Ziekenhuis

It was her half-birthday tomorrow. Remus knew this because she'd been talking about it for weeks. Tonks' real birthday was three days before Christmas, which meant that it had always been during the school holidays. As a result, she'd never been able to spend her birthday with her friends, and at home it had always been overshadowed by Christmas. When Tonks was in her third year, she'd decided that she'd celebrate her half-birthday on 22nd June, so she could spend it with her friends. Usually that date was after the end of exams, so it worked out well, and the tradition had continued into adulthood. She'd told Remus about it months ago, and throughout May she'd dropped hints that she'd like him to come, until he had to tell her bluntly that he couldn't.

"Won't, you mean," Tonks had retorted.

"Both. You know why. We've been over this time and time again," he said, trying to sound more patient than he felt.

"Yeah. Fine. Didn't really think you would," she muttered, defeated.

"I'll still get you a present," Remus promised.

"You don't have to do that,"

"I know. I want to,"

"Doesn't have to be anything big,"

Remus hated the way she was trying to excuse him from buying her anything. As far as he was concerned, money was for spending on people he loved. He had planned to buy her a gift that was special and personal: a present that nobody else would think to give her.

As it happened though, Remus hadn't got round to buying her anything. Four days before Tonks' half-birthday, Severus had rushed to Grimmauld Place with an urgent message: Voldemort had tricked Harry and his friends into going to the Department of Mysteries. Remus had rushed- with Tonks, Mad-Eye, Kingsley and Sirius- to the Ministry, to protect Harry and his friends. The Death Eaters got there first. They had fought. And Sirius had died.

Dora was hit by a curse and had been in hospital since. There hadn't been any discussion about who would inform her of Sirius' death- everybody knew that that was Mad Eye's responsibility. Remus was grateful that he'd been spared the task of having to tell her. It had been hard enough to say the words to Harry. Repeating the fact without the adrenalin of battle, sitting beside Tonks' hospital bed while holding her hand and looking into her face, would have upset him too much. Remus had never been much of a crier, and he'd only allowed himself to get tearful about Sirius when he was safely at home in his cottage, alone. Not at Grimmauld Place, not with Kingsley or Molly or Dumbledore, and absolutely not with Tonks. She was burrowed so far into his heart and knew so many things about him which had been strictly private until he met her, that the idea of crying in front of her made Remus feel horribly vulnerable.

Since Tonks was admitted to hospital on the night Sirius died, Remus had come to see her twice a day, carefully planning his visits to avoid her parents. Every time she saw him Tonks had burst into tears about Sirius, then got cross at herself for being the one to cry when it was Remus who'd just lost his best friend. The curse Bellatrix had used on Tonks (still unidentified by the Healers) had left her woozy and lethargic. She'd slur her words and become more frustrated. She'd mumble repeatedly that she was sorry because she knew that Sirius' death was her fault.

"It wasn't," Remus had told her yesterday, "There was nothing you could have done,"

"Could have beat B-Bellatrix," she'd stuttered, "Defended him,"

"You did everything you could,"

Tonks pressed her face against his shoulder then, and he'd rubbed a hand up and down her back while she cried. Remus didn't want to say that Sirius' death was on his conscience, but the truth was that it was his fault. He was supposed to protect Sirius. He knew, miles better than Dora did, about how rash and determined Sirius could be. Remus had tried to persuade him to stay at Grimmauld while the rest of them went to defend Harry, but Sirius had refused to listen. Remus had known that arguing about it would have slowed them down so, prioritising getting to the Ministry over Sirius' safety, he had stropped arguing and let Sirius come. Sirius' death was his responsibility. He was the one who had failed.


He hadn't mentioned her half-birthday this evening. Tonks had been disorientated, and had fallen asleep only ten minutes after Remus had arrived at St Mungo's. He'd seen her sleep plenty of times before, but it was different when he was watching her from a plastic hospital chair and holding her hand uselessly in his. Her hair had faded from its usual hot pink to a warm pinkish-brown. Remus liked the colour, but he knew that Tonks wouldn't. She disliked her hair changing when she didn't want it to.

Remus watched her chest rise and fall, and thought about the fact that never, in his whole life, had he wanted this to happen. Everything that had gone on between them over the past few months was everything he had never asked for. He had never lain awake at night imagining what it would feel like to fall in love. He had never questioned if it would ever happen to him- in fact, he was relieved that it hadn't. Remus had had a couple of brief romances with women over the last fourteen years, but none of them counted as a relationship, and certainly not a serious one. More common was receiving a shrewd look from a man in a Muggle pub, a flick of a head, an offer of a drink, or perhaps a conversation. And then Remus would follow the stranger outside or into the toilets for confused, confusing kisses and dispassionate fumbling with each other's bodies. It was just bodies, just wanting to be touched, to feel something. It was easier with Muggles, because the wizarding world was small so there was a high chance of bumping into somebody again, whereas a Muggle man could wander into the night or the crowd and disappear. Plus, in the Muggle world Remus could remain unknown, while in the wizarding world his affliction was always lurking. Nobody in the wizarding world would want to touch him if they knew what he was, and if they didn't know then Remus was a bastard for deceiving them. He had never in a million years expected to fall in love with someone who insisted that they didn't care about his disease and his savagery. They'd argued about it a few times because Remus refused to believe that it was true, but Dora had said it over and over, and never once wavered.

He hadn't expected to have a girlfriend, either. Historically, Remus had found that sex with a woman felt more unsavoury and indecent than with men. Except, more perturbingly, with Tonks it hadn't been sex. Remus had never expected to know somebody who wanted to make love to him. It had felt more wrong because of how young she was- Sirius insisted that Remus should feel flattered by Tonks' interest in him since most blokes, secretly or not, wanted to date a younger woman. Remus had never wanted to. He'd never expected to meet someone like her: funny and ridiculous and bright and big-hearted and noisy and brave and lovely. He had never thought particularly highly of himself, so he'd never wanted anybody to look at him with the mixture of thrill, fascination and pride with which Tonks gazed at him. Sirius had occasionally tried to force Remus to accept a purseful of gold from him to buy new clothes or a record or a book, but that was different. He'd known Sirius forever. Remus had never imagined meeting somebody now who'd be as desperate as Dora was to buy him presents and concert tickets and a new suit (he had always refused the offers from both her and Sirius). He'd never woken up alone and wished that instead he'd be awoken by fingers sieving through his hair, or the crashing sounds of a very clumsy human being trying to get dressed.

Since all his friends died or disappeared, Remus didn't imagine he'd ever find new ones, so he hadn't wanted to fall for a girl who needled him to meet her own friends and promised that she knew they'd like him. Who on Earth would believe that their friends would want to be introduced to a werewolf? Remus had never wanted to meet somebody who would want to go out on dates with him. He had never imagined being with a person who would roll her eyes sulkily when he refused to hold hands or kiss her in public. It was impossible that someone would want to be seen doing such a thing with a werewolf. He hadn't ever wanted to be invited to a twenty-three-and-a-half birthday party.

Tonks was everything Remus had never wanted, but when she'd offered all of the above he'd taken them all. Now, he was nearly as amazed by this as he was ashamed. As he watched her sleep in her hospital bed, he wondered what on Earth he'd been thinking over the past few months. Had he been thinking at all?

It was the middle of Summer so still light outside, even though the clock on the wall had tocked round to eight. He should leave. What right did he have to stay? He'd never wanted this, and Tonks shouldn't have either. They'd got unhealthily muddled and entangled. Abruptly, Remus stood up. Time to go. He moved the chair away from Tonks' hospital bed and pushed the chair against the wall. Remus straightened the blanket at the bottom of the bed and crumpled up a crisp packet which Tonks had left on the beside table. There was a vase of flowers on the table too, which Remus turned around so that the side which had been in the sun all day was now facing the bed. Tonks didn't care for flowers, but he reckoned it would be nice for her to see them first thing when she woke up. Remus wanted to kiss her goodbye, but he knew he shouldn't. He had never wanted what she'd put in front of him but he'd taken it anyway. So now what he wanted was not important.

Remus leaned over and squeezed Tonks' hand.

And then he left.