Ink: An Epistolary Romance

It was almost strange, she would reflect later, how innocently it started out. The silliest of things, really; she wanted to ask his opinion of a Christmas gift that she had in mind for Sirius, but every time she dropped by headquarters to seek him out, she'd end up missing him by mere minutes. And once she missed him for the fifth time, she began to think that things were getting a little out of control in the fate department. So she remedied it by leaving a note for him.

She had to charm it so that only his eyes could read it, of course. How else could she have kept Sirius' nose out of her business?

Though she missed him again the next time she stopped by, there was a note waiting for her: a little piece of parchment sealed with a charm similar to the one she'd used. The simple fact that he'd replied made her smile a little, but what made her smile a lot was what he'd written inside. It was a casual, friendly reply, written of course in the grammatical perfection that one might expect of Remus Lupin, but along with the opinion she'd requested of him, the note also contained an apology for never being around when she was there. And a wish that he might see her more often.

So instead of forgetting about the notes and going about her business as usual, she decided to write back to him. And he replied again. And so did she. And so on and so forth, until she could no longer imagine living a life without the anticipation of what would be in the next note.

They shared a strange kind of intimacy in their increasingly personal letters to one another. An intimacy that, she felt sure, would not have been allowed to surface had their only interactions been face to face. Words written somehow seemed a safer medium than words spoken, and for the first time Tonks found herself capable of Saying Things About Herself to someone of the opposite sex.

Well, it wasn't exactly saying, but she would take what she could get.

He told her things in his notes, too, which was of course part of the reason that she'd finally been able to open up a little. He told her things that she simply couldn't imagine him telling anyone else, even though her rational mind knew that he must have done. Things about his own past, about his friends both alive and deceased, about his condition. Things about several former girlfriends, though she noticed that he'd always refer to these girls as having been a part of his more distant past.

Things that made her wonder about... other things.

Then, there was Tuesday. She'd never forget it, that snowy Tuesday in February.

Her last note to him had been about a boy she'd had a crush on back at school, and how he'd wanted to put his hand up her shirt while they kissed and how she hadn't let him but she'd felt bad afterwards and did that mean she was a prude and that, even worse, people could tell she was a prude?

She was a little afraid, and a little excited, to see what his reaction would be.

Oh, Nymphadora, the note began; she wrinkled her nose and read on. He said all the right things, as she should have known he would. (He always did, but it still always took her by surprise.) He reassured her that she was not a prude, and that if she hadn't felt comfortable at the time, then she'd been right to say no. (That part made her smile; it sounded very teacher-y and just like him.) He went on to tell her about the first time a girl had allowed him to touch her like that.

It was the most extraordinary feeling, he wrote. Partially because breasts are somewhat forbidden territory to a boy of fifteen, but mostly because of how it made her smile when I touched her. She shivered a little bit and told me I could keep doing it, and she kissed me. Another person's skin is always an amazing thing to touch, and that sort of intimacy is quite the experience, but the best part is being able to make someone else feel something. Sounds corny, no? But it's quite true.

She had to read that particular paragraph twice before she could bring herself to finish the letter.

He signed it with his usual half-formal pleasantries, but she hardly cared about that bit. Taking the letter into her sometime bedroom (number twelve's third guestroom), she reread that paragraph yet again. Who in the world had ever written so eloquently about putting his hand up a girl's shirt? Nobody, that was who. Nobody except Remus Lupin, who had instantly turned one of Tonks' worst fears into an exciting possibility. What, she wondered, would someone else's hands feel like if they touched her there? Would it be as amazing as he said?

She sat up straight and blinked, realizing what she had just been thinking.

Just last week, he had written her a note about his favourite kind of soup. And now it was breasts. She didn't quite know why, but this struck her as slightly odd. No, that wasn't it. On the contrary, she had the feeling that she should think it was odd, but her intuition had accepted the situation as perfectly normal.

That was the odd part.

Tucking the note under her pillow and out of sight, she sat for a while and tried to figure it out. She traced their written conversations from beginning to present, trying to put her finger on the exact moment when it had suddenly become okay to talk about breasts. She couldn't. It had all been so gradual, so natural, that she'd never even stopped to think about it till that particular moment.

Another person's skin is always an amazing thing to touch, he'd written. That was the line that stuck in her mind the most. Another person's skin.

She felt a strange pang, one that she couldn't rightly name, and ever so slowly she reached her own hand up, under her shirt, to feel the skin there. To pay attention to the skin there. She'd felt it before, of course, as she'd always been conscientious in her bathing habits, but she'd never felt it with a purpose.

She rubbed a finger lightly over one of her nipples, feeling a thrill as it hardened into a little nub. She rubbed a bit harder, wondering how different it would feel if it was someone else's finger there instead of her own.

Remus Lupin's finger, perhaps.

And that moment, when she realized that she was thinking his name as she rubbed, was the moment she knew things had changed.