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The first time Severus saw Nymphadora in the Hogwarts kitchens he turned and left immediately. He wasn’t sure whether she had seen him, and he didn’t care.
The next two times, he hesitated long enough that he decided it would be pointless to leave, and instead sat as far from her as possible, in a corner where he could not, in fact, see her.
The fourth time, she looked up as he entered, and rolled her eyes so dramatically that he might have felt shame, were shame an emotion that he could still experience. Instead, he felt sharp annoyance, and then something that might almost have been relief as she looked very pointedly away from him. After a long moment of reflection, he sat, carefully, not quite as far away from her as he might otherwise have done.
To his immense frustration, it began to seem as though she were almost always there when he entered, though he supposed that, as one of the most consummate Hufflepuffs he’d ever met, her affinity for the kitchens couldn’t come as a surprise to him. As weeks turned to months, though, he was forced to admit that her presence was surprisingly… unobjectionable.
Blessedly, she rarely spoke, but then, not many people in the castle spoke to him when it wasn't strictly necessary. More strikingly, when she did speak she bore almost no resemblance at all to the person she’d seemed to be during their infrequent interactions at Grimmauld Place. There, she’d been easy to dismiss as being as dunderheaded as all the rest of them, far more concerned with her combat boots than with actual combat. He'd largely tried to ignore her as she made pig noses and tripped over her own two feet running after Remus Lupin.
Here, he could see the woman who had become an Auror. She was always sensible and spoke with an almost reckless honesty that was refreshing given the rest of his life. It made him want to be honest, too, but that was sentimental drivel, easily dismissed.
He infinitely preferred her this way. He privately felt that she was prettier, like this, too, without the garish technicolor hair and endlessly changing features that had characterized her earlier interactions with him. Her natural features weren’t, exactly, beautiful, but they were striking. They made him feel like, if life were entirely different, she might be someone interesting, someone who he might like to know better.
But that thought had no place in anything, and it was easily dismissed too.
“What're you reading and why do you look like you’d like to incendio it?”
Severus hesitated. Of course, Nymphadora had no idea that Albus was quickly dying, but she was sharp, far more intelligent than he’d ever have given her credit for even 3 months before. It wasn’t impossible that she could put two and two together, given enough information. In fact, it was a near certainty that she would put two and two together, given enough information.
Very, very slowly he passed her two of the papers he had laid out in front of him.
“I’m working on a potion. I’ve already tested it, and it’s effective, but if there were anything at all that could make it stronger, that would be useful.”
“Hmmm,” she said, gazing at the parchment raptly. “Have they been poisoned?”
With some difficulty, Severus avoided the impulse to arch an eyebrow. “Has who been poisoned?” he inquired, carefully.
“Whoever you’ve already tested it on,” she said, without particular interest, and he felt himself relax, slightly.
“I suppose that, in a manner of speaking, they have,” he answered. “What made you think so?”
She shrugged. “Combination of billywig stings and fire seeds, I suppose.” She met his eyes and something in her gaze flipped, becoming almost teasing. “I had this potions professor once, who wouldn’t stop talking about the interaction between them. Quite the bore.”
A corner of Severus’s mouth twisted upward, quite against his will. “Indeed.”
She bit her lip, then jerked her head in his general direction. “May I?”
He hesitated, then nodded to the seat next to him, carefully securing the remaining papers that he’d gathered around him. She sat, then leaned toward him and began suggesting a variety of substitutions and adjustments that he’d already tried — and a few he hadn’t yet thought of.
“Don’t suppose there’s any possibility of swapping the powdered bicorn horn for powdered unicorn horn?” she asked, finally, evidently having reached the end of her sensible suggestions.
He shot her an unamused stare. “Oh, certainly. Do you know anyone who might be able to go and inspire a unicorn to give up its horn just for this purpose?”
She snorted. “Certainly not me,” she said, the barest hint of amusement in her tone, and he wondered if she could possibly be implying what she seemed to be before she pushed the papers back toward him.
Her shoulder brushed his, just briefly, as he resumed control of the parchment, and then she pulled away. He felt cold and wasn’t sure why — the kitchen fires were always burning.
“Well, that’s all I’ve got,” she said with a shrug, then stood. “I’d best be off.”
She walked away from him with her customary haste, but then hesitated, for a moment, near the door. “I'll be patrolling at the boat house later tonight if you wanted to come by.”
This time he allowed his brow to arch, then shrugged noncommittally. “Perhaps.”
Tonks felt more pleased than she’d realized she would be when he entered the boathouse hours later.
“Severus,” she said warmly, and as his face twisted, just slightly, she wondered if he was going to insist she call him Professor Snape. After another moment, she decided it didn’t really matter — she could live with that, if necessary, though given that he had actually been her professor at one time she did imagine it might make it ever so slightly awkward. “I wasn’t sure you’d come!”
His brow furrowed as though she’d said something strange, but surely he had to know he wasn’t easy to read in the best of circumstances. Bluntness had always seemed to work with him, though, and so she pushed forward with a shrug.
“How should we do this? I’ve already set some warming and cushioning charms but I suppose if there’s anything else you can think of to make the place more comfortable it wouldn’t go amiss. The walls seem reasonably sturdy if you’d like to try it up against one of them, but of course, with the cushioning charms the ground would probably be more comfortable — or maybe I could bend over one of the covered boats?”
“Ms Tonks,” he said gravely, after a long moment. “Have you by any chance imbibed a babbling beverage this evening?”
She looked at him blankly. “What? No. Why would I have?”
He looked at her as though she might be the mad one. “Then perhaps you'd be so good as to enlighten me as to what is happening.”
She blinked at him, slowly, trying to work out what he was talking about before deciding on a question of her own. “What do you think is happening?”
He hesitated. “I thought you’d asked me to come here to discuss confidential Order business, but I find that, at the moment, I’m feeling less certain.”
She hesitated, too, torn between mortification and amusement, then decided she may as well just be honest. “Oh. Well, no. I thought you understood that I asked you here for a quick shag.”
For a single moment, Severus looked as though he'd been hit by a stunning spell, and Tonks wished she'd somehow had the foresight to bring a chair into which he could sink, and possibly fuck her on later. However, the man recovered nearly immediately, staring down at her as though nothing at all had happened.
“This is about the werewolf,” he finally sniffed, dismissively.
She hesitated, feeling taken aback, especially since, for the first time in months, she hadn't been thinking of Remus at all. “Well… yes. I suppose it is, in a way. If I were still with Remus I wouldn’t very well be here. But if you’re implying there’s no one else I could have seduced instead you’re sorely mistaken,” she continued, suddenly feeling almost indignant. “There are a dozen men in Hogsmeade who would have been happy to sleep with me, and it would have been easier to get their attention, too.”
He looked gobsmacked again, which she supposed was a victory in its own way. “Surely you can't mean that you're trying to seduce me?”
She risked a cheeky grin. “Suppose that depends. Is it working?”
“No,” he sneered, half-turning away, and more out of instinct than anything else, she grabbed for his hand.
As his eyes met hers, a part of her felt like she should drop his hand immediately and flee, pretending this had never happened. The small shock that went through her body at the contact, however, sent a rather opposite message… and while Severus looked as cold and intimidating as ever, she didn't miss the fact that he made no move to pull away.
Without allowing herself to think about it further, she lunged forward and pressed her lips to his.
For a long moment, the kiss was a clumsy, awkward thing, more a desperate fumble than anything resembling pleasure. She had just started to think maybe this was a sign that she should just cut her losses when Severus tilted his head slightly to the left. Somehow, the change of angle seemed to be an invitation, and she carefully tilted her own head before grabbing his robes and yanking him toward her.
He seemed to pause for a moment, and then his hand moved to tangle in her hair as he deepened the kiss. She gasped as he bit down none too gently on her lower lip, and opened her mouth to allow him entry.
In her 24 years of life, Tonks had always regarded kissing as a pleasant prelude, something sweet and almost innocent. There was nothing innocent about the way Severus kissed. He kissed her as though he wanted to devour her. He kissed her as though it were the only thing that existed in the world.
When she realized she was clinging to Severus’s robes less to pull him closer and more to prevent her own knees from giving out from under her, Tonks made to pull away and felt mild surprise as his body followed hers and he pushed her with a thud against the wall. Even though they were barely touching, she could feel his erection pressing, insistently, against her stomach.
“You're serious,” he said after a pause that went on just a bit too long, and she managed to nod, just once, before tangling her hands in his robes again.
“I'm always serious, now.”
His eyes met hers, and while they were still dark and uncompromising, there was a certain softness, around the edges, that she didn't think she'd ever seen there before.
“So am I.”
She leaned up toward him, then pushed his outer robes from his shoulders with a finesse she hadn't felt sure she'd be able to manage. As she came face to face with what appeared to be a hundred tiny black buttons, she arched an eyebrow, then sent them all flying open with a slash of her wand.
To her surprise, Severus frowned slightly, then grabbed both her wrists with one hand. He pulled them up and over her head in one effortless motion, pinning them there as he leaned forward. “A word of advice,” he murmured, directly into her ear. “Successful seduction is unhurried .”
As he began to trail his lips with excruciating care down the curve of her neck, Tonks closed her eyes and thought that this kind of seduction might be worth getting used to.
