Hey guys! Thanks for all your reviews. I got a request for an extra chapter in light of a custody situation so I obliged. And yes, iheartmoony, I had it in mind that maybe her folks could have accepted their relationship had they been upfront from the beginning – I think to find out like that does far more damage than just saying from the start 'this is the situation'. This chapter is set in the first canon year of Harry Potter, first year.

1991

Tonks made all the appropriate noises as Charlie did his best to turn her on, although in reality she was bored and wished he would finish already. She simply wasn't attracted to him, for all he tried hard to arouse her.

After he was finished she turned onto her stomach, her long blond hair fanned out across her back. Charlie ran his fingers through her hair. He still loved that particular look on her, although now that he was aware she only did it to please him, the pleasure had been diminished somewhat. "How was that?" he asked eagerly.

"Great," she said as enthusiastically as she could muster. Charlie frowned. No matter what he tried, he couldn't make her happy. Jealously he remembered seeing her with Lupin. Clearly, he turned her on, so what had he been doing that Charlie hadn't mastered?

He had thought that with Lupin's disappearance, she would get over him. She had moped her way through the rest of their last year at Hogwarts, throwing herself into her studies but clearly desperately unhappy. He had thought that if he could be her friend and she got used to the idea of being with someone her own age he could make her happy. So far, all he had achieved was at best passing enthusiasm. And it only seemed to be getting worse, as if everything he did increasingly reminded her that he wasn't Lupin.

He rubbed his hand across her back and she murmured appreciatively. She welcomed his touch so long as it wasn't sexual; he was beginning to think that she was more inclined to see him as a brother; despite the fact the things they did together were hardly sibling-like. "Love?" he asked her.

She tensed up immediately. "Don't call me that," she said shortly.

She had told him not to call her 'love' before, and while he had never asked and she had never volunteered, he suspected it was because that was his name for her. "Tonks," he corrected himself. She made a murmuring sound that he took as consent to continue with his question. "I was thinking of going to Romania. I have a job offer there, working with dragons."

"You should take it," she said immediately. "There aren't that many jobs out there for people so young." It was part of what he loved about her; she understood how much working with dragons meant to him. His mother, for one, was reluctant to see him too far from London, let alone on the other side of Europe.

"The thing is," he said, "I was hoping you would come with me."

He knew from the way she tensed up again what her answer was. "And where," she asked coolly, "would I get the kind of Ministry training I need?" Being an Auror was something she had been interested in for almost her entire seven years at Hogwarts. The geographical locations of their chosen fields were mutually exclusive; the kind of first-class training that she could get with the London-based Ministry of Magic wasn't available in Romania, and dragons were officially banned in the UK.

"I was thinking we could do the long-distance thing," he suggested.

"They never work," she replied.

"Because you have so much personal experience with relationships," he pointed out sarcastically. She had confided in him that she'd only slept with two people, which made him feel a little insecure, because that was one more then he had. But then, he'd never had a raging libido like some of the boys in his year. There had only ever been two things that he'd been really crazy about, dragons and Tonks.

"I only ever got to see Remus on Hogsmead weekends and holidays," she reminded him. "It sucked."

"Yeah, but now you wouldn't have to sneak around and change your appearance," he pointed out.

"I wouldn't have had to sneak around and change my appearance if it hadn't been for judgemental people," she retorted.

"Sor -ree," he said. "Look, babe, I don't want to fight with you. I want you to come to Romania with me. It'll be great. We could get our own place, travel – it will be fun."

"Fun for you. What would I get out of it?"

"You sound like your cousin," Charlie teased. His youngest brother was in the same year as Draco Malfoy, who he found to be a spoilt brat. He got a filthy look for his troubles. "Damnit, Tonks, I'm really trying here and all I'm getting for my troubles is a smart mouth."

"You knew what you were getting into." She saw the look on Charlie's face and knew she had gone too far. He was really in love with her and she just went along with it because he was willing to put in all the work. She should never have gotten re-involved with him. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

"I do. It's him, isn't it?" Tonks gave a non-committal shrug when Charlie took to mean yes. "What's wrong with you?" he demanded. "He left you. For your own good, from what I hear. He knew you wouldn't be happy with someone that much older, so why can't you learn it."

She got out of bed and started getting dressed. "You think I haven't tried, Charlie?" she demanded, her back to him. "You think I didn't hate having to sneak around and change my appearance? You think I don't know how much happier I'd be if I could fall for someone my age? I know all that and I can't stop thinking about him."

"Even when you're with me?" he asked flatly. She nodded slightly.

"I think you should go to Romania," she told Charlie sadly. "I can't make you happy any more than you can make me happy."

And I can't stop thinking about you any more than you can stop thinking about him, he thought to himself.

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