Disclaimer: Everything herein associated with Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling, and therefore isn't mine. Oh, and the title and lyrics come from Ingrid Michaelson's 'Oh What A Day' which also isn't mine.

A/N:This is my final entry for the 2012 Hogwarts Games (Butterfly), which seems crazy! I've had so much fun writing for this competition so I just wanted to say thank you to Ash (Fire The Canon) for hosting.

oh what a night is tonight
i think i'm ready to fight
now that my broken bones all have been healed
i think i'm starting to feel

She wasn't hiding.

She was merely...strategically repositioning herself in response to the new intelligence gleaned through careful observation of the situation at hand. Yes. That was it.

Tonks gave a small snort. Being an Auror had taught her how to talk her way out of something using official government bullshit, if nothing else.

No. No. That wasn't true. Being an Auror had taught her many, many things – and not least that she was good at the things she attempted. (Except for Stealth and Tracking maybe, but she'd passed on her second attempt and honestly, it had always been a foregone conclusion that she'd screw that up.) At twenty four, she was not only a fully qualified Auror (mishaps with Stealth and Tracking be damned) but the youngest fully qualified Auror since Mad-Eye Moody himself had passed his exams. She earned a decent enough wage that she could afford her own apartment in Diagon Alley – an achievement in itself for those who did not come from old Pureblood money. She went out to bars and gigs with her friends; took care of cooking and cleaning and bill-paying like a grown-up and went to her parents' house for Sunday lunch at the end of every month.

She was an adult. Until she was around him. Then she became a bumbling fool of a schoolgirl, offering up her heart to be broken. Repeatedly. Once was acceptable. Twice, maybe. But over and over? She had to be an idiot. Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. That was what she was.

"It's worse because it's unexpected," she said aloud, into the dark room of the old house. The house creaked and groaned in response. For all the bleakness of the place, it felt like the house understood. Maybe it had once been loved, but then those who had loved it had gone away. It had retained its form, though, in case those who had loved it came back. The house did not want to change – and neither did she.

"Okay, now you really have lost it," she said, attempting to roll her eyes at her own foolishness (and almost managing it). "It's just a house. You're just a girl. Woman. Person." Something creaked and she jumped, placing a hand over her chest as if to quieten the loudness of her beating heart. She did not want to be discovered. Not yet. She needed some time to collect herself before she went back out there.

The meeting hadn't begun yet, but when it did, she had to be better than her best. Mad-Eye had only brought two Aurors from the department along – Kingsley Shacklebolt (widely tipped for promotion to the top job when Robards eventually retired) and herself, the youngest Auror in the squad. She needed to prove herself to these people, who'd judge her on her age, and maybe her sex and her clumsiness. She needed to show that she was willing and more than able to join the fight against You-Know-Who.

(She believed those who said he'd returned. Her mother, who had a better understanding of the Dark Side than most middle-aged housewives with a desk job in Gringotts, had always said he'd come back one day, and she remembered Cedric Diggory from her own time at school – he'd always been a good kid. No one deserved to die at the age of eighteen, but his life seemed especially cruel to take.)

How ridiculous, then, that she was prepared to fight the greatest Dark Wizard in living memory, but the idea of going out there and facing Charlie Weasley again was terrifying to her.

Charlie was only a man, she reasoned to herself. Her first man, yes – the boy she'd fantasized about marrying when she was seventeen and foolish and still believed in love. Her first everything, including the first to abandon her for a foreign country to go chasing dragons. That had broken her heart.

They'd kidded themselves for a few months that they'd be able to keep a long-distance relationship going, but they were both poor students, unable to floo-call each other across the continent and too busy to write letters. Their holidays never coincided, and even when they did manage to get time off, they were expected to see the family and friends they hadn't seen for months on end, so there was no time for each other. So they called it a day. "Better to end now, as friends, than end up hating each other right?" she'd said.

"Definitely!" he'd agreed, like this was the best way forward for both of them. That had broken her heart, too.

She often lay awake at night, pondering the what-ifs. If they'd had a clean break... If they hadn't kidded themselves into thinking that being "just friends!" was possible... If he'd cheated on her or called her fat and ugly or developed a drinking problem or done anything that could make her legitimately hate him...

If they didn't fall back into each other's arms when they saw each other again. The second Christmas, just after she'd failed her exam and thought she might have to give up on becoming an Auror altogether; when he'd seen his family for one week total in the past two years; when they were both at their lowest, she'd blown what meagre savings she did have on a Christmas Even Portkey to Romania and turned up on his doorstep, shaking with cold.

He'd taken her in without question.

"We can't do this," she'd whispered, as the tears fell from her eyes.

"I know," he'd replied, kissing them away.

That, she thought, was the first move – the one that set them both off. (Because her arriving in a foreign country the night before Christmas certainly wouldn't constitute a 'first move', oh no...) He'd wrapped her up in his strong, muscled arms, which were covered in more tattoos than the last time she'd seen them. She had run her fingers through his hair, across his back, along his girth, trying to memorise every part of his body before she had to leave again. Their lovemaking was frenzied – they'd only bothered to remove the bare minimum of clothing – but it was the aftermath, the part where they'd curled up by the fire together and he'd murmured promises he could not possibly keep in her ear that destroyed her.

They'd spent two days drinking each other in with the desperation of alcoholics until she'd had to leave again. She'd worn the shirt she'd stolen from him until May, when she finally accepted the fact that it had lost his scent.

She didn't see him again until the following summer, when he'd come back for the World Cup. She told herself she'd moved on now, that she wasn't going to sleep with him again. That resolution lasted for the time it took her to get a third of the way through the Firewhiskey he'd bought her. (She comforted herself with the knowledge that she was only this cheap for him. All other men had to get her dinner, at least.)

She'd had no idea that, eleven months later, she'd be seeing him again – though, in hindsight, she thought ruefully, she should have expected that a family as well-known as the Weasleys would be involved in the fight. "Tonks!" he'd said, his voice the same mixture of surprise and alarm and attempts to play it cool that hers had been when she'd said his name. "I didn't expect to see you here!"

"Me either!" she'd replied. "But I...how are you?"

"I'm good," he'd answered. "Yeah, good. Good. You?"

"Yeah, I'm good too! Work okay?" she'd asked.

"Work's great," he'd said, sincerely. "Yours too?" She'd nodded. "Good!" he smiled. "That's...that's just great."

They'd stood there like that, grinning manically at each other until Bill had come over, to her relief and embarrassment and tried to help with the awkwardness. "Charlie's only here for a few days," he'd explained, once they had greeted each other. "He's going to be working with the Order in Romania, trying to recruit some foreign wizards to our cause. It was Mad-Eye's idea."

"Oh, that makes sense," she'd nodded. "He's full of good ideas, that Mad-Eye!" She'd given a shrill laugh that was nothing like her usual one, and Bill had looked at her with concern. Her cheeks flushed. She didn't want to be pitied. "So, uh..." she'd said, turning back to Charlie. "How long is a few days?"

"Just til Thursday," he replied.

"Ah, right," she nodded. "You wanna maybe get a drink sometime?" Her tone was light, the invitation casual and open-ended. But she'd caught his eye, and she knew that he understood what she was asking him. His expression flickered, then became unreadable. He hesitated for a second too long, before replying. "Sorry, I can't. I've got to spend time with my family, and there's a couple of things I need to do for work whilst I'm here, so..." he trailed off.

"No worries – I understand," she'd said cheerfully (even though he'd never blown her off like this before, even when they were discussing actually breaking up. She wondered for half a second if he'd found someone knew, then dismissed that thought as too much to even contemplate.) "But a group of us are heading to the Leaky on Tuesday if you change your mind. Just the usual crowd – Simon, Alexa, me, Kath. Oh, and Ben."

"Ben?"

"He's...uh...just a friend," she'd said lightly, hesitating oh-so-slightly before the final word. "From work." She did know a Ben at work. He was sixty-two and married, but Charlie wasn't going to check.

"Oh!" Charlie had said, his tone neutral, but a flicker of surprise on his face. "Right. Lovely!"

"The Leaky's a great pub," Bill had jumped in, clutching at straws to fill the awkward silence.

"It is," she'd nodded, still grinning manically. "Right – this meeting starts in twenty, doesn't it? Cool, I'm just going to ask Sirius where the nearest loo is. Back in a few!" She'd given a cringe worthy half wave, then headed out to find somewhere to hide.

No, to reposition herself based on...oh, bugger it all to hell. Maybe Charlie Weasley was her Boggart. That could be it. It was clearly the only explanation for why he upset her so much. She sniffed. She felt like she might cry, but no tears had actually appeared. "Why are you so sad?" she asked aloud. "It's not like you're dating. He doesn't have to come drinking with you. It's fine."

It wasn't fine. He'd never rejected her before now.

She glanced at her watch, pushing those thoughts to the back of her mind. It was nearly time for this meeting. She'd have to get a grip, sort herself out and—

The door of the room she was in banged open. "And I am telling you that she—oh, hello, cousin dearest," Sirius Black grinned at her. She grinned back. Over the past month or so, Sirius's circumstances had been explained to her, and she'd gotten to know her cousin quite well. It had been one good thing, at least, to come out of this whole situation. "How're you?"

"I'm good. I was just..." she trailed off.

"Admiring the décor? Hideous, isn't it? My dear old Mum did have quite a taste for the dark and gloomy. My particular favourites are the decapitated House Elves. I feel they really add a certain je ne sais quoi to the room, don't you?" Despite herself, she gave a small snort of laughter, and was momentarily taken aback when she heard an answering laugh from somewhere behind Sirius. Her cousin took a step backwards, revealing a second man, who stepped forward into the patch of light from the window. "Right, you two haven't officially met, have you?" he said, and the man's lip twitched ever-so-slightly. "Tonks, this is my best friend, Remus Lupin. Moony, this is my cousin, Nymphadora Tonks, who prefers to be known by her last name only. Something I can understand," he added, with a wink at her.

"Nymphadora's a lovely name," Remus said, gazing at her. Uncharacteristically, Tonks felt herself blushing under his gaze.

"For a stripper, maybe," she said, and Sirius gave a bark of laughter.

"How about Dora, then?" Remus asked.

"I...you can call me Dora, if you'd like," she replied. "Or Tonks. I'm not fussy. In fact, you can call me anything you'd like as long as it's not Nymphadora and I'll probably answer to it."

Sirius's eyes narrowed in glee. "Oh really?" he said. "What about—"

"That was a dangerous thing to say in front of him," Remus cut in, smiling. She smiled back. "Perhaps we should get going, back to the kitchen? The meeting is about to start."

"Good idea," she said. For some reason, she found herself not wanting to end her brief conversation with this man. Something about him intrigued her. She started to follow him down the hallway.

"Forgive me for being so abrupt, but Alastor mentioned your abilities to me earlier. Your morphing," he added, at her puzzled look. "Perhaps after the meeting, you might tell me more about it? I'm very interested in genetics, you see."

Tonks glanced behind her. Sirius seemed to be very interested in rearranging an old portrait for some reason. "Well, Sirius invited me to stay for dinner, so perhaps if you could stay too, we could talk about it then?"

"That sounds delightful," he replied, smiling at her once again. She returned the grin.

Much later, as she let herself into her apartment (three hours after she'd thought she would be back) and sorted out a couple of books she owned on Metamorphmagi that she wanted to give Remus at the next Order meeting, it occurred to her that, for all her stress before the meeting had begun, she hadn't thought of Charlie once after she'd been introduced to a certain Mr. Lupin.

She allowed herself a small smile, before slipping between the sheets of her bed.

A/N: It's been such a long time since I've been able to just sit down and write, and this was so cathartic. I'm supposed to be revising for my final that got postponed because of the snow (seriously, can you tell I live in the UK?) but instead this happened. The assigned pairing was Remus/Tonks, but I couldn't resist throwing some Charlie in there because I, along with Tonks, am a bit in love with him. Oops.

If you liked this (or hated it!) I'd love to hear your thoughts!