Girl in the War.

[amalin]

No, you are not seeing things.

Here is: A Bleak Fic I Started In 2008 And Just Now Finished For The Heck of It #1. (If I get around to them, there are like three more.) Tonks/Remus. Books six and seven. Some beginnings but mostly endings. Title from Josh Ritter. For Susan, because what about Tonks and Josh Ritter is ever not. ♥



girl in the war
by amalin

She ought to be used to not looking like herself.

She can deal with mirrors; they’re like looking at pictures of other people, like staring at a moving photograph. It's the shop windows, the corner-eye glances, which trip her up. She can look at bald-faced lies and not blink. It's the little things, the lies that sideswipe her, which unsettle the most.

Her disguise that day is that of a respectable housewife, at Andromeda's insistence. Tonks thinks privately, respectable, my arse, but there have been three days of Floo arguments already, so she puts on the dress her mum offers and turns her hair blonde. She looks like Narcissa Malfoy might have, twenty years ago. Worst of all, Andromeda produces a string of pearls and proffers them with an eyebrow raised in challenge.

'Mum,' Tonks exclaims.

'Nymphadora.'

Tonks puts them on.

Respectable, she thinks again, staring down the mannequin who admits them to the office. Fuck that.

She wants to be brave, to dress in ripped Muggle jeans, to keep her hair pink. She wants to look exactly as she is, a ragged girl who bites her nails, who's fighting a war-a fucking war-and is not ready to have a kid, much less raise one. She imagines strutting in there with her scars still showing, her black combat boots, her old attitude.

'We have an appointment,' Andromeda tells the Welcome Witch. 'Nymphadora Tonks, here to see Healer Ballywallis, at one o’ clock.'

Tonks bows her head and feels like she's fourteen again.

'There’s no need to act as if you're being led in for execution,' Andromeda says crisply in the waiting area, as Tonks sits down beside her. 'These days, you need a good reason to even get an appointment.'

Tonks rolls her eyes. 'If all the mediwizards are busy treating casualties of the war, shouldn't they want to see me? In my actual appearance? I am part of the Order, remember.' It's been a point of contention for years, Andromeda's refusal to join the Order, and Tonks always reminds her of her membership with relish.

'Ballywallis is the best,' Andromeda insists, skipping right over the insult. 'And his family's practice has been the choice of the Black family for centuries.'

Oh, Tonks thinks. She should have known. She was too busy arguing about disguises to insist on choosing her own mediwizard, and now she sees the error of her ways. She could fuss now, insist on leaving, but in truth, Andromeda has already won this one.

Instead, Tonks asks, 'Coming to the wedding tomorrow?' It's another sore subject; though invited, Andromeda feels little welcome among the Weasleys or even the Delacours; Mrs. Weasley, in particular, has never forgiven Andromeda for remaining neutral during the first war against Voldemort. The invitation had been for Tonks's sake, and all of them knew it.

'Your father and I have other plans,' Andromeda says delicately.

Tonks smirks, a small victory.

'Nymphadora?' a trainee calls then, and Tonks stands. Her mother leads them in, of course, her step never faltering. Neither does her voice give away any hint of emotion when she tells Healer Ballywallis that her daughter may very well be pregnant. Tonks has yet to hear an opinion from Andromeda herself on the matter; whether pleased or disappointed, she's betrayed nothing.

'And you're a Metamorphmagus, correct?' Ballywallis asks. He's a genteel wizard with a kind smile, and he directs this question at Tonks.

'She is, yes,' Andromeda says.

Tonks has yet to say a word. Missing her pink hair and her combat boots, she blurts out, 'And the father's a werewolf.' She can't look at either of them, only at the wall. 'Just so you know,' she adds, as nonchalant as she can manage.

'Oh my,' says Ballywallis.

Andromeda gives both of them a cold smile. 'Indeed.'

She doesn’t tell Remus until two nights after the wedding, the tea going cold in their mugs. After she tells him, he adds a splash of whisky to his. None for her, though the reason goes unspoken.

'Remus,' she says, soft. She doesn't recognize her voice, and thinks savagely that the way this week has been going, soon she won't recognize herself at all.

He only stares and for a second, she doesn't recognize him either.

'I'm going-out,' he says, that's all before the door clicks shut, far worse than a slam.

Left there with her tea, Tonks thinks of the small kindnesses he showed her in the beginning, the way he never overlooked her. Even when she'd stumble into Order meetings with bloodshot eyes in last night's robes, Sirius would ask her longingly for details and Remus would push a cup of tea across the table at her. In all reasonable expectation, she should have fallen for Sirius, cousins or not. It'd always been Remus, though. Remus with his shabby robes, looking half in the grave already, full of sighs and that professorly way of asking questions that elicited answers people didn't know they knew.

It was the same, really, with her interest in him; Tonks didn't realize it herself until after Sirius died, when she had said, terribly awkward, 'Wotcher, Lupin, you all right there?' and he had looked right through her for the first time.

Her heart had clutched up and she had thought, no way, no fucking way, and the next day, when Molly Weasley asked her to bring a casserole over to him, the poor man, she had said yes with no complaint. Even though her brain was saying, don't do this, don't fucking do this, girl, no, no, no.

'Tonks,' he'd said, after she watched him eat and rinsed the plates and made him tea and washed that mug, too. That word, her name, sounded strangled and lonely when he said it.

She'd stayed.

In the morning-she never stayed over with one-nighters, never-she found him in the front room, taking tea with lemon and paging through a book that looked older than the House of Black. 'Hey,' she said. Barefoot, sheets wrapped around her, standing before him. 'Um-'

'There's hot water in the kettle,' Remus said, a note of apology in his voice. 'If you can find something to eat for breakfast, it's all yours, but I don't have high hopes.'

She peeked in the refrigerator and found nothing but a hunk of molding cheese, two slices of stale bread, and a takeaway container with two spoonfuls of curry inside. Breakfast was a glass of water. She got her clothes and went back to where he sat. He hadn't looked up from his book.

'I suppose I'm,' Tonks said. 'Going to-go?'

'I'll see you at the Order meeting next Friday,' Remus said. He still wasn’t looking, and her heart gave a thump, a sort of futile feeling.

There were stupid things she would tell herself; she'd spend whole meetings thinking, if he touches me, he wants me; if he doesn't, I'll stop trying, and then he'd brush a hand over her shoulder on the way out and she'd tremble. Once he moved around her with one hand on her waist, nose nearly in her hair, and it was all she could do not to lean into him.

Then a polite 'Excuse me' and he'd be off.

They slept together twice more: once on Halloween, when she could not have fled if she'd wanted, his grip on her arm was so strong. She hadn't wanted. The other time was nothing special, one day after an Order meeting, grim news from Hogwarts, and she could see the want in his eyes. They'd tumbled into a room of shadows and re-settling dust, Tonks the only bright point in the gloom, her pale, naked body, her hair a shock of pink.

'This isn't what you want,' Remus said to her there, his forehead damp against her neck as she straddled him, his arms holding her still. 'I'm too old,' he said, 'look at me, I'm useless to you-'

'I should hope not,' Tonks said, shifting her hips forward meaningfully and giving him a wink, because if they kept on like this, she'd probably start crying, another thing she never did in front of other people, another rule she never broke. She moved over him and he gasped a little, wetly, into her shoulder.

'Fine,' Remus had said, with half a chuckle, and he'd pressed his lips to the hollow of her neck. Said, 'Fine, have it your way, this is-this is fine.'

It was enough, then, and she'd naively thought it a victory, read too much into every cup of tea and passing smile afterward, like a schoolgirl with her first crush. She didn't know better until he came to her in the front hall of Hogwarts the morning Dumbledore died, held her face in shaking hands and kissed her. 'Don't leave me,' he said, voice rough. She hadn't felt any triumph at all.

They'd given it a real try. His proposal shocked her, almost into laughter, but somehow her mouth answered before her brain could catch up. Yes, she'd said, yes, of course she would, of course. It was not so hard to imagine life with him, after all, his books in alphabetical order on the shelves, family dinners with her dad, occasional drunken sex and lazy mornings after.

When Fleur learned, she tucked her arm around Tonks and rambled for over an hour about the cottage she longed for, cozy and coastal, full of flowers at all times of the year. Her mother's china, the smell of salt in the air. 'And a baby,' Fleur said, cheeks going pink, smiling at Tonks like she was supposed to understand.

Tonks said fervently to Remus, after, It doesn't have to mean anything. This won't change anything.

But it did.

There were weekend mornings, long and indeterminable from the equally gray, lazy afternoons. Suddenly their flat was full of books lying open everywhere, constant tea stains on the table. Remus liked marmalade on toast and she hated the taste. All their cups were chipped, his because they were old or second-hand, hers because she'd dropped them all. Once she took the ugly floral platter Fleur gave them for their wedding and knocked it clean off the counter, shattered into so many pieces they found bits when they swept for the next two months.

'What,' Remus said, trepidation in his voice, 'are you-okay-'

'Ever so clumsy,' Tonks said, and gave him her sunniest smile. 'Oops.' They both laughed so hard they had to move to the living room just so they could lie on the floor and shake with it.

And when he was gone, the still of it, the quiet.

She'd never known the gripping fear that passed over her every time he left, the comfort and confusion of such intimacy. Some days she would be walking down Diagon and realize that Remus could be anywhere, could be dying, and she wouldn't know; a cold shadow shot through her like the chill of a cloud passing over the sun.

It doesn't have to mean much, Tonks thought, two weeks in. Then it was the full moon and she was in the bathroom heaving, lips pressing together so hard they might have knitted unnaturally for a moment before she realized and her mouth morphed back to normal with a horrid gasping sound. Remus heard her crying, he must have, but he didn't come in.

Everything's changed, she thought, then. What have we done?

He's gone for a day. She's in bed, restless, when he returns, smelling of smoke and grease, a tense current in his shoulders. He shrugs off his robes and sits down on the bed, facing away from her.

'I saw Harry today,' he says.

Tonks feels as cautious as Minxie, her mum's cat, when she's sneaking after a robin. 'Are they all right?'

'They're fine.' Remus makes one of his enigmatic sounds, something between a snort and a grunt, and she can't tell-ever-if it is amused or irritated. 'Harry's thought better of me. We argued.'

She knows better than to ask what about, and not for his sake, either.

After a moment, Remus swings his legs up into bed, an autumn chill creeping under the blankets with him. She can feel the hair of his legs brush against hers, his scent and the smoke in his shirt overpowering her. 'Out drinking, were you,' she says. Trying to be light, she adds, 'Invite me next time, why don't you?'

'It's not good for the baby,' Remus says. The word hangs between them and her whole body goes still, as if one wrong move will break it all apart.

'Are you leaving?' she asks, low.

'I think you should stay with your parents,’ Remus whispers. She can feel her body curling in on itself, literally, bones shifting to make room for each other. It's only when Remus starts in surprise that she realizes and forces herself to stop. It used to be like this, when she was younger: if she needed an extra hand, or a longer neck, she would do it unconsciously until her mother started screaming and she understood it was wrong. No one realizes, really, just how terrifying Metamorphmagi can be.

'I'm not leaving, I just think it would be better,' Remus finishes. 'Safer. I'll visit.' Silence. 'I want to.'

I don't believe you, Tonks thinks, but she refuses to be that kind of wife.

He falls asleep with one hand on her stomach, her hand over his.

In the endless days after, Tonks tries to learn to be a mother. She takes cooking lessons from Molly, which go disastrously, and no one dares mention the time Molly tries to teach her to knit.

No one asks why she is pregnant, why they are having a child now. Molly and Arthur are all too ready to assume that they wanted to consummate their love as soon as possible, to preserve some sense of a future. That is the narrative placed on them, a responsible couple, doing the best they could amidst a war.

Tonks remembers, too, the night she must have gotten pregnant: no protection, both of them drunk out of their minds, after a show-a show, going out to listen to music, as if the world were normal. She'd been trying to prove something to herself, that the war or Remus had not changed her, and oh, the irony about kills her. They'd gotten fucked up, staggered home starving and drunk and happy, the sun brimming over the horizon. He had leaned over her, too strong, too much, the smoke in their clothes making her sick, the sunlight streaming in and sharpening everything-his day-old stubble, the bruise on her forearm where she'd bumped into a doorway. He had put his hand on her cheek and she'd turned into it, licked the lifelines on his palm, bit at his fingers.

Embarrassing, every bit of it. In the middle of a war. And from that, from that-

'All our hand-me-downs are worn right through,' Molly says apologetically, bustling around the Burrow's attic. 'I've a nice blanket I knitted for Ginny, though, that should be useful-'

'Yeah, thanks,' Tonks says. 'This is, you're a really big help.'

On the way down the stairs, she knocks her head on the top of the doorframe and lets out a stream of curses without thinking. Molly doesn't even need to say anything, only clear her throat, as if to say, Mothers clean up their language, Nymphadora.

Fuck that, Tonks thinks.

She says, 'Thanks for all your help, really. I don't know what I'd do without you.'

'I'm sure your mother would help,' Molly says. A hidden judgment there too.

When Tonks leaves, Molly pats her on the shoulder and gives her a well-worn stack of cookbooks to carry. The way her lips are pressed together, it's clear she is holding back, but she only waves and watches Tonks trudge out into the dusty yard, hand on her belly, and Apparate.

At her parents' house, she stays in her old room, falling asleep under ripped Muggle magazine pages and posters of the Weird Sisters that Kirley autographed for her as a joke. She sleeps till noon most days. Remus visits, true to his word, and the formality makes her awkward, like they're courting or he's asking her father for permission, like they aren't married already. Andromeda arranges to be out, as if it's the polite thing to do, but Remus and Ted laugh over beers and shared stories from the first war.

On Sundays, her father takes her to church, a habit he still hasn't broken after forty some years. In the car on the way home, he smokes a cigarette she promises not to tell Andromeda about, and they listen to Muggle radio and pretend there isn't a war going on. Some days he helps Tonks work through Molly's worn cookbooks; they stir pots of sauce and chop onions until they both tear up, laughing, eyes streaming.

She pads around the house the rest of the time, restless. She lets the cats out into the back garden and back in again, standing at the door, watching the leaves turn.

Some nights she spends with Remus, their flat a space she now thinks of as his, strewn with books and half-empty mugs, the wireless always on. It startles her that she knows him, now, can close her eyes at her parents' and still picture the curl of hair at the nape of his neck, the pattern of scars on his left thigh. She asked him about those, once, and he'd laughed, Sirius, then stopped laughing, remembering. He has a long scar on his right shoulder, too. When asked about that one, he'd said, That time of the month, mouth quirking at the phrase. At Hogwarts, before I had-when it was just me.

He always answers her questions, but sparingly. She always asks, but she doesn't press.

Tonks learns about Wolfsbane and how to do a proper healing spell, and still he says, 'Stay at your mum's on the full moon.' Like she's a girl, not an Auror, not a fighter.

She doesn't want to, but she does.

She still sees him spit blood in the sink, dark and viscous, the next night. She still feels him flinch away from her when she tentatively spreads her fingers out over his back, blooming with bruises.

'When I was little, I had a bruise,' Tonks starts, then stops, as she realizes that the rest of the story ends, 'and I was afraid it wouldn't go away, it would just get bigger, and before I knew it, my skin had turned mottled and blue and strange, and my mum screamed when she saw me.'

'Mm,' Remus says from his side of the bed, facing away from her.

'I get them a lot,' Tonks finishes, lamely, instead. 'Clumsy, you know.' There is one on her elbow. Her body's had more of a mind of its own lately, something about the baby, perhaps; she has to look at her own palm in the stretch of moonlight just to make sure she hasn't turned blue.

'Sleep,' Remus murmurs, and it might be a command or a plea or a statement of fact. She doesn't touch his bruises. She lets him sleep till noon and drool on her pillow, and she goes to Diagon and buys salve that she leaves on the bedside table, and then she leaves for her parents'. She needs a shower and a clean shirt, and he doesn't want her there anyway, he never protests when she goes.

She reads about the attack on the Ministry in the Prophet the day after it happens, the paper tucked beside her plate at breakfast. The telling is ridiculously biased, of course-the Daily Prophet's been under Voldemort's control for weeks-but she reads between the lines.

'Did you know this was going to happen?' Andromeda asks her, voice purposely devoid of curiosity, as if she is only making conversation.

'Heard something about it,' Tonks lies.

No one tells her anything anymore.

A week later, her father leaves, after two visits from the Muggle-born Registration Committee and four warnings from the Order.

Andromeda puts her arms around Tonks as they stand in the doorway, and Tonks thinks cruelly about men who leave, pushed out or running, willing or not, out into the world while she is the one left behind.

Sometimes she goes to 12 Grimmauld Place. She walks its empty, foreboding halls, gathering dust now that Harry has gone and there is no master to bid Kreacher to clean it. She lies in Mrs. Black's bed, takes tea in the lonely kitchen, walks the portrait hall. Sits in the bath Kreacher draws for her until her fingers have formed webbing. When she was six she tried to grow gills and her father had to tell her that even Metamorphmagi can't shift their innards, only Animagi can do that.

'Then I'll be an Animathing,' she had declared.

He'd ruffled her hair and called her his Dorafish for the next three weeks.

The third time she visits, she knocks over the umbrella stand and Mrs. Black screams for ten minutes. When she stops, Tonks says,

'Tell me.'

'Tell you what?' Walburga Black says crisply.

'What it's like being a Black.'

'Why?' The woman's mouth is a harsh line.

'Because,' Tonks says. 'I need to know.'

Walburga stares at her for a moment, frown lines permanently drawn, then shuts her eyes. She speaks of the way her first child was stillborn, and how the girl meant to fill the space between Sirius and Regulus had been a miscarriage after three months, and how she'd thrown up every morning for six weeks from the potions. She tells Tonks how she married her cousin at the age of seventeen knowing that he was in love with his sister, believing like a fool that he could learn to love her as well. She talks of this house of shadows and the Muggle records she incinerated the moment Sirius sneaked them inside, the way she used to lie in the bath for hours because it was closest to his room and she could hear him and Regulus talking low and late.

'They will not love you, only leave you,' Mrs. Black says, 'they will poison your womb and curse you and leave you.'

Afterwards, Tonks doesn't hate her any less.

But she knows.

The garden dies slowly. November brings the first snows, but no word from Harry in ages. There are streaks on the window where she has stood too close, fingers pressed against the glass as she looks out at the empty trees, the wilted flowerbeds.

She plays the Weird Sisters beside her belly in the afternoons, both to reassure her in the quiet and to convince her child to like the guitar. Molly's cookbooks sit, forgotten, on the top of the refrigerator, and Andromeda spends most of her days shut up in the study, keeping her own vigil.

Remus comes over more, now, with Ted gone. They have sex there once, in her old bedroom, slow and cautious; he falls asleep beside her immediately after, but she doesn't sleep at all. She lies awake, letting the silence blanket her, until he rolls out of bed at dawn and she finally closes her eyes.

She has a dinner one night for her school friends. Charlie comes around, and Kirley, who brings Myron and Donaghan. The roast is burnt and the wine is cheap. She watches them all drink glass after glass, telling more stories about Quidditch games that she can count. After dessert, they all cluster around her stomach, with that half-horrified curiosity boys get about womanly things. For names they all suggest their own.

'Ted,' she says firmly. 'Sorry, boys.'

'Girl names, then,' Charlie suggests. 'What about your mum? I always liked Andi for short.'

Kirley offers Fiona for a girl, the name of his current girlfriend. 'Then if I break up with her, all the songs I've written for her can be for your kid,' he says, winking.

When they leave, she goes into the bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror, pink hair hanging limp on her shoulders. She doesn't feel like a rebel, these days, or Mad-Eye's protégé, or a schoolgirl with a crush, or really much of anything.

'Bit pale there, love,' the mirror says.

Tonks showers, the smell of her mother's lavender soap a thin comfort, then curls up in bed, where she listens to Remus on Potterwatch. 'Don't give up hope,' he says, voice thin and crackling on air.

You hypocrite, Tonks thinks.

She thinks, I am not afraid, I am not afraid, I am not afraid.

Two weeks before Christmas, they all Floo to the Burrow for Charlie's birthday, and Tonks entertains Ginny with pig noses when her stories of Hogwarts under the Death Eaters become too much for any of them to bear. Fleur talks incessantly, obliviously, about babies.

'Maybe Fiona, if it's a girl,' Tonks says to her. She looks for Charlie to see if it makes him smile, but he must be in the kitchen.

''Ow 'orrid,' Fleur sniffs. 'Ze Irish 'ave no sense of beauty in their words! When Bill and I have our girl, I will call her Victoire.'

'Assuming we win, that is,' Bill quips from the sofa.

It funnier than it should be, and Tonks laughs, and Bill laughs, and halfway through they realize no one else is laughing. Both quiet embarrassedly and then their eyes meet and they are laughing again, trying to stifle it, snickering uncontrollably while Fleur looks on in prim disapproval and Molly looks horrified.

'I'm sorry, Mum,' Bill says after, contrite as can be, though his mouth is still quirking a little, as if he can't fully suppress the grin. 'Anyone fancy more tea? I'll put the water on.'

As he leaves for the kitchen, he gives Tonks a wink.

She used to fancy him, she remembers, palling around with Charlie and marveling at his older brother, the one with an earring, a loping easy grace. They'd all met up at Tracy Mulligan's house the summer after her fifth year, and she'd been so nervous that she spilled multiple drinks.

'Fuck,' she'd said, so many times that Bill had grinned and said lightly, 'Is that your favorite word or something?'

She had known enough to say, 'Favorite thing to do, maybe.'

Bill had kissed her then, the end of the party, backed up to the counter, his mouth tasting like Firewhisky. She didn't know how Charlie found out, only that he didn't speak to her until Halloween that year (always had a thing for you, Kirley insisted, you knew that, though she'd known no such thing, still didn't).

It occurs to her all at once that she is married, a mother-to-be, sitting here in the living room of a family that for all intents and purposes has made her one of their own, talking to a half-Veela Frenchwoman about baby names. Across the room, Remus and Arthur are listening to the wireless, heads bent, disapproving frowns on their faces. More propaganda, no doubt. Adverts for the Muggle-born Registration Committee. Politics. Her husband.

She feels so old she almost starts to cry when Charlie appears beside her and says, 'Fancy a good old game of Exploding Snap?'

She plays Exploding Snap with Bill and Charlie and Ginny until the fire dies and then Remus has her coat, helps her slide into it. Ginny smiles at her belly with a look that is plainly covetous, not for Remus or the baby but at least the certainty, the guarantee of it.

'Your turn one day,' Tonks says when they hug goodbye. It comes out less flippant than she intends it. Charlie and Bill kiss her on the cheek. Molly gives her at least half the leftover cake. They stagger out into the snow at last, Remus's hand on her shoulder, and he Apparates them both, her arms around his neck. They make a perfect picture.

It is supposed to be easy between two people in love. It is never easy with them, not unless they are drunk, and these days, he's the only one who can be.

'I'll put on the tea,' Tonks says, back at the flat. 'But I should go, Mum's expecting-'

'Stay,' Remus says. He isn't looking at her, as enigmatic as he always is. 'Tonks. Stay.'

His back is bowed a little as he leans against the counter and he looks so much older than she is, his hair graying at his temples, the elbows of his coat nearly worn through. She thinks of her father out there in the cold, no cake, no comfort but her husband's thin voice on the radio.

'All right,' she says.

'You're too good to me,' Remus says.

She goes to him, then, and puts her arms back around his neck. There's a lump in her throat, and she can't tell if she's happy or sad, if it's the pregnancy, if it's Voldemort, if she loves him too much, if she loves him at all. She says, 'Someone has to be.'

She stays through the holidays, when the morning papers blare news of Snatcher captures, and their heat's shut off on Christmas Eve. 'We can go to the Burrow,' Tonks says, but Remus only brings out more blankets and they cast all the heating charms they know. Tonks pulls on a Weasley jumper that stretches over her belly, and they go to bed that way, wrapped tight.

'Happy Christmas,' Tonks says in the dark, her breath a fog in the cold room. The hush of it makes her voice solemn. Remus's nose is cold on her shoulder when he mumbles, almost asleep, 'Good night.'

She knows it won't be the same as she thought it might be, once, not only drinking lukewarm tea but also staying out till dawn in smoky clubs, not only cats and china but sex on the wobbling kitchen table, not only monthly dinners with Bill and Fleur-insufferable, still, she'll never stop begging Charlie to get a girl so he can join in and keep her entertained-but also weekend visits to Diagon Alley, small comforts, the luxury of a dinner out or a new pair of boots once in a while.

Now they've the baby to remember. She can't trip over the threshold of doors and barely catch herself when she's holding a baby. They can't stay up late smoking and listening to old tapes stolen from her dad's collection. Remus can't stay out nights. Not as many.

But the war will end, she thinks, it will. Her dad will come home. Her baby will be born. And there will be cats and tea and wobbling tables, and maybe sex on weekends and new boots for Christmas. It could work, she thinks, hideously optimistic like the housewife she's afraid she's becoming, she can hold onto that thought when Remus is slumped beside her with his uneven snore and that frown, even in sleep. She'll hold it together; she'll hold on.

We live with it until we can't, Mrs. Black had said.

The news of her father's death comes in March. Three days after Remus's birthday, the day of a full moon. Remus leaves her to transform and she cannot stand to be at her mother's house where her father sang in the kitchen, where he kissed her goodnight. She Apparates to the House of Black, and when the ghost of Dumbledore appears before her, she says, 'I did not kill you,' then bursts into tears.

'It's his own fault,' Walburga says stiffly, later. 'Muggle-born good-for-nothing stain on the blood of the pure, he corrupted your mother and fed his tainted blood into you-'

Tonks doesn't say anything. Knocks over the umbrella stand on the way out and doesn't bother picking it up. It was stupid to think this could be a source of comfort. The old hag is a bitter, broken record; she's nothing but a painting, Tonks thinks viciously, just an abandoned picture on a wall.

When she gets home, she finds Narcissa Malfoy sitting in the kitchen, sipping from a glass of water and watching Andromeda cry as if it is nothing unusual.

'Here to gloat?' Tonks snaps.

Narcissa eyes her, contempt curling her perfectly painted lips. 'Ah yes, the woman bearing a werewolf's cubs. No, Nymphadora, I have not come to gloat. Perhaps even to sympathize.'

Tonks stares. 'Your husband isn't dead-?'

'Near enough, some days,' Narcissa says coolly. 'The Dark Lord has taken my husband from me as surely as he has taken your father.' She stands, then, and Tonks sees in her profile the same sharp lines that define Andromeda's. 'Excuse me,' Narcissa says. 'I only wanted to convey my condolences, sister. You'll understand if I want no news of my visit publicized.'

'No one will know,' Andromeda says.

Narcissa Apparates out in a breath of perfume and the rustle of her robes, and then there is just the empty kitchen, unbearably familiar, chipped mugs in the sink and the leaky tap, Minxie purring on one of the chairs.

'I'm sorry, Mum,' Tonks says hollowly. There in the chair, her mother's body looks small, fragile, for once.

Andromeda wipes at her tears. 'I never should have loved him,' she says. 'If I hadn't-if I hadn't-'

Tonks wants to shout, You should have loved him more, but the words don't fit in her throat. They sit in silence, instead, and finally Andromeda goes upstairs; Tonks stays there in the dark kitchen. She hates the Blacks, she thinks. Their fucking cold hearts, the way no one who loves them is the same, after.

When the war ends, she thinks, she will open all the windows of that miserable house, let in all the light. Scrub out the mold. Strip away that blasted family tree.

After-

She stays at Remus's, after that. Prefers her calendar with all the full moons circled to a bedroom where her father read bedtime stories, prefers the sofa arm permanently stained with tea to her mother's steely grief. The little flat is riddled with remnants of their life, which she once found a shock and now finds a strange comfort. One of her mother's cats has kittens and she thinks about taking one, only hasn't asked Remus or, come to think, the doctor. She thinks she'll name the cat Fiona, if they keep it.

Tonks only cries once after her dad's funeral, when she hears that the baby's a boy and the tears spill over.

Little Teddy. Conceived on booze and smoke and sunlight, born four weeks after his father's birthday. Her Metamorphmagus genes, Walburga's eyes, her dead Muggle-born father's name. The savior of the wizarding world for a godfather. She hopes it is enough.

When the nurse brings Teddy back in, Tonks puts her arms out to hold him. Don't curse me, don't hate me, don't leave me, she thinks, like a prayer, her arms shifting to cradle him tight. It is no small thing, she knows, the way people used to be able to promise such things. I won't leave you. You won't lose me. I have not brought you into a world that will break you.

Teddy yawns, sweetly, and she has to exert every bit of her willpower to resist the contortions of her own body: as she holds him, she can feel her body fighting, desperate to envelop him, wrap around him, take him back inside where it is safe.