InsaneJournal

Who: Nymphadora Tonks and Fabian Prewett
What: Cleaning out an old safehouse
When: One evening in early April (backdated like woah)
Where: Old Order safehouse, Haddiscoe, Norfolk
Warnings: You find nasty things in abandoned houses (including monsters!)



Fabian had assigned himself the job of putting together and re-warding the old Order safehouses. It needed to be done, and he was perfectly in shape to do it. This place appeared to be abandoned and probably burned down to Muggle eyes; there was a Muggle home across the road and yet nobody took any interest in what was across the way. Fabian was careful to approach from the rear, though, away from the street, in case he should excite any interest.

There was probably nothing in the house other than an eighteen-year accumulation of dust, but Fabian didn't want to take any chances. He was glad to have Tonks with him for this. If nothing else, it would serve as a practice run for any real breaking and entering they might have to do later.

The perimeter wards had responded to Fabian's old Order key spells. He drew up to the back door, told Tonks, "Cover me," and opened the lock with his wand.

Tonks wasn’t the greatest at stealth, but she was great at providing cover, and she was great at blending into her surroundings, at least until she tripped over something. As far as Tonks was concerned, those two tended to balance out the whole sucking at stealth thing. “Roger that,” Tonks said. She fell into position, providing enough distance between herself and Fabian to enable her to keep a clear eye on anybody who might catch sight of what they were doing. It wasn’t even all that illegal. They were just here to clear out an old safe house. Fabian didn’t seem to draw any unwanted attention, though. Nobody so much as even glanced at the glamored safe house.

Fabian swung the door open and moved in. There was little light in the building, other than what the windows and the door let in. He assumed that if there had ever been Muggle eckel--eletro--elec--power in the building, it had long since stopped. A quick Lumos showed that he was standing in the old kitchen of the place, alone. From the dust and cobwebs in the room, Fabian wondered whether anyone had been in the building in the last seventeen years. Some of those old glamours they'd set on these buildings had lasted a long time.

He stuck his hand out the door and waved to Tonks to join him.

Tonks half hopped, half skipped across the yard to the back door of the safe house. She was dressed dark, rather demurred for her natural style. Even her hair was of a darker color. Once inside of the house, however, her hair immediately returned to a more orange color, part way colored blue. She had her wand out and used it immediately to manually swipe through a cluttering of cobwebs hanging around the doorway. “Uck,” she said, before muttering Lumos to her own wand. The house actually looked worse now that she could see it. “Thank Merlin’s beard and toes and appendages you’ve tasked us with cleaning out the safe house rather than cleaning it up.”

"I don't need backup to apply elbow grease. As much as I might want it." Fabian poked through a heavy cobweb of his with the tip of his wand. "This may be as bad as my flat was when I got back into after they let me out. Whatever you do, don't open anything that looks like it might have had food in it." That reminder was inspired by a couple of bad experiences he'd had with things he'd left to moulder for a decade.

"Clear the downstairs first and then the upstairs?" That was Fabian's instinct, but he was willing to defer to Tonks if she had a better idea.

Tonks made a face. She could’ve probably guessed that, but the reminder put that right at the forefront of her mind. No cupboards, no ice boxes. Duly noted. “Yeah,” Tonks confirmed. “I pity the squatter that finds themselves in a place like this.” There was movement to their right that Tonks sensed more so than saw. But once she directed her wand toward it, ready to blast it into a dozen pieces, it revealed itself to be a rat, rather than something more dangerous. “Don’t kill the rats. They’re needed for our survival,” she added.

Tonks took a step away from the kitchen area to begin their journey around the house. The odds were that there was probably nothing here. It was empty, left to years of decay. All they were likely to find were rats and spiders. But that other chance - the ten percent likelihood - that they would actually find something dangerous in this dark house had Tonks tense, her wand out before her.

The place looked and smelled terrible. Fabian could see a lot of places where small repairs were needed in the house as he and Tonks investigated the kitchen, dining room, and parlour. None of the damage appeared to be structural (yet), but the floorboards were in questionable shape, the rugs and seating threadbare, and the wooden tables and chair legs looked like they'd been gnawed by the hungry, scuttling rodents.

It was, in fact, worse than coming back to his flat. There hadn't been dead rats in a nest in any of the drawers in his kitchen. He'd been hardened to death by the time he came back to Azkaban, or so he thought, but the corpses of rats set his gorge to rising.

Tonks was less turned off by the corpses of rats, probably because she actually hadn’t been hardened by death. Sure, she’d seen death, but dead rats didn’t really look like dead people. Dead rats didn’t smell like dead people either. They had a unique smell that became alarmingly apparent the closer they got to the nest. It permeated the house, and made everything smell of decayed flesh.

But so far, there was nothing beyond that. As they cleared the rooms one by one, a little bit of the tension eased out of Tonks. They didn’t need to discuss the next course of action. As they cleared the last room, they turned toward moving onto the second floor. The shift in floors was apparent as soon as Tonks ascended the stairs. The air was colder up here, which made all of the tension she’d lost soak right back into her.

As far as Tonks could see, there was no actual holes in the walls, no outside wind beyond a few cracked windows, but it wasn’t this cold outside. She started down the hallway, and it felt very much like drifting toward a black hole. The further she got, the colder it got. The gloomier it got.

The cold and terror of the upstairs was familiar to Fabian. More than. He'd lived in close quarters with it for a decade. "They're here," he told Tonks in a voice drained of its familiar strength and purpose. He steeled himself to continue: "Or at least one of them is."

Tonks glanced at Fabian, to gauge his reaction. She could deduce what he meant. As a hit witch, she knew what a dementor was. She wasn’t sure if she was at an advantage of if he was. She’d never been kept in close captivity with a dementor. But she also had no reason to fear them. “You want me to go in first?” She asked, mostly out of courtesy. She could hear her own voice, the steely resolve of it diminished somewhat, making the willful question sound much more like an actual question than it was meant to. “I mean, I could probably go in first.” Nope, that still sounded like a question, and she vaguely didn’t want it to.

No. Fabian wanted to be able to do it himself. He needed to be able to do it himself. Or at least to have a share in it. He closed his eyes for a moment, focused, breathed in the stale, dank air, felt the chill on his skin, even under his protective jacket. Memories: music, his fingers on the piano keys. That had always been enough before, and he started to whisper the words, but here and now, with a Dementor on the far side of the door, it wasn't, and he knew it.

More, then: private moments with friends and family; the satisfaction and joy of success in his work, at creating a network to protect the writings of his colleagues; "I'll do what I can ..." "Me, too."; flying and dark hair whipping in the wind and laughter. "Expecto Patronum." His voice was firmer, if not back to full strength, and the mist that issued from the tip of his wand coalesced, if more slowly than usual, into the form of a raggedy-furred fox.

"You, too. It'll need both of us."

Tonks’s fingers tightened on her wand. She closed her eyes. As a hitwitch, even a young one, she’d been in the presence of dementors before. Because she didn’t share in Fabian’s weighted memories of the time he’d spent in Azkaban, this ought to be easier for her. But perhaps it wasn’t quite so easy, because she also had never needed to overcome this growing darkness, a depression of which the likes she’d never truly, authentically experienced before.

She conjured the memories strongest to her. The wistfulness of being in school, the overwhelming pride of having graduated with excellent marks, of applying to be a hitwitch, of the extraneous training course she embarked on merely because she could. She recalled laughter having never been held back by grief or fear or loneliness, of making people laugh by making a joke of herself, by transforming her face, her hair, her physical attributes into things so suddenly and so shamelessly that it could do nothing more than force laughter out of her classmates, like a punch. She recalled the look on her parents’ face as she left Hogwarts with the intent to embark on something more than herself. She recalled saving lives, surviving, overcoming, and only when she was so full of pride, of hope, did she speak. “Expecto Patronum.” Her voice sounded strong, steady and firm. And she succeeded on the first try. A misty white form jotted from her wand, in the shape of a jack rabbit.

"Yes," said Fabian, and his thin and patchy patronus strengthened too. Together they ran to the keyhole of the door and passed through it, Fabian a half-step behind them as he kicked the door right by the handle. There was the crack of the door breaking and then the room was open, darkness and gloom and chilly wind and the smell of rot and terror. Inside they could see the dark figure backing away from the two patronuses, the jackrabbit in the lead and the fox running a little behind.

Fabian took one look at the situation and shot off a spell to break out the window, which shattered with a loud crash of glass that fell into the lawn below. With an exit route to the outdoors, the dementor let the patronuses harry it out and away, leaving the two wizards standing in the hallway.

The sound of Fabian's breath was harsh and shaky in the hall.

Sounds were extremely loud right now, because the seriousness of it blotted everything out as white noise. Tonks heard the window shatter, so loud it vibrated the room. She watched her jackrabbit vault through the shattered window after the dementors, before dissolving in mid air before it ever reached the ground. And then she heard Fabian’s breathing, as that sole sound filled the sudden vortex of silence left in the wake of the fleeing dementors.

She let his breathing crack the silence for a moment longer before she lowered her wand. “You alright, mate?” She asked, her voice sounding so much quieter now that they were alone. It felt muffled by the ringing silence.

"Yeah." It was a harsh exhale as much as a word. Fabian reached into his jacket and pulled out the flask, whose cap he unscrewed to take a mouthful of the good stuff. Then he passed it to Tonks while he enjoyed the burn. "Let's fix that window. And then let's go somewhere with lights and people." But it was already lighter in the hall, a sign that the Dementors were gone and not coming back.

Tonks took the flask and took her own drink. This was heavy shit, emotion wise, she could acknowledge that as the emotions were already draining from her. Lazily, she directed her wand, without stepping a foot fully into the room, even after the dementors had fled. “Reparo.” The shattered glass of the window quickly pulled itself back together, to reform what had once been broken. “Done. Let’s get the fuck out of here, before we find somethin’ worse.” She had half a mind to suggest they blow this popsicle stand and go get drunk, take their mind off of all of this good and proper.

They'd have to finish clearing this place later, but Fabian wasn't sure he was up to doing it right now anyway. One corner of his mouth quirked up and he hissed out a laugh that mostly sounded like one. "I'm proud to be a part of this plan."