Completing his shift at the Department of Mysteries, Remus was uncertain as to whether he had ever been more grateful for Apparation. He wanted nothing more at the moment than to vanish from the Ministry of Magic, reappear at Grimmauld Place, and fall into his bed, and go to sleep. He was exhausted: physically, from staying up all night; but even more so mentally, from having stayed up all night thinking. Guard duty required only awareness of his surroundings, and his mind had taken advantage of the freedom to wander.

If only it had actually wandered, instead of fixating on one thing: his row with Tonks.

A row.

With Tonks.

He could hardly believe it.

Disbelief kept him rooted to the Grimmauld porch steps, not opening the door, not going inside, not falling into bed, not silencing his mind with sleep. He could not have rowed with Tonks. He liked her so very much, one of the chief reasons being that, for all their apparent differences -- her youthful vivacity, his greying hair; her success and place in Wizarding society, his fringe existence which seemed unlikely ever to change; her newness to the demands of her work, much less soldiering, his worldly experience with loss -- they got on so well. Her quick, and often unconventional way of thinking complimented his, almost intuitively at times, and made her his favourite partner for assignments. How often did you come off a shift wanting to spend more time with your partner? Certainly not when you had duty with Mad-Eye.

Added to it all was the unmistakable fact that Tonks was a very pretty young woman. Not a beauty, like her mother, Sirius had been quick to say; but he had also allowed that given the other set of genes she had working against her -- which added up to a beer belly and male-pattern baldness -- she'd come out better than she might have.

Perhaps, in the traditional sense, Sirius was right; but attraction didn't bow to tradition, and Remus was, undoubtedly, attracted to Tonks. He really couldn't have stopped his feelings shifting to more than friendship, could he?

Not that he was entirely sure they'd ever been anything else.

The course of his adult life had not frequently thrown him into the company of available women -- at least not ones who struck his fancy, and certainly not ones who were interested in him in return. Even if anyone had caught his attention, he would have been too conscious of all he lacked: clothes that hadn't been mended and patched a dozen times over; the means for dinners out, flowers, gifts; a flat worth bringing a girl to, should he be so lucky.

It wasn't that none of these things concerned him with Tonks; indeed, quite to the contrary, he wanted more than ever to be what she deserved. When he was with her, the headiness of the moment, the spark between them, pushed those feelings of inadequacy out of his mind. Her enthusiasm for creativity over custom, the quirkiness of her own style of dress (this morning she'd opened her door to him in pyjamas and Pygmy Puff slippers, after all), the opening of her own shabby enough flat, put them on even keel.

Then there was the way they simply fit, physically. His longer fingers curved perfectly around her slim hand; her head tucked neatly under his chin when they hugged; her lips moulded to his as if they were two interlocking puzzle pieces...

She was a rarity among witches, Nymphadora Tonks, and it had nothing to do with being a Metamorphmagus.

She knew what he was.

Knew what he was...and didn't care.

He could have had everything he'd never dared to want...

And he'd thrown it all away in one row.

Of course, it had been a great deal more than a petty quarrel, hadn't it? Perhaps it might have started out as one, but it had uncovered real differences of life outlook. Did she know what he was, truly? She couldn't possibly...She was so young...It wouldn't be right for her to know. Her world view should remain unspoilt.

Sirius could say what he liked about Remus not letting people help him, and he would be right. It was not, however, a martyr complex. He deeply appreciated the people who wanted -- or thought they wanted -- to help him. The problem was, he had so little to give in return. Could his curse be anything but a burden?

From somewhere deep within, a small voice said that helping Remus had given Sirius the gift of Animagery, without which he'd have been destroyed.

No. Remus tapped his wand against the door of peeling black paint, and the clicking of bolts and rattling of chains drowned out the voice. Peter Pettigrew also had learnt Animagery because of him. Everyone knew how different things would be now if that had never happened.

He held his breath as he entered, and stepped gingerly over the creaky floorboards. The slightest sounds set off Mrs. Black. He'd heard her epithets once tonight, and felt gloomy enough without another round reminding him that much as he'd like to believe there was a future for him -- as Tonks had seemed so surprised to learn he did not -- that nothing ever lasted for him.

And hadn't he gone into this conditionally enough? Just one date. He'd hoped for two or three, or ten or twenty, but if he was honest with himself, he hadn't been set on it happening.

The one thing he had not expected was such an unpleasant end. Never a row. Something more along the lines of Tonks greeting him before an Order meeting, and saying, Wotcher, Remus. The first three dates were lovely, but this bloke at work asked me to have dinner with him, all right? See you at the Department of Mysteries...

He hated quarrelling. Worst of all, no matter what angle he examined theirs from, he couldn't think of anything he would have said differently to avoid it. He hadn't wanted to discuss Umbridge, but Tonks pushed him into revealing thoughts better left unspoken.

Oh well -- wiser to end it now, even on a sour note, than to have got much further with her. Less pain in the long run, for both parties. He knew this. Why couldn't he stop brooding?

Safely past Mrs. Black's portrait, Remus quickened his pace toward the staircase. He was distracted from his goal by a beam of light emanating from the double drawing room doors, which stood ajar. Compulsively, he stopped to check whether anyone was within, or whether a lamp had been left lit.

As though summoned, his gaze was drawn across the room, to one of the two settees stood perpendicular to the fireplace.

Curled up asleep, cuddling one of the water-stained velvet cushions that might at some long-past date have been green, but was now colourless grey, was Tonks.

A pink-haired Tonks.

Whether because he was startled to see her, or because Sirius' earlier words about her wearing pink hair for him echoed mockingly in Remus' head, (and he was doubtful it was the former, as part of him said that he'd known perfectly well it would be her), he could think only of getting out of the drawing room, and stepped backward into the door jamb. Damn it, he cursed silently as Tonks stirred at the bump. Before he could turn, her dark eyes opened.

Opened -- on him.

Remus stood, one hand on the doorknob as though Stunned, and watched the sleepy look in her eyes fade into the brightness of dawning alertness.
She sat up, the cushion falling to the floor with a little puff of dust, and rubbed her eyes. "Wotcher, Remus."

Her voice was husky from slumber, and it set a longing coursing through him to go to her, to sit facing her on the edge of the settee and smooth her dishevelled mass of pink hair back into a more intentional state of disarray as he kissed her in a proper greeting. But he remained where he was, clutching the doorknob. Because a kiss wasn't the proper greeting now. She wasn't here waiting up for him as a coupley gesture. She was waiting because they'd rowed, and he'd walked out on her. She had to have her say.

"It's very late," he said, stiffly, instead of acting on impulse. "You should be at home."

Slim shoulders tensing, twitching cheek muscle thrown into relief by the lamplight, she muttered, "Nice to see you, too."

Remus opened his mouth to shoot back that though he'd love to argue with her again, he really had to be going, but he bit his tongue. No matter how much he wished Tonks would just let this go, he wasn't angry at her.

Never at her.

In fact, he wasn't sure angry really described how he felt at all.

And when her features softened, and her eyes, so large and dark, held him gently, Remus realised that there was no anger on her side, either.

"I couldn't go home," she said. "I wouldn't have slept a wink, when Merlin knows how long it would be before I saw you again to finish our discussion."

Though Remus had expected to hear those words, he was absolutely unprepared for the paralysing, knee-weakening sensation that came over him. Exactly like what he experienced one night every month as he, naked, vulnerable, never mind his supposed Gryffindor courage, awaited the rise of the full moon.

Dread.

"Tonks...It's late," he said again, even as he shut the doors behind him, and leant heavily against them.

"I'm sorry," she said, simply, and without preliminaries, in very Tonks-like fashion. "You don't like to dwell on your problems. I'm a wallower, myself, so I don't really get that. But I should've respected you. I shouldn't have pushed. I'm sorry."

Remus' throat felt tight, choked. Certainly he was relieved at her understanding of him. But unfortunately, understanding didn't change his mind one iota about the conclusions he'd drawn in the hours since he'd last seen her.

She was looking at him with her eyebrows raised, and her lips just slightly parted, as though she wanted to ask a question.

Or as though she expected him to say something.

Somehow, though it was absurd given the way he'd behaved at tea, he doubted that what this optimistic young witch expected him to say was that her understanding of him meant, even more necessarily, that their brief romance must end. It made his heart leap to think that he'd got involved with the sort of girl who believed rends could be patched up -- that she wanted to mend things with him; at the same time, it plunged to the pit of his stomach to imagine her lovely dark eyes bent with disappointment when he told her patches only covered holes, which the fabric eventually would pull away from. And wasn't he, in his patched robes, an expert on that?

But Merlin, he couldn't bear the thought of being the one to burst her bubble.

He heard himself say, "Apology accepted."

Fine lines crossed Tonks' pale face. Oh yes, he'd certainly spared her feelings. He wished he'd learnt that Self-flagellation Charm Padfoot and Prongs had always said would be very useful to him.

"Thank you," he said in an attempt to recover. "I'm sorry as well."

One of Tonks' eyebrows hitched a little higher as she folded her arms across her chest. "For?"

"I--" Remus began, but fell silent. His hands hung limp at his sides. He knew he was equally at fault, knew it always took two to quarrel. But he hadn't the least idea what his part had been.

Unless Tonks thought like Sirius, and counted not wanting to talk as his part of the row?

"You were unfair to me," her clear voice pierced through the thick web of his clamouring thoughts. "When I asked about...you not being able to marry..."

As her words trailed away, her gaze slipped from his. For an instant she looked very small, and reminded Remus of someone swept helplessly out to sea. He automatically stepped toward her, to pull her out, but then she drew her knees up to her chest and clutched her hands tightly around them, as if clinging to a life preserver. She was an Auror. She didn't need him.

"You assumed I was talking about..." But Tonks faltered again, and Remus braced himself for the inevitable, if inconceivable, us.

She drew a deep breath, resumed eye contact.

"I fancy you, Remus. Quite a lot. But I honestly haven't thought further than that. I've only just crossed Become An Auror off my Things To Do Before I Die list, you know. I'd like to get used to being one before I move on to Get A Husband And Have Multicoloured Babies."

Remus blinked.

Had he missed the us?

Of course not. She hadn't said it. She'd been too embarrassed by the idea of it to say it. She hadn't meant...He had put the idea in her head...

Dear God.

Had he ever felt more foolish? Apart from Fourth Year April Fool's Day when Prongs charmed Remus' robes to turn into a perfect duplicate of McGonagall's clothing, right down to a tartan bra and knickers set, which had been disturbing on far too many levels, for far too long. Including the several times during his tenure as Defence professor when he'd been tempted to sneak into her rooms and put an end to twenty years' niggling curiosity as to whether the underwear were a figment of James' imagination, or whether there was a really juicy story he'd never told anyone, not even Sirius. Remus had thought more than one dry Order meeting could have been lightened up by a well-timed ice-breaker game where everyone said what underwear they'd got on. He'd even been tempted to ask Mad-Eye if he ever got up to no good with that oh-so-useful magical eye...

At the moment, the more pressing question was: how, in Merlin's name, could he have been so presumptuous? Or, indeed, so unfair -- as Tonks herself said?

The knot inside, which had been so tight and kept so much at bay, loosened, and his heart felt too full to contain. "I'm sorry," he said. "I reacted on the defensive. I took umbrage where you never meant to offend--"

The corners of Tonks' mouth twitched. For a moment she battled against it, but she didn't last long against the ear-to-ear grin that insisted on splitting across her face.

It cut the tension, as well. The room, which had seemed so expansive up till now, with so very much between them, condensed as he laughed. Without being aware of having crossed it, he found himself seated close beside her on the settee, and saying, "It's still a wretched pun, Tonks. And really, multicoloured babies?"

She made a reply he was sure must have been clever, but he missed it, too absorbed in the shining of her eyes, and with the thought that the row was over, and all was right between them once more.

He reached for her hand, and he sighed as their fingers locked together, both with how right it felt and the return of the earlier -- weaker now -- convictions.

Laughter dying, Tonks looked up at him with a quizzical expression.

Quietly, Remus said, "I'm not sure I shouldn't have told you not to waste your time with me."

Tonks shook her head. "I don't want to stop seeing you. It would never be a waste of time to me."

Remus felt like he should protest, and he opened his to do so, though he didn't have the faintest idea what he planned to say. In his hesitation, Tonks squeezed his hand tighter, between both of hers, and continued:

"We'll both get a lot from it. I admire how you don't want to focus on the wrong people do to you. I worked myself into a right tizzy today thinking too much about Umbridge, and you're right, it was exhausting, and I've got too much to do to lose energy to the likes of her. And..." Her gaze dropped to her lap. "You were also right about me setting a different standard for Harry than for myself."

She said it without the slightest hint of accusation, but Remus felt the prick of guilt. It wasn't about one of them being right and the other being wrong.

"I suppose," he said, "like most things, there must be a middle ground. I'm accustomed to keeping everything inside, and I do think about negatives."

He swallowed hard, the bitter taste of shame burning his throat when he recalled just how negative he'd let his thoughts turn tonight. Ordering himself not to play the hypocrite by indulging in regret over that, he looked at her, smiling, through the hair falling into his face, and drew her attention to him with a light nudge of his knee to hers.

"One wise young woman I know would say I think too much."

He half-expected Tonks to lecture him, but instead, she said, "Wise, hmm?" and scooted nearer to him.

His breath caught when her hands released his and slid upward over his forearm. Her skin was very warm and very soft against his, exposed by his rolled-up shirtsleeve. Hugging his arm, . she leant her head against his shoulder.

"See?" she half-sighed. "We're already learning from each other."

Though he loved the feel of her leaning on him and his defensive walls were all but crumbled, Remus said, "That can happen without romantic involvement, you know."

Tonks wagged her head against his shoulder. "Not for us."

"Why not?"

"Because we fancy one another. It would be all wrong if we tried to ignore that. We'd have horribly awkward silences." Looking up at him, cheeks rounding with a grin that made her elfin features look charmingly Puckish, she added, "Or do nasty hexes on each other, and that would be awful for the Order, wouldn't it?"

Remus grinned. "It does sound like behaviour rather more suited to members of the Disorder of the Phoenix."

Her glittering laugh entranced him -- or, more precisely, the curve of her throat as her head fell back did. It wasn't until she stopped, regarding him with her endless dark eyes, that he noticed she'd let go his arm and laced her fingers through his again.

"We won't be wasting our time," she said quietly, pulling their joined hands onto her knee, "even if it doesn't work out."

It wouldn't work out, Remus amended in his mind as he studied their entwined fingers. But maybe she knew that? Perhaps it really didn't matter?

"I don't have much to offer you."

"I haven't asked you for anything. Only ten or twenty creative dates."

Remus chuckled. "Practically nothing at all."

"I may drive you mental, harping on things, but you can't say I'm demanding."

Their soft laughter trailed away as her forehead wrinkled in deep thought. Remus felt she must be puzzling him out, and he tensed.

"What do you think you'll gain by selling yourself short?" she asked.

"I...I beg pardon?"

"Pity?" she went on, bringing her other hand to cover both of theirs, fingers chafing his knuckles. "You won't get that from me."

Recalling vividly the way she'd looked at him earlier, he turned his head. "I don't want pity." Gruffness crept into his voice. "And you do pity me."

"What?" Tonks dropped his hand and backed away. "Like hell I do!"

"I saw it in your eyes when I said..." Oh God, he'd nearly blurted it out again.

"That you couldn't marry," she blurted for him. "If you saw pity in my eyes, it was because you caught the reflection of you pitying yourself."

Remus looked up sharply, just as her small hands shot out again to take his.

"I was surprised," she said -- which brought the bitter taste of guilt back into his mouth, because of course she'd been, he'd seen it himself; why else would he have questioned her incredulity? "You're always so positive, and you can joke about it, that it never occurred to me you saw your life that way."

Remus was partly glad to hear it, because it meant that he'd done what he'd hoped, and kept people from worrying about -- or pitying -- him. But he wished it hadn't made Tonks quite so admiring of someone as flawed as he.

"I can't afford to take you out for a proper dinner date," he said, pressing her hand. "I think it's pretty safe to assume I shall never able to support a family."

"Affording a family's not the same thing as supporting one."

Before Remus could argue -- which was a good job, since he was too tired to formulate a convincing line of reasoning, if there was one at all against something that sounded as wise as what she'd just said -- Tonks leant in, face close to his, expression conspiratorial. She stage-whispered, "You could always be one of those modern wizards who keeps house and takes care of the werepups."

Remus gawped. "The werepups?"

She sat up with a wicked, gleeful grin.

Chuckling, he ran a hand through his hair and leant back into the corner of the settee "I'll never doubt again that you're Sirius' cousin. Really, Tonks, werepups? You do know it's not hereditary, don't you?"

"Course," Tonks replied, rolling her eyes. "I have NEWT level DADA, like every good Auror."

"I've heard about some of my predecessors."

"Can you cook?"
Remus raised a dubious brow. "A few things. I make a mean Beans-On-Toast."

"You're tidy."

"Compared to you."

Tonks nearly tumbled off the sofa as she twisted to get at her wand, which she used topoke Remus in the soft part of his shoulder as she glowered playfully. "Watch it -- I know a few hexes that'll definitely make people pity you."

"You should have seen my office at Hogwarts," Remus said quickly, raising his hands in surrender. "I had a photograph taken for the Wizard English Dictionary entry for clutter."

"And you like kids."

"Not everyone teaches because they like kids," said Remus. "Some like taking away house points, or giving detentions."

"You're describing Snape, not yourself," Tonks returned, putting her wand away and snuggling into the crook of his arm again. "And don't tell me you wouldn't enjoy a quiet domestic life, with time to study Grindylows and Boggarts and all those creatures you're so fascinated with."

"And my brood of werepups?"

"I think it would be a litter, wouldn't it?"

Remus' laughter died as the scene she painted came to life, like a moving photograph, with startling clarity. He saw himself, less shabby, though considerably greyer, stood in a comfortably cramped living room of lumpy arm chairs and packed bookshelves, animatedly showing two wide-eyed, brown-haired children a Grindylow in a tank. From somewhere beyond the frame came a woman's merry laugh. Enjoyment was a tremendous understatement for how such a life would make him feel.

Or rather, how it would make him feel if such a thing came to be.

"You make it seem so feasible," he said, speech breaking the magic of the vision.

"It is feasible."

"Perhaps..."

Yes, perhaps -- but it had nothing to do with this, the here and now with Tonks.

"That doesn't change the fact that I turn to a Dark Creature every month. Hardly the bedtime story a woman wants to tell her children."

"One night a month, and so far, your current girlfriend handles it well."

In truth, Tonks had not precisely handled his transformations. There had not been a full moon since he'd asked her to go out with him. She'd never even been present in the house during one of his transformations. At the moment, however, Remus was unconcerned with particulars. How could he be, when Nymphadora Tonks had referred to herself as his girlfriend?

"You handle it brilliantly," he said, raising her hand briefly his lips, "but that's not the same as living with a lycanthrope."

"That's where we might encounter issues," said Tonks, a blush Remus hadn't noticed till now fading from cheeks and neck. "You already think I'm a right slob -- though I swear to Merlin, I'm nowhere near as bad as my dad. And my music might drive you mental." She grinned broadly as she gestured toward her Weird Sisters t-shirt, drawing his gaze down considerably lower than her face, but quickly became serious again. "Couples part all the time, and lycanthropy is rarely the cause."

Remus could argue that point till he was blue in the face -- as well as the role of finances in relationship troubles -- but he knew Tonks wouldn't hear it. And he did not particularly want to argue it. Her view made so much sense. She wanted to be with him, and he very much wanted her to be. But there was one point he wanted to make certain was absolutely clear to her.

"Are you sure you want to continue as we are without any promise of...something more?" Remus asked. "Because I can't promise you a future, Tonks. I can only live one day at a time."

"That's the only way anyone can live, Remus. Especially Aurors, in times like these. But it's okay to dream. To want."

Her brow furrowed in a sudden frown, and her eyes, which had been shining with earnestness, dropped.

"Tonks?"

"Unless you don't want..." She bit her lip.

Oh Merlin. Somehow, though he couldn't imagine how, he'd made her think this was all about her, that he was making excuses because he didn't want to keep going out with her.

"I do," he said, catching her other hand, squeezing both before kissing them again. "Very much."

She smiled, relief clear on her face, and Remus released one hand to stroke her cheek with the backs of his fingers. "What do you dream about?"

Grinning impishly again, she stretched to retrieve her wand from the coffee table. Flicking it lazily toward the closed door, she said, "Accio memo."

A moment later, a sheet of parchment rustled out from under the door and flew into Tonks' hands. Umbridge was no longer only a caricature of a toady witch, but full of holes, too. Sirius must have taken Tonks' advice and used it for a dartboard.

"I dream about Dolores Umbridge going green in the face," Tonks said, "and growing a lot of warts."

"Perhaps I could teach you a useful little spell?"

As they laughed, Remus slipped his arm around her shoulders once again and drew her close against his side. For a few minutes they sat in a contented silence, during which he marvelled at how perfectly Tonks fit there. She was just the right height for him to rest his head against hers.

At last she said, "I dream about you getting to teach again someday."

Something deep inside him -- a knot he hadn't known was there -- loosened, even as an entirely different one formed in his throat.

Tonks dreamed a dream for him.

Not because she pitied him, but simply because she cared. She bolstered him, yet did so without unmanning him, as was so often the problem with letting people in. In fact, he hadn't felt this strong since...he couldn't remember when.

Yet in the midst of absorbing these new sensations, Remus recognised that Tonks had not revealed any of her personal dreams. Part of him couldn't help hoping wildly that it was because he was a part of those fancies, though he truly believed what she said earlier: at this point -- one real date, and one quarrel, into a relationship -- she wasn't thinking of him that way. Nor would he dare to imagine such a thing would ever come to be. In any case, now was not the time to let her see how deeply she had moved him.

He raised his arm to rest on the back of the sofa and turned to her with a teasing expression. "How will the Defence Against the Dark Arts position become available again? Will Umbridge resign when her face goes green?"

"Course," said Tonks. "It'd clash horribly with her pink cardigan."

"Maybe you could serve as interim professor, while I picket the Ministry..." He thought of what Sirius had said, and made a mental note to apologise to him in the morning. "...with Harry and Hermione for lycanthrope rights. You are an Auror, after all. Perfectly qualified."

She pulled a face. "I'd trip over a desk and lose all the kids' respect within the first minute of class. Plus my hair isn't very professorly."

"Dumbledore obviously doesn't care about the state of the professors' hair. Otherwise he'd never allow Severus to keep that greasy mop."

As their mirth abated, Tonks asked, through a yawn, "D'you know what I'm dreaming of right now?"

The yawn was contagious. Covering his mouth, Remus asked, "Sleep?"

He realized the sun had begun to rise; light filtered dimly through yellowed lace curtains. Arthur and Molly would be up soon, and Order members would arrive at the house for the day's assignments. Tonks had to work.

"Not sleep." Tonks slipped her arms around Remus' neck and inched close enough that their noses almost touched. "I'm dreaming of you kissing me to make up for our row. And maybe you can help me decide whether I like cheek kisses better than lip or neck kisses."

Remus needed no further coaxing to lean in and fulfil that particular dream of Tonks'.

"Have we tried ear kisses?" he asked, leaning in toward her--

--but he stopped just shy of her lobe, his breath making the tiny, fine hairs of her neck stand, and pulled back to look her in the eye.

"Only swear to me you won't metamorphose into Dolores Umbridge the moment I kiss you."

A/N: That wraps up another instalment of the Transfigured Hearts series. As always, I really appreciate my readers. This time, those who tell me what they think will get their own Remus and/or Tonks to daydream about the future with, or plot ways to get their own back on the Dolores Umbridge in your life.