A/N1: Wotcher, guys! I'm so sorry for making you wait this long, but it's finally here! \o/
Anyway, I've added a Prologue, not much, just the basics about their story before the beginning of the Fanfic, what isn't there is because I plan on writing it here so, don't worry, but please, please let me know if you got lost at something. :)
This chapter was supposed to be together with the next one, but I realised that it would be far too big if I left it the way I had planned so, I divided it. The next one will be bigger, but I have some of it done so, give me a week and I'll get it finished.
Yeah, well, that's it. Read, enjoy and let me know what you guys liked and what you didn't! Oh, yeah, Happy Birthday, Harry! ;)
CHAPTER 7: A Violent Shade Of Violet
Summer at Grimmauld Place was going on as pleasant as possible; Mrs Weasley had taken as her life mission to get the headquarters completely clean, much to Sirius dismay, even though having something to do such as cleaning the house was better than spending the whole day bored and locked in his room.
Following Dumbledore's orders, Remus had been searching for the werewolf pack. He would leave the headquarters around eight or nine and spend the morning searching in places the werewolves were known to take place and hide themselves. Lunchtime he would be back at the Grimmauld Place would take an hour or two, if that much, before he could retake his search. At night, around seven or eight, he would come back to relax, have some dinner and catch up to what had happened in the hours he had been away. In that particularly evening, he had been reading in the drawing-room with Sirius as the later wrote a birthday note to his godson when he saw a girl whose hair was a violent shade of violet entering the room.
Recalling their last encounter, both Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin's cheeks became somewhat redder. She had been thinking about that day for weeks now, perhaps she had been a bit too harsh on him, she did not know how it was to have to turn yourself into a monster every full moon, for sure it was not easy to be in his shoes so, who was she to get into his private business anyway? Despite being busy searching for the werewolves, he remembered that moment a few times during the last weeks too and he always felt rather embarrassed when it came to his mind. After the Marauders, he should know better than to think that no one would want to be friends with him, but was it that bad of him? He had been through so much after the end of the First Wizarding War, so many wizards and witches he met that when they acknowledged his condition, would not even be able to look him in the eyes. No, perhaps he could be forgiven for his disbelief and behaviour the night before said encounter, in which he had nearly shouted at her due his anger, not totally justified.
She stared at him for a moment, hating the feeling that they seemed to be almost strangers. She had not seen him for weeks and did not exactly like the way they had left things the last time.
'Hey,' she said as she close the door behind herself.
'Hey,' Sirius answered with even less enthusiasm than she had greeted.
As she walked her way to an empty chair, both of them got to the same conclusion: the best to be done about it, at least for now, was to let go. They were fine with it, weren't they? So, why bother being nervous about it? What needed to be said, was said, she knew about him and she was OK with it, end of story. He offered her a warm smile as she sat and grinned at him, lips parted; both hearts feeling incredibly lighter with that simple gesture.
'Evening, Tonks,' Remus said with a short nod and still smiling.
'What are you doing?' she asked, looking at her cousin.
'Oh, hm, writing a card to Harry,' Sirius told her. 'His birthday tomorrow, you see. Hermione, Ron and I will send him a couple of chocolate boxes from Honeydukes,' he smiled.
'Oh, cool,' she said finding somewhat unnatural for Sirius to join Ron and Hermione for a birthday present considering the amount of money her cousin had, but now that she thought about it, it was not unnatural at all. Being forced to live in a house that was protected by the Fidelius Charm and that he could not put a foot out the door would obligate him to take different actions from the ones he normally would. And that was the reason she had decided to stop by, he needed company, someone to talk to, someone to keep him busy. She had thought that Remus would do this, but it did not turn out as expected.
'And you?' Tonks asked looking at Lupin. 'Why have you been a stranger?'
It took him a minute to realise that she had actually spoken to him.
'I'm sorry,' he said looking up from his book. 'What?'
'I haven't seen you around these days,' she shrugged. 'Was wondering what you've been doing.'
'Oh, yes,' Remus carefully put a bookmark on the page and put the book on the coffee table. 'Dumbledore asked me to …' he paused for a moment thinking about the best way to put what he had in mind into words, 'go on a special mission,' he finished with a smile.
'Oooh,' Sirius laughed. 'Special mission!' he added chuckling.
'And may I know what it is?' she asked eager to know what kind of missions Dumbledore had been giving that would require the member to spend the whole day out, but at the same time, she was not sure if he was allowed to talk about it and did not want to make it sound as though she was demanding to know.
'Yes,' he said with a smile. 'Yes, you may,' Dumbledore never mentioned anything about the mission being secret, though as any other activity from the Order, they had the obligation to stick said activity to its members and not a soul from the outside was allowed to be aware of their actions. However, of course the Weasley kids had found a way to cheat. 'I've been trying to loc―'
'Dinner's ready!' Mrs Weasley announced as she entered the room.
'Just a second, Mrs Weasley,' Tonks said as Sirius got up at once and followed Molly to the kitchen, obviously too hungry to wait for his best friend to explain something he already knew. She smiled at Remus, encouraging him and he cleared his throat before continuing.
'I have been trying to locate the werewolf pack.'
'Oh,' she said staring at her feet, thinking she should have known it had something to do with it.
'Until now, I have only searched in forests,' He added being careful to keep any essential information out, but still letting her know what he had been doing. 'No luck, though. Of course I didn't really expect to find them in the first couple of weeks, I mean, I've been living away from them my whole life. Sure I know where it is most likely that I would find them, but I believe it will take a couple of months, at least,' he got up and smiling, he offered his hand to help her stand up. 'Shall we?'
Tonks felt her heart skip a beat as she stared at his hand for an instant. When was the last time someone had done something like this for her? Yeah, well, Dad doesn't count. And even though, it had been years since her father did something similar. She smiled shyly at him before taking his hand and trying to sound as casual as possible.
'Sure.'
In the kitchen, Tonks took a seat next to Ginny, who was petting Hermione's orange cat, Crookshanks, on her lap and Remus sat between her and Sirius.
'I've been trying to talk with the goblins,' said Bill, 'Ragnok is one my … friends, dare to say. You see, it is rather complicated to establish an actual friendship with them. Goblins have a very different view of the wizarding world from ours. For example, they believe –' But he was cut off by his sister.
'Sirius, Sirius, Sirius!' Ginny called. 'Ahn, sorry, Bill, but you gotta see this one, Sirius!' she said almost laughing. 'Do the one you showed me and Hermione that day, Tonks! The one with the …' She put her hand on her nose, fingers down and Tonks could not help and let out a giggle in anticipation. A stained expression on her face as she morphed her nose to look like a hook, very similar to the one of a certain Potions' Master getting laughters from everyone around her.
When Sirius was finally able to stop howling from laughter, he put his hand on Lupin's shoulder and said 'Someone's gotta keep the abnormally large nose out of people's business, huh, Moony?' But the rest of his laughter was cut off by the butterbeer that Fred and George spit on them.
'Just what did you call him?' the twins asked at the same time with wide eyes.
They all frowned and looked back at them.
'… Moony?'
The twins exchanged a look for a second.
'Do you think it is?' George asked.
'It's the only explanation!' Fred said as a smile started to spread across their faces.
'Professor Lupin?'
'That'd be brilliant!'
'We had classes with one of them?'
They turned their heads to face Remus and Sirius again.
'So, are you or are you not?'
'What exactly are we, boys?' Remus asked confused.
'The Marauders, of course!'
'Moony,'
'Wormtail,'
'Padfoot'
'And Prongs'
'Are proud to present'
'The Marauder's Map,' they grinned widely.
'You are, aren't you?'
'Oh, um, yes, we are.' Remus smiled fondly at them.
'So, you two had our map?' Sirius asked.
'Yeah, we had.'
'Hand it over to Harry about a year and a half ago.'
'We owe you so much,' their eyes held so much admiration that Remus was starting to feel somewhat uncomfortable.
'But wait, if Lupin is Moony then you are …'
'Padfoot!' George answered connecting the dots in the blink of an eye, they all had seen his Animagus form by now.
'And who are Wormtail and Prongs?'
'You guys were brilliant either way.'
'We never thought we would actually …'
'Meet them – I mean, you.'
'Of course there were only another mischievous group of Gryffindors that managed to beat you guys,' Fred said as a sudden wave of confidence crossed him.
Sirius crossed his arms over his chest with a grin almost as if he was saying he had accepted the challenge.
'And who those Gryffindors might be?'
'Us, of course,' Fred answered simply with a shrug.
'But, boys, if you owe us because of the map … How come you get to beat us?' Remus's tone was calm almost as if he was explaining it to a couple of toddlers. He was far from being the most mischievous of them, but there was obviously something wrong there and he felt the need to defend the Marauder's name.
'Point is … professor,' George added the last word quickly to make his point, but still show some respect to the men he admire so much.
'We had the map's information all along,' he explained.
'We didn't need to spend our time creating it,' he did not want to take the risk of sounding arrogant by saying "waste" instead of "spend".
'Therefore, we could use our time to cause mischief,' Fred concluded trying to show that it did not matter whoever invented the map.
'But you two said you'd be nothing without us!' Sirius replied. The creators of the map needed to get credit for what they did, it was only fair.
'We never said we'd be nothing –' George started, but his mother ended the discussion.
'MUNDUNGUS!' Molly reprimanded, getting up and walking towards him. 'No smoking in the kitchen! For Merlin's sake! We eat here!' She had already been somewhat mad at him for she thought he was a bad influence for her boys and now he wanted to fill the kitchen with that awful smell?
'Aye, Molly,' he took the piper from his mouth and with a tip of his wand he put out the fire. 'Sorry,' Putting it in one of his pockets, Dung got up. 'Must get going anyway. Got a shift tomorrow, another one on Wednesday, too bad a had a great deal –' clearing her throat, Molly stopped him from saying anything else. 'Right, yeah, 'm going.'
Murmuring complaints about him, Mrs Weasley started to float the empty plates to the sink and Tonks got up to help her, floating the ones on her end of the table. Fred and George got the cue to leave for they had been chatting and laughing with Mundungus a while before and had no desire to listen to their mother scolding with them; the twins were closely followed by Ginny, Ron and Hermione, leaving only the members of the Order in the room. Tonks chuckled at the sight of all the kids leaving because of how mad Molly was, of course she could not blame them, Mrs Weasley could be pretty scary when she was angry.
As it always happened when she let her mind float when she was doing some task that had a great probability of something breaking, the whole room was startled by the sound of objects ... well, breaking. Tonks had landed one of the plates on a not very stable pile and another three went down together with the first one.
'Tonks!' cried Mrs Weasley.
And that was enough to wake Walburga's portrait, making it nearly impossible for anyone to hear Tonks desperately apologising.
'BLOOD TRAITORS! FILTHY CHILDREN BRINGING DISHONOUR TO MY HOUSE!'
Sirius left to shut his mother's portrait as Remus kneeled to help her fix the broken plates doing his best not to smile. That girl had a good heart; she just wanted to help, but so clumsy that she could not do it without breaking something or tripping over her own feet. And yet, it was all sort of … adorable.
'There, all fixed,' he smiled fondly at her, floating the plates back onto the sink.
'Thanks,' she smiled at him before turning to Molly. 'I'm sorry, Mrs Weasley,' She said with a small nod before leaving the kitchen.
Passing by the drawing-room, she saw the Weasleys, Hermione and Sirius with two boxes of chocolate.
''Be careful and don't do anything harsh.' Done. There you go,' he said and handed the piece of parchment to Hermione. A moment later, her cousin was grinning evilly at her.
'Hey, lemme help you!' Sirius started to shake his hands. 'Sorry, I broke everything!' he laughed.
'Shove off, you bloody berk!' she rolled her eyes. ''M going home,' she announced walking away. 'Good night,' she stated not in the most amicable way.
Sirius stood up from the floor and ran to the doorway.
'Tonks! Tonks! Don't be mad at me, Tonks!' he yelled at her.
'Am not!' she shouted back. Truth to be told, she was used to hearing jokes about her clumsiness every now and then. Turning around, she looked at Remus, barely remembering why she had shouted at Sirius, she walked a couple of steps backwards and said, 'Night!' in a much happier tone and with a wink.
'Good night, Tonks,' Remus nodded smiling.
Three days later, Tonks had joined them for what she thought it would be a lovely afternoon, but it turned out to be one toilsome task, getting rid of flobberworms. Molly had been reading Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests, but the author's tips did not turn out to be exactly helpful, so they were basically on their own. Grabbing a couple of dead worms, Tonks's face twisted in disgust.
'Leave it there, Kreacher!' she heard her cousin yell as he came back from feeding Buckbeak. Searching for him, she saw Hermione biting her lip, clearly uneasy about the way Sirius was treating the house-elf.
'Kreacher was just trying to save his old master's belongings, sir,' said the elf.
Sirius grabbed the trousers and threw them back on the pile of trash they had been putting together all along.
'My father's. Ugh!' Sirius faked a shiver and re-joined them at the same moment Tonks had an idea that although seemed pretty obvious, would probably save them all from this arduous job.
'Have you tried telling him to clean the house?'
'Kreacher?' asked Sirius, incredulously. 'Nah, of course he has to if I give him an order, but he's just far too nuts to clean anything these days,' he frowned for a moment, looking from her and back to the elf. 'You're welcome to try, though.'
'Me?' she had never given an order to a house-elf, they did not have one at their house and the ones at Hogwarts were always so friendly with her when she went to the kitchens that she could not imagine someone being mean to any of them. Of course none of the ones she ever encountered were near Kreacher's state of mind. 'B-but why would he – Oh,' she stuttered as her mind perceived what her cousin had figured out. 'Hm, yeah, OK,' everyone had stopped and was now watching her attempt to give the house-elf an order. She cleared her throat and stood up. 'Kreacher,' she began with a firm tone, 'clean those nests of flobberworms.'
The elf looked up to her with straightened eyes.
'Kreacher lives to serve the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. What would his mistress think if she saw Kreacher receiving orders from a blood traitor? Kreacher doesn't have to obey this blood traitor. Kreacher doesn't know why, but Kreacher won't obey this blood traitor.'
'Kreacher!' Sirius shouted at the elf. 'This is not how you treat my family, did ya hear me?'
'Sirius,' Hermione's calm voice called him, but if he heard it, he chose to ignore her.
'Out of here!'
'Sirius.' It was now Tonks's turn to call for him, but with a firmer tone. 'Let it go.'
'I. Said. Out. Of. Here!'
'Let it go!' She needed to push his arm in order to get his attention. 'Let it go,' she repeated calmly when his eyes met hers.
'He called you a blood traitor!'
'That's what I am!'
'But you didn't do anything!'
'No. That's thanks to Mum,' she said, chuckling, but not even the joke was able to get her cousin to relax. 'Seriously, though, don't argue with an old, crazy elf, will drive you nuts,' she smiled, more concerned about Sirius's state of mind than Kreacher's.
'It shouldn't have to be like this,' clenching his teeth, Sirius looked back to the door where the elf left a moment ago.
'Yeah, well, to change that we need to defeat You-Know-Who. So, forget about him and focus on helping the Order. Now –'
Sirius scoffed and started to walk away.
'Oh, I'll help. I'll help the Order. By cleaning some flobberworm's nests!'
Tonks closed her eyes and exhaled heavily. This was not how it was supposed to be. She was here to help him cope with the fact that he could not do anything to help, but she had only made everything worse. Well done, Tonks. Well done. She started to go after him, she had to try to fix it, she had to at least try. However, despair never had a chance to leave her mind for in that second, one big silver phoenix entered and spoke with Dumbledore's voice.
'I am convoking an emergency meeting now. Harry has just been attacked by two Dementors. Alert as many members as you can.'
A/N2: Sort of cliffhanger in the end 'cause everyone knows what happens next, but well, won't take long anyway. Don't forget to review! ^_^
