Fic: The Locket
Title: The Locket
Author: bookish_brownie
Rating & Warnings: G
Prompt: locket
Format & Word Count: 638
Summary: AU: While going through Tonks's old clothes, her daughter finds an interesting necklace. Set around the Epilogue.
Author’s Notes: I had planned to write something long and plotty for this challenge, but that didn't work out. So this is a quickly thrown together ficlet instead, in which Remus and Tonks are alive and well. :) In the denial!land in my head, Remus and Tonks have two other children after Teddy; Maura is a few years younger than he is.
“Ooh, Mum, may I take this one?” The second annual back-to-school shopping trip through Tonks’s wardrobe was in full swing. Maura loved to choose some of Tonks’s old outfits and jewelry to take with her back to Hogwarts for the weekends.
“Sorry, love, that’s the only one that’s off limits.”
“What is it?” Maura gave her mother the necklace. She examined it, running her fingers over the embossed phoenix and the thick antique gold chain. She smiled to herself first and then at Maura.
“This was the first gift that your father ever gave to me.”
“Really?! It’s pretty, but it doesn’t look like your style.” She’d thought the same when he’d first given it to her.
“It’s not, but I should wear it more often.” Maura was still looking at her expectantly, and Tonks knew she’d be wheedled to death if she didn’t tell the story. “It was my birthday in the autumn that I joined the Order of the Phoenix. Your father and I had just started dating.” She looked down at the locket still held loosely in her hands and opened the clasp in the pendant.
Sure enough, the picture was still the same. They looked so young there! Tonks’s face, crowned with a mass of turquoise spikes, was smiling out and she was waving. Remus’s arm was draped over her shoulder and he pressed a kiss to her cheek.
“Mum?”
“Oh, sorry.” It was ridiculous that she could still be flushing at her age, for the sake of a chaste kiss, no less. “Anyway, I wasn’t really expecting anything from him because we hadn’t been seeing each other long. But the night of my birthday he showed up at my flat, looking like he thought he was intruding on me and holding a carefully-wrapped box.”
“Was he brushing the fringe out of his eyes and tugging at his hair like he does when he’s nervous?”
“Yes, just the same.” Mother and daughter shared an appreciative chuckle and Tonks continued, “I let him in and he held out the box to me. It felt heavy; I couldn’t imagine what it was. When I unfolded the paper that it was wrapped in, I think I gasped a little.” Her gaze turned inward again; she could see the scene and feel the swell of happiness just as she could twenty years ago. “It’s beautiful now, but when he gave it to me, the front of the locket was charmed to look like the phoenix was flapping its wings and there was a wreath of flickering flames around it. I’ll have to get your father to renew the spell.”
“That was a nice idea. Could I see it please?” She handed the necklace over. “It’s all dented. You didn’t drop it, did you?”
Tonks glared playfully at her daughter. “No, it came like that. Your father was quite embarrassed when I asked about that. It came from a Muggle second-hand shop.”
“I don’t see what’s so wrong with that. He found something that he thought you would like and that had meaning. It was a lot better gift than just buying you a fancy diamond or something.” Maura’s earnestness burned like a flame, and it was one of those moments that Tonks loved most about being a mother. She really felt that she had done something right in raising her daughter to believe the way she did.
“Of course, there was nothing wrong with it, dear. But your father had some rather silly notions back then, about what I wanted and needed. Thankfully, he’s cured of all that now.”
Maura gave the locket back to her mother. “You should wear it tonight.”
“Excellent idea.” She placed the heavy chain over her head and smiled with satisfaction as she imagined her husband’s face when he saw her that night.