Harry hadn't spent a great deal of time in hotels in his life; he'd made it to adulthood with only a single stay at one, and that one had been The Leaky Cauldron, which felt less like a leisure residence and more like the heart of wizarding Britain.

Moreover, even on his all too frequent visits abroad to one council or another, he'd never found himself spending a great deal of time milling around. While he was sure a social scene did exist within the pantheon of international politics, it was not one that he himself ever felt the urge to partake in. Usually, he was too tired after a day of work to willingly spend an evening swirling whisky around his glass amongst the richest people that he'd likely ever met.

In many ways, therefore, his time wandering the infinite corridors of the hotel with Tonks felt like a first time, yet of what he could not exactly say. It was not aimless, not quite, as they were still, under the pretence of being lost, surveying the building. Yet, as their spells turned up empty yet again, he couldn't help but feel as though they were devoting their time to nothing at all.

"That went as well as I thought it would," Tonks did say, eventually. They'd been entirely silent up to then, ever since they'd left Sally-Anne, even their spells silent. "You seemed off."

"Hmm?"

"Did something happen between you two?" Tonks asked. "When you were at Hogwarts?"

Harry shook his head. "Nothing that I remember."

"So what is it?"

"I don't think there is anything."

"There was," Tonks told him. "You're usually really good at talking to civilians, but you went quiet on me with her." She grabbed his wrist lightly, inadvertently bringing a stop to his spell. He went to meet her eyes, though they were too much. "What's up?"

"I'm not sure." It was an effort to bring his voice to be more than a mumble.

"I think you are," Tonks said. "And you know the rules. If you can't work this case, you can't work it. There doesn't need to be any more to it."

"There's nothing to be made more of, is there?" Harry asked, defensive. "I didn't suddenly become mute."

"But you stopped being you," Tonks said, squeezing his wrist. "Sure, you were fine, but I want you as my partner. Not some half-arsed, mediocre version of you."

He nodded. "Let's find our room first."

Given the doors were numbered, the task did not take long at all, no matter how much Harry might well have wished it to. The numbers went from three hundred to two hundred and then to one hundred in little more than a blur.

Soon enough, they were stood beside the non-descript, unnotable number fifty-four, its appearance identical to those that bordered it. Harry was halfway to pulling his wand out by muscle memory, before recalling that he did possess a key for that very door.

Once opened, the room showed itself to be just as opulent as the rest of the hotel. Peculiar paintings were on the walls. They seemed to hold no particular theme except that they were no doubt tastelessly expensive. The second floor was some height above the ground, and so the bay windows offered a wondrous view of the green, rolling hills of the home counties of England, rolling on and on until they met the horizon.

Yet, what stood out most eminently in Harry's vision was the bed.

The one bed that the room offered.

The room that both he and Tonks would be sharing.

How such an obvious detail had slipped Harry's mind he did not know, but it took him so by surprise that he could think of nothing else.

Even Tonks seemed perturbed as she too was silent. Harry expected her voice to come, though it did not. They instead cast their privacy charms in a muted sort of daze, voicing only the occasional incantation. Still, after they finished, the silence lingered.

Tonks scanned the room for any cameras on even the slim chance that their wizarding criminal would be capable of harnessing such technology. Harry's gaze never left the bed.

"So what was going on with you back there?" Tonks did eventually ask.

"Oh," Harry said.

"Yeah," Tonks said. "What happened?"

"Nothing happened," Harry repeated. "I think that's the problem." He ran a hand through his hair. "Or that I did nothing."

"About Sally-Anne?" Tonks asked. "You mean when you were eleven?"

Harry sighed. "It was bad enough for her to give up magic completely, and I had no idea until today."

"Well, did you know her?" Tonks asked. "Were you in the same house?"

"No, she was a Hufflepuff."

"Then how could you have known?" Tonks questioned, her voice climbing as she did. Her hair pulsed red and she began to pace. "Despite what everyone tells you, you aren't the warden of our entire country. We're not all your charges to protect and we certainly weren't when you were a child."

"You're right," Harry said. His nails scratched against his stubble. "But I had no idea, Tonks. I was too busy fighting Malfoy and pissing around with an invisibility cloak to notice at all."

"Because you were eleven!" Tonks said. "Could you treat yourself with some respect for once, please?" She stopped in front of him. "So you didn't see her. Do you know who else didn't? Dumbledore. McGonagall. Fucking Sprout, her own head of house, didn't notice. Are you really beating yourself up about this?"

"I could've been better."

"No, you couldn't," Tonks said, simply. Harry stared at her. "You couldn't. You're muggle-raised, so you couldn't even hope of having a clue of knowing what blood prejudice is, let alone seeing it happen to a stranger, which Sally-Anne really was. You know that. I know you do."

Harry sagged under the weight of her words, his knees bending of their own accord to lower him onto the bed.

"I'spose," he allowed, his frame sagging. "I've just never seen anyone have it so bad that they give up magic completely."

Magic had been the best thing that'd ever happened to Harry. He couldn't fathom a reason to give it up.

"Neither have I," Tonks agreed. "And I bet it was awful. I mean, think of how bad we both had it at times, and we're only half-bloods." Harry nodded. "But what's done is done. We have to play the hand we're dealt here."

Harry knew that, of course he did. It was the nature of their job. They didn't have time to mourn the victims of the dark wizards they hunted; that mourning would only damn more people in the end. Their task was to amputate the rot of their society, not diagnose its ailments.

And yet.

And yet.

"You should take the lead on this one, Tonks," Harry said, rising from the bed, "but I promise I'm right there with you, as I've always been."

"You sure?" she asked. "Look, I know it's hard. She's your age, and she probably makes you think about what would happen if you'd not been there for Hermione, but—"

"—I'm right there with you," Harry repeated, his voice louder this time, "I promise."

Tonks didn't settle, however.

"It's horrible," she said. "It's disgusting. But if we're dirty, they're clean."

"Sally-Anne's not clean," Harry couldn't help but say.

"Yes, she is," Tonks told him. "She's carved out a happy little life for herself. It's our job to keep it that way."

"Alright," Harry agreed with a nod.

There was silence as they both breathed a much-needed sigh of relief. Both Harry and Tonks seemed to realise at the very same moment that they were standing within a foot of one another, and suddenly all the tension bled from the room as they started laughing.

Harry didn't have a clue why he was laughing, but he laughed all the same.

"That's not really our style, is it?" Tonks asked.

"Not really."

"Let's not make a habit of it," Tonks said, lightly giving Harry a grin that he couldn't help but mirror. "Now, one problem down, one more to go."

"The case?"

"No." Tonks flicked her head to gesture over her shoulder. "The bed."

"Oh."

"Oh, indeed," Tonks agreed. "Look, it doesn't have to be awkward. Obviously, we're adults, we're mates, and that bed is massive." Harry looked over. It seemed twice as big as his own bed at home, though even still it didn't feel half big enough. "If our arms, like, brush against each other in the night, it's not a big deal."

"I could transfigure another bed."

"You trust your Transfiguration that much?" Tonks asked. "Because I don't. Mine or yours."

"I'll take the floor then."

"With your back?" she asked. "You barely sleep enough as it is, and that's with a bed." Tonks folded her arms. "No, we're sharing this bed."

Harry sighed.

"This isn't a problem," Tonks said. "Even if we wake up fucking spooning every morning, it's not a problem because we're friends, right?"

Tonks walked over to Harry and wrapped her arms around his waist. And, when he did not move, she took hold of his right and placed it upon her shoulder, guiding him to hug her back, which he dutifully did.

Harry could feel his own heartbeat, bouncing beneath his skin.

"This isn't weird," Tonks announced, her voice coming from directly beneath his eye line, "is it?"

It was.

Harry was not a hugger. His friends were – Ron especially so when he was drunk – but he wasn't. And, for whatever reason, that aversion was doubly true where Tonks was concerned.

Sure, they'd slap one another on the back at the end of a job, and if he was having a rough week, she'd place her hand upon his shoulder sympathetically. It was comforting, but it felt fleeting too, and that was what made it comfortable then.

It was odd, however, mostly as he held absolutely no desire to let go.

Hugging had always felt perfunctory before; something that just needed to happen, never something that he could find himself getting lost in. It wasn't constricting; he didn't feel like parts of himself were being bled away with every passing second.

It was freeing.

He'd never had that before.

He could feel Tonks' mouth breathing against his neck, and it reminded him that they were alive. The scent of her shampoo, of her, served to ground him, rather send him fleeing into himself.

He still did not want to let her go, and she did not let go, either. Her hands passed over the wiry muscles of his back, their firmness felt through the thin material of his shirt. His hands held her hips, her waist, at the soft curves of her form. He wished to push up her top and feel the warmth of her skin.

Even after time passed, he still did not want to let go.

But he did force himself too, and the metre or so of separation seemed so easily crossed after that, once crossed already. The closeness, once shown, seemed to be the only thing his mind wished to notice.

"You're right," Harry said to both of their surprises. "We're friends. Nothing has to be weird." He looked at the door. "I think we better go make the most of being lost hotel guests before that excuse wears thin."

The Lansbury would be packed with guests by that time tomorrow, they both knew, and the culprit would likely be among them. They did not ask one another, but both Harry and Tonks did agree to leave separately. Over the coming days, they would likely be glued to one another's side. And, Harry reflected, he needed time to think.

The evening came all too quickly for Harry to have discovered anything worthwhile.

Their day's efforts had been led with nothing to show for it. They were no closer to finding the attacker, and, Harry learned, familiarity had not made the hotel's patrons or staff any fonder of his presence.

They would have to begin questioning soon, with their environmental checks having brought forth nothing. And, where muggles were concerned, the morality of such actions was murky.

Following the war, there had been a shift in the legislation regarding the acceptable conduct between wizards and muggles. Or rather, there had been the first of any kind of legislation introduced at all beyond the remedial laws that had governed such conduct for the last four hundred years.

Where before, all spells that could reasonably be considered to be upholding the Statute of Secrecy were deemed acceptable. Now, spells within the subject of Legilimency were to be the very last resort in solving their problems, as Hermione argued privacy of thought was an undeniable human right. Furthermore, they were not allowed to use the direct spell, Legilimens, as it provided excessive insight into its subject's mind. Their wands were checked at the end of every case to ensure that the spell had not been used.

If an Auror was skilled enough, as both Tonks and Harry were, they could passively use such magic, though only ever passively, gleaning only the very surface of insight from the subject. With context, it was more than enough, most of the time, especially after considering that muggles had no idea they were being watched and so had no reason to obfuscate their thoughts.

Yet then, Harry wished that he could perform the magic upon himself, just to gain even the very narrowest of insight over what'd happened earlier with Tonks.

He arrived at their room sooner than Tonks did, though not by much. By the time he'd showered in their en suite and put on pyjamas, Tonks herself had arrived.

By her frown, Harry gathered she'd been equally unsuccessful. She allowed the door to shut before her hair cycled to the pitch black it seemed to need to be.

Tonks sighed the moment the pink fully left.

"No luck?" Harry still asked.

Tonks pulled off her leather jacket and threw it to the ground, leaving her in a flannel shirt and a black tank top, though soon the shirt fell to the floor too. "None at all," she said. "Just got kicked out of the lounge. Apparently, they weren't kidding about the dress code." She flopped down onto the bed. "Wearing dresses is going to suck."

"Can't say I'm looking forward to suits either," Harry said, watching as Tonks yanked off her boots without bothering to undo her laces. She let out a gasp of relief when they came free. "I always feel like I'm pretending to be an adult whenever I wear one."

"I mean," Tonks said, reclining upon the bed to stretch her spine, "you sort of are."

"I know," Harry said. "But I don't need to be reminded of that by my own clothes."

It was only then that Harry recalled that he wasn't wearing a top, his chest bare for the world to see.

He folded his arms, obscuring as much of himself from view as was possible.

Tonks caught the action from the corner of her eye.

"At least you'll look good," Tonks argued. "Dresses ruin my whole vibe."

Harry leaned against the wall, almost casually, his back pressed against the cold surface bringing goosebumps to his skin. "What vibe's that?"

"Cooler than you," Tonks said. Harry groaned. "Y'know, nonchalant, grungy-punk artsy chic. The whole look survives on the basis that I look cooler than everyone else, but I'm not trying to. Dresses don't work with that. They're too performative."

"Do you not think you're reading a little too much into this?"

"I mean, maybe," Tonks allowed. She reached down to unbutton her black jeans. Harry studied the paintings on the walls. There was a biblical scene of the Garden of Eden, Harry soon learned. "And sure, I think my aesthetic can survive a sundress or two, but I'm not happy about it."

"Naturally."

"Harry," Tonks said. "Harry. Look at me." He did so, though slowly. He looked only to her eyes, though still, he could see the top of her thighs from the edges of his vision. "If we're going to be a couple, we ought to be comfortable with each other, don't you think?"

"I didn't want to look without permission," Harry said. "Friends or not."

"Taking off my jeans is permission enough for me," Tonks said. "It's just skin."

"I think we both know it's a little more than that."

Tonks sat up, bending her legs until her heels were planted on the bed. She rested her elbows on her knees as she looked up at him. "Why's that, Harry?"

Because Tonks was his friend. And the thoughts that looking at her would bring were completely unfriendly. That his mind had plenty to think of, without knowing exactly how her hips curved or the fullness of her thighs, or how her pale skin would glow in the low, evening light.

"It just is."

"You know you have nothing to feel self-conscious about, right?" Tonks asked, her eyes leaving him to look at his body. Her eyes found the toned edges of his abs, the broad set of his shoulders, the subtle strength of his neck and shoulders. "If that's the reason."

"It's not."

"So why is it so, so painful for you to just look at me?" asked Tonks. "There's nothing in the rules of life that says you can't find your friends really hot. That doesn't have to mean anything."

Harry smiled. "Isn't that a relief."

"So, if I were to find you looking at me, I wouldn't be offended," said Tonks, her voice airy. "Just as I would hope you wouldn't be offended if you caught me doing the same. And, the sooner our bodies start becoming normal to one another, the sooner we do our job."

Harry knew immediately that Tonks would never, ever be normal to him.

And, as her eyes still were yet to leave him, he doubted the truth of the rest of her words, too.

So, he did not allow his eyes to map her legs, as he absolutely wished to.

If he started, he would not stop.

"I was trying to be polite," Harry said.

"Would you feel the need to be 'polite' with Ron?" Tonks asked, "or Hermione?"

"Obviously. It's courteous."

"I think you're lying, beloved," Tonks said, rising up so that she sat on her knees. "You made a point of not looking at me; you still aren't. You wouldn't need to do that with them."

He made a point of looking only at Tonks then, no matter how much he might wish not to. "What are you implying?" he asked, his voice coming out far less steady than he'd hoped.

"That you have a thing," Tonks said. "A thing about closeness." Her nose crinkled. "And…intimacy."

"I have a thing about intimacy?" Harry echoed. Tonks' nose scrunched again. "And you've deduced that by me not perving over your legs?"

She smiled at the word 'perving'.

"By you making an event out of them," Tonks corrected. "It seems to matter too much to you."

"No, it doesn't."

"Yes, it does," Tonks said, her hair then beginning to fall in blonde waves. "If we're a couple, we're going to have to play the part. We're going to need to be touchy-feely. We're probably going to need to kiss. I need to know you're going to be able to do that without getting weird."

"That's all playing pretend. That's fine," Harry said. "But when we're here, we're not doing that. We don't need to convince anyone here."

"Then, as a friend, I want to change your life a little for the better," Tonks said. "Given we're probably gonna spend a while together, why don't we work through your thing about closeness?"

"You mean my thing about intimacy," Harry said, Tonks' nose crinkling as he spoke, "which I don't have."

Tonks sighed.

"Your denial isn't helping," she said, rising to her feet. "While we're here you need to chill the fuck out. By the end of this week, my body won't be special enough to make you study the wall art." She walked toward the bathroom. "Now, I'm going to have a shower. Naked. I trust you won't go through an existential crisis with that knowledge."

Harry let out a deep breath when she left the room.

He didn't have a thing.

He didn't.

He was capable of existing in the same room as an unfathomably beautiful woman without turning to a man completely controlled by his base instincts, or running away at the first sight of her.

But, he was tired and, short of anything to do save for waiting for Tonks to return, he climbed into bed and curled into the covers.

Mostly, he resisted the urge to build a wall of pillows in the middle of the bed as he listened to the thrumming of the water from the shower.

Through the bay windows, the light was only just beginning to leave the sky. The sun's gradual descent was in its earliest infancy, the sky not yet fading from brightest blues to burning, bronzing reds. Yet still, Harry silently guided the curtains closed with his wand, and turned off the lights of the room, bringing it as dark as the world would allow.

The shower stopped, and the wet pattering of Tonks' feet against the tiles met his ears. In the wait, it seemed to echo. The bathroom door opened.

"Nope," Tonks said, as moved through it, walking over to the light switch and flipping it on. "Can't hide in the dark, Harry."

"I'm not hiding," Harry said, his head unlifted from its pillow, "I'm sleeping."

"At eight pm?" Tonks asked. The sound of her feet grew louder until they were no doubt by his side of the bed. She shook his shoulder. "You're too young to be asleep this early. This is an old person's bedtime."

"We have an early start tomorrow."

"Yeah, six. Not midnight."

Reluctantly, Harry did rise from the bed, his eyes yet again meeting hers. Her hair was still wet, the ends soaking the shoulders on her pyjama top; a faded Weird Sisters t-shirt two sizes too big. She still was not wearing bottoms.

"This is how I sleep," Tonks said.

"Put us together and you'd get one adequately dressed person."

Tonks grinned.

"I realise I may have made my point a little too strongly," she said. "I do that."

"I hadn't noticed," Harry said. Tonks softly swatted his shoulder.

"I don't want things to be awkward with us," Tonks said, "but we do need to be comfortable with each other, in close proximity—"

"—intimacy—"

"—proximity," Tonks said, her eyes meeting his. She gave him a significant look, though it hardly hid her nose scrunching once again. "I get that you're not as comfortable like this as I am. I mean, how could you be? My life experience up to now has hardly been normal." She smiled; a softer expression than it so often was. "So, if you want, I will put some pyjamas on. They're uncomfortable, and my legs will be all sweaty, and it'll be awful and, really, how do you sleep in them?" Harry stared at her and she stopped her teasing. "But I will do it because I love you so so so so much."

He rolled his eyes.

"It's fine," Harry said. "I'd hate for you to suffer such an ordeal on my account."

"Are you sure?" Tonks asked. Harry nodded. "Are you sure you're sure?"

"Yes!" Harry exclaimed. "Now, can we please go to sleep?" He patted the bed with his palm. "I'm so tired, and if I don't start trying to fall asleep now, I just won't sleep at all."

"If you wanted me in your bed, all you had to do was ask," Tonks teased. Harry groaned against the duvet.

He flopped his head against his pillow and curled back into a ball, his eyes closed. He heard the light switch off, and then he could feel the duvet lift and Tonks' form slip in behind him, though the bed was large enough that their forms would not have a hope of meeting by accident.

"I really do hate wearing trousers, by the way," Tonks said, into the mild, early evening darkness.

"I believe you."

"The best part of every workday is getting home and finally being free."

"And I thought our time together was special."

"Not as special as my legs finally being removed from their prison."

"You could just wear robes, you know. Or a skirt. Or a dress."

"But that would ruin my vibe. You know that."

"I didn't realise your 'vibe' ranked so highly on your pyramid of needs," said Harry. "What's my vibe, anyway?"

"What, outside of being the saviour of the world?"

Harry nodded; mostly to aid in resisting the urge to roll his eyes. "Yeah. Like, to a muggle, what's my vibe?"

"Angry hipster," Tonks said, just slightly too quickly. "The hair, the beard, the eyes. You probably listen to Radiohead and say 'fuck the man' unironically."

"I'll have to take your word for it."

"You should give Radiohead a go," Tonks told him. "Based on like, everything about you, you'd probably like them."

"Wait," Harry said, sitting up so that he could look at Tonks as he spoke. "My eyes? How are they hipster-y?"

"Not your eyes, but the way they look," Tonks said. Her words were spoken so casually, too. As if what she was saying was something they'd covered countless times. "All morose and sorrowful. They're very pretty." She stopped for a moment, and Harry could feel her magic thrum through the room as she quickly added, "striking, I mean."

Harry smiled.

"Harry, can I ask you something?" Tonks asked. He nodded, fairly uselessly.

"Sure."

"When was the last time you were in bed with someone?"

"Seriously?"

"I'm not teasing," Tonks said. "It's been a while for me, by the way. Definitely over a year."

Harry was silent for a while.

"About the same for me, I think," he said. "Not since Daphne."

He never mentioned her. Never.

"Today's been long enough without talking about either of our failed relationships," Tonks said, to his relief. "I just wanted a little reassurance that I wasn't the only one."

"You've got me for company there."

"I really do, huh." Tonks gave a laugh. "It usually feels a lot weirder than this. Laying in bed with someone, I mean."

"That's because we've usually just gotten laid. We were lingering in the shame," Harry said. "Here, I'm just lingering in the knowledge that I'm not going to sleep anytime soon."

Tonks laughed. "You feel ashamed afterwards?"

"Not shame, no," Harry said. "I do feel like I'm wasting my life though."

"After getting laid?"

Harry nodded, again redundantly. He stared into the dim world above, the emptiness allowing him to think he was only thinking aloud, and not with an audience. "It's never as good as it ought to be."

Tonks sighed. "I'm with you there."

"We're really caught between two shit options, aren't we?" Harry asked. "You stand at the edges of intimacy—" Harry looked over, though this time Tonks' face didn't shift, "and everything is mediocre. Or, you walk through the minefield of relationships, which is seemingly infinitely likely to blow up in your face. I'd just rather not bother."

Tonks hummed agreeably. "And then you have your married friends, all smug and cuddled up and shit, saying how wonderful life is when you're in love, and the struggle is all worth it." She grumbled. "Hestia Jones and Charlie Weasley."

"Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley."

"Fucking Weasleys."

"Someone's got to."

Tonks laughed.

"It feels good to actually say this aloud," she said. "Every person my age is either too married or too divorced to talk to about all this."

"It feels like for everyone I meet or work with these days, everything has gone perfectly for them. Even when things go wrong for them, they actually go right. Happy and smug and always, always married or whatever," Harry said. "So yeah, the same for me too."

The light that broke through the window had begun to lessen. It was as if the universe had a dimmer switch for just the two of them to use. The sky was, to their eyes, glimmering and golden, caught halfway between the day and the day's end.

"Our job tends to fucking ruin everything, too," Tonks said. "The hours, the fact that they might just have to come second on some days because, if they don't, people die."

They were nearing uncomfortable territory there, they both knew.

"The fact that it's sometimes impossible to switch off," Harry allowed himself to say. "That you can't really ever separate you at work and you at home, because you've never been allowed to be anything other than that person."

"I'm sorry."

"It's alright."

"No, it's not," Tonks told him.

"No. It's not."

There was an oddness about the air of that moment. At once uncomfortable and necessary. No sound except the two of them breathing. No one else but them to hear it.

"Harry?" Tonks asked; her voice a balm against the sting of then.

"Yeah?"

"Superstrength is a really dumb superpower when you think about it," Tonks said. It was an escape, and they both knew it. "We have magic, so it's just all the boring parts of being strong without the cool muscles, because they don't just come with the powers, by the way."

It was an escape. One Harry could easily take. One he always, always would take.

But, he'd never been as he was then. Never with Tonks.

"Can I tell you something?" Harry asked, his voice quiet and serious, and he hated the way it sounded.

Hated how, even after all this time, his feelings still hit him without notice. That things had been fine — that he'd been fine — and then the tiniest thing would shatter the mirage.

But then, the mirage was already shattered. That die was cast. All that was left was to trust someone enough to help in examining the cracks, and then piece them back together.

Harry could feel the breath that Tonks hastily swallowed. "Of course."

"I have no idea what I'm doing," Harry said. "I haven't for a while. But recently, I can't help but notice that I'm just spinning my wheels. I don't know what I want. I don't know what makes me happy. And everyone else seems to know, and it feels like I'm just stuck."

"What do you do for yourself?" Tonks asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Is there anything you spend time doing that is just for you?"

Harry did not speak immediately.

"I don't think so, no," he said, after a time.

"Then if you never spend any time with yourself, how could you possibly know what you want?" Tonks asked of him. "You don't really know yourself. You just know the expectations of others."

"So you're suggesting I be selfish?"

"Yes," Tonks said, simply.

The brevity of her words made him feel hollow.

"I don't think I know how."

"Oh," Tonks said. The words felt like they echoed through the shell that was his body. "Well, why don't we start now?"

Harry passed a worried hand through his hair. "What do you mean?"

"Whatever it is, at this present moment, that you want to do, do it," Tonks said. "It could be to literally force me to put on pyjamas. It doesn't matter. We'll do it."

"I feel like this is the sort of thing I should've done ten years ago."

"Well, ten years ago you were on the run from Voldemort and I was moping over Remus, so we were a little occupied," Tonks reminded him. "But, we're here now, and even if you're beginning a little late, you are still beginning."

Her words did not make him grow at all. He felt small and hollow still.

But then, with Tonks, he allowed himself to be.

"Could we hold each other again?" Harry asked. "I really liked it the first time."

Tonks' response was immediate.

"Of course."

Harry smiled into the darkness.

"And it doesn't have to mean anything," Tonks rushed to say. In the darkness, Harry knew that she was talking only to herself. "It can just feel good, and that's enough. It doesn't have to be serious; it can just be fun."

"Okay."

Tonks traversed the distance between them quickly, the heat of her body at first distant and only growing until only the thinnest slip of air separated their forms. Harry turned in place so that they faced one another.

The darkness, with the room seemingly holding nothing but Tonks, only made her presence greater. She seemed closer than closer. Closer than even touch could bring her.

And then, slowly, she placed her hand upon his shoulder, gently guiding his face down to rest against her neck. Her other hand held his neck, his head cradled in her steady palms.

Harry collapsed into her. His hands had no place other than her hips. Tonks lifted her leg over his hip to drag him yet closer still until it felt like every fibre of him, marrow and pore and all in-between, was held by her being. Just as he held her; as he clinged to her.

The light of the world died outside of their room until it was truly night, and they remained as they were then.

"This is nice, isn't it?" Tonks wondered. Even as her voice broke the air, it could not break the peace. "Is there anything else you'd like to do?"

Harry closed his eyes and shook his head against her skin.

"Could we just stay like this?" Harry asked. "Just for a little while longer?"

And so, through the last dredges of anxious wake, they held one another, until at last tiredness began to fill Harry's body.

They didn't speak at all, but rather in an unconscious union, their limbs pulled away as night fell on England. They turned their backs upon one another as Harry attempted to catch the brief fractals of sleep he'd grown accustomed to.

Their backs were facing one another's, but just as Harry was falling off, their legs found their way to interweave. Her hair brushed against his skin every time they moved.

And his journey that night between rest and wake was not quite as endless as those before it.