Tonks had read about kisses like this. Kisses that were so mind blowing that you felt like the world was expanding around you and that you were floating. Prior to this, she would have said that it was just authors using literary rhetoric to say that it was a good kiss. When she opened her eyes again the world was different, Azaria's world had changed and was now a weird hybrid of a forest from her world and a rainforest from earth. Brightly coloured parrots were sitting next to ghostly Aictuilaxr. Flowers were being visited by both brightly coloured butterflies and strange magical insects that seemed to be made from magic. Stepping away from Azaria she just turns around making a good impression of a goldfish. Azaria hugs her from behind and whispers into her ear.

"It's wonderful isn't it, this is our magic."

Eyes half closing as she leaned back into the hug, "What do you mean 'this is our magic'?"

"When I saw your vine entwine around that tree I knew that our bond was far deeper than I expected. So I took a chance and did for you what you did for me on earth. Where our bond allows me to live on earth with no ill effects as my magical body is bolstered by yours, here it's the other way around. Your magic is being made more flexible than normal by mine. And so we have something that is different and has the properties of both."

"What. Did. You. Do?" Tonks bites out.

"I brought us out to where I've been training Karen, so now we're equals magically."

"What happened to the challenge I gave you?"

"I'm sorry, but this is more important. I'm getting help with my past, and that's not going to stop, but now look at our magic. We'll need to learn how to work together, but we should both be able to manipulate the environment here. It's how I brought you here after all, it also means that you can be with me when I try to reduce my magic again, or I go back into that cave. I. I don't think I could do it alone." She reluctantly admits the last, as her experience in the cave frightened her.

"That's still no reason to just spring this on me. You could have killed me, and then what?"

"Never!"

"What normally happens when someone from my world is brought this far out?"

"They die as their magical body is unable to expand to hold their new level of magic and takes their physical body with it."

Tonks grimaces at the visual, "So, why do you think I'd be any different?"

Feeling sheepish and alarmed at that, Azaria says sheepishly, "I didn't think of that."

Shaking her head Tonks turns around, "For a race that prides itself on taking the time to perfect every move, you can sure be impulsive."

Azaria's shoulders sag, "I'm sorry, I should have at least spoken to you before I did this. And yes we are, I think the English word would be flighty."

In a huff, Tonks immediately withdrew her magic from Azaria before collapsing to the floor outside their inner world in agony as her magic tried to force itself to grow beyond the bounds that her body could handle. Coming out of her inner world after the loss of her presence, Azaria starts to panic.

"Tonks, Tonks, you need to come back to me. Merge your magic with me, I don't want to lose you."

Tonks laughs weakly and coughs up some blood, "I don't think I can, you'll need to do it from your end."

Desperately Azaria tries to draw Tonks into her magic, holding her limp form to her chest as she does so. Failing to do so, she searches for something that might help. Remembering the bubble technique that the magi teach, she expands her magic out into a sphere around them, and plunges the level of magic in that sphere as low as she can. In her inner world, hoarfrost spreads out and covers the world, leaving only the solitary tree still untouched. Not even paying attention to that, Azaria instead concentrates on the woman in her arms, who's breathing is becoming less laboured inside this sphere of magic.

"Please, please join with me, I can't do it from this end, you need to reach out to me as well, just a little and I'll do the rest. I'll keep you safe I promise."

With a weak smile, Tonks sends out the tiniest tendril of magic, and coughs up some blood with the effort. Grabbing that tendril with her own magic, Azaria pulls both of them into her inner world. Tonks appears looking healthy, but drawn.

Pulling Tonks into a crushing hug, Azaria cries in relief on her shoulder, "I thought I was going to lose you."

"Hehe, you're not going to get rid of me that easily. Though, I think I need to eat some humble pie, as at least your impulsive action didn't almost kill me. And what's with all the snow?"

Azaria looks around before barking out a dry laugh, "I guess I found something that frightened me more than my memories... You need to bring your world in here like you did before, as that's what was protecting you."

"What's protecting me now?"

"I bubbled and included you in it, as you can see, I then reduced the magic in that bubble to a level you can survive."

"I'll try to bring my magic here, but you may need to help as just letting out that tendril was agony."

"It's ok, take your time. For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I, just saw an opportunity for us to be equals and took it. I'll. I'll understand if, when we get back to earth, you choose to pull away again and take your life somewhere else."

"Let's get me well enough to travel and then talk about breakups. You'll need to help me, as I don't really know what I did to bring my magic here the first time, and now it hurts to even think about using it."

"I'm going to leave, and make us a bit more comfortable. Once I've done that, I'm going to push some of my magic into one of your hands. I want you to let go of your magic, and accept it while pushing some of yours out of the other hand into me. This is how we do our bonding ceremony in my world. Once we've got that going I'll come back in here and find you, and together we can try and draw your inner and mine together again."

All told, it ended up taking 6 hours to get their magic merged again. That was after they had to abort a couple of hours in, in order for Azaria to drive off a predator while protecting Tonk's magic. The difference in how she felt was massive for Tonks though.

Inside their shared world Tonks started to walk around to see what had changed, what she saw was disturbing. Where, for the few moments before she left Azaria, their world was a harmonious mix of both worlds. Now there were knocked down trees, dead animals and more than a few crevasse' that seemed to be trying to pull apart. She could see where the roots and undergrowth of Azaria's world was bridging those holes in her magic. As she wandered around she could see that some of Azaria's magical features were also starting to show signs of damage. A mischievous smile came over her face as she thought back to her herbology lessons and how to grow an apple tree on a pear tree. Wincing as she changes her hand from a bear paw to a hand repeatedly, she locates the part of her magic that is twinging the most when she does it. When she finds a tree where the vines wrapping around it are weeping sap, she carefully takes off one of the branches that's already wounded and locates the nearest plant that looks to be similar in size and is part of Azaria's magic. Making a small incision on a joint in the branches she puts the piece of her vine in the wound. Whatever she was expecting, what happened was completely outside of it. Her vine fused with the host plant successfully, and then it all went sideways as bush shuddered and shook. Then all it's leaves fell off before rapidly starting to grow back. Only this time the bush looked like it something completely different. She watched as an insect that she'd seen occasionally feeding on this type of bush flew over, and landed on the bush. At which point the shape and colour of the bush changed to one that this insect didn't eat. A few moments later the insect flew off again without taking a nibble.

Guiltily she exited their shared world just in time to see Azaria stumble over nothing as one leg visibly shortened as she took a step. Which made her feel even more guilty, as she realised that she hadn't just given Azaria a touch of metamorphic ability, she'd given her the whole thing. Her stomach clenched as Azaria reached for a tree to steady herself only to push herself off balance as her arm lengthened to reach the tree but she continued reaching out. Painfully crawling over to where Azaria was staring at her hand in disbelief, she laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"It's ok, it's ok, I tried something that worked a little better than I wanted. You need to just remember what you look like. Visualise the way you look in the mirror and bring that image out to your body. I'm sorry, I just wanted to give you a touch of Metamorphic ability so that your features could change with your emotions before I taught you to control it. It was supposed to be a couple of laughs followed by a few days teaching you."

"What's going on?"

"Your self-image isn't strong enough, so your magic is responding to your desires and changing your body to cater for it. It's the most dangerous stage for a new metamorph as you can cause yourself real harm. Harry was lucky that their ability was locked as a child, as it's only because of that they survived their childhood to reach Hogwarts. You know what you look like, I need you to close your eyes and meditate as if you were going to go into your inner world, but instead focus on who you are and what you look like. It might be in a mirror, or as a mannequin, it will be unique to you. But once you have a clear image, you need to step into it, or pull it onto you, again this will be something that's unique to you."

Azaria looked up into Tonks worried eyes, eyes that had gone jet black she idly noted, and couldn't help it as she started to laugh.

"This isn't a laughing matter, this could kill you."

"But it is, we're both as bad as each other. I tried to give you more magic, you tried to give me different magic."

"I can see the irony, but you need to settle your self-image before your magic gives you larger lungs and you suffocate because your ribs aren't big enough, or it makes your heart larger and you have a heart attack. Come on, please do this for me."

It took more cajoling and wheedling and a few hours work, but eventually Azaria relented and learnt how to hold her core image. Once she was able to move about without her body always changing, they tried to return to earth slowly. The wrenching pain that Tonks felt in her magic put paid to that idea, as further investigation in their shared inner world showed that the core vine of her magic wasn't well rooted, so when they tried to shift the core was trying to tear itself out of her wider magic. This sent shockwaves through her magic and opened up new crevasses. Realising that they were going to be there for the long haul, they both worked together to find a hill and build a home into it using transfiguration and other magics.

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A few years later Tonks was checking her period post when she realised that it felt like she was a few weeks overdue. They'd started the posts when the lack of day and night or even moons had thrown both of their time sense out of whack and they'd had to clean up the bed unexpectedly because it had crept up without warning. That was almost a year into their stay. Wandering out to find Azaria, she smiled fondly at the fact that she now had a base form. Even if it wasn't a human base form. It started when the first scouting party had come past looking for the prince. This was before Azaria had mastered keeping her self-image in the forefront of her mind while it was also in the background. Lucky really, as she looked nothing like herself at the time with one arm and leg longer than the other. The leader of the group hadn't even looked at her face, just sneered at her deformity and imperiously demanded to know about the prince. Luckily she had the presence of mind to mention the winter court when she called Tonks, otherwise a human appearing would have raised the wrong sort of eyebrows.

After that, both of them had got very good at holding a different form outside their home as they couldn't know when these groups were going to pop in. She'd also needed to adapt to a far slower way of life than she was used to, as Azaria drummed it into her that having a humans haste would out her to any scouts more surely than her features would. It was hard to start with, as all she could think about was getting her tasks completed. But now it was nice, as she picked up a task and did a bit while she was interested before moving onto something else. Sometimes that would be minutes, other times hours or even days later.

Oh, and they'd made love, lots and lots of love, both in their inner world and the real world, and recently both at the same time, and wasn't that mind blowing.

As she got outside she had a soppy smile on her face as Azaria looked up.

"What's made you so happy?"

"Oh, I was just thinking back about our time here. If I show you the spells, could you run though some household diagnostics for me as my period is late."

"It's been late before, so why are you worried now?"

"Aye, but only a few days. I was just checking my period pole and I'm over two weeks late this time. I'm never that late."

"Sure, let me make a wand and then you can show me."

A few minutes later Azaria had a wand and was watching Tonks.

"Ok, as we're women, standard practice is to always cast the pregnancy spell first. This is because some of the other basic diagnostics can show that we've got something even though it's actually just a side effect of being pregnant. Most women don't bother with this if they've been using the contraceptive potion, spell, or haven't been with a man for a while. But as I'm showing you the spells, I might as well do it in the right order. Once you cast the spell on the person they will glow a light grey if they're not pregnant. Any other colour and you know that they're pregnant. Depending on the species and gender of the baby, the colours mean different things. I'll cast it on a couple of animals so that you can see what I mean, and then I'll cast it on you so you can see why I need you to cast these diagnostics for me."

She casts it on a few of the animals that hang around the area, including a couple of Aictuilaxr, who did glow grey for a moment before they ate the spell. She then cast it on Azaria who glowed a purple colour. She then cast it again a couple more times.

"Erm, Azaria… According to the spell, you're pregnant."

"Huh?" Azaria tried to look at the glow surrounding her, but couldn't see it as it was so faint from this side.

A panicky note entered Tonk's voice, "Ok. This is how you cast the spell, can you test it out a few times and then cast it on me please?"

It took nearly an hour to teach Azaria to cast the spell, as it was much more complicated than the note spell the first years taught her. Eventually she got it well enough that she could switch to using her sword for it. Through the sword, the creatures glowed white instead of grey, but they double checked the spell by casting it both ways for both of them and it came out the same way. So then she cast it on Tonks, who glowed a swirling pink and blue.

"I hate to say this, but I think you're pregnant too. How would people normally do this?"

"They'd use a mirror, but we don't exactly have a plentiful supply of those."

Looking up to the sky Azaria says, "Selene help me I have a wife that's forgotten she can do magic."

She then waves her sword and changes a log into a full size mirror with an ornate frame. Looking a little sheepish, Tonks casts the spell on herself and watches as the darker pink and blue swirls around her.

"I guess we should see if we can go back to earth, as I'd like a healers opinion on this, and my magic seems to have finished healing."

"We've been here a while, so we might need to spend a day or so further out while we wait for the veil to open and allow us passage to at least the Sanctuary."

"You're not going to object?"

"No, we've got responsibilities there, so we can't stay here for too long, so we'd need to be going back soon anyway."

"I'm going to miss this place."

"I know, it's become a home, we can come back every night though."

"I suppose there is that, I guess we just need to find out how long we can stay here at night if we do."

"What about the babies?"

"I… you're right. Let's see what they healers have to say, and then make our decisions."

Slowly, but with increasing speed they make their way back to earth as it becomes clear that Tonks isn't suffering any ill effects from the travel. It was a few days later when they popped into the sanctuary, much to the surprise of a certain prince.