Uncle Sirius' Friend

Uncle Sirius' Friend

By Dimgwrthien

The first time I met Remus Lupin, I was seven years old. He was twenty. It had been a bit before Lily and James' wedding, and Sirius had been introducing them to his family.

(By family, this meant the people he considered family. That mainly included my branch of the family and nothing more.)

He had been a level-headed man. I wasn't interested in any of them then. I was only seven. He was just that man who hung out with Sirius and the rest of them. Sirius was my favorite... uncle? That's what I always called him. He was Uncle Sirius, or just plain Sirius. That made Remus the rank of Uncle Sirius' Friend and sometimes he was Remus, at least when everyone was relaxed and not paying attention to me.

After Sirius went to Azkaban, I didn't see him again. There was no Uncle Sirius' Friend or Just Remus.

The next time I saw him was after Sirius was back, when I was twenty-two and he was thirty-five. We were both adults, and he remembered me, not by my Metamorphing ability, but by name. He called me Nymphadora and I called him Remus. Just Remus, not Uncle Sirius' friend. In the Order of the Phoenix, we were the same level. He treated me like a lady, which I hated. I treated him like a friend, which I think he enjoyed.

There was a short period that everyone experiences where we barely knew each other, though we had the same link in the past. It was like talking to a family member after only meeting them once. Remus was like family. Sirius always considered me his only family, because he wanted to. He considered Remus family because he wanted him as family. So we were related in Sirius' mind.

After a while, we became friends. We treated each other that way, at least. We paused to ask each other for a health status, ate together, had normal conversations of what we had been doing for the past few years. Thanks to the Order and all of the work involved, along with work for the Ministry, I never had time to talk to anyone who was not on a mission or anything with me.

The end of the year came, and with it came the fight at the Ministry. It was hard for everyone, but it was those who really knew Sirius who had it worst. Molly knew him, for one, but she never loved him. Even she cried after, and I did not want to imagine the horror going on in Remus' mind afterwards.

It was then that I really spoke to Remus.

That year of friendship had meant more to me than I think it meant to him. I felt more than I think he would have thought of me feeling. I took him aside one day and told him that.

"It's... a nice gesture, Nymphadora," he said, eyes wide as he tried not to show surprise. I think he thought I was joking or overestimating it. "But -"

"I really do love you, Remus," I insisted. It was then that, for minutes, maybe hours, possibly several happy days and nights, that I explained everything to him. I explained how he started off as only being some man, and how he was my best friend, and how I know he missed Sirius too and that he loved Sirius but I wanted him to love me.

And I never got a response from that statement. He only told me that I should go for someone better, and he said nothing when I said he was the best person I could find.

I did not see him again for several days. The next time I did see him was right after a full moon. It was the first full moon after Sirius' death.

He liked to transform at his own house rather than Headquarters because he had no Wolfsbane Potion thanks to Snape, the horrible man who had ripped apart a year of his life. He said that he was a monster during those days and that's why he would never come near any of us on the day surrounding then. When I did see him however, it was the night after his transformation, when he came to tell Molly he was alive, as she always told him to stop by as soon as he was well enough. She had always mother-henned us all, and it was Remus who she worried about health-wise the most. I could understand why.

He came to Headquarters rather later than usual that night, looking horrible. I had never seen him so soon after the full moon, and I could see what he meant by monster on those nights if he could do that to himself. He was limping badly, wincing with most movements. His eyes, which were mainly gold rather than blue as usual, were framed with dark shadows of a sleepless night. His cheekbones, which had always been clar enough to see on his thin face, were even sharper and bruised badly. His voice was even hoarser than usual, making him almost impossible to hear. From what I could see of his wrists and neck under his robes, he had been cut up very badly and had tried to heal himself.

Feeling nothing but pity after what had to have been a horrible night for him, I placed an arm around him and spoke to him as I normally did, trying to keep the shock out of my voice. After dinner, he said he was tired and was going to head home to sleep, but Molly, eyeing me every few seconds as she spoke, said he ought to stay there, as I would be staying the night too and could make sure nothing bad happened to him.

Truth be told, I was looking forward to a night alone with him.

He went to sleep as soon as he was upstairs, staying awake just long enough to take off his robes and get under the covers. I saw that he stayed in Sirius' room rathr than the one I was used to him being in. I think that he, like myself, tried to not run away from everything that was happening, but try to remember what was there before everything was gone.

I saw how peaceful he looked before sleeping and I wanted to crawl into bed with him. I did, in fact. No one could ever call me a cautious person or say that I cared about consequences. That was something that happened to other people.

I was there, next to him, lying on top of the covers with one arm around his shoulders. His breathing came shallow and fast when he slept, but after a while, I heard it slow down and his face eased as though he could not feel any pain, either physical or emotional.

By the time Headquarters was moved, and we were all in a complete war, hoping for the best and trying to get our allies, trying to give ourselves a headstart, I had seen how Remus was going to act towards me. He tried to comfort me, talked to me, but always disappeared whenever I brought up a subject relating to love. I couldn't change my appearance anymore. Stress and Remus and Sirius dying and Remus and just the war (and Remus) were starting to take a toll, and not just on me. He took to haunted around, looking worse and worse everytime I saw him, looking older and thinner.

By the end of the war, he loved me back. By the time Voldemort was gone, he took me into his arms, looking joyful for the first time since I first met him, and he kissed me.

(Well, really, I kissed him, but it was all the same to us. It's the thought that counts.)

And, given the chance, I would have gone back and made it move faster. The first time I met him, I would have said, "I'm Nymphadora Tonks, you're Remus Lupin, and we're going to fall in love."

And instead of a handshake, it would have been a kiss.