Remus liked listening to the sound of the rain. He liked the way the windows felt when they were cold with condensation. He liked to imagine what the outside looked like in monochrome grey. The drab weather was likely the easiest thing for him to relate with, due to its flexibility. He couldn't imagine all of the colourful flowers as well as he could before, or imagine what the changing leaves looked like, but he could imagine what the bland concrete world below looked like. He didn't feel like he missed the sunshine as much when he couldn't see it. He had been sitting and thinking for a long time, and eventually the rain slowly transitioned from pouring to sputtering out to a stop.

"You want a pillow?" A voice asked. Remus didn't turn his head. He had been sitting on the drawing room floor near the base of the window rather than standing. "The floor doesn't look very comfortable."

"What time is it?" Remus asked, startled by her approach.

"Almost six o'clock." Tonks replied, her footsteps stopping in front of him. She had heavy boots strapped onto her feet today.

He thought it was much earlier than that. "Do you know what day it is?" He wondered.

"November nineteenth." She informed him. Again, he had thought it was much earlier than that. "Should I let you go?"

"You can stay if you'd like." Remus said.

"You don't seem up for conversation." He shrugged. "Do you feel like doing anything tonight?"

"Isn't the sun going to be down soon?" Remus asked.

"We can still go walk down to the park." Tonks said happily. "Come on, why don't you feel like doing something? Are you ill?"

"No," Remus put on false encouragement. "I'm feeling fine."

"Then let's go." She was a bit vehement, helping Remus up.

"Right now?"

"Yes, of course." Tonks said. "Molly and Arthur are still back at the Burrow, and I don't think anyone else is around except Sirius. I don't want to be alone tonight."

Remus tried to think how long it had been since their break, or even since their last conversation. Had it only been a month ago? Everything that had happened to them, everything that had gone on between them felt like a fever dream. Had it ever even happened? Was she even real anymore? He tried to think back to the conversation he wasn't meant to hear, that perhaps she was just in as big of a hole as he was in.

Come to think of it, he didn't quite remember the last month the way it had happened. He remembered waking up early in the morning to Sirius feeding Buckbeak and then proceeding down to the kitchen and eating primarily bowls of dry cereal because they didn't have any milk. He remembered not making his bed because he knew he would just go back to sleep soon enough. Sometimes he would remember to shower and change his pajamas, picking up socks and other bits of clothes off the floor and putting them in a basket to be washed. Sometimes Arthur would come in and ask him to read aloud a new name of someone who had recently been bitten or recently died from a werewolf related injury. On occasion, he had to deliver a brief coded letter to the mysterious man. The whole situation seemed to big for him, too far out of his control. All Remus ever was now was a pawn, a middle man who was meant to live with content and blissful ignorance. Whenever he had to read a new name, all he could do was go back to sleep. He couldn't help them. He couldn't help anyone. Sometimes if a name was particularly familiar, he simply mixed up a concoction of water and a sleeping potion to make him fall asleep faster. He could pretend more easily that he forgot the name, or made up hearing it while he was out of it.

"Tonks, are you okay?" Remus wondered. Standing up, he had a good amount of height difference over her. Her shoulders turned, indicating that she no longer particularly wanted to be apart of this conversation or that she was really going to make him hurry out the door. Remus swiftly grabbed the side of her arm. "Wait-"

"What?" She snapped at him. She paused, took a deep breath, and tried again. "What?"

"You're acting peculiar." Remus repeated.

"Why are you asking?"

"You just seem like you're running away from something, that's all." Remus shook his head. "You seem... you're really stressed."

"We lost three aurors this morning." Her voice choked. "We lost three aurors this morning, and I'm sorry that I can't just sit here and stare at the same four walls all night. I can't just sit here."

He quickly caught on. "Help me get my coat and we'll go." They didn't say another word as they headed downstairs. Tonks sort of lead him behind her, holding onto his arm, but only to keep him from slowing her down. She helped him into his coat and wrapped a scarf a little bit too tightly around his neck. "You want a hat?"

Remus shook his head and loosened the scarf around his neck. "I'll be okay."

"Ah- Wait a second." Tonks said, stopping in her tracks. "Remus..."

"Yes?" He said quickly. "I thought we were in a hurry."

"You aren't wearing shoes." She said bluntly. Remus curled his toes with the realization he had run down the steps in socked feet. "Wait here, I'll go run up to your room."

Tonks eventually returned with a pair of shoes and Remus quickly threw them on as he was stumbling out the front door. They began walking, and though Remus didn't want to nag her, he knew he needed to remind her that he needed to hold onto her. Fortunately, his anxiety over breaking her personal boundaries was dissolved when she grabbed him by the elbow, furiously clinging onto him.

The cold November air was filled with a fine mist, occasionally sending out painfully brisk bouts of wind. They didn't need an umbrella right now. Remus counted his steps to distract him. They were walking fast, so he wasn't sure if they would reach the park in fewer steps or not. And they didn't talk either. Suddenly, Remus began to worry that they may or may not be going somewhere else entirely.

"Thank you." Remus caught himself mumbling.

"What?" Tonks said, not listening. She couldn't have heard him anyways over the traffic and the busy sidewalk.

"Thank you for bringing me out here." Remus said louder. "This was very kind of you to do."

Her shoulders shrugged. "You're the only thing keeping me from losing it right now, so thanks for that too. No pressure or anything."

There was a a knot of guilt growing inside of his stomach. "I'm sorry you feel that way. I'll... try and do my best to keep you occupied then. Not that I don't want to be around you anyways-"

"No, no, I wouldn't hold that against you, and not that I don't want to be around you otherwise-"

They both stopped, realizing they were rambling on about absolutely nothing.

"Maybe we should talk about something." Remus suggested. "It'll help get your mind off of things."

"What do you want to talk about?"

Remus tried to come up with a safe topic. "How are your parents?"

Tonks sighed. "They're good. They're annoying, though, demanding I come over tonight and see them."

"Oh come on, Tonks, they're your parents." Remus said lightly. "They won't be alive forever." He reminded.

"I know. But I already told them I had plans." She remarked. "I told them I'd be over tomorrow or something..."

"Well if you don't plan on going, I may as well go for you. I'm sure your mother likes me well enough." He joked, though he believed quite the opposite in reality.

"Maybe I'll take you back there some time. You know, if you actually want to." Tonks offered.

"I wouldn't want to be intrusive." Remus said more seriously.

"They do like you, Remus. My dad thinks you're very charming, and my mum won't stopping asking about your well-being and all." She chuckled. "Anyways... have you had any work for the Order?"

Remus shook his head. He knew their conversation would get lost in the crowd anyways, but he didn't want to talk about that now. "Just... the usual stuff. Reading letters."

"Yeah?" She didn't pretend to be interested. "Um... let's cross the road here, yeah?"

They quickly ducked across the street and continued down the sidewalk a ways. The street winded around a corner, the sidewalk changing from concrete to brick. They were getting close. They didn't try again at any conversation, and Tonks was still very set on where she was taking him. They entered the park and she led him far down the path, away from prying ears of passerby's on their way home from work.

"Here, hang on, don't sit down. I have a jacket in my bag. You'll sit in a puddle." Tonks said quickly. The metal bench was still covered in rain water, but at least they weren't completely wet when they sat down.

Tonks still seemed overly distant compared to the usual. Remus kept wondering how serious Sirius had been when he mentioned her tiredness in passing.

"I'm so sorry to hear about what happened at work today." Remus finally spoke up. "You don't have to talk about it, but I want you to know that you're reacting in a perfectly reasonable way. You don't have to handle this all at once."

"One of them was a junior auror, only a few months behind me." Tonks burst into shaking sobs. "One of them, his name was Augustus or something like that, he was a senior auror, but he was always so nice to me. He would let me sit next to him when we had to go out to lunch as a group and he would make me laugh. And the other one... She wasn't really one of the nicest people I ever knew, but she has two little boys at home and... and they're going to have to be raised by her mum, and they're all probably just now being told that she's never going to come home again."

Remus was speechless. Her body curled up instinctively in pain and he wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her body hard. The comforting restraint slowly brought her down from her tears, though she stuttered and faltered many times, breaking out into more tears, over and over again. Remus could feel his shirt getting wet with tears from the spot where her head rested.

"I'm know-" She blurted out between waves of her grief. "I know what I'm supposed to say, that it wasn't my fault-"

"It wasn't your fault. It doesn't sound like it at least. Did you talk to a healer afterwards? What was the verdict?"

She shook her head. "It was just... it was just a regular attack. We had to go stop them, and arrest them..." Her tears came out again.

"You're doing perfectly fine." Remus coaxed. "You're supposed to cry. You're supposed to be feeling whatever you're feeling and you don't need to feel sorry about it."

"You sound like you're reading one of those self-help books." Her muffled voice moaned.

"Yeah, I've sort of had to read a lot of those before." Remus sighed. "I am so sorry, Tonks. I want to help you so badly, but I have no idea what to say or do."

Tonks slowly built up her courage to steady herself, wiggling herself loose from Remus's arms, but she still laid her head against his shoulder. He tried his hardest to be as still as possible. "It's okay. You're so kind to me. I really... I think I owe you one at this point for putting up with me."

"Putting up with you?" Remus asked, half-kidding. "You're absolutely wonderful to be around."

"Even when I'm crying?" She let out a bitter laugh.

"You're an absolutely lovely person, Tonks. I've told you this before." Remus reassured, stroking her hair. It was shocking to touch today, so short that it was almost a buzz cut, but he liked it just the same. "Did you go into a disguise today?" He wondered with fascination.

"No, but I did sort of shave my head. I'll probably morph it so the others can't see until it grows back out again." Tonks sniffled.

"Sort of?" He laughed, carefully running his hand across the top of her head. She nudged him. "I like it, Tonks."

"No you don't." Her voice spat, completely separating herself from him. "You're just being nice like always."

"No, really, I like it. I always like your hair." Remus told her. "But why did you get rid of your natural hair?"

Tonks took her time composing herself. "It's a long story. I've been seeing this guy for a short period, he saw me at work and asked me out a couple of times, and he um... he made this joke about me one night at dinner... about my morphing, and I did the only thing I could think to do to make him go away and not owl me again."

His heart began to sink down, his whole body growing cold and stiff. She was moving on, in less than a month, while he was back at Grimmauld to do absolutely nothing but sulk. "He sounds like a jerk." Remus blurted out. "I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't have said that. I really wish you had had better luck with him."

"No, he was an absolute creep." Tonks shook her head. "It needed to be cut anyways, just... probably not this short. I'm regretting it already." He tried to ponder this mysterious man, imagining up a strapping young man working for the Ministry. Part of him wanted to imagine the man as smug, rude, and smirking, a small part of him feeling a tiny bit of relief that it didn't work out, but he quickly overshadowed that thought with guilt. But Remus did truly feel bad for her that it didn't work out. "He seemed really nice at first too, you know? And no offense or anything, but you might be one of about two men I know that haven't met me and immediately asked about how I can morph in the bedroom, and the other one is my dad."

"I'm sorry." Remus said.

"Why are you apologizing?" She exclaimed. "You are not the problem! I just told you."

Remus opened his mouth to say something again, but quickly stopped himself. "I really do like it. I mean, I don't think you could wear your own hair badly."

"At least you're don't have to look at it." She scoffed. "I think I might use a potion to grow it out a bit, just so it doesn't look too bad."

"Don't worry too much about it, alright?" Remus reached over and squeezed her hand. Tonks didn't say anything for a while, but she still let Remus hold onto her.

"Are you hungry?" She asked quietly, tilting her head back.

"A little bit, do you want to head back to Grimmauld?" Remus said.

"I was thinking... do you want to go somewhere?" Tonks offered.

"You don't have to pay for my food, Tonks."

"I know." She announced. "But I want to. I'll be honest, I don't really want real food right now, but I'm starving. I haven't eaten since breakfast."

"We could walk around the block." Remus suggested. "I don't know the layout that well, but I'm sure we could find something to eat somewhere."

Remus didn't quite know they layout very well, but they eventually got up and started walking. He tried to memorized where they were crossing the street at and how far they were walking, but all he knew was that they were getting further and further from Grimmauld. He didn't want to mention the obvious that it was getting darker sooner. The sky was darker than the insides of buildings and the street lamps. They knew they might not make it back before dusk.

Then the rain came. It was so sudden that in the time it took Remus to process the sound, they were both already getting soaked. "We should stop until the rain slows down!" He persisted.

"Lets go in here then." She helped lead him into a store, and the smell was familiar, but he didn't quite know where she had taken him.

"Um, I'm not exactly positive, but I don't think pastries count as dinner." He spoke up.

Her voice gave away to her smug expression. Remus rolled his eyes. "I've had a long day. So I'm getting a piece of cake, and you can have some too if you want. And if you want to go walk out in the rain, I'm not going to stop you."

Following her promise, they both agreed on splitting a slice of cheesecake. Remus said that at least it had strawberries on it, and those had some nutritional value. Given his diet the past month, something was better than nothing at this point. It was surprisingly crowded due to the rain, so they didn't have anywhere to sit, hiding against the wall out of the way. They were quickly hidden, drowned out by the mass of people fleeing the cold.

"Here, open your mouth."She said.

"What?" He let her feed him a bite of cheesecake. "Hmm. Thank you. Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"You cut your natural hair, right? Not the hair that you change and shape?"

"Mmhm. Why?"

"What colour is it?" He wondered.

"Brown." She said, disappointed. "Why, were you expecting me to be a blonde?"

"No, I just wondered."

"It should be back to normal in a few days, longer, pinker, the works."

"Does it happen to turn blue when you're sad?"

"No. Just brown. Why?"

"I just thought that would be ironic."

They had already been standing in close proximity to each other, but Remus became acutely aware that she had inches closer to him. "I'm sorry that I told you that I loved you." Tonks said. "I still think about it everyday. I still feel like shit for saying that. And I'm sorry for crossing that boundary."

"Tonks..." He set down his fork on the box she was holding, reaching over to stroke her cheek. "You are still one the most wonderful people I've met to this day. I couldn't be mad at you over... something silly like that." There he went, he thought, getting all sentimental over her. He had gone so long without speaking to her that now he was ready to fall head over heels all over again, and just in the same stupid manner.

"I just wanted you to know that I still feel bad. I shouldn't have said something that could have made you feel uncomfortable."

"It was one of the best things anyone's said to me in ages." Remus replied. "And..." His voice stopped.

"And?" Her voice grew a bit desperate.

"And... I don't know if I'm... Dora, I'm scared." He confessed. "I don't want you to end up like me."

"I know that this is scary, but... can't you trust me that everything's going to be okay?"

"I can't afford to. What about your eyes, Tonks? What if you couldn't see at all?" Remus told her. "What if something did happen? How would I live with myself if it did?"

She shook her head. "Forget it."

He quickly cut her off. "That doesn't mean that I don't... that I don't necessarily... have the same feelings for you. Just... that they have to manifest differently for me. It doesn't mean that I care about you any less or any different than you-"

"It means worlds of difference when you're afraid of me." Her voice grumbled. "Here, do you want the last bite of this?"

"You can have it." Remus told her. "Just because we can't make this work, doesn't mean that I don't feel anything. Are you listening to me?"

"Yeah, I heard you." Remus abruptly leaned over and pressed his lips against hers. She let him at first, cutting him off when she winced, whimpering. "Stop it. You're being absolutely absurd. You either get to kiss me or you don't, but you're not allowed to pick and choose which parts of me you get to like and which parts you get to throw out. You don't get to play with my feelings like this."

"That's not what I meant." Remus said with annoyance. "I didn't meant to start this all over again, and I'm sorry. I just... I miss you, Dora."

"I miss you too, Remus." Tonks muttered. "A lot."

"Maybe... maybe in another life, we could've make things work properly." He said somberly. She nodded in agreement. "Can I still call you Dora? Or would you prefer Tonks now?"

"Please call me Dora. I want you to."

"Dora it is then." Remus gave her a second kiss on the cheek. "Maybe we should go home now then."

"I'll take you back then if you're ready." The rain was still pretty bad when they decided to head home. Tonks claimed she could see the sidewalk well enough to get them there, but they were still chilled to the bone when they got there. Their fingers were still intertwined as they walked home, both afraid of leaving the other. The portrait screeched as soon as they got in, until Kretcher went and soothe her.

"You're wet." Sirius's voice said in shock. "You're soaked! You left? Where were you two? God, I thought maybe you had both just passed out upstairs or something! Tonks, what the hell did you do to your hair?"

"I wanted to wear it short." She said firmly.

"Well you sure hit the nail on the head with that one, love." Sirius scoffed. "Get in here, please, and dry off before you get hypothermia."

Tonks was taking off her scarf and coat, and Remus followed suit, following her to the fireplace. When he was least expecting it, Tonks pushed herself up onto her toes and kissed the side of his neck, her arm lingering around his waist. In turn, Remus went and put his own arm around her shoulders. "I'm glad I got to see you tonight." She said quietly.

"Me too." Remus agreed.

Sirius seemed to be silently lurking behind them, eyeing their movements suspiciously. "Right... and where did you two go exactly?"

"The usual." Tonks shrugged.

"Of course." Sirius said dryly. His eyes were still glaring into the back of Remus's head. "...well I was on my way out anyways. I suppose you can tell me all about it in the morning."

"Goodnight!" Tonks called after him.

"Night, you two!" He shouted back. "Oh, and happy birthday, Tonks!"

Remus turned to Tonks knowingly. "You didn't-"

"I didn't want you to know." She butted in. "But I got to see you on my birthday and that's all I wanted."

"I would've gotten you something-"

"I don't want anything." Tonks reassured, squeezing his hand. "I wanted to see you. That's all."