Written by a dear friend.

Her hair flashed such a brilliant red it was almost electric.

"I swear, if you call me Nymphadora one more time, you'll be leaving this house as the world's most pathetic were-toad!"

There was a moment where the man thought that she really meant it, but as he picked his head up and looked at her, he saw the old and familiar mahogany eyes that never changed. Her hair was just a show, and as much in her power as her own words. That is to say, she could control it if she wanted to, but rarely did.

As he met her gaze, she felt her anger crack and falter, as it had all evening long whenever she looked at him. But each time, she collected the pieces and added them on to the determination that was growing stronger by the minute.

"I mean it, you know you're in no state to stand up against me right now, and to be honest, you probably never have been."

She regretted the words as soon as she said them, but she hoped he couldn't see that. Hoped that he couldn't see the real cause of her anger. Soon, she knew, he would. Animals can smell fear.

He held her gaze, unblinking. When he spoke, it was from an old and tired soul, measured in dog-years.

"Red hair never suited you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I know what you're trying to show, and that's all it is. You wear your anger like a dog wears its hackles. A dog that barks and barks so no one will find out that that's all it can do."

"You would know a thing or two about that, wouldn't you?"

To say that the air in the room was tense and unsettling would be true, but not because of the fight that was unfolding between the man and the woman. The air was always old, always musty. It was as broken and desolate as the abandoned furniture that scattered its twisted hallways and skewed rooms. No one outside of a few select and terribly brave young wizards had even entered the Shrieking Shack in decades.

"If you would just listen to me and leave me alone," replied Remus, "maybe I wouldn't have to."

"You're an idiot," Tonks came back, "and everyone thinks so. I know that you've really taken to the whole gloomy outcast thing lately, but it never really worked for you. Leave the misunderstood outsider gig to Sirius and start taking an interest in the people around you for once."

"That's exactly what I'm trying to do!" Remus yelled. Of course, when Remus yelled, his voice never went above a volume that even Librarians would consider polite.

"No, you're trying to get yourself killed. I'd say you were so horribly screwed up that you can't even think of yourself, but that's all you're doing. This is just a selfish and cowardly attempt to put even more ground between you and the people who-"

She broke from his gaze for a brief second, "care. About you."

"Tonks," he said, holding her with his eyes, but never his arms, "I know they care about me. Look at this place. Look at the walls."

She glanced over the tears in the wallpaper, the shredded pillows, the broken, bloodied windows.

"This is a museum of how much they care for me. Since my friends…my old friends…first started taking me here, my life has been built upon the people I love sacrificing themselves for me. I know I told the order that this was going to be for everyone else out there who is as…wretched…as I am, and it will be. But most of all, this is for my family, and my friends."

His words drew her eyes back to his own.

"For you."

Her hair faded to a soft, ocean blue. She let her head drop to look at her hands, neither of which was holding the wand he insisted she have at the ready.

"You don't know the first thing about what I need."

Melancholy was a comfortable idea for Remus. He lived his entire life in its numbing embrace, and feeling it in a room was almost like coming home after a long vacation. He wore it around himself better than his old and baggy robes. But this moment was different. He would never, in one hundred lifetimes, tell her, but to see her brought down to his level, it broke what little was left of his heart.

"I know that you need to get out of here, I have only minutes left."

Remus of course didn't track time in minutes, he tracked it in fractions of the lunar cycle, but he still knew how imminent the change was. Or at least, whatever awaited him this time.

"And I know that if you go through with this, you'll kill yourself." Red hair once more. "And if you're too damn ignorant to quit this idiotic idea of yours, you need someone here to take care of you."

Remus yelled then, a proper, terrifying yell.

"And what do you think you could do?"

Tonks closed her eyes. She knew by the volume of the words alone that it hadn't really come from Remus. Not her Remus.

"I could bury you. But I wouldn't forgive you."

At this stage in his life, Remus had stopped apologizing for the outbursts that came in the last few minutes of his humanity. They were just nature's warning signs.

"No one knows what's going to happen," he said, "But it's definitely not going to work if you're here.

"Why?"

"Tonks, there's no time for this. You have to leave. Now."

"Tell me why."

He looked up at her and saw that her hair was once again the soft blue-green that only appeared when she was sincere. He sighed.

"Because my curse is not a state of being, it's a state of mind."

He paused, and in that moment he was older that he had ever been. His words came out carefully, as though he were trying to convince himself as much as her.

"It is a carnal, violent and primeval state of mind. I'm sure of it. Physical curses don't survive for centuries, because bodies are too weak. But a curse on a soul…echoes throughout history itself."

Tonks' eyes clearly conveyed her confusion. Remus sighed one of the many sighs in his arsenal of desolate expressions.

"The curse calls us back to something ancient. Instinctual. And it must be expressed, embraced, made tangible in the real world. That is why the curse haunts people like myself above all others. People like me, the…the weak…are the furthest removed from our base instincts, and the curse tears its way out of us like a plague. Others… well, they say Fenrir can almost call his other form to himself like a steed, changing earlier and earlier every month."

At that moment, Remus let out a cry. It came from inside of him, far beyond his throat, thousands of years older than his own voice. Mixing into the scream, like a torturous symphony composed by the damned, sounded a long and voracious howl. Tonks tried to maintain her composure, to show Remus that she was as strong as he was frightening, but white lines swam through her hair, opening like petal fireworks at the tips.

"Get OUT!" Remus growled, straining against the manacles that ran over the side of the armchair to lie affixed upon the floor. They were a mere formality, and he knew that they wouldn't hold once he wanted to break them.

"Why?!" Tonks yelled back, fire flowing into the white streaks of her hair, "Why should I?"

"Because," Remus pleaded, holding on to what little control he had left, "Because I need to let it out. I need to listen to the curse, I need to become Fenrir. And I won't let you see that!"

"Why not?! You let James see the worst of you. Sirius, too! This isn't the first time you tried something stupid in this house with your friends."

Remus stood, snapping both of the manacles easily.

"You are not one of my friends!" he barked, but in his own voice. This was still Remus, and he meant it.

Tonks could feel the energy washing over the desperate man chained to the chair in front of her. In the seconds that she had left, she heard his words again, and for the first time she understood them. Planting her feet firmly in front of him, Tonks went up on to her toes, grabbed Remus' tattered collar, and pushed her lips against his.

She could taste his ferocity. She could feel the fire that ran through his lips, and she was terribly aware that everything in his body was telling him to bite. Tonks held herself against him, lips pressed even more fervently, and felt two arms, too strong to be Remus', wrap around her body. One arm slid between her shoulder blades and rested on the back of her neck. The other moved across her back and came to hold her on her opposite hip, the entire arm urging her forward against his chest. Opening her eyes, Tonks found that Remus' were as well. But they weren't his eyes.

His body was still his own, his arms and his hands and his lips, but Remus' eyes had changed. They were the sharp, luminescent glow of an October moon. Radiating white, yellow and orange like a fire on a lake, with the large, black pupils of an animal moments away from a kill.

In the moment that she saw his eyes, Tonks felt the kiss change. It was suddenly coming from both of them, pressing from both sides and faintly shifting to match the other, never content to stay still. She closed her eyes again, and felt his nails press into her skin. She realized that his hands hadn't shifted, and she knew that they hadn't simply pressed, they'd grown.

There was a sharp but exciting pain as Remus moved his hands across her back, and Tonks pulled her lips away to gasp in surprise. She felt cold autumn air against her back, and knew that he'd torn several strips of material off of her shirt. Throwing her hands around his neck, she buried her lips against his neck and bit down hard. With her ears so closely pressed against the side of his throat, Tonks was able to pick up the faint growl that rolled through his body. Kissing her way back up to his lips, Tonks closed her eyes and pressed herself even harder against the panting, tense body of her old friend.

His body was like a furnace. She could feel every muscle begging to be let free, his blood pumping at violent speeds through his veins, and everything in him screaming to let go and devour the small defenseless prey that he held in his arms. But in that moment, Remus parted his lips ever so slightly, tilted his head, and through the passion and the pain, caressed his tongue against hers so gently that she felt his entirety in that kiss. She felt the kind brilliance that made him stand out from the rest of the Order.

It had been a long time since Tonks had kissed someone. Not since before she first met Remus.

Suddenly, his arms tensed, and Tonks felt herself leave the ground. Remus lifted her easily in his powerful arms, slowly leading her body upwards as he kissed his way down her neck, pausing to take a single soft bite, then continuing down to the top of her shirt. He pressed his lips against the fabric border, daring it to leave its post for even a moment. Feeling his lips so close to her chest, Tonks let out a small, mousy gasp of air, and before she had taken her next breath, felt the gasp settle itself in Remus' mind, doubling his passions, as he drew his claws against her back and tore a line down her shirt from top to bottom, clean through her light black bra, and only slightly into her skin. For a daring and passionate second, the material hung suspended between their bodies, their desire to feel the other's pulse holding what was left of the clothes in the air, until they parted from each other in a breath, a half heartbeat, and the they fell away to the ground.

Tonks felt a chill rush across her small breasts, but the heat coming off of Remus fought the air away possessively, claiming her as a part of his space and no one else's. He easily pulled one hand down to the front of his shirt and tore it off like pulling a page out of a notebook. He shrugged his old robes to the ground, and Tonks felt his strong and burning skin against hers.

The feeling was absolutely exhilarating. Tonks couldn't help but to pull herself even closer against him, lifting her legs around his waist, and she felt a firm hand reach down to support her small bottom. The strength came from the curse, she knew, but the gentle caress that traced her shoulder blades, that was Remus.

Tonks kissed every inch of Remus she could manage, and he returned every one. Her body tensed as his lips came upon one of her breasts, and she couldn't contain the quiet moan that escaped as he bit softly into the skin below her nipple. It was amazing to witness, and even more amazing to experience. He was as passionate as a wild wolf, drinking her in like oxygen, and at the same time he was as soft and careful as Remus' own voice.

But she could feel that this would not be enough, and part of her had hoped it wouldn't be.

Tonks pulled against Remus' neck, and he turned slowly and sat down on the tattered old couch against the wall. Sitting on top of him, Tonks could finally feel the firm pressure that pressed into her calf, and, lifting her skirt to gain some freedom, she subtly moved herself until it was aligned between her legs.

This time the moan came from Remus and Tonks at the same time. Resting her weight upon the seat that Remus provided, Tonks placed her arms around his neck, kissed him passionately, and began to shift her body against his, rocking back and forth as he groaned into her kisses. His hands found their way around to her hips, and he helped her along in her motion, lifting her gently off of the couch with his waist as he did so.

When she let out another moan of pleasure against his lips, his passions doubled again, and she felt the claws slide up the side of her hips, and in another gasp of wonderful pain, he felt the cold air once more as her skirt and her underwear fell to the floor in pieces.

Tonks felt the pressure in between her legs strain against her, and she knew that the animal in Remus was going to take her.

Remus stood up, still holding her skinny body against his, entirely naked in the full moonlight, and placed her firmly against the floor. He took a hold of either side of his pants at his waist, and with panting lips and rippling muscles, he tore them in two, casting the pieces aside.

He stood over her, then, illuminated only in the moonlight shining through the broken windows, and Tonks could see everything that he was. She saw the man she loved, the gentle, kind and humble man, and she saw the brutal, carnal and ravenous beast that he carried with him every day. They shared his body, and they were both in control tonight.

Kneeling down, he slid one of his arms under her body, and gently whispered into her ear, in Remus' quietest voice,

"Yes."

And he entered her.

It was unlike anything Tonks had experienced before. He still burned against her like a sun, and she felt the heat carry into her own body, magnifying the unbelievable shock and pleasure of feeling him thrust himself inside of her. Her back arched immediately, and what were once gentle moans grew into open arias of pleasure. He thrust himself back and forth, pushing against her body and inside of her body, pulsing ecstasy through her veins.

Tonks lifted her legs and wrapped them around Remus' back, twisting her hands into the carpet underneath her. This was unbelievable. Remus' passion was beyond human, and it only grew as she pulled him tighter, urging him to go deeper into her, begging him to give her more. Pleasure pumped across her skin as she felt him pick up speed, moving her rhythmically against the carpet and entering her so rapidly and so ferociously that she could no longer distinguish between each thrust, and gave herself in to the absolutely terrifying and wonderful experience of giving herself over to his passions.

When she thought she could take no more, Tonks felt herself moving again, held in the arms of the animal that was making love to her. Remus picked her up and turned her around, pulling himself out of her body for only a moment while he bent her over the arm of the chair that had held him to the ground not too long ago. Tonks had a brief moment in which she turned her head to see Remus' naked body in the moonlight, hungrily gazing down at his prey, before she felt his massive body push inside of her once more, and she screamed in absolute rapture.

The walls of her body were pushed to their limits in every direction. As Tonks bit into the arm on the opposite side of the chair, she went cross-eyed through a combination of pleasure and exquisite pain as she tried to contain the immense passions of the animal behind her. Remus' hands were on her back again, and while he thrust himself even more voraciously into her, one took a hold of her hips while the other ran his claws down her back, and she gasped into the armchair, feeling the first waves of pleasure that she knew would soon overtake her entire body.

As if he could feel her moving rapidly toward ecstasy, Remus picked Tonks up for the last time, and turned her around so her back was against the closest wall. He placed one hand under how increasingly-sore bottom, and she lifted her legs around him. He held her easily against the wall, and as she pressed his lips against his, she felt the rest of the animal claw its way back to the surface. Remus pressed harder, passionately pushing his hips against hers in deep enthralling surges of blinding euphoria. Tonks ran her hands through his shaggy hair and grabbed it tightly as she let out another encouraging scream. She was moments away from letting everything go, and she could feel that he was just as close.

"I'm…I'm…" she whimpered into his ear.

Wrapping her arms around his back and kissing him with every ounce of love that she had felt since the day they met, Tonks felt Remus thrust himself deep inside of her one last time, and she gave herself over to the pulsing, electric orgasm that coursed through her body. Somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear him howling gently into her kiss in the voice that wasn't his own. She came stronger and stronger as he held himself inside of her, and through the curtain of ecstasy she could feel him pulsing as well, could feel the flow of heat as he came deeply inside of her, and her own body tremored and shook and clenched, pulling it all out of him and throbbing with the still growing orgasm that consumed her. When she thought she couldn't bear the pleasure any more, Remus pulled himself out of her and let her feet to the ground, supporting her weight carefully, lovingly.

The moon was bright that evening. Its light came in through the broken windows and cast clouded moving shadows on the old carpet and the old, tattered furniture. It was a full moon, but the man asleep on the floor didn't mind. In his arms he held a small and beautiful woman, with soft, blue eyes. Her hair was mousy brown.

Thank you. Please review.