Author's note: I think y'all are going to like this one. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights
Hogwarts: Assignment 10, Culinary Arts Task #8 Write about someone wanting things to be absolutely perfect. For any occasion.
Content Warnings: NA
Career Week
"Are there any other questions about the essay?" Remus asked his class, leaning against his desk as he surveyed the room. It was a rather straightforward task—write about a magical creature that Muggles used to or continued to believe in—but this class was an especially anxious one, full of Ravenclaws who wanted to do well and Slytherins competing against one another.
"Professor Lupin?" someone asked. He swivelled towards the door and saw McGonagall, with Dora in tow.
Her magenta hair was pulled back in a neat, high ponytail today and the piercings running up and down her ear were amongst her most discreet silver earrings and studs. Even more surprising, she was wearing her formal Auror uniform, which she only wore when specifically mandated by the department for court hearings, funerals, and other ceremonies. It was essentially a long coat in a purple so dark it almost looked black, closed by bronze buttons all the way to her neck. A dramatic, billowing cape was attached at the shoulders. All her various Auror badges and her Order of Merlin were pinned to her chest.
"Your guest is here," McGonagall said—accenting the word unsubtly. Remus had told her that he'd made arrangements with the Auror Office for someone to come speak to his fifth year class ahead of their career planning sessions; he hadn't specified that his wife was the one turning up. He suspected she would be no help when the rest of the faculty learned that his wife had been around and the teasing started, but that was fine. Remus was not complaining.
"Wotcher. I might be early," Dora said—which she was. Remus knew how chaotic her mornings were and had been fully prepared to stall.
"That's fine," Remus said, straightening up from his desk. "Thank you, Headmistress. Okay everyone, books away unless you want to keep a quill and parchment to take notes."
McGonagall gave Remus another look before leaving, and Dora stepped into the classroom, eyeing his students. Remus knew her well enough to think she may even look nervous.
"Alright," he said. "I told you we'd start off our series of talks on careers in Defense Against the Dark Arts strong, so I'm very pleased that our first guest has been able to take time away from the Auror Department for us—but I'll let her introduce herself. Join me in welcoming her."
The class applauded, and Remus took his seat at his desk.
"Thank you," Dora said. "Thank you very much for having me, thank you to… Professor Lupin for having me."
Remus frowned. He wasn't sure how he felt about his wife calling him that.
"I'm Tonks, I'm an Auror," she said. "I've been with the department for about fifteen years now. I was recruited out of Hogwarts by Alastor Moody which is a name you might recognize. He headed off most of my training, shortly before retiring, and since then I've specialized into long-term tracking and infiltration operations. We can go over why I'm quite good at those later, if anyone's curious. I was around before and during the war, and then during the department's reconstruction, and… mostly ever since."
She went to run a hand through her hair nervously, forgetting that it was pulled up.
"Right," she said. "Does everybody know what an Auror is? No shame, my father was Muggleborn and he had no idea for the longest time."
A few tentative and honest hands went up.
"Okay," she said, nodding along. "An Auror's a highly-trained law enforcement official for the Ministry of Magic. We're often called Dark Wizard catchers, because a lot of our work is about crimes relating to the Dark Arts. If we do our jobs right, we don't have to deal with those crimes ideally—because we've been able to prevent them before anybody's gotten hurt. Since the War ended, we've been doing a lot of cleaning up—both internally and in the real world. We've been tracking Death Eaters on the run, sometimes working with Aurors from elsewhere in the world to track suspects abroad, we've been restructuring Azkaban in a big way, working in Dark Arts Practise awareness and prevention, tracking down dark objects that were made during the war, all kinds of shit—fuck, am I allowed to swear in front of the children?"
A few of the students chuckled and Remus smiled when she turned to him, wide-eyed and panicked.
"Yes," he said. "They've all met Peeves."
"Oh brilliant, I thought I'd really fucked it," Dora sighed in relief. "Anyways, that's my job. I know it sounds broad, but you honestly usually have no idea what your day's going to look like until you get to the office and find out what fresh bullshit has rained down on the shift before yours. But you're always going to be trying to make the world a little bit safer, in whatever way you can. Any question?"
A couple of hands shot up.
"Oh, wow," Dora said. She turned to Remus. "Do you want to pick, or..?"
"Go ahead, unless you want me to," he said.
"Alright, umm—you in the back?" Dora asked.
She fielded questions about training for a bit, then Nico Zabini asked her what her current mission was.
"Ah—can't tell you that," Dora said. "Confidentiality's kind of a big deal, I don't even get to tell my husband that."
"Well what's the coolest mission that's done that you can talk to us about?" Nico asked again.
Dora grinned and pursed her lip as she thought.
"Quick vote: do you want to hear about the dragon-smuggling ring or about how I handed Rodolphus Lestrange his own ass?" Dora asked. "Which I phrase that way because he's my uncle and we have beef because his wife tried to murder me with a blood curse—not because it's an acceptable way to talk about suspects. If an Auror ever talks to you like that, report them to the Wizengamot immediately. Hestia Jones runs a clean department, but know your rights."
The clamour that followed seemed to help ease Dora into things. She ended up telling both stories and Remus listened with a smile, even if he'd heard them before. The kids livened up—peppering her with questions about all her badges, if the Order of the Phoenix had been part of the Auror Department ("absolutely not, it was incredibly illegal—next question?"), how long her shifts were, if she always wore those robes, how much she got paid, if the Aurors were friends outside of work, what was the worst injury she'd gotten... Then Mia, who never raised her hand but always said something brilliant when she opened her mouth, surprised Remus by raising her hand.
"Yeah?" Dora said, smiling at her.
"You said earlier that you were really good at undercover work," Mia said shyly. "Why's that?"
"Right," Dora said with a smile. "If I get in looser clothes, I can give a demonstration."
She waved her wand over herself and her formal uniform disappeared in favour of a pair of stretchy black leggings and a baggy charcoal shirt.
"I need a volunteer," she said.
Dora picked Jared, a Slytherin who liked to make his friends laugh, and made him walk across the classroom a few times. She watched him like a hawk and, wordlessly, took on his features. Remus rarely saw her transform so completely and so quickly—and the class went wild. Jared laughed so hard he fell on someone else's desk.
"I could do my voice too, but that tends to freak people out," Dora said. She crossed her arms and grinned in a very Dora way. "So I'm a Metamorphmagus—I can change my features at will. It's incredibly useful; I barely had to study for my Concealment and Disguise examination."
She shifted again; this time she grew into a tall blonde woman with high cheekbones, freckles, and a dancer's build.
"It's a pretty rare trait and nobody's sure how you get it—I passed it on to my kid, but Merlin knows what wall I licked it off off—which is why the department likes to use me for undercover work. I take on characters to do all kinds of long-haul projects," Tonks said. "This face is retired now, because I testified in court which blew her cover, but the character's name was Justine and she helped to infiltrate a group that would go out, kidnap Muggles, put them under the Imperius curse, and then wipe their memories. It's a cool party trick, but it's also rather useless if I always talk and walk and behave like myself. Nowadays, the test for a good character that's fit to go out in the field is how quickly my husband recognizes them. So Jared, come here…"
She spent the rest of the class mimicking Jared and his mannerisms, which was hilarious, then shifting back to herself in her formal robes to field more questions. She passed around her badges, talked about wand maintenance around dark magic, demonstrated what a legal arrest should look like, and fielded more questions until the bell rang.
"Alright everyone," Remus said before they vanished. "Please keep this all to yourselves, the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs have this class after lunch, and join me in thanking Auror Lupin for her time…"
"Auror Lupin?" one of the Ravenclaws blurted.
Dora turned to him with a smile and an arched eyebrow.
"You didn't tell them?" she asked.
"I wanted them to ask you actual questions about your job, not questions about me," Remus said.
"You're her husband?" Jared asked, stunned. The kids started whispering amongst themselves furiously.
"Alright, go get lunch but give all your questions about what Professor Lupin's like to the Hufflepuffs—I'm spilling it all," Dora said. That made the students laugh as they trickled out, though a few swung by to thank Dora personally or ask her follow up questions—especially with OWLS coming up. Then they were alone in the classroom. Dora turned to him and without the kids there, she looked nervous again. She took a deep breath.
"How did I do?" she asked.
"You were wonderful," Remus said, getting up from his perch on the corner of his desk. He waved his wand to close his classroom door—sure that some of the kids had hung around in the hall—and went to give her a hug. "You were great; they loved it. I'm going to hear about how incredible you are until the end of the year, thank you so much for coming."
"Okay, good," she said, sighing in relief.
"Were you really that nervous?"
"I just wanted to do a good job," Dora said earnestly.
Remus tried not to smile. He kissed her to hide the tug of his lips—but apparently not well enough.
"Stop," Dora said.
He couldn't help but smile.
"Are you even wearing mascara?"
"Shut up."
WC: 1801