"So, dearest cousin," Sirius said, tipping the last of the Firewhiskey into his tumbler. "How did you enjoy your first Order meeting?"

"It was…" Tonks searched for the right word in her mind. It had most definitely been interesting, Dumbledore had given her so much information her mind was still struggling to take it all in. The truth about Sirius and Peter Pettigrew, Mad-Eye's impersonation by Barty Crouch Jr last year, Voldemort and what was going on, and what their jobs within the Order entailed. Mainly it was stake out missions and collecting evidence quietly until the Minister was ready to listen.

But for a secret organisation that was in serious danger if discovered by the Ministry, it had been surprisingly…normal. Tonks wasn't sure what she had been expecting, it wasn't as if she'd had much time to acclimatize, but sitting in a warm, clean kitchen (that actually looked lived in, compared to what she had seen in the hallway) at a table with people who laughed and joked together like old friends – apart from Snape who had sat looking like he was sucking on a lemon whenever he wasn't talking – while Molly Weasley fussed around, forcing tea and cake down everyone's throat had not been high on her list. She had sat quietly throughout most of it, shutting up and sitting down after her attempt to help Molly with the tea had resulted in spilled tea and broken china.

After the meeting, most had left fairly quickly, but Sirius had asked her to stay, saying that she was the first family member he'd seen in years, and one of the good ones to boot, so they may as well have a catch up.

"Different?" Remus offered from his seat opposite her. He hadn't moved from the table since he'd sat down at the beginning of the meeting. Several times throughout the meeting he had stopped Sirius from pouring more whiskey, usually when Snape was speaking. Sirius had told her that Remus lived with him at Number 12, so her guess was that he was trying to minimise the consequences of a drunk member of the house of Black, which he would inevitably have to deal with. She smiled.

"Something like that."

"Don't let anyone fool you, most of these get togethers are very boring." Sirius told her wisely as he spilled some Firewhiskey down his shirt.

"I don't think the main aim of these meetings is to provide you with entertainment, Padfoot." Remus said, a tired smile on his face.

"Then you've been sadly misinformed." The dark haired wizard winked at him conspiratorially. The three of them fell into a comfortable silence. Tonks watched the fire, letting the heat wash over her and feeling tired, yet content. It was disconcerting how a house so filthy and unpleasant had a room as warm and welcoming as this.

Suddenly, Sirius coughed on his drink, at the same time Remus said in surprise, "Your hair!"

"Hm?" Tonks held it up. The bright red corkscrew curls had dissolved into shoulder length waves, in a dreamy shade of pink.

"Have your eyes changed too?" Remus said, looking at her in fascination. She could very easily picture him as a Professor.

"What colour are they?" She said, frowning.

"Dark brown." Sirius said, having regained his composure. "I forgot that you did that."

"Did what?" Remus said, looking between the two of them. Tonks had an inkling that he was the kind of man who liked to know what was going on all the time.

"My dear cousin here," Sirius gestured at her grandly, as if Remus hadn't seen her before. "Is a Meta…a metamo…what's the word for it?"

Tonks laughed. "Metamorphagus."

"Exactly."

Remus raised an eyebrow. "I had wondered how you'd managed to pull off all those pranks Bill told us about."

"Apparently morphing into your teachers to scare students in the middle of lessons is frowned upon in an educational environment." Tonks grinned and shrugged. "Who knew?"

Sirius leaned forwards, swaying slightly, and Tonks realised just how drunk her cousin actually was. "So…what do you look like really?"

Tonks arched an eyebrow at him. "The same, really. A few more skin problems and horrible plain hair, but not that different. Being able to make yourself look like anyone else loses its novelty when you wake up no longer full of teenage self hatred, and you can't even recognise yourself."

She fell silent, wondering if she'd said too much. She eyed her glass. Sirius had summoned two more bottles of Firewhiskey from the cupboard and charmed them to keep their glasses topped up, and the three of them had been drinking steadily since the kitchen had emptied. Her eyes glanced upwards to see Remus watching her, chin resting on his hand. He smiled at her.

"I don't know." She shrugged, eyes falling back to the table. "It felt like an insult to my parents, to deliberately try and make myself look...not like myself. It's a visible gift from them to us, our appearance, and it seemed ungrateful to try and hide that part of me." Mentally shaking herself for letting herself get carried away, she laughed. "Merlin's Beard Sirius what's in this Firewhiskey? You've got me rambling on like a drunk at last call."

The only response she got was a large snore from the head of the table. Sirius' head had fallen backwards and he was currently expelling some interesting noises towards the ceiling. Remus smiled apologetically. "I think you lost him at skin problems."

Tonks tried to frown in mock annoyance, although her features felt heavy and hard to control. "And you let me carry on? Poor you, having to listen."

"On the contrary, I felt enlightened by your wisdom."

She narrowed her eyes at the man sitting in front of her, until he laughed. She decided, not for the first time since arriving at Grimmauld Place, that she very much liked his laugh.

"I'm being serious!" He said.

"Oh yes," said Tonks sarcastically. "Who wouldn't want to listen to the drunk ramblings of a twenty two year old stranger while their friend is attempting to bring the ceiling down with his snores?"

Remus pulled himself to his feet, trying and failing not to sway a little. "Well if it makes you feel any better, you sounded much older and wiser than any other twenty two old I've ever met. Or thirty five year old, now I think about it. Come on Padfoot." He looped his arm around his friend's shoulders and heaved him up. Sirius mumbled something unintelligible and snuggled his head in Remus' shoulder. He shot Tonks a glance that was both resigned and amused and she giggled into her glass.

"I suppose that's my cue to leave." She said, also getting to her feet and pulling on her bright pink jacket.

"Not necessarily." Remus said, securing Sirius' arm around his shoulder and making her pause. He raised an eyebrow at her. "You have my full permission to sleep at the kitchen table all night."

She snorted. "I'm sure your permission carries a lot of authority in this house."

He looked at the unconscious man in his arms pointedly. "Someone's has to. But honestly, we have plenty of rooms if you're…ah…not in a fit state to Apparate. The cleanliness is definitely questionable but they are, for the most part, safe."

Tonks grinned, plucking a handful of powder from a pot on the mantlepiece. "Thank Merlin for Floo Powder. Goodnight, Remus."

"Goodnight Nymphadora."

"Don't call me Nymphadora!" She narrowed her eyes at him as the green flames sprung up at her feet.

Seconds later, she appeared in the fireplace of her own flat, the warmth of the Grimmauld Place kitchen and Remus' farewell smile lingering on her skin.

As the weeks slid on, Tonks found herself looking forwards to the meetings more and more. Aside from Snape, they were a good group of people and she liked them all very much. A few members could only manage to come to the occasional meeting, but she, Moody, Kingsley, the Weasleys (minus Bill, who'd had to return, temporarily, to Egypt to make his farewells before officially coming home), Emmeline and Dedalius, as well as Snape and Dumbledore, were at every meeting without fail. Sirius and Remus were also there, and more often than not the three of them would stay late after the meeting, drinking and talking. She had even stayed over once or twice, when Remus had decided that she'd got too caught up in Firewhiskey drinking competitions with Sirius. For all that they talked about being best mates at school, Tonks sometimes got the feeling that it was as much a reunion for the two friends as it was for her and her cousin. They hadn't seen each other for thirteen years, one locked up and the other….Tonks didn't actually know what Remus' life had been like between the First Wizarding War and going to teach at Hogwarts. When she'd asked him, he'd given her a vague smile and very subtly redirected the question onto Sirius. That had led to a drunken rant about Azkaban, which Remus must have known would happen. He was very good at not talking about himself and yet learning everything about the people around him. Last week she had told him her favourite childhood memory and it wasn't until after she got home that she realised she didn't even know when his birthday was.

So when Tonks Apparated onto the front step of Grimmauld Place on a dry summer evening, she was determined that by the end of the night she was going to have learned something about the polite, mysterious man who sat opposite her at every meeting. She couldn't explain why it affected her so much, perhaps because she and Sirius were so open with their lives or perhaps she was just nosy, but it didn't matter.

It didn't matter at all, she found out, because Remus wasn't at the meeting. And it bothered her. All through Mad-Eye's update on the most suspicious people that the Order needed to keep an eye on (which was about forty five minutes longer than it needed to be), she kept glancing at the empty chair opposite her or up at the ceiling, as if she'd be able to see into his room. She knew it was silly, he might just be ill or out for the evening, there was nothing stopping him from having a social life after all. No one else seemed bothered by Remus' absence, least of all Sirius, who actually seemed to be enjoying the freedom to drink as much Firewhiskey as his heart desired. But by the time Mad-Eye finally wrapped everything up, her leg was subconsciously jumping wildly under the table. As people began to stretch and make conversation, she turned to Sirius, wanting to ask where Remus was, but Kingsley got to her first.

"I thought you might want to know your shifts this week." He said in response to her raised eyebrows.

"Oh, oh yeah…thanks Kingsley."

As he recited the list, her ears pricked. Tuesday night with Mad-Eye in some shack up north, Wednesday with Emmaline patrolling Diagon Alley, and Friday with Remus watching Malfoy Manor all night. It would be her first shift with Remus, and the thought of spending twelve hours with just him for company made something vaguely uncomfortable prickle in her stomach. It's not that she didn't like him, she did, but before there'd always been Sirius to fill any silence and give them a shared source of entertainment. She didn't do well in potentially awkward situations, and she really didn't want to embarrass herself in front of Remus. He was one of those people she felt the need to excel in front of, to impress. She had felt the same with Moody when they first met.

"…Tonks?"

"Hm?"

Kingsley was looking down at her and she flushed. "Sorry. Got distracted. Sounds good."

He sighed. "As I was saying, the rest of the Weasley family will be arriving here tomorrow. Just prepare yourself. Molly's been waiting for an opportunity to scrub this house from top to bottom, she'll probably try and get you, Sirius and Remus involved, as it's you three that seem to be here most of the time now."

If there was a note of inference in his voice, she ignored it. "What about you?!" Tonks said, only slightly pretending to be outraged. "You and Moody are here all the time too! How have you managed to get out of this?"

He adjusted his robes rather smugly. "She didn't ask me to help."

She threw her hands up. "Perfect. This is what I get for being so kind and helpful."

Kingsley chuckled at her indulgently, and bid her farewell. She and the older wizard had become rather fond of each other over the past month or so. During office hours he would often visit her at her desk and they would talk about everything and nothing. Annabelle was, of course, highly suspicious, and Tonks was fairly sure that there were rumours flying around the office about one of the junior Aurors sleeping with one of the senior ones, but she found the whole thing rather amusing.

"Snape was on top form this evening." Sirius grumbled into his glass, drawing her attention back to him. She sighed.

"Leave it out, Sirius, you're both grown men, way too old to be starting fights across the dinner table, especially about stuff that happened while you were at school."

He glared at her. "You sound exactly like Remus. I don't need another parent, thank you very much."

She rolled her eyes, but spoke affectionately, leaning across to rest her head on his shoulder. "Maybe if you stopped acting like a child we wouldn't have to babysit you."

"Hm." He replied. "Can you blame me? It's not like I'm able to go anywhere and release a bit of tension, is it?"

Tonks sighed. She hated it when he was morose, it sucked the life out of everything. But then her mind drifted back to Remus' empty chair. "Sirius, where was Remus tonight?"

She felt him stiffen and she drew her head back. He was looking at her in vague surprise. "He's in the attic, of course."

"The attic?" Tonks was bewildered. "Why on earth is he up there?"

Her cousin looked at her like he wasn't sure if she was joking or not. "It's the full moon tonight, Tonks."

"A full moon? What…"

"Oh Merlin!" Sirius interrupted her, his mouth dropping. "You really had no idea, did you? Bloody hell I thought we all knew. Why didn't he tell you, although he might have assumed…"

"Sirius, what on earth are you talking about?"

"Remus is a werewolf, Tonks. He's upstairs getting ready for the moon."

Tonks really didn't know what to say. She blinked three times, and Sirius summoned a glass from the cupboard, tipping a generous amount of whiskey into it. Thinking about it, it made a lot of sense. His scars, his unwillingness to talk about what he'd been doing for the past ten years, in fact his reluctance to talk about himself at all. She took a deep breath and gulped some whiskey. "Is he…is he alright?"

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "That's it? That's all you want to know?"

She shrugged, although her mind was still reeling a little. "I would imagine that him as a werewolf is the same as everything I've ever read about them. It's the person who makes the difference, isn't it. I've read up on Fenrir Greyback. Remus is nothing like him and that's the important thing."

She thought she had rather impressed Sirius with her answer, he didn't seem to have a reply. So he coughed. "Fair enough. But in answer to your question, he's…as well as can be expected. While he taught at Hogwarts he had Wolfsbane potion direct from Snivellous, but he hasn't had any since leaving and it's been hard for him to adjust."

"Hasn't anyone asked Snape to keep on making it for him?"

Sirius shrugged. "No one else knows, and I'm certainly not asking that weasel for anything."

She frowned. "But if it meant that he had something to help him…"

Sirius put his hand over hers and gave it a squeeze. "It's good of you to think of him Tonks, it is. But he'd hate it if he thought anyone was going to any trouble because of him. Trust me."

Tonks snorted. "That's bloody ridiculous. We're his friends! If we don't help him who will?"

"With all due respect, he's been dealing with this for a lot longer than the two of you have been friends. It's nothing he hasn't experienced before."

She bent her head, recognising the reprimand. "I'm sorry, I just… it isn't right that he shuts himself away like this."

Her cousin smiled. "He's not shutting himself away, I'll be with him tonight, as Padfoot obviously. And the best way you can be of use to him is by not acting up, or treating him any differently."

Tonks was genuinely offended. "Of course I wouldn't! What do you take me for, Sirius?"

"We've all been there, Tonks. It's hard to know how to act or say in these situations, especially when it's someone you care about."

She sighed, hating the idea of him alone, upstairs, waiting for the moon to rise in the sky. "Are werewolves any different before the full moon? There's loads of theories about the pull of the lunar cycle."

"An avid werewolf reader, are you cousin?" Sirius laughed at her.

"When you study them relentlessly for your NEWTS, some stuff will stick in your head." She retorted, sticking her tongue out at him.

Sirius stared at the amber liquid into his glass. "I don't know about all werewolves," he replied slowly. "But with Remus…" He sighed. "It's hard to explain. It's like, he's more in focus. His edges are sharper, his colours are brighter, his presence is so much stronger and demanding. He laughs louder, he drinks more, he's more affectionate with words and actions. As horrible as it sounds, it's like the moon gives him energy and life the fuller it gets. But Remus isn't someone who's meant to be in focus, and that's the bad side of it. He's quicker to anger and violence, especially when it concerns his friends and family. He gets drunk, angry drunk and at his worst, is selfish and mean. I'm not saying I don't enjoy seeing my perfect mate get wasted and piss off Snape with me, but…"

Sirius rubbed his face, and Tonks saw a shadow pass across it.

"He's not himself. That's why he doesn't like to surround himself with a lot of people on the day of the moon. It's the day that his…attitude comes to a head. He views that side of himself as degenerative and doesn't want anyone to see it. After the full moon, he's himself again. He's bone tired, feels violated and so fucking sad, but he's Moony. He's always searching for more gentle affection afterwards."

"Gentle affection?"

Something similar to a roguish grin spread across his face. "Put it this way. Before a full moon he'd want to throw you down on his bed and do things only I would be depraved enough to want to do. After a full moon he generally just prefers a hug.

"Oh." Tonks said, not really sure how to process that last piece of, rather unusual, information. "You'd better watch out then."

Her cousin snorted, and the mood lightened a little. "No, thankfully Moony has never lusted after me, although believe me when I say he's in a minority."

"I'm sure."

"Don't be rude to your cousin. But you wouldn't believe what he was like at school. Virgin plus teenage boy hormones plus the effects of the full moon made for some serious entertainment. Once James had to lock him in our dormitory to stop him going to the library to declare his burning passion for Orla Pertet. You'll have to get him to tell you sometime."

"Like he'd want to speak to me about that kind of thing." Tonks laughed. "I barely know anything about him anyway, details of his sexual exploits at Hogwarts might not be something he wants to share."

Sirius snorted. "Don't be stupid, Tonks. Of course he'll talk to you. He likes you. Admittedly he might not want to talk about sex with you, but if you mention the name 'Orla Pertet' I promise you he will drop whatever he's holding."

The two of them laughed. Then, there was the sound of footsteps from upstairs, and the easy mood shattered into dust. Sirius shot to his feet. "That'll be him. You should go Dora, please. He'd better not see anyone except me tonight."

Tonks was torn. She wanted to stay, wanted to see Remus, let him know that she knew and didn't care one bit, it didn't change her view of him. But as the footsteps grew louder, and Sirius gave her a look that was almost pleading, she sighed. It was a matter of respecting his privacy, and she had no right to intrude. And so, she bade Sirius farewell and Apparated home.

All evening, Tonks kept glancing out of her window, watching the full moon climb higher and higher into the velvet sky. As she cooked dinner, she wondered if Sirius had taken Remus back up to the attic, and whether he was with him right now. As she brushed her teeth she thought bitterly how ironic it was that something so beautiful could cause so much harm. Tonks told herself (as she lay awake well into the early hours of the morning, her view of the moon slightly hidden by her bright pink curtains) that she'd feel like this for anyone she knew and liked who suffered from lycanthropy. When her alarm clock showed her that it was three in the morning, and the moon was still hanging resolutely in the sky she decided enough was enough, and she turned away.

This one was a journey to finish, let me tell you. I keep trying to push the romance element too soon, and have to put the breaks on. That's how nerdy I am about this couple. Hope you enjoyed guys, reviews/follows/favourites are of course always much loved and appreciated!