Fic: The Wake Remus/Sirius
Jan. 29th, 2006 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wildestrangerTitle: The Wake 1/2
Pairing: Remus/Sirius, Harry/Ron/Hermione
Words: 3079
Summary: Harry wants to hold a wake for Sirius.
The Wake
The kitchen of 12, Grimmauld Place had not changed much since Harry had last been there. The windows were still dirty, the cooker still smelled faintly of over-boiled cabbage, and there were still strange noises coming from the pantry. Harry still hated it.
It was worse now. The sour smell in the curtains was more pronounced without Molly’s cleaning charms to battle it. The deep cold in the corridors, seeping through his boots, was unrelieved by warm fires or warm bodies. The portraits were silent, and somehow that was the worst of it; no Mrs. Black to shout abuse at her son, no Sirius to laugh at his mother and provoke her into further invective.
They had made tea. Harry had brought teabags and Hermione had brought a kettle, since magic in this house could no longer be depended on. Spells went awry, small household charms required great effort and friendly magic turned easily into curses. Hermione kept saying how fascinating this was, and how the next time she visited she would bring some device to measure magic and study it. Harry wondered whether she was actually interested, or whether research was merely a way of countering the suffocating mood of the house.
Harry drank his tea and watched Hermione stir the spoon in her cup as they waited for Ron. She was thinner now and pale, the freckles of past summers all but invisible on her arms. Harry knew she didn’t go to the Burrow for dinner these days, anymore than he did; Molly’s enforced cheerfulness and increasingly manic conversation made it difficult to keep up the appearance of normality. Ron still lived there, but Harry suspected it was only to keep his mother from going insane.
Fending for themselves with things like food and laundry was one of the unexpected results of leaving Hogwarts. Harry was getting used to worrying about clean clothes and whether he’d remembered to buy cereal as well as worrying about Voldemort’s next move.
Hermione was taking out notebooks from her bag. These days they tended to be sober brown and green, as if the constant dread of war would not permit such frivolous colours as pink and yellow. But Hermione looked cheerful as she sharpened her quill, and Harry almost envied her for the distraction of taking notes on traditions that didn’t involve curses and torture.
“Hello? Harry? Hermione?”
Ron’s voice was tired, and his steps on the corridor outside were clumsy and loud. But Harry found himself grinning, and there was a similar curve of joy on Hermione’s lips when she looked at him. They didn’t see each other often enough, with Hermione flitting about from library to library and Ron orchestrating the war from the Burrow. Harry moved along with the Order Headquarters, now changing location every two weeks.
Ron stumbled in, his hair longer than Molly had ever allowed it before and his jeans dirty. But his grin was the wide as he sat down, brushed Hermione’s hand with his fingers and looked up at Harry.
“So, a memorial or something?”
Harry’s smile became tight and then disappeared.
“After Dumbledore’s…funeral, I started thinking, about how we never had that for Sirius. Even though everybody knows he was innocent and the Ministry…but yeah. We should do something.”
Ron nodded.
“A wake? We could toast his memory by getting hammered.’
Hermione coughed and for a moment turned back into a disapproving prefect.
“Actually, wizarding traditions do not include that kind of drinking feasts. There’s a very interesting ritual, for example, where the family members sacrifice a goat…”
“We had a wake for my great uncle Mortimer! That’s the most drunk I’ve ever seen Dad…”
“…and then you say this incantation and receive the blessing of the dead for the house, which Sirius probably wouldn’t have wanted for this house, although now that it’s yours, Harry…”
“…and Fred and George kept saying things like how useful the kitchen table is, what a fine sturdy table, and Mum kept blushing but she couldn’t say anything of course since we eat from it everyday, and…”
It was a curious thing to watch. They were both pretending not to listen what the other was saying, but somehow the flows of their speech matched so that it made sense. Not quite bickering, but Harry could hear the fond competitiveness in the voices. He realised he had started smiling again, for the second time in weeks.
“A wake?”
There was a moment’s silence at his voice, and then Hermione spoke.
“It’s not a proper wizarding tradition, Harry…”
“But I keep telling you we have them! And we’re wizards!”
Hermione frowned, not in displeasure but with scholarly confusion.
“Perhaps there is some Irish blood in you then, cause you know, Irish wizards have a completely different set of traditions…”
“What kind of a wake then?”
A pause, and Harry couldn’t tell if they were pleased and annoyed at being interrupted. Then Ron’s voice, clear and determined.
“With lots and lots of alcohol. You invite all the friends of the dead person, get lots of booze, say a few things about him and then get royally pissed.”
“Honestly, Ron, do you really think…”
“Would Sirius have liked that?”
Harry remembered Sirius in this house, stumbling into the kitchen with dark circles under his eyes, grabbing a bottle of wine from the cupboard and Remus Lupin from the kitchen table before disappearing back to his room. From the blush on Hermione’s cheeks and the dirty grin on Ron’s face, they remembered it too.
“So, a wake it is. Who should we invite?”
There was no question of where to hold the party. Dark and depressing as this house was, it was where Sirius had lived and it was his house, and that was that.
“Lupin, I suppose, and Tonks as well…”
“We should call him Remus, you know.”
“You want to call him Remus because you fancy him.”
“Harry also calls him Remus, are you saying Harry fancies him as well?”
Harry stood up to make some more tea.
“And who else?”
“McGonagall perhaps, she seems very fond of him now. Kingsley Shacklebolt? Fred and George, certainly, they still mourn the loss of Mess. Padfoot. And Bill and Fleur, and Charlie…”
“Mum and Dad”?
Hermione pursed her mouth in a way that suggested she was about to be polite.
“I don’t think your Mum liked Sirius that much, Ron.”
“No, but she’d still want to be there. They both would.”
“This is not just so you can see her dance on the table again, is it?”
Ron and Hermione turned to look at Harry, with horror and glee on their respective faces. Harry put the teapot and three mugs on the table, grinning again.
Hermione recovered first.
“Well, it seems we have a preliminary list. We can add more names as we think of them.”
“Yeah. We can start buying alcohol then.”
The enthusiasm in Ron’s voice wasn’t all feigned, nor was Hermione’s look of mock outrage.
“When are we having this?”
Harry frowned as they both turned to look at him. This was the one thing he had decided. He kept his eyes straight ahead and his hands steady on the table.
“Halloween.”
“Ah.”
Another tight smile on Hermione’s face, and then:
“Right then. Who’s going to tell Remus?”
: :
The flat where Remus lived was small. Harry had only been there once before, delivering a book from Hermione and drinking an awkward cup of tea. This was going to be worse.
There were fewer smiles on Remus’ face these days but then none of them had any reason for joy. The shabby robes were the same as before and his eyes were still tired, but Remus’ voice was colder now, and more careful with its expressions. Harry remembered a day in 12, Grimmauld Place, over the Christmas holidays when Sirius had convinced his friend to join him in recounting the alternative lyrics to a wizarding carol, and how they had both been laughing with tears in their eyes by the end, with Hermione giggling and Molly looking on with disapproval. This man didn’t look like he could have ever done that.
But he was polite as he let Harry in, asked after his friends, made some comment on the latest news. He didn’t look fragile but Harry dreaded what he might say. His rights over Sirius went far beyond Harry’s.
“We’re going to have a wake for Sirius.”
He didn’t stumble the words, but there was a slight crack in the last word.
Remus had lifted his tea to his lips, and he held the cup there for a long moment before putting it back down again.
“Oh?”
Harry nodded, stared at the table and explained their plans as concisely as he could. He had practiced this, knew the rights words that should offer no disrespect. Their plan was good, but there would be no wake if Remus didn’t want it.
But the threat of breaking down seemed to fade as Harry spoke, and there was almost warmth in the curve of his mouth when he heard of Ron’s plans for much alcohol, and Hermione’s disappointment at not using a proper wizarding tradition.
“Well, that’s true, the kind of wake Ron was talking about is not really something that they would use in most families. But you must remember that there are many traditions within wizarding Britain, and quite a few of the older families, especially those with ties to the continent, would include an element of Phrygian magic, where wine plays an important part. There’s a ritual, first recorded in ancient Rome but already old at that time, that was brought to us through Norman wizards. It requires the blood of an animal and an incantation in old Latin, and merum, that is, ‘old wine’. It is somehow associated with the poet Catullus and takes its name from ‘the night of endless sleep,’ which is a line in one of his poems. The ritual supposedly produces a release from the little death, and in the case of ghosts, for example, allows them to move on.”
“But Sirius isn’t a ghost.”
“No. But the ritual would have been popular with families like the Blacks. It would have cemented their position as the guardians of old magic, and perhaps more importantly, made sure the dead didn’t come back to haunt their descendents. Which, for the Black family, I would imagine, could have been a grave concern.”
There was a smidgeon of amusement in his voice now, but Harry wasn’t sure whether that was because he enjoyed sharing the knowledge or because mocking the Blacks was something he liked to do.
“Do you think that’s something Sirius would have wanted? I mean, we were thinking that Ron’s idea of having all his friends around, with lots of booze, is something he would have liked.”
Remus gave a slight grin and sipped his tea.
“Well, I can imagine that the idea of getting all of us pissed off our heads and telling fond stories about him is something that would have pleased him.”
Harry nodded. There had been nights at Grimmauld Place when Harry had sat by the kitchen table with his friends, long after dinner plates had been cleaned away and Molly had stopped trying to pry the wine bottle from Sirius’ hands, listening to Remus and Sirius tell stories about their schooldays, and James, and Lily, and Snivellus (“Snape, Sirius, his name is Snape.”) and the first Order of the Phoenix. Remus had done most of the talking, Sirius interrupting with comments that would usually make the children howl in laughter and Remus smile fondly, but with slight exasperation.
“What about the ritual? Is that something that, I mean, should we do that as well?”
“Ask Hermione to find out about the nox perpetua dormienda. It should be in Ritii Bacchi, vol. 3.”
Harry stood up. There was no heating in the room, and his fingers were cold despite the warm tea. He put his hands in his pockets.
“Right. I’ll get that sorted.”
Remus finished that last of his tea, and looked up.
“And Harry? Tell her I’ll bring the wine.”
: :
Hermione had never spoken to Tonks on her own. She had been chosen, not because she was a girl, but because Harry and Ron, through their own admission, were incapable of having a reasonable discussion with a woman they didn’t know. Or any woman, Hermione had said under her breath, and pointed out that they also wouldn’t know what to ask, or to say. But if she had thought anything of their eagerness send her off and be left alone in the big house, she had not mentioned it. She was not prepared to deal with that quite yet.
Tonks answered the door with half a grimace. Her hair was purple today, and although the lines of fatigue were still visible on her face, the general numbness Harry had talked about was gone. She welcomed Hermione politely, asked if she wanted a drink, and settled her down with a glass of white wine.
Hermione had decided to go straight to the point.
“We are going to hold a wake for Sirius.”
This statement didn’t cause any reaction apart from a raised eyebrow, and Hermione continued with only a slight tremor in her voice.
“I don’t know if Remus has mentioned this to you, but there’s a ritual, the nox perpetua, that Harry wants to do, and we were wondering if you wanted to come along.”
Tonks leaned down carefully on the sofa in a clear effort to appear relaxed, and Hermione realised how tense she was.
“I haven’t spoken to Remus for a while. We broke up some time ago.”
There was a blush of embarrassment on Hermione’s cheeks. Tonks’ voice was low and steady, and Hermione wondered whether Metamorphmagi ever blushed unintentionally.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realise…”
“It’s okay. We were not well suited and it’s better this way. We’re still friends and all.”
This woman was very different from the one who had shouted out her love in the hospital wing a few months ago. The lines under her eyes were deeper, but the desperation in her mouth was not as pronounced. She shrugged under Hermione’s scrutiny, and Hermione looked away, thinking about whether it was ever possible to really stay friends afterwards.
“Right. Well, as I said, we are holding a wake, and we would very much like you to come. It’s on Halloween. In 12, Grimmauld Place.”
Tonks nodded.
“The nox perpetua. My mum talked about it once, said she didn’t want it done to her. It’s something the Blacks do, not quite necromancy but still fairly dark. Are you sure this is a good idea?”
Hermione smoothed her trousers and looked straight up at Tonks.
“We are not going to be raising the dead, or anything. There will be some incantations and some wine…”
“The merum, yes…”
“…and a small blood sacrifice. If you wanted to come along, as a representative of the House of Black…”
Lifted eyebrows and a look of surprise coincided with suddenly black hair.
“I am hardly a Black. My mum was disowned, you know, and I’m half-blood anyway. Not someone they would consider a proper Black.”
Hermione found it was easy to curve her mouth into a smile at this point.
“But Sirius would. He wouldn’t want any proper Blacks, as you say. He would want you.”
Hermione kept eye contact although her hands were shaking, and the look on Tonks’ face wasn’t particularly pleased. The moment lasted, until Hermione spoke again.
“It was Remus’ idea, that we should ask you. He said it should be you.”
Tonks took a long, painful breath, and there were something like tears in her eyes, but she nodded. Hermione looked down and finished her wine, letting the other woman compose herself in peace.
“Halloween, then. Do you have everything sorted out then, the wine and the spell and all?”
“Yeah. I’ve found the words and done the research. Remus is bringing the wine.”
Tonks nodded again. There was regret on her face but also something besides bitterness, something that made Hermione want to never care about a man if it meant this. She said goodbye and hurried out, and didn’t think about Harry or Ron.
: :
Tonks had chosen black hair for the wake. She was conscious of how ill it made her look, drawn and colourless in her black robes and much older than she was. Her mother had given her a long look as she was leaving, but Tonks had ignored her. She knew why she didn’t care about looking attractive anymore. She wasn’t interested in discussing it.
This ritual made her uncomfortable. Not only because it was old magic, something no longer taught at Hogwarts or acknowledged by most of the wizarding population. But there was something strange in the incantation that kept bothering her, something to do with house and family and blood, something foul. She had tried researching it, but there were no records of successful spells being performed. Those families that were rumoured to still continue the tradition chose to remain silent about it.
Tonks wondered where Remus had got the merum. The Latin word originally meant strong wine, the kind that had been drunk in the Roman Empire, but the wizarding tradition had developed a separate meaning. The merum was also blood-wine, earth-wine, made out of dark grapes from an underground vineyard in what was now Turkey, and mixed with animal blood and hallucinogenic oils. A mouthful was enough to fell a grown man.
Most rituals that used it required it to be burnt; the thick scent and smoke that would follow would create strange visions and nausea but without poisoning the body completely. In those occasions where the merum was drunk, it was always diluted with water, and rumoured to result only in strong headaches and at most a brief coma.
In the nox durmienda perpetua a drop of pure merum would be placed on each participant’s tongue. Then libations would be poured on the ground, on a circle of magic that was both protective and threatening. Then the incantation, the blood-sacrifice, and the nox durmienda, whatever that meant. Tonks didn’t like any of it.
But it was for Sirius and she would do it. He deserved the memorial, and they, they all deserved to mourn.
To be continued
Pairing: Remus/Sirius, Harry/Ron/Hermione
Words: 3079
Summary: Harry wants to hold a wake for Sirius.
The Wake
The kitchen of 12, Grimmauld Place had not changed much since Harry had last been there. The windows were still dirty, the cooker still smelled faintly of over-boiled cabbage, and there were still strange noises coming from the pantry. Harry still hated it.
It was worse now. The sour smell in the curtains was more pronounced without Molly’s cleaning charms to battle it. The deep cold in the corridors, seeping through his boots, was unrelieved by warm fires or warm bodies. The portraits were silent, and somehow that was the worst of it; no Mrs. Black to shout abuse at her son, no Sirius to laugh at his mother and provoke her into further invective.
They had made tea. Harry had brought teabags and Hermione had brought a kettle, since magic in this house could no longer be depended on. Spells went awry, small household charms required great effort and friendly magic turned easily into curses. Hermione kept saying how fascinating this was, and how the next time she visited she would bring some device to measure magic and study it. Harry wondered whether she was actually interested, or whether research was merely a way of countering the suffocating mood of the house.
Harry drank his tea and watched Hermione stir the spoon in her cup as they waited for Ron. She was thinner now and pale, the freckles of past summers all but invisible on her arms. Harry knew she didn’t go to the Burrow for dinner these days, anymore than he did; Molly’s enforced cheerfulness and increasingly manic conversation made it difficult to keep up the appearance of normality. Ron still lived there, but Harry suspected it was only to keep his mother from going insane.
Fending for themselves with things like food and laundry was one of the unexpected results of leaving Hogwarts. Harry was getting used to worrying about clean clothes and whether he’d remembered to buy cereal as well as worrying about Voldemort’s next move.
Hermione was taking out notebooks from her bag. These days they tended to be sober brown and green, as if the constant dread of war would not permit such frivolous colours as pink and yellow. But Hermione looked cheerful as she sharpened her quill, and Harry almost envied her for the distraction of taking notes on traditions that didn’t involve curses and torture.
“Hello? Harry? Hermione?”
Ron’s voice was tired, and his steps on the corridor outside were clumsy and loud. But Harry found himself grinning, and there was a similar curve of joy on Hermione’s lips when she looked at him. They didn’t see each other often enough, with Hermione flitting about from library to library and Ron orchestrating the war from the Burrow. Harry moved along with the Order Headquarters, now changing location every two weeks.
Ron stumbled in, his hair longer than Molly had ever allowed it before and his jeans dirty. But his grin was the wide as he sat down, brushed Hermione’s hand with his fingers and looked up at Harry.
“So, a memorial or something?”
Harry’s smile became tight and then disappeared.
“After Dumbledore’s…funeral, I started thinking, about how we never had that for Sirius. Even though everybody knows he was innocent and the Ministry…but yeah. We should do something.”
Ron nodded.
“A wake? We could toast his memory by getting hammered.’
Hermione coughed and for a moment turned back into a disapproving prefect.
“Actually, wizarding traditions do not include that kind of drinking feasts. There’s a very interesting ritual, for example, where the family members sacrifice a goat…”
“We had a wake for my great uncle Mortimer! That’s the most drunk I’ve ever seen Dad…”
“…and then you say this incantation and receive the blessing of the dead for the house, which Sirius probably wouldn’t have wanted for this house, although now that it’s yours, Harry…”
“…and Fred and George kept saying things like how useful the kitchen table is, what a fine sturdy table, and Mum kept blushing but she couldn’t say anything of course since we eat from it everyday, and…”
It was a curious thing to watch. They were both pretending not to listen what the other was saying, but somehow the flows of their speech matched so that it made sense. Not quite bickering, but Harry could hear the fond competitiveness in the voices. He realised he had started smiling again, for the second time in weeks.
“A wake?”
There was a moment’s silence at his voice, and then Hermione spoke.
“It’s not a proper wizarding tradition, Harry…”
“But I keep telling you we have them! And we’re wizards!”
Hermione frowned, not in displeasure but with scholarly confusion.
“Perhaps there is some Irish blood in you then, cause you know, Irish wizards have a completely different set of traditions…”
“What kind of a wake then?”
A pause, and Harry couldn’t tell if they were pleased and annoyed at being interrupted. Then Ron’s voice, clear and determined.
“With lots and lots of alcohol. You invite all the friends of the dead person, get lots of booze, say a few things about him and then get royally pissed.”
“Honestly, Ron, do you really think…”
“Would Sirius have liked that?”
Harry remembered Sirius in this house, stumbling into the kitchen with dark circles under his eyes, grabbing a bottle of wine from the cupboard and Remus Lupin from the kitchen table before disappearing back to his room. From the blush on Hermione’s cheeks and the dirty grin on Ron’s face, they remembered it too.
“So, a wake it is. Who should we invite?”
There was no question of where to hold the party. Dark and depressing as this house was, it was where Sirius had lived and it was his house, and that was that.
“Lupin, I suppose, and Tonks as well…”
“We should call him Remus, you know.”
“You want to call him Remus because you fancy him.”
“Harry also calls him Remus, are you saying Harry fancies him as well?”
Harry stood up to make some more tea.
“And who else?”
“McGonagall perhaps, she seems very fond of him now. Kingsley Shacklebolt? Fred and George, certainly, they still mourn the loss of Mess. Padfoot. And Bill and Fleur, and Charlie…”
“Mum and Dad”?
Hermione pursed her mouth in a way that suggested she was about to be polite.
“I don’t think your Mum liked Sirius that much, Ron.”
“No, but she’d still want to be there. They both would.”
“This is not just so you can see her dance on the table again, is it?”
Ron and Hermione turned to look at Harry, with horror and glee on their respective faces. Harry put the teapot and three mugs on the table, grinning again.
Hermione recovered first.
“Well, it seems we have a preliminary list. We can add more names as we think of them.”
“Yeah. We can start buying alcohol then.”
The enthusiasm in Ron’s voice wasn’t all feigned, nor was Hermione’s look of mock outrage.
“When are we having this?”
Harry frowned as they both turned to look at him. This was the one thing he had decided. He kept his eyes straight ahead and his hands steady on the table.
“Halloween.”
“Ah.”
Another tight smile on Hermione’s face, and then:
“Right then. Who’s going to tell Remus?”
: :
The flat where Remus lived was small. Harry had only been there once before, delivering a book from Hermione and drinking an awkward cup of tea. This was going to be worse.
There were fewer smiles on Remus’ face these days but then none of them had any reason for joy. The shabby robes were the same as before and his eyes were still tired, but Remus’ voice was colder now, and more careful with its expressions. Harry remembered a day in 12, Grimmauld Place, over the Christmas holidays when Sirius had convinced his friend to join him in recounting the alternative lyrics to a wizarding carol, and how they had both been laughing with tears in their eyes by the end, with Hermione giggling and Molly looking on with disapproval. This man didn’t look like he could have ever done that.
But he was polite as he let Harry in, asked after his friends, made some comment on the latest news. He didn’t look fragile but Harry dreaded what he might say. His rights over Sirius went far beyond Harry’s.
“We’re going to have a wake for Sirius.”
He didn’t stumble the words, but there was a slight crack in the last word.
Remus had lifted his tea to his lips, and he held the cup there for a long moment before putting it back down again.
“Oh?”
Harry nodded, stared at the table and explained their plans as concisely as he could. He had practiced this, knew the rights words that should offer no disrespect. Their plan was good, but there would be no wake if Remus didn’t want it.
But the threat of breaking down seemed to fade as Harry spoke, and there was almost warmth in the curve of his mouth when he heard of Ron’s plans for much alcohol, and Hermione’s disappointment at not using a proper wizarding tradition.
“Well, that’s true, the kind of wake Ron was talking about is not really something that they would use in most families. But you must remember that there are many traditions within wizarding Britain, and quite a few of the older families, especially those with ties to the continent, would include an element of Phrygian magic, where wine plays an important part. There’s a ritual, first recorded in ancient Rome but already old at that time, that was brought to us through Norman wizards. It requires the blood of an animal and an incantation in old Latin, and merum, that is, ‘old wine’. It is somehow associated with the poet Catullus and takes its name from ‘the night of endless sleep,’ which is a line in one of his poems. The ritual supposedly produces a release from the little death, and in the case of ghosts, for example, allows them to move on.”
“But Sirius isn’t a ghost.”
“No. But the ritual would have been popular with families like the Blacks. It would have cemented their position as the guardians of old magic, and perhaps more importantly, made sure the dead didn’t come back to haunt their descendents. Which, for the Black family, I would imagine, could have been a grave concern.”
There was a smidgeon of amusement in his voice now, but Harry wasn’t sure whether that was because he enjoyed sharing the knowledge or because mocking the Blacks was something he liked to do.
“Do you think that’s something Sirius would have wanted? I mean, we were thinking that Ron’s idea of having all his friends around, with lots of booze, is something he would have liked.”
Remus gave a slight grin and sipped his tea.
“Well, I can imagine that the idea of getting all of us pissed off our heads and telling fond stories about him is something that would have pleased him.”
Harry nodded. There had been nights at Grimmauld Place when Harry had sat by the kitchen table with his friends, long after dinner plates had been cleaned away and Molly had stopped trying to pry the wine bottle from Sirius’ hands, listening to Remus and Sirius tell stories about their schooldays, and James, and Lily, and Snivellus (“Snape, Sirius, his name is Snape.”) and the first Order of the Phoenix. Remus had done most of the talking, Sirius interrupting with comments that would usually make the children howl in laughter and Remus smile fondly, but with slight exasperation.
“What about the ritual? Is that something that, I mean, should we do that as well?”
“Ask Hermione to find out about the nox perpetua dormienda. It should be in Ritii Bacchi, vol. 3.”
Harry stood up. There was no heating in the room, and his fingers were cold despite the warm tea. He put his hands in his pockets.
“Right. I’ll get that sorted.”
Remus finished that last of his tea, and looked up.
“And Harry? Tell her I’ll bring the wine.”
: :
Hermione had never spoken to Tonks on her own. She had been chosen, not because she was a girl, but because Harry and Ron, through their own admission, were incapable of having a reasonable discussion with a woman they didn’t know. Or any woman, Hermione had said under her breath, and pointed out that they also wouldn’t know what to ask, or to say. But if she had thought anything of their eagerness send her off and be left alone in the big house, she had not mentioned it. She was not prepared to deal with that quite yet.
Tonks answered the door with half a grimace. Her hair was purple today, and although the lines of fatigue were still visible on her face, the general numbness Harry had talked about was gone. She welcomed Hermione politely, asked if she wanted a drink, and settled her down with a glass of white wine.
Hermione had decided to go straight to the point.
“We are going to hold a wake for Sirius.”
This statement didn’t cause any reaction apart from a raised eyebrow, and Hermione continued with only a slight tremor in her voice.
“I don’t know if Remus has mentioned this to you, but there’s a ritual, the nox perpetua, that Harry wants to do, and we were wondering if you wanted to come along.”
Tonks leaned down carefully on the sofa in a clear effort to appear relaxed, and Hermione realised how tense she was.
“I haven’t spoken to Remus for a while. We broke up some time ago.”
There was a blush of embarrassment on Hermione’s cheeks. Tonks’ voice was low and steady, and Hermione wondered whether Metamorphmagi ever blushed unintentionally.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realise…”
“It’s okay. We were not well suited and it’s better this way. We’re still friends and all.”
This woman was very different from the one who had shouted out her love in the hospital wing a few months ago. The lines under her eyes were deeper, but the desperation in her mouth was not as pronounced. She shrugged under Hermione’s scrutiny, and Hermione looked away, thinking about whether it was ever possible to really stay friends afterwards.
“Right. Well, as I said, we are holding a wake, and we would very much like you to come. It’s on Halloween. In 12, Grimmauld Place.”
Tonks nodded.
“The nox perpetua. My mum talked about it once, said she didn’t want it done to her. It’s something the Blacks do, not quite necromancy but still fairly dark. Are you sure this is a good idea?”
Hermione smoothed her trousers and looked straight up at Tonks.
“We are not going to be raising the dead, or anything. There will be some incantations and some wine…”
“The merum, yes…”
“…and a small blood sacrifice. If you wanted to come along, as a representative of the House of Black…”
Lifted eyebrows and a look of surprise coincided with suddenly black hair.
“I am hardly a Black. My mum was disowned, you know, and I’m half-blood anyway. Not someone they would consider a proper Black.”
Hermione found it was easy to curve her mouth into a smile at this point.
“But Sirius would. He wouldn’t want any proper Blacks, as you say. He would want you.”
Hermione kept eye contact although her hands were shaking, and the look on Tonks’ face wasn’t particularly pleased. The moment lasted, until Hermione spoke again.
“It was Remus’ idea, that we should ask you. He said it should be you.”
Tonks took a long, painful breath, and there were something like tears in her eyes, but she nodded. Hermione looked down and finished her wine, letting the other woman compose herself in peace.
“Halloween, then. Do you have everything sorted out then, the wine and the spell and all?”
“Yeah. I’ve found the words and done the research. Remus is bringing the wine.”
Tonks nodded again. There was regret on her face but also something besides bitterness, something that made Hermione want to never care about a man if it meant this. She said goodbye and hurried out, and didn’t think about Harry or Ron.
: :
Tonks had chosen black hair for the wake. She was conscious of how ill it made her look, drawn and colourless in her black robes and much older than she was. Her mother had given her a long look as she was leaving, but Tonks had ignored her. She knew why she didn’t care about looking attractive anymore. She wasn’t interested in discussing it.
This ritual made her uncomfortable. Not only because it was old magic, something no longer taught at Hogwarts or acknowledged by most of the wizarding population. But there was something strange in the incantation that kept bothering her, something to do with house and family and blood, something foul. She had tried researching it, but there were no records of successful spells being performed. Those families that were rumoured to still continue the tradition chose to remain silent about it.
Tonks wondered where Remus had got the merum. The Latin word originally meant strong wine, the kind that had been drunk in the Roman Empire, but the wizarding tradition had developed a separate meaning. The merum was also blood-wine, earth-wine, made out of dark grapes from an underground vineyard in what was now Turkey, and mixed with animal blood and hallucinogenic oils. A mouthful was enough to fell a grown man.
Most rituals that used it required it to be burnt; the thick scent and smoke that would follow would create strange visions and nausea but without poisoning the body completely. In those occasions where the merum was drunk, it was always diluted with water, and rumoured to result only in strong headaches and at most a brief coma.
In the nox durmienda perpetua a drop of pure merum would be placed on each participant’s tongue. Then libations would be poured on the ground, on a circle of magic that was both protective and threatening. Then the incantation, the blood-sacrifice, and the nox durmienda, whatever that meant. Tonks didn’t like any of it.
But it was for Sirius and she would do it. He deserved the memorial, and they, they all deserved to mourn.
To be continued
