breathless and on again.

Astoria thought she’d lived through a war, but the events of the past few days made her realize how much her experiences as a teen were merely an echo of such violence. Every time she shut her eyes her mind was imbued with images of smoke and brimstone, wailing, injured people, and blood. (Erin’s pale face, her shaking voice.) If Astoria was this bothered by the battle having come out of it unscathed, she couldn’t imagine how the younger woman was feeling. 

The Chief Warlock looked up from a veritable mountain of paperwork to see Erin (alive, alive, she’s alive) poised in the doorway to her office. She wasn’t without shock when her Senior Undersecretary came back to the office several days sooner than she expected. Astoria admired her gumption (foolishness?), but worried that she had created an expectation for Erin to value work and steadfastness above all else. Things at the Ministry were in an absolute flurry, of course, but they could manage. 

After a moment’s hesitation to take stock of how she was feeling about going to lunch early (eager, exhausted, more-than-willing), Astoria stood, capping her fountain pen and retrieving the dosirak that her husband had lovingly pressed into her hands this morning from the top drawer of her desk. “Of course. Lead the way.” 

There are things Erin wants to say to Astoria. Realisations of affection, the way she not simply sees her as boss and friend, but holds a warm kind of love for her too. Gratitude, for the way she had come to her rescue. And all her suspicions, most of all, the way she cannot tell if her brain is making her believe that it was Cassius as a way to cope, or whether it really was. But this is not the place, nor the time. Maybe in the open air, where the sharp ears of fellow Ministry employees aren’t turned their way, she’ll let it out.

“Lovely,” she says in response to Astoria’s willingness, easily taking the lead on their way out of the office, and subsequently Ministry building. The walk towards the city is one of greeting colleagues, hands waved and people asking Erin if she’s feeling better, then? and Erin nodding head. A proud smile on her lips, the terror that now resides in her stomach even more hidden with extreme care. She’s glad to have Astoria on her side, who demands more respect and is thus harder to approach.

Erin inhales deeply once the pair is outside, glancing sideways at her boss. “I don’t understand how some of our colleagues just sit inside all day,” she hums, wrapping arms around body as the late-autumn winds seem to pick up. “My place isn’t far from here, by the way.” She continues to move, heels clicking against cobbled streets. “I don’t think I’ve properly thanked you for what you did, and maybe it goes without saying ... but thank you, Astoria.”

WHO: harry & luna // @thvstral​​​ WHERE: dumbledore’s tomb, hogwarts grounds WHEN: a few weeks after the battle 

The tomb was one of few places that looked the same, that didn’t need the same careful magical reconstruction that was taking place within the castle. Harry might have found that comforting, if the thing itself wasn’t such a reminder of everything that had happened here. And if it wasn’t close, so close, to the forest he was trying not to think about, and the stone hidden there. 

He hadn’t even intended to come here. All he’d meant to do was help with construction efforts and yet now he stood beside the white marble, feeling his eyes prickle. A sensation that only made him feel angrier, though he could hear Dumbledore’s voice in his head explaining in gentle fashion that it was not anger, but love. Then again, perhaps Dumbledore would understand only too well that by now, Harry couldn’t think of him without both.  

It was while he was bitterly fighting against himself to not let any tears fall that he heard the sounds of someone approaching and instantly felt his anger increase. It was always the same, when he came here. Someone always wanted to talk to him - at times for genuine reasons, about the progress of the restoration, but in this moment he didn’t care who it was. He felt his temper coil in his stomach, rising and rising until it expanded into a snarl, “Look, if I could actually just get a minute to myself-” But then he broke off, recognising the silhouette and the wispy blonde head that followed with a jolt.  “Oh. Luna. I didn’t know you were here,” he finished hollowly. Luna had always somehow made it hard for him to hold onto his anger, made it empty out of him. But Harry didn’t feel entirely ready to let it go yet, so it was with a half resentful and half ashamed look he met her gaze now, with it still burning in his eyes. 

Luna’s hands had been made for creation. It’s a lesson her mother once taught her, taught as she worked on a spell, eyebrows creased in that Pandora-like way — not angry or serious, but fully concentrated on the task at hand. Her mother had made spells, her father had made articles, and Luna made art.

It’s with that philosophy under her belt that she took to the restorations and renovations. Luna’s mind is a clouded thing these days, but that at least she knows how to do still: how to include splashes of colour, how to push for innovation and creativity, how to think otherworldly. But sometimes that weighs heavy too, because the place they’re renovating is not her rook-like home whose walls she’s always painting over. It’s Hogwarts and bad memories live in every nook and cranny, like unexpected little creatures.

She walks. She walks strange and new routes, lets her feet guide her to places of loveliness and sorrow. Today, on her feet’s itinerary: Dumbledore’s tomb. She had not known Harry was there, but when she finds him there she is not surprised. A funny twist, she thinks, of fate or something else entirely: that doesn’t matter. His sharp words do not shake her.

It takes much more to shake her these days.

Luna is not made of thick skin per se, but something blocks harsh blows out all the same. Something enshrouds her, something she has not dared to name yet. ( Bad dreams of the drip-drip-drip of water in the Malfoy’s basement or of screams – hers? Hermione’s? Ollivander’s? She does not know; they all sound the same in her memory – or of wiping blood of Ginny and Neville’s faces and holding their hands and saying nothing at all. ) Whatever it is, though, it is like a protego charm: everything bounces right off. “Hi Harry,” she says, voice as airy as always, as if it floats. “What are you doing here?” A question she genuinely seeks an answer to, not accusatory in tone but rather curious. There are plenty of reasons to turn to a grave, Luna knows that much – her mother is buried in her and her father’s backyard, and she stands over it on many summer days, sometimes sad and sometimes happy and sometimes something in between – but she does not know which one it is for Harry, today. “I think he would have liked this place, even if it is more peaceful than he ever was.”

Someone had set his mother off downstairs. Sirius had heard her shrieking from all the way up here, but for once it had done nothing to move the thick layer of apathy dulling his sense, like frost on a glass pane. They’d managed to shut her up without him, anyway. They could, apparently, manage a lot without him. He imagined talk was beginning down there, that the meeting might have begun by this time. It did nothing to change Sirius sullenly staying in place. Dumbledore had already said they weren’t going to rescue Harry yet, and Dumbledore had already said Sirius wasn’t allowed to so much as walk in the street, let alone do anything useful. He couldn’t think of a single other damn thing he cared about, not unless they announced they’d found Peter and had him tied up in the kitchen, ready for Sirius to try out the Noble and Most Ancient wizard’s torture rack he and Molly had found in the attic last week. Maybe Kreacher had been onto something, not letting him throw anything out, he thought, with a flash of dark amusement about it, if nothing else. 

The knock on the door took his eyes off the old photo he’d been staring at - unable to look away, like he was stuck into a loop, just like it was stuck onto the wall forever by his very own charm, a fucking reminder forever that he hadn’t just killed Peter right then and there, at fifteen years old apiece - but he didn’t move to open it. He’d already told Remus he didn’t want to be the show for the new members. It had gotten old. His mouth opened, ready to say as much as the door blew open, but then shut again in confusion. This wasn’t Remus. He felt a stronger wave of irritation, enough to begin to crash through his sense of paralysation. 

“Azkaban. It works miracles. Dear old Bella’s sweeter than ever, too,” he said, deliberately scathingly to this stranger, before he was struck right out of numbness entirely by the pink hair. And the mention of Bella - those were her eyes, in this face he didn’t know. It would chill him, except he did know it, had known and mourned for it. He’d never liked to think of little Dora Tonks hating him. It had almost been a relief that the Dementors had taken memories of her away. “Nymphadora?” 

It was only the moment after he said it that he remembered he had never called her that. His memory was like that, these days, more remnants pieced together than anything else. He could never quite predict what would stay and what wouldn’t. But now there was the phantom of the way he’d crouched down beside her and given a conspiratorial whisper, i have a real name, too, different from what people want to call me. it’s padfoot, you can use it, but don’t tell your mum, it’s a secret codename, i think you can be trusted.  The memory was fuzzy, distorted; how cruel Azkaban was to leave something behind, just enough so he knew something was missing. All the same it was the same thought running through Sirius’ mind now, staring at this face that was at once familiar but not, at least not in the form of an adult. I think you can be trusted. He blazoned on a grin, even if it was stretched thin at the edges. His bitterness had not been for her. “Sorry, kid. I meant to say Tonks. Unless you don’t like your codename anymore.” It was half-teasing, half-cautious, a rusty attempt at trying to fall back into an old pattern that he wasn’t sure still existed between them.  

It’s startling, to see him like this. It’s startling to see him in general, that cousin she hasn’t seen since she was eight years old and someone else entirely. A ghost of a person, not just because he seems to be made out of memories, but because he looks half-alive. Tonks has never been particularly good at these bits of life, or at least has her very own way of approaching it that not everyone can always appreciates. She looks at Sirius for a moment, registers the bitter mention of the aunt she’s never met but has heard both horror stories and tragedies about, and then turns to close the door behind them.

She drops on a spare chair. Her entire mind is made out of questions she wishes to ask, and it’s not a lack of bravery that keeps her from doing so –– it’s because she does not know where to start. Ever since Sirius had gone to Azkaban, Tonks has been filled with questions upon questions that her mother nor father could answer. Her mother’s side of her family has always had that effect on her, leaving her with more questions than anyone could possibly answer. Sirius simply raised the biggest ones, because he was the only family member of her mother’s side she ever knew, and then he’d been gone, suddenly. 

And here he was again. A ghost. She’s forgotten how to behave, but then she’s never been particularly good at behaving herself anyway. If she remembers right, that’s something Sirius once liked about her. “Still just Tonks, yeah,” she says, and she’s grinning a little. “Though I’m definitely not a kid any more.” Something proud laces her voice, and she wants to tell him that she’s an Auror now, that she’s fighting the good fight and part of it is because of him. The word codename stirs up a memory, and she reaches for it for a moment, urging it back. “Padfoot’s yours, right?”

She wonders if he would be okay with her hugging her. With most others, she would do it, no questions asked, but something about the way Sirius sits here, in his childhood bedroom, makes her hesitant. Tonks shifts in her seat, lets her eyes travel around the bedroom for a few moments again, and then her eyes are back on her cousin. “It never made any sense to me, ya know,” she says, “You.” She tries to make her words coherent, to not stumble over them like she did over the umbrella stand earlier. “Guess it does now.” And it’s not something she’s happy about, she hopes he sees that. Tonks pulls her legs up, sits cross-legged on the chair now, a restless thing even in adulthood. “It’s good to see you again, is what I’m tryin’ to say. Wish it wasn’t all so fucked.” She’s quiet for a moment, before letting out a laugh. “Oh, you can swear in front of me now. Mum tried to raise me not to be potty-mouthed but it never worked out.”

This could have gone more smoothly, admittedly. Upon entering 12 Grimmauld place for the first time, Tonks had – much to Moody’s chagrin, but a lot of the things she did were to his chagrin – stumbled over an umbrella stand, which had kicked of a series of events. A screaming painting, calling her all sorts of names, and Moody scrambling to shut her up while Tonks was still trying to think about how she should try and keep the clumsiness to a minimum while meeting the Order. She’d stood there, a bit incredulous, half-amused and half-enraged, setting the umbrella stand upright again.

And now, having recovered from her general clumsiness and having shaken some hands in the kitchen – “Oh, no, it’s not a dye job, but thanks, I do love the pink too!” – she’s climbing up the stairs. Portraits of people that look like her mother in slight ways follow her and she sticks out her tongue to a few, flips off another. She’s glad every day that she carries her dad’s surname, and not that of her mother. The sheer idea of being related to some of these twats is almost laughable. She reaches the top floor, followed by whispering paintings, and halts.

There’s a nameplate on the door that reads Sirius, and Tonks stares at it for a moment, before knocking. The polite gesture is followed immediately by a less-than-considerate one, and she bursts through the door, impatient and curious without waiting for a reply. How her mother would disapprove. But Tonks has never been good at patience, and curiosity tends to eat away at her if she lets it, and so she stumbles in.

“Holy shit,” she says, eyes falling on Sirius, then on the covered walls, then on Sirius again. “You’re so much cooler than I remember.” A strange thing to say, but it’s the first thing that comes into her head, and Tonks has a fatal lack of filter. “Remember me?”