I sat in the Hospital Wing, and I couldn’t move. I was frozen, frozen by horror, pain, and grief. Florescent lights beamed down, and Madame Pomfrey’s sheets were starched and white, tucked around the cots without a wrinkle. Those sheets were perfect. And that was wrong, that anything should look nice when Dumbledore had been murdered.
It was wrong that the world should go on turning at all, when Dumbledore had been murdered.
I didn’t know him as well as Harry and the Order members did, but I knew him. Everybody knew Albus Dumbledore. I respected and liked him- at first just because of all I’d read about him, and because I knew he was a genius. Then I realized that there was more to him than that. He was the wisest person I’ve ever met, and without him Harry, Ron, and I wouldn’t have lived to see our second year. He trusted people, too, was always willing to give a second chance. In the end, that was his downfall.
Funny, in my first year I had thought “nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak!” was a rather moronic start-of-term speech to give. Now I couldn’t imagine the Welcoming Feast without Dumbledore there to say “a few words.” But I knew that I would never see another Welcoming Feast at Hogwarts. Though Harry hadn’t said a word, I knew we weren’t coming back for our seventh year. It was a sixth sense. Books weren’t the only thing I was I was good at reading. Some people were a page of print, just inviting you to have a look.
So I sat there, trying not to cry, as the Hospital Wing slowly emptied around me. Harry went with Professor McGonagall. Mr. And Mrs. Weasley took Ginny and Ron out into the hall to “discuss things” and Fleur followed. Hagrid left as well, sobbing abut what a great man Dumbledore was- no, had been. Soon I was alone, except for the unconscious Bill. And…
Professor Lupin sat by the window, staring into the night as if he wished it would swallow him up. He wasn’t crying; in fact, his face was completely blank. His soul could have been sucked away by the dementors he knew so much about and you wouldn’t have known the difference. He didn’t look at me, and certainty not at Tonks. She was completely alone in a corner of the room, tears dripping down her cheeks. She was staring at Lupin, not even blinking, pleading with her eyes for him to so much as glance at her. There was terrible pain in her expression, and something else too, something I had only seen before in the way Mum looks at dad on their anniversary, or the way Ginny looks at Harry at Quidditch practice. It was the look I tried to disguise whenever I was with Ron.
It was love.
If Remus Lupin had bothered to turn around , I think they would have fallen into each others’ arms. But he didn’t glance at Tonks. He stood up and quietly left the room, not sparing a word for me.
I have no idea what came over me then. Why on Earth I got to my feet when he had disappeared. What possessed me to follow him out of the Hospital Wing. Perhaps I temporarily lost my mind. Or perhaps it was my sixth sense all over again.
I knew I needed to do this, though it seemed insane. Setting up Dean with Parvati after he and Ginny broke up was one thing. Interfering in Professor Lupin’s love life was another thing entirely. I hesitated at the door for just a moment. But I heard a sob behind me, and it spurred me onward. For Tonks, something must be done.
I followed Lupin out of the castle and to the edge of the lake, where he sank to the ground, muttering to himself. I only caught one word- “dangerous.”
“Hello, Professor,” I said with a confidence I didn’t feel. I stepped out of the shadows and sat down next to him.
He looked up, startled. “Nympha- oh, Hermione, it’s you.”
He had thought I was Tonks. Even after I called him ‘Professor.’ The man was either completely obsessed or very, very, paranoid.
“I need to talk to you about something,” I mumbled, realizing how embarrassing this was going to be. Maybe I shouldn’t even be here.
“Schoolwork?” Lupin said hopefully.
I rolled my eyes in the dark. “No, Professor, not schoolwork! Who could even think about schoolwork on a night like this? I have to talk to you about Tonks.”
“Hermione-” He started to cut me off.
I gathered my courage. “Please listen. I heard what you said tonight, and I suppose I can understand why you feel that way, but I hate to see this happening to her. She’s wasting away.”
Lupin wouldn’t look at me. “I know,” he said in a flat, emotionless voice. “But her feelings will fade. She can start over. I’m not good enough for someone like Tonks, Hermione.”
“Yes, you are,” I insisted, feeling a lot less embarrassed. I realized this must be even more awkward for Professor Lupin than it was for me. Always logical, I ran through what he’d said earlier in my head, then began my great debate. “I know you think you’re too old for her-”
“The age difference is not the important thing,” Lupin said stiffly. Well, fine. We didn’t have to go into that if he didn’t want to. I knew, after all, what it all came down to in the end.
But I wasn’t at all sure how to talk about it. I as read about lycanthropy, of course, but the authors were very prejudiced, and I felt I knew nothing about it.
“Professor-” I began without the faintest idea what I was going to say. So it was a relief when he interrupted me.
“I am no longer your teacher, Hermione, and since you have decided to meddle in my personal life I see no reason why you shouldn’t call me Remus.”
I was quite taken aback. No teacher, former or otherwise, had ever asked me to call them by their first name before. I allowed myself a moment to bask in the honor. Then it was back to my lecture.
“As for being poor-”
Lupin groaned. “I thought I had distracted you.”
I ignored this. “As for being poor, money doesn’t matter, not really. I’ve read all about Aurors, and they make thousands of Galleons a year. Tonks has more than enough to support both of you with room to spare.”
Lupin still wouldn’t meet my eye. “I could never ask her to do that for me.”
“She would want to,” I said, quietly but firmly. “In fact, she would probably do it without asking you.” That would be like Tonks; at least, the Tonks I had known a year ago. She had changed beyond recognition since then. In trying to save her, Lupin had destroyed a piece of her heart. And he didn’t even realize what he was doing.
It was then that I knew what my final argument would be.
“It makes no difference,” Lupin- Remus- finally said. “I’m still, well… dangerous.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “I’m not going to disagree. I know you’re afraid of hurting Tonks. I don’t think that will happen.”
“But-”
“And even if it does,” I plowed on, “she would forgive you in an instant, and anyway, don’t you think she’s hurting right now? Her heart is broken, nd isn’t that worse than anything a- er- werewolf could do? Isn’t her heart more important than her body? I mean-” I blushed- “physical well-being?”
Remus looked at me for the first time. I could see the inner battle raging in his eyes. Imagining his thoughts and emotions made me dizzy, the same feeling I got when I tried to make sense of my best friend Harry’s troubles. Then I realized something, and mentally kicked myself. I hadn’t actually asked-
“Remus, you do love Tonks, don’t you?”
There was a long silence. Thoughts of the real Nymphadora Tonks began to creep into my head as I waited. Her pink hair, her laugh, her cheerful, “Wotcher, Hermione!”, her endless apologies when she broke something (a common event). She’d been a bit like an older sister to Ginny and I, something neither of us had ever had. This new Tonks was nothing but a shadow, faded and drifting.
“Yes,” Lupin finally said, breaking the silence.
“What?” I said stupidly.
“Yes, I love Nymphadora. I have all this time. You were right, Hermione. Absolutely right. I believe I told you once that you were the cleverest witch of your age? You proved it again tonight. And you have been much cleverer than me.”
I may have started crying at this point, or it may have been going on for a while. I can tell you, however, that that was the exact moment when Remus Lupin changed from a closed book to an open one, which I- and Tonks- could clearly read. And I can tell you that I have never been gladder to have my mysterious sixth sense.
Sixth Sense by HPwizzzard
Chapter Notes: Hello, everyone! Guess what? I'm J.K. Rowling, and I wrote this story in my nonexsistant spare time between working on book 7 and taking care of my three kids! Um... not. I am merely a humble fan of Jo's, borrowing Hermione, Remus, Tonks, and anything else you recognze for a simple fanfic.