A/N: My first attempt at fanfiction! Well, actually, I wrote this really quickly and I have another fanfic which I intended to publish first, but it needs a thorough spelling check and I need to make some little changes to it, so this ended up being my first fanfic. It's actually inspired by a picture I saw on DeviantArt of Tonks and Charlie, so I won't take full credit for it. Since seeing the picture, Tonks and Charlie has been one of my favourite ships and I just had to write something on it. R&Rs would be much appreciated!

Old Flame

Despite the overall joyful mood tonight, that so rarely happened these days; despite the laughter and chatting and congratulating that fell upon The Burrow and is still lingering on now, so that the voices carry to the large oak tree under which I'm sat, I can't deny that I feel disappointed, frustrated, and even a little alone.

Don't get me wrong, I was happy, immensely happy, when I married Remus. I even turned my hair his favourite colour for the wedding; a sort of chocolate brown, and I wore the sapphire hairpin that his mother had given me, too, for the whole 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue' thing, though I'm not big on traditions like that. Molly leant me a tarnished silver necklace with a tiny silver phoenix pendant, I bought my shoes but not my dress - well, it wasn't really a wedding dress, to tell you the truth, but it was old, so that's something - I just wore the most casual, yet still smart-looking, thing I could find, which was a long silver-grey dress with a black collar. I'd never really liked it much but the wedding was so last-minute and I didn't want a fancy ceremony anyway. I wasn't too bothered about what I would be getting married in; for me it was more about who I was getting married to.

Afterwards we went back to The Burrow where Molly and Arthur had gathered some Order members to congratulate us, bless them. I told them time and time again not to hassle themselves, and Remus did too, but all the same, it was lovely to see everyone. Kingsley, Mad-Eye, Hestia, and Deladus were all there, as well as Mum and Dad, Fred and George, Bill and Fleur, and Ron and Ginny. Harry wasn't there, though, and Remus and I both agreed that it would have been nice to see him, but we understood that it was impossible to arrange for him to be there. Merlin only knows how we're going to get all fourteen of us back safely when we go to pick him up.

Molly treated us to a lovely dinner and we all ate outside in the yard, and Fred and George pinned a banner up reading 'REMUS & TONKS - JUST MARRIED' which everyone appreciated, me especially, because they hadn't put my first name up there. Fleur said that the banner was incorrect because my last name wasn't Tonks any more, but I just found it funny rather than insulting.

They must all be wondering where I am. I didn't even tell Remus that I was going on a walk; he was too busy humbly accepting the well-wishers surrounding him. He didn't seem to look too happy, though, towards the evening. And that was the problem. I felt that, though we had just gotten married, he was constantly placing himself further and further away, and he wasn't proud, or happy - unhappy, as a matter of fact, seemed to be the only expression registering on his face. I felt like shouting at him for his misery at the fact he'd married me; why do it if he was just going to regret it later? I'd told him countless times from the moment we got engaged. I didn't care that he was a werewolf, for Merlin's sake! Did it make him a bad person? Was he angry that he had allowed himself to be normal, and get married to someone he loved? Was he ashamed?

It was that, I think, that sent me wandering off into the unruly orchard swathed in dim light from The Burrow's lanterns and fluttering with moths. I took a seat down beside an oak tree with gnarled, spidery roots, and tried very hard for a while to control my anger and hurt. I'm still clutching the empty champagne goblet that I had a while ago. I don't refill it, but let it drop out of my hand into the grass.

That's when he arrives.

I hear the faint pop which means he's Apparated beyond the boundaries of The Burrow's protective enchantments, and I don't see him yet as it's dark and misty, but I hear him picking his way across the dry grass. I know that eventually he'll see me feeling sorry for myself, but I don't pick myself up and hurry over to chat with the rest of the party like I should be doing. Instead I sit there, waiting, watching, and make no attempt to hide.

His broad, stocky frame looms into view, shadowy and then suddenly thrown into relief by The Burrow's light so that I can see all of his features. He doesn't notice me at first, but then he spots that there are not just moths flitting beyond the oak tree, and he walks over, and still I don't go back.

Charlie Weasley looks even more battered than when I saw him last; deep scratches embellish his muscly forearms and there's a small gash across his cheek. The light doesn't show it too well, but he's tanned and very freckly, and I can just about make out dark black lines peeking at his chest, above the neckline of his Weird Sisters tour T-shirt. At first I think it's a bruise, but the shape of it looks suspiciously like a dragon tattoo. He isn't smiling.

'Nice hair,' he says without showing any expression, pointing to my chocolate-coloured waves, tousled and limp - they had been curls mere hours ago.

'I don't like it much,' I reply instantly and defiantly, and though we both know I can change it at a moment's notice, I don't.

'Yet you got married with it like that?' Charlie asks sceptically.

I don't reply to that. I don't want to say that Remus likes it.

Charlie is staring at the huddle of people at The Burrow, conversing at my little after-wedding party.

'Congratulations,' he says flatly.

'Thanks,' I reply with a hint of sarcasm. Then, with a brave stab at making polite conversation, 'So, how long are you back for?'

'Not long,' Charlie says, still not looking at me. 'Just to arrange stuff with Bill for his wedding. Then I'm off. I didn't realise I'd walked right in to your little gathering. I didn't even know it would be today that you and Lupin got married, until Bill told me...'

'How's things in Romania? Busy at the office, is it?' I joke, although I can't keep a little sarcasm at bay, and I think he notices it.

'Fine,' he says coldly. 'A Romanian Longhorn's eggs are actually hatching right now, as we speak, so - '

'Is that why you're not staying long, then?'

Charlie nods. Then he finally looks at me. 'You don't look too happy, to say it's your wedding.'

I want to hit him and shout at him for being the only person that has realised the truth.

'I am happy,' I lie.

Charlie gives me a look. 'Sat here under a tree on your own, on the night of your own wedding? Yeah. Happy. Right.'

'What fascinates me is that you seem to know everything about me when you've spent God knows how long in Romania the whole time Remus and I were together - '

'I know enough about you to know you've changed since I saw you last!' Charlie says hotly.

'Yes, well, I'm a Metamorphagus, I do that,' I reply sarcastically.

'That's not what I meant,' Charlie snaps.

There's a short, angry silence in which I look at the ground and Charlie resumses staring at the yard of The Burrow again.

'It wouldn't have worked anyway, and you know it,' I say quietly.

'What?'

'You expected me to wait for you while you were off with dragons in Romania? I didn't know when you were going to be back, I didn't know what you'd be like when you did come back, I - '

'So, what, you thought you'd get back at me by forgetting about me altogether and getting married?'

'No!' I reply truthfully. 'No! I love Remus, and that's why I married him, alright? No other reason besides that - '

'Really?' says Charlie with awful sarcasm. 'Really. Right.'

'Two years, Charlie!' I say, exasperated. 'You left me, without even trying to get back in contact, without even giving me a sign that you still cared, for two years. And you expect to come back and find that nothing's changed?'

'I'd have thought,' Charlie says forcefully, 'that if you cared about me as much as you made out that you did, you wouldn't have fallen in love with someone else and gotten married to them - '

'Don't be so selfish!' I say angrily. 'Was it easy for you, in Romania, spending time with your beloved dragons, not a care in the world while things got all the more worse over here and people getting killed and attacked - did you think I was going to be fine waiting for two bloody years for you and being utterly miserable - '

'Of course it wasn't easy for me!' Charlie retorts. 'You thought it was just here? It wasn't, it's happening everywhere, no-one can pretend otherwise! I wanted to come home and see all my family, of course I did! But do you think I could just pack and leave at a moment's notice?'

'You've managed it tonight.'

'With permission. And you know, you make out that I've been gone for two years straight - I came back! Not for very long, but I came back!'

'You didn't bother telling me, though, did you?'

'You were busy at the Ministry, you were doing things of your own, you had enough to deal with - plus you'd just gotten together with Lupin and I didn't want to - '

'Didn't want to complicate things?' I guess. 'Charlie, you've made things all the more worse for yourself, coming back like this - acting all surprised when you found out I was with someone else...you can't pretend that you didn't think it would happen.'

'I thought it would,' says Charlie slowly, 'but I didn't want to believe it.'

'Sometimes you've got to believe it,' I tell him firmly. 'I loved you, Charlie, but you went away and left me, and I'm not saying you should have stayed with me, but - I stopped wanting you to come back. I accepted it. And now - now you have to accept it. Accept this.'

Charlie just looks at me, sadly, wistfully, desperately. He looks like he wants to argue, but after a few long moments, he blinks rather rapidly and takes a deep breath.

'You should go and see your family,' I say quietly. 'They'll be wanting to see you again after all the time you've had apart.'

Charlie nods. 'You look beautiful, by the way,' he adds a little resentfully. 'Lupin's a lucky man.'

I just stare at my knees, blushing. I hate getting compliments like that - all too often my hair turns red without me knowing it. I glance at my hair falling from my shoulders, but thankfully, it's still brown.

Charlie's already made his way across the grass to the yard by the time I look up. He'd gone while I looked away - I hadn't even heard the grass rustling. I watch him being hugged by his mother and father, being greeted with cries of delight from his brothers and sister and clapped on the back by the other guests. But though my husband stands over there, smiling and chatting to the person whom he has no idea I once loved, there is still a tiny, tiny part of me that wishes I was married to the freckled red-headed Weasley now being ushered to a seat and served champmagne as though that love between us had never even existed.