Part II – One Sample of the Million Times. Repetition Breeds Fondness. Or So We'd Better Well Hope.

Tonks was still young and innocent and dewy-eyed and all enough that she could not let a promising whim go by, so on her way back from scrounging up a few extra plates to the other side of the kitchen she noticed Remus looking kissably occupied with onion slicing. He always did look such when his attention was fixed on inanimate objects. So of course she kissed him. He inclined his head enough to return it. They went on with their respective tasks, and that should have been the end of that pleasant little incident.

But Remus never did leave things alone. She could tell while kissing him that he wouldn't; by this point she could tell from the first millisecond when he had resolved to let himself go and when he had resolved to hold back.

"I don't think you're taking very seriously my advice to pick up your dating life," he said casually, once she had returned to her fold of the counter.

"Whatever makes you think that?" she returned, equally casual. Banter wasn't normally her thing, but they were stuck there in the basement for a while trying to put a lunch for five and possibly a spare together, and this was a good a way to beguile the time as any.

"Oh, passing hunch," he said. Even with their mouths still tingling with each other's he said so very dryly, and grew increasingly precise with the onion-dicing.

Tonks sighed as if much put upon. Their backs were to each other but she was sure he could pick up the grin from her voice. "Now I should think this is getting quite old, me humouring you with those little illusions. I have no intention of finding anyone else to date. I'm dating you."

"You are not," said Remus, very gently.

"Oh yeah? And how's that?"

"Well, most authorities on the subject would agree that I have some sort of say-so in you dating me."

Their tones were still uniformly easy. It was not even an effort to be casual.

"Bah, your say-so." Tonks was slowly peeling slices of ham from each other. "Means nothing."

"That sort of respect for my say-so is an excellent foundation for a relationship."

"In this relationship that's the only sort of respect it can be founded on, you great anvil. We'd never get anywhere if I waited for your say-so. You'd never use it. Trust me on that one."

The atmosphere changed; Remus turned to direct the onion bits rapid-fire with his wand into the boiling stew, and he was obviously gearing for a more direct line of attack. "Come on, now, Tonks. It was a very enjoyable joke while it lasted but I'm afraid you've gotten serious about it somewhere along the line."

"'Fraid I did," said Tonks breezily, now busily slapping the ham onto the bread. "Somewhere around the sixteenth date. You know, months ago."

Remus frowned as he circled the table, slowly plunking a spoon down at five places. "Excuse me, what sixteen - "

"Remus! Are those teaspoons? You utter idiot – even I know better than that."

"Oh – right." Remus scooped them up again and traded them in for proper-sized spoons. "Come to think of it should we be making tea? This is looking to be a late lunch."

"Not so late as all that. Though I wonder if we still have that packet of coffee lying around anywhere – Kingsley always appreciates that after a morning with Dawlish – ah, thanks," she said, catching the packet that Remus lightly tossed to her on his way back over to the onions. "But you're not getting off. I'm not that easily distractable."

And so the conversation – and 'twas a very familiar conversation – went on, as they bumped elbows and finished off the cleaning of breakfast dishes together.

It was now at the point where Remus was reminding her that he didn't have a Sickle to his name, and not likelihood of extracting himself from that financial situation, as if this had any remote bearing on the topic at hand. Which Tonks was convinced it hadn't. And even if it had, what was his point?

"But, Remus, don't tell me you've forgotten, not a nice considerate bloke like you, but – " here Tonks briefly switched to a stage whisper " – I have a job! Me!" A return to her regular voice, with just an extra dash of sarcasm. "It's with this Ministry lot, p'raps you've heard of it before, I'm an Auror – it's actually quite a good-paying job, and I have plenty of advancement ahead. It's more than – well, maybe not more than, but it can definitely be made to cover for the both of us."

But Remus waved his wand rhetorically in her direction. "Yes, your job," he said triumphantly, for here he had at last found fresh ground – fresh meaning they had covered it a little less than a hundred times before, instead of more. "And how long do you suppose you would remain an Auror if it got around you were involved with me? Oh, and I think the first pot's been on long enough already, it's making funny noises."

Tonks jabbed at the first pot thoughtfully. Since this part of the conversation was as yet unscripted, Tonks had to take a moment to think on it. "Well sooner or later they'll have to drag their minds out of the fourteen hundreds," she protested. "Anyway we're at war. Soon enough they'll be desperately short and wouldn't be able to spare me if I was a werewolf myself."

"I wouldn't be too certain of that. And hypotheticals aside, they might not realise we're at war for ages yet."

"Oh, it has to be sooner rather than later," said Tonks bracingly. "Get five glasses out, would you?"

"Even very late in the game last time they threw out some Auror named Murkwin on purely political grounds – her husband had made a donation to one of Bagnold's critics. And Bagnold wasn't even half so corrupt as Fudge."

"Only because she was too distracted," said a new voice, and Tonks and Remus both concealed their surprise: Mad-Eye would never let up on them if he found them startled at his approach. No excuse for not hearing him a mile off, he would have said, the way he clunked around so helpfully, and they were the ones holding down the fort? What if he had been a Death Eater? And so on and so forth. "Bagnold was an idiot, no question, but she was at least sincere about trying to do something even if she didn't know what, and she hadn't the time what with fighting a war and fighting it badly for too much of the political shenanigans. What're we doing talking about old Ludmilla Murkwin, anyway?"

Tonks didn't let Remus answer; she pounced. "Say, Mad-Eye, is it a rule Order members aren't allowed to take up with each other?"

Mad-Eye gave the frown of the confused, and then rolled his eyes. "Eh - I've got the situation about pegged now. Lupin, no one is going to let you use the Order for an excuse. 'Specially not me."

Tonks crowed, sending her dripping ladle waving through the air in celebration. "HA!" Then she folded her arms to glare at Remus, who seemed perfectly composed – but Tonks knew the miniscule shifts in posture that gave him away.

"So that's not the case?"

"Oh, Remus, you're busted," said Tonks. "Give it up!"

"You know it's not," said Mad-Eye.

"I did not know. I thought I remembered hearing something to that effect early on last time."

Mad-Eye snorted. "Lily and James married after joining the Order, didn't they?"

"Well, yes, but you couldn't very well have stopped them – "

"Just as they couldn't very well stop us!" Tonks protested, all indignation, but nothing deeper. Tonks was really not all that worked up about it; she was sure she would get her way in the end, and in the meantime twitting Remus about it was half the fun.

"I thought that was quite a different case," Remus insisted doggedly. "They were already going out before joining the Order. Look – " He was ready to appeal to Moody on different grounds, as fighting on the current turf was obviously no good for him. "Let's have your opinion on how much it would take to have an Auror discharged even during a war?"

There were some days – most, perhaps – when Mad-Eye wouldn't have let himself be used in this fashion, but today he sat down with a put-upon sigh to mull it over. "Well. Let's see now. By war you mean like last time."

"Exactly like."

"Well… it would be difficult to get discharged. We didn't have near enough to go around last time." There was a certain look in Moody's eye not entirely unlike the one Sirius sometimes got thinking of Azkaban – of an endless nightmarish past. Though on Mad-Eye's part it went almost as quickly as it had come. "But… yeah… in this case, I'd have to say they'd be bound to at least harass you about it, and suspend you, and investigate you, and probably in the end discharge you," he said, with a nod in Tonks's direction. "A werewolf's near as good as a Death Eater. Too suspicious. I mean, you have to look at it from the point of view of someone who doesn't know Lupin here. And then add that to public opinion, and – mind, I'm not saying what you should or shouldn't do, but you two asked and I am saying Tonks probably wouldn't be kept on."

"There you have it," said Remus.

Tonks's arms were still folded, and now her mouth was set rather mulishly. "That's just what would have happened last time," she said. "I'm not accepting anyone's word on the matter except Kingsley's. You two old-timers just know how the Auror Office used to be. Kingsley's a veteran of the new atmosphere."

"Well, we'll sound him on it," said Moody, agreeably enough for a man who's just been declared outmoded. "Mind, lassie, I'm not saying you should back down to him on this one. But where's Sirius? Thought he'd be down here sniffing me out for news."

"With Buckbeak," said Remus, with the dignity of one who knows that all in the room – indeed the house – want to see him trumped. "He was in rather too restless a mood for sandwich-making this morning."

"He was a miserable git," said Tonks, "don't look at me like that, Remus, he was, and I hope all the company today shakes him up a bit."

"I'll do my best," said Moody, pulling himself up again.

The second he was gone Tonks stuck out her tongue at Remus. "That's for lying to me."

"I did not lie, I honestly thought – "

"Sure you did – whoops!" For twirling dramatically on her heel had backfired and Remus had just yanked her back from falling into the open fire. "Thank you."

"Why don't I take over the stew."

"Suits me, I know the different between teaspoons and tablespoons. At any rate – well, I'm totally up a few points on you now."

"Tonks," Remus sighed, "it's not a matter of keeping score, you know it's not, and I wish you wouldn't – "

"Yes?" asked Tonks innocently, still kneading his back.

"Like that," he said quietly. "And earlier."

"Oh, but last week I wasn't the one who started it. You've got the worst passive-aggressive complex-thingy going on – " Here Tonks had to laugh. "Oh, yeah, did I mention my brother says hello?"

The matter of her brother had been a great victory for her; before that Remus had been able to claim that he simply was not interested in her, but Tonks knew that he had been terribly jealous before finding the young Muggle at her flat had been one of her two brothers, and although Remus denied it he knew she knew. Admittedly it was always hard to tell with Remus, and it had only been a matter of a certain cast to his eyes and the slightest shift in his shoulders, but Tonks had been well able to pick up on it.

"Well, return the greeting for me, if he really did" – Remus looked dubious on that score – "but can you please stop harping on that? You've blown it entirely out of proportion. Anyone would think I had been plotting murder as I shook hands with him."

"I promise to stop harping on that when you stop harping about being a werewolf and all that rot. Which, by the way, Ajax thought was wicked cool." Tonks tried to grin, but wound up tilting her head thoughtfully. "You know, it's very difficult to talk to Ajax these days, or anybody else not in the Order. I can get by at work, because the Aurors at least take this sort of thing seriously even if not all of them believe what's happening, but – well, I'm afraid that's just another way you're well shut in, since I can't put up with what Ajax calls 'civilians' anymore."

"Tonks. There are Aurors, and there are members of the Order, and some very fit Hit Wizards now I come to think of it, who aren't a dozen years older than you, who aren't Knutless, and who wouldn't accidentally eat your children, and, once again, I beg you – go and at least give them a fair shot."

"Shows how much you know. Against office policy to date other Aurors."

They had really finished up all their kitchen work, and the conversation had gone on quite past the bantering stage; Remus braced himself back against the counter as if ready to make his final move. Perfectly unconcerned and ready to meet it, Tonks pulled up a chair and sat backwards on it, resting her chin on the top rung.

"Tonks…" He sighed. "Do you remember New Year's Eve?"

She grinned at him. "Affirmative."

"I think that whole episode serves as a very good synecdoche for the possibility of our whole relationship."

"Hold up. If you're going to shut me down, you're going to do it in words I understand."

"A synecdoche is… a rhetorical tool in which a part is used to reference its whole." (Tonks was shaking her blue-haired head in the most disgusted manner.) "Or vice versa, but that's not the sense I used. I was using it illustratively, so that we can examine this one portion and draw lessons to apply to the larger picture."

"No way. You made that word up," Tonks said in the most accusing of tones.

"I did not."

"Did too. I'm no professor, but I'm not half so ignorant as you think. Bet you anything my NEWT marks were better than yours."

"Very likely they were. But I'm not making up the word."

"You must have. I've never heard such a stupid word in all my life."

"Bear with me for a second, please? Now think back. At first it promised to be very enjoyable, did it not?"

"I do seem to remember that," said Tonks, pokerfaced, with a levity that told him plainly that she did not see his objections as anywhere near a defeat for her position.

"As do I, Tonks, honestly. But then, after Phineas Nigellus started hectoring us – "

"We should have carried on. Actually I think we did. I hope we did."

"Well, I think we had to settle a thing or two with him first – but then after that we upset the hundred or so spiders that started scurrying everywhere underfoot – "

Tonks got a reminiscing glint to her eye. "I don't know, I remember it made me jump closer to you, so that was a benefit, really. Very appreciative I am of those spiders."

" – and then you tripped over the threshold and blacked your eye on the banister – "

"Now that's just low, to use that against me."

"I am not using it against you, it's just another example. And then when we stumbled over the corpse of that Crup – "

"Okay, I will admit that ruined the mood a little."

"I know it was just 'a little'. All of these were very little things in themselves, just as you say my various objections are, but added up – they did force us back down to the basement."

"No, Remus, you wound up dragging us back here. I was all for going on."

"That's not how I remember it."

"Well, we were both mildly to moderately intoxicated. Perhaps under the influence I didn't put up as good a fight back then in your little sin-neck-dee-key, but I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"Tonks, you're purposefully trying not to understand what I'm saying. It's hardly a concept that's beyond you."

"I wouldn't agree with you even if I understood what you were saying," said Tonks, still enjoying herself hugely.

"Look, I'm just saying that all my reasons might seem petty, and in a sense they are– I'm not saying any one of them alone is enough for me to put an end to this – but all together they build up a very convincing case."

"Look, Remus. Do you love me?"

It is entirely possible to be too direct with Remus. Perhaps even too easy. He looked at her a minute, and then left the room.

Tonks let him. She wasn't yet worried. "I'm sober now, Remus," she called after him lazily. "You'll not be able to say you don't remember me putting up a good fight this time."

Making matters even better, Kingsley came in moments later, and, after some obligatory grumbling on his part about how lucky she was to have pulled the off-shift, she extracted from him an opinion on the career-prospects question that differed from Mad-Eye's. Tonks smirked. Wars were wonderful devices for adding just enough drama to the day, and the world was as yet very good.

TBC (let's say, oh, tomorrow? - you may have noticed the pattern)