You can remember the first time you started seeing colours in the air around people. Fifth year. It was a Wednesday. You and Prongs and Moony and Wormtail were in, well, your people forms, first of all. You were also in Transfiguration class. You and James were acting up, as usual – throwing dungbombs around the classroom – and suddenly the air surrounding McGonagall was a glaring, angry shade of red. You were so terrified that you stopped immediately, but James just kept on. He ended up getting a whole week of detention. What could you have said to him anyway?

When you mentioned it to Remus and Peter later, while James was being detained, Peter made fun of you, said you should ask Dumbledore about heading up a bloody Divination department. You socked him in the nose and he shut up. Remus said nothing, simply screwed his mouth off to the side and blinked his eyes away from your face. You didn’t bother telling James; you just admired the blues and greens and oranges and blends of all of the above that surrounded him for the next two years, and you were never sure if you liked the deep maroons that suddenly appeared during seventh year when he started dating Lily Evans. You ignored the wishy-washy yellows that constantly trembled around Peter; now you wish you hadn’t. You always told Remus what colour was around him at any given time: brown when he was studying, gold when someone was giving you or James or Peter or Lily a hard time, magenta when he was reading for leisure, pale blue when you or James or Peter was giving Snape a hard time, burning passionate red when he was talking to Lily before she and James began dating. The colours around Remus always surprised you.

Which is why you know what the same burning passionate red meant when you see it this time. This time, in 12 Grimmauld Place during the summer. Whenever Tonks visits, gets to know you, gets to know your best friend. It takes time before you start seeing anything in the air about Tonks. But when you do, it’s so definite that it almost hurts you, square in your chest. Sometimes it is the same colour as her hair; fitting, as she changes it to suit her mood at any given moment. It is an angry orange when she reads The Daily Prophet or talks about Bellatrix or Lucius or Rodolphus or Narcissa or listens to your mother’s portrait screaming obscenities about half-breeds and blood traitors. It is a gentle midnight shade of blue when she drinks tea by herself. And whenever she is near Remus, her air becomes a perfect match to his air.

You can see it, from both of them. Their feelings are there, present at all times, around their faces, in the lines around his mouth and in the tap-tap-tap-taps of her fingernails on the kitchen table. They love each other. They love each other like James loved Lily, like Lily loved James, like Ron Weasley so obviously loves Hermione Granger. They love each other like Ginny Weasley loves life, like Tonks’ mother loves Tonks’ father, like your mother hated you. And you can see it, even though they can’t.

They can’t ever see it, not from each other. They’re too bloody blind and too bloody foolish to think that either could ever love the other. They’re too bloody proud to admit to you that each loves the other, too. But they don’t have to. You’ve known since before they even knew.

You wonder sometimes if Remus knows that you can see their colours. Perhaps he thinks that you lost that ability during your stint in prison. But you were never happy that you could see murky greys above your younger brother, or terrible blacks and hateful blues above Bellatrix, or deceitful shades of soft white and glittering gold around Narcissa. You were never happy about it so the dementors could never take it from you. And perhaps Remus thinks you never had the gift at all, that you were just making it up the whole time. That theory makes more sense; you’ve always seen the doubt in his eyes when you tell him what you see. Maybe if you tell him what colours you see now, he’ll truly believe you. But really, it’s more plausible that he’ll simply think you’re crazy. A woman like Tonks could never love a man like Remus.

But her air says she does. So maybe you’ll tell her.