This story follows Hunger in the Transfigured Hearts series, and is set during and after chapter sixteen of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Many thanks to Godricgal for her invaluable beta help.

Part One

Oh if you stir my cauldron…

"I never knew," he says, pulling away from Tonks' mouth. His voice is husky. Can she hear him over the volume of the wireless? He leans close to her ear. "I never knew this song was so—"

He inhales sharply as Tonks shifts beneath him. Her feet trail over his calves, pulling at the sheets as her legs wrap firmly around his waist. Ankles crossing, her heels dig into the small of his back as her thighs press against his.

"Nice, isn't it?" she murmurs, breath warming his face in the staccato rhythm with which she pulls him closer and deeper.

"What's nice?" He might have meant to say the song was long, but his thoughts seem fuzzy. "The song, or…?" His fingertips trace the hollows of her hipbones as he rolls his hips against hers.

He almost misses her throaty, "Stirring it right," as Celestina Warbeck sings the same words in a duet with an off-key and familiar grating voice…

Fleur Delacour?

What is she doing downstairs in Tonks' flat?

Tonks' flat doesn't have a downstairs.

Or does it?

Bugger the flat. Upstairs and downstairs are no concern of his when he's lost in the depths of Nymphadora's dark eyes…

He meets her mouth, giving a small whimper of protest when her lips part in speech instead of kisses. "We should play this song at our wedding."

She arches up into him, and he slides his hands underneath her, cupping her bottom, pulling her yet closer. The embrace of her legs tightens. Oh Merlin…

I'll brew you up some hot, strong love

To keep you warm tonight.

"I suppose," he says, chuckling low, "the lyrics invoke the idea of a wedding night."

Tonks laughs. The contraction of her muscles very nearly brings their lovemaking session to a premature end. He bites his lip and groans as he extracts his hands from underneath and cups them over her breasts. Her head, thrown back with laughter, makes her neck curve tantalisingly. He trails kisses up to her jaw and feels her pulse beat in a wild counterpoint to his own heartbeat.

"S'our song." Tonks turns her head and speaks breathlessly in his ear. "First time togeth—Oh. God, Remus…."

"In that case…" He interrupts himself with a half-groaned murmur of her name. "…we ought to have Celestina sing it in person at our wedding. I'll go down and ask her now."

Wait. He is in the middle of something he really doesn't want to end, and it isn't Celestina downstairs. It's Fleur, mimicking the singer at the top of her nasally voice. In shrill tones, Molly tries to jog Arthur's memory about when they had danced to the tune.

They must be dancing to it now. The floorboards are creaking and pounding.

Or is that the headboard?

"I reckon Celestina'd write a song for us," says Tonks. "'The Werewolf Who Married the Metamorphmagus.' With a very daft verse about the sort of babies we'll make together."

"Multicoloured werewolf cubs or some such rot."

Wonderful as kissing her neck is, he misses her lips. Raising his head, he sees a dreamy look on her face and pauses over her mouth.

"Beautiful blue-eyed babies," she sighs.

"I am rather partial to brown." Smiling, he gazes into her eyes (are they very dark brown, or black?) and watches them glaze as he rocks against her again.

They gasp together.

"Our babies will have beautiful eyes," he whispers, quickening their pace in response to her palms rubbing over his arms and chest, "but for now I am content to have only yours to get lost in."

Or he would have got lost, if not for Celestina Warbeck…

…Fleur…

…or Molly…

…sliding up the scale to a strident octave, which has an effect not unlike a cold shower.

He shifts, pushing up on his elbows, to caress and kiss Tonks' breasts. "Really now, Nymphadora…" Passion mounting again, he pauses for a shuddering breath before continuing, "this song's rubbish. Must we make love to it?"

Her lovely features slope in a sharp frown. "Dunno. You're the one dreaming it."

He blinks. His mouth falls open. "Dreaming?"

"You called it off."

Tonks' voice comes from somewhere other than beneath him, and he no longer feels the warmth and slight stickiness of her skin on his, but the cold dampness of crumpled bed sheets. The covers tangle around him as he sits up and turns around.

Thank Merlin, she's still here, just across the room. But she's pulled her boots on, and is buttoning her crimson Auror robes. The colour makes her grim face look very pale. Her hair is lank and brown.

"Tonks, I—"

From downstairs, Celestina croons,

Oh, my poor heart, where has it gone?

It's left me for a spell.

"No." He shakes his head as he clutches the sheets – they smell like Tonks – winding them around his hands. "No, I let you go so your heart would not—"

Eyes hard and wild, Tonks' mouth opens and releases a frighteningly shrill soprano:

And now you've torn it quite apart,

I'll thank you to give me back my heart!

Remus Lupin snapped awake.

His heart was pounding, and his breath came in ragged gasps. He sat propped up on his elbows as he had been in his dream. The moonlight filtered through the gingham curtains and revealed a tangle of sheets around his waist. His flannel pyjamas clung to his clammy skin.

At his core, he ached.

The dream images had faded immediately, but his need did not. Even when it did finally subside after tortuous minutes of struggling against his traitorous imagination that would supply pictures of lips and curves and joined bodies, yearning continued to gnaw deep inside.

It was a feeling to which he had grown accustomed over the past six months, though only as a dull feeling he could ignore, like his empty belly.

But he had not dreamed like this before. Always he was careful to clear his mind before sleeping.

Tonight he had indulged too much in brooding over her. The Burrow, it seemed, made him lower his guard. The love songs, though daft, underscored his particular brand of melancholy.

And they nearly had made love to A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love.

They had talked of marriage and children as Celestina Warbeck crooned over Tonks' wireless. The real conversation had been less daft than – though not by much – the dream one.

No. It had been a dream, too. With a crueller, more dissatisfying awakening than unfulfilled desire.

His heart thudding once more at a regular tempo, Remus shivered as the chill of the bedroom crept through the worn fabric of his sweat-dampened pyjamas. Wearily he disentangled his legs from the sheets and swung them over the edge of the bed. Limbs trembling slightly as he put his weight on his feet, he shuffled to the bureau, next to which his carpet bag of spare clothes resided – against Molly's insistence that he unpack and make himself at home during his few days at the Burrow. He rifled through jeans and jumpers till his fingers brushed the worn fabric of a pair of lighter cotton pyjamas.

He unbuttoned his flannel top, but hesitated to don the fresh pyjamas. He had purposely not worn these to bed, not merely because it was a cold night, but because she had worn them once. The top, anyway.

Last summer when he had lived with her – if the few days between her release from St. Mungo's hospital and his assignment underground counted – Remus had emerged from the bathroom one night, wearing only the trousers, and found her curled up in bed wearing the shirt. Sharing one pair of pyjamas between them had struck him as a delightful, charming idea. She'd looked so adorable, with the long sleeves covering her hands, slender body swallowed in the flimsy garment, turquoise polka-dot knickers just peeking out from beneath the hem.

They had lain in bed for a long time that night, not sleeping, he tracing the smooth contours of her hips as the pyjama top hiked up around her waist.

A shiver coursed down his spine. Reluctantly, he pulled on the shirt in which Tonks had slept, yet he found himself disappointed that the shirt no longer bore the raspberry-scented evidence (whilst slathering lotion onto her legs and elbows, she had squeezed out too much and spattered the shirt) that she had worn it. It stank of mothballs, without a trace of her.

Fool.

He ran a hand through his shaggy hair and flopped back onto the bed. That was a long time ago. Six months. He had not seen her once in all that time. She had not been present at any of the Order meetings he had managed to attend. Always she was on duty at Hogwarts, or investigating a lead on a Death Eater.

What was she doing tonight? It was Christmas Eve.

Sleeping, no doubt, at her parents' home.

Or working. (However she was managing to juggle her hefty Auror load with her no less time-consuming Order work was beyond him. In all likelihood she was executing everything with a vast deal more success than he.)

Not hoping to catch his scent on any of her belongings.

Certainly not having erotic dreams about a werewolf who was foolish enough to throw away the chance at a life with her.

No matter how much he still wanted her, no matter how vividly she visited him in dreams, now matter how much he doubted his decision to end it with her on account of his mission, Nymphadora Tonks was out of his life.

She was asleep now, and dreaming of other wizards than him.

She laughed with them, and was beautiful.

He screwed his eyes shut against the images of his body entwined with hers, of gazing into her laughing face, and fought sickening jealousy at the idea of some other man losing himself in her eyes. He wanted her to be happy. Laughter meant she was happy.

But was she?

The last part of the dream nagged. Give me back my heart, she'd sung. Her hair had been the natural mousy brown she hated. He'd torn her heart apart.

No.

He rolled onto his side, drawing the quilts up under his chin and crumpling the pillow under his head as he tried to savour the luxury of sleeping in a proper bed. He was reading too much into dreams, which wasn't like him at all. It was just a stupid song. It was the eggnog and Bill and Fleur all over each other and Molly's reminiscing about dancing with Arthur and his own moping. He had weighed against them and found himself wanting, and had thrown himself a pity party.

Merlin, he thought, recalling Harry's face when he'd told him about his role as Order spy, he'd sounded so bitter. How could he have made such a slip in front of the boy? True, Remus was hardly fond of his assignment, and more often than not descended into doubt as to whether he was really accomplishing anything.

He rubbed a hand across his bleary eyes, burning with fatigue, and saw an edge of the waxing moon through a gap in the draperies. Soon he had to go back to the colony, and he would transform with them again. He had been lucky so far, without Wolfsbane, and running in the wild, that he had not done what the evil instincts urged him to do. How long would that luck continue? If it did overcome him, how would he feel about what Dumbledore had asked him to do?

"No," he said aloud, voice almost a growl, and he turned his back to the window.

If Dumbledore thought it was important that he continue, he would. By no means must he give Harry reason not to trust Dumbledore's judgment. Harry's trust had been damaged enough by Sirius' death.

There was no denying it, no sense in resenting what was. He was ready-made for the job. He was a werewolf, and essential to the Order. Everyone was making sacrifices in this war, he no more than another.

But it seemed like more, said the ache in his core, always the source of his doubts, to sacrifice love as well as his very nature, likely as not…

Nature was why he had broken it off with her. For her protection. For her happiness.

He lived outside the fringes of society. Tonks was at the centre of the Wizarding world. Even in the face of war, her future was bright. He could only mar that for her. Surely by now, after six months of separation, she was disillusioned of her romantic notions about marriage to a werewolf.

She had to be over him.

She had to.

Closing his eyes, he repeated the thought like a mantra.

But he did not sleep again.

A/N: Sorry for the relative shortness of this chapter. The adult content, the whole dream sequence thing, and the paragraphs upon paragraphs sans dialogue were against my normal grind, to say the least, and I couldn't drag any of it out any longer. The next two chapters are a bit beefier. Feedback is greatly appreciated, and Remus will cheer up reviewers by starring in a steamy dream. And he promises not to go emo afterward. Though he might in the next chapter.