Under the Influence
Title: Under the Influence
Author: mocca_fix_gold
Rating: G
Prompts: Christmas wreath
"Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe,
Help to make the season bright,
Tiny tots with their eyes all a-glow,
Will find it hard to sleep tonight."
- The Christmas Song - Nat King Cole
Word Count: 2,411
Summary: It doesn't feel like Christmas for Nymphadora Tonks.
Author's Notes: This is my first R/T fic ever and it was written in just over a day. I have a feeling that the ending is half-baked and there's too much Andromeda/Ted, but over-all I'm quite proud of it. Apologies for any and all Americanisms. Thanks to parapsionic for her help.
“Oof!”
Nymphadora Tonks grips the edge of the dining table as her legs give way on her mother’s dangerously shiny kitchen floor. Her weight drags the table down and, with it, the box of Christmas decorations that Tonks has gone to her parents’ house to pick up. Luckily, years of experience have taught Tonks’s parents to remember to put a Cushioning Charm on anything that had the slightest chance of falling over.
Tonks catches the box, fortunately Lightened as well as Cushioned, before it hits the floor and reads the note scribbled on top.
Dear Nymphadora,
Here are some things I thought you might want to put up in your flat for the holidays. No need to return them as your father insisted we buy more decorations this year. I do hope that we get to see you on Christmas Eve, even if you just pop in for the Firewhisky. Let me know if you can come so I can start making a Hangover Brew.
Lots of love,
Mum
Tonks has to laugh, remembering that the last time she spent Christmas with her parents-two years ago, before she joined the Order-had ended with her pink-faced and sprawled under her old swing set in the backyard, singing a medley of Celestina Warbeck songs while her father’s pet Crup marked her feet as its territory. She involuntarily recalls last year’s Christmas at Grimmauld Place-or more specifically (if she wants to admit, but she doesn’t) the first time she had a proper conversation with a certain Remus Lupin. Remus, wearing one of Molly Weasley’s sweaters (Red with a gold R in the middle, and there was a stray thread on the left sleeve) had stifled a snort quite adorably when Tonks had mentioned the time she accidentally cast a powerful Cheering Charm on Snape the previous summer. The thought of Snape smiling had amused Remus so much that he…
All right. Must NOT go there.
Prying her thoughts away from that particularly thorny subject, Tonks puts the table back as it was, shrinks the box to fit into her pocket, and Floos back to her flat.
“How’s your view?” Andromeda Tonks asks her husband, who is eight inches tall and disguised as a stuffed reindeer sitting atop their daughter’s liquor cabinet. Of course Nymphadora would have a liquor cabinet, Andromeda thinks, glancing down at the still-orange cabinet that used to house her daughter’s doll collection. All those nights, drinking away a broken heart…
“Brilliant,” Ted replies, his voice muffled by the cotton around him. “I can now say that I’ve seen life through the eyes of a stuffed animal. I don’t see why I could’ve been one of the drummer boys on the mantelpiece. Or even a fairy.”
Andromeda smirks. “I doubt you’ll enjoy being trapped in a ceramic figurine more than being stuffed into a toy reindeer. And besides, we agreed that whoever can replicate fairies’ wings first gets to be the fairy.”
“Yes,” Ted concedes. “But you must admit that I gave sensible alternatives to disguising ourselves as Christmas ornaments and spying on Dora in order to find out about what’s bothering her. Such as asking her straightaway about what’s bothering her.”
“And when was the last time Nymphadora spoke to you about a boy?”
“What makes you think it’s about a boy? Maybe it has something to do with the Order. Or the Ministry. You know how that lot is.”
“It’s about a boy, Ted,” Andromeda insists. “If it were about any of those other things, she would’ve talked to us-or somebody. But Molly says that Nymphadora hasn’t spoken much to her lately either, apart from the usual things about the Order and work. I’ve asked her and Hestia to keep an eye out-Nymphadora spends most of her time with the Order if not at work. Merlin knows this flat is just a place to sleep for her.”
The sound of footsteps heading towards the dining room alerts Ted and Andromeda to their daughter’s approach and interrupts their conversation. Andromeda hurriedly flies away from Ted to join the other fairies illuminating the wreath in the middle of the dining table. Ted jumps back to fall in line with the rest of the reindeer on the liquor cabinet.
Tonks waves her wand in the air and the flat is filled with the sound of the Weird Sisters. She takes out a bottle of Firewhisky from the liquor cabinet and slams the door. She doesn’t notice that most of the stuffed reindeer on top fall over, or that one manages to right itself again. She sits at the table, swilling the Firewhisky in a chipped mug and absentmindedly making the fairies scatter with her fingers.
“I got to get to grips
I don’t wanna feel like this
Your voice keeps haunting me
I cannot eat or sleep.”
Tonks jiggles her foot to the song and a ghost of a smile appears on her face as one fairy clings to her thumb. But the single tear that makes its way down her cheek and is immediately wiped away doesn’t escape Andromeda’s notice. She has to remind herself that she is too small to embrace her daughter.
The doorbell rings once. Tonks plunks down her mug on the table and stands up so fast that she knocks over her chair. Andromeda flies after Tonks at a safe distance and cringes when Tonks almost trips over herself in getting to the door.
Ted turns in his place, careful so as not to knock over the other reindeer. He positions himself just in time to see that before opening the door, Tonks runs her fingers through her hair and smoothes down her clothes.
So there is a boy, Ted thinks. He falls over trying to get a better view.
Tonks tentatively opens the door just as Ted manages to pull himself up. She opens the door a little wider to let her caller in.
Ted falls down again when he sees just who the boy is.
“So,” Tonks says, turning to face him. “What, um, are you doing here?”
Remus Lupin was expecting a lot worse than that. He is mildly relieved she doesn’t appear to be furious at him (Just crushed, which is a lot better…you prat) and so taken with the way she bites her lower lip and looks up at him in restrained expectation that he only remembers the purpose of his visit once his hand clenches around it in his coat pocket.
“I, uh,” he stammers, and his heart sinks when he sees the flash of hope in her eyes, “I came to give you…this.”
Tonks looks at the proffered package in Remus’ hand and takes it.
“Thank you,” she says quietly.
“You’re welcome.”
There is an uncomfortable silence. Remus’ eyes wander from Tonks’s face, to the fairy lights hovering around them, to Tonks’s face again, and then to the dark violet carpet in the living room, which is sporting a brown, Grim-shaped stain-Not a Grim, just an ordinary dog, Remus thinks hastily, or a wolf-
“Would you like a drink?” she asks him. “It must be very cold outside.”
Remus wants to say no. “Freezing, actually,” he says instead. He knows its selfish to prolong his visit, but he wants to indulge himself in her presence one last time. Even if I can’t look at her in the eye, he adds to himself, following her to the dining room. And when I do, all I want to do is-
“Firewhisky?” she asks, holding out a bottle. “Or Butterbeer?”
“Firewhisky would be fine.”
She pours him a glass and sits across him at the table. He drinks as slowly as possible while she finishes off the drink she had before answering the door. Her eyes burn a hole into his bent head over the rim of her mug. Fairies float in the air between them, tired of being confined to the boughs of the wreath on the table. He follows the progress of the sparks of light as they gradually disperse around the room so that he won’t have to look at the woman right in front of him.
“Remus,” she says. “Please look at me.”
He lifts his head and does just that. Tonks grips her mug and takes a huge breath. She is doing a good job of not letting her chapped lips quiver too much. All the same, he wants to make them stop quivering altogether. But he knows he can only do that by telling her that he’ll be with her, which is so far out of the question, Remus doesn’t even let that idea register with the part of him that is still able to hope.
“I want you to remember how I look,” she finally says, “even when you’re away with the other werewolves. I want you to remember what you can come home to.”
“You shouldn’t wait,” Remus says, his throat dry. He knows she knows he means that she shouldn’t have to wait. “I’m too-”
“Don’t give me that,” she says, cutting off a speech she has heard variations of before. “I happen to think you’re worth waiting for. And I will wait, Remus John Lupin.” She leans across the table to him. If he leaned too, they might be able to kiss. But the only things of theirs that meet are their eyes, hers steady but glistening, his unable to look at her without darting down in shame. “Don’t forget that,” she adds.
“I-I won’t,” he replies softly.
“Good.” The brief flickering in her eyes is all that shows she knows that not forgetting doesn’t mean he will return to her. As if suddenly embarrassed by their conversation, she goes to a huge box in the corner and pulls out a present, which she slides across the table to him. “Merry Christmas, Remus,” she says as he catches the gift before it falls off the edge.
“Merry Christmas, Tonks.”
She walks him to the door. In the dining room, Ted and Andromeda decide to leave.
This year, Tonks is glad to be on a swing instead of underneath it. She drags her feet along the snow while Chester the Crup sniffs her boots.
The last of the Tonkses have left already, leaving Andromeda and Ted to clean up the remnants of their Christmas Eve dinner. Tonks knows that she should be inside helping, but she thinks it would be better to leave the cleaning to people who can walk ten steps without stumbling. Besides, she is not yet sure if she can promise she won’t vomit.
It is already Christmas Day on Tonks’s watch. The sky is mostly clear and Sirius twinkles down on Tonks, more brightly than the other stars around him-it, Tonks corrects herself, and Sirius is brighter than the other stars. The wind whips through her hair, which is red and therefore appropriately festive. It’s also the same shade as Remus’s favorite scarf.
Tonks sighs and makes her way across the yard. She decides to help her parents so that she doesn’t have to be anywhere where the light of that ominous white orb in the distance can touch her, the same light that turns Remus into a wolf. In a few days, she tells herself, I won’t be able to recognize him.
She only almost falls down once-considering the snow on the ground and drinks she has had, it is exceptional by Tonks standards-and this time she remembers to wipe off her boots at the door. Chester follows her inside, wagging its tail and shaking off snow.
Tonks expects her parents to be in the kitchen, joking about the prodigious Tonks appetite while the plates wash themselves. But they aren’t. Further investigation leads Tonks to the living room, where her parents are seated on the couch pushed near the fireplace. Her mother appears to be unaware that her father is levitating mistletoe over them. Ted finally manages to plant a kiss on Andromeda, but they pull away from each other quickly once they sense Tonks is nearby. Tonks wonders-vaguely, because she still hast those drinks in her-why they look guilty while doing so.
Ted clears his throat. “Hello, sweetheart,” he says, pulling her between him and Andromeda. His eyes seem to ask anything but what he says next. “Ate well tonight?”
“Not really,” Tonks says, burying her face in her father’s jumper. “I didn’t get to eat that much turkey.”
Andromeda laughs. “We thought that would happen. If you eat here for New Year’s, we’ll make sure to buy a third one just for you and your father.”
Tonks feels Andromeda’s hand rubbing her back, first with just affection, and then gradually with the weight of concern. She wonders, a little more clearly now, if they know that the man she loves refuses to be with her. Part of Tonks wishes she can tell them, but the fire is crackling and the tree is twinkling and it’s a shame to ruin all that.
Her father’s jumper smells like a pine forest. Tonks breathes in the scent deeply and lets out a sigh that Andromeda thinks should only be coming from someone old and tired of life. She and Ted exchange worried looks but silently agree that Christmas isn’t the best time to talk about their daughter’s problem. They content themselves with rubbing Tonks’s back and stroking her hair to let her know that Remus Lupin doesn’t know what he’s missing.
Tonks couldn’t remember the last time she spent Christmas like this-maybe more than ten years ago, before she decided to grow up just like the rest of Hogwarts. She snuggles deeper into the circle of her parents’ arms. For a few moments, she does feel like a child again, until the distinctly un-childlike desire to have Remus’ arms around her and her arms around him flits through her mind.
“I’m going to bed,” Tonks tells her parents after a while. She doesn’t want to continue imagining them as Remus when they actually want to be with her. “Merry Christmas, Dad. Mum.”
“Merry Christmas, Dora,” Ted says, kissing her on the forehead. Andromeda pulls her into an embrace that lasts longer than usual before whispering “Merry Christmas” in Tonks’s ear.
The curtains are already closed and moon duly hidden when Tonks goes up to her childhood bedroom. But it still takes hours for her to fall asleep.
Author: mocca_fix_gold
Rating: G
Prompts: Christmas wreath
"Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe,
Help to make the season bright,
Tiny tots with their eyes all a-glow,
Will find it hard to sleep tonight."
- The Christmas Song - Nat King Cole
Word Count: 2,411
Summary: It doesn't feel like Christmas for Nymphadora Tonks.
Author's Notes: This is my first R/T fic ever and it was written in just over a day. I have a feeling that the ending is half-baked and there's too much Andromeda/Ted, but over-all I'm quite proud of it. Apologies for any and all Americanisms. Thanks to parapsionic for her help.
“Oof!”
Nymphadora Tonks grips the edge of the dining table as her legs give way on her mother’s dangerously shiny kitchen floor. Her weight drags the table down and, with it, the box of Christmas decorations that Tonks has gone to her parents’ house to pick up. Luckily, years of experience have taught Tonks’s parents to remember to put a Cushioning Charm on anything that had the slightest chance of falling over.
Tonks catches the box, fortunately Lightened as well as Cushioned, before it hits the floor and reads the note scribbled on top.
Dear Nymphadora,
Here are some things I thought you might want to put up in your flat for the holidays. No need to return them as your father insisted we buy more decorations this year. I do hope that we get to see you on Christmas Eve, even if you just pop in for the Firewhisky. Let me know if you can come so I can start making a Hangover Brew.
Lots of love,
Mum
Tonks has to laugh, remembering that the last time she spent Christmas with her parents-two years ago, before she joined the Order-had ended with her pink-faced and sprawled under her old swing set in the backyard, singing a medley of Celestina Warbeck songs while her father’s pet Crup marked her feet as its territory. She involuntarily recalls last year’s Christmas at Grimmauld Place-or more specifically (if she wants to admit, but she doesn’t) the first time she had a proper conversation with a certain Remus Lupin. Remus, wearing one of Molly Weasley’s sweaters (Red with a gold R in the middle, and there was a stray thread on the left sleeve) had stifled a snort quite adorably when Tonks had mentioned the time she accidentally cast a powerful Cheering Charm on Snape the previous summer. The thought of Snape smiling had amused Remus so much that he…
All right. Must NOT go there.
Prying her thoughts away from that particularly thorny subject, Tonks puts the table back as it was, shrinks the box to fit into her pocket, and Floos back to her flat.
“How’s your view?” Andromeda Tonks asks her husband, who is eight inches tall and disguised as a stuffed reindeer sitting atop their daughter’s liquor cabinet. Of course Nymphadora would have a liquor cabinet, Andromeda thinks, glancing down at the still-orange cabinet that used to house her daughter’s doll collection. All those nights, drinking away a broken heart…
“Brilliant,” Ted replies, his voice muffled by the cotton around him. “I can now say that I’ve seen life through the eyes of a stuffed animal. I don’t see why I could’ve been one of the drummer boys on the mantelpiece. Or even a fairy.”
Andromeda smirks. “I doubt you’ll enjoy being trapped in a ceramic figurine more than being stuffed into a toy reindeer. And besides, we agreed that whoever can replicate fairies’ wings first gets to be the fairy.”
“Yes,” Ted concedes. “But you must admit that I gave sensible alternatives to disguising ourselves as Christmas ornaments and spying on Dora in order to find out about what’s bothering her. Such as asking her straightaway about what’s bothering her.”
“And when was the last time Nymphadora spoke to you about a boy?”
“What makes you think it’s about a boy? Maybe it has something to do with the Order. Or the Ministry. You know how that lot is.”
“It’s about a boy, Ted,” Andromeda insists. “If it were about any of those other things, she would’ve talked to us-or somebody. But Molly says that Nymphadora hasn’t spoken much to her lately either, apart from the usual things about the Order and work. I’ve asked her and Hestia to keep an eye out-Nymphadora spends most of her time with the Order if not at work. Merlin knows this flat is just a place to sleep for her.”
The sound of footsteps heading towards the dining room alerts Ted and Andromeda to their daughter’s approach and interrupts their conversation. Andromeda hurriedly flies away from Ted to join the other fairies illuminating the wreath in the middle of the dining table. Ted jumps back to fall in line with the rest of the reindeer on the liquor cabinet.
Tonks waves her wand in the air and the flat is filled with the sound of the Weird Sisters. She takes out a bottle of Firewhisky from the liquor cabinet and slams the door. She doesn’t notice that most of the stuffed reindeer on top fall over, or that one manages to right itself again. She sits at the table, swilling the Firewhisky in a chipped mug and absentmindedly making the fairies scatter with her fingers.
“I got to get to grips
I don’t wanna feel like this
Your voice keeps haunting me
I cannot eat or sleep.”
Tonks jiggles her foot to the song and a ghost of a smile appears on her face as one fairy clings to her thumb. But the single tear that makes its way down her cheek and is immediately wiped away doesn’t escape Andromeda’s notice. She has to remind herself that she is too small to embrace her daughter.
The doorbell rings once. Tonks plunks down her mug on the table and stands up so fast that she knocks over her chair. Andromeda flies after Tonks at a safe distance and cringes when Tonks almost trips over herself in getting to the door.
Ted turns in his place, careful so as not to knock over the other reindeer. He positions himself just in time to see that before opening the door, Tonks runs her fingers through her hair and smoothes down her clothes.
So there is a boy, Ted thinks. He falls over trying to get a better view.
Tonks tentatively opens the door just as Ted manages to pull himself up. She opens the door a little wider to let her caller in.
Ted falls down again when he sees just who the boy is.
“So,” Tonks says, turning to face him. “What, um, are you doing here?”
Remus Lupin was expecting a lot worse than that. He is mildly relieved she doesn’t appear to be furious at him (Just crushed, which is a lot better…you prat) and so taken with the way she bites her lower lip and looks up at him in restrained expectation that he only remembers the purpose of his visit once his hand clenches around it in his coat pocket.
“I, uh,” he stammers, and his heart sinks when he sees the flash of hope in her eyes, “I came to give you…this.”
Tonks looks at the proffered package in Remus’ hand and takes it.
“Thank you,” she says quietly.
“You’re welcome.”
There is an uncomfortable silence. Remus’ eyes wander from Tonks’s face, to the fairy lights hovering around them, to Tonks’s face again, and then to the dark violet carpet in the living room, which is sporting a brown, Grim-shaped stain-Not a Grim, just an ordinary dog, Remus thinks hastily, or a wolf-
“Would you like a drink?” she asks him. “It must be very cold outside.”
Remus wants to say no. “Freezing, actually,” he says instead. He knows its selfish to prolong his visit, but he wants to indulge himself in her presence one last time. Even if I can’t look at her in the eye, he adds to himself, following her to the dining room. And when I do, all I want to do is-
“Firewhisky?” she asks, holding out a bottle. “Or Butterbeer?”
“Firewhisky would be fine.”
She pours him a glass and sits across him at the table. He drinks as slowly as possible while she finishes off the drink she had before answering the door. Her eyes burn a hole into his bent head over the rim of her mug. Fairies float in the air between them, tired of being confined to the boughs of the wreath on the table. He follows the progress of the sparks of light as they gradually disperse around the room so that he won’t have to look at the woman right in front of him.
“Remus,” she says. “Please look at me.”
He lifts his head and does just that. Tonks grips her mug and takes a huge breath. She is doing a good job of not letting her chapped lips quiver too much. All the same, he wants to make them stop quivering altogether. But he knows he can only do that by telling her that he’ll be with her, which is so far out of the question, Remus doesn’t even let that idea register with the part of him that is still able to hope.
“I want you to remember how I look,” she finally says, “even when you’re away with the other werewolves. I want you to remember what you can come home to.”
“You shouldn’t wait,” Remus says, his throat dry. He knows she knows he means that she shouldn’t have to wait. “I’m too-”
“Don’t give me that,” she says, cutting off a speech she has heard variations of before. “I happen to think you’re worth waiting for. And I will wait, Remus John Lupin.” She leans across the table to him. If he leaned too, they might be able to kiss. But the only things of theirs that meet are their eyes, hers steady but glistening, his unable to look at her without darting down in shame. “Don’t forget that,” she adds.
“I-I won’t,” he replies softly.
“Good.” The brief flickering in her eyes is all that shows she knows that not forgetting doesn’t mean he will return to her. As if suddenly embarrassed by their conversation, she goes to a huge box in the corner and pulls out a present, which she slides across the table to him. “Merry Christmas, Remus,” she says as he catches the gift before it falls off the edge.
“Merry Christmas, Tonks.”
She walks him to the door. In the dining room, Ted and Andromeda decide to leave.
This year, Tonks is glad to be on a swing instead of underneath it. She drags her feet along the snow while Chester the Crup sniffs her boots.
The last of the Tonkses have left already, leaving Andromeda and Ted to clean up the remnants of their Christmas Eve dinner. Tonks knows that she should be inside helping, but she thinks it would be better to leave the cleaning to people who can walk ten steps without stumbling. Besides, she is not yet sure if she can promise she won’t vomit.
It is already Christmas Day on Tonks’s watch. The sky is mostly clear and Sirius twinkles down on Tonks, more brightly than the other stars around him-it, Tonks corrects herself, and Sirius is brighter than the other stars. The wind whips through her hair, which is red and therefore appropriately festive. It’s also the same shade as Remus’s favorite scarf.
Tonks sighs and makes her way across the yard. She decides to help her parents so that she doesn’t have to be anywhere where the light of that ominous white orb in the distance can touch her, the same light that turns Remus into a wolf. In a few days, she tells herself, I won’t be able to recognize him.
She only almost falls down once-considering the snow on the ground and drinks she has had, it is exceptional by Tonks standards-and this time she remembers to wipe off her boots at the door. Chester follows her inside, wagging its tail and shaking off snow.
Tonks expects her parents to be in the kitchen, joking about the prodigious Tonks appetite while the plates wash themselves. But they aren’t. Further investigation leads Tonks to the living room, where her parents are seated on the couch pushed near the fireplace. Her mother appears to be unaware that her father is levitating mistletoe over them. Ted finally manages to plant a kiss on Andromeda, but they pull away from each other quickly once they sense Tonks is nearby. Tonks wonders-vaguely, because she still hast those drinks in her-why they look guilty while doing so.
Ted clears his throat. “Hello, sweetheart,” he says, pulling her between him and Andromeda. His eyes seem to ask anything but what he says next. “Ate well tonight?”
“Not really,” Tonks says, burying her face in her father’s jumper. “I didn’t get to eat that much turkey.”
Andromeda laughs. “We thought that would happen. If you eat here for New Year’s, we’ll make sure to buy a third one just for you and your father.”
Tonks feels Andromeda’s hand rubbing her back, first with just affection, and then gradually with the weight of concern. She wonders, a little more clearly now, if they know that the man she loves refuses to be with her. Part of Tonks wishes she can tell them, but the fire is crackling and the tree is twinkling and it’s a shame to ruin all that.
Her father’s jumper smells like a pine forest. Tonks breathes in the scent deeply and lets out a sigh that Andromeda thinks should only be coming from someone old and tired of life. She and Ted exchange worried looks but silently agree that Christmas isn’t the best time to talk about their daughter’s problem. They content themselves with rubbing Tonks’s back and stroking her hair to let her know that Remus Lupin doesn’t know what he’s missing.
Tonks couldn’t remember the last time she spent Christmas like this-maybe more than ten years ago, before she decided to grow up just like the rest of Hogwarts. She snuggles deeper into the circle of her parents’ arms. For a few moments, she does feel like a child again, until the distinctly un-childlike desire to have Remus’ arms around her and her arms around him flits through her mind.
“I’m going to bed,” Tonks tells her parents after a while. She doesn’t want to continue imagining them as Remus when they actually want to be with her. “Merry Christmas, Dad. Mum.”
“Merry Christmas, Dora,” Ted says, kissing her on the forehead. Andromeda pulls her into an embrace that lasts longer than usual before whispering “Merry Christmas” in Tonks’s ear.
The curtains are already closed and moon duly hidden when Tonks goes up to her childhood bedroom. But it still takes hours for her to fall asleep.