the history of magic meme

[1castle4houses]

welcome to AU hell

RULES;

1. tag in
2. tag around!
3. mix and match - pick a setting from the first column and an AU from the second column (or use RNG if you like to live on edge -- there's 10 prompts per column)
4. have fun

HINTS;

We welcome and encourage all OCs. Add a little blurb about your character so other players have an idea what to play with, and feel free to add your preferences and permissions.
Ship, don't ship; make out, don't make out - all is fair game.

PROMPTS;

Setting	AU
1. Ancient	a. Soldiers on the same side
2. Middle Ages	b. Arranged marriage
3. 1600s	c. Great new discovery
4. 1700s	d. Childhood friends
5. 1800s	e. Met on the road
6. 1900s	f. Rags and riches
7. Roaring 20s	g. Members of two feuding houses
8. 1940s	h. It's all about the art
9. 1970s	i. Co-conspirators
10. WILDCARD	j. WILDCARD

Comments

[metamorphical]

A chortle escapes then. It's nice to know she wasn't the only one who had asked, though her question had been asked of Sirius. Sirius, who had a field day both with the question itself and the implication that Tonks had a crush on their mutual friend.

"Though perhaps there'd have to be a parade for you to be aware? Seventy-six trombones and all that." Tonks teases, though the jest is more than a little bit true as well. What isn't true is that he merely reflects his companions light. So she shakes her head in disagreement.

"Mm. You're a star just like the others. Just further away is all. Gotta squint to see the shininess." She does just that, squinting playfully as if to help her see him more clearly.

[timenssecundus]

[In their future, Sirius would say, "A live one, that. Think she fancies you."
Remus would pale and answer, "Shove off. She's too young."
Sirius: "Fine. I'll get to work for you on McGonagall."]

The shared cultural reference gets a flicker of a smile. The complete lack of understanding (of course! how could she know?) of the moon part makes it fall.

"Well, everyone is," he says, truthfully and evasively. "But… it's kind of by design. I don't want attention. I know there's contradiction… Being linked with them gets me more, but being in their shadow… offsets it."

It was camouflage—she was right: standing next to their glare in order to subsume and mask his own light. Their active and ambient protections meant the attention Remus did get was more plentiful but much more diffuse than what he'd get on his own. The judgments and speculations his clothes and scars would inspire either way, this way were more about what the handsome, talented, powerful Trickster Gods' motives could possibly be, adopting the ratty toadying one and the raggedy scarred one.

(Peter was complicated; they initially accepted him solely for Remus's sake—and Remus maybe acting more than he'd like to admit out of guilt, trying to help Peter where he hadn't been able to help Snape. Pete's continued role in the group was to be something of an audience, someone to be awed and surprised as rehearsal for the masses. It sometimes made Remus uncomfortable, but on the whole, it seemed to please Peter too.

For Remus… The assumption of Remus having been abused by someone got quickly sidebarred into assumptions of Sirius's probable abuses making him want to save and protect another, et cetera. Which wasn't so off the mark; the only inaccuracy being that Remus was his own abuser. It was the same mistake Sirius himself had made the first time he saw the extent of Remus's scars. That was what inspired him to steal Remus's file and find out about Moony and get the other two on the Animagus path.

The irony that Remus's least hideable scars—the ones on his face—had come from Sirius… a microcosm of the rest, but he refused to think too much about. Fair cost.)

He needed out of his own head. And maybe to get Tonks's attention a bit off him, too. That was something Remus was fairly good at, for himself and for the others. Like most of what he'd said as soon as they got on this subject: he was simultaneously tactical (stop thinking about me) and wholly sincere (I want to know about you). "Were you ever roped into to any of Sirius's antics? How much did you two interact?" Both Sirius and Tonks's family had all cut ties with the main Black tree; did that mean they'd refound each other outside of it, or drifted out on their own separate ways?

[metamorphical]

While she knows (of course she knows!) she still thinks it's a load of horseshit. "Sometimes attention finds you anyway, yanno. And it's not always a bad thing." But she shrugs off that particular part of the subject. She knows, and understands, the why's of it. But truthfully, she doesn't understand the who's of it. He's careful of who he lets in, at any age it looks like, but there is a small part of her that often wonders why not her. Still, Tonks knocks at the proverbial door, and one day maybe he'd answer fully.

Which is funny. Because there was a saying about wolves at the door, wasn't there? In this case, the wolf outside is really just a creature as curious as a cat. And pink-haired.

"Deflecting." She calls him out on it like she does his older version, cheeky and blunt. But lets him get away with it as well, also something done for his older half. Except for the times she chooses not to let him. "Not as much as you, of course. Though I didn't need much help in school for mischief." She grins and shows off a little, shifting her features from impish and decidedly Tonks to a perfect facial copy of Dumbledore. Her voice changed to sound like him as well. "One does not need help for what one naturally is." Trouble with a capital T.

And as easily as she shifted to their old Headmaster, she rights her features to be just Tonks. "First time I was in Grimmauld, I took the piss out of a portrait yelling obscenities. I shifted into his face and started professing my love for everything Muggle.." She smiles slyly at that, not regretting it for a minute. "Woke up mummy dearest, who then started yelling at that guy." Some stuffy ass great uncle or something. "That was fun."

It's a shame really that she can't share too many actually shared shenanigans. There wasn't enough time with Sirius. And the small troublemaking they did get into would be difficult to explain without explaining what sort of world she's taken a few hours holiday from.

"I didn't get to meet up with him proper until relatively recently, actually. It's one of the regrets I have. But lives took us other ways for a while, yeah? And I had to go and pretend to be mature enough to pass Auror training."

[all the future worldbuilding blathering from my headcanon days…]

[timenssecundus]

[Why not her: all the reasons he adores her. He doesn't want to put his self-hatred against that. It's not even the conceptualising he'll do to try to explain it to her and others and himself—I'm too old, too poor, too dangerous; I don't want to make you unhappy (though he doesn't); you deserve better (he thinks she does but on some level knows it's not up to him), your life will be tarnished by me (it will) ; yes, all true, but it's mostly visceral. He can't stand the thought of all the vivid and generous light and beauty in her being weighted and grated up against his guilt and neediness and ugly darkness. Maybe selfishly because he doesn't like the anticipation of his own guilt and the picture it draws of himself as user/addict/inflictor; at least as much as his prophesying the effects on her.

…It wasn't like he'd learned better on these issues with anyone else, either. When the only other crush he'd ever had was someone he would never, ever even think about whether or not to show his feelings, when she loved and was loved by someone equally dear to him. And Harry could never not be James's son.]

Her morph to Dumbledore makes Remus do a near-perfect spit-take. On the one hand, it's brilliant and he's laughing so hard. On the other, oh Merlyn, an authority-teacher-parental-figure is not really a face he wants to associate with someone he's very rather fancying…

"Grimmauld?" The name sounds familiar, something Sirius has mentioned, but without the urgency or immediacy that makes Remus able to place it.

"I've always gone back and forth on whether I think Sirius would ever be an auror," Remus said thoughtfully. "On the one hand: structure and orders, negative. On the other: power and ingenuity to offset some of what he hates most in our world and help others by it. It's tricky. Sounds like he won't, though."

Remus hesitates. He both desperately wants and doesn't want to ask her more about their futures. Practically: it's such a terrible idea. Philosophically: …though if things went badly, isn't foreknowledge the only way to potentially change that? Mythologically: …or it's the way to ironically/hubristically bring it about. Emotionally: his desperation for it to go well is only outweighed by his horror of what if it doesn't, which he can't bear to hear. Intellectually: who's to say anything she might tell him here could be reliable, anyway; not because he doubts her personally, but everything about this current situation is to be doubted, be it joke, illusion, anomaly, alternate dimension, her traveling back, him traveling forward… and they'll have to deal with that before worrying about any other causality.

And (maybe hormonally, but no, not just—) right now, he doesn't want to deal with it. He wants to keep having this nice encounter with her.

[Bring it on! Though Tonks is :P'ing that particular poetic waxing]

[metamorphical]

"Sirius' family house." Not a home, though Molly tries her hardest to attempt that feeling. "We stop in there from time to time." Not a lie. Not the full truth.

There is a small part of her that wants to explain more. However entangled he is and will be in the situation, Remus as it stands is also an outside party. Not fully entangled yet. And she knows that she would appreciate what he has to say on matters at hand.

The far larger and louder part of her refuses though. Not only does that have unknown consequences, but she's loath to put all of her own burdens on him. This is not a case of burdens shared, burdens lessened in the slightest, and wouldn't be fair to the poor man at all.

So instead, she falls quiet for a few minutes..not quite the same comfort as usual, but not uncomfortable either..and takes another drink. It's then that she notices that somewhere between them getting their drinks and talking, a goblin had come in and was playing the piano.

It's a jaunty little number at the moment, which makes Tonks grin a little and catch Remus' eye. "C'mon." Up she gets, grabbing his free hand and giving a little tug to get him up as well. A little dance never hurt anyone.

Except maybe Remus' toes. But she'll warn him after he gets up.

[timenssecundus]

What? Oh. —wait, what?

Last Yule Ball, Lily had learned that Mary Macdonald wanted to ask Emma Vanity to be her date, but was too afraid of others' hostility to try. (With good reason, as Mulciber would exemplify.) Lily shared this with Remus in trying to think of how to help, and the upshot was that Remus and Sirius went with each other.

(In solidarity and support, from Remus; maybe a bit to drive all the Slytherins crazy, for Sirius.)

Sirius had taught Remus how to dance, and he actually did it pretty well.

Thing was: as Sirius's date, Remus only knew how to follow.

So, having been too bewildered to do otherwise, Remus found himself standing on the dance floor; he automatically put his hands and arms and feet in the appropriate positions, but then he just… stood there. Not knowing how to explain any of this or whether it was allowed to suggest Tonks take the lead.

[metamorphical]

She would absolutely comment on the reasoning and how it tracked for the both of them. Tonks herself, if in a similar situation, would have been the perfect mix of both. As it was, most of her own friends agreed to go in a group. No one left behind that way. And they all danced in ways that were silly and ridiculous.

Cordelia and Charlie did take turns submitting themselves to Tonks' left feet in attempts to teach her both leading and following -- brave souls that they were -- but the lessons only kind of stuck.

Standing in the most amicable awkwardness she thinks she's ever felt, Tonks laughs and bites the bullet. Trying to remember Cordelia's instructions from years ago, she gets them moving into a quick little waltz.

It doesn't start off too badly, but somewhere in between repeating the four step pattern a third or time, Tonks' foot slipped and caught some part of Remus' foot. Stopping, wide eyed and concerned, she looks up. "Shit. I'm sorry!"

[timenssecundus]

Remus's pain thresholds were… pretty far beyond a bumped foot. Maybe if she'd stabbed through it with a stiletto, he'd want an apology. As it was, he belatedly glanced down to see what she was talking about, then looked back into her face with a smile of such reassurance, it was almost sheepish. "Don't be. Everything's fine." …Was that quite what he'd meant to say? Well, it seemed to be okay… He readjusted his hands on hers in a friendly signal.

[metamorphical]

Tonks in stilettos would be an entertaining -- or perhaps cruel -- joke. As it is, while she knows that he's stronger than he looks (and maybe even than he thinks), she's still apologetic. "I was thinking that I had more time to warn you about my clumsiness." She jokes, reassured by that endearing smile.

So with that out of the way, she carries on and gets them dancing again. When one song finishes and another begins, she does pull apart, but only so she can grab his hands and do silly dance moves with him.

The third song starts slower and, while she has little problem dragging his ass to do something stupid and fun, the witch does have the wherewithal to not demand things like this. "Back to the table for another round?" She asks Remus with a quirky smile.

[timenssecundus]

For the waltz, he's focusing so hard on doing it 'right', being a 'good' partner to her, not making them look foolish… he succeeds in moving surprisingly well but focused so fiercely, with a look on his face like he's trying to write the densest arithmancy essay Prof Vector ever set… and so distant from her.

But getting that settled, when the song ends, his eyes return to her with relief… and more opened up than before.

So then, the next song, when she grabs his hands, and the steps aren't prescribed…

Again, Remus is always minding his emotions. It's relentless, having to check and balance… the others speak of his patience and kindness as inexhaustible… only Lily Evans has gotten inside his barricades to know it is exhausting, and sometimes a cause of rage in of itself, that he can never, ever, let it go.

Or so he thinks.

With Dora smiling, shining in the starlike light, from the halo of her colourful hair through her radiant eyes to the ends of her fingers and toes, her hands simultaneously his safety tether and his kite strings encouraging him along… Remus goes with her, moving without knowing how.

Because he doesn't focus on himself, on 'doing it right'; he focuses on her. On following her tides and flows.

To watch them, the result from him is pretty small and restrained… but freeform dancing nonetheless, partially mirroring but not slavishly just complementary, and maybe tiny but still… abandoned, holding onto her with hands and eyes, and the look on his face is open wonder.

'Silly' dance moves. Wonderful.

The song ends, he's startled and dismayed that she seems to feel the need to take pity—I'm not embarrassed, this was a gift, I can't believe it, thank you—but then he realises he's exhausted and ready to fall.

"Yes, please, good," he says ridiculously.

For the first time, as they turn to walk, (through the mirror,) he threads his arm with hers.

Sorry!! Got caught up with a phone call!

[metamorphical]

The waltz is nice, and Remus is kind for taking the proverbial punches -- from left footed women -- gently. But when their steps change and they both relax, Tonks smiles even more brightly.

It's the complementary style -- something at once seemingly practiced and yet completely natural and unforced -- that she likes between them so much. It's a funny thing, then, that they sometimes take a minute to get to that point. They each, in their own way, try too hard sometimes. If Tonks thought about it, she would suppose that it's similar to thinking about how one breathes. Or eats. The naturalness becomes weird upon too much thought.

But Tonks is not thinking too much. Or about trying, either too much or not enough. She's living in the moment and truly enjoying herself. She honestly wouldn't be able to say when the last time she did that was. And even as she makes moves up on the fly, she pays attention to Remus and his movements as well.

The motion to stop isn't pity in the slightest. It's a slight step back into her own awkwardness, a dance she's less sure of. There is often a point in their interactions where Tonks feels she goes too far. While it may (unbeknownst to her) be Remus remembering himself and putting kind but distant space back between them (for her safety, a statement at which she would snort unladylike toward), she wonders if it's her. Too brash. Too bold. Too much. She doesn't know how to tone herself down.

But now? Now, the awkward dance and curious thoughts of too-much are quieted by the quite welcome feeling of his arm linking with hers. She leans in, bumping shoulders lightly as they walk back to the table.

"You should tell me about a hidden talent of yours." She says as they sit back down, eyebrows lifting. It was apropos of nothing but her curiosity and the fact that she asks what pops in her head.

Never a problem! ^_^

[timenssecundus]

Finding himself in combinations with people is endlessly incredible to him. Finding people is incredible. What each of his [marauding?] friends gives and does to him is a miracle, a life saver, a transformation, a drug, an addiction, a nourishment, a complement, a compensation, a discovery, an adventure, a hallucination… Lily is an affirmation, a validation, a calm center, a generosity, a strength, a meditation, a rest, a charm.

This with Dora…

No nouns apply. Though he's captivated by her… there isn't the flight to her away from him… He feels… to be… himself. Because there has to be a him in order to be with her.

And… he doesn't mind.

He's never known this before.

It's…

…it's not intellectual… it's…

All he knows is that it feels amazing to lean gently on each other as they walk, and he keeps his fingers brushed barely against hers on the table when they sit.

"A… hidden talent."

Thank Merlyn she said talent. That handily eliminated The Hidden Thing, so he didn't have to lie by omission.

It did make him, again, have to step a little from this unprecedented… smooth mirror lake… plane of… just being… here, with her, as himself… in order to think.

What's a 'talent'… He didn't want to offer something from his youth of devouring Muggle fantasy and science fiction literature, because that might be a conversation stopper. (Though Dora was half-blood too and they'd had the music exchange… Still, nah. Because at its core it also had the thread of his disease and loneliness.) The ways he could use his magic…? That hardly seemed to count among fellow practitioners, unless maybe it was a discipline he'd invented maybe…

"I… uh… I'm working on inventing a study aid," he said.

He regretted it the moment he said it. But too late to stop.

"I got the idea because of Sirius, actually. But also now that I'm a prefect, I see lots of other students with the same issue. You probably already know this… Sirius spent a lot of time thinking he was stupid. Incapable of thinking technically or strategically… or thinking much at all. Not intellectual. But in fact, he's brilliant… he's an inventor. He can come up with the most ingenious devices and spells. He uses them for pranks so he doesn't think of himself as… studious, but they're incredible. He thinks that if he hadn't been in Gryffindor he'd have been in Slytherin… I actually think, if he hadn't had his idea of himself so twisted around, he'd have been in Ravenclaw.

"The main problem is that he needs things to be interactive from the start. So I was thinking, how to make reading that, even when you're presented with a scroll, a wall of text, even if you don't have access to other people to help or don't want to damage the material. Not just reading aloud like for those with limited sight or difficulty reading, but for someone like Sirius who really needs to have a partner or an audience to wrestle in order to first absorb any idea.

"So… you know marginalia in illustrated manuscripts? Those weird figures and doodles that rarely make sense, even in the Magickal realms? Like a lance-wielding rabbit riding a manticore while holding a snail on its wrist like a falcon… or completely unrecognisable animals doing even stranger things with abstract patterns clouding around them.

"My charm would be that you could pick and, not actually imprinting the paper, just in the air above, transpose one, or even draw one yourself with your wand; and it would hop along the text—or you could have as many as you like… and it would be like a study group or debate team or commentary panel or… just… really irreverent peanut gallery, reading along with you; there to be consulted or challenged or just make things less boring as you go.

"And they could also be inaudible to everyone but you if you're stuck doing this work in… say… detention." (Well, he had designed it for Sirius.)

"I don't know if that counts as a talent. …It's probably more James and Sirius's talent that I've been picking up from them. The inventing."

[metamorphical]

Her smile, generally lopsided and present around him more often than not, brightens again as he explains his hidden talent. It’s so very much in line with what she knows of him older – the teacher, the one who believes in the value of learning and understanding. Her mouth opens to encourage him to talk about the study aid, to gently drag him across the line of no return that he sometimes puts up, but promptly shuts with a chuckle as Remus crosses that line just fine on his own.

“The Weasley twins are rather that, too. Brills, but not keen on school.” She only interjects to add to the conversation, peppering his story with pieces of her own and players that are in his future. It’s when he mentions that Sirius believed he would have been in Slytherin that her expression changes. It’s a slight shift, one from amusement to gentle understanding. She had wondered the same with a child's curiosity and worry at the same time as the Hat took its time to decide where to place her.

Her hands move again, this time in the excited way that they move as she talks. "Oh, or like the nuns tending to wonky body part bushes?" Tonks asked with a laugh. But as Remus explained his project, she lifted her eyebrows again. This time in a motion of being impressed.

"I think that's be dead clever! I talk to myself a lot as I'm figuring things out. An audience for that would be helpful. Even as an echo chamber, to determine whether the idea is sound or not, or to pipe in with commentary."

She taps his fingers then, a playful and physical chiding of his humble nature as she chortles. "And it absolutely counts as a talent. You have to have capacity for it to pick it up from others."

[timenssecundus]

"I don't know any Weasleys," said Remus apologetically. She'd said the name as if he should.

(This Remus was right between Weasleys. Molly and Arthur had already graduated Hogwarts and Bill hadn't yet begun. Lupin would meet them when he entered the first Order of the Phoenix… but those years would be a return to such isolation, sent away to work undercover among the werewolves, he'd be rather preoccupied with finding himself more and more separated—thus bereaved and even alienated—from James, Sirius, Lily and Peter. If he'd been more at home and bonding with people like Molly and Arthur, getting their healthy wonderful influence and a broader… well, life, but also safety net; his life would have been considerably different. —Of course, if he'd been more at home keeping up with those preexisting friends, maybe history would have been different. He'll never be able to afford to think that way and will never be able to stop thinking that way. And trying hard not to hate the person to whom he owes everything for it.)

"But, yeah. Sometimes the difficulty is that school wants you to do things a certain way. And some people, often because they're very clever, just have different ways. Sometimes they end up doing poorly in school but better outside of it." Sometimes the scenario was considerably poorer. But here with Tonks, thoughts trended rosier, tinted by the light in her hair.

He blushed almost to match it at her validation—and compliment.

"…You know… I… didn't think of that as a talent but… That's a really nice way of… Thank you. I like that. Yeah." Snape had accused him of ulterior mimicry. But Dora had just turned it on its head… the being able to 'pick up from others'… joining up with something Lily said about sensitivity to needs and wanting to help… and playing the dumb Houses game and Sirius declaring that Remus would actually be a Hufflepuff for the same reason… For some reason, Dora saying it made it finally make sense and feel right.

"Okay. Your turn," he said. "Hidden talent."

[metamorphical]

Incorrigible is often a word that can accurately describe Tonks. So when he blushes, she grins impishly and points something out both quickly and casually. "You're cute when you blush like that." It's the truth and it's a tease at the same time.

But she moves on easily, the action nothing more than simply carrying on their conversation. "I was a bit of a Hat Stall. Not a long one..four or five minutes? But it said I'd do well in any of the Houses." Hers is a blatant mimicry at times, a game created at a young age to see how far her innate abilities could go, a kinder version of Remus' forced shapeshifting, this one allowing for agency. But Tonks also picks things up from others, each person offering a plethora of colors to allow her to paint her own picture how she wants.

She laughs at the turnabout of the question, immediately replying with a silly answer. "I can do fancy card shuffling. I'll trip over air, but the cards will dance and never fly out of place." It's true, but not as insightful an answer as his was. So she shimmies a little bit in her seat, thinking of a proper reply.

It takes a minute. While she doesn't mess with false modesty and knows she's good at things, she doesn't really think of herself as having any talents, per se. Not outside the obvious one that lets her change her appearance. "I like to think that I've a knack for puzzles? I like figuring things out. Dead helpful as an Auror."

[timenssecundus]

He blushes even deeper. Any attempt to be swish or nonchalant seems much worse—he couldn't carry it off like James or Sirius and thinks he would just seem rude—or worse, like he doesn't actually care or like her—so he doesn't try. Thank Merlyn, she forges ahead.

"James has a theory," said Remus, "that the attributes they say determine Houses aren't necessarily what do it—or that they're up for interpretation, or aren't passive but have to be translated to… —Okay, no. His theory is that attributes may land you in any of the others, but Gryffindor is the House you have to choose. I know three doesn't make a pattern, but looking at our own group of friends, only James could only be Gryffindor. The rest of us really should be everywhere else. Sirius is a good example again. He felt like he had a fate and refused it.

"I'm thinking, though, that one House wouldn't function so differently from others. I'll bet choice matters for all of them. …Because aren't choices what really best define and reveal our true attributes anyway…?"

(He sure hoped so.)

He would love to see that. He bet they'd have cards in a place like this… But then she mentioned puzzles…

"Now I'm trying to think of riddles that aren't totally infuriating," he said, another of his shy smiles creeping across his face… but this one with also maybe a hint of a Siriuslike mischief. "Or not that kind of puzzle?"

[metamorphical]

"Now that is very Gryffindor, thinking it's so special." She grins, teasing. But she's thinking about it and nods in agreement. "I reckon you're right. It's just curious how the Hat knows what choices you'll make before you do."

It's that. That smile, shy but hinting at deeper things -- a penchant for mischief just as much as his friends -- that she finds so damn cute. Laughing, she quirks her head ever so slightly and smiles. "All sorts of puzzles."

She leans in then, conspiratorial and close. "Whatever kinds are you talking about, mm?"

[timenssecundus]

"You didn't have a conversation with it at the time?" asked Remus, genuinely curious—and, for some reason, anxious. "All of us did. —I mean, Sirius, James, and Peter. And me." Again, four doesn't make a terribly valid sample population, but even James, who had had entire (maybe unique) confidence and clarity on the subject, had reported a back-and-forth with the Hat that he later discovered to have been entirely telepathic.

Thank goodness, riddles. Though trying to think of a good enough one (to be… um… what… present himself somehow the way he wants to in front of her, though he has no idea what that is) is also giving him minor panic.

"Oh, y'know… um… I’ll bleed for you until my veins run dry. I’ll send your imagination soaring high. Use me with a flourish and I’ll make your dreams come true. I come in all colors but mostly black and blue. What am I?"

[metamorphical]

"I did, but I also didn't have a preference on the House?" She pauses, chuckling and offering a shrug on the matter. "My mum was in Slytherin, and she's great, so I wasn't as adamantly against it? Though wouldn't have been my first pick. Dad's Hufflepuff, so I knew all about that. Gryffindor was where Bill Weasley had landed, and I knew him. So Ravenclaw was the only House I didn't have any knowledge of."

She thinks about it, trying to recall what the Hat told her. "I do recall it chortling when I thought about the Slytherin dorms...dungeons? No thanks."

Humming and squirming before she settles down again, she thinks about the riddle. "I'll bleed for you.." She mutters, repeating the riddle to herself in half sentences. "..Mostly black and blue-- oh! Ink!"

[timenssecundus]

He could have sworn the story went that Andromeda, already the only cousin Sirius liked, married a nonwizard, confirming Sirius's approval and casting them both out of the dynasty. Of course, to think of it, Remus had no reason to presume that muggle was or was not Tonks's father, so he said nothing.

"Yes," said Remus unthinking. "It may not seem like much if you've never had to worry about it, but sleeping somewhere without a draft or leaks makes enormous difference."

…Fuck he shouldn't have said that. Too late.

"Yes!" he said at once, focusing again on the riddle instead. "'Pen' is also accepted but I always thought 'ink' made lots more sense."

[metamorphical]

Tonks pauses, head tilted and eyes thoughtful as he casually remarks upon the state of housing (or non-housing, as the case may be). It's a stark reminder of what was in her Remus' past. In this Remus' future. But she realizes, as she watches him, that his youth..this youth..likely had some difficulties (beyond the obvious) that he glossed over in their adult conversations. Whether it was shielding either one of them from those thoughts, or rose-coloured glasses on the times, Tonks isn't sure. She opens her mouth, but thinks different of it.

Different, but not better. Better would be to tell him everything and hope that the future changes. Tricky time travel.

Instead, she vacillates between the lighthearted conversation of riddles and the perhaps-treading-more-difficult ground of homes and dorms and the like. "Hufflepuff dorms are right by the kitchens. So I'd sneak in and grab snacks and things."

[timenssecundus]

"I've never been." Remus sounds abashed. "As Gryffindor prefect, I don't have business there, and… socially… it's just the four of us." …Well, it isn't for two of them, but…

…and really, Lily made five. Or their own separate two. But not really—he can't afford to think that way.

—It's somehow kind of easier not to, sitting here talking to Tonks.

Actually, that's not right. He's not not-thinking of it. It's easier to think of Lily, but in an easier way. More comfortable, much simpler. Rather than work to push it out of mind entirely, until a moment's carelessness flooded his brain with doomed, fatal longing. Here, suddenly, thinking of sitting on the window seat with Lily, laughing over marking, is right in the same category as sitting in front of the fire with the other Ms; all just as vital, precious, immutable, but solid. Complete. No need for yearning of any 'missing' aspect.

…because… instead… here… dancing across the table from him in a pair of sparkling eyes…

"It sounds really nice," said Remus, stupidly but earnestly. Wondering for the first time if getting into Gryffindor wasn't the only way his life could have been saved that day. "…You ever read muggle books, as well as liking their music? I've heard the Hufflepuff commonroom compared to something in… some of it."

[metamorphical]

"I nearly got into Gryffindor's common room once! McGonagall caught that there were two of the same student at the last minute." She chuckles, snapping her fingers. "I do think we should get to visit the other rooms, though."

But when he mentions Muggle literature and alludes to a particularly Muggle story, Tonks lights up. "It's absolutely a hobbit hole! Cozy and warm and perfect for second breakfasts."

"My dad's Muggleborn, so he read me the classics. Hobbit, Bedknobs and Broomsticks," She motions to the bedknob and its bloomed flowers. "And Mary Poppins -- I think she's a witch, really."

[timenssecundus]

That she not only knows and agrees but preempts warms him so completely, all the way through… he can't really change colours the way she does (skin stays pale with paler scars) but it feels like it. A story that meant so much to him, in a world that sets him almost as apart from shockingly many in Hogwarts as the Wolf does, and she connects so easily and… merrily… He could never possibly attempt to tell the others about this because James would turn it into something sexual—and fine, maybe that was in the mix but only because the universe was; like a molten gold suffusing him and giving him what had to be the dopiest of grins.

Muggleborn. Oh, pfsbthp, of course, that was it. Stories reconciled. God Merlyn was it ridiculous how generations didn't… It was ridiculous.

"Well, she definitely uses an undetectable extension charm, apparition, mobilicorpus, and has pioneered some method of going into moving portraits… crumbs, that would be incredible… I've always had so many questions about… for lack of a better word, souls, and mortality, and those pictures… and at the very least travel…"

He stopped himself babbling, and contented himself just to grin foolishly at her.

"Anyway, yeah. Definitely a witch. So I'll bet PL Travers was. I'd guess… I wonder how many witch and wizard authors snuck our world into muggle books—or snuck their books into the muggle world—maybe to guide muggle-borns to their own magic."

On sudden irresistible impulse, Remus said, "You're brilliant. Do you… they… know… does anyone tell you that?"

[metamorphical]

His grin only makes her smile even more, eyes squinting up cheerfully with the action. There's something particularly nice and makes her rather proud when she can get Remus on a streak of smiles and laughter and genuinely just fun conversation. It's hard sometimes, and understandably so, but she believes wholeheartedly in the fact that he deserves those times of just being happy.

And he's got an amazing smile.

So she's admiring it as he talks about Mary Poppins and the types of spells she cast, and the idea of the author sneaking real knowledge into the Muggle world. She's listening! Just admiring as she does.

"Mm!" She plans to interject with her thoughts in return, the idea that children's books and fantasy literature are the perfect hiding places, when Remus compliments her. It's sudden and completely unexpected and causes her hair to bloom from roots to tips bright red in a blush.

"I-- thank you!" Had anyone told her that? The obvious answers are there -- her parents and friends. Sirius mentioned it once or twice with a (what Tonks had hoped was pointed) 'Right, Moony?'.

"Can you remember that, please? When our timelines meet again?"