HP: Valentine, Done Well (ORIGINAL VERSION)

[mrstater]

Title: Valentine, Done Well
Author: MrsTater
Rating: PG
Pairings: Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks; Bill Weasley/Fleur Delacour
Summary: With Tonks, Remus so frequently feels like a boy that he seldom thinks about the rather substantial difference between their ages. A double-date with Bill Weasley and fresh-out-of-school Fleur Delacour, however, makes it impossible for Remus to think of anything but the generation gap. Not only that, but Fleur's backhanded compliments and self-centred domination of the conversation bring out Tonks' insecurities, and Remus is too mired in self-doubt to bolster her. Just as the night seems destined to be named Worst Valentine's Date Ever, he receives encouragement from the most unexpected of people.



TO BE REVISED

Valentine, Done Well

"Sir," came the voice of the restaurant host behind Remus, "it's frightfully cold there by the door."

"I'm fine," Remus replied. He leaned closer to the windowpane, careful not to crush the
long-stemmed pink rose and small, heart-shaped box of Honeydukes chocolates he held at his side, and cupped his palm over his eyes to block out the glares from candelabras inside and streetlights outside.

"If you would like to sit with the rest of your party," the host persisted, "I will keep eye out for your date. What does the lady look like?"

Remus scanned the pavement for Tonks' lone, vibrant figure amongst the cloaked couples holding hands and huddling close together against the bitter cold. Not spying her, he glanced back at the host's podium and let out a puff of laughter. "You know, I couldn't tell you what my date will look like."

The host, a young wizard clad in immaculate dress robes, arched his eyebrows. "Blind date?"

"No," said Remus, turning to look outside again. "Metamorphmagus."

"Metamorph-Blimey!" the host muttered, dropping his formal façade. "Lucky old git."

Remus winced at the word "old" but agreed he was, indeed, lucky. Occasionally he felt like saying "blimey" when he tried to grasp the notion that he, Remus J. Lupin, had been dating Nymphadora Tonks since August - six months.

Despite what he'd told the host, Remus was almost positive Tonks would turn up with hair in some shade of pink, as she had been prone to do since he told her it suited her. He didn't mind bending the truth, because he wanted an excuse not to sit with the rest of his party. He hated playing third Beater.

Especially on Valentine's Day.

Especially to a younger generation.

He was - or would be, as soon as Tonks arrived - on a double date with Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour. As a fundraiser, St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries held a raffle for Valentine's dinner for four at the Lion and Unicorn, one of the most posh Wizarding restaurants in London. Bill, Fleur, Tonks, and Remus had all purchased tickets with the agreement that if one of them won, they would make it a double date - an outing long-planned by Bill and Tonks, but long-delayed due to conflicting work schedules, Order duties, and full moons. When Bill's ticket was confirmed as the winning one, the four made certain to clear their schedules for the fourteenth of February.

Unfortunately, the holiday coincided with the Hogwarts students' Hogsmeade weekend, and Dumbledore requested a number of Aurors be stationed discreetly around the village to keep an eye on things. Tonks volunteered, thinking she could still make the dinner reservation, but she ran late and sent Remus a message to go ahead without her and meet Bill and Fleur at the restaurant.

While Remus knew Bill well enough to be comfortable with a double date, he was not at all easy in Tonks' absence. With his greying hair and stodgy old suit, Remus thought he must look more like the couple's chaperone than their dinner companion. Why had Tonks insisted he with Bill and Fleur? On Valentine's Day, of all days, he should have waited for her and picked her up at her flat, rather than meet her at their venue.

The windows rattled with a crack that was the unmistakable sound of Apparation. Remus opened the door and found Tonks standing on the pavement, smoothing her clothes. As predicted, her hair was a deep shade of raspberry, the exact colour as her lipstick, in springy spiral curls that Remus' fingers itched to touch. Shimmery heart-shaped earrings dangled from her earlobes, and a matching pendant rested in the deep V of her polka-dot blouse.

"Pink trousers," Remus said, unable to form any more coherent thought.

Tonks smiled. "I bought them specially for tonight. Y'like?"

She twirled, and Remus swallowed hard at the sight of hearts embroidered on her back pockets. As his gaze travelled down the pink satin that clung to all the right places to a pair of strappy, rhinestone-studded shoes, Tonks wobbled. Flailing wildly, she caught Remus' arm and narrowly avoided falling off the curb.

"I did that in lieu of a security question," said Tonks, "so you'd know it was really me."

"Ah, but now I am more suspicious," Remus said, still a little flustered, but at least regaining his faculty of speech. "The real Nymphadora Tonks would trip without intending to do so."

"Don't call me Nymphadora, Remus." She frowned, but belied her true feelings by sliding her hand up his sleeve to rest on his shoulder and leaning up to kiss his cheek. "It's Valentine's Day."

"So it is." Remus settled his free hand on her hip and kissed her softly, slowly - then abruptly pulled away. "I think I forgot to tell you I like your trousers very much." He coloured, realising how fixated - and how obviously so - he seemed to be on her bum, and hastily added, "And the rest of you. All of you looks wonderful. I don't think any wizard here has a lovelier date."

Despite his fumbling attempts at compliments, a dreamy expression settled over Tonks' features. However, her gaze suddenly dropped, and her eyes widened. "Ooooh - are those for me?" Her eyes locked on the flower and sweets Remus held at his side.

"It's not much," he said, knowing Fleur would likely see the single flower and gush about the dozen-rose bouquet Bill had sent her, as she had when Remus met the couple earlier.

"It's more," Tonks said sweetly, accepting the tokens that did not go nearly far enough in expressing his affection. "All I wanted was you, y'know."

Just as Remus bent to kiss her again, a frigid gust of wind sent them rushing for the door. Tonks, with her open-toed shoes and sexy but unseasonable clothes, moved so quickly that Remus was barely able to grab the handle and play the gentleman for her.

Settling his hand in the small of her back to guide her to their table, Remus glanced at the host. The young man's expression resembled one Narcissa Malfoy wore, of having sniffed something unpleasant; Remus suspected he was no longer considered a "lucky old git" for dating a Metamorphmagus who preferred outlandish pink hair to whatever it was blokes preferred. Blondes, probably. Remus had noticed the host ogling Fleur when they first arrived, and the younger wizard's gaze drifted jealously to the table where she cooed to Bill in French and fed him hors d'oeuvres.

"Wotcher, Bill, Fleur," said Tonks as she and Remus joined them. "Sorry I got tied up."

"No worries," said Bill. "How was Hogsmeade?"

"Is it just me," Tonks cast Remus a pretty smile as he seated her, "or are the students getting smaller and more immature than when we were in school?"

"I thought the same thing when Charlie's lot started at Hogwarts." Bill popped a bite into his mouth. "Especially this one Hufflepuff girl who ran about doing daft transformations to her nose and hair-"

He broke off into laughter as Tonks shot him a very ineffectual glare. Remus chuckled softly and took her hand under the table. He could just picture eleven-year-old Tonks wearing the pig snout that so amused Ginny, wreaking havoc in the halls of Hogwarts. How could those prefects and Head Boys on whom she had confessed to having crushes (he tried not to think about the fact that Bill had likely been one of them) have given her detentions? Remus would not have been able to do it. He would have found her too clever and cute.

Fleur, who had been eyeing Tonks' heart-shaped Honeydukes' box since she laid it on the table (but blessedly made no comment about the rose), said, "I suppose Metamorphmaguses-"

"Magi," Bill gently corrected. and lifted Fleur's manicured fingers to his lips.

"Metamorphmagi," Fleur carefully enunciated. She gazed adoringly at him. "You are ze best English tutor, Bill. So patient and kind." Shaking off the dreamy moment, she turned back to Tonks. "Since Metamorphmagi can change ze shapes of zeir bodies, do zey have to watch what zey eat?"

"This one does." Tonks slid a finger under the red ribbon to open the sweet box. "But I usually don't. Chocolate anyone?"

Turning up her nose, Fleur said, "I am saving my calories for ze famous plum cake."

Though Tonks did not appear to be nettled by the remarks, Remus hoped she knew he preferred her figure to Fleur's svelte one. The fact that Tonks could have any body she wanted, yet chose her own, lent attraction. Perhaps he simply admired how comfortable she was within her own skin.

"Metamorphosing can be draining," Tonks said, eating a chocolate. "I have a hard time with it if I'm really knackered or off colour. With my line of work, I need all my energy, so I keep my natural face and body unless I'm undercover."

"Or being cheeky," Remus added. She cast him an endearingly saucy look, and he released her hand to squeeze her thigh.

The waitress approached the table with a hovering quill and notepad. "What can I get you lot tonight?"

"I forgot to look at the menu," said Tonks, opening the leather-bound book and scooting her chair closer to Remus' so they could share it.

When the waitress left them to deliberate, Fleur gave her silvery-blonde hair a shake. "Is zat your natural hair, Tonks, or do you dye it?"

Tonks looked up from the menu patted her pink curls. "I always morph my hair. My natural colour's horrid."

For some reason unbeknownst to Remus, Fleur giggled. "Bill?" she laid her hand on his arm. "What is zat funny shop in Hogsmeade?"

"Zonko's?"

"Not zat kind of funny! I mean ze little tea room."

"Madam Puddifoot's," said Tonks and Remus together.

"Oui!" said Fleur. "Were you zere today, Tonks? You would blend in with ze décor." She giggled again. "You look like a Valentine."

Remus felt affronted on Tonks' behalf that she had been compared to the gaudy tea room. Tonks, on the other hand, smiled and continued perusing the menu, not seeming the slightest bit perturbed. It was fortunate for Remus; if she had been insulted, it would have been his duty to build her up, and he could not think of anything to say except a ridiculous statement about her being the sexiest Valentine he'd ever received.

"I was at Madam Puddifoot's all day," Tonks said. "Not looking like this of course," she added, raking her hand through her pink curls, making Remus' fingers madly jealous. "I didn't want any of the kids to recognise me."

"Did you see Ron?" Bill asked eagerly. "Or Ginny?"

Tonks shook her head, but said brightly, "I saw Harry!"

"On a date?" Remus felt winded at the thought of James' son being old enough to go out with girls and took a drink of wine.

Tonks' brow furrowed slightly. "He didn't seem to be having much fun."

"What went wrong?" Remus asked.

"I tried not to eavesdrop too much," said Tonks, "but he left part way through to meet Hermione Granger."

"Harry's not interested in Hermione?" Bill's brows arched in a slightly alarmed expression. "Because Ron-"

"No." Tonks nibbled an hors d'oeuvre. "I asked Mad-Eye later - he was out with his invisibility cloak - and he said they met Rita Skeeter."

"The hack?" Bill said, and Remus sat up straighter, intrigued.

"Apparently Harry told her everything about V-" Tonks glanced around the restaurant full of happily oblivious wizards and witches. "-about You-Know-Who's return, and he named the Death-"

"It is Valentine's Day," Fleur interrupted. Her voice shook slightly, and her blue eyes were cloudy with distress. "Let us not discuss work or war."

"Who was Harry's date?" Remus asked.

"Too bad Ginny 'got over'…" Bill emphasised the phrase by making quotation marks in the air with his fingers "…Harry. They'd have had fun."

"I want to say the girl's name was Cho," Tonks said. "Ring a bell, Remus?"

"Cho Chang?"

"Oh!" cried Fleur. "Cho was Cedric's girlfriend! " Eyes glistening with tears, she turned and clutched Bill's shoulder, "My darleeng Bill, if I lost you, I would not be out with anozzer wizard ze next Valentine's Day."

Bill glanced over her head at Remus, looking baffled. Wisely, he made no comment, but merely kissed his girlfriend.

Tonks, on the other hand, choked back laughter, and while reaching for her wine to hide her amusement, upset the glass - all over Fleur's lap.

"'Ow can an Auror be so clumsy?" Fleur said over Tonks' profuse, mortified apologies. But she whipped out her wand and performed a quick scourgify on her dress, then smiled alluringly at Bill. "See? I am quite good with ze domestic spells."

"Brains and beauty," said Bill, to Fleur's delight. "The perfect woman."

Remus noticed Tonks looking chagrined and quickly turned the subject. "I am rather surprised Harry knows Cho well enough to fancy her. She is a Ravenclaw, and a year ahead of him. I suppose they know each other through Quidditch."

The waitress returned to take their dinner orders. When Bill selected a steak cooked well, Fleur's mouth twisted in an expression of disgust. She beamed, however, when Remus ordered his rare. "Finally," she said, "an Englishman who does not eat 'is meat burnt to a crisp!"

Remus smiled woodenly and hoped to escape this without having to discuss side effects of lycanthropy.

Fortunately, Fleur was not interested in culinary conversation. As usual, she turned the topic back to herself. "I went out with a younger man once. To ze Yule Ball at 'Ogwarts. All night he could not put two words togezzer for staring at me. I prefer older men."

"So do I," said Tonks. "Always have."

"Lucky for us, huh, Remus?" said Bill, offering the last hors d'oeuvre to the others before claiming it for himself.

Remus nodded, glad no one mentioned Bill being Head Boy during Tonks' school days.

"It takes an older man to look past my lovely face and see my intellect," said Fleur. "All zoze silly 'Ogwarts boys last year…None of zem - not even your little brozzer Ronald - considered my mind and my magical talents made me a Triwizard Champion. I theenk it must be ze same for you, Tonks."

"Oh," said Tonks, face as pink as her hair and outfit, "the boys never thought-"

"Of course by zat I mean it takes a good, mature man not to use your abilities to fulfil some fantasy."

Tonks looked up at Remus with a smile that made his heart beat in staccato. At the same time, Fleur's complimentary words echoed in his head, and he relaxed. He had felt he stuck out from this group like a sore thumb, but now was completely comfortable. Odd that the youngest of the group - and one he had heard others write off as self-absorbed and snobbish - was the one to put him at ease.

He had been holding hands with Tonks under the table, but now wrapped his arm around her shoulders and allowed his hand to wander up and finger her enticing curls now and then. When their food arrived, he laughed heartily at Fleur's toast: "To older men and rare steak."

"We should go out with Bill and Fleur again sometime," said Tonks as she and Remus strolled hand-in-hand back to her flat, prolonging the evening.

London was alive tonight, bustling with couples, yet the romance of the night leant itself to a quiet atmosphere. Perhaps Remus had simply blocked out everything but Tonks. She had never looked more beautiful than she did now; her heart-shaped face, flushed from the cold and the wine, glowed under the amber streetlight as she lifted her pink rose and drank in its fragrance with a sigh.

"Tonight was a lot of fun," she said.

"It was," Remus said so eagerly that Tonks looked mildly surprised, but mostly delighted. He squeezed her hand. He felt twenty again, and not even a glimpse of his grey-haired reflection in the loo mirror before leaving the restaurant had tainted his mood. It was good to do the things he'd done with friends before the tragedies of the first war snuffed out such hopes.

Tonks dipped her head, and an errant curl fell in her face. Remus released her hand and reached up to push the hair out of the way, letting the soft strand twine around his finger before he tucked the curl behind her ear.

With a sheepish glance up at him, Tonks said, "I'm a little ashamed to admit I didn't expect it to be fun. I should've known Bill wouldn't date an empty-headed vela, like Ginny and Hermione said."

Remus recalled the Fleur-bashings in which Ginny and Hermione had frequently engaged the previous summer at twelve Grimmauld. "As bright as those girls are," he said, "they are teenagers. And I would wager Fleur did snub them from time to time. She means well, but she has an abrasive way. I imagine she is intimidating to insecure adolescents."

Tonks' laughter rang out in the crisp, winter night air, her breath forming a cloud. "I'd no idea you understood the teenaged female psyche, Professor."

"I don't," he said, with a chuckle. "But I am an expert on insecurity, especially the teenaged variety."

Hugging his arm tightly, Tonks said, "I'm not saying I'll be best chums with Fleur. She definitely snubbed me a few times, and I think if I spent too long with her she could drive me quite mad."

Remus quirked a brow. "You do realize you are describing my friendship with Sirius?"

Tonks stopped dead in her tracks. "I take it back," she said with an exaggerated shudder. "We can never ever go out with Bill and Fleur again." Dark eyes shining with mischief, she asked, "If I'm to play Remus to Fleur's Sirius, does that mean I've got to do boring things with my hair and stop wearing this sort of outfit?"

"Don't go morphing your hair grey," Remus said. Looking her over, he added in a low voice, "By no means give up those trousers."

They laughed softly as they moved closer together, Remus bending to meet Tonks' upturned, expectant face. Their mirth sound faded away with sighs as their lips melted into a tender kiss. When the cold forced them to resume walking, they maintained a relatively slow pace, warming themselves by wrapping their arms around each other. As Remus hooked his arm around Tonks' waist, he gave in to the urge to let his fingers graze her very cute, very tempting bum.

"I definitely won't give up these trousers," said Tonks. A spring came into her step, but when Remus grinned at her, she became almost bashful. With incongruous seriousness she said, "What Fleur said was really true. Immature wizards love the idea of a Metamorphmagus."

Remus recalled a brief, long-ago conversation about Tonks' almost prior dating history. Other than to describe it as virtually non-existent, she had not said much else on the subject. She claimed there was nothing to tell, and blamed her inexperience with men on general social awkwardness and the rigorous schedule she maintained during Auror training. Now, however, Remus wondered if there was, in fact, more to it than that.

"Do you speak from experience?" he ventured, hoping he had not broached a painful topic.

An expression almost like the one that creased her features before a metamorphosis flickered on Tonks' face. "Like I told you," she said with a shrug, "I haven't a great deal of experience. When I was at school I used to change for boys I liked, but I never was good at pretending for very long."

Remus felt a pang of sadness for her. "I know about that. How do you tell a girl you're a werewolf?"

"Isn't it a relief that I've always known?" Tonks nestled more snugly against his side. Again, self-consciousness crept into her tone as she said, "That's why I said you're the best thing that's ever happened to me. You've never asked me to be anything other than myself." Chuckling, she amended, "Or who I want to be - y'know, since the pink hair's not real."

"It's you, though." Remus hugged her, his heart swelling with joy and pride and wonder that he could be so fortunate as to give Nymphadora Tonks what she wanted, and what no other wizard ever had. "Remember? We agree pink hair suits you." Dropping a kiss on her pink curls, he recalled the host's response to learning he awaited a date with a Metamorphmagus.

"Yes, lucky you," said Tonks dryly after he related the anecdote, "on a date with a walking, talking Valentine." With a slightly serious expression in her dark eyes, she turned to him and asked, "Would you have preferred me not to go all out with the Madam Puddifoots mascot look?"

Remus supposed that ridiculous comment he had avoided earlier would have to come out now. "You are, without question, the sexiest Valentine I have ever received."

"Ooh," said Tonks, "you deserve a treat for that." She stopped walking, handed Remus her rose, and rummaged through her handbag for the box of chocolates.

"We werewolves have to watch what we eat," Remus said in mock-protest - but he did not resist as Tonks put a chocolate into his mouth.

"That's okay," she said, sliding her arm about his waist again. She reached her other arm around, as though to hug him, but instead patted his stomach. "The fur'll hide it."

The End

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