Past and Present
Title: Past and Present
Author: Dev (Devonwood)
Rating & Warnings: T/PG-13. Just mild swearing.
Prompts: Astronomy Tower, Orchideous, A Day of Acquisition, Drama
Word Count: 1,724
Summary: Bandaids may fix a broken heart, but some wounds take longer to heal.
Author’s Notes: This was beta'ed by my loverly friend Trace, so any grammar/spelling mistakes are entirely her fault. XD Also, I apologize for any Americanisms.
“What’s the matter, Uncle Remus?” chimed a small voice. The older man looked down at the young girl, his eyes glazed over with unshed tears.
“I’m not your uncle, Nymphadora.” The man said with a twinge of annoyance in his voice. “Just like James and Lily aren’t,” he corrected himself, “weren’t your aunt and uncle.”
“ ‘Tever you say, Uncle Remus.”
It caused the older man to smirk, although it was a guarded one, and didn’t carry to the rest of his face.
“You shouldn’t be outside by yourself, little Nymph. These are war times, and certainly no place for a five year old.”
Although the neighborhood seemed relatively safe, every house identical with their whitewashed walls and carefully manicured yards, no one could be too sure. Behind that rosebush could be a pointed black hood; above that roof with shingles missing could be a floating green serpent of death. The sour scent of rain flooded his hypersensitive nose, and the man shivered as a foreboding cloud loomed overhead.
The little girl pouted, and a curl of pink hair fell into her eyes. The rest of it was tied back into two tiny braids that hung behind her shoulder. Her eyes, a purple color that seemed the exact shade of the dusk sky, crossed in an attempt to bring the hair into focus. Jutting out her chin, she blew a stream of hot air which made the hair settle back into place, albeit messily.
Grinning with satisfaction at that simple action, she looked back up at the man and regarded him with a questioning look, her tiny eyebrows looking as if they wanted to just fly off of her face and touch the sky. Her grin slipped into a frown, and her lower lip seemed to quiver as she regarded his morose expression.
“You look sad.”
Once again, the man looked down at her. “I am sad.” He replied, bending over to pick a small yellow flower from a neighboring bush. Twirling the stem around in his fingers, he added, “So very sad.”
The little girl played with the zipper on her bright yellow jumper for a moment before asking “Are you sick? Mommy got sad when Dad was sick last year with New...newmo...newmin-“
”Pneumonia.”
Her smile brightened. “That’s it!”
The man allowed himself a smile. He answered her with a, “No, I’m not sick.”, although that was hardly the case. A week ago, he was most certainly sick, in the head if not the body. Sprouting fangs and claws was considered ‘sick’ in everyone else’s book.
“My heart’s been broken.” He looked up towards the sky again, mumbling, “James...Sirius...Peter...Lily...”
“Oh.” The little girl said in all seriousness, as if she too had experienced a love lost. She glanced from his chest, down to the ground, and then back up again before her eyes popped wide open.
“I’ll be right back!”
She darted off into the house, slamming the blue front door behind her as she ran inside. The man simply stared quietly at the space where she formerly stood, until he heard another slamming and the sound of Mary Janes slapping against the pavement.
“I can fix you!”
He cocked an eyebrow at the girl, wondering where on earth she had just gone. “How are you going to do that?”
The little girl rummaged around in her pocket for a moment before pulling out a band-aid. “All we’ve got to do is stick your heart back together again, and you’ll be okay!” she said excitedly, her eyes glinting with pride that she had thought of a solution.
The man could only stare at the piece of synthetic fabric for a few moments before he broke out into uproarious laughter that caused a neighbor to hastily close their drapes. It sounded foreign coming from his lips, and jubilation was rather hard to come by these days.
She looked at him strangely. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, nothing.” The man took the bandage and stuck it rather unceremoniously on the left side of his worn brown jumper.
“Are you feeling better?” The girl asked with the tone of a doctor regarding a patient with the flu.
He smiled and tousled her hair. “Much.”
The front door of the house opened with a creak, and a petite woman stepped outside onto the porch.
“Remus...is that you?”
The man’s expression turned grim again as he turned to face the startled housewife. “I have news on the Potters.” he called, “Sirius was involved”
The woman’s face paled, and she gripped the doorframe with white knuckles.
“Nyphadora, come inside!”
“But, I don’t want t-“
”I said come inside!” The woman’s voice was shrill and persistent, causing the little girl to run quickly inside, leaving the man to tread slowly behind her.
Tonks shivered and wrapped her navy blue cloak a little tighter around her shoulders. It was two months after Sirius’s tumble behind the veil, and she, Proudfoot, Savage, and Dawlish had been stationed at the castle. From a window in the Astronomy Tower, Tonks could look out and see all of the stars. She remembered Lupin telling her about some of them long ago. “There’s Sirius the dog star”, he had said, “And although your cousin would like to say the star was named after him, it really was the other way around.”
A single tear rolled down her cheek. Damn that man for making me happy, she cursed. After the loss of Sirius, no one had been the same. Molly Weasley kept a closer watch on her children, Harry had walked around in a daze, and Remus, well... he had severed ties with everyone.
And although she hadn’t wanted to believe it, she had loved that man. That ridiculous, insensitive, stubborn, gentlemanly, thoughtful, caring- what am I thinking?!- fool of a man. The same man who now haunted her dreams, the same man who made her hair turn mousey brown and hang limply from her shoulders, the same man who left her to live underground with the werewolves!
He had said it was for the best, Tonks thought icily, the chill of her words nearly freezing her heart in her chest. Well, this wasn’t for the best. He had shredded her soul, and left her alone to pick up the pieces. If she was weak, she would allow herself another cry over that broken man. But Tonks was strong, and stared out the window as if she held no emotion.
A gust of summer wind blew in through the open window, causing her brown hair to float rather dully in the air before it resettled on her shoulders. When she used her left hand to smooth it back into place, her heart reminded her head that Remus used to do that simple action for her.
She huffed rather loudly, causing a mouse to scurry back into its hole in the wall. “Get out of my thoughts”, Tonks mumbled angrily, sitting down on the cold stone floor so she could get a better view of the perimeter, “You don’t want us to be together; too old, too poor, too dangerous, so I should just let you go.”
...But she couldn’t.
Another tear rolled down her cheek, but she furiously blinked it away. Tonks refused to cry over this man, when that was all she had done the week following his hasty exit from her life.
She had barricaded herself in her room, only leaving to go to work every few days and gather the necessary paperwork.
“You need to eat more.” Molly Weasley had said after the fourth meal in a row that Tonks had skipped, marching up the stairs and stepping into her quarters before the younger witch could lock the door behind her. She had cast a simple Orchideous, producing bright yellow flowers that landed gracefully into a vase on her dresser, all of which severely contrasted with Tonks’s mood. “I’m not leaving this room until you finish this chocolate biscuit and cup of tea.”
And with a pang in her heart that the biscuit was chocolate, she complied, and ended up spilling her entire story to the mother of seven with some needed tea and sympathy.
It hadn’t really made her feel better, and the flowers were thrown out the window the minute Molly left, but Tonks was eating again now. Barely. A half eaten croissant was laid haphazardly next to her, and a thermos of hot chocolate was behind her.
She hadn’t even touched the latter.
The midnight bell tolled twelve times, and Tonks stood up, brushing invisible dust from her pants. Kingsley was taking over the watch after her, and was waiting in Hogsmeade for the signal that all was safe to come onto the grounds.
Pointing her wand in the direction of the window, she said the incantation Expecto Patronum, expecting her chameleon friend to shoot out of the end of her wand.
Instead, silver fog spilled out, pooling on the floor in front of her. Tonks could only watch in amazement as it began shifting and writhing as if in pain. Slowly, torturously, it began taking a shape.
At first, it looked like a Grim, and she could only stare at the bad omen with a rapidly beating heart. But then, the snout grew longer, and it was painfully obvious what it was.
A werewolf.
Tonks paled, and her eyes sprang open as wide as saucers. “No...It can’t be.”
The silver canine turned to regard her with a confused expression. Tonks scrambled backwards, trying to get away, knocking over the thermos of hot chocolate.
“This...this can’t be happening.”
The wolf looked down at the spilled chocolate, and a phantom snout leaned down to lap up the liquid. Raising its maw, the beast howled shrilly out the window at the floating crescent moon.
“Get away from me! Just leave me alone!!”
Tonks continued her desperate attempt backwards until the back of her knees came in contact with a chair, sending her crashing down into the seat.
The wolf looked at her for a moment, and if silver eyes could hold expression, he looked as if he were concerned. As Tonks stood up roughly, catching her cloak against the hard stone of the wall, the wolf turned his back to her.
He bounded out the window, characteristically, leaving just as soon as he came.