Better To Have Loved - Part 1
Oh no it's her again, that new kid that keeps cluttering up the comm >.< Here's the first bit of a drabble collection I'm currently working on, numbers 1 to 10 out of 100. If you guys like 'em I'll post the rest in groups of ten as I finish them. Please, please, please let me know if they're terrible and I won't make you all suffer anymore! :3
Title: Better To Have Loved
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13 for set 1
Pairing: Tonks & Remus
Summary: 100 drabbles meant to give the feeling of looking through a shoebox full of jumbled photographs, not in chronological order, and hoping to prove that it's better to go through the ups and downs of loving another than to never love at all.
- Beginnings
A petite, purple-haired witch trips her way into Number Twelve, and Remus, ever the gentleman, offers a steadying arm.
“Thanks.” She straightens herself, brushing off imaginary dust before fixing her attention on him.
“Wotcher! I don’t believe we’ve met.” The hand she thrusts out for a shake makes direct contact instead with the bric-a-brac on the side table. She winces before they even hit the floor.
“SHAPESHIFTING MUDBLOOD FILTH! HOW DARE YOU BREAK THINGS IN THE NOBLE AND MOST-”
Remus yanks Mrs. Black’s heavy curtains shut and offers his hand, giving the shaken young witch a sideways smile. “Nice to meet you, Shapeshifting Mudblood Filth. I’m the Werewolf-in-Residence.”
- Strangers
Her muscles stand out like cords of rope under her skin, straining with the effort of keeping control. The months since he’d left have made themselves painfully clear in the small bump growing beneath her shirt.
“Tonks, I-”
“‘You’ what? I don’t even know who you are.”
Remus shrinks under the quiet violence in those words. “Tonks, please, let me explain...”
There are hot tears streaking her pale cheeks, and he knows he is defeated before she speaks.
“The Remus I knew was past all that nonsense about doing what’s ‘best’ for me. His being here was what I needed!” One hand rests on her belly, and it nearly rips his insides to shreds. “And he’s left me.”
Her voice breaks, but she does not look away. “Get out.”
- Breakfast
Remus had never been one for coffee, and shoots the paper cup in his hands a disapproving glare.
“You tricked me.”
Mirth sparkles in her dark eyes as she throws back what’s left of her espresso. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us. Can’t have you falling asleep on the job, can we?”
“There’s caffeine in tea!”
“For Merlin’s sake, Remus, just try it! I got you a latte, it’s sweet. I even had them put whipped cream and chocolate syrup in it. You can’t put chocolate in tea.”
He looks from Tonks to the cup and back again, highly skeptical, especially in light of the knowing smirk plastered across her face.
“It’s from Honeydukes. How bad could it be, right?” She plucks it from his hands and takes a sip for good measure, licking the cream from her lips.
Tentatively he takes it back, flicking his unconvinced gaze at her - she’s grinning over the edge of her violent green scarf - and takes a ginger sip.
- Too Much
He wakes alone, cold without her warmth tucked close against him.
Rising, he finds her wedged into the corner of the sofa, muffled sobs shaking the small body curled protectively around her very pregnant belly. A grey owl sits on the table beside her, its message clutched in her hand. In an instant she is pulled into his arms, held tight as he tries to soothe the tears away.
“I can’t do this, Remus. I can’t bring a child into a world like this, into a war, into this family-” She swallows, buries her face in his shoulder. “They want me dead, I’ll get him killed, Bellatrix alone…”
He whispers to her, tries to allay their shared fears. “Tonks, sweetheart, we’ll keep him safe. We’re stronger than her. Nothing can touch him here. We can protect him-”
“My dad is dead!” She throws the note across the room, wraps her arms tighter around herself. Her breaths are heavy, rattling, painful, before she says, more quietly, “Mum sent word.” Her tears leave warm, wet spots on his skin. “If the Death Eaters could find him, how much harder could it be to find us?”
- Hours
Laughter rings through the early morning, reverberating through the somber halls of Grimmauld Place. Halls that Sirius would’ve liked to remain somber, at least until seven AM.
“Don’t you two ever shut up?” he asks, squinting through the glaring kitchen light at the pair at the table. Tonks and Remus look from each other to Sirius and back again; how long had it been since he’d left to go to bed?
“Sorry, mate,” Remus offers, scratching absently at the back of his neck, “Must’ve lost track of time.”
“Lost track of time?! It’s four in the morning!”
Tonks ticks off the hours on her fingers; Sirius had gone upstairs at eleven. “We’ll shut up, we promise,” she laughs, “Go back to sleep.” With that, Sirius tromps, grumbling, back up the kitchen steps.
As soon as he’s out of sight Remus leans in close and whispers with mischievous lips against her ear, “Better he walk in now than on what we were doing at…two-ish, give or take a few minutes?”
- Parents
His first meeting with the Tonkses is not the awkward dinner invite he’d been expecting.
Remus had not left Tonks’s side ever since she’d been wheeled, unconscious, into a small room in the Spell Damage ward of St. Mungo’s. She is battered and bruised, with blood in some places seeping through the bandages, but in one piece. And alive. More so than Bellatrix would have allowed, had she not been distracted -Remus fights off a wave of gut-wrenching grief - by Sirius.
He is holding her hand, head and arms leaning on the bed, when a sharp-featured, anxious woman he could guess to be Andromeda Black rushes in, followed by a rather shorter but no less worried man who could only be Ted Tonks. Remus stands up and drops Tonks’ hand, unsure of how well her parents would take to that small display of affection.
Andromeda smoothes Tonks’ pink hair from the bandage across her forehead, then turns her attention to Remus. Her frightened mother’s eyes, still sharp and appraising despite their wrenching fear, bore into him like knives.
“What happened to her?”
- Fall
The pair sits on the front steps of Grimmauld, a once-comfortable silence growing more and more oppressive by the moment. The September night is chilly and Tonks fidgets with her cloak, tries to dislodge the edge from beneath her without elbowing Remus or knocking over the two half-full bottles of Butterbeer beside them. Before she can manage either, he pulls her under the warm cover of his arm.
She shivers anyway.
“Something the matter?” he asks, and starts to take his arm away.
“No!” Tonks answers too quickly. “I mean…no, it’s fine. Thanks.” His arm stays, to her relief, comfortably draped about her shoulders. She scuffs at the red and orange leaves at her feet.
They sit in silence for another few age-long minutes. She can’t look at him. Too nervous.
“Remus?” Her voice is small, he notes. Fearful.
“Hmm?”
“Would you hate me very much if…if I said I wanted…” she swallows, “…to kiss you?”
The few seconds’ pause is almost more than she can take. Her face flames. She should get up, go inside and find somewhere to hide the blush that just won’t morph out of her cheeks-
His arm around her tightens, and when he speaks his voice is velvet-soft.
“Would you hate me if I asked to kiss you back?”
- Orange
It’s a rare occasion when Tonks has a spare hour to waste, and this time she’s determined to enjoy wasting it with the youngest of the Weasleys.
“Tonks, can I ask you something?”
“Shoot, kiddo,” Tonks says past the sparkly purple hairbrush clamped in her teeth, separating Ginny’s copper locks of hair.
“How did you know you were in love with Professor Lupin?”
The hairbrush falls from Tonks’ mouth. It takes a conscious effort to keep the blush from creeping up her neck. “How long have you known?”
“Since the end of last summer.”
Tonks supposes she shouldn’t be surprised. She and Remus had been rather attached to each other, and Ginny was the most astute of her siblings…
She sighs, chews on a lock of violent pink hair. “I didn’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I do know I love Remus, but I don’t reckon I ever had an epiphany about it. Sorry, that doesn’t really help at all, does it?”
Ginny shakes her head, bottom lip caught in her teeth.
Tonks plants her hands on Ginny’s shoulders. “If this is about Harry, don’t you worry about him. He’s over the moon for you - he just doesn’t realize it yet.” Ginny nods and Tonks smiles to herself; over the moon…sums things up quite nicely, doesn’t it?
- White
The patronus he knows she conjured on nights it felt too hard to spend alone.
The moon she slowly taught him not to fear.
The single rose he left on her pillow one evening.
The sheets on his bed, their first time.
Her skin under his fingers, bathed in pale moonlight as their bodies twine together.
And now the color of the simple dress draped over her body, falling in graceful fluid folds down to her knees.
White is all colors at once, bright like the woman standing so very impossibly before him, holding his hands, smiling up into his eyes.
Firenze asks, and Remus gives the most terrifying and wonderful answer he’s wanted for so long to say.
“I do.”
- Broken
They are shouting, shouting so loudly the entire Burrow seems to shake with it.
“What part of this don’t you understand, Tonks? For Merlin’s sake, I’m trying to save you!”
“What makes you so sure I need saving?!” She all but spits the words at him, eyes afire through the tears, hands balled into fists at her sides. “We talked about children, Remus, about having a life together! How is it so easy for you to throw all that away?”
“You think this is easy? To walk away from the only glimmer of happiness I’ve had my entire life? I’m doing this so I can at least have some hope that you’ll be safe! Is it so bad to want you to live if I don’t make it through this year?”
“Do you really think so little of me? That I can’t protect myself as well as you would?”
“I think I wouldn’t be able to survive if I knowingly put you in the path of a danger so much bigger than the both of us! Nothing can warrant that!”
“I love you, Remus! Shouldn’t that be enough reason to fight it together?”
But he will hear no more. Molly watches from the window as he strides across the lawn and out of sight, and Tonks is glad they cannot hear her cry.
A/N: In case anyone was wondering, #8 takes place in my little world just post-OotP, but before Remus decides to break it off with Tonks. Also, the inspiration for #2 came from the song "Someone Wake Me Up" by the Veronicas.