The Long Fight of Nymphadora Tonks

Chapter 7: Seeking Comfort

Tonks took great care to appear her usual, sunshiny self as she stood at King's Cross with the others, waving goodbye to Harry. But no sooner had he passed out of sight than her eyes flickered back to the face of the man beside her, and her heart ached to see how drawn and tired he appeared.

"Are you going straight back to Grimmauld Place?" she asked in a would-be casual tone.

Remus shook his head. "Not just yet. We can't be sure whether it's safe now that Sirius ... Well. For all we know, Kreacher may belong to the Malfoys now, or Bellatrix Lestrange. And if the house has passed into their possession too, then the Fidelius charm could be worthless."

He started walking towards the exit and Tonks walked beside him.

"But you've already been back there, haven't you?" she said quietly.

"Yes," he confessed. "How did you know?"

"When you left me at St. Mungo's, you had that look about you. Stubborn. Like you were going to go and do something you knew you shouldn't be doing."

His only reaction to her statement was to clench his jaws more tightly. Tonks persisted.

"What were you doing there?"

"Just thinking."

"About Sirius?"

He was silent. They turned a corner into a narrow, deserted street, and kept on walking. After a little while, Tonks said,

"Do you have any feelings at all, Remus?"

The remark hit him so unexpectedly that he stopped to look at her. Tonks stopped too and faced him steadily.

"What do you mean? Of course I have feelings."

"You never show them."

"What would be the use?"

"I don't know. It might make you seem more - human." His face became startled, and she reddened and said hurriedly, "Oh, I didn't mean ... not that! It's just that ... you can be so calm and possessed sometimes that it drives me mad. And I think there's got to be more to you than you ever show, no one can be as unshaken by what happened at the Ministry as you seem to be, and you were his closest friend, too. Look at me. I'm trembling, I'm bursting to scream and yell and bawl my eyes out, and I barely knew him! Why the hell can't you do that? Why can't you let go for once and show me what you feel? Shout at me, if you like. Blame me, I don't care. Just show me - something!"

"Tonks," he said gently, and tried to hold her by the shoulders, but she shook him off and glared at him, so he let his arms drop. With a sigh, he said, "I have spent much of my life practising control. Ever since my first transformation, I have hated the feeling of losing control over myself, and so I learned not to. I can assure you though, I do grieve, in my own way. But why should you think that I want to shout at you, to blame you? No one could blame you for anything."

"Why not? I blame myself!"

She turned abruptly away and began walking again. He hurried to catch up to her, caught her by the shoulder and made her turn round and look at him.

"Why?" he asked, and through that one word she could tell that he really didn't know, that he didn't understand what she was feeling or thinking, not in the slightest, and her eyes stung dangerously.

"It was my fault, Remus," she said bitterly. "I was fighting the woman - my own aunt. And everyone relied on me to take her down and keep her off their backs, she was my responsibility. But I let her beat me. She knocked me out, and then she fought Sirius instead and she killed him, and it was my fault because I should have taken care of her! And now - now you've lost your best friend for the second time because of me, and you won't even be angry with me for it and make it easier!"

"Easier?" he repeated, puzzled. "How would that make it easier for you?"

"I don't know!" Tonks cried. "I don't know how or why, I only know that it would. I just want ... I want to know that you care!"

She broke out in floods of tears now and hated herself for it. She tried to turn her face away from him, but it was no use.

"Nymphadora," he said gently, and pulled her towards him.

He put his arms around her and she wrapped hers around his neck and sobbed bitterly. He said and did nothing, just stood there with her in his arms and waited for the flood to pass. Tonks buried her face deeper and deeper into his shoulder, feeling herself tremble and feeling his heartbeat against her chest, calm and reassuring. She felt the warmth of his skin against her cheek and pressed closer still and somehow, suddenly, without having planned it, she found his lips and kissed him hungrily.

Almost immediately, after the tiniest of delays, the briefest second when she had dared to hope, he stiffened and pushed her away from him. Not roughly, but gently, carefully, almost as though he knew how much he was hurting her. Tonks waited breathlessly for him to say something, but he just looked at her. It seemed to her for one wild, crazy moment as though he were indecisive, as though she might have struck a chord with him somewhere, deep inside. But then his features closed and became as still and unfathomable as ever, and he turned and started walking again. Tonks felt anger rise up inside her, and she shouted after him.

"Stop right this minute! Don't leave me standing here like this! Remus Lupin, don't you dare turn your back on me!"

To her surprise, he really did stop, and he really did turn round and walk slowly back to her. Even more surprising, he took her hand. Then he smiled. She wondered if he could have chosen anything more painful to do, for in that smile she saw again the same sadness that had been in the first smile he had ever given her.

"You're excited, Nymphadora," he said. "And you're upset. It's only natural you should look for - comfort. But I'm afraid you won't find it with me."

She shook her head vigorously. "You're wrong. I won't find it anywhere else."

"Why, Tonks?" he asked, and ironically it almost hurt her that he had stopped calling her by the name she hated. "Why pick on me?"

"Pick on you?" she exclaimed. "Pick on you? Do you think I chose to feel this way? Do you think I said to myself 'It's time I found a boyfriend, but it had better be someone difficult, someone who doesn't want me'? Do you think I haven't guessed, for a long time, that I would probably only be disappointed? That you couldn't possibly care about me the way - the way I care about you? I didn't mean for this to happen, Remus. It just did. I ... I fell in love with you."

He took a step back from her, and for once she got what she wanted. She had caught him unawares with that last remark, he was practically reeling.

"You don't know what you're saying, Tonks," he reasoned, sounding confused. "Love is a very strong word."

"I know. And I wouldn't use it lightly," she told him firmly. "I love you, Remus. And nothing you can say or do will change that. Even if you don't like me ..."

"Of course I like you."

"Well, even if you don't return my feelings, which I suppose I never really expected you to, I ..."

She broke off suddenly. There was something about his expression that silenced her, left her at a loss for words. A fleeting impression she had of indescribable misery. And somehow she knew what his answer would be before he spoke, and she begged him not to. But he said it.

"It isn't that, Nymphadora. It isn't that I don't care, that I don't return your feelings, that I don't love you. It's ... it's because I care that I have to say this can't go anywhere beyond just now. Because I never want to hurt you. I want you to be happy."

"But that's what I want, too. I want for us both to be happy, together!"

"But we can't be. I am thirteen years older than you ..."

"Who cares?"

He ignored her and went on, "I've no money. I own little more than the clothes that I stand up in ..."

"And me. You own me. And I don't need money, I don't need anything else but you."

"Nymphadora, I am a werewolf!" he cried, and she was so shocked to hear him raise his voice to her that she could think of nothing more to say for a moment. He went on more quietly, but urgently and sharply, "I'm a werewolf," he repeated. "And you have no idea what that means. Do you think I want you to have to find out? That I could bear the thought of what a danger I'd be to you? Or that I could ever live with myself if anything happened to you because of me?"

She looked at him intently, and spoke as softly as she might to a small child,

"I understand all of that, but it doesn't make the slightest difference to how I feel. What I care about is what's in here." She laid her hand at his heart. "All the rest is unimportant."

He shook his head slowly. "No. I can't do it. I can't let you throw your life away like this. A life that's only just beginning. You should go ahead and live it and be happy and carefree and all the things I can't be."

And with these words, he turned and walked away without hesitating or looking back. Tonks stood paralysed for a moment, then she yelled after him just before he disappeared round the bend,

"How am I supposed to be happy without you?!"