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I.
Remus wasn’t sure why everyone decided he was in charge of what would happen with Sirius’s things.
Most of them would go to Harry, of course, but what to do with his room, the little knick-knacks — maybe it was how as soon as he arrived back at the house he went straight to Sirius’s alcohol stash (he was terrible at hiding it) and took a bottle of very expensive scotch to Sirius’s bedroom and stayed there.
On the rare occasions that he wasn’t undercover, this had been Remus’s bedroom too — not that anyone had noticed. Sirius was always the last to bed, and Remus had always stayed up late to keep him company, and everyone was always far too busy to notice Remus leaving his room the next morning.
Things were different now from how they had been back — back before, back during school and just after it, when they’d been breaking the law. They didn’t have to hide — of course, they shouldn’t have done anything in public, not if they didn’t want to risk the chance of a bashing, but Sirius couldn’t go outside, which neatly nipped that in the bud. The only people left to care were the other Order members, and they were hardly going to expel them for it.
And yet.
Maybe it was just that they were used to it. Maybe it was all they ever knew how to be. Maybe it was that they couldn’t bear to introduce yet another uncertainty — between Remus’s missions and the general state of the Order and the way this house was slowly driving Sirius mad, why would they risk it? So Remus politely declined dates with women Molly knew, and everyone else assumed he was far too busy with Order business to even consider romance — which was mostly true.
It wasn’t even like it was particularly romantic, this time around. They’d loved each other, of course they had, but they were so tired, and so old, and there was no emotional space to do more than a quick fuck whenever Remus was there. Thirty-five was impossible, so much more than Remus ever expected, and yet — he was so old.
They had rarely spent hours snogging, comfortable and joyous in their slow exploration of each other’s bodies; certainly they had no dates to go on; and romantic gestures like cooking dinner were useless when there was a literal house elf. All they could do was cling to each other and try to pretend the other knew the depth of their feelings.
And now here he was, and Sirius was dead, and Remus had drunk half the bottle before Molly had come up to gently pry it from his hands and usher him downstairs for some food, which he sorely needed if the way he couldn’t get downstairs without assistance was any indication.
As she fed him the previous night’s leftovers (the last thing Sirius had ever eaten, and didn’t that make the food turn to ash in his mouth—) she said, as if it made any sense, “It’s alright, you don’t need to decide what happens to Sirius’s things now. I imagine Harry will want to have a look at them, so… we can see if there’s anything perishable we need to get rid of and then we can just leave it, if you like.”
He nodded, because what else could he do? He was extremely drunk, and he wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but the numbness inside him was now mostly alcohol instead of grief, and that seemed… a little better.
Molly just hummed at him sadly and then when he was done eating, found him some potion for him to drink in the morning. “Do you — where do you sleep, when you’re here?” she asked, almost as an afterthought, as they began to climb the stairs and he was far, far too drunk for this.
“Wherever there’s space,” he mumbled. This was technically not even a lie — there was space in Sirius’s bed.
She put him in the bedroom next to her and Arthur, presumably to keep an eye on him.
This went on for — well, longer than Remus would like to admit, probably, if he had been more sober and less grief-stricken. It was a cycle that repeated for several days, one that Molly tried to prevent by clearing out several alcohol stashes — but Sirius had been working against her for far longer than could be fixed in only a few days, and Remus just moved onto a different stash each time.
He was expecting her to give up on him completely (she should — he was useless and not worth any of the trouble she was going to), but despite her pursed lips and her heavy sighs when she found him, inevitably, with another bottle of hard liquor in Sirius’s room, she always gently helped him down the stairs so he didn’t fall and break his neck, and fed him and made sure he didn’t vomit in the night.
She did run out of hangover potion though.
It was certainly unpleasant, waking up that first morning after Molly’s stores had run out. She’d warned him, of course, but he still wasn’t prepared to wake up and feel so terrible. For a while he lay in bed, his eyes and mouth clamped shut, trying to fight back the waves of nausea rolling through his body and the headache pressing against his skull. Eventually he felt like he could, at least, open his eyes; but that proved to be a mistake. The room swam around him disconcertingly, and after only a moment, Remus stumbled out of bed, staggered to the bathroom, and threw up.
During the first war, they’d all get absolutely munted whenever an Order member died — well, the younger members would. They’d usually do it on the dead person’s poison of choice, too — Benjy’s was the classic firewhiskey, Caradoc preferred currant rum, and Dorcas had been a frankly terrible evening of mulled wine. (Well, it was always going to be a terrible evening, because Dorcas was dead, but the mulled wine didn’t help.) Even when Lily got pregnant, she drank — not too much, since Healers had discovered a few years back that was apparently bad for you, but just enough to take the edge off.
The difference was that back then they were nineteen, twenty, and barely had hangovers at all (except after the mulled wine). Now, Remus felt every single year of thirty-five as he emptied his stomach. He knew he should stop — he couldn’t go on like this, his liver would give up the ghost even if Molly didn’t throw him out. And yet — and yet. Even when he resolved that today he wouldn’t drink, he would just get so overwhelmed. He couldn’t do anything but stare at the wall in this enormous, terrible, awful house that had Sirius’s ghost all through it, and he couldn’t bear to leave. It would just get too much, and the only thing he knew that would numb it was alcohol.
Yesterday Molly had convinced him to leave the house, to go to the park or a coffee shop, just to see if a change of scenery would help, and it did — until he remembered that he was the only Marauder left, now. That he had nothing and no one and everyone he loved was dead. It was hard to enjoy the park after that.
This morning he moved slowly, all his joints aching, so no one heard him come down the stairs. Instead, he heard Molly’s voice wafting up, talking to — was that Tonks?
“I didn’t realise they were so close,” Molly was saying. Remus found himself frozen on the stairs, hiding like he was some kind of small child spying on his parents. “Of course I knew they were friends at school, but he was away so often — although I guess Sirius was so much more tolerable when he was around. I don’t know, he’s just been hit so much harder than I expected. He’s drunk all the time, and I don’t remember him drinking before, except — well, we were all perhaps a little tipsy on Christmas.”
This was a wild understatement, but correcting her would mean letting her know he was there, so he didn’t. Everyone had got sloshed at Christmas. It’s just that only Remus had excused himself, pink-faced and wobbly, so that a respectable time later Sirius could follow him upstairs and Remus could fuck him into the mattress.
“I wish — I wish I’d known him better,” Tonks said, her voice thick. “He wasn’t much interested in getting to know me, which I understand, because — I mean, he wasn’t much interested in most people, but… he was family. I asked Mum what he was like when they were kids and she said he was the only good thing about family parties, and when she got blasted off the family tree he sent her a congratulatory howler. He sang ‘Why Was She Born So Beautiful’ with — well, Mum said he changed some of the words. Apparently he had a nice voice, too.”
Remus hadn’t heard Sirius sing at all since he got out of Azkaban. Tonks was right, he’d had a good, clear tenor; once for his birthday Sirius had learnt some of the songs off Remus’s dad’s old jazz records and serenaded him. He’d forgotten, actually, but he had to sit down on the stairs with the force of how the memory slammed into him. It was this bump that seemed to alert Molly to his presence.
“Well, dear, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but I must say, he was a bit — Remus?” she said, turning around, jumping as if caught out.
He felt his face heat up. She seemed as flustered as he was, though, and said, “Sorry, how long have you been there? Come down, I’ll fix you some breakfast; you’re looking a bit grey.”
“That’d be—” Remus hesitated, because he didn’t want to trouble her. She’d gone to more than enough trouble for him as it was, and he surely wasn’t worth the effort — but she’d already gone into the kitchen, so there was no point in protesting.
He took a seat in the seat next to the one Molly had just vacated, across the table from Tonks.
He glanced up at her; she was looking teary, her hair a mousy brown and her skin gaunt. He looked away, unwilling to deal with it.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment of silence.
Remus, who had had far too much practice with people telling him they were sorry for his loss during the last war, sighed and said, “Thank you.” The table was too perfect, with no scuff marks or dents at all. It was very boring to look at.
“No, I mean — I’m — I know it was my fault,” Tonks said, and Remus looked up. “If — I swear I tried, if I’d been better at duelling Bellatrix, Sirius would never—”
“And if Sirius had been better at duelling Bellatrix, he wouldn’t be dead,” Remus said shortly. “We can play this game all day but it doesn’t help.”
Tonks was so shocked she stopped crying for a moment, and said again in a smaller voice, “Sorry.”
“If it was anyone’s fault, it was his. He shouldn’t have left, and he knew it.”
“Yeah,” Tonks said, her voice still quiet. “Maybe.”
Remus suddenly had the urge to apologize, for Tonks had shrunk in on herself, and it hadn’t been his intention to make her feel worse than she clearly already did. But his throat was burning, and the weight of everything that had happened in this house was pressing down on his shoulders, and he couldn’t even look her in the eye. He wasn’t sure what he thought he’d see there - or maybe it was about what she might see in his.
Abruptly, he stood up, the legs of his chair scraping harshly on the hardwood floor. “Sorry,” he muttered; about before, he didn’t add. About last time. About everything.
Without looking at her, he turned and left the room, ignoring the pang of guilt he felt at letting Molly go off to cook a breakfast he wouldn’t eat. He was halfway up the stairs when he heard Tonks leave the room behind him, and for one brief, mad second, he imagined (he hoped?) that she was going to follow him; but instead, she slipped out the front door.
That was better. That was for the best.
II.
It began — it began long before Sirius’s death. It began in January; Sirius was grumpier and meaner than usual, mourning the loss of Harry after Christmas and hating Remus for doing another werewolf mission. He and Tonks were assigned to a surveillance of a known Death Eater-aligned bar, but once they were off the clock (nothing had happened except a mistaken identity at about 2am), Remus didn’t want to go back to Grimmauld Place for yet another drunken, angry fuck before he fell asleep in an evil house.
Tonks asked him about his time at Hogwarts. She admired him — his expertise in Defence Against the Dark Arts (though he demurred, saying as a trained Auror she was far better), his bravery for going undercover with the werewolves, even the few stories of the last war she managed to coax out of him. The stakeout turned into a drink turned into two, and when she kissed him he didn’t object.
When she took him back to her place and took off her clothes he didn’t object either. It wasn’t a surprise; Sirius had pointed out she had been flirting with him for months at meetings, though he had no idea why. Even Moody was probably more attractive than he was.
Having sex with a woman was… different. He’d only ever had sex with men before, and while he wasn’t turned on by her body, it was easy enough to close his eyes and pretend — and she actually paid attention to him, wanted to make it good. He thought she mistook his initial apprehension and uncertainty of what to do as shyness, which she seemed to find endearing, if anything. She laughed when she came, which shocked him — when was the last time someone had laughed while having sex with him?
She grinned at him afterwards when she offered him a cigarette. He offered a weak smile back, mind still reeling a little at what he’d done.
It’s not like he and Sirius had actually discussed exclusivity. They’d not discussed bloody anything. And sure, Sirius being stuck in the house meant Remus knew he definitely wasn’t fucking anyone else, unless he and Mad Eye had some secret trysts while Remus was away, but Remus had had sex with werewolves on a mission before and not felt a drop of guilt.
This wasn’t guilt for cheating, it was — Tonks didn’t deserve this. She was still smiling contentedly to herself as she puffed on her fag and she was so young and happy and . Surely she could find literally anyone better than him.
She offered to let him stay overnight, but he disentangled himself as gently as possible — he didn’t want to give her any ideas, but he also didn’t want to hurt her. It was a thin line to toe, and he wasn’t sure he succeeded, but she smiled as she waved him off, and that was… at least he could make her smile.
When he returned to Grimmauld Place, he didn’t miss her, but he found that he missed how it used to be with Sirius more acutely — before, he had resigned himself to the new reality, but now all he could think of was how in the early days they had laughed together, awkward and still learning each other’s bodies, and thrilled that they got to do this at all.
He tried, once, to have a conversation about it with Sirius, but whatever changes might have come with it were gone by the next time Remus came back from a mission.
III.
The worst part was that he shouldn’t miss him. Sirius had been a ghost of his former self since leaving Azkaban, and whatever love they had once had was dead before that. He didn’t miss Sirius as he had been at Grimmauld Place, but he missed the Sirius he once was; he missed the Sirius that he dreamt he could have become, once Dumbledore had cleared his name and he no longer felt trapped in a toxic house with no one to resent but Remus.
He went through Sirius’s things, making sure there would be no nasty surprises for when Harry inherited it all when this was all over. (And it would be over, one day, he had to believe it.) He took a few things just for himself — a photograph here, a letter there, so that he could remember that things had been better, once. He tried to convince himself that Harry wouldn’t miss them, but in the end he justified that he was leaving the rest to Harry, and he could selfishly have a few things. He was careful to collect anything that implied he and Sirius had been in a relationship, too. He couldn’t guard many secrets, but he could have this.
He went back to the werewolves, trying to forget himself for a month as he slipped into the monster he always was, in part. It was always easiest not to think at all during missions, except to note what he needed to report back to Dumbledore. If he thought too much, his cover slipped. If he thought too much, he realised what he was doing was indefensible, and he couldn’t have that. This was literally his only usefulness.
Tonks was stationed at Hogsmeade: she said as much at Order meetings. When he came back from a mission, she sent him an owl, asking if he wanted to meet. He’d finally moved out of Grimmauld Place, so he was back to his two-up two-down in New Tredegar, which was desperately lonely. He tried to tutor children, but he was gone so frequently that he often lost the job, and he eventually had to go on his hands and knees crawling to Dumbledore to ask for a stipend. He couldn’t justify asking for it all the time, so he only asked for it to cover when he was on werewolf missions. It meant he could pay rent and usually eat, but the utilities were sometimes shut off, and he never bought new clothes.
It didn’t inspire any confidence in his employers, that he was wearing such ratty clothes, but there was simply no money for it.
So he went to Hogsmeade, knowing that Tonks might expect things of him, given their past, but he was hoping she would pay for a hot meal and at least treat him like a human worthy of respect.
She didn’t even ask if he wanted to split the bill, thankfully. When she asked if he wanted to come up for a nightcap he agreed at least partially because he had no heat at home, and wanted to keep being warm for however long he could spin it.
This time, it hurt too much picturing Sirius, so he imagined some composite of men he’d known — but Sirius’s features kept sneaking in, and he was mostly relieved when it was over. This time he did accept the cigarette even though his lungs were shit, and he tried not to cough as he took a drag.
“Do you want to do this more regularly? Proper-like, with dates?” she said as she stubbed the cigarette out.
Remus went cold all over and there was an entirely too-long pause before he said, “Surely you have better options than me.”
Tonks frowned and said, “What d’you mean?” Remus didn’t dare look at her and kept his eyes down. He could see all the reasons: the scars on his legs, the bung knee he did in while in wolf form somehow; the way he was useless and broken.
“I’m too old for you,” he began, self-conscious suddenly of his already-greying hair. “And I’m a werewolf. I’m so poor I can’t reliably provide for myself, let alone — I’ve got absolutely nothing going for me.”
“I don’t care about any of that!” Tonks said, and out of the corner of his eye he saw how she sat up and gestured emphatically. “Of course I know you’re a werewolf, and we’re both adults, you’re not too old for me, and it’s not like I’m planning on quitting my job or anything, bloody hell. This isn’t the eighteenth century, Remus. I know that you’re kind and brave and excellent at magic and attractive and you’re someone I want to spend time with. That’s enough for me!”
Remus swallowed and rubbed at his face. He could hardly tell her the truth — that he was far too gay for this whole thing, that he imagined men while he fucked her. The rest of it wasn’t a lie, either, though, and that was far safer.
“It’s a terrible idea.”
“You don’t get to decide that for me.”
“It’s not a decision,” Remus insisted. “It’s a fact. I am a terrible idea, and you should stay away from me.”
“Then why have you been shagging me? It’s all good and fine to get your dick wet but as soon as I suggest something that looks like commitment, you’re all ‘stay away from me’?”
“Tonks, it’s not — I made a mistake, doing this with you. It was selfish, and you’re right to be angry. I just — I like being around you, but I never should have — I’m sorry.”
Even as he apologized, Remus’s stomach twisted at the thought that surely, Tonks would want nothing to do with him after this. Now he would really have no one — no one who saw him as brave, and human, and worthy of admiration rather than fear and pity.
Then again, he was none of those things, so perhaps it was for the best.
“Yeah,” said Tonks shortly. “I reckon you should be.”
“I’ll — I’ll go then. I’m sorry.”
He tried not to linger in the warmth as he got dressed and collected his things before going back out into the cold again.
IV.
Tonks didn’t come to Christmas at the Burrow, just as Molly had said.
“Why won’t you date her? She clearly fancies you, and it’s breaking her heart. She said you gave some — some rubbish reasons, like being a werewolf. We all know you’re a werewolf, Remus, that cat is out of the bag.” Molly said, having asked him to help her in the kitchen, thankfully away from everyone else.
“I know it is, which is why I don’t understand why she would want to date me. I’m damaged goods, I’m far too old for her, too poor, and she deserves someone better. Anyone better. Don’t you understand?” He put the potatoes in the oven and turned to Molly, who was frowning at him.
“Frankly, no. Think about it, Remus. She wants you, whatever you might think of yourself.”
He wasn’t sure if he imagined the implied “and no one else ever will”; but it wasn’t about that. He knew there was a possibility other people would — Sirius had, for one. But look how that had turned out. He was dangerous and it was better for everyone if he were alone.
At the next Order meeting — blessedly not at Grimmauld Place, as that had been deemed compromised by Kreacher and the possibility that other Blacks could have access — Remus made a gesture at Tonks to have a quiet word before it started and she, for whatever reason, followed him into Moody’s kitchen.
“You didn’t have to skip Christmas at the Burrow — if you’d been uncomfortable with me being there, you could have said something, I wouldn’t have come.”
Tonks stared at him like he had a second head and snorted. “Sometimes it’s not about you — I’m Jewish. It’s been a rough year, and I wasn’t up to the potentially deadly combo of Peak Christmas Molly Weasley and the man who refuses to commit to anything on a day I don’t care about.”
Remus was speechless for a moment, opening his mouth and then closing it. Andromeda certainly hadn’t been Jewish — she was a Black, after all — so she must have meant Ted. Tonks smiled a little, as if she had succeeded in what she meant to do.
“Then why did you spend it alone? Molly said you weren’t going to your family.”
The smile dropped immediately. “What part of Jewish is hard to understand? Chanukah ended two weeks ago, and I didn’t even spend that with my parents. On Christmas, I got a kebab and spent it on duty so Savage and Proudfoot could spend it together.”
“Savage and… Proudfoot? Aren’t they both women?”
“Yes,” Tonks said in an unfriendly tone, her eyes narrowed. “You have a problem with that?”
“No! No, I just — I was surprised. I didn’t think it was information that — that, you know, that you told other people.”
“It’s not a secret, everyone at work knows. They make a cute couple.”
Remus had never actually met Proudfoot, only heard about her, but he imagined that he should have somehow seen it when he met Savage that one time. They were meant to be able to detect each other, weren’t they? It was probably for the best, since she might have realised about him.
“I’m happy for them,” he said feebly. “They’ll need each other in the hell that’s coming up.”
Tonks took a brief moment to stare at him, and then shook her head and left. She didn’t look at him for the whole meeting and left without speaking to him again.
V.
Things got worse. There were werewolf attacks up north; Dementor attacks in the West Country; Death Eater attacks almost every week. The world was falling apart and Remus couldn’t decide whether being so isolated when he wasn’t out in the field was a blessing or a curse.
At least it wasn’t as bad as the last war, with loved ones dropping dead like flies. Amazing what difference not having a spy in the Order made.
Then again, most of his loved ones were already dead.
One night he was at Order headquarters filling in a report, taking advantage of the functional utilities, when someone came in. The door didn’t offer any resistance, as it was supposed to if a non-Order member attempted entry (well, it shouldn’t have even existed for a non-Order member, with the Fidelius, but they had built in safeguards), so Remus finished the sentence he was writing before he looked up.
When he did he scrambled to his feet, grabbing his wand from the table. “Regulus?”
Regulus was dead. He remembered it, he remembered how much it had torn Sirius up, even as Sirius had sworn a few years earlier that Regulus was dead to him.
Regulus immediately put his hands up in front of him in a gesture of conciliation and even as he spoke, he began to morph in front of Remus’s eyes. “It’s me, Tonks, I promise — not Regulus. I’m sorry, I forgot — it was easier on this mission if I was a man, and I forgot to change back.” By the time she finished speaking she was Tonks again, and Remus put his wand down with shaking hands.
For just a moment, Regulus had been alive again.
“That was — has Andromeda ever seen you do that? You scared the shit out of me.”
Tonks pulled a face. “She doesn’t like it. She never said why, though — I guess I know now. Do I really look like him? Sirius’s brother, right?”
“Yes,” Remus said. His heart wouldn’t stop racing, and he didn’t know how to calm down. “It was eerie, he — he never actually got that old. It was like looking into some alternate future.”
“I’ll try to be better about changing, then. D’you want a cuppa?”
“I — yes, maybe that’ll — yes,” Remus said, sitting back down at last. As she put the kettle on, he asked, “Is that how it works, that you have a sort of… default masculine appearance, as well as a default feminine one?”
“Yep,” she said through the doorway, and Remus could hear the clink of mugs as she prepared the tea. “I can change it, obviously, but it’s an extra bother, so I usually don’t. It feels more normal that way.”
“Have you ever seen a photograph of him?”
“Regulus? No, never. I don’t know if Mum has any, to be honest — she might’ve got rid of them, I wouldn’t blame her.”
She brought out the tea and Remus found that it helped, grounding him in the present so he could try to think clearly.
“He was a right tosser,” he said at last, “but I suppose he came through in the end. Voldemort killed him for betraying him, the story goes. Sirius—” His voice cracked and he fell silent, choosing to instead sip his tea. He wondered if Sirius would have hated this.
“What’re you working on?” she asked after a moment, pointing at the parchment in front of him.
Remus spent the remainder of his mug of tea explaining it to her, and she slowly drifted into his personal space as if she didn’t even realise she was doing it. At some point she caught herself and blushed, making her excuses not long after. She looked at him with undisguised longing, but he pretended not to see.
He next saw her outside of a meeting in May. He was spending time at Order headquarters again, this time not because the heat was shut off (it was, but he didn’t need it now that the weather was warmer) but because this house at least felt lived-in in a way that his own didn’t. It made him feel less dead, just a little.
When she stumbled in he looked up, not because he was afraid it was an intruder but because he could hear her ragged breathing. She was crying, her robes torn and dark with dried blood. She didn’t hold herself like someone injured, so she must have had her wounds tended to before she arrived.
“Leung is dead,” she said with a sob. “They — I couldn’t save her, I should’ve — right in front of me, but I wasn’t quick enough and — they killed her and I didn’t even find out — I don’t know who was under the mask, and I failed — I failed her.”
Remus didn’t know who Leung was. It didn’t matter — clearly she meant something to Tonks, and she was dead, and Remus did the only thing he knew how: he hugged her and let her cry into his robes. He knew he should be using the opportunity to check her for injuries, too, but he couldn’t do anything but hold on.
At last, Tonks quieted a little and pulled back. “We were — I was taken off Hogsmeade because they said they needed me for other work, so I was partnered with Leung and we were looking into Death Eater activity in Leeds, and we thought it was abandoned, and — I shouldn’t have left her, she’s still there, I—” She dissolved into sobs again, and Remus didn’t know what to say. There was nothing he could say — there was no way to make this right, and everything sounded hollow, perfunctory.
“Was she dead when you left?” he said, picking the least comforting but potentially most important question.
“Yes,” Tonks said, rubbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her robes pulled over her hands. “Yes, she — I saw her die.”
Remus didn’t know if this was the first time Tonks had seen someone die, but he was acutely aware, all of a sudden, of how young she was; of how old he was; of how many people he had seen die. Of the fact that there was an entire war between them.
“Does the Auror Department know?”
“I told the Healer I saw at St Mungo’s; they wanted me to stay for — for observation or something, I don’t know, but I couldn’t… I don’t know if — her family’s all in Hong Kong. I don’t know how the Department deals with that, if we have to liaise with the Hong Kong Ministry. I can’t — I don’t know what to do. If I go into the Ministry I’ll get stuck with mountains of paperwork but the thought of doing it tonight just…” She trailed off, wiping her eyes again. Remus conjured a handkerchief for her, which she took and blew her nose on.
“How about we get you home, you can send in a message so they know but you don’t have to go in and do all the paperwork until tomorrow.”
“Alright,” she said, looking a little calmer. “I can do that.”
They used Moody’s Floo to get to Tonks’s flat, and she pulled a face and apologised for the mess. Remus was oddly relieved that she was in a state of mind to be embarrassed about something so inconsequential. He waved her off, settling her on the sofa and going into the kitchen to make tea, looking in four different cupboards before he found the one with mugs in.
When he came back with two steaming mugs, Tonks had calmed down and stopped crying. “I only knew her for — what, a month and a half? I mean, she came to the Department two years ago, but I hadn’t worked with her before, so it was more that I just knew her face and name. She’s — she was such a good Auror. We thought the safehouse was abandoned, all our intel said it was, so we were going in there to see if there was anything left behind — it’s amazing what you can find, the kind of stuff you’d think someone would never accidentally leave, how important it can be, and then halfway through our search they turned up.”
“Do you think it was an ambush?”
Tonks paused, considering. “No, I think — I think they might’ve been as surprised to see us as we were to see them. One of them went down hard, but there were three of them, and — she’s such a good dueller, but it was an unlucky hit, and she just — it was quick, I think.”
“Sometimes that’s all you can ask for.”
“I should’ve — she was better than I am. She shouldn’t’ve been the one to die.”
“Maybe, maybe not, but you can’t think like that — it’ll eat you alive,” Remus said, as if this was not his constant companion, the thought that he should have died (instead of Dorcas, instead of the Prewetts, instead of the Potters, instead of Sirius). “How about you write a notification to the Auror Department and then we can send it off and get you into bed.”
It had barely gone nine, but Tonks nodded, summoning a piece of purple parchment and a quill. She scribbled a short message, folded it up into a paper aeroplane and stuck her head in the fire, emerging a minute later.
“Could you — stay, tonight? I don’t want to be alone,” Tonks said, staring at a spot a foot to the left of Remus.
“Of course, I can take the sofa.” The sofa looked pretty sad as far as something to sleep on went, but it wasn’t all that much worse than his actual bed.
“No, I mean — in my bed? It’s big enough, and — I don’t want — I just don’t want to be alone.”
He should say no. He should say he’ll stay on the sofa, or he should conjure some small folding bed in her room, anything, but — but she looked so small.
“Alright,” he said. They both got ready for bed, taking turns using the single bathroom, and then he slipped into bed next to her. As she curled up next to him, an arm around his middle, he tried not to think of the last time he had slept in the same bed as someone.
And as she cried herself to sleep, he tried not to think about Regulus’s death, and Sirius crying himself to sleep all those years ago.
Despite his misgivings, he slept well in Tonks’s bed — she had a better mattress than he did, and the problems only really arose when he woke up.
His first reaction to the weight of someone sleeping next to him was to say good morning to Sirius, and the jolt he felt when he turned to see her instead made him feel momentarily ill.
He must have accidentally jostled her, because she opened her eyes and smiled at him. “Sleep well?”
He nodded.
“I’ll get us breakfast,” she said, slipping out of bed, and he watched as she left the room. He felt jarred, out of place.
Eventually, he got up and went to the bathroom, and when he went into the kitchen Tonks had the kettle on. “I’ve got English Breakfast, Earl Grey and um, I think a Jasmine?”
“Earl Grey, thanks,” Remus said, and hovered awkwardly as Tonks poured water over his teabag and her own.
“I was going to be all fancy and make us pancakes or something but I’m out of eggs, so I’ve got, um, cereal? Or last night’s pasta,” Tonks said apologetically, ducking her head. Her hair was still that same mousy brown and Remus didn’t have the heart to ask her about it.
“Cereal’s fine,” he said, and they each had a bowl of cornflakes.
They were almost done when Tonks raised the dreaded topic again. “You said you slept well last night, and I enjoyed having you here — it was a comfort, and — c’mon, Remus, I don’t care that you’re a werewolf, you know that. I know you’re poor and older than me, but I’m not exactly rolling in it, and I don’t know if you’ve seen my family tree but we would hardly be the most alarming age difference. It doesn’t even — what exactly is it that I’m missing, in my youth, that makes me ineligible to date you?”
“A whole other war!” Remus said, answering a little too truthfully, caught off-guard. If not for the sex and the constant reminders that Tonks was so inescapabably younger than he was, he would enjoy spending time with her. Served him right for staying for breakfast, he supposed. “This is what, the first person you’ve seen die?”
Tonks was brought up short. “I don’t see how — how that has any relevance to who you date. You don’t have to live in the last war. You can at least live in this one.”
Remus flinched.
“I can’t date you,” he said with an air of finality. “Please, Tonks. Find someone worthy of you. Find someone whole and healthy — things are only going to get worse.”
“And what if I want you?” she said, sticking her chin out defiantly.
“Then you’ll be disappointed. I’m sorry, Tonks. I’ll — I’ll see you at meetings.”
She had the grace not to argue as he collected his things and left. Part of him wanted to just tell her the truth — the whole truth — but he was afraid of what she would say. And worse, he was afraid of who she would tell; the way she had reacted to Proud and Savage was promising, but what if Molly found out? What if the rest of the Order found out? He couldn’t live with that.
The concept of everyone knowing filled him with terror that he couldn’t rationalise away, reinforced by decades of hiding. So he fled.
VI.
Dumbledore’s death rattled him in a way that few others had, this war round. It wasn’t that he had felt that Dumbledore couldn’t die, because Dumbledore was mortal — they all were. He had learnt that over and over. If anything, it was more that he wasn’t sure what direction they had without Dumbledore. He was the one telling them what to do, the one with the big picture.
And now he was gone, and Remus was realising that maybe none of them had ever really known the big picture.
He had been cornered in the Hospital Wing, Tonks once again making an impassioned plea for him to date her, despite all the reasons it was an absolutely terrible idea. Well, all the reasons she knew.
But worse, now everyone else knew all the reasons he was refusing to date her, and everyone was on her side, and it would be far more difficult to justify refusing her.
Dumbledore was dead, and he was so tired.
He had managed to delay the inevitable by pointing out that it was not the time or place — Bill’s family was coming to terms with terrible news, and he didn’t want to do anything to take away from their pain. Once McGonagall took Harry, though, Tonks took Remus by the arm down the corridor and into a classroom.
“Is this the right place and time?” she asked, looking up at him, and Remus wasn’t sure if he imagined a little exasperation in her tone.
“No, obviously — Dumbledore is dead—”
“Come off it, I mean we’re no longer in the same room as Bill so we can actually talk about—”
“We have talked about it! Many times! Were you not there? I distinctly remember you being there!” It felt like they were just going around in circles constantly and Remus didn’t know how to get off this roundabout.
“Remus, Molly is right. It’s not like if I date someone young and ‘whole’ that they’d stay that way, not with the war like it is — and you deserve happiness too.”
Remus thought it terribly presumptuous that Tonks thought he could find happiness with her, but was too cowardly to say so.
“I mean, you do — you’ve never said you don’t like me,” Tonks said. “You’ve always just said a crock of shit about being old.”
For a moment, the world froze. He could say something. He could say that he didn’t like her. Technically, people didn’t have to like everyone they could hypothetically be attracted to — that was definitely a thing. He didn’t actually fancy every man he saw. And yet — and yet he hadn’t said anything earlier, because he had enjoyed her company, and she hadn’t cared that he was a werewolf, and she was smart and funny and made good conversation. Also she had always paid her heating bill. He… he had used her, and the thought of her knowing that — of everyone knowing that — was just about as bad as the thought of everyone knowing about him.
He’d backed himself into a corner. Had he done it deliberately? Was it a punishment? He didn’t think so, because surely he wouldn’t intentionally drag someone else into this hell, but… but here they were.
“Alright,” he said, and tried not to sound as resigned as he felt. “You can’t ever — we’ll have to talk about the full moon, but — alright. I’ll date you.”
It seemed to take a moment for his words to hit her, but he could see it the moment that they did; her eyes went wide, and a spark lit up inside them, and then she flung her arms around him with such force that he staggered back a step.
She pulled his robes down so she could kiss him, and he closed his eyes as her lips met his. This was his future now. It could be worse — he could be dead, or trapped in Grimmauld Place without Sirius somehow, or on more frequent werewolf missions. He could have killed someone. He could be alone.
She kissed him and he felt nothing, but at least she was happy.