Hello, fellow mortals! I'm here with a one-shot that just so happens to be for halffictionalprincess' The Card Will Tell Your Fate Challenge. I was tasked with writing an angsty story featuring our dear Tonks and having to use the quote that will appear later on in this little story.

Disclaimers: I don't own Harry Potter or Dragon Scale! (Dragon Scale is a beer found in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter).

What else should I say? Obviously, constructive criticism (and whatever else) is welcome! I appreciate any reviews and favorites I get. :)

Hope you enjoy!

XXX

The mission had gone through without a hitch. None of the people at the tavern had ever walked away suspecting that she wasn't really Mrs. Crawfield, cashier at a small-town bookshop in the outskirts of London. There were only two times when she had been forced to use the Confundus Charm (once on a wizened old wizard who looked like he had a small pumpkin at the end of his nose, and another on an unremarkable Muggle lady), and both times the charm had been executed so perfectly that Tonks was sure she had never done them so well in her entire life. To top it all off, she had only stumbled five times all together, and she actually caught herself thrice. All in all, it was an extremely successful mission, and one that, under normal circumstances, she would be proud of.

But she wasn't under normal circumstances.

"He's still handsome, isn't he, even after Azkaban?" Tonks asked.

She and Remus were hiding outside an enemy's home, waiting for the man to come out. They were far enough away that they were safe with talking, and they had been exchanging stories about their time spent at Hogwarts. Remus had just wrapped up a story about a "duo quest" that he and Sirius had done in their third year to Professor Slughorn's office when Tonks made that remark.

Of course, she hadn't meant to hurt Remus' feelings. Tonks had no feelings at all for Sirius, and she had instead only been giving a compliment about a mutual friend of theirs. That was not how Remus took it. With only a sliver of the Moon being in the sky it was far too dark for her to make out his expression, but she could well imagine. His entire body tensed and the bitterness that emitted from him was so thick that she could taste it.

"Oh? I suppose you've fallen for my old friend, then. He always did get the women."

Her anger, as always, was immediate. How dare he? Tonks didn't give a damn about Sirius - at least not in a way that wasn't platonic. She spent hours and hours of her life daydreaming about spending time with him, Remus, daydreaming about what it would be like to hug him as his girlfriend, to kiss him. He always did things like that: assuming stupid things because he never bothered to see more than two feet in front of him.

"You'd know perfectly well who I've fallen for, if you weren't too busy feeling sorry for yourself to notice!" she snapped.

The effect her words had were quick, because the negative feelings that Remus felt switched to such jubilation that she was unsure if he had ever been so happy.

Then, as soon as the joy had appeared, it was gone, only to be replaced with more sadness (though this wasn't as angry of a sadness as the previous had been).

"What do you mean?"

His voice was level, and calm, but it was also very careful. That, coupled with Tonks' assurance that Remus was no idiot (at least, not always), led her to only one conclusion: he knew damn well what she meant and simply didn't want to face what would happen if they were a couple.

That had happened four months ago. As she sipped at her Dragon Scale at the Leaky Cauldron she reflected sadly that their friendship was simply not the same as it had been before that night. She missed him. Every little thing, from the little round tables that decorated the pub's floor to the birds that sang every morning somehow reminded her of him. In her waking hours she could not help but see everything being better if she was enjoying it with Remus, and when she slept the best dreams she ever had (all of which were of the two of them being together) turned into horrendous nightmares when she awoke and realized that the lovely images she had been experiencing were merely silly illusions. . . .

It hurt so much. The emotional agony Tonks felt was far from being bone-deep and was instead soul-crushing. Even when they were friends she felt as though he completed her in a way that no one else in the world ever had: not her parents, not her best friends, not her first love (or the other one that had come after him) . . . she could not imagine spending her entire life without him.

And, although he did his best to give off the impression that he was perfectly fine, Tonks could tell that Remus was anything but fine. He was tired and hurting in ways that she knew from her year of companionship with him that was different from the pull of the Moon, and she knew exactly where the pain originated: from him trying to force himself to "fall out of love" with Tonks.

The Dragon Scale must have been getting to her, because she realized that her mind was going far, far back into her past. She recalled that her grandfather had always been a lover of books, and she remembered that his favorite author had been a man by the name of . . . something Maugham. Maugham wasn't very popular in the Wizarding world (of course, being as he was a Muggle). It suddenly struck her that of all the quotes he had said that she loved, there had always been one that she never truly understood: "The love that lasts longest is the kind that is never returned."

What an epiphany to have at a pub.

A fear suddenly slammed into her with an amount of fierceness she would expect only from a Bludger: could it be that she was fighting a losing battle? Could it be that Remus really never would return her feelings (or at the very least, that he would never admit he felt the same)? Was it time to just give up. . . ?

Had she not cried so much already, had she not been so dry of tears, she would have broken down into a puddle of her own sad reflections then and there and caused what would likely be the most awkward scene the Leaky Cauldron was bound to have that month. As it happened, though, she could not force herself to cry (although she waned to), and instead she pushed her nearly-empty drink to the side and rested her head on the counter. No matter what she did or how hard she fought, Remus Lupin would always be too stupid to willingly love her back.