Fic:: Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (2/2)
Apr. 25th, 2006 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenpart one comes first
When they left Harry at King’s Cross, it was a bright, sunlit day with an achingly blue sky. It still ached, for all the colour had faded and dissolved into dusk. There were buskers playing jaunty tunes on corners as they walked, in silence, back through London, and Moody gave them money to be quiet.
There were no lights on in the kitchen at number twelve, Grimmauld Place. Remus had tried. Flames had sputtered and flared into bright shining stars that burned, withered, died, and he gave up. His power was splintered round the edges, Tonks noted; the flares were indicative of loss of control. She nodded: Remus’s first and last sign of grief.
Now, he was barely visible, a greyish shape in the darkness, but Tonks had memorised how he was sitting, with boots on the table and head hanging off the back of his chair, shaggy hair a soft cloud beneath. She hadn’t yet heard him move, and besides, he sat still, these days. She didn’t try and move herself. The room was too dark and the air too thick with things still left unsaid.
“I remember,” Remus said, into the silence to no one, “things that no one else remembers.”
Tonks said nothing.
“James and Lily are dead, Peter’s forgotten everything he ever knew. And the Dementors took Sirius away from himself.” He paused, and Tonks became aware of his breathing, a steady rhythm below the syncopation of words. “They take your happy memories, your defining moments, everything that delineates you and your edges, every influence of the shaping world.”
Tonks thought he was probably drunk, or getting there. She turned and saw, momentarily, twin mirrored gleams, canine eyes in the darkness. She was probably drunk herself, to imagine something like that.
“Sirius could remember my birthday.” Remus laughed, and the sound was horrible, obscene. “He could remember it’s the tenth of March, and that I turned seventeen on a Friday. But he couldn’t remember that he woke me up before breakfast, gave me three boxes of Honeydukes’ best and tickled me until I cried.”
Tonks asked: “Did he remember me?”
“He remembered every time you cried. Every time he shouted, every time he scared you. I told him that when we were in seventh year we came to babysit for you and made you cookies with pink food colouring, and how you laughed because it matched your hair. He asked me to tell him more things like that.”
Tonks’s hair wasn’t pink today, tonight, wouldn’t be pink tomorrow. Remus was silent for a minute. When he spoke, his voice was falling with every syllable.
“I told him about the time you flushed your goldfish down the toilet and told your mum it had gone to live in Uzbekistan. I told him about how he left this house forever and went to live with James and how they were spannered for a week. I told him about the flat we used to have, this grotty little place on top of Mornington Crescent tube, and how messy it was with motor oil on the floor, and how angry I used to get about the motorbike. I told him about how we brought you up to visit, once, and you spotted the collar and lead and wanted to know since when had we had a dog.
“I told him, and he tried to remember.” His voice was almost gone. “For me, he tried to remember.”
Tonks sat back, and said, softly, “I tried, too. I tried reminding him. He wanted to get to know Mum again properly, and she was going to come up and visit during this summer. She was going to help with telling him stuff, because you know I can’t remember that much myself. It was all so long ago.”
“That’s right.” There was bitterness in Remus’s tone now, something she hadn’t heard for years. “It was all so very, very long ago.”
Tonks thought about it. “Remus,” she said softly, “we have to keep going on, we have to keep fighting. Sirius would have wanted us to.”
Remus laughed again, and Tonks stifled the deep-down, primal urge to shriek and cry at the sound. “Those aren’t your words, Nymphadora. That’s Andromeda, that’s Dumbledore, that’s not you.”
“I’m me. I’m not Nymphadora.” She didn’t know why she persisted, but here in the darkness with only the sounds of distant traffic and Remus’s soft, soft voice, it seemed more important than ever. “And I loved Sirius too.”
“I think...” Remus faltered, tried again, “I think he loved you, and me, and Harry. I think love is too painful for the Dementors.
“But if we are the sum of all our experiences, then I lost Sirius fourteen years ago and more.” He stood up, and Tonks heard the chair fall to the ground, crunching wood on stone. Light flared, guttered, held. It flickered below the ceiling, wordless magic illuminating Remus’s face, stark white, with dilated pupils holes into his soul.
“I wish I could forget,” he said, and Tonks got up to stand behind him, put her arms around his shoulders to feel the warmth seeping through his cloak, to feel him still human after all these years.
*
On the stone floor beneath the kitchen table, they woke up with limbs entangled in the dust. Through the blurring between sleep and dim awareness, Tonks thought: it’s dark; it’s dirty; it’s probably really early; my knickers are missing; this isn’t my bed....
“Sirius is dead.”
He was looking at her and she nodded, because that, like everything else, was true. “Yeah.”
Remus sat up, his head skimming the underside of the table. He had been awake before her, and she knew what he’d been thinking about before, during, after. “Funny, isn’t it,” he said, “how it isn’t always better in the morning.”
Tonks ran both hands through her hair. “Remus, this is fucked up.”
“I think that’s a foregone conclusion. What, specifically, are you referring to?”
“All of this.” She made an expansive gesture. “You know it is. And no” – she held up one hand – “don’t you try acting like it didn’t happen. You were drunk, I was drunk, we were both drunk, we were also both really stupid, we had sex, Sirius is still dead.”
“Consciousness to narrative coherence in less than thirty seconds. I’m impressed.”
It was his usual dryness, but newly sharp, suddenly hurtful. Even in the shadows by the floor, she could see the closed-off quality about his face.
She rubbed at her eyes and tried to get out from beneath the table, but the room was too dim, with only greyness to mark the difference between the dawn and the remains of the night. Her wand had rolled out of sight. “Don’t you want,” she said, ferreting about for it, “don’t you think we need to... talk about it?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Certainly not.”
“Then I’m impressed,” – delivered as cuttingly as she knew how – “that you’re so disgusted with what you did last night that you wouldn’t have mentioned it, would you, if I hadn’t.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Tell me, is it women in general that don’t turn you on? Or is that me flattering myself? Is it not the girly bits? Is it just generally me?”
“Shut up, Tonks!”
They had been whispering, furiously, but the yell stunned them both into momentary silence.
After a minute, Remus put a hand to his head, probably nursing the same headache as she was, and said, “I’m sorry. Look, I’m sorry. I don’t think... I don’t think this is a good idea, that’s all. I’m sorry.”
She nodded, more to herself than to him. “In the dark on the floor and just got fucked by a bloke who doesn’t want to know. Note to self – not a good idea.”
“Tonks.” He was sounding gentle, now, more like himself. “I really am sorry. Even about the whole of last night, if you want me to be.”
“Fuck, no.” Feeling for him rather than trusting her vision, she put a loose arm around his shoulders. “None of that taking-advantage crap. Don’t be sorry for that. Be sorry for being a bastard.”
He nodded. “This is, as you say, fucked up.”
She managed a slight, bittersweet smile. “You don’t know how fucked up this is. You have no idea. I want to show you something.”
“What?”
She wouldn’t answer him. With a knot in her stomach that tied and untied, she murmured, “Lumos.”
A foot away from her, her wand lit up. She grabbed it, using it in a large, erratic sweep to light all the room sconces. Remus quickly found his own, and emerged from under the table with a few graceful movements. “What is it, Nymphadora?”
“This,” she said, in a voice that was treacherous and shook, “is it.”
It wasn’t a matter of focus. It was about unravelling, coming undone, the caress of a slipping mask. There was a mirror in her pocket but she didn’t need it; she couldn’t get it wrong when it was her face, and although she hadn’t seen it in years, she wasn’t able to forget. By now it must be the face of an adult woman, heart-shaped, with high cheekbones and white skin with the faintest of blushes. She could feel her hair on her shoulders, shaggy and fittingly black, and when she opened her eyes, she knew they would be heavy-lidded, pale grey.
Remus was staring, his own eyes wide, golden-brown – they never changed colour, with or without the moon – and he was pale and getting paler. “Bella?” he said, and she knew all at once that he was going to make her cry.
“No,” she said, softly. “Me. Nymphadora Tonks.”
“I forgot.” He wasn’t looking at her any more. “I knew... but I still forgot. She killed him. She killed him. And you look....”
“I look like my aunt who killed my cousin.” Her voice was flat, matter of fact, and his head was in his hands. He was murmuring under his breath, softly, painfully. She could feel it along with him, the labels falling off the world.
“Remus,” she said.
He looked up, and she changed. Her face lost the softness, the curling lashes and heart, became beauty ravaged by years, an old dog, a dying star.
She heard a sharp intake of breath. There was light in his face, in his eyes, and as she sat, fearful, he reached out with one hand. Delicate fingertips traced the curve of cheek and jaw, pushed back a stray lock of hair, withdrew wet with saltwater.
And then there was a stifled, quiet cry, a jerk of movement, sounds of pushed chairs, footsteps, slamming door in morning silence, and he was gone.
She stayed where she was, cried and cried, and she never did find her knickers.
*
Every day Remus reached out in his sleep, with eyes tight shut and hands that closed on nothing.
She was standing in the doorway, watching his still form, wrapped in sheets and blankets and bathed in the afternoon grey falling from the attic skylight. He hadn’t been there when she left; he’d be gone again come dusk. He was underground with the pack by night, sleeping by day, and every day was shorter than the one before.
She understood now what Sirius had feared.
It was cold inside the room; she drew the door closed with a gentle click and sat on the edge of the bed. Reaching down, she undid her boots, meticulously. She didn’t trip over things on missions, even if it meant tying her laces into triple knots. From under the leather emerged a pair of very old, very smelly socks. She grimaced, shook them off and felt herself begin to slip, insidiously, off the edge of the mattress.
Shifting back, she crossed the space between them and her inching hands touched the warmth of skin through the sheets. Beneath them, he was deeply, deeply asleep, exhaustion uncoiling like a spring in the lines of his body. He was becoming familiar to her, through the early mornings when it was still too dark to see and they both needed something, someone, with desperation born of grief, of anger born of the passage of time, and in the morning he was always gone but she remembered him.
She was thinking, through a blurred mind, that she ought to worry she was being used. After the second time, she stayed in his bed, below the window, below the sky, because it was closer to the stars than the floor beneath the kitchen table. But the truth was more complex than that, with more sharp edges than a cut jewel; they were both using each other to fill a space, so his hands could grasp something, so she didn’t feel like the grief of the house was settling so deep within her bones.
Behind her head, Remus shifted, and the slow, sweeping sounds of fabric on skin brought her back to herself. Standing up, she gathered her boots and stuffed the socks down into them. She should take them, wash them, go home. She was staying here out of convenience, mostly; when she couldn’t face the trek across London, and there was a house to stay in, it was only sensible. Her own flat was growing musty from lack of use, and still she didn’t go back and air it out.
She walked up and down the room, listening to the silence. She was going to be home tonight, she was going to go home now. She would go after another five heartbeats, another five steps, another five minutes stolen from this washed-out afternoon. She was pacing up and down in bare feet, and her toes curled with the chill.
The movement was silent, but she turned. He was still asleep, still breathing deeply, his hands swimming through space, grasping for a lifeline. She moved across and knelt by his head, all at once aware of the cold in the room, the stillness, the grey in his hair and behind the skylight.
He touched her. Fingers closed around pink strands of hair, moving blindly but softly towards the curves of her cheeks. She didn’t move, and from the smoothness of the skin, the warmth of living flesh, he was awake. “Morning,” she muttered, the word falling unnoticed into the silence.
His eyes narrowed, focused. He was looking at his hands, at her face, the space in between. He didn’t speak, and he didn’t have to. She wasn’t whom he was expecting, but he didn’t draw back.
She kissed him by daylight, and there was sweetness in it.
*
Tonks knew she was being followed.
There were a thousand little telling sounds, half-muffled by the snow and amplified by the still, cold air – the snaps of twigs, the scrapes of boots on cobbles, the short, shallow breaths. So far, no threatening movements. She kept on going, and one careful hand dropped to her hip, rested lightly on her wand.
She was prepared. She always was; no one had ever been allowed to say that she wasn’t extremely fucking good at her job, or at least no one who hadn’t shortly been dead or wishing they were. Everything about her, her weapons, her stance, her clothes, suggested a woman on top of things. “You look nice, dear,” the mirror had said. “Very sensible.”
She did look very sensible. She had clean jeans on, with no rips as to not let in any cold air, with the thickest jumper she owned, lots of layers beneath it, and a wand case at her belt and sturdy dragon-hide boots. Her Weird Sisters T-shirt was hanging off the end of her bed. She hadn’t washed it in weeks.
Trudge, trudge, trudge through the snow. The brief echoes of her footsteps – someone matching her gait – were clearly perceived whispers that slowed down, sped up, slowed down again, losing their rhythm. She’d nearly failed stealth herself, but she recognised an amateur at work.
She didn’t turn around or stop. The crunching – that’d be the run up with its quick, snow-compacting footsteps – the murmur of polish on fabric, which would be the drawn wand, and then the jump, and she’d be ready....
“Guess who.”
She froze. The voice was clear in the chill, with a dozen notes of familiarity in the brief syllables. The hands laid over her eyes were familiar, too.
“Charlie?”
He laughed, and brought his hands back down to his sides in time to submit to a hug. “Charlie,” she muttered again, into his shoulder, “I thought you were a Death Eater!”
“I’m flattered. I think.” He looked amused.
“You were following me!” She looked up, startled to see her vision becoming fuzzy, his face a sudden, crystalline blur. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, I don’t know, I had time to kill, thought I’d take in some of the lovely scenery about these parts.” When she only stared at him, he grinned broadly. “I came to see you, you silly bint. They told me in the village that you usually patrol out here.”
“I do!” she said. “I do! I’m on duty....”
“Nah, you’re not. Dawlish is covering for you. You’re having a drink with me. It’s all arranged, so come on.”
She smiled, unexpectedly, and fell into step beside him as they walked through the trees. “What I meant was,” she said, “is what are you doing back in England? Aren’t you supposed to be in Romania?”
“You’d laugh if I told you.” He gave her a sidelong glance over his scarf, eyes dancing, and something about the look prompted a simple thought: she’d missed him.
“Try me.”
“Mum wants to make sure I fit in my robes for the wedding. See, I knew you’d laugh!”
She wasn’t laughing, but she was grinning broadly and that was as close as she’d got in a while. “Ah. I see.”
“Stop trying to be polite, it doesn’t suit you. Anyway, you’re not going to be polite when you actually see the bloody robes.” He paused. “You are coming to the wedding, aren’t you?”
They were emerging from the tree line when she said, wistfully, “I might. I’m not sure.”
“Why not? Hey, watch it!” He grabbed her hand to stop her from falling on the frozen cobbles; hanging on, she skidded and slid but didn’t topple.
“Thanks.” She let got of his hand with reluctance and picked her way more carefully through the ice. The windowsills of the houses were heaped high with the snow, and large, dangerous-looking icicles hung from the eaves. It reminded her briefly of days out to Hogsmeade at school; the village looked now much as it had then, and with Charlie beside her, nothing had changed.
“Why aren’t you coming to the wedding?” Charlie asked again. He was leading the way down the pavement, and she had to step quickly to keep up.
“I would, if I knew for certain that Fleur wouldn’t kill me stone dead.” She smirked briefly. “Molly’s been trying to set me up with Bill even after they got engaged.”
“Bet Fleur loved that.” Charlie grinned. “I haven’t seen much of her myself, but she can handle her dragons, I’ll give her that.”
“High praise, coming from you.”
“Naturally,” he said, and paused beneath the Three Broomsticks’ painted sign. “Ah, we’re here. After you.”
She stepped through, shaking her boots free of snow and breathing deeply in the rush of warmth. The pub was almost empty at eleven o’clock on a weekday morning, which had its advantages; once they were perched on barstools, complete with foaming, warm tankards, the background noise was muted enough for conversation.
Sitting there, facing Charlie with his warm eyes and freckles, she had a strange, uncomfortable sense that the pleasantries were over. He was regarding her with his usual affection, but tempered with concern, with appraisal, and the silence had been too long when he asked, gently, “What’s the matter, Nymphadora?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” – still gently – “you’re not fine at all. I haven’t seen your hair that colour since sixth year.”
She touched it, self-consciously. She wasn’t going to say it, but the mousy-brown surprised even her sometimes, catching sight of it as flashes in puddles and glass. “It’s a reaction,” she said carefully, “to stress. It can have an effect on morphing, sometimes.”
“So I understand.” He nodded. “And forgive me for asking, but what exactly is the cause of the stress?”
“It’s a war, Charlie!” She waved her hands around, fretfully. “It’s a war and I’m an Auror and any one of my friends or family could get killed! It’s stressful!”
“I don’t believe you,” he said flatly. And when she opened her mouth, ready for an angry reply, he went on, “Not about the wartime stress. I believe you. You know I believe you. But it was a war months ago, and this” – he touched her hair again – “is new. Do you want to tell me about it?”
She sat there, stared steadily, didn’t say anything. He took a deep breath and asked, quickly, “Is it about Remus Lupin? Mum said....”
“Fucking hell!” she said, and the pub was quiet enough for people to turn around and look. “Oh, Charlie, I’m sorry. I told your mum that in confidence, no one was supposed to know.”
“Really?” He looked surprised. “Because I didn’t believe Mum, either.”
“You didn’t?” She stared at him. “Why not?”
He shrugged. “Because it’s you, you know? I remember when you were fifteen you burned your bra.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” she asked, smiling for a second at the memory.
“You’re the essence of girl power, you are. Not the type who’d get silly over some bloke.”
“He’s not some bloke.” She sighed. “Oh, I don’t want to talk about it, but I do, and fuck, it’s hard. It’s really hard. Look, Charlie... you know what Remus is, don’t you?”
“Gay?” he suggested, but the flippancy seemed to hurt more than meant. He reached out and put a hand on her arm. “No, sweetie, I do know. I know.”
“He’s out there with Fenrir Greyback.”
“He’s what?” Charlie looked shocked. “He’s defected?”
“No! He’s a spy, he’s gathering intelligence, I think. He can’t tell me much about it. Look... I ended up shagging him over the summer. Because Sirius was gone. That was it, I swear. Sirius was gone, and him and me, we were left.”
“Right.” Charlie didn’t laugh and didn’t look surprised.
“And he was there and now he isn’t and I’m missing him. I think...” She paused. “I tried telling him before he went, but he wouldn’t listen to me, and I don’t know. I think we could work. I think we could. I’m not the fucking sentimental type.”
“No, you’re not.” Charlie smiled, probably at a memory of his own.
“But neither is he. And he’s lost something and I’ve lost something and it’s him, it’s Remus. It could have worked, Charlie!” Her vision was blurring again. “But it didn’t.”
Charlie nodded. “What happened?” he asked, quietly. “What did he do to you?”
She didn’t answer him.
“Did he do something?” Charlie had a look on his face she remembered; it meant some boy, or man, now, was going to be nursing a black eye soon. “Did he do something to hurt you?”
She sat still, and the drops on the counter were like the dripping meltwater from the icicles on the eaves, thawing, cold, deadly.
“He left,” she whispered.
*
The next time her hair was pink, she was at a funeral. When the worst of it was over, when the throngs of people had dissipated and they were left to the quiet, beautiful summer’s day, Remus took her hand and led her across the grass, down towards the lake. There were birds over the water, wheeling and calling, breaking the surface into shadowed droplets and flying back up to the sun. It was too bright, it hurt to look at, and she blinked hard, painfully.
“I think he would have liked your hair,” said Remus.
She opened her eyes and saw the vivid colours, green, blue, pink, still summer; nothing changed, for all the world was being remade around them. She sat down beside him on a soft, sunlit patch, and watched his fingertips trail along the surface of the water. “What?”
“Dumbledore.” Remus looked up, head inclined. “He would have liked it.”
“He always did.” She smiled to herself. “He liked the pink best out of all the colours I used to have it.”
“Past tense,” Remus murmured. So close to her, she could see the year spent with the pack lying heavily on him; there were more wolf-grey streaks in the shaggy hair, even less weight on his sparse frame. But he was there and he was alive, she reminded herself; unlike others, he had come back. “I can’t get used to that.”
“Me, neither.” She paused, breathed in and out before speaking again. “What are we all going to do, without Dumbledore? Other than argue lots?”
She got a smile. “Yes, quite. I think we’ll have to do what we were doing, and keep on fighting. What else is there for us to do, except remember the past?”
As he spoke, he lifted his hands out of the water, and a flash of red caught Tonks’s eye. Reaching out, she grabbed them and he didn’t resist, letting her cast careful eyes over the bruised palms. Close to, she saw the ragged cuts, split fingernails, and the palpable splinters, gravel beneath the lacerated skin.
He was looking at her, smiling awkwardly. “I meant to do something about them,” he muttered, “just never got around to it....”
She took her wand out of her pocket and grimly, efficiently, set to work. “This is going to hurt, Remus. I guess we’re blaming Greyback?”
“Not specifically.” Another awkward smile. “It’s just... an occupational hazard, I suppose.”
She tapped one of the splinters. It rose through the flesh and Remus hissed in pain; quickly, she asked, “What was it like, out there?”
“Cold, mostly. Wet. Miserable. Dangerous.” He closed his eyes. “Half the time I was afraid they were going to lose patience and dispose of me. But there were some who – ouch! – took an interest in what I had to say.”
She held up her first prize, a sharp, bloodied thorn the length of her thumbnail. “That’s quite an impressive souvenir. Who were the ones taking an interest?”
“The children.” His hands relaxed in her careful grip. “Fenrir specialises in children. He likes to catch them young. And they have so much potential, some of them. They could do, and be, so much, and they know there’s more to life than what he’s offering, they just don’t know where to go, how to go.”
“You were helping them,” she said, tapping with her wand again; she was clearing the debris according to the clear, rounded shape of pads and paw.
“I was trying. It may not have been enough.” There was a pause, while he opened his eyes and watched in wonder as she threw a handful of gravel into the lake. “That was in my hand?”
“Yes! How could you not notice?”
He shrugged. “It blurred, after a while. I couldn’t think.”
She didn’t say anything, focusing on the warm, torn flesh, pulling and teasing out the last of the pieces. She held onto his hands after she had finished, leaning back onto the grass and looking up. The sun was burning with sweetness, working into her skin, cleaning through the old cobwebs. Across the lake, she could see Harry and Hermione, talking quietly; they and the other Gryffindors were lingering on the grass, within sight of the tomb.
“This is beautiful,” she said.
“What is?” Remus was pale, washed through by the light.
“All of this,” – she swung an arm out at the water, the greenery, the sky – “it’s all so wonderful.”
He said nothing, and his eyes were mild.
“I know. I know, it’s not. It’s not wonderful. It’s horrible and people are going to die and so many people are dead already. I think we need to take what beauty we can when we find it, that’s all.”
“I wish we could.”
“Remus,” – and her voice was sincere, pained with truth – “why can’t we, you and me I mean, just start again? There’s a war going on, last year was horrible, we’ve got enough pain and angst in our lives. Why can’t we just wipe the slate clean, say here’s where our lives begin and just start from here?”
He was quiet for a moment, and then he leaned in, kissed her lightly on the lips. “Because,” he said, and there was weariness in his tone, “I would love to, but I can’t.”
“Why not?” She was breathless, from the caress, from something else. “Why can’t we?”
“Where would we start?” He was smiling as he looked at her, but there was a weight in his eyes and she’d learned to bear it. “Where does this begin? When we met?”
She covered her eyes. “I was five.”
“But we have to meet somewhere.” He was frowning, but not with irritation; she recognised the expression as the one associated with crossword puzzles and academia. “If we were to get someone to perform a selective memory charm – such things can be done, according to the most recent research – then what would we keep, what would we throw away?” He went on, talking more to himself then to her, “Does it begin with the war? The first war? But Sirius and I met – and we wouldn’t have met without Sirius – years before that, so maybe it begins then?”
“Does it begin with I met him? But he only knew you when he left home, so does it begin when he walked out? When Andromeda walked out? Or did it only really begin when James and Lily died? Or does it begin when you were five? How about when I was five, does it begin with Fenrir biting me? Does it begin with Voldemort? Or does it begin with Tom Riddle?”
She frowned, thought about it. “It begins here. Right here, right now.”
He nodded. “I thought you’d say that.”
“Remus...” She ran skilful fingers over his hands, feeling for any last traces of injury. “I know there’s a lot of history. I know, all right? I lived through most of it. Believe me, the one thing we’re not going to do is repeat it.”
“I will be your weakness.” He was looking up at the sky. “I will be your weakness the same way I was Sirius’s. In the end, we found it easier to believe the other one was a spy, rather than face the fact we were falling apart. If we’d only thought, only realised...” He waved a hand. “You know the rest.”
“I said, we’re not going to repeat it.” She looked up at him, angry. “I will not lose you, Remus Lupin. Not to a pack of werewolves or Death Eaters or Voldemort himself, may he rot in hell. I will not let you go.”
His gaze was steady. “This is more than a mere age difference, more than my being old and poor and all the rest of it. This is a war, and I’m fighting on the wrong side.” He smiled, tiredly. “I’m a certified creature of the dark. I’ll come back to you torn up and smelling like the pack. I’ll come back to you soaked in blood and it won’t be mine.”
She shook her head. “You don’t scare me. I’m an Auror.”
“You’re twenty-three years old. You’re not scared of anything.” He laughed, suddenly, and kissed her again. “And it’s not too late for you to get out.”
“I will not let you go,” she repeated. “You go out there and you fight, and then you come back to me.”
“I will,” he said.
“You mean it?” she demanded. She was standing up, had leapt to her feet without noticing, was staring down at him hurt and dazzled by the sparkle off the water.
He lay back, his robes a flat half-moon of fabric around him, his fingers curled, inviting. “Come down here with me,” he said, and she was on her knees, on the floor. The softness of skin and hair and grass was a muted chord beneath the sunlight, beginning something.
*
Charlie stood framed by a doorway with his hands on his hips. “You’re laughing at me.”
“Oh, no,” said Tonks, quickly, “no, no, no, I’m not laughing, does it look like it, Remus, does it look like I’m laughing at him?”
Remus regarded her appraisingly. “Either,” he said, “you are trying very hard not to have hysterics, and failing miserably, or you are having some variety of acute, probably-fatal pulmonary embolism.” He considered. “The optimist in me favours the former.”
“Remus,” said Charlie, pleading, “she’s your girlfriend, make her stop laughing at me.”
“Sadly, I think my girlfriend has read her feminist literature.” Remus smiled and grabbed Tonks’s hand. “Come on, Nymphadora, let’s leave Charlie to his dress robes. I’m sure he’d appreciate some time alone with them.”
On the way down the rickety stairs, she gave up the fight and let out the threatening gasps of laughter. “They had,” – her hands were flapping – “lace! And frilly bits! And, and, a ruffle!”
“From what I hear, the Delacour family are very particular about such things.” She could tell by his expression that he was more amused than he was letting on. “But ours not to reason why, ours but to provide the refreshments.” He stuck his head out of the door. “Molly! Do you want some tea?”
Molly bustled into the Burrow kitchen, shouting something to the twins over her shoulder; someone was yelling aggrievedly from upstairs and there were the sounds of inevitable explosions emanating from the garden. “Bless you, Remus,” she said sincerely. “I don’t know what we’d have done without you to help. Nor you, Tonks dear.”
Remus smiled and tapped the kettle with his wand. Tonks grimaced. “You’d have probably had a lot more intact china,” she said ruefully.
“Nonsense, dear! Who needs china when we’re having a wedding in the family? Yes, Ginny, I’m coming! Be patient a minute!”
She disappeared with a rustle of robes and skirts. Remus started rummaging in the cupboards for clean cups. “You’d think a wedding in the family would be exactly the occasion you would need intact china,” he said thoughtfully.
“Oh, don’t rub it in.” Tonks sat down at the table. “Remind me to replace some of Molly’s kitchenware. I broke six plates this morning.”
“They’ll repair.”
“Yeah, but they’ll still be cracked. And talking of being cracked – why are we the only non-family members here helping out? What did the rest of the Order do to get out of this?”
Remus came to sit down beside her, having miraculously found a handful of unbroken mugs, and she held them still as he poured out. “Moody and Kingsley will be here fairly shortly,” he pointed out. “Mundungus Fletcher has been banned from the house. Harry, Hermione and Ron are out running last-minute errands. I believe Bill is hiding in the garden so he doesn’t see his fiancée in her dress. Do you think I should just keep making tea until people turn up to drink it all?”
“That would be a waste of your talents. You can do the washing-up, too.”
He laughed. Getting up, he pushed the door open with a foot in time for them to both hear Ginny yelling, “I don’t care! I won’t wear it!”
“Don’t tell Molly, but I’m on her side,” Tonks said. “It’s hideous.”
“It isn’t,” said Remus thoughtfully, “hideous in itself. It’s rather a nice dress. And Ginny’s hair too is striking in isolation. The combination is, however, unfortunate.”
“Fleur has a lot to answer for,” said Tonks feelingly, and shut the door again. As she did so, someone knocked at the outside door on the other side of the room.
Someone hissed. “Psst.”
Remus put a hand on the door handle and peered through a small crack. “Hello?”
“No, don’t open it!” It was Bill’s voice. “Is she there?”
“Fleur? No, she’s upstairs.”
“Then let me in, it’s bloody freezing out here.” He bounded through into the warmth, shivering, and came to sit down beside Tonks. “If she comes in, tell me and I’ll close my eyes. I couldn’t stand the garden any more. Fred and George keep doing product demonstrations on the flowering shrubs.”
“It may not be any more peaceful in here,” Remus told him, handing him a mug of tea. “Your mother and Ginny are busy having a violent dress-related argument, Charlie is probably wringing his hands in desperation in front of the mirror and we’re expecting a pep squad of Aurors any minute now.”
“Just another Friday night at the Burrow.” Bill grinned and leaned back in his chair, savouring the tea. Tonks still wasn’t used to the element of the grotesque in his smile; mirth stretched at the fresh scars, made macabre mockery of the once-handsome face. “Do you think I dare go in and get a jumper?”
“Cover your eyes,” Remus advised, and Bill did. He nearly walked into the door, but Remus got it open in time to avoid a collision. He shouted quick directions to no avail; there was a series of crashes as Bill hit an umbrella stand, then a wall, then a grandfather clock, followed by imperious demands from above as to what in creation was going on down there, couldn’t they all be left alone for five minutes, whatever next, and with a wry smile, Remus shut the door on the resultant chaos.
“I think it’s best we stay out of it,” he said, and returned to his teapot.
Impulsively, Tonks moved to sit beside him, perching on the table-edge. “Don’t you think it’s strange,” she said, “all of this? I thought it would be different somehow. But no, the twins are making explosions and Molly’s going crazy and I’m breaking things. It’s like everything’s normal.”
“Not quite everything.” Remus looked up at her, and she thought about slipping down to land in his lap, but then imagined what Molly would say and resisted the urge. “You’re here. I don’t mean,” he went on quickly, “that in normal times you, or Alastor or Kingsley for that matter, wouldn’t have been invited, but there wasn’t a choice in the matter. Where’s your wand?”
She tapped her hip. “Here.”
“Mine too. People are prepared. They’re not afraid, but they’re prepared.”
“I knew that,” she confessed. “I’m here on official duty too. I wasn’t supposed to let on, but you knew, I’m sure.”
He nodded. “I suspected.”
“But I thought people would be acting differently. I thought that it would be different because of Bill being...” She trailed off. “You know.”
“Hard to know what Bill is, isn’t it?” His voice was weary. “There is a change in him. I can feel it, though I doubt that anyone else can. The wounds are cursed, but not like mine. But however bad it turns out to be, I think Bill won’t let it stop him. Nor Fleur, at that. They’ll be happy.” He smiled a little. “That’s the answer to your question, right there.”
“What question?”
“People try their best to be happy, in wartime. Their joy is their defiance. After all, not engaging in a big crazy family wedding would mean Voldemort had won, isn’t that right?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “That sounds right.”
“I remember James and Lily’s wedding was the same. Molly was younger, but just as crazy.” He flashed her a mischievous glance. “Sirius was best man, which was a bad idea all round, as he thought it entitled him to shag the bridesmaids. When I objected, he told me, and I quote, ‘You know what you have to do, Moony.’”
“You were a bridesmaid?” she demanded, spluttering.
“No, I hit him.”
She laughed, and when thinking about war, about memory, it didn’t seem to matter what Molly would say. With more grace than expected, she slipped down into his lap, putting an arm round his shoulders with one hand tangling loosely into his hair. “You’re going to leave after the wedding, aren’t you?” she said, softly.
“Yes.” He shifted in the creaking chair so her weight was more evenly settled, and his hand came to rest on her hip, fingers curling over her wand. “I have to go. The call of the wild, you know.”
There was meant to be humour in it, but somehow it fell flat and she sank further down into him. Through the thick, soft fabric of his cloak, she could feel his heart beating.
“I have to fight,” she said, dully. “It’s my job. There won’t be any more quiet days and village patrols. It’ll be battles and blood and raids all the time, now.”
“I know.”
“I’ll come back.”
“I know.” He laughed very quietly, and she was being fanciful but there was something about the wolf in it, low and purring. “You’ll come back, and I’ll be there.”
Something crashed outside, and it was louder than the usual explosions; there was the sound of a bell ringing, and then what sounded suspiciously like someone shouting, “Constant vigilance!”
Tonks startled. “Just when I was getting comfortable!” she complained. “Bloody Moody and his bloody fixation....”
Remus tried getting to his feet, so she fell on him and around him and clung to him until they were both balanced, standing. “Sounds like the gang’s all here,” he said, grinning, and the house exploded with life.
*
She crashed, soaking wet, into the flat, and sneezed violently, once, twice, thrice. There was rainwater in her sinuses, flowing out of her ears, and it was still battering the windows. In the small hallway, she stood and dripped. There were lights on in the living-room, and she could hear music. Remus.
Lightning flashed, electric-bright, as she followed the sound now barely audible above the rolls of thunder. He was on the floor, asleep. It had been days and long nights, almost a week since she’d seen him, and the moon had been in the meantime; she chose to notice peaceful sleep, rapid eye movement and dreams rather than his hair thick with mud and the curious, painful angles of his splayed limbs.
She went into the kitchen to put the kettle on the boil, reached into her pocket and realised her wand was already in her hand, gripped tightly enough to leave rigid grooves in her skin. She hadn’t dropped it nor let it go since she’d left, and that had been hours ago, after a call through the fire in the sunny purple-streaked dawn. She’d gone, and she’d come back.
She couldn’t find clean cups in any of the cupboards, and none had been left in the draining-board either. There was blood in the sink. It formed a thick, turgid layer around the plughole and splattered around the sides, clotting, but fresh on the surface. She turned on the taps and went quickly back into the living-room to retrieve an empty mug from Remus’s outstretched hand. She filled it with water and used it to slosh round the sides, watching quietly as the red colour diluted, turned pink and flowed away. She turned the taps down to low pressure, but left them running.
On the table, she found a small pile of post addressed to her. On the top was a postcard, showing a classic view of the Eiffel Tower in springtime, and once turned over, proved to be from Bill and Fleur. Having wonderful time – lots of good food – Paris est très beau en printemps – love to you and Remus – Bill.
She smiled, wistfully, leaning back and listening to the sound of the trickling water. Remus would probably be able to translate, but the French words were pretty enough without knowing what they meant; in her head they felt like sunshine, strawberries, golden wine in gleaming glasses. There was a war being fought over there, too – the honeymoon was nominal, considering Fleur was recruiting at Beauxbatons for the Order – and probably it rained there sometimes as well, with thunder and lightning and dirty water flowing out of the gutters, but she preferred the fantasy.
She pinned the card carefully onto the notice board, preferring to do it by hand than use her wand, and wandered back into the living-room. Remus had shifted position, hands flung out behind his head, and the record player was skipping. She pushed the stylus back into place and sat down, realising as she did that she’d never got around to making herself any tea, but she was feeling too tired to get up again.
The thunder was dying away, and the music was becoming clearer. Remus rolled over, rolled back. He was waking up, but Tonks wasn’t going to rush him; she stayed curled up in her chair, listening to the song playing. She wondered how much he’d missed it, if werewolf packs, out in the old continental forests, had songs, had music. She supposed not, apart from the low, melodic, ululating howling. She’d heard that, rising below the aspens above the plains, and it probably counted as music because it made her want to laugh and scream and cry.
“What’s that?” Remus sat up, hugging his knees and looking about him in bemusement. “Nymphadora?”
“Hey, it’s me.” She leaned out of the chair to touch him. “It’s me. What’s the matter?”
He was still looking wildly around. “What time is it?”
“Almost eight. Why, do you have to....”
“I have to go back. I was only meant to be here for a little while, I just sat down for a minute and fell asleep.” He got to his feet, but didn’t move any further, still looking puzzled. “What is that?”
“It’s the Beatles.” She glanced at the record sleeve left on the floor. “Sergeant Pepper. Don’t you remember putting it on?”
“I remember.” He jumped across with sudden energy, grabbed her and twirled her. “Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly....”
His voice was hoarse, and she held onto his hands and kissed his bruised, bloody mouth. “Come back soon,” she murmured, through the water and the salt. “When you come back we’ll make cookies.”
He nodded, once, and then he was gone, the room left silent.
Except for the rain, her breathing, her heart beating, and the song, the pretty song about the boat on the river, the stars in the marmalade skies, and the girl with the kaleidoscope eyes.
finis
When they left Harry at King’s Cross, it was a bright, sunlit day with an achingly blue sky. It still ached, for all the colour had faded and dissolved into dusk. There were buskers playing jaunty tunes on corners as they walked, in silence, back through London, and Moody gave them money to be quiet.
There were no lights on in the kitchen at number twelve, Grimmauld Place. Remus had tried. Flames had sputtered and flared into bright shining stars that burned, withered, died, and he gave up. His power was splintered round the edges, Tonks noted; the flares were indicative of loss of control. She nodded: Remus’s first and last sign of grief.
Now, he was barely visible, a greyish shape in the darkness, but Tonks had memorised how he was sitting, with boots on the table and head hanging off the back of his chair, shaggy hair a soft cloud beneath. She hadn’t yet heard him move, and besides, he sat still, these days. She didn’t try and move herself. The room was too dark and the air too thick with things still left unsaid.
“I remember,” Remus said, into the silence to no one, “things that no one else remembers.”
Tonks said nothing.
“James and Lily are dead, Peter’s forgotten everything he ever knew. And the Dementors took Sirius away from himself.” He paused, and Tonks became aware of his breathing, a steady rhythm below the syncopation of words. “They take your happy memories, your defining moments, everything that delineates you and your edges, every influence of the shaping world.”
Tonks thought he was probably drunk, or getting there. She turned and saw, momentarily, twin mirrored gleams, canine eyes in the darkness. She was probably drunk herself, to imagine something like that.
“Sirius could remember my birthday.” Remus laughed, and the sound was horrible, obscene. “He could remember it’s the tenth of March, and that I turned seventeen on a Friday. But he couldn’t remember that he woke me up before breakfast, gave me three boxes of Honeydukes’ best and tickled me until I cried.”
Tonks asked: “Did he remember me?”
“He remembered every time you cried. Every time he shouted, every time he scared you. I told him that when we were in seventh year we came to babysit for you and made you cookies with pink food colouring, and how you laughed because it matched your hair. He asked me to tell him more things like that.”
Tonks’s hair wasn’t pink today, tonight, wouldn’t be pink tomorrow. Remus was silent for a minute. When he spoke, his voice was falling with every syllable.
“I told him about the time you flushed your goldfish down the toilet and told your mum it had gone to live in Uzbekistan. I told him about how he left this house forever and went to live with James and how they were spannered for a week. I told him about the flat we used to have, this grotty little place on top of Mornington Crescent tube, and how messy it was with motor oil on the floor, and how angry I used to get about the motorbike. I told him about how we brought you up to visit, once, and you spotted the collar and lead and wanted to know since when had we had a dog.
“I told him, and he tried to remember.” His voice was almost gone. “For me, he tried to remember.”
Tonks sat back, and said, softly, “I tried, too. I tried reminding him. He wanted to get to know Mum again properly, and she was going to come up and visit during this summer. She was going to help with telling him stuff, because you know I can’t remember that much myself. It was all so long ago.”
“That’s right.” There was bitterness in Remus’s tone now, something she hadn’t heard for years. “It was all so very, very long ago.”
Tonks thought about it. “Remus,” she said softly, “we have to keep going on, we have to keep fighting. Sirius would have wanted us to.”
Remus laughed again, and Tonks stifled the deep-down, primal urge to shriek and cry at the sound. “Those aren’t your words, Nymphadora. That’s Andromeda, that’s Dumbledore, that’s not you.”
“I’m me. I’m not Nymphadora.” She didn’t know why she persisted, but here in the darkness with only the sounds of distant traffic and Remus’s soft, soft voice, it seemed more important than ever. “And I loved Sirius too.”
“I think...” Remus faltered, tried again, “I think he loved you, and me, and Harry. I think love is too painful for the Dementors.
“But if we are the sum of all our experiences, then I lost Sirius fourteen years ago and more.” He stood up, and Tonks heard the chair fall to the ground, crunching wood on stone. Light flared, guttered, held. It flickered below the ceiling, wordless magic illuminating Remus’s face, stark white, with dilated pupils holes into his soul.
“I wish I could forget,” he said, and Tonks got up to stand behind him, put her arms around his shoulders to feel the warmth seeping through his cloak, to feel him still human after all these years.
On the stone floor beneath the kitchen table, they woke up with limbs entangled in the dust. Through the blurring between sleep and dim awareness, Tonks thought: it’s dark; it’s dirty; it’s probably really early; my knickers are missing; this isn’t my bed....
“Sirius is dead.”
He was looking at her and she nodded, because that, like everything else, was true. “Yeah.”
Remus sat up, his head skimming the underside of the table. He had been awake before her, and she knew what he’d been thinking about before, during, after. “Funny, isn’t it,” he said, “how it isn’t always better in the morning.”
Tonks ran both hands through her hair. “Remus, this is fucked up.”
“I think that’s a foregone conclusion. What, specifically, are you referring to?”
“All of this.” She made an expansive gesture. “You know it is. And no” – she held up one hand – “don’t you try acting like it didn’t happen. You were drunk, I was drunk, we were both drunk, we were also both really stupid, we had sex, Sirius is still dead.”
“Consciousness to narrative coherence in less than thirty seconds. I’m impressed.”
It was his usual dryness, but newly sharp, suddenly hurtful. Even in the shadows by the floor, she could see the closed-off quality about his face.
She rubbed at her eyes and tried to get out from beneath the table, but the room was too dim, with only greyness to mark the difference between the dawn and the remains of the night. Her wand had rolled out of sight. “Don’t you want,” she said, ferreting about for it, “don’t you think we need to... talk about it?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Certainly not.”
“Then I’m impressed,” – delivered as cuttingly as she knew how – “that you’re so disgusted with what you did last night that you wouldn’t have mentioned it, would you, if I hadn’t.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Tell me, is it women in general that don’t turn you on? Or is that me flattering myself? Is it not the girly bits? Is it just generally me?”
“Shut up, Tonks!”
They had been whispering, furiously, but the yell stunned them both into momentary silence.
After a minute, Remus put a hand to his head, probably nursing the same headache as she was, and said, “I’m sorry. Look, I’m sorry. I don’t think... I don’t think this is a good idea, that’s all. I’m sorry.”
She nodded, more to herself than to him. “In the dark on the floor and just got fucked by a bloke who doesn’t want to know. Note to self – not a good idea.”
“Tonks.” He was sounding gentle, now, more like himself. “I really am sorry. Even about the whole of last night, if you want me to be.”
“Fuck, no.” Feeling for him rather than trusting her vision, she put a loose arm around his shoulders. “None of that taking-advantage crap. Don’t be sorry for that. Be sorry for being a bastard.”
He nodded. “This is, as you say, fucked up.”
She managed a slight, bittersweet smile. “You don’t know how fucked up this is. You have no idea. I want to show you something.”
“What?”
She wouldn’t answer him. With a knot in her stomach that tied and untied, she murmured, “Lumos.”
A foot away from her, her wand lit up. She grabbed it, using it in a large, erratic sweep to light all the room sconces. Remus quickly found his own, and emerged from under the table with a few graceful movements. “What is it, Nymphadora?”
“This,” she said, in a voice that was treacherous and shook, “is it.”
It wasn’t a matter of focus. It was about unravelling, coming undone, the caress of a slipping mask. There was a mirror in her pocket but she didn’t need it; she couldn’t get it wrong when it was her face, and although she hadn’t seen it in years, she wasn’t able to forget. By now it must be the face of an adult woman, heart-shaped, with high cheekbones and white skin with the faintest of blushes. She could feel her hair on her shoulders, shaggy and fittingly black, and when she opened her eyes, she knew they would be heavy-lidded, pale grey.
Remus was staring, his own eyes wide, golden-brown – they never changed colour, with or without the moon – and he was pale and getting paler. “Bella?” he said, and she knew all at once that he was going to make her cry.
“No,” she said, softly. “Me. Nymphadora Tonks.”
“I forgot.” He wasn’t looking at her any more. “I knew... but I still forgot. She killed him. She killed him. And you look....”
“I look like my aunt who killed my cousin.” Her voice was flat, matter of fact, and his head was in his hands. He was murmuring under his breath, softly, painfully. She could feel it along with him, the labels falling off the world.
“Remus,” she said.
He looked up, and she changed. Her face lost the softness, the curling lashes and heart, became beauty ravaged by years, an old dog, a dying star.
She heard a sharp intake of breath. There was light in his face, in his eyes, and as she sat, fearful, he reached out with one hand. Delicate fingertips traced the curve of cheek and jaw, pushed back a stray lock of hair, withdrew wet with saltwater.
And then there was a stifled, quiet cry, a jerk of movement, sounds of pushed chairs, footsteps, slamming door in morning silence, and he was gone.
She stayed where she was, cried and cried, and she never did find her knickers.
Every day Remus reached out in his sleep, with eyes tight shut and hands that closed on nothing.
She was standing in the doorway, watching his still form, wrapped in sheets and blankets and bathed in the afternoon grey falling from the attic skylight. He hadn’t been there when she left; he’d be gone again come dusk. He was underground with the pack by night, sleeping by day, and every day was shorter than the one before.
She understood now what Sirius had feared.
It was cold inside the room; she drew the door closed with a gentle click and sat on the edge of the bed. Reaching down, she undid her boots, meticulously. She didn’t trip over things on missions, even if it meant tying her laces into triple knots. From under the leather emerged a pair of very old, very smelly socks. She grimaced, shook them off and felt herself begin to slip, insidiously, off the edge of the mattress.
Shifting back, she crossed the space between them and her inching hands touched the warmth of skin through the sheets. Beneath them, he was deeply, deeply asleep, exhaustion uncoiling like a spring in the lines of his body. He was becoming familiar to her, through the early mornings when it was still too dark to see and they both needed something, someone, with desperation born of grief, of anger born of the passage of time, and in the morning he was always gone but she remembered him.
She was thinking, through a blurred mind, that she ought to worry she was being used. After the second time, she stayed in his bed, below the window, below the sky, because it was closer to the stars than the floor beneath the kitchen table. But the truth was more complex than that, with more sharp edges than a cut jewel; they were both using each other to fill a space, so his hands could grasp something, so she didn’t feel like the grief of the house was settling so deep within her bones.
Behind her head, Remus shifted, and the slow, sweeping sounds of fabric on skin brought her back to herself. Standing up, she gathered her boots and stuffed the socks down into them. She should take them, wash them, go home. She was staying here out of convenience, mostly; when she couldn’t face the trek across London, and there was a house to stay in, it was only sensible. Her own flat was growing musty from lack of use, and still she didn’t go back and air it out.
She walked up and down the room, listening to the silence. She was going to be home tonight, she was going to go home now. She would go after another five heartbeats, another five steps, another five minutes stolen from this washed-out afternoon. She was pacing up and down in bare feet, and her toes curled with the chill.
The movement was silent, but she turned. He was still asleep, still breathing deeply, his hands swimming through space, grasping for a lifeline. She moved across and knelt by his head, all at once aware of the cold in the room, the stillness, the grey in his hair and behind the skylight.
He touched her. Fingers closed around pink strands of hair, moving blindly but softly towards the curves of her cheeks. She didn’t move, and from the smoothness of the skin, the warmth of living flesh, he was awake. “Morning,” she muttered, the word falling unnoticed into the silence.
His eyes narrowed, focused. He was looking at his hands, at her face, the space in between. He didn’t speak, and he didn’t have to. She wasn’t whom he was expecting, but he didn’t draw back.
She kissed him by daylight, and there was sweetness in it.
Tonks knew she was being followed.
There were a thousand little telling sounds, half-muffled by the snow and amplified by the still, cold air – the snaps of twigs, the scrapes of boots on cobbles, the short, shallow breaths. So far, no threatening movements. She kept on going, and one careful hand dropped to her hip, rested lightly on her wand.
She was prepared. She always was; no one had ever been allowed to say that she wasn’t extremely fucking good at her job, or at least no one who hadn’t shortly been dead or wishing they were. Everything about her, her weapons, her stance, her clothes, suggested a woman on top of things. “You look nice, dear,” the mirror had said. “Very sensible.”
She did look very sensible. She had clean jeans on, with no rips as to not let in any cold air, with the thickest jumper she owned, lots of layers beneath it, and a wand case at her belt and sturdy dragon-hide boots. Her Weird Sisters T-shirt was hanging off the end of her bed. She hadn’t washed it in weeks.
Trudge, trudge, trudge through the snow. The brief echoes of her footsteps – someone matching her gait – were clearly perceived whispers that slowed down, sped up, slowed down again, losing their rhythm. She’d nearly failed stealth herself, but she recognised an amateur at work.
She didn’t turn around or stop. The crunching – that’d be the run up with its quick, snow-compacting footsteps – the murmur of polish on fabric, which would be the drawn wand, and then the jump, and she’d be ready....
“Guess who.”
She froze. The voice was clear in the chill, with a dozen notes of familiarity in the brief syllables. The hands laid over her eyes were familiar, too.
“Charlie?”
He laughed, and brought his hands back down to his sides in time to submit to a hug. “Charlie,” she muttered again, into his shoulder, “I thought you were a Death Eater!”
“I’m flattered. I think.” He looked amused.
“You were following me!” She looked up, startled to see her vision becoming fuzzy, his face a sudden, crystalline blur. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, I don’t know, I had time to kill, thought I’d take in some of the lovely scenery about these parts.” When she only stared at him, he grinned broadly. “I came to see you, you silly bint. They told me in the village that you usually patrol out here.”
“I do!” she said. “I do! I’m on duty....”
“Nah, you’re not. Dawlish is covering for you. You’re having a drink with me. It’s all arranged, so come on.”
She smiled, unexpectedly, and fell into step beside him as they walked through the trees. “What I meant was,” she said, “is what are you doing back in England? Aren’t you supposed to be in Romania?”
“You’d laugh if I told you.” He gave her a sidelong glance over his scarf, eyes dancing, and something about the look prompted a simple thought: she’d missed him.
“Try me.”
“Mum wants to make sure I fit in my robes for the wedding. See, I knew you’d laugh!”
She wasn’t laughing, but she was grinning broadly and that was as close as she’d got in a while. “Ah. I see.”
“Stop trying to be polite, it doesn’t suit you. Anyway, you’re not going to be polite when you actually see the bloody robes.” He paused. “You are coming to the wedding, aren’t you?”
They were emerging from the tree line when she said, wistfully, “I might. I’m not sure.”
“Why not? Hey, watch it!” He grabbed her hand to stop her from falling on the frozen cobbles; hanging on, she skidded and slid but didn’t topple.
“Thanks.” She let got of his hand with reluctance and picked her way more carefully through the ice. The windowsills of the houses were heaped high with the snow, and large, dangerous-looking icicles hung from the eaves. It reminded her briefly of days out to Hogsmeade at school; the village looked now much as it had then, and with Charlie beside her, nothing had changed.
“Why aren’t you coming to the wedding?” Charlie asked again. He was leading the way down the pavement, and she had to step quickly to keep up.
“I would, if I knew for certain that Fleur wouldn’t kill me stone dead.” She smirked briefly. “Molly’s been trying to set me up with Bill even after they got engaged.”
“Bet Fleur loved that.” Charlie grinned. “I haven’t seen much of her myself, but she can handle her dragons, I’ll give her that.”
“High praise, coming from you.”
“Naturally,” he said, and paused beneath the Three Broomsticks’ painted sign. “Ah, we’re here. After you.”
She stepped through, shaking her boots free of snow and breathing deeply in the rush of warmth. The pub was almost empty at eleven o’clock on a weekday morning, which had its advantages; once they were perched on barstools, complete with foaming, warm tankards, the background noise was muted enough for conversation.
Sitting there, facing Charlie with his warm eyes and freckles, she had a strange, uncomfortable sense that the pleasantries were over. He was regarding her with his usual affection, but tempered with concern, with appraisal, and the silence had been too long when he asked, gently, “What’s the matter, Nymphadora?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” – still gently – “you’re not fine at all. I haven’t seen your hair that colour since sixth year.”
She touched it, self-consciously. She wasn’t going to say it, but the mousy-brown surprised even her sometimes, catching sight of it as flashes in puddles and glass. “It’s a reaction,” she said carefully, “to stress. It can have an effect on morphing, sometimes.”
“So I understand.” He nodded. “And forgive me for asking, but what exactly is the cause of the stress?”
“It’s a war, Charlie!” She waved her hands around, fretfully. “It’s a war and I’m an Auror and any one of my friends or family could get killed! It’s stressful!”
“I don’t believe you,” he said flatly. And when she opened her mouth, ready for an angry reply, he went on, “Not about the wartime stress. I believe you. You know I believe you. But it was a war months ago, and this” – he touched her hair again – “is new. Do you want to tell me about it?”
She sat there, stared steadily, didn’t say anything. He took a deep breath and asked, quickly, “Is it about Remus Lupin? Mum said....”
“Fucking hell!” she said, and the pub was quiet enough for people to turn around and look. “Oh, Charlie, I’m sorry. I told your mum that in confidence, no one was supposed to know.”
“Really?” He looked surprised. “Because I didn’t believe Mum, either.”
“You didn’t?” She stared at him. “Why not?”
He shrugged. “Because it’s you, you know? I remember when you were fifteen you burned your bra.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” she asked, smiling for a second at the memory.
“You’re the essence of girl power, you are. Not the type who’d get silly over some bloke.”
“He’s not some bloke.” She sighed. “Oh, I don’t want to talk about it, but I do, and fuck, it’s hard. It’s really hard. Look, Charlie... you know what Remus is, don’t you?”
“Gay?” he suggested, but the flippancy seemed to hurt more than meant. He reached out and put a hand on her arm. “No, sweetie, I do know. I know.”
“He’s out there with Fenrir Greyback.”
“He’s what?” Charlie looked shocked. “He’s defected?”
“No! He’s a spy, he’s gathering intelligence, I think. He can’t tell me much about it. Look... I ended up shagging him over the summer. Because Sirius was gone. That was it, I swear. Sirius was gone, and him and me, we were left.”
“Right.” Charlie didn’t laugh and didn’t look surprised.
“And he was there and now he isn’t and I’m missing him. I think...” She paused. “I tried telling him before he went, but he wouldn’t listen to me, and I don’t know. I think we could work. I think we could. I’m not the fucking sentimental type.”
“No, you’re not.” Charlie smiled, probably at a memory of his own.
“But neither is he. And he’s lost something and I’ve lost something and it’s him, it’s Remus. It could have worked, Charlie!” Her vision was blurring again. “But it didn’t.”
Charlie nodded. “What happened?” he asked, quietly. “What did he do to you?”
She didn’t answer him.
“Did he do something?” Charlie had a look on his face she remembered; it meant some boy, or man, now, was going to be nursing a black eye soon. “Did he do something to hurt you?”
She sat still, and the drops on the counter were like the dripping meltwater from the icicles on the eaves, thawing, cold, deadly.
“He left,” she whispered.
The next time her hair was pink, she was at a funeral. When the worst of it was over, when the throngs of people had dissipated and they were left to the quiet, beautiful summer’s day, Remus took her hand and led her across the grass, down towards the lake. There were birds over the water, wheeling and calling, breaking the surface into shadowed droplets and flying back up to the sun. It was too bright, it hurt to look at, and she blinked hard, painfully.
“I think he would have liked your hair,” said Remus.
She opened her eyes and saw the vivid colours, green, blue, pink, still summer; nothing changed, for all the world was being remade around them. She sat down beside him on a soft, sunlit patch, and watched his fingertips trail along the surface of the water. “What?”
“Dumbledore.” Remus looked up, head inclined. “He would have liked it.”
“He always did.” She smiled to herself. “He liked the pink best out of all the colours I used to have it.”
“Past tense,” Remus murmured. So close to her, she could see the year spent with the pack lying heavily on him; there were more wolf-grey streaks in the shaggy hair, even less weight on his sparse frame. But he was there and he was alive, she reminded herself; unlike others, he had come back. “I can’t get used to that.”
“Me, neither.” She paused, breathed in and out before speaking again. “What are we all going to do, without Dumbledore? Other than argue lots?”
She got a smile. “Yes, quite. I think we’ll have to do what we were doing, and keep on fighting. What else is there for us to do, except remember the past?”
As he spoke, he lifted his hands out of the water, and a flash of red caught Tonks’s eye. Reaching out, she grabbed them and he didn’t resist, letting her cast careful eyes over the bruised palms. Close to, she saw the ragged cuts, split fingernails, and the palpable splinters, gravel beneath the lacerated skin.
He was looking at her, smiling awkwardly. “I meant to do something about them,” he muttered, “just never got around to it....”
She took her wand out of her pocket and grimly, efficiently, set to work. “This is going to hurt, Remus. I guess we’re blaming Greyback?”
“Not specifically.” Another awkward smile. “It’s just... an occupational hazard, I suppose.”
She tapped one of the splinters. It rose through the flesh and Remus hissed in pain; quickly, she asked, “What was it like, out there?”
“Cold, mostly. Wet. Miserable. Dangerous.” He closed his eyes. “Half the time I was afraid they were going to lose patience and dispose of me. But there were some who – ouch! – took an interest in what I had to say.”
She held up her first prize, a sharp, bloodied thorn the length of her thumbnail. “That’s quite an impressive souvenir. Who were the ones taking an interest?”
“The children.” His hands relaxed in her careful grip. “Fenrir specialises in children. He likes to catch them young. And they have so much potential, some of them. They could do, and be, so much, and they know there’s more to life than what he’s offering, they just don’t know where to go, how to go.”
“You were helping them,” she said, tapping with her wand again; she was clearing the debris according to the clear, rounded shape of pads and paw.
“I was trying. It may not have been enough.” There was a pause, while he opened his eyes and watched in wonder as she threw a handful of gravel into the lake. “That was in my hand?”
“Yes! How could you not notice?”
He shrugged. “It blurred, after a while. I couldn’t think.”
She didn’t say anything, focusing on the warm, torn flesh, pulling and teasing out the last of the pieces. She held onto his hands after she had finished, leaning back onto the grass and looking up. The sun was burning with sweetness, working into her skin, cleaning through the old cobwebs. Across the lake, she could see Harry and Hermione, talking quietly; they and the other Gryffindors were lingering on the grass, within sight of the tomb.
“This is beautiful,” she said.
“What is?” Remus was pale, washed through by the light.
“All of this,” – she swung an arm out at the water, the greenery, the sky – “it’s all so wonderful.”
He said nothing, and his eyes were mild.
“I know. I know, it’s not. It’s not wonderful. It’s horrible and people are going to die and so many people are dead already. I think we need to take what beauty we can when we find it, that’s all.”
“I wish we could.”
“Remus,” – and her voice was sincere, pained with truth – “why can’t we, you and me I mean, just start again? There’s a war going on, last year was horrible, we’ve got enough pain and angst in our lives. Why can’t we just wipe the slate clean, say here’s where our lives begin and just start from here?”
He was quiet for a moment, and then he leaned in, kissed her lightly on the lips. “Because,” he said, and there was weariness in his tone, “I would love to, but I can’t.”
“Why not?” She was breathless, from the caress, from something else. “Why can’t we?”
“Where would we start?” He was smiling as he looked at her, but there was a weight in his eyes and she’d learned to bear it. “Where does this begin? When we met?”
She covered her eyes. “I was five.”
“But we have to meet somewhere.” He was frowning, but not with irritation; she recognised the expression as the one associated with crossword puzzles and academia. “If we were to get someone to perform a selective memory charm – such things can be done, according to the most recent research – then what would we keep, what would we throw away?” He went on, talking more to himself then to her, “Does it begin with the war? The first war? But Sirius and I met – and we wouldn’t have met without Sirius – years before that, so maybe it begins then?”
“Does it begin with I met him? But he only knew you when he left home, so does it begin when he walked out? When Andromeda walked out? Or did it only really begin when James and Lily died? Or does it begin when you were five? How about when I was five, does it begin with Fenrir biting me? Does it begin with Voldemort? Or does it begin with Tom Riddle?”
She frowned, thought about it. “It begins here. Right here, right now.”
He nodded. “I thought you’d say that.”
“Remus...” She ran skilful fingers over his hands, feeling for any last traces of injury. “I know there’s a lot of history. I know, all right? I lived through most of it. Believe me, the one thing we’re not going to do is repeat it.”
“I will be your weakness.” He was looking up at the sky. “I will be your weakness the same way I was Sirius’s. In the end, we found it easier to believe the other one was a spy, rather than face the fact we were falling apart. If we’d only thought, only realised...” He waved a hand. “You know the rest.”
“I said, we’re not going to repeat it.” She looked up at him, angry. “I will not lose you, Remus Lupin. Not to a pack of werewolves or Death Eaters or Voldemort himself, may he rot in hell. I will not let you go.”
His gaze was steady. “This is more than a mere age difference, more than my being old and poor and all the rest of it. This is a war, and I’m fighting on the wrong side.” He smiled, tiredly. “I’m a certified creature of the dark. I’ll come back to you torn up and smelling like the pack. I’ll come back to you soaked in blood and it won’t be mine.”
She shook her head. “You don’t scare me. I’m an Auror.”
“You’re twenty-three years old. You’re not scared of anything.” He laughed, suddenly, and kissed her again. “And it’s not too late for you to get out.”
“I will not let you go,” she repeated. “You go out there and you fight, and then you come back to me.”
“I will,” he said.
“You mean it?” she demanded. She was standing up, had leapt to her feet without noticing, was staring down at him hurt and dazzled by the sparkle off the water.
He lay back, his robes a flat half-moon of fabric around him, his fingers curled, inviting. “Come down here with me,” he said, and she was on her knees, on the floor. The softness of skin and hair and grass was a muted chord beneath the sunlight, beginning something.
Charlie stood framed by a doorway with his hands on his hips. “You’re laughing at me.”
“Oh, no,” said Tonks, quickly, “no, no, no, I’m not laughing, does it look like it, Remus, does it look like I’m laughing at him?”
Remus regarded her appraisingly. “Either,” he said, “you are trying very hard not to have hysterics, and failing miserably, or you are having some variety of acute, probably-fatal pulmonary embolism.” He considered. “The optimist in me favours the former.”
“Remus,” said Charlie, pleading, “she’s your girlfriend, make her stop laughing at me.”
“Sadly, I think my girlfriend has read her feminist literature.” Remus smiled and grabbed Tonks’s hand. “Come on, Nymphadora, let’s leave Charlie to his dress robes. I’m sure he’d appreciate some time alone with them.”
On the way down the rickety stairs, she gave up the fight and let out the threatening gasps of laughter. “They had,” – her hands were flapping – “lace! And frilly bits! And, and, a ruffle!”
“From what I hear, the Delacour family are very particular about such things.” She could tell by his expression that he was more amused than he was letting on. “But ours not to reason why, ours but to provide the refreshments.” He stuck his head out of the door. “Molly! Do you want some tea?”
Molly bustled into the Burrow kitchen, shouting something to the twins over her shoulder; someone was yelling aggrievedly from upstairs and there were the sounds of inevitable explosions emanating from the garden. “Bless you, Remus,” she said sincerely. “I don’t know what we’d have done without you to help. Nor you, Tonks dear.”
Remus smiled and tapped the kettle with his wand. Tonks grimaced. “You’d have probably had a lot more intact china,” she said ruefully.
“Nonsense, dear! Who needs china when we’re having a wedding in the family? Yes, Ginny, I’m coming! Be patient a minute!”
She disappeared with a rustle of robes and skirts. Remus started rummaging in the cupboards for clean cups. “You’d think a wedding in the family would be exactly the occasion you would need intact china,” he said thoughtfully.
“Oh, don’t rub it in.” Tonks sat down at the table. “Remind me to replace some of Molly’s kitchenware. I broke six plates this morning.”
“They’ll repair.”
“Yeah, but they’ll still be cracked. And talking of being cracked – why are we the only non-family members here helping out? What did the rest of the Order do to get out of this?”
Remus came to sit down beside her, having miraculously found a handful of unbroken mugs, and she held them still as he poured out. “Moody and Kingsley will be here fairly shortly,” he pointed out. “Mundungus Fletcher has been banned from the house. Harry, Hermione and Ron are out running last-minute errands. I believe Bill is hiding in the garden so he doesn’t see his fiancée in her dress. Do you think I should just keep making tea until people turn up to drink it all?”
“That would be a waste of your talents. You can do the washing-up, too.”
He laughed. Getting up, he pushed the door open with a foot in time for them to both hear Ginny yelling, “I don’t care! I won’t wear it!”
“Don’t tell Molly, but I’m on her side,” Tonks said. “It’s hideous.”
“It isn’t,” said Remus thoughtfully, “hideous in itself. It’s rather a nice dress. And Ginny’s hair too is striking in isolation. The combination is, however, unfortunate.”
“Fleur has a lot to answer for,” said Tonks feelingly, and shut the door again. As she did so, someone knocked at the outside door on the other side of the room.
Someone hissed. “Psst.”
Remus put a hand on the door handle and peered through a small crack. “Hello?”
“No, don’t open it!” It was Bill’s voice. “Is she there?”
“Fleur? No, she’s upstairs.”
“Then let me in, it’s bloody freezing out here.” He bounded through into the warmth, shivering, and came to sit down beside Tonks. “If she comes in, tell me and I’ll close my eyes. I couldn’t stand the garden any more. Fred and George keep doing product demonstrations on the flowering shrubs.”
“It may not be any more peaceful in here,” Remus told him, handing him a mug of tea. “Your mother and Ginny are busy having a violent dress-related argument, Charlie is probably wringing his hands in desperation in front of the mirror and we’re expecting a pep squad of Aurors any minute now.”
“Just another Friday night at the Burrow.” Bill grinned and leaned back in his chair, savouring the tea. Tonks still wasn’t used to the element of the grotesque in his smile; mirth stretched at the fresh scars, made macabre mockery of the once-handsome face. “Do you think I dare go in and get a jumper?”
“Cover your eyes,” Remus advised, and Bill did. He nearly walked into the door, but Remus got it open in time to avoid a collision. He shouted quick directions to no avail; there was a series of crashes as Bill hit an umbrella stand, then a wall, then a grandfather clock, followed by imperious demands from above as to what in creation was going on down there, couldn’t they all be left alone for five minutes, whatever next, and with a wry smile, Remus shut the door on the resultant chaos.
“I think it’s best we stay out of it,” he said, and returned to his teapot.
Impulsively, Tonks moved to sit beside him, perching on the table-edge. “Don’t you think it’s strange,” she said, “all of this? I thought it would be different somehow. But no, the twins are making explosions and Molly’s going crazy and I’m breaking things. It’s like everything’s normal.”
“Not quite everything.” Remus looked up at her, and she thought about slipping down to land in his lap, but then imagined what Molly would say and resisted the urge. “You’re here. I don’t mean,” he went on quickly, “that in normal times you, or Alastor or Kingsley for that matter, wouldn’t have been invited, but there wasn’t a choice in the matter. Where’s your wand?”
She tapped her hip. “Here.”
“Mine too. People are prepared. They’re not afraid, but they’re prepared.”
“I knew that,” she confessed. “I’m here on official duty too. I wasn’t supposed to let on, but you knew, I’m sure.”
He nodded. “I suspected.”
“But I thought people would be acting differently. I thought that it would be different because of Bill being...” She trailed off. “You know.”
“Hard to know what Bill is, isn’t it?” His voice was weary. “There is a change in him. I can feel it, though I doubt that anyone else can. The wounds are cursed, but not like mine. But however bad it turns out to be, I think Bill won’t let it stop him. Nor Fleur, at that. They’ll be happy.” He smiled a little. “That’s the answer to your question, right there.”
“What question?”
“People try their best to be happy, in wartime. Their joy is their defiance. After all, not engaging in a big crazy family wedding would mean Voldemort had won, isn’t that right?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “That sounds right.”
“I remember James and Lily’s wedding was the same. Molly was younger, but just as crazy.” He flashed her a mischievous glance. “Sirius was best man, which was a bad idea all round, as he thought it entitled him to shag the bridesmaids. When I objected, he told me, and I quote, ‘You know what you have to do, Moony.’”
“You were a bridesmaid?” she demanded, spluttering.
“No, I hit him.”
She laughed, and when thinking about war, about memory, it didn’t seem to matter what Molly would say. With more grace than expected, she slipped down into his lap, putting an arm round his shoulders with one hand tangling loosely into his hair. “You’re going to leave after the wedding, aren’t you?” she said, softly.
“Yes.” He shifted in the creaking chair so her weight was more evenly settled, and his hand came to rest on her hip, fingers curling over her wand. “I have to go. The call of the wild, you know.”
There was meant to be humour in it, but somehow it fell flat and she sank further down into him. Through the thick, soft fabric of his cloak, she could feel his heart beating.
“I have to fight,” she said, dully. “It’s my job. There won’t be any more quiet days and village patrols. It’ll be battles and blood and raids all the time, now.”
“I know.”
“I’ll come back.”
“I know.” He laughed very quietly, and she was being fanciful but there was something about the wolf in it, low and purring. “You’ll come back, and I’ll be there.”
Something crashed outside, and it was louder than the usual explosions; there was the sound of a bell ringing, and then what sounded suspiciously like someone shouting, “Constant vigilance!”
Tonks startled. “Just when I was getting comfortable!” she complained. “Bloody Moody and his bloody fixation....”
Remus tried getting to his feet, so she fell on him and around him and clung to him until they were both balanced, standing. “Sounds like the gang’s all here,” he said, grinning, and the house exploded with life.
She crashed, soaking wet, into the flat, and sneezed violently, once, twice, thrice. There was rainwater in her sinuses, flowing out of her ears, and it was still battering the windows. In the small hallway, she stood and dripped. There were lights on in the living-room, and she could hear music. Remus.
Lightning flashed, electric-bright, as she followed the sound now barely audible above the rolls of thunder. He was on the floor, asleep. It had been days and long nights, almost a week since she’d seen him, and the moon had been in the meantime; she chose to notice peaceful sleep, rapid eye movement and dreams rather than his hair thick with mud and the curious, painful angles of his splayed limbs.
She went into the kitchen to put the kettle on the boil, reached into her pocket and realised her wand was already in her hand, gripped tightly enough to leave rigid grooves in her skin. She hadn’t dropped it nor let it go since she’d left, and that had been hours ago, after a call through the fire in the sunny purple-streaked dawn. She’d gone, and she’d come back.
She couldn’t find clean cups in any of the cupboards, and none had been left in the draining-board either. There was blood in the sink. It formed a thick, turgid layer around the plughole and splattered around the sides, clotting, but fresh on the surface. She turned on the taps and went quickly back into the living-room to retrieve an empty mug from Remus’s outstretched hand. She filled it with water and used it to slosh round the sides, watching quietly as the red colour diluted, turned pink and flowed away. She turned the taps down to low pressure, but left them running.
On the table, she found a small pile of post addressed to her. On the top was a postcard, showing a classic view of the Eiffel Tower in springtime, and once turned over, proved to be from Bill and Fleur. Having wonderful time – lots of good food – Paris est très beau en printemps – love to you and Remus – Bill.
She smiled, wistfully, leaning back and listening to the sound of the trickling water. Remus would probably be able to translate, but the French words were pretty enough without knowing what they meant; in her head they felt like sunshine, strawberries, golden wine in gleaming glasses. There was a war being fought over there, too – the honeymoon was nominal, considering Fleur was recruiting at Beauxbatons for the Order – and probably it rained there sometimes as well, with thunder and lightning and dirty water flowing out of the gutters, but she preferred the fantasy.
She pinned the card carefully onto the notice board, preferring to do it by hand than use her wand, and wandered back into the living-room. Remus had shifted position, hands flung out behind his head, and the record player was skipping. She pushed the stylus back into place and sat down, realising as she did that she’d never got around to making herself any tea, but she was feeling too tired to get up again.
The thunder was dying away, and the music was becoming clearer. Remus rolled over, rolled back. He was waking up, but Tonks wasn’t going to rush him; she stayed curled up in her chair, listening to the song playing. She wondered how much he’d missed it, if werewolf packs, out in the old continental forests, had songs, had music. She supposed not, apart from the low, melodic, ululating howling. She’d heard that, rising below the aspens above the plains, and it probably counted as music because it made her want to laugh and scream and cry.
“What’s that?” Remus sat up, hugging his knees and looking about him in bemusement. “Nymphadora?”
“Hey, it’s me.” She leaned out of the chair to touch him. “It’s me. What’s the matter?”
He was still looking wildly around. “What time is it?”
“Almost eight. Why, do you have to....”
“I have to go back. I was only meant to be here for a little while, I just sat down for a minute and fell asleep.” He got to his feet, but didn’t move any further, still looking puzzled. “What is that?”
“It’s the Beatles.” She glanced at the record sleeve left on the floor. “Sergeant Pepper. Don’t you remember putting it on?”
“I remember.” He jumped across with sudden energy, grabbed her and twirled her. “Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly....”
His voice was hoarse, and she held onto his hands and kissed his bruised, bloody mouth. “Come back soon,” she murmured, through the water and the salt. “When you come back we’ll make cookies.”
He nodded, once, and then he was gone, the room left silent.
Except for the rain, her breathing, her heart beating, and the song, the pretty song about the boat on the river, the stars in the marmalade skies, and the girl with the kaleidoscope eyes.
finis
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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on 2006-04-25 08:32 pm (UTC)On a non- fic note; we have to meet up for coffee sometime.
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on 2006-04-25 09:36 pm (UTC)Yes, definitely, coffee would be very much of the good! When are you free? I can do every day in the foreseeable future except Thursday (and possibly Friday afternoon).
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on 2006-04-26 06:52 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-04-25 08:58 pm (UTC)Also grinning.
Thankyou for this, it provided a much needed break from my total lack of revision. :)
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on 2006-04-25 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-04-25 09:46 pm (UTC)oh god why did I not do more work over the holidays... ;)no subject
on 2006-04-25 11:23 pm (UTC)oh god yes why why did I not learn all of this when I had the timeno subject
on 2006-04-25 11:06 pm (UTC)It's really great: you're right, you do capture everyone's voices incredibly well. And my favourite moment is Remus's outrage at the decafination spell. I don't do caffiene addiction, but I have a girlfriend who would greet such an act with very similar fury!
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on 2006-04-26 05:16 pm (UTC)Thank you very much! I may, possibly, have been channeling myself in Remus's decaffienation fury. :)
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on 2006-04-26 06:50 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-04-25 09:18 pm (UTC)He remembered every time you cried. Every time he shouted, every time he scared you
to
“It isn’t,” said Remus thoughtfully, “hideous in itself. It’s rather a nice dress. And Ginny’s hair too is striking in isolation. The combination is, however, unfortunate.”, because they're both - it all is - exactly right and lovely.
Apart from anything else, hee, dykescene!Tonks of joy.
Thankyou :)
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on 2006-04-26 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-04-25 11:06 pm (UTC)I am an Oxonian, but an ancient DPhil - so I'm not avoiding revision. I'm just avoiding doing any work on my thesis ;-)
I've been contemplating coming along to a OU3FS event, by the way: does one have to be a fic writer, or just a casual reader of fanfic and observer of fandom?
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on 2006-04-25 11:44 pm (UTC)Heh. We all unite in not doing work. It is tragic. *g* You should come to a OU3FS thing! They're for people with an interest in fandom, that's it. Everyone's welcome. Join
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on 2006-04-25 11:38 pm (UTC)You are a goddess and I fangirl you. Especially knowing you managed to write this and keep your end up in PPE AT THE SAME TIME.
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on 2006-04-26 05:21 pm (UTC)Ah, PPE. My one main obstacle in the way of fandom. *shakes head* Thank you!
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on 2006-04-25 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-04-26 05:23 pm (UTC)this is the kind of fic this ship deserves.
on 2006-04-26 05:54 am (UTC)I tried to hold it, but I had to laugh.
He nodded, once, and then he was gone, the room left silent.
Except for the rain, her breathing, her heart beating, and the song, the pretty song about the boat on the river, the stars in the marmalade skies, and the girl with the kaleidoscope eyes.
;heart&
Re: this is the kind of fic this ship deserves.
on 2006-04-26 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-07 09:07 am (UTC)PS I may need to pick your brains about PPE at some point during my latest round of novel revisions.
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on 2006-05-07 10:30 am (UTC)And feel free to do so any time. *g*
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on 2006-05-07 12:37 pm (UTC)Hmm, are there any Oxford stereotypes I need to know, preferably steroetypes that have been the same forever (I can run the latter past my Oxford-degree beta if needbe)? Stuff like when I was at Edinburgh vets were heavier drinkers/party-crashers than medics, but agrics beat both groups *and* were perverts.
If it's any help my PPE character is a fresher in 1988, an American at Trinity and very openly gay (although he also slags off GaySoc on a regular basis).
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on 2006-05-07 05:37 pm (UTC)The sad, sad thing about this stereotype is it's largely accurate. *g*
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on 2006-05-07 10:09 pm (UTC)And yes, I have understanding of hacks -- they have them in Cambridge too.
Thanks for that. It gives James even more of an excuse to hang round with Our Heroes, other than his original reason, which doesn't get revealed until the end of the story.
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on 2006-05-09 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-16 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-05-11 02:00 am (UTC)God, you really do kill me dead sometimes. It's absolutely wonderful. Tonks is gorgeous and I can only describe your Remus as nnnnnngh and *painful gulp*, because he wounds me, he's so utterly... god. You give him the weight his life ought to have given him and that's bloody impossible to do, so I'm mystified (probably spelt wrong) as to how you manage it.
Really, really bloody good, and worth staying up an extra hour for ;). I hope things work out for them so much, I really, really do. And Remus on the tube train kills me.
no subject
on 2006-05-16 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-10-29 11:01 am (UTC)I just wish it was longer! I would have liked to have read it forever.
The ending was lovely.