Retarded
By Siriusly Amused

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Chapter Six

At first, Tonks thought that it was all over. All she saw was black and all she heard was the buzzing in her own ears. She didn't feel pain, only exhaustion, her limbs so heavy that she wondered how she was ever able to move them. Then light seeped in, and Tonks realized that she had opened her eyes very slightly. Blurred colors blended together as her eyes tried to adjust. A voice reached her ears. It was warm and familiar, though not the voice that she wanted to hear.

"Ron?" she asked thickly.

The red head's face became clearer as Tonks became more conscious. He offered her a lopsided grin, his blue eyes shining with relief.

"Um, yeah," he said slowly, almost sheepishly. "I forgot to tell you: You can't Apparate within the wall." He paused as his facial features pulled into a thoughtful expression. "Well you can in designated areas, but…"

Tonks cut him off with a groan, her hand coming to rest upon her stomach; she felt bandages through her clothes. "I splinched myself?" she asked.

Ron nodded. "Good thing Draco was there though," he added, turning his head to look behind himself. Tonks followed Ron's gaze to a dark corner on the opposite side of the room where Draco was standing with his arms crossed moodily over his chest. He was still clad in a green t-shirt and white Quidditch pants, though his Quidditch robes were missing. Her eyes found the robes in a bloody clump on the floor. It was then that she realized that she was not in the manor; the room that they were in was small and quaint, with wooden walls and floors; the bed that she was laying on was covered with a homemade quilt. They were in one of the servant cabins that were a mile away from the manor.

"He not only brought you here, but he also gave you some of his blood; you had lost a lot in the splinching," Ron continued.

"What?" Tonks asked softly. She felt her jaw slacken in shock: Draco had saved her life twice over. Her eyes shot back to her cousin. He sighed and uncrossed his arms, and Tonks saw bandages holding a cotton ball to his inner arm.

"Yeah. Lucky you two have the same blood type, eh?" Ron quipped. His smile faded when he realized that they weren't laughing. He cleared his throat uncomfortably and shifted himself off of the bed. "We already contacted the main house," he continued in a much more formal voice, becoming a servant once again. "It's still raining pretty heavily, so we told them that you two will stay with us tonight. Mum's making supper now. I'll bring two trays in when it's ready." He looked at Tonks then at Draco, his eyes shining with some unspoken warning before he backed out of the room and closed the door behind him, leaving them in a heated and uncomfortable silence. Tonks was the first to break it.

"Draco, I…" She paused, clamping her mouth shut. She had almost apologized to him. Out of habit, she had wanted to say that she was sorry for the trouble she had caused, but she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. She was justified in her anger earlier, and if she had known that she couldn't Apparate, she wouldn't have.

Draco raised an inquisitive eyebrow, his arms crossed once more as he stared at her. She had his full attention; he was listening, waiting for her to say whatever it was she wanted to say. Tonks slumped back into her pillows, feeling defeated.

"Why did you do it?" she asked at last.

His faced hardened. "Do what?" he asked, turning away from her to stare out of the window. Tonks noticed the rain running down the glass and, after a few seconds, a flash of lightning illuminated the trees outside of the cabin. She wondered vaguely how a storm could get past the charms over the community.

"You saved me," Tonks said at last. She noticed Draco's shoulders tense at the admittance.

"What? You think I'm incapable of saving people?" He glanced over his shoulder at her, his eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted into a scowl. "Don't you remember last year, Tonks? I'm not incapable of saving people; I'm incapable of killing people! …I couldn't kill Dumbledore!"

"Leaving someone to die is much different than using Avada Kedavra on them," Tonks said softly. "You didn't leave me there. You saved me. Twice." Tonks eyes fell upon the bandage around his arm.

Draco sneered at her. "I saved you because I wouldn't be able to live with myself if you had died. Guilt aside, they probably would make me marry Granger if you were gone. Don't get all sentimental thinking that I saved you because I actually care for you. I don't." He turned away from her again.

Tonks felt a pang stab through her chest as disappointment washed over her.

"Selfish prick," she whispered as she settled back against her pillows. She saw Draco twitch out of the corner of her eye, and she felt a vindictive pleasure spread throughout her body, knowing that her insult had hurt him.

"It comes with the territory of being a spoiled only child," Draco said at last.

"I'm a spoiled only child too, you know!" Tonks said vehemently. She got up from the bed, surprised that she didn't feel any pain from her splinching; Molly must have fixed her up good.

Draco shifted uncomfortably, keeping his back to her. "Yes, but you were raised differently than me."

"That doesn't mean we can't get along!" she exclaimed. She went up to him and placed her hand on his shoulder. "Draco…"

He pulled away from her as if he had been burned. "Don't touch me!" His eyes shone with a hatred that Tonks didn't think the boy was capable of. Indifference, sure. Dislike, maybe. But how could he hate her? He didn't even know her!

He took a step closer to her, his face mere inches away as he leaned over her. Tonks straightened resolutely, ready to take whatever he threw at her.

"Did you ever have to talk to our dear Aunt Bellatrix?" he asked.

Tonks scoffed. "Of course I have! I talked to her this morning. She was shoving cake in my face!"

"Not her!" he spat, screwing his face up with frustration. "That woman isn't our aunt. I'm talking about our real aunt. The one that murdered Sirius, not married him!"

Tonks clamped her mouth shut and shook her head.

"Lucky you. Do you want to know why I insulted Lupin this morning?"

Tonks tried to push passed him, but his hands clamped around her arms, prohibiting her from doing so. "I don't want to hear why you insulted him, Malfoy," she spat, glaring up at him.

"Too bad," he replied. "Before this summer, I had nothing against you, Tonks. You and your parents may have been traitors, but you were still family. Technically."

Tonks was surprised; she had no idea that Draco had acknowledged their relation before.

"But then you went and married that halfbreed, Lupin! Which, at first I didn't care about. He obviously favored Potter, which was annoying, but all our professors favored Potter, so it wasn't anything new. And other than that, he wasn't a bad professor. And as much as I like to sneer at halfbreeds, he was too much of a human for me to see him that way. So I initially didn't care that you had married him!" Draco paused, screwing up his face with distaste. "Hell, I even thought it was kind of cute!"

Tonks blinked. "Cute?"

"Shut up; I'm not done yet!" He inhaled deeply, as though gathering strength. "Voldemort used your marriage to Lupin and our blood relation to you as a way to shame us. My parents and I were used to his abuses, but Bellatrix wasn't. She couldn't take her rage over your marriage out on you…so guess who got the brunt of it?" He released his grip on her and turned away, his hands coming to pull at his hair.

"She…she used Crucio on you?" Tonks asked.

Draco turned back around, his lips twisted into a sick grin. "No. She made me, her weak little nephew, use Crucio on people I didn't even know. She took pleasure out of it. Would laugh her arse off watching me torture people. She never looked at the people I was torturing. She liked watching me. She liked to see how painful it was for me to do it." He paused, his eyes sizing her up. "What were you doing on your 17th birthday, Tonks? Opening presents with your family? Hanging out with your friends? Want to know where I was on my 17th birthday?"

Tonks shook her head ardently, but Draco paid her no attention.

"I was being violently sick in my own garden. Right next to some girl who I had tortured within an inch of her life. And our aunt was laughing at me. And my mother was crying because she didn't want to see me like that. And my father wouldn't do anything. And the whole time, all I could think about was how fucking lucky you were!"

Tonks stared into Draco's eyes for a brief moment before turning away; she was blinking away tears. "I'm sorry, Draco," she said softly, her voice cracking. "I'm sorry you had to go through that, I am. But it's not my fault! I had no idea that you guys even acknowledged that I was family! If I had known that my marriage was going to hurt you like that, I would have…"

"You would have what?" he asked. "Not have married him? Kept the marriage quiet?" He chuckled derisively. "You wouldn't have done a thing, Tonks."

"You don't know that," she whispered, keeping her eyes on the floor because she knew deep down that Draco was right.

"Oh please," Draco spat. "You married him even though it put your parents in the spotlight. Stupid thing to do when your dad's Muggleborn."

Tonks felt sick. She hated that Draco Malfoy was bringing up her ugliest faults and that she couldn't even contradict him because everything he was saying was true. She heard him sigh, but she couldn't bring herself to look at him.

"This isn't going exactly how I wanted it to," he said unexpectedly. Tonks looked at him, confused at the sudden change in his voice.

"What?" she asked.

"You're right when you said that everything—all the shit that happened to me—isn't your fault. It isn't and logically I know that I shouldn't blame you for them, but I do. Every time I look at you, I get so pissed off. Because I see you and I think how lucky you were that your parents ran away and went into hiding during the war. Because I see you and I remember that you're inadvertently the reason why I've spent the past month torturing people. And it's not fair to you and I know that and I've been trying to see past that and just…I don't know…get to know you. Or something. But every time I do, you just…ignore me and run off to Weasley…or you get so upset when I let one little insult slip!"

Draco broke off, bringing his hand to run through his light hair. He leaned back against the wall and sank down to the floor, bringing his knees up and resting his arms on them, his head back against the wall. Tonks cautiously walked over and sat down next to him; she ignored the slight shiver that rippled over him as their shoulders brushed.

"I overreacted. I'm sorry," she apologized. "And I know I haven't been much help either. I was trying to change that. That's why I got up so early this morning and had Ron help me pick something out to wear. I was trying to look and act like how…she…would have. I was going to go to the library and help you research and…I dunno. Hold your hand in front of our parents or something. But then you came in and we got into that fight and…" She paused, taking a deep breath and letting the air out slowly. "I want to like you, Draco."

He turned and stared at her, his gray eyes locking onto hers. "You're not lying," he said at last.

"After what we just went through, I think we're past lies."

His jaw tensed as he gnashed his teeth. He glanced away from her. "I want to not hate you, Tonks."

She laughed softly. "It's a start, I guess." Her grin widened when she saw Draco's lips twist upwards slightly. "I was wrong," she continued, keeping her eyes on her cousin. He turned back to her.

"About what?"

"About us not agreeing on anything. We both agree that our Aunt Bellatrix is a bitch."

Draco did smile at that; he even laughed slightly. "And we both agree that we need to get out of here before they marry us," he added. "And if we can't…"

"Then we both agree to get really, really drunk for our wedding," Tonks finished, nodding.

"Very drunk," he agreed.

End Author's Note: Draco, shut your mouth. Jeez, he just let it all out in this chapter. I actually think that Draco and Tonks are slightly OOC in this story, but I don't care all that much. Their fight was fun, and I'm almost sad to see them (slightly) reconciled, but it's time to move on. I don't think they'll ever be best friends, but I also don't think that two people can go through something like this and not form some kind of bond.