Styles slipped an arm around Patsy's shoulders. 'I am Adam Styles. Let me get you a drink,' he suggested, 'and then it might be best if you stayed with us. We can't have the Ministry trying to obliviate you.'
'No bloody point obliviating anybody here,' said Patsy. 'Most of them are used to seeing far, far stranger things.'
'Pardon?'
'Well, if they don't, they should think about changing their suppliers.'
'But wasn't that the wife of the President of . . .?
'So she should be well used to understanding bugger all and saying less.'
Tonks slipped her arm around Snape and started to pull him towards the fire doors. 'My wand,' he growled. Pulling free, he strode towards Fortinbras who saw him coming and held out his wand.
Snape took it without comment and veered back towards the exit only to stop when a voice wailed 'Draco!' Tonks turned to watch as Sandy collided with her young cousin.
'Oof! Sandy. What's up?'
Alexandrina clung to the wizard. 'They want to make me forget all about you.'
Something about the Ministry obliviators made Tonks think of Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. Draco tucked the young woman's head under his chin. 'Miss Urquehart is my fiancée,' he announced.
'Even so, you shouldn't have told a muggle about . . .,' began Tweedle-dee.
'Given my current legal situation, it would have been dishonest not to,' announced Draco, nobly.
'You are?' Tweedle-dee looked puzzled.
'Draco Malfoy,' supplied Granger.
The Obliviators blinked. Then they considered Malfoy and Granger and the Boy Who Lived and Arthur Weasley's youngest son and the Aurors.
'Perhaps you should take advice,' suggested Malfoy.
'Right.'
Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum departed.
'Fiancée? You cannot be serious?' said Granger.
'What? You've got to be kidding,' Sandy shuddered. 'It takes him all morning to manoeuvre his ego in and out of the bathroom. Don't get me wrong. I love Draco but I couldn't keep my hands off his throat. Sex, yes. Kids, maybe. Marriage?' A delicate wince, 'Centuries and centuries of inbreeding would be required and . . ..'
'I'll drive, shall I?' Draco stepped back and then headed off waving a set of car keys.
Tonks hadn't realised that it was possible to run and jump in high heels but Sandy could. 'Nooo! I just got it back. It took them six weeks to match the paint . . . .'
Styles smiled. 'Is Bollinger ok?'
'Always,' growled Patsy. Tonks wasn't sure where Ms. Stone had found the glass but she wasn't expecting Styles in early the following morning. Snape took a deep breath and continued towards the fire doors only to be intercepted.
'Well, here's your fee,' said the designer. 'A bit too much ad libbing, and try not to fall off the stage in future, but not too, too shabby. How do I get in touch with you?' Snape blinked at her. 'Ok, I'll get Draco to call you.' She wrapped Snape's hand around the envelope and slapped him on the back. Snape's jaw tightened.
'I'll take that, shall I,' said McLaggan, twitching the cheque from Snape's hand.
The fire-doors crashed open in front of Snape and Tonks followed him out into a grey walled, grey carpeted, downward sloping passage. 'Hold your horses.' Quite suddenly, and entirely without volition, she found herself sliding down the wall to sit on the ducting that ran, at floor level, along one side of the passage.
'Tonks?'
Dizzily, she allowed her head to sink between her knees. 'Since yesterday,' she said, 'I've had, and kept down, a bit of toast and some wine, and I've changed . . ..' She didn't know how often she had morphed but the demands on her metabolism had been excessive and now she was struggling to remain conscious. As roaring waves of darkness encroached she was aware of her head being pulled up and something hard and warm being forced between her lips. Liquid that tasted of nothing in particular flowed over her tongue.
'Swallow.' Tonks swallowed and Snape removed the little bottle from her mouth. He let her rest against him for a few seconds and then slipped onto one knee on the floor in front of her, his hands steadying her shoulders. 'Ok?'
'Ok.' Tonks got up, Snape rising with her, steadying her. 'I need to eat. Have dinner with me?'
Snape's eyes were calculating. 'What about Lupin?'
'Remus is in love with someone else.' Silence stretched like a chasm between them. 'He said . . . he said that it would be best for me; that he would only cause me grief.' Somehow she held the sob in the painful constriction in her throat.
'And if you leave with me, Potter will see to it that he finds out?'
Tonks shook her blonde head. 'I'll probably splinch myself if I try to apparate and I'm not going back into that madhouse. Ok, you probably can apparate after Cruciatus, but you shouldn't. If I go into a restaurant on my own, looking like this, someone will try to pick me up and I really can't be bothered. I would appreciate it if you would let me buy you dinner. She took a deep breath. 'And if it gets back to him that I'm dating a . . .. Sorry Snape but yes, if it bothers him, so much the better.'
Snape considered. 'Very well.' A flick of his wand and he was wearing a round necked, collarless jacket, his academic soutane having shrunk into a scarf - both as black as ever - and the number of buttons having decreased only marginally. Tonks nodded and, without thinking, transfigured her clothes into the cream linen dress and long, midnight blue jacket that comprised her usual muggle formal wear. It would have to do.
She followed Snape out, through the fire doors at the bottom of the incline, and around the outside of the building to the taxi rank, where he helped her into the car and instructed the driver before climbing in beside her. 'Did you really trust us to protect you?' she found herself asking.
'Muffliato!' Snape hid his wand under his left hand.
'Bellatrix thought that, rather than risk the biological agent being employed, we would just let them take you.'
'Would you?'
Tonks bit her lip. 'You shouldn't have been there at all - wouldn't have been if you hadn't decided to help us.'
'Which evades the question. Would you have let them take me?'
'I couldn't move. "Petrificus".'
Snape said nothing but continued to sit in the corner of the seat observing her. Tonks turned to watch the lights of the city as they passed outside the taxi's window.
Ten minutes travelling brought them to a busy street lined with bars and restaurants. Tonks got out and paid the driver who glanced at Snape. 'Foreign money only,' she told him. As the taxi pulled away, Tonks slipped her arm through Snape's. 'According to the best medical opinion available to the Ministry, the treatment for Cruciatus is fluids, salt and bed-rest. Unofficially it's lager, curry, more lager, lager and something sweet. Ice-cream's good.'
Snape paused to consider the menu in the window of nearest restaurant and decided against it.
'Well?' demanded Tonks.
'Well what?'
'You've never been hit by Cruciatus before?'
'Do you really wish me to discuss the Dark Lord's service with you?'
'Less paper work than the Ministry?' Tonks blinked and wondered where in hell that had come from. It felt as though she was drunk, right down to the peculiar stiffness of her upper lip. 'What was in that stuff, Snape?'
'You mentioned drinking wine?'
'One glass of Champaign.' Snape said nothing. 'Shit.' Tonks rubbed at her face. 'Sorry. It's just they're prosecuting Shunpike for wasting Ministry time. Granted, pretending to be a Death Eater was pretty stupid . . ..'
'But scarcely deserving of Azkaban,' Snape concluded. 'I would agree.' He noticed that she was shivering. 'This will do.' He guided her in through tall glass doors with art nouveau brass work into a room that was all candles, white linen and dark woodwork. It looked expensive. At the far end of the room Snape pulled out a chair for her and then sat down opposite. It was next to the kitchen door but, with his back to the wall, Snape could see the rest of the otherwise empty restaurant. 'My friend has a metabolic disorder and needs to eat,' he declared. 'Bring her some soup, some bread and some water. Bring me the menu and the wine list.'
