Author's Notes: I feel like this is getting redundant. And I'm sorry. This has undertones of everything I've written and I hope that someday I'll be able to write something else. But I'm back in a rut and feeling insecure and when I feel like that--I automatically go back to my comfort zone. Which is writing about Charlie and Tonks cheating on Remus.

So forgive me. Please. I love you all. :)

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

"Once upon a time" is how the story starts but Tonks doesn't like that beginning so she writes her own, crafts it out of a werewolf and an empty promise and a shotgun wedding where she says "I do" and doesn't look into the crowd because his eyes are fixed on her and if she looks, she'll hike her lying white dress up to her knees and run run run away from all of this and into the arms of another man and Tonks is nothing if not loyal.

So she watches Remus—only Remus—and pretends that her guilty tears are tears of joy, even as she burns alive on the inside.

This is not the happily ever after she wanted.

Tonks is sad and broken and sits on the floor of the flat that she and Remus live in, waiting for him to return from wherever it is he goes to do whatever he does on "Order Business." When she said "forever and always" she thought she knew what she was getting into. She thought she was prepared for everything, thoughts she knew what "forever and always" really meant, but now she's just a silly little girl who's torn in two pieces. Because as soon as she promised herself to a man—gives her heart to a werewolf in shining armor—he shows up, the boy who broke her heart when he said "not now" and Tonks would have said "yes, anything" in a heartbeat, if only he'd asked.

He shows up at the Ministry (of all places) while Tonks is looking at the promise on her finger and thinking about something else entirely.

And it—everything—it's all back in a heartbeat—the adrenaline, the butterflies, the smiles that make her cheeks ache, the way her heart feels full enough to burst and is beating so fast it feels like it's going to beat clean out of her chest, everything that he made her feel comes flooding back and—

Does she love him? Perhaps. In a first-love kind of way. He's her Hogwarts sweetheart, after all, and you never forget your first love. And he was her first… everything. First crush, first love, first kiss, first… other, less than innocent things. He's the boy she'd do anything and everything for if only he'd asked then, but he's asking now, here, when Tonks is wearing another man's promise and here in her little cubicle where anyone could walk in at any moment and see—but Tonks has never been strong. Her loyalty binds her legally to Remus, but Charlie's slow, sweet smile and rough hands and kisses that taste like sunshine and color and freedom crumble her walls to dust.

And she loves Remus. She does. He is her once in a lifetime and the deep, all-consuming love she feels for him overshadows almost everything else. But Charlie…

Charlie is memories and golden years and remember whens and daring, dashing freedom decked out in leather and sparkling blue eyes. Charlie loved her when she was awkward and gangly—he knows what she looked like when she was eleven and wore nothing but innocence. He knew her before she wore makeup and bubble-gum pink hair, knew her when she was still Dora Tonks, before she was Tonks and before she grew up and grew older and grew out of innocence. Charlie knows her in a personal way. Remus knows her, too, but it's different, because Charlie grew up with her and you can't learn that kind of thing just by falling in love with a person when you're all grown up and out of innocence.

They both love her—Tonks knows this with all the certainty of her being—and Tonks loves them, loves Charlie and Remus both, just in different ways.

She's twisted, she knows, and headed straight for hell as she gives in and says yes to freedom and tried to ignore the way Remus's promise burns on her finger.

Surrender has never tasted this bittersweet.

She does it again. It's like tasting the forbidden fruit—once is never, ever enough and Charlie… Charlie is here and he has no commitments, no girlfriend or wife or crazy best friend and nothing holding him back.

So Tonks gives herself back to him, back to the boy who loved her and left her, lets him take back little pieces of her and lets him say "I love you" and dream about forever. She lets him dream, even knowing as she does that his dreams will never come to fruition.

She burns with guilt, too, hates how she's torn and hates how she has to pretend. She hates that she's not brave enough to tell Charlie "no" or at the very least walk away before this blows up in their faces.

It's almost a relief when Bellatrix gets that glint in her eye and as she spins to bring her wand down—

Tonks is strangely grateful—she can't help but be a little bit relieved because this is a clear solution. It's a clean break. She's not suicidal, but she's thankful, in a twisted way, to Bellatrix for letting her be free.

This is the happily ever after she's been looking for. Tonks will go quietly into the warm white light of her happily ever after, will let it soothe her and tell her that everything is fixed now, everything is better. She is free now and surrender has never tasted this bittersweet.