Nymphadora Tonks Hates Christmas
Title: Nymphadora Tonks Hates Christmas
Author:
tierfal
Rating & Warnings: Rated PG for Tonks being petulant and for Sirius being himself. Warnings: Extreme cynicism and anti-Christmas spirit. And a sort-of spoiler for “Citizen Kane,” which I actually haven’t seen. Also, please forgive anything wretchedly American.
Prompts: Sledding
Word Count: 1170
Summary: Tonks finds hating everything surprisingly easy.
Author’s Notes:
eltea, my beta as always, was starting her fic this evening, so I figured I’d start another one with, oh, six hours left, and this is it. I like how it turned out-that is, rather differently than its predecessor. And please accept my most grovelling-est apologies if the font is weird; it was NOT cooperating, and I am pathetically miserable at computer-y things. :(
Nymphadora Tonks Hates Christmas
Tonks has decided that she hates Christmas.
She hates the shoppers, and the expenditures, and the people, and the bows, and the shiny paper and the winking lights and the glimmer of the snow as the chill of it radiates through the windowpane and washes over her face in waves.
And she hates herself, most of all-hates herself for hating it, because everyone else is in love with the very idea, and she is the dark cloud, rumbling with thunder, sparking with lightning, heavy with rain, encroaching into the startling blue of their picnic sky. Her hair is brown, her eyelids lay low and hooded over unforgiving dark eyes, and her arms are folded over the candy floss-pink and candy floss-blue striped scarf draping down over her chest. She received this scarf last year, for… that… holiday, and she wasn’t able to find anything less fun and cheery, because her bedroom has recently fallen victim to Hurricane Nothing-to-Wear, and her dresser and closet have become sick of Christmas as well and have vomited articles of clothing vindictively all over the floor.
Tonks sort of wants to vomit vindictively all over something. Or someone. Like Remus, maybe. He could do with some vomit on him. The smarmy little-
No, she isn’t going to think about Remus, because she hates him, too. Actually, she hates everything. She hates everything in the world, everything in the universe, everything in the vast reaches of the infinite galaxy-a galaxy of stars like the ones peeping tentatively out of the dimming sky, each of those stars ringed with planets, another one of them somewhere in that endless silken darkness probably sporting another young woman with brown hair and a slightly stupid-looking scarf, another young woman who is currently glaring out a window. Tonks hates everything on her planet, that planet, and all the planets in existence.
Except maybe kittens. It is awfully hard to hate kittens. Tonks has sometimes tried.
She especially hates peering out her living room window, watching the puffball kids in their blindingly colourful marshmallow jackets zipping down the hill on their plastic sleds.
Rosebud? Tonks remarks in her head, sniffing to herself. I think not.
Faintly she can hear their whoops and their cries, the vocal overflowing of their ebullient joy, and she hates them, too, even though some deeply-ingrained maternal part of her chides her softly that they don’t deserve it.
The sun is sliding fast out of sight, as if it wants to retreat behind the spiky silhouettes of the naked trees, and it splatters pink and purple on the wispy clouds in the sky, just as Tonks would rather like to splatter some blood. Perhaps that would make her feel a little bit better.
She starts thinking about how if she had an alien to mangle as well, it might have green blood, and then she could spray Christmas-coloured gore all over, and she is about to smile when she catches herself.
Speaking of green things, a virid glow erupts behind her, and she can no longer see the stupid children on their stupid sleds having more stupid fun than she is having. She turns, and, not entirely unexpectedly, sees Sirius’s ugly mug blinking at her from the emerald heart of the flames.
“Aren’t you coming?” he asks.
Sirius has never been one to bandy words. Sometimes Tonks wishes he would dance around what he means, even just a little. Sometimes, she also wishes that he would go boil his head, even just a little.
“No,” she responds crisply, because she can play this game just as adeptly as he can.
He raises his eyebrows, which are greenish at the moment, as is the rest of his fat head. Tonks supposes she is being slightly petty, but she isn’t particularly concerned by the revelation, and she isn’t inclined to stop.
“I’ve got mistletoe,” he tells her, sounding a little bit hopeful. “Right over the door. I’ll send Remus to answer if you tell me when you’re coming.”
Tonks turns to the window again, folding her arms a little tighter, as if she can hide behind them like the setting sun behind the reaching trees. The stars stare down at her, remote and unrelenting, a thousand sightless eyes focused intently on her face. “You can go hang yourself with your mistletoe,” she informs him.
“Don’t think it’s quite long enough for that,” Sirius muses.
She glares at him a little, and he seems to shrug, though she can’t quite tell, because the fireplace does not convey his shoulders.
“I mean,” he offers, “I can try, if you want, but I really don’t think…”
“Don’t patronize me,” she warns, thinking of all the festive red blood she’d like to spill from his jugular vein.
Sirius looks a bit bored now. “And you ask me,” he says, “why I don’t date. Do I have to spell it out for you, Nymphadora Tonks? It’s because women are insufferable. Understand? I-N-U-S-F-”
“Brilliant, Mister Black,” she interrupts, hoping that the curl of her lip makes her sound scathing.
“So I can’t spell.” She imagines him shrugging again. Something in the toss of his hair and the little leap his eyebrows make. “At least I could get Remus in my bed if I wanted.”
Tonks thinks that her vomiting dream may well come true. “That certainly convinces me to enter your den of sin,” she notes, her sarcasm seeming to hiss as it burns its way off of her tongue.
“You should come,” Sirius repeats, in a tone that makes it quite clear that he is waving a hand dismissively. “You can impress Remus with your spelling prowess and your bitterness.”
“I am not bitter.”
His eyebrows dart over his forehead like playful shadows. “Right,” he says.
“I believe I told you not to-”
“-Patronize you; yes, yes.” He rolls his eyes now, and they glint a darker green. “Look, Tonks, love, if you come, I’ll rig the mistletoe such that Remus ends up under it with me. How about that? Fulfill some of your late-night, deep-dark-secret fantasies, eh?”
“My fantasies,” she retorts, “conclude with you suffering a heart attack and falling dead to the floor.
“Do you have a hat to match that scarf?” Sirius inquires suddenly, and, thrown by the non sequitur, Tonks finds herself nodding. “Good,” Sirius decides. “Wear it. You’ll knock him off his feet. He’ll complain about breaking his tailbone, but he’ll be glad of it later.
Tonks stares at him, and he grins broadly and then disappears. The flames sink and subside into verdant embers that gradually fade to black
No pun intended.
Tonks goes into her bedroom, Summons the hat in a mumble, jams it on over her hideous brown hair, excavates a coat, and Apparates to the doorstep of 12 Grimmauld Place, because deep down inside, under the feeble light of the critical stars, beneath the vituperations about plastic Rosebuds, she knows that she does not hate Remus Lupin.
Though Sirius may be a different story.