Disclaimer: Still haven't magically turned into JK Rowling. Still just me, messing around with her wonderful characters.

Author's Note: Set in May, 1996, during OotP, approximately one month before the Battle at the Ministry. I think I've been promising this story since about 1996 as well, but it is intended to be a multi-chaptered fic so I hope you enjoy this first one.

Chapter 1: Roses Are Pink.

After only a few days of her company, it was obvious that Melvyn the Miscellaneous Office Worker had totally succumbed to the charms of Carmen the Junior Potions Mixer. Tonks thought it was just as well that he was only required to be overcome in a talkative and indiscreet fashion, and not fulfil a more self-sacrificing role. Melvyn gave every indication of thinking that dying for the object of his desire would be the ultimate in romantic fantasies.

"Tea, Miss?" he asked hopefully, and tentatively placed the cup and his freckled hand in-between the various live and dead ingredients on her desk like a joint gift offering. It was only eleven o'clock and this was her fourth cup of the day. Yesterday she'd had at least ten, and spent most of it with her legs tightly crossed – rather wasting the incredibly sheer stockings - as this level of waiter service meant there was a permanent queue for the loo. The other staff had rarely had it so good, though if the looks they were currently shooting her from the opposite end of the long office were anything to go by, then they weren't exactly bursting with gratitude.

"Thank you, Melvyn." Tonks smiled at him, leaning forward slightly to give him the full benefit of three undone buttons and Carmen's chest. She watched the flush start in the cheeks of his acne-pitted skin, his eyes drawn immediately downwards, and told herself again that this was the best and quickest way of doing what had to be done.

The fact that it was less than admirable was irrelevant.

Melvyn wiped his hand on the seat of his trousers and began to rock back and forth on the soles of his shoes, momentarily worrying Tonks that the lungful of Fathomless Perfume he'd just inhaled was about to make him keel over. She was reassured somewhat when his eyes were able to roam freely over the contents of the desk – while always flickering back to her – in a clear attempt to find an excuse for some more lingering.

"Can I get you anything else, Miss?" His round face was alight with determination to be of assistance. "Pomegranates? Glumbumble parts? Wormwood, armadillo bile or leeches?"

Now that was an offer guaranteed to turn any girl's heart, but it was also the ideal opportunity to get a break from making anti-wrinkle face potions all day long, and accompany him downstairs to the store cupboard for some gossipy one-to-one time. Tonks forced her glossy, plum-coloured lips to part and smile sweetly, while thinking she should remember that line to tell Sirius over dinner this evening. Except that it was becoming increasingly hard to both amuse him and take the piss out of Melvyn with a clear conscience.

She stared at her long nails critically – the bits of dried Horned Slugs stuck in them rather added to Carmen's look – and told herself savagely to snap out of this. All right, she was missing Remus, but he'd be back in a day or so, they'd got a weekend off together for once to look forward to, and then this would all seem like nothing but a harsh necessity of the times.

She ran the tip of her tongue deliberately over her top lip and looked at Melvyn.

"Some Lovage would be ever so helpful," she said, in Carmen's annoyingly breathy voice, and flicked her hair back over her shoulder.

Melvyn's pale blue eyes opened very wide, as did his mouth, but before he could say anything Madam Primpernelle's ample figure and shrewd eyes were bearing down on them both.

"Stop loitering in the potion room, Melvyn," she snapped, her less than complimentary glance at Tonks making it quite clear who she blamed for any loitering, with or without intent. "You're supposed to be book-keeping, not gossiping, so I suggest you get back to it."

Melvyn, who'd wisely started backing away as soon as she appeared, disappeared through the nearest doorway. Tonks silently cursed another missed opportunity, and picked up more dried slugs to crush as she smiled artlessly at her employer.

Madame Primpernelle's critical eye was on the potion bubbling quietly away in the brass cauldron, but there was no fault to find with the mother-of-pearl sheen and the wispy puffs of smoke gently spiralling into the air. She was reduced to saying through tight lips: "There's an owl arrived with an urgent message for you."

Tonks didn't have to stimulate surprise. "Urgent?" she said, wiping a filthy hand quickly, and as she did so the door sprung open again and Melvyn's shiny face peered round it.

"The thing is, Miss," he grinned at her, proud of the line he'd obviously been working on, "looking the way you do, you'd always get plenty of Lovage!"

"Out!" The owner of Knockturn Alley's recently opened Heath and Beauty Salon spoke in a voice that left no room for argument, and swung round on Tonks the minute he disappeared again. "You shouldn't be encouraging him, not when you've got a boyfriend. It might be amusing for you, but he'll ge-" She broke off, abruptly. "What's the matter? Is there something wrong?"

"Yes. There is." Tonks passed the note to her, her hand shaking slightly. "It's my brother. He's been taken ill." She forced her anger into something more like understandable concern. "I'll have to go at once, I'm afraid."

"Yes, of course." Madame Primpernelle's tone changed completely, as her eyes scanned the words which said a fictional brother had caught vanishing sickness. Tonks could only think of the repeated code words, highly contagious, which told her the whole mission had been aborted in the blink of one of Carmen's heavily made-up eyes.

What the hell had gone wrong?

"I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do?" To give the woman her due, she did look genuinely concerned which, considering she must have wanted to strangle Tonks several times over in recent days, was greatly to her credit. "Is this your boyfriend who says he's coming to pick you up? You certainly don't want to be going to St Mungo's alone after a shock like this."

"No." Tonks reached for her bag and ran her hand distractedly through her blonde hair, remembering too late that her hand was still far from clean. "It's my Uncle Alastor. My boyfriend's away at present, he has to travel a lot for his firm. I'm sorry about the potion…"

"Don't worry about that, dear. I just hope your brother is all right."

Madame Primpernelle looked sympathetically at her in a way that made Tonks feel about an inch high, and manage only the weakest of smiles in response. She ran down the steps on her way out to Knockturn Alley, cursing as she went. Four sodding days of precious annual leave given up for nothing. Should she have pushed Melvyn sooner and harder? He was definitely a boy with secrets, though she doubted it was anything serious.

It probably hadn't helped her cause, telling him she had a boyfriend. But Madame Primpernelle, who was a clever woman and had met a Carmen or two in her time – indeed, she might even have been a Carmen herself once – had chosen her moment and her audience very carefully to ask her straight-out. Tonks was prepared to deny her appearance and her very nature for the sake of the Order, but she was never going to deny him to anyone.

Besides, she wanted to talk about him and there were so few times, and so few harmless listeners. And she wanted to grin like an idiot at the thought of him. And she wanted to tell him what she'd been putting off telling him for far too long now.

She shook her head, vaulted down the last five steps, and remembered her high heels in mid-air. She just grabbed the hand rail in time as she landed with a wince, and told herself she had more than enough things to think about till she saw Remus again. Mad-Eye's magical eye was likely to jam in its socket when he saw her in this get-up, but she'd have to stay in it in case anyone was watching her leave. A really perfect end to a crap morning.

At least it would be something else to recount later tonight to make Sirius laugh, because keeping him happy seemed to be very much the name of the game at the moment.

She saw the shadow waiting for her in the darkness of the alleyway and cursed again. This shouldn't have gone wrong, and she certainly should be able to pull this skirt down to somewhere near her knees. Or even her thighs. Oh, to be through the next five minutes of her making stupid jokes, and Mad-Eye gruffly talking about procedural changes to security regulations while carefully not looking at her.

"Walnut Whips," she whispered softly, pausing with her hand lightly on the wall, and watched with a suddenly thumping heart as a tall shadow detached itself from the gloom in response.

"And Jaffa Cakes to you, too," said an amused voice in return.

Tonks always wondered why time seemed to slow down in these instances, as though it had a perverse desire to relish truly horrifying moments. So it was in this case, as she fought the desire to close her eyes and disappear silently into the cobbles, while Remus stepped calmly into the light, the familiar smile curling his lips, only to pull up abruptly at the sight of her.

It was a toss-up, Tonks thought grimly afterwards, when back in her cold, silent flat, as to who'd been the more shocked. Whether it was her, whose mouth had gaped open immediately as every appalled thought was reflected on her face; or him, whose expression slowly hardened into a frozen and intimidating mask of politeness.

She did remember the pink rose bud in his hand. He'd still given it her, of course, but she'd left it too long before putting it in water and the petals had started to curl and brown at the edges.

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Dinner was always fun when the host alternated between laughing too loudly at everything, and then being positively morose with little or no warning. Meanwhile his friend, who could normally be relied upon to chivvy him out of both moods, seemed more occupied with fingering the stem of his goblet in a distracted and silent manner.

Of course, it didn't help when the topic of conversation centred on obtaining information from a rather pathetic adolescent boy, who was currently in one of the holding cells at the Ministry. With a staggering degree of sensitivity, they'd put him next to a notorious murderer who was awaiting transfer to Azkaban. Tonks thought Melvyn would probably be incapable of either speech or thought by morning.

"How you going to do it then?" asked Sirius, with both relish and envy, looking from her to Remus, who was still apparently transfixed by his goblet, and then back at her again.

"Veritaserum," Tonks said matter-of-factly. "We can't afford to mess around. If Kingsley hadn't got wind of what was happening and let Mad-Eye know, I'd have been sat there when they arrested him." She smiled, entirely without humour. "Poor Madame Primpernelle, she's lived down her own shady past to get this business going, and now her own staff are dragging her down again."

Sirius grinned. "Reminds me of that old joke - how can you tell a woman's history? By looking at her geography, of course." He laughed in a way that set Tonks' teeth on edge, looked across again at Remus, and shrugged. "So when are you going to see him?"

"Tonight. There's an interview scheduled for first thing in the morning. Kingsley managed to get hold of the guard rota and the first shift is going to be taken by Fitzgibbon, well known for his dedication to duty and his love of money. Can't wait to hear how much of an honest bribe he'll need to look the other way."

Sirius cocked a black eyebrow at her.

"Such disillusionment, young Tonks?" What looked like bitter lines of his own appeared on his face. "Surely you don't still imagine that the good guys are all pure of heart and soul, while the bad ones have 'villain' stamped on their forehead and you get to hiss at them in disgust as they walk by?"

"The guards told Kingsley that Melvyn's terrified. Scared out of his tiny little wits," said Tonks. She laid her knife and fork down on the plate of her half-eaten dinner. "They laughed about it, because it'll make him easy to break. And this is all because he happens to have once briefly made the tea and sorted post in a department at the Ministry where Simeon Darrowby once did."

"Yes, but that's what put us onto him, isn't it? He's the only one the Ministry never checked out, precisely because he isn't worth a second glance. The pity is they've suddenly caught onto him now." Sirius had switched to being reasonable and logical, which Tonks found equally disquieting because she knew it wouldn't last. "The trouble is there's no proof that Simeon was either a spy at the Ministry for Voldemort, or just a nasty piece of work. Your terrified lad is our last chance of finding out one way or another." He stopped and wrinkled his brow, looking at Remus. "And some of us are just on the edge of our seats with excitement at it all."

Remus, who for once had drunk more than Sirius at the table, had raised his head from his chest and was staring at her. "When we get in there, it would probably reassure him if you were disguised as …"

His voice trailed away.

"As Carmen?" Tonks met his eyes with an effort, her heart thumping painfully, and a solid lump of anger and fear lodged in her throat. "Is that really a good idea? She seems to give a few people around here the odd nightmare."

"Perhaps you should consider the possibility that it isn't me she gives nightmares to," he said, very quietly, a slight flush appearing on his cheeks.

Somehow his very quietness was the light to Tonks' tinder. She'd never quarrelled with Remus, never even imagined she would, but then nor had she ever imagined struggling through a dinner with both of them scratching around for something to say.

"You're a fine one to talk," she said, acidly, "when you won't look me in the eye for at least the first hour on the morning after a transformation."

The tiny flinch he gave was only discernable because she knew him, and she instantly wanted to take her words back unspoken, and yet say something even worse at the same time.

Anything to make him feel the same muddle of emotion that she did.

"I'm sor-" she began, at the same time as he said: "Tonks, plea-" but a louder voice overrode them both.

"Right." Sirius had his hand held up, and was looking at them with an amused but irritated air. "Much as I loved it when you two were carrying on those exhausting courtship rituals that drove everyone nuts, and caused the most complicated sweepstake ever known to man or woman, I did think I'd seen the end of all this. But no! It's welcome back to those frigging fraught looks at each other, and those excruciating meaningful silences full of sexual tension that make me want to smack the pair of you round the head. For the love of Merlin, just sort it out!"

There was a fairly fraught, meaningful silence. Tonks, risking a quick, sideways glance at Remus and seeing the slight curl of his lips, thought the excruciating sexual tension was definitely still there. In spades.

"Courtship rituals?" Remus said it calmly. Dryly. In typical Remus-like fashion.

"Like a pair of bleeding Nifflers." Sirius nodded. "Very shy and timid, but absolutely fixated on something shiny and irresistible. It was quite pathetic to watch."

"Thank you." Remus looked across at Tonks. Your turn, the look said.

She cleared her throat. "Who did win the sweepstake in the end? You never said."

"Mad-Eye. Of course, he could see through walls so I wanted the bastard disqualified for an unfair advantage. Though I nearly caught Molly using the Extendable Ears once; she swore she was putting them in a drawer, but it seemed to be one mighty close to the door you two were behind. Anyway you don't need to fret; I saved her from hearing stuff that would have made her pass out with boredom."

"Thank you." Tonks allowed herself the smallest of grins.

"Okay." Sirius scraped his chair back noisily and stood up. "I suppose this is where I make myself scarce in my own home and leave you to it. But you," he pointed at Remus, "should know that she's been about as much fun as a flobberworm waiting for you to come back, and you," he pointed at Tonks, "should know that he raced back here, and barely managed to speak two words to either me or Mad-Eye before rushing off to meet you."

He broke off and looked at her, surprised as she was standing up as well.

"No, I'm going first." She felt Remus' eyes on her, and said, hurriedly, "We've got to get to the Ministry soon, and I need the loo! Don't worry, I'll be back to do my best flobberworm impression."

"Well that's every male's ultimate fantasy so we'll definitely hang around and wait for you." Siruis slapped Remus on the shoulder, murmured something in the general direction of his ear which sounded suspiciously like "You should have pulled Trelawney, mate," and went over to the drinks cupboard. "No doing a Molly on us, though. Eavesdroppers never hear what they want to."

"Who'd want to listen to you two?" Tonks paused with her hand on the door, trying to indignantly look as if she hadn't already thought about it, although the initial impulse had just been to get her thoughts and head together. "And I will only be a minute."

Indeed, she was only a minute or so in the loo, and then another one inching her way slowly and carefully back down the staircase, managing, with the aid of a couple of spells, to negotiate the creaky floorboards and dodge underneath the stuffed elf heads in what seemed like complete silence.

I shouldn't do this, she thought, briefly hesitating outside the door, and then did it anyway.

"As I keep repeating, you're out of your mind if you think I'm going to discuss this," Remus was saying, in calm but patient tones, which must have irritated Sirius as much as it did eavesdroppers desperate for information.

"All right, be a tight-mouthed git, as usual." There was a clink as presumably bottles or goblets were put on the table. "I'll discuss it and you can give me death stares, and I'll correctly interpret the pained silence and your body language. And that's not a nice gesture for a start."

"Well at least you've correctly interpreted it." Remus gave what sounded like a humourless chuckle, and then sighed audibly. "Do you remember that night I planned to take Tonks out to dinner at that Italian restaurant she'd been going on about?"

"Wasn't that the night-"

"Yes, that was the night she got called out to that murdered Muggle family. Some nutcase had decided to do a sacrifice to Voldemort to express his devotion." Remus suddenly sounded very tired. "Two parents, one child and the family cat. It rather took the edge off the idea of tiramisu."

"I don't get-"

"This damn war gets in the way all the time. Every time. If I had a job and some money I could take her away somewhere, but thanks to Umbridge there's no chance of that. She deserves so much better than this. I've just spent a fruitless week trying to get support for the Order from people who have been threatened with all sorts and are frightened to even open their doors now. I've only got this weekend here, and then Dumbledore wants me somewhere else, trying again."

"That still doesn't explain why you're not spending your nights with her. Merlin, you've been going out what – three, four months? What the hell are you messing about at?"

Tonks felt her cheeks burn as she craned to hear. But Remus said nothing and it was Sirius who spoke again.

"All right, I'm out of bounds with that one, and I've got an overwhelming need to go and get pissed anyway. But I'll give you something to chew over. I never got why James married so young, never understood why he'd want to saddle himself with a wife and then a kid. I never said anything, but one day he told me he did it because he'd discovered what the most important thing was to him, and then nothing else mattered. Now I still think he was an idiot," Sirius' voice was suddenly a lot nearer and Tonks hastily put her hand on the handle to turn it, "but when I see Harry, I realise I'm a bigger one. And you're well on the way to being the biggest of us all because you haven't discovered anything yet. Shall I let Tonks in? Poor girl must be getting cold out there."

"Leave her alone. She's probably gone to sleep listening to you lecturing me."

Tonks came in swiftly at that, with as much dignity as she could muster, and gave Sirius a pointed look. "Leaving so soon?"

"Yeah, must fly. I can't bear to watch two Nifflers fumbling around again." Sirius ruffled her hair, before she could stop him, and roared with laughter as she smacked his hand away.

The door closed behind him and she turned to face Remus, who was watching her with a small smile on his face.

"Wotcher," she said, after a pause, trying to suppress a grin as she realised that, yet again, they were in danger of having a meaningful silence.

"Hello." He got up and walked towards her. She felt her heart start to thump. "How much did you hear?"

"Probably not enough. And we haven't solved anything," she added, watching as he took his wand out and Imperturbed the door. "Not what happened today," she paused again as he added a Muffliato in case Kreacher was lurking, "or what's going to happen in the future."

"I know." He was stood in front of her now, very close, and it was so hard to meet his grey eyes, but even harder to look away.

"And we've got to go out in about twenty minutes and do something I'm dreading."

"I know." He reached out and the backs of his long fingers touched her cheek in a gesture so soft, so comforting, and she leant into his warm hand as he stroked her skin down to her jawbone.

"None of this is about your face, Tonks, or the body you have to wear for a job," he said, very quietly, but very clearly. "It's a lovely face, but there's a lot more to you than that. And mine changes too, so I do understand. It was you I saw today, not Carmen. It's always you I see."

She laid her head against his hard collarbone, feeling the same sense of haven that had been there the first time he'd held her. "It's just that, this morning-"

"Yes?"

She groped for honesty, wrapping her arms around him, breathing in his reassuring warmth and smell. "It's just that … you wouldn't want your other half to ever see you in curlers, or with a fake chest shoved up under your chin. Not for at least the first six months, anyway."

She felt him shake with suppressed laughter, his arms tightening around her.

"I want us to be perfect because everything else isn't," she said finally, raising her head and marvelling, as she always did, at how he could look at her like that.

"So do I," he whispered, and bent his head and kissed her.

It was gentle, as it always was when they'd been apart; as though he was asking her if she still felt the same. And she always thought that here was her opportunity to tell him how she felt, so he wouldn't have to do this. But while she was hesitating, he was deepening the kiss, and her arms were winding round his neck and her fingers were twisting through his hair.

"You fool," he said, against her mouth.

"Yes." She bit his lower lip gently. "And you, too."

"And me, too." He grinned at her and touched her face again. "Nymphadora, you're not really going to answer the door to me in curlers after six m-"

She kissed him, forcing back the words; half laughing, half furious and wholly conscious, as she held him fiercely, of time running away from them again as it always did. His hands slid down her back to her hips, and then he picked her up and took her over to the sofa, and they collapsed on it in a wild heap.

She was dimly aware of a faint rapping noise and then a familiar voice saying: "Don't mind me!" As Remus lifted his head, she glimpsed Sirius over his shoulder, peering round the door, and aiming his wand at the bottle in the middle of table.

He pretended to shield his eyes and then peeped through his fingers at them, with the widest of grins on his face. "Really impressed by the way, Moony. In the kitchen! Thought you'd still be at the hand holding and wistful glances stage."

"Out!" Remus sounded distinctly like Madame Primpernelle, and Tonks was laughing as she pulled him down again, and the door was shut with a resounding bang that cut the final chuckle short.

"Yes," said Tonks, as he kissed her again. "In the kitchen!" She laughed and felt a surge of over-whelming love for this man go right through her. She opened her mouth to tell him as his lips found her neck, and she turned her head towards his ear, only to have her eye caught by the large patch of green mould on the ceiling.

She'd seen it before, of course, but now it seemed like some strange, malevolent creature, staring down at them.

Idiot, she told herself furiously. Now you don't want to tell him you love him because there's a patch of damp above your head. This is real life, not some soppy romance novel. You don't have to pick a perfect moment; they don't exist in these times.

His mouth was on hers again, and the opportunity had gone like so many others before. She kissed his hair, his eyes, his nose and his mouth, and felt his heart beating against hers.

Just give us that moment, she thought. Just one …

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As chapter two is already done, it will be posted next Friday. Honest. In the meantime, I'd love to know what you think, and reviewers get to discuss how handy Remus is to have around the kitchen or when you've got your hair in curlers. ;)