Under the Table

"Oh Mad-Eye no," she said. "Anyone but him."
"Lupin's a damn fine wizard," Moody replied. "You could learn a lot from him."

Tonks made a noise that sounded very much like 'pfft'. "He was Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts," Moody growled. "The year before I - er - wasn't. Would've made a damn fine Auror, is you ask me."

"But the whole night, Mad-Eye," she said, with a grimace. Moody fixed both of his eyes on her, the magical one shivering slightly in its socket. "All right," she said, rolling her eyes.

Moody stomped out muttering to himself, and she turned back to the Muggle eye-witness testimonies on sightings of Sirius she was fabricating and glowered at the parchment. Twelve hours, trapped in the undergrowth outside the Malfoy mansion with Remus Lupin. Terrific. The whole night.... She groaned at the thought and head-butted the table.

She was so busy groaning into her report that she didn't even notice Remus come in. "Good evening," he said, and she looked up, startled.

"Have you seen Moody?"

"Yes," he said, crossing the room and studying the bookshelves intently. "I'm very much looking forward to having the pleasure of your company, all night. I can see you're delighted at the prospect of having mine."

She narrowed her eyes at him, unable to tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

He selected a book and, rather than taking it back up to his room as she expected, settled in one of the arm chairs near the fire and thumbed the pages until he found what he was looking for.

She turned back to her report, but after a few minutes of staring blankly at the parchment she realised that she couldn't really concentrate.

"Were you really Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts?" she said.

"Why?" he asked, without looking up. "Do you need help with your homework?"

Tonks glanced down at the pile of papers she was working on, and then back up at him, and scowled. Annoyed that he wasn't even looking at her to notice her scowl, she rolled a spare bit of parchment into a tight ball and flicked it at him, catching him on the temple and ruffling his hair into his eyes. When he didn't flinch, she was mildly impressed. "You do seem the type," she said.

"The type?" he said, raising one eyebrow.

"To be a teacher."

"Let me guess," he said, turning a page, "we're back to me being boring, are we?"

"Not necessarily," she said. "I was just wondering. I was always in trouble at school."

"I'll bet," he said.

She flicked the end of her quill across her fingers for a moment, studying him. She could never quite tell what he was thinking, and she hated it. "I suppose you never got in trouble," she said.

"I never got caught," he said, looking up with a slightly mischievous look in his eyes. "There's a difference."

She suppressed a smile with great difficulty. Interesting answer, she thought. She nibbled on her thumb nail, and he turned back to his book. "What kind of thing did you get up to, then?"

"All sorts."

"Prove it," she said. "What's the worst thing you ever did?"

Remus sighed and turned a page, and for a moment she thought he wasn't going to answer. "I lead three other students into performing highly dangerous and advanced, not to mention illegal, magic on themselves, and on one occasion, very nearly killed someone. You?"

He looked up, raising his eyebrows with pleasant inquisitiveness, and Tonks swallowed. She hadn't really been expecting anything like that. "Turned Snape's robes pink, once," she offered feebly.

"I'm sure that was very fetching," he said, "but I always preferred Severus in something lacy, and perhaps wearing a hat with a stuffed vulture on it."

"What?"

Remus offered her just the faintest of half-smiles. "One of my pupils was very afraid of Severus," he said, "and when we covered Boggarts I persuaded him to think of Snape in his grandmother's clothes. The results were slightly more amusing than I anticipated."

"Did Snape find out?"

"Oh yes," Remus said. "It was the talk of the school."

"What did he say?"

"He took it in good humour."

"Really?" she asked, leaning forward, astounded.

"No."

She let out a brief snort of laughter, and his smile widened slightly before he returned to his book. She wanted to talk to him more, but she couldn't think of anything to say, and the longer she left it, the more awkward she thought it would seem.

Reluctantly she turned her attention back to making notes on the sightings of Sirius for her monthly report on his fictional whereabouts. Yorkshire, she thought. Yes, that'd be a likely place for a -

The ball of parchment hit her squarely between the eyes. She looked up at Remus to find him serenely turning the page of his book, not even looking in her direction.

But she knew it was him.

She swallowed the urge to call him a git and suppressed the twitching of a smile on her lips. Maybe spending the night with him wouldn't be so bad after all.