“Wotcher, Remus.”
Remus thought that Tonks had surprised herself by speaking. She appeared to have used up her tact by that comment, though “ she didn’t often stare as she was doing now.
Her hair was true blonde today and brushed her shoulders. Her eyes were a pretty medium blue, but Remus saw the dark-eyed woman he knew looking through them.
“May I join you?”
She nodded silently. He tried for a natural good-morning expression and was rewarded by her brief smile. Madam Rosmerta arrived to take Remus’s order, allowing both of them a moment to breathe while he asked for a cup of tea.
When he turned back to face Tonks, she grinned, addressing him as though she had seen him the day before. “So, Remus, how’s your summer been?”
The reappearance of her easy manner caught him off-guard. “I “ well, I’ve been with “ the same group of people I was with last year.” He pulled his thoughts together, sliding into familiar code. “They’ve added a few “ friends. I’m afraid that they are still not popular with our mutual acquaintances, but a few of them are showing willingness to let bygones be bygones.”
Tonks nodded casually. Remus knew that behind her polite expression, she was analysing the current situation in the werewolf underground. He wondered idly if she had ever acted on stage.
“Was your summer productive? I heard you were visiting your family?”
Tonks brightened. “It was, and I was. I hadn’t stayed at home for more than a few days since leaving Hogwarts. I got to tell Mum about Sirius “ so she didn’t have to find out from the papers.” Her voice fell on the last phrase, coloured with sadness.
There was an uncomfortable pause. Tonks looked up and smiled a little. “Sorry, didn’t mean to make things awkward.” She kept her voice low, but the sadness was gone as quickly as her earlier embarrassment. “My Metamorphosing is getting better. I have almost the same range and stamina that I did before “ June.”
She paused. “Would you like to meet for lunch or something and talk a bit more?” A raised eyebrow added, Where we don’t have to use code, please. Remus found himself wishing that she had meant something else.
He shook his head, both to clear his thoughts and in regret. “Not today; I have a…report…to go over with my…associates. Lunch tomorrow?” There was a morning Order meeting; they could eat together after.
She nodded and stood, her smile fully recovered. “Lovely running into you, Remus!” With a wink, she was gone.
Remus didn’t feel entirely ready to stand. It appeared that her revelation of weeks before had not had a terrible impact on her “ or any impact at all, for that matter. She seemed almost entirely normal, quite cheerful and perfectly ready to get on with life. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? For you to not have to keep rejecting her?
It had been rather egotistical to expect that she would still want him. After all, she was very young. Quick recovery was not unsurprising. Just because you fell in love hardly means that her feelings would stay the same. Remus paid for his tea and went on his way, wishing that relief was a stronger emotion. It was too easily overwhelmed -- by heartache, for instance.
He arrived a little early to the next day’s Order meeting, held at the Burrow. No one met him at the door, so he followed muttered voices to the kitchen.
“I’m so sorry, dearie. It didn’t help at all?”
Someone answered Molly, voice muffled. He opened the door but Tonks’s words stopped his own as efficiently as a Silencing Charm.
“…like he’d only just been there. I might as well have seen him every day this summer.”
Tonks and Molly sat at the table, their backs to him. Tonks seemed rather dejected; her hair was neutral brown again, though much better-looking than when she had been unconscious. Her tired, unhappy voice gave away what her hair did not.
“Well, there’s not much to do but keep going, though I must say, I think it’d do the poor man good to get out more. He’s so alone these days.”
Tonks muttered dully, “He’s always been alone.”
“He shouldn’t have to be,” said Molly firmly.
Remus shut the door with rather more care than he’d opened it and leaned against it, trying to collect his wits. Apparently Tonks still had feelings for him.
Apparently? He sneered at his own disbelief. Or she could have held up a neon sign.
Her voice was muffled through the now-closed door. Unconsciously, Remus leaned in until his ear was pressed against it.
“…love him. It’s so stupid. Why can’t two people like each other the same amount or not at all?”
Molly’s soothing murmurs, too quiet to catch. Tonks, agitated and louder.
“I know, I know. Yes, he’s a werewolf. What does that mean? That a few times a year he has to take a vile potion and sleep for a while. I don’t care.”
“…a little more complicated, dear….”
“Those are excuses, not reasons.” A long, defeated sigh. “Except he doesn’t like me, or not much, so it wouldn’t go anywhere anyhow.”
Remus walked back down the hall, trying to rid himself of both guilt and exhilaration. He opened and shut the front door loudly, then called out as he walked to the kitchen, “Molly? Arthur? Is anyone home?”
There was a moment of ringing silence, a sound like smashed china, apologetic murmurs and a slightly exasperated, “Yes, yes, we’re in here!”
Remus entered to find Molly filling a mug for him, and Tonks staring, face flushed, at an empty cup.
The Order trickled in over the next quarter of an hour or so, putting Remus through an interesting trial as he attempted to converse without losing control of his voice, which seemed to want to reflect his wildly conflicting emotions. The meeting itself was not too long; Remus gave a short, basic report and spent the rest of the hour and a half wrestling with his thoughts.
Afterwards, Remus offered to help straighten the meeting room. Two spells later, he looked around and wondered if perhaps Muggles had an idea, putting things in place manually “ at the very least, it had to give them time to think while they worked. He sank into a nearby chair, the well-worn argument about the risks of love running through his mind again, and closed his eyes, thankful for the temporary darkness.
“Mind if I sit?”
He nearly swallowed his tongue. “Of “ course.”
He heard the creak of chair springs (her favourite armchair, patterned with a well-worn plaid) and tried not to think, not to expect, and certainly not to hope.
After a good five minutes, Remus realised that Tonks hadn’t spoken either. He looked up to see her gaze fixed blankly on the floor. He thought of her cheerful tone of the previous morning and took a deep breath. “Did you have any more questions about the werewolves?”
She raised her head at once. “Well, you answered most of them at the meeting, but there was something….”
Remus heaved an internal sigh as he replied.
It was a very credible conversation, but since Remus had little left to tell, it faltered all too soon. He wondered if it was only his own guilty conscience making him edgy, or if Tonks also wished that someone would pop into the room and break the rigid silence.
He himself was fighting a growing urge to apologise for his refusal at the start of the summer. He had made the right answer (of course he had) and logically, there was nothing more he needed to say.
But, argued his mind, all you said was no. You owe her a decent explanation.
Explanations are dangerous, Remus answered resolutely. There isn’t a good one. All I could say is “I’m sorry”, and I’ve already said that.
So?
To his horror, Remus heard himself blurt, “I’m sorry about “ saying no.”
Not only had he broken a firmly logical decision, but he had phrased it more than a little ambiguously, not to mention badly. Tonks looked incredulously at him, but didn’t ask what the apology was for.
“I mean “ I’m sorry I had to,” Remus amended. “I am sorry for hurting you.”
“Don’t apologise. I knew you would probably say no.”
“You did?” Remus closed his eyes and took a deep breath “ that had come out much too quickly. Actually, it shouldn’t have come out at all.
Tonks turned pink, though she answered lightly, “You’ve never exactly made a move on me.”
He laughed, surprising them both. “That’s not my usual modus operandi.”
“What is?”
Blast. She regarded him intently, though with quirked eyebrow.
“I hadn’t really thought to note it down.”
She gave him a real smile. “You’d probably be very sweet and old-fashioned about it. With a Marauder touch.” Then she laughed. “Remus, you’re blushing.”
He was. The phrase she had innocently used conjured a number of memories involving one of his friends hand-in-hand with a girl, smirking at one or more of the others from across the room.
He told her this, which didn’t help his blush, but which made her laugh harder and brought the atmosphere in the room onto a more even keel.
“I can imagine Sirius doing that. He was pretty charming in his good moods.”
They were silent again, thinking of the smirking, lively teenager in the pictures. Most of the photos had been in Remus’s possession, distributed about Grimmauld Place in a valiant effort to make it feel more homey.
“Anyway, I’m sorry,” said Remus quietly.
She shrugged one shoulder. “Like I said, forget it. That’s life.”
“It’s not that I wouldn’t have liked to say yes “” At this point, Remus’s mind caught up with his treacherous tongue. Both organs froze.
“What?”
He shook his head desperately, as though he could take back the words. A strong sense of honesty prevented him from actually doing so.
“Well, why didn’t you? I thought…I thought….”
Remus finally unstuck his tongue. “I…well, I’m a werewolf, for one thing.”
“That’s never changed anything about our friendship.” The emphasis made Remus, if possible, even less comfortable.
“Tonks, I’m sorry I said that “ about saying yes, I mean “ I didn’t mean to. I can’t date the way most people do, I’m not safe “ and I’m nearly fifteen years older than you are “ and I couldn’t afford to take you anywhere, come to that “ and “ well, it’s not plausible, no matter what I feel.”
Worse and worse. Tonks pounced on the last part of the sentence. “What is it that you feel, Remus Lupin?”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He hated dishonesty, partly by nature, partly from being forced to lie on a consistent basis, and so had trained himself never to lie if at all possible. Besides, this was the woman he loved. But to tell the truth would be to wound them both deeply. Instead, he looked away and hated himself for it.
“Remus, please….”
He couldn’t help it. He looked back into her eyes, now filled, he saw, with tears.
“You owe me an honest answer.”
He had given away too much. The answer was, if anything, worse than the not-answer, but there was no way to tell her that without actually answering, and she wouldn’t let the not-answer go.
He thought suddenly of a white-faced James, gazing steadily back at Professor Dumbledore over Remus’s hospital bed, ready to explain why Severus Snape had had to be dragged out of the tunnel below the Whomping Willow on a full moon night.
Throughout the first War, Remus had witnessed a great deal of bravery, but very little that surpassed James’s courage of that night. Remus thought of his old friend and looked straight into the eyes of a friend who had become much, much more.
She repeated the question, as though he might have forgotten it. “What is it that you feel for me, Remus Lupin?”
Slowly, painfully, he answered, “Much too much, Nymphadora Tonks.”
As slowly, he stood, and slowly crossed the room and left it. Behind him, a heartbroken young woman curled into a tight ball in a plaid armchair, mousy brown hair hiding her face as she cried.