Part Five

Remus had just cast a Muffliato and stepped cautiously into the corridor when Tonks, giggling, clutched the belt of his dressing gown.

He turned, intending to mouth what? despite the precautionary charm, but his lips cracked into a grin at the sight of her. Clad in red teddy print pyjamas and fluffy yellow Pygmy Puff slippers, Tonks stood just beneath the lamp by their door, left hand held up to the light, staring at the new ring on her fourth finger.

"I feel different," she whispered. "Do you feel different, Remus?"

"That depends entirely on what you mean by different." He settled his hands on her hips and leant in for a kiss. "I certainly feel a bit less...urgent...than I did before we celebrated our engagement." His stomach growled. "And I'm a little hungrier than I was when we decided to put on clothes and sneak downstairs for cake."

Tonks' dark eyes danced, and Remus imagined the sparkles in their depths were the reflection of the jewels in her ring. "You did work up an appetite."

"Mmm." Remus kissed her deeply, until his stomach growled.

Giggling against his mouth, Tonks asked, "A little more urgent than you thought?"

"Shall we carry on, then?" He grabbed her left hand, smiling as the ring poked his palm -- but Tonks didn't budge.

"By different," she said, "I mean that we've talked before about getting married, but now it feels real."

She tugged her hand free of his grip just enough to show her ring. Remus didn't think he'd ever seen a wider, happier smile on her face.

"Literally feelsreal," she said, "with this ring on my finger."

"It suits you," said Remus, lifting her hand so he could inspect the ring more closely, wrapping his other arm around her waist to pull her snug against his body.

He knew engagement rings were supposed to be grand, dazzling flawless diamonds, like the one Fleur wore; yet he couldn't denyhow perfect this ring looked on Tonks' hand. It was neither traditional nor flashy, yet it was beautiful and delicate in its own way. In her way.

For all that, he couldn't help but ask, "Do you really like it? I know it's not much…"

Tonks rose up on her toes and gave him a kiss that made him lose his breath and her, her balance. Thankfully she only pushed him into the wall, and didn't topple backward onto the wood floor, though whoever was sleeping in the room beyond likely did not share the appreciation. But Remus was hardly in a position to care too much about anyone's sleeplessness but his own.

"I love it," Tonks murmured as she drew back, and it took a moment for Remus to register what she was talking about. "Knowing you, it's everything."

"I transfigured a few lengths from my watch chain for the band," Remus said, feeling a swell of pride that he'd thought of it, even if necessity was the mother of invention.

"Your coming of age watch," said Tonks softly.

"It was my father's -- and my grandfather's, before him." He lightly traced the centre stone with the tip of his index finger. "And the diamond is--"

"The timepiece?" Tonks' eyes flicked down, expression more full of wonder than it had been. Her tone became hushed, awed even, as she said, "There's a lot of meaning in that."

"I'm glad you think so," Remus said, and then could say nothing else because his heart had lodged in his throat and he had to kiss her again.

Eventually they stopped and made it the remainder of the distance down the hall, but Remus had to pause again at the landing when he saw Tonks again holding her hand up to another lamp, at the top of the stairs, wiggling her finger to make the gemstones catch the light and refract rainbows on the walls. He'd pressed her against the wall and was holding an inner debate about whether he was hungrier for cake or his fiancée -- what a wonderful word that was, and he was beside himself that he actually had one -- when Tonks asked, "Actually I was wondering about the sapphires."

"The sapphires?"

"Yes," she said dryly. "You know, the blue and pink stones."

"I think I shall have to kiss you for being saucy." He nipped playfully at her lips, then asked, "What about them?"

"What do they mean? Diamonds are forever, but…what are sapphires? Blue for you, and pink for me?"

Remus quirked an eyebrow. "Have you ever seen me sporting blue hair?"

"You know, I might just have to drag you back to bed without any cake."

"Sapphires are for hope," Remus said quickly, brushing his lips across her forehead. "And for peace…" He kissed one eyelid, and then the other. "Prosperity…" He kissed her lips softly. "And fulfilment of dreams."

He pulled back to look in her eyes, and he found them bright with tears before she hugged him fiercely. "I'd be insulted you chose cake over bed if that weren't the most beautiful thing--"

"ARTHUR AND MOLLY WEASLEY! WHERE ON EARTH DID YOU LEARN THIS SORT OF BEHAVIOR?"

Remus and Tonks broke apart. He was sure his face mirrored her own: mouth agape, eyes round. The joyful tears had vanished from hers.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS PLACE IS? A BLOODY BREEDING GROUND?"

At the same moment, they bolted down the stairs toward the sound of the twins' commotion. Tonks tripped over one of her slippers and slipped down the last few; somehow Remus caught her arm and the handrail and saved her from an ungainly pratfall. Because of the Muffliato charm and the peals of laughter in the sitting room, no one noticed their arrival. And their attempts at sneakiness proved unnecessary, since everyone was downstairs, wearing an array of sleepwear, apparently having got out of bed for the same reason Remus and Tonks had: Harry's birthday cake stood on the coffee table.

But it had been forsaken for Arthur and Molly -- his pyjama shirt unbuttoned and revealing flushed skin, her dressing gown open and hair in disarray -- looking stunned with their arms around one another in the broom cupboard.

Tonks' head fell on Remus' shoulder as her laughter rang in his ears.

Remus flicked his wand to call off the Muffliato. "Fred, George…"

Somehow his voice carried over the mirth. Everyone turned.

"Honeymoon over already?" George asked.

It was a testament to how truly bewildered Molly was that she didn't utter a word of rebuke.

Smiling, Remus countered with a question of his own. "Charmed cupboard?"

"It's our latest product," Fred eagerly pounced on the subject. "Couples can't pass by without stopping for a snog."

"Cupboard Casanovas," George said, "for those awkward blokes who just haven't got the ba--ow!"

Fred elbowed him hard in the ribs as he interrupted, "--brass to seduce women on their own."

"Since your time in the Cupboard Casanova resulted in an engagement," said George, "we'd be honoured to feature you as spokeswizard."

"Except you've just insulted the wizard, you daft gits," said Charlie, stretched out on the sofa clutching his belly as he laughed.

"And your dad, as well," added Hermione in a know-it-all tone that, sure enough, earned her a snide, falsetto reply from George: "And Ickle Ronniekins?"

But while Ron and Hermione blushed profusely, George himself, along with Fred, were almost sheepish as they sputtered insistently that everyone was misinterpreting them; they were sure a born Marauder like Remus had honed his own cupboard seduction skills in his youth.

"Talking of engagements," said Bill, reaching out to shake Remus' hand, "shall we make it a double wedding?"

Fleur went ghastly white, and Remus laughed harder at the mere possibility of what might come out of her mouth.

But Fleur only said, "Do not be silly, Bill. Tonks could not possibly plan a wedding to 'er…taste…een two days."

Across the room, Hermione snorted, and Ginny made a hissing sound.

"That's right," said Tonks, voice high and shaky with held back laughter. "Molly offered to lend me that gorgeous tiara for my wedding, and Fleur and I couldn't both wear it if we had a double wedding."

Remus' stomach growled.

"Cake, woman!" cried George, grasping his mother's hand. "Feed this man cake."

"I really don't know where I went wrong with you pair," Molly said, recovering her senses at last.

"That's because you didn't," said Fred.

Molly shook her head, but looked genuinely touched as the twins kissed each of her cheeks.

When everyone was settled in the lounge with cake and goblets of Molly's Elderflower wine, Bill asked his parents who, though out of the cupboard, sat very close together on the sofa and kept casting each other knowing glances over their wine glasses, "What's the secret? How do Fleur and me and Remus and Tonks stand the test of time and end up snogging in broom cupboards thirty years from now?"

"CUPBOARD CASANOVAS!" shouted the twins.

Everyone roared again, but Tonks, in Remus' lap again, regarded him with shining eyes. "Last year seems short and unimportant in light of all the years to come."

His heart pounded in his chest, quickening with more life than Tonks had yet made him feel. He'd never doubted that he had her full and free forgiveness for all he'd done, and all he'd failed to do; yet part of him, he realised now, had been held back by time -- by an unconscious sense of owing her, of requirement to earn that trust.

It was not so.

In promising himself to her, in placing the engagement ring on his future wife, he had gained so much more than the hope of years. He held all their years already.

Guilt had lost its hold.

Remus' heart was completely unbound.

He was --

-- and always would be --

-- a free, whole man.

He kissed Tonks' temple, then caught her hand that wore his ring and brought it to his lips.

Arthur held his wife's hand, too. "You'll make a lot mistakes. Don't look back at them. Just keep looking ahead to the next broom cupboard."

"Arthur," chided a blushing Molly, with a great deal more sentiment than rebuke.

"To Bill and Fleur!" said George, raising his goblet.

"To Remus and Tonks!" said Fred, raising his.

"To Cupboard Casanovas!" they said together, clinking their cups.

"To the future," said Harry quietly, and Remus looked up to see his eyes locked with Ginny's.

Remus held Tonks tighter, reminded that hope was small and solid as the gems in her ring that symbolized it. Faith was a blind leap into a future that lay in the hands of the young man who toasted it, and soon tonight would only be a memory.

But he knew that the look on her radiant face as he slid the engagement ring onto her finger would be the memory that would conjure his next Patronus.

There were some things that were definitely worth looking back on.

Especially when they pointed straight ahead.

The End

A/N: All who comment on this final chapter get to have some fun with the mischievous wizard of their choice: Remus, of course, who likes to sneak out of bed for a midnight snack; Arthur, who's still up for broom cupboard snogs after thirty years of marriage; or the twins, who are sure to have as creative inventions for their own love lives as they are for everyone else's...