#Post hospital scene in Halfblood Prince

[asnarkyandironicusername]

Day 25 of @remadoramicrofics - Ina Dark Dark Wood

Nymphadora supposed, as she trudged towards Remus Lupin’s silhouette, that this was how moths felt as they fluttered about unattended candles. They couldn’t explain their draw to the sun, they could only follow it, no matter how ill-advised. She had spent the past few months being told to forget about her infatuation with the grumpy werewolf, that it was bad for her health, and, with him fleeing at every chance he got, she didn’t have any sound evidence to suggest the contrary.

“Are you done trying to kill yourself?” She asked as she reached him.

“Hm?” he asked as he stared at her.

“Well, you’ve rushed off to the werewolf camp and now you look like you're debating a swim. Just wondering if –”

“Dumbledore needed –”

“I don’t care, Remus,” she ground out, looking away from him.

“So you’ve said.”

He started to turn away, but Tonks caught his wrist. “Tell me you don’t feel the same, Remus, tell me you don’t love me and I won’t –”

“You know I can’t do that, Nymphadora,” he protested.

“Don’t call me –”

“And don’t you see how dangerous that is?”

“I’ve never –” she felt her anger flare and he cut her off again.

“Nymphadora, I need you to understand –”

She felt like there were a thousand bees buzzing in her ears and the anger swelled in her. More than that, was the sadness that flowered at the idea that Remus found his own love to be dangerous. She pressed up onto her toes and caught his robes, pulling him close as she crashed their lips together. Remus tensed, but his hands, maybe of their own accord, held her, one looping around her waist and the other resting on her shoulder.

As they parted, slightly out of breath, Remus stared down at her wide-eyed. “I-I– We can’t –”

“Yes, we can, Remus. There’s a damn war going on and you have the nerve to think you’re the most dangerous thing to me, an auror and an Order member.”

He swallowed thickly and Tonks waited, biting her tongue. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said eventually. Anyone else might have taken it for a rejection, but Tonks knew better. Remus was private, he wouldn’t want to get caught making out on school grounds, not after his unceremonious ousting.

“Alright,” she agreed as she slid her hand into his.

“Afraid of the Forest?” he asked as he led her along.

“Are you?”

He smirked, “No, I’m used to being the scariest thing on this campus.”

“Oh, that can’t be true,” she chided as they followed a path into the dark woods. The branches were so thick that it nearly pitch black.

“Have you ever been here?”

Tonks shook her head. She had never seen much need to venture past the edge, though Charlie had been sent out here with a group for detention once.

Remus nodded. “I had to come a couple of times with James and Sirius for detention.”

“Sirius did always say you were a trouble maker.”

Remus snorted, but didn’t refute the accusation. “It’s also where we spent a lot of transformations.”

“Where do you spend them, now?”

He looked her over for a moment before he sighed. “Recently? At the camp, with the others. Before that, at Grimmauld Place with Sirius.”

“Before that?” she pressed. She wanted him to know she was all in, furry little problem be damned.

“I own a cabin…in wales. It’s seen better days, but it suffices.”

“By yourself?” He nodded, leading her to the left of a y in the path. “I could –”

“No,” he said firmly.

She turned to him, her mouth twisted in a pout. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

He smiled knowingly at her. “You’re not coming to see the cabin and you’re not spending a transformation with me.”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” she told him as she pulled him along the path. “I was going to say I could take us to my place.”

He looked at her. “Nympha– Tonks, I don’t think –”

“Why? I’m not afraid of you and I make enough money that I don’t need any financial support from you, and I’m old enough to date whomever I please, so why won’t you really come?”

He sighed as if the act was particularly painful. “Everyone I’ve ever loved has died, Tonks, and I can’t subject you to the same –”

She scoffed. “Be serious, Remus, none of those deaths have been your fault. You weren’t the spy and Peter had everyone fooled, Bellatrix wasn’t going to let Sirius live, and no one could have known about Dumbledore.” Remus started to protest, but Tonks pressed on, “And one day, no matter how careful I am or you are or how much we try, I’ll die. Everyone does, you know, it’s inevitable. The important thing, the thing that makes death a little less painful, is making sure that you live while you have the chance. Because if you aren’t living, you’re just waiting for death. How long have you been waiting, Remus, and how much longer are you going to?”

He stared at her for a long moment before he crashed his lips to hers. Tonks’s hands immediately found their way into his hair and along the nape of his neck while his hands twisted in her robes and pulled her close. He drew back and she was about to protest when he whispered in her ear, “I love you, Nymphadora Tonks, and I have for a long time.”

“I love you, too, Remus Lupin,” she said into his neck, “Now please come home with me. Like, right now.” She felt, more than saw, him nod and quickly apparated them to her front door.