Remus did his usual dance with temptation. The one where he bitterly told himself he shouldn't, because he was and would always be below the rest of the magical community. Then he told himself he wouldn't, a note of desperation in that thought, because he aspired to be an ascetic, tragically bearing his burden.
Then he did.
The transgression in this instance was not too severe, more humiliating than harmful. Usually, he masturbated to memories of past encounters. That seemed safe - if the woman in question had been happy enough to do it at the time, it couldn't hurt to remember, could it?
He stayed away from memories of Marjatta if he could help it - the tall blonde Fin brought a meltwater of guilt along with her long, muscular legs and delicate pink lips. She was why he'd stayed the longest in Finland. He'd tried, he really had. He cared deeply for her, but he didn't love her and ultimately, he did not want the life she offered.
Think you're better than her because you're a tame wolf, "Moony"? Asked his inner critic sharply. Marjatta may have been a taciturn wolf-witch who lived in a forest, proudly shunned wolfsbane and eagerly howled at the moon, but she would have drawn the line at accepting a teaching post at a boarding school.
Like Remus, Marjatta was bitten as a young child - but that was where the similarities ended. Unlike Remus - and indeed all British werewolves - Marjatta was effortlessly separate from the rest of wizardkind. She did not hate them, but nor did she want to be like them.
Ophelia - real name Zhao Yue - was a much safer option. Remus met Ophelia sometime after leaving Finland, in a werewolf community near Khabarovsk, on the Russia-China border. She'd been a potioneer in Harbin when she was bitten - brewing wolfsbane was no problem, but the same could not be said of enduring ostracisation. Like Remus, Ophelia suffered crushing social rejection and self hatred - but she insisted that was now behind her. She'd found the werewolf commune over the border, and fell upon it like an oasis in the desert. She hadn't loved him - 'too self-pitying' she'd said in her harsher moments, 'too damaged' in her gentler ones - but they had been friends and she was beautiful and bluntly forwards, so one thing had led to another.
Since his return to Britain all those years ago, there had been one woman - and hadn't that ended atrociously?
But tonight, his brain had settled on someone rather closer to home. He told himself his behaviour was inappropriate on every possible level. This was pure fantasy, rather than memory, or fantasy based on memories - he hadn't been given permission and so was perving, rather than just…appreciating. Remus frantically told himself he mustn't, because was over a decade younger and she certainly wasn't a werewolf.
But he did, anyway.
With such limited fantasy fuel, he'd had to make up most of it. Would Tonks moan and murmur quietly, or would she be loud and shrill? Explicit, or shy? Somehow, he doubted that shyness was her natural state in bed - and he did not mind being ordered around a woman's body and bed. He rather liked verbal encouragement and even instruction - probably due to a mixture of its practical utility (he was shockingly inexperienced, for a man in his thirties), and a desire for reassurance.
Would she venture south? If so, would she take his cock in her mouth, or just lick it a bit? How did she like it, he wondered? Ideally not from behind - the wolfish connotations didn't do it for him. She had reasonably stocky, well-muscled legs and if she got on top he'd probably tire long before she did. He hoped she'd let him put her legs up on his shoulders, that the depth wouldn't be too much for her and she'd assure him it felt good.
He was gripping hard and moving his hand quickly, in small tugs of his foreskin near his tip. When he finished, so did the fantasy.
For goodness sake, she's not going to shag you, you lecherous old wolf.
*****break*****
It was lucky that Tonks had stayed. Over the breakfast that she delightedly took with Remus and Sirius, Emmeline Vance's wild boar patronus appeared and urgently informed the room that Narcissa Malfoy had been overheard instructing Lucius to collect her altered dress from Twilfitt and Tattings before he left Diagon Alley.
"Bugger - Dung missed a shopping trip," Tonks said. "Remus, you've probably done too many of these. We'll need to disguise you."
Tonks grabbed Remus by the shoulder while he was still sitting. Pulling out her wand, she efficiently turned his hair and slight beard black, gave him a larger nose, concealed his facial scarring and darkened his green eyes to near-black.
"Impressive!" Remus said, raising an amused eyebrow. She hastily darkened his brows, too.
"Concealment and disguise - right let's go!"
Looking at a disguised Remus, Tonks realised that he was remarkably familiar for someone she'd only met a few months before. She felt a prickle in the back of her brain, as if part of her subconscious kept trying to remember their story - before her rational mind kicked in and kicked that thought out.
On their way to the front door, Remus seemed thoughtful.
"What's troubling you?" Tonks inquired, but he made no effort to answer.
Lucius Malfoy's first stop was the pet emporium. Tonks was following him, and Remus was posted between the main apothecary in Diagon and the Diagon entrance to Mulpepper's.
"Madam," Malfoy addressed the proprietress, "I believe my Ministry colleague, Mr Yaxley, placed an order for veterinarian-prescribed maximum strength feline and canine anthelmintics? I am here to collect."
They argued over the anthelmintic - the proprietress initially huffed over how such a potentially dangerous, controlled medication had to be collected by Yaxley himself - but eventually she relented. Tonks was fairly stumped by this one - and quite tempted to write it off as being for Yaxley's own menagerie.
Malfoy's behaviour in the apothecary was a little unusual, and another customer jokingly remarked on his purchase - aconite, or wolfsbane - asking if he'd had a nasty bite recently. Though Malfoy was quick to put the man in his place, an ugly sort of flush crept up his neck. Tonks didn't find the suspiciously large quantities of aconite to be remotely suspicious, however - it was a key ingredient in wiggenweld.
His next stop was Shyverwretch's, and Tonks almost laughed at his barely-concealed embarrassment when he asked for a human anthelmintic.
"And ah…Sir…when did symptoms first arise?" Asked the proprietor delicately.
"Two weeks ago!" Malfoy muttered, his voice quiet but furious. "My private Healer has diagnosed the whole family with whipworm and pinworm infestation."
Tonks dug her nails into her palm and willed herself to keep a straight face, as she browsed a shelf full of poisons. Tonks found Malfoy's discomfort hilarious - aside from being a known Death Eater and an arrogant, bigoted arsehole (possibly now with an itchy arsehole), Malfoy also worked at the Ministry and had been exceedingly rude to her on a number of occasions. However, the fact that both he and Yaxley had inquired after such unusual medication - albeit some for animals, and some for humans - caused her heart to beat faster. They were surely up to something, unless all of the death eaters had come down with a nasty bout of intestinal worms - but what could they possibly do with wormer?
"After one teaspoon of this-" the proprietor held up a purple vial and spoke as though talking about the weather "-you will expel a large burden of pinworms in your next bowel movement."
Malfoy was puce.
The proprietor continued, his voice ruthlessly cheerful: "the anal itching should reduce within twenty four hours. One dose is generally sufficient to kill pinworm, however, you must continue to take one teaspoon daily, for a week, in order to kill the whipworm. As both are highly contagious, you must treat the entire family at once, including any staff, even if they don't have symptoms. If one person in the house has pinworm or whipworm, assume everyone does!"
This news appeared to shock Malfoy, and disgust seeped across his haughty face.
"I require fifteen quantities," was all he said.
Tonks fervently wished she could pensive the memory of Malfoy talking about intestinal worms for Proudfoot (to whom he was also very rude).
Malfoy went next to Mulpepper's. His purchases of billywig stings, boom berry juice and Moly were entirely expected, as they were wiggenweld ingredients. Tonks found his purchase of powdered sage to be quite bemusing. However, it was his final item - jobberknoll feathers - which caused her skin to prickle and her stomach to drop.
Malfoy's final stop was Twilfitt and Tattings - where he really did just collect an altered gown.
*****break*****
As soon as they got back to Grimmauld Place, Tonks was bursting to speak. She nearly tugged on Remus's sleeve.
"Veritaserum! Truth potion!" Tonks yelped. "Jobberknoll feathers are used in heaps of truth potions, most worryingly Veritaserum! Snape needs to be warned."
Veritaserum wasn't irresistible - occlumency went some way towards counteracting it, and there were antidotes. However, one needed to have the antidote on them at all times, know they'd been drugged, and actually be able to ingest it. Tonks felt sure that Snape would not be able to resist a three-pronged approach of Veritaserum, torture and legilimency.
They agreed to Floo-call Dumbledore, but when they saw his face in the fire, the old man seemed unconcerned. He merely reminded them not, under any circumstances, to tell Snape of their suspicions, asked if they worked well as partners (both said they did) and then disappeared.
"How many batches of veritaserum could be made from the number of jobberknoll feathers Malfoy bought?" Remus asked Tonks.
"Loads - maybe three big cauldrons," Tonks admitted, knowing where he was going but not trusting the sense of relief that began to spread out from her stomach.
"So Snape probably isn't the target," said Remus reasonably. "If he were, Malfoy would have only bought enough feathers to make one very small cauldron."
Tonks knew Remus was trying to reassure her, but she had to admit that his logic made sense.
"What else can jobberknoll feathers be used for?" Remus asked gently.
"Gag quills - they repel ink, so it looks like a normal quill and people try to write with it. They're pretty funny gifts, actually," said Tonks. "Also memory potions - but come on Remus, is Malfoy playing pranks on Yaxley and Macnair, trying to cure Alzheimers, or trying to force a spy to tell the truth?"
"We mustn't be hasty, Tonks," said Remus.
Hasty? For fuck's sake, she'd show him hasty.
"You're dead right Remus, there's every chance he's planning to swap Voldemort's favourite quill for a jobberknoll feather of the same colour! I can just see him elbowing the Carrows, as they all crack up at Voldemort trying to use the quill as the ink just slides off it. Banter with the Death Lads!"
Remus snorted, and Tonks felt relieved that he wasn't annoyed by her sarcasm.
"I suppose we can't do anything more than tell Dumbledore," Tonks admitted.
To distract herself, she asked him what had been troubling him earlier, when they'd stood on the front step to apparate to the Leaky.
"You told Harry you got top marks in concealment and disguise without any study," Remus said.
Really? My work ethic was the issue?
"I did, though," she said. Then to be safe, she added: "I didn't tell him never to study for anything!"
"I assumed that was due to your metamorphmagus abilities - but that doesn't help you change someone else's appearance. And those charms-" he gestured at his restored face "-are quite difficult."
"I already knew how," she said airily. "It's a bit like you and your friends, actually."
Remus looked mystified: "go on?"
"From year five to seven, I used to sneak out to Hogsmeade at night and visit the three broomsticks. This was really easy for me, I just morphed, but of course it's no fun on your own. So I learned the concealment spells, and did them on my friends. Speaking of going out - what are you doing for Halloween?"
Remus's face fell, and Tonks kicked herself - the boy who lived delivered them from Voldemort on the night of Halloween. That meant James Potter died on the night of Halloween.
"Sirius and I will probably hold a vigil," he replied and she nodded, saying she was sorry and that the significance of the date had slipped her mind.
*****break*****
Halloween fell on a Tuesday. Remus knew there was no point in even trying to keep Sirius sober - they were both unemployed, anyway. Fourteen years had blunted Remus's grief, turning it from an acute searing to a dull, gently encroaching black cloud. Back in the '80s, Halloween found him gasping for each agonised breath - now, he just felt morose.
But he knew that Sirius didn't have the luxury of wound-knitting time. His life had been paused when he entered Azkaban; though he would have grieved for the Potters from that awful rock in the North Sea, his grief would have been different. Azkaban's dementors robbed people - usually temporarily, but sometimes Remus had to wonder - of their happy memories. Sirius would have been unable to access his best memories of James, and therefore surely would have felt the sting of his best friend's death less keenly. Remus had also heard - admittedly not from Sirius - that Azkaban caused prisoners to enter a misty, dreamlike state. Even their worst memories, which the dementors so kindly allowed them to keep, had holes and inconsistencies. When they tried to fixate on a detail, it dissolved like smoke. The unsurprising end result was that Sirius hadn't spent the 80s grieving, so much as pointlessly suffering. The Potter's deaths were rawer for him.
"Why didn't he have his wand?" Sirius asked roughly.
Remus had been expecting that question - it was one he couldn't answer, and one which still kept him up at night. Why didn't James have his wand? Most witches and wizards never let their wands out of their sight - "where's my wand?" was hardly like "where are my glasses?" But it was even more extraordinary that James Potter, Order member in hiding, who knew that he and his family were constantly being hunted by the most dangerous dark wizard of all time, did not have his wand to hand.
"I don't know, Sirius," said Remus softly. "No one does - and probably no one ever will."
Sirius looked at Remus doubtfully.
"Perhaps he was just so overcome with the instinct to protect his family that he didn't think to gather it," offered Remus, visibly wincing at how ridiculous that explanation sounded out loud.
Sirius didn't react to that, which was the most generous thing he could have done under the circumstances. Why didn't he have his wand? was a game that Remus had played ever since Dumbledore told him that James's wand was found inside the house and his body outside it, indicating he had tried to take Voldemort wandlessly. Remus also wondered why Lily didn't disapparate, but knew better than to voice that particular question. Sirius's grief was primarily for James. Asking why Lily had not abandoned her husband to save herself would not have gone down well, despite the fact that she couldn't help James by staying at Godric's Hollow.
"Why didn't I see it coming?" Sirius muttered, to himself as much as to Remus.
"Pettigrew?"
"Yep."
"None of us did," said Remus briskly. "It never even crossed my mind, until I saw that map."
"You didn't know I'd persuaded them to make the rat secret-keeper," said Sirius flatly.
"No - it was more than that," Remus admitted.
Sirius looked up, his mouth a set line, something flinty in his grey eyes.
"As soon as I heard, I recalled the time you tried to have me murder Snape," said Remus, before he could lose his nerve. "I said to myself why didn't I see it?"
Sirius's face was unreadable. Recklessly, Remus pushed on: "you could've done it yourself, you know. You didn't need a werewolf to kill a teenager."
"I was a fucking teenager!"
"So was the werewolf - how did you suppose I'd take the news on waking the next morning, a boy again?"
"I didn't," said Sirius, summoning a bottle. Remus was too angry with him to care.
"So you didn't think it prudent to carefully consider a murder plot? Not even a murder plot involving your supposed best - well, second-best - friend?"
"Remus for fuck's sake, name one time I've shown myself to be remotely prudent."
"Certainly not when you hatched a hare-brained plan to swap the Potter's secret keeper without discussing it with anyone else!" Remus knew it was cruel, didn't care.
From the look on Sirius's face, he'd seen the wolf stir, because he didn't tell Remus to go fuck himself. Remus sucked in a few deep breaths.
"That was unfair," Remus said quietly. "I know you thought that I was the spy."
"And you can't forgive me, can you?" Sirius asked, in his oddly perceptive manner. "Even though you said you did, that night in the shrieking shack."
Remus nodded. It had been a lie, but a lie he desperately wanted to believe. All of his close friends had been gone - three dead, one a betrayer of the worst kind and in prison. And then he'd got one back - he raced to the shack, feet powered by surging hope. He wouldn't have to face the world alone anymore - Sirius was coming back. In light of the enormity of Pettigrew's betrayal of them all, Sirius's minor betrayal of Remus seemed so insignificant. Remus lied about forgiving his old friend, telling himself that he'd be able to forgive Sirius soon, and then it wouldn't be a lie. But he never fully had.
"You didn't suspect me before Halloween, did you?" Sirius prompted. "I'd already suspected you for months."
Remus had to admit that he'd never really suspected Sirius. They both knew the Order had a spy, and that it was someone close to them. The idea that Sirius could betray James, his real best friend, was absurd. Remus never told Sirius that he suspected the Order had a spy because he didn't want his impetuous friend to do anything rash.
"No," said Remus. "Somehow, I knew that you could never betray James."
"Only you?" Sirius asked gently.
"It's not the same - it was a stupid, incautious decision made when you were sixteen," said Remus. "Nothing so premeditated as switching sides and passing information for a year."
"I underestimated your self-hatred," said Sirius. "I thought - I thought you'd know the wolf, and not you, was the one who killed Snape."
"I AM THE FUCKING WOLF!"
How could Sirius, of all people, still not understand that Remus and the wolf were one and the same? Oh, Dumbledore had carefully crafted the false dichotomy of wolf/boy and Remus had clung to it as if to a life raft. It's not me; I have a 'furry little problem', I am not a giant fucking 'furry problem'. As an adult, Remus guiltily, greedily promoted that view. People were more accepting if they could draw a bright line between wolf and man; mostly, Remus could swallow his anger and act the part. And the lie came easily, because his new friends at the Order so badly wanted to accept him, wanted to see him as a good man and a victim of circumstance - Tonks in particular. All they needed was a little nudge, the words they wanted to hear: "I'm not the wolf; he just pops up once a month." Tonks seriously thought that he was like any other wizard three hundred and fifty three days per year - she'd compared her morphing to his transformations, for fuck's sake! Even as he burned with guilt, Remus knew he would never really try to disabuse her of that notion.
The separation of wolf and man was laughable, truly. His sense of smell was more like a wolf's than a human's. His reflexes were better, and he could run faster than he had any right to, considering the fact that he didn't train. When angered, he felt a prickle up his spine and down his chest, as every hair - from the downy to the dark and bristly - stood on end. Perversely, the more he tried to distance himself from the wolf, the more it endangered the people around him.
Ironically, Remus's selfish self hatred led him to hide the true extent and nature of his condition, to cling to the soft underbelly of his friends' compassion. He'd nearly eaten James. He'd nearly eaten Harry, Ron and Hermione. Marjatta, proudly holding herself apart from normal people, honest about her condition as she sniffed the air to track her reindeer quarry, baring her canines as she ate raw meat (killed and butchered by her own hand, something Remus could never do), had nearly eaten no-one. Ophelia wasn't quite as unashamedly lupine as Marjatta, but she'd accepted her lot in life. Leaving Harbin had broken her heart, but she'd never even thought to lie about the danger she posed.
The Marjattas and Ophelias of the world were the real 'good werewolves' - the ones who'd bravely stepped out of their old skins and embraced their new selves. Remus continued to endanger normal witches and wizards by getting so close to them, slavering covetously all over their normal lives.
*****break*****
Snape was present at the next Order meeting. Remus and Tonks exchanged glances - hers grimacing, his smiling. Ever a fan of the 'rip it off' approach, Tonks decided to accost Snape before the meeting began.
"Hey Severus, can I have a word!" Tonks called brightly. Then, as an ice-breaker, she absentmindedly said: "promise I'll keep my hands to myself this time."
She meant it as a self-deprecating reference to the first time she'd seen him after graduating from Hogwarts - that Order meeting back in July, when she tripped over him and practically landed in his lap. As soon as she said the words, even a split second before he reacted to them, she realised they were entirely the wrong thing to say to Snape of all people. Snape was terminally repressed and, as far as Tonks could see, entirely devoid of a sense of humour.
With a growing sense of deja vu, Tonks realised that Remus was barely concealing his laughter, whereas Snape was ashen-faced and furious in his seat. Ordinarily, she would not have minded provoking in these two men these exact reactions. However, given that she was about to beg Snape for a favour, the timing seemed unfortunate. She turned her mind firmly to the contraband market in the Wyvern.
"Anyway, I was going to ask if I could borrow some books."
"Borrow some books?" Snape asked incredulously, as though completely mystified as to why she would want such items.
I can read.
"Yep - the auror office has me digging into the black market. Some unusual contraband's come up for sale lately and I don't know what all of it is used for."
"So naturally, your solution is to seek out one of your least favourite people for assistance?"
"Look, I'll just ignore that loaded question - though I reckon I like you far better than I like Lucius Malfoy, the smarmy git. I think that a smuggling ring might also be engaged in brewing dark, illegal potions - you know, not the sort of thing you could find in most potion books."
He said nothing.
"And I thought you'd have some er…darker books, with rarer potions."
"I see, Nymphadora," said Snape, his mouth twisting into a bitter sort of snarl. "Did you imagine that I might have The Encyclopaedia of Necromancy on my shelf? Perhaps the official Death Eater Potions Manual, with a little 'dark mark' motif on the cover?"
"Yeah actually, both of those would be ideal," said Tonks brightly, opting to take the bull by the horns.
Beside her, Remus was staring intently into his lap. Whether he was trying to hide his laughing or his cringing, Tonks did not know.
Snape looked momentarily stunned, so Tonks pressed her advantage.
"I don't think anyone in Britain has a better collection of texts on rare and possibly illegal potion ingredients than you do, prof," she told him.
"And what if I'm buying from this smuggling ring? Or brewing and selling to them? Perhaps it's directly against my interests to help you," said Snape. "Not to mention my unwillingness to aid the Auror Office in any of its ventures. Your colleagues have hardly been…friendly toward me, over the years. 'Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater,' doesn't Alastor say?"
"Oh, many of them aren't friendly toward me either, Severus!" Tonks chuckled.
He glowered at her.
"But the more success the auror office has with this smuggling ring, the more likely they are to discover some faint ties back to the Death Eaters. I mean, they have to be getting money from somewhere, and somehow I doubt it's just pureblood donations," said Tonks lightly.
Beside her, Remus froze. It was a risky strategy - it flew far close to the truth and if Snape-
No.
Andrew revealed that he already knew the date and location of the largest contraband market of the year. It was to take place in the basement of the White Wyvern on Knockturn Alley, starting at 7pm on the last Friday before halloween.
"Tonight?!" Proudfoot and Tonks yelped in unison
"Sluttier," Dawlish said, in a bored tone, as Tonks stood before him - a sea-green eyed redhead with taut, delicate curves folded into a pair of leather trousers and a pale blue silk shirt, neckline slashed to the waist.
"Right, so I'm basically going into a gangster-and-death-eater hagglefest and sex party alone, armed only with my wand?" Tonks asked cheerfully. "And my emergency plan is 'just walk out'?"
To her surprise, Snape sighed exasperatedly and rolled his dark eyes. She barely stopped herself from wondering if he'd even tried to read her mind.
"Which ingredients interest you?" Snape asked flatly. "As the school is presently under the watchful eye of a meddling bureaucrat by the name of Umbridge, I will have to bring the texts to you - much as I resent functioning as a courier owl for a clumsy, pink-haired auror."
Now for the hard part. In truth, she wanted information on every ingredient on the list she'd made while - - while on auror business. Which of course was classified.
"The auror office has told us not to divulge that information," said Tonks.
Snape's dark, flat eyes bored into hers. Her jaw clenched. She had a headache coming on.
Proudfoot is so fucking sexy, she thought, summoning an image of her colleague in one of his overly tight shirts. Such delicious pectorals.
Snape looked quite ill.
"Severus, you're not attempting to read my mind, are you?" Tonks asked pleasantly.
"I need to know which books you require," he said shamelessly; Tonks suspected the "and why" was silently added.
"Darkest, most twisted ones you've got. Also, er, just if you can think of anything on magical marine plants?" Tonks asked, concentratedly imagining forests of kelp. Kelp.
"I will owl you to arrange a date and time," Snape said contemptuously, before swooping away.
Tonks sat down next to Remus, massaging her temples. Snape knew something was up, but she'd have expected a real outburst if he'd read her well enough to know that Dumbledore had put her on the trail of a death eater potions project and expressly instructed her not to tell the potions master.
She felt someone touch her arm, and it took her a split second to realise that it was Remus. She jerked, and he looked like he'd been stung. Quickly, she returned the gesture and whispered: "sorry, sorry, still thinking about Snape." The pain didn't leave his beautiful green eyes.