Chapter 1: Dora Tonks

Saturday 22nd June 1996

Nymphadora Tonks was a 22, nearly 23, year old witch. She absolutely hated her name, preferring to go by her surname or Dora, as her father called her. She couldn't imagine what her mother had been smoking when she'd named her Nymphadora of all things. Sure Andromeda came from a family that favoured...alternative baby names but she'd also been disowned. Did she really have to follow in those lunatics' footsteps by scarring her child for life with a stupid name? Her father had wanted to name her Michelle but Andromeda had retorted that if Ted went through 31 hours of labour without pain relief, due to being allergic to the main ingredient in pain relief potion, and endured tearing in unmentionable places then he could choose the baby's name. Needless to say Ted had lost that battle.

What few people knew about Dora was that she was only a witch because she chose to be. Dora had been born a metamorphagus, meaning that she had a very rare ability to change literally everything about her body, including her gender. Her parents were of the opinion that those with the metamorphagus ability were basically a third gender because they were technically both male and female but, at the same time, neither. Societal pressures meant she, at least outwardly, had to be one gender or the other, though so her parents had decided on a girl as that was the form she'd been in at the time of her birth. Of course since then Dora had been through so many changes she'd lost touch with her base form, although she still chose to live her life as a woman, even after her parents sat her down when she was eight years old, explained exactly what being a metamorphagus meant and promised to support her even if she wanted to start living her life as a boy. While she'd always been a tomboy, Dora felt like a girl so a girl she remained.

A few years later, however tests run by Andromeda, a qualified healer, revealed that Dora was capable of both bearing and siring children. This was something the Tonks family kept a strict secret. Dora had already been coveted by the DMLE since she was a child, due to the surveillance skills her abilities gave her. She'd be turned into a brood mare for the purpose of the wizarding world's obsession with line continuation if the extent of her ability was revealed. Luckily Dora, as far as her parents could tell, was the only metamorphagus alive in the world so there was nobody who could let any information slip.

Dora hadn't had very many friends at Hogwarts and she'd hardly dated. The boys didn't like her for her; they all wanted her to change into their fantasy date, usually a blonde, big boobed barbie doll. The girls, on the other hand, we're jealous of her abilities and hated her because the boys were less interested in them, knowing what she could do. After Hogwarts Dora had done what everyone expected her to do and joined the DMLE. Her parents hadn't been happy with her decision. They didn't think she should give in to pressure. Dora didn't see it that way. If she could become an aurour and use her abilities to help make the world a better place then so much the better.

Having the legendary Mad-Eye Moody choose her as a protégé made Dora feel even better about her decision. Mad-Eye never paid attention to public opinion so if he'd chosen her Dora had to have something more going for her than just her metamorphagus abilities. She'd quickly become disillusioned, though. It was obvious that the worth of an aurour had nothing to do with their skills. It was how well they played the political game and whether or not they were willing to look the other way to the...unscrupulous activities of some of the so-called upstanding members of their society.

Mad-Eye hated all the burecratic bullshit and definitely wasn't going to let any criminal activity he saw go so he ended up quitting before he could be fired. Dora was too young to follow him, though. She still had her whole career ahead of her. The fact she was a metamorphagus brought her some respect in the snake pit that was the DMLE but Dora still knew that sooner or later the fact that she, unlike the majority of her colleagues, had morals was going to cause problems for her.

At the end of her probationary year, Dora was surprised when Mad-Eye suddenly came knocking on the door of her apartment. Voldemort was back, Mad-Eye told her, and the Ministry of Magic was refusing to believe it. Instead, to combat the dark wanker, Professor Dumbledore was reinstating the Order of the Phoenix, what basically amounted to a vigilante organization he'd started during the first war, and, as one of the few sane members of the DMLE, they wanted Dora to join. She hadn't hesitated. Her parents had kept her as far away from the first war as possible but Dora could clearly remember how scared Ted and Andromeda had been back then. She would do anything to spare her parents from having to relive that pain. She would do anything to spare others from having to experience that pain so she'd immediately signed up to be part of the fight.

When she joined the Order Dora expected to be facing deatheaters on the battlefield. She expected assassinations. What she didn't expect was a glorified dinner club where all they did was sit around listening to the Professor preach about how even the most evil person deserved a second chance and Severus Snape complain about how he was the only one doing anything useful for the Order and how much he hated Harry Potter. When she joined the Order Dora also definitely didn't expect to be reunited with Sirius Black.

Where most people old enough to remember Sirius had preferred to put him out of their minds, Dora had always remembered her cousin. He was her mother's favourite relative, the only one Andromeda had been sorry to leave behind when she fled the House of Black. Sirius had been a frequent visitor to the Tonks home when Dora was young, often babysitting her so Ted and Andromeda could go out. The whole family had been stunned when Sirius was sent to Azkaban, accused of being Voldemort's second in command. Andromeda had felt so betrayed. She'd really thought Sirius was on her side, the white sheep in the Black family. She'd loved him, taken him into her home and let him around her child so when Sirius was arrested, Andromeda felt like a complete fool for not realizing what he was like.

For a good part of her life Dora had hated Sirius Black with a passion for the grief he'd caused her mother so when she walked into Order headquarters for the first time and saw the most wanted man in all of Europe sitting calmly at the kitchen table she'd gone for the throat. Eventually though she'd calmed down enough to hear Sirius' story and that was when, for Dora everything had changed. Her parents had raised her to believe that family always came first and Dora's family once again included Sirius. She now knew that she couldn't spend the rest of her working life at the Ministry. Trying to make the world a better place wasn't worth sticking with the organization that had screwed her cousin over so badly. She would stick it out for however long the war dragged on – even if the Ministry didn't pull it's head out of its ass and start fighting Dora thought she might be able to pick up intelligence to pass on to the Order – but as soon as the dark wanker bit the dust she was out of there.

Dora had never had a cousin before. Well, biologically she had several cousins on her father's side. They didn't know about magic though so Dora hadn't been able to hang out with them when she was young in case she inadvertently broke the Statute of Secrecy before she learned to control her metamorphagus abilities properly. When they were older the cousins all went to the same school so saw each other every day whereas Dora only saw them occasionally when she was home from Hogwarts. As far as Dora was concerned the cousins were naive little twits she would never have anything in common with and the cousins all thought Dora was a weird recluse that they shouldn't have anything to do with.

So Sirius had come as a pleasant surprise to Dora. Yes he was 13 years older than her but, despite her fun loving demeanour, Dora's abilities had forced her to grow up much faster than anybody except perhaps her parents realized. She could definitely relate to Sirius' hard, embittered shell and ultimately was just glad to find she had another magical relative that wasn't criminally insane. The professor tried to tell Dora that she shouldn't tell anybody about Sirius but there was no way Dora was going to let her mother go on thinking that her favourite cousin had betrayed her and, dammit, Sirius needed as many people as possible on his side.

Less than a week after Dora set foot in Order headquarters for the first time she'd looked on as Sirius snuck into her parents' house and had a tearful reunion with Andromeda. From that point on family dinners had been a regular occurrence, usually following the examinations Andromeda insisted Sirius submit to as she helped him recover from Azkaban. Sirius provided a shoulder to lean on when Dora's boyfriend turned out to be the latest in a long line of losers and, in turn, Dora had lent her support when Sirius began making his own discreet enquiries into the mess that was his godson's life.

That mess was how Dora found herself where she was now; standing in a shitty little street in Surrey, in the early hours of the morning, staring up at Number Four Privet Drive. She turned her nose up disdainfully. Dora had nothing against muggles but this place felt sterile and...fake. If she hadn't already had chapter and verse from Sirius about what ghastly people Lily Potter's relatives were, Dora could have figured it out for herself just by the area they lived in. She wanted nothing more than to leave but this was important. The work Sirius had started was essential to the future of the entire freaking world so, with him dead now, Dora had taken it upon himself to carry it on. Using her morphing abilities, she altered her inner ears, to give herself super human hearing. This allowed her to hear what was going on inside Number Four, even from across the street.

By the sound of it, Dudley Dursley was jerking off. Dora quickly focused on another area of the house. She really had no desire to know what that fat fuck got up to in the privacy of his own bedroom.

Vernon and Petunia Dursley were also awake, lying in bed talking. "The fucking freak!" Vernon growled. "I'm going to kill the boy one of these days."

"It's only for another year, dear," Petunia soothed her husband. "The freaks come of age a year earlier than everyone in the normal world so when he turns 17 in the middle of next summer we can legally throw the boy out, regardless of what the old man thinks."

"Believe me, I'm counting down the days," Vernon snapped. "But if he doesn't get rid of those bloody nightmares he'll be lucky to live to 16, let alone 17."

Dora scowled. And these were the people the Order thought appropriate to raise Harry Potter, the hero of the wizarding world? She longed to show a pensive memory of this to the Daily Prophet, to rub in their faces how wrong they'd been, but she resisted. After today the Dursleys would never be an issue again. Besides, she couldn't put Harry, her cousin's beloved godson, through that sort of humiliation.

She frowned, comprehending exactly what Vernon had said. Nightmares? She hastily honed in on Harry's room. Judging by his breathing and heartrate the kid had just woken up from one such nightmare. He was shedding quiet tears. "Sirius," Harry sobbed.

Dora's heart broke for the kid. When Sirius realized how fully his godson had been betrayed he'd also realized that he wasn't going to survive the war. After all he was all that stood between the boy-who-lived and these bastards controlling the kid. Sirius had made plans for after his death but Dora suddenly realized that, still struggling to comprehend that there were people in the world who loved him, he hadn't taken into account the impact his loss would have on those left behind. Dora missed her cousin, badly. She, at least, still had loving parents however so she couldn't imagine how Harry, whose only other remaining adult relatives hated him, must feel.

She glanced skyward. Dora wasn't a religious person but even if there wasn't such a thing as heaven she found herself hoping that Sirius was somewhere peaceful and happy, hopefully reunited with the Potters who he missed so dearly. It was the very least Sirius deserved after all the crap he'd been through. "I promise you, cuz," she whispered. "I'll finish what you started."

She slowly started making her way towards Number Four. It was time to fill the boy-who-lived in on a few unpleasant truths.