Title: "Wherefore I Threw a Penny"
Author: monimala
Fandom: HP-OotP.
Rating/Classification: SAC, post-War, ficlet.
Disclaimer: I solemnly swear I am up to no good. Title from W.B. Yeats.
Summary: I have no idea what possessed me. I had to write about Tonks.
There was great darkness after the second war. They learned to navigate by touch, by instinct, their eyes adjusting to the shadows and their ears perked for the slightest swish of an enemy wand. The living members of the Order now numbered few, and they knew to stick close to Muggle London, to always travel in pairs, to always watch their backs, and to bury their dead in shallow graves.
Tonks rose in the middle of what used to be day and stood, for minutes,
under the cold spray of the utilitarian shower. Grimmauld Place still held ghosts, although the portraits no longer screamed, and she felt them watching her as she shivered and quickly shrugged into her robes.
Whimsical times had long since passed and she no longer wore her hair in colors that drew attention to her. Dull, lifeless, blond. Matted black
dredlocks. Shades and styles that matched her shuffling gait, her stooped shoulders, when she crept through Knockturn Alley looking for word, any word at all, on the Dark Lord's latest campaign of violence.
"Call him by his name," Hermione would chide, reproachfully. "Speak it or he'll always have power over you."
Hadn't he all ready won power over her, over them all?
"Voldemort," she would whisper, the syllables crashing together in one
shuddering breath, burying her face in the younger witch's shoulder.
Her eyes had adjusted to those shadows as well. The bony curve of hip,
the fatigue circles beneath eyes that still held keen intelligence but were now heavy with loss.
When she came back into the bedroom, Hermione and Bill were still twisted up like willow branches, their wands within reach, peeking out from beneath the threadbare pillows. One false step and she knew they would snap
awake. Sleep was a rare commodity, valued, and even in this they traveled
together. The path of dreams was fraught with peril...and Severus Snape had long since gone to the other side of the veil. There was no one to teach them Occlumency. There was only vigilance, that which they had, out of sheer necessity, taught themselves.
Careful not to rouse them, noting, sadly, the way her witch's fingers were wound in the loops of her wizard's dark auburn hair, she withdrew from the chamber. She understood clutching at memories. Forming names in slumber that one no longer said aloud.
The Weaselys loving clan had been whittled down to three. Two, for
certain. Ginny had joined the resistance movement based out of the rubble
that had once been Hogwarts. Fred had been in Azkaban for three years and
madness was as good as death, if not a precursor.
Remus. Tonks still wept, sometimes, for the way he had always called her "Nymphadora" despite all her protests. For the way he had looked so
peaceful as Bellatrix cried out the Unforgivable Curse and sent him to Sirius even as he broke her neck. A gentleman, a gentle man, to the very end.
And The Boy Who Lived...lived no longer.
She tiptoed down the stairs out of habit more than caution. The umbrella stand in the hall was no longer her nemesis. After all, far worse things than her went bump in the night.
There was great darkness.
"Oi, Tonks!" hissed her partner for this excursion. "I've been waiting
for hours!" The transparent spirit, ever impatient, seemed to forget that human time and ghost time were counted separately.
"Put a cork in it, Harry," she said, smiling despite herself as her face
wrinkled and her nose broke. "You'll be waiting for eternity."
There was also light.
--end--
May 27, 2004.