“Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would,'
Like the poor cat i' the adage?�
~Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Act 1, scene 7, lines 41-45

Remus stood in the corridor outside the Hospital Wing, trying to process the events of the night. Dumbledore was dead. He’d seen the body both broken on the grounds and laid out in the Great Hall, but it was still so hard to believe that Severus had been lying to them the whole time. Dumbledore trusted him. It had been the only indictment, the only proof Remus had ever needed. So, because Dumbledore trusted him, Remus did too. It was heartbreaking to think that his faith could be so wrongly placed a second time.

Remus didn’t know how to move forward. Fifteen years ago, when Voldemort had fallen but Remus’s world had crumbled, at least he’d had a friend in the Headmaster. But now Dumbledore was dead, Sirius was gone, James and Lily were long since buried, and Peter, he wouldn’t -- couldn’t -- think about Peter. He had no one now. He was more adrift than ever before.

He wasn’t sure how much time had gone by. He could have spent minutes or days pacing back and forth in the corridor, be he was still surprised when the door to the Hospital Wing opened, and Molly Weasley came out.

‘Shouldn’t you be inside, with Bill?’ Remus questioned.

He watched her eyes well with tears before she blinked them away. ‘Bill- Bill will be okay,’ she said, determined. Remus thought maybe she was trying to convince herself, not him, of this.

‘He’ll be fine, Molly. Greyback hadn’t transformed; it wasn’t a full moon,’ he reminded her, wrapping his arms around himself. He wasn’t sure whether he was trying to hold himself in or if he couldn’t bear to put an arm around her shoulder. Times like this made him feel like his condition was a stark gulf between him and the rest of the world.

‘I know,’ she replied brusquely, wiping her eyes. ‘Besides, I’m here to talk about you.’

Remus was taken aback. ‘Me? What about me, Molly?’

She stared into his eyes, and he could see the fire in hers. ‘You saw Fleur in there.’ She was, he assumed, talking about the way Bill’s beautiful French fiancée had reacted to his attack. ‘She doesn’t care that he was attacked. She doesn’t care about his scars. She doesn’t care how this might change him. She loves him.’ Molly looked pointedly at Remus. ‘Like Tonks loves you.’

‘Molly, please, don’t,’ he begged. ‘It’s not safe for her. I’m not safe for her,’ he stressed. ‘Bill won’t ever be truly cursed, but I’ll always be a monster.’

‘Remus Lupin,’ Molly scolded sharply, ‘don’t you dare call yourself a monster!’ Her eyes blazed, and he quailed under her gaze. ‘Harry looks up to you, my children look up to you. Do you think I’d let any of them be around a monster?’ Remus knew what she meant, but he still couldn’t allow himself the possibility of the one thing he knew he could never have. ‘That woman loves you, and you know it! What’s keeping you from this, Remus? Do you not love her in return?’

‘Oh Merlin no, Molly, that isn’t it at all,’ he said in a rush so quick the words were out before he realized he’d said them. With the truth out there, he couldn’t hope to deny it.

‘Then what’s the problem?’ Her hands were on her hips, never a good sign, and she was looking at him the same way she used to look at Sirius when he’d done something foolish.

‘I can’t- I won’t subject her to what I become, Molly,’ Remus said. ‘I couldn’t bear it if something happened to her because of me.’

‘And if she’s willing to risk it?’ Molly asked. ‘If she’s not willing to just let you walk away?’

In all his musings, Remus hadn’t considered Tonks’s tenacity before. ‘I won’t let her.’

‘Will you listen to yourself, Remus? Always “I can’t� after “I want�,’ Molly railed. ‘Like you have any say in what she does,’ she huffed. ‘You want to be with her, and there’s nothing to stop you. You said once that you trusted Dumbledore; he would have wanted you to love and be happy. If Tonks will do that, be a man and fight for what you want for once.’

Remus couldn’t take any more of Molly’s helpful lecturing. He backed away without responding to her and fled the castle, but as he walked the quiet grounds, students finally having been herded back into their dorms, he couldn’t shake what she’d said. If he really wanted love, if he truly wanted to be happy, then he needed to ignore his inner demons and grab his destiny. No longer could he rely on his friends to help him, no longer could he look to others for counsel; he needed to make a decision.

He wasn’t sure how long he wandered, but he made a loop around the lake and edged the grounds as night began to fade. When the sky lightened from indigo to lilac, Remus was no closer to making a decision about anything. Molly was right; he always put what he thought was right behind what he wanted, even when what he wanted wasn’t exactly bad or wrong.

He was a werewolf, but he remembered something Lily said when she’d found out. “It’s only one night out of every twenty-eight, Remus. You can’t change what happened, but you don’t have to let it define you.� He was thirteen years older than Tonks, but he knew that emotions knew nothing about age; they were both adults, and he had been alone for so long. He knew what he wanted, and this time he wasn’t going to counter that with what he wouldn’t or couldn’t do.

As he came over the rise near the shore, where McGonagall said Dumbledore would be buried, he saw a figure in the distance. Though her hair still wasn’t pink, Remus would recognize Tonks anywhere. And suddenly the hours of wandering, of thought, of resignation gave way. He would do as Molly said. He would finally stop hiding, stop putting what he wanted behind what he thought he deserved, stop being such a coward about his destiny. He was going to do something about his feelings for Tonks once and for all.