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Nymphadora hates being called Nymphadora - anyone who knows her just a little bit knows this too.
It's the first thing she says about herself – and she's never liked talking about herself, but sometimes she's required to do it, if only out of politeness.
(Politeness… It has the voice of her mother, Andromeda Black now Tonks, in her head every time she does something wrong, like: ”Keep your feet off the table, Dora, please" or: “Don’t be rude, say hi to Uncle Charles, c’mon”. That’s what politeness has meant to her since she was a kid: boring obligations arising from living in a society. She hates that.)
When she meets Remus, he unexpectedly doesn't ask her about herself.
She doesn't need to say what she's learned almost by heart, so many times she's repeated it (“My name is Nymphadora Tonks, but you call me Tonks...”). That's because it doesn't even cross his mind to question her about her name.
He doesn't ask her for her name, or her last name – or her mother's.
(And yet, she has the feeling that he knows – he already knows everything about her and her blood ties.)
On the other hand, that pale, emaciated man - eyes full of things to say, thin lips sealed in a mute meek smile, prematurely graying hair and many small wrinkles around his brittle eyelids – he immediately seems to understand her with just one of the long, calm glances with which he’s accustomed to considering the things around himself.
He stares at her and does not speak; he hints at smiles that look more like a ripple of light in his pupils than a crease on his face. He seems detached, discreet, wrapped in an almost sorrowful demeanor. These things strike her, because they’re so alien to her youthful impetuosity.
And yet, his eyes can be cold icy needles sometimes, when his gaze passes through her without really seeing her.
Her heart beats heavily on the inside when his eyes don't see her – they're sad.
§
Is that man an Auror?
No, he's not an Auror. He is a Hogwarts teacher.
A-a... professor?!
Tonks can't believe it.
She secretly chews on her fingernails along with bits and pieces of information about him that she surreptitiously steals here and there.
(She knows it's a dishonorable thing to do — but what else can she do since he just doesn't speak?) ...
"I expected them to be different. Professors, I mean…” she says, one time she musters the courage to raise her voice and talk to the back of his head, the very moment he turned around to leave – only, she won't let him go anywhere this time.
He turns to her again, a little stiff in astonishment.
She sees sad eyes and scars she's never noticed before on his skin, in plain sunlight – and he's ashamed of them every time, that's why he’s always trying to run away.
But now he laughs, because she's seen them - the marks - and she doesn't seem to care.
What did you expect them to be? he asks. He sounds sincerely curious.
"I don't know," she scoffs. She tries not to blush, despite the blood throbbing under her skin. She wishes she was as cheeky as the tip of her lilac locks; instead, she's just nervous, on the verge of panic. "Like Dumbledore, perhaps. Old, serene... wise.”
I've never been wise, for sure, he says. His lips curl slightly in a smile, but his eyelids squint over his eyes as if to enclose a secret pain.
She looks at him, tilting her head to the side; she finds herself squinting too, unconsciously imitating his expression. She wants to understand this man and unravel the mystery hidden deep within him, get to the heart of his secret and open hers in turn - her heart that was so simple, gay and confident before meeting him.
(Now, however, she is acutely aware of that warm, throbbing weight in her chest, and all the shades of hot and cold that run through her with his every gesture or word – and no one has ever mattered so much in her life before.)
"You're very young," Lupin says suddenly, and it's strange to hear him almost blurt out the words. Everything he says, in fact, is always reasoned and composed - except this one. “You still have a lot to learn.”
And so do I, he adds.
Then he turns on his heel and walks away.
Tonks doesn't know him, but she already loves his tendency to talk to himself – rather than about himself.
She’s less fond of his tendency to run away, but she’ll get used to it in time.
§
When she is chosen to join the Order of the Phoenix, Tonks is out of her mind with joy.
The fuchsia of her hair bursts more violent than ever and so her ability to be horrendously clumsy in the most inopportune contexts. Especially when she's in front of him, to her great dismay and the slight, sweet amusement of the Professor – as she has started calling him in secret.
(She tastes that name over her tongue, like the sweetest of candies…)
Tonks knocks over a troll's paw, Sirius rolls his eyes, and Molly hastily tries to push her away from every fragile or potentially lethal object within a few feet.
(The Professor snickers.)
She tries hard not to feel like an ungainly child who breaks all the toys she can get her hands on, but she almost always can't help it – and when they gather at their Headquarters, at Grimmauld Place 12, nothing goes as it should.
A little girl, you are, he once tells her – but without malice, or contempt.
She treasures all the things he says (a very few, indeed) – much more than she ever treasured the lessons of her old teacher, Alastor Moody. But, then again, the former’s words are deeply impressed on a completely different part of her, and the heart forgets much less than the mind.
Yet, sometimes, she doesn't know what to think.
His eyes are as clear as the water of a mountain well, but also just as cold and unreachable. His being so good yet so distant makes her cry with nervousness.
She often feels awkward under those eyes, afraid they see nothing but the youngest of the Order, the one admitted on the sly, and only because Moody interceded for her.
(The one who didn't actually deserve it - who didn't earn her place by fighting on the front line like all of them...)
She tries hard not to think about it.
"You're just a little girl, fresh out of school," Sirius grins, once they’re all together in the same room. "What can you know about life?"
He jokingly ruffles her hair when she takes his words the wrong way, with disappointment – that doesn’t make them any less hurtful.
Tonks is proud, so she chooses not to let it show. She doesn't believe that the stubbornness with which she often goes after things - usually some trivial trifles at first that quickly become of vital importance to her – is enough to label her as a whiny and hardheaded brat.
Maybe she's still a little girl, yes, compared to all of them who are already so experienced and mature, but she doesn't think it's fair to rub her nose in it every single time she doesn’t agree with them.
That's why she angrily shakes Sirius' hand from her hair – which immediately rises irreverently, as if with a life of its own – and sets him on fire with a single glance.
(The problem isn't Sirius, of course. She gets along quite well with her cousin, most of the time. He seems to care about her because somehow, curiously, she reminds him of the remnant of family he failed to preserve – the glimpse of an alternative present that never had the chance to be. On the other hand, Tonks is sensitive enough to realize that Sirius needs to cling to illusions in order to keep himself alive. It’s just that, sometimes, he crosses a line and hurts people with his sarcasm, even if he doesn't want to.)
"Take it easy, Dog," Remus, who witnessed the scene, scolds his friend. "Leave her alone.”
Tonks is amazed, because he never took her side. She has hardly ever heard him speak in front of her, in truth - and always and only about the Order and its missions and plans.
Tonks would spend actually hours listening to that quiet but firm voice of his as the words go along with the examples that his brilliant intelligence lets unfurl in the air from the tip of his wand, when he’s explaining something particularly difficult in front of the audience. She can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he has spoken directly to her; and this is definitely the first one that he stands up in her defense.
Thank you, Remus, she would like to say. Instead: "I don't need anyone to stand up for me” – that's what comes out of her mouth.
She calls herself stupid a second later, but the damage is done by now and biting her tongue won't cut it off - it’s too late.
In the stupefied silence that follows, Sirius bursts out laughing. Tonks forces herself to immediately think of something that distracts her, that keeps her hair from catching fire, betraying her inner turmoil. Being a Metamorphomagus can complicate your life, sometimes.
Black turns three-quarters to Remus – who has remained perfectly quiet and still – and winks at him from over his shoulder.
"She’s a piece of work, I told you.” He has the indulgent, smug smile of a father in front of a promising whiz kid. "Black blood doesn't lie, after all; and Andromeda wasn't even the worst of the family.”
"I suppose not, knowing you," Remus replies, unfazed.
Tonks feels a laugh welling up from inside – she quickly stifles it when Remus turns to her.
“I didn’t take your side because I think you can't stand up for yourself, Tonks. Far from it.”
He hints at a smile with his eyes. It's the first time he calls her Tonks.
There's a ringing in her ears as if water has started to run somewhere inside her.
Sirius keeps on laughing obnoxiously.
Remus strokes Crookshanks.
Everything goes on as before.
The only thing Tonks knows for sure about him is that he can’t tell lies.
§
Tonks... This isn't the first time she's fallen in love.
She's already lost her mind a couple of times for as many light-hearted youngsters her age before.
This time it's different, though.
This time it's not the desire to lose her mind, but a desire to keep one, along with heart, lungs, eyes, to give him every single part of her, everything and more. To hand them over to him wrapped in all her trust and faith. She doesn't know where those feelings come from; she just knows that he would never hurt her and that's enough for her.
She strokes with invisible fingers the new Tonks which is slowly taking shape inside herself. She touches the crack in the cocoon through which the chrysalis is about to give birth to its final form. She follows with her mind the silhouette of the woman she is becoming without even realizing it. She waits anxiously for it to come out.
She knows it's because of him; he made her grow up. The need to be like him, at his level, pushed her away from the shy dark depths of childhood to gush out to the purity of maturity.
She realizes now that Moody was right all along.
Every time she stubbornly insisted: I'm an adult, I can look after myself, put me to the test, and every time he shook his head and coldly said: Not yet. When the time comes, you'll figure it out yourself, Moody was right all along.
And now that she would like to go to her teacher and tell him: Now I'm ready, I know, now she can’t do it anymore. Because Moody is dead, and it's too late for that and for lots of other things.
However, she feels a new strength flowing deep and tenacious within her. She knows who she is now, but she's still afraid of it.
Growing up doesn't mean you're no longer afraid, it means that you’re ready to cope with your fears, Sirius always says.
And it's funny that, of all people, he’s the one saying it – after all, that's Sirius' charm: the irredeemable inconsistency between his heart and his mind, his words and his actions.
She reckoned that it would not be easy to penetrate Remus’ armor built upon wounds and painful memories, with all the regrets buried but never quite forgotten.
How can it ever be easy to persuade a wolf who’s been humiliated, beaten, defeated multiple times to come out of his den and trust men again – trust her? Wolves are wild beasts; no matter how often they may wander around the hearths of men, sniffing out food and prey, they can never be fully tamed.
“A wolf is not a dog,” it’s Molly who tells her, some other time. “Look at Sirius: after all, he is a reckless puppy who bites and makes a lot of fuss just to challenge you to play hide-and-seek with him; in fact, he is fasting for love and cuddles. But Remus is different; his distrust stems from the fear of being rejected. He would starve for his dignity, and being away from the herd doesn't scare him. He needs no other.”
Tonks never looked at it that way before.
"What am I supposed to do, then?"
She’s speaking with her heart on her sleeve, in a sparkle of feminine confidentiality suddenly born between two people – a woman, a girl – with very little affinity so far.
She’s always been concerned that Molly would not be very fond of her; yet, she viscerally senses that Molly knows all about her infatuation with Remus. And she can't ask anyone else for suggestions.
Molly smiles, hearing the hearty desperation in her young voice.
"It’s simple, child." For once, Tonks isn't irritated by being addressed like that. "You don't have to do anything. Wait for him to let his guard down. Let the wolf come to the fire. When he needs meat, when he needs heat, then it will happen. And you'll have to be ready.”
You have to be ready, you always have to remain on your guard! Constant vigilance!
Moody used to bark it all the time; that was the first lesson she had been taught.
No one tells her though that, no matter how hard you try, you can never be fully prepared.
And no one tells her how to protect herself from the fangs and claws of a wolf you love.
§
"Have you ever thought you were so horrible that no one could ever fall in love with you?"
Sirius glares at her, more drunk than surprised, above the rim of his glass.
“Horrible?" It is clear from his face that he has never even remotely raised that question in his mind. “Hmm, I’m no more horrible than so many other human beings around... Where does this come from?”
They are alone in the kitchen, Sirius and Tonks. Doing nothing – just waiting for something to happen that neither of them exactly knows.
Crookshanks rubs against Sirius' knees letting out grunts of obscene pleasure; his purr fills the air as the man's free hand – bony knuckles, as pale as pulped paper – scratches him behind his ears, while he takes sips of stale whiskey.
“Sometimes I think so," she whispers, her eyes following the casual caresses that Sirius is spreading over the feline's orange fur.
From Sirius' grin, she knows that the tips of her hair have abruptly turned to a violent magenta. She immediately repents of being that inappropriately sincere.
“What?” she snaps, her cheekbones suffused with redness.
Sirius leans a little towards her, continuing to pet the cat.
"Tell me, who's the lucky one? Do I know him?”
Tonks elegantly dodges both the question and the annoying grin that accompanies it.
"Have you ever fallen in love, Sirius?" she asks instead, point-blank.
Sirius slowly sits back up, almost throwing himself against the backrest; he sips the whiskey with an enigmatic smirk and lifts his gaze from Crookshanks, curled up in his lap.
“No. Yes. Maybe... What does it matter to you?” He raises his glass in a mute toast to her, drowning in his irritating evasiveness.
Tonks stares at his Adam's apple going up and down his gaunt throat and sighs with impatience. Having a conversation with his cousin can be as frustrating as few other things in life – she wonders how the Professor can stand it. Yet, the two of them can spend hours and hours being in the same room and you can hear them talking and talking behind the closed door - with Buckbeak as their only company, and only sometimes.
But thinking about Remus doesn't do her any good.
She mechanically rubs her shoes under the table and then crosses her ankles and lets them swing like she did as a child. She stretches out and places her chin on her arms crossed on the table in front of her.
“Anyway… no, I've never been in love," Sirius says suddenly, lowering his glass.
They remain silent for long minutes, each one of them lost in their own thought.
You'll never be a good Auror if you don't learn to be more cautious and less impulsive!
Moody's warnings come to her mind, but they can't keep up with her tongue.
"It's Remus," she blurts out in one breath. She can’t hold back any longer; she's been waiting for ages to tell someone about it. "It's Professor Remus John Lupin. I'm in love with him.”
The stupefied silence that follows seems to amplify the echo of her words. Fear and absurdity suddenly overwhelm her in that silence, annihilating her, nailing her in the limbo of what is irreparably said.
Sirius keeps staring at her.
He doesn't laugh anymore.
Sirius pours himself a second glass of whiskey.
"Remus," he repeats, as if he’s not sure he got the name right. Then, he falls silent for a while, letting the name slowly sink into the walls of the kitchen, being absorbed into the floor, fading away.
He carefully places his glass on the table, paying exaggerated attention to the gesture – as if only now he’s realizing that the fragile glass he’s clutching between his fingers is something that can be broken very easily.
“Do you really like Moony?” His tone is as dry and tense as a thin rope, tinged with cold disbelief.
For a moment Tonks feels a slight jolt of jealousy, hearing the nickname coming from her cousin’s lips so naturally - denoting an elusive intimacy from which she is excluded.
“Yes, I do.”
Sirius shakes his hair from his eyes. “He’s not meant for you.”
His hand cuts through the air in a sharp, definitive gesture, pointing out his laconic sentence.
Kaputt.
Tonks feels deeply hurt inside. A wrinkle of disapproval appears on her young forehead, between her purple eyebrows; her eyes lit up with a warlike glance.
Before she can open her mouth, however, Sirius resumes his speech.
"He's a man, you're a little girl. What the hell do you have in common?... He left a shitty past behind his back, his life has always been anything but easy and even now you can't say that he is doing completely fine. You, on the other hand, grew up in cotton wool; my cousin and her Muggle husband never let you miss anything. But Remus… Remus is a fucking Werewolf. You should probably have a theoretical idea of what that means, but it's obvious that you're not afraid enough of it, otherwise you wouldn't even be thinking about-”
Tonks cuts him off with fierce sarcasm.
“So you think that you, the Marauders, were the only ones who could stand up to a Werewolf? That no one else can?”
“It takes skills and experience that you don't have for sure.”
"Maybe not now. But skills can be perfected over time and in time you gain experience too.”
"You're too young for such big responsibilities. It's your future that you need to think about, Tonks.”
“I'm thinking about it. And it is precisely taking on great responsibilities that will help me grow.”
Sirius' expression grows darker and darker as he realizes he can't win over her stubborn optimism.
"You're going to hurt yourself," he growls, gloomily. “Very bad. And by the time you realize it, it will be too late to run for cover.”
"It's part of the job, Moody always said that."
"This isn't one of those stupid drills they make you do at the Auror school, Tonks! We're talking about real people, real feelings! Real lives!” Sirius slams his palm on the table, the veins in his neck turgid, his eyes reddened and squinted with rage.
Tonks bits her lip, but doesn’t give up. Her eyes are blazing.
“I know that very well, Sirius. Do you think I'm stupid? Do you think I can't tell the difference between-”
She trails off watching Sirius’ attitude suddenly change. He shakes his head softly, collapsing his forehead on the dry palm of one hand. The grayish tinge that hasn't gone away from his skin since Azkaban is more evident than ever now. All of a sudden, he seems hopeless somehow.
The change is so sudden that Tonks closes her mouth, shocked and taken aback for a few seconds.
She doesn't feel like raging, not in front of a Sirius who looks like a beaten and helpless animal which has lost its fangs. Pity overwhelms her.
"Sirius..." She reaches out and touch his hand, a bit shyly but firmly; it’s as cold as dead.
He looks at her curling his upper lip with an indecipherable expression – as if the vaguest hint of nausea is creeping through his mouth and the pit of his stomach right now and he’s doing all he can to keep it in check. His dilated pupils seem to silently scream something that is too painful to say out loud.
An intuition suddenly crosses Tonks’ mind — stunning her.
The answer is so easy. How did she not think of this before?
"Is there another woman?" Her heart is beating like a drum. "That's what you're warning me about, isn't it, Sirius? He has another woman. Of course he has…”
The chair topples heavily on the floor when Tonks jumps up like a spring, her whole body trembling.
“Please tell me, Sirius. You’re his best friend, you must know something... Is there another woman?”
Sirius leans over to pick up her chair from the floor with some difficulty, and shakes his head again.
"Sit down, please.”
“Who is she?” she exhales, almost choking herself with her own saliva. All of a sudden, she feels like she has lost the coordinates of the world she’s in.
"Forget about it, Tonks. I'm saying that for your own good, you hear me?... Forget about Remus Lupin.”
Sirius refuses to say more. He downs two more glasses of whiskey, stubbornly dodging Tonks' attempts to extort anything more from him.
He leaves a few minutes later without saying goodnight. His dark face makes him look like a prisoner of a fixed thought that’s poisoning him from within. His cheerful drunkenness is gone, his mood is the worst ever.
Tonks listens helplessly to the heavy sound of his footsteps climbing the stairs, followed by the slamming of the door to his room.
An open window is slamming into the void of her thoughts, too.
She thought she had an ally.
She was wrong.
§
“You loved Sirius, didn't you?”
She hates herself for not being able to keep her voice steady.
“What?” Remus raises his bloody, tears-stained eyes from the palms he’s holding to his face.
These are still the first days - the hardest. Sirius’s been dead for less than a week, and the warm, sunny weather seems to make fun of their grief - chewing it up and spitting it out like a mocking, ferocious hyena.
Pieces of Remus’ heart float in plain sight, in front of everyone.
The pain makes him feel numb and a little out of tune, makes him lose track and his self-control. He often pauses in the middle of a sentence with no idea how to continue; he feels a constant tremor spread in every nerve in his body. He can't get it to stop; he can't stop shaking.
His hands, especially, are never still – just like his thoughts.
The tragedy - the greatest of his life until now - made him momentarily forget about Tonks. But now, there she comes again - with her righteous questions crawling under the rubble at the bottom of his heart. Stirring, rummaging, forcing him to dig up what he’s trying to forget for his own good.
"Did you love each other?"
She feels like she has a boulder on her chest that rips the air out of her lungs. Her voice is a peep, a sour note written on a yellowed score from years ago.
“It’s… it’s not that simple," he whispers.
She’s simply grateful to him for not lying to her.
He looks back at her and, for the first time, he notices her gray hair.
She looks like turned off. As if all life has been sucked out of her – along with Sirius' life.
That once beautiful violent fuchsia is just a memory.
"If you want to know if I loved Sirius, well, I have no doubt: I loved him, yes, I did for many years. Whether he ever loved me, that's harder to tell. Only he can know. We should question the dead to get an answer.”
Tonks remains silent, watching Remus sit on what has been Sirius' bed in Grimmauld Place ever since - a smashed sofa and a misshapen plaid, nothing more to remind him of a far more unhappy childhood spent within those walls.
She stands in silence, wringing her hands behind her back, unsure whether or not to sit by his side. Adorable, in the vulnerability of the double pain that’s tearing her in two.
Her boyfriend, her cousin.
"How did you figure it out?" Remus asks.
Tonks shrugs.
"It was easy. All I had to do was look at the two of you together. But for a long time I only looked at you.”
Remus swallows several times, nodding his head. “I understand.”
"How stupid of me.”
"Don't say that.” Remus shakes his head wearily, getting up. "You're one of the smartest people I've ever met.”
His voice dies out, like the light of a fading sunset.
Tonks looks at him, at his pale face and his empty eyes - except for tears.
"I've been so blind. And there it was, right under my nose, clear as day. Everyone knew. And I opened up to him about you... Oh, Godric, who knows what went through his mind then... and Molly’s, too...”
She sniffs - tears and mucus filling her up.
They look at each other in silence for a few minutes. She glances at him from the bottom up, and he looks back with his head bent a little over his chest to balance the difference in height. He silently reaches out and brushes against the shaggy helmet of her mousy hair; it looks like the corolla of a fleshy flower turned upside down on her head.
"Would you ever love me as you loved him?" Tonks whispers.
(Will you always and absolutely love me, above all other things, and will you do anything for me? - maybe it is a prayer, the one that her eyes are silently uttering…)
He drops his hand, as though the nerves in his wrist have been severed, like a puppet's hand. That is already an answer.
Tonks – Tonks the puppet, with her broken strings – gathers the pieces of her heart one by one and leaves.
§
A horrible period follows.
Remus clearly doesn't want her, and Tonks has never felt so humiliated in her life, so meaningless and empty - so stupid.
Seeing him at every meeting of the Order is torture. They try not to look at each other, they don't talk to each other unless it's absolutely necessary (“Can you pass me that paper?” – “Thank you...”), but everyone notices how tense the air around them is and no one can honestly tell why. Some think it’s because of Sirius' death: the pain brings some people closer, while pushes others apart irreparably.
Remus also appears grayer and more hunched over than usual. He has never been cheerful, but his sad funereal look is almost unbearable to the eye.
Molly tries to spur him on, her fists on her wide hips, mumbling like a boiling teapot.
“Stop looking so blue! If Sirius were here, do you know what he would say, Remus?" Actually, she’s worried to death inside. Life is falling apart, and no one seems able to help anyone else.
"No, Molly, I don't know," Remus replies wearily, "because Sirius is dead, hence I don't know what he would say. So please, don't mention him to me again.”
He gets up from his chair and leaves, leaving Molly stunned, unable to decide whether to blame him or her own indelicacy.
She's just trying with all her strength to save the day - apparently to no avail.
§
I can try to love again, says Remus. He's convincing her and himself. His heart is still occupied by the void that Sirius’ death left behind.
Those feeble words are enough to open a breach of hope in Tonks' heart; she drinks them from his mouth, thirsty. The alternative, on the other hand, would be to let herself die – and, despite everything, she is too young to give up on life so soon.
She takes his hand, tries to smile at him and convey some confidence.
We'll make it, together.
But Sirius' canine laugh is all that fills Remus' ears with its echo – it drowns out Tonks' words.
His lips say yes, but he's not truly listening.
When he loves her, he is distant. He always seems to be thinking of something else, locked up in a sort of shell where nothing and no one can reach him, not even if that screamed straight into his face.
When he loves her, it's as if he's loving someone else's body.
Sometimes, his nails dig into her skin, as if searching underneath it for a different soul. His head bends to chase her scent into the creases of her neck, but it's as if he's sniffing out a long-lost trail that leads nowhere.
When he takes her, pushing, entering her, it’s first wild and urgent, then it gets agonizingly slow, as if he were heading home, but his home is not her body. He looks for it and can't find it. It just doesn’t fit. It’s like trying to play an instrument, but the only sound coming from it is a off-key squeak. Every time he feels like he’s bumping against an impenetrable wall and is knocked back.
He’s confused, she’s desperate.
When he loves her, she's afraid to let him close his eyes. She is afraid that he will get lost in his own mind - the place where he can chase Sirius’ ghost and be with him again, - because she just couldn’t stand him taking pleasure in using her body while thinking about and wanting someone else.
He’s not hers and never will be - never completely hers, only one half.
The other half belongs to a dead man.
She loves Sirius; she loved him, she suffered for him.
She hates Sirius. Because even in death he still means more than her and her living body. Her blood and flesh, her beating heart - they are meaningless, when love belongs to another.
Don't give up, she tells herself. You love this man; in time he will notice, he will love you back. Don't give up.
Stubborn, obstinate like she’s always been; she wants what she thinks is due to her. She doesn’t know this is one battle she’ll never win.
§
Tonks is pregnant when the moon is full and Remus turns into a Werewolf for the first time in front of her.
The smell of the baby's blood who’s growing inside her is the strongest thing he’s ever smelled.
She's standing against the wall, protecting her belly with one hand, the other slipping with sweat down the wall and the only thing she can picture in front of herself are her worst fears.
She relives Moody’s death, and Sirius’ death, and the death of her parents. She sees the wolf's fangs tearing through her belly, severing the life of her unborn child. She sees herself die at the hands of the man she loves, now reduced to a monster.
She collapses, cries, hugs herself, rocking back and forth hopelessly.
A hand resting on her face makes her scream.
She looks up.
Remus smiles, leaning over her. He's pale, but he’s human again.
"I took the potion," he says, showing her the empty cup in his hand. "It's all right. I won’t hurt you.”
She keeps staring at him; she’s so scared that she can’t even get his words.
"Did you really think I was going to attack you?"
When she finally understands, tears begin to fall down silently on her cheeks.
Tears of gratitude, of relief.
No, of course I didn’t.
§
Remus is desperate.
He knows he’s a danger to Tonks and the child.
He's not sure he loves her – definitely he doesn’t love her like he loved Sirius.
But he’s sure he does not want this baby.
Because he wouldn't know how to love him or her – as well as their mum – as he’s supposed to.
Because he is a wolf and he fears that one day he will not be able to control himself.
Remus hates himself and doesn't know what to do.
He wishes Sirius were here, if only to ask him for advice.
He looks at the stars and repeats: I wish you were here, Dog.
He’s back home.
It's been a long journey down memory lane and back.
She is there waiting for him, as she does every night.
Tonight, though, he doesn't know what’s wrong with himself. He feels different - brave.
He looks her in the eye and says:
"I don't want it, I don’t want this child.”
He watches the world collapse in her eyes, blood flowing from the surface of her soul, leaving in her stare a flat empty mirror of his own selfishness and terror.
I'm sorry, he adds.
He opens the door and walks out.
A sigh of relief.
He didn't even take off his jacket, thankfully.
... I'm going to have a child… I’m going to be a father…
There's a street in London Remus can't go back to.
He can't go back because it's teeming with memories of his life with Sirius there. His life as before.
For everyone, it's just a house like many others. For him, it’s been the center of his life, the heart of his world, for years.
It’s raining. Wrapped in his drenched raincoat, he stares at the nondescript wooden door, the same as all the others.
He smiles when a sudden memory flashes through his mind.
“What about you? Have you ever fallen in love, Sirius?”
Sirius drinks and shakes his head.
He pours another glass.
“No, never.”
Remus smiles, bitterly this time.
Never been in love.
He smiles. He cries.
Soon it will be Christmas again, at Grimmauld Place 12.
end