Fitting

Fitting

The first time she ran into him it was an accident.

But then, Nymphadora Tonks was always running into people by accident.

It was on a sidewalk in London outside of an abandoned department store that was guise for St. Mungo's hospital where her shoulder bushed his like a car crash. Percy Weasley fell. He fell hard. And when he looked up at the girl who he had thought had hit him, he saw it was someone else entirely.

For a moment, just a moment, he had thought he recognized her. A face out of his past. A girl who'd been friends with Charlie and Bill. A girl who'd teased him in good nature when he first got to school. A girl who he knew probably was working for Dumbledore now. But it wasn't. Not this mousy brown haired thing. Not this girl who was so slight you wouldn't notice her in a crowd. Or in an empty street. Percy wondered how he could have been knocked down.

"I'm sorry," she said angrily. Like she wasn't at all.

Percy pulled himself to his feet and straightened his formally pristine suit.

"That is quite alright, Miss. I must not have been watching where I was going. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've very important business to attend to." And he stalked away briskly, brushing dust from his sleeves.

Tonks watched him pass by the hospital. Turn and walk past again. She turned away and walked into one of the alleyways for only a moment. When she reappeared she pulled a hand through her tufts of pink hair. Percy still stood at the entrance of St. Mungo's. In debate.

"Go in. For Merlin's sake, go in. He almost died," Tonks whispered to herself. She watched him step back from the door, hang his head and walk away.

***

The second time she ran into him was at the ministry and that was no accident.

She saw him at the end of the hall. Tagging behind the Minister of Magic by several feet.

So she charged, head forward, eyes on a point somewhere behind him. The other Aurors on her team behind her. When their shoulders connected, Tonks drove her point home.

Percy let out a startled gasp.

"Watch where you're going, would you? We're on important business!" she hissed at him.

"Nymphadora?"

Tonks stormed out of the ministry, muttering things that would make Mrs. Black blush. Too many nights she had watched how he had hurt his family. Too many nights she had watched Molly cry. Too many nights she had seen Arthur look on the faces of his children and register that there was one missing. One gone astray. He should have been a Slytherin. The bastard.

***

The third time she ran into him was a mess.

The ministry was falling apart at the seams.

Aurors were everywhere. Officials were called in during the middle of the night. Whispers were on everyone's lips. He had been here. Him and a circle of his Death Eaters. Half of the ministry was paralyzed. What did they do now that everything they had hoped wasn't true was?

Tonks saw Remus. Tonks saw Remus's face and knew that everything she had hoped wasn't true was.

She turned and started running, leaving in her wake a trail of turned over and broken things. Anything that would fall did. Tonks was rapidly becoming someone else. Anyone else. Anyone who wasn't her. Ten different faces in the minute she took to turn through the hall. Five different hair colors and lengths in the space it took to run into Percy Weasley head on as he ran to join his Minister and pick up the pieces of a government falling apart.

"You!" she screamed. "You! Now look. Now LOOK!" she screamed from a different mouth. "All of this. If you hadn't been so busy distancing yourself from your family and helping them... if you hadn't denied all of this..." She pounded her fists on his chest as they shifted from pudgy little fingered hands to ones that were long and slender. "My cousin is dead. My cousin is dead! And it should have been you, you traitor!"

It was at this point Kingsley picked up the girl who was busy being every girl and carried her away from Percy who just stood there, paralyzed.

***

The fourth happened by chance at the house of the Blacks.

The house of no Blacks.

Tonks was drinking a cup of coffee, black with one sugar, when Percy came in.

He was following a still recovering Arthur Weasley. One led astray led back. The prodigal son.

Tonks didn't say hello. Tonks didn't do anything but drink her coffee and hide behind the long strands of cherry red hair she was sporting.

Later when he sat next to her and took the empty mug from her hands she flinched into a black-haired waif.

"I am sorry about Sirius."

"I'm sorry I said it should have been you," she replied in a voice wasn't very apologetic.

They sat in silence for too long to be a pause and too short to be awkward when Tonks looked him in the eye.

"You were wrong."

"I was wrong about a lot of things. But we're rebuilding the ministry. This time it will be different."

"What side are you on now?"

"The right side. I always wanted to be on the right side. I was sure I was."

"That's a lie. You always knew where the good side was. You just weren't brave enough to be on it. You're supposed to be a Gryffindor. You were supposed to be a Weasley."

"We're all supposed to be something. Sometimes we choose to take a different path. Sometimes we choose to be something else. We try on different lives to see what fits."

Tonks fell back into the features that were her own.

***

The fifth time was out of curiosity.

Tonks was passing by Percy's door and heard him talking. She leaned against the door to eavesdrop because it sounded like he was angry.

What she didn't realize was that the door wasn't locked. What she didn't realize was that it was slightly open.

When she fell through and onto Percy's floor, he stopped speaking in mid lecture and stared at her.

Tonks quickly stood up to find they were alone in his room.

"Were you... were you talking to yourself?" she asked.

Percy didn't answer. He straightened his tie.

"You're too straight-laced. You have too many rules," she told him as she looked around his perfect room. The bed made with hospital corners, turned down precisely twenty-four inches. The desk and chair just so.

"If I don't give them to myself, who will?" he said vaguely as he replaced the quill he was holding into line with the others. All lying straight. All spaced evenly.

"What do you mean?" she asked, putting her hands in her pocket. Afraid to mess anything up.

"Mum has Dad. Bill has Charlie. Fred has George. Ginny has Ron. Who do I have? I've been outcast from this family long ago. If I don't watch myself, no one else will." He said it quietly, squaring the sheets of parchment in front of him.

"I'm sorry," Tonks said. And she found she was.

"I'm not," he said. And he found he wasn't. "Please close the door on your way out, Nymphadora. I must get back to my paperwork now. Very important."

Tonks turned to leave. Before she stepped out of the door she paused to push three books out of alignment.

When Percy got up to make sure the door was locked this time he saw what she had done. He spent three minutes and twenty-seven seconds making sure the book spines were exactly perpendicular to the shelf. His mouth twitched. It wasn't a smile, but it was close.

***

The sixth time they met, Tonks tried on a different life to see if it fit.

They were somewhere dark. Somewhere too quiet. Somewhere a gathering would be taking place.

Percy had joined with the group of Aurors and Order members who were staging the ambush as a representative for the new ministry. Sometime tonight there would be a confrontation like there hadn't been in years. They waited.

And Tonks, she waited next to him. Dressed as herself and ready to hunt the woman who was black to the core. Bellatrix, a relative she didn't mind loosing.

When the fight broke out they got separated. Tonks stumbled her way through the battle. She saw her aunt there in the middle, laughing. A hysterical bitter sound.

Bellatrix saw a ghost.

"You can't be real," she told Tonks.

"You don't deserve to be," Tonks told her.

And then she fell. Her feet that were never her feet caught somewhere and she went down. Bellatrix was on her far too quickly and they fought with hands and teeth. A battle more fit for a prison yard.

Bellatrix was stronger. Maybe it was because she had lost her mind sometime ago, if not her soul. She brought her wand up to Tonks' neck.

"One last time," the estranged Black said.

But what she didn't count on was being stunned from behind by young Percy Weasley.

And she didn't count on the Killing curse coming from her niece shortly after.

Tonks stood and shrugged the body off of her.

And she shrugged off the likeness of her cousin. It was like letting Sirius die for a second time, but his life didn't fit her. It didn't fit anyone any more.

"Percy," she said and when she fell, this time he caught her.

And when he took her hand and led her away, she found that it fit. Her real hand, her real fingers. His like a glove. They just fit.