Love Will Lead Us

A/N: Disclaimer, see chapter one. I have no idea how old Tonks is in HP Canon. I have read OotP, however I do not remember Ms. Rowling mentioning an age. Therefore since I\'m playing with them this evening, please forgive me if I get either character\'s age wrong.


from the last chapter...
... ...She wrapped his arm around her small strong shoulders, holding him firmly as he mutely tried to push away her assistance. \"Hush, now, let Mama Tonks help you upstairs.\"

His only reply was a snort as she helped him across the kitchen floor and out to the stairs.

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The sunlight shining persistently through the window kept him from falling back asleep. He closed his eyes against the bright light and cautiously rolled onto his back and slowly starteretcretching his protesting muscles. As he tchetched out his left arm, he encountered warm flesh and events of the previous night came flooding back...

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They had half-walked, half-staggered up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs, Tonks giggled.

Severus looked at her questioningly.

\"It\'s just, (heh) it\'s just like we\'ve been out tying one on, staggering home after too many shots of fire whiskey, instead of, well you know...\" voi voice stopped, thinking about what she had done during the evening, kee Dea Death Eaters from murdering an innocent muggle family in cold blood. Thinking about what he had been through to try to get information for the Order.

All for nothing. He had been tortured that evening for no reason other than to amuse the Dark Lord. Very little new information had been gained.

\"Sev...\" she whispered, looking at him, distraught. \"How can you keep doing what you\'re doing?\"

His dark eyes gave away nothing. He quirked an eyebrow at her, \"How do you keep doing what you\'re doing? An Auror\'s lot is never an easy one, especially in this day and age.\"

She made a strange noise in her throat and shrugged. \"At least I usually don\'t end up in the condition you\'re in this evening...Severus.\" She shivered in the cold hallway.

\"Miss Tonks, you are cold and tired. We are *both* cold and tired. Perhaps if you could show me to a free bedroom.\" He made to move away from her and found himself stumbling towardwallwall, stiffness from lying in a strange position in the kitchen beginning to set in.

\"Here...\" she grabbed his arm and put it around her shoulders, holding his hand to keep his arm about her shoulders. She started guiding him down the hall when a Tonksian disaster struck.

Tonks tripped on the carpet. Her grip tightened on Snape\'s hand and they both went down, Tonks flat on her face, Snape half sprawled on top of her.

\"Oooooh,\" she groaned, \"that smarts. Severus?!?\" She could feel him shaking, lying half on top of her. \"Severus! Are you...?\"

She heard a strangled snort and craned her head around to look at him. He was fighting to keep from... laughing!

\"Sev?\"

His response was to roll onto his back, flinching as he did so and continuing to chuckle. \"Tonks,\" he whispered when he could contain himself. \"How the devil did you ever become anor?\or?\" He shook his head and grinned at her.

She picked herself off the floor and sat next to him. The man was actually smiling. She was stunned. She had been expecting to be hexed halfway to Sunday.

His obsidian eyes were crinkled with laughter. He sat up, slowly and faced her. \"Could you help an old man off the floor instead of knocking him down?\" he smirked.

Tonk\'s mouth was hanging open by this pointamazamazement. She shut with a snap and considered his smiling face. The smiransransformed him from a somewhat homely man with an overly large nose and slimy looking hair to something that was doing something to rouse the butterflies in her stomach and...elsewhere.

\'Okay Tonks old girl,\' she thought to herself. \'Not enough shagging in the past year and too much proximity with a male of the species this evening. Get a hold of yourself.\'

She found herself opening her mouth and protesting, \"You\'re not old!\" She shut her mouth before she could comment further and open herself to more laughter on his part, at her expense. She quickly stood and brushed herself off. \"Now, *Dumbledore\'s* old...you\'re a sprinickeicken compared to him.\" She held out her hand to help him up.

\"Damned by faint praise?\" he murmured silkily as she pulled him to his feet and smiled ruefully at her.

\"...\" Tonks mumbled something at him, feeling a blush creep up her cheeks as the butterflies began to tango in response to his smile.

\"Hmmm?\" he queried.

\"Nothing, don\'t mind me, just talking to myself...\" she shook her head and seemed to make up her mind about something.

Unbeknownst to Severus, her butterflies were taking up dirty dancing.

She grinned back at him. He raised an eyebrow questioningly, not able to figure out what was going on in her brain as her eyes sparkled at him. She winked at him, deepening his puzzlement.

\"Okay, Sev, it\'s off to bed with you.\" Wrapping her arm around his waist, she guided him to a bedroom down the hall. Throwing open the door, she sidled in with him, her arm still firmly wrapped around his waist.

Tonks murmured a quick charm that lit all the candles in the room. She sat him down on the large bed that dominated the room. \"You wait right here. I\'ll be back.\"

He looked after her as she left the room, his puzzlement deepening. He heard her going down the stairs.

In a couple of minutes she was back, hauling an ewer full of water and a small box with a handled on top. She set the ewer down on the nightstand, next to a large bowl that was there.

\"Now, Sev, take off your shirt,\" she looked at him with a challenging glint in her eye.

\"I beg your pardon?\" he asked, rather shocked.

\"The way you\'ve been flinching tells me that you are injured. Probably more than you are willing to let on. Off with the shirt.\"

\"Miss Tonks, I assure you I can take care of mysel\"
\"

\"Pooh!\" she interrupted. \"Well since you don\'t seem to able to do it...\" She reached in and began unbuttoning his shirt. He tried to slap her hands away, but she was too quick for him.

\"Severus, *why* do you wear clothing with so many buttons?\" she whispered when she had his shirt half-open. \"Hell, this is taking too long, you will be healed, naturally!, by the time I get this shirt off.\" She whipped out her wand and murmured a charm causing the buttons to fly open by themselves before he could do anything to stop her, laying the shirt open exposing his torso to her scrutiny.

\"Oh Sev,\" she groaned in painful sympathy when she saw the large dark bruise spreading on his side. He clutched his shirt closed about him, glaring, his aversion to pity plain in his face.

Tonks shook her head, gathering herself together. She quickly morphed herself into Molly Weasley. Startled, Severus gaped at her.

\"Now Severus. Take that shirt off right now,\" she said in her best Molly Weasley voice. \"Your injuries need to be tended.\"

He snickered.

\"What?\" asked Tonks.

He gurgled something and laughed out loud, clutching at his ribs.

\"I just thought, w-w-well I just thought you\'d be more comfortable with a motherly figure taking care of your injuries...\" she looked at him, perplexed as she morphed back to herself. \"What is so funny?\" she asked, hands on hips, glaring at him.

\"Tonks,\" he said, sobering. \"You don\'t know how many years Molly Weasley has beener mer me to take better care of myself, to \"tend\" my injuries as you put it. Probably more years than you\'ve been alive...\" He frowned.

\"Pooh,\" said Tonks. He looked up at her a question in his eyes. \"You\'re not old at all,\" she continued, \"and at twenty-eight, I\'m hardly a spring chicken myself.\"

It was his turn to gape at her. \"You look all of eighteen,\" he said in wonder.

\"Oh,\" she muttered, \"It\'s just my disguise for the evening... I was tempting the Death Eaters out of hiding with a little promise of some teenage nookie...\"

\"And you thought *I* was in danger,\" he snarled at her, his voice a silken roar held down to barely above a whisper in deference to a sleeping household. \"Who came up with that crack-brained idea of using you as bait. Gods, woman, you could have been r...\"

\"Actually,\" she broke in, \"itwasmyandianditworked.\" Sinisinished in a rush hoping he didn\'t catch it all.

\"What?!?\"

\"Erm, it was my idea anditworked,\" the last came out in a rush again.

\"You little, orange-haired cretin.\" His voice was dead level, emotionless.

They stared at each other, her eyes daring him to say anything else disparaging about her person or her profession. Surprisingly, he was the first to blink and his face slid into a scowl.

\"Right, Sev. My choice. End of discussion. Let\'s get you tended and into bed.\" She opened a small jar that contained a creamy ointment and reached to push his shirt off his shoulder.

Severus jerked away and grabbed for the jar. Tonks quickly held it out of his reach.

\"Ah-ah-ah! Let me do this.\" She put the jar and lid down on the nightstand and pushed the shirt off his shoulders. \"Now get out of that shirt and lie back and think of England.

He scowled as she tittered a little over her choice of words.

\"Now Sev--erus,\" she hastily fleshed out his name when his scowl deepened, \"Take off your shirt and let.me.do.this.\" The last said very sternly, her fists on her hips.

Snape gave in to the inevitable and shrugged off his shirt.

Tonk\'s butterflies took flight and began dancing the conga. He was unhealthily pale even in the golden candlelight and a bit slender for a man of his build, but his muscles and chest were nicely defined.

\'Very nicely defined,\' she thought as she suppressed a gasp. A light sprinkling of dark hair covered his chest and trailed down into the waistline of his pants. Tonks clenched her hands into fists as she fought the urge to run her fingers over his chest and further down.

She realized he was staring at her as she blatantly stared at his crotch. Quickly she brought her eyes up to meet his and bit her lip, blushing bright red.

Severus looked at her and quirked a questioning eyebrow.

\'Think Tonks, Think!\' \"Erm, nice weather we\'ve been having?...\" Good God, she couldn\'t believe she just said that.

\"Yes, Miss Tonks. Lovely weather,\" sarcasm heavy in his voice, he quirked his eyebrow even further. \"You are a strange creature, Nymphadora, it\'s been raining and gray this past week...\"

\"Er, ah, I love the rain! Hmmm. Er. Now lie back.\" Faux pas aside, now was the time to take charge again. \"I\'ve some ointment that will take care of the bruising in no time.\"

\"Hmmm,\" he responded and lay back as instructed.

Tonks grabbed her wand and muttered an incantation making the tip of the wand glow deeply violet. She sat down next to Severus and passed the wand over his side. The violet glow changed to an ugly puce when she got to his lower ribs. She muttered another spell and he flinched, feeling a cracked rib heal.

\"Okay, take a deep breath,\" she ordered. He complied and was relieved to find he could breath naturally again.

\"Thank you, Miss Tonks, now if you will just leave that medi-kit with me...\"

She reached over to the nightstand and snatched the ointment jar out of his reach again. \"No. You let me...\" She dipped her fingers into the ointment and rubbed the dollop gently between her fingers to warm it. Scraping most of it off her left hand, she gently spread the concoction on Severus\' side.

He winced slightly in response, though not from pain.

\"I\'m sorry, did I rub too hard?\" she asked, concern showing on her face.

\"No. It\'s just the aftereffects of the Cruciatus. These vary from person to person. In my case, my skin becomes, ah, hypersensitive for a few hours afterwards.

It was her turn to quirk an eyebrow and grin at him. \"Hypersensitive? In a good way, I hope...\" she trailed off and bit her lip, the thought of all that responsive flesh before her tightening her stomach and causing a rush of warmth to head southward...

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The sunlight persisted, but he still felt sleepy. Severus sighed and closed his eyes, rolling towards the sleeping woman pulling her unprotesting body into his embrace. Her back against his chest, she murmured \"Sev...\" snuggled closer to him and seemed to go back to sleep. He luxuriated in the warmth of the sunshine, the first that had peeked out in days and in the warmth of the sweet body next to him. And remembered...

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A/N. Huge apologies! I thought this was going to be finished more quickly, but real life intruded in the form of newsletters to write and work and other fun stuff. And the darn characters seem to want things to happen more slowly. Dang it. Oh well. More soon, lemons, soon, I promise!!!