Serpents, Chapter 1
Title: Serpents (1/?)
Author: MrsTater
Rating & Warnings: R for sexuality
Prompts: weakness; "In the light of Voldemort's return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided."
Word Count: 7412
Summary: Two years into a relationship with Remus, and the correct way to deal with full moons continues to elude Tonks, dredging up her insecurities and memories of painful past failures. Voldemort's attack on a fellow Order member puts everything into perspective for her...But will Remus see the light?
Author’s Notes: A leap into the future in the Caring For Magical Creatures universe, which I think should stand alone even if you've not read that fic, though the background might make more sense as it's a POA-era R/T romance. :) I cannot thank Godricgal enough for letting me bounce zillions of ideas off her, helping me keep my story and the POA timeline straight, for her beta work, and for all-around great encouragement.
Prologue: Judgment Day |
1. Vicious Cycle
December, 1995
"Oh!"
At Hestia Jones' cry from behind, Tonks stopped suddenly in her tracks and span so quickly that the contents of her rucksack shifted, throwing her off-balance on the uneven dirt path. She grimaced as one foot slipped into the tread mark left by a Muggle car and lightning pain shocked through her turned ankle.
Bloody trainers! she thought, glaring down at her feet, encased in the bright green and yellow trainers she'd thought so flash when she'd seen them in Gladrags last week. Why didn't you wear proper shoes for a hike through the snow, you idiot?
Because you didn't know you'd be hiking. You thought you'd just Apparate straight to Remus' house. You weren't counting on anti-Apparition wards popping you to Brockenhurst instead, and having to do to some pretty sneaky memory charms on those Muggle villagers you scared the living daylights out of--
"Hestia," she interrupted herself, noticing that the pink-cheeked witch was even pinker-cheeked than usual as she stood stock still in the road, staring into the trees, "what are you ohing about?"
"Ponies!" Hestia cried, pointing through the foliage. "Molly, look! Did you ever see such darling little creatures!"
Ponies.
Hestia had got to be joking.
Not that people tended to joke about ponies.
Especially not in places that were famous for their ponies. A fact confirmed by Molly Weasley who, though huffing and puffing up the slight incline with a picnic hamper containing the full contents of the Burrow's larder, somehow caught the breath to oh and ah in duet with Hestia.
"I've always thought New Forest Ponies were the most adorable creatures on earth!" she said. "When I was a girl we took a cottage here one summer, and I made friends with them all." She sighed. "I begged my father to take them home with us, but of course they were wild creatures, and Mother wanted to hex them to oblivion for eating the vegetable patch. Peskier than garden gnomes, New Forest ponies. Though positively precious, to be sure."
Tonks had been listening to Molly's rambling story in a sort of stupor of disbelief, when suddenly -- at the grating sound of Hestia's giggle, to be precise -- she snapped into consciousness.
Hoisting up the straps of her rucksack, Tonks strode back downhill to her colleagues. "All this time I'd been under the impression that we were hiking through the wood because Remus was in trouble. It's nice to find out we're on a New Forest pleasure tour instead."
The crisp December air suddenly seemed stifling as Hestia giggled through her teeth, revealed by lips parted in a wide smile of embarrassment and astonishment; her rapidly blinking eyes darted from Tonks to Molly, whose face had gone quite as red as her hair.
Crap.
Molly already doesn't like you because of your weird hair and tomboy clothes and your incurable clumsiness and foot-in-mouth disease. After that smart-arse remark, she'll sure as hell hate you.
So much for hoping she might think a little better of you today for looking after Remus. So much for hoping she'd cut you a little slack because he thinks well of you.
In fact, it's a good job she doesn't know how well Remus thinks of you. He's as good as a son to her, and you've noticed how every time Bill or Charlie talk to you, she wrings her apron in her hands and starts talking very loudly about girls they knew at Hogwarts who she saw at the shops the other day and found out they were still single. If she knew Remus was more than friends with rude, crude, socially unacceptable you, you'd have to watch Molly try and fix him up with Emmeline and Hestia and any other remotely suitable lady she could think of.
Hell, she'd probably pair him with Professor McGonagall before she'd pair him with you.
Despite her face flushing, Molly looked at Tonks with rich eyes and said, tremulously, "Now, dear, I'm sure Remus is just fine."
She'd stepped forward and reached for her arm, but Tonks reflexively flinched away (sod getting into Molly's good graces) as something akin to magma bubbled in the pit of her stomach, then erupted in a flare of temper.
"Do you have any idea what the Oak Moon means?"
Molly's mouth fell open as she stared at Tonks.
Tonks' temple throbbed as she gritted her teeth.
Out the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Hestia, biting her nails and looking at Molly as if life depended on her knowing the answer to Tonks' question.
The colour drained slowly from Molly's plump cheeks as she wagged her head. Oddly, the pallor gave the illusion of gauntness. Or was it the fact that Molly's brown eyes had darkened and grown big as saucers?
Whatever it was, it made Tonks' anger cool instantly, seeping out of her in a sigh that formed a cloud in the air.
Now you've done it. They're effing frightened, and it's all because of you. You became an Auror because you wanted to stop people looking that way. What are you doing, then, putting that look on their faces?
Of course Molly and Hestia didn't have any bloody idea what the Oak Moon meant. Not many people were versed in werewolf lore, and she was sure Remus preferred his colleagues in the Order of the Phoenix stay that way.
Hell, you're pretty sure he'd prefer you weren't versed in werewolf lore.
Tonks sighed again, along with the whistling wind that whipped through the bare trees and kicking up dead leaves from the frosty ground, rustling them against the flapping hems of the women's cloaks and the tasselled ends of their scarves.
"Just a difficult moon," she said, hating to trivialise it that way, even though that had been Remus' exact description to her. "You're right, Molly -- and I'm sorry. Remus'll be fine."
She squeezed Molly's maroon-mittened hand and, thank Merlin for small favours, Molly actually gave her a small smile. An understanding -- as much as she could understand, anyway -- smile.
In fact, Molly was looking at Tonks much more closely than she'd ever done before. Her eyes criss-crossed at the corners as she looked...and looked...Tonks felt as if the older witch was probing her, reading her. Not like a Legilimens; like a mother -- which, at least from her experience with her own mum, Tonks thought was probably quite a lot more powerful.
Apparently it was in the case of Molly, too. After a moment, her blonde-red eyebrows arched in realisation.
Tonks' heart, which had been thudding heavily, raced. What's she just figured out about you?
But Tonks was distracted from the question by Hestia's giggle.
"Why, of course Remus'll be fine! That's why we're here, isn't it? To see to it that he will be fine, even if he's not at the moment?"
Tonks felt her blood begin to boil again as Hestia chattered and giggled. Every inch of her burned to react, and she didn't know how long she'd be able to hold back the hot words, but she restrained herself, for the sake of maintaining whatever new level of understanding, even respect, she'd achieved in Molly's eyes, as long as possible. Even if it was only a minute.
Miraculously, Molly actually rolled her eyes at Hestia.
Tonks took it as permission to turn around and lead on. She set a quicker pace than she had yet, knowing, somehow, that Molly harboured no resentment for leaving her in the dust as she struggled with her picnic hamper.
As she walked, the thoughts about the Oak Moon which she'd left unspoken to Molly and Hestia tumbled pell-mell through her head.
Difficult didn't go far enough to describe what Remus experienced during his December transformation. Of course that had been how he phrased it to her the first December they were together when she noticed he was ill for longer leading up to and following that month's transformation, and asked him about it.
Just a slightly more difficult moon than normal, he'd said with a shrug and a smile that said it was no big deal, but thanks to Wolfsbane Potion, he'd feel none the worse if he were to prowl all night in a dank dungeon on the hunt for Red Caps, and then play a game of Quidditch the next day.
At that point she'd been thoroughly distracted from worry by the image of Remus zooming around on a broomstick, throwing Quaffles which was, perhaps, more unbelievable than him turning into a bloodthirsty monster one night each month.
Not to mention bloody hilarious.
Don't forget you were also a wee bit distracted December of '93 because Remus invited you to spend Christmas at his house in the New Forest. You were worse than ever in Stealth and Tracking because Darling Des said he was taking you away for a dirty weekend, and you were wetting yourself wondering how the hell to break it to him you were a virgin.
"Ouch!"
Hestia's sharp cry interrupted Tonks' train of thought, but she continued walking, heedless, until Hestia called out to her to stop. The note of desperation in her voice made Tonks turn. Hestia was leaning against Molly, rubbing her ankle.
"You okay?" Tonks asked.
Hestia looked up, rather crossly. "Would you please slow down? It won't help Remus if we all cripple ourselves falling into potholes covered up by snow! Especially the Healer!"
"Go on ahead," said Molly, hoisting Hestia's arm over her shoulder so she could support her. "We'll catch up."
Tonks didn't hesitate to hitch up her rucksack and do just that, though niggling guilt refused to allow her legs to move at the pace she'd kept previously.
Typical, you self-centred prat. Just like last year, when you were too wrapped up in becoming a full-fledged Auror, and obsessing over Remus' secrets, to notice that losing his Hogwarts job meant he didn't have Professor Snape brewing his Wolfsbane Potion.
A year and a half later, her face still burned with mortification that six months had passed before it had registered. Remus had assured her it was okay, he hadn't drawn attention to it precisely because he knew she'd enough on her mind without fretting over things that didn't matter.
But they did matter. At the very least, she ought to have noticed. She was his girlfriend, for Merlin's sake.
Did you need it spelled out in four-foot high letters, flashing in neon lights? You couldn't have asked for a bigger clue than the change in your sex life.
Actually, she wasn't so sure. When she thought about it, she supposed there always had been a pattern of not being physical, or seeing him at all, very close to full moon. Then again, why should she have attributed it to the lunar cycle? Remus had been very busy with his teaching duties and extra tutoring sessions with Harry. It had seemed natural that he'd be too tired, or too busy to see her; Merlin knew her training schedule had been the one to keep them apart at least as often as his, especially as Auror qualifications loomed closer. Remus spoke so seldom about transformations, or his potion, that Tonks, convinced he was managing, all but put it out of her mind.
Since the termination of Remus' employment at Hogwarts, they'd had a thousand factors working against them, not least of which included the guilt trip Remus seemed unlikely ever to return from, over his lie of omission to Dumbledore and Sirius having to go on the run. Mixed with Tonks pretending to have fallen out and broken up with him so they could keep their relationship secret, they were practically begging for stress, exhaustion, and all not to be fair in love-making and war.
That line of thinking had carried her to the previous December, when the memory of Oak Moon being a difficult moon, but Wolfsbane Potion helped, slammed into her with the force of the Hogwarts Express. She'd reacted impulsively -- and regrettably.
Not only had she made great thing of the fact that Remus had gone six months without Wolfsbane Potion, throwing in his face the whole sodding chain of events he'd already been flagellating himself over since June, but she'd also rubbed his nose in it that in the meanwhile she had acquired one of the most prestigious careers in the Wizarding world by offering to hire him a potion-brewer. Of course Remus had been the epitome of cordial when he turned her down, offering his standard assurance that he'd be fine. But fine wasn't good enough for her, not when she could do something to make him better than fine, and she'd pushed the issue till it had erupted into a proper row which, if she were to be totally honest, she was surprised hadn't brought about a real break-up and an end to all their secrecy.
She'd thought it had been over when, in the midst of the fight, a mission for Dumbledore took Remus away for the entire fortnight leading up to the Oak Moon, so that Tonks saw neither the worst of the pre-transformation effects, or the aftermath. Yet instead of the stony silence of a lovers' quarrel interrupted, every day of Remus' absence brought owls bearing newsy letters of his travels, all light and wry and amusing and sounding like they came from Remus in the pink of health. When he'd returned to her in time for their second Christmas holiday to the New Forest, she'd looked for signs that the moon had been more difficult for him without Wolfsbane Potion than it had been the previous year with it. Enough time had passed that he had fully recovered to his usual, if a bit thinner, self. Nor did she ask him how his transformation had been.
And that just goes to show why you weren't sorted into Gryffindor. You're a bloody coward, through and through, too afraid of pissing off a bloke and risking him breaking up with you, to probe him about something you know he's not being up front with you about. Wasn't that why you broke up with him? Cos you wouldn't settle for less than honesty? You're a damned hypocrite, as well as a coward.
At least her inaction hadn't kept her permanently in the dark. Her Ravenclaw dad would have been right proud of how she turned to books to get the information she couldn't bring herself to ask from Remus. For the next year, she'd read every werewolf-related book, journal article, and pamphlet she could get her hands on. A lot of it had been horrifying; a lot of it had been rubbish, she learnt later, after a very strange tea she'd managed to arrange with Newt Scamander. Of course the things that had horrified her hadn't really been the rubbish bits -- like pre-transformation skyrocketing lycanthrope libido, which she knew from personal experience was hogswallop. Now that she was looking for it, she recognised a direct correlation between the approach of full moon and the effectiveness of her lingerie.
But then afterwards he was himself again, sweet and affectionate, and looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time, and was delighted by her.
She didn't think Remus had any idea how much she took from those first moments of seeing him after another moonset, or how much that look meant to her. No matter how helpless she'd felt watching the waxing moon chip away at the thin veneer of his health and stamina, no matter how like a failure she'd felt at not being able to stop it, or even to ease it, that look confirmed his love; as the moon waned, their relationship could grow anew.
It was the anticipation of that look which quickened her steps now, even as she slipped on icy patches in the trail and twice narrowly avoided crashing onto her backside, and Hestia called, giggling, that she wasn't sure why Tonks had bothered to bring a Healer along, when she didn't seem to care if that Healer made it to the patient in one piece. For one horrifying bit she'd read in werewolf lore, which she'd found in the anonymous autobiography, Hairy Snout, Human Heart, which Newt Scamander had recommended particularly, and lent Tonks his own copy as Umbridge had banned it, had been confirmed one-hundred percent true.
Not only was the Oak Moon longest full moon of the year (read: the lengthiest amount of time Remus spent trapped in the form of a werewolf) but enacted in his body was the violent struggle of the Oak King of winter over the Holly King of summer at the coming of Solstice. Then more than ever, the werewolf thirsted for human prey. If free, he would get it; if confined, sensing the shreds of humanity lingering in his mind and spirit, he would turn on himself.
So, she understood why Remus refused to transform in his room at Grimmauld Place, as he usually did. She understood that he didn't want to risk the safety of their colleagues who might not be able to stay away from Headquarters if an emergency were to arise. She understood that even if he were restrained, the werewolf, sensing human prey, could have a surge of strength and break free, even against magical bonds. She understood that even Sirius, in his Animagus form, could be at risk at this time of heightened sense and need.
She did not understand why Remus would place himself at risk, rather than ask her, just this once, to find him the Potion.
Cos you're not enough for him, Tonks. You're too young, too naive, too inept--
An icy patch swept her feet out from under her, and she skidded on the heels of her rubber-soled trainers, flailing her arms wildly for balance, till she hit a tree root which pitched her headlong straight at a tree off the path.
Inept, see? This is why he doesn't trust you with the werewolf thing. Cos you can't even bloody walk through the wood to his house without doing something stupid--
Hands brushing the branches of a sprawling holly, she closed her fingers around them to stop herself careening into the tree, gritting her teeth against the prick of the spiny leaves penetrating her gloves.
Yes, she was utterly wrong for Remus -- but he loved her anyway. She didn't know why; truthfully, she'd always been rather in the dark about that.
The timing of when he'd first told her, said the actual words I love you hadn't been the first time they'd slept together, or after that, on Valentine's Day, or his birthday or on a romantic date or any other time people tended to say those words for the first time. They hadn't even been together at all. And it had followed so many words from her that she was pretty sure never preceded I love you.
Hell -- it's a miracle he went out with you at all, seeing as in the first twenty-four hours of knowing him you accused him of running the black market Dark Creature trade! Then you had to go and dump him the day he resigned from Hogwarts. He'd been honest with you, truly honest, for the first time ever. He'd wanted forgiveness and loyalty....and comfort. And you threw all of it back in his face!
She didn't think she'd ever stop blushing with shame whenever she thought back to that day, which remained as clear in her memory as if only eighteen seconds had passed instead of eighteen months...
"It wasn't as bad as you're making it out to be," said Kingsley Shacklebolt as Tonks pushed her way out of the lift before the doors had fully opened.
"Don't lie just to make me feel better." The staccato tap of Tonks' heels as she stepped off of the carpeted area where the lifts were onto the hardwood floor in the Ministry Atrium underscored her clipped syllables. "I don't want to hear it."
"Watch it." Kingsley's booming baritone was closer now, as his longer strides quickly caught him up to her. "You may not think you'll qualify for Auror, but until your marks are posted, I'm still your superior, and that means you don't get to choose what you hear from me. And I'm not--Look out!"
His large hand wrapped firmly around her elbow, but he was too late to stop her colliding with a person who had been obscured from view by the Centaur statue in the Fountain of Magical Brethren.
"Bugger!" Tonks hissed, as Kingsley tugged her back and kept her steady on her feet. "Sorry, I--"
The apology died on her tongue when she looked up to see who she'd run into.
Remus.
Remus, who that very morning had come to her flat and told her that Sirius was an Animagus, and he'd known all along, and kept it from her.
Remus, who by keeping something like that from her, had betrayed her trust.
Remus, who for betraying her trust, she'd broken up with.
Remus, who she'd broken up with, which had distracted her so completely that she was sure she'd failed Stealth and Tracking.
Remus, here now, in his shabby old robes, clutching his battered old briefcase with the peeling monogram.
She ought to have turned and walked away, without a word, as Kingsley tried to get her to do. But her feet felt as though they'd been hit with a Sticking Charm to root her to the highly polished floor. Remus was the very last person on earth she wanted to see right now. Not only that, but he had the balls to turn up here, looking bloody awful, and shake hands -- albeit warily -- with Kingsley.
"What the hell are you doing here?" she demanded. "I thought you were taking the train to Brockenhurst."
His eyes fixed somewhere just to the side of her face, and his lips twitched into that damned polite smile he always kept at the ready, like a pocket handkerchief.
"I took a slight detour," he said, "in the hope that if I demonstrate contrition and compliance by enrolling with the Werewolf Registry, I might be able to prevent widespread fall-out for my actions." The lines of his face deepened with obvious effort to maintain the mild manner he wanted to show the world. "However, it seems a vain hope, in light of the whisperings that legislation is already being drawn up for monitoring of my kind."
Even in her fury at him, Tonks couldn't deny the guilt, the deep sadness, she heard in Remus' rasping tones. Her heart went out to him--
--but she reined it in.
It was horrible for Remus, she knew, and to tell or not to tell must have been a huge dilemma. But it didn't have to be this way. If only he'd bloody told her, she would have done everything she could to protect him even as the truth came to light. He'd be tucked up in his great four-poster bed at Hogwarts, having his usual post-transformation lie-in, still gainfully employed, rather than jobless and subjecting himself to the humiliation of registering with the Ministry. And, though she wondered that she could accept it as the truth so easily after Remus had lied to her by omission for the better part of a year, she believed Black really was innocent and felt sure that if she'd been privy to the truth sooner, she could have done something to prevent him going on the run, and seen him exonerated of the murder charges. Remus wouldn't be carrying that guilt now. At least, if they'd tried and failed, he wouldn’t be carrying it alone.
In the heat of the moment she'd told him that the truth would have made her break up with him, but would she really have done? All those months ago, when it was early days, she was so chuffed that someone like him would fancy someone like her. In her heart of hearts, she knew she couldn't confidently say she'd have had the guts to break up with him, to put the career she'd dreamed of before a life she wasn't sure she wanted.
Stupid. She'd been so. bloody. stupid.
It made her furious.
"Yeah, well," she spat, "that's what happens when you circumvent the law, isn't it?"
"Come on, Tonks," said Kingsley, pulling gently on her arm again. "Let's go."
Jerking free of his grasp, she lit into Remus. "D'you know what other whisperings there are?"
Remus' eyes flicked to her, meeting her gaze for the first time since they'd run into each other. They were rounded, and allowed Tonks to read him more clearly than she'd ever managed before now. Fatigue, and the situation, had caused him to let his guard down. He was afraid of what she had to say. It seemed impossible; she hadn't thought Remus was afraid of anything. But he was.
"There's to be an inquiry," Tonks said, "into whether I knew my boyfriend was an unregistered werewolf and endangering the lives of the schoolchildren, and if I did, whether I ought to be suspended. Not that I’m going to qualify anyway," she added sharply, "seeing as I just cocked up my Stealth practical."
"For the millionth time," said Kingsley, "you passed."
"Barely," she said, eyes on Remus. "No thanks to you."
Remus swallowed hard, and Tonks watched his Adam's apple bob in his slender white throat, and press against his collar. "I'm so sorry."
"Yeah," Tonks said, turning on her heel. "Me, too."
As she walked toward the furthest gilded fireplace in the Atrium, she heard Kingsley tell Remus goodbye and good luck before calling to her. "Oi! Tonks! Where are you Flooing to?"
Tonks stopped in her tracks. She didn't have a bloody clue where she was Flooing to. Not home. She couldn't take Des right now. She tried not to think about the quiet evening Remus had promised her, of dinner in his room at Hogwarts followed by a massage and a bath...
She turned around as Kingsley strode up behind her. His tall, broad frame blocked out the fountain and any parting view of Remus.
"You need a drink," he said, taking a pinch of Floo powder off the intricately carved mantel. "Come to the Leaky with me."
"Is that an order?" Tonks asked.
"Yes." Kingsley laid a hand on her shoulder and tossed the powder into the Fireplace. "Diagon Alley!"
A few minutes later, she found herself nursing a Firewhisky in a shadowy corner booth in the mouldy tavern.
"How was I s'posed to concentrate?" She sounded pitiful, but didn't have the energy to care. "All day, everyone was saying, 'Poor Tonks. Stupid girl didn't know she was sleeping with a werewolf.'"
"They weren't saying that," Kingsley chided.
"They were thinking it."
"That's the spirit. Be that confident on your Legilimency exam, and you'll pass with flying colours."
In spite of her determination to wallow in misery, Tonks felt the corners of her mouth curve upward against her bottle.
"Finally," said Kingsley. "A smile."
Tonks promptly frowned. "I hate pity."
Sighing, Kingsley rested his elbows heavily on the crude table and ran a hand over his shiny bald head. "For what it's worth, the only thing I feel sorry for you about is that Remus didn't live up to your trust. I mean, what's it matter if he's a werewolf? That's one day out of every twenty-seven, right? Rest of the time he's the sort of chap you'd feel good about taking home to meet your parents."
Tonks wished she had taken him home at some point, so her parents could have seen for themselves how wonderful he'd been to her, instead of only knowing of him as the former Defence professor now embroiled in one of the worst scandals since the war ended. She didn't even want to think about the owls that must be waiting for her at the flat. At least her parents had had the sense to leave her alone before her test.
"That's the thing, Kingsley," she said, even though it wasn't the thing. Werewolf thing or Black thing, the principle was the same. "I don't care about him being a werewolf. I....could've fallen in love with him anyway, if he'd just let me in. What?"
Kingsley was looking at her like she'd gone mad. Then he snorted into his beer.
"Tonks, Tonks, Tonks...Please tell me you're not living under the delusion that you weren't -- aren't -- head-over-two-left-feet in love with him."
"I--"
"You fell in love with Remus, whether you intended to or not, even though he held out on you. And you didn't fall out of love with him the minute you broke up with him."
"I--"
"How else do you think hearts get broken?"
Kingsley watched her with his warm brown eyes, and Tonks wondered if he was reading her, because that was exactly how she felt inside: broken. God, she wanted to cry.
But she sucked it up. "What are you going to say next? That if we're meant to be, Remus'll prove he's worth it and make it up to me, and I'll find it in my heart to forgive him?"
"Pretty much the gist of it, yeah."
Reliving that conversation as she stood in the New Forest on a freezing December morning, face burning as she thought of how awful she'd been, Tonks still managed to smile. Avoiding the icy patch that had sent her off the road, glancing over her shoulder to see that Molly and Hestia were catching up to her (Molly actually thanked her for waiting), Tonks resumed her hike with a new energy as the shadows of the past drifting to the front of her memory became a bit less...shadowy.
Much as she'd insisted to Kingsley and herself that it would be far more vindicating -- especially to her Stealth marks -- to stay pissed off at Remus, she found herself wondering, right there in the Leaky Cauldron, what Remus could do to make her forgive him. In fact, if she'd been honest with herself, she'd already begun to forgive him even without him doing a damn thing. Thanks to Kingsley, who didn't even know the real thing she was upset at Remus for was holding back.
"Don't hate me for saying this," said Kingsley a few days later, when the end of Auror qualification exams brought them once more to the pub, "but I sort of get why Remus didn't register as a werewolf."
"Do you?" Tonks knew exactly why, as Remus had told her when she'd mentioned having checked the Registry one day and coming up with nothing, but she wanted to hear what an unbiased outsider had to say.
"Had to be a secret for him to get to go to school at all, hadn't it?"
"I suppose..."
"Well, then, after seven years of anonymity, and no incident, why would Remus suddenly go public? Scandal aside, it must be right impossible to get a job when you've got Werewolf stamped on your records. And it's not like Werewof Support Services actually provides services."
Tonks wondered if Remus had begun looking for work yet, or if he was lying low and reading the Prophet with increasing hopelessness. The new anti-werewolf bills Dolores Umbridge was trying to persuade Minister Fudge to sign were getting almost as many inches in the paper these days as the unfolding story of Black's escape . Mandatory registration had already been passed, and the Werewolf Capture Unit were undergoing additional training to prepare for tracking and arresting those who didn't comply. Half the letters to the editor this week were from witches and wizards who supported the tightening of security, and more than a few employers sought legal protection to sack werewolf workers.
No, if that was what Remus had anticipated as a young man, she couldn't blame him for not registering, or his parents for hiding the truth when he was a child.
Yet even though he hadn't been registered, Remus hadn't seemed to have had much long-term work before his stint at Hogwarts. Why? Had it been difficult for him to keep a job because of the relentless cycle of the moon? Had his bosses noticed the pattern of his illness? How ill was he? Knowing how tired and sickly he became every month whilst he was taking the Wolfsbane Potion, Tonks could only imagine it was worse without.
Of course, Remus had never spoken of any of these things.
Which was the whole damn problem. Even if she hadn't broken up with him because of the werewolf thing.
"Why are you pushing this?" she asked, frustrated that Kingsley was striking an emotional chord with her that distracted from the actual issue. "Do you want me to get back together with him, or something?"
Kingsley took a drink. "Yeah. I do."
She should have let it drop, but in spite of herself, she couldn't help but ask why.
"No offence, Tonks," said Kingsley, "I love you when you're snarky and feisty and independent and fuelled by righteous fury..."
"But?"
"But ever since you broke it off with Remus, you've been a bit of a loose cannon. You've got crap marks on your exams--"
"I've been a tad distracted!"
"Actually," drawled Kingsley, "I think it's that you overcompensated." He paused, met her stare levelly, and leant back in the booth, stretching one arm across the seat, and sipped his beer casually. "Remember last autumn, before you got a boyfriend, and you were your own worst enemy because you worked too hard and made yourself nervous?"
Feeling a bit like she'd taken a Stunner to the chest, Tonks nodded weakly. Was he saying what she thought he was saying? "You think I did better in training because I was getting laid?"
"Because you were getting laid by Remus, yeah," Kingsley replied. "I mean this in the best possible way, Tonks, but you grew up a lot this year. You and Remus fit really well together. He brought out the best in you. It was like you'd found your purpose as a human being, not just as an Auror cadet."
Tonks picked at the handle of her mug. "I wanted to be his equal. I thought if I could get to his level he'd..." She swallowed a painful lump in her throat. "...love me."
Her voice came out small and pinched and pathetic. She quickly swigged her beer and added, bitterly, "Obviously that wasn't enough for him, or he'd have told me his secrets. Bastard."
"What if he was protecting you?" Kingsley asked.
"Protecting me?"
"When we ran into him in the Atrium and you told him about the inquiry, I read him like a book. He was afraid of something like that happening. But if you didn't know about him, you'd be off the hook for sitting on information."
It made sense.
A lot of sense.
After the initial days of knowing each other, when they'd found one another irresistible, he'd backed off inexplicably. Later, after she'd stumbled onto the truth during a bit of very ill-advised detective work, he'd confessed to her that, given the gap in their ages, his conscience refused to allow him to go out with her without her knowing what he was. But he hadn't wanted to tell her, either, when, for all his attraction to her, he barely knew her. Rather a slap in the face, to be sure -- but at least it had been an honest slap in the face. He'd made it up to her with a series of the loveliest dates she'd ever been on, treating her like a queen, and in that context, his preoccupation with doing right by her became charming, endearing. She'd thought that men who cared more about a woman than about themselves only existed in fairy tales. It was difficult to feel insulted by protectiveness when a bloke made you feel special, or even...cherished.
When applied to the Black situation, protection made even more sense, and oh God! In that light, it became perfectly obvious that Remus hadn't thought for a second that she would betray his trust. She'd been mad to suggest it. He wouldn't have tried to protect her otherwise. He knew. He knew she would honour his confidence, and so he kept silent, to protect her from being incriminated, from being denied Auror qualification, from being packed off to Azkaban...
The constricted feeling that had clutched at Tonks' heart for days loosened--
--but some rebellious part of her still resisted.
"Isn't up to me whether I risk my job? Protection's gallant, but it's not right."
"No," said Kingsley, surprisingly. "But it's noble. Damned hard to find noble people."
That was the truth, Tonks thought. "I'm not one of them."
However much she'd grown up during her third year of Auror training, Tonks was no more noble now, as a Junior Auror, than she had been then -- as Hestia's breathless pleas from further and further behind on the path made perfectly plain. Tonks slowed her pace, and pulled up her sleeve to check her watch. As she did, her silver charm bracelet caught her eye, and she smiled.
No, she wasn't noble -- but Remus, who definitely was, didn't care. As had been evident the night he gave her the bracelet...
"Sure you don't want me to walk you home?" Kingsley asked when he saw Tonks down to the lobby of his flat when she left the party he'd thrown the new Junior Aurors after their graduation ceremony.
"Haven't we established this week that I've gone off of gallant men?" Tonks teased. "Anyway, you've got a lot of new Aurors up in your flat who are two sheets to the wind, and if you go to mine, Des, constantly vigilant in her quest to hook up with Auror Shacklebolt, will pounce, and you'll never get away from her in time to save your lovely white sofa from total destruction--"
"As if you didn't already dye it red with your wine," he muttered, looking over his shoulder to the lift, high forehead etched with concern.
"So I'll just walk myself home, ta." Tonks turned back in the doorway to thank him for everything that week, all his support about the break-up, then stepped out into the night and sighed with relief.
It had been hard -- so very hard -- to be at one of Kingsley's parties, single after months of attending on Remus' arm, and feeling like the belle of the ball when she saw how well-liked he was, even among strangers. Oddly she'd felt his absence most keenly on the several occasions during the course of the night that people had asked her about him, and why she hadn't teamed up with Umbridge to champion the new legislation, when she herself had been treated so abominably by one of the nasty, lying creatures. Because that wasn't Remus. For all his faults, he was a million times the human half the people she knew were.
So she'd left early, missing him, and wishing she could see him.
Lucky stars must have shone that night. When she rounded the corner of her building, he was there.
He stood in the shadows, magical blue flame cupped in one hand as she'd first seen him at the gates of Hogwarts last September. In the other hand, he clutched a bouquet.
"Hyacinths," he said, quietly, holding it out to her.
She drank in the fragrant purple blossoms. "For congratulations?"
Remus shook his head. "For an apology. And I hope -- forgiveness. This..." He reached into his pocket and drew out a flat velvet box.
A jewellery case.
"This is for congratulations."
She could manage no more than his whispered name as he placed it in her hand.
He tapped his wand to it, and it opened to reveal a silver bracelet, gleaming brilliantly in the flickering blue light of the flame. From it dangled three delicate charms which, after the initial dream-like haze of seeing him, of being given flowers and jewellery after she'd so cruelly dumped him, she recognised as runes. At the centre was Jera, the rune of success, with a red gemstone set in one corner -- cornelian, she remembered from her Ancient Runes textbook; on one side dangled Wunjo, the rune of joy, which contained a diamond (dear Merlin, he must have spent a fortune...and him, without a job); and there was yet another, an opal-encrusted Gebo, the rune of forgiveness and--
Her heart was in her throat.
"It's for love, as well," said Remus.
She looked up.
For love.
Had he said...? Did he mean...?
Oh Merlin, it was in his eyes, his beautiful blue eyes, and was stepping closer to her, so close that his words were a warm breath on her face.
"I love you," he said. "I have for a long time. I should have told you sooner, but I thought...I saved it because...I thought tonight would be special."
"As if that alone wouldn't make any night special?" Tonks asked, then cursed herself for it.
But Remus laughed, quietly, and put his hand on her waist, and dipped his head. He looked boyishly up at her through his fringe. "I know. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before." He looked up again, and looked like a man, with greying hair and lines around his eyes and mouth. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you a lot of things before."
"You were protecting me," said Tonks, shaking her head. "And Dumbledore."
"And myself," he added. "I'm not noble...Elphine."
"You are," Tonks argued. "You were just wrong. And you're not the only one who was. I owe you hyacinths."
He smiled gently. "You don't owe me a thing, except..."
She'd told him she loved him, too, of course.
Now, looking at her charm bracelet, reflecting the December morning grey against her black leather glove, she warmed at the memory of his brilliant smile as he carefully clasped it around her wrist. Several new rune charms had been added since then, his gifts for her birthday and Christmas and Valentine's Day, which she knew he could ill afford as time dragged on without a steady income, but which she cherished all the more because she knew how much it meant to him to give them to her.
If only he knew how much she wanted to give to him in return.
Their reconciliation had been sweet, but not without the bitter. The Ministry had let her off the inquiry hook because Kingsley had argued on her behalf that her reaction to Remus being outed was too genuinely shocked and angry for her to have known he was a werewolf. If she were to keep a low profile, they would have to be together in secret. Which she hated, because the very last thing she wanted after everything was for him to think she was ashamed of sleeping with a werewolf, as everyone assumed she must be. But Remus, of course, had been perfectly agreeable about it. It was safer, he said, and he couldn't ask for anything more than her safety and her love.
Doesn't he, though? Tonks asked herself as the familiar sight of his chimney of crumbling stone appeared through a gap in the trees. Doesn't he need someone to keep him safe? Especially when the Oak moon waxes full?
But apparently that someone's not you, or he'd let you in. He's holding back again, Tonks. It's the werewolf thing keeping him from you again.
She brushed the thoughts of self-doubt aside and fixated on the ones about Remus. At the thought of the wolf, so needy for human flesh, tearing at his own body -- Remus' body -- she quickened her pace on the snowy path. As she raced through the forest, eyes fixed on the chimney that meant Remus was so near, she could only hope that Molly was right, that he was fine, tucked up in bed, and simply sleeping too soundly to have sent for her.
You'll see, Tonks. When he opens his eyes, he'll look at you, and you'll see you really are all he needs.
At least...you hope you will.
If she didn't, she hadn't a bloody clue what she would do.
A/N: The Oak Moon is actually the name of the December full moon, but I've taken imaginative license tying it in with the legend of King Holly and King Oak, as well as with how it might affect Remus' transformations. If you're interested in seeing the runes Remus chose for Tonks' charm bracelet, you can find them at the Metal Artist home page.
Thanks to all who are following this fic, and I appreciate the feedback y'all left for the prologue. This time, those who review will receive a bouquet of your favorite flowers and the jewelry item of your choice, from Remus, of course, though of course the gesture needn't be an apology. Unless, of course, you've had the quarrel just for the fun of making up... ;)
Read Chapter 2
Author: MrsTater
Rating & Warnings: R for sexuality
Prompts: weakness; "In the light of Voldemort's return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided."
Word Count: 7412
Summary: Two years into a relationship with Remus, and the correct way to deal with full moons continues to elude Tonks, dredging up her insecurities and memories of painful past failures. Voldemort's attack on a fellow Order member puts everything into perspective for her...But will Remus see the light?
Author’s Notes: A leap into the future in the Caring For Magical Creatures universe, which I think should stand alone even if you've not read that fic, though the background might make more sense as it's a POA-era R/T romance. :) I cannot thank Godricgal enough for letting me bounce zillions of ideas off her, helping me keep my story and the POA timeline straight, for her beta work, and for all-around great encouragement.
Prologue: Judgment Day |
1. Vicious Cycle
December, 1995
"Oh!"
At Hestia Jones' cry from behind, Tonks stopped suddenly in her tracks and span so quickly that the contents of her rucksack shifted, throwing her off-balance on the uneven dirt path. She grimaced as one foot slipped into the tread mark left by a Muggle car and lightning pain shocked through her turned ankle.
Bloody trainers! she thought, glaring down at her feet, encased in the bright green and yellow trainers she'd thought so flash when she'd seen them in Gladrags last week. Why didn't you wear proper shoes for a hike through the snow, you idiot?
Because you didn't know you'd be hiking. You thought you'd just Apparate straight to Remus' house. You weren't counting on anti-Apparition wards popping you to Brockenhurst instead, and having to do to some pretty sneaky memory charms on those Muggle villagers you scared the living daylights out of--
"Hestia," she interrupted herself, noticing that the pink-cheeked witch was even pinker-cheeked than usual as she stood stock still in the road, staring into the trees, "what are you ohing about?"
"Ponies!" Hestia cried, pointing through the foliage. "Molly, look! Did you ever see such darling little creatures!"
Ponies.
Hestia had got to be joking.
Not that people tended to joke about ponies.
Especially not in places that were famous for their ponies. A fact confirmed by Molly Weasley who, though huffing and puffing up the slight incline with a picnic hamper containing the full contents of the Burrow's larder, somehow caught the breath to oh and ah in duet with Hestia.
"I've always thought New Forest Ponies were the most adorable creatures on earth!" she said. "When I was a girl we took a cottage here one summer, and I made friends with them all." She sighed. "I begged my father to take them home with us, but of course they were wild creatures, and Mother wanted to hex them to oblivion for eating the vegetable patch. Peskier than garden gnomes, New Forest ponies. Though positively precious, to be sure."
Tonks had been listening to Molly's rambling story in a sort of stupor of disbelief, when suddenly -- at the grating sound of Hestia's giggle, to be precise -- she snapped into consciousness.
Hoisting up the straps of her rucksack, Tonks strode back downhill to her colleagues. "All this time I'd been under the impression that we were hiking through the wood because Remus was in trouble. It's nice to find out we're on a New Forest pleasure tour instead."
The crisp December air suddenly seemed stifling as Hestia giggled through her teeth, revealed by lips parted in a wide smile of embarrassment and astonishment; her rapidly blinking eyes darted from Tonks to Molly, whose face had gone quite as red as her hair.
Crap.
Molly already doesn't like you because of your weird hair and tomboy clothes and your incurable clumsiness and foot-in-mouth disease. After that smart-arse remark, she'll sure as hell hate you.
So much for hoping she might think a little better of you today for looking after Remus. So much for hoping she'd cut you a little slack because he thinks well of you.
In fact, it's a good job she doesn't know how well Remus thinks of you. He's as good as a son to her, and you've noticed how every time Bill or Charlie talk to you, she wrings her apron in her hands and starts talking very loudly about girls they knew at Hogwarts who she saw at the shops the other day and found out they were still single. If she knew Remus was more than friends with rude, crude, socially unacceptable you, you'd have to watch Molly try and fix him up with Emmeline and Hestia and any other remotely suitable lady she could think of.
Hell, she'd probably pair him with Professor McGonagall before she'd pair him with you.
Despite her face flushing, Molly looked at Tonks with rich eyes and said, tremulously, "Now, dear, I'm sure Remus is just fine."
She'd stepped forward and reached for her arm, but Tonks reflexively flinched away (sod getting into Molly's good graces) as something akin to magma bubbled in the pit of her stomach, then erupted in a flare of temper.
"Do you have any idea what the Oak Moon means?"
Molly's mouth fell open as she stared at Tonks.
Tonks' temple throbbed as she gritted her teeth.
Out the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Hestia, biting her nails and looking at Molly as if life depended on her knowing the answer to Tonks' question.
The colour drained slowly from Molly's plump cheeks as she wagged her head. Oddly, the pallor gave the illusion of gauntness. Or was it the fact that Molly's brown eyes had darkened and grown big as saucers?
Whatever it was, it made Tonks' anger cool instantly, seeping out of her in a sigh that formed a cloud in the air.
Now you've done it. They're effing frightened, and it's all because of you. You became an Auror because you wanted to stop people looking that way. What are you doing, then, putting that look on their faces?
Of course Molly and Hestia didn't have any bloody idea what the Oak Moon meant. Not many people were versed in werewolf lore, and she was sure Remus preferred his colleagues in the Order of the Phoenix stay that way.
Hell, you're pretty sure he'd prefer you weren't versed in werewolf lore.
Tonks sighed again, along with the whistling wind that whipped through the bare trees and kicking up dead leaves from the frosty ground, rustling them against the flapping hems of the women's cloaks and the tasselled ends of their scarves.
"Just a difficult moon," she said, hating to trivialise it that way, even though that had been Remus' exact description to her. "You're right, Molly -- and I'm sorry. Remus'll be fine."
She squeezed Molly's maroon-mittened hand and, thank Merlin for small favours, Molly actually gave her a small smile. An understanding -- as much as she could understand, anyway -- smile.
In fact, Molly was looking at Tonks much more closely than she'd ever done before. Her eyes criss-crossed at the corners as she looked...and looked...Tonks felt as if the older witch was probing her, reading her. Not like a Legilimens; like a mother -- which, at least from her experience with her own mum, Tonks thought was probably quite a lot more powerful.
Apparently it was in the case of Molly, too. After a moment, her blonde-red eyebrows arched in realisation.
Tonks' heart, which had been thudding heavily, raced. What's she just figured out about you?
But Tonks was distracted from the question by Hestia's giggle.
"Why, of course Remus'll be fine! That's why we're here, isn't it? To see to it that he will be fine, even if he's not at the moment?"
Tonks felt her blood begin to boil again as Hestia chattered and giggled. Every inch of her burned to react, and she didn't know how long she'd be able to hold back the hot words, but she restrained herself, for the sake of maintaining whatever new level of understanding, even respect, she'd achieved in Molly's eyes, as long as possible. Even if it was only a minute.
Miraculously, Molly actually rolled her eyes at Hestia.
Tonks took it as permission to turn around and lead on. She set a quicker pace than she had yet, knowing, somehow, that Molly harboured no resentment for leaving her in the dust as she struggled with her picnic hamper.
As she walked, the thoughts about the Oak Moon which she'd left unspoken to Molly and Hestia tumbled pell-mell through her head.
Difficult didn't go far enough to describe what Remus experienced during his December transformation. Of course that had been how he phrased it to her the first December they were together when she noticed he was ill for longer leading up to and following that month's transformation, and asked him about it.
Just a slightly more difficult moon than normal, he'd said with a shrug and a smile that said it was no big deal, but thanks to Wolfsbane Potion, he'd feel none the worse if he were to prowl all night in a dank dungeon on the hunt for Red Caps, and then play a game of Quidditch the next day.
At that point she'd been thoroughly distracted from worry by the image of Remus zooming around on a broomstick, throwing Quaffles which was, perhaps, more unbelievable than him turning into a bloodthirsty monster one night each month.
Not to mention bloody hilarious.
Don't forget you were also a wee bit distracted December of '93 because Remus invited you to spend Christmas at his house in the New Forest. You were worse than ever in Stealth and Tracking because Darling Des said he was taking you away for a dirty weekend, and you were wetting yourself wondering how the hell to break it to him you were a virgin.
"Ouch!"
Hestia's sharp cry interrupted Tonks' train of thought, but she continued walking, heedless, until Hestia called out to her to stop. The note of desperation in her voice made Tonks turn. Hestia was leaning against Molly, rubbing her ankle.
"You okay?" Tonks asked.
Hestia looked up, rather crossly. "Would you please slow down? It won't help Remus if we all cripple ourselves falling into potholes covered up by snow! Especially the Healer!"
"Go on ahead," said Molly, hoisting Hestia's arm over her shoulder so she could support her. "We'll catch up."
Tonks didn't hesitate to hitch up her rucksack and do just that, though niggling guilt refused to allow her legs to move at the pace she'd kept previously.
Typical, you self-centred prat. Just like last year, when you were too wrapped up in becoming a full-fledged Auror, and obsessing over Remus' secrets, to notice that losing his Hogwarts job meant he didn't have Professor Snape brewing his Wolfsbane Potion.
A year and a half later, her face still burned with mortification that six months had passed before it had registered. Remus had assured her it was okay, he hadn't drawn attention to it precisely because he knew she'd enough on her mind without fretting over things that didn't matter.
But they did matter. At the very least, she ought to have noticed. She was his girlfriend, for Merlin's sake.
Did you need it spelled out in four-foot high letters, flashing in neon lights? You couldn't have asked for a bigger clue than the change in your sex life.
Actually, she wasn't so sure. When she thought about it, she supposed there always had been a pattern of not being physical, or seeing him at all, very close to full moon. Then again, why should she have attributed it to the lunar cycle? Remus had been very busy with his teaching duties and extra tutoring sessions with Harry. It had seemed natural that he'd be too tired, or too busy to see her; Merlin knew her training schedule had been the one to keep them apart at least as often as his, especially as Auror qualifications loomed closer. Remus spoke so seldom about transformations, or his potion, that Tonks, convinced he was managing, all but put it out of her mind.
Since the termination of Remus' employment at Hogwarts, they'd had a thousand factors working against them, not least of which included the guilt trip Remus seemed unlikely ever to return from, over his lie of omission to Dumbledore and Sirius having to go on the run. Mixed with Tonks pretending to have fallen out and broken up with him so they could keep their relationship secret, they were practically begging for stress, exhaustion, and all not to be fair in love-making and war.
That line of thinking had carried her to the previous December, when the memory of Oak Moon being a difficult moon, but Wolfsbane Potion helped, slammed into her with the force of the Hogwarts Express. She'd reacted impulsively -- and regrettably.
Not only had she made great thing of the fact that Remus had gone six months without Wolfsbane Potion, throwing in his face the whole sodding chain of events he'd already been flagellating himself over since June, but she'd also rubbed his nose in it that in the meanwhile she had acquired one of the most prestigious careers in the Wizarding world by offering to hire him a potion-brewer. Of course Remus had been the epitome of cordial when he turned her down, offering his standard assurance that he'd be fine. But fine wasn't good enough for her, not when she could do something to make him better than fine, and she'd pushed the issue till it had erupted into a proper row which, if she were to be totally honest, she was surprised hadn't brought about a real break-up and an end to all their secrecy.
She'd thought it had been over when, in the midst of the fight, a mission for Dumbledore took Remus away for the entire fortnight leading up to the Oak Moon, so that Tonks saw neither the worst of the pre-transformation effects, or the aftermath. Yet instead of the stony silence of a lovers' quarrel interrupted, every day of Remus' absence brought owls bearing newsy letters of his travels, all light and wry and amusing and sounding like they came from Remus in the pink of health. When he'd returned to her in time for their second Christmas holiday to the New Forest, she'd looked for signs that the moon had been more difficult for him without Wolfsbane Potion than it had been the previous year with it. Enough time had passed that he had fully recovered to his usual, if a bit thinner, self. Nor did she ask him how his transformation had been.
And that just goes to show why you weren't sorted into Gryffindor. You're a bloody coward, through and through, too afraid of pissing off a bloke and risking him breaking up with you, to probe him about something you know he's not being up front with you about. Wasn't that why you broke up with him? Cos you wouldn't settle for less than honesty? You're a damned hypocrite, as well as a coward.
At least her inaction hadn't kept her permanently in the dark. Her Ravenclaw dad would have been right proud of how she turned to books to get the information she couldn't bring herself to ask from Remus. For the next year, she'd read every werewolf-related book, journal article, and pamphlet she could get her hands on. A lot of it had been horrifying; a lot of it had been rubbish, she learnt later, after a very strange tea she'd managed to arrange with Newt Scamander. Of course the things that had horrified her hadn't really been the rubbish bits -- like pre-transformation skyrocketing lycanthrope libido, which she knew from personal experience was hogswallop. Now that she was looking for it, she recognised a direct correlation between the approach of full moon and the effectiveness of her lingerie.
But then afterwards he was himself again, sweet and affectionate, and looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time, and was delighted by her.
She didn't think Remus had any idea how much she took from those first moments of seeing him after another moonset, or how much that look meant to her. No matter how helpless she'd felt watching the waxing moon chip away at the thin veneer of his health and stamina, no matter how like a failure she'd felt at not being able to stop it, or even to ease it, that look confirmed his love; as the moon waned, their relationship could grow anew.
It was the anticipation of that look which quickened her steps now, even as she slipped on icy patches in the trail and twice narrowly avoided crashing onto her backside, and Hestia called, giggling, that she wasn't sure why Tonks had bothered to bring a Healer along, when she didn't seem to care if that Healer made it to the patient in one piece. For one horrifying bit she'd read in werewolf lore, which she'd found in the anonymous autobiography, Hairy Snout, Human Heart, which Newt Scamander had recommended particularly, and lent Tonks his own copy as Umbridge had banned it, had been confirmed one-hundred percent true.
Not only was the Oak Moon longest full moon of the year (read: the lengthiest amount of time Remus spent trapped in the form of a werewolf) but enacted in his body was the violent struggle of the Oak King of winter over the Holly King of summer at the coming of Solstice. Then more than ever, the werewolf thirsted for human prey. If free, he would get it; if confined, sensing the shreds of humanity lingering in his mind and spirit, he would turn on himself.
So, she understood why Remus refused to transform in his room at Grimmauld Place, as he usually did. She understood that he didn't want to risk the safety of their colleagues who might not be able to stay away from Headquarters if an emergency were to arise. She understood that even if he were restrained, the werewolf, sensing human prey, could have a surge of strength and break free, even against magical bonds. She understood that even Sirius, in his Animagus form, could be at risk at this time of heightened sense and need.
She did not understand why Remus would place himself at risk, rather than ask her, just this once, to find him the Potion.
Cos you're not enough for him, Tonks. You're too young, too naive, too inept--
An icy patch swept her feet out from under her, and she skidded on the heels of her rubber-soled trainers, flailing her arms wildly for balance, till she hit a tree root which pitched her headlong straight at a tree off the path.
Inept, see? This is why he doesn't trust you with the werewolf thing. Cos you can't even bloody walk through the wood to his house without doing something stupid--
Hands brushing the branches of a sprawling holly, she closed her fingers around them to stop herself careening into the tree, gritting her teeth against the prick of the spiny leaves penetrating her gloves.
Yes, she was utterly wrong for Remus -- but he loved her anyway. She didn't know why; truthfully, she'd always been rather in the dark about that.
The timing of when he'd first told her, said the actual words I love you hadn't been the first time they'd slept together, or after that, on Valentine's Day, or his birthday or on a romantic date or any other time people tended to say those words for the first time. They hadn't even been together at all. And it had followed so many words from her that she was pretty sure never preceded I love you.
Hell -- it's a miracle he went out with you at all, seeing as in the first twenty-four hours of knowing him you accused him of running the black market Dark Creature trade! Then you had to go and dump him the day he resigned from Hogwarts. He'd been honest with you, truly honest, for the first time ever. He'd wanted forgiveness and loyalty....and comfort. And you threw all of it back in his face!
She didn't think she'd ever stop blushing with shame whenever she thought back to that day, which remained as clear in her memory as if only eighteen seconds had passed instead of eighteen months...
"It wasn't as bad as you're making it out to be," said Kingsley Shacklebolt as Tonks pushed her way out of the lift before the doors had fully opened.
"Don't lie just to make me feel better." The staccato tap of Tonks' heels as she stepped off of the carpeted area where the lifts were onto the hardwood floor in the Ministry Atrium underscored her clipped syllables. "I don't want to hear it."
"Watch it." Kingsley's booming baritone was closer now, as his longer strides quickly caught him up to her. "You may not think you'll qualify for Auror, but until your marks are posted, I'm still your superior, and that means you don't get to choose what you hear from me. And I'm not--Look out!"
His large hand wrapped firmly around her elbow, but he was too late to stop her colliding with a person who had been obscured from view by the Centaur statue in the Fountain of Magical Brethren.
"Bugger!" Tonks hissed, as Kingsley tugged her back and kept her steady on her feet. "Sorry, I--"
The apology died on her tongue when she looked up to see who she'd run into.
Remus.
Remus, who that very morning had come to her flat and told her that Sirius was an Animagus, and he'd known all along, and kept it from her.
Remus, who by keeping something like that from her, had betrayed her trust.
Remus, who for betraying her trust, she'd broken up with.
Remus, who she'd broken up with, which had distracted her so completely that she was sure she'd failed Stealth and Tracking.
Remus, here now, in his shabby old robes, clutching his battered old briefcase with the peeling monogram.
She ought to have turned and walked away, without a word, as Kingsley tried to get her to do. But her feet felt as though they'd been hit with a Sticking Charm to root her to the highly polished floor. Remus was the very last person on earth she wanted to see right now. Not only that, but he had the balls to turn up here, looking bloody awful, and shake hands -- albeit warily -- with Kingsley.
"What the hell are you doing here?" she demanded. "I thought you were taking the train to Brockenhurst."
His eyes fixed somewhere just to the side of her face, and his lips twitched into that damned polite smile he always kept at the ready, like a pocket handkerchief.
"I took a slight detour," he said, "in the hope that if I demonstrate contrition and compliance by enrolling with the Werewolf Registry, I might be able to prevent widespread fall-out for my actions." The lines of his face deepened with obvious effort to maintain the mild manner he wanted to show the world. "However, it seems a vain hope, in light of the whisperings that legislation is already being drawn up for monitoring of my kind."
Even in her fury at him, Tonks couldn't deny the guilt, the deep sadness, she heard in Remus' rasping tones. Her heart went out to him--
--but she reined it in.
It was horrible for Remus, she knew, and to tell or not to tell must have been a huge dilemma. But it didn't have to be this way. If only he'd bloody told her, she would have done everything she could to protect him even as the truth came to light. He'd be tucked up in his great four-poster bed at Hogwarts, having his usual post-transformation lie-in, still gainfully employed, rather than jobless and subjecting himself to the humiliation of registering with the Ministry. And, though she wondered that she could accept it as the truth so easily after Remus had lied to her by omission for the better part of a year, she believed Black really was innocent and felt sure that if she'd been privy to the truth sooner, she could have done something to prevent him going on the run, and seen him exonerated of the murder charges. Remus wouldn't be carrying that guilt now. At least, if they'd tried and failed, he wouldn’t be carrying it alone.
In the heat of the moment she'd told him that the truth would have made her break up with him, but would she really have done? All those months ago, when it was early days, she was so chuffed that someone like him would fancy someone like her. In her heart of hearts, she knew she couldn't confidently say she'd have had the guts to break up with him, to put the career she'd dreamed of before a life she wasn't sure she wanted.
Stupid. She'd been so. bloody. stupid.
It made her furious.
"Yeah, well," she spat, "that's what happens when you circumvent the law, isn't it?"
"Come on, Tonks," said Kingsley, pulling gently on her arm again. "Let's go."
Jerking free of his grasp, she lit into Remus. "D'you know what other whisperings there are?"
Remus' eyes flicked to her, meeting her gaze for the first time since they'd run into each other. They were rounded, and allowed Tonks to read him more clearly than she'd ever managed before now. Fatigue, and the situation, had caused him to let his guard down. He was afraid of what she had to say. It seemed impossible; she hadn't thought Remus was afraid of anything. But he was.
"There's to be an inquiry," Tonks said, "into whether I knew my boyfriend was an unregistered werewolf and endangering the lives of the schoolchildren, and if I did, whether I ought to be suspended. Not that I’m going to qualify anyway," she added sharply, "seeing as I just cocked up my Stealth practical."
"For the millionth time," said Kingsley, "you passed."
"Barely," she said, eyes on Remus. "No thanks to you."
Remus swallowed hard, and Tonks watched his Adam's apple bob in his slender white throat, and press against his collar. "I'm so sorry."
"Yeah," Tonks said, turning on her heel. "Me, too."
As she walked toward the furthest gilded fireplace in the Atrium, she heard Kingsley tell Remus goodbye and good luck before calling to her. "Oi! Tonks! Where are you Flooing to?"
Tonks stopped in her tracks. She didn't have a bloody clue where she was Flooing to. Not home. She couldn't take Des right now. She tried not to think about the quiet evening Remus had promised her, of dinner in his room at Hogwarts followed by a massage and a bath...
She turned around as Kingsley strode up behind her. His tall, broad frame blocked out the fountain and any parting view of Remus.
"You need a drink," he said, taking a pinch of Floo powder off the intricately carved mantel. "Come to the Leaky with me."
"Is that an order?" Tonks asked.
"Yes." Kingsley laid a hand on her shoulder and tossed the powder into the Fireplace. "Diagon Alley!"
A few minutes later, she found herself nursing a Firewhisky in a shadowy corner booth in the mouldy tavern.
"How was I s'posed to concentrate?" She sounded pitiful, but didn't have the energy to care. "All day, everyone was saying, 'Poor Tonks. Stupid girl didn't know she was sleeping with a werewolf.'"
"They weren't saying that," Kingsley chided.
"They were thinking it."
"That's the spirit. Be that confident on your Legilimency exam, and you'll pass with flying colours."
In spite of her determination to wallow in misery, Tonks felt the corners of her mouth curve upward against her bottle.
"Finally," said Kingsley. "A smile."
Tonks promptly frowned. "I hate pity."
Sighing, Kingsley rested his elbows heavily on the crude table and ran a hand over his shiny bald head. "For what it's worth, the only thing I feel sorry for you about is that Remus didn't live up to your trust. I mean, what's it matter if he's a werewolf? That's one day out of every twenty-seven, right? Rest of the time he's the sort of chap you'd feel good about taking home to meet your parents."
Tonks wished she had taken him home at some point, so her parents could have seen for themselves how wonderful he'd been to her, instead of only knowing of him as the former Defence professor now embroiled in one of the worst scandals since the war ended. She didn't even want to think about the owls that must be waiting for her at the flat. At least her parents had had the sense to leave her alone before her test.
"That's the thing, Kingsley," she said, even though it wasn't the thing. Werewolf thing or Black thing, the principle was the same. "I don't care about him being a werewolf. I....could've fallen in love with him anyway, if he'd just let me in. What?"
Kingsley was looking at her like she'd gone mad. Then he snorted into his beer.
"Tonks, Tonks, Tonks...Please tell me you're not living under the delusion that you weren't -- aren't -- head-over-two-left-feet in love with him."
"I--"
"You fell in love with Remus, whether you intended to or not, even though he held out on you. And you didn't fall out of love with him the minute you broke up with him."
"I--"
"How else do you think hearts get broken?"
Kingsley watched her with his warm brown eyes, and Tonks wondered if he was reading her, because that was exactly how she felt inside: broken. God, she wanted to cry.
But she sucked it up. "What are you going to say next? That if we're meant to be, Remus'll prove he's worth it and make it up to me, and I'll find it in my heart to forgive him?"
"Pretty much the gist of it, yeah."
Reliving that conversation as she stood in the New Forest on a freezing December morning, face burning as she thought of how awful she'd been, Tonks still managed to smile. Avoiding the icy patch that had sent her off the road, glancing over her shoulder to see that Molly and Hestia were catching up to her (Molly actually thanked her for waiting), Tonks resumed her hike with a new energy as the shadows of the past drifting to the front of her memory became a bit less...shadowy.
Much as she'd insisted to Kingsley and herself that it would be far more vindicating -- especially to her Stealth marks -- to stay pissed off at Remus, she found herself wondering, right there in the Leaky Cauldron, what Remus could do to make her forgive him. In fact, if she'd been honest with herself, she'd already begun to forgive him even without him doing a damn thing. Thanks to Kingsley, who didn't even know the real thing she was upset at Remus for was holding back.
"Don't hate me for saying this," said Kingsley a few days later, when the end of Auror qualification exams brought them once more to the pub, "but I sort of get why Remus didn't register as a werewolf."
"Do you?" Tonks knew exactly why, as Remus had told her when she'd mentioned having checked the Registry one day and coming up with nothing, but she wanted to hear what an unbiased outsider had to say.
"Had to be a secret for him to get to go to school at all, hadn't it?"
"I suppose..."
"Well, then, after seven years of anonymity, and no incident, why would Remus suddenly go public? Scandal aside, it must be right impossible to get a job when you've got Werewolf stamped on your records. And it's not like Werewof Support Services actually provides services."
Tonks wondered if Remus had begun looking for work yet, or if he was lying low and reading the Prophet with increasing hopelessness. The new anti-werewolf bills Dolores Umbridge was trying to persuade Minister Fudge to sign were getting almost as many inches in the paper these days as the unfolding story of Black's escape . Mandatory registration had already been passed, and the Werewolf Capture Unit were undergoing additional training to prepare for tracking and arresting those who didn't comply. Half the letters to the editor this week were from witches and wizards who supported the tightening of security, and more than a few employers sought legal protection to sack werewolf workers.
No, if that was what Remus had anticipated as a young man, she couldn't blame him for not registering, or his parents for hiding the truth when he was a child.
Yet even though he hadn't been registered, Remus hadn't seemed to have had much long-term work before his stint at Hogwarts. Why? Had it been difficult for him to keep a job because of the relentless cycle of the moon? Had his bosses noticed the pattern of his illness? How ill was he? Knowing how tired and sickly he became every month whilst he was taking the Wolfsbane Potion, Tonks could only imagine it was worse without.
Of course, Remus had never spoken of any of these things.
Which was the whole damn problem. Even if she hadn't broken up with him because of the werewolf thing.
"Why are you pushing this?" she asked, frustrated that Kingsley was striking an emotional chord with her that distracted from the actual issue. "Do you want me to get back together with him, or something?"
Kingsley took a drink. "Yeah. I do."
She should have let it drop, but in spite of herself, she couldn't help but ask why.
"No offence, Tonks," said Kingsley, "I love you when you're snarky and feisty and independent and fuelled by righteous fury..."
"But?"
"But ever since you broke it off with Remus, you've been a bit of a loose cannon. You've got crap marks on your exams--"
"I've been a tad distracted!"
"Actually," drawled Kingsley, "I think it's that you overcompensated." He paused, met her stare levelly, and leant back in the booth, stretching one arm across the seat, and sipped his beer casually. "Remember last autumn, before you got a boyfriend, and you were your own worst enemy because you worked too hard and made yourself nervous?"
Feeling a bit like she'd taken a Stunner to the chest, Tonks nodded weakly. Was he saying what she thought he was saying? "You think I did better in training because I was getting laid?"
"Because you were getting laid by Remus, yeah," Kingsley replied. "I mean this in the best possible way, Tonks, but you grew up a lot this year. You and Remus fit really well together. He brought out the best in you. It was like you'd found your purpose as a human being, not just as an Auror cadet."
Tonks picked at the handle of her mug. "I wanted to be his equal. I thought if I could get to his level he'd..." She swallowed a painful lump in her throat. "...love me."
Her voice came out small and pinched and pathetic. She quickly swigged her beer and added, bitterly, "Obviously that wasn't enough for him, or he'd have told me his secrets. Bastard."
"What if he was protecting you?" Kingsley asked.
"Protecting me?"
"When we ran into him in the Atrium and you told him about the inquiry, I read him like a book. He was afraid of something like that happening. But if you didn't know about him, you'd be off the hook for sitting on information."
It made sense.
A lot of sense.
After the initial days of knowing each other, when they'd found one another irresistible, he'd backed off inexplicably. Later, after she'd stumbled onto the truth during a bit of very ill-advised detective work, he'd confessed to her that, given the gap in their ages, his conscience refused to allow him to go out with her without her knowing what he was. But he hadn't wanted to tell her, either, when, for all his attraction to her, he barely knew her. Rather a slap in the face, to be sure -- but at least it had been an honest slap in the face. He'd made it up to her with a series of the loveliest dates she'd ever been on, treating her like a queen, and in that context, his preoccupation with doing right by her became charming, endearing. She'd thought that men who cared more about a woman than about themselves only existed in fairy tales. It was difficult to feel insulted by protectiveness when a bloke made you feel special, or even...cherished.
When applied to the Black situation, protection made even more sense, and oh God! In that light, it became perfectly obvious that Remus hadn't thought for a second that she would betray his trust. She'd been mad to suggest it. He wouldn't have tried to protect her otherwise. He knew. He knew she would honour his confidence, and so he kept silent, to protect her from being incriminated, from being denied Auror qualification, from being packed off to Azkaban...
The constricted feeling that had clutched at Tonks' heart for days loosened--
--but some rebellious part of her still resisted.
"Isn't up to me whether I risk my job? Protection's gallant, but it's not right."
"No," said Kingsley, surprisingly. "But it's noble. Damned hard to find noble people."
That was the truth, Tonks thought. "I'm not one of them."
However much she'd grown up during her third year of Auror training, Tonks was no more noble now, as a Junior Auror, than she had been then -- as Hestia's breathless pleas from further and further behind on the path made perfectly plain. Tonks slowed her pace, and pulled up her sleeve to check her watch. As she did, her silver charm bracelet caught her eye, and she smiled.
No, she wasn't noble -- but Remus, who definitely was, didn't care. As had been evident the night he gave her the bracelet...
"Sure you don't want me to walk you home?" Kingsley asked when he saw Tonks down to the lobby of his flat when she left the party he'd thrown the new Junior Aurors after their graduation ceremony.
"Haven't we established this week that I've gone off of gallant men?" Tonks teased. "Anyway, you've got a lot of new Aurors up in your flat who are two sheets to the wind, and if you go to mine, Des, constantly vigilant in her quest to hook up with Auror Shacklebolt, will pounce, and you'll never get away from her in time to save your lovely white sofa from total destruction--"
"As if you didn't already dye it red with your wine," he muttered, looking over his shoulder to the lift, high forehead etched with concern.
"So I'll just walk myself home, ta." Tonks turned back in the doorway to thank him for everything that week, all his support about the break-up, then stepped out into the night and sighed with relief.
It had been hard -- so very hard -- to be at one of Kingsley's parties, single after months of attending on Remus' arm, and feeling like the belle of the ball when she saw how well-liked he was, even among strangers. Oddly she'd felt his absence most keenly on the several occasions during the course of the night that people had asked her about him, and why she hadn't teamed up with Umbridge to champion the new legislation, when she herself had been treated so abominably by one of the nasty, lying creatures. Because that wasn't Remus. For all his faults, he was a million times the human half the people she knew were.
So she'd left early, missing him, and wishing she could see him.
Lucky stars must have shone that night. When she rounded the corner of her building, he was there.
He stood in the shadows, magical blue flame cupped in one hand as she'd first seen him at the gates of Hogwarts last September. In the other hand, he clutched a bouquet.
"Hyacinths," he said, quietly, holding it out to her.
She drank in the fragrant purple blossoms. "For congratulations?"
Remus shook his head. "For an apology. And I hope -- forgiveness. This..." He reached into his pocket and drew out a flat velvet box.
A jewellery case.
"This is for congratulations."
She could manage no more than his whispered name as he placed it in her hand.
He tapped his wand to it, and it opened to reveal a silver bracelet, gleaming brilliantly in the flickering blue light of the flame. From it dangled three delicate charms which, after the initial dream-like haze of seeing him, of being given flowers and jewellery after she'd so cruelly dumped him, she recognised as runes. At the centre was Jera, the rune of success, with a red gemstone set in one corner -- cornelian, she remembered from her Ancient Runes textbook; on one side dangled Wunjo, the rune of joy, which contained a diamond (dear Merlin, he must have spent a fortune...and him, without a job); and there was yet another, an opal-encrusted Gebo, the rune of forgiveness and--
Her heart was in her throat.
"It's for love, as well," said Remus.
She looked up.
For love.
Had he said...? Did he mean...?
Oh Merlin, it was in his eyes, his beautiful blue eyes, and was stepping closer to her, so close that his words were a warm breath on her face.
"I love you," he said. "I have for a long time. I should have told you sooner, but I thought...I saved it because...I thought tonight would be special."
"As if that alone wouldn't make any night special?" Tonks asked, then cursed herself for it.
But Remus laughed, quietly, and put his hand on her waist, and dipped his head. He looked boyishly up at her through his fringe. "I know. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before." He looked up again, and looked like a man, with greying hair and lines around his eyes and mouth. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you a lot of things before."
"You were protecting me," said Tonks, shaking her head. "And Dumbledore."
"And myself," he added. "I'm not noble...Elphine."
"You are," Tonks argued. "You were just wrong. And you're not the only one who was. I owe you hyacinths."
He smiled gently. "You don't owe me a thing, except..."
She'd told him she loved him, too, of course.
Now, looking at her charm bracelet, reflecting the December morning grey against her black leather glove, she warmed at the memory of his brilliant smile as he carefully clasped it around her wrist. Several new rune charms had been added since then, his gifts for her birthday and Christmas and Valentine's Day, which she knew he could ill afford as time dragged on without a steady income, but which she cherished all the more because she knew how much it meant to him to give them to her.
If only he knew how much she wanted to give to him in return.
Their reconciliation had been sweet, but not without the bitter. The Ministry had let her off the inquiry hook because Kingsley had argued on her behalf that her reaction to Remus being outed was too genuinely shocked and angry for her to have known he was a werewolf. If she were to keep a low profile, they would have to be together in secret. Which she hated, because the very last thing she wanted after everything was for him to think she was ashamed of sleeping with a werewolf, as everyone assumed she must be. But Remus, of course, had been perfectly agreeable about it. It was safer, he said, and he couldn't ask for anything more than her safety and her love.
Doesn't he, though? Tonks asked herself as the familiar sight of his chimney of crumbling stone appeared through a gap in the trees. Doesn't he need someone to keep him safe? Especially when the Oak moon waxes full?
But apparently that someone's not you, or he'd let you in. He's holding back again, Tonks. It's the werewolf thing keeping him from you again.
She brushed the thoughts of self-doubt aside and fixated on the ones about Remus. At the thought of the wolf, so needy for human flesh, tearing at his own body -- Remus' body -- she quickened her pace on the snowy path. As she raced through the forest, eyes fixed on the chimney that meant Remus was so near, she could only hope that Molly was right, that he was fine, tucked up in bed, and simply sleeping too soundly to have sent for her.
You'll see, Tonks. When he opens his eyes, he'll look at you, and you'll see you really are all he needs.
At least...you hope you will.
If she didn't, she hadn't a bloody clue what she would do.
A/N: The Oak Moon is actually the name of the December full moon, but I've taken imaginative license tying it in with the legend of King Holly and King Oak, as well as with how it might affect Remus' transformations. If you're interested in seeing the runes Remus chose for Tonks' charm bracelet, you can find them at the Metal Artist home page.
Thanks to all who are following this fic, and I appreciate the feedback y'all left for the prologue. This time, those who review will receive a bouquet of your favorite flowers and the jewelry item of your choice, from Remus, of course, though of course the gesture needn't be an apology. Unless, of course, you've had the quarrel just for the fun of making up... ;)
Read Chapter 2