R/T Fic: Another Kind of Magic, Part 7
Title: Another Kind of Magic (7/7 + Prologue and Epilogue)
Authors: godricgal and mrstater
Illustrator: hrymfaxe
Format and word count: chaptered fic, this part weighs in at 3003 words
Rating and 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: Written for the occasion of gilpin25's birthday, October 25, 2008.
Prologue | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six |
As reluctant as they had been to get out of the shower, Remus and Tonks were even more loath to go into number twelve, Grimmauld Place to face the music. At the door, Remus took out his wand, but he didn't touch the tip to the peeling black paint to undo the myriad locks, bolts, chains, and charms. Instead, he contemplated the wand, which had been ever at the ready for nearly twenty-five years.
It was the wand -- oak, ten inches, griffin feather core -- that had chosen him at Ollivander's and filled him with a rush of hope that he could be a normal boy, maybe even a great wizard, after all, despite being a werewolf. After long nights spent in the body of a monster, nothing did what holding this wand could do in making him feel like a real human wizard again.
And yet, after only twenty-four hours without magic, his wand felt strange in his hand, his fingers not quite fitting into the slight grooves they'd worn into the handle over the years. It felt like he was holding some other wizard's wand. Like he wasn't a wizard at all, and didn't have the faintest idea what to do with it.
Or, rather, didn't have the faintest desire to do anything with it.
Somehow, a spell had been cast while he and Tonks had lived as Muggles, which, the moment he evoked magic, would be broken. How was that for irony? It was like a fairy tale turned all topsy-turvy.
Well -- Remus smiled as Dora's arms encircled him from behind -- not broken just yet. How had she been Tonks to him only yesterday? Un-morphed in his arms, she'd been transformed into Dora, his Dora. Or perhaps he'd simply discovered that she'd always been Dora to him.
But would she continue to be? Would she revert to Tonks once they stepped through the door to Order headquarters? Would time allowed them only the relationship of comrades-at-arms? She rested her cheek against his back, and he marvelled at how perfectly she fitted between his shoulder blades, how his hands completely covered her smaller ones when he placed them atop hers resting on his stomach.
Her breath tickled the back of his neck. "I thought you were a Gryffindor."
"I am..."
Though his back was to her, Remus could see her teasing smile, the glitter in her eyes, and grinned in anticipation of her joke as he would have if he were looking at her.
"Apparently the courage doesn't extend to facing up to old friends who know what personal spells you cast last night?"
"If there's one thing in life I'm as accustomed to as turning into a wolf every full moon, it's having Sirius know far more about my personal life than I'd like. And anyway, it was only this morning I cast that charm."
It hadn't dawned on Remus till then that it was this very day, a mere handful of hours ago, that he'd become intimate with Dora. It felt like so much longer, as if they'd been ensconced from the magical world for a week, at least, but in actuality their time of discovery had been so very short. They'd talked of falling in love; but had it been enough time for love to take root, to grow, and to thrive and endure the drought that would surely come once they returned to business as usual in the Order?
Filled with sudden urgency, Remus turned to Tonks and held her face in his hands, letting his fingers slide into her soft hair, which she'd morphed pink the moment they'd left the Muggle house and their mission had ended.
"I'm just not ready to go in yet."
"Nor am I," Tonks concurred. "I'm not ready for this to end."
To end. What did it mean that she'd put it like that? Remus couldn't let it mean what he feared.
He leaned in and kissed Tonks deeply, slowly, letting his tongue glide lingeringly along hers, tracing each warm contour of her mouth and lips. Her fingers caressed his neck, raked through his hair spilling over the collar of his shirt. Without words, she confirmed what she'd spoken aloud, asked him to do the same.
Remus drew back. "Dora..." He moistened his suddenly dry lips with his tongue, drew a long breath in a futile attempt to still his pounding heart. He could barely hear himself for the rush of blood in his ears. "There's something I want to--"
"Well, well, well."
They turned to see the door open and Sirius stood in the gap, leaning casually against the jamb and looking exactly like the fifteen year-old who'd caught the prefect snogging in a broom cupboard.
"If it isn't the lovebirds. I have to say I'm surprised you failed that part of the training, Moony. Not that I thought even you'd have the self-control to keep your paws off the lovely Nympha--"
"Don't call me Nympha--"
"Dora, steady on," Remus said quietly, raising a hand between her wand and Sirius. "We already owe him quite enough without hexing him, as well."
"Yes," said Sirius, "you do. Not least, that bottle of Ogdens. And to think, it could have all been spared if only you'd remembered that useful little lesson I gave you all those years ago on Muggle contraception." His superior look fell into heavy lines of perplexity etched across his aristocratic brow. "Erm...what were those rubber things called again?"
"Condiments, I believe you said," Remus replied. "Although the accuracy of that is debatable, given how hung over you were when you related your Muggle sexcapades."
"Speaking of which, we need to talk," Tonks said, "Mad Eye will be here any minute, and I don't want him to find us up here talking to Sirius, or that mark on our score sheet. He would find that consistently unvigilant."
Sirius grunted his assent and stepped back from the door to admit them; Remus, his hand resting in a warm spot on Tonks' back, stepped into the house with mixed feelings: a slight lessening of tension from stepping into more private surroundings, and an urge to grab Tonks and flee its confines once more.
"So," Tonks said, the moment they entered the kitchen, "what'll it be to alter our score sheet?"
"You say it as though my corruptibility is beyond doubt, cousin." Sirius lowered himself dramatically into a chair and flung his legs up on another. "Clearly yours is -- or was Moony the victim of seduction in this tawdry affair?"
Remus bristled to hear the words 'seduction, 'tawdry' and 'affair' in relation to what he and Tonks had shared, but thought it prudent to keep quiet.
Tonks, too, wisely ignored Sirius' bait. "Of course it is. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave you and Remus to sort out the particulars. My shift starts in less than an hour. I just came by to get that file I need to return to the Ministry." She was searching through a pile of paperwork that Remus thought had become somewhat more of a mountain in their short absence.
"That's very disobliging of you. I've been fit to burst since..." He leaned over to check the incriminating length of parchment that sat on the table beside him. "Seven twenty-six this morning. Suffering, I have been, and you don't have the grace to stay and let me have my fun? You and old Moony have clearly had yours."
"Grace is not something I'm known for," she replied, returning to Remus' side having found the file she was after; her fingers curled loosely around his. "But if I did have the time to spare any, it would be to save Remus the pain of having to suffer your foolery alone." There was a curt note of warning in her voice that Remus suspected would be noted by Sirius, but not heeded.
Suddenly desperate to extricate Tonks from the situation, Remus said to her, "You'd better go -- I'll walk you out." She nodded her agreement, waved a swift goodbye to Sirius, and they turned to make their way back up the stairs.
Back up in the grim old hallway, Remus opened his arms and Tonks stepped into his folded embrace; her head fell to his chest he rested his against it. The idea of parting with her now, to say goodbye and not know when he might see her again -- to not see her again that day, even, suddenly seemed like too cruel a punishment to bear.
Without even giving himself the chance to think twice about it, he blurted, "I want to see you later."
His heart skipped a beat at the unexpected force of his words, but Tonks assented so quickly that it skipped again with excitement. Of course, he had no option but to kiss her enthusiastically and she responded no less ardently.
Eventually, they pulled away and Tonks buried her face once more in his chest. "I hope he's not too awful," she said into his jumper after a few long moments.
"I'm sure it won't be worse than anything I've had from him before. Anyway, I can certainly put up with it given that it's the result of a circumstance that's made me very happy..." He grinned wider at her blush, and her eyes peering knowingly at him from beneath her lashes. "...but I'll do my best to extract a promise that he'll go easy on you when we make whatever ridiculous deal he's going to come up with. Have you got that Muggle crossword on you? The clue that eluded us should distract him for a while."
As it happened, Sirius' deal was quite the opposite of any number of horrors Remus' mind supplied him with in the short time he'd had to really worry about it. Perhaps there'd been something in his face when he returned to the kitchen -- he certainly felt dreamy and rather wobbly on the insides; or maybe Sirius had taken Tonks' earlier words rather more to heart than Remus would have given him credit for. Whatever it was, on his return to the basement for the expected grilling, Remus found Sirius looking at him with a puzzled expression on a cocked head and a knowing smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
"You love her, don't you?"
Remus considered brushing him off, denying it, but on second thought, why should he? And it was so far from something to be embarrassed about that he met his old friend's searching gaze directly, with a broad smile and said, "I do."
For an instant, he thought he glimpsed a shadow of wistfulness in the grey eyes, but the expression was quickly replaced by a familiar gleam as Sirius clapped him on the back. Remus felt a hitch in his chest. How he'd missed having a friend like Sirius, who always rejoiced in others' happiness as if it were his very own. How long it had been since been so truly happy? In fact, he'd never dared to imagine he should be the recipient of the very same affectionate congratulations as Sirius had offered James on his wedding day.
His arm slung companionably about Remus' shoulders, as in the long-ago days of their boyhood, Sirius steered him back downstairs to the basement kitchen.
"Moony's in love, and someone's in love with Moony -- if this doesn't call for a drink, I don't know what does."
"I think she loves me," Remus said, his grin unwavering even in the wake of this slight uncertainty; he thought back to jogging with Tonks, of her looking up at him from the ground, and joking, though quite earnestly, that she was falling in love.
But Sirius whirled around from the larder, Firewhisky bottle in hand, looking at Remus as if he were a class act failure. "What do you mean, you think she loves you? Didn't she say?"
"Not in so--"
"Didn't you say?"
"Not in so many words," Remus tried again, sheepishly, unable to meet Sirius' accusatory gaze. But his attention was jarred back to Sirius when his barking laugh rang out.
"My love life's not really a laughing matter," Remus began.
"I'm not laughing at your love life. I'm laughing maniacally at my own Marauder genius." He bounded over to the table, picked up the score sheet parchment, and vanished the Contraceptive Charm, which only partly relieved Remus, given the evil gleam in Sirius' eyes. "I know just what you're going to do to earn this."
Wrapped in a vivid pink towel, Tonks stepped out of the shower cubicle to find Remus at the sink, brushing his teeth. Last night they'd brushed their teeth together and she'd revelled in the easy intimacy of it, but there was something about seeing him doing it here, in her own space, that thrilled her even more. She grinned at him as he met her eyes in the mirror, and then laughed at the foamy grin he gave her in return.
She stepped up beside him and leant forward to examine her hair in the mirror, flipped the odd lock this way and that, and then grabbed her wand from the sink and pointed it at her hair, muttering, "Sicco." Her hair dried in an instant.
"Drying your hair by magic is a great deal more efficient than that Muggle contraption," said Remus, who had finished cleaning his teeth; his hands reached up to comb through her hair as they had this morning when he'd used the hair dryer on her, which, during her dull as dishwater evening shift, had been one of the more heavily replayed moments from their Muggle adventure.
"Doesn't have quite the same potential for romance, though, does it?" she replied, leaning into his touch, which was so evocative of the way she'd felt that morning.
"Muggles might have the more romantic hair drying solutions, but wizards definitely win in the contraceptive stakes."
"Oh!" she cried. "I can't believe I forgot to ask you: what happened with Sirius?"
"It's all sorted," Remus said evasively, dropping his hand away from her and turning back to the sink to wash his hands.
"Sorted? How?"
"You're off the hook, don't worry. There's something he wants me to do -- something Muggle to make up for the charm."
Tonks wasn't sure whether she ought to be worried or not; she trusted Remus, of course, but he was the type of man who would take something on himself to protect her. "Why won't you let me help?"
"There is one thing you can do once it's completed." He turned to her once more, drying his hands on a small towel; there was a hesitant, almost shy expression on his face.
"What's that?"
"You'll know once I've done it, I hope. I can't tell you more than that now."
Since she was a girl of a naturally curious disposition, Tonks didn't quite leave it at that, but Remus was firm in his insistence that he'd told her as much as he could and to say anymore might be to invalidate his agreement with Sirius, that she wasn't to worry, and he hoped she'd find the eventual outcome to her liking. She had to content herself with that, for now, and sent Remus ahead to the bedroom while she popped her pyjamas on.
If watching Remus go about his nightly routine in her small bathroom had been thrilling, it was nothing compared to seeing him propped up in her old but comfortable bed beneath the blue and gold duvet set that had long been a strong symbol of home for her. But she wondered how she could have thought home complete without him.
She lost no time in skipping over to her side of the bed and slipping beneath the covers. Remus sank down the mattress till his head rested on the pillow and rolled over to meet her, wrapping his arms around her. Tonks felt every muscle in her body relax as she sank into his embrace, let her head fall to his shoulder and buried her face in his neck. She slipped a knee between his thighs, and they lay still for a long time. His breathing was slow and deep and eventually, the tempo of hers matched it.
After they'd left the Muggle house earlier in the day and returned to Grimmauld, Tonks had worried that the magic they'd experienced during their time lone together would be broken once they returned to their normal lives. She'd spent her shift with her stomach taking dizzying, nervous somersaults in turn at the thought of things they'd done and said, and concern that it had all been the result of finding themselves out of their normal environment, away from the mundane and the routine. But it was not so. In returning home to find Remus waiting for her, a kiss ready for her lips; in sharing a late night supper of soup and bread at her small breakfast bar in the kitchen; in observing the ritual of bedtime preparation; in slipping into bed and finding warmth and welcoming arms, they were forging out their own routine on this new path that life had set them on together.
She loved that she could lie in bed, tilt her head up and find warm lips to welcome hers; that beneath a soft cotton t-shirt, her hands could find a body receptive to her touch, and there were hands that touched her in return, sending sensation guttering straight to her heart. She was more at home than ever when she uttered the words 'good night' and felt them whispered on her cheek in reply as her eyes fluttered closed at the end of one day that had been pure magic, though they'd hardly uttered a charm or waved a wand at all.
Read Epilogue
A/N: With only one instalment to go, we thank you all for reading and taking the time to leave such lovely feedback. This time, those kind enough to review will get to have a drink with Sirius -- to Remus' and Tonks' relationship, of course!
Authors: godricgal and mrstater
Illustrator: hrymfaxe
Format and word count: chaptered fic, this part weighs in at 3003 words
Rating and 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: Written for the occasion of gilpin25's birthday, October 25, 2008.
Prologue | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six |
As reluctant as they had been to get out of the shower, Remus and Tonks were even more loath to go into number twelve, Grimmauld Place to face the music. At the door, Remus took out his wand, but he didn't touch the tip to the peeling black paint to undo the myriad locks, bolts, chains, and charms. Instead, he contemplated the wand, which had been ever at the ready for nearly twenty-five years.
It was the wand -- oak, ten inches, griffin feather core -- that had chosen him at Ollivander's and filled him with a rush of hope that he could be a normal boy, maybe even a great wizard, after all, despite being a werewolf. After long nights spent in the body of a monster, nothing did what holding this wand could do in making him feel like a real human wizard again.
And yet, after only twenty-four hours without magic, his wand felt strange in his hand, his fingers not quite fitting into the slight grooves they'd worn into the handle over the years. It felt like he was holding some other wizard's wand. Like he wasn't a wizard at all, and didn't have the faintest idea what to do with it.
Or, rather, didn't have the faintest desire to do anything with it.
Somehow, a spell had been cast while he and Tonks had lived as Muggles, which, the moment he evoked magic, would be broken. How was that for irony? It was like a fairy tale turned all topsy-turvy.
Well -- Remus smiled as Dora's arms encircled him from behind -- not broken just yet. How had she been Tonks to him only yesterday? Un-morphed in his arms, she'd been transformed into Dora, his Dora. Or perhaps he'd simply discovered that she'd always been Dora to him.
But would she continue to be? Would she revert to Tonks once they stepped through the door to Order headquarters? Would time allowed them only the relationship of comrades-at-arms? She rested her cheek against his back, and he marvelled at how perfectly she fitted between his shoulder blades, how his hands completely covered her smaller ones when he placed them atop hers resting on his stomach.
Her breath tickled the back of his neck. "I thought you were a Gryffindor."
"I am..."
Though his back was to her, Remus could see her teasing smile, the glitter in her eyes, and grinned in anticipation of her joke as he would have if he were looking at her.
"Apparently the courage doesn't extend to facing up to old friends who know what personal spells you cast last night?"
"If there's one thing in life I'm as accustomed to as turning into a wolf every full moon, it's having Sirius know far more about my personal life than I'd like. And anyway, it was only this morning I cast that charm."
It hadn't dawned on Remus till then that it was this very day, a mere handful of hours ago, that he'd become intimate with Dora. It felt like so much longer, as if they'd been ensconced from the magical world for a week, at least, but in actuality their time of discovery had been so very short. They'd talked of falling in love; but had it been enough time for love to take root, to grow, and to thrive and endure the drought that would surely come once they returned to business as usual in the Order?
Filled with sudden urgency, Remus turned to Tonks and held her face in his hands, letting his fingers slide into her soft hair, which she'd morphed pink the moment they'd left the Muggle house and their mission had ended.
"I'm just not ready to go in yet."
"Nor am I," Tonks concurred. "I'm not ready for this to end."
To end. What did it mean that she'd put it like that? Remus couldn't let it mean what he feared.
He leaned in and kissed Tonks deeply, slowly, letting his tongue glide lingeringly along hers, tracing each warm contour of her mouth and lips. Her fingers caressed his neck, raked through his hair spilling over the collar of his shirt. Without words, she confirmed what she'd spoken aloud, asked him to do the same.
Remus drew back. "Dora..." He moistened his suddenly dry lips with his tongue, drew a long breath in a futile attempt to still his pounding heart. He could barely hear himself for the rush of blood in his ears. "There's something I want to--"
"Well, well, well."
They turned to see the door open and Sirius stood in the gap, leaning casually against the jamb and looking exactly like the fifteen year-old who'd caught the prefect snogging in a broom cupboard.
"If it isn't the lovebirds. I have to say I'm surprised you failed that part of the training, Moony. Not that I thought even you'd have the self-control to keep your paws off the lovely Nympha--"
"Don't call me Nympha--"
"Dora, steady on," Remus said quietly, raising a hand between her wand and Sirius. "We already owe him quite enough without hexing him, as well."
"Yes," said Sirius, "you do. Not least, that bottle of Ogdens. And to think, it could have all been spared if only you'd remembered that useful little lesson I gave you all those years ago on Muggle contraception." His superior look fell into heavy lines of perplexity etched across his aristocratic brow. "Erm...what were those rubber things called again?"
"Condiments, I believe you said," Remus replied. "Although the accuracy of that is debatable, given how hung over you were when you related your Muggle sexcapades."
"Speaking of which, we need to talk," Tonks said, "Mad Eye will be here any minute, and I don't want him to find us up here talking to Sirius, or that mark on our score sheet. He would find that consistently unvigilant."
Sirius grunted his assent and stepped back from the door to admit them; Remus, his hand resting in a warm spot on Tonks' back, stepped into the house with mixed feelings: a slight lessening of tension from stepping into more private surroundings, and an urge to grab Tonks and flee its confines once more.
"So," Tonks said, the moment they entered the kitchen, "what'll it be to alter our score sheet?"
"You say it as though my corruptibility is beyond doubt, cousin." Sirius lowered himself dramatically into a chair and flung his legs up on another. "Clearly yours is -- or was Moony the victim of seduction in this tawdry affair?"
Remus bristled to hear the words 'seduction, 'tawdry' and 'affair' in relation to what he and Tonks had shared, but thought it prudent to keep quiet.
Tonks, too, wisely ignored Sirius' bait. "Of course it is. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave you and Remus to sort out the particulars. My shift starts in less than an hour. I just came by to get that file I need to return to the Ministry." She was searching through a pile of paperwork that Remus thought had become somewhat more of a mountain in their short absence.
"That's very disobliging of you. I've been fit to burst since..." He leaned over to check the incriminating length of parchment that sat on the table beside him. "Seven twenty-six this morning. Suffering, I have been, and you don't have the grace to stay and let me have my fun? You and old Moony have clearly had yours."
"Grace is not something I'm known for," she replied, returning to Remus' side having found the file she was after; her fingers curled loosely around his. "But if I did have the time to spare any, it would be to save Remus the pain of having to suffer your foolery alone." There was a curt note of warning in her voice that Remus suspected would be noted by Sirius, but not heeded.
Suddenly desperate to extricate Tonks from the situation, Remus said to her, "You'd better go -- I'll walk you out." She nodded her agreement, waved a swift goodbye to Sirius, and they turned to make their way back up the stairs.
Back up in the grim old hallway, Remus opened his arms and Tonks stepped into his folded embrace; her head fell to his chest he rested his against it. The idea of parting with her now, to say goodbye and not know when he might see her again -- to not see her again that day, even, suddenly seemed like too cruel a punishment to bear.
Without even giving himself the chance to think twice about it, he blurted, "I want to see you later."
His heart skipped a beat at the unexpected force of his words, but Tonks assented so quickly that it skipped again with excitement. Of course, he had no option but to kiss her enthusiastically and she responded no less ardently.
Eventually, they pulled away and Tonks buried her face once more in his chest. "I hope he's not too awful," she said into his jumper after a few long moments.
"I'm sure it won't be worse than anything I've had from him before. Anyway, I can certainly put up with it given that it's the result of a circumstance that's made me very happy..." He grinned wider at her blush, and her eyes peering knowingly at him from beneath her lashes. "...but I'll do my best to extract a promise that he'll go easy on you when we make whatever ridiculous deal he's going to come up with. Have you got that Muggle crossword on you? The clue that eluded us should distract him for a while."
As it happened, Sirius' deal was quite the opposite of any number of horrors Remus' mind supplied him with in the short time he'd had to really worry about it. Perhaps there'd been something in his face when he returned to the kitchen -- he certainly felt dreamy and rather wobbly on the insides; or maybe Sirius had taken Tonks' earlier words rather more to heart than Remus would have given him credit for. Whatever it was, on his return to the basement for the expected grilling, Remus found Sirius looking at him with a puzzled expression on a cocked head and a knowing smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
"You love her, don't you?"
Remus considered brushing him off, denying it, but on second thought, why should he? And it was so far from something to be embarrassed about that he met his old friend's searching gaze directly, with a broad smile and said, "I do."
For an instant, he thought he glimpsed a shadow of wistfulness in the grey eyes, but the expression was quickly replaced by a familiar gleam as Sirius clapped him on the back. Remus felt a hitch in his chest. How he'd missed having a friend like Sirius, who always rejoiced in others' happiness as if it were his very own. How long it had been since been so truly happy? In fact, he'd never dared to imagine he should be the recipient of the very same affectionate congratulations as Sirius had offered James on his wedding day.
His arm slung companionably about Remus' shoulders, as in the long-ago days of their boyhood, Sirius steered him back downstairs to the basement kitchen.
"Moony's in love, and someone's in love with Moony -- if this doesn't call for a drink, I don't know what does."
"I think she loves me," Remus said, his grin unwavering even in the wake of this slight uncertainty; he thought back to jogging with Tonks, of her looking up at him from the ground, and joking, though quite earnestly, that she was falling in love.
But Sirius whirled around from the larder, Firewhisky bottle in hand, looking at Remus as if he were a class act failure. "What do you mean, you think she loves you? Didn't she say?"
"Not in so--"
"Didn't you say?"
"Not in so many words," Remus tried again, sheepishly, unable to meet Sirius' accusatory gaze. But his attention was jarred back to Sirius when his barking laugh rang out.
"My love life's not really a laughing matter," Remus began.
"I'm not laughing at your love life. I'm laughing maniacally at my own Marauder genius." He bounded over to the table, picked up the score sheet parchment, and vanished the Contraceptive Charm, which only partly relieved Remus, given the evil gleam in Sirius' eyes. "I know just what you're going to do to earn this."
Wrapped in a vivid pink towel, Tonks stepped out of the shower cubicle to find Remus at the sink, brushing his teeth. Last night they'd brushed their teeth together and she'd revelled in the easy intimacy of it, but there was something about seeing him doing it here, in her own space, that thrilled her even more. She grinned at him as he met her eyes in the mirror, and then laughed at the foamy grin he gave her in return.
She stepped up beside him and leant forward to examine her hair in the mirror, flipped the odd lock this way and that, and then grabbed her wand from the sink and pointed it at her hair, muttering, "Sicco." Her hair dried in an instant.
"Drying your hair by magic is a great deal more efficient than that Muggle contraption," said Remus, who had finished cleaning his teeth; his hands reached up to comb through her hair as they had this morning when he'd used the hair dryer on her, which, during her dull as dishwater evening shift, had been one of the more heavily replayed moments from their Muggle adventure.
"Doesn't have quite the same potential for romance, though, does it?" she replied, leaning into his touch, which was so evocative of the way she'd felt that morning.
"Muggles might have the more romantic hair drying solutions, but wizards definitely win in the contraceptive stakes."
"Oh!" she cried. "I can't believe I forgot to ask you: what happened with Sirius?"
"It's all sorted," Remus said evasively, dropping his hand away from her and turning back to the sink to wash his hands.
"Sorted? How?"
"You're off the hook, don't worry. There's something he wants me to do -- something Muggle to make up for the charm."
Tonks wasn't sure whether she ought to be worried or not; she trusted Remus, of course, but he was the type of man who would take something on himself to protect her. "Why won't you let me help?"
"There is one thing you can do once it's completed." He turned to her once more, drying his hands on a small towel; there was a hesitant, almost shy expression on his face.
"What's that?"
"You'll know once I've done it, I hope. I can't tell you more than that now."
Since she was a girl of a naturally curious disposition, Tonks didn't quite leave it at that, but Remus was firm in his insistence that he'd told her as much as he could and to say anymore might be to invalidate his agreement with Sirius, that she wasn't to worry, and he hoped she'd find the eventual outcome to her liking. She had to content herself with that, for now, and sent Remus ahead to the bedroom while she popped her pyjamas on.
If watching Remus go about his nightly routine in her small bathroom had been thrilling, it was nothing compared to seeing him propped up in her old but comfortable bed beneath the blue and gold duvet set that had long been a strong symbol of home for her. But she wondered how she could have thought home complete without him.
She lost no time in skipping over to her side of the bed and slipping beneath the covers. Remus sank down the mattress till his head rested on the pillow and rolled over to meet her, wrapping his arms around her. Tonks felt every muscle in her body relax as she sank into his embrace, let her head fall to his shoulder and buried her face in his neck. She slipped a knee between his thighs, and they lay still for a long time. His breathing was slow and deep and eventually, the tempo of hers matched it.
After they'd left the Muggle house earlier in the day and returned to Grimmauld, Tonks had worried that the magic they'd experienced during their time lone together would be broken once they returned to their normal lives. She'd spent her shift with her stomach taking dizzying, nervous somersaults in turn at the thought of things they'd done and said, and concern that it had all been the result of finding themselves out of their normal environment, away from the mundane and the routine. But it was not so. In returning home to find Remus waiting for her, a kiss ready for her lips; in sharing a late night supper of soup and bread at her small breakfast bar in the kitchen; in observing the ritual of bedtime preparation; in slipping into bed and finding warmth and welcoming arms, they were forging out their own routine on this new path that life had set them on together.
She loved that she could lie in bed, tilt her head up and find warm lips to welcome hers; that beneath a soft cotton t-shirt, her hands could find a body receptive to her touch, and there were hands that touched her in return, sending sensation guttering straight to her heart. She was more at home than ever when she uttered the words 'good night' and felt them whispered on her cheek in reply as her eyes fluttered closed at the end of one day that had been pure magic, though they'd hardly uttered a charm or waved a wand at all.
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A/N: With only one instalment to go, we thank you all for reading and taking the time to leave such lovely feedback. This time, those kind enough to review will get to have a drink with Sirius -- to Remus' and Tonks' relationship, of course!