A/N: Miracle-Beta Emily has returned! Just for two chapters, due to a broken foot. I'm a horrible person for benefiting from her pain and immobility. But all you lovely readers are too, so we're all as guilty as each other. :) Please enjoy this properly edited chapter.

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The next time Remus opened his eyes the scene was very different. There was no flurry of activity or panic; it was silent, peaceful even. He was still in the hospital wing, but on a comfortable, if narrow, bed, rather than the unforgiving litter James had conjured in the forest.

It was night time again, or at least to judge by the dim light it was. A lamp was lit at his bedside and next to it there was monstrous box of Honeydukes' finest. The gift tag hanging conveniently in his view read: Love and kisses, from Padfoot and Prongs.

Remus smiled at the absurdity of his friends. He tried to hoist himself up onto his elbow to reach the water jug that also sat on the bedside table, but noticed as he moved that his midriff was heavily bandaged, and there was a sharp needle-like pain as the muscle beneath pulled. He hissed and froze, afraid to move further in case he damaged anything.

"Careful there Mr Lupin," said a cheerful voice from the other side of his bed. "Poppy says you're to keep still."

Remus turned his head to see a scruffy-looking young woman sitting in his visitor chair. She had bright pink hair and wore reddish lace up boots that were creased with wear. He only noticed her boots because they were propped up on the rail beside his bed, right next to his hip. There was a magazine open in her lap, which she had obviously been reading until he woke up.

This odd girl grinned at him. Her heavy boots hit the hard hospital floor noisily as she hastily sat upright. It was only then that Remus noticed she was wearing the red robes of an Auror - they clashed horribly with her hair, but the unusual boots seemed to match quite well.

"Hello?" he ventured tentatively.

"Wotcher," she said, standing to attention and extending a hand for him to shake. She seemed to think better of it as Remus struggled to move enough to reach it and retracted her hand. "Sorry," she said, with an awkward grimace. "Did you want water? Poppy said you'd be thirsty when you woke up."

Remus nodded, watching in confusion as she moved quickly around the bed to pour him a drink. She held the glass out, closer this time, and Remus managed to free his hands from the bedding to take it.

He gulped it back greedily, then before he'd even asked, the young Auror filled the cup again. Remus smiled gratefully at her and threw the refill back gladly. After pausing for breath he said, "Thanks."

She shrugged happily and returned to her seat, "No problem." she picked up her magazine again, apparently not having the desire to explain her presence.

Remus looked bemusedly at the cover of her reading material for a while, the perplexing word Kerrang! was splashed across the front, Remus assumed this was the publication's name. Below this was a picture of a homeless looking blond man who was holding a guitar glaring angrily out at the world.

"Sorry," Remus said, feeling quite lost, "I think I'm missing something here, why is there an Auror at my bedside?"

"I'm your guard," she said, "well, I'm your trainee guard, I'm a year two, my seniors are Black and Longbottom but they wanted to go home for the night, so I'm here to make sure no one else tries to do you in. I'm Auror Tonks." she finished proudly.

"Tonks?" Remus repeated the familiar name.

Auror Tonks nodded. "Yes, that Tonks, my mum is Andromeda, Sirius's cousin. I think we've met before, years ago though, I was only a kid."

Remus nodded again, "I think I remember," he said. Suddenly the pressing concerns he'd had about Greta Reeves came flooding back. "What happened with Miss Reeves," he asked, "were they able to contain her?"

Tonks looked grim, but before she could answer the sudden scraping squeak of the curtains surrounding Remus's bed being pulled back interrupted their conversation.

In a flurry of scarlet robes Tonks was back on her feet with her wand drawn. Remus did a double take when he looked in her direction to see not the young heart-shaped face, framed by shocking pink hair, but instead, a wizened woman with cropped iron grey locks and a frown of steely determination. He fumbled automatically for his own wand, patting at his chest and sleeve but his hospital pyjamas had no internal wand pockets. He wasn't sure if he wanted to defend himself from the curtain puller or the woman that could change her face at will – was she even an Auror?

And then, completely oblivious to Remus's sudden panic Madam Pomfrey bustled around the drawn curtain holding a tray stacked with bandages and beakers of smoking potion. "You're awake then?" she said kindly, not even looking in Tonks's grey-haired direction.

"Er yes," Remus said, "Poppy, what happened?" His eyes flicked to Tonks who still looked like a combat-hardened crone. "Am I under arrest?"

"Arrest? Oh no, I shouldn't think so, dear," Madam Pomfrey said absently. "Now, how do your wounds feel? I must say these ones tested me, you were never so focused on one area as a teenager."

"Er, sorry about that?" Remus said, weakly. He grasped the topic, in hopes of solid information, "But I'm going to be okay?"

Madam Pomfrey looked a little offended, and her tone was stiff as she replied, "Of course you are. Now we just need to change your dressing, so shirt up if you please, Remus."

Remus, suddenly self-conscious about being healed while undressed in front of the face-changing Tonks looked to his left, but the Auror had vanished. Remus wondered if she could change herself invisible as well as into different people.

"Come along Remus," Madam Pomfrey said, "I've got a few more patients to tend to, the game today was a complete disaster."

"Right, right," Remus muttered, feeling quite overwhelmed. He pulled up his pyjama shirt and lay still as the matron stood over him. She waved her wand, murmuring under her breath, and the bandages loosened; to take his mind of the increase in pain Remus asked, "Poppy, what happened at the full moon? Was the potion faulty? Did Greta's dose malfunction too?"

"No dear, just yours." She paused her complicated wand pattern to spare him a glance, "I'm afraid no one knows what happened yet, but since your dose didn't work and Miss Reeves's did, the Aurors are assuming you were targeted specifically. I've run every test I can think of but there is nothing in your system that suggests you've been cursed or poisoned." She went back to work, and Remus felt little a series of stabbing pinches across the skin of his stomach. Madam Pomfrey continued to speak, "Now that you're awake, Professor Snape will want to speak with you regarding more advanced curses. He and Auror Black had very noisy disagreement in his dungeon yesterday; I believe Auror Black was under the impression the professor had tampered with the potion before he delivered it to the hospital wing. "

"Oh Christ," murmured Remus. "So everyone knows about this then?"

"No, the Headmistress was adamant it should be kept private; she's viewing it as an assassination attempt. The students will be told you have flu."

"Surely that's a bit excessive," Remus sputtered, "assassination I mean, flu is fine."

"I don't think so. You weren't in danger of dying last night, but as you well know, the law is clear: any wolf who attacks a human will be put to death."

Remus did know. He had never fought against it because wolves who attacked people lived outside the law anyway, and Wolfsbane had been so available for so long that it wasn't an issue. On personal level Remus knew that if he ever attacked another person he wouldn't want to keep living anyway.

"Minerva thinks someone wanted you arrested, and executed."

Remus gulped. He supposed that was possible, although horribly thoughtless to the people he could have hurt. Remus's public profile had earned him plenty of enemies over the years. Voldemort's followers obviously had a few issues with him, and were deranged enough, but most of them were locked up. There were social enemies too, ones that still saw werewolves as dangerous, and Remus had to admit that this was proof that they were right, but how on earth would anyone have gotten to his dose of potion? His dose, and not Greta's. That didn't make any sense.

The bandages around his middle cinched in tight again and Madam Pomfrey said, "Okay, you need to take this for blood replenishing. Open up," she added as she drove a deep measuring spoon towards his mouth. He complied resignedly, feeling like a toddler. "And this for reducing the inflammation in your joints, and this for pain," the matron reeled off, with two following spoonfuls, "and this last one is a bit nasty I'm afraid, but it's to keep the other three from damaging your stomach lining."

Remus just held his mouth open and then swallowed the moment the smoking liquid hit his tongue.

"Don't let it come back up." Madam Pomfrey said sternly, as though he could control the urge to vomit with willpower alone.

To his surprise he could. The potion cocktail heaved and roiled in his gut but as long as he concentrated it didn't make a reappearance.

Madam Pomfrey left him shortly after that, on to her next patient. They must have been bad Quidditch injuries if the players had to stay in overnight, Remus thought. But before he could start worrying about any of his students, Tonks peeped through the curtains. Her face was young again but oddly she had her eyes scrunched closed.

"You dressed, Mr Lupin?"

"Yes," he replied, his concerns lifting slightly at her silly expression. "I was never undressed," he said as she plonked down in her chair again.

"That won't be how I tell it back at the office," she said as she picked up her magazine once more, "the girls will be green." She grinned widely at him, "They'll be begging me for every detail when I tell them that while on a top secret mission I happened to come across the great Remus Lupin, shirtless."

Remus snorted, "I'm not sure whether to be concerned or flattered," he said, "although, since you're imagining the whole thing, be kind," he flapped a hand in illustration, "you know, plenty of broad muscular shoulders and rippling abs."

Tonks burst out laughing. "You're an excellent sport, Mr Lupin," she said happily.

"Remus," he said. "If you insist on pretending to ogle me, then please don't address me like a student would." He wrinkled his nose, "it's a bit creepy."

"Who says I'm pretending?"

Remus blinked. "Er, your Auror code of ethics?"

"Oh blast," she huffed, but she smiled once more and said, "Pretending it is, then."

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