i think one of the reasons remadora appeals to me in the way it does (yknow other than the 2 decades of reading fanfic that fills the gaps in varied and fun ways) is the cynicism of how it plays out. it feels out of place in this series that likes to hammer you over the head with the redemptive power of love and whatever. like, love ultimately isn't enough here and gives them an extremely hard time and is at least indirectly what gets them both killed, actually. (no credit to the author whatsoever on that front because i don't think that's the intended message, i think she just realised she couldn't let all the secondary characters live and liked the idea of doing the war orphan parallel lol)
obsessed with the potential from what we know of these two characters to tell a really interesting story about an unlikely, secretive connection happening on the margins of the canon, starting in a really tender beautiful place and torn to bits by the impact of the outside world and the war and the inherent prejudice of society. that part that part.
they're also just really juicy characters to think about individually (and i'm going to talk about tonks specifically here because i have a lot to say and remus already gets lots of attention in canon and fanon). tonks is brilliant. she's always running into danger guns blazing to a degree that fucks me up acutely. she grows up with the end of the first war and the aftermath in the backdrop, her mum's cousins becoming two of the most notorious Bad Guys in azkaban. her parents aren't involved in the war (presumably - they don't get into the order that we see until deathly hallows and we never hear about them having been a part of it the first time. them deliberately not involving themselves makes sense to me; andromeda might have that slytherin self-preservation streak going on, ted seems pretty easygoing, nothing in the little we see of either gives soldier/fighter vibes). tonks sees this and her reaction is "i'm going to be an auror".
and then she becomes an auror and the ministry is denying that voldemort is back and she's like "nope fuck that, i'm going to join the order". she appears to really throw herself into that headfirst - she's in grimmauld place quite often in the summer of ootp and again at the xmas holidays, despite having her job and other order duties and whatnot. she goes there on (either xmas or new years' eve or potentially both - one of them anyway, there's a party and she's there) - she's choosing to spend presumably limited free time socialising in this haunted house. she makes a real effort with all of these teenagers who are having a properly weird time of it and tries to make them laugh and buys them little christmas presents. she goes after bellatrix specifically at the department of mysteries.
she's basically all in all the time with everything that she does, and we see that approach start to take a toll on her when hbp comes around and she's depressed and having trouble with her morphing (sure it can be interpreted as being all about remus, but i prefer to think that there are multiple things happening here at once).
we know it isn't gryffindor levels of valuing bravery over everything that motivates her, she's brave yes, but she's a hufflepuff so she values hard work and duty and loyalty more. that makes me wonder if she feels drawn towards her choices out of a sense of wanting to fix the world she lives in, and if there's maybe also a desire to confront parts of her ancestry that make her uncomfortable (it's interesting to me that we don't hear from tonks that she's related to the blacks, we hear it from sirius - combined with her preference to be known by her last name over her very flowery black-esque first name. one interpretation is she's very firmly asserting who she is vs who her mum's estranged family are).
and all of that without talking about the metamorphmagus of it all! which in and of itself is an extremely fun idea that canon does very little with. how does being able to look however you want to look impact your sense of self? she seems to have so much fun with it and to know who she is, but there's a darker interpretation of how that power could impact her self-perception - and how it must feel to have it desert her when she's at her lowest. and wow girlie is someone who's In Her Feelings. i enjoy that, there's a temptation to have tough soldier-y characters be disconnected from their emotions in a way that doesn't always ring true for me when i think about how those types of people typically behave.
to bring it back to the ship, we've got this person who is so driven but so empathetic and at least on the surface very joyful and funny. we contrast her with remus who is also very empathetic and witty (and brave, btw - we describe him as a coward a lot but i think that oversimplifies him, his cowardice is specifically interpersonal), but has this crippling self-loathing and melancholy and learned reluctance to let himself participate in life. like it makes sense to me that she would coax him out of his shell and that they would get on really well with each other, and that tonks would look at this sad beaten-down man and just not be able to let go, even when it would be the smart thing to do, even when he's telling her over and over he's not worth it, because it's not fair that it has to be that way and that he's not allowed to have the things in life everyone else gets. and she's not letting anybody tell her anything, ever, even him because she knows what she wants and she knows what he wants too if he'd stop getting in his own way about it. i love her. she's drive and bravado and guts and good intentions. she's a bulldozer. it all goes so, so badly for her but i love her.
...and then there's the other part where the hospital wing scene lowkey imprinted as The Most Romantic Thing Ever in my beauty-and-the-beast-pilled childbrain (and that concerns me on some level that i'm not clever enough to articulate, but it is what it is)
tldr remadora drives me insane and i hate it and i love it and i want to pick it apart and look at all the pieces and put them back together in a satisfying way. and i'd also like it very much if they didn't die please (but would i be as obsessed with it? idk man idk)
