Chapter Text
Tonks slowly opened her eyes before snapping them shut again at the piercing daylight. She decided to roll over and go back to sleep, but the arm she reached out to turn herself didn’t move. She struggled a little but it seemed to be bound to her chest. That was odd.
Disoriented, she opened her eyes, more slowly this time, and realised she had no idea where she was. Sunlight streamed towards her from all directions, reflected from clean, white surfaces. That was very odd. It was all far too clean.
A shadow moved across her face and she turned to the figure leaning over her and tried to ask where she was, but let out only an indecipherable murmur.
“Oh thank goodness, you’re awake,” the figure said and Tonks smiled as the voice triggered a warm, fluffy sensation in her still dazed mind. She struggled to focus her eyes on him.
“You’re in St. Mungo’s, but the healers say you’ll be fine in a couple of weeks,” he continued, gently, before asking, in a rather more worried tone, “Nymphadora, are you all right?”
“Don’t call me that,” Tonks snapped back, her vision finally sharpening enough to take in Remus’ pale, concerned face.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” he said, relaxing into a smile.
From the two empty mugs and half a bottle of pumpkin juice that sat on her bedside table, atop a newspaper with the headline 'YOU-KNOW-WHO RETURNS', Tonks could tell that Remus had been waiting for her to wake up for some time. Her heart fluttered with a mixture of gratitude and embarrassment.
Tonks scrunched her stiff shoulders as best she could with her right arm tightly bandaged to her chest. This wasn’t the first time she’d found herself waking up in hospital. There had been that time when she had tripped over a cauldron in her first year of Auror training and doused herself in Scalding Solution, the nasty incident with the Wartcap Powder, not to mention all the injuries she had sustained whilst practicing duelling.
“What did I do this time?” she mumbled, expecting yet another embarrassing tale of her own clumsiness, but Remus’ eyebrows shot up in shock.
“You don’t remember?” he asked and Tonks shook her head vaguely. “Well we went to the Ministry,” he continued, his eyes now even more concerned as they raked over her expression of numb confusion. “Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny and a couple of their friends had gone there because they thought Voldemort had... well, we went down to the Department of Mysteries to get them out and... and...”
Remus broke off, seemingly struggling to maintain his usual calm demeanour, as his gentle, reassuring tone of voice began to fracture. Tonks felt a sudden desire to comfort him, to tell him that everything would be all right. If only she could piece together the hazy memories of what had happened enough to be sure that everything was all right.
There had been a silver doe; that was Severus’ Patronus, and it had burst into the kitchen at Headquarters to tell them they needed to get to the Ministry. Sirius’ look of righteous fury; he had put up a fight when he was told to stay where he was and there wasn’t really time to argue with him. Doors spinning in a blur and glittering time turners; they had gone to a part of the Ministry she had never seen before that felt unnerving and otherworldly. But none of these images told Tonks exactly what had happened.
“I remember going to the Ministry,” she began, feeling as though she was clutching at the final, fleeting memories of a dream, “but not... were the Death Eaters there?”
“Yes,” Remus replied quickly, but he did not seem to want to elaborate so Tonks pressed on.
“So one of them did this to me, then?” she questioned, indicating her bandaged arm and chest. Now sleep had truly worn off, she had become aware of how much they ached. Spell damage, surely, but not quite like anything she had felt before.
Remus nodded gravely, his eyes full of guilt, pity and an intense sadness, such as Tonks had never seen, as they scanned her broken body.
“I’ll be okay,” Tonks assured him. “I’ve made it through far worse in training when...” Tonks trailed off at the look Remus was struggling to conceal from his eyes. Her stomach dropped as she realised what that look meant; she wasn’t the greatest of his worries.
“Remus, did... did something happen to one of the others?” she asked tentatively, her voice shaking with sudden fear.
He nodded, no longer looking at her and the calm expression he had struggled to maintain throughout their conversation cracked into a look or pure, grief-stricken anguish, which felt like a knife driving itself through Tonks’ stomach.
“I sh-shouldn’t be bothering you with this,” Remus muttered, making to leave, but Tonks grabbed at his wrist with her un-bandaged hand. He froze and she gently guided him to sit on the bed beside her.
“Please tell me,” she asked in a desperate whisper.
Remus closed his eyes and slowly placed his own hand on Tonks’. She watched as two tears streamed quickly down his cheeks.
“Sirius,” he said bluntly, eyes still closed.
“Is he...?” Tonks couldn’t finish, Remus’ expression answering her question, but his nod still brought tears of her own to her eyes.
They sat in silence as tears fell freely down her face. She was too overcome by numb shock to brush them away. Finally, Remus squeezed her hand and looked up into her pale face. His eyes still shining with tears, he looked so haunted, tortured even, and Tonks wanted nothing more than to take that pain away from him, but had no idea where to start. She had never been much good in such situations. Though she knew it was perhaps a little insensitive to continue questioning him, she finally let her curiosity get the better of her.
“How did it happen?” she muttered gently.
Remus’ mouth twisted with bitterness as he looked up and spat out his answer.
“Bellatrix Lestrange.”