Fic: For Better or Worse: Prologue - Red Sky in the Morning
Title: For Better or Worse
Chapter: Prologue - Red Sky in the Morning
Rating/Warnings: PG (mild language) Rating may alter between chapters.
Word Count: 3814
Summary: Remus and Tonks are soon to be Mr and Mrs Lupin, but marriage has never been simple, especially when there’s a war on.
Author’s Notes: It feels so nice to be posting some fic! This story has been simmering in the back of my mind since the publication of DH, and last summer some of it even got written. I've now finally completed the prologue, and plan to post a chapter a month over the summer. So far I seem to be mostly on schedule!
Huge thanks should go to gilpin25 for her marvelous beta work and for putting up with my procrastination and indecision. Thank you. :)
June 16th 1997, 3.30am, Hogwarts
She finds him in the grounds, in the end.
He’s sat leaning against a tree, gazing out over the lake in the grey pre-dawn light. It’s been a long night for both of them; battling Death Eaters is hard work at the best of times, as is cleaning up afterwards, and watching a friend nearly bleed to death in front of you. But betrayal, loss and grief hit even harder. One event, one small twist of fate, has turned their worlds upside down; in one night, their hopes of winning this war have been all but demolished.
She’s tired, achingly, crushingly tired, but there’s no way she can leave tonight without speaking to Remus and gaining some kind of resolution to… whatever it is that’s going on between them. It’s a smaller problem than how they’re going to win the war, but not necessarily easier to solve.
She sits down next to him on the grass. “I’m sorry for making a scene earlier,” she says. “You didn’t need to be put on the spot like that.”
“No,” he says, “don’t apologise. It needed to be said.”
He’s right, but to agree would be to make her apology seem insincere, so she just nods, and than says, “A lot of things need to be said. We need to discuss this properly, not just say the same things over again without listening to each other.”
“Indeed.” Remus doesn’t say any more though, merely looks at his knees - clearly it’s Tonks who will need to start the discussion.
“I really don’t care you know,” she says, unsure of where else to begin. “It’s not just something I say without thinking about it properly. I know you think the werewolf thing makes you repulsive, but to me and anyone else with half a brain and a smidgen of conscience, it’s no worse than if you were blind, or deaf, or missing an arm or a leg. Merlin, it matters less - deafness lasts all year round, the full moon only happens once a month.”
Remus remains silent for a moment, and Tonks wonders if he’s ever going to speak, or whether she’s going to be conducting this conversation with herself. But perhaps his silence is a good sign. Perhaps he’s actually thinking about what she’s saying, rather than reflexively dismissing it, as he has done until now.
“It isn’t the same though,” he says quietly, almost inaudibly. “People with one leg are no threat.” She stifles the urge to make a joke about Mad-Eye; this isn’t the moment, and this truce they seem to have is too precious to be spoiled by some flippant remark. “They’re not feared,” Remus continues. “It isn’t part of their very nature to kill and destroy. But that is exactly the case with werewolves; we and all we associate with are loathed and feared by society.”
“By an ignorant few!”
“No, Tonks. By society.” His voice is growing a little louder now, a little more forceful. “The law discriminates against us. The attitudes of the press, and juries, and politicians, and the wizard on the street are solidly against my kind and those who associate with us.” He sighs. “I could never inflict that on you. I could never allow you to inflict it upon yourself. I l-” He swallows, takes a deep breath, clearly struggling to keep his composure, that tight control over his emotions that he prides himself on. “I care about you too much to allow that to happen.”
It is her turn to be silent now. There is a lot to digest from his speech: the way he includes himself in his description of animals that maim and kill, the way he no longer distinguishes between man and beast, as she knows he once did. But she must also take in the terrible truth of what he says. That the law is intolerant of werewolves, that it’s getting worse by the month, that the Prophet’s scaremongering has made the average person more ignorant, not less, and that the likes of Umbridge are unlikely to make much distinction between werewolves like Greyback, who delight in violence and werewolves like Remus, whose biggest fear is hurting someone under the full moon. (And loathe as she is to admit it, she knows that those who are close to werewolves are likely to incur similar prejudice.)
But amongst this catalogue of misery, Tonks senses some hope, some headway in her arguments, because apart from anything else, she’s almost certain he almost said he loved her.
“I don’t care what people think of me, Remus. If people think all werewolves are like Fenrir Greyback, if they think that anyone who associates with werewolves is somehow dangerous, then they’re idiots, and their good opinion doesn’t matter to me.”
“They’re very powerful idiots, Tonks.” He’s gone back to his quiet voice now, and she isn’t sure whether that’s a good or a bad sign.
“So’s Voldemort,” she says, a hint of frustration creeping into her voice. “So are the Malfoys and a good percentage of the other Death Eaters. Does that mean we should live our lives according to their twisted ideals? I’m sorry, but I rather thought that it was those kinds of attitudes we were fighting against.”
He sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. She’s obviously won that little argument, because he changes tack. “I could never offer you anything. I can barely support myself, let alone-“ he cuts himself off again. “Let alone anyone else.”
“Oh for Merlin’s sake!” She’s irritated, no, angry now. Angry that he can’t bring himself to say the things she so needs him to say, angry at the implications of what he’s just said, angry at him and his stupid, stupid pride. “Do you really think I care about that? That what I want is to be looked after by some alpha male while I sit at home playing house? If that’s what you really think, and I’m not convinced you do, then you don’t know me at all.”
“No. No, of course I don’t think that. It isn’t what I meant.” He looks at her, and even in the almost-darkness she can see the truth in his eyes. “What I mean is…” he pauses. “You’ve got to see that we would never have much,” he says. “Poverty’s a miserable thing. You’d end up resenting me because of the sacrifices we’d have to make and I couldn’t bear that.”
Words like ‘marriage’ and ‘children’ hang unspoken in the air between them. For them it’s never been a casual fling. Never a ‘lets-just-see-where-this-goes’ kind of relationship. Right from the start it’s been serious, and they’ve always known it. They’re in deep or not at all.
She sighs and swallows some of her anger, but her frustration is still evident in her voice. “I’ve got a good salary. I can support two of us.” And maybe more, eventually, she adds silently. “Anyway, who knows what will happen? Things might be better after the war.”
“They might be worse.”
“We might die tomorrow,” she shoots back. “Who knows? Things are so uncertain, we should live as much as we can, while we can.”
She can see by his face that he’s running out of logical arguments, that she’s gone some way to convincing him.
He shakes his head, looking at his knees again. “You deserve so much better than me.”
“Stop putting me on a pedestal, Remus,” she says. There’s something rather un-nerving about the way he seems to think she’s some example of perfection; flattering as it is, it’s a lot to live up to, and she worries what will happen when he finally sees her for her bog-standard, ordinary self. “I’m not some celestial being to be worshipped. And you’re not some creature in the dirt too lowly to set eyes on me.”
He shakes his head as if to say that she doesn’t understand, she’s missed the point. “I’ve squandered so many opportunities,” he says, “I’ve repaid everyone who’s trusted me with deception. My recklessness has put countless people in danger, made countless werewolves lives infinitely more difficult and given Voldemort a dangerous and powerful weapon.”
Tonks is almost speechless. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Dumbledore. He let me come to school, something no other headmaster would have done, and I repaid him by inciting my friends to break the law, and by putting the entire school and village in danger every full moon. He gave me a job, and I repaid him with more of the same. I never told him Sirius was an Animagus, because I was too cowardly to admit I’d been deceiving him for years. I forgot to take the Wolfsbane and I nearly killed Harry, put everyone in danger. Even after all those years, I never learnt my lesson. And because of that night, and the revelation about me, those employment laws were brought in, and no werewolf has been able to get any kind of a job ever since. I’ve plunged them all into even greater depths of misery, and handed Voldemort an army of disillusioned werewolves on a plate.”
It dawns on her that this is what it’s all been about. It’s not that he really believes a relationship between them couldn’t work out, or would be unfair on her. Not entirely, anyway. It’s that he really doesn’t believe he deserves to be happy.
“None of that is your fault!” She reaches out to touch him, to hold him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pressing his head against her neck, hoping to bring some comfort to this tortured man. There are tears in her eyes, and no wonder, after such a heartbreaking speech. “The employment laws would have happened anyway with a cow like Umbridge in the Ministry,” she says, “and any allies that the Death Eaters gain because of them are her fault, and Greyback’s, and Voldemort’s, and their own. Not yours. Your friends became Animagi of their own free will, and knowing Sirius, and knowing Harry and how like his father everyone says he is, I don’t reckon you could have stopped them. And yes, maybe you were all a little stupid, but you don’t have the monopoly on teenage stupidity, not by a long shot.” She finally pauses for breath, running through his list of supposed crimes in her head to see if she’s covered them all. “As for Dumbledore,” she continues, speaking more quietly now, sitting back a little and moving her hands to his face and looking into his eyes, “oh Remus, I can’t believe you don’t know how much he thought of you. How much he respected you. Ask anyone in the Order; it was plain as day.”
“But -“
“No buts.” She moves her hands from his face to his chest. “You expect too much of yourself. Everyone makes mistakes, it’s what makes us human, and there’s no reason for you to punish yourself just because you’re less than perfect.”
He’s silent for a moment, searching for the right words, clearly very moved by her outburst. “I- Thank you. Just- Thank you,” he says, tears in his eyes. “I want so much to give in and say yes to you-“
“Then do it!”
“-but,” he runs a hand over his face, clearly wrestling with his thoughts, “Oh, this is going to sound so ungrateful, but… it’s not enough for you to not care, I need you to understand.” Tonks sits back, letting go of him entirely and feeling as if she’s been slapped in the face; it’s one thing to be told that not caring is foolish, but to be told that it’s inadequate, that her unconditional love is not enough… It stings like nothing he’s ever uttered before. He must see the hurt and confusion writ across her face though, because he continues quickly, “No, no,” he says, trying to reassure her. “What I mean is, I need you to understand how dangerous I am at the full moon, and to understand that I have to take steps to keep people safe. I really couldn’t bear for something to happen to you because we were careless.”
“I understand that, of course I do,” she says, relief flooding through her; this is something she can certainly give him, something she already does comprehend. “Believe me, I’ve come face to face with transformed werewolves at work, and I have no desire to repeat the experience, if I can help it. But we can be careful. You can lock yourself away and I can brew you Wolfsbane, there shouldn’t be a problem, so long as we’re sensible.”
She sees the final barriers dissolve behind his eyes, and can barely believe that she might possibly, finally have convinced him that this, that they, might be feasible. Can hardly believe that she might have allayed his fears, soothed his insecurities, shown him that he deserves to be happy as much as any other person. She’s longed for this moment for so long and yet never quite dared to believe it might happen. He gazes at her, his eyes full of emotion, full of love. She could really do with the reassurance of him saying the words out loud, but suspects that would be too much to ask at this early stage, and she will have to wait. After all, enormous progress has been made tonight and to wish for more seems rather greedy.
He continues to look at her, directly, honestly and straight into her eyes, and the moment it takes feels like an hour. He licks his lips, reaches out to brush a strand of hair from her face in a strangely intimate and tender gesture, and leans forward to press his lips softly against hers. She takes his bottom lip between hers, trying not to be too forceful or eager, afraid of pushing him too far and erasing all their recent progress. She has nothing to fear though, since he deepens the kiss himself, taking her face in his hands and allowing his tongue to slip into her partially open mouth in between his gentle assaults on her lips. She slides her hands up to rest on his neck, a little of her anxiety leaving her now, and they continue in this slow, tender manner for what feels like forever.
Eventually they pause, and gaze once more into each other’s eyes, foreheads pressed together. Tonks smiles. “Looks like I’ve won that argument then,” she says.
Remus gives a wry grin in return. “So it would seem,” he says, and captures her lips with his once more.
* * * *
It’s little more than half an hour later, when the sun is just beginning to appear above the horizon, that she begins to notice how cold she is. It has seeped into her bones from the damp ground, chilling her through, and the thought of her warm bed and several hours sleep is very appealing indeed. She’s not ready to say goodbye to Remus just yet though, not when the small resolutions they’ve found tonight (this morning really, she supposes) are so fragile. She needs the reassurance of having him close.
“Merlin, I’m freezing,” she says. “Fancy a cup of tea?”
They walk through Hogsmeade as the sun rises, the sky pink and lilac and orange in the dawn. There was a time when she would have made a game of matching the colours with her hair, but not any more. These days she’s lucky if she can manage even a sombre black or an unexceptional dark blonde. This long, hard year has worn the colour out of her, but she has hope now that at least some of it might return, in spite of the difficulties they now face.
She lets him into her little attic high above the bookshop, hanging her cloak on the hook by the door and flicking her wand at the kettle.
“Do you still have your flat?” he asks, referring presumably, to the rather larger property she rents in London. He hangs his own cloak next to hers and gazes around the room, taking it all in.
“Yeah,” she says, reaching for the teabags, “I’d already signed the contract for another year when I was transferred up here. This one’s Ministry subsidised though, so it wasn’t a problem. They need me to be on the spot in case anything happens.” It’s a shock to realise how little he knows about her life now, and how little she knows about his. This year, the few times they’ve seen each other, they’ve been preoccupied with other things. “I go down once in a while,” she continues, “when I’ve got time off, and I’ve been letting Kingsley stay there during the week.” Remus looks puzzled. “It means he can get the bus to Downing Street,” she explains, “rather than risk Apparating. Plus, I get someone to do my housework for me.” She grins and glances around. “Pity I don’t have anyone to do that here.”
It occurs to her that she really ought to have thought about the state of the place before she asked him up. She’s not had much time to spare for cleaning recently, so the place is a bit dusty and the floor could do with a sweeping charm, but it’s not too bad, considering. There are a few sets of robes slung over the back of the settee, several mugs and a couple of weeks worth of newspapers on the coffee table and (oh Merlin) a pile of clean knickers on top of the chest of drawers waiting to be put away.
It’s probably not worth worrying about though, she decides, since Remus doesn’t seem to have noticed, and in any case, is far from tidy himself. Tonks knows from seeing his room at Grimmauld Place that like her he’s a great believer in piles; piles of clothes, piles of papers and, somewhat oddly, piles of coat hangers always littered his bedroom there.
She finishes making the tea and hands him a mug, moves the robes so he can sit down, kicks off her shoes and joins him. They sit with their bodies turned towards each other, he with his elbow on the back of the sofa and his head against his hand, her sitting sideways with her back against the armrest and her cheek against the cushions. They talk of refreshingly inconsequential things, sip their tea and nibble on the squares of Honeydukes chocolate that she found in the back of the cupboard, until he reaches out and fingers a lock of her mousey brown hair.
“I miss the pink,” he says.
Tonks gives him a wistful half-smile. “Me too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, it’s not your fault.”
“Really?”
“Really. It’s the eighteen hour shifts and the deaths and the lack of sleep and the Ministry being useless and all the other crap.” And worrying about you, she adds in her head, and wondering if I read the signals all wrong, and if I’ll ever see you alive again. “The same thing happened to me during my NEWTs,” she continues. “I worked myself into the ground to make sure I got the marks I needed, and I lost my morphing. It came straight back once it was all over and I’d had a rest.”
She’s misleading him, pretending that it’s all because of stress and exhaustion, that he has nothing to blame himself for. It’s partly true, too, she is stressed and exhausted, and these things do affect her ability to morph. What she’s not saying is that it would all have been a lot easier if she could have relied on him, if she could have seen him between his visits to the werewolves without their conversations opening up wounds old and new, because when he pushed her away last summer, she lost more than a potential lover; she lost her best friend.
She doesn’t tell him any of this, because she’s not sure how he’d take it. There’s a risk that, rather than persuading him of how important he is to her, such information would drive him away again through guilt and fear. It’s a risk she’s not prepared to take, so she switches the conversation back to pleasant trivialities and tells herself that it doesn’t really matter anyway, as long as he’s here, as long as he stays
* * * *
Remus gazes at the sleeping woman in the bed beside him, wide awake despite his tiredness. She looks so beautiful, all the care and worry smoothed from her face by slumber. Her mere presence is comforting, just having her close makes him feel a strange mixture of safe and deliriously happy. His heart is almost singing with the joy of it. How did he ever believe he could manage without her? How did he ever manage without her?
She’s so fierce in his defence, so sure that they can survive all the hardships his condition will impose on their relationship, and it’s not that he doesn’t agree, exactly, but even if she never does end up resenting him for the sacrifices she’ll have to make, he’s still not sure if it’s fair to ask her to make them. He wonders too about the reasons behind her inability to morph. Is it really only because of overwork? Or has his treatment of her over the past year made some contribution? In a perverse way, he almost hopes the latter is true, because in that case, there’s a chance that her skills might return now that the situation between them is to some extent resolved. What’s more, as much as he hates to admit it, hates what it implies about him, and hates himself for thinking it at all, he likes what the second possibility suggests about her feelings for him.
Pushing those unpleasant thoughts away, Remus turns his mind to other, more pleasant aspects of this morning. Sitting by the lake, he poured out his deepest worries to her, his darkest secrets, and she responded, not with the horror that he expected, but with acceptance. And not only acceptance, but reassurance that what he had perceived as terrible deeds were not so very awful after all. He feels liberated, as if a weight has lifted from his shoulders; the simple knowledge that she loves him despite his flaws uplifts him in a way that nothing else ever has.
And she’s right when she says that they shouldn’t let prejudice rule their lives. It’s something he’s been guilty of more than once, but what are they fighting against, if not prejudice? What better reason does he need to allow himself to be happy?
With these comforting, joyful thoughts, Remus feels sleep overcome him, and before he knows it, he is dead to the world.
Chapter: Prologue - Red Sky in the Morning
Rating/Warnings: PG (mild language) Rating may alter between chapters.
Word Count: 3814
Summary: Remus and Tonks are soon to be Mr and Mrs Lupin, but marriage has never been simple, especially when there’s a war on.
Author’s Notes: It feels so nice to be posting some fic! This story has been simmering in the back of my mind since the publication of DH, and last summer some of it even got written. I've now finally completed the prologue, and plan to post a chapter a month over the summer. So far I seem to be mostly on schedule!
Huge thanks should go to gilpin25 for her marvelous beta work and for putting up with my procrastination and indecision. Thank you. :)
June 16th 1997, 3.30am, Hogwarts
She finds him in the grounds, in the end.
He’s sat leaning against a tree, gazing out over the lake in the grey pre-dawn light. It’s been a long night for both of them; battling Death Eaters is hard work at the best of times, as is cleaning up afterwards, and watching a friend nearly bleed to death in front of you. But betrayal, loss and grief hit even harder. One event, one small twist of fate, has turned their worlds upside down; in one night, their hopes of winning this war have been all but demolished.
She’s tired, achingly, crushingly tired, but there’s no way she can leave tonight without speaking to Remus and gaining some kind of resolution to… whatever it is that’s going on between them. It’s a smaller problem than how they’re going to win the war, but not necessarily easier to solve.
She sits down next to him on the grass. “I’m sorry for making a scene earlier,” she says. “You didn’t need to be put on the spot like that.”
“No,” he says, “don’t apologise. It needed to be said.”
He’s right, but to agree would be to make her apology seem insincere, so she just nods, and than says, “A lot of things need to be said. We need to discuss this properly, not just say the same things over again without listening to each other.”
“Indeed.” Remus doesn’t say any more though, merely looks at his knees - clearly it’s Tonks who will need to start the discussion.
“I really don’t care you know,” she says, unsure of where else to begin. “It’s not just something I say without thinking about it properly. I know you think the werewolf thing makes you repulsive, but to me and anyone else with half a brain and a smidgen of conscience, it’s no worse than if you were blind, or deaf, or missing an arm or a leg. Merlin, it matters less - deafness lasts all year round, the full moon only happens once a month.”
Remus remains silent for a moment, and Tonks wonders if he’s ever going to speak, or whether she’s going to be conducting this conversation with herself. But perhaps his silence is a good sign. Perhaps he’s actually thinking about what she’s saying, rather than reflexively dismissing it, as he has done until now.
“It isn’t the same though,” he says quietly, almost inaudibly. “People with one leg are no threat.” She stifles the urge to make a joke about Mad-Eye; this isn’t the moment, and this truce they seem to have is too precious to be spoiled by some flippant remark. “They’re not feared,” Remus continues. “It isn’t part of their very nature to kill and destroy. But that is exactly the case with werewolves; we and all we associate with are loathed and feared by society.”
“By an ignorant few!”
“No, Tonks. By society.” His voice is growing a little louder now, a little more forceful. “The law discriminates against us. The attitudes of the press, and juries, and politicians, and the wizard on the street are solidly against my kind and those who associate with us.” He sighs. “I could never inflict that on you. I could never allow you to inflict it upon yourself. I l-” He swallows, takes a deep breath, clearly struggling to keep his composure, that tight control over his emotions that he prides himself on. “I care about you too much to allow that to happen.”
It is her turn to be silent now. There is a lot to digest from his speech: the way he includes himself in his description of animals that maim and kill, the way he no longer distinguishes between man and beast, as she knows he once did. But she must also take in the terrible truth of what he says. That the law is intolerant of werewolves, that it’s getting worse by the month, that the Prophet’s scaremongering has made the average person more ignorant, not less, and that the likes of Umbridge are unlikely to make much distinction between werewolves like Greyback, who delight in violence and werewolves like Remus, whose biggest fear is hurting someone under the full moon. (And loathe as she is to admit it, she knows that those who are close to werewolves are likely to incur similar prejudice.)
But amongst this catalogue of misery, Tonks senses some hope, some headway in her arguments, because apart from anything else, she’s almost certain he almost said he loved her.
“I don’t care what people think of me, Remus. If people think all werewolves are like Fenrir Greyback, if they think that anyone who associates with werewolves is somehow dangerous, then they’re idiots, and their good opinion doesn’t matter to me.”
“They’re very powerful idiots, Tonks.” He’s gone back to his quiet voice now, and she isn’t sure whether that’s a good or a bad sign.
“So’s Voldemort,” she says, a hint of frustration creeping into her voice. “So are the Malfoys and a good percentage of the other Death Eaters. Does that mean we should live our lives according to their twisted ideals? I’m sorry, but I rather thought that it was those kinds of attitudes we were fighting against.”
He sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. She’s obviously won that little argument, because he changes tack. “I could never offer you anything. I can barely support myself, let alone-“ he cuts himself off again. “Let alone anyone else.”
“Oh for Merlin’s sake!” She’s irritated, no, angry now. Angry that he can’t bring himself to say the things she so needs him to say, angry at the implications of what he’s just said, angry at him and his stupid, stupid pride. “Do you really think I care about that? That what I want is to be looked after by some alpha male while I sit at home playing house? If that’s what you really think, and I’m not convinced you do, then you don’t know me at all.”
“No. No, of course I don’t think that. It isn’t what I meant.” He looks at her, and even in the almost-darkness she can see the truth in his eyes. “What I mean is…” he pauses. “You’ve got to see that we would never have much,” he says. “Poverty’s a miserable thing. You’d end up resenting me because of the sacrifices we’d have to make and I couldn’t bear that.”
Words like ‘marriage’ and ‘children’ hang unspoken in the air between them. For them it’s never been a casual fling. Never a ‘lets-just-see-where-this-goes’ kind of relationship. Right from the start it’s been serious, and they’ve always known it. They’re in deep or not at all.
She sighs and swallows some of her anger, but her frustration is still evident in her voice. “I’ve got a good salary. I can support two of us.” And maybe more, eventually, she adds silently. “Anyway, who knows what will happen? Things might be better after the war.”
“They might be worse.”
“We might die tomorrow,” she shoots back. “Who knows? Things are so uncertain, we should live as much as we can, while we can.”
She can see by his face that he’s running out of logical arguments, that she’s gone some way to convincing him.
He shakes his head, looking at his knees again. “You deserve so much better than me.”
“Stop putting me on a pedestal, Remus,” she says. There’s something rather un-nerving about the way he seems to think she’s some example of perfection; flattering as it is, it’s a lot to live up to, and she worries what will happen when he finally sees her for her bog-standard, ordinary self. “I’m not some celestial being to be worshipped. And you’re not some creature in the dirt too lowly to set eyes on me.”
He shakes his head as if to say that she doesn’t understand, she’s missed the point. “I’ve squandered so many opportunities,” he says, “I’ve repaid everyone who’s trusted me with deception. My recklessness has put countless people in danger, made countless werewolves lives infinitely more difficult and given Voldemort a dangerous and powerful weapon.”
Tonks is almost speechless. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Dumbledore. He let me come to school, something no other headmaster would have done, and I repaid him by inciting my friends to break the law, and by putting the entire school and village in danger every full moon. He gave me a job, and I repaid him with more of the same. I never told him Sirius was an Animagus, because I was too cowardly to admit I’d been deceiving him for years. I forgot to take the Wolfsbane and I nearly killed Harry, put everyone in danger. Even after all those years, I never learnt my lesson. And because of that night, and the revelation about me, those employment laws were brought in, and no werewolf has been able to get any kind of a job ever since. I’ve plunged them all into even greater depths of misery, and handed Voldemort an army of disillusioned werewolves on a plate.”
It dawns on her that this is what it’s all been about. It’s not that he really believes a relationship between them couldn’t work out, or would be unfair on her. Not entirely, anyway. It’s that he really doesn’t believe he deserves to be happy.
“None of that is your fault!” She reaches out to touch him, to hold him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pressing his head against her neck, hoping to bring some comfort to this tortured man. There are tears in her eyes, and no wonder, after such a heartbreaking speech. “The employment laws would have happened anyway with a cow like Umbridge in the Ministry,” she says, “and any allies that the Death Eaters gain because of them are her fault, and Greyback’s, and Voldemort’s, and their own. Not yours. Your friends became Animagi of their own free will, and knowing Sirius, and knowing Harry and how like his father everyone says he is, I don’t reckon you could have stopped them. And yes, maybe you were all a little stupid, but you don’t have the monopoly on teenage stupidity, not by a long shot.” She finally pauses for breath, running through his list of supposed crimes in her head to see if she’s covered them all. “As for Dumbledore,” she continues, speaking more quietly now, sitting back a little and moving her hands to his face and looking into his eyes, “oh Remus, I can’t believe you don’t know how much he thought of you. How much he respected you. Ask anyone in the Order; it was plain as day.”
“But -“
“No buts.” She moves her hands from his face to his chest. “You expect too much of yourself. Everyone makes mistakes, it’s what makes us human, and there’s no reason for you to punish yourself just because you’re less than perfect.”
He’s silent for a moment, searching for the right words, clearly very moved by her outburst. “I- Thank you. Just- Thank you,” he says, tears in his eyes. “I want so much to give in and say yes to you-“
“Then do it!”
“-but,” he runs a hand over his face, clearly wrestling with his thoughts, “Oh, this is going to sound so ungrateful, but… it’s not enough for you to not care, I need you to understand.” Tonks sits back, letting go of him entirely and feeling as if she’s been slapped in the face; it’s one thing to be told that not caring is foolish, but to be told that it’s inadequate, that her unconditional love is not enough… It stings like nothing he’s ever uttered before. He must see the hurt and confusion writ across her face though, because he continues quickly, “No, no,” he says, trying to reassure her. “What I mean is, I need you to understand how dangerous I am at the full moon, and to understand that I have to take steps to keep people safe. I really couldn’t bear for something to happen to you because we were careless.”
“I understand that, of course I do,” she says, relief flooding through her; this is something she can certainly give him, something she already does comprehend. “Believe me, I’ve come face to face with transformed werewolves at work, and I have no desire to repeat the experience, if I can help it. But we can be careful. You can lock yourself away and I can brew you Wolfsbane, there shouldn’t be a problem, so long as we’re sensible.”
She sees the final barriers dissolve behind his eyes, and can barely believe that she might possibly, finally have convinced him that this, that they, might be feasible. Can hardly believe that she might have allayed his fears, soothed his insecurities, shown him that he deserves to be happy as much as any other person. She’s longed for this moment for so long and yet never quite dared to believe it might happen. He gazes at her, his eyes full of emotion, full of love. She could really do with the reassurance of him saying the words out loud, but suspects that would be too much to ask at this early stage, and she will have to wait. After all, enormous progress has been made tonight and to wish for more seems rather greedy.
He continues to look at her, directly, honestly and straight into her eyes, and the moment it takes feels like an hour. He licks his lips, reaches out to brush a strand of hair from her face in a strangely intimate and tender gesture, and leans forward to press his lips softly against hers. She takes his bottom lip between hers, trying not to be too forceful or eager, afraid of pushing him too far and erasing all their recent progress. She has nothing to fear though, since he deepens the kiss himself, taking her face in his hands and allowing his tongue to slip into her partially open mouth in between his gentle assaults on her lips. She slides her hands up to rest on his neck, a little of her anxiety leaving her now, and they continue in this slow, tender manner for what feels like forever.
Eventually they pause, and gaze once more into each other’s eyes, foreheads pressed together. Tonks smiles. “Looks like I’ve won that argument then,” she says.
Remus gives a wry grin in return. “So it would seem,” he says, and captures her lips with his once more.
* * * *
It’s little more than half an hour later, when the sun is just beginning to appear above the horizon, that she begins to notice how cold she is. It has seeped into her bones from the damp ground, chilling her through, and the thought of her warm bed and several hours sleep is very appealing indeed. She’s not ready to say goodbye to Remus just yet though, not when the small resolutions they’ve found tonight (this morning really, she supposes) are so fragile. She needs the reassurance of having him close.
“Merlin, I’m freezing,” she says. “Fancy a cup of tea?”
They walk through Hogsmeade as the sun rises, the sky pink and lilac and orange in the dawn. There was a time when she would have made a game of matching the colours with her hair, but not any more. These days she’s lucky if she can manage even a sombre black or an unexceptional dark blonde. This long, hard year has worn the colour out of her, but she has hope now that at least some of it might return, in spite of the difficulties they now face.
She lets him into her little attic high above the bookshop, hanging her cloak on the hook by the door and flicking her wand at the kettle.
“Do you still have your flat?” he asks, referring presumably, to the rather larger property she rents in London. He hangs his own cloak next to hers and gazes around the room, taking it all in.
“Yeah,” she says, reaching for the teabags, “I’d already signed the contract for another year when I was transferred up here. This one’s Ministry subsidised though, so it wasn’t a problem. They need me to be on the spot in case anything happens.” It’s a shock to realise how little he knows about her life now, and how little she knows about his. This year, the few times they’ve seen each other, they’ve been preoccupied with other things. “I go down once in a while,” she continues, “when I’ve got time off, and I’ve been letting Kingsley stay there during the week.” Remus looks puzzled. “It means he can get the bus to Downing Street,” she explains, “rather than risk Apparating. Plus, I get someone to do my housework for me.” She grins and glances around. “Pity I don’t have anyone to do that here.”
It occurs to her that she really ought to have thought about the state of the place before she asked him up. She’s not had much time to spare for cleaning recently, so the place is a bit dusty and the floor could do with a sweeping charm, but it’s not too bad, considering. There are a few sets of robes slung over the back of the settee, several mugs and a couple of weeks worth of newspapers on the coffee table and (oh Merlin) a pile of clean knickers on top of the chest of drawers waiting to be put away.
It’s probably not worth worrying about though, she decides, since Remus doesn’t seem to have noticed, and in any case, is far from tidy himself. Tonks knows from seeing his room at Grimmauld Place that like her he’s a great believer in piles; piles of clothes, piles of papers and, somewhat oddly, piles of coat hangers always littered his bedroom there.
She finishes making the tea and hands him a mug, moves the robes so he can sit down, kicks off her shoes and joins him. They sit with their bodies turned towards each other, he with his elbow on the back of the sofa and his head against his hand, her sitting sideways with her back against the armrest and her cheek against the cushions. They talk of refreshingly inconsequential things, sip their tea and nibble on the squares of Honeydukes chocolate that she found in the back of the cupboard, until he reaches out and fingers a lock of her mousey brown hair.
“I miss the pink,” he says.
Tonks gives him a wistful half-smile. “Me too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, it’s not your fault.”
“Really?”
“Really. It’s the eighteen hour shifts and the deaths and the lack of sleep and the Ministry being useless and all the other crap.” And worrying about you, she adds in her head, and wondering if I read the signals all wrong, and if I’ll ever see you alive again. “The same thing happened to me during my NEWTs,” she continues. “I worked myself into the ground to make sure I got the marks I needed, and I lost my morphing. It came straight back once it was all over and I’d had a rest.”
She’s misleading him, pretending that it’s all because of stress and exhaustion, that he has nothing to blame himself for. It’s partly true, too, she is stressed and exhausted, and these things do affect her ability to morph. What she’s not saying is that it would all have been a lot easier if she could have relied on him, if she could have seen him between his visits to the werewolves without their conversations opening up wounds old and new, because when he pushed her away last summer, she lost more than a potential lover; she lost her best friend.
She doesn’t tell him any of this, because she’s not sure how he’d take it. There’s a risk that, rather than persuading him of how important he is to her, such information would drive him away again through guilt and fear. It’s a risk she’s not prepared to take, so she switches the conversation back to pleasant trivialities and tells herself that it doesn’t really matter anyway, as long as he’s here, as long as he stays
* * * *
Remus gazes at the sleeping woman in the bed beside him, wide awake despite his tiredness. She looks so beautiful, all the care and worry smoothed from her face by slumber. Her mere presence is comforting, just having her close makes him feel a strange mixture of safe and deliriously happy. His heart is almost singing with the joy of it. How did he ever believe he could manage without her? How did he ever manage without her?
She’s so fierce in his defence, so sure that they can survive all the hardships his condition will impose on their relationship, and it’s not that he doesn’t agree, exactly, but even if she never does end up resenting him for the sacrifices she’ll have to make, he’s still not sure if it’s fair to ask her to make them. He wonders too about the reasons behind her inability to morph. Is it really only because of overwork? Or has his treatment of her over the past year made some contribution? In a perverse way, he almost hopes the latter is true, because in that case, there’s a chance that her skills might return now that the situation between them is to some extent resolved. What’s more, as much as he hates to admit it, hates what it implies about him, and hates himself for thinking it at all, he likes what the second possibility suggests about her feelings for him.
Pushing those unpleasant thoughts away, Remus turns his mind to other, more pleasant aspects of this morning. Sitting by the lake, he poured out his deepest worries to her, his darkest secrets, and she responded, not with the horror that he expected, but with acceptance. And not only acceptance, but reassurance that what he had perceived as terrible deeds were not so very awful after all. He feels liberated, as if a weight has lifted from his shoulders; the simple knowledge that she loves him despite his flaws uplifts him in a way that nothing else ever has.
And she’s right when she says that they shouldn’t let prejudice rule their lives. It’s something he’s been guilty of more than once, but what are they fighting against, if not prejudice? What better reason does he need to allow himself to be happy?
With these comforting, joyful thoughts, Remus feels sleep overcome him, and before he knows it, he is dead to the world.