Author's note: Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

Hogwarts: Assignment #4, Ancient Studies Task #1 Write about unrequited love/infatuation

Warnings: NA

All The Time In the World

When he bumped into her in the landing, on his way down to The Burrow's cellar, he looked shocked. She knew that she looked a little shocking too, and by 'shocking' she meant 'put together.' Her hair was a vivid scarlet colour, pouring freely down her back besides a few thin braids loose amongst the curls. She was wearing a little black dress he'd often seen before and a pair of chunky, high-heeled boots she affectionately nicknamed her 'man-killing heels.' The bronze bangles at her wrist clattered as she made her way up the stairs of the Burrow's unfinished basement.

It was her go-to date night outfit, something he had seen her wear before. She was doing her absolute best not to wildly blush or punch a wall at the irony that of course she would run into the reason she had no intention of enjoying this date Hestia had set up for her. Of course Remus would also happen to be wearing that nice, parchment-brown sweater she had liked to steal up until the day he'd told her he couldn't see her anymore. And his hair was stupidly tousled and his eyes were stupidly warm and brown and… Of course.

"Hi," Remus said finally.

"Hi," she replied. She pushed her hair backwards.

"Sorry," Remus said. "I just need to… to squeeze by. Mad-Eye's got me doing grunt work. I think he's still mad at me for finding a typo in his back-up back-up schedule rotation."

Tonks snorted and then remembered that she shouldn't laugh at his jokes. If she remembered how funny he could be in that quiet and silly way of his, it was harder to pretend that she didn't like him.

"He had me doing grunt work too; I sassed him the other day," she said.

"You sass him every day," Remus pointed out.

"I do lots of grunt work," she said. "I should… I should come back down and show you what I've gotten down—it's a bit of a mess down here…"

Remus nodded. They had moved everything that belonged to the Order from Grimmauld Square to the Burrow very quickly after Sirius had died—too quickly, according to Mad-Eye Moody who was still grumpy about the organizational state of the Order.

Dora led him to a shelf of preserves which had been partially cleared, with a worktable pushed against the wall and covered in boxes of paperwork—blue prints, interview transcripts, intelligence reports, mission logs… He waved his wand and turned on the series of candles that had been left all around the room.

"He had me alphabetize all the oral interviews with former Death Eaters," Dora said. "I finished today but didn't get around to cataloguing the confiscated item stock. It might be a good starting place if you want to get back in his good books. I know he really wants to get that done so that we can move things to Dumbledore's Gringotts safe."

"I can work on that," Remus said.

"You're probably the best person to do it," Dora said. She immediately blushed and turned away from him to pull a box off the shelf and carefully lower it down onto the worktable. She lifted the lid off, revealing an ensemble of eclectically-sized objects wrapped in old copies of The Daily Prophet.

"Well," Remus said so quietly it could have been just to himself, stepping forwards. "What have we got here?"

"Frankly, I have no idea," Dora said. "It could be anything."

"I can fill you in later, if you would like," Remus said as he picked up his first object.

"No, that's alright," Dora said. Her eyes fixated on his hands as he unwrapped whatever it was that he was holding, but when he laughed her eyes immediately darted to his lips.

"I haven't seen one of these in ages," Remus said, showing her what he'd found. As far as she could tell, it was a regular writing quill with a streak of white along the feather. He must have sensed how unimpressed she was, he was always good at reading her, and so he explained. "Invisible writing quills—you could use any ink and the quill would turn it invisible so you could leave messages. They were quite popular back in school, and then during the first war we used them to write messages all the time…"

"Nice… It's probably not too complex of a charm," Dora said. "A disillusionment charm working with an infusioning spell of some sort, no?"

"Something like that, yes," Remus said, wrapping up the quill and noting down a few details about the object before placing it on the table again. The next object he unwrapped was much bulkier. Dora leaned across the table to get a better look at it—a small grandfather clock.

"What's that?" Dora asked.

"Not sure," Remus said. "Time will tell."

Dora scoffed but couldn't stop herself from laughing.

Remus smiled at her shyly.

"It wasn't that bad, was it?"

"If I could, I'd clock you for it."

"Ha, ha. I'll make sure to watch my back, then."

"Seriously. I'm quite ticked," Dora said.

"I'm sure it wasn't my worst work, hands down."

"That doesn't make it good," Dora laughed. "Seriously, what is that artefact?"

"I'm not sure," Remus said. "I've seen something like this before that turned out to be a trap for Boggarts, but I'll have to give this one a closer look to be sure…"

"Boggart traps," Dora mused.

"It's not a bad idea in theory, but in practise they often backfire on users—not to mention that they hurt the Boggarts more than a simple Riddikulus ever could."

"Hmm," Dora said. Her eyes turned back to the box as Remus wrapped up the little clock, wrapping it up again and leaving it with a note recommending further inquiry.

"Anything in here catching your attention?" he asked.

Dora paused. It was just a question from Remus, but to her it felt a lot like an invitation to stay. She hesitated. She was sure that Remus was asking innocently enough—he loved magical objects and this kind of thing, not to mention the opportunity to share ideas and information. But she, Dora, was not level-headed enough for a crash course in magical artefacts with him to be just that. Not now, anyways, when it seemed like they were talking and working well together and agreeing on something for the first time in weeks.

If she stayed, she would listen to him talk and tell stories and get excited about something nerdy and trivial and she would fall head-over-heels for him again. And if Remus had made one thing clear, it was that he didn't want to see anything like that occur. But it wouldn't, it couldn't, just be Order stuff to her, when and where he was concerned. It was just like her, to get caught in a rabbit hole like this and to spiral away from what she was actually meant to be doing. Remus made the rabbit holes deeper and the spirals more closely-knit.

"That one looks vaguely triangular," Dora said, pointing to an object in the corner farthest from her.

"That is odd," he mused as he reached for it.

She ripped her eyes away from the box and Remus' stupid, curious face for a second to reach into her purse for a Muggle ballpoint pen and the enchanted notebook that she and Hestia shared—the one she could write in if she wanted a message to appear in Hestia's notebook. She scribbled a quick note: "Sorry to cancel last minute—something came up—tell your friend I'm sorry but would love to meet him another time, maybe."

She shut the notebook and tucked it away before Remus noticed or before Hestia's most likely sassy response got back to her.

"I think you found a particularly interesting one," Remus said. "It's triple-wrapped."

"Jackpot," she said.

He looked up at her and slowed down for a moment.

"You look nice," he said.

"Thank you," she said blushing.

"Did you have plans or somewhere to be?" Remus said.

"Not at all," she said, happy that it was now true. "I've got all the time in the world."

Stacked with: MC4A; Shipping Wars; Hogwarts

Individual Challenge(s): Gryffindor MC; Hufflepuff MC; Order, Order; Summer Vacation; Seeds; Golden Times; Medial; Old Shoes; Themes & Things A (Love); Themes & Things B (Surprise); Themes & Things E (Box); Ethnic & Present; True Colours Rian-Russo Inversion; In a Flash; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux

Word Count:

Shipping Wars

Ship (Team): Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks

List (Prompt): Fall Micro 1 (Rabbit Hole)