Summary: Remus transformed in his bedroom, causing everything to be messed up and ripped. He is just about to clean it up when Tonks decides that she wants to help. The two of them are caught in a whirlwind of discoveries and questions brought upon by the simple events that occur because of the messy room.
Disclaimer: Did you see that?! The top of this page? Since I'm writing fanfiction I obviously don't own these characters. Would I be stooping to this if I did?
Author's Note: Hey everyone! I've been really into the Remus/Tonks relationship recently. I truthfully do not know where this new obsession came from but I am in love with them together! I don't know if it will happen, but just something about the way that J.K.R. wrote about them in OotP (ever notice how they were always together?) made me think about it. Anyway this is just a little one-shot with no purpose whatsoever that is merely here to entertain you. At least I hope it does! Let me know what you think about the fic and the new pairing for me! I love your reviews!
Eyeshadow5746
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Pandemonium
A One-Shot
By: Eyeshadow5746
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Remus Lupin rubbed his head as he surveyed his damage. He allowed himself to let a sigh slip past his lips as he closed his eyes and opened them again, as if trying to wish the scene before him away from his sight.
'If only I had left the room in time...' Remus thought as he let his mind slip away from the task at hand and into the 'what-ifs' that always seemed to plague his brain at times like these. It seemed as if he had run into a lot of bad luck in his life and this event was just the icing on the cake.
Remus picked up a few pages that were shredded to pieces. 'More like if only I had taken the Wolfsbane potion.'
As the thoughts continued to fly past his head at an alarming speed, causing him to become quite flustered, he managed to sink down onto his rumpled bed. He vaguely realized that he was sitting on what seemed to be the remains of a mattress. The remaining pieces of the puzzle appeared to be scattered across the room.
'I'll bet I can trace this all the way back to ' if only I hadn't been bitten'.' Remus thought bitterly as he childishly kicked at an extensive pile of something or other that he had ripped up in the process of his transformation.
'But I never ever forget the potion...' Remus trailed off as he ran his hand through his straggly hair. 'There was that one time...' Remus tried to shake the thoughts out of his head. He needed to be at task and to stay focused if he ever planned on accomplishing his task. He seemed even more tired than usual as he surveyed the room in which he had transformed during the previous night.
Remus had been so occupied with the order work and trying to get his emotions and thoughts in order that he had completely forgotten to get his Wolfsbane potion from the cabinet over the sink in his bathroom where he had conveniently left it so that he wouldn't forget.
A lot of good that had done him. Since he hadn't taken the potion and he hadn't left his room, or what had once been his room, was now scattered in tiny little pieces, creating a chaos that Remus wanted no part of.
"This room is just—" Remus began as he searched for an adequate adjective.
"Pandemonium?" a chipper voice laughed from behind Remus, causing him to start out of his thoughts and turn around to face the laughing woman with bright pink hair.
"You could say that," Remus stated with a trace of bitterness woven through his words, as he looked around the room.
"What did you do in here?" Tonks asked as she allowed the smile to fade off of her face slightly. The room was in complete disarray, seeing as nothing seemed to resemble anything remotely like what had been in the room earlier.
"I–er–transformed," Remus managed to blurt out before he quickly turned his head to the side to avoid eye contact with Tonks and to hide the blush that was beginning to creep its way onto his pale cheeks.
"Don't you become harmless with the Wolfsbane?" Tonks questioned innocently, while her comment caused a blush to quickly rush up Remus's cheeks even faster.
"Well–you see–that's what makes this so ironic–"
Tonks's eyes widened at Remus's stuttering implication. "You didn't take the potion."
"I got distracted–there was a lot of work to be done for the order–I forgot to take it," Remus finally surrendered to Tonks' stern comment as he lowered his eyes, away from her vibrant dark ones, to the floor.
Tonks didn't comment on anything but merely just looked around the room shaking her head and muttering things that sounded suspiciously like strings of curses underneath her breath. Remus took a step away from the woman, not knowing if the colorful phrases were directed at him, his wolf, or the room.
"Tonks?"
"Didn't you realize that your room would end up like this?" Tonks asked without showing that she had acknowledged Remus's question.
"You'd assume," Remus mumbled underneath his breath so that Tonks could barely hear his comments.
"Remus Lupin, how can you first forget to take the potion and then forget to at least leave your bedroom where anyone could just simply walk on in?" Tonks demanded, causing Remus to look down at the floor in shame once again.
"It's more complicated than you think. I didn't just merely lose track of time..." Remus trailed off, as he tried to assure Tonks and tried to regain some of his pride by showing her that he wasn't a complete prat all the time.
"How do you lose track of time?" Tonks asked suspiciously as she narrowed her eyes.
"You know I just got home yesterday–"
"Where did Dumbledore send you?" Tonks asked before Remus could finish the feeble explanation that he had prepared.
"It's confidential," Remus stated clearly.
"I'm a member of the Order. I think I've earned my right to know," Tonks countered.
"It's more important than you realize!" Remus exclaimed in his frustration. The room, his forgetfulness, Tonks' questioning, the Order, the war, and Harry–they were all piling themselves upon his shoulders and he didn't know how much longer he would be able to support them before he just crashed down into the ground.
"How can it be so important that I can't be told about it?" Tonks smirked sarcastically as she watched Remus's tired gray eyes darken considerably after her question.
"Don't you realize I'm the only one of my friends left? I'm the only one of them that lived a normal life after the first war..." Remus trailed off as if he were uncertain on how much he should confide in Tonks or how much he should trust her.
'You never really know who you can trust.' A voice inside Remus's head insisted. Tonks must've seen something flash in his eyes because her harsh eyes that she was holding firmly on Remus's figure seemed to lighten slightly.
"I don't realize what that has to do with my not being able to know. Everyone's lost somebody that they care for," Tonks announced as she held her head high, but with a closer inspection you could see the faintest silvery glimmer of a tear forming in the corner of her eye.
"Has everybody lost everyone?" Remus asked bitterly as he poked at the pile of rubble in his room.
"Maybe if you weren't so bitter about it you'd realize that not everyone you care about is gone. You must care for some of us in the Order. What about the Weasleys?" Tonks snapped. "What about Harry?"
Remus didn't respond. Tonks wasn't sure if it was because he didn't have an answer or because he was afraid of what he would say if he opened his mouth. Instead he just took to staring at Tonks with a hallow look in his eyes.
"I don't want it to happen again," Remus finally spoke.
"Someone's giving Voldemort information, aren't they?" Tonks asked Remus with a straightforward tone which conveyed that she wasn't going to take any devious answers. She wanted to know the truth.
Remus just looked around the room with pleading eyes as if he were willing for the room to suddenly pick itself up and go back to the perfect, organized way it was before. He closed his eyes imagining how it had looked and where everything had been. Of course there were things that were probably better ruined. Not everything was perfect, nothing can ever really be perfect.
"It's always someone that you'd never guess. It's always someone that you'd trust with your life–or with a friend's life," Remus told Tonks with such sadness ringing through his voice that she had to turn in the other direction.
"That's their job." Tonks smiled slightly. "They need to get our trust in their hands so that they can use it to their advantage. You'll never really know if anyone is really trustworthy but you can never really gain anything from just cutting yourself off from everyone."
"You could be the spy. You could be playing with my mind," Remus stated, all trace of emotion gone from his voice as he allowed himself to watch Tonks's reaction out of the corner of his eye. She hadn't moved. She was still standing, staring at the cluttered room with her face scrunched up into a tight frown.
"I could be," Tonks began, "but I'm not."
"You could be lying," Remus insisted.
"You've got to learn to let go of your past. You can't hold onto all of the horrid experiences forever. At some point in time you're going to have to forgive yourself and Peter for what happened. You can't keep it all inside," Tonks instructed Remus.
"It's hard when everything is such a mess inside of my mind," Remus laughed slightly as if he suddenly understood something that had been teasing his mind.
"Take all the time you need," Tonks smiled.
"There might not be enough time," Remus mumbled so softly that at first he wasn't sure if Tonks heard what he had just said. Her expression hadn't changed. She was still staring at him with the same defiant, yet soft expression that she had been wearing the entire time.
Remus didn't wait for an answer as he tugged at a stray piece of graying hair. He sighed as he looked around the room and bent down to pick up something small and golden from the pile. He shoved it into the pocket of his fraying robes.
"Would you like an extra hand?"
Remus smiled for the first time in their conversation. He slowly nodded his head and without another word, the two of them began to pick up the pieces of his possessions.
XXX
Tonks, who was walking towards the window to observe the sun setting, tripped over part of what had been Remus' trunk and sent herself sprawling across the room. She landed at the foot of a table and caused a bunch of papers and quills to fly off and land in various place across the room.
"Bloody hell!"
Remus just looked at the papers that weren't picking themselves off the ground and then at his half gnawed trunk and with a sigh he picked up a sheet of paper and began to pick up another. Tonks, on the other hand, was trying to get herself up from underneath all the junk. She rubbed her backside and watched Remus with a contemplative eye as she tried to regain her composure after the fall.
"What are all these papers?" Tonks finally asked as she began to gather them as quickly as she could and place them back in the trunk where they had originally been.
"Things I've saved up over the years," Remus stated as he stumbled around trying to pick up the mess that Tonks had made.
"You still have papers from when you were in Hogwarts here!" Tonks exclaimed as she flipped through pages of notes and assignments that Remus had obviously been keeping in his trunk. A glare of light caught her eye and she moved the papers aside to produce a very clear intact mirror.
"I don't know if a spell can fix this; it's almost gnawed off," Remus was muttering to himself as he began poking at his mutilated trunk with his wand.
"You should consider yourself lucky," Tonks smirked as she held up the mirror that was still whole, even after Tonks' clumsy display, and Remus' wolf form ripping the room to shreds. Remus looked at the mirror with distaste as he shook his head.
"What? You want to have bad luck for seven years?" Tonks asked as she raised her eyebrows.
"I don't think it can get any worse," Remus muttered underneath his breath before quickly responding to Tonks' question. "You should hear the things that she just assumes are true."
"She can't be that bad." Tonks laughed at Remus' look of disgust after what she had just said and she quickly put the mirror down on the ground, not wanting to cause Remus any more problems in his life. She looked at the mirror curiously out of the corner of her eye, and wondered what things that the mirror would automatically assume about him.
The mirror was a quite large one. It had probably been set on his desk or bedside table at one time. The border was a simple deep oak wood. The top was embroidered with a single gleaming jade. Tonks smiled as she ran her fingers over the green stone.
"She just assumes she knows me because she knows my condition," Remus stated bitterly as he tried to drop the conversation and avert Tonks' eyes away from the mirror, which she was still looking at with interest.
"Why does her opinion matter?" Tonks asked with a smirk. It wasn't like Remus to suddenly give into the harsh words that the mirror recited.
Remus didn't respond, he just looked out the window and watched the sun finish setting. He let out a small sigh that almost escaped Tonks' ears and the two of them sat there for a while as the fading lights left the room darker. The shadows fell across the wall and Remus just watched Tonks through the darkening room.
"You can't keep yourself from thinking about things that you shouldn't."
Tonks took this information and stored in it the back of her brain. On the surface, she was positive that Remus was talking about letting the stereotyping get into his soul. On the other hand, there could be something more in there. Something less superficial and more realistic.
The shadows fell across the room as Remus stood up and offered his hand down to Tonks. She gingerly placed her hand in his rouge one and steadied herself to her feet without much trouble. "Would you like some tea?"
"That'd be nice," Tonks responded softly as she stole a glance at the mirror in the corner.
Remus turned and left the room to prepare their tea. Tonks watched the empty doorway for a few seconds before swiftly moving over to where the mirror was placed on the floor. She gently picked it up in her young hands.
"A proper young lady wouldn't wear her hair pink," the mirror warned in a very testy, shrill voice that made Tonks cringe. "A proper young lady wouldn't be having a rendezvous with a man so much older than her either."
Tonks jumped with a start and dropped the mirror from her hands. The shattering glass was followed by the sound of more clattering to the ground. Tonks glanced up slowly and met Remus's eyes.
"Nymphadora—" Remus began.
"Don't call me that!" Tonks spat out before she glanced down at the floor with a sheepish look on her face. "I'm sorry! I'm so bloody clumsy!"
"It's just a nasty little thing I acquired over the years." With a smirk Remus said, "Plus, you're the one who broke it."
Tonks rolled her eyes as she began to pick up the pieces of the mirror. The pieces were still and dark in the calm night light as the two figured began to pick up the small pieces of shattered glass hiding on the floor.
"I've probably caused you an even bigger mess than before I came to help," Tonks stated apologetically.
"It's alright," Remus said with a light smile.
'Assumptions...' Tonks thought as she allowed herself to think about what the mirror had told her for the first time. Remus's smile in the dark room had more meaning to her now. The assumptions and what Remus had said all made sense.
"Sometimes the things you think about are blown out of proportion when they're as simple as reading the signs right in front of you." Tonks smiled at Remus and then stood up to leave the room.
XXX
Late at night as Remus was laying atop his newly repaired bed was when the 'what-ifs' found their way back into his brain. He closed his eyes as he tried to figure out what Tonks had meant by her comment before she had simply walked out of the room.
She hadn't tripped or stumbled once, and through a room with a floor as cluttered as his that showed him that something about her was different. He couldn't put his finger on it but somewhere between the time when he went to get their tea to when she had broken his old mirror something had changed inside of her.
"What's different?" Remus asked himself. He heard his voice echo around the room and finally come back to his ears. His own voice sounded foreign and old to even his own ears.
'What if she found out...' Remus couldn't stop the thoughts from entering his head. He sat up in bed and attempted to get out of bed and go down to the kitchen to pour himself a cup of water.
He was unsuccessful.
He tripped over the remains of his feeble wooden chair and quickly landed, with a very loud thud, on the floor.
"Ouch," Remus muttered as he picked himself up off of his messy floor. As quietly as he could, he padded down the stairs to the kitchen and proceeded to search for something to eat. He quickly skipped over the cheese and the left over ham from dinner. He had just grabbed an apple when he turned around to see Tonks standing in the doorway with a thoughtful look in her eyes.
"Wotcher," Tonks muttered sleepily as she stifled a yawn.
"What are you doing down here–in the kitchen."
"I couldn't sleep and I heard you getting up," Tonks smirked as she closed her eyes for a few seconds only to reopen them and find Remus watching her with a keen interest.
"I tripped."
"You're going to become me, pretty soon you'll be sporting bright pink hair." Tonks laughed at the thought as she poked at Remus's shoulder, causing him to turn away quickly and try to clean his apple with his shirt.
The apple was shining in the tiny light in the kitchen.
XXX
"You couldn't find anything out?" Tonks questioned eagerly. She was sitting across the table from Remus and she had been pressing information out of him about his trip for the past hour. Remus was stiffly answering the questions at first, but now he appeared to be answering easier and lighter than before.
"No." Remus bowed his head as he rubbed his temples with his hands.
"You don't have any idea on where the leak is coming from?" Tonks asked urgently. She sounded as if her entire life was standing on the edge of this line and if he couldn't' answer her then the line would be pulled out from underneath her feet and she'd fall down with nothing to hold onto.
"No." Remus answered vaguely again, causing Tonks to watch his reactions to her questions intently. She knew that he was hiding something from her. She knew that he was holding back from providing her with information.
Tonks had to wonder how she seemed to know so much about Remus Lupin and not realize it. How could she know this man in front of her like she knows the back of her hand and not realize it. She could watch his actions and immediately know what's going on in his mind, and yet she was so confused and so jumbled with her own emotions.
"It's so hard to imagine that someone would betray us," Tonks whispered. Her voice seemed cold and harsh in the quiet, warm kitchen.
"You become cynical after a while," Remus told Tonks with a bittersweet smile.
"Just because you've seen these things doesn't mean you need to let them get ahead of your life. Some people are bad and some are good. It's a fact that you need to learn to accept life and the sooner that you make yourself believe it is the moment that you'll be able to move on and live your life the way that you want to live it. Even if we were to both die tomorrow we'd die knowing that we were happy," Tonks offered with a smile.
"You can't possibly remember the first war."
"I'm not that much younger than you. Ten years isn't that much of a difference. I remember some details. I remember enough to know what people thought my cousin did. How do you think it was for me growing up and believing that my cousin was a murderer? Do you think it was easy watching my best friend get killed because her father turned her and her mother in to Voldemort?" Tonks snapped.
Remus didn't have anything to say after her comment. His eyes showed extreme concern but he knew that words would be pointless and crowded at this point in time.
"What did you pick up from your room when we were just about to start cleaning it?" Tonks asked Remus. The silence was beginning to make her uneasy and she wasn't in the mood for being uncomfortable around someone that she felt she knew so well. She didn't need to have the suspicions building in the back of her mind.
Remus blinked before he reached his hand into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a small golden ring. There was a single diamond in the center surrounded by two small sapphires. Tonks allowed a smile to grace her lips. She watched as the light shimmered across the ring. She looked across the tidy kitchen table at Remus.
"It was my mothers," Remus began to explain. "I don't know why I've saved it all these years. She should've been buried with it. I was just hoping..."
"You shouldn't ever give up hope. Look at me. I trip over everything imaginable but I always pick myself up and keep on walking. Sure I'll fall again but the point is that I never give up–and one day I know that I'm going to make it across the room without tripping."
"You didn't fall last night," Remus pointed.
Tonks just shook her head gently before inspecting the ring again. It was beautiful in its simplicity. She looked up at Remus, who was sitting in front of her with a far away look in his eyes. There was so much going on around them during the day, but yet at night it seemed as if they were the only two people in this house. The only two people who were going to listen to anything that happened.
"It's beautiful."
She placed the ring in front of him without a word. On a closer inspection of the room it wasn't perfectly maintained. There were a few crumbs on the table and napkins littered the side that wasn't occupied at that moment.
The table would never be clear, but it certainly would be clearer for a few more precious moments. Soon there would be such a mess that the bottom of the table wouldn't be able to be seen. She smiled as she thought of how long it would take to be able to glimpse the glossy tabletop afterward.
She would make it through the summer and join Remus in the fall. Then after the leaves changed to their golden reds and yellows the two of them would face winter together for one final challenge.
XXX
Author's Note: Well, this story took a very different direction than I had originally planned. It was going to be a pointless comedy/fluff fic and it actually turned into something with substance. Not that anyone will actually understand this story...I was really heavy on my symbols and foreshadowing and everything. Oh well, I always write like that. I'm just afraid that this story may depend on that too much. You'll all have to let me know when you review!!
I have to thank my betas Brittny and Violet! They were the greatest to actually work on this for me! Their input made this story so much better and I really appreciate that! So thank you!!! I also have to send out a BIG thanks to elegystar for actually reading the story and giving me the nicest feedback. She made me actually want to post this story up for all of you. Another shoutout needs to be sent to funnykido for helping me with this story also. You guys all helped so much more than you realize!
If anyone has any comments or questions on this fic or any of my other fics feel free to either e-mail me (my e-mail address is ) Or you can reach me on AIM (my screen name is eyeshadow5746) I'm pretty much always online so if you want to talk or you have any questions I should be there!
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