FIC: Fleurs du Mal
Title: Fleurs du Mal
Author: chococoffeekiss
Rating/Warnings: T
Prompts: Dance and the Rise Against lyrics:
In a field where nothing grew but weeds,
I found a flower at my feet, bending there in my direction.
I wrapped a hand around its stem,
and pulled until the roots gave in,
finding now what I've been missing.
though the lyrics are only vaguely employed.
Word Count: 4,342
Summary: Goths, Boggarts, Bellatrix Lestrange in a bikini, and carnivorous plants are the least of Remus Lupin’s worries on a Non-Date with Nymphadora Tonks.
Author’s Notes: This took far too long to write, the re-deadlining was a lifesaver! Many thanks to kt_tonguetied, my speedy beta and moral support! I'm sorry I've scarred you for life!
The queue of people outside the rundown, ivy-covered warehouse stretched from the double doors to the edge of the street, looking like the bread line of the damned. Fleurs du Mal was written above the entrance in glowing, eerie green neon script, and the thud of electronic music was more felt than heard through the dreary-looking brick building.
As he was given to doing, Remus stopped, looked around, and reasoned that the best chance he had to survive the evening with his dignity still intact would be to return from whence he came…despite the fact that Sirius’ house was more troublingly Gothic than this establishment.
A pallid, wraith-like girl in black, with lank hair and pierced lips scowled at him as she stalked past, baggy pants and shirt flapping along in her wake. The Should-I-Stay-or-Should-I-Go-Now vacillations that had been haunting him since his arrival were suddenly interrupted by the idea that the patrons of this discotheque seemed to be kin to Snape, or quite possibly, they were his minions.
Lupin pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and checked the address-it was right. Frowning a bit, he looked up at the name over the door; for some reason he had envisioned a French café. Another group of sinister-looking youths swept past him like a cloud of angst-ridden bats with streaking eye makeup, jostling for a place in the queue.
Warily, he eyed the line of people, all dressed in some funerary shade of gray or black. Most of them wore hairstyles resembling some sort of dead bird plastered on their heads, lacquered into feathery spikes that quivered on the breeze. The girls-when he was able to tell them from the boys-wore Victorian corsets, disturbingly tiny ruffled skirts, and platform shoes. They wobbled precariously on the uneven sidewalk. The gentlemen had donned shirts with macabre designs and shapeless trousers, chains and straps dangling around their knees. He looked back to his own faded-out trousers and dark shirt, and felt he rather resembled a travelling insurance salesman lost at a Byron-Shelley-Poe reading night, or a Zombie Apocalypse Prevention convention.
All things considered, it was absurd.
Still unsure if he wanted to proceed or not, he stalled on the pitted, weedy concrete walk-there was still time to make it back to 12 Grimmauld and come up with a suitable excuse as to why he had never showed up at the club, but then he would have to face his would-be landlord, who had already questioned him thoroughly before he left.
Sirius, having nothing better to do than immerse himself in other people’s business, had cornered him in the dark and dank kitchen upon receiving the owl, bearing the address and the time he should arrive.
“I don’t know if I should go…”
“What’s your problem with her, then? Tonks is-”
“I don’t have a problem with her,” Remus countered in a tone bordering on exasperation, and spilled sugar across the kitchen table as he made a cup of coffee. “I’m the one with the-never mind, just-”
“What did you do?”
He sighed resignedly and crossed his arms, uncrossed them and shrugged helplessly, then ran a hand through his hair, knowing Sirius would get it out of him one way or another. Confessing had always been the easier, less painful, non-upside-down method to tell Black something, as he was fond of using Levicorpus as an interrogation tactic.
“She and I got into a bit of a…situation, last week.”
“Was it a horizontal situation?”
“Erm, no, it was…it was vertical.”
“…I’ll bet it was.”
“Aren’t you a bit old to be making that kind of joke?”
“You’re only as old as you feel, Moony.”
“So you’re what, now? Twelve?”
“Oh, shut up Mum,” Sirius scoffed, then folded his hands on the table and stared him down, cross-examination style. “This situation, Remus, I have to know-”
“It’s dreadfully embarrassing-”
“Even better.”
He felt his face flush; though the incident had taken place days ago it was plaguing him still. “We were-I was walking out of the kitchen just as she was running in, and…as we were trying to dance around each other to get out of the way, she-she tripped and started to fall forward, so I-“
He stopped short, and abandoned by any suitably discreet and sensitive action verb, he held up both hands at chest height, palms facing out, with a look of abject mortification in his eyes.
“You-?“ Sirius made the same motion, but added a squishy, squeezy finger-wiggle at the end, somehow imbedding both query and innuendo into the gesture with the arch of one dark eyebrow.
Remus nodded, slow and repentant.
“Mmm-hmm, I see,” Black murmured with a finger and thumb on his chin, looking dangerously thoughtful. “I know Dumbledore asked us to make her feel welcome, but I’m sure that’s not quite what he meant…”
“Don’t be daft, of course I didn’t mean to do that,” he’d kicked at Black under the table for emphasis. “I suppose should apologize to her, I just don’t know how to do it without-”
“Seeming mawkish and causing her to revisit the entire painful and embarrassing episode?” Sirius interrupted in an attempt at helpfulness. “You could send her some flowers-“
“Flowers are so transient, though.”
“Chocolate?”
“Cliché.”
“Money?”
“I’m not paying her off, you great prat.”
“Sex?”
“That’s what got us into this mess to begin with.”
“The lack thereof, you mean.”
“Shut up.”
Honestly, it was her fault for falling into him like that. He would have never ever dared even to accidentally cop a feel on a Junior Auror-the protégé of one of the most paranoid wizards he knew, at that-without said Auror’s express permission, and she had gone and forced it upon him. He was starting to wonder about the suspiciously wicked smile on her face every time she passed him in the hall-it was keeping him awake at night.
Rallying some good old-fashioned Gryffindor courage, Remus marched to the front of the line and waved the note from the girl at the bouncer, who resembled Kingsley Shacklebolt in a foot-taller, fifty-kilos-heavier, twelve-more-earrings kind of way. The line of creepy twenty-somethings shot him a communal glare from behind greasy fringe and smeared eyeliner as the guard lifted the black velvet rope and let him pass after checking the note, and as the outside light became fainter, the dread in his stomach became heavier.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like Tonks; he did-more than that if he was honest with himself, but he disliked a few things about her-the way she walked by him just to make him look at her, the nonchalant way she acted around him, how comfortable she seemed with everything wrong with him. He found himself annoyed by her for being too young, too tempting for him not to notice her and just out of his reach.
What bothered him most of all, though, was that she knew-or at least seemed to know-exactly how frustrated he felt, and teased him anyway.
Pushing through the pitch-dark, crowded hall, he emerged into a larger area that was only slightly less dark, decorated with glowing green lights that pulsed to the beat of the song. The dance floor was filled with a hundred undulating goths, their ghostly boredom set to music.
Remus had a sneaking suspicion the girl wouldn’t be dancing, so he scanned the edges of the room for someone who looked as out of place as he did. He saw her through the thorny, tangled mob of black like a single bloom in a burned field.
Of course, it helped that she was standing on a brightly lit platform at the opposite end of the building, wearing a white shirt and her trademark hair; pink with a vengeance. She was leaning against a railing, looking out over the crowd and talking to the girl next to her.
Tonks was carefully climbing down the stairs to the platform as he finally made it through the crowd, elbowing a moping, mohawked, anemic-looking kid out of her path. They stood and looked at each other for a moment, until she smiled appraisingly and said,
“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked in what he hoped was a confident-sounding voice, attempting to look neither at her eyes nor the plunging neckline of her top, which was difficult, considering the fact that it seemed to be nothing more than a length of fabric looped and draped about her front.
“Just doesn’t seem like your kind of place,” she returned with the arch of an eyebrow, as though she suspected he would have shown up regardless of whether or not it was his sort of place, dragging his conscience kicking and screaming the entire way. “But I’m glad you’re here, at any rate,” she said, grabbing his arm enthusiastically. “Want a drink or something?”
“Uh…sure?”
He watched her walk to the bar, eyes locked on the near non-existentness of her ridiculous top- threads held it on, crisscrossing her back in a loosely woven net, and he barely remembered that he hadn’t given her any money for the drinks, which would have been the chivalrous thing to do.
The really noble thing to do would have been to end their impromptu meeting before they got themselves into a situation that was not easily remedied. It was entirely too vexing for his tastes, knowing how difficult it would be to find a nice way to tell her to stop wasting her time.
He considered cutting out, as per his usual Tonks-avoidance stratagem, and going to hide in the study at Grimmauld with a bottle of bourbon, to console himself with the thought that he was Not That Guy, no matter how skimpily she dressed. Just as he was rifling through his mental repertoire of excuses to go home, she reappeared.
“Fat polar bear,” Tonks said in a cheerful non sequitur, and handed him a glass.
“What?”
“I thought I should say something that would break the ice.”
“That’s just terrible,” he said, shaking his head, and forgetting all ideas of running home
as she laughed.
Remus wasn’t falling for her, he was quite past falling and now he was being dragged like a criminal behind a runaway horse, with no way to cut loose. The thought took him down a rung on the self-esteem ladder, and she noticed as he made the mistake of staring pensively at a poster of The Cure on the wall behind the bar.
“What’s the matter, Lupin? Haven’t you ever been to a club before?”
“Not this kind.” He looked back just in time to see her wrinkled nose and ambivalent shrug.
“It’s not so bad. Do you honestly think I’d invite you to a place like this if I didn’t have a really good reason?”
“I don’t know. You might.”
She smiled coyly at the green maraschino cherries in what he hoped was only her first drink of the evening. “You make it sound like I’m about to do something terrible to you.”
“You might,” he said again.
“I’m shocked you don’t trust me, Remus.”
“Not when you’re dressed like that,” he muttered darkly into his drink, wondering where the emergency exits were in the building and how long it would be until he needed one.
“What?” she shouted over the din of the music, unable to hear.
“I said I only trust you as far as I could throw a cat,” he said quickly, struggling not to laugh.
“Sorry to hear that, truly I am. I just reckoned-“ she stopped, looked him over, and continued with a dispassionate sigh. “I just thought you looked like you needed to have some fun.” She motioned for him to follow her, so he did, downing his whiskey and abandoning the glass on a nearby table as they walked.
“Did I?” he asked through the sear of alcohol in his throat, feeling moderately lightheaded.
“You’ve been staying in Grimmauld, haven’t you?”
“Yes…?” he answered apprehensively, unsure of where they were going and what she was going to do to him when they arrived.
“Exactly.” She laughed and led him through a door, then up a steep stairwell. They climbed the steps in silence to a small landing at the top, lit by a bare bulb.
“This was a furniture warehouse, before it was…well, this. From what I’ve found out, it was owned by a witch and her husband, who was a Muggle,” she whispered. With effort, Tonks pushed open the door at the top of the stairs and ushered them both into a huge room, the only light filtering down through a streaky, vine-entangled roof lantern that dominated the center of the ceiling. The entire upper floor was full of rows of furniture; desks, cabinets, trunks and bureaus, a ghostly, shadowed landscape of dusty oak and mahogany. “They never bothered to clean out the extra stuff and now it’s full of Boggarts.” She kicked at the nearest desk, which gave an occupied sort of wobble. “I was going to get rid of them myself, y’know,” she continued, swiping at a cobweb hanging from the ceiling. “But it’s stupid to take them on alone. Then Hermione told me that you’re the absolute best at it, and I thought I’d ask, at least…I thought you might enjoy an evening out, even if it is in a haunted warehouse.”
“Tonks, that’s…well, thank you. I appreciate it. Hauntedness and all.”
“Well, do you want to?”
“Do I want to what?”
“Take care of some Boggarts, innit? What else would we be doing, Remus?” Tonks grinned, reached down again and pulled her wand from the calf of her boot.
“Oh,” he said numbly, caught himself staring at her again, and quickly looked away.
“Well, go ahead and show me how it’s done.”
Dragging his mind out of the gutter, and a wand out of his back pocket, he opened the cabinet with a spell. A blur of black swirled out, forming into a bank of clouds that obscured a glistening, silver full moon. He spoke the spell and the moon turned into a bowl of petunias. The girl laughed loudly and the bowl fell to the floor, vanishing in a puff of smoke.
“Whoa, you are good. It’s never that easy for me,” she said, and pointed at a large locking bookshelf. “Oh, get this one.”
He took out several more before he realized he was having fun-although he had been somewhat tricked into it. Tonks seemed to be having a blast, dragging him around and cheering as he turned the Boggart-moons into a beach ball, a wheel of cheese, a balloon, a Frisbee. Of course, she always seemed to have fun wherever she was, and this was, or would have been, the perfect date for them-she liked to laugh and he couldn’t help but like to listen to her.
“Well, let’s see yours, then.”
“See my what?”
“Your…Boggart?”
“Oh, okay,” she shrugged, and added warningly before she opened the wardrobe, “It’s a really stupid fear, just so you know.”
“Most fears are somewhat irrational,” he said reassuringly. Nevertheless, he was stunned when Bellatrix Lestrange poked her head out between the doors, grinning madly, as if she had been chasing her family members through a hotel with an axe, Jack Torrance-style.
Tonks cast the spell, but it missed the Boggart by an inch and hit the wardrobe, knocking it backwards into the row of furniture behind it with a huge clatter and the sound of splintering wood. Through the screen of rising dust he saw a half-dozen Lestranges clambering out of the opened doors of overturned furniture, moving towards the pair in a slow, zombie-esque shuffle.
“Oh, crap-”
“Here, I’ll-“ Remus stepped forward to help just as she frantically turned around to face him and they ran into each other-his unsteadiness and her momentum sent them both to the ground. Tonks landed with a knee on either side of his hips, her hands flat on the floor on each side of his head. For a moment they were both motionless, until he realized he was holding on to her mostly-bare waist with one hand, the other wrapped around her thigh, slipping under the hem of her skirt. Her hands lost traction on the slick, dusty floor and suddenly they were nose-to-nose. Her eyes were wonderfully, terrifyingly dark and for a moment he forgot that she troubled him so.
“Dreadfully sorry,” she breathed. “I didn’t mean-“
Before she could finish, he lifted her off to one side and climbed to his feet, gasping for the breath that had been knocked out of him.
The boggarts were still staggering in their direction, looking underfed but not undefeatable. Remus leaned down, lending a hand to Tonks, who jumped up and dashed toward the creatures, casting the spell with a shout. There was a loud crack, and the nearest Bellatrix’s tattered, striped Azkaban robes changed into the tacky, spangled pink garb of a Las Vegas showgirl-a revealing bikini top and bottom, complete with a tall, spiky feather headdress and shoes. The others followed suit until an entire chorus line of Boggarts was looking around anxiously, wondering what the hell had happened.
“Erm, Tonks?”
“Hmm?”
“Not to be critical of your technique or anything, but I believe when you cast the Riddikulus spell, it’s meant to make the Boggart less terrifying.”
The thin line of her lips trembled, and she laughed riotously as the Boggarts began to disappear in puffs of smoke and the occasional marabou feather. The last one tottered in a confused circle, looking for its missing comrades, before exploding.
“Congratulations, Nymphadora.” He grinned. “That was the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen.”
She smiled proudly and elbowed him. “Surely not.”
“Honestly, I’ll have nightmares for a week, now.”
She laughed. “Before it was Bellatrix, it was a giant Venus Flytrap.” Tonks sobered a bit, and said, “I liked that one better. At least it was funny.”
Suddenly, he realized how still it had become-he could once again hear the faint thrum of music downstairs. Tonks studied her fingernails and he watched her, until he could no longer take the silence.
"Listen, about the, erm-the other day," Remus said hastily, grasping the opportunity to atone for his accidental inspection of her womanly bits. She looked up at him, startled out of her quietude. “I feel I should apologize-“
"Oh, it's fine, really. Not like I’ve never been accidentally groped before-“
He winced inwardly, wishing for another drink.
“-And I'm the one who should be apologizing about it, anyway," she finished quickly. "I'm the clumsy one."
“Don’t-don’t worry about it.” As aggravated as he had been with her earlier, he now found it impossible to tell her how destructive she was to his morals.
She moved to sit down on the domed lid of a travel trunk pasted with stickers from exotic locations. A Haitian voodoo mask peered at him from under a layer of grime, next to peeling labels from Cairo and Athens. The trunk rattled as she sat and the girl jumped up to her feet again, wiping dust from her skirt.
“Oh! Seems we’ve missed one. Do you want to take this or shall I-“
“I’ll do it,” he insisted, hoping not to see another demonstration of Bella Lestrange in inadequate clothing, and Tonks nodded understandingly, unlocking the trunk with Alohomora.
They both stepped back and waited, but no moon floated up from within, and no murderous auntie climbed out. Both regarded the trunk with a curious tilt of the head, and after a moment they looked at each other. Tonks walked back to the trunk and peered inside.
“It’s just a manky old trunk, Remus, doesn’t look like anything is in here after all.”
“Well, that doesn’t make any sen-“ the word died on his lips as he watched her lean down, all long legs and curvy hips, to look closer in the travel trunk.
“Can’t see a damn thing,” she mumbled, and leaned even farther in. A vague sense of trepidation filled him and he moved toward her slowly. Just before the girl whispered “Lumos,” he saw it-a thick vine snaked out of the dark and wound around her wrist, climbing her arm. She felt it and started to back away.
“Tonks…don’t move.”
She froze just as the plant-or at least, he thought it was a plant-wrapped around her elbow and jerked her forward, her wand clattered to the floor. She swore and tried pulling backwards as more vines snuck out of the trunk, wrapping around her waist and curling around her other arm, but the plant tugged harder and her grip on the edge of the trunk began to slip.
Thinking quickly, he grabbed her around her waist and pulled, casting spells at the same time. He had never dealt much with plants, but Diffindo seemed to be working well enough. Writhing vines dropped to the floor, severed from the plant, and she was free-he pushed her backwards, away from the trunk and then several things happened at once.
The trunk’s lid slammed shut on the plant’s feelers, which still flailed in the air like Cthulhu trapped under a house a la the Wicked Witch of the East. The plant shrieked like an electrocuted cat, Tonks screamed, Remus tripped on one of the dismembered-but-still-wiggling vines, and both of them hit the floor.
He landed on top of her, pinning her down-both of them panting, disheveled, and covered in green plant goo. The girl’s dark eyes were wide with fright and he had the sudden urge to kiss her. He almost did; their lips were half an inch apart…but he lost his nerve, and instead he said,
“Are you okay?”
“Great. You?”
Remus nodded, and for a long, painful second, neither of them spoke.
“Well, this is awkward,” she said bluntly, unmoving.
“I agree. Maybe…maybe we should go.”
“Yeah, I’ve work in the morning.”
“Okay.”
“Will I see you tomorrow?”
“I’m sure you will.”
He got up, pulled her to her feet, and they proceeded to dust themselves off without looking at one another.
“I guess I’ll see you later,” Tonks said, sticking out a hand. “I had a great time.” She grinned and he knew she wasn’t lying. “Thanks for…y’know, rescuing me and all.”
“No problem,” he said, shaking her hand. “I had a great time, too.”
Tonks stood, holding his hand for a moment and giving him a searching look from under her hair, which flooded pink. Quickly, she leaned towards him and after a moment’s hesitation, she kissed him on the cheek. Without realizing he had done it until it was already happening, he caught her chin in his hand and kissed her lips, trying to put every feeling he had for her into the gesture-it was warning and apology, a plea for forgiveness, a substitute for all the words he couldn’t say to her, and she seemed to understand. Her fingers tightened around his, and she smiled with a hint of sadness in her eyes.
“Bye,” he said quietly, letting go of her hand.
“Bye,” she said, blushing, and then disappeared.
The next morning he arrived-in unusually high spirits for someone standing on the doorstep of 12 Grimmauld-with a cup of coffee in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other, and as Remus suspected, Sirius was waiting for him in the kitchen.
“You didn’t come home last night.”
“I went to my house,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. “Sorry I didn’t check in, Mum.”
“Ha ha ha,” Black laughed mirthlessly.
“Tonks stop by yet?”
“No. How did your date go?”
“It wasn’t a date.”
“What was it, then?”
“A catastrophe.”
“That bad, eh? More ‘accidents,’ then?” Sirius asked, but Remus didn’t answer, which he took
as affirmation. “What’d you do this time, grab her bum?”
Remus was silent again, rolling his eyes in lieu of a proper retort, and he put a large brown paper bag on the table. “I got her something. To apologize.”
“Liquor?” Sirius asked hopefully, eyeing the bag.
“No…”
He reached in and pulled out a terracotta pot, which he sat on the table. A wild-looking, neon green and bright pink plant was growing from it, its two strange leaves edged in long spines.
“What the bloody hell is that?”
“A Venus Flytrap.”
“You got her a houseplant.”
“It’s a carnivorous plant, it eats bugs.”
“That’s not a plant, that’s a pet,” Sirius said, frowning. Remus chose not to acknowledge his friend’s comment and continued with his project, spelling a hot pink bow onto the pot.
“I think she’ll like it,” he said, straightening the bow, but he didn’t elaborate as to why he thought such a thing. He was certain that at any rate it would make her laugh, and that was all he could really do for her, being stuck in limbo between one hell of an impossible platonic friendship and another hell of a similarly unfeasible romantic relationship-but that was better than nothing, and he was accustomed to making do with what he had.
“So it’s thorny and eats raw meat?” Sirius laughed, and poked the plant. It snapped at his fingers-he quickly jerked his hand away. “And it’s vicious, as well. She should definitely name it after you, then.”
Author: chococoffeekiss
Rating/Warnings: T
Prompts: Dance and the Rise Against lyrics:
In a field where nothing grew but weeds,
I found a flower at my feet, bending there in my direction.
I wrapped a hand around its stem,
and pulled until the roots gave in,
finding now what I've been missing.
though the lyrics are only vaguely employed.
Word Count: 4,342
Summary: Goths, Boggarts, Bellatrix Lestrange in a bikini, and carnivorous plants are the least of Remus Lupin’s worries on a Non-Date with Nymphadora Tonks.
Author’s Notes: This took far too long to write, the re-deadlining was a lifesaver! Many thanks to kt_tonguetied, my speedy beta and moral support! I'm sorry I've scarred you for life!
The queue of people outside the rundown, ivy-covered warehouse stretched from the double doors to the edge of the street, looking like the bread line of the damned. Fleurs du Mal was written above the entrance in glowing, eerie green neon script, and the thud of electronic music was more felt than heard through the dreary-looking brick building.
As he was given to doing, Remus stopped, looked around, and reasoned that the best chance he had to survive the evening with his dignity still intact would be to return from whence he came…despite the fact that Sirius’ house was more troublingly Gothic than this establishment.
A pallid, wraith-like girl in black, with lank hair and pierced lips scowled at him as she stalked past, baggy pants and shirt flapping along in her wake. The Should-I-Stay-or-Should-I-Go-Now vacillations that had been haunting him since his arrival were suddenly interrupted by the idea that the patrons of this discotheque seemed to be kin to Snape, or quite possibly, they were his minions.
Lupin pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and checked the address-it was right. Frowning a bit, he looked up at the name over the door; for some reason he had envisioned a French café. Another group of sinister-looking youths swept past him like a cloud of angst-ridden bats with streaking eye makeup, jostling for a place in the queue.
Warily, he eyed the line of people, all dressed in some funerary shade of gray or black. Most of them wore hairstyles resembling some sort of dead bird plastered on their heads, lacquered into feathery spikes that quivered on the breeze. The girls-when he was able to tell them from the boys-wore Victorian corsets, disturbingly tiny ruffled skirts, and platform shoes. They wobbled precariously on the uneven sidewalk. The gentlemen had donned shirts with macabre designs and shapeless trousers, chains and straps dangling around their knees. He looked back to his own faded-out trousers and dark shirt, and felt he rather resembled a travelling insurance salesman lost at a Byron-Shelley-Poe reading night, or a Zombie Apocalypse Prevention convention.
All things considered, it was absurd.
Still unsure if he wanted to proceed or not, he stalled on the pitted, weedy concrete walk-there was still time to make it back to 12 Grimmauld and come up with a suitable excuse as to why he had never showed up at the club, but then he would have to face his would-be landlord, who had already questioned him thoroughly before he left.
Sirius, having nothing better to do than immerse himself in other people’s business, had cornered him in the dark and dank kitchen upon receiving the owl, bearing the address and the time he should arrive.
“I don’t know if I should go…”
“What’s your problem with her, then? Tonks is-”
“I don’t have a problem with her,” Remus countered in a tone bordering on exasperation, and spilled sugar across the kitchen table as he made a cup of coffee. “I’m the one with the-never mind, just-”
“What did you do?”
He sighed resignedly and crossed his arms, uncrossed them and shrugged helplessly, then ran a hand through his hair, knowing Sirius would get it out of him one way or another. Confessing had always been the easier, less painful, non-upside-down method to tell Black something, as he was fond of using Levicorpus as an interrogation tactic.
“She and I got into a bit of a…situation, last week.”
“Was it a horizontal situation?”
“Erm, no, it was…it was vertical.”
“…I’ll bet it was.”
“Aren’t you a bit old to be making that kind of joke?”
“You’re only as old as you feel, Moony.”
“So you’re what, now? Twelve?”
“Oh, shut up Mum,” Sirius scoffed, then folded his hands on the table and stared him down, cross-examination style. “This situation, Remus, I have to know-”
“It’s dreadfully embarrassing-”
“Even better.”
He felt his face flush; though the incident had taken place days ago it was plaguing him still. “We were-I was walking out of the kitchen just as she was running in, and…as we were trying to dance around each other to get out of the way, she-she tripped and started to fall forward, so I-“
He stopped short, and abandoned by any suitably discreet and sensitive action verb, he held up both hands at chest height, palms facing out, with a look of abject mortification in his eyes.
“You-?“ Sirius made the same motion, but added a squishy, squeezy finger-wiggle at the end, somehow imbedding both query and innuendo into the gesture with the arch of one dark eyebrow.
Remus nodded, slow and repentant.
“Mmm-hmm, I see,” Black murmured with a finger and thumb on his chin, looking dangerously thoughtful. “I know Dumbledore asked us to make her feel welcome, but I’m sure that’s not quite what he meant…”
“Don’t be daft, of course I didn’t mean to do that,” he’d kicked at Black under the table for emphasis. “I suppose should apologize to her, I just don’t know how to do it without-”
“Seeming mawkish and causing her to revisit the entire painful and embarrassing episode?” Sirius interrupted in an attempt at helpfulness. “You could send her some flowers-“
“Flowers are so transient, though.”
“Chocolate?”
“Cliché.”
“Money?”
“I’m not paying her off, you great prat.”
“Sex?”
“That’s what got us into this mess to begin with.”
“The lack thereof, you mean.”
“Shut up.”
Honestly, it was her fault for falling into him like that. He would have never ever dared even to accidentally cop a feel on a Junior Auror-the protégé of one of the most paranoid wizards he knew, at that-without said Auror’s express permission, and she had gone and forced it upon him. He was starting to wonder about the suspiciously wicked smile on her face every time she passed him in the hall-it was keeping him awake at night.
Rallying some good old-fashioned Gryffindor courage, Remus marched to the front of the line and waved the note from the girl at the bouncer, who resembled Kingsley Shacklebolt in a foot-taller, fifty-kilos-heavier, twelve-more-earrings kind of way. The line of creepy twenty-somethings shot him a communal glare from behind greasy fringe and smeared eyeliner as the guard lifted the black velvet rope and let him pass after checking the note, and as the outside light became fainter, the dread in his stomach became heavier.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like Tonks; he did-more than that if he was honest with himself, but he disliked a few things about her-the way she walked by him just to make him look at her, the nonchalant way she acted around him, how comfortable she seemed with everything wrong with him. He found himself annoyed by her for being too young, too tempting for him not to notice her and just out of his reach.
What bothered him most of all, though, was that she knew-or at least seemed to know-exactly how frustrated he felt, and teased him anyway.
Pushing through the pitch-dark, crowded hall, he emerged into a larger area that was only slightly less dark, decorated with glowing green lights that pulsed to the beat of the song. The dance floor was filled with a hundred undulating goths, their ghostly boredom set to music.
Remus had a sneaking suspicion the girl wouldn’t be dancing, so he scanned the edges of the room for someone who looked as out of place as he did. He saw her through the thorny, tangled mob of black like a single bloom in a burned field.
Of course, it helped that she was standing on a brightly lit platform at the opposite end of the building, wearing a white shirt and her trademark hair; pink with a vengeance. She was leaning against a railing, looking out over the crowd and talking to the girl next to her.
Tonks was carefully climbing down the stairs to the platform as he finally made it through the crowd, elbowing a moping, mohawked, anemic-looking kid out of her path. They stood and looked at each other for a moment, until she smiled appraisingly and said,
“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked in what he hoped was a confident-sounding voice, attempting to look neither at her eyes nor the plunging neckline of her top, which was difficult, considering the fact that it seemed to be nothing more than a length of fabric looped and draped about her front.
“Just doesn’t seem like your kind of place,” she returned with the arch of an eyebrow, as though she suspected he would have shown up regardless of whether or not it was his sort of place, dragging his conscience kicking and screaming the entire way. “But I’m glad you’re here, at any rate,” she said, grabbing his arm enthusiastically. “Want a drink or something?”
“Uh…sure?”
He watched her walk to the bar, eyes locked on the near non-existentness of her ridiculous top- threads held it on, crisscrossing her back in a loosely woven net, and he barely remembered that he hadn’t given her any money for the drinks, which would have been the chivalrous thing to do.
The really noble thing to do would have been to end their impromptu meeting before they got themselves into a situation that was not easily remedied. It was entirely too vexing for his tastes, knowing how difficult it would be to find a nice way to tell her to stop wasting her time.
He considered cutting out, as per his usual Tonks-avoidance stratagem, and going to hide in the study at Grimmauld with a bottle of bourbon, to console himself with the thought that he was Not That Guy, no matter how skimpily she dressed. Just as he was rifling through his mental repertoire of excuses to go home, she reappeared.
“Fat polar bear,” Tonks said in a cheerful non sequitur, and handed him a glass.
“What?”
“I thought I should say something that would break the ice.”
“That’s just terrible,” he said, shaking his head, and forgetting all ideas of running home
as she laughed.
Remus wasn’t falling for her, he was quite past falling and now he was being dragged like a criminal behind a runaway horse, with no way to cut loose. The thought took him down a rung on the self-esteem ladder, and she noticed as he made the mistake of staring pensively at a poster of The Cure on the wall behind the bar.
“What’s the matter, Lupin? Haven’t you ever been to a club before?”
“Not this kind.” He looked back just in time to see her wrinkled nose and ambivalent shrug.
“It’s not so bad. Do you honestly think I’d invite you to a place like this if I didn’t have a really good reason?”
“I don’t know. You might.”
She smiled coyly at the green maraschino cherries in what he hoped was only her first drink of the evening. “You make it sound like I’m about to do something terrible to you.”
“You might,” he said again.
“I’m shocked you don’t trust me, Remus.”
“Not when you’re dressed like that,” he muttered darkly into his drink, wondering where the emergency exits were in the building and how long it would be until he needed one.
“What?” she shouted over the din of the music, unable to hear.
“I said I only trust you as far as I could throw a cat,” he said quickly, struggling not to laugh.
“Sorry to hear that, truly I am. I just reckoned-“ she stopped, looked him over, and continued with a dispassionate sigh. “I just thought you looked like you needed to have some fun.” She motioned for him to follow her, so he did, downing his whiskey and abandoning the glass on a nearby table as they walked.
“Did I?” he asked through the sear of alcohol in his throat, feeling moderately lightheaded.
“You’ve been staying in Grimmauld, haven’t you?”
“Yes…?” he answered apprehensively, unsure of where they were going and what she was going to do to him when they arrived.
“Exactly.” She laughed and led him through a door, then up a steep stairwell. They climbed the steps in silence to a small landing at the top, lit by a bare bulb.
“This was a furniture warehouse, before it was…well, this. From what I’ve found out, it was owned by a witch and her husband, who was a Muggle,” she whispered. With effort, Tonks pushed open the door at the top of the stairs and ushered them both into a huge room, the only light filtering down through a streaky, vine-entangled roof lantern that dominated the center of the ceiling. The entire upper floor was full of rows of furniture; desks, cabinets, trunks and bureaus, a ghostly, shadowed landscape of dusty oak and mahogany. “They never bothered to clean out the extra stuff and now it’s full of Boggarts.” She kicked at the nearest desk, which gave an occupied sort of wobble. “I was going to get rid of them myself, y’know,” she continued, swiping at a cobweb hanging from the ceiling. “But it’s stupid to take them on alone. Then Hermione told me that you’re the absolute best at it, and I thought I’d ask, at least…I thought you might enjoy an evening out, even if it is in a haunted warehouse.”
“Tonks, that’s…well, thank you. I appreciate it. Hauntedness and all.”
“Well, do you want to?”
“Do I want to what?”
“Take care of some Boggarts, innit? What else would we be doing, Remus?” Tonks grinned, reached down again and pulled her wand from the calf of her boot.
“Oh,” he said numbly, caught himself staring at her again, and quickly looked away.
“Well, go ahead and show me how it’s done.”
Dragging his mind out of the gutter, and a wand out of his back pocket, he opened the cabinet with a spell. A blur of black swirled out, forming into a bank of clouds that obscured a glistening, silver full moon. He spoke the spell and the moon turned into a bowl of petunias. The girl laughed loudly and the bowl fell to the floor, vanishing in a puff of smoke.
“Whoa, you are good. It’s never that easy for me,” she said, and pointed at a large locking bookshelf. “Oh, get this one.”
He took out several more before he realized he was having fun-although he had been somewhat tricked into it. Tonks seemed to be having a blast, dragging him around and cheering as he turned the Boggart-moons into a beach ball, a wheel of cheese, a balloon, a Frisbee. Of course, she always seemed to have fun wherever she was, and this was, or would have been, the perfect date for them-she liked to laugh and he couldn’t help but like to listen to her.
“Well, let’s see yours, then.”
“See my what?”
“Your…Boggart?”
“Oh, okay,” she shrugged, and added warningly before she opened the wardrobe, “It’s a really stupid fear, just so you know.”
“Most fears are somewhat irrational,” he said reassuringly. Nevertheless, he was stunned when Bellatrix Lestrange poked her head out between the doors, grinning madly, as if she had been chasing her family members through a hotel with an axe, Jack Torrance-style.
Tonks cast the spell, but it missed the Boggart by an inch and hit the wardrobe, knocking it backwards into the row of furniture behind it with a huge clatter and the sound of splintering wood. Through the screen of rising dust he saw a half-dozen Lestranges clambering out of the opened doors of overturned furniture, moving towards the pair in a slow, zombie-esque shuffle.
“Oh, crap-”
“Here, I’ll-“ Remus stepped forward to help just as she frantically turned around to face him and they ran into each other-his unsteadiness and her momentum sent them both to the ground. Tonks landed with a knee on either side of his hips, her hands flat on the floor on each side of his head. For a moment they were both motionless, until he realized he was holding on to her mostly-bare waist with one hand, the other wrapped around her thigh, slipping under the hem of her skirt. Her hands lost traction on the slick, dusty floor and suddenly they were nose-to-nose. Her eyes were wonderfully, terrifyingly dark and for a moment he forgot that she troubled him so.
“Dreadfully sorry,” she breathed. “I didn’t mean-“
Before she could finish, he lifted her off to one side and climbed to his feet, gasping for the breath that had been knocked out of him.
The boggarts were still staggering in their direction, looking underfed but not undefeatable. Remus leaned down, lending a hand to Tonks, who jumped up and dashed toward the creatures, casting the spell with a shout. There was a loud crack, and the nearest Bellatrix’s tattered, striped Azkaban robes changed into the tacky, spangled pink garb of a Las Vegas showgirl-a revealing bikini top and bottom, complete with a tall, spiky feather headdress and shoes. The others followed suit until an entire chorus line of Boggarts was looking around anxiously, wondering what the hell had happened.
“Erm, Tonks?”
“Hmm?”
“Not to be critical of your technique or anything, but I believe when you cast the Riddikulus spell, it’s meant to make the Boggart less terrifying.”
The thin line of her lips trembled, and she laughed riotously as the Boggarts began to disappear in puffs of smoke and the occasional marabou feather. The last one tottered in a confused circle, looking for its missing comrades, before exploding.
“Congratulations, Nymphadora.” He grinned. “That was the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen.”
She smiled proudly and elbowed him. “Surely not.”
“Honestly, I’ll have nightmares for a week, now.”
She laughed. “Before it was Bellatrix, it was a giant Venus Flytrap.” Tonks sobered a bit, and said, “I liked that one better. At least it was funny.”
Suddenly, he realized how still it had become-he could once again hear the faint thrum of music downstairs. Tonks studied her fingernails and he watched her, until he could no longer take the silence.
"Listen, about the, erm-the other day," Remus said hastily, grasping the opportunity to atone for his accidental inspection of her womanly bits. She looked up at him, startled out of her quietude. “I feel I should apologize-“
"Oh, it's fine, really. Not like I’ve never been accidentally groped before-“
He winced inwardly, wishing for another drink.
“-And I'm the one who should be apologizing about it, anyway," she finished quickly. "I'm the clumsy one."
“Don’t-don’t worry about it.” As aggravated as he had been with her earlier, he now found it impossible to tell her how destructive she was to his morals.
She moved to sit down on the domed lid of a travel trunk pasted with stickers from exotic locations. A Haitian voodoo mask peered at him from under a layer of grime, next to peeling labels from Cairo and Athens. The trunk rattled as she sat and the girl jumped up to her feet again, wiping dust from her skirt.
“Oh! Seems we’ve missed one. Do you want to take this or shall I-“
“I’ll do it,” he insisted, hoping not to see another demonstration of Bella Lestrange in inadequate clothing, and Tonks nodded understandingly, unlocking the trunk with Alohomora.
They both stepped back and waited, but no moon floated up from within, and no murderous auntie climbed out. Both regarded the trunk with a curious tilt of the head, and after a moment they looked at each other. Tonks walked back to the trunk and peered inside.
“It’s just a manky old trunk, Remus, doesn’t look like anything is in here after all.”
“Well, that doesn’t make any sen-“ the word died on his lips as he watched her lean down, all long legs and curvy hips, to look closer in the travel trunk.
“Can’t see a damn thing,” she mumbled, and leaned even farther in. A vague sense of trepidation filled him and he moved toward her slowly. Just before the girl whispered “Lumos,” he saw it-a thick vine snaked out of the dark and wound around her wrist, climbing her arm. She felt it and started to back away.
“Tonks…don’t move.”
She froze just as the plant-or at least, he thought it was a plant-wrapped around her elbow and jerked her forward, her wand clattered to the floor. She swore and tried pulling backwards as more vines snuck out of the trunk, wrapping around her waist and curling around her other arm, but the plant tugged harder and her grip on the edge of the trunk began to slip.
Thinking quickly, he grabbed her around her waist and pulled, casting spells at the same time. He had never dealt much with plants, but Diffindo seemed to be working well enough. Writhing vines dropped to the floor, severed from the plant, and she was free-he pushed her backwards, away from the trunk and then several things happened at once.
The trunk’s lid slammed shut on the plant’s feelers, which still flailed in the air like Cthulhu trapped under a house a la the Wicked Witch of the East. The plant shrieked like an electrocuted cat, Tonks screamed, Remus tripped on one of the dismembered-but-still-wiggling vines, and both of them hit the floor.
He landed on top of her, pinning her down-both of them panting, disheveled, and covered in green plant goo. The girl’s dark eyes were wide with fright and he had the sudden urge to kiss her. He almost did; their lips were half an inch apart…but he lost his nerve, and instead he said,
“Are you okay?”
“Great. You?”
Remus nodded, and for a long, painful second, neither of them spoke.
“Well, this is awkward,” she said bluntly, unmoving.
“I agree. Maybe…maybe we should go.”
“Yeah, I’ve work in the morning.”
“Okay.”
“Will I see you tomorrow?”
“I’m sure you will.”
He got up, pulled her to her feet, and they proceeded to dust themselves off without looking at one another.
“I guess I’ll see you later,” Tonks said, sticking out a hand. “I had a great time.” She grinned and he knew she wasn’t lying. “Thanks for…y’know, rescuing me and all.”
“No problem,” he said, shaking her hand. “I had a great time, too.”
Tonks stood, holding his hand for a moment and giving him a searching look from under her hair, which flooded pink. Quickly, she leaned towards him and after a moment’s hesitation, she kissed him on the cheek. Without realizing he had done it until it was already happening, he caught her chin in his hand and kissed her lips, trying to put every feeling he had for her into the gesture-it was warning and apology, a plea for forgiveness, a substitute for all the words he couldn’t say to her, and she seemed to understand. Her fingers tightened around his, and she smiled with a hint of sadness in her eyes.
“Bye,” he said quietly, letting go of her hand.
“Bye,” she said, blushing, and then disappeared.
The next morning he arrived-in unusually high spirits for someone standing on the doorstep of 12 Grimmauld-with a cup of coffee in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other, and as Remus suspected, Sirius was waiting for him in the kitchen.
“You didn’t come home last night.”
“I went to my house,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. “Sorry I didn’t check in, Mum.”
“Ha ha ha,” Black laughed mirthlessly.
“Tonks stop by yet?”
“No. How did your date go?”
“It wasn’t a date.”
“What was it, then?”
“A catastrophe.”
“That bad, eh? More ‘accidents,’ then?” Sirius asked, but Remus didn’t answer, which he took
as affirmation. “What’d you do this time, grab her bum?”
Remus was silent again, rolling his eyes in lieu of a proper retort, and he put a large brown paper bag on the table. “I got her something. To apologize.”
“Liquor?” Sirius asked hopefully, eyeing the bag.
“No…”
He reached in and pulled out a terracotta pot, which he sat on the table. A wild-looking, neon green and bright pink plant was growing from it, its two strange leaves edged in long spines.
“What the bloody hell is that?”
“A Venus Flytrap.”
“You got her a houseplant.”
“It’s a carnivorous plant, it eats bugs.”
“That’s not a plant, that’s a pet,” Sirius said, frowning. Remus chose not to acknowledge his friend’s comment and continued with his project, spelling a hot pink bow onto the pot.
“I think she’ll like it,” he said, straightening the bow, but he didn’t elaborate as to why he thought such a thing. He was certain that at any rate it would make her laugh, and that was all he could really do for her, being stuck in limbo between one hell of an impossible platonic friendship and another hell of a similarly unfeasible romantic relationship-but that was better than nothing, and he was accustomed to making do with what he had.
“So it’s thorny and eats raw meat?” Sirius laughed, and poked the plant. It snapped at his fingers-he quickly jerked his hand away. “And it’s vicious, as well. She should definitely name it after you, then.”