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It was a series of unfortunate events that led Remus Lupin to be drinking fire whiskey at 4 in the morning, the day before Christmas Eve, choking down a mixture of the burning alcohol and his own snot as he sobbed silently on the roof of the apartment building Tonks and him were currently renting a room in.
It had started much earlier that day when Tonks had been sitting by their small, grisly little Christmas tree and staring into the mirror above their little dinner table. Remus had run out for something fancy to take to the Weasley’s for Christmas, and Tonks was amusing herself by trying to decide her new hair color.
Vivid turquoise, a brilliant yellow, and a sickly shade of maroon were all flickered through while Tonks wrinkled her nose. None of them would do. Remus had once swirled her bubblegum pink hair in his fingers and said she looked like a misty sunrise. She wanted to find a hair color that made Remus get all soft in the eyes and say something so oddly poetic for her grizzled werewolf boyfriend. She shifted her hair to a startling shade of red and imagined Remus smiling gently at her and pressing a kiss to her forehead, saying her hair reminded him of poppies at dawn or something silly like that. She chuckled, ruefully. He was such a nonce.
Absentmindedly she changed her hair to a deep black, not unlike her mother’s hair. It made her look even paler, somehow gaunt. With a start, she realized she looked a bit like Sirius with her hair so dark. With a sad twist in her chest, she twisted up her face and concentrated on elongating her nose a bit, thinning her cheeks and sharpening her jawline and chin. Her eyes faded to a pale, silvery gray. She shook her hair out, watching as it grew to settle at her shoulders in shaggy black feathers. She grinned, even getting the pointed canines right.
How macabre to shift to the spitting image of her dead cousin, Tonks thought she might be going a bit mad after all when something crashed behind her.
With a start, she leapt to her feet.
Remus was feeling sufficiently bleak as he tramped up the stairs to the tiny apartment he and Tonks shared. It had been raining and cold outside and now his threadbare trousers and shoes were soaked through. He had only been able to afford a little box of mince pies to bring to the Weasley’s Christmas dinner, and he was feeling simultaneously very cold and very poor.
With a deep sigh he reached for his key to unlock the door. It was cheaper out here in the Muggle world, and people didn’t know the Lupin name as a disgraced ex-Hogwarts teacher who happened to be a werewolf. Still, as he shoved the key into the lock he felt keenly aware of the wand tucked into his coat’s inner pocket and of the world that he so missed being a part of.
The door swung open to reveal Sirius Black’s reflection staring at him in the little mirror above the dining room table.
Remus felt a sharp pain somewhere in his abdomen as all the air rushed out of him, and with a clatter he dropped the box of mince pies and staggered foreward with his hand outstretched.
Sirius leapt up and turned around, and God above there he was with his shaggy black hair and grey eyes and aristocratic nose and Tonks’ Weird Sisters T-Shirt--
Remus stopped short, breathing raggedly and staring at the Weird Sisters T-Shirt with bile rising in his throat. “N-Nymphadora?”
“Oh, Remus.” Sirius said with Tonks voice before the illusion melted away to reveal Remus’ pink-haired girlfriend wearing an expression of guilt. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry--I didn’t think you’d be home so soon.”
Remus felt like he had been ripped open again, like all the long nights with Tonks sleeping on his chest and his world knitting back together after Sirius’ death had just been torn apart and discarded. He wanted to punch himself for being so stupid. He wanted to scream at Tonks for shattering every minute of healing he’d tried to have.
Instead he pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a huffy little breath, closing his eyes. “Is--is this something you do, while I’m away? Shape change into your d-dead relatives?”
“No, God, no you must think I’m bloody barking.” Tonks’ hands were on his chest all of a sudden and her Sandalwood shampoo was filling his nose but he couldn’t bear to open his eyes or move to hold her.
All he could see was Sirius’ face looking at him in that mirror, an expression of surprise lighting up the familiar planes of his face. Remus had avoided looking at pictures of Sirius, so to see him as if he had suddenly sprung up alive and well in the apartment was too much.
“I was just playing around with my hair and I took it too far, Remus, I’m so sorry I know you two were such good friends I know--”
You don’t know, Remus wanted to say.
With his eyes still closed, he reached out and enfolded Tonks in his arms. She was so small and bird-boned, sometimes it made him laugh thinking about how graceless and clumsy she was in comparison to how she folded up in his embrace like a little rag doll. Now, all he could think about was how Sirius had felt in his arms and the bile taste was back in his throat.
“I’m sorry.” Remus coughed out. “I--I just got a bit of a shock.”
Tonks patted his back soothingly. “I’m sorry, love, I’m so sorry. S’alright, Remus. You’re alright.”
Carefully, Remus disengaged Tonks from the hug and stepped back stiffly. “I, erm, I’m going to go pick something else for Christmas.”
The mince pies laid in ruin on the floor.
Tonks smiled weakly. “I”ll clean this mess up then.”
Remus tried to smile back, failed, leaned down to kiss her quickly on the cheek before turning on his heel and dashing out of the room.
Tonks closed the door behind Remus and fought back the tears burning her eyes. She had been a right fool, shifting into Sirius like that.
She hadn’t seen Remus look that destroyed since that night in the Ministry last June. It tore her up inside. With a sigh, she knelt down to start cleaning up the crushed minced pies.
Remus did not return home for a long time that night. He had used the odd little Muggle cell phone to call Tonks and tell her he would be out late. He hadn’t even bothered to think of a reason why. Tonks, bless her loving heart, hadn’t asked for one. She knew he needed time, even if she didn’t know quite why.
Remus sat on the roof of their apartment building, soaking the ass of his trousers with cold rain water and miserably nursing a bottle of fire whiskey.
He kept replaying the moment Tonks, wearing Sirius’ face, had turned around. He juxtaposed it to the moment Sirius had fallen through that veil, so that instead of never turning to face Remus again, Sirius turned away from that veil with a surprised look on his face.
Remus didn’t even know he was crying as he finished the last of the firewhiskey and then hurled it against the roof, imagining it was Bellatrix Lestrange’s skull that was shattering into a million pieces.
Below, Bellatrix’s niece waited for him to return to their little bed. Remus could only see Sirius sitting on their sheets, wearing the Weird Sisters T-Shirt with a grin on his face.
“Whaddya think, Moony? Pretty nice, right? The bloke at the shop said it was a lady’s shirt but, c’mon, does it not strain around my manly shoulders so fetchingly?”
The grief ran so deep in that moment that it roused the slumbering wolf in Remus’ chest, and he raised his head and howled wordlessly at the night sky.