Chapter 8: Back in the Kitchen

Now that he lived more among people, now that he found himself endowed—to his silent bewilderment—with a growing array of friends, Remus worried more than ever about the sites of his transformations. In the year he taught at Hogwarts, he had, thanks to the Wolfsbane Potion, transformed in his office nine times without incident, but his forgetfulness about the potion in his last month as a professor made him sensitive to the dangers of transforming around other people. He could not risk transforming in Grimmauld Place; and the Shrieking Shack held bitter memories of the harm he had so often done himself and had so nearly done others.

Dumbledore, when Remus applied to him, spoke vaguely of what a good man he was, as if that lessened the terrors of his being a werewolf. When Remus had almost ceased to hope for practical assistance, Dumbledore flicked his wand at the animated map of Scotland on his study wall and abruptly endowed him with a tumbledown butt-and-ben cottage on the Isle of Skye. Remus visited it and was struck by its isolation, its wild charm, and the complex undetectability spells that Dumbledore had thoughtfully placed upon it. Setting to work, he barred the windows and scourgified the interior, thanking his stars that he at last had a safe, tidy, and secret place in which to transform.

A week after Tonks had tried to make him dinner, Remus apparated into Grimmauld Place following an untroubled, almost placid, transformation in his stone-walled den on the Isle of Skye. At the head of the kitchen table, Sirius was presiding over the remains of beans on toast. Tonks was hanging lazily over the back of a chair, on the point of departing for guard duty.

"Wotcher, Remus?" she said. "Feeling better?" She put her arm around him, pulled him to her, and kissed him on the cheek.

"For the moment. Thanks for asking. Go to work." He bent to kiss her cheek and pushed her gently towards the door. Tonks mussed his hair, waved to Sirius, and disapparated.

Sirius folded his arms and smirked down the length of the Black kitchen table. "Remus Lupin, in love at last?"

"What are you talking about?" said Remus, wiping the smile off his face.

"My fair young cousin. She told Molly and Arthur and me all about your Muggle pizza run last week."

Remus shrugged. "We got pizza."

"And now you're kissing her. Molly's planning the wedding, and Arthur wants you to take him to an authentic Muggle pizza parlor."

"She was kissing me," Remus pointed out. "In a purely platonic manner. Please pass the toast."

Remus sat down and put a serviette in his lap. Sirius passed the toast.

"You find her very attractive, don't you?"

Remus chewed slowly. Clearly, there was no safe answer to that question. But Tonks was Sirius's cousin, as well as a valuable member of the Order, and perhaps Sirius did have some right to be concerned. He swallowed and looked Sirius straight in the eye. "I haven't done anything inappropriate," he said firmly, "and I'm not going to."

Sirius merely chuckled. "Have you ever done anything inappropriate with a girl, Remus?"

"Not really."

"At Hogwarts, I recall, you fell in love about once every three months, and the only time you summoned your nerve to ask a girl on a date was the time you took Lily to Horace Slughorn's Christmas party—"

"—and she spent the entire evening watching James out of the corner of her eye. Yes. I also took Carrie Bones for a walk around the lake once, and she kissed me behind Greenhouse #3."

Sirius raised his eyebrows.

"And then the giant squid surfaced and splashed us, and she screamed and ran away."

Sirius guffawed. "And that's it?"

"Pretty much. It's been almost twenty years since Hogwarts, and there've been a few more women, but every affair ended just like Lily or just like Carrie, and just as quickly. No doubt for the best."

Sirius wrinkled his nose in a characteristic doglike gesture. "Remus, I have to ask you. I know you've got that furry little problem, but you're alive, you haven't been in prison, and you haven't been on the run. How does a man get to the age of almost thirty-seven without ever having had a woman?"

Remus's heart contorted in a mixture of anger and pathos. "It hasn't been much fun, Sirius. But then there are several aspects of my life that are not much fun. Anyway, Tonks is safe."

"Is that because werewolves don't respond to pretty women, or because werewolves lack the necessary equipment?"

"It's because responsible werewolves know what they're capable of and don't endanger those they love."

"Oh, you are in love with her?" asked Sirius cheerfully.

Remus sighed with exasperation. "Sirius, that's not what I said. I—I'm very fond of her, and I'm going to keep her safe." He paused. "Anyway, Tonks sees me as sort of a benevolent older brother figure, just someone she likes to tease and romp with."

"Tonks sees you as a brave, brilliant, and goddamn sexy piece that she hasn't quite managed to negotiate into her bed yet."

"Sirius!" This time Remus was actually shocked. Sirius had been known for his ribald humor at Hogwarts; he had been famous for it. But Remus had half-forgotten that, and anyway he had assumed that the intervening decades would have softened Sirius's tongue. "Tonks is young. She has very little experience with men—"

"How do you know?"

"She told me. I mean, not explicitly—"

"And why were you two discussing Tonks's sex life?"

Remus sighed and pushed back his chair. "I'm going to bed. Let's not discuss this in the morning."

Tonks's birthday fell the day before Remus's. She was twenty-three and he was thirty-seven. As if to emphasize this disparity, Molly threw them a joint birthday party in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place. She baked two cakes and lit sixty candles with the tip of her wand, as Mad-Eye Moody thumped around the kitchen's perimeter, muttering, "Constant vigilance! Constant vigilance!" His pronouncements were quickly justified when Tonks, arriving late, squeezed into her seat and inadvertently tipped her cake into Remus's lap. The candles went out at once—Molly must have charmed them—but Remus, prying the cake from his lap, looked down at sleeves full of butter cream frosting.

"Oh, Remus, I'm so sorry! Here, let me clean it up—" Tonks hastily undid the buttons on Remus's cuff and began to roll up the sleeve.

"No, Tonks, don't bother. I'll do it myself." He jumped up and fled to the bathroom.

A minute later, there was a knock on the door. "Just a minute," called Remus, turning on the tap. It was too late; Sirius had already opened the door.

"I'll be back in a minute," said Remus firmly. "There's nothing wrong."

Sirius stepped into the bathroom, shut the door, and sat down on the toilet lid. "What's the matter with you, Moony? You jumped like you'd sat on a house elf when she started undoing your cuff buttons. Don't tell me you haven't imagined that."

"I didn't imagine it happening in your kitchen, in front of half the assembled Order!" retorted Remus.

Sirius laughed—not his usual bitter chuckle, but a spontaneous shout of joy. "There are private rooms at your disposal, mate, if you—"

Remus shook his head. He gestured at his clean, wet arm and rolled-up sleeve.

Sirius didn't flinch. "I think she could handle it, Moony, if you let her."

Remus shook his head again. "I hope she knows I'm violent, but I'd just as soon she didn't actually see—"

"Don't let the wolf run your life."

"Unfortunately, the wolf does run my life, whether I let him or not," said Remus, rolling down his sleeve. "And even if I were healthy, I'd be too old for her. Look how many candles Molly put on the cake."

"She might teach you how to be young again. Actually, I thought she already was."

Remus raised his eyebrows.

"Moony, I may be a little out of touch after twelve years in Azkaban, but I'm not totally daft. I know perfectly well that even Muggle bookstores don't stay open until midnight, however many charmed bookmarks you leave around the house. And it was pretty clear who the girl was."

Remus opened his mouth to explain, but there seemed to be no point. It was months since he had seen Sirius looking so happy.

"Come on back now. It's your party."

Remus followed Sirius obediently to the kitchen. Molly had redecorating Tonks's cake. Everyone else was downing shots of fire whiskey and studiously not staring at Remus. Tonks was intensely apologetic.

"Remus, I'm so sorry," she whispered, putting her arm around him. "I was late, and I'm so clumsy—did I burn you?"

"No," said Remus quietly. "So far no one has gotten burned."

It was two days later, and not yet daylight, when Remus awoke with a start. Blood on his arm, blood—he checked—on his lips, blood on the sheets. He stumbled into the bathroom and showered long and steamily. He cleaned and bandaged the wound, thinking, this does not happen to normal people. It does not. It does not.

At breakfast, Sirius, who was still in a cheerful mood, took advantage of his abstraction to offer some fairly explicit advice about how to make love to Tonks. Remus sat staring at the table, only half listening, pushing a tea cup moodily back and forth. The wound on his arm throbbed silently beneath the heavy cotton weave. Eventually he rose without a word, pushed the cup away from him, and strode towards the door.

Sirius cut him off and pushed him into a chair. Holding his shoulders, he said, in a slightly less jocular tone than before, "Moony, don't be mad at me. I'm saying this for your own good. You want her. She wants you. Do us all a favor and get it over with. Just pull her into bed next time she comes over. Or pull her down on the kitchen floor, if that's your style. I'll charm the door—"

"Look, Sirius, just because you've been in every girls' dormitory in Hogwarts, it does not mean that other people—"

"Boys aren't allowed in girls' dormitories," said Sirius, sounding amused. "But the password to the prefects' bathroom is 'Pine Fresh.' And it's very rarely occupied after midnight."

"You weren't a prefect."

"Hestia was." Sirius plopped into a chair beside Remus, still holding his shoulder. "It wasn't that many girls, you know, Moony. Just Hestia. And Lisa." Remus hadn't known about Lisa. "That was all. Really and truly. Fifth year. Sixth year—" Sirius broke off. "James took advice from me, you know," he pointed out. "Before— he had quite a lot of questions."

A truly terrible thought crossed Remus's mind. "Sirius, tell me you didn't sleep with Lily."

Sirius laughed out loud. He laughed and laughed. "Lily would have copped me one if I tried anything funny," he said when he finally finished laughing. "And James would have had my head on a platter."

"Carrie?"

"Carrie never took her nose out a book. Not for me, anyway. You can keep your tame household goddesses."

Remus's throat hurt. "They're dead, Sirius," he said in a strangled voice. "Both of them."

"I know, Moony. I bloody well know. Tonks, on the other hand—"

Remus pulled out his wand and flicked it at the Daily Prophet. The newspaper sprouted wings, sailed across the room, slapped Sirius squarely across the forehead, and tweaked his nose.

"I'm going to give you some time to cool off, mate," said Sirius, still more amused than annoyed. "Have a nice book." He flicked his wand at the March edition of the Quibbler, which had arrived that morning, still in its brown paper wrapper. It was a wizarding rag full of unintentional humor, to which Remus subscribed on the theory that one never knew where intelligence might pop up. The magazine sailed across the room, nipped Remus's ear, and tumbled into his lap. He picked it up, pulled off the wrapper, and stared.

HARRY POTTER SPEAKS OUT AT LAST, the headline blared. THE TRUTH ABOUT HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED AND THE NIGHT I SAW HIM RETURN.

It was a brilliantly sunny morning in April when they went to see the lilacs at Kew. Hogwarts's gardens were magnificent, but they were rare in the wizarding world. Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, and most wizard homes—from mansions like the Blacks' and Malfoys' right down to the modest Burrow—had a tumbledown quality to them, with weeds and flowers alike ranged in wild disarray among the tattered buildings. At Kew, the trim foliage breathed reprimands on Remus for his scruffiness, and though he still felt sore and headachy from his last transformation, he tried to mollify the bushes by standing up straighter and tucking in his shirt. Tonks, unusually, wore a Muggle dress, a straight sheath of dark blue. She walked serenely between the rows of flowers, her head held high, only stumbling twice.

"How was it?" she asked.

"Was what?"

"Your weekend on Skye, of course. You only just got back."

Remus did not discuss his transformations with anyone if he could avoid it; it was a subject on which there could not be too little said. "It was what it was. It is what it is. I'm lucky to be on a potion now. At least I keep my mind when I transform."

"I miss you when you're gone."

"I'm terribly sorry to leave the Order in a lurch, Tonks. I always worry about what will happen if there's an emergency at the full moon. It hasn't happened yet—not this time around—but it happened in the First War, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it happens again."

"That kind of thing happens to everyone, Remus. Sirius is still stuck in hiding. Mad-Eye got himself locked in a trunk for nine months. I was seven years old in the last war—and the Order did without me. What I meant was, I miss you personally."

Remus felt intensely embarrassed.

"But then, you don't do personal, do you?"

"I think I've done some personal with you."

They were walking in a remote copse, nearly a mile from the Main Gate, with scarcely another person in sight. Tonks put her hand in his hair and kissed him where his cheek met his chin. "More?" she asked softly. She kissed his neck.

Remus's chest felt weak. Blood was racing to his pelvis. He laid a hand on her shoulder—and pushed her away.

"Why do you always push me away, Remus?"

"I haven't been pushing you away, Tonks. I've been spending a ridiculous amount of time with you." Tonks's cheeks twitched as if she were about to cry. "Look, Tonks, if I ever do push you away, you need to respect that. I'm sorry, but I'm not a whole man. There are things I just can't do."

"Your furry little problem?"

"That's what James used to call it."

"Sirius does too."

"He would," said Remus bitterly. "It's real, Tonks."

"Maybe I don't mind."

"I mind."

"Remus, I'm going home." She walked a few steps and disapparated, an unquestionable breach of Magical Security on a Tuesday morning in Kew.