Title: Heartache to Heartache
Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: Remus/Tonks

Format & Word Count: Ficlet, 524
Rating: G
Prompt: the rt_challenge August ficathon #2 "There's no such thing as a crowded battlefield. Battlefields are lonely places." - Alfred M. Gray.
Summary: Tonks is alone
Author's Note: This ficlet proves two things about me. (1) I am utterly incapable of following a prompt in any way, shape or form. (2) I listen to far too much 80s music. But this is where my brain took me, Lord save us all.

It’s a little known fact, but one that happens to be true, that whenever Tonks is in an emotional mood, she’ll hear a song on the radio that reflects her state of mind exactly. It would be a joke if it wasn’t so pathetic, and today’s instalment is even less welcome than normal.

For starters, it’s the first time she’s ever wanted to put her fist through the radio at a Weird Sisters song.

It’s a cover of an 80s Muggle song, one she remembers from Hogwarts, when some Muggle-born Hufflepuffs took it upon themselves to introduce some of their culture to the school. It was the era of big hair, and they’d been very impressed when Tonks was able to make hers look exactly like Pat Benatar’s on the tape cover.

She likes the song, likes the cover too, but she hasn’t heard the lyrics in years, and when she listens to them, they cut a little too close to home.

You're makin' me go, then makin' me stay
Why do you hurt me so bad
It would help me to know, do I stand in your way
Or am I the best thing you've had
Believe me, believe me, I can't tell you why
But I'm trapped by your love and I'm chained to your side

That’s as far as she lets it get before she turns it off, but it’s already made her think of him, of all his arguments, all his objections to them being together.

Of course it also makes her think of whispers in the night, of the feel of his hands against her skin, the way he looks when he smiles, the sound of his laughter…

She shakes her head in an effort to banish the thought, but that makes her catch sight of herself in the mirror and her limp mousy brown hair reminds her of everything she’s trying to forget. For old times’ sake, she scrunches up her face in concentration, tries to morph her hair back to Pat Benatar, but there’s not a flicker of a change of colour or height.

In the Hufflepuff dormitory, none of them had really thought of the lyrics, of the meaning behind them. They still weren’t that far removed from real battlefields; Voldemort had only been banished three years before she started at Hogwarts. And when they did think of them, they didn’t associate love with fighting and tears and heartbreak. Love was all red and roses and trying to get Charlie Weasley to sit beside you in Herbology.

Love was about always having someone, someone who would be there, would take your side, would support you come what may.

Love was the opposite of lonely, that’s what they’d all thought, and up until very recently, Tonks would have agreed with her eleven year old self.

But then, after months of comings and goings and back and forth, Remus left, and the Weird Sisters and Firewhisky are a sad substitute for his presence.

She always thought, when she felt in love for the first time, she’d feel like the happiest person alive.

Instead, she feels like the loneliest.