Part 4 of BTHL and art

[nancystagerat]

Every time I draw Remus and Dora together, somehow she always ends up in a dress. *sigh* The shpiel is in my artist's note on it's deviantart page.

Here's the sketch:  http://nancystagerat.deviantart.com/art/Married-Life-Suits-You-134588952

Title: Better to Have Loved
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13 except for #'s 7, 24 and 28. 
Pairing: Remus and Tonks
Summary: Have the next set of photos.

1. Middles

They sit with their backs against the arms of her couch, laughing. Tonks’ knees are drawn up to her chest, toes curling in their polka-dot socks, and she reaches her arms around to catch and hold Remus’ hands. Maybe she’s had a bit too much to drink, but the wine has emboldened them both and she enjoys it, their conversation quick dissolving into giggles and a rather absurd word-association game.

“Goat,” she snorts, and he rejoins with a rather emphatic “Aberforth!”

“Bruise,” he tosses out.

“Whomping Willow! Hmmm…let’s see…puddle!”

“You falling in it.”

“You didn’t even hesitate, you git!” she playfully accuses, lobbing a decorative pillow at him.

“Ah, it’s your turn, Nymphadora,” he chuckles, “Fudge.”

“Stupid moron in a bowler,” Tonks replies, taking a second to ponder her next, nervous and hopeful, “Tonks.” And then quickly amends, “DO NOT say Nymphadora!”

“Pixie,” Remus answers, and she feels herself swell a bit with joy. He, on the other hand, is even less sure of his hesitantly offered “Remus?”

He braces for the inevitable, waiting for “werewolf” to form on her perfect lips and tear into him and ruin-

“Hot cocoa!”

Mirth spills from her eyes, and Remus chides himself for ever having doubted her.

1. Thanksgiving

Tonks grabs both his hands and dances backward on her toes, her playful, velvet-dark eyes overflowing with laughter. Remus smiles and pulls forward and Tonks’ own momentum throws her into his arms, caught close to his chest as he spins with her around the sitting room. The bottom hem of her bright teal lingerie fans with the twirl of their bodies, and as soon as Remus loosens his hold she is once again giggling and tugging at his hands, expectant, insistent, guiding him after her to bed.

God, she’s gorgeous.

For just one blissful moment Remus forgets to question this reality, and lets his pink-haired pixie lead him where she will.

1. Life

People who know Tonks would be surprised to hear she can’t wait to move away from London. Nothing against the city; she’s loved it and its many colorful faces all her life. It’s just…not the life she’s envisioned.

London is not the little house in the countryside, shared by herself and an imaginary faceless loving husband and their imaginary faceless beautiful children. It’s been an image that’s swum in and out of her head since she was little, often forgotten for long stretches before something will conjure it back to the front of her mind. Just a little house somewhere, with flowers and trees and grass and a porch swing and space. A little isolated, a little too small, but bright and sunny and completely their own.

She’s never been able to invent faces for her imaginary family, though not for lack of trying. Tonks’ll bet that almost every little girl in the world has at some point tried to picture the man she’ll marry. No face she’d come up with has ever looked right, and her phantoms would never solidify into people.

But now, as she holds the tiniest, most perfect baby boy in the world, she’s never wanted that imagined life so badly before. Tonks smiles up into Remus’ eyes, pulled against his side, her fantasy so finally touchably close; those hoped-for loves have shown themselves at last and she will hold them tight for as long as they will let her.

1. Lightning

Teddy Remus Lupin has the lung capacity of a Fwooper who’s just had its tailfeathers yanked out, complete with the magical bird’s talent for driving listeners insane. The baby isn’t taking well to his first nighttime thunderstorm, and is making his distress known loud and clear.

Remus attempts to roll over, to pretend he’s still asleep, but his equally exhausted wife is more than savvy to his designs.

“Nuh-uh. It’s your turn,” Tonks groans, pulling the covers up and burying her face in the pillow. “I shushed and fed him an hour ago.”

Remus sighs heavily, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and collects their son from his crib. “Shhh,” he soothes, rubs Teddy’s back, kisses the boy’s turquoise hair. “It’s okay, Teddybear, shhh. I’m right here.” As tired as he is, Remus knows he wouldn’t have been able to relax, not with his poor little man so scared. They’ll stay up all night if that’s what it takes to make their child smile.

For the moment the backrub works and Teddy’s fearful shrieks fade to quiet fussing into his father’s shoulder. That is, until the next flash of lightning floods the bedroom.

Remus sits back on the side of the bed and Tonks props herself up, cooing to her frightened boy. She tickles his belly, nuzzles his nose with her own. “Daddy’s got you, Teddybear,” she murmurs. Remus pulls her close with his free arm, and soon both mother and son are held tight and asleep.

1. Air

Every once in a while Remus will wake in the middle of the night and find himself suffocating a bit. His bedmate will have sleepily thrown an arm over him, and in her dreams Tonks often shifts enough that her embrace turns into a dead weight over his neck. Hence the suffocating.

Tonight is no exception. He shoves her off of him and all she does is roll onto her side, still lost to whatever reverie had induced the need to cuddle. Her hair hasn’t changed color, though, so he assumes it must be something happy, and pulls her back against his chest. He may not be the subject, but he can bloody well compete for her affection with whatever dreams have kept her pink tonight.

1. Spirit

Her patronus is so hard to summon now. All her happy -God, so deliriously happy-memories make her want to ruin things and cry like the child she knows she is. All the better that it’s difficult to call up, Tonks thinks, hating and dreading the sight of the wolf that has beaten and stolen her love. But she still tries, and that terrible great wolf might as well rake its claws down her back with every memory she tests to see which one will work.

Finally she finds the thought that brings her hope and hurts the most and her silver wolf flows into being, huge and bright and apologetic as she remembers lying beside Remus in the morning, stroking the side of his face gilt by the golden light that filters through her curtains and thinking she could stay like this forever. Its tail is between its legs, head dipped low to nose the brown hair hiding her face and it lies down behind her, curves its great silver body around her back. Her protector. Here where Remus should’ve been. Here until the morning.

1. Winter

It’s just sex, she tells herself, she’s done this a few times before, but her heart races in her throat and her hands tremble against the shirt she pushes from his arms and sex has never felt so frightening or complicated or careful like this before. She’s helped divest him of his robes but draws her hands back against her chest, awkward and shy as she nervously laughs and turns her face away and waits for him to remove his underthings himself. He stands there, naked before her, unsure and blushing and she dimly realizes she is still fully clothed and shouldn’t she be following his lead and naked by now?

His eyes lock with hers and they are soft and warm and clouded with what she hopes is longing as she fumbles with the buttons on her robes and he covers her hands with his, takes the fastenings and makes short work of them, and his hands slide beneath her shirt and she raises her arms for him and it is discarded, he reaches around her back and unfastens her bra with more ease than she could’ve managed for herself…

…But now all that’s left between her skin and his hands are her own arms and she doesn’t know why she’s self-conscious when she can be as beautiful as anyone could want but she doesn’t know how he wants her to be and it’s just sex-

His hands cup her face and she finds her every worry kissed away.

1. Days

How many days has he watched her? How many days in a row has he come to this same chair at night with his brandy and his books only to lose his head to thoughts of her? She’s so young, bright and full of life he cannot match. She wears her hair and clothes in ways that should upset him and they do upset his sense of what is right and normal for a man to find attractive in a woman. She makes him a right mess with those playful looks she sometimes sends his way across the table, those instances their eyes meet and just as he’s plucked up the courage to smile she dips her face again and looks away. She’s beautiful and mystifying and maddening and he wants her just to see him as he’s never wanted anything before.

And somehow now the brandy and the books he hides behind are in the way as she waltzes into the room, perches herself on the arm of his chair, leans over to inspect his book. She seems so strong and sure here in this moment, brushing pink hair back out of her face, but the eyes that only just capture his are still, impossibly, painfully shy.

He finds it much easier to smile at her now.

1. Brown

Tonks stares into her cold cocoa, wet brown hair lank and dripping where it sticks to her face.

It’s humid in her kitchen, windows open and curtains wafting despite no detectable breeze. It’s sunny, the day is perfect, she shouldn’t feel so cold. The scalding shower didn’t help. She couldn’t make herself drink the hot chocolate. Nothing works because he’s taken the few things he’d had here, left only her own clothes hanging in her closet and suddenly without his shoes beside hers by the door the flat seems too big and too empty to hold her all by herself.

She pushes herself up from the table and tears through the cabinet under her sink, pushes things aside until she finds the bottle of firewhiskey she’d been given and not touched since she’d made Auror.

It’s her day off. She knows it won’t warm her enough. She shouldn’t be cold. She shouldn’t need this. She’s stronger than that. But he’s said so many stupid things and now there’s no one to look forward to when she comes home at night and no number of blankets she’s pulled over herself can make her feel as wanted and safe as she’d been with him beside her.

Tonks pours the liquor into her cocoa, winces at the first sip. She doesn’t want it, she’s not a drinker, she doesn’t even like firewhiskey. But she’s dying for him and it hasn’t even been one full day, and she’ll need to sleep sometime.

1. And

His shoes beside hers at the door seem too intimate a place for them to be, like a secret shared, and this should scare him. “And” should seem like too small a word between their names. Remus and Tonks. Not enough letters, not enough distance. His clothes in her closet? It’s closer than he’d ever dreamed of being with anyone.

“That’s it, Remus? Sheesh, here I’d thought I’d need to shrink most of my things to fit anything else in that closet. Sorry ‘bout all the mess, I promise I won’t have you living in filth for too much-”

She’s laughing and he loves it and he finds he’s laughing, too, and he smirks and flicks his wand and all her things fly back where they belong.

“-longer,” she finishes. A smirk twists her mouth and her pixie’s eyes glint with the joyful promise of lots and lots of trouble.

“Well, then, since you’ve done all that hard work for me, you lovely man, what say you and I have a bit of playtime?”

You and I. He didn’t think it was possible for those eyes of hers to hold any more mischief. They prove him delightfully wrong as she whispers with her mouth close to his ear. “I can’t stand having my bed all neat and made-up for more than three seconds with you in the place.”

Remus and Tonks.

It sounds so nice put like that.

1. Colorless

Remus sings her to sleep with I love you’s in her ear, holds her close in a tangle of tired limbs and soft, soft kisses he can’t tell if she feels. Her chest rises and falls with breaths long and slow and even and she is so much more beautiful in the milky light that filters through the curtains than even in the memories that got him through this last long year alive. All he knows is that the world no longer exists except for them and this bed and this moment, and her hair is silk sifting through his fingers and he finds he doesn’t care what color it is, just that it’s here and she’s here and she’s not given up on him, not yet.

1. Summer  (“Got To Get You Into My Life” - The Beatles)

Nymphadora Tonks is not prepared for this. Remus has got her down to her underthings and draped over his arms and he is swinging her body out over the water like some kind of spastic pendulum, laughing and threatening to toss her sorry arse smack into the lake. Tonks shrieks in his ear, kicking and fighting and clinging like a monkey to his neck.

“Don’t you dare, Remus John Lupin! Don’t you even-aiee!” she yelps and practically somersaults over his shoulder to get her feet back on the safe solid bank. But he manages to keep his hold on her and she is once again held fast to his chest and grabbing on for dear life.

“I can’t swim, you stupid great git! What part of ‘put me down’ don’t you understand?!”

But he understands “put me down” all too well and grins and she realizes she’s said something very, very stupid just as he lets go and Tonks suddenly becomes much better acquainted with the shallows. She comes up sputtering and Remus is doubled over laughing, leaning against a tree for support. Fine, she thinks, glaring and shaking the water from her hair and trying very hard not to be distracted by the fact that he’s just in his boxers. If that’s the way he wants it, two can play at that game.

“You are so going to pay for this!” she growls, and, grinning evilly, she pushes his pile of clothes into the water.

1. Independence

It’s almost February and Remus is frozen and sick and starving and he’s never felt so desperately lonely in his life. None of the food he’s stolen for himself has stayed down these last few days, though whether the ailment is physical or otherwise he doesn’t know. It makes no difference which it is. He’s run away from everything he loves, and for what? To wallow in self-pity? To grasp at hopeless straws in a pack of wolves that won’t even let him speak? To reach for scraps of hope that will only beat him back into his place?

He’s accomplished nothing since he’s been here, has only served to alienate the pack further from the alliance the Order hoped he would achieve, and in doing so has generated so much unnecessary pain for the one person that’s meant the world and far too much to him. He feels like such a waste of skin and bones and breath still hopelessly tied to the woman he’d thought he’d cut away. A waste of her time and the months they’d spent falling so hard for each other.  He can’t give her anything, can’t make any promises. He can’t even fix what he’s broken, and the more he thinks about her the more he’s convinced that he’ll never be able to leave her behind, not in truth.

He belongs in this sorry sordid life.

1. Sunrise

The world has no right to be this beautiful, not when Tonks has been awake all night and has only just realized what time it is as the sun peeks its rosy corona over the trees. Her body wants nothing more than to sink into bed and sleep ‘til forever after a busy night of work and then pacing until the full moon hid its face back beneath the horizon. Or as much of “horizon” anyone could get, living in London.

Some invisible giant brush widens the watercolor stripes of gold and bronze and strawberry pink and she’s sure it’s safe now, practically skips through the flat collecting extra blankets and the massive bar of Honeyduke’s Best she’s been saving for a morning like this. Remus wouldn’t let her stay with him at Grimmauld after she got off work last night, but he never said anything about her flitting by to help him wake up in the morning, now, did he?

Careful to keep the lime green tassels of her scarf out of the bubbling cauldron she lifts from her fire, Tonks hunts for the Floo powder; no one in their right mind would trust her to Apparate anywhere with a full pot of soup, magically spill-proof or not, and neither would she. Potato soup sounds like something Remus would like, doesn’t it? She hopes so as she tosses the green dust into the fire.

1. School

“Merlin, I wish I could’ve been at school with you,” she says, laughing at the conclusion of one Remus’ particularly entertaining Marauders escapades.

“But would you want to be at Hogwarts at the same time as Sirius?” Remus smirks, and Tonks weighs Sirius’ teasing versus cousinly affection.

“It would’ve been nice to have someone to stick up for me,” she replies after some thought. Tonks laughs ruefully, turning her Auror’s badge over in her hands. “I think a giant growling black dog might’ve put off some people spreading their nasty rumors about me. I could’ve gotten Sirius a great spiky collar! I might’ve even gotten Prefect…”

Remus is well-acquainted with Tonks’ less-than-perfect school years and the gossip that had circulated about her morphing, had become so on their many nights of tea and talking down in the Grimmauld kitchen. He was also quite familiar with why the no-magic-in-the-corridors rule had come between Tonks and the Prefect badge she’d wanted so badly.

“But wasn’t that why you went for Auror?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it was,” Tonks answers, toying with her badge. It was true. She’d gotten so good at defending herself and those weaker than her from the wider teenage community that Auror was really the only career she’d considered.

She and Remus probably wouldn’t have been friends had they attended school together anyway, she thinks. She’d been too hostile to Non-Charlie Gryffindor boys, sweet and shy or not.

“Teach people to pick on Hufflepuffs now, hm?”

1. What

Tonks trawls through Diagon Alley, at a loss for what to get Remus for his birthday. She can think of a hundred things he needs, but would hurt his pride to be given. It’d feel too much like charity, and the last thing she wants is for Remus to think she pities him when he’s the one person she loves and admires most in the world.

Anything practical is absolutely out, she thinks as she passes Madam Malkin’s. But anything too expensive is also not on her potential gift list as she stops at the front windows of Flourish & Blotts. The display is of dragonhide-bound tomes with gilt pages and illuminated letters that make her want to pore over them, regardless of what they’re actually about.

Tonks steps inside, but she doesn’t know what books Remus’ already read or what subjects he’s interested in, and makes a face when she comes across a stray copy of Hairy Snout, Human Heart. Well, that certainly wasn’t on her list. Too trite, she thinks, and probably insulting.

But a sedate little leather journal display catches her eye, the sign above them boasting personalization for an extra three Knuts, and she weighs her options. Professors couldn’t say no to notebooks, right?

Tonks turns one over in her hands; she can see him carrying it, well-worn and tucked it into a deep coat pocket. It’s a nice picture in her mind.

“Can I get ‘R J L’ put on the front of this?’

1. Shade

They sit beneath a tree towards the secluded fringes of the park, Remus’ head in Tonks’ lap as she absently sifts his hair through her fingers. They’d come here to escape the incredulous (and often disapproving) looks they received from other park-goers upon sighting a pink-haired girl wearing mismatched thigh-high socks and rebellious-looking leather boots being innocently intimate with a man so very innocuous by comparison.

“You look like someone just fed your puppy to a Skrewt,” Tonks chirps, admiring the light through the leaves dappled on Remus’ face. “What’s the matter?”

“Even the muggles disapprove of this relationship,” he laughs a little, trying so hard to inject the words with humor that doesn’t reach his eyes. Tonks smoothes one gentle hand over his cheek, holds it there to guide his gaze to hers.

“Are you happy here?” she asks.

Remus takes a moment to admire her face, pretty and pale and tinted with a sweet sincere concern no one else has ever gotten close enough to show him. The sideways smile he offers back is warm and thankful.

“How could I not be?”

“Then don’t pay no mind,” she answers simply, and drops a kiss to his forehead.

1. Enemies

“He was a Sixth year Hufflepuff, I was in Fifth. Took me out twice, and then asked if I’d morph into some Gryffindor girl who wouldn’t give him the time of day.” Tonks wears a wry smirk. “I ran away and cried on Charlie’s shoulder. Then the rumors started, and almost the entire school thought I’d morph into someone else for sex.” She sighs, laughs a little. “I got really good at hexes about then, and no one came near me anymore. Lost Prefect, though...”

Remus is slightly relieved that she’d been just as unlucky in love at school as he’d been, but that hasn’t yet put his mind at ease with regards to afterwards.

“Since I made Auror I’ve only had two boyfriends,” Tonks continues, not quite wanting to meet his eyes. “I dug myself in deep with the first one. Then he asked why I didn’t morph myself prettier when we made love.” She toys with the fastenings on her robes, eyes hard and narrow. “A year of my life down the drain,” she spits.

Remus is surprised; he’d expected to feel much more threatened by her past suitors. But she leans against his side and twines an arm around his waist, wearing an easy, unassuming smile that’s come to be so very Tonks, and so very just for him. “What about the other?” he asks, mouth against her hair.

She laughs and reaches up to kiss the hinge of his jaw. “I think you know the bloke.”

1. Purple

“Must you?” she sighs heavily as she brushes past him, striding across the lawn to strap Harry’s trunk beneath her broom. She’s switched her hair from purple to pink, he notices.

“‘Must I’ what,” Remus’ eyebrows disappear beneath his fringe, “Nymphadora?”

Oooh, he’s giving her that smirk of his, the one that always makes her blood boil and then collect in places blood shouldn’t be collecting just now. It’s dead sexy and the last thing Tonks wants is to let him know it’s got her all flustered at this quite inopportune moment.

“That, you git.”

“What, call you Nymphadora?”

“Keep it up, wolf man. I dare you,” she grins, and bounces to join Mad-Eye and the rest for take-off. Her name sounds almost excusable when he says it, she thinks, giving the sling with Harry’s trunk a final tug.

Almost.

1. Sunset

He says nothing, and she has never looked-or felt, he’s sure-so defeated.

Tonks finally starts to surrender his robes, and as her face breaks all the world and all his walls come crashing away and crumble to dust with just that slight release of pressure from her hands, and a frantic scream rises in his head and he cannot let her let him go.

She had held the shreds of him together when he would have-should have-lived and died a lowly mongrel with his pack, thoughts of her all that kept him tied to this existence when otherwise he would have rather begged for death than abandon those perfect elysian memories. He hadn’t dared to hope she would still be here, waiting, hoping as he had, if he managed to return. But here she is, those silenced dreams made manifest, pleading, still waiting and wanting him so much more than he could have imagined with pain so dark in her eyes he could fall into them and drown.

His hands reach up to cover hers and he holds them to his chest. She does not get the chance to release his lapels, her tight, anguished face not quite meeting his eyes, not quite believing the gesture.

“Please, Remus,” she begs in a voice so small he has to strain to hear it. “Don’t do this just because everyone’s told you to. Don’t give me hope.”

1. Light

Ever since he’d been a boy in his parents’ home, Remus has, somewhat embarrassedly, wondered what it is that keeps a couple attracted to each other post-the birth of children. Especially what keeps a man so. Not that he’s ever feared he would lose his attraction to Tonks once their baby was born, but he’s seen too many Daily Prophet scandals about which wizard having which affair with which witch, and it always seemed to be that the poor, betrayed, and often pretty, wife would be left behind to worry about their-often very young-children.

But Tonks is sitting in a puddle of sunlight on the floor, wearing his white shirt open and pooling around her over the knickers she’d slept in last night, cooing and murmuring to the two-week-old baby in her arms with such love in her eyes that Remus needs to close his eyes to commit it all to memory. He’s never seen anything more beautiful in his life, and pity rises under his skin for any man foolish enough to throw something so perfect away. As he has learned the hard way.

1. Teammates

They fight back-to-back, sweating and bloodied and filled with electric adrenaline fear, but still alive. Hurricanes of magic and dizzying red and green and all-colored swatches of light thrown from so many wands scream past and their heads are spinning and they don’t even know which spell is who’s anymore but as long as it’s aimed away it’s friendly fire and so long as the other is standing firm behind they can go on, they can hope for one more second, and another, and another, that they might make it home.

1. Lunch

“Tell me you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” Remus asks around a mouthful of chocolate, trying to nonchalantly crumple the gold foil remains of Molly Weasley’s Easter gift to him.

“Don’t tell me you just ate that entire chocolate dragon egg for lunch.”

Tonks tries and fails to look authoritative from under baby blue fringe she keeps trying to blow out of her eyes, hands planted on hips from which her low-cut jeans expose a tantalizing band of bare skin. He swallows and offers a smile so innocent it’s incriminating. “Then I won’t tell you.”

“You are going to get so sick, Remus Lupin, and I am going to laugh.” She pouts. “If I ate all that in one go, you’d whine at me for not sharing.”

A Marauder’s grin splits his face. “Who said I wasn’t going to share?”

He catches her in his arms, and Tonks finds herself soundly kissed.

1. Heart

Remus moans and gasps into her hair and Tonks convulses, collapses against him, eyes closed, breathing hard. Sated bodies rest, still joined together, his pulse fluttering beneath her cheek and she would be content to never move again if it means they’ll share this for just a little longer. Her white dress lies forgotten on the floor, but Remus takes her left hand and presses a kiss to her knuckles, lingering on the gold band that feels so foreign and yet so at home there.

She wants to laugh and scream and burst into tears all at once, shout out the window that everything she’s never dared to dream has come to rest in her lap right in this very moment. But he murmurs his love against her hair and strokes her cheek with too-gentle fingers and all she has the strength left to do is bury her face in his heartbeat.

1. When

“Just look at the little guy,” Tonks murmurs, stroking the backs of her fingers against their sleeping boy’s cheek. “He’s got your nose.” She flashes that radiant Tonksian smile up at Remus and he rests a hand on the small of her back, leaning over to admire both wife and son.

“Maybe right now,” Remus chuckles, “Give it five minutes. He’ll be all you.”

“Lookit his sweet little face, our Teddybear.” She pauses for a moment, eyes lighting up like a giddy ten-year-old. “Remus! We need to get him a teddy bear outfit!”

“Planning for Halloween rather far in advance, are we?”

“You bet your arse. He’s gonna look so cute!” Tonks chatters, grabbing Remus’ hand. “Well, unless he decides he wants to go as a frog or something and morphs himself green and slimy, in which case Operation Teddy Bear Baby may not go according to plan…”

Remus drops a kiss to the top of her head. “Shhh.”

“Oh, right.”

1. Fire

 Pain and hatred and a deep, deep sickness sing with adrenaline through her, spells exploding from her wand with the force of the rage that pulses with her blood.

“Go on, then, niece, protect pwecious wittle Potter! I’d rather save killing you for the next full moon!” Bellatrix taunts, hair blown back from a face twisted and glowing with triumph at the mere thought of her next blow. “Your dear were-husband will appreciate the pretty little snack!”

Tonks fights like a cornered dog boxed in by words that spin like solid objects around her head, wrath ruins her precision and spell after spell after spell, none make contact with the shrieking woman Tonks would give anything to silence. Red jets of Stunning spells whip past her face and Tonks knows it’s Ron behind them, one hits its mark, fells a masked Death Eater from his broom and she feels a dark sort of pride rising in her at the sight.

Ron’s face is set and pale behind Harry’s glasses. This is not her battle, and if this is to be her trial by fire Tonks will fight to her last breath to protect the brave boy in her charge. Vengeance will wait until Ron is back home safe.

Green light singes the tail of her broom and the sky rings with Bellatrix’ laughter.

“We’ll see how much your werewolf loves you then!”

1. Children

Remus leans his back against the arm of the couch and Tonks stretches out over him, their legs entangled. Her head rests against his jumper, comfortable against his heartbeat, his hands stroking back unruly pink hair. Her eyes are so hopeful, and his, he fears, so very withdrawn.

His voice is hoarse. “I could never give you anything, not like a…” The word ‘husband’ hovers, unspoken, on his tongue.

“Since when has that mattered to me?” she asks. “Since when have I needed anything but you?” Her arms tighten around him, a physical promise she’s never broken before.

“You’ll tire of that,” he says, holds her head to his chest. “Someday you’ll look back on all this and wonder why you thought I’d be worth the-”

“Bollocks.” The look she gives him is fierce. And brutally honest. “Try a real argument, Remus.”

He traces the outline of her face. “Children,” he rasps. “It wouldn’t be easy, if they …” Remus swallows. “…If they were like me. The disgrace that follows a child, a family like that…”

“Are you asking if I’d be ashamed of them?”

He doesn’t want to look at her.

“Remus, they’d still be our children.” Tonks raises her face, dark eyes glassy. “What does it matter if they’re werewolves or metamorphmagi or squibs or-” She stops, catches back the waver that’s crept around the edges of her words. “They’d be ours.”

He loves her. He loves her so much more than he’d ever imagined.

1. Rain

Water drums against his back, runs in streams down the small perfect breasts he kisses, licks away the water beaded on her nipples. The tiles are cold against their skin as he holds her against the wall, but the rest of his world is blazing, searing hot, burning despite the water that runs from their bodies down the drain. She holds him tight within the circle of her legs, her heels dig into the small of his back and he nearly loses himself to the force of her need he wants to make last but wants so badly to fulfill. She claws at his back, as much to hold herself up as to drive him on, begs for what he knows no one else will ever get the chance give her. Her gasps are lost in the hiss of the shower, but he feels them in the sharp rise and fall of her chest at his mouth. The flush beneath her skin is as much from his touch as it is from the steam that swirls around them, and just for now, he lets it drive the war from his mind. Just for now, he can let himself believe that he deserves her.

1. Work

“First watch tonight?”

Tonks slouches over the table, head falling forward onto her arms. “Mmmm-hmmm.”

Remus settles in across the table from her, tea in hand. “Mind if I stay a bit, Shapeshifting Mudblood Filth?”

“Suit yourself, Resident Order Lycanthrope.” It’s slightly muffled by her arms.

“Aren’t we chipper this evening,” he smirks, laugh lines deepening over the rim of his mug. She raises her head just enough that dark eyes are visible through pink fringe.

“You bet.” Tonks plops her head back down. “Nothing wakes you up like a warm Black Family Welcome from Auntie Walburga.”

“At least she had the decency to wait until you broke a couple of heirlooms.”

The pink head jolts up. “No one saw that but you.”

“No, but they heard it loud and clear.” Remus chuckles at the way her face reddens and drops back onto her arms, but not before he notices her abruptly pale. “Must be handy, morphing away those pesky signs of embarrassment. D’you use that trick often, or is it some kind of special occasion?”

“I save it for when I’m getting the mickey taken out of me by werewolves I hardly know.” Her shoulders shake with suppressed laughter.

“Well, then, allow me to re-introduce myself. Remus Lupin, at your service.” He bows over the table with a flourish.

She raises her head and takes the hand he offers, trying to hide a smirk of her own. “Nymphadora Tonks. Call me Nymphadora and I’ll hex you to next week.”

1. Weeks

Tonks has popped off to retrieve something she’d forgotten in the Apothecary, and Remus pages absently through Flourish & Blotts’ display copy of Unfogging the Future to give himself a little room to think.

He can see Sirius now, sitting in the Grimmauld drawing room, just waiting and raring to go with I told you so’s and was I right’s as soon as Remus Apparates back.

He hates it when Sirius is right.

It’s only been two whole weeks, and already Nymphadora’s ingrained herself so far in his thoughts Remus doubts he’ll ever be able to evict her. She’d held his hand as they’d strolled down Diagon Alley, looped their arms together, and that sunny Tonksian smile of hers hadn’t once been spared for anyone else but him. Even though every so often he’ll catch someone staring. Some are merely bewildered by the sight of such a flashy girl with such a bland older man, but others look at them with open contempt and hurry past as if he were something rotting between the cobblestones. No doubt they’d recognized him from the scandal he’d caused at Hogwarts. It’d been all over the Prophet.

But Tonks is trotting back to him now, beaming and toting two massive ice cream cones. “Mine’s the Strawberry. I got you Death by Triple Chocolate Fudge Brownie Swirl,” she says, plunking the cone into his hand. “Chocolaty-est thing Fortescue’s ever made. I hope you’re planning on sharing.”

Remus chuckles and threads their fingers together.

A/N: And now for your heinously long author's note!
#1 was heavily influenced by the song "Girls and Boys in Love" by the Rumble Strips
#2 got written while listening to "4ever" by the Veronicas on repeat for a rather long time. I had an extremely clear picture of that drabble in my head from the first time I'd heard the song, and it finally came out onto paper and inspired this drawing:  http://nancystagerat.deviantart.com/art/Come-With-Me-Tonight-133232282 
#3 is the fault of "Simple Life" by the Weepies (you had to know they'd show up again pretty quick) and "Muchaboom" by Feist.
#4 is being blamed on "Take It from Me" by the Weepies.
#6 is thanks to "Untouched" by the Veronicas and "Little Bird" by the Weepies.
#7 used to be part of my longer fic "First", but didn't really fit with the atmosphere I'd wanted to convey in that fic. So, it got some tweaking and polishing and now lives here in BTHL.
#s 8 and 9 are being credited to "I Gotta Have You" by the Weepies (are you sick of them yet?), and # 9 was also helped along by "All Good Things", also by the Weepies.
#10 is thanks to "Die Alone" by Ingrid Michaelson and "Happiness" also by the Weepies.
#11 was inspired by "Strange Place Now" by (guess who) the Weepies. I wasn't kidding when I said I could apply their music to almost any R/T moment.
#13 was loosely begun while listening to "House of Wolves" by My Chemical Romance, only I wanted the drabble to come out more hopeless-sounding than the song. I'm not sure how well I succeeded.
#16 is a companion drabble to #6, Moon,  of the second part of BTHL I posted. 
#17 was rather blatantly ripped from "Don't Pay No Mind" by the Weepies. But I really like how it came out. 
#18 was written in a fit of artistic lisence I had while trying to invent Nymphadora a past for a fic I'd started a long time ago but abandoned. So now it lives here. 
#19, if it's not clear, takes place while the Advance Guard is readying for take-off to bring Harry to Grimmauld place at the beginning of OotP.
#20 is a companion drabble to #30, Storm, of the third set of BTHL.
#21 was largely inspired by thise piece by burdge-bug over on deviantart: http://burdge-bug.deviantart.com/art/it-s-a-mother-son-thing-110853846 .
#22 is set during the Battle of Hogwarts. Nuff said.
And lastly, #29 is a companion drabble to the very first one I wrote in set one, Beginnings.

hope you all liked!