Imperative

For months Remus Lupin is all Tonks can think about.

She thinks she must love him.

The others believe her to be preoccupied with Sirius' death, blaming herself for his fall. They attribute her mopiness and distraction to mourning. Honestly, how could she could bring herself to care so much about a cousin she barely knew? Sirius had spent nearly half his life in prison -- he had been in Azkaban since she was a child. And his relationship with Remus was far too possessive, certainly not healthy.

Molly has warned Tonks that her own obsession with Remus may not be healthy either, for there have been whispers ever since Sirius came back to Grimmauld Place that Remus does not gravitate toward women; he always seemed to prefer the company of Sirius. But Tonks is certain that this is false. Remus loves her company. He is always there for her when Dumbledore has not sent him off on some work for the Order that is likely to get him killed.

She must love him. That is what she tells herself as she corners him to beg him yet again to tell her that he will be hers -- a compulsion she cannot resist. Absurdly, in dreams, it is her aunt Bellatrix's voice that she hears in her head telling her that she must make Remus Lupin her own. This is how desperate she has become for Remus' affection. She links its denial to possession by the Death Eaters, and to torment by her own family.

Still, Remus wears a battered, helpless look as he embraces her like an uncle and tells her no, he can't, it isn't right. Tonks isn't concerned about "right," and anyway, Pomfrey thinks it would be all right, Molly and Arthur think it would be all right, Dawlish thinks it would be all right (and bugger it if he's the least intelligent of the Aurors anyway). Tonks is desperate to find excuses to be alone with Lupin...to take him away with her. She is certain that if she could just tear him apart from excuses like Greyback and Harry Potter, she could make him hers forever.

Though she does what is expected of her, Tonks has really had quite enough of Harry Potter. She can no longer even bring herself to smile at the boy. After all, it's his fault that Voldemort is back and causing so much trouble, which is why Remus must live among werewolves, trying to keep them from joining forces with enemies of the Order. Whenever she hears that there has been an attack, she panics. What if Remus is taken from her before she has even made him her own? She rushes to Dumbledore, begging for news, but the headmaster cannot always tell her anything and sometimes she is certain that that manipulative old man is hiding things.

Her work is stressful, and it's lonely, and sometimes everything feels wrong -- even loving Remus. Sometimes she sits and sobs, uncertain of who she is supposed to be, what she should do, why any of it matters. She finds that she cannot change her shape. Soon she cannot even change the color of her hair. Make Lupin follow you as you are, says Bellatrix in her head. No tricks, no deceptions. Only then can you accomplish your task. Oddly, this calms her, and she can focus once more on the most important thing.

Since nobody loves a pushy woman -- men love women like Fleur Delacoeur, not like Dolores Umbridge -- Tonks proceeds by stealth. She cries regularly on Molly's shoulder. She sends her Patronus far and wide, making certain that as many people as possible will see how it has changed. When Lupin is yours, whispers Bellatrix in her head, you will be safe forever. He will save you. It is difficult in these troubled times to think of happy memories, yet sometimes Tonks conjures the Patronus for herself, just for the pleasure of seeing the wolf-shape.

She must love him. That is what she tells herself each time she humiliates herself with increasing despair, sobbing to Remus that it's her fault that Sirius died, when every single member of the Order knows that if anyone is to blame it's Harry Potter. The only way to save Remus from the same fate as Sirius is to make him her own. Just loving him won't save him -- not if he won't give himself to her body and soul. Remus loved Sirius and maybe would have died for Sirius the way Lily Potter died for her son, but Remus couldn't keep Sirius alive, could he?

No, love is not enough. Everyone loves Dumbledore but that isn't enough to save him when the Death Eaters come to Hogwarts. The battle is brutal, yet she is spared completely; curses fly harmlessly away from her, even though the members of the Order are outnumbered. Greyback leaves her untouched despite the way he ravages Bill, even though she thinks that perhaps it should have been her. Perhaps she should have welcomed it, the opportunity to become like Remus, to take away his last excuse to shun her.

No, Bellatrix murmurs in her mind as Tonks makes her way to the hospital wing. That darkness is not for you. When you make Lupin yours, you will understand.

Now all their fates are in the hands of a teenage boy and his friends. And now Remus is truly alone, and truly desperate. He is not a predator like Greyback; he sees himself as a victim. He breaks down in front of the children when he learns of Dumbledore's death.

And Tonks knows that her moment has come, before an audience of supportive members of the Order. She throws away whatever is left of her pride and she pleads, the way she imagines Dumbledore must have pleaded with Snape. (Snape would not be moved by pleas -- he is a servant of the Dark Lord, hisses Bellatrix. But Lupin will not want to see anyone suffer in his name.)

Then it happens, because he is so tired of fighting, because he has so little left. Suddenly Remus is hers. He does not quarrel any longer when Molly and Arthur and Minerva insist that he owes it to Dumbledore to love her. Standing in his shabby, soiled clothes, with a look of defeat on his scarred face, he lets her take him with her, away from Hogwarts and the stench of curses.

Now Remus does not turn her away when she comes to him. He closes his eyes and gives himself over to her, like a child in the jaws of a wolf who finally understands that it will only hurt more if he struggles. With her victory, she regains her ability to change her hair color. She turns it back to garish pink for Dumbledore's funeral -- a mark of her conquest for everyone to see. It is, after all, what Remus and the others expect.

She must love him. That is what she thinks as she brings him into the woods, weak under the waning moon after the funeral. She spreads her legs over the blanket of dead leaves and she lights the sky with the signal taught to her by Bellatrix -- the secret they shared in the Ministry of Magic the moment after her aunt's Stunning spell hit her, the secret none of the Healers at St. Mungo's had been able to detect.

Remus blinks, distracted, at the light, then stares at her. By the time he understands that she has not brought him here only to make love under the stars, but for a far greater purpose, he whirls at the sound of a bang followed by a rustle on the dry ground. The shape that has Apparated beside them straightens and distorts. It is a large rat, a parasite of a man.

"Peter?" asks Remus, voice dripping with revulsion and shock. Proudly Tonks realizes that her lover is not afraid. In the moonlight she sees him stand straight as well, facing the enemy responsible for the deaths of his two closest friends.

Remus does not flinch as Pettigrew reaches toward him, ignoring his raised wand and the useless disarming spell he utters. He does not cry out as Pettigrew's hand gleams silver in the moonlight, nor as the metal touches him, slicing through the skin of the werewolf. He accepts this fate almost as if it is welcome, as Wormtail reaches in, squeezing, crushing the heart of Remus Lupin where Nymphadora Tonks knows that she has never truly held a place.

You're a Black now, Tonks thinks she hears her aunt shriek in triumph. Not a weak pathetic half-blood, not a Tonks. Finally you are what my sister could never become. You are one of us.

It is as if someone has immobilized her with a spell, for she cannot move until it is over -- until Pettigrew withdraws, shrinking, his twisted face elongating into a rat's greedy grimace and his body compacting into a squeaking, hideous thing that slithers away among the leaves. Remus stands still for a moment where he is, wide open...his mouth, his eyes, his chest.

Then he falls, dead already, blood no longer pumping from a heart that no longer beats.

The Imperius curse lifts and Nymphadora screams and screams. When the other Aurors come she has not stopped screaming.

Predictably enough, the others forgive her. Just as they believe she had blamed herself for Sirius' fall, they blame themselves for not having recognized that she was under an enchantment. Yet not one of them apologizes to her for accepting without question that she had become a weak pathetic woman pining away for love of a man. (Snape tried to warn you, didn't he, gloats Bellatrix in her head. You're one of us now...come join us.)

She wants to die. She feels the way they all believed she felt after Sirius fell -- miserable, worthless and so weak. But they are all so weak: Molly with her tea and hand-patting, Bill with his attempts to share her darkness, McGonagall with her assurances that there was nothing anyone else could have done, not against so strong a curse cast by so powerful a witch as Bellatrix Lestrange. Harry is the only one who will not forgive, who cannot even look at Tonks, and for that she is grateful. No, love is not enough. She thinks that perhaps the boy is strong enough to defeat the Dark Lord after all.

As for Lupin, she tries not to remember him. She hopes now that it was true about Remus and Sirius having been lovers; perhaps, she thinks, they are together again, somewhere free from Dementors and Greyback, safely beyond the Veil. When she remembers Remus' attempts at kindness to her in the weeks after Sirius died, she wishes she had fallen instead, but she knows that there was nothing she could have done. Bellatrix is too powerful -- stronger than all the other Blacks -- stronger than Tonks with her Muggle blood and a body that changes beyond her control, making her unrecognizable even to herself, turning her into this monster that could frighten a werewolf into submission.

Sometimes Tonks wishes she were still under the Imperius curse, when she had felt blissfully numb...believing only what she had been told to believe, focused on the task that had been set for her. If she pictures Remus at such times, she still believes that she must have loved him. But even with the curse lifted, she can no longer remember how it felt to love.

Perhaps, now, this is imperative for her as well.