CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Merlin's Beard, what have I gotten into now?
This question was beginning to become the mantra of the young Auror's life, sadly.
Tonks looked up at the opening of the air vent shaft with unease, finding herself in a bit of a dilemma.
Tonks bit the inside wall of her cheek and pondered her only option. She was the only one even remotely tiny enough to fit through the shaft and go up and coax Ptelea to return to her.
The poor thing was probably frightened out of his little leafy wits if Tonks had to hazard a guess. She stifled a groan and sighed.
Sirius was standing behind Tonks on the second most bottom step, sighing in frustration and rubbing his brow as if he thought it would help alleviate the tension.
"I really don't think this is a good idea, Tonks, considering…but, something tells me that I cannot stop you, so what do you need me to do here?" Her cousin was resting a cheek on his right fist and looking rather put off.
"And you don't have to worry about me telling Remus. You are far too pretty to incur his wrath, I think," he chuckled. "If any one's going to bear the brunt of the blame, it shall be me for this. You've my word, cousin, I shan't breathe a word of your admittedly ridiculous plan to your partner. Something tells me if he were to learn I was letting you do it, he'd be the one jinxing me in a heartbeat and wouldn't think twice about doing it," Sirius sighed, glancing up at the air vent shaft with no small amount of trepidation in his light gray eyes.
Tonks nodded, not removing her gaze from it. "I don't even know if he's still up there, but it's the best chance I have of finding him since Moody's not here and I can't use that damned mad eye of his to see through the vent and I stand before you pretty much fraught of my powers without my wand," she sighed.
She felt a mad light blush speckling along her cheeks as she coughed once to clear her throat as she looked towards the vent and then back to her cousin.
Sirius noticed Tonks staring at him and blinked owlishly at the young witch and folded his arms across his chest.
"Let me guess. You need my help?" he smirked, and when the Auror nodded, confirming his suspicions, he snorted and rolled his eyes.
Black shook his head in disbelief, not anticipating that the evening would have come to this, though he supposed there were worse ways to kill an hour of time.
"You have…" He paused to glance at the clock on the wall, trying to gauge exactly when Moony and the rest of the Advance Guard had left.
But Tonks interjected before Sirius could offer his two cents. "Fifteen minutes to find Ptelea and get back out of the vent before the Guard comes back with Harry, I know, I know," finished Tonks irritably, jerking her head towards the vent. "Now are you going to help me up or not, Sirius? If we keep standing here, and if I don't find a more efficient method to get my Bowtruckle, Ptelea is in danger, Black. I'm just being realistic. I estimate that vent about being five minutes to traverse the entire length of it, which should take me approximately about five minutes to find Ptelea, assuming that he's hiding somewhere in a corner, given my…limited mobility issues,' she scowled, kicking at the sole of her black boot with her good shoe. "Which leaves me about five minutes to get out of the vent with Ptelea before Harry and the others arrive back," she huffed, reaching up a hand to swipe her bangs off of her forehead. She noticed Sirius openly gawking at her. "What?"
Sirius was staring at Tonks with such an incredulous look, you'd have thought she just sprouted antlers.
"Did you just do all of that in your head. You are such a nerd, cousin."
"I happen to be good with numbers, Black. I'm good at a lot of things, actually. Proud of it," Tonks snapped hotly, tapping her good foot in frustration, and folding her arms across her chest. "Now help me up. I need a boost, Sirius."
Her face flushed pink and she aptly tried to ignore Sirius's smirk as he bent his right knee and knelt to the floor, allowing Tonks to get up on his shoulders to pry open the vent.
The most she could be grateful for during this awkward encounter was that thank Merlin no one else in the Order was around to see this.
If Remus saw this, he'd forbid it and have a fit. She bit the wall of her cheek and let out a tired sigh.
"Wotcher," she cautioned as she felt her equilibrium teeter, though she managed to pry open the ventilation shaft and with a guttural grunt from the back of her throat and with some help from Sirius, heaved herself into the air duct.
She crinkled her nose in disgust at how murderous all the dust in here would be on her allergies, wondering if this place's house-elf, Kreacher, had ever actually done any cleaning at all in his life, and poked her head back out of the vent to regard Sirius one more time before shutting the vent and going after Ptelea.
"Not. One. Word. Or I will carve your eyes from your head for this, cousin, the Muggle way, if he finds out at all that we're doing this—that I'm doing this—he'll throw a fit, and I don't know about you, but I don't fancy being on the receiving end of Remus's temper, now that I've seen it firsthand for myself what that's like, and I don't want you getting in trouble on my account either, Sirius. So, don't say a word. And if he does find out…"
At that unpleasant thought, she almost didn't want to think it, having seen his temper for herself now several times.
Tonks closed her eyes and blew a puff of air. "Then you will let me deal with him, Sirius. I—I won't have you getting trouble on my behalf. I can handle him. Understand?"
The warning escaped Tonks as a low threatening growl. The pink-haired young witch watched in minor amusement as Sirius Black made the sign of the Holy Mary across his chest.
"Cross my heart, hope to die, Tonks." He promised her and mock saluted.
Tonks let out a tired sigh and cast a wary glance over her shoulder and into the vent. "If I'm not mistaken, I think this leads out to your mum's library, doesn't it? Meet me on the other side of the house with a ladder. I'll need one to get down and out of this filthy old thing."
There was a beat. A pause. Tonks couldn't stop the dark little chuckle that escaped her lips. "You know, if you ever wanted to rid yourself of the house-elf that's causing you so much trouble, you could just send him to crawl up in here and tuck away in a corner and he'd just die."
Her suggestion earned a snort and a laugh from Sirius, though the man got an interesting gleam in his eyes that told the young witch he was at least considering her words.
Sirius gave a curt nod of his head and pursed his lips in a thin line. "Be safe. Because if you aren't, it's my head that's on the line for this, dear cousin."
Tonks nodded, though she did not speak, and taking a deep breath to steel her nerves, calmed her nerves, knowing that to find her mischievous Bowtruckle, she'd have no choice but to disappear like a phantom back down into the bleak darkness of Number 12, Grimmauld Place's air duct.
"Don't worry, Black. I won't let you take the blame for this. Not when this whole thing was my idea, to begin with. If Remus finds out, then I will deal with him. No matter what you think," she grinned, sticking out her tongue before ducking back in the vent, and heaving a heavy sigh. "Damn it, Ptelea, you'd better bloody be up here or I swear to Merlin Above that I'm taking away your potted elm tree for a week and no tree lice for three days. Or any other bugs that you catch," she growled, murmuring to herself as she kicked open the shaft's door with her boot and army crawled on her stomach across the cold tin, wincing as the occasional creak and groan pierced the otherwise silent air, and she prayed no one but Sirius heard it.
Tonks continued the occasional grumbling to herself as she crawled her way through the darkness, ignoring the throbbing of her broken ankle in its boot.
The young Auror had thought she'd seen darkness before, everything a shade of gray. But up here alone in the damned air vent covered in dust and Merlin only knew what else that was going to be seven shades of holy hell on her allergies, this was the kind of darkness that robbed her of her best senses and replace it with a horrible paralyzing fear, as though she expected a boggart or something to round the corner and scare her.
In this darkness she crawled on her stomach, straining her ears, listening for any distressed squeakings of her Ptelea.
Her muscles cramped and she ground her jaw and locked it, letting out a hiss of pain and clenched her eyes tightly shut.
"All right, T," she murmured. "You can do this. Just…crawl through this bloody thing, find Ptelea and get the hell out before Remus finds out. Yeah. Easy enough. You can do this. It's not your first time literally crawling your way out of a tight spot," she coaxed herself, crawling forward on her stomach inch-by-inch.
The silence was unnerving her if she was being honest with herself. Tonks snorted and growled in frustration.
"Hey Ptelea," she called out softly, hoping to placate the little Bowtruckle and coax the twig-like creature into revealing himself by telling the spritely creature one of her jokes, which he'd always responded to favorably, or at the very least, the hope in that he would hear her voice and it would entice him to reveal himself and they could both get out of this dusty shaft that was murder on her allergies. "Did I ever tell you the reason why Mad-Eye is such a bad teacher?"
Silence. Tonks scowled and furrowed her brows.
"Because he can't control his pupils," she snorted and allowed a light giggle to escape her lips, thinking if Moody were here to hear her joke at his expense, he'd give her holy hell for such a bad pun. Once again, the Bowtruckle did not respond to her joke. "Okay," she murmured. "Not a fan of that one, huh? All right, I'll try another one," she whispered, careful to keep her voice low as she stopped a moment, feeling a swell of white-hot pain lick at her entire right side, her ribcage.
"A wizard walks into a pub and orders a Forgetfulness Potion. He turns to the witch next to him and says, "So, do I come here often?" Nothing.
Her frown deepening, Tonks let out a groan. She tried again. "You really are making this unusually difficult, Ptelea. These are quality jokes, and I don't even get a chirp from you? You love my jokes, twig. All right, let's try another one at the expense of our favorite greasy-haired git. Why does Professor Snape stand in the middle of the road?" she asked.
Silence. Tonks pursed her lips into a thin line. "So, you'll never know which side he's on," she snorted, rolling her eyes as she imagined what Snape would say if he were here to hear her joke at his expense.
Probably nothing kind, she knew.
Usually, Ptelea liked her jokes and responded in kind by blowing his usual trademarks at her especially bad puns, but this time, she was met with just silence.
The young witch groaned in frustration and rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine, don't laugh, but I'll remember this!" she called out, careful to keep her voice low.
Tonks only knew her eyes were still there because she could feel herself blink, still instinctively moisturizing the organs she had no current use for now.
She let out a sigh and closed her eyes, trying to block out all other sounds. Tonks cocked her head to the side and strained her hearing, thinking that she heard the tiniest of squeaking sounds, were they Ptelea's? Or was it a rat?
Whatever it was, it was nearby and coming from her right.
Shooting one of her eyes open, she steeled her nerves and swiveled her head to the left, and cursed herself internally as she let a startled yelp of surprise and clamped her hand over her mouth and clenched her eyes as she heard voices coming from below, though it sounded as though Mrs. Weasley was talking to Sirius.
I hope. If that's Remus he's talking to and the others have made it back already, we're in serious trouble, he and I.
Tonks blinked and forced her attention to return in front of her. Tonks found herself staring face-to-face with a dark brown rat, its fur matted and tangled as it stared at her with inquisitive beady black little eyes, checking its surroundings for immediately visible dangers as it huddled in the dark corner of the air vent shaft.
"Oh, God, rats, why did it have to be rats, I hate rats," she moaned, clenching her eyes shut in disgust.
The rat just continued staring, which only further provoked Tonks's fear and wrath even further, and she was quickly hit with a sense of urgency to find Ptelea and get the bloody hell out of here before Remus and Harry and the others got back.
"Did you eat my Bowtruckle? I'll kill you if you did, you little…worm tail!" Tonks hissed.
The rat, un-answering, merely twitched its whiskers before letting out a squeak and scurrying off to some unknown corner before Tonks could shoot out her hand.
She emanated a tense exhale through her nose and she breathed a sigh of relief as yet more squeaking noises came from her left, and when she poked her head in the corner of one of the smaller shafts, just enough to fit her hand through, she saw tiny little Ptelea cowering in a dead-end corner of the shaft, though he seemed to perk right up at seeing her.
"I knew that was you. Come here," she murmured lowly, stretching out her left index finger, doing her best to keep it steady, though it was shaking like mad from the cold. "Did that mean old cat chase you all the way up here? Well, he won't be bothering you again. If he tries to eat you, I'll turn the old beast into a tea cozy, how's that?" she crooned lovingly, stifling a small chuckle as she propped the little Bowtruckle as best she could on her should. "But don't think this lets you off the hook! You know I don't like having to save your ass," she scowled, scrunching her nose, and pulling a face in annoyance at the Bowtruckle's antics.
Ptelea responded in kind to her comments by blowing a raspberry.
"The things I do for your love. Look at the lengths I go to for you. Crawling in a disgusting, dusty vent, just to come to save your sorry little twiggy ass. Wotcher, Ptelea. Stay close to me and don't wander off, you walking twig," she scolded, to which her Bowtruckle answered her remarks with what she could only assume was meant to be some kind of rude hand gesture in Bowtruckle. "You are so in for it, mister when we get out of this bloody air vent."
Her first thought as her eyes squinted as they strained forward to see the faint light coming from the other end of the vent that had to lead to the library was that she did not think that her first night in Grimmauld Place would involve her crawling on her elbows and stomach in the bloody house's dusty air shaft.
Tonks breathed a sigh of relief as she could hear Sirius barking orders at Kreacher to get the bloody hell out of the library and not say a damned word.
She gritted her teeth and managed to pry the shaft open with her hands, despite the uncontrollable tremors in her wand hand, and poked her head out.
True to his word, Sirius stood in wait with the step ladder. "Did you find him?" he called up, having to crane his neck to look up to where Tonks was.
Black got his answer a moment later when the little Bowtruckle poked its head out from underneath his usual look of his owner's dark pink hair and waved.
Sirius blinked, momentarily startled, but quickly shook off his astonishment, and for a moment, Tonks's face paled as Sirius looked to the door.
"Merlin's Beard, hurry it up, won't you?" he growled, his gaze flitting from the closed library door and back out into the hallway. "I think they're back."
"Damn," she swore through gritted teeth, and turned around at the waist, trying to ignore the throbbing in her broken ankle, and it itched in this damned boot something terrible, but she had no time to dwell on it now. "Gimme a second, I still need to get down there," she murmured, suddenly feeling lightheaded and dizzy, no doubt a direct result of the dust she'd probably accidentally inhaled while in the air duct. "It's not quite that easy, Black. Lock the door and stall if you have to."
The library Tonks now found herself in was murky, desolate, and quiet. It sent a chill of unease down her spine, and Tonks decided she didn't like it.
Almost too quiet. I would have expected Remus to come running the second he saw I wasn't at the door to greet Harry and him. No doubt he's noticed Sirius and I aren't in the living room anymore and will probably come looking for us. I'd better hurry if I don't want to get Black in trouble, she thought, slowly inching her way down the rungs of the ladder.
No footsteps rang in Tonks's eardrums that were headed their way, so she assumed that for the moment, she and Sirius were safe, and they might actually get away with pulling this little rescue mission of theirs off, which would truly be something of a miracle in it of itself.
"Will you bloody hurry it the hell up, Tonks? I think I hear Remus coming," Sirius snapped, cocking his head to the side to better listen for him, glancing around the darkened library. No candles were lighted and as such, the pitch-blackness cast eerie long shadows all throughout the Black Family's library.
"Why should I hurry, huh, Sirius? Are you scared of the dark? Seriously, Sirius? Shall I bring you a night light to help light your way in the dark?" she teased, and shrugged her shoulders, wincing as a white-hot jolt of pain from her broken ankle almost missed one of the rungs and she slipped.
"I wouldn't want to be up here at night either," Tonks weakly joked, trying to ignore the burning fire in her lungs. "Don't worry, Black, your little secret that you're afraid of the dark is safe with me. My lips are sealed."
Sirius, from his position at the bottom of the egregiously long ladder, rolled his head and shook his head, wiping a stray lock of dark hair out of his eyes.
"Oh, very clever, cousin, but I don't think this is the time to—oh, hell!"
Tonks felt her head whiplash sharply upwards to see what had caught Sirius's attention, for she noticed her cousin had become stock-still, and his ears had perked up like that of a dog's. She could hear it now. A voice, coming closer.
Though it did not necessarily sound like Remus's, either way, the fact that someone was coming closer and closer to the library, and if they were to open the door and discover this unusual scene, both of them would be in trouble.
The rest of the Order would undoubtedly ask questions, and Sirius would get in trouble on her behalf, and that she could simply not allow. She wouldn't.
Bloody hell. She swallowed nervously down past the lump in her throat and did her best to look down towards the floor, a terribly long way down to go.
Tonks was about halfway down the ladder when she heard a sudden squeak across the library. She turned her head in alarm as did Sirius towards the doorway on the other side of the library. "Hurry the bloody hell up, Nymphadora!"
"Don't call me Nymphadora!" Tonks hissed through gritted teeth, and she could feel the stray wisps and strands of her dark pink pixie cut change to crimson.
Though it quickly reverted back to normal when she heard the noise again.
Tonks squinted her eyes towards the door, trying to make out whether anybody else had come in, but the library was, as far as the young witch could tell, was utterly deserted except for herself, Ptelea, and Sirius.
"Keep your bloody shirt on, Black. I have to go slow because of my stupid broken ankle. This—this isn't as easy it would normally be under the circumstances," Tonks snapped through gritted teeth as a swell of hot pain shot up and down her spine. "I just need another minute. I'm coming…"
Sirius scowled in frustration, casting nervous, skittish glances towards the door, and waved his wand at the door, breathing a sigh of relief as he heard the door lock. It wasn't much, but it would buy the pair of them a bit more time.
Though, as Tonks gingerly climbed down another rung of the ladder at a snail's pace, careful to mind her damned blocky black boot to not trip over herself, she could not help but let out a muffled whine of terror at how dizzy she felt.
She bit the inside wall of her cheek as she gingerly lowered her foot clad in the heavy black boot down another rung, and right at the moment, she did so, a brief beam of moonlight fell atop her head, and her two inquisitive gray eyes stared down at Sirius in astonishment as Sirius suddenly felt his throat hollow and constrict all of a sudden as he regarded the pink-haired young witch on the ladder.
Flinching slightly, Tonks furrowed her brows at Sirius's sudden shift in his expression, casting a slightly wary glance over towards the door, thinking that she'd heard the noise again. Turning back towards her cousin, she was surprised to see that the man had paled and was looking as white as a ghost or a bedsheet.
The young Auror looked towards the door again, though it was admittedly difficult considering the place was shrouded in shadow, her delicately arched brows knitted together in quandary. She froze, as she could swear she heard him.
When she turned back to look at Sirius and shook her head to clear her mind of such a thought, she huffed in frustration, as the man was looking like a deer caught in the sights of the Knight Bus, and she could tell the man felt guilty.
But Sirius seemed as though he was a little too dazed and confused and mesmerized by the sudden turn of events his night had taken to be able to so much as form a coherent sentence around this woman, this 'She-Stranger' from Remus's nightmares.
Which was, in Sirius's mind, a little bit ridiculous, because he had always believed himself to be rather charismatic and charming whenever the mood struck him, especially around members of the opposite sex.
He was very rarely tongue-tied, but by Merlin's beard, his best friend did not know how lucky Remus had it if the poor man's nightmares bore any semblance of truth.
He supposed that, in their own way, they did, because Remus had certainly proven to him that the woman from his dreams was very much alive and real.
And she was currently struggling to make her way down the ladder in his parents' library after painstakingly crawling her way through the air vent to retrieve her pet Bowtruckle with a broken ankle, stab wounds that still looked like they were proving to be problematic and causing her a great amount of hurt, her wand hand which suffered nerve damage and as a result of this shook uncontrollably, and her other arm currently sporting a splint and was immobile.
Sirius shook his head in minor disbelief. Who on earth was this woman?
Nymphadora Tonks possessed a certain inner strength that was unlike anything he had ever seen in another witch or wizard before, though if he was being honest with himself, in a small, subtle way, the witch reminded him of Alice, back when Frank and Alice had been inducted in the Order during the First Wizarding War, and it was rumored that, when this one's hair changed color to a dark brown, the likeliness between her and Alice Longbottom was uncanny.
Sirius offered Tonks an awkward little-half smile as his cousin finally noticed that she was being stared at, and she paused, one hand on the rung of the ladder to steady herself as she craned her neck over her shoulder and frowned.
"What?" Tonks demanded hotly, a light pink blush speckling along her cheeks, painting them a pale pink. "What? What? Why—why are you staring at me?" The young pink-haired Auror huffed in frustration and blew a stray strand of her long pink bangs that had gotten in her way and fallen in front of her eyes.
"Because Remus does not know how lucky he is to have a partner like you. And…this might be a bit forward, but... has anyone ever told you that you have a lovely neck, Tonks? It's very long, elongated. It's like a…a sexy goose. Don't bother trying to deny it, cousin. Can't put the truth back into the box," he murmured thoughtfully.
Tonks blinked at Sirius in surprise, her lips parted open in shock, and seeming to struggle to form an apt response to his quip about her neck.
Sirius wasn't sure if his cousin had taken offense to his comment or not, but the moment he heard Tonks let out an adorable sounding little snort through her nose, and her shoulders start to shake, he felt the tension in his shoulders leave him, and he allowed himself to relax.
Sirius smiled warmly, feeling more than a little stupid and off his game as he cautiously approached the end of the ladder, hoping that he wouldn't have to bloody catch her if she fell, and hoping no one walked in.
Her cousin awkwardly shifted her position on the ladder. Her voice matched her outward appearance, given the circumstances.
It was light but had a rather vivid presence.
"So, Lupin is your best friend. What's he like, you know, off-duty, when he's not working for the Order? He strikes me as the type to sit in a corner and brood," she asked casually, her gray eyes alighting with something akin to intrigue and an insatiable curiosity, that Sirius blinked owlishly in surprise at her.
So, she does care for him, then. Dumbledore was right. I'll be damned.
"Oh, about what you would expect. Quiet, reserved, but he opens up to you, in time. I don't think that you will have any problems. I can see why he likes you," Sirius answered airily by way of deflection, thinking that it was not his business to discuss Remus when he wasn't here. If she was truly interested in the man in that way, then it was up to her to approach her partner and learn for herself of Remus's interests by asking her questions directly to the man himself.
Sirius scowled. "Come on, hurry up! You want to know what's happening with Harry, don't you? And I don't fancy Remus catching us in here, do you? Look, if it'll get you down off the bloody ladder faster, then just jump! I'll catch you!"
"But I—I really hate this!" Tonks moaned in protest, trying not to look down. "There are only three things in this life I hate. Crouch, heights, and jumping from them." Tonks frowned, shaking her head in response, and she turned back to the ladder to gingerly step down another rung just as she felt the ladder begin to tip backward.
Hastily clawing at the wall to find something, anything to stop herself and the ladder from falling, she quickly realized it was futile as she grasped at air.
Sirius swore under his breath as without even having to think on it, the man bolted forward to stop the ladder from falling, and although Sirius had succeeded in managing to push the wooden ladder back against its perch on the wall, he quickly realized that, in his haste to do so, he'd failed to consider that the sudden movement would cause his cousin to lose her balance and fall forwards.
Onto him. As Tonks began to scream, Sirius rushed forward, catching his cousin around the waist as she inevitably toppled on top of him, rather clumsily.
The sudden weight caused Sirius to fall backward as he tried in vain to balance himself and not fall to the ground.
Sirius ground his teeth as Black quickly realized the two of them were going to converge with the wall behind Tonks, and Sirius hastily moved to his side so he would get the brunt of the impact and stop his already injured cousin from slamming her body wholly against the wall.
Sirius winced and groaned as he felt the back of his head hit against the corner of the wooden writing desk that he fell back against and inwardly cursed whoever had bloody invented the damned thing who'd created such a wretched table with its ridiculous twists and uneven surfaces, and something wet formed at the base of his skull and Black flinched, thinking he'd have a good size knot there.
One had to excuse Sirius for his lack of grace and edict, considering he'd spent the last twelve years of his life locked away in Azkaban Prison with limited mobility, and he'd never exactly, not even with his best friends and all that they got up to during their time at Hogwarts, had never found himself in the position of having to catch someone, much less his own cousin, so he got a pass for this.
"Ow, Merlin's beard, that hurt," Tonks groaned, her eyes clenched shut, her pretty face twisted into a rather pained-looking grimace as she rested her head back against the wooden floorboards of Sirius's mum's library. "You all right?"
Sirius nodded, blinking rapidly as he dared to open his eyes and saw nothing but concern ridden in those glistening gray orbs like the steel of his cousin's.
"I think I should be the one asking you that. Are you all right, Tonks? Can you sit up? Holy Merlin's beard, that hurts. Is anything broken?" Sirius gasped out, not realizing that he might be crushing his poor cousin with his body weight, and he realized that in his haste to attempt to keep his cousin from re-injuring herself even more than she already was, his right hand accidentally rested just above her right breast. Not wanting to make this any worse than it already was, he quickly withdrew his hand as though the very gesture had burned his skin.
Sirius drew in a sharp breath, not wanting to get up just yet until he could discern for himself if his cousin had any broken bones, never mind that this was a rather unsavory and precarious position for the pair of them to be in, and would likely bode ill for the pair of them if someone were to walk in and discover this, but it did not deter him from remaining exactly where he was, and he made no move to get up, though he and his cousin were a mess of tangled legs and limbs.
It looked bad. Sirius bit the inside wall of his cheek as the heat crept to his cheeks, and he heard himself ask his cousin again if Tonks was all right and hurt.
"I—I'm fine," Tonks replied airily, opening her eyes blearily and struggling to focus her haze vision, clouded with black dots dancing and swirling in her line of sight from when she'd hit her head on the floor during the fall. "But are you, Black?" Tonks asked, concern and worry laced through her soft voice.
"Yes," croaked out Sirius, even as his head began to throb and pound horribly, and he clenched his eyes tightly shut as a brief swell of nausea wracked his body. "But it's you that I'm worried about. Your—your injuries. Are you hurt, Tonks?"
"I'm fine. But you are kind of heavy and kind of crushing my side, so if you can just get off of me and untangle yourself, then I'll be better. And I'm so sorry," Tonks sighed, her voice rising an octave the more upset she got. "This was all my fault. What a stupid plan," she growled through gritted teeth. "I'm just a stupid girl with stupid ideas who never learns! I—I must have squashed you, Sirius!" she groaned and attempted wiggle her way out from underneath Sirius's weight, which had effectively trapped her on the floor.
Tonks visibly flinched as she watched her cousin gingerly clutch and rub at his shoulder, Sirius wincing as it throbbed and ached with the pain from the fall.
Though despite this, her cousin quickly put on a brave face and smiled grimly at the nervous young Auror who was now unceremoniously on top of.
The last thing Sirius wanted was for his cousin and Remus's partner to think that it was her fault, or that he blamed her for what happened just now, which could not have been further from the truth. "Don't say that. You aren't stupid, Tonks, far from it. It was an accident. A close one, yes, but an accident."
After a moment of simply staring up at Sirius from her spot on the hard floor with what must have been the roundest gray eyes that Black had ever seen, the young witch replied that yes, she was all right, and she couldn't thank him enough for catching the worst of her fall and bearing the brunt of the full impact.
Before he could even so much as getting a word in edgewise, Tonks began to stammer and apologize repeatedly for her clumsiness, and Sirius quickly cut her off. "This isn't necessary, Tonks. It was an accident. Please don't feel like this was your fault. What matters is you're not hurt, I hope, and that you need to—"
But Sirius's sentence was promptly cut off as the library's door flung wide open and startled the pair of cousins, and, with great effort on both their parts, blearily lifted their head and tried to untangle their entwined limbs from each other.
"Oh, damn. It's him, Sirius," Tonks breathed, her eyes wide and round as the pair of cousins regarded Remus, who was standing in the doorway, his wand drawn in his wand hand, and he'd managed to conjure a small ball of flame in the other to provide a small burst of light and warmth into the otherwise cold, dark, and dank library. "We're screwed," she cried.
Tonks shivered, but not with the cold of the room, as she felt Sirius immediately pull himself up off of her, and she could see Lupin looming over her as he wordlessly held out her hand and without even waiting for Tonks to ask, his hand gripped onto her forearm, his towering shadow casting a large shadow from her perch on the floor. Rather, she shivered because of how angered he looked. The look of unbridled rage on his pale face sent Tonks's spine weak.
Lupin's gaze drifted down to the floor, where Sirius still lay on top of Tonks, his right hand hovering just near her breast, the pads of his fingertips accidentally grazing the skin of her slightly sticking out, prominent collarbones, and the man seethed, a muscle in his jaw twitched and behind the man's right eyelid as well.
"What the hell is going on here?" Lupin snarled, baring his teeth as his eyes narrowed until they were mere slits as he looked at Tonks and Sirius. "Someone want to explain this to me? Why was the door locked? And why are the lights out?"
And then his head slowly inclined as his head swiveled slightly to the right to regard Tonks in silence. Antagonizing hurt. His light brown eyes boring through her.
Tonks swallowed nervously and stepped forward. "It's—it's not what it looks like Remus, I—I fell, and Sirius managed to catch my fall. I can promise you, Lupin, n—nothing happened," Tonks whispered quickly, surprised at how meek and hoarse her voice sounded. Strange.
She furrowed her brows into a frown as she could have sworn that she heard Lupin growl a little. Tonks internally screamed, knowing that by this point, it was fruitless to try to reach the werewolf, for her words were as good as the wind.
Though there was no denying that what her partner had walked in on was a very peculiar scene indeed, and it did look bad, with Sirius on top of her, one of his hands hovering unceremoniously near her breast as he tried to steady himself.
Her gaze briefly flitted away from Lupin's outraged face, as his arm clutched tightly onto Tonks's, though when he followed her gaze and saw that she had locked eyes with Sirius, then his grip upon her arm loosened slightly and he stepped forward.
"Sirius," Tonks started to say as Remus silently pulled her to her feet, and she had no chance to react as one of Lupin's arm shot out in front of her, preventing her from taking another step forward to try to reach her cousin.
Tonks let out a muffled squeak as Remus strode towards Sirius, who was promptly backing away from his best friend, having no doubt seen the look of anger and shock on his slightly withdrawn and sullen best friend's lined face.
Sirius shot Tonks a brief look, and upon seeing her shoot him a slightly pleading look, he gave a curt shake of his head, as if to say, Let me deal with Remus, and winked. For whatever reason, one that was foreign to Tonks, Sirius did not seem put off nor even remotely surprised by Remus's sudden violent behavior.
In fact, if Tonks wasn't mistaken, he almost...looked like he was...enjoying it.
Tonks returned the gesture and silently pleaded with her cousin as Lupin rapidly advanced on his best friend, effectively backing Sirius into a corner, near one of the bookshelves, for Black to allow her to deal with Remus's temper.
But Sirius again shook his head curtly and locked his jaw in anger. No.
Tonks swallowed down hard past the lump in her throat as Remus approached Sirius and did not stop until Sirius's back was literally pressed against the faded flowering wallpaper, and this time, Remus did not restrain himself.
A cry of rage escaped his lips and Remus curled his left hand that was cupping the small orange and yellow flickering ball of flame currently, into a tight fist, tight enough that his nails pierced the skin of his palm and he slammed his fist into the wall, just below Sirius's right earlobe and would have singed the skin had Sirius not jolted his head to the left at the last possible second.
Tonks let out a muffled squeak and jumped at the sudden violent reaction of her partner, though she did not know what to say or do in this regard to quell his wrath.
Remus very narrowly missed his best friend's ear, and as a result, thanks to the ball of flame he'd been holding, left a thick, black, scorch mark on the wall in its wake.
Permanent. Tonks gingerly crept forward and tugged on Remus's sleeve of his tattered brown jacket and swallowed hard again as she lifted her head slightly to better look her new partner in the man's kind light brown eyes.
Though right now, Lupin's eyes were anything but kind. His open, wide eyes reflected everything in this library all at once, and yet saw nothing at all.
Behind the man's glistening brown orbs as they darkened in color, and Tonks heard the low rumbling of a low, threatening warning growl emerge from deep within the confines of the man's chest, was something more intense than normal thought, and his clenched two-day jaw stubble was not a good sign at all.
Tonks had been hoping to get through her surprise rescue mission of little Ptelea without any incident.
Actually, she wasn't entirely sure what she had been hoping for. Definitely not to get caught, and she certainly didn't think she would.
But now that they had, her and Sirius, who had gone with her plan against his better judgment, and in a rather compromising and admittedly suggestive position to boot, the best that Tonks could hope for was not outright forgiveness. But the beginnings of a tentative understanding between her and Remus.
Now, however, Tonks simply hoped that Lupin would let Sirius go from this confrontation without giving Remus a reason to hate her as his partner even more, but she knew that as she looked into Remus's brown eyes burning bright with anger, those orbs of his holding total anger, that it wounded her. It hurt her.
The way his darkened eyes squinted when Tonks gingerly stepped in between Remus and Sirius in an attempt to quell the worst of the man's anger, and glowered at Remus, reminded the young Auror of a pit viper's slit pupils.
She gulped nervously. A burning, fiery animosity was developing in those brown eyes of his, and Tonks could tell that she was likely the root cause of the problem, of Remus's unbridled rage towards what he had walked in on just now.
And if, judging by the furious look in his eyes, Tonks was about to find herself and Sirius in a spot of trouble that she wasn't quite sure she would get out of.
Very. Deep. Trouble.