Author's note: Yes, I have written this before. Yes, I am writing it again. And yes, I will write it again. Why? Because it is soft and good. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights

Warnings: Mentions canon character deaths

The Comforting Smell of Wet Dog

If she was any other woman maybe she would feel slightly surprised to wake up with something furry in her face, but the smell of wet dog filled her nose and reassured her that nothing was amiss. Again, this would not be a good sign to any other human being in the world–but to Tonks it was just a sign that Sirius was over.

Still, she shoved the sleeping dog off her face as she sat up in bed, squinting at her alarm clock. The duals realisations that it was 4:00 AM and that today was her day off struck at relatively the same time and her whole body relaxed, satisfied. She was about to snuggle back into bed, but dumping an 80-pound mutt on her husband had apparently woken him up.

"Oh–sorry," Remus muttered under his breath when he realised that the extra presence in their bed wasn't, in fact, their toddler but a middle-aged ball of shag. "Damn it, Padfoot. I set him up in the living room, but he does this sometimes when he's properly inebriated…"

"Don't I know it?" Tonks asked, settling back into bed and tugging the blanket back over herself. She had gone to bed in only a tank top and Sirius did have his use as a bed warmer, after all. He snored loudly as a dog, unfortunately. Ah, well. You won some, you lost some. "Did you two have a good night out?"

"Yes," Remus said. "I just didn't want to send him back home as sloshed as he was, what with Kingsley out of town…"

"Of course," Tonks said. "I mean, the bed's always open to both my husbands."

Remus snickered.

"Lily used to make that joke too," he said. "Except she had three of us to reckon with, aside from James who was a handful in and of himself. Merlin, we were a nightmare–always in that little cottage, hovering over her when she was pregnant with Harry because none of us knew what to do, eating all her food, pulling her into our most asinine debates and squabbles…"

She smiled; both because she liked hearing these old stories, and because she liked when he could tell them fondly instead of getting sad.

"I wish I could have gotten to meet her. All your friends, really," she said a little sadly. "They sounded like amazing people."

"They were," Remus said wistfully. "But Sirius is good, too."

He gave a particularly loud snore as if to punctuate that, and Tonks laughed.

Remus sighed, but he did reach out to scratch between the dog's ears. Tonks snuggled into her pillow, smiling at how soft and familiar that gesture was, and thanking whoever ought to be thanked that Remus still had at least one of his Marauders.

WC: 464