A/N: This fic was written as part of the livejournal community metamorphicmoon's Fic jumble. My prompts for this piece were Trelawney's emerald earrings, a day of expectation, an art gallery and Angst.
Colours by Jess PallasThe art gallery was open.
Tonks was a little surprised – after all, the slow, stealing creep of evening had darkened the sky above her and leeched the colours from the air like a well cast blotting spell. But no, the door was open, the lights still burned and several Muggles wandered within its glare, examining the works upon the walls with oddly absent expressions.
They were lucky. They had an escape. They did not know the dangers that lurked within the mists that lapped around these walls, dark hooded shapes that she and Savage had helped to drive away from the boundaries of this little Highland town just a few minutes before. They knew nothing of magic, Dementors, Aurors or the War, they knew nothing of evil wizards, deadly curses and bloody self-sacrificing werewolves…
They knew nothing. They could just lose themselves in art.
The Order meeting would be starting soon, Tonks knew. But that did not prevent her from stepping inside.
For losing herself seemed pretty good just then.
She moved into a world of colour, portraits, landscapes, modern works all jumbled together in this exhibition that celebrated the works of generations of local painters, a rainbow world that seemed somehow to touch upon the colourless voice that now lingered deep within her. Her eyes wandered idly as she absented handed a gold Muggle coin to the friendly, white haired old lady at the desk beside the door, drifting over abstract landscapes, smiling faces and drinking in nothing at all.
"Come on! You can do better than that!"
"I'm sorry, Tonks. I'm so sorry, but I just can't let you throw your life away on me…"
She shivered. Bloody Dementors… She needed to move her thoughts away, she needed to forget…
She swung her gaze furiously to the nearest picture. And froze.
A highland loch by night, brooding mountains, sparkling stars and, reflected in the darkened waters, the gleaming bright full moon.
Irony could be very cruel sometimes.
He was expected back. Tonight. At this meeting. It would be the first time she had seen him since the confession, the fight, the bloody, bloody, bloody note…
She had longed for and dreaded this day all at once. Remus, back from the werewolves, giving his first account of his efforts to infiltrate a group of people whose way of thinking was so utterly opposed to his own. Remus, with his soft smile, his deep eyes, his quiet laugh and devious humour, the man she had fallen for, the man she loved…
The man who had rejected her in the name of her own good.
She wanted to see him, She was desperate to see him, to see that he was unhurt, undamaged, unchanged by the horrors with which he was now forced to live, but at the same time she dreaded that haunted look, those sorrowful eyes and the same old repetition of why it could not be…
How many times did she have to tell him that she just didn't care? How many times before he listened? How many times before he managed to believe?
A Muggle man in broad glasses and a heavy tartan jacket brushed against her shoulder as he stepped forward to peruse the painting that had held her absent gaze. Shaking herself, Tonks moved quickly passed him, her eyes drifting to the next frame along.
It was a portrait of a gypsy woman, dressed in a gaudy green dress and crimson shawl, her ringed fingers stroking a smoky crystal ball, her eyes staring intensely out of a wrinkled face trimmed by two enormous emerald earrings. She seemed to stare out across the room defiant, as though daring those who lingered below to look into her mind.
In spite of herself, one corner of Tonks' lip curled up in sardonic amusement. So this was the Muggle idea of a seer, was it? Maybe it was some distant relative of Sybil Trelawney's; after all, those earrings were nearly identical…
Professor Trelawney. A crystal ball.
"Ah, my dear, I pity you…" Enormous eyes peered out from vast glasses, bracelets dangling, shawl crooked, emerald earring dancing in the light – suddenly she was thirteen again, sitting in her first divination lesson and staring with barely concealed incredulity as Professor Trelawney examined her crystal ball with artfully tortured features. "I see terrible sadness in your future, gloom and cloud and grey and it will consume you. Oh, sometimes it is better not to know the fate that awaits you, but I feel it my duty to warn such poor unfortunates like yourself…"
Tonks had laughed that day, morphing her hair into a mockery of Trelawney's locks as she sat in the Great Hall that lunch time and repeated her doom-laden pronouncements for the amusement of her friends. Everyone knew that old Trelawney talked nothing but made up hokum…
But now…
The gypsy woman's vivid eyes stared down at her, mocking her for ever having doubted. Gloom and grey, gloom and grey, gloom and grey…
Tearing her eyes free with an almost desperate jerk, Tonks moved on quickly to the next frame, a Highland valley scattered with sheep and in the foreground, a young woman in traditional Scottish dress curled beneath a tree as she stared down at a letter grasped within one hand…
A letter. Neat handwriting, carefully written, waiting on her kitchen table as she returned from work, waiting where Remus Lupin should have been, should have come to say goodbye…
Tonks, I'm sorry, but I don't want to argue with you again… I felt it best that I just go and spare you the pain of another pointless fight…I hope you forgive me, but you must see that all I'm thinking of is what's best for you…
Violently, Tonks tore her eyes free with a sudden gasp, ignoring the startled look from the tartan-jacketed man to her left as she struggled to regulate her breathing. A note. A bloody note. How could he do that to her, how could he think that would ever be good enough, how could he believe that breaking her heart by note was all for the best? Yes, he was right when he said she would have argued; she would have picked up the thread of the fight they had begun the night before, a battle she never meant to halt until Remus offered his full surrender and came to his ruddy senses. But to have the argument snapped in half and never resolved, for him to vanish on a perilous mission without so much as a goodbye… How could he possibly expect her to move on from that?
Another picture caught her eye, a cheerful gathering of men and woman around a table, laughing, joking, drinking. The Order had been like that once, in spite of - or perhaps because of – the dangers they faced, a group of friends battling in secret to save so many lives that refused to recognise they were in danger. But since the deaths of Sirius and Emmeline Vance, since Kingsley and Remus had vanished on their respective missions, it had not been the same. She had almost come to dread their meetings now…
Like the meeting tonight. That Remus was going to be at.
She had not seen him, heard from him, since the note, since he had plunged into the werewolf underground; this was his first report, the first time he'd surfaced since then. What would he be like? He had told her, before leaving, of his fear, his horror at such a task, how much he dreaded what spending time amongst creatures that were the antithesis of his beliefs might do to him. Would he be different? And would the experience make him realise what a fool he'd been or harden his belief that they should stay apart? What would he say to her? Would he ignore her altogether? Or would he simply return to his mantra that it was really all for the best?
A family portrait, happy faces, a father, a mother, three bonny children smiling down at her. She had cherished such dreams, such hopes of a life with him, a future, perhaps even a family of their own someday and she'd dared to believe he wanted the same. Was it fear that made him reject her or did he truly believe himself so unworthy? Was he really so deluded as to think she could want anyone but him? Or did he really think her so shallow that she could just turn off her feelings and move on?
Bright colours, flecks of orange, mauve and turquoise, splashes of green and vivid pink; a gaudy, modern painting glared down at her. She had been like that picture once, fresh, vibrant, free of all constraint but now the colour had leeched from her, doused from her soul as though with turpentine. She knew such a depression was not her way, that even in the worst moments of her life before now, she could still manage a laugh and a smile, a silly nose or a rainbow hairstyle. But now, with her cousin lost, separated from the man she loved by his own stubborn bloody nobility and surrounded daily by Dementors who reminded her over and over again of her of all that had been taken from her…
Gloom and grey. Gloom and grey.
Her eyes drifted on to a hellish scene of an ancient battle, kilted clansmen screaming, bleeding, dying, claymores gleaming bloody by the glow of vicious lightning. And then suddenly it seemed as though the contorted, damaged faces morphed into her friends; Kingsley's bald head sliced away from his shoulders, Moody's wild eye flickering desperately as he slumped bleeding to the earth, Remus screaming as a sword curved through his torso…
No.
Enough of that. The war was going badly enough without imagining a fresh slaughter, the fight stretching on, horrific and never ending, good people killed or sent into the stuff of nightmares and here she was hiding away from her duty in an art gallery all because she longed and dreaded seeing…
Remus.
Oh, Remus. Would he come to his senses? Or would stupid stubborn self-sacrifice prevail?
She honestly didn't know.
Ahead, the exit of the gallery loomed – a glance at the clock told her that she still had time to make the meeting. Darkness yawned beyond the opening, out of the reach of the bright lights, of walls strewn with colour. For an instant, she could not bear to leave.
But she had to go. She had to see him. However painful it was.
Because she had to know. Good or bad, she had to know.
And so, bracing her shoulders, Nymphadora Tonks stepped out of a world of colour and vanished into the dark of night.