25 August 1996

I sit here writing from The Cheerful Chickadee, a hole in the wall pub in South London. Hiccup. It paints a fairly misleading portrait of what it's actually like here, because nothing, dear diary, is bloody cheerful in Brixton. Not the barman, not the fifteen other patrons, and certainly not me. Before we really get started... excuse me for another drink.

I was here last night as well. Blending in in the Muggle world is undoubtedly easier without hair the shade of bubblegum, but without even trying, it's gone back to my natural mousy brown. After what happened last night with R, I'm not sure I could change it back, even if I wanted to. If it sounds like I'm sulking, diary... I am. I decided to let myself really feel it tonight, because I'm 23, and drunk, and being without him is tearing my sense of self apart. Are we feminists not supposed to admit that anymore? That it hurts? While a big English breakfast used to lure me out of bed most mornings, I wake up now and can hardly muster the effort to move. How many times can you try to convince yourself that life goes on before the other (dependably mean) half of your brain chimes in with, "Sure, but you'll never look at another man the same." I see his strawberry-blond hair just by resting my eyes. A bad idea on a barstool, four (and a half) pints in.

I saw him last night, pacing in circles on the pavement in front of the Chickadee. I've never known Remus to smoke, but he was shakily pulling out Benson & Hedges from a crumpled pack in his hand. The last of the blue hour had turned to dark, but even in the dim lighting outside the pub, I could see the bags under his eyes and the beaten look of no sleep. The Chickadee wasn't a regular haunt of mine, and to my knowledge, it wasn't somewhere he came either. I was nervous to see him step through the heavy wooden door at the entrance, not spotting me at a table in the corner. He walked up to the barman and rooted around his trouser pocket for £1.80 in change (the going price for lager, Christ), counting it carefully before the familiar exchange for a pint. I'll pathetically reveal now that I'd hoped he would see me and light up, the smiling face I've so seldom seen after Sirius. After several minutes watching him nurse a drink and hunch over a table on the opposite side of the room, I'd hoped that he'd see me at all. We'd been working together in the Order for over a year, and in that time we'd gone back and forth between days we couldn't stop talking, and days he'd not acknowledged I was in the same room. The less he paid attention to me, the brighter my hair tended to be around him, changing from an alarming neon orange to purple dreadlocks one afternoon when he wouldn't make eye contact. I'm not proud of that fact.

I like that he's shy. Not really around me, but in general, how he's cautious, and clever, and very obviously thinks before he says something. The last few months he's turned inward and has been engaging less with the members of the Order, accepting his tasks without discussion and quietly leaving 12 Grimmauld Place. I want to tell him that he doesn't have to do it alone - completing dangerous Order tasks or mourning Sirius. I just want him to know he has a friend. Does he think no one else feels even a fraction of what he does? Does he think we don't care what he lost? Drunk and angry is my worst combination, so I'll skip over the curse words I'm itching to write, and delve into last night...

My hair had turned honey-hued and shiny, a trendy shoulder length cut with bright blonde highlights and va-va-voom body. I blinked, and my eyes went from blue to earthy green, changing the rest of my face along with it into something more conventionally attractive, more palatable to him. I looked nothing like myself. Even in my most insecure moments of being a teenager, I'd resisted the temptation to change things. While my hair has a mind of its own and I'd sometimes imitated professors to friends to brighten the mood during exam revision, I've never so much as tweaked an eyebrow before. I stared at the blonde girl in the mirror in the loo, so pretty and approachable, and wondered if I'd gone too far. (A kind phrase for it.)

I just wanted him to look at me, after weeks of brushing off all attempts to have him open up. He wouldn't confide in anyone, and it ate away at me why not. I won't pretend that it was a noble act or an honest way of doing things, but it's what was done. I wish I could write that I changed my mind and left the Ladies' with my own familiar face and hair, but I walked out as someone else and headed straight for Remus' table.

I sat down across from him, not a long distance apart at the small table. A new voice, a new accent.

"Hiya, can I sit here?" I asked. If it were me, I probably would have just plunked down without asking, the "a stranger is a friend you haven't met" Hufflepuff philosophy ingrained deep in who I am.

He looked up and nodded, locking eyes with me for a moment, and then returned his gaze to the table.

"You look like you really need that drink," I said.

"To be honest, I'm not supposed to be here," he said. "Everyone thinks I'm in Berlin."

The candidness of it had caught me off guard, having completely forgotten that, yes, he was supposed to be in Germany, sent there on an Order task. Why was he not?! Play it cool...

"What were you supposed to be doing in Berlin, then?" I said.

Remus' posture stiffened a little bit, and he studied my new face. I could tell he regretted what he'd revealed, and was thinking how to ask who I was - a witch or a Muggle? While the wizarding community is small, there are still plenty of strangers. The blonde girl could be anyone, and the Order operated under top secret instructions.

"Just travelling," he said casually, still staring.

I asked him about where he'd been, and to my surprise, he talked at length about the foods he loved best in every country and his favourite villages in the UK. Over the course of twenty minutes, he hadn't touched his pint for even a sip. He didn't mention magic or anything that might allude to his identity as a wizard, and I reached for my dad's stories of my Muggle grandparents to pad the blonde girl's cover story with a tiny bit of truth. I moved my chair near him, thrilled at being emotionally close to him again after months of almost nothing. I became invested in the lie of the blonde girl's life, feeling like I could be her, the girl he was flirting with, if I thought about it hard enough. He asked her questions about herself, the most mundane details of an (unsaid) Muggle life, begging me to tell him about the grind of a 9 to 5 career and going to concerts for fun on the weekends. It's only now, diary, that I realise how desperate he must have been in that conversation, needing to hear of a happier world without Death Eaters, corruption, and painful loss. Never mind that Muggles still have two of the three. He'd hung off of my every word (almost all of them lies), and I'd let him. It felt real... so I did the unthinkable and leaned over to kiss him.

Remus seemed to wake up from whatever fantasy life we'd been role-playing. He politely pulled his face away from mine (not kissing, but almost), and smiled apologetically for my benefit.

"I can't do that... with you. I'm sorry," he said.

I nodded while staring down, unable to hide my disappointment. He didn't want me, and he didn't want her.

"I'll leave you to your pint then. Sorry," I said, and walked out of the Cheerful Chickadee and into the night.

26 August 1996

I closed my diary for a moment last night, and he came through the door of the pub. He glanced around, probably scanning for blonde hair to avoid a run-in, and as he turned his head towards the side of the room, we made eye contact and he stopped, surprised.

Remus walked sheepishly to my table and pulled out the chair across from me.

"I left Berlin five days ago," he admitted in one breath. He waited for a reaction.

"Have you been back to Grimmauld Place to tell someone this?" I said.

He shook his head, embarrassed.

"Why did you come back and not say anything?" I said. "You know you can always come to me when you need help, right?"

He nodded a few times, then motioned to my hair.

"I've never seen it that colour before. You usually prefer it pink, don't you?" he said.

"Answer the question," I said.

He gave a long sigh.

"I saw someone there, a stranger, who I thought for a moment was... Sirius," he said, talking quicker. "He was in the Berlin underground, and everything about him from the black hair to the way he walked... it was him. I ran after the guy, and he was just some 20-year-old kid with dyed hair and a leather jacket. I felt mad. He's been gone for months, and I chased someone across a tube station, hoping it'd be him."

"Remus, I-" I started to say, before his chair legs squeaked out and he was walking towards the pub door.

I got up and ran after him, catching his arm on the pavement outside. The sky, even in darkness, was a stormy dark grey.

"I give a shit about you and I want to help!" I yelled. "I want to listen. Please?"

He cupped my face with one hand, but moved no closer.

"Sometimes I forget you're just 23. You have so much youth left, and so many great things ahead of you. Tonks, you don't need my problems," he said, and took a step back to disapparate in hurtful timing.

So that's where we are.