HP FIC: Perchance To Dream
Title: Perchance To Dream
Author:
mrstater
Format & Word Count: one-shot, 4146 words
Rating & Warnings: R for smut; original character
Summary: A dream leads to an argument and an unexpected quest to seek out the meaning. Will Remus and Tonks kiss and make up? More importantly, who will come out on top?
Author's Note: Originally written for the March 2008 "Not Forgotten" ficathon at
rt_challenge , this fic was inspired by the prompts awake and whimsy, and the question, "Can one write Deathly Hallows humor?" One tried...The dream meaning which I have attributed to JK Rowling's The Dream Oracle actually comes from the Dream Moods A-Z Dream Dictionary. Many thanks to my fantastic beta reader,
godricgal , who had a dream and gave me a plot bunny and urged me to run amok with it. (So blame her for this. ;))
Perchance To Dream
"Remus..."
"Mmm," he murmured against her mouth before once more capturing her lips softly between his, not realising that Tonks hadn't only whispered his name in a barely intelligible approval of the way his hand slipped beneath the black lace-trimmed edge of her hot pink babydoll nightie to rest on her hip, his fingers fiddling lackadaisically with the string bikini strap of her knickers (which, she thought, looked less-than-sexy beneath her five months pregnant belly, though Remus seemed not to mind much); she had also said his name because she was trying to put a temporary stop to the action that reduced her to barely intelligible whispers.
But Merlin...With Remus' strong arm beneath her shoulders, his fingers tracing tingle-inducing patterns on her skin, his lean waist resting against her rounded abdomen, the trail of course hairs prickling her bare skin and sending delightful shivers over her body, his warm mouth open on hers, his tongue exploring so deep...Well, it was more than a little difficult to remember that she had anything more to say to him at all.
Except that it was also very difficult to breathe--for reasons that had less to do with Remus snogging her breathless than the weight of their baby pushing her internal organs into positions they weren't meant to be in.
She tore her lips from his and turned her head, repeating his name as his lips trailed across her cheek, then down as he nuzzled the sensitive place where her jaw curved up to her earlobe. Groaning, Tonks untangled her fingers from the fine hair at the base of his neck and slid her hand down to settle on his chest, pushing him away.
At once, Remus sat up, withdrawing his arms from around her. Lines appeared at the corners of his eyes and on his brow as he looked down at her with concern.
"I'm sorry, Dora! If you're not in the mood, we don't have to--"
"I never said I wasn't the mood," said Tonks, not sounding as if she was as she pushed up on her elbows. "I just need to get off my bloody back--"
"Of course."
Remus didn't hesitate to slip his arms around her and assist her onto her left side--a more comfortable posture, to be sure, Tonks thought as she drew in deep lungs full of air and massaged her belly, pushing a tiny knee aside--though not the position she necessarily would have assumed if left to her own devices.
But she tried not to think grudgingly about her husband's helpfulness as he settled behind her. One long-fingered hand slid down to rest beneath her stomach, rubbing the silk of her knickers; the other curved over her full breast, so lightly. His fingers traced around her nipple, but avoided more direct touch to the sensitive pink flesh--mindful, no doubt, of the tenderness of her changing body.
Tonks sighed.
Remus' lips had just closed softly around her earlobe, but parted, leaving a coolness in their wake.
"If you're not up for this," he said huskily, "if you'd rather go to sleep--"
His sentence ended with a sharply indrawn breath as Tonks reached a hand back to touch him through the thin cotton of his boxers. She turned her head to look over her shoulder at him, and the tips of their noses brushed. Despite having only a moment before protested, Remus leant in to kiss her again.
"If you're up for this," said Tonks, "which you clearly are..."
Remus chuckled low, the sound rumbling pleasantly against her back. "Am I that transparent?"
"Transparent's not exactly the word I'd use..."
She covered his hand on her breast with hers, drawing it briefly up to her lips before replacing it and holding it firmly against her breast. She shifted, rocking slightly back into him, and squeezed her fingers around him, eliciting a soft moan in his throat.
"I'm up for this, too," she said.
Easily convinced, Remus planted a kiss to her shoulder before he moved away from her, the bed shifting as he divested himself of his underwear; then, rolling onto his side again, he quickly removed her nightie and tugged her knickers down over her hips so they could spoon together without so much as a scrap of fabric between their bodies.
His hand settled once more on her breast, just stroking her nipple until it hardened beneath the callused pad of his thumb; Tonks bit her lip against the slight sensitivity, bracing herself with a hand on his hip as he slowly pushed into her. There was no discomfort, but he did not move for a moment after that, except to drop light kisses on her neck and the side of her face. His actions reminded her of their early days of intimacy, when Remus had taken such care as her body had learnt to accommodate his.
When he did, finally, begin to move, it was still with utmost gentleness. Not to the extent that Tonks felt no pleasure from his moving within her; far from it, as her accelerated heartbeat rapid, shallow breathing, her flushed face and chest, and her wordless exclamations in duet with his, testified. But she couldn't help but wish he wouldn’t treat her as if she might break, that she felt a more active participant in their lovemaking, as she had before her pregnancy.
Tonks came with him, but as she curled on her other side, Remus' breath deepening in slumber beneath her arm slung across his chest, she drifted off to sleep with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction.
When she awoke, however, it was with a definite feeling of perspiration. She sat up with no little amount of effort thanks to her baby bulge; in the process of pushing herself to the edge of the bed and swinging her feet down onto the carpet, jostled Remus, ever a light sleeper, awake.
"Dora," he said through a yawn, scrabbling in the dark for his wand on the bedside table. He flicked on the lights and squinted against the sudden glare. "Are you all right?"
"Just need to wash my face."
Tonks grabbed her black silk dressing gown that was slung over the bedpost and pulled it on.
"Your half of the bed's drenched," Remus observed, getting up as she crossed the bedroom. "Are your hormones playing havoc with your body temperature again?"
"No, actually." Tonks paused with her hand on the doorknob and turned back to him, grinning a little. "I just had the strangest dream. Funny now, though it must've been right stressful at the time for me to sweat like this."
Remus' forehead dimpled between his eyebrows, and frown lines tugged heavily at the corners of his mouth. "What was it?"
Laughing, Tonks wiped her forehead on the sleeve of her dressing gown and shuffled back to the bed. "Well I dreamt I had the baby, and the head came out just fine, except that it had blue hair--"
"Given that you were having the baby," said Remus, his expression lightening a little, "blue hair probably indicates a very fine baby, indeed."
"--but then the body came out, and it had four legs and a scorpion tail, and my mum started screaming that it was a Manticore, so we all ran away, but it was huge and it stung us all--Remus?"
He had become very pale, and dropped to sit at the edge of the bed.
"What in Merlin's name's the matter with you?" Tonks asked. "It was just a silly dream, and I'm quite recovered now--"
"It wasn't a silly dream," said Remus hollowly. "No dreams are."
"What, you don't think me dreaming about giving birth to a Manticore reflects some deep internal angst?"
The blue eyes Remus turned up to her were too bright, almost haunted. "As a matter of fact, I do."
Tonks put her hands on Remus' knees and bent over him.
"So do I," she said in a conspiratorial tone. "From time to time, I become quite angsty about how bloody much giving birth's going hurt."
She leant in and feathered his fringe back from his forehead so she could drop a kiss on his skin. He was clammy to the touch.
"Come on. Let's go back to sleep."
Though they lay back down, Tonks could not fall asleep again, because Remus, beside her, couldn't stop tossing and turning.
"For Merlin's sake!" Tonks cried out in frustration after about ten minutes of this. "We may be having a baby together, but I think I'm the only one who's supposed to have trouble getting comfortable in bed. For once I actually am, but you won't let me get a bloody wink of sleep!"
Remus threw back the duvet. "I'm sorry. I want to have a look in The Dream Oracle."
Tonks gawped as she watched Remus' silhouette, highlighted by the street lamp directly outside their bedroom window, stooped to pull on the pyjama bottoms he'd left crumpled on the floor.
"The Dream Oracle?" she repeated. "You mean the Divination textbook?"
"By Inigo Imago, yes."
"I thought those were supposed to stay in the Divination classroom."
"I liked Divination so much I nicked one."
"And you were still made a bloody prefect," Tonks grumbled as he padded out of their bedroom and flicked on the lights in the hall. She called after him, "You know, I don't think you're going to flip through it and find an entry for 'Birthing Manticores'!"
"No," said Remus, returning from the study a moment later, flipping through a battered leather-bound book, "but here under the birth heading it says that 'to dream that you are giving birth to a non-human creature signifies you have an overwhelming fear in the health of your baby. You are overly concerned that your baby may have birth defects. This type of dream is common in expectant mothers in their second trimester.'"
He raised his eyebrow at the last.
It was so ridiculous that Tonks snorted with laughter. "I don't believe the book really says that. You're making it up. Give it here."
Remus withheld the book from her. "Why would I make that up? You know my fears for our child."
Again Tonks stared, then she flopped back on the pillows, dragging her hands through her sticky-with-sweat hair.
"Bloody hell, Remus! Is this about the baby being a werewolf? Only that's always been your fear, as you said. Not mine."
"You might fear it subconsciously."
"No." Tonks reached for her wand. "I don't. Accio Dream Oracle."
"Dora--"
The book flew from Remus' hands into her own, and she quickly found the page from which he'd been reading and scanned it.
"I notice you left out this little bit that's in brackets--'to dream that you are giving birth to a non-human creature represents an overwhelming (unfounded) fear in the health of your baby.' I think that's a word I've used about your fears, isn't it?"
"Nymphadora, don't make light of my insecurities."
"Then don't leave out crucial bits of The Dream Oracle to suit them. Listen to this next bit: 'In particular, if you dream that you are giving birth to a monster--' Hm, are Manticores monsters, I wonder? What do you think, Remus? '-- then it implies that your inner creative energy has yet to differentiate itself and grow into expression. You may hold some hesitation in releasing this 'monster' for fear that others will judge your or that they will not accept your ideals."
"As a matter of fact, Nymphadora," said Remus, enunciating each syllable of her hated name with great deliberation, "I did read that bit. Only I thought it inapplicable because you, of the pink hair, surely have never delayed the differentiation of your inner creative energy."
Tonks clapped the book shut and tossed it to the foot of the bed, sitting up with her hands balled into fists.
"For your information, I've actually been working up the courage to tell you I want to paint the baby's room white. It's feng shui, and encourages creativity, but I thought you'd think I was a Death Eater posing as me if I suggested something as plain vanilla as white, and I'm too damn irritable these to put up with you asking me a million security questions to prove yes, I really am Nymphadora Tonks Lupin."
A faint smirk tilted Remus' lips. "Actually, I imagine if you told me you wanted to paint the baby's room white, I'd readily agree, because it already is white."
Tonks scowled. "And now you're making light of insecurities I don't even have! I swear to you, I'm not even a teensy bit worried about the baby being a werewolf. And even if he or she did turn out to be one, that wouldn't change how I feel about the baby. That piece of shit book--"
"The Dream Oracle is most certainly not--"
"--implies I'm afraid of the child. I could never think of our baby as a monster--even if that dream was a bloody prophecy and do have a Manticore!"
Her words hung in the air, seemingly suspended by her rapid breaths. Her eyes held Remus' for a long time before he finally shrugged and slid into bed with her once more.
"From where I stand--" he began, but Tonks, turning on her side, her back to him, interrupted, "Which is lying down."
"--there is only one way to solve this."
"Admit that you're being completely irrational?"
"We pay a little visit to a Seer."
Delphina Plainview had filled the Divination post at Hogwarts for twenty years prior to Sybill Trelawney's appointment to the position, and before that, had served as Head of the Prophecy Division of the Department of Mysteries.
Tonks could not believe she'd let Remus talk her into going to see her at her home in Blackpool.
"A Seer called Plainview!" she sneered as they paused on the second storey landing of a narrow, winding staircase so Tonks could catch her breath and rest her feet before ascending to Delphina's fourth floor flat. "With a connection to Delphi, city of Oracles and Sibyls, no less! Whoever in the name of Merlin's crystal ball would have expected that?"
"The real irony," said Remus, taking Tonks' elbow and helping her mount the next flight of stairs, "is that Professor Plainview is stone blind."
At the top of the stairs, Remus had only just raised his hand to knock on the single peeling door of the garret flat, when a crackly voice from within bid them--by their full names--to enter.
Tonks looked up at Remus. "I suppose when you're a Seer you're exempted from constant vigilance?"
"Naturally."
He took her hand, turned the doorknob, and pushed the door open.
"Hello, Professor Plainview."
They stepped into a smoky flat which made Tonks think of all the times she'd walked into Professor Trelawney's stuffy tower, so thick with candle smoke and incense that you couldn't make out the tea leaves in the cup right under your nose, embodying all the hokus pokus mumbo jumbo she and Mad-Eye had used to grumble about Divination.
Only this was cigarette smoke. Fresh cigarette smoke, cigarette smoke as stale as if every ashtray in the country, since the dawn of time, had been emptied into this room. What was Remus thinking, bringing her and their baby to a place like this? She started to wonder about casting a Bubble-head Charm, but stopped herself when she remembered they were in the home of a Seer--only to chide herself for being worried about a Seer reading her mind when she was convinced that ilk were phonies.
Remus was pressing her hand into one as gnarled as if it were a tree branch that protruded through the haze of smoke.
"This is my wife, Nymphadora--"
"Who is about to elbow you in the ribs, Mr. Lupin."
The voice was so deep and raspy, Tonks would have taken it for a man's had she not known she was meeting a woman, and the mouth from which it came puffed out a cloud of smoke, straight into Tonks' face. She thought it might have been in the shape of a Hippogriff, but she didn't really give it a proper look as she was turning her head away and holding her breath.
"You'd best step aside," Delphina added.
Tonks stopped her elbow short of Remus' side. Gritting her teeth, she glanced up at Remus to find him wearing a smug expression.
"Right then." Delphina's coarse voice was underpinned by the faintly scratching sound of what Tonks could only assume, thanks to the dense cloud of smoke hanging in the air, were a pair of extremely dry-skinned palms rubbing together. "What brings you here?"
"Don't you know?" Tonks asked, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of her tone, and earning a nudge from Remus.
"Of course I do," Delphina replied evenly--or would have done, if her voice were not so gritty. "I'm doubtful you know what brings you here."
"Remus," replied Tonks, at the same time as Remus said, "Dora had a nightmare."
"It wasn't a nightmare," Tonks argued. "It was just a dream about giving birth to a Manticore, and it didn't scare me. It was quite funny, actually."
"I read The Dream Oracle," said Remus, "and I believe Dora subconsciously fears our child will be a werewolf." He swallowed hard. "Like me."
"He's talking bollocks!" Tonks told the Seer, crossing her arms across her chest so that they rested atop her belly. "If it means anything at all, it's that I've been squelching my creativity, but now I've admitted to my paranoid husband that I'd like a white, feng shui nursery, I'll never dream about birthing Manticores ag--"
Her word was swallowed by a paroxysm of coughs as Delphina puffed more smoke into her face; this time Tonks glimpsed enough to know for certain it was a perfect smoke representation of a Manticore.
"The Dream Oracle," Delphina said, "is codswallop."
Tonks started to flash Remus a told-you-so grin, but the Seer continued:
"However, in this case, I believe it is correct. For once."
Remus started to look smug, although behind the triumph of being right were sadness and pain--neither of which evoked any emotion in Tonks beyond an urge to grab his robes and shake him.
"Mrs. Lupin chose the correct interpretation of the dream."
"Ha!" cried Tonks. "I told--"
A smoke werewolf loped into her face, much like her Patronus, only her Patronus had never sent her into a coughing fit. Remus, not begrudging her being right, probably because he hadn’t wanted her to be afraid of their baby, patted her on the back.
"Mrs. Lupin's pent-up creativity, however," Delphina continued, "is not feng shui. It's UST."
"UST?" Tonks and Remus repeated together.
"Unresolved sexual tension," Delphina explained.
"That's..." Remus looked a little pale, though everything looked rather hazy, in this smoke-filled room. "I'm afraid that can't be..."
"It's bollocks," said Tonks for the second time in the course of their visit, and, not knowing why she felt the need to set this nutter straight, heard herself elaborating: "We have sex three or four times a week. Usually four, since I started my second trimester. It's been great."
She threw her shoulders back and jutted her chin, giving her best smug smile--which Delphina promptly withered.
"But not fantastic," the Seer said. "Most witches find sexual relations fantastic during their second trimester. Sensation is heightened...Ecstasy is, well, ecstasy. And you, my dear, have a monster in you waiting to be unleashed."
Suddenly, a leathery face whose most prominent feature was a mouthful of yellow smoker's teeth clamped down on a cigarette emerged from the smoke, framed in a hallow of grey, whispy hair that seemed to fade into the hazy aura that hung about the room.
"Tell me, Mrs. Lupin. What is your fantasy?"
Remus practically dragged Tonks down the Blackpool street to their Apparition point, though the air was so cold and fresh after the ashtray stench of Delphina Plainview's flat that Tonks didn't really mind how tightly his fingers clutched her wrist or that she had to run to keep up with his long, swift strides.
"I cannot believe I paid that woman ten Galleons to talk bollocks about our sex life," he muttered through clenched teeth. "As you said, we make love regularly, and you've never left me in any doubt as to your satisfaction."
He stopped suddenly, and Tonks nearly collided with him as he spun to face her; his hands found her shoulders.
"You are satisfied, aren't you, Dora?"
Despite wanting nothing more than to erase the anxious lines from his face, Tonks found herself unable to answer yes. She bit her lip and glanced down at the cracked pavement. Technically, there was no question of her having been satisfied after last night's encounter. And yet there had been that strange feeling just before she'd fallen asleep, and her wishing as he made love to her so gently...
"Oh, God."
Remus' hands fell from her shoulders, one hanging slack at his side, the other rubbing over his unshaven face.
"Why haven't you told me there's something more you want?"
"Because I'm pregnant!" Tonks cried. "Because you're tender and lovely and it's good! Great, even!"
"But not fantastic."
"I've nothing to complain about."
A terrible, agonising pause, then Remus said, quietly, "Surely you know that if you have a fantasy, I'm more than willing to try anything you want. I never meant to be too gentle. I only thought it was what you wanted."
"I didn't realise I had a fantasy. But I think maybe it was a ten Galleons well spent, because I do."
Tonks looked up at Remus, and found him looking endearingly sincere, though undoubtedly nervous.
She took his hands and squeezed them reassuringly.
"It's not exactly visions of me donning leather and thigh-high boots and chaining you to the bed, so I hope you won't be too disappointed."
Disappointment was certainly the last thing Tonks was--and she could safely guess, was the last thing Remus was--as she rode out wave upon wave of ecstatic sensation, and then collapsed, heaving, down onto his sweat-slicked body. Her rounded belly didn't allow her to press his body entirely against hers as before her pregnancy, but with his hands holding her baby bulge, she could feel the energy pulsing from his fingers, the tautness of his muscles against her skin, and she loved it.
But most of all she loved what she was seeing, which was why astride had always been her favourite position: the curve of his throat with the masculine swell of his Adam's apple as his head fell back as she drove him over the edge; his lips forming the shape of her name; his blue eyes opening on her at last, rich, and hazy with love; their joined bodies...
She held his hips beneath hers, keeping them pressed together, and stretched up to kiss him.
"That," she said as his hands slid up to tangle in her hair, "was bloody fantastic."
Remus mumbled a barely intelligible agreement.
"We may just have to do this pregnancy thing again," Tonks added. "All that morning sickness, and I reckon even the labour pains, are well worth it for the second trimester sex."
She gave her hips one final roll against his before they slipped apart, then turned on her side so that Remus could lie behind her, cuddling close like two spoons in a silver drawer.
Two very warm, naked spoons.
Then they slept the sleep of the satisfied, not once waking in the night. And if they had any dreams, they were sweet.
A/N: Reviewers get to spend an afternoon with Remus, who promises to bring over his Dream Oracle and tell you what all your dreams--or maybe your fantasies--mean.
Author:
mrstater
Format & Word Count: one-shot, 4146 words
Rating & Warnings: R for smut; original character
Summary: A dream leads to an argument and an unexpected quest to seek out the meaning. Will Remus and Tonks kiss and make up? More importantly, who will come out on top?
Author's Note: Originally written for the March 2008 "Not Forgotten" ficathon at
rt_challenge , this fic was inspired by the prompts awake and whimsy, and the question, "Can one write Deathly Hallows humor?" One tried...The dream meaning which I have attributed to JK Rowling's The Dream Oracle actually comes from the Dream Moods A-Z Dream Dictionary. Many thanks to my fantastic beta reader,
godricgal , who had a dream and gave me a plot bunny and urged me to run amok with it. (So blame her for this. ;))
Perchance To Dream
"Remus..."
"Mmm," he murmured against her mouth before once more capturing her lips softly between his, not realising that Tonks hadn't only whispered his name in a barely intelligible approval of the way his hand slipped beneath the black lace-trimmed edge of her hot pink babydoll nightie to rest on her hip, his fingers fiddling lackadaisically with the string bikini strap of her knickers (which, she thought, looked less-than-sexy beneath her five months pregnant belly, though Remus seemed not to mind much); she had also said his name because she was trying to put a temporary stop to the action that reduced her to barely intelligible whispers.
But Merlin...With Remus' strong arm beneath her shoulders, his fingers tracing tingle-inducing patterns on her skin, his lean waist resting against her rounded abdomen, the trail of course hairs prickling her bare skin and sending delightful shivers over her body, his warm mouth open on hers, his tongue exploring so deep...Well, it was more than a little difficult to remember that she had anything more to say to him at all.
Except that it was also very difficult to breathe--for reasons that had less to do with Remus snogging her breathless than the weight of their baby pushing her internal organs into positions they weren't meant to be in.
She tore her lips from his and turned her head, repeating his name as his lips trailed across her cheek, then down as he nuzzled the sensitive place where her jaw curved up to her earlobe. Groaning, Tonks untangled her fingers from the fine hair at the base of his neck and slid her hand down to settle on his chest, pushing him away.
At once, Remus sat up, withdrawing his arms from around her. Lines appeared at the corners of his eyes and on his brow as he looked down at her with concern.
"I'm sorry, Dora! If you're not in the mood, we don't have to--"
"I never said I wasn't the mood," said Tonks, not sounding as if she was as she pushed up on her elbows. "I just need to get off my bloody back--"
"Of course."
Remus didn't hesitate to slip his arms around her and assist her onto her left side--a more comfortable posture, to be sure, Tonks thought as she drew in deep lungs full of air and massaged her belly, pushing a tiny knee aside--though not the position she necessarily would have assumed if left to her own devices.
But she tried not to think grudgingly about her husband's helpfulness as he settled behind her. One long-fingered hand slid down to rest beneath her stomach, rubbing the silk of her knickers; the other curved over her full breast, so lightly. His fingers traced around her nipple, but avoided more direct touch to the sensitive pink flesh--mindful, no doubt, of the tenderness of her changing body.
Tonks sighed.
Remus' lips had just closed softly around her earlobe, but parted, leaving a coolness in their wake.
"If you're not up for this," he said huskily, "if you'd rather go to sleep--"
His sentence ended with a sharply indrawn breath as Tonks reached a hand back to touch him through the thin cotton of his boxers. She turned her head to look over her shoulder at him, and the tips of their noses brushed. Despite having only a moment before protested, Remus leant in to kiss her again.
"If you're up for this," said Tonks, "which you clearly are..."
Remus chuckled low, the sound rumbling pleasantly against her back. "Am I that transparent?"
"Transparent's not exactly the word I'd use..."
She covered his hand on her breast with hers, drawing it briefly up to her lips before replacing it and holding it firmly against her breast. She shifted, rocking slightly back into him, and squeezed her fingers around him, eliciting a soft moan in his throat.
"I'm up for this, too," she said.
Easily convinced, Remus planted a kiss to her shoulder before he moved away from her, the bed shifting as he divested himself of his underwear; then, rolling onto his side again, he quickly removed her nightie and tugged her knickers down over her hips so they could spoon together without so much as a scrap of fabric between their bodies.
His hand settled once more on her breast, just stroking her nipple until it hardened beneath the callused pad of his thumb; Tonks bit her lip against the slight sensitivity, bracing herself with a hand on his hip as he slowly pushed into her. There was no discomfort, but he did not move for a moment after that, except to drop light kisses on her neck and the side of her face. His actions reminded her of their early days of intimacy, when Remus had taken such care as her body had learnt to accommodate his.
When he did, finally, begin to move, it was still with utmost gentleness. Not to the extent that Tonks felt no pleasure from his moving within her; far from it, as her accelerated heartbeat rapid, shallow breathing, her flushed face and chest, and her wordless exclamations in duet with his, testified. But she couldn't help but wish he wouldn’t treat her as if she might break, that she felt a more active participant in their lovemaking, as she had before her pregnancy.
Tonks came with him, but as she curled on her other side, Remus' breath deepening in slumber beneath her arm slung across his chest, she drifted off to sleep with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction.
When she awoke, however, it was with a definite feeling of perspiration. She sat up with no little amount of effort thanks to her baby bulge; in the process of pushing herself to the edge of the bed and swinging her feet down onto the carpet, jostled Remus, ever a light sleeper, awake.
"Dora," he said through a yawn, scrabbling in the dark for his wand on the bedside table. He flicked on the lights and squinted against the sudden glare. "Are you all right?"
"Just need to wash my face."
Tonks grabbed her black silk dressing gown that was slung over the bedpost and pulled it on.
"Your half of the bed's drenched," Remus observed, getting up as she crossed the bedroom. "Are your hormones playing havoc with your body temperature again?"
"No, actually." Tonks paused with her hand on the doorknob and turned back to him, grinning a little. "I just had the strangest dream. Funny now, though it must've been right stressful at the time for me to sweat like this."
Remus' forehead dimpled between his eyebrows, and frown lines tugged heavily at the corners of his mouth. "What was it?"
Laughing, Tonks wiped her forehead on the sleeve of her dressing gown and shuffled back to the bed. "Well I dreamt I had the baby, and the head came out just fine, except that it had blue hair--"
"Given that you were having the baby," said Remus, his expression lightening a little, "blue hair probably indicates a very fine baby, indeed."
"--but then the body came out, and it had four legs and a scorpion tail, and my mum started screaming that it was a Manticore, so we all ran away, but it was huge and it stung us all--Remus?"
He had become very pale, and dropped to sit at the edge of the bed.
"What in Merlin's name's the matter with you?" Tonks asked. "It was just a silly dream, and I'm quite recovered now--"
"It wasn't a silly dream," said Remus hollowly. "No dreams are."
"What, you don't think me dreaming about giving birth to a Manticore reflects some deep internal angst?"
The blue eyes Remus turned up to her were too bright, almost haunted. "As a matter of fact, I do."
Tonks put her hands on Remus' knees and bent over him.
"So do I," she said in a conspiratorial tone. "From time to time, I become quite angsty about how bloody much giving birth's going hurt."
She leant in and feathered his fringe back from his forehead so she could drop a kiss on his skin. He was clammy to the touch.
"Come on. Let's go back to sleep."
Though they lay back down, Tonks could not fall asleep again, because Remus, beside her, couldn't stop tossing and turning.
"For Merlin's sake!" Tonks cried out in frustration after about ten minutes of this. "We may be having a baby together, but I think I'm the only one who's supposed to have trouble getting comfortable in bed. For once I actually am, but you won't let me get a bloody wink of sleep!"
Remus threw back the duvet. "I'm sorry. I want to have a look in The Dream Oracle."
Tonks gawped as she watched Remus' silhouette, highlighted by the street lamp directly outside their bedroom window, stooped to pull on the pyjama bottoms he'd left crumpled on the floor.
"The Dream Oracle?" she repeated. "You mean the Divination textbook?"
"By Inigo Imago, yes."
"I thought those were supposed to stay in the Divination classroom."
"I liked Divination so much I nicked one."
"And you were still made a bloody prefect," Tonks grumbled as he padded out of their bedroom and flicked on the lights in the hall. She called after him, "You know, I don't think you're going to flip through it and find an entry for 'Birthing Manticores'!"
"No," said Remus, returning from the study a moment later, flipping through a battered leather-bound book, "but here under the birth heading it says that 'to dream that you are giving birth to a non-human creature signifies you have an overwhelming fear in the health of your baby. You are overly concerned that your baby may have birth defects. This type of dream is common in expectant mothers in their second trimester.'"
He raised his eyebrow at the last.
It was so ridiculous that Tonks snorted with laughter. "I don't believe the book really says that. You're making it up. Give it here."
Remus withheld the book from her. "Why would I make that up? You know my fears for our child."
Again Tonks stared, then she flopped back on the pillows, dragging her hands through her sticky-with-sweat hair.
"Bloody hell, Remus! Is this about the baby being a werewolf? Only that's always been your fear, as you said. Not mine."
"You might fear it subconsciously."
"No." Tonks reached for her wand. "I don't. Accio Dream Oracle."
"Dora--"
The book flew from Remus' hands into her own, and she quickly found the page from which he'd been reading and scanned it.
"I notice you left out this little bit that's in brackets--'to dream that you are giving birth to a non-human creature represents an overwhelming (unfounded) fear in the health of your baby.' I think that's a word I've used about your fears, isn't it?"
"Nymphadora, don't make light of my insecurities."
"Then don't leave out crucial bits of The Dream Oracle to suit them. Listen to this next bit: 'In particular, if you dream that you are giving birth to a monster--' Hm, are Manticores monsters, I wonder? What do you think, Remus? '-- then it implies that your inner creative energy has yet to differentiate itself and grow into expression. You may hold some hesitation in releasing this 'monster' for fear that others will judge your or that they will not accept your ideals."
"As a matter of fact, Nymphadora," said Remus, enunciating each syllable of her hated name with great deliberation, "I did read that bit. Only I thought it inapplicable because you, of the pink hair, surely have never delayed the differentiation of your inner creative energy."
Tonks clapped the book shut and tossed it to the foot of the bed, sitting up with her hands balled into fists.
"For your information, I've actually been working up the courage to tell you I want to paint the baby's room white. It's feng shui, and encourages creativity, but I thought you'd think I was a Death Eater posing as me if I suggested something as plain vanilla as white, and I'm too damn irritable these to put up with you asking me a million security questions to prove yes, I really am Nymphadora Tonks Lupin."
A faint smirk tilted Remus' lips. "Actually, I imagine if you told me you wanted to paint the baby's room white, I'd readily agree, because it already is white."
Tonks scowled. "And now you're making light of insecurities I don't even have! I swear to you, I'm not even a teensy bit worried about the baby being a werewolf. And even if he or she did turn out to be one, that wouldn't change how I feel about the baby. That piece of shit book--"
"The Dream Oracle is most certainly not--"
"--implies I'm afraid of the child. I could never think of our baby as a monster--even if that dream was a bloody prophecy and do have a Manticore!"
Her words hung in the air, seemingly suspended by her rapid breaths. Her eyes held Remus' for a long time before he finally shrugged and slid into bed with her once more.
"From where I stand--" he began, but Tonks, turning on her side, her back to him, interrupted, "Which is lying down."
"--there is only one way to solve this."
"Admit that you're being completely irrational?"
"We pay a little visit to a Seer."
Delphina Plainview had filled the Divination post at Hogwarts for twenty years prior to Sybill Trelawney's appointment to the position, and before that, had served as Head of the Prophecy Division of the Department of Mysteries.
Tonks could not believe she'd let Remus talk her into going to see her at her home in Blackpool.
"A Seer called Plainview!" she sneered as they paused on the second storey landing of a narrow, winding staircase so Tonks could catch her breath and rest her feet before ascending to Delphina's fourth floor flat. "With a connection to Delphi, city of Oracles and Sibyls, no less! Whoever in the name of Merlin's crystal ball would have expected that?"
"The real irony," said Remus, taking Tonks' elbow and helping her mount the next flight of stairs, "is that Professor Plainview is stone blind."
At the top of the stairs, Remus had only just raised his hand to knock on the single peeling door of the garret flat, when a crackly voice from within bid them--by their full names--to enter.
Tonks looked up at Remus. "I suppose when you're a Seer you're exempted from constant vigilance?"
"Naturally."
He took her hand, turned the doorknob, and pushed the door open.
"Hello, Professor Plainview."
They stepped into a smoky flat which made Tonks think of all the times she'd walked into Professor Trelawney's stuffy tower, so thick with candle smoke and incense that you couldn't make out the tea leaves in the cup right under your nose, embodying all the hokus pokus mumbo jumbo she and Mad-Eye had used to grumble about Divination.
Only this was cigarette smoke. Fresh cigarette smoke, cigarette smoke as stale as if every ashtray in the country, since the dawn of time, had been emptied into this room. What was Remus thinking, bringing her and their baby to a place like this? She started to wonder about casting a Bubble-head Charm, but stopped herself when she remembered they were in the home of a Seer--only to chide herself for being worried about a Seer reading her mind when she was convinced that ilk were phonies.
Remus was pressing her hand into one as gnarled as if it were a tree branch that protruded through the haze of smoke.
"This is my wife, Nymphadora--"
"Who is about to elbow you in the ribs, Mr. Lupin."
The voice was so deep and raspy, Tonks would have taken it for a man's had she not known she was meeting a woman, and the mouth from which it came puffed out a cloud of smoke, straight into Tonks' face. She thought it might have been in the shape of a Hippogriff, but she didn't really give it a proper look as she was turning her head away and holding her breath.
"You'd best step aside," Delphina added.
Tonks stopped her elbow short of Remus' side. Gritting her teeth, she glanced up at Remus to find him wearing a smug expression.
"Right then." Delphina's coarse voice was underpinned by the faintly scratching sound of what Tonks could only assume, thanks to the dense cloud of smoke hanging in the air, were a pair of extremely dry-skinned palms rubbing together. "What brings you here?"
"Don't you know?" Tonks asked, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of her tone, and earning a nudge from Remus.
"Of course I do," Delphina replied evenly--or would have done, if her voice were not so gritty. "I'm doubtful you know what brings you here."
"Remus," replied Tonks, at the same time as Remus said, "Dora had a nightmare."
"It wasn't a nightmare," Tonks argued. "It was just a dream about giving birth to a Manticore, and it didn't scare me. It was quite funny, actually."
"I read The Dream Oracle," said Remus, "and I believe Dora subconsciously fears our child will be a werewolf." He swallowed hard. "Like me."
"He's talking bollocks!" Tonks told the Seer, crossing her arms across her chest so that they rested atop her belly. "If it means anything at all, it's that I've been squelching my creativity, but now I've admitted to my paranoid husband that I'd like a white, feng shui nursery, I'll never dream about birthing Manticores ag--"
Her word was swallowed by a paroxysm of coughs as Delphina puffed more smoke into her face; this time Tonks glimpsed enough to know for certain it was a perfect smoke representation of a Manticore.
"The Dream Oracle," Delphina said, "is codswallop."
Tonks started to flash Remus a told-you-so grin, but the Seer continued:
"However, in this case, I believe it is correct. For once."
Remus started to look smug, although behind the triumph of being right were sadness and pain--neither of which evoked any emotion in Tonks beyond an urge to grab his robes and shake him.
"Mrs. Lupin chose the correct interpretation of the dream."
"Ha!" cried Tonks. "I told--"
A smoke werewolf loped into her face, much like her Patronus, only her Patronus had never sent her into a coughing fit. Remus, not begrudging her being right, probably because he hadn’t wanted her to be afraid of their baby, patted her on the back.
"Mrs. Lupin's pent-up creativity, however," Delphina continued, "is not feng shui. It's UST."
"UST?" Tonks and Remus repeated together.
"Unresolved sexual tension," Delphina explained.
"That's..." Remus looked a little pale, though everything looked rather hazy, in this smoke-filled room. "I'm afraid that can't be..."
"It's bollocks," said Tonks for the second time in the course of their visit, and, not knowing why she felt the need to set this nutter straight, heard herself elaborating: "We have sex three or four times a week. Usually four, since I started my second trimester. It's been great."
She threw her shoulders back and jutted her chin, giving her best smug smile--which Delphina promptly withered.
"But not fantastic," the Seer said. "Most witches find sexual relations fantastic during their second trimester. Sensation is heightened...Ecstasy is, well, ecstasy. And you, my dear, have a monster in you waiting to be unleashed."
Suddenly, a leathery face whose most prominent feature was a mouthful of yellow smoker's teeth clamped down on a cigarette emerged from the smoke, framed in a hallow of grey, whispy hair that seemed to fade into the hazy aura that hung about the room.
"Tell me, Mrs. Lupin. What is your fantasy?"
Remus practically dragged Tonks down the Blackpool street to their Apparition point, though the air was so cold and fresh after the ashtray stench of Delphina Plainview's flat that Tonks didn't really mind how tightly his fingers clutched her wrist or that she had to run to keep up with his long, swift strides.
"I cannot believe I paid that woman ten Galleons to talk bollocks about our sex life," he muttered through clenched teeth. "As you said, we make love regularly, and you've never left me in any doubt as to your satisfaction."
He stopped suddenly, and Tonks nearly collided with him as he spun to face her; his hands found her shoulders.
"You are satisfied, aren't you, Dora?"
Despite wanting nothing more than to erase the anxious lines from his face, Tonks found herself unable to answer yes. She bit her lip and glanced down at the cracked pavement. Technically, there was no question of her having been satisfied after last night's encounter. And yet there had been that strange feeling just before she'd fallen asleep, and her wishing as he made love to her so gently...
"Oh, God."
Remus' hands fell from her shoulders, one hanging slack at his side, the other rubbing over his unshaven face.
"Why haven't you told me there's something more you want?"
"Because I'm pregnant!" Tonks cried. "Because you're tender and lovely and it's good! Great, even!"
"But not fantastic."
"I've nothing to complain about."
A terrible, agonising pause, then Remus said, quietly, "Surely you know that if you have a fantasy, I'm more than willing to try anything you want. I never meant to be too gentle. I only thought it was what you wanted."
"I didn't realise I had a fantasy. But I think maybe it was a ten Galleons well spent, because I do."
Tonks looked up at Remus, and found him looking endearingly sincere, though undoubtedly nervous.
She took his hands and squeezed them reassuringly.
"It's not exactly visions of me donning leather and thigh-high boots and chaining you to the bed, so I hope you won't be too disappointed."
Disappointment was certainly the last thing Tonks was--and she could safely guess, was the last thing Remus was--as she rode out wave upon wave of ecstatic sensation, and then collapsed, heaving, down onto his sweat-slicked body. Her rounded belly didn't allow her to press his body entirely against hers as before her pregnancy, but with his hands holding her baby bulge, she could feel the energy pulsing from his fingers, the tautness of his muscles against her skin, and she loved it.
But most of all she loved what she was seeing, which was why astride had always been her favourite position: the curve of his throat with the masculine swell of his Adam's apple as his head fell back as she drove him over the edge; his lips forming the shape of her name; his blue eyes opening on her at last, rich, and hazy with love; their joined bodies...
She held his hips beneath hers, keeping them pressed together, and stretched up to kiss him.
"That," she said as his hands slid up to tangle in her hair, "was bloody fantastic."
Remus mumbled a barely intelligible agreement.
"We may just have to do this pregnancy thing again," Tonks added. "All that morning sickness, and I reckon even the labour pains, are well worth it for the second trimester sex."
She gave her hips one final roll against his before they slipped apart, then turned on her side so that Remus could lie behind her, cuddling close like two spoons in a silver drawer.
Two very warm, naked spoons.
Then they slept the sleep of the satisfied, not once waking in the night. And if they had any dreams, they were sweet.
A/N: Reviewers get to spend an afternoon with Remus, who promises to bring over his Dream Oracle and tell you what all your dreams--or maybe your fantasies--mean.