AN: This one isn't funny. At all. Sorry about that. If you think so, you are sick and twisted…but I guess that's between you and your therapist. If you are wondering why it has jumped so far ahead, it is because this story is as much about Tonks and Lupin as it is about the apartment.

We will be without internet access for about a month, so there may not be updates on this for a while…if we find some internet, we will post though…

Lingering Scents

She curled up closer to her blankets and inhaled deeply. It used to be, on nights that they couldn't spent together, that she would do this and a warm feeling would trickle from her nose to somewhere in her belly and she would be happy.

Now, she felt like crying.

This bed was all too familiar, and yet she hadn't slept in it in years. For the past year, she had been at Remus' place, and the two years before that, she had been just above it. Now, she was home, because she couldn't bring herself to stay there—not now.

He had said he wasn't good enough for her.

Bollocks.

He had said he was too old for her.

He wasn't that much older.

He had said that he was a werewolf.

She was well aware of that fact. She remembered locking him away in that room just off the kitchen once (or perhaps twice) a month for the past nine-odd months.

He had said that it couldn't work anymore.

He had reminded her of her promise to stay in the apartment.

She hadn't had the heart to tell him that she couldn't stay there. She somehow doubted he had any expectations that she would.

Now, her blankets didn't smell of Remus—not even a little.

They smelled of Todd, Andy, Christian, but not Remus.

It hadn't taken very much to move, really. Not very much at all. She had had to put her clothes and posters and books and records in a box or two, and then brought the boxes back. Most everything in that apartment belonged to him.

She wondered if he would be reminded of her on the rare nights he would be home. She wondered if his blankets would smell like her. She wondered if it would make him happy or sad, bitter or relieved or resentful.

She wondered many things, and nothing at all.

It hadn't hurt this badly when she had split with Andy—who had been her first love, and her first lover. The pain had endured, that was for sure, but she had still managed to change her hair to iron black, make her skin pasty pale and somehow show that she was heartbroken.

She hadn't tried transfiguring her hair recently, because she knew it wouldn't work. She was stuck with boring mouse brown and the very shade of it made her sad because it was so close to the shade of his hair, although his had been flecked with grey.

And her patronus! It had been a chameleon (appropriately enough) and now it was a large, furry, four-pawed creature that looked very much like the werewolf she longed to smell in her blankets.

Maybe she would go back tomorrow, and see if she could steal some sheets.

But no. They were not hers. And if she went back, she might be tempted to stay.

Or perhaps to sit and cry and mope until she couldn't bear it any longer.

But she couldn't bear it now. And, for the third time that evening, tears leaked out of her eyes. The first time, it had been at dinner and her parents had sent shocked looks at one another and her mother had made clucking noises. The second time had been when she had been taking a bath and she had overheard her mother saying "I always thought Remus Lupin was a gentlemen when I saw him when he was a kid. But right now, I would very much like to give him a piece of my mind," and her father saying "Dromeda, he had his reasons…"

She wondered if he missed her too.

He did, and terribly so. She was all he could think of. But unlike her, he had something to remind him of her smell. He had the jumper she had taken to wearing last Christmas. He was wearing it, now. It and the smell of her.