*~* Chapter Twenty One

Downstairs Tonks and Teddy were the only two remaining in the family room. After Remus and his godfather left, the teenager started to leave, but his mother reached out to stop him. "Wait!" she said. He turned back towards her, and Tonks shrugged awkwardly. "Do you want to talk?"

The young man nodded slowly and glanced to the door Remus and Harry had exited through. "What about...," he trailed off, still unsure what to call the man who was his father.

"Oh, we don't have to talk about anything important without Remus," Tonks said. "But if you have any questions for me..."

Teddy nodded again. "Okay," he agreed, perching on the arm of a nearby chair. Her son gave her a cursory look and a slight smile. "What's your favorite color?"

Tonks grinned. Her hair was already sporting her favorite shade, but she made it glow brighter for emphasis. "That would be pink. What's yours?"

He returned her smile and made his hair glow teal. "I'm pretty fond of this color," he told her. "Your turn for a question."

"Ever change your face into weird stuff? You know," she demonstrated by morphing her nose into a pig snout, a face that had been popular back with the Weasley kids during her time in Grimmauld.

Her son replied first by scrunching up his face and transforming his nose into a beak. "You mean like this?" he asked, still managing to look mischievous with the bird-like protrusion on his face. Tonks snorted through her pig nose, and neither of them could hold back their laughter.

She'd never met another metamorphmagus before, and she doubted Teddy had either. This was a whole lot of never before imagined fun for them both. The beak disappeared as he tried on an elephant's trunk. Tonks morphed her features into those of a cat complete with whiskers.

"I used to do that one all the time when I was little," Teddy said. He chuckled as he studied her feline face. "I always ended up looking like Crookshanks though. Hermione hated when I did that. Something about a bit of Polyjuice gone bad."

Tonks nodded, remembering hearing stories herself. "I remember her reaction when I used to do this. Hermione really did hate the whiskers."

Teddy scrunched up his face to transform again, but midway through, he sneezed, something made all the more impressive by his elephant trunk. This hilarious action sent mother and son into another bout of laughter.

"Okay," Teddy said after they had caught their breath and regained their human features. "Have you ever morphed into another person?"

She paused to think over that question and sat beside him on the couch. "Yeah," Tonks answered. "In the Order and at the Ministry, I sometimes have to disguise myself for undercover work."

The teenager shook his head. "I mean have you ever morphed into somebody else?"

Thinking hard, Tonks grinned. "At school I used to make fun of one of my professors. I'd change my face to look like Snape and scare all the kids in my year. Even Charlie got freaked out when I did that." She studied his face, still trying to memorize every feature. "What about you?"

Her son blushed faintly as he scanned his memories. "Yeah." He looked around for anyone else in the room. Taking a deep breath, he decided to tell her. This woman was another metamorphamagus, she was his mother; she would understand.

"This last year at school, I would sometimes sneak out after hours. Not anything bad, but for midnight snacks and stuff. One night I was headed for the kitchens and wasn't paying as much attention to the map as I should have been."

Tonks knew about the fabled Marauder's Map. She'd heard all about it from Sirius and Remus as it had been their greatest treasure and achievement.

"When I did glance at the map, I saw a teacher walking my way. There was no where to hide and he'd be on to me in a moment." He blushed again and ran a hand through his teal hair. The look he gave his mother was a guilty one as he related the rest of the story. "So I did the first thing I could think of to avoid a detention. I erased the map, cast a quick spell on my pajamas, and..." he paused, wondering what she would say, "and morphed my face into Filch."

"No!" Tonks felt her face spread into a wider grin. Morphing into Filch... She never would have thought of that one. This kid was good. "Who was the teacher? Did he fall for it?"

Teddy looked up again and saw her smile. He was relieved. He'd never told anyone that story, not even Harry, not even Victorie. He hadn't been sure how his parents would react to hear about their son's thoughtless and reckless behavior. "It was the Potions Master, Professor Slughorn," he answered. "Luckily, I thought to stash my wand too, since Filch having one would have gotten me into even more trouble. Sluggy almost ran into me in the dark, and I'm pretty sure I scared him."

"What did you do?" she asked, enthralled with her son's daring gamble.

He smiled back, seeing, not for the first time, the humor in this encounter. "He called me Argus, so the morph job must have been convincing, and he asked what I was doing at this late hour. So I muttered something about 'looking for my cat' and shuffled off. Far as I can tell, he still doesn't know it was me."

Laughing outright at Teddy's audacity and wit, Tonks cheered him on. "That's brilliant! Really genius."

"The next morning at breakfast, I heard Slughorn ask Filch if he'd ever found Mrs. Noris."

This added information made Tonks laugh all the louder. "Wow, I never would have thought of something like that and would have the detention to prove it. The morphing you might have got from me, but the wit came from your dad."

Teddy smiled slowly, as he thought about that.

Tonks sobered a bit and said, "Teddy, you do know that you can't just turn into other people. What we've got is a brilliant gift, but it's not okay to get others into trouble with it."

The young man nodded, just as solemn as she. "I know. I wouldn't ever try to get someone into trouble with my powers." Truthfully, he'd felt guilty about using Filch's face almost as soon as he had. "I won't do it again."

"There's nothing wrong about what you did. I mean, technically sneaking out of bed is against the rules, but we all had a bit of fun with that in our day. The important thing is that you understand where the line is and be sure not to cross it."

He nodded again. "So you're not disappointed in me for that?"

His words made her want to pull him into her arms, but as well as this conversation was going, Teddy still wasn't ready for that. "Of course not. For using your morph like that? I thought it was genius, and I trust you not to go too far. For being out of bed in the first place? I'd be a complete hypocrite if I was. I was in plenty of trouble while at school."

"What about ... my dad?" Teddy settled on asking.

"He'd be proud too," Tonks assured him. She really did hate the fact that Remus had been at least partially right about Teddy's fears. "He'll tell you that if you let him."

Teddy stood and shoved his hands into his pockets. Tonks tried to hold back a snort at his familiar posture. "I have another question," he told her. She stood next to him and gestured to indicate that he should ask it. Her son took a deep breath and plunged in. "What do you really look like?"

She stood across from her child and watched as he chewed on his bottom lip, a nervous trait that was more her than Remus. He was scared he'd asked too much. A metamorphamagus, like Tonks or Teddy, could hide their true features, so oftentimes they did. Pink or teal hair could often cover up numerous insecurities.

Tonks wasn't one to morph it all away, every freckle, every blemish, but she was well aware of her powers. Very few had ever seen her completely pure and true to herself. Even while she'd been unable to morph, her features had not revealed her complete self.

Slowly, she let the layers drop. There weren't many, but there were enough. Her heart shaped face stayed the same, but the emerald eyes she'd been sporting flickered to the dark brown of her father's family. She remained the same height, a good few inches shorter than Teddy, but her hair settled back to its soft and ordinary brown. And the scares shone through her own pristine skin.

The scars had been one of the few things she'd worked to hide. There were many, from countless and frequent tumbles and crashes. They didn't make her hideously disfigured, but they showed how flawed she really was. Tonks stood before her only child, looking as she really did. Plainer, quieter, weaker perhaps. But Teddy's expression suggested he was staring into the very face of an angel.

He understood what she had done for him. Letting down the barriers was hard. It required great trust and love. Teddy had seen pictures, of course, of his mother. But one hadn't existed of her as she really was. To him, she was extraordinarily beautiful.

Teddy let his own morph slip away, consciously pushing back the layers, wanting to return the gift, wanting his mother to see the real him. He stood before her, taller than she, with the same heart shaped face and dark eyes. His hair was a light and tousled brown and fell across forehead and down into his right eye. When he smiled there was a faint dimple in his cheek and the glisten of unshed tears in his eyes.

She felt the tears well up as she gazed on her only child. He was perfect in her eyes. Looking so much like his father, but yet resembling her as well. Teddy had done her a favor by showing his true self. Tonks would never live to see her young son grow to be a man, but here, now, she'd seen a glimpse of who he'd become.

As he stood facing his mother, Teddy could practically feel her love for him. He'd never felt anything like it. There were plenty of people who loved him, would do anything for him. But he'd never before felt as loved as he did by his mother. He felt content, complete, for perhaps the first time in his life.

"iBut then/i," a little voice from inside whispered, "iwhy did she leave you?/i" Teddy knew the story of his parents' deaths. How his father had gone to fight, and how his mother had followed. How she'd had the choice between fighting and keeping his safe. How she'd not chosen him.

And suddenly it hurt far more to stand beside her than to miss her. "I'm going up to bed," he said shortly. Turning quickly so as not to change his mind, he walked purposefully from the room.

Tonks watched him go in confusion. They'd been so close. He'd finally let her see him, let her love him. And then, suddenly, it was gone. And so was he.