A.N: If I owned Harry Potter, I would be calling this an omaki instead of fanfiction.
I know my name. I'm Nymphadora Elizabeth Tonks. At least, that's who I'm supposed to be.
I know my gender. I'm a girl. Well, that's what I'm supposed to be.
I know my age. I'm twenty-one. That's how old I'm supposed to be.
I know my physical appearance. I'm five foot two, with brown hair, and grey eyes. That's who I'm supposed to be.
But right now, I am none of those things. Right now, I am a six foot five, bald, brown eyed, forty-five year old male by the name of Kingsley Shacklebolt. The real Shacklebolt is my boss, and doesn't mind me using his form for my missions. What is my mission? I'm attempting to get into the Department of Mysteries, and I'm lying through my teeth to get there.
Lucky for me, lying is in my nature. After all, it's programmed into my very being. I am a Metamorph. I can change my appearance at will, mimicking anybody, up to and including the sound of their voice. As long as I know what they look like, I can look like them. I've gotten a lot of people in trouble this way and I will continue to do so.
The security guard at the Entrance to the Department of Mysteries is easily fooled. Kingsley is well known here, since the Aurors and Unspeakables work together often. It isn't any stretch of the imagination for the man to believe that Kingsley is coming to check on an artifact that one of his teams found at a crime scene. While yes, that does need to get done while I'm down here, it's not my primary mission. I have to make my way into the Hall of Prophecies..
I pass by the security guard with ease, and watch him go back to reading his newspaper. For being the sole guard of the most important department in the Ministry, he is rather delinquent on the security aspect of the job. Mad-Eye Moody would have this man's head if he knew. After the door shuts behind me, I take on another disguise.
This time, it's a man named Shane Urquhart. He actually works in the Hall of Prophecies, so my presence again will not get questioned. Like most of the Unspeakables I've met, Urquhart has brown hair, brown eyes and is stereotypically nondescript. He has a higher pitched voice than Kingsley does, which is such a shame. I like imitating Kingsley's voice, because it's deep and nice for getting people's attention. But I'm digressing.
Using Urquhart's form, I slip past the other Unspeakables in the department, making my way to the Chamber of Passages. This circular chamber of doors spins, a defense designed to confuse intruders. A small, stylized crystal ball on the doorknob marked the door to the Hall of Prophecy.
Thousands of crystalline orbs glittered in the low, blue light. An eerie chill emanates through the whole hall, making me shiver a bit. "Caldus." I whisper, using a warming charm. I look up at the shelves soaring up to the high, cathedral-like ceiling. There has to be hundreds of thousands of prophecies on these dark racks.
I stride down the center aisle, trying to move as fast as I can without tripping over my own two feet. It takes me a good ten minutes to get to row 97. Before getting there, I drop the visage of Shane Urquhart, so the person I was relieving would know it was me. As I turn the corner to row 97, I trip over a stray particle of air and stumble into something. Something invisible and bloody rock-solid. Two invisible hands grip my upper arms to steady me as I regain my balance. A voice from just above my head whispers. "Graceful as ever, Dora."
"Oh shut it, Remus. And my name is Tonks." I growl, falsely annoyed.
"Finite." He mumbles, canceling the Disillusionment spell he used to become invisible. "You don't mind getting called Dora as much as you want me to think." He continues, smirking.
"I mind it quite a bit actually. I don't like the fact that my name means 'gift of the nymphs'. People try to take advantage of my mum's absolute determination to have a baby, and the unusual talents bestowed upon me." I'm desperately trying not to smile, not to show him he's won this little round.
"Yes, but 'Dora' by itself means gift. And you have many, and are one yourself to those around you." He replies, running his hands down my arms to link his fingers in mine.
"Stop trying to flirt with me, Remus. You're not my type." I lie again.
"You, Dora, are an especially bad liar." Remus declares, in a low, husky voice. He draws my left hand to his mouth and brushes my ring finger, where a wedding ring would go. I shiver, and not just from the sudden disappearance of my warming charm.
"When I want to be." I retort, finally giving in and smiling. Remus smirks back, and kisses the side of my mouth.
"Are you cold? Here." He asks, before taking his cloak off and wrapping it around my shoulders. I protest a bit, but not too much, because the cloth is warm from his body heat and I'm freezing. "I'll see you at Headquarters, Dora."
I grumble a bit after he leaves, but not too much. Besides his cloak, he'd also left me a copy of the latest Quibbler, turned to the puzzles.
The Quibbler is a brilliant magazine. Most people don't take it seriously; the editor writes nonsense in his personal column, even though that only takes up a bit of the inside cover. The rest is short stories, poems, logic problems and similar things. I love working out the puzzles, but people above my pay-grade consider the whole thing a joke so I often claim that I don't subscribe. It's obvious Remus knows better. That's a scary thought to have, so I sit down on the floor and start on my Runic Sudoku.
After my four hour shift, I go back to Headquarters at #12 Grimmauld Place. Remus and Sirius are sitting in the kitchen. Sirius grins at me as I walk through the door.
"I know that look, cousin. What's going on?" I ask pointedly as I grab a butterbeer from the icebox and join the two men at the far end of the table.
"Remus left the house this morning with a cloak on. He came back without one. You left without a cloak and came back with one."
"Okay. What about it?" I answer, nonplussed.
"The one that Remus left with this morning. It's got a tear in the bottom of it where he ripped the tag out and hasn't fixed it yet." He finishes triumphantly. I pull up the material and sure enough, there's a rip in the seam, about an inch long, and the tag is missing.
"Okay? And the meaning to this?" I ask, suspicious now.
"Moony never lets people borrow his stuff. Ever."
"That was one time, and those were dress robes, Padfoot. Of course I wasn't going to lend you those. Prongs had given me those." Remus protests.
"The Grateful Dead t-shirt? The Journey shirt?"
"Those are band shirts, Sirius. That's practically a marriage proposal made of fabric." I say, smirking. Remus gives me a high-five.
"The only person he ever let borrow his clothes was Marlene Price. Before she broke everyone's heart by marrying Adam McKinnon." Sirius reminisces.
"Jumpers and cloaks don't count as clothes." Remus mutters.
"Okay, but how does this relate to me?" I ask. Sirius grins devilishly before speaking again.
"Remus absolutely adored Marley."
The man in question hides his face in his arms, but I can tell he's embarrassed. "I hate you, Padfoot." He says, muffled by his arms. Sirius yelps and sends Remus a dirty look, so I assume he got kicked under the table. I kick him as well, just to be sure.
"Oi! That hurts, you know! I'm trying to be helpful!" He whines, moving farther down the table.
"Helpful, my arse." Remus returns, keeping his head down.
"Well I mean, everyone else has been playing matchmaker. Why not me?"
"Sirius, if all your friends decided to jump off the Astronomy Tower - Actually no, don't answer that."
"Oh? Why not, Moony? Maybe because we did that?"
"YOU WHAT?" I screech, snapping my gaze to Remus.
"Merlin's sake Nym, I don't think my mum heard you. Why not go a little louder, huh?" Sirius quips.
"Shut it, Siri. You jumped off the Astronomy tower?" I snap, still staring at Remus.
"We were on brooms, Dora. It was perfectly fine." He responds, finally pulling himself up to glare at Sirius.
"Mmhmm. Sure it was."
Sirius tries to sneak out of the kitchen but I send a charmed copy of the Daily Prophet flying in quick pursuit. We hear him swear as the heavy paper smacks into him, and the noise sends the portrait of Walburga Black into a fury. Sirius' mum had never been one for staying quiet if there was a suitable reason to yell. But again, I'm digressing.
"You're a terrible liar, Dora." Remus says again.
"How can you tell?"
"You scrape your fingernails together, usually the thumb and middle, when you lie. And the ends of your hair blush a darker shade than the rest."
I shook my hair out to waist length and blonde so I could see for myself.
"No, it doesn't." Even as I speak the words, my hair betrays me, and the tips change from platinum to a warm butterscotch color.
"Mm, yes it does, love."
I look up in shock at the last word he says. Remus blushes a bit but holds my gaze. "Well, Sirius kind of let it out of the bag, but yes, I fancy you. I'd like to take you out for coffee some time, if that's okay?" he finishes in a rush.
"No." The look of shock on his face is priceless, but I have to keep talking. "You can't take me out for just coffee. You can take me out to be your girlfriend though." I smile as his expression turns from one of despair to one of pure joy. Remus grabs me in a tight hug and kisses me on the mouth, and we hear Sirius cheering from outside the kitchen door. He yelps as I send a Flipendo over my shoulder, causing the door to smack into him.
"You know, this reminds me a bit of a Muggle fairy tale, one called Pinocchio. He had a physical tell when he lied too. They ran it in the Quibbler a couple weeks back. I've got it up in the library if you want to read it." Remus murmurs.
"Yeah, let's go!" He smiles at my enthusiasm as we head upstairs.
We hardly get inside the Black Library before I trip over a stray particle of air and fall. I expect to hit the floor, but Remus catches me just in time.
"At least your clumsiness has you falling for me." he says, smirking. I blush and settle on a loveseat as Remus hunts for the old magazine. Once he finds it, he sits next to me on the settee and begin reading the story aloud. His deep voice soon has me relaxed and nodding off into Dreamworld.