Twisted (Charlie Weasley)

Chapter Forty-Six

There are many different things I have gone through throughout my life that have scared me. My mother, the night my father was taken from me, the moment I learned the truth about who my father really was, not knowing what my future would be when I had nowhere else in the world to go, leaving my families traditions behind. The list goes on and on, an encounter with dragons, leaving home again, falling in love, finding out I would be a mother and the war beginning all over again. In some ways it seems the world is out to scare us, to test out limits of what we can handle and what we can't, and so far I have passed through each test time and time again, to the point where I never imagined a night where I wouldn't know what to do. This isn't that night, instead, this night is one of the best nights of my life.

The worst is yet to come.

"Indigo!" Dora yelled as she clenched her teeth down in pain, "Why the hell didn't you tell me how much this would hurt?"

I held back a small smile as I poured out the potion that would take away most of her pain, "Because it only hurts for a little while... and then you get a lifetime of happiness with your baby boy, and I get a nephew to spoil for the rest of my life."

On a normal day there may have been a chance that she would have laughed at such a comment, or a day that would have taken place in our old lives... and oh how things had changed so much from what our lives used to be...

Many years earlier...

"No, wait!" The youthful voice of Nymphadora Tonks had called out, "I'm sorry, that was rude of me. I've always wanted a cousin... and if you don't want that we could just be friends, please."

I think it was the desperation her voice that day that changed my life forever. Despite everything that my mind was screaming at me to do... for me to go find the Slytherins. The children of the people my parent hung around with back in the days of the war. The people I knew who would be looking for me at this very moment, there was something about this girl whose hair seemed to flicker all sorts of colours in her apparent nerves that made me turn away from all of that and reach for her hand.

"Why don't we start over?" I asked her softly, "I mean, there isn't any need to put pressure on the fact that we are cousins or that I'm a Lestrange and that you are a Tonks and everything in our world tells us to be separate from each other..." My breath shook as I stared at the girl who was beginning to grin, "My name is Indigo Lestrange, what's yours?"

Nymphadora Tonks grinned, "Tonks."

I groaned, "Come on! Friends don't call each other by their surnames! If we are really going to make this work, you are going to have to let me call you by your first name!"

She let out a loud groan, "Come on Indigo! It isn't just you! It's everyone... I just really dislike the name..."

"How about Dora then?" I asked her, "A compromise? And if you ever change your mind about your first name you let me know. I personally think it is much better than the name Indigo!"

Her laugh was something filled with excitement and wonder, a sort of laugh I had never heard directed towards me before that day. A sort of laugh I was sure I had never experienced myself. "Come on then Lestrange!" She giggled, "Let's go get a compartment! We have eleven years of life to catch up on and only a few hours until we arrive and I am already starving! What do you think they will serve for dessert?"

The next few hours were filled with more laughter than I had experienced in a long time, though most of it was directed towards Dora and her antics as she danced about the compartment as she told her stories. I personally didn't really have that many tales to tell, but that, of course, didn't stop Dora from asking questions.