Thanks for reading you guys! This chapter's set during Goblet of Fire. Since Lupin didn't get anything to do in that book I thought it was a nice bridge. (Even though it's actually a conversation between Tonks and Sirius about Lupin.)

1994

"I can't believe he'd come to see my mother and literally disappear the second I arrived," Tonks said to Sirius shortly after. She had taken to visiting the cave he inhabited, wearing a different disguise everytime. Sirius appreciated the effort, and the company. He had barely known Tonks when he had been sent to Azkaban, and he was proud to call the young adult she had become kin.

"And what would you have done if he'd stayed?" Sirius asked. "Your mum told me you tried to throw yourself into his arms."

"And so what if I did?" Tonks asked defiantly. "I love him."

"I don't doubt that you think you do," Sirius said, a touch condescendingly. "But you're twenty-one. He's – "

"Thirty-four. I have thought about this a few times," she said sarcastically. "Merlin's beard, Sirius, how come no matter how old I get, he's still - "

"Thirteen years older than you?" Sirius offered with a grin that bordered on a leer. It vaguely amused him that booky Lupin, who'd had to rely on his cast-offs to get laid, had managed to snag a gorgeous young metamophmagus – not only snagged her, but had her doggedly pursuing him and unable to get over him after he had left her. Unlike Andromeda, though, he didn't give two figs that Lupin may or may not be 'appropriate' for her – Tonks could take care of herself, he knew Lupin to be a loyal, caring man, and he knew what it was like to be a pariah. "You're going to have to be a lot older than twenty-one for people to stop talking about that. And the werewolf thing doesn't help. Dare I say it's the main cause of disapproval."

"Thanks to Severus Snape!" she cried.

Sirius's lips twisted into a grimace. Needless to say, he disagreed with Lupin's insistence on being grateful for the Wolfsbane potion Snape continued to make him. He had been a sullen, troublesome boy and nothing had changed but he'd gotten older and uglier. It was probably why Snape had outed Lupin as a werewolf; he couldn't stand the fact that he could inspire love out of someone significantly younger and more attractive. Everyone had known of his pathetic crush on Lily Evans, just as everyone had known that there was no way he could compete with James Potter. So why not expose his friends Sirius and Remus since he couldn't touch James – or even his legend, no matter how hard he tried – anymore. "It would have gotten out eventually," he was forced to concede. "Perce Weasley's a prefect now. How long do you think he would have tolerated – what did they call him – a child molester teaching at Hogwarts?"

"He is not – " Tonks started to say, eyes blazing with fury. Sirius had noticed they went an unnatural green, like the nuclear contaminations that muggles were so fond of portraying in their movies.

"I know perfectly well that he's not," Sirius said mildly. "I'm just saying that it would have gotten out anyway and the story that was always going to be accepted as the Merlin-given truth was that he seduced a teenager who was barely legal – and that was what she said to defend a man she was infatuated with."

"I did not – "

"Oh, stop being so defensive, Tonks, and try to understand how bad it looks. Remus is right. You're better off with someone more appropriate."

"But I don't want – "

He flashed her a knowing grin. "I understand you better than you think I do," he said. "You're a Black like me, like your mother. You know we're the only three in the history of the family who didn't go to Slytherin? And yet we're still a lot like my brother and Narcissa and Bellatrix. We go for what we want regardless of the odds... though I like to think we're a little more informed and open-minded about what we want. I don't know how you feel about him, I've never seen you together. For what it's worth, i think he still thinks about you a lot." Lupin had been upfront about his involvement with Tonks, fully prepared to accept it if Sirius – who was hardly in a position to treat anyone like a pariah, except maybe those delightful cousins of his – wanted to treat him with the same contempt Andromeda had. But after that, he had never referred to Tonks, no words of regret, no passing comment with something reminded him or her. And given how much remorse he had expressed for not realising the truth about Peter and not being able to stop him a second time, for him to never mention Tonks suggested he had divided feelings about her. On the one hand, there was no doubt the regret that he had dragged her down, but on the other, maybe feelings he couldn't shake. And he was much more inclined to believe that a grown man who had endured so much to put his feelings in perspective was truly in love than a teenage girl who had become infatuated with a much older, more sophisticated man.

"And I don't believe all this rubbish about how dangerous he is. It's true, he has a side of him that's instinctively aggressive, but he was with you for how many months and never hurt you?" Sirius asked casually, taking gleeful note of the flushed expression on Tonks's face. So he had exposed her to his more aggressive side... and she had liked it. Well, good for both of them. "Both your aunts are more dangerous than him, and they ought to be able to help it. I personally wouldn't give a damn if you were with him. You could do far worse."

"Yeah, but you're not my mum," Tonks reminded him, still cheered up by Sirius's uncompromising support.

"Sorry, love, I'm not," he agreed.

"Don't call me that," she said, and he winked conspiringly at her, knowing immediately that it had been Lupin's endearment for her.

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