The nights at Grimauld place have been lonely and restless, not quite dark enough to bring sleep to its lone inhabitant. Night after night he roams, searches, runs through its endless corridors, in hope of exausting himself once and for all, and slip in blissful slumber.
The grimy portraits of traitors and proud murderers decorate the walls, the silenced voices of which still torment him, every single one reminicent of his lost friend.
No one visits him anymore. Oh, they visit the place alright, it is after all still the headquarter - for a while anyway. But they don't bother trying to sooth the ache they can all see in his eyes. Even she stopped. She tried longer than others, slapped him once to draw him out of his silence, cried when she glimpsed his cut wrists, kissed him when he said he wanted to die. But now she has drawn back, a piece of his pain with her, chilling her eyes, drawing her face, dulling her once-pink hair.
So now as the nights wear on, never-ending, as he runs and screams, it is her he looks for, in their friends' words and her old room.
Tonight is one of the good nights, where the alcohol out-ran him. He sits, or slouches rather, in an old armchair by the hearth, glass loosely held in his large hand. In old jeans he fished out from Sirius' room and wrinkled shirt he found god knows where, his face several days unshaved, his hair shaggy, his eyes dark and tired, he sleeps.
Tonks steps out of the fire tired, half-dead, chilled to the bone and back. Her eyes soften as she sees him, only to harden as they land on the empty glass and bottle at his side.
He is startled awake when she turns around, stepping back in the hearth. She hasn't made a sound.
He stumbles after her, in his eyes a blur of pink and black, with the orange of the fire at her back. Suddently the heat is overwhelming, the sound overbearing, and he recoils. On the other side of the fire, though it could be the world, she turns off the light, the fire within her rekindled at the sight of him, if only for one night.
With guilt, resentment, and longing, she moans her way through the night.
"Remus..." she sighs.