265A/N: It's been ages since I've posted on here, and I've been working on this story for almost as long. This chapter's been written since July, but I didn't want to start posting until I was sure I'd have enough free time to update relatively regularly. I was originally going to post this in a few weeks, but I got accepted to college this past weekend so now I have time to post again!
Anyway, I haven't read many stories where Remus and Tonks meet before the Order (but I've loved all those that I have read), so I thought I might try it. All you really need to know is that it begins early July of 1994 (and will continue for quite a while, I think). Remus has just resigned as DADA professor and Tonks has just graduated Auror training.
The title is from Motion City Soundtrack's 'Broken Heart', which includes the line, "with fingers crossed there will be love".
Chapter 1 (an intro/prologue of sorts) is dedicated to Briallen Hunter, StrawberryFields, Fanfiction fan, Hannah, and ani, who all left wonderful reviews on Bruised Knees but who I couldn't PM to thank. I know it's been ages, but if you're reading this, thank you so much all of you!
Chapter 1 - A Tipsy Introduction
July 1st, 1994
The first time Nymphadora Tonks meets Remus Lupin, she's giggling, euphoric, and just tipsy enough to have a complete lack of respect for personal space.
Okay, she may be a bit more than tipsy, but she's definitely not pissed.
She's not.
She's sure of this, because although the room is slightly spinny, she can still manage to convince Tom, in spite of his knack for looking after her a bit more protectively than other patrons at the Leaky Cauldron, to give her another drink. And she's pretty sure she's at least partially coherent, because he doesn't grumble too much when he protests that she's had enough and only threatens to tell her father once. And this is, in fact, progress.
She starts to doubt her sobriety only a bit when she has difficulty explaining this to her mate Michael, but she brushes it off because he nods at her, completely entranced in her explanation of the fact that her dad and Tom go way back and that's why Tom looks after her.
It's only when he tells her, still smiling, that she's told him the same thing three times now, that she starts to become really worried. But he takes her mind off it, the filthy enabler, by pushing her drink back towards her.
"Better drink up, Tonks. You managed to convince Tom to give you free drinks as congratulations, but only for an hour," he tells her, and she's momentarily disconcerted because she can't actually remember doing that.
He seems to notice her concern, however, because he gives her a reassuring pat on the back. "Don't worry, I won't let you do anything stupid. Well, I did let you give everyone you passed on the way in hugs, but they were happy to oblige. And you deserve it, anyway, after all the work you went through."
Tonks beams at the compliment, knowing it's true; she's worked her arse off to pass Stealth and Tracking and qualify as an Auror. She received her badge today, and as it's a Friday and she's now officially an Auror, she and her best mates from Hogwarts are out for drinks.
Or were, she thinks to herself hazily, as her other best friends, Jane and Will, went home at some point she doesn't quite remember. She'd grumbled and called them boring and domestic, and they'd retorted (with pathetic, dreamy grins and a disgustingly soppy kiss) that at least they had romance in their lives. To which she'd blushed and probably done a horrible job attempting to convince them that she has a social life, because in all honesty, she doesn't. She sees Michael most often, but she rarely has time with training, and she can't imagine that changing much now that she's a rookie Auror. Besides, she knows he's only got free time because his boyfriend works abroad.
It's still weird for her to think that Jane and Will, people she'd gone to school with, are married now, she muses. She's only 21 after all, but many witches and wizards marry young. Her mum and dad'd married when her mum was only 18, just out of Hogwarts, but then again her dad's much older and her sister was born a convenient 8 months later so it was probably necessary. Plus, her mum's family's awful, and so her mum and dad had eloped the second they got the chance.
Still, she can't help but feel ashamed at her lack of serious relationship right now–or ever, really. Her longest lasting boyfriend, Toby, who she'd started seeing during her seventh year, had broken up with her sometime during her first year of Auror training, complaining that she didn't have time for him anymore. She's since become convinced that he resented her for being accepted into the programme when he never was, if his comments about her morphing being what got her in were any indication, and he was pretty useless anyway, leaving her feeling as if she was being used half the time, but she's over him now and really not into any guys she does know.
Besides, she's crap at meeting people, because she can always tell that they're impressed with her because of what she can do, not who she is. Which, whatever, she guesses, it's their loss. Only it takes its toll, after a while, and she really doesn't want to date some guy if he's interested for the wrong reasons. Even if it would stop her mum from asking if she's got a boyfriend every time she comes over.
"Tonks?" Michael's deep voice coaxes her out of her stupor, and by the look on his face she thinks he's probably been trying to get her attention for a while.
"Hmm?" She asks eloquently, because really, she's pretty sure she's drunk at this point. She's not even sure what time it is anymore, because there aren't many people here (except those women at the hen party, the drunk old guys chatting with Tom, and that miserable looking bloke in the corner who hasn't moved since they arrived), and she knows it's not early enough that they've missed the rush, which concerns her a bit. Surely it's not that late yet?
"I said we could always pretend you're my girlfriend to take your mum off your case," Michael explains, and she frowns at him. Has she really been saying all of that aloud?
"Yes, you have." He informs her, and she groans, resting her forehead against the wood table. It smells of cigarettes and butterbeer, but she doesn't mind at this point. She must be really pissed if she's been speaking out loud.
"Hey, Mike," she slurs, moaning as she lifts her head enough to look at him, one eye shut, "if I fall asleep here, do you promise not to let anything bad happen to me?"
He rolls his eyes. "That's what I thought, time to get you to bed."
And without further ado he stands, places some coins on the table, slips an arm around her back and legs, and lifts her up as if she weighs nothing. She squeals, a rather undignified sound that causes quite a few heads to turn, and wraps her arms around his neck, giggling silently up at him.
"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to seduce me," she teases, laughing as she rests her head against his chest.
He laughs as well, and presses a light kiss to the top of her head. "Sorry, love, you're not my type."
She laughs harder at this, because suddenly Mike's being gay is hilarious, and lets out another, even less dignified yelp when he suddenly stops in his tracks and drops her.
Well, he doesn't quite drop her; he sort of loosens his grip on her as he freezes and she's too busy laughing to notice and cling tight. So she falls unceremoniously to his feet, confused and mightily disoriented.
"Um, Mike?" She asks, not bothering to try to sit up on her own. She knows a lost cause when she is one, and besides, the room's lagging a bit, and she's sort of having a hard time making out his face from down here.
She can, however, tell that his gaze is trained on the miserable man from the corner, who's now not in the corner at all but heading, as they were, for the door. They're both frozen for a moment, before the man shoves his hands awkwardly in his pockets and looks away from Michael and at anything else, settling on his feet and (accidentally, she assumes) catching Tonks' eye.
"Hi," she says to him with a lopsided grin (because really, what else is she going to do?), and she sees an involuntary flash of amusement cross his features before his face falls back into what can, she thinks, only be described as misery. Or maybe shame.
He makes to turn away, but pauses when he notices that she's struggling to sit up. Tonks grimaces as she heaves herself up, trying to get closer to him, because honestly, she thinks, nobody should look that forlorn on a Friday night in a pub. She doesn't even consider the fact that she should probably be slightly alarmed at her sudden desire to hug him, or maybe just rub the worry lines away from his face with her finger, but she finds herself thinking he's too handsome to look so old like that when his eyes are so young.
Her thoughts catch up to her a moment later, when she's finally sitting and staring at him. Handsome? Did she really just think that? She's startled by it, to be honest, because he's wearing a horrible wool cardigan and looks, when he's frowning like that, to be at least a decade her senior, and yet in her drunken stupor all she can think is that he simply can't deserve the pain that put that look on his face.
All these deep (and ridiculous, she'll think the next morning) thoughts have taken place in a rush in her head and she's trying to think of what it is she wants to say to him as she struggles to stand (and wonders what Michael, the sodding git, is doing standing there still frozen instead of helping her), but everything in her head is replaced by one single thought as she stumbles and hits her head on the table.
Ow.
The pain catches her off guard, because she's been doing pretty well standing up so far and with her clumsiness in general, but suddenly all she can think is ow and oof as she ends up back where she started, wincing in pain (and embarrassment) as she returns, with even less dignity, to Michael and the sad looking stranger's feet.
On the plus side, she supposes, she can tell through her swimming and teary vision that Michael's finally been jarred out of his stupor and is kneeling down next to her. She still notices, though, when he continues to dart nervous glances at the man she'd been trying to get to, and it doesn't slip past her that he backs away a bit when the other man kneels down as well.
"Are you all right?"
They're the first words she ever hears him say, and in her alcohol-induced state she finds herself mesmerised by the gentleness in his voice, the genuine concern.
Instead of responding, however, her hand makes a belated trip up to the bump she can already feel forming on her forehead as she tells him, "I hit my head."
She's not sure why her vision's trained on him and not Michael, though later she'll justify it by saying he's obviously the more sober of the two, but she catches that flash of amusement again as he says, "Yes, you did. Can you tell me what day it is?"
She blinks at him while struggling to sit up once more. "Why, don't you know?"
She swears she can see him roll his eyes as he gently restrains her, and when she makes a pathetic whiny sound in protest he huffs a bit and helps her into a sitting position.
"I was asking to be sure you knew." He tells her, and she can feel herself flush as he takes her face in one hand and stares into her eyes.
It's all a fuzz, and she's not quite sure what he's doing, (because hey, sure he's attractive, but they're moving a little fast, aren't they?) but eventually he lets go of her, satisfied, and tells her, "Your pupils are responding normally and you seem relatively lucid, considering the amount of alcohol you've consumed in the past few hours. I don't think you have a concussion."
And oh, she thinks, that's what he was doing, and she's just a little confused when she feels something a bit like disappointment, because it's not like she wanted him to do the other thing, either. She tells herself she just misses the warm weight of his hand on her skin because now she feels a bit dizzy and lost, and when he stands to go she doesn't think twice and reaches out to stop him.
"Wait!" She says, a little louder than she thinks she meant to, because he goes back to looking uncomfortable and does that whole ashamed-eye-darting thing when the remaining people in the pub look around at them.
He raises his eyebrows at her, which makes her want to giggle for some absurd reason, and she realises that she hasn't told him what to wait for.
"Wait," she repeats, because when she opens her mouth again, she realises she has no idea what she wanted to tell him.
She staggers to her feet and approaches him, a bit unsteadily, she thinks, because she can see him hold out a hand to steady her and she feels the room sway dangerously.
"Thank you," she tells him, and without hesitation she throws her arms around him, because really, that seems like the most mature and reasonable thing to do right now. She holds him tightly, failing to notice the way he tenses at the contact, and then suddenly she feels an arm wrap around her stomach and pull her back.
She struggles for a moment, confused and a bit scared, but when she smells a scent that is distinctly Michael she realises it's him that's pulled her away from the man.
"What?" She asks him, turning around and ending up pressed against his firm chest when he doesn't release her but instead tightens his hold on her. If she was more sober she'd probably recognise his tense expression as fear, but for now she doesn't notice much. "I just wanted to give him a hug! He looks so sad."
She means for the last part to come out whispered, but when she turns back to the man and sees his face she wonders whether she's failed at that, too.
Oh well, too late now, she thinks to herself, so she faces him directly, wiggles a bit in a vain attempt to free herself from Michael's hold, and tells him in her best no-nonsense voice, "You look like you need a hug."
The second she's said it she hears Michael hiss her name in her ear, and she turns back to him, annoyed, and battles an urge to stomp her foot at him.
"What?!" She asks again, feeling her face flush with anger. When he says nothing but continues to hold her tightly, she hisses, "Will you let go of me!?"
But he doesn't, and instead looks somewhere past the stranger's shoulder as he mutters, in a low voice, "You'll have to excuse her, mister, she's had a bit too much to drink."
And then he doesn't wait for a response and drags her, by force, out the door and onto the street. She's still looking at the man's face, who at first looked baffled at her launching herself at him but now just looks ashamed again, and maybe even resigned, and she finds herself furious with Michael for putting that look back on his face. She's maybe even a bit upset with herself for failing to remove it.
And as she thinks more about it, about the sadness in his eyes and posture and everything about him, and she thinks about the way Michael reacted to him, without knowing anything about him, and about the way the other people in the pub seemed to avoid him, she finds herself inexplicably sad, and tearing up. Because it's not fair, she thinks again, for someone like that, someone that gentle and kind, to feel so sad.
It's ridiculous for her to be so worked up over someone who she's barely spoken to and never met before, and she knows that it is, even being as drunk as she is, but she still can't quite stop the tears from building.
Michael hasn't said a word to her since their little spat indoors, but as they walk towards his flat (or as he supports her and she stumbles), she can feel him finally calming down. But she still remembers that she's supposed to be mad at him, so as they get to his street (as she's long since accepted that she's too drunk not to splinch and plans on kipping on Michael's couch), she turns on him, eyes flashing.
"Did you have to be so mean?" She questions angrily, not even sure why she's so worked up on some stranger's behalf.
Michael just looks weary, and maybe exasperated, and he runs a hand through his short, dark hair with his free hand. "You don't read the Prophet at all, do you?"
"No, why would I?" She asks incredulously. "It's boring and long and–hey, don't change the subject!"
He just shakes his head at her, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like typical under his breath, and doesn't say anything back, instead putting an arm around her and practically carrying her up the stairs to his flat. He makes the whole thing seem quite effortless, which it probably is for him given her general smallness (which she absolutely refuses to recognise as shortness) and his rather impressive musculature.
By the time they're through his front door, she's temporarily forgiven him for being mean, because he's reminded her that Charlie Weasley is coming home tomorrow and now he's telling her that she can stay on his couch and greet Charlie in the morning and that he'll make her breakfast and a hangover potion.
When she finally does stumble onto the couch, she gazes up at his ceiling dreamily and feels herself give a massive yawn. Michael laughs at her, and pulls off her shoes and throws her a blanket, telling her he'll be in the next room and not to vomit on his carpet. She giggles at him, snuggles up in a ball, and promptly falls asleep, blissfully unaware of her friend's troubles.
~ o0o ~
Back in his room, Michael sighs heavily as he gets ready to sleep. He's a bit ashamed, really, that he'd frozen like that when he saw the man from the papers. But he'd recognised him, Remus Lupin, from the Prophet's article about the ex-defence teacher who'd, just a week or so ago, resigned from his post at Hogwarts. Mostly, he'd remembered the one word.
Werewolf.
And now, as he thinks of it, he is ashamed, because as a black man–and even further, a gay man–he knows what it's like to have people judge him without knowing him. But his parents, as is custom among magical parents, had cautioned him against werewolves, and his friends at school had shared scary stories about men like Fenrir Greyback. So when he'd seen the man, seen Remus Lupin, he'd been afraid, with no real reason to be.
Yet the man in the pub'd been all right. He'd helped Tonks when Michael'd dropped her, and he'd been...gentle. And sort of cute, in the professor-ish way, if he does say so himself, even if he had, as Tonks'd so eloquently put it, looked like he needed a hug.
Michael sighs, rolling over and burying his face in his pillow. He has other things to be concerned with; Charlie is finally coming hometomorrow, and it isn't as if anything bad has happened. He'll just have to hope Tonks won't remember it, or won't question him as to why he'd reacted that way. He'd be ashamed, he knows, to admit to her that he, of all people, carries a prejudice.
And besides, he reasons, he has no reason to worry Tonks with such information. After all, it isn't as if she'll ever see him again.
A/N: So, how'd you like it? A bit shorter than usual, I know, but it's kind of an intro/prologue of sorts.
Also, I'm sorry if it was hard to keep up with Tonks' thoughts/sort out what was actually happening. Obviously, in order for her to have had basically no inhibitions, she'd have been pretty drunk, which makes the relative coherency of her thoughts a bit unlikely. I didn't think I could manage to write an entire chapter and convey any sort of reason if I'd written her as completely trashed, though, so this is what happened–a bit of a balance, I guess. Just remember that she was drunker than she sounded! ;)
Next up: Tonks does, in fact, run into Remus again, but does she remember him from the pub?
Thanks for reading, chapter 2 should be up soon!