The First Merman Settlers – Hogwarts – Summer, 1858
“We’ll be safe here, my dear,” the merman whispered. “They won’t find us here. It must be like coming home for you.”
The haddock blinked dolefully.
“Of course, you don’t understand.” He sighed. “I’ll get you sorted, though, Mirabella. I promise. You’re the only haddock in this lake. I’ll find a way to turn you back.”
And, three weeks later, he did exactly that, with help from a very obliging and knowledgeable ghost and the snatched wand of an unassuming student. Mirabella, restored to her usual form – red-haired, pale and beautiful – surfaced in the centre of the lake and coughed up murky lake water, retching.
“Where am I?”
“I rescued you, my darling. I lifted you from Loch Lomond and brought you back to the school you told me so much about, where we can be safe.”
Mirabella blinked at him and then up at the castle. A long, slow smile spread across her face.
“The Great Lake. Perfect,” she whispered. “Thank you, my love.”
Mirabella Plunkett ceased to exist; her parents told her story to anyone who would listen, and to human ears, the story was a warning of the grave dangers of consorting with ‘creatures of near-human intelligence’. It changed laws and sparked grief from many in the Wizarding World – from those who knew Mirabella, and many who didn’t. A chocolate frog card was soon created in her memory.
But under the water, another tale was being woven. Mirabella mastered a host of charms and transfigurations to make life underwater achievable, if not altogether comfortable; the creatures of the lake’s depth sang tales of the lengths they had gone to for one another. They lived in harmony and love, drifting through the depths with eyes only for one another,
More merpeople came to see the human their brother had fallen in love with, witness the love story of the century for themselves. The Great Lake became alive with their singing at dusk, and students crowded around the lake’s shores, leaning ever closer to the black water.
Finally, during the Christmas break, a student became so enthralled that he fell right into the frigid water, and, weighted down by the thick robes he’d donned against the bitter wind, began to sink. Mirabella dragged him desperately back to the surface, kicking her webbed feet with all her might, and screaming for her beloved’s help.
He only watched, laughing at the foolishness of the child.
“Why didn’t you help me save him?” She asked once she had returned the first year to the bank and shot sparks towards the Castle for the staff’s attention. “Why didn’t you help me?”
“Human affairs are not of our concern,” he answered. “You know this.”
“I am human!”
“And yet our magicks conceal you from the attention of the castle wards. You are one of us now, Mirabella, as much as anyone can be. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I wanted you. I thought you were kinder than that.”
She kicked furiously for the shore, and waded out of the lake; silhouetted in the light spilling from the great oak doors were two adult figures, holding up the sodden first-year between them. Mirabella felt a pang of longing for the light and warmth and company of the castle, and wondered what would happen if she simply walked to its door.
Perhaps she could go home.
But I love him, her heart whispered, and she covered her eyes and sobbed, because it was true. She loved him more than she longed for the castle’s stone walls and arched ceilings and the warm buzz of human conversation. She loved him more than she missed her parents. She loved him more than she hated life underwater.
She loved him, but she couldn’t be a part of his world. It was impossible. She couldn’t stay under the lake for the rest of her life; they couldn’t marry, or have children, for no known magic could achieve such a feat. She couldn’t share her happiness with her family, and nor could he with his.
She dove back down into the depths of the lake, moving more easily there, now, than anywhere else. She cut through the water with sure, easy strokes, still crying silently, adding the tiniest amount of salt to the fresh water.
Her merman was waiting for her, and his expression was as sad as hers. “I am sorry, my love,” he said, taking her in his arms. “I forget myself, sometimes. I forget how gentle you are, and how vicious my kind can be.”
“I know, beloved. I know.” Mirabella clutched him, sighing. “And yet, it is proof that I must go.”
“Ah, how I expected that – and yet, how my heart breaks to hear you say it.”
Mirabella put her hand on his cheek. “You will live a much longer life than I,” she said softly. “I cannot give you children, I cannot be a part of your world, just as you cannot mine. You must find a mate of your own kind, and fill this lake with your children and grandchildren, and nieces and nephews, the better to terrorise – but not harm! – the Hogwarts students of the future.”
He showed his pointed teeth in a grimace of a smile. “Then let this be my oath to you,” he replied, and his voice gained a power and a bright golden light filled the water around them. “All the merpeople of this Great Lake will be guardians of the students of this school, and while we may play our games, we will allow none of them to come to harm at our hands or in this water, nor will any other creature of the deep take a human life.”
The golden light spread away from them, lighting every corner of the lake before it fizzled out.
“What was that?” Mirabella whispered.
“Ancient magic,” he answered. “Accidental; unpredictable; uncontrollable. My oath is now binding. We must all live by it – or die.”
She stared at him in wonderment. “That is the strength of your love for me?”
“It is.” He laid his forehead on hers and closed his eyes. “If you must go, then you must. But where to?”
Mirabella bared her teeth in a feral grin. “Not far,” she promised. “My love, I have forfeited human life. I have forfeited libraries and fireplaces and hot, bitter coffee. I have forfeited the beauty of human engineering, and the genius of what we can build. I no longer belong among my own people, but nor do I belong among yours. See how my skin puckers, and my hair becomes brittle? Magic can only do so much.”
“But if you will not return to the castle, or to your kind, where will you go when you leave me?” He clutched her hand between both of his, to his bare chest, where she could feel his heart thumping twice as fast as her own, the better to filter the oxygen from the water he breathed in.
“I will remain on the shore of the lake,” she murmured, holding his gaze, committing his inhuman eyes – and the softness she brought into them – to memory. “I will remain between you, in the lake, and my kind, in the castle, where I was always happiest as a student here. I sat for hours on the beach, staring over the mountains. I will take root, and I will grow here for as long as you do – longer, perhaps, in the end.”
He gathered her to him and hugged her fiercely. “You will not outlive me in your current form. You mean to become something else again.”
“I do,” she said. “And I will not be able to communicate with you – not with words. But I will find a way, my love. I will find a way.”
And so the stories became mourning songs; the merpeople sang of starcrossed lovers and a great fire that swept the lake, and the love and loss of Mirabella, the beauty of her age. They cried as they parted, and the merman went into a state of mourning that lasted many long years, unable to surface and lay eyes on her beautiful face again.
When he emerged from his trancelike state, he was greeted in hushed, measured tones. His brother finally escorted him to the surface of the lake, where the sun was hot and beat down on their greenish heads and their ropey hair.
“She promised,” his brother said, and pointed.
There, on the shore – in the spot from which Mirabella had sent sparks up over the first-year she’d saved – was a tree; perhaps ten or fifteen years old, still spreading its roots and stretching its canopy. The grass beneath its branches looked invitingly soft and springy – and for the first time, he had a brief, sharp stab of longing for Mirabella’s world.
There was no humanoid figure sheltering there; no hint of Mirabella’s presence.
“But – but she’s not – ”
A single beech leaf detached from the tree and floated through the still air to settle in the water before him. He picked it up wonderingly – and he could feel her.
“Oh, my sweet Mirabella,” he whispered. “How clever you are.”
The tree rustled, just like a bird might preen, and he smiled, heart lighter than it had been since she had left.
Career Advice Week – Hogwarts – May 1976
“Magical research?” Remus propped himself up on his elbow and raised an eyebrow at Sirius. “Look, you know I love you, but you’d blow yourself up in your second week.”
Sirius pouted, looking so much like Padfoot that it was comical; Remus had to try very hard not to laugh. “I became an Animagus without dying or seriously injuring myself!” He argued, and there was mirth in his light grey eyes.
“Hm. And what, exactly, would you research?” Remus asked, curious despite himself.
“A cure for lycanthropy,” Sirius said at once. “But… well, I’d like to help the war effort, one way or another. Maybe defensive spells, too, and ways to deduce truth in trials. I dunno, I just thought it would be interesting.”
“It would,” Remus agreed. “It really would.” He smiled at the raven-haired boy. “I thought you’d want to be an Auror.”
Sirius shook his head. “My family have caused enough deaths over the years,” he said bitterly. “I don’t want to cause any more. Anyway, I doubt I’d get into the programme, based on my surname alone. They’d be stupid to recruit someone who could so easily be a spy.”
Remus reached for his hand and threaded his fingers through Sirius’s, squeezing. Sirius squeezed back and took a deep breath.
“Anyway, what about you?”
“Me?”
“Yes, Remus, you. How was your appointment?”
He sat up and propped his back against the tree trunk, deliberating for a moment. “I didn’t go.”
“You- you didn’t go? Why?”
“Oh come on, Sirius,” Remus snapped, pulling his hand away impatiently. “No one is going to employ me.”
There was a silence broken only by the whisper of the leaves overhead, the creak of the beech tree’s branches.
“I’ve told you before,” Sirius said, “You’re wrong.”
Remus shook his head stubbornly. “People look at me and see a monster. The staff are cautious around me, the students have no idea because they’d drive me out if they did. If this tree could talk, I’d be screwed, Sirius. I’m never going to get a job in the Wizarding World. I’ll find a way to get every full moon off in the Muggle one.”
“You could research with me,” Sirius said quietly. “Since I’m clearly not going to convince you that anywhere else will employ you.”
“No,” Remus sighed. “No, I couldn’t. None of the Universities would take me, Sirius, and no-one would award me funding. No-one would trust any of my papers or cite any of my studies, and if you worked with me, you’d be blacklisted to.”
“You have to go to University to get into magical research?” Sirius asked, horrified.
“What were they telling you in these meetings?” Remus asked, irritated.
“I’m kidding,” he said, grinning. “Kidding. Look, Remus, I don’t know what else I want to do other than stay away from this bloody war and stay with you.” He reached shyly for Remus’s hand and focused his gaze on his fingers, fiddling with them. “So… so if I managed to get into magical research, I’d love some help. I know it wouldn’t be the same as doing it yourself, but it’s the next best thing, surely.”
Remus squeezed Sirius’s hand. “I don’t need you to take care of me,” he said gently.
“I know. And yet, I want to. Remus, you’re the best person I know. The best thing to ever happen to me – well, after that bloody hat sorting me into Gryffindor. I don’t want to go our separate ways after school, watch you go back to the Muggle world. I don’t want to just meet up with you at James and Lily’s wedding and their kids’ bloody Christenings.”
Remus smiled wryly at the mental image, and then let it fall. He hesitated, and turned to Sirius, who had pushed himself upright as well. “Neither do I,” he said softly, lifting his hand to Sirius’s cheek. “But I won’t let my condition drag you down as well.”
“My name drags me down,” Sirius pointed out. “But we build each other up, Remus. You’re everything I need.”
Remus shook his head, and a single tear slipped from beneath his closed eyelids. “Why?” He asked, so quietly it was barely audible, and almost certainly rhetorical.
“What happened to you wasn’t your fault,” Sirius told him. “It doesn’t change who you are. You are the kindest, gentlest, best person I know, and I don’t want to have to leave you.”
Remus pulled him into the fiercest of hugs and raised his eyes to the blue sky, thanking Merlin and whoever else was listening for his friends – but especially Sirius, who underneath the goofiness and clowning, was more sensitive and thoughtful than most of his peers would believe.
The beech tree loosed a single leaf and it floated to the ground, settling in the grass by his left hand.
O.W.L. Week – Hogwarts – 1976
“This’ll liven you up, Padfoot,” said James quietly. “Look who it is…”
…<original text in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, chapter 28: Snape’s Worst Memory, towards the end>...
There was another flash of light, and Snape was once again hanging upside-down in the air.
“Who wants to see me take off Snivelly’s pants?”
Halloween – a flat in Denmark Street, London – 31st October 1981
He wouldn’t.
Remus shook.
Three years since he’d left Hogwarts; three years of sharing the cosy little flat with Sirius, building their little library in the magically-expanded living room, curling up under blankets and reading to one another. Learning more and more about the man Sirius had become, and loving him all the more for it.
The planned studies had been put on hold; magical research would have to wait, because the war was in full swing. He had expected to be working in a Muggle coffee shop by now, calling in sick whenever the rota had him on during the full moon, simply to pay the rent while Sirius studied. Instead, they’d both joined the Order of the Phoenix, and their days were filled with chaos and disorder.
He remembered the long conversation they’d had, about joining the Order. Neither of them had wanted to be part of the War; neither of them had wanted to put their lives on hold to fight a battle that seemed already lost, become killers in defence of the Light, do bad for the sake of the good. But they’d decided, in the end, that they had little other choice; Voldemort was winning, and if they didn’t try help, there would be no world left to make a life in. The Order was full of people who respected them, despite Sirius’s name and Remus’s affliction, and despite the battles and the deaths, it was, at times, a happy thing to be part of.
And yet…
Questions asked to prove identity at every meeting. Wands concealed on every outing. He was running with werewolf packs, trying to gain their support – but why would they support the Light? What had the Light ever done for them? Remus was lucky. He had Sirius, and Peter, and James and Lily, and little Harry. He had a reason to fight, and a place to belong.
Except, apparently, now he didn’t.
James and Lily had been in hiding, and no matter what Sirius was to him – that is to say, everything – he was still James’s best friend. He had been their Secret Keeper.
He wouldn’t.
But he had to have.
James and Lily were dead. Peter was dead. Sirius was gone, in Azkaban, charged with the deaths of Peter and twelve innocents – Muggles, no less. He’d given up their location; followed in his brother’s footsteps. Harry was gone, out of reach.
Remus could have so easily joined a pack, run away from civilisation and lived with the wolves, for what did he have now? Nothing and no-one.
He wouldn’t.
“My name drags me down,” Sirius pointed out. “But we build each other up, Remus. You’re everything I need.”
The memory was painful; Remus gasped for breath as it needled, hot, under his ribs. He turned the beech leaf over and over in his hands, the one he’d kept for all these years – a memory, the moment he’d known that Sirius felt the same way about him as he did about Sirius. The day his future unfolded before him, glittering rather than grey.
Sirius was gone. His friends were gone. His future burst into a thousand pieces and what remained was indistinct; grief ran in magical pulses from his chest and down his arms, and the beech leaf disintegrated until nothing remained but a pile of grey dust on the floor.
Career Advice Week – Hogwarts – May 1989
“Why dragons?” Tonks asked quietly, rolling onto her side to face him.
Charlie shrugged. “I’ve always loved them,” he answered. “Since I was a kid.” He sat up, leaned his back on the beech at the lake’s edge.
“I know that.” She frowned, concentrated for a moment. Her skin erupted in purplish scales. “But… why?”
He smiled, ran his fingertip down her arm, tracing the cool ridges. “There aren’t any purple breeds,” he chastised gently.
She huffed out two plumes of smoke and the scales vanished. “I know. No-one is friends with Charlie Weasley for five years without knowing that,” she sighed. “You’re avoiding the question.”
She was right. Charlie dropped his hand and bit his lip. “Because they’re some of the most feared and yet revered creatures in the world. Even Muggles know of them, and have stories and legends about them. But they’re always the villains, and yet… they’re just creatures. Misunderstood ones.” His voice was gathering momentum, gathering strength and passion. “Everyone can be cruel, or cause someone pain. Everyone, if pushed, is capable of evil. I don’t believe dragons are any more inherently bad than you or I.”
Tonks sat up too, and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I agree with you,” she said. “I think a lot of people probably do, actually.” She smiled and turned her eyes over the lake, unseeing.
“I… Bill started it, actually,” Charlie said finally, breaking the silence. “When we were kids. He’s lanky where I’m stocky, and he used to curl up around me and tell me he was a dragon, and the warmth of the fire in his chest would comfort me. I… I used to have nightmares.” He looked at her defiantly, as if daring her to laugh at him. She didn’t; just refocussed her eyes, taking him in again, with his scruffy ginger hair and bright blue eyes. “After my uncles were killed, I dreamed constantly about wars and death, and mum crying. Bill always knew what to do, and he would tell me stories of creatures, instead of people. Good ones; misunderstood ones. He said animals were much less complicated than people. They survive on instinct; everything they do is to live, and nothing more. People are messier.”
He turned away, pushed himself to his feet and walked to the lake’s edge. As always, the giant squid was there to greet him; as always, he turned out his pockets, producing more fish than could have ever fitted into them.
Tonks watched him from the shelter of the beech tree, shading her eyes against the summer sun peeping over the mountain-top. She had always known that his attention was elsewhere. He was never quite with her; never quite on the same planet as the rest of them.
“Surely there’s somewhere closer than Romania?” She asked. The breeze ruffled her long hair and carried her words to him.
“Eastern Europe is where most of the breeds are,” he replied distantly. “The Caparthian Mountains are a protected site because the Longhorns are endangered. And the Retezat National Park has the old forest in the middle – ancient; it’s got its own magicks, strong enough to hold all the breeds. It’s the epicentre of all dragon research.” He turned back to her, shrugged helplessly. “It’s hardly far when we have international portkeys, and Floo.”
“Far enough,” she replied. “Charlie, won’t you miss your family? Your friends?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “But not as much as most people would. I’m… I’m not that good with people, Tonks. You know that. Bill isn’t great either, is he? I guess we were left to run wild, while mum was grieving her brothers and Percy and the twins kept dad busy. We were the feral ones.”
“And Bill is going abroad too?”
“Hopefully. Gringotts have accepted him, as soon as he graduates. His training starts in August, and he wants to go to Egypt.”
Tonks considered him for a moment. “Goblins, and dragons, and travelling. But you’ll miss Bill?”
“Yes, and he’ll miss me. And I’ll miss you, too,” he said, surprising her. “But that’s life, isn’t it? We miss the people we love. But if we spend all of our time with them, we never miss them… and we never know how much we love them.”
The beech tree shuddered around them. Tonks looked at Charlie with new eyes; he’d never said such deep things before – had given no indication that he was such a deep thinker at all, in fact.
“You could play Quidditch,” she tried half-heartedly. “You’d travel a lot then.”
“Come on, Tonks. You know I can’t make a living out of being competitive. I play because I enjoy it, and apparently my reflexes are good… but I don’t care whether we win or not.”
“Annoying, really, when you’re world-class. I’m competitive enough for both of us, but I’m far too clumsy to play,” she said, standing up and shoving him. He stumbled and laughed, shoving her back gently; the squid splashed them as their game turned into a wrestle.
Tonks called a halt, gasping, and leaned into his broad chest. Charlie wrapped his arms around her and propped his chin on her head.
“I’ll miss you, too,” she whispered.
“I know.” Charlie squeezed her. “But you’ll be off doing big bad Auror things. You’ll be too busy to think about it too hard.”
She lifted her head and smiled up at him. “You really think I can get in?” She asked.
“Absolutely. You can do anything, Nymphadora Tonks.”
She shuddered even as the smile spread across her lips and she swatted his upper arm. “Don’t call me -”
“I know,” he sighed. “You know, you’ll have to hear it on your wedding day.”
“I’m not getting married,” she said automatically.
He raised an eyebrow. “Me neither,” he said. “Why not?”
“I refuse to have that name aired in public,” she said, and laughed. He chuckled along with her. “Why aren’t you?”
He hesitated. “Because people are messy. And creatures are simpler,” he said. “I just… I don’t know, Tonks. I love you to pieces, but I wouldn’t want to marry you. I’ve never had the remotest feeling that I’d like to kiss you.”
“Charming,” she said, rolling her eyes in mock-annoyance.
“I don’t mean -”
“I know what you mean, Charlie. I’m teasing.” She kissed his cheek softly. “I’m… worried about training,” she admitted.
“Auror training? It won’t be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is.” He tugged her back under the branches of the beech, and they leaned on its trunk and each other. “You’ll do just fine, I know it.”
“Even if I do… what’s the point?” She asked. “He’s gone. Bella is in Azkaban. Everything is over, now.”
Charlie’s mouth tightened. “I don’t think it’s ever going to be over,” he said finally. “There will always be rumblings, underneath. Someone else will come to power, one day, inspired by You-Know-Who. Maybe even Harry Potter – he’ll be famous. It wouldn’t be impossible for that to go to his head.” He shook himself. “The point is, if everyone thinks, ‘it’s over at the moment, so let’s not worry about it’, then we’ll have no-one left when it stops being over. I think this is the bravest time to start – because you don’t know what you’re going to be facing, when the time comes.”
Tonks wiped her eyes surreptitiously on her sleeve and sniffed. “I think today’s conversation is the most I’ve ever heard you speak,” she said with a chuckle. Charlie punched her on the shoulder and laughed.
New Term – Hogwarts – 1st September, 1993
The feast had been, as ever, utterly wonderful – and yet, despite feeling full for the first time in months, Remus was glad it was over.
He’d slept on the train. He felt well-rested and safe; his cases were unpacked in his office, and his lesson plans were in an orderly pile on his desk. His timetable was laid out next to them.
He ought to go to bed. It was late. And yet…
The call of the beech tree was like that of a siren; a hinkypunk leading him into the murk to stumble through treacherous bogs of memory. And yet he was helpless to refuse. He drifted through the silent, empty corridors – even the portraits were slumbering. He wondered whether it was past midnight, checked he had his wand in case any errant dementors drifted into the grounds.
The beech tree stood taller and broader than he remembered, and shone an eerie silver, ethereal in the moonlight – regal, almost. He admired her from a distance, and then, as if magnetised, drew closer and closer, until he found himself sitting under her boughs.
If he squinted, it could almost be that Sirius sat beside him, once again boyishly handsome, fifteen and innocent – the first Gryffindor in a long line of Slytherin Blacks.
“I’m back,” he murmured, laying a hand on the tree’s huge trunk. “I’m back, but this time I’m alone. They’re all gone… but you’re here. You’ve endured.”
The tree didn’t stir. He wondered whether that was agreement, or disapproval, or just the still night air. A wry smile creased his lips once he caught his own line of thought – because no matter the memories it held, this was just a tree.
He sighed, and the image of Sirius – eyes shining, creased with his smile – faded, to be replaced with leaves bathed in silver moonlight, just beginning to turn rusty-brown and orange in places. “I should go,” he murmured. “I think it would be wise for me to stay away from here, this year. There enough wraiths and ghosts within the castle walls; I need not add any more under your arms.” He looked up through the tree’s branches, trying to see the top; it was impossible in the dim light. He stepped away, letting his hand drop to his side; the loss of contact felt like a chasm opening up around him.
As he left the shelter of the unmoving tree, a breeze rustled past him and lifted his hair. Not a single leaf drifted free; he considered, for a fleeting fraction of a second, picking one – but that would be foolish. A permanent reminder of his loss… like he needed any more.
Remus returned to the castle as silently as he had left, so wrapped up in his gloom that he didn’t notice the luminous eyes watching him from the shadows. True to his word, he didn’t go back to the beech tree; he avoided its watchful gaze all year, just as he trained his third years to throw off the enticement of the will-o’-the-wisp lanterns in the marshes.
Time and Again – Hogwarts – 6th June, 1994
Sirius looked terrible. Remus supposed twelve years in Azkaban would do that to someone; twelve years of confusion, of thinking your partner had caused the deaths of two of your friends. He wondered if he looked so bad, for similar reasons – minus the dementors. He wondered if he had aged as badly as Sirius.
As the pieces of the story fell into place, he felt like a great weight had been lifted from him; he could breathe again, he was no longer utterly exhausted by the challenge of simply surviving.
It was replaced with a burning, rousing anger – the kind that made him want to act, and fight. He saw the same anger reflected in Sirius’s eyes, and it took everything in him to hold back, and give James’s son the time he deserved, and the information they all should have been given – should have worked out, really – years ago.
The date slipped from his mind.
It was only as they were preparing to leave the Shrieking Shack, the place he held so many foul memories of from his Hogwarts years, that he was able to grip Sirius’s arm and embrace him again – just as fiercely as he had before, when Hermione had announced what he was to the room, but this time without the unanswered questions, this time with nothing between them but emotion, and longing, and too many missed years.
“We can prove it, now,” he murmured. “We can go back.”
“We can’t,” Sirius replied flatly, and Remus’s heart sank like a stone. “James is gone, Remus. Our flat… I assume you moved out of there a long time ago. We’re getting old. I’ll never be accepted, not after all this.”
“My name drags me down,” Remus whispered. “I know. We can’t… pretend none of this happened. But there’s still us , isn’t there – once we’ve proved your innocence.”
Sirius bared his teeth in a wolfish grin and nodded, and Remus’s heart, suddenly helium-light, double-tapped in his chest.
“I want to go back to that beech tree – you know the one, our one? That tree on the edge of the lake.” Sirius gripped Remus’s hand, suddenly. “Once this is all done. I want to go back there, and sit with you, and breathe. I laid under it in the dark so often this year as Padfoot, but I want to go in this body, with you .”
Remus, wordless with the strength of his emotions, which hit him like a tidal wave through a broken dam, just nodded. He couldn’t stop.
And then they stepped into the light of the full moon, and the whole night went to shit.
After the First Triwizard Task – Hogwarts – November 24th, 1994
It was over. Charlie leaned his shoulder against the beech tree and sighed, turning his face to the west. The sun was just kissing the mountain peaks; they were reflected in the lake, wavering slightly in the gentle breeze. It was cold – much colder than Romania’s ancient woodland.
At dusk, he’d have to go and get the dragons loaded. By midnight, they’d be on their way home.
It was a relief. Brood mothers being baited by children – honestly, it was lucky none of them had been killed. He hated to think of the damage it might do to some of the dragons – and thank goodness none of the eggs had hatched! What a disaster that would have been.
He stroked his hand – silvery in the waning sunlight from old burns – down the tree’s trunk, wondering how old it was, how many years it had stood on the lake’s shore and watched student after student pass through the school. How many backs it had supported.
His thoughts drifted to Tonks. He missed her. He missed the easy friendship he had with her, and her acceptance of his quirks, and how simply she saw the world. He pulled the leaf – green, lush as the day he’d plucked it from the ground during their wrestling match, held in stasis since – from his waistband, and lifted it in a kind of salute to its original bearer.
The tree sighed, and a handful of rust-orange leaves showered him. He grinned and patted the tree trunk again, and swept up another leaf, before standing, brushing the remaining debris off of himself, and striding towards the Forbidden Forest.
It was time to go home.
The Great Lake – Hogwarts – February 20th, 1995
The merman visited the beech tree often; usually in the summer, when the students were absent. He’d swim up to the lake’s surface and bask, for a few minutes at most – before the air became too much for him, and he needed to return to the water and reoxygenate his lungs – on the sandy shoreline at the beech’s roots, reminiscent of that fateful day on Loch Lomond.
In 1995, he made an exception. He surfaced at dawn in late February and let the chilly air freeze his oily skin.
He stared up at the beech tree with his bulbous eyes, and sighed. “I am old, now,” he murmured. “Too old for the excitement of ships arriving in our lake from foreign shores, and wizarding tournaments interrupting our depths. My family has grown, my love. We are two more, since I last came up here, and more are coming. The eggs are safely away from all this excitement. I fear I will not see the day they hatch.”
The beech tree shuddered, as if it’s almost-bare branches were feeling the cold; a single, frosty leaf fell into the merman’s outstretched hands.
“I will wait until this task is over. I will make sure my kin keep my promise to you, and the students remain unharmed. After that, Mirabella, I can promise nothing. I am old, and I am tired, and I feel death’s welcome growing nearer. I feel my promise will outlast me, but there is no way to be sure. You understand?”
The tree shivered. Three more leaves fell into the water and drifted towards its centre, startlingly orange on its iron-grey surface.
The Second Triwizard Task – Hogwarts – February 24th, 1995
Harry raced down the lawn and under the arms of the beech tree, eyes focused on the full stands on the opposite bank. The branches lifted in a sigh as he passed.
Almost two hours later, before the stands, a myriad of familiar heads broke the lake’s surface; green-haired, wild, and shiny. They were smiling; the beech tree sagged, like a tense person might with relief, and the remaining rust-coloured leaves fell to the mud and grass below, forming a circle. Those smiles… all was well, and the promise would be upheld.
As the stands began to empty, and some of the fallen leaves were tramped towards the castle, stuck to muddy shoes, the merpeople began to sink back into the depths. The champions and the hostages were chivvied along by the nurse; more merpeople sank out of sight. The staff began to herd the stragglers; the youngest few merpeople, fascinated by the glimpse at human life, swam alongside them, all the way around the lake; the colours, compared to the murk and greenish hue of the underwater world, were startling.
Finally, the grounds slumbered again, and the lake’s surface returned to perfect smoothness. There was little movement for another hour.
Then, a familiar head broke the surface, under the tree’s shadow.
“It is time.”
The beech didn’t move; the green-haired head bowed in sorrow.
Then, with a cracking, crunching sound, one of the great roots tore upwards through the soil, revealing its long length – it must have been dipping into the lake for decades. In the space it revealed was a water-filled chamber.
“Oh, my love. To be buried under your roots… to have your essence in The Great Lake – this is why my oath remains.” The merman laid both palms on the root and smiled; a single tear landed between his hands and their webbed fingers. “How I wish I could hold you one more time… but you will hold me, my dear, eternally.”
He slid under the water, hands still on the tree root, and swam into the gap hewn in the bank. The beech settled and the root returned to its position, flush to the ground; the end spiralled around the merman’s body within the tomb.
And so the first merman settler greeted Death as a friend, and went with him willingly.
O.W.L. Week – Hogwarts – 1996
Harry sighed as he leaned against the tree’s trunk. He couldn’t help but see the memory of Snape’s own OWLs in his mind, replaying over and over, and he wondered why he’d come to this same tree. He was hardly going to be able to focus on anything else while he was sitting under its branches, between the same span of roots, wondering whether it remembered.
He leaned forwards and put his chin on his knees, staring blindly out over the lake, thinking. His dad had been so cocky, so sure of himself; playing with that stupid snitch and messing up his stupid hair. He’d idolised the idea of his father for so long that he didn’t know what to do with the memory he’d seen.
“Who was he?” He murmured. “A good man, or a bully?”
Sometimes, they’re the same thing, a voice in his head replied – although he wasn’t quite sure it was his own. He couldn’t put his finger on where the thought came from, nor could he answer the riddle of the thought in itself. He felt like there was a lesson in it. Perhaps he was supposed to like Malfoy, and this errant thought, wherever it came from, was to tell him that Malfoy was good under the bullying? He mentally snorted at the thought.
But what about his father, then? And what about Sirius? He had been as bad, in his day. Even Remus hadn’t stopped them – although he hadn’t seemed to be enjoying himself quite so much as the other two.
Sirius is a good man now , Harry thought to himself – and it was his own thought, this time. He was sure of it. Sirius is a good man, and everyone says Dad was too. So they must have grown out of it, all the teasing and nastiness. He hoped so, anyway. He hoped that he was right, and his father was as good a man as the Sirius Harry knew; he hoped that it wasn’t Sirius’s loneliness and incarceration that had made him nicer. Surely it would have made him more bitter, if anything?
It was too much of a conundrum. Harry couldn’t imagine acting the way Sirius and his dad had, under this very tree; he couldn’t imagine twelve years isolated with dementors; and he couldn’t imagine these exams or this war ever ending.
He put his head on his knees and wished Sirius could be there with him now. Instead, a gentle whisper along his shoulder, like a ghostly hand; he looked, and there, incongruous in the hot, still air, was a beech leaf, perched on his shoulder like it had been placed there deliberately.
He picked it up and ran his fingers across its smoothness. He felt almost instantly calmer.
“Thank you,” he said, unsure why or to whom. The tree rustled. He tucked the leaf in his pocket, stood up, and headed for the owlery, overcome with a sudden urge to write to Sirius and tell him that he understood – he didn’t think, any more, that what they did as children made them bad people.
He tucked the leaf into the letter, almost mindlessly, without thinking about it. Later on, he felt stupid for doing so, and hoped Sirius wouldn’t mention it when he replied.
After the Battle of the Ministry of Magic – Order of the Phoenix Headquarters – 18th June 1996
Remus paced, almost in slow motion, into Sirius’s room – their room – and leaned on the doorframe. Tears blurred his vision, and he blinked them away angrily.
Twelve years apart – and two more was all they got. Two more, overshadowed by war and conflict and fear; every happy memory was tainted by the events just before, or just after. It was so unfair – and now he was alone again.
His arms ached from holding Harry back. He knew he’d have followed Harry into the Veil; knew, if Harry hadn’t been there, that he’d have followed Sirius into the Veil too.
A letter, on Sirius’s nightstand, caught his eye. He wiped his face and sighed, letting the door drop closed behind him, and walked numbly towards it.
It was from Harry. He’d recognise that scruffy writing anywhere.
He picked it up, and the beech leaf – waxy, veined, with its tiny spikes around the edge – fell out. Remus froze. What were the chances of that? What were the chances that the leaf was from the same tree – their tree?
He skimmed the letter. The memory of that day – James’s stupid snitch, and the fight with Lily, and Severus’s casual use of the slur – came back to him instantly. He’d not dwelled on their misdemeanours; like every other memory of his childhood years, it had been too painful. He still wondered, sometimes, how he’d managed to teach at the castle for a whole year without breaking.
Because you had no choice, his inner voice supplied, and it was true. He’d needed the money, the roof over his head, and some semblance of normal and stable – just for a while.
He twirled the leaf around in his fingers and smiled softly. Here was serendipity, held between his finger and thumb. The very day Sirius was taken from him, forever, was the same day a tiny piece of him, a memory in leaf form, fell into his hands.
He murmured a stasis charm and tucked the leaf into the neck of his shirt, so it rested over his heart.
New Term – Hogwarts – 1st September 1996
Try as she might, her hair remained mousy. How she’d conjured a Patronus, she’d never know. She couldn’t summon up any of her usual joy, her usual clumsiness or curiosity, as she escorted Harry off the train and up to the castle gates, and handed him over to the staff.
Remus had refused her.
“Tonks, no, I am too old, and too poor, for someone with your youth and vibrance and-”
“No, you’re not. That’s my decision to make, Remus, and I want you anyway. I wouldn’t be here, telling you this, if I thought – if I didn’t – I want you . All of you, the good, the bad. That’s what love is, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is, but this isn’t – I’m not -”
“Don’t you dare say you don’t deserve it,” Tonks had snapped fiercely. “Don’t you dare. ”
“I wasn’t going to.” Remus dropped into a chair. “Is anyone else home?”
“No.” Tonks sat down hesitantly and watched as Remus scrubbed his hands over his face, sighing deeply. She realised for the first time how tired he looked – how deeply the lines around his mouth had become.
“Tonks, I’m not – I don’t – of course I don’t deserve someone as wonderfully full of life as you. I’ve always been the boring one, the mature one, the one who spoilt my friends’ fun.” He smiled wryly at her. “But that’s not… that wouldn’t stop me. Not any more, not after… oh, this isn’t… how I planned for you to find out.” He swallowed. “Were you close to Sirius, when you were growing up?”
Tonks blinked, blindsided by the change of subject. “No,” she answered honestly. “You know mum was blasted off the tapestry for marrying dad. We didn’t overlap at Hogwarts. I knew of him by reputation – another distant relative who did a bad thing, just like Bella.” She shrugged, and put a finger in her mouth, nibbling nervously at a hangnail. “Until he became part of the Order… I don’t think I’d even met him. Obviously then we got on like a house on fire.” Her face crumpled for a moment, but she steeled herself and set her shoulders. “I’m proud to have been related to him,” she said firmly.
Remus smiled sadly. “He’d like that,” he murmured. “He’d have liked to have heard that.” He sighed. “Sirius – you know about the four of us, growing up? Me and him and James and Peter. Inseparable. Sirius and James were best friends, the ringleaders. I was the goody-two-shoes, and Peter was the hanger-on.” He paused, ran a hand down his face again. “But with Sirius and I… there was more. We were… more.”
Tonks raised an eyebrow. “You and Sirius? Merlin, Remus, how did you survive him being locked up?”
Remus – surprised at her easy acceptance – blinked. “I… don’t know,” he admitted. “I mean, I thought he was guilty. So did everyone. That will always be one of my biggest regrets – that I didn’t believe in him, and fight for him. But I could never… after the first few hours, I could never be really angry with him, not even for Harry. I wonder, sometimes, why that was… whether, perhaps, I knew, somewhere, that he was innocent. I hope so.”
She smiled at him, and leaned forward, covering his scarred hand with her small one. “Why did neither of you ever say?” She asked.
Remus shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “We never had to, before. James… James just knew , and that was all that mattered, really. We didn’t ever discuss what we were to one another, it just… it was just the way things were. That didn’t change after Azkaban, but his existence was a secret for a while… I guess we wanted to make up for lost time. That didn’t include sharing what we were to each other with everyone else in the Order.”
“So here you are, grieving again, on your own,” she said sadly.
Remus shrugged. “Alone is all I have,” he said. “Alone is what I’m used to. And that’s fine. Tonks, I didn’t tell you for your pity, I told you because I- I can’t- it’s only-”
“Only a few weeks. I know. I understand.”
And she did. She really, honestly, truly, did understand. But it might have been easier if he’d just said no; if he’d refused her because he didn’t like her that way, or – like Charlie – wasn’t interested in pursuing relationships at all. If he’d rejected her outright.
Now, she was stuck, waiting. She was wishing she could comfort him, and yet knew she couldn’t; she was grieving her cousin anew, both for his death and his incarceration, and the pain it had caused the man she loved.
Merlin, being human was complicated.
Tonks meandered over the grounds to the familiar silhouette on the lake’s edge and leaned on the trunk, staring out over the dark surface of the lake. The Great Hall’s windows were lit by floating candles, and she knew that behind the glass, hundreds of plates were being scraped clean. She felt oddly removed from it, as if she existed outside of that world – outside of time itself.
She Summoned some parchment and a quill and settled under the beech’s branches. Dear Charlie, she began.
The Wedding Day – Location Undisclosed – July 1997
“Good morning,” Remus called gently from the other side of the door. Tonks, beaming, threw it open. Remus gasped and threw his hands over his eyes. “Dora, you know that’s bad luck!”
“Remus, it’s a war. Most of the people we want there today can’t be. I don’t care about tradition, I care about you , and me, and us . That’s it.”
He slowly dropped his hands from his eyes. A gentle smile spread across his face. “I love you,” he told her wonderingly.
“I love you, too. Now come on, let’s get this show on the road. I need to start preparing for hearing my full name far too many times today.”
“Hang on – why did we sleep apart if you don’t care about tradition?”
“Because my mother does,” Tonks replied grimly. “So she’d better not catch us.” She grinned and slipped her hands up Remus’s t-shirt, leaning into him for a kiss. Her hands met bare skin, and she stopped.
“Dora?”
“Remus… where’s your beech leaf?”
He directed his gaze to the floor. “I… took it off. I’m marrying you , today. It’s going to be the happiest day of my life, I can already tell, and I don’t… want you to feel…”
“We’ve talked about this,” she said softly. “I don’t feel betrayed. I don’t feel second-best. I don’t feel pushed out or jealous or anything else. I know, Remus, I know you’d have married him if you could – I know you loved him. But you can’t compare two different relationships. That beech leaf is so much part of you to me that it might as well be a tattoo, so you don’t get to take it off just because we’re getting married.”
Remus ran a finger down the side of her face, smiling. “I think,” he said hoarsely, “That I might be the luckiest man alive. To have found love, and felt so strongly, twice.”
Tonks Summoned the beech leaf and pressed it into his hands, and her lips to his. “Now, my mother will be up in…” – she cast a quick Tempus – “about two and a half minutes, like clockwork. Go, go – don’t let her catch us!”
The Gemenele – Retezat National Park, Romania – 2nd May 1998
Charlie pulled his t-shirt away from his skin. It was dark and warmer than usual for the time of year at twenty-four degrees, and the brood mothers were blowing warm air and gentle flames over their young. The thick canopy of the ancient forest held the heat down, and the air was still between the thick trunks. It made for a muggy atmosphere.
Something was nagging at him; something felt wrong. He pulled out his Galleon, the one Hermione had showed him how to charm, and checked it; the network of foreign allies he’d built in the Order of the Phoenix’s name hadn’t contacted him. It wasn’t that.
A Longhorn snorted gently and watched proudly as another egg shuddered and cracked. Norberta, whose clutch had all emerged weeks prior, shuffled until she could shield all of her young at once with her wings. Charlie had written to Hagrid; the letter he’d had back was smudged with great, fond, proud teardrops. He’d promised to send pictures.
Charlie watched the tongues of flame and glittering of scales, and breathed in the scent of scorched wood, iron and earth. The gentle grunts and snorts of flame and communication were a lullaby he usually caved to. If he couldn’t sleep in bed, he’d come down here and prop himself up against a tree, and take in the sounds and smells, and doze.
But today he was restless. He pulled Tonks’s letters from his pocket – the first telling him about Remus, and Sirius, and her hearbreak; the second, that she’d got married, and he’d been right after all, her name hadn’t sounded so bad in that context; the third, announcing her pregnancy; and the last announcing the safe arrival of Edward Remus Lupin, or Teddy, and asking him to be godfather, alongside Harry, who was Remus’s choice. He’d written back, enthusing and agreeing, but with the caveat that Tonks had better be prepared for her son to be as obsessed with dragons as her best friend was.
He’d been touched; more touched than he cared to admit. He studied the photograph of the tot with his tuft of turquoise hair, heart full; he couldn’t wait to meet the little guy, and formally meet Remus, too. The man who’d married his best friend… who’d given him a godson, the closest thing to his own child he’d ever have, albeit by virtue of his career choice.
He tucked the photograph inside the letters and popped them back in his pocket. Sleep wasn’t going to come tonight; he was sure of that much, if nothing else. The heat and the comforting smells weren’t going to be enough; he was so sure that he’d forgotten something that even the steady dripping of water droplets finally making it through the thick canopy couldn’t lull him into dreams.
It had rained earlier in the day in the rest of the park; as normal, the droplets were only just beginning to filter through. The extra layer of moisture in the leaves and the earth added another layer of scent. Petrichor . The word was perfect for the smell of wet, mulched leaves in the mud.
Leaves.
He pulled the beech leaves from his waistband, one green, one gold. The stasis charm had held for all these years; they both still looked as perfect as the day he’d picked them, one after wrestling Tonks, after she’d bid him goodbye and left him sitting there, smiling out at the squid, feeling lighter than he ever had for having her acceptance, and one only a few years ago, sitting under the tree and reminiscing about his best friend before he returned the Triwizard dragons to Romania.
He ran his fingers over the smooth, veined leaf, and suddenly knew what was bothering him. Whether it was intuition, or magic, he had no idea – but he was needed at Hogwarts. Tonks, or the beech tree itself, or something – something there was calling for him.
He activated his galleon and hoped they would come – and come they did.
Who would have thought it? He wondered silently. Charlie Weasley, with friends – human ones. And then he thought, Tonks, and Bill. They would have thought it.
He prayed they were both safe as he rounded up his allies, both human and animal, and prepared for the international jump, barking orders which were repeated in three, four, five different languages by wizards he’d come to know, watched as his requests were carried out to the letter, and members of the International Order of the Phoenix were dispatched by Floo, by Portkey, by multi-stop Apparition, by Thestral and dragon and broomstick to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
He wondered why no-one had called for him, and supposed it had simply happened too quickly; the focus would be evacuating the students. A war at a school… a war of any kind was bad enough, but at a school… He dreaded to think what they’d find when they landed.
As his Shortsnout snorted and pulled him skywards, the beech leaves were wrenched from his grip and incinerated by a Horntail as it launched airborne behind him, already snapping and snarling, full of bloodlust, carrying a Polish wizard who snarled along with his mount. That was the moment that reality hit him; they were going to war. There would be casualties. The beech leaves…
Tonks. Bill. His family.
He pushed the thought from his mind and focused on the Hogwarts gates. The dragons would get them there.
Settling Dust – Hogwarts Grounds – 3rd May 1998
Andromeda arrived silently the following morning. The clean-up had barely begun. Charlie felt numb.
Fred. Charlie felt he’d barely known Fred; all of his memories of the twins were of them together, causing mayhem as small children; the odd addition of tricks played at family occasions, and on their holiday to Egypt a few years ago. He felt… numb. He grieved for George, and for the hole that he’d never get used to having at his side; the names that would never be confused again.
And Tonks… Tonks and Remus, the man who’d made his best friend the happiest she’d ever been, and whom Charlie had never had the chance to meet.
At least they’d gone together. If not willingly, then together, and having known love – for Charlie had no doubt that Tonks had truly loved him, and if her letters were to be believed, so he had loved her.
He sat by their bodies for hours, unable to comfort and be comforted by the family he hardly knew, happier in isolation, staring at Tonks’s familiar face, relaxed in death.
Something green, poking out of Remus’s collar, caught his eye. He wondered whether he ought to disturb the body, but – glancing around – doubted anyone would notice. He leaned forward, gently took hold of the tiny triangle, and pulled.
The beech leaf came free willingly and laid, unfathomable, on his hand.
“The same tree?” He wondered aloud. “Did Tonks… no, she wouldn’t have been so symbolic.” He wondered whether his leaves had somehow come here, rather than being incinerated; some form of undiscovered dragon magic, a message to tell them he was coming. But no… why Remus? Where was the copper leaf, then?
He recalled her letters, and stroked the leaf wonderingly. “So the tree was special to you, too,” he murmured to Remus’s body. “To you and him.” He sat for a while longer, contemplating the leaf quietly, trying to absorb its story. “I’ll look after it,” he promised finally. “I’ll look after you both – your story, your memories. I promise.” His voice cracked.
“You must be Charlie,” a voice behind him said gently. “I believe you’ve yet to meet your godson.”
He turned, and came face-to-face with a woman so like Tonks that he almost stumbled. Her eyes sparkled and creased in the same way – full of mischief, he’d wager, when she wasn’t staring down at her daughter and son-in-law. In her arms, a quiet baby lay, big eyes staring around, and a tuft of hair turning, before his very eyes, from turquoise to mousy-brown.
“Teddy,” Charlie whispered.
“Teddy,” Andromeda agreed, holding the baby out. Charlie took him awkwardly, reverently, and – in a sudden burst of inspiration and understanding – tucked the leaf beneath his blankets.
“That’s for you,” he told the baby. “When you’re older… when you’re old enough, I’ll tell you all about it. All about them, and us, and the leaf, and the tree.”
Andromeda watched as Charlie gently bounced the boy, whose hair turned slowly turquoise again.
Present Day
And so Mirabella had slumbered through quieter years, and taken an interest in a few particularly special students. Her thoughts were slow, sluggish, like those of all trees; with such a long lifespan, everything happened much more sedately. Human lives were but a blink of an eye, the passing of a season.
She had seen so much of life and love and loss, over her years standing sentinel on the shore of her beloved’s lake. She had seen lovers’ tiffs, and friends making merry; heard apologies and confessions and requests. She had observed as children, and then their children, and their children’s children, learned and practiced magic in her shadow.
She had watched as war tore apart her home, her history. She had been unable to do much more than call on those who weren’t present, and watch as some of her students – the ones she had monitored, and pushed, and helped – were cut down by the Dark. She wondered whether she could have fought, would have fought, if she’d still been human. Whose side would she have taken? None of the merpeople rose from the lake. They remained unseen, hidden in their depths. They couldn’t fight on either side, and not only because of the lack of water – but because students were fighting on both sides, and the oath remained.
Her heart remained, slumbering, still and peaceful in death, below her roots. She was custodian of another, now, too; a white tomb which stood just out of her shadow, and towards which she had strained and grown since its birth.
She felt ready, now, to greet death in her own way. The next generation was calmer. Teddy Lupin had graduated, after many quiet moments spent under her boughs, head bowed over one of her leaves – the one the Potter boy had taken, after she’d dropped it on his shoulder. It had come full circle; he’d moved on, now, with his turquoise hair, and there was nothing more for her to do. There was less chaos to mind; fewer pointers to give. She felt less inclined to be involved in the goings-on of teenage humans; felt less like a human herself, in fact, than she had even during her life in the lake.
So Mirabella gave up control, and slipped willingly away into the beech tree’s grasp. She gave up her conscious mind, and became one with the unthinking, unknowing cells and biology of the ever-growing ecosystem she had created.
Mirabella’s portrait hangs in the Castle and is reproduced on Chocolate Frog cards, celebrating the strength of her love and mourning her loss as she became a haddock. The merpeople sing of the star-crossed lovers, the Merman and the Human, and the Eternity Tree; they sing of new settlements and oaths to last a thousand years. They remain in The Great Lake, neither threat nor foe.
The tree, now, is just a tree. But it holds a special place in many hearts, and Teddy Lupin carries one of its leaves; a memento of the lives it touched, in its prime.