Chapter Text

July

A dusty dining room, serious faces beginning to droop. Kingsley’s lull of a baritone, the stifling heat of the day, the ever-present rot permeating the air.

Along and across the table, Tonks is making notes again, a wrinkled focus writ in her brow. The multicoloured quill vibrating with the movement of her hand, catching the eye quite unaware. A scratching sound on the periphery.

Sleek and blonde today, dusting her shoulders. A new one, glowing against the faded damask wallpaper. She could pass for a Malfoy like this, he muses — saying so would be unwise. Her pointed chin, the slight upturn to her nose. She would hate to hear it, but it's there.

Belied in the slouched posture, the infernal fidgeting, the glitter of dark abandon in her eyes when she looks up at him from her parchment, soft smile playing on her mouth. It’s unsettling. He will not hold her gaze.

At the corner of his eye, she looks away, tunes back into the meeting. Taps the quill against the table in a steady beat, unable to be still or silent for long. Biting her lip. She's flushed — well, it's warm in here.

“…what do you think, Lupin?”

It cuts across. Alastor’s raised brow, expectant. A moment’s hesitation as the cogs turn, calibrating.

“I quite agree with Kingsley.”

Whatever he'd endorsed, it goes down well enough. A moment of foolish relief.

Careless. Vile. Utterly unsustainable. It must stop.

—

“You were well out of it in there today,” she drawls later, stretched on her back across the drawing room sofa as if she owns the place, legs hanging off the armrest in her heavy boots. Crossed primly at the ankle in a parody, the lady of the house as it were. Irritating, not endearing. “Not like you. What were you thinking about?”

Every muscle of the face held consciously still; her eyes searing everything they light on.

“Nothing in particular.”

Sirius swans in with the promised bounty, dusty bottles of some noble and most ancient vintage, eye-wateringly valuable. To be swigged like Lambrini from the corner shop as conversation flows undammed — as well it should. Entertaining her with stories about her mother, their uneasy shared lineage, anything and nothing. Her fiery wit and curiosity. She's a talker. She can fill a room with questions.

He makes his excuses and retires early.

Concealed on the crest of a rolling Cotswolds hill, the two of them laid on the grass on their bellies. The Selwyn estate sprawls across the valley ahead of them; stern gargoyle sentinels leering from forbidding iron gates, the towering hedgerow boundaries taking a bite out of pastoral idyll.

The manor house itself presides in the distance, partially hidden by the alien angles of the arboretum — in front, a sea of magically maintained lawn, precise to a blade, the monotony only broken by occasional florid islands of statuary. The muggles see untamed woodland and wildflowers, apparently. Lucky them.

Tonks shifts, hawk-eyed and earnest, fizzing with mettle to prove. Her omnioculars glued to the bridge of her nose, her quarry disappeared behind the trees. Beside her, Remus aches, bone-tired and brain-fogged and resolved not to show it, eyes dutifully held open and pointed in front of them.

The smell of earth and living things; the artificial apple of her shampoo. The tang of leather from her jacket — new, of good quality. Sleeves with zips where no zips could conceivably be useful; they catch on the looser threads of his cloak whenever she leans in. The fancy coffee she arrives with; she only drinks half before vanishing the paper cup, but the aroma lingers. Tobacco, powdery sweet deodorant, zesty lemon soap. Underneath, barging into conscious thought, Tonks.

He really must speak with her about personal space.

“This is a waste of time. I can't get a visual from this far away,” she huffs at him, petulant, close enough that her coffee breath brushes his cheek. "We need to get down there."

He wilts further into the brush, watching as a beetle meanders up a blade of grass. “You've found the limits of that gadget of yours? I never thought we'd see the day.”

The omnioculars often appear on these assignments. Tonks pulled them to bits and retooled them, charmed in some additional features. She does that: takes things apart, prods at their innards. Leaves her mark. Ten whole galleons at the world cup — proper bargain, she'd informed him, shocked when he admitted not attending. Everyone went, apparently.

“Not the omnioculars’ fault you’re too big a prefect for common sense, Remus,” she retorts, bumping shoulders with him, not especially gently.

Too much time with Sirius, he thinks, then winces at himself.

“I'd never dare insult the omnioculars. I have seen your bat bogey hex in action,” he says instead, disturbing warmth flaring in his chest when it earns him a snort of her amusement.

"Dung deserved it," she replies, pleased with herself.

True — only himself to blame, vulgar comment like that. Disrespectful. Shortsightedly so, in Mundungus's line of not-quite-work; an auror, for goodness sake. Tonks brushed it off seamlessly, a flick of her wand, a crude joke of her own. Sirius, Arthur and himself had a collective strong word with Dung afterwards. That did appear to bother her; unclear why.

“He did. It was formidable."

Tonks nudges him again. "Stop stalling. Are you in or what?"

"I'm 'what'. Our brief was to note relevant visitors, not follow Death Eaters blindly onto their home turf. Who knows what we would get into if we did it your way?”

In his peripheral vision he catches her nodding along at the end, as if he hadn't just disagreed with her. All roads leading back to why she's right. She does that too.

“That's it though. We don't know!" she exclaims, gesticulating in front of them, her fingernails switched from their earlier chipped black to an iridescent purple. Morphed then, not painted. "Weeks of nothing until now. We can lie around up here with our fingers up our arses, or we could go and find out what Gibbon's got to say to him, bring some intel back for once.”

"And risk revealing to Selwyn that his home is being watched? Over something that might be nothing? You have to consider the long term. Or are you so averse to being a bit bored that you'd compromise the whole operation?"

She scoffs. "Depends. Are you so desperate to be Dumbledore's good boy that you won't consider taking a risk in case it goes tits up?"

Played beater for Hufflepuff, she tells him. Fitting. Aim like that, he'd hate to see the carnage.

"We're not running in without a strategy,” he says with a deliberate calm, irritated enough that he turns his head, forgetting.

It's a mistake, of course. Always is. She's far too close, staring back at him with that stubborn set to her jaw, eyes ablaze. Her hair in greens and yellows to blend with their environment, short and spiky, little clover leaves, the odd daisy just because she can. She's done something unusual with the texture, it's fascinating — as though it would feel like grass too, if he could touch.

“And you get to decide for both of us, do you?” she asks acidly, bringing him back to the issue at hand.

Chastened, he turns his head towards the estate again, bracing for the inevitable giving-in. Prefect indeed.

“Not any more than you do. If you want me to go along with it, you might offer a better plan of action than ‘let’s go and have a look’.”

There's no small hint of satisfaction in her tone as she replies. “Alright. If you’d bothered reading your precious brief, you'd've seen the layout of the grounds.”

He shoots her the most unamused look he can muster from the side of his eye. It only serves to inflame the building migraine he's been trying to ignore all afternoon.

Of course he read the brief. He drafted it. Does much of the admin, given the chronic lack of a real job. Sirius helps — sometimes. Sirius brings enough to the table. It's his table.

“I read it.”

“Right, then think about it? Obviously we go up the north west, the woodlands. Test the wards on approach, find the cracks and slip through. Take it slow, camouflage. Just far enough in for a better angle on the house.”

He considers it. Not a bad start, but it's too soon to cede. She’ll be unbearable once she discovers how easily he’ll roll over.

“And if we're caught?”

She shrugs, her shoulder brushing his; zips catching, tugging, threatening to unravel.

“We won't be.”

He hesitates.

“We agree an apparation point before breaching the wards.”

“Fine.”

“We do not engage unless unavoidable.”

“Yeah, obviously.”

He won't look. Doesn't have to; the eye-roll is perfectly audible. He presses on anyway.

“If one of us is discovered, the other leaves them behind, retreats immediately and apparates back to headquarters.”

She scoffs at that one. “That's not happening.”

That jut of her chin in his peripheral vision, unyielding. The smile creeps up on him.

“Ah. Then I’m afraid we 'lie around up here with our fingers up our arses', as you put it,” he says dryly, effect undoubtedly ruined by the blush that rises in the aftermath.

"You first." Can't look, not after that, but he can hear the upward curve of her lips — expressive, inviting — in her voice. "C'mon, please? I'll let you have the rest of it, but if one of us is stupid enough to get caught the other goes back for them.”

'Please' is a novelty. Tonks doesn't plead, she says what she thinks should happen and then one tends to hear about it until they comply. An effective strategy; please is better. Nonetheless.

“Not a realistic precedent, Tonks. It won't be surveillance forever.”

“Don’t care. Not pretending to agree when I know I won't stick to it.”

“No, why would you? You'd demand it of me instead.”

A moment of resentful stalemate, staring redundantly down on the closed gates below.

For her, he would; useless pretending otherwise. The other way around is unconscionable — it would be the other way around. How could it not be?

He's watched her duel Sirius and keep up with him. Chuckled at her poking at Mad-Eye, as if he's her eccentric grandfather and not the most prolific dark wizard hunter alive. Taken notes from her cheerful dismissals of Severus at his most noxious (annoys him more when I'm nice, she'd confided gleefully, as if he wasn't well acquainted). She'll even disagree out loud with Dumbledore, this barely-adult, barely-in-the-door upstart. Ridiculous. The nerve astounds. The thought of her risking herself for—

“I'll go by myself," she threatens.

He indulges himself in a sigh, covertly attempting to rub the sharp edge of headache from his temple. “No, you won't.”

He can feel her studying him, picture the sly grin without seeing it — arrogant, wonderful. It's getting almost worse than the looking, the picturing.

“Coming, are you?”

August

An afternoon of supervision in the study. Laughter echoes down stagnant hallways, old bones reanimated, the clangour of teenagers having the strangest summer of their lives. Thus far. Fading into the background as they march downstairs for lunch; the soldiers they'll become. It's how it goes.

Just the two of them left now, Professor Lupin and Tonks clearing up after the cleansing.

There are dead doxies piled by the window. Dozens and dozens, tiny corpses splayed where they land. Insectile and glassy-eyed, the hard shell of their wings landing them on their backs, hairy limbs pointing up accusingly.

He looks away.

“Feels good, doesn't it? Like we’re letting some light in,” Tonks chirps as she levitates their bodies unceremoniously into a bin bag, flourishing her wand, inadvertently toppling Orion's ghastly collection of shrunken heads with her elbow.

Her back is turned, but the absence of nasal echo in her voice indicates the duck bill left with the teenagers. Always the entertainer. Today she has worn the face of an elephant, a kneazle, a platypus. More disturbingly, an Argus Filch, as she danced along to the radio — it did get Harry laughing.

Sometimes the portraits hiss when she passes; changeling, aberration, mutant. She revels in the scorn of her ancestors, or takes pains to appear to. Shows off to a captive audience, or cheers up troubled children. He can't decide; is forced to conclude that all her possibilities appeal. Her hair in royal blue today, choppy, vivid.

The short layers sticking up from the top of her head remind him of electricity — the day he'd blown the television set up, uncontrolled magic pulsing in angry waves, shocking, crackling, hair standing on end. He'd never forget the fear in Mam's eyes, the shame he'd felt over it. Days before the full moon. Bad enough, where it can't be prevented. He'd been seven. He never, ever let it happen again.

He goes to shake the dusty curtain in lieu of response, checking for stragglers. A set of sharp teeth sink into the meat of his hand.

“Oh. Here's another.”

The doxy flops from the curtain onto the ground, writhing, letting out a barely audible dying gasp. Tonks tries to pass the doxycide. Unthinking, he holds his bitten hand up to halt her.

“It's alright. Look, he's gone already,” he says quietly, but she only frowns and grabs at his wrist, pulls him closer for inspection.

“You need this seen to. Molly’s got the antidote downstairs. Why'd you let it get its fangs in so deep?” she chides him.

Breathing deliberately even; more muscles in a hand than one expects, tensing and relaxing. Hers are small in comparison. There's nothing hesitant or cringing in her grip.

“No need for the antidote. Werewolves are immune to doxy venom,” he explains, carefully mild. Professor Lupin addressing the class. "Quite the other way around — there are theories as to why. None have been proven conclusively."

It's not research that attracts funding; not wizard enough for St Mungo's grants, nor wholly beast enough for the magizoologists. The literature unreliable, healers reluctant. Decay the only certainty.

The minute corpse between them, cursed blood shining red around the mouth. Something like an apology dies in the throat. Useless now, sentimental besides. She'd only think it strange.

Tonks summons the dittany from the sideboard and when she goes to dab at the bleeding bite, he pulls his hand out of hers, stepping back with a flinch he can't quite prevent.

“Helga's minge Remus, I'm not contagious,” she snaps, not-quite-black eyes round with horror a moment later. “Oh, oh shit. Your bl— sorry, I didn't thi— wait no. No, it doesn't even work like that.” She's uneasy, watching him far too closely. “Right?”

He lets out a held breath, hoping it passes for amusement, and smiles reassuringly.

“That is right. Not to worry, no need to trouble yourself with it. I have survived worse bites, as established,” he says, maybe a shade too lightly.

He turns his back and makes quick work of healing it before she can insist, pretending her gaze doesn't singe the nape of his neck.

“You shouldn't have to do that,” she says eventually, as though she'd know the first thing about it. “Be all polite when people are being thick. No reason for anyone to be afraid of your blood. It's not fair.”

Nothing that won't sound like a rebuke comes to mind; easier, to say nothing at all.

September

Gathering grey clouds, the mizzle before the storm. Darker evenings, darker moods. Headquarters all the emptier for having recently been so full.

Tonks is never on her own after meetings. Remus notices, though he shouldn't.

Debates tactical manoeuvres he doesn't understand with Kingsley, reminisces about people he hasn't met with Bill. Confers over Merlin knows what with Emmeline and Hestia, huddled in a lively cloister, laughter sputtering through the fence. She has a fantastic laugh — loud and infectious, snorting, tempting to join in on despite missing the joke. She's friendly. Exuberant. She's like that with everyone.

It takes him aback to spot her outside, that's all. Prickled spurs of eye-catching pink in the crepuscular light, like the head of a thistle from his window above. Alone, unaware of her audience. Knees hugged against her chest as she smokes on the back step, uncharacteristically still, staring out into the dismal strip of dead shrubs that pretends to be a garden.

His feet carry him down two flights of stairs before intent is formed. Pops the kettle on — underbrews the way she does, no milk, replicates "one sugar" that leans closer to two when she adds it herself — and dithers at the door for a halting minute before opening it anyway.

Tonks's impish smile blooms as she takes the offered mug. "Cheers. You won't tell Doge I'm smoking again will you? Can't do another lecture."

"Again?" he can't resist asking, raising a brow.

He'd had the same wheezing spiel not quite half his life ago, he and Sirius and Peter, more schoolboys than men still. Doge doesn't look more elderly now, which may well serve his point. James had given up by then, when Lily did — not that it mattered for either in the end.

Elphias means well, but he could stand to mind his business.

She huffs, but the smile is more genuine now. "Fine. Smoking still."

"Better."

"Knobhead."

"So I'm told. He won't hear it from me."

She pats the step beside her. After a moment's indecision, he eases himself down, hoping she can't hear his joints protest. Broke both legs again last moon. A nuisance really; each time it's mended, less of it slots back together correctly.

They drink their tea in tandem, watching the rain get heavier from the shelter of her umbrella charm, battering against the jagged remnants of what once might have been a camellia bush.

The walled garden is worse than the house itself: a soulless rectangle of dead branches and thorns, at once too orderly and fallen into a tangling, desiccated ruin. Brick walls covered in withered vines loom either side, casting shadow over all. An oppressive shroud of silence from the privacy wards. Wouldn't do to glimpse the neighbours, or hear any hint of the city one chooses to inhabit — useful for the Order's purposes, but still.

A pathway bisecting the shrubbery, eroded by time, odd seedling shoots of the hardier weeds pushing the stone tiles apart. The gate at the far end, leading out into the world. More tempting than it should be.

"Lovely night for it," he comments mildly, watching Tonks stub out the end of her cigarette and immediately fumble in her pockets for the pack. "I doubt Sirius would mind you smoking inside, now Harry has gone. He certainly does."

She shrugs. "I like the garden. Could've been nice once." A wrinkle of her button nose. "Well, probably not."

She holds the pack out to him in offering, shrieking — too near his ear for comfort — and slapping his arm when he takes her up on it.

"Ey! I'm a crap influence! Since when do you smoke?"

Remus hums, finding himself oddly lightened by the nihilism of giving in. He sets his mug down, and on a whim conjures fire directly into his hand for them to light up with. "You're an appalling influence. Truly god-awful. Fourteen years since my last, give or take."

She lets out a shocked breath of a laugh, shaking her head as if to clear it, and leans in to light her own cigarette from the offered blue flame. Her bubblegum spikes muted, bruised in the cyanic glow. Fire flickering in her eyes. Skin ethereal. He takes a longer first draw than intended, harsh and tickling at the back of his throat — tries not to cough and fails miserably at it, hacking away for her amusement. It fades as her expression falls solemn.

"Not a reassuring sign, you starting again, is it?"

"No. No, I suppose not."

As the nicotine flutters to his head, smoke curling around them, he might be fifteen on top of the Astronomy tower. An anxious Peter appointed Filch lookout, James brandishing the pack he'd overpaid an enterprising muggleborn for earlier — Remus hesitating. Sirius pretending he'd done it hundreds of times before, of course, cigarette dangling lazily from the side of his mouth. Announcing Remus had better man up or he'd be sentry next time. He'd snatched Sirius's at that and smoked the horrible thing himself. James laughing into a coughing fit, refusing to give an outraged Sirius another until he asked nicely. Simpler times.

Then he wonders why on earth Tonks would want to mope in the rain with a morose werewolf of a Friday night — the first she's had to herself in weeks, no less — and it dissipates.

"I'm supposed to be at my mate's in an hour. Only came outside to head home and get ready," she says eventually.

"Oh, sorry. Don't let me keep you."

He shifts in preparation to stand, stilled by her hand curling over his arm.

"You're not. What you sorry for? I'm not going."

She puffs a smoke ring out, watching it drift out of her protective bubble and get beaten away by the rain. His sleeves are still rolled from the dishes earlier. The pout of her rosy lips, the startling heat of her palm against the bare skin of his inner forearm, her lemon and apple smell overpowering the smoke and petrichor and rot — he can't quite process what she'd said until she lets go.

"Why not?" he asks at last, blinking his expression clear.

"Nothing to say for myself when anyone asks what I'm up to. 'Oh just tracking Death Eaters and doing the minutes for Anti-Voldemort Club, the usual'. Yeah right."

It's the first time he's heard her say the name unselfconsciously, no flicker of forethought in it. Already. There's a strange swell of pride, before he remembers he has no right to it.

"If I have to sit through another conversation about who's shagging who and who's let themselves go and who's up the duff, I'll be locked up beside poor Sturg. They've all bought it! Business as usual, and I can't even tell them why they're wrong. None of them have a clue." She exhales with a scowl, gripping her mug so tightly he worries it might break.

His hand twitches towards her, but finds his tea again. Inappropriate.

"Don't judge them too harshly for it. A comfortable lie can be easier to digest than a difficult truth, sometimes," he offers.

"Yeah. I hate that."

She would.

"You should go anyway. You might enjoy yourself."

"Didn't ask, and I wouldn't," she retorts mulishly.

He laughs; he can't help it. "You'd rather sit here alone, chain smoke and drink revolting weak tea instead? Go on, don't waste your night off. It would be good for you."

"Not alone, you already know you got my tea right, and you don't know what's good for me." She ticks them off on her fingers, then smiles at him. "I heard you turn down that pint with Kingsley and Deds twenty minutes ago. Do you ever follow your own advice or d'you just really get off on doling it out?"

Embarrassingly, he feels his face flush. "That's not quite it. You forget Dedalus's tendency to get everyone thrown out before his round."

It's not a lie. Diggle's loud, a lightweight and tighter than two coats of paint; a nice enough man, nobody's ideal drinking partner. Can't afford to get his own round in, though. He'd rather not broadcast that to present company.

She clucks her tongue. "Not if Kingsley's going. Senior Auror in the group, you get away with anything."

It's so casual. He winces. "Nonetheless. Kingsley shouldn't be seen with me anymore, too obviously linked with Dumbledore. Go to your friend's house. Don't wall yourself away while you have a choice."

"I think that ship's sailed to be honest."

"Not if you're still invited."

"No. I'm staying here. We'll see who can force Sirius to crack a smile first, sulky bastard."

Tempting to defend Sirius from that charge. A better man would. As locked up as Sturgis, his magnificent sharp edges blunted by miserable captivity. One year of freedom, and back in. Coping admirably, considering. She might amuse Sirius but she knows very little of him, not like he does. None of them do. Sirius certainly doesn't sulk.

That better man would keep urging Tonks to leave, argue the point until she listens, plead with her if need be. Rush her up the path and through the gate. She should spend her free time in places living things grow. She can't see it yet. There's not always time.

"Hardly a fair contest. You are better at it than I am," he says instead with a soft smile, guilt calcifying in his gut.

She leans in, nudging her elbow into his side. "Not true. I try harder, but you've known him longer."

This close sometimes, the urge to touch her is a physical ache. Hunger. All he is, when it comes to it. She can never know.

"You're suggesting we team up?"

She grins at him wickedly, canines showing.

"That was your suggestion Remus, but yeah let's. I only meant you could try harder."