Random Acts

"Year Thirty-Five"

"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."

Buddha

Sitting high on the rooftop with a new moon overhead, Remus Lupin indulged in a moment of bitter self-pity. He didn't do it often, but when he did, at least he readily admitted it. It felt good to have guard duty tonight. No one to deal with but himself.

A dog barked somewhere….no sign of anything abnormal……Yet part of him welcomed the idea of a harried foot chase or a notable deviation in the dark alley below where Deatheaters occasionally congregated to share information. He wanted anything but tedium, which tended to bring out his sullen side and make things like what happened earlier that night matter when they shouldn't.

"Bloody animal, I recognize you! I read about you in the papers! Get away from my cart!"

People froze in the streets, and Remus flushed crimson from their burning glares as he gave the man a small smile, thrust awkward hands in his pockets and disappeared into the darkness of the night.

Remus took the chocolate and cherry Muggle sucker out of his mouth and downed close to the last dregs from his soda bottle. Silly things to crave when you're depressed but he always had – the solace of sugar in his system, the glucose threading through his veins like a calming potion. First the light buzz then the satisfied sleepiness. There were worse things to crave in fits of depression, he figured.

His eyes darted suddenly to color and movement at the edge of the rooftop and he reached for his wand only to realize the shocking brightness came from Nymphadora Tonks' hot pink coiffure and lime green T-shirt as she arrived to relieve him, stumbling over a small pipe and cussing lightly. Tonks….He truly cared for the young auror but didn't know whether he could handle her effervescence tonight.

"Wotcher, Remus," she said quietly yet with an energy that he hadn't seen from anything or anyone in days.

"Hello, Tonks," he mumbled.

"Ahh, Sirius warned me. 'Remus is in one of his baleful moods tonight.'"

"Did he? That's funny, I thought it didn't start until after I left."

"Nope, you were grumpy when you left." She hunkered down beside him to poke casually at the corner of his mouth, and he batted her hand away.

"A smile is a frown turned upside down, they say."

"Don't make me kill you."

When she laughed he laughed, too, for some strange reason hating himself for pulling away from his depression.

"Okay, it's 1:00 am now. Go home and get some sleep, Professor R.J..…..But what about coming back with Kingsley at 9:00 when he relieves me and we can go get omelets at The Leaky Cauldron? I have to run an errand at Diagon anyway."

"The Leaky Cauldron…" He laughed bitterly. "Tonks, did you know that every time I eat there, they throw away everything I touch? The plates? The cutlery? If it's alright with you, I'll spare them the expense, as I'm sure it runs higher than the cost of my meals."

Her face fell.

Suddenly, he felt badly for sharing. He didn't want the ill thoughts of others tainting her opinion of him, which it sometimes did with people. Humans were pack animals, and weaker ones often fell in with the pack. But Tonks was strong. Plus, she wasn't a child anymore. She couldn't afford to be naïve about their world in times like these. And so, he continued.

"I couldn't even get a road vendor to sell me a box of curry tonight. So before you start viewing me as a prospective dinner mate, Tonks, you should at least know the facts. I doubt you and I will get beyond morning cereal at Grimmauld as far as eating together goes."

"Remus….." She felt her eyes start to water and cleared her throat. "I didn't know those things….that people were like that to you….that's….that's bloody awful."

An uncomfortable silence passed between them as she dealt with her anger and he mentally chastised himself for displaying such a raw spot. He tried to keep mental injuries locked away, hidden from others. But this one was oddly painful, and he had cried out when he should have kept silent.

Remus shifted the sucker from one side of the mouth to the other with his tongue and tried to go back to small talk, but his voice was tight.

"I don't make a bad omelet, Tonks. Why don't you come back to Grimmauld in the morning and I'll fix you some breakfast? And then I'll go with you to Diagon, if you like."

But Tonks could feel the hurt emanating off him as he rested his elbows on his drawn-up knees, trying to keep his eyes trained on the alleyway and avoid her gaze. Here he was – a mainstay of strength for the Order. Quite possibly one of the most powerful wizards among them. But he wasn't beyond feeling pain for such petty, hateful injustices. Remus wanted to be understood. And he wanted people to like him. Merlin, don't we all? And it was obvious that he always had. Quite possibly, the pain of such trite injustices would only run deeper as time went by and beat him further down. And she didn't know what she could do about such things. Except….

Tonks looked down at the soda bottle with just a dreg of the flat brown fluid left. She picked it up and drained it slowly, her eyes never leaving his, then put it back down with a decisive swallow.

"Tonks, that's nothing but backwash at this point." he said blandly. Then it struck him what she had done. "Just backwash…"

As he gazed at the empty bottle, Tonks moved forward on her knees and sat directly in front of him, their legs touching. She looked from his eyes down to the white paper stick protruding from the side of his mouth, his lips parted slightly in shock from her downing of the soda. The sucker was nestled in his tightly set cheek, but she pulled at the stick and it raked across his teeth and popped from his mouth.

Tonks and Remus both looked at the candy, shiny with werewolf slobber and whittled to half its original size from a half hour of sucking. Tonks put in her own mouth, twirling it pensively for a moment, watching his eyes and smiling when his adam's apple bobbed. Then she crunched the candy off and carefully deposited the stick in the empty pop bottle.

"You know, that goes way beyond fear of Lycanthropy contamination, Tonks. That's just plain unsanitary."

She smiled and did a little dance with her shoulders as she chewed the last of the candy and held his face gently in her hands to give him a chaste but sugary wet kiss on the lips then leaned back to gauge him.

"Oh, I'm horribly afraid, Remus. I'm afraid that I just risked getting a cold from you. Do you have a cold right now, Remus?"

"No," he said quietly with a smile and ducked his head down. He was practically ashamed by how much her actions meant. She lowered her head to meet his eyes.

"Well, then I don't have anything to worry about. Thank you for the soda. And the candy."

He dug in his coat pocket and pulled out a fresh one, neatly wrapped in red wax paper.

"You didn't have to recycle." he said with a genuine grin.

"No thank you, I don't like candy that much. The chocolate center was nice, though!"

She leaned back into him and looked out on the street to begin her watch, pulling his long arm around her and cushioning it against the warmth of her breasts. After a minute, she rubbed his arm and leaned her head back, looking up at him.

"What about coming to my flat for dinner tomorrow night? I'll make lasagna, and you can test the sauce off all my spoons."

He laughed, reaching for her hand and squeezing it lightly. Suddenly, his breath quickened as he noticed a dozen things about her at once -- the way he could just see the bottom of her teeth when her lips parted. How wonderful she smelled. How radiant she looked, even in the dim light of a new moon. How her eyes, just below him, gleamed with something he rarely saw when people looked at him.

All he could manage was a murmured, "That would be wonderful." She returned the smile before looking back down into the alley. And Remus rested his chin on the top of her head and let the fingers of his captured arm curl around her shoulder.

"You just can't let me brood in peace, can you?"

"I'm an Auror, a destroyer of all things dark." she said with a gentle, teasing tone.

After a moment, he dropped a kiss on her pink-tressed head and lowered his lips to her ear and whispered, "Thank you for being my friend, Nymphadora."

Ever-so-softly, she answered, "Thanks for being mine." But after a beat, she added in a serious voice, "And it's Tonks, Remus…..Tonks…not that other name. 'Kay?"

"We'll see."

She shook her head with a smile. "Incorrigible."

Remus grinned and, in spite of himself, for the first time in weeks, he felt content. More than that, he felt loved.

tbc

Author's Note: Hope you liked this one! Please let me know what you thought.

Just one more to go -- Xmas day at Grimmauld. Tonks will also show up in the final chapter, as well, with good will and mistletoe ;).

Cheers to all, Rane