Chapter 2: Like Coffee and Cacao

"What have you produced?" Snape asked her in a bored tone.

Tonks held out a scroll of parchment. "Here. I did the first half."

He accepted the scroll of parchment from her. "You need to be writing reports up much quicker than this, Nymphadora."

"Yeah, I know." She rolled her eyes. "Where's yours?"

Snape flicked his wand, and a shimmery roll of parchment materialized in the air between them.

She quirked an eyebrow up at him. "This is the second half, then?"

"Yes."

"Cool. I can merge them then, if you want, and then I can send it to the rest of the Order."

But Snape wasn't listening; he was scanning her parchment closely, his eyes flitting over the ink. "Nymphadora, are you unable to follow the simplest of directions?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

He held up the scroll. "You've written here about the Knockturn Alley suspicions. The list that Professor Dumbledore gave us specifically said that I would be writing the first part, and you the second. The first part was to note suspicions of unusually Dark activity in Knockturn Alley. The second part was to record observations concerning the distribution of wands, and their buyers."

"No? I checked the schedule only yesterday, and it said that the first part was about Knockturn, and the second part was about wands. And we agreed that I would do the first part, and you would do the second, remember?"

"Nymphadora, do I look like I am a fool? Don't think for a second that I believe this childish excuse."

"Severus, it's not an excuse. I clearly checked the list that Dumbledore made. I checked it just yesterday. And it said that part one was about Knockturn Alley, so that's what I wrote up. What did you write up?"

"I wrote up the first part, as I was supposed to. You wrote up the first part as well, as you were not supposed to."

She scowled at him. "Do you think I'm lying? Why would I go to all of the trouble to write up a report if I knew you were already writing it? I only did it because the list said so!"

"Nymphadora, I wrote my portion of the report the very day of the observation," Snape sneered. "Obviously, in procrastinating to write up your portion, you have misread the list and gone on to write the wrong part of the report."

"I have not-"

"Is everything alright?" came a voice, and both Tonks and Snape turned around to see Remus standing in the doorway, his arms crossed against his chest. "Severus, just to let you know, Dumbledore dropped by last night and made some changes to the reporting list. So, if there's any discrepancies, that's probably the reason."

Tonks shot him a thankful glance and glared at Snape. Snape's face was unreadable.

"Fine," he said coolly. "Nymphadora, rewrite the missing portion of the report. We'll use my section for the Knockturn Alley observations. I expect you to have finished part two and merged the complete report by tomorrow night."

As he swept away, she made an obscene gesture at his retreating back.

"Hey," Remus said. "Calm down. It's okay."

"He's infuriating," she seethed, almost walking right into the doorframe before he thankfully caught her by the shoulders. "Why do I have to write the second portion? I'm the one who has duty at the Ministry and separate reports to write for the Auror Office! What's so important that he can't do it, huh? File papers?"

"I know," Remus agreed, walking her over to the kitchen and sitting her down in a chair. "Tea? Coffee?"

"Blood," she spat.

Remus rubbed her back. "Yeah, I know. Do you want some tea?"

"Just some water?" she asked. He complied, setting a glass of cold water down in front of her. She lifted the glass and took a long drink. "That git. Anyway, where's Sirius?"

"Upstairs, trying to teach Buckbeak to play Gobstones. Want me to go get him?"

"No, actually," she said, taking another sip of water. "I just wanted to know if you and I would get some time alone."

"Yeah," he said, looking slightly surprised. "We have time."

"Cool, then." She finished the water and set down the glass, looking right at him. "So, let's talk about Kate Arnett."

Color rose to his cheeks, although he didn't protest. "Okay. What about her?"

"Well, when you like someone, there's lots of different things you could do, but what I think works best is if you learn about them, and then approach them. The first rule is that you always have to be respectful. You know, you have to be okay with taking no for an answer, and you can't be rude or stalkerly or anything like that. But that's not going to be a problem for you, since you're, like, the most respectful person I know."

"Thank you," he said.

"I mean it. Anyway, let me start with a question. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you think you like Kate? With 1 being, like, barely, and 10 being love."

"Erm…" It was clear that he wasn't expecting that question. "I'm not sure."

"Just take a guess," she encouraged him. "I promise, I won't laugh."

"Erm… Maybe around three and a half? Four?"

She nodded. "Okay, that's good. Like, you don't want to be at like ten, because that could fall on borderline stalker-y and obsessive. You know, for someone who you don't know all that well?"

"Yeah."

"Yep. So, tell me how you know her. I know you mentioned something about Germany and all earlier, but… in detail."

"Right. Erm, so we met in Germany a few years ago. There was this convention about some magical practices, and I thought it would be nice to attend. Kate was there, as one of the speakers, and after the convention, she and I talked for a while. Both British, and all that. I met her again in the Ministry when I was going to a… registration check-in, and we talked some more, I guess. That was about two weeks ago."

"Neat. Have you seen her again after that?"

"Not directly."

She nodded. "Sounds nice. So, how well do you think you know her? And how well do you think she knows you?"

"Er, well, we know each other okay, I guess? Like, normally. About as well as I know Emmeline, let's say."

"Alright. And, er, does she know?"

"Know?"

"Erm…" There really was no delicate way of putting this. "About the… condition?"

"Oh. My lycanthropy, you mean? Yeah, she knows. At least, I would think so. Everyone knows, ever since Severus let it slip a few years back."

Tonks's blood boiled at the reminder of Snape. "Merlin, you probably hate him more than I do. And that's saying something, since he's making me rewrite an entire report for no reason. Did Dumbledore really come in and change the list, by the way?"

"No, actually," Remus said, the corners of his mouth twitching. "It was Mundungus. But I didn't think Severus would be satisfied with that answer."

"You're the best, Remus, thank you. Snape would've barked on about how useless I am for another hour."

"You're not useless, Tonks, you know that."

"Yeah, but I hate Snape either way. Sorry, off topic. Anyway, Kate would probably know about…"

"My lycanthropy," Remus said gently. "You don't have to be afraid of saying it. I won't be offended."

"I know," she sighed. "It just makes me feel bad. So do you think she takes it well? Do you think she'd…" Merlin, this was definitely a difficult subject to talk about. "Do you think she'd be okay with it? Or would it make her… yeah."

"I would imagine she'd be okay with it," he remarked thoughtfully. "She never said anything about it or expressed some sort of distaste, even though she would have known last month. Not to mention, she's a Ministry official too."

"Good point. Okay, then, that's great! Do you know what kind of woman she is? Like, tell me about her."

Remus's cheeks flushed. "Tonks, do I have to?"

"Yeah, of course. Go ahead." She blinked at him expectantly.

"Right. Erm, well, she's nice. And friendly. Sort of tall, too, I think. Brown hair? Or maybe it was black."

She nodded. "Cool. What else?"

He appeared to be thinking. "Well, erm, she's kind? And attractive, I guess?"

"Right. Okay. So, based on what you know about her, you should try to figure out how you're going to ask her out, where you're going to go, all that stuff." She scratched her chin. "Does that make sense? I mean, you're good at reading people, so you should be able to take care of that. I'm not worried."

"How do you know all this?" he asked with a smile. "I mean… you seem so experienced."

She gave him a wry smile. "Yeah. Experience. I've been with plenty of blokes before, so I have a good idea of how to read them. And I've helped friends out too. Most of my friends are guys, so I've helped them ask out the girls they liked."

"Ah. That makes sense." He hesitated. "Were you and Charlie ever a… a thing?"

"Charlie? As in Charlie Weasley?"

"Yeah. I mean, you two seem close, and I've seen you guys at Order meetings, and all that. I was just wondering."

"Oh," she said, surprised. "No, Charlie and I were never a thing. Charlie never really wanted a relationship, and he was more like my big brother than a potential partner or anything." She made a face. "Not Charlie, that's for sure. I've dated a couple of blokes from the Ministry, though. They were nice, I guess, but things didn't exactly work out. And there was one of them who was absolutely terrible."

"Really?"

"Yeah! Okay, so my first boyfriend was this guy named Jack Allen. He was nice, but way too quiet and shy. I dunno, he never talked. I always felt like an idiot for blabbering my mouth off when he would just be sitting there. Anyway, we kind of just broke apart, but it wasn't bad or anything. We just thought it was better if we weren't involved. Very peaceful. Next was this guy named Jonah Blackpayne. He was really nice, and smart, but like… he was the opposite of Jack. He talked his mouth off. I don't know, he just had a lot of stuff to say. So I'd be trying to talk, and he'd be trying to talk, and we didn't listen when we talked. Long story short, he got promoted to some other branch in Hungary, so he left, and that was that. Guy number three was a guy named Louis Martin. I have kind of mixed feelings about him, if we're being honest. He was really funny and smart, but he was obsessed with my aunt. Bellatrix. He had posters of her up on his wall. No joke. I broke that one up quickly."

"Oh." Remus didn't look bored at listening to her monologue about her ex-boyfriends, though. "Well, I'm glad. You deserve better than all of them."

She smiled. "Thanks."

"And… what about the other one? The one who was absolutely terrible?"

She shifted in her chair. "Are you sure you want to hear about him? He was pretty bad, you know."

"If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to," he assured her quickly.

"No, it's okay. Well, really, he just wanted to, you know, be with me for the sake of being with me. Physical relationship, and all that. Since I'm a Metamorphmagus." She shrugged nonchalantly. "I didn't feel comfortable, so I broke it off."

"Oh. I'm sorry," Remus said. "He had no right to do that to you."

"It's okay," she said, shrugging again. "It happens."

There was some awkward silence for a while, until Remus said, "So, erm, I should probably let you get working on that report."

"Report?" she asked blankly.

"Well, er… isn't that what Severus wanted you to do?"

"Oh." She scowled. "I almost forgot. I guess I'd better go start that."

"Yeah," Remus said. "Okay."

There was another moment of silence.

"Sorry for boring you with my life stories," she told him.

"Don't apologize. You didn't bore me."

"Right. Er, well…" She got up from her chair. "Report. Better go get started on that. Bye!"

And without waiting for an answer, she dashed out of the room as fast as she could.

A/N: Developments :) Don't forget to leave a review!