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starfishstarRAISE YOUR LANTERN HIGH
Summary: In which Remus and Tonks fight battles, arrest criminals, befriend werewolves, overcome inner demons and, despite it all, find themselves a happy ending. A love story, and a story of the Order years. (My Remus/Tonks epic, which has been years in the making! This is the second half of the story, set in the Half-Blood Prince year.)
Chapter 15: Alone Apart
We're sailing, we're sailing every night
We're drifting, we're drifting alone apart
–The Swell Season, Alone Apart
“Why not, though?” Ariadne asked.
They were squeezed in together at a tiny table at the back of the Three Broomsticks, and at Ariadne’s prodding Tonks had confessed about how Andy, the shop assistant from Scrivenshaft’s, kept eagerly striking up conversations with her whenever they crossed paths. In fact, she was pretty sure he’d been trying to ask her out for a drink the last time they’d met, though she’d managed to divert the conversation before he’d quite got to the chance.
“Why not what?” Tonks asked, fiddling with her glass, though she knew what Ariadne was going with this. It was evening and the pub was abuzz with the usual chatter, and Tonks was trying – unsuccessfully – to let the hubbub distract her from the conversation she was currently having.
“Why not go out for a drink with him?” Ariadne persisted. “I know I know I know, you’re not over Remus, and I’m not saying you should be. But you don’t have to be one hundred per cent over someone in order to go out for a drink with somebody else. Even if it’s just to remind yourself that there are other guys out there, you know?”
That was the problem, wasn’t it? Despite everything, Tonks didn’t want to be “over” Remus. Despite how acrimoniously they’d parted, despite how firmly Remus had declared himself done with her, what had existed between the two of them didn’t feel like a thing that was over. Tonks felt as closely bound to Remus as ever, no matter that he was in some unknown location on a moor somewhere, and the only time they’d talked to each other in months had been that brief, tense encounter outside the gates of Hogwarts shortly after Christmas.
Lately Tonks couldn’t help asking herself in frustration, was she completely stupid? She’d never thought of herself as the kind of woman who would hang around helplessly waiting for a man. Surely she should have moved past the heartbreak of Remus by now. Surely she shouldn’t still be nursing this secret hope that they might still be able to find their way back to each other.
Ariadne scrutinised Tonks over the rim of her glass. “Is he nice?” she asked, jolting Tonks out of her ruminations.
“What, Andy? Yeah, I guess,” Tonks admitted.
“Is he cute?”
“Er, I suppose so. In a kind of normal, cheerful, young bloke way.”
Ariadne snorted. “Oh, no, normal, that’s a strike against him. Merlin forbid our Tonks ever meet a nice, normal bloke.”
Tonks rolled her eyes. “Fine. Yes, okay, I will have one drink with him, if that’s what it takes to make you believe I can be normal. But who knows, he probably won’t even ask me again.”
But he did ask again.
Which was how, one evening in late January, Tonks found herself walking up Hogsmeade’s high street in the biting cold, making her way to the Three Broomsticks to meet nice, normal Andy for a nice, normal drink.
Despite the purported normalcy of all this, it felt strange and unreal to Tonks.
The front door gusted shut behind her, and Tonks saw Andy already seated at one of the booths along the side wall of the pub. He grinned and waved, and stood up when she reached him.
“Tonks, hi!” he said.
“Hi,” she said, sliding into the seat opposite him and wondering what on Earth to talk to him about. All her usual conversational gambits seemed to have failed her.
Andy slid back into his seat, too, and fiddled with a beer coaster on the table between them. It was one of the magical ones Rosmerta used, that slid around the surface of the table of their own volition, absorbing any small spills.
“So…” Andy said, smiling and charmingly nervous. “D’you like Quidditch? What team do you support?”
Tonks breathed out. Okay, she could work with this.
They talked about Quidditch for a while, then discussed Hogsmeade and bookshops and books and that great common ground of British wizards, Hogwarts. Tonks learned that Andy had been three years behind her at Hogwarts and a Ravenclaw, which explained why she hadn’t recognised him when she first saw him around the village. They traded school memories of outlandish Zonko’s jokes and exacting professors and chilling dares in the Forbidden Forest. Andy was kind and good company and he made her laugh, which Tonks had to admit was a welcome change from so much of the rest of her life these days.
He was also, Tonks was uncomfortably aware, the absolute anti-Remus. He was cheerful, uncomplicated and terribly young. Someone Ariadne would place firmly in the “nice and normal” category. Tonks liked him well enough, but she couldn’t imagine him holding her interest in a long-term way, and she wasn’t sure what that said about her.
Maybe she could learn her way into feeling more than polite amicability towards him? It took time to really get to know someone, after all. She ought to try.
So at the end of the evening, as they lingered over the dregs of their glasses of ale, Tonks heard herself say, “Want to come over for another drink at my place?”
Across the table, Andy’s eyes widened. Tonks wondered if she should regret the invitation, but mostly she just felt numb.
Remind yourself that there are other guys out there, Ariadne had said. So, okay, she was doing that.
I made a mistake. I’m sorry for it, Remus had said, sounding so bleak, that last horrible time they’d talked in the summer, before he left for the werewolf pack. And it wasn’t the break-up that he’d meant – the “mistake” had been getting involved with her in the first place.
Tonks wasn’t stupid. She knew she deserved more than being with someone who saw her as a mistake.
If only it were as easy as a flick of a wand or a blink of an eye, to change herself from caring too much about someone who didn’t seem to be able to return the feeling in the way she needed, and then decide instead to like this perfectly nice bloke in front of her.
They walked side by side in jittery silence through the dark, cold streets of Hogsmeade. It was not so very late, despite the night that came early this time of year. Warm light still spilled from some of the shop windows and turned the cobblestones a diffuse, shimmering golden hue. At night, the streets of Hogsmeade didn’t look as dour and afraid as they did during the daytime. If Tonks squinted and let her eyes blur out the boarded-up shop fronts that dotted the street like rotten teeth, this could almost be the familiar old Hogsmeade of her school days.
Tonks let them both in the door of her flat, waved a hand vaguely and told Andy to leave his cloak anywhere. She never had got around to putting in hooks or a cloak rack or anything like that – for herself, Tonks tended to simply throw her clothing over whatever item of furniture was nearest. Remus had always smiled in amusement at the places her cloak and shoes managed to end up, and damn it, now she was thinking of Remus again.
She probably shouldn’t be thinking of Remus at this particular moment.
From under a pile of discarded T-shirts, Tonks unearthed her tiny portable wizarding wireless and gave it a tap with her wand. The Weird Sisters, good, that would do.
Glad to have an excuse to keep moving, Tonks squeezed into the little kitchen nook and grabbed a couple of beers from the cold cupboard, glad that she’d managed to keep the kitchen stocked for once. This whole thing would be even more awkward if she didn’t have drinks on hand to fulfil the pretence of the visit.
She returned to Andy, who was hovering nervously by the door, and handed him one of the two bottles.
“Cheers,” he said, and tapped his drink against hers. Tonks nodded.
He took a sip. She took a sip. They were still standing a couple feet apart.
“So, have a seat, if you want,” Tonks said, and led him towards the tiny, lurid green loveseat that served as her flat’s sofa.
The loveseat was small enough that it would have been a bit of a squeeze in any case, but Andy sat down right next to her, so close that their legs were lightly touching. Tonks tried to feel excited about that, tried to feel anything about it. There was a very nice bloke on her sofa, who liked books and Quidditch, and had nice eyes and a friendly laugh, and who was not currently trying to get himself killed by feral werewolves or cold or starvation, shouldn’t that be enough? What was wrong with her, that she couldn’t think her way into making this be enough?
Andy put a tentative hand on her knee, so Tonks set her drink down on the floor and leaned over and kissed him, because surely she should want this.
He responded eagerly, leaning in too and threading a hand into Tonks’ hair, shifting so their bodies were more or less aligned despite the odd angle at which they sat scrunched in against each other on the loveseat. Andy’s lips were warm, and Tonks could feel him smiling even as he kissed her, like he just couldn’t contain his enthusiasm. And Tonks, feeling like the worst person imaginable, kissed him back and tried to feel…anything.
It wasn’t that it was unpleasant. It was nice that there was someone here in her flat after so many months alone, and it was nice to be around someone who liked her well enough to want her company. It should have been very pleasant to sit there on the loveseat of her cosy little flat and kiss Andy, but instead it felt all wrong. Tonks felt like she was watching herself from somewhere far away, having to remind herself at every moment how to move and breathe and smile.
She couldn’t do it. It was too weird, to be kissing someone and feeling nothing. And it wasn’t fair to the person she was kissing, either.
Tonks pulled back and rested a gentle but discouraging hand on Andy’s shoulder. His eyes, sweetly closed, flashed open in confusion.
“I’m sorry,” she said, already feeling awful about what she had to say next.
Andy’s eyes widened in alarm and he dropped his hands from her shoulder and from her hair. “I’m sorry,” he echoed, stumbling over his words. “Did I – I mean, I didn’t mean –”
“No,” Tonks rushed to assure him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. That was nice. I just – it’s not – I guess –” She took a fortifying breath, because what a stupidly unkind thing this was to say to someone, five seconds after you’d been kissing them. “I guess I’m even less over my ex than I thought I was, and I – can’t. I’m sorry.”
Andy, in great credit to what a nice human being he was, just winced and said, “Oh – okay.” He folded his hands in his lap and gave her a polite smile. “When did you, er, break things off with your ex?”
Tonks opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Erm. In June last year? Or in April? I guess it’s complicated, actually. It was all sort of…poorly defined starts and endings.”
Andy rubbed his palms on his trouser legs and tried to shift a respectful distance away from her on the loveseat, though there was only so far he could go. “Yeah, I get it,” he said. “That stuff takes time to get over, yeah?”
“I’m sorry,” Tonks repeated, feeling like such a cad. “I didn’t mean to…to be weird about anything. I thought maybe I could be ready for this, but I guess it turns out I’m really not.”
“That’s all right,” Andy said. “No hard feelings.” His smile was kind, though he looked embarrassed. His being so nice about it only made Tonks feel worse. “I still had a nice evening with you,” he said. “Thanks for meeting up.”
“I had a nice time with you, too,” Tonks said, and she was glad she could at least say that and have it not be a lie. It had been nice to talk with someone other than her colleagues, to interact over something that wasn’t work or the Order or the war. It had been nice, for a few brief moments, to think she might be a person capable of having a relationship this innocent and uncomplicated. Even if had turned out not to be true.
She wanted to tell Andy, You’re sweet, but she knew that probably wasn’t what a twenty-year-old guy wanted to hear from the woman who was rejecting him, no matter how much she meant it as a compliment.
Andy got to his feet, shifting his weight nervously from side to side. He looked down at Tonks and bit his lip. “Yeah, so, I guess I’ll – go.”
Tonks scrambled to her feet. “Right, yeah, of course. Let me, er – I’ll see you out.”
It was only a few steps across the tiny flat to the door, but it felt like much more than that when you were trying to navigate in space around a person you’d invited into your home and now were politely kicking back out again. Tonks grabbed Andy’s cloak from the back of a chair and followed him to the door, then stood by uncertainly as he shrugged into the cloak and patted its outer pockets to find his gloves.
She bit back the impulse to say I’m sorry again. Tonks knew what it was like to be apologised at over and over. It didn’t change anything.
“So, yeah,” Andy said. “See you around?”
“Yeah,” Tonks agreed. “See you around.” That was one major detraction about life in tiny Hogsmeade – they definitely would be seeing each other around town, again and again.
Tonks opened the door and Andy stood there framed by it, giving her another of those bashful smiles, and Tonks thought again how stupid love could be, how it struck with no regard to logic. She felt a twinge of regret, too, because dating Andy might have been quite nice. But dating someone for whom she felt little more than a gentle tolerance – that was more than unfair.
“Bye,” Andy said. Tonks gave an awkward little wave, then watched as he descended the stairs, watched until he reached the bottom of the steps and disappeared out into the dark. Only then did she close the door, lean her back against it and stare around the room in front of her. The Weird Sisters were still singing, low, into the emptiness of her flat.
Tonks pushed herself away from the door and stalked back to the sofa. She switched off the wireless, then picked up both their beer bottles, not even half empty, and took them to the kitchen to dump out.
She tidied everything in the flat that could possibly be tidied, but still felt full of restless energy. How frustrating to know what she ought to do, that she ought to move on, but not be able to make her heart believe it.
Tonks dragged one of the flat’s two high-backed wooden chairs over to the window and flung herself down onto it, staring out at the night. It was cold and clear, and the stars made painfully bright pinpricks against the wide, deep black of the sky. Tonks rested her chin on one knee and stared and stared out into the night, like things might come clearer if she watched those faraway lights long enough.
The moon was out, too, and almost full. Tonks knew she would never again be able to look up at the sky and not take immediate notice the phase of the moon.
It was so strange to think that Remus, too, was somewhere in Scotland, maybe not even all that far away, yet she wasn’t allowed to know where. Staring out at the cold night, Tonks tried to imagine where he might be sleeping, but her imagination failed her, as it had failed so many times before. She had no point of reference from which to start. How did werewolf packs live? The one man who could have offered insight wasn’t at hand to ask.
She wondered if he was still awake. It wasn’t all that late, though the darkness of the sky made it look like the deepest night. Tonks wondered if Remus, too, was looking up at the stars right now. Was he thinking of her, in this moment when she was thinking so longingly of him? Did she want him to be thinking of her?
No point, really, in both of them being miserable.
Tonks tried to summon anger at Remus, but she had moved long past it. If only Remus would act in accordance with his words, if only he were a more talented liar and could do a better job of pretending not to care about her, maybe then Tonks would find it easier to move on. If she were certain that Remus was as done with her as he claimed to be, she would grieve the loss of something that had brought her joy, mourn what had been and what could have been, but she would learn to move past it.
But the way he’d looked at her when they’d run into each other outside Hogwarts, his eyes stark in a face grown thinner than before, she couldn’t forget that. For all his protestations, Remus missed Tonks as desperately as Tonks missed him, and that knowledge only made everything harder.
Why wouldn’t he give in, and let them both stop being unhappy?
Tonks tried again to draw herself together in anger, but all she felt was a well of sadness.
Was there any way to reach through Remus’ stubborn shell and change his mind? Was she wrong to hope it was possible?
Tonks sat there a long time, her hands clasped around her shins and her chin resting on one knee as she gazed out at the distant stars, but she got no closer to any answers.
(continue to CHAPTER 16: The Duel)
Summary: In which Remus and Tonks fight battles, arrest criminals, befriend werewolves, overcome inner demons and, despite it all, find themselves a happy ending. A love story, and a story of the Order years. (My Remus/Tonks epic, which has been years in the making! This is the second half of the story, set in the Half-Blood Prince year.)
Chapter 15: Alone Apart
We're sailing, we're sailing every night
We're drifting, we're drifting alone apart
–The Swell Season, Alone Apart
“Why not, though?” Ariadne asked.
They were squeezed in together at a tiny table at the back of the Three Broomsticks, and at Ariadne’s prodding Tonks had confessed about how Andy, the shop assistant from Scrivenshaft’s, kept eagerly striking up conversations with her whenever they crossed paths. In fact, she was pretty sure he’d been trying to ask her out for a drink the last time they’d met, though she’d managed to divert the conversation before he’d quite got to the chance.
“Why not what?” Tonks asked, fiddling with her glass, though she knew what Ariadne was going with this. It was evening and the pub was abuzz with the usual chatter, and Tonks was trying – unsuccessfully – to let the hubbub distract her from the conversation she was currently having.
“Why not go out for a drink with him?” Ariadne persisted. “I know I know I know, you’re not over Remus, and I’m not saying you should be. But you don’t have to be one hundred per cent over someone in order to go out for a drink with somebody else. Even if it’s just to remind yourself that there are other guys out there, you know?”
That was the problem, wasn’t it? Despite everything, Tonks didn’t want to be “over” Remus. Despite how acrimoniously they’d parted, despite how firmly Remus had declared himself done with her, what had existed between the two of them didn’t feel like a thing that was over. Tonks felt as closely bound to Remus as ever, no matter that he was in some unknown location on a moor somewhere, and the only time they’d talked to each other in months had been that brief, tense encounter outside the gates of Hogwarts shortly after Christmas.
Lately Tonks couldn’t help asking herself in frustration, was she completely stupid? She’d never thought of herself as the kind of woman who would hang around helplessly waiting for a man. Surely she should have moved past the heartbreak of Remus by now. Surely she shouldn’t still be nursing this secret hope that they might still be able to find their way back to each other.
Ariadne scrutinised Tonks over the rim of her glass. “Is he nice?” she asked, jolting Tonks out of her ruminations.
“What, Andy? Yeah, I guess,” Tonks admitted.
“Is he cute?”
“Er, I suppose so. In a kind of normal, cheerful, young bloke way.”
Ariadne snorted. “Oh, no, normal, that’s a strike against him. Merlin forbid our Tonks ever meet a nice, normal bloke.”
Tonks rolled her eyes. “Fine. Yes, okay, I will have one drink with him, if that’s what it takes to make you believe I can be normal. But who knows, he probably won’t even ask me again.”
But he did ask again.
Which was how, one evening in late January, Tonks found herself walking up Hogsmeade’s high street in the biting cold, making her way to the Three Broomsticks to meet nice, normal Andy for a nice, normal drink.
Despite the purported normalcy of all this, it felt strange and unreal to Tonks.
The front door gusted shut behind her, and Tonks saw Andy already seated at one of the booths along the side wall of the pub. He grinned and waved, and stood up when she reached him.
“Tonks, hi!” he said.
“Hi,” she said, sliding into the seat opposite him and wondering what on Earth to talk to him about. All her usual conversational gambits seemed to have failed her.
Andy slid back into his seat, too, and fiddled with a beer coaster on the table between them. It was one of the magical ones Rosmerta used, that slid around the surface of the table of their own volition, absorbing any small spills.
“So…” Andy said, smiling and charmingly nervous. “D’you like Quidditch? What team do you support?”
Tonks breathed out. Okay, she could work with this.
They talked about Quidditch for a while, then discussed Hogsmeade and bookshops and books and that great common ground of British wizards, Hogwarts. Tonks learned that Andy had been three years behind her at Hogwarts and a Ravenclaw, which explained why she hadn’t recognised him when she first saw him around the village. They traded school memories of outlandish Zonko’s jokes and exacting professors and chilling dares in the Forbidden Forest. Andy was kind and good company and he made her laugh, which Tonks had to admit was a welcome change from so much of the rest of her life these days.
He was also, Tonks was uncomfortably aware, the absolute anti-Remus. He was cheerful, uncomplicated and terribly young. Someone Ariadne would place firmly in the “nice and normal” category. Tonks liked him well enough, but she couldn’t imagine him holding her interest in a long-term way, and she wasn’t sure what that said about her.
Maybe she could learn her way into feeling more than polite amicability towards him? It took time to really get to know someone, after all. She ought to try.
So at the end of the evening, as they lingered over the dregs of their glasses of ale, Tonks heard herself say, “Want to come over for another drink at my place?”
Across the table, Andy’s eyes widened. Tonks wondered if she should regret the invitation, but mostly she just felt numb.
Remind yourself that there are other guys out there, Ariadne had said. So, okay, she was doing that.
I made a mistake. I’m sorry for it, Remus had said, sounding so bleak, that last horrible time they’d talked in the summer, before he left for the werewolf pack. And it wasn’t the break-up that he’d meant – the “mistake” had been getting involved with her in the first place.
Tonks wasn’t stupid. She knew she deserved more than being with someone who saw her as a mistake.
If only it were as easy as a flick of a wand or a blink of an eye, to change herself from caring too much about someone who didn’t seem to be able to return the feeling in the way she needed, and then decide instead to like this perfectly nice bloke in front of her.
They walked side by side in jittery silence through the dark, cold streets of Hogsmeade. It was not so very late, despite the night that came early this time of year. Warm light still spilled from some of the shop windows and turned the cobblestones a diffuse, shimmering golden hue. At night, the streets of Hogsmeade didn’t look as dour and afraid as they did during the daytime. If Tonks squinted and let her eyes blur out the boarded-up shop fronts that dotted the street like rotten teeth, this could almost be the familiar old Hogsmeade of her school days.
Tonks let them both in the door of her flat, waved a hand vaguely and told Andy to leave his cloak anywhere. She never had got around to putting in hooks or a cloak rack or anything like that – for herself, Tonks tended to simply throw her clothing over whatever item of furniture was nearest. Remus had always smiled in amusement at the places her cloak and shoes managed to end up, and damn it, now she was thinking of Remus again.
She probably shouldn’t be thinking of Remus at this particular moment.
From under a pile of discarded T-shirts, Tonks unearthed her tiny portable wizarding wireless and gave it a tap with her wand. The Weird Sisters, good, that would do.
Glad to have an excuse to keep moving, Tonks squeezed into the little kitchen nook and grabbed a couple of beers from the cold cupboard, glad that she’d managed to keep the kitchen stocked for once. This whole thing would be even more awkward if she didn’t have drinks on hand to fulfil the pretence of the visit.
She returned to Andy, who was hovering nervously by the door, and handed him one of the two bottles.
“Cheers,” he said, and tapped his drink against hers. Tonks nodded.
He took a sip. She took a sip. They were still standing a couple feet apart.
“So, have a seat, if you want,” Tonks said, and led him towards the tiny, lurid green loveseat that served as her flat’s sofa.
The loveseat was small enough that it would have been a bit of a squeeze in any case, but Andy sat down right next to her, so close that their legs were lightly touching. Tonks tried to feel excited about that, tried to feel anything about it. There was a very nice bloke on her sofa, who liked books and Quidditch, and had nice eyes and a friendly laugh, and who was not currently trying to get himself killed by feral werewolves or cold or starvation, shouldn’t that be enough? What was wrong with her, that she couldn’t think her way into making this be enough?
Andy put a tentative hand on her knee, so Tonks set her drink down on the floor and leaned over and kissed him, because surely she should want this.
He responded eagerly, leaning in too and threading a hand into Tonks’ hair, shifting so their bodies were more or less aligned despite the odd angle at which they sat scrunched in against each other on the loveseat. Andy’s lips were warm, and Tonks could feel him smiling even as he kissed her, like he just couldn’t contain his enthusiasm. And Tonks, feeling like the worst person imaginable, kissed him back and tried to feel…anything.
It wasn’t that it was unpleasant. It was nice that there was someone here in her flat after so many months alone, and it was nice to be around someone who liked her well enough to want her company. It should have been very pleasant to sit there on the loveseat of her cosy little flat and kiss Andy, but instead it felt all wrong. Tonks felt like she was watching herself from somewhere far away, having to remind herself at every moment how to move and breathe and smile.
She couldn’t do it. It was too weird, to be kissing someone and feeling nothing. And it wasn’t fair to the person she was kissing, either.
Tonks pulled back and rested a gentle but discouraging hand on Andy’s shoulder. His eyes, sweetly closed, flashed open in confusion.
“I’m sorry,” she said, already feeling awful about what she had to say next.
Andy’s eyes widened in alarm and he dropped his hands from her shoulder and from her hair. “I’m sorry,” he echoed, stumbling over his words. “Did I – I mean, I didn’t mean –”
“No,” Tonks rushed to assure him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. That was nice. I just – it’s not – I guess –” She took a fortifying breath, because what a stupidly unkind thing this was to say to someone, five seconds after you’d been kissing them. “I guess I’m even less over my ex than I thought I was, and I – can’t. I’m sorry.”
Andy, in great credit to what a nice human being he was, just winced and said, “Oh – okay.” He folded his hands in his lap and gave her a polite smile. “When did you, er, break things off with your ex?”
Tonks opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Erm. In June last year? Or in April? I guess it’s complicated, actually. It was all sort of…poorly defined starts and endings.”
Andy rubbed his palms on his trouser legs and tried to shift a respectful distance away from her on the loveseat, though there was only so far he could go. “Yeah, I get it,” he said. “That stuff takes time to get over, yeah?”
“I’m sorry,” Tonks repeated, feeling like such a cad. “I didn’t mean to…to be weird about anything. I thought maybe I could be ready for this, but I guess it turns out I’m really not.”
“That’s all right,” Andy said. “No hard feelings.” His smile was kind, though he looked embarrassed. His being so nice about it only made Tonks feel worse. “I still had a nice evening with you,” he said. “Thanks for meeting up.”
“I had a nice time with you, too,” Tonks said, and she was glad she could at least say that and have it not be a lie. It had been nice to talk with someone other than her colleagues, to interact over something that wasn’t work or the Order or the war. It had been nice, for a few brief moments, to think she might be a person capable of having a relationship this innocent and uncomplicated. Even if had turned out not to be true.
She wanted to tell Andy, You’re sweet, but she knew that probably wasn’t what a twenty-year-old guy wanted to hear from the woman who was rejecting him, no matter how much she meant it as a compliment.
Andy got to his feet, shifting his weight nervously from side to side. He looked down at Tonks and bit his lip. “Yeah, so, I guess I’ll – go.”
Tonks scrambled to her feet. “Right, yeah, of course. Let me, er – I’ll see you out.”
It was only a few steps across the tiny flat to the door, but it felt like much more than that when you were trying to navigate in space around a person you’d invited into your home and now were politely kicking back out again. Tonks grabbed Andy’s cloak from the back of a chair and followed him to the door, then stood by uncertainly as he shrugged into the cloak and patted its outer pockets to find his gloves.
She bit back the impulse to say I’m sorry again. Tonks knew what it was like to be apologised at over and over. It didn’t change anything.
“So, yeah,” Andy said. “See you around?”
“Yeah,” Tonks agreed. “See you around.” That was one major detraction about life in tiny Hogsmeade – they definitely would be seeing each other around town, again and again.
Tonks opened the door and Andy stood there framed by it, giving her another of those bashful smiles, and Tonks thought again how stupid love could be, how it struck with no regard to logic. She felt a twinge of regret, too, because dating Andy might have been quite nice. But dating someone for whom she felt little more than a gentle tolerance – that was more than unfair.
“Bye,” Andy said. Tonks gave an awkward little wave, then watched as he descended the stairs, watched until he reached the bottom of the steps and disappeared out into the dark. Only then did she close the door, lean her back against it and stare around the room in front of her. The Weird Sisters were still singing, low, into the emptiness of her flat.
Tonks pushed herself away from the door and stalked back to the sofa. She switched off the wireless, then picked up both their beer bottles, not even half empty, and took them to the kitchen to dump out.
She tidied everything in the flat that could possibly be tidied, but still felt full of restless energy. How frustrating to know what she ought to do, that she ought to move on, but not be able to make her heart believe it.
Tonks dragged one of the flat’s two high-backed wooden chairs over to the window and flung herself down onto it, staring out at the night. It was cold and clear, and the stars made painfully bright pinpricks against the wide, deep black of the sky. Tonks rested her chin on one knee and stared and stared out into the night, like things might come clearer if she watched those faraway lights long enough.
The moon was out, too, and almost full. Tonks knew she would never again be able to look up at the sky and not take immediate notice the phase of the moon.
It was so strange to think that Remus, too, was somewhere in Scotland, maybe not even all that far away, yet she wasn’t allowed to know where. Staring out at the cold night, Tonks tried to imagine where he might be sleeping, but her imagination failed her, as it had failed so many times before. She had no point of reference from which to start. How did werewolf packs live? The one man who could have offered insight wasn’t at hand to ask.
She wondered if he was still awake. It wasn’t all that late, though the darkness of the sky made it look like the deepest night. Tonks wondered if Remus, too, was looking up at the stars right now. Was he thinking of her, in this moment when she was thinking so longingly of him? Did she want him to be thinking of her?
No point, really, in both of them being miserable.
Tonks tried to summon anger at Remus, but she had moved long past it. If only Remus would act in accordance with his words, if only he were a more talented liar and could do a better job of pretending not to care about her, maybe then Tonks would find it easier to move on. If she were certain that Remus was as done with her as he claimed to be, she would grieve the loss of something that had brought her joy, mourn what had been and what could have been, but she would learn to move past it.
But the way he’d looked at her when they’d run into each other outside Hogwarts, his eyes stark in a face grown thinner than before, she couldn’t forget that. For all his protestations, Remus missed Tonks as desperately as Tonks missed him, and that knowledge only made everything harder.
Why wouldn’t he give in, and let them both stop being unhappy?
Tonks tried again to draw herself together in anger, but all she felt was a well of sadness.
Was there any way to reach through Remus’ stubborn shell and change his mind? Was she wrong to hope it was possible?
Tonks sat there a long time, her hands clasped around her shins and her chin resting on one knee as she gazed out at the distant stars, but she got no closer to any answers.
(continue to CHAPTER 16: The Duel)
