Just Follow The Spiders or was it Butterflies
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling
"It just had to be follow the spiders didn't it. Why couldn't it be follow the butterflies? Harry, anything else and I am your Gryff'. Why does it have to be spiders?" Ron exclaimed.
Harry looked over at his first friend, and he knew he couldn't force him to do this. What kind of a friend would he be if he did that? "It does sound rather useless as a clue. Why would following the spiders solve the problem?"
"Exactly, look it's getting late. Let's head back to the common room, and play a game of chess. I think best playing chess. I might think of something better, we could do instead." Ron's pale face finally regained some colour. That fact was the nail in the coffin for Harry. There was no way he would make his friend follow the spiders.
"I'll join you shortly mate, with Hagrid gone I want to check Fang has enough food and water." Harry quickly replied, and watched his friend, gratefully head off. He waited for a bit, and then set off. He would check Fang had food and water, and he would return later to play a game of chess with his friend. So he hadn't lied. Even if he followed the spiders alone in the middle of the other two tasks.
He wondered as he followed the trail of spiders into the forbidden forest if he should have brought Fang along with him. It was a bit daunting to go into the forbidden forest alone. Then again Hagrid had said Fang was a coward. He was doing this for Hagrid, and Hermione, and so Hogwarts isn't closed. He would rather go into the forest alone than return to privet drive early.
"Hey do you not know the forbidden forest is, you know, forbidden?" A boy he didn't know asked him, causing Harry to jump. "What'ya doing going there?"
"Who are you?" Harry asked, noticing the tie had Hufflepuff colours of yellow with black stripes. Well at least he wasn't a Slytherin. However, it was an unknown older boy, probably a fourth year.
"Just call me T… ed.. dd." This unknown boy obviously offered a wrong name, which didn't help enable Harry to become comfortable in the current situation. "Yep, I'm Ted, and you're Harry Potter. So you gonna' clue me in on why you're heading into the forbidden forest? Looks like you were following this trail of spiders, which is odd, and interesting. If you are following the spiders then I will come with you. I plan to be an auror, and know lots of spells to keep us safe. So what do you say, deal?"
All this time Harry had been examining this bloke to try to get a feel if he could trust him. His gut said though he lied on his name, he could trust the rest. He wished he could lie for once on who he was. He hated being the bloody boy-who-lived. Unfortunately, everyone knew he was flippin' Harry Potter, so he couldn't really get bent out of shape on the offered false name. In the dusk lighting he noticed that Ted's black hair seemed to have blue in it. How did he not notice that before? "Hey Ted, is some of your hair blue?"
"Damn, I thought I had got that washed out. It was a bad dye job." Ted replied, while Harry approached.
"Well I think it is cool. I have the same raven coloured hair as you, and I think I would like to dye it with those streaks of dark blue too. Where can I get it from? Is it hard to do like that?" Harry asked.
After a while he realized Ted hadn't responded, and he looked away from Ted's hair that he had been studiously examining to see Ted had his mouth open in shock. Suddenly Ted's Hair went pink. "Wow is there magic to change your hair. Why would you say it was a bad dye job if you could just fix it with magic?"
"Harry you can do it too." Ted said.
"Sure I'm a wizard, but I'm a bit busy now. Later though I want to learn the way to get those blue streaks in my hair."
"You already have them. That's why I'm in my shock. I lost a bit of control and my hair turned pink." Ted said. "Most wizards can't do what we can. "You're a metamorphmagus, like me. The first I've met. I am amazed at your control. I'm constantly changing when I am not thinking about what I want to look like."
"So this is thought evil like parseltongue?" Harry angrily spat out. Great he was a freak. Doing something few others can do. As Ted is hiding his identity it probably is considered evil, and freakish too. That was why Ted would lie about his name. The Dursleys always said he was a freak.
"No this isn't hated. It actually is more a problem the opposite way. Once every one finds out you can change something, and then they want you to make your boobs bigger or look like their last girlfriend, or this girl they saw somewhere."
"Great another freakish thing to add to my list." Though he was worried about Ted's sudden comments about girls, and their body parts. Surely they didn't make a boy look like a girl just because they could change their appearance.
"I won't tell anyone, and you can use it like I do to hide. I'm actually a girl, and my name's Tonks."
"Tonks? I think I had an easier time believing Ted was your name, and I knew you were lying then." Harry calmly stated.
"Tonks is my last name. I hate my first name. My bloody mother thought it great to give me a hideous name. I'll tell it to you, but if you ever call me by it… I'll kill you, and no one will find the body, deal?"
Harry laughed at the absurdity of the situation. He was talking to a girl that looked like a boy that actually offered to commit murder to prevent someone from using her first name. "Well just so long as no one will find the body, deal." Harry chuckled back.
"Okay, it's Nymphadora Tonks, my Dad's named Ted so I didn't really lie with that name either. You better only call me Tonks. Now, are you going to tell me why we are following the spiders?" Tonks asked.
"The minister just arrested Hagrid to be seen to be doing something. He knows he isn't guilty, but as long as he is seen by the public to be doing something he stays in office. Hagrid told us to follow the spiders to solve what's attacking Hogwarts. With Hermione, and the others petrified. I can't leave it. Hogwarts is my home. I can't go back…"
Tonks's recollection of a story from the twins about saving the boy-who-lived from barred windows and locked doors suddenly sounded more sinister than the usual twins' tall stories. She needed to get Harry to stop thinking about whatever is wrong enough that it would make him call Hogwarts home. Sure the school was great, but a normal kid didn't call school, home. She would come back and address that later, but first she needed a distraction. "So who's us, I mean I just joined you?"
"Oh, I sort of lied to Ron. He really hates spiders, and I tricked him into thinking I wasn't going to follow them."
"Wow that is a great 'puff attitude from both of you. He would have come if you hadn't tricked him, and you tricked him so he didn't have to. I think that makes you both honoree 'puffs from this day forth." Tonks said, grabbing a hold, and giving Harry a hug.
If Harry had ever questioned if this boy was truly a girl he didn't now. As she was like all girls, ready to use any excuse to hug. She could sure talk too. At least she let him talk too. I mean Hermione was great, but she controlled the conversation. He had spent several minutes talking more than he had in the last week. It was fun too.
"Well let's find out what is attacking Hogwarts. Save the damsel that has been most foully turned to stone, and live happily ever after." Tonks said grabbing his hand, and pulling him into the forbidden forest.
It was a bit dark, due to all the trees to see for sure, but Harry was fairly sure Tonks had changed from how she had first looked. He didn't mean just the fact her hair was now bubblegum pink and in a girl's pixie cut either. Sure she was still wearing trousers, and a Hufflepuff tie on her boy's shirt. However, the figure in the clothes was no longer a boy's one, he was positive. She also looked older than the fourth year he had pegged her as being. The older was not due to how she came across maturity wise. She had a lets have fun, by causing chaos attitude. In fact he bet she would love the twins. Hogwarts might not survive if they meet though.
His musing was cut off when behind them about ten spiders nearly the size of small ponies dropped from the trees. "This is not looking like such a good idea as it was before, champ." Tonks needlessly informed him. The following herding by the spiders led them into darker territory, and they noticed webbing between the branches increasing at an alarming rate.
Finally, they entered into a clearing and there were spiders here that made the pony spiders look small. From behind a huge fallen tree, coming out of the hole in the ground likely caused by the huge tree's roots ripping out of the ground as the tree fell, was the biggest spider of all. "Why would you come here?" Oh, and the spider talked.
"Hagrid told us to follow the spiders." Harry quickly said. Hagrid always had the most dangerous looking pets. He had told them to follow the spiders, and must have known it would lead them here. "Hagrid said we would find the answer to what is attacking Hogwarts if we followed the spiders."
"We do not say its name! Our sworn enemy has awoken again in Hogwarts…
"A basilisk, that can't be for their gaze kills. We have students being petrified." Tonks interrupted the acromantular. She had learned their sworn enemy was the basilisk in Care of Magical Creatures previously when she had been studying to take her OWLs.
'Don't speak the cursed legles one's name again or my children will lay eggs within you, and you will slowly be eaten as they hatch, and search for a way out."
Tonks clung tightly to Harry, and decided that she should probably let the Gryffindor do the talking. He had been doing a much better job of it than she had. Knowing their eggs were the size of beach balls, she wasn't interested in having one let alone a plural quantity forced inside her. Then there was the whole being eaten six to eight weeks later.
"Well thank you, I will pass on the best to Hagrid. He was right to send us this way, but it is getting late and probably about time for us to check back with Hagrid."
"As you are a friend of Hagrid, I will not eat you. Hagrid knows he is always welcome to visit. He also knows that only he is welcome to visit. I offer protection only to him from my children. I will not eat you, but my children are hungry."
"Run, Lumos maximus!" Harry yelled after whispering run to a startled Tonks. He grabbed a slightly confused Tonks with him, and they were running, while he kept shooting the brightest flares that caused the spiders to retreat. When had he drawn his wand? They charged out of the clearing, and Tonks having finally drawn her own wand actually started casting some fire spells that mainly angered the spiders. They did cause a small path ahead to clear, but the spiders were taking to the trees, and would likely drop on them soon.
Tonks screamed when her robe got stuck in a web. In blind panic she set the record for disrobing. Leaving it behind as the two of them ran for their life.
Then like a scene straight from her Dad's Monty Python movies there was a bloody car driving in the woods toward them. Tonks decided to just go with the flow. The car hadn't phased Harry, he'd just started to pull her toward it. Was this what his life was like, she had thought the ridiculous stories were fiction. 'Fine run toward the nutty thing that doesn't belong in the picture, why don't we.' At least he was still running away from the spiders.
"Get in!" Harry pushed her through the open door of the empty car. Where had the driver gone? Harry was right after her, and the car was speeding off. Its doors opening and closing to throw the jumping spiders off. She panicked when she realized that Harry wasn't driving the car. Then remembering they'd been dealing with spiders near the size of carthorses, and she wondered why she would panic over no one driving the car. As long as its moving away from the Acromantular colony, and missing the trees that wasn't the thing to panic over. She was so sure she was going to die. Then again maybe the spiders' venom is a hallucinogen, and she is being eaten or worse, being filled with spider eggs that will eat their way out when they hatch. She recalled they laid eggs in lots up to a hundred.
Well damn it if she is going to die or is dying anyway. She pounced on the boy-who lived and grabbing him to her, she proceeded to snog him senseless. After a moment or two of likely surprise Harry returned her kissing. When she pushed her tongue against his lips he didn't realize he was supposed to open so she pushed her tongue harder, and then began fencing with his tongue. He worked out what he was supposed to do and the kiss became passionate. She grabbed his arse and pulled him hard to her, and felt him stiffen. It felt a pretty good size. One of his hands was in her shirt, and grasping a boob that was available as she hadn't been wearing a bra while in boy form earlier.
The next moment she was in the air flying toward the whomping willow. She felt her shirt's buttons pop off, as Harry's arm inadvertently ripped itself out of her shirt as they were air-born. Her tie forced out from under the collar, 'till it dangled like a necklace around her neck. They landed thankfully not too close to the willow, and she got to see the car drive off into the forest once more.
"That happened then?" She said looking at Harry whom couldn't stop looking at her chest. Oh right, she pulled her shirt closed over her naked boobs.
"Urm, you might need to be a bit more specific. If you mean the sex, and kissing, which is the most important thing that happened tonight to me. Then, yes, that happened." Harry replied.
"Wow, you sure say the nicest things to a girl, Harry." Then stopping herself from saying she had been talking about the car that lives in the forest and drives itself, she grabbed him and started walking across the grounds, and continued. "Yeah, let's go with that. Do you know this is the best first date I have ever had."
"Well as I hadn't known it was a date, I will have to say that as soon as the kissing started it was my best date too. Of course the stuff before was scary as shit, and this is my first date. But, I don't think it will ever be beaten."
"You do know how to say the best things to a girl, Harry. Don't ever change. Will you walk me to Hufflepuff entrance, while we decide on what we will do for our second date?"
It took a bit of walking for Harry to actually engage his brain and be able to reply. "You want a second date with me?"
"Well sure, not only was that my best first date ever. The adrenaline shot I got from the action comedy movie was nearly good enough to die from. I mean you take me out on a true muggle style date. You provided one complete with a drive in your car through the haunted forest, and both dinner, and a movie. Admittedly we would have been the dinner, but a date can't always go completely perfect, and we survived the hic-ups, which actually show the date as superior. It's good for a girl to see how the boy handles things going wrong on the date."
"The car isn't mine, it's the one Ron, and I crashed into the whomping willow at the start of the year. It was Mister Weasley's, but it has sort have gone wild." Harry clarified.
"Well anyway, seen as you nearly got me impregnated on our first date. You definitely owe me a second." Tonks declared.
The sound of a thump caused both of them to look away from each other's eyes that they had been lost in, to find several students around them, staring at them wide eyed, and Professor McGonegall was laid out on the castle's stone floor.
When during the conversation did they enter the castle?
I know I made Tonks younger - reviews appreciated - 3000+ words