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“What are you doing these days?” Tonks asks. She means it to be casual, but from the tilt of her head and the way she leans on the wall, her interest is clear.
Remus sighs inwardly. It’s difficult to explain even to himself why he’s left the wolves behind. He tells himself it’s because it was getting unjustifiably dangerous, because he wasn’t making any progress, because he’s needed more on other jobs. But the truth, which he never lets himself acknowledge, is that he can’t stand the feeling of pointlessness. Dumbledore is gone. How will they ever win now?
He knows, and reminds himself, that they can still fight and, really, they do have a chance. But it’s hard to believe. Hard to think of that in the small morning hours when his throat burns with cheap alcohol and the cottage echoes with leftover laughter—ghosts from another life.
So he takes a sip of Ogden’s and straightens his shoulders. “Working,” he says. It’s a lie. Or mostly a lie, since he has forged a few letters and helped Arthur scrounge up plans for certain Ministry operations. And now he’s helping enchant safe houses in preparation for the 27th of July when, somehow, they will get Harry to the Burrow.
Tonks gives him a knowing look. It’s a bit too understanding for comfort, he thinks. It’s been that way since last June. He supposes it works the other way, too—isn’t that always how it is with loss? But Remus hasn’t much interest in probing Tonks’s secrets, whatever they are. He’s only glad her hair is pink again, and wonders, without any real desire to find out, what caused the change.
Still—“What about you?” he asks, hoping to deflect attention.
It works, at least momentarily. “Kingsley’s trying to get me assigned with him, protecting the Muggle Prime Minister,” she says, “to keep us from getting spread out if something happens.” She doesn’t elaborate on what that something might be, but even in his isolation Remus has heard the rumors of spies in the Ministry, and everyone knows about the new decrees. He isn’t surprised; it was the same during the first war. “So far he hasn’t been able to do much,” Tonks continues. “I’m starting to think my superiors suspect something, too.”
Moody stumps back in from another circuit around the yard. “Speaking of suspecting,” he says, “the only thing they’re suspicious of is your ability to concentrate. As am I.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tonks tells him.
“Oh, yes, you do.” Moody pours himself a glass of Ogden’s while his magical eye remains fixed on Tonks. “Whoever it is that’s spicing up your personal life had better stay in the personal part. You’ve been getting complacent. Daydreaming.”
Remus watches Tonks’s face work for several seconds. At last she seems to get her expression under control. “I haven’t had a single complaint until now,” she says. “And there’s nobody for me to daydream about, so I’ll thank you to stop making things up.”
Moody catches Remus’s eye and smiles; Remus gives an automatic twitch of his lips and takes another drink of the firewhiskey. With as much as Tonks is protesting, it’s clear she is hiding something, but Remus isn’t convinced it’s a lover. And he doesn’t really care to discover the truth—he hasn’t noticed any absent-mindedness. Not that he’s in a position to be observing very much. He looks at Tonks again and sees that her cheeks have gone as pink as her hair.
Apparently catching on to Remus’s disinterest, Moody says, “Just keep your mind on the job,” and lets the subject drop. He finishes half his glass before he speaks again. “Hestia said she’d swing by around two to check our progress. Has she told either of you differently?”
Tonks and Remus both shake their heads. Remus looks at the clock on the wall and sees that it’s nearly three. “Maybe she got held up. You know she always has one more thing to do.”
“Hm.” Moody doesn’t look convinced. “Give us a shout if she shows up. I’m going to check the broomstick-repelling charm again.”
“You don’t think I can do it properly?” Tonks demands, but he’s already vanished up the stairs. She turns to Remus and rolls her eyes. “Can you believe him?”
Remus shrugs. He’s still caught up worrying about Hestia, and he can see that Tonks is, too. But she also has that sympathetic look again. “What?”
“Why are you here?” she asks him.
“There’s work to be done.”
“There’s always work,” she says. “You don’t always show up. So why today?” Now her tone is direct, almost accusatory.
Remus gives up. Over two decades of dealing with the Tonks women have taught him that he has to choose his battles. “I didn’t want to spend another minute alone in that house.” He resists the urge to add, “Happy?”
But Tonks doesn’t look happy. She looks sad. “You don’t have to stay there, you know.”
“Where else would I go?” he asks, more sharply than he intends to. He’s asked himself the same question a dozen times. “Grimmauld Place? No, thanks. Snape knows how to get in, anyways—”
“He can’t, Mad-Eye made arrangements,” Tonks interrupts. “But I didn’t mean there. I meant—well, you could stay with me. If you want.” She isn’t blushing now. She holds his gaze. “I mean it, Remus.”
“I,” he says, “that’s hardly.” Then he takes a breath and gets the words to make sense. “You don’t want me as a flatmate.”
“Maybe I do.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not reasonable,” he says. “Why would you? Is it just to get Mad-Eye off your back?”
Tonks blinks. “I’m not that shallow,” she tells him, “and I can stand up for myself without a fake relationship, or a chaperon, or whatever you’re thinking.”
“Is it because you think I’m lonely?” he presses.
“You are lonely,” she replies. “Don’t deny it.”
“I’m not, but it’s not your job to fix me.” In some small, aching corner of his mind, he thinks about what Sirius said on that last night—that Remus was only interested in him because he needed something broken to repair. He thinks he might know how that feels.
Color flares in Tonks’s cheeks. “Who said anything about fixing?” she asks hotly. “Maybe I’m lonely, too!”
In the heartbeat that follows, Remus has enough time to feel foolish, pleased, and very, very sorry. “You are?” he asks, taken aback.
She nods and looks away, towards the bottle of Ogden’s on the other side of the kitchen. “I only asked why you were here because I noticed you’re usually not—and I noticed because I usually am.” She gives a wry smile. “I don’t much like being in an empty home, either.”
The first thought in Remus’s mind is that it isn’t the same as living with ghosts, but he tells himself that isn’t what she meant. And in a way it’s almost exactly the same. For the second time in ten minutes, he’s surprised by their similarity. “Have you even got a place for me to sleep?” he asks.
“We’ll figure something out.”
Typical, he thinks, both of her age and her family—but he knows the real reason she brushes the matter aside is because of the fear. He feels it, too. Enough time in isolation and you start to worry you’re the only one still around. The feeling intensifies when he thinks of going home in just a few hours to the crack in the ceiling and blue tea kettle and the huge, gaping absence. “All right,” he says before he can restrain himself. He hopes he doesn’t sound as relieved as he feels.
“Really?” Tonks asks, brightening visibly.
“Yes,” he says, “somehow you’ve convinced me.” He wonders briefly what he’s getting himself into, but decides it doesn’t matter, as so many things don’t anymore. What’s important is the loosening in his chest and the pain that comes with it, telling him, despite the ruin of it all, that he’s still here.