Learning to Laugh

Learning to Laugh

The house was quiet. There were no annoying Weasleys, no chattering children, no obstinately friendly Order members. It was just him, Severus Snape, and the peace and solitude was blissful.

Well, he wasn't completely alone. Sirius Black was there, but he was hiding in his mother's bedroom, talking to that damned Hippogriff that clucked its beak angrily every time it saw Snape. But apart from Black, Snape was the only one in old town house of number twelve Grimmauld Place.

To anyone who knew Snape even vaguely, his being here would be surprising. He very rarely came by, except for Order meetings, and he never stayed for dinner, despite Molly's persistence. However, Grimmauld Place had a wonderful library, much better stocked in Dark Arts books than the Hogwarts library. And so Snape had walked down to Hogsmead after dinner that night and apparated to London. He was worried that the place would be crawling with Order members, prattling on about the war and trying to make him laugh, but he was fortunate to find it pretty much empty and thus did not have to interact with anyone beyond exchanging a few short insults with Black.

He sighed and leaned his head back, closing his eyes. He was seated on the rich green velvet sofa in the drawing room on the first floor. A fire crackled merrily in the hearth, warming him to the very tips of his fingers and toes, and he could hear the rain gently tapping against the window. Occasionally thunder would roll in the distance somewhere and lightning would flash, brightening the room for a split second before leaving it to the soft amber glow from the fire. The sofa was so soft and the storm so strangely comforting, that Snape thought that he could doze off there and then. The first few weeks at Hogwarts were always the hardest, and given the situation and the perilous work he had been doing throughout the summer, Snape was exhausted. He was simply glad to have somewhere, away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life at Hogwarts, where he could relax.

The door to the drawing room banged open unceremoniously and someone cursed as they tripped over the handsomely embroidered rug that lay in front of the door. Snape's eyes shot open and he watched, shocked, as a young woman righted herself and entered the room. She had a pale, heart-shaped face and bright blue eyes. It was obvious she had just been out in the rain as her clothes clung to her, soaking wet, and her long blue hair hung dripping around her face. She did not, however, seem particularly fazed by her dampness or her slight fall because when she saw Snape a sparkling smile broke across her face.

"Wotcher, Snape!" Tonks said. "It's bloody wet out there!"

"I can see that," Snape drawled, irritation at being interrupted welling up inside him.

"What are you doing here?" she asked brightly.

"I am making good use of the library," he said stiffly. "I was enjoying the peace and quiet here."

"Oh, really?" she said unfazed, cheerfulness grating Snape further. "What-cha reading then?"

She had walked over to the crackling fire, and after warming her hands for a moment, turned and, to Snape's shock, began to warm her arse.

"It-- it's none of your business what I'm reading," Snape said, regaining control over himself.

"Alright Mr. Secretive," she said amiably. "I take it's a Dark Arts book, because otherwise you would have gone to the Hogwarts library, but you don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"I wasn't going to tell you, Nymphadora," he said exasperatedly, whilst noting, not for the first time, that she was actually sharper than she seemed. He, of course, knew this from seven years as her professor, but it still caught him off guard occasionally.

Meanwhile Tonks, who was still busy heating her backside against the fire, turning it this way and that to get it properly dry, wrinkled her nose. Snape had often thought that her nose looked a bit like a button, small and delicate. "Please don't call me Nymphadora, Snape. It's such a vile name."

Snape sneered. "And Tonks isn't a vile name, Nymphadora?"

"No," she answered stubbornly. "Tonks is cool and more appropriate for an Auror like me. So, if you were nice you would consent to my wishes and call me that instead."

"Ah, we seem to have stumbled on a critical flaw in you argument. You see I am not nice. I am surly and cold and extremely unsociable," he sneered. "It should therefore be appropriate to my character to call you what you don't want me to call you."

"Because you know I don't want you to call me what you call me and thus you call me what I don't want you to call me instead of what I want you to call me?" she asked, smirking impishly at him.

"Sorry, what?" Snape said, rubbing his head. It had been a long day and there was nothing he disliked more than being shown to look stupid by someone, particularly someone so much younger than him. Tonks, who was giggling quietly to herself, knew this well.

He was just forming a clever and nasty retort in his mind, something that mentioned her clumsiness, when he looked up at her to see her looking suddenly thoughtful, head cocked to one side and finger tapping her chin.

"I don't think you're horrible, Snape," she said finally, eyes distant and staring at the heavy curtains without actually seeing them. "Sure you're a bit unsociable and come across as a bit aloof to some of the Order members, but I think it's because you don't join in enough with the conversation, especially if it's about silly things."

Snape stared at her. Tonks had a way of stating things that people probably shouldn't know in a way that unnerved Snape, though he would never admit it. "You can hardly blame me for not enjoying hearing about the twins' latest invention or Mundungus' latest scam," Snape said harshly and Tonks raised her eyebrows.

"Perhaps if you made an effort it would be different." She looked at him sadly. "You can't go through life friendless, Snape."

"I'm perfectly happy as I am!" he declared, affronted as much by the idea that she was nosing into his business as by the pity in her voice.

She sighed like one does when a child is sad and it breaks the heart of the adult as much as it does the child. Wrapping her arms around herself she bit her lip, thinking hard. Snape, confused by her strange behaviour, but putting it down to meddling which, he told himself, any woman in their twenties was bound to enjoy immensely, picked up his book which had been sitting on his lap. He turned the page loudly and concentrated on the small words in front of him, but it seemed Tonks was not done.

"Why don't you like them?" she asked suddenly, the sad look gone from her face to be replaced with another thoughtful one. "The others. Why don't you like them?"

It was Snape's turn to sigh. He set down his book on his lap slightly overdramatically so that she would know he was annoyed, but she didn't seem to notice. She was staring at him through those brilliant blue eyes.

"Will you ever give up, Nymphadora?"

"No," she said, smiling smugly.

He sighed again. "I told you, I do not enjoy having to partake in a conversation with empty-headed idiots who have nothing worthwhile to talk about. Like Black, for example. He spends his time complaining, when really he doesn't realise how easy he has it, the stupid bastard. Or Bill who keeps going on about his latest conquest!"

"Ah!" Tonks cried triumphantly.

"Ah what?"

Smiling in that knowing way that annoyed Snape no end, Tonks moved over to the sofa and sat down next to him, draping her arm over the back of it and tucking her legs underneath her. "Ah," she said nodding wisely.

"We are beginning to sound like a Healer's surgery, Nymphadora. Will you kindly tell me what you are 'ah-ing' about?"

Tonks, however, was not listening to him. She had flung a hand over her forehead as she bemoaned dramatically, "Oh, the wails of the lonely, the laments of the single,"

"The howls of the completely insane. What are you going on about?"

Her head snapped around suddenly and her eyes caught his in a way that alarmed Snape. She looked a startling mixture of smugness, keenness and excitement that Snape had never seen in a person before.

"You, Severus Snape, unsociable extraordinaire, winner of Mr Moody Award," she said, pointing an accusing finger at him that Snape eyed warily whilst trying not to break eye contact with this clearly unstable girl, "you want a girlfriend!"

Yep, definitely unstable.

Snape stared at her in stunned silence. Excuse me? A girlfriend? Of course he didn't want a girlfriend! Hadn't their whole conversation just been about how he didn't like people, how he was quite happy on his own thank you! How ridiculous for a woman who enjoys turning her hair bizarre colours and flirts with a werewolf like there's no tomorrow (but has so far, to his knowledge, not managed to get him into bed) to tell him, him, that he wants a girlfriend!

It was only Tonks looking at him disapprovingly, pursing her lips in a very good imitation of Molly Weasley, that made Snape realise that he had just said all of that out loud.

"Oops," he said, rather lamely.

"I do not flirt with Remus!" she declared, crossing her arms and looking affronted. "And I like my hair being 'bizarre', it makes me stand out."

"It certainly does that," Snape muttered, and Tonks punched him lightly on the arm. "And I do not want a girlfriend!" he assured her.

"Oh no," Tonks scoffed, rolling her eyes, "you just happen to dislike Bill talking about his girlfriend, and you just happen to keep a tab on my non-existent sex life."

Snape was about to retort that he didn't 'keep a tab on it', when she cut in with something that made him temporarily loose the power of speech.

"Well, it's a shame Snape, because I happen to know someone who's interested in you."

"You do?" he asked, pulling back, surprised more than anything. "You mean like not interested in me the way you're just nosy?"

"Well would you look at that," Tonks cooed, "Snape wants to know. Snape's interested. Snape wants a girlfriend."

Snape stiffened. "Clearly you were teasing me," he said shortly, as he picked up his book and buried his face behind it, determined that Tonks wouldn't see the hint of disappointment in his face.

"No, no, no," Tonks said, laughing, attempting to pull the book out of Snape's grasp. "I'm sorry. I wasn't teasing, I wasn't."

She giggled as they fought over the book, pulling it this way and that, trying to break the other's hold on it.

"Get off--" Snape complained as he tugged at one half of it, desperately trying not to rip its ancient pages.

"No, give it here--"

"You'll rip it--"

"Give it then--"

"No! Get off-- oof"

The book flung out of both their grips and hit Snape smack on the nose, leaving a nasty red mark where it hit. "Ouch! Look what you've done now!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry Snape!" Tonks said, trying very hard to stifle her giggles. "Let me have a look at it..."

"No! You stay away from it!" Snape covered his nose defensively, and scooted away from the woman who was suddenly very close after their fight over the book.

Tonks could barely control herself, laughter bubbling up as her eyes began to stream. "Come here, Snape. Let me see. I'm an Auror, you know, I know what to do."

"You a danger, that's what you are. Go away!" he complained as he tried to bat her away with one hand, the other still covering his face to prevent more harm coming to it.

"Please, Snape. Let me see it."

Despite the ridiculousness of the situation, or maybe because of it, with Tonks trying to get him to remove his hand whilst rolling about laughing, now with no attempt to restrain herself, and him trying to keep her away from his wounded face, Snape couldn't help but be amused by it all. It really was the strangest sensation, that something so silly could be so funny, that being hit in the nose by an extremely heavy book and having dust up your nose and a woman with blue hair trying to make it a lot worse could actually make him laugh.

And that's exactly what he did. Severus Snape burst out laughing and Tonks was so surprised that she actually stopped and stared for a minute, before collapsing with mirth again.

"Get off," he said, finally managing to push her away gently and rubbing his damaged nose. "I think it's broken."

"No, it's just bruised. Here." She muttered a soothing spell and Snape almost instantly felt the pain ebb away. He wrinkled it a few times experimentally and when contented that it was alright, picked up the book from the floor, checking to make sure that it was not damaged.

"Thank you, Nymphadora," he said. It was only then that he realised she was staring at him, with warm kind eyes that seemed to flicker and sparkle in the candlelight.

"Um," Snape said, swallowing visibly, then frowning to himself. He hated the word um. It wasn't even a word, just a noise people made when they couldn't think of anything else to say or were being incoherent. He always tried to avoid it himself and was shocked that he was using it now. People should always, he believed, talk with utmost clarity and diction, otherwise there was no point listening to them...

"Severus." Tonks voice cut through his rambling thoughts. It sounded like warm butter, just as it was melting, or maybe it was him who was melting, he couldn't tell anymore, all he could do was blether on in his head about melting butter...

Tonks smiled slightly and Snape realised that he probably looked like a complete idiot. He tried to put on a sensible, manly expression and sat up straight, crossing his hands on his lap, but that just made Tonks smile even more broadly. He probably looked constipated.

She bit her lip, still looking at him carefully. "I believe," she said softly, "that we were discussing your romantic position before you got attacked by that book."

"Yes. We were. You were." Short sentences. Not good speaking.

"And I told you I knew someone who liked you, and you thought I was teasing you." Snape seemed unable to form any words, which was probably because his brain felt like it was filled with treacle. At least, he reflected vaguely, it had stopped chattering madly to itself.

"Do you want to know who it is?" She seemed to be getting closer and closer. Snape was frozen to his seat, eyes wide like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

He nodded dumbly.

"It's me," she whispered, and then she had leaned in and kissed him. Her lips were warm, sweet, soft. Her hand, which had somehow found its way up to cradle his face, was small and cold, but comfortingly real. Few people had ever done this, kissed him because they wanted to, not because it was a double dare or a practical joke.

And then horror washed over him like freezing water. Was this a joke? Was it all a set-up? He stiffened suddenly and jerked away convulsively. Tonks frowned and Snape took her face in his hands, staring into her eyes as though trying to read them, searching for the laughter or disgust that he knew was waiting there. But, to his great surprise, he found none, just worry and, to Snape's guilt, fear.

It was as if he was thawing out after being frozen. A feeling of euphoria filled him up from the pit of his stomach and made him feel warm as if he had just eaten a whole bar of Honeydukes' Finest. And then, without thinking about what he was doing, because if he did he would just panic, he leaned down and kissed Tonks, blindly, with no clue what to do or how to go about it. But kiss her he did, and not a few seconds had passed before she was kissing him back.

"You should feel very proud," he murmured into her mouth, "that was the first time anyone has made be speechless in a very, very long time."

She giggled, and then, hesitantly at first but growing stronger and more confident with every passing second, they both began to laugh and laugh and laugh...

~ The End, Or The Beginning? ~