"I married her because I couldn't ever imagine getting bored of talking to her,"

- Neil Gaiman on Amanda Palmer, 2013.

Unusual Suspects

Sleeping with a Metamorphmagus is an adventure. Remus finds this out in bed one Saturday morning, the weekend before the May Bank holiday. Tonks almost always wakes up before he does and sometimes in his sleep Remus can feel her fidgeting and rolling over and muttering to herself. Once she'd tried to wake him by kissing his neck, but the feel of a mouth unexpectedly on his skin during sleep was too much like Remus' nightmares and that one dreadful memory, and he'd woken up screaming. He'd flailed so much that he'd hit her, and that had made everything worse because he's always panicking about accidentally hurting her, and with the wolf in his mind he'd felt even more shocked and sickened with himself. He'd wanted to apparate away immediately but Tonks had gripped his hand and insisted that everything was fine. He'd stayed but felt guilty and on edge all day. She hasn't tried to kiss him awake since.

This morning Remus had woken up to find Tonks watching him sleepily and running her fingers down his arm. Her hair sometimes changes colour in the night, which he finds delightful, and this morning is bluish-white. He'd mumbled a hello and she'd shuffled over to him for a morning cuddle. Hands and mouths had started wandering and now Tonks is sprawled half-on-top of him blowing softly into his face between kisses. Remus rubs his hands together to warm them up, then slips them under her pyjama top.

"Yes?" he clarifies clumsily.

"Mmph, yeah,"

His hand skates up the skin of her stomach to her breast. Tonks wriggles contentedly and presses herself harder against his palms. Her face nuzzles the side of his. Last night she had been lying on her back on his bed rabbiting about something, and he'd been listening to her, chuckling, while he changed into his pyjamas. He pulled his trousers and his socks off, tossed his socks into the washing basket and folded his trousers neatly over the back of the chair. Tonks had stopped chattering, and he glanced over to see her watching him dreamily.

"What?" he'd asked.

She gave him the smile she sometimes did, the smile which one might give to a person if they had just fetched the stars out of the sky. The sort of smile he never expected or deserved to be on the receiving end of.

"You look cute,"

She'd crawled across his bed to him, knelt up, reached a hand out and stroked it down his face to his shoulder. Then she wrapped both arms around his back and kissed him on the mouth. It was slow and loving- he liked it when she kissed him slowly because he could feel her and taste her properly. He didn't think he'd ever get enough of the taste of her. Merlin knows what she thought was cute about him in his boxers and scruffy shirt, but if she wanted this then he'd take it.

"Anyway, so I said to Proudfoot that that couldn't work because of the Formeebtia jinx," she mumbled, jumping back in to the story she'd just be telling him. She kissed him every couple of words, and when Remus flicked his eyes open he saw that hers were still shut. She did this talking-while-kissing thing sometimes. He liked that too because he got to taste her and feel her and listen to her silly stories. He kissed lazily across her face down to the neck, hands round her waist while she mumbled on about Proudfoot and Formeebtia jinxes. He hadn't wanted to do anything beyond kissing- and, because she is the most patient and understanding girlfriend on Earth, she didn't bring it up. Nowadays she lets him say if he wants to do anything more, and then she'll say yes or no. It isn't the greatest arrangement in the world- he isn't sure how to adequately phrase "If you wouldn't mind, I would like to do something which in polite company James referred to as rolling cigars," but if he doesn't suggest anything then neither does she, so at least he doesn't have to say "Please no cigar-rolling today, thank you". Tonks isn't usually one for waiting, but when it comes to this she's got the patience of a saint. She nags and needles him about plenty of other things, but when it comes to sex she's always willing to wait for him, stop for him, help him, reassure him. She'd said to him when they first started being intimate that the only thing she'd insist on was that he wasn't to feel guilty about anything to do with it. And he knows that every other man she's been out with, every man her friends are going out with, are the sort of ordinary men who enjoy this, who jump into bed and giggle and flirt and know what they're doing and what to say and where to touch. She could be going out with any of those men and having a normal, fun sex life, but instead she's being patient and understanding and wiser than most people would give her credit for, with him. So he'd climbed into bed, and pulled the duvet up over their heads, trapping them in a tiny dark tent. He likes that. They'd kissed some more, he'd run his hands around her back and through her hair, she'd done that absolutely amazing thing with her mouth on his ears- and then they'd tapped the light off and snuggled up and fallen asleep.

"Do you like them this size?" she asks into his neck, back in the present.

"Nmm...what?" Remus mumbles.

"I can change if you want. I can make them bigger," Tonks says. The flesh in Remus' left hand expands freakishly and he yelps, letting go of her like she's frozen.

"Or smaller. Or one of each," Tonks continues mildly, her chest swelling and shrinking in demonstration. "Don't you like that?" she asks with a smile of devastating innocence.

"No! Just...just normal, thanks," Remus says hastily, "Can we just get back to, you know...".

"Seriously, big tits or small? I won't be offended,"

"Small," he decides. He doesn't know much about women but he knows that smaller is the less dangerous answer, even if she's only messing with him.

"Like this?" Tonks offers, her flesh contracting again.

"Um, yeah," he mutters.

"Hair alright? You don't want it green or something?"

She is completely barking mad. "Why would I want you more if your hair was green?"

"Dunno, you might. You get to find a lot of stuff out about people when you're a Metamorphmagus,"

"Oh, are you a Metamorphmagus?" Remus asks, getting irritated and taking his hands out from under her shirt, "You've never mentioned it,"

"Hmm, keep that up and you'll find you're snogging a girl who looks like Snape,"

He shudders. "That's not an image I need in my mind,"

"Or Umbridge,"

Immediately, Remus stiffens. Dolores Umbridge, the woman who made his chance of a career and financial security even less likely than they had been already. The woman for whom "half-breed" is a favourite word, worst insult, biggest fear and greatest relish. The woman who is no doubt making life at Hogwarts even more difficult for Harry, a boy who has suffered so much already and walks with the weight on the world on his shoulders- and who is not famed for his even temper and placidity. Remus feels his jaw set involuntarily.

"Or Mad-Eye," Tonks says quickly, in the tone she uses when wishing to change the subject. She rolls off him and flops onto her back on the bed.

"I'd prefer Mad-Eye to Snape," Remus replies, glad for something to talk about other than Dolores Umbridge.

"Seriously?"

"What, you'd take being in bed with Snape over being in bed with Moody?"

"Yeah, course I would," Tonks answers, as if it's obvious, "Mad-Eye's a mate but he's about a hundred years old and he's got a face like a battered chair,"

"Whereas Severus Snape is the picture of beauty". Sometimes the show of being overly civil to Severus in front of everybody else (specifically Sirius) gets wearying, so Remus likes that with Tonks he can mock Snape as much as he wants without worrying whose overhearing.

"He'd be alright if he had a hairwash," Tonks suggests.

"-try twenty hair-washes-"

"-and he's only the same age as you,"

"Ancient, then," Remus notes. His tone is joking, but the truth is he never thinks more about how much older he is than Tonks than when he remembers that Severus was her teacher. That makes him feel archaic as well as sleazy. Thirteen years. If Dumbledore had come knocking at Remus' front door three years earlier than he had, Remus could have taught Tonks for NEWT. And now here she is in his bed.

She must be able to tell that he's uncomfortable because she says, "Don't call yourself that". She's always defensive about him calling himself old. There's an awkward pause and then Tonks continues, "Did he have girlfriends at school?"

"Severus? Good God, no," Remus answers in a slightly too scoffing tone. The thought of Severus Snape having a girlfriend is…even more ridiculous than the thought of Remus Lupin having a girlfriend.

"Alright, I was just asking," she responds defensively.

"He was far too busy mixing potions and reading about dark arts. He didn't have any hobbies that I know of,"

"Friends, then?" she pushes.

"No. Well, people he hung around with," Remus concedes, "But I wouldn't call them friends,"

"Did they become Death Eaters?"

"Yes". Tonks looks at him thoughtfully and shuffles over to slot her head underneath his chin. In books men think things like her head fitted perfectly there like she had been made for him. Tonks' head is uncomfortable on Remus' collar bone and her spiky hair's in his face and if his head has to stay at this angle to accommodate hers he's going to have a cricked neck later. He wouldn't change a thing.

"Remus?" she says.

"Hmm?"

"Why d'you think he came back to our side?"

He doesn't have to give it much consideration. "Cold feet, same as Regulus. It happened back then," he shrugs, draping an arm around her.

"But Regulus was killed. You-Know-Who believes that Snape's a double-agent? Or is it triple? You know what I mean- he thinks Snape's on his side,"

"Voldemort's hamartia is his hubris,"

"English, please," Tonks says with an eye-roll.

"Voldemort's a very good Legilimens. He knows that Snape can perform Occlumency but Voldemort wouldn't imagine for a second that Snape's skill at defending his mind is as good as Voldemort's own skill at infiltrating,"

"But it is,"

"Yes. No matter what Sirius says, Snape's one of us now and it's costing him incredible effort to stay in Voldemort's inner circle while feeding information back to Dumbledore,"

"He must be very brave," Tonks murmurs.

"Yes, he is,"

"Still a prick, though,"

Remus grins. The Black bluntness has always made him laugh. "Absolutely," he agrees.

Tonks leans over to the bedside table to check his clock (the clock in her bedroom crows and shrieks and gets cross with them. Remus is thankful that his is a standard silent clock), realises that the table is too far away from the bed, so grows her arm longer to be able to pick it up. Remus often feels wary about touching her stuff, but she treats everything in his house like it's hers. He often comes downstairs to find her snooping through his bookshelf, rummaging in his kitchen cupboards, or chucking the cushions off his sofa while she gropes for a pen that's fallen down the side of the couch.

A sudden thought occurs to Remus.

"Whatever you want to look like is fine with me," he blurts.

"Eh?"

"I know you like to mess about with what your face and everything, but it doesn't matter to me. Big, small, tall, short, green, pink, whatever. I don't care about what you want to look like or if you've got a real face; it's not important and it never will be,"

She gives him a long look. Then she surprises him by simply saying, "Thanks,"

He nods. He'd expected her to say a lot of things but none of them were that. She's always surprising him, whether with changing the size of her breasts while they're in his palms or knowing the twelve uses of dragon's blood or thinking that Snape could have had a girlfriend, or by just how many times she can trip over the umbrella stand at Grimmauld Place. She will always bamboozle him. She will always fascinate him. She will always astound him.