Heaven With A Smidgen of Marmalade
There’s a burn mark on the table, Tonks notices, as she slumps in her chair and sips from her coffee mug. It’s scalding, and she can feel it scraping against her throat, but she doesn’t care, because it’s better to think of heat and pain and cooling charms than choices and mistakes and this baby and him. Gently, she traces the mark with a finger; the blackened wood is coarse and oozes of memories.
She knows exactly how it came about, she remembers exactly how his lips felt when they smashed against hers - like heaven with a smidgen of marmalade for extra flavour - how they’d both collapsed with laughter when she’d knocked over the pot of boiling eggs, how he’d swept away the mess and then swept her up in his arms. Remus had patted her stomach gently, and his hair had tickled her bare midriff as he’d whispered to the baby that it had better not grow up as clumsy as its mother. She’d tossed her head back, long purple locks cascading down her back, and chuckled, and they’d danced together, the life that they’d created sandwiched, before scurrying off into the bedroom.
Back then, this kitchen had been their own slice of heaven in the turmoil that was the world - they’d cooked together, drank together, reminisced and hoped and dreamed - and now, it’s her own personal hell, complete with such a memory. Tonks doesn’t really understand this, because where have all those years of feminism, and “I don’t need a man,” and raunchy Muggle music about the power of the woman disappeared to, and how can she get them back?
She rubs her stomach, taut like a drum, and wonders how the hell she can love this child when all it’s done is cause this pain and this misery and -
- and she laughs, because she is, blaming it, when she’s the one spinning into insanity with nothing more than her chipped Weird Sisters mug for company.
Tonks continues to finger the burn mark, until, sometime, early in the morning, she succumbs to slumber.
She dreams of the incident all night, and she’s almost surprised when she wakes up alone in the morning.