Be Careful
87: What You Agree To
By Anne B. Walsh
"You got me drunk."
Tonks looked up at her husband. "Happy Easter to you too."
"No day is happy that starts with a hangover." Remus had his eyes nearly shut, and he was leaning his head against the doorframe. "Why did I listen to you about that party?"
"Because everybody needed it and you know it." Tonks levitated a cup half-filled with a dark liquid towards Remus. "Drink that. Mum made it up for you last night."
Remus took a cautious sniff of the contents of the cup and wrinkled his nose in distaste, but downed it in one gulp. "Not as bad as Wolfsbane," he said, setting the empty cup aside. "And—ah, yes." The furrows smoothed out of his forehead, and he came into the room to sit down beside Tonks. "I assume there’s enough for Harry and Ron as well, whenever they get up. None of the girls had enough to affect them too badly."
"Two more doses waiting in the kitchen." Tonks leaned over for her good-morning kiss. "How much do you remember?"
"Enough to be sure none of them will ever take me seriously again." Remus shook his head, though he was smiling. "I didn’t know I knew that many horrible jokes. ‘What’s the difference between a butterbeer cap and my lovely wife’ indeed."
Tonks wiggled her eyebrows at him. "Do you think I want you to do that?"
"Judging by a few of the things you were saying while Teddy was being born..." Remus ducked as Tonks made a fist. "I’ll take that as a no, then, shall I?"
"You shall. I thought the songs were the best bit, myself. Especially the one about that special ball." Tonks treated him to a wicked grin. "If we ever decide to have a big ceremony, a vow renewal or whatever, that’s the kind of reception I want."
Remus stared at her aghast for one second, then groaned as she laughed. "Molly is going to kill me, you realize," he said. "Ron’s one thing, he was already corrupted, but her only daughter..."
Tonks flexed her fingers, running through her hand warm-ups. "I would say everyone who was here has a vested interest in Molly never finding out about it."
"Which means she’ll know within a month," Remus returned. "Or doesn’t Andromeda have those senses as well tuned anymore?"
"Good point. Still, if we can get to a point where Molly Weasley is the worst thing we’re worried about, we’ll be doing well." Sharpening her ears for a moment, Tonks heard only the regular breathing of sleep from the other occupants of the house, and decided it might be a good time to broach a subject she’d been avoiding until after she was no longer pregnant. "Speaking of things to worry about, didn’t Harry want your help getting into Hogwarts?"
"If I’m any indication, he’s unlikely to be in shape to work on that today, and I think he needs another day or two of rest in any case before he’ll be back to full strength. There’s no rush, since he’s said he won’t leave without Hermione." Remus looked sidelong at her. "Is there a reason you ask?"
"Well... yes." Tonks drew her wand and summoned the papers she’d received at Christmas from the desk in her bedroom. "Remus, love, I need you to look at these and think about them, really think, not just react. Mum’s checked it already and she says the theory’s sound, and I ran all the spells past Bill to have him look for trapdoors or hidden tricks but there weren’t any..."
"Anything with that dramatic a lead-in makes me suspicious," said Remus, accepting the papers. "What is this? Or perhaps I should ask, what is this supposed to be?"
"Just read it? Please?"
Remus unfolded the papers and began to scan them. Tonks turned away, giving him what privacy she could, and began to grow and ungrow her fingernails out of sheer nerves.
Don’t reject this because I have to be involved, she willed him. Don’t pretend you don’t want it or it would be better for us not to do it. Don’t say you can’t take advantage of me that way. Just don’t.
Because if you do, I will scream.
"What is that?" said Hermione, peering out the door of the girls’ bedroom towards the stairs. "It sounds like someone screaming. I hope nothing’s wrong..."
"Frustration." Ginny pushed the door shut with a foot. "None of our concern."
Hermione and Luna both looked at her. She returned the look blandly. "In a house with Fred and George, you learn the difference," she said. "It sounded like Tonks. I wonder what it’s about?"
"She’s probably showed Professor Lupin those spells I sent her." Luna folded a clean diaper neatly into thirds and laid it on the pile. "And he’s worried about them, or afraid of them, which I wish he wouldn’t be. They could help him so much."
Behind Luna’s back, Hermione and Ginny held a brief, intense staring contest. Hermione lost. "What spells?" she asked. "And why would Remus be afraid of them?"
"Because some part of him believes he deserves to be a werewolf." Luna neatened her stack of diapers, then started a new one beside it on the bed. "So anything that could help him also frightens him, because he’s afraid that life will punish him for trying to get anything better than he has."
"And these spells would help him somehow?" Ginny asked.
"Oh, yes." Turning to face her friends, Luna sat down on the bed beside the white cloth heap. "They have a wonderful story to them—it starts out scary, but most good stories do..."
Hermione listened in fascination. She knew how badly werewolves were thought of in the wizarding world, but she hadn’t realized that they had once been classed under wizard law as animals, and dangerous animals at that. It had been legal, then, to chase them away from your home with anything up to and including deadly force. It had been legal to put out poison for them or trap them and leave them to die.
And it had been legal to own them.
Legal, but very dangerous, as Luna explained earnestly. "Because everyone knew that they still had human minds when they weren’t transformed, even though they didn’t want to say so out loud," she said, twirling a diaper by one corner for emphasis. "So people came up with spells and artifacts to keep them from fighting back or running away. And one of those spells worked especially well."
The problem with a continually working spell, Hermione recalled from her N.E.W.T. preparation, was its power source. A simple charm or transfiguration happened once and was finished, so it never needed more power than the caster gave it at the beginning. But a spell like Luna was describing, which would keep a werewolf—a human being in all but name, and furious at being enslaved—under control and "safe" to be around, would need recharging constantly, and if the caster forgot to do it even once...
"They made the power source the werewolves’ own feelings." Luna pleated the diaper between her fingers. "Their anger, their bitterness, their hatred for the people who were doing this to them. So the only way the spell could ever wear off, they thought, was if the werewolves learned to love their masters."
"And then, what need for the spell?" Ginny shivered. "That’s horrible."
"It is." Ripples of white wove around Luna’s fingers. "The spell wasn’t just ‘don’t hurt me,’ either. It was all about control. The master could speak within the werewolf’s mind, give commands that had to be obeyed, or even use the werewolf’s body like his own. It took a lot of concentration, because the werewolves knew it was happening and would fight back, but the spell made sure they always lost in the end."
"What about full moons?" Hermione asked. "What happened then?"
"Something they weren’t expecting." Luna pulled the diaper free with a flourish. "The masters were expecting to be able to control the wolf’s mind more easily than they could control the human’s. But when they controlled the wolf’s mind... that meant the human’s mind could come back. It wasn’t pushed out like it would be in an uncontrolled transformation. And the master had to fight both the wolf and the human, and some masters couldn’t do that. So they died."
"What about the rest?" Ginny had her arms around her knees and was rocking back and forth in concentration. "There has to be some reason the spell went out of use. Other than it being disgustingly wrong."
Luna smiled. "The masters forgot that the opposite of hate isn’t love," she said. "The opposite of hate is not caring. The werewolves didn’t have to love their masters to make the spell stop working—they just had to learn to be calm and indifferent for long enough that the spell would lose power. Then they could care again. And they did." Her eyes were bleak for a moment, as though she knew too much about how the werewolves had cared. "They cared a lot."
"So would I," said Hermione, thinking of the terror and anger she hadn’t been able to suppress at Malfoy Manor, despite the nearly silent voice whispering comfort to her.
Even knowing it wouldn’t happen, I still hated every second of what Draco was telling me. How would I feel if he’d meant it, and went through with it?
"Call me little miss silly if you want to," said Ginny, "but I don’t see what any of this has to do with Tonks and Professor Lupin. They’re not about to use that kind of a spell, are they?"
"That kind of a spell, yes." Luna held up her hand as Ginny reddened. "It’s been changed. It isn’t Dark anymore."
Hermione stared at her friend. "Not Dark? How?"
"Simple." Luna draped the diaper over her hand, then pulled it away like a Muggle magician doing a conjuring trick. "Change the power source."
"The power source?" Ginny sucked air through her teeth, thinking. "Hate is a bad idea, I can see that, but what would you use—oh!" It was an explosion of sound. "Never mind me, I’m so stupid, of course!"
"The thing that isn’t really the opposite of hate," said Hermione with a smile as it came to her. "You’d power it with love. But it’s still a spell of control, and I can’t see Remus liking that, even if it would mean he could have his human mind on full moons. Wolfsbane does that, without someone else having to be in charge of you."
"There’s the second way it’s different." Luna’s hand went around one corner of the diaper. "The original spell was all one way. A master and a slave." She snapped the diaper, making a sound like a whip. "This spell is really two spells—the same spell twice." Her other hand came up and grasped the diaper’s other corner, and she pulled it taut. "Two people, casting it on each other."
"Which would make them both the masters of each other," Ginny said, doodling in the air with a finger. "I could see how that could turn bad if they had a fight, but I suppose if you did the spell right the powers would just cancel out in normal times..."
Luna nodded. "The ‘control’ bits have things added that mean ‘not without permission except in emergencies,’" she said. "And just a fight isn’t an emergency. A transformation is, but the same thing happens there that did with the original spell."
"The person who isn’t a werewolf can control the wolf’s mind." Hermione had to resist the urge to touch her face, to see if she could tell how big her smile had grown. "And then the werewolf’s human mind can come back. Which means he isn’t dangerous, just like he’d taken Wolfsbane." She stopped, frowning. "Where has Remus been getting his, anyway? I know Snape made it when he was a teacher..."
"Andromeda makes it now," said Luna, standing up and turning back to her work. "She said if she has to have a werewolf in her house, she wants to know what he’s getting into."
"Her daughter?" Ginny suggested with a sly grin.
Hermione groaned. "He’s infecting you," she said as Luna giggled. "Dirty, dirty minds."
"You’ve met my brothers. Why would you think I’d have anything else?"
"Good point."
"Let’s go over this one more time." Tonks ticked off points on her fingers. "The spells would link us together, but both of us would be able to keep the other one out of private thoughts and memories. The only things we’d share would be the ones we decided to share, just like talking aloud."
"Except for this bit about emotional outbursts," Remus objected. "I don’t like the sound of that."
"It’s no different than blurting something out by accident."
Remus shot her a quick look. "Like ‘I’ve told you a million times I don’t care,’ perhaps?"
"Yes. Exactly like that." Tonks glared at him. "Are you going to claim you’re sorry I said it?"
"Would I dare?" Remus ran a finger down the neatly printed paragraphs. "Spells are continually powered by the affection and love of the two people involved..." he murmured.
"What about that one? Going to say you don’t think you’ll love me next month, or next year?"
"My, you are fond of putting words in my mouth today," Remus said mildly, still reading. "Controlling aspect of spells goes into effect when the human mind of the lycanthrope is overtaken at full moon... with the wolf mind controlled, the human mind can reemerge..."
He set the papers aside and looked Tonks straight in the eye. "Are you truly sure you want to do this?" he asked, his voice hesitant but his gaze unwavering. "A marriage is one thing, even a child, but this is a bond that doesn’t look as though it can ever be reversed..."
"It’s powered by love," Tonks pointed out. "If I ever stop loving you, it stops working." She leaned forward and hooked an arm behind his neck, pulling him close enough that she could demonstrate the extent of her current feelings. "Which means," she whispered when she was done, "that it ought to last damn near forever at this rate."
Remus sighed. "I don’t deserve you—" he began.
Tonks slapped him on the back of the head.
"Ouch." Remus returned her earlier favor, giving the detailed attention to kissing that he did to everything else in life and making her entire body tingle in anticipation of her full recovery from Teddy’s birth.
"But since you seem determined to save me in spite of myself," he murmured against her lips a few moments later, "what can I say except thank you, and yes?"
Tonks later estimated that neither of them breathed for over a minute.
Tonks in true Tonks-mode isn’t all that different from Danger. Tonks as Dora the mousy-haired wonder, on the other hand... no, bad fanfic author, no ripping canon in author’s notes. Just write better in your own stories! How’m I doing at that? Let me know, and hang in there because the main final action is set to start real soon now! Hope you’ve enjoyed the ride, but it isn’t over yet, so hold on tight!