A/N: So I called a meeting of the Order of the Phoenix and I said, "Characters, would you like to belong to me?" and they said, "NO!" with a Resounding Voice. So they don't. I nearly got Kingsley Shacklebolt, though. Damn.

—

They did not speak until they found themselves, somehow, on guard duty together. Moody had decided, after what had happened to Arthur Weasley, that two would be necessary to monitor the Department of Mysteries from that point on—"one to watch, and one to keep the other awake," he growled with a rather accusatory look in Arthur's direction; Arthur looked away sheepishly. One day, Tonks would hope against hope for guard duty with Lupin, and the next she would pray that it would never happen. Lupin, after all, had been sent back to the werewolves as a spy. She saw him only once a month, and that was and wasn't exactly what she wanted.

When it finally happened, she was not prepared. Bill Weasley, her usual partner on duty, had fallen ill, and Lupin was asked to fill in. "I don't need a partner!" Tonks wailed at headquarters, thrilled and mortified at the same time. "Seriously, Mad-Eye, nothing's happened since Arthur—I know how to stay awake, honestly—"

"Not after what happened outside the Ministry," Moody mumbled from behind his Evening Prophet.

"What was all that training for, then?" Tonks demanded of Moody, though she was looking at Lupin. "So that I could have my hand held through every oper—"

"This is hardly every operation," Moody barked. "This is this operation. This guard duty. This night."

And Tonks, accustomed to following barked orders from years of service to Scrimgeour, gave in. It helped that part of her was more than happy to do so. Lupin's expression was characteristically inscrutable, and she didn't expect anything more from him than vague reports of his mission and friendly, yet impersonal inquiries into how she had been. "How have you been, Tonks?" he would ask her often, always taking care not to use Nymphadora. She would put up with being called Nymphadora from the whole world, if only it meant that he would call her Nymphadora again. And then, maybe she wouldn't. Maybe part of the name's renewed charm, for her, was that he was the only one who had used it in such a long time.

—

"I had almost hoped," Tonks whispered, after the necessary how-have-you-beens were out of the way, "for something to happen tonight. You know. Anything. Just so I could prove—"

"That's a very unwise wish," Lupin said, almost primly.

Tonks sighed. "You're still no fun at all."

He laughed louder than he should have, under the circumstances. "Ever the killjoy."

"You know what I—"

"I know what you meant. All right, fair enough. I do." He lowered his voice even further. "Imagine, then—all is silent. The Ministry is asleep. Two lone figures wait, at the end of the long hallway—ready, alert, when suddenly, at the other end of the corridor, they see—a dementor."

The threat in Lupin's voice made Tonks shiver with delight. She hadn't thought, after everything she'd seen and been through, that it would ever be fun to be frightened again. But perhaps it could be, when the fright wasn't real, and when you weren't alone. And when you knew that, whatever it was, there was a pretty good chance you were up to its level.

"It glides closer," Lupin whispered. "They hear it sucking on the still night air—"

"We're inside, Remus. And underground."

"—on the remarkably stuffy basement air, then—and as it draws ever nearer—one partner looks to the other and realises that he is terrified. Paralysed. With fear. And terror."

"You think you're overdoing it much?"

Lupin glared at her. "Are you going to leap into action or not?"

"Yes! Right." Tonks stood hastily, wand in hand.

"And as the dementor draws closer, she jumps to her feet and summons the happiest thought she possesses, without any trace of cynicism to speak of—"

Immediately, though she didn't want it to, a memory of celebration, and mead, and Lupin's breath against her cheek floated into Tonks' mind. She didn't fight it off anymore, though. She knew it strengthened her Patronus; the memory was, perhaps, her happiest, in spite of the fact that it didn't end as she wanted it to. She tried very hard not to crumble under the pressure, trapped between the Remus she remembered and the Remus who was, still, instructing her very enthusiastically from his place on the floor.

"And she steps forward—"

"—on the second syllable—"

"—when she says—"

"ExPECto patronum!"

There it was again. It ceased to surprise her, now. She had, after all, experienced twenty-four steady years of being her own protector, and she had nothing against the idea of someone else coming in to take her place. The wolf was just as well defined as it had been on the first night she conjured it: sharp eyes, tufted tail, a snout that Tonks liked to think reflected the slight angle of Lupin's own nose.

And as she turned, again, to watch Lupin look at it—almost casually, as though it was not important—she noticed that he was smiling, very faintly, in the way he did when someone had done something that pleased him.

She knew, as she settled back down on the floor next to him and felt his arm come to rest gently around her shoulders, that he would not allow himself to hold her the next day, or the day after that. She knew that he could do this for the same reason she could: because it was a place out of time, out of routine, where the usual rules (the ones that kept him from speaking to her when no one else was around) did not apply. She knew that it would be a long time—longer, perhaps, than she was prepared to wait—before he would be able to admit to himself, let alone to her, that he loved her.

But Tonks watched the wolf vanish into the darkness of the marble corridor, and felt, somehow, that all these other things could not possibly matter.

Fin.