Author's note: God this took me forever to write. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights

Hogwarts: Assignment #6, Mixology Task #4 Write about someone being sent to prison.

Warnings: Canon character death; parent loss

As Close To Justice

She didn't particularly like the shape her body had taken today. She looked narrow and gaunt, especially with her magenta hair snatched back in a tight, crisp ponytail the way that it was. But she didn't particularly know how else to look and she felt too nauseous to shapeshift until she landed on something she liked, so she just tucked herself in the black turtleneck and pencil skirt she'd found in her closet. Muggle clothes. Once Kingsley had told her that she couldn't attend the trials as an Auror, with the Ministry besieged with allegations of conflict of interest and all, it had only felt right that she should turn up in the courtroom wearing Muggle clothes. She still felt hollow when she looked in the mirror, as if she was floating outside of her own body.

Remus appeared in the reflection behind her, lingering at the door for a moment before coming to stand at her side. He slipped his hand out of his pocket so she could take it if she wanted to, like a fairytale character leaving breadcrumbs should anyone want to follow them.

"I left Teddy at your mum's, happy as a lark in the garden," he said. He cleared his throat nervously. "She said that she…"

"She's not coming to a trial," Tonks finished. "I know. She told me last night."

Remus nodded, looking somewhat relieved that he didn't have to be the bearer of bad news. She couldn't blame him, nor could she blame her mother for stepping away and erasing herself from this narrative. She'd been widowed by Snatchers in the middle of a war in which she had been under such surveillance that she hadn't been able to mourn her husband freely for months. That those Snatchers had once been the boys she'd grown up with in Pureblood society… there was only so much heartbreak that her mum could take. Going to the trial and seeing them all sent to prison would have been too much for her, and it wouldn't bring back Dad. So what was the point of her mother torturing herself?

"What do you need?" Remus asked quietly.

"I don't know," she said quietly. She took a deep, shaky breath.

Remus took her hand and squeezed it while she pressed her fingers against her eyes, smudged eyeliner be damned.

"I know that getting a confession out of those Snatchers and sending Dad's murderers to jail is closer to justice than what most families are going to get. I know that there's other kids and friends and partners and families of Muggles and Muggleborns who will just never know what happened to the people they love. I know that. And it makes me shudder, it's just so unimaginable, but… but…"

"But it doesn't feel much like justice since he's still gone," Remus said quietly.

She shut her eyes again and nodded, trying to keep her breath steady.

"I just miss my dad," she said again, aware of how pathetic she sounded. Still, what else could she say? It was true.

She looked up and saw Remus nod in the mirror, quietly and affirmingly, and for whatever reason that's what broke her. Maybe she had been working too hard not to feel like a lost little girl or a homesick Hogwarts student. Maybe she was still processing a backlog of grief, from all those months when she'd had to keep it together after Dad died because mourning a runaway Muggleborn was traitorous to the regime, or because she'd had a baby to grow and bring into this world and take care of. Whatever the case, that quiet nudge that it was okay to just miss her dad desperately, to be a mess and maybe fall apart about it, was the only permission she needed.

Remus had her in his arms, bundled up against his chest, immediately and she sobbed. She sobbed about how her son would never meet his grandfather, about how unfair this entire war had been, about how her whole job meant nothing if tracking down dark wizards didn't truly help the people they hurt, about how heartlessly someone had killed her father and dragged his body off the forest floor and to the Ministry to claim a bounty…

"I've got you," Remus said quietly as he held her. "I've got you…"

It was probably the most violent cry of her life, and she felt drained when it was over–which could have been five minutes or five hours later, she had no way of knowing. But Remus was still there, holding her up even if she'd gone limp in his arms.

"We can stay home," he said quietly. "Those Snatchers will go to jail whether you're in the stands watching the Wizengamot deliberate or not. Or we can go fix your makeup and finish getting ready so that we won't be late. It's up to you, love."

She knew her dad would say something similar if he was around, she just knew it. He'd probably stir up cocoa powder and milk in a mug and toss it in the microwave, the way he always did when she was upset and he thought she needed a drink. He'd have a stupid, stupid pun up his sleeve to break her mood and start grounding her bag to reality. He would find a way to chip at the problem so it became smaller, more manageable, and so they could find a solution or at least a step to take to start making it better.

"Can you go get my makeup bag?" she asked.

"Of course," Remus said. "Can I bring you a glass of water too?"

"Please," she said. He let her go gently, as if to make sure she didn't collapse to the ground, and slipped away to the bathroom. Then it was her in front of the mirror again, in those sleek black Muggle clothes and a tight ponytail that showed off her (very puffy and very red) face.

You are never as helpless as you think you are, Dad had told her the last time he'd caught her crying, when she was studying for her Auror exams and terrified of disappointing Mad-Eye and at a loss for how to memorise the long list of potions and antidotes she would be evaluated on. You, by just being you, are enough. Don't you ever forget that.

"Here you are," Remus said when he came back into the room. She drank her glass of water before rummaging in her make-up bag. Remus sat on the bed, hands clasped, as she approached the mirror to get to work.

"I'm going to find them," she said, patting her smudged eye make-up with a q-tip. "The lost Muggleborns. The ones who disappeared during the war, who went into hiding and never came home."

She went for the lightest eyeshadow in her palette to brighten her eyes this time.

"Mad-Eye trained me to track people down," she said. "The Auror Office loves using me to infiltrate, to get information out of people who didn't know they were giving it, to follow cold trails without a shiver. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get as close to justice as I can for every single one of them."

She shut her eyeshadow palette with a satisfying click shut.

WC: 1224