Lupin's Story
Sometime between the 5th and 6th Harry Potter's
'Well I'm off to bed all.' said Molly cheerfully. She looked over at the pile of dishes that needed to be done.
'Don't worry Molly, we'll take care of that,' Remus said smiling.
'Alright then, night.'
'Night Molly,' said Tonks. Remus simply smiled. He suddenly regretted offering to clean up. This left him alone with Tonks, and it was beginning to really show how uncomfortable they were to be alone with each other. After several minutes of silence, Remus said,
'Should we start cleaning all this up?'
Tonks looked baffled by this and stumbled 'Oh-yeh-er,' in reply.
Remus didn't dare look at Tonks while they cleaned. He would not give himself the chance to give into temptation. They wiped, washed and cleaned without magic and Remus saw an empty bottle on the bench beside the sink. He went to grab it, as did Tonks and he felt their hands touch. James had once told him, that when he touched Lily's hand, it seemed like time had stopped, and they were the only two people in the world. At the time Remus thought it was absolute nonsense, but now it made complete sense to him. When he remembered what he was doing, he pulled his hand away and continued to wipe. He should never have let himself be alone with Tonks. If he was going to get over, whatever this was, he was going to have to keep a distance between them. Remus was still thinking about this when Tonks broke the long silence.
'Have you ever been in love before?'
Stumbled, Remus abruptly stopped cleaning, and turned to look at her. If he had smiled the moment would have been less awkward, but he couldn't even force one. So they just stared at each other and Remus thought about her question. He wasn't even sure of the answer. He turned back to the sink and said rather quietly, 'Once.' He wished he hadn't of said that. He didn't even know if it was true. All he knew was that he'd never felt like this in his life.
'You have to stop thinking like that!' he told himself.
'How do you know...' asked Tonks still looking at him.
He stopped cleaning and looked at her again. Why did she have to ask him this? He did not even know what to answer but his mouth started moving before his mind had time to catch up.
'I think, it's just one of those things,' He said. 'When you look at this person, you see happiness, love, everything you could possibly want in the world, and... you just know...'
The next few seconds seem to go tremendously fast, and extremely slow, all at the same time.
Tonks seemed to move herself closer to Remus and he did not stop her. They both leaned in closer to each other, and again, he did not stop her (or himself). It was the closest he had ever been to Tonks and he could feel her breath on his face, and he did not stop. He closed his eyes and swore he could feel Tonks' lips on his own, when, he stopped it. He immediately drew himself away from Tonks as if she had some sort of illness, when in fact; he was the one with disease. He turned around and, bumping into the benches and seeing quite a few of Molly's plates and cutlery fall to the ground, he head toward the door.
'Remus...' he heard Tonks say. Disregarding this, he grabbed his coat and walked straight out of the room. Hearing the door crash behind him, he did not look back, no matter how much he wanted to.