Before Ron could announce he was hungry (because Harry could read the expression on his face), three things happened at once. The window next to his bed exploded inward, showering both he and Ron with glass. The fire in the fireplace and every lantern in the room went out, leaving the entire room pitched into darkness. And a thundering voice called into the room. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT I'M GOING TO DO TO YOU?" Harry frowned. Who the bloody hell is that?
Harry reached for his wand, but was pushed back by someone.
A familiar female voice said, "I hope what you were planning didn't have anything to do with his nether regions. That's my territory."
"Tonks? What the hell is going on?"
"Quiet, sweets. Stand back there and look pretty; I've got this one," Tonks replied, licentiously patting Harry's ass as she did. "I've been tracking him for weeks." The metamorphmagus expanded her body to seven and a half foot tall, and 25 stone of solid muscle.
"Cor..." Ron exclaimed as it became obvious Tonks's wardrobe wasn't up to this particular change in appearance. Tonks paid no attention to the randy 16-year-old.
"All right," she said. "You want a fight? You've got a fight!" And with that rather uninspired one-liner, she produced a rather magnificent whip of Fiendfyre, which, when wrapped around the creature's leg, brought him to his knees with an ear-splitting shriek.
"I yield! I yield!" the creature said, and Tonks, good sport that she was, released it from her enchantment. Mysterious creatures, however, are far too fond of monologuing to simply leave quietly.
"I will go," it said. "But know this: I will be back for what is mine. You cannot interfere with Lady Destiny!"
The creature left with a thunderous whoosh, and the room lightened once again. Harry transfigured a bathrobe out of his duvet for a rapidly-normalizing Tonks, much to Ron's dismay.
"What in the name of Merlin was that, Tonks?" Harry asked, quite afraid of the answer though he was.
"Oh, Harry," Tonks said, sitting her young charge next to him and forcibly resting his head on her breast. "I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, but..."
"...you unleashed far more than Snape's anger when you stole that parchment. Things have been released that should not be mentioned in front of the young and impressionable." She nodded towards Ron, who bridled in indignation.
"Look here!" he protested. "I'm five months older than Harry!"
Tonks regarded him pityingly. "In years you may be older, Ron," she conceded. "But in experience..."
Her voice trailed off, and Harry could not help but smirk.
There was an awkward silence, broken by the door being flung open and Snape entering, cloak and greasy hair flying, with fury in his eyes.
"Potter!" he roared.
Years of confrontations with Dudley had honed Harry's fight-or-flight response, and, having faced the business end of Snape's wand with regrettable results, he chose the latter. Pushing off a curiously soft and round part of Tonks, Harry bolted under Snape's outstretched arm and out the door, skipping several steps at a time in his haste to escape his dorm. Gryffindors, apparently clueless to the unusually loud activities upstairs, watched him with growing astonishment. Harry was almost to the portrait hole when it opened in front of him, and he crashed into the one person he never expected to see at Hogwarts.
