Looking at the scene in front of him he said to Molly, "I can take care of this." He referred this to Tonks which she found offensive. He referred to her as if she was an item instead of a person.
"It's okay Severus," Molly said, "I can handle it." She smiled sincerely.
Tonks looked at him and he jerked his head a tiny bit to the side in an attempt to tell her that he really needed to talk to her in private.
"Molly thanks. He can handle the rest."
Molly gave both of them a look unsure about the whole thing but gave a curt nod and disappeared into the house.
Snape took her place and put her foot on his lap and looked down at her lime green toe nails.
"You're not serious," he deadpanned.
"Stop looking at them," she said. She liked them but because she had an orange t-shirt on she wanted to change them to orange but couldn't, for a while anyways.
"Pajamas? You're shot," he went on clearly not caring how he made her feel.
"Look if you came here to put me down I can call Molly back here and she could do it."
He worked the bandage with care. On the right leg there wasn't much to do. He said, "You should have listened."
Of course. She should have known it was going to come up. Why else would he be here?
"What in the past ever gave me reason to believe so? To believe in anything you have to say?" she asked. She liked the cooling sensation from Mrs. Weasley but when he did it, it was different. It was nice. Whatever he was using it was helping, it was helping a lot.
"You should've just taken my word."
It was easier said than done. She couldn't and even if she could go back she wouldn't have still trusted him. There was just something about him that was untrustworthy no matter what was going on.
"What did you know that I didn't? What were you going to tell me?" she asked quietly. Her body was beginning to feel so much better. She unrolled her sleeves and put her pants legs down in his silence.
Was he speechless?
"You see that's the thing Nymph-"
"Can you cut that out?" she broke in breaking off his sentence. Why did he have to do that all the time?
"No," he answered quite frankly not even in the slightest bit bothered that he was offending her. "Nymphadora," he continued, "that was going to be the thing. For the information I was going to share with you I was going to ask for something in return. It would have been fair. Everything comes with a price."
She should have guessed. Gently he lifted her chin so she wasn't looking at the ground and removed the bandage on her cheek and cleaned the wound. Trying to avoid his eyes she could still see everything out of their corners.
He had tried to warn her, he really had and she didn't listen. Something told her deep down, she didn't know where and if she did she would squash it but it told her that even though she didn't listen she should do whatever it was that he wanted from her in return.
Once he was done with that he put a hand on her other cheek. "Why do you have a fever?"
His hand was ice cold and she got a bad vibe from it so she moved to the side and put both hands on her cheeks to feel for herself and she felt just how warm she was. She knew why she was so warm with fever, crying because of Remus. It stayed out of her mind but now it was back and she felt miserable.
But before she could become down and out she remembered what she had to ask.
"So what do you want in return?" she asked.
"I couldn't complete my side; it's unfair if you had to yours."
"I still want to do it," she replied scratching her hair through the cap.
He studied her as if looking for a lie. She watched back. He didn't use Legemencyon her so it couldn't be that serious.
"Fine." He listened a moment to see where Mrs. Weasley was and they both heard that she was upstairs doing something. Still he leaned in close. "In Hogsmade there is an underground market-"
She already knew.
"And I want you to go in there and buy an onyx cut-"
"That's very illegal. You know what can happen to you if you're caught with one of those?"
"That's why I'm sending you in there." He held up his hand to silence what would be an outburst and said, "There's more. Besides only those in the illegal arts know where it is, it is simple to just walk in and purchase the overly priced item. But leaving town someone will be sure to follow you, track you down and take it back by prying it from your cold dead fingers. They will put it back on display and have earned your profits. You come in because of what you are. No spell, no detection, you get out hop into a community place and simply change your appearance."
The way he said the whole thing, the whole casualness didn't bother her. It was something petty; he wanted her to do his dirty work for him.
"That's it?"
He nodded once.
"Yeah, that's- I can't do it yet." She remembered her problem and had to wait a few more days before she could transform again.
"I figured that," he said monotonously, "I'm in no hurry. By the end of the week is fine with me."
She nodded feeling very tired and hungry but still there was one more thing she had to know.
"What happened to me last night? Who saved me? Healed me? Where was I?" She asked. She felt very light headed and really wanted to sleep. She cracked here eyes open from falling shut; she was just so suddenly tired.
"I will enlighten you later." He left the kitchen and out the front door. When the door shut she took her wand and conjured a blanket and wrapped it around herself and dropped her feet to the floor and went into the living room where Mrs. Weasley was sitting on the couch knitting what looked to be a baby blanket with its soft and bright colors.
Tonks went right over to the woman and lay down, right against her thigh making herself comfortable and warm.
Mrs. Weasley looked down at her, maybe a smile on her face but resumed her knitting.
Tonks liked that she didn't have to talk with this lady and could just lay there and listen to the clanking of her knitting needles as they went this way and that. She closed her eyes enjoying the silence.
It didn't take long, no matter how much she tried to rid him from her mind and for it to come crashing down. He was gone and most likely he wouldn't be coming back and to say that she should just move on, it was easier said than done. Even if he was already moving on, even if he wasn't with somebody else he should know that she wasn't going to move on. Still, he made it very difficult.
She shut her eyes tighter. "Can you wake me a little before everyone starts to arrive? I don't want to look like a mess for the meeting tonight." She shrugged her shoulders.
"Sure dear," the older woman answered never stopping her knitting.
"Thanks." She let the clanking drift her off to sleep. She knew that she would never be able to knit; everything would just come out in a giant tangle and just become a mess.
-
-
Mrs. Weasley woke her up and she went upstairs to her room and made herself decent and at least presentable for the meeting. Wearing long sleeves she kept her cap on with all of her hair behind it. She still hurt all over and lying curled up on the couch made it worst, a lot worse. Her limbs felt tight and all she wanted was a massage from Remus.
No.
She promised herself that she wasn't going to think of him and keep her demise as calm as possible, nothing showing on her face besides the bandage; nothing anybody can question or show concern for.
She went downstairs where some of the members were already arriving and smiled in greeting to them except to Kingsley in which she gave a hug.
"Thought you'd be feeling better considering how you hate your job and the supervisor to go with it."
"Yeah, you know I wasn't thinking about it until now, thank you very much." She slugged him in the arm and went over to Hestia who looked very tired after a long hard day's work.
"Long day?" Tonks asked.
"Long day," Hestia agreed and the two girls went into the kitchen.
-
-
She knew that she was going to be the point of topic, but still she felt nervous. She knew these people, but sometimes what everyone saw and thought she said was too strong.
Plus the story was front page. Instead of some important story, it was her personal life turned work related that punctured the front page. It was a waste and even so it affected her life most importantly.
Now besides worrying about that there was another factor to the whole story: because there was no capture of any Death Eater the might consider her one of the Dark Lord's secret followers. They would turn it into drama.
At least there was no picture. If there was it would have been a lot worse.
When Dumbledore arrived it was the first topic he brought up which suddenly made it her "negative" fifteen minutes of fame.
"Can you please tell us what happened?"
"Yes sir," she respected. She didn't know if she had to stand or not but she didn't. She sat but instead of slouching she sat up attentively and said, "My own personal affairs were affiliated when I was attacked. Clearly, by my supervisor there were others in the place but I received no help and managed to scrape by suffering injuries."
She looked around not to see their reactions but not to make in obvious that she wanted to see Snape's reaction. She didn't know if he wanted his business spread around. She saw a slight nod so she kept her mouth shut on that subject, but continued on telling them that it was an ambush and not the lies the Daily Prophet was spreading. And she finished it off knowingly accusing every one of them of reading the paper and shifting their gazes.
She sat back and the attention was shifted back to Dumbledore much to her relief.
But Snape cut in, "Sir, may I project-"
"You may," Dumbledore allowed with the wave of his hand.
"In legion with the Dark Lord small groups have formed in secrecy and as Miss. Nymphadora Tonks has clearly demonstrated by example she was attacked by one of these groups. Certain people have been targeted and she, along with a few others are targets."
That she didn't know and it made her sit straight up with anger on her face. Her aunt was not only a follower of Voldermort but she was also a deviant one with her own master plan and her niece Tonks was the main target.
"The best course of action is to keep Nymphadora on the low key for a little while," Dumbledore said agreeing whole-heartedly with Snape.
Tonks didn't say anything. She was still mad about being targeted and being so stupid about the whole thing. She sat the rest of the meeting without another word inwardly fuming about just how stupid she was and how she was just no good at being an Auror and how everything was only failing and just plainly feeling sorry for herself.
Every feeling that she had, pain from her injuries and the fever from before came creeping back with a vengeance. All she wanted to do was crawl back into bed, under the covers and not come out for a very, very long time.
She heard the kids running around upstairs and wished she was up there having fun instead of worrying about all the stuff that was going on and being a target.
At least Fred and George, even though they couldn't make this meeting were there at meetings to bring even the littlest of joys to the meetings which were always downing and very sobering.