Snapedom

Sorry, I was unclear. WE (the readers) are the ones who want reconciliation--I'm saying that's the attraction behind a lot of Snarry and Snupin. JKR didn't give it to us--if she had, and had done a plausible job, much less fanfic.

But reconciliation can only occur where the primary conflict is. For Harry, with Snape (who, we're told, Harry hated worse than arch-enemy Riddle); for Severus, with the Marauders (Harry, for him, is their echo--one of the challenge of Snarry fictions is to turn Harry into more than not-James and not-Lily for Severus).

What JKR gave us instead of any reconciliation?

For Snape, an echoing void, begging to be filled.

For Lupin?--Tonks is clearly, overwhelmingly, dimiinished by her obsession with him. The Tonks of HBP is lesser, magically and emotionally, than the Lupin-free Tonks of OotP.

As for Lupin--he accepts Tonks's interest under duress (social pressure plus overwhelming emotional travail), takes the first possible opportunity to ditch her, and considers the possibility of reproducing with her nearly as unfavorably as Voldemort does.

JKR never gave Tonks anything to celebrate. Or to reconcile.

Tonks is in the horrible position of being Remus's ultimate fallback: 'Since I can never have what I want, or what I want next, or what I want to want, or what I could contentedly settle for, I might as well dredge up the sludge of what might be theoretically possible, and settle for the best of that."

How does it feel, to be the fifth-best to anything actually desired by one's beloved?

You're starting, really, to make me feel for Tonks. Which JKR hadn't managed to make me do.