Remus stood up and stretched, something cracking very loudly. That sounded very painful. However, he sighed in relief.
"Ah, that felt good."
Sirius shot a grin at him.
"Those old bones of yours complaining, Moony?"
"Like you're any different, Padfoot."
Sirius stuck his tongue out at him but didn't deny it. Actually, Sirius was even more creaky (if that was a thing) than any of us and we all knew the reason why so we weren't going to bring it up. No. No way. That was a subject that was not to be touched.
However, teasing was certainly not out of the question. Especially since I had something over them for a change.
"You two are such old men," I teased.
That got me identical outraged looks from them.
"I'll have you know that I'm in the prime of my life," Sirius said with a sniff and struck a pose, flexing his muscles. "See?"
Remus put his hand over his face in exasperation and I giggled. He pouted at us.
"Yes, so not old and creaky," I responded, trying to keep a straight face. "All systems working perfectly, huh?"
"Just you wait, Tonks," Sirius playfully warned me, wagging a finger in my face. "In a few years you'll be just the same."
"Nuh uh," I denied, shaking my head. "I'm going to be supple and flexible. No creaking or cracking is going to come from me."
Neither of them looked like they believed me. Hmpf. Hey, I was as healthy as could be. My body was not going to betray me by stiffening up. Nope, no way. I was going to stay supple and flexible forever.
On that note, I supposed I better get up as well. We needed to eat and then I had to get to bed so Robards wasn't breathing down my neck at work. I uncurled myself and stood up. Or, I tried to. As soon as I put weight on my feet, I belatedly realised that my legs had fallen asleep. So, of course, I ended up on the floor. We really needed to keep a running total of how many times it happened. Actually, no. It was probably an embarrassingly high number.
"Are you okay?" Remus asked as he pulled me to his feet.
"Wow! You didn't catch her this time!" Sirius teased, making both of us blush.
"It's not Remus' job to catch me," I told him.
Sirius raised an eyebrow. "Moony has certainly made it so."
"Shut up, Padfoot."
Inexplicably, that made Sirius smirk. But a lot of things made Sirius smirk so I just ignored it in favour of the feel Remus' hand in mine that still hadn't let go.
Of course, he realised this at the same time as me and dropped my hand, his whole demeanour awkward.
He coughed and asked again, "Are you okay?"
"Huh? Oh yeah. I'm fine. Legs fell asleep."
And now they were tingling with the feel of a thousand tiny pin pricks. I rubbed at them to try and get normal feeling back into them. I hated it when this happened.
"Now who's old?" Sirius demanded.
"Restricted blood flow is not the same as creaking joints."
"If you sat normally that wouldn't happen to you," Remus told me.
"I sit normally!"
"Your legs were somehow tucked up under you in a way your feet were sticking out at an odd angle. That is definitely not sitting normally."
The only good response to that was to pull a face at him, wasn't it?
"Children, I'm surrounded by children."
That got me and Sirius chuckling at him, which he so really didn't appreciate. Not that he could stop us, though he did dramatically roll his eyes. One of these days they were going to pop out or something if he wasn't careful.
Something I wished I could do with my feet at the moment, as weird as that sounded but I really hated the feeling of pins and needles. I couldn't even morph the feeling away - didn't know enough about blood vessels to dare to try and do something like that.
Remus checked his watch and his eyes widened. "Wow, it's later than I thought."
I instinctively (for some reason) looked outside and noticed that it was starting to get dark, which meant it had to be after seven. My stomach rumbled which meant it was definitely past dinner time. Why it was always rumbling stomachs that indicated that we'd missed a meal, I didn't know. We really should be more aware of the time and our surroundings, my stories weren't that interesting.
"Food?" I hopefully suggested.
It wasn't like I was going to be the one cooking it. Hopefully not anyway, unless they all wanted something unidentifiable and burnt.
"Food," Sirius agreed and Remus and I tried not to look at him in surprise.
"I bought a carton of eggs the last time I went out," Remus suggested. "How about scrambled eggs on toast?"
"And bacon?" Sirius asked. "I could do with bacon."
Oh, that was a good idea.
It turns out that we didn't have bacon in the fridge. Not any that was identifiably bacon anyway. The greenish-grey slab of meat might have been bacon once upon a time but it definitely wasn't any more. Huh, that was odd. No one in this house was the type to waste good bacon.
Anyway, you can't mention bacon and not crave it so I volunteered myself to go and get it from the local corner shop (that, yes, inexplicably carried bacon and sausage rolls).
So that's what I got - the bacon and the sausage rolls because I was thinking of breakfast as well. Soon we were all tucking into scrambled eggs and bacon and arguing about the best way to make them. I liked them dry but Sirius, inexplicably, liked them wet. Yuck.
"You just have inferior taste buds." I was told.
I certainly didn't have inferior aim. Not when I was throwing bread anyway.
