Current mood:	happy
Entry tags:	harry potter, marauders, nymphadora tonks, remus lupin, sirius black

A Tale of Two Faces [5]

So, I've been lazy and not updating! But I'm bored, therefore I post. :D  Alright, in the last chapter Tonks and Remus saw a lot more of each other than most people have in their first six months of a relationship. In this chapter, Remus and Tonks reflect on the night before, and Sirius gets closer to his cousin.

Chapter Index and...well, the full story XD  http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com/viewstory.php?psid=253503

“It was the most amazing night of my life,” Remus summed up the next morning in the dormitory. He hadn’t bothered changing into pajamas the night before, and hadn’t yet gotten up from where he was lying spread-eagled on top of his covers. His friends were staring at him as if he were quite mad.

“Moony, old friend?” asked Sirius in an almost deadly sort of friendly voice. Remus sheepishly raised his head to acknowledge him. “You didn’t, by any chance, have sex with my little cousin, did you?” Remus shot up into a sitting position, his face drained of all color. He raised one hand as if to shield himself from projectiles.

“No! No, no, no I didn’t, I swear!” he assured his friend, hoping they didn’t think he was lying. Thankfully, Sirius shrugged tensely and sat back on his bed. Remus let out a slow breath.

“If she had white hair and eyes, she could have been a moving stat—”

“That’s enough!”

.*.*.

I have never felt this way before in my entire life.

I mean, it was as if, in exposing himself to me, Remus was showing that he trusted me. He trusts me!

He has so many scars. It would have frightened me if I weren’t already frozen with shock. Once he got within about a foot from me, and I could see every inch of him, I felt something I can’t really explain. It was as if…as if there was some sort of Great Sadness that came from him. When I slipped and he touched my shoulders, I felt the Sadness seep beneath my skin and plague my very heart with an irrational sadness. It took all of my best efforts not to burst into tears right there. He is full of sadness, but I could never imagine why.

There is something strange about him, and I am almost certain that this Great Sadness is associated with his scars as well. But that doesn’t matter to me right now. All I care about right now is that, for once in a very long time, I felt like someone actually cared about me. And now, even though I’ll probably never be able to look Remus in the eye after last night, I still feel like I can trust him. I don’t think I ever had a choice in the matter of my trust in him. It just happened, and I’m so glad it did. I just feel so…secure, around him. Like, even though my life’s been pretty bad up to this point, it no longer matters now that I’m his friend.

*.*.*

An hour after Tonks wrote in her diary and hid it in her trunk, her roommates’ leader, Eva, got up and stealthily unlocked Tonks’s trunk. Grinning like the wicked girl she was, she pulled out the diary and opened it up. This time, the other girls weren’t involved. It was much easier to get things done without three other girls giggling nonstop around her. She read the last entry and felt a truly inspired laugh coming on, but she refrained. Instead, she waved her wand over the page, muttering a Copying Charm as she did so. Instantly, 800 copies were neatly stacked on top of the entry. She allowed herself one small snigger as she put the diary back and tucked the copies of the diary entry into her bag before going to bed herself.

The next morning, Eva walked into the Great Hall before everyone else had even woken up (but waited long enough so she wouldn’t be breaking curfew), her bag on her hip. Reaching in, she took out a fistful of the copied diary entries, the backs of which had also been labeled with “EXCLUSIVE FROM THE DIARY OF A DARK CREATURE” in bright red. Walking the length of the Great Hall, she threw the papers up into the air until her bag was empty and the Hall scattered with parchment. She smirked, proud of her handiwork, and went back up to bed.

.*.*.

By noon that day, Tonks couldn’t be found anywhere in the castle, and the Marauders were in a worried frenzy. Remus had seen her once in the hall; she had passed him without a word even though he had been talking to her. He had heard about her diary entry ten minutes later. He didn’t see her for the rest of the day, but made periodic checks to the Marauders Map. She was, puzzlingly enough, not on the Map at all. Remus only hoped that wasn’t because Nymphadora Tonks no longer existed, but instead because she had left the grounds or gone somewhere they hadn’t documented on the Map.

The next day, during his free period, Remus went out to the Grounds to look for Tonks. It was getting warmer outside every day, so he hoped that she had come out to enjoy the sun. And, sure enough, he could see a vaguely feminine silhouette moving along the low wall Hagrid had built to keep students away from his pumpkin seedlings. He had no idea how he suddenly knew it was her, when it could have been any other skinny female in the school, but he did know that it was nothing short of instincts. He stops about ten feet away from her, watching her go slowly around the soon-to-be pumpkin patch atop the wall, now able to see her purple hair.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he stated, his voice carrying even though he hadn’t spoken very loudly. Tonks, surprisingly, didn’t even flinch.

“No I haven’t,” she said simply, not even looking up from where she was concentrating on her footwork. She paused for a moment, looked up, and then added: “Perhaps you and I have just been seeking each other out in different places at the same time.”

He could tell she was lying, and wasn’t sure why, but decided to play along as he took a few steps closer to her. “Well…it is a big castle.” He dug his hands deep into his pockets and waited for her to speak again, but she seemed far too absorbed in her circular path along the stones. There was at least a silence of two minutes before Tonks broke the silence.

“Remus?”

“Yes?” Remus replied immediately, his head snapping up alertly.

“I think I’m about to fall, so I’d appreciate if you’d catch me.”

Now noticing that Tonks’s ankles had started wobbling dangerously, Remus dismissed the thought of catching her and instead strode up to her completely, wrapped one arm around her waist and one around her knees, and literally swept her off his feet and into his arms. It would have been horribly romantic if Remus, being in a slightly weakened state from his body’s rejection of the Wolf’s strength and agility that would come only if he embraced the Wolf completely, hadn’t fallen backwards. Luckily they landed in a particularly soft and springy patch of grass and moss, though it had still hurt Remus’s prematurely aging bones.

“Well, I’m perfectly comfortable here, how about you?” Remus said breathlessly after a few minutes. Tonks quickly crawled off of him and settled at his side. A gentle breeze flitted through the tall grass, ruffling their hair and clothes as sunlight seemed to glitter off of Tonks’s skin. She was the image of perfection, for all Remus knew. He reached out and nudged her hand with his. She turned her hand over, ready to lace her fingers through his, but Remus didn’t make a move to touch her any further. Instead he probed her with his eyes, asking for the truth.

“Okay,” she sighed, closing her eyes before turning her face toward the sky. “I guess I was avoiding you…because I’ve never really done anything like this before, and I didn’t want to mess things up with you.” Her lips tightened, as if she wanted to say more but just couldn’t.

“Plus the thing with your diary didn’t help matters much, either?” prompted Remus gently. Tonks’s eyes flew open, and she looked at him with such a raw emotion he nearly had to look away.

“No, it didn’t,” she whispered. Remus didn’t respond right away, instead listened to the sound of the breeze running tantalizingly through the forest’s many trees’ leaves. He stared up at the sunny blue sky, wondering how it could have been so cold and bleak only two weeks ago, and now felt like summer was on the way.

Realizing he’d been silent for a very long time, he finally spoke up. “I do hold a lot of sadness inside of me, Tonks,” he said quietly, being careful not to look in her suddenly attentive (and hungry?) eyes. “Exposing myself to you the way I did…all of my scars…I didn’t even dress in front of the other lads until they—” he cut himself short, realizing he was about to say ‘found out about my lycanthropy,’ so instead stammered “—told me to sod off and they wouldn’t make fun of me, so after only really knowing you for a few days….” He faded off weakly, before whispering in a shaking voice:

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.”

He swallowed, hard, and looked over at Tonks. She was staring attentively at him, and Remus was shocked to see that her eyes were wet. What was even more remarkable was…he was almost certain her eyes held such emotion…for him. He wanted so badly to tell her the truth, to scream it out, but knew that that would only cause her more pain on his behalf. Instead, he would have to lie to her.

“Tonks…” He fought to bring his voice above a trembling whisper. “I…I have to go away for a day or two. My aunt is ill.”

Tonks didn’t speak, but instead continued to stare at him with her beautifully piercing eyes. He knew that she desperately wanted to ask why he’s always got to go home every time a relative falls ill. But she didn’t. Though Remus did see something change behind her eye, which was not at all related to morphing. She was beginning to put the pieces together, just as the Marauders had. Instead of saying anything particularly incriminating, she simply smiled at him and said:

“Okay. See you when you get back.”

*.*.*

Sirius really hated full-moon detentions, especially when said detentions lasted until after the actual moonrise. He ran through the corridors at full-tilt, making for the Astronomy Tower to try and get a look at where the lads were before going out.

When he reached the top of the winding staircase, he stopped in his tracks. His cousin was sitting with her knees curled to her chest on top of one of the battlements, dangerously close to the edge, and looking melancholy.

“Tonks?” he asked quietly. She didn’t answer him. “Tonks,” he repeated firmly, but still she did not respond. “Nympha—”

“Don’t call me Nymphadora.”

Sirius scowled slightly, but it faded when he realized she had spoken only half-heartedly. She was only keeping up the argument because she was stubborn, not because she genuinely cared about her first name. He took a few tentative steps toward her, before settling himself at her side on a battlement.

“Well, I don’t like calling you Tonks either. I’m calling you Dora whether you like it or not,” he stubbornly said.

Tonks couldn’t fight her small smile. “I like that,” she quietly said. The smile quickly faded, however, as she played with her fingers in her lap. Sirius couldn’t stop staring at her.

“Don’t-…don’t try to kill yourself again, okay?” He bit his lip as Tonks slowly raised her eyes up to his. “I mean…you’re not going to try again…are you?” Tonks’s violet eyes abruptly faded to dark brown as she turned her head out toward the grounds.

“I don’t know,” she answered, and Sirius knew she was telling the truth. She took a slightly shuddering breath as a single howl broke through the night air. Sirius froze, remembering why he was up here in the first place; how long had Tonks been up here?

“You…don’t know?” asked Sirius to divert his cousin’s thoughts from the howl. Her mouth twisted slightly.

“It all depends,” she elaborated. “I…sometimes, I have relatively good days that I would never dream of trying to harm myself. Other days, something that would seem completely insignificant to anyone else will trigger every bad thought I’ve ever had about myself. I’m ugly, I’m stupid, I’m unnecessary, I’m an abomination, I’m a burden to my family; it doesn’t stop until I do something about it. A good night’s sleep after a self-loathing fit of angry crying usually does the trick.”

Sirius stared at his cousin in an awed silence for over a minute. The only sound that permeated the silence was a gentle gust of wind blowing about crumpled bits of parchment and damp leaves along the floor of the tower.

“Well that’s no good at all,” he muttered. Tonks finally looked at him, her face bemused. “I know exactly what you need, cos!”

“And what would that be?” drawled the younger witch. Her cousin grinned.

“You need a big brother, and I am going to fill that role,” he puffed up proudly. One delicate eyebrow rose up in that Black Family ‘You know you’re absolutely ridiculous most of the time, right?’ way. “Yes I do know I’m ridiculous most of the time, but that has nothing to do with this!” Tonks blinked confusedly, possibly thinking he could read minds. “Family trait, dear.”

“…Oh…”

“Anyway, my first act as your big brother is—”

“Big brothers have acts?”

“…Shh! As I said, my first act as your brother is definitely going to be keeping you, little lady, away from thinking those suicidal thoughts, m’kay?” He then smiled so casually and so easily at her, it gave her the willies that he could speak about suicidal thoughts in such a way. But then again, his smile was so charming at the same time. And, knowing he was being genuine, Tonks felt a most curious itching behind her eyes. She rubbed at the corner of her right eye absently before staring out at the brilliant stars.

Then, to Sirius’s own surprise, he suddenly found her gently leaning against his shoulder. He stared down at his cousin as if he had never seen anything quite like her before. Plus, her hair smelled good. Like sweet green apples.

He would just have to apologize to Moony in the morning, because he wouldn’t have wanted to leave Dora all by herself on that tower even if he had been paid. He was conflicted, really; he always wanted to be there on the full moon in case anything went wrong (he was the only other one with impressively canine claws and teeth, after all), but now he felt as if there was someone out there who really depended on him besides himself.

It was a good feeling.