Even Old Morose Bats Can Get Soft

"S-see if... what?" Nymphadora raised a nervous brow.

Slowly, after the dramatic awakening, she was finding again the harnesses of reality. If the world around the confused mortals had previously been a dull crawling snail, now it was a prancing pony in the need of serious taming. So odd was this situation that she briefly wondered whether everything was merely a portion of the ache-littered nightmares. She had no coherent idea how long she had sojourned under this chamber's dark-blue canopy. There were the hazy recollections about some lime-green ghost dosing her some sort of poo-tasting drink, and then the irksome teasing of the four-poster hangings. Through the stupor, the girl yet had comprehended that this foreign space was no Hawaiian luxury hotel, but St. Mungo's hospital.

In addition, there seemed to be a great black abyss gaping toothily in the day's plotline. As though some lamebrain had ripped all the crucial pages of a thriller novel away, leaving the dumbstruck reader to goggle at a book with no middle. Had she not been staring straight into a pair of merciless, heavily lidded eyes of a Death Eater just a mere second ago? And that suddenly she was staring straight into a pair of mercilessly long nostrils hovering above her bed's edge? Another shrubbery of black hair, another gaunt visage... this time just with an abnormally large nose and black whiskers.

Moreover... this man crouching surly in the shadows was the first familiar face she remembered meeting since the jet of searing light had struck her back in the Department of Mysteries. Nonetheless, why on jumping Jupiter did it have to be the most unlikely person available, on the most unlikely hour? It had to be way past the regular visit time, probably the deepest night. And if she indeed was a maimed patient at St. Mungo's, would it not have been more reasonable to find some less uncanny phenomenon beside her bed than this hooknose exhibition? Like her parents, or one of the Weasleys, or Alastor...

The lord of thunder played a kettledrum solo outside. Snape's jaded face stood unmoving for a moment, before his thin mouth was willing to share any enlightenment with the confused Auror.

"I... I wanted to see if you were... going to survive... and..." Yet, somehow, the old dank shyness was creeping back into his chest in great, cold dollops. He abruptly had the nastily familiar artichoke stuck in his throat. It obliged him to gulp down the rest of the sentence, which would have finally revealed his fondness towards the little cherished one.

However, the nauseously sepulchral tone, with which those few breaths had been articulated, implanted a heavy, gray misgiving in Tonks. Survive? Had she been spell-whacked that badly? That would of course explain the throbbing pain burning even in her deepest marrows. She laboriously propped herself up a tad with the help of the pillows. Anxiety twisted her young face. The room was unlit again, and Snape's cloaked outline was barely visible. Although she could not fully distinguish the scarecrow, she had the odd feeling that he purposefully evaded her gaze.

"What do you mean survive? What happened? How about the others? Kingsley, Sirius..."

A blinding thunderbolt flashed outside, deluging the room with sizzling white light. Snape's inky, piercing pupils were back upon her.

"Black... is dead."

"Wha... What?"

It took a few seconds for Nymphadora to perceive what her ashen-faced visitor had just uttered. But tardily the comprehension flowed into her mind as icy, blood-red brooks. She sat up, not recalling the ache any longer. Her wide-flown, glazed eyes remained to stare incoherently into the light-devouring shadows.

Sirius, dead? One of her dearest friends...?

Dead...?

She felt as though the blazing storm winds had suddenly catapulted her onto a secluded islet, which the black waves of an endless sea licked, where the lightless, starless horizons were hidden behind sackcloth tapestries, where the breeze wailed its everlasting requiem... Lost in the vast darkness she was, trapped onto that desolated rock... Forceful shivers began swaying her body. Prickling tears burst out of her eyes, soon trickling down her cheeks as hot streamlets. The girl sunk back onto the pillows, and buried her face into her hands.

Severus stared at her, bemused. Crying was something he had always considered as a sign of pathetic weakness, or some kind of foolish attention-seeking of overspoiled brats. Yet, now there was a weird, different emotion, a bleary hollowness inside him, as he watched her lamenting. She looked somehow so frail, so small, the forceful sobs shaking her slender body... His stomach gave a salty lurch. Why did those quivering little shoulders look as though they should have been given shelter? Severus was hunching very close to Nymphadora, so close that his fingers could have brushed her cheek... And, the more he goggled at her, the more he became oddly mesmerized, willing to do something that would cease those dainty features from shivering...

It was also awkward to notice that this strong outburst of sorrow was occurring because of his near rival's death. He did not know how to take Black's passing. The bat and the hound had loathed each other till the last bickering they had shared the previous day. But had Snape hated him so much that he would now go and dance Macarena on his grave? No. It was equal to the Potter neurosis: he had not wanted Sirius dead. The men had been on the same side after all. And when Snape had reformed, had he not been washed clean from the soot of the grimmest evilness? Perhaps he was not going to award roses and honey-cakes for Gryffindor, or become a pink chibi plushie glomping every by-passer. However, at least he felt ever-growing animosity towards Voldemort because of all these futile deaths and sufferings.

Suffering... She was suffering. Through others' suffering and because of her own suffering. And was her suffering also his suffering, suddenly? The old cynical man had perhaps never felt pity, but at this very moment, the chains arresting such sentiments were cracking broken. And perhaps someday, in the indefinite future, he was going to discover how this novel emotion began residing in his heart in ever larger quantities, and what was the most profound meaning of it.

Still hypnotized by her stirring, anguished frame, he did not notice how one of his scarred hands was extending itself towards her shoulder. Would just a petty stroke make those tears vanish a bit? His fingers were thrilling even because of the thought of skimming her softness... this softness that - by such a minuscule whim of luck - had avoided the cold mould under a gravestone...

But, her abrupt movement made him jigger the fist away. She had revealed her face. Suffused with tears, she goggled at the wizard. In fact, the girl had not even spotted his floating fingers and their haphazard jogging back towards their owner.

"H-how did this happen? How - who killed him? And what about the others, what..."

Hence the bird of ill omen had to caw out the tales he had heard in the early Phoenix convention. Tonks lay on her back, breathing brokenly, gazing indifferently at the four-poster's vault of hangings. Somehow the tears died after a while, but the benumbing vacuum was left to embrace her. Although Severus had spent the morning in equal stupor, his subconscious had apparently snatched a syllable from here and there during the Order meeting. Thus his ho-hum croaking was not completely meaningless. The fatigue yet drained all the usual pomp and drama out of his tone. The vowels barely drifted onwards.

At some point, towards the end of his gibbering, Snape began recalling the very purpose of his sneaky nocturnal visit to St. Mungo's. As he had fluttered in hours ago, rather unauthorized and illegally with the aid of some cunning camouflage, his awareness had still functioned sleekly. But entering this chamber had somehow crushed the sense of reality. The thoughts had sailed no more, but had been drowned into the bottomless surfs of Styx. Perhaps it had been the sheer effect of seeing her again, or perhaps not... The reasons were hard to picture. After the incoming, he had just squatted beside her bed like a guardian gargoyle, not having the courage to wake the little thing up, even though her sleep evidently had been a limbo. The clock had ticktocked and ticktacked and tried pathetically to make a splash in the corner with all that noisiness. But the big brother thunderstorm had muffled its rackety. Thus, nothing and nobody had made the glum bat observe the time's racing.

The thundering brawled more faintly, as though it had gotten its throat sore because of all that futile roaring. It had observably also become bored with London, and was migrating elsewhere, looking for new adventures.

The man finished his story. For a blink, he only listened to her arduous inhales, and the occasional, faint sobs. Finally he slipped a few long fingers into one of his cloak pockets, and pulled out a black, opaque vial. With a flick of wand, he conjured an empty goblet out of thin air, nipped the bottle's stopper off with a yellow, overgrown fingernail, and poured the fuming fluid into the cup. After adding some water from the jug on the nightstand, he bent over the delirious Auror to awaken her. Her feverish, swollen eyes met his oddly closed expression.

"You ought to drink this. It shall aid your healing."

For a moment, she gaped suspiciously at the malodorous muck. Cliché-like, even this black magic gunk had to stink like a dumpster. But perhaps some clichés are meant to stay for forever. Like the commonplace Mary Sue invasion in fanfiction, and that always someone was born to bring the balance to the Force: whether it was Neo, Anaikin Skywalker, or Harry Potter.

Coughing somewhat, Nymphadora pushed herself back to the half-sitting position. She hesitated to grab the goblet. The shock of finding out Sirius's fate had kicked the issue of Snape's uncanny presence out of her scull. But now the enigmas crept stealthily back in such large flocks, that they would have needed their own Department of Mysteries for storing. What was this all about? Why was that man here after all?

"Nym... Miss Tonks... you unfeignedly ought to drink this. I daresay it is a rather strong solution, and may taste... somewhat sour. But it indeed shall help, and principally lessen the pains."

Eventually she picked up the dish with a trembling hand. Severus forced her to swallow it with one gulp. The instant aftereffect definitely was not any ecstasy complete with rainbow-colored bunnies and rope-skipping trees. It was as though she had eaten a campfire. The potion burned her throat, made her nose runny, and sent imaginary ants marching along her body. But after hacking and sputtering for a few minutes, a soothing, warm wave plashed over her throbbing limbs. It shooed almost entirely away the bone-chewing ache, and even washed somewhat off the tumescence left by the long crying.

Tonks, resting there with closed eyes, enjoying the spreading warmth of this remedy, did not see how a very faint smile curved Snape's lips behind the rags of greasy hair. A very uncharacteristic expression it was indeed, since not even the tiniest tint of sneer frolicked on his features. Again, the girl's existence, now calmer and softer, was mesmerizing him. Perhaps this weird fugue made his inner dictionary-thesaurus malfunction. At least he became rather oblivious of what actually wormed out of his mouth.

"Now, little child, rest. I shall leave this -"

Nonetheless, this made her eyes fly fifteen miles wide, and round like two freshly air-filled weather balloons. If she initially had been swigging the yucky potion, it would have probably spurted out of her mouth in a perfect, gorgeous semicircle towards the teacher's mug.

Little child? LITTLE CHILD?

In her whole life, she had never heard this scornful professor calling any person so. Ten years ago she had been accused of being an insufferable pewit-brain after slopping inaccurately brewed potion on Snape's robes, whose color in front of the whole class had turned into a deep shade of magenta, roses starting to sprout out of his pockets together with live budgerigars flying out concurrently. But that now, all abruptly, she was a little child for him? If she in her daze had not recalled Sunday's snogging shock, now everything returned in her mind. That oddball was using pet names, had kissed her like a corporal bonfire, and that whatever-ooze had been literally tailored for her...

Her voice blared out bright and clear, her stare boring into him. "Why did you come here? And what, WHAT was that thing supposed to be you did on Sunday? You just grabbed me like that and started KISSING me! Then you just ran away and - and - W-why did you do this to me?"

Severus froze, the sallow complexion turning into an ill shade of green. He had not expected this. Suddenly all the pent-up shame was back, hideously galloping around him and mocking his stupidity. The Potions Master sprung up from his seat like a rabid kangaroo. The neurotic man could not bear the embarrassment again... Oh, if he only could have turned himself into a crake and bounced out of the window... The door in the shadows appeared somehow so distant, as though it had been five million light years away. Yet, he took a springy hop towards the exit.

"I - I - I m-must ggggg-go now. It is late and I ought to be at Warthogs... eh, Hogswatch - erh - Hhhhh-oggwrts -"

"No, don't go! You tell me why you -" Nymphadora snapped. She could not believe this. Was that bloke trying to take a hike again with lame excuses? And alike, forgetting imprudently her illness, she skipped out of the bed as though rebounding from a trampoline. Her bare soles hit the floor, and instantly she fell, with a shrill moan. Before her blurring gaze, the room started swirling with horrendous, psychedelic figures.

However, halfway down, she was snatched up by a pair of sinewy strong arms. Their grip was persistent; they were not going to let this frail creature damage herself more. In a split second, Nymphadora found herself back between the bedsheets. The chamber was still spinning like a cracked Sneakoscope detecting the sudden invasion of carnivorous radishes from Venus. But even through the haze, she saw a tall black shape hunching above her, setting the cushions back in places, drawing the blanket over her shoulders.

"Do not be foolish, child. You are not cured overnight. You are only scathing yourself more with unwise acts like that," the figure scolded at her. Nonetheless, it was evidently going to swirl about and pigeon-heartedly swoop away the following second. So, with her remaining strength, Tonks arrested one of his arms in the last resort. The miasma was tardily vanishing, her hold gathering power again.

"Don't you dare leave just like that! Can't you understand at all what it felt like after you had left me in that closet with no explanation whatsoever of your doings? And now you're trying to do the same! Why did you do that to me? What the heck's going on?"

Snape's face was shifting color as though it had been a traffic light out of order. His gaze shot towards the exit, and back again at the girl, which was clutching his arm now with both hands. Her mien was teary, angry, demanding.

"I - I was a fool, a sss-stupid idiot, I never should have done that, I - I lost my mind... I apologize... But I... m-must go now..." he hasped.

"Don't you dare!" she snarled. It was fortunate, that her temperament was so frank and bossy. Otherwise Nymphadora could have perhaps never been able to fish out the answers.

The bat was beaten, ultimately. Like a broken-winged vulture, the jaded Potions Master flopped down on the bed's edge with his voluminous robes and cloaks. Was it now time to face the shame in its full measures? Finally step into the Minotaur's maze with no hope of escaping... hear how she would burst into impish cackles and throw dirt upon the idiot called Severus Snape. And how he had tried to forget everything... But, after all, she was right. He owed her an apology the size of a mediocre planet.

"Fine, fine then..." he exhaled, running his hands nervously through his slimy locks. All over, it was all over... Now that he was forced to confront the final, unbreakable barrier of this journey, the words slithered out rapidly, every inch of them clothed in bitterness and semi-Shakespearian solemnity.

"I have behaved foolishly; I barely can fathom what bewitched me thusly. Me, a pathetic old man... w-who could no longer listen to mere silence, who once found something more precious than the gently simmering potions... who found out that there were treasures of other kind... The young freshness of a sweet maiden... I watched your delicateness from the shadows... day by day, this unexplainable sentiment inebriating me, swelling inside me. It grew too immense for me to bear, and I fell, lost myself... Now, I apologize, and wish that you would forget the old man's mistakes. My dreams are an impossibility. And still I so foolishly cherished such false, pathetic, unattainable matters..."

He turned his agitated, hungry and burning stare upon her, which made the girl flinch. Snape was drawing breath in shallow, wheezing puffs, and wringing his skeletal fingers so that they looked like pale, twitching insect legs. His mouth curled into an awful, grievous grin that revealed the full row of uneven, yellowed teeth.

"An old man's dream... Maybe I became rattlebrained after seeing suddenly such delicate, plainspoken beauty... something that I daresay never had fallen onto my path before. So blinding can such unseen jewels be, that they drive a person senseless... But what was I thinking? That I could truly achieve those dreams? This ugly, hideous old man, facing such a graceful, sweet nymph as you... Nymphadora... even the name subsumes the subtle grace. However, I shall walk out of your life for forever now if you wish; I shall no longer persecute you. I only wish that you would save me from the scorn. I hardly can bear any more shame."

Tonks goggled at him, open-mouthed. Every drop of anger had molten off from her visage. The speechless puzzlement that initially lodged there, made her young features look almost ludicrously naïve. She had never expected such a rhapsody, where this weird Potions Master had depicted her almost as something divine. The girl barely comprehended one third of his bittersweet mutterings. And his frenzied gaze gleaming in the darkness, how it made her shiver...

"W - What are you talking about? I... I don't understand..."

Severus let out a small snort, and turned his eyes back to scrutinize the blank wall. "I, fool... I fell in..." His tongue fumbled the one and only word he had always considered as something utterly stupid, something that plashed in pink, sugared cream, something around which dozens of fluffy doves cooed wistfully. However, perhaps it was time to admit it, ultimately. Had he not made himself such an inept buffoon already? She would laugh in any case, he thought.

"What a fool I am, and yet... the more the hours pass... the more I... love you..."

---

If Tonks had previously stared at Severus as though he had been a Martian radioactive mutant eggplant, now he had transformed into a genetically manipulated cross between zucchini, Thestral, and empty Coca Cola bottle.

"Y-you... y-you l-love me?"

Snape recoiled at the sound of that cursed, syrupy honey-bunny word. After going through the whole color spectrum of a rainbow, an icky tint of putrid puce had remained on his bony cheeks. The Auror had never seen him so nervous, never so angsty. And his mutilated mind seemed to be waiting for the final collapse, when she would start squealing with impish laughter like a rusty foghorn. His rigid jaw was trembling, as he turned his mad, burning eyes back upon the girl.

"There. Go and laugh at the bumbling, loathsome old fool."

She blinked. "Why - why would I laugh?"

The change of his air was instant. If Tonks had experienced a jaw-drop reaction just a nanosecond ago, now it was his goateed chin's turn to fall some meters downwards. "But..."

"Why would I want to laugh at something like this?" She scrutinized him with bewildered pupils. A weird shimmering sensation tardily had begun tickling her joles. She could comprehend neither where this feeling was flowing from, nor how on Mars she had not flinched when hearing her forename. Usually she caught the urge to turn the poor bugger, who had erred to whinny this mere swear word, into dungbeetle droppings with an angry flick of wand. Now, however, everything appeared so thoroughly upsy-daisy and topsy-turvy, that even the forces of nature were taking holidays and turning the elements into pea soup.

Somewhat stuttering, the Auror went on. "I... I just don't know what to think. What you just said... I don't believe I've ever heard anyone talking about me so... so beautifully."

And true it was. Such refined reflections of dole affected a lot more than just some humdrum, unmannered 'Kewl, ur a hawt chick'. At this point, an imaginary paintbrush was splashing deep magenta coating all over her face. She perfectly sensed the nauseous glowing. And what was even worse, she could not hide it anywhere. Snape's dark eyes were glittering oddly. Embarrassed, chewing at her lower lip, she peered at her hands resting in her lap.

"Just... h-how did this happen? I mean... we hardly know each other and everything..."

The wizard's mind was one big blank patch, with no coherent thoughts. Despite the strong will to crash through the solid wall and leave this place for forever, his hinterland seemed to be pasted onto the bed's edge with good old isinglass. Mind-boggling was, that her reaction had been the complete opposite of his biased expectations. The child was merely blushing, just as anxious as he... And now, what was he supposed to tell? Digging history was difficult since the soil was hard and rocky. How would he clarify happenings that were enigmatic even for him? What kind of pickaxe would break the earth's surface so that he could shovel the mould aside and reveal the explanations underneath?

His voice diminished into a mere whisper. Since the thunder was not abusing the neighborhood any more with overly loud noise pollution, such subtle vibrations of ether could be caught again. Moreover, the two figures sat very close, his tall bat-shadow towering over Nymphadora's frailer form. Hence there was no need for Extendable Ears or other hearing aids.

"I... For months, I have been watching you. Denying my feelings, pretending that they never existed... I... I hardly can interpret the course of these occurrences... During the few occasions we shared, I daresay I was very startled because of the absence of prejudice you had towards me..."

He winced because of his own speculation. Even at the moment she expressed this rare splendor of inner beauty, and still, still he had expected to meet ridicule? But so it was, that deep-rooted weeds of distrust were not plucked off that easily, and hence his biased mind had turned against him once more. Once more to imagine only mocking around him...

"And what you have become, such a graceful orchid..." he croaked on. “However, it indeed might have been the honesty sturdier than the purest Veritaserum... Your smile, your t-touch... ever more intoxicating me..."

She gulped, cheeks shimmering like two cooking plates. "B-but I... d-didn't I just cause you loads of harm? I mean... I burnt your robes and got you in trouble in that alleyway and..."

Suddenly, as she recalled her own blunderings, beside Snape's snog-farce they started looking as though trying to draw a parallel between a thimbleful of water and the Atlantic Ocean. She felt her shoulders cringing, an uncanny shuddering pulsating inside her with the tempo of her heartbeats. Here she sat, the little butterfingered goof-off, praised by this extremely powerful wizard who had not only saved her life before, but had slithered in the dead of night to make sure she would survive from her injuries... And she had not even cared to be grateful because of the remedy...

However, on top of the angst heap was something that had re-awoken some forgotten peculiarities. Had he not honked something about touching? And what Sirius had once said about this oddball loathing such innocent friendliness... The abrupt curiosity overrode the bashfulness and made her seize one of his chapped hands. It was a miracle that Severus did not zoom up like a firework gone haywire and hit his greasy head to the ceiling far above. So rigid and breathless the Potions Master turned, that there could be no more doubts of his phobia. She was easily able to link the past with the present. So many times she had seen that same eep-aargh-gasp-reaction...

"I was told you hate this, and yet you say..." She shook her head slightly. "Yet you say that you..."

He stared at her, transfixed. It felt as though he had had his lungs full of cauliflowers. The inhales had once more grown arduous and shallow. Although his fingers were stiff as fossilized oysters, they slowly curled over her soft little hand, closing it into a bony hold. Apparently those spidery fingers, burned and scarred by the years of potionmaking, were enjoying immensely the warmth and smoothness underneath, something that they never could possess...

"I... used to... but... you... Miss Tonks, your sweet, engaging softness..." His eyes bore suddenly a glazed, dreamy aspect. "Throughout the times, it has merely meant pain or humiliation, but your soft hold was something unusual. It remained in my dreams... If I seek for comprehension, I repeatedly fail to understand..."

His badly manicured thumb smoothed the back of her hand as though fumbling a frail bottle of some remarkably moola-requiring potion. And true it was, usually long-lasting mortifications accumulated in one's mind, gradually turning into venomous vipers ensnaring the awareness, poisoning it, possessing it, turning it ever bitterer... Perhaps it is cliché-like to talk about tragic childhood while a shrink looking like Freud paces around the psychologist's office, making notes on a clipboard... However, the hero of an unknown geeky book series, scribbled by some obscure Muggle called J. K. Rowling, had himself extracted memories from Snape's mind, and seen flicks of the hatred's origins.

Hurting, mocking... years flying past... seclusion, the serpents of mind hissing and accusing... Memories of the golden youth were nothing but swirling darkness. Witnessing pain was just as excruciating as feeling it personally. At home, at school, and later, as a servant of Lord Whatever-French-Sounding-Thingy... A violent father, a suffering mother... Messieurs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs hexing his every third step, cackling, cackling, cackling, cackling... and finally, his own hands gory after ripping innocent souls apart ...

The stigmas were burned there for forever. And hence, the biased, agonized awareness hardly distinguished honest friendliness due to the curses of the past. But initially, there had been a pale dawn in the long-lasting polar night, melting the permafrost and crushing the icebergs...

If only the ashen light would be permitted to last and fight the night, fight the benumbing coldness... If not, the shadows would perhaps creep back ever blacker, and let the arctic winds breeze again, envelop the landscapes back into the eternal, hollow coldness...

Tonks, sitting beneath an infamous hooknose, had turned so scarlet that her bubblegum pink hair appeared almost sickly wan compared to her face. His husky drawling made her feel ever meeker. Severus was holding and measuring her hand as though he had been Gollum thumbing the Ring of Power, his mesmerized, yearning mien adding the final salt into the soup. However, before the Auror found time to pip a syllable, he let go of her and straightened up. The hypnotized air was gone. Instead was again spreading the nauseously virulent air. His yellow fangs glowed appallingly in the darkness.

"Now... you are provided with the answer to my foolishness. Once more, I apologize that an old pathetic man got lost in his pitiful, impossible dreams. Henceforth, I shall leave you. I shall agonize you no longer. Perhaps I am meant to return to my solitude... for forever. Young and fresh as you are, you undoubtedly shall find better suitors than th-"

His sour farewells were cut short.

"What are you talking about?" Nymphadora had also pulled herself up a few inches. The crimson blotches had vanished from her face, and the hair's pinkness was dominating again.

"Wh... I merely inferred that -"

"Did I say I wanted you to leave?"

"Erm... No, but -" The curl of lip disappeared.

She sighed, shaking her head lightly. "Look, Mr. Snape... I don't know how to put this, but you... you shouldn't have scared me like that, but just plain told that you feel this way... I..." She cast her gaze up at him. "I do like you. You just oughtn't to be so dodgy. I guess I never really admitted it, but... umh... you saved my life in that alleyway and all, if you remember. I'm such a dead clumsy berk that I'd gotten myself in fatal trouble -”

The effect of these words was as if jinxing Snape with a Petrificus Totalus. He became rigid for the 50000000th time that night, which was getting definitely somewhat a lame act. His black fervent eyes were boring so deep and flaming into hers, that it was a mere wonder they did not set her hair on fire. And even though Tonks had been shot an equal number of times with this Piercing Scowl of Ultimate Penetration ™, it still had effect enough to make her recoil.

"Y-you... d-does this mean that you... H-how can this be... D-does this mean that y-you are not r-rejecting my feelings?" he spluttered, extending a hand towards her cheek.

"Um, well... w-we could try and get to know each other..." She gave a shy, tiny shrug. And a petite quiver, as she felt a few of his cold, coarse fingers beginning to travel down the side of her face, slowly, caressing the silky buccal treasure they had re-found. There was almost an insane gleam in his pupils. Seemingly the wizard had a hard time to trust his senses and believe the view below.

Snap. A clawlike fist clenched upon the girl’s upper arm, beginning to draw her nearer its master. Another snap, and the Auror was pressed almost unmanneredly hard against his chest, a sinewy arm tight around her upper body. She could sense his thorax rising and falling with fast, agitated respiration. The fingers still wandered on her cheek, a large thumb fondling her lower lip.

Nymphadora's heart started pounding frantically, like a dotty hippopotamus jumping up and down. His touches felt very odd: clearly the greasy old bat had no coherent idea of what was supposed to be gentle or affectionate. The hold always reminded her of pincers or cutting pliers, and the strokes of his fingers were almost like those of a raw skeleton. Yet she could not help shivering so near this uncanny male. Perhaps he was uglier than the average gargoyle, but still so full of might and shadowy power, cunning razor-sharp intelligence...

"My little sweet child..." a hoarse whisper at her ear croaked. A second later, a pair of lips was sliding down her cheek, with the weird side effect of a huge, long nose being smeared against the side of her face. Oh how easier everything would have been, if the Potions Master's beak-like facial protuberance had been removable. Initially, he could have trivially snapped it away, set it on the table, and enjoy fully the wonderful swooping sensation the procedure of snogging brought along. Afterwards, the Easy Take-It-Off Nose™ would have been so trouble-free to place back into its slot, and he could have gleefully continued to glare at the pathetic sordid mortals down its curving bridge. Now however, the teacher had to bear the misery that this overlarge projection so maliciously sneered at him, with its best efforts trying to hinder his lips from reaching the girl’s sweetness.

The witch felt so exceedingly weird to be squeezed here by this bloke, the most self-conflicting man in the wizarding neighborhood, the oiliest, greasiest git of Hogwarts, her least favorite teacher back in the teeny bobber years... And yet her stomach was tingling more by every fondle, ever breathless she became when being pressed against his broad chest... Unlike the bloodless sandpaper-like fingers, his slow, burning kisses on her cheek were soft, and the enfold warm. And although Nymphadora usually was a rather bossy extrovert, initially an overpowering shyness was filling her consciousness. Why so, she could not comprehend.

But unfortunately the poor batman, whose love life had been as exciting as that of an old punctured football, could barely read any feminine reactions. Tonks gave an involuntarily twitch as his lips slid over a sorer spot lower on her jowl, near the neck. Snape was dragged away from his dreamland, and he ceased the cuddling.

What was that?

Evidently he could not perceive that such a flinch could be the sign of sheer rapture, but took it as a mark of nausea. And lo, the demons of prejudice, how they furthermore howled.

Was she only playing games after all, and in reality despising him? But... there had been the honesty in her eyes, the honesty so crystallic... yet... she did not answer his tokens of affections...

Was he only making a fool of himself, again...?

He slowly let go of the Auror, frowning fatigued down at her.

"Wha...?" she started, befuddled.

"You are too generous to trifle with me. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject for forever. As I have stated, I shall not tease you."

"What? No, no, why'd you think that I..." Her jaw hit the floor, her hands unwittingly gripping the front of his cloak so that the large serpent-shaped silver clasp holding the canvas got ripped off and fell with a clatter onto the floor. What was the matter with him? Again falling into that accursed sulkiness?

And yet again, so that the night would be prolonged and prolonged and prolonged and prolonged and ever more prolonged, there was a long mute moment of mutual agaze. Tonks clutching at his cloak and Snape clutching at her shoulders... Him goggling at her so unblinkingly that her eyes began to water...

And then... almost one could hear dramatic thrill music in the background... dumm bada dum boom boom...

Kazam. The bat struck. The attack was so swift that the girl barely noticed how she was drawn into his tempestuous embrace, somewhat too hard for a convalescent like she. Their lips melted together, his burning, flaming kisses deepening, his chapped fingers descending to fondle her soft long neck. The slender little sparrow quivered in his hold; she evidently enjoyed fully those dark, passionate caresses. Even though the ol' Anti-Casanova had not completely lost his clumsy barbarity. Not too long went, and a pair of arms was coyly slipped around the professor's thorax, and her abashed answers reached his sentience. Hypnotized by her grace he was, hypnotized by the spellbinding night. After all the angst, the raven misery, had he truly won the delicate desert flower to his side? Yes, here the little jewel rested at his chest, in the shelter of his cape, eyes closed... She resisted no more, but was entirely his, here, under the dark-blue cupola of inky shadows... the storm clouds outside gradually growing paler and hazier, giving room for a new dawn.

Indeed. If the chamber had previously been a lair of tears, now it was oozing with such gushing, tacky syrup, that any incomer would have gotten his or her shoes stuck to the gooey floor. Only the blooming roses, the silvery pixie dust, the rainbow unicorn peeking in through the door, and the gamboling cupids throwing pink confetti were missing.

The silence was almost ethereal, as even the slobbering and slurping noises had ceased. Confusing the night had been, at the same time grievous and blissful. Tonks lay still in Snape’s arms, a deep drowsiness overcoming her steadily. The potion's major tranquillizing effect had begun, slowly lulling her into sleep. And indeed, after all the ache of heart and body, perhaps a deep slumber would be welcome... although nothing could chase away the Grim Reaper's grimacing face... the Death's cloaked figure bending over Sirius's fading form. There were the occasional tears trickling down her visage, but usually a pallid thumb crawled forth to wipe them away. Snape had long kept his palm cupped on her cheek, occasionally stroking her hair, and letting his fingers descend and travel slowly along her neck. She seemed to like this immensely.

"I... g-guess I needed a shoulder to cry against..." She nuzzled her cheek a little against his pectoral, her voice lisping slightly. "And t-thanks for the remedy, Mr. Snape..."

"Eh..." he hasped. “You do not need to address me that way, child. It is Server- eh... Sewer- ergh... Severus. Severus for you."

Another long-lasting stillness drifted through the ether. Tonks was turning ever listless, and equally did the jadedness push the man's shoulders down. He lifted some of the blankets up, wrapped them around the girl, and set her back to lie on the fluffy cushions. A few of his fingers brushed some fallen locks off her face, smoothing the soft arch of her choule.

"I shall leave now. And grateful I am to know that you do not loathe me, even though I am what I am... not Witch Weekly's smooth-cheeked prissy cover boy. I adore furthermore your honesty. As difficult as the Wolfsbane Potion is to brew, as intricate is such an excellent quality to find these days..." Unromantic as the old bogey was, he though it perhaps to be very flattering to compare her character with some muck-stinking sludge. But she was so much on the verge of sleep that she hardly noticed the ungainly metaphors. Weird the bloke was in any case, and she would need to get used to it.

The professor flitted to the nightstand, and set the black remedy vial beside the water jug.

"There is substance left enough for one gobletful. You ought to drink it as soon as you awaken. You obviously are not cured yet, even though the pains might have slightly ceased."

In Nymphadora's ears, his sentences were being diluted, and they were turning fuzzy, bleary. The potion was ensnaring her senses, and carrying her further into the inky fjords of sleep. She barely sensed how Snape's lips gave the last caresses to his treasured nymph.

"Henceforward, if you wish, I shall come to see you when I am allowed to have an adequate time..."

The words were drowned in blackness. She was gliding past the star-strewn galaxies somewhere in the unknown subliminal dimensions.