A/N: Rated M for a reason (language and sexual content).
I hope you enjoy the story!
Funny Little Feeling
"It's more of a wiggle," Tonks says, "like this." She points her wand at Harry and shimmies it back and forth as she casts the spell.
He feels a tickle of cold run down his spine, like ice water. When he looks, he finds that he's been fully disillusioned to blend in with his surroundings.
Unfortunately, his surroundings are the training space he and Tonks have set up in her mother Andromeda's basement, so his jeans and the bottom of his shirt are now the colour and texture of bright green shag carpet. He doesn't want to know if his face matches the rosebud patterned wallpaper behind him.
Judging by Tonks' wide grin, it probably does.
"Finite," Tonks mutters, and Harry feels warmth run back up through his body as she reverses the spell. "See?" she asks brightly. "Go ahead, try on me!"
Harry thinks the incantation and tries to emulate the wand movement Tonks showed him. He's never been great at disillusion, or any disguise spells, really. Possibly a consequence of having an invisibility cloak and Hermione being around to brew illegal polyjuice whenever they needed it.
For a second, he thinks he's got the spell, but then he realizes he's reversed it somehow. Shag carpet on the top, rosebud wallpaper on the bottom.
Tonks looks ridiculous, though that's not really something new. He's been watching her morph her face into various wild animals for the past four years, and somehow she looks beautiful no matter what she does to her hair or face or body.
"That's not bad for a first go, Harry!" she says, nodding enthusiastically. When she smiles, he can see that even her teeth match the carpet. It's rather unsettling. He cancels the charm and Tonks is back to her normal pink hair and deep blue eyes.
"Isn't it?" he asks, sceptical.
The Auror program entrance exam is coming up in a few weeks, so he's got to get this figured out. For the past couple months, Tonks has been coaching him on the basics, all the skills he'll need to get into the program, but Harry can't shake this pit in his stomach, this nagging feeling he has that none of it will be enough.
"Go left, then right with your wiggle, maybe."
"What?" He frowns at her.
"Like this, not like this," she demonstrates. He mimics the wand movement, not entirely sure how it's different from what he was doing before.
But within a few more tries, he gets it right. They practice a couple more times for good measure, then they're done for the day.
"Thanks again," Harry says, following Tonks up the stairs. "I'm not sure what I'd do without you."
She scoffs. "You know I'm happy to train with you, but you could pass that test in your sleep."
"Not the disillusionment part!" he argues. "I've always been rubbish at that."
"I suppose you didn't have much incentive to learn before now, what with that brilliant cloak of yours," she muses, turning her head and casting her eyes over him. Their eyes meet for a moment and his heart stutters. Then she half-trips on the stairs and barely rights herself in time to avoid catastrophe. "Did I ever tell you about how I used to metamorphose myself to look like Filch at Hogwarts?" she continues, as if nothing happened.
"You didn't!"
"I sure did," Tonks declares. "Dead useful for getting around at night."
Harry grins. "Did a lot of sneaking out after hours, did you?"
"Oh my fair share," she says mischievously as they reach the upstairs hallway. "The Filch thing worked great for getting past the teachers and prefects, until one night I ran into Filch himself…"
"Oh no."
"After that it worked even better!" she says. "He was too scared to patrol the halls for months."
"Oh, man," he says, laughing. "I wish you'd been around when I was in school, a Filch double would have really come in handy."
"Yeah, the two of us could've gotten into tons of trouble together, I'm sure." She's smirking in a way that Harry would probably call flirtatious if he didn't know any better.
Though Harry has long harboured a bit of a crush on Tonks, one that's only intensified over these months they've been working together, he's never had any delusions about it being reciprocal. No, Tonks isn't flirting. That's just how she talks.
"Anyway, sure you don't want to stay for supper? Don't worry, I'm not cooking," Tonks offers.
"I'd love to, really," Harry says, "but it's Sunday — I've got dinner at the Burrow."
They've reached the front door and Harry is a bit reluctant to leave, as always. These training sessions are a favourite part of his routine.
And not just because he gets to spend time with Tonks, but because it's one of the only times he gets to feel like he's working towards something.
It's easy to feel a bit pointless after the thing you were born to do is already done, even though you're not quite 19. Training for the exam gives him a purpose, sort of. Same with when he went back to school and did his N.E.W.T.s last year. And when he helped with the Hogwarts rebuild before that.
If he keeps moving, stays busy, and avoids being alone, everything's fine.
When he gets home from the Burrow, Harry stays up late, fixing the creaky door to one of the upstairs bedrooms.
It's become a bit of a nighttime hobby of his, home repair. With the state the Grimmauld Place house is in, he'll have a way to occupy himself for many nights to come.
He likes the noise of fixing things, the repetitiveness of it. He likes the way it keeps his mind busy without being overly taxing, so he can think, but not too much. He likes how when he finishes a task it looks clean.
And he likes that when he finishes one thing, there's always another.
It helps ease the transition from his busy days full of people and noise and training and quidditch and press, to the aching quiet of being alone in a big, empty house.
It helps to tire him out, so that when he does eventually crawl to bed, he has a better chance of falling asleep with fewer nightmares. Never no nightmares, not dreamless sleep, but fewer — if he's lucky.
It's not that he had no other option than to live at Grimmauld Place alone. Ron and Hermione offered him a room in their flat, Molly and Arthur invited him to live at the Burrow again, George had a spare room, Neville wanted a roommate, he was welcome at Shell Cottage anytime… Harry turned them all down.
What he told them was that he wanted to fix up the house. That it had been Sirius' house so it's not like he could sell it. Not just because it held memories of Sirius and status as a near-sacred space in the history of the Order of the Phoenix, but because who would buy it? It was a mess.
And messes need clearing up.
Though none of that means he actually has to live here. He knows he could have hired someone to renovate the house who would do it better and faster than he ever could. (There had to be such a thing as magical contractors, right?)
The truth is, when he left Hogwarts for the last time a few months ago, Harry thought that he was quite sick of being around people all the time. He wanted a bit of peace and quiet, thought he deserved as much, after everything.
But then, as soon as he found himself with more alone time, the quiet became deafening. It turns out being alone with his thoughts and memories is not particularly peaceful or relaxing.
So now when he's with friends — or strangers, or anyone — all he wants is to go home and be alone. When he's home, all he wants is to go out and make the loneliness stop.
One of the only times he doesn't feel pulled between these two extremes, is when he's training with Tonks.
He isn't lonely around her, but he's not overwhelmed either. Tonks talks a lot, but she never expects him to talk. If there's a silence, she'll fill it. He can just listen.
Even Ron and Hermione get to be too much sometimes. They always want his opinion on things, need him to make decisions.
Tonks on the other hand, is bubbly and loud and full of energy, but there's a calmness to her, something still at the core of her that Harry longs for, is drawn to. Something to balance out the restlessness churning inside him.
He wants calm, and he wants Tonks, and sometimes those are separate things, and sometimes they're the same thing, but when he said he didn't know what he would do without her, he meant it.
It's like there's this pit of something — dread, maybe — in his stomach that gets blacker and blacker the closer he gets to the Auror exam. Like the end of something is fast approaching and he's powerless to stop it.
Harry knows, reasonably, that this feeling means nothing. Feelings rarely do. He's just nervous for the test and sad that he isn't going to be able to spend as much time with Tonks. He'll be fine. The exam will be fine.
Besides, it's tomorrow, so there's nothing he can do about it now. He'll just keep going like he always does, black pits of dread be damned.
Because at the moment, he's in the basement with Tonks and they're doing a drill that he's good at and it's not quite easy to push away the dread, but it's easier than it is at other times, so really, it's not so bad.
"Expelliarmus!" Harry thinks and Tonks' wand comes soaring out of her hand.
She grins brilliantly. "I'll never get tired of watching you disarm people," she remarks as Harry continues to the next step in the suspect apprehension drill. "You make it look so easy."
"Incarcerous manus," Harry thinks, warmth rising to his cheeks, as he completes the exercise by conjuring handcuffs which grab Tonks around the wrists and pull her arms behind her back.
"Good work, Harry!" she says enthusiastically, tripping as she steps forward, thrown off balance by the position of her arms.
He instinctively reaches out to grab her, and ends up holding her by the shoulders with both hands. Their eyes meet and she's close enough that he can feel her breath on his face. After slightly too long a beat, Harry clears his throat and steps back, vanishing the handcuffs and passing her wand back to her.
"Well. You're more than ready for the exam. I'm sure you're more prepared than I was when I took it," she says professionally, after a brief pause to smooth out her rumpled Weird Sisters t-shirt. "Not to mention all the real-life experience fighting Dark wizards," she adds with a laugh.
Harry nods, tucking his wand in his pocket and scraping a hand through his hair. He knows she's right, but he can't quite wrap his mind around it. Him, an Auror, tomorrow. Well, a trainee-Auror, but still. The pit blackens.
He pushes the dread away and smiles at Tonks as he says, "Yeah, I feel pretty good about it I think."
"Great!" She looks for a second like she's going to say more, but then she casts her eyes around the basement and sighs. "Help me put the room back together?"
Several months ago, they shrunk all the rarely used antique furniture in Andromeda's basement and shoved it in a corner.
They stand next to each other as they wave their wands at the pile of objects, Harry enlarging things and Tonks putting them back in place. The room ends up looking a bit crooked and off-kilter, but more-or-less like it was a few months before.
"Never ends up quite straight when I use that charm," Tonks chuckles. "Some sort of metaphor in that, probably." She looks sort of wistfully around the newly reconfigured room, then abruptly brightens. "Tea, Harry?" she asks, bounding up the stairs.
"Sure," Harry says, glad for the excuse to stay a little longer.
She always makes tea without magic, except for heating the water. ("Less chance of a spill that way.") Harry likes that he knows that about her. He can't think of anyone else whose preferred method of tea-making he knows, other than Ron and Hermione.
"Thanks again for doing all this," Harry starts when they're sitting at the table with their tea.
"You know I was happy to," Tonks says, waving her hand dismissively. "Besides, I've always liked teaching."
"Did you ever think of being a teacher?" he asks, just for something to say.
"Nah, I like being an Auror too much. Being a teacher would be a lot of routine, I think. Working in the same place every day, regular hours, ugh." She shudders. "I'd hate that."
Harry nods into his cup. It's funny, she's highlighted the things he thinks he'll like least about being an Auror — irregular hours, lack of routine — as a positive. Harry likes routine. Even the less sane aspects of his routine, like renovating his house in the middle of the night. Regularity, predictability, knowing what comes next. It's what's keeping him together.
"Why do you want to be an Auror, Harry?" Tonks asks. "Funny, I don't think I've ever asked you before."
The pit blackens. "Well, er— I've just always wanted to be one, I guess."
"Hm," she says. "I suppose I felt like that, too. I just always knew, you know?"
Harry nods, though he's not sure he does know. He just knows it's the next thing he has to do. He has to take this exam, and he has to pass.
Tonks tells him about her first case as a junior Auror and how it confirmed everything she'd always believed about how much she'd love the job. Harry nods along, just letting her talk, just looking at her. Her eyes are a sort-of teal colour today, vivid and complex.
"Well anyway," Tonks finishes her story, sending her emptied tea cup over to the sink. It lands with a bit of a clatter and she winces at the sound. "I'll give you a Floo call when I'm done work tomorrow, yeah? I'll want to hear all about it."
"Yeah, absolutely," he says, draining the last bit of tea from his cup and sending it to the sink as well. It lands smoothly, no clatter.
"Show-off," Tonks teases in that near-flirtatious tone that might have set Harry's heart fluttering on another day. But today, even that's not enough to distract him from his anxiety.
With tea finished, there's no reason for him to stick around, so they say their goodbyes and Tonks promises again to call him tomorrow evening. Harry heads off to meet Ron for lunch and then go together to their rec league quidditch practice, like he does every Tuesday.
The moment the end appears, Harry isn't surprised.
Though he never saw it coming, it makes perfect fucking sense when it arrives. And he is, as expected, powerless to stop it.
He never wanted to be an Auror. He thought he did when he was fifteen, because having the skillset of a Dark wizard catcher would seem like a good idea when you're destined to fight the darkest wizard of modern history, but actually, having done that already, it's possible his skills are sufficient and becoming an Auror would just make him fucking miserable.
It's possible that not knowing what he wants isn't a good reason to do something he knows he doesn't fucking want. (Harry thinks the word 'fuck' a lot in the immediate aftermath of the end).
It happens like this:
He screws up his disillusionment, to no one's great shock. Then his shield charm is weak, even though he's always been good at that spell. So, it starts off going poorly.
Then — and this is the real moment — the examiner asks for an Expelliarmus.
Obviously, this should be no problem. It's his signature move. He mastered it when he was twelve. He used it to kill fucking Voldemort.
And it's not a problem. He disarms his examiner flawlessly.
Then he throws the poor man's wand back at him. (Hard. Seriously, he fucking pelts it.)
Then he walks out of the room, calmly gets into the nearest Floo, returns to the downstairs drawing room in Grimmauld Place, and promptly begins tearing the wallpaper off the walls with his bare hands.
In short, he has a bit of a meltdown.
Later, when he talks to Tonks about it, he'll realize what it all meant, but in the moment, all he knew was he needed to escape.
"Harry?"
He jumps at the sound and the piece of ugly wallpaper he's yanking on slips out of his hand. He hadn't noticed that the shadows in the room were getting longer. He hadn't really felt time passing at all.
Yet somehow, it's early evening already and Tonks' head is in his fireplace.
"Harry?" she asks again, and this time he whirls around and kneels in front of the Floo.
"Hi."
"How was it? How does it feel to be done? Who was your examiner? Did you have to do a disillusionment?" Tonks asks in a single breath. Her genuine interest and warmth is obvious even through the flames.
"I — uh," Harry starts.
"Sorry, that was too many questions!" Tonks laughs. "I'm just so excited for you! How was it?"
"I failed."
"WHAT?"
"I failed."
"You're joking. Who was your examiner? I'll go down there, there's no way that's right."
"No, it's right," Harry sighs, shifting so he's sitting cross-legged in front of the fireplace. "Or, well, I guess I don't know officially. But since I ran out early and threw the examiner's wand at his face…"
Tonks furrows her brow. "So you're saying… you quit on purpose?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Well, shit," she says.
"Yeah."
"Do you have any firewhisky?"
"Huh?"
"If you don't, I'll bring some. I'm coming through."
And that's how Harry ends up on his couch, wallpaper gunk still under his fingernails, drinking straight from a bottle of firewhisky. He's sitting sort of slumped, low down in his seat, while Tonks sits perky and upright, cross-legged on the other end of the couch.
There's a pile of wallpaper shards in the middle of the floor, which Tonks ignores entirely except for a single sharp glance the moment she arrives.
"So, it was the Expelliarmus, then?" she asks once they've each had a few swallows of the whisky.
"Yeah," he says. "Wait, how did—"
"You said you threw his wand at him, so you must have gotten it from him first," Tonks explains. "I understand how that could be…triggering, for you."
"I don't know," Harry says, after a beat. "I mean, it's a loaded spell for me, yeah. But I did it a million times in practice."
"I wonder if it's because this was a higher stress situation than practice?"
"Maybe." He shrugs and reaches out for the firewhisky. Tonks passes it to him. He sips.
"You seem… sort of okay with it. Are you okay with it?"
He just shrugs again.
Tonks nods and beckons for the bottle. He passes it back to her and when she finishes her sip, she sets it down and claps her hands together. "Okay! Enough of that — I came here to cheer you up. We should play a game or something!"
He sits up straighter on the couch. "Uh, I have Exploding Snap?"
She laughs. "Sure."
He tries to summon the cards from upstairs, but he's had enough to drink that his magic is a little imprecise, and the cards end up on top of a cabinet on the other side of the room.
Tonks is closer, so she stands and reaches up to grab them. Harry can see a little bit of her lower back where her shirt rises up as she stretches and he's relaxed enough now, and drunk enough, and that little bit of skin is so pretty, that he almost forgets about the shitty day he's had.
When she turns back around, she catches his eye and Harry quickly looks away.
"Er, right, maybe easier to sit on the floor?" he says.
"Sure." Tonks holds up the firewhiskey bottle, now considerably lighter than when she'd arrived. "What d'you say? Whoever makes it explode, drinks?"
"Definitely," Harry says, grinning.
They make it through a couple games — Harry wins the first, Tonks the second. They laugh a lot.
And it's like all the tension left in Harry's body dissipates. Hours ago, when he stormed out of his exam, the dread and anxiety had snapped, burst out of him in a flood. Now, it's a trickle, with calmness and comfort displacing all the rest.
At some point they abandon the cards, and he lays his head against the couch, still sitting on the floor, and looks over at Tonks. She's sprawled out on the carpet, looking every bit as comfortable as he is.
"Harry?" she asks into the contented, drunken silence. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"You dated Ginny Weasley in your sixth year."
"Yeah? Was that the question?"
"No! Give me a second to set up the premise!" she scolds, raising her head off the floor to glare at him.
Harry raises an eyebrow impatiently and Tonks heaves a dramatic sigh, rolling her eyes, before starting again.
"So. You dated Ginny Weasley in your sixth year. Then what?" she asks. "That was the question," she adds unhelpfully.
"Oh. Er, I don't know, then nothing. Then she started dating Luna. We're all friends."
"I meant" — she drags out the word theatrically — "then what for you?"
"Nothing." He shrugs.
"Really?" She raises her head again. "Even when you were back at Hogwarts last year? There must have been tons of girls — and non-girls — interested in you."
"I guess," he shrugs again, "'cause of the whole Chosen One thing."
"Definitely not just because of that," she mumbles.
Harry just makes a sort of noncommittal noise. He's really quite ordinary, if you take away his past.
"What about you?" he asks instead of responding further. He's always been curious, he doesn't know much about Tonks' love life at all.
"No one at the moment," she replies without hesitation. "Do you want the whole history? 'Cause that could take a while."
"I've got time."
"Hm." She looks at him appraisingly. "Well, there was Charlie Weasley for a bit in my sixth year — I suppose everyone dates a Weasley at some point. Then Miranda Boot for most of seventh year and a few months after we graduated." She looks up at him, as if expecting some sort of reaction to hearing a girl's name, but Harry just nods. He's never been under the impression that Tonks is straight. "Then this guy from my Auror training class for a bit — Andy Stevens. Right tosser, that one. Then, um—"
"Wait, Andy Stevens? I think he was my examiner."
"Oh my god! You threw Andy's wand at him?" she shrieks. "That's the best thing I've ever heard."
Harry laughs. "He was a bit of a tosser. Anyway, carry on."
"There's not much more! Just Connie Chang and Jamie O'Reilly. And then during the war, there were a bunch of people I suppose, but not really what I'd call 'dating'."
Harry nods. "And since then?"
"More of the same, really. I haven't quite settled back into dating like normal. It's hard, isn't it? When most people didn't do what we did. Everyone was affected by the war, of course. But if they weren't in the Order, or at the battle…"
"Yeah."
Tonks settles back onto the floor and stares at the ceiling. "When you're done with the wallpaper, you should paint this room yellow."
The next day, Harry wakes with a slow groan, the sound of an owl at his window dragging him out of sleep. His bedroom is bathed in sharp, afternoon sunlight. As soon as he opens his eyes, he bolts upright and frantically scrambles for his glasses.
He's a bit panicked. He hasn't slept until the afternoon in years. Not since… a few Saturdays in fourth year? Something like that.
He lets the owl in and, as he expected, it has a worried note from Hermione. He's late for their lunch plans.
A whole group of his friends had wanted to go out tonight and celebrate, all more confident than he had been that he would succeed on his exam and yearning for any excuse for a party. Hermione had wanted to get lunch ahead of time, likely to debrief each element of the test at length.
Harry rakes his hand through his hair a few times, then scribbles a response asking Hermione if she'd just come 'round his instead and maybe could she call off the party for him?
He gets dressed hurriedly, but distractedly. He leaves his room without socks, then doubles back. Then gets halfway downstairs, before going back up to brush his teeth.
When he gets to the kitchen, he can't decide if he should eat breakfast food or lunch food, so he ends up just having coffee.
Hermione arrives. They talk. She leaves. Harry feels slightly unburdened, but no less out of sorts.
In an effort to restore some semblance of routine, he spends the evening taking down more of the wallpaper in the drawing room.
Then, even though he woke up late, he goes to bed early.
By the weekend, Harry feels more like himself again.
That is to say, he's found a new direction toward which to point his anxiety and agitation.
Well, not new, exactly. He's redoubling his efforts to renovate the house, and at the same time, increasing the percentage of time he spends worrying about his future.
Having abandoned the goal of becoming an Auror, he's poised to ruminate over other possibilities and interests, while calculating the length of time he can exist on the money he has before he absolutely needs to get a job. It's kind of a long time, actually, but it doesn't make him less unmoored by the feeling of being goalless.
Although, renovating and deciding on a goal are goals too, sort of. So, yes, he's feeling more like himself.
That, and he can't stop thinking about Tonks lying on the floor in his house. And how she'd known exactly what he needed when she came over. And how she's not technically his mentor anymore. And how she confirmed that she's single. And how she was the one who asked him about that first. And how pretty she is when she laughs. And that little bit of skin on her lower back, when she stretched to reach the top of the cabinet.
He finishes the wallpaper. Before he can think too much about it, he buys a can of yellow paint and some paint rollers and writes to Tonks.
(I got yellow paint. I'm shit at painting. Since this was your idea, maybe you want to come over?)
Once the owl leaves, he immediately thinks it was a terrible idea and if she comes over it will only be because she is too nice to say no and he's totally going to ruin her weekend and this might be a good time to throw himself into the sea.
"Harry?" Tonks' voice sounds from his drawing room. "Can I come thr — Oh my gosh that's a bright yellow! Is it really that colour or am I just seeing things in the fire?"
He steps back into the drawing room to see Tonks craning her neck to look as far out of the fireplace as she can.
"You can come in," he says. "Do you think it's too much?" He gestures to the open paint can. "I thought it looked sort of happy, but I don't know, I could get something different, or maybe we could spell it lighter somehow?"
Tonks steps into the room and stands directly over the paint, and tilts her head sideways as she looks at it. She's wearing painting clothes, a simple black t-shirt and these ratty old-looking jeans, and Harry has a hard time not staring at her. She just looks so Tonks like this, so casually sexy and effortlessly cool.
"No," she declares. "It's perfect. I was imagining like a pastel or something more … normal, but this is more you."
"You think?" It is quite bright. The colour is called Sunnyside Up. Probably a reference to egg yolks, but Harry thought the name was rather aspirationally optimistic. The kind of outlook on life he'd like to have one day.
"Yeah. Full of life, isn't it?"
"And you think that's me?"
"Don't you?"
"To be honest, I've always thought of myself as more… full of death." He's not sure why he says it.
Tonks turns her glance towards him, sideways and appraising, like how she was just looking at the paint. She says, "Maybe that's your past. But I think you're choosing something different for your future."
Harry coughs awkwardly and gestures to the can of paint. "Should we get started then? I mean, if you want. You don't actually have to help, I can—"
"Of course I want to help," she says firmly. "Though be warned, I'm probably going to knock it all over the floor at some point."
She does. It's after they get their paint rollers soaked in paint and spelled to coat the walls, but before they've gotten the smaller brushes ready to do around the windows.
Harry manages to siphon most of it back into the can with his wand, but the paint ends up a touch dusty and there are several stubborn splashes of yellow he can't get off the floor.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Harry!" she wails when she realizes. "I've ruined your floor."
"Nah, you haven't," he says, then catches her eye with a grin. "It's full of life now, right?"
She laughs, warm and buttery, and the whole room is starting to take on a yellow hue, and Harry feels quite… sunny.
They each sloppily spell some brushes to work on the edges and window sills. They're doing a terrible job, the walls are going to be a mess.
Harry doesn't care at all. The yellow will still look miles better than the ancient wallpaper. Even if it didn't, Harry wouldn't care.
Once they've got everything set up, Tonks sits down on the floor, cross-legged, right near the splotches of paint. She beckons for Harry to sit with her, and leans back on her hands.
"So," she starts. "Feeling okay with it yet?"
"Maybe," he says, dropping down and joining her. "I guess I feel fine about not doing the Auror thing, but I don't love not having a goal. Or like, not having as much on my schedule without training."
"Free time can be hard, I get that." She nods. "But a little bit of relaxing, some fun, wouldn't hurt too much, would it? You deserve it, certainly."
"I guess that would be okay… I'm not much of a relaxer — I like to stay busy. It's… easier that way," he admits. "But I didn't really make plans for after the exam, I mean, I figured I'd be starting the training program. So now I've got to decide what to do next."
"No need to rush it, if you're not sure." Tonks is fidgeting with the frayed edge of her jeans as she speaks. "I mean, you've got time."
"Yeah, I guess. And I've got the house to work on."
"Right. And, it's just a thought, but after all you've done these past few years… There must be something you've always wanted to do, but never got a chance to?"
"What d'you mean?"
"Like travelling or mountain climbing or tap dancing or whatever!"
"Tap dancing?"
"Why not! It could be fun, right?" She gesticulates wildly and Harry can't help but laugh at her enthusiasm.
"I guess travelling would be cool," he says after a moment. "I've never been outside Britain."
"Well there you go," Tonks says. "I have a list of life goals, you know. But nothing serious. Fun only!"
Harry nods. He could probably use the inspiration. "Yeah. That's a good idea. Fun goals. I like that."
Tonks grins and winks at him. "You're doing better than you think you are, you know."
"What d'you mean?"
"At coping," she says simply. "And having fun. You bought yellow paint. You made a pretty decisive choice about the Aurors. Sure, you threw Andy's wand at him, but whatever. He deserved it and you made a choice for you. That's pretty fucking awesome. And then…" she hesitates, looking down and fidgeting with her jeans furiously, before she meets his eye again. "You invited me over, and maybe I'm being presumptuous, but maybe… that was also about doing something you want?"
Harry feels himself swallow. "Yeah. I — yeah."
"I think we want the same thing, Harry."
When he looks at her, he knows it's true. Sitting on the floor in his newly yellow drawing room, he understands, finally, something about him, and about Tonks, and about how this vague thing he's been searching for — a future, a purpose, a goal — it's all wrong. It's none of those things.
It's her. She makes him feel good, and calm, and like himself. And maybe, impossibly, truly, he makes her feel that way too.
He pushes himself forward on the floor, so his cross-legged knees bump hers. And her smile is brighter than this ridiculous yellow room, but he kisses it off her face anyway.
Tonks kisses like she does everything else - with warmth and enthusiasm, if a little bit clumsily. She threads her fingers through the hair at the base of his skull, pulling him closer, her mouth moving in imprecise and ever-changing patterns over his.
When they break apart, Harry has the stupidest grin on his face, but he doesn't care. "Did that really just happen?" he whispers.
"Yeah," she says, so close to him that he feels her breath against his face. "Let's do it again."
For the next week, it rains constantly.
But as Harry sits in his sun-coloured drawing room, working on his list of fun life goals, he doesn't even notice.
The day they'd painted this room, he and Tonks had spent a long time on the floor. Kissing, and talking, and kissing, and giggling as they came up with increasingly silly things to put on his list, and kissing some more.
It was one of the best afternoons of his life. She left in the early evening, after agreeing to help him cross one thing off his list — taking her out on a date.
The date is tonight. They aren't doing anything special, just going for a drink, but Harry's nervous all the same.
It's an exciting sort of anxiety though, not the more dreadful type he often experiences.
He still felt plenty of that this week. Kissing Tonks and painting a room yellow hasn't fixed him, not by a long shot.
In fact, for a little while, he thought that lovely afternoon had made him worse. The next day, he'd hardly been able to get up. It was like he'd had so much happiness, that for a moment his body, or his mind, or whatever, had gotten confused and forgotten how to cope.
But if Harry's learned anything in his life, it's that things don't last. Not the best things, but not the worst things either.
So as he sits in his sunny room, staring at the rain, he makes a list of things he wants in his life. Not for his life, not forever, but just for himself.
Later, he apparates back to the same room, holding Tonks around the waist. Still dizzy from the apparition, they fall into each other, kissing desperately and backing toward the couch.
He had a lovely time out with her, talking over drinks. But he can't say he wasn't distracted by wanting to be alone with her in a sunshine-yellow room.
She sits on his lap, knees against his hips, and presses her forehead to his, breath heavy as she talks to him.
"I've wanted this for so long, Harry."
"Me too."
"Since the end of the war, at least," she says, kissing him again. "But then I didn't see you much last year, and then..." (She presses her lips to the corner of his mouth.) "I was supposed..." (She trails her lips over his jaw.) "... to be your teacher." (She kisses his cheek.) "And I am nothing if not..." (Her mouth hovers just below his ear.) "...professional," she whispers, flicking her tongue over the pulse point at the side of his neck.
Harry can only reply with groan, low in his throat, and by gripping tighter around her hips.
Tonks is wearing this short denim skirt that's riding up around her waist with how she's positioned over him and she grinds against him and makes this crazy-sexy breathy little noise and it's all kind of amazing.
The knowledge that something about him could elicit that sound from her feels… extraordinary. As does the way she's moving against him right now.
It also feels like a lot. Like this is going somewhere — and fast. Not that he's opposed to going places, but it does make him panic a bit.
"I've never, uh," he mutters, pulling his lips away from hers for half a second, "before."
"Okay." She doesn't even flinch, doesn't stop moving her hips. She just kisses him again. "Does that mean that you want to go slow?"
"No!" he says, perhaps faster than necessary. "Er, I want — I really want — but, I just —"
"Okay," she responds, like she understood what he meant perfectly, despite the fact that he's making no sense.
She sits back so she's resting more on his knees and looks at him appraisingly.
"Harry," she says innocently, trailing a finger idly over his forearm. "Has anyone ever used their mouth on you?"
He shakes his head, eyes wide.
"Do you want me to?" she asks, her voice still maddeningly casual.
"I — Is that a trick question?" he manages to stammer, his cock twitching at the thought.
She laughs and, leaning back towards him, captures his lips with hers again.
She starts to unbutton his shirt, which doesn't seem strictly necessary to the process, but honestly, what does he know?
When he's all unbuttoned, Tonks bends her head and kisses his chest. She kisses slowly down his body, her touch practiced and soft. When she gets near his belly button, she slides off his lap onto her knees, positioning herself between his thighs.
She grins up at him and doesn't break eye contact, even as she undoes the button on his trousers and pulls down the zip. He feels like he should be doing something or saying something or contributing somehow, but he's totally mesmerized by watching her and more than a little bit dizzy with anticipation.
She takes his cock in her hand and runs her thumb over his tip. "Mmm," she murmurs, from somewhere deep in her throat.
Tonks looks up at him again, eyes wide and a smirk stretching at the corners of her mouth, before she leans in and repeats the path of her thumb with her tongue.
Fucking hell. This is happening.
She wraps her whole hand around him and pumps slowly, her other hand pressing into his thigh. She wraps her lips around the head of his cock and slides them slowly down his length.
She moves her mouth in concert with her hand, every movement is slow and deliberate. He holds his breath as she does something new and swirly with her tongue, then lets it out in a strangled huff when she pushes her head father down and he feels her swallow against him.
"Tonks, that's so," he stammers, "so — fuck."
She starts going faster and he definitely can't take much more of this and he's gasping and flailing around, his hand gripping wildly at the back of her head.
When he touches her hair, the normal short spikes of pink magically lengthen several inches until it's the perfect length to tangle his fingers in. He does, gripping it desperately and it's truly the hottest fucking thing.
"Fuck, I'm—" he chokes out and comes in her mouth.
Delicately, she slides back onto the couch and leans against him, her hair adjusting back to it's normal length.
"So," she says after a moment, "fun, right?"
He's still struggling to catch his breath. "More fun than tap dancing, I'd wager."
She laughs, dipping her head sweetly against his chest. He touches two fingers against her chin, tilting her face up, and captures her lips in a slow, meandering kiss. He tries to put into the kiss all the things he can't put into words — how amazed he is by her, how much he's enjoyed himself, how grateful he is to even have her in his house and as a friend, let alone to be able to kiss her and touch her and for the experience she's just given him.
Harry shifts on the couch so he's leaning over her — somewhat awkwardly, with his legs still half in, half out of his jeans — and deepens the kiss.
Tonks is still fully dressed, if a touch dishevelled, and Harry finds that rather unsatisfactory. He slides a hand under the hem of her t-shirt, surprised by how much he wants more. How much he wants her.
He starts to pull up on her shirt. "Can I —?"
"Please." She sits up a bit, helping him pull her shirt over her head. She quickly tosses her bra off as well, and Harry's brain stops working for several entire seconds.
He touches her, hesitantly at first, watching with fascination as her nipple pebbles under the light touch of his thumb, then with more conviction as she lets out a soft moan and leans into his touch. He meets her eye with a grin and dips his head, letting his tongue and lips follow the path of his thumb.
What Harry wants most of all is to do for Tonks what she did for him, to make her feel even a tenth of how good she made him feel, even if he doesn't actually know quite how to do that.
He slips a hand to her upper thigh, letting in rest softly under her skirt.
"Here, let me get rid of that for you," she says, grinning and scooting up on the couch to slip out of her skirt and knickers.
Harry sheds the remaining scraps of his clothing. "So we match," he says, as he looks at her, biting his lip, not sure where to start.
"Can I touch you?" he whispers. She nods. "And, um, with my mouth?" he asks.
"Yessss," she draws out the last syllable, "please."
So he does. Exploratorily, at first. He marvels at how warm and soft and pretty she is and notes the way she breathes in sharply when he brushes over her clit. He bends his head to taste her and enjoys the gentle sounds she makes and the feel of her fingers tangling in his hair.
And he loves doing this, loves exploring her body with his tongue — it's incredible. But after a while, he feels like he's fumbling, like he's not going to get anywhere doing this, like he's missing something.
Tonks, ever his teacher, saves him. She grabs his hand from where he's resting it on her thigh and pulls it back closer to her centre. "Use your fingers," she says. "Two."
He does as instructed, slipping two fingers inside of her and stroking slowly.
"Mmm. And with your mouth go a bit higher — yeah there — and then you can do, um, circles or like suck a bit — mmhmm just like that. Do not stop doing that."
He feels as her body grows tense and her hips start to rock against the pressure of his hand and his mouth and he focuses as hard as he can on doing exactly what he's doing, wanting desperately not to screw this up.
And then her breathing gets louder and she's saying yesyesyes and then she relaxes and he looks up and meets her eye and she's grinning wildly and then he's grinning kind of wildly too and they're both laughing and then they're kissing and it's like Harry's just accomplished something amazing, even though he didn't actually do much, they did it together, but it still feels bloody brilliant.
After, they just laze around on the couch in the yellow room, partially dressed — Tonks elects to remain topless, a decision Harry heartily approves of — mostly talking, sometimes kissing, often laughing.
It's quite late when she finally leaves, stepping through the Floo with a bright smile and a "See you soon, Harry."
When he goes up to bed he's happy and tired, and he wonders if — for once — he'll have sweet dreams.
2 Months Later
Harry wakes up with Tonks beside him. She's snoring softly with her face pressed against a pillow and an arm dangling off the edge of the bed. Harry smiles.
It's a Saturday, and Tonks refuses to allow him to set an alarm on weekends, so he has no idea what time it is. Not too late, he doesn't think, based on the way the light is coming through the window and reflecting off the vibrant blue walls.
He painted this room a few weeks ago — sky blue (the paint colour, funnily enough, is called Magic Blue) with Gryffindor-red trim. It doesn't look great — the colours clash horribly and he did it himself, so it's even more of a mess than when Tonks helped him. He likes it, though.
It finally feels like his room. He kept one awful poster of a girl on a motorbike in honour of Sirius, but the rest is all him.
Harry gently brushes a hand over Tonks' hair, faded to her natural brown colour while she sleeps. He doesn't mean to wake her, but she stirs gently and soon turns over to meet his eye.
"Your hair looks all weird," she mumbles. Her morning greetings, Harry's observed, trend more towards the bluntly observational than the sweetly romantic.
"Morning," he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead. He narrows his eyes, scrutinizing, as she shifts her hair back to pink and sits up a little. "You look tired. Be honest — how much did I wake you up last night?"
"Hm, just twice, I think. The second one lasted a while, though."
"Tonnnks," he groans. "Just kick me or something. Seriously." He made the mistake of telling her that unless he wakes up in the middle of his nightmares, he doesn't remember them as much and they bother him less.
So now she just lets him sleep, even if all the thrashing and yelling wakes her up. And so he ends up feeling guilty about ruining her sleep a few nights a week, and then more guilty about how he doesn't feel guilty enough to not ask her to stay over.
Tonks rolls her eyes and Harry sighs. "Do you want coffee?"
"Later," she says. "Let's stay in bed a little longer. It is our last chance, after all."
Harry's got a Portkey to Paris this evening. Then another to Rome next week, and Athens after that. Then from there, somewhere else. He hasn't decided how long he'll be gone.
Or what he'll do when he gets back. Maybe he'll look into becoming a teacher. Or maybe work in a shop, or do something related to Quidditch.
He still gets that pit-in-his-stomach feeling when he thinks about after his trip and having to make those decisions. But thinking about the trip itself makes him feel wide-open and sunny and right.
Just like being with Tonks.
Thank you for reading! I would love to hear what you thought.
Story originally posted on AO3 as part of the HP Rare Pair Fest 2021, head over there to find the rest of the collection!