Notes: Kingsley/Ginny... A strange pairing, I guess. Set during DH and after, so beware of spoilers.
Also, please forgive my English. I'm unfortunately a french writer.

Five years

1. Discussions over a cup of tea

- 'I cannot stress it enough: I'm not into little girls.'

Kingsley's slow voice echoed through the Tonks's living room, followed by an uncomfortable silence. Nymphadora, totally herself with her flashy pregnancy dress and orange socks, shifted in her seat. She was clearly uneasy, as indicated the faint loss of color of her vivid pink hair. On the table, her cup of raspberry flavored tea was slowly going cold.

- 'I wasn't implying you...'

- 'That's exactly what you were implying, and I assure you I would throw myself into Azkaban if I ever indulged in thoughts of that kind. The girl is SIXTEEN. While it's no problem for you to marry someone Remus's age, it...'

- 'HEY! Stop it, stop it, stop it', shouted the younger auror, her hair now tomato red. She jumped to her feet, and, in typical Nymphadora Tonks fashion, promptly tripped. It had to be belly first, too, and Kingsley caught her by the shoulders to prevent her from landing flat on the floor. She looked suitably miffed, pouted for a few seconds, then calmed down and sank back into the sofa. 'Don't get all offended like that, Shacklebolt! I said you were looking at her, not that you were, err, looking. Why the drama?'

He sighed. It was not the best thing to do, and his colleague stared at him as if her eyes could have drilled an hole in his head to get hold of his thoughts.

- 'Unless you are, of course', she added.

- 'For God's sake, Tonks! I am NOT!'

She crossed her arms and mimicked Andromeda's coldest expression. As nice as her mother was, the woman still had the Black's features, and didn't have to try very hard to manage menacing looks that could put Bellatrix to shame. With the metamorphmagus's uncanny skills for imitation, the result was about perfect.

- 'Then what's your problem?', she asked.

- 'It's just getting quite tiring. The Weasley twins cornered me with the same accusations - they are becoming a tad suspicious, I'll have you know, since the "ministry employees" that knocked at their door felt the need to be a tad too close to the girl. Just to check if she was hiding "illegal items".'

- 'They DID?'

- 'I heard she kneed one of them in the balls. She's hardly the helpless kind.'

- 'Six brothers, that's to be expected', commented Tonks while casting a warming charm over her tea. She took a sip, grimaced, and put the cup back on the table. 'My god, it couldn't taste any worse.'

- 'I wouldn't know, Tonks, I do not understand how you can drink the stuff in the first place. To be honest, I wouldn't consider anything you described as "tasty" in the four last months as even remotely edible. Pregnancy is messing with you. A lot.'

- 'Well, I can't wait to be hooked on the junk we aurors call food again!", she joked. 'Hot-dogs and coffee, just what I need to get back in shape!'

She was maybe a little bitter about her new figure, though Kingsley wasn't worried about her ability to go back to the svelte, slightly muscled body he had seen so many times while she was training. A large part of the aurors were men, and proper clothing wasn't really the primary concern of most of the female recruits: harder training was, as well as the occasional arse-kicking of the disrespectful peers. The calm, orderly life of their office in the ministry, reassuring to the public eye, had nothing in common with the hard reality of the bloody battles and the roughness of the training. Clumsy as she was, Maugrey's favourite had broken her fair share of noses (some by accident), knocked out a respectable quantity of teeth, and crushed just enough testicles (death eather's, of course) with the hard soles of her combat boots to be considered a brilliant young auror. She would have no difficulty at regaining her natural weight, anyway: metamorphmagus had some clear advantages over the rest of the human species.

- 'But, let's not forget the topic.', she said. 'Back on the girl, Kingsley.'

Ginevra had probably been "the girl" since the day of her birth. The Weasley girl, the girl going out with Harry Potter, the girl Tom Riddle possessed. Now she was "the girl" for the order, as Tonks, with her protruding belly and the ring on her finger, had been promoted to "Mrs. Lupin". Hermione granger, currently "the missing one", roamed the country with her best friends. Ginevra was the last kid left.

Away from school, she spent most of her time in the garden of the Burrow, pretending to "practice her school lessons". As far as Kingsley was concerned, it looked more like relentless battle training - not that effective without a proper opponent, but the spirit was there. Her family would never allow her to fight, obviously, but she was not likely to comply to such orders.

Every now and then, passing by to report the latest news or just to catch Potterwatch on the Weasley's radio, he had stopped to watch the teenager, and even dropped her a few tips. Molly had promptly warned him "not to encourage her to be reckless", but in a fairly uncharacteristic move, he had done way more.

- 'I'm trying to convince her to become an auror, if we ever take the ministry back.'

- 'Are you insane? Her mother is going to throttle you!'

- 'Oh, don't worry, I am quite aware of that. I got my first tongue-lashing a few weeks ago, but I cannot help thinking the girl has everything one needs for the job."

Tonks gaped.

- 'Are you pushing a sheltered, last-born little girl to try our job?'

Shacklebolt cast a look at his empty cup of tea, and filled it with a flick of the wand.

- 'Indeed, I am.'

- 'She'd have to be crazy to consider it. I mean, you need to be masochistic just to complete the three years of training, what with the crazy nutcases we have as teachers... And then there's the dark magic, the morbid jokes, the risks, the work, the... Ah, no, wait, that was just me being stupid. She would be perfect.'

- 'Yes, she would', replied her friend. He took a sip of tea. 'But don't worry. She is not interested. Professional quidditch is better, or so she says.'

- 'Cleaning toilets is a better job, Kingsley. We only love being aurors because our mind isn't wired the right way.'

- 'If you say so.'

- 'Oh! He's moving again', exclaimed the young woman, looking down with a smile of delight. 'Actually, he mostly moves at night, he doesn't like it when I try to sleep. But I'll live through it.'

Kingsley tried to summon some courage, and did his best to come up with suitable comments to the long baby themed monologue that followed.

To be continued...