Part Two: Homonym

"HALF-BRED SHAPE-SHIFTING FREAK!" Mrs. Black awakens at the flush of the toilet and her great-niece's blundering exit from the loo. Tonks jumps and backs into the loo again as Remus bolts to stifle the portrait.

From the basement, Sirius bellows, "SHUT HER UP, WILL YOU MOONY?"

"I should have warned you," Remus apologises to Tonks, pulling the heavy curtains closed.

"What?" Tonks asks, breathless with shock. "You can't flush the toilets here?" Her voice is high with incredulity, and Remus cannot help but laugh.

"Mrs. Black – your aunt, I should say – does not take kindly to disowned family members and half-bloods darkening the door of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. However, I cannot imagine why she chose that particular epithet for you. The last part only applies to me."

"Werewolves aren't the only shape-shifters, you know," said Tonks matter-of-factly (or almost mildly affronted, though that makes no sense at all). She scrunches her face, and it becomes a female version of Sirius' face; her hair darkens to black and lengthens.

"You're a Metamorphmagus," says Remus, more obviously awed than he means to sound and hoping it does not offend her.

"Or a fellow shape-shifting freak, if you like," Tonks says proudly, her face returning to her own heart-shaped, pink-haired form. "So, you've got a Muggle-born parent, too, then?"

Remus nods, but cannot find his voice. He listens, transfixed to the muffled voice of Mrs. Black: "HALF-BRED SHAPE-SHIFTING FREAKS!"

The words reduce him to a jumble of emotions. Part of him hates that a magical being as rare and extraordinary as a Metamorphmagus can share an ugly epithet with a Dark Creature. Another part of him takes comfort in the plural. He likes the thought that Mrs. Black, toujours pur, cannot distinguish Metamorphmagi from lycanthropes. He does not wish his curse on anyone, not even to relieve his own loneliness, but perhaps as long as Tonks – self-declared 'fellow' – is in the house, he can pretend that he is something else, something special.

"Did you get her quiet?" Sirius asks, plodding up the stairs. He stops at the landing and glances back and forth from Remus to Tonks. "Nymphadora—"

"Don't call me Nymphadora!"

Sirius continues, ignoring her, "D'you realise you're standing in the loo to talk to Remus?"

"Your mum scared me," Tonks returns, quick on the uptake and as snarky as if she and Sirius have known each other for much longer than a few minutes. "Remus was just coaxing me out."

"Yes," says Remus, "apparently 'What To Do When A Psychotic Matriarchal Portrait Traps You In A Loo' is not part of the Auror training curriculum."

Sirius' bark of laughter sets off Mrs. Black again. "BLOOD TRAITOR! SHAME OF MY FLESH!"

With a dismissive wave of his hand, Sirius clomps downstairs again, flinging back over his shoulder, "You're all freaks, the lot of you."

Above Sirius' footfalls and Mrs. Black's tirade of slurs, the walls of the old house ring with Remus' and Tonks' mingling laughter.