32
EVEN here in the Shrieking Shack, as the waxing moon pooled into Tonks's outstretched palm, overflowing, and shining through Dora's shaking fingers, Lupin was having a hard time believing this was happening to him.
He stared at Dora's bone-white hand, so pale and pristine and perfect for a moment, before nervously lifting his gaze to the face of the hand's owner.
The young witch who he now knew himself to be hopelessly and desperately in love with, despite his mind screaming at him that this was twenty different kinds of abhorrent, that he was a werewolf, and she, an angel, that he was much too poor, too dangerous, too old for someone so pure and gentle and kind as Dora Tonks was, regarded him with soft, patient, pale grey orbs.
"Are you sure, Remus?" she questioned, staring at Lupin from across the creaking old bedroom that the tunnel underneath the Whomping Willow led to, this old place that Remus never thought he would set foot in again, a place that he both haunted and cherished, considering James, Sirius, and Peter had helped to make the years of his transformations prior to the invention of the Wolfsbane Potion the best years of his life so far.
"Yes," he managed to get out in a low, hoarse growl that sounded wolfish.
Though it seemed like those times couldn't hold a candle to his current company in the present moment.
Toward Tonks's immediate left, the blankets and old mattress that Lupin wasn't entirely sure he trusted seemed to be the focus of the entire room, or perhaps that was simply because of the implication of what Dora wanted, and what he wanted too, for that matter, was all that he could seem to be able to focus his mind on.
Tonks merely offered Lupin a coy, demure smile that felt like it made his knees weak, as though he'd been hit by a Jelly Legs Curse, without her having to utter a word.
"If you don't want to, if…if it's too soon, Rem, I hope you know that you can tell me no. I won't be upset. It's perfectly fine to say no. I just want to know if you want it. I know I do," she whispered, a pink blush speckling along her cheeks as she briefly averted Remus's piercing gaze, looking instead over her shoulder towards the bed.
Lupin nodded, still feeling like the two of them were standing on the ledge of a cliff and were about to tumble off the ledge together. "Are you sure you want…me?"
She nodded, perhaps so that Remus did not have to, but regardless, it still did nothing to shake his disbelief. Lupin was half tempted to ask Tonks if she was serious, but he knew that she'd already given her answer.
But the next burning question that lingered on the tip of his tongue was…why?!
As he struggled to formulate his thoughts into something that resembled coherent speech, Tonks cautiously approached him, grasping onto his hand, and giving it a light, reassuring squeeze. His partner was always so softly spoken, almost to the point of being shy around those whom she didn't know, so careful with her word choice, not wanting to offend.
Her demeanor at the moment, had the opposite effect of her words as she tried to reassure Lupin it was fine for him to say no if he was not at all ready for this now.
For the last few hours, ever since she had kissed him in front of the closet in Professor Snape's office, Lupin had wanted to get as close to Tonks as she would let him.
The way she smiled softly at him in the mornings during breakfast in the Great Hall at the staff table, how she would sit next to him in his office in the evenings, the way that she would shoot him interested little glances out of the corner of her eye when she thought Lupin wasn't privy to what she was doing. But he knew.
Remus cherished every single moment spent in Nymphadora's company, and he was not blind to his growing desire for the young witch standing beside him.
But yet, out of a sense of habit that had become almost like second nature to him at this point, courtesy of most of his life spent enduring his harsh condition, Remus held back, wanting to be absolutely sure that Tonks wanted it. Even after all this time spent in Dora's company, Lupin had a hard time she could want him in the way that a witch would want a wizard. He wasn't handsome, normal, like Sirius had been in their youth.
And while Remus was more than shocked at the revelation that Tonks felt the same unimaginable thing that had been churning within him these last few weeks, he did not want to give his partner the wrong idea at all.
"It isn't that. I haven't…" His voice broke. He cleared his throat, swallowing down the lump in his throat, and tried again, despite the reddening blush making its way across his cheeks at a rapidly alarming pace. "I'm not…"
His face burned like wildfire, and for a moment, he wished the creaky floorboards beneath their feet would open up and swallow him whole. Tonks must have sensed what he was thinking, for the witch didn't miss a beat. She moved closer to close off the gap of space that lingered between them, resting her forehead against his.
He wasn't the only one who felt like he was burning. "Neither have I. At least...not with anybody that I truly loved. We'll go slow if that's okay with you?"
But she had! With…him. He blanched and pulled away, furrowing his brows into a frown as visions of Tonks's boggart, that bastard Brennan, flitted into the forefront of his mind.
The look of shock must have been evident on his face, for Tonks pulled back and frowned.
Lupin swallowed down past the lump in his throat. "You and…Brennan," he began cautiously, not wanting to stir up bad memories for his Dora if he could help it, but at the same time, wanting to get this off of his chest.
She seemed to sense what he was thinking and shook her head no and shot him a pointed look. She struggled a minute, seeming to search for the right words to say.
"Ollie never…never loved me, Remus," Tonks whispered hoarsely, blinking back a fresh onset of briny tears. "Not like I hope that you do, Remus. But…if we do…take things a step further tonight, I just want to know if you do. If we do, then I'll be in love with you."
Lupin nodded, reassured by her words.
Satisfied, Tonks leaned forward and pressed her mouth against his in a gentle kiss, waving her wand with her free hand to extinguish what few lighted candles were lit in the windowsill, momentarily plunging them into darkness.
"Do you feel ready?" she asked, turning towards him, and as she did, her silhouette became illuminated by the one single candle that she had re-lighted with a curt wave of her wand, not needing to utter the Lumos spell.
Lupin tried to speak, to tell her, yes, but it felt like there was a gag on his mouth. All he could do was nod.
She took his hand and bade him sit on the edge of the bed, watching with bated breath as she reached for her black silk blouse and pulled it over her head, stepping out of her black flared trousers once they were unzipped and letting them fall in a heap to her floor until she was clad in nothing but black lace undergarments. He merely watched her in silence as Tonks approached the bed and sat down next to him, reaching for his hand.
Something foreign stirred within Lupin's chest, beating down and back against the self-consciousness that had rendered him mute and unable to speak to her.
So, this was what it felt like. Love. That foreign emotion that his father, Lyall, had spoken of whenever he spoke of Remus's mother, Hope, Merlin bless her soul forever, how James had spoken of what the feeling felt like when he and Lily had been alive. Never before was an exhilaration as to make the woman nervously sitting before him as great as it was coursing through his veins now. To wake up with the scent of her skin over his.
Dora's face was shaded with an unspoken longing for him, but Tonks did not need to say a word. She didn't. He saw this. Lupin let his hands drift to Dora's waist, feeling goosebumps erupt over the skin of her thighs as he followed her lead and struggled to get out of his sweater, grunting and almost growling with the effort to remove it and not rip off any of the buttons in a frenzy.
He leaned forward and pushed her backward, so she fell against the mattress. "Say that you love me," he urged. Tonks felt the electrifying shudder that wafted down her spine as his smooth, languid voice melted.
Remus was doing his magic and she pulled into the cauldron of whatever witchcraft was happening to her.
His hand drifted so it rested below her jaw as her dark maroon hair splayed out on either side of the pillow like that of a fan, as Lupin was left to hover over his Tonks, both of his arms bracing his weight on Tonks's pillow.
Tonks closed her eyes and allowed herself to succumb to the man's lips that grazed against the curve of her ear, his dense sigh sinking deep and slow. She wanted more.
"Say it. That tonight you'll dream of me, Dora." The moment she nodded, breathless, their lips met with a fervor. Their fingers caressing the curves of each other's body, straining to be even nearer, as Tonks attempted to fumble with the buttons of Lupin's trousers to relieve her partner of the only thing standing between a night of passion and love that she had never felt with Ollie.
However, the moment alone in the Shrieking Shack with Remus, needing the feel of his body pressed against hers, she wished to be nowhere else in the entire world.
"I love you, Dora. I want to hear you say it to me," Lupin said in a lowly voice that could almost be described as a wolfish sort of growl, the edges of his voice hardened. "Say. It." He commanded, almost angry.
"I love you," Tonks managed to gasp out breathlessly, and she was hardly given a moment to react as Lupin's mouth searched hers, hungry, yearning, eager to taste her sweet, succulent kiss for himself. Their pulses quickened as their bodies felt what their hearts confessed. Barely able to fill her lungs, Tonks let out a gasp into the shell of his ear. "I need you, Rem. Please."
It was the use of the word please that awakened something urgent with Remus's chest, eager and more than ready to answer the woman's plea, he entered her, slowly but firmly, exhaling sharply from the pleasure.
Dora answered Lupin with a velvety, husky groan of pleasure, raising her hips to him and tightened her legs around his waist, driving him even deeper to fulfill his need. Lupin's hands descended down Tonks's sides, clasping tightly onto her hips, almost painfully tight.
Her hand alighted on Lupin's face, moving down past his scarred collarbones. Already his brain felt on fire.
Dora was his angel, his angel with the fingertips of flame. In those moments, she loved him with her eyes as much as the rest of her body, their souls mingling with the quiet moments between the action and the stillness.
The cold room of the Shrieking Shack where he used to transform almost felt warm. It was hard to hold back, Remus thought, as his hand came up to cup her breast, to make their moment last, but wasn't that always the way, so caught between the intoxication of the climax and extending a moment with her he did not want to end? Desperate to feel her, Remus leaned down to kiss her.
Whatever he had done in that moment almost sent Dora over the edge. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him down slightly in their kiss, moving against him frantically, a whimper building in her throat as it moved past her lips. Lupin held onto Tonks tightly, almost afraid to let go, for an unfounded fear that if he did, he would never have her again, one of his hands buried in the back of her hair, the other pressed to her low back, resting on top of her spine, his fingers gripping onto her tightly for support. Hearing her moans, feeling her body move in sync with his movements, was almost too much for the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor to bear a second longer.
When Tonks's entire body shuddered with a startling cry, ecstasy exploded in his veins and for a moment, his wolfish vision was blind. Remus saw nothing but white.
Lupin wasn't sure how much time had passed before he dared to open his eyes again. The room felt like it was spinning. How long had it been? Five seconds? A minute? An hour? He guessed it didn't matter at all. When he felt like he'd finally managed to regain composure of himself, he returned his attention to Dora.
She looked no more put together than he felt. Her dark maroon waves were tousled and in disarray, her pale grey-blue orbs lazy-looking and heavily-lidded, like she'd drank too much Fire Whiskey or Muggle alcohol.
Tonks offered Lupin a lopsided, giddy smile and ran her fingers through his light brown bangs, pushing them away from his eyes, allowing a giggle to escape her lips.
"What's funny?" Lupin started to stammer, feeling his heart plummet to the pit of his churning stomach, thinking that he'd done something wrong to upset her.
"It's…nothing…" Tonks managed to gasp out in between her fits. "It's just…h—he never…Ollie never…made me do that before when he…when we…."
She chanced a glance up towards Lupin, suddenly looking nervous, trying to silently gauge his reaction.
"I didn't sound stupid?" Tonks whispered in a small voice as she brushed back a lock of stray hair back behind her ear where it rightfully belonged. "Did I?"
Lupin shook his head and smiled, the edges of his lips curling upward, thinking what a question she'd asked.
"No, love. Of course not. I didn't sound stupid, either did I?" he challenged, throwing her query back to her.
Tonks made an odd little noise that sounded like a cross between a snort and a laugh through her nose, throwing her head back and laughing before pulling Lupin even more on top of her to gather him in her arms.
She collapsed her head back against the pillow and smiled. "No, Remus," she whispered. "You were perfect."
For the rest of the night, Lupin and Tonks did not leave the Shrieking Shack. Their clothes lay discarded and forgotten on the floor at the edge of the bed, along with their sense of shame. The two of them stayed up into the ungodly hours of the morning, talking, exploring one another's bodies, learning about themselves, what it meant to truly love one another.
Tonks eventually fell asleep, but not Lupin. Instead, he was more than content to hold onto his partner and now his girlfriend while the young woman slept in his arms, her legs entangled with his, her head nestled comfortably against his chest, listening to his heartbeat.
In the pitch-black darkness, he stroked Dora's hair, thinking back to the experience the two of them had just shared with one another. Never in his lifetime did he think himself worthy of love, much less finding it in a witch who would dare to look past his lycanthropy, or that the woman in his arms would feel so deeply for him.
Tonks, the young Auror on the Hogwarts Express, had stumbled into his life by pure happenstance. And now, she was perhaps the best and most beautiful thing ever to happen to him.
Truly, Merlin worked in mysterious ways. Perhaps He had sent Lupin Tonks to allow the young witch to pull him out of his desolate existence. Whether that way was Merlin's or Tonks, Remus didn't know, nor did he particularly care about it.
He was just grateful to have someone to share in his life now, thinking that one of the first places he wanted to take her when the sun broke over the horizon was for a walk in the woods, maybe followed by a late afternoon trip to Honeydukes, before topping off the night at the Three Broomsticks to share in a butterbeer before heading back to Hogwarts, but this time, it would be as a couple.
Not just as partners. It was this single thought that accompanied Remus all throughout the night, and that eventually lulled him to sleep, thinking he would do whatever it took to protect this young witch in his arms from Sirius if need be, and the rest of the cruel world.
For he was hers. And she was his. And Lupin wouldn't have it any other way.
