Better To Have Loved - Part 5 of 5
Title: Better To Have Loved
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tonks & Remus
Summary: the last 20 of a set of 100 drabbles meant to give the feeling of looking through a shoebox full of jumbled photographs, not in chronological order, and hoping to prove that it's better to go through the ups and downs of loving another than to never love at all.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
1. Touch
There are many different ways for one to touch another, and Remus doesn’t doubt that most of those ways were invented by Nymphadora Tonks. Her presence is such a tangible thing, sweeping into the room long before she sets foot inside, and then even the merest glance from those pixie’s eyes is enough to set his skin prickling. She’s looking at him now, over the edge of a book he doubts she’s actually reading and he feels her gaze settle over him like a caress, sends a shiver through his spine as if her fingers had run up it. Remus smiles; he knows that look all too well, and if he’s not mistaken it’s the one that often leads to physical touch before too long.
“Interesting story, Nymphadora?” he asks, doing his utmost to exude nonchalance over the rim of his tea.
“Not nearly as interesting as the hair that keeps falling so adorably into your eyes,” she says, holding her place with a bent page corner. “It’s really quite distracting, Remus. Something should be done about it.”
Ah yes, she’s pushing herself up off the sofa, just as he’d thought. And sure enough, Tonks waltzes over to his armchair, book forgotten, and smoothes his fringe out of his face. He closes his eyes as her fingertips graze his forehead.
2. Earth
For someone who, at a first glance, seems notoriously up in the clouds, Dora Tonks has her feet solidly on the ground and her priorities in order. Her work is not something taken lightly, and tonight she sits at her kitchen table surrounded by a satchelful of case files. A pair of kitschy glasses perches on her nose for form rather than function, but they fail to hide the line between her brows deepening with every document she peruses.
“Bloody rubbish!” she barks and Remus starts up from the couch, upsetting his newspaper. It falls open to a photo of Harry, bloodied, distraught, and oppressed by photographers’ flashbulbs. In the Department of Mysteries. After the battle.
Tonks drops the glasses and dips her face into her hand, hiding her eyes. In her outburst she’s swiped a pile of case files to the floor.
“Scrimgeour’s still pushing me reports on Sirius.”
Remus’ stomach constricts.
“Apparently this week he’s been sighted in Burma, Miami, Oslo, and Saskatchewan.” Tonks’ voice is bitter, dripping with coagulated acid and grief.
He rises to stand behind her chair, and Remus rubs his hands up and down her arms. “If only.”
3. Club
Sirius bangs his mug against the table like a gavel, garnering the attention of the couple sitting opposite him. He’s slightly inebriated, much to the amusement of the female half of said couple, and the chagrin of the male half.
“This meeting of the Late Night Kitchen Club is now in session,” Sirius laughs, a bit of spiked coffee slopping onto his sleeve, and Remus beats him to the drying charm.
“I wanted to be the Kitchen Brigade,” Tonks pipes.
“Quiet, you,” Sirius waves a dismissive hand at her, “You’ll speak when addressed by the Grand Poobah, missy. Tonight we’ll be discussing the mating habits of domesticated lycanthropes-”
“We most certainly will not,” Remus says, a strained sort of irritation playing on his face. Tonks, on the other hand, shrieks with laughter, and Sirius’ dark eyes glint with mischief Remus wishes wouldn’t lead to an in-depth inquisition into the current state of his love life. But alas, if wishes were winged horses, Remus would have stablefuls of Axbrans and a lot less embarrassment to show for it.
“First question,” Sirius grins evilly. “Love bites. Discuss.”
“Well, I think they’re right sexy,” Tonks states, glancing dancing eyes up at Remus, “So long as it’s not quite the full moon. Remus-?”
“-Would appreciate it if you’d stop encouraging the perverse mutt who used to be his mate, thanks.” Remus groans.
Sirius smirks. “But if you don’t bite, Moony, then who gave my baby cousin that obnoxious hickey?”
4. How
“You are barking mad!”
Sirius looks as though he’s very close to lobbing the silver tea service he’d been scrubbing in Remus’ general direction.
“Stark barking mad! You turned her down? What in the name of Merlin’s left eyebrow were you thinking?”
“I was thinking,” Remus darts back, “Which is more than I can say for you.”
“I choose to ignore that zinger in the interest of saving your hide from my cousin, who’s really quite upset at you at the moment and rather indiscriminating with her Joint-Reversal Jinx-”
“I can’t be around her during the moon, Padfoot! Or have you forgotten that little technicality?” Remus snaps, quickly losing patience with the entire argument.
“Tell me how it makes any sodding difference,” Sirius barks, and his last semblance of levity crashes through the floorboards. “You’re her lover, not her father.”
“Just because Nymphadora can morph herself canine doesn’t mean she’ll lose her human scent, or mannerisms, or-”
“I do! Tonks can’t be so different! Besides, you have your Wolfsbane, and I’d be there for that, you thick stupid prat! You won’t have the chance to do anything dangerous.”
“Because transforming into a vicious monster isn’t dangerous in the least.”
“She wants to help you, mate. How often do you find someone who cares enough to make that kind of offer?”
Remus doesn’t answer.
“Not since James and me, I figured.” Sirius’s eyes narrow. “For once in your life, Remus, would it kill you to quit playing martyr?”
5. New Year
Just before midnight, Remus leads her from the bustle of the party swirling in Number Twelve’s core. The twins and Sirius raise their voices to count down the remaining seconds of the year and Remus stops short as the rest of the group gathered in the kitchen joins the chant. Tonks bounds behind him, connected at their clasped hands, tipsy and gigging as she asks where exactly he’s taking her when she barrels headlong into him, knocking the both of them backward several feet.
Remus smiles wickedly.
He pulls her flush against his chest and this is now a moment best not shared with the raucous crowd downstairs. With a yelp she is lifted and carried and bounced onto his bed, scooting backwards and shooting a few muffled wards at the door, laughing and shedding clothing as Remus pushes her back into his pillows. Lips are pulled to hungry lips as the forgotten party breaks into shouts and applause, muffled considerably by stairs and walls and doors and ears more finely-tuned to gasps and whispered teasing and each other.
6. Death
“Dora, I need you to stay here.” Remus holds her arms at her sides, as much to keep her steady as to force her to listen, and she stumbles backward, fighting them free.
“Like hell, you do!”
Her eyes are bright with tears she refuses to shed in front of Bill.
Remus is acting like her father, like he can’t trust her to hold herself together long enough to do what needs to be done. She wants nothing to do with his damned Gryffindor chivalry, not now, too blind with grief and rage to notice how his eyes demand nothing of her.
“I can do this.”
“I know. But Alastor...” he sighs, raising one hand to cup her cheek. “You two were close. And…it was a long fall.”
She is silent.
“If we find his body - I won’t force you to remember him that way.”
7. Blue
Her carpet is blue.
Blue like her eyes were tonight, deep and dark, difficult to interpret. It’s the color they turn when she’s nervous.
Those eyes are closed now, but her arm dangles from the couch and her fingers-she’s still wearing his ring, he hadn’t dared to hope she’d kept it-her fingers weave with his, seeking some small comfort from physical touch. His touch.
Remus watches her back rise and fall with her breath and wants so badly to pull her down beside him and feel that breath against his skin. But she doesn’t trust him yet and rightfully so after all the harm he’s done, and so he can merely be thankful for the place she’s saved for him. Even if tonight it’s only some pillows and blankets on the floor beside her couch. Like a dog.
Strangely, he doesn’t resent this. He is not yet welcome again in her bed, but her fingers stay threaded with his and he knows that from now on his home will be wherever she is.
8. Sight
Is that really…?
Yes. Yes it is.
No. Remus would never...
Tonks leans over the bathroom sink.
He did.
There is a…hickey…on her neck.
That certainly wasn’t something she’d expected to see in the mirror this morning.
Tonks fingers the purple bruising just under her skin, not quite hidden by the collar of her shirt. She leans forward, looking closer, prodding at it a bit. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s darker than she’d originally thought. Nothing a focused Vanishing charm won’t take care of, of course, but she stops with her wand only halfway drawn.
It won’t go unnoticed, that’s for sure, especially not with Mad-Eye trawling around Number Twelve barking about vigilance… Sirius’s face swims gleefully in her mind. She can practically hear the ribbing already.
But…maybe she likes it that way.
9. Spring
Remus sits up, lets the sheets slide down to pool around his hips. Early April sunlight edges her in gold, warm and glowing, almost ethereal. But his head rests in his hands. She watches him with questions in her eyes that go unanswered.
“Dora, we- I can’t-”
He watches her draw back, retracting the fingers she’d extended to rest on his arm. “Can’t, Remus, or won’t?”
She pulls the sheets up around herself, arms clutched against her chest.
Protective.
“Yesterday you wanted this,” she says. “What makes this morning so different?”
He takes a deep breath.
“Nothing.”
There’s altogether too much hope in those eyes. He needs to stop this before he goes too far. He’s already gone too far. He needs to leave. He needs to think.
“Then stay with me?”
Remus kisses her, perhaps against his better judgment. Or, perhaps this is his better judgment; he can never tell with her. She hesitantly pulls him closer.
“Is this what you need of me, Dora?” he whispers, another kiss softer, a seal against her lips.
Yes.
10. Yellow
“You look nice in yellow.” Molly says.
Tonks looks different. Not bad-different, but…strange. Very not-Tonks. The pink hair is the same, but she wears it a bit smoother than normal, held back from her face with a turquoise ribbon that matches the trim on her lemonade dress.
“Thanks, Molly.” Tonks smoothes the front of the skirt, suddenly very aware of how out-of-place she must look. But she needs the advice and a bit of moral support, and Molly Weasley is the only one she trusts enough to tell it like it is.
Molly leans her elbow on the table. “You’re antsy.”
“Wouldn’t you be if you had to bring your-” Tonks thinks for a second; boyfriend just sounds like the wrong word for Remus, and lover too intimate. “-significant other to have dinner with your parents?”
Molly laughs, a knowing smile on her lips; it hadn’t been a picnic introducing Arthur to the Prewett clan, either, thirty-odd years ago. “It’s going to be fine, dear.”
“I hope.” Tonks fusses with her hair. “Mum’s already up in arms about this thirteen-year business and she doesn’t even know about the wer-”
“Trust me,” Molly answers, and Tonks freezes long enough to listen. “He really is good for you, they’ll see.” She pats the bench beside her, and Tonks slumps forward.
“You’re happy with him.” Molly pulls Tonks’ slouching shoulders back, adjusts the ribbon in her hair. “Remus is a good man, and Andromeda’s no fool. She’ll come around.”
11. Stars
Door, he thinks.
Doorknob. There is a doorknob jabbing into his back.
Remus can’t honestly say he minds this turn of events, not with Nymphadora pressed so tantalizingly close and gliding her lips against his in ways that make him shiver and doubt the need to ever speak again if he’ll have to disengage from her. He’s surprised he notices the doorknob at all in the wake of a kiss like that, but vaguely feels it turn under his hand and sends them both reeling into her bedroom. He has to catch her closer to keep them from falling and they stumble backwards the last few feet until she has him backed against her bed, snatching breaths in the seconds she pulls away long enough to slide her hands beneath his shirt. He traces the skin exposed by the back of her dress; too much fabric, not enough touch.
From there on it’s a race to see which trails of heat will reach where first as she pushes him back and stars burst behind his eyelids from whatever it is she’s doing with her hands. He kisses her neck and the side of her face and her gasps against his skin speak more than he’ll ever need to hear ever again.
12. Food
He hurls the stone as far as he can, releases a yell that boils up and swells from molten fury in his core and he falls forward, braced with an arm against a tree.
Coward.
It reverberates in his soul, feeding the rage and the guilt already smouldering there.
My father died trying to protect my mother and me, and you reckon he’d tell you to abandon your kid to go on an adventure with us?
Echoes make his insides shift with a sickening lurch, bloody rage pooling with grief and the repugnant grey-green of shame.
I’d never have believed this, the man who taught me to fight dementors - a coward.
He leans his forehead against the bark, closes his eyes against the familiar woods he’d Transformed in as a boy, the shack he’d run to to hide.
He cannot blame the wolf for this. The wolf does not hide. The wolf only destroys.
But the man, Remus John Lupin…the man hides. Runs away. Forces distance between himself and those he loves.
Dora.
He loves her. He’s left. And somewhere buried, closer to the surface than he can bring himself to admit, he knows it’s killing her.
Coward.
His jaw clenches. This is how the man in him destroys.
13. Snow
“Question for you, Dora.”
Tonks whips around, still catching snowflakes on her tongue, and dances backward a few feet on the toes of her boots. She smiles from between a pair of fuzzy blue earmuffs and that ever-present lurid green scarf. “Yeah?”
Remus tries with all his might to keep the smirk out of his eyes, smiling innocently from beneath snow-dusted fringe, hands behind his back. “D’you wear white often?”
She gives him a smile tinged with just the slightest bit of sarcasm, gestures to that scarf of hers artfully mismatched with a violet and magenta plaid pea coat. “No, I don’t reckon I do.”
“You will now.”
“Wha-!”
A snowball collides with her head. Bulls-eye, straight in the earmuff.
She’ll kill him.
“You stupid great git! I’ll give you white-!”
“Dora, you can’t tell me you didn’t see that one c-oof!”
He laughs until she torpedoes headlong into his chest, toppling them backwards into a snow bank the size of the Knight Bus. She lands on top of him, perched on his stomach, and bounces once to wedge him in further.
“Say, Remus,” she smirks, “I think white’s your color.” And with that she hops back to her feet and strolls away.
He stays there a minute, lodged in the snow, admiring the sway of her hips as she saunters off down the block. Tonks throws a glance over her shoulder, catches him staring, and laughs.
14. Desk
“No-Remus, don’t-” Tonks stammers between kisses; he’s got her held fast with an arm about her and one hand at her face, angling her lips to his. Her hands against his chest may have meant at one point to push him away, but have since forgotten their original purpose and rest there pinned instead.
“I won’t-hey!” Remus pushes her backwards until her hip catches the side of some indeterminate furniture (neither has much of a mind to notice at the moment) and he takes advantage of this, leans her back onto a slanted surface that appears to belong to some sort of writing desk, all the better to kiss her with. Tonks bends to follow his body, comfortable against her, but her elbow knocks a holder full of quills to the floor and the protests continue.
“No, stop-Remus, I can’t do this-” She sneaks glances at him after each kiss, “because I know-you’re just going to pull away as soon as we start-” Her lips seek his now after every few words, hands sliding down to slip beneath his jumper, “doing anything more, and you know, I’m really very much in love with you, so it’s-extremely frustrating, and-”
He slides one hand down her back and his mouth silences the last of her objections. The hand that isn’t slipping into her back pocket reaches for his wand.
Thank Merlin for silencing charms.
…Oh. She gasps; that feels nice.
15. Book
Tonks sometimes pages through the journal she’d bought him. Remus probably knows this and hasn’t let on, but she’s an Auror; sneaky is her middle name. Or, it would’ve been, if Andromeda hadn’t decided on “Vulpecula” first.
He’s filled it a little more than halfway in the two years since they’ve known each other, mostly with stray notes or lists of books he’d enjoyed and would like to read again sometime.
She mostly looks for the sketches. About ten pages in he’d begun doodling around his lists, simple drawings of heirlooms Sirius hadn’t yet destroyed, or thumbnails of people dawdling about the kitchen, nothing too special.
A little farther in, he’d started sketching her.
The early ones are innocent, quick things, each one dated; her profile, different hairstyles, laughing, reading in an armchair. A few months later come more intimate things, a sketch of a kiss he’d abandoned when he’d scribbled out most of his face, loose thumbnails of her curled in his lap, and one particular detailed drawing Tonks can’t discuss in polite company. Or even in private, if she’d wanted to.
There’s a nine-month gap in the dates, last August to May. His favorite photo of them is next, torn in half and taped whole again. Below it he’d taped a newer photograph, taken at their wedding, and a few pages past that sits a drawing she’s never seen before.
She’s wearing Remus’s shirt, kissing Teddy’s forehead. He’s scrawled “I love you” underneath.
He knows. Tonks smiles.
16. Dog
“Snuffles!” Tonks growls. “You get your sorry mutt behind back here, you great drooling…”
Sirius trots back towards the pair of them, tongue lolling happily out of his mouth, slobbering all over the leash between his teeth for added effect.
“Come when called, boy, or we can’t take you out anymore. Don’t go ruining things for yourself,” Remus says a little more sweetly than Tonks’ boldfaced admonition, but to that effect, Remus always had been very good at making nice tones sound extremely dangerous.
Sirius steps back a paw or two, mouth closing around the leash, and whines.
“Snuffles. Give Nymphadora th-”
Thwack.
Remus starts forward, scalp smarting. She’s hit him upside the head with the Daily Prophet.
A rolled-up Daily Prophet, no less.
“Bad dog. My name is Tonks.”
Remus rubs the back of his head. “Dora, what the deuce was that for?!”
Tonks smirks, scratching his ex-best mate behind one shaggy ear. To add insult to injury, Sirius wags his tail so hard he might just take off at any moment, plants his forepaws on Tonks’ shoulders, and gives her a delighted, slobbering canine kiss.
“I’ll train you yet, Professor. Just you wait.”
17. Empty
Sleep escapes him, and as Remus stares at the ceiling of their flat he can think of nothing but the dark. It’s never particularly scared him in the past, but tonight…tonight is different.
His arm drapes around her, and yet he doesn’t feel her anymore. Tonks is curled close against his side, and she’d fallen asleep holding him more tightly than he’d remembered her ever doing so before, though out of love or something else he isn’t sure. He remembers her knees drawn up to her chest as she’d spoke, purple sleeves pulled down over her hands, and she’d never looked so painfully young to him before. Young and afraid, a different person than the sure, strong woman he’d fallen in love with.
She’s pregnant.
God, she’s so young, and he’s created something in her he can’t bear to think about without thick, congealing waves of shame breaking in his blood and freezing as they course down through him. He wants to hold her, whisper that it’ll all be alright, but all he can feel is the heavy pulsing of his own guilt and doesn’t have the strength to lie to her anymore.
18. Mask
“You’re different, you know?” Tonks says, tossing pink hair out of her face. “Like…I don’t know how to say it, you’re unassuming, or…something.”
“Unassuming?” Remus asks, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He clasps his hands, looks at her sitting beside him. She’s hugging her knees, shoes kicked off and toes curling in their yellow snidget socks.
“You don’t have these preconceived notions about people, or expectations for them to live up to.” Tonks fights for the right words. “You’re easy to be with.”
He stiffens just a bit, rubs the back of his neck.
…to be with.
She doesn’t seem to notice, too busy staring pointedly at an interesting spot on the floor, but her eyes are vacant, lost in thought. “It’s like…I don’t need to hide when I’m with you, if that makes any sense. You don’t look for me to change myself. I’m not used to that from people.” She laughs once, quietly.
“It’s…it’s nice, Remus. So thank you.”
“Why would I need you to change?” he asks, a half-smile curving his mouth.
“Well, it’s more like I don’t feel like I should change when I’m talking to you.” Tonks tucks her legs beneath her. “I can be how I want for a bit, and you’re okay with me. It doesn’t…feel weird, with you.”
“Good to know I keep the weirdness to a minimum,” he laughs a little, and wishes she wouldn’t make his insides flutter like that.
19. Ends
“Aunt Molly? Can I ask you something?”
“Absolutely, Teddy. Anything at all,” Molly beckons for the eleven-year-old to scoot his chair further into the shade of Fortescue’s awning. He absently twirls his spoon in the dregs of his sundae.
“You knew my mum and dad, didn’t you?”
Molly starts a bit. “Yes, dear,” she says, a question in her smile. “I knew them.”
“D’you think…you could tell me what they were like?” His big brown eyes are guarded, braced already for a “no.”
“Teddy, don’t you think that’s a question for your-?”
“Grandmum won’t talk much about Dad, and Harry never really knew Mum well enough.”
Teddy shakes turquoise fringe into his face, hiding his eyes, and Molly softens. Just like his father, that one.
“Listen to me,” she says, and Teddy looks up, a little more light in his eyes. There, there’s a little of Dora.
“Your father was a brilliant wizard. He taught Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts, and I don’t know of one student who didn’t adore him. He was the bravest man I ever knew.”
Teddy smiles a little.
“And your mum? She could brighten up a whole room just by standing at the door! She was a great Auror, and a right good shot, too - could hex your knees backwards from a mile away.” Molly takes his hand. “Your mum and dad loved you more than life, Teddy, and they fought harder than anyone so you could grow up happy, without fear.”
20. Lovers
Tonks stops halfway down the hall and whips around, her face set and intense as she turns to face him.
“What are you?”
Remus startles backwards; she sounds exasperated. “I beg your-?”
“Well, I can’t rightly call you my boyfriend, now, can I?” She smiles now, trailing mischievous eyes up and down the length of him. “Because I know for a fact that you are nothing less than every inch a man.”
“Significant other?” he offers.
“Too old-fogey sounding. Like I’m some Ministry officewitch having an affair or something.” Tonks taps her lips with a finger. “Sweetheart’s too juvenile. Prue calls you That-Guy-I’ve-Been-Seeing, but that makes it sound like a casual thing. It doesn’t convey nearly enough of that I-can’t-even-imagine-my-life-without-you-anymore feeling.”
“How about lover?”
She stops for a moment to look at him, really look at him. He’s tucked his hands into trouser pockets, messy fringe hiding his eyes in that achingly shy, boyish way she loves. It’s sweet and sexy and for just a second she can’t believe Remus had ever paused to give her, clumsy, bumbling Tonks, a passing thought so many months ago. She closes the distance between them, fishes his hands from his pockets.
“Hey,” Tonks slides her palms up his arms, “Kiss me?”
Remus rests his hands at her hips, traces her nose with his. His fringe tickles her face. “What about-?”
But she silences him with a finger at his lips. “I’ve heard it’s what lovers do.”
A/N: And that's the end. I hope you all liked, and if you've got any crit or found any grievous errors with canon here, please let me know! Also, I have a fairly extensive playlist I used while working on these, and if you'd like to hear any of it, do tell me and I'll post links to the songs here. Thanks!