You know the drill, but just remember how little I own (I own nothing!)

:) *enjoy*

As supper time arrived without any sign of Tonks, Hermione started to fidget. It wasn't anything particularly abnormal; sometimes assignments took days to complete, she reminded herself again as Fred and George apparated into the kitchen with a loud 'crack', making her jump and look to make sure it wasn't the pink-haired Auror.

When they all sat down at the table, Hermione found herself in the middle of a dozen cross-table conversations, none of which she felt like participating in. Molly was yelling at Fred and George –again- about the responsible use of magic, which the twins were avidly ignoring by talking loudly across the table at Harry and Ron about their latest scheme. Harry was switching between moodily staring into his potato soup, and gazing longingly at Ginny from behind his shaggy bangs, while Ginny's pink cheeks attested to the fact that she had noticed Harry's stare, but was now loudly arguing with Fred about the morality of selling puking pastilles to first years. Ron, his mouth completely full of soup-soaked bread, was recounting the afternoon's trials cleaning the attic to Sirius, who was obviously attempting to have a sobering conversation with Remus and Arthur. Arthur was trying his hardest to hide behind the Daily Prophet, to no avail. Hermione kept her head down, and brooded over her soup.

It wasn't like she thought that Tonks was incapable of defending herself, exactly the opposite. The truth of the matter was that Tonks had come and gone from 12 Grimmauld Place multiple times during Hermione's stay, and had always come back whole; but her absence had never felt this stressful before. It was like her inner compass had been stuck on the woman ever since that night on the fire escape.

Shaking off the sensory memory of Tonks' cloak wrapped tightly around her, heavy and irresistible, Hermione appeased Molly -who had been attempting to give her seconds- with a smile and excused herself from the table. Spending some time with the massive collection of books in the study would be sufficient to calm her nerves, but she quickly changed course when she saw Mad-Eye Moody slouched over an enormous tome, his dinner set neatly on the table next to him. The last thing she needed was more talk about You-Know-Who.

She was being silly, the whole thing was just silly. When Tonks did return, she would probably report that she had spent a few days trailing an innocuous wizard after they had bought something suspicious at Borgin and Burkes for their nephew's collection.

"There's nothing to worry about" she muttered to herself, as she often did when her head started to get that buzzing, over-stuffed feeling, and sluggishly started to climb the stairs towards the third floor. Upon reaching the landing, she automatically swung towards her bedroom, but paused with her hand on the knob when Tonks' door at the end of the hall caught her eye.

Hermione walked over and hesitated, looking back over her shoulder and listening hard for the tread of anyone coming upstairs, before ducking inside.

Now that she was in the dark of Tonks' room, she shook her head in anxious disbelief. She could not believe that she was actually in here. She should just turn around and go to bed, Tonks would probably be back by the time she got up.

She. Was. Being. Ridiculous.

But there was that smell, that smell that screamed Tonks. It slid against her like silk, and before she knew it the knot in her chest had eased, and she could breathe. Hermione blinked in the dark, something new beginning to actualize in a dusty compartment of her conscious, but before the thought could fully form, there was a loud 'bang' from downstairs, followed by the screeching of the portrait of Walburga Black, Sirius's mother, in the entryway.

Before Hermione could think twice, she was outside in the hallway, gripping the stair bannister and straining to distinguish the tangle of voices beneath the shrieking of the portrait. She could clearly hear Sirius bellowing at the visage of his mother, and she couldn't mistake Mad-Eye's guttural growl for anyone else in the house; she closed her eyes and listened, barely breathing.

"I'm so sorry! I swear I can't walk through this door without setting the old thing off," Hermione's grip on the bannister loosened at the sound of Tonks' rough cadence.

"I swear Tonks, it's a miracle you ever passed your Auror exams" Lupin chastised, though any response was quickly overrun by a babble of voices, which moved towards the kitchen.

Hermione let out a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and strode into her room to continue her literary explorations of the Ministry of Magic.