Disclaimer: All character herein belong to the illustrious J.K. Rowling, may she richly prosper.

A/N: A little one-shot to get back into the swing of all things Harry Potter. This is not the same universe as Second Chances. Actually, its pretty much canon. (Or it was, before Harry Potter and the Extended Camping Trip hit shelves.)

Honesty

"Why do you have to be so stubborn? Can't you just accept that I love you? That what will happen will happen? Why not try to be happy while we still have the chance?" Tonks cried.

"Because I cannot make you happy!" Remus nearly shouted back. Tonks flinched. "I am flawed, flawed in so many ways. Dora, you can't even begin to imagine."

They were at it again. The same old fight. This was never how she pictured falling in love. Remus pushing her away, while she pushed right back, determined to make him see that his excuses didn't matter, those excuses that he repeated like a mantra, too old, too poor, too dangerous…This time was no different. Until McGonagall heard the shouting and found them facing off in the sitting room of Grimmauld Place.

Both looked up as the door popped sharply in its frame. The set line of the older woman's jaw made Tonks uneasy, and Remus took the advantage of the intrusion to sink into one of the high-backed chair with his face in his hands.

Tonks expected Minerva to scold them for being so loud, or for yelling in general, maybe mentioning something about the lateness of the hour or what Dumbledore would have wanted. But she just stood there, watching Remus in his chair. Tonks glanced from her to the place where he sat. She took in the sag of his spine, the streaks in his hair, the lines of his forehead that she could just see above the tips of his fingers still pressed to his face, and she felt guilt. Merlin, she was being selfish. Maybe, but he's being stupid, said a voice in her head.

Minerva was the one to break the silence.

"Why don't you tell her the truth, Remus?"

"And what truth would that be, Minerva?" Remus asked tersely.

The matron's hard mouth softened, as did her tone when she answered.

"That you love someone else."

It was soft, almost pitying. A pleading suggestion borne of caring rather than the no-nonsense orders Tonks was used to hearing issue from the lips of the Hogwart's matron-turned-Headmistress.

"Remus," Tonks ventured in the void that followed. "Is that true?"

But she knew it was true. It was written into the set of his shoulders, hidden behind hands that still hadn't shifted, exclaimed in his neglect to reply. So instead she asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"

Now the hands moved, one down to his knee, the other up and back, running long fingers through graying hair. His eyes remained fixed on the arm of the chair, searching for answers in the dust between the threads.

"Because we were supposed to tell you together."

We. We were supposed to. Who was this mysterious woman who had captivated her Remus's heart where she could not? Did she want to know? Would it break her?

Did she have a choice?

"We?" she asked.

"Sirius and I," he said. "We had planned to, you see, but then—we never got the chance." The reply was simple. Matter-of-fact. Empty. His eyes turned to the floor. "Excuse me," he said, and rose from the seat, long strides carrying him quickly to the door which creaked quietly behind him. And in that moment Tonks knew that no love of hers could ever heal the depths of his heart, because he had hidden them so completely.

"So now you know."

She turned to look at Minerva. She had a thousand questions, but none of them seemed…appropriate? Finally she settled on one.

"How long have you known?"

Minerva sighed and sank into the chair that Remus had vacated, motioning for her to take another. "Those two…have always been different together," she said. "Had—excuse me." She sniffed and smiled a sad half-smile in remembrance. "I caught them after an Order meeting, back in the days of the First War. They were twenty at the time, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had been seeing each other for far longer."

Sirius. No wonder Remus was so against any relationship with her. On top of everything else, she was his cousin. Every time Remus looked at her he must have been reminded of what he'd lost. Suddenly every little gesture that passed between them, every covert glance was explained. What she had taken for the bond shared by two friends who had lost everything but each other was in reality even more than she'd imagined. They obviously loved each other very much. So then why had they kept it a secret?

"…He could have told me," she said.

"I don't believe they ever told anyone," Minerva confided. "Although I'm fairly sure Lily had them figured out. There wasn't much you could hide from that girl. Just the way she looked at them sometimes… But no, those boys were always very close with their secrets."

Tonks idly wondered why she wasn't more upset. She had just found out that the man she loved more than anything was in love with her cousin, who was male.

And who wouldn't be coming home anymore. The perfect tragedy.

He had loved and he had lost, and here she was, experiencing what by all rights should have been her first heartbreak—but strangely wasn't. Yes, she was disappointed, sad, defeated, but—most of all, she was accepting. Like even though her world had been turned upside down in those moments of honesty, it somehow made more sense to her now than it had before.

But, perhaps that was the heart of it. Perhaps she had always known, somewhere in that part of her that saw far more than she allowed herself to see. Remus had loved someone else. Someone who she could never hope to measure up to, she knew. Trust Remus to pick the one man she idolized more than anyone, her own cousin… And in a way, it comforted her to know that it was Sirius who had loved Remus, and been loved by him. She couldn't think of anyone else truly deserving of the man she cared so deeply for.

But now Sirius is gone…

"Will he be alright?" she asked Minerva. Minerva, who had known Remus since he was a boy of eleven. Minerva, who would know now what Remus could weather and what might finally destroy him.

The answer was a comforting one. "Remus is strong," she said. "When they took Sirius to Azkaban, Remus was the one who insisted on his innocence, well after the rest of us had turned our backs."

And me, thought Tonks. She remembers being nine, determined to defend her favorite cousin to anyone who doubted him, no matter what her mother said.

"Dumbledore told me Remus wrote thousands of appeals to the Wizengamot," Minerva continued. "But no one was going to listen to a werewolf. Especially not in those days, and especially not Remus. He had even been brought in for questioning as a possible accomplice. There was never any hope. Eventually, I think Remus, too, convinced himself that Sirius had betrayed them all, and it almost tore him apart. We lost contact with him. Supposedly he went traveling, but no one heard from him for several years." She sighed. "When he finally did come back, he was…changed."

Tonks vaguely recalls the shy, smiling boy that she met one summer when he had visited her mother's cottage with her dark-haired cousin. He had humored her childish curiosity, told her stories, and laughed at her jokes while Sirius and her mum talked in the next room, secrets dancing behind his eyes.

She pictures the still kindly, but closed face of her present Remus, with eyes like iron gates that only open when Sirius catches his gaze over morning coffee.

"He'll be alright," Minerva assured her, rising from the chair and placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Remus is stronger than most of us. He will move on, in time."

As she watched McGonagall leave, she wondered if that were true, if Remus really would ever move on. Maybe he would eventually be alright, someday. Maybe he would be able to smile again without the sadness that tugged at the corners of his mouth. But she worried that those iron gates would remain forever barred.

Because it was only Sirius who had the ability open them with no more than a glance.

And the key had died with him.

A/N: I'm not too excited about this piece. It feels a bit generic to me. Oh well. It was mostly just to get me writing again. And I need to work on my spatial relations. Thoughts?