Tonks sat at the table in number twelve Grimmauld Place reading the Daily Prophet and grimacing with distaste. The articles that now featured prominently in the newspaper were … well, it was down-right depressing. She knew that that was horribly insensitive to everyone suffering in the war … but what happened to the funnies on page 98? What happened to the limericks and girly articles on the latest cosmetic healing? Something that Tonks could read and then feel very proud that she didn’t need any fancy wand work to look ten years younger.
Another reason for Tonks’ displeasure was tea. She had never liked tea as a child, or coffees, cappuccinos or espressos or any other kind of ‘os’ that her family had forced upon her. They were drinks that adults had. Her mother had often told her that ‘you cannot go round someone’s house and ask for orange squash for the rest of your life’. Well, she was an adult now … and she still thought tea tasted like liquefied shit.
Not that she would know.
Tonks folded up the Prophet with a sigh, wishing that she could be more adult. She wished that she could drink tea and coffee and read continually depressing articles in the paper and feel empathetic. She wished she could, but she couldn’t.
Remus, of course “ God, Tonks, when will you stop bringing him into every discussion with yourself? “ drank tea and coffee and had some kind of second skin when it came to the war. She never caught Remus complaining over the lack of the crossword puzzle or thinly veiled dirty limericks. God he was a boring sod.
But he’s my boring sod.
A pathetic sounding knock resounded around the house. Tonks sighed again as her great-aunt woke up from behind that musty curtain and started hurling abuse.
“DIRTY BEASTS! BEGONE FROM THIS PLACE! HOW DARE YOU BESMIRCH THE HALLS OF MY FOREFATHERS…”
“Oh shut up you great prune,” Tonks muttered as she succeeded in stunning the horrific ‘woman’ in the picture.
Fumbling on the locks of the front door, Tonks hummed to herself. For some strange reason attacking defenseless pieces of artwork lifted her spirits.
Hearing the final click of the last lock, Tonks pulled open the door. The bright, “Wotcher!” trailed off somewhere in the middle.
Tonks had to remind herself to close her mouth.
“Remus…” her voice sounded oddly muffled. “I … I thought you had a key?”
He looked at her with a dazed look in his eyes. He looked terrible. His hair was even more heavily lined with greys than when she had last seen him; his eyes looked pained and lost; and his clothes were shabbier than ever. But the look on his face … it terrified her. He looked dead.
Remus lifted said key, and she noticed that it was shaking. “I couldn’t find the lock,” he mumbled. “What I meant … I couldn’t get it in.”
Tonks took a quick peek outside. It was extremely warm for a late February day. Why was he shivering? Dear Merlin … was he drunk?
“Are you drunk?” Tonks winced after she said this. Verbal diarrhea. Fantastic.
He didn’t even smile. “No.”
They stood there for several long moments, staring at each other.
“Are you coming in?” Tonks asked hesitantly. Remus was making her feel quite awkward, and he was being even more quiet than usual.
As if to fit with Tonks’ thought, Remus stepped inside without a word and walked quickly down the corridor.
Completely overwhelmed, Tonks rushed after him. She was in such a flurry that she even forgot to trip over that monstrosity of an umbrella stand.
She ran after him until she reached the kitchen, to find Remus pacing around it restlessly.
“What do you want?” Tonks asked rather impatiently.
“I want a drink,” he said simply, not even looking her in the eye.
Tonks frowned. “What kind of drink?”
“The kind you drink.”
Smartass.
“One tea, coming up,” Tonks said, trying to sound cheerful. So what if the last time she saw him, she told him she loved him, and he reiterated with ‘I have to go’, and then disappeared for months? So what if at every Order meeting he would completely ignore her, and she would be left feeling worthless and unattractive? (Not a mean feat for a Metamorphmagus) She would act dignified and breezy. Breezy. Exactly.
“No,” he said, stopping her short. “I don’t want tea. Get me some juice, or squash … yeah, I’d like some squash.”
Tonks frowned. Since when did Remus ever drink squash? Next he’d be doing the crossword in the Prophet. If there was a crossword in the Prophet.
“Remus…”
Remus walked to the table, in the exact spot that she had recently vacated, and stared at the wood surface.
Tonks sighed “ not for the first time today “ and set about making squash, trying to forget the fact that her hair had turned brown for him. Or the fact that her Patronus had changed into him, for him. Or the fact that he had never even kissed her. And so she set about making an orange squash.
She set it down in front of him. He didn’t even say ‘thank you’. That’s when she knew that something was really wrong.
“Remus, talk to me,” she said softly, resisting the urge to hold his hand that was still shaking slightly.
“I love you, Nymphadora.”
Whatever she had expected, it wasn’t that.
A smile tried to creep across her lips, but the look on Remus’ face stopped it before it started.
“I’ve tried to stop it,” he continued. His gaze was still on the table. “But I realized that I’m in the middle, and I didn’t even know I had started.” He chuckled lightly and raised his eyes to hers. “Does that make any sense at all?”
Tonks started to nod, then realized that she couldn’t lie, and shook her head instead. She thought that now she could take his hand.
He moved away.
“But we can’t,” Remus said. “I realized that today more than ever. I love you too much to be with you.”
Starting to get a little bit angry, Tonks said, “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Remus got to his feet and started to pace again. Her heart had been elevated and sunk so often in the last ten minutes that it had given up and decided to lodge itself in her throat. It made breathing difficult.
“I killed someone yesterday.”
Tonks gasped. “Oh Remus…”
“I don’t want your pity,” he said in a dead voice. “I need …”
Somehow Tonks knew exactly what he meant. She grabbed her wand from her back pocket and conjured a blanket from nowhere. Knowing that Remus wanted silence now, Tonks wordlessly took his hand and led him up two flights of stairs and into Remus’s old bedroom.
She laid him in the bed, wrapping him in the blanket and then covering them both in the covers. He was still shivering like mad, so she drew him close to her. Even while she was in a state of panic breathlessness, she noticed that they fit perfectly together. Like pieces of a jigsaw. She’d never fit like this with any other piece.
Even if it came from another box.
She brushed back a lock of hair from his face. “What happened?”
Remus took a deep breath. “Greyback told me two weeks ago that he had an assignment for me. We all know what that means in the camp, it means that he wants me to contaminate someone “ probably a child “ on the next full moon. I knew I wouldn’t do it, and I would have told him that. He would have punished me, sure, but not every werewolf in his group would kill. Only a select special few.
“But then he told us that the Dark Lord…”
“Don’t call him that,” Tonks said quietly, while stroking his face. He had almost stopped shivering now.
“Sorry,” he muttered distractedly. “It’s a habit now. Anyway, Voldemort had given Greyback a list of children’s names. It was a full list of everyone that we were to contaminate in the near future, for some reason or other. Greyback wouldn’t let me near it, and if I tried he would have killed me.
“I told Dumbledore about the list. I knew that once I had proved my loyalty to Greyback by biting the child he would confide in me the list. Dumbledore told me that I should do it. He said that sacrificing one would save so many others. He was right. It was horrible, it was heartless “ but it was right. So I did it. I bit him. Only I got carried away. They took him to St. Mungo’s, but he didn’t make it. Tonks, he was ten-years-old…”
Tonks held him tighter and pressed a kiss to his jaw. He took it as a sign to continue.
“This morning I asked Greyback for the list, for research purposes I told him. Only, there wasn’t any list. He made it up because he knew what I’d do. He knew I was a spy all along. He tried to kill me. I Apparated away and …”
“You’re here now,” she whispered, her heart again confused. Was it horrified by what Remus had been through, or was it ecstatic that his mission with the ferals was finally over? So she did the only thing that she could do … she kissed him.
It started hesitant, not knowing if this was insensitive or inappropriate. Then his lips moved against hers, and all thought flew out of the window.
Before Tonks knew what was happening, Remus had coaxed her lips open and he was pressing her into the mattress, kissing her urgently, passionately … desperately.
“I love you,” she moaned against his lips before he captured them again.
She raked her hands through his hair while his hands slipped under her shirt “ moving slowly upwards, caressing soft skin …
“I love you too,” he said, pulling away. “But I murdered someone yesterday. I’m sorry.”
Tonks placed her hands on his chest. “Why can’t it go back to squash, crosswords and the funnies?”
Despite himself, Remus laughed. He laid a hand gently against her cheek. “You do come out with some crazy stuff sometimes, Nymphadora,” he said, smiling slightly. “But then again, I’m not any better.”
“Except you come out with philosophical crap that I can’t understand. I, however, come out with insane crap that no one can understand.”
Unable to stop, Remus leant down and pressed a soft kiss against her bottom lip. Before she knew it, he was gone.
Tonks sighed. She was going to have to get used to coffee and tea again.