"Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes?" Moody sighed, clomping into the kitchen.
"Me or the bottle?" Sirius looked up, rolling his eyes.
"Not answering that one." Mad Eye dropped himself into a chair and reached for the firewhiskey sitting in front of Sirius. "Don't need to lose any more body parts."
Sirius chortled and summoned another glass from the cupboard.
"Are you sure you trust me not to poison you?" Sirius asked.
"I'll just watch and make sure you don't fall out before I drink." Moody nodded.
"I'll take a shot too, just so you can be certain." Tonks grinned, coming into the room.
Sirius choked and sucked firewhiskey through his sinuses. "Dora? Leather skirt?" He raised one eyebrow and made a show of looking down the length of her legs to her stiletto heels.
Right as she stumbled and nearly turned her ankle.
"Why in the name of Merlin's hairy balls are you dressed like ... that?" Moody pointed at her with his walking stick.
"Remus and I are going out after the meeting." she looked at the floor, slightly embarassed. "Do I look presentable for going on a date?"
Sirius rolled his eyes. "You're going out with a werewolf. Why don't you just fill your purse with raw steak?"
"You'd have him eating out of your hand. Literally." Moody chuckled at his own joke.
"You're both incorrigible." she shook her head, flung herself into a chair and poured herself a shot.
"Am not!" Sirius insisted, holding his hand to his heart as if wounded. "My parents were most certainly married. Incestous inbred racist fanatics, maybe, and they were cousins, but they were most definitely married."
She stuck her tongue out at him and downed her shot.
"Go on a date and sit like that, you'll have a lot of attention." Moody gestured vaguely at her lap. "Trying to show off your fancy new knickers?"
Tonks glared at him but closed her legs. "You should have raised me better." she teased.
"You can only work with the materials you have." Moody shrugged. "Can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, can you?"
Tonks retrieved a napkin left on the table, and transfigured it into a towel, which she spread across her lap before resting her ankle on Moody's shoulder.
"Give me your opinion as a man, Sirius. Do you like the shoes?" she asked, flexing her foot to poke the side of Moody's head with the heel.
"Yes, they're wonderful shoes, now take them off before you hurt yourself." Moody huffed.
"I didn't ask your opinion." she snorted. "You once tried to make a date with a corpse."
"She was only a little bit dead." Moody protested. "I mean, she was still warm and sitting upright."
"Sirius?" she turned back to the man across from her.
"I refuse to answer that." Sirius held up both hands in front of him. "I do not embrace the beliefs my parents held, which includes the fact I do not view family reunions as dating opportunities." He poured himself another drink. "And besides, I spent enough time with Lily Evans Potter to know there is no right way to answer a question like that."
"You should be more open-minded." Tonks joked. "Great Uncle Marius was a squib, but he married a lovely witch, and has some beautiful granddaughters. And then if you really wanted to stir things up in the family, there's always Aunt Narcissa's pretty boy son."
"Don't make me throw up perfectly good whiskey." Sirius groaned.
The threesome was joined by Arthur and Molly Weasley.
"Why is she dressed as a muggle streetwalker?" Arthur asked. "Are you going undercover, dear?"
"Arthur!" Molly smacked her husband's shoulder. "Even if she is, she can't tell you."
"Actually our lovely Nymphadora here has a date after the meeting." Moody informed the newcomers. "She and Lupin are going ... where are you going?" he started to turn toward her, stopping when he nearly got a stiletto heel in his good eye.
"No." Tonks shook her head. "I am not telling you. We don't need company."
Sirius rolled his eyes again. "Because we certainly have no idea what you'd be doing, with you dressed in a leather skirt and spike heels and demonstrating how flexible and limber you are."
Remus walked in on the last, his head whirling to take in the site of Tonks with her foot still next to Moody's head. He looked like he swallowed his tongue.
Tonks jumped, bringing herself up straight in her chair, and tucking both of her legs, crossed at the ankle, under the table.
"Oh, there you are." Molly clucked, taking Lupin by the elbow and guiding him to the chair on the other side of Tonks. "Here you go, let the two of you sit together. We'll just get this meeting done and over with so the two of you can go on."
"Please tell me that you won't be taking relationship advice from the matriarch of the most prolific family we know." a voice drawled from the doorway. "We should be finding you in a few years with a houseful of rainbow coloured puppies."
Sirius raised his glass in mock salute. "Always lovely to see you too, Sniv ... I mean, Severus."
"Good evening, everyone." Shacklebolt came up behind Snape. "Let's get started, shall we?"
"Sorry about all this." Tonks whispered to Remus.
He squeezed her hand under the table.
Remus slipped out of the bedroom, casting a weak lumos with his wand, stealing quietly down the stairs toward the kitchen fireplace, smaller and hopefully not as noisy as the main floo in the sitting room. He was so distracted by his thoughts that he didn't realize there was a faint glow coming from inside the kitchen until he reached the doorway.
Sirius sat facing door, a teacup on the table in front of him.
"Good morning, Moony." he smirked. "You're up rather early."
Lupin ran his hand down his face.
"This is what muggles call the Walk of Shame. Being seen on the morning after wearing the evening before's clothes. Dora didn't walk you down?" Sirius reveled in Remus' discomfort.
"Um, no." he shook his head. "I was trying to leave quietly and discreetly. She offered, but something about the idea of her tumbling down the stairs or tripping over that troll umbrella stand, again ... "
"Ah yes. Would have rather ruined the moment, I'd imagine." Sirius licked his lips and chuckled. "I would like to thank you for the excellent silencing charms last night. I didn't hear a thing and until now was wondering if I had imagined you coming home with her."
Remus flushed. "You knew?"
Sirius gave a one shouldered shrug. "I survived twelve years in Azkaban by knowing who was around me all the time." He gestured at his tea cup. "Could I offer you something for the road, so to speak? Cuppa tea, hangover potion?"
"No, I'd better be getting home." Remus shook his head.
Sirius took a sip of his tea and grinned. "You know, this is the part where I'm supposed to tell you not to hurt my little cousin and all that. But I feel in this situation more like I should protect you from her."
"It was ... " Remus flushed and went all flustered again. "A one-off thing. Just to get it out of both of our systems. It wont' happen again."
"Yeah." Sirius snorted. "Keep telling yourself that. You might be a wolf, but you're going to end up whipped like a dog when it comes to that girl."
"It's all perfectly logical." Remus insisted. "Sexual tension, the strain we've both been under, the ... "
"Yeah, whatever." Sirius held up a hand to cut the other man off. "You'll end up married to that girl."
"I am too old, too poor, too damaged ..."
"I want to be the best man." Sirius continued as if he hadn't spoken. "We'll dress Kreacher up to be the flower girl. I think James Sirius Lupin for your firstborn. Unless it's a girl of course."
Lupin turned and walked back upstairs to use the main floo, Sirius' voice still laughing behind him.