Unexpected
"Charlie!" Nymphadora Tonks was standing in the doorway. Grinning ear to ear, she swept in and grabbed him up in a hug. Charlie, his thoughts lagging somewhere behind him, stood up and wrapped his arms around his old school friend.
Tonks stepped back and smiled at him. Charlie stepped back and looked at her. Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't this.
Characters: Charlie Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks
Timeframe: Shortly before Christmas during "Deathly Hallows".
Further note: I don't actually believe, in a canon way, in this story. But I thought it would be fun to play with...
Warnings: None
Words: 3,500
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, the Burrow or the wizarding world.
Story:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Charlie!"
Charlie Weasley had been sitting at the kitchen table, his winter cloak and a rucksack abandoned haphazardly by the back door, drumming his fingers on the table and thinking vaguely of nothing in particular. Now he dropped the front two legs of his chair back to the floor as he swivelled around, just barely managing not to fall over backwards the way his mother always told him he would if he sat like that.
None other than Nymphadora Tonks was standing in the doorway that led from the Burrow kitchen toward the stairs. "Charlie!" she repeated, grinning ear to ear as she swept in and grabbed him up in a hug.
Charlie, his thoughts lagging somewhere several steps behind him, stood up quickly and wrapped his arms around his old school friend.
Tonks stepped back and smiled at him. Charlie stepped back and looked at her. Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't this.
Tonks was pregnant.
Visibly so, her right hand unselfconsciously tracing the swell of her belly, and she was radiating precisely that indefinable glow you always heard pregnant women were supposed to radiate.
Charlie realised he was staring.
"Yeah," she agreed, trying and failing to suppress a goofy grin. "I know what you're thinking, and you're entirely right, and I didn't exactly plan for this in the middle of a war and all, but… Charlie, I swear, I've never been so happy in my life."
And Charlie saw that it was true. Playing for time to get his thoughts in order, he pulled out a chair and waved a hand at it. "Come on, have a seat - do you want a Butterbeer or something? Uh, no, I mean -" He hurried over to root through the kitchen cabinets, emerging a few moments later with a flask in hand. "How about pumpkin juice?"
"Sure," she smiled, sinking into the chair he'd offered with a grace that struck him as different, new.
He pointed his wand at two glasses and the flask poured itself neatly into them. Charlie carried the glasses to the table. Sat again. Looked at his old friend. "This is - wow, Tonks, it's -"
"It's okay, love," Tonks laughed. "I didn't expect a big speech. And I probably should have warned you by owl or something, just so I wouldn't have to see your mouth hanging open…"
Charlie snapped his mouth shut and felt his cheeks go red. "I, uh -"
She squeezed his shoulder. "It's okay, really."
He sipped his juice and took his time setting the glass back down, trying to get the conflicting pictures in his brain to mesh. Tonks, his irreverent, irrepressible, tomboy friend, who'd got detention for trying to sneak into the Forbidden Forest more times even than Charlie had got the same for sneaking in dangerous magical creatures and keeping them under his bed. And then this new Tonks, gentle, radiant wife and mother-to-be.
Clearly, he was missing some key piece of the equation.
Not that it wasn't his very own fault if his friend was seriously pregnant and he hadn't even heard. Tonks had already been gracious enough to forgive him - over and over again - for being the world's worst correspondent, so he certainly had no right to complain here. And it wasn't his place to say what kind of life Tonks should lead. Kids and babies were very definitively the last thing on Charlie's mind, so it seemed weird to think of them being on Tonks' mind, but if that's what she wanted, then clearly she'd found a good match in Lupin…
"So are you back for good or just for Christmas?" Tonks was asking.
Charlie shook his head. "Just Christmas." He shrugged uncomfortably. "I mean, I wanted to check in with the Order anyway, give some updates. It seemed like a convenient time."
"Oh, Charlie." She shook her head at him in that oh so familiar way. "You're allowed to want to see your family. Honestly, you're the only one who thinks it's weird to ever want to come home!"
"I worried about Mum," he mumbled.
She cocked an eyebrow at him.
"You know, with Ron away Godric knows where and Percy being…Percy, and then Bill said he wouldn't be coming to the Burrow this year either, so I just thought… Who knows, you know? I've got to be back right after Christmas and who knows when I'll get away next. Things are getting worse out there, Tonks."
"They are here too," she replied, and it was her solemn tone more than anything that gave him pause - Tonks, who was never serious for more than the instant it took to crack a grin and show she was only joking.
His eyes flicked back to her belly before he could help himself and her hands settled there self-consciously. He noticed the ring on her finger, also new since he'd last seen her, though that at least he'd heard about in a letter at some point. "So you're off dangerous missions for the moment? I hope?"
She gave him a wry smile. "Yup, all desk work for me until the kid's born. I already want to tear my hair out."
Charlie couldn't help smiling at that. Tonks had never been a one to sit still for more than, oh, three seconds - lasting through an entire lesson, obviously, had been a challenge. He could very well imagine that she was currently driving every single member of the Auror department up the wall.
Thoughts of Aurors led him to thoughts of the Order, and that led him to blurt out, "Wait, Tonks, what are you doing here anyway?"
"Always with the charm, Charlie, your mother must be so proud." She rolled her eyes and he had the good grace, at least, to look abashed. "A few Order members are stopping by here later, so I came early to visit with your mum. She's upstairs folding a mountain of laundry - I think either Ginny saved it up all term at Hogwarts, or Fred and George aren't quite as free from the apron strings as they claim."
Charlie felt a slight twinge of chagrin as he realised he actually had no idea what his twin brothers had been up to lately. He'd never even seen their flat, though it was just upstairs from their joke shop, and he'd stopped in there briefly the last time he was home.
"So I was upstairs," Tonks continued, "when my finely honed Auror instincts alerted me to another presence in the house -"
Now it was his turn to raise a sceptical eyebrow - Tonks was a good Auror, but the stealth and tracking stuff had never been her strong suit.
"Okay, okay, Molly told me you'd just got home this morning, and were out again for a bit, but you'd be back soon. And she carries that clock around with her practically all the time now, so she knew the minute you got back. Happy?"
Charlie felt himself relax into a true grin for the first time since he'd arrived home - hell, for the first time in a long while. "Nymphadora Tonks," he told her, trying to keep his tone extremely grave, "I doff my hat to your powers of observation. There's no longer any doubt in my mind what mitigating factors caused the Ministry to overlook your knack for knocking things over and your goldfish-esque attention span when they were recruiting for what can only be described as the single most serious, no-nonsense, very, very important, solemn profession in all the wizarding -"
But by that point he was all but drowned out by Tonks' laughter, as she pummelled his shoulders and chest with fists that, all teasing aside, had rather alarmingly good aim. "You - are - such an absolute - ponce -"
He remembered Tonks as an excitable first year, with that same laugh, her hair changing from one outrageous colour to the next so fast it made Charlie's eyes water to watch her, tripping and falling and almost knocking him over in her hurry off the Hogwarts Express as it arrived at Hogsmeade Station. When she managed to right herself, with not a trace of embarrassment, she cried, "Oi there, ginger, watch where you're going!"
At which Charlie, anxious because he'd already managed to lose his big brother into the crowd in the five seconds it took to disembark from the train, went through a second of shock and a few seconds of absolute indignation, then realised she was joking. She flashed him a saucy grin, screwed up her face for a moment, and turned her hair precisely the same shade as his. Charlie was charmed.
And Nymphadora Tonks - whom he was never, ever, EVER allowed to call "Nymphadora" - became his closest friend, tireless sparring partner and constant comrade in ill-advised adventures for the following seven years.
"Okay, okay, uncle! Truce!" Charlie cried now, ducking his head in acknowledgement of her far superior boxing abilities. "So where is everyone else?"
She cocked her head, considering. "Molly, the mountain of laundry. Fred and George, at the shop, obviously, but she said they'd be over for dinner. Ginny, dunno, out with friends I think. She's taking it hard that Harry and Ron and Hermione are gone. Arthur's out in the shed boring Remus to tears with some Muggle contraption or other." She flashed a wicked grin. "Remus is a far nicer person than I am - I couldn't even pretend to be interested in the gasket gadget thingy and the plug-in whatever."
Charlie felt his stomach lurch in an unnecessary way. "How is Remus?"
And just like that, the mirth dropped away from her eyes and the unfamiliar, serious Tonks was back. "He keeps going away on these pointless werewolf missions," she muttered. "There's no sense to it, not a single one of those dolts is ever going to be convinced, but that's how Remus is, he thinks he's got to do it or die trying." She paused. "And I love him for it, obviously." Another pause. "But sometimes I want to wring his stubborn neck."
"Oh," was the only halfway intelligent reply he could think of.
"And Remus -" Suddenly she was fidgeting and looking away from him, had her glass to her lips and was trying to drink from it before she finally realised it was empty.
Charlie looked at her in alarm. "Remus?"
"Left me for a while, when I first got pregnant."
"Wait, what?"
"I don't want you thinking he's some terrible person, or that I'm some hopelessly weak-willed, I don't know, damsel in distress. It was just Remus with his Remus complex, the misguidedly noble thing where he thinks he's not good enough, thinks everyone's better off without him, the baby is better off having no father than a father who's an outcast. Etcetera. I was angry, believe me. He's a stupid idiot, but the point is that he figured out he was a stupid idiot and came back."
Charlie gazed at his old best friend. He wasn't sure he even deserved to call her that at this point, when he only saw her once or twice a year at best. But that's just how he was, everybody knew that - Charlie and his dragons, now Charlie and his dragons plus trying to help out the Order abroad. Charlie didn't even own an owl - it would be rather pointless, since he never remembered to write.
He knew he was out of touch. He'd hardly even been aware there was anything between Tonks and Remus before the two of them were suddenly married. Or maybe it was more that he hadn't been willing to believe she was that serious about Remus - perpetually kind, upstanding and entirely overly serious Remus, with his greying hair and the wise-beyond-his-years weight on his shoulders. In a weird way, though - in a very weird way - the relationship did seem to work.
"Well," he said, trying to process this disturbing new wrinkle. "I guess you two went through kind of the same thing in the beginning too, right?"
"That Remus was a stupid idiot?"
"Er, yes, that."
"Yeah, we most definitely went through that."
"So I suppose it's similar this time too, he freaked out when things got serious, but he's come round?"
She looked relieved that he'd accepted the situation. Frankly, Charlie thought, he ought to be furious at the man for having abandoned Charlie's best friend - while she was pregnant and in the middle of a war, no less - but he found his reaction, as he listened to Tonks tell him about her errant husband, was something more akin to a slight disappointment.
He noticed Tonks studying him. "I wish you knew Remus better," she mused. "But you're always - you know -"
"In Romania -"
"In Romania, running around getting all your hair singed off in 'unfortunate mishaps' so serious they make the Daily Prophet, but conveniently forgetting to owl your mother that you're still alive…"
"That only happened once!"
"Because really, you have a lot in common," she continued, undeterred.
"I - what?"
"You and Remus."
"Remus and -"
"Yes, you great dolt."
For several long moments, Charlie tried very, very hard - and failed - to see how this could possibly be true.
Finally he said, "Is the stress of the job finally getting to you, Tonks? Because that may be the least logical statement you've ever made."
Tonks looked vaguely embarrassed and covered it by laughing at him. "Fine, don't take a compliment!"
"Well, if you put it that way…"
"Ah, ah, so now you're curious." She gave him a knowing smile and waited. He saw that she was not going to be the one to give in.
"I - Oh, fine! Tonks, tell me, please, if you would, in what ways are Remus and I similar?"
Now she was pensive again, resting her chin on her hand as she gazed at him. "The things that strike me are things that are hard to put into words. Like how you're both so loyal to the people you care about, but in this understated way, like you're afraid to make too big a deal about it. How you're always game for adventure, but you also know when to stop. You're brave. You act cool and collected, but you kind of wear your heart on your sleeve for the people who really know you." Now she was flushing a little, twisting her empty glass in her hands. "And that's enough! I didn't come down here just to inflate your ego."
Charlie opened his mouth experimentally a few times before he finally succeeded in getting sound out. "I should stay in touch more often, Tonks," he said earnestly. "I really, really will this time."
"You always say that," she replied, without even a trace of bitterness. She'd accepted him as he was long ago, perhaps before even Charlie himself had realised he was always going to end up choosing the great unknown over what he knew.
Not that his first couple visits back from Romania hadn't been a bit awkward, especially considering the way things had left off by the end of their last year at Hogwarts. But soon enough, they'd fallen back into an easy friendship. They were close when he was there and not when he wasn't, and that was just the way it was.
"Do you remember -" Charlie asked, then mentally kicked himself for going nostalgic on her, when he had no particular right to. Besides, he realised belatedly, he didn't even have an isolated incident in mind to complete that sentence.
"Everything," Tonks agreed, as if his question had made any sense. "Really, like it was just a second ago. All those nights sneaking out to explore the castle, where we thought we were the absolute coolest thing since self-lighting cauldrons because we found this or that secret passageway. Or because we were helping Hagrid with those horrible toothy, winged things he was raising our third year, remember? Always going on about their great magical significance and 'they're quite tame, really'." She shuddered.
"Ah, Hogwarts nights, sneaking out to visit Hagrid."
"And smoke practically coming out of McGonagall's ears when she inevitably found you out, and you looking so surprised every damn time you got caught."
"Well, and Flitwick literally falling over when he found you just about to slip out of the Entrance Hall in the middle of the night, headed for the Forbidden Forest, because you wanted to 'catch a Thestral'."
"Well, I did want to catch a Thestral."
"Tonks, love, you can't see the things."
Her chin in the air: "And so I'd read up on how to summon them."
Charlie was laughing harder than he'd laughed in a long time. "Oh, Tonks. You're the definition of incorrigible."
"Charlie Weasley, you don't even dignify a definition in response."
Their seventh year, when friendship had turned into something slightly more, they'd kept things casual. They weren't looking to get serious - serious wasn't even in their vocabulary. They were just having adventures, sneaking out onto the castle grounds like they'd always done, maybe snogging a bit while they were at it, exploring the Forest and daring each other to jump into the lake in the chilly early spring. Running his hands through her ever-changing hair as they talked in whispers outside the Hufflepuff common room at night, both on alert - she to disappear inside, he to dash off up the stairs in the other direction - for the slightest sound of an approaching professor.
His memories of those years seemed to all flow into each other, and the tiny, energetic, blue-haired girl who'd nearly knocked him over at the Hogsmeade station was the same young woman with the mischievous grin he'd kissed behind the Whomping Willow one magnificent June rainstorm.
And when Charlie let slip that he'd signed a three-year contract with a dragon reserve in a faraway country he'd never even been to, Tonks was angry, but even then she wasn't surprised.
"Tonks?" he asked, interrupting his own reverie and surprising himself with the realisation of what he was about to say.
"Yeah?"
"How did you know Remus was the one?"
She looked at him. "Charlie, you're not still -"
"Of course not."
"But -"
"You're my friend and I want the best for you. And I think Remus is that, but it's not something I can put my finger on. How did you know?"
She pondered, taking her time with his question, as if it were a good one and not just nosy. "Being with Remus always feels like home," she said finally.
That got him no further. "Which means…?"
"Basically, if I think about whether I'm better off - whether I'm happier, whether the world seems more right - with him or without him… it's clear. It was clear even when he was fighting so hard against it and there were a thousand reasons why it would have been logical just to move on, and believe me, my mother reminded me of every single one of them several times over. But when I thought about Remus - who's poor and a werewolf and pretty much barred from holding a normal job and has this whole guilt complex thing, not to mention being seriously old - none of it mattered. And I don't mean that in a sappy way. More like, all those obstacles didn't even matter, because it was just obvious we'd get past them. I don't know if I can make it make more sense than that." Tonks turned to face him fully, contemplating him. "Think you'll ever marry, Charlie?"
"Probably not."
He remembered Tonks angry, the most towering rage he'd ever seen her in, brandishing her wand in his face. "Are you serious?" she'd asked. "Could you have maybe just mentioned the fact that you're going abroad in a month and never coming back? Just so I could, you know, plan accordingly?"
But even now, when he was very honest with himself, he knew he wouldn't change a thing. He didn't want to be married to Tonks. It didn't fit. He wanted to be a dragon tamer, he'd always wanted that, and Charlie Weasley was one of the few people he knew who was doing 100% exactly what he'd always wanted to do. He even got to keep Tonks in his life, more or less, and he was pretty happy about that too. He sighed, looking at his old friend, and mentally willed himself to let it go.
He'd only just registered a slight noise when the back door opened from the outside. Charlie's body seemed to react before his mind did, and he found himself on his feet, turning, as Remus Lupin walked into the Burrow kitchen. Charlie noticed how the man's eyes darted first to his wife, as if he needed to reassure himself she was really still there.
Tonks rose from the table, but Charlie reached the door first, hand outstretched to his friend's husband.
"Remus," he said, "Congratulations. I'm so happy for you both."
Tonks stepped back and smiled at him. Charlie stepped back and looked at her. Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't this.
Characters: Charlie Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks
Timeframe: Shortly before Christmas during "Deathly Hallows".
Further note: I don't actually believe, in a canon way, in this story. But I thought it would be fun to play with...
Warnings: None
Words: 3,500
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, the Burrow or the wizarding world.
Story:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Charlie!"
Charlie Weasley had been sitting at the kitchen table, his winter cloak and a rucksack abandoned haphazardly by the back door, drumming his fingers on the table and thinking vaguely of nothing in particular. Now he dropped the front two legs of his chair back to the floor as he swivelled around, just barely managing not to fall over backwards the way his mother always told him he would if he sat like that.
None other than Nymphadora Tonks was standing in the doorway that led from the Burrow kitchen toward the stairs. "Charlie!" she repeated, grinning ear to ear as she swept in and grabbed him up in a hug.
Charlie, his thoughts lagging somewhere several steps behind him, stood up quickly and wrapped his arms around his old school friend.
Tonks stepped back and smiled at him. Charlie stepped back and looked at her. Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't this.
Tonks was pregnant.
Visibly so, her right hand unselfconsciously tracing the swell of her belly, and she was radiating precisely that indefinable glow you always heard pregnant women were supposed to radiate.
Charlie realised he was staring.
"Yeah," she agreed, trying and failing to suppress a goofy grin. "I know what you're thinking, and you're entirely right, and I didn't exactly plan for this in the middle of a war and all, but… Charlie, I swear, I've never been so happy in my life."
And Charlie saw that it was true. Playing for time to get his thoughts in order, he pulled out a chair and waved a hand at it. "Come on, have a seat - do you want a Butterbeer or something? Uh, no, I mean -" He hurried over to root through the kitchen cabinets, emerging a few moments later with a flask in hand. "How about pumpkin juice?"
"Sure," she smiled, sinking into the chair he'd offered with a grace that struck him as different, new.
He pointed his wand at two glasses and the flask poured itself neatly into them. Charlie carried the glasses to the table. Sat again. Looked at his old friend. "This is - wow, Tonks, it's -"
"It's okay, love," Tonks laughed. "I didn't expect a big speech. And I probably should have warned you by owl or something, just so I wouldn't have to see your mouth hanging open…"
Charlie snapped his mouth shut and felt his cheeks go red. "I, uh -"
She squeezed his shoulder. "It's okay, really."
He sipped his juice and took his time setting the glass back down, trying to get the conflicting pictures in his brain to mesh. Tonks, his irreverent, irrepressible, tomboy friend, who'd got detention for trying to sneak into the Forbidden Forest more times even than Charlie had got the same for sneaking in dangerous magical creatures and keeping them under his bed. And then this new Tonks, gentle, radiant wife and mother-to-be.
Clearly, he was missing some key piece of the equation.
Not that it wasn't his very own fault if his friend was seriously pregnant and he hadn't even heard. Tonks had already been gracious enough to forgive him - over and over again - for being the world's worst correspondent, so he certainly had no right to complain here. And it wasn't his place to say what kind of life Tonks should lead. Kids and babies were very definitively the last thing on Charlie's mind, so it seemed weird to think of them being on Tonks' mind, but if that's what she wanted, then clearly she'd found a good match in Lupin…
"So are you back for good or just for Christmas?" Tonks was asking.
Charlie shook his head. "Just Christmas." He shrugged uncomfortably. "I mean, I wanted to check in with the Order anyway, give some updates. It seemed like a convenient time."
"Oh, Charlie." She shook her head at him in that oh so familiar way. "You're allowed to want to see your family. Honestly, you're the only one who thinks it's weird to ever want to come home!"
"I worried about Mum," he mumbled.
She cocked an eyebrow at him.
"You know, with Ron away Godric knows where and Percy being…Percy, and then Bill said he wouldn't be coming to the Burrow this year either, so I just thought… Who knows, you know? I've got to be back right after Christmas and who knows when I'll get away next. Things are getting worse out there, Tonks."
"They are here too," she replied, and it was her solemn tone more than anything that gave him pause - Tonks, who was never serious for more than the instant it took to crack a grin and show she was only joking.
His eyes flicked back to her belly before he could help himself and her hands settled there self-consciously. He noticed the ring on her finger, also new since he'd last seen her, though that at least he'd heard about in a letter at some point. "So you're off dangerous missions for the moment? I hope?"
She gave him a wry smile. "Yup, all desk work for me until the kid's born. I already want to tear my hair out."
Charlie couldn't help smiling at that. Tonks had never been a one to sit still for more than, oh, three seconds - lasting through an entire lesson, obviously, had been a challenge. He could very well imagine that she was currently driving every single member of the Auror department up the wall.
Thoughts of Aurors led him to thoughts of the Order, and that led him to blurt out, "Wait, Tonks, what are you doing here anyway?"
"Always with the charm, Charlie, your mother must be so proud." She rolled her eyes and he had the good grace, at least, to look abashed. "A few Order members are stopping by here later, so I came early to visit with your mum. She's upstairs folding a mountain of laundry - I think either Ginny saved it up all term at Hogwarts, or Fred and George aren't quite as free from the apron strings as they claim."
Charlie felt a slight twinge of chagrin as he realised he actually had no idea what his twin brothers had been up to lately. He'd never even seen their flat, though it was just upstairs from their joke shop, and he'd stopped in there briefly the last time he was home.
"So I was upstairs," Tonks continued, "when my finely honed Auror instincts alerted me to another presence in the house -"
Now it was his turn to raise a sceptical eyebrow - Tonks was a good Auror, but the stealth and tracking stuff had never been her strong suit.
"Okay, okay, Molly told me you'd just got home this morning, and were out again for a bit, but you'd be back soon. And she carries that clock around with her practically all the time now, so she knew the minute you got back. Happy?"
Charlie felt himself relax into a true grin for the first time since he'd arrived home - hell, for the first time in a long while. "Nymphadora Tonks," he told her, trying to keep his tone extremely grave, "I doff my hat to your powers of observation. There's no longer any doubt in my mind what mitigating factors caused the Ministry to overlook your knack for knocking things over and your goldfish-esque attention span when they were recruiting for what can only be described as the single most serious, no-nonsense, very, very important, solemn profession in all the wizarding -"
But by that point he was all but drowned out by Tonks' laughter, as she pummelled his shoulders and chest with fists that, all teasing aside, had rather alarmingly good aim. "You - are - such an absolute - ponce -"
He remembered Tonks as an excitable first year, with that same laugh, her hair changing from one outrageous colour to the next so fast it made Charlie's eyes water to watch her, tripping and falling and almost knocking him over in her hurry off the Hogwarts Express as it arrived at Hogsmeade Station. When she managed to right herself, with not a trace of embarrassment, she cried, "Oi there, ginger, watch where you're going!"
At which Charlie, anxious because he'd already managed to lose his big brother into the crowd in the five seconds it took to disembark from the train, went through a second of shock and a few seconds of absolute indignation, then realised she was joking. She flashed him a saucy grin, screwed up her face for a moment, and turned her hair precisely the same shade as his. Charlie was charmed.
And Nymphadora Tonks - whom he was never, ever, EVER allowed to call "Nymphadora" - became his closest friend, tireless sparring partner and constant comrade in ill-advised adventures for the following seven years.
"Okay, okay, uncle! Truce!" Charlie cried now, ducking his head in acknowledgement of her far superior boxing abilities. "So where is everyone else?"
She cocked her head, considering. "Molly, the mountain of laundry. Fred and George, at the shop, obviously, but she said they'd be over for dinner. Ginny, dunno, out with friends I think. She's taking it hard that Harry and Ron and Hermione are gone. Arthur's out in the shed boring Remus to tears with some Muggle contraption or other." She flashed a wicked grin. "Remus is a far nicer person than I am - I couldn't even pretend to be interested in the gasket gadget thingy and the plug-in whatever."
Charlie felt his stomach lurch in an unnecessary way. "How is Remus?"
And just like that, the mirth dropped away from her eyes and the unfamiliar, serious Tonks was back. "He keeps going away on these pointless werewolf missions," she muttered. "There's no sense to it, not a single one of those dolts is ever going to be convinced, but that's how Remus is, he thinks he's got to do it or die trying." She paused. "And I love him for it, obviously." Another pause. "But sometimes I want to wring his stubborn neck."
"Oh," was the only halfway intelligent reply he could think of.
"And Remus -" Suddenly she was fidgeting and looking away from him, had her glass to her lips and was trying to drink from it before she finally realised it was empty.
Charlie looked at her in alarm. "Remus?"
"Left me for a while, when I first got pregnant."
"Wait, what?"
"I don't want you thinking he's some terrible person, or that I'm some hopelessly weak-willed, I don't know, damsel in distress. It was just Remus with his Remus complex, the misguidedly noble thing where he thinks he's not good enough, thinks everyone's better off without him, the baby is better off having no father than a father who's an outcast. Etcetera. I was angry, believe me. He's a stupid idiot, but the point is that he figured out he was a stupid idiot and came back."
Charlie gazed at his old best friend. He wasn't sure he even deserved to call her that at this point, when he only saw her once or twice a year at best. But that's just how he was, everybody knew that - Charlie and his dragons, now Charlie and his dragons plus trying to help out the Order abroad. Charlie didn't even own an owl - it would be rather pointless, since he never remembered to write.
He knew he was out of touch. He'd hardly even been aware there was anything between Tonks and Remus before the two of them were suddenly married. Or maybe it was more that he hadn't been willing to believe she was that serious about Remus - perpetually kind, upstanding and entirely overly serious Remus, with his greying hair and the wise-beyond-his-years weight on his shoulders. In a weird way, though - in a very weird way - the relationship did seem to work.
"Well," he said, trying to process this disturbing new wrinkle. "I guess you two went through kind of the same thing in the beginning too, right?"
"That Remus was a stupid idiot?"
"Er, yes, that."
"Yeah, we most definitely went through that."
"So I suppose it's similar this time too, he freaked out when things got serious, but he's come round?"
She looked relieved that he'd accepted the situation. Frankly, Charlie thought, he ought to be furious at the man for having abandoned Charlie's best friend - while she was pregnant and in the middle of a war, no less - but he found his reaction, as he listened to Tonks tell him about her errant husband, was something more akin to a slight disappointment.
He noticed Tonks studying him. "I wish you knew Remus better," she mused. "But you're always - you know -"
"In Romania -"
"In Romania, running around getting all your hair singed off in 'unfortunate mishaps' so serious they make the Daily Prophet, but conveniently forgetting to owl your mother that you're still alive…"
"That only happened once!"
"Because really, you have a lot in common," she continued, undeterred.
"I - what?"
"You and Remus."
"Remus and -"
"Yes, you great dolt."
For several long moments, Charlie tried very, very hard - and failed - to see how this could possibly be true.
Finally he said, "Is the stress of the job finally getting to you, Tonks? Because that may be the least logical statement you've ever made."
Tonks looked vaguely embarrassed and covered it by laughing at him. "Fine, don't take a compliment!"
"Well, if you put it that way…"
"Ah, ah, so now you're curious." She gave him a knowing smile and waited. He saw that she was not going to be the one to give in.
"I - Oh, fine! Tonks, tell me, please, if you would, in what ways are Remus and I similar?"
Now she was pensive again, resting her chin on her hand as she gazed at him. "The things that strike me are things that are hard to put into words. Like how you're both so loyal to the people you care about, but in this understated way, like you're afraid to make too big a deal about it. How you're always game for adventure, but you also know when to stop. You're brave. You act cool and collected, but you kind of wear your heart on your sleeve for the people who really know you." Now she was flushing a little, twisting her empty glass in her hands. "And that's enough! I didn't come down here just to inflate your ego."
Charlie opened his mouth experimentally a few times before he finally succeeded in getting sound out. "I should stay in touch more often, Tonks," he said earnestly. "I really, really will this time."
"You always say that," she replied, without even a trace of bitterness. She'd accepted him as he was long ago, perhaps before even Charlie himself had realised he was always going to end up choosing the great unknown over what he knew.
Not that his first couple visits back from Romania hadn't been a bit awkward, especially considering the way things had left off by the end of their last year at Hogwarts. But soon enough, they'd fallen back into an easy friendship. They were close when he was there and not when he wasn't, and that was just the way it was.
"Do you remember -" Charlie asked, then mentally kicked himself for going nostalgic on her, when he had no particular right to. Besides, he realised belatedly, he didn't even have an isolated incident in mind to complete that sentence.
"Everything," Tonks agreed, as if his question had made any sense. "Really, like it was just a second ago. All those nights sneaking out to explore the castle, where we thought we were the absolute coolest thing since self-lighting cauldrons because we found this or that secret passageway. Or because we were helping Hagrid with those horrible toothy, winged things he was raising our third year, remember? Always going on about their great magical significance and 'they're quite tame, really'." She shuddered.
"Ah, Hogwarts nights, sneaking out to visit Hagrid."
"And smoke practically coming out of McGonagall's ears when she inevitably found you out, and you looking so surprised every damn time you got caught."
"Well, and Flitwick literally falling over when he found you just about to slip out of the Entrance Hall in the middle of the night, headed for the Forbidden Forest, because you wanted to 'catch a Thestral'."
"Well, I did want to catch a Thestral."
"Tonks, love, you can't see the things."
Her chin in the air: "And so I'd read up on how to summon them."
Charlie was laughing harder than he'd laughed in a long time. "Oh, Tonks. You're the definition of incorrigible."
"Charlie Weasley, you don't even dignify a definition in response."
Their seventh year, when friendship had turned into something slightly more, they'd kept things casual. They weren't looking to get serious - serious wasn't even in their vocabulary. They were just having adventures, sneaking out onto the castle grounds like they'd always done, maybe snogging a bit while they were at it, exploring the Forest and daring each other to jump into the lake in the chilly early spring. Running his hands through her ever-changing hair as they talked in whispers outside the Hufflepuff common room at night, both on alert - she to disappear inside, he to dash off up the stairs in the other direction - for the slightest sound of an approaching professor.
His memories of those years seemed to all flow into each other, and the tiny, energetic, blue-haired girl who'd nearly knocked him over at the Hogsmeade station was the same young woman with the mischievous grin he'd kissed behind the Whomping Willow one magnificent June rainstorm.
And when Charlie let slip that he'd signed a three-year contract with a dragon reserve in a faraway country he'd never even been to, Tonks was angry, but even then she wasn't surprised.
"Tonks?" he asked, interrupting his own reverie and surprising himself with the realisation of what he was about to say.
"Yeah?"
"How did you know Remus was the one?"
She looked at him. "Charlie, you're not still -"
"Of course not."
"But -"
"You're my friend and I want the best for you. And I think Remus is that, but it's not something I can put my finger on. How did you know?"
She pondered, taking her time with his question, as if it were a good one and not just nosy. "Being with Remus always feels like home," she said finally.
That got him no further. "Which means…?"
"Basically, if I think about whether I'm better off - whether I'm happier, whether the world seems more right - with him or without him… it's clear. It was clear even when he was fighting so hard against it and there were a thousand reasons why it would have been logical just to move on, and believe me, my mother reminded me of every single one of them several times over. But when I thought about Remus - who's poor and a werewolf and pretty much barred from holding a normal job and has this whole guilt complex thing, not to mention being seriously old - none of it mattered. And I don't mean that in a sappy way. More like, all those obstacles didn't even matter, because it was just obvious we'd get past them. I don't know if I can make it make more sense than that." Tonks turned to face him fully, contemplating him. "Think you'll ever marry, Charlie?"
"Probably not."
He remembered Tonks angry, the most towering rage he'd ever seen her in, brandishing her wand in his face. "Are you serious?" she'd asked. "Could you have maybe just mentioned the fact that you're going abroad in a month and never coming back? Just so I could, you know, plan accordingly?"
But even now, when he was very honest with himself, he knew he wouldn't change a thing. He didn't want to be married to Tonks. It didn't fit. He wanted to be a dragon tamer, he'd always wanted that, and Charlie Weasley was one of the few people he knew who was doing 100% exactly what he'd always wanted to do. He even got to keep Tonks in his life, more or less, and he was pretty happy about that too. He sighed, looking at his old friend, and mentally willed himself to let it go.
He'd only just registered a slight noise when the back door opened from the outside. Charlie's body seemed to react before his mind did, and he found himself on his feet, turning, as Remus Lupin walked into the Burrow kitchen. Charlie noticed how the man's eyes darted first to his wife, as if he needed to reassure himself she was really still there.
Tonks rose from the table, but Charlie reached the door first, hand outstretched to his friend's husband.
"Remus," he said, "Congratulations. I'm so happy for you both."