Based off some prompts I've picked up a while ago from livejournal.

RLNT, naturally (as if I write anything else in this fandom). Sometime around HBP, summers pre and post included. Because I don't seem to be capable of writing a happy R/T story. Come to think of it, it's actually lucky JKR hacked them off in the end, lest I'd have them tortured to oblivion in various sequels and whatnot, the poor dears. Seriously, I have a majorly distorted perception of their relationship (and relationships in general, it would seem, as they are my favourite HP couple).

Inspired a great deal by jadeddiva's awesome fics here at FF net.

I really tried keeping them under 500 words (the "long" ones went through so many revisions, I've lost count). But seeing that I can't write anything nice and concise, everything shorter than 1000 words is quite a feat.


prompt 01: letter

Word count: 418


Four-letter word.

d-e-a-d.

A word relating to him on so many levels. An awful expression that had just claimed another victim, stripping him from yet another thing he held dear, leaving him virtually with nothing at all. Not that he was a stranger to that feeling. He could recall, quite clearly, a period when he had felt just as desperate-maybe even more so. He had feared then, that the darkness would consume him completely. He had felt as if everything was lost, as if there was no reason to live anymore. It was difficult to pull himself together afterwards. He had almost forgotten who he was-who was he trying to be-blinded by grief and rarely quite sober at the time, he had almost run off and joined the first werewolf pack out there, eager for a chance of having an early death himself. It was all a blur, really, those days...

All that is stopping him going down the same road this time is her. It disgusts him a bit, actually, this lack of all-consuming grief he thinks he should be feeling. But he can't really help it. She is like a silver pool of blinding light: twinkling, radiating, pulling him in, the way she laughs reverberating through his memory (because she doesn't really laugh much these days, though her smiles-shy and guilty somehow-are just as blinding to him). She is like a lifeline, unyielding and dignified even in her grief. He could so easily delude himself, reach for that little bit of happiness he felt with her (his best mate is dead, for heavens' sake, he is not supposed to be happy-not now, not ever!). In any case, he couldn't. There were certain reservations, boundaries he shouldn't cross.

And yet, sometimes he couldn't quite help it. He'd purposely forget himself and call her Nymphadora in front of everyone and Dora silently to himself and she'd roll her eyes-out of habit, really, her scowl more of a smile than anything-wordlessly admitting she actually liked it when he called her that and he'd be shamelessly pleased with secretly being given the privilege of using the name no one else was allowed to. Because Tonks is awkward, impersonal, sounding ugly and abrupt like a bad onomatopoeia; it doesn't feel right. And the fact he's spent so much time poring over her name is enough of an alarm as it is, because he shouldn't-mustn't-think about her so often, in such a way.

Four-letter words.

l-o-v-e.

d-o-r-a.

He starts calling her Tonks.


...if the world would fall apart

in a fiction-worthy wind

I wouldn't change a thing now that you're here...

Incubus - Here in my room