The Food of Love

If music be the food of love, play on,

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting

The appetite may sicken and so die.

- Orsino, Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene i

    It was not, as Nymphadora Tonks would have had it, a particularly clear or beautiful night. The clouds had rolled in to cover the stars, and there was a dusky, musty sort of quality to the air that she and her four companions inhaled as they stepped out into the evening. It was, she decided, a good night to be indoors, and just a little bit too creepy to justify flying around alone on a broomstick.

    “What ho,” bellowed Fred Weasley, sauntering over to his splintering old broomstick and throwing one leg over the side. “My fair companions, let us fly!”

    “Away doth flee the night,” agreed George, waving one arm dramatically as he mounted his own broom, “and us just barely on our merry way.”

    “What?” Mad-Eye Moody straggled out of Grimmauld place last, his magical eye spinning in it’s socket as he glared, bemused at the garrulous Weasley duo. “When did yeh start talking like my grandmother?”

    “Your grandmother talked like that?” Asked George, interested. “Just how old are you, anyway?”

    “Old enough,” grunted Moody. With surprising nimbleness for the way he generally carried himself, Moody snagged and clambered onto his broom. “Better not be late,” he groused. “Doesn’t look good to be late. Makes us more conspicuous, yeh know.”

    “And we’d certainly never want that,” agreed Fred brightly, turning his head slightly to roll his eyes at George.

    “Oi,” muttered Moody, “I saw that.”

    “Just leave it to us,” chimed in George, quickly. “We’re the masters of inconspicuousity! Sneaky like snakes, stealthy like mice-!”

    “And mouthy,” cut in Tonks, chuckling, “like…like…” she trailed off, grappling for something sufficiently loud to compare them to.

    “Like Weasleys?” suggested Fred proudly.

    “Tonks laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “Like Weasley twins, that’s what.”

    “Well, thank you, mademoiselle,” George accepted with a flourish of his hand. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

    “Really, though,” agreed Fred, and he gave Tonks an appraising look. “You’re looking absolutely corking today, Nymphadora. Really spiffing.”

    Tonks glared at him. “Don’t you ever call me that, you little git,” she admonished, raising a fist at the two grinning redheads. Still, the praise added an extra ruby glow to her cheeks, and George noticed, winking at her before kicking his broom upwards, followed closely by his twin. Grinning despite herself, Tonks rolled her eyes and shook her head. The compliment had certainly been well-timed. She’d been about ready to rush back inside and re-design her hair completely before George had commented on it. Decked out in the token little-black dress, she had her royal purple dress robes un-fastened, hanging loosely and threatening to fall about her elbows. She’d changed her legs to give herself a little extra height, but had added a pair of black high-heeled pumps for effect. Her hair, the hair that she’d been so self-concious about, was its usual shade of bright violet, but was hanging in a smooth bob, falling just above her shoulders.

    “C’mon, Tonks,” growled Moody. “Get yer broom, we’re leaving.” He turned away from her, but she had the sense that his magical eye was probably rolled backwards in his head to watch her and make sure she complied with his demand.

    “Wait a sec, there,” she called, as Moody made as if to kick off from the ground. “We’ve got a missing person.”

    Without turning around, Moody paused, and then asked, “What? Oh, yeah. Where’s Lupin? Wouldn’t expect him to be the dawdling type…”

    “Stop bellyaching,” Tonks berated him. “Nobody’s gonna die just because we didn’t get to the theater on time. We’ve got enough time left in our lives to wait for Remus to finish up. Actually,” she amended, after a moment’s consideration, “he’s probably gotten distracted by one of those crazy scrolls he’s had floating around in his bedroom this past week. Bet he’s forgotten all about us, the crazy kid.” She shook her head, and turned on her heel, throwing over her shoulder, “I’ll just go check on him, then. Won’t be a bit. Don’t leave without me, will you?”

    “Better hurry up!” called George. “Can’t promise we can hold old Mad-Eye for long. And besides, the night groweth older, my lady!”

    Fred picked up on George’s reversion to old English. “Methinks the time is drawing near. Make haste, lest doom befall us all at the hands of yonder one-eyed man!”

    “Shut up,” suggested Tonks brightly, and disappeared through the door, out of sight.

*    *    *    *

    Remus Lupin’s bedroom was, to put it mildly, a disaster area that looked like a cyclone had blown through and left no survivors. There were papers everywhere, on the floor, on the table, on the bed, on the counter, and on the chairs. Some were rolled up into half-hearted scrolls, others completely unrolled, strewn lengthwise across any available surface and held down on the corners with anything from paperweights to jars of living specimens from Lupin’s days as a Dark Arts professor. The drapes were closed, so that Tonks, upon entering, had to pick her way through the piles of papers, arms outstretched before her, feeling around in the darkness to find her way past the obstructions of bed and dresser.

    It didn’t take long to snag her quarry. His face bathed in the flickering light of a small, personal flame that he’d lit by his bedside, Lupin was half sitting, half kneeling on the floor next to the bed, hunched over one of his un-rolled scraps of parchment. He had one hand braced against the bed, the other planted on the ground next to the papers, with his face turned away from her, apparently totally engrossed in his bit of reading material. His sandy hair was tousled and disheveled, and he had clearly forgotten to dress appropriately for their night at the theater, still wearing his normal, somewhat moth-eaten everyday black robes. Clucking derisively, Tonks squatted on her haunches next to him, taking her index finger and flicking the side of his face to get his attention.

    Startled, Lupin spun around, and lost his balance, falling backwards into a sitting position to regard Tonks out of wide, blinking eyes balancing above dark, hanging circles. “Ah,” he said quietly, “Tonks…did you…that is…do you need something?”

    “I did knock,” shrugged Tonks, slouching down on to the floor beside him so that she could look him in the eye. “No answer, though, and Mad-Eye’s getting a little antsy out there. You know the way he is. Anyways, whatcha reading?” She leaned over to try and catch a glimpse of the parchment, but Remus was already rolling it up, stashing it beneath the bed before she could make out any text in the precarious lighting.

    “Just some old letters,” he murmured, with a weary little smile. “Nothing you’d take any interest in, I’m quite sure. God, have I kept you all waiting long? What time is it?” Glancing at the wall clock, he grimaced. The clock read, very pointedly, “You are LATE.”

    “’S only about seven,” Tonks assured him. “Doesn’t look like you’re ready to be running off, anyway. Tell you what, I’ll step out for a bit and alert the rest of our troupe, and you find something to wear. Or maybe,” she amended, glancing concernedly around the maelstrom of a room, “maybe it’d be better if I helped you out with the finding of the robes bit. Looks like it might be a two-person job in this dump.”

    Lupin grimaced. “I know, I know,” he murmured apologetically. “It’s a catastrophe in here. I’ve just been so caught up”--and he waved a hand at the piles of papers--“I haven’t had a chance to clean it up lately…and it’s not like I haven’t been telling myself that it’d be a good idea…”

    “Yeah,” agreed Tonks animatedly. “It’s almost life-threatening in here. Oh well, though. ‘S you’re life, you can live it in piles of scrolls if you bloody well want to. Still,” and now she was skeptical, “Wouldn’t want you to suffocate in here. Tell you what, you and I can have at this place when we get back. Or even better, let Molly loose in here. She’ll have it fixed up for you in a second.”

    Lupin chuckled. “If I so much as give Molly a glimpse of this place,” he told her, “I’ll never see any of these pages ever again, and she’ll probably move me into another room where she can keep a better eye on me.”

    “Yeah, probably.” Tonks grinned fondly. “She’s a great old girl, isn’t she?” Then, glancing at the clock, she said, “Oops, you know, we’d better get going. Promise I won’t do anything to keep you from your reading later, but couldja throw on something decent? I think Moody’s gonna have both of our heads if we don’t get our rears in gear down to the theater. Besides, Fred and George are determined to get on his nerves as much as possible in the meantime, and I’d hate to go down and find out that those two had gotten fried. Shame to lose such fine kids, you know?”

    Still smiling, Lupin nodded. “Yes, of course. I’ll be down in a moment. Here, hold on.” Removing his wand from a pocket in the back of his robes, he held it above his heard and muttered something under his breath. In a second, his previously ratty and unremarkable robes had transformed themselves into a much cleaner, slightly longer set of semi-formal, none-too-fancy blue dress robes, a set she’d seen on him many times before in the Order’s many excursions.

    “Oh,” she said, grinning. “Well, that works. Shall we?”

    “Of course,” agreed Lupin, proffering his arm and hiding a smile behind a grave expression as she tucked her elbow through his. “I think we’ve kept poor Mad-Eye cooped up with the Dreaded Duo quite long enough.” Together, they exited the room, with Lupin making sure to close the door behind him to prevent a curious Molly Weasley from coming across his mess. Then, quickly, following the tones of irritation they could hear from outside the front door, they descended the stairs to meet up with the waiting wizards outside the house.

*    *    *    *

    “Took you long enough,” grumbled Moody as Remus and Tonks rushed out into the night, hurriedly mounting their brooms and straightening their robes for flight. Fred and George were already floating above them, flying lazy circles around the very irate looking older auror.

    “He almost turned us into bats,” exclaimed George. “But we reminded him that mom would beat him senseless if we ended up flying home on our own wings.”

    “I did no such thing,” Moody murmured. “Well, I…may have gotten a little carried away, but…yeh deserved it, you miserable young menaces.”

    “I think he’s just jealous of our broomstick prowess,” Fred declared, doing a little spin and flip in the air, which ended up him upside-down, his hair sticking up from his head as he swayed lazily in front of Tonks. “I would be.”

    “I don’t think you’ve ever been jealous of anyone in your whole long life,” reminded George.

    “Yeah,” agreed Fred, “but it’s not like we’ve got reason, to anyway, have we?”

    George seemed to consider this. “You’ve got a point there,” he said, after much proliferation. “After all, when you’re as good looking-!”

    “-and as talented,” inserted Fred.

    “And as talented,” George agreed, “as we are, you start getting used to the whole being-perfect thing. Jealousy is so base for such delightful, attractive, talented young men such as ourselves…”

    Tonks groaned. “Come on,” she told Moody and Lupin, kicking off from the ground and soaring straight forward on her broomstick. “We can leave our delightfully perfect young disasters to their self-aggrandizing conversation, but we’ve got a show to see, and a man to catch.”

    Grinning, Lupin followed her, leaving Mad Eye behind them to berate the boys. “Would yeh stop YAPPING and get yerselves MOVING before I’m forced to follow up my earlier offer and turn yeh both into creepy crawlies? GET GOING.”

    In a few moments, a slightly less cocky looking Fred was flying alongside Tonks, glancing behind him every few seconds to check on the progress of the one-eyed wizard. “Well,” he said, planting one hand on his hip, “I never guessed he was serious.”

    “OI!” yelled George. “Get this crazy git away from me! He’s trying to turn me into a….ARGH!”

    Tonks and Lupin’s laughter echoed through the night sky as they sped on ahead, followed closely by the twins and their irate companion. “You know,” murmured Tonks, “this is almost better than the show we’re going to see, I bet.”

    “You’re probably right,” Lupin agreed, as George started flying circles around them trying to escape the magical blasts from Moody’s wand. “After all, this little comedy has such attractive and talented stars…”

*    *    *    *

    The Sampson Granite Theater was, in a word, huge. Tonks had only ever been there once before in her lifetime, and that had been with her mother’s friend Lucy Granite when she’d been very young. The experience of attending a show with the then-owner of the theater swam slowly back to mind as Tonks surveyed the changes that had been made since she’d last attended. It had only been six or seven years ago, yet the theater, probably due to its overzealous magical set-builders, had changed its décor almost completely from the way it’d been when she’d last seen it. There were huge marble Doric columns now, decorating the proscenium arch, and there had been at least two-hundred seats added, all cushioned in velvet and hovering gently above the beige-carpeted floor. Tonks wasn’t entirely sure that she liked the changes, but the overall ambience of the theater was the same, with its majestic “invisible orchestra” playing eternally in the orchestra pit below the stage. The instruments, enchanted as they would be in any sensible wizarding theater, were playing by themselves, and every now and then a short, stout, pompous looking wizard in a muggle tuxedo would come out from a little panel beneath the stage, wave his wand, and the piece being played would change.

    All around her, people decked out in their finest robes and gowns were milling around, chattering animatedly, greeting newcomers, and emanating a general sense of conviviality and excitement. Tonks drew her robes around her, feeling a little bit out of place in this gathering that was slightly more pompous than she was used to. Tonks had no trouble with crowds. She liked people, liked watching people, and meeting new people, and was usually more loathe to be alone than in a large group of strangers. Now, however, her shorter-than-average black skirt she felt a little bit self-conscious as the five of them moved into their floating seats near the middle of the second section.

    “Wow,” exclaimed George appreciatively. “This is one super-snazzy place, huh?”

    “You said it,” agreed Fred. “Oooh, that woman looks like she’s wearing a giraffe on her head, look at that.”

    “Keep it down,” muttered Moody. “Don’t make a scene. We don’t want to stand out in this crowd.”

    “When do you ever want to stand out in a crowd?” queried Fred, craning his neck to get a glimpse of the ridiculous hat pointed out by George. “What’s any different about this crowd?”

    “Because,” insisted Moody, “in this crowd, somewhere”--he cast a shifty, suspicious look around at all the people in the seats near them, who all murmured nervously and lurched away--“there’s a man with a mark on his arm and a wand in his hand, and that man will be looking for us, too. So keep it down, will yeh?”

    “You’re the obvious one, Mad-Eye,” Fred remarked. “They don’t know the rest of our faces. Yours is pretty blatant, though.”

    “Shh,” Lupin admonished. “You’re all entirely too loud. We’re in a theater, for heaven’s sake. Try to enjoy the experience, will you?”

    “Oh, I am,” George replied with feeling, as a woman wearing a rather clingy red dress wandered by. “I truly am.”

    As Lupin laid his arm on the velvet-coated armrest provided with the hovering chair, a program for the show materialized in his lap. Tonks leaned over his shoulder to get a better look as he opened it and flipped idly through the pages until they got past the various ads for enchanted hand cream and Magical Mahogany Inc., and came to the blurb about the show.

    “Thirteenth Night,” she read out loud, for the benefit of the rather distracted twins. “An adaptation of the famous Shakespeare play for an educated wizarding audience. Huh.” Grimacing, she glanced over at the stage. “Shakespeare…I’ve never been so very good with Shakespeare. They tried to teach it to us in our Muggle studies class at Hogwarts, that one year, but it was all the ‘ye’ and the ‘yea’ and the ‘hither’ and the ‘yon’ that confused me. I swear, he made up most of those words, anyway.”

    “Actually,” smiled Lupin absently as he perused the cast list, “he did.”

    “I knew it,” crowed Tonks. “Couldn’t have been real words. No one speaks like that, not even old-fashioned folk like Mad-Eye’s grandmother.”

    “Nay, you err,” murmured George. “Tis right and good to speaketh in such a flourishing manner.”

    “Oi,” cut in Fred. “I think you used ‘speaketh’ wrong.”

     “Quiet, you,” Moody growled, as the lights began to dim. “Watch the show. I’ll watch for our man.”

    “Righto,” agreed Fred cheerily. “All work and no play makes Mad-Eye…well…mad.”

    Tonks diverted her attention from her quibbling companions to watch as the great red curtain slowly began to rise on the immense stage. She heard Lupin give a little sigh of satisfaction beside her, and saw him settle back into his chair, folding his arms over his lap, his program dematerializing as the lights went completely black.

    Tonks thought a little bit about what it might be like to be on that stage, instead of watching from the audience. She’d thought about it quite a bit when she’d been a student at Hogwarts herself. In her sixth year, she’d been a great deal like Fred and George, loud and proud and notorious throughout her year for being the most-likely-to-explode-something-if-given-ample-opportunity. So, of course, when the time for the school-wide play rolled around she’d been encouraged by all her schoolmates to try out and give it a shot. She couldn’t remember what the play had been, or what part she’d been trying out for, but the experience and sensation that stuck in her mind was that of standing there, on the steps to the stage, and the thrill that she’d received when she found the spotlights shining on her face. She’d botched the audition, probably because she’d spent the whole night before up late goofing off with the other girls in her dorm instead of getting her rest and practicing. But she’d had that moment, that little thrill that made her wonder if maybe her calling hadn’t been missed. That was long ago, and she’d gone into heavy training and ended up as a top-notch auror for the Order of the Phoenix, and that was every bit more exciting than being an actress, she was sure. Still, that little regret lingered foolishly on the periphery of her senses, and when the first actor made his entrance, she felt just a bit of the disappointment of that childhood pang of realizing she’d never have what it takes.

    Settling back into the chair and tucking in her skirt around her thighs, Tonks attempted to ignore George and Fred as they materialized and de-materialized their programs numerous times in a row. They weren’t, she admitted, being particularly mature. She’d argued to allow them to come along, when Moody had originally refused on the grounds that the mission, if a pleasurable one, was quite serious. She had assured him that the twins would behave themselves, had reminded him of their prowess with the quick curse, and had eventually convinced him to let her drag them to the play. She’d hoped that they’d provide a little amusement, as they were generally fun people to have around, but she almost regretted it now. Although they were certainly amusing, they were also certainly distracting, and Moody seemed to be having no luck keeping them under control.

    “No wonder Molly’s so frazzled all the time,” she murmured to herself.

    “Mm?” Lupin asked, leaning over to hear her better. Tonks shook her head.

    “Nothing,” she whispered. “Talking to m’self.”

    “A worthy endeavor,” smiled Lupin, as he returned his eyes to the stage. “Is yourself saying anything particularly choice?”

    “Never,” grimaced Tonks. “I don’t think I’m a very good conversationalist, all around.”

    “Well, better luck next time.” Lupin sat silently for a moment, his hands folded thoughtfully beneath his chin as he focused on the stage. “You know,” he murmured after a short pause, “this is the play…well, the original, Twelfth Night was the play that they had us studying in my Muggle studies class, sixth year, when I was back at Hogwarts.”

    “Really?” Great minds, thought Tonks, think alike. “I took that class. It was kind of silly, since my father was a Muggle, but I figured it’d be easy to pass. We did…oh, whatsit called…” she floundered for the name of the play they’d been forced to read. “Bugger, I can’t remember. Awfully sad, lots of death, painfully long-winded?”

    “Sounds like any of the tragedies,” chuckled Lupin. “The tragedies are actually more to my taste…even if they are a bit gloomy, they do make significantly more sense than the comedies do, most of the time.”

    “None of it makes a whopping great deal of sense,” insisted Tonks.

    “Well, if you look at this one, this play for example,” Lupin continued, leaning closer and lowering his voice in response to the irritated looks the two of them were receiving from their neighbors, “it’s so confusing, with people disguised as others and twin siblings and mistaken identities that it really makes a lot more sense in a magical setting. Muggle audiences had to significantly suspend their disbelief, but with the modified version, it seems almost plausible.”

    “Yeah,” Tonks replied, “but you still don’t know what the hell any of them are saying.”

    Lupin laughed quietly, shaking his head. “You sound,” he whispered, “like Sirius.” Tonks bit her lip, prepared to steer the conversation away again as she was prone to do when any mention of Sirius arose around the weary werewolf. To her surprise, however, Lupin continued without any sign of regret for the remark. “He was determined to score the lead in our little production, and, of course, so was James. I’d walk out into the courtyard and find them “running lines” together, each trying to get the best of the other, or outdo the other with their dramatic flair and theatrical expertise.” He smiled, more to himself than to Tonks. “In the end, one of the Hufflepuffs got the role, and the two of them sulked for a week.”

    “Sounds like Sirius,” agreed Tonks, with a little laugh.

    “Yes.” Lupin frowned, and seemed to recede into himself as Tonks had expected him to do earlier, the way he often did after too much contemplation of the olden days. Tonks cleared her throat and stumbled for another topic, but sighed after a moment and gave up. Perhaps it wasn’t the most horrible thing to let Lupin reflect a little. She hadn’t really allowed herself to do much of it lately, afraid that she’d become too caught up in the grief that she really couldn’t allow to interfere with her everyday comings and goings.

    She would never be able to claim that she’d known Sirius well. She hadn’t, or at least, not as well as Lupin and some of Sirius’ closer compatriots had. He’d always been the funny older cousin, the one that came over on holidays and took her on little rides around the block on his motorcycle. He’d been the one who’d had all the stories told about him at Hogwarts, and to whom she’d proudly connected herself whenever someone mentioned one of his particularly ingenious pranks. The two of them had had their times, their moments, their little shared laughters…but she’d never been one of his close confidants, not like Lupin, who had shared most of his young life and most of his young heart with the crazy, suave black-haired animagus.

    “You know,” she murmured, somewhat to Lupin, but mostly to herself, “I sometimes wish-!”

    She was distracted by a triumphant growl from Moody’s direction. “He’s here,” the older Auror announced. “He’s there. Look.” A bony finger jabbed in the direction of the stage, and Tonks turned her attention back to it to watch the young, toothily smiling actor take his place at center stage.