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Severus Snape never missed an oppurtunity to make old grudges resurface. The day Remus Lupin came into Twelve Grimmauld Place was no exception. From the moment Lupin stepped into the small study, Snape was quick to make sarcastic comments. "So, she cheats on you with a Death Eater, kills him, and tries to pin it on you, and you're stcking by her. Most men would just leave her in that hellhole. How...noble."
"Well, thank you," Lupin began.
"I was joking," Snape sneered. "Have you got the five-thousand Galleons?"
Lupin shifted uneasily. "Well, I've only got three hundred," he admitted with embarassment. Snape smirked coldly.
"Well then--"
"Look, do you know how hard it is to get a high-paying job with my condition?"
"Ah, that reminds me..." Snape opened a desk drawer and put a goblet full of a smoking potion on the desk between them.
"Are you going to start charging me for that, too?" This made Snape begin to snicker under his breath.
"I was never going to charge you for anything," he drawled. "I was just rather eager to see your reaction." Lupin's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets with surprise, but he shook his head, as if to say, I should have known. "I'll take your wife's case--" he flinched slightly "--and stick with it."
Remus cocked his head: this was a blatantly non-Snapeish thing to do, for lack of a better term. "Why are you doing this?" he asked.
The answer was quite simple, really: as the Dark Lord was demanding that he defend Bellatrix for free, it would look suspicious if he denyed the service to a member of the Order of the Phoenix. Naturally, the Dark Lord had expected him to sabotage Tonks's case on purpose, as she had killed a useful Death Eater, and he knew exactly how to keep the jury confused. But why should he waste such an explanation on Remus Lupin, who was in on the joke of Snape's would-be death years and years ago? "Do you want your wife to live or not?"
Given the present circumstance, Remus had no choice but to accept.
"And I have no idea what happened after that, I completely blacked out...I only know that I didn't do it." Reporters sure were stupid, Tonks thought to herself, watching them eat up her aunt's cock-and-bull story. Of course she meant to kill my mum, and remembers doing it, too, she thought. Even worse was that, waiting for her own press conference, she had listened in on Bellatrix's only to have to relive her mother's disgusting affair with Rodolphus Lestrange, which she had long since decided was worse than both deaths combined. As it was, she didn't exactly have time to dwell on it, as Snape had enthusiastically taken her case and concocted a story, without waiting for her O.K, of course. The memory still gave her much needed laughs, which were hard to come by in Azkaban:
"What were you like at school?" Snape asked.
"Oh, I was a real clutz--"
"You must have been rather intelligent--"
"Alright...um, I got good marks in Concealment and Disguise," Tonks had considered. It had taken her a while to think of something good about herself in the dismal prison.
"Perfect: you wanted to be an Auror."
"I was an Auror," Tonks brought up with a roll of her eyes, before allowing Snape to slip a bottle into her hand: pink hair dye. She couldn't help but laugh out loud at the irony. Never before had she needed to dye her hair, and, when she'd lost the ability to Metamorphose other times, she'd also lost the will to do most anything else...
"Ms. Black has no idea who the real culprit was, but is offering a substantial reward to anyone with information," Snape was explaining to the press as Tonks snapped back into the present.
"How much is the reward?" asked Rita Skeeter.
"I don't know, how much?" Bellatrix whispered to Snape, irritation and confusion mingling on her face. "What are you talking about? I'm not offering a reward!" she demanded as the press conference ended, though the reporters did not disperse: Tonks's conference would commence immediately afterward. Her stomach knotted tightly.
"We'll just deny it later--Nymphadora, time to go." Tonks was too nervous to even tell him off for using her name.
"Good luck, Pinky," Bellatrix siad with a sarcastic smirk as Tonks followed Snape to a wooden podium. Rita Skeeter was eyeing her hungrily and making her feel intimidated.
The questions were easy enough, considering Snape answered them all. Tonks felt more uncomfortable than ever as she discovered that none of these answers were true. Irrelevant questions like 'How do you think your parents are reacting to this' were answered with elaborate sob-stories like 'Nymphadora is sure her parents are very proud looking down from Heaven, knowing their daughter is not caving to the pressure of our unjust system. It was they, in fact, who contributed much to her sense of righteousness, but her temper was never really under control, and their money helped indirectly fund her outbursts..."
She felt like a whining martyr, even though Snape was the one confusing everyone beyond the point of reaching conclusions. She was thankful he was trying to save her life, but by the end of the press conference, when Tonks was heading back to her cell, she never wanted to hear the empty lie that 'they both reached for the wand' again.
Bellatrix was laughing cruelly at the end of Tonks's press conference. Tonks thought nothing of it: her aunt always found something to laugh cruelly about, but Bellatrix pulled her niece around to face her as she walked down the corridor, and Tonks winced in preparation from something nasty.
"I don't know what he's planning, either," Bellatrix said with a mutinous sneer in Snape's direction. "Brilliant lawyer...completely nutters...you know, you look just like your mother," she commented. Tonks was rendered rather uncomfortable by her aunt's sudden change of subject. "Before we went down different paths, I had wanted your mother to join me in service to the Dark Lord...Cissy had always been to delicate, but Andromeda--she had potential. We would have been his favorites..."
Tonks had heard enough about her mother and Death Eaters to drive anyone insane. "Stay away from me!" she shouted, "What do you want?"
"I just want my own job back, Nymphadora," Bellatrix explained. Tonks cringed as her name was spoken. "But the Dark Lord needs more followers. If we're going to accomplish anything, I can hardly go back alone..."
Tonks, knowing exactly what Bellatrix was suggesting, made haste down the corridor. She could feel her eyes welling with tears, but blinked them back, continually walking, quickening her pace--anything to get her away from Bellatrix. "Where are you going?" the Death Eater inquired.
"Solitary!" Tonks blurted, shouting the first thing that came to her mind. "That way I can get away from you!" Though Tonks had no intention of being locked in a soft room in a straight jacket, the looks on the guards' faces in response to her hysterical behavior told her it was likely to happen, but with each passing second, she felt it would be worth it to be away from Bellatrix, as the scariest thing was that a murderous rampage sounded like exactly what she needed.
A/N: I might put this on hiatus for a few weeks, as I've got a lot of stuff to do. You guys must hate me, I haven't updated this in months! Review!