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rt_moreloveAuthor: Fragilesymphony (nevernevergirl on AO3)
Title: Winter Alone Reminds Us of the Human Condition
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word Count/: 4456
Prompt(s): 29 (Charlie Weasley pays a visit) and 48 (almost).
Mum had sent five owls in as many days asking about Christmas dinner.
Andromeda Tonks, for as long as her daughter can reasonably remember, has always celebrated the holiday season with a decidedly average amount of cheer. That is not to say the Tonks family had less than jovial Christmases--they were warm, grateful things, a stark contrast to the house Andromeda had grown up in, and full of what Ted Tonks had always insisted was real magic.
But this-- this nagging, for there was no other word for it, (though Tonks did feel admittedly uncharitable and uncharacteristically irritated for thinking it)-- went beyond commitment to the holiday and veered straight into the groan-worthy territory of Concerned.
This was about her hair.
(“It’s nothing, Mum. Just a bit of trouble morphing. Side effect of a broken heart, who could have guessed!” she’d said, lightly. It’s a sort of a laugh if you really think about it, nothing too serious! Only a bit of inconvenience!)
Mum and Dad knew about Remus. They knew she’d fallen in love with him, they knew he was convinced they couldn’t be together, they knew he was away now. She’d managed to keep where to herself, because it was the Order’s secret, and also because it made her stomach tie up in angry knots just to form the words. But the rest of it seemed pointless to bother hiding any longer-- especially with her body acting as a constant reminder that she had grown too tired and too emotionally spent for secrets.
Ergo, Christmas. Ergo, cheering up.
It is Christmas Eve, the bloody full moon is hours from rising, and Merlin knows there’ll be no post in the morning with even a simple Hello Tonks, haven’t managed to get myself ripped to shreds, don’t bother tearing your hair out. Cheers.
Ergo, Tonks isn’t in the mood to be cheered up, and she doesn’t have the heart to let Mum and Dad see that for a whole bloody cheerful night.
She sighs as she picks at the bar of chocolate she’d settled on for breakfast as she scrawls yet another note to her mum.
Mum,
Can’t get out of my patrol. I told you, I’m not senior enough to avoid the holiday shifts yet.
She stops there, biting her lip and letting herself indulge in the guilt pooling in her stomach for a moment.
I’ll try to stop by after I’m done. I’ll probably miss dinner, but save me some cake, would you?
Love, Dora.
She ties the note to the owl’s leg, sending it off after letting it nibble a few pellets out of her palm. She stands by the window, and bites a chunk of her chocolate off rather savagely as she watches its wings span across the sky and disappear past Hogwarts’ looming form.
Of course Mum saved her cake-- and a bit of roast and potatoes, too. She shows up just as Dad’s starting to clear the dishes off the table. She smiles apologetically as she holds up a case of peace-offering butterbeer and a flask of nice firewhiskey she’d begged off Rosmerta at a discount.
It’s not so bad, veering on genuinely nice. She lets Mum fuss over the state of her robes and complain about her boots and hug her tightly. She lets Dad pile her plate high with sweets again and again. She feels the weight of the week-month-year slide a little further back in her mind, lets their presence pull her out of the brainsuck of the war. Yes, her hair is still brown, but look! She can laugh, and it can feel alright.
I’m not miserable all of the time, she tries to show them. I’m still your Dora. Just a little grown up, that’s all. I know how to hurt a little harder.
Charlie Weasley shows up on her doorstep late afternoon the day after Christmas with a large basket full of leftovers and a wrinkled nose aimed in the direction of her charmed muggle record player.
“Oh bloody hell, this bloke’s got you listening to Morrissey?”
Tonks rolls her eyes and waves him inside, quickly resetting the protective charms on the flat before heading back to the couch and flopping down onto its cushions. She wraps an afghan around her shoulders as petulantly as one can wrap a blanket.
“I’ll thank you to not credit my outstanding ear for music to a bloke,” she scowls, tossing a pillow in Charlie’s general direction, missing abysmally as he makes his way toward the kitchen.
“The Smiths are depressing, this song is depressing, your hair is depressing,” he calls out idly as he unpacks the basket. “Mum sent leftover roast.”
“Your mum is a bloody blessing. Is there cake as well?”
“There’s cake.”
“Bless her, I finished off the last of my mum’s for breakfast. And I can’t change my hair, and I don’t want to change the music.”
“Because of a bloke,” he sing-songs cheerfully, making his way to the couch and poking at her legs. “Budge over. He’s okay, you know. Stayed at ours last night. He was just leaving when I got in this morning.”
Tonks sighs and draws her knees up, settling her legs back across his lap once he’s sat next to her. “I know. He sent an owl this morning. Thank your mum for whatever guilt trip she pulled to get him to deign to write me,” she grumbles.
“Think she just told him she thought you were spending Christmas alone,” he says, poking her calf. “You didn’t, did you?”
“Not all of it. Went to mum’s for a bit after work,” she shakes her head. “I’m glad he went to the Burrow, though. I was a little afraid he’d martyr himself out of a decent dinner.”
She picks at the afghan idly, ignoring Charlie’s studying gaze.
“I know you love him,” he said, carefully. “And he looks about as miserable as you do, so I reckon he loves you too. But is it worth all this?” he asks, tugging lightly on her ponytail. She sucks in a breath.
“Worth all of what?” she says, anger and irritation building up from their months-long resting spot deep in her bones, seeping into her bloodstream. “I’m not moping because my Hogsmeade date stood me up, you prat. I’m not bloody moping at all. I love a man who hates himself too much to properly love me back, I apparently can’t do anything to help him, and frankly, I’m not sure it should be up to me to do anything about it. We’re in the middle of a war I’m not sure has an end at this point, and I am tired. I am not a damsel, but I am allowed to be sad.”
Charlie stared. “Tonks--”
“No,” she says, sharply. “Don’t. I know you mean well, Charlie, I do, but quite honestly, I can no more remove myself from Remus Lupin’s utterly ridiculous bullshit than I could get away from the war by simply quitting the Order.”
He nods slowly.
“I’m sorry,” he offers. She’s not sure if he means for his words or for Remus or for the state of the miserable world, but she nods her acceptance anyway. He sighs, running a hand through his hair.
“I was going to stay and work, in Romania,” he says, quietly. “I wasn’t planning on coming home. Bill owled and said Percy showed up with the Minister last night, though.”
“He still hasn’t come around, then?”
“Mm. Hardly,” he jiggles his leg absently. “Mum keeps crying, Dad’s angry, the twins want to send him dungbombs in the post.”
“And you?”
Charlie smirks, wryly. “And I think he’s still my kid brother, pompous git or no.”
He says it like an admission of solidarity, and it feels like friendship bracelets and whispered pacts in the back of first year Herbology, which is comforting and nice and relieves a bit of the tension in her shoulders. They sink into an easy, familiar quiet, letting the music fill the room.
Sing to me
Sing to me
I don't want to wake up
On my own anymore
“Oh fuck I love you but I cannot listen to this bollocks any longer, I am staging an intervention,” Charlie declares, drawing his wand and flicking it determinedly in the direction of the record player, a smug grin slowly forming on his face. Tonks eyes him warily--Charlie’s taste in Muggle music is limited and third-hand, cobbled together from the occasionally questionable influences of muggleborn and halfblood friends.
Hey, ho, let’s go
Hey, ho, let’s go
Tonks laughs-- an embarrassing, barking sort of laugh. Charlie looks unbearably proud of himself, and her heart constricts with a grateful sort of fondness.
She lobs another pillow at his head to let him know that.
The week between Christmas and the new year has always felt a little like the no man’s land of the calendar year to Tonks. It exists in a dreamlike state where the blinding spell of holiday cheer has given way just so, but still-- still the world clings to the last vestiges of celebration before life and war and love and loss take it by the proverbial shoulders and force it to soldier on and on and on.
(Not that life and war and love and loss cease to exist during the holidays, and of course she is not still naive enough to hold on to that bit of grace no matter what you’ve heard, but it is a blessed blanket of temporary feigned ignorance to wrap around your shoulders on Christmas morning with a mug of cocoa settled in your hands.)
But still, that week: the 26th of December hits, and no one is quite ready to return to their lives, not with the 31st skipping merrily just behind you, balancing a glass of champagne in its wearied, relieved hand. Shifts at work feel half-hearted-- not that she’d ever phone in on duty, but Hogsmeade feels sleepier, less on-edge. The school is quiet. The snow has settled into the spaces between the cobblestones, and the sky is a cool and gentle grey. It’s pleasantly melancholy-- living in a holiday state with the full awareness that this can’t last, and with the relief that it isn’t over yet.
Nothing feels entirely real, so perhaps that’s why Remus manages to drag his arse through her floo just as she’s flicking on the wireless and settling in with a cup of tea.
(That is a bitter thought. She does not want to think bitter thoughts, longs for her childhood when she didn’t have the capacity to match the concept with a concrete memory, but all the same isn’t sure she’d give up her ability to think them. Her bitter thoughts, she knows, are an admittedly weighty price for experiences she isn’t yet willing to budget out of her life.)
At any rate, he steps out of the fireplace, carefully brushing soot only onto the hearth as if her flat possibly had the wherewithal to take offense to dirt (ha!), smiling apologetically. She does not indulge this apology. She’s too tired to convince herself he deserves the validation.
“Hello, you great git,” she greets, waving for him to follow as she stands and makes her way into the kitchen to put the kettle back on. “Happy Christmas.”
“It’s the 27th,” he says; she snorts and receives a grin in return. See, she wants to say. You’ve still got it in you to tease me, and I’ve still got your number, and we could be just fine.
She doesn’t say any of that. She’s missed him too terrible to risk pushing the boundaries just yet.
“Well, I didn’t see you on the 25th, did I?” she says, treading lightly. “And at any rate, I hear we get 12 days of it.”
“I must confess that I can never remember if that’s before or after the day itself,” he says, gravely, still light and almost teasing.
“I can’t either. I’d like it to be after. Though as long as we don’t know either way, I suppose it could be both. Sit down, would you, and take off your coat. You’re dripping melted snow on the hardwood.”
He takes his turn to snort now as he shrugs off his coat, settling it gently over the back of a chair. “Of course, Molly,” he jokes, easing himself down and laughing silently when she flips two fingers in a V in his direction. “That’s a bit indulgent, don’t you think?”
“The hardwood floors? Hardly, they’re ancient.”
He rolls his eyes. “Twelve days before and after. That’s nearly a month of Christmas.”
“Nearly a week shy of it, actually, and I don’t see the harm in taking as much joy this time of year as you can.” She turns her back to him, busying herself with reaching for a mug. He sighs good-naturedly, and she doesn’t have to look to see him drawing his wand, ready to levitate any endangered ceramics knocked astray by her elbow. “Are we done talking in metaphors yet?”
He’s rolling his eyes when she turns back to him, triumphant with an intact mug in hand. “Quite. Happy Christmas, Dora.”
“Thank you,” she says, mock haughtily, shooting him a grin.
They’ve had tea and biscuits and a bit of Molly’s Christmas cake for a makeshift dinner, and it’s been pleasant and comfortable. The erumpent in the room is there, of course-- it’s still (always) hard to look at each other without knowing there’s so much so purposefully unsaid-- but that’s the thing about this thing between them, isn’t it? Even that hardly matters.
Even when he’s been constantly, steadily driving her mad for months, he doesn’t feel like company. Having Remus in her kitchen, helping with the washing up, feels as natural and easy as being home alone. It’s like he’s an extension of what her life is like in private.
He’s been in her flat for near on two hours before either of them are even tempted to shatter the whole thing. Nearly a record, she suspects.
And, so, inevitably, it goes:
Remus yawns. Stretches with it, just a little-- it lifts the hem of his shirt. Tonks spies a fresh, angry red gash peaking out from the flash of skin. Her eyebrows shoot up; he notices with a sigh.
“I’m alright.”
“You’re alive,” she mutters.
“Same thing,” he shoots back, petulantly.
“You’re an idiot.”
“Well, I reckon you’d say that’s the same thing as well. For me,” he says, wryly, running a hand through his hair.
“I would, and I’d be right.”
“We all do what we--”
“If you say ‘have to do,’ I’ll have to scream,” she says, calmly. “There’s moral obligation, and then there’s reckless endangerment. You’re the academic, figure out the difference.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree, then.”
“I haven’t agreed to it, but we’ve been disagreeing for months anyway. I suppose there’s no reason to stop now.”
“Dora.”
He is weary and resigned.
And Merlin, but he’s messy. He spends so much time, she knows, carefully stitching himself together. He measures his words and he mends his clothes; he is mild-mannered and kind and a solid, steady friend.
He is also an emotional clusterfuck who, she knows for a fact, has been known to eat sugary Muggle cereals out of tea mugs because he hasn’t done the washing up and doesn’t have any clean bowls. He is a disaster, as much as anyone as anyone else. More in some respects and less in others, she’d wager. Which is terribly human, of course, no matter his actual biological make up.
And it makes her want to fucking burst-- the totality of this man, the infinite ways she’s found to love him.
“You should put dittany on that,” she says, because anything else she wants to say will just lead to screaming her voice raw. “I can help you do it.”
He swallows hard, and she wonders about all the words, the inevitable protests, disappearing down his throat. It’s a quiet charity they give to each other: a white flag waved in unison by two tired soldiers.
“Alright,” he says, quietly.
She doesn’t understand how something can feel so easy and so tense all at once.
He stays that night. He sleeps in her bed. She also sleeps in her bed.
They’ve done this before: at Grimmauld Place, there was sex involved, sometimes. A cuddle, at least. Since she’s moved into the Hogsmeade flat, and he’s moved on to an encampment in the bloody woods, it’s more careful than all that. It’s the indulgence of a warm body just within reach.
(She’s not sure why he agrees to even that much, expect that she suspects-- knows-- he’ll only come to her in the first place when he’s too spent to keep up pretenses.)
They are in limbo, a land of almost: almost together, almost part, nothing complete. He is effectively homeless, and the Burrow, while welcoming and warm, is crowded and loud. She-- well. She wants him to stay. She’s fairly sure, practicalities aside, he’d like to as well.
She’s curled up in bed with a book with the wireless playing softly when he walks back in, hesitating in the doorway for a moment she pretends not to see. He slips into bed as carefully as he does everything else, trying to make as little impact on her side of the bed as possible.
She rolls her eyes as she turns the page of her book.
“What are you reading?” he asks, softly, shifting to see the spine as she holds it up. He wrinkles his nose. “Sylvia Plath?”
“Have you heard of her, then? She’s a muggle writer. Found it in my dad’s study.”
“I’ve read her. Not exactly 12 days of Christmas material,” he says, his voice forcefully light.
Tonks shrugs. “I like it,” she says, simply. He nods, settling against the pillows. “You can change the wireless channel, if you’d like. Should be announcing Quidditch scores soon.”
“With the way the Kestrals have been handling the quaffle lately, I’m not sure I want to know,” he jokes.
“Great season so far for the Harpies, though.”
“Mm. Wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up in the finals.”
“It’s that new seeker. Even the Tornados haven’t been able to match her.”
Remus nods, reaching for his wand on the bedside table and switching off the radio. She glances at him, raising her eyebrows.
“I don’t want to talk about Quidditch, Dora,” he sighs.
“Alright,” she says, quietly. “What do you want to talk about, then?”
He shakes his head, nodding toward the book in her hands. “I thought we could read,” he said, quietly.
She sucks in a breath; it’s silly. It’s a silly thing they used to do the year before. She’d pick up a book he’d started before the full moon, and read a few passages to him the next day while he recovered. He would tuck a novel in his robes for long stake-outs and read out loud while they waited for something interesting to happen.
He had read her Yeats hidden just outside the gates to Malfoy Manor (tread softly because you tread on my dreams), and she’d kissed him for the first time. He’d been too shocked at the time to manage a protest.
“You want me to read you Plath?” she says, dubiously. She bites back any sort of wry remark-- this is a strange sort of olive branch he’s handing out, and she needs to push carefully if she wants to see where it takes them. He shrugs.
“You’ve already got it in hand. Anything’s fine.”
She nods, flipping around to the bit she keeps coming back to anyway.
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. I think I made you up inside my head,” she recites. “The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, and arbitrary blackness gallops in. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.”
He bites his lip. “I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed, and sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane,” he continues for her. “I think I made you up inside my head.”
“You’ve read it before.”
“A few times.”
“A few,” she scoffs. He smiles, sadly.
“I don’t mean to make this harder than it needs to be,” he says, quietly. He’s got his hand splayed on the mattress, just between their pillows, just inches from her own. She wants to close the gap so badly her stomach aches. “Coming here, I mean.”
“You coming here isn’t the problem,” she murmurs. He sighs-- the chorus in this familiar song.
“It’s the coming and going,” he says, steadily. “It’s the knowing I can’t--”
“Won’t,” she interjects.
“Can’t and won’t stay,” he continues. “And coming anyway. It isn’t fair.”
“None of it is,” she says, quietly. “I’ve told you before, you haven’t ruined my life. But this,” she gestures a little wildly between and around them, “This isn’t fair. I know what you mean to do, but if you’d like me to say I understand, I’m afraid I can’t.”
“I don’t know what to do,” his voice is nearly inaudible.
“And I don’t know what you want me to tell you. I’ve said my piece. So often I’m not sure you actually want to hear I’ve changed my mind.”
He closes his eyes tightly; she tries to squash the small hope she’s struck a cord. “I only meant that I don’t mean to take advantage. I don’t mean to--”
“Remus,” she says, gently. “This isn’t enough. It’s not even a fraction of what I want. Don’t worry. I haven’t settled for your ridiculous, half-arsed bullshit.”
He looks up at her and smiles wryly at that.
When she wakes up in the morning, he’s already pulling his robes on over a thick, recognizably Weasley-knit sweater. She’s not surprised; he has been in the world of friendship and love and care for just over two days now, can’t have that. She rolls over; his side of the bed’s started to go cold.
“Going already?”
“I need to check in with the pack. I’m pushing my luck already, staying away this long.”
“Could you get away again soon?” she blurts. It’s too bloody early. “Meet me for a drink on New Year’s Eve?”
He gives her a look.
“Dora--”
“They say the way you spend that night’s how you’ll spend your year,” she tries.
“So they say. And you’d like to spend it bickering?”
She sits up in bed, wrapping her arms around her stomach tightly. “No,” she says, pointedly. “I wouldn’t.”
He sighs. “I told you last night,” he says, steadily. “I won’t take advantage.”
“Remus.”
He closes his eyes for the briefest of moments; his hand curls into a fist. She imagines his fingernails leaving little crescent marks in his palm.
“I’ve got you reading Sylvia Plath, for Merlin’s sake,” he says-- his voice shakes and her stomach drops.
“And what, I’ll be fine if you shut me out? I’ll be fine if you run off with Fenrir fucking Greyback? I’ll be fine if you’re hurt, or if you’re--”
“Dora.”
“You’re the most self-destructive arsehole I’ve met in my life, d’you know?” she says, goading him now, trying anything. She hates when it comes to this, hates the frustration that comes out of her mouth. He is infuriatingly stoic in the face of it. “Merlin save me from this self-sacrificing Gryffindor bullsh--”
“Dora.”
She slumps back against the headboard. She is so tired; she wishes she were still asleep.
He unclenches and clenches his fist again.
“Why bother coming?” she asks, quietly. “Why are we even doing this at all?”
He tucks his wand into his robes and just looks at her, really looks at her. She imagines she can feel him aching in the spot right next to her own heart.
“I don’t know.”
He is a great wizard and a practiced liar, but he cannot summon the strength for this sort of illusion anymore than she can. She knows it and she sees it and she’s felt it in the way his fingers twist and fidget in hers: he does not believe the lies he tells himself, the ones where this can be over and done and neatly squared away.
She doesn’t know how this will end, she only knows it hasn’t yet-- and that she very much plans to see it through.
“I think I made you up inside my head,” he quotes, quietly. He shakes his head. “Goodbye, Dora. Happy Christmas.”
He leaves.
He leaves, and she promptly drags herself out of bed, to the kitchen, and flings the tea cup he used the night before against the wall.
It smashes brilliantly, with bits of tea leaf clinging to the wall. She takes a deep breath, casts reparo, and summons the cup back to her to have another go at it.
She breaks the damned thing 6 times before she’s satisfied.
That’s the nifty thing about sadness, she thinks. You can always use it against itself.
She spends New Year’s Eve at the Burrow.
Tonks doesn’t actually believe that rubbish about how you spend New Year’s Eve. It feels a little too close to divination and superstitious, and she’s never gotten enough of a feel for that type of magic to think much about it.
If anything, she suspects the night has more to say about the year you’re finishing up. And if that’s the case, well. Tonks has spent 1996 with good people who believe in doing the right thing, filling her heart with enough love to justify its heaviness.
Molly’s back garden is bloody freezing, but the twins are setting up fireworks, and she’s curious to see what they’ve managed to get up to. Harry, Ron, and Ginny are huddled in a corner, talking Quidditch strategy in hushed, intense tones she can’t help but smile at. Fleur fusses over Bill while Molly fusses at Arthur to fuss at the twins, and her heart hurts a bit to watch it all, but it’s sweet.
She wraps her coat tighter around herself and takes a deep, cold breath. It’s hard not to feel alive in this kind of cold.
At midnight, she’ll do a shot of firewhiskey with Charlie, she’ll laugh and cheer at the explosions, she’ll hug and be hugged. She will think of Remus, and she will hope-- in spite of it all, she will hope.
And she will feel, so deeply, how much she has loved this year, easy love and hard love and everything inbetween.
And she will wake up in the morning ready to face more of it.
Title: Winter Alone Reminds Us of the Human Condition
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word Count/: 4456
Prompt(s): 29 (Charlie Weasley pays a visit) and 48 (almost).
Summary: Tonks spends Christmas 1996 and the days following a little bit alone, and a little bit not.
Notes: The songs mentioned are Asleep by The Smiths, Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones, and the poetry mentioned is Sylvia Plath's Mad Girl's Love Song and Yeats' He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven. Timing note: I looked up moon cycles for 1996, and realized about halfway through writing this that they don't quite match up with HBP, but kept in because the details are fuzzy enough in canon. I'm American, and this hasn't been Brit-picked at all, so please forgive me if I say something completely ridiculous!
Notes: The songs mentioned are Asleep by The Smiths, Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones, and the poetry mentioned is Sylvia Plath's Mad Girl's Love Song and Yeats' He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven. Timing note: I looked up moon cycles for 1996, and realized about halfway through writing this that they don't quite match up with HBP, but kept in because the details are fuzzy enough in canon. I'm American, and this hasn't been Brit-picked at all, so please forgive me if I say something completely ridiculous!
Mum had sent five owls in as many days asking about Christmas dinner.
Andromeda Tonks, for as long as her daughter can reasonably remember, has always celebrated the holiday season with a decidedly average amount of cheer. That is not to say the Tonks family had less than jovial Christmases--they were warm, grateful things, a stark contrast to the house Andromeda had grown up in, and full of what Ted Tonks had always insisted was real magic.
But this-- this nagging, for there was no other word for it, (though Tonks did feel admittedly uncharitable and uncharacteristically irritated for thinking it)-- went beyond commitment to the holiday and veered straight into the groan-worthy territory of Concerned.
This was about her hair.
(“It’s nothing, Mum. Just a bit of trouble morphing. Side effect of a broken heart, who could have guessed!” she’d said, lightly. It’s a sort of a laugh if you really think about it, nothing too serious! Only a bit of inconvenience!)
Mum and Dad knew about Remus. They knew she’d fallen in love with him, they knew he was convinced they couldn’t be together, they knew he was away now. She’d managed to keep where to herself, because it was the Order’s secret, and also because it made her stomach tie up in angry knots just to form the words. But the rest of it seemed pointless to bother hiding any longer-- especially with her body acting as a constant reminder that she had grown too tired and too emotionally spent for secrets.
Ergo, Christmas. Ergo, cheering up.
It is Christmas Eve, the bloody full moon is hours from rising, and Merlin knows there’ll be no post in the morning with even a simple Hello Tonks, haven’t managed to get myself ripped to shreds, don’t bother tearing your hair out. Cheers.
Ergo, Tonks isn’t in the mood to be cheered up, and she doesn’t have the heart to let Mum and Dad see that for a whole bloody cheerful night.
She sighs as she picks at the bar of chocolate she’d settled on for breakfast as she scrawls yet another note to her mum.
Mum,
Can’t get out of my patrol. I told you, I’m not senior enough to avoid the holiday shifts yet.
She stops there, biting her lip and letting herself indulge in the guilt pooling in her stomach for a moment.
I’ll try to stop by after I’m done. I’ll probably miss dinner, but save me some cake, would you?
Love, Dora.
She ties the note to the owl’s leg, sending it off after letting it nibble a few pellets out of her palm. She stands by the window, and bites a chunk of her chocolate off rather savagely as she watches its wings span across the sky and disappear past Hogwarts’ looming form.
Of course Mum saved her cake-- and a bit of roast and potatoes, too. She shows up just as Dad’s starting to clear the dishes off the table. She smiles apologetically as she holds up a case of peace-offering butterbeer and a flask of nice firewhiskey she’d begged off Rosmerta at a discount.
It’s not so bad, veering on genuinely nice. She lets Mum fuss over the state of her robes and complain about her boots and hug her tightly. She lets Dad pile her plate high with sweets again and again. She feels the weight of the week-month-year slide a little further back in her mind, lets their presence pull her out of the brainsuck of the war. Yes, her hair is still brown, but look! She can laugh, and it can feel alright.
I’m not miserable all of the time, she tries to show them. I’m still your Dora. Just a little grown up, that’s all. I know how to hurt a little harder.
Charlie Weasley shows up on her doorstep late afternoon the day after Christmas with a large basket full of leftovers and a wrinkled nose aimed in the direction of her charmed muggle record player.
“Oh bloody hell, this bloke’s got you listening to Morrissey?”
Tonks rolls her eyes and waves him inside, quickly resetting the protective charms on the flat before heading back to the couch and flopping down onto its cushions. She wraps an afghan around her shoulders as petulantly as one can wrap a blanket.
“I’ll thank you to not credit my outstanding ear for music to a bloke,” she scowls, tossing a pillow in Charlie’s general direction, missing abysmally as he makes his way toward the kitchen.
“The Smiths are depressing, this song is depressing, your hair is depressing,” he calls out idly as he unpacks the basket. “Mum sent leftover roast.”
“Your mum is a bloody blessing. Is there cake as well?”
“There’s cake.”
“Bless her, I finished off the last of my mum’s for breakfast. And I can’t change my hair, and I don’t want to change the music.”
“Because of a bloke,” he sing-songs cheerfully, making his way to the couch and poking at her legs. “Budge over. He’s okay, you know. Stayed at ours last night. He was just leaving when I got in this morning.”
Tonks sighs and draws her knees up, settling her legs back across his lap once he’s sat next to her. “I know. He sent an owl this morning. Thank your mum for whatever guilt trip she pulled to get him to deign to write me,” she grumbles.
“Think she just told him she thought you were spending Christmas alone,” he says, poking her calf. “You didn’t, did you?”
“Not all of it. Went to mum’s for a bit after work,” she shakes her head. “I’m glad he went to the Burrow, though. I was a little afraid he’d martyr himself out of a decent dinner.”
She picks at the afghan idly, ignoring Charlie’s studying gaze.
“I know you love him,” he said, carefully. “And he looks about as miserable as you do, so I reckon he loves you too. But is it worth all this?” he asks, tugging lightly on her ponytail. She sucks in a breath.
“Worth all of what?” she says, anger and irritation building up from their months-long resting spot deep in her bones, seeping into her bloodstream. “I’m not moping because my Hogsmeade date stood me up, you prat. I’m not bloody moping at all. I love a man who hates himself too much to properly love me back, I apparently can’t do anything to help him, and frankly, I’m not sure it should be up to me to do anything about it. We’re in the middle of a war I’m not sure has an end at this point, and I am tired. I am not a damsel, but I am allowed to be sad.”
Charlie stared. “Tonks--”
“No,” she says, sharply. “Don’t. I know you mean well, Charlie, I do, but quite honestly, I can no more remove myself from Remus Lupin’s utterly ridiculous bullshit than I could get away from the war by simply quitting the Order.”
He nods slowly.
“I’m sorry,” he offers. She’s not sure if he means for his words or for Remus or for the state of the miserable world, but she nods her acceptance anyway. He sighs, running a hand through his hair.
“I was going to stay and work, in Romania,” he says, quietly. “I wasn’t planning on coming home. Bill owled and said Percy showed up with the Minister last night, though.”
“He still hasn’t come around, then?”
“Mm. Hardly,” he jiggles his leg absently. “Mum keeps crying, Dad’s angry, the twins want to send him dungbombs in the post.”
“And you?”
Charlie smirks, wryly. “And I think he’s still my kid brother, pompous git or no.”
He says it like an admission of solidarity, and it feels like friendship bracelets and whispered pacts in the back of first year Herbology, which is comforting and nice and relieves a bit of the tension in her shoulders. They sink into an easy, familiar quiet, letting the music fill the room.
Sing to me
Sing to me
I don't want to wake up
On my own anymore
“Oh fuck I love you but I cannot listen to this bollocks any longer, I am staging an intervention,” Charlie declares, drawing his wand and flicking it determinedly in the direction of the record player, a smug grin slowly forming on his face. Tonks eyes him warily--Charlie’s taste in Muggle music is limited and third-hand, cobbled together from the occasionally questionable influences of muggleborn and halfblood friends.
Hey, ho, let’s go
Hey, ho, let’s go
Tonks laughs-- an embarrassing, barking sort of laugh. Charlie looks unbearably proud of himself, and her heart constricts with a grateful sort of fondness.
She lobs another pillow at his head to let him know that.
The week between Christmas and the new year has always felt a little like the no man’s land of the calendar year to Tonks. It exists in a dreamlike state where the blinding spell of holiday cheer has given way just so, but still-- still the world clings to the last vestiges of celebration before life and war and love and loss take it by the proverbial shoulders and force it to soldier on and on and on.
(Not that life and war and love and loss cease to exist during the holidays, and of course she is not still naive enough to hold on to that bit of grace no matter what you’ve heard, but it is a blessed blanket of temporary feigned ignorance to wrap around your shoulders on Christmas morning with a mug of cocoa settled in your hands.)
But still, that week: the 26th of December hits, and no one is quite ready to return to their lives, not with the 31st skipping merrily just behind you, balancing a glass of champagne in its wearied, relieved hand. Shifts at work feel half-hearted-- not that she’d ever phone in on duty, but Hogsmeade feels sleepier, less on-edge. The school is quiet. The snow has settled into the spaces between the cobblestones, and the sky is a cool and gentle grey. It’s pleasantly melancholy-- living in a holiday state with the full awareness that this can’t last, and with the relief that it isn’t over yet.
Nothing feels entirely real, so perhaps that’s why Remus manages to drag his arse through her floo just as she’s flicking on the wireless and settling in with a cup of tea.
(That is a bitter thought. She does not want to think bitter thoughts, longs for her childhood when she didn’t have the capacity to match the concept with a concrete memory, but all the same isn’t sure she’d give up her ability to think them. Her bitter thoughts, she knows, are an admittedly weighty price for experiences she isn’t yet willing to budget out of her life.)
At any rate, he steps out of the fireplace, carefully brushing soot only onto the hearth as if her flat possibly had the wherewithal to take offense to dirt (ha!), smiling apologetically. She does not indulge this apology. She’s too tired to convince herself he deserves the validation.
“Hello, you great git,” she greets, waving for him to follow as she stands and makes her way into the kitchen to put the kettle back on. “Happy Christmas.”
“It’s the 27th,” he says; she snorts and receives a grin in return. See, she wants to say. You’ve still got it in you to tease me, and I’ve still got your number, and we could be just fine.
She doesn’t say any of that. She’s missed him too terrible to risk pushing the boundaries just yet.
“Well, I didn’t see you on the 25th, did I?” she says, treading lightly. “And at any rate, I hear we get 12 days of it.”
“I must confess that I can never remember if that’s before or after the day itself,” he says, gravely, still light and almost teasing.
“I can’t either. I’d like it to be after. Though as long as we don’t know either way, I suppose it could be both. Sit down, would you, and take off your coat. You’re dripping melted snow on the hardwood.”
He takes his turn to snort now as he shrugs off his coat, settling it gently over the back of a chair. “Of course, Molly,” he jokes, easing himself down and laughing silently when she flips two fingers in a V in his direction. “That’s a bit indulgent, don’t you think?”
“The hardwood floors? Hardly, they’re ancient.”
He rolls his eyes. “Twelve days before and after. That’s nearly a month of Christmas.”
“Nearly a week shy of it, actually, and I don’t see the harm in taking as much joy this time of year as you can.” She turns her back to him, busying herself with reaching for a mug. He sighs good-naturedly, and she doesn’t have to look to see him drawing his wand, ready to levitate any endangered ceramics knocked astray by her elbow. “Are we done talking in metaphors yet?”
He’s rolling his eyes when she turns back to him, triumphant with an intact mug in hand. “Quite. Happy Christmas, Dora.”
“Thank you,” she says, mock haughtily, shooting him a grin.
They’ve had tea and biscuits and a bit of Molly’s Christmas cake for a makeshift dinner, and it’s been pleasant and comfortable. The erumpent in the room is there, of course-- it’s still (always) hard to look at each other without knowing there’s so much so purposefully unsaid-- but that’s the thing about this thing between them, isn’t it? Even that hardly matters.
Even when he’s been constantly, steadily driving her mad for months, he doesn’t feel like company. Having Remus in her kitchen, helping with the washing up, feels as natural and easy as being home alone. It’s like he’s an extension of what her life is like in private.
He’s been in her flat for near on two hours before either of them are even tempted to shatter the whole thing. Nearly a record, she suspects.
And, so, inevitably, it goes:
Remus yawns. Stretches with it, just a little-- it lifts the hem of his shirt. Tonks spies a fresh, angry red gash peaking out from the flash of skin. Her eyebrows shoot up; he notices with a sigh.
“I’m alright.”
“You’re alive,” she mutters.
“Same thing,” he shoots back, petulantly.
“You’re an idiot.”
“Well, I reckon you’d say that’s the same thing as well. For me,” he says, wryly, running a hand through his hair.
“I would, and I’d be right.”
“We all do what we--”
“If you say ‘have to do,’ I’ll have to scream,” she says, calmly. “There’s moral obligation, and then there’s reckless endangerment. You’re the academic, figure out the difference.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree, then.”
“I haven’t agreed to it, but we’ve been disagreeing for months anyway. I suppose there’s no reason to stop now.”
“Dora.”
He is weary and resigned.
And Merlin, but he’s messy. He spends so much time, she knows, carefully stitching himself together. He measures his words and he mends his clothes; he is mild-mannered and kind and a solid, steady friend.
He is also an emotional clusterfuck who, she knows for a fact, has been known to eat sugary Muggle cereals out of tea mugs because he hasn’t done the washing up and doesn’t have any clean bowls. He is a disaster, as much as anyone as anyone else. More in some respects and less in others, she’d wager. Which is terribly human, of course, no matter his actual biological make up.
And it makes her want to fucking burst-- the totality of this man, the infinite ways she’s found to love him.
“You should put dittany on that,” she says, because anything else she wants to say will just lead to screaming her voice raw. “I can help you do it.”
He swallows hard, and she wonders about all the words, the inevitable protests, disappearing down his throat. It’s a quiet charity they give to each other: a white flag waved in unison by two tired soldiers.
“Alright,” he says, quietly.
She doesn’t understand how something can feel so easy and so tense all at once.
He stays that night. He sleeps in her bed. She also sleeps in her bed.
They’ve done this before: at Grimmauld Place, there was sex involved, sometimes. A cuddle, at least. Since she’s moved into the Hogsmeade flat, and he’s moved on to an encampment in the bloody woods, it’s more careful than all that. It’s the indulgence of a warm body just within reach.
(She’s not sure why he agrees to even that much, expect that she suspects-- knows-- he’ll only come to her in the first place when he’s too spent to keep up pretenses.)
They are in limbo, a land of almost: almost together, almost part, nothing complete. He is effectively homeless, and the Burrow, while welcoming and warm, is crowded and loud. She-- well. She wants him to stay. She’s fairly sure, practicalities aside, he’d like to as well.
She’s curled up in bed with a book with the wireless playing softly when he walks back in, hesitating in the doorway for a moment she pretends not to see. He slips into bed as carefully as he does everything else, trying to make as little impact on her side of the bed as possible.
She rolls her eyes as she turns the page of her book.
“What are you reading?” he asks, softly, shifting to see the spine as she holds it up. He wrinkles his nose. “Sylvia Plath?”
“Have you heard of her, then? She’s a muggle writer. Found it in my dad’s study.”
“I’ve read her. Not exactly 12 days of Christmas material,” he says, his voice forcefully light.
Tonks shrugs. “I like it,” she says, simply. He nods, settling against the pillows. “You can change the wireless channel, if you’d like. Should be announcing Quidditch scores soon.”
“With the way the Kestrals have been handling the quaffle lately, I’m not sure I want to know,” he jokes.
“Great season so far for the Harpies, though.”
“Mm. Wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up in the finals.”
“It’s that new seeker. Even the Tornados haven’t been able to match her.”
Remus nods, reaching for his wand on the bedside table and switching off the radio. She glances at him, raising her eyebrows.
“I don’t want to talk about Quidditch, Dora,” he sighs.
“Alright,” she says, quietly. “What do you want to talk about, then?”
He shakes his head, nodding toward the book in her hands. “I thought we could read,” he said, quietly.
She sucks in a breath; it’s silly. It’s a silly thing they used to do the year before. She’d pick up a book he’d started before the full moon, and read a few passages to him the next day while he recovered. He would tuck a novel in his robes for long stake-outs and read out loud while they waited for something interesting to happen.
He had read her Yeats hidden just outside the gates to Malfoy Manor (tread softly because you tread on my dreams), and she’d kissed him for the first time. He’d been too shocked at the time to manage a protest.
“You want me to read you Plath?” she says, dubiously. She bites back any sort of wry remark-- this is a strange sort of olive branch he’s handing out, and she needs to push carefully if she wants to see where it takes them. He shrugs.
“You’ve already got it in hand. Anything’s fine.”
She nods, flipping around to the bit she keeps coming back to anyway.
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. I think I made you up inside my head,” she recites. “The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, and arbitrary blackness gallops in. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.”
He bites his lip. “I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed, and sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane,” he continues for her. “I think I made you up inside my head.”
“You’ve read it before.”
“A few times.”
“A few,” she scoffs. He smiles, sadly.
“I don’t mean to make this harder than it needs to be,” he says, quietly. He’s got his hand splayed on the mattress, just between their pillows, just inches from her own. She wants to close the gap so badly her stomach aches. “Coming here, I mean.”
“You coming here isn’t the problem,” she murmurs. He sighs-- the chorus in this familiar song.
“It’s the coming and going,” he says, steadily. “It’s the knowing I can’t--”
“Won’t,” she interjects.
“Can’t and won’t stay,” he continues. “And coming anyway. It isn’t fair.”
“None of it is,” she says, quietly. “I’ve told you before, you haven’t ruined my life. But this,” she gestures a little wildly between and around them, “This isn’t fair. I know what you mean to do, but if you’d like me to say I understand, I’m afraid I can’t.”
“I don’t know what to do,” his voice is nearly inaudible.
“And I don’t know what you want me to tell you. I’ve said my piece. So often I’m not sure you actually want to hear I’ve changed my mind.”
He closes his eyes tightly; she tries to squash the small hope she’s struck a cord. “I only meant that I don’t mean to take advantage. I don’t mean to--”
“Remus,” she says, gently. “This isn’t enough. It’s not even a fraction of what I want. Don’t worry. I haven’t settled for your ridiculous, half-arsed bullshit.”
He looks up at her and smiles wryly at that.
When she wakes up in the morning, he’s already pulling his robes on over a thick, recognizably Weasley-knit sweater. She’s not surprised; he has been in the world of friendship and love and care for just over two days now, can’t have that. She rolls over; his side of the bed’s started to go cold.
“Going already?”
“I need to check in with the pack. I’m pushing my luck already, staying away this long.”
“Could you get away again soon?” she blurts. It’s too bloody early. “Meet me for a drink on New Year’s Eve?”
He gives her a look.
“Dora--”
“They say the way you spend that night’s how you’ll spend your year,” she tries.
“So they say. And you’d like to spend it bickering?”
She sits up in bed, wrapping her arms around her stomach tightly. “No,” she says, pointedly. “I wouldn’t.”
He sighs. “I told you last night,” he says, steadily. “I won’t take advantage.”
“Remus.”
He closes his eyes for the briefest of moments; his hand curls into a fist. She imagines his fingernails leaving little crescent marks in his palm.
“I’ve got you reading Sylvia Plath, for Merlin’s sake,” he says-- his voice shakes and her stomach drops.
“And what, I’ll be fine if you shut me out? I’ll be fine if you run off with Fenrir fucking Greyback? I’ll be fine if you’re hurt, or if you’re--”
“Dora.”
“You’re the most self-destructive arsehole I’ve met in my life, d’you know?” she says, goading him now, trying anything. She hates when it comes to this, hates the frustration that comes out of her mouth. He is infuriatingly stoic in the face of it. “Merlin save me from this self-sacrificing Gryffindor bullsh--”
“Dora.”
She slumps back against the headboard. She is so tired; she wishes she were still asleep.
He unclenches and clenches his fist again.
“Why bother coming?” she asks, quietly. “Why are we even doing this at all?”
He tucks his wand into his robes and just looks at her, really looks at her. She imagines she can feel him aching in the spot right next to her own heart.
“I don’t know.”
He is a great wizard and a practiced liar, but he cannot summon the strength for this sort of illusion anymore than she can. She knows it and she sees it and she’s felt it in the way his fingers twist and fidget in hers: he does not believe the lies he tells himself, the ones where this can be over and done and neatly squared away.
She doesn’t know how this will end, she only knows it hasn’t yet-- and that she very much plans to see it through.
“I think I made you up inside my head,” he quotes, quietly. He shakes his head. “Goodbye, Dora. Happy Christmas.”
He leaves.
He leaves, and she promptly drags herself out of bed, to the kitchen, and flings the tea cup he used the night before against the wall.
It smashes brilliantly, with bits of tea leaf clinging to the wall. She takes a deep breath, casts reparo, and summons the cup back to her to have another go at it.
She breaks the damned thing 6 times before she’s satisfied.
That’s the nifty thing about sadness, she thinks. You can always use it against itself.
She spends New Year’s Eve at the Burrow.
Tonks doesn’t actually believe that rubbish about how you spend New Year’s Eve. It feels a little too close to divination and superstitious, and she’s never gotten enough of a feel for that type of magic to think much about it.
If anything, she suspects the night has more to say about the year you’re finishing up. And if that’s the case, well. Tonks has spent 1996 with good people who believe in doing the right thing, filling her heart with enough love to justify its heaviness.
Molly’s back garden is bloody freezing, but the twins are setting up fireworks, and she’s curious to see what they’ve managed to get up to. Harry, Ron, and Ginny are huddled in a corner, talking Quidditch strategy in hushed, intense tones she can’t help but smile at. Fleur fusses over Bill while Molly fusses at Arthur to fuss at the twins, and her heart hurts a bit to watch it all, but it’s sweet.
She wraps her coat tighter around herself and takes a deep, cold breath. It’s hard not to feel alive in this kind of cold.
At midnight, she’ll do a shot of firewhiskey with Charlie, she’ll laugh and cheer at the explosions, she’ll hug and be hugged. She will think of Remus, and she will hope-- in spite of it all, she will hope.
And she will feel, so deeply, how much she has loved this year, easy love and hard love and everything inbetween.
And she will wake up in the morning ready to face more of it.
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no subject
Date: 2017-01-09 01:38 pm (UTC)I first liked the discussion between Charlie and Tonks, and Charlie asking Tonks if it was worth it. Because I have always wondered whether any of her friends asked about it, even one in the Order. I love the dynamic they have.
I also found Remus's visit believable. And Tonks isn't totally faultless, but neither is he. And having seen people in rocky relationships, the temporary stay before the inevitable fall-out and leave felt real. So did their reactions.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-09 02:55 pm (UTC)I really like the idea of Charlie and Tonks as friends, so I'm glad that dynamic came across well! And we don't really get to see anyone who isn't a mutual friend of them both in the book, so I wanted to play with that.
I'm so glad his visit worked! Remus is creating difficult situations, and Tonks is frustrated, and they're really not on the same page even though they love each other, and I really like the idea of exploring what that would look like before things really come to a head.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-17 03:49 am (UTC)I don't know if I'll quite manage to express here exactly what I mean, but this feels like such a grown-up, real-world iteration of Tonks – this all feels very real, very true to how complex life (and relationships) actually are.
As a Remus/Tonks writer/shipper/appreciator, one thing that's always important to me is to portray that, no, surely Tonks was not just "moping" over Remus for the entire year of HBP; there's a lot more going on than that – and you've got that here, in spades. The way you portray her thoughts really, really gets that across: just how much she's carrying on her shoulders, how much of a mess everything is (about Remus, but not only about Remus – she's also in the middle of fighting a war). How it's a mess, and she knows it's a mess, and she knows it's not okay that it's a mess, but that doesn't make it easy to solve.
The image of Tonks and Remus sharing a bed and trying to act like everything is fine is BREAKING my heart. But in a good way. In a "this is very real" way.
Happier things:
I loved Tonks and Charlie's friendship here – friends who've known each other so long and so well that they know when to say "I'm here and I support you" and when to say "I love you but I'm staging an intervention, you're not allowed to listen to any more sad music!"
And Remus and Tonks having a thing of reading aloud to each other...I love it. I'm totally going to consider that headcanon now. :-)
no subject
Date: 2017-01-17 06:40 pm (UTC)Really portraying everything that was going on with Tonks in HBP is something I very much wanted to get across with this, so I'm so glad to hear it worked for you! Even though we only see bits of her through Harry's POV, what's always struck me is that we still see her very capably doing her job and working for the Order. She's sadder and more serious, and I've always thought of everything with Remus as the sort of last straw in this pile of awfulness. She's basically coming into her adulthood in the middle of a war, and even falling in love, this one nice, wonderful thing, is complicated and messy and hard.
Tonks having an old friendship with Charlie and the reading bits are two of my pet headcanons and I felt almost too self-indulgent writing them, haha, but I'm so so glad you liked them!
no subject
Date: 2017-01-17 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-17 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-19 11:00 am (UTC)Like
I love your dialogue too, and I feel like I'm repeating myself here, but there's something very real about it. Love your Charlie and his genuine concern, and I love how you've shown us how torn Remus is between what he wants and what he thinks is right.
Really such a wonderful read!
no subject
Date: 2017-01-19 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-19 11:25 pm (UTC)I’m not miserable all of the time, she tries to show them. I’m still your Dora. Just a little grown up, that’s all. I know how to hurt a little harder.
These lines resonated throughout the story for me. Your Tonks feels real, ballsy and determined - no wonder Remus can't stay away. You've told me so much about her complex relationship with him in a short space of writing time: the things that are endearing when you're in love (like unclean cereal bowls), that are heart-breaking (his hand on the bed not quite touching hers), and what his continual not-quite commitment or rejection is doing to them both. Lots of other favourite lines, especially when she observed how very human he is. And the mess that their relationship is, as well as the bond between them, is crystal clear as well.
Most of all, I like that you've ended with a great scene of New Year's Eve at the Burrow, which feels absolutely right and uplifting.
This was really well done. You stayed true to what we know of their story at this time, but managed to say so much that was new about them both along the way. I LOVED reading it. :D
no subject
Date: 2017-01-20 09:13 pm (UTC)I'm so, so pleased this take on Tonks worked! Ballsy and determined might be my new favorite way to describe her-- it's definitely how I've always read her. I was incredibly worried about writing her, and this relationship from her perspective, because the very little writing I've done from this fandom has been from Remus's perspective. But I'm so, so thrilled it came across well for you. Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2017-07-01 01:17 am (UTC)