Raise Your Lantern High, chapter 12: Christmas at the Burrow

RAISE YOUR LANTERN HIGH

Summary: In which Remus and Tonks fight battles, arrest criminals, befriend werewolves, overcome inner demons and, despite it all, find themselves a happy ending. A love story, and a story of the Order years. (My Remus/Tonks epic, which has been years in the making! This is the second half of the story, set in the Half-Blood Prince year.)

( Chapter 12: Christmas at the Burrow )

You, yes, you, want to help me brainstorm a missing moment for this fic?

Calling all fans of Tonks, of strong, active female characters, or just fans of discussing the writing process and brainstorming about character and plot!

My big (22-chapter, 100+k) Harry Potter fic "Raise Your Lantern High" is pretty much completely written, and halfway through posting. BUT it's missing something in the middle. Throughout the earlier and later parts of the story, it does pretty well at balancing Remus' and Tonks' storylines. (A tricky feat, since they're apart most of the time, during the HBP year!)

But right here in the middle of the story, around Christmas, there's moew Remus story (because in canon we know more about what Remus is doing, since Harry sees him at the Burrow that year) to the point that it feels unbalanced. I want to add at least one more scene for Tonks, here in this middle/winter bit, and I've been wracking my brains as to what! It could be basically a like a one-shot, that happens to take place at that point in the timeline – it doesn't have to related closely to the overarching plot of the story.

Thus my question:

What do you wish we could have seen of Tonks during the winter of HBP? Is there a character you'd like to see her interact with? Moody? Kingsley? Luna??

(That's my one idea so far, that maybe I can somehow engineer a situation where Tonks is patrolling at/near the school, and runs into Luna, and Luna takes her to see the Thestrals in the Forbidden Forest – because Tonks is still grieving Sirius at this point, and Luna seems like someone who would take one look at her and decide she would benefit from a not-quite-school-sanctioned ramble into the Forest to hang out with the Thestrals – now that she can see them. Plus, I'd love Tonks to get to interact with another female canonical character.)

Anyone want to weigh in?

(I've posted this same question on Chapter 12 of the story at both AO3 and FFN, with a bit more detail about other things Tonks is doing around the same time in the fic. But again, it almost doesn't matter what else is happening around it – I just need something cool and interesting for Tonks to do for a bit during the winter of HBP!)