Eye of the Beholder

Eye of the Beholder

Page 713, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:

Mad-Eye Moody had crawled across the room to where Tonks lay, and was attempting to revive her.

"Enervate," he muttered, weaving an intricate spell.

She did not respond, and he was afraid, for he knew that if it did not work by the third time he cast it, she would never stir again.

I remember the morning when a cyclops bounded into my room and I reached for my wand reflexively and hexed it only to see your stunned body in its place... so reminiscent of now.

Then, I never understood why you were so foolish. I reprimanded you, chastised you, called you a disgrace to your profession - our profession. You should have known better than to pull a prank on me. I had had - and still have - a deep fear of intrusion ever since the time Pettigrew and Crouch subdued me and placed me under Imperius for a year.

And all the time I was yelling at you you were lying prone on the floor, but I could swear your eyes sparkled both with amusement and unspoken hope, a hope always present in the most subtle of forms, a hope that I would someday understand.

No, it was more than a childish prank - you, trapped by your physical appearance as much as I am, would never make fun of me.

You were trying to tell me a secret, a message hidden in a bottle that would lie unrevealed until its season. And so it was that I never opened the bottle - until now.

When I look at you, so helpless, so vulnerable under your self-assured façade, I grasp its hidden meaning.

Perhaps it is just as well that my magical eye is lying discarded at the other end of the room; I have been too reliant on it. Without it, I am blinded, yet I see something I never noticed before, I understand a mystery that has eluded me for so long.

Yes, perhaps I should remain a cyclops too, Tonks.

* * *

"Enervate," he repeated, brow knit in concentration, wand raised high. He could feel the sweat trickling down his back under his heavy overcoat, but his hands were numb and cold with fear as he studied her unresponsive face - contorted with surprise, as Sirius' had been when he fell through the veil.

Alastor Moody was no stranger to death. Years of being an Auror and watching his comrades fall, one by one, in battle against the Dark powers had made him jaded and immune to grief, so resigned was he to the fact that death was as unpredictable as it was inevitable, that it lurked, ready to pounce, behind every corner, every concealed turning.

But you are so young, Tonks, and you never realise the gravity of any situation. Just look at Sirius - maybe it runs in your family. He didn't take Bellatrix seriously, either.

Remember the time we rescued Harry from Privet Drive and I was telling him what to do if anyone was killed during the journey? "Stop being so cheerful, Mad-Eye, he'll think we're not taking this seriously," you told me, and I was thinking, Someday you'll learn, Tonks, and then you'll understand why I did what I did, why I am who I am...

But is it too late now, Tonks?

And Alastor Moody placed one gnarled hand gently on Nymphadora Tonks' pale cheek before tenderly stroking her shockingly pink hair, so incongruous against her sober Auror garment.

* * *

In all the years I've known you, you've never really changed, Tonks. You're still the fifteen-year-old daughter of Andromeda and Ted, unofficial members of the Order - the outrageously frivolous teenager who thoroughly horrified me the first time I met you, when you announced unabashedly - ripped cuffs, nose rings and all - that you wanted to be an Auror, like me.

I was positively scandalised - my profession, until then, had never been dealt a greater insult, and I fervently hoped, for its sake, that you were joking.

But you kept your promise, after all - despite knocking over so many vials in Potions you completed your NEWTs with perfect scores. Taking you under my tutelage, I had to admit, to my chagrin, that I never had a more talented apprentice.

For you were the first - and the only - to have truly understood, to have truly accepted me for who I am - scars, eye and all.

Only you do not look at me with the revulsion I see mirrored everywhere else, because only you can believe - only you have accepted - that physical beauty is ephemeral, transient, and utterly insignificant.

Only you have ever had the courage to love me.

If you will live, live for me, Tonks.

* * *

Alastor Moody sucked in a deep breath and drew his wand for the third time, his gaze never leaving Tonks' pallid, still-beautiful face.

"Enervate."

-fin-