Auror Tonks
Where did you start when you've just blown up all your world? Where do you go next when you've rewritten the entire history of the end of the war, even if in a minor way? What do you do when you have a giant secret to keep, and still a mission to finish?
Right then and there, Hermione lacked answers to pretty much everything. It did at least make some things that had been odd before make sense, like Narcissa secretly meeting with Andromeda on a regular basis despite publicly remaining the good pureblood wife of Lucius (even if she had now taken a position at St. Mungo's and gave extensively to charity). Harry had just been so grateful that Andromeda finally had some kind of family support on the wizarding side that he hadn't thought much of it, but Hermione had not wanted to think so highly of Narcissa Malfoy. Now she was reappraising that.
Guilt was an uncomfortable compatriot each night in Tiraspol. She certainly felt like she had sold out Sirius and Dobby for the chance to get the scar off of her arm. She indulged in self-psychoanalysis, an absolutely terrible and pointless effort. Of course, she had always been more willing to forgive others than herself, so it made sense that she'd even give some Bellatrix some credit, while blaming herself for engaging with her.
So, your problem is that you want to care about everyone except yourself, and you hate the idea that your chosen self-care involves compromise with a morally compromised individual. Yeah. It was a neat exercise in intellectualism, but it didn't go anywhere productive, so she headed out to a street cafe to get some food and something to drink. Probably coffee today, even Tiraspol did have it available Turkish-style.
She went out, wondering if she should just give up thinking about it. But that was totally impossible. Among other things, her investigation wasn't particularly going anywhere. Larissa had arranged some interviews with border guards—which were completely useless, they had clearly been briefed in advance. The regime and the Russian peacekeeping forces would never admit they would do anything wrong, that was all pro forma. And Hermione respected that, it meant Larissa was a good professional protecting her national interests. Hermione had never been a realist herself, and couldn't see herself in the same position, but she understood it.
It was not helping. The food did, the drink did, but the rumination manifestly did not. Instead, it was just a reminder of the situation she had gotten herself into.
Isn't this just the radical commitment to equality and forgiveness and rehabilitation that you want?
How do you rehabilitate a vampire?
Finishing dinner/breakfast, she went back to her hotel room. There would be one way to start to answer those questions. She could ask Tonks. Hermione needed help trying to make some progress on the case of the dragon eggs, anyway.
The knock on the door came about fifteen minutes after dusk. Tonks was dressed like an old woman, with a scarf over her hair, and a massive pair of dark sunglasses, but these things she pulled off as she entered, tossing off scarf, outer vest, sunglasses onto the bed with casual disdain, eyes flashing red to reveal her true nature, but also opening up, being comfortable around Hermione. If she had completed the disguise and shifted form any, she had reverted it by the time she was at the door.
Hermione was standing there, waiting, and without hesitation reached out to squeeze the vampire into a hug. That was perhaps a test of Tonks' self control as much as anything else, but she really had missed her, and without Bellatrix around at all, this felt much safer and comfortable. And Hermione was not at all afraid of Tonks. Around her, Hermione's attitude might as well have been—if she bites me, she bites me.
Tonks was cool to the touch. Hermione didn't care. "Damnit, I missed you."
"Likewise. And it's wonderful to know you're tearing your way through the Ministry ranks," Tonks added with a grin.
"Pfft." Hermione rolled her eyes. "Kingsley's golden haired girl, except I'm not golden haired. I've heard it all. And I don't care."
"Straight to the top?"
Hermione flickered a grin at Tonks that she couldn't resist despite the circumstances. Oh yes, she still had her ambition. And around Tonks she felt comfortable admitting it, too. "Straight to the top." A moment later. "Come on, sit down, bed, chair, it doesn't matter. And do you want any water? I assume you can still hydrate."
"Yes. Actually, I can still drink tea too, though I'm rarely in the mood for it. Most liquids are okay. It's hilarious to see Bella going for brandy like it's water."
"She's become a regular sot?" Hermione grinned wryly as she stepped over and grabbed a water bottle, insisting on pouring it into a glass to make it a little fancy for Tonks. But it was definitely a wry grin as much as Hermione had little room to complain—of course Bellatrix would come up—she was Tonks' lover.
"It's much harder for vampires to get drunk. But she's… Well, I'm trying to help raise my son from a continent away. She's… She's pureblood, she finds that silly because Purebloods never really raised their own children to begin with. Nannies and house-elves, you know, Mum was kinda screwed up by it too. I'm sure it helped contribute to the existence of my name."
Hermione laughed despite herself. "Probably."
Tonks was laughing wryly as she looked up, to Hermione with her legs crossed in the chair, while Tonks sat on the bed. "How are you and Ron doing?"
"Oh, you know, Ron worked as an Auror for a while and then… Retired to work in his brothers' Joke Shop. You know. He wants to have children, and Molly and Arthur really want more grandkids, and I guess we will soon enough, since, well, I mean, it would be nice for my parents to have grandkids too…"
"...You do know, right, that it's totally okay to be a childless couple if you choose to be?"
"Oh, it's not that way. Raising a new generation in the wizarding world that can experience it in a less prejudiced way than I did is important to me. I'm just not sure yet that I'm in that place in my career, and I'm not sure yet that Ron is in that place as a man where he could adapt to being a Stay at Home Dad."
"I admit, he isn't the most obvious Mister Housewife," Tonks agreed with a wry grin, though there was a flicker of distant pain.
She's probably thinking of Remus, Hermione thought, and immediately felt guilty about it, again. Shouldn't have brought it up at all, especially since I do nothing but complain. Damnit.
"It's okay, Hermione, really," Tonks observed succinctly.
"You could tell, huh?"
"One of the virtues of being a vampire, I suppose. Heart-rate, the scent of fear or concern in the air, I can hear it, smell it," the metamorphmagus observed. "Though until Valentina arrived neither Bella nor myself really knew what the hell we were doing, to be honest. This whole 'becoming a vampire without a sire' thing was very odd, I've garnered from her."
"Is that why you tolerate having her around? I mean, she's very polite, Valentina, but I've also seen her file and she's spent most of her life as a hired killer. And she was a right-wing terrorist before that, to be blunt."
Tonks grimaced. "You got her file somewhere?"
"MinKol headquarters, of course. I am getting along well enough with the Station Chief. I take it you're at least somewhat aware?" Hermione folded her hands behind her head, genuinely curious with what Tonks was going to say about this here.
"She's a lone wanderer. Her sire and their clan are dead, destroyed in the – World War Two, the Pacific part of it," Tonks said after a moment, more plugged into that part of the history of the muggle world, but not by that much. "She wanted to settle down, come in out of the cold, be adopted by a coven. But that's a very hard process for a vampire, and it involves giving up a lot of autonomy, and vampire men can be shits to women just as much as mortal men can be. It's a … Wot, Hermione, the vampire world needs feminism too," Tonks started laughing at the expression on Hermione's face; then Hermione couldn't help it and joined her.
"Well, great, men are all the same then," she laughed, pleasantly. "Anyway, go on."
"She carries with her the prejudices of her era. I've confronted her about them sometimes and forced her to work her way out of some. But, yes, it's complicated. I think she sees Bellatrix as a fellow exile, and respects that. She was an exile before she was a vampire, and that part of her sense of identity is pretty wrapped up in the humanity she keeps. Just like, I suppose, family is the most important thing for me in terms of keeping a sense of humanity. And, well, on a practical side, yes, we needed an experienced fighter to help protect our territory. There are covens in Chisinau and Odessa which have sometimes caused problems for us, since two vampires without a history or a past or any kind of connections make for a vulnerable coven. Valentina has an address book as thick as her arm is long; representing the leader of an area in eastern Europe like Bellatrix technically is, she's been able to reach out to a lot of people, smooth some ruffled feathers, and help establish boundaries for us."
"Which are?"
"All of Transnistria, and the districts around Balta in the Ukraine. Which used to be part of Moldova before WW2 but that's all really kind of ridiculous backstory and only relevant because a lot of older vampires love living with one foot in the past."
"Do you have any contacts across the border?"
"Oh yes," Tonks nodded. "We don't use them for smuggling, though, I …"
"Still want to be an Auror a little? Don't worry," Hermione raised her hand. "Despite Larissa's suggestions to the contrary, I don't believe you and Bellatrix are behind the smuggling. It's all too low stakes and ridiculous for you to risk being found out from it. Technically you were already found out as a result of it and I saw how Bellatrix responded to that. I'm asking because I would like to use those contacts to investigate, I admit. And I suppose Valentina might even be helpful for that."
"She would, and I don't think you'll have a problem of disrespect from her. Even Bella seems, well… I'm trying to wean her from slurs," Tonks added wanely.
"I know you are, and to be blunt," Hermione shrugged, not feeling put on by the conversation. Tonks had taken a lot of shit over the years too, after all, "I'm impressed by the fact that she's been as willing as she has been. Has she changed, my friend?"
"I think almost completely losing and then having to begin re-learning her magic has humbled her a bit," Tonks answered. "That and, it's common knowledge now that Voldemort was a half-blood and the child of a muggle. I'm not sure exactly when Bella found out and she gets upset when it's brought up, but it may have something to do with a change in her stance."
"Mmmn." She looked sharply at Tonks for a moment, and then asked, in the softest and nicest voice that she could muster-"if I manage to get it so you can safely return to wizarding Britain, with rights of citizenship… Will you leave her?"
"I don't know, I can't fathom it at the moment but I can't say for sure one way or another. You are right, though, she'd never really be welcome in wizarding Britain again," Tonks nodded, her expression rather grim.
"I understand that it's a difficult decision, and probably unthinkable at the moment," Hermione tried to be as sympathetic as she could. "Uhm, did you know you were pansexual before Bellatrix?"
"Yes." Tonks smirked at her a little. "Remus wasn't my only partner, Hermione. I suppose it wouldn't have mattered, though, because partners or not, I knew who I was attracted to, which was … Everyone I found attractive, really."
Hermione blushed a little. Mayhaps more than a little, she could feel the heat rising up in her cheeks. "Oh."
"Don't worry, not you, too young! Well, you were, then."
"Fair." A smile. "I guess by that standard, anyway, I'm at least bisexual, though it feels lame to use that label when you've never acted on it, like the ultimate excuse in tokenism."
"...Hermione, stop blaming yourself. So, you're attracted to women, too?" Tonks asked bluntly.
Blushing again… "Err, yes."
"I guess it's going to be impossible for me to convince you that you shouldn't put enough effort into constructing some justification for how it doesn't really count… But it does. Just, do something good with it. If you keep going up, try to fix, try to really fix, the issues the Wizarding world has with the LGBT community. Arranged marriages, for one."
"You mean…"
"Take Bellatrix for example," Tonks continued with a nod. "She was forced into an arranged marriage—legally. Otherwise, I'm fairly sure she'd have been exclusively interested in women. Well, she was exclusively interested in women, but, you know. I'm not sure how much that had to do with the direction that she ended up taking her life, but I think it's fair to assume that it didn't help."
"I thought she got along fairly well with Rodolphus and Rabastan…"
"She hates Rodolphus, though she does like Rab," Tonks corrected. "But Rod and her worked well together, in Voldemort's service. You can imagine what that did to her, finding a way to cooperate with him even as she was trapped in a marriage with him. Serving Voldemort with him. And, Voldemort," her expression turned dark. "He manipulated and used her. Slept with her, but it wasn't something—she's never been sexually attracted to men, I'm sure. It was like a cult leader using one of his groupies. I think Bella's in denial about it, to be honest. She hates being controlled by others, and yet, decades of her life were destroyed by Voldemort using her, playing her like a fiddle. And at some level she knows it, and desperately doesn't want to own up to it, not in the slightest."
That's honestly kind of encouraging. It implies she's aware of how much of her potential and her life and her freedom were all wasted, Hermione thought. Then she thought of something manifestly unpleasant. "Uhm, does that mean that Voldemort and Bella..."
Tonks looked like she was going to vomit. "Don't know, and don't want to know."
"Even as her intimate partner?"
A glare was directed at her, and Hermione winced as Tonks spoke. "Can we… Move on from that? I'd much rather help you crack this case you've got for yourself. I've mostly used my Auror training to help keep order here and that's...a complicated pickle to find myself in, really."
"Fair. My apologies about pushing too hard."
"You're forgiven, it's your desire to always know things," Tonks smiled. "And, I do mean it. I'd love to be of assistance. I made my vows, those years ago, and it would be nice to actually act as an Auror outside of a counterinsurgency campaign—and then an insurgency campaign."
"I'd love the help of a trained Auror, actually," a smile flickered to Hermione's face again, glad to put Tonks' discomfort behind them. "Where would you suggest we start then, Auror Tonks?"
Tonks' expression brightened at the form of address, even if it really didn't get brighter since how pale she was seemed fairly fixed. I wonder what happens to a black person who becomes a vampire, Hermione thought; another of those questions it would have never occurred to her to even think before this trip.
"Wellllll…" Tonks was grinning. "In fact, there's a second railway crossing Transnistria, in the north, at Ribnita. There's a distillery and sugar factory there and a fair number of other businesses as well including a steel mill. We do travel up there and go into the Ukraine via Balta, sometimes, but it's further from the MinKol headquarters and also the headquarters of the peacekeeping commission, so if you're going to be smuggling high value cargo through Transnistria, why not use the Ribnita crossing?"
"Huh." Hermione joined her friend with a smile. "Looks like I'm reaping the benefits of your Auror training already. You have contacts up there?"
"Certainly."
"How long would it take us to get there?"
"Two and a half hours by car," Tonks recited. "Safer that way considering MinKol is probably tracking where you apparate, to the best of their ability."
"Do we have a car?" Hermione acknowledged she had a point, and resolved that when Tonks was gone, she'd check herself for bugs of the magical kind, that might trigger an alert on a ward when she apparated in the area.
"Of course I have a car. In fact, I have a Jag." A wink and a finger daringly pointed at her. "Absolutely no saying anything at all about bad influences of the posh and bitchy on me, 'Mione. It was in fact my mother who was the gearhead."
"...Your mother may not be rich, but she's still posh."
Smiling fondly but sadly, Tonks tipped a salute to Hermione in acknowledgement. "Alright, true. If anyone can be a posh gearhead, it's mum. Da' taught her how to drive on an Austin 1800. She immediately took to it like a fish in water and became obsessed with cars. Used her job at the Ministry to help them afford a brand new Rover SD1 when it came out..."
"Oh Christ, my parents told me horror stories." Though, despite the fact that he was no longer with them and it was a sensitive matter, it seemed like a happy story, and Hermione could certainly imagine Ted Tonks trying to teach his aristocratic pureblooded wife how to drive in one of British Motor Corporation's 'finest' products of the 1960s. Come to think of it, the few times she'd been driving anywhere in the muggle world with Andromeda Tonks, the estranged Black sister had worn driving gloves… "A brand-new SD1, though, really?"
"Well, nobody ever said Purebloods made good decisions with their money," Tonks winked. "Anyway—tomorrow night?"
"Sure." Hermione did some quick maths in her head. "Will we really have enough time to get back before sun-up, though, considering the travel times and what we may be up to while we're there?"
"We've got a safe-house up there, we can spend the night."
"Well. All right then." Road trip in an unrecognised former Soviet Republic with Tonks to possibly surveill a criminal organisation. But don't worry, Tonks is a vampire.
Well, this sure isn't boring. In fact, Hermione's main concern at this point was that she was getting used to the idea her life had become just as nuts as it was at Hogwarts. So much for putting the past behind.
Especially when it was named Bellatrix.