Remus lifts his eyes from the open book in his lap.

"So," I say, "Just wanted to tell you, tonight's the night."

Remus shifts, leans back into the arm of his chair. He smiles.

I plant my hand on the wall and lean in. "That's right. Tonight she's mine, old man. So you just sit your arse in that chair and stay out of my head."

Remus' gaze drops back to his lap. He drags his fingertips over the page, smoothing it down, then raises his face again.

"Right. Glad we could have this little chat, then."

Remus shifts, leans back into the arm of his chair.

Footfalls clomp on the floor boards behind me. Remus smiles.

"Oh, gods, Weasley. Come away from the photo of little Dora in the mustard pantsuit." In the glass, Tonks' face is suddenly superimposed over Remus and his chair, a reflection of wide eyes, of paper white teeth flashing between the dark slashes of her lips. "It was a gift from Great Auntie Gemma, that. Just what I never wanted."

"Oh. No. No. I…uh…," The words catch, drowning swift deaths in the deluge of spit flooding my throat. She looks amazing, mouth-watering, apparently, with her tease of cleavage and her lipstick. I quickly scan the wall for some other photo, then clear my throat, beginning again one suave octave lower. "I was just… looking at this picture of Teddy. For such a tiny guy, he sits a broom like a natural."

Just as I realize what I've said, before I can look away, Tonks' smile splits wide. Her eyes go soft at the edges.

The proud mum, and her darling, little man.

My feet and hands pulse cold at the thought, and I force myself to focus on her mouth again. The deep bow of her top lip, her teeth, the shiny, slick underside of her tongue. That lipstick. The sort of lipstick that stains the skin of the neck and hangs about in your chest hair. The sort of lipstick you find smeared on the inside of your thigh the morning after.

Tonks says, "You alright?"

Oh, luv, I want to say, I'm so far from alright. Instead, I chuckle. "Yeah… just a bit dazzled. You look amazing."

"Thanks." She smiles, but it's different this time, smaller, her teeth catching at the plump part of her lower lip. Her knees creep together. A flush rushes up the pale skin of her chest.

For you, I remind myself. She's here, dressed up and blushing, for you. I offer her my arm. She wobbles forward and takes it.

"You think those are a good idea?" I say, steadying her as she kicks up one foot to pick at the ludicrously high heel.

"Well, you said Muggle, and it's all part of the 'look', you see? This dress, the stockings with the seams, the heels. It's sort of, I dunno, retro strumpet, I guess . It's supposed to be… "

"What? Dead sexy?" I lean back to take in her rear. "'Cause it definitely is. But…."

She shrugs. "I've got you to grab hold of," she says, digging her fingers into my jacket and pulling me forward. "Come on, then. The sooner we go out, the sooner we can come back." She turns round, shoots a wink my way, but her eye catches at the collection of pictures on the wall, and I take a step forward to remind her we're heading for the door.

o0o

It's rare, but there are times, like now, when I can almost forget Tonks is somebody's mum. Barefoot on the dance floor, sipping whiskey through a skinny, black straw, her free arm flung over her head as her hips swing a bit behind the beat, she's the exact same girl I knew at Hogwarts. She's my smoke buddy, my friend from Hufflepuff House, my mate with the nice legs. She's everything she ever was before that night in the stairwell eleven years ago when I went and mucked it all up.

Now she's caught my eye, holding up her glass. The ice glitters red then orange then green, the light filtering through, splashing the colours across her cheek. I nod, but she shakes her head, then outlines the silhouette of a bottle. I lift my brows and nod again. Got it. Switching to beer. She turns her attention back to the stage and goes back to swaying. Swaying, because Tonks doesn't dance. "Soon as I pick up my feet, people get hurt," she says, and it's true enough. Honestly, I'm just glad she hasn't dropped her glass already, and I'm double glad she took off those shoes. "Gods, you old woman," she'd said, because I'd kept on about them. Purple, dragon skin, stacked soles, heels like heart-spikes. "The better to kick a man in the groin with," she'd said, but all the time she's wobbling. Not that I minded, per se, because she had to lean into me to steady herself. Still, a ruined ankle and a trip to St. Mungo's ain't on my agenda. Not tonight.

I slide in next to her. She nods toward the stage and says, "See? They're good, yeah?," then nudges my arm with hers and takes the bottle from my hand. I smile. I've been trying to get Tonks to come with me to see this band for the last six months, at least. Ever since her hands came out from under the table at the pub. Ever since she began to gesture and laugh and hold her head up. Ever since the ghost of Remus Lupin un-draped himself from her shoulders and took up permanent residence on mine.

"Yeah, good, them," I play along. I take a sip of whatever swill they're trying to pass off as top shelf stuff and turn to the stage. Tonks bobs through one song, claps and whistles, then bobs through another. The next song the music changes, slows, and I glance over when she stills beside me. I catch her eye and she smiles that small smile again, then tips the mouth of her beer bottle in my direction.

She says, "Hey, Charles, it's pointin' atcha."

I say, "I don't know if I remember all the rules to that game."

And she says, "No rules. Or…none that I can recall."

She's a little bit drunk, but I am, too. I lean over, fighting the surge of baleful werewolves and blue-haired toddlers on broomsticks who've come to swoop through my thoughts. Widow… mother… not the girl she used to be…what the fuck are you doing here, Charlie? And then my lips brush hers, and I'm sixteen again, trying to find my footing on the uneven ground.

Even now, I can honestly say it is a rather impressive bit of magic. It took forever to perfect, but when I think of all the action it's afforded me through the years, it was damn well worth the effort. Still, when you're seeing it for the two hundredth time, you're bound to be less than impressed, and, that night, Tonks was in no mood to be impressed with me, anyway.

I wandlessly Conjured the cigarette in mid-air, then lit it with a spark from the tip of my thumb.

"I wish you'd tell me how you do that," she said. Same as always. And, same as always, I shook my head, taking a long, hot-box drag, exhaling as the chemicals dizzied up my brain and stomach simultaneously, wiping the crowd on the other side of the tapestry clean away. I held the other half out for her to take and she plucked it from my fingers. "'S not such a great trick, you know. Not when you can only ever Conjure one."

"Shame. Still haven't learned how to share, have we, Nymphadora?" I said, then held up my hands, pretending to quell under her nasty look before slouching against the stone wall of the stairwell.

"Gods, I'm sorry. It's just… he was sitting right next to you." She took another short drag, breathed the thin veil of smoke out her nose, then propped her foot against the wall and leaned back. "I mean six inches to the right. Bloody…"

One bottle, a tatty, old rug, and a circle of kids. The rules were simple: 1) You had to go into the stairwell with whoever, male or female, the bottle pointed to, and 2 )there was to be no magical "nudging" of the bottle. If I recall correctly, that night the chance was one in seventeen you'd spin right for the one person you wanted to snog, one in seventeen they'd spin right for you.

"Chance you take," I said, which, looking back, probably wasn't the most supportive thing to come out with. "Can't win 'em all."

"Nope," she said, then sighed. "Maybe next time, right?"

I looked at her across the width of the steps, so very Tonks in her T-shirt and boots, cigarette smoke swirling up the length of her arm. She shook the turquoise fringe from her eyes and looked back at me. And there we were, maybe two minutes through our seven, propping up the walls, shoulders slumped, both too cool in our assumed teen-aged detachment to stand up straight, both too stubborn to be the first to look away. But I was replaying her words in my head. Next time. The game would go on, there would be a 'next time' for her. A 'next time' when there would be a someone other than me.

And suddenly, I didn't care about playing it cool, anymore. I didn't want her to stand across from me thinking about 'next time' while 'this time' just ticked away.

"Fuck it," I muttered, and then I was against her, my fingers wrapped around her outstretched thigh, hitching it over my hip. I knew it was okay when she arched into me, when she dug her heel into my arse and grabbed a fistful of my shirt. My lips slid over hers as her head fell back, and then our tongues touched, and her hands were around my shoulders, then my neck, her fingers pushing into my hair, her nails digging into the crease where spine meets skull. And then I lost track of what was happening where. I just knew I was wrapped around Tonks, that we were two wet mouths, two throbbing bellies grinding away a ravenous hunger one filthy hip roll at a time.

I wasn't exactly keeping tabs on my feet, so I don't know when we began to slip, but I remember holding onto her, twisting as we fell.

And, for a second, I thought the fire was an illusion, a hallucination from my head smacking the stone floor. Flames, orange with blue tips, undulated up the tapestry. I could see all the details I'd always ignored before. Little stitched yeoman, their oxen and carts, their green and brown parcels of land, all illuminated in a glaze of fire and then singed away. I felt the heave of Tonks' chest, heard her breath catch as the smoke clogged my own throat. And then the cold hit, and then the wet.

She was off me before they could push back what was left of the tapestry, bent over, spluttering water and smoke. I lay on the floor, head spinning every time I coughed. The tapestry flapped back. Sixteen pairs of eyes stared as Tonks pushed her soaking, brown hair from her face with both hands, then grabbed the front hem of her shirt, twisting it, pulling it away from her body where it clung to every curve.

I didn't have to look at her. I could feel the heat of her mortification right where I lay. But I glanced up just as she glanced down, and that's when wanker Marcus MacGruder- Mr. Six-Inches-To-The-Right, himself—piped out, "What the hell were you two doing back there?"

I heard her take one deep, rattling breath, and then she was a blur, just a trail of drips leading to the portrait hole.

I rolled onto my stomach, squelching in my clothes, and picked the sodden, singed cotton filter out of the corner where it had lodged itself.

And no one so much as batted an eye when I said, "We were smoking."

o0o

After that, Tonks gave up the cigarettes. I soon followed suit. Turns out it wasn't the nicotine I was addicted to, anyway.

But bad habits are always easy enough to take up with, again, so I was hardly surprised to be back on twenty a day after one week with the Order in Grimmauld Place. She was there, of course. In and out. I liked to look at her in her Auror robes, authoritative until she moved, and then it was spilt tea and shattered Black family heirlooms all over the shop. She'd smile at me in the hallways, throw out a "Wotcher, Charlie," now and again, but, I could tell, really, she didn't give a shit that I was there. So, the night before I was to leave, after Mum had clucked and fussed and lamented my earring and the state of my fingernails at top volume, after a dinner spent watching all the things that happened when Tonks sat across from Lupin, I climbed the stairs till there were no more stairs to climb, opened what I thought would be an attic door, and stepped out onto a terrace where Sirius Black sat on a busted, iron lawn chair. He raised his glass and waved me over.

"You must have been well ready to be shot of the lot of them if you bothered to hoof it all the way up here," Sirius said. He lifted the bottle of Ogden's Old from the chair in front of him, then sat back, planted his boot on the seat and shoved it to the side. "Sit-Charlie, is it? Yes? Sit."

It was the man's house, and I was a guest, of sorts, so I sat.

"Drink?" He held up the bottle as I dug my cigarettes from my pocket.

I shook my head, "I'm good. Smoke?" I held out the pack.

"I'm good," Sirius said, then settled back, his chair groaning, reclining when it really shouldn't have.

I can only say one thing with certainty about Sirius Black: He was a man who understood silence- its value, and its oppressiveness. I smoked my way through two cigarettes and was lighting a third before he finally spoke.

"I imagine you'll be pleased to get back." There was no mistaking the wry tone of his voice. By 'pleased' he meant 'relieved'. I must have looked like I'd been caught with my hand in the biscuit tin, because he quickly added, "But then, I suppose that's none of my business."

I leaned forward, pressed the heels of my palms into the hollows of my eyes. "Gods, am I that obvious?"

"Not at all. Let's just say I have a nose for these things. Or, perhaps, I'm just naturally suspicious." He was quiet for a moment, and then he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, rattling the ice in his glass. He rubbed his thumb across his chin, looked out across the rooftops. "Strange days. Times like these… they make people—"

"Completely, bloody mental?" I finished.

Sirius laughed, a dry sound that wedged up from the depths of his throat. "That's it. On the nose." He sat back, again, holding up his glass, studying the level of the liquid in the half-moonlight. Backlit in white, I could see the checked pattern of his fingerprints, the impressions the ridges of his lips had made on the rim of the glass. "Seriously,though, Charlie, don't discount Remus as some tottering old man because of the grey hair and the books and the tea. He's done incredible things, deadly things, for our side. Still does, from time to time." He stopped, took a sip of his drink, then went on. "I know it's hard to see right off, but there are a lot of sound reasons a woman like Dora would want a man like Remus."

Sound reasons. Whatever it was that Tonks harboured for Lupin, it had less than nothing to do with reason. I'd watched her over dinner- watched her body, watched her lashes thicken as her eyes cycled brown-green-blue-violet, watched the shade of her lips darken when Lupin spoke to her, then pale when he turned away. Nearly imperceptible changes, easily missed by a casual glance. Nothing you would notice if you weren't staring, if you weren't trying to memorize every detail of a person's face.

And that was the crux of it: I wanted her, and, despite all the ways it could go horribly wrong, she wanted him. Good sense rarely ever trumps that sort of soul-deep desire.

Sirius' chair creaked as he threw his foot upon his knee. He reached over the rusted, broken arm, picked up the Ogden's, and sloshed a bit over his ice. "If I may offer a bit of advice…," he said, and I nodded for him to go on. "Go back to the reserve. Get roaring drunk. Take a night to wallow in your sorrow and the next day get up, have a shave, and get. On. With. Your. Life. You're a free man. You like your job." He stopped and took a drink. "And, if you're at liberty to look for them, there are willing women, everywhere."

Something told me that Sirius knew as well as I did that a willing woman is a far cry from The Woman, but I went ahead and took most of his advice, anyway. And then the days turned darker, and I didn't give a damn who Tonks was with, anymore, as long as she was alive to come home to them at night.

Tonk's door squeaks upon its hinges. I haul her over the threshold, drop her damn shoes in the floor by the fireplace and prop her on the sofa.

"It was just bad luck I tripped on the steps coming up." she says, poking the soft, purple flesh swelling around her ankle with her wand. "Apart from that, you have to admit I did well tonight."

"I'll admit no such thing," I say, heading for her kitchen. The thing is, she did do well. No broken glasses or stubbed toes or accidental elbows to the nose. Then we get to the steps of her building, and down she goes. "How are you with healing spells?" I ask over my shoulder "'Cause, unless you're covered in burns, I'm rubbish."

"I think I've got this." Her voice sounds far off, though she's only round the corner. I summon a tea towel, catch it out of the air then add a couple of fistfuls of ice to the centre. I flip the edges of the towel up to twist them together, and that's when I see the embroidery. Scripted, blue silk letters: R, L, N, the L giant in the middle.

It hits me in the gut. There is nowhere to hide from this man. He is forever. His son is forever. Tonks' son. Tonks birthed a baby. A baby, with its odd shape and its fingers and toes, its Spellotape thin nails and its open skull. It grew inside her and then tore its way out, and it wasn't like the Ladies on the reserve—one quick ripple, a little smoke from the nostrils, and there's this perfect, smooth thing. No. There was blood, and pain, and this tiny human….

"Charlie?"

I look up. Her uneven gait as she walks my way kills my freak-out dead in its tracks.

"Oh, gods. No. No. You stay right there." I bunch the tea towel around the ice and jog the few steps it takes to get to her. "I'm sorry. I…I got lost there for a minute." I wrap my arm around her waist to help her back to the sofa.

"It's alright," she says. "See? I'm quite good with minor sprains. Almost healed." She lifts her leg, showing me her ankle. Beneath her stockings, the skin is pale, no bruising in sight.

"Still, I'd feel better—" I move her toward the sofa, settle her on one side then move to the other end. I grab a pillow for my lap, then pull her feet onto it and lay the ice pack over her ankle. I sit back, take a second to look around. Tonks' place is messy in the best sort of way. In the overstuffed chair, a sky blue blanket is bunched around a velveteen dog. Tonks' Comet 260 and Teddy's training broom lean against a weathered, old trunk taking up the corner. There are too many toys, loads of knitted things, and the books are spilling off the shelves. Out of all this stuff, some of it has to have been her husband's, and a fair bit is certainly her son's. It all seems to fit together just right, and it sort of makes me sad that I can't seem to imagine it any other way, that there doesn't appear to be room here for anything else.

Tonks says, "It's a mess, I know, but it's home for now."

"For now? You going somewhere?" My voice is calm, cool, but the apprehension loops around my lungs, squeezing my breath away. I idly pick a lump of yellow fur from the end table, just to have something solid to hold in my hands.

In my lap, her toes curl, stretch, flutter. "We had talked about moving, Remus and I. It's always been a bit crowded, here." She looks around, her gaze flitting over this and that. Her lips press together and her eyes close. And I can feel it: something trying to settle upon her, but she suddenly shrugs, then rolls her head along the trough of her shoulders, and when she opens her eyes again, whatever it is has been chased away. "And Teddy's tired of bunking with his mum. The big boy wants his own room." She pauses, then she smiles that same, small smile, looks right at me, and says, "Mummy'd like to have her own room, again, as well."

Oh.

"So," I say, staring back at her. "A bigger place, then? With room for all the Quidditch gear, and books, and…this thing." I look down at the yellow wad, turn it over in my hand. "What the hell is this?"

The lump's black fringed eyes flip open. It parts it's plastic, orange beak.

"Oo-oooooooh," it says.

"Shit," Tonks sighs. "You woke her up."

"Her?"

"Yep. Mee La is a 'her', and, best I can tell, Meh No is a 'him'." She points to the puff of green peeking around the wireless.

Mee La bats her eyes and opens her beak. She says, "Aah-uh. Aah-uh."

Tonks laughs, "Uh-oh, she likes you." The mirth in her voice says this might not be a good thing.

"Of course she does," I say, "But what is she?"

Tonks pulls her feet from my lap and leans forward, shifting until she's on her knees beside me. "This, darling," she reaches out and touches the tuft of butter coloured fuzz topping the things head," is what the Muggles call a Furby. This one came from Harry at Christmas. And that one was a gift from Great Auntie Gemma last year. Mum's taught him to sing, so we really do try to let him sleep."

I don't understand the significance of anything she just said. All I know is this thing is both adorable and truly disturbing in equal parts. I set it upright in the palm of my hand, watching as Tonks pokes at its midsection. "Come on," she says. "Laugh, you."

"Let me," I say, pushing my finger into the matted yellow fur. Mee La laughs. She says, "You tick-le meeee," and then laughs, again. I stroke my finger down her middle, and Mee La purrs.

"Well, she's certainly responsive for you, the little tart" Tonks says. Her voice so close to my ear makes my arm raise up gooseflesh. I turn and look at her, meeting her gaze.

I say, "I only did as she asked. You know, I like it when a bird orders me about."

The smile flits around her eyes. She grins, then licks her lips. "Does that only apply to animatronics with a piercing blue gaze, or should I fetch the Auror robes?"

She's shifting closer all the time, smelling of jasmine and cigarettes. If she were any other woman, I'd have her staked out by now, stripped down to her garters and begging. I think of that tease of a kiss in the bar. She pressed into me, but I pulled back. It just felt too crowded with the four of us there; Tonks, Teddy, Remus, and myself.

The voice in my head hisses that I've never been first in her heart, that now she has Teddy, I never will be.

But the look in her eyes whispers that, maybe, if I can just let it go, I could run a close second.

In my hand, Mee La clacks and whirs. She lets off a string of nonsense sounds, kah mee-mee a-tay, then says in plain English, "Mee La hun-gry. Aah-uh, aah-uh."

Tonks grins, rolls her eyes, takes Mee La from me, then pokes her finger inside Mee La's beak. Mee La makes a smacking sound, says "You feed me," then laughs, burps, and says, "Scoose me."

"Better mannered than Ron," I say. Tonks laughs, setting Meh No off to clicking and whizzing by the wireless.

"Gods, they'll never shut up now," Tonks says, leaning across me to set Mee La on the end table. The two furballs volley gibberish across the room to each other, but it's just static noise drifting further and further at the feel of Tonks, warm and weighty, against my side. Before she can move back, before a stray ghost can loom up between her body and mine, I put my hands around her waist and tug her onto my lap. I touch her slowly, lightly, tracing the curve of her waist, up her ribs, then along the low scoop of her neckline. I put my palm over the place I feel her heart beat, slide my fingers between the fabric of her dress and her soft, bare skin.

Her breath is heavy and warm on my cheek. I look up into her face, at her lips, then her eyes. Tell me, I think. Tell me you want this.

Her eyes cycle brown-green-blue-violet. Against my lips, she breathes, "Yes."

The Woman, willing.

By the wireless, Meh No sings.