Disturbing the Universe Part I
Title: Disturbing the Universe I/II
Pairing/Characters: Remus/Tonks; original character
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 2179
Summary: When it comes to obtaining a marriage licence, Remus and Tonks find it pays to be one step ahead of the law. Set at the end of HBP.
Author's Note: I have a lot of unfinished drabbles and fics, which I'm taking some time out to try and finish. The oldest I found was about Remus and Tonks trying to obtain a marriage licence, and coming up against a Ministry employee in the process: most of it has long since found its way into other stories, but I liked the original idea so here it is re-thought, re-titled and re-written. I hope this works as a stand alone piece, but there seems to be another important birthday tomorrow (no wonder I normally go away on holiday this week;)) and I have part II planned. It may not quite get written in time for posting then but, if not, I'm aiming for Friday. Meanwhile, this is for mrstater, the best of friends to have, and I hope she's having a great birthday. :) The title was inspired by TS Eliot's line, "Do I dare disturb the universe?" and a recent LJ conversation.
Disturbing the Universe
They’re about halfway down the Ministry form when the questions they expect to see are replaced by some they really didn’t. She’d thought she was prepared for everything a dried-up bureaucrat could throw at them, was ready for the insult and innuendo she is already anticipating in advance these days, but this is far more subtle. Even clever, in its way.
Applicants for marriage licence should describe how they first met.
Doubtless the Ministry - and Umbridge, in particular - thinks they might as well see what other names and locations crop up as being associated with Dark creatures and Aurors who have apparently lost all sense of judgement. Besides the ones they already have, of course.
“I don’t quite see the relevance,” Remus says mildly, quill hesitating above the parchment, and Solomon Trimpley smiles without showing any teeth at all, and assures him that all facts required are relevant. That’s why they’re included on the form.
Especially when it comes to you two, is understood at once by the three of them in the tiny, tucked-away room. In the same way that their previously cancelled appointment here had been relevant, along with the one yesterday that her presence hadn’t been required for at all, and which had left Remus with a drawn, tired face, and shadowed eyes that slid past hers as he shrugged it off as nothing whatsoever to worry about.
Certainly nothing worth talking about. And she has kept quiet because whatever vile things have been said, whatever insinuations have been made about a werewolf who dares to marry far above the lowly station which this world has decided is his, she knows that Remus can bear almost anything.
Apart from her losing her temper for his sake.
She takes a breath, and a tight hold of over-strung nerves. There is no law (only increasing talk of it) which forbids a union between a witch and those deemed as something less than part-human. So this thickset little man, with a few wisps of grey hair left curling on his head, may be surrounded on either side by dusty books on every rule and regulation going, but he’s still fighting a losing battle right now. He just hasn’t realised it yet.
“You must know us girls love to talk forever about things like that,” she says, with her cheeriest smile (it helps that inside she’s imagining the results of one of Mad-Eye’s favourite spells. Trimpley would make a nice, if rather bald, ferret). “I hope there’s enough room on the form.”
Remus is looking at her, an eyebrow quirking slightly upwards, and she turns the same, guileless smile on him.
“It’s not as though we’ve any secrets,” she adds, her eyes meeting his and conveying, she hopes, everything she’s not saying. Especially that he’d better not bring up the brainless bimbo act when they get home. She puts a flirty giggle into her voice. “Or have we anything to hide?”
Only the truth. Which they wouldn’t believe, anyway.
“Not that I know of.” Remus’ head ducks down as he studies the form and the waiting box again, but she’s caught the answering glimmer of amusement and she wants to cheer. He’s not about to lose his temper for her sake, either. They’re going to do this, and then they’re going to get what they want out of it.
And they’re going to do it together.
She watches as the quill glides quickly over the parchment. Rests her head against Remus’ arm like an adoring bride-to-be, which enables her to press her cheek and then her mouth into his shoulder until she’s certain she’s not going to smirk at what he’s written.
Applicants for marriage licence should describe how they first met.
At a friend’s house.
It’s hard to hear above the raised voices in the kitchen, there being nothing like a report from Severus for giving the Order conflicting opinions they all feel the need to express at once. It’s also getting increasingly hard to even see in one corner of the room, thanks to Mundungus’ pipe smoke, but Remus, waiting patiently for the volume to subside so he can add a few words of his own, thinks he heard the front door opening a while ago. Although it has been followed by what sounds like a muffled thud, which suggests it might simply have been Kreacher, deliberately breaking something else he knows will annoy Sirius.
Though isn’t tonight the night when Kingsley is bringing along the new recruit?
Footsteps sound along the hallway as if in answer to that thought. Two figures are outlined in the haze of smoke, one of whom appears to hesitate for a minute and bend and rub an ankle. Remus rises to his feet as the only Order member apparently paying the slightest attention, and so he is first to greet Nymphadora Tonks.
He never forgets the moment.
Long afterwards, he remembers the texture of the arm of the chair as he puts his hand on it to pull himself up, the voices and laughter fading into the background, and a purely imaginary vision of himself moving forward with a smile on his face that falters as she steps into focus, and is replaced by an expression he doesn’t even want to imagine. Because he has no idea what’s there.
Nymphadora Tonks looks at him with interest as Kingsley says something. She is a pale and slender girl, pink-cheeked and pink-haired, not very beautiful in the strictest sense of the word, but young and vivid and, above all, genuine and honest. He has no idea how he knows this instantly, or that the meaning of words in their strictest sense doesn’t even begin to apply here any more.
“Call me Remus,” he says, forcing the polite smile back on his face as her hand touches his. It is also pale and slender, but her eyes are very dark and fixed on his.
“Tonks.” She grins.
“Not Nymphadora?”
“No way.” Another grin. “People call me that when they want to annoy me or tease me. It’s really not a good idea.”
“I see,” he says, and instantly wants to tease her.
Kingsley’s saying something else, but Remus is only conscious of the girl in front of him and the feeling that the world has somehow shifted like the uneven flagstones beneath his feet. It’s only later, in fact several weeks later, that he realises he’s given up his customary position as an observer to other lives and has stepped into his own once more.
This is something he’d never thought he’d do again, and now he can't believe he ever settled for anything less.
It’s far too easy to spend time with her, to talk to her, and to listen to her. She makes him laugh with her capacity to find humour even at the most serious of times - something he’s always done himself - and her ability to poke fun at herself. And soon it’s also far too easy to start to anticipate his time with her, when it’s just them, and he can forget they’re two soldiers on the front line of a war he’s not sure they can even win and believe they’re just-
What, exactly?
He tells himself it’s only to be expected; a thirty-something man, whose knowledge of women and sex has always been limited by fear and determination and lack of opportunity, is probably ripe for something like this. It’s quite pathetic, really, and grossly unfair to her. So he takes to avoiding her, which doesn’t help because she’s intelligent and she soon realises. Worst of all, it brings home to him how very much he misses her.
It’s not just an attractive young woman and the pull of sex, then. Even though he doesn’t think it ever was, right from the start. He could have coped with that.
“What’s wrong?” she asks him bluntly, straight out, one day.
“Nothing’s wrong.” He finds a reassuring smile and looks round Grimmauld’s dreary version of a drawing room, searching for an excuse to leave. “Everything’s fine. How are you, Tonks?”
“Me? Oh, I’m fine, too. Just dandy, in fact. I’ve had a real good day at work, the highlight being some idiot who’d left his cloak behind on the Knight Bus and wanted an Auror, no less, to personally go and get it for him. Now I’ve come round here to find Sirius half-drunk already as he wanders around like a guest in his own house, Molly nagging him about something that doesn’t even matter, and Arthur pretending he’s somewhere else entirely. When it’s like that this whole place just - just saps all your energy and makes you feel like you’re sealed up inside a tomb. And when I look for the one person who always makes it bearable, and makes me and everyone else feel that things aren’t really half-bad, I find him buried away up here.” She takes a deep breath. “It’s a good job I’m not paranoid, otherwise I might thinking you were hiding. I might even think it was from me.”
Her eyes are very fierce. Remus makes himself say, casually, “Did you retrieve the cloak?”
“In a way. Sent an owl to Stan Shunpike and told him to drop it off at the lost property depot next time they were in the remotest part of Scotland. You know if you really can’t stand the sight of me, it would be a whole lot easier, and I’d probably get over it a whole lot quicker, if you just came right out and said it.”
Despite himself, he grins. Impossible to pretend anything with her. The trouble is he doesn’t want to.
“You know that’s not it, Tonks.”
“What is it, then?”
He sighs. “You’re very young-”
“And I’m clever, and I’m right here listening to you, and I just want the truth. So don’t even bother with the patronising bit.”
“I’ve never once patronised you,” he says, stung, and the colour rises in her face.
“No, you haven’t,” she whispers. “Sorry.”
She’s come very close to him in her agitation and her breath touches his face, gentle as a breeze. She can’t hide the note of uncertainty in her voice, the fear of rejection. Remus nearly kisses her.
He comes so near to it that it’s only disbelief and the long-held habit of control which combine to jerk him back with an almost physical force.
She’s still staring at him, and he forces the emotion back. Reins it all in and reminds himself of the impressive list of reasons why this can never work. Ignores the traitorous voice inside that says but you’ve never even tried…
“Tonks, the life I lead is not one I could ask anyone I cared for to share.” Now the tightness is in his throat and she’ll hear it, but he makes himself say it all the same. “You, least of all.”
“Right.” He doesn’t know what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t her nodding in apparent agreement. He’s more or less bared his soul to her in four words and now she’s nodding?
“Does that matter?” she asks.
“What?” He tries not to sound bitter as well as sarcastic as he adds, “I would assume most people would think it’s a fair point, well worth considering and running a mile from.”
Most sane people always had. Till it came to her. And she’s still bloody nodding.
“Only it seems to me that all that matters is Harry and You-Know-Who. Winning this war. Getting a pardon for Sirius. The big stuff like that. Making sure all this never happens again. It’s not exactly going to bother the universe that much if you ask me out now, is it?”
He can feel himself blink at her.
“I mean-” Incredibly, she seems to be smiling. At him. “It might be a disaster. One date and I might never want to see you again. And I know you think I’m wilfully ignoring the obvious, Remus, and I do get it but… I just don’t care that much about it right now.”
He tries to say that she should. She will. One day, she’ll care so much and she’ll hate him for it. That she isn’t young in years so much as innocently young in her thinking that people will see the bigger picture when it comes to prejudice. That the life and actions of one werewolf doesn’t count for much in the grand scheme of things.
They shouldn’t. Except that to some they do.
But now all he can see is that smile, all he can feel is the urge to take her in his arms, and all he can hear is that voice saying, well, she’s disturbed your world all right … and aren’t you thankful for it?
“Are we going to argue some more?” she asks. “Because I’ve had a long day and we can always do it sitting down.”
There is one final moment when he can still draw back.
“No, we’re not,” he says, and as soon as he touches her the moment is gone for ever.
Pairing/Characters: Remus/Tonks; original character
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 2179
Summary: When it comes to obtaining a marriage licence, Remus and Tonks find it pays to be one step ahead of the law. Set at the end of HBP.
Author's Note: I have a lot of unfinished drabbles and fics, which I'm taking some time out to try and finish. The oldest I found was about Remus and Tonks trying to obtain a marriage licence, and coming up against a Ministry employee in the process: most of it has long since found its way into other stories, but I liked the original idea so here it is re-thought, re-titled and re-written. I hope this works as a stand alone piece, but there seems to be another important birthday tomorrow (no wonder I normally go away on holiday this week;)) and I have part II planned. It may not quite get written in time for posting then but, if not, I'm aiming for Friday. Meanwhile, this is for mrstater, the best of friends to have, and I hope she's having a great birthday. :) The title was inspired by TS Eliot's line, "Do I dare disturb the universe?" and a recent LJ conversation.
Disturbing the Universe
They’re about halfway down the Ministry form when the questions they expect to see are replaced by some they really didn’t. She’d thought she was prepared for everything a dried-up bureaucrat could throw at them, was ready for the insult and innuendo she is already anticipating in advance these days, but this is far more subtle. Even clever, in its way.
Applicants for marriage licence should describe how they first met.
Doubtless the Ministry - and Umbridge, in particular - thinks they might as well see what other names and locations crop up as being associated with Dark creatures and Aurors who have apparently lost all sense of judgement. Besides the ones they already have, of course.
“I don’t quite see the relevance,” Remus says mildly, quill hesitating above the parchment, and Solomon Trimpley smiles without showing any teeth at all, and assures him that all facts required are relevant. That’s why they’re included on the form.
Especially when it comes to you two, is understood at once by the three of them in the tiny, tucked-away room. In the same way that their previously cancelled appointment here had been relevant, along with the one yesterday that her presence hadn’t been required for at all, and which had left Remus with a drawn, tired face, and shadowed eyes that slid past hers as he shrugged it off as nothing whatsoever to worry about.
Certainly nothing worth talking about. And she has kept quiet because whatever vile things have been said, whatever insinuations have been made about a werewolf who dares to marry far above the lowly station which this world has decided is his, she knows that Remus can bear almost anything.
Apart from her losing her temper for his sake.
She takes a breath, and a tight hold of over-strung nerves. There is no law (only increasing talk of it) which forbids a union between a witch and those deemed as something less than part-human. So this thickset little man, with a few wisps of grey hair left curling on his head, may be surrounded on either side by dusty books on every rule and regulation going, but he’s still fighting a losing battle right now. He just hasn’t realised it yet.
“You must know us girls love to talk forever about things like that,” she says, with her cheeriest smile (it helps that inside she’s imagining the results of one of Mad-Eye’s favourite spells. Trimpley would make a nice, if rather bald, ferret). “I hope there’s enough room on the form.”
Remus is looking at her, an eyebrow quirking slightly upwards, and she turns the same, guileless smile on him.
“It’s not as though we’ve any secrets,” she adds, her eyes meeting his and conveying, she hopes, everything she’s not saying. Especially that he’d better not bring up the brainless bimbo act when they get home. She puts a flirty giggle into her voice. “Or have we anything to hide?”
Only the truth. Which they wouldn’t believe, anyway.
“Not that I know of.” Remus’ head ducks down as he studies the form and the waiting box again, but she’s caught the answering glimmer of amusement and she wants to cheer. He’s not about to lose his temper for her sake, either. They’re going to do this, and then they’re going to get what they want out of it.
And they’re going to do it together.
She watches as the quill glides quickly over the parchment. Rests her head against Remus’ arm like an adoring bride-to-be, which enables her to press her cheek and then her mouth into his shoulder until she’s certain she’s not going to smirk at what he’s written.
Applicants for marriage licence should describe how they first met.
At a friend’s house.
It’s hard to hear above the raised voices in the kitchen, there being nothing like a report from Severus for giving the Order conflicting opinions they all feel the need to express at once. It’s also getting increasingly hard to even see in one corner of the room, thanks to Mundungus’ pipe smoke, but Remus, waiting patiently for the volume to subside so he can add a few words of his own, thinks he heard the front door opening a while ago. Although it has been followed by what sounds like a muffled thud, which suggests it might simply have been Kreacher, deliberately breaking something else he knows will annoy Sirius.
Though isn’t tonight the night when Kingsley is bringing along the new recruit?
Footsteps sound along the hallway as if in answer to that thought. Two figures are outlined in the haze of smoke, one of whom appears to hesitate for a minute and bend and rub an ankle. Remus rises to his feet as the only Order member apparently paying the slightest attention, and so he is first to greet Nymphadora Tonks.
He never forgets the moment.
Long afterwards, he remembers the texture of the arm of the chair as he puts his hand on it to pull himself up, the voices and laughter fading into the background, and a purely imaginary vision of himself moving forward with a smile on his face that falters as she steps into focus, and is replaced by an expression he doesn’t even want to imagine. Because he has no idea what’s there.
Nymphadora Tonks looks at him with interest as Kingsley says something. She is a pale and slender girl, pink-cheeked and pink-haired, not very beautiful in the strictest sense of the word, but young and vivid and, above all, genuine and honest. He has no idea how he knows this instantly, or that the meaning of words in their strictest sense doesn’t even begin to apply here any more.
“Call me Remus,” he says, forcing the polite smile back on his face as her hand touches his. It is also pale and slender, but her eyes are very dark and fixed on his.
“Tonks.” She grins.
“Not Nymphadora?”
“No way.” Another grin. “People call me that when they want to annoy me or tease me. It’s really not a good idea.”
“I see,” he says, and instantly wants to tease her.
Kingsley’s saying something else, but Remus is only conscious of the girl in front of him and the feeling that the world has somehow shifted like the uneven flagstones beneath his feet. It’s only later, in fact several weeks later, that he realises he’s given up his customary position as an observer to other lives and has stepped into his own once more.
This is something he’d never thought he’d do again, and now he can't believe he ever settled for anything less.
It’s far too easy to spend time with her, to talk to her, and to listen to her. She makes him laugh with her capacity to find humour even at the most serious of times - something he’s always done himself - and her ability to poke fun at herself. And soon it’s also far too easy to start to anticipate his time with her, when it’s just them, and he can forget they’re two soldiers on the front line of a war he’s not sure they can even win and believe they’re just-
What, exactly?
He tells himself it’s only to be expected; a thirty-something man, whose knowledge of women and sex has always been limited by fear and determination and lack of opportunity, is probably ripe for something like this. It’s quite pathetic, really, and grossly unfair to her. So he takes to avoiding her, which doesn’t help because she’s intelligent and she soon realises. Worst of all, it brings home to him how very much he misses her.
It’s not just an attractive young woman and the pull of sex, then. Even though he doesn’t think it ever was, right from the start. He could have coped with that.
“What’s wrong?” she asks him bluntly, straight out, one day.
“Nothing’s wrong.” He finds a reassuring smile and looks round Grimmauld’s dreary version of a drawing room, searching for an excuse to leave. “Everything’s fine. How are you, Tonks?”
“Me? Oh, I’m fine, too. Just dandy, in fact. I’ve had a real good day at work, the highlight being some idiot who’d left his cloak behind on the Knight Bus and wanted an Auror, no less, to personally go and get it for him. Now I’ve come round here to find Sirius half-drunk already as he wanders around like a guest in his own house, Molly nagging him about something that doesn’t even matter, and Arthur pretending he’s somewhere else entirely. When it’s like that this whole place just - just saps all your energy and makes you feel like you’re sealed up inside a tomb. And when I look for the one person who always makes it bearable, and makes me and everyone else feel that things aren’t really half-bad, I find him buried away up here.” She takes a deep breath. “It’s a good job I’m not paranoid, otherwise I might thinking you were hiding. I might even think it was from me.”
Her eyes are very fierce. Remus makes himself say, casually, “Did you retrieve the cloak?”
“In a way. Sent an owl to Stan Shunpike and told him to drop it off at the lost property depot next time they were in the remotest part of Scotland. You know if you really can’t stand the sight of me, it would be a whole lot easier, and I’d probably get over it a whole lot quicker, if you just came right out and said it.”
Despite himself, he grins. Impossible to pretend anything with her. The trouble is he doesn’t want to.
“You know that’s not it, Tonks.”
“What is it, then?”
He sighs. “You’re very young-”
“And I’m clever, and I’m right here listening to you, and I just want the truth. So don’t even bother with the patronising bit.”
“I’ve never once patronised you,” he says, stung, and the colour rises in her face.
“No, you haven’t,” she whispers. “Sorry.”
She’s come very close to him in her agitation and her breath touches his face, gentle as a breeze. She can’t hide the note of uncertainty in her voice, the fear of rejection. Remus nearly kisses her.
He comes so near to it that it’s only disbelief and the long-held habit of control which combine to jerk him back with an almost physical force.
She’s still staring at him, and he forces the emotion back. Reins it all in and reminds himself of the impressive list of reasons why this can never work. Ignores the traitorous voice inside that says but you’ve never even tried…
“Tonks, the life I lead is not one I could ask anyone I cared for to share.” Now the tightness is in his throat and she’ll hear it, but he makes himself say it all the same. “You, least of all.”
“Right.” He doesn’t know what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t her nodding in apparent agreement. He’s more or less bared his soul to her in four words and now she’s nodding?
“Does that matter?” she asks.
“What?” He tries not to sound bitter as well as sarcastic as he adds, “I would assume most people would think it’s a fair point, well worth considering and running a mile from.”
Most sane people always had. Till it came to her. And she’s still bloody nodding.
“Only it seems to me that all that matters is Harry and You-Know-Who. Winning this war. Getting a pardon for Sirius. The big stuff like that. Making sure all this never happens again. It’s not exactly going to bother the universe that much if you ask me out now, is it?”
He can feel himself blink at her.
“I mean-” Incredibly, she seems to be smiling. At him. “It might be a disaster. One date and I might never want to see you again. And I know you think I’m wilfully ignoring the obvious, Remus, and I do get it but… I just don’t care that much about it right now.”
He tries to say that she should. She will. One day, she’ll care so much and she’ll hate him for it. That she isn’t young in years so much as innocently young in her thinking that people will see the bigger picture when it comes to prejudice. That the life and actions of one werewolf doesn’t count for much in the grand scheme of things.
They shouldn’t. Except that to some they do.
But now all he can see is that smile, all he can feel is the urge to take her in his arms, and all he can hear is that voice saying, well, she’s disturbed your world all right … and aren’t you thankful for it?
“Are we going to argue some more?” she asks. “Because I’ve had a long day and we can always do it sitting down.”
There is one final moment when he can still draw back.
“No, we’re not,” he says, and as soon as he touches her the moment is gone for ever.