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Chapter 11

Purple

4th February 1998

"Do you reckon it's a boy or a girl?" Tonks asked, running her hand over now very round stomach, as she lay on the bed one tempestuous evening. Rain was lashing against the windows, the wind was howling in the trees outside and they had come upstairs to try and feel a little bit cosier. It hadn't helped much, admittedly, but at least the bedroom was smaller and warmer than the other rooms in the house.

Remus thought for a second.

"A girl!"

"But last time you said you thought it would be a boy!"

"Well, why do you keep asking me the same question if you don't want a different answer?"

As Tonks was pondering this, trying to find a suitably smart retort, a slight glow on her bedside table caught her eye. Her Communicoin was glowing, a sign that it had a new message. Unconcerned, and expecting it just to contain details of the next Potterwatch location, Tonks picked it up, stared at it, and then took a sharp intake of breath.

"Remus," she choked out. "Sturgis is dead."

A lead weight, so familiar yet still so shocking every time it happened, dropped into Remus's stomach.

"What?"

She held out the coin so he could see.

The coin was devoid of details, but the overall message was clear. Sturgis Podmore had been murdered the night before.

It was a grim end to an already grim day. Neither of them had been particularly close to Sturgis, even though Remus's school years had overlapped a little with his and he had been in the original Order with him. Sturgis had never been around much other than for Order meetings and he hadn't tended to stay for dinner or late into the evening at Grimmauld Place, as some of the other members had done. Then of course, he had spent six months in Azkaban for a crime that hadn't been his fault at all, and by the time he was out, the general format of the Order had changed and they had hardly seen him until his collaboration with Potterwatch at the end of last year. Tonks had barely got to know him at all.

Nevertheless, he had been their friend and ally, cheerful and amusing company, and just a few weeks ago he had been laughing and joking with them, as Lancelot on their twelfth broadcast of Potterwatch.

They would never see his face again.

Neither of them slept well that night. The wind continued to howl and the rain kept falling. More than once, they were jolted awake by the sound of the storm. Remus, having finally drifted off to sleep in the early hours of the morning, was still dozing when Tonks got out of bed and sleepily pulled on some clothes. It was only when a strangled cry came from the kitchen that he jerked awake.

He was up and sprinting down the stairs in a matter of seconds.

"Are you ok?" he said breathlessly, stumbling into the kitchen doorway.

"Yes, yes I'm fine, but look."

Tonks was pointing to the floor.

What had once been a thriving Moonwort plant was now a mess of earth and shrivelled leaves on the kitchen tiles. The pot, which they kept on the window ledge so that it received the right amount of sunlight and moonlight to keep growing, was smashed into many pieces.

"It's all my fault," Tonks said fretfully, "I had the window open yesterday afternoon, before the storm came in, and I must have forgotten to lock it properly, and then with the news about Sturgis and everything I didn't check, and it must have blown open in the wind and knocked the plant off. I'm such an idiot. Anyone could have come in, broken in, and now-" she looked at the mess on the floor, her eyes huge and worried.

"Dora, Dora, calm down," Remus soothed. "We have protective enchantments, remember, all round the borders of the land. No one could have come in unless we knew them and had already given them the address. And I really don't think Bill Weasley or Kingsley were going to be sneaking in the kitchen window to rob us blind, do you?"

"But the Moonwort!"

"We have more seeds. We'll plant more. It'll be ok!"

"But it won't be Remus! The full moon is just eight days away, and you need to take your first dose tomorrow, with fresh leaves added every day. This Moonwort is past saving, and I haven't got time to grow it back. For the March moon, yes, but not for tomorrow."

The full impact of what she was saying suddenly sank in. Without the Moonwort, the wolfsbane potion would be completely useless.

"You see!" Tonks cried, borderline hysterical now that he had realised the full extent of the problem. "There's nothing I can do to make it grow back - it needs a full month. We could try and get the ready made wolfsbane, like you used to get. From St Mungo's. Or I could go out to some apothecaries, maybe Diagon Alley will have some fresh Moonwort. Or if not I'll try Hogsmeade."

"You will do no such thing,"

"But-"

"It is far too dangerous for either of us to be going to Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade," he said. "And anyway, you know it would be no use. The apothecaries don't sell fresh Moonwort at the moment, that's partly why we started growing it in the first place. And there is no way we will be able to get our hands on the ready-made potion. St Mungo's stock always had to be strictly Ministry approved, and that will have been revoked months ago. The new regime either wants to stamp out werewolves or turn them into killing machines, not keep them as healthy, docile members of society."

"But I have to at least try!"

"Dora, please calm down," Remus said firmly, taking both of her hands in his. "We are not putting our lives in danger, just for the sake of this. I've spent most of my life without the wolfsbane potion, a lot of last year included. One full moon without it now won't do me any harm."

He gently brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. It was its natural state of light brown, a clear sign of the extent of her distress.

"I'll go to my parents' old house, like I used to a few years ago," he went on. "I'll be perfectly safe, far away from you. I'll leave before it gets dark, so as not to take any chances, and I'll come back in the morning. It will be one night. I'll probably have a few scrapes and bruises which will be easily fixed, and by the next moon I'll be able to take the potion again. Problem solved."

She looked unconvinced.

"Can't you at least be here, in the cellar where you normally are? We could put extra reinforcements on it and then I will be able to help you in the morning. And you won't be alone."

Remus went pale at the very idea.

"Absolutely not."

"But Remus, it would be fine! We'd make sure it was safe."

"And what if we made a mistake?" he challenged. "What if, somehow, I got loose, ended up attacking you, or biting you, or…" he could barely say it. "killing you?"

"You wouldn't though."

"There is no guarantee of that."

He could not look at her as he went on.

"Dora, that time at Hogwarts, that night I forgot to take my potion, has haunted me ever since. What if I had bitten one of the students, or Sirius? What if I had harmed Harry, or worse, killed him. Harry. Lily and James once told me that I would be godfather to their second child…they never lived to see that reality and I couldn't even protect their first and only child properly in their stead. I couldn't have lived with myself if I had hurt him. And it's pure luck that I didn't. I lose my mind completely when I transform."

He looked quite sick.

"The thought of hurting you is even more unbearable. I would not even be able to open my eyes the next day, for fear of what I might see… what I might have done. No, Dora, staying here is not even a subject for debate."

oooo

Matters did not improve over the next few days. Tonks relented in the end, accepting that it really was too dangerous, not to mention completely pointless, for them to try and hunt down wolfsbane ingredients in the present climate, and as Remus refused point blank to even discuss the idea of staying in the house for his transformation, she gave into that as well, but she was overwhelmed with fear and worry nonetheless.

The weather remained filthy, winds and rain rattling the windows and doors, with the only break in this being an appearance of thick, damp mist, clear signs that dementors were lurking nearby.

Their next Potterwatch, just few days before the full moon, was a very bleak affair, after the loss of Sturgis. Kingsley gave them a few more details on what had happened and it seemed that it had been very unlucky. Sturgis, on hearing that Death Eaters were in his area, had fled and tried to set up base elsewhere, but they had been able to track him, and the concealment charms that he set up around his new base were not strong enough to stop them from finding him.

"He was always more one for fighting, than concealing," Kingsley said sadly. "I was supposed to check on him a couple of hours earlier than I did, to reinforce the enchantments for him. I got held up, and when I found him…"

Words failed him.

11th February 1998

On the morning of the full moon, Tonks woke up feeling completely nauseous, and barely able to eat any breakfast. She did manage a small bowl of porridge, mostly for the baby and partly to stop Remus worrying about her more than he seemed to be already.

By three o'clock that afternoon, Remus was ready. No chances, he insisted. He would leave well before nightfall.

Tonks watched as he pulled his thickest travelling cloak off the hook by the door and wrapped it round himself.

"Please give me the address."

"I thought we'd already been through this."

"I'll only come if I haven't heard from you at all by say nine… or ten even. I promise. I just need to know where you'll be."

Remus did not reply as he grabbed a book off the shelf near the door and tucked it inside the little bag of food that he was taking.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay at Shell Cottage for the night, or The Burrow, or your mother's? You know they would all have you in an instant."

She sighed, refusing to let him change the subject.

"I'll be fine Remus, I promise. Stop worrying about where I'll be, and let me worry about where you'll be. Please, just give me the address. I have to know where you're going to be."

He relented, if only to keep her calmer and to stop her fretting about him more than she already was. Such worry could surely not be good for the baby.

"Here." He wrote it on a piece of paper. "But you won't need it. I will send you a patronus as soon as I am awake, and I'll come back to you as soon as I'm strong enough to apparate. OK?"

She could only nod.

"I'll be fine," he assured her, pulling her into a hug and kissing her softly. "One night. I'll see you in the morning."

"You'll come back?"

"I promise."

She watched forlornly as he made his way to the end of the garden and disapparated.

oooo

Remus reappeared seconds later outside an old, rundown house in the middle of nowhere.

It had been several years since he had been here to transform. During his years as an outcast in the Muggle world he had come here every full moon. It had been the safest place he could think of. The reason that his parents had moved here in the first place, shortly before his seventh birthday, was to keep themselves far away from other houses, and some of the more complex protective enchantments placed on the house still held strong even thirty years later.

Others, of course, had died with his father, but he had been able to put a lot of them back up himself years ago, and they endured as well.

The house was in as remote a location as he could hope for, and it had been in such a state of disrepair since the attack on his parents in the first war that there had never been much he could do to destroy it any further.

The house looked worse than it ever had before, in the cold, misty February darkness.

He made his way up the front steps, looking sadly at the little sign that hung there on one rusty nail - Violet Cottage. He pushed open the door, memories suddenly assaulting him more forcefully than they ever had before.

Remus pushed open the door to the cottage. He knew there were not going to be any bodies there; the Ministry had seen to that. But it was a grim scene, nonetheless. The living room was completely destroyed, a mess of glass, brick and rubble. The kitchen was almost as bad. Windows were smashed in most of the rooms.

Remus could tell just from the state of the house that his father had put up a terrific fight, no doubt trying to protect his wife, who he had loved with all his heart, despite the strains that their relationship had had to bear over the years. Hope was a muggle, therefore completely defenceless in this situation. From what Remus could tell, his father had fought and fought, tearing apart the downstairs of the house before being forced to retreat upstairs. Pipes were burst, the floor was covered with water, and scorch marks lined the wall by the staircase.

Feeling sick and a little disorientated, Remus made his way upstairs.

The floor above was in a much better state. The bathroom merely had a few cracked tiles. His childhood bedroom had escaped a lot of the damage, barring a few singe marks on the floor. He did not know at what point his father had died, but it could not have been long after coming upstairs.

The only room that was completely free of damage was his parents' bedroom. But even in here, the sheets on the bed were not pristinely smoothed out as his house proud mother normally left them, rather wrinkled and crumpled up, with an indent in the pillow, as if someone had been lying there. It did not take much deduction to work out where Hope Lupin had been when his father had finally been overcome. Remus could only hope that it had been quick and clean for his kind, gentle, defenceless mother.

He thought of his mother, of her caring face watching over him through all his years of pain and transformations. He thought of his father, doing his best to protect his family no matter how hard the cost. He sank into an old chair with his head in his hands, and let the tears fall.

Remus looked round at the shabby furnishings in his parents' old bedroom. There were no tears now, merely a sad sense of longing.

He sighed, went back downstairs and pushed open the door to the room that he had always used for transformations, the annex which had been added onto the house when he'd reached the age of ten, and become too big and powerful during the full moon nights for his parents to risk keeping him in his bedroom. This room, too, had been destroyed in the attack, but Remus had spent many hours in the days before his first ever transformation back here, fixing the space, repairing the windows, doors and roof, and reinforcing the walls.

Now, he pushed open the door, and then stared in dismay. The room, that had not been used for this activity in several years, was damp, the windows rotting away. Part of the roof had caved in. Clearly the recent weeks of stormy weather had done more damage than he had anticipated. It would not be safe or secure for a fully-fledged werewolf in its current state.

Idiot, Remus cursed himself. How had this not occurred to him before? This part of the house had previously been destroyed by dark magic, so of course it was going to disintegrate quicker, especially in the current weather and climate. He should have realised this, come here earlier in the week, fixed it up and spent several hours making sure it was safe.

But he had not thought of it before, and now only two options remained. Repair the room as best he could before moonrise, or stay in a different room of the house for the night.

He could work on the reinforcements again, he supposed. But there was a lot that needed to be done in a short space of time, and he wasn't physically or magically strong at the moment. The full moon tended to weaken him on its approach, particularly without the wolfsbane. Could he be completely sure that he would be able to do a good enough job to keep him secure for the night? And what if he made a mistake? What if he, somehow, made it to a neighbouring village, bit someone, bit a child, and infected someone's son or daughter with this horrible affliction?

He could not possibly risk it. Not when there was a better, safer option.

He just didn't want to take it.

An ache in the pit of his stomach, Remus climbed painstakingly back upstairs. He had another look in his childhood bedroom. Other than the fact that most of his possessions were gone, it looked the same as it always had; the bed in the corner, the bookshelf with the model trains on it, the faded mauve curtains. But it was small. It had been too small even at the age of ten, and it was much, much too small for him to be able to use now.

Heart heavy, he crossed the landing and returned to his parents' room. Sure enough, this would do the job. It was still smaller than the annex room, unfortunately, and that would not be pleasant. But it was secure. As the only room in the house - other than his own - that had not been blown apart by dark magic, it had retained its structure over the years, and it would only need a few simple charms to make it safe for the night. He barricaded the door and used several locking charms. Reinforced the glass in the windows, then boarded them up as well. Shrank some of the larger pieces of furniture so that he had as much space as possible. It would have to do.

"I'm sorry." The soft apology was to his parents for destroying the only thing he had left of them.

Then he took out the book he had brought with him, and his sandwiches, sat on the old bed and tried to read, counting down the minutes until moonrise.

His heart was thumping in his mouth, as he wondered what the night had in store for him after all these months of taking the wolfsbane and simply curling up on a mattress in a fortified cellar, waiting patiently for the moon to wane again. He would never have admitted it to Dora, but he was afraid.

oooo

Tonks would never have admitted it to her husband, but she was afraid.

Two hundred and fifty miles away from where Remus currently sat, trying to read but not taking in a word of what was written, she paced the living room of their home. She sat on the sofa, then went through to the kitchen. She went up to their bedroom and tried to get some sleep, then immediately got up again. The house felt eerie and frightening in its empty state.

She wasn't used to being alone anymore, and certainly not at night. Months in hiding has seen to that. Once upon a time, she had loved her evenings of solitude, relishing the knowledge that she could go back to her own space, do whatever she pleased, dress however she liked and listen to whatever music she wanted, with no one to disturb her.

But things were different now. She couldn't even remember the last night she had spent on her own.

Well…actually, she could, she realised. She could remember precisely the last night that she had spent alone in her old flat, and the night that had followed as well. But the memory didn't make her feel any more cheerful about being alone right now.

Tonks came home and slammed her front door. She had just made things one hundred times worse, and she knew it. Declaring her love for Remus in front of the entire Weasley family, Harry, Hermione and Minerva McGonagall, in the wake of Albus Dumbeldore's death had been a ridiculous thing to do. But she was now so deep in despair that all rational actions seemed beyond her.

She had truly believed, six weeks ago, that she had finally got through to Remus. After that night. That one, beautiful, wonderful night together. Returned from the werewolf pack, unsuccessful in his mission but mercifully alive, he had seemed to be welcoming her renewed companionship more and more as the days went by. And as the weeks wore on, she had felt closer and closer to him. And when they had finally kissed for a third time, and he hadn't pushed her away, letting things unfold well past the point of no return, she had thought that he had, at long last, seen reason.

She had woken up the next morning feeling happier than she had in months. A little uncomfortable, perhaps, but joy had eclipsed pain, and anyway, she was not going to admit that detail to Remus. She didn't want to give him more reason to pull away from her, not when he finally seemed to be giving in.

It hadn't mattered. Because as soon as he opened his eyes and looked down at her, she had seen the expression on his face. The look of regret, of remorse, of self-loathing. And she began to understand that nothing was ever going to change his mind.

Since then, she had tried so hard to forget him, to move on. She had done everything she could to block thoughts of him from even entering her mind, throwing herself into her work, spending time with her colleagues, volunteering for every Order mission going. But she hadn't been able to forget him, nor feel any differently. Seeing him tonight, after six whole weeks without a single word from him, had made everything so much more painful. And seeing Fleur - beautiful, young, delicate Fleur, who could have had any man she wanted - sit over Bill Weasley's lifeless form and declare that a werewolf bite was not going to stop her marrying the man she loved, had been the final straw.

She grabbed a tiny china vase from the table in her kitchen and hurled it across the room with a cry of fury.

As the sound of breaking china faded, there was a knock on the door.

It couldn't be. Could it? She did not even hope. She did not even care. She wasn't even sure she wanted to see him anymore.

Sure enough, Remus stood there, looking gaunt and sad and sick. But seeing him like that just made her even more angry. He had no right to be unhappy about this, not when he was the one making them both miserable.

"Why are you here?" She tried to slam the door in his face, but managed to get his foot in the gap, pushing it open and coming in after her.

"Tonks, please-"

"Why are you here?" she repeated, more loudly, as he followed her into the sitting room. "Seriously Remus, you can't keep doing this to me. You can't! You can't keep pushing me away and then coming over to try and comfort me and make everything right again. Not when you know full well the only thing that can make this right!"

"Tonks, why can't you just drop this," he pleaded. "It's killing me to see you like this, you have to know that, but I've said all I can say, and I don't understand why you can't just accept-"

"I'll tell you why!" Tonks snapped, cutting over him. For once, the tears weren't forthcoming, for which she was glad. "I'll tell you! Because don't think I haven't tried. Don't think I didn't do everything I could to push you out of my mind. I even tried to hate you, for making me feel so utterly worthless. Don't interrupt," she yelled brokenly, as Remus opened his mouth in protest. "You can say what you like Remus, but I did feel worthless, because I was giving myself to you, throwing myself at you, and all you did was push me away. And you're still pushing me away!"

She was shaking a little as she continued. "But I couldn't hate you, and I couldn't give up on you, and I sat here," she gestured wildly around the living room, "for hours sometimes trying to work out why. And after driving myself almost insane with my stupid, obsessive thoughts, I realised..."

She paused to take a deep steadying breath.

"You never said that you didn't feel the same way," she finished, a little more calmly. "For all your stupid, ridiculous arguments, all your protests that you were too old, and too poor, and that you might hurt me... You sure as hell made me feel like you didn't want me, but you never actually said it."

"But Tonks," Remus ran his hands through his thick hair in frustration. "You know full well that was never the problem. You know this isn't about you! You know that I wish things were different and we could be together. So how could I stand here and tell you that I don't?"

"Because it would have helped to hear it!" Tonks retorted instantly. "Because I told myself that if I could hear those words - even just once - then I could convince myself that you really didn't want me and then I could move on. I've been rejected before, you know! A lot of guys can't stand the fact that they don't know what face they're going to see one day to the next! But do you really think that when that happened I wasted months grieving and pining and making a complete idiot of myself? Because I didn't," she spat, her voice raising again as Remus looked completely at a loss in the face of her rage. "I got over it and I was fine! This was different. Because although I knew it really wasn't because of me, it would have been so much easier to accept if it had been. And no matter what I did I couldn't stop hoping that at some point you were going to change your mind!"

She glared at him, and he looked so stricken, so guilty, and she didn't want to say the next bit, but she had had enough now. She couldn't keep living in this terrible swing between pointless hope and overwhelming sadness. She had to move on.

"So say it!" It was a harsh command. A few stray tears ran down her cheeks, but she brushed them away impatiently. "Just tell me that you don't want to be with me, that I'm not good enough for you! And I swear! I swear to you that I'll get over you, and I'll move on, and I'll find someone else. Someone younger, someone who has more money, someone who isn't a werewolf. I'll do all those things that you keep saying you want for me, if you just tell me that you don't love me the way I love you."

A dead silence fell over her living room. Their eyes locked. And she waited, for the words that would hurt her so deeply, but that might finally release her from this everlasting cycle of longing and misery.

"I can't say that," he said at last, and she felt the outrage and exasperation and pure fury bubble up in her again, that he should insist that he wanted her happiness but then deny her any possible chance of this being the case. But then he reached out and took her hand, pulled her closer towards him, lowered his head slightly so that his lips met hers. They stood there for several moments, the kiss softer and gentler than their previous ones, the salty taste of her tears strong in their mouths. But this time it was Tonks who cut it short, her eyes wary as she pulled away and looked up at Remus, not daring to believe that this was really happening.

"Are you just doing this to shut me up?" she asked, a note of warning in her voice. "Because if you're going to kiss me and then tell me that nothing can happen. If you're going to walk away again, I swear -"

"I won't." Remus interrupted quietly. "I'll stay this time." He swallowed and looked deep into her eyes. "I promise."

He had explained to her, many months later, the thoughts that had swarmed through his mind in the space of just a few seconds. How he had truly believed that he wanted her to be happy with someone else, until faced with the ultimatum that would finally push her away. How he had been completely unable to say those few words. How, in the face of this, there had only been one remaining option for him to take. And how doing so had been the best decision, belated though it was, of his life.

Tonks sat on the little sofa, lost in thought. He had been there, by her side, ever since that night, excepting the four days after Bill and Fleur's wedding of course, and that was now well in the past, forgiven, if not completely forgotten. But now he was hundreds of miles away. And it was all her fault. For a completely wild moment she considered going to the house, or somewhere very close by, so that she could be there for him the second moonset came. But she swiftly decided against it. Remus would quite possibly never forgive her, even if she found a way to guarantee her own safety. And anyway, she had promised him that she would stay away, just as he had promised her that he would come back.

What you going to do today?" she asked cautiously, the next morning, watching him get dressed.

"Order work needs doing," he sighed. "I don't even know where to begin, to be honest, with Dumbledore gone. I'll try and get hold of Mad Eye. And we need to sort out what will happen to Grimmauld Place."

"But you'll come back?" Tonks could not keep the note of worry out of her voice. The worry that he was going to run away and pretend last night's events hadn't happened, just as he had done before. That he was going to push her away again with insistence that he wasn't worthy of her. But he was smiling as he came over to her.

"I'll always come back," he said, kissing her gently. "I promised."

A gust of wind made one of the windows rattle and Tonks gave a jump of fright.

You're an Auror, she told herself furiously. Get a bloody grip on yourself.

But tonight was different. Being alone was different tonight, especially with the horrible news about Sturgis so fresh in her mind. And she couldn't stop her thoughts straying to her husband all those miles away, couldn't stop picturing what horrible wounds he might be inflicting on himself in just a few hours' time. At last, as the sun set completely and the sky faded from indigo to pitch black, Tonks could not bear it any longer. Making a quick decision, she pulled on her own fur lined travelling cloak, and, making sure everything was securely locked behind her, made her way down the garden path.