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July 1995
When the sound of birdsong slices through the sour whiskey fug, Tonks screws her eyes tightly shut in silent rebellion. This, on reflection, was the first clue. She nestles her head into the pillow, but it is too soft to be her own, too yielding. And it smells. Not unpleasantly, but strangely. Her head hurts too much to locate how and why, but this slightly spicy scent is familiar. Oranges. This pillow smells like washed oranges.
It is not hers.
And as much as she would like to bury her head under it, this is worrisome. Slowly, she opens the eye closest to the pillow, ready to close it in an instant should a figure be lurking nearby. But the room is empty. She can hear its great, yawning emptiness. There is the faint ticking of time passing and the chirping birds, the drip of condensation on the windowsill; no steps, no breaths. Safe.
Groaning with the effort, she pulls herself up onto her elbow. The curtains are drawn. This room is pretending to be dark, but she can see the singing summer sun spreading onto the wooden floor under them. She glances at her left wrist, but her watch is gone.
“Bloody marvellous.”
A glass of clear liquid has been positioned carefully on the bedside table, but she knows better than to drink it. Even if her mouth feels like she’s been swallowing sand. Turning away from it, trying and failing to put it out of her mind, her eyes alight on the chair beside the door. Or rather what has been folded into a neat pile upon it. Namely her clothes.
“Oh fuck me.”
She is relieved to find she is still clothed, but the blue-striped button-down pyjama top with its iron-straight lapels is very plainly foreign.
He knocks the door softly, politely, even though it is his own. And if Tonks did not already know exactly who smells of soapy bergamot and irons his pyjamas, she knows who would knock like this.
“Come in.”
Of all the beds to wake up in, it would be Remus Lupin’s. Gangly, cardigan-wearing, beige, drier than her own mouth.
“Was that as weird for you to hear as it was for me to say?”
He offers her a half-smile and, as though reading her mind, says, “I left you water if you – ”
“I never drink strange substances conveniently left out for me.”
“Very wise.”
She gulps it down too quickly. Her stomach lurches with it.
“I don’t usually um…”
“We didn’t.”
“Oh thank God.”
Tonks tries not to notice his flinch.
“I’m not usually a whiskey drinker.”
He says nothing.
“More a cider girl really. What’s that stuff they divvy out in the Hog’s Head?”
“Glad you’re up and about. I just thought I’d call in and make sure you were all right.”
“Was I that bad?”
She is sat in his pyjamas, in his bed, still vaguely pissed if she is completely honest with herself. Last night was a getting-to-know-you event which ended, for one terrifying moment she truly believed, in getting off with the man who had avoided her all night. Even asking him this is audacious, but she had expected something more confidently reassuring.
“I suppose that depends on who you ask, doesn’t it?”
December 1995
This time, she knows the pillow. The room is darker and the late-morning sun seeping under the too-short curtains, muted and dull, but little else has changed. Her robes have been neatly folded into a pile on the chair, a glass of water has been left out for her with a little green vial at its side. Her head throbs softly, almost absentmindedly, but as her nose is also blocked and sore, Tonks is fairly certain she has not embarrassed herself.
Removing the lid from the tiny vial, she sniffs tentatively. Even with a blocked nose, she can smell menthol and tickling ginger and knows this is a Pepper-Up.
“If I’d poisoned that, you’d be dead. Constant vigilance, no?”
She swigs it and immediately, the blessed balm of relief washes through her.
“Do you make a habit of watching women sleep, Remus?”
“Do you make a habit of sleeping in strange beds, Nymphadora?”
“What have I told you, time and time again?”
There is a strange little glint in his eyes, and she knows she will never be Tonks. Not now that she has shown her hand.
“I don’t generally. Yours might be the first.” She swings her legs out from under the duvet and tries not to shiver. “Can I ask why this is the case?”
“Why mine should be the first?”
“Why did I have to be put to bed? I assume this time it has not involved copious amounts of Firewhiskey?”
“Is that a safe assumption?”
Her horror and shame must flood her features as his face pales. She has never seen Remus Lupin caught off-guard, never heard him say the wrong thing.
“You were very ill. Nobody particularly wanted to send you home. Molly Weasley seemed to think it was avian flu from a fire-breathing chicken.”
“And Healer Lupin couldn’t resist a wounded soldier?”
“I thought a dusty bed on the top floor probably wasn’t going to help you, so I took it.”
She is almost disappointed. Not, she reminds herself, that it would be appropriate to imagine him sat there all night, mopping her brow. “And you brewed me a Pepper-Up.”
“If I’d brewed that, you’d be en route to St Mungo’s as we speak.”
“Not a potioner. Noted.” She grins up at him. “Though if the boot was on the other foot, I would absolutely have taken credit for that.”
“I considered it.”
February 1996
“You know, the first time I was here, I was – ”
“Tight as a boiled owl? Sick on my shoes?”
“Was I? No I bloody wasn’t! I don’t remember that.”
“I suspect there might be quite a lot you can’t remember.”
But for the first time, Tonks thinks Lupin might be laughing with her. His scrutinising gaze that seems to see right through her has softened over the long months; become conspiratorial and twinkling. She has learned that he plays the disapproving maiden aunt so well that it is a role he steps into for the sheer joy of the performance and she no longer fears his arched brow.
She flops noisily back onto the bed, staring up at the dark ceiling. Everything at Grimmauld is dark, she realises. “If you could paint this room, what colour would you have it?”
Lupin, rifling through a meagre wardrobe, turns to her. “But it’s not mine to paint.”
“I always think a person’s favourite colour will tell me everything I need to know about them.”
He shrugs into a cloak, buttoning it swiftly at his throat. “Are you ready?”
“Aren’t you going to try to seduce me? I always assumed when a boy invited you to into his bedroom – ”
“I was collecting a cloak. You followed me.”
“That doesn’t sound like me.”
“Despite protests that it wasn’t tidy.”
“It’s very tidy. It’s tidier than my whole flat.”
“I’m sure it is.”
Tonks sits up sharply, grinning triumphantly, clutching a fine gold chain in her hand. “I knew I left my watch under this bed!”
“You only had to say. I’d have looked for it.”
“You’d have been at Galleons for Gold in Vertic Alley before I could say ‘What’s the time?’” She nudges him playfully as he closes the door and realises as he moves deftly out of reach that this is the first time she has touched him. “Anyway, I’d forgotten about it until I was staring at your ceiling again.”
It is not until she watches the faint stirrings of a blush blooming on his cheek that Tonks quite realises the implications of her comment. “I suppose I wanted to get a proper look at where you lived. It gives away a lot and you don’t.”
“I don’t…what?”
“Give away a lot.”
He is halfway down the stairs before he turns and says, “Red.”
“What is?”
“I don’t know if it’s my favourite, but it’s the colour I painted my bedroom. At least as much of it as my mother would let me.”
“Oh, don’t start me off. I quite fancied orange, but my mother made me live in a magnolia prison until I was eighteen.”
“And then what?”
“I moved out.”
May 1996
They have come to spend a great deal of time in his little bedroom on the second floor, heads together. She works best with someone who is unafraid to challenge her and she thinks, just occasionally, someone should challenge Remus Lupin and the authority he has little idea he holds. It is good for him.
It is also one of the last places she has yet to sniff out an Extendable Ear.
“You have the loveliest room in this house.”
She expects a snarky response, for him to ask if that is the reason she is always in here, but he smiles genuinely and it reaches his eyes.
“I don’t suppose I even asked him if I could have it. It fell into my possession because it had two windows, a view of that little park, and singing wrens.”
“How serendipitous.”
“Quite.”
When he laughs, his face morphs as easily as hers. The lines deepen at his eyes, but vanish from his forehead. His not-guilty-enough smile is the only wolfish thing about him and Tonks can see the ghost of the young man still haunting him. There is something very classical about Remus Lupin; his Greek nose, sharp cheekbones, even the grey whispers in his hair.
“And are you the sort of man who always gets what he wants?”
“Not half so often as I’d like.”
But the laughter dies at his lips. A line has been crossed and she can tell by the confusion in his dark eyes that he is unsure who has crossed it.
The light is fading and perhaps it is the gathering gloom, the cloak of assurance she may wrap around her, the ability to pretend he has misread the signals in the twilight.
“I like to think I get what I want.” She is so close that she can identify the heady scent of bergamot seems to originate in his hair; close enough to hear the catch in his breath, count a light spattering of freckles she has never seen before on his nose, spot two light indentations where he has bitten his surprisingly plump bottom lip. Perhaps, thinks Tonks, this is because she is so used to seeing his mouth set in a determined thin line. Perhaps his lips have always been generous. Perhaps it is strange to even notice it.
When did gangly, beige, cardigan-wearing Remus Lupin, dry and serious and stern, become the object of desire?
“I should…” He is soft-footed, but his step back, his rejection, roars.
“No, I’ll…I’m actually late for something, so I – ”
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
June 1996
When she wakes, she has lost four days. There is a faint beep emitting from something in this room. It is annoying, but somehow also soothing; rhythmic and pulsing like a heart. This room is very white; lighter and brighter than any corner of Grimmauld and cleaner than her flat. The sheets are smooth and ironed; they smell artificially of fresh linen. She almost expects to find a glass of water at her bedside, but there is no such luck. Not unless she intends to down the contents of the vase – and it might be touch and go. Who loves lilies so much they smother a room with them?
“Nymphadora!”
Ah. Of course.
“Mum.”
“Thank goodness you’re awake. Ted! Ted, she’s up!”
“Mum, really. I’m all right.”
“You’re not all right! You’ve been out cold.”
“All right, but can you please not fuss? I – ”
Her mother is already making plans for her return to the parental home, but Tonks cannot fight it. Despite herself, the sound of her mother’s voice envelops her, warms her, soothes her back to sleep just as easily as it did when she was small.
“Look,” she says eventually, with a force that wakes her, “I’m not coming home with you and that’s it.”
“Fair enough.”
The room spins as she sits up. Though it is dark outside, this room is lit by a dim, warm light. “Remus?”
He smiles at her, but she knows him well enough now to recognise that this is not a smile.
“Remus, you’re not going to believe me, but I genuinely thought you were my mother.”
“She leaves at seven. I try not to visit when you’re busy. You’re a very popular patient.”
Her eyes itch and though she rubs them with the heel of her palm, there is no relief. “I hope I haven’t worried anybody. Is everyone else all right?”
His blink is too long. Only momentarily. Anyone else might not have noticed it.
“Shit. Is it Harry?”
His jaw is set, but he briefly shakes his head. “It’s not important at the moment. If I’d thought I would be disturbing you, I wouldn’t have come.”
“Remus, I know you. We’re partners. Whether you like it or not. I probably spend more time on missions with you than I do in the bloody office with anybody else. The only person who can even pretend to know you better than me is…”
His eyes are coal-black. Tonks sometimes thinks he might hide behind them, believing them too dark to read, but she has seen them filled with so much over the course of their brief shared career; wonder, ennui, quiet respect, even fear. Tonight there is an unfamiliar emptiness in his face and before she even registers that she is on her feet, her arms are around him.
Lupin’s embrace is exactly as she imagined it; spiky and awkward, made almost entirely of elbows and smelling vaguely of citrus. But his kiss is an electric current, all scorch and search and stubble.
When they break apart, his chest heaves. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what – ”
But she cuts straight through the emerging spiral. “I’ve imagined that a few times now. And not once was I wearing a hospital gown.”
July 1996
Have all her relationships moved this quickly, she wonders, pushing a pillow down into the small of her back and wrapping her long legs around Lupin. She has promised her natural form for a sense of shared vulnerability, shushed and soothed him through his apologies, traced the silvery threads of long-healed wounds, but she thinks a few inches between friends is only a white lie after all. And if those inches have been borrowed from her hips, then it’s barely even a lie at all.
“I’m not what you’d call proficient.”
“I don’t think anyone has passed an exam.”
“No, I suppose not.”
She has never seen him flustered and it gives her a little thrill to learn that she has this ability, this power over his incredible self-control. She is waiting for him to wake from a trance, to realise she is in too deep and flee, but in this moment, she can afford to be a little smug and she cannot help but smirk up at him. “I think it’s like riding a broom. It’s muscle memory. You just – ah!”
November 1996
The bed is empty without him; cavernous and cold. Perhaps she was only meant to have him for a summer, a glorious eight weeks of desperately clutching at one another, drawing the curtains and frantically kissing under her covers. Perhaps this miserable dreariness is just the price to pay for it.
Ironic. Until she came to think of Remus Lupin as crimson, he was beige. And now she has come to inherit it. Lank mousy hair; dull, grey eyes. A form she had promised him and now, a form she is stuck in. But shorter and squatter.
Perhaps, she has to admit, not squatter. Her appetite left when he did and she no longer has spare inches at her hips to give guilt-free to her legs. When she catches sight of her reflection, she is worse than beige. She is grey.
She tries not to think of him, tries not to wonder where he is and whether they are looking at the same stars, tries not to throw someone else’s vase of dried lupins at the nearest wall. In the cold light of day, she can be angry. She can leave the vase alone, promising herself a tantrum later, but at night, the bitter loneliness is all-consuming, and she is too exhausted by it to rage at nothing and nobody. She goes to bed and waits, sleepless, for dawn.
She knows better than to feed the dementors, but they’re hungry and she has so very much to give.
July 1997
Boyfriend is the wrong word. It is too juvenile, though Tonks promises herself she will never, ever voice this. She knows very well that it is going to lead to a familiar and unpleasant litany. Nor will she admit, while he sleeps, that she can perhaps see his point.
Since he has returned from some foreign circle of hell that he will not speak of, he has aged. Physically, very little. There are more greys flecking through his sandy hair and the fresh, deep scarring across his back makes her wince when she thinks he cannot hear her. But mostly, he is slower to smile; his eyes convey less easy good humour. There is little left of the man she tried not to flirt with at Order meetings in Lupin, but she sees he is trying. She understands his despondency, knows now that he is constantly torn between relief to find his mission completed and the aimlessness of unemployment with no further prospect of meaningful ways to pass the endless days. He will take nothing from her, dance around even her least-loved possessions.
Sometimes, when the night is darkest and she lies awake, she adds to her worries, knitting a cloud of concern that hovers over her pillow. Worse now than death is what would happen to him should she not return.
He has no rights of his own, but he could perhaps inherit hers. And if boyfriend is frivolous, there’s something very grounding and reassuring about husband.
April 1998
The pain is like nothing on earth. Why did nobody mention pain and fear? Why was there so much time spent on bloody shawls and not nearly enough on literally bloody sheets? She thought she would be grateful for her mother’s silencing charm, but as she screams, she would like the whole county to hear her.
“Mum, it hurts.”
A phrase she has not uttered in twenty years. This time, there are no rolling eyes and clicking tongues. This is a pain her graceful mother knows and there is nothing she can do to protect her from it.
“I know, but it won’t be long now.”
Tonks knows she is a liar. Labour, even these final stages, already seems to have gone on for six-and-a-half years.
But when it is over, when piercing cries reverberate, seemingly bouncing off the walls, when her husband places a pink and already squirming tangle of limbs and copper-coloured hair into her arms, it is forgotten.
“We have a son.”
And his hair! As soon as he is placed into her waiting arms, the baby is quiet, soothed into the appearance of a beautiful blonde cherub.
“Oh he’s like me. He’s…” For the first time she can recall, words completely fail her. She forgets that he may yet show signs of his father’s sickness, forgets even the bloody sheets and the sickly smell of her toil lingering, sweet and heavy, in the air, because for the first time in months, a glint has returned to her husband’s eyes. And she can recognise it now as shared joy.