Even Old Morose Bats Can Get Soft

Alarmed clatter reverberated from beyond the door of Nymphadora’s hospital room. The quartet froze. The males would need to hide themselves somehow, and faster than the speed of light multiplied with the number of atoms in the known universe. The unauthorized night guests would have probably leapfrogged out of the window, but the frame was far too minuscule for a grown-up man to squeeze out. And alas, who was able to think rationally in this cornucopia of chaos? Snape would have been supremely able to camouflage them all with his masterly Dark Arts knowledge, but unfortunately his wand was still in George's clutches. And initially the fancy candies brought no solutions either. The chaps needed to stay invisible more than just a few seconds.

Nevertheless, a quick idea lamp burst into light above the former Ravenclaw witch's shrubbery of hair. Lifting up the sheet that was hanging past the four-poster's edge, she frantically gesticulating pointed at the empty space under the bed. That playground of dust bunnies was not quite roomy. It however served as the only alternative for a quick hideout. So, in a blur of dragonhide green, the twins plunged into the gaping blackness underneath, the crippled hooknose on their heels. The sheets verging on the floorline covered the bed's underbelly perfectly. As long as nobody would peek in, the piece of furniture would seal the mysteries till infinity and beyond. Hence, Tonks swiftly unlit all the floating candles, dived under the blankets, and pretended to abide in the fjords of deep slumber, accompanied by a chant of loud fake snores.

On the very last eighth of the final second, Fred noticed the mountain of silver clasps glimmering splendidly in the pool of moonbeams filtering through the window. If the incomers would spot those, all would be lost… Via a gap in the sheets, he swiftly pointed his wand towards the frippery heap.

"Accio pile of Goth stuff!" he whispered. The thingamabobs bounced up, beginning to zoom towards Snape's face, which unfortunately jutted just on the very beeline…

A feeble ouch resounded from under the four-poster just before a squad of panting Healers appeared in the doorway.

******

What the gamboling kumquats was this? Had not the horrible ruckus been thundering from this very chamber? And yet, everything appeared calmer than the insides of a swimming pool filled with the Draft of Peace. The befuddled Healers stuffing the entrance could merely shrug and tilt their heads. The patient seemed to be lulling in the most glorious mansions of sleep, snoring so complacently that any insomniac would have been green with jealousy. After a while, the medi-meisters took a hike since ostensibly nothing was wrong. Maybe some last feeble remnant of the thunderstorm had decided to have a tantrum above this very chamber Or then the patient had shrieked in her sleep, but had slain the bogies of the slumberland and calmed down. Who knew?

When the irksome prowling in the outside corridor died, the fake-snoozer sprung up like an overperky Eastern Bunny.

"They're gone! You can get out,” Tonks prompted, lifting up the dangling sheet.

Soon, the trio crawled out. They all appeared more or less disheveled. The twins with their guilty expressions looked like two cloned Mundungus Fletchers returning from a zippy cauldron gig, only to notice that the Wonder Boy had been attacked by a few Ringwraith rip-offs. The Potions Master was furthermore as wrathful as an insulted Hippogriff. Additionally his oily head was winsomely decorated with a portion of the tinsel that had soared towards him before the Healer invasion. Apparently the hair grease made the bric-a-brac glitter even more vibrantly, because their lustrous glimmer formed a near halo above his not-so-very-angelic mug. Few other clips had experienced a fate less delightful. Some of them had zoomed into his open mouth, and one seemed to be stuck in his left nostril. Hacking and spluttering, he kept spitting out those less nutritious tidbits of Slytherin bat-wear.

"Erm... sorry about this..." Fred mumbled. His visage shimmered like a red traffic light. "We couldn't know that you two...erm - like each other -"

"Eeh... diswasurs." George lisped, and meekly offered Snape's wand back to its sovereign owner. The Potions Master snatched it back with an angry yank, shaking a gnarled fist towards the redhead. Humiliated and bashed though he was, he still somehow managed to keep the jug of senses intact, and did not become a psycho lunatic chainsaw murderer. Yet, after spewing out a few more buckles and conjuring the unluckiest one out of the abysses of that dark and cavernous nostril, Severus began hissing venomously to the rascals.

"You shall not repeat what you witnessed or committed to anybody!" His lips were shaking, and his pupils still reflected imaginary sculls complete with snakes protruding out of their maws. "Grrrahh! You shall not -"

Nymphadora's calmer, yet severe retort was perhaps more convincing than the professor's mad mooing. "Please, don't start babbling around about this. We'd like to keep our privacy. For the sake of the Order, you're old and clever enough to understand what issues we're dealing with."

Tonks sighed deep and straightened her pose. Her brow remained knitted. "You know, that was really stupid of you to blast in like that and attack Professor Snape. I'm expecting you to apologize to him."

The brothers were shuffling their feet awkwardly, giving timorous nods. In the background, the oilylocks was with swift speed falling into dark, dank sulkiness. Thunderclouds the size of Russia were swirling above his slimy crown. He had been bitterly offended right in front of his petite admired one. Just like in the dingy alleyway with Malfoy's slanders... Humiliation all over again, the worst of the worst... Severus almost neurotically loathed the concept of being overpowered or insulted. Not to mention becoming bashed by a bunch of school-skiving, know-it-all teens.

"Umh, yeah. We're sorry. We just wanted to see how you're doing, Tonks..." the Weasleys gibbered almost in unison. They began hurriedly to empty their pockets, and load the get-well paraphernalia onto the four-poster's foot.

"We, erm, aa - we just decided it might be better if we pay a re-visit after the sun's come up. Erm - yeah -” they sang. The end of the sentence turned into swallowed mumbles, even though it vaguely sounded like 'and when that ol' git's not lurking around'. Before the girl had time to tootle a mere vocal, the carrot-hairs had already weaseled out the room.

******

Panting furiously, the Weasley twins leaned against the dusty display of Purge and Dowse Ltd. The repulsive dummies in their moth-eaten rags goggled at them eerily through the sooty glass with their blank, plastic eyes. Even though these artificial mannequins looked like the kind that might presumably wake up and join some whacked-up wannabe Dark Lord's army of zombie puppets, they did not bother to stir. They merely remained to exhibit the full-scale ugliness of the fashion world of the eighties. Fred and George had spurted out of the hospital as though they had had their hinterlands on fire. Gradually their lungs found the air molecules again, and the wheezes formed recognizable words.

"Bleugrgh!"

"Pfii - Bro, d'you thhh-thhhink whhh - Do you thhh-think what I think?"

"Hhh - Who'd you think I am? Some eight-legged cross between Legilimens, Seer, and real-time ESP master? Pfii - How am I supposed to know what you're hatching in your cobwebbed scull?" George held a hand at his throat, feeling how his strained heart was still bouncing up and down like a ferret under the fake Mad-Eye Moody's spells.

"But... you saw what I saw, bro? Or did you saw it? I just... I just can't believe it. That grease-dripping git snogging Tonks and her being all swoony about that gargoyle…"

"Eygh! Don't ever remind me of it again!" The second twin's visage warped to express utter nausea. "Especially not at a dinner table! Eggh! I seriously hope I haven't lost my appetite for the rest of my life."

"Pfiff - Hhh - In that case, you'll have to enter an early ghostdom, bro, if you're going to starve yourself because of this. But... I was just thinking..." Fred brushed some fallen locks off his face, straightening up somewhat after the breathlessness. "It was just so weird... Did that actually happen, or could it all have been some dodgy side effect of our test product? I mean… we've encountered numerous tricky troubles before with the crucial than crucial fieldwork. Like with those disqualified Ballerina Bonbons... You remember when you were testing them, mate?"

"Yeah... the candy was supposed to turn the poor unsuspecting victim’s clothes into a pink frilly tutu, but instead I started having these plain awful hallucinations... what was it… there was this humongous purple dinosaur trilling these sickening out-of-tune sappy songs to a bunch of clapping toddlers… Then there was this tall asthmatic bloke in black who both looked and sounded like as though he had had a cauldron on his head… he kept calling me 'Luke' and claiming to be my father... It was horrible, bro. Especially the overperky dinosaur. Brrh, it still makes me shudder. I'm so glad it was only a faulty invention and nothing real."

Beetle-browed, Fred observed suspiciously at one of the invisibility snacks pinched between his forefinger and thumb. "That wasn't the whole cake, mate. You were acting really dodgily for hours. Cringing under a table and accusing your dear brother to be a whopping gargantuan Umbridge, who'd come to feed her pink cardigan to you... Phew. But alas, the road to glory and success is never easy.” He struck a dramatic pose, adopting momentarily a mock-tragic expression. A few seconds later, the young man however hardened back to the former seriousness. "You see my point now? What if - what if this stuff's some crackpot ickiness too? What if it caused some sort of... duplicated mirage or something? I mean come on, that ol' stink's got the emotional range of a box of lemons. Sour, sourer, git. How could he even be capable of anything that'd require snogging? By Merlin's secret chamberpot, he's got the sweetness of a seasick crocodile! We couldn't have really seen what we saw!"

"I don't know, bro…" George scratched his forehead, lips pursed. "It looked pretty real to me... with Tonks insisting we should keep our traps shut about it and everything..."

"Yeah, you yakked just the same tosh when you thought I was that overswollen horned toad. Honestly, mate."

The redheads stagnated silent for a moment beside the dingy display, their jaws hanging open. A lonely tomcat meowed like a rusty hinge somewhere in the deep black shadows. In a nearby gutter, healthily brown mire purled and oozed, apparently carrying the contents of a few public toilets along. A few grayish cloud shreds lazily dragged themselves across the puny gap of paling sky that shimmered between the high buildings. Such endearing surroundings Snape and Tonks had for their nocturnal romance drama.

"But..." George finally collected his chin up from the pavement. "If it was all hocus-pocus, what did we really do? We were inside the hospital, weren't we? Or did we accidentally Apparate to Greenland, got chased by a polar bear, and Disapparated back here to pant?"

"Umh, obviously not, you forgot that we can't Apparate here... But... maybe we were all the time just behind her door or something and got kicked out by some Healer... Don't ask me. I'm still working on hard to get that twisted disturbing hallucination out of my attic. Eww, it's going to give me nightmares for the rest of my life."

Timidity veiled the panorama once more. The gutter played its burble-gurgle symphony again in peace. The Weasleys eyed each other, then the invisibility candies, again each other...

"Okay. Maybe we'll put these back into the research and development unit..." George glanced sorrowfully at the colorfully wrapped goodies. "What a shame... all the longer than long hours of our wasted ingenuity..."

"Yeah, but we can't market this marvel if it causes such near-fatal side symptoms..." Fred bit his lip. Yet, soon his freckled face widened into a merry grin. "Hey, but maybe it's worth it. A bit o' brooding and maybe we'll get the invisibility reaction to last longer. We'll just need to sink our conks into some other substances and study their effects… I bet ol' Dung'll get us good alternatives."

"Ah well, c'est la vie, like Bill would say it. Spends too much time with that oo-la-la-je-suis-Veela lass nowadays. Infests all his beloved brethrens with that French propaganda,” his companion chuckled.

And so, ultimately, the semi-confused twins decided to wave sweet farewells to Purge and Dowse and their cobwebbed exhibition of ugly dummies. Thus, under the blanching empyreans, the secret of Severus and Nymphadora seemed to become re-shrouded, as the sole eyewitnesses did not trust their senses even worth a millimeter. Indeed, perhaps it was lucky that the whole incident became mixed with doubting the safety of the candies. However, since the joke shop owners respected the Auror and her requests, they hardly would have blabbered on about what they had beheld. Yet now, as they both ferociously attempted to push the sheer concept of the old bat being sloppily amorous into the deepest gulfs of the murkiest void, no rumors would slither out of their throats in a long, long, long, long, long, long time.

Or at least so long, that not even several hundred long-words in succession would be enough to describe the length of that indefinite slice of the time pie.

---

A very noiseless individual called Silence was Nymphadora's roommate. For a moment her eyes had lingered upon the closed doorway, but now it was time to shift the gawp towards the moping Potions Master. He sulked in the furthermost nook of the chamber, trying to stitch up his jubilee Count Dracula -attire with the fallen clips and buckles. Snape's mien was so acid, that his bare scowl could have curdled all the milk within a square mile. Or equally putrefy all the rosebushes and sweet dandy summer blossoms, whichever then were closer. It seemed as though the evil humility bogeys never left the long-suffered man alone. Crouching there petulantly, plucking the clasps one by one from the floor, he avoided stealing even the most minuscule glance towards the bedstead. All kinds of heavily censored curses were teeming under his cranium, spinning in the same whirligig with the shame.

Those cursed imps, intruding even his seventh heaven, and making him look like a thwacked cabbage-brain in front of his dream cherub... Perhaps it would be better if he just crawled stealthily out of the limbo when the belle was not peering in this direction... All this shame, all this disgrace...

Nonetheless, where elsewhere would have Tonks been gazing at, than at the bashed professor? It would have been rather dull and brain-debilitating to stare at the door so everlastingly, even though it tried to be such a smug showoff with its towering height and fancy carvings. After all, it was only a boring piece of dead wood. And was there not an alive person in this chamber that needed attention?

Although the Weasley farce had majored in nastiness, the Metamorphmagus could not help giggling in the shelter of her hand. Despite the deep offences, this all had its undeniable comical side. The whole idea of Fred and George endeavoring to rescue Tonks from the evil merciless clutches of Severus Snape was just something thoroughly ludicrous... not to mention the conception of that elegantly sweeping mage lord dangling upside down, struggling with his own robes, and presenting his ridiculous breeches. To think that a man of his age - hardly even forty years old - attired himself as though he had been some shady alchemist from the murkiest Dark Ages… But perhaps it had something to do with his ancestry. Highly obsolete both with manners and speech style, Snape originated from one of those ancient pureblood wizarding families. Perhaps the latter fact explained why he kept drawling and dressing up like the combined reincarnation of Shakespeare and Salazar Slytherin.

At the moment, Tonks felt some kind of soft, humoristic empathy towards star-crossed suitor, when discovering him so grim and miffed. After all, the bat had soared here to assure that she would heal up, sacrificing his expensive time to brew her potions she was likely to feed to the floor slabs even before reaching the drinking vessel. That wizard had done so much for her. Hence, it was perhaps time for refunding. Time to accept the tricky quest of attempting to cheer up that grouty lemon-face.

Smiling, she patted the spot where the hook-beak had previously roosted. "Severus... please don't take it that hard. Those kids getting lost in here was quite much just a stupid random accident. Besides, they're gone now. And weren't you supposed to sit here?"

He cast his scowl up at her. The petulant pout slowly melted into wordless wonder. Question marks were twirling around his greasy scull, as he stared at her naïve simper and those dark, merrily twinkling eyes. Hardly ever a woman had looked at him that way, her aspect so full of such warm compassion - as though he had been a big gargoyle plushie that desperately needed a hug. And, slowly, he gathered up his vampire accessories and wormed at the four-poster, more and more question marks joining the previously large flock bobbing in his awareness. The professor had not even fully sat down, and yet a pair of arms was softly sliding around his torso. The little Auror snuggled at his side with closed eyes, a sweet, credulous grin curving her lips.

"Don't be mad at them. I know that was really stupid of them, but aren't we all a bit of berks sometimes and end up acting idiotically?"

The girl cuddled up some more under his arm, the remedy's aftereffect still jesting her with occasional chills. Hence the batwing's shelter was more than welcome. "Mmmh... you're so warm..."

Severus sat there, his expression utterly lopsided, hands rigid in the air. His eyes behind the rags of lank raven hair had turned so mile-wide and round, that it was a mere wonder they did not pop out of their sockets like two ping-pong balls. Even though he hardly could forgive the twins their baddie boo-boo, Nymphadora's easygoing gentleness and sense of humor was initially putting the grumpy ol' crow melt like ice cream in sauna. And how she was calling him 'warm'... another contradiction that increased the blank befuddlement. Someone known as a walking refrigerator abruptly being addressed that way... And although Severus had experienced her honesty in such many ways already, it furthermore had its mind-boggling power to surprise him. No impishness, no sneers, just the very bucket of opposites was pushed under his nose. The Potions Master kept opening and closing his dry-gone mouth as though some rascal had been idly flipping the lid of a mailbox. He had no clue how to versify his thoughts. That pinklocks hugging him was like a virus that had formatted his mental hard drive, erasing all the words and phrases.

---

It took a while from Snape to survive from the shock of Nymphadora’s Care Bear attack. Long, long he appeared as baffled as a goldfish recovering from lobotomy. All the glomp-the-gargoyle mania had been somewhat too perturbing for such an average Jack Skellington to bear.

Yet, was that not what Severus so desperately needed in his life after all? Some color to brighten up the kingdom of blackness, some empathy to shoo away the icicles from his chest. And it seemed that Nymphadora was the perfect person to turn this lump of flint into jelly. Tonks might have had her flaws just as well as the Potions Master had his. But with such inner treasures as genuine cordiality and honesty, could be compensated even ultra-perilous clumsiness.

Indeed, Snape and Tonks were the perfect opposites approximately in everything, and yet - it seemed - almost like tailored for each other. Nonetheless, was not an age-old game called jigsaw puzzle based on the same idea? Even a cicada-brained slug would have discovered that the differently cut pieces matched, not the ones that were cloned to the last atom. Opposites melted together, forming perfect patterns, headlands fitting the other's gulfs. And here, Severus needed someone to teach him that the world around was not just one huge bucket of scorn… and perhaps the elegantly soaring bat could in the future exhibit his little fledgling how to be a tad less ham-fisted than a three-legged mammoth endeavoring to dance ballet.

In the end, in this bathtub of impossibilities, Snape's anger abated totally. The lass in his arms indeed possessed some kind of power to turn granite into rubber. Eventually his sallow gnarled fists lost their fossilization. They curled around her shoulders, stroked them for a while, and finally drew the nymph back under the protecting batwings. And as though the night's blooming romance had never been interrupted, his meganose was soon again splatted against her cheek, his lips slowly caressing the girl's fresh softness.

In the crack of dawn, an ominous gliding shadow emerged from the lane where Purge, Dowse, and their winsome court of mismatched dummies roosted. A random tomcat whizzed fizzing out of its way, screeching like a badly played violin, apparently scared out of its wits. Snape, however, would not have awoken from his spellbound hypnosis even if a blue whale had sat on him. Thus, one shaggy cat's caterwauls were much nothing but random cricket's whirr. A tiny confused smile arched his thin mouth in the middle of the black whiskers. His dark pupils observed glazedly at the eternities beyond endless horizons.

His little precious... Indeed, that child, she did not despise him at all. And how he had dreaded the worst even today...

An oasis in this cold reality, where his mind wished to abide... He had reached it, and the haven had not left him to writhe outside its sealed gates... Was she truly to be his now, accepting him as he was? An ugly man nigh his forties, whereas she had to be at least fourteen years younger...

Apparently...

This was beyond all the logic of this universe...

Ponders. Deliberations. Which naturally were to be expected from Severus, the genius with razorblade intelligence. Nevertheless, even though his mind was supposed to dance in jubilance, a portion of those endocranial synapses was somewhat disturbed. Another one of his long-time obsessions besides the eek-that-person-touched-me syndrome was crumpling and charring like a piece of paper in flames: the supremacy of purebloods. Was Dumbledore truly right when he kept gibbering that one's ancestry did not matter, but the deeds committed? And how much, how much useless pomp the Potions Master had always placed on the genealogy... considering Muggle-borns to loll on the levels of Hippogriff dung, and regarding even half-bloods as somewhat debilitated...

She was in the latter category... and yet, how he admired, adored every droplet of her warm honesty, the wit bubbling underneath, the grace...

Conceivably it was slowly time to trash the prejudices, since most of the theorems seemed to be walking on straw legs. However, such ingrained fungus was not scrubbed off overnight. He still needed myriads of hourglass turns before fully comprehending how childish it was to cherish such ideas so closely related to Lord Thingy-Thing.

But perhaps this night would be a start...

****

Time can take so surprisingly many forms, that one could think it is one of those Metamorphmagus-Animagus-Legilimens-Occlumens-Divinities, id est, a Mary Sue of the worst kind. Sometimes it selects the exact shape and speed of a dead slug. Sometimes it races in hyperspace with speeds that would make Muggle physicians faint. Yet now it was jogging like a poodle on an evening wee-wee, not truly fast, but not with snail's pace either. Some might call this velocity the most convenient one between the two extremities; some might think it still teeters too much on the lethargic side. Nonetheless, it is quite much time's own decision how it clothes itself daily, stubbornly resisting any constancies and steadfast fashions. And what can an arbitrary pathetic mortal do in front of this hideous dilemma? Bellow, whack his head against a wall, rip hair, eat sauerkraut, watch Pokémon, and get zero results after all that desperate rebelling. Time would care a flying biscuit's crumb about you anyways.

The following day Tonks was freed from the arms of St. Mungo's. The Healers were shrugging in unison at her swift recovery, without knowing that a certain shady mastermind was lurking behind the scenes with sock-tasting potions. Still somewhat queasy, she limped with her slightly searing legs for a few days afterwards. But the ache was to wear off eventually.

Also Hogwarts was gradually recovering from the blisters of Umbridge-itis, even though Montague yet remained disoriented after his toilet adventures. In any case, the Hospital Wing was with swift tempo belching ex-patients out. Hermione and Ron rejoined Potter's company, and the supergang of marvel teens was intact again. Professor McGonagall and Hagrid had also returned, bringing a portion of healthy balance back into the castle.

The sacked megatoad of course hoped that her flight would go unnoticed. Perhaps she sensed the grudge against her hovering forebodingly in the air, and wished to tiptoe out of its way before the fist of sweet revenge would strike. However, Dumbledore and Flitwick had apparently done a fortunate deed when transferring the owl that had nested in Snape's hat, into Umbridge's office. The potty bird seemed to have an endless amount of friends. Just as endless pride it radiated when becoming a happy mother of five marble-sized fluff balls that mewled and puled in the cushioned headpiece. The day Dolores had waddled out of the Hospital Wing, a quick and camouflaged hike out of Hogwarts in mind, she was made to face a complete turmoil of her dear pink lace chamber. Severus had not been exaggerating even a nanometer when he had growled about the possibility of a pack of elks getting crammed in his dungeon. The frog-burrow had not exactly experienced an elk invasion that day. But a whole herd of cows, unmistakably from the near meadows of Hogsmeade, had ridiculously stuffed itself inside both the office and the corridor before. Mooing enthusiastically, they seemed to be queuing in order to see the microscopic owl nestlings, on the way chomping Umbridge's dried flowers as though they had been the best-tasting fodder ever, and fertilizing the floor and tables with natural manure en passant. How these not-so-minuscule animals had secretly gotten in, was an unsolved mystery of its own.

It did not much matter whether her property was demolished in the cow pandemonium or not, since she would have not been able to pack it anyways. Attracted by the curious mooing sounds, Peeves the Poltergeist had come floating down the very archway. He had immediately comprehended the lurking toad's escape schemes. The rest, how the ghost had chased the icky she-frog out of the school, was a legend.

*****

King's Cross Station slowly bobbed out of sight with the tempo of Nymphadora’s treads. Only a few minutes ago, the Auror had waved a good-bye to the legendary scar-head, who was grudgingly taken back into Aunt Petunia's surgically clean Muggle-palace to spend the summer. A petite sneer still played on her lips when recalling Alastor's hat tricks and the revelation of the basilisk glance. Vernon Dursley's expression of mingled fury and fear had been priceless. Hopefully, after Moody's moody lecturing, the wonderboy would get better treatment this vacation.

A turn left, and ultimately the vista was short of train depots. Whistling tunelessly, hands in pockets, the woman was gradually traipsing homewards. Her patched jeans and violently pink locks received disapproving scowls from a bunch of wider-than-tall elderly women gossiping in the street corner, wearing mismatchedly patterned muumuus so large that one could have used them as three-man tents if propped on sticks. But she could not have cared less. Especially when the critique came from a flock of prissies appearing as though someone had placed differently dressed clones of Hogwarts' ex-supreme toad to jut there with lumpy carpetbags.

Meandering lanes, dingy alleyways, and a few more persnickety grandmas in Mother Hubbards. Tonks did not bother to Apparate, even though her flat somewhere in the heart of London was rather far away from King's Cross. She plain loved walking, and especially fancied to traipse along those semi-forgotten passageways winding between ancient buildings that literally breathed Poe-esque gothic romanticism. Even her bedsit resided in one of those pre-Victorian houses the wizard kind seemed to favor almost obsessively if living here amongst the Muggles. Since most of them had trouble with electricity, - or electrocricket or electrickery, as some of them called it - they preferred everything medieval. Nymphadora of course was not a baboon when it came to understanding weird Muggle doohickeys. It was a good thing after all to possess a Muggleborn patron. It brought along certain kind of enlightenment the average mage lacked.

The day was teetering towards a pale night when the Auror finally reached her own cozy burrow. The house, which served as her daily nook, definitely looked like as though it had erred to pop in the wrong century. Dark-gray, weathered stone clothed this five-storey house adorned with curvy facades, carved pillars, minuscule balconies, and a somewhat lopsided tower-like protrusion sticking out of the roof. The small windows were here and there littered with stained glass, giving the oddball hovel a rather overly bombastic look. The whole circus was surrounded by a tall stone wall, which luckily hid a portion of the nineteenth century jamboree from external eyeballing.

If the building looked severely out-of-place, so did the Auror in her rock concert get-up as she entered the unmanicured yard through the slightly vaulted gateway. The main entrance's heavy oaken door groaned on its half-rusty hinges. It acted just the way doors were supposed to behave in places like this: the more creak, squeak and other portentous sound effects, the better. The small, dusty foyer was appropriately dark, and the steep spiral staircase made the hall literally bask in horror-movie-like creepiness. The graying wallpapers were peeling off in places, still nonetheless showing the rather complex, burgundy ornaments stamped on them. The Bizarre Haunted Shack™ image was quite perfect, but perhaps lacking the full effect since a pale light yet glowed outside.

Tonks did not care a flying penguin's web about the ill-omened shadows, but slouched up the stairs, making sure that she would not stumble over thin air. Indeed, this house was not perhaps the most convenient one for someone who could have well become the world champion in clumsiness. After leaving the sweet golden childhood home, she yet somehow had managed to live here without worse nuclear catastrophes.

The black stone steps, in which here and there could be distinguished small fossils of some shellfish, reached the fifth floor. Her climb adventure did not end yet, but her trainers selected another escalator jutting in the right. This one was steeper and more battered than the others put together. In its other end loomed a narrow teak door. She wrenched it open using a rather heavy-looking brass key, which also appeared as though it had recently done some illegal time traveling. Even though this building plashed in oddness already, Nymphadora had probably selected the yet dodgiest place of the peculiar showoff: the ludicrous tower.

Beyond this door existed a different world compared to the dark dusty gray reigning over the hallways. The high, large octagonal room burst with blaring color. A mismatched assortment of wizardous gizmos and Muggle paraphernalia was strewn across it. Orange and purple ryas covered most of the walls, blazing with zigzaggy patterns. A rickety four-poster towered in one nook. Even its hangings were painted with rather eye-aching hues. Something conspicuously looking like a piñata served as the chandelier. And the rest of the furniture appeared as though they had been piled up from the oddest flea market items. Nothing quite rhymed with one another, leaving the chamber to wallow in distinct dottiness. As she quite had not the knack for Snow White -like household keeping, where every pot and jug would have sat in über-balanced harmony on their doilies, her property swam pell-mell here and there. Unwashed coffee mugs squatted on the table. A somewhat un-Scourgified birdcage hung lopsidedly above the windowsill, its owlish resident currently looking for supper-frogs somewhere out there. Clothes lay in crumpled heaps on the backrests of chairs. A tattered old transistor radio hummed dissonantly together with a crystal ball -looking dojigger that worked as the transceiver of the WWN. This resulted in the miserably discordant singing contest of The Spice Girls and The Weird Sisters.

The empress of this bedlam snapped the radio shut, rolling her eyes at her own absent-mindedness. Usually Nymphadora did not even recall in what state she left her tiny queendom when scurrying out. Hence it was not a surprise to find the lights on, or the windows wide open when she arrived back home after a workday.

Tonks kicked her shoes off, adjusted the wacko siblings to screech louder, fixed herself a cup of strong tea, and flopped down in one of the sinking armchairs cluttered around the mahogany table. Her legs were slightly throbbing after the long promenade. Being still somewhat worn-out because of auntie Bella's spell-whacking, it was only predictable for her not to be a perky chaffinch twenty-five hours a day. Nonetheless, Nymphadora's Healer had advised her to proceed with light exercise. It would quicken the recovery. Thus, becoming a sluggish couch potato was not an option.

She found it difficult to concentrate her mind coherently on anything. A war was rising out there, even though everything was fleetingly looking so falsely placid. The naively twinkling evening stars and the mellow warm wind fanning the curtains were prone to create such bogus illusions. Voldemort had suffered only a minor defeat after all, and was gathering more power faster than a hummingbird beat its wings. The Dementors were galloping loose already... What was the next threat going to be? Godzillas and King-Kongs stomping around London, the Nazgûl soaring over the Buckingham Palace and making window-glasses shatter with their foghornlike squeals?

Only tomorrow would show... only the future would show whether the Dark Side would be slain and the cloak of menace shredded in pieces. Yet, all this ambivalence was an epitome of anguish already. Uncertainty, not exactly knowing what would be the foe's next move on this huge chessboard of life. And how many souls would be shattered before the haunted days would be over? How many others would end up like Sirius, sacrificing themselves on the altar of fight? How many more crimson tears to be shed, how many more unhealable, putrefying wounds of mind?

The end, the beginning, or the beginning of the end... The definitions were mixed, filling the dimensions of awareness and subconscious with haze. Who was going to explain the alpha and omega of this history?

Only the future itself...

Tonks squeezed a tattered copy of The Daily Prophet in her hands, her expression grim, her eyes staring incoherently at the blatantly blaring tapis opposite to her. The blustering colors and those edged, jerky figures seemed to be screeching in canon with the hatred, the hatred against this injustice. And she definitely was not alone in the deepening dusk with those sentiments. Many bowed their fatigued and bewildered heads, cursing under their breaths oaths of wrath.

So many black blossoms yet to bloom, so many cold graves yet to be dug...

A boisterous tapping sound made Nymphadora startle awake from the stuporish misery. It was coming from the open window, behind the orange curtains the serene night-waft fluttered. The Auror furrowed her brow. Was that Don Quixote Junior returning from the frog-hunt? If so, why was the owl acting like a lack-wit woodpecker and did not just hop in his cage to gnaw the delicacies in peace? On the other hand, the bird was just as peculiar as its mistress. Of mixed breed, this sporty and rather daredevil creature originated from Spain. Or at least so the salesman had bragged in his flamboyant marketing speech, and merchants were known to add some extra sugar in their prattle. But in the lack of a better name, Tonks had decided to call the manifestly batty owl so. So much harum-scarum it was that if given evil windmills, it probably would have attacked them anyway.

The girl walked to the windowsill, and drew the curtain aside. She had to squint a few times before spotting the rickety's source. To be exact, the cause blended so well in its background - the ink-blue nocturnal London vista - that it was rather difficult to notice in the dim piñata light.

An entirely black owl, so dark that any black hole would have been jealous of its feather hue, was kicking the window frame with its talons. The woman raised a curious brow. If her bird pal was wacko, it was nothing compared to this peculiarity. The creature barely had the outline of an owl. Its head was rather small, its body oddly hunched, its curvy crowlike beak disproportionately large compared to the rest of its form. No hoot or toot came out. It only scowled at her ominously with its dagger-sharp amber eyes. Tonks could not suppress a giggle. This surly birdie bore odd resemblance to the famous Bulgarian Quidditch player Viktor Krum, whose glaring pictures she had so often beheld in the Daily Prophet. And whether it was indeed an owl, or another barmy crossbreed, she could not figure out. It only managed to look as though some minor Dark Wizard might have kept such a daffy phenomenon as a pet.

The grim fowl appeared to have a thick roll of parchment tied to its leg. Briefly she mulled over who on Saturn would send such a kooky egglayer to make rackety behind her window. But as she loosened the parchment from the bird's leg and discovered the seal's crest, a fang-bearing serpent coiling to form the letter 'S', there was no doubt any longer who had scribbled the late night post. So long the parchment was, that its other end landed on the floor with an audible flump, when the Metamorphmagus rolled it open. Cramped, spiky black lettering pullulated crisscross the mail, the long and densely scrawled sentences forming almost a small novel.

The scowling owl cast a last yellow glower at the slightly blushing Tonks, who was scanning through the parchment's first lines. The murky creature apparently thought it rather offending that it had become the courier of some idiotic, syrup-dripping love letters like some common dove. Nonetheless, the recipient seemed to be going through exactly the opposite reaction. A coy simper arching her mouth, pink patches still glowing on her cheeks, she waved an indifferent sayonara for the window and plunked back down in the armchair.

Even though almost a week had passed in silence, Severus had not forgotten her. And judging by the length of the letter, he had placed time and effort on it. Time and effort to please her.

To have such an admirer...

It definitely shooed away the previous glum, empty feeling from her chest. It was perhaps for the best that concurrently with the losses, a noveau light was twinkling in the horizon, the lantern of awakening love. If the Dogstar was fading, the Batstar was sparkling with novel, unexpectedly warm glint.

Just for her...

Observably old morose bats could get soft after all.

The End.