Tonks stared down at their entwined fingers. Oh, gods, this is not happening. I won't let it happen. She tried to stay calm. "It really was an accident," she said. "I'm sorry I scared everyone. I'll apologise to the Macbeths as soon as I get dressed." She looked around the room for her tracksuit. Had Fiona taken it to mend and clean?

"Didn't you hear me?"

I'm not deaf, you idiot, of course I bloody well heard you!

She resisted the impulse to yell and squeezed Jerry's fingers gently. When his grip relaxed, Tonks drew her hand away and crossed her arms. "You're one of my best mates," she said. "You mean a lot to me, too." So don't eff-up our friendship, please, please, PLEASE!

"Look at me."

Uh-uh. No way. If he gave her puppy-dog eyes, she'd hex him or cry. "Where are my trousers?"

Jerry knelt on the floor. "Look at me."

She buried her face in her hands. Why couldn't he take the hint? Why was he bollixing everything up? Tonks froze when she felt lips press against the back of her right hand, and then her left.

"I love you," Jerry said. "I want to make you happy. I want your hair to turn pink." He paused, and then whispered, "Most of all, I want to hear you say you love me the way you did at the inn, right before we kissed."

"I can't." She lowered her hands. "Whatever I said that night—whatever I did—was because I thought you were Remus."

"No. You knew it was me, you said I always take care of you."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry."

"You're a Hufflepuff, loyal to the core, but if you'd open your eyes—"

"You're the one who's blind!" The frustration she'd repressed for weeks burst free. Tonks pushed the sheet off her lap, rolled to the other side of the mattress and stood. She wanted to make a point, but not without the bed between them. "Now it's your turn to look—c'mon, you've seen me naked; don't be a prude—and listen. I didn't wear these panties for you, mate. I wore them for Remus. Something came up, he couldn't visit, and I went for a run and learned the hard way not to play with sharp objects. Understand?"

"I understand Lupin's wrong for you." Jerry rose to his feet. "He's too—"

"Old, poor, and dangerous? Don't give me that prejudiced bullshit! Remus is my mate, my life partner, the only man I have ever—or will ever—love with all my soul."

Jerry flinched. After a moment, he said, "Maybe you just think that."

"I know it," she shot back, "but you don't want to believe it. You're such a wizard scout you think I need saving when I don't. Tell the truth," she said quickly, when he started to speak. "It was only when I started leaning on you to cheer me up that everything changed, wasn't it?"

"No. My life changed two years ago, during the first case we worked together."

Two years ago? If that's true, his psycho ex-girlfriends weren't as paranoid as I thought for accusing us of being more than partners and friends. She remembered that first day. "I punched you in the arm."

"Because I told you it wasn't just your metamorphosing that makes you sexy."

Tonks lifted her fists like a Muggle boxer. "I'm willing to have another go at knocking sense into you."

Jerry smiled faintly. "Too late for that."

Tears stung her eyes again. She grabbed the duvet from the foot of the bed and wrapped it around herself like a sarong.

"You don't have to cover up."

"Yes, I do." A shirt that barely covered her midriff and a scrap of mesh and lace were not convince-a-mate-he-doesn't-really-fancy-you attire. She sat on the edge of the mattress. "We need to talk."

Jerry continued to stand. "Will you give me a chance to be more than a friend?" His smile twisted downward. "If you won't, there's nothing to talk about."

"Sure there is. Auror partners deal with this sh—stuff all the time. It's proximity. If you work every day with somebody and they're attractive, you notice. It doesn't have to affect the relationship."

"Do you think I'm attractive?"

"Of course I do. You're nice to look at and a nice guy. I lucked out."

"Are you attracted to me?"

He was giving her puppy-dog eyes: vulnerable and hopeful. Her vision blurred. Tonks pressed her lips together and shook her head. She wanted to hug him, not kiss him.

"If that's how you feel..." Jerry walked towards the door.

She jumped up to block his way. "Where are you going? Back to the Hog's Head? I'll get dressed and come with you."

"Pomfrey said for you to go to the Hospital Wing when you awoke. She needs to follow up, make sure you're healing properly."

Jerry wasn't meeting her eyes. Tonks started to panic. "I don't want her poking and frowning at me. I'm fine. See?" She tugged at the bandages on her arm. They wouldn't budge. "What did the old harpy do, put a spell on them?"

"Yes."

"Okay, I'll go."

"I'll tell Dawlish where you are."

Tonks lifted her arm. "Does he know about...?"

"I sent a Patronus last night to inform him of the accident."

Jerry still wasn't looking at her. Her stomach knotted with tension. "Tell him it won't affect his precious duty schedule. We'll patrol this afternoon."

"I won't. I'm going to take Dawlish up on his offer of a transfer back to London. Effective immediately."

"Don't," she said. "Don't do it. Don't leave me."

He lifted wet eyes. "The last time you said that, I thought it meant you cared about me more than you realised and if I just waited..." Jerry brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. "But there's no use anymore."

"I won't let you go." Fat teardrops splashed her skin. "I won't lose another friend."

Jerry's face crumpled. "You aren't losing me; I just—can't—see you everyday. It hurts too much."

She broke down. "Oh, gods." Tonks threw her arms around Jerry and hugged him with all her strength. Sadness clogged her throat and thickened her voice. "I'm so very, very sorry."

He held her close and then lowered his arms. "Me too."

When he stepped away from her, Tonks let her friend go, but couldn't stop herself from calling after him, "If I send a Christmas card will your mum burn it?"

Jerry paused, but didn't turn around. "Better make it flame-proof, just in case."

"I will. Bye, Jerry."

"Goodbye, Tonks."

Fiona brought in the cleaned tracksuit right after Jerry left. The only question she asked was if Tonks would like coffee or breakfast.

"No, thanks for everything, I've got to check in with Madam Pomfrey."

"We were glad to help. Hamish took the children to visit his mother, but I'll tell him how well you've recovered when he gets back."

Did he whisk the kids away last night when she showed up bleeding, or later, when Pomfrey called her injury a "cry for help" and her mental health was in doubt? Tonks didn't ask. She tried to smile. "Tell him I'll use a stick, not claws, to rattle the castle gates from now on."

"That's good. If you ever want to talk..."

Meaning Fiona thought she'd made up the story and might have another self-injury episode. Fabulous. "Ta, thanks," Tonks said briskly. She placed her clothes on the bed and picked up the trousers.

Unlike Jerry earlier, Fiona took the hint. She left.

When Tonks exited the cottage, she Apparated to the gates of Hogwarts and nudged them open with her foot. The thought of touching the bars with bare hands made her skin crawl. Once she reached the castle, she used a Disillusionment Charm to avoid the students on their way to the Great Hall for breakfast and headed to the dungeon level instead of the Hospital Wing.

She became visible and knocked on the door of Snape's private quarters. "It's me. Open up."

It was a surprise that he didn't force her to wait in the corridor. The door opened at once. Snape regarded her with an uplifted brow. "Are you here to verbalise your cry for help?" he asked in a tone that could curdle milk.

A filthy word slipped out of her mouth. "Pomfrey told you I tried to kill myself?"

"She termed it a suicidal gesture: a lethal action with non-lethal intent."

"I have another term for what happened: an accident."

Snape looked into her eyes.

Memory surfaced in a flash of images. She dropped the stick...watched fingertips become claws...gripped the iron bars with her left hand and slashed with her right...blood pooled and dripped...

Tonks broke his gaze. "That's enough!" What had happened afterwards was none of his business. "Why did she tell you, anyway? I thought Healers and mediwitches were bound by confidentiality."

"She thought you wanted me to know."

"Why would—" Tonks broke off with a short laugh. "I don't come for lessons anymore so she thinks you dumped me and I slit my wrist to get sympathy?"

Snape curled his lip.

Tonks said, "That makes me want to avoid her more than ever." She pulled up the jacket sleeve. "I can't take these off. Please say you can."

"I can."

"Will you? I said please."

Snape's expression was sour as he waved his wand.

The bandages fell away to reveal thin, silvery scars.

-

The area where the pack resided was among the oldest in Inverness. It was notorious for poverty and crime. Remus kept a tight grip on the handle of the deceptively small Capacious Bag as he entered the rundown industrial estate housing Skoll's lair. He remained on guard, although he saw only derelict warehouses that matched the cold, gray sky in bleakness.

"Are you Lupin?" A teenager had stepped out of a side door after he'd passed. The boy was dressed in black, with backcombed blue hair that made him look younger instead of older, the way he'd probably intended.

"Aren't you underage?" Remus said to the boy, who held a green bottle of Buckfast Tonic Wine in his hand.

"So?"

"Three small glasses a day, for good health and lively blood," Remus quoted softly, wondering if the boy had ever read the label's notice that the wine provided none of the benefits it once claimed. Likely not. The "tonic" was cheap, sweet, and had a high alcohol content: qualities that appealed to the underaged and antisocial. He extended his hand. "Yes, I'm Remus Lupin."

"Donnie Spence." The boy's dead fish handshake revealed his lack of self-confidence.

"A pleasure to meet you, Donnie."

"Yeah, okay, let's go." He led the way toward a building that had upper windows intact while the ground floor panes were boarded over.

"The lower level is the safe room?" Remus asked.

Donnie nodded. "We sleep upstairs." He knocked on one of the covered windows. It magically slid to the side to reveal a door. "Go in."

Each face that turned when Remus entered was sharpened by mistrust and deprivation. That was expected. Their lives were hard and he'd lived among wizards. The surprise was that the pack members who lounged on tatted sofas and chairs that looked taken from skips or charity shops were young. None appeared older than twenty.

This could have been my life. Bitten by Greyback, taken from my family, raised to steal and kill and hate.

A dark-haired young man nudged a girl off his lap to unwind from a chair. "Skoll's waiting. Follow me." He sauntered toward the metal stairway in the back corner of the warehouse.

Remus was reminded of another shaggy-haired lad. "Do you know Will Hughes?"

"He was my flatmate in Salford."

"You're Frank."

"That's right. Will's told me about you, too, Lupin." Halfway up the stairs, he paused to look over his shoulder. "Haven't heard from him in awhile. Any reason why?"

"Lillie keeps him busy," Remus said easily. It was the truth.

"I remember. I was always kicking those two out of my room." Frank resumed the climb. "Not that I blamed them. That was a great bed."

"Yes." Remus thought of Nymphadora crawling across the mattress and prudently changed the subject. "Should I store my gear somewhere before meeting with Skoll?" They had reached the upper floor, an open, loft-like space. Scattered amid half dozen camping tents were sleeping bags piled with rucksacks and holdalls. Unless a pack member obtained a tent, there was no privacy or security. It wasn't sleeping in the rough—there was shelter from the elements and what looked to be toilet and shower facilities behind partitions on each side—but council housing was luxurious by comparison.

"He said you were to go right in." Frank pointed to the largest tent.

Remus could tell it was wizard-made. Unlike the other tents, Skoll's was made of black canvas, not Muggle fabric, and the "vestibule" flap unzipped itself as he approached. Inside, the living space resembled the lounge of a flat, with pen and ink drawings of wolves on dark "walls" and two beige leather chairs flanked by matching leather sofas.

"Have a seat, Lupin," growled a voice from a back "room."

"I'm admiring your artwork," Remus said, as he took a step closer to the drawing of a wolf chasing the sun hung behind the sofa. "I almost hear the jaws snap. It's a vivid image."

"It's Skoll, chasing Sol across the sky." The man who entered wasn't lean and hungry-looking as his namesake. His long blond hair and brawny physique brought to mind the Norse god Thor. "Soon, he'll devour her and plunge the world into darkness."

Remus asked mildly, as if out of intellectual curiosity, "Do you think Ragnarok is here?"

"The doom of those who hold themselves as gods is certain," Skoll replied. "The final battle is coming. Fenrir has burst free, giants and the inhabitants of hell will rise to scorch the earth. Old ways will perish and a new world will arise." His smile revealed the inner wolf. "For wizards, this is the beginning of the end."

-

A/N: It's the end of the world as we know it... REM has been singing in my head along with Matchbox Twenty. Well I, believe, it all, is coming to an end... :D Ironic, Muggle-loathing werewolves using Norse mythology to screw their courage to the sticking point, as Lady Macbeth would say, but (oh well) next chapter will show how far they've come. Hopefully, Who-ish and Grinchy readers alike will say about Christmas, "It came! Somehow or other it came, just the same." It's been a long wait.

The last chapter of Moonlight and Shadow was when Tonks told Jerry, "Don't leave me." Sirius had gone through the veil and she was afraid she'd lose everyone else she loved until she had a talk with Healer Wells. For a walk down memory lane, Jerry's psycho ex-girlfriends Tonks refers to are Anne (she had her Mrs. C orchestrated meltdown in ch 6 of Promise of a Spring Moon) and Meg (the Muggle who didn't believe in magic in ch 14 of Moonlight and Shadow).

Every time I reread the Christmas chapter of HBP, I had a hard time with Remus' description of the werewolves. Why was the situation so grim when they could use magic to get what they needed? They might steal, but they wouldn't have to kill to eat, unless...the pack he referred to was the one made up of children Greyback had raised "to hate normal wizards," yet hadn't bothered to teach magic, so they lived by their wits just like Muggles.

In my usual reluctance to write off the top of my head, heh, I scanned loads of Inverness Courier articles on deprived areas, underage drinking, crime, and even camping equipment. To balance the serious stuff, I perused the Inverness page found at uncyclopedia ("the content free encyclopedia"). From that article, I'll confess my fave export is "Depression in a jar" and there's a list of twenty "strange but true" facts by Madscotsman that's mad craic, for your brain, at least. I almost want to go to the seedy side of Inverness (where the pack resides), now, so I can experience the Ferry Time Warp Syndrome, in which you get the craic for a few days, stagger back to civilisation, only to spend your last 20p on a paper and learn that what seemed like two days of hazy memories has actually taken up three weeks of your life. (Yes, the long sentence is a moshed quote. :D)

Before I hope reviews are what's crackalackin', I have to thank the readers who gave the equivalent of "Happiness in a jar" with their response to the last chapter. 40/16, adrienne.hope, alix33, Bandon Banshee, Calenmarwen, Carnivalgirl, ChristinaAngel, Don'tCallMeNymphadora4, ElspethBates, Freja Lercke-Falkenborg, GoodQueenA, ishandtwofourths, Kates Master, Lady Adrienne Faery, Ladyofthebookworms, MollyCoddles, Moontime, Mrs. Hermione Jane Weasley, Operamuse, potteronpotluvhim, Rose of the West, Siriusblack18, siriuslycrazy4snuffles, sunny9847, SunshineDaisies816, tambrathegreat, TwilightFanatic123456789, vintagejgc, Writer Merrin, xLupinxLoverx, and Ziroana.