She shook her head. Good man, Dennis. Perceptive. Good memory. "I did it yesterday, just in case." It only hit her then that it was entirely possible the boy was trying to bide his time, put off the actual bulk of the mission just those few moments more until he could prepare himself to the reality of what they were about to face. She should have lied, she should have thought of that. A trek around the area could have been good for them to at least prepare. Damn.
Tonks only nodded when Alicia let her sentence trail off. Not since her discovery. Whether the scene had been as macabre as she'd seen or whether she'd been heavily influenced by the sheer shock and horror, she didn't know. But now they were about to find out. She wanted to ask them if they were ready again, wanted to give them just that much more time. Dennis' trepidation, the shadow in Alicia's eyes. It was just so.. Unfairthere was a fun week back in her days of training. "They usually have to be wizards, but muggleborns are just as susceptible. The visible ones, friendly or unfriendly, you can easily avoid. The more sophisticated they are, the more likely they are to see you too. And luckily, not many of the sophisticated ones have too big a hankering for human blood." Tonks hopped over a fallen branch, already the forest was clearing into the field. Already the trees were showing signs of being charred, of being dead. Already the smell of smoke and burning flesh seemed to come into focus. "It's the invisible ones you should try to be careful with. You won't even know they're there until they want you to." And usually, that was far from a pleasant experience.
The trees opened ahead of them, beckoning them forward into a wide open field. Not even the grass has survived the fire. The ground, the surrounding trees, all were covered in a thick paste of ash and.. Other things. Only the skeletal remains of some of the houses stood, fractured, splintered and collapsing on themselves. And everywhere, scattered like pebbles strewn about, 147 bodies lay on the ground. Depending on the extent of the burns, of their proximity to the fire as they died, they each lay in varying states of decomposition. Some were strewn and dragged about by animals, others simply lay there, staring up into the sky unseeingly. Every now and then amidst the black burned corpses that looked as though they'd been covered in tar, there were the few whose death had obviously not come from the fire. Not as mercifully. It was macabre. Tonks shouldn't have been surprised the Death Eaters would still leave something like this in the open, even after the Prophet article, but yet she still was.
Tonks didn't say anything, just looked back at the two kids. Here's your entrance exam.