Four Weddings and a Funeral

What

13 February, 1999

The idea is to storm out of the house as quickly as possible and Apparate away before anyone can stop her. Of course, she remembers as soon as she slams the front door behind her that the anti-Apparition wards are still up from the war, so she decides to start walking towards the edge of the Weasleys' property.

Unfortunately, she isn't figuring on six inches of slushy snow, on the thinness of her dress robes, or on her own clumsiness. She stumbles three times before she's even cleared the kitchen garden.

Furious, disgusted, and on the edge of tears, Tonks throws herself down into the snow-covered bench. Just till I catch my breath, she thinks. Then I'll walk away from here and never come back.

Before the cold damp can quite soak through the heavy brocade of the robes--orange, only Charlie would think to give her robes of Cannon bloody orange, never mind the fact that she'd loved the dead brilliant way that they clashed with his hair, that she'd worn her own curls a garish Weasley red for the occasion just to take advantage of the affect--she casts a Drying Charm and a Warming Charm on her bum, then attempts to stand.

Her thin-soled, high-heeled shoes, however, have other ideas, and dump her back on her bottom, threatening her with wet and chill once again. A stream of Muggle-inspired invective spews from her mouth, and Tonks remembers for the first time that her grandfather is stranded back in the Burrow, a Tonks among the Weasleys. "Bloody fucking hell!"

The angry tears overflow now in spite of her best efforts to squeeze them off, and the old wounds ache as she begins to sob gobbets of steam into the pearlescent night sky.

"And a bloody fucking good evening to you, too, Tonks," mutters an annoyed, familiar voice, and she realizes with a start that Charlie is standing there, holding a winter cloak in his hands. "What the bloody hell was that all about?"

Tonks breathes in the sour, sharp air, trying to calm herself--but why? He's presented himself as a target, he didn't have the good grace to let her make her get-away: let him have it. "If you're too bloody thick to know what THAT was about, Charlie Weasley, than you're an even sadder specimen of the male of the bloody species than I thought. What? Perfect bloody Mum Weasley says something horrid and hateful but it's my bloody fault because I let it hurt? Screw you, Charlie. That's.... Just... Screw you!" She yanks the cloak out of the stunned redhead's hands and swipes it across her snotty, weepy face. Eyes, nose and mind now clear, she stares at his stunned, sleet-pinched expression as levelly as she can. "You had a choice to make, Charlie, and I'm glad you made it. You had the chance to honor me and my feelings or to side with Mum, and I can't blame you, Mum won out. Well, great. At least this happened tonight, because if it'd happened after tomorrow and you'd let her say something like that to me, I wouldn't have been able to walk away, I'd have had to fucking kill you!" Well, bollocks. Now she's crying again. Bugger.

She is vaguely aware that Charlie's weight is settling into the slush beside her, that he is draping the snot-smeared cloak over her shoulders.

She takes a swing at him, but he blocks it, the tough leather of his palm absorbing a punch that Moody would probably have made fun of. She pulls back her hand.

"Tonks," he says. Maybe he's been saying it for a while, but she hasn't been listening. He's sitting beside her, carefully not touching. "Tonks, I made my choice two years ago. I told you. You're my mate. In every sense. If you walk away from this house now, I'm coming with you, and I'll never turn back." He looks pale, much smaller than usual, his dragon keeper's strength banked like a campfire on a wet night. "But... Tonks, don't make me do this just because my mum doesn't know what she's talking about. She didn't mean to hurt you. She doesn't know."

"Doesn't?..." Tonks splutters, tears flaring back to anger in an instant. "Of course she bloody knows.... 'Babies are what it's all about,' leering at your bloody beached-whale sisters-in-law like they were bloody queens, rubbing my bloody face..." Tears win out again. Double bugger.

For the first time, Charlie touches her, lightly, on the forearm, and Tonks nearly jumps out of her skin. "She doesn't know, Tonks."

"She... What?"

"I've never told her. I've never told anyone."

It takes a moment for his words to sink in. "You... You never told?..." His broad, honest face stares at her, open, concerned. No subterfuge. "What are you on about, Weasley? Of course she knew. They all bloody knew I was pregnant. Where's that supposed to have gone, the bloody cabbage patch?"

"They knew you'd lost the... the pregnancy when Grimmauld Place was attacked, that second time. But I wasn't going to tell them the extent of your injuries. Wasn't my place, Tonks. Wasn't anyone's business but yours and your Healer's. Mine after tomorrow, I suppose. But certainly not my family's."

Mrs. Weasley's wonderful prime rib is threatening to come up. "So... She..."

"She was toasting all of us, love. She was toasting you, the poor, clueless old bint."

"Oh, Charlie," she moans, wishing she could disappear into her cloak. Every clumsy move she's ever made in front of Mrs. Weasley added together isn't a sneeze, compared to this. "Oh, fuck. What have I done?"

"Nothing, love," he sighs, and throws his thick arms around her. "It's me that's done it. I should have told you. I should have asked if it was okay to tell them." His voice is getting heavy. "I just, you know, didn't want to before the wedding, I didn't want anyone to think..."

"What?" she cries, wincing. "That I was damaged goods?"

"That you were anything but the woman I was in love with." His forehead rests against hers. "I'm sorry, love. I'm so bloody sorry."

"Should be, you bloody git," she says, or tries to say, because his mouth is on hers, and suddenly things seem much better.

Snogging has always been a way of answering all questions for the two of them. Tonks wonders if this will always be true. Hopes it will.

When they have reached a breathing point, Tonks sighs steam into Charlie's shoulder.

"What?" he asks.

"I'm the last," she says. "Last of the Tonkses. Last of the Blacks. Sirius gone. Auntie Bell gone. Auntie Narcissa on the loony ward at St. Mungo's. Draco fertilizing daisies, which is about all he was good for, the little bugger. Two bloodlines funnel down to me, and I'm a dead end."

His lips are on her ear and so she feels his words as much as hears them: "No one gets to talk that way about my wife."

She feels something swell up inside of her.

"Oi, Tonks? Charlie?" A muffled voice calls out through the snow that seems to have started falling. "You two all right?"

Tonks looks up and sees four... no, five shapes approaching, backlit by the Burrow's lights. "Wotcher, George," she says, struggling to sound even vaguely cheerful. "Yeah, we're okay."

George nods, looking exhausted. Ron ghostlike. Luna wraithlike. Harry and Ginny clinging to each other, his steps still halting as he leans on her.

"Bloody brilliant," mutters Charlie, an uncharacteristic edge to his voice. "They send the non-pregnant ones to calm us down."

The boys all blink. Not Luna--she never blinks--nor Ginny, who answers sensibly, "Fleur and Penny would have taken a half hour to waddle out here, and their husbands weren't coming without them. Mum's in a right state, and Dad's trying to calm her. She doesn't know what she said, but she's figured out it was pretty stupid, whatever it was. And Tonks, your grandad's a bit perplexed, the poor old dear."

"Bloody hell" is all that Tonk can manage.

"Tonks," Ron says, his eyes too old for someone who's just about to turn nineteen, "is this about the... the baby you lost?"

Charlie had made jokes over the years about Weasley men's lack of empathy--there it is again. God love Ron, he meant well, but that was not the thing to say, and whatever it is she's feeling, Tonks can't say a word.

So Luna, of all people, speaks. "You can't have children, can you, Nymphadora?" And there it is: that absolutely wrong, absolutely right thing to say. Luna.

Charlie is holding her, and stroking her, and all of them are looking at Luna like owls. "Tonks thought everyone knew, you see," Charlie is spluttering. "Only I didn't think it was my job to share her private business, even with you lot."

And suddenly all of them are reaching out to her, and she finds herself wrapped in them. Then, just as quickly, Tonks finds herself standing, lighter than she has felt in months. "Come on," she says. "Let's get inside. It's bloody cold out here and I think I owe your mum an apology and a half."

Together, they all stumble through the snow back to the house. Charlie kisses her on the cheek, his lips burning against the chill. "Didn't think you'd get out of marrying me that easy, did you?"

Nervous as they step up onto the porch, she whispers back, "What? You thought that was easy?"