This story follows Good A-brewing in the Transfigured Hearts series is set in the spring of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Thanks to Anki, beta extraordinaire.

Interview With a Skeeter

"What d'you think of these?"

When Tonks had asked Remus to go shopping with her in Diagon Alley, he had not anticipated spending an hour at an outdoor kiosk helping her select jewellery. Of course he would have accompanied her even if he had known what the excursion entailed; but he never would have expected it to be fun. Yet there was no denying it – he most certainly was enjoying himself as Tonks modelled earrings. He tried not to appear smug as the thought crossed his mind that even Sirius, at one time the Casanova of Hogwarts, had never gone to these lengths for a witch.

Remus was no expert on jewellery, but he had a feeling most people would consider Tonks' current pair of earrings – fluorescent green and turquoise beadwork dangling almost to her shoulders – gaudy. Tonks, though, had a rare knack for making the ostentatious suit her. He cocked his head as he studied the baubles. Something wasn't quite right.

"Don't like them?" Tonks asked, her voice undeniably disappointed; she'd reacted like it was Christmas morning when she first spied the earrings hanging on the display rack.

"I like them," Remus said decisively, "just not with your hair."

"Too much blue?" Tonks's forehead wrinkled as she concentrated on changing her shoulder-length hair from the colour of robins' eggs to midnight blue.

"Better. But perhaps you should shorten it?"

Again, Tonks furrowed her brow in a look of intense deliberation. Remus watched, fascinated, as the long, silky locks seemed to grow in reverse, then arrange into a windblown look that, Remus thought, made Tonks look like a pixie. "Good now?"

"I think you need a completely different colour to make the earrings stand out."

Tonks made a sound of exasperation. "Are you saying that because you mean it, Remus, or because you're entertained by my morphing?"

"Both." He grinned sheepishly and shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets. "As long as I'm not making you feel like a curiosity." He'd noticed the young witch operating the booth observing them raptly, along with any passersby who happened to catch Tonks mid-transfiguration.

"Not at all," said Tonks sweetly. "You're a saint to put up with this."

"It's fun."

Tonks arched a brow. "Would it be fun if I weren't a Metamorphmagus?"

Remus coloured and shoved aside the annoying thought that Sirius most likely would be a willing participant in earring shopping if his date had such diverting abilities. Tonks smirked as though she could read his mind.

Clearing his throat, Remus adopted his most professorial tone and said, "I recommend something in the pink palette."

"You would," Tonks muttered as she transformed her hair yet again, this time to a dark shade of purplish pink. "There. Raspberry. If you don't like it, I'm giving up on these ruddy earrings."

Remus stepped closer to her and traced her cheek with his fingertips. "They are lovely earrings, and they complement your hair perfectly."

For a moment Tonks looked as though she would kiss him for the admiring comment, but as Remus leaned in to her, the young Auror's gaze wandered beyond his shoulder. She blanched. "Oh bloody hell."

"What?" Remus anxiously glanced over his shoulder but saw nothing other than the usual bustle of the wizarding district.

"I've been spotted morphing."

"What did you expect? We are in a public place, Tonks."

She rolled her eyes at him and said, through gritted teeth, "Rita Skeeter's coming this way."

"The journalist?" Remus asked, looking around again. The former Daily Prophet correspondent was infamous, but Remus had never seen her in person.

"The hack," Tonks said venomously, then let out a squeal and ducked around the side of the jewellery stand. "She's got her bloody Quick Quotes Quill!"

Remus squelched his amusement that Tonks, the fearless Auror, would be afraid of a newspaper reporter – even one as notoriously irritating as Rita Skeeter. "Shall we Disapparate?"

Tonks looked tempted, but then she straightened up and squared her shoulders. "I haven't finished shopping, and I don't want to interrupt our date just because some—"

"Professor!" Remus jumped as a nasally voice screeched in his ear and a heavy hand clamped his shoulder. "Excuse me, Professor Lupin?"

As he turned to face the reporter, Remus was sure he looked every bit as petrified as Tonks had a moment before. He relaxed slightly when he saw Rita's hair was not coiled into rigid curls and her face was not overly made up, as her photographs in The Daily Prophet. Remembering she had been unemployed for months, he felt a surge of empathy for her as he regarded her rumpled clothes, battered shoes, and stringy, unkempt hair.

However, Rita's pitiable façade vanished as she demanded, "You are the Defence Against Dark Arts professor who got sacked from Hogwarts for being a…werewolf?" Her heavy eyebrows arched almost menacingly over her eyeglasses, and the Quick Quotes Quill scribbled furiously.

"Remus did not get sacked!" interjected Tonks before Remus could think of a reply, and she brushed past him and planted herself right in Rita's face. "He resigned of his own accord. Not that it's any of your business."

"Fine," Rita snapped, turning archly on Tonks. The Quill scratched out whatever it had written and hovered over the notepad. "Instead of my piece on Unemployment in the Wizarding World," the reporter continued, "I'll write about Wartime Wizard Romances." Rita paused briefly to let her writing implement catch up, then she forged ahead. "Tell me – it's N-Y-M-P-H-A-D-O-R-A Tonks, isn't it? I remember the buzz when you qualified for Auror. What shape does a werewolf prefer a Metamorphmagus to take in the bedroom?"

Tonks' hands balled into fists at her side, and Remus held her upper arms in the fear that she might pounce on Rita. He hadn't known Tonks was capable of speaking so icily until she said in clipped syllables, "Definitely not a beetle."

Rita sputtered unintelligibly – except for the words "Hermione Granger" – as she crammed her Quick Quotes Quill into her crocodile skin purse. She tottered away on uneven heels, pausing once to fling a filthy look over her shoulder at the couple.

"That was certainly as horrifying as I expected," Tonks said in a voice shaking with what Remus assumed to be lingering fury. But when she turned to him, his heart sank at the sight of her flushed face. Merlin – why hadn't he realised before the interview why Tonks wanted to avoid Rita Skeeter? She'd anticipated that the reporter would humiliate her for keeping company with an outcast like him.

"I have never thought highly of that woman," said Remus, doing his best to sound apologetic rather than disappointed, "but I would not have picked her to be the first person to ridicule you on my account."

Tonks gawked, her expression mirroring one Sirius got when he thought Remus was socially retarded. "On your account?" she repeated in a flabbergasted tone, then hooted with a laugh that turned more heads than her metamorphosing had. Remus' eyes dropped to his shuffling feet, but Tonks caught his face in her hands and gave him a smacking kiss on his forehead. "You silly, noble nutter!" she said through her laughter. Do you know anything at all about witches?"

"Nothing at all." Remus chuckled nervously as blessed relief flooded through him. "Certainly I cannot imagine how I have so thoroughly amused you."

"Rita wanted an interview with you." Tonks poked him in the chest. Slowly, as though speaking to a child, she elaborated, "I – another female – got in her way. So Rita got even. That's what that was all about." She pecked his cheek, then turned back to the earring display.

"Fascinating," Remus said, a lilt coming into his voice. "I suppose that means you employed the same strategy first?"

"Pardon?"

"Rita got in the way of your earring decision, so you fought back?"

"Not exactly. It was more that I was defending you from a blood-sucking predator."

"Beetles aren't predators. Or blood-suckers."

"True. A mosquito would be a more appropriate transfiguration for her."

Chuckling, Remus shook his head. "I appreciate your fierce loyalty, but I swear, Nymphadora, if we end up in The Quibbler…"

"We won't," said Tonks nonchalantly as she continued to brows the earring display. "I work for the Ministry. I know she's an unregistered Animagus." She held up a pair of hoops with incandescent purple beadwork. "Besides, the mating habits of werewolves and Metamorphmagi aren't bizarre enough for The Quibbler."

Remus glanced over his shoulder at the shop girl, who, by quickly ducked her head, revealed she had been eavesdropping. Turning back to Tonks, he asked in a hushed tone, "Don't you think a Quick Quotes Quill can make it bizarre enough?"

Tonks stiffened as she considered this. "Harry's friends with Lovegood's daughter, isn't he?"

"With Luna? Yes, she arranged for the publication of the article that named the Death Eaters."

"Catastrophe averted," said Tonks brightly. She removed the blue and green earrings, handed them to Remus, and tried on the purple pair. "I'll ask Harry to ask Luna to ask her dad not to buy another story from Rita."

He stepped just behind her and bent to speak softly near her ear. "Just how do you intend to break it to Harry that his former Defence Against Dark Arts professor is the subject of an article about…"

"Shagging?"

Remus cringed. "He would be appalled. As far as teenagers are concerned, grown-ups do not get up to such activities."

"I heard Mum and Dad at it once. I couldn't look at them in the eyes for a week." She shuddered, giving Remus the distinct impression that Tonks hadn't yet recovered from the incident, then turned her attention to the ovular mirror on the jeweller's cart. She pursed her lips and metamorphosed her hair back to midnight blue. "If I don't make Harry our liaison, we'll have to grin and bear whatever might appear in The Quibbler."

Leaning back against a nearby lamppost, Remus raked a hand through his too-long hair. "Why didn't you correct Rita?"

"When has a correction ever stopped Rita from writing what she wants?" Apparently dissatisfied with the purple hoops, Tonks returned them to the rack. "Look, Remus!" she cried, snatching another pair. "Lightning bolts – like Harry's scar!" She turned to model the bright yellow earrings, offset by the dark bob.

"Fetching."

Tonks looked in the mirror again, running her fingers through her blue locks as she lengthened them.

"You are correct," Remus said, picking up where they left off before the lighting bolt earring interruption. "Rita always writes what she wants. But did you have to make the beetle remark? I am afraid you only stirred her cauldron."

Tonks turned back to Remus, a quizzical grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. "D'you care if people think we're shagging, Remus?"

Remus winced at her volume. In his peripheral, he noticed the clerk watching them eagerly. "This is not the place to discuss—"

"I don't care," Tonks went on, oblivious to both the vendor and Remus' self-consciousness. "Someday it'll be true, right?"

The capacity for verbalisation abandoned Remus as his mind became a jumble of vague thoughts and images. He had a sensation of his mouth growing very dry and of his skin becoming very hot and prickly and of Tonks smirking at him. Had she really just said…? And in public? Yes – her eyes were laughing at him. Remus whipped around to the earring display, using the task of finding the purple hoops to bring his mind back into a state of coherence. By the time he'd found them, he had regained his ability to speak.

"Try these again," he said, "with long red hair."

"Hm," said Tonks, removing the lightning bolts from her earlobes and giving her now Weasley-coloured hair a flick. "Is that what you'd fancy in the bedroom?"

"What? No, I—"

"Rita does raise a fascinating question." Tonks turned to the mirror and slid her fingers through the long, silky auburn strands. "What would you prefer?"

Despite her obvious intention of flustering him, Remus maintained his composure. Hands on her shoulders, he guided her out of earshot of the nosy vendor. Tonks faced him with a bemused expression, clearly surprised that he was going to answer her seriously. Remus cupped her face in his hands and said, "If I am ever so fortunate as to take you to bed, I want you to be yourself."

Her eyes looked velvety, and she sighed as she slipped her arms around his waist and pulled him delightfully close. Remus' heart swelled to have produced such a reaction. He doubted even Sirius had ever said anything so smooth.

Suddenly Tonks raised her head, the dreamy expression replaced with her usual impish gleam. "But we agree my natural brown hair doesn't suit me."

"You may have been born with brown hair, but I think pink is your natural colour."

She grinned broadly as she changed her hair back to her preferred pink, spiky style. As Tonks spun the revolving earring display, she glanced coyly over her shoulder. "There's no 'if', by the way. You will be so fortunate one of these days."

Remus noticed a shiny beetle perched atop the mirror. It couldn't be Rita, could it? He poised his fingers to flick it off, but thought the better of it. He no longer cared what might appear in The Quibbler.

The End