Nymphadora Tonks woke to the sound of her own breath catching, heart hammering against her ribs as if it meant to escape. The light through the curtains was thin and spiteful, slicing across the room like something that wanted her awake.
She screwed her eyes shut, desperate to hold on to the dream before it slipped away completely. It was already crumbling—his voice and his touch—but the warmth still lingered, faint and fading. Fingers had brushed the hair from her face. Lips had kissed her forehead.
"Sweet dreams," he'd whispered. His voice had been low, soft, like dusk settling over skin.
For one foolish second, she'd believed it. Believed someone might actually care. That she might matter. But she knew better. He wasn't real. Just another lie her brain had stitched together in the dark, some half-remembered kindness dragged up from nowhere. Just another ghost. She had plenty already.
She stared up at the ceiling, eyes dry but sore. The dream had felt safer than anything she'd woken up to in weeks. Like something she'd once had—if she'd ever really had it at all.
She didn't move, still curled beneath the blanket, clinging to the last bit of warmth her bed could offer. Because once she moved, the thoughts would start. They always did.
What are you doing, really?
Is this who you are now?
Proud of that, are you?
She turned her face to the side, as if that might shut them out. It never worked. Her throat tightened. The air felt thick, heavy with everything she didn't want to think about. Everything she never said.
Eventually, she sat up with a groan, blanket sliding off her shoulders, skin prickling at the sudden cold. She looked down at herself and felt wrong, as if the body weren't hers, as if she'd borrowed it and forgotten how to give it back. She didn't feel like a person anymore. Just… a shell. Something empty, shaped like a girl.
Coins glinted on the bedside table, catching the morning light. Galleons: sharp, cold, accusing. Payment for forgetting. For pretending. For being whoever they wanted her to be. She swept a few into her bag; the metal bit at her fingers. The clink echoed, too loud in the silence.
She stepped back, and a few coins slipped off the edge, scattering across the floor. The sound filled the room and then vanished, leaving only the silence she deserved.
She didn't bother picking them up.
Let them rot.
In the bathroom, she didn't look at the mirror straight away; she already knew what she would see.
When she finally lifted her gaze, the reflection blinked back—blonde hair, bright blue eyes, skin lightly tanned by magic rather than sun. A lie. A mask. Not a trace of the girl who once laughed too loudly, tripped over her own feet, or turned her hair bubble-gum pink for fun.
Just armour now. Just camouflage.
She was sixteen. That's what the world said. Sixteen. A kid.
She didn't feel like one.
Not after thirteen.
Not after the surgery.
Not after the silence that followed, the kind that pressed in from all sides and never truly left. She could still smell the ward and remember how the air had seemed to stop moving altogether. She remembered her mother's face: blank, untouched, as if she weren't really there.
Tonks's hand drifted to her stomach. Flat now. Always would be. Her mother had made sure of that.
"It's better this way," Andromeda had said, voice clipped and decisive. She had said it as though certainty could make it true.
But Tonks hadn't believed her.
The ache never left, and neither did the guilt.
She never got to say goodbye.
The waiting room at St Mungo's murmured faintly with low conversation, the swish of robes and the occasional cough. It smelt of antiseptic and something dry and papery, like parchment left too long in the sun. Tonks sat in the corner, knees drawn together, hands clenched tightly in her lap. Cold sweat clung to her palms. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, drowning out everything else.
"Is there a Nymphadora Tonks here?"
The healer's voice sliced through the air like a Severing Charm. Tonks flinched. The name alone was enough, a slap across the face. She hated it. No one called her that. No one but—
"Yes!" came her mother's voice, brisk and commanding. Andromeda was already on her feet, chin high, eyes scanning the room until they found her daughter. "Come on, Nymphadora. It's time."
She had arranged for privacy and no official record.
Tonks didn't move. Something inside her locked up completely, as if her limbs had forgotten how to move. She stared at her hands, pale and trembling, useless things. Her vision blurred, and tears slid silently down her cheeks. She didn't bother wiping them away.
Shame throbbed in her chest, alive and heavy, a second heartbeat she could not silence.
You let this happen. You agreed. You gave up.
Andromeda marched closer, each click of her heels a warning bell. "What's wrong now?" she said, her tone clipped.
Tonks opened her mouth. Nothing came. Then finally, a whisper, barely more than breath. "I— I've changed my mind."
Her mother's fingers closed round her wrist, firm and cold. "Nymphadora, we have discussed this already."
That name again. It burned.
Her lips trembled, but her eyes lifted anyway. "I can't," she whispered. "I don't care what it takes. I'm keeping the baby."
The words cracked as they left her mouth, broken but laced with iron.
Andromeda's expression didn't soften. If anything, it hardened. "Don't be ridiculous."
"This isn't your life," Tonks said, louder now, her voice shaking. "You don't get to decide. You don't get to erase her."
"Stop it," Andromeda snapped, sharp enough that a few people turned to stare. Then, quieter, colder, aimed like a curse: "That boy ran the moment he found out. Do you mean to throw away your future for a boy who's already gone?"
The words struck like a blow.
He had run. Of course he had. She'd known it already, but hearing it said aloud made it real. Solid. Brutal. Shame wrapped tighter round her like vines. She couldn't breathe past it.
Andromeda reached for her wand.
And Tonks didn't fight. Not properly.
Something flickered in her chest, a final scrap of resistance, but it was smothered by the weight of it all. Fear, grief, exhaustion. Her feet moved, though she couldn't feel them. Her legs carried her forward. She let herself be led.
The corridor stretched ahead like a tunnel, grey and blinding, swallowing her with every step.
I'm sorry, something inside her whispered. But there was no one left to hear it.
What came after was quieter, but worse.
She had learnt quickly that silence came at a price, and there were plenty of people, Muggle and wizard alike, willing to pay it. At first it was only money for food, a bed for the night, and a way to feel as if she were choosing something. Yet each time, a little more of her slipped away. By sixteen, she could play any part they wanted. She could smile, laugh, and lie. Always with the same thought whispering at the back of her mind: at least this way, no one could take anything she had not already lost.
She stood at the sink, fingers curled white around the edge, staring at her reflection in the mirror. The charm-light above flickered, casting harsh light and deep shadows across her face. Her cheeks were hollowed, her eyes ringed with something darker than sleep.
She looked as if she stood between two worlds, one she had already left and one she could not reach. Maybe that was what she was now, caught between them.
Her chest ached, not with magic, not even with anything she could name. It was a dull, endless throb, as if something inside her had been scooped out and left hollow, a kind of pain that never bled and never healed.
She tried to breathe. In. Out. Count. Steady. But the memory pressed in.
His voice came back to her, cool and distant, as though he had already turned his back.
"It is just too much, Tonks. I cannot. I am sorry."
Like she was a mistake he regretted.
Then the room again, the ward, white, sterile, final. Nothing soft. No one speaking. Only the cold hum of magic and the rustle of paper and gloves and robes. Only silence.
The grief struck her chest like a Bludger. Her hands began to shake.
She gritted her teeth and drew a breath, then another. Without thinking, she let the glamour fall. All of it.
Magic stirred round her in slow smoky coils, and with it the glamour melted away until her real self surfaced. Hair clung to her neck, mousy brown and damp with sweat, flat and lifeless. Her face, stripped of illusion, was young but worn in the way people stopped noticing. Her eyes were dull but not empty. Not quite. A flicker remained, something stubborn that refused to go out.
She looked ordinary. Unremarkable. Invisible, perhaps, but not to herself. Not anymore.
This is me, she thought. This is what is left.
Most people had not seen her true face in months. Possibly longer. She was not even sure she would have recognised it if it had not been staring back at her now. She had worn so many versions of herself: sleek blondes, fiery redheads, curves in all the right places, and eyes that sparkled and teased. Every face a performance. Every change became a barrier, a charm against being ignored, a lie to convince herself she was still in control.
Lately it had stopped working. The transformations no longer felt like power; they felt like noise, clutter in a room already too full. The more she changed, the more hollow she felt, as though every new face only reminded her of what she had lost.
What had she been trying to find in the first place? Love? Forgiveness? Someone to look at her as if she mattered? Maybe just someone to say her name as if it meant something.
She reached out and touched the mirror lightly with her fingertips. It was cool beneath her skin. She was not sure what she was reaching for—some earlier version of herself, perhaps. Someone simpler. Braver. Kinder. Whole.
"You have really lost it, have you not?" she murmured, voice catching. It was not cruel or self-pitying, only honest and quiet.
That voice in her head had grown louder of late. It was not spiteful, only tired. It no longer bothered dressing things up. It told her what she already knew: she was not healing. She was hiding. The beds changed, the faces changed, but it was all the same. Pretending was not freedom, only another way of staying numb, prisons with prettier wallpaper.
Still, today had to be different. She decided it would be.
She straightened, not much, just enough. Maybe today she could pretend to be someone who was not falling apart. Even if it only lasted an hour. Even if it was pretend.
She slipped into the black dress as if stepping into a role. It clung in the right places, familiar and forgiving. Her lips were painted red, bold, not subtle, not safe. War-paint.
Her reflection smiled back, crooked and fierce, a woman who looked as though she knew exactly what she was doing, even if she had not the faintest clue.
It was not real, but sometimes pretending was enough.
"Let us get this over with," she muttered, forcing a little steel into the words.
Outside, the Muggle street buzzed with life, familiar in a way it should not have been. She knew these streets too well, the faces that looked without seeing, and the promises that never meant anything. Tonks stepped into it as though it were a stage. Once, she had walked these roads for different reasons. Now she was not sure the reasons had changed at all.
With a flick of her wand, her hair turned golden, long, glossy and dazzling beneath the afternoon light.
Heads turned. She felt it. She fed on it, just a little, enough to remember she was still visible. Still here.
Her heels struck the pavement in time with the city's pulse. She liked the sound; it drowned out thinking. She walked with purpose, as if she had somewhere to be, as if she meant to be seen.
Inside, though, she trembled. The confidence was a thin veil stretched over old bruises. But she kept moving. She always did. Stopping meant thinking, and thinking was dangerous.
What is under all this, she wondered. Under the magic, the lipstick, the lies?
Maybe nothing. Maybe just the tired girl who whispered truths to a mirror. Maybe something cracked. Still soft in places. Still hoping.
A voice called from the pavement. "Oi, gorgeous!"
She turned, smile ready. Polished. Perfect. Nothing real.
"You are stunning," the man said, grinning.
"Thanks," she replied smoothly. "You are not too terrible yourself."
He laughed. So did she. Because that was the script, the part she knew by heart.
She slipped back into the act as if it were second nature—flirty, confident, untouchable. Just another stranger. Just another day.
But something inside her flinched. Barely a flicker. Shame perhaps, or grief. It passed.
Is this it, then?
Is this all there will ever be?
She did not answer.
The man said something. She did not really hear it. Still, she smiled. She played the part.
Her footsteps grew heavier, and the laugh did not quite reach her eyes.
But she kept walking. One foot, then the other.
Still here. Still upright.
Bruised, yes.
Cracked, certainly.
But not gone.
She used to tell herself it was a choice, that no one could touch her unless she allowed it. Yet standing there now, make-up perfect and heart hollow, she was not sure what choice had ever been hers.
Remus Lupin sat rigidly at a polished iron table at the edge of a spotless Muggle café, tucked between glassy shopfronts and boutiques far too polished for comfort. The whole street shimmered with that curated kind of wealth, where everything gleamed, even the cobblestones, as though scrubbed for show. It made his teeth itch.
He wore his best suit, charcoal grey and crisply pressed. He had sponged it clean himself, patched a seam near the cuff and polished his shoes. But it still felt like a disguise. The collar sat too stiff against his throat, the jacket too tight across his shoulders, as if it were not made for him or for it. Either way, it itched in the way things do when you know you do not belong.
He glanced at the passers-by, well-dressed Muggles with shiny hair and relaxed shoulders, gliding from shop to shop with bags swinging at their sides and laughter light on the breeze. People with plans. People untouched by war or by the curse that ruled his life. They looked whole, solid, and unburdened.
He shifted in his seat, rubbing his palms down his thighs beneath the table. His stomach turned at the scent of garlic and butter drifting from the kitchen behind him. Too rich, too indulgent. He had not eaten. He could not, not when every part of him was knotted tight with dread.
Then,
"Remus!"
Lily Potter's voice cut across the air, warm and familiar, and for a moment the tightness in his chest loosened. He stood automatically before she reached the table, her hair a bright sweep of copper in the sunlight. She moved briskly, with that easy confidence she had always had, sharp, bright and full of life.
"You look as if you are about to be called in for questioning," she said, dropping into the seat opposite with a smirk. "I thought this was lunch, not an interrogation."
He smiled, though the expression did not reach his eyes. "You know me; I thrive under pressure."
Lily snorted. "You thrive under a stack of overdue essays and two cups of tea."
He chuckled softly. The sound felt foreign in his mouth. Still, being around Lily always felt like stepping into sunlight after a stretch of fog. She had that effect on everyone, but especially on him. She made space feel easier somehow, as if he did not have to defend every inch of himself.
She launched straight into a story about Harry's latest broom escapade, something involving a near miss with a washing line and a very cross cat. Remus tried to listen; he really did. But his mind snagged elsewhere.
A flicker of movement inside the café caught his eye.
There, seated by the window, was a woman. Alone. Elegant. She wore a black dress that fitted her as if it had been charmed into place. Her blonde hair was swept back, effortless and precise, like everything else about her appearance. One leg crossed over the other. A glass of something clear and sharp in her hand. She was not eating.
She was watching.
And her eyes were fixed on him.
Remus looked away at once, his throat tightening. There had been nothing warm in that gaze, no curiosity, no recognition. Just something cold and detached, the way someone might look at a puzzle with too many missing pieces. He ducked his head, his heart thudding.
He did not know her. He was sure of that. Yet something in the look unsettled him. Not fear exactly, more a creeping shame, as if she could see something he had spent years trying to hide.
You do not belong here, the look seemed to say. You never have.
He swallowed and tried to focus on Lily's voice, but it was distant now, as though she were speaking through water.
That woman belonged in this place, in this polished, curated world. She belonged to light linen, to perfume that never faded, and to lives untouched by scars or apology. She did not wake in cold sweats or flinch from silver cutlery. She did not ration kindness as though it might run out.
Remus rubbed his thumb over the edge of the menu. It felt like a prop. As if all of this were a set and someone might call "cut" at any moment.
Twenty-nine. That was all he was. But he felt ancient, the kind of old that settled in the bones, that did not show in his hair but wore at his soul. He had lived enough loss to last several lifetimes. Yet somehow, it never became any easier to carry.
His thoughts slipped, uninvited, back to St Mungo's. The little office was tucked near the end of the corridor, too bright, too clean, and filled with that antiseptic sort of silence. The healer had spoken gently, as though he were something fragile held in her hands. He remembered the way her lips moved, the words:
"It is a brain tumour."
Just like that.
No preamble, no careful lead-in. As if it were a missed appointment or a change in the weather, nothing more than a logistical nuisance.
Remus had not answered at first. He could not. The words had struck like a silent spell, freezing him in place. His ears buzzed faintly. His palms had gone slick against the worn arms of the chair. He remembered nodding, because that was what you did when someone said something serious, but the words had not really landed yet.
The healer had continued, efficient and composed.
"This type can become malignant. It may affect cognitive function, memory, decision-making and speech. Median survival is about two years. We will need to operate."
Remus had latched onto the one thread that mattered: would surgery cure it?
He had spoken quickly, as though asking fast enough might let him outrun the answer.
It came after the smallest pause.
"No. We can reduce it, but we cannot guarantee it will not return."
That was the moment the bottom seemed to fall away. Not the diagnosis. Not the timeline.
Cannot guarantee it.
He knew that feeling too well; it was the essence of his life. That slow, sickening uncertainty that had come with being bitten, with being branded. No absolutes. No certainties. No safety.
Only endurance.
He had left in a daze, the hallway spinning faintly around him as he passed glass doors and bustling mediwitches. Then plastic chairs, blue and cracked at the corners. He had sat with his back curved and shoulders slumped, as if his body already knew something he had not yet accepted.
He could not even feel the weight of his own wand in his pocket.
He remembered that the floor had strange scuff marks on the tiles. He had focused on them and tried to anchor himself. This is real; I am sitting, I am breathing, I am alive. But nothing held.
And then came crying.
A girl's sobs, young, barely into her teens. Quiet, but sharp—clean, splintering sounds that rang across the sterile waiting area. Her mother crouched beside her, murmuring something low and steady, trying, like all parents did in hospitals, to sound brave when they were terrified.
Remus had looked up. Their eyes met.
Just for a second.
She had not said anything. She had not needed to. Her tear-streaked face said everything: fear, confusion, helplessness. That particular kind of grief that came from knowing something awful had happened but not yet understanding the full shape of it.
In her, he saw himself. Not as he was now, but as he had been—nine years old, alone in a hospital corridor, blood still drying on his skin, his parents arguing just out of earshot. The world had shifted, and no one had explained why.
This is not about dying, he thought.
He was not afraid of that. Not truly. He had lived too close to death for too long to fear it now.
What chilled him was the thought of being forgotten, of slipping quietly out of the world, like fog fading from a windowpane. No imprint. No weight left behind. Just a file in a drawer. A name no one said out loud anymore.
That was it, was it not?
He did not want to disappear without having mattered.
The café around him buzzed on. Cutlery clinked. A spoon stirred. Someone laughed behind a newspaper. Somewhere nearby, Lily was still talking, her voice edged with worry now.
But Remus could not meet her eyes.
Across the street, through the café window, the woman was laughing now, tilting her head towards a silver-haired man in a linen coat. Her smile was easy and polished, the kind people wore without thinking, as if she had never had to fight to be in a room, never had to apologise for the air she took up.
He watched her for a moment longer, then looked away.
That flicker came again, a tug in his chest. Not longing, not quite. Something stranger. Older. A breath of memory. Recognition?
No. It could not be.
His mind had begun to play tricks on him in recent months. Familiar voices where there were none. Faces in crowds that turned out to be strangers. Ghosts conjured by exhaustion or by something deeper.
He blinked, and the light shifted. Her face blurred just enough to break the illusion.
It was not her.
It was not the girl.
He let out a slow breath through his nose and rubbed the heel of his hand against his temple.
The fog had returned, not pain exactly, only a pressure sitting heavy behind his eyes. The same dull weight he had been carrying for weeks, though now it had a name.
He had not told anyone yet.
He did not know how.
What would I say?
I am dying?
I might forget your name?
I do not want to be alone at the end?
Too dramatic, too selfish, too soon.
So he tucked the truth back into the quiet space behind his ribs, beside the rest of it. The guilt. The fear. The endless what-ifs. He let it settle there. Let it ache.
But he handed Lily the envelope without a word.
Just parchment and ink, official lettering printed with Ministry precision. Bureaucracy disguised as finality, but in his hands it felt heavier. Not paper—weight. It felt like holding a wand pointed at himself.
He had filled it in the night before, alone, methodical, detached. Signed every line as though it belonged to someone else. The ink had barely dried before he sealed it.
He and Lily had spoken of it once. One of those quiet, unlit conversations you have when the world feels too sharp and you pretend you are only tired. She had nodded when he said it was better to be prepared, just in case. Neither of them had said what they were truly afraid of.
Now, in daylight, with the seal broken by her careful fingers, it felt altogether different.
Final. Real.
She unfolded the parchment slowly, as if it might disintegrate if touched too quickly. Her eyes scanned it once, then stopped.
DEATH REGISTRATION: REMUS JOHN LUPIN.
He saw it the moment it landed. She did not gasp or cry out. She simply stilled.
All the colour drained from her face, and her hands trembled slightly. That was all. But he saw it. He always saw the quiet things.
Then it came.
Grief, not a spectacle but a presence. Silent. Immovable. It was like fog rolling across the lake. It settled in her shoulders, her spine, and her throat. It lived there now.
She held the paper a moment longer, eyes fixed as if staring hard enough might will the words into something else, something reversible. But magic could not touch this kind of spellwork, not the sort written in ink and law and inevitability.
He did not move.
He could not.
Guilt climbed his chest like ivy, winding fast and tight. He had not meant to hurt her, never her. But he needed someone to know. To see it, to see all of it. The shape of the end. The small, crumpled truth he carried in private.
And Lily had always seen him. Not the professor. Not the werewolf. Just Remus.
The world pressed in again: the scrape of a chair, the clink of cutlery, the clatter of laughter from somewhere to the left. Muggle life moved on, oblivious and blithe, folding itself around their stillness.
She refolded the parchment with slow, precise movements. Slipped it back into its envelope. Her fingers lingered on the seal before she looked up.
No words.
Just her eyes.
In them he saw confusion, sorrow, and a flicker of rage, not wild but steady. And beneath it all, unwavering, there was love. That fierce, loyal kind that had stood through everything.
"Remus," she said softly.
His name was a touch in her mouth, gentle and undone.
It nearly broke him.
She wanted to say something more—he saw the words gathering behind her lips—but what was left? There were no spells for this. No charm for grief. Only the living of it.
Still, something between them held. Wordless. Solid.
He wished, for a heartbeat, that he could pause the moment and hold only this. Sit in the hush with Lily across from him, in the corner of a noisy, sunlit world that had not noticed them yet. No tumour, no curse, no ticking clock.
But time does not wait for wishing.
She rose slowly, like someone waking from a dream they could not change. As she passed him, her hand brushed his forearm, light but anchoring.
He felt it all through his chest: the goodbye, the grief, the promise buried somewhere in the quiet.
Then she turned and walked away.
He watched her until she vanished into the shifting crowd.
And then he stayed.
He always did.
Somewhere in that same city, a girl he had never met was learning the same art—how to keep standing when everything inside you wanted to fall.