Fic: Nymphadora Tonks and the Marauder's Box
Author: starfishstar and stereolightning
Title: Nymphadora Tonks and the Marauder's Box
Rating & Warnings: PG, no warnings
Word Count: 4,900 words
Prompt: stereolightning’s prompt #1: Tonks gets a box of Sirius’ old personal effects out of storage as part of her ongoing "investigation" of this "escaped convict." She brings it to Grimmauld Place. She ends up with a little more information than she bargained for...
Summary: Even as they grow to be friends, Tonks doubts she'll ever know much about Remus' past. But when a box of Sirius' old belongings turns up at the Auror Office and she brings it back to Grimmauld Place to delve through and laugh over with her two friends, she finds herself seeing more than she ever expected of Remus, both body and soul.
Notes: We now present to you - rt_morelove's first co-written effort! I was taken with stereolightning's prompt, but couldn't help thinking this story would be so much more creative and fun if two heads worked on it instead of one... so I asked if she would write it with me. We had such a blast doing this! We hope you enjoy this even a fraction as much as we enjoyed writing it.
- - - - -
Tonks found she was humming to herself as she made her way up from the Auror Office to the Ministry Atrium with a sturdy cardboard box, sealed with Tough Charm Tape and stamped Property of the Auror Office, clasped under one arm.
Kingsley had handed it to her with the stern instructions, "Another search through the Archives turned up this additional box of Black's personal effects that were seized after he was arrested. I want you to take this home tonight and have a good look through it to see if you can turn up any clues." Then he'd winked.
That wink seemed to suggest that this was not just about misdirection and letting the Ministry think Sirius might be in places that he definitely wasn't; no, the wink suggested that Kingsley was handing this to Tonks in particular because he thought she might enjoy looking through it. That its contents might reveal amusing, even embarrassing, things about her cousin that she could then have fun teasing him about. Tonks actually skipped a bit as she left stepped out of the lift and into the Atrium.
Straight to Grimmauld Place, then. From the Atrium's Apparition spot, she spun in place and landed in a blind alley near Headquarters that they used for their comings and goings, stumbling a little as the box under her arm threw off her balance.
Sirius opened the door when she knocked, but then stomped off back upstairs. In one of his moods, then. Feeling trapped and useless at Grimmauld Place didn't always do great things for his personality. Well, fine. She could amuse herself just as well without him.
Especially with this box and the promises it held!
Tonks made her way downstairs (not knocking over the troll's leg umbrella stand, thank you very much), brewed herself a quick cup of the Darjeeling that Remus always seemed to keep on hand, then turned her attention to the box she'd set down at one end of the long kitchen table.
Ah, young Sirius, she thought, what will we find of you here?
Charming open the tape, she carefully lifted each of the box's flaps.
Most of it looked to be the kind of detritus an Auror might collect on the off chance it would later turn out to reveal a clue - scraps of parchment with notes in illegible scrawl, things that looked to be grocery lists and incomplete spell ideas and something that was barely decipherable but rather looked like it might be a knock-knock joke. Nothing that would particularly incriminate Sirius to the Ministry - or to Tonks and her hunt for embarrassing facts about his past.
Sifting past all the bits of parchment, she found there were a few books, too, probably pulled off Sirius' shelves when they'd tossed whatever flat he'd been living in at the time. Lurid Muggle pulp fiction and some sort of dense philosophical treatise, now wasn't that combination Sirius in a nutshell?
For about half a second Tonks wondered if they could use that - get the Ministry to believe Sirius might be hiding in Denmark, on the strength of his interest in Kierkegaard? - but then discarded the idea as flimsy.
She set the books to one side, reached in further, and found - photographs. "Ohhhh, yes!" she muttered, carefully withdrawing a small stack of photographs out of the box and settling into a chair.
There were a few snapshots of people she didn't recognise - people who'd been in the Order the first time round, she couldn't help thinking. But, then, oh - one of the pictures included Remus. A Remus with barely any grey in his hair, which he wore longer than Tonks had ever seen it. He looked less careworn than Tonks had ever seen him look, too. Merlin, what she wouldn't give for a chance to find out what the elusive Remus had been like when he was young!
Then in the next photograph, aha, there was young Sirius, posing cockily in the middle of the shot - Merlin, he really had been a handsome devil, hadn't he? - with his arm around a stunning woman who… Wait, was that a full-blood Veela?
Tonks looked up, distracted by the sound of footsteps descending the basement stairs. Sirius, come to be good company after all? No, she knew it by the familiar, measured sound of his tread - that was Remus, not Sirius. Tonks' stomach did that funny little squirm it always did when Remus approached.
She tamped it down and said, "Wotcher!" as he appeared in the doorway.
"Oh, hello." He blinked at her. "Didn't know you were here."
Tonks pushed back her chair and stood, photo still in hand. "Remus, is that a Veela?"
He stepped closer and took the photograph from her, their fingers just brushing.
Looking down at the picture, Remus made a sound somewhere between a snort and a chuckle. "Oh, dear, that's - yes. Have I never told you the story about Sirius, the Veela and the one-way ticket to Minsk?"
"No, of course you haven't! Here, what if I make you tea and you tell me the story in exchange?" She picked up the tin of Darjeeling from the worktop and waggled it at him. "That's a fair trade, don't you think? One cup of delicious tea for one scandalous story about Sirius?"
He smiled. "I would tell you the story even without the tea, you know."
"No, no," she insisted, "It should be a fair exchange. Tea for stories."
The corners of his mouth tipped up even further. "All right."
Merlin, she loved making Remus smile. Almost as much as she loved teasing Sirius. Possibly more.
She waved her wand to heat the kettle again.
Part of being an Auror was being observant, and Tonks knew already exactly how Remus took his tea. She knew precisely how long he steeped it, and that he took his Darjeeling without milk but with just a tiny bit of sugar. That made him not quite a purist, perhaps, but Tonks had the sense that Remus was a person who'd lived through enough lean times to appreciate even small pleasures like a half a spoonful of sugar in his tea.
She handed him the cup and grinned in anticipation.
He took a sip, and Tonks saw his eyes go that tiny bit wider with pleased surprise. "Mm, very good," he said, and sipped again.
"Good enough to be worth a really ripping story about Sirius and a Veela, wouldn't you say?" she pressed.
"Hm, yes," Remus agreed. "I'd say."
He perched against the edge of the table, carefully balancing his cup, so Tonks came and mirrored him, leaning against the table and facing a bit towards him. She picked up her teacup again, as well.
Remus glanced down at the photograph that now lay on the table between them. "How did you come across this, anyway?"
Tonks indicated the box from the Ministry by pointing her chin in its direction, given that her hands were occupied with tea and saucer. "Kingsley dug that out of storage and thought we might have fun with it." She tossed a grin over Remus' way. "I have to say, I'm having fun with it already. And we haven't even got to the part about Sirius' Veela yet."
Remus gave the photograph another long-suffering look.
"She was called Valeria," he said. "And she was drop-dead beautiful, I admit it, but she was also a Veela, with all the attendant complications. We were maybe nineteen at the time, and she had Sirius completely convinced that what he wanted more than anything was to move with her to Belarus."
He was interrupted by footsteps on the stairs - this time it could only be Sirius.
They both looked up as he appeared in the doorway, then stopped there and seemed to smirk a little to see the two of them together.
"Wotcher," Tonks said, again, because he probably hadn't been listening to her properly the first time. But as mercurial as Sirius' moods could be, at least they sometimes cleared as fast as they came.
"Hey," Sirius said, nodding to both of them. Then he zeroed in on the photograph on the table, stalking towards it to take a closer look. "Hey, it's Valeria!" he said, picking the picture up and grinning. Tonks saw the woman - Veela - in the picture wink up at him. "Man, but she was crazy. Completely off her rocker."
Tonks found herself exchanging a glance with Remus, because surely only Sirius could sound that pleased about dating someone who was off her rocker?
"She used to throw fireballs at me when she got angry," Sirius reminisced. "And she got angry a lot."
"She also made you buy a one-way train ticket to Minsk, and then abandoned you in the woods by some lake," Remus noted drily.
Sirius chuckled.
"Right in the middle of a bunch of hags," Remus pressed.
"Ah, they wouldn't have eaten me," Sirius said. He tipped his head to the side and seemed to think for a moment. "Nah, I don't think they would have done."
"Uh, wait," Tonks said. "Your girlfriend abandoned you in some forest with hags and you just, what, walked away and caught a train home?"
"Battled my way out," Sirius grinned.
"No, actually, he ran away," Remus said. "And then had to Apparate all over half of Europe to make his way back to England."
"Good thing my family went on holiday to the Harz Mountains once when I was a kid," Sirius said. "Otherwise there wouldn't have been anywhere close enough that I knew how to Apparate to."
Remus shook his head at him, fond and exasperated.
"Anyway, worth it," Sirius said. "Valeria was hot. And I don't mean just when she was throwing fire."
"You know, it's no good finding embarrassing things from your past if you don't have the grace to be embarrassed about them," Tonks complained.
"Well, let's see what else we've got here," Sirius said, picking up the stack of photos Tonks had left on the table. He flicked through a few of them, discarding them casually back onto the tabletop, then said, "Oh, now. How about this one of old Moony?"
Tonks set down her cup and saucer. Sirius handed her the photo, which seemed to have been taken at a fancy dress party, because the figures in frame wore costume jewellery and bright, medieval-looking robes cut from cheap fabric. An odd lens flare obscured part of the picture, and she tilted the photo this way and that to try to get rid of it.
"Where?" she asked.
"Right there. In the middle. In the blue number with the sequins," said Sirius, pointing.
Tonks held the photo still and squinted. "What are you - oh! That's both of you, isn't it? In drag."
She giggled, half-amused and half-impressed by their efforts - disguise, being, after all, something she knew quite a lot about. In the photo, Remus and Sirius looked young, maybe eighteen - smooth-cheeked enough to pass as witches, if you didn't look too closely. Remus wore a blue polyester gown and a quietly arch expression. Sirius wore a red houppelande trimmed with faux fur, and his long, dark hair was arranged under a silver circlet. The total effect was très Rowena Ravenclaw.
"Sirius was by far the best-looking, as usual," said Remus, finishing his tea.
"Oh, but you were the only one who was at all convincing as a woman, Moony," said Sirius. "It's not enough just to dress like one. You have to get the psychology."
Tonks wrinkled her nose, unsure whether she wanted to hear a lecture on the psychology of women from Sirius Black, who had, after all, just admitted to following a flame-hurling Veela halfway to Asia for no discernible reason. "Who are you all supposed to be, anyway?" she asked.
"The witches from 'The Fountain of Fair Fortune.' You know, from The Tales of Beedle the Bard. And that's James as the knight, Sir Luckless," said Sirius, pointing to a tall, bespectacled wizard in what looked like real chainmail. James' resemblance to Harry was striking.
"I was unfairly typecast as Asha," said Remus. "Sick of a malady no Healer can cure, etcetera."
"And which one are you?" asked Tonks, nudging Sirius with her shoulder.
"Obvious, isn't it?" said Sirius. Just then his eighteen-year-old self in the photo leaned over and kissed James on the cheek, in exactly the awkward sort of way you would expect a young man to kiss his best friend at a fancy dress party. Probably whoever had taken the photo had dared him to do it.
"Ah. The one who was in love with Sir Luckless, then," she said.
Sirius' grey eyes became glassy and unfocused for a moment, but then he shook his head and tapped James' picture affectionately. "He saved my life about a dozen times."
Tonks nudged Sirius again, and her voice came out in a softer register than usual, part teasing, but part gentle. "You two do a lot of snogging, then?"
Sirius shook his head. "Nah, it wasn't like that. We were just…" His eyes darted to Remus and then to Tonks. "Look, for some people, the love of their life is this romantic affair, with starlight and birdsong and roses and whatever else. But sometimes the love of your life is just your friend, your best friend. I mean, look at Harry."
Tonks tilted her head quizzically. "Look at Harry, what?"
"Well, he likes girls, but no girlfriend is ever going to come close to what he has with Ron and Hermione. That's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. They finish each others' thoughts," said Sirius.
"They do, sometimes, don't they," said Remus, smiling. "And that's led them into quite as much trouble as we ever got into, if not more."
Sir Luckless and the fairy tale witches waved enthusiastically and beamed.
"Well, you were both right fetching, as girls," said Tonks, noting that Peter, too, was in this photo, and not wanting to draw too much attention to that. "Dead sexy, really. What else have we got?"
She picked up another photo. This one depicted a redheaded witch in high-waisted jeans and dark eye makeup, sitting astride a motorbike and smoking a cigarette, smirking, and giving a rude two-fingered salute with her other hand.
"That's Harry's mum. Lily," said Sirius, grinning again. "And my motorbike. The night James proposed. He took her joyriding across half of England."
The biggest diamond Tonks had ever seen winked from Lily's finger. Tonks flipped over the photograph. A note was scribbled across the back in sprawling, ecstatic capital letters - PADFOOT! SHE SAID YES! YOU OWE ME TEN GALLEONS, YOU NUMPTY!
"You were a fool to take that bet," said Remus, taking Tonks' empty cup from her.
Sirius shrugged. "He needed the encouragement."
Remus picked through the kitchen cabinets and quietly began making dinner. Aha, thought Tonks, we're making an evening of it. She would have to give Kingsley a very nice thank-you tomorrow. Pleased by this turn of events, she reached into the box and selected another artefact at random.
The object her groping hand withdrew from somewhere near the bottom of the box turned out to be a slim sheaf of parchment pages, neatly hand-bound on one side to create a small book. On the cover, in unmistakeable handwriting, was written:
Spring Verses
by
Remus J. Lupin
Tonks stared. This was…a volume of poetry? By Remus?
There was a thunk as the packet of pasta Remus had been holding dropped to the kitchen worktop, forgotten, and Tonks looked up to find him standing in front of her, rapidly going as red in the face as a Chinese Fireball dragon. "Er, yes, I'll just have that, then," Remus said, starting to reach for the little book.
"NO, DON'T GIVE IT TO HIM, HE'LL JUST THROW IT AWAY, LET ME SEE IT!" Sirius hollered, throwing himself at the both of them, and in the space of a second, both men were scrabbling for the book, shoving and grappling each other like little kids.
"No - Sirius - really - " Remus was gasping, as Sirius continued to shout, "Don't let him have it! Give it to me, Tonks, give it to me!"
Tonks jumped away from them, clutching the hotly contested little book to her chest. "No, stop it, both of you!" she said. "Not one step closer, or I'll use that very handy Bat-Bogey Hex Ginny Weasley showed me over the summer." She yanked her wand out of her robes to lend credence to the threat.
They did stop, panting, with Remus' hand still in a vice-like grip on Sirius' arm, and Sirius still clutching the shoulder of Remus' robes.
"Anyway, would you mind just giving that to me for a moment?" Remus asked, in his best Being Very Reasonable voice.
"No, no, don't give it to him, it's priceless, Tonks, really," Sirius entreated.
"Remus, I'm not going to look inside it," Tonks promised. "I just want to hold it. And - " she stifled a giggle " - and look at it. And appreciate its very existence."
Remus and Sirius shook themselves free of each other. Remus crossed his arms. Sirius slouched against the table, looking pleased.
Tonks put away her wand, then looked again at the cover of the slim, hand-bound volume she was holding. "Remus, you write poetry?" she asked.
"Wrote poetry," Remus said, looking pained. "Past tense, please."
"And why did Sirius have it, anyway?"
"He had it," Remus growled, "because he nicked it out of my flat and held it for ransom, in exchange for I don't even remember what, and then even once he got what he wanted, he wouldn't give it back, the git."
"Oh, don't be cross, Moony," Sirius said. "It was too good to let you have back. You would have just got rid of it. But, see, I kept it safe for you all these years."
"You kept it safe?" Tonks snorted. "The Auror Office kept it safe, more like."
"Eh," Sirius said, unconcerned. "It survived the years one way or another, didn't it?" He looked over at Remus, then back at Tonks. "Seriously, Tonks, you have to read it. You have to read it. You can't just stand there with poetry Remus wrote when he was nineteen in your hand and not read it!"
It was admittedly highly tempting.
"Can I…Remus, can I read maybe just one?" she asked.
Remus briefly closed his eyes, and Tonks considered rescinding her request, if it really made him that uncomfortable. She opened her mouth to say so -
"Yes," he said.
"What?"
"Yes, go ahead. Read one." Involuntarily, he cut his eyes sideways towards Sirius, then added, "Not out loud, please. Just read one poem to yourself."
Tonks stared at him, wondering if he meant it. He seemed to mean it.
"Uh, okay," she said. "Thanks."
Remus nodded, still looking embarrassed, but no longer the colour of a Chinese Fireball.
Tonks looked down at the book in her hands again, and very gently opened the cover.
The poem on the first page was titled "In Springtime" and it was…really lovely, actually. Very sweet, with phrasing that was lyrical but understated. It was a love poem to an unnamed girl and it started and ended with the line, "All I can think of is her eyes."
It was almost unbearably sweet to think of nineteen-year-old Remus feeling these feelings and writing these words. At nineteen, while Sirius had been chasing a crazy Veela across Europe, Remus had been writing gentle love poetry about some girl to whom he would surely never actually reveal his affections.
And wasn't that the two of them in a nutshell?
She looked up to find Remus still watching her. Waiting to hear what judgement she would pass, she realised.
"Remus, I really like it," she said. "I'm impressed, actually. I didn't know you could write this well. Let alone write this well years ago." She smiled at him, and he smiled back, a little shyly.
"Oh, for Merlin's sake!" Sirius said. "You're as bad as him." He waved his arms in a dismissive gesture, and went to take over whatever Remus had been preparing to cook.
Tonks carefully closed the cover of Remus' volume of poetry, then looked over at him and motioned with the book towards the inner pocket of her robes, a gesture that asked, Can I hold onto this for a bit?
He hesitated, then nodded, seeming to say, Okay, I trust you.
Tonks smiled and tucked the book carefully away.
"Oi, seriously, dinner is not going to cook itself!" Sirius called. He picked up the packet of pasta and shook it like a maraca.
Still smiling, Tonks joined Sirius at the cookery end of the massive kitchen and began charming the lids off of tinned tomatoes and bewitching knives to mince garlic and rosemary. A moment later, Sirius slunk off to the pantry in search of acceptable wine, and Tonks watched Remus cook with a practised efficiency.
All I can think of is her eyes. Who must that have been about? Had she survived the war, or was she gone, like so many of his and Sirius' friends? Tonks thought she might be pushing her luck to ask, and anyway, this was turning out to be such a fun evening that she didn't want to temper the mood with questions that could have unhappy answers.
"Found a Sauterne and a Bordeaux," said Sirius, re-emerging and uncorking two bottles with a graceful flick of his wand. "Let's drink to youthful indiscretion."
"Chin chin," said Tonks, as three goblets zoomed overhead and one of them found its way to her outstretched hand. She sipped tentatively at her wine, and wondered how long it had been ageing in some corner. It tasted sharp and tannic, but not off. Maybe spells had kept it relatively drinkable.
From tea to wine in the space of an hour - yes, this had been a very successful trip to Grimmauld Place indeed.
They ate together at the table, and here and there Sirius pulled out another photograph or scrap of parchment and commented on it, leaning his chair back on two legs and grinning or muttering. Tonks noticed that Remus drank carefully, taking reserved little sips. Sirius might not be afraid to be swept away by pleasure and then abandoned by it - the Veela escapade was only one example of that - but Remus, Tonks thought, rather was.
"Ah, here you go," said Sirius, sliding another photo across the table and leaving it beside Tonks' plate. "Stag party for James. Pun intended. We all went streaking across the lawn at Augusta Longbottom's."
Tonks looked from Remus to Sirius and then glanced furtively at the picture - four young men in various states of undress - before looking away.
Sirius smirked. Remus set down his fork and swallowed, his face unreadable.
"Go on, you can look. Our manly bits are covered," said Sirius, pouring himself another drink.
Tonks locked eyes with Remus, and he gave her an almost imperceptible nod. Yes. She blinked several times and then gave the picture a good looking-over.
Really, Sirius was just showing off now. He had been quite fit, classically proportioned, maddeningly well formed. Tonks tried not to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging this, and she also tried not to stare at the image of Remus, who was, what, nineteen or twenty years old, and shirtless and… well, not fit, exactly. Slender. Too slender. Freckly. A fine, dense matrix of scars, raised and white, snaked across his shoulder and down his left side. Werewolves aim for the heart, she remembered from training. That must have been where he was bitten. And scratched. Scratched a lot.
Tonks took a breath, swirled her remaining wine in its goblet, and then said, "Really, chaps, it takes a lot more than bare chests to get a rise out of an Auror."
Remus gave a short sigh that might have been mixed in with a chuckle.
Sirius twisted his face into a playfully sour expression which suggested he had been disappointed by her lack of response to his former beauty. "Well, little Dora, how about I owl your Mum right now and ask her to send over some photos of you as a sprog with spaghetti sauce all down your front, or naked in the bath squirting water out your elephant nose - "
"Oh, shut up - "
"Or, or, swanning about in that pink tutu you wore every day when you were about five -"
"Ugh, Sirius - "
"And I'm sure there're things I don't even know about. Old diaries full of your precious girlish thoughts about dreamy boys. Or maybe you fancied a teacher."
Tonks felt her colour rising, hot along her throat. "I will hex you, right now, in your own house - "
"Ah, but you'll have to catch me first. And I have the advantage of having befriended a very large and dangerous hippogriff," said Sirius, winking and pushing his chair aside as he got to his feet. He was positively skipping as he disappeared up the stairs, leaving Tonks and Remus to deal with his dirty dishes.
Tonks gave a derisive snort. "He's bluffing. He wouldn't. He's not supposed to be sending owls."
"I wouldn't put anything past Sirius, though. When he really wants something, he finds a way," said Remus. "Are you finished?"
He nodded at her plate. "Ta, Remus," she said, as he cast a Hover Charm on it and sent it gliding toward the sink.
She watched him cast a dishwashing spell, again with that efficiency that suggested he was quite accustomed to taking care of himself.
For a long moment they sat together at the table, listening to the hush and clink of pots and plates being scoured. Remus neatened the stacks of photos and books and set them carefully back in the box. He smiled at a few of them. Was she in there, the woman he had cared about a decade and a half ago?
Tonight she had seen parts of Remus that he most certainly did not wear on his sleeve - or if he ever had, he'd long since chopped off the sleeves and sewn up the raw edges. Here were intimacies he probably didn't grant to anybody, let alone some witch he had met only a few months ago. And she had seen parts of Sirius, too, that she would have been way too young to understand when she knew him before. Before Azkaban. The last time he'd seen her, she'd been, what, eight years old?
Remus folded the flaps of the box closed.
"Do you think that's true?" asked Tonks. "What Sirius said, about Harry? That he'll never love anybody like that again, or whatever it was?"
Remus pursed his lips ever so slightly in thought. "Hmm. In Harry's case, I'm not so sure. But I can see how Sirius thinks that. What you have to understand about Sirius is, he truly loved James. Well, we all did, but this was different. They were like twins. You should have seen them duel together, perfectly synchronised, anticipating each other's movements. And Azkaban isn't really the sort of place where one makes new friends so, yes, I can see how Sirius thinks that this was it. That James was the one great love of his life, that you love only once, and that's the only chance you have. But I don't think it's like that for everyone. Look at Molly. She loves all seven of her children, and Arthur, and Harry besides, and she doesn't love any one of them the less for it. Love doesn't have to be a zero-sum game, or something you do only once and never again. I would hope that people are more resilient than that. But I suppose it depends on the person."
"Am I going to read more about this in Spring Verses?"
Remus gave a closed little smile. "I think my ideas about love at that time may have been informed by a lot of soppy pop songs."
"And you're older and wiser now?"
"Certainly older. But what about this picture of you in the bath with an elephant nose, anyway?"
"What about it?" asked Tonks, rescuing her goblet with a hastily cast Hover Charm before she nearly dropped it onto the kitchen floor.
"You've seen some… colourful things about my history," said Remus. "Feels a little unbalanced, don't you think?"
"Are you suggesting tit for tat? An eye for an eye?"
"Nothing so hostile, I hope. But perhaps there ought to be another evening like this sometime, only with the positions reversed. I really do have to find something else to tease you about, Nymphadora, because I suspect you're getting desensitised to my calling you by your given name. You see, you don't get nearly as angry with me as you used to. And whatever will I do if I can't get you to make that face at me?"
"This face?" She gave an exaggerated grimace of the sort only a Metamorphmagus could pull off properly.
Remus laughed, and for a moment Tonks was able to imagine that the lines around his eyes could simply be the product of too much sunshine and a life well lived.
Really, joy made him ten times more alluring than Sirius Black had ever been.
.
Title: Nymphadora Tonks and the Marauder's Box
Rating & Warnings: PG, no warnings
Word Count: 4,900 words
Prompt: stereolightning’s prompt #1: Tonks gets a box of Sirius’ old personal effects out of storage as part of her ongoing "investigation" of this "escaped convict." She brings it to Grimmauld Place. She ends up with a little more information than she bargained for...
Summary: Even as they grow to be friends, Tonks doubts she'll ever know much about Remus' past. But when a box of Sirius' old belongings turns up at the Auror Office and she brings it back to Grimmauld Place to delve through and laugh over with her two friends, she finds herself seeing more than she ever expected of Remus, both body and soul.
Notes: We now present to you - rt_morelove's first co-written effort! I was taken with stereolightning's prompt, but couldn't help thinking this story would be so much more creative and fun if two heads worked on it instead of one... so I asked if she would write it with me. We had such a blast doing this! We hope you enjoy this even a fraction as much as we enjoyed writing it.
- - - - -
Tonks found she was humming to herself as she made her way up from the Auror Office to the Ministry Atrium with a sturdy cardboard box, sealed with Tough Charm Tape and stamped Property of the Auror Office, clasped under one arm.
Kingsley had handed it to her with the stern instructions, "Another search through the Archives turned up this additional box of Black's personal effects that were seized after he was arrested. I want you to take this home tonight and have a good look through it to see if you can turn up any clues." Then he'd winked.
That wink seemed to suggest that this was not just about misdirection and letting the Ministry think Sirius might be in places that he definitely wasn't; no, the wink suggested that Kingsley was handing this to Tonks in particular because he thought she might enjoy looking through it. That its contents might reveal amusing, even embarrassing, things about her cousin that she could then have fun teasing him about. Tonks actually skipped a bit as she left stepped out of the lift and into the Atrium.
Straight to Grimmauld Place, then. From the Atrium's Apparition spot, she spun in place and landed in a blind alley near Headquarters that they used for their comings and goings, stumbling a little as the box under her arm threw off her balance.
Sirius opened the door when she knocked, but then stomped off back upstairs. In one of his moods, then. Feeling trapped and useless at Grimmauld Place didn't always do great things for his personality. Well, fine. She could amuse herself just as well without him.
Especially with this box and the promises it held!
Tonks made her way downstairs (not knocking over the troll's leg umbrella stand, thank you very much), brewed herself a quick cup of the Darjeeling that Remus always seemed to keep on hand, then turned her attention to the box she'd set down at one end of the long kitchen table.
Ah, young Sirius, she thought, what will we find of you here?
Charming open the tape, she carefully lifted each of the box's flaps.
Most of it looked to be the kind of detritus an Auror might collect on the off chance it would later turn out to reveal a clue - scraps of parchment with notes in illegible scrawl, things that looked to be grocery lists and incomplete spell ideas and something that was barely decipherable but rather looked like it might be a knock-knock joke. Nothing that would particularly incriminate Sirius to the Ministry - or to Tonks and her hunt for embarrassing facts about his past.
Sifting past all the bits of parchment, she found there were a few books, too, probably pulled off Sirius' shelves when they'd tossed whatever flat he'd been living in at the time. Lurid Muggle pulp fiction and some sort of dense philosophical treatise, now wasn't that combination Sirius in a nutshell?
For about half a second Tonks wondered if they could use that - get the Ministry to believe Sirius might be hiding in Denmark, on the strength of his interest in Kierkegaard? - but then discarded the idea as flimsy.
She set the books to one side, reached in further, and found - photographs. "Ohhhh, yes!" she muttered, carefully withdrawing a small stack of photographs out of the box and settling into a chair.
There were a few snapshots of people she didn't recognise - people who'd been in the Order the first time round, she couldn't help thinking. But, then, oh - one of the pictures included Remus. A Remus with barely any grey in his hair, which he wore longer than Tonks had ever seen it. He looked less careworn than Tonks had ever seen him look, too. Merlin, what she wouldn't give for a chance to find out what the elusive Remus had been like when he was young!
Then in the next photograph, aha, there was young Sirius, posing cockily in the middle of the shot - Merlin, he really had been a handsome devil, hadn't he? - with his arm around a stunning woman who… Wait, was that a full-blood Veela?
Tonks looked up, distracted by the sound of footsteps descending the basement stairs. Sirius, come to be good company after all? No, she knew it by the familiar, measured sound of his tread - that was Remus, not Sirius. Tonks' stomach did that funny little squirm it always did when Remus approached.
She tamped it down and said, "Wotcher!" as he appeared in the doorway.
"Oh, hello." He blinked at her. "Didn't know you were here."
Tonks pushed back her chair and stood, photo still in hand. "Remus, is that a Veela?"
He stepped closer and took the photograph from her, their fingers just brushing.
Looking down at the picture, Remus made a sound somewhere between a snort and a chuckle. "Oh, dear, that's - yes. Have I never told you the story about Sirius, the Veela and the one-way ticket to Minsk?"
"No, of course you haven't! Here, what if I make you tea and you tell me the story in exchange?" She picked up the tin of Darjeeling from the worktop and waggled it at him. "That's a fair trade, don't you think? One cup of delicious tea for one scandalous story about Sirius?"
He smiled. "I would tell you the story even without the tea, you know."
"No, no," she insisted, "It should be a fair exchange. Tea for stories."
The corners of his mouth tipped up even further. "All right."
Merlin, she loved making Remus smile. Almost as much as she loved teasing Sirius. Possibly more.
She waved her wand to heat the kettle again.
Part of being an Auror was being observant, and Tonks knew already exactly how Remus took his tea. She knew precisely how long he steeped it, and that he took his Darjeeling without milk but with just a tiny bit of sugar. That made him not quite a purist, perhaps, but Tonks had the sense that Remus was a person who'd lived through enough lean times to appreciate even small pleasures like a half a spoonful of sugar in his tea.
She handed him the cup and grinned in anticipation.
He took a sip, and Tonks saw his eyes go that tiny bit wider with pleased surprise. "Mm, very good," he said, and sipped again.
"Good enough to be worth a really ripping story about Sirius and a Veela, wouldn't you say?" she pressed.
"Hm, yes," Remus agreed. "I'd say."
He perched against the edge of the table, carefully balancing his cup, so Tonks came and mirrored him, leaning against the table and facing a bit towards him. She picked up her teacup again, as well.
Remus glanced down at the photograph that now lay on the table between them. "How did you come across this, anyway?"
Tonks indicated the box from the Ministry by pointing her chin in its direction, given that her hands were occupied with tea and saucer. "Kingsley dug that out of storage and thought we might have fun with it." She tossed a grin over Remus' way. "I have to say, I'm having fun with it already. And we haven't even got to the part about Sirius' Veela yet."
Remus gave the photograph another long-suffering look.
"She was called Valeria," he said. "And she was drop-dead beautiful, I admit it, but she was also a Veela, with all the attendant complications. We were maybe nineteen at the time, and she had Sirius completely convinced that what he wanted more than anything was to move with her to Belarus."
He was interrupted by footsteps on the stairs - this time it could only be Sirius.
They both looked up as he appeared in the doorway, then stopped there and seemed to smirk a little to see the two of them together.
"Wotcher," Tonks said, again, because he probably hadn't been listening to her properly the first time. But as mercurial as Sirius' moods could be, at least they sometimes cleared as fast as they came.
"Hey," Sirius said, nodding to both of them. Then he zeroed in on the photograph on the table, stalking towards it to take a closer look. "Hey, it's Valeria!" he said, picking the picture up and grinning. Tonks saw the woman - Veela - in the picture wink up at him. "Man, but she was crazy. Completely off her rocker."
Tonks found herself exchanging a glance with Remus, because surely only Sirius could sound that pleased about dating someone who was off her rocker?
"She used to throw fireballs at me when she got angry," Sirius reminisced. "And she got angry a lot."
"She also made you buy a one-way train ticket to Minsk, and then abandoned you in the woods by some lake," Remus noted drily.
Sirius chuckled.
"Right in the middle of a bunch of hags," Remus pressed.
"Ah, they wouldn't have eaten me," Sirius said. He tipped his head to the side and seemed to think for a moment. "Nah, I don't think they would have done."
"Uh, wait," Tonks said. "Your girlfriend abandoned you in some forest with hags and you just, what, walked away and caught a train home?"
"Battled my way out," Sirius grinned.
"No, actually, he ran away," Remus said. "And then had to Apparate all over half of Europe to make his way back to England."
"Good thing my family went on holiday to the Harz Mountains once when I was a kid," Sirius said. "Otherwise there wouldn't have been anywhere close enough that I knew how to Apparate to."
Remus shook his head at him, fond and exasperated.
"Anyway, worth it," Sirius said. "Valeria was hot. And I don't mean just when she was throwing fire."
"You know, it's no good finding embarrassing things from your past if you don't have the grace to be embarrassed about them," Tonks complained.
"Well, let's see what else we've got here," Sirius said, picking up the stack of photos Tonks had left on the table. He flicked through a few of them, discarding them casually back onto the tabletop, then said, "Oh, now. How about this one of old Moony?"
Tonks set down her cup and saucer. Sirius handed her the photo, which seemed to have been taken at a fancy dress party, because the figures in frame wore costume jewellery and bright, medieval-looking robes cut from cheap fabric. An odd lens flare obscured part of the picture, and she tilted the photo this way and that to try to get rid of it.
"Where?" she asked.
"Right there. In the middle. In the blue number with the sequins," said Sirius, pointing.
Tonks held the photo still and squinted. "What are you - oh! That's both of you, isn't it? In drag."
She giggled, half-amused and half-impressed by their efforts - disguise, being, after all, something she knew quite a lot about. In the photo, Remus and Sirius looked young, maybe eighteen - smooth-cheeked enough to pass as witches, if you didn't look too closely. Remus wore a blue polyester gown and a quietly arch expression. Sirius wore a red houppelande trimmed with faux fur, and his long, dark hair was arranged under a silver circlet. The total effect was très Rowena Ravenclaw.
"Sirius was by far the best-looking, as usual," said Remus, finishing his tea.
"Oh, but you were the only one who was at all convincing as a woman, Moony," said Sirius. "It's not enough just to dress like one. You have to get the psychology."
Tonks wrinkled her nose, unsure whether she wanted to hear a lecture on the psychology of women from Sirius Black, who had, after all, just admitted to following a flame-hurling Veela halfway to Asia for no discernible reason. "Who are you all supposed to be, anyway?" she asked.
"The witches from 'The Fountain of Fair Fortune.' You know, from The Tales of Beedle the Bard. And that's James as the knight, Sir Luckless," said Sirius, pointing to a tall, bespectacled wizard in what looked like real chainmail. James' resemblance to Harry was striking.
"I was unfairly typecast as Asha," said Remus. "Sick of a malady no Healer can cure, etcetera."
"And which one are you?" asked Tonks, nudging Sirius with her shoulder.
"Obvious, isn't it?" said Sirius. Just then his eighteen-year-old self in the photo leaned over and kissed James on the cheek, in exactly the awkward sort of way you would expect a young man to kiss his best friend at a fancy dress party. Probably whoever had taken the photo had dared him to do it.
"Ah. The one who was in love with Sir Luckless, then," she said.
Sirius' grey eyes became glassy and unfocused for a moment, but then he shook his head and tapped James' picture affectionately. "He saved my life about a dozen times."
Tonks nudged Sirius again, and her voice came out in a softer register than usual, part teasing, but part gentle. "You two do a lot of snogging, then?"
Sirius shook his head. "Nah, it wasn't like that. We were just…" His eyes darted to Remus and then to Tonks. "Look, for some people, the love of their life is this romantic affair, with starlight and birdsong and roses and whatever else. But sometimes the love of your life is just your friend, your best friend. I mean, look at Harry."
Tonks tilted her head quizzically. "Look at Harry, what?"
"Well, he likes girls, but no girlfriend is ever going to come close to what he has with Ron and Hermione. That's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. They finish each others' thoughts," said Sirius.
"They do, sometimes, don't they," said Remus, smiling. "And that's led them into quite as much trouble as we ever got into, if not more."
Sir Luckless and the fairy tale witches waved enthusiastically and beamed.
"Well, you were both right fetching, as girls," said Tonks, noting that Peter, too, was in this photo, and not wanting to draw too much attention to that. "Dead sexy, really. What else have we got?"
She picked up another photo. This one depicted a redheaded witch in high-waisted jeans and dark eye makeup, sitting astride a motorbike and smoking a cigarette, smirking, and giving a rude two-fingered salute with her other hand.
"That's Harry's mum. Lily," said Sirius, grinning again. "And my motorbike. The night James proposed. He took her joyriding across half of England."
The biggest diamond Tonks had ever seen winked from Lily's finger. Tonks flipped over the photograph. A note was scribbled across the back in sprawling, ecstatic capital letters - PADFOOT! SHE SAID YES! YOU OWE ME TEN GALLEONS, YOU NUMPTY!
"You were a fool to take that bet," said Remus, taking Tonks' empty cup from her.
Sirius shrugged. "He needed the encouragement."
Remus picked through the kitchen cabinets and quietly began making dinner. Aha, thought Tonks, we're making an evening of it. She would have to give Kingsley a very nice thank-you tomorrow. Pleased by this turn of events, she reached into the box and selected another artefact at random.
The object her groping hand withdrew from somewhere near the bottom of the box turned out to be a slim sheaf of parchment pages, neatly hand-bound on one side to create a small book. On the cover, in unmistakeable handwriting, was written:
Spring Verses
by
Remus J. Lupin
Tonks stared. This was…a volume of poetry? By Remus?
There was a thunk as the packet of pasta Remus had been holding dropped to the kitchen worktop, forgotten, and Tonks looked up to find him standing in front of her, rapidly going as red in the face as a Chinese Fireball dragon. "Er, yes, I'll just have that, then," Remus said, starting to reach for the little book.
"NO, DON'T GIVE IT TO HIM, HE'LL JUST THROW IT AWAY, LET ME SEE IT!" Sirius hollered, throwing himself at the both of them, and in the space of a second, both men were scrabbling for the book, shoving and grappling each other like little kids.
"No - Sirius - really - " Remus was gasping, as Sirius continued to shout, "Don't let him have it! Give it to me, Tonks, give it to me!"
Tonks jumped away from them, clutching the hotly contested little book to her chest. "No, stop it, both of you!" she said. "Not one step closer, or I'll use that very handy Bat-Bogey Hex Ginny Weasley showed me over the summer." She yanked her wand out of her robes to lend credence to the threat.
They did stop, panting, with Remus' hand still in a vice-like grip on Sirius' arm, and Sirius still clutching the shoulder of Remus' robes.
"Anyway, would you mind just giving that to me for a moment?" Remus asked, in his best Being Very Reasonable voice.
"No, no, don't give it to him, it's priceless, Tonks, really," Sirius entreated.
"Remus, I'm not going to look inside it," Tonks promised. "I just want to hold it. And - " she stifled a giggle " - and look at it. And appreciate its very existence."
Remus and Sirius shook themselves free of each other. Remus crossed his arms. Sirius slouched against the table, looking pleased.
Tonks put away her wand, then looked again at the cover of the slim, hand-bound volume she was holding. "Remus, you write poetry?" she asked.
"Wrote poetry," Remus said, looking pained. "Past tense, please."
"And why did Sirius have it, anyway?"
"He had it," Remus growled, "because he nicked it out of my flat and held it for ransom, in exchange for I don't even remember what, and then even once he got what he wanted, he wouldn't give it back, the git."
"Oh, don't be cross, Moony," Sirius said. "It was too good to let you have back. You would have just got rid of it. But, see, I kept it safe for you all these years."
"You kept it safe?" Tonks snorted. "The Auror Office kept it safe, more like."
"Eh," Sirius said, unconcerned. "It survived the years one way or another, didn't it?" He looked over at Remus, then back at Tonks. "Seriously, Tonks, you have to read it. You have to read it. You can't just stand there with poetry Remus wrote when he was nineteen in your hand and not read it!"
It was admittedly highly tempting.
"Can I…Remus, can I read maybe just one?" she asked.
Remus briefly closed his eyes, and Tonks considered rescinding her request, if it really made him that uncomfortable. She opened her mouth to say so -
"Yes," he said.
"What?"
"Yes, go ahead. Read one." Involuntarily, he cut his eyes sideways towards Sirius, then added, "Not out loud, please. Just read one poem to yourself."
Tonks stared at him, wondering if he meant it. He seemed to mean it.
"Uh, okay," she said. "Thanks."
Remus nodded, still looking embarrassed, but no longer the colour of a Chinese Fireball.
Tonks looked down at the book in her hands again, and very gently opened the cover.
The poem on the first page was titled "In Springtime" and it was…really lovely, actually. Very sweet, with phrasing that was lyrical but understated. It was a love poem to an unnamed girl and it started and ended with the line, "All I can think of is her eyes."
It was almost unbearably sweet to think of nineteen-year-old Remus feeling these feelings and writing these words. At nineteen, while Sirius had been chasing a crazy Veela across Europe, Remus had been writing gentle love poetry about some girl to whom he would surely never actually reveal his affections.
And wasn't that the two of them in a nutshell?
She looked up to find Remus still watching her. Waiting to hear what judgement she would pass, she realised.
"Remus, I really like it," she said. "I'm impressed, actually. I didn't know you could write this well. Let alone write this well years ago." She smiled at him, and he smiled back, a little shyly.
"Oh, for Merlin's sake!" Sirius said. "You're as bad as him." He waved his arms in a dismissive gesture, and went to take over whatever Remus had been preparing to cook.
Tonks carefully closed the cover of Remus' volume of poetry, then looked over at him and motioned with the book towards the inner pocket of her robes, a gesture that asked, Can I hold onto this for a bit?
He hesitated, then nodded, seeming to say, Okay, I trust you.
Tonks smiled and tucked the book carefully away.
"Oi, seriously, dinner is not going to cook itself!" Sirius called. He picked up the packet of pasta and shook it like a maraca.
Still smiling, Tonks joined Sirius at the cookery end of the massive kitchen and began charming the lids off of tinned tomatoes and bewitching knives to mince garlic and rosemary. A moment later, Sirius slunk off to the pantry in search of acceptable wine, and Tonks watched Remus cook with a practised efficiency.
All I can think of is her eyes. Who must that have been about? Had she survived the war, or was she gone, like so many of his and Sirius' friends? Tonks thought she might be pushing her luck to ask, and anyway, this was turning out to be such a fun evening that she didn't want to temper the mood with questions that could have unhappy answers.
"Found a Sauterne and a Bordeaux," said Sirius, re-emerging and uncorking two bottles with a graceful flick of his wand. "Let's drink to youthful indiscretion."
"Chin chin," said Tonks, as three goblets zoomed overhead and one of them found its way to her outstretched hand. She sipped tentatively at her wine, and wondered how long it had been ageing in some corner. It tasted sharp and tannic, but not off. Maybe spells had kept it relatively drinkable.
From tea to wine in the space of an hour - yes, this had been a very successful trip to Grimmauld Place indeed.
They ate together at the table, and here and there Sirius pulled out another photograph or scrap of parchment and commented on it, leaning his chair back on two legs and grinning or muttering. Tonks noticed that Remus drank carefully, taking reserved little sips. Sirius might not be afraid to be swept away by pleasure and then abandoned by it - the Veela escapade was only one example of that - but Remus, Tonks thought, rather was.
"Ah, here you go," said Sirius, sliding another photo across the table and leaving it beside Tonks' plate. "Stag party for James. Pun intended. We all went streaking across the lawn at Augusta Longbottom's."
Tonks looked from Remus to Sirius and then glanced furtively at the picture - four young men in various states of undress - before looking away.
Sirius smirked. Remus set down his fork and swallowed, his face unreadable.
"Go on, you can look. Our manly bits are covered," said Sirius, pouring himself another drink.
Tonks locked eyes with Remus, and he gave her an almost imperceptible nod. Yes. She blinked several times and then gave the picture a good looking-over.
Really, Sirius was just showing off now. He had been quite fit, classically proportioned, maddeningly well formed. Tonks tried not to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging this, and she also tried not to stare at the image of Remus, who was, what, nineteen or twenty years old, and shirtless and… well, not fit, exactly. Slender. Too slender. Freckly. A fine, dense matrix of scars, raised and white, snaked across his shoulder and down his left side. Werewolves aim for the heart, she remembered from training. That must have been where he was bitten. And scratched. Scratched a lot.
Tonks took a breath, swirled her remaining wine in its goblet, and then said, "Really, chaps, it takes a lot more than bare chests to get a rise out of an Auror."
Remus gave a short sigh that might have been mixed in with a chuckle.
Sirius twisted his face into a playfully sour expression which suggested he had been disappointed by her lack of response to his former beauty. "Well, little Dora, how about I owl your Mum right now and ask her to send over some photos of you as a sprog with spaghetti sauce all down your front, or naked in the bath squirting water out your elephant nose - "
"Oh, shut up - "
"Or, or, swanning about in that pink tutu you wore every day when you were about five -"
"Ugh, Sirius - "
"And I'm sure there're things I don't even know about. Old diaries full of your precious girlish thoughts about dreamy boys. Or maybe you fancied a teacher."
Tonks felt her colour rising, hot along her throat. "I will hex you, right now, in your own house - "
"Ah, but you'll have to catch me first. And I have the advantage of having befriended a very large and dangerous hippogriff," said Sirius, winking and pushing his chair aside as he got to his feet. He was positively skipping as he disappeared up the stairs, leaving Tonks and Remus to deal with his dirty dishes.
Tonks gave a derisive snort. "He's bluffing. He wouldn't. He's not supposed to be sending owls."
"I wouldn't put anything past Sirius, though. When he really wants something, he finds a way," said Remus. "Are you finished?"
He nodded at her plate. "Ta, Remus," she said, as he cast a Hover Charm on it and sent it gliding toward the sink.
She watched him cast a dishwashing spell, again with that efficiency that suggested he was quite accustomed to taking care of himself.
For a long moment they sat together at the table, listening to the hush and clink of pots and plates being scoured. Remus neatened the stacks of photos and books and set them carefully back in the box. He smiled at a few of them. Was she in there, the woman he had cared about a decade and a half ago?
Tonight she had seen parts of Remus that he most certainly did not wear on his sleeve - or if he ever had, he'd long since chopped off the sleeves and sewn up the raw edges. Here were intimacies he probably didn't grant to anybody, let alone some witch he had met only a few months ago. And she had seen parts of Sirius, too, that she would have been way too young to understand when she knew him before. Before Azkaban. The last time he'd seen her, she'd been, what, eight years old?
Remus folded the flaps of the box closed.
"Do you think that's true?" asked Tonks. "What Sirius said, about Harry? That he'll never love anybody like that again, or whatever it was?"
Remus pursed his lips ever so slightly in thought. "Hmm. In Harry's case, I'm not so sure. But I can see how Sirius thinks that. What you have to understand about Sirius is, he truly loved James. Well, we all did, but this was different. They were like twins. You should have seen them duel together, perfectly synchronised, anticipating each other's movements. And Azkaban isn't really the sort of place where one makes new friends so, yes, I can see how Sirius thinks that this was it. That James was the one great love of his life, that you love only once, and that's the only chance you have. But I don't think it's like that for everyone. Look at Molly. She loves all seven of her children, and Arthur, and Harry besides, and she doesn't love any one of them the less for it. Love doesn't have to be a zero-sum game, or something you do only once and never again. I would hope that people are more resilient than that. But I suppose it depends on the person."
"Am I going to read more about this in Spring Verses?"
Remus gave a closed little smile. "I think my ideas about love at that time may have been informed by a lot of soppy pop songs."
"And you're older and wiser now?"
"Certainly older. But what about this picture of you in the bath with an elephant nose, anyway?"
"What about it?" asked Tonks, rescuing her goblet with a hastily cast Hover Charm before she nearly dropped it onto the kitchen floor.
"You've seen some… colourful things about my history," said Remus. "Feels a little unbalanced, don't you think?"
"Are you suggesting tit for tat? An eye for an eye?"
"Nothing so hostile, I hope. But perhaps there ought to be another evening like this sometime, only with the positions reversed. I really do have to find something else to tease you about, Nymphadora, because I suspect you're getting desensitised to my calling you by your given name. You see, you don't get nearly as angry with me as you used to. And whatever will I do if I can't get you to make that face at me?"
"This face?" She gave an exaggerated grimace of the sort only a Metamorphmagus could pull off properly.
Remus laughed, and for a moment Tonks was able to imagine that the lines around his eyes could simply be the product of too much sunshine and a life well lived.
Really, joy made him ten times more alluring than Sirius Black had ever been.
.