Beware of Statues Bearing Gifts.
Title: Beware of Statues Bearing Gifts.
Author: Bring and Fly.
Format: Fic.
Rating and warnings: PG-13, for swearing. Unbetaed, owing to lateness.
Prompts: Christmas shop window display and Diagon Alley.
Word Count: 3 467
Summary: Remus Lupin lands himself in an unusual spot as a consequence of choosing a gift for Tonks.
A/N: I’m rather ashamed to say I leaped forward in time to after Voldemort’s defeat for the setting because I wanted a happy piece. I’ll leave the angst to those more skilled at writing Remus and his Tonks. :-)
I’m hoping you won’t hold the wizarding-ised Christmas songs against me…
Beware of Statues Bearing Gifts.
If it hadn’t been for the contents of that little green leather box catching his eye in the trying-to-be-quaintly-old-fashioned shop window, Remus was adamant -five thousand percent positive, as James at his cockiest used to say- that he would never have landed himself in this predicament.
How did he do it?
With your usual flair, drive and initiative, Moony, he heard Sirius wheeze and knew that somewhere in the Great Hereafter, a grim-sized black dog was howling with laughter at his current situation.
Remus couldn’t even sigh or huff in disapproval or agreement so he carried on barely breathing.
How was it that innocent events conspired to drop him into such compromising positions? Really, it was more like one of those theatre farces where the lead actor kept getting caught with his trousers down for the amusement of the audience, if not the participants.
With wry amusement, Remus could easily imagine how Sirius would have relished relating the details of this little episode to anyone who’d care to listen, could practically hear him voicing one of those characteristically loaded statements where the slightest hesitation or note of enquiry on the part of his audience would be taken as the cue to elaborate… and then all the teasing he would never again have to endure reminded him sharply once more that he was the last marauder.
The self-imposed charm made anything other than slow, gentle breaths difficult and it was easier to imagine the way seventeen-year-old Sirius would treated this assignment; with absolute confidence, but then, Sirius had never been particularly shy about his body. Remus remembered well how James’s face had initially turned white with shock the winter that Sirius had ostentatiously abandoned the wearing of pyjamas. He’d recovered well enough to dryly remark that if anyone heard two dull clangs in the night, they’d know to return certain portions of Sirius’s anatomy in the morning.
At least he wasn’t cold, which, given his state of dress, was something to be grateful for. The lights that made the metallic elements and bright colours of the display shine and sparkle so appealingly were doing a sterling job of keeping him warm -especially the one focused, apparently, on his right shoulder and the underlying aching muscle. Poppy had warned him it would continue to ache for a while, despite the efficacy of her healing charms. She had spoken with the same tolerant shake of her head for his antics she’d given him when he was at Hogwarts.
Remus reflected that given the choice, he still preferred the school matron to treat his injuries. It was a comfort zone thing. Poppy Pomfrey had been healing his injuries since he was eleven and was one of three women who’d seen him naked.
And that didn’t include the Muggle woman who’d just done a double-take and then walked on giggling.
She didn’t count.
He’d caused a lot of ‘double-takes’ this evening, as he was supposed to. As a marketing ploy to tempt customers in, it seemed to be working but Remus did wonder how many shoppers would return after Christmas.
Certainly the shoppers were out in force tonight with so few shopping days left. So far, amongst the harassed parade passing by he’d been taunted by several groups of inebriated Muggle boys, had two lots of equally inebriated teenage girls threaten to ‘flash him their tits’ in an attempt to force a reaction from him. He’d even been likened to a shop window dummy out of ‘Doctor Who’.
Doctor Who, good grief. There was a ‘blast from the past’ Surely it couldn’t still be running? He remembered watching it as a child on the small television his mother had acquired so she could keep up with ‘Coronation Street’. That had probably been axed years ago.
It was so boring, standing here, unable to move and with only his thoughts and observations for company, that he’d amused himself with a favourite past time -watching the people who passed him by, finding their varied reactions interesting indicators suggestive of personality traits.
The women were generally in sociable groups or intently-talking pairs so the lone woman in a long black coat stood out for him. She drifted slowly across his vision like a dark ghost, her pale fingers trailing across the glass as she moved heedless to the counter tide of humanity. She paid no attention to the items in the display but searched his face instead. She gave a small and faintly sad smile, mouthed ‘Happy Christmas’ and passed beyond his line of sight but not his thoughts. Remus wondered whether there was anyone to care about her; it was a sobering thought and made him doubly glad Tonks had fallen into his life -literally fallen.
One young man, who appeared to be wearing a year’s income, had examined his reflection in the glass, twitching his tie before casting a cursory glance at the objects around Remus’s feet and moving on.
Several other men, of indeterminate age, had passed by, staring at each item desperately, as though the answer to some unvoiced question lay concealed there if only they looked hard enough, from which Remus inferred they were searching for a ‘present for the wife’. He had heard it muttered any number of times; ‘I haven’t got a clue what to get her.’
It was something he supposed went with their general lack of attention as Muggles. None of the wizards he knew, or had known, had been at a loss when it came to choosing presents for their wives or girlfriends, although Arthur had confided one evening recently that Molly had once been less-than-impressed with half a pig…
James had made something for Lily in their seventh year, ending Sirius’s discussion on the perfect gift for a witch by stating quietly that handmade presents were best. Lily had owled early on Christmas morning, which James claimed proved his point.
The persistently cheerful Christmas ‘musak’ returned to the first song again, a favourite of his mother’s but somehow, it was the twins Remus heard, belting out their version; ‘Joy to the world! Lord Thingy’s dead! They barbequed his head! What happened to the body?’ Molly had stormed in at that point to remonstrate with them about having some consideration for poor Harry’s feelings and so Remus had remained in ignorance as to the next line.
The tunes progressed relentlessly, in a determined attempt at creating a bright and cheerful Christmas air that brought to mind a particular Defence Against the Dark Arts professor they’d had one year, Professor Seyton. His assertion that, ‘This is a party. You vill enjoy yourselves,’ still had an ominous ring to it. Even Sirius had avoided the punch.
The brass arrangement of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ positively invited alternative versions, although he wished he could forget Sirius’s drunken version ‘the twelve lays of Christmas’. In a concerted effort to blot it out, Remus made up his own so that by the time the last verse came around, he mentally carolled,
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me, twelve Aurors running, eleven Firebolts flying, ten books a-leaping, nine sherbet lemons, eight squids a-squirting, seven Quidditch players, six Weasleys hexing, five draaaaagons! Four calling gnomes, three French Tonks, two random Bludgers and a phoenix in a pear tree.
And then, of course, there was the old favourite, ‘Prongsie, the red nosed reindeer, had a very shiny nose -After drinking!- And if you ever saw it, you would even say it glows -Like Incendio!- All of the Animagi used to laugh and call him names-’ Only it was at that point that fifteen-year-old James generally retaliated with creative hexes.
Maybe Harry would like to hear that story over plum pudding. It was only his imagination that heard James groan, saw him lodge his head in his hands. At least I’ll tell the story without embellishment, unlike Sirius.
The alternative lyrics exercise wasn’t quite so amusing the second time around, and by the third, Remus wished he’d donned the fluffy bright pink ear muffs dangling persuasively from his left hand.
A clock chimed the hour across the slow excuse-me of late shoppers and their harassed expressions and Remus fell back on his well-worn and trusty methods of ‘allowing his attention to wander freely’, as Dumbledore used to say.
Released from constraint, his attention didn’t so much wander as gallop straight to contemplation of a heart-shaped face topped off with spiky pink hair and lit from within by mischievous and interested-in-everything eyes.
Tonks.
His Adora.
She was the reason he was standing here, or rather, her last Christmas present was, waiting for the exchange paper money rather than Goblin cast gold that would liberate it, enabling Remus to walk home with a small green leather box nestled in his coat breast pocket.
He had been walking back through the Christmas lights one evening, looking in at the displays -the latest styles provided inspiration for his creative skills- and the brightly illuminated shop windows when a sparkle caught his eye, a pink sparkle that reminded him of Tonks’s joyous hair colour.
Naturally, the similarity meant he had to pause and examine said article.
The rightness of it as a Christmas present for Tonks left him breathless.
Even firm exhortations from his sensible side that it was bound to be horribly expensive from this smart shop in the upmarket side street, that there were so many other things the money could be eked out on, like warm clothes, or good food or draught excluders for his mother’s old bungalow that they were ‘doing up’, were drowned out by his inner marauder -sounding suspiciously like James- repeating ‘but it’s perfect, she’ll love it’.
After only a week of daily visits to the jeweller’s window in an agony of apprehension that it might already have been sold, Remus donned the least disreputable garments he possessed and passed the smart front door.
The jeweller, a working silversmith, looked up from his bench when Remus entered. Approaching to greet his customer cordially, Remus noted the man held up his trousers with a length of string that contrasted sharply with the rest of his smart apparel and was intrigued. Close to, the silversmith was older than Remus had imagined but his eyes were bright as a blackbird’s and as hazel as he remembered James’s being.
The silversmith knew what he wanted, had noted his daily interest in the piece he admitted with a smile, and after some conversation that ranged across the history and methods of lost wax casting, the difficulty of cutting matched Kunzite stones of a small size, touched on the pack habits of Arctic wolves, and finally, the current interest in such pieces, a bargain was struck.
Having apparently won the silversmith’s wholehearted approval during the conversation, the silversmith, or Sam, as Remus was now invited to call him, agreed to reserve the piece until Remus chose to collect it as long as he could leave the piece on display to ‘generate interest in his work’.
They shook on it, and, moderately ecstatic, Remus walked out of the shop and into a casual Christmas job at the newly renovated and ‘under-new-management’ Muggle department store of Greenman and Fossick, located conveniently off London’s famous Oxford Street.
The department head who took him on, a mature woman with eyes as frosty as her handshake, asked a great many questions in response to his assertion that he used to teach. She seemed to be under the impression that he’d lost his teaching post through alcoholism. Remus found it convenient to let her go on thinking it. Telling her he was a wizard and a werewolf would only convince her he had the DT’s and that the police ought to be taking him away.
All of which brought him back to his current reason for standing in a Muggle shop window, surrounded by ‘Christmas present suggestions’ and with only a length of draped chiffon between him and indecency charges.
Despite appearances to the contrary, he was transfigured, unlike Julian, Nigel and Rupert in the other windows, who really were wearing a layer of granite-tinted body paint, second-skin tiny briefs and artistically draped layers of granite-tinted chiffon in their role as living statues. When the fourth bloke, Laurence, had rung in to say he was ill and couldn’t come in tonight, the senior window dresser had immediately selected Remus as his replacement.
Remus’s first thought whilst gazing wildly at the man had been mass Stunning spells and legging it and only the small point that he was shite at memory charms to cover up breaking the Secrecy statute stopped the ‘plan’ shimmying seductively through his head and out through his wand. Lily could have done it, as could Tonks, but he’d never quite got the hang of it.
He remembered begging the man’s pardon only to be raked over in a clear appraisal that made him reassess the man’s sexual orientation. ‘I can’t see a problem’, he’d said. ‘You look good enough clothed. Just put the costume on, Mr Lupin,’ and stop being such a baby was implied in his tone.
Feeling as though he was under a powerful spotlight, he had nodded curtly; it was only his pride he was sacrificing. Only for Tonks, for his Adora. That, and his skin was crawling over the way the senior window dresser was looking at him.
Ah well, he’d be able to laugh about it by the time he could tell the tale to Adora. She would snigger, sympathise, and hang off his arm while cheekily quipping that he was hers and she wasn’t sharing.
The background music changed again; ‘We Three Kings’, or, as James used to sing, ‘We three here from Gryffindor are, one on a Nimbus, one in a car, one on a Honda urging us yonder, following Moony’s star’.
Only another three more hours of shepherds washing their socks by night…
~*~
“Of course, I always thought it was very late because it was dark, and I felt terribly grown up to be out so late but it wasn’t really, was it? I mean, I suppose it was the excitement because five o’clock isn’t late at all, really. Oh, look!”
Tonks followed the direction of the exuberantly directed arm attached to the mile-a-minute delivery, grinned, and gave the companion hanging off her arm in a sisterly fashion a nudge. “Hey, Ginny.”
The fourth member of this shopping expeditionary force tutted.
“I’m not really sure that’s entirely appropriate for Christmas,” Molly said severely, after a roving stare of the window display that Tonks knew had missed no detail. “Come away girls.” She plucked at Ginny’s shoulder, who shrugged her off and dragged Tonks closer.
Hermione was agog on Tonks’s other side, oblivious to the nudges of passers-by.
“Oh, come on, Molly,” Tonks said, pausing to have a proper look. “They’re all decent, the Muggles have laws about that kind of thing and besides… He’s not bad.” She made a show of eyeing the male model up. Actually, he looked rather familiar. There was something about the set of those shoulders…
“Better than Remus?” Ginny asked slyly onto to be jabbed hard in the back by her mother.
“Ginevra Weasley!”
Tonks grinned broadly and cut in before Molly could start in on Ginny and kill what was meant to be a light-hearted and fun thing. “Nah, s’all right, Molly. I may window shop but it only convinces me that I’m dead happy with him. Don’t you window shop?” she asked with a sly wink for Ginny.
Molly coloured up at once. “No, of course I don’t!” she replied indignantly. “I’m a happily married witch!”
Ginny drew Tonks’s attention from a pink-faced Molly fussing persistently with the rearrangement of her scarf by giving a huge fake cough. It sounded suspiciously like ‘Lockhart’ and they both laughed outright. Ginny’s transfigured spikes danced, which made Tonks wonder if hers did the same thing when she laughed. She had taken it as a compliment that Ginny had chosen to match her, although Molly’s lips had thinned.
Tonks adjusted the soft felt trilby that she had pinched out of Remus’s overcoat pocket to a more rakish angle. “Molly, you’re married, not dead. Besides, they look so why shouldn’t we? Sauce for the goose and all that.”
“Harry doesn’t,” Ginny said stoutly, staring at the items on display at the model’s feet.
Tonks bit back her grin hard. Remus had once confessed that Harry was like James in so many ways. That particular evening, with his head in her lap, Remus had wondered if Harry had ever made a prat of himself around Ginny, or had he taken after his mother, Lily, and hidden his feelings? “Well, he is mad about you,” she said and found she was speaking to thin air. Ginny had crouched down.
“Tonks?”
Ginny had her nose pressed to the glass, like a young child. Tonks dropped to her haunches and followed Ginny’s pointing finger.
“Harry would love one of those.”
Tonks knew her eyes widened and she put her head close to Ginny’s. “You, er, do know what that is?”
Ginny merely rolled her eyes. “Six brothers,” she muttered tolerantly.
“Are you sure Harry would love one of those?”
Ginny’s eyes sparkled impishly as she turned to check where her mother was. “Well, it might be more that I’d like Harry to have one but, you know.” She shrugged, smiling.
How very normal that was. Tonks put her quick-thinking to good use. “They’re still open. We can always pretend I want it for Remus if Molly follows us inside.” She jumped to her feet, caught Hermione’s elbow and was thankful for Ginny’s quick reflexes or they’d all be on their bums on the pavement.
“Thanks Ginny. Quick, while your mum’s tutting over the other window.”
Ginny grinned brightly.
~*~
It was very late on Christmas Eve, or perhaps he ought to say it was very early. The coloured Christmas tree lights set patches of colour across Adora’s skin where she nestled against his chest, her eyes closed.
Harry and Ginny had visited, shared a festively flavoured Butterbeer with them, agreed that it was disgusting, and caught them both out with festively flavoured Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans; soot.
It had been good to see the spark back in Harry’s eye, to see him watching Ginny when he thought he was unobserved. He had grinned over the tale of ‘Prongsie the red-nosed reindeer’. Adora said she’d heard them singing it as they dashed off through the not-so-festive rain.
It seemed ridiculous to wake her up to tell her it was bedtime. He tightened the arm around her back and wriggled the other under her thighs. He would carry her instead, and enjoy their closeness. He cradled her more securely against him, ready to stand, when her head lounged back.
“ ‘R you trying for a sneaky grope?”
Her sleepy mumble had the usual effect.
“Absolutely.”
She smiled. “Do we get to the presents now?”
“I thought you were asleep. I was taking you to bed.”
She purred and stretched out so that her top rode up revealing a narrow segment of midriff and her belly button. “Can’t we give just one present first?”
How could he refuse? “There’s a funny story to go with this one,” he said, offering her a carefully wrapped red-and- gold bow-topped box.
She leaned in to kiss him, now very awake and shining with anticipation. “Thank you.” She opened it without taking her eyes from his.
He waited breathlessly for her reaction. The green leather lid opened with a squeak and she looked down. Her jaw dropped. He swore her hair became fluorescent pink.
“Remus!” Her whisper was incredulous and her eyes wide with what he hoped was awed delight. “It’s a wolf’s head with pink eyes.”
“I know,” Remus mumbled. “The same colour as your hair. That was why I-”
He was suddenly on his back, smothered under a Tonks fervently demonstrating her appreciation.
“It’s brilliant!” she assured him breathlessly, now holding it up so that he could see its tiny reflection in her eyes twinkling at him under the tree lights. Her knees gripping his waist, Remus watched her nimble fingers extract the contents and hold it up to admire.
Then she glanced at him. “Er, Re-mus…”
How he loved that slow note of enquiry. “Adora?”
She glanced coyly down at him. “You know what this is, yeah?”
“Ear-rings.”
She plumped down on top of him, her nose fractions of an inch from his and turned the intricately modelled wolf’s head so that he could see it. “Nope, it’s a stud for a body piercing.” She grinned at him. “Remus Lupin, you kinky bugger. Where shall I wear it, then?”
~finitum est~
Author: Bring and Fly.
Format: Fic.
Rating and warnings: PG-13, for swearing. Unbetaed, owing to lateness.
Prompts: Christmas shop window display and Diagon Alley.
Word Count: 3 467
Summary: Remus Lupin lands himself in an unusual spot as a consequence of choosing a gift for Tonks.
A/N: I’m rather ashamed to say I leaped forward in time to after Voldemort’s defeat for the setting because I wanted a happy piece. I’ll leave the angst to those more skilled at writing Remus and his Tonks. :-)
I’m hoping you won’t hold the wizarding-ised Christmas songs against me…
Beware of Statues Bearing Gifts.
If it hadn’t been for the contents of that little green leather box catching his eye in the trying-to-be-quaintly-old-fashioned shop window, Remus was adamant -five thousand percent positive, as James at his cockiest used to say- that he would never have landed himself in this predicament.
How did he do it?
With your usual flair, drive and initiative, Moony, he heard Sirius wheeze and knew that somewhere in the Great Hereafter, a grim-sized black dog was howling with laughter at his current situation.
Remus couldn’t even sigh or huff in disapproval or agreement so he carried on barely breathing.
How was it that innocent events conspired to drop him into such compromising positions? Really, it was more like one of those theatre farces where the lead actor kept getting caught with his trousers down for the amusement of the audience, if not the participants.
With wry amusement, Remus could easily imagine how Sirius would have relished relating the details of this little episode to anyone who’d care to listen, could practically hear him voicing one of those characteristically loaded statements where the slightest hesitation or note of enquiry on the part of his audience would be taken as the cue to elaborate… and then all the teasing he would never again have to endure reminded him sharply once more that he was the last marauder.
The self-imposed charm made anything other than slow, gentle breaths difficult and it was easier to imagine the way seventeen-year-old Sirius would treated this assignment; with absolute confidence, but then, Sirius had never been particularly shy about his body. Remus remembered well how James’s face had initially turned white with shock the winter that Sirius had ostentatiously abandoned the wearing of pyjamas. He’d recovered well enough to dryly remark that if anyone heard two dull clangs in the night, they’d know to return certain portions of Sirius’s anatomy in the morning.
At least he wasn’t cold, which, given his state of dress, was something to be grateful for. The lights that made the metallic elements and bright colours of the display shine and sparkle so appealingly were doing a sterling job of keeping him warm -especially the one focused, apparently, on his right shoulder and the underlying aching muscle. Poppy had warned him it would continue to ache for a while, despite the efficacy of her healing charms. She had spoken with the same tolerant shake of her head for his antics she’d given him when he was at Hogwarts.
Remus reflected that given the choice, he still preferred the school matron to treat his injuries. It was a comfort zone thing. Poppy Pomfrey had been healing his injuries since he was eleven and was one of three women who’d seen him naked.
And that didn’t include the Muggle woman who’d just done a double-take and then walked on giggling.
She didn’t count.
He’d caused a lot of ‘double-takes’ this evening, as he was supposed to. As a marketing ploy to tempt customers in, it seemed to be working but Remus did wonder how many shoppers would return after Christmas.
Certainly the shoppers were out in force tonight with so few shopping days left. So far, amongst the harassed parade passing by he’d been taunted by several groups of inebriated Muggle boys, had two lots of equally inebriated teenage girls threaten to ‘flash him their tits’ in an attempt to force a reaction from him. He’d even been likened to a shop window dummy out of ‘Doctor Who’.
Doctor Who, good grief. There was a ‘blast from the past’ Surely it couldn’t still be running? He remembered watching it as a child on the small television his mother had acquired so she could keep up with ‘Coronation Street’. That had probably been axed years ago.
It was so boring, standing here, unable to move and with only his thoughts and observations for company, that he’d amused himself with a favourite past time -watching the people who passed him by, finding their varied reactions interesting indicators suggestive of personality traits.
The women were generally in sociable groups or intently-talking pairs so the lone woman in a long black coat stood out for him. She drifted slowly across his vision like a dark ghost, her pale fingers trailing across the glass as she moved heedless to the counter tide of humanity. She paid no attention to the items in the display but searched his face instead. She gave a small and faintly sad smile, mouthed ‘Happy Christmas’ and passed beyond his line of sight but not his thoughts. Remus wondered whether there was anyone to care about her; it was a sobering thought and made him doubly glad Tonks had fallen into his life -literally fallen.
One young man, who appeared to be wearing a year’s income, had examined his reflection in the glass, twitching his tie before casting a cursory glance at the objects around Remus’s feet and moving on.
Several other men, of indeterminate age, had passed by, staring at each item desperately, as though the answer to some unvoiced question lay concealed there if only they looked hard enough, from which Remus inferred they were searching for a ‘present for the wife’. He had heard it muttered any number of times; ‘I haven’t got a clue what to get her.’
It was something he supposed went with their general lack of attention as Muggles. None of the wizards he knew, or had known, had been at a loss when it came to choosing presents for their wives or girlfriends, although Arthur had confided one evening recently that Molly had once been less-than-impressed with half a pig…
James had made something for Lily in their seventh year, ending Sirius’s discussion on the perfect gift for a witch by stating quietly that handmade presents were best. Lily had owled early on Christmas morning, which James claimed proved his point.
The persistently cheerful Christmas ‘musak’ returned to the first song again, a favourite of his mother’s but somehow, it was the twins Remus heard, belting out their version; ‘Joy to the world! Lord Thingy’s dead! They barbequed his head! What happened to the body?’ Molly had stormed in at that point to remonstrate with them about having some consideration for poor Harry’s feelings and so Remus had remained in ignorance as to the next line.
The tunes progressed relentlessly, in a determined attempt at creating a bright and cheerful Christmas air that brought to mind a particular Defence Against the Dark Arts professor they’d had one year, Professor Seyton. His assertion that, ‘This is a party. You vill enjoy yourselves,’ still had an ominous ring to it. Even Sirius had avoided the punch.
The brass arrangement of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ positively invited alternative versions, although he wished he could forget Sirius’s drunken version ‘the twelve lays of Christmas’. In a concerted effort to blot it out, Remus made up his own so that by the time the last verse came around, he mentally carolled,
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me, twelve Aurors running, eleven Firebolts flying, ten books a-leaping, nine sherbet lemons, eight squids a-squirting, seven Quidditch players, six Weasleys hexing, five draaaaagons! Four calling gnomes, three French Tonks, two random Bludgers and a phoenix in a pear tree.
And then, of course, there was the old favourite, ‘Prongsie, the red nosed reindeer, had a very shiny nose -After drinking!- And if you ever saw it, you would even say it glows -Like Incendio!- All of the Animagi used to laugh and call him names-’ Only it was at that point that fifteen-year-old James generally retaliated with creative hexes.
Maybe Harry would like to hear that story over plum pudding. It was only his imagination that heard James groan, saw him lodge his head in his hands. At least I’ll tell the story without embellishment, unlike Sirius.
The alternative lyrics exercise wasn’t quite so amusing the second time around, and by the third, Remus wished he’d donned the fluffy bright pink ear muffs dangling persuasively from his left hand.
A clock chimed the hour across the slow excuse-me of late shoppers and their harassed expressions and Remus fell back on his well-worn and trusty methods of ‘allowing his attention to wander freely’, as Dumbledore used to say.
Released from constraint, his attention didn’t so much wander as gallop straight to contemplation of a heart-shaped face topped off with spiky pink hair and lit from within by mischievous and interested-in-everything eyes.
Tonks.
His Adora.
She was the reason he was standing here, or rather, her last Christmas present was, waiting for the exchange paper money rather than Goblin cast gold that would liberate it, enabling Remus to walk home with a small green leather box nestled in his coat breast pocket.
He had been walking back through the Christmas lights one evening, looking in at the displays -the latest styles provided inspiration for his creative skills- and the brightly illuminated shop windows when a sparkle caught his eye, a pink sparkle that reminded him of Tonks’s joyous hair colour.
Naturally, the similarity meant he had to pause and examine said article.
The rightness of it as a Christmas present for Tonks left him breathless.
Even firm exhortations from his sensible side that it was bound to be horribly expensive from this smart shop in the upmarket side street, that there were so many other things the money could be eked out on, like warm clothes, or good food or draught excluders for his mother’s old bungalow that they were ‘doing up’, were drowned out by his inner marauder -sounding suspiciously like James- repeating ‘but it’s perfect, she’ll love it’.
After only a week of daily visits to the jeweller’s window in an agony of apprehension that it might already have been sold, Remus donned the least disreputable garments he possessed and passed the smart front door.
The jeweller, a working silversmith, looked up from his bench when Remus entered. Approaching to greet his customer cordially, Remus noted the man held up his trousers with a length of string that contrasted sharply with the rest of his smart apparel and was intrigued. Close to, the silversmith was older than Remus had imagined but his eyes were bright as a blackbird’s and as hazel as he remembered James’s being.
The silversmith knew what he wanted, had noted his daily interest in the piece he admitted with a smile, and after some conversation that ranged across the history and methods of lost wax casting, the difficulty of cutting matched Kunzite stones of a small size, touched on the pack habits of Arctic wolves, and finally, the current interest in such pieces, a bargain was struck.
Having apparently won the silversmith’s wholehearted approval during the conversation, the silversmith, or Sam, as Remus was now invited to call him, agreed to reserve the piece until Remus chose to collect it as long as he could leave the piece on display to ‘generate interest in his work’.
They shook on it, and, moderately ecstatic, Remus walked out of the shop and into a casual Christmas job at the newly renovated and ‘under-new-management’ Muggle department store of Greenman and Fossick, located conveniently off London’s famous Oxford Street.
The department head who took him on, a mature woman with eyes as frosty as her handshake, asked a great many questions in response to his assertion that he used to teach. She seemed to be under the impression that he’d lost his teaching post through alcoholism. Remus found it convenient to let her go on thinking it. Telling her he was a wizard and a werewolf would only convince her he had the DT’s and that the police ought to be taking him away.
All of which brought him back to his current reason for standing in a Muggle shop window, surrounded by ‘Christmas present suggestions’ and with only a length of draped chiffon between him and indecency charges.
Despite appearances to the contrary, he was transfigured, unlike Julian, Nigel and Rupert in the other windows, who really were wearing a layer of granite-tinted body paint, second-skin tiny briefs and artistically draped layers of granite-tinted chiffon in their role as living statues. When the fourth bloke, Laurence, had rung in to say he was ill and couldn’t come in tonight, the senior window dresser had immediately selected Remus as his replacement.
Remus’s first thought whilst gazing wildly at the man had been mass Stunning spells and legging it and only the small point that he was shite at memory charms to cover up breaking the Secrecy statute stopped the ‘plan’ shimmying seductively through his head and out through his wand. Lily could have done it, as could Tonks, but he’d never quite got the hang of it.
He remembered begging the man’s pardon only to be raked over in a clear appraisal that made him reassess the man’s sexual orientation. ‘I can’t see a problem’, he’d said. ‘You look good enough clothed. Just put the costume on, Mr Lupin,’ and stop being such a baby was implied in his tone.
Feeling as though he was under a powerful spotlight, he had nodded curtly; it was only his pride he was sacrificing. Only for Tonks, for his Adora. That, and his skin was crawling over the way the senior window dresser was looking at him.
Ah well, he’d be able to laugh about it by the time he could tell the tale to Adora. She would snigger, sympathise, and hang off his arm while cheekily quipping that he was hers and she wasn’t sharing.
The background music changed again; ‘We Three Kings’, or, as James used to sing, ‘We three here from Gryffindor are, one on a Nimbus, one in a car, one on a Honda urging us yonder, following Moony’s star’.
Only another three more hours of shepherds washing their socks by night…
~*~
“Of course, I always thought it was very late because it was dark, and I felt terribly grown up to be out so late but it wasn’t really, was it? I mean, I suppose it was the excitement because five o’clock isn’t late at all, really. Oh, look!”
Tonks followed the direction of the exuberantly directed arm attached to the mile-a-minute delivery, grinned, and gave the companion hanging off her arm in a sisterly fashion a nudge. “Hey, Ginny.”
The fourth member of this shopping expeditionary force tutted.
“I’m not really sure that’s entirely appropriate for Christmas,” Molly said severely, after a roving stare of the window display that Tonks knew had missed no detail. “Come away girls.” She plucked at Ginny’s shoulder, who shrugged her off and dragged Tonks closer.
Hermione was agog on Tonks’s other side, oblivious to the nudges of passers-by.
“Oh, come on, Molly,” Tonks said, pausing to have a proper look. “They’re all decent, the Muggles have laws about that kind of thing and besides… He’s not bad.” She made a show of eyeing the male model up. Actually, he looked rather familiar. There was something about the set of those shoulders…
“Better than Remus?” Ginny asked slyly onto to be jabbed hard in the back by her mother.
“Ginevra Weasley!”
Tonks grinned broadly and cut in before Molly could start in on Ginny and kill what was meant to be a light-hearted and fun thing. “Nah, s’all right, Molly. I may window shop but it only convinces me that I’m dead happy with him. Don’t you window shop?” she asked with a sly wink for Ginny.
Molly coloured up at once. “No, of course I don’t!” she replied indignantly. “I’m a happily married witch!”
Ginny drew Tonks’s attention from a pink-faced Molly fussing persistently with the rearrangement of her scarf by giving a huge fake cough. It sounded suspiciously like ‘Lockhart’ and they both laughed outright. Ginny’s transfigured spikes danced, which made Tonks wonder if hers did the same thing when she laughed. She had taken it as a compliment that Ginny had chosen to match her, although Molly’s lips had thinned.
Tonks adjusted the soft felt trilby that she had pinched out of Remus’s overcoat pocket to a more rakish angle. “Molly, you’re married, not dead. Besides, they look so why shouldn’t we? Sauce for the goose and all that.”
“Harry doesn’t,” Ginny said stoutly, staring at the items on display at the model’s feet.
Tonks bit back her grin hard. Remus had once confessed that Harry was like James in so many ways. That particular evening, with his head in her lap, Remus had wondered if Harry had ever made a prat of himself around Ginny, or had he taken after his mother, Lily, and hidden his feelings? “Well, he is mad about you,” she said and found she was speaking to thin air. Ginny had crouched down.
“Tonks?”
Ginny had her nose pressed to the glass, like a young child. Tonks dropped to her haunches and followed Ginny’s pointing finger.
“Harry would love one of those.”
Tonks knew her eyes widened and she put her head close to Ginny’s. “You, er, do know what that is?”
Ginny merely rolled her eyes. “Six brothers,” she muttered tolerantly.
“Are you sure Harry would love one of those?”
Ginny’s eyes sparkled impishly as she turned to check where her mother was. “Well, it might be more that I’d like Harry to have one but, you know.” She shrugged, smiling.
How very normal that was. Tonks put her quick-thinking to good use. “They’re still open. We can always pretend I want it for Remus if Molly follows us inside.” She jumped to her feet, caught Hermione’s elbow and was thankful for Ginny’s quick reflexes or they’d all be on their bums on the pavement.
“Thanks Ginny. Quick, while your mum’s tutting over the other window.”
Ginny grinned brightly.
~*~
It was very late on Christmas Eve, or perhaps he ought to say it was very early. The coloured Christmas tree lights set patches of colour across Adora’s skin where she nestled against his chest, her eyes closed.
Harry and Ginny had visited, shared a festively flavoured Butterbeer with them, agreed that it was disgusting, and caught them both out with festively flavoured Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans; soot.
It had been good to see the spark back in Harry’s eye, to see him watching Ginny when he thought he was unobserved. He had grinned over the tale of ‘Prongsie the red-nosed reindeer’. Adora said she’d heard them singing it as they dashed off through the not-so-festive rain.
It seemed ridiculous to wake her up to tell her it was bedtime. He tightened the arm around her back and wriggled the other under her thighs. He would carry her instead, and enjoy their closeness. He cradled her more securely against him, ready to stand, when her head lounged back.
“ ‘R you trying for a sneaky grope?”
Her sleepy mumble had the usual effect.
“Absolutely.”
She smiled. “Do we get to the presents now?”
“I thought you were asleep. I was taking you to bed.”
She purred and stretched out so that her top rode up revealing a narrow segment of midriff and her belly button. “Can’t we give just one present first?”
How could he refuse? “There’s a funny story to go with this one,” he said, offering her a carefully wrapped red-and- gold bow-topped box.
She leaned in to kiss him, now very awake and shining with anticipation. “Thank you.” She opened it without taking her eyes from his.
He waited breathlessly for her reaction. The green leather lid opened with a squeak and she looked down. Her jaw dropped. He swore her hair became fluorescent pink.
“Remus!” Her whisper was incredulous and her eyes wide with what he hoped was awed delight. “It’s a wolf’s head with pink eyes.”
“I know,” Remus mumbled. “The same colour as your hair. That was why I-”
He was suddenly on his back, smothered under a Tonks fervently demonstrating her appreciation.
“It’s brilliant!” she assured him breathlessly, now holding it up so that he could see its tiny reflection in her eyes twinkling at him under the tree lights. Her knees gripping his waist, Remus watched her nimble fingers extract the contents and hold it up to admire.
Then she glanced at him. “Er, Re-mus…”
How he loved that slow note of enquiry. “Adora?”
She glanced coyly down at him. “You know what this is, yeah?”
“Ear-rings.”
She plumped down on top of him, her nose fractions of an inch from his and turned the intricately modelled wolf’s head so that he could see it. “Nope, it’s a stud for a body piercing.” She grinned at him. “Remus Lupin, you kinky bugger. Where shall I wear it, then?”
~finitum est~