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She couldn’t see Hogsmeade in a good light, not anymore.
She used to strut down these streets, eyes vibrant and voice loud, making jokes about the dullest things there were - her friends by her side would laugh and say, Tonks, morph yourself so you can go buy us some Firewhisky.
And who shall I be this time? Her eyes would glisten and the spark behind them was so bright under the sun, Oh- have I ever done Dumbledore before?
A lifetime ago. She thought.
Now her numb, unchanging eyes were sore from crying, her throat tight, and her hair blended into the darkness of Hogsmeade so well she thought this place would suck her in entirely one day, just any day now.
Lumos. Tonks lit up her wand and kept on walking. She could already taste the mold smell in her room.
He watched Alastor’s patronus dissolve into silvery mist and thought the wound on his back needed to be disinfected - one of the Carrows had thrown a hex before they ran away. It was not a nasty one, and he had done his best - Merlin knows how accustomed he was to wounds - but it was still throbbing painfully on his back. Alastor had just sent over a message to inform him of an Order meeting here tomorrow morning, and the last thing he needed was to sit through an already painful meeting with even more pain.
Alcohol, he remembered what his Muggle mother had done with it when they’d run out of Dittany one time, a particularly bad moon, and his father had been away for work.
Mother’s fingers had been ever so tender, trembling in the November air, and he’d heard her breath out shhh, baby, it’s gonna be alright, through his pounding ears.
He still had the money for one bottle of drink, though he didn’t think Aberforth would have the mind to care about money tonight.
Tonight was just another new low and Remus Lupin had been at his lowest many times, too many to still have the audacity to consider himself whole. Tonight just added a new body to the mass grave somewhere deep inside him and he thought all he did was bury, bury James’ black hair, bury Lily’s green eyes, bury Sirius’ bark-like laugh and bury Dumbledore’s last will.
What was his last will anyway? He didn’t know anymore. He didn’t know if he should go back to the werewolf camp and watch himself try so embarrassingly in vain again. He sometimes envied the dead. They didn’t have to still walk this earth and fail at everything his generation had all so gloriously died for.
The wound ached even more. He got up from his bed and opened the door to get that bottle of drink.
Hog’s Head was empty with Aberforth nowhere to be seen. Tonks locked the front door and hoped he was doing okay somewhere, not that she had the strength to comfort him at this point.
She turned around and saw Remus walking out of one of the rooms upstairs. She froze on the spot. The tired, weary face that had been the sole vision her dreams had held for the past year was now perhaps the last thing she wanted to see.
He seemed shocked to see her here too, or to see her anywhere, she huffed a bitter laugh silently. The top buttons on the white shirt he was wearing were undone, he must have already gone to bed.
He came downstairs slowly and Tonks waited for him to say something, anything - his same old litany of weak excuses or excess apologies - She didn’t care. She was tired of always doing the most talking between the two of them.
He swallowed, evidently struggling with what he needed to say. She was used to seeing this look on his face after that stakeout night, when she’d crossed the line with bravery and he’d fumbled with dumbness.
“Tonks,” he finally spoke, spitting out the syllables like they were pieces of glass in his throat, “Are you staying here too?”
“I’ve been staying here for the past year. Can’t stay at the same place with the Ministry lot.”
They looked at me like I was a malfunctioning object, she wanted to add, she actually screamed out from inside, like I should be sent to St Mungo’s and just get it fixed.
Remus nodded. His eyes flickered to her mousy-brown hair but quickly returned to her face. He thought she wouldn’t notice. It had been like this before as well - when she’d told a particularly inappropriate joke during the Order meeting and everyone had been disguising their laughter in awkward gestures. When she’d been quibbling with Sirius and sharing drinks between the three of them in a long night. When they’d stood quietly at the front door after coming back from an overnight stakeout mission and the cold, midnight wind had lifted the pink strands from her eyes.
She’d always noticed. His hidden, soft, simmering affection that had wormed its way into her heart.
Neither of them spoke a word for a moment, and the air in the room was beginning to suffocate her. Tonks averted her eyes from his stiff figure, “You better get some rest. Mad-Eye is holding an Order meeting here tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you. I know. He just sent over a patronus.” He said automatically.
She lowered her head and muttered an “okay”, dragging her feet to her room, heavy and slow.
He watched her turn away. Her figure looked even smaller in the dim light. This is what you will always be, he didn’t know if it was the wolf or the man inside him that was scoffing, a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
He shook his head in pain and walked to the counter to grab a dusky bottle, before he heard Tonks’ weak voice.
“Just…just tell me. Are you going back to the camp? Even after all this?”
The vulnerability in her voice was for certain the punishment for all he had done to her this past year, seizing his throat like a cold, fierce hand.
“I…”
“I know you think I’m young and don’t know better for my own good, but I meant every word that I said at the hospital wing.” She cut him off, tears in her eyes. “And every time. If that doesn’t matter to you then just…”
She paused, swallowing hard.
“Just live. Don’t go out there killing yourself because you think martyring yourself proves any value you have, or that you think it’ll be better for me. It won’t, Remus.”
She finally stopped, the words she had just croaked out seemed to have taken all the strength she had left in her body. He had never seen her so small, like she had cut out half of herself to put weight on her words.
“It does.” He blurted out without thought.
“What?” She looked at him with confused, watery eyes.
“What you said to me tonight…and every time, it matters.”
His head was pounding. Words came out of him like curses being lifted from a tortured man. “It matters so much that I can’t bear to think what I’d do if I stepped one inch closer to you.”
Tonks closed the distance between them, step by step, and suddenly she was so close to him he forgot how to breathe. He’d been trying not to remember those doe eyes for the past year, the colour of them like dark chocolate, pouring tingling warmth into his body every time he met them. Dim orange light flickered on her pale skin, he could almost feel the softness of it.
“What could you do to me, exactly?” Her voice was so low, tinged with something brave, something provoking. “Is your love a curse on me?”
Yes, he wanted to say, of course it bloody is. I’d rather curse myself a million times than subject my wretched life to you.
But he couldn’t say any of these with his throat held tight at the sight of her. The delicate, lovely face that had been haunting him for a year every night in his dreams, forcing him to wake up to a pain he hadn't known existed.
Was this what love did? Rip his heart apart so fiercely like what the moon did to the bones in his body every month. He had survived four hundred moons, but didn’t think he could survive one more blow that love would inflict on him. He looked at her drawn, frail features and had a change of heart about the moon now - at least the moon only ever wanted to torment him alone. But love? Love didn’t spare Tonks. Love wanted its oblation in pairs.
And all the words he wanted to say - were swallowed by a kiss on her lips.
If Obliviate were a touch, it would be his kiss, for she couldn’t remember anything before his lips were on hers.
Remus’ hand was on her waist now, slightly lifting her up and she was on her toes, desperately trying to reach even closer to him, as if any more distance between them would threaten to send him back to that wretched camp and her back into the abyss. Her fingertips touched the raised ridges of old scar tissue on his neck - she’d seen those silvery lines many times before, always wondering if those wounds had ever been fatal - and he was so alive now, with his soft lips pressing down on her, hesitating to open her mouth with his own. He moved his other hand to her cheek, caressing it with such gentleness and care that she was on the verge of melting in his arms. She moved both of her hands to his back, trying to hold him tighter.
He abruptly stopped, pulling away from her. Her heart skipped a beat as she frantically locked eyes with him, in fear of finding any regret or the same old guilt on his face.
“Sorry, my back…” he grimaced, “One of the Carrows cast a spell before they ran.” Breathless and eyes dazed, he looked like someone had just woken him up from a restless dream. He gestured to the bottle on the counter, “I was trying to use this to disinfect it.”
“Why would you do that?” She let out a breath, half relieved that he didn’t stop because of what she feared, and half irritated that he didn’t go see Madam Pomfrey to have it taken care of before leaving.
He blinked, “I don’t have Dittany with me, and I’ve already…”
“I have it in my room. I’ll go get it. You should go take your shirt off.” She finished in one breath before realizing what she’d said, blushing slightly, “I mean…just wait for me in your room.”
That sounds even worse, cousin. Strangely, she heard Sirius’ mischievous voice in her head. His bark-like laugh followed, sending her back to Number 12, where his grey eyes had shrewdly moved between her and Remus, glimmering a light that said I just know you’ve fallen.
He watched Tonks disappear behind one of the doors in the back, then walked back to his own room with her scent still on his lips. A sense of insanity struck him - this was a sordid werewolf taking advantage of a young girl’s future to make himself feel like a human again. This was the repressed lust in him bursting out after decades of forced dormancy. This was - he realized with a painful shame - breaking every promise he’d made to this ruined body and her young, whole, intact life.
He sat on the bed with his hand rubbing the wound on his back a little too hard, as if the physical pain could help clear his mind.
Too late, as Tonks walked in the room with a small bottle in her hand. The light in the room was so dim he couldn’t see her expression until she sat next to him, face close to his again.
“Let me see it.”
“I can just do it myself, you don’t need to…”
He stopped when she flinched away a little, like she’d become aware of the thick wall he’d put between them for the past year again, and he felt like dying just from that.
Without saying a word, he started unbuttoning his shirt one by one, slow and deliberate, buying time to prepare her for the sight he never wanted her to see.
Her eyes widened a little at his chest - webs of silvery scars, jagged bite marks, all the evidence of his animalistic existence - just a little bit and he knew that this was what she had already expected to see, but it still shocked her.
She turned her gaze away from his bare chest, and focused on the wound on his back.
“Should be quick.” She said, and poured a small drop on the wound. After a few seconds, he heard the hissing sound of smoke, feeling her cold fingertips touching the wound gently.
“Feel anything?”
“No. Doesn’t hurt now.”
“It’s not a deep one. I don’t think it’ll leave a scar.” She averted her eyes from his body, mindlessly putting the bottle stopper back on and then wrenching it off again.
“It’s alright. I’m used to having them.”
“I’m used to having scars too, you know.”
She looked up and met his eyes again, “I used to trip a lot as a kid - yes, even much more frequently than I do now - so I always got all kinds of weird scars all over my arms and knees, but they were all small and I always morphed them away as soon as I saw one.” She bit her lower lip, slowing down before continuing, “This year…I got to see them again after all these years. Most of the scars have faded away in time, but this new one…”
She lifted up her shirt, and a long, deep scar across her flank that bore definite evidence of dark magic almost made him shudder - Bellatrix’s work. He had assumed it’d already been healed well after she’d been sent to St Mungo’s.
As if she’d read his mind, she gave him a bitter smile, “They couldn’t heal it completely. Say what you will about my aunt, but she knows her work. So I have to see this ugly thing every day in the shower - have to witness the evidence of my biggest failure. It screams at me, you know, why I couldn’t finish her off and Sirius wouldn’t have died.”
“Don’t.” He hissed, feeling his eyes go dark and the temperature in the room rise. “Do not blame that on you. It was not fair and you shouldn’t do that to yourself.”
“You think I want to?” Her voice went up and he saw something spiteful in her eyes. “Sirius was gone, and then you were gone, and one day I just woke up and found my power gone too.”
A familiar sense of guilt and shame gripped his heart without surprise, so he said the only thing he was good at saying.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m tired of hearing that.” She pressed the heels of her hands on her eyes, as if trying to stop a wound from bleeding, “Say something different.”
The pain on his back was gone, but his body still felt battered, tense. He clenched his fists and could sense something inside him on the verge of breaking.
“I didn’t leave because of you. I left because of myself. What you said…that stakeout night. I never expected it. Someone like me…should not be imposing himself on you. I should’ve left the moment I found myself…”
He went slack completely, shutting his eyes as he heard a crack.
“The moment I found myself falling for you.”
He met her eyes at last, catching the orange light reflecting from her eyes like little fires. She reached for him and locked her arms around his neck. Suddenly he could see all of his past lives vanish into thin air like ashes swept away by the wind. And it was an inebriating, overwhelming feeling, to allow himself to breathe into her scent like it was the only kind of air he needed.
“I know.” She said, her lips against his skin.
“I’ve always known that you love me, but you hate yourself more.” She breathed, “And that fucking terrified me - to think you’d rather walk to your own death for your self-loathing than love me when your heart tells you so.”
She pulled back to stroke his cheek and he leaned into her hand, warming it up with his temperature as she took a long, exhausted breath, “I just pray that you let your heart win like I did.”
Astonishing, how she saw the wolf, the coward, the dead all in front of her, and still opened her mouth and said I loved it so.
She was the one to kiss him first this time, soft lips engraving her name on his as he muttered it like what a devout man uttering a vow. Rationality be damned - the whole world could go to hell for all he cared - when all he could feel was Tonks’ body pressed tightly against his chest, her hands tracing the patterns of his scars as if trying to remember the roots of his existence, and a gush of vivid, polychrome love from her that drowned out all the grayness in his world.
He tentatively moved a hand to the bare skin under her shirt and it felt almost alienated - to touch someone like that. She stroked his hand lightly, encouraging him, and parted his lips wider with her tongue. Desire rose up in him, his fingers roaming to the underside of her breasts. The kiss became hungrier with their tongues tangling together wildly and they both got out of breath. Tonks pulled away slowly, dark eyes fixated on his blue ones, as she peeled off her shirt and the air in his lungs became even scarcer.
It would be a lie if he said he hadn’t imagined this before. Smudged images that emerged in his dreams, spiraling thoughts that intruded his mind when she was particularly close to him, uncontrollable urges during those cold, long nights at the camp where he’d toyed with the thought of ending it all. The beauty of her always in the form of a mockery, a warning - that he was unworthy to even think about it.
The train of thought left him motionless on the spot, as Tonks caught his hesitation and he saw a fleeting look of awkwardness on her face. She fidgeted with her shoulders and said with a quiet voice, “We don’t have to do this if you’re not ready.”
“No…I mean yes, no I mean…” He flustered and the sight of him must have been ridiculous, for Tonks clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle a giggle. He hadn’t seen that kind of smile on her face for a year now, the shape and colour of a violent rainbow.
He looked at her in awe, struggling to form some coherent words, “I may never be ready for this. You…this is not something that I have ever expected to happen. It’s just…” He paused, swallowing hard, “Unreal.”
Her gaze on him was so soft, “I’m promising you this is real as long as you want to.”
“Of course I do.” He answered with a pathetic attempt to make it sound casual, “Are you sure that you…”
“If you’re asking me for the millionth time to reassess my feelings, Remus, I’m hexing you into oblivion.” She cut him off so quickly it was like she’d already been expecting him to ask her this, rolling her eyes slightly with an annoyed look on her face.
“Forgive me.”
“I’m hexing you for that too.”
“If you’re banning me from apologising to you then I think I’ll regretfully be mute for the rest of my life.”
She burst out laughing, wasting no time to put her lips back on his. The intoxicating feeling took him over again, coaxing a sigh out of his mouth and he unclasped her bra with trembling fingers. It fell away, baring her breasts and her naked skin against his chest was warm and soft. He moved his lips to her neck, leaving a trail of kisses all the way to her clavicles. Tonks tipped her head back and moaned, the sound of her foreign to him, clouding his mind completely as he found himself hardening at the feel of her.
She climbed into his lap and bent her head to kiss the scars across his neck and chest, with such tenderness that the same old sense of unworthiness almost took him over again. He brought her down on the bed and her hands ventured down towards his waistband, helping him slip off his trousers. Her thigh was now pressing hard against his rigid length. He groaned and moved his lips to her breasts, sucking on the skin there gently. His thumb brushed her nipple and she gasped, squeezing his hair in her fists. He trailed down to her lower abdomen, lifting his head to look at her before unbuttoning her jeans.
She lay in nothing but black underwear on his bed now, face flushed and eyes dark. The whole of her body took his breath away - she was so beautiful, but had evidently lost too much weight over the past year, with her ribs visible under pale skin and her hip bones standing out. His heart lurched at the sight, knowing he was to blame. He tore his gaze away from her body, the way a guilty culprit evaded confrontation.
He wasn’t sure if she knew what was going on in his mind, but she sat up and kissed him deeply, earnestly. “Look at me.” She said against his lips before he obliged and looked into her big, dark, dreamy eyes. A surge of red love welled up in him and he returned the kiss ardently. Without breaking the kiss, he laid her down again slowly.
“I haven’t done this in a long time.” He muttered on top of her, the heat in the room burning his skin.
“Neither have I.” She smiled with her eyes half-closed, fingertips grazing his chest.
“We have very different definitions of...” He was cut off by the feeling of her fingers on his length, stroking him as he stifled a moan, “...of a long time.”
“You can tell me all about your sexually-repressed life afterwards.” Tonks mumbled when he put his eager lips back on hers. He gently pulled off her underwear, touching her warm flesh with tentative fingers. Small sounds of pleasure echoed in the room and it was simply the most thrilling sound he’d ever heard in his life. He applied more pressure, stroking her as he grew painfully hard at the sight of her - panting with her lovely mouth open and sweat dripping from her bare breasts, burying a scream in the pillow with her hand squeezing the bedsheets. He moved his lips to her throat without stopping the movements of his fingers, and Tonks began to squirm beneath him, struggling to move his hand away. He stopped abruptly and panicked, looking at her worriedly.
“Am I…”
“No.” she said quickly, breathless with her face flushed and her hair tousled. She wrapped her legs around his waist to pull him closer, grasping his length in her warm palm as she murmured in his ear, “I need you inside me now.” And the world stopped moving altogether at her bare avowal. His chest heaved as he nudged her gingerly at the entrance.
Neither of them closed their eyes as she guided him inside her, savouring it in an attempt to preserve this moment, encase it in golden resin and trap it forever in time. The pleasure washed over him instantly but he waited, looking for any signs of discomfort on her face. Tonks let out a sigh and moved her hips, encouraging him. He started to thrust at an unhurried speed, pushing in deeper as her body adjusted to him. It was with every last bit of his self-control that he didn’t lose this rhythm, but she was pushing up to him now, asking for more, with her back arched and gasps emerging from her swollen lips. He gripped her hips and reached the full length of him, filling her completely and quickening the pace of his thrusts.
Her lips were pressed against his ear, whispering his name and how much she loved him, breaking his resolve to make this last longer. He pushed her legs back and picked up his speed, eliciting loud, sweet moans from her and he feared that the mere sound of her could finish him right now. His bony hips were hitting hard against her smooth skin enough to bruise her, but he couldn’t stop when this suffocating euphoria had overtaken him completely.
He could feel that she was on the edge of coming as her moans became more high-pitched and her walls clenched him even more tightly. He pressed his lips on her collarbone to stifle his own sounds of pleasure, pushing harder and deeper inside her. With a shuddering sound, Tonks cried out, her whole body trembled and writhed beneath him, with her pulse beating ever so fervently against his flesh. He had to stop for a few seconds before her body allowed him to move again, his thrusts became more erratic as he reached closer to his own climax. He was kissing her roughly now, in between the muffled moans from her lips he heard himself let out a litany of “I love you”s before he gave into his release, spasming inside her.
Burying his head in her neck, he could only hear their ragged breaths in the room. They were lying motionless for a minute or two before he softened inside her. Tonks struggled to get up with shaking legs to reach for her wand, murmuring a spell at herself. He flushed, realising in embarrassment that he’d completely forgotten about taking precautions. He locked his arms around her waist and muttered against her naked skin, “Sorry, I didn’t think to ask…” She turned around and fell on top of him, firmly putting her lips on his to stop more of his apologetic words from coming out.
He kissed the top of her head instead, looking down at her naked body. A sheen of sweat made her skin glow in the dim light. Her heartbeat against his chest gradually steadied, and she kissed him one more time before slipping away to the bathroom.
The sound of running water was somehow soothing him. Exhaustion dragged him under like a tide, claiming him to a dreamless sleep.
Tonks was woken by the sunlight, shimmering with early July’s heat. She stirred, feeling a pair of hands around her waist, and remembered who they belonged to. Remus’ steady breathing was tickling the hairs on the back of her neck. She turned her body to face him, drinking in his sleeping face. She’d always assumed that he'd a light sleeper, easily woken by any small noise, but he lay completely undisturbed by her movements - his breathing was very quiet, brown lashes casting a faint shadow over his cheeks.
Even when she reached out a finger and gently poked his nose, he didn’t seem to stir one bit. She grinned, and planted a feather-like kiss on his lips.
She pulled back and was finally met with his open eyes, so softly blue it almost made her head dizzy with love. Her lips curled, “Morning.”
“Good Morning.” Remus smiled too, a shy one.
“I was just making sure you were actually sleeping, not in a coma.” She chuckled.
“It was full moon a week ago.” He said with tenderness in his eyes.
“Oh! Sorry. Are you quite alright?”
“I’m fine,” He explained, “Only the first few days were rough, but I usually need more sleep within the first week.”
“That’s a relief.” She released a breath, “I was beginning to worry I’d insensitively worn you out last night.”
It was after she blurted out the words that she realized how blunt it sounded, and Remus blushed immediately, his eyes darting around. His shyness made her want to push his buttons further, “So tell me.”
“Tell you what?” He looked puzzled.
“About your sexually-repressed life. You seemed quite keen on telling me about it last night.” She said evenly, trying her best to hide the amusement in her voice.
“That’s not…what I suggested…It’s…” He was stammering, dragging a hand over his face.
“How long has it been?”
“Tonks…”
“How long?”
He dropped his hand from his face and stared at the ceiling, “I think it was around the time when you were still at Hogwarts.”
“That’s not too bad.” She said, but was shot with a look of disbelief. She smirked, “So who were you with when I was dating Rupert Hale?”
“A girl in Ireland…a Muggle.” He mumbled.
“Were you in love with her?” She asked without thinking.
“I’ve never been in love with anyone before you.”
It was shocking, to hear him confess his love for her so casually as though he were being asked what to eat for lunch, when he hadn’t even been able to look at her properly before last night. She wanted to say “neither have I” but she didn’t want to lie to him. After childish school flings, there had been a few people she had genuinely loved at one time, though it all died down after they showed her their true nature as men, or just as deceitful, greedy, arrogant humans. But still, love was unavoidable, and it was both heartbreaking, to learn that Remus had been avoiding loving anyone all his life before her, and gratifying, to know that she was the one for him - the one that broke all his promises he’d made to himself because a love as strong as theirs, was a force that was formidable enough to make him finally choose happiness over despair.
She buried her head in his neck, kissing the skin under his earlobe, and heard him ask with a tone of feigned nonchalance, “So who was Rupert Hale?”
“Slytherin Head Boy. A year above me. Hell of a Beater.”
He chuckled, “Never pegged you for someone to fall for a Slytherin. Or a Beater.”
“Yeah, my type before quiet, apologetic, self-loathing professors was really just a fine body at the Quidditch games.” She answered sarcastically, “Beater Rupert who asked if I could morph myself to look like the Veela on his magazine, Chaser Seb who somehow managed to date both me and my fellow Hufflepuff mate at the same time for two weeks, and Seeker Charlie who, well, Charlie was actually a decent…”
“Charlie? Charlie Weasley?” His voice sounded just a bit high-pitched.
She closed her eyes, grimacing, “Can you forget I said that please? We only dated for like two months in fourth year and you’re gonna be so weird next time you see him - ”
“I am not going to be - ”
“You will! And why are we only talking about my love life? I asked you first and you’ve only said ‘Muggle girl in Ireland’ - that’s not fair!” She protested, but he smiled so patronisingly at the sight of her, causing her to throw a half-hearted punch at his chest.
“You look like a bristling rabbit.” He said laughing, the adoration in his eyes almost made her forget everything she had in her mind. She shook her head and climbed on top of him, wrapping her hands around his throat in a warning gesture and squinting her eyes, “Speak, Lupin. All about your sexually-repressed life.”
He looked at her in frustration for a few seconds before giving in, “Three. Including you.” He let out a sigh, “One was a Ravenclaw girl. Things…got a bit out of control the night we graduated - mostly Sirius and James’ fault - I’d had a crush on her for some time and they were insufferable about it. We started going out that Summer and I was torn the whole time - I couldn’t find the courage to tell her what I was. After the second full moon she left the country with her family to avoid the war. And the other one was that Muggle girl - I was living in Ireland at the time, working at a bookstore. She was a regular customer there and it just sort of…happened. She didn’t know I was a wizard, let alone the other thing. After about a year I just couldn’t live with the lies anymore and returned to England.”
Remus rubbed at his eyes in weary resignation, “There you have it. The whole history of my love life.”
She grinned, laying her head on his bare chest, “If only History of Magic were this brief and easy - I would’ve saved Professor Binns so much trouble.”
He laughed, threading his fingers through her hair and caressing her scalp. Then he went quiet, but she could almost hear him thinking. When she raised her head to look at him, he finally spoke, “I know you’re tired of hearing this, but I have to say it again. I am sorry that I caused all of this.” His eyes were fixed on her hair, and she’d never seen them look so blue.
“I don’t care if you can’t change your hair to the colour of rainbows anymore, but I know you do, because it’s your gift and it’s about more than just looks.” He said with a hoarse voice, “I’m sorry that I brought this upon you. I was so certain that you’d be better off without me - that whatever feelings you had for me, they would fade away in time. But then Harry told me about your patronus…”
He paused, his lashes fluttering, “I never wanted that to happen. To have the wolf be part of your life is…”
“It’s part of you, and I love you. It’s that simple.” She didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence, knowing that he could only see the wolf as a stain in her life, but it was not the case at all - nor was it simple like she’d just told him.
It had changed its form some time after she stopped being able to morph, and she’d sat on the floor for hours, conjuring it again and again until she’d exhausted herself, until she’d used up all of her happy memories, and she’d laid down on the floor, weeping silently, feeling vindicated - that the wolf was proof. Proof that she was suffering for an overpowering reason, for a love that was strong enough to alter her soul. And she’d smiled. A smile that she’d been sure would haunt Remus for the rest of his life if he’d seen it. It was in that moment that she’d realized he was not the only one that was self-destructing in this relationship - she had willingly let her soul be torn apart and reshaped. “The Blacks are all lunatics!” Some kid in Gryffindor had said this after they’d learned she was half a Black. She’d been furious, starting a fight and getting detention again. They were right, she’d thought, only a lunatic would think of love in the form of a tear.
She wouldn’t tell him any of these. How she’d morbidly coaxed herself into surviving those times.
“Tonks...Tonks? Nymphadora?” The use of her first name hit her like a hex, dragging her back to reality. She looked up and met Remus’ puzzled eyes, “Huh?”
“You were very still for quite a while.” He gave her a faint smile, “Almost thought you had fallen asleep again if your eyes weren’t closed.”
“Nah, was just thinking about the Order meeting later.” She lied, “And having me naked on top of you doesn’t mean you can call me ‘Nymphadora’.” She added, rolling her eyes.
He grinned, “Sirius actually told me your mother loved that name. She mentioned it in one of her letters to him years ago.”
She huffed, “At least Dad doesn’t. He thinks it’s a mouthful.”
“What does your Dad call you?”
“Dora. Much better.”
“Dora.” He repeated the syllables slowly, the ghost of a smile on his face. “Can I call you that?”
There was such an uncertainty in his voice, like he still didn’t think he had the right to be intimate with her in any way, even when they were lying in bed together, the ache he’d left between her legs last night still tingling.
So she pushed herself up and kissed him hard. His hands wrapped around her waist in a swift motion to pull her closer as she mumbled a “yes” against his lips.
The kiss became heated within seconds. Remus’s hands travelled to her shoulderblades, caressing the smooth, naked skin there, then to her breasts, brushing over her nipples. She moaned and felt him hardening against her thigh. She broke the kiss, wasting no time to lower herself down onto him. She watched his eyes shut, sounds of pleasure uncontrollably falling from his mouth. She rolled her hips back and forth, her heartbeat pounding in her chest as her own pleasure flooded through her body. He opened his eyes and looked at her in awe, mouth half open and blue eyes so incredibly dark, before he gripped her hips and thrust up into her.
It didn’t take long for her to feel the waves rippling through her. Her legs gave out and she fell on his chest, sucking on his neck hard as she came. She was still panting when he sat up and tried to flip them over, but she pushed him down, starting to ride him again till he gasped and jerked inside her, face flushed and breaths ragged.
Exhausted, she felt Remus gently lay her down on the bed and mutter the same spell she’d cast on herself last night. She looked up and gave him a crooked smile, “Who taught you the contraception spell in the first place?”
“Take a wild guess.” He raised an eyebrow.
“Oh Sirius.” She giggled, “Already doing the most for his dear cousin two decades ago.”
Remus closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, “That genuinely sounds so wrong on so many levels.”
“The water in your bathroom is cold this morning,” Tonks came out of the bathroom and threw the towel she’d wrapped around her body to him, wearing only her underwear. “I’ve charmed it, but you might need to do it again yourself.”
Remus nodded as she winced, “Ugh, my clothes are filthy from the battle.” She went and put on one of his clean shirts instead, the hem falling well past her hips.
He got out of bed and stepped into the shower. The water was indeed cold, but he didn’t bother charming it warm, letting the cold flow wash over his still heated body. When he wrapped the towel around his waist and came out of the bathroom, Tonks was sitting on the bed with her back to him, her bare legs dangling and swinging. She’d conjured a mirror in her hand and busied herself with casting a drying spell on her pale brown hair.
He was fumbling for some clean clothes in his suitcase when he heard a knock on the door. Before he could tell her to wait, Tonks had already gotten up and opened the door.
“Oh, Professor McGonagall!” He heard Tonks yelp.
Panic washed over him instantly when he saw Minerva McGonagall standing outside the room, her confused eyes flickering from Tonks and then to his half-naked figure.
Sweet Merlin.
Before he could hear what his Head of House came to say, he grabbed a handful of clothes from his suitcase and fled to the bathroom. He didn’t think he had ever put on clothes so quickly in his life - and he was a werewolf forced to wake up naked every month.
The temperature on his skin was scorching his clothes. He didn’t even need to look in the mirror to see how red his face was. As soon as he came out of the bathroom, Tonks ran to him with her jeans in her hands, hissing desperately, “I’m sorry! I didn’t know you didn’t have your clothes on when I answered the door!”
He shut his eyes and gripped her shoulders, gently pushing her inside the bathroom before she could say anything else. He took a deep breath and strode towards the door.
“Minerva…” He forced himself to meet her eyes.
“Remus.” Minerva cleared her throat. “I wasn’t sure if Alastor had informed you of the Order meeting later, so I went up to tell you - Aberforth told me you were staying in this room.”
“Yes, thank you, Alastor let me know last night - he sent over his patronus.” He tried to answer as calmly as possible, “Is everyone else here?”
Her lips were pressed into a thin line. “I was the first one to arrive. Kingsley and Arthur are here, too.” There was not a trace of emotion on her face as she added, “I’m glad you took my words seriously last night.”
“Err…” He put one hand on his forehead, struggling for words, but she held out a finger before he could say anything else to embarrass himself even more, “The meeting won’t start for another hour. Take your time.”
A loud crash came from the bathroom, accompanied by Tonks’ startled yelp.
“I’m okay!” He heard her muffled shout behind the bathroom door, “I’ll be out in a sec!”
Minerva’s lips twitched ever so slightly, “Like I said. Take your time.” She turned on her heels and headed downstairs, “The girl’s clumsy enough already.”
Remus sighed, finding the fact that Minerva McGonagall of all people was the first one to learn about their nascent relationship to be absolutely ridiculous, let alone mortifying - the woman who had taught not only Tonks, but the both of them at Hogwarts, who possibly still distinctly remembered what their childish faces had looked like when she’d put them in detention.
Remus let out a sigh and opened the bathroom door. Tonks was sitting on the floor, wincing.
“What happened?”
“There was water on the floor!” She yelled, evidently accusing him of not drying the floor after he showered, “So of course I fell when I was putting on my sodding jeans, then I sprained my ankle trying to get up from the floor.”
He knew he shouldn’t find it to be amusing at all, but still, he had to press his lips so tightly together to keep from smiling. Tonks shot him a look as he lowered himself and held out his wand, casting a healing spell on her swollen ankle.
“Don’t you say a word.” She said, sulking.
“I was not going to say anything.” He answered innocently. “Although it is uncannily characteristic of you.”
He finally burst out laughing and she swatted him in the arm hard, the way an angry child threw a tantrum, the way that had always made him shudder at how young she was. Back at Number 12 when he’d simply looked at her, hair vibrant and eyes aglow, and could feel his skin sagging and his bones shrinking - a horrifying, devastating awareness of his age that crept over him whenever she tinted that bleak house so violently saturated with her youth, her humour, and her wit. He would have cursed whatever gods there were for bringing her into his life and making him fall for her the way an ink blot tainted a perfect painting, but he had never believed in gods, so he’d just prayed to himself, that his scarred, calloused, aged hands would never touch her unblemished ones, that just being someone she would think of in friendly but insignificant ways would be enough for him, that when the waxing moon or the looming war finally killed him, he would be content that she had once been in his life.
He’d thought of his death too often, and she’d been twenty-two.
“Penny for your thoughts?” She said quietly, “I can hear you thinking, you know.”
He looked at her and it was almost a bizarre sight - wrapped in his old white shirt, with July sunlight bathing her pale skin in a soft shimmer, young and beautiful and his. Her dark eyes rested softly, tenderly, wholly on him, telling him that she was really here with him, loving him wholeheartedly, despite his weathered body, his unfixable defects, and his broken soul, all in contrast with her immaculateness. He felt like he had wandered into a lucid dream. He wanted to fall to his knees and tell her to love me is to suffer me and I love you too much to let you endure that.
But he didn’t. He couldn’t bear to imagine what his world would look like without her after he’d been in this mesmerizing dream. So he just managed to mumble “it’s just surreal”, before helping her to her feet. She tilted her head, contemplating the meaning of his words for a while and gave him a faint smile. He wasn’t sure if it was because she’d somehow understood what he meant, or because she’d grown tired of deciphering his mind.
“And I thought you were just thinking about how you’re going to face your Head of House after this morning.” She said, half-jokingly.
“Ah yes, that too.”
They were both laughing now. Tonks laughed so hard that she was squeezing her eyes shut. Sunlight threaded through her hair, weaving flecks of gold between her mousy-brown strands - the roots of them slowly, wondrously, miraculously, shifting into a soft pink.
“Dora…” He gasped, the name intimate on his lips. He ran his fingers through the locks of her hair. “Your hair…it’s turning pink.”
But Tonks still had her eyes stubbornly shut - for a moment she looked completely detached from the world, even from him - and when she finally opened her eyes, tears streamed down her face like dewdrops.
“I know.” She choked. “I felt it.”
She screwed up her eyes again, and suddenly he was blinded by a sea of suffocating pink waves. The vividest pink he had ever seen.
Remus.
Yeah?
What did you really mean that day in the bathroom? You know, when you said “it’s just surreal”?
Why are you asking this now?
Because Teddy has kept us awake all night and my mind is all over the place after the fifth cup of tea I just had.
What do you think I meant?
Well.
Well?
I think you couldn’t quite believe that I was there with you. That I was yours and you were mine. I think that you had just come down from the high of sex, well, Minerva’s arrival definitely helped sober you up and you finally had the mind to process what had really happened. I think you looked at me and saw an unreality. Like I was insane to love you. Like I was something you stole from a dream. I think you found the fact that anybody would love you for who you were to be surreal because you were, and probably still are a self-loathing bastard. I think you loved me so much you wanted to beg me to stop loving you but you couldn’t live if I stopped, either. Yeah. I think you meant that sort of thing.
Dora.
Hmm. Am I close?
I still think it’s surreal.