Scars

"I've got a surprise for you," he'd said earlier. Which was surprising, because Remus doesn't like surprises. He'd held his hand out to help Tonks up off the bed, then put both hands over her eyes.

"What are you doing?" she'd asked, giggling.

She'd felt Remus kiss her cheek. "You'll see,"

He'd steered her into the bathroom. Tonks could feel warmth and smell a flowery scent, and when her husband took his hands away, she saw that the bath was billowing with bubbles and candles were dotted around the room.

Tonks beamed. Then she turned to face him. "You are such a sap,"

Remus had shrugged, looking proud of himself, and she laughed and kissed him.

"Thank you," she murmured.

They'd undressed- Remus had wanted to help her, and she'd let him, and she'd let him get into the bath first and hold both her hands so she didn't fall when she stepped in after. He'd sat down in the water, leaning against the back of the bath, and Tonks had leaned back against him.

"Choose a record," he'd said, nodding over to the shelf above the toilet, where the record player stood beside a stack of records.

Tonks had chosen an LP, and her husband had used his wand to levitate it onto the record player and start playing. At first, they'd talked a little, about what had happened that week, about plans for when the baby arrived, about Mad-Eye. Now, they've lapsed into silence. Remus has pushed her hair to one side (pregnancy is making her feel more feminine, so she's wearing her hair longer these days) and is kissing her neck and shoulder. When he's in a situation he's comfortable with, he can be great at physical stuff. His mouth is slightly ticklish, more tender than erotic, and it feels fantastic. He's got his hands over her stomach, and she's playing with his fingers. Tonks doesn't reckon she looks pregnant yet -frustratingly, she looks fat. That's strange to come to terms with because if she puts on a couple of pounds, she can usually morph it away, but that isn't a good idea with the baby growing inside her. Tonks isn't convinced that she likes being pregnant. All that "blooming with beauty" and "miracle of nature" drivel sounds like it's from another planet. Maybe that'll come in the new year, or maybe she'll keep feeling dumpy, bloated and sluggish until the baby arrives in the Spring.

Good job, then, she has a husband who gives her treats like this. He's pressing his mouth against her collar-bone now (Remus doesn't ever bite her, but he sometimes does a similar motion but with his lips instead of his teeth). His knees are either side of hers, and Tonks can see the scratches across his legs. He gets those every full moon. The lighter cuts are from bracken and thorns, and the deeper gashes from the wolf's claws. The latter are often found on his ankles, because when the wolf runs its claws catch on the heels of the other foot. The morning after a full moon Tonks helps Remus patch himself up, and when he falls asleep she allows herself a cry while she looks at all the bandages they've plastered across his body. Remus' compliancy, the fact that he never complains and only occasionally winces at his injuries, makes her cry more. He's resigned to regularly experiencing serious pain. He's had years of dealing with it alone. The pain would be bad enough but there's fear to, and humiliation and the knowledge of the violence which will be inflicted on him and which he'll be made to want to inflict on others. When she watches him sleep after full moon, Tonks sometimes jolts with alarm at realising that "taking care a werewolf after a full moon" has become part of her life. It's too upsetting to be routine exactly, but it's normal. And that's crazy. Two and a half years ago she'd have been apprehensive about being in the same room as even an untransformed werewolf. She was decent at healing magic, but she'd never imagined Dittany and bandages and sleeping draughts to take up so much space in her bathroom cupboards and in her head.

Remus' knees are bruised due to the way his bones change when he transforms. Sometimes they're scabbed too, and they click like crazy when he stands up. He's clicky all over- Tonks suspects he'll be arthritic before he's fifty. Which, disconcertingly, isn't very far away for him. His fingers crack sometimes, and they go stiff in the cold. Like his legs, the backs of his hands have a nicks from bushes and bracken. Remus' arms aren't as damaged- they seem to survive much of the scathing that happens on the forest floor. He's not especially muscular, but his arms have taken such twisting in transformation that his biceps and triceps are so pronounced that they almost sag.

Remus nuzzles the side of her face and laps at her earlobe. "Your mother's going to be home soon," he whispers.

"Just what every girl wants to hear when she's naked with her husband,"

"But not what every mother wants to walk in on, or what every son-in-law wants to be witnessed doing,"

She presses against his chest. "What is it exactly you don't want to be witnessed doing with me?"

Remus laughs (she can feel it through his chest) and darts his tongue out to lick the shell of her ear. "This," he mumbles.

"What else?"

He leans down to brush his mouth against hers. "And this,"

"Mmm?"

"And this,"

Remus' wet hands drift up from her stomach to her chest, around her breasts and down her arms, over her hands and across her thighs. His touch is light and his hands are slick with water and bubbles.

"No. I imagine Mum would be pretty cross with you if she saw you do that," Tonks mumbles. Her mum's been coming around to Remus more lately. Tonks reckons that "like" optimistic when describing how her mother feels about her husband, but Mum's finally starting to see Remus has a person, not a werewolf. And if Mum's seeing Remus as person, Tonks is sure she must be able to tell what a sweet, funny, humble guy he is, and how helpful and supportive he's being. But Mum has an infuriating habit of seeing what she wants to see.

Remus nudges her forward, stands up, hops out of the bath, and holds his hands out to help Tonks out after him. Usually she'd refuse his fussing, but Remus clearly wants to spoil her, so she lets him. The bathroom air feels chilly after the warmth of the bath, and Remus grabs a towel from the radiator to wrap her in. He grins, puts both hands on Tonks' shoulders, and kisses her softly, so that she can feel the smile on his mouth. He's restrained and reserved in front of other people and often even when they're alone. So when he does get mushy like this it makes Tonks feels so cherished and special. She's beyond lucky to have met somebody who makes her feel that way.

He pecks her on the forehead and reaches for his own towel, which gives Tonks the opportunity to observe him naked. Now that Remus has been dispatched to her old bedroom and she's sharing a bed with Mum, she hasn't seen him nude for weeks. Well, she sees him stagger home the morning after a full moon, but that doesn't count. Aside from his legs, his torso is the most frequently damaged part of his body. The wolf often gets scars on its stomach and chest when it's been hunting (ironically, Remus doesn't grow much body hair normally, so his chest scars are always obvious). His ribcage reminds her of a statue of Jesus she once saw in a Muggle church- gaunt and bloody. The cuts he gets there are difficult to heal.

On his side there's a clump of bruises which, having seen them so many times, Tonks reckons are in the shape of knuckles. She's never clarified with him, but it's not surprising, is it? It makes Tonks want to strangle Snape even more than she does already. If Snape hadn't outed Remus as a werewolf, this wouldn't have happened to him.

Remus' biggest scar is across his back. It's pink and scaly, starting on his spine and jagging up to reach his neck. If you know it's there you can spot the top part against his collar when he's wearing a shirt, although now he's facing away from her with his shirt off Tonks can see the scar in full. She's never asked when he got it, although she suspects that it's a few years old at least. He's lived through almost four hundred full moons. Four hundred. It doesn't bear thinking about, except it does because it's Remus' reality.

Tonks hasn't asked Remus how he got the scar either. He probably doesn't know. A nasty collision with a tree or a rock? A bite or scratch from another animal? A fall? Did somebody attack him? If they did, then that person (realistically, that man) would have ended up with a lot worse than a scar. Even now, when they're married and she's expecting his baby next year, Tonks doesn't want to ask Remus if the werewolf has ever killed anybody. She'd like to know for definite, and she's almost sure that the answer is no. But there's a chance that it isn't, and she won't make him relive it if it did happen.

The scar across his back only hurts him if there's pressure on it. More often, he gets backache and pains in his neck. Remus' shoulder-blades are covered in welts from where the wolf's body has exploded through. He's got cellulite on his stomach, shoulders and thighs from the way his body contorts when he transforms and shrinks when he turns back. Transformations give him bruises in those places too. As he wraps his towel round his waist, Tonks notes that his balls are bruised. He often gets hurt down there as when the wolf fights its way out, or when it knocks itself when running. In her research about werewolf babies, Tonks read the disturbing fact that male werewolves have been known to try to have sex with sheep they've killed, or cows, or fallen-over trees. She can't bear to ask Remus if that's true, but if anything like that's happened to him, it would explain a lot about why he finds sex uncomfortable and shameful, and why he ties himself up in knots if he suspects that he's done something to her that she didn't want.

And then there's the bite-scar. Left arm, where his forearm meets his shoulder. It's an ugly scarlet splodge, more like a burn than a bite, except for the two punctures where Greyback's canine teeth had ripped his flesh. That always makes Tonks wince. He was so little when it happened. How close was he to getting his arm torn off? Probably not very close. Greyback is skilled at what he does, so he'd have known how to infect Remus without risking killing him.

The scar gets inflamed in the days before the full moon. The first sign that the wolf is coming.

"What are you looking at?" Remus asks, tying his towel around himself.

"Nothing," Tonks says too hastily, then corrects herself, "I mean- you. You look good today,"

Telling Remus she's eyeing his scars will ruin his good mood.

"Oh. Thanks,"

"Not just good," she changes tack, realising that 'you look good' is the blandest statement imaginable, "Beautiful. Sexy. Proper fit,"

"No need to overdo it," Remus says, cocking an eyebrow.

"I'm not!"

He chuckles and leans in to kiss her cheek. When he's close, she can see the little scar on his hairline- the only one which isn't of werewolf origin. Remus got it when James and Peter were climbing the greenhouses and school, and Peter's lagging foot accidentally smashed one of the windows. A shard of glass had caught Remus on the forehead. The four Marauders had legged it back to the common room, with Remus dripping blood everywhere. He had was able to patch himself up decently enough that nobody noticed the cut later. However, when the damage to the greenhouse was reported at breakfast the next morning, Lily Evans had worked out what had happened. She'd cornered the Marauders outside Transfiguration and threatened to grass them up. When Sirius and Remus had told Tonks this anecdote in the Grimmauld Place drawing room a couple of years ago, Sirius had insisted that the only reason Lily didn't tell on the Marauders was because Remus was her favourite. Remus had dismissed this, although his denial was clearly out of embarrassment.

The scar healed well (even as a twelve-year-old, Remus had been adept at using healing magic on himself) and now it's tiny and faint. Tonks likes it because it makes her happy that Remus has got a scar which is a result of a dumb teenage prank. Merlin knows enough of her own scars are from those sort of daft accidents.

"You look proper fit, too," he says, back in the bathroom.

It makes Tonks giggle when he uses her own phrases back on her. He puts his hands back on her shoulders, walks her back to Andromeda's bedroom and hands her her pyjamas. He's put his own in there was well, and they get changed together, which seems childishly funny, like they're on a secret sleepover at school. Or, Tonks acknowledges, like being an ordinary couple who get to live together normally. When Dad first went away and they first started living with Mum, Tonks planned for her and Remus to spend one night a week back at the flat. By now, however, life's got in the way and they only make it back for the nights around the full moon.

"It's almost like being back at the flat, isn't it?" says Tonks. This living arrangement isn't ideal, but they need to be here for Mum and, besides, it makes simple stuff like getting changed for bed in the same room seem excitingly furtive. It's fun, in a way.

"Yes,"

"Is it weird for you that you only lived there for a couple of months?" Tonks asks. Remus moved in after they got engaged at the start of July, but they've been living here with Mum since September.

Her husband considers. "Not especially. I suppose I'm used to moving around. I didn't want to live in your flat, I want to live with you,"

"Do you want something?" Tonks questions.

"No. Why?"

"Because you're being awfully charming this evening. Anyone would suspect you'd broken something important of mine and you're trying to get in my good books before you tell me,"

"We both know that you're better than I am at breaking stuff," he points out.

Tonks looks up from drying her feet to chuck a pillow at him.

"Is it such a surprise that I can be charming?" Remus asks, with a mock-disappointed sigh.

"I know what's brought this on- seeing the Weasleys at the weekend," Tonks realises, "Has Arthur been giving you husband advice again?"

"What do you mean, 'again'?"

She pins him with a look.

"He may have given me pointers once or twice before," Remus concedes. He stands up to knot the tie on his pyjama bottoms.

"I knew it,"

He throws the cushion back at her.

"Seriously, though, thanks for tonight. You make me feel proper happy. Proper loved,"

He needs to hear that because a few months ago she confessed that she suspected that her love for him was stronger than his for her. She doesn't feel that way anymore, and Remus needs to know that.

Because Remus can't possibly accept a compliment, he changes the subject. "Maybe I'll plagiarise Arthur and write a book,"

"That's already been done. Haven't you ever read Twelve Fail-Safe Ways To Charm Witches?" Tonks replies, smirking as she goes along with his subject-change (she can't be bothered to be exasperated by him all the time).

"What's that?" he asks, laughing.

"It's a book. The Weasleys have one lying around the Burrow,"

"Perhaps I should take a look,"

"Trying to learn about girls from books sounds very you,"

"Maybe that's where Arthur learnt the advice he gives me,"

"It's more of a Fred-and-George thing," Tonks explains.

"Do the twins need help with girls?" Remus asks. He's hopeless at gossip- even Weasley gossip, which is usually unavoidable.

"Fred's caught up in an on-off saga with a girl called Angelina Johnson, George is officially single and mostly dates Muggles," Tonks rattles off.

Her husband considers, then murmurs, "I remember Angelina,"

"Anyway, they got the book for Ron. Merlin knows he needs help with Hermione," Tonks sighs.

Their conversation is interrupted by the sound of a clunking from downstairs as somebody arrives in the fireplace.

"Hello?" says Andromeda's voice, "1189,"

"1445. Hi, Mum," Tonks hollers down, "How was Poker?"

"I won a box of chocolates," Mum calls back.

"Cool,"

"They're white chocolates, and you know I don't like those. Do you two want them?" Mum replies.

Tonks looks at Remus. You two? they mouth at each other. Mum doesn't like them being a "you two".

"Weird," Tonks whispers to her husband, "Have you been secretly running her bubble baths as well?"

Remus grins the Marauder grin she rarely sees on his face, and lifts an eyebrow at her. There's the sound of footsteps as Mum walks up the first few stairs.

"Do you two want them or not?"

"Yeah, course," Tonks shouts back. One of the only good parts about being pregnant and not being an Auror anymore is that she can eat rubbish.

"I'll apparate back to my room," whispers Remus.

"Why? She's being all 'you two' with us. That's a good sign,"

"Yes, but another item on the list of 'Scenes I Don't Want Your Mother To See' is us hurriedly getting dressed in her bedroom," he says, giving her a knowing look.

"Good point,"

"There's some risks," he says, squeezing her shoulder before he leaves, "That I'm not willing to take".