The Night Before Christmas
Title: The Night Before Christmas
Author: wildmagelet
Ratings & Warnings: PG-13, for occasional sexual references (and a few really lame jokes)
Featured Characters: Tonks, Remus, Hestia Jones & various employees of the Ministry of Magic.
Prompts: "T'was the night before Christmas"
Word Count: 4,783
Summary: On Christmas Eve, in a rather under-the-table way, Tonks and Remus realise that some things are worth the fight.
Author's Notes: Set after the war. And AU in the sense that (in the interests of a more festive spirit) I've completely ignored one fairly significant fact about Remus and Tonks in DH. More than a bit rushed, because I kept getting distracted by holiday programmes on TV because I'm hopeless when trying to keep to a word count.
T’was the night before Christmas and all through the house…
…swarmed pretentious gits from the Ministry in overly starched dress robes, listening to rubbish music and stuffing their gobs with jam tarts.
Tonks didn’t bother to hide her distaste as she watched a Big Name from the Department of Secrets simultaneously (and ineffectually) pick pastry crumbs from his moustache while pinching a busty red-haired clerk on the bottom. The woman whirled about, scowling, her ample breasts bouncing with indignation, before recognizing her assailant and melting into a puddle of ingratiating flirtation. Withdrawing a discreet distance from the plump wandering hands, she fluttered both sets of false eyelashes and pursed her red mouth into a pout. If Tonks’s abilities at lip-reading had survived three goblets of Hestia Jones’s eggnog, the words “you naughty, naughty man” were actually being uttered.
If those pasty fingers hovered anywhere in the vicinity of her own rear, the bosky pervert would become quickly acquainted with the heel of her boot, driven into whatever orifice presented itself first.
A rough shoulder jostled her elbow, splashing the remains of her eggnog down her arm, where it disappeared beneath her sleeve in a sticky, vanilla-scented trail. She licked belatedly at her wrist, copped a mouthful of Hestia’s best gardenia perfume (which smelled vaguely like her Nan’s compost heap and had been splashed generously down her arms and cleavage during an innocent trip to the loo), and glared after the departing Aurors. Young louts, fresh from the training pool, who had only been invited because their fathers were quill pushers in Kingsley’s head office and who ought to know better than to get completely sloshed at the home of the Acting Minister of Magic.
See how they fancied a week’s worth of sentry duties in the Projectile Expulsions of Fluid ward at St. Mungo’s, she thought stonily, before wondering if she was possibly growing a trifle vindictive in her old age. Even in the previous few years, which had been spent either in mortal peril or bashing her head up against a stone wall trying to have a functional relationship with Remus, she would have been able to muster some enthusiasm to celebrate the birth of Kingsley’s first-born. Her godson, for Merlin’s sake. She liked babies. She particularly liked the guest of honour, even if the poor little sod had curled up into a snoring ball of drool some hours earlier, quite possibly to sleep off the embarrassment of having been dubbed Ignatius Horace Shacklebolt. And a party at the Shacklebolts’ house had always been good for a laugh, especially at Christmas, the only time King ever really let down his hair (so to speak) and his depressingly dainty wife made scores of her chocolate truffles. Duels had been fought over the last of those chocolate truffles.
This year, the circulating trays of hors d’oeuvres had failed to cue a single rumble in her stomach and she hadn’t cracked a smile at Kingsley’s increasingly wild attempts at a Muggle Salsa. Although she thought she’d seen a familiar creepy-crawly disappearing around the punch bowl, so their respected Minister was likely to be on the front page of tomorrow’s Prophet in all his twinkle-toed glory. A repeat viewing at the breakfast table might be more entertaining. All she needed, probably, was a decent night’s sleep - and a day away from the faces that she saw quite enough of at the office, thank you very much. Throwing several barrels of liquor into the mix had not rendered her work colleagues any less irritating.
“Tonks! Why are you standing over here all by yourself? What are you drinking? Here, let me get you another,” trilled a suspiciously chipper voice, before a flushed Hestia swerved around the buffet table with the reckless abandon of a highway broomsman and swiped the remains of Tonks’s eggnog.
The few surviving members of the Order of the Phoenix were starting to get on her wick, as well.
“No, really, Hestia. Thanks, but…” Tonks’s objections trailed into a mulish silence as her glass obeyed the practiced flick of the other witch’s wand and refilled to overflowing.
“Now, Tonks,” Hestia said, in a ‘just us girls’ whisper that instantly reminded Tonks of her mother and set her hackles twitching. “I have to apologise, my dear, I do. I really do.”
Tonks stood stiffly within the maternal arm that clamped her shoulders in a vise. She eyed Hestia warily, bit back a sarcastic reply and waited, although no explanation seemed forthcoming. Her companion sniffed once or twice, shook her head sadly three or four times and stared blearily into the distance.
“Right. Well,” Tonks said after a moment, trying to ease away from the regretful - and surprisingly strong - woman. “I accept your apology. It is Christmas, after all. And bearing that in mind, it’s getting quite late, so I might just…”
“I should have warned you that he would be here,” Hestia moaned dolefully, wrapping both hands about Tonks’s forearm and effectively halting her retreat. At this rate, she was going to wind up as a Prophet exposé herself, caught engaging in a girly wrestling match at a baby’s party. For such a tiny little woman, Hestia had a grip like a bloody manticore. “But obviously when King…when the Minister said that he was inviting all of the Order, I didn’t think he would come, after…well, you know…” A pair of large doe brown eyes gleamed sympathetically up at Tonks, who unwillingly followed their gaze toward the group of people hogging the prime position by the fireplace.
Standing on the outskirts of the circle that centered around the Chancellor of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and included various hangers-on, as well as Arthur Weasley, Charlie Weasley and Aberforth Dumbledore, Remus was staring at the ground, his arms folded across his chest and his shoulders slightly hunched. Every few minutes, one of the Weasleys would turn and comment in his direction, to which he would respond with the faintest nod or upward curl of his lips. Tonks was yet to see him speak more than five words together all evening. Not that she had been watching. He was looking a bit unkempt with his hair disheveled and the upper buttons of his jumper incorrectly fastened - very unlike Remus. While his clothing and appearance had often been rather shabby, she had always known him to take remarkable pains to dress as neatly and respectably as possible. She watched as he wavered slightly on his feet, before hurriedly steadying his stance and attempting to straighten his back. He looked absolutely knackered and even less enthused than she by their surroundings. Tonks was equally surprised that he had actually come tonight, although not for the maudlin sentimental reasons that were causing Hestia to snivel into the sleeve of her best (and only) dress. It was only three days since the full moon and her husband was a bloody great fool who ought to be at home in bed.
The small wave of annoyance that began in her middle surged quickly into a very real and encompassing anger. What a prat. How on earth did he expect to keep his strength between transformations if he went swanning off to hobnob with the rich, famous and deadly dull before the waning cycle had even begun?
It was a moment before Tonks realized that she really was cross. She was actively, intensely irritated with Remus. And it felt brilliant.
Across the room, Remus’s head lifted and his eyes met hers, a light within them immediately sparking to life. She couldn’t read his expression, which remained enigmatic, but there was palpable emotion in his face. And any expression at all was better than the dreadful blankness that she’d come to expect when he looked at her. Worse, that she’d come to feel when he’d looked at her.
She had never been able to pinpoint the moment when it had started, the day that they had effectively become strangers, living together yet barely noticing the movements of one another. She didn’t know when she had begun to look at Remus without really seeing him, when she had stopped wondering or even caring what wicked and wonderful thoughts were going on behind that inscrutable façade of polite reserve. After the initial shock of peacetime had faded and the desperate clinginess of their snatched hours during the war had retreated to memory, their marriage had become something of an afterthought. There had been no momentous fights, no shouting, no tears or flying kitchen utensils as in the first year of their relationship. She had all but forgotten the days when Remus and his unnecessary ideas of self-sacrifice could piss her off to the extent that she saw no other option but to heave the nearest gravy boat at his nose. They had not even argued over the small things, the stupid little grievances that gave a marriage a bit of spice. If Remus compulsively straightened her things, she had barely looked up from her paperwork. When she had forgotten to charm the lid back on the bottle of tooth powder - every morning - he had done it himself without comment or nagging. If she was late home, he had waited up for her, but fallen asleep the moment he saw that she was safe. And when the full moon rose in the sky, she defrosted a piece of meat, left out a cup of cocoa - and went to bed, alone, worried by habit and instinct, but not especially lonely.
If their relationship had been threatened by another woman or another Dark Lord, Tonks would have gone into battle with her chin and her wand hand held high - but how did you fight the onset of complete and total apathy?
She didn’t think there had been a worse moment in her life than when it had finally occurred to her, during a sunny morning in their little cottage as she watched Remus marking external O.W.L. papers, that she could look at the most important person in her existence - and feel absolutely nothing.
She’d left the cottage that afternoon and she hadn’t been back.
And even the brief pangs over their separation, something that had once seemed more difficult to bear than the most painful injury that she’d ever received in the field, had shortly dissolved into bland, everyday routine. She had not consciously missed him and actively avoided thinking about the marriage. Life had gone on. Not exuberantly or even satisfyingly, but she had at least escaped the state of Bloody Miserable Cow that had swamped her during their first break-up. It was a bearable sort of nothingness, infinitely easier to handle than constant heartache.
And now, suddenly - zap. Unexpected and uninvited, the spark had reignited. A gate had been opened, a switch had been flipped, whatever the damned cliché, she was feeling it all like a stinging hex to the face. A familiar warmth tingled in the roots of her hair and she seized a curly lock with a suspicious hand, pulling it into her line of vision. The conservative shade of brown, perfect for blending into the background and avoiding the notice of people who might want to speak to her, dance with her, complain to her, or engage in any form of social interaction, had vanished.
He’d turned her bloody hair pink.
Tonks’s eyes shot back to Remus. He had turned away from his circle, leaving Charlie with his mouth open in mid-conversation, and was standing tall and straight, his half-assed smile quickly widening to a fully-fledged and very pleased grin.
Smug bastard.
She glared back and he had the utter gall to laugh, a proper laugh that flung back his head and threw delighted stars into his glittering gaze. She could hear the deep richness of the sound even over the noise and nonsense of the party. Remus had always had the most infectious laughter; when it was directed at her (as it usually was) it still invited her to laugh along.
Her lips twitched.
It was something more akin to a spasm that seized her entire upper body as a brutal elbow landed between her ribs, temporarily winding her.
“Don’t look now,” Hestia hissed, her warm sherry-scented breath fanning Tonks’s cheekbone. “He’s smiling at you again. I do believe he rather fancies you.”
Startled out of a reverie in which she was torn between the desire to sock her husband on the nose or snog him silly in front of all and company (what in Merlin’s name was in that eggnog?), Tonks stared at Hestia in bewilderment.
“I…what?” she asked, feeling Remus’s amused regard burning into her exposed spine and resolutely resisting the urge to look back in his direction. Odd how one could be a married woman and a war veteran, yet all it took was one “Guess who fancies you?” conversation and she might be back in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, smirking with the girls about snogs and shags. “Well, I should hope so.”
Hestia’s eyebrows, shoulders and bosom all rose in excitement with her sudden intake of breath. Her nails bit further into the flesh of Tonks’s upper arm and she smiled widely, proving once and for all that one could either eat spinach or expose one’s teeth in public, never both.
“So you are interested, then?” she asked, sounding a little taken aback but very pleased. “That’s wonderful, Tonks. I’ve always thought that the two of you would hit it off, although I must say, I thought I’d have to talk you into it… I’ll call him over, shall I? Yes, I shall! What better time than at a party to… Lowered inhibitions work wonders at the beginning of a romance, you know. Archie!” Her voice escalated into a near screech as she waved an eager hand at a tall bloke standing by the doorway to the kitchen.
Tonks watched, aghast, as the man carefully set his drink down on a coaster and obeyed the summons, which had probably been heard clear to the back garden.
She hadn’t… She wasn’t really going to…
She bloody was. If Hestia hadn’t actually bellowed ‘coo-ee’ at Archibald Cunningham, the Cabinet Secretary of all people, it was close enough. And judging by the look on his face, “Archie” certainly was keen.
Tonks tried to smile back, but something had happened to the muscles of her mouth. She was not looking at Remus; she was not.
“Hestia, how are you?” Cunningham said politely as he reached them. He was a handsome man with a well-shaped head of cropped sandy hair and a pair of very bright blue eyes which rested briefly on Hestia before darting a glance at Tonks. “And Miss Tonks, isn’t it? Looking very lovely and festive this evening, if I may say so.”
She felt sick.
Home time!
“Thank you, Mr. Cunningham.” She shot a nasty glare at Hestia, who remained annoyingly oblivious.
“Archie, please.” His grin was wide, charming and apparently sincere.
Unfortunately she was well aware that the whole embarrassing exchange was being observed from the fireplace.
“Uh.” She blinked rapidly. “Right, Archie.” (Archie! He was the Cabinet Secretary. The youngest that the Ministry had ever appointed to the post, but still - it had been ghastly enough when her Nan had once expressed a desire to “sharpen his quill for him”.)
“Can I get you a drink?” he asked, stepping closer to her. “Some punch, perhaps? It’s very good.” He raised his own glass and shook the contents.
“Thanks, I have one.” She gestured at the eggnog and watched in fascinated dismay as a tinge of pink darkened his complexion.
“So you do! My apologies. Something to eat, then? A biscuit? Or I’ve heard rather stunning things about the chocolate truffles.” He coughed awkwardly.
The Cabinet Secretary fancied her.
And he was trying to pull her in front of her husband.
Definitely time to leave.
“No, really, thanks, but it’s getting late and I should be…” Her voice trailed off as he took another step forward.
Persistent bugger, wasn’t he?
“Oh, don’t leave yet,” Mr. Cunningham (she was giving up) protested, his face falling. “It’s not even midnight.”
Hestia had beaten a retreat that was probably supposed to be tactful and was going to earn her a short, sharp Bat Bogey Hex when Tonks caught up with her.
Retribution was clearly going to have to wait, since her own attempts to escape were resulting in a brisk backpedal into the kitchen. The well-lit room was, of course, empty for the first time all evening. Personally, Tonks would have thought that the sight of one’s companion fleeing in blind panic would be enough to dampen the spirits of the most randy politician, but as she was steadily pursued until her hips bumped up against the dining table, this one had apparently failed to take the hint.
Bracing her palms against the solid wood surface, a move which she instantly regretted as it thrust her chest forward and turned a very modest cleavage into something a bit more exciting, she smiled politely at the man who could have her demoted to desk duty at the flick of a quill.
“Mr. Cunningham…”
“Archie,” he insisted, leaning toward her.
Blimey, how much punch had the bloke been knocking back?
“Mr. Cunningham…”
A large palm touched her hip. She was just at the point of mentally calculating the respective damage to her career of a ladylike stomp to the instep or a good old Stinging Nettle Hex to the groin when the door opened rather energetically, the handle hitting the adjacent wall.
“I must admit, I’ve always despised the moment in novels when the hero makes his entrance and utters that immortal phrase, “Take your hands off my wife!”, or words to that effect. A cliché if I’ve ever heard one, and yet…” Remus commented in droll tones. He tucked his hands into his pockets and surveyed the mortifying tableau. Tonks was sure that his lips were quivering, the git.
She didn’t think that Remus, wan, haggard and amused, was a particularly threatening sight, herself, but Cunningham actually paled. She wondered if he’d failed to take note of her husband’s presence in the lounge room. It seemed a pretty vital oversight for a man in his position.
Suddenly feeling slightly entertained by the whole saga, Tonks watched the two men curiously as she straightened away from the table. Her move coincided with Cunningham’s instinctive dodge away from the Wronged Spouse and the result was fairly inevitable. Her elbow took a painful blow from the floorboards as she hit the ground, but, to be frank, it was a party, there was liquor and she’d been waiting to take her first tumble for some hours. Remaining on two steady feet until almost midnight was a bit of a record.
“Oh, shite.” Cunningham, all sense of dignity abandoned, performed a nifty little maneuver and managed to stay upright, to Tonks’s slight resentment, although he immediately reached down to offer her a hand. “I’m sorry, are you…”
A lean forearm all but swept him aside as Remus knelt at Tonks’s side. She rose to a seated position, absently rubbing her elbow, and scowled as she waited for his wisecracking commentary. To her surprise, he said nothing as he took her wrist in a gentle clasp, turning her arm to examine the reddening skin. The look which he cast the unfortunate Cunningham, now more bashful schoolboy than would-be seducer, had lost any hint of humour. The lines about his mouth were grim and the expression in his eyes was unmistakably anger.
Tonks could see a highly unnecessary display of testosterone looming. A pissing contest between the Cabinet Secretary and the very respectable spokesman for the Werewolves League would make a far better story for the gossip rags than Kingsley’s terrible dancing. Not only would it not do the lycan population any favours, however, it would ensure that the runt Aurors sniggered behind her back for the next month, so she was relieved when Cunningham made a stumbling, apologetic escape.
Tonks watched him go, deciding it was best not to inform her Nan of all the evening’s events. She knew what a crushing blow it was when the famous face of your inappropriate fantasies turned out to be attached to a less than impressive personality. She’d fancied Michael Weatherbeater, the newscaster on the Wireless, right up until her fifteenth birthday when word had broken that he was having an affair with Elvira Puddifoot. Adultery was bad enough, but to commit it among those paper doilies…
Remus’s warm fingers slipped about her own and she turned to look at him, her hands slowly rotating to return his clasp. His eyes were soft and warm on her face and any words dried up in her mouth.
How long they would have sat on the Shacklebolts’ kitchen floor, holding hands and gawping at one another like two teenagers on a Hogsmeade visit, she wasn’t sure, but the sound of approaching footsteps and laughter steadily growing in volume drew Tonks’s attention back to their surroundings. Holding tightly to Remus, she shifted her knee out of a small spill of flour and started to rise to her feet.
Remus’s grip tightened, bringing her to a halt in mid-crouch, and she met his troubled gaze in surprise.
“Remus, someone’s com…” The protest went unheard as her famously reserved, well-behaved husband shoved her unceremoniously beneath the kitchen table and let the tablecloth fall back into place behind them.
Tonks’s astonished giggle was smothered beneath Remus’s palm as he threw her a warning look. The kitchen door opened and high heels spiked past the table, casting a shadow across the floor. They sat there, ludicrously still and silent beneath the table, listening to a couple joke back and forth as they collected a fresh bottle of port. The prospect of exactly how embarrassing discovery would be only encouraged the laughter bubbling up in her throat. Remus frowned, exasperated, and drew her closer, wrapping one arm about her quivering torso and the other about her head.
She couldn’t breathe particularly well, but he was warm and solid and smelled fantastic. She snuggled closer and hoped that the port-drinkers were planning to linger. After the fridge opened and closed, and a voice commented on the rubbish weather, the feet disappeared from sight. A muttered Nox extinguished the lamps, casting the room into near darkness, and silence fell. Tonks sat quietly against Remus for a moment, reluctant to move, watching the Christmas tree twinkle through the thin fabric of the tablecloth.
“At the risk of sounding like my mother,” she said finally, out of the corner of her mouth, “if this is a belated attempt to cross off number three on that list, I’m not sure it’s all that polite to have a shag under someone else’s table.”
“Shagging under the kitchen table was number four,” Remus replied mildly, letting his arms fall to rest loosely around her waist. “Number three was the bathtub, if I recall correctly.”
“That would have been a good idea if we’d tried it anywhere other than Grimmauld Place,” Tonks said reminiscently.
“Yes, it was a bit of a shock when the claw-footed tub took off running.”
“Mostly for Sirius, poor sod.”
Their laughter was a bit strained.
Remus stroked his fingers in a slow circle around the lines of her wrists, rubbing the pads of his thumbs against the veins showing blue through her skin. She could feel the motion of his breathing as his chest rose and fell against her shoulder blades, the wool of his jumper rough against her bare back.
“You left.” The words were quiet and stark.
Tonks wet her lips with her tongue, her eyes fixed on their hands.
“You know I had to, Remus. We were… We’d become two separate people and I didn’t recognize either one of them.” It sounded silly, but she didn’t know how else to explain it.
“I know,” he said heavily, after a fraught pause. “One of us had to go or things would have become even worse. It was six in the morning before I realized that you weren’t coming back.” The admission was rushed, the words garbled together. “I just…assumed, I suppose, that you had a night shift. I didn’t even know for sure; I hadn’t asked.”
“You got my note?”
“Yes.” His voice was unnaturally deep and a little husky. “I got your note.”
Tonks took a deep, unsteady breath, finding it almost painful to hold back her tears. If she cried, he would comfort her or he would kiss her, and they would never get this sorted out. It suddenly seemed so vitally important that they had it out here, under Kingsley Shacklebolt’s kitchen table on Christmas Eve.
He kissed her anyway.
The tears spilled over and wet both of their faces as his mouth pressed urgently against hers. He tasted of chocolate and of Remus, and she was so glad. Wrapping both arms tightly about his neck, Tonks broke the kiss and buried her nose in the space between his ear and the line of his jaw. His hand smoothed down her back, before sliding up to tangle in the knot of her hair.
“I didn’t miss you.” His skin felt damp and clammy under the fall of her breath. “I didn’t think about us much.”
He held her tighter.
“But I haven’t thought much about anything, really. Not since before the war. It doesn’t feel like any time has passed, or that I’ve done anything or been anywhere. Nothing really mattered.”
Remus stroked the back of his hand down her cheek.
“The Healers have a term. Half of St. Mungo’s is packed with people suffering from “Peacetime Displacement Syndrome”. The Muggle doctors call it Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Label it what you will, perhaps that did have some role to play. Perhaps there was a psychological explanation behind what happened to us and what we let happen to our marriage, but… I can’t help being ashamed, Tonks. I’m ashamed of us both.” He pulled her around to meet his serious gaze. “It seems like such an appalling waste now. I know that we…that we agreed that it was Harry who ought to be our focus, that Harry must survive and that we had to make whatever sacrifices were necessary to ensure the safety of the children, but...” He lifted one shoulder in a rueful shrug. “Of course you were going to be my first concern. I used to lie there and pray that come the next night, you would be back in bed, preferably whole and as happy as was possible. And in my more selfish moments, I prayed that I would still be there at your side.” He shook his head wearily. “We came through all of that and then we just…turned our backs on what we’d been given.”
“I do love you, Remus,” Tonks said quietly. She swallowed. “And I don’t want to…pretend anymore. I wanted things to be the same, I think, and they weren’t ever going to be, not after everything that happened. It was easier not thinking about it, or about us. I still don’t know exactly…”
“What we have now?” he finished, squeezing her hand. “I don’t know either, but Tonks, whatever it is, whatever we can have together, I want it. I want you and I want our marriage.”
“Even when your wife is such a moody cow?” Tonks teased unsteadily.
He didn’t smile.
“I’ll take a moody wife over one who looks straight through me any day.”
“I’m sorry, Remus.”
His forehead rested briefly against hers.
“So am I, Tonks, more than I can say.”
She pressed her mouth to his.
“Let’s go home.” A slow smile curled her lips. “We do have a kitchen table of our own, you know. Could be number four’s night.”
The tension easing from Remus’s features, he raised an enquiring brow. “If you’re quite sure that there aren’t any more infatuated public servants hovering about the scene?”
“Remind me to pay Hestia a visit tomorrow.”
“I suppose the poor chap can’t help having such good taste,” Remus mused as they made a rather undignified exit from their sanctuary. “And I imagine that Hestia spoke an encouraging word or two in his ear. She finds Christmas a very romantic time.” His eyes gleamed. “Or so she gave me to understand when she asked if I fancied sharing a bottle of sherry with her on New Year’s Eve.”
Tonks stopped with her hand on the door and stared at him.
“She did what?”
“I politely declined, of course, but… Tonks! Put your wand down.”
Author: wildmagelet
Ratings & Warnings: PG-13, for occasional sexual references (and a few really lame jokes)
Featured Characters: Tonks, Remus, Hestia Jones & various employees of the Ministry of Magic.
Prompts: "T'was the night before Christmas"
Word Count: 4,783
Summary: On Christmas Eve, in a rather under-the-table way, Tonks and Remus realise that some things are worth the fight.
Author's Notes: Set after the war. And AU in the sense that (in the interests of a more festive spirit) I've completely ignored one fairly significant fact about Remus and Tonks in DH. More than a bit rushed, because I kept getting distracted by holiday programmes on TV because I'm hopeless when trying to keep to a word count.
T’was the night before Christmas and all through the house…
…swarmed pretentious gits from the Ministry in overly starched dress robes, listening to rubbish music and stuffing their gobs with jam tarts.
Tonks didn’t bother to hide her distaste as she watched a Big Name from the Department of Secrets simultaneously (and ineffectually) pick pastry crumbs from his moustache while pinching a busty red-haired clerk on the bottom. The woman whirled about, scowling, her ample breasts bouncing with indignation, before recognizing her assailant and melting into a puddle of ingratiating flirtation. Withdrawing a discreet distance from the plump wandering hands, she fluttered both sets of false eyelashes and pursed her red mouth into a pout. If Tonks’s abilities at lip-reading had survived three goblets of Hestia Jones’s eggnog, the words “you naughty, naughty man” were actually being uttered.
If those pasty fingers hovered anywhere in the vicinity of her own rear, the bosky pervert would become quickly acquainted with the heel of her boot, driven into whatever orifice presented itself first.
A rough shoulder jostled her elbow, splashing the remains of her eggnog down her arm, where it disappeared beneath her sleeve in a sticky, vanilla-scented trail. She licked belatedly at her wrist, copped a mouthful of Hestia’s best gardenia perfume (which smelled vaguely like her Nan’s compost heap and had been splashed generously down her arms and cleavage during an innocent trip to the loo), and glared after the departing Aurors. Young louts, fresh from the training pool, who had only been invited because their fathers were quill pushers in Kingsley’s head office and who ought to know better than to get completely sloshed at the home of the Acting Minister of Magic.
See how they fancied a week’s worth of sentry duties in the Projectile Expulsions of Fluid ward at St. Mungo’s, she thought stonily, before wondering if she was possibly growing a trifle vindictive in her old age. Even in the previous few years, which had been spent either in mortal peril or bashing her head up against a stone wall trying to have a functional relationship with Remus, she would have been able to muster some enthusiasm to celebrate the birth of Kingsley’s first-born. Her godson, for Merlin’s sake. She liked babies. She particularly liked the guest of honour, even if the poor little sod had curled up into a snoring ball of drool some hours earlier, quite possibly to sleep off the embarrassment of having been dubbed Ignatius Horace Shacklebolt. And a party at the Shacklebolts’ house had always been good for a laugh, especially at Christmas, the only time King ever really let down his hair (so to speak) and his depressingly dainty wife made scores of her chocolate truffles. Duels had been fought over the last of those chocolate truffles.
This year, the circulating trays of hors d’oeuvres had failed to cue a single rumble in her stomach and she hadn’t cracked a smile at Kingsley’s increasingly wild attempts at a Muggle Salsa. Although she thought she’d seen a familiar creepy-crawly disappearing around the punch bowl, so their respected Minister was likely to be on the front page of tomorrow’s Prophet in all his twinkle-toed glory. A repeat viewing at the breakfast table might be more entertaining. All she needed, probably, was a decent night’s sleep - and a day away from the faces that she saw quite enough of at the office, thank you very much. Throwing several barrels of liquor into the mix had not rendered her work colleagues any less irritating.
“Tonks! Why are you standing over here all by yourself? What are you drinking? Here, let me get you another,” trilled a suspiciously chipper voice, before a flushed Hestia swerved around the buffet table with the reckless abandon of a highway broomsman and swiped the remains of Tonks’s eggnog.
The few surviving members of the Order of the Phoenix were starting to get on her wick, as well.
“No, really, Hestia. Thanks, but…” Tonks’s objections trailed into a mulish silence as her glass obeyed the practiced flick of the other witch’s wand and refilled to overflowing.
“Now, Tonks,” Hestia said, in a ‘just us girls’ whisper that instantly reminded Tonks of her mother and set her hackles twitching. “I have to apologise, my dear, I do. I really do.”
Tonks stood stiffly within the maternal arm that clamped her shoulders in a vise. She eyed Hestia warily, bit back a sarcastic reply and waited, although no explanation seemed forthcoming. Her companion sniffed once or twice, shook her head sadly three or four times and stared blearily into the distance.
“Right. Well,” Tonks said after a moment, trying to ease away from the regretful - and surprisingly strong - woman. “I accept your apology. It is Christmas, after all. And bearing that in mind, it’s getting quite late, so I might just…”
“I should have warned you that he would be here,” Hestia moaned dolefully, wrapping both hands about Tonks’s forearm and effectively halting her retreat. At this rate, she was going to wind up as a Prophet exposé herself, caught engaging in a girly wrestling match at a baby’s party. For such a tiny little woman, Hestia had a grip like a bloody manticore. “But obviously when King…when the Minister said that he was inviting all of the Order, I didn’t think he would come, after…well, you know…” A pair of large doe brown eyes gleamed sympathetically up at Tonks, who unwillingly followed their gaze toward the group of people hogging the prime position by the fireplace.
Standing on the outskirts of the circle that centered around the Chancellor of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and included various hangers-on, as well as Arthur Weasley, Charlie Weasley and Aberforth Dumbledore, Remus was staring at the ground, his arms folded across his chest and his shoulders slightly hunched. Every few minutes, one of the Weasleys would turn and comment in his direction, to which he would respond with the faintest nod or upward curl of his lips. Tonks was yet to see him speak more than five words together all evening. Not that she had been watching. He was looking a bit unkempt with his hair disheveled and the upper buttons of his jumper incorrectly fastened - very unlike Remus. While his clothing and appearance had often been rather shabby, she had always known him to take remarkable pains to dress as neatly and respectably as possible. She watched as he wavered slightly on his feet, before hurriedly steadying his stance and attempting to straighten his back. He looked absolutely knackered and even less enthused than she by their surroundings. Tonks was equally surprised that he had actually come tonight, although not for the maudlin sentimental reasons that were causing Hestia to snivel into the sleeve of her best (and only) dress. It was only three days since the full moon and her husband was a bloody great fool who ought to be at home in bed.
The small wave of annoyance that began in her middle surged quickly into a very real and encompassing anger. What a prat. How on earth did he expect to keep his strength between transformations if he went swanning off to hobnob with the rich, famous and deadly dull before the waning cycle had even begun?
It was a moment before Tonks realized that she really was cross. She was actively, intensely irritated with Remus. And it felt brilliant.
Across the room, Remus’s head lifted and his eyes met hers, a light within them immediately sparking to life. She couldn’t read his expression, which remained enigmatic, but there was palpable emotion in his face. And any expression at all was better than the dreadful blankness that she’d come to expect when he looked at her. Worse, that she’d come to feel when he’d looked at her.
She had never been able to pinpoint the moment when it had started, the day that they had effectively become strangers, living together yet barely noticing the movements of one another. She didn’t know when she had begun to look at Remus without really seeing him, when she had stopped wondering or even caring what wicked and wonderful thoughts were going on behind that inscrutable façade of polite reserve. After the initial shock of peacetime had faded and the desperate clinginess of their snatched hours during the war had retreated to memory, their marriage had become something of an afterthought. There had been no momentous fights, no shouting, no tears or flying kitchen utensils as in the first year of their relationship. She had all but forgotten the days when Remus and his unnecessary ideas of self-sacrifice could piss her off to the extent that she saw no other option but to heave the nearest gravy boat at his nose. They had not even argued over the small things, the stupid little grievances that gave a marriage a bit of spice. If Remus compulsively straightened her things, she had barely looked up from her paperwork. When she had forgotten to charm the lid back on the bottle of tooth powder - every morning - he had done it himself without comment or nagging. If she was late home, he had waited up for her, but fallen asleep the moment he saw that she was safe. And when the full moon rose in the sky, she defrosted a piece of meat, left out a cup of cocoa - and went to bed, alone, worried by habit and instinct, but not especially lonely.
If their relationship had been threatened by another woman or another Dark Lord, Tonks would have gone into battle with her chin and her wand hand held high - but how did you fight the onset of complete and total apathy?
She didn’t think there had been a worse moment in her life than when it had finally occurred to her, during a sunny morning in their little cottage as she watched Remus marking external O.W.L. papers, that she could look at the most important person in her existence - and feel absolutely nothing.
She’d left the cottage that afternoon and she hadn’t been back.
And even the brief pangs over their separation, something that had once seemed more difficult to bear than the most painful injury that she’d ever received in the field, had shortly dissolved into bland, everyday routine. She had not consciously missed him and actively avoided thinking about the marriage. Life had gone on. Not exuberantly or even satisfyingly, but she had at least escaped the state of Bloody Miserable Cow that had swamped her during their first break-up. It was a bearable sort of nothingness, infinitely easier to handle than constant heartache.
And now, suddenly - zap. Unexpected and uninvited, the spark had reignited. A gate had been opened, a switch had been flipped, whatever the damned cliché, she was feeling it all like a stinging hex to the face. A familiar warmth tingled in the roots of her hair and she seized a curly lock with a suspicious hand, pulling it into her line of vision. The conservative shade of brown, perfect for blending into the background and avoiding the notice of people who might want to speak to her, dance with her, complain to her, or engage in any form of social interaction, had vanished.
He’d turned her bloody hair pink.
Tonks’s eyes shot back to Remus. He had turned away from his circle, leaving Charlie with his mouth open in mid-conversation, and was standing tall and straight, his half-assed smile quickly widening to a fully-fledged and very pleased grin.
Smug bastard.
She glared back and he had the utter gall to laugh, a proper laugh that flung back his head and threw delighted stars into his glittering gaze. She could hear the deep richness of the sound even over the noise and nonsense of the party. Remus had always had the most infectious laughter; when it was directed at her (as it usually was) it still invited her to laugh along.
Her lips twitched.
It was something more akin to a spasm that seized her entire upper body as a brutal elbow landed between her ribs, temporarily winding her.
“Don’t look now,” Hestia hissed, her warm sherry-scented breath fanning Tonks’s cheekbone. “He’s smiling at you again. I do believe he rather fancies you.”
Startled out of a reverie in which she was torn between the desire to sock her husband on the nose or snog him silly in front of all and company (what in Merlin’s name was in that eggnog?), Tonks stared at Hestia in bewilderment.
“I…what?” she asked, feeling Remus’s amused regard burning into her exposed spine and resolutely resisting the urge to look back in his direction. Odd how one could be a married woman and a war veteran, yet all it took was one “Guess who fancies you?” conversation and she might be back in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, smirking with the girls about snogs and shags. “Well, I should hope so.”
Hestia’s eyebrows, shoulders and bosom all rose in excitement with her sudden intake of breath. Her nails bit further into the flesh of Tonks’s upper arm and she smiled widely, proving once and for all that one could either eat spinach or expose one’s teeth in public, never both.
“So you are interested, then?” she asked, sounding a little taken aback but very pleased. “That’s wonderful, Tonks. I’ve always thought that the two of you would hit it off, although I must say, I thought I’d have to talk you into it… I’ll call him over, shall I? Yes, I shall! What better time than at a party to… Lowered inhibitions work wonders at the beginning of a romance, you know. Archie!” Her voice escalated into a near screech as she waved an eager hand at a tall bloke standing by the doorway to the kitchen.
Tonks watched, aghast, as the man carefully set his drink down on a coaster and obeyed the summons, which had probably been heard clear to the back garden.
She hadn’t… She wasn’t really going to…
She bloody was. If Hestia hadn’t actually bellowed ‘coo-ee’ at Archibald Cunningham, the Cabinet Secretary of all people, it was close enough. And judging by the look on his face, “Archie” certainly was keen.
Tonks tried to smile back, but something had happened to the muscles of her mouth. She was not looking at Remus; she was not.
“Hestia, how are you?” Cunningham said politely as he reached them. He was a handsome man with a well-shaped head of cropped sandy hair and a pair of very bright blue eyes which rested briefly on Hestia before darting a glance at Tonks. “And Miss Tonks, isn’t it? Looking very lovely and festive this evening, if I may say so.”
She felt sick.
Home time!
“Thank you, Mr. Cunningham.” She shot a nasty glare at Hestia, who remained annoyingly oblivious.
“Archie, please.” His grin was wide, charming and apparently sincere.
Unfortunately she was well aware that the whole embarrassing exchange was being observed from the fireplace.
“Uh.” She blinked rapidly. “Right, Archie.” (Archie! He was the Cabinet Secretary. The youngest that the Ministry had ever appointed to the post, but still - it had been ghastly enough when her Nan had once expressed a desire to “sharpen his quill for him”.)
“Can I get you a drink?” he asked, stepping closer to her. “Some punch, perhaps? It’s very good.” He raised his own glass and shook the contents.
“Thanks, I have one.” She gestured at the eggnog and watched in fascinated dismay as a tinge of pink darkened his complexion.
“So you do! My apologies. Something to eat, then? A biscuit? Or I’ve heard rather stunning things about the chocolate truffles.” He coughed awkwardly.
The Cabinet Secretary fancied her.
And he was trying to pull her in front of her husband.
Definitely time to leave.
“No, really, thanks, but it’s getting late and I should be…” Her voice trailed off as he took another step forward.
Persistent bugger, wasn’t he?
“Oh, don’t leave yet,” Mr. Cunningham (she was giving up) protested, his face falling. “It’s not even midnight.”
Hestia had beaten a retreat that was probably supposed to be tactful and was going to earn her a short, sharp Bat Bogey Hex when Tonks caught up with her.
Retribution was clearly going to have to wait, since her own attempts to escape were resulting in a brisk backpedal into the kitchen. The well-lit room was, of course, empty for the first time all evening. Personally, Tonks would have thought that the sight of one’s companion fleeing in blind panic would be enough to dampen the spirits of the most randy politician, but as she was steadily pursued until her hips bumped up against the dining table, this one had apparently failed to take the hint.
Bracing her palms against the solid wood surface, a move which she instantly regretted as it thrust her chest forward and turned a very modest cleavage into something a bit more exciting, she smiled politely at the man who could have her demoted to desk duty at the flick of a quill.
“Mr. Cunningham…”
“Archie,” he insisted, leaning toward her.
Blimey, how much punch had the bloke been knocking back?
“Mr. Cunningham…”
A large palm touched her hip. She was just at the point of mentally calculating the respective damage to her career of a ladylike stomp to the instep or a good old Stinging Nettle Hex to the groin when the door opened rather energetically, the handle hitting the adjacent wall.
“I must admit, I’ve always despised the moment in novels when the hero makes his entrance and utters that immortal phrase, “Take your hands off my wife!”, or words to that effect. A cliché if I’ve ever heard one, and yet…” Remus commented in droll tones. He tucked his hands into his pockets and surveyed the mortifying tableau. Tonks was sure that his lips were quivering, the git.
She didn’t think that Remus, wan, haggard and amused, was a particularly threatening sight, herself, but Cunningham actually paled. She wondered if he’d failed to take note of her husband’s presence in the lounge room. It seemed a pretty vital oversight for a man in his position.
Suddenly feeling slightly entertained by the whole saga, Tonks watched the two men curiously as she straightened away from the table. Her move coincided with Cunningham’s instinctive dodge away from the Wronged Spouse and the result was fairly inevitable. Her elbow took a painful blow from the floorboards as she hit the ground, but, to be frank, it was a party, there was liquor and she’d been waiting to take her first tumble for some hours. Remaining on two steady feet until almost midnight was a bit of a record.
“Oh, shite.” Cunningham, all sense of dignity abandoned, performed a nifty little maneuver and managed to stay upright, to Tonks’s slight resentment, although he immediately reached down to offer her a hand. “I’m sorry, are you…”
A lean forearm all but swept him aside as Remus knelt at Tonks’s side. She rose to a seated position, absently rubbing her elbow, and scowled as she waited for his wisecracking commentary. To her surprise, he said nothing as he took her wrist in a gentle clasp, turning her arm to examine the reddening skin. The look which he cast the unfortunate Cunningham, now more bashful schoolboy than would-be seducer, had lost any hint of humour. The lines about his mouth were grim and the expression in his eyes was unmistakably anger.
Tonks could see a highly unnecessary display of testosterone looming. A pissing contest between the Cabinet Secretary and the very respectable spokesman for the Werewolves League would make a far better story for the gossip rags than Kingsley’s terrible dancing. Not only would it not do the lycan population any favours, however, it would ensure that the runt Aurors sniggered behind her back for the next month, so she was relieved when Cunningham made a stumbling, apologetic escape.
Tonks watched him go, deciding it was best not to inform her Nan of all the evening’s events. She knew what a crushing blow it was when the famous face of your inappropriate fantasies turned out to be attached to a less than impressive personality. She’d fancied Michael Weatherbeater, the newscaster on the Wireless, right up until her fifteenth birthday when word had broken that he was having an affair with Elvira Puddifoot. Adultery was bad enough, but to commit it among those paper doilies…
Remus’s warm fingers slipped about her own and she turned to look at him, her hands slowly rotating to return his clasp. His eyes were soft and warm on her face and any words dried up in her mouth.
How long they would have sat on the Shacklebolts’ kitchen floor, holding hands and gawping at one another like two teenagers on a Hogsmeade visit, she wasn’t sure, but the sound of approaching footsteps and laughter steadily growing in volume drew Tonks’s attention back to their surroundings. Holding tightly to Remus, she shifted her knee out of a small spill of flour and started to rise to her feet.
Remus’s grip tightened, bringing her to a halt in mid-crouch, and she met his troubled gaze in surprise.
“Remus, someone’s com…” The protest went unheard as her famously reserved, well-behaved husband shoved her unceremoniously beneath the kitchen table and let the tablecloth fall back into place behind them.
Tonks’s astonished giggle was smothered beneath Remus’s palm as he threw her a warning look. The kitchen door opened and high heels spiked past the table, casting a shadow across the floor. They sat there, ludicrously still and silent beneath the table, listening to a couple joke back and forth as they collected a fresh bottle of port. The prospect of exactly how embarrassing discovery would be only encouraged the laughter bubbling up in her throat. Remus frowned, exasperated, and drew her closer, wrapping one arm about her quivering torso and the other about her head.
She couldn’t breathe particularly well, but he was warm and solid and smelled fantastic. She snuggled closer and hoped that the port-drinkers were planning to linger. After the fridge opened and closed, and a voice commented on the rubbish weather, the feet disappeared from sight. A muttered Nox extinguished the lamps, casting the room into near darkness, and silence fell. Tonks sat quietly against Remus for a moment, reluctant to move, watching the Christmas tree twinkle through the thin fabric of the tablecloth.
“At the risk of sounding like my mother,” she said finally, out of the corner of her mouth, “if this is a belated attempt to cross off number three on that list, I’m not sure it’s all that polite to have a shag under someone else’s table.”
“Shagging under the kitchen table was number four,” Remus replied mildly, letting his arms fall to rest loosely around her waist. “Number three was the bathtub, if I recall correctly.”
“That would have been a good idea if we’d tried it anywhere other than Grimmauld Place,” Tonks said reminiscently.
“Yes, it was a bit of a shock when the claw-footed tub took off running.”
“Mostly for Sirius, poor sod.”
Their laughter was a bit strained.
Remus stroked his fingers in a slow circle around the lines of her wrists, rubbing the pads of his thumbs against the veins showing blue through her skin. She could feel the motion of his breathing as his chest rose and fell against her shoulder blades, the wool of his jumper rough against her bare back.
“You left.” The words were quiet and stark.
Tonks wet her lips with her tongue, her eyes fixed on their hands.
“You know I had to, Remus. We were… We’d become two separate people and I didn’t recognize either one of them.” It sounded silly, but she didn’t know how else to explain it.
“I know,” he said heavily, after a fraught pause. “One of us had to go or things would have become even worse. It was six in the morning before I realized that you weren’t coming back.” The admission was rushed, the words garbled together. “I just…assumed, I suppose, that you had a night shift. I didn’t even know for sure; I hadn’t asked.”
“You got my note?”
“Yes.” His voice was unnaturally deep and a little husky. “I got your note.”
Tonks took a deep, unsteady breath, finding it almost painful to hold back her tears. If she cried, he would comfort her or he would kiss her, and they would never get this sorted out. It suddenly seemed so vitally important that they had it out here, under Kingsley Shacklebolt’s kitchen table on Christmas Eve.
He kissed her anyway.
The tears spilled over and wet both of their faces as his mouth pressed urgently against hers. He tasted of chocolate and of Remus, and she was so glad. Wrapping both arms tightly about his neck, Tonks broke the kiss and buried her nose in the space between his ear and the line of his jaw. His hand smoothed down her back, before sliding up to tangle in the knot of her hair.
“I didn’t miss you.” His skin felt damp and clammy under the fall of her breath. “I didn’t think about us much.”
He held her tighter.
“But I haven’t thought much about anything, really. Not since before the war. It doesn’t feel like any time has passed, or that I’ve done anything or been anywhere. Nothing really mattered.”
Remus stroked the back of his hand down her cheek.
“The Healers have a term. Half of St. Mungo’s is packed with people suffering from “Peacetime Displacement Syndrome”. The Muggle doctors call it Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Label it what you will, perhaps that did have some role to play. Perhaps there was a psychological explanation behind what happened to us and what we let happen to our marriage, but… I can’t help being ashamed, Tonks. I’m ashamed of us both.” He pulled her around to meet his serious gaze. “It seems like such an appalling waste now. I know that we…that we agreed that it was Harry who ought to be our focus, that Harry must survive and that we had to make whatever sacrifices were necessary to ensure the safety of the children, but...” He lifted one shoulder in a rueful shrug. “Of course you were going to be my first concern. I used to lie there and pray that come the next night, you would be back in bed, preferably whole and as happy as was possible. And in my more selfish moments, I prayed that I would still be there at your side.” He shook his head wearily. “We came through all of that and then we just…turned our backs on what we’d been given.”
“I do love you, Remus,” Tonks said quietly. She swallowed. “And I don’t want to…pretend anymore. I wanted things to be the same, I think, and they weren’t ever going to be, not after everything that happened. It was easier not thinking about it, or about us. I still don’t know exactly…”
“What we have now?” he finished, squeezing her hand. “I don’t know either, but Tonks, whatever it is, whatever we can have together, I want it. I want you and I want our marriage.”
“Even when your wife is such a moody cow?” Tonks teased unsteadily.
He didn’t smile.
“I’ll take a moody wife over one who looks straight through me any day.”
“I’m sorry, Remus.”
His forehead rested briefly against hers.
“So am I, Tonks, more than I can say.”
She pressed her mouth to his.
“Let’s go home.” A slow smile curled her lips. “We do have a kitchen table of our own, you know. Could be number four’s night.”
The tension easing from Remus’s features, he raised an enquiring brow. “If you’re quite sure that there aren’t any more infatuated public servants hovering about the scene?”
“Remind me to pay Hestia a visit tomorrow.”
“I suppose the poor chap can’t help having such good taste,” Remus mused as they made a rather undignified exit from their sanctuary. “And I imagine that Hestia spoke an encouraging word or two in his ear. She finds Christmas a very romantic time.” His eyes gleamed. “Or so she gave me to understand when she asked if I fancied sharing a bottle of sherry with her on New Year’s Eve.”
Tonks stopped with her hand on the door and stared at him.
“She did what?”
“I politely declined, of course, but… Tonks! Put your wand down.”