Disclaimer: Everything (almost) belongs to J.K. Rowling.

Huge thanks to jadeddiva for being a perspicacious beta, and for giving me the opportunity to use the word "perspicacious." ;)

Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

- W.B. Yeats

There's something there that you can't find
You look honest when you're telling a lie
You hurt her but you don't know why,
You love her but you don't know why.

- Wilco

Remus had been coughing all day, a great racking smoker's cough that left him dizzy and gasping for breath. Once he'd hawked up a wad of bloody mucus, and wondered if he was dying. He certainly felt like he was dying. What would they do with his body if he died here? Eat it, probably. He'd make a terrible meal, but waste not, want not.

He hadn't the energy to scrabble for scraps after the king and the current queen had had their share. Instead, he huddled away by the fire while the others fought and snarled. He knew it must've been late, since the trains had stopped running; it was the only way he could keep track of the time. He hadn't left the abandoned Underground station in at least three or four days.

He dozed for a while with his head resting on his knees, and jerked awake when someone put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey. I saved some beans for you."

He took the proffered can. There were only a few lukewarm mouthfuls left, but he ate them eagerly, licking his fingers afterwards. "Ta, Nigel."

The boy stooping over him was as sickly and pale as the rest of the pack, with a long nose and a hoodie pulled down over lank black hair. "You all right, mate?"

"Been better." He wiped his perpetually running nose on the sleeve of his coat. "I think I've got the plague."

"Ah, don't say that. You'll be better soon."

"I'll be better with some sunlight and fresh air." He looked around at the dank walls, the dripping ceiling. "Did you get enough to eat?"

"Yeah, I nicked part of a sandwich earlier tonight. Cheese and pickle. It was really good."

His mouth watered at the thought of cheese and pickle. It had always been one of his favorites. "Well, sit down by the fire a bit, Nige. Warm your bones."

"Cheers." The boy sat, folding his long skinny legs, and held his hands out to the fire. "Don't be sad about not going topside, mate. It's bloody awful weather up there. You ain't missing nothing. Pissing down rain and fucking cold, and you go somewhere to warm up and they kick you out on your arse."

"London can be a cold city."

"You said it, mate."

He wiped his nose again and straightened his legs out, his knees cracking audibly. He was getting too old for this. "It's almost Christmas, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Bloody Christmas." Nigel made a face. "Decorations everywhere, fucking Christmas songs, everyone being all jolly. It's shite. I hate it."

"I always miss my dad at Christmas. He died about ten years ago."

"I don't miss my dad. It's his fault I'm down here."

"Really?"

"Yeah." Nigel looked over his shoulder. The others were passing around a bottle of whisky, and the king was sprawled on his "throne" (an old armchair nicked from Merlin knew where) with his hand up the queen's skirt. "My dad kicked me out, you know. Because I'm a poofter. I was sleeping rough over in Limehouse when I got bitten."

The boy couldn't have been more than fifteen - the same age as his fifth-year students. He thought of their well-scrubbed faces, the great plates of food at every meal. "I'm sorry, Nigel."

Nigel's face twisted. "I don't want your fucking pity."

"You know I didn't mean it like that."

"Go fuck yourself, you fucking posh cunt." Nigel got up and stalked away.

He pulled up the collar of his coat and sighed. Nigel would be back later to apologize, as he often did. Remus wasn't sure whether Nigel regarded him as a father figure or something else, but the boy was kind at heart, despite all his adolescent bluster, and he appreciated that.

Several of the pack members had started singing, although they obviously hadn't agreed on a tune to sing. The king was snogging the queen and a young hopeful, a plump blonde girl with a turned-up nose and watery eyes, had perched herself on the king's knee. One of the whisky-drinkers caught Remus's eye and Remus stiffened, but the man - a big burly fellow in a ragged overcoat - smirked and tossed the nearly-empty bottle in Remus's direction. It landed in his lap. "Oi, drink up, Rag-and-Bone."

He drank. It was foul, and burned the back of his throat and seared its way down his esophagus, but he felt better afterwards - a little less ill. He set the empty bottle aside. They all called him by that nickname. He thought it might be some sort of Cockney rhyming slang, but he couldn't make it out. It was fitting enough, though.

He pulled his coat more tightly around him. In a little while someone would shove him away from the fire for a prime spot to sleep in. In the meantime, he enjoyed the warmth while he could.

She held his hands in hers, examining the sores and bites and scratches. As usual, her face was expressionless, though her mouth tightened. "I'll buy you a cup of coffee," she said.

"If you want. Do you have time?"

"I'm taking the day off. Come on," she said, and he followed her off through the slushy streets, yesterday's unexpected snow working its way through the holes in his shoes. People were staring at them, the two of them together: the pretty young woman in her scarlet winter coat and combat boots, the tall shambling man in his ragged clothes and his shoes held together with gaffer's tape. He was used to getting stares by now. He wondered if she was.

Albus had wanted someone to check up on him periodically, and it hadn't surprised him at all that Tonks had been the one to volunteer. Their meetings were usually brief - she was busy in Hogsmeade and with the Order - but it was always good to come out of his hole and see her waiting for him on the street corner. It was like swimming up from deep water into sunlight. The memory kept him going - kept him sane - until their next meeting.

He had another coughing fit. She stopped and waited until he had spat some brown stuff onto the pavement. Old blood, he thought, wiping his mouth on his grimy sleeve. Not the plague - consumption. Did people get consumption anymore?

"You ought to go to St. Mungo's," she said.

"They'd probably tell me to go to a veterinarian."

"Shut up." She'd said it to him often enough before, usually as a preface to a kiss or in response to him and Sirius being silly, but she obviously meant it this time. He shut up.

The café was a trendy, upscale sort of place with white tiles on the walls and attractive female baristas. "Can we go somewhere else?" he whispered to her as soon as they walked in.

"If you want to walk all over London to find a café that's decrepit enough for you, be my guest," she said. "I'm staying here."

He ordered hot chocolate. She drank black coffee. She had taken her wool hat off, and her hair was still mousy brown, sticking up in rumpled cowlicks. He'd asked her a few weeks ago, at their last meeting, whether she was unwilling or unable to morph, and she just shook her head and changed the subject.

The hot chocolate was thick and very sweet, almost too rich for a belly accustomed to being mostly empty. He dredged out cocoa sludge at the bottom of the cup with his finger before he realized that he could have used a spoon. Oh well, waste not, want not.

"Albus read us your report last week," she said.

He wiped his finger on a napkin. "I trust you all found it entertaining."

"You don't seem to be having much luck."

"Well. . . gaining their trust is one thing. Actually talking them into anything is another matter entirely."

"They sound horrible." She sounded carefully neutral.

He thought about Nigel and his can of beans. "They're scared and desperate and angry. Most of them don't have anyplace else to turn. They're just trying to survive."

"How can you defend them?"

"Because I'm one of them."

"No, you're not. You're not desperate. And you're not vicious."

"You have no idea, Tonks."

She got up abruptly. "I'm going to the loo," she announced, and marched off to the back of the café. He occupied his time by scraping more sludge out of the bottom of his mug, with his spoon this time. She came back a few minutes later, shaking water from her hands. "They're out of paper towels," she said, pulling out her chair with unnecessary violence and sitting down with a thump. "You want any more hot chocolate?"

"No, thank you. I should probably be getting back soon. I told them I was out looking for food."

"I'll buy you something you can take back with you. You could use something decent to eat."

"Please don't."

"And you need a bloody bath. You stink."

"I'm fine."

She clenched her fists on the tabletop. "You enjoy this, don't you? Being a bloody martyr. Or maybe you think you deserve all of this. You're punishing yourself. Is that it?"

"I was ordered to infiltrate the werewolf pack, and I'm doing my job." A sense memory: the full moon, blood in his mouth and raw meat between his teeth. He felt slightly nauseated.

"You weren't ordered not to bathe or eat. For fuck's sake, Remus, I'm half-expecting to see stigmata on you. You're wallowing in it."

"I'm sure I would inspire universal trust among the pack members if I got all spruced up in my best robes like I was going on a bloody date. You don't know what they're like -"

"Of course I bloody know! Do you think I sit at those meetings with earplugs on? I'm not stupid!" Her lower lip was trembling, and he reached across the table and tried to take her hand, but she jerked it away from him.

He opened his mouth to make some sort of placating response, and started to cough again. He coughed and coughed and coughed, and she watched him with an expression he didn't have the energy to interpret. He swallowed hard, trying to keep himself from gagging - he didn't fancy vomiting in this place - and took a deep shuddering breath. She got up and brought him a glass of water, which he gulped down gratefully. "Thank you," he said when he was able to speak again.

"Are you all right?"

"Not really," he said in all truthfulness. She deserved that much.

"Do you want more water?"

"Please."

She fetched another glass of water, and watched as he drank it, her eyes seemingly fixed on his bobbing adam's-apple. "I'm sorry for shouting at you," she muttered after a few minutes.

"No, you're right. I'm sorry for. . . well, I'm sorry." He fiddled with his spoon. "I suppose I am wallowing in it a bit. I just don't like people fussing over me. Except for Molly - I'm used to it with her."

"I'm sorry for caring, then," she said sharply.

"Look, I know you care, and I appreciate that. I just don't understand why you care so much."

"Oh, Remus." She shook her head and smiled, but her eyes were bright with unshed tears, and she wiped them away with her fingers. "Maybe you'll figure it out someday."

"Maybe I will." They sat in silence for a moment, and then Tonks said, "You know, I've got a really good cough potion around somewhere. Molly gave it to me last year when I had a cold. It works really well."

"That would be nice."

"But if you come back to my flat, you have to take a bath."

He sighed. "To be absolutely honest, Tonks, I would love a bath. You'll probably never be able to use your tub again, though."

"I don't care. And if you want to get filthy again before going back, there's a nice patch of mud right outside my building."

"I'll keep that in mind."

They walked outside, where the snow was already melting. He took a deep breath of the wintry air and savored it, and savored the sun which had come out from behind the clouds. She took his hand, and they walked together towards the Tube station without speaking. For a little while, except when he saw their incongruous reflection in the shop windows, he could pretend he was normal, that everything was all right.

He wiped steam from the mirror and considered his reflection. He didn't look as bad as he thought he would (or as bad as he felt), though he was certainly thin and peaky enough, with a healed scar on his forehead that hadn't been there before - the result of some half-remembered full moon foray. There was more grey in his hair, which was longish now and hung in his eyes, and also some grey in his scruffy excuse for a beard. He wanted to shave it, but he supposed that was taking personal hygiene too far: it would attract attention, even if his lack of body odor didn't.

Tonks's bedsit was small and cluttered, with a bright knitted blanket on the bed and a Christmas tree taking up most of the corner by the window, covered with tinsel and cheap plastic ornaments and magic candles that cast cold bluish flames. It made Remus remember Christmas at Grimmauld Place last year, where the tree had been abundantly lit with the same kind of candles. The great dank house had smelled of Molly's cooking, and Sirius ran around like a lunatic singing carols and trying to push people under the mistletoe. It was the last time he had ever seen Sirius truly happy.

The water in the small clawfoot tub was draining with the familiar gurgling and creaking of old pipes. He dried himself with a large fluffy towel, so eye-poppingly neon pink that he thought the color would come off on his skin. The bitter taste of the cough potion, brewed with horehound and mullein and other herbs he didn't recognize, still lingered in his mouth. The stuff worked, though. He hadn't coughed once since he'd taken it.

He was thinking of a night around this time last year, perhaps Boxing Day or the day after, when he had taught Tonks and Sirius to play poker down in the drawing room by the fire. Tonks had been beautiful that night, her hair purple-black and bobbed, her skin like porcelain: a punk china doll. And when the game was over (Sirius won, somehow), she had kissed Remus goodnight and gone upstairs, and Sirius had said something like, "She fancies you, Moony."

He'd scoffed, of course. Nobody fancied Remus Lupin. Not anymore, anyway. It was a law of nature. He was grey, he was stodgy, he dressed badly, he was poor, he was old, he had big feet and ugly scars and a stupid mustache which he refused to shave. And anyone who got past that exterior would eventually find out he was a werewolf. That was enough to scare anyone away. He had needs and desires of his own, but they would never be satisfied. He had accepted that. If Tonks was attracted to him, it was just a more grown-up version of a schoolgirl crush, which a few of his students had been prone to: flattering but ultimately without consequence.

He used to think he had it all figured out.

He picked up his trousers with an expression of distaste. He could have wand-cleaned them, but none of the pack members did that - whether it was from a dislike for wizardry or a simple desire to be filthy, he didn't know. The smell was certainly fascinating: a palimpsest of woodsmoke, cigarette smoke, spilled liquor, sweat, moldering rubbish, wet dog, and mud. He breathed through his mouth and put the trousers on anyway, along with the rest of his equally pungent clothes, and left the bathroom.

"You look better," she said. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, reading The Daily Prophet. There was a brown paper bag at her side. "I've got some tinned things to take back with you."

"Really, you didn't have to."

"I found them in the cupboards at Grimmauld Place, when we were clearing out of there. I'm not planning on eating this, so you might as well."

He peered into the bag. Cream of mushroom soup, peas, tinned pasta, and the inevitable beans. Bachelor's food. Sirius's food. He had bought it himself at Tesco's some time this spring, with Sirius's money. Relics of the dead. "Thank you."

"Are you going now?"

"I probably should." He put his hands in his pockets and shifted from foot to foot as she folded the newspaper and got up. They stood there awkwardly for a moment.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," she said. "Molly said you're invited to the Burrow for Christmas."

"I'll try to be there, if I can. Are you going?"

"I don't know. I've got to see my family, and I have paperwork to file with the Ministry. But I'll try to be there too."

He smiled and picked up the paper bag. "I hope to see you there."

She looked up at him, her expression somewhat wan. "Safe travels," she said, put her hands on his shoulders, and stood up on tiptoe. He leaned down to kiss her. Her lips were as soft and warm as he remembered from their last meeting, and her body was warm against his. He thought of what he was going back to, the dirt and misery and violence, the cold nights and hard concrete, and he dropped the bag with a clatter, and they were clinging to each other like shipwrecked mariners, neither of them willing to let go. He breathed in the smell of her hair, the smell of her skin, and wished that time would stop and leave them like this so he would never have to move or think again.

"I love you, Remus. I love you so much."

He looked down at her, bewildered. "Why, Tonks? Why? I don't understand it. Look at me! How can you possibly even -"

"Stop it. Shut up." She glared back at him. "Just stop it, all right?"

"Tonks, you know what I am."

"I know what you are. I don't think you do, though."

"I'm a monster. Did you know, Tonks, every bit of fat I've got left on me is from eating human flesh. We go hunting at the full moon. I know exactly what your intestines would taste like."

"Like chicken?"

"Ugh!" He let go of her and picked up his bag. "I'm leaving."

She stepped around him and blocked his way to the door. "You're not leaving till you've listened to what I have to say."

"All right, fine. Talk."

"Remus, I love you because you're a good man. You're brave and kind and clever and you make me laugh and - and you've got beautiful eyes." He snorted, but she ignored him. "I don't care what you've done on the full moon. You can't help any of that. It's what you do the rest of the month that makes me love you. And it makes me so fucking angry that you can't understand that."

He couldn't say anything. He stood there with his mouth open. Her face was blotchy and her eyes were once more filled with tears, but she was standing her ground, and in that moment he loved her so much that it was almost physically painful, like a fist squeezing his heart. And it was all completely, utterly futile.

"Well?" she snapped.

"Merry Christmas, Tonks," he said, and reached for the doorknob.

The door slammed behind him so hard that chips of plaster fell from the lintel. He hurried down the stairs, clutching the bag to his chest, so that he wouldn't have to hear her start to cry in earnest. He realized he had forgotten the cough potion, but of course there was no way he was going to go back and get it.

I'm a bastard, he thought. But he had known that all along. Now she knew, too.

"Oi, Rag-and-Bone! Where'd you go, a visit to Mummy?"

"Look at 'im, all cleaned up like a gennelman!"

"What you got there, Rag-and-Bone? Something for us?"

Remus ignored their jeering. Scraps could be hoarded among the pack members, but a larger cache of food like this went to the king so he could have the first share. The king: Fenrir Greyback, his creator, his nemesis. As a member of the rank-and-file, Remus had never spoken to him, except when he first petitioned to join the pack. He had been set his initiation task - to turn a member of the Werewolf Capture Unit at the next full moon - and had done it, though he barely escaped a silver bullet in his heart. It was his duty, but he never forgot the man's scream.

Now, he walked towards Greyback's shabby "throne" with the bag still clutched to his chest. The werewolf king, in his too-tight black robes, was instructing a younger pack member - not Nigel, but another boy whose name Remus couldn't remember - to send a message to somebody topside. The boy skittered away, and the king lifted his big grey head and flared his hairy nostrils at Remus's approach. "Rag-and-Bone," he said in his rasping voice. "I smell wizard on you, and clean water and soap. Where've you been?"

"I broke into a witch's flat, sir. To steal food." He was able to keep his voice from shaking, but the old bite on his calf, the original bite, sent bolts of pain up his leg and made his knee tremble, and his heart was beating very fast.

"Did you now? And stopped to take a nice little bath?"

"I have scabies, sir. I thought it'd help if I cleaned up a bit."

"Risky, risky. Were you seen?"

"No, sir."

"Hmm." Greyback picked a morsel of food out from between his teeth with a long nail and regarded Remus thoughtfully. From his Marauder days, Remus was an accomplished liar: he knew not to blink too much, not to avoid his questioner's eyes, to keep his jaw relaxed and his expression neutral. Finally, Greyback said, "What've you got for me, then?" Remus opened the bag and he peered inside. "Nice. A bit of veg so the minions don't get scurvy, eh? Here." He delved into the bag and thrust the tinned pasta into Remus's hand.

"Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. You're very kind."

"Ain't I? Go on, get out of here."

Remus made a half-bow and backed away quickly, while the other upper-ranking pack members closed in on the food. He tucked the tin into his coat pocket before anyone else saw it, although he wasn't quite fast enough.

"What you got?" Nigel asked as he retreated to his usual spot by the fire. "What did he give you?" Remus displayed his treasure and Nigel's eyes widened. "Nice one! It'll be a bit before the tin-opener comes round. . . look at those greedy pigs stuffing their faces. . ."

He watched, feeling the tin pressing against his side. The food of a dead man, the gift of a scorned lover, the gift of a werewolf. He imagined it would taste like ashes. As the pack members squabbled over the rest of the food, Remus began to cough again.

Meanwhile, Remus Lupin, who was thinner and more ragged-looking than ever, was sitting beside the fire, staring into its depths. . .

"I invited dear Tonks to come along today," said Mrs. Weasley. . . "But she wouldn't come. Have you spoken to her lately, Remus?"

"No, I haven't been in contact with anybody very much," said Lupin. "But Tonks has got her own family to go to, hasn't she?"

"Hmm," said Mrs. Weasley. "Maybe. I got the impression she was planning to spend Christmas alone, actually."

She gave Lupin an annoyed look. . .

- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, American hardcover edition, pp. 330, 340