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rt_moreloveAuthor: starfishstar
Title: The Lighthouse Keeper (a sneak peek from “The Snow Wolf”)
Rating & Warnings: PG
Word Count: 2,900
Prompt: “cold”
Summary:
While on his undercover mission to the werewolves, Remus disappears. Tonks sets out north on a quest to find the man she loves and reclaim him from the clutches of a powerful magical beast.
(A fairy tale fusion, bringing together the world of Harry Potter with the plot of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen. Or: in which I took a 19th century fairy tale that's surprisingly full of strong female characters, and added even more of them.)
In this excerpt, Tonks seeks the help of a powerful witch who can harness the winds.
Notes:
This is a small excerpt from my forthcoming story "The Snow Wolf." An early, partial version of the story was written forrt_morelove last year, and the much expanded, complete version is nearly ready to post, so it seemed fitting to give rt_morelove folks an excerpt!
This section comes towards the end of the story; Tonks has been travelling north, across Scotland to Shetland to Norway, piecing together clues about what happened to Remus with the help of people she meets along the way. One werewolf in the pack he'd been living with tells Tonks that Remus was taken away to the north, and a mage in Shetland tells her about the Snow Wolf, a terrifyingly powerful magical beast who lives at the top of the world. Even a woman living in an enchanted garden on Scotland’s north coast, who first tries to trick Tonks into staying with her because she's so lonely, eventually helps guide Tonks on towards Norway. There, Tonks meets Hindrun, who turns out to be a reindeer Animagus and offers to carry Tonks north to find a witch in a lighthouse at the very northern tip of Norway, who may be able to tell them how to find the Snow Wolf.
For this excerpt, as for the fic as a whole,gilpin25 was my beta and huldrejenta provided expertise on all things Norwegian.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
They ran all night, or maybe it was more than a night, as time slid away under Hindrun’s hooves with the hard-packed snow. Tonks clung tightly to Hindrun’s warm reindeer fur, pressing her face into the comforting animal scent of it to protect her lungs from the unforgiving air.
She heard a crackling overhead and looked up to see the northern lights setting the sky on fire, glorious pinks and purples radiating from the horizon, swooping and arching until they filled the whole sky. The beauty of it took Tonks’ breath away as she stared up and up into the wheeling colours of the Arctic night.
Then all at once Hindrun skidded to a halt, her hooves clanging out against bare rock instead of snow.
They’d stopped at the top of a rocky rise looking out over the sea. Below them, a narrow causeway led out to a tiny islet of rock. A lighthouse squatted there, solid and square and very white against the darkness of the sea. Its beacon flared in an uneven rhythm – one two… one two… – and the light appeared faint, as though it were shining from far away, even though the lighthouse lay so close beneath them.
Tonks slid down from Hindrun’s back, in case her friend wished to transform back into human form, and rested one hand lightly against the reindeer’s flank as she stared down at the lighthouse below. A strange mist swirled around it, following no natural pattern Tonks had ever seen. At times it would part completely, then refold itself around the building almost like a set of double doors being slammed closed.
Beside Tonks, Hindrun shivered, rippled, and became human again.
“Yup,” Hindrun said, as casual as if the two of them had been chatting back and forth all day. “I reckon that’s where she lives, this witch who knows all about the far north and the winds.”
As Tonks watched, the mist again parted then shut around the lighthouse below. Staring at the eerie picture it made, Tonks mused, “I wonder how she feels about visitors.”
Hindrun turned to her and grinned. “Want to find out?”
There was a precarious path down the side of the outcropping that allowed them, barely, to pick their way down the rock to sea level, then cross the narrow land bridge that connected the lighthouse to the shore. Standing in front of the little wooden door of the lighthouse, Tonks looked at Hindrun and Hindrun looked at Tonks.
“Knock?” Tonks wondered aloud. It felt anticlimactic, after the long journey they’d undertaken to get here.
“Suppose so,” Hindrun shrugged. “Unless you know some special secret signal for summoning magic women who live in lighthouses.”
“Nope,” Tonks said, and she reached out and rapped at the door.
They waited, staring at the unmoving door, for a long time. The strange fog they’d observed from above now swirled about their feet, moving not like any normal fog would do, but like a living thing.
It began to snow, too, big flakes that drifted down all around them until the whole world seemed full of it. Snow landed in Tonks’ eyelashes and eyebrows, and she kept having to blink it away so she could see.
They waited in front of the lighthouse door so long that Tonks started to wonder if they were going to have to turn around and leave and find a different way onwards, after they’d come so far to find this place. She felt her shoulders drawing up around her ears and her hands clenching in frustration. It couldn’t end here. It couldn’t.
The door banged open.
“What do you want?” demanded the woman standing inside it. She was tiny, barely as tall as Tonks’ shoulder, with wiry arms and a slight hunch to her back, yet she radiated enormous power. Wild grey hair stood out from her head in all directions and her dark eyes snapped at them, keenly intelligent and missing nothing. Tonks was reminded of Dumbledore, if Dumbledore were tiny and fierce instead of tall and almost aggravatingly amiable.
“My name is Tonks, and this is my friend Hindrun,” Tonks said, in her best being-very-reasonable Auror voice. “I’m trying to find the way to the Snow Wolf’s fortress, and we’ve heard you might be able to tell us how to get there.”
“Huh,” the woman said, sounding extremely unimpressed. She scratched absently at her elbow as she scowled at both Tonks and Hindrun. “You seek the Snow Wolf? You? What are you going to do, wave your wand at him?”
Before Tonks could say anything, Hindrun answered instead, with a beseeching note in her voice that Tonks hadn’t heard before. “My friend isn’t as powerless as you’re thinking. She’s got a pure heart and a strong will. And she’s questing for the sake of love, and that still matters with these ancient old foes, I know it does.”
The old woman burst out in raucous laughter. “‘Ancient old foes’,” she repeated mockingly. “What do you know of ancient old foes, little fawn?”
Tonks glanced over at Hindrun, surprised that this witch could guess not only that Hindrun was an Animagus, but even what her form was. Tonks wondered if she was discomfited by being so easily exposed. But Hindrun was busy scowling back at the woman.
“I know enough,” Hindrun glowered. “I know the Snow Wolf isn’t human, so he doesn’t play by human rules. I know we’ll never find him if we just walk around looking for him with our eyes and nothing else to guide us. I also know that you have the power to help us, if you decide you can be bothered.”
The witch stared back at her for a long moment. Then she made a noise of utter disgust that sounded something like ekhhh. “Fine,” she said. “You might as well come inside.” She stamped away into the building, then waved an arm back at Tonks and Hindrun, calling, “Well? Aren’t you coming? You’re letting the snow in.”
Tonks stepped into the lighthouse, and Hindrun followed and shut the door behind them. Inside was a single large room, perfectly square except for one corner where a wooden staircase spiralled upwards and disappeared into the room’s ceiling, leading presumably to some upper chamber from which the lighthouse’s beacon sent out its strange and intermittent signal through the icy mists.
“Go on, warm yourselves by the fire,” the woman grunted.
Tonks and Hindrun crossed the room to the merry fire that crackled behind a grate in the middle of one wall. Tonks gratefully pulled off the thick mittens the mage and the wise woman had given her, and stretched her fingers out to thaw in the fire’s warmth.
“Now then,” the lighthouse keeper went on, coming to stand between Tonks and Hindrun and rocking impatiently from her heels to the balls of her feet. The top of her head barely came up to Tonks’ shoulder. “What’s this nonsense about seeking the Snow Wolf, eh? What’s put that idea in your pretty wee heads?”
For all her gruffness, there was also a hint of a lilt to the woman’s voice, and it didn’t strike Tonks as Norwegian. This woman didn’t talk like Hindrun or Dúfa or Mona or anyone else Tonks had met since she first Apparated into that forest of spruces and pines. And yet there was something vaguely familiar about the woman’s speech, but for the life of her Tonks couldn’t place it.
The woman was looking at her with impatience, so Tonks launched into her story again, telling how Remus had disappeared and how she’d gone out into the world to look for him. And she explained what she’d learned along the way about the Snow Wolf, this ancient being who lived in a land of ice but sometimes came south to kidnap werewolves.
“Everything I’ve learned about the Snow Wolf fits with what I know about Remus’ disappearance,” Tonks concluded. “Someone Hindrun knows even saw the Snow Wolf carrying Remus north. I know that’s where he is, and I know I’ve got to go there and find him and bring him back.”
“Ha!” The woman burst out with another harsh laugh, then poked one sharp finger into Tonks’ shoulder and fixed her with a stare. “Let me give you some advice, from one who knows a great deal more about the Snow Wolf than you ever will.”
“Yes?” Tonks answered unwillingly. She had a pretty good idea what the woman’s advice was going to be.
The lighthouse keeper dropped her hand to her side and rocked back onto her heels. “Go on home, girl. Only fools seek the Snow Wolf, and fools don’t survive the encounter.” She gave a wry little cough. “I’m not entirely cold of heart, whatever you may think, and I’m sorry your friend has been lost. But it helps nothing and no one if you sacrifice yourself as well. Go back home. Enough of this, now.”
She smacked her hands together, as though brushing the whole matter away, then stalked away from them, to a table along the opposite wall that was piled high with scrolls and books. She began shuffling aimlessly among the papers, for all the world as though she’d already dismissed her visitors’ presence from her mind.
Tonks and Hindrun exchanged a look. But it was Hindrun who darted across the room to the woman’s side. They made quite a contrast, seen there together: tall, athletic Hindrun with her pale, fine hair, and the tiny, wiry woman with a shock of grey like a cloud around her head.
“We know the Snow Wolf is powerful, but there must be some way to defeat him,” Hindrun pleaded. “You have power, too, you can harness the winds – can’t you give my friend extra strength so she can fight the Snow Wolf?”
“Strength!” The woman yowled with laughter. “Strength, to fight the Snow Wolf? Are you utterly ignorant, girl? You don’t fight the Snow Wolf with strength.”
The woman’s gaze snapped to Tonks, on the other side of the room.
“Listen now,” she hissed. Her voice was barely louder than the crackling of the fire, but Tonks heard every word. “This friend you seek, he wants to stay where he is. He thinks it a very fine place! You can be sure that by now he’ll have looked into the Mirror of Reason and, well! There’s no coming back after that.”
Tonks felt a chill at those words, just as she’d done the first time she heard of the Snow Wolf. Her voice caught in her throat, but she asked the question: “What is the Mirror of Reason?”
“Mirror of Unreason, more like,” the woman growled. “It shows anyone who looks into it the worst possible version of themselves. Of all the Snow Wolf’s magicks, it is perhaps the most dangerous of all, for it shows the truth, or at least a version of it. Once your friend has seen and believed the worst of himself, he won’t believe any longer in the person he was before. He has no wish to return to you now.”
Tonks felt Hindrun’s eyes fixed on her in sympathy, as well as the lighthouse keeper’s harsh stare, but all she could see was her mind’s own picture of Remus, somewhere in an icy wasteland, gazing into a mirror that made him forget himself.
“I’m not turning back,” Tonks said fiercely. “You can say whatever you want, you can tell me it’s pointless, but if there’s even the tiniest chance I can find him and bring him back, I’m going to do it. And if you don’t help me, I’ll find another way there.”
The woman gave a weary sigh, still fixing Tonks with her stare from across the room. “Will you? Hundreds of cold miles across the open waters of the Barents Sea?”
“Yes,” Tonks said.
“Listen,” the woman snapped. “I didn’t come up here to the edge of the world for the fun of it, you know. I am here in this place to keep balance. I keep the Snow Wolf from extending his reign further south than the lands that have always belonged to him. And I keep fools who come here from the lands beyond his domain, like you, from stumbling too far north, into things beyond their understanding. I tell you again, foolish child, turn back.”
Tonks stared at the woman, several things falling together into sudden sense. The oddly familiar lilt in the woman’s voice. Her admission that she’d come here from somewhere else. Even her use of the word lost to describe Remus.
“You’re her sister,” Tonks breathed. “Aren’t you? I mean: you have a sister, who keeps a magical garden, but you left her behind to come up here and be this…gatekeeper of the north. That’s you, isn’t it?”
It was only for a moment, but Tonks saw a chink appear in the woman’s gruffness. A glimpse of the little girl she must once have been, before she decided to leave everything she knew and take up this role as a protector at the border of the Snow Wolf’s domain. It was a glimpse that showed through for only a moment, but it was enough to let Tonks know that she was right.
She pressed on, before the woman could speak and refute her. “Okay. So you had a sister once and you cared about her. I don’t know if you still do, but there must once have been a time when you did, so maybe you can understand when I say that’s how I feel about Remus. Not the same kind of love as for a sister, but the same amount.” Tonks found her feet drawing her across the room towards the woman, caught up in the intensity of what she needed to convey. “I care about Remus. I’m not going to turn him over to fate and walk away. You say he doesn’t want to be rescued from the Snow Wolf, and maybe that’s true, I don’t know. But if there’s even the tiniest chance that the tiniest part of him still wants to come home – I’m going to find him and give him that chance.”
She’d reached where the woman stood by her paper-strewn table. Tonks stood in front of her, silent and pleading to be understood. Hindrun watched them both and seemed not even to breathe.
The woman stared back at Tonks for a very long time. It was so silent in the room that over the crackling of the fire Tonks could hear the wind outside soughing around the lighthouse walls. The tiny, fierce woman with the piercing eyes stared up into Tonks’ face like she was taking the measure of her heart.
At last she said, “Ekhhh, fine! I will put the wind at your back, to carry you across the sea.” She snapped one hand impatiently through there air. “Be glad of it, for you wouldn’t make it there at all if I didn’t. Little deer!” She spun around to Hindrun.
“Yes?” Hindrun asked, startled.
The woman poked her finger into Hindrun’s chest. “Change into your animal form and carry her there. Don’t tarry along the way. There are Muggles on Svalbard, with their towns and their research stations. Ignore them. Go directly to the northernmost of the islands, where the Snow Wolf’s fortress lies. Leave your friend there, at the southern edge of that island, and turn back. Only one can approach the Snow Wolf’s fortress, and it must be the one whose heart draws her there.” She cocked her head at Hindrun, sizing her up with her sharp eyes. “You’re not entirely wrong, foolish little animal though you are: purity of heart and strength of will, these things do matter. Your friend here is questing for love – more fool her! But if the motives of her heart are as strong as she claims, then, who knows? She might yet rescue her lost love. But she must venture there alone if she’s to try.”
Hindrun looked past the lighthouse keeper, her eyes meeting Tonks’. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Absolutely sure.”
Hindrun nodded once, and Tonks saw a little of that jauntiness in her again, the same devil-may-care attitude that had been so striking about her the day they’d first met. If Tonks had to cross hundreds of miles of frigid sea, she couldn’t think of a better person to do it with.
Tonks turned to the lighthouse keeper. “I don’t know if it matters to you, after all this time. I understand if it doesn’t, if that’s not the life you want for yourself anymore. But I met your sister on my way here, and she misses you. I think it would mean a lot to her to see you, if you wanted to visit her sometime. Even just once.”
The woman cocked her head again, fixing Tonks with the sceptical glare that seemed to be her speciality. But, too, Tonks saw again that tiny flash of the little girl she’d once been – a child who must have loved her sister, and had had her own reasons for leaving, but maybe still lived somewhere inside the woman who stood here now.
“Okay,” Tonks said. “Anyway. Thank you for helping us, even though you didn’t want to.”
“Go,” the woman said, but her gruff voice was surprisingly gentle. “Go now. I’ll send the wind to lift you up as soon as you step outside.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
End note: This has been an excerpt from “The Snow Wolf” – I’m currently finishing up the final-final-final edit of the fic as a whole, which is coming soon and will be found under the same username (starfishstar) on AO3, DW or LJ. :-)
.
starfishstarTitle: The Lighthouse Keeper (a sneak peek from “The Snow Wolf”)
Rating & Warnings: PG
Word Count: 2,900
Prompt: “cold”
Summary:
While on his undercover mission to the werewolves, Remus disappears. Tonks sets out north on a quest to find the man she loves and reclaim him from the clutches of a powerful magical beast.
(A fairy tale fusion, bringing together the world of Harry Potter with the plot of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen. Or: in which I took a 19th century fairy tale that's surprisingly full of strong female characters, and added even more of them.)
In this excerpt, Tonks seeks the help of a powerful witch who can harness the winds.
Notes:
This is a small excerpt from my forthcoming story "The Snow Wolf." An early, partial version of the story was written for
rt_morelove last year, and the much expanded, complete version is nearly ready to post, so it seemed fitting to give rt_morelove folks an excerpt! This section comes towards the end of the story; Tonks has been travelling north, across Scotland to Shetland to Norway, piecing together clues about what happened to Remus with the help of people she meets along the way. One werewolf in the pack he'd been living with tells Tonks that Remus was taken away to the north, and a mage in Shetland tells her about the Snow Wolf, a terrifyingly powerful magical beast who lives at the top of the world. Even a woman living in an enchanted garden on Scotland’s north coast, who first tries to trick Tonks into staying with her because she's so lonely, eventually helps guide Tonks on towards Norway. There, Tonks meets Hindrun, who turns out to be a reindeer Animagus and offers to carry Tonks north to find a witch in a lighthouse at the very northern tip of Norway, who may be able to tell them how to find the Snow Wolf.
For this excerpt, as for the fic as a whole,
gilpin25 was my beta and huldrejenta provided expertise on all things Norwegian. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
They ran all night, or maybe it was more than a night, as time slid away under Hindrun’s hooves with the hard-packed snow. Tonks clung tightly to Hindrun’s warm reindeer fur, pressing her face into the comforting animal scent of it to protect her lungs from the unforgiving air.
She heard a crackling overhead and looked up to see the northern lights setting the sky on fire, glorious pinks and purples radiating from the horizon, swooping and arching until they filled the whole sky. The beauty of it took Tonks’ breath away as she stared up and up into the wheeling colours of the Arctic night.
Then all at once Hindrun skidded to a halt, her hooves clanging out against bare rock instead of snow.
They’d stopped at the top of a rocky rise looking out over the sea. Below them, a narrow causeway led out to a tiny islet of rock. A lighthouse squatted there, solid and square and very white against the darkness of the sea. Its beacon flared in an uneven rhythm – one two… one two… – and the light appeared faint, as though it were shining from far away, even though the lighthouse lay so close beneath them.
Tonks slid down from Hindrun’s back, in case her friend wished to transform back into human form, and rested one hand lightly against the reindeer’s flank as she stared down at the lighthouse below. A strange mist swirled around it, following no natural pattern Tonks had ever seen. At times it would part completely, then refold itself around the building almost like a set of double doors being slammed closed.
Beside Tonks, Hindrun shivered, rippled, and became human again.
“Yup,” Hindrun said, as casual as if the two of them had been chatting back and forth all day. “I reckon that’s where she lives, this witch who knows all about the far north and the winds.”
As Tonks watched, the mist again parted then shut around the lighthouse below. Staring at the eerie picture it made, Tonks mused, “I wonder how she feels about visitors.”
Hindrun turned to her and grinned. “Want to find out?”
There was a precarious path down the side of the outcropping that allowed them, barely, to pick their way down the rock to sea level, then cross the narrow land bridge that connected the lighthouse to the shore. Standing in front of the little wooden door of the lighthouse, Tonks looked at Hindrun and Hindrun looked at Tonks.
“Knock?” Tonks wondered aloud. It felt anticlimactic, after the long journey they’d undertaken to get here.
“Suppose so,” Hindrun shrugged. “Unless you know some special secret signal for summoning magic women who live in lighthouses.”
“Nope,” Tonks said, and she reached out and rapped at the door.
They waited, staring at the unmoving door, for a long time. The strange fog they’d observed from above now swirled about their feet, moving not like any normal fog would do, but like a living thing.
It began to snow, too, big flakes that drifted down all around them until the whole world seemed full of it. Snow landed in Tonks’ eyelashes and eyebrows, and she kept having to blink it away so she could see.
They waited in front of the lighthouse door so long that Tonks started to wonder if they were going to have to turn around and leave and find a different way onwards, after they’d come so far to find this place. She felt her shoulders drawing up around her ears and her hands clenching in frustration. It couldn’t end here. It couldn’t.
The door banged open.
“What do you want?” demanded the woman standing inside it. She was tiny, barely as tall as Tonks’ shoulder, with wiry arms and a slight hunch to her back, yet she radiated enormous power. Wild grey hair stood out from her head in all directions and her dark eyes snapped at them, keenly intelligent and missing nothing. Tonks was reminded of Dumbledore, if Dumbledore were tiny and fierce instead of tall and almost aggravatingly amiable.
“My name is Tonks, and this is my friend Hindrun,” Tonks said, in her best being-very-reasonable Auror voice. “I’m trying to find the way to the Snow Wolf’s fortress, and we’ve heard you might be able to tell us how to get there.”
“Huh,” the woman said, sounding extremely unimpressed. She scratched absently at her elbow as she scowled at both Tonks and Hindrun. “You seek the Snow Wolf? You? What are you going to do, wave your wand at him?”
Before Tonks could say anything, Hindrun answered instead, with a beseeching note in her voice that Tonks hadn’t heard before. “My friend isn’t as powerless as you’re thinking. She’s got a pure heart and a strong will. And she’s questing for the sake of love, and that still matters with these ancient old foes, I know it does.”
The old woman burst out in raucous laughter. “‘Ancient old foes’,” she repeated mockingly. “What do you know of ancient old foes, little fawn?”
Tonks glanced over at Hindrun, surprised that this witch could guess not only that Hindrun was an Animagus, but even what her form was. Tonks wondered if she was discomfited by being so easily exposed. But Hindrun was busy scowling back at the woman.
“I know enough,” Hindrun glowered. “I know the Snow Wolf isn’t human, so he doesn’t play by human rules. I know we’ll never find him if we just walk around looking for him with our eyes and nothing else to guide us. I also know that you have the power to help us, if you decide you can be bothered.”
The witch stared back at her for a long moment. Then she made a noise of utter disgust that sounded something like ekhhh. “Fine,” she said. “You might as well come inside.” She stamped away into the building, then waved an arm back at Tonks and Hindrun, calling, “Well? Aren’t you coming? You’re letting the snow in.”
Tonks stepped into the lighthouse, and Hindrun followed and shut the door behind them. Inside was a single large room, perfectly square except for one corner where a wooden staircase spiralled upwards and disappeared into the room’s ceiling, leading presumably to some upper chamber from which the lighthouse’s beacon sent out its strange and intermittent signal through the icy mists.
“Go on, warm yourselves by the fire,” the woman grunted.
Tonks and Hindrun crossed the room to the merry fire that crackled behind a grate in the middle of one wall. Tonks gratefully pulled off the thick mittens the mage and the wise woman had given her, and stretched her fingers out to thaw in the fire’s warmth.
“Now then,” the lighthouse keeper went on, coming to stand between Tonks and Hindrun and rocking impatiently from her heels to the balls of her feet. The top of her head barely came up to Tonks’ shoulder. “What’s this nonsense about seeking the Snow Wolf, eh? What’s put that idea in your pretty wee heads?”
For all her gruffness, there was also a hint of a lilt to the woman’s voice, and it didn’t strike Tonks as Norwegian. This woman didn’t talk like Hindrun or Dúfa or Mona or anyone else Tonks had met since she first Apparated into that forest of spruces and pines. And yet there was something vaguely familiar about the woman’s speech, but for the life of her Tonks couldn’t place it.
The woman was looking at her with impatience, so Tonks launched into her story again, telling how Remus had disappeared and how she’d gone out into the world to look for him. And she explained what she’d learned along the way about the Snow Wolf, this ancient being who lived in a land of ice but sometimes came south to kidnap werewolves.
“Everything I’ve learned about the Snow Wolf fits with what I know about Remus’ disappearance,” Tonks concluded. “Someone Hindrun knows even saw the Snow Wolf carrying Remus north. I know that’s where he is, and I know I’ve got to go there and find him and bring him back.”
“Ha!” The woman burst out with another harsh laugh, then poked one sharp finger into Tonks’ shoulder and fixed her with a stare. “Let me give you some advice, from one who knows a great deal more about the Snow Wolf than you ever will.”
“Yes?” Tonks answered unwillingly. She had a pretty good idea what the woman’s advice was going to be.
The lighthouse keeper dropped her hand to her side and rocked back onto her heels. “Go on home, girl. Only fools seek the Snow Wolf, and fools don’t survive the encounter.” She gave a wry little cough. “I’m not entirely cold of heart, whatever you may think, and I’m sorry your friend has been lost. But it helps nothing and no one if you sacrifice yourself as well. Go back home. Enough of this, now.”
She smacked her hands together, as though brushing the whole matter away, then stalked away from them, to a table along the opposite wall that was piled high with scrolls and books. She began shuffling aimlessly among the papers, for all the world as though she’d already dismissed her visitors’ presence from her mind.
Tonks and Hindrun exchanged a look. But it was Hindrun who darted across the room to the woman’s side. They made quite a contrast, seen there together: tall, athletic Hindrun with her pale, fine hair, and the tiny, wiry woman with a shock of grey like a cloud around her head.
“We know the Snow Wolf is powerful, but there must be some way to defeat him,” Hindrun pleaded. “You have power, too, you can harness the winds – can’t you give my friend extra strength so she can fight the Snow Wolf?”
“Strength!” The woman yowled with laughter. “Strength, to fight the Snow Wolf? Are you utterly ignorant, girl? You don’t fight the Snow Wolf with strength.”
The woman’s gaze snapped to Tonks, on the other side of the room.
“Listen now,” she hissed. Her voice was barely louder than the crackling of the fire, but Tonks heard every word. “This friend you seek, he wants to stay where he is. He thinks it a very fine place! You can be sure that by now he’ll have looked into the Mirror of Reason and, well! There’s no coming back after that.”
Tonks felt a chill at those words, just as she’d done the first time she heard of the Snow Wolf. Her voice caught in her throat, but she asked the question: “What is the Mirror of Reason?”
“Mirror of Unreason, more like,” the woman growled. “It shows anyone who looks into it the worst possible version of themselves. Of all the Snow Wolf’s magicks, it is perhaps the most dangerous of all, for it shows the truth, or at least a version of it. Once your friend has seen and believed the worst of himself, he won’t believe any longer in the person he was before. He has no wish to return to you now.”
Tonks felt Hindrun’s eyes fixed on her in sympathy, as well as the lighthouse keeper’s harsh stare, but all she could see was her mind’s own picture of Remus, somewhere in an icy wasteland, gazing into a mirror that made him forget himself.
“I’m not turning back,” Tonks said fiercely. “You can say whatever you want, you can tell me it’s pointless, but if there’s even the tiniest chance I can find him and bring him back, I’m going to do it. And if you don’t help me, I’ll find another way there.”
The woman gave a weary sigh, still fixing Tonks with her stare from across the room. “Will you? Hundreds of cold miles across the open waters of the Barents Sea?”
“Yes,” Tonks said.
“Listen,” the woman snapped. “I didn’t come up here to the edge of the world for the fun of it, you know. I am here in this place to keep balance. I keep the Snow Wolf from extending his reign further south than the lands that have always belonged to him. And I keep fools who come here from the lands beyond his domain, like you, from stumbling too far north, into things beyond their understanding. I tell you again, foolish child, turn back.”
Tonks stared at the woman, several things falling together into sudden sense. The oddly familiar lilt in the woman’s voice. Her admission that she’d come here from somewhere else. Even her use of the word lost to describe Remus.
“You’re her sister,” Tonks breathed. “Aren’t you? I mean: you have a sister, who keeps a magical garden, but you left her behind to come up here and be this…gatekeeper of the north. That’s you, isn’t it?”
It was only for a moment, but Tonks saw a chink appear in the woman’s gruffness. A glimpse of the little girl she must once have been, before she decided to leave everything she knew and take up this role as a protector at the border of the Snow Wolf’s domain. It was a glimpse that showed through for only a moment, but it was enough to let Tonks know that she was right.
She pressed on, before the woman could speak and refute her. “Okay. So you had a sister once and you cared about her. I don’t know if you still do, but there must once have been a time when you did, so maybe you can understand when I say that’s how I feel about Remus. Not the same kind of love as for a sister, but the same amount.” Tonks found her feet drawing her across the room towards the woman, caught up in the intensity of what she needed to convey. “I care about Remus. I’m not going to turn him over to fate and walk away. You say he doesn’t want to be rescued from the Snow Wolf, and maybe that’s true, I don’t know. But if there’s even the tiniest chance that the tiniest part of him still wants to come home – I’m going to find him and give him that chance.”
She’d reached where the woman stood by her paper-strewn table. Tonks stood in front of her, silent and pleading to be understood. Hindrun watched them both and seemed not even to breathe.
The woman stared back at Tonks for a very long time. It was so silent in the room that over the crackling of the fire Tonks could hear the wind outside soughing around the lighthouse walls. The tiny, fierce woman with the piercing eyes stared up into Tonks’ face like she was taking the measure of her heart.
At last she said, “Ekhhh, fine! I will put the wind at your back, to carry you across the sea.” She snapped one hand impatiently through there air. “Be glad of it, for you wouldn’t make it there at all if I didn’t. Little deer!” She spun around to Hindrun.
“Yes?” Hindrun asked, startled.
The woman poked her finger into Hindrun’s chest. “Change into your animal form and carry her there. Don’t tarry along the way. There are Muggles on Svalbard, with their towns and their research stations. Ignore them. Go directly to the northernmost of the islands, where the Snow Wolf’s fortress lies. Leave your friend there, at the southern edge of that island, and turn back. Only one can approach the Snow Wolf’s fortress, and it must be the one whose heart draws her there.” She cocked her head at Hindrun, sizing her up with her sharp eyes. “You’re not entirely wrong, foolish little animal though you are: purity of heart and strength of will, these things do matter. Your friend here is questing for love – more fool her! But if the motives of her heart are as strong as she claims, then, who knows? She might yet rescue her lost love. But she must venture there alone if she’s to try.”
Hindrun looked past the lighthouse keeper, her eyes meeting Tonks’. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Absolutely sure.”
Hindrun nodded once, and Tonks saw a little of that jauntiness in her again, the same devil-may-care attitude that had been so striking about her the day they’d first met. If Tonks had to cross hundreds of miles of frigid sea, she couldn’t think of a better person to do it with.
Tonks turned to the lighthouse keeper. “I don’t know if it matters to you, after all this time. I understand if it doesn’t, if that’s not the life you want for yourself anymore. But I met your sister on my way here, and she misses you. I think it would mean a lot to her to see you, if you wanted to visit her sometime. Even just once.”
The woman cocked her head again, fixing Tonks with the sceptical glare that seemed to be her speciality. But, too, Tonks saw again that tiny flash of the little girl she’d once been – a child who must have loved her sister, and had had her own reasons for leaving, but maybe still lived somewhere inside the woman who stood here now.
“Okay,” Tonks said. “Anyway. Thank you for helping us, even though you didn’t want to.”
“Go,” the woman said, but her gruff voice was surprisingly gentle. “Go now. I’ll send the wind to lift you up as soon as you step outside.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
End note: This has been an excerpt from “The Snow Wolf” – I’m currently finishing up the final-final-final edit of the fic as a whole, which is coming soon and will be found under the same username (starfishstar) on AO3, DW or LJ. :-)
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