Stages of Love Challenge: When Remus Met Tonks

[mrstater]

Title: When Remus Met Tonks
Author: mrstater
Rating: PG
Summary: The first meeting of Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks, in five ficlets.
Word Count: 2500
Author's Note: Written for the stagesoflove challenge, Exploration of a Relationship Through The Five Senses.



Part One: At First Sight

Spiky pink hair. The twenty-something witch must be Bill Weasley's recruit.

"Merlin," says Sirius, approaching her, "you look just like your mum."

Remus observes from the bottom stair, interest piqued. Sirius knows the pink-haired witch?

"Mum would be so insulted," she says, dark eyes glittering. "She hates my hair and clothes."

Definitely Bill Weasley's recruit. Molly never stops nagging him to have a haircut and remove the fang earring.

The young witch's mention of clothing draws Remus' gaze from her pink spikes to her purple Weird Sisters t-shirt, then down to rent and patched jeans - bought that way, judging from the strategically placed holes and scraps of fabric that coordinate with her hair and shirt. Remus steps back into the shadows, conscious of his shabby-but-not-chic attire.

"Andromeda's still enough of a Black to disapprove of the Muggle punk look?" Sirius glances over his shoulder with a smirk. "Moony! You great prat! Get down here and meet my cousin Nymphadora!"

"Don't call me Nymphadora!" Her dark eyes glint at Sirius, but sparkle as she steps around her cousin and approaches Remus. He's still rooted to the stairs, astonished to realise the witch is one of Alistor Moody's recruits - an Auror.

"Wotcher!" She grins and thrusts out a hand. Remus notes her lips are the exact shade as her hair. "I'm Tonks."

"Remus Lupin." As he accepts her proffered hand, he notes chipped glittery purple paint on her fingernails. "I haven't any issues with my first name, so you may call me Remus."

Tonks' grin widens, and her eyes dance. "Pleasure to meet you, Remus. I've been looking forward to it since Mad-Eye told me you were in the Order. I always like to know people Dolores Umbridge detests, because they're generally wonderful people."

Her eyes hold his the entire time she speaks, and her smile never falters. Merlin - she knows he's a werewolf who hasn't got more than two knuts to rub together, and she still thinks he could be a wonderful person. He steps onto the floor, into the light, because he's got a feeling that if Nymphadora Tonks notices his darns and patches, she won't care.

"Bit of a rebel, are you?" Remus wonders if her cheeks hurt from smiling so hugely. His do.

"What's your clue?" Sirius snorts. "The hair, or the refusal to use her very pretentious, very Black name?"

As Tonks laughs, her grin stretches all the way across her heart-shaped face.

"Excuse me," she says suddenly, bolting for the loo next to Mrs. Black's portrait. She catches her foot on the doorjamb and sprawls inside. She pokes her head out the door, face pink as her hair, smile sheepish. "Yes, I qualified for Auror even though I'm dead clumsy."

When she disappears and closes the door, Sirius shakes his head. "All Blacks are mad, but that one's got her own brand of daft. Pink hair."

"It suits her," Remus replies. "I like it."

Sirius claps Remus' shoulder. "That's because you're grey before your time, Moony."

Part Two: Homonym

"HALF-BRED SHAPE-SHIFTING FREAK!" Mrs. Black awakens at the flush of the toilet and her great-niece's blundering exit from the loo. Tonks jumps and backs into the loo again as Remus bolts to stifle the portrait.

From the basement, Sirius bellows, "SHUT HER UP, WILL YOU MOONY?"

"I should have warned you," Remus apologises to Tonks, pulling the heavy curtains closed.

"What?" Tonks asks, breathless with shock. "You can't flush the toilets here?" Her voice is high with incredulity, and Remus cannot help but laugh.

"Mrs. Black - your aunt, I should say - does not take kindly to disowned family members and half-bloods darkening the door of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. However, I cannot imagine why she chose that particular epithet for you. The last part only applies to me."

"Werewolves aren't the only shape-shifters, you know," said Tonks matter-of-factly (or almost mildly affronted, though that makes no sense at all). She scrunches her face, and it becomes a female version of Sirius' face; her hair darkens to black and lengthens.

"You're a Metamorphmagus," says Remus, more obviously awed than he means to sound and hoping it does not offend her.

"Or a fellow shape-shifting freak, if you like," Tonks says proudly, her face returning to her own heart-shaped, pink-haired form. "So, you've got a Muggle-born parent, too, then?"

Remus nods, but cannot find his voice. He listens, transfixed to the muffled voice of Mrs. Black: "HALF-BRED SHAPE-SHIFTING FREAKS!"

The words reduce him to a jumble of emotions. Part of him hates that a magical being as rare and extraordinary as a Metamorphmagus can share an ugly epithet with a Dark Creature. Another part of him takes comfort in the plural. He likes the thought that Mrs. Black, toujours pur, cannot distinguish Metamorphmagi from lycanthropes. He does not wish his curse on anyone, not even to relieve his own loneliness, but perhaps as long as Tonks - self-declared 'fellow' - is in the house, he can pretend that he is something else, something special.

"Did you get her quiet?" Sirius asks, plodding up the stairs. He stops at the landing and glances back and forth from Remus to Tonks. "Nymphadora-"

"Don't call me Nymphadora!"

Sirius continues, ignoring her, "D'you realise you're standing in the loo to talk to Remus?"

"Your mum scared me," Tonks returns, quick on the uptake and as snarky as if she and Sirius have known each other for much longer than a few minutes. "Remus was just coaxing me out."

"Yes," says Remus, "apparently 'What To Do When A Psychotic Matriarchal Portrait Traps You In A Loo' is not part of the Auror training curriculum."

Sirius' bark of laughter sets off Mrs. Black again. "BLOOD TRAITOR! SHAME OF MY FLESH!"

With a dismissive wave of his hand, Sirius clomps downstairs again, flinging back over his shoulder, "You're all freaks, the lot of you."

Above Sirius' footfalls and Mrs. Black's tirade of slurs, the walls of the old house ring with Remus' and Tonks' mingling laughter.

Part Three: Handle With Care

"She's quite a good Auror, really," booms Kinsley Shacklebolt, "despite how it looks."

Remus gapes at Tonks, who, en route to answer Kingsley's knock, tripped over the troll-foot umbrella stand and somehow ended up prone on the floor. Just as Remus moves to assist her, Kingsly shakes his hand.

"Good to see you, Remus," says the wizard Remus has not seen since Hogwarts days. "Where's Sirius?"

When Kingsley retreats downstairs, Remus reaches out to Tonks. "Hand up?"

She regards him with round eyes. "Blokes never do that for me."

He's as surprised as she; aiding a witch is simply what one does. "Do they fear you'll bring them down with you?"

"I can, y'know." With a grip more suited to Kinsley than this pixie, Tonks tugs on Remus' hand.

As he careers to the floor, Tonks' teasing expression becomes horrified. "Oh God, I'm sorry!" Her hands fly over her mouth. "Bloody-! I didn't mean-!"

"Didn't you?" Remus quirks an eyebrow as he rights himself.

"Honestly, I didn't! Merlin, you must think I'm a walking disaster. I'm so-!"

"No harm done." He pats her shoulder and hopes the gesture will ease her distress. "Anyway, this is the closest I've come in a long time to taking a tumble with a girl."

She looks at him with unabashed surprise, then goes red. Godric Gryffindor, did he say that to a young witch he met ten minutes ago? His hand falls from her shoulder as his own face burns.

"Well, I'm just dead clumsy," says Tonks. "Kingsley calls me a good Auror, but the truth is, I nearly failed Stealth and Tracking."

"Perhaps I could teach you a few simple balance charms?"

"No such things." Tonks gives a rueful smile. "I've scoured all the spell books."

"I know. I was just trying to make you feel better. Did it work?"

"Yeah." She stands and nudges his foot with hers. "Now, if you're not afraid of me, can I give you a hand up?"

He accepts her hand, again surprised by the strength of it, and says, "I'm not afraid of you."

Tonks' grip changes, and Remus notices how small her hand is, and holds his larger one awkwardly. She is not gentle, but plainly wants to be.

"I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of the law," says Remus. "You're stronger than you look. I believe you're a good Auror."

"I got your robes all filthy." She swipes roughly at his clothing, sending up little puffs of dust. "Merlin, I'm so sorry."

Remus considers how her grip changed when he told her he was not afraid of her, and decides to conduct an experiment.

"Sirius and I have been trying to get this old house clean. I'm sure all that dust was already on me."

"Well, can I still try to get it off?" Tonks asks.

"Certainly," says Remus. "Thank you."

Her touch is instantly feather light, proving his hypothesis correct: when handled with care, Tonks is careful.

Part Four: What Tonks Is Made Of

It's a myth that werewolf senses are keen even when in human form. Remus' are sharp - but only because he is naturally observant and has trained himself to be more so.

He detects a sugary aroma as Tonks stands close to him to brush dust and carpet lint from his robes. It has to be her scent; it's not his, and twelve Grimmauld smells musty and mouldy. Of course, this smells like fresh biscuits, so Molly might be baking. But if the smell were Tonks, Remus would hardly be surprised. She's a sweet girl, from what he knows of her thus far.

"There." Tonks's hands drop away from him. "All tidy - till my next disaster."

"Planning to knock me down again?"

"Well, it seems a bit sad a nice bloke like you hasn't had a tumble in a while."

Remus' neck and ears prickle hot, but he reckons he deserves a bit of payback for embarrassing her with almost the same comment.

Tonks slips past him, robes brushing his, to descend the basement stair, and he catches another scent but cannot identify it.

"Actually," she says over her shoulder, "I'm planning to offer you tea or Butterbeer or something to drink, and there's a great possibility I'll trip and spill it all over you."

Following, Remus lightly touches the back of her head and turns it. "Look where you're walking. I won't be able to catch you if you trip and roll down the stairs."

"So little faith in me already?"

"I'd say that demonstrates great faith."

He half-expects her to turn again and poke out her tongue, but instead she alights at the foot of the stair and looks at him with a faint toss of her vivid pink hair. "When I douse you with Butterbeer, you'll be performing your own scourgify or evanesco or whatever spell you prefer."

"Why? Because I insulted you?"

"Because I'm rubbish with householdy spells." Quirking a brow, Tonks leans closer to him. "Unless you'd like to end up starkers at the first meeting of the Order of the Phoenix?"

"Why don't you take a seat, and I'll get you a Butterbeer."

A moment later, he takes the chair Tonks has saved beside her at the great kitchen table. He catches the sugary scent and recognises the other one.

"This sounds strange," he says, taking a drink of Butterbeer, "but have you been baking?"

"Baking?"

"I smell sugar and spice whenever you're near."

Again that raised eyebrow. "Are you using a line on me?"

"A line?"

"Sugar and spice and everything nice - that's what girls are made of?" But then Tonks sniffs her robes. "Blimey, I do smell like sugar and spice - like…gingerbread. Oh!" She reaches into her pocket and draws out something wrapped in a paper serviette. "I forgot I brought these. Gingerbread man, Remus?"

He accepts a gingerbread man from her, and he cannot help but think that sugar and spice and everything nice are exactly what Nymphadora Tonks is made of.

Part Five: A Pleasant Taste

Remus should have known better than to accept a homemade treat from a girl who professed to be rubbish with householdy spells. Of course, it would not have done to reject her sweet generosity. Likewise it will not do to let on how positively revolting this gingerbread man is. But Merlin's teeth - if Remus breaks one of his on this gingerbread that is the consistency of one of Hagrid's rock cakes and gives Wolfsbane Potion a run for the title of Worst Taste Detectable By the Human Tongue....

In his peripheral, he sees Tonks snap the head off a second gingerbread man. She seems unfazed by the hardness, and he wonders if she, like Hagrid, loves her own cooking. But what if she does not? What if she has no idea how awful her gingerbread is? Surely she will be mortified to have shared it with a new acquaintance. Already she has revealed self-consciousness and insecurity about her clumsiness. Remus nibbles at the gingerbread, though his gag reflex chastises him for being noble.

"Ugh!" Tonks presses the paper serviette to her mouth and spits the bite of gingerbread into it. "How yacky!"

Though Remus is relieved not to have to eat any more of the nausea-inducing treat, he has no desire to embarrass Tonks. As she gulps down Butterbeer, he says, "It's not so bad."

"Haven't you got taste buds?" Tonks asks, shuddering. "It's bloody awful! Oy! Kingsley!" she calls to her fellow Auror, talking with Sirius in a corner. "Who made this crap gingerbread I found in the break room?"

Kingsley glances over Sirius' head with a look of mingled amusement and disgust. "Gawain's wife."

Qualms about washing the taste out of his mouth abandon Remus. He gulps down Butterbeer as purposefully as Lady Macbeth washed her hands.

"Gawain needs to keep Mrs. Robards out of the kitchen," Tonks mutters. "Really, Remus, you can't think it's not that bad."

"Wretched," he admits, "but I thought you made it, and I did not wish to hurt your feelings."

The touched look that crossed her features earlier, when he offered to help her off the floor, returns. "You're such a gentleman," she says softly.

Remus rearranges his feet under the table and swallows more Butterbeer. Why does she take such note of his behaviour? He is only doing what comes naturally to him, and surely that is nothing extraordinary.

"If I were a gentleman," he says, "I would not say, thank you for the gingerbread, Nymphadora."

Scowling, Tonks whips her wand out of her robes, striking rather an imperious pose despite the fact that she sits at a kitchen table with a partially eaten gingerbread man before her. "I ought to hex your tongue so that gingerbread's the only thing you taste for the rest of your life."

As they banter about hexes before the Order meeting convenes, Remus wonders if Tonks has any idea what a pleasant taste she, without any magic but her personality, has left in his mouth.