July 1st, 1996

Nymphadora Tonks

Ted had a strange liking for black and white movies. He'd insist that when they were in black and white, it forced the directors' hands in making visually pleasing films without relying on colour. Tonks would insist that this was his way of saying that her mother hated having such a clunky piece of muggle technology in her home and he would choose old films to make himself seem more sophisticated when she would walk by, shaking her head.

Tonks had been trying to follow along with the story, but she kept dozing off, coming back to a new, more confusing scene. The stories were always so strange, about people running away together to get married and suffering horrible fates. Ted had a book of sudoku in his lap, the page covered in eraser shavings. Neither of them had spoken in a while, the movie droning on in the background. "Is that friend of yours still living with you?"

"Yes," Tonks yawned. She fumbled, spilling popcorn from the bowl in her lap onto the carpet.

"You didn't want him to come meet us?" Ted asked, adjusting his glasses. He sounded like he was teasing. "What, are you embarrassed of us?"

"He's out of town for a few days," She shifted uncomfortably.

It wasn't a very comfortable sofa to begin with, being almost purely decorative with cushions that were hard as rocks. Everything in her mother's house was hostile, vintage, pink, and decorative, and incredibly fragile. Even with a full time job, it seemed like Andromeda spent half her life cleaning up messes (and the nonexistent ones too, Tonks thought). The tables weren't meant for drinks (as if Andromeda would let anyone take anything other than water from the kitchen), the seats weren't made for sitting, and even attempting to enter the living room with shoes on was as good as a death sentence. Ted said it was because of how she was raised. Tonks didn't know what that meant.

"For work?" Ted finally asked, erasing more numbers.

"Something like that."

"What did you say he does again?" Tonks, in anticipation of this question, shoveled popcorn into her mouth, pretending she hadn't heard him ask. Of course, as she was chewing, she turned to look at her father, who was waiting patiently for an answer, looking down at her over his glasses. "Besides working for Dumbledore."

Tonks continued to chew slowly. "He's… sort of in between jobs at the moment. It's complicated."

"That's all you had to say," Ted said as he returned to his puzzle. "He seems like a nice fellow."

"He is a nice fellow."

"A bit jumpy—I think he might not like your mother too well, he was particularly frightened of her—but he seems like a decent man. He said you are his 'dear friend' and I thought for sure he was going to make himself sick waiting for you to wake up. What did you do to cause that? Or do I not want to know?"

Tonks sort of shrugged, but only because she had no clue what else to do. "I dunno. I'm nice to him, I suppose."

Ted laughed lightly. "You suppose? I thought the poor man was standing around to ask me if he could have you home by ten o'clock!"

"I don't sleep with every man I'm friends with! We're just friends." Tonks turned back to the movie, pretending to be interested in the elaborate car chase that was happening. "He just needs a place to stay, and besides, he's a decent cook."

She remembered her last few moments before she woke up in the hospital. She remembered how badly she hurt, but she remembered Remus being there. He was out of breath and looked terrified. She couldn't move, and he was saying something to her, but the ringing in her ears completely washed out his words. He was cradling her, like he was trying to protect her from an impact that had already hit. There was a bit of her that wanted to go back to that. She wanted him to hold her so that she could feel safe, even though everything around her felt its most dangerous now.

Her head was starting to hurt again. And now, so was her stomach.

"I sort of liked that one," Ted said, watching the television.

"What, the movie?"

"The man, Dora." Ted said lightly. "He seemed nice. And he seems to care a lot about you."

"Dad—"

"I'm just saying! You know, if he's going to be staying with you for a while, you ought to bring him over for dinner…."

Tonks snapped her head in his direction. "Dad!"

Ted shrugged. "Only if you want to! Fine, fine, it's not like it's that big of a deal."

Tonks slumped down further into her nest of rock hard cushions and flimsy lacy pillows. She watched a man in a trench coat scoop up a brunette woman in his arms, passionately kissing her as the music started to swell. She hoped Remus was okay.

xxx

xxx

xxx

July 2nd, 1996

Remus Lupin

Remus wasn't sure he'd even seen a werewolf that small until he saw Paul. Had he been that small? He couldn't imagine a grown adult being afraid of such a small creature.

Imogen was lanky. She liked to scratch and lick and stumbled over her feet like a newborn deer. The older boy, Henry, was quite angry. He had too much anger in him, that which he took out on his "sister" until Remus dragged him away by his scruff. But Paul was afraid. His whole body was shaking and he wanted to curl up against Katerina's body.

Upon waking up, Remus started to wonder if that was the most human he had ever felt in wolf form.

The three children were tired when the sun broke. Paul's shoulder hadn't wanted to fall back into place during the transformation, which required Remus and Katerina to hold the crying boy down while they put it back into place, and Imogen, in her restlessness, had twisted her ankle and cut up her legs when she fell off of a log she was climbing on. Otherwise, the moon had gone fairly well.

Which was unusual. Not unusual, absurd, Remus thought. He'd never stayed so calm. He, or the mind that took over when he transformed, liked to run, to stretch his legs, but last night, he had slowed down to let the smaller wolves chase him. It had felt like a part of him was tamed, brought down to a halt as the children were still learning to run, to play.

Remus didn't play. Not even as a child, he did not play. He was not a house dog, he was a violent creature that wasn't safe to be around humans. Yet he remembered lying on his back, one of the young pups nipping at his ear, another tackling him. He was letting them. Whatever part of his mind that took over when he transformed had wanted to play with the children.

Katerina had gone hunting. She was so easily tired after the transformation. He had forgotten how bad the stench on her was, or perhaps it had gotten worse over the last year. It had somewhat repelled his wolf self away from her, and it seemed to keep the children at a small distance too. Human Remus knew that smell, and knew rationally that she wasn't going to somehow infect him with cancer. His wolf self did not. She killed a small doe and brought it back to them. The children were insatiably hungry, and suddenly so had Remus been. He didn't seem much like a monster, eating the innards of an already dead deer and tearing pups apart from fighting.

Bits of his memory of the night before leaked into his mind. His wolf self didn't exactly think in words, but rather, feelings and sensations. He hadn't done anything regrettable, and he praised any god above that may or may not exist and listen for that (though he unfortunately suspected it was her sickness that drove him off of her), but he could remember the sort of feelings he had been plagued with the night before. They were the same feelings he had been plagued with around Tonks the last couple of days. Though embarrassingly, it seemed as if Katerina had noticed such feelings. She had nipped at him to get away whenever he was even a bit too close to her.

She stretched her legs, then curled up in a pile of leaves by a tree, satiated enough to sleep. Remus didn't usually sleep in his wolf form, not without the influence of the potion sedating him, and this rang true the night before. He played with the younger wolves and watched over them, certain there were no looming threats nearby even though even his wolf self was paranoid. He had killed a couple of squirrels and seemed to have spent most of the night wandering in search of something, though he did not know what exactly, but tried to be a dutiful babysitter while she rested.

It wasn't at all like when he took his monthly potion. Yet he didn't feel angry or terrified or violent.

He felt like a wolf who had found his pack. A creature as opposed to a person, but something had neutralised him, even if he hadn't been in control.

This frightened him. He didn't like the thought of not being in control.

The usual wash of guilt and shame flooded him. His mouth tasted like fur and blood and his chest hurt. He wasn't injured, no more than his bones and muscles were sore from stretching and transforming into a different form and then back again. He was as bad as an alcoholic, thinking back on his reckless night before. He wanted to go back to the city and have a proper shower. There was a creek nearby. It was ice cold, even for the summertime, and less than knee deep but it was sufficient in removing the majority of the dirt and blood and fur and had to suffice.

The blood under his fingernails refused to budge. His body was pink and shivering and he could hardly stand to look at himself long enough to clean himself off. His clothes were warm but not comfortable. He was starting to come back, remembering bits of the night before. How unfair was it that his wolf self seemed to have access to bits of his thoughts, but he had no access to the wolf self, without the expense of drugs. It was at least one of the few things he had going for himself: his wolf self had never killed before, never bitten anyone, and he had to imagine that a bit of that was influenced by his subconscious. He had to.

Katerina looked exhausted, even though she had slept more than he had. She had made more coffee and she had an air of smugness about her. "You seem troubled," she remarked.

The coffee was bitter, but it was hot, and burned going down. "Tired," Remus said simply.

She raised her eyebrows, glancing at the kids sleeping in a pile on one of the beds. Paul was tossing and turning uncomfortably, before settling with a huff. She turned back to Remus, watching him over her cup.

Katerina was a friend. Perhaps not a close one, not someone he'd want to confide in with more serious matters, but he could definitively say that he had no further feelings towards her. Though the feelings he had had the night before started to haunt his thoughts.

"You really ought to figure things out with that girlfriend," She interrupted his thoughts as if she was reading his mind. "Because I can assure you that you won't be figuring them out on me." She chuckled. "Oh, stop looking so miserable! You are so… tsk, you are too harsh on yourself. Human and wolf. You are like a monk and you are going to die like one, full of complaints and regrets."

"It would be different if I were different, wouldn't it?" Remus snapped at her. "I could be normal if I were normal."

"No one is going to make you a saint because you hate yourself for what you are! Do you think that you'll convince those people that you're a 'good werewolf'? Is that your hope? That you'll manage to convince the world that you can be a good boy and you deserve to be walked on because you're not like those bad dogs."

Remus was trying not to grind his teeth with frustration. "I didn't ask for any of this to happen. I'm sorry if it's my job to mitigate the suffering caused by this and not… raising a bunch of orphans in the woods, eating scraps. I'm not like you, and I don't like any part of this. I'm sorry if I—"

"You didn't ask for it, but you act like you can fix this. That this is something that needs fixing!" She shook her head, cursing under her breath in a language he couldn't make out. "You won't let yourself be a human because you aren't good at that, you won't let yourself be a wolf because you're a coward. I don't know what you expect me to do about that, but you're going to have to live with the fact that you're both. And you will have to be both until the day you die."

They sat in silence. Remus wanted to ask why she had even agreed to take the children. Perhaps it was because they would be bitten anyway and this way they had some sort of comfort, some sort of home to grow up in. She could not see why any of this was wrong.

"I was Paul's age when I was bitten," Remus said. "He's not going to have any chance at a normal life. How can you take pride in that?"

"I take pride in it because it's my job to raise him right." Katerina tilted her head. "Did your parents lock you in a closet and beat you with coat hangers? Because I don't… believe that is a good way to raise them. He's going to be allowed to be himself in any form."

He's going to bite people. She's raising children to be weapons to kill, to embrace themselves as weapons.

He couldn't think of a rebuttal that she would be responsive to.

"How many people have you bitten, Katerina?"

She took a drink of her coffee. "How many do you think?"

"I want to hear you say," He pressed.

There was a painful, long pause. "One. It wasn't my fault, really, I had just been attacked myself and no one told me what that meant. I bit a woman who was walking home from work and she died. That was when your people stepped in. They did not help me. They did not want to help me, they wanted to punish me for something which I could not control. Something which I was ignorant about." Katerina sighed. "And you, oh holy one? How many lives have you taken? Since you seem so convinced that all we do is hunt and kill and bite? Hmm?"

They sat in silence for longer. Finally, Remus pushed his chair away from the table. He hurt more now than he did when the sun came up. He thought of Tonks and hoped she had slept. He hoped her bed would be warm. A selfish little part of him hoped he'd go, and she'd be there, waiting all night and morning for him to come back.

"You act as if being bitten is the worst thing to have ever happened to you." Katerina said bluntly.

"Because it was," Remus replied. Why, if he hadn't been bitten, James and Lily wouldn't have had reason to suspect him, Pettigrew would have been caught, Sirius would still be here, Sirius would still be here, Sirius would have still been there…

"You must live a pretty happy life, then." Katerina interrupted his thoughts. Her fingers were rubbing over the scar on her neck. "I got to have a second chance with mine and I couldn't be more grateful. Perhaps you ought to stop thinking about what was supposed to happen and think about what is right in front of you."

There was no use in fighting. "Then I suppose that's where we differ."

"I suppose," The corners of her lips upturned. "Now, go home to the pretty girl and take good care of her. Good care, do you hear me? Stop telling yourself you're the worst person to walk the face of this Earth. I still have a good few years before I collapse and you won't outrun me."

Remus hoped Tonks would still be home as he was slowly making his way up the stairs. Perhaps it was adrenaline wearing off, he didn't even know, but if she didn't open the door, he was sure he was going to collapse on the floor. It felt like he had a horrible flu with no visible symptoms, and that felt even worse, like somehow this was all a horrible, horrible dream. He was dragging his feet up the last two steps and all he could think of was how he was going to have to do this for the rest of his life. If he didn't collapse sooner, he'd be an elderly man, dislocating all of his bones twice a month and he'd have to keep going about his life with no hope of retiring.

Tonks must have been anticipating him, because she had the door open before he even made it to the top. She was dressed for work, her hair done up in a spiky sort of ponytail, with colourful clips that seemed to emulate the usual colour that would have been there, though, she'd managed some striking pale highlights. She had on a soft violet lipstick that he liked quite a bit. "What in Merlin's name are you doing? You didn't apperate to the top of the stairs?" She demanded, worriedly. Her eyes were checking him up and down for injuries. "You need to sit down, please. Are you alright? Did you sleep at all?"
Remus heavily exhaled. "I didn't think about it. Yes, I'm fine. No, and that's why I didn't think to apperate to the top of the stairs." He had to stop in the doorway. The horrible mirror beside the door reflected back at him. His face looked old, sunken it, wrinkled and dry and sick. His hair had gotten so grey and so long it hung in his eyes. His eyes were dark and deep and red. He barely looked human. If anything, he was more like a caricature of what a human was supposed to look like.
He couldn't stand to look at himself and turned to her. Her skin was pale and tight, with a bit of artificial blush and a bit of cream to hide how poorly she slept. Her back was straight, her forehead relaxing when her eyebrows parted. She looked so young, so soft. She took a step towards him, her hands gently holding his shoulders. "Remus," Tonks said, quietly, her big brown eyes staring right at him. Her voice was barely audible."Are you alright?"
There was a knot in his throat. Slowly, he nodded. She held her lips tightly together. He thought of kissing her. He thought of doing much more than kissing her and he wasn't even sure why. He thought of her lips on his throat, of her warm hands running all over his chest and through his hair. "You have to go to work."
She shook her head. She was getting even closer to him. "I don't have to go anywhere if you're not feeling well. Are you not feeling well? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I'm fine," Remus lied.

"Then why are your hands shaking?" Tonks took his hand in hers, gently holding him there until she brought it to her lips. "Talk to me. I want to help you but I can't if you don't tell me what's wrong."
His lungs were inflating and deflating with effort in each breath, as if suddenly every part of his mind had turned off in order to give her his full attention. He could list a dozen moments before now that he could have taken to kiss her. It must have been the moon that was manipulating his body, blurring the lines between instinct and rational thought, pushing those thoughts to the forefront of his mind because now it was all he could think of, all he could see, all that he wanted in the entire world. Blood was rushing to his ears, pounding so loudly as to drown out any of his own protests. He smelled like iron and algae and his clothes were wrinkled and filthy and yet she touched him. Soft as ever, her hands moved to his neck, her thumbs resting just against his cheekbones.

"Tonks, I–" He didn't know what to say. All Remus could manage was to shake his head.

"Are you running a fever again?" She asked before holding the back of her hand to his forehead, bumping him with her rings. "You really ought to lie down."
Remus shook his head again in protest. This time she didn't move, didn't say anything in response to him. His fingers gently touched her arms, lowering her hands away from his face as he leaned down and pressed his lips against hers. He had fully expected she would pull away, or gasp in surprise, or even try to say something. But Tonks was receptive to the kiss, leaning into him as opposed to pulling away, almost as if she had been able to intuit his thoughts before his actions.
His eyes opened before he could manage to pull himself out of the kiss. Her eyes were still closed but he could see himself just clearly enough in the mirror behind her, despite the grey hair falling over his eyes. He was craning himself over her, his hands firmly clamped around her wrists.

Deranged. Monstrous.