4. Right On Cue
Crack!
Tonks stumbled as the gravel surface of car park behind The Snakecatcher public house rose up suddenly -- and unevenly -- beneath her feet. She was just registering the pothole she'd Apparated into -- Damn it, not again! -- when another Crack! erupted in the space beside her.
Remus materialised with his hands burrowed deep in his trouser pockets in his characteristic unruffled stance, but looked momentarily perplexed by the difference in their height, a good six inches more than usual. He opened his mouth to speak (Thank God; she'd been starting to think one of her parents had pulled him aside and made him swear an Unbreakable Vow of Silence.), most likely to ask why she'd morphed, but then his eyes darted down to the pothole.
His lips twisted into a smirk. "Forgot about the pothole, did you? Well, at least it wasn't filled with whatever that was this time. It stained your socks, by the way, and I'm sorry, I know the ballerina pigs were your favourites, but I was able to get the pong out of your trainers at least."
"Are you going to be a gentleman and give me a hand, or am I going to have to call you that other G-word we talked about?"
Remus slid one hand from his pocket and offered it to her. "When have I ever been a git?"
"Never," said Tonks, grasping it as he half-lifted her out the hole. "Great git, on the other hand..."
Now, now, Tonks, don't be cross just because he's managed to say no more about how the engagement announcement went than he said about how he expected it to go, which you didn't think was possible.
When was he supposed to talk, anyway? During the hundred-yard walk from your mum and dad's front door to the Apparition point? Mid-Apparition? Give the man a bloody break
He used up his word quota for a month with that speech. And it won your dad over, in case you forgot.
Of course she hadn't forgotten. In fact, that was why she wanted so badly to talk to him about it.
In defiance of that favourite self-coined maxim of his about werewolves not being popular dinner guests, he had proved a model one at her parents' house: an interesting conversationalist, talking more about himself than he had in ages, the sort of amusing stories about his school days and work abroad such as he'd used to tell her when they first started going out, as well as a number of stories from their courtship.
He'd also seemed to strike up quite the rapport with her mother. Which had, at first, seemed strange to Tonks, but by dessert she was beginning to see their similar temperaments, humour. She supposed, when you came right down to it, that their backgrounds weren't necessarily all that different. Remus might not have to rise above the family of his birth, but he and Andromeda were both connected by blood to people with ideals that could not be more contrary to either of their natures.
For all that, however, Tonks had got to know Remus well enough over the years to know that beneath that personable and even charming demeanour, he could be thinking and feeling...well, anything. And very often not anything like the mood he was projecting.
Such was the case now, she was sure of it. She'd felt it in his body when he'd held her as he shook hands with her dad. Not that she didn't believe the things he'd said -- she did, every word. It was that something else lay beneath his words, something wrong, which she needed to know so she could put it to right for him.
She just wished she had a bloody clue what the hell that might be.
Tugging at Remus' hand, she strode toward the road which veered into the forest and eventually became the unpaved footpath to the -- their! -- cottage, but he didn't budge. She looked back at him, her mouth open in question.
Remus gestured his head toward the pub behind him. "Fancy nipping in for a game of pool?"
Tonks was stood on level ground now, yet the request wrong-footed her. Not the request itself; on holidays to Brockenhurst they often walked up after dinner for a pint and pool or, if the table had already been claimed by people who actually knew how to truly play, without wands, she and Remus amused themselves trying to follow the plots of the Muggle programmes on the big screen television. But tonight she didn't care for TV; she didn't particularly want to play pool, either.
When Remus played pool, he concentrated on how to make his shots look like real shots and not like magic. Also he was cocksure about her checking him out when he bent over the table with his pool cue. The latter she normally found strangely attractive, but tonight the two factors combined would make him downright impossible to read. He certainly wouldn't talk about serious things in such a public place. By the time they got home, she would be wracked with pent-up tension and probably blow up at him when he slipped into bed with her, relaxed, and began to kiss her neck and shoulders in that way she never could help reacting to. He would rub her back, and soothe her, and they would make love and he would drift off to sleep whilst she lay awake remembering they hadn't talked.
They were back to life as usual.
Which was why Tonks gave him a crisp nod and said, "I could go for kicking your arse at pool, yeah," and let him lead her inside. Because life as usual, imperfect as it could be, was a hell of a lot better than life-as-it-had-been-for-the-past-year. Also, she got momentarily side-tracked from frustration as she considered how she'd always thought, every time they came up here, how nice it would be to live near this village and be one of the pub regulars; to have a routine with Remus -- not just on holiday -- of strolling up after dinner, meandering in the forest to watch the ponies and look for the odd unicorn...Now that really would be their life, because in just two days...
You're going to marry Remus Lupin!
Who promised to do better by you -- so bloody trust him already!
Inside The Snakecatcher, they found the pool table unoccupied; everyone was gathered around the television, watching what Tonks and Remus gathered was a very important football match. She asked him if he thought it was the World Cup, because she'd heard once that Muggles had one for football, but he didn't know. The only time they had tried to watch football, they'd thrown up their hands at ever understanding the game. What was the point of all that running up and down that great field chasing a ball that only moved because you kicked it? Why would anyone do that voluntarily?
The good thing about football nights was that with all the attention on the television, they could be a little less guarded about their use of magic in pool. Which they used rather a lot, because the long, oddly heavy pool cues felt right awkward in her clumsy hands, and even Remus, natural and graceful as he made it look, said he felt the same. Not to mention they'd only guessed at the rules by watching other people play, and she and Remus seemed to have mixed several variations in, along with the magic.
And maybe, if the luck you've had tonight continues, she thought as she found cues, popped a Muggle coin into the table for the balls, and set up the game, while Remus, waiting for their beers at the bar, watched her with a smile, he'll be less guarded than usual in public with his emotions.
When he joined her at the pool table, leaning in to kiss her cheek as he pressed a foaming pint of beer into her hand, he said, "Does buying you a drink make up for me being a great git in the car park?"
Tonks eyed him as she took a drink. "Maybe...If you let me go first."
Remus set his beer on the edge of the table and made a sweeping bow. "My credo, Elphine, is ladies first."
Smirking at him as she swept past and swapped her mug for a cue, she said, "Especially when you're raiding buildings that might contain Death Eaters?"
"Especially then. Especially when the ladies are highly trained professional Dark Wizard Chasers."
"You really are my knight in shining armour."
The only thing Tonks broke in the opening break was the beer bottle she knocked out of a bloke's hand with the butt end of her pool cue.
"Oh for the love of Merlin! I forgot to cast the bloody--"
She caught herself at the brink of saying Shield Charm in front of the annoyed football watcher whose drink she'd spilt and the pissed-off looking teenaged boy who was clearing tables. As she launched into her usual bout of profuse, red-faced apologies to the parties affected by her blasted clumsiness, she somehow managed to notice that Remus wasn't wearing his usual look of poorly concealed amusement. In fact, as he fished in his pocket for money to buy the man a new beer, he watched her intently, scrutinising...critically.
Inwardly, Tonks screamed in frustration. If only this were a Wizarding pub, she could she could've Reparoed the bottle and siphoned the beer back into it with her wand. Not that a Wizarding pub would have a pool table to begin with... As it was, she'd made a crap first impression on two villagers. (Why the bloody hell couldn't you be morphed as someone else tonight, so they won't know straight away that the new Mrs. Lupin is a total idiot?) She also had to create a diversion so Remus could Transfigure a couple of knuts into Muggle money, as he'd had just enough one him to pay for their two beers. And Transfiguring money wasn't precisely legal -- not to mention, very temporary.
The barman'll hate you, and you and Remus both will probably be banned from ever darkening the door again...
Bang-up start to your village life, Tonks!
And what had that look on Remus' face meant?
She tried to read his expression from across the bar, but rowdy football fans kept getting in the way, and the time he returned to her, it had vanished,
"That went pretty well, I thought. Protego totallum pool table."
Tonks' automatic response was to whack him with her pool cue, but at the last second before contact, but Remus reacted instinctively and caught the end before it struck him.
"With your parents, I mean."
The way he just blurted out the thoughts she'd expected to have to pry out of him, and the fact that he'd smiled as he said them, caught Tonks so completely off-balance that it was a very good job she was holding on to the pool cue which Remus still had the other end of.
What wasn't a good job was that the pool cue only had the power to keep her upright, and didn't give her a better response than her automatic sarky one.
"Which part? The bit where Mum made it pretty plain she didn't love our plan for the ceremony? Or the bit where Dad was a total prat to you?"
For just a second, that odd look flickered on Remus' face again as he released her pool cue, only for his grin to stretch even wider, eyes glimmering with a joke as he retrieved his own from where it was propped against the table.
"I confess I don't know your mother as well as you..."
He bent to make the break Tonks had missed, positioning the cue between his long fingers, wand held discreetly alongside the tip as he lined up with the cue ball.
"...but she didn't strike me as particularly critical when she brought up the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia. Dilabor."
The balls scattered across the green felt of the pool table, a half a dozen of them finding their way into pockets.
Remus straightened up and grinned. "If your father, on the other hand, had been the one to talk about drunken centaurs attempting to make off with the bride, then I might have taken it as criticism. However, as your mother laughed with what appeared to be very genuine amusement at my response, I must assume she was only teasing me."
True, Andromeda and Tonks both had cracked up at the dinner table -- which Tonks wasn't sure she'd ever seen her mother do before -- when Remus said, wryly, If I were marrying Dolores Umbridge and Magorian were the Centaur in question, then yes, I might be a bit worried about having my bride kidnapped, never to be heard from again. Seeing as it's Firenze, however, and I wouldn't marry Umbridge if she were the last witch on earth and passed legislation that required me to marry her...
"Dad didn't think it was very funny when you said about Umbridge not coming within a hundred yards of you except to arrest you." Tonks tapped the cue ball into two yellow balls. "Decumbo side pocket and left corner pocket."
She watched the balls zoom across the table, into the far pockets rather than the nearest, as she'd directed. Not that she cared which went where, so long as she sunk them.
"No," Remus agreed, "but I don't know if I'd say he was a prat so much as..."
The tip of his tongue poked out between his lips as he focused on the cue ball, which had stopped directly in line with a red ball, perilously close to a corner pocket. Tonks wondered if he was thinking of some of the stronger words there were to describe what Ted had acted like, none of which she could bear to attach to her dad, no matter how fitting they were.
"Transeo," Remus muttered, giving his wand the slightest flick.
The cue skipped over the ball--
--and, in the sort of fluke way that only ever seemed to happen to Tonks (and was rather nice to see happen to Remus, actually), it flew right off the table.
Right at her head.
Dropping her cue, Tonks dove to the floor to keep from being decapitated by the rogue ball, which flew with all the force of a Bludger. She stayed under the table as it ricocheted off the Shield Charm erected around them, saving the young waiter from severe head trauma, though he did nearly drop his tub of dirty dishes and blink in confusion when he saw the ball do a mid-air about-face just before striking him.
"What the hell?"
"What the hell what?" Remus asked the boy pleasantly as he watched the ball bounce twice on the table before bumping a yellow ball into a pocket.
"Didn't you bloody see that?"
"Didn't I bloody see what?"
The boy glowered. "You nearly killed me with that effing cue ball, then it turned right around in the air!"
As she stood, Tonks saw Remus looking rather at a loss as to how to cover this breech of the Statute of Secrecy. Though she was nearly killed from trying not to laugh, she pinned the boy with her best no-nonsense Auror face, which included a sharply raised eyebrow.
"Snuck a few drinks tonight, have you?"
"No!" he cried, too defensively, and his voice cracked. Face flushing tomato red, he shuffled off to clean a table, shaking his head and muttering to himself that he had to lay off the booze and that he hadn't really seen what he thought he saw and the bitchy lady with the stupid hair had nothing to do with it.
Tonks turned back to Remus, and said, "Maybe we ought to try it without magic for a bit? Only I'm afraid if we have any more incidents like that, you'll want to start Obliviating people."
The crowd around the telly erupted, toppling chairs as they leapt up to cheer.
"Be a shame to deprive that lot of the memory of the match, wouldn't it?" she added. "Nothing to talk about around the water coolers."
"I don't think we've anything to worry about." Remus watched them take their seats again, sat at the edges, engrossed in the football, then looked at Tonks cheekily. "Anyway, you'll never catch up with me if you don't use magic."
"Not much to catch up to since that last ball doesn't count."
"Why in Merlin's name not?"
"You scratched! The cue ball went off the table!"
"But it returned to play!"
"Because the Shield deflected it!"
"If we're playing with magic, then that counts! And your father was just being a father, not a prat."
As if another ball had shot off the table and into Tonks' head, the squabble about magic or no magic was driven clear out of her thoughts.
Here you go, Tonks. Another chance presents itself to you to talk about kids! Will you take it this time, or will you keep acting like bloody Gryffindors have a monopoly on courage even though your favourite saying's that they don't?
Bending to retrieve her cue from the floor and pocketing her wand, she asked, "Are you saying if you were a father you'd talk to your daughter's fiancé like Dad talked to you?"
"Of course not. I would growl and snarl and bare my very sharp teeth."
Go on, then! He's actually set it up perfectly for you to say, 'Since you keep bringing them up, I reckon it's safe to assume you expect to have kids one day, and since you keep cracking jokes about the werewolf thing, it must not be an inherited condition you're afraid of passing along, like my idiot ex-housemate thinks?' The answers to all your questions are mere...well, questions...away!
She couldn't say that...Could she?
Of course you can! He's bloody joking about it!
But it was different to joke about your own condition than to make light of someone else's. And anyway, mightn't the werewolf jokes be his way of deflecting questions about a subject he didn't want to discuss?
Just. bloody. say it!!
"Talking of dads..." She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear, then hunched over the table, lining up her shot.
"Yes?"
Her eyes darted up from the cue ball. The inquisitiveness on Remus' face as he absently continued to chalk the end of his cue -- dear Merlin, he really had no clue where here train of thought was -- made her mouth go dry.
She looked down.
And blurted, "You've never called me Dora before."
Bleeding coward.
Furious with herself, she took her shot.
And missed the cue ball entirely.
She straightened up, threw back her shoulders, and glowered at Remus. "You charmed that chalk to make me miss, didn't you?"
He smirked as he strode (or was that a swagger?) around the table to take his turn. "I don't believe I actually called you Dora at any time -- I merely referred to you as Dora."
His elbow moved to push the cue into the white ball, but he stopped the shot and turned his head toward her, wearing that look that said he knew she'd been looking at his bum, which irritated her, because for once she actually hadn't been!
"Only I didn't hear you correcting your dad when he called you Dora, so I assumed you didn't mind."
"I don't -- from my dad," she said as she ground chalk on her cue.
Remus took his shot.
And did not miss.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
Every remaining ball received a hit in the proper sequence that sent another -- the black ball last -- into a pocket.
"I did not, in fact, charm the chalk to make you miss. I did, however, bewitch it to make me win."
"You're a bigger, filthier cheating bastard than Mundungus Fletcher!"
"I should certainly hope so," said Remus, moving to replace his cue in the rack with what was definitely a swagger in his step. "And while we're on true confessions, I've always found it a bit impersonal to call you by your surname--"
"It's not calling me Tonks, it's referring to me as Tonks."
"--and now that you're soon to be my wife, it feels especially impersonal."
Annoyed as she was at him right now, the words my wife falling from his lips, in regard to her, made her feel like she'd been hit with a Jelly-Insides Jinx. She couldn't ignore the romantic side of her (God, Tonks, engagement's turning you into such a pathetic sap) that wanted to leave behind everything of her old life that didn't immediately link her with Remus.
But as soppy as she was becoming, imagining Remus calling her Dora in bed -- or anywhere, really, but especially in bed -- sent a shudder coursing down from her spine.
"You can't call me Dora."
Remus had just grabbed a chair from a nearby table and was sat on it the wrong way around, elbows propped on the back, as he drank his beer. His trouser legs rode up to reveal a bit of his brown and grey argyle socks.
"Why not?"
The way he was looking at her with the imploring and, more compelling, mischievous blue eyes his fringe was falling boyishly into, Tonks found herself in very real danger of giving in. Quickly, she looked away from him and around the pub, found everyone glued to the television, and took out her wand.
"Accio beer."
Her glass levitated to her from the other side of the pool table as she pushed herself up to sit on the edge. She swigged her drink, then, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, pinned Remus with her gaze. Which wasn't really much of an accomplishment, since he'd already been looking at her with interest.
Much more difficult was making her pulse stop racing in response to that look. But she managed it with another drink.
"You can't call me Dora cos the last bloody thing you need's a nickname connected with my dad to draw attention to the age gap."
Remus stared at her for a moment, then one light brown eyebrow hitched upward. "You think me calling you -- referring to you, I mean, as Dora would make me fall into the too old trap again?"
Nice going, Tonks. Way to show him how much faith you've got in him.
She hung her head.
And winced as he said, seeming to have read her thoughts, "You may not have any faith in me, but I think I could manage to say Dora without thinking of your father. If anything..."
There was a note of held-back laughter in his voice, that made her look up, and to her very great relief, she saw the upward tug at the corners of his mouth, and the light dancing in his eyes.
"...it might make me picture you in that tweedy middle-aged morph you've been known to tweak me with."
Tonks tried to glower at him, but her treacherous mouth betrayed her by releasing a laugh. Remus' slightly raspy chuckle mingled with it as he got up, leaving his beer on the table, plucked her pint from her hands, and wrapped his arms around her. He held her so close that she felt rumble in his chest as his laughter gradually quieted, trailing away with a contented sigh that might have been his or hers or both of theirs.
"Why do you have to call me something other than Tonks?" she asked.
"I thought we'd agreed it was referring, not calling?"
"It's not like everyone else is going to switch names for me just cos I got married."
Remus pulled back from her slightly, and his cheeky grin softened as he removed one arm from around her to rake a hand through his longish, thick greying hair.
"I don't know," he said. "I suppose it was just that it seemed very strange to talk about you as Tonks to your parents. Especially as I kept thinking of them as Mr. and Mrs. Tonks even though Ted proved his paternity by expressing an aversion to formal names."
Tonks pulled a face, which made Remus chuckle again before going on:
"When he said Dora it rather stuck in my head as something affectionate..."
He leant in and kissed her lips. "...and sweet..." He kissed her again. "I got to daydreaming..."
"At the same time as Dad grilled you about being a suitable husband? And anyway, what about Elphine? That's affectionate...and sweet..."
"Mm...but also very private, and far too intimate for mere referring."
He kissed her a third time, a little more lingeringly and intently, and by the time he pulled back again, and spoke to her in a lower tone, the discussion had been pushed to the hazy reaches of her mind.
"Don't you want to hear what I was daydreaming about?"
You couldn't argue with a man who was stood between your knees like that, slipping his fingers just under the hem of your skirt to touch your bare legs as he kissed your neck, his breath so warm and manly on your skin...
You could, however, fold your arms across your chest, putting a bit of space between you, and say huffily, "Go on, then."
"Being out and about and running into friends who ask how married life's treating me, and how my wife is, and me saying Dora's wonderful, thanks, and I absolutely love being her husband."
When he put it like that...
"If I were you I'd refer to me as Mrs. Lupin, but I reckon that's strange and you'd probably think that's really tweedy--"
"Mrs. Lupin's my mum, sorry. Too many associations with Sirius saying it in far too flirtatious a way."
"Which ought to make you all the more sympathetic to my plight, of having far too many associations of Dad calling me Dora." Tonks kissed him. "But fine, if you really can't keep referring to me as Tonks and Dora makes you feel like a proper newlywed, go ahead -- just not in front of me. And you're sure as hell not allowed to engrave it in your wedding ring. And if anybody else starts with the--"
"I solemnly swear, you shall always be Elphine to me." He flashed a wicked grin. "Dora."
Chuckling, he kissed the tip of her nose, then moved away, whistling, he popped a Transfigured fifty pence piece in the slot and waited for the balls to drop, then began to arrange them in the rack for another game. Tonks' groan was cut off by her inner voice:
Just what you need! Another name to tell people not to call you! Not that you don't deserve it, with the way you completely chickened out of asking Remus about kids!
She grabbed her beer and drank. "Actually, Remus, there was something else I wanted to say to you about dads."
"Oh? What's that, then?"
She started to take a deep breath--
Don't hesitate!
Forgoing the deep breath, she blurted, "Would you ever want to be one?"
Remus' eyes flicked up from the ball he was just placing in the remaining corner of the rack. "Be a...dad?"
Tonks nodded, slowly.
Her yeah was drowned out by the cheers and fists pounding on tables from the crowd at the television, which seemed to have doubled.
Huzzah, indeed! cried her inner voice. Wasn't so hard, was it?
No, she had to admit, it hadn't been. But now she had to explain herself, and she wasn't stupid enough to think that would be a piece of Cauldron Cake.
She took another drink, thinking to go for casual, like Remus' approach to talking about how it went with her parents.
"Only Des asked me if we were going to have kids, and it occurred to me in all the million times we argued about getting married, kids never came up, so I didn't know if that meant we both wanted them or both didn't want them or just hadn't given it a thought, and then you started joking about it, which I suppose ought to have answered the question for me--"
"Have you?"
"Have I what?"
"Given it a thought. Do you want to be a mum?"
"Honestly..."
Of course honestly! And quit looking at your stupid orange fingernail tracing the lip of your pint glass and meet. Remus'. eyes!
She looked up at him just as he took a drink. Her eyes followed the line of his throat as his Adam's apple bobbed with the slow roll of the beer.
What was he thinking?
What are you thinking?
What if you want different things to each other? This is why you wanted him to go first. What if your answer isn't the one he wants to hear? What if his isn't what you want to hear?
Hell -- did she even know what she wanted to hear?
Just say it! You've blurted out worse things before!
"I don't know."
A heartbeat, as Remus lowered his glass. "Neither do I."
Feeling as though a floodgate had opened, especially as the volume of the pub was rising with the excitement of the football match, Tonks moved close to him and said loudly, "If I had to say right now, it would be a resounding no--"
"Absolutely no--"
"But I can't say never--"
"No, neither can I--"
"I do like kids--"
"Me, too--"
"And think I could see us being a mum and dad -- you, especially, you'd be a great dad."
"Ta -- and the feeling is entirely mutual, you know. I think that's why I did start joking about kids, I've just got caught up in the idea of being married to you, having a family seemed perfectly natural--"
"I'm not sure you're right about me being a good mum. I'd probably drop the poor kid on its head, or scare it with my hair."
"Are you quite certain you want to enter a frightenability contest against me?"
"Frightenability? Is that even a word?"
In that instant of their eyes locking together in laughter, Tonks knew she had no need to elaborate further than that joke for Remus to understand her doubts and fears about parenthood; for she knew everything he had left unsaid, as well.
Remus was leaning against the pool table again, and Tonks sidled up to him, resting her head on his shoulder. "We'll just figure out together what we want."
He wrapped his arms around her, but not in a simple act of affection. He felt rigid against her, and at the same time, relying on her for support. Just as she'd felt at her parents' house, after his speech.
She raised her head and saw his face set in grim lines.
"It's so irrevocable," he said.
"Sort of the point of marriage, isn't it? Otherwise it wouldn't be any different to just going out."
His eyes were fixed straight ahead, not looking at her, nor even at the pub interior. He looked as if he was trying to see something, but couldn't.
"We'll be bound to each other, Elphine. In a way, we already are."
Tonks thought of all the magical proof she'd found for their relationship: Amortentia...her morphing...her Patronus.
"I meant what I said about getting caught up in the idea of marriage and a family." He wore a faint smile now, and held her more tightly. "It's wonderful, and I want it all with you."
"But?"
His expression fell, and he unwrapped his arms from around her as he met her eyes. "Try as I might, I cannot escape this old thought pattern of not wanting to impose on other people. For me to have that life -- your life must be altered forever."
Tonks had to ball her hands into fists on her lap to keep from hitting him round the head, and literally bite her tongue to keep from saying, I've told you a million times, I don't care!
That's not what he needs. He needs to hear that you've thought through it, that it's as earth-shattering to you as it is to him.
"When you put it like that," she said, "it does sound huge and frightening. Werewolves aren't the only people who get cold feet, though."
"Actually, we don't -- the fur, you know."
"And when it comes to kids, it seems like nine times out of ten, the powers that be think it's fun to screw with you, so it's kind of stupid to even bother with a plan."
Remus opened his mouth in protest, but Tonks went on before he could get a word out:
"Do you really think Arthur and Molly knew before they said I do that they'd have seven children? Molly told me once that if a Seer had told her that, she'd have asked for her money back. Every other day Fleur's either never een a million years going to rueen 'er perfeect feegure weeth ze babies or going to 'ave seex beautiful Veela girls and seex 'andsome red-'aired boys...And Mum and Dad's plan definitely hadn't included kids for a couple more years when I popped out all pink-haired and screaming."
At the last, Remus looked at her with clear surprise.
"Think about when I was born," Tonks said.
"Are you sure you want me to think about that? I mean, you were just going on about me not needing any reminders of the age gap--"
"Shut it, you!" Laughing in mild frustration, Tonks pressed her hand over his mouth, his breath and the vibration of his chuckle tickling her palm. "Honestly, Remus, I've got a great point here."
"Smmy. Gnn pzz." He kissed her hand, and she withdrew it from his mouth, just enough for him to repeat, "Sorry. Go on, please."
"You know better than I do what current events were when my parents got married. You-Know-Who was rising to power, and mum's sister was currying favour with him, and had my mum and her Muggle-born husband at the top of her Death Eater Initiation Rites Victim List. Trust me, Mum and Dad did not time my birth with that on purpose."
She paused, for the first time realising how young her parents had been then, and having an inkling of how terrifying those days must have been. Werewolf thing aside, she and Remus could very well be a case of history repeating itself. If they'd known what would happen, would they have got married?
If you knew what lay in your path, Tonks, would you?
Taking his hand in hers, she said, "You can't plan much in life, Remus. And you can't let the unknown make you second-guess your decisions. You're right, the choices we're both making to be together do impose on each other. Married or not, our futures are still mysteries. You're looking at a witch who's just damn glad not to have to face hers alone."
Remus gave her a small smile, and brought her hand to his mouth. "I'm not second-guessing, really, I'm not, and believe me, there's nothing worse than being alone after being with you. It's just..." He looked away again, and swallowed. "I stood up and said I will and I shall so definitively to your father...And the other night when I told you I wanted our bond to be a magical one..."
He faltered, and Tonks squeezed his hand, and leant toward him to peck his cheek. "You were wonderful."
"I'm glad you think so, but I am afraid I cannot help but feel it was the height of audacity for me to say such things."
Tonks didn't know what to say.
Of all the times, Tonks, when he finally opens up to you, more open than he's ever been...
But she really didn't know. An awful thought was stealing through her, as well, which had begun to creep in when he'd first said irrevocable, only it hadn't fully formed till now.
Her hand felt clammy, and slackened around his. Her heart pounded loudly in her ears.
"Elphine?"
She couldn't look at him. "When you suggested Handfasting..."
Oh God, Tonks, you're not asking him this...You can't ask him this...
But she heard her voice go own without her brain's permission:
"It wasn't because the year and a day bit appealed to you...Was it? I mean, you're not thinking I'll regret it next year, and want the chance to..." She swallowed painfully. "That I might want to...undo it. Or that...you might want to...Are you?"
The last question had barely left her mouth when an aghast look crossed Remus' face, and then he was enfolding her in his arms again, practically pulling her into his lap.
"Oh no, Elphine, no! Merlin, no!"
He kissed her forehead, her cheek, her lips, and his hand stroked her hair.
"I should have said...I can't believe I didn't say...Firenze asked if that was the sort of matrimonial bond we sought, and I told him no. Come next summer, you and I will be celebrating our first wedding anniversary."
Relieved beyond words, Tonks took his face in her hands and kissed him for all she was worth.
When they parted, it was to cheers and high fives and fists pumping the air and feet pounding on the floor.
It's not for you, you sentimental idiot. It's for the stupid football on the sodding television!
"So it's till death do us part?" she said, loudly, over the rumpus.
"No, actually," Remus said at the top of his voice, leaning toward her. "I thought we should be bonded for this life and the next."
A smile started to bloom on Tonks' face, and then she saw the glimmer in Remus' eyes.
With an ill-concealed grin, he added, "Mostly because I feared if I said anything less than eternal, you'd hex me to oblivion!"
She gave him a playful shove off the pool table, and he laughed, looking young and very happy.
Even so, she reached her hands out to him, drawing him to her again, and said, "You can be as audacious as you fancy, you know. I like it."
"I expect I'll get used to it," said Remus. "And I can't say as fear of the unknown outweighs how much I'm looking forward to spending a good long while having the house to ourselves while we figure out what our future holds."
Their lips had not quite touched when, "Oi!" The waiter's cracking voice jarred them apart. "You two gonna play pool or what? Only those blokes over there want the table."
"No," said Tonks, hopping down from table. "I think I'll audaciously suggest we go get started having the house to ourselves."
Remus grinned. "I think I audaciously agree."
"Oh," she said on the way out, as their fingers twined together, "I told you I'd kick your arse at pool."
To be continued...