Over the next few weeks, Tonks steadily recovered from her injuries, with only an occasional twinge to remind her of them. She quickly resumed her Auror duties, which seemed to consist primarily of engaging in endless tail-chasing activities meant to reassure a terrified populace. She contacted an increasingly restive Harry Potter and attended the meetings of a depleted Order in a strangely empty Grimmauld Place, setting off her great-aunt's portrait's rancor nearly every time. And three times a week, she met Hooch at Hogwarts to practice combat.
"Why is it, my dear, that you can barely manage the first 8 steps on Wednesdays when you are perfectly capable every other day of the week? And this week, you can't even perform the first eight?" asked Hooch with mild frustration, peering down at a sulky Tonks collapsed at her feet.
Tonks looked up at her unhappily, magenta-pink hair flopped into bright purple-blue eyes, shading gray with distress now. Tuesday evenings meant contacting Harry – which had begun to be disturbing as well as depressing, with the boy's alternate malaise and fury wearing even on the normally buoyant Tonks – and an Order meeting at Grimmauld Place, where she inevitably set off her least favorite cousin's poisonous rants. Without Sirius available to draw her fire and defuse it with his mockery, it had begun to focus on Tonks, as the only member of the Black family to enter the house. She was getting awfully tired of being told that she was a worthless degenerate perverted half-blood.
It made it worse that even her Muggleborn father agreed with and repeated some of it – while both he and her mother were very active in fighting anti-Muggle and blood purity prejudice, her father had inherited and kept some very negative ideas about same-gender relationships from his very Christian Muggle parents. They had been very close when she was young, but the discovery that her romantic life would never include males had driven an unmovable wedge between them. Her mother chose to remain aloof from this particular argument – she still had frequent contact with both parents, but it was strained and irregularly supportive.
This particular Wednesday she had been hit with a particularly virulent auntly rant the night before, highly vocal blame for bumping the portrait from Molly Weasley, a sullen Harry, worrying news about Death Eater activities, a nasty encounter with a sneering former lover also a member of the Order, and her father at lunch with lectures and some anti-gay Muggle literature from America. He wouldn't understand that she didn't want to change her sexuality.
"I just... I hate Tuesdays! And they affect my Wednesdays." She left it at that, refusing to rise. She felt too crotchety to make an honest effort at anything, let alone a physical activity requiring grace and control such as Tai Chi.
Hooch studied her new friend's drooping posture, dropping down in front of her to sit cross-legged. The two were practicing in the Japanese garden in the small atrium that Hooch shared with Milagra Rara, Hogwarts' Special Talents Tutor. As Milagra only taught Seventh, and rarely, Sixth Years, and never had more than ten students once a week each per year, she was rarely present, preferring to spend time in the flat she kept in Hogsmeade except when she had a morning session. This afternoon, the two had the atrium to themselves.
"Want to tell me about it?" Hooch coaxed gently. She'd come to know Tonks well enough to know that visible distress was unusual, no matter what the provocation. One of the things she enjoyed most about the younger woman was her usual cheer and enthusiasm – she herself tended to be overly serious.
"I... I'm just tired – all those old goats finding You-Know-Who-and-wish-you-didn't in the lavatory bowl, you know. And family and ex problems just when I most didn't need them. My da and my aunt hated each other, but just my luck, the one thing they agree on is my complete inadequacy. As does my ex, incidentally, as she spent all lunch telling me."
Tonks looked up at Hooch, wishing she was sure that she could tell her the full extent of why she was upset, but she still had no idea how much the other woman knew, COULD know, about the Order, and any discussion of the full extent of her problem with her aunt would necessarily involve an explanation of Grimmauld Place. She also, unaccountably, felt a bit hurt to have Hooch point out her undeniable clumsiness today.
"Inadequate? Feh. For what, to father children? I can't imagine anything else that you wouldn't be more than adequate to do," Hooch offered, reaching to touch her knee lightly. "And former lovers aren't known for their impartiality when discussing your faults – you should hear some of mine."
"Well, actually... Technically... I am a Metamorphmagus, you know." Tonks grinned teasingly at Hooch. This was true, although she truly disliked changing her physical gender. This had been one of the issues that had come between her and Hestia – the other woman had wanted her to change too much of herself physically too frequently. She looked at Hooch curiously – this was the first time the other woman had mentioned anything specific about her romantic life, although they'd both established that they preferred women early on. While this wasn't nearly as looked down upon in the Wizarding World as in the Muggle world, it still wasn't the usual, and many of the Pureblood families would expect such a witch to marry and produce a child before 'indulging' their true inclinations.
Hooch's eyebrows shot up. She offered Tonks a sharp look to let her know that she wasn't distracted by this tangent, but asked "You can really father a child without spells? I didn't know that – are you sure it would work? I thought the Metamorphmagic changes were strictly surface?"
"Nope. Oh, they're surface in that it's always me, but physically, they go down to the organ level unless I want them not to. When I first started changing my age, it was really hard because it took a while to figure out how not to change my age on the inside, too – I could have given myself a coronary if I'd changed the age of my heart at the wrong time. I was really glad when I figured out how to change just on the surface."
Hooch pursed her lips thoughtfully, reaching over to tug lightly at a lock of magenta hair. "I know that you change your hair, but what else is different? Could you shift back to your original... template?"
Tonks stiffened slightly, but nodded. She changed from a small woman with blue-violet eyes and spiky pink hair to a small woman with unusually clear green-hazel eyes and thick, shaggy black hair. Her face and build hadn't changed much overall, although she'd been revealed to have a slightly crooked nose, clearly broken at some point. Hooch stood, reaching to tug Tonks up to meet her.
"I want to see how far off you took it from the original you," she explained as her hands skimmed lightly over Tonks's body, measuring length of limbs, back, etc.
"You are probably having problems partly because you aren't quite matching up when you shift parts of the whole – your body expects everything to be in a certain place and move in a certain way, and it just isn't. I should have thought of this before, but I forget that you're a Metamorphmagus – you never change anything but your hair when I see you, you know! Why do you keep your eyes blue? They're lovely like this?"
"Oh." Tonks managed, no longer surprised by how much she liked Hooch's touch after weeks of working together like this. She felt a little guilty to be feeling like this, knowing that Hooch didn't know and didn't intend her to feel anything sexual. She arched her spine a little under the other woman's touch unconsciously, causing Hooch's eyes to widen in surprised pleasure behind her back.
"Thanks – I got tired of rude remarks from my family – they all have blue eyes, both sides, and no true Tonks or Black could possibly have hazel – and no-one believed they were my real eyes, anyway, most people with hazel eyes have flecks, not rings of color. So, what can I do? I mean, I'm still a clod when I don't shift anything, and I have to shift when I'm an Auror – one of my biggest assets is my ability to look like someone else."
Hooch stood in front of Tonks, her hands resting lightly on the Auror's shoulders. "Well, we'll skip fighting practice today, but I want you to do the exercises I'll give you instead when you aren't shifted. I think that the more connected you get to your body the more able you'll be to carry it over when you shift. The Tai Chi will help with that – I want you to practice the first 24 stances in your own body in the morning and then in your most usual shifted forms at night, every day, on top of the other fighting practice you perform. That should help with stress, too," she added at Tonks's exaggerated groan.
She smiled at her pupil-friend, reaching to stroke a bit of soft hair out of her eyes. "You'll like this part – I want you to get massages, in your original and favorite shifted forms, at least every other day, to get you more connected to where your body is."
"I've never had a massage – I don't know if I want someone I don't know touching me," said Tonks, frowning. She was a little uncomfortable at the idea of someone touching her when she couldn't watch them, especially in her natural form. Her eyes flicked mischievously with an idea.
"Could you give me one?," she looked up appealingly at Hooch through her fringe. "Just the first – because I've never had one before." She could get an idea what that would feel like and get some more of that gentle firm touch that she had come to like over the past few weeks.
Hooch smiled and said, "of course, my Lady. Let's have a hot bath first, to relax you." She pulled away to offer an exaggerated bow, offering Tonks her arm to lead her to the Japanese-derivative furo she shared with the absent Milagra.