It happened again. The village that Remus was staying for the weekend had discovered his secret.
He looked through the curtains of his window from the all too familiar scene. It was angry villager-forming mobs, fire torches snaking its way to his house, angry faces complete with doomed background music (which was actually just a pair of old wands used as sticks whacking an old drum).
It was so cliché Remus would have laughed if he didn't just have the probability of dying. He was even a bit disappointed that he had no servant to shout at him, "Sire, they are outside the mansion," Spanish or otherwise. It was after all, not good to expect too much out of life... or death, strictly speaking.
Nevertheless, Remus went to meet them with his sad tired eyes to tell them that he is not running away.
But before he could draw breath to speak, someone grabbed his arm. No it wasn't just one. Two, three. And that would have been the end of Remus John Lupin as we know him if not for another someone who had yanked him to the other direction.
It was Auror Tonks.
"Tonks! What are you doing here? You should not be here!" said Remus, quite forgetting the townspeople dilemma in his anger.
"Ministry Auror here on patrol," said Tonks, not even glancing sideways on him and was instead stretching her hands flashing her shiny badge for the crowd to see, like it was some sort of magical item that held powers to defend them (It was, actually).
"Let go! This is our werewolf!" said the villagers.
"He's mine. I call dibs on him," said Tonks.
"That doesn't make sense! We got here first!"
"So? I'm an Auror and you're not making any sense either."
"Give him back!" said one bloodthirsty woman on the front.
"Look, once you've finished debating whether he's a saint, a monster or a coward, can't we just accept werewolves in our community, do some constitutional amendment to our current legislation, then fix everything with uhm... love?"
"No. We want kill. We want death. We kill monster!"
Tonks rolled her eyes. Sheep mentality, herd mentality, and bigotry. Or maybe just a shallow bloodlust of the plebeian proletariat class.
They shook the ground with their long spears and chanted for his death.
"Death! Death! Death!"
"Well, what are you just standing there?" she said to Remus.
Remus blinked twice.
"Run!"
And the next thing he knew, she took his hand and they swept to the back of the house, up the hillside, running and running until the thickets had covered them from the onslaught. Jets of light fell over their heads but they were already well away and covered by the clump of trees.
Lupin knew he should have felt fear, one spell at the back could have hit him clean dead. Even if it was a crime to be happy with death chasing behind them, he found himself smiling. He looked at Tonks, and she was doing the same.