Fic Submission: Knowing

[nyxcymbeline]

Title: Knowing
Author: Nyx Cymbeline
Rating and Warnings: PG-13 for violence
Prompts: Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play/Now I need a place to hide away/Oh I believe in yesterday - from “Yesterday” by The Beatles, word: skeletal
Word Count: 3 465
Summary: After the Battle of Hogwarts, it was easy for Tonks and Lupin to be in love again, but a sudden attack threatens to be a simple end to a simple beginning.
Author’s Notes: Finally I’ve submitted something! This is my second stab at this challenge after my first version fell apart… well, yesterday.



KNOWING

All he wanted to do was kiss her. Despite his previous words, despite that everything was rapidly collapsing around them - the battle in Hogwarts, Snape’s betrayal, Dumbledore’s death - all he wanted to do was kiss her. She looked unwell and incomplete. She’d lost her magic, but even if her hair was the most vivid pink she could conjure, her eyes said it all. He didn’t know if wanting to kiss her was selfish: he was in pain and knew her touch would make him feel better, but after being left and alone for almost a year, she might want her space from him so that she might forget all the good times that made this moment so profoundly sad.

He couldn’t kiss her, so he couldn’t keep looking at her. As he picked up his coat, he felt a hand on his arm.

“Remus, you don’t have to go,” Molly insisted, trying to give him a reassuring look, but unable to keep her eyes from Bill for more than a moment.

“No, this is a family affair,” he said, determined to steel himself against Tonks’ stare from the other side of the bed. “I’m sure there’s something I can be doing to help. I’ll come back later.” With his famous composure he left the hospital wing, quietly closing the door behind him. He walked down the corridor, his calmness feeling strange to him for the first time.

“You will go after ’im, won’t you?” Fleur said to Tonks’ blank face.

“What?” Tonks asked. She tried to keep the anger from her voice, but it was the only way she knew how to hide everything she was feeling.

“You love ’im, you should go.” She turned back to Bill and gently stroked his hand.

If it was that simple, don’t you think I’d be chasing him down, you daft French fancy? Tonks felt like yelling. If I could figure out whether I loved him or hated him, or if he still loved me, don’t you think-

Tonks’ boots hammered against the floor as she ran down the corridor. She didn’t even pause before choosing left or right. Something told her that whichever way she went, she would find him. Finally, after descending several hundred stairs to the ground floor, she saw him. He, too, was running, and Tonks could only hope that it wasn’t from her as she pursued him out of the castle, dodging the rubble and destruction from that night’s battle. Her eyes followed him with fierce focus and she strained to hear any sound he was making, but he was much too far ahead of her.

When Remus reached the open air, he took several shuddering breaths as if he hadn’t breathed properly since Harry had told him-

The feeling, the realization, hit him as suddenly as the air had. It took hold if his spine and he almost collapsed, throwing his arm to the wall to steady himself. It was like trying to fathom James’ death and, several years later, Sirius’, yet still worse. Dumbledore was the protector of the bravest men Remus had ever known. The future was hopeless.

“Remus.”

The sound of her voice made him forget what he’d been thinking about. He looked over his shoulder at her, and even that was almost enough to make him forfeit and hold her. Even if he could do it just for a moment, relive the time when the world mostly made sense, a time that the past year had convinced him he would never have again.

“I’m sorry,” he said, first into the vastness of the world, then more specifically to Nymphadora Tonks. “I’m so sorry. I know I don’t have the right to apologize to you, but I feel I owe it to you if I made your life more difficult when living was hard enough.”

“You only made it difficult when you left it,” she said quietly, approaching Remus’ back as he recited his speech to the empty space in front of him.

“And I don’t deserve your grace, maybe not even your respect, for being-”

“A daft, pig-headed, stupid, stupid bastard,” she said for him. She ran her hands on the underside of his bend elbows, felt the worn material of his coat, revelled in it. When she found his wrists, she stroked her thumb along his pulse.

“I was going to say foolish,” he said, suddenly breathless. The past year had hung over him like death since the first day, the day he left, and it had bled all over everything until he could no longer distinguish his happiness from his misery. But here she was - his happiness - and the world was starting to clear. He knew Dumbledore would appreciate a rekindled love amidst the terror that had passed, the terror that was coming. With that comforting thought, he only needed Tonks’ permission and all he would do for the rest of his life was kiss her.

“‘Foolish’ would have been a gross understatement,” she said, pressing her forehead between his shoulder blades.

Remus spun around too quickly for his weary body and mind, and pulled Tonks to his chest. His heart calmed immediately, and his pain and grief subsided. He preferred to not to think he was foolish enough to believe that by holding her, he would become a more worthy man. He was still too old, too poor and was even more dangerous now. He was a traitor to his pack and, as Greyback had frequently reminded them, traitors were killed. Remus’ death could be added to the list of Order tragedies even tomorrow. This thought, which he had so often used as an excuse not to accept Tonks’ sentiments, became the reason to hold her tighter.

“I’m sorry I’m a daft, pig-headed, stupid, stupid bastard,” he said. He could feel his mind beginning to bend under the mental, physical and emotions strains of the day.

“That never stopped me from loving you before,” she said, breathing in his warmth. Her arms were wrapped beneath his jacket and she could feel how emaciated he was.

Tonks knew she shouldn’t feel happy. Dumbledore was dead, Bill was injured, Harry was, again, the victim of a terrible loss. But Remus was holding her, loving her, and it was as joyous and electrifying as the first time he kissed her. Their reunion shouldn’t have been this simple, but it was. Amidst the endless and harrowing complications of war, they held on to something simple. They had this moment in which their fears were dissolved. Tomorrow morning, the hunt, the war would resume. But tonight they would only think of that which held them together rather than what threatened to tear them apart.

“Remus-”

“Let’s not say anything,” he requested softly.

She acquiesced, sinking back into the memories of all the times she’d held him like this. Her hands travelled over his well-defined ribs and up to his chest. Finally, she took a step back and looked at him. His wasted body pitched slightly forward without her to lean on, but he still managed a smile for her. She tried to tell him everything through her eyes. That she forgave him, that she missed him, that she loved him. When absolution appeared in his face, she had to break her silence.

“But you already knew that,” she said.

He only could have conjured his energy as he did for the sake of kissing her. It was perhaps too eager for their first kiss in eleven months, but Remus was past guarding himself. He never thought he’d taste her lips again.

Tonks sighed, only too happy to let him express his love for her. When he suddenly stopped and twisted slightly to grab his wand, Tonks’ mind reeled to diagram the worst possible situation. She drew her wand as well, though Remus’ left arm still held her close to his heart.

Remus’ wolfish senses had been piqued by the sound of footsteps. He heard the quiet swish of a wand and then nothing at all. A Silencio charm silenced the pull of a trigger and the firing of a single silver bullet.

Her view limited by Remus’ height, Tonks waited for further instruction. She studied his moonlit profile for anxiety or relief. His body tensed against hers, but his hazel eyes dilated.

“Remus?” Tonks pressed her hands to his chest and her left hand was immediately drenched in hot blood. “Remus!”

His weight almost overtook her, but she managed to steady him and lay him on the grass. Ripping open his bloodstained shirt, she watched as a web of darkening grey veins branched from the bullet hole in his upper chest. A sound - a breath - made her eyes snap to his face.

“Remus, what do I do?” she asked him.

He brushed his finger against her hand. “Nothing…” he inhaled. “I’m-”

“No,” she argued firmly. “I’m going to help you, Remus. You’re not going to…” She whipped her wand from her belt and summoned her Patronus, the sight of which almost made her lose her mind. “Go get help. Tell them Remus is severely hurt.” Her Patronus sprinted off and she looked back at Remus. His breaths were little more than empty twitches.

“Tonks…”

“Don’t talk,” she commanded. Pulling her sleeve up to her elbow, she pressed the heel of her palm into the wound in efforts to stop the bleeding. “Someone, anyone, please,” she whispered, tasting her own tears.

“Tonks, I…”

“Remus, don’t you dare say it,” she said. Again, her eyes were drawn to the effects of the silver bullet. His entire upper body was a web of dark blue veins; his heart was perfectly contoured on his chest, like a bruise. She could even see it beating. The veins in his neck were beginning to darken now, as well. She tried to banish the thoughts that this was what a corpse looked like. Skeletal, bloodless.

“Help is coming. You have to stay awake.”

She could feel his staggered breathing under her hand. More blood spilt over her skin, crimson streaked with silver.

He was beginning to feel the pain, beginning to panic.

“I know, Remus, but you have to stay awake,” she said, trying to ignore the sickening sensation of his blood, his life, pouring through her fingers. She was too afraid to stay silent. “Help! Someone, we need help!”

“Sirius…”

Tonks retched. He was dying. “Remus, don’t leave me again.”

She craned her neck to see if anyone was coming. With great relief, she saw the straight figure of Professor McGonagall. “Help! Professor!”

McGonagall’s speed was not amazing to Tonks. Anything short of Apparition was too slow. “Nymphadora, what’s-”

“Remus,” Tonks stammered. “He-he…”

McGonagall Conjured a stretcher and raised Remus’ painfully writhing body from the ground. Her eyes were drawn to his skin, his veins, his beating heart. He was not dead yet, but there was little sign that he would remain that way for long.

“Did you see who-”

“No,” Tonks said, following McGonagall towards the doors at what felt like a glacial pace. “He just went still and then…” Tonks became a gasping, heaving mess, unsure of how she’d been able to be momentarily coherent in the first place.

Remus’ skin continued to pale, accenting the blue web across his body. His heart seemed to have become engorged and McGonagall touched it warily, feeling its chambers flutter in canon. She withdrew her fingers instantly. The thin scars across his face were dark and blood trickled from the central one, sliding down his neck.

Tonks was breathless alongside the stretcher, as though she had been chasing it. She grabbed Remus’ hand and held it tightly, praying for reciprocating pressure. She pretended to have felt something and slowed her pace, tripping over everything in her way, blinded by the tears that brimmed in her eyes. Though the thought was secondary to her immense fear of losing him, she contemplated Remus’ words: that he was too dangerous, that he could be hunted, and that any slack given to his equanimity would have dire consequences for them both. And, as usually, Remus Lupin was right. Suddenly, the night he left her seemed much closer to her than what had only occurred minutes ago. Their kiss seemed like the fiction of a foolish girl’s imagination.

Tonks felt guilt tingling, spreading, under her skin. If she had just left him alone, maybe he would be alive…

He’s not dead.

Only stopping when she realized that a door was blocking her path, Tonks released Remus’ hand. McGonagall looked at her only briefly as she brushed past her and into the hospital wing.

Tonks stayed where she was. She heart first Madame Pomfrey’s gasp, succeeded quickly by Molly’s wail.

“Minerva, what happened?”

“Well it seems he was shot, doesn’t it!” McGonagall shouted, her exhaustion taking her over.

Tonks continued to wait. She could see Remus’ body floating onto a bed.

“Albus knew what to do… He studied in lycanthropy before Remus came to Hogwarts…”

As more tears poured down her cheeks, Tonks smeared them away with both hands. She would not stand and listen to them do nothing. It took four purposeful strides to bring her into the hospital wing.

“Nymphadora!”

Tonks did not realize why Molly had been so taken aback by her appearance until she took Remus’ hand again and saw the blood that covered her own arm and was now smudged across the left side of her face.

“The silver acts as a poison against the wolf blood,” Madame Pomfrey recited, apparently more to herself than anyone else. “But because it’s not nearly a full moon, there’s little blood for it to act on.”

“Even if he’s not poisoned, he’s still bleeding!” Tonks yelled, incredulous of their continuing inaction.

“He has been poisoned,” Madame Pomfrey said timidly. “But I don’t know the extent of it.”

“We have to take him to St. Mungo’s,” Tonks said, rounding on McGonagall.

“You think they’ll save a werewolf after a pack of them just attacked the school?”

“Maybe they don’t know yet - we can beat the news there,” Tonks hoped aloud, glancing desperately at Remus’ pained face. “We can’t lose him. I- I can’t lose him, Professor. Not after fighting for him. Not without fighting for him.”

“I know, Nymphadora-”

“Then do something!” Tonks looked at McGonagall, then at Madame Pomfrey, then at Molly Weasely, and all she saw was that they had nothing to say. She looked at Remus, his heart embossed grotesquely on his chest, a suffocated shade of blue, beating arrhythmically. Blood covered the right side of his body and already drenched the sheets beneath him. Tonks could heart the gruesome drip of his blood to the floor.

There was nothing else to be done. Tonks took his hand again and bowed, touching her lips to his ashen forehead. She did not imagine the squeeze she felt on her hand.

“Remus?”

“Tonks…”

Tonks’ resolve heightened. “I’m going to save him,” she said, her vision clearing, but her tears persisting. “Whatever it takes… we’re going to St. Mungo’s.”

“And if they tell you they cannot, will not do anything?” McGonagall asked.

“I’d rather strangers be the ones who let him die than his friends,” Tonks said acidly. Her wand was swooping to Conjure a stretcher when Alastor Moody limped in, even more worse for wear than usual. Upon seeing Remus, he hurried to the bedside and surveyed the injury.

“Who did this?” he growled. “Was anyone with him?”

“I was,” Tonks replied. “But I didn’t see who pulled the trigger.”

“The silver’s in there pretty good,” he said, his magical eye apparently seeing something the rest of them could not. “Will you three hold him down?”

Tonks went immediately to his blood-drenched shoulder and pressed down. Molly bent over his abdomen and Madame Pomfrey set her hands on his left shoulder.

Moody brandished his wand over the wound and focused suddenly, so intensely that his hand shook. His wand lifted slightly and with it came beads of silver and blood from the entry wound. Remus’ back arched and he screamed.

“I know, lad,” Moody said gruffly, his voice loud in his rigorous concentration.

Remus writhed as if Moody were performing a Cruciatus Curse on him. The silver collected in a sphere above him, slowly rotating and beginning to shine. Blood floated above him as well, shapeless and metallic. His veins rapidly paled, but his heart remained a silhouette. It was beating frantically. Tonks swore she could hear it. The strangled sound that came out of him after almost a minute of screaming alarmed her more than any amount of howling could have done. His body suddenly went rigid and he opened his eyes for the first time, pupils almost eclipsing the silver that quickly drained away to show the hazel.

When Moody stopped, he stumbled back from the power of the spell. He easily cauterized the wound with his wand. There was only a single tendril of smoke.

“Remus?” Tonks leaned in close to him.

His eyes became still and a drop of blood streamed from the corner of his mouth. As his eyes began to close, Tonks seized his face and stared at him, willing him to stay awake and look at her.

“Strengthening potion, Poppy,” Moody directed her. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a perfectly oval moonstone. He silently placed it on Remus’ chest and stepped away from the bed to leave Tonks her privacy. He could not fault her for becoming so emotional. All year, he’d witnessed the pain Remus’ absence had caused her, and now she was also exhausted from battle.

Tonks reached her bloody hand across Remus’ chest and searched for a heartbeat. Finding nothing, she weakly beat her fist against him.

“Dammit, Remus!” she screamed hoarsely. “Speak to me. Tell me why can’t love me for the thousandth time. Tell me why you love me anyway.”

Madame Pomfrey returned with a pomegranate-coloured potion that Moody visually measured before taking the cup from her and going over to the bed. He didn’t have to ask Tonks to move as he fit one arm under Remus’ neck and lifted his head. The potion only ran down his lips and added to the savageness of his appearance. Remus’ head rolled lifelessly away from the cup, but Moody was undeterred. He tipped another mouthful of strengthening potion to Remus’ lips.

“C’mon, lad,” he growled to himself.

Tonks finally had to look away. She turned her back to the bed and dropped her face into her hands. For once, she was glad of Molly’s investment in her wellbeing as she was pulled into a tight embrace.

Tonks wept. She wept for Remus, and for herself, for Dumbledore and Harry, for the fate of the Order, for the fate of the world. As reasons for misery compounded each other, Tonks was sure she was going to faint from the fatigue that overcame her.

Not without a fight.

Tonks freed herself from Molly grasp and poised her arm above her head. With a forceful flick, she yelled, “Anapneo! Anapneo!”

Moody had already ceased further attempts with the strengthening potion, but still had to step back to give Tonks room for her spell casting.

“Anapneo!” she screamed desperately, growing weaker with every spell. “Anapneo.” She was hunched forward, her breathing was laboured.

He was dead.

She couldn’t cry anymore, she couldn’t scream. She needed something to keep her alive. It was a gentle kiss, but not without passion. She felt his cold, slightly parted lips under hers and a sob escaped her. Another was building in her lungs, suffocating her, when a tremendous gasp startled her. She jumped back and saw Remus’ eyes wide open, his chest swelling with air. He turned away from her as he coughed up the blood that remained in his throat.

Moody swiped up the strengthening potion once again and forced it upon Remus once he’d finished coughing. He grimaced at the taste, but still drank it all. He was still gasping for breath when he finished it.

Molly, Madame Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall sighed collectively around the bed.

“Tonks,” Remus said in a scratched voice.

She turned his face towards her and studied him, as if verifying that he was alive and real, not a hallucination or ghost.

His brow creased and he took her bloodied cheek in his right hand. With his thumb, he shakily wiped away the tears that stained her face. Despite his depleted energy, his eyes still managed to tell her how much he loved her.

She kissed him again, this time feeling the blood and life in his lips. She smiled feebly against him and whispered, “I knew that already.”