Work Text:
"Pleasant evening?" Snape asked, without bothering to look up from his newspaper, and Remus felt his heart sink. They could have cast a silencing charm, of course. If Remus hadn't been so out of practice, the thought might even have occurred to him before half of Grimmauld Place had been subjected to his sex noises.
"Hmmmm," he replied, hoping the non-committal response might be the best way to end the conversation before it began. As usual with Snape, this was the wrong choice.
"The Black family seem to hold a specific fascination for you, Lupin. Should I warn Lucius to be on his guard lest Narcissa is next on your to-do list?"
"Hilarious," he said, sitting down at the table and helping himself to some tea before accio-ing the Prophet from the pile at Snape's elbow.
"Or perhaps Draco is more likely to be in the firing line? It appears you do prefer them younger."
"Let it go, Severus," he said quietly. Snape put down his newspaper and folded his hands on top of it, fixing Remus with an expression of mild delight.
"Does she know, your Nymphadora? How close you were to her dear departed cousin?"
The question was a triumph of carefully-crafted barbs, each one stinging exactly as it was intended to, and even ten days from the full moon, Remus struggled to shut down the hot flash of anger in his gut. "Let it go," he hissed, and Snape smiled at him coldly as Tonks walked into the room.
"Morning!" she said brightly, and Remus trained his eyes on the newspaper, locking his mind tight against Snape, as if there were anything to read that wasn't already quite obvious from the situation. Tonks moved quietly around the kitchen, collecting breakfast before settling opposite Snape and spreading jam on her toast. She was the same, of course, glowing with health, youthful and beautiful and totally fucking inappropriate. Remus got to his feet as Snape crunched toast in a manner calculated to annoy.
"Well," he said, "I'll be in the study finishing up some reports for Albus if anyone needs me." He fled without waiting to see if either of them would offer a response.
The study was cramped, with books overflowing from the shelves and parchment piled in various places on the carpet. Remus transfigured the coffee pot back into a kettle – Moody must have been working late last night – and made tea, thinking about the way Tonks had twisted her hands in his hair as she came. At the desk, he looked at the photograph of Sirius and James in the sixth year, laughing with their arms slung around each other's shoulders. "I fucked a 22 year old last night, boys," he said to the picture.
"Nice one, Moony!" Sirius grinned and James winked lasciviously.
The worst thing was that Remus wasn't even sure Snape was wrong. There had been nothing between Remus and Sirius since they were teenagers, or at least nothing physical. Sirius had been so destroyed after Azkaban that it wasn't possible to countenance more than a friendship. But Remus couldn't deny that he had carried his feelings for Sirius through the intervening years, allowing them to twist into a grotesque parody of what they had once been, a connection to a happier time that was as compelling as it was toxic. The fierce warmth he felt towards Tonks was inspired by so many of the same things that he had loved about Sirius; a quick wit, a sharp mind, an easy command of sex and magic and a clearly identified sense of herself. He wanted Tonks, wanted her more now that he had smoothed his hands over her soft skin, now that he had been inside her, but it was madness to give in to the unlooked-for flattery of her desiring him in return, madness to work through their shared grief in a way that could only lead to more pain.
They would talk it through, Remus resolved. Tonks would see the logic. They would simply have to talk it through.
Just then, there was a knock on the door, and Tonks appeared in the doorway, light flooding in from behind her. "Do you want any tea?"
She didn't look like Sirius. She didn't look like Narcissa, or like Draco – she looked like herself, and Remus thought that he was probably in love with her.
"I've got some, but thank you," he said, feeling miserable, and she nodded, leaving him in the mess of the study, alone.
The wizarding world, with typical lack of consideration, was not prepared to put itself on hold whilst Remus sorted out his latest emotional fuck-up. Every bit of intelligence they could acquire suggested Voldemort was preparing to go on the offensive and there had already been attacks on both wizards and muggles. The work piled up, and without a regular job or a family to look after, Remus was a central point for co-ordination and the relay of information within the Order. He didn't care about being on call all the time, and he was happy to make decisions or just to make tea, but he knew what Dumbledore was going to want from him, sooner or later.
"You know I wouldn't ask this of you, Remus, but there is so little option." They were having the conversation in the headmaster's office rather than at Grimmauld Place, and Remus wondered if there was a reason for that. He slouched in his chair. "It's a matter of protection," Dumbledore emphasised, laying his hands on the desk where Remus could see the damage the horcrux had caused. "They will target the children."
"I am aware that they target children," Remus said, and Dumbledore offered a dry smile.
"This is no time for self-pity, Remus," he chided and Remus wanted to turn the desk over, smash all the glass jars lined up on shelves against the wall. "We must put others before ourselves." Remus sighed.
"Fine. Just let me know when."
"I truly appreciate it, Remus," Dumbledore said, reaching across to lean a hand against Remus's forearm. Remus kept his mind locked tight.
Back at Grimmauld Place, Molly told him Tonks had been crucio'd.
"It was just a stray curse," Molly was saying, as if an indirect crucio caused pain any less crippling. "She's fine, really, they treated her straight away. It was just an accident – inevitable with all the new aurors they're training up." She stirred four pots one after the other and then looked at Remus with worried eyes. "She's in St Mungo's for the night."
Remus had spent too many long, lonely nights in hospitals not to be viscerally aware of how Tonks must be feeling and he felt helpless, awash with anxiety. He worked late into the evening, sipping firewhiskey in the hope it might make him feel a little fuzzier around the edges, but when he lay down in bed, there was no sleep to be found. He stared at the ceiling, wondering if Dumbledore was going to send him straight back to Greyback, wondering if Tonks was sick of him and the way he had been behaving around her. He was seized, as he sometimes was, by the urge to run, to get away, anywhere but here. That hadn't worked out so well the night James and Lily had died. Anyway, he had nowhere else to go.
In the morning, sick with himself and sick with worry, he waited in Tonks's room.
"How are you feeling?" he asked when she eventually emerged, fresh from the bath and wearing a dressing gown. Despite the flush of heat across her face, her skin looked ashen and he could see a livid purple bruise from the curse blossoming across her cheek.
"Better," she replied with a smile. "My mum always said a hot bath was the best cure for any ailment." They were standing so close together. Remus couldn't stop looking at the delicate line of her clavicle, the soft perfection of her skin. Nerves fluttered in his gut as he reached to twist a strand of her pink hair gently between his fingers.
"I was worried when I heard the news."
"I'm sorry." He could smell her bubble bath, something citrusy and fresh. Underneath that there were still traces of the hospital, rubber and antiseptic. Underneath that, he could smell Tonks, the sweet and salt of her, the way she had tasted when he licked at her skin and it made his mouth flood with moisture. He cradled her skull gently, watching as her eyes closed. He was close enough to press a kiss against her hairline, or against her mouth.
"It's not your fault," he murmured, lifting his other hand to trace his fingers across her skin when her eyes opened.
"Remus, what are you doing?"
It should have been enough to stop him, or at least to make him think about what the hell was actually happening, but instead he was pulling at the belt on her robe and kissing her, feeling her mouth open under his. She was warm and alive under his hands, making soft noises as his fingers found her skin, and need washed through him like the wolf, commanding his senses. Tonks unfastened his trousers, looking him in the eye as her hand wrapped round his hard cock. He groaned as much from the look as from the achingly good strokes of her small hand and he mouthed at her shoulder, trying to keep himself under control.
It was better than last time. He fucked her slowly, watching her lift her hands to grip the headboard, dropping his head to lick over her nipple. It was warm in the room, and despite the bubble of their silencing charm, the quiet sounds of other people in the house occasionally filtered through. Tonks sighed and arched her back slightly, letting Remus slide in at a different angle, a deeper angle and he fucked her harder, looking down to the place where their bodies joined. The sight of her moving underneath him made him feel utterly desperate, and his orgasm rushed up inside him. "I'm going to come," he managed, sliding a hand round the back of her neck and she groaned, tightening around him as he tipped over the edge.
Afterwards, he slid down her body and pushed his face against her skin, licking at the insides of her thighs and upwards until he was close enough to lap out the taste of himself. He mouthed slowly over her cunt, pressing his tongue inside, sliding his hands up and over her hips as he sucked her clit and she arched off the mattress. "Remus," she moaned, breath coming short as he felt the muscles in her thighs tense and he licked her through her orgasm, continuing until she pushed his head away gently with one hand.
He knelt back, catching his breath, face still damp with her wetness. On the bed, Tonks looked sated and beautiful, a flush pinking her skin and her hands soft and open on the mattress beside her. Suddenly everything pushed out by Remus's need came flooding back into his mind – Dumbledore and werewolves and the war, Sirius's death and Tonks, already injured by her own fucking aurors. His selfishness and stupidity made him feel sick to his stomach and he moved off the bed, dressing quickly, in a panic.
"Remus," she said softly, "are you going to be like this every time we have sex?"
He looked at her, feeling something like vertigo. This was such an incredibly bad idea. "I'm sorry, Tonks."
The conversation should have ended there, but it didn't. Remus should have listened to the rational part of his brain, the part that had kept him at Hogwarts and kept him alive, the part that never listened to Sirius or James. Instead, he listened to Tonks, telling him that she knew what she wanted and that it wasn't anything more than this.
"All right," he said eventually, and she smiled at him. She hadn't lived through a war. She didn't understand the fear and the pain and the betrayal, or that the closer you got to somebody, the worse it was when they were ripped out of your life for good. She was too young, and too whole and too ready to fight for what was right. The worst of it was, she convinced him. She left Remus with something terrifying, something he had worked so hard for so many years to avoid: a straggly, fledgling feeling of hope.
They continued working, late nights and early mornings, tedious Order meetings and Snape being Snape, but Tonks would come to his room after everyone was in bed and they would take some solace in each other. At the full moon, Tonks locked him into the cage and came to collect him the following morning, spelling his wounds back together more softly than anyone had done since Sirius, making him blink back hot, unwelcome tears that had nothing to do with the pain. She complained bitterly about Moody and Shacklebolt and their unreasonable demands, and she made him laugh. She asked no questions. He would have given anything to take care of her. At the end of July, Remus dreamed of a boy with a shock of blue hair trapped in a shadow. He woke up to an owl tapping on the window pane with a message from Dumbledore, summoning him to Hogwarts for what he knew would be unwelcome news. Tonks slept silently next to him, and he stroked a hand through her hair, watching her chest rise and fall with her breath. "I'm sorry," he said softly, "I have to go." She didn't stir.
After the meeting with Dumbledore, Snape caught him in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place. "He's sending you to Greyback," he stated, face completely blank, and Remus didn't bother to wonder why it was deemed necessary for Snape to have this information.
"Needs must, apparently," he replied, without hiding his frustration, and Snape crossed his arms over his chest.
"Your potion," he said, after long minutes of silence.
"I won't –"
"Quiet. I have been working on a spell to transfigure the wolfsbane into tablets. This seems like an ideal opportunity to test their efficacy."
"Oh," Remus said. "Well, quite."
"I will ensure it reaches you before you leave," Snape said, stepping smartly into the fire with a flash of floo powder before Remus had a chance to respond.
"Thanks," Remus said to himself, before turning to climb the stairs.
In his room, he discovered Tonks's robes in the wardrobe and her shoes underneath the bed. On the bedside table, a paperback biography of Nicolas Flamel was opened face down. "Fuck," Remus said, sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. "Fuck."
Sirius had always maintained that honesty was the best policy, but Sirius was a lot braver than Remus. Instead, Remus put together some careful lies and thought about how best to deliver them to make Tonks hate him before he left. That night, he turned his back on her and they slept without touching, like strangers in the same bed. The next morning, she looked at him warily.
"Would it really be so different if we were in an actual relationship?" she asked, and he shook his head.
"I knew this was a mistake."
"I'm not asking for marriage or children," she said and he wondered if she could sense his panic, his desperation. "I'm just asking for us to be together."
The script he had written for himself evaporated from his mind. In the end, he could manage only one word. "Goodbye."
He closed the bedroom door behind him and leaned heavily against the wall, trying to remember why it was better this way.
Two hours later, after a final meeting with Dumbledore, he apparated to a Yorkshire village on the edge of the moors. He could smell the pack as soon as he arrived, far too close to human beings. He knelt down and vomited quietly at the side of the road. "Every man must do things he regrets in war," Dumbledore had told him, "but you must think of the greater good. Keep yourself safe, Remus. Do not blow your cover."
Remus stood and wiped his mouth, searching for memories he had long been careful to avoid, of how this had felt before. In one pocket of his robe, he found a leather pouch filled with tablets, and threw them away. In the other, he found the piece of parchment he had rolled and tied carefully, ready for attachment to an owl. He unrolled it slowly, revealing the words in his neat teacher's hand. "I love you," it said. "I will come back." Breathing hard, Remus ripped it to pieces and let it scatter in the wind.
Rain began to fall, and Remus pulled his hood over his head before throwing his small pack onto his back. Think of the greater good, he told himself, before squaring his shoulders and trudging grimly onwards.