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Tonks wasn’t one for sweetly romantic imaginings, but she had fancied taking care of Remus after a transformation on one occasion. She’d supposed it would involve clean bandages, crisp sheets, and an aura of stillness as he slept – all quite befitting the overall neat and tidy impression he constantly gave off.
The reality was very different.
Remus had told her she wasn’t to wait just outside the door to the basement all night, and she’d agreed in order to keep the peace – this was the first time he’d let her be involved at all with the aftermath of a transformation. He didn’t like to let her come around until around the next day, when he could sit in a chair and look moderately alert. But since Sirius had died, he’d had nobody, and she knew he was even lonelier than before.
So Tonks waited up on the second floor of the abandoned farmhouse Remus had been using once a month, under strict orders to Apparate far away if she heard the door splintering. It was pretty dire – even if she weren’t completely unable to sleep due to her worry for Remus, she didn’t imagine she’d be able to. There were a couple of bedframes left, one with an extremely dusty mattress on it, and bits and bobs of furniture that hadn’t been taken away when the inhabitants left. Just to be on the safe side, she cast a few strengthening charms on the building as she walked through it, since a total collapse didn’t seem implausible. (Although Remus had surely done something like that already, if only to prevent himself from breaking free.)
As the full moon dipped below the horizon and the dawn began to lighten the sky, relief flooded through her. Finally, the night was over, and soon Remus would be himself again.
Then the howling started, howling that took on a bloodcurdling quality as the shape of his mouth and throat shifted and it transitioned into screaming. Very soon, the screams were muffled – Remus was enough himself to try to bite it back to keep her from hearing. That propelled her down the stairs, to press herself against the peeling door that lead down to the cellar. She’d promised. She’d promised.
Her promise kept her there until the bitten-back moans subsided into whimpers, which she knew had to mean that it was all over. At the very least, he had to be enough himself that it was safe for her to take the spells off the door and come in after him – so she did.
Tonks found him curled up on the dirt floor in the center of the cellar, his back to her. His ribcage was moving up and down unsteadily, as his breaths were coming in uneven gasps, and as she drew closer she could see bumps on his back that surely meant several ribs were broken. Something was wrong with his shoulder as well.
“Remus?” she breathed, and reached out with a hand for his elbow. She touched him so lightly, but he still shuddered and made an indistinct noise. “Sorry! Sorry!”
“It’s,” he managed, with clear effort. “Fine.”
But this was not fine. Tonks was normally great with field healing, it was her second-best area after using her natural talents to disguise herself – but that was different. Even seeing a friend in the throes of a curse or with blood spurting from their arm was something she could cope with, throwing out a countercurse or a staunching charm.
Remus, though. Remus was the man with the soft cardigan who smiled whenever she came into a room. He was the man with the eyes that went sad every time he remembered, well, pretty much anything from his life, because there were too many sad memories and too many happy memories that were sad in retrospect. He was restrained, calm, and withdrawn; polite even to Snape. When he fought, it was with a steely gaze and no unnecessary movements. If they were living a hundred years earlier, she’d have called him the consummate gentleman. Seeing him naked, grimy from the dirt floor, and in pain was simply … wrong. It was wrong of the world to put him in this situation, over and over and over, ripping his refinement and his self-control from him month after month. And she felt wrong for witnessing it.
But he needed her. She couldn’t just kneel beside his body and feel sorry for herself, and for him, too. She had to help.
“Right, then,” Tonks said briskly. “Let me just look at your shoulder, here. Okay, that’s a dislocation – I’ve got a spell to pop it right back in for you.” She tried to imagine that she was doing it for Dawlish as she had a year ago to keep her hand steady, and once she heard the proper snap of everything going back in the right place, she cast a numbing charm after it.
Now what. Now what? Tentatively, she reached for Remus’s hand, resting her fingers on the back of it lightly. When he didn’t flinch or groan, she reached out a little farther, spreading her fingers in order to slip them between his. It was heartening that he moved his hand just enough to put some pressure on hers. “Can you tell me what you want me to do next? Oh, hang on.” Conjuring a thick woollen blanket, she tucked it awkwardly around him with her free hand. “Sorry, I should have done that right off.”
Remus’s voice was very hoarse – from the screaming, she realized – and he sounded utterly exhausted, but his words still had that tone of fondness that he reserved for her. “I can assure you … I’ve dealt with worse.”
“Right, yeah,” she said, trying to force a little jollity into her own voice. “And it’s nothing I haven’t seen before, anyway. Why don’t I do your ribs?” At his nod of assent, she briefly let go of his hand so she could hold the blanket aside while healing the breaks. The second she’d finished, she threaded her fingers through his again; this time, he squeezed them more firmly.
“Thank you.”
He was quiet again, and Tonks let him be, casting surreptitious cushioning charms on the packed earth beneath him. When he sighed, she thought he sounded a little contented (for the situation), and it buoyed her up; she dropped her wand in her lap and combed her fingers through his hair. She could almost forget that they were in a dank cellar with weak light filtering in through the short windows.
“All right,” Remus finally said, and began to push himself into a seated position. Tonks fluttered – not a word she normally connected to herself – snatching up her wand but not sure what to do with it, she held back until he was propped up on one very smudged arm. Then she scooted herself forward on her knees until she was close enough that he could lean back against her, which left her in the perfect place to tuck her chin over his shoulder. They again lapsed into silence, Remus shaking a little as his body adjusted.
When he spoke again, it was in a whisper, and his head dipped a little forward. “I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have to see this – you shouldn’t have to deal with it –”
“Hey, we’re past that, right?” There was a little shiver in her stomach, but she pushed it away. They were past it, she knew it. “I’m not leaving.”
He put his hand over hers. “I know, I know – I’m not …” He was a little out of breath, she could hear, and he licked his lips before he went on. “I’m not saying you should, I just … it’s not fair.”
“It’s not,” she agreed, thinking of her earlier anger. “And it’s not fair that you only have me here.”
There was a pause, but it felt different. “What?” he asked, finally.
“I don’t know what to do!” Tonks didn’t mean to let it out: this was a time for Remus and his struggles. “I just – I didn’t know what to do when I was waiting upstairs, and then I came down here and I didn’t know what you needed. It’s not … it doesn’t come naturally to me, I guess.”
With some effort, he pushed himself forward and pivoted on his hip, still clutching the blanket around him. The concerned look in his eyes, so close to her own, made her feel even more guilty.
“I bet Sirius was really great after a full moon,” she added.
“Sirius was a lot of things,” Remus said thoughtfully, “but no, he wasn’t particularly good at dealing with … all of this. But he tried, and he asked what I needed, and he did it if he could.” He shrugged his shoulder, the one that had been hurt. “He had to fix my dislocations by hand, which was certainly less efficacious.” She snorted, mostly at his choice of words – always sounded like he’d swallowed a dictionary. “I certainly don’t expect you to know exactly what to do. Just the fact that you want to is enough.”
The effort to say this much so soon after his transformation seemed to have drained him, and he leaned forward to rest his head on her shoulder. Without even having to think about it, Tonks brought her arms up to hold him, and nestled her cheek against his hair.
“Let’s promise to stop apologizing to each other,” she suggested suddenly.
He huffed a little laugh. “Sounds to me like you want free rein to keep putting empty boxes back in the cupboard,” he said into her shirt.
“You’re free to think what you like, Mr. Lupin,” she told him, squeezing a little tighter. “Now, can I move you up to a bed? Or, better yet, to our flat?”