Disclaimers: Harry Potter doesn't belong to me. If he did, I wouldn't write fanfiction, but the sixth book ^^

Author's Notes: This is my first attempt at Snape/Tonks. Don't ask me why, but when I couldn't fall asleep last night, I spontaneously decided that the two of them were just meant to be.

And please note that I am no native speaker, so don't flame me for grammar mistakes.

********************************************************************************

Endless Dark Rain

She stands alone on the small porch of Grimmauld´s Place and stares out into the dark night, willingly ignoring the rain that hits down on her and despite your better judgement you stop dead in your tracks to watch her. Most people look something akin to a wet dog or a raving lunatic when they're rained on, but not her, not even with this silly pink hair. She looks tired, weary, resigned, nothing like the clumsy girl you have, quite fruitlessly, tried to teach in the subtle science of potion-making only a couple of years ago, but not ridiculous. Not at all.

Strangely unmoved your gaze lingers on the raindrops that patter her face, that fall on her eyelids and between her lips. Is this wetness on her cheeks really just the rain or is she mourning the dubious loss of Sirius Bloody Black like the other members of this household whose company she so deliberately avoids tonight?

You don't know why you care.

If you had a single grain of common sense, you would leave now, for, even in her reverie, the girl is an Auror and will spot you sooner or later. She has always made it fairly obvious in the past that your presence makes her feel... uncomfortable to avoid the vernacular, and she surely has no desires whatsoever to see you now. Yes, it would be the wisest to simply go, but then it seems that nine Death Eater meetings the past nine nights in a row, each time with an angrier Dark Lord and uncountable accusing glances from Molly Weasley have robbed you of your intelligence altogether.

"You do realize that they are showers in the house so that you are not reduced to take advantage of the rain, don't you?" you finally address her.

She jerks around, startled, and for one moment you stare into large round eyes made even larger and rounder by her surprise. Your skin suddenly feels too tight around your face when you see the colour her eyes have tonight, this unfathomable, impossible black that could tear you to pieces with its sheer intensity. You know this shade, you have faced it countless times in the last months either in Black's or in Bellatrix´s face but you have never seen it in the gentle, heart-shaped oval of your former student. A scathing comment already lays on your tongue when you suddenly realize that this is probably her eyes´ natural colour.

It's so easy to forget where she comes from.

"Professor", she greets you tentatively after regaining her self-control and you almost smirk. It had been eight years since you have been this girl's "Professor" and still she can't bring herself to use your first name.  "What...what are you doing here?"

Now you actually smirk. "Enjoying the comfort of a free shower just like yourself, Miss Tonks. Obviously."

Your mockery causes her to blush a deep crimson - which looks downright terrible with the pink hair - and quite abruptly she turns her gaze away to the distant night sky again. The rain still hits down mercilessly at her before it finally flings into the dark, but she continues to ignore it. "I suppose you are glad that he's gone?" she suddenly asks, her voice so soft you barely hear her. "Tell me, did you celebrate his death? Did you thank my aunt for doing the dirty job for you?"

A muscle in your cheek twitches at this quiet yet open accusation. Is there anyone in this household who doesn't blame you for what is - quite obviously - the insolent Potter brat's fault alone? "I shall consider it."  Even to yourself your voice sounds cruel.

A bitter smile, such as you have never before seen in that impossible gentle face, slowly creeps over her features. "Do so."

Not for the first time you feel a distant, almost indistinct pang of regret over the hostility you cultivated as a teacher in your Non-Slytherin students, but the feeling remains rather vague and the way the rain has plastered her hair to her face is far too distracting to dwell longer than necessary on it. You ask yourself why you have never noticed before that the girl has Narcissa Malfoy´s beautiful pale complexion.

"Professor?" Her voice sounds tentatively, but flat. Obviously she hasn't expected that you would stay after her accusation.

"Yes." An acknowledgement, nothing more, nothing less.

"Why are you still here?"

Because you are.

"Because I choose to", you answer instead, no emotion betraying the perfect coldness of your voice.

Finally, she tears her eyes away from the dark orbit and tilts her head back at some odd angle that can't possibly be comfortable to regard you with these disturbingly dark eyes. "I see", she says after a while, something stealing itself in her expression that you have never seen there before, a small, flickering light far behind her fragile shell that she must have put back there for no-one to see. For one moment you just stare at each other, then she does something unexpected; she moves at the parapet to make place for you. All the while her mesmerizing eyes rest on yours, as though daring you to accept the unspoken invitation.

This is ridiculous and you know it, but nevertheless you take the place at her side, carefully avoiding to approach her nearer than indifference would allow. It was true, not a grain of common sense these days.

"You do know that we both risk our deaths in this weather, do you?"

She just shrugs her shoulders, the movement surprisingly graceful in one usually so clumsy. "At least they won't have problems with cleaning up our bodies.

Sarcasm is something so rare in Gryffindors, in this particular Gryffindor especially, that you can't help but raising an eyebrow at her. She returns your gaze steadily, her eyes still this strange, unnameable shade of black. You should be used to such eyes, you really should, but somehow neither Bellatrix´s nor Black's eyes have ever made you think that you might lose yourself in them, falling and falling without caring at all. You already feel the first bands of pressure gathering behind your eyes, the sure sign of a nasty headache on its way, and, quite justified as far as you see it, you blame the foolish girl at your side for it.

A part of you, though, knows that you are the greater fool of you both.

Resigning to the fact that you are already wet from head to feet, you fold your arms across your chest, following her gaze to the wide expanse of the night which lays in perfect silence before you both. You have always loved the quiet, which is odd since it should make you prey to all the demons of your past, the regrets of your present and the uncertainty of your future. It would be divine justice, given what you have brought over the world in your past, but all you feel is peace. As much at peace as you are still able to feel, anyway.

"I am thinking about it all the time", she whispers suddenly, her voice oddly strained. "I ask myself how it could have ended this way. I replay it over and over again in my head and I still don't understand it."

Now you feel a real migraine coming up. Fighting down an exasperated sigh, you force yourself to stare down into her eyes once again, thinking that they look almost ridiculous in their earnestness.

"Culpability has always been a Gryffindor failure", you pause shortly, "next to uncountable others, I may add."

This causes her to smile and to your shock you detect something of Black's wicked humour in the way her lips curl up. "This is my blood, all these people", she says, bluntly ignoring your sarcastic remark. Her voice sounds very serious as though her life depended on your understanding, as though your opinion actually mattered to her. "This is my aunt who just killed my second cousin, my uncle whose life ambition it is to get the world rid of everybody without a flawless family tree, my godmother who doesn't care about anyone but herself. This whole cunning, well-oiled crowd, they are my family, no matter how much we all try to ignore it and sometimes I ask myself whether..." She hesitates and looks at you with such helpless confusion that you feel something in you soften despite your will. The Blacks were always beautiful, but all of them came to the world with the look of already having seen too much. She is no exception.

"Whether you're stained by your most noble ancestry?" you eventually try to finish the sentence for her when the silence becomes unbearable. Your voice sounds dry, but not unfriendly.

She shakes her head and for an instant the pink hair doesn't look ridiculous but endearing. "No", she replies in a frightened little whisper. "Whether it is betrayal that I still love them."

You can't help but stare at her, your eyes undignifiedly widened, rendered dumb by the still, weary resignation in her voice. Foolish girl. Such a foolish, poor, brave little girl. And suddenly it all makes sense; Kingsley´s strange tale how she, after attacking Bellatrix at the Department of Mysteries, had hesitated to speak a curse so that the older woman could bring her down; the raw, unaltered shock on her face when she learned about Lucius's imprisonment; the hesitant way in which she had asked after Narcissa on the Order's last meeting. After all these people have brought down on her, after all the pain and horror they have caused her innocent soul to witness, she still loves them, stills regards them as family, although not one of that egoistical bunch deserves even the smallest grain of her devotion.

For one moment you feel that you would burn the world to ashes and use your very soul for tinder if only you could be in their place.

"So you stand here in the rain, trying to justify yourself and your family?" you eventually ask but in spite of the irony of your words, understanding echoes in your voice.

She looks up to you, her face unguarded like you've never seen it before. "Yes", she answers simply.

And still the rain falls.

The silence flows between you again, not uncomfortable this time but peaceful.  It's odd. You never thought that you could ever bring yourself to share your silences with anyone, let alone Nymphadora Tonks, the clumsy, ridiculously eager Gryffindor girl that always tries way too hard. Only that she isn't this girl, not at all. Under the colourful mask, she is but a darkened insecure woman who uses the gift the Gods have granted her to hide herself, a woman who rehearses every motion before performing it.

Tonight, however, the rain has washed all masks down from her face and you just see her as what she is. And, strange as it seems, in your eyes this stained, frightened, fragile child-woman is the most beautiful thing you have beheld in a very, very long time.

"Let's get inside", you finally demand, your voice both rough and gentle, honey dripped over a razor blade. "You have to get out of these wet clothes."

Of these wet clothes, and this old, borrowed life and of the terrible loneliness that screams out of your eyes.

Looking up, she returns your gaze and a small understanding smile appears on her lovely young lips. "Yes", she replies simply. "I guess we both have to."

FINIS

********************************************************************************

TA-DA! If you actually made it thus far, please let me know whether you think this is worth a sequel? I have certain vague ideas about one, but nothing concrete...