Tonks sighed heavily and scuffed her feet along the curb. They just got her a muddy streak across her shoes. Fantastic. The weather matched her mood; grey and listless. With a very good opportunity for rain like the previous few days. Honestly, Scottish weather sucked. She'd forgotten how long it took for the warm weather to creep in. Or even hint at it. Why did Hogwarts and Hogsmeade have to be so far North? She was sure there were other areas of the United Kingdom that they could easily make unplottable. Somewhere warmer.
"Hi, Auror Tonks!"
"Good morning, Auror Tonks."
Tonks raised a hand in greeting to the familiar mother-daughter pair. They went to the shops at the same time each day so the morning patrol were very familiar with them. They were one of the few that actually smiled at them - most villagers viewing them with disdain or suspicion.
Not these two, they were always pleasant and genuinely happy to see them. Especially they daughter, Maisie. She had declared that she wanted to be an "Auror just like you Auror Tonks!" while giving Tonks a hug. Which had been nice. And heart-warming, they needed more girls on the force to balance out the testosterone.
It gave her a warm feeling in her gut to have some positive interactions with people. That was literally the first sort-of emotion she'd had in days. Which wasn't great but that's how life was at the moment. She just felt... empty these days. Like she was just making the motions but not really living them if that made any sense at all. It felt weird, like she wasn't in her own body. Not a nice feeling at all actually. But none of these recent times were particularly nice, were they? What with all the death, torture and destruction going on in the world. And that was just the stuff being reported. What was being swept under the covers was worse, if that was even possible. Which, of course, it was. Depressingly so. Which was not helping.
That was another thing, things being kept for the public. She knew that in some cases it was for security reasons, which made sense. It was dangerous to let people know details of ongoing operations. It put lives at risk and that was never a good thing, obviously. You couldn't have transparency in cases like that and she was all for it. Especially if it kept people alive. There was far too much death going on at the moment.
But things were also being kept from the public just not to cause panic. Which was stupid because everyone knew the Ministry was holding things back which didn't make moral good at all. People would panic no matter what. People were panicking no matter what. They literally couldn't lose if they just gave people information. Information people needed to keep themselves sane. There was no way she was the only person who had anxiety over this whole situation.
And then there were the cases that the Ministry covered up just because it made them look bad. The instances where they didn't get there in time or they effed something up. Because that's what the Ministry of Magic did.
"Urgh!"
She kicked at a rock in frustration and completely missed it. Typical. Just typical. It earned her a few wary looks from the people walking by but she ignored them. She was getting good at that these days. Wary looks, curious stares, concerned glances, she could ignore them all. It would be paired nicely with a don't care attitude to completely throw people off but she couldn't muster up the energy or the ability to care to do it. So, she just ended up looking sulky and skittish. Hey, people still left her alone so she couldn't complain too much.
It was better to save all her complaints for work. Or rather, Ministerial Incompetence, as mentioned above. Because that really was getting ridiculous and therefore deserving of her complaints. Merlin, that sounded posh. Tonks shook her head. She had been reading too many official reports and not enough light-hearted stuff. Not that she had done a lot of that in the first place, much to Remus' disgust.
No. She wasn't going there. She had been doing so well. Hadn't been thinking of him at all. Hadn't even had to think about not thinking of him. Why did she have to think about reading? That was a sure-fire way of thinking about him. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Tonks just about stopped herself from smacking herself on the forehead. Her palm had literally been millimetres from it, which earned her a set of weird looks from the group of people that just walked by. Why were there always people around when you did something embarrassing?
It started to rain. Or more like pathetically drizzle. The type that felt like you were barely getting wet but as soon as you went inside you discovered you were drenched. For some reason, Auror robes did not repel it, so you ended up with increasingly heavy, saturated material that literally dragged along the ground. Well, they did if you were as short as she was. Even in these boots. She couldn't wear her normal ones (the ones that gave her a lovely three inches in height) because, she found out the hard way, they gave her no grip on slippy cobblestones whatsoever. That's what she got for not forking over money for her usual ones and just buying the cheap ones because they "looked cool". What was she, a teenager? She should really know by now that it was quality over appearance. And her usual boots weren't that much more expensive really.
Anyway, back to her issues with cobblestones. The reason why she was, horror of horrors, wearing flat boots. It was horrible. She hated being short.
She could just hear Moody complain about her footwear now. She had got such a scolding one time at the beginning of Training for her platform boots. Moody almost made her do that day barefoot but thankfully another instructor intervened. Not that he had appreciated that and had really put her through her paces because of it. Eh, he had had a point back then and would have a point now. She just needed some time off to go get her boots.
Ha. Time off. What a concept. Except for that brief half day she'd had with Kingsley, no one had had a proper day off in weeks (her stint in hospital and resulting convalescence didn't count). And it was starting to show. But noooo, they had to up the number of patrols they were doing in the second safest area of the Wizarding World (the first being Hogwarts, duh) so that they were doing that pointless looking like the Ministry were doing something. Tonks scoffed. Something stupid alright.
All they were doing was causing an increase in irritability and a decrease in their ability to ignore aforementioned irritations. Currently, they were all just ignoring each other in the flat just so they could stay sane. It wasn't really helping. They were just all sick, sore and tired of this whole situation. Not just her. Everyone. How could it feel like the days were going by so slowly yet she couldn't remember the month of February happening?
