The Things We Do For Love

The Things We Do For Love

"BLOODY HELL!" she exclaimed as, for the second time in the past hour, a pan of chips jumped from her hands to the floor.

Ok, maybe jumped wasn't exactly the right word. Let's just say it fell and leave it at that.

The scene was not a pretty one. Who knew that all-purpose flour possessed such a rapid dispersal power? Four hours earlier, it had been so nicely enclosed within the earthenware container on the kitchen shelf.

And she was almost positive that the spot of treacle on the ceiling had not been there this morning, but she could not for the life of her figure out exactly how she had got it up there.

It had all sounded so simple. A butterbean and sweetcorn soup to start. Roast beef with chips, mushy peas, and a Yorkshire pudding for the main course. A treacle tart for dessert. These were his favorite foods (well, except for the treacle tart, but if she was going to put all this effort into it, she wanted to get SOMETHING out of it for herself).

The sales-witch at the market had promised her that this was the simplest possible menu. Tonks promised herself to have a few words with the sadistic hag the next time she visited the market.

"I'm a bloody Auror, for Merlin's sake!" Tonks thought. "I face life-threatening situations every day! Why can't I follow a simple bloody recipe?"

Tonks just could not understand how Remus did it. He spent all day in his study writing his latest article or book chapter on whatever dark creature struck his fancy that week. He was astoundingly prolific and had been having reasonable success in getting his work published. She even got to tag along on some of his research trips when she could get time off work.

Even with this professional success, every night when she got home from the Ministry there was a warm, delicious meal waiting for her. And the kitchen, along with the rest of the flat, remained immaculate in spite of her best efforts to introduce entropy into the system in the form of hastily strewn garments and the army of Ministry coffee mugs that she liked to leave strategically about the place.

"There is no way that the man is human," she thought. "Oh, poor choice of words," she quickly acknowledged, kicking herself.

But honestly, he was much too good for her, she decided. What would he find waiting for him when he returned from the Cannons match he was currently attending with Harry and Ron? A tepid soup that she had inexplicably managed to turn blue, a roast that appeared to have weathered a nuclear holocaust, peas.... "Best not to think about the peas," she told herself. The chips were all on the floor and the tart...

"The tart!" she screamed.

She threw the oven door open and launched her hands in to rescue what was left of the burning tart. About 5 seconds too late, she remembered that this was probably the sort of thing that would have been best accomplished with her wand.

She dropped the tart, which, of course, landed face down on the floor. She stared in shock at her hands as they became increasingly pink and puffy.

Tears of incredible pain and frustration burst from her eyes as she fell back against the kitchen wall and slid less than gracefully into a ball on the floor.

To her horror, it was at this exact moment that she heard the front door open and Remus' gentle voice calling, "Nymphadora, I'm home."

"REMUS!" she cried in anguish.

Instantly, she heard the thud of something falling to the floor and hurried footsteps as Remus ran to the kitchen.

"Nympha... oh my god, what happened?" he asked in a panicked voice. He dove to the floor beside her and pulled her into his arms.

Receiving no response, Remus asked insistently, "Nymphadora, are you hurt?"

Tonks couldn't look him in the eyes. She lifted her burned palms to him and he immediately performed the appropriate healing charm.

She continued to sob as Remus rocked her back and forth for what seemed to her to be at least an hour. He waited for her to speak.

"I just wanted......soup......blue......roast......flames......PEAS!" she squeaked in a voice that sounded to Remus like a house-elf on helium.

"Love, I'm not a wolf until next week. Can you bring it down a few octaves, please?" he replied, kissing the tears from her eyes.

"I was cooking," she said in a tiny voice.

"Is that what you call it?" he asked in an amused tone. He immediately regretted this comment as she resumed sobbing.

"I'm sorry, dear. I didn't mean it. It was a very thoughtful effort," he said, trying hard, but not very successfully, to stifle the laughter in his voice.

"It's not funny!" she exclaimed. Her voice dropped as she whispered into his chest, "I just wanted to make you happy."

"Look at me, Nymphadora," Remus said quietly, but authoritatively, lifting her chin with his finger. "You DO make me happy. For a while there, you were the only thing on this earth that could make me happy. You saved me, Nymphadora. You saved me from myself."

She shook her head. "No, Remus. That was you. You are the strongest person I've ever met," she replied.

"Shut it," he told her. "It is my turn to talk. You are, quite possibly, the worst cook to ever walk the face of this planet. You are an abysmal homemaker, and I often fear for my safety when I see you in possession of a sharp object."

Tonks huffed and glared at him.

"If I was interested in being with some Mary-Sue homemaker, I most certainly would not have stuck around as long as I have. I love you, Nymphadora Tonks. I love you BECAUSE you are a disaster in the kitchen, BECAUSE you are loud, clumsy, sloppy, and unable to censor the things that come out of your mouth."

"So... you are telling me that you are some kind of a masochist or something?" she inquired, a smile creeping to her face.

"No," Remus replied, his voice deadly serious. "I am telling you that I like to cook dinner for you. I like to keep you from wallowing in your own filth." ("HEY!" Tonks exclaimed.) "I can never repay what you have given me by loving me, but I am sure as hell going to keep trying for the rest of my life."

"Cue the sappy violin music," Tonks thought, causing herself to snigger.

"You think I am funny, do you?" Remus asked, a smile playing at his lips.

"Yes," Tonks replied. "It is one of the million and twelve reasons that I love you."

"You're odd, did you know that?" he asked jovially.

"Yes. Yes I did," she answered. "What should we do now?" she asked, surveying the wreckage surrounding them.

"For starters," he replied, "you are going to get the hell out of my kitchen while I attempt to salvage what I can."

She smirked and pulled her tongue out at him as he began to push her towards the door.

"Go upstairs and run a bath and if you are a good girl, I may just join you," he added with a grin.

Tonks grinned back, jumped up and down, and clapped her hands. Remus rolled his eyes and laughed.

As she headed towards the stairs, she noticed a shopping sack next to the front door.

"He must have dropped it when he heard me call," she thought, smiling to herself.

Curiosity getting the better of her, she walked over to it and looked inside. What she found was her favorite curried chicken from the Muggle Indian restaurant that she dragged him to whenever he left her to pick where to eat. Remus hated curry. He told her that eating it was akin to what he imagined consuming a bluebell flame would feel like. But, he knew that she loved it and he had gone out of his way to bring it to her.

As she lifted the curry carton out of the bag to get a better whiff, she noticed something else inside. In addition to going across town to the Indian place, he had made another stop at her favorite bakery on Diagon Alley to bring her a mini-treacle tart.

Tears returned to her eyes, but this time for a much more pleasant reason.

Vowing to do something for Remus that fell well within the realm of her talents, Tonks bounced up the stairs, food in hand, to wait for him in a warm bubblebath.