Forgotten Photographs

Forgotten Photographs-

She still feels a little lightheaded after she comes back from St. Mungo's, so with strict orders from Molly ringing in her ears and a vial of Dreamless Sleep Potion in her pocket, Tonks troops up the stairs of the old house. She is aware, maybe much too aware, of each creaking floorboard as she steps over it, of the silence of the upper floors.

No one comes up here anymore, not after...

Tonks closes her eyes and grips the railing tightly. She can feel an intense prickling behind them, something that she hasn't felt in a long time. She stands on the landing between the first and second floors, pausing for a moment to catch her breath, to try and stop her vision from deteriorating. In front of her, the familiar hallway with its rooms leading off on the right stretches, a gaping chasm that leads to other abysses within. The rooms seem so threatening, so empty, so cold, and even if these are the rooms she usually sleeps in when she stays over at Headquarters, she is not unhappy to turn her back on them and continue climbing. She is glad there is no one to see her, though; she cannot force herself to smile anymore.

The second floor of the house is rather different from the first. There are only three rooms up here, none of which she has particularly cared to enter before. She knows that the door left slightly ajar at the end of the hallway is the Master bedroom. A faint scuffling sound reaches her ears, making her jump before she realizes who exactly it's coming from.

Tonks lets the corners of her mouth twitch upwards softly, barely conscious of her actions. 'Buckbeak,' she thinks, but then, the smile slips. There is a small sound, eerily resembling a whine, coming from the door, and she swallows heavily because she knows that Buckbeak has been here, alone, since...

He has been here, alone, and her scent must be carrying on the air towards him. But even if she has felt affection towards him before, she cannot bear the sight of the animal, and she cannot make herself go there. Instead, she stumbles towards the first room, reaching out for the doorknob and giving it a feeble twist, only to find it locked.

'Alohomora,' she whispers, frowning, before she tries the door again. It is still locked, and now that she sees the grubby nameplate on the door, the initial half-hidden by the years of grime, she understands.

R. Black.

This room will never be opened again... if the house is demolished, the room will remain locked until the walls come crashing down.

Sliding along the wall, Tonks comes to the second door... and stops. This, too, is ajar; from the crack between the door and the frame a sliver of wall can be seen, a dirty white strip peeking out. When she breathes, there is a faint scent coming from the room, a scent she has been trying to familiarize herself to for the past year. On this door, the nameplate is clear, but she doesn't need it to tell her who once lived here.

S. Black

Without thinking, she pushes the door open, treading as softly as she can over the rotten wood flooring, stopping just beyond the doorway to look around.

The room is small; the walls, painted in that same dirty white, are completely bare, giving an illusion of space. Sparsely furnished, it has even less than any room she has ever seen. There is simply a bed, pushed against the wall on her left, a rough, worn rug on the floor, and a rectangle above the bed that looks significantly cleaner than the rest of the wall. The bedclothes are ruffled, thrown about haphazardly; there is a large nightshirt lying amongst the sheets and blankets, sleeve trailing on the floor.

Tonks inhales sharply. The scent is even stronger in here, invading her senses, but it is not simply the smell that makes to hard to breathe; it is not just the musty air that makes her feel suffocated. She can almost see the faint traces of the man who once slept in that bed, his shape still pressed into the sheets, and again, like so many times in the past few days, the tears come to her eyes unbidden. She does not know when she crosses over to the bed, or when she picks up the old, worn nightshirt, but even as she feels the material sliding over her fingers, she cannot help but shiver. It smells faintly of aftershave, of stale firewhiskey, a smell that grabs at her, wrapping itself around her. Holding it up to her face, she inhales deeply, committing the scent to her memory. She wonders if he always smelt like this; she wonders if he would stare resignedly into the mirror as he scraped the blade over his cheeks, if he would hold the glass up to the light and stare sadly through it before emptying the swirling contents into his stomach. There is a faint trace of some spice, of the blasted cinnamon that he insisted on putting in everything; the familiar smell gives her a faint trace of comfort because it reminds her of the warmth in a smile she had missed for the greater part of her life.

The scent of him, these faint traces of his life are so overwhelming that for a second, Tonks thinks that she might just throw up. She is reluctant to let it fade, but her head is spinning, and she opens the small window that is set into the wall opposite the door, not really sure if she just wants to let the fresh air in or release whatever remains of him into the free wind outside.

A small nightstand she hadn't noticed before catches her eye. A half-empty glass of water and a couple of photo frames are all there is on it; the occupants of each frame stare at her with sad, sad eyes. Still clutching the nightshirt, she strides over to the nightstand and kneels on the floor beside it, leaning so that she rests her head against the wrought iron frame of the bed as she takes in the images that glance around and return to staring at her.

In one, there is a picture of a boy, thin with large green eyes peering out from behind thick glasses. He is entirely unremarkable, looking to the sides of his frame then slumping against the wall behind him, his hands in his pockets. The black hair juts out over his forehead and Tonks is glad that in this picture, she cannot see the scar that identifies Harry to the world around him. But she cannot avoid looking at his face, full of unhappiness, flashes of guilt running through his photofilm green eyes. There is an aura of loss around him, even in the photograph. The edges of the picture sit loose in the frame and reaching out, Tonks picks up the frame and slowly peels away the photograph, turning it over.

On the back, she recognizes the handwriting, large and untidy. There is something in the scrawl that she cannot make out, but from what she can read, she picks out a date from last year and two words beside the name, two words that make her throat hurt and her eyes water.

Harry- My boy.

She didn't know him well, but if anything, she knew that he adored Harry, that he had loved him like his own son. She knew that he was fiercely protective of the boy, that he would...

Well, he already did. For a second, though, she can't help but wondering if... just, if he would...

'He would die for any of you...'

Remus's voice echoes in her ears. 'He would die for any of his chi- for any of his own.'

Of course, Remus knew, even if he had stumbled over the word, even if he had declined putting a name to it... he knew. The photo slips from her fingers but she cannot pick it up...

Tonks grabs at the other frame, her hands shaking, her eyes raking hungrily over the image within. This one shows a woman with long black hair, her eyes soft with tears as she hugs a man close to her. His face is young, handsome, his hair falling over his eyes as he draws back; his hand rests against the woman's stomach. She covers it with her own. They both glance out of the frame and wave at her, but the woman's smile is tight-lipped and the young man's is one of longing.

His smile is one she's intimate with; it's only haunted her for the entire duration of the year gone by, glued to a face that was much older, much more weary than in the photo. Tonks has seen her mother's guarded smile so many times before that she is not surprised to find her using it in this picture, even if it does slip at times. This picture, too, is loose; she doesn't have to pry it away from the frame; it simply slides away when she pushes a finger under it, as if it has been removed so many times. The back bears a simple declaration in her mother's handwriting, one that she reads while trying to hold the photo steady between trembling fingers.

To my dearest S. Yours forever, Andie.

But even as it slips, she notices the small photograph that has been taped to the frame, hidden by the other one. This one does not move; a lump rises in Tonks's throat as she holds the Muggle photograph close to her face in both wonder and resigned knowledge. She is surprised that he still has it... had, she corrects herself... but she knows that there is no way he would have ever lost it. With a finger, she trails over the figure of the little girl kneeling on the grass, outlining the pretty heart-shaped face, almost feeling the scabbed knees she left behind so long ago. She can almost hear her own childish giggles, feel the large black dog licking her face, breath against her skin, hot and damp...

The great black dog bounded after her, legs skidding against the grassy ground. It barked loudly, and she looked back, laughing.

'Come on, doggie!' she shouted, turning to face it. She stretched her little arms towards it, her stubby fingers waving in the air. 'Come on!'

With a loud bark, the dog raced to her, jumping up and knocking her flat.

'Ah!' she cried, but it was a happy shout, one that dissolved into giggles as she rolled over with the dog in a tangle of yelps and excited barks.

She ended up on her back, the grass tickling her neck, with the dog standing over her. She tilted her head as she looked up at it; the dog imitated her, cocking its head to one side. She could swear that it was grinning. It lowered its head and licked her cheek, stepping back as she laughed and wiped at her face with the back of one hand.

'Hey, that tickles!' she exclaimed, sitting up and leaning back against a tree trunk. The words were barely out of her mouth before the dog leapt at her again, licking her face in a frenzied manner. She held it, her fingers running over its sleek black coat; the dog's front paws came up to rest on her shoulders.

'You're a smart doggie, aren't you?' she said. The dog nodded its head, barking happily before licking her nose playfully, leaving it wet...

It is all of three seconds before she realizes that the wetness on her face is not imagined, but very real; the tears have leaked from her eyes and she stubbornly wipes at them, forcing them back. She scrabbles at the edges of the photo, peeling away the sellotape at its corners, pausing in her efforts to dab at her eyes with the back of one hand. Still, she cannot stop the drips from marring the photo; she cannot stop the ink from smudging under her fingers as she turns it over to read the caption on the back.

My baby. Nymphie, 1979.

She has always known that the name she goes by is not hers; the silent confirmation of the obvious is no new shock. She knows that if she ever wore her real face, if anyone came up here now and watched her change into what she was meant to be, they would see it too. In her mind, she sees the face- it takes concentration to change, to bring it to the surface, each feature taking an age, sapping away her energy. She feels the hair changing, the skin shifting, bones settling back into the positions they were always meant to be in. It is painful, years and years of masks melting away until there is nothing left but her true form, nothing left but the evidence of her real identity.

Tonks doesn't need a mirror to know what she looks like; she doesn't need anyone to tell her who she resembles.

A child is always supposed to resemble their parents. Well. She could blame the jet black hair on her mother, and her delicate nose too... but simple genetics gave her gray eyes, high cheekbones, a dimpled chin she has refused to wear since she was eleven and realized that she didn't know anyone in her family who had those features.

Simple genetics made her an almost perfect copy of her father. Her real father.

Simple genetics made Nymphadora Tonks look like Sirius Black.

They never told me, and now... he's gone.

A wave of tiredness washes over her, a resignation that tugs at her like some tangible weariness settling in her blood. She closes her eyes, fumbles for the vial in her pocket. Even if the glass is slippery against her fingertips, she makes sure that she doesn't drop it; she does not want to dream tonight. Tipping her head back, she swallows the potion in one go, wiping her mouth crudely. She feels it traveling through her, a sudden burst of fire followed by the curious sensation that her blood is slowing down, that it is being pulled back and forced to stop. She tosses the vial to the side, barely hearing the crash as the glass shatters.

Tonks is beyond caring about anything except the hard bedstead against her back and the fading scent of cinnamon around her. Her fingers clutch at the cloth of the nightshirt as she curls up on herself. A tear drops onto a forgotten photograph.

Outside, a dog barks, a child's giggle rising to float in through the open window.

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fin

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