The witch was lying flat on her front on the ground, casting spells of concealment around her while peering under a huge blue dustbin. The gap between floor and bin gave her hiding space a great vantage point, but it wasn't the most comfortable. She finished casting her final spell, and shifted her weight around to try and find a more comfortable position.

In doing so, she kicked Remus Lupin hard on the shin. Her combat boots were practical, but fucking hurt when she kicked someone.

"Oh Merlin, I'm so sorry!" she said, spinning round to apologies and jabbing him in the knee with her wand.

"It's nothing, please stop apologising," Remus said, rolling up his Muggle jeans to inspect the damage. The boots were impressive. They'd managed to slightly break the skin even through the thick denim.

"I really am so sorry," said the witch. "I'll take them off if you want?"

"And then what would you do if we were spotted? Battle Death Eaters in your socks?" Remus asked, even though it was the third time this week her boots had hurt him and he'd have been glad to have seen the back of them. "Keep them on, please Tonks, and please for the love of all that is holy keep them to yourself."

The witch, Nymphadora Tonks, grinned. "My mother told me when I was six years old that I should cast Cushioning Charms on my body to protect everyone around me."

"Perhaps you should take her advice," said Remus.

"When does anyone take their mothers advice?"

Remus could think of many occasions he'd taken his mothers' advice. However, as most of the advice he'd listened to had been about concealing his lycanthropy, he probably was an unusual case. He would add it to the list of reasons being a werewolf made him different. He'd actually compiled a list once in his fifth year of Hogwarts with the help of James Potter, and they'd got to twenty-seven inches of parchment before they'd given up.

"Anyway," said Remus, thinking to change the subject, "seen anything yet?"

Tonks had got back down onto the floor as he was talking and was staring intently at a door on the other side of the street. The huge black door with an ornate golden knocker belonged to an impressive house. It was tall, standing three stories above its fairly large neighbours. The stonework around the windows was engraved with patterning. Huge bushes flanked the doorway, and a long gravel pathway lead from a gateway adorned with silver runes. It was unlikely the house was visible to the Muggle residents of the street, given its ownership, but if it was a passer-by would have noticed it very similar if slightly more flashy than the others.

An Order member would be able to recognise the feel of magic. Darker magic.

"Not a peep," she said. "Could be he's changed the time."

"It's only ten to," said Remus, checking his watch.

They had been assigned to stake out the Death Eater Yaxley's house, as Dumbledore was certain that some kind of planning meeting was due to take place there. He thought, although he was less sure about this, that they would be planning their assault on the Ministry of Magic. It was of course highly unlikely they'd be able to see anything. It would be useful to know who was attending though so that the individuals could be more easily tracked. Their spy amongst the Death Eaters, Severus Snape, had managed to get them the information this far, but he didn't know who was involved in this plan and had felt he was unable to ask for fear of raising suspicion.

Remus had volunteered for this particular mission after finding out that Tonks was going to be there. Sitting waiting around was not his preferred type of mission, although stealth was something he was good at. He'd always been good at not being noticed, since the werewolf bite.

As a kid he'd referred to it as 'that wolf thing', almost as if giving a name to what had happened would make it real. Each month at the full moon, however, it was real all the same. Remus hadn't had friends until Hogwarts, and it wasn't until his second year he felt at home with them.

He could pin it down to a moment, the very first time he had felt as if he belonged with his friends.

James and Sirius had been messing around in Charms, chucking notes at each other egging each other on to do silly, pointless things like floating Alison Brown's pencil case when she wasn't looking. Then, Sirius had thrown a note to Remus. He unfolded it, and it said 'levitate Flitwick's water goblet'. He'd done it, and then Flitwick had spotted James charming the window open, found the notes, and they'd all been given detention.

He'd floated out of that classroom, despite the detention and the house points Flitwick had deducted from Gryffindor. He had friends who wanted to get detention with him.

It was almost stupid how insignificant it was, Remus thought, but he still couldn't shake the warm feeling when he thought of that day.

And then James had died, he thought Peter had died and that Sirius had betrayed them all, and he'd decided never to have friends again as it was all more heartbreak than it was worth. Even if only some of that had turned out to be true.

Way to bring a downer, Lupin, he thought to himself. Think of something else, or you'll be a useless maudlin mess. Even more than usual.

"Is that something?" said Tonks, scrunching forwards under the bin at the sight of movement. She kicked Remus again as she did so. He decided to say nothing, and squished himself in beside her.

"That's Dolohov," muttered Remus. Antonin Dolohov was a famous Death Eater, one of their best fighters. He'd killed Molly Weasley's brothers in the first Wizarding War, and Remus himself had barely escaped him when they'd duelled before in a disastrous raid on a Death Eater hideout in Somerset. "He nearly killed me once, but I managed to Stun him and just about escaped."

"Seriously?" said Tonks as she watched Dolohov open the gate of the house opposite with the black door. "He's terrifying, I don't think I'd have a hope against him."

Remus had no idea why he had this compulsion to talk about his exploits in front of Tonks. Almost like he was showing off.

"I'm sure you would," he said. "You're an impressive fighter, I've watched you practice. And you've beaten Death Eaters before."

He also had no idea why he kept feeling the need to compliment her.

Tonks was staring straight at the door still, but even in just the light of the one lonely street lamp Remus could swear she was blushing a bit.

The whole compliment thing was probably because he was in love with Nymphadora Tonks. And there was the odd moment like this where it seemed almost like she could be in love with him too.

"I've beaten easy ones," she said, "and Dolohov would squash me. I'm not as good as you."

There was another moment like that.

"I was better before," he said. "Younger, fitter, more practice. Hang on, that's Rowle."

"Three in there, plus Yaxley, and it's five past eight," said Tonks. "I'm guessing they ward their doors, and these will be of no use?" She held up a tangle of flesh coloured string and wiggling ears. Remus recognised them instantly as Extendable Ears, invented by Fred and George Weasley to eavesdrop.

"I'll bet they do. Does Molly know you've got these?"

"She does. I think she still hates them, but I think I managed to convince her of their use to the Order. I told Fred and George I'd nick them back off her for them, as long as they didn't use them in Headquarters anymore. Molly caught me and I had to think fast."

Remus smiled softly. Fred and George had more front than Blackpool, as his mum would have said, and Tonks wasn't far off them sometimes.

"Anyway, I'll go check," said Tonks, and before he could put up a show of chivalry and offer to go in her place Tonks had thrown Moody's spare Invisibility Cloak over herself, pulled herself up and was off to the gateway of number 5.

Remus had been pondering why these chivalrous urges always came on around Tonks too when he was prodded in the back. He swing round, wand raised, before he heard a whispered "wotcher" and Tonks pulled off the Invisibility Cloak as she slipped back within their wards.

"Good reflexes," she said. "Not as old as you look, clearly."

Now it was Remus' turn to blush.

"Any luck?"

"Nope. Their protective spells don't have a gap in them, couldn't get within three feet of the gate without setting off at least six alarms. Ears wouldn't have had a hope."

"What's that in your hand?

"Dungbomb." Tonks grinned. "Chuck them at stuff to test if things have been Impeturbed, and works against other wards too."

Remus bit back the urge for another compliment, but it was very clever.

Tonks sat down next to him. Yaxley's house may have been in a fancy part of Muggle London, but as any urban area it still provided good opportunities for hiding places to watch him as long as you didn't mind being around bins, broken sofas or pissed-in phone boxes. She shuffled sideways to get a better look around the bin, brushing Remus' arm as she did so.

A shiver, a happy shiver, spread through Remus' body. This had to stop, he thought. Before the war, he'd have taken himself off to a new town, a new job at the first signs of love to make sure nobody had to know and nobody got hurt. Werewolves were not designed to love, and no good would have come of any of it.

But the Order needed him, and Minerva McGonagall had cornered him a month ago to inform him of that in no uncertain terms. It was almost as if she'd known, and she couldn't have, as he'd been sure to bury his feelings for this beautiful witch so far down that he'd have a chance of forgetting them himself.

So he was going to have to stick it out. He'd stay until Voldemort had been defeated, being sure to never let on, and he could then safely disappear. She would be happy, and he would be a werewolf.

He could only hope that he wouldn't have to watch her fall in love with anyone else. Some attractive young Auror probably, and have to attend the wedding and smile and wish the couple well and…

"Remus?"

Her voice broke his train of thought.

"You alright? It's just I don't think much is happening, but you don't look as though you'd notice if it did."

"Sorry. Just thinking about stuff."

"You look like Sirius does when he thinks about Harry."

Remus could well imagine he did. Sirius hated being trapped in Grimmauld Place unable to do anything for his godson despite his impulses to help. Remus was not trapped physically, but definitely constrained, and just as unable to do anything on his own desires.

"He's struggling at the moment," said Remus, thinking the subject of Sirius was safer than getting anywhere near his own worries. "Harry back at Hogwarts with Dolores Umbridge out to trip him up and worse. Being unable to act never suited Sirius. At Hogwarts he was a completely different man."

"I'd like to have known him then," said Tonks. "Bet he was fun."

"He was," Remus said. "Most the boys wanted to be like him, and half the girls wanted to date him. His pranks were legendary and he was commonly considered the most attractive boy in Gryffindor, if not the whole school."

"He's still handsome, isn't he, even after Azkaban?" she said.

Anger rose in Remus as she said those words. Not her as well! Remus couldn't have hoped for Tonks to return his feelings, and it was better she didn't, but the woman he loved could have least have had the common decency to fall in love with some faceless fellow Auror and not his best fucking friend. This was exactly why he should have left by now, Order or no Order, whatever Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall had to say about the subject.

"I suppose you've fallen for him too," Remus spat. "He always got the women."

He always had, he'd even gone out with the only girls in Hogwarts Remus had successfully asked out on a date. Helena Davies in their sixth year, and Cassie Abbott in their seventh. Water under a bridge now between the two men, helped along by a duel on the second occasion, but the anger and frustration he'd felt at the time was back.

Remus had expected that feeling. He often had it when reminded how he'd never be the one to get the woman, whether due to his friend or his circumstance. He hadn't expected Tonks' reaction.

"You'd know perfectly well who I've fallen for, if you weren't too busy feeling sorry for yourself to notice." The witch looked angry, her hair suddenly a crimson red and spiky and her eyes the darkest brown. The unmistakable smell of a crushed Dungbomb filled the air. She turned away from him, fixing her eyes firmly on the black door opposite and setting her shoulders.

A feeling that he'd never felt before flooded Remus' body, an electric shock of excitement and nervousness and levity. Could she? Did she? How long had she?

Tonks loved him, and she knew what he was.

What he was. That bite at the age of four and the curse that came with it had shaped his destiny though and he knew he could not love, as he could not marry. He could not put a woman through what his parents had lived, and he could not risk passing on the curse to a child. A child! A little baby wolf, forced to transform into a dangerous creature from it's first weeks and forced to a life such as he had had. No, this was good for nobody, and Tonks, the clever, funny, beautiful woman he loved, deserved more than he could give her.

He would pretend he hadn't understood, that's what he would do. She would move on, and he would avoid a situation like this again. That was the best way. He'd be the only one to suffer, really, and that was fine.