A Lesson in Holding Hands

A Lesson in Holding Hands

Remus sits on the edge of the bed, perched lightly on one knee. The brocade duvet is crinkled beneath him. It smells clean, feels stiff, is long unused. He is quiet and tense. His breaths come shallow and the soft hiss of air past his lips is the only sound in the room. His eyes roam slowly around the walls, never settling on any one stone, controlled in ceaseless movement.

It is early morning -- though dawn is some time away. The remnants of a velveted night coat the castle and grounds. Hogwarts is silent.

The phoenix song has left a deafening void. Even the distant leaves make no sound as a night-breeze blows through and among them, branches waving against the sky. If the children are wondering, the rumours flying, or the paintings whispering, he cannot hear them.

A single candle lights the room where he sits. It is not enough to pierce the darkness spilling through the open window. He did not so much choose this--of the castle's many guest bedrooms--as allow his feet to lead him here; they followed, like water, the course of least resistance.

If stars are visible in the sky outside, he doesn't see them. The flame flickers, casting wavering shadows along the stone ceiling and floor.

Poised, he does not lie down, attempt to change his dirty robes, or wipe the blood from his cheek. He is expecting... something to happen. His wand is cool in his hand, against the duvet, smooth wood and heavy wool beneath his palm. There is a prickling in the tiny hairs at the nape of his neck, though the heat of battle has faded into the cold fire of memory.

And so, he waits.

Knock.

He does not leap from the bed, nor does he bolt towards the doorway. The prickle dissipates along his skin, and a languid calm floods his limbs. He inhales, ready because he must be. Absently, he wonders whether he will find a moment to sleep before dawn. He refuses to wonder when he will again find peaceful rest.

Deliberate and calm, he rises and opens the door.

Tonks is standing in the doorway, framed by the dark hall behind her. Candlelight dances across the planes of her face, searches out blonde strands in her mousey brown hair. She looks straight at him, willing him to meet her eyes. Now. Please. He watches the emotions flicker over her face: relief that she has found him, fear that he will be unmoved by her pleas, hope that he has changed his mind, joy that he opened the door.

He steps aside and invites her in. The door creaks shut, and he can almost see her heart flutter with fantastic anticipation, a shiver across her narrow shoulders. He wonders how long she has been searching for this door and inhales slowly; she is facing the window with her eyes closed.

Remus watches her indecision, and it tears him. Her movements are small, timid. There is desperation in her eyes -- a desperation tinged with hope. He savours this final moment of silence and runs a tired hand behind his neck.

~*~

Tonks steps inside, and thrills that she has finally found the room. Her joy, however, dissipates in the dim candlelight.

Suddenly the walls feel too close, the space too small, the air too still. Tonks leans out the open window where the wind blows past her face. For a moment she wonders what it would feel like to throw herself out. She wonders whether he would save her.

She steps back.

Words--though they came so readily in front of Bill and Fleur--fail her now. She is afraid to break the silence. Instead, she runs a hand through her hair, trying to coax out its shimmer and shine. It hangs limply over her ears. The lines she'd practiced, while wandering the darkened halls, queue for her consideration. How are You she attempts to ask, but she already knows the answer to that. Now that she is here, her stubborn hopes feel foolish.

Yet they persist.

"Have a seat," he finally says, indicating the bed, the chair, any of the heavy pieces of furniture scattered throughout the room.

She nods and settles on the edge of the bed. The covers are warm--like him. They send a thrill through the tiny nerve endings in her skin. His room smells like the castle, familiar and dusty, yet there is something more, musky and comfortable as a soft jumper. Her legs are curled under her, and she looks up expectantly, waiting for him to say something, anything. Remus pulls over the desk chair and sits opposite her. She cannot meet his eyes, but studies a small freckle on the bridge of his nose.

"Tonks," he begins.

"Yes?" She answers too quickly and reminds herself, again, not to sound so eager.

"It's late."

"I know." She hides the petulance in her voice, the fleeting frustration that he will not acknowledge the things she told him the hospital wing, in headquarters, in a thousand back alleys and dimly lit bars with sticky floors, the things she thinks about before every meal, every order report, before opening the Daily Prophet to scan the headlines every morning. Will he ask about the weather next? So very English. She wishes, for a moment, that they were from Timbuktu - or an idyllic commune where people said what they felt and small talk was punishable a thousand jarvey-licks to the privates.

She pauses, searching for the right words, the ones that will make him finally see. "I thought you might be up."

"I don't expect many people are sleeping tonight." In eight words he silences her. Again. Her back is tight, and she pulls at a loose thread from the cuff of her robes - cleaned since the fight that evening.

~*~

Remus looks out the window, at the sky which has - if anything - darkened over the passing minutes. He closes his eyes as he is swept by the sudden sensation of falling. Vertigo swirls through his blood. When he looks up, Tonks is winding her fingers together, over and under, around and through. Her brow is furrowed, creating dark, shadowy crevices across her forehead.

She breathes quickly. "What I said, before," she blurts. "I meant it. I mean, I mean it. Still."

Remus nods. "I know." He closes his eyes and presses the heels of his hands into them. Soon, stars erupt in the corners of his vision. His skin feels thick, heavy, old. He sighs. "I've told you; you deserve someone better, younger." Then he pauses. "Whole." A rueful smile finds its way to his lips.

"And I've told you." She is torn between argument and plea. "That none of that matters to me." Her eyes are wide. "Besides, age is in your mind."

"And body," Remus says, rubbing the soreness from his shoulders. He feels a near constant ache now, deeper than muscle and bone, and it no longer wanes with the moon.

~*~

Tonks stares while Remus half-closes his eyes. His fingers trace out the knots in his neck. They work slowly, deliberately. She longs to do it for him, to place one leg on either side of his back and--

"Dora," he says. She looks up sharply at the old endearment, blushing. He grins. "I remember when your mother used to call you that." She shrugs, jarred from her daydream, nightdream, fancy, but he goes on. "Do you know, I will always remember the first time I saw you?"

Her heart flutters wildly in her chest, and she is all quivering attention. It requires every ounce of her willpower to stay still, to continue breathing.

"You were less than a year old. Your mother asked Sirius and me to mind you while she and your father went to the theatre." Remus smiles at the memory and laughs softly. It is the first time she's seen him laugh in weeks, months-- since before the battle at the Ministry last year, before the night he came to her hospital room to tell her what had happened.

"He had never changed nappies before. Neither had I. You were very tolerant of us, all things considered. I believe you only bit Sirius once." Remus is looking past her now, gazing fondly into a shared history that she cannot recall, a story in which she played a stand-in role. With a final chuckle, he snaps back to the present. "That was a long time ago," he says, frowning.

Her cheeks colour; she can feel the heat, and she hides her face in her hands. Tears well in her eyes, concealed behind her sweaty palms. Suddenly, there is a hand on her shoulder. Under the welcome weight, her despair fades just a little. She can't help but note it's the first time he's touched her since first recoiling from her proclamations of love.

"You were a beautiful child," he tells her. She can hear the gentle smile in his voice. "Loved to bring us to your tea parties, with your stuffed dragons." He reaches out and takes her hands, then looks at her steadily.

"And you grew into a stunning young woman."

She looks up, sniffling once. "You think so?"

"It's true."

The fluttering is back, and it brought its friends: Shaking Hands and Shortness of Breath. He finds her beautiful! Stunning, even. Suddenly the candlelight seems overbright, and she quickly wipes her eyes. The room is warm and welcoming.

She wonders if this volley of emotions will ever stop.

Newfound courage wells in her. In the corner of her eye, the light catches a strand of hair--now a deep, auburn, red. " We're only fourteen years apart," she says, emboldened. " I know they made a difference when I was four. But now?" She tries to grin mischievously. I've seen so much, been through so much. We're fighting a war. Together. That changes people."

~*~

Remus knows. He can't figure out whether she's attempting to grin or grimace, but her hair suddenly looks soft, fanned out over her shoulders, her cheeks are flushed prettily, and these things please him. As he watches, the edges of her face, nose, and neck unconsciously align themselves into more pleasing shapes and angles. Her hair is constantly, subtly changing colour, shape, texture, length. This is the young girl he remembers taking out for ice cream, tugging on Sirius' robes and begging him to stay when she was five, then meeting - after so many years - at Grimmauld Place, a guest of Shaklebolt's, a new member of their ranks, almost grown-up.

We're fighting a war.... That changes people.

Remus knows about fighting, about change - We're supposed to be in this together, Moony! Why won't you talk to me? Tell me what the bloody hell you do when you go away? Let me in? - has known about it since Tonks was only a child.

A moth flies in through the window, lured by the light. Lost in thought, Remus watches it circle the candle, studies the broken patterns of shadow its wings cast along the walls. It catches an updraft and flutters away from the heat, then returns, forever drawn to the flame.

"Why won't you listen to me?" she asks.

It is not in her face or size, but there is, sometimes, a familiar fierceness and arrogance about her that shocks Remus. In these moments, her resemblance to her cousin is so acute that he can hardly bear to look at her.

Still, he'd rather see her smiling, vibrant, or fighting, than fading away.

Outside, silence hangs low over the morning, but inside, the castle is coming reluctantly to life. He no longer hears her words, but over Tonks' voice, rising and falling like willow branches in the wind, he can hear the house-elves patter past his door. They dust and wipe as though nothing has changed. He wonders how long it will take them to scrub Bill's blood from the flagstones, whether anyone's told them what happened, that Dumbledore is no longer their keeper. That he is no longer Hogwarts'. Something sharp steals Remus' breath and burns his eyes. House-elf magic is different from his; perhaps they already know.

Tonk's final words pierce his reverie. "... We deserve a little happiness." She is standing, now, stance wide, hands gesturing emphatically then running through her hair - it is suddenly long, wavy, and very dark. Remus looks away.

He considers happiness for a moment, as though it is a puzzle he can fit his pieces into, as though it is a key. "What would make you happy?" he asks.

She stops, sits heavily on the bed. It bounces, and soft clouds of dust motes drift into the air. The candle flickers and the moth flits farther away. Tonks looks at him as though he's grown a third eye, or has declared himself to be part Quintaped.

"Don't you know?" she says. "You. Just you, with me."

~*~

She sees his jaw clench and steels herself for the old arguments. She thinks of Bill and Fleur upstairs, Fleur dotting salve onto his ravaged face. She thinks of Bill before, so handsome, alive. Such a light. There had been a time... but that was before Fleur came to England. She puts it from her mind.

Remus opens his mouth to speak, but Tonks interjects, "Stop. Don't say it."

"Don't say what?" He raises an eyebrow.

"Don't say that you aren't whole, or that I don't understand. I can. Look at Bill. Look at Fleur. Do you think things like that matter? I don't care what you are."

~*~

What.

Remus wishes she hadn't mentioned Bill. His throat burns with remorse. It should have been him fighting Greyback; he's the only one from whom that monster couldn't take any more.

"That isn't what I meant," he manages to say before words fail him altogether.

~*~

Remus' face is set, hard, closed, and Tonks knows he won't say any more. She wants to hit something, to grab his robes, to shake him, to kiss him soft, to make him see. She wants to scream. She takes a deep breath and curls her fingers into the blanket beneath her. Starchy and stiff, it yields to her touch. Slowly the oxygen, cooled by its nighttime wanderings, tempers her frustration. She has to make him speak again, to hear his voice if nothing else.

"Fine. What would make you happy?" she half-dreads the answer but continues recklessly. When he is her everything, she has nothing left to lose. She parries his question as a weapon against the silence. "What do you want?"

Tonks stares while Remus half-closes his eyes.

Remus smiles. It is only the slightest shift in his face, a tiny upturn at the corners of his mouth, a knowing glint in his eyes. "I want to finish Albus' work," he says. "Whatever that entails. Minerva believes Harry has been charged with a secret mission. I'll help him in any way I can; whatever way he'll let me until he finishes--whatever it is that he's set out to do. Then, if I survive, I want to leave it all. I've had too many years of running, of fighting, of blending, of trying. I want to live in the house in the countryside, away from all this, and just be, for a while."

Despite herself, Tonks is intrigued, swept into his dreams. She could live in a house in the countryside. She could be. "You said the house," Tonks prompts eagerly. "You already have one in mind?"

~*~

Remus takes a deep breath. Outside, a cock crows. The sound is unexpected, jarring. It is time for Tonks to understand. He will tell her everything because he can see no other way to convince her. If she asks, he will tell her the things he's told no one--no one who's still around to remember them. The idea fills him with a strange sensation: relief. He feels lighter than he has in months, a year. He could float on a whisper of phoenix song out into the morning.

"How will you find it? How will you afford it?" She asks and gestures towards his robes, frayed, stained, and patched, held together by little more than a thread of dignity.

"I already have it, full stop." Remus tells her. He watches her think, consider the things she's been told, by Arthur, by Molly, by others. He watches her open her mouth to protest that it simply isn't possible. If he'd had a place to go to all this time, he wouldn't have had to-- He speaks before she can say a word.

"It was for Sirius and me," he says. The words come out barely louder than a sigh. Tonks cocks her head to listen. The gesture is so familiar, reminiscent of another--part of another life. He presses on. "Something to look forward to, if only he hadn't--" Remus' voice breaks, and he coughs to cover it.

"We found it well before that, though."

The moth flutters over to Remus and alights on his arm. He can feel the tiniest swirl of air off its wings; its dusty legs tickle the fine hairs on his skin. He blows gently and watches it rise, flying up and away. Soon, it disappears out the window.

Tonks is still listening, coiled in attentive anticipation.

"It started," Remus casts his mind back over the years, tracing webs of cause and effect through the course of his life, recalling young boys play-wrestling in the snow, revising by the lake on a warm summer's day. "We'd only been in Grimmauld Place a few weeks--the Order, and Sirius, and me." He shakes his head as the memories dance before his eyes. Merlin.

"It was a Saturday morning. I'd been on duty that night and the one before, and I'd just got back, ready to sleep. Sirius met me in the hall."

He remembers the sunlight on the smooth wood as he shut the door. He remembers the clicks of twelve different locks, the hum of concealment charms slipping back into place. He remembers a whoosh of air. Sirius did not so much meet him as come barrelling into him with the force of a charging erumpent in mating season; Sirius pressed him against the back of the door, heedless of disturbing the portraits with his unseemly display. Miraculously, they did not wake. He remembers laughing as the breath was knocked from his lungs, holding Sirius at arms length, trying to read new mysteries in the lines of his face. Is anyone around? he'd asked. No. Just me. A momentary flash of bitterness crossed Sirius' features, but was quickly replaced with a lascivious wink and wide grin. And you're never going to guess what I found!

"Someone -- Dung or Arthur -- had left that Friday's Prophet in the kitchen, with the front page and crossword missing. Sirius had been reading the classifieds."

In one move, Sirius had fallen to his knees and spread the paper open on the floor. Look he said That's it. That's the one. The picture was black and white, large and grainy, and it didn't even move.

It didn't have to. Remus squeezed Sirius' hand, and touched the picture gently. Their fleeting future lay under his fingertips.

~*~

Tonks is silent. She hasn't moved to say a word the entire time he was speaking.

"He found a house. A little cottage in Ayrshire, and--well, you knew Sirius--he wasn't easy to argue with." Remus smiles fondly. "He could be such a stubborn bastard," he says, but there are deep wells of affection in his words. "He was still wanted by the Ministry, so he bought it in my name. We'd planned to go there together, once everything settled down."

Tonks is silent, but inside her head, the thoughts bump and swirl and pound at her temples to make themselves heard.

Together.

And in the chaos, the memories begin to fall into place. A sly smile, a rumpled bed sheet, she sorts through the moments she's always overlooked. A laugh at some joke that no one else at the table understands, a temper flaring whenever Remus is away, a gentle touch and carefully brewed cup of tea before a long full moon night, a thousand moments and glances and unspoken questions slide across her memory. Her assumptions melt in the face of the word, together.

She feels like a child who'd never been told about Christmas, looking in through a yuletide window, seeing the festivities and fun, without understanding why anyone would put glass baubles and twinkling fairy lights on a tree.

~*~

Remus looks out the window while he waits for her to respond. Dawn is nearing, heralded by the pale blue sky over the horizon. It will be the first sunrise on a world without Albus Dumbledore, the first, unfaltering step towards the unknown.

When he looks back, Tonks is staring at him, her mouth the shape of a small o.

He almost smiles. She finally understands.

~*~

"I didn't know," she says, bewildered.

"No one did," he replies.

Then he recalls Albus' shrewd glance Why don't you go with him to headquarters. There's room enough for two, and before that, a large dog dripping on his doorstep, three words and a sheepish grin, Dumbledore sent me.

No one else knows anymore.

They are silent for a long moment. The candle has burned low, wax dripping over the edge of the bureau to pool and harden into a milky-white puddle on the stone floor. What is left of the flame flares high, but its shadows are dull in the grey morning light.

Remus watches Tonks' brow furrow in thought. Her eyes roam the room, from his face, to the candle, to the window, and back, looking for a safe place to settle. She frowns, and colour and heat rise up from her neck, paint her cheeks with a faint blush.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she demands.

Remus looks at her steadily and raises an eyebrow.

"Oh," Tonks says, "Her ears colour, and she hides her face in her hands. She feels tears well in her eyes. "But they said--they told me you were lonely."

"I know they did."

She plays with the cuff of her robes, considering. Suddenly, she meets his eyes. "They weren't wrong."

He shakes his head. This time, it is Remus whose eyes wander the room in search of solid ground.

"Just... you weren't looking for me."

Remus stares at a spot between two bricks in the wall. He swallows, then shakes his head again.

"When you said you weren't 'whole', you meant because of him."

"I did."

Her curiosity has overcome any confusion and consternation. "How long were you and Sirius...?"

Remus inhales. "A long time." Forever, since before he knew that such feelings were possible, since they were boys skiving off their studies to run barefoot through the grounds. "Since we left Hogwarts," he says aloud. He aches for the twelve long years of mistrust and resentment, for too few days' reunion. "And after, when we found him.

"It was easy, being together, even after so many years. Well, as easy as these things ever are. Easy to slip into old habits, to reminisce, and eventually to make plans. We used to nip away to the cottage, you know. He hated that house, headquarters, being stuck there." Remus stops, his jaw clenched, then forces himself to breathe again. "I stayed as often as I could, as often as my work allowed, to talk and cook dinner, to sit by the fire and read, but he wasn't happy. And when I was gone, he was so much a part of my every day, every thought. Even when we fought-- I miss that. And when he--when I lost him, again...." Remus falls quiet.

Tonks makes a small, whimpering sound. Outside, the stars have faded against a lightening sky. Pale blue light rings the horizon, imperceptibly growing and muting into shades of yellow and orange and pink.

~*~

Tonks swallows, replaying his words in her head. She realises, with a shock, that this is the longest Remus has ever spoken to her, really spoken to her, without slipping into talk of Order business or the infernal weather, and she treasures the moment for that alone. Something inside her sparks. Outside, the sun is rising.

"So, you've never, I mean, never been interested in a girl?" she asks. He shakes his head. "And you've never wanted to?"

For only the second time that night, a true smile crinkles in the corners of his eyes. They catch a ray of sunlight as he chuckles deep in his throat and runs a hand over his face. Then he shakes his head again. For a moment, Tonks slips outside herself and sees the absurdity of the situation.

In that moment, she begins to laugh as well. She feels good, a wellspring of joy bubbles up through her, better than she has since the day--

"When you came to St. Mungo's," she says aloud. Then she adds, "Never mind." He didn't come for her. He came to talk. She remembers his eyes, his hand holding hers, the compassion, the infinite sadness in his voice, in the slope of his shoulders against the sterile white walls.

"You're not an easy man to get over, Remus Lupin," she says in her best professor voice. He grins, and her heart thumps harder against her chest. Her jibe rings true in the air between them.

~*~

"Do you think we could still be friends?"

"I'd like that," he replies.

"And talk to each other?"

He nods.

"And when it's all too much, or when we're scared, could we hug, or hold hands?

He reaches out to her and smiles.

~*~

Remus is smiling more broadly now, than he has in recent memory. A sliver of sun is already above the Forbidden Forest, illuminating its topmost leaves in golden light, playing on a wisp of cloud in the sky. He stands to greet it, to breathe in the morning. Before he knows what's happening, Tonks has launched herself into him, wrapping him in her little arms, shivering with relief and release, the unbearable lightness and joy of morning.

After a moment, she pulls away. Her hair is short and pink and spikey. Together they watch the sun rise on the first day of the new world.

"I can't believe he's gone," she says quietly.

"Neither can I."

The End