no_aphrodisiac

Chapter 5: makes the menacing cute-lipped

2006-06-08T10:56:20Z

Chapter eleven progress is... erm, coming along. W/E, man, w/e. Hopefully I want it up around or on my birthday, so we'll see how I go with that. Not too well, likely. This is the very first beta'd chapter, so if it looks markedly different in quality to the ones preceding this one then you can thank dbassassin for that.

Also, if you can guess where the chapter title comes from (and hint, it's obvious if you a) hear the music I put up with each chapter and b) if you know my taste of mysic anyway) I'll do something special. Like... um, put another chapter up, or something.

Love,
gun

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 184 hours, 22 minutes

The door of Number 12 slams shut as she drags herself wearily down the hallway, grateful for the respite from Mrs Black's horrible screaming. Skipping over the stair with the missing stones, she heads straight for the biscuit jar in the kitchen, where she passes Ron Weasley and Harry Potter devoting their attention to a plate of sandwiches. A chessboard lies abandoned at the far end of the kitchen table, the pieces wandering aimlessly across the squares. (Indeed, if one examines the bishop closer, you can see him checking his watch, as if running late for an appointment.)

"Lupin got back," Ron says as he crams a ham and relish sandwich into his mouth.

"He what?"

"Yeah, got back while you were at work today. Didn't even stop to talk to anyone, he just stumbled about the kitchen a bit, looking like he was about to pass out. Then he Flooed over to Hogwarts, didn't say what was wrong or anything. He's up in the study at the moment."

She stares at Ron strangely, and he shies away from her gaze. "Why didn't he owl me to let me know he got back? Is he all right now?"

Harry and Ron raise their eyebrows at each other. "I dunno."

She swallows a bit of biscuit, coconut sticking to her back teeth. "I might go check up on him."

Harry and Ron stare at her incredulously. "You really want to do that?"

"I'm sure I can handle it," she says as she pockets another biscuit or two into her robe pockets. "I arrested four people today, I'm sure I can handle an angry man with two percent muscle tone."

"Uh huh." Harry swallows his mouthful of salmon and cucumber, and looks back up at her. "We'll get you nice flowers for your funeral."

"Ta." She swishes away from them, taking the steps from the kitchen two at a time. Panting a little, she tackles the wooden staircase up to the second floor with a little less vigor, pausing when she reaches the landing outside the library door and knocking quietly. She hears no response, so she tentatively turns the handle, peering in through the crack.

The first thing she notices about the room is that the temperature is a good ten degrees warmer than down in the kitchen, in part due to the sunlight streaming in through the window in front of the desk. Remus Lupin sits at it, head in hands: his hair greasy, his clothes rumpled, his hands slightly twitching. Almost imperceptably, his breathing is laboured and jagged, and he turns to face her as the floorboards creak. She smiles a bit, giving a little wave.

"Nice to see you back. How come things took so long?"

He sighs, raising his eyebrows in recognition at her. She wanders over to stand directly behind him. "You all right? You look a bit peaky, is all; you weren't sick over there, were you?"

"Listen, Tonks, I'm not really in the mood for this now, maybe-"

"What, don't be silly! Tell us how your trip went. Here, I brought you up a biscuit-"

"Just shove off for a bit, all right?" he snaps at her, his facial muscles twitching as he grimaces, turning away from her and rubbing his face in his hands. "I told you I wasn't in the mood."

The breath catches in her throat, and she feels a stab in her gut at the tone in his voice. She forces herself to exhale, then grabs him by the shoulders and forces him to look at her, though he tries avoiding her line of vision.

"Look, I don't know what your problems are or what happened to you over there. Frankly, if you're going to be shitty to everyone, I couldn't care less. But I'm not going to let anyone speak to me like you just did, so you can either lose the attitude or get fucked." He nods, biting his lip in embarrassment. She leans in closer to him, pulling his face into hers. "Remus... Remus, what's wrong with your pupils?"

He pulls his face away from her, closing his eyes and turning back to the desk. She bites her lip, putting her hand on his shoulder gently. "Have you taken anything? You weren't drinking in Russia, were you?"

He shakes his head, not turning back to face her. "Oh god, I've done something so fucking stupid."

"Are you all right?" She pulls the biscuit out of her robe pocket, holding it out to him. "Anything a biscuit can't fix?"

He laughs, almost silently, accepting her peace offering. "Thanks." He puts it between his teeth, then screws his eyes shut again, warranting another eye-rub. "God, I am so, so sorry. I didn't mean to snap, I just had one of the shittiest weeks of my life."

She kicks her feet slightly in front of her, biting her top lip as he so often does. "What happened, Remus?"

He takes a bite of the biscuit, setting the crumbly remainder back down on a piece of parchment. "Don't get me started on it, it was just-"

"Was it Snape?"

"It's a long story."

"Yeah?" She leans into him, reaching for the crumbs of his biscuit and pops them in her mouth. "It's Friday afternoon, and I have no weekend plans. Try me."

He nods, resigned. "Close the door."

A bit taken aback, she nods, levelling her wand at the door and whispering Colloportus. The grand old door slams itself shut, and she looks back to him, his face returned to the palms of his hands.

"You have to promise that whatever I tell you does not leave this room."

She nods silently, inching closer to him along the desk. He pulls his face from his hands, leaning back in the chair and inhaling deeply.

"We... can I just..." He pauses, pulling a packet of dried green leaves and a little box of white paper squares out of his jacket pocket. He lies a piece of paper out, arranging a thin row of the tobacco out on it.

"Smoking is just as bad as drinking, you know."

"I never said I was going to give it up, though." He rolls his little cigarette, licking the edge of the paper and sealing it shut. Touching the tip of his wand to it, the end sparks orange, glowing and lighting his face in the failing afternoon light. Taking the first long drag, his hands steady somewhat, and his eyes glaze over.

"You were saying?"

"Right. We arrived in Russia, everything as normal as possible: him loathing me, me being relatively civil-"

"Relatively meaning..."

"Not killing him. Just being polite. But anyway. First few days, nothing amiss. Him being his usual antisocial fuckwit self, me being forced into antisocialism through the language barrier. I was fine with all that, save for me being entirely dependent upon him for basic survival over there."

"He didn't leave you stranded, did he?"

He shakes his head, taking another long, slow drag of the cigarette. "Not stranded, no. The second night we were there, things started getting weird."

"Weird?"

"I made some stupid comment on the way back to the hotel we were staying at, and he laughed at it."

She shudders. "My god, Snape laughing at something? That is creepy as all get out."

"That's what I thought, too. Well, it wasn't so much a laugh as it was a rude sort of leering, but nonetheless. It was really off, like him waking me up the next morning for breakfast, explaining what the Russian Ministry people were saying. It was unnerving, to say the least."

She notices a glass of water on his desk, and motions for it. He nods, and she takes a long sip, leaving the faintest smudge of pinkish lipgloss on the rim. "So that was it, him sucking up to you for a few days?"

He shakes his head. "The night before we were supposed to head home together, he took me to this wizarding pub down in the St Petersburg sewer systems. It was this incredibly bizarre conglomeration of these weird fucking eastern European wizards. It was pretty unnerving. According to him, it was a popular stamping ground for the Zjadacz Smierc."

"The what, sorry?"

"Zjadacz Smierc. The wizards who escapted from the Polish death-camps in World War two who fled into Russia and other European countries and had to survive by eating the dead. Violently anti-Muggle, for pretty good reason."

She blinked blankly at him.

"Zjadacz Smierc is Polish for 'eaters of death'." A grim smile. "Voldemort was hardly original. Not that there are any left of them to complain about it, seeing as he killed them all. They weren't ones to take orders. Voldemort established his reputation in northern Europe, and he drummed up a lot of support in his early days around that area."

"And he brought you to that pub because..."

"I have no idea why. Food was decent enough, and he was shouting. I've never seen Severus Snape showing generosity in his entire life, and here he was, ponying up for raw venison steaks and blood sausages and oh, the black pudding, Tonks! I was still wary then, but I was so hungry at that stage... I didn't care..." He falters, taking another drag, exhaling heavily so that faint little rings of smoke puff out his mouth. "I didn't know what I was feeling at the time though. I thought I must've had food poisoning, or a stomach bug, because I was feeling strange... you know, queasy, my vision was distorted. I felt like I'd been drinking, but honest to god, I hadn't touched a drop of alcohol in over a week, I promise. And he was just staring at me, hanging onto all the stupid shit coming out of my mouth. I have no idea what I was spouting, it was just gibberish. I couldn't stop."

Another lump forms in her throat, and she swallows it down, recognising the symptoms he was describing. "What happened then?"

"He leans forward, and he starts being rather civil, and almost charming, and I know there's something obviously fucking wrong going on, and I say this out loud to him. I told him that I was creeped out by his friendliness and his overall demeanour, and he just smirked at me.

"He said, 'Lupin, you're a disgrace the way you're acting. I can't expect any less, for your kind'. I just laughed it off - you have no idea how many times I've had people tell me that before. And he just sat there smiling, sipping at this foul drink that stank of metho and Pimms. Probably more metho than Pimms, judging from the clientele of this particular venue. And then... oh god..." He taps the ash from the edge of his fag out the window, exhaling and clenching his teeth.

"Remus, were you watching what you were drinking with him?"

"Not all night, no. I slipped out to the loo after I'd finished eating. It didn't taste any different. But I knew as soon as my head started spinning what'd happened to me."

"Oh god, I can't believe you trusted him not to-"

"I know now, all right," he says rather snappily, and as her head snaps back in shock he shakes his head in apology. "No, no, sorry about that too."

She rests a hand on his , the scars from his previous transformation scabbing and cracking at the edges. "It's fine; don't worry."

He takes one final long drag, blows it away from her and looks at her, fidgeting with his lips and blinking more than he probably should. His pupils are still violently dilated, the normal grey tones squeezed into the outer circumference as the black engulfs his irises.

"He started going on about all this stuff I had no real interest in - the people he associated with at school, where he used to spend his summers. I was just tired, and my eyes were spinning and flashing, and I just wanted a gallon of water, I was so parched. Then somehow the topic went from his school friends to mine, and how I must've had a right good time at school with all the humorous escapades of the Marauders. I think I must've lost it at that stage, and I started getting rather angry and accusatory at what he was inferring. He said that he'd always had doubts about my intentions toward him, and he said he wanted to give me the chance to rectify the situation." He stubs the ashy remains of his cigarette out on the edge of his desk, the ashes picked up in the wind. "I said to him that I had nothing to do with what happened that night in sixth year a hundred times, a thousand times that night. I tried to prove so hard to him the truth. I told him that I would've rather died than injured or killed anyone during the full moon, and after I'd blathered on a good ten or fifteen minutes he nodded, and said very sincerely that he believed me."

"Then what?"

"It was getting late by then - it was nearly two in the morning. Most of the foreign wizards had cleared off by then, and it was just me, him, and a couple of old German warlocks by the bar. He told me to calm down, and not to worry. He said that I wasn't the only person to have matured and got over our differences at school." He laughs bitterly. "Fucking twat. I think I'd figured out that my water was laced with veritaserum by that point, and I told him I thought so. He laughed at me again, told me not to be so paranoid."

She holds her breath quietly, watching as he ran his hands through his hair, staring out the window with glazed eyes. She reaches up to his head, stroking a piece of greasy reddish-brown hair behind his ear. He flinches a little, but relaxes at her touch, and emboldened, presses on.

"He started probing me with all these questions. Nothing too personal at first. Just general things: what Sirius and James really thought of him, whether I'd been involved in any of the pranks, whether I'd ever wanted to stop them at school. It wasn't anything I wasn't prepared to ever discuss with him, just not under the current circumstances. I was so tired, but so lucid, anything he wanted to know about me just came out. Some of the questions I didn't want to answer, some words I bit down on as hard as I could, but in the end they had to come out. I couldn't stop. It was horrible. I remember it being four in the morning in some dismal pub in Leningrad, him probing me about my sexual proclivities, whether I hated my parents or not, whether I was ever resentful of Sirius and James. And I could do nothing to stop it. My eyes hurt, and my stomach was churning, and I just wanted to die, and every single bit of my history was being extracted from my guts with a scalpel, and oh god..."

He pauses, breathing heavily, and Tonks puts her arm around his shoulder, leaning her forehead into the dip between his neck and shoulders. "What did he do to you?"

"By this stage I was hysterical, trying to tell him to stop, that I was tired and sick and scared, and that I was about to collapse. He didn't listen to me. He just kept ripping into me with questions, had I betrayed my friends, had I stolen before, had I ever killed someone on the full moon?" She closes her eyes in pain, holding him closer to her chest. "And then..."

She kisses the side of his neck, feeling the layers of sweat and dirt and cold animalistic fear leave a mark on her lips. He shudders slightly, his breathing extremely heavy, his hands clenched into fists and his short hair sticking up wildly. "He asked me... Tonks, I can't, I can't. I can't say it again. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Then don't."

His breathing subsides minutely, and he clenches to her robes, his eyes screwed shut in pain. He lowers his head as the booming pulse in his head silences, and he looks up at her, gulping for air like a drowning man. The shaking remains, however, and his shirt clings to his back and shoulders "What happened... he asked me something I thought nobody knew, something I hoped nobody knew. I couldn't lie. And he..." Another shudder, another deep intake of air.

"Settle. Does it involve anyone else?"

He nods again, beads of sweat coursing their way down his forehead. "Harry. Not directly Harry, but if he were to find out-"

"Shh." She strokes his head again. "Whatever it was, is there any way he can find out about it?"

He stares into space for a little, then swallows heavily. "Snape said he was taking him for Occlumency again this year. You know he has talents in Legimency, if Snape just happens to be 'thinking' about what I told him..."

"Oh. God."

"I know."

"Can't I talk to Snape for you, tell him that he better not even think of mentioning-"

He shakes his head. "There's no way you can tell someone to stop thinking about something." He sighs again, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead and closing his eyes as the low rays of the afternoon sun hit his retinas. "I've been so stupid, Tonks."

"Did Snape leave you alone after that?"

The beads of sweat drench his collar, and with a dry sob, he clenches his teeth, staring dead ahead of him. "I woke up the next morning in our hotel room alone. The Portkey was missing from the table in the sitting area. I didn't have any money, any other clothes, any language skills. I knew fuck-all people in Russia, and the hotel manager was banging on the door, screaming at me in Russian. I thought I was going to be sick. I couldn't remember what'd happened to me the night before. Veritaserum fucks with your short-term memory. I could barely remember my own name, or where I'd left my wand." His words are forced, grating against his vocal chords, and his hands are shaking violently. "It took me a couple of days to get my bearings. Lucky it's summer, or I would've frozen over there."

Her blood rises, and she squeezes his shoulder. "Do you want to take a bath or something, cool yourself down?"

He nods, and she pulls away from him, sliding off the desk and patting him on the shoulder.

"Don't worry about it, all right? He's not worth thinking about. It's not your fault, Remus."

He nods. "Right."

"Are you sure I can't I talk to Snape about this?"

He shakes his head violently. "No, don't, don't worry about it. It will all work itself out." He slowly strides to the door, stretching his neck out as he walks, and turns to her as he reaches the door. "Sorry for all that rot," he says as he smiles weakly at her, bitter, tired and violated. He pulls the door shut quietly behind him. She stares at the door, mind reeling, and picks at the biscuit crumbs he left behind.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 195 hours, 6 minutes

She wakes to the birds at the crack of dawn, the sky still an inky black with only a slither of orange on the horizon. Under her door, amber light spills across the floorboards from a far region of the house. Pulling a pair of shorts on, she slips to the ground. She tiptoes across her room and out onto the landing, then down the stairs, trying not to wake the Weasleys and the other children. She halts outside the kitchen door, pressing her ear against it and holding her breath, as if the minute currents of air would spark immediate interest from the parties inside.

"-found him in Chernobyl. The Ukranian Ministry of Magic assisted greatly, we don't know how long he'd holed himself up there-"

"-unless he was there since he fled the Triwizard-"

"-bloody. We think he tried to cut the Mark out of his skin. He was nearly unconscious by the time Snape-"

She moves closer to the door, trying to identify the voices. One, she knows for a certain, is Remus Lupin's, but the other she can't recognise.

"And you, Remus? No problems for you on this trip?"

"I'm fine, sir."

"Did you get along with Severus all right?"

"No problems."

A pause. She imagines a knowing nod, and the recognition of the voice and tone hits her. "It's about time you and he started getting on, Remus. It's too long a time for grown men to hold grudges."

She frowns, and Remus' voice continues. "We cleared the air on a lot of things, which is good, I suppose. Don't imagine we'll ever be friends, but being civil to each other is a start."

"That is true." A scraping of a chair, the sound of old parchment rolling. "Dare say you look like you need a good nights' sleep. Haven't you been getting enough?"

"Not of late, Headmaster."

"Have you been firm in your resolve?"

"Not a drop in over a week."

Another pause. "You're doing well, Remus. I believe this is the worst that you will have to face, if I can remember from when Aberforth first quit. He wasn't very successful, mind you. Are we keeping you awake, Miss Tonks?"

Shit, she says under her breath, pushing open the door. "Sorry for eavesdropping," she says as she stares daggers at Lupin. Dumbledore nods to her quietly.

"You are forgiven, of course." He nods to Lupin, gathering a scroll on the table. "I've spoken to Kingsley. He says he is happy to head to Bath in your place today."

"Thank him for me if you see him, will you?"

"Of course. Good day, Miss Tonks." With that and a stately nod, and a loud crack fills the kitchen, the sound ricocheting off the stone walls. Tonks stares at Lupin, her eyes narrowing.

"You lied to him."

"Pardon?"

She knows she has little chance of seeming dignified yet rightfully indignant whilst wearing an old tee-shirt with the slogan 'This Insert has a Protective Coating' and a pair of shorty-shorts. But nonetheless, she stands as tall as she can, her hands on her hips, looking down at him ferociously. "You lied to Dumbledore, I heard you! You know perfectly well that you were two inches away from murdering that piece of filth."

He sighs. "Tonks, today I'd like to try something where I don't disappoint at least one person before supper. God knows I've disappointed everyone else."

"Don't give me that rubbish," she says as she rolls her eyes, turns on her heel and strides towards the door. Her indignation would have been far more impressive, however, if she hadn't stepped straight into the hole leading into the cellar. Landing hard on her ankles, she rolls on her side, swearing loudly and forgetting that it's only 4.35am. "Erm... Remus... I think I left my wand upstairs - ow, fuck- don't suppose you could lend us a light down here?

She hears his chair scrape, and he drops down beside her, though far more gracefully. "Lumos."

"Thanks."

"Not a problem." He holds out an arm to her, and she pulls herself up. "You're not hurt at all, are you?"

"Fine. Just a flesh wound."

"Lucky."

She peers around into the shadows created by the boxes and chattels, and shivers. "It's horrible down here."

"Want a leg up?"

"Pardon!"

"Here." He hoists her around the midsection, and she shrieks, kicking her legs out. "Don't be ridiculous. Grab onto the steps."

She does so, and he pushes her upwards. She scrambles onto the kitchen floor, recoiling from his arms and blushing. "Ta."

"Lend an arm." She nods, and sticks her arm down into the hole, pulling him up. "Lovely way to start the day, dislocating your shoulder."

"You should be lucky. I have all the boys lining up to have their shoulders dislocated."

"Hussy. You want tea?"

"Nah, think I'll go back to bed."

"Your loss," he says as he moseys toward the kitchen, calmly brushing dust off the front of his trousers.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 196 hours, 4 minutes

One Remus Lupin notices his stack of magazines has been shifted.

One Remus Lupin notices grubby boy's fingerprints on them.

One Remus Lupin notices that one of them is bent and crooked, as though thrown in haste and horror and disgust.

One Remus Lupin points his wand at the stack, and mutters Incendio at the offending smut, and watches it burst into flames, the fire licking at the red haired girls and their suggestive poses.

One Remus Lupin wishes for death. Death, and a drink.

Chapter 4: The Spy Who Loathed Me

2006-05-01T13:41:22Z

My last non-beta'd chapter. Enjoy.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 82 hours, 50 minutes

(The aforementioned list was found magically attached to the bedroom door of aforementioned werewolf by one Molly Weasley whilst on her cleaning rounds of the house. Confused, she passed the note on to Harry and Ron, thereby guaranteeing the possessions of the mentioned werewolf no privacy whilst in his sojourn behind the Iron Curtain.)

Dear All and Sundry,

I hesitate to be so demanding and whiny and naggy, but while I'm away I might need a few small favours from you all which will be generously reimbursed for upon my return from The Motherland (see disclaimer).

1. Please, somebody feed Archimedes, though when you do you should probably not let your hand come within two feet of the tank - he gets a bit nippy around dinner time.

2. Harry and Ron, if you happen to find any more alcohol down in that cellar, please set it aside as I can use it for Christmas presents later in the year.

3. Someone please tell the Misses Granger and Tonks to lower their eyebrows in disapproval and suspicion at this.

4. The plants! Not too much water - they're just seedlings. A bit of water every second evening, and check on my rose leaves to make sure the aphids aren't attacking them. They might need fertilising around Thursday, but not too much because apparently phosphorus is toxic in large doses. (Dung - do not confuse the fertiliser with your home brew yeast. They may look similar, but I'm not going to spend yet another eventful evening with you at the St Mungo's Emergency Room while they try and extract your vital organs out of your mouth in order to regrow entirely new ones. That gets old after the fiftieth time.)

5. Joke's on you if you try and nick off with any of my worldly possessions, for I have none. (Yes, that means you, Dung.)

6. If anyone's seen a cheap looking exercise book lying about, please leave it in my room as I have displaced it. There is nothing of interest to read in it (matter of fact, there's no text in it to read anyway) so don't bother trying to put a whole arseload of spells on it to test this theorem.

Take care, one and all, and I should be back in a week (though I can't guarantee whether or not I will return in an otherwise unpoisoned condition, considering that Severus shall be accompanying me),

RJL

Disclaimer: The generous reimbursement is more than likely to be cheaply purchased Latvian Eurovision singles and beer brewed in lovely Chernobyl sold to me on the rampant black market over here. Be that as it may, someone still needs to take care of my stuff.

Addendum to disclaimer: Yes, Tonks, I will be abstaining from sampling the Russian vodka wares. I'm not a total drunken souse, you know - I'm only half Irish, after all.

Nymphadora Tonks is in a girly mood today - a mood she is rarely in. The combat boots are discarded in favour of silky little Chinese slippers she found at a flea market, her usual military styled hair a dark brown to her shoulders. It's not conventionally pretty, or beautiful, or sexy, or even very feminine, but it's her own version of delicate that's rarely seen on in the battlefield around her, and that in itself is lovely.

Bloody shame he is out of the country and thereby missing said Loveliness.

She is sitting on his bed at present with the exercise book, fingering the cardboard cover. Clearly he wouldn't be so agitated over a crummy sixty-four pages of recycled pulp with nothing written in it. The man might be poor, but he's certainly not a cheapskate.

"Ow! Motherfucking thing! I'll bloody--"

"You right there?" She swivels round to face Ron, who's sucking on a bloody thumb and shooting daggers at the fish in the bowl atop Lupin's desk.

"That's not a goldfish! That's... well, I'm no fishologist or anything, but there's got to be bloody piranha blood in that thing!"

"Icthyologist?" pipes up Hermione, who's sitting cross-legged in front of his bookshelf, pulling down titles and flipping them open to the cover pages.

"Yeah, that. I'm not feeding that thing again. Harry, you're used to this sort of thing, you deal with it."

"Piss off." Harry's lying on his stomach beside the bed, peering underneath it in desperate hope of finding something, anything, to alleviate his boredom.

"Isn't this all a little sad, really?" Ginny says, peering into the wardrobe at a long row of drab grey work shirts. "Look at us - so bored that we're snooping through someone elses' stuff."

"We're not snooping," Hermione says in a very defensive tone. "And besides, look at what you're doing."

"Yes, but at least I can face up to being a snoop." Ginny pushes a row of cardigans along, clucking her tongue and adopting a very facetious tone to her voice. "My, you cannot say the man isn't fashion forward. Would you look at this darling chocolate jumper? And this tres chic slate cardigan? And oh my, I would just die for a taupe pullover like this one."

"You don't need to get snarky, you know," Tonks says, closing the empty book and frowning. "Poor bloke hasn't bought any new clothes since... well, I don't know, since ever, I suppose."

"Looks like a relative who didn't like him very much left him with all their shitty clothes that they got from relatives that didn't like them."

"Got a point, you know," says Ron as he nurses his barely-nibbled finger with a tissue stolen from the bedside table. Underneath him, Harry makes a triumphant grunt, pulling out a stack of magazines.

"My god, look at all this stuff. He must like redheads, looking at the..."

His eyes gloss over, and he takes a slow intake of air, tossing the magazine on the top of the pile in Ron's direction as if they were scaldingly hot. Ron ducks out of the way, screwing up his face. "Don't do that! Ugh! Look at this stuff! That's disgusting."

A clucking of the tongue distracts Ron from his righteous indignation, and he turns his head to face Ginny, who is rolling her eyes and looking utterly bemused.

"Oh, seriously. Raise your hand, anyone, if you actually can't believe that a single guy in his late thirties with no prospect of getting laid owns pornography."

Around the room, the figures remain still, not a hand raising into the air.

"See? I'm right. I'm always right."

"Yeah, well..." Ron pulls the sleeves of his jumper down over his palms, his face reddening slightly. "He's a teacher, he's not meant to be--"

"What, a human being?"

"Do you want to get into this argument?"

Tonks picks up one of the magazines, flipping through it quickly and blushing. There's nothing particularly smutty, or even debauched to them. Interestingly enough, all the women have red hair. Harry is doing his best to ignore this fact. She notices him looking away from everyone else, and she pulls the magazines away from Ron.

"Leave them be, Ron, it's not nice to go through peoples' stuff." She picks the pile up from the bed, sliding it under the frame and clapping her hands more enthusiastically than she felt. "Come on, let's leave his stuff be, all right?"

They nod, Ron rather creeped out, Ginny rather bored, Hermione rather suspiciously and Harry rather shellshocked, however he is the only left sitting on the end of Lupin's bed as the others file out of the room, Ron scuffing his shoes down the hallway to the consternation of the portraits hanging on the walls. He stares, mouth open, his lips dry and cracking as the saliva on them evaporates in the August heat. Tonks swallows, looking at him, picking up the discarded exercise book she left on his duvet and clearing her throat quietly.

"Erm... you all right?"

"What? Oh, yeah yeah, fine... just a million miles away..."

She bites her lip, sighing silently. "Do you want to talk about anything... I mean, you don't have to talk about anything if you don't want to, but... just, yeah... you can come to me if you like. I might have girl germs, but--"

Harry laughs fakely, shaking his head and scratching his nose. "No, nothing to talk about, I don't think. Sorry."

"No, no, don't be sorry." She waves the book desolately, flipping it open and hanging it upside down, as if expecting letters and numerals to cascade down into her head. "I hear you have a bit of a talent with wringing the truth out of enchanted parchment, Harry. Care to have a gander?"

"I thought he said that there was nothing in there."

"He's lying. There's something in there, I know it."

He takes the book off her, frowning. "I thought you said we shouldn't rifle through his stuff."

"This isn't rifling through his stuff."

"No, you're right. This is far, far worse. Maybe you could write something in it, see if it responds. That's what I did with Tom Riddle's diary."

"Hmm. Got a quill?"

Harry scans his surroundings, settling on a miserable looking pigeon feather on the desk on the far side of the room. He slides off the bed, picking it out of an ink bottle, and hands it to Tonks, sitting down cross-legged again. She tickled her chin with the quill, contemplative. She sets the nib onto the cheap paper, letting the ink soak through a little, and scrawls, with a messy, carefree hand, 'My name is Nymphadora Tonks'.

At once, text slowly fades onto the page, beautiful, curled and sloping to the left. Harry and Tonks lean in close to the book, Tonks holding her breath in anticipation.

'Nice try, Nymphadora. If you think you can try and drag information out of me this way you've got another thing coming. Better luck next time, love. RJL.'

"Bugger!" She tosses the book down in frustration, crossing her arms and pouting. Harry laughs a little, more genuinely than before.

"Well, now you know that he's hiding something in there."

"I suppose."

"And he called you 'love'."

She rolls her eyes. "He calls most people 'love'. He calls Mundungus 'love'. Dirty bastard called me Nymphadora. I'm going to give him hell when he gets back. And why would it matter if he calls me 'love' or not? It doesn't matter to me if he does or not, it's not as if we're together or anything... huh, not like that's going to happen."

"Right." Harry looks away, eyes bulging in disbelief, though trying to hide it from her.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 94 hours, 00 minutes

She's in the kitchen, sipping a glass of milk and nibbling on a digestive biscuit. She is tired, having been woken up at four AM by lights in the kitchen and the quiet scraping of drawers in the room next door to her, but sleep so far is proving elusive.

She hasn't found the guts to return to her parents' Windsor townhouse, her pink lacy bedspread from childhood and Brer Rabbit doll by her pillow inappropriate given the current circumstances. More likely though, it is her parents she can barely stand to be around, as they have reverted to suffocating, overcompensating and intrusiveness to cope with the loss of Andromeda's only close relative. She can't bear to be asked one more time if she is all right, and if she needs someone to talk to, and she feels a pang of hypocrisy at her pestering of Harry earlier in the afternoon. It would be her father's genes responsible for that, as the Blacks were not notorious for the Freudian breakdown, though they were responsible for countless other varieties of breakdown.

The Black Manor is barely better, but the relative apathy of the inhabitants, due to their own multiple problems, provides her with slight psychological asylum. She still gets scared walking along the corridors alone at night, and whenever she is awake she needs the lights on full ball to prevent her mind from drawing conclusions from the freakish shadows cast by their even more freakish objects.

Her hair is red tonight; gingerish, brittle like toffee and plaited to slightly below her shoulders. Her fringe is parted to the side, and she rather looks like a Raggedy-Anne doll: fleshy and curved, fragile, infantile. Her nose has freckled from being out in the sun, the skin peeling a little on the tip.

She's found herself gnawing on her top lip like he does, scraping her lower teeth over the dry skin on the cusp, sucking on it and flicking it with her tongue. It's a very distracting pursuit, and she imagines that's part of the reason why he fidgets with it so much, another part being insecurity and an even smaller part being because the carnivore inside him just likes feeling meat between his teeth.

For now, she's given up on the exercise book, leaving it in as close to the original position as she can remember. If left to his own devices, he'd never ever tell her a single thing about himself, but that was what alcohol was for - to gently coax out a little snippet about himself; a childhood favourite food, a favourite scent, how he'd got those scars along his forearms. Shame he'd given up drinking; it more or less left him impenetrable.

Tonight, for the first time in a few months, she actually feels clean, sitting with her short little nightie with a biscuit and milk, her hair drying in a plait and smelling of Pears soap and a little violet scented talcum powder. Tomorrow she will have to return to work after a long weekend, and to celebrate her last night away from crime and hateful human instinct she is curled up on a rickety wooden chair with a novel from Lupin's bookshelf, Snowflake, propped up on the table with her now-empty glass of milk. The pages are yellow and curling, the fabric cover shiny and worn away around the corners, but it's this age to it that makes her feel comfortable and nostalgic for her youth.

A soft hooting from outside almost jolts her back out of alignment for a second, and she peers out the window into darkness, no owl visualising. She stands up, dog-earing a page and laying the book flat on the table, and tiptoes to the window, looking out at whatever is illuminated by the fire in the kitchen.

A large brown owl perches on a branch of the fig tree outside the kitchen, and she slides the glass doors open to approach it. As she nears it, she notices an envelope tied to its leg, words written in a beautiful, left-sloping hand. She unties the envelope, and the owl flies off, shrieking into the night as it leaves to hunt mice before its flight back to Russia.

Closing the door behind her, she walks toward the kitchen table, bumping into a pair of wellington boots left beside the countertop, and sits down, sliding her pinkie into an opening in the envelope seal, her tongue poking out slightly in anticipation.

To everyone at Number 12,

Arrived in Russia this morning and have been to the Russian Ministry. Ours is more architecturally impressive, I think, despite the historical... well, history of the Russian Ministry. Severus was not aware of the irony of constructing an American Muggle fast-food restaurant over the burial place of one of communism's most important figure heads. The man cannot grasp irony or humour, please spare me. Besides the entrance to the Ministry having a subsistence level of air conditioning, I was also able to buy a rather sub-par meal for the equivalent cost of less than a sickle. Things that make you go 'hmmm', indeed.

The Russian Minister is a rather entertaining fellow, despite the Ministry itself being only what I can describe as 'esoteric'. The Muggle and magical Russian Ministries have much in common, the oligopoly and cronyism notwithstanding. The Minister, Pyotr Kournikov (apparently the distant relative of a famous Muggle tennis player), invited me to partake in a Firewhisky tasting tour within five minutes of my arrival at the Ministry by wildly gesticulating at me and using his limited English skills, all of which are no doubt courtesy to the temple of Capitalism hiding the entrance to the government. Is my alcoholism that obvious that someone would accuse me of it five days after having a drink? I don't know, I just don't know. Fortunately enough Severus was more than happy to look at me disapprovingly so I had to decline. I get the impression that Severus is saying not-very-nice things about me to the Russians, for I alone cannot understand Russian, and I was receiving some very strange looks.

We are meeting a source tomorrow to help us with ... well, the very nature of our visit.

Best be off: I want to visit the Royal Ballet and have finally convinced Severus to accompany me after seven hours of needling him on the Underground.

Have fun all, and don't go through my stuff,

RJL

She grins, her cheeks glowing red and her mouth pulled into a wide smile. Glancing about the messy table for a spare piece of parchment and a quill, she tears off a length of it from the end of a rather curt report sent to the Order by Fleur Delacour, whose romantic prelude with one William Weasley has since ended on a minor coda.

Remus,

Received your owl just then! Don't let Snape give you any rubbish or treat you badly, otherwise he will think he can get away with it.

England is boring. Come back and entertain us, you're rather entertaining, you know. Well, you are for me anyway. I hope you packed enough warm stuff, it gets very cold in Russia from what I've heard. Do you need any wolfsbane? Make sure that you get Snape to make you some if you do.

I borrowed a book out of your room - is that all right? We've all been desecrating your belongings, and I just know that Mundungus has his eye on those delightful lacy underpants in your drawer. He simply salivates at the sight of them.

Will pass on the cheers to all in the house, and take care of yourself!

Tonks.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 106 hours, 6 minutes

(The following letter was delivered the cubicle of Nymphadora Tonks in the Ministry of Magic by a rather confused looking owl with a ruddy beak and small eyes.)

Dear Mum,

The underpants are not mine, they are probably the ones I originally stole from Mundungus. That wasn't envy in his eyes, that was anger and vengefulness. He's going to steal my garters in retribution.

In case the point is not clearly obvious to you, I attained legal adulthood back in 1978, meaning I have now spent the past nineteen years in glorious legality. Consequently, I am also able to feed and dress myself.

Alas, Severus will continue to think he can walk all over me, as he has done so for the past twenty-odd years. It bothers me not in the slightest. One must learn to pick their battles. It is ultimately like that Muggle television program I saw on a television in the Underground station where the people fight over infidelity and throw chairs at one another: no matter who wins, everyone is a loser.

Keep safe

RJL

ps. Please attach specific list of suggestions for your birthday present.

pps. You are most free to borrow my books.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 106 hours, 9 minutes

(Returned to Russia, the owl looking rather hungover in the interim)

Dear Sentient Life Force

I never would have guessed at your age, you know, what with the grandpa jumpers and crows feet and all. I shall stock up on the epsom salts and incontinence pads in your absence, old man.

My birthday list, for your approval:

1. Your favourite colour

2. Your favourite smell

3. Your favourite member of the Beatles

4. Whom you shared your first kiss with

5. Where

6. When

7. Was it any good

8. Why do you bite your lip?

9. Where have you stashed all that alcohol that was downstairs before you left? Sneaky bastard!

10. Where were you born?

11. Can we borrow your wind-up record player?

12. Lemon or lime?

13. Favourite dinner?

14. Is it true you voluntarily handed in your prefects badge in protest at one of the candidates for Head Girl?

15. And is it also true that you were suspended for a week for doing so?

16. Was it you that left all that mustard on Ron's pants for Kreacher to try and clean out?

17. Well done if you did so: he's still ranting and raving about it now.

That's all I can think of for now. Will try and come up with more later.

Ta ta,

Tonks

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 111 hours, 43 minutes

(Dropped on her head on the way out of the Ministry.)

You cheeky devil. I shan't be prodded that easily, your job is much harder than that I'm afraid. And I'm not so poor that I can't afford to actually buy you something.

The longer I'm alone with Severus, the longer I'd really like to shave his eyebrows off.

RJL

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 112 hours, 21 minutes

(Tied to Hedwig as she headed out the door for Order Duty.)

Please do, Remus, I would be ever so grateful. I would prepare you lunch every day if you would do that. I don't care for expensive presents, I want to know more about you, Mr Lupin sir.

xoxo

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 120 hours, 56 minutes

(On the doorstep as she stumbled into Number 12, Grimmauld Place, yawning. Envelope inscribed with 'Nymphadora'.)

Kiss hug kiss hug? I blush at the inference. There's nothing to know, as Mr Lupin is a very boring man aside from the incontinence, which is not a very interesting trait indeed. I can't say that I want to kill Severus, but... well, I would approve if he would cease to exist. I am dying for a drink. I am in freaking Russia, the home of vodka and other tasty alcoholic beverages. I chose the worst time to quit drinking, ever.

ps. God knows I'm not stupid enough to let you cook for me. Do you take me for a fool?

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 121 hours, 00 minutes

(Passed back to Hedwig, scrawled messily as she heads upstairs for a bath and a sleep.)

You know better than to call me 'Nymphadora'. Mr Lupin is indeed a rather fascinating fellow, and I would be honoured to hear more about him above all else. I would not, of course, like to hear more about his opinions on my culinary abilities.

Slip some salt into the sugar and offer it to him with his tea.

Ta ta

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 129 hours, 4 minutes

(Found beside the early edition of The Daily Prophet, rolled up on the kitchen table.)

See, Nymphadora, it's ideas like that which don't lend much credit to your skills in the kitchen. However, they do lend tremendous weight to your skills at sabotage, which are slightly up there with Peeves putting cling-wrap on the toilet seat and olive oil on door handles. You Macchiavellian genius, you.

Assignment ended early. Will be back tomorrow. Severus is lucky he is still alive.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 129 hours, 4 minutes

(Added in with a letter to Snape from Dumbledore to hand to the Russian Minister for Magic.)

Can't wait to see you again, there's so little to catch up on from my end.

Not Nymphadora

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 137 hours, 11 minutes

(Written in her easy print, very clear to read, blue ink. Envelope not addressed to anyone, however Hedwig knows where to go.)

Extended the assignment, have they? You got my hopes up you wicked thing, you.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 149 hours, 37 minutes

(The writing is less printed than it normally is, a little tenser.)

Are you all right? I thought you said you were coming back two days ago. Snape is back already and has been for quite a bit.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 160 hours, 18 minutes

(The writing is now illegible and hurried.)

Remus, I'm starting to get worried about you. Please let me know where you are and when you're coming home.

Chapter 3: Megalomania and Horticulture

2006-04-05T12:24:11Z

This comm now has a user bio and history. Party.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 67 hours, 16 minutes

Harry and Ron found a hidden storage space in the stone stairs leading down to the kitchen. Apparently the stones have to be stepped on in a precise order for the bottom three to slide away to reveal yet another staircase, this one made of wood. I banged my head on the stones when I was going down there. There must've been a scalding hex plastered onto the handrails, because Ron's palms are blistering and scarred. I sent him up to Molly and Arthur, who is currently itemising the consumables, none of which I am allowed and all of which are worth an absolute bloody fortune. Mundungus is hanging about him salivating over the Latour.

Items thus far recovered: one set of golf clubs, oak and platinum; four bottles of Château Latour Pauillac, 1974 vintage; viola, old and out of tune, with R BLACK engraved on the handle; case of Tanquerays' gin (Severus pretended not to be interested but he was CLEARLY stealing a look over at it every now and again - lousy man, fabulous taste); forty-eight piece set of solid sterling silver cutlery (once again, not allowed to handle though for entirely different reasons); a bottle of Penfolds Grange Hermitage, 1982 vintage; ivory chess pieces encrusted with rubies (white) and emeralds (black), which Ronald Weasley has acquired; Wedgwood flatware with a willow pattern; a bottle of Agatha perfume, which Mrs Weasley assures me is the official perfume of Her Majesty the Muggle Queen; books: oh, the books! A first edition print of 'Vanity Fair' with an embossed leather cover and yellow pages, a hand-bound edition of 'King Lear', and a devastatingly tiny publication of T. S Eliot's 'Wasteland' which fits right in the pocket of my jacket. Those are only the ones under the stairs; there must be boxes of them in here. Criminal, none of them look like they've ever been opened except 'Wasteland', which I know for a fact to be a favourite of Sirius'.

It's a fairly incredible collection of things. Not things that people have loved, spent time with, savoured, devoured. Just things to display, impress. That the wine isn't drunk is offending not only the blue-blooded snobbery of my English heritage but the compulsive alcoholism of my Irish heritage. The only thing that looks worn is the viola; the moisture and time has made the wood crack and buckle, and the strings are rusted. Sirius always complained about Regulus' playing when he'd get back from holidays (when he was allowed back home, anyway), regaling, in dismal terms, how he would commit fraternicide the next time he had to hear a horribly atonal rendition of 'Hot Cross Buns'. Sirius himself was never offered the option of learning an instrument, which I think is a good thing if one is to share a room with him for seven years or longer.

I can understand now why it's down here. A week after I'd moved in here with Sirius, there was suddenly an abundance of cupboard space. I'd never really questioned it, but now I think harder I remembered the bottom steps leading down to the kitchen as being less dusty than the rest of the floor. There are countless more chattels, no doubt, in the boxes and crates and trunks pushed to the edge of this room. I'm guessing there's a piano

"Are we going out now, or shall we just stay indoors for the rest of the day?"

"Pardon?" He slams the book shut, looking up at the girl with angry purple hair.

"Well, it's such a lovely day that I thought you might want to stay down here in the dank as opposed to looking at plants for the garden."

"Oh; right, coming up in a second."

Her head recedes from view, and he pulls himself up the rickety stone stairs, blowing out his candle and squinting despite the darkness of the corridor in front of him. She greets him at the top of the landing, hands on hips.

"Why a Muggle nursery? There's always Greengraves in Diagon Alley."

He brushes a bit of dust off the seat of his pants. "For a change, Tonks, I thought the garden would look lovely in the absence of plants that don't bite, sting, strangle or otherwise endanger human life. What this house needs is some colour." With that, he grabbed her by the hand, pulling her down the stairs and into the kitchen, through the door and into a dusty old garage. Beside a covered-up, enchanted Grey Ghost is his car; a 1983 Mitsubishi Gemini, grey paint peeling off in patches.

"Can't we just Apparate? That thing is an utter deathtrap."

"You," he said, opening the garage door, "are a complainer. We can't Apparate to a Muggle nursery, and in that case how does one expect to bring back the shrubbery?"

"The shrubbery can bloody well walk for all I care. That car doesn't have airbags or properly opening windows."

"Fussy girl." He unlocks his door and slides in, flicking the lock on her side. "You've been in it before and you're not dead yet."

She buckles herself in, poking at the buttons of his radio as the engine roars to life and the music blares tinnily into the car. "You got any cassettes or discs?"

"Just the radio. Not that embracing of Muggle technology," he says, craning over his shoulder as the car reverses out of the garage into the street, "but not willing to part with Muggle music." He corrects the wheel, and the car sets off smoothly, cruising past the council terrace houses lining Grimmauld Place.

"Was it weird growing up with a Muggle dad and a witch mother?"

"A little, but not very. It seemed very ordinary for me. Didn't change my notion that all fathers are spectacularly unspectacular people, not even mentioning his lack of job or moral fibre. Thank goodness I'll never have children."

"I wouldn't mind kids, you know."

He pulls up to a red light, the car in front of him indicating to the right. "Oh?"

"Yeah. I like kids, they're so... I don't know. They're so optimistic for a start, I like that, and so genuinely sweet and good."

"Madam," he says as he follows the car in front of him around, "you obviously have not taught Draco Malfoy."

"He's my cousin, I know enough of the little spiv to know that whatever he is can hardly be classified as human, or even innocent. But... yeah, I wouldn't want that kid, but I would like kids. Before I'm thirty, maybe."

"And you're twelve now. You have a whole life ahead of you."

She slaps him on the arm, blushing, as he glances up at his rearview mirror. "Twenty four, thankyou. It's my birthday soon, you know. In three whole weeks. What are you going to get me? You'd better be getting me something, because you owe me for all the times I've overlooked you cheating at cards."

"Remus Lupin never cheats at cards."

"He does, I've seen him. You can't have a hand of five aces."

"Well, what would you like?"

She puts a finger on her chin in a mock-thoughtful display, humming loudly. "I don't know. Something pretty. I don't have enough pretty things. Torn things, yes. Leather things, yes. Utterly debaucherous things, yes. Something pretty and nice, no. And that's only my underwear."

"Stop it, you're making me blush. I shall get you a book. A nice, heavy, dusty book that smells like the basement in the block of flats I used to live at, which may be because it's still in the basement of the block of flats I used to live at."

"There are enough books at Number 12."

"There are never enough books, Nymphadora."

Another slap on the arm. "You are a bad, bad man. So what plants do you want to get for the garden?"

"I don't know. I'll have to order in some topsoil; you should see the poor quality of the ground at that place. Had to sprinkle lime all over the clay just to break it up. Then I don't know. Roses, maybe, some lavender. I don't know too much about plants. I intend to walk in there and emerge with the ones that smell nice and don't pose a health threat."

"You should get lupins," she says as she stares out the window wistfully at an Indian takeaway place. "Megalomania and horticulture at the same time."

"No eponymous selections. Did you know that those fish in the pond bite you?"

She stays quiet on that one. She doesn't like how flippantly he brings up his... attempt.

"They're horrible fish, they're great ruddy koi carp. I can't believe they're still alive after all this time, that pond must've frozen over at least--"

She takes a hold of the hand on the gearstick, and the car swerves a little as he pulls over to the side of the road. He stares at her face, angry and upset.

"It might not affect you by mentioning it, but it fucking well cuts into me."

Whatever colour drains out of his face, prickly ginger-brown hair sticking up from pasty skin. He pulls his hand away from hers and turns off the engine. He sighs, running a hand through his hair.

"Sorry."

"It's all right." She leans back into her chair herself, staring straight forward. "I shouldn't have snapped at you."

"It's all right. Someone has to prevent me from turning into Job."

She laughs quietly. "You'll be right. Come on, let's not sit about on the roadside all day."

He starts the engine up, turning the little volume dial up a bit. It is 'Norwegian Wood' today, one of her favourites, and she hums quietly along with it.

"You like the Beatles, Tonks?"

"Oh?" She looks back toward him, her eyes, once glossy and glazed, now sharp. "Oh, yes. Dad used to put Magical Mystery Tour on all the time, Mum couldn't stand it one little bit. Dad invented the Magical Mystery Tour in the backyard, we had this enormous fig tree hanging over the fence with the Portsmiths, and you used to be able to hide in the roots and..." She trails off, going quiet again. "Should tell me to shut up if I go on like that."

"Why ever would I do that?"

She smiles a bit, tucking a strand of purple into a pin at the crown of her head. "I talk far too much. You like them?"

"A bit. They're not my ultimate favourites, but some of their songs are nice."

"What's your favourite one?"

He looks over at her, the car growling as he changes gears. "Is this 'pester Lupin day' or something?"

"I like to learn one new thing a day. I've been a bit slack lately, and I'm making up for lost time."

He turns back to the road. "'Across The Universe', I suppose. That's one of my very favourite songs."

"I like that one too. How much further do we have to go?"

"It's only a few streets away." He turns a hairpin corner, clipping the back wheel against the gutter. "Sirius didn't like the Beatles. Not manly enough for him."

"What was manly?"

"The Doors," he says, a look of fervent distaste plastered on his face. "The second he got out of Azkaban he sent me off to a Muggle record exchange and made me buy him one of their albums. I've never forgiven him. He had horrible taste in music. Oh, he used to wail 'The End' at me whenever I wouldn't let him out of the house. It was atrocious, he even left in the whole Oedipal bit."

"How ironic," she says dryly.

He indicates to the left, and pulls the car up to the roadside beside a cottage fronted by rows of terracotta pots. He turns the ignition off, unbuckling his seat belt and opening the door. "Lock yours on the way out, no central locking."

"Luxury." She fiddles with the seat belt a bit. "Remus... erm..."

He sighs, and walks around her side of the car, opening her door and leaning over her lap for the buckle. The proximity to her, coupled with the location of the fastener, heats his face a little internally, and he can feel her breath on his cheeks. "There's a trick to it," he mumbles breathlessly, "got to just jiggle the clasp a little until it lets you out."

The belt snaps back, and he pulls out to let her exit. She flips the lock and slams her door, crossing the narrow street to the house across from her. A dangling branch of wisteria snags in her hair, and she ducks down, water from the sprinklers hitting her on the cheek. He follows her, playing with a hole in the brown wool of his cardigan. She fondles the purple blossoms on the walls and looks askance to him.

"No. Nothing climbing, spiky or man-eating."

"Roses are spiky."

"But roses are unlikely to engulf the house."

"So what is it you plan to get then?"

He pulls a stiff trolley out of a rack, dragging it behind him. He stops for a moment to look at a row of tulips. He leans in close to them, smiling. "Look at this. Isn't it lovely, Tonks; the flowers aren't trying to kill me."

"Smart arse."

He picks up a few pots, examining the leaves. "Some of these will do nicely. And poppies - poppies go nicely with tulips, and they ought help Dung's heroin trade."

The trolley is weighed down further by little punnets of viola seedlings, tiny little burgundy heads poking out of their constraints. It is joined by several potted semi-mature roses, mock-orange bushes, a stout magnolia, and taking up an entire second trolley of their own, young apple trees, leaves overly green and the tiny buds dry and crusting. "Very nice trees, apple trees," he says as he hauls a fifth bag of topsoil onto a third cart. "Noble trees."

"Trees are noble?"

"Go sit in the car."

"Speaking of which, how on earth are you going to fit all this stuff in the car? I'll have to Apparate back home so you can get all this back."

He nods, wiping a bit of sweat from the bridge of his nose and leaving a big soil mark on his face. She licks her thumb and wipes it off.

"Girl germs. How disgusting."

She flicks a bit of soil at him. "How very mature of you. I'll meet you at home."

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 71 hours, 5 minutes

Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, is raking topsoil, a flannel shirt tied around his waist. Ron Weasley watches him from the porch, sipping at a lemonade whilst thumbing through a Chudley Cannons fanclub newsletter. "It's good exercise, Harry."

"Why me? Why fucking me?" He kicks at a clod of clay and it explodes against the fence.

"Because you're the son that I never had and I'm overcompensating by doing what I assume are fatherly things with you, which will no doubt cause much resentment on your part," Lupin says, patting soil around the magnolia bush, "and because I need a young back."

"Stop being a lazy sod, Harry." Ron flips the page of his newsletter and sucks at a slice of lemon.

"You're bloody one to talk. Who was hiding behind the curtains in the sitting room when your mum wanted some help ripping up the carpet in the parlour?"

"Me. And you."

"Fair cop." Harry wipes his sweaty face on his shirt, rubbing the oil from the inside of his glasses. "At least it's something to do, it's dead boring here."

"There's the spirit," Lupin says. "It's a lovely, sunny, pleasant, atypically London day, so make the most of it." He turns back to the magnolia, trimming a dead leaf off from the bottom.

Harry looks around, pulling his wand out from his back pocket. No Moody to castigate him for lost arsecheeks today. "Enervate," he whispers, pointing it at the rake. As if operated by someone in an invisibility cloak, the rake comes to life, scraping neat little rows into the soil.

"I heard that, Harry. You're not allowed to use magic away from school, and it's probably best for nobody to use any out here." He lowers his voice, looking about furtively, and the rake drops to the ground. "Muggles everywhere around here, they see your wands and I'll have my arse on a plate."

"A concept I wish banished from my imagination," droned a voice from the doorway, "and one that I fear will never be." Severus Snape steps out onto the porch, looking very ill at ease amongst things like sunlight, flowers and youth. "Dear me, Lupin, is your social life that dire that you turn to plants and imbeciles for company?"

"Aren't you supposed to shrivel up and die in the sunlight?" Lupin says irritably, forgetting composure for a minute as Harry and Ron goggle at him. "Very sorry, Severus; just slipped out."

"No offence taken." Snape sits down dignifiedly in one of the director's chairs beside Ron, who looks thoroughly dismayed. He too clutches at a frosted hi-ball glass, this one full of clear, sparkling fluid. "Such an unpleasantly hot day, too. It must be horrid out in the sun."

"It's not, for your information," Lupin says as he peels off his button-up shirt, a sweaty undershirt clinging to his skin.

"But of course." Snape takes a long, slow sip of his drink. "This is very refreshing, let me assure you, Lupin. Nothing quite like a nice gin and tonic on a summers' day to quench ones' thirst."

"You broke into the Tanquerays', didn't you?"

"Why should it matter? You have given up drinking."

"Yes, but one day I may wish to take it up again."

Snape swirls the ice and a slice of lime around in the glass, perspiration beading at the bottom of the glass. "Tell me, do you prefer lemon or lime in your gin and tonic? I must say at present my current orientation is lime, but--"

"Severus, I'm not going to listen while you sit there and parade your stupid drink in front of me. I do have some level of self control, you know. I might be a bloodthirsty creature, but I like to think I'm as well repressed as a Windsor."

"Obviously not very well repressed then." Another sip, and the glass refills itself with a tap of his wand. He stands, black robes dragging in the dirt as he makes his way over to Lupin and Harry. He waves the glass in front of the sweaty werewolf, whose eyes don't leave it for a second.

"You sadistic bastard."

Snape abruptly pulls it away from him, downing it all in one long gulp. "You should join me later this evening, Lupin. We can reminisce about our school days over a nice glass of the Latour." With a flourish, he tips the icy dregs onto the soil at his feet. "Or not." He turns on his heels, Harry making rude hand gestures at him behind his back. He corrects himself when he realises Lupin is standing by him, but to his surprise notices the look on Lupin's face.

"What a fucking idiot." Lupin meanders over to the boxes of flora, picking out the viola seedlings and kneeling down on the pavers, leaning more heavily on one knee than the other slightly swollen one, finally not making protest at his decision to put a little weight on it when he walks.

"Don't listen to him. You're doing really well now."

"It's been just over three days since I've had a drink, Harry."

"And that's more than any Irishman could claim to," called out Ron from his deckchair, looking thankful that Snape had vacated the seat beside him. "We ought lock him up with you on the full moon, that ought be a right laugh."

Lupin, despite himself, laughs at Ron, finally sitting on the pavers. "I'll take that one into consideration." He pokes a little hole into the ground with his fingers and slips a seedling into the soil, pressing down around it and pouring a little water over it. "Can I ask you two a question in utter confidence?"

Ron paused for a second, and nodded. "Kay."

"What do you get for someone... as a present, I mean... when they only specify that it has to be pretty?"

Harry pondered. "Pat them on the shoulder, and tell them that you will always accept their lifestyle choice."

Lupin tosses a clod at him. "Stupid. No, it's for a girl."

"A girl, eh? Why are you asking us, don't you have, like, ninety years experience on us?"

"You'd think that, wouldn't you."

"Get her some nice lacy knickers," Ron says, discarding his newsletter in favour of the conversation at hand. "They're pretty."

"Yeah, underwear is pretty. Get her underwear."

"No. No, no, no, emphatically, infinitely, no."

"Someone's on the defence." Another clod is launched in Harry's direction, and he ducks it, stepping on a seedling in the process. "Just saying, is all!"

"What about perfume?"

"No. Too pretty."

"Books? Mum has these fantastic romance novels hidden under the mattress, they've got very attractive covers with handsome men."

"No. Too trashy."

"Flowers, then. Can't go wrong with flowers."

"Flowers," Lupin says as he waters a seedling, "are fraught with romantic subtext as a gift choice."

"Who're they for anyway, Tonks?"

"No. They're for... um... my mum."

"Nice try. Are you still beating around the bush with her?"

"No, Harry, the problem is that he isn't beating around the bush."

"Don't be crude." Lupin wipes mud on his trousers and looks up at the sky. "It's a delicate situation, and I don't want anything that sends messages that either burn bridges or are overly suggestive."

"Bertie Botts' All Flavour Beans?"

"You two are useless. Why don't you go back inside and make yourself useful by clearing out under the stairs?"

"I thought we were making ourselves useful out here by helping you?" Ron says with an angelic expression on his face.

"No. You're not helping, what with your sloth and Harry's stepping on my little violas. Go back inside, and if you see any decent alcohol down there hide it for me."

Harry gladly ditches his gloves and rake and follows Ron into the shade of the house, the glass door slamming after them. Lupin rubs his temples and turns back to the flowers.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 74 hours, 27 minutes

PRETTY THINGS - IDEAS

Wine - nb what sort?! she drinks most of everything, red v. white...

Clothes - can't afford anyway, see Hermione/Ginny/random female for advice on matter.

Book - nice idea, nothing esoteric/academic/romantic/pornographic; classical? Might like Bonfire of the Vanities - investigate; see her bookshelf for ideas

Chocolates - nice, not lasting enough

Jewellery - no money, GET MONEY.

Poetry - she might think I'm gay. Remember Kathleen Groves incident, 1975.

Leningrad tomorrow morning. Portkey 5AM, kitchen. Not Leningrad, Remus, St Petersburg, get it right!!! Train from Moscow; Portkey at Stalin's grave, 11.30AM.

He lies in the bath and observes his recently completed page, biting his upper limb as he skims over the words, his handwriting still not free of the bitter slant to the left and cramped loops. There is a bit of a wry smile on his face when he taps the page with his wand and whispers "mischief managed", as if it is an injoke only with himself. The page wipes blank, and he sets the book down on the tiles beside the bath. He tucks the quill behind his ear, and closes his eyes.

It is sometime later that Nymphadora Tonks, wrapped in a bathrobe, walks into the bathroom to find him asleep again in the bath water, curled into a foetal ball with a quill behind his hear. There is a ratty looking exercise book lying beside him, the ink on the cardboard cover blotchy and running.

She picks it up, flipping the pages open to find only blankness. She skims throughout the book, hoping to find anything - a grocery list, a daily schedule, a recipe, anything, but the pages are otherwise empty and clean, perforated with pale blue rulings.

She tucks the book under her arm, pockets the ink pellet on the bathside and plucks the quill from behind his ear,smoothing back a piece of hair on his head. She stands quietly, hoping that when he wakes he sees nothing amiss about the situation; that he only dreamed of bringing writing materials with him into the bathroom.

random bit o' shit from chapter 10

2006-03-16T03:41:52Z

This is a mini-scene I'm cutting from the next chapter of Loneliness. My beta has pointed out how unrealistically OOC it is for Snape, and I damn well agree with her. But this is the beauty of an LJ just for Loneliness purposes: you dear people get to look at the crap that never makes it to the final cut. Some of it will be kept: the banter about the cocktail party, some of the lines, but the sling = gawn. So enjoy, while you can.

Enjoy.
Gun

"Right." He steps back, a little wounded. He can hear a nasty snickering from Snape's direction, but uses all his self control to ignore him until the lift door has shut and she's gone from his sight. He turns to look at Snape, who's wearing an unpleasant look of self-satisfaction.

"Are you all right there, Snape?"

"Quite all right, thank you. Cocktail party?"

"Well, we don't have much in the way of cocktail ingredients. We do have beer, but we'll put it in a nice glass, or something."

"Some party," he says rudely. Remus raises an eyebrow, looking Snape up and down, and thinking (for the first time in his life) that he looks nicer than someone else.

"You know, just because you're not invited doesn't mean you have to be rude about it."

"And I imagine you would know everything about manners and upbringing, wouldn't you?"

"I know a bit more about laundering my undergarments than you do."

Snape's chest puffs out, and a black look crosses his face. "Crow all you like now. After this tribunal you won't see anything but the dirty inside of an Azkaban jail cell."

"Yes, Snape."

"You're pathetic. You're old enough to be her father, you know? It's sickening."

"Yes, Snape. I like your sling. Didn't I viciously savage your other arm?"

Snape goes even redder, balling his free hand into a tight, bloodless fist. "As if that will help you, Lupin."

"I suspect that Madam Pomfrey's injury report will, however," Remus replies, brandishing the manila envelope. Snape hastily snatches at it, but Remus, being taller and stronger, holds it above his head. "My, my. It would be a shame if your entire case against me were predicated on lies and exaggeration."

"Still doesn't matter. Unless you're so stupid as to not have read the summons, you would have noticed Dolores Umbridge's name on the list of case assessors."

"I did see that, but I just ignored it because it was unpleasant. I also noticed that there are two other assessors hearing my case, on the other hand, and assumed from there that I might be entitled to a fair trial. At any case, do you know the penalty for lying in front of an official ministry tribunal, Severus? I can't remember precisely off the top of my head. Something about four hundred galleons or two months in Azkaban, it was a bit difficult to read."

Snape's hand dives into his robes, fishing for his wand, but before he gets a chance to level any curses, Remus sets a petrificus jinx on him. Snape collapses to the ground and Remus, without a scrap of pity or remorse, turns his back on Snape as the door of the lift opens for him.

"Don't be late, Severus," Remus says mildly to him.

And, as an afterthought, he sticks his hand back into the lift and presses each of the floor buttons. As the door closes, he sees a look of fury stewing on Snape's face.

Chapter 2: Ladybird, Ladybird

2006-02-16T00:26:21Z

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 43 hours, 1 minute

I thought I was having a heart attack this morning. I couldn't feel my left arm, and I was all sweaty, and my chest hurt so horribly I couldn't breathe. I was screaming out for help, except that nothing came out because there was no air in my lungs to scream. I knocked a lamp onto the floor, and fortunately Molly Weasley was prowling along the landing looking for messes to clean up. She sat with me for a bit, telling me to calm down and breathe normally, and after a minute or two I did, feeling like I was about to pass out. Apparently I was having a panic attack, which I haven't had since I was at school.

Since then, she's been trailing me like a shadow, making sure I don't try to finish what I started a couple of nights ago. So far today she's given me four cups of tea, two slices of cake and a good half litre of Draught of Peace. (However she roped Severus in to helping me is beyond me.)

I've realised that giving up drinking is a silly, silly thing to do, because most of the social activities after dinner revolve around activities normally associated with alcohol; cards, darts, gossiping about how horrible the Ministry is. Being sober certainly doesn't help when Mundungus is in one of his 'free and easy' moods and starts peeling his clothes off. But I best keep at it. Tomorrow I will go see Mum. I might take Harry along with me, it's terrible to be stuck in this house for so long.

The heat of the August day has drawn the younger female inhabitants of 12 Grimmauld Place out into the backyard, for lack of a better term as at present it is less a yard and more a dignified swamp. Creeping vines, ivy, weeds and plants with minds of their own advance slowly upon the premises (on a particularly slow day, the late Sirius Black and Remus Lupin measured the growth of the ivy over a twenty four hour period; it advanced nearly 22 inches), threatening to overtake it and the people who live within.

Sitting on a plastic deck chair is Nymphadora Tonks, who's braiding the hair of Ginny Weasley, who has hiked her skirt up in order to let the sun bathe her legs. Hermione Granger is lying on her back on the tiles, blocking the sun out with a book as she squints up to read the adventures of Gulliver.

"Wish there was a swimming pool here or something," Ginny says listlessly, her pale skin freckling by the second.

"I think there was at some stage. Aunty Aggie must've filled it in when I was about two; I think it was revenge for Sirius getting his ear pierced."

"I didn't know he had an earring."

"He took it out after a while, got bored with it. Also reckon he got his hair tangled up in it." Tonks pulls a hairpin off her shirt, securing a loose strand of red hair in front of her. "So where did Dean say he was taking you?"

"Dunno. Said he wanted to show me what the Muggle pictures are like. Have you ever been, Hermione?"

"Loads of times, when I was little. Haven't been since I started school."

A pretty little white flower pokes its head up from under the ugly green vines, lovely and pure and bright. Tonks contemplates for a moment plucking it and putting it in Ginny's hair, but thinks better of it, realising that it is possibly the nicest thing in the garden at present.

"Wish a boy would take me to the movies," she says, leaning back for a moment to admire her handiwork. "It's been ages since I've been on a proper date."

"What about Mark?"

She screws up her face in utter distaste. "You've got to be kidding me, he was such a wanker! To call that a date would ruin every date that I'm yet to go on."

"You could make Professor Lupin take you," Hermione says, turning the page, "he needs to get out of the house."

Ginny stands, shaking her skirt out as Tonks occupies the vacated chair with her own feet. "It's a difficult situation, Hermione."

"Why, because he's a suicidal alcoholic who's having a nervous breakdown?"

"No, I think I'm coming to terms with that."

"Then why not?"

"Because." And she leaves it at that, because to follow up that comment opens up a whole other can of worms which she doesn't want to get into.

"Because... why?"

"Because... I don't know."

"Oh." Hermione lies the open book on her stomach, closing her eyes and wiggling her toes. The sliding door opens, and Molly Weasley steps out carrying a bundle of wet sheets. Standing as tall as she possibly can, she reaches for the line of thin rope strung between the posts on the porch, clipping the sheets with wooden pegs. She's frowning, looking tired and worried.

"Ginny, I want you to ring me if anything should happen while you're out today. Any time, for any reason, and I'll come collect you... I'm not happy about this, honestly, my fifteen year old daughter..."

"Oh, come on Mum, you never said anything if Fred or George went out with a girl when they were my age!"

"That's because they're boys. And it's not because I don't trust you, it's because I don't trust--"

"I know, I know! I'll be all right!"

Molly's lips narrow, and she turns back to her sheets. A ladybird, shiny red shell glistening in the sun, lands on a sheet, wings folding back under their cover. It catches Hermione's eye also, and she stands, moving in close to the insect as it wanders fearlessly along the white cotton.

"Do wizards know any of the nursery rhymes?"

Tonks snorts. "We invented most of them!"

"Really?"

"Of course. As if Muggles could come up with them."

She touches the little beetle as it scurries up the sheet. It doesn't react to her interaction with it, merely changing course and heading right instead of left. "Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children all gone," she sings, tilting her head out of the sun's direction.

The towel Molly is pinning to the line drops to the ground, and Hermione notices her eyes pressed shut and nostrils flaring, as if in a mild state of distress. Guiltily, Hermione bends down and picks up the dropped towel, picking some pegs out of Molly's hand and hanging it up herself.

"Are you all right, Mrs Weasley?"

She opens her eyes, smiling in an odd false manner. "Of course I am, dear. It's very warm out in the sun today, you know, you should all be wearing hats or you'll get terribly burnt. Especially you, Ginny, your skin being as pale as it is."

"I'll go inside in a minute, Mum."

Molly nods in response and heads indoors hastily, as though trying to conceal something from the others. Hermione watches after her, and as soon as Molly is inside she turns back to the ladybird, plucking it off the sheet and blowing it into the wind.

"Don't stick about this place, it's rotten to the core here."

Ginny stretches, and brushes a hair off her shirt. "Best get going, I suppose, I said I'd be meeting Dean at the Leaky in twenty minutes and Mum has to arrange a Portkey for me. Have fun, all."

Tonks and Hermione nod in response, and she follows her mother in through the sliding door, pushing it shut. Hermione sits down on the pavers staring out at the jungle, twisting a bit of hair in her fingers.

"Why do you reckon men are such emotional cripples?"

Tonks scratches her chin thoughtfully. "Well, for a lot of them I suppose they have really good reasons for it. I can't explain a good half of them though - they're bloody tough to understand, let me tell you. Why, did you have another tiff with Ron or something?"

She shakes her head. "Well, not really, he's just... stupid, I suppose, he never talks to me or tells me anything."

"Well, maybe he sees it all on a need to know basis. Give him time, pet, he'll be right."

The sliding door opens once more, and Remus Lupin, clad in old trousers and a threadbare shirt, steps outside, squinting into the glare. He nods at the females seated on the porch, and kneels down about two metres in front of them, pulling out one of the weeds with his left hand.

"Wotcher, Remus?"

He turns back to Tonks, who looks at him quizzically. "Gardening, Tonks. It's such a lovely day out, and it's so disgracefully unkempt out here, so I thought that I might do something with the garden."

"Why ever would you do that now? It suits the house so wonderfully!"

"It's depressing."

She sticks her tongue out at him as he turns away from her. "You're depressing," she adds quietly out of his earshot.

"I'm sure I read a different version of 'Gulliver's Travels' when I was little," Her says, picking up her book and examining the spine. "It was far shorter and only had his travels in Lilliput."

"I'm assuming that most parents would be at a loss to explain the rest of the story," he says, burying the tip of his wand in the soil as so not to lose it. "It's a hard story to get through, actually, it took me years to finally getting around to read the entire thing."

"I don't know if I like it. Swift is very scathing."

"He was. Utterly hated the Irish, even though he was Irish himself."

"Moony's Irish, aren't you?" Tonks says as he rips out a dandelion, the roots trailing dirt over the ground.

"Half Irish, half blood, half breed, half sober. I'm a man of many divisions."

"You better be fully sober, Mister, or I'll be extremely cranky with you."

"Who are you, my sponsor?"

She nods. "You better believe it. So if you think of touching that bottle of Ogden's under the sink I will honest to God hex you into tomorrow."

"You've already tipped it out and replaced it with water, I checked."

She gives a faux-shocked gasp, clutching her chest melodramatically. "Oh, Lupin, will we never get you off the wagon?"

He growls slightly, absent-mindedly ripping out a nettle. The spines dig into his palm, and he bites his lip in agony.

"You right there?"

Hermione ducks over to him, taking a look at his hand. Pulling his wand out of the soil, she taps it lightly and utters Despinifex quietly. The needles extract themselves from his hand, though little spots of blood punctuate his pasty British skin. Tonks wanders over also, looking over his shoulder with a very concerned look on her face.

"You want me to get any peroxide for that? You've been digging in the soil, you'll get it infected or something."

He stands up, examining his hand. "I'll go in and wash it now, get a pair of gloves or something."

He leaves them at the edge of the garden, limping inside. Tonks sighs, staring down at the uprooted plants. A tiny white flower clings to one of the discarded weeds, wilting in the sun.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 57 hours, 22 minutes

A flash of soft orange light wakes Nymphadora Tonks up, and she rubs her eyes as she looks out the window to determine the offending source.

Lit by a handful of pitifully dim oil lamps and a giant pyre of rotting, shrivelling plant matter, the bare and tousled dirt of the backyard is illuminated, the ground dusty and uninhabited save for papyrus reeds and lilypads in the pond. The flames must be licking as high as six or seven feet, and silhouetted against them is the figure of a hunchbacked man with poorly cut hair, bent over and writing something into a book.

I think I remember now why I drink. It's not because I like alcohol in particular, but I've noticed that whenever I'm drinking I don't feel sick like this. What I mean is that I don't feel flat, like there's no energy running through my veins, or that I'm about to pass out from hunger. It makes me feel buoyant, and at present I certainly don't feel buoyant in the slightest. I'm shaky and cold because at the moment there's no alcohol in me to heat me up. James told me when we were in school that some people survived the icy water in the Titanic disaster because they kept drinking whiskey so their blood wouldn't freeze, so maybe there's truth in it, or maybe I'm just an inactive hypochondriac who needs to find a better focus than my stupid physical complaints, I'm starting to sound like Si

He throws the exercise book to the ground, tilting his head up and swallowing. He picks the book up again and tears a page out of the middle, the staples in the middle leaving gaping big holes in the lined paper. He picks up the quill and the tiny bottle of ink, and wets the nib.

Hi Sirius, I don't know if you'll get this letter or not if you're here, and if you don't I don't suppose it matters in the slightest because the dead can't read letters. I wanted to let you know that I say 'hello', just didn't want you to think that I've forgotten you or anything, because I haven't and I miss you to hell and

This is the point where he stops because his writing is smudged by a dirty great tear smearing the cramped handwriting that slants to the left. His handwriting wasn't this bad when he was teaching at Hogwarts, where it adopted a very formal, dignified scroll on the end of each letter, artistic, beautiful and elegant. This isn't such handwriting, because it has the horrible painful shaking of a teenage boy, and his letters look oh so very very juvenile. This letter will have to suffice, and beside himself he digs a hole a foot deep, dropping the letter into it and hoping that when watering the soil for planting the paper will dissolve into the ground. Sirius might have only been a Black by blood and surname but there is some part that remains in him in this house, and if there is anywhere that an essence of him remains to intercept communication between him and the living it would be in this house.

Once again, Lupin picks the exercise book and quill up, his face composed and tearless.

Chapter One: Resolve is Never Stronger

2006-02-10T11:37:49Z

Chapter One Song: Hold Me Now, by the Polyphonic Spree.

Authors notes, references etc to come next edit.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 13 hours, 46 minutes

I fell asleep in the bath today. Last I remembered I was going up to have a bath before I went to bed, and I climbed in and just fell asleep. It must've been the warm water, or that I hadn't slept in about seventy-two hours before that. Whatever the case, it was interesting to have Harry poke me awake after four hours and tell me to get out of the bath because someone else may wish to use the room. That I doubt with the unwashed miscreants who live in this house.

Mum suggested I record my attempts at sobriety to encourage my progress. Or something like that. She said she tried it on Dad. I then reminded her of Dad's progress of getting out of the habit, and she looked like she didn't know whether to purse her lips and frown at me or hit me over the back of the head with a copy of Emma. Her WASPishness took over, and she just frowned at me. That woman has the silent disapproving thing down so well one would think she was the Catholic one in the family. She then sent me home with the leftovers from the Manchester Anglican Witches Polo Society luncheon. Ron and Harry set about making pikelet flavoured quiche, only to promptly throw it back up upon tasting their creation.

I feel sick myself too. At this point, it's not hard to knock back anything vaguely alcoholic, simply because my churning stomach is saying 'Remus, you damned dirty ape, poison me one more time with that fulsome fluid and I swear I'll give you an ulcer out of spite'. I'm desperately hungry, though too tired and queasy to go downstairs and fix something. God, send me something utterly fattening and greasy, and I swear I'll go to mass every week. Need sleep--

At this point, the subjectivity of the accounts of this tale switches to objectivity as a light knock on the door stirs the resident werewolf out of his reverie and back into reality. He closes the fresh notebook acquired for such purposes as self-administered therapy and alcohol deprivation, and tucks it under his pillow.

"Come in."

The door opens, and she enters carrying a cup of steaming hot tea and a glass of red wine. She takes a cross-legged seat perpendicular to him, staring up at him and offering him the tea. He accepts it wordlessly, sipping a little off the top and setting it down on the table beside his bed. She offers him the wine, but he shakes his head in agony.

"You right there?"

"Fine. Just fine."

"Harry said you fell asleep in the bath today."

"I had a detached Freudian moment."

"Oh yeah?"

"No. I was really hungover."

"Yeah, same. Not as much as you, obviously, but still. Mum got all cross when she smelled it on my breath."

"Not as much as my mum did," he says, picking up the teacup again and taking a more prolonged sip. "Thinks I'm going to die in a gutter, surrounded by rats and street urchins."

"Well, you're already halfway there, looking at the people we come in contact with every day. You feeling better after this morning?"

Another sip. "A bit better, anyway. I've decided that I'm going to quit the sauce, once and for all. It can't be good for me in the state I'm in anyway."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He looks at her a bit, taking in the fact that tonight her hair is a wholly unnatural shade of emerald green, her eyes a lovely shade of brown. She's greedily swallowing a mouthful of wine, a bit dribbling down her chin. "Harry gone to bed yet?"

"A little while ago. Erm, Remus..." She looks at him in earnest, licking the wine off her bottom lip as if in response to how he normally bites his upper lip. "I think you ought talk to him. About what happened last night, I mean. He's been a bit funny today, or so Ron says."

"Really." It's a statement, not a question.

"Well, more so than usual, I suppose. I think it perturbed him a bit seeing..."

She trails off, looking guiltily toward the bedspread. He nods quietly. "I didn't think about what I was doing, or why I was doing it, more to the point."

"I think I can understand, a bit anyway." She pulls herself parallel to him, crossing her legs at her ankles and reclining back on his bedhead. "But at the same time, I can understand why he would be shocked by it."

"I might go down and talk to him about it in the morning."

"You should."

He leans his head back on the wall, letting it fall to his shoulder. "What happened to me?"

"You're not expected to be happy all the time, you know. Be honest, I think everyone was placing bets on you cracking at some stage or another." She shuffles a bit closer to him, taking another sip of her wine. "Is there anything you want to talk about tonight?"

"Apart from whether or not I said anything stupid to you when I was drunk this morning, no."

"In that case, you didn't say anything too embarrassing. You know, declaring your feelings, admitting you're a Michael Bolton fan. The usual stuff."

"Jesus."

"It's all right. I told myself that you were drunk, and that you didn't mean a word of it."

He looks at her. She's still staring at him over the top of that wine glass, her eyes questioning him. He turns away from her, swallowing a bit of bile at the back of his throat. From his peripheral vision, he can see her still looking at him.

"I'm tired, Tonks."

"You should go to bed then."

He stretches himself out on his back, edging down the bed so he is entirely flat out. He sighs a bit, reaching over for the teacup on his bedside table and drinking the now tepid contents. She takes the empty cup out of his hands and steps down onto the floor.

"You want that light on in the corner?"

He shakes his head, and she pinches the little flame out in the oil lamp on the desk. She pulls the door shut after her, banging her head silently against the door.

He lies there in the dark, hands folded neatly on his stomach. After a minute or two, he picks up the wand sitting on his bedside table and utters Lumos under his breath, pulling out the book under his pillow. Plucking the quill out from inside it, he licks the nib and sets it to the paper one more time.

Addendum to note to self: consider cyanide next time, see Severus with regards to this.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 16 hours, 10 minutes

He sleeps in a room with a bookshelf, desk, single bed and a mirror that screams 'VIRGIN! VIRGIN! VIRGIN!" at him whenever he passes it. He hopes to rectify this soon in the only manner possible - by taking the damn thing down.

He's wearing part of his inheritance - threadbare blue pyjama pants and a tee-shirt with the motto 'The Ashes: 200 Years of England v. Australia Quidditch Test Matches' emblazoned under a bastardised coat of arms featuring a lion and a kangaroo wielding broomsticks. He wakes to the sound of cupboards being opened and shut down in the kitchen. After an hour or so, he realises that he cannot get back to sleep despite it still being dark, so he slowly climbs out of bed and crosses the room, opening his bedroom door and hobbling silently along the landing until he reaches the stairs, leaning his weight on the railing to avoid placing pressure on his bunged knee. He scratches a scab on his arm as he walks past where Mrs Black's portrait once hung, now without fear of insult or derogatory comments.

Kreacher is sitting outside the kitchen door, peering in at whoever is preparing themselves breakfast. He stares at Lupin as he pushes the door open, utterly ignoring the presence of the malevolent little house elf.

Bent down on his knees, Harry Potter is inspecting the contents of the pantry, his hair even more dishevelled than normal. As the kitchen door closes, he looks up at the intruder.

"Morning. Nothing for breakfast."

"That's all right, I'm not hungry."

Pulling out a half eaten loaf of bread, Harry turns back and takes a seat at the kitchen table, Lupin doing likewise. He tears himself off a hunk of bread, and offers some to the older man, who merely shakes his head. Harry shrugs, and bites into it, making a face.

"Ugh, mouldy." He tosses the remainder of the morsel onto the table.

"It's all right, I'll put some tea on for now." Lupin stands, moving over to the kettle sitting on the countertop. He nudges it with his wand, and steam profuses out the spout. He pulls out two dirty old teacups, pouring hot water in and dropping in a couple of bags.

"Ta," Harry says as he accepts it.

"Harry, are you all right?"

"What?"

"After... well, what I did the other night."

"I'm fine. I mean, you're all right now and everything."

"I suppose I am. I just don't want you to... I don't know, get any ideas, or think that you weren't on my mind when I did it. It's just--"

"It's all right, I get where you're coming from."

"It's just--"

"I mean, it's not like I don't care or anything, because we were all worried, but--"

"Harry, you haven't contemplated it yourself, have you?"

He stares at this older man who has so correctly divined his inner thoughts. He nods weakly. "There was a time after he died when... um..." He buries his head in his hands as they slip under his glasses to rub his eyes. He looks back up after a bit. "I don't feel like it anymore or anything, it was just in that time when I couldn't get to sleep without someone sitting in the room with me. Don't tell Mrs Weasley or Hermione though, they'll fuss over me like you wouldn't believe."

Lupin reaches his good arm across the table, and rests it on Harry's shoulder. "It's why you've been so cheery these last few weeks, isn't it?"

"I don't want people pitying me or looking at me weirdly. I've had enough of that to last a lifetime."

"I know exactly what you mean." He pulls his arm back, and rubs a bit of sleep out of his eyes. "Between the two of us, I reckon we could exhaust the supply of therapists on this damned island."

"Are you glad that you... you know, didn't die?"

"No. But I'm going to have to deal with it. There's obviously a very good karmic reason for why I'm still here."

"Do you want to die now?"

"I think I've rid myself of all desire to kill myself. I can't say that I'd complain much if I weren't to wake up tomorrow morning." Lupin sips his tea, looking thoroughly disgusted. "My god, when did the Blacks last refill their tea supplies, the fall of the British Empire in India?"

"Karma, I reckon."

"Hmm. Possibly. Well, if there's no tea or food, best break out the poison, eh Harry?" He pulls himself up and hobbles over to the cupboard under the sink, from which he pulls out a bottle of Ogden's. Sitting back down, he pours firewhisky into his and Harry's teacups, and raises it in a toast. Harry follows suit.

"What's this for?"

"Let's have a toast. To sticking it out, no matter how shitty our circumstances. And to me giving up alcohol." He takes a sip and looks at the cup very disappointedly.

"This tastes like water."

"It is. Bloody woman."

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 16 hours, 20 minutes

Resolve is never stronger than the morning after the night before it was never weaker.