Change for Me

"You want me to do WHAT?"

He turned away, clearly unable to meet her eye. "You don't understand, Tonks ..."

"No, I bloody don't!" she yelled, disbelieving.

He sighed. "Can you imagine what it's like to have loved someone so deeply and then have them snatched away? To have the agony of knowing you'll never see them again, of knowing you didn't even have the chance to say goodbye?"

"Yes, I can imagine that, actually," she said, more quietly this time. "I was imagining it all the time last year when you were off with Greyback."

"I'm sorry." He sounded, to her surprise, as if he really meant it. "But for me - well, I didn't have to imagine it, did I?"

"I'm sorry." She found, to her surprise, that she really meant it too. "But Remus ... this is ... sick."

"I know. I should never have mentioned it. Forgive me. I warned you that you shouldn't get involved with me, I'm too old, I have too many issues ..."

"Oh, don't start that bullshit again!" She paused and steeled herself. "Be honest, Remus. Do you even want me?"

He looked up, startled. "Yes, of course I do! You must know that by now." His eyes slid from contact with hers once more. "But ... I never expected to fall in love again. I never believed I would even be capable of it. It's ... confusing, Tonks."

"Why?"

"Because these last few years have been confusing! I thought I lost the love of my life in 1981. I had to live with that, but I was never able to get over it, and it poisoned every attempt at a relationship I tried! Maybe if I'd ever been able to tell anyone about it before you ..."

"You didn't tell anyone else but me ... wait, you mean you spent all that time cooped up in Grimmauld Place with Sirius and didn't even mention it to him?" she spluttered, incredulous. "You know, I'd have thought he'd be the bloody obvious person to tell, wouldn't he?"

He flushed. "I don't think he ever knew I had those feelings, or even if he did have an inkling he never knew how strong they were. Not back then, not last year when we talked about ... those times. I couldn't tell him, Tonks! He'd been through enough, he didn't need his sole remaining old friend to ... to shock him to the core with his self-indulgent confessions. I'd hoped there would be time enough for us to talk about the subject later when we weren't fighting a war! I didn't want him to hate me because of it," he finished miserably.

"You don't know that he would have hated you because of it. He might have understood. He might have approved." She was amazed how calm her voice sounded, as if they were merely discussing the chances of the Falmouth Falcons winning the league this year. It bore no relation to the ache in her heart.

He gave a short and rather sour laugh. "Oh, I know, all right. I always knew who he loved most in the world, and it wasn't me, it was James. Oh not in that way! He'd have understood something of what it was like to feel like I felt, yes, but he wouldn't have approved of what I'd been feeling. Just believe me, that was something I couldn't tell a friend."

The sting from that comment was so sharp it took her unawares. Her voice shook as she bit out a reply. "You just told me. Don't I even count as a friend now?"

The sudden look he gave her was startlingly intense. "I thought we were just friends too, at first. I never recognised what I was beginning to feel for you before ... he died. It never even occurred to me that I would be able to feel that way about you, or about anyone else. And then when I realised I did ..."

"You ran away from it. From me," she added bitterly.

"Yes." He hung his head. "It was too much, Tonks! I couldn't handle it. I didn't know how to feel both things at once, it was like my head would explode!"

"But why does it matter to you now? I don't blame you for feeling that way but it's in the past, Remus! Don't pretend you don't care for me at all, because I'll know you're still lying ..."

He startled her by grabbing her hands so tightly it felt almost desperate. "Don't ever think that. Yes, I spent a year running away from you. I was a fool. I just have ... unresolved issues ..."

"And you think that this will help you resolve them? You really must be a fool." She fought down an urge to laugh hysterically. "Remus, how dare you try to take advantage of what I can do? How can you even ask me that?"

He dropped her hands and turned away, shamefaced. "Because I wouldn't dare ask anybody else. I wouldn't trust anybody else but you to know," he mumbled. "Because you deserve to know all of my hang-ups and shameful little secrets before you decide you want to start a serious relationship with me."

"Oh ..." That wasn't quite the answer she'd been expecting, and it left her temporarily nonplussed. "But you still want me to ..."

"Change for me. Yes."

She was completely unable to make sense of him. "But ... but ... oh bloody hell, Remus, why on earth do you think it would help if I made myself look like ..." She found that she couldn't even bring herself to say the name. "That's twisted. What good could it do?"

"I don't know." His voice was almost inaudible. "Look, I just ... I just need to try and end it, Tonks. I've nursed these feelings for twenty years and I need ... closure." He threw up his hands. "You don't know how often I dreamed I could see that face again, young and carefree, laughing and joking, exactly the way it was when I fell in love. To be able to look into those eyes and say 'I love you. Did you know that? I never dared to tell you. But you've always been beyond my reach and let me move on dammit!' It was just a damaged man's fantasy. But with you being able to do what you can do ... and you've already accepted worse things about me ... I just thought I might actually be able to do that."

She stared at him. "Remus ... that's really ... oh, it's bloody ridiculous."

"I know. But ... I'm desperate, Tonks. I thought it might help me get it out of my system. Nothing else ever has."

She watched him for a minute or two, open-mouthed, and then did something she could never quite explain to herself afterwards. She summoned up the memory of a young, laughing face she'd only ever seen on a tattered old photograph, and concentrated hard. She felt her hair lengthen, her chest shrink, her height increase; she couldn't stop herself breaking into a reluctant half-smile at the incredulous look in his eyes. She had no idea what it was she was doing, and whatever it turned out to be, she expected to regret it.

"Oh God," he said, holding out a hand to lift a few strands of her hair reverently. "It's you, it's you, it's ..."

Tonks started as he abruptly dropped the lock of hair as if it had burnt him. With a choking cry, he threw himself into the nearest armchair with his head in his hands, trembling and whimpering.

"Remus!" she cried, thoroughly disconcerted.

He continued to shake and gasp for breath, a reaction so unlike him she found it truly terrifying. "Remus, what the ... what the matter with you?"

He glanced up at her with a tortured look in his eyes, flinched at her appearance and quickly looked down again. "It's ..."

"What?"

"It's not you. It's not you, but it's you, and it's not you either ..."

"Remus, stop babbling, please, you're scaring me ..." She wasn't just saying that; incoherence on this scale did not make sense for Remus Lupin. She'd never seen him as bad as this, not even when told of Dumbledore's death, and had an uneasy feeling that the situation had spiralled out of her control long ago. "What do you mean?"

He tried to meet her eyes again but couldn't. "That face," he whispered, staring determinedly at the wall. "It's perfect ... and I so longed to see it again ... and I asked you to change for me and you did that for me but it's you and --" he stopped and took a huge gulp of air "-- I didn't realise how wrong it would feel to see that face and know it was you, because I don't want to look at you and see that face, I want to look at you and see you because I love you and ..." He buried his head in his hands again. "Oh God, Tonks, what have I done?"

Her arms were around him before she even realised what she was doing. "Oh Remus ..." He tried to pull away but she refused to let him.

"I don't deserve you," he said, his voice muffled. "How could I ask that of the woman I love? Everything you must always have hated in a man before? I don't deserve you ..."

"No, you don't," she said, her voice shaking, whether with fear or love or rage she was unable to tell. "But you've still got me. If you want me. Just ... tell me the truth, Remus. Do you love me, really, or are you still hung up on ..."

"No!" She froze at that, and he turned to her in alarm. "I didn't mean that! I mean no, I love you, I'm not hung up on ..." He waved a hand at her changed features, shuddered and looked away once more. When he spoke again his voice was much calmer, although it still had a tremor in it. "It took seeing you like that to shock me into a realisation of what I really wanted. I think I've spent far too long telling myself that I wanted a fantasy, and never letting myself dare to fantasise that I could have a reality. And then you came along --" the faintest of smiles appeared on his face "-- and despite everything I did to push you away you just stubbornly hung in there and refused to let me get away with it and became a reality. And ... the fantasy's a fantasy, and this is a reality, and I want the reality, I want ... oh the hell with it, I want you. Because the love I feel for you is a reality, not a fantasy, and I don't have to tell myself that I feel it, I just feel it."

The little half-smile crossed his face again as she struggled to comprehend what he'd said, if indeed it was susceptible to comprehension. "And that's probably the most honest I've ever been with anyone about my feelings, Tonks. Just -" he swallowed painfully "- please. Look like you. I want to see you. You were right. This feels ... sick."

"Change for you again?" She couldn't stop herself making the pointed remark.

He flushed again. "Yes."

She let go the breath she'd been holding without realising it and allowed herself to relax back into her natural form. The small breasts grew out to restore her own fuller figure, the startlingly green tint in the eyes faded as they darkened, and the thick, dark red hair shortened and faded into her natural brown. Somehow, she managed to force a smile.

"Can you ever forgive me for this?" he asked, tentatively, clearly unsure of what her answer would be. She smiled again, and if it was a twisted smile, that couldn't be helped.

"I've forgiven you so much already I suppose I can just put this one down on account," she said. "But since at least we finally got this out in the open, that pays for a lot. You still owe me, though."

His shoulders sagged in relief. "More than I can repay. Because ... I think I finally understood who the love of my life is in reality."

The sheer wonder on his face as he looked at her made her breath catch. A sudden, unexpected feeling of delight bubbled up from within as she realised that they might now, at long last, have laid to rest all the ghosts that mattered.

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Author's Notes: Yes, I was trying to play games again.

I had the original little plotbunny a while back when posting on some thread or other at FAP (doubtless Wolfstar or Wotcher Wolvie related), but I'm probably not the only one to have had it. The idea was simply that Remus asking Tonks to change into Sirius was extremely unlikely given canon, but Remus asking her to change into Lily was perhaps just slightly less so (although still deeply weird, obviously). And just for the avoidance of doubt - no, I don't really think this is what the Remus and Tonks relationship is like in canon, it's just a plotbunny! My apologies for the tortured romance-novel dialogue.