FIC: From the Oblivion

[paulamcg]

hp_creatures is posting the Halloween Fest works non-anonymously, and I'm happy to let you know that my hag fic has been posted.

Title: From the Oblivion
Author: paulamcg
Pairings: Gen, but also Nymphadora Tonks & Sirius Black, Nymphadora Tonks & Remus Lupin, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks/Amelia Bones, Nymphadora Tonks & Tiberius Ogden, Nymphadora Tonks/OC
Creature character: A hag
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): Coercion (temporary prevention of breathing, heartbeat and movement), Canonical character deaths
Word Count: 3900
Summary: In July 1996 Tonks is coerced into reliving moments shared with Sirius, Lupin, and Amelia Bones.
Notes: This was written for HP Creatures Halloween Fest. My self-prompt was: A hag minds her own business, which is worthless at best, right? Thank you, our amazing mod digthewriter, for running this fabulous fest, too! Thank you, liseuse, for the beta, once again! Thank you, anyone who reads this story! I'd love to hear how you like it.

Read here on AO3.

(Edited to include the story text and the end notes after the fest has finished posting.)
Or read right here



From the Oblivion



She wants to keep staring at the golden, lacy border. But once again she can't resist pressing her palms and her nose – her snub nose, which she is just learning to turn flatter or perkier according to her wishes, since she's still small, as she always is in this dream.... To press her bare skin under the border, on the thick layer of frost.

It's so cold in this attic room that she should have followed the advice to keep her pretty fur-lined hood and her mittens on. But is the windowpane really made of ice and snow? She's been brought to meet her new teacher – and he's a prisoner in a tower of ice.

The two adult men, sitting close to each other on the ugly mattress, bicker like little boys. She's six years and six months, and knows better. And now that Uncle's brilliant voiceless spell has made the gift they've brought to the teacher grow to its full size on the men's laps, she jumps down from the windowsill and pushes the joined hands aside so as to reveal another surprise of gold.

She knows how to read. Professor R. J. ... But the golden letters on the leather briefcase shift and spell out: To Werewolf from Traitor.

As a suffocating weight presses on her lungs, Tonks tries to wake up.

"Dream on! Remember!" a husky voice whispers in her ear.

"There are monsters... in your family," Dad says when he's steering the car towards home, and he assumes that she's asleep on the backseat, exhausted after the day on the beach, but the low sun is in her eyes.

Mum's family – that's theirs. No, she is nine and understands. She knows all about the war and the monsters who eat death, but has to wonder why exactly eating death is a bad thing, and if swimming this Christmas, too, wouldn't be better than getting back to the old home and winter.

Anyway, Dad must mean Mum's first family. Mum's sister. And cousin. No, not Uncle Pads. No!

Yes, now he is a prisoner in a tower colder than ice. Mum and Dad are arguing, and Mum's irritable when nothing's arranged neatly in the trunk, and every pair of socks keeps folding and unfolding itself, as if she'd forgotten if she's packing or unpacking, and what is home. But they agree that sucking out all happy memories is not a humane way to treat anyone. Do they mean treating humans? The monsters are crazy. Are they...

"We're not." Now the words are being whispered right into her gaping mouth. "We wander by the water’s edge – in the margin."

Tonks manages to turn her head aside and crack her eyes open. There are blades of grass in front of her face. A stretch of sparse brush. And beyond, the line of the river, dark in cold light of dawn.

Of course. She's fallen asleep on the shore where she walked with Prospero after leaving the pub.

Two years after qualifying as an Auror, and a year after joining the Order, she's not too cautious about mixing work and private life. She must admit to herself that she hoped to see this relative of a goblin banker right where they had first met. Of course, she would not discuss the confidential negotiations between the Order and the owners of the banks and the mines. But then she found herself unable to talk about herself, either, when Prospero asked her how she'd recovered after the Battle of the Department of Mysteries.

They agreed to part, and he was gone in a flash of a flame. But she knew she was too drunk to Apparate home, and she lay herself down by the side of the path to stare at the dim summer stars.

Her limbs are too heavy to lift. As if she were pinned down by an unlikely, comforting warmth that entices her to rest a while longer.

But now she's shivering. There's the face of the fugitive glaring at her from the front page of the Prophet. An escaped convict, the Muggle news calls him.

No, he is never convicted, never gets a trial, and Mum cries with her when packing and unpacking. Her Sirius, their brightest star, would never have turned dark if they hadn't left him, seeking safety on the other side of the globe.

In this moving picture there's the glare of the star and of his anger.

Is he the same handsome, charming man whom she's proud to show to her playmates, and whom Ruby Skeeter, almost eleven, calls dazzling, or dishy? Is he the jolly uncle who squeezes her mittened hand and conspires with her to take his friend, the teacher – whose hand he can hardly resist holding, instead – out for a big pub lunch? She mourns that man like a fairy-tale figure lost beyond the border of childhood.

She's put away childish things, and she doesn't want them back now that she's got only one more year of training left. Downing her drink, she exchanges flirting smiles with Tiberius Ogden, this fascinating wise elder with a deeper historical perspective on the promotion of peace, and changes the colour of her eyes to violet, his favourite. He'll admire her vigour and boldness even more when she's a catcher of dark wizards.

And this is one of them. His once glossy hair – provocative, Dad's voice says with mirth – is now definitely too long, down to his elbows, and matted, filthy. His skin shines white... yes, a whiter shade of pale, and he's more gaunt than that friend back when... He must pretend to care while he's preparing himself for betraying them, all his friends.

Here he's just done it. She's looked away from the Prophet, wished to focus on Tiberius's endearingly greyed head, but sees, instead, the treacherous man twelve years ago. He's ready to launch himself at her from the wanted poster on the pub wall. His friends and a dozen outsiders have just died because of his betrayal, and he laughs, still gorgeous, but mad? Now, resurrected from the oblivion where the growing girl condemned him, at the latest now he's crazy, with a mind devoured by other monsters.

Tonks struggles to wrench herself free from what must be a dream. She surely doesn't dwell on the memory of hating Sirius when he's been wronged and damaged so.

"Unlike Dementors, we serve your mind." There's the sharp feel of a skeletal hand on her face: the heel of a palm resting on her jawline, the fingertips stroking her temple. "Hush," the hoarse voice goes on as she's about to scream, "and see!"

She's stumbled, and knocked something over. A thick severed leg rolls across the gloomy hall, umbrellas spill out of it with a clatter, and here comes the horrendous scream, which she's been told not to provoke. "You filth! Freak! Mongrel! Blood traitor's bastard..." It penetrates her head but doesn't hurt her. Instead...

The host has started to descend from the landing to meet her. Now a glow of blue flames on the other man's palm reveals a huge dog that's turning to scramble back up and skidding on the floor, with its tail between its legs.

Here they are. There's a fine bed with a canopy in this room, but the two men are sitting side by side on the floor. Sirius is clean and groomed now, his hair merely shoulder-length, less thick, too, and is there even a bald spot? He's shaking, but he shoves his friend's hand away from over his chest before opening his eyes to see that she's followed them.

A ghost of her charming uncle's grin emerges when she's spoken. "Glad to see... what? What I've become, or rather what's left of me?"

Remus Lupin, with a shoulder against his, has fished out a fag, but not his wand or a Muggle lighter. After placing the fag between his lips, Lupin lights up by sticking the other end above the nail of his bent thumb in the shelter of the other fingers.

When Sirius accepts the fag, their hands touch in front of his mouth, and after a couple of drags he gets up. "There's another curiosity to see in my mother's bedroom. Britain's most wanted and handsome Hippogriff."

"I don't think he remembers me." Dark curls spread over the short arms she's crossed on the table as she lowers her head, disappointed.

Other participants of the Order meeting chuckle when leaving the kitchen. They exchange amused and admiring remarks on the metamorphosis they've just witnessed. But while Sirius is striding towards the pantry, perhaps for another bottle, she feels still shaken by his indifferent glance and by the muttered "Sure, you can make yourself look like any brat. You must be highly useful!" and even a hissed "Show-off!"

"The reason must be..." And Remus Lupin must be the reasonable one. He's started charming the plates to pile up by the sink, but now he sits down opposite to her with the same wistful smile which was evoked immediately by the form of seven-year-old Nymph – no, Miss Tonks, as she started to insist back then. "You gave him only happy memories."

As he looks towards the pantry, she takes back her adult shape. And she's distracted into wondering whether this body can appeal to him as it does to Tiberius, while she's started to doubt that she is into men only, if at all.

"Those were happy times," he continues, hardly reacting to the change, when turning his gaze to her, although she keeps adjusting the shades of her hair and eyes. "I used to think life was hard. That cold winter when he brought you with him... It wasn't, compared with... That's why he still doesn't remember much about me either. He'll get better."

"I guess I just have to start from a scratch. Making friends, I mean. And he's so... mean." She tries to smile at the way she ended up using that word.

"He hates feeling useless. Perhaps talk about something else than your Order missions or Auror work."

"Music. I remember he used to like Muggle music, some of the same bands as Mum." Yes, she is resourceful. "Punk, yes!"

"You're right. He tried his best to learn to sing." Lupin's grinning, but he becomes thoughtful again. "Better start with new songs, not anything he's supposed to remember."

"But we can't make any electric devices work in this house, and he's stuck here."

"And this house is most harmful for his recovery," he says, closing his eyes, and making her realise that she's not the one with a serious problem.

Someone's pinched her cheek. "Perhaps I should let you wake up and go." There's a playful tone in the low whisper. "We bring the nightmares that are needed. And these dreams of yours can barely be called that. My mistake."

The weight on Tonks's chest is lifted, and she draws in air saturated with a cloying scent of flowers. No, a more pungent odour... mildew? The creature on top of her continues to lean so close that she can feel hot breath on her face. She's almost sure she'd be able to open her eyes, but she hesitates and considers her chances for taking the creature unawares and escaping. There's a pressure still on either side of her waist, perhaps knees placed on the ground. One of her wrists is released from a vice-like grip, and a hard, cold finger brushes across her lids.

"Better look at each other more closely." A wry chuckle sounds from a bit further up than the earlier whispers, however. "I've assumed that anyone sleeping rough has worse memories and fears to face."

Yes, Tonks wants to have a proper look at her capturer, who can't be an enemy she must run away from. She manages to lift her head a bit.

The first surprise is the amount of colour that has emerged since the previous time she glimpsed the early-morning landscape. A veil of moss green in front of her reaches down to her chest. It's... long matted hair that obviously hides a human-like face, as the tip of a sharp bluish nose is poking through, but this mane is parted only lower – to reveal a ragged garment and through it the shape of heavy, hanging breasts.

Can this be a hag? Why would a hag bother to talk to and touch her like this? It's common knowledge that a hag minds her own business, which is worthless at best. Hunting carcasses to devour – and some wizards say, even corpses to copulate with – the hags can neither harm nor benefit wizards and witches, and they stalk human children only in old tales.

"Your torn clothes, too, misled me." Something sharp scrapes Tonks's thigh. Fingernails. The hag must have stretched her arm back and reached the bare skin exposed by the purposefully ripped jeans. "Hardly fancier than ours. Can that be a crazy Muggle fashion choice, favoured by some wealthy witches? You've got a fine unique wand, no one-size-fits-all stick, the kind sometimes used by those we usually serve. You've been fortunate and virtuous. I've made a mistake, I'm afraid, but let's go on and try again. Have you ever hurt anyone – or neglected anyone – who loved you, then lost... her?"

The hag lowers her head. Through the tangles of hair that now cover Tonks's face, she feels a mouth pressing tight over hers, and she's choking. Her presence is extinguished and...

Here's another current reality, hardly more suffocated by her reluctance to remember. She's forced to stand still, on the lookout for those who'll appear at the other end of the street, and then to flail her arms and to pretend to have kept walking.

Now Lupin's spotted her from beyond the telephone booth that hides the entrance to the Ministry. "What a coincidence!"

And she knows it isn't. He's set up this meeting, eager to introduce her to an old friend, whom he claims she shares a lot in common with.

So many surprises. He's got a friend who's had a great career. And the head of the law enforcement department belongs to his generation. Indeed, Amelia Bones doesn't look as old as Tonks has thought when seeing her – with the stern expression and the monocle – at the Ministry. Not that an even higher age would make her less fascinating.

The intensity with which Amelia looks at her and says she's always recognised her despite the changes in her appearance, whereas she's only now realised whose daughter she is... This makes Tonks stare back at her and find her alluring – with the violet shade in her cropped hair and the way she starts babbling about her vinyl record collection and night clubs. And it becomes clear enough that it's their insight into the gay scene they want to share.

Now she's staring at another long letter she seems to never find the time for reading. The exact shape of the words keep eluding her. But she senses they are full of affection so ferocious that it contrasts with the way Amelia closed her lips in a smile against Tonks's desirous mouth, as if one shared breath and their fingers touching were all that two women in love wanted.

On this rainy evening she's come to give Mel another chance. Now staring pointedly into her eyes, now asking her to close hers and not to think, now outright flopping over her on the couch, finally by wriggling her fingers under the neckline, she tries her best. But Mel evades her – and when finally in bed, turns her back and merely cuddles against her for the night with a contented sigh.

They've both seen it doesn't work. At last she's taken the time to say it to Amelia across a pub table instead of writing, and now she's forced to see the despair on this broad, graceless, mature face. It's strenuous enough that she can't end the close friendship with Tiberius, who keeps owling her daily. Perhaps she's not really into men, or into women either, but into some other...

It's hard to have any patience to explain. She can barely wait to Apparate to the snow-covered alley beyond Knockturn and, sneaking through the door illuminated by blue flames, to enter the pub frequented by interbred creatures. Enchanted by a particular slender figure, and by the half-goblin's wide mouth flashing a radiant smile on the dark, mysterious face...

"The rest of my life!" Amelia exclaims, weeping.

And Amelia is right. For the rest of her life – through that winter and that spring of war – the middle-aged woman, living alone with her cat, must be ever lonelier, mourning a failed relationship. That life's over in not much more than six months.

Tonks is able to think about this when lying in the hospital bed with the Prophet spread on her blanket. Not to feel for her. Not to mourn her.

There are other issues involved that worry and enrage her. The explosion that killed her is blamed on the goblins, and the Ministry's legalised the use of the Unforgivable Curses on them. Is she still supposed to continue the work she's been doing since last year – although until recently only for the Order – or rather to start it from the beginning: trying to gain the goblins' trust and allegiance? This stresses her so – as school and training and work have often done while she's tried to hide her nerves behind reckless behaviour – that she sleeps less the more tired she is, and keeps waking up.

And she is more tired again after she insisted on leaving St Mungo's and forced herself to seem recovered when meeting Harry and his friends at King's Cross. She's brought back a few days later, and the healers say someone found her at the foot of some stairs where she must have stumbled and hit her head on a troll's leg. No Order member who visits her admits having helped her. It must have been Lupin, but he's gone now, and nobody knows where – except perhaps Dumbledore, who won't reveal even whether he does or not.

Yes, she keeps waking up in this bed at St Mungo's, while she hopes to wake up on the riverside, touched by the hard fingers and something akin to promises of caring – of managing to care for others.

Lupin, too, must have mustered up his remaining strength in order to talk to Harry at the station. He's not talked to her or anyone else.

She's tried to forget she saw him, either, ever again after facing her monster of an aunt in the Death Chamber, after hurting her and being hurt, and losing the sight of the scene, tumbling down in darkness. It's more soothing to imagine that the two men are both gone – back beyond the border, together.

No, each of them is lost, alone, again. Did they ever have each other back, ever any shared life?

There's an ice-cold hand on Tonks's chest under her clothes now. Is this the service: yanking her back – or forward – to lie on the weeds by the river? No, the dreams must have been it. Anyway, is the hag going to caress her breasts? No, the sharp fingers have taken an uncompromising grip of her heart.

"Our service is to help you relive the worst – and the best together with it." The hag's voice, familiar by now, has turned solemn. "After facing their memories, and after feeling the loss of their breath and bloodflow, the most miserable, damaged creatures will cherish any life that still goes on."

A moment of silence in her body, of an emptiness, and of her absence from the scene urges Tonks to scan the landscape as her last view of the world. She succeeds in looking aside and seeing the glint of the stream through shades of green in vegetation as well as in the hair still falling over her eyes.

Now the hag lifts her head, but perhaps the emerging sun is behind it, as the face remains in shade. Tonks can rather hear in the voice than see the smile.

"Oops, I've just made another mistake – let you know too early that this is not your end. I can as well give your heartbeat back to you now."

And the hag's offering it together with her own. Tonks can feel first the rhythm of the hag's heart, and then hers joining it. She's fully alive... And fully awake, which means that this is not a dream but a memory she welcomes with tears finally in her eyes.

At the end of the only night when she shares a bed with Mel, she tries to finally get some snogging started. And Mel just lays her head against the unicorn on the t-shirt lent to her guest, and soon rolls out of bed.

Not only this frustrating moment is clear. Here's also the line in a love letter not read with enough love: the beautiful shape of the words in which Mel describes her joy.

With your heartbeat against my ear, I sensed it pulse right through me, join mine, and I felt as if my heart had never been beating before.

Tonks's arms are free now for her to wrap them around the hag. "Thank you!"

If only she'd known how to love those who are gone now! Now she wishes this for their sakes more than hers. It's still only a useless wish, but at least she admits her failure. And perhaps this can help her do better with others.

The hag's rolling to lie on her side next to Tonks while they're still in a tight embrace. "You're as ready to continue your work and your relationships as I can help you become. One more thing. It's ever more important to strive for good relations with the goblins, and you'd better include others besides the richest. Now let's get up!"

Having been pulled to her feet by the hag, Tonks enjoys leaning against her soil-scented warmth for a moment more.

"And let me introduce myself," the hag says, jerking her head so as to flick some of the hair aside, and revealing sharp cheekbones, green-tinted lips and dark, slanted eyes, and pale skin without more blemishes than a few round moles. "I'm Nelly, Old Peg's daughter. Not one of the eldest, as you must have guessed. But I'm learning. I must thank you for this practice and for bearing with me."

"I'm Tonks. You clearly know that and more."

Tonks herself has obviously had only misinformation on hags. This one has meant or done her no harm, which is a surprising conclusion after all the coercion. Tonks knows only... "I know someone who needs some services from you... Perhaps from a more experienced sister of yours."

"You mean the werewolf. His kin is among those we often serve. But he doesn't admit he belongs to them." Nelly, Old Peg's daughter is stepping backwards.

"He's one of us. An educated wizard."

"Maybe someday he'll come to us. So far he's learnt a bit about others: some of the goblins' magic of needs and flames." Gliding closer to the glittering water, Nelly's leaving Tonks to stand on the path. "You can give him our love."




Notes: My self-prompt was: A hag minds her own business, which is worthless at best, right? My Tonks, who's interested in Muggle music, must have listened to Medusa, the Annie Lennox album released in 1995, at least Annie's covers of No More "I Love You"s and of A Whiter Shade of Pale.