on the other by the werewolf that had killed her uncle. Her wand had rolled away from her, into one of the puddles of blood and spittle that spattered the surface of the roof.
Tonks looked at their captive and sighed. "This won't do," she said to Severus.
"No," he agreed. "Summon my wand, please?"
As soon as it was back in his grip, Snape aimed his wand at Violet Bonnefaux's, lifting it up and then rapidly chain-spelling a series of cleaning and vanishing charms through it. Within a matter of seconds, he'd erased almost all of the gore and scuff-marks and other indications that a conflict had taken place.
Tonks had chain-appropriated the dead wizard's wand. Pointing it at Miss Bonnefaux, she softly said, "Obliviate," thrust it into a pocket, and then cast a Stupefying charm using her own instrument.
As she did so, the werewolf transformed back into Lupin, dressed in black robes and a long, dark cloak. His face pale and drawn, he said, "Scene almost set?"
Tonks nodded. "'Uncle' and 'niece' have altercation over Draco. Uncle hexes niece and then turns into a rabid beast. Niece inflicts mortal blows in self-defence; uncle falls to his death."
Tonks levitated the hound's body and casually dropped it off the edge of the roof. Her voice was level as she continued, "Not really knowing what to do next, niece cleans up the mess. Acting upon a tip-off from Dr. Irene Longbottom -- a physician tending a sudden onset of delirium in Draco Malfoy -- Auror Nymphadora Tonks visits the Bonnefaux residence several hours later, upon which she discovers the uncle dead and the niece deranged --"
"Crouched among the rotting morsels of canine snacks and other detritus," Snape muttered, surveying the remaining debris with distaste.
"And so, it'll be to St. Mungo's with her," Lupin concluded. "And thus we close the case of the Bonnefaux and the Baskervilles." He kneeled next to Snape and systematically began to cast healing charms on the wounds the hound had inflicted.
Tonks said, "Neville won't like this at all. Will we have to memory charm the Longbottoms as well as Draco?"
Snape broke in. "If nothing else, he'll hold his peace for Lupin's sake."
Lupin shook his head. "He'll hold his peace to do right by Sir Conrad." Caressing Snape's clothing back into place, he stood back up and tucked his wand back into his sleeve. "Conventional justice had no interest in finding the murderer -- Neville won't have forgotten that."
"Especially --" Tonks's voice sounded choked. Snape followed her gaze to a niche in the chimney next to Violet Bonnefaux. Squinting through the gloom -- night had fallen as they were speaking -- he could make out the remains of a small animal, tufts of curly hair visible among fragments of bone.
"Poor Quibbler," Tonks said.
"Poor Neville." Lupin Transfigured a scrap of paper into a towel and then walked over to her, his face impassive as Tonks gingerly transferred what was left of the spaniel onto the makeshift shroud. When she had finished, he folded and knotted the fabric so that it securely enveloped the dog's remains.
"Thank you, Remus." Cradling the bundle in her arm, Tonks kissed him on the brow and then stepped toward Snape.
"I'll see you at the Hall?" she said. He nodded and gently thumbed a tear on her cheek. Embarrassed, she ducked into his palm, lightly brushing it with her lips before hastily Disapparating.
As the echo of her departure faded into the darkness, Snape turned back to Lupin. The lines on his lover's face were harsher than he'd ever seen them.
"You," Lupin said, "do not ever get to lecture me again about suicidal recklessness."
"You," Snape growled, "do not get to decree to what degree I love you."
"No. No, I don't," Lupin said at last. He stared into Snape's eyes, his gaze utterly and uncharacteristically naked. "This is a choice, then? Your choice? In spite of all this?"
In the entirety of his life, Snape had never felt this sure of himself -- had never before believed such a declaration was truly his to make. "Without 'all this,' I wouldn't have you. If there had never been a war . . . if you or I had never been ordered to kill . . . if we had been whole to start, what would have driven us to find each other's truth? Out of everything broken and blasted and betrayed -- out of all the lies we must carry to our graves -- somehow 'all this' has brought me to you, and I will not, cannot let you treat yourself as anything less than my home."
Lupin's voice was nearly inaudible. "Home. Is that what I am to you -- tatterdemalion soul and all?"
Snape held Lupin close -- held on for dear life -- pressing his lips against his lover's coarse grey hair. "Home," he answered, his voice clear and firm. "You are my hearth, and where I most belong."