A/N: The following combines two "ficlets" originally written separately, since they're sequential in fictional time.

The Knight Bus disappeared with a bang, leaving Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks alone on the road to Hogsmeade. In the distance, Remus could see the children making their way up to the castle, dragging their luggage and joking among themselves. It was good to see the Weasley children so happy, knowing their father was safe, but Harry...

Remus had a feeling something was wrong there. But Sirius was his guardian. If there was something wrong, it would be Sirius to whom he turned.

"I was thinking," Dora said, "that I could do my errands in Hogsmeade as easily as in Diagon Alley."

Remus turned. She was morphing, her face screwed up in intense concentration, letting her steely gray hair grow loose and wavy, darkening it to the black hair she'd been born with (and which Remus hadn't seen since she'd joined the Order). The tweedy-middle aged clothes she was wearing looked quite out of place, hanging oddly on her as she let herself settle into her shorter, slightly more rounded body.

In twenty years, he'd never grown tired of watching that.

She grinned. "Bit silly," she said. "Clothes don't even fit now. Should have left the height alone."

"You look fine."

"Anyway, I was thinking about doing my errands, then having lunch at the Three Broomsticks. It'd be like an old Hogwarts weekend. I'm feeling all nostalgic, being back. D'you want to join me?"

"Well, I probably should--"

"Oh, come on. Are you really in a rush to head back to Auntie's house?"

"Not really, no."

"So come along."

Remus sighed and shook his head. "Dora, really, I--"

She raised an eyebrow in a challenge he knew perfectly well: Come on then. Make an excuse.

"What if I just said I didn't want to?"

"I'd say, 'Suit yourself,' and go find my old mate Sanjiv. Last I knew he was doing sketches for a galleon in a flat above that horrid little tea shop." She flashed him another grin. "But I'd rather have lunch with you. Not at Auntie's. We haven't had much of a chance to catch up, what with You-Know-Who--"

"Voldemort," Remus corrected.

"Yes, him." She didn't repeat it, but she didn't wince; she was learning. "And the Ministry being troublesome. Let's just sit down, have a nice lunch and a good jaw about anything that's not that."

Remus pretended to weigh the options. He held out his arm. "You convinced me."

She clapped gleefully and jumped up and down (which looked absurd in the tweed skirt and jacket). "Our first date!"

"Other than when I took you out for ice cream when you were eight."

"I'm a bit older now."

"Yes, you look at least ten."

She turned up her nose playfully. "Perhaps I'll go find Sanjiv after all."

He laughed. "All right, all right. Twelve. At least twelve."

She punched his arm, then linked her own through it and started to lead him down the road toward the village. "It's sort of a pretty day, don't you think?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Bit cold."

"Mmm."

She walked in uncharacteristic silence for a few minutes, then sighed. "It's all we're doing, isn't it? The You-Know... The Voldemort business. It's all I can think to talk about. I haven't even been keeping up with Quidditch standings this year. Even Harry worries about Quidditch."

"I didn't follow Quidditch much even before."

"We used to talk about other things."

"Always whatever happened to be going on around us."

"True."

They walked on for a few more minutes. The outer houses around Hogsmeade started to slip by them. "So, this Sanjiv," Remus said, trying for a non-Order topic. "He's a boyfriend?"

Dora gave him a derisive laugh. "No. Sanjiv is just a boy. Friend."

"I don't even know if you have one."

"A boyfriend?"

"Yes."

"No." She smiled and went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. "How could anyone compete with you?"

"Will you stop that?"

"All right," she said, with mock disappointment. They came up on a small tailoring shop at the close end of the business district, and she let go of his arm. "I have a dress that needs some altering. And I ought to get this fit for company, too."

"Do you mind if I find something else to do while you're in the dress shop? I'll meet you at the Three Broomsticks later."

She nodded. "Sounds like a plan. Give me half an hour."

"Will do."

He mussed her hair with some affection and took leave of her as she went into the shop, the bell above the door tinkling merrily in the wintry afternoon.

A date, indeed. She was a child. Maybe not in chronological years, but still... he could never think of her as anything else.

Remus didn't have much to do, really; if he was going to eat lunch out, he would have to avoid spending money in any of the shops (Dora and Sirius both let money slip through their fingers like water, and it never occurred to either of them that he might need to hold back). He'd brought along the sketch pad and pencils that Harry had bought him for Christmas and sat for fifteen minutes on a bench in the center of town, drawing trees and animals. He did a few sketches of Dora as well, her hair in the midst of changing, her clothes hanging loosely on her.

A child.

After awhile, the snow on the branches above him began to drip onto the pages, and while an Impervius charm could keep them dry, it also tended to prevent new markings. He put the sketchpad away and headed over to the Leaky Cauldron. He'd be early, but he'd be dry.

Madam Rosmerta gave him a tentative smile--all of Hogsmeade knew why he'd left Hogwarts--and put out a butterbeer for him. He sat at the bar to drink it as slowly as he could, and pulled the sketchpad back out, looking for a subject.

A pretty woman was sitting by the fire with her back mostly to him, long and lovely hair reflecting in the firelight. Her graceful neck cast a arced shadow on the wall, and the sharp curve of her jaw gave her a kind of classic beauty.

He put a pencil to the paper, and was starting to draw when she looked up at a sound, and smiled broadly.

"Wotcher, Remus!" she said, waving. "You're early."

Tonks uncurled herself from her spot by the fire. Remus was staring at her for some reason, and didn't seem inclined to come join her.

She sat down at the barstool beside him and waved to Rosmerta to bring her another pint of mulled mead.

"I wasn't expecting you yet," he said, not looking directly at her. A thin charcoal stick was playing across his long fingers. (The perfect evenness of the first and middle fingers--one of the few signs of lycanthropy that stayed when the moon wasn't full--had always fascinated her.)

"Dress shop was a bit of a wash," she said, as her mulled mead appeared beside her. She took a swallow and let it warm her up. "They're swamped. Don't know why; no ball this year."

"I suppose they have patrons other than students." He started gathering up bits of parchment. "You got your other outfit fixed, I see."

"Oh. Just a quick shrinking at the waistband to keep the skirt from hanging oddly. And I took off the horrid jacket."

"Are you morphed?"

"What?"

"I was just wondering. I didn't recognize you there for a moment."

Tonks frowned, irritated. "I'm not morphed at all. Good Lord, Remus, how long have we known one another?"

"A long time. Your mum brought you to King's Cross to meet the train the year you were born. She let all four of us hold you."

Tonks raised an eyebrow. Not that Remus saw it. He was meticulously brushing charcoal dust from the bar onto a piece of parchment.

"You were frightened of James's glasses for some reason. You started howling. I took you then. You quieted down. And you smiled."

"Good to know."

Remus glanced up at her quickly and smiled in a nervous way that she'd never seen before. "I'm sorry. You don't care about that, do you?"

She shrugged and smiled. "A bit puzzled. I only meant that you've known me long enough that I thought you'd recognize me on sight. Most of the time, you recognize me when I am morphed."

"Just..." He shook his head and sighed deeply. "It was just a trick of the firelight, Dora. I'm sorry."

"It's all right. I don't think you've seen me totally unmorphed for awhile." She looked over his arm, which was curled protectively around several sketches. "When did you start drawing? I remember you doing it when I was small, but I haven't seen you do it for a long time."

"Oh. Sirius and Harry gave me this. I expect Harry said something like, 'What am I meant to give Lupin?' and Sirius came up with the idea. I know Harry wouldn't have any reason to think of it on his own."

"You know, you should let him get to know you. He wants to."

"Sirius is his guardian."

"Did you see his face in Surrey, when he saw you in at his aunt's house? I never saw anyone so relieved to see someone as Harry was to see you."

"I'm not his guardian," Remus said, his face settling into the thoughtful, rather sad look it so often had, his arm relaxing slightly on the pile of sketches.

"You're not my guardian either. I still like knowing you." Tonks took another swig from her mead. "So, what were you drawing?"

"Oh... oh, nothing, really. It's been awhile. I was getting back into the habit. Drawing this and that. I haven't charmed anything yet. Perhaps we should order lunch?"

"Sounds like good plan."

They ordered stew and bread, and Remus pulled the conversation around to the past again--to Tonks's charmed dollies, and the stories they'd read together when he sat with her on nights her parents had gone out, and the Christmases he'd spent with her family. By the time the bowls were half empty, they were laughing, and she had nearly forgotten his nervously fluttering hands, hovering near his sketchpad.

"Do you remember the year Dad decided to take us all caroling?"

"Someone really needs to tell your father that he can't carry a tune..."

"Don't look at me. It would break his heart."

"Oh, well."

"I remember that old Muggle woman who gave us hot cocoa. Cooked it up in a saucepan on their stove. I wanted so much to ask her how it worked! Mum had to step on my foot to keep me from going exploring."

"Yes, I remember. You wanted to explore everything."

"I still like to explore everything." She drained her mead. "Right now, I think I'd like to explore another pint. What do you say? Another round?"

Remus smiled awkwardly. "Er... let me check... I think I could..." He leaned sideways to pull his money bag from the pocket of his outer robe, and his elbow caught the edge of his sketchpad, spilling it onto the floor, the drawings he'd done flying every which way.

Tonks climbed down from the stool to help pick up, without thinking about it, and only heard his horrified, "Dora, don't," after she'd already picked up a handful.

Squatting there on the floor of the Three Broomsticks, she glanced down at them. A tree, sketched very quickly, but with a marvelous sense of movement--the Whomping Willow. An abstraction of the lines of Hogsmeade in the snow. And...

"Goodness, who's this girl?" she asked, flipping the landscapes aside to find sketches of a small girl in oversized clothes, grinning mischievously. Her face had been sketched with great love, the arch of her eyebrows... "Remus, is this me?"

He nodded miserably and pulled himself back onto his barstool. "I was trying to get what you looked like, transforming on the road out there."

Tonks's heart sank. "I really do look ten to you, don't I? I thought you were joking."

Remus leaned forward, face in hands. "Keep going," he muttered.

She grimaced, not really wanting to see more sweet-little-Doras, but when she moved the piece of parchment she was looking at, she saw someone entirely different: an elegant woman, with a swanlike neck and thick wavy hair, drawn from an unattainable distance, with the flames of the...

She looked up sharply. Remus's face was still covered, but his ears were quite pink.

"I'm beautiful here," Tonks said.

"Yes, you are beautiful here." He curled his fingers into his thick hair and shook his head. "I can't believe I looked at you like that," he said. "I'm so sorry, Dora. You must think I'm quite the dirty old man."

"Yes, you're ancient," she said absently, letting her eyes linger on the lines of the drawing. "And I'm dead offended that you think I'm beautiful. What an insult."

"You know what I mean."

Tonks looked at the picture one last time, then slammed the whole sheaf of them down on the bar. Remus moved his hands from his face and looked at her, vaguely surprised.

"I don't have the first bloody idea what you mean, Remus. And do you know why I'm offended? Because when you think I'm ten, you love me. I can see that. But when you think I'm a beautiful, actual grown-up woman, I'm just something pretty to draw, like a tree or a house. If you were to draw me again, knowing perfectly well who I am, you'd draw me at ten, wouldn't you? Little Dora in pigtails. I've had it, Remus. I'm twenty-three." He blinked a few times, looking lost, and she felt guilty. "Forget it, I'm sorry. I'll morph myself back to ten if you'd like."

She started to change her face, smiling so he'd know it was a joke (even if it really wasn't), but quite abruptly, he put his hand on her wrist, and said, "Don't."