They'd been bickering in slow-motion for hours. Nothing Remus said seemed to please Tonks. Her jaw was silently working, as if she was chewing her tongue in frustration as she sat beside him on the balcony, uncharacteristically drab in a gray chambermaid's uniform and a brunette bun.
They'd been told the clandestine meeting between Lucius Malfoy and the muggle Home Secretary was set for four in the afternoon, but it was already half six and nobody had shown. So they waited, cloaked in layers of Tonks's Auror-strength concealment charms, outside a decadent suite on the sixth floor of the Dorchester Hotel, watching the day ripen into golden late-afternoon. The many-windowed buildings of central London shone like faceted gemstones in the sinking sun.
Remus kept his eyes on them, because he didn't trust himself not to stare at how the rosy light caught in the tips of Tonks's eyelashes and played over the smooth skin of her face.
When Remus had conjectured that Kingsley must have gotten some bad information about the meeting, Tonks had jumped to Kingsley's defense, which had made Remus bristle for reasons he hadn't wanted to think about but ended up thinking about anyway: Kingsley, sure and handsome, with his easy smile and his Auror's confident stride, was exactly the kind of man Tonks ought to want to spend her time with. Not a sickly old pariah with a limp and six days left before the full moon turned him into a murderous creature.
It had been seventeen days since Tonks had knocked Remus's whole existence off-balance by kissing him, and four days since she'd cornered him again and demanded to know why he was avoiding her. He realised with a start that there were two chronologies ruling his days now: the ancient and predictable rhythm of the moon, and the new, erratic joys and terrors of seeing Tonks.
Both, he thought, with a feeling like the bottom dropping out of his stomach, seemed to constantly destroy and rebuild him in ways he couldn't control.
Tonks was bobbing her wand in the air beside him, and after a moment he caught on that she wasn't just idly fidgeting: the tell-tale sparkle of a charm was dripping from the end of it, and his eyes followed it down to where it ended at the forecourt of the hotel. One of the array of international flags flying above the entrance had been transfigured to a red and white symbol Remus didn't recognise.
"Tonks, what are you—"
She cut across him with a wicked giggle.
"How long til someone notices, d'you reckon? I give it an hour at least, all of these muggle toffs are so far up their own—"
But someone had already noticed, and Tonks abruptly stopped talking at a shout from somewhere unseen.
"What have you done?" Remus whispered, worrying he might be overheard despite Tonks's charms. "What did you change?"
"I've just improved the Union Jack a bit," Tonks lilted, her mouth perking up at the corners.
Remus could feel his blood pressure rising; his face was hot. Tonks was always doing things like this, capricious and dangerous things to amuse herself that would get her captured or killed someday. He turned to her, pushing a lid down on his frustration to speak to her calmly. Before he could start, she seemed to clock a look on his face and held up her hands appeasingly.
"Just—keep your knickers on, will you? I'll change it back."
Tonks raised her wand to lift the charm, but just as she did, a couple of uniformed bellhops jogged out into the circular drive to goggle at the flag.
"It's too late now," Remus said with a deliberate evenness. "We'll have to wait for the fuss to die down and hope it doesn't scare off our targets."
Tonks scowled and crossed her arms. "You can tell Kingsley it was all my fault," she said dourly.
Remus took a deep, steadying breath, but before he could reply, the door to the suite opened behind him and Lucius Malfoy oozed inside, moving with a gliding haughtiness Remus had become familiar with after dozens of missions keeping tabs on him with Tonks.
"About time, mate," Tonks muttered under her breath. Malfoy quickly checked the room for monitoring charms, scanning with his wand around the bedroom, the bathroom, and the closet. Then he perched himself delicately on the damask settee, crossed his legs, and checked the time on his fine silver wristwatch.
The furore below was growing louder and Remus glanced away from Malfoy to look down. A small crowd of hotel guests, in crisp bespoke suits and glistening furs, had gathered on the ground to puzzle over Tonks's handiwork.
"Purely out of curiosity, how exactly did you 'improve' the flag?" Remus asked.
"I made it the Dead Kennedys instead," chirled Tonks. At Remus's blank look, she added, "You know–they're from your time, actually—the DK—" She scrawled it in the air with the tip of her wand.
Remus shook his head. "Is that a band? Sounds American."
Tonks wrinkled her nose. "Your mum sounds American."
"Tonks, that doesn't even..." Remus trailed off as she smiled in that impish gleeful way she always did when she'd flustered him. She covered the grin with her hand, but it was too late for Remus, who was already overthrown by that feeling he'd been getting lately when she was around: the one had that had made him suddenly understand why they called it a crush, because it was like the walls were closing in around his heart.
"Shit," said Tonks. "Here he comes."
A squat, balding man was walking up the side street toward the hotel entrance, dressed conspicuously plainly compared to the natty clientele gathering outside. When he spotted the crowd he stopped in his tracks, pulled the hood of his anorak over his head, and turned to walk back the way he'd come.
Tonks cursed under her breath.
"How do you know that was him?" asked Remus.
Tonks rolled her eyes. "From his pictures in the dossier Kingsley gave us. Didn't you go over them?"
Remus had, but he still didn't recognise him.
"You're better with faces than me, I suppose," he sighed.
It was true: Remus spent much of his life with his eyes cast downward, trying not to impose upon anyone with his gaze. Tonks seemed to examine other people's faces with a studious keenness and file them away for later use in her Metamorphmagus's portfolio of disguises.
Apparently she didn't agree, and she huffed in frustration. "No feeling sorry for yourself," she snapped. "I did my homework and that's all it is. You know I take our mission prep paperwork to bed? I've been looking at that Tory twat's face every night for a week, that's how I know." Glaring at him, she quickly added, "And yes I know what a Tory is. Don't look so surprised."
But it wasn't surprise that had gone across his face: it was the messy skirmish of emotions he'd felt when the image of Tonks reclining in a nest of sheets (leafing through documents with her fine little fingers, her pink hair mussed and the strap of her camisole slipping down over one shoulder) had come into his head.
Pervert, whispered a sour voice inside him. Imagine her face if she knew all the little things you save up to think about in your bed.
Inside the suite, with a flourish of his elegant robes, Lucius Malfoy stood and began to pace the length of the room.
Remus was quiet for a long time. Tonks was waiting for the crowd outside to thin enough for her to discreetly restore the Union Jack to its stuffy old self, but those gormless muggles kept coming outside to get a butcher's at it.
She felt a bit bad, if she was honest, and she really wanted to fix it before they had to leave, as a sort of apology to Remus. He'd been a right brittle prig every time they'd seen each other since she had impetuously kissed him in the kitchen a few weeks ago. She was a bit miffed that he was acting like it had never even happened, and she couldn't seem to stop herself from needling him and trying to get under his skin. Irritation was one of the only emotions she could reliably provoke him to show and she preferred it to the practiced mildness he hid behind most of the time.
"I wonder how long he's going to wait," she said, tilting her head toward Malfoy, who'd gotten into the minibar and was disdainfully examining a tiny bottle of Laphroiag. "Do you think we should... I dunno... cut our losses?"
Remus shook his head. "It's too risky to apparate, I expect," he whispered, even though Tonks had covered them with several coats of redundant silencing charms. "He'll hear the pop and know he's being watched. And it won't do us any favors to have other guests reporting loud noises from this room."
They had snuck up to the sixth floor with their robes transfigured into staff uniforms, and the plan had been to wait until the meeting ended and slip out the same way. Tonks had thought it'd be fun flouncing about the posh hotel in her chambermaid's frock, but Remus had been obviously uncomfortable and kept sneaking glances round corners, which set her on edge.
"Didn't you say you'd had a job in a muggle hotel once?" she'd whispered incredulously as he'd hid behind a potted ficus from a worker pushing a room service cart. "Just pretend you're–whatever—going to clean a bed or something."
His face had looked so miserable at that remark that she hadn't gone on. She'd wanted to tell him that ninety-nine percent of a successful disguise was acting like you belonged exactly where you were. It was all this flighty, furtive nonsense that would get them found out.
Tonks privately suspected that Remus's life would look a lot different if he took this advice to heart. Even in Sirius's house, Remus had an awkward, cautious way of carrying himself, like he thought he shouldn't be allowed to be there. But that was one of a great many things she knew he wouldn't take well if she brought it up, so she never had.
Malfoy had fixed himself a gin and tonic in a finely-etched glass, handling each ingredient with his fingertips like it was dirty, and strolled idly toward the window, sipping it. Tonks felt Remus tense beside her, but she wasn't worried; she had set the charms herself and she took pride in her knowledge of state-of-the-art concealment magic.
As Malfoy peered out the window, his gaze aimed straight through where Tonks and Remus were sitting on the balcony, Remus shifted and muttered to himself. Tonks felt the familiar cool slime of a disillusionment charm dripping over her face, and a hot flicker of indignation ignited in her chest.
"You know that's not necessary," she hissed through her teeth. "I'm a fucking Auror, you big girl's blouse, I know how to do a–why am I even whispering?" She flung out her arms and belted out the rest in a brassy singsong: "He can't hear us, he can't see us! I'm fucking good at my job, and you're a condescending git who underestimates me!"
Remus went very still, his eyes trained on Malfoy.
"I'm not underestimating you," he said slowly, his lips barely moving. "I'm trying to keep you safe."
"We are safe. I've kept us safe. You just don't think I know what I'm doing," she shot back icily.
Malfoy checked his watch again, then turned away from the window.
Tonks felt Remus let out a long breath beside her.
With a reverberating clang, Malfoy threw his fine crystal glass in the bin, gathered himself into his cloak and disapparated with a ringing pop.
"So much for not disturbing the neighbors," Tonks muttered.
Remus was already on his feet. He tapped his wand against the sliding door that divided the balcony from the room, and beckoned Tonks with his hand. She felt a little trill of excitement in her stomach, despite herself. She loved his gentlemanly way of holding open doors, of always inviting her to go first. It was one of the first things that had made her feel that exhilarating mix of curiosity and fondness and instilled in her a strangely ambitious drive to get to know him.
She got to her feet and tried to meet his eyes as she passed into the room, but he was nervously looking over his shoulder and didn't see her.
The room smelled of potpourri and astringent muggle cleaning potions. Tonks caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror: chestnut hair like her mum's, a white apron tied messily around her waist. She smiled at herself and swayed to admire how the simple dress clung to her figure.
A perverse impulse seized her and she glanced sideways at Remus, who was checking over his own uniform, brushing his slender white-gloved hands down the double-breasted jacket with its bright gold buttons. He looked rather good in the crisp navy blue, which almost fit his lanky frame properly, unlike most of his actual clothes.
"When you worked at one of these places," she asked coyly, spreading her arms to indicate the palatial suite. "Did you ever get to use one of the rooms?"
"No," he snapped. "I was just a cleaner."
She skewered him with a sultry look. "Did you ever want to?"
His eyes flicked up to the ceiling and he bit down on his bottom lip. His face was turning pink.
"No," he said, returning her stare.
Tonks dropped her arms to her sides, dropped the seductive expression from her face, and regarded him steadily.
With all the unassuming gentleness she could muster, she asked, "Do you want to right now?"
Remus swallowed hard and jammed his hands into his trouser pockets.
"I thought you were angry with me," he said quietly.
Tonks's heart was going like a hummingbird. That wasn't the answer she was expecting.
"I am, a bit," she admitted. "But I still like you."
She watched Remus's gaze wander from her face to the ornate crown moulding, his mouth opening slightly. He always looked lost and unhappy at moments like this. She knew he must be fighting himself in some way, but it was hard not to take it personally when her flirting seemed to make him so glum.
"Tonks," he said, his voice shuddery and hoarse. "Please understand, it's not that I—"
The unmistakeable crack of apparition sounded inside the room.
Instinctively, Tonks flung herself into the closet and out of sight. She reached for Remus to pull him with her, but he had done exactly the same thing, and their hands bumped awkwardly as they jostled together in the tiny space.
Remus heard Tonks utter her string of concealment charms at the same time he whispered his own. She kept murmuring after he was done; clearly she knew a few spells that he didn't. Shimmering magic wrapped around the pair of them like a blanket.
He felt a sting of regret for his paranoia on the balcony; he hadn't meant to imply that she wasn't competent. He just couldn't stand the thought of something happening to her that he might have prevented.
They stood pressed shoulder-to shoulder in the dark little space. Through the slats of the closet doors, he had a partial view of the room, into which Lucius Malfoy had just apparated. Malfoy's arm was interlinked with that of a striking blonde woman Remus recognised as Mrs. Malfoy. He and Tonks had glimpsed her several times on their stakeouts at Malfoy Manor; She sometimes stood just outside the window of the dark mahogany-paneled room where the Death Eaters discussed their business, evidently listening in.
Lucius Malfoy cast a wary look around the room, and Remus held his breath as his cold eyes passed across the closet. Tonks's fingers encircled Remus's wrist, and even through his ridiculous white gloves he could feel the steadying warmth of her little hand. He was afraid to move for fear of drawing attention to himself, and he wondered with a sort of deranged awe whether that was exactly why she had chosen that moment to touch him.
But he let her, and it felt so disasterously good that he thought she must be able to feel his heartbeat tripping under her fingers.
Mr. Malfoy's gaze didn't linger on the closet; he slung off his cloak and threw it over the settee.
"I thought, since we have the room anyway, darling..." Mr. Malfoy glided to the bar and took down two more crystal glasses.
Mrs. Malfoy stood with her hands on her hips, an unimpressed look on her face.
"Rather dreary," she appraised. "You couldn't get a suite at the Lanesborough?"
"Oh, shall I pop you back home and find someone else to enjoy it with?" Mr. Malfoy teased archly, sidling up to slide an arm around his wife's waist and press a drink into her hand.
Mrs. Malfoy laughed a dirty sort of laugh.
"Idle threats," she purred, fisting her fingers in her husbands hair and pulling him down into a kiss. "Nobody sets you off like me."
"Sotovoci," Tonks murmured, and a prickling crackle sounded in Remus's left ear, the one closest to her. When she spoke again, her voice was inaudible to Remus's right ear but crisp and amplified in the left. "Is this working? Can you hear me?"
"Yes," Remus confirmed, his own whisper inaudible to him.
"Cool. Good. We used to use this to talk to each other in class."
"Yes. Us too."
Tonks turned her head to look up at him, her smile faint and peculiar, and stripes of warm light fell across her face from the louvered door. He felt unnervingly vulnerable under her gaze, and he wondered if it had only just occurred to her that he'd been a schoolboy once.
The wet sounds of Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy's snogging were clearly audible in the little closet.
"They're a bit disgusting, aren't they?" whispered Tonks.
Remus had to bite back a laugh, and the feeling of muffling a snigger while his ear buzzed with a whisper charm returned him so powerfully to his school days that his head spun vertiginously for just an instant.
The Malfoys, still smacking kisses on each other every couple of seconds, swaggered arm-in-arm toward the bedroom, their cocktail glasses swinging in their hands.
"I say we wait until we hear the bedsprings creaking and then leg it," Tonks continued.
Remus had to admit it was a sensible plan.
Somehow, though he was completely still, Tonks could tell that Remus was squirming internally. She could feel the fluttering pulse in his wrist. He often got weird about sexual stuff—Tonks had seen him cringe and side-eye her when she laughed at Mundungus's raunchy jokes, and when Molly had approached him about giving Harry and Ron a little talk about all the socks she was finding under their beds, he had flushed and stammered like he was going to have a stroke.
Once, last summer, when all the kids had been staying a Headquarters, Tonks and Ginny and Hermione had been chatting in the kitchen. Tonks had gathered that neither of them got to spend much time with other girls their own age, because anytime the three of them got together, the conversation would go from school to boys to sex—not that those two kids had much to say about that, but they liked to eagerly pester Tonks with questions and elaborate hypotheticals. Tonks had been right in the middle of a rather inspired speech that had both girls engrossed.
"Boys can be a bit stupid," Tonks was in the middle of telling them. "It'll get better when you're older, but for the first few years you're gonna have to teach them everything."
Here, Remus had walked into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Ginny's eyes had gotten huge and Hermione had buried her face in the sleeves of her jumper, but Tonks had been on a roll.
"Don't assume they already know anything," she'd continued. "The contraceptive charms, the clean-up spells, how to make you come..."
At this, Remus had set his teacup down with a tremulous clink and quickly walked out of the room, his cheeks and ears as red as she'd ever seen them.
Here in the dark of the closet, with only thin slats of light falling across his profile, Tonks could tell Remus was bright red again. She wondered, as she had many times before, if he was embarrassed on her behalf or his own—if he just had old-fashioned ideas about propriety or if his reticence was more akin to Hermione's adolescent horror at Tonks's frank speech: the flushing shyness of inexperience.
She fairly itched with the desire to find out which it was.
When the sound of gasping and squeaking springs began to emanate from the bedroom, Remus couldn't even look at Tonks as he signaled with his hand that they should go. He gingerly slid open the closet doors and stepped out, cautiously glancing around the room before turning his head to give her a little all-clear nod.
She kept her grip on his wrist and pulled him with her toward the door.
She almost kicked over the bin next to the minibar, but Remus steadied her shoulder with his free hand, then raised a finger to his lips, silently shushing her. She almost laughed out loud. His face was so red, but there was an uncommon sparkle in his eyes.
The Malfoys were making low, animal sounds as Tonks reached for the door handle. Suddenly, she drew her hand back and turned to look at Remus.
"Wait," she mouthed. He frowned and shook his head. She let go of his wrist and minced back across the room to the balcony door, sliding it open as carefully as she could. She turned to hold up a finger to let him know she'd just be a second, but he was already right behind her, with worry in the deep lines of his face.
"I've got to fix something," she whispered.
His hand went around her wrist this time, holding firmly, but she was undeterred and he allowed her to pull him out onto the balcony with her. The traffic noise was disorientating after the whispering quiet of the closet.
The crowd of muggle spectators had cleared out from the front drive, and the only person in sight was a valet swaying boredly at his post. Tonks bent over the railing, and Remus gripped her upper arm protectively. She flicked her wand and tidily broke the charm she'd set on the flag. The valet didn't look up, and the Union Jack retook its bellicose colours.
Tonks straightened up and beamed at Remus. He had the same bewildered look he'd gotten when she'd kissed him. Behind them, the sounds of the Malfoys had risen almost as loud as the London clangor of sirens and honks.
"We've got to go," Remus implored in a whisper. Tonks was staring up at him with a blazing intensity that made his legs feel weak.
"One more thing," she murmured, her voice as clear in his left ear as if her lips had been brushing right up against it. He quickly took his hand off her arm. He was terrified that she might kiss him again. He was terrified that if she did, he'd press her up against the balcony railing, forget where they were, forget all the things he'd forbidden himself, forget the Malfoys in the next room, forget everything but the sticky softness of her little heart-shaped mouth.
She glanced back into the hotel room. "I just can't stand to see those twats so happy," she said, almost to herself.
Remus didn't understand what she meant. He watched her hand delve into her apron pocket and saw her eyes light up as she found something in there.
"Remus," she said earnestly, "I'm very sorry, mate."
She withdrew a little brown ball from her pocket, threw it into the hotel suite, and slammed the sliding door shut.
Clouds of brown smoke began to fill the room, and even with the balcony door closed, Remus caught a whiff of the Weasley twins' powerful dungbomb. A clamor of shouts sounded from inside the bedroom. Tonks's face cracked into a bright delinquent grin.
Remus grabbed her hand and disapparated them both to safety.
With an echoing crack, they appeared on the front steps of Number 12, Grimmauld Place in a tangled embrace. Tonks was clutching the thin transfigured material of Remus's bellhop jacket in her fingers, her head thrown back as if she'd been laughing all the squeezing twisting way.
The fizzing pressure of a crazed laugh was welling up in him, too. He could see the smooth sinews of her throat and the exquisite curve of her jawline in the sharp relief of the streetlamps. He forced the feelings down into a tight crevice inside himself, muttered the countercharm to stop Tonks's spell from amplifying his voice, and let go of her hand.
"Tonks," he said sternly, his voice coming out strangled, "you shouldn't have done that."
Tonks straightened up and as she did, she pressed against him and slid her hand around his lower back.
"I know," she said.
Remus let out a heavy breath and looked up at the purpling sky. Tonks brought her hand up to the back of Remus's neck and guided his head so that he was looking at her again. His scalp prickled as all the hairs there stood on end.
"Sirius told me you needed somebody who gets you into trouble," she told him. Her eyes were half-closed. Her little finger was stroking down under the collar of his shirt. "That that's what disentangles you from yourself. He said you liked being the one that gets your friends out of tight corners."
"You think I like having to get you out of trouble?" He sounded more annoyed than he meant to, but the intoxicatingly fond look on her face didn't change.
"No," Tonks insisted. "I get in trouble whether you like it or not. I just think that's why you like me."
Her fingers threaded into the shaggy hair at the back of his neck, and she was tugging him down toward her with a resolute firmness, and her lips silently formed the words come on, come on—not like she was asking him, but in the way one quietly prays for something to happen.
Her mouth was just barely open. He could feel the heat of her breath. He shut his eyes like it might help him get a hold on himself but he just wanted so badly to be kissing her and then, with an easiness that shocked him, he was. His fingers fidgeted nervously at his sides. Her fingers were digging into his back. Her tongue darted into his mouth, daring, possessive. His tongue pushed back with the kind of greed he'd spent a lifetime training out of himself, and she groaned a little into his mouth.
And just as he was leaning in to kiss her deeper, she pulled her lips away with a little sucking sound.
"Lupin," she gasped, "For fuck's sake, put your hands on my waist or something, you can't just stand there doing nothing, it's fucking weird."
He delicately laid his hands over the coarse fabric of her frock, and his fingers irresistably entwined themselves with the strings of her apron, and then she was pulling on him again and her effervescent giggle was tickling his mouth. He found himself gripping her waist with a sureness that surprised him.
When they separated, she had a look on her face like she half-expected him to scold her.
He didn't know what was going to come out of his mouth, exactly, but in the end he nervously blurted, "You know, all the Hogwarts professors know a spell to listen in on the sotovoci charm. They teach you in your orientation. It's subauscultio. A jabbing motion with your wand."
He rubbed his hand across his mouth, mortified at his jittery rambling.
A hilarious process of expressions squirmed across Tonks's face, and Remus startled both of them by kissing her again.
Weeks later, when Mundungus would mention in passing that he'd once seen a bellhop kissing a maid on the front steps of Order headquarters, Remus and Tonks would both agree that it was quite odd, and Tonks's hand would silently find Remus's under the kitchen table.