Author's Notes: This was written for the All Hallows' Moon Jumble at LiveJournal's MetamorficMoon, where it won Best Drama and was runner-up for Romance. It was based on the prompts Day of Neglect, Fireworks, a picture of a man at a window, and Drama/Romance (though both genres appear within the larger shadow of Mystery). I hope you enjoy it. :)
The Killing Lights
5:00 AM, read the bright red numbers on the digital clock. For a moment, he muses on the strangeness of keeping a clock in the bathroom, but then, he decides, an Auror must have a very busy schedule.
He is sitting on the fluffy candy-floss bath mat, leaned up against the cool, powder-blue tiles of the wall, facing the door, which is a creamy off-white. The room seems almost too conservative for her, until one notices the little touches: the glitter paste covering the doorknob (applied in uneven globs, as though the painter was somewhat impatient, or perhaps not entirely sure-handed), the trashy romance novel on the shelf beside the bath (the pages slightly brittle, as though it has been dropped and then received an imperfectly-cast drying charm), the collection of multicoloured rubber ducks balanced precariously along the edge of the bath - (Children's toys, he thinks in agony, the home of a child - she is a child and what am I doing here?)
He drops his face into his hands, not knowing what to do. He can't leave and he can't go back. He supposes that he should have expected this - that this is what happens when one has too much to drink and, with the warm, fuzzy logic of the inebriated, decides to have a one-night stand with a friend.
A friend who happens to be a colleague from the Order, thirteen years one's junior, a daughter of the House of Black, a cousin (once removed) of one's best friend, and one of the toughest Aurors on the force.
Remus John Lupin sure knows how to pick 'em.
With a groan, he tilts his head back to rest against the wall. He doesn't want to lose her friendship, but he isn't quite sure how to preserve it after last night. If he admits that he's been dreaming about this for months (well, not this precisely - his fantasies never included sneaking out of bed to hide in her bathroom at five in the morning), he's sure to scare her off. He can't imagine that any girl - especially one like her - would genuinely want to be with him (though, if he examined the romance novel, he'd notice that the hero is a man named John with a kind smile, an interest in books, and a web of scars crisscrossing his body). He decides that a passionate declaration of love - for it is love, he knows - (it must be love because his mind hasn't been replaying the sex, which was drunken and clumsy and not particularly memorable, but rather the way she giggled helplessly when he kissed her stomach - the weak spot of all the Blacks, as he learned ages ago from tickle wars with Sirius - and the string of curses she let out when she tried to pull her tee-shirt off and managed to get her arms stuck in it - yes, this is love) - but proclaiming his ardent longing for her is probably not the best way to keep her friendship.
On the other hand, he suspects that telling her he feels nothing for her and only slept with her in a fit of drunken misjudgment would not be the best thing to say, either.
So he hesitates, tormented, and the rubber ducks cast pitying glances at him, at this grey, weary man curled up against the wall, for he looks so helpless and unhappy and alone. When he woke and slipped from the bed, he was flushed with the warmth of humiliation and a thousand other warring emotions, but now, he's starting to notice just how cold this crisp, mid-October morning is. He huddles in his thin shirt and begins to wish he'd taken a moment to find his jumper on the floor, or at least his socks - his trousers (which are, to be honest, outgrown, and which he still wears simply because new clothes are so expensive) are a bit short on him, scarcely covering his ankles, and his bare feet are beginning to go numb.
And then, just as he's deciding that (cowardly as the idea is) it might be best simply to slip away and pretend none of this ever happened, she appears.
She's wearing a white tee-shirt with red runes that spelled "Ancient Runes Exhibit" (it is good to know that, despite being unable to find a teaching position, his studies can be put to use reading tee-shirt slogans), and then below, in English, "Museum of Wizarding History", and her pajama pants are sky blue with clouds, rainbows, and pearly-white unicorns (as another pang says Child, so young, so pure). On her feet are fluffy pink slippers, her bathrobe is an orange plaid that, a few shades brighter, might blind him, her hair hangs dull and brown and limp over the set of her shoulders, and her thin mouth is curled down in a scowl. She is resplendent in her angry beauty, and, for a moment, he cowers, before she sees him and her expression softens. She goes from terrifying goddess to dear child, standing in front of him with a little girl's deep brown eyes, her face softened by a small smile and illuminated by that light which can blaze into being with the smallest amount of fuel - hope.
"Remus?" she hazards tentatively, her voice small and cautious.
He has to clear his throat twice before he is able to speak. His voice comes out low and hoarse. "Nymphadora?"
The scowl returns.
"How many times do I have to tell you? It's Tonks."
He smiles, a genuine smile for the first time since waking.
"Oh, I'd say at least several more."
She crosses her arms, but there is laughter in her eyes. He knows that she would be heartbroken if he ever did begin using her surname (just as life would lose its meaning for Argus Filch should Hogwarts students ever completely cease to break rules); not only would it seem cold after the humour and intimacy of their friendship, it would also deprive her of the opportunity to correct him.
"Mind telling me what you're doing in here?"
Oh dear.
Her voice is mild, calm, but it hovers between curiosity and accusation. He feels as if he is defusing a bomb - he needs to figure out the right sequence very quickly, but if he touches the wrong wire, it will reduce him to a soot-mark on the wall (which, actually, is sounding rather desirable compared to what she will probably do to him if he says the wrong thing).
"Just finding a moment of privacy to think," he offers.
An eyebrow goes up. "What about?"
He shrugs. "Oh, you know… life, my days at school, people in general… those kinds of things…" He hopes he's being specific enough to satisfy her curiosity and vague enough to avoid increasing it. He hopes she's not about to give him the "Just Friends" speech. Dear God, he hopes she remembers what he's doing here (because alcohol, after all, has been known to blur memories, and perhaps she thinks that he simply let himself into her home at five in the morning to sit on her bathroom floor and think about—)
"So… are you coming back to bed?"
Oh. She does remember.
"Er… you… want me to?" Oh, that was very coherent. Pity he can't muster that kind of eloquence every day - but alas, only on special occasions (such as, for example, proximity to a lovely young woman with whom he is utterly infatuated). Perhaps he isn't to be blamed, however, for her next words are just as disordered, stumbling out of her mouth as clumsily as she often does on the last, slightly uneven step on the kitchen staircase in the house at Grimmauld Place.
"Well - that is, I mean - if you wanted - you look a bit cold - I mean—"
"That's quite all right," he interrupts gently. "I'll just collect my… things…" (somehow he can't bring himself to say 'clothing'; it will make the truth all too real), "and be on my way."
"Oh. All right." Her voice sounds a bit distant, and, when he raises his gaze to her own, he sees that she is building a fortress behind her eyes.
"If you want," she adds a moment later, "you can crash on the sofa until it's late enough to actually count as the morning after. If I'm gone when you wake up, help yourself to breakfast." And then she is gone in a swirl of dizzyingly bright tangerine bathrobe, and he is left shivering in the chill that has suddenly returned (for she has a glow and warmth all her own, and, poetry aside, nobody could be cold with such a loud shade of orange in the room), wondering what caused her to look so closed. Surely she has no feelings for him against which she might need to shut her heart - (so why is his own screaming at him to follow her?)
In the end, he does sleep on the sofa, because he can't quite find the heart to leave (and part of him hopes that her offer was made because she doesn't want him to leave, either). He wakes to sunlight streaming through the window, a note that tells him she was called away to work, and a tray of "breakfast" which looks slightly more horrible than Dolores Umbridge's smile. The egg appears to be raw, the presumably-cold-by-now coffee must have slopped a bit as she was carrying it and has soaked the toast (though really, the only way he can tell is by the pool of dark liquid around it - the toast itself resembles a rather wide, flat charcoal briquet), and there's a large lump on the far side of the plate that he can't quite identify. He suspects that she might have intended it to be an omelet - though there's really no way of telling - but it looks like something that, if approached, might prove to be alive, and swallow him whole before going on a rampage through London.
He isn't sure he wants to move close enough to examine it. Instead, he simply carries the tray back to the kitchen, scrapes the food into the bin and arranges some of the other rubbish over it in hopes that she will never discover its fate (because he appreciates the gesture - but at the same time, he strongly suspects that playing musical chairs with a troll would be less hazardous to his health than eating what's on the tray), and pours himself some cereal, smiling fondly at the thought of her leaving breakfast for him. Perhaps last night hasn't ruined their friendship. Perhaps it isn't something to be regretted.
And for a moment, he allows himself to wonder if this beautiful, vivid woman with dark sparkling eyes sees something in him that he does not.
He wonders if she thinks he's attractive.
He wonders if she thinks he's worth something.
But then, he tells himself with a wry smile, it is no use dreaming of a fairy tale ending he has never been presumptuous enough to expect. She is a kind woman who is intelligent enough not to let what happened affect their friendship - that's all.
Once he finishes eating, he rinses out his bowl, and then, because there are enough towering stacks of dirty plates, cups, bowls, and silverware to form a small metropolis on her countertop, he does her washing up for her to give her back a little time in her busy schedule. In part, he hopes it will amend for throwing away the breakfast she left him (not that she's ever going to know); in part, he just doesn't want to go back to Grimmauld Place and find himself all alone again with nothing but stuffed elf heads for company.
So he takes his time washing up, and then, still not wanting to depart, glances at her note again. It does say that he's welcome to stay as long as he likes, so he chooses an interesting-looking book from her shelf and sits down to read.
The sun moves through the sky as his eyes take in the text, and, by the time warm afternoon sunlight begins to slant through the window, his eyelids have fallen shut and he has slipped into a dreamy doze.
When he awakens hours later, his world is golden with the last honeyed rays of afternoon, and he moves through the flat like a memory, floating and surreal. His feet carry him through the kitchen and into the dining room, which he suspects she seldom uses - the floor is thin-paneled wood, the table is dark mahogany, and altogether the room seems far too stern and formal for her bright tastes. He likes it, though. It's quiet and calm, and, as he crosses to the sliding doors decorated with wrought-iron framework and gently pushes them apart, the room opens to a breathtaking view of the sun sinking low over the Thames.
He leans on the railing of the shallow balcony and simply watches, silently, as the late daylight glimmers on the water and a feeling of utter peace suffuses him. That is, until he hears the front door opening and closing, followed by the sounds of Tonks yawning and kicking off her shoes.
For a moment, he panics - it can't be that late already! How will he explain the fact that he's been here all day? He curses himself for not leaving earlier, then decides that it is better to confess his presence now than to startle her when she inevitably finds him.
"Nymphadora?" he calls.
There is silence for a moment. Then…
"Remus?" Well, she doesn't sound angry - that's something. And she hasn't even corrected him for using her first name. Curious, he reenters the kitchen just as she pokes her head in. To his great surprise, instead of incredulity, a weary smile spreads across her face.
"Oh, thank God you're still here." She pads across the room in her socks and slips her arms around his neck, burying her face in his jumper and letting out a deep breath. He holds her gently as a small smile touches his lips and he entertains the idea that, just perhaps, the thought of returning to an empty home was no more appealing to her than it was to him.
"Long day at work?" he asks gently, and she nods.
"Yeah," she mumbles, "if by 'long' you mean 'bloody endless'."
He strokes her hair gently and smiles again as he thinks that this - meeting her as she arrives home and hugging her and asking about her day - is something he could get used to very easily.
"Why don't I make some tea," he offers, "and you can tell me about it?"
She looks up at him with relief and gratitude in her eyes.
"That," she decides, "would be absolutely wonderful."
A few minutes later, they are side-by-side on her sofa, mugs of tea in their hands and a slightly frustrated expression on her face.
"It all started with Domingo Imago," she begins.
"Imago…" Remus mutters. "Why does that name sound familiar?"
"Inigo Imago's father," she replies. "A Seer - a Muggle-born one, too, which is extremely unusual - and a very nice old man with a house in Soho, not far from Diagon Alley."
"So what has Mr. Domingo Imago been doing to cause you frustration?"
"Well," she explains, "it started a few days ago, when he complained that someone had been messing around in the alley behind his house and painted 'Die, Mudbloods' on the wall."
Remus sighs resignedly. "Yes, it sounds like that's been an all-too-common pattern lately. When I talked to my mother yesterday, she said that there were happenings of that sort in the area where she lives as well, and she found similar graffiti yesterday morning - that kind of thing's been becoming more and more frequent since the Ministry officially announced Voldemort's return last summer. Mr. Imago's intruders were probably a gang of prejudiced teenagers who think petty crime is a fun way to pass an evening."
Tonks nods slowly. "Yes, that's what we thought, too," she tells him. Then she bites her lip, as though considering her next words. "That is, until he was discovered dead this morning."
His eyes widen. "Dead?"
She nods grimly and adds, "Dead, but otherwise—"
With dread, he finishes for her. "—completely unmarked."
She nods again, and then she takes a deep breath.
"Remus," she says quietly, "the… the Dark Mark was floating above his house."
His stomach lurches, and for a moment, they only stare at each other. They both know just how bad this may and probably will become, and as he watches her face - grim and determined, beautiful and brave - he knows there is only one thing to say.
"How do I help?"
Distantly, the bells of the Clock Tower strike three as two figures silently walk the streets of Soho. The night air is crisp and cold, heavy with the threat of rain, and Remus Lupin turns up the collar of his coat against the chill and the damp. Tonks is beside him, her face morphed slightly older and slightly less distinctive, her hair long and dark down her back, and he has a hat pulled low over his eyes.
This is the area in which Domingo Imago lived; this is the area in which there have been numbers of similar complaints about prowlers and threats left on walls. Already they've passed several - all seeming to burn ruby-red from the walls, all with the same message: 'Die, Mudbloods.' The writing refuses to be removed by the spells they try, so, regretfully, they give up and press on.
"Remus?" Tonks asks suddenly, breaking the silence that has settled over them and turning her face nervously up towards his. It's raining in earnest now, and cold droplets of water plaster her hair to her face and put a pink tinge in her pale cheeks. In the dim yellow glow of a streetlight, her face looks drawn and tired and a little grim, but to his eyes, she could not be more beautiful.
"Yes, Nymphadora?"
She gives him a token scowl, then bites her lip, looking worried. After a moment, though, she takes a deep breath and speaks firmly and somewhat impatiently.
"Oh, why beat around the stupid bush - Remus, can we talk about last night?"
Remus's stomach twists in a feeling not dissimilar to that of being punched in the gut. He really shouldn't be afraid of this sweet, pretty young woman looking up at him with worried eyes, but, at that moment - as frantic variations on OhGodWhatDoISay sweep through his head, leaving panic in their wake - she seems more dangerous than a niffler in a jewellery shop.
"We don't have to talk about it if you're not ready," she reassures him quickly, seeing the worry on his face. "I mean, no matter what, we're still friends, right? I just wanted to figure out… you know… how things stand."
"Well, er… I…"
"Actually," she interrupts, "I mostly just wanted to know if what you told me was true."
He wracks his mind for anything particularly incriminating he might have let slip, then asks somewhat hesitantly, "What did I tell you?"
She bites her lip again, looking nervous and uncharacteristically girlish. Finally, she confesses quietly, "When I showed you my natural form, and you said I was beautiful. Did you mean it?"
"Why would I have lied?" he asks, frowning slightly in confusion. She shrugs.
"Oh, I dunno… I mean, it's not that I doubted you, it's just that I've never considered myself pretty in that form. Sometimes, I wonder if people would still like me if I couldn't change form, or whether I'd still be useful as an Auror. It's funny, but if there's something special about you - even something good, like my ability - it becomes a curse, too, because you start to wonder whether people like you for you or like you for it." She shakes her head a bit sadly. "I'm sure Harry knows what that's like, the poor kid. But it's just… well, you're the first guy who's ever said anything like that to me, ever made me feel wanted for who I was, not who I could become. And so I wanted to make sure you knew that I don't just see you as some man I slept with - I see you as a friend, someone I care about, someone I can trust. Someone special."
When he simply nods mutely, she drops her eyes to the ground and confesses, "At first, I thought it just happened because we were drunk, but - but now, I think I might fancy you a bit." She blushes and looks up at him nervously through her eyelashes.
His heart is in turmoil, but foremost in his mind is that she must be mistaking her feelings. She's just admitted that he's the first of her romantic partners to like her natural appearance, and it's probable that gratitude has combined with loneliness to convince her that the friendship the two share might be tinged with something more. He smiles a bit sadly.
"You're a kind and beautiful young woman, Tonks, and I consider you one of my best friends—"
"But you don't like me that way," she finishes morosely. She sighs and shrugs her shoulders. "All right, then…"
She looks so sad at that moment, her face pale in the darkness and her eyes slightly glazed over, that his heart goes out to her. She's probably hungry and exhausted, he reasons, and staying out in this downpour will only make her ill. Gently, he puts a warm arm around her shoulders.
"Let's find something to eat and then head home," he suggests in a soft voice. Wearily, she nods, leaning into his arm slightly as the two press on. They cross a street covered in puddles that reflect the fragile light of the new moon, pass a drunkard sleeping under the shelter of jutting doorway, and walk by a house (yet another 'Die, Mudbloods' scrawled beside the door) in which Remus thinks he sees the flickering green of a Floo fire (and feels a jolt of physical pain and dizziness as he imagines how warm and dry it might be - he really is too old to be traipsing around outside on a rainy night). At last, after waiting until the dark-haired Muggle on the other side of the street disappears around a corner, they duck through an ostensibly solid wall covered in theatrical posters and down an alleyway that leads them to a small, twenty-four hour Chinese restaurant run by a wizard named Lee, where Remus says he and Sirius used to eat when they were out late during the days of the original Order.
They've just ordered their food when there is a thump and a scratching outside, and both look up to see a large, rather bedraggled-looking owl attempting to get in. Frowning slightly, Tonks goes to retrieve the message it carries, and Remus watches her with a heavy heart, knowing that news received in the early hours of a rainy Tuesday morning is unlikely to be good news.
When he catches a glimpse of what Tonks is reading, he sees a mail-order bill for a set of robes, but from the way the worry line between her eyebrows is deepening as she scans the parchment, he can tell it's a coded message. Sure enough, she burns it when she finishes reading and turns to him, her face grim.
"There's been another murder."
His heart constricts. "Who? Where?"
"Eloise Midgen," she replies grimly. "You know her?"
"I taught her," he finally manages to reply, his voice shaking. "She was in the same year as Harry - she'd come in for help on her essays all the time. They were her weak point, but she was determined to improve them, and - I - God, she'd be what - sixteen now? Why?"
Tonks's voice is cold and uncharacteristically harsh. "Because she was Muggle-born, and there are bastards out there who have a problem with that."
"Did they get her family, too?" Remus asks numbly, his feet unconsciously keeping stride with hers as they retrace their earlier path down the alley. Tonks shakes her head.
"No, they were out and she was alone in the house - which worries me, because it suggests some kind of planning and inside knowledge of her family's schedule. They found her alone in the living room, dead but unmarked - just like Imago. And just like Imago, the murderer left behind the graffiti and the Dark Mark."
She stops talking as they reach the house, and he gasps in shock. It's the very house in which he thought he saw Floo fire - and now he realizes with a sickening horror…
"Oh, my God…"
Tonks's head snaps up. "What is it?"
He swallows painfully. "I saw it."
"What do you mean?" she demands, her eyes narrowing.
"When we passed the house before," he explains. "I saw a flash of green light. I thought it was a Floo fire; it looked as though it was burning. But I - I must've mistaken it. God, I - we were right here…"
Tonks nods unhappily. "I know. I - I mean, there's nothing we could've done to prevent it, but I still feel guilty…"
"Nymphadora." He takes her cold, thin hands in his own and looks her in the eye, continuing gently before she can stop him. "This was in no way your fault. This was the fault of someone with a sick mind and a twisted sense of right and wrong, someone who probably would have killed you as well if you'd been in the way, Auror or not. Whoever did this is very dangerous, and, knowing how close we were to him or her or them, I'm just glad to have you safe." He smiles, and she mirrors the expression weakly. It's dark and cold and wet and they're standing at a crime scene, but his mind is focusing more and more on the way her hands fit in his, and the warmth radiating off of her body, and the way the light of the flickering streetlamp falls on her face - morphed slightly to form her disguise, but at the same time, still so very her. And then, as he is beginning to feel that he could stand here holding her hands forever and never want anything more, he notices her eyes flickering over his shoulder to the sky and follows her gaze to see the leering serpent-tongued skull, glittering down at them from above the house in a way that would be beautiful if the image were not so hideous.
"Isn't somebody going to get rid of that?" he wonders. She shakes her head in reply.
"Can't. The charm that normally works wouldn't take down the one at Imago's - seems that they've altered the spell a bit. I've only ever seen photographs of it, but I don't remember its looking quite so bright and… well… sparkly. I can't imagine why they'd modify it, but it appears that they have."
"Here's another puzzle for you," comes Kingsley Shacklebolt's deep voice, as the Auror himself steps into the pool of light under the lamppost (somehow he doesn't seem surprised to find Remus there, but then again, he's always been a master of calm and collectedness). "The Midgens have been fearful of an attack since taking Eloise out of school earlier this year, so they have anti-Apparation wards up, and their fireplace isn't connected to the Floo Network. In addition, all of the doors are magically locked from the inside."
"Well," Tonks volunteers hesitantly, "perhaps the murderer knew some way to re-lock them once he'd left. I mean, Remus saw the flash of light from the curse."
Kingsley shakes his head. "The spells have built-in timers, Tonks, and they've been on without pause since the family left." He pauses before looking her in the eye, and Remus almost expects to hear dramatic music swelling in the background as Kingsley makes his next statement.
"Nobody but her was in that house."
"Besides the whole problem of the murderer never entering the house, you know what else doesn't make sense about this?" Tonks demands as the two sit together on her sofa, eating the Chinese takeaway that they went back for once the Aurors were dismissed.
Remus has just put an entire spring roll into his mouth, so he settles for raising his eyebrows in question.
"If they hate Muggle-borns so much, they probably hate Muggles, too, right? So why," she muses, "did they wait for her family to leave? Why not just kill all of them?"
Remus frowns in thought, swallows, and shrugs lightly. "That's a good point, and I'm not sure. Perhaps there's some quality that she and Imago had in common, besides being Muggle-born? Some trait that made them in particular targets? After all, these murders seem to have been planned carefully; perhaps the killer is trying to send some kind of message with their deaths."
"They weren't in the same house at Hogwarts, were they?" Tonks asks after a moment of thought.
Remus shakes his head. "I looked up a little information on Imago while you were getting ready to leave earlier - he attended a school for wizardry and dueling in Madrid and didn't move to England until he was in his forties."
"Well, scratch that," Tonks sighs. She rubs her eyes, yawning. "You know, I've only just noticed how exhausted I am. It must be nearly five in the morning; let's come back to all these confusing facts to… to…" (yawn) "…morrow." And before he knows it, she has fallen asleep (with somewhat suspicious speed, he thinks, wincing at his unintentional alliteration), and her head is drooping sideways onto his shoulder.
He catches the tiny smile on her lips, indicating that her abrupt drowsiness is probably nothing more than a devious plot to use him as a pillow. He finds that he doesn't mind, and indeed, that he's rather tired, too.
A few minutes later, the two have fallen asleep together on the sofa, curled up in each other's arms.
When he wakes the next morning, he is alone on the sofa, a warm blanket draped over him and a pillow under his head. Once again, she has left him a note (thankfully accompanied this time by a banana and a bagel, which even Tonks seems unable to ruin).
Remus - Please make yourself at home; I've left you some breakfast that's hopefully more edible than yesterday's (I hope you didn't try to eat that!) and a couple of books you might enjoy. I'll be home around six.
He takes this to mean that she's hoping to see him then. He feels a little guilty for imposing on her hospitality, but she's practically ordered him to stay, and somehow being here just feels so right.
He picks up a book and takes it into the dining room, sliding the window panels open and pulling up a chair to the balcony in what has quickly become one of his favorite spots in the flat. As he looks across the river to watch the tiny shapes strolling along the opposite bank, he spots a man and a woman holding the hands of a small child, and a sudden fierce longing fills him. It's a longing for a place to call a home, a warm place filled with love and happiness, not one in which he is sepulchered in his own misery and loneliness. It's a longing for someone with whom to share that home - someone to love and hold and cherish and laugh with and cook for and welcome home from work and fall asleep with. It's a longing for family - for photographs, for bedtime stories, for finger paints, for Halloween costumes, for warmth, for love, for home.
Remus Lupin has never really thought about a family before - he's always supposed that his lycanthropy will make it impossible. After all, finding a woman willing to marry a werewolf would only be one problem - the Wolfsbane potion is horribly expensive, especially considering that he himself has no income to offer, and he doesn't exactly have youth and good looks to distract a woman from these problems.
And yet here is a kind, intelligent, and beautiful young witch who's welcoming him into her home and admits to fancying him. Desperate and foolish as he knows it is, he allows himself to hope - to hope that just maybe his story will end in a Happily Ever After.
If anybody deserves a Happily Ever After, it is Remus Lupin.
That night, he cooks for her, and she returns home to find, to her delight, a hot meal on the table and a pair of candles burning. She throws her arms around his neck and kisses him on the cheek as he blushes and says it was nothing, and they laugh and eat together, and they chat as they wash up, and a small part of his mind says very forcefully, This is right, and he wonders if there is any chance that she is thinking the same thing.
When they move to the living room and curl up on the sofa, she has a new theory to share.
"At first," she tells him, "I couldn't see how it was possible for the murder to have happened without the murderer entering the house, but, when Kingsley finally managed to convince me that there was no way anybody but Eloise had been inside all evening, I started to think about how it could have been accomplished without entering."
"'Once you have excluded the impossible,'" Remus quotes, "'whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'" When Tonks raises an eyebrow, he explains, "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Muggle author. My maternal grandparents were Muggles; my mother used to read me the Sherlock Holmes mysteries as bedtime stories." And yet again, he feels the powerful wish to someday read bedtime stories to his own children. Tonks smiles.
"Well, yes, that's how it ended up working out. So I started researching methods of remote spell casting, and I found out that it's actually more common than I'd imagined - there are lots of magical items that not only have spells on them but have to be able to use spells themselves - invisibility cloaks, for instance, and spell-check quills, as well as less serious products - dungbombs, screaming yo-yos, that kind of thing… from what I could tell, the overwhelming majority of well-made magical toys, games, and tools have at least one kind of remote spell on them, set with a trigger specific to the intent. It's been done with curses before; cursed jewellery, especially, is nothing new, but I've never heard of someone casting the Killing Curse remotely before - from what I read, it sounded like the more powerful the spell, the more difficult remote casting became and the stronger the trigger required. Putting any of the Unforgivables into an object would probably require an expert, and there's a good chance that he or she would have to trigger it personally. Which means…"
"Which means that he or she would have to be close enough to tell when the object containing the curse was in place," Remus finishes for her.
Tonks smiles. "Exactly. The culprit may not have been inside the house, but he was by the scene of the crime."
Remus frowns. "But how is that possible? The murderer would've had to be looking through the front window, since Eloise was in the kitchen, but if he had been, we would have seen him for sure. The only other person in the area was that Muggle, and he had a shopping bag in one hand and was on a handheld telephone with the other, which would not be particularly conducive to wand-waving. So that brings us to a halt again."
"Not necessarily," Tonks points out. "The culprit could've been hiding - I mean, it's not as though we made a thorough search; I barely even glanced at the house. I could easily have missed someone in the dark."
"I suppose you're right," Remus concedes thoughtfully. "Did your research tell you anything about the object itself?"
Tonks shakes her head. "It could be almost anything, though something with magical properties would probably be favoured - and the stronger, the better. Jewellery is often chosen to house powerful curses because of the stones, which are easy to enchant. But really, it could've been almost anything." She taps her fingers on her knee, then asks, "You said you caught a glimpse of it, right? What did it look like?"
"A fire," he replies instantly. "I actually mistook it for a Floo, though thinking back on it, it was far too small. Actually, during the second or so I was looking towards it, I believe I caught a glimpse of something tall and cylindrical, with the green flame burning on top, almost like—"
"A candle!" Tonks finishes excitedly, making him smile. "Of course, that'd be perfect - candles are used in magical rituals all the time; they'd be wonderful for remote spell casting! And the energy provided as the candle burned would make the spell powerful enough to split it into all directions - something necessary, since there would be no way to assign a target."
"That must be why I felt sick while looking at it," Remus realizes. "I got part of the blast - heavily diluted by distance and by the window, but still enough to cause pain."
Tonks nods. "The murderer must be planting the candles beforehand and then coming to set them off from outside - which means he or she is at least in the area each time."
"So what do we do now?" Remus inquires. In return, she pulls out a map of Soho and a red marker pen.
"Kingsley wants us to find all of the locations with the graffiti and mark them on this map as possible crime sites. I thought we might also ask around a bit - find out if anyone's been given candles recently - then see if we can't discover some pattern in the murders and prevent the next strike before it happens."
Remus smiles. Kingsley wants us to find all of the locations.
He likes the sound of the two of them as a team.
"Tonks, look." Remus's voice is slightly hoarse as he catches her arm (today, she is the same tall, stern woman she was when they brought the children back to Hogwarts the previous year), and she glances up just in time to see a relatively young, thin man with pale skin and black hair disappearing into an alleyway.
"That man looks familiar," he tells her in a low voice.
"Well, of course he does - he's the Muggle we passed last night, in front of Eloise Midgen's house!" She sounds stunned at the coincidence and the possible implications. Remus shakes his head.
"Remus, that is most definitely the same—"
"No, I know he is," Remus assures her. "I just meant that last night isn't where I know him from - he looked a bit familiar then, too. I know I've seen him somewhere else before, somewhere unconnected to this."
Tonks hesitates. "Well… yeah, he didn't look like a total stranger, I guess I might've seen him somewhere… but there was something a bit… funny… about him that I think I would've remembered. I dunno."
"Let's follow him," Remus suggests quickly, and the two duck into the alley. Their quarry is standing at the other end and, as they start towards him, he suddenly disappears around a corner.
"D'you think we should give it a moment in case he saw us?" Remus asks quietly. Tonks doesn't reply, so he glances over his shoulder - and his jaw drops.
The dark-haired man they have been chasing has Tonks in a choke hold, his free hand twisting her wand out of her hand, and - before Remus can recover from his shock (He must have seen us. How did he get back here so quickly? If he Apparated, why didn't we hear him?), the man shoves her to the ground and slashes at her with his wand, his nonverbal spell sending gashes whipping across her body and face.
He then glances at Remus, his eyes utterly devoid of emotion, and Disapparates.
Ten minutes later, they are back at her flat, and she is propped up against an arm of the sofa and swathed in blankets while he makes her tea. Her cuts were healed easily enough, but, pale from pain and still partially in shock, she continued to stare into space until Remus gently helped her to stand up and Apparate home.
"What most confuses me," he remarks at last as she sips her tea gratefully, "is that he didn't even touch me - especially considering that you were the one in disguise, the one who should have been unrecognizable to our enemies. When else have you used that disguise?"
"Only on the Knight Bus," Tonks replies, echoing his puzzlement, "though I was with Harry, Ron, and Hermione, so if anybody malicious saw us, that face is probably linked to Hogwarts and to the Order. Perhaps I should've picked a different disguise." She bites her lip ruefully for a moment, then, all of a sudden, her eyes light up. "Remus, is that where you recognized him from? That day on the Knight Bus?"
Slowly, Remus shakes his head. "I really don't know. I suppose it might've been. I just get the feeling that… I don't know. There was something really strange about him. I mean, his face was unusually pale for such dark hair, the rest of his head was almost grey, and his eyes - apart from also being extremely light-coloured - had pupils so tiny I could barely see them. There was something a bit… robotic about him, almost inhuman. I've heard of emotionless killers - and I'm pretty sure now that he's the killer - but that encounter was just unnatural. I almost wonder if—"
He's interrupted as a large barn owl soars through the open window with a screech and drops a letter into Tonks's lap. All illness forgotten, she sits up and rips it open instantly - and one glance at her face as she reads the message inside tells him that there's been another murder.
Ulysses Dalton is - was - a shy, reclusive young man, a cat lover, a Potions expert, and - of course - Muggle-born. There isn't much to see at his house, besides the expected. The body is in the living room (once again, visible through a front-facing window). The writing is on the wall. The Dark Mark is hovering over the roof. His roommate and brother, a young, mild-looking Muggle schoolteacher, is sitting in a kitchen chair, stroking the cat that has climbed up into his arms, and there is a numb expression on his face.
After a quick survey of the house, Remus and Tonks leave for Diagon Alley. Recently, Luiza Fortescue has reopened her father's ice cream parlour (some shake their heads and speak of frivolity in wartime, but one look into the passionate young woman's defiant black eyes shows that this is a symbolic gesture, an attempt to keep some light and hope and happiness alive through difficult times, and a big 'F-you' to the darkness), and the two enter the shop to find themselves the only customers save for a small group of young men and women talking in whispers at a far table.
They order chocolate ice cream and sit down, chatting about lighter things in an attempt to dispel some of the Dementor-like gloom that has settled over them. As they eat, the mood gradually begins to grow warmer, and by the time they step out into the cool evening air, both wear wide smiles.
"Well," Tonks asks, "shall we get home, then?"
Suddenly uncomfortable, Remus pauses on the step and wonders whether this is going to go on - whether he should follow her home or simply give up on half-hopes that can never be and return to Grimmauld Place.
"Oh, come on, Remus," she says, rolling her eyes as she apparently reads his mind (or perhaps just his face). "Do you really want to go back to that creepy old mausoleum of a house? I understand if you don't want to consider a relationship, but at least stay with me as a friend until you can find somewhere less gloomy to live."
Remus blinks, wondering if he can have heard right. "Why in the world would you want a relationship with me, of all people?"
"Why wouldn't I?" Tonks asks blankly, as though it is the simplest thing in the world. "You're smart, you have a sense of humor, you're only about the kindest man I've ever met…"
"I'm a werewolf," he reminds her, a bit darkly.
Tonks raises an eyebrow in slight amusement. "Yeah, and your wolf would cower in fear if he ran into me while I was PMSing. I think all women have some idea of what you go through, Remus - at least the physical cycle - and that only makes you more attractive, because guys who understand women are rare and valuable."
Against his will, Remus finds himself chuckling a bit incredulously. "I've never thought of myself as attractive," he admits. "James and Sirius were always the good-looking ones."
"Well, I think you're very good-looking," Tonks winks. "Smart and sexy."
"Even the grey hair?" Remus laughs quietly, lifting a hand to it and still not quite believing what she's telling him.
"The grey hair makes you look distinguished!" Tonks insists. "Don't ever dye it!"
"Oh, I won't," he reassures her vehemently, shaking his head. "Every Halloween during our time at Hogwarts, the Marauders dressed up as some kind of set, and the idea that Sirius managed to talk us into in my fifth year - which I will never tell you, so don't bother asking - put me off of hair dye for the rest of my life."
"Oh, come on," Tonks giggles. "It can't have been that bad."
Remus raises an eyebrow. "It was that bad and more. It only takes you a moment of concentration to change your hair colour; you have no idea how bad it can get for the rest of us. Dye is messy and stains absurdly easily, and if you're not extremely careful, you turn your scalp the same colour as your hair, and…" He trails off, his eyes widening.
"Remus?" Tonks asks worriedly.
Remus's mind is a whirlwind - because he has just figured out who the man that attacked Tonks was.
The man with the grey scalp, because he had dyed his hair black.
The man Remus did not recognize at first, because black is far from his usual hair colour.
All of a sudden, he knows why the man's pupils were so dilated and his face so glazed.
All of a sudden, he knows how the man appeared to be in two places at once.
All of a sudden, he knows the identity of the murder-weapon he mistook for a candle.
"Fireworks," he whispers.
"What?" Tonks asks, confused.
"Fireworks," Remus repeats. "People are being murdered with fireworks, because Fred and George Weasley are under the Imperius Curse."
It doesn't take long to let themselves into the back workroom of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes (the spell on the door is a complex one, but Tonks is an Auror trained by Mad-Eye Moody to break into buildings protected by the most powerful of Dark Magic), and it takes even less time to find a whole shelf of Wild-Fire Whiz-Bangs hidden behind a curtain.
However, it takes Remus a moment longer than usual to notice that Tonks has stumbled, and, as such, he is unable to prevent her stumble into the shelf of fireworks - most of which ignite.
"Shit," Tonks has time to breathe just before the fireworks begin to go off.
Fortunately, these particular fireworks appear to be experimental and do not contain the Killing Curse.
Unfortunately, they contain the Cruciatus Curse.
A lot of screaming and a few failed attempts to stop the fireworks later, the door is blasted open. Before either can move or even turn to look (not that either can focus on much besides being hit with several torture curses at once), the fireworks are being shot out of the air, falling to the ground in piles of ash, and the pain is stopping.
Remus turns to look at their rescuer. She is standing in the doorway, panting slightly, her pale pink cardigan stained with soot, her wide-set eyes narrowed in concentration.
Before he faints, Remus manages to register the fact that Dolores Umbridge has just saved his life.
When Remus wakes up again to find himself propped up in one of the office's large, cushioned armchairs, the first thing he hears is Umbridge's voice speaking to Tonks.
"…nasty children released them all over the school. The other faculty members were apparently too…" (her voice is sneering) "…incompetent to clean them up, so I became quite an expert at destroying them. Ah, it would seem that the werewolf is awake."
Well, Remus thinks ruefully, I suppose the fact that she prevented my being tortured to death is something, at least.
"How did you know to come here?" he asks, opening his eyes. Hers narrow in disgust, but she answers him, albeit in a somewhat sharp tone.
"Because it is October the Fifteenth."
"Er… pardon?" Tonks asks. Umbridge's frosty glare turns towards her.
"Every month since their departure from school, those brats see fit to celebrate on the fifteenth - the day of their flight - by sending me an inane assortment of practical jokes, a ritual I have come to predict. Today, however, I have received none, and - especially in consideration of the fact that this is the half-year anniversary of their rule-breaking - their neglect to harass me made it clear that something was wrong, so I came to investigate. And I was right that the two miscreants are up to something - by the look of this, they are behind the recent murders! I knew they were dangerous delinquents, and yet I never expected this degree of—"
"Neither did we, Ms Umbridge," Remus assures her. "We believe that they are acting under the Imperius Curse, a suspicion that a Healer will likely be able to confirm if we are able to capture them. Perhaps we should wait here and…" But he trails off, noticing Tonks staring intently at a piece of parchment. When he glances over her shoulder, he sees the message of the graffiti - 'Die, Mudbloods' - written across it, but this time, the letters are spaced out into pairs of two: 'DI EM UD BL OO DS'.
"What d'you suppose it means?" she asks, bemused. Lupin shrugs. He still can't quite get his mind around the idea of Fred and George, the pranksters, Mrs. Weasley's children, being forced to commit murder. The dark-haired man who attacked Tonks (probably under Imperius orders to attack any snooping Aurors, he realizes, which is why he left Remus alone - and certainly a passenger on the Knight Bus that day), the killer with no emotion in his eyes, is almost impossible to reconcile with the cheerful boys wearing the F and G sweaters.
Remus's eyes narrow.
F and G, for Fred and George.
"Give me that paper," he requests suddenly, reaching for the parchment Tonks holds. She passes it over, her face lit with curiosity.
"What, did you figure it out?"
"DI," he reads aloud. "EM. UD. Domingo Imago; Eloise Midgen; Ulysses Dalton."
"You're right," Tonks breathes. "They're spelling out their message with the initials of their victims - do we know a 'BL'?"
Remus considers a moment, and then his face drains of colour.
"My mother," he whispers. "She's Muggle-born, she heard prowlers, she found graffiti."
"What's her first name?" Tonks asks tensely.
"Blythe."
There is silence in the room for a moment. Then Remus Lupin rockets out the door, Tonks and Umbridge close behind.
Blythe Lupin is a very collected woman. Therefore, she is not particularly surprised - or at least manages to hide her surprise - when her son bursts through kitchen door in a panic, followed by an Auror with pink hair and a Ministry official who looks a bit like a toad. She merely sets down her teacup, gets to her feet, and asks, "What's wrong, dear?"
But Remus is too busy gaping to answer, because across the table from his mother, holding a teacup of her own, sits Andromeda Tonks.
"Mum?" Tonks demands incredulously.
Mrs. Lupin smiles. "You must be Nymphadora; Remus talks about you every time he visits. It's obvious that the two of you have been growing very close, so I asked your mother over for tea. I would have invited you as well, but I wanted to wait until my son was ready to introduce you to me." The slight twinkle in her eyes shows that she knows all about Remus's shyness with women, and a smile creeps on to Tonks's face. She is opening her mouth to reply, when…
"Hem, hem…"
Everyone present turns around to look at Umbridge.
"The weapon?" she reminds them a bit disdainfully.
Remus sighs and turns to his mother. "Yes, that brings me back to what was wrong. There's a cursed firework somewhere in your house, and a pair of murderers will be arriving soon with the intention of setting it off."
Blythe Lupin raises her eyebrows.
Ten minutes later, when Fred and George Weasley arrive, they are confronted by an Auror, two of their former teachers, a woman who snubbed the Black family and lived, and a mother who, after the death of her husband, singlehandedly raised a werewolf.
Two strong young men under the control of an extremely powerful Dark Wizard don't stand a chance.
Remus stands once more at the window, leaning on the balcony and gazing off into the golden sunset. They spent the night at St. Mungo's, waiting and comforting Mrs. Weasley (who, by the strange magic of mothers, arrived only minutes after them) as the Healers collected evidence that the twins had, indeed, been under the Imperius Curse and cast the spells necessary to help them escape it. The rest was spent at the Ministry, where Remus helped Tonks write up a report of the case. As the first rays of morning sunlight began to slant through the high windows, the two stumbled back to Tonks's flat, where they barely had the energy to remove their shoes before falling together onto her bed (both too exhausted for awkwardness). They slept until the afternoon - an afternoon in which several important things happened to Remus.
First, they learned that Fred and George are recovering quickly and, as expected, have revealed that Death Eaters were behind the plot. The remaining cursed fireworks have been destroyed (along with Dark Mark fireworks found near them), and, slowly, things are going back to normal - or as normal as they ever were.
For Remus, though, things are far from normal - Tonks has asked him to live with her, at least for a little while. It's not a permanent commitment, she insists, and if he likes, they can find him an alternative to Grimmauld Place in case things don't work out. But she says that she likes him, a lot, and she thinks she wants to try a relationship if he's willing. She says that now she's used to having him around.
He's retreated to his favorite spot by the window to think it over. He's been here for a while, and, at the moment, he's feeling a bit daring - as though, just perhaps, he can forget about his age and his poverty and his lycanthropy for a little while and instead think about what will make both of them happy.
He's sure it won't be easy, but he thinks he's willing to try. After all, if the two of them can solve a mystery that baffled senior Aurors and track down and capture the culprits, surely they can do this. Surely they can at least try.
He hears Tonks come up behind him, and a moment later, she puts her arms around his waist and grins up at him.
"Whatcha lookin' at?" she wants to know.
Remus smiles. "Something I only just noticed - can't you see it out there, hovering over the horizon?"
Tonks squints, scrunching up her face much as she does to morph. Remus watches her search the view for a moment, then smiles and drops a kiss onto her forehead.
"It's hope," he whispers.
Exactly thirty days later, on the fifteenth of November, Remus asks Tonks to marry him, and Dolores Umbridge walks into her office to find glasses and mustaches drawn on all of her china-plate kittens and a pair of miniature broomsticks that spend the day swooping in circles around her head.