Tonks slammed into Sirius before he'd fully comprehended she was running toward him across the room. He let out a oommph as he was jolted backwards from the impact and looked down at her in surprise. "Nypmhadora?"
"Hi Sirius!" she squealed, arms wrapped snug around his waist.
He petted her hot pink hair awkwardly as Remus came 'round the corner from the hallway. "How long's she been here?"
"Longer than I have," Remus answered.
"What?" Sirius looked confused.
"She showed up while Peter was home and he left her here alone," Remus said, eyebrow raised, "To go out with Oni Lamm."
Sirius's eyes darted down to the seven year old wrapped around his middle. "He left her here alone?" he repeated.
Tonks looked up, "I was doing a secret mission, but I don't have to keep any thing secret from you and Remus."
Remus's lips pursed with disapproval at the idea of the secret mission and Sirius raised an eyebrow. "What sort of secret mission?"
"I was guarding Peter's room from bad guys!" she said, "They said the flat could be attacked any moment and I had to be a real good secret agent and keep the baddies from getting in his room and protect the flat!" She paused, letting go of Sirius's waist, looked at her fingers, then held them up, "So I did my nails. Look. Pink."
Sirius stared at the nails. "Very pretty," he said. Then he looked up at Remus, "What the fffff--" he looked at Tonks, then back to Remus, "-- fireflies were they thinking?"
Remus shrugged and shook his head.
"Don't they know she's far too much like me to be left alone?" Sirius demanded.
"Not to mention seven," Remus supplied.
"Yeah, not to mention," Sirius growled.
"I think they were lying about my secret mission, though," Tonks said. Sirius had to bite back the urge to say "no shit" and only just managed to suppress it. Tonks went on, "I went to Peter's room to see what I was guarding and there wasn't a single thing there worth guarding at all. Well, except for some book that Regulus didn't like but --"
"Regulus?" Sirius interrupted.
"She got into our room, too," Remus explained. "She was carrying the portrait around when I got home."
"The portrait's awake?" Sirius asked, and he rushed to the hallway.
"He's very nice," Tonks said. "I like Regulus. He told me about Maryrose!" She was hurrying after Sirius, practically skipping in her excitement to go and talk with Regulus's portrait again.
Sirius walked up to the portrait, but it was still and dull, just pencil on paper again. Tonks stared at it, "Heyyy," she said, frowning, "How come he's not moving?"
Sirius sighed.
Remus stood in the doorway, hands gripping the frame of it, putting the majority of his weight on the wood for support. "Not sentient?" he asked.
"No," Sirius said. He looked at Tonks. "So he talked with you, did he?"
"Yeah," she nodded. "He said he knew a girl called Maryrose Jenkins that was like me. A metamorphmagus. She wore her hair teal and could change into anything or anyone she wanted!"
Sirius nodded, "Yeah, she could." He was frustrated his brother hadn't stayed sentient for him and wondered where he'd gone and why he'd been awake for only a short time.
"Have you really met a unicorn?"
"What?" Sirius asked, shaking off his pondering about Regulus.
Tonks pointed to the wedding photo.
"Oh! Yes, yes we did," Sirius said, and he launched into talking about the unicorn, pushing all the concerning things from his mind and focusing on Tonks for the time being. He and Remus would deal with the oddities of the situation later on.
Remus watched Sirius and Tonks head out of the bedroom and back to the living room. He hesitated, then turned and walked down the hall to the door of Peter's bedroom, which Tonks had left opened in her haste to meet Remus earlier. He cleared his throat, glancing back down the hallway, then stepped timidly into the room, hands slipping into his pockets as he glanced around the room, eyes skimming the tidiness.
Fleetingly, he thought he wished Sirius would be so tidy as Peter was.
Remus looked without touching, inventoried without snooping, eyes sliding over the bed side alarm clock and the pile of candy and snacks on the nightstand. He saw a stack of books on the floor by the window - muggle mystery stories - and some comic books he recognized from Bradley talking about superheroes he liked. There were tarot cards and rune stones laying on a tray table, a crystal ball on a little gold stand on the window sill, only just visible between the curtain and the shade. Peter's dresser was a collection of standard things - a comb, a small bottle of cologne, deodorant, a couple licorice wands, and a handful of sickles and knuts mixed with some muggle coins and notes. There was an old birthday card signed by the lot of them that Remus recognized and a picture of Peter's family from when he was small and they were whole and normal. Remus saw the pretty curls of Peter's little sister and her smile looking up at him from the frame and he felt a bit guilty, poking about in Peter's room.
Of course they'd lied to Tonks - she was a child and they were just trying to strike her fancy so they could slip out, to distract her.
Of course.
Silly of him to think there may be some secret thing in here worth guarding.
Shame of him to think that of his friend.
And then he saw the book.
The patronus that alerted Andromeda of the location of Tonks arrived barking and leaping through the window, running around the kitchen with a shaggy, wagging tail. "Again?" she sighed and went to the living room, where her husband was hard at work building a small model of a dragon made from matchstick wood. He had accidentally glued the bottle to his fingers and was working on getting it off without tearing his own skin. "Ted Tonks!" Andromeda said, and he looked up in surprise. "Your daughter has done it again."
"What's that?" Ted asked.
"Run off to London!"
Ted looked up at the ceiling, "No. Has she? She was upstairs. Did you lot fight again?"
"No, I have no idea why she's run off this time."
Ted shook his head, finally prying off the glue tube and tossing it onto the table. "She's a wild spirit, Andy."
"What are we going to do with her?" Andromeda worried. "She's only seven. What on earth will happen when she's a bloody teenager?"
Ted laughed.
"What's funny?"
"She's such a lot like you, isn't she, love?" Ted asked.
Andromeda flushed.
Ted walked over, kissed his wife's cheek, and said, "There are far worse things she could be." He smirked. "Like me, for example."
"At least she'd be tame."
"And wouldn't we be bored?" Ted joked.
But Andromeda looked more bothered than amused and she asked, "I had a reason for rebelling... I had my Mother and her beliefs... What does Nymphadora think she has to rebel against?"
Ted thought for a moment, then, in a voice that proved she was just as much like him as she was like Andy, he said, "The establishment."
Andromeda laughed and swatted at Ted's shoulder. "Go fetch your daughter please."
"Yes madam," Ted nodded and he slipped out the door with a peck at his wife's cheek.
Lily and James invited the dogs, but they got a letter back that they had Tonks over the flat and needed to take a rain check on the offer for a ride. "We'll still go for a ride," James said, seeing Lily's disappointment. "In fact, it'll be great. Just you, me, and Mum."
Dora had been in a car before, although it had been a long time ago. She sat in the passenger seat, animatedly talking about the time that Charlus had surprised her by renting a muggle car and how they'd had a jolly time of taking it for a ride along the coast instead of going home during their holiday from school in their seventh year.
"My mother screamed at me like a wretch when she found out," Dora said wistfully staring out the window. "Your father's parents weren't very happy with him, either, though for a much less horrid reason than mine were. Mother was angry I was seeing that muggle-loving-Potter as she called him. Not marriage material, said I was wasting away my life, spending time with filth of his sort... and my father bellowed that I'd be married to Orion that summer whether I liked it or not... Show's them. Charlus and I were married before the Summer was out." Dora smiled.
"Brilliant," James grinned from the back seat. "My parents were rebels."
Lily asked, "Was Charlus a good driver?"
"Horrible driver," Dora recalled, shaking her head. "Luckily we had magic and just set the car to driving itself for the most part. But he looked very good pretending to be good at it, he did." She winked at Lily and James made a face and leaned back into his seat to sit properly.
"I'm going to teach James how to drive," Lily said.
Dora smiled, glancing over her shoulder at James. "What fun!"
They rode until they needed a break and Lily found a small town where they parked and walked along past shops that lined a river. They ducked in one and bought some handmade soaps that Lily and Dora got quite excited over. Another had some fine knitting needles and the softest wool Dora had ever felt, gleaned from an alpaca in Peru, which she purchased in a cozy grey color, promising to use the wool to make booties and a hat for the baby.
They ate an early dinner on the terrace of a pub that overlooked the river, and watched a crane that pecked at reeds along the edge on the far side as they ate chips and great chunks of fish, battered and fried to perfection.
It was happy and comfortable and when they got home that night, James had the silly notion of tucking his mother in to bed when she went, later than she usually would because she'd been busy metering out her alpaca wool into balls for her project. She laughed when James sat beside her on the bed like she'd done for him when he was young and she took his hand and kissed his knuckles, looking up at him, their roles reversed. She smiled, "You're such a good boy, Jamsey," she said, "I must be the luckiest mum in all of history."
James bent down and kissed her forehead, "I'm the luckiest kid, rather." He brushed her hair from her forehead. "I'm glad you were a rebel, mum," he said.
"I am, too," she answered.
James smiled.
Lily was waiting in the hallway for him when he slipped out of Dora's room after they'd said goodnight. She had the door of the room they were going to turn into the nursery opened. It had been intended for Regulus when they'd thought for a moment that he might stay with them and his things from the hospital sat on the dresser across the room, opened and spilled across the surface from when Lily had gone rifling through them to find that journal. His jumper - dark grey with flecks of black wool and black buttons at the close - lay folded on the arm of an old rocking chair. Lily stared at it.
She looked at James. "Let's do the room with magical creatures as the theme," she suggested. "Dragons and hippogriffs, bowtruckles and nifflers and erumpets... but cute ones, obviously."
"Alright," James said, nodding.
Oni and Peter had gotten a chance to talk to Barty Crouch after all.
Speaker's Corner was less crowded than last time and although the muggles didn't jeer and mock like last time (that smart mouthed bloke wasn't there), they weren't really listening either. Nobody really stuck around to hear the full of what Barty had to say, apart from Peter and Oni, who had found themselves a park bench to sit on and listen while Barty talked, and it was because of their attentiveness, perhaps, that Barty noticed them.
"They think I'm mad," Barty said, coming over to them, eyes glinting with a hint of the very madness he was lamenting them thinking he might have. "But they've got to know... and perhaps if they knew, if they submitted willingly... the less blood would be shed in the end."
Oni looked at Peter, who in turn looked to Barty, and in the bravest tone he could muster, Peter said, "Sounds to me like we may think more alike than some might expect... What do you think, maybe we could go someplace and have a chat?"
That was how they ended up in a small pub off Knockturn Alley called the Augury Nest.