"The only impossible journey is the one you never begin" - Tony Robbins.
Nymphadora Tonks sucked in a deep breath, trying to quell the butterflies in her stomach that had been growing ever more persistent with each passing hour. Now that her workday had come to an end, the anticipation was close to unbearable and in her distracted state she almost walked right into a dustbin as she ducked into an empty alleyway, away from the prying eyes of muggle commuters. Wanting to look her best for all the new acquaintances she was about to meet, she scrunched up her face and concentrated on returning her hair to her favourite bubble-gum pink, she'd experimented with a more discrete midnight blue today but hadn't got the shade quite right. She took a moment to lean against the wall and compose herself as best she could, she still couldn't quite believe that this was happening, but she knew that tonight her life was about to change for good. She couldn't help but grin to herself, her whole life she'd been waiting to do something meaningful, she had thought that meaningful thing would be for the Ministry but doing it behind their back only made it more invigorating. And with that thought she stood up straight, turned on the spot and disappeared with a faint pop, reappearing seconds later on a residential road in a much wealthier part of London.
When she regained her footing, she wasted no time in looking around for her old mentor, "Mad-Eye" she whispered, squinting in the semi darkness before mentally scolding herself for assuming the paranoid old bugger would remain exposed while he waited. "It's me!" she announced to the seemingly empty street, screwing up her face to change her hair to green then purple then back to pink, to prove that she was who she said she was.
A hand grabbed her upper arm from behind, "Alright girl, careful will you" came the familiar gruff bark of Mad-Eye Moody. She swivelled round and fixed him a bright sunny grin, receiving just a grunt of acknowledgement in return. His less than warm manner had never been off putting to her, if anything she found it endearing. He was different, and she liked different.
Without another word he set off down the road and she followed with her characteristic bouncy strides. Of course she wasn't a complete fool, she did know how dangerous her life was about to become. She really was risking everything by joining Mad-Eye tonight. But the whole world was in danger now, burying her head in the sand wouldn't change that as much as Fudge may like to think so. And what kind of Auror would she be if she simply stood by and did nothing whilst dark wizards threatened the peace of the entire wizarding population?
The street, Grimauld Place, was lined with old but expensive looking town houses, she surveyed her surroundings with keen interest and a perceptiveness that could only come from 3 years of intense Auror training. When they reached house number 11 Mad-Eye stopped suddenly and Tonks realised that the next house after this was number 11.
"You memorised that note Kingsley showed you?" Mad-Eye asked and she nodded sharply, suddenly serious and alert, her eyes displaying a fierceness that hadn't been there just moments previously.
It often came as a shock to her colleagues in the Auror department, how swiftly she morphed from a bubbly, fun loving 22-year-old into this focussed, highly trained Auror, ready for any unexpected danger to befall her. But then again, she was a Metamorphmagus. Perhaps a lifetime of effortlessly transforming her appearance at will had made it easier to switch her mindset accordingly as well. Either way, it was this fight that Mad-Eye had seen in her during her first weeks of Auror training which had impressed him enough that he requested to train her personally. She hadn't been oblivious to the opinions of the other trainee Aurors that she was too young, too clumsy, too female to ever be a good Auror. But their short sightedness had only driven her to work harder and longer until she eventually graduated top of her cohort and no one could ever say she wasn't good at her job.
Together, the 2 stared meaningfully at the wall between number 11 and 13 and under their expectant gaze, the wall magically began to split into two walls, moving apart slowly until they revealed another grand town house nestled between them.
The serpent shaped knocker of number 12 was rusting heavily and the black paint was peeling off the door. Tonks had to admit, it was not at all what she had pictured the Order of the Phoenix headquarters to look like, but she supposed that made it ideal.
Mad-Eye showed her how to get through the security enchantments and the heavy door swung open, creaking spectacularly as it did so.
Tonks stepped inside and stared around the dimly lit hall with wide eyes as she drank it all in. The sight was truly harrowing, decapitated House Elf heads hung all along one wall, whilst the other wall displayed dusty gold frames which housed portraits of formidable looking wizards that sneered at her as she passed.
She opened her mouth to communicate her surprise at her surroundings, but at that moment her shin collided rather painfully and loudly with something hard and heavy. Her yelp of surprise was occluded by the racket that followed.
"FILTHY BLOOD TRAITORS! MUDBLOODS! HOW DARE THEY SET FOOT IN THE NOBLE HOUSE OF BLACK!"
Tonks started, whacking her shin again, but the pain to her eardrums far exceeded the stinging sensation that ricocheted up her leg. In her shock it took her a moment to register the filthy language that was reverberating through the hall at a deafening frequency. If the serpent door knocker and house elf heads hadn't seemed out of place, the foul insults were certainly the last thing she'd expected to hear tonight.
She held out her hands to steady herself as a figure brushed past her and raced towards the largest portrait which hung in the centre of the hall and only then did Tonks realise that the woman in the portrait was the source of the yelling.
"Oh shut UP!" the man who had brushed past her had stopped at the woman's portrait and was struggling to pull some curtains over her. Finally he succeeded and the wails were muffled, allowing Tonks the chance to take in the man who now stood before her.
He was gaunt with pale skin and a mane of dark hair, he looked in dire need of a hot meal and a hair cut yet his face bore unmistakable signs that it was once handsome. She would recognise that face anywhere, there had been pictures of him plastered around the Auror office for 2 years now.
"You have to be quiet in the hall!" he whispered harshly as he leant against the wall to gather his breath after his battle with the curtains, "she doesn't like being woken up my mother."
She opened her mouth to speak but the man promptly held a finger to his lips, gesturing for her to be quiet, before leading her and Mad-Eye further down the hall. She sidestepped the object that she'd already walked into twice, an umbrella stand which looked suspiciously like a troll leg, and followed the man down some steps into a fairly large kitchen which was equally as dismal as the entrance hall.
"You don't recognise me, do you?" she asked the man as he closed the door behind her. Only now did he turn and make eye contact with her, frowning in confusion as he took in her appearance. She laughed and screwed up her face, focussing on changing her hair through a spectrum of vibrant colours, not noticing the attention she was drawing to herself from the other occupants of the room.
Sirius's jaw dropped. "It can't be little Nymphadora Tonks!"
She let her hair turn back to its normal bubble-gum pink before fixing him with a steely glare. "It's just Tonks now" she informed him, "I ditched that awful first name the second I started Hogwarts"
He stared at her in disbelief for a second longer and she grinned confidently back at him before he threw his head back, letting out a roaring laugh and grabbing her into a bone crushing embrace, knocking her off balance once again.
"I can't believe it's you!" he said still chuckling, and she noticed how much less intimidating he looked when he was smiling. "What are you doing here? Aren't you about 5?"
"Aren't you a mass murderer?" she teased, earning her a jab to the ribs from her long-lost cousin which made her wonder whether she had broken her own record for how many times one could lose their footing in the space of a few short minutes.
Remus couldn't sit down, he was too thoroughly absorbed in his memories from last time. How young and passionate they had been, how sure they had been that they could defeat the darkest wizard of all time though they were barely out of Hogwarts. How quickly their grand image of themselves as revolutionaries and been lost in the grief of loss followed by loss followed by more loss until it felt that even if they did win it wouldn't matter because nothing would ever be the same again. And it hadn't been. Familiar faces surrounded him now, though aged by 15 years. It was starting again, and he really wasn't sure whether he had it in him to go through it all a second time.
But he had been young back then, surrounded by friends and with his whole life ahead of him, he'd had so much to lose. These days he could count on one hand the people that really mattered to him. Perhaps the hard shell of solitariness and cynicism he had cocooned himself in these past years would be enough to keep him going until the war was won or he died trying.
The consensus amongst the old hats was that things were different this time around. They better understood what they were up against and they had a head start. The Death Eaters had reduced in numbers, but so had the Order. There was no Marlene, no Frank and Alice, no Benjy, no Gideon and Fabian, no Peter (he thought with a surge of bitterness) and no James and Lily.
Remus looked around the kitchen, which had slowly started to fill up. Molly and Arthur Weasley with their oldest sons Bill and Charlie. Remus had taught all the younger Weasleys but had never met these 2, they were warm friendly people who didn't seem like they should be fighting in a war. Kingsley Shacklebolt, looking ever calm, competent and collected. Dedalus Diggle was speaking with Hestia Jones and Minerva McGonagall. How many more would they lose?
Yet amid the moroseness of his current musings, he couldn't deny that this last week reunited with Sirius had been a privilege he had never thought possible. The loss of Sirius all those years ago had been a wound that was impossible to heal, there had been no closure, just the constant inner conflict as Remus obsessed over every interaction he'd ever had with Sirius, desperately searching for some clue he had missed as to what the man would become. The horror, the disbelief, the unquenchable anger had almost been Remus's undoing. It had been 14 years, and he'd been no closer to achieving any sort of inner peace when his world had been turned upside down once more as he learned of Sirius's innocence. He'd been so close to getting his old friend back only to have him ripped away once more as Sirius was forced once more into a life on the run. They'd lost 15 long years, it would take time for them to get past that, but now at least they were able to make a start on repairing the damage that the years of mistrust had done to them. The injustice of it all overwhelmed Remus at times, but he had long learnt by now that injustice was the cornerstone on which their civilization had been built.
Remus winced at the sound of a loud bang from the hall above him which was followed, for the third time today, by the hair-raising wails of Sirius's mother. Sirius groaned and ran out to put an end to the abuses that could be heard throughout the entire house and when he returned Remus couldn't help but do a double take. Sirius was accompanied by a very striking young witch, with vibrant pink hair which couldn't have looked more out of place in this sombre setting. Her large eyes were alight with a youthful enthusiasm and she was grinning as though she'd arrived at a party, not an underground association plotting to take down the most dangerous dark wizard of all time. And then, Remus watched on in disbelief as she screwed up her pale, heart shaped face and in the blink of an eye her cropped locks were no longer pink, but an equally bright shade of orange, then blue, then yellow, then red and back to pink all in a matter of seconds.
Having been so fascinated by her colourfulness, it was a second before Remus even realised that Sirius was steering the witch over to the corner where Remus stood. She strode over with an impressive boldness, still looking as though she hadn't really realised where she was as she chatted animatedly to the convicted mass murder without any reservations whatsoever. It was a strange sight, Remus almost laughed.
"Remus" Sirius boomed as they reached his corner of the kitchen, "meet my little cousin, Nymphadora-"
"-Tonks" she but in, holding out a hand to shake his, "it's just Tonks."
Remus smiled and grasped her hand briefly, "nice to meet you just Tonks"
She grinned at him in the most charming way, her smile seemed to light up the room just as much as her hair did and her large dark eyes sparkled with an undeniable warmth.
"Nymphadora" Sirius began and her head snapped around towards him, eyes narrowed "ok, ok" Sirius held his hands up grinning, "Tonks, meet my oldest friend, Remus Lupin."
"So you two are cousins..?" Remus asked, his knowledge of the Black family tree was rusty after years apart from his friend.
"Once removed" Tonks chimed, "but don't worry if you can't see the family resemblance, I bet he didn't tell you that his hair is naturally pink"
Sirius rolled his eyes fondly, "her mum is Andromeda, do you remember she was disowned for marrying a muggle born?"
Remus nodded slowly, he thought it rang a dim bell and now was trying to remember whether this made her the niece of Bellatrix Lestrange. He didn't ask, assuming that if she was the Death Eater's niece, he wouldn't particularly like to be reminded of the fact.
"So you still haven't told me how you ended up here, Tonks?" Sirius asked before thumping her on the back as he realised, "hang on, you arrived with old Mad-Eye! No way are you their shiny new Auror they were talking about?!"
She laughed, "I don't know about shiny but yep I guess that would be me!"
"But you must barely be out of Hogwarts?" Sirius gawked at her.
"I started training straight out of school" she said, beaming with pride, "qualified last year"
"Impressive" Remus commented, earning another bright grin from the young witch and Remus rather felt he'd quite like to keep saying things that made her grin like that. There was something about her cheery presence that warmed the room like no warming charm ever could and as she gleefully embarked on tales of Mad-Eye's rigorous training programme, complete with impressions and morphs to aid her story telling, Remus found himself laughing along with her, all depressing thoughts of the trials that lay ahead of him completely put aside.
