New Year's Day dawned before Tonks had really had a chance to appreciate being asleep, but when she remembered why she'd woken up with a grin on her face she didn't mind.
He liked her. Remus Lupin liked her. The grin widened.
She resisted the urge for as long as she could and then pulled a pillow over her face and squealed into it, kicking her legs beneath the covers to try and shift some of her nervous energy. She gave a final squeal of excitement before leaping out of bed and hopping around the room, trying to dispel the cold as she looked for her clothes. Then she remembered she'd forced them all under the bed and knelt down, extracting a red T shirt and jeans and brushing the dust off them. Rubbing her arms against the chill of the room she went over to the wardrobe and selected a black loose knit jumper to throw over the top.
She peered into the mirror and smiled at herself thoughtfully. Pink and red, she thought, only worked on socks. She lengthened her hair and turned it black. Much better.
She wondered if he'd be up yet. He probably was. However early she got out of bed, Remus always seemed to have beaten her to it. She wondered if he slept at all, but thinking of him doing anything even remotely bed-related gave her stomach tingles, and she decided she'd best try and put them to one side if she was going to make it downstairs in one piece.
She darted down the stairs, careful not to wake Mrs Black. She was sure that even if Sirius didn't get hangovers, he wouldn't appreciate a screeching wake-up call about half-breeds and blood traitors to welcome in the new year.
She tentatively pushed the door to the kitchen open to find Molly at her usual place by the stove and Remus sitting at the table with a pot of tea and a plate piled with far too much toast for one man to eat in front of him.
"Wotcher," she said, quietly. Now she was faced with the prospect of actually seeing him and talking to Remus, she had an inexplicable nervous twitch in her stomach. He glanced up at her over his shoulder and smiled, which did nothing to quell the nervous twitch.
"You're up bright and early, dear," Molly said. "There's tea on the table if you fancy a drop.""Thanks," she said. She slid into the seat next to Remus, pulling her knees up to her chest and hugging them tightly to steady her jangling nerves.
"Morning," he said, setting down the piece of toast he had been eating and brushing the crumbs off his fingers. "Would you like some?" he asked, gesturing to the pot in front of him. She smiled at him in answer and Summoned her heavily chipped 'I hate work' mug from the dresser. He filled it for her and then dropped two sugar lumps into it, and added just a dash of milk. She stared at him. She didn't remember ever telling him how she liked her tea, and yet he'd made it just the way she would have done.
"How did you know how I take my tea?" she asked. He gave her a look of rather shifty embarrassment from underneath his sandy hair. He pressed his lips together for a moment.
"Just something I noticed?" he offered sheepishly.
"Oh," she said, feeling that she might well be smirking. The nervous twitch was gone, replaced by something altogether warmer and fuzzier, and for a few minutes she was acutely aware of the slightly increased pace of her breathing and the ball of fluttering sensations that sat where her heart normally did.
She knew that if she was going to get through breakfast without knocking him from his chair and snogging him senseless on the floor she'd have to try to push the feelings aside. It was absurd, she thought, that something as simple as Remus noticing how she liked her tea should cause such a reaction.
Of course knowing it was absurd and being able to set it aside were two entirely different things.
"How's Sirius?" she asked, sipping her tea and smiling into the mug.
"Shockingly cheerful, I expect."
"You didn't smother him, then?"
"No," he said. "I didn't have the heart in the end. He looks annoyingly adorable when he's asleep."
"Which is a nice contrast," she said, "since he's adorably annoying when he's awake."
"Indeed," he said, the corners of his mouth twitching in amusement. "Tonks?" he said, leaning towards her, his voice low enough that Molly couldn't hear it over the bubbling of the porridge she was stirring. If she'd had a heart at that second and not just a ball of fluttering sensations, Tonks was sure it would have skipped a beat. "In light of what happened last night," he said, "the other thing, I mean, between us. I – "
"Remus?" Molly said, turning round suddenly. Remus looked up, forcing the startled expression off his face just before he met her eyes. "Any thoughts on getting the children back to school?"
"Knight Bus, I thought," he said, smiling slightly. Molly nodded her agreement and turned back to the stove. He leant in closer and lowered his voice. "I wondered – "
"You don't think it might be safer for them to Floo?" Molly said. Both of their heads snapped up but were still far too close together, and Molly's eyes darted suspiciously from Tonks' face to Remus'. Tonks tried to lean back surreptitiously and slowly, trying not to give away any flicker that there was something going on other than two Order members drinking tea together. She wasn't entirely sure she succeeded, and Molly continued to survey them both with narrowed eyes.
"We'll take all the necessary precautions," Remus said, resting his hands on the table. "And I'm not sure, with Umbridge on the prowl, that Flooing is any safer or even if she'd allow it."
"You're probably right."
Molly smiled at them both. Tonks waited for her to turn away and then leant back into Remus, brushing his arm with her shoulder. "What were you going to say?"
"I was just wondering if – "
"Toast, dear?" Molly said.
Tonks looked up, biting her lip. "Hmm, thanks," she said. Molly beamed and turned away, Levitating a couple of slices out from under the grill and onto a plate in front of her. Tonks smiled her thanks at Molly and turned back to Remus. She wondered if she'd ever get the chance to know what Remus had been wondering.
"I – er," he said, "was just wondering if you – "
"You could go with them," Molly said, turning back abruptly. Apparently not, Tonks thought. "Both of you."
Remus closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, and Tonks tried desperately not to giggle at him. "Yes," he said.
"No problem," Tonks said, her voice a little strangled with the effort of not laughing. "I think I've got that day off anyway."
"That's settled, then," Molly said.
Remus leant on his elbow, massaging one eyebrow with his long fingers. He met her eye with an expression of rather amused infuriation which sent the fluttering into overdrive. "Quick," Tonks whispered, "before she thinks of something else."
"I was just wondering if you might – "
"Morning everyone," Sirius boomed, throwing the door open and striding into the kitchen with the air of a man who'd had nine blissful hours sleep rather than the air of a man who, six hours ago, had had his face in a plate of cheese and pickle sandwiches.
Tonks tried hard not to laugh as Remus closed his eyes and continued stroking his eyebrow. "Maybe you should write it down," she said, biting her lip as a mischievous grin erupted.
Molly bustled out to round up the other occupants of Grimmauld, and sensing an opportunity to actually get a sentence finished, Remus leant in again. This time he didn't even have the chance to get a word out.
"Aye aye," Sirius said, throwing himself down into a chair opposite. "You two look cosy. Not up to anything, are you?"
"The chance would be a fine thing," Remus sighed, shooting Sirius a look that would have frozen water.
"You're tetchy this morning," Sirius said, reaching across the table and stealing a piece of his toast. "What's the matter? Someone keep you up all night?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and smirked as he folded the slice in half and stuffed it into his mouth all at once.
"Yes," Remus said. "You."
"Oh," Sirius said through a mouthful of toast. The smirk faded and he swallowed with obvious effort before reaching for another slice. "I did wonder where the bucket came from. You didn't have to stay with me all night."
"I rather thought I did," Remus said. "I didn't want you to choke to death on your own bile. For the life of me I can't remember why."
Sirius grinned. "How is he doing that?" Tonks said to Remus. "How is he not curled up in bed throwing up his internal organs?"
"Oh he did plenty of that last night," Remus said bitterly. "I'm not sure he has any left."
Tonks bit her lip again. "Well that explains it."
"Would you please not talk about me as if I'm not here?" Sirius said.
"You're lucky I'm talking to you at all," Remus said.
"Why? What did I do?"
Remus rested his elbow on the table and leant on his hand wearily, regarding his friend with a raised eyebrow. "Let's just say your aim leaves a little to be desired."
Sirius looked momentarily startled. "That was you?"
Remus echoed his expression almost perfectly. "Who did you think it was?"
"Sandra Hathaway," Sirius admitted sheepishly.
"Sandra Hathaway?" Remus said, furrowing his brow as he thought. "That Ravenclaw prefect you went out with?"
"Yep."
"I had a lucky escape, then."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing," Remus said. "Just that on several occasions I opened a cupboard door and saw you two doing things that made me want to remove my brain and scrub it clean, none of which I would particularly have appreciated you trying to do with me."
"Are you sure you want to be talking about seeing things that make you want to yank your brain out and give it a good scrubbing, Moony?" Sirius said. "Because if you do, I'll see your Sandra Hathaway and raise you a favourite cousin."
Remus pressed his fingers together and bounced them on his lip. "Fair enough," he said, not entirely succeeding in concealing his mischievous smile behind his fingers. "Consider the subject closed."
"Oh no," Sirius said, grinning. "You're not getting off that lightly."
Remus sighed. "Go on, then," he said. "Let's get it over and done with."
"What?" Sirius said, his face fixed in a not-especially-convincing innocent expression.
"Whatever excruciatingly embarrassing little speech – or speeches – you have planned."
"You think you know me so well."
"I can read you like a book, Black."
"A cheap, trashy paperback?"
"Indeed," Remus said, leaning forward and staring intently at Sirius. "One with a very unconvincing hero on the front. A hero who has perhaps forgotten certain things that his oldest friend knows about him."
Remus raised his eyebrow, and Tonks' eyes switched rapidly between the two as if she was watching a tennis match. "Certain things," Remus continued, "that, perhaps, the hero would not want certain members of his family to know about. Certain things that he should keep in mind when he makes whatever speech he's about to make."
"What are you talking about, Moony?"
"I'll give you a clue," Remus said. "The first word is Rebecca, and the second is Hammond."
Sirius' eyes widened to an almost alarming extent and he fell back in his chair as if Remus had pushed him. "You wouldn't."
Remus leant back in his chair, resting his head on the thumb and index finger of one hand. "Make your speech," he said, tapping his cheek with his finger, a rather impish look on his face, "and then we'll see, won't we?"
Sirius swallowed and cleared his throat. "I was just going to say that I'm, you know, going to stay out of it entirely," he said. "None of my business, really."
Remus took a sip of his tea. "Thank you."
"I hate you sometimes," Sirius muttered, his pursed lips twitching from side to side in annoyance that his plan had been foiled.
"I know."
Tonks made a note to file the name Rebecca Hammond and bring it up at a later date, thinking that if whatever it was had such a hold over her cousin, it was probably a story worth hearing.
Sirius glowered at Remus for a few minutes, and then got bored and started to try and draw them both into a post-party dissection which carefully skirted any mention of anything he might have seen happen between them in the kitchen. They were just discussing what kind of charm the twins may have used on the streamers when the door opened and the room filled with chattering voices and red hair as Molly shooed the Weasley clan in to breakfast and Hermione and Harry tagged along obediently.
"If you'll excuse me," Remus said, standing up. "I didn't get much sleep last night."
He exchanged a flurry of good mornings with the children, and then disappeared through the door.
Tonks waited a moment, and then, ignoring Sirius' juvenile suggestive glances, slipped out of the kitchen and followed Remus upstairs. She knocked softly on his door, and he opened it immediately, smiling at her as he gestured for her to come in and closed the door behind her.
She'd never been in his room before, and she took the opportunity to sneak a look at it. It wasn't nearly as tidy or ordered as she thought it might have been. It lacked the piles of clothes everywhere that her room made a speciality of, but the desk was as cluttered as hers was, piled high with folders she, Arthur and Kingsley had copied at the Ministry on one side, and thick, dusty, reference books on the other, with rolls of parchment nestling together in the centre. The bed was made but rather inexpertly, and his bookcase was full, but with all the volumes on one side in an order that appeared to be entirely random, as if he'd shoved them in anywhere they'd fit.
"Hi," she said, suddenly feeling the twinge of nervousness in her stomach again.
"Hello," he said. "I apologise for having to blackmail your cousin in front of you."
"No need," she said. "I quite enjoyed it. I take it that wasn't your first time using him against himself?"
"No," he said. "He does make it rather easy. I daresay he'll make me pay for it at some point, though."
"Maybe not," she said.
Remus raised a disbelieving eyebrow at her. "Wishful thinking," she concurred. She shifted from foot to foot with awkwardness. "Anyway," she said. "I just thought you might like the opportunity to say whatever you were going to say downstairs."
"Oh," he said. "Yes. I was just wondering if – "
There was a knock at the door, and Remus sighed at her, his eyes twinkling. "I suppose I should have seen that coming," he whispered.
Instinctively Tonks dodged behind the door, and Remus shot her a conspiratorial look as he stepped forward and opened it, hiding her from whoever was on the other side of the door.
"Harry," he said.
"Hello Professor," Harry said.
"You don't have to call me Professor any more, Harry."
"I know," Harry replied. "Force of habit. Sorry."
"What can I do for you?"
"There's a spell in one of the books you bought me for Christmas that I think might be really useful for us all to learn," he said. "Only I don't quite understand it and Hermione can't explain it to me properly. Sirius said I should ask you about it, and that you weren't doing anything important at the moment so…"
Remus let out a breath which, to Tonks at least, sounded very much like the word 'git'. She bit her lip to keep from blurting out a laugh and giving away her position and when that was on the brink of failing, clamped a hand over her mouth. She hadn't expected Sirius' retribution to be so swift. "Of course," Remus said good-naturedly. "Why don't we go downstairs where there's more room and you can show me what the problem is?"
Harry murmured his assent and Remus shot her the briefest of glances. "I'll owl you," he said dryly, and then closed the door behind him.
She chuckled to herself for a few minutes and then crept out of Remus' room and back downstairs to amuse herself watching Remus glower at Sirius and Sirius pretend not to know what he'd done.
For the rest of the day they were always surrounded and bound to be interrupted, and so Remus didn't even try to talk to her about whatever it was that he'd been trying to talk to her about. She wondered if he'd been about to ask her out, but even in the wake of the previous night's admission it seemed like too thrilling a possibility to become reality. She didn't want to get her hopes up, just in case what he'd been about to say was 'I was just wondering if you agree that last night was a giant mistake' or something else equally crushing.
It was evening before they ran into each other alone, in the hallway. "Ah, Tonks," he said, peering up and down the corridor. "Have you got a minute?" he added. She nodded, and he opened the door to the library for her, ushering her inside. He perched on the edge of the sofa, and she followed suit.
He looked at her for a very long time. "I was just giving people a chance to interrupt," he said, and she let out a soft chuckle.
"What did you want to talk about?"
"To be honest I can't remember," he sighed, shaking his head ruefully. "This morning I had it all planned – I had a speech – "
"A speech?"
"I was up all night," he said, "and the range of reading material Sirius has in his room is – shall we say – interesting, but limited in scope. And mostly pictures."
She chuckled at what she thought he was probably implying, and when she looked up, Remus was staring into the middle-distance in thought. "I'm fairly certain the speech started with the word 'I'," he said, snapping his eyes back to hers. "The rest eludes me at present."
She laughed, and he smiled somewhat nervously. "Actually," he said, with such utter sincerity that the flutters that had taken all day to slowly disperse instantly sprang back into life, "I wanted to ask you if you might like to go out with me."
Her heart fluttered so madly she thought it might take off. "Oh," she said. "Yes."
"You don't want to give it a moment's thought?" he said, giving her a rather disbelieving lopsided smile that made her stomach twist into an entirely new position.
"No," she said.
"Are you sure?"
"Are you trying to talk me out of it?"
"No," he said, letting out a soft breath of laughter. "It's just – if you'd changed your mind – or thought better of it – "
"I haven't."
"It's just – "
He stalled, his brow furrowed. He seemed on the verge of saying something that was causing him a great deal of effort. She edged slightly closer to him on the sofa. He avoided her eyes for a moment, but then took a breath and fixed his soft grey eyes on hers, making her heart buckle. "I'm keenly aware that I don't really have a lot to offer a girl," he said, his eyes flickering down again momentarily. "I'm abysmally poor, and with my – er – condition that's not going to change in the near future. I won't be able to take you to fancy restaurants or anything."
"Oh well you needn't worry about that," she said. "I'm banned from nearly every wizarding restaurant in Great Britain already, so you couldn't, even if you wanted to."
He let out another soft chuckle and then wrestled himself back to seriousness, seemingly against his own wishes. "And I'm older than you are," he said, "quite a bit older, actually. I mean, when you were born I was already a moody teenager, and when you were seventeen I was thirty. When I was your age, you were ten –"
She smiled at him, and he stopped. "And if you'd asked me out when I was ten, that would've been a problem," she said. "Mostly because you'd still be in prison."
"If that's supposed to make me feel less like a lecherous old man," he said, leaning back on the seat and raising an eyebrow at her, "it could do with a little work."
"Sorry," she said, sniggering slightly as she followed his lead and sank backwards. She turned towards him slightly. "If it's any help I don't think of you as remotely old."
His eyes flashed with amusement as he glanced at her. "How about lecherous?"
"I'm reserving judgement on that until I've got more evidence."
He paused for a moment, evidently on the verge of a grin, and seemingly having lost his thread. He swallowed. "And, of course," he said, "a stroll by the light of the full moon is completely out of the question."
"I've never been much of a one for romantic clichés," she said.
"Somehow," he said, "I suspected you wouldn't be."
His knee brushed hers as he turned towards her slightly, far closer than she'd thought he would be. "I just wanted to make sure you'd thought about things," he said, his eyes as soft as he looked at her as his voice when he spoke.
"I have," she said. "And the answer's still yes."
He gazed at her with a glint of something unusual in his eyes, something she wasn't sure she'd seen before, and held her eyes with his for so long she could've probably counted his eyelashes if she'd thought to instead of just gazing back.
"Well, then," he said, smiling.
"Well then, what?" she asked.
"I didn't really have anything else to add," he said. "I just felt one of us should say something, and, although I have a reputation for being rather taciturn, I thought it should be me."
"Oh," she said.
"I'm done now, though."
"Shame," she said, "because I could listen to you ramble on all night."
He smiled widely, and then slowly closed the rather short distance between them. He raised his hand to her cheek and looked into her eyes briefly before he touched his lips to hers. She was gradually coming to the conclusion that kissing Remus was certain to cause a number of sensations: a rather light-headed, intoxicated feeling, a fizzing in her veins, and a delightful all over tingle that only intensified when his hand moved across the skin of her cheek and into her hair. He gently teased her lips apart with his, giving her a languid kiss which filled her with a rather desperate yearning for more. He pulled away, his eyes sparkling. "I have to ask," he said, scuffing her cheek with his thumb as he gazed into her eyes. "How on earth do you get banned from a restaurant?"
She smiled at him, then laughed rather breathily. "It's easier than you'd think," she said. "Well, maybe not for a normal person," she added, "but if you're the kind of person who's a menace to crockery, accidentally impales themselves on chopsticks, or, say, covers the proprietor's mother-in-law in French onion soup and smacks her on the head with a ladle, pretty easy."
He leant forward and their lips met for the briefest and most exquisite of seconds before he pulled back again, just far enough to look her in the eye. "Impaled on chopsticks?"
"Only once. Total freak occurrence."
"Oh," he murmured, his eyebrows twitching in amusement. As he brushed his lips across hers, she could feel him smiling. She raised a hand to his face and sighed into him.
Then the door slammed open. Tonks and Remus sprang back to their respective ends of the sofa, exchanging embarrassed, guilty glances as Fred and George stumbled in, arguing about one of their concoctions.
"Professor," George said. If they'd been rumbled, Tonks saw no trace of it on George's face, and she thought that seeing a former professor kissing someone probably would have produced at least a smirk, and probably a joke, if not a stampede out of the room to tell everyone they'd ever met.
"Tonks," Fred added, equally unruffled. "Didn't know you were in here."
"We were just looking for a hint about recipes that might work with engorging charms."
"Working on an idea for the ultimate blow up, blow out banquet."
"Thought we'd try a book, rather than trial and error."
"For a change."
"Sick of getting accidentally poisoned."
"You know how it is."
"Bottom shelf," Remus said, rolling his eyes. "Start on the right. And don't tell your mother I helped you."
The twins made for the bookcase. Remus jerked his head towards the door, and Tonks followed him out into the hall. He closed the door on Fred and George, who were arguing about whether to start with The Silver Spoon: Recipes To Impress or Cupboard Love: Recipes To Keep Those You Love In Line.
"Given our luck today," he said, "I'd better make this quick. Friday?" he said, and she nodded. "Do you want to meet here?"
"I don't think so," she said. "It's taken you – " she checked her watch " – nine hours to ask me out. Imagine how long it would take us to actually make it out of the door."
He made a face of exasperated agreement. "I could pick you up at your flat?" he offered.
"Ok," she said. "I'm working until seven, but after that I'm all yours."
They arranged to meet at eight, and she scribbled her address on a scrap of parchment, told him where to Apparate to and handed it to him. He tucked it into his pocket. "Anyway," he said, "as I was saying before – "
"Hmm? Were you saying something?"
"Erm," he said, biting his lips thoughtfully. "I think it went something like this…"
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and slowly brushed his lips over hers again. She was vaguely aware of a door opening.
"Well well, Moony," Sirius said. "Sprung twice in two days. Just a slave to your hormones, these days, I see."
Remus pulled away and sighed, giving her a rather apologetic glance. Sirius strode past them and ran up the stairs, sniggering.
"You should have smothered him when you had the chance," Tonks said.
As Tonks slipped back into bed that night, she was still grinning, and she couldn't, hand on heart, say that she expected the situation to change any time soon.
A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter (especially wcoast-girl for recommending it on LJ). Everyone who reviews this one is, I think, entitled to a full on snog from the fan fic Remus of their choice, assuming, of course, they can find somewhere to do it ; )
