R/T Fic: Another Kind of Magic, Part One
Title: Another Kind of Magic, Part One (1/7 + Prologue & Epilogue)
Authors: godricgal and mrstater
Illustrator: hrymfaxe
Format & Word Count: chaptered fic, this part weighs in at 3,838 words.
Rating & Warnings: R for sex
Summary: Something magical has been brewing between Remus and Tonks all summer long. But what happens when an Order assignment requires them to do things the Muggle way?
Authors' Notes: It's been over two years since godricgal and mrstater first discussed writing this fic -- or three of gilpin25's birthdays ago, and we're so glad we finally got the chance to write it. It's been an absolute blast to work on, and we're especially thankful to hrymfaxe for providing us with lots of squees as we saw the illustrations taking shape. gilpin25, we hope you (and others!) enjoy reading it as much as we've enjoyed writing it.
Prologue |
Part One
"Have you ever been in one of these before?" asked the young witch beside Remus. He looked down to see Tonks' dark, scrutinising Auror's eyes scanning warily over the vast glass-fronted building before them.
Remus shook his head. "Only once when I was a very small boy. With my Muggle gran. I don't really remember anything but being excited by the chocolate and sweets."
Tonks' mouth, set in a grim line, curved upward slightly as her face took on a nostalgic glow. "I stayed with my Muggle gran for a week once while my parents were on holiday. I didn't know how to control my morphing back then, and that week I'd been accidentally morphing into the people I saw on Gran's telly. So when Grandpa was out playing golf with his chums, Gran didn't have a choice but to take me shopping with her. She had to put sunglasses and a hat and scarf on me -- in the middle of July, mind -- because she said she didn't know how she'd explain if the little girl in her trolley suddenly turned into Captain Birds Eye."
As Remus chuckled, his own memory of the frozen foods mascot having been jarred by the name, Tonks went on, "I'd probably have been more likely to turn my hair the colour of his parrot's feathers, as grey hair isn't really my thing--"
Her words died abruptly as the colour drained from her pretty heart-shaped face and her features contorted into a mask of horror.
"Not that...I mean..." Tonks stammered. "It doesn't look good on me, I mean. On other people it's..." She appeared to cast around for the right word, while Remus looked on with amusement, unsure whether he wanted to help her out and put her out of her misery, or let her fester in her discomfort a little longer. He was just about to jump in, when she muttered something, which, had he not known better, he would have interpreted as 'downright sexy.'
"I beg your pardon?" he said, watching with curiosity as she flushed a shade of scarlet that he thought was all the more noticeable on her cheeks for being beneath brown, and plain -- well, plain for her, anyway -- hair.
"Distinguished," she said loudly and quickly, then turned, businesslike, back towards the shop front -- to hide her flushing face, Remus thought.
"That's what I thought you said." Remus draped his arm loosely around her shoulders and steered her towards the double doors that opened and closed with Muggle magic, giving her a few moments to compose herself and allow her colour to go down before she had to face him again.
"I realise," he said as they walked, "that grey hair is supposed to imply experience, but I'm afraid mine is as minimal as yours in the realm of Muggle shopping, so we're just going to have to have an adventure."
Chancing a glance down at Tonks, Remus was somewhat surprised to find her looking grave, the same deep frown on her face as she wore when on patrol. He struggled to suppress a grin, doubting she would appreciate him finding her focus on such an assignment as this rather cute.
Hopefully she wouldn't remain too serious and focused, and allow Remus the opportunity to indulge in a bit of the sort of innocent flirtation that always did seem to occur all too naturally whenever he was with her. It was a positive sign that she hadn't shrugged his arm from around her shoulders. Did she notice, he wondered with a pleasant shift of his insides, how perfectly her height complimented his? She fitted so comfortably beneath his arm; his hand was just the breadth to curl over her shoulder.
As it turned out, the details of their physical proximity were not the ones Tonks was focused on at the moment.
"I'd prefer we made this the least bit adventurous we can get away with and still earn passing marks on the cooking part of the assignment," she said crisply. "Unless you've worked as a chef?"
Remus' hand fell to his side, and he turned away to select a trolley from the long line of them tucked together at the front of the supermarket.
"No." He tugged at the end trolley to free it -- but it didn't budge. "I agree, we ought to try something simple."
Another tug, and still no joy.
"What about spaghet--argh!"
Even with one hand on the end of one trolley and the other tugging at the handle of the other, and all his strength applied to the task of pulling them apart, he could not make them budge much more than an inch. "Is there a Sticking Spell on this?"
"Maybe." Tonks' voice was tight and pitched high with held-back laughter. Remus felt red-hot colour prickle up from his collar as she went on, "Only we can't do magic to find out."
He gave the trolley one last tug -- a last ditch effort for the salvation of his manhood; it lurched towards him and then stopped with a shimmering clash of metal against metal.
"Is your pound stuck, young man?"
Remus looked up to find a statuesque elderly lady with steel-grey hair, who reminded him uncomfortably of one of Tonks' disguises of choice, peering down at him through wire-rimmed glasses that were perched on the end of her long, thin nose.
"My what?" he asked, momentarily taken aback.
"Your pound." She tapped a solid-looking box, approximately the size and, apparently, the strength of one of Hagrid's cauldron cakes, though not quite as lumpy.
"My...?" Before Remus could utter the word pound, the old lady spoke over him.
"These new-fangled contraptions." Her voice was crisp with disapproval. "A poor show, indeed. I wrote to the manager of this very store just last week to voice my opinion that if they do feel the need to levy a deposit on a mere shopping trolley, one ought, at the very least, to expect it to be a hassle-free experience with the provision of properly functioning equipment!"
Remus tried to formulate an appropriate response, but found himself a cropper because he had not the least idea of what on earth the lady was talking about. Tonks wasn't making it any easier on him, still sniggering into her hand in his periphery.
Thankfully, he was saved when the old lady once again tapped her trolley briskly, and said, "I suggest you try another. There is little one can do to induce a Tesco's shopping trolley to behave once it has taken against the notion."
With a show of strength impressive for her apparent age, she swung her trolley around one hundred and eighty degrees and made for the entrance of the supermarket, those strange, magically opening doors parting to admit her, and she was gone.
"Are you any more the wiser for that encounter?" Tonks piped up from beside him, her tone laced with barely concealed glee.
"Not yet, but I have formulated a plan."
"What's that then?"
"We read the instructions," he replied, leaning in slightly to read the small print on the box that perched upon the handle of the trolley; he wondered how he'd failed to notice it before now. So much for constant vigilance.
"I always knew I was working with a genius," Tonks said.
"That's enough," he said. "I don't see you helping out much here."
"Oh, I'm having far too much fun for that. Remus Lupin, Hogwarts Professor of notable achievement, foiled by a big, Muggle, wheelie, metal basket."
"Use enough adjectives, Tonks?"
"That's what I'm talking about."
Remus looked up from the instructions to raise his eyebrow at her. "Hmm?"
"Professor. Notable and what not." Her eyes twinkled at him. "Have you figured out what we've got to do yet?"
"As a matter of fact, I have," he replied, straightening up and turning to face her. "Would you happen to have a pound coin about your person?"
Tonks dug deep in the pockets of her jeans; eventually, she produced a chunky-looking goldish coin and held it out to him between her thumb and forefinger.
He fiddled for a moment, inserting the coin into the coin-sized hole and the dangly chain thing (which, in fairness to him, he thought, had been hidden behind the square box thingy) in the dangly chain-sized hole and then, with a satisfying click, the trolley was released. He turned to Tonks, triumphant.
"I wouldn't look so smug if I were you," she said. "I was the one with the Muggle money, and anyway..." She was perusing a roll of parchment from beneath knitted brows -- their score sheet, ironically, the only magic they were allowed during this training exercise; its twin lay in the hands of Sirius, back at Grimmauld Place, reporting their progress, or lack thereof, in real time. "...out of a possible ten points for the 'Shopping Like Muggles' test, we've just lost one for 'Trolley Mastery'."
Having given up on the idea of scholastic perfectionism in fifth year Potions, Remus wouldn't have been troubled by a one-point deduction out of ten, but, as he was contending with a Hufflepuff, he thought it best to appear perturbed and inspired to do better.
"Maybe there's something we could do for extra marks," he suggested as he motioned for Tonks to enter the supermarket through the magical glass doors through which their elderly shopping trolley adviser had passed. But Tonks veered toward the trolley, instead.
"I'll push."
"No, it's okay, I've got it," Remus said, keeping a firm grip on the handlebar." You go on ahead."
"But I want to push."
Stifling a grin at the image of a much smaller Tonks, bundled up in scarves and hats and gloves, saying the same thing to her gran -- an image Remus was sure an Auror wouldn't appreciate him having -- he said, "But you'll have more freedom to explore the supermarket if you let me."
Her eyes narrowed on him. "You think I'm too clumsy, don’t you? That I'll cause an accident."
"No!" Merlin, he hadn't meant her to take it that way at all. But he knew how self-conscious she was; how could he have been so thoughtless? "I'm just trying to be a gentleman!"
"But shopping is a woman's work!"
He caught the telltale glint in her dark eyes, and realised she'd only been winding him up. Well, two could play at that game. "Men are supposed to drive!"
"Old-fashioned Muggle thinking, Remus!"
"Unlike shopping being a job for a lady, I suppose, but in any case -- what do you think this weekend's for?"
"It's for us to learn how to live like Muggles, and you already did one trolley bit, so now I want my go."
Unceremoniously, she bumped Remus aside with her hip and took hold of the trolley, pushing it forward toward the door with a cheeky glance back at him. He hurried to catch up as the glass doors opened to swallow her into the building.
"So, what do you think we could do for those extra marks?" Tonks asked over her shoulder.
Remus looked around the expansive interior, the rows of tills lining the front, the aisles of food behind, and dragged a hand through his hair. "Perhaps something like actually finding our way around in here."
He glanced at Tonks, hoping to see his own feelings mirrored on her face so he might know he was not alone in his sense of bewilderment and intimidation at what ought to be a very basic task; but Tonks was stood with her hands on her hips, surveying Tesco's as she would the scene of a criminal investigation.
"You said something about spaghetti?" she asked, and Remus nodded. "Then we'll want to find the pasta aisle. I think the sauce will be on the same one..."
She spoke in a perfunctory way, eyes trained on the shelves, which rather deflated Remus, who'd been encouraged by her earlier flirtatious demeanour. And yet, as he followed her as she pushed the shopping trolley, his attraction to her grew all the more, for he found her irresistible in professional mode -- even if her Auror skills were currently being channelled into grocery shopping.
It didn't hurt that he was getting a tantalizing view of swaying hips and her cute bottom, to which clung a pair of extremely flattering jeans that were a little frayed at the edges of the pockets and just revealed the tiniest hint of vivid colour which he realised, with a swell in his throat, must be her knickers.
"Ooof."
He also realized, slightly too late, that his attention had been so singularly focused on following that teasing band of colour like a beacon amid this sea of Muggle shoppers, that he'd failed to notice that Tonks had stopped. He'd crashed right into her so that she was now firmly sandwiched between his body and the shopping trolley before her.
"Tonks," he said in a rather dazed manner, owing, in no small part, to the feel of each of her curves pressed against him, "you stopped."
"So, apparently," Tonks replied, tipping her head back and resting it lightly on his shoulder so she could meet his eyes with her dark ones that twinkled mischievously, "did you."
Remus swallowed. There was that feeling again of a perfect fit: she really was exactly the right height to rest her head on his shoulder; he could imagine, if she turned slightly, that her face would rest against the crook of his neck, her lips touching the pulse point, just so.
"Oi, watch it, mate! You're in the way," a rough male voice called from not too far behind them, the tone just touching anger.
Remus slipped his arms around Tonks to grasp the handle bar of the trolley and, keeping Tonks nestled close in front of him, swung the trolley round and ducked them into the relative safety of the aisle to their left.
The shelves were stacked high with every different sort of pasta imaginable, far more than were commonly available in the grocery store in Diagon Alley: spirals, tubes, spaghetti, extra long spaghetti, nests of delicate-looking pasta in pale knots.
"That was a lucky coincidence." Remus released his hold on the trolley and reluctantly took a step back from Tonks, who looked at him with amusement, which made heat rise in his face. Did she know how much she affected him?
"Coincidence? Why d'you think I stopped?"
Probably not because she knew he was staring at her very attractive bottom and plotted to make him run into her, Remus realised, and, feeling warmth rush up from his collar, took another step back from her and quickly turned to examine the selection of pasta.
"Why are there so many different box designs, I wonder?"
Leaving the trolley to stand next to him, Tonks said, "Because Muggles appreciate variety as much as some witches do? Names are a bit boring, though."
Remus sniggered. "This from someone who won't let anyone call her Nymphadora."
"But you certainly try to call me that every chance you get," she said, giving him a look. "Tesco Value, Tesco Finest, plain Tesco...Oh!"
Her hands shot out to snatch a box of pasta off the shelf, knocking two others off in the process. She muttered a curse and bent to pick them up, but there was joy on her face as she stood and presented Remus a box with a flourish.
"These are shaped like little bow-ties! How cute is that? Do you think it cooks just like regular spaghetti? Could we try that?"
Stifling a grin, Remus said, "I've never been much of one for bow-ties, but as it's something we don't see in the Wizarding world, I suppose we ought to try it. Although it appears that kind over there in the green box is cheaper. We'll have more money for dessert if we get it. I have been hankering to try Muggle sweets..."
"Ooh, yes! If they have pretty bows for plain old pasta, imagine what they might have managed in the dessert line!" She restored the pricier pasta to the shelf, and sidestepped once to pluck the product Remus had pointed out. "Let's choose a sauce quickly so we can go and find the interesting stuff."
"Don't you think it's all interesting?" Remus asked as he turned to scan the rest of the aisle, looking for sauce section. It wasn't hard to find, and, as Tonks tossed the pasta into the trolley and grasped the handle, he touched her back to urge her further down the aisle toward their quarry.
"S'pose," she replied. "But there's a limit on how exciting pasta can be."
"This coming from the woman who just described pasta bows as 'cute'?" Remus teased, nudging her playfully with his shoulder.
"They'd be more exciting if they were pink," she said, eyeing the single item in their trolley, fingers inching towards the wand Remus knew was concealed in the band of her jeans.
"Enough of that," Remus said, reaching around her waist to still those pesky fingers. "I think we're on thin enough ice with this section of the mission as it is. It's doubtful that Minerva or Mad-Eye would find pink pasta a diverting enough antic to eschew docking us points for using magic."
"Excuse me!"
At first, Remus thought she was objecting to his slightly more than simply friendly gesture, and as he withdrew his hand, he berated himself for overstepping the mark. It was all well and good draping a friendly arm around her shoulder, but a flattened hand on her hip was that much more intimate.
He was just about to stammer an apology when she said, "It was hardly my fault that you couldn't handle a simple Muggle trolley."
He let out the breath he'd been holding. "You weren't exactly brimming with advice," he said, giving her a light squeeze.
"Hey, I had a readily available pound, didn't I?"
Remus sighed dramatically. "It's never me that just gets to stand around and sort problems by handing out money."
"How about I let you pay when we get to the payment desk thingy?"
"All right," Remus said, pretending to be slightly mollified. "But it's only because you don't want to have to count out the Muggle money in front of a Muggle, isn't it?"
"Yes," Tonks said. "But think about how manly you'll feel handing over all those notes. Now, what kind of sauce do you want? Tomato or cream?"
Ruling out cream sauces, because he was fairly sure they had a tendency to burn rather pungently, hardly narrowed down their choices; there appeared to be more varieties of tomato sauce than there were shapes of pasta, although when they realised that there were, apparently, multiple Muggle companies that all manufactured essentially the same flavours ("Not very creative of them!" Tonks remarked), they settled on the least expensive jar, again with the reasoning that they could get more dessert for their money.
In the fresh produce aisle, they were amazed to find you could buy salad in a bag, the lettuce already chopped, and croutons, cheese, and Caesar dressing in separate packets, ready to be mixed together.
"Hm," mused Remus as he popped one into the trolley. "I wonder if there's a market for that in the Wizarding community. Think anyone would object to lettuce that's been chopped and packaged by a werewolf?" They continued on down the aisle.
Again that look of something like sadness (he didn't think it was pity; he hoped it wasn't pity) glimmered in Tonks' dark eyes, only to flicker into a blaze of defiance as she jutted her chin and pushed the cart toward the baked goods. "I think the domestically disinclined single witch or wizard would welcome Remus' Ready Romaine at magical green grocers. This one would, anyway, and I think half the Auror division would be queued up behind me."
Remus grinned and grabbed a foil-wrapped garlic bread off a baker's rack. ("Hot and crisp in just ten minutes!" he read on the package, and Tonks commented that wands could do it a lot quicker.) "Shall I market Lupin's Loaves, as well?"
They continued in this way as they selected a plain loaf of bread to make toast for breakfast, as well as found eggs, bacon, orange juice; finally, they selected a bottle of inexpensive white wine to complement their Italian dinner. All the while, Tonks pushed the shopping trolley, and Remus admired her swaying hips and the worn bottom of her jeans. Once he had to grab hold of her waist to pull her -- and the trolley -- back just in time to avoid running over a small boy who darted out unexpectedly from an aisle.
Remus held on to her a little longer than was strictly necessary, but the flush on her face, he was certain, had nothing to do with his touch, and everything to do with the near-disaster, as their score sheet deducted a further half a point for "Trolley Mismanagement." Remus suspected it would have been a whole point if he hadn't caught her, but wisely kept that to himself.
It wasn't as if he really had time to comment, anyway, as Tonks, chattering rapidly, said that they'd avoid the trouble Molly Weasley had with washing up Muggle-style if they bought paper plates, napkins, and disposable cups and utensils, and steered the trolley sharply into that aisle, which they happened to be approaching.
The towering paper towel display never saw her coming.
Remus' granddad had taken him to a Muggle bowling alley once, long ago. He thought of it now, as the trolley struck the tower dead on and the white rolls went flying.
Tonks' eyes bulged as she saw the rest of their points docked from the "Trolley Management" portion of their assignment. "Oh, bloody buggering--"
"My stars!"
The elderly female voice on the other side of the display was vaguely familiar. When the paper towels -- it seemed like hundreds of them -- had stopped falling, Remus saw that a number of them had landed in another shopper's trolley. More precisely, the shopper who'd helped them get a trolley in the first place.
Most probably she regretted it now.
"Sorry," breathed Tonks, red-faced and looking as if she might cry. "I'm so sorry, I--"
The lady hmmphed as she removed the errant rolls of paper towels from her trolley, which had slightly dented a loaf of bread, her eyes peering over the tops of her narrow spectacles, scrutinizing Tonks. "Have you never been to a supermarket before, young lady?"
Tonks shook her head, pitifully.
Remus patted her shoulder and took charge of the trolley. "Let's brave the dishwasher after all, shall we?"
She nodded, looking miserably up at him.
He leant close to her, so that her hair tickled his cheek, and said softly in her ear, "Leaves more money for dessert."
Read Part Two
A/N: Those kind enough to leave a comment get to go shopping with Remus for a birthday cake and bottle of champagne for gilpin25.
Authors: godricgal and mrstater
Illustrator: hrymfaxe
Format & Word Count: chaptered fic, this part weighs in at 3,838 words.
Rating & Warnings: R for sex
Summary: Something magical has been brewing between Remus and Tonks all summer long. But what happens when an Order assignment requires them to do things the Muggle way?
Authors' Notes: It's been over two years since godricgal and mrstater first discussed writing this fic -- or three of gilpin25's birthdays ago, and we're so glad we finally got the chance to write it. It's been an absolute blast to work on, and we're especially thankful to hrymfaxe for providing us with lots of squees as we saw the illustrations taking shape. gilpin25, we hope you (and others!) enjoy reading it as much as we've enjoyed writing it.
Prologue |
Part One
"Have you ever been in one of these before?" asked the young witch beside Remus. He looked down to see Tonks' dark, scrutinising Auror's eyes scanning warily over the vast glass-fronted building before them.
Remus shook his head. "Only once when I was a very small boy. With my Muggle gran. I don't really remember anything but being excited by the chocolate and sweets."
Tonks' mouth, set in a grim line, curved upward slightly as her face took on a nostalgic glow. "I stayed with my Muggle gran for a week once while my parents were on holiday. I didn't know how to control my morphing back then, and that week I'd been accidentally morphing into the people I saw on Gran's telly. So when Grandpa was out playing golf with his chums, Gran didn't have a choice but to take me shopping with her. She had to put sunglasses and a hat and scarf on me -- in the middle of July, mind -- because she said she didn't know how she'd explain if the little girl in her trolley suddenly turned into Captain Birds Eye."
As Remus chuckled, his own memory of the frozen foods mascot having been jarred by the name, Tonks went on, "I'd probably have been more likely to turn my hair the colour of his parrot's feathers, as grey hair isn't really my thing--"
Her words died abruptly as the colour drained from her pretty heart-shaped face and her features contorted into a mask of horror.
"Not that...I mean..." Tonks stammered. "It doesn't look good on me, I mean. On other people it's..." She appeared to cast around for the right word, while Remus looked on with amusement, unsure whether he wanted to help her out and put her out of her misery, or let her fester in her discomfort a little longer. He was just about to jump in, when she muttered something, which, had he not known better, he would have interpreted as 'downright sexy.'
"I beg your pardon?" he said, watching with curiosity as she flushed a shade of scarlet that he thought was all the more noticeable on her cheeks for being beneath brown, and plain -- well, plain for her, anyway -- hair.
"Distinguished," she said loudly and quickly, then turned, businesslike, back towards the shop front -- to hide her flushing face, Remus thought.
"That's what I thought you said." Remus draped his arm loosely around her shoulders and steered her towards the double doors that opened and closed with Muggle magic, giving her a few moments to compose herself and allow her colour to go down before she had to face him again.
"I realise," he said as they walked, "that grey hair is supposed to imply experience, but I'm afraid mine is as minimal as yours in the realm of Muggle shopping, so we're just going to have to have an adventure."
Chancing a glance down at Tonks, Remus was somewhat surprised to find her looking grave, the same deep frown on her face as she wore when on patrol. He struggled to suppress a grin, doubting she would appreciate him finding her focus on such an assignment as this rather cute.
Hopefully she wouldn't remain too serious and focused, and allow Remus the opportunity to indulge in a bit of the sort of innocent flirtation that always did seem to occur all too naturally whenever he was with her. It was a positive sign that she hadn't shrugged his arm from around her shoulders. Did she notice, he wondered with a pleasant shift of his insides, how perfectly her height complimented his? She fitted so comfortably beneath his arm; his hand was just the breadth to curl over her shoulder.
As it turned out, the details of their physical proximity were not the ones Tonks was focused on at the moment.
"I'd prefer we made this the least bit adventurous we can get away with and still earn passing marks on the cooking part of the assignment," she said crisply. "Unless you've worked as a chef?"
Remus' hand fell to his side, and he turned away to select a trolley from the long line of them tucked together at the front of the supermarket.
"No." He tugged at the end trolley to free it -- but it didn't budge. "I agree, we ought to try something simple."
Another tug, and still no joy.
"What about spaghet--argh!"
Even with one hand on the end of one trolley and the other tugging at the handle of the other, and all his strength applied to the task of pulling them apart, he could not make them budge much more than an inch. "Is there a Sticking Spell on this?"
"Maybe." Tonks' voice was tight and pitched high with held-back laughter. Remus felt red-hot colour prickle up from his collar as she went on, "Only we can't do magic to find out."
He gave the trolley one last tug -- a last ditch effort for the salvation of his manhood; it lurched towards him and then stopped with a shimmering clash of metal against metal.
"Is your pound stuck, young man?"
Remus looked up to find a statuesque elderly lady with steel-grey hair, who reminded him uncomfortably of one of Tonks' disguises of choice, peering down at him through wire-rimmed glasses that were perched on the end of her long, thin nose.
"My what?" he asked, momentarily taken aback.
"Your pound." She tapped a solid-looking box, approximately the size and, apparently, the strength of one of Hagrid's cauldron cakes, though not quite as lumpy.
"My...?" Before Remus could utter the word pound, the old lady spoke over him.
"These new-fangled contraptions." Her voice was crisp with disapproval. "A poor show, indeed. I wrote to the manager of this very store just last week to voice my opinion that if they do feel the need to levy a deposit on a mere shopping trolley, one ought, at the very least, to expect it to be a hassle-free experience with the provision of properly functioning equipment!"
Remus tried to formulate an appropriate response, but found himself a cropper because he had not the least idea of what on earth the lady was talking about. Tonks wasn't making it any easier on him, still sniggering into her hand in his periphery.
Thankfully, he was saved when the old lady once again tapped her trolley briskly, and said, "I suggest you try another. There is little one can do to induce a Tesco's shopping trolley to behave once it has taken against the notion."
With a show of strength impressive for her apparent age, she swung her trolley around one hundred and eighty degrees and made for the entrance of the supermarket, those strange, magically opening doors parting to admit her, and she was gone.
"Are you any more the wiser for that encounter?" Tonks piped up from beside him, her tone laced with barely concealed glee.
"Not yet, but I have formulated a plan."
"What's that then?"
"We read the instructions," he replied, leaning in slightly to read the small print on the box that perched upon the handle of the trolley; he wondered how he'd failed to notice it before now. So much for constant vigilance.
"I always knew I was working with a genius," Tonks said.
"That's enough," he said. "I don't see you helping out much here."
"Oh, I'm having far too much fun for that. Remus Lupin, Hogwarts Professor of notable achievement, foiled by a big, Muggle, wheelie, metal basket."
"Use enough adjectives, Tonks?"
"That's what I'm talking about."
Remus looked up from the instructions to raise his eyebrow at her. "Hmm?"
"Professor. Notable and what not." Her eyes twinkled at him. "Have you figured out what we've got to do yet?"
"As a matter of fact, I have," he replied, straightening up and turning to face her. "Would you happen to have a pound coin about your person?"
Tonks dug deep in the pockets of her jeans; eventually, she produced a chunky-looking goldish coin and held it out to him between her thumb and forefinger.
He fiddled for a moment, inserting the coin into the coin-sized hole and the dangly chain thing (which, in fairness to him, he thought, had been hidden behind the square box thingy) in the dangly chain-sized hole and then, with a satisfying click, the trolley was released. He turned to Tonks, triumphant.
"I wouldn't look so smug if I were you," she said. "I was the one with the Muggle money, and anyway..." She was perusing a roll of parchment from beneath knitted brows -- their score sheet, ironically, the only magic they were allowed during this training exercise; its twin lay in the hands of Sirius, back at Grimmauld Place, reporting their progress, or lack thereof, in real time. "...out of a possible ten points for the 'Shopping Like Muggles' test, we've just lost one for 'Trolley Mastery'."
Having given up on the idea of scholastic perfectionism in fifth year Potions, Remus wouldn't have been troubled by a one-point deduction out of ten, but, as he was contending with a Hufflepuff, he thought it best to appear perturbed and inspired to do better.
"Maybe there's something we could do for extra marks," he suggested as he motioned for Tonks to enter the supermarket through the magical glass doors through which their elderly shopping trolley adviser had passed. But Tonks veered toward the trolley, instead.
"I'll push."
"No, it's okay, I've got it," Remus said, keeping a firm grip on the handlebar." You go on ahead."
"But I want to push."
Stifling a grin at the image of a much smaller Tonks, bundled up in scarves and hats and gloves, saying the same thing to her gran -- an image Remus was sure an Auror wouldn't appreciate him having -- he said, "But you'll have more freedom to explore the supermarket if you let me."
Her eyes narrowed on him. "You think I'm too clumsy, don’t you? That I'll cause an accident."
"No!" Merlin, he hadn't meant her to take it that way at all. But he knew how self-conscious she was; how could he have been so thoughtless? "I'm just trying to be a gentleman!"
"But shopping is a woman's work!"
He caught the telltale glint in her dark eyes, and realised she'd only been winding him up. Well, two could play at that game. "Men are supposed to drive!"
"Old-fashioned Muggle thinking, Remus!"
"Unlike shopping being a job for a lady, I suppose, but in any case -- what do you think this weekend's for?"
"It's for us to learn how to live like Muggles, and you already did one trolley bit, so now I want my go."
Unceremoniously, she bumped Remus aside with her hip and took hold of the trolley, pushing it forward toward the door with a cheeky glance back at him. He hurried to catch up as the glass doors opened to swallow her into the building.
"So, what do you think we could do for those extra marks?" Tonks asked over her shoulder.
Remus looked around the expansive interior, the rows of tills lining the front, the aisles of food behind, and dragged a hand through his hair. "Perhaps something like actually finding our way around in here."
He glanced at Tonks, hoping to see his own feelings mirrored on her face so he might know he was not alone in his sense of bewilderment and intimidation at what ought to be a very basic task; but Tonks was stood with her hands on her hips, surveying Tesco's as she would the scene of a criminal investigation.
"You said something about spaghetti?" she asked, and Remus nodded. "Then we'll want to find the pasta aisle. I think the sauce will be on the same one..."
She spoke in a perfunctory way, eyes trained on the shelves, which rather deflated Remus, who'd been encouraged by her earlier flirtatious demeanour. And yet, as he followed her as she pushed the shopping trolley, his attraction to her grew all the more, for he found her irresistible in professional mode -- even if her Auror skills were currently being channelled into grocery shopping.
It didn't hurt that he was getting a tantalizing view of swaying hips and her cute bottom, to which clung a pair of extremely flattering jeans that were a little frayed at the edges of the pockets and just revealed the tiniest hint of vivid colour which he realised, with a swell in his throat, must be her knickers.
"Ooof."
He also realized, slightly too late, that his attention had been so singularly focused on following that teasing band of colour like a beacon amid this sea of Muggle shoppers, that he'd failed to notice that Tonks had stopped. He'd crashed right into her so that she was now firmly sandwiched between his body and the shopping trolley before her.
"Tonks," he said in a rather dazed manner, owing, in no small part, to the feel of each of her curves pressed against him, "you stopped."
"So, apparently," Tonks replied, tipping her head back and resting it lightly on his shoulder so she could meet his eyes with her dark ones that twinkled mischievously, "did you."
Remus swallowed. There was that feeling again of a perfect fit: she really was exactly the right height to rest her head on his shoulder; he could imagine, if she turned slightly, that her face would rest against the crook of his neck, her lips touching the pulse point, just so.
"Oi, watch it, mate! You're in the way," a rough male voice called from not too far behind them, the tone just touching anger.
Remus slipped his arms around Tonks to grasp the handle bar of the trolley and, keeping Tonks nestled close in front of him, swung the trolley round and ducked them into the relative safety of the aisle to their left.
The shelves were stacked high with every different sort of pasta imaginable, far more than were commonly available in the grocery store in Diagon Alley: spirals, tubes, spaghetti, extra long spaghetti, nests of delicate-looking pasta in pale knots.
"That was a lucky coincidence." Remus released his hold on the trolley and reluctantly took a step back from Tonks, who looked at him with amusement, which made heat rise in his face. Did she know how much she affected him?
"Coincidence? Why d'you think I stopped?"
Probably not because she knew he was staring at her very attractive bottom and plotted to make him run into her, Remus realised, and, feeling warmth rush up from his collar, took another step back from her and quickly turned to examine the selection of pasta.
"Why are there so many different box designs, I wonder?"
Leaving the trolley to stand next to him, Tonks said, "Because Muggles appreciate variety as much as some witches do? Names are a bit boring, though."
Remus sniggered. "This from someone who won't let anyone call her Nymphadora."
"But you certainly try to call me that every chance you get," she said, giving him a look. "Tesco Value, Tesco Finest, plain Tesco...Oh!"
Her hands shot out to snatch a box of pasta off the shelf, knocking two others off in the process. She muttered a curse and bent to pick them up, but there was joy on her face as she stood and presented Remus a box with a flourish.
"These are shaped like little bow-ties! How cute is that? Do you think it cooks just like regular spaghetti? Could we try that?"
Stifling a grin, Remus said, "I've never been much of one for bow-ties, but as it's something we don't see in the Wizarding world, I suppose we ought to try it. Although it appears that kind over there in the green box is cheaper. We'll have more money for dessert if we get it. I have been hankering to try Muggle sweets..."
"Ooh, yes! If they have pretty bows for plain old pasta, imagine what they might have managed in the dessert line!" She restored the pricier pasta to the shelf, and sidestepped once to pluck the product Remus had pointed out. "Let's choose a sauce quickly so we can go and find the interesting stuff."
"Don't you think it's all interesting?" Remus asked as he turned to scan the rest of the aisle, looking for sauce section. It wasn't hard to find, and, as Tonks tossed the pasta into the trolley and grasped the handle, he touched her back to urge her further down the aisle toward their quarry.
"S'pose," she replied. "But there's a limit on how exciting pasta can be."
"This coming from the woman who just described pasta bows as 'cute'?" Remus teased, nudging her playfully with his shoulder.
"They'd be more exciting if they were pink," she said, eyeing the single item in their trolley, fingers inching towards the wand Remus knew was concealed in the band of her jeans.
"Enough of that," Remus said, reaching around her waist to still those pesky fingers. "I think we're on thin enough ice with this section of the mission as it is. It's doubtful that Minerva or Mad-Eye would find pink pasta a diverting enough antic to eschew docking us points for using magic."
"Excuse me!"
At first, Remus thought she was objecting to his slightly more than simply friendly gesture, and as he withdrew his hand, he berated himself for overstepping the mark. It was all well and good draping a friendly arm around her shoulder, but a flattened hand on her hip was that much more intimate.
He was just about to stammer an apology when she said, "It was hardly my fault that you couldn't handle a simple Muggle trolley."
He let out the breath he'd been holding. "You weren't exactly brimming with advice," he said, giving her a light squeeze.
"Hey, I had a readily available pound, didn't I?"
Remus sighed dramatically. "It's never me that just gets to stand around and sort problems by handing out money."
"How about I let you pay when we get to the payment desk thingy?"
"All right," Remus said, pretending to be slightly mollified. "But it's only because you don't want to have to count out the Muggle money in front of a Muggle, isn't it?"
"Yes," Tonks said. "But think about how manly you'll feel handing over all those notes. Now, what kind of sauce do you want? Tomato or cream?"
Ruling out cream sauces, because he was fairly sure they had a tendency to burn rather pungently, hardly narrowed down their choices; there appeared to be more varieties of tomato sauce than there were shapes of pasta, although when they realised that there were, apparently, multiple Muggle companies that all manufactured essentially the same flavours ("Not very creative of them!" Tonks remarked), they settled on the least expensive jar, again with the reasoning that they could get more dessert for their money.
In the fresh produce aisle, they were amazed to find you could buy salad in a bag, the lettuce already chopped, and croutons, cheese, and Caesar dressing in separate packets, ready to be mixed together.
"Hm," mused Remus as he popped one into the trolley. "I wonder if there's a market for that in the Wizarding community. Think anyone would object to lettuce that's been chopped and packaged by a werewolf?" They continued on down the aisle.
Again that look of something like sadness (he didn't think it was pity; he hoped it wasn't pity) glimmered in Tonks' dark eyes, only to flicker into a blaze of defiance as she jutted her chin and pushed the cart toward the baked goods. "I think the domestically disinclined single witch or wizard would welcome Remus' Ready Romaine at magical green grocers. This one would, anyway, and I think half the Auror division would be queued up behind me."
Remus grinned and grabbed a foil-wrapped garlic bread off a baker's rack. ("Hot and crisp in just ten minutes!" he read on the package, and Tonks commented that wands could do it a lot quicker.) "Shall I market Lupin's Loaves, as well?"
They continued in this way as they selected a plain loaf of bread to make toast for breakfast, as well as found eggs, bacon, orange juice; finally, they selected a bottle of inexpensive white wine to complement their Italian dinner. All the while, Tonks pushed the shopping trolley, and Remus admired her swaying hips and the worn bottom of her jeans. Once he had to grab hold of her waist to pull her -- and the trolley -- back just in time to avoid running over a small boy who darted out unexpectedly from an aisle.
Remus held on to her a little longer than was strictly necessary, but the flush on her face, he was certain, had nothing to do with his touch, and everything to do with the near-disaster, as their score sheet deducted a further half a point for "Trolley Mismanagement." Remus suspected it would have been a whole point if he hadn't caught her, but wisely kept that to himself.
It wasn't as if he really had time to comment, anyway, as Tonks, chattering rapidly, said that they'd avoid the trouble Molly Weasley had with washing up Muggle-style if they bought paper plates, napkins, and disposable cups and utensils, and steered the trolley sharply into that aisle, which they happened to be approaching.
The towering paper towel display never saw her coming.
Remus' granddad had taken him to a Muggle bowling alley once, long ago. He thought of it now, as the trolley struck the tower dead on and the white rolls went flying.
Tonks' eyes bulged as she saw the rest of their points docked from the "Trolley Management" portion of their assignment. "Oh, bloody buggering--"
"My stars!"
The elderly female voice on the other side of the display was vaguely familiar. When the paper towels -- it seemed like hundreds of them -- had stopped falling, Remus saw that a number of them had landed in another shopper's trolley. More precisely, the shopper who'd helped them get a trolley in the first place.
Most probably she regretted it now.
"Sorry," breathed Tonks, red-faced and looking as if she might cry. "I'm so sorry, I--"
The lady hmmphed as she removed the errant rolls of paper towels from her trolley, which had slightly dented a loaf of bread, her eyes peering over the tops of her narrow spectacles, scrutinizing Tonks. "Have you never been to a supermarket before, young lady?"
Tonks shook her head, pitifully.
Remus patted her shoulder and took charge of the trolley. "Let's brave the dishwasher after all, shall we?"
She nodded, looking miserably up at him.
He leant close to her, so that her hair tickled his cheek, and said softly in her ear, "Leaves more money for dessert."
Read Part Two
A/N: Those kind enough to leave a comment get to go shopping with Remus for a birthday cake and bottle of champagne for gilpin25.