Author's Notes: This is the first instalment of a fic that is a collaboration with MrsTater as a birthday gift for our dear friend Gilpin. We'll be posting the rest over the next week or so, so please keep an eye out! We hope you enjoy the fic. :)

Prologue

The Order of the Phoenix were filing out of number twelve, Grimmauld Place as Tonks approached the austere row of townhouses, which looked impossibly gloomy as the sinking late summer sun cast long shadows across the patchy, dry grass in the square, sere from neglect and the unrelenting summer drought.

"Crap!" she spat as Snape descended the front steps, his black eyes beady, reflecting the light from the lamp across the street, as he sneered down his nose at her. "I've missed the whole meeting, then?"

"Clearly," Snape replied, his lip curling in an ugly approximation of a smile. "Or did you think I was popping out for a Victoria sponge to serve up with tea?"

"Obviously not," Tonks scoffed. "Molly would never let us eat second-rate cake. Bought from a shop? I should think not!"

"You got a problem wif shop cake?" asked Mundungus Fletcher, his face almost completely hidden in a noxious cloud of pipe smoke. "I filched one jus' las' week wot was--"

"Rock cake?" Hagrid looked twice as large as usual lumbering down the steps behind the squat Dung. "You did like to pop in my place fer a rock cake now and then when you were at Hogwarts, didn't yer, Tonks? All righ', I'll bring a batch next week. A partin' gift, as me an' Maxime finished our Muggle trainin' and'll be off soon fer the giants."

His huge hand came down on Tonks' head, thoroughly mangling her jaunty lime green spikes in his attempt to rustle her hair affectionately. Snape's mocking eyes flashed on Tonks before he Disapparated.

Keen not to have to pass comment on either Dung's shifty ways or the quality of Hagrid's rock cakes, Tonks took the steps two at a time and then turned back towards them.

"If ever there were a couple of us to draw attention to this place, it's you two," she said. "Even if you are somewhat obscured by that muck belching out of Dung's pipe. Better make yourselves scarce before Mad-Eye comes out and teaches you a thing or two about constant vigilance."

"Ri' y'are, Tonks. I'll be on me way." Hagrid pulled his enormous fur coat up to his ears, as though this would aid his undetected retreat from the square, then Disapparated with a pop quite incongruous with his massive size. Dung followed, though the smoke from his pipe lingered, draped over the thick August air.

Turning to the door, Tonks started to find Remus leaning against the jamb, one hand casually tucked into his trouser pocket, a slight grin on his face and laughter in his eyes -- which were fixed on her, and apparently had been for some time. Her heartbeat accelerated, as she'd come to expect it to in his presence during the nearly two months since she'd been introduced to him; her hand flew self-consciously to twist her bedraggled hair back into spikes, and for the first time all day she questioned her choice in colour. But it would be painfully obvious if she changed it now, wouldn't it?

"Wotcher," she said, as confidently as she could manage from beneath the lime green locks -- not that much effort was required to sound cheerful about seeing Remus, but she didn't think she sounded too keen; or if she did, Remus didn't seem to mind.

"Hello, Tonks." He straightened up, still smiling, and stepped back from the door to let her pass through. "I missed you at the meeting."

She promptly caught her foot on the blasted Troll-foot umbrella stand and saw the faded rug rushing up toward her nose with alarming speed. Scrunching her eyes closed, she shot her hands out in front of her and waited for the inevitable thump of knees and palms on floor...

It never came, though. Instead, a strong arm wrapped around her middle, and a steady, firm hand caught her arm, preventing her fall and then hauling her upright, onto her feet.

"Used up all your constant vigilance in an effort to make sure our less inconspicuous members weren't caught lurking around the square, did you?" Remus' voice rasped in her ear in the teasingly low pitch she'd noticed he seemed to reserve for her. "We're lucky to have you. Though of course, Dung and Hagrid both seem to be faring better with creatures at the moment."

"Excuse me?" Tonks spluttered. Remus had caught her off-guard. Falling she could handle, but being saved by a man who could more likely than not maintain cool as a cucumber composure whilst standing in a boiling cauldron full of bat fingers and Niffler testicles was really beyond her realm of expertise.

"Dung tells me he's managing very well with a shipment of frogs that have proven quite profitable to his business enterprises," Remus explained, removing his arm from around her -- to Tonks' disappointment -- but keeping a firm hold of her arm. "Hagrid's managed to charm the feisty Olympe Maxime, and they're both off to negotiate with big, unfriendly giants. And you, Nymphadora," he added with a twinkle in his eye, "have been foiled by a troll. A dead one, at that."

Flushing, Tonks looked away from Remus and pulled a face at the troll-foot. "Reckon we could send it along with Hagrid as a good luck charm?"

"You mean like rabbits' feet?"

"I don't know how much good it would do Hagrid, but it'd be the luckiest thing that's ever happened to me." Apart from being the lone witch in the Order with whom Remus flirted. Not that he had many options. "And don't call me Nymphadora," she added, out of habit, though her heart wasn't really in the reprimand. "What did I miss at the meeting?"

"Nothing much. Snape spat like a snake while Sirius growled like a dog; Dung smoked like a chimney while Molly fumed like a particularly aggressively bubbling potion; Hestia giggled like a third year on Euphoria Elixir...I could go on in a similar -- or should I say simile? -- fashion."

He looked at her with an expectant half-smile. The smug git. Tonks didn't want to give him the satisfaction. But she couldn't deny him, either.

"I don't know whether to tell you that was bloody brilliant, or to groan at a bloody awful pun."

"Also," Remus went on, more seriously, though still grinning like a schoolboy who was all too pleased with himself, "I had to lie like a rug to Mad-Eye when he cornered me to ask whether you and I had done our Muggle training yet. So I hope you're free Friday night, because that's when I told him we're down for."

"Are you telling me you've successfully circumvented the constant vigilance of the ultimate guru of the philosophy?" Tonks gave a low whistle to show she was impressed.

Remus' eyes glinted with mischievous amusement. "It would appear that way, yes."

"Merlin, you're good," she said. "Lucky for you and the chance of not being hexed to oblivion--"

"Which is a speciality of yours, I believe?"

"Yes, but I had a good teacher. Anyway, I am free this Friday."

Tonks tried not to let her smile falter, though she felt a distinct tug at her facial muscles which had nothing to do with morphing.

After the mission to rescue Harry from his aunt and uncle's house, Mad-Eye -- of all people -- had convinced Dumbledore that the Order weren't up to snuff in the Muggle stealth department. "Gawked at the Microthingumy and the Tellywhatsit like a lot of Muggle-born kids seeing Hogwarts for the first time." So, a training programme had been devised for the Order members to take it in turns -- in pairs -- to spend a weekend living as Muggles. Tonks had no problem with the prospect of the training itself; she rather liked the idea of roughing it without magic, seeing how the other half lived, how her own father had grown up.

And she'd scarcely believed her good luck when she'd found herself partnered with Remus. Until, that was, she'd allowed nerves to get the better of her. Aware as she was, that something, as yet indistinct and undefined, lay between them, a weekend alone together could surely be a gateway to a wonderful, more concrete state of affairs. But it would also be a weekend without her wand, when her awkward clumsiness could not be masked by her talent for magic, and he was the very last person in the world she wanted to make a fool of herself in front of. Excepting, perhaps, Snape, though for entirely different reasons. Remus made everything he did look so effortless, and pulled it off with real flair. Tonks was sure she was even more clumsy and awkward around him than around other people... The very idea made her feel exposed.

Sirius had been tasked with organising the day-to-day running of the mission, and she'd heard the stories he shared over a late night Butterbeer about what troubles the other pairs had run into during their Muggle weekends: of Arthur taking Molly out for a Sunday drive and getting pulled over by a policeman who gave him a ticket for some driving offence or other, which Arthur had framed for his office, an honest-to-Merlin Muggle traffic ticket; of Dedalus and Hestia testing out the television, finding a naughty programme, and being forced to watch it because they couldn't turn the device thing off again. It would be humiliating in the extreme to find herself the object of these late night gossips.

Even more unsettling, in some ways, was that she wouldn't be allowed to morph. While she wasn't one of those girls who put all her stock in physical appearance, there were certain aspects of her ability that bolstered her confidence considerably. Thus she'd found herself dreading her turn in the Muggle training, and had put it off as long as possible.

"Tonks?" Remus nudged her foot, and she looked up to see his forehead creased in concern. "You haven't thought of a prior engagement, have you? Only I'm desperately depending on you to spare me a weekend as a ferret if Mad-Eye finds out I lied to him."

"No, I'm not doing anything," Tonks said, because she couldn't put it off forever, and then she thought that she quite liked the idea of Remus depending on her and that taking on the role of co-conspirator with him against Mad-Eye was rather enticing, especially when the frown on his face faded into the expression of altogether too irresistible mischief that had first made her notice him, she flashed him a real grin that stretched her cheeks. "Or I wasn't, until I was required to make sure you remain bipedal this weekend. I mean really, at least a werewolf is big and manly. We can't have you dancing around as a poncy little ferret, can we?"

Remus' eyebrows hitched ever so slightly in inquiry above his quietly laughing eyes. Running one hand over his chin so that Tonks could hear the faint scratch of his stubble on his palm, he said, "Manly isn't one of the few positive attributes I've considered about being a werewolf, but who am I to argue with such a pretty and clever witch as yourself?"

"You'd have to be pretty bloody stupid," said Tonks, turning to go so he wouldn't see the redness of her face. "I'm a dab hand at ferret transfiguration myself."

His low chuckle seemed to caress her, and she shivered as she imagined she would at his actual touch. "Mad-Eye's protégée."

Tonks glanced back over her shoulder and wagged a finger at him. "And don't you forget it!"

"Never."

Remus' eyes held hers for a moment, and then her gaze drifted down to his lips as they parted to ask whether she was going to come in for a drink. Tempting as the offer was, Tonks thought she'd be better served to take advantage of having missed the meeting and have a rare early night; Merlin knew she needed all the help she could get if she wasn't going to make a hash of things with Remus, and she was knackered. Not that she expected to get much sleep for dreaming about what Friday might bring -- or having nightmares about it.

"I'll owl you with the details about Friday," Remus said with a nod, and then he added, almost tenderly, "Have a good sleep."

Remus watched Tonks round the corner of the row of houses, and startled slightly at the voice that sounded suddenly behind him:

"Well, well, Moony. That was flirty."

He turned to see Sirius leaning against the mouldy papered wall, smirking, and shrugged at his old friend.

"Why shouldn't I indulge in a little harmless flirtation with a pretty girl?"

"Harmless? Twenty galleons says this little assignment will take the U out of your unresolved sexual tension."

"Harmless, yes. As in, of the variety that doesn't end up with said pretty girl in the evil clutches of werewolf paws," Remus replied lightly, hoping Sirius wouldn't see through the humour to the truth, which was quite the opposite of his words. But if anything was to happen with Tonks, Remus wanted it to do so on his terms, not because Sirius pushed either of them into it. "In any case, resolution would require a measure of interest from her, and that's about as likely as Dung's taking up residence in a monastery, so I'll see your twenty Galleons and raise you a bottle of Ogden's."

"Plenty of booze in some monasteries," Sirius rejoined, predictably distracted by the promise of Firewhisky -- thank Merlin. "I could see Dung quite happily whiling away the end of his days in a place that'll keep him topped to the brim with liquor and priceless silver, and provide a limited wardrobe to ease the stresses of daily fashion. So don't go betting beyond your means, old man," he said, jabbing Remus in the upper arm. "You may just live to regret it."

With that, he turned and headed back down to the kitchen, his robes flapping in a manner reminiscent of another colleague who'd attended Hogwarts in the 70s, though Remus would never dare to mention it.

Nor would he mention the undeniable fact that if Sirius did turn out to be correct, he would quite happily see the back of twenty galleons he didn't have for the sweetness of the reward.

To be continued...

A/N: Reviewers get to be Remus' personal Muggle tutor, where the lesson plan will be to give him a head start on the mission and help him impress Tonks. They must also help him to send a birthday card to Gilpin for tomorrow.