Real
Nymphadora Tonks stares in the mirror and she wishes that she could take a vacation from herself.
She's made an art of her own unique abilities. This nose with that hair and this lip shape with those kinds of eyes. She can be just about anyone she chooses to be and she can remodel and remake herself should the image she see not please her. If she so chose, Nymphadora Tonks would never have to have a bad hair day or sagging boobs. Forget crows' feet and the blotchy skin of old age. She can be forever young if she so chooses.
She's happy with the way she can shape her body and she's happy with the opportunities that it's given her. Really.
She thinks that if she changes her face just one more time, then no one will notice. She hopes that if she makes a joke out of her own ability to switch noses like she was switching socks then no one will see. If she shocks them long enough with the fast and varied array of colors in her hair then maybe they'll be too otherwise occupied to take a closer look.
She looks in the mirror now, and her own face stares straight back at her. Not someone else's face, not someone else's nose, not someone else's hair or lips. Just hers and hers alone. She used to think that if she changed them around enough she could make someone else's face her own. She used to think that if she kept the endless stream of masks flitting over her face that she'd find one that finally fit.
But none of the masks are really hers to call her own, except for this one. This face is the one that she hides behind everyone else's.
This is the real Nymphadora Tonks. This is the knob-kneed girl who never felt as if she belonged. This is the halfblood who is both a disgrace to the family and a freak of nature. This is the girl who trips over every obstacle, real or imagined, and has to pick herself up each time.
She's tried on every face under the sun and been a chameleon in her own skin, but this lost and uncertain girl is always the face that comes back to haunt her and that shows up in her mirror.
The real Nymphadora Tonks is someone she doesn't wish to share with anyone. She wishes she could displace her personality along with her skin, but even she isn't that much of a freak.
But she is just enough of a freak to know that she doesn't belong. That she never has. That she's always been a part of two very different worlds with very different priorities and that the real Nymphadora Tonks is neither witch nor muggle. She keeps trying on faces with the hopes that one day she'll find a face that will give her that acceptance she's wished for her entire life. She keeps trying on faces, hoping against hope that she'll stumble across one that lets her slide easily into one of the worlds she straddles.
And each time she thinks she's close, she looks in the mirror and realizes all over again that it's hopeless.
And each time she wishes that she could take a vacation from being herself and all of the false faces she wears.