Notes: a warning to please not read this unless you have completed your read of Order of the Phoenix or are crazy enough to not mind being spoiled very, very badly. For those of you who haven't pressed the back button, this, essentially, is my response to The Death. Because it really, really upset me. Until I saw the other side of things. This may cheer you up; this may depress you further. It may also make you yell at me for my characterization of Tonks; I ask you to give me a bit of leeway with her, as I have only read OotP once, but feel free to tell me exactly what I am doing to murder her character.
Disclaimer: none of this belongs to me, but to JK Rowling. Rest assured, if I happened to own this, there would be certain events in OotP that would have played out rather differently.
Burnt Cookies
Tonks didn't know what to say.
She hated this feeling, that there were things that desperately needed doing and she was helpless, couldn't do a thing about it. She watched as Dumbledore and Moody rapidly debriefed Fudge amid the ruins of the Ministry's fountain. She looked around at the other members of the Order; Kingsley, frowning at the debris in the great room; Mundungus, eyeing the broken statues with something suspiciously like a greedy interest; Remus –
– Remus standing there still as stone, staring unseeingly into the middle distance. Tonks felt a stab of greatest sympathy in her chest. This had been a horrible night for all of them, and for him … Remus would usually have gone to assist Dumbledore and Moody, helped explain the whole thing, lent support … because that's what Remus did. Somehow, in the quiet, unassuming way he had, Remus Lupin was the Order's one steady, solid comfort.
Tonks was completely sure that Remus was the only thing that had kept Sirius Black sane.
Now, as she looked at Remus standing there, still and tense, breathing too fast, not seeing a thing around him, Tonks began to wonder if maybe Sirius was the only thing keeping Remus sane too.
"Well, I'm off," Mundungus muttered, glancing around, and Disapperated, clutching what looked to be most of the smashed house-elf statue.
Most of the other Order members followed suit, minus departing with stolen statue parts. Kingsley was the last to go. He glanced from Dumbledore, Moody, Fudge, and the anxious Ministry employees to Tonks and Remus. "Tonks," he said quietly.
"Yes?"
He tipped his bald head in Remus's direction. "Take Lupin with you. I'm not trusting him to Apperate alone right now."
Tonks nodded once and gave Kingsley the ghost of a smile as he Disapperated. She turned to Remus, stepping carefully over the statue wizard's head to get to him. "Remus?" she said quietly.
He turned and blinked dazedly at her. "Tonks."
"Here." She took his arm. "Let's get out of here. Back to Order headquarters."
"Order headquarters," Remus said thoughtfully. "Number twelve, Grimmauld Place." He frowned slightly, then shook himself and looked at Tonks. "Right. Let's go."
They Disapperated, appearing with loud cracks in the kitchen. Remus immediately shook Tonks off without an explanation and strode out into the hallway in which Mrs. Black's portrait hung.
Tonks stayed where she was, staring at the wood grain on the kitchen tabletop, and waited.
Moments later, there were several loud crashes in the hallway, followed by a strange muffled boom, a shriek, and the crackling of flames. Tonks' eyes widened. He … he burned the portrait. Mrs. Black's portrait. He set it on fire.
"Remus?" she called hesitantly.
Soft, unsteady footfalls were her answer. She looked up as Remus appeared in the doorway, clutching the doorframe and looking white. "I lost control," he whispered.
"Understandably."
He gave her a false half-smile. "Indeed. I believe I'll be getting to bed now. I'll see you tomorrow?"
She nodded. "I'm staying here a while. See you at breakfast."
Remus left, and Tonks stood there in the kitchen, staring at the empty doorway and feeling oddly empty herself. It was so horribly frustrating, knowing that nothing she could do could come close to helping him. Tonks knew something of what Remus had been through, for being a werewolf, and could guess the rest – she could hardly imagine living in a world in which every one of her close friends was killed or a betrayer. And to get one of them back – broken, yes, but still mostly whole – and only lose him again –
"Damn unfair world," Tonks muttered, slumping into a seat and resting her chin on the table. Even as she said it, she wanted to laugh, bitter laughter at herself, for making such a grossly huge understatement. Unfair wasn't the word she was looking for. She doubted there was a word in English or Brazilian or even Gobbledygook that could describe the complete unfairness of the world Tonks found herself in.
Sighing, she stood up and promptly knocked the chair over. Ignoring it, she decided that the best course of action was probably to … make Remus cookies. She wasn't entirely sure why; it just seemed like the right thing to do.
Would Sirius have made Remus cookies?
Tonks found her feet drawing her out into the hallway, and she walked unwillingly down the corridor until she came to rest at a pair of very charred curtains. Pushing them aside, wrinkling her nose as charcoal rained down at her feet, she found herself looking at a long black burn mark and some twisted lumps of metal stuck to the wall: all that remained of the frame and portrait of the infamous Mrs. Black.
"She's gone now, Snuffles," Tonks murmured.
Now – cookies for Remus.
She paused again at the hall mirror, and stared for a second at her bubblegum-pink spiky hair. It was still her favorite hair, and Sirius liked it – had liked it. But tonight it looked too boisterous, too much like silly things Tonks had done that seemed amazingly insignificant right now. She frowned at it, and after a moment it turned jet black, lengthened, and tumbled over her shoulders, spilling down her back, falling into her eyes. Her real hair, the hair she had been born with, gorgeous hair signature of the Black family. Impatiently she brushed stray hair from her eyes. This definitely didn't look like Tonks. It looked uncomfortably like Nymphadora, the little girl who had suffered a horrid name and too many Black family reunions.
It looked a little too much like Sirius, too.
Tonks took a moment to mentally prod at the pronounced ache in her chest, then shrugged and tossed back her long Black hair, going back into the kitchen.
She considered for a moment the wisdom of simply going to bed, exhausted as she was by the hour and by grief. But she wanted to postpone getting to a place where she had nothing to do but wait for sleep to come and relive the night … relive Sirius's laughter, and the graceful arc in which he had fallen cleanly through the veil, and Harry's yells, and the stricken look on Remus's face. So she got out a bowl, and made cookie batter, and sprinkled in chocolate chips because she could recall someone (perhaps Sirius) saying that Remus liked chocolate. Then she cooled the whole thing with a Chilling Charm, to keep it fresh until she baked the batter in the morning, and fell asleep with her face pressed into the tabletop.
Her dreams were not pleasant.
Probably because of this, Tonks awoke early the next morning to a strange silence. For a moment she felt disoriented, before she remembered that the kids were all at school and wouldn't be making noise, that no one was rushing down the hallway and waking Mrs. Black's portrait, because Mrs. Black wasn't there, because Remus had lost control and burned her, because Sirius –
Tonks winced. It had been nice, to pretend for a few moments that it was yesterday, and she was blissfully unaware of her friends' mortality.
She got up from where she had been sleeping, slumped in a chair by the table. Last time I'm falling asleep somewhere without a mattress, she thought ruefully, grimacing at the stiffness in her limbs. After knocking a few chairs over on her way to the sink, she succeeded in arriving at her destination and splashing cold water on her face. She washed her hands as well, ran them thoughtfully through her long black hair, and got to work on baking the cookies.
They burnt.
Perhaps her inherent clumsiness had something to do with it. Maybe she was too preoccupied to pay too much attention until the smell of burning made her realize the cookies were beyond all hope. But whatever the reason, Tonks was now standing in the middle of the kitchen, hands covered in yellow-checkered mitts, holding a tray of very burnt cookies and feeling at a total loss.
She ended up setting them on the table, and sitting in one of the chairs next to them, just waiting for Remus to come downstairs. There wasn't really anything else to do, not when she didn't really have anywhere urgent to go … not when she was sitting here in a kitchen in a house of dead Dark wizards with the smell of burning permeating the air, like the charred remains of Mrs. Black's portrait, and staring at the ruined cookies and trying not to think about the ironic symbolism of it all.
"Tonks?"
She looked up quickly. Remus was standing in the doorway, looking just as pale as he had the previous evening, but this time his smile of greeting was slightly more sincere.
"Morning," Tonks said. Adding good to the greeting didn't seem anything like appropriate.
Remus looked around the kitchen in mild interest. "What's this?"
"Chocolate-chip cookies," Tonks said. "But I burned them."
Remus sat down next to her and inspected the cookies, then reached out and took one. He bit into it and chewed thoughtfully, then gave a faint smile. "They aren't nearly as burnt on the inside." He showed Tonks – nearing the center of the cookie, they turned a yellow-brown creamy color, the color they were supposed to be.
"Ah," said Tonks, and ate a cookie herself. It didn't taste much better than if it had been burned clear through, but the non-burnt part in the center made the cookie tolerable.
"Thank you," Remus said quietly.
Tonks looked at him. She really didn't want to talk about this, but was fairly sure that it was probably best, and also healthiest, to get it over with. She opened her mouth.
"You're welcome," was what came out.
Remus raised his eyebrows slightly and scrutinized her. "You know," he said conversationally, "I should be used to death."
Tonks wasn't entirely sure what to say to this.
"My mother died, of grief and weariness and illness, just before I turned seventeen," Remus continued thoughtfully. "My father died two years later in the war against Voldemort. James and Lily died two years after that, and only a day afterwards the boy I believed to be Peter and my friend died, to the best of my knowledge."
Tonks decided that, perhaps, not saying anything was best. Sometimes people needed someone to listen to them, rather than give empty words of comfort. So she listened.
Remus stared at the burnt half-cookie he held in his hand, and said softly, "But this – this is different."
"What is?" Tonks asked quietly before she remembered that she was supposed to be listening.
It didn't seem to matter. Ignoring her question, Remus said more slowly, "I didn't mourn my mother; she hadn't been living, only existing, and I was glad she had reached her final rest. My father I did mourn; I went to his funeral, and it was final. I never went to the funerals of James and Lily or Peter, but their death was so widely broadcast on the news that I couldn't have denied it no matter how hard I tried. And even when I discovered Peter hadn't died, it didn't change a thing; the boy I had been friends with was gone, and … if Wormtail dies, I will not have anything to mourn."
He swallowed a little and looked up at the ceiling. His voice shook slightly as he continued. "But Sirius … was still living, even if it was a life he disliked. He wasn't ready to die. Some part of what makes Sirius be Sirius dictates that he always has one more thing he has to do, always has a reason to keep on." His voice took on a more bitter edge. "Sirius … he won't have a funeral, because there is no body. His death won't on the news at all, the papers will be very taken with telling everyone about Voldemort's return, and certainly won't be mentioning that Voldemort's supposed right hand man died fighting Death Eaters." He sighed and put his face in his hands.
Tonks stared fixedly at the tray of cookies, feeling that awful helplessness again. What was she supposed to say to this? She'd always counted on Remus to be the voice of reason, everyone's comfort when things got too mad, and here she was, sitting at a table with the man while he calmly explained that he was heartbroken.
Remus took a deep breath and said, slightly muffled through his hands, "And – and I thought I'd lost Sirius, those fourteen years ago, when I heard that everything I thought my friend to be was a lie; and then to know that none of it was true, that Sirius had never been the betrayer, to get Sirius back and not have him dead in my eyes –"
Tonks shut her own. It didn't matter that Remus's face was hidden behind his hands; she couldn't quite bear to hear his next words while looking at him.
"– to have him die again."
The tabletop had very nice wood patterns on it. Lines and whirls of darker wood against the lighter grain of the table. She could feel him looking at her again. What did he expect her to do?
She steeled herself and looked up.
Remus wasn't looking at her; he was staring thoughtfully into the middle distance, with the same strange transfixed look he'd had the previous night. He said more slowly, almost as though hypnotized, "Somehow, none of this is the reason Sirius's death feels so strange to me. I don't know what curse Bellatrix Lestrange hit him with; I only know it wasn't the Killing Curse. And I don't know what is on the other side of that veil; I only know that if someone is to go through that veil, they will never return."
Now he did turn to look at her, and frowned almost philosophically. Tonks felt that painful pity stab her chest again, to see him like this, so broken but still managing to be so collected.
"No one comes back from beyond that veil," Remus murmured.
And suddenly Tonks knew what to say; not because of any false hopes, or because she had to say the first thing that came to mind, but because somehow, amid the smoke in the room, and the stupid burned cookies that Remus had thanked her for, and the numbed shocked grief that was hanging over them, Tonks had suddenly seen something, a single dazzling fact that shone in her mind like a certain very bright star.
"No prisoner," she said, "ever escapes Azkaban."
Remus looked up slowly. "No," he said thoughtfully. "Not until one of the prisoners was innocent."
"And no one," Tonks found herself whispering, "ever comes back from beyond that veil."
"Until," Remus said hesitantly, tasting the words on his tongue, testing this theory, "until … someone passes through without being one of the dead themselves?"
Tonks nodded mutely.
Remus raked a hand through his hair. "It took him twelve years to escape Azkaban," he reminded Tonks.
"You have a lifetime," she replied. "However long that is."
Remus shrugged slightly. "Yes, I suppose so. Thank you, Tonks." He finished his cookie, a bit of color coming back into his face.
Tonks ate another cookie too.
It didn't taste half bad.