Harry Potter is not mine. It belongs to JKR and Warner Brothers.
Explanation: (skip if you want to just read fanfiction). I've been in a bit of a non-posting funk lately so I thought I'd move past it by making myself write and post one thing a day until Christmas (25 days). At least that's my goal. We'll see how I do. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to stick to book-canon couples (although I admit, Neville-Luna in the movie is adorable) if there is a couple involved at all. And I'm going to give them all some relation to Christmas.
Christmas 1997 (Deathly Hallows), undisclosed location (Order safe-house)
Tonks was greeted with a rapid hug that nearly sent her flying backwards the instant after she, Remus, and Hestia had confirmed themselves to be who they looked like. Hestia pulled back smiling, a huge grin on her face. "You're here!" she yelped happily. "Dedalus!" she called out into the house as she dragged Tonks and Remus through the door. Harry's large uncle stared at them along with his wife as they entered. Their son was studying the ground. Dedalus came tramping down the stairs with a large sports bag in hand.
"Hello, Happy Christmas to you," he said, dropping the bag on the floor and squeezing past them to get to the cupboard next to the door. Tonks pressed her back against the wall opposite the closet and looked around. In front of her was an open area with a large tan sofa sitting next to the closet door that created a sort of corridor to the closed front door on the left and beginning of the stairs on the right. Dudley and Petunia were in chairs across from a coffee table in front of the sofa. There was a cabinet with a talking box full of pictures against the front windows, across from the open doorway into the kitchen.
"Happy Christmas," Remus replied, slipping past Tonks and leaning against a wooden table pressed against the wall of the "corridor" between the entryway and the sofa. Dedalus had tossed Hestia her cloak.
"Lovely to see you, really," Dedalus said, grabbing the bag back up again. "See you in a couple of weeks, right?"
"Right," Tonks agreed, looking at Hestia questioningly.
"Well, then, good-bye I suppose," he replied, giving both of their hands a quick shake.
"Happy Christmas!" Hestia called as she followed him out the door. It banged behind them, echoing through the room. Tonks looked at Remus in confusion and he tilted his head slightly to the side to say he was as oblivious as she was. It was definitely Hestia and Diggle. Hestia had used the Patronus Charm to prove herself and that certainly couldn't be faked. And Hestia had spoken for Diggle. The Dursleys were definitely the Dursleys; in order to make sure they weren't being followed, Tonks had cast a detection spell. Four fully-grown wizards, Hestia, Diggle, Remus, and herself, plus the three muggles, who she predicted to be the Dursleys, had been the only ones to make any mark at all.
"Err, wotcher," Tonks greeted to the silent Dursleys. Petunia had turned away, Vernon's eyes were moving up and down Remus's body, seeming to take note of the state of his cloak, and Dudley kept looking up at them and then down at the floor again. None of them said anything. Tonks moved toward the door and set the locks on it again.
"I'm sure Hestia and Dedalus have told you that we'd be switching out for a couple of weeks," Remus remarked. For a moment there was nothing until Dudley gave a small nod. "Right, well, we've met before but never officially," Remus tried again. "Ah, this is my wife, Nymphadora, err, Tonks. She likes to be called Tonks."
"I don't like my first name much," she explained. "I go by my surname, or did I suppose. I took Remus's surname so I suppose I ought to go by Lupin, shouldn't I? But it seems awkward for him to call me by his last name, not that he even does; he generally sticks to my first name so- so, um, it's Tonks," she explained, dying out half-way through. Both Dudley and Vernon were staring at her wordlessly. Petunia had taken to staring at a small patch of wall slightly to Remus's left, the closest she seemed to be able to come to looking at them. Tonks drummed her fingers lightly against her arm. A few more minutes of this and she would be desperate to run out the door just like Hestia and Dedalus had. Suddenly the behaviour of their fellow Order members didn't seem so odd. "Ah, what are you doing?" she attempted. Dudley jerked his head toward the box of moving pictures.
"Television," he responded. Tonks decided to move away from her safe wall and walk toward the sofa, standing against the opposite end of Vernon.
"Oh yeah?" she asked, trying to be interested. "Is Rudolph going to be on sometime? I used to watch that on video with my granddad."
"You watched television?" Dudley asked, looking at her straight on for the first time. Tonks saw Petunia's lips purse together though she still was refusing to look over at them.
"My dad's a muggle-born," she answered with a smile.
"We don't often watch Christmas specials," Petunia said harshly, finally looking over at Tonks. "Not the ones like that at any rate."
"Oh," she answered studying the room again. "Would you mind if we went and got settled?" she asked. She heard a grunt from one of them, took that as a yes and turned around toward Remus who was already heading toward the stairs. She quickly trampled after him, ending up in a small hallway upstairs. "How do we know which one Dedalus and Hestia normally have?" Tonks asked. Remus was looking around as well.
"I'm guessing the one with the door partially open," he suggested, moving toward the first door on the left. There was one door in the centre of the hall, one on the right, and two on the left. Tonks peered past Remus into the room and sure enough saw a cauldron sitting beside the dresser and a pair of twin beds that had been stripped of sheets. A clean set of blankets and sheets lay on the bed nearest the door. Tonks dropped her bag down by the cauldron as she used her heel to kick the door closed. Remus pulled his bag off of his shoulder.
"Is it just me, or does this house smell odd?" she asked him. "I keep thinking I'm at St. Mungo's," she added, wrinkling her nose as she began to unfasten her cloak. Remus had already hung his on the edge of the mirror.
"It is a little overly clean," Remus admitted as Tonks rolled her cloak up in her arms and dropped it on top of her knapsack. "But then I believe the Dursley's old house was the same way." Tonks nodded and moved over to the bed by the door and collapsed down on her back. Remus walked over and sat down beside her, picking up her legs and putting them across his lap so there was room for him to sit.
"The Dursleys are going to make this a holly-jolly Christmas, aren't they?" she snorted. He raised his eyebrows and she grinned, propping herself up on her elbows. "I say that Dedalus and Hestia owe us, majorly," she told him.
"Or perhaps the rest of the Order owes them," he mused. "We're merely paying a portion of our debt."
"I don't like your way of thinking," Tonks decided, manoeuvring to sit on the edge of the bed next to Remus. "I think I'll stick with mine. Are you hungry?"
"I suppose," he agreed.
"Good, because I'm starving," she told him, getting to her feet.
"I think you've been starving on and off for the past three months."
"I'm telling you, hormones apparently turn me into a teenage boy," she informed him as she opened the door, heading for the stairs.
"That's an appealing image," he said dryly, following her down. She chuckled to herself as she reached the bottom of the stairs. Petunia looked up and this time didn't look away.
"You're pregnant?" she asked bluntly, her eyes surveying Tonks's body and freezing on the bump that couldn't be seen as well through her cloak but showed quite well in the robe she was wearing, which stretched over her rounding stomach before flaring at her hips. Tonks became aware that now the other two Dursleys were also staring at her.
"Um, yes," Tonks answered. "About uh, five months."
"So you have kids like normal?" Dudley asked. His mother and father suddenly looked over at him as if he had asked something despicable.
"Well, I suppose so. What would be abnormal?" she asked him, furrowing her brow in confusion.
"They sent a pregnant woman and a man who looks ill to protect us?" Vernon grumbled looking over at them. Tonks glared at him and willed herself not to reach for her wand.
"She's an Auror, a dark wizard catcher, trained by Alastor Moody. I'm sure you remember him from the train station a year or so ago," Remus spoke up. "And if you'd like to know, I spend my full moons as a werewolf. If you want to question the danger we'd pose to anyone who would decide to threaten you then I'm sure we could arrange a minor demonstration," he said helpfully, reaching into his pocket and eyeing the sofa. Vernon shut his mouth and looked away. Tonks grinned lightly to herself before heading toward the kitchen.
The Dursleys, it appeared, did not improve once they got used to someone else being there. They also seemed to spend as much of their time as possible staring at one talking box or another, interrupted by Petunia's cleaning. Tonks and Remus found themselves up in their room most of the time, though Tonks had found out that if she wanted to sit in one corner of the sofa none of the Dursleys would come and sit on the other end, particularly Petunia.
It was the night of Christmas Eve when Tonks rolled off the bed they had made by putting both Hestia's and Dedalus's together, leaving the book she was re-reading behind on the bed. She had heard Petunia and Vernon heading upstairs and she knew Dudley had been on the computer in his room most of the day. Remus looked over at her from where he was writing. "I'm going downstairs," she told him.
"Okay," he answered as she headed toward the door. She turned around, crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.
"You're coming too," she informed him.
"Am I?" he asked, still staring at the paper he was writing on though she noticed his quill wasn't moving and his eyes seemed bright, even though he wasn't looking at her.
"You're as bored stiff in here as I am, Remus," she reminded him. He raised his eyebrows.
"Oh you know me that well?" he asked her as she walked toward him. He was sitting in the chair kitty-corner from the door using a spell to levitate the paper in front of him and make it stiff enough for him to write. She didn't say a word as she paused in front of him and leaned over to read what his was writing. It was a crossword puzzle she knew he had done yesterday. He had covered up the clues and was attempting to solve it by memory. Tonks smirked at him.
"All right, fine, I'm bored but I don't see how going downstairs is going to change that."
"We're going to watch the television," she informed him.
"I hardly see the appeal of a talking box," he answered as she pulled his crossword puzzle and quill away and tossed them gently on to the bed next to her novel.
"It's something we haven't done yet," she explained, tugging on his arms. "And I want to play with the buttons. Come on Remus! I don't want to go down there alone. What if the Dursleys show up?"
"An Auror scared by three muggles who are most likely terrified by her hair?" he asked. Tonks nodded and used her best puppy-dog eyes.
"You're right, I need you to protect me," she told him, giving his arms a feeble tug.
"No you don't," he said definitively. She sighed and tried a slightly different tactic.
"You're not going to let me sit down there all alone on Christmas Eve when I'm carrying your child are you?" she asked, trying to make herself tear up a little. He glared at her and sighed as he got up from the chair.
"I'm bringing my crossword," he informed her heading for the bed.
"I like this pregnancy excuse. I might have to stay this way all the time," she said with a grin. He turned sharply, his expression a mixture of confusion and horror. She threw up her hands. "Merlin, Remus, I'm kidding! I'm already terrified enough I'm going to drop this kid once it's born."
"This kid is the last one, Dora," he told her as they headed for the door. "I mean it."
"Darn. Good thing we're having twins then," she replied on the landing. She saw an expression somewhere between surprise and terror cross his face for an instant before he glared at her. "Oops, I was going to tell you tomorrow," she grinned. "Molly only just showed me how to tell right before we left."
"Not funny, Nymphadora," he said as she began to laugh. "Not funny at all."
"The look on your face was priceless," she informed him. "I ought to have had a camera." He rolled his eyes at her but smirked a little as he got downstairs and then hit her with a pillow he got off the sofa.
Half-an-hour later, none of the throw pillows were left on the sofa or chairs. Tonks was sitting on the sofa with her legs drawn up next to her, leaning against Remus. He had his arm around her, his crossword abandon in his lap, staring at the Christmas specials on television with the same utter confusion she'd felt as a ten-year-old child, the first time she'd seen them. She almost moved when she heard heavy footsteps on the stairs but Tonks decided that they had just as much right to be here as the Dursleys and snuggled up to Remus even more closely. A moment later, she saw Dudley awkwardly enter the room standing in front of them. Tonks shifted where she was sitting.
"Mum's not going to be happy," he said glancing at the pillows on the floor, mixed with a few feathers. Remus pulled his arm back from around Tonks. Lazily, Tonks reached for her wand, making Dudley jump nervously.
"Oh I wouldn't hurt you," Tonks told him sleepily, flicking her wand at the pillows. They went tumbling back to their places, one of them hitting Remus in the head. He shook his head at her, a ghost of a smile on his face and then tossed it gently to the other end of the sofa. "Scourgify," she said, pointing her wand at the feathers. None of them moved. Remus sighed and shifted so that he could grab his own wand and then pointed it at the feathers. They were gone in an instant.
"That's useful," Dudley said, watching nervously as Remus stowed his wand away again. "I mean to be able to just get rid of things like that."
"Keep thinking I should learn my household spells better," Tonks replied.
"The problem isn't your knowledge, it's your personality. You're a slob, Nymphadora and it affects your spell work."
"Don't call me Nymphadora. And I am not."
"You are too," he answered stubbornly. Dudley was staring at them as though he had never seen people before.
"Fine," Tonks agreed, wrinkling up her nose. Dudley glanced away but then looked back at them as if there was something still floating in his head that he wanted to say.
"Something going on?" she asked him.
"I err, I wanted to ask you something," he replied, looking flustered. "I mean both of you something."
"Go ahead then," Tonks suggested, straightening out her legs. Remus put his arm over her shoulders again.
"It's about, well, about Harry," he said nervously. "I wanted- I mean is he- he's all right isn't he?" Tonks felt her stomach clench as Remus moved his arm again and leaned forward slightly. Tonks put a hand on his shoulder. "I well, Dedalus and Hestia, they didn't really know anything and-"
"That's about as much as anyone knows," Remus replied straightening up, his right leg bouncing up and down. Tonks put her hand on his left leg and he stopped bouncing his right. "I was the last person in the Order to see Harry as himself although we're presuming that another member saw him when he was impersonating someone else in the Ministry. Both incidents were months ago."
"So he's- he's- what does that mean?" Dudley asked, looking at them. Tonks stared at him, trying to figure him out by the look in his eyes. From what she had heard, he hadn't been the nicest person to Harry when they were growing up but right now he was doing a good impression of actually caring.
"We're assuming no news is good news," Remus answered.
"The other side would broadcast it proudly if they caught Harry," Tonks added trying to make herself sound happy that he hadn't been found but finding herself failing. She wished they could have been looking for him. He was barely of-age, no matter what experiences he'd had. "He and his friends want to remain hidden and that's what they're doing. We have to hope they stay that way."
"So you're not looking for him?" Dudley asked, seeming worried. "I mean obviously you're not looking. You're here but somebody has to-" he stopped as Tonks shook her head.
"We'd risk drawing more attention to him if we started searching for him. The last thing Harry needs is for a group of Death Eaters to follow us right to him," she answered.
"But you're doing something right?" Dudley protested. "You've got to be doing something. He's only seventeen. He's still a kid; he can't possibly do everything on his own. I- I couldn't," he ended feebly.
"There's not much we can do," Remus answered him. "Trust me, I did try. We're trying to track down Death Eaters, figure out their plans but it doesn't directly help Harry."
"The only thing we really can do," Tonks added, meeting Dudley's eye, "is pray." The three of them were silent again except for the network jingle that signalled the end or beginning of a series of commercials. Dudley seemed to be pondering all of this for a while. Tonks curled up against Remus again, suddenly feeling cold. He pulled her close as she began to feel fluttering kicks again in her stomach.
"You mind if I watch too?" Dudley asked after a moment, gesturing toward the television.
"Not at all," Tonks answered. Dudley sat down on the opposite end of the sofa as Tonks curled her legs up on the sofa again, one hand resting gently on the growing bump. She felt the baby move, safe and alive despite everything else. She closed her eyes and prayed that the only other child of the Marauders would reach his bed tonight the same way, safe and alive.
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