Nymphadora Tonks. Metaphormagus. Demon-slayer extraordinaire. Mother, wife, widow, lover, spy. She had a lot of names, and an equal number of faces. Deep down inside she was a fighter. A rebel. Greatly feared among the enemy forces, second only to her commander, Harry James Potter.
He'd swooped down from the burning towers of Hogwarts during the battle, singlehandedly cutting down every foe in sight. Saving her life, but leaving Bellatrix unharmed, so she could avenge her family. It was a night she could never forget. It was etched in her mind, one of two memories that would haunt her for life. She thanked him for it, but would also curse him for it.
That night she'd avenged her mother and father. And she'd enjoyed every second of it. She'd had madness fueling her vengeance, had it thrumming through her veins as she flayed and cut and burnt her aunt till she was less than a hump of smoking flesh. Later, she would feel unclean, but not guilty. Not an ounce of guilt for the murderer who'd done the same to her father, while her mother, the poor soul, had been made to watch.
After that she only remembered Harry's vacant eyes, being scooped up in his arms, and the weight of apparition before she had passed out.
The years that followed were a roller-coaster ride of war, bloodshed, a little madness, and of loss and pain. Watching friends and family being cut down in front of you, waiting on someone late at night, not knowing you'd never see them again, training to become a killing machine, and when potions became scarce, switching to muggle painkillers and finding that they numbed all kinds of pain and not just the physical ones you got from battle.
That was her life.
Well, that used to be her life, until her headlong fall back in time. Now, clutching her Hogwarts letter, she was snogging the hell out of Harry Potter.
"Ready to go?" she moaned into his mouth.
"Ready if you are," He told her while pulling off her t-shirt.
"Hmm." She moved back a step, grinning at his distress. "Well, since you ruined my dress, maybe I should take a shower."
"In that case, maybe I should help you."
"Maybe you should. Maybe you should." She made a show of thinking and tapping her chin. Then, twirling around, she swung her top off and ran to the shower, "First one there gets a foot-rub!"
Laughing, Harry raced after her, laughing harder when she tripped on the carpet and fell on her bum. "Ouch."
It was a week after their arrival, and things were looking good so far. Apparently, Harry's counterpart had died in a fire that'd broken out at Number 4, Private drive during the night, four years past. A fire so strong that it had exploded in a mushroom cloud. Muggle authorities had brushed it off as a catastrophic gas explosion, likely due to the liberal use of memory charms, while tales of bug-eyed aliens and laser beams from the sky ran rampant among the local conspiracy theorists.
After Sirius had told him everything he knew, Harry had gone down to the familiar street to look at it with his own eyes. What remained was charred gutted earth and a blanket of magic over the property that reeked of the deep dark. Harry Potter was not a racist in any way, shape, or form. He was a practitioner of all forms of magic, dark, light, ever-green, vibgyor. If death had her way, she'd have him calling up and doing tangos with the undead in no time. But there were boundaries that no sane person would cross. And this smelled like something from way beyond that horizon. Rotten.
He heard footsteps behind him.
"Harry? Is that you?"
He turned around to look at the wizened old wrinkled face that'd graced (or disgraced) every punching bag that he'd ever mashed to pulp. The mastermind, chess-master, the brains-behind-his-pains. He looked as old as ever, but without the frailty that old age should bring. He stood tall enough to withstand an imaginary hurricane, but seemed gentle enough to pluck a flower without its petals bruising. Such was Dumbledore's charm. Personally, Harry knew that most of it, if not all of it, was an act.
He had a very personal bone to pick with him. But that's a tale for another night. As Sirius would say, over a bottle full of firewhiskey and a bed full of pussy.
"Am I supposed to know you, Mr. ...?" He asked, shifting his gaze back to his ravaged childhood house.
"I did not expect you to know me," he shifted his spectacles, looking at him from his great height. "But I wouldn't have been surprised if you did."
"Are you famous then?"
"Oh no, I just run a famous school."
Dumbledore regarded the ruins of Number 4. "I do not wish to tread upon painful memories, but I must ask, where have you been for so long?"
"I agree with the sentiment, professor. As to where I was, it's a rather long story and I wouldn't want to take up too much of your time." Harry nodded at him, and leaving him behind, stepped inside, past the lopsided remains of the gateway. The blackened skeleton of the house still stood leaning and creaking with the wind.
"May I expect you in Hogwarts this year, Mr. Potter?" Dumbledore's voice boomed from the entryway. He shrugged, not caring that Dumbledore wouldn't see him.
Harry walked toward the cupboard under the stairs.
He pushed open the door by the knob and felt it crumble under his fingers.
He pushed magic into his fingertips and lit them up in a pale white glow.
A glint of light caught his eyes from amid the blistered rubble.
He squatted down and reached toward it.
The resurrection stone twinkled in the glow and jerked to his hand.
Everything burned.