This is the first Harry Potter fic I've ever actually published. And Harry Potter was the book that first made me want to write... weird... and kind of stupid.

Tonks's morning began with a cup of tea.

Not that abnormal. The only thing about it that could be considered abnormal was the fact that she was at Grimmuald Place instead of her flat near the Ministry. But now a days that wasn't even that abnormal. She spent every weekend there now, as well as a couple of her week days. There was plenty of room, better company than she got in her flat all alone, and Molly's cooking was a right sight better than hers.

"Sleep well, Tonks?" the Weasley matriarch asked as she bustled into the kitchen, already pointing her wand at various pots, causing them to fill with water to boil and fires to start on the stove below them.

"Great, Molly. Thanks." Tonks lowered the cup of tea onto the table. She was careful to place it far enough away from her on the table that she wouldn't knock it over with a wave of her hand.

"Hungry?"

"Famished," she answered, grinning. "I'm always famished for your cooking Molly."

"You're sweet, dear."

They didn't talk much more than that, Tonks still too busy finishing her tea and Molly busy getting breakfast cooking. She was just starting on the sausages when Sirius limped down to the kitchen. He was holding a hand to his ribs and stopped at one point to wince before approaching the table.

"Sirius!" she said, standing up when she saw him. "Are you alright?"

He glanced up. "Nymphadora. What are you doing here?"

"Don't call me Nymphadora, Sirius," she responded automatically. He seemed to be the most adamant about calling her that. Most everyone else knew by now to call her Tonks, but he refused to call her that for some reason. Probably some agreement with her Mum about trying to convince her it wasn't that bad of a name. "What happened?"

"I spent the night with Remus. Well, Snuffles did. It helps him, having company." He said it casually, as if that cryptic statement made complete sense.

Tonks frowned. "What do you mean it helps him?"

Sirius winced as he lowered himself into one of the seats around the table. "It helps him keep his mind a little. He's less likely to hurt himself."

"What… oh." It suddenly made sense. "It was the full moon last night!"

"Yeah," Sirius responded eloquently. "Molly, do you have the healing kit? The usual potions." Despite Molly's usually reservations for the Azkaban escapee, she was eyeing him with an almost concern in her eyes. She was giving her attention to him rather than the pan she was using to cook at least.

"It's on the counter. Worked on it last night."

"Thanks. I'll take that up to him right now then… still asleep…" He grunted in pain when he hauled himself out of the chair.

"Hey, wait a minute, Sirius," Tonks said. "You're hurt."

"Yes, well, werewolves don't exactly play gentle."

"You mean he bit you?" Tonks's hand flew to her mouth.

"No, no, I'm fine. I promise." Sirius's wolfish smile wasn't that much of a reassurance. "Just a scratch. It'll scar, but I'm alright." He examined the potions, sniffing a few, before rummaging in a cupboard for some cloths that he dropped on a tray before loading up on the potions.

"Well, I'll head up there."

"Sirius, you've been up all night," Molly finally said, hands on her hips, every inch a concerned mother. "You deserve to go to bed."

"I'm fine, Molly."

But it seemed the Weasley matriarch's maternal instincts would not be ignored. "Bed. Now. I'll take care of Remus. And then I'll take care of you. Rest up while I'm healing him."

The Black looked like he was going to argue, but Mrs. Weasley's expression was so fierce that he threw his hands up and left the room after grabbing a piece of toast off the table.

Molly nodded sharply before grabbing the tray herself. Tonks watched her, before a wave of impulsiveness hit her and she found herself speaking.

"Hey, Molly, you don't have to worry about that, I'll take care of it."

Tonks entered the room carefully. She was incredibly clumsy most of the time, but Sirius had said that Remus was sleeping, and she knew that after a night like he'd had he needed the sleep. She refused to give in to her natural clumsiness and wake the poor man up.

The room was empty except for a chair that had been knocked over… Tonks took that back, it looked like one of its legs had been ripped off. She swallowed before shaking her head and looking around the rest of the room. Curled in the corner, stripped bare except for a blanket lying over him, laid Remus.

He had his back to her, but even from this distance across the room she could tell that he was injured.

There was nowhere for her to drop the tray with the healing supplies, though, so she laid it down on the floor next to Remus as she got closer.

The closer she got however, the worse it got.

Tonks had known Remus for almost a year and in that time she had never seen him in anything less than full robes. She hadn't thought much of it. He was the modest type. Sure she might have thought it odd that he kept himself completely covered even when it was unbearably hot to her, but she had never imagined this.

There were scars covering his entire torso. Some were the half circle shapes that betrayed them as bite marks, others long slashes. It looked like someone had taken a knife and carved into every inch of his body. Pulling the blanket down a bit (being careful not to move it too much though) revealed that the pattern continued all the way down his chest and all the way up his legs. His arms too. She was familiar with his scared face, even in her most private thoughts thinking they made him look even more handsome, but this…

Some of them were fresh. Claw marks stretching from his chest all the way to his back. A nasty looking bite on the outside of his left thigh. One on his shoulder that looked almost like it was festering. There was a new one on his face too, a scratch from under his right eye into his hair line.

"Oh Remus…" she breathed, dipping one of the clothes on the tray into the first pot of ointment. Sirius had already warned her that normal healing spells wouldn't work on these wounds. He went through this every full moon? Every single month?

She stared first on the scratches on his torso. They looked the most serious, simply because they were bleeding the worst. That bite on his shoulder was definitely next though.

The moment she touched the rag to his skin though, all of his muscles seized up, making her pull it away. They didn't relax however, and she heard a small whimper pass his lips. Tonks's heart squeezed slightly, but this time she steeled herself and began to clean the cut.

His muscles seized up again, but as she continued to clean it he eventually relaxed.

About the time that she was finishing with the three long scratches though, he began stirring. He tried to roll over and face her, but she stopped him with a hand against his back.

"Oh no you don't, or you'll make them worse."

For some reason, he stiffened again.

"Tonks?"

"Wotcher," she said, but her heart wasn't really in the greeting.

"What are you doing here?" He sounded almost panicked. He tried to sit up, and then seemed to realize the fact that he wasn't wearing any clothes. She would have been amused by the flushed color of red his cheeks were turning if she wasn't so busy staring at all the scars.

"Molly sent Sirius to bed, and I volunteered to take care of you."

He flushed again. "You don't have to Tonks, I can take care of myself."

"Don't be a martyr, Remus, it's fine. I got full marks in the Healing portion of my Auror exams," she dismissed, waving her hand and almost topping over the potion that Molly insisted he drink as soon as he woke up. She cursed, but he had managed to catch it, though he hissed in pain. He had used the shoulder with the bite mark.

"Molly said to drink that all up," she told him when he tried to offer it to her. "Now hold still while I finish up on these scratches."

"Who usually patches you up?" she asked absent mindedly as she finished cleaning the scratches. "Obvious it was your Mum and Dad when you were a kid and Madam Promfrey when you were at school, but who else?"

Remus shifted slightly, whether because he was uncomfortable with the topic or with the fact that he was naked under the blanket, she wasn't sure.

"I do."

Tonks hand froze. "You do?"

"I usually hide what I am. Asking someone to heal me after every full moon defeats that, so I've learned to heal myself."

"Isn't that painful?"

He shrugged. "I've learned to deal with the pain."

Tonks paused, not quite sure how to respond to that admittance. Every month? "Well… it's a good thing I'm here to do it for you now."

His responding smile was weak. She wanted to continue the conversation, but she could think of nothing except questions about his scars, how he dealt with it, and that was a topic she didn't want to approach. She knew he was sensitive about his condition, especially about talking about it.

She finished cleaning the scratches on his side, and moved to start on his shoulder, but she felt his hand on hers.

"There's no point in cleaning that one."

"Why not? It's probably the worst, it needs to get cleaned or it's going to be infected—"

"That one's not going to come clean," he said quietly, not quite looking her in the eyes. "It's my original bite."

Tonks looked at the scar, back to his face, and then back at the scar. "You mean… where…"

"Where Greyback bit me as a child."

"You mean… it's never healed?"

"The original bite never heals completely." He seemed less awkward talking about this though, probably because he was switching into, as Tonks like to call it, Teacher Mode. "When someone is bitten, dittany and silver is applied to the bite so that they don't bleed to death, but the wound itself never quite heals. Most of the time, it's not too bothersome. It's only during the full moon that it begins to look like this and ache. Nothing you do will help it."

"… Oh," she said. The fought to get a smile on her face. "Well then you've got a nasty bite on your leg I can certainly look at."

"Tonks…"

"Yes?" she responded, moving down and dipping the cloth in the potion again, touching it to the bite mark.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome, Remus. That's what friends do, don't they? Patch each other up after one of them tore themselves to bit the night before when they weren't in their right mind." She froze as she thought over her words. "Oh wait, Remus, I didn't mean it like… anything bad—"

Luckily, he was chuckling. "You sound like Sirius. And James. They would always visit me in the Hospital Wing after the full moons and smuggle me sweets from dinner. What are friends for if not sneaking them treats while they're recovering from turning into a giant uncontrollable wolf and trying to eat themselves?"

"You don't actually try to eat yourself—!" she said, eyes wide as she turned around sharply, but he was smiling and shaking his head.

"No, no, no. A fully transformed werewolf will have the uncontrollable urge to bite and scratch any and every human that it encounters, though they aren't interested in animals much at all for some reason. So if there are no humans around, and no animals to distract it, it will give in to the urge to bite and scratch the only target available. Furniture," he gestured at the legless chair, "or itself."

"But Sirius was with you all night… how come you still bit yourself…"

"However entertaining a large black dog is," he said, grimacing, "the one thing werewolves can't stand more than no humans to attack, is feeling trapped. I — the wolf — fought to get out for a while, but Sirius and the charms prevented that, so I took it out on the most available target."

"Oh."

She began cleaning the bite on his leg, careful to keep her movements confined just to the bite mark, so Remus wouldn't feel too uncomfortable about the blanket preserving his modesty.

She couldn't help her eyes wandering though. Not to where one would expect when alone in a room with a blanket clad man, but over more of the scars. There was one on the inside of his calf that looked… she wasn't even quite sure how to describe it.

"I ripped an entire chunk of my flesh out," he said quietly when he noticed what she was staring at. She jumped slightly at being caught in the act of staring at his scars, but looked at it again. "Madam Pomfrey spent almost until the next full moon trying to get it to heal."

"How old were you?"

"I was twelve."

"Twelve?" Tonks was horrified. She knew he had been bitten as a child, but a twelve year old doing this to himself?

"It was before James, Sirius, and Peter knew I was a werewolf. They didn't know why I was in the Hospital Wing for so long, they were convinced I was dying and no one was going to tell them. It was one of the ways they finally managed to figure out what I was."

"… you really miss them," she observed.

"I miss the times. Things were simple. I was terrified that they would find out, but I was also happy for one of the first times in my life. And when they didn't abandon me, I was happier than I've ever been in my life. Sirius was innocent, ignoring all the pranks and detentions he got himself into, James was alive, Peter wasn't a traitor. It's a time I can't go back to."

She finished cleaning the bite, but before moving to the scratch under his eyes, Tonks couldn't help herself from touching one of the scars that ran across his chest. She didn't except him to speak, and in fact blushed a little for touching his bare chest without permission, but his words froze her hand.

"I was fifteen. It was my last transformation before James, Sirius, and Peter learned became full Animagi."

Her finger trembled in place on the scar before she followed it up until it crisscrossed with another one that stretched over his shoulder.

"I was eight years old when I gave myself that one."

She touched a bite mark under his arm, and once again he offered an explanation. "I was eleven. My first transformation at Hogwarts. It was a bad one. The wolf doesn't like new places."

Her fingers ghosted over scratches across his back. "I almost broke my spine when I was six. My father was terrified. We weren't sure what would happen during transformations if I was disabled. Would he be too or would I be injured even further as the wolf did things my body couldn't?"

Different shaped bites on his side. "Those I actually got from Sirius."

"Sirius did this to you—!"

"It was called for. While I was teaching at Hogwarts, I forgot to take my Wolfsbane potion and almost attacked Harry. Sirius stopped me."

Tonks gapped at him, before swallowing and looking back at his chest. There was a gash that ran across his stomach. "I was 23. I didn't eat for three days before the full moon so I could have a full meal the night before. The hungrier the wolf is, the more vicious it is."

"You starved yourself for three days?" Tonks had never grown up in the wealthiest family, her mother had been completely cut off when she married her father, but they always had food on the table. Sure she hadn't gotten the top of the line racing brooms, but she never had to skip a meal because of money.

"It's better than hurting someone."

She wanted to stop, she didn't want to have to hear about anymore of the scars and the horrible stories behind them. But morbid fascination kept her hand moving, tracing more of the scars out, and he kept obliging her with the stories.

She traced the next one very carefully because it stretched under the skin her had torn up just the last month. Even so he winced slightly.

"20. I was fighting for the Order the first time."

Tonks shifted position so that she could get a better look at one on his back.

"That's one of the more recent ones. Last year, only two full moons before Voldemort rose again."

A scratch that ventured too far down for her to follow. "Also from my first transformation at Hogwarts."

It was only when her hand ventured to right under his ribs — which stuck out slightly, how come she had never noticed how thin he was? She must have just dismissed it as his natural build, or just a side effect of the lycanthropy... and it was. Because of the social stigma against his kind, he couldn't keep a job nor afford to feed himself out of fear of hurting someone — that she realized his breathing was even… carefully controlled in fact. He was almost forcing himself to breath evenly. Probably because he was still in pain and trying not to show it.

"25. I had just been fired from my janitorial job at a broom store. Not Quality Quidditch Supplies, a small one in Bristol."

"A janitorial job?" she asked, aghast. "You're so much better than that though! Remus, how could you take a job like that? You could work anywhere—"

"There are very few places that will hire a werewolf, Tonks," he said, once again not looking her in the eyes. "I can't take any jobs that entail attention or responsibility, or they'll notice right away that I'm disappearing once a month. And on bad full moons I can be disposed for as much as a week. I can usually only keep a job for a year, maybe two depending on what the job is and how attentive my coworkers are."

"No one's ever kept you on after they find out you're a werewolf?"

"Very few people want to find out they're working in proximity with someone who could kill them."

"That's once a month! And you even stay away from everyone else one full moons so you won't hurt them! There's more chance of me killing someone during my time of the month at work."

A ghost of a smile crossed Lupin's face.

"Thank you, Tonks, but they're quite right. I am dangerous. And it's hardly a benefit to have a worker who's disappearing once a month."

"Still…" she muttered, hand once again moving of its own accord up his chest.

"Ten. I also gave myself a scar on the face the same month." He traced a scar across his jaw with his own finger.

The next one was easily one of the nastier scars, more than just one scratch, but multiple ones all over the same spot. This time she laid her whole hand on his chest, right on the spot above his heart. She could feel it underneath her hand, beating rather fast. Was that also a result of the lycanthropy and the resent full moon? What reason would he have to be nervous?

This was the first time she looked into his eyes for the explanation. It was only then that she realized how close they had gotten while she explored his scars. It was also then that she really realized that she really had been running her hands all over his naked torso. She flushed slightly, but he was already talking.

"The first full moon after Voldemort fell."

"Was that a particularly bad full moon?" she asked, not even realizing that she was subconsciously moving closer to him.

"Not a particularly bad one… no."

"Then why… oh."

It was obvious wasn't it? That wonderful moment that went in the history books as one of the best in history, the moment that her mum talked about all the time… was the moment that Remus lost his best friend. And then a day later, his other best friend at the hands of his third, who had also led Voldemort to the doors of the first.

It was also the disbanding of the Order the first time, the only people among whom Remus had ever felt a part of.

It was the end of all of his friends and the beginning of his exile. He must have felt betrayed and lonely… She would never make the mistake of thinking that the wolf was anything like Remus; Remus was intelligent, and kind, and brave. The wolf was just a disease. It wasn't Remus. It wasn't. But that didn't mean that they were entirely inseparable. The helplessness and the… devastation must have been reflected in the wolf's actions that full moon.

"Remus…"

He didn't even bother with a weak smile this time. So she went with the action that seemed the most natural to her, and wrapped her arms around his neck in a tight hug.

He froze, and she was left hugging someone as still as a board until he finally relaxed and accepted the hug, encircling her back with an arm.

It was when she finally pulled away and looked at him that she realized she had stopped right in the middle of caring for his cuts.

Tonks apologized for forgetting, picked up the rag, and muttered a quick Scourgify, before dipping it in the solution once more and gently beginning to clean the wound under his eye. She was sure to be very sensitive with this one.

"What about these ones?"

"I already told you about this one," he muttered, looking down at her and then away. It was a strain to look so directly down after all. "This one I got when I was thirteen. This one at twenty…"

"At twenty?"

".. twenty nine." He was turning sort of pink again. Why would he be embarrassed about that? He seemed to get over it quick enough, though, and started pointing out more of the scars. "During the summer between fifth and sixth year, 24, 25, five—"

"Five?" she cut off. "You've been doing this as early as five years old?"

He nodded. "I got bit right before my fifth birthday."

"You were four?"

He nodded.

"Every month… since you were four?"

"Except for when I was teaching at Hogwarts and Severus made the Wolfsbane potion for me."

Tonks was horrified. How could anyone bare that? How could any stand — she took a look at his body again and could find no word to describe it other than… this. Since they were four years old! And doing it to themselves…

"Remus…"

"I know," he said, looking away from her. "What kind of monster does this to himself?"

"Remus!" she said sharply. "You're not a monster." She traced a finger over one of the longest scars, all the way down his chest. "If anything this just confirms what I already knew…"

He looked at her, confused.

"That you're the bravest man I've ever met."

She brushed some of the hair away from his face, behind his ear. For some reason she was staring at him like she was some sort of mystical creature that he had never heard of before.

"Now come on," she said after he continued to stare at her. "Only a few more potions. Then Molly won't have my head."

Tonks patiently watched as Remus swallowed each of the potions that Molly had told her to make him drink, and then she offered to help him up.

He gave her a look.

"Tonks."

"Yes?"

"You do remember that I'm not actually wearing any clothes, right?"

Tonks flushed bright red, which had nothing to do with her Metamorphmagi powers. "Right… Uh… I'll.. leave you to that then."

He smiled at her as she hurried out of the room and closed the door behind her. A few minutes later he emerged tucking his shirt into his pants.

"Do you know where my wand is, Tonks?"

She shrugged. "Sirius might have it."

He nodded and turned, setting off in the direction of Sirius's bedroom.

"Oh, and Remus…"

He turned. "Yes?"

"I don't think you look that bad shirtless."

The statement was accompanied by a wink that made the werewolf flush bright red.