Disclaimer: I don´t own Harry Potter.
A/n: Here goes my first attempt at Remus/Tonks. Read and enjoy! And then push that little button in the bottom left corner, won´t you?
Remus Lupin has never liked the night. When he was a child, he was afraid of the monsters in the darkness. Then he grew older and became afraid of the monster in himself. For with the night came the full moon, and with the full moon the wolf came out.
Tonight is the first full moon after Sirius´ death, and Remus is afraid. For the first time in nearly two years he has to face the wolf alone. He has drunk his Wolfsbane Potion, of course, he wouldn´t dare not to. What he fears isn´t that he´ll do something to harm anyone, he´s simply afraid of being alone through the long, horrible night.
So now he´s just sitting on his bed, waiting for the transformation to happen. That´s when she comes in.
Her hair is no longer the vivid pink it used to be, but he can understand why that is. Anyway, he doesn´t care about that. To him she is just as beautiful no matter how she looks. He wishes that he could tell her that, but he can´t. He is too old, too poor, too dangerous for her, and therefore he must keep quiet.
"Wotcher, Remus," she says and sits down next to him.
"Hello, Tonks. What are you doing here?" He realizes the second he says it how rude it sounds, but there´s no taking it back now.
She doesn´t seem to mind. "I thought you might want some company tonight," she explains.
"What do you mean?" Surely she can´t mean it the way it sounds. She´s not stupid, after all.
"What do you think I mean? I´m staying with you tonight, of course." She rolls her eyes to make it clear how slow she thinks he is. He´s not amused.
"Don´t be stupid. You can´t stay with me, you know that. Now please leave," he says sharply. Something inside him leaps with joy because of the fact that she wants to stay with him, but he quickly suppresses it. It´s wrong and selfish to feel like that.
It doesn´t look like she has any plans of leaving, though. Instead she settles down more comfortably, making it clear that she´s staying. "You´re the one being stupid. You´ve taken your potion, haven´t you?" When he nods, she continues: "Then it´s no problem. You´re not dangerous, so there´s no harm in me staying."
"Well, yes, but…" He´s beaten now, and he knows it. But he refuses to give up. "Look, Nymphadora-"he ignores her wince at the sound of her first name- "I really don´t want to discuss this."
In that moment, the transformation starts, and he can´t say more. For a moment his whole being is pain, bones bending and muscles stretching, and then he is the wolf.
On the bed, Tonks grins. "Okay, no discussing, I get it." The wolf scowls at her, if that is possible for a wolf, and she laughs. "I´m not afraid of you, big bad wolf. Sorry." She gets up from the bed and kneels next to him.
"I bet this scary wolf wouldn´t mind if I scratched his ears," she whispers in his ear. Action follows words, and a content sound escapes him as she scratches him just on the right spot. Right on the spot where Sirius used to scratch him. And it feels just as heavenly when she does it.
Suddenly he finds himself thinking that full moon nights might not get so lonely after all. And for some reason, that thought scares him more than anything else.