Pink Hair for a Different Reason

I've taken it into my head to start writing some Harry Potter FanFic, since I read it so much I thought I should try some of my own. This one's about my favorite character in the Harry Potter series, Nymphadora Tonks. There will be other parts to this story coming as soon as I can write them.

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Pink Hair for a Different Reason

When Tonks stepped out of her flat, breathing in the cool fall morning air to clear her mind, which was still fuzzy from sleep. She glanced at her watch. It was only 6:00. She had the day off from work, and even though there was much work to be done, she wasn’t one to protest. But that still didn’t give her anything to do. She shook her head, feeling her pink hair still wet from the shower slap her face, and stepped out into the street. Walking towards her favorite Muggle coffee shop, Tonks performed a useful little charm to provide enough hot air to dry her hair. I didn’t need the charm, she thought, I could have just stood too close to Moody for a while. Growling to herself about the injustices of having a constantly vigilant boss with an eye that can see out of the back of his head, Tonks tripped over a curb and put her hand out to break her fall…on the roof of a stylish red convertible. Ten minutes into my Great Day Off and I’ve already been hit by a parked car. She stumbled the remaining two blocks to the Caf’Fiend for something to wake her up-not that she’d be any less clumsy-and made it there without sustaining any more serious injuries. She tripped over to the counter and ordered a large white chocolate mocha with extra whipped cream. Slurping her sweet drink, she found a table and watched the people outside walk by. There seemed to be some sort of Muggle rally. People were just swarming through the road, and they were all wearing pink! This seemed to be Tonks’ sort of thing, so she stepped outside, to ask what was going on. Some people were carrying signs that said things like “Walk to save lives”. She walked up to the nearest woman and asked what was happening.
“It’s the breast cancer 3-day walk, dear, didn’t you know? I thought you were here for the walk, with that hair of yours.”
“Oh, no, my hair’s just for fun.” Tonks replied. “But…what’s breast cancer?”
“Dear, don’t you know? How could you not?” Tears were forming in the woman’s eyes. “It’s when tumors form in your breasts and it can be fatal.”
“What’s a tumor?”
“Good gracious, child, don’t you know anything? Tumors are clumps of cells that keep reproducing and getting bigger and bigger until they take over your body. Many women die from it every year. My mother did, 7 years ago.” Now tears were really running down the woman’s face.
“Oh. I’m really sorry.” There was an uncomfortable pause in the conversation as the woman wiped her face, until Tonks’ next question.
“What does the walk do?”
“Raises money for treatments and cures and raises awareness in the communities.”
“That’s great! Can I...walk for one day? I have to go to work tomorrow, and I don’t have any more days off.”
“Yes, we’d love you to walk! I’m Melanie.”
“I’m Tonks.”
“Tonks, eh? That’s an unusual name. Well, come with me, Tonks, and I’ll get you set up.”
Tonks followed Melanie to a table where she got a number pinned onto her pink Weird Sisters T-shirt and grabbed a plastic water bottle from the table. Tonks was thankful that she had worn athletic clothes today-they were the most comfy clothes she owned and NOTHING was going to mess up her Great Day Off, especially not uncomfortable clothing. She realized she should send the Order a message telling when she’d be back, so she ducked into a Porta-Potty and sent her chameleon patronus with the message. After retying her left shoe, she walked to the start line and got ready to run. When she got the signal to go, she blasted forward until she realized no one was with her. She turned around, looking for people, and they were far behind her.
“There’s a reason why it’s called the Three Day Walk, you know.” Tonks looked at the smiling woman and grinned back. She stopped running full tilt and waited for the other woman to catch up. She looked at her new acquaintance. She was wearing almost solid pink, except for lime green running shoes. “I like your outfit!”
“Thanks, but your hair beats all of it!”
“Maybe not the shoes!”
“Ha. You like?” She queried, stretching out one dark leg.
“I want.” The two women looked at each other and started laughing hysterically. “What’s your name?”
“Callypta. You?”
“I’m Tonks.”
“Looks like we both have interesting names!”
“Mine’s really Nymphadora, but I hate it, so I go by Tonks, which is my last name.”
“You win.”
“But you come close, let’s call it a tie. I like yours better.”
“Tie.” They shook hands.
“How are you connected to breast cancer?”
“I just learned about it, like half an hour ago, actually. How about you?”
“I have it.”
Tonks gaped at this new development. “But…I thought that it was some sort of debilitating illness, like you can’t move and stuff.”
“It’s better right now, but I don’t know when it will get worse again. The reason I have short hair is because I went through a treatment that made all my hair fall out. It helps, but it can’t cure it. Nothings so far can.”
“Oh. I wish I could do something.”
“It’s O.K. Just treat me like a normal person, and I’ll like you. Just forget about it so we can be friends. What?” Tonks was laughing.
“You sound exactly like someone I know. He also has…a condition, and I’m…interested in him, but he thinks his…condition makes it impossible for someone to be his friend.” Tonks suddenly yearned to see Remus. She told herself that she’d drop by Grimmauld that night, and she’d see him then. Maybe she would talk to him. Maybe…she hadn’t been paying attention, and Callypta was talking to her.
“-act like I’m some sort of charity case, just because I have a disease, that doesn’t make me their responsibility, it definitely doesn’t give them the right to be condescending!”
“Calm down. Deep breath. In. Out. I hope it’s not me you’re mad at. I know I’m shitty at making friends, but I’d hoped I didn’t fuck this one up.” Tonks pulled a long face and Callypta laughed, all traces of her previous anger gone from her dark brown face. She ran a long-fingered hand through her buzz cut and retied her pink headscarf. “What size shoe are you?”
“Why?”
“If you like my shoes so much, we could switch one! I’m an 8.”
“I’m around there, too!” They stopped and switched their left shoes. Tonks barely had to morph her feet to fit Callypta’s shoe. Her mismatched shoes looked perfect. She loved it. They ran up the hill and down the other side, flying in those beautiful shoes.
Thoughts were flying through Tonks’ head. Callypta, shoes, magic, Remus, breast cancer, death, Muggles, love, running, life, and the color pink all blended into a whirlwind of beauty and sadness. They were dashing down the hill, stumbling, but both staying upright, holding hands and laughing like schoolgirls. They collapsed at the bottom of the humongous hill, at the base of a massive, spreading oak tree and sat there, their panting the only sound in the companiable silence.
Tonks was thinking. There was no cancer in people with magic, and even if someone magical did get cancer, the healers could just Vanish it, but 552,200 Muggles die every year from something that could be prevented, if a wizard could become a Muggle doctor. Tonks knew it was definitely illegal, but she had to try. She didn’t want Callypta to become one of the 552,200. And Melanie’s mother would still be alive if there was someone to help. Muggles sometimes got better from cancer, but they had to go through chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and that seemed to Tonks like something just as bad as having the actual disease, not that she knew much about either.
“Hey, Tonks?” Callypta’s voice broke into Tonks’ thoughts. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just thinking.”
“You’re crying.”
Tonks swiped beneath her eyes and discovered moisture there. She hadn’t realized she was crying. “Oh.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“All the people who die from cancer every year. The brochure said the number was about 552, 200 people every year! That’s just… I dunno. It seems unnecessary. Like, if people could be cured, by some kind of magic, wouldn’t that be better?”
“Well, we do what we can,” said Callypta, hugging Tonks with one arm. “we have chemo and radiation, and that works wonders, but people are going to die anyway sometime, and that magic you’re talking about wouldn’t help with anything else people get, so when their immune systems are weakened by the cancer, they’d just die from something else.”
“But if the magic could cure everything?”
“Tonks, honey, that’s impossible. Even of it could cure everything, it couldn’t cure everyone in the world with every disease.”
“I guess you’re right.” Tonks sighed and looked down. “I just wish I could change the world by making people better.”
“You’ve made me better, happier, just by being my friend without treating me like an invalid.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
When the two women looped their arms together and continued running, people on the other side of the hill wondered who was laughing and singing so loudly, because just two people couldn’t possibly make all that joyful noise.