"So, I'll see you tomorrow?" Nymphadora Tonks asked hopefully.
"Definitely, we'll meet up around three, do whatever and go onto duty together, is that alright?" he replied, equally as hopefully.
Just not in the way Tonks had hoped.
"Yep, see you!" she waved.
He walked down the path leading away from Tonks' apartment. She sighed. He looked so sad and forlorn with his frumpy old brown jumpers and equally shabby trousers. His stance was bad, his shoulders drooping forward. Even his prematurely greying hair was a picture of depression.
Tonks' best and only close friend had been round for his usual cup of evening tea. Tonks enjoyed his company, but he saw her approaches as friendship. Nothing more than rotten friendship.
Tonks watched him turn and raise his hand in his normal farewell salute. She copied, hoping it looked as natural on her as it did on him.
His chuckle of amusement told her it didn't.
She watched him stroll along the street, his hands in his pockets, whistling gently. A picture of content. A picture she could only dream of being part of.
Tonks watched him walk round the corner. Even when he was out of sight, she remained intently watching the spot he had disappeared from, not able to shake the feeling of loneliness that always surrounded her once he had left.
And now I'm all alone again,
Nowhere to turn, no one to go to,
Not a home, not a friend, not a face to say hello to,
And now the night is near, now I can make believe he's here.
Suddenly, she decided she needed a walk to clear her mind. The setting sun cast rays of golden, pink and orange light around the streets, illuminating endless possibilities. Only one seemed satisfying. And that was precisely the one she knew she'd never have the bottle to do.
Tonks darted inside, shut the door behind her and raced up to her room (tripping up the stairs several times). By the time she had reached her tiny flat, she regretted not taking the lift, despite the smell of urine. But she had more important things to do than regret the past. If only she knew what.
Grabbing her front door keys, Tonks jumped on the banister (it seemed the least painful way) and slid down several storeys.
She staggered off the bottom of the stairwell and flew outside, taking deep breaths of the sweet summer air and wondering where she would go.
Tonks decided her feet would decide and started to walk down the street bathed in evening sunlight.
She liked this time of day best. The streets were usually almost completely empty, leaving her to do what she wished when she wished. She liked to watch the way the day turned into night as she stood in it. At this time she had a place in the world. But as night fell, she couldn't find that peacefulness.
Sometimes I walk alone at night,
When everybody else is sleeping,
I think of him and then I'm happy with the company I'm keeping,
The city goes to bed, and I can live inside my head.
Tonks suddenly knew where she was going. She forced her legs into a run, stumbling blindly at first but eventually falling into a rhythmical pattern.
As her feet traced the familiar path, Tonks wondered of she had gone completely - as she had always been a little - stark-staring bonkers.
Arriving at her destination, she knew this was true.
Ignoring the blood pounding in her ears and the sweat from the long run flattening her mousy-brown hair, Tonks charged up the stone stairs.
She stood in front of the towering wooden door and knew that she was mad.
But how could she delay this anymore? How could she try to swallow her feelings for a moment longer? She couldn't. She raised her hand to knock. He skin was white in contrast to the rich colour of the door. Maybe she could wait a few more minutes, just to regain her composition.
She lowered her hand and waited. She didn't know what for, just something, a sign, anything to tell her she was doing the right thing.
It began to rain.
Tonks began to think that she should be submitted to the mental ward at St Mungo's. She had legged it from a dingy old apartment she called her house to confess her undying love to a man almost twice her age, but now she had run five miles, she couldn't do it.
Then Tonks stopped thinking about how nutty she was and began thinking of what she would say to him if she actually knew he loved her.
You mean the world to me. No, that sounded soppy.
I'll love you until the stars stop shining. So did that.
Will you marry me? Ha! As if a dignified man such as he would ever marry a scatty girl, barely out of school, like her!
Her case was hopeless. She was hopeless. She was destined to spend her life alone, unloved and miserable.
On my own,
Pretending he's beside me,
All alone, I walk with him 'til morning,
Without him,
I feel his arms around me,
And when I lose my way, I close my eyes,
And he has found me.
Tonks shook her head, blinking away the tears that threatened to spill. She had come here for a reason and she was not going to leave until that task had been fulfilled.
She raised her hand to knock again. Then lowered it. Again. How many times was she going to chicken out like this?
She suddenly became aware of the darkness around her. Tonks sighed, turned around and looked around her.
She looked up at the cloudy night sky, but was forced to look down again as the raindrops stung her eyes.
Tonks took to surveying the landscape, the glowing lampposts, the pavement shining in the rain, the trees full of the starlight hidden behind the clouds.
She looked at the beauty she could never be part of, no matter how many times she magically changed her looks to be pretty.
In the rain, the pavement shines like silver,
All the lights, are misty in the river,
In the darkness, the trees are full of starlight,
And all I see is him and me, forever and forever.
Tonks tripped down the stairs and sat heavily on the bottom one, watching the wet faces of the people hurrying past. The rain had stopped bothering her long ago, especially as she was now soaked through.
She loved him so much. Everything about him was magical.
The way he scratched his head whilst thinking, the way he squinted when he encountered new things. The way the corners of his eyes crinkled and his eyed sparkled when her clumsiness amused him.
But she was just a friend to him. She would never be more to him, no matter how much she reasoned that he wasn't that much older than him and his condition was just that - a condition. One night a month wouldn't make any difference at all if they truly loved each other.
She knew the arguments he would make if she ever had the bravery to admit her feelings to him. She should, she had imagined them a trillion billion million times. As often as she thought of him.
Tonks began to think he would never love her, not if they lived to be five thousand. Then she shook her head and mentally reprimanded herself (physically and verbally reprimanding herself had earned her a lot of strange looks).
He would love her, he had to, one day. She just had to be patient. Something she was not good at, but she would learn. She would have to.
Besides, she could imagine him loving her until he did. However long that took.
And I know, it's only in my mind,
That I'm talking to myself,
And not to him,
And although, I know that he is blind,
Still I say, there's a way for us.
Tonks sat with her chin rested on her hands for most of the night. The rain persisted and she grew colder. But she didn't care. She would sit there until she had the courage to knock on his door, or until he came out and enquired in his polite and formal manner why she was sitting on his doorstep soaking wet. Whichever came first.
Then she thought what would happen if he never came out again and she never plucked up the bravery to knock. She could be sat there for an awfully long time.
Tonks allowed her mind to drift to all the good times they'd had together.
Like the first time they met. She had tripped over that blasted troll umbrella stand at Grimmauld Place and right into his wasted arms.
She remembered how he'd awkwardly stood her on her feet and they'd introduced themselves. It seemed like yesterday.
But then did the time she'd asked him round for tea for the first time. She remembered her invitation sounding vaguely like a troll speaking, except her voice had been high a girly and she had babbled more than a troll could ever dream of having the intelligence to do.
She remembered the delighted expression on his face as he finally understood what she was saying and how grateful he was to get away from his house.
His happiness had caused Tonks to trip over he own feet and break about twenty dusty plates.
They had had so many good times together, so many laughs, so much fun. But as friends. Only as friends. Only ever as friends.
The day dawned and the rain stopped. Tonks told her legs to stand and walk home before he came out of his house and found her, but the morning was so harsh. No birds sang, the sun was hidden behind stormy rain clouds and a cold wind was starting to blow, freezing Tonks to the bone.
She didn’t want to move in case she became part of this cold, harsh world before her.
I love him,
But when the night is over,
He is gone, the river's just a river,
Without him, the world around me changes,
The trees are bare and everywhere, the streets are full of strangers.
Tonks kept telling herself to move and, in time, she did. Just not in the direction she had planned.
She stood, fell, became disorientated and once again found herself standing in front of that all too familiar wooden door.
So she told herself to knock, to smile brightly at the tired man she would find behind it. And then confess her feelings to him. Even in her head, this sounded absurd. She expected she would be whisked to the nearest muggle hospital if she said it aloud.
I love him,
But everyday I'm learning,
All my life, I've only been pretending!
Without me, his world will go on turning,
A world that's full of happiness that I have never known!
The Tonks knew that if she didn't tell him today and now, she never would. She'd always be silly, clumsy, foolish little Nymphadora, alone and unhappy in her little apartment, visited only by the Great Remus Lupin, who was still happy, despite his lifestyle.
Tonks raised her hand for the third time, determined. She would defy her destiny to be alone. She would not allow herself to drown in the immense feelings she had managed to hide for so long. She would tell him and she would make him love her as much as she loved him.
I love him...I love him...I love him,
But only,
On my own!
Tonks knocked on the door three times.