A/N: As always, thanks to DarylDixon'sgirl1985 for beta reading.
I did my final edits of this chapter while sitting in an apart after a ten hour flight and no sleep for twenty-four hours, so I apologize if anything slipped by me or this chapter is just bad.
Word count: 1,561
She couldn't ignore Grimmauld Place forever. Before long, there was another Order meeting that she had a responsibility to attend.
Though she arrived mere seconds before she would have been late and though she sat as far as possible from the men who were the source of her problem, she couldn't stop looking at them throughout the meeting.
When she'd first joined the Order, she'd been eager to know every detail of what the other members were up to, even if she didn't have a hand in it, but she couldn't be bothered to listen to any of that night's updates. Remus Lupin was the only thing she could focus on. She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes repeatedly, worried each time that she would be caught in the act.
It was made worse by the fact that she was sure he was looking at her too, his posture stiff. No matter what was between him and Sirius, he was, for the length of the meeting, more focused on her than on his old friend at his side. Tonks was as proud of it as she was ashamed that she was proud.
By the end of the meeting, during which she spoke as little as possible, she was ready to flee. Every cell in her body hummed with energy, and her stomach sloshed, protesting violently against the possibility of dinner.
She needn't have worried though. With Molly no longer around to keep the house in tip-top shape, no one entertained the idea of staying behind for dinner. Instead, they left within minutes of Dumbledore, and Tonks hurried to keep pace with them before she was left behind, but Sirius appeared in front of her as if he'd Apparated there. Tonks huffed, momentarily forgetting that she was meant to be concealing her anger.
"Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" she snapped.
Sirius was unperturbed by her outburst. He had a hopeful smile on his lips that was entirely unlike the mournful look he'd worn during the meeting.
"Stay for a drink?" he asked, lifting a bottle of firewhisky that Tonks noticed for the first time.
She eyed it distrustfully. If staying sounded like a bad idea, then getting drunk with the two people she was actively concealing something embarrassing from sounded even worse, but there was a hope in Sirius' eyes that she couldn't crush when he was already dealing with so much. Before she could stop herself, she nodded and was pulled into a bone-crushing hug.
Sirius ushered her back to the kitchen table, empty except for Remus. Stray chairs still sat pulled out from the table when people had been too lazy to push them back in. Tonks slid into the chair that Arthur Weasley had occupied earlier as Sirius gathered glasses and hummed to himself.
Remus gave her a small, nervous smile that she did her best to return. She kept her eyes on the bottle of firewhisky as Sirius poured some for each of them and passed the glasses around.
Tonks took a long gulp of hers before anything could be said, cringing as the burn hit her throat. She coughed.
"This is strong," she said, struggling to get the words out as she continued to cough.
Sirius laughed, his own glass already half empty.
"My parents always stocked the best."
Tonks' eyes widened. She tilted the glass and swirled it around as if the liquid itself would reveal something.
"This has been here since before your parents…"
Sirius shrugged, his smile not dimming at the allusion to his parents' deaths.
"Firewhisky doesn't go bad," Sirius said with a shrug. "You're drinking the good stuff."
Tonks raised an eyebrow, unable to keep an amused grin off her face.
"It's wine that ages and gets better," she pointed out. "I'm 90 per cent sure that isn't how whisky works."
Sirius shrugged and took another swig. Tonks looked at her glass and debated with herself for only a moment before she drank herself. At least it was alcohol. Her cells were still humming with energy, and she needed something to distract her from Remus, who had only taken a small sip of his own drink so far.
He hadn't yet said a word, and Tonks both longed to hear him speak and couldn't bring herself to ask him a question.
"So, how's the Auror office?" Sirius asked, allowing Tonks to breathe easier.
"Same as before," she said, running her finger around the rim of her glass. "No one is taking the threat seriously. They all think Dumbledore is full of it as if they always thought he was a laughing stock. It's frustrating."
She drank again, downing the last of her glass, and Sirius refilled it without being asked. Tonks didn't have any reservations about the drink anymore. She was caught up in her familiar frustrations, with her other worries falling to the wayside in response.
"Kingsley said that there's no one else from the Auror Office to recommend for the Order," Remus said, his voice cracking from disuse.
Tonks locked eyes with him, her heart skipping a beat.
"He knows better than I do," she said, "but I wouldn't know of anyone. One would hope there weren't so many idiots there."
Remus cracked a smile, and Tonks looked back down at her whisky.
"Little chance of that," Sirius said. "The Ministry has always been full of people more concerned about their egos than anything else. You get a few bad eggs, and it spreads and spreads. That's not where anything good happens. They'll only listen when they're made to."
"There's little chance of that either," Tonks said. "Most people are happy to believe that everything is fine."
The conversation she'd overheard in the break room preoccupied her. She hadn't wanted to tell Remus about it, but suddenly, she felt like she was going to explode with the knowledge that people were such prejudiced arseholes. She could hardly prevent herself from sharing it.
"They're good at their jobs if they're given the right tasks," she said with a sheepish shrug. "But they're just as ignorant as everyone else. The other day, someone didn't want to log testimony from a werewolf because she didn't take them seriously. Kingsley set her straight, but still, I can't believe people are such prejudiced arseholes in this day and age."
She trailed off, not sure what else to say. Remus had stiffened, his lips turned down in a slight frown, and Sirius' expression had grown darker. The way he looked at her made Tonks regret telling the story. She couldn't figure out why saying it aloud had ever been appealing. Her cheeks burned with the knowledge that it had been a mistake, though she felt as if she were still missing something that had been left unsaid between her and the men so far.
Tonks looked between the men, trying to make sense of the small smile yet sad eyes of Remus and the look of thinly veiled fury that Sirius was shooting her.
"It shouldn't come as a surprise," Sirius said, still looking at her in a way that baffled her. "Werewolves have been all but hunted for centuries. And before that they actually were hunted. I'm sorry that your precious beliefs in a just society have been quashed."
Tonks gaped at her cousin as her brain whirled through possible responses, none of which felt right. She glanced at Remus, who had turned a light pink at Sirius' words but seemed unable to say anything himself. Tonks felt the fragile pieces of her heart break further. She certainly hadn't meant to sound ignorant. She'd known that there was plenty of prejudice before the incident, though she'd have to admit that she hadn't realized how much until she'd learned of Voldemort's return and how many Death Eaters had returned to his service.
Her ears rang with shame, and suddenly, not even the alcohol was helping with her anxiety. She stared at the cup, willing herself not to lose control.
"That's not fair, Sirius."
Tonks' head shot up to look at Remus, her eyes wide.
"You'd have said the same thing once," Remus said. His gaze was on Sirius, but Tonks felt breathless as she watched him. "It may have been twenty years ago, but you weren't always well-versed on the troubles of werewolves."
Sirius gave a strange jerk that was half nod and half shrug. His jaw was tight, hinting that he wasn't happy to hear Remus speak of something truthful. It reminded Tonks of his current plight, and she felt a surge of pity despite what he'd said to her. None of them were had been happy in recent days, and she couldn't find it in herself to blame Sirius for having a short fuse, especially about something so important.
The knowledge that Sirius was lonely and isolated prompted her to down the rest of her whisky, cringing as it burned its way down her throat. She'd never been a big whisky drinker in the first place, preferring wines or, at least, butterbeer when she drank, but she was determined to stay, and she wasn't sure she could do that sober.
Sirius filled her glass for a third time, and Tonks accepted that as her apology as she tilted the glass in his direction and took another drink.