Plot bunny: Hey, write me!
Me: Dude, I totally forgot about you! Man, I wish I could but I have all this stuff to do for school...
Plot bunny: ...
Me: ...
Plot bunny: What if I scream directly into the heart of your brain until you write me?
AND SO HERE WE ARE!
Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.
MC4 Spring Bingo entry information:
Space Address : 1A (Pink)
MC4 Shipping War entry information:
Team: Technicolour Moon
List: Big List (Stroll)
Word Count: 993
Just Me
Tonks met him exactly where and when they had agreed, with the precision of an Auror, though he might not have recognized her if he hadn't watched her shapeshift hours ago. Her nose was small and round, her cheekbones weren't quite as high, and her hair was curly—that he'd never seen her wear before. It spiraled down past her hips in a pleasant, girl-next-door blond.
No, that was a lie: he'd recognize those chunky boots, her walk, and the way she scanned rooms from left and right, like any good Auror, but so casually and subtly it always seemed as if she was simply looking for a friend she was supposed to be meeting.
"Are you alright?" Remus asked, getting up from the table where he'd been nursing a black coffee to keep the waitress off his case.
"Fine," she said. "It's you I'm worried about. I know we'd agreed to split off if something happened, but I felt bad transforming and slipping away, leaving you alone…"
"I wasn't quite expecting to hand Anthony Dolohov his own ass tonight, but if he wanted to be difficult, so be it," Remus said. Dora laughed.
"Anyways, once you and Dolohov went off, I managed to shake that other bloke down and grab… what we're looking for. Let's just say it's tucked somewhere very hard to get at."
They wandered around town for a while, to make sure they hadn't been followed. They walked up and down several streets in a comfortable silence until they cut through a park, where they stalled under the stars.
Dora looked up, craning her neck. "When I moved to London for work, that was the thing that bothered me the most about living downtown—no stars. I took Astronomy even if I didn't need it for NEWTS, I just loved it and the view from the Astronomy tower and all."
"I quit as soon as I could," Remus admitted. It had been such a hassle to make up all the nighttime lessons he missed and honestly, Remus wanted little to do with a discipline where people did little but talk about how pretty the damned moon was. When he told her so, she laughed and pushed a piece of hair behind her ear.
"Every now and then I grow it out and promptly remember why I keep it short," she complained. Immediately, her hair started to shorten.
"How many times a day do you change?" Remus asked her.
"On average?" Dora asked. "It depends—on how much time I have to goof off in the morning, if I'm doing party tricks for Ginny and Hermione, trying to drive my mother to insanity, risking my neck on Order and Auror missions or just one… it depends. It's very fluid."
Remus nodded. "Right. Sorry, it's quite a silly question."
"I don't mind. I like questions more than assumptions, I'm sure you understand," Dora said. "I don't know if I ever told you, but when you talked to us about lycanthropy that first Order meeting, just to clear the air, I learned a lot."
"Oh," Remus said. He wasn't sure where to go from there. "Does that mean I get to ask questions now?"
"Okay," Dora said. She grinned. "You have four free questions, then I get to start asking too."
"That seems fair," Remus said. "I apologize if this is…"
"There's no such thing as a dumb question," Dora said.
"Alright then," Remus said. "What is it that you look like when you aren't… changing yourself?"
"So, you want to know what I really look like?" Dora asked. "You could buy me dinner first."
He knew he was blushing. "Is that rude?"
"No, no," Dora said. "I'd just expect you to want a little light so you can actually see it. Here, let's get back to headquarters…"
They Apparated back to Grimmauld Place. Dora stopped on the front steps of the house and took his hand so he'd turn the look. The disguise she'd put on faded away and then it was just… her. The same Dora he saw every day.
"That's your base form," Remus said.
Dora nodded. "Fancy word for it, but yes. This is just me."
Her nose had the same shape, her cheekbones were prominent, her eyebrows high, her upper lip was heavier than the lower… She did shrink an inch or two, and so looked up at him with chocolate brown eyes. Her hair brushed over her shoulders, a light brown colour.
"You look like you," Remus said, for which he strongly considered smacking himself. She grinned.
"Yeah," Dora said. "I don't mind the way I look. I mean, I used to, as a kid. I thought that I had this whole world of possibilities, so I better find the best one, you know? The perfect fit. But then I realized that if I had this whole world of possibilities, there had to be something good about each one. I mean, I still fill in the hair. How could I not? But other than that, this is… well, me."
"It's you," Remus agreed. She grinned and as she did, the pink tinge came back to her hair. He couldn't help thinking, looking at her fluff out her hair, that if he had a thousand possible bodies to be in, he wouldn't pick his own. Not in a thousand years. But she had made herself at home in her skin and had stopped fretting over alternatives and perceptions and pros and cons. And there was something powerful about her smile when she looked up at him, now that he knew just how much love it was backed by.
"Well," she said. "Should we...?"
"We should," Remus said. "Yes, we should go check in with Mad-Eye. Thank you."
"What for?" Dora asked.
"What for," he agreed. "Yes, never mind me."
She laughed. "Alright, then. And when you think of your next three questions, you can let me know."