To Be Overlooked

One

Tonks flexed her fingers and ran her hand through her short hair. Turning her head this way and that, she gradually manipulated all the angles in her face to be masculine. Finally satisfied with her look, she tore herself away from the mirror and snuck out of the girl's bathroom, hoping no one had been watching her. She was lonely, and thought she could see a friend in Charlie Weasley.

"Hello," she said quietly. As she had hoped, Charlie and his two friends stopped in confusion.

"Who are you?" Charlie looked at her with interest, his head tilted. "I thought I knew everyone in First Year by now."

One of his friends burst out laughing. "I know who she is! It's that one, you know, the Metamorphmagus who fell down the stairs!"

Charlie frowned at her. "I thought you were a girl?" He noticed Tonks' stony silence and filled it by rebuking his friend. "She has a name, you know."

"Okay then, what's your name?" The Gryffindor girl asked with an eye roll at her friend.

"Tonks."

"Tonks? That's not a real name!"

Charlie and the girls looked at her expectantly.

"It's- it's Nymphadora!" Tonks stormed away from the two giggling girls and an indifferent Charlie Weasley.

Two

Tonks watched the street carefully, looking for any sign of a potential threat to Harry Potter. She was waiting for the Mrs. Weasley and the kids to come along and be taken to Kings Cross, disguised as an elderly lady with tightly curled grey hair.

She started slightly when a girl of about seven skipped out of the alley behind her.

"Did I scare you?" Tonks nodded. The girl laughed and hugged herself. "What's it like to be old?"

Tonks smiled and answered, "It's like being young I suppose. Except I have a lot of pains in my knees, so I can't skip anymore." The girl looked dismayed, so Tonks continued with a different answer, "And I have a lot of wisdom because I've seen lots of things in my life." Tonks inwardly sighed at the girl's bored expression and added, "And I've lots of wrinkles."

"I'm never going to have wrinkles," the little girl decided. "And I'm never going to get old either, because not skipping everagain is no fun."

"Don't skip in the roads," Tonks warned. The girl just smiled and skipped away. Tonks kept a half eye on the girl, watching her skip onto a road without looking.

Tonks held her breath as a lorry sped past. She was about to run over and check what happened when the lorry drove off. The girl turned around and stuck her tongue out at Tonks, as if to say 'Look at me, I was right and the old woman, with all her wisdom, was wrong.'

Tonks saw the kids coming, and put the matter out of mind.

Three

"We'll need someone to go in first, find out what the wards are."

Moody looked at Tonks pointedly.

Tonks became aware that the concentration had shifted onto her. It wasn't that she didn't want to help the Order get Antonin Dolohov, he had killed Molly's brothers, but her heart wasn't in it. She didn't understand how everyone was sitting around her dead cousin's house without a hint of regret. Everyone was drinking hot beverages out of cups decorated with a family name that had only days previously been eradicated.

Tonks mustered up the strength to reply. "What kind of club is it?"

"A private one, designed for those who take their pleasures with a dose of pain," Snape sneered at Tonks' appalled face.

With a quick mumble about looking around for inspiration for the disguise, Tonks pushed her chair away from the table and left the room.

-()-

Tonks quickly dulled her hair to a medium brown, changed to about 5"3 and flexed her facial muscles into a threatening grimace. With that done, she began walking briskly away from Grimmauld Place.

She didn't know where she would go, but she knew she wouldn't go to a place full of people. People who could cause pain, emotional or otherwise. With this in mind, Tonks found herself following the sound of flowing water.

She ended up by a rusty old park. Rather than sit where some child might take it upon himself to be loud and screaming and so much more alive than Sirius could ever be now, she walked to the source of the water, a broken drainpipe. She settled herself on top of a piece of scrap metal and looked up at the sky.

"Can I have that?" Tonks opened her eyes to see a thin girl standing in front of her, pointing at the scrap metal she had sat on. The girl smiled widely as encouragement, and even more widely when Tonks shifted over to a small piece of cardboard and presented her with the metal. "Cheers!" The girl turned around to carry on searching, revealing corset piercings along the entirety of her exposed back.

Tonks knew that if she wanted piercings she wouldn't suffer the bruising or angry red marks around the holes like this girl. Suddenly, Tonks realised, here was her inspiration. She got up more quickly than gracefully and opened her mouth to shout after the girl.

-()-

She asked the girl where she got her rings from. She would know later on that she wanted to be noticed, and who she wanted to be noticed by. For now though, she listened to the shocked yells of Molly and the rest of the Order, who apparently could manage some kind of human emotion, if not grief for Sirius. She listened as she revelled in feeling the metal rings warming to body temperature, and the piece of silk string being the only form of cover from the cool air on her lower back. She listened even as she turned around to the one person she hadn't heard any exclamation from.

Remus Lupin was gazing helplessly into his mug of tea.

I know Tonks is actually upset about Remus in the books, but I think she had enough whiney-ness in book 6 to be sad about two things. Not that I don't like Tonks, but she was pretty down for a while there!

Written for the 'A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words' Challenge by RoyalJamboree, beta read by the great i fancy some honeydukes and dedicated to the scrap metal man who wakes me up every single morning I have off, because who doesn't love him...