Harry woke with the sunrise.
The light of a new dawn filled their room. A freer dawn. An unburdened dawn.
One that brought nothing to wake for. To a day of near-total freedom. Free to do whatever they wished. To fly if they wished to fly. To eat if they wished to eat. To drink if they wished to drink.
Harry thought of rising from the comfort of their bed, their soft mattress against his aching back, their soft linens against his skin. Of rising away from Tonks, who slumbered without any threat of waking, her arm outstretched so that it might lay across his chest.
He lifted his head to look out the window and toward the glory of the new day. The pristine blue of the sky and the unending flow of the green hills of his homeland. Trees that bloomed in their fullest and their brightest. The birds that floated along the soft summer winds, their music filling the air.
He looked down. To Tonks.
With a searching hand, he found his wand on the bedside table and swiped it in the general direction of the bay windows. Fortunately, magic did the rest, darkening the bedroom of any light.
Harry closed his eyes and dropped his head against the softness of his pillow. He laid his hand atop of Tonks', threading their fingers together.
He was asleep again in moments.
Motion, rather than light, awoke Harry the second time. Tonks' motion. And, to his vexation, it was away from him, rather than toward him. Her hand leaving his, returning to her side of the bed.
The room was still dark as he blinked his eyes open again. Still except for Tonks, who'd sat up on the pillows of the bed, her back against the headboard and the covers pulled up to her neck, her hair a muted, dark sort of brown.
Harry frowned as he reached for his glasses, nearly smashing them with the urgency to find them and see the world properly again. He thought to mirror her and sit up against the headboard but decided against it. Tonks' pulling of the covers around her, had exposed all of his torso, but he made no move to change that.
His first clear sight of the day was of Tonks. That made him smile.
She made him smile.
A quick flash of a smile flitted across Tonks' face all too fleetingly. "This is awkward," she said.
"That's because you're all the way over there," Harry said. Boldly, he pulled upon the covers. Tonks did not grab them tightly, but rather came withthem. "Come here."
Tonks dropped back into bed, her eyes aligned with his, their colour muted by the dim light, yet he could see their shifting perfectly. She did not allow him the wonder of her eyes for very long, before they trailed around the room, their path purposeless.
The corners of her lips quirked upward often, though her smile did not stay for long. And, although she'd lowered herself, she held her head off of the pillows. Even as they then shared the bed, she still had the bedsheets wrapped fully around herself, a cocoon amongst the covers.
Harry pulled his arm out from the duvet. He moved to reach out and touch her, though he offered her a look before he did. "May I?" he asked.
Tonks sighed, and then nodded. "Of course."
Harry smiled, his hand upon the duvet as it covered her hip, tracing the curves of her with his fingertips as if to reassure himself that she was truly there, distant as she then was. His hands retracing the paths his lips had taken on the night prior, teasing along the edges of her.
Yet, he did not seek to tease, but to reassure. To remind.
Tonks soon did lift her hips, allowing her cocoon to unravel. Harry inched closer, his hand dropping below the covers.
"May I?" he asked.
Tonks gave a truer smile. "Of course."
By her grace, his hands felt the touch of her skin once more. The slight raises where he'd sucked marks into in the dead of night. The peaks and falls he'd utterly lost himself to.
The warmth he wished to never leave. The tenderness he'd found enthralling.
Tonks moved closer still until their bodies shared heat and air, her mouth barely apart from his. She raised her hand to his cheek.
"May I?" she asked, her finger brushing against his glasses and pulling them from the bridge of his nose.
Harry laughed softly. "Of course."
Tonks had the patience to set his glasses down carefully before her touch returned to him.
She did not map the parts of him she'd lathed so absolutely with attention in the night, but instead trailing her hand down the plane of his chest until she met with the taut firmness of his abs. Her thumb traced shapes against the tense muscles until they relaxed.
Tonks lifted her head just enough for their lips to meet again. Harry took her jaw in both of his hands, pulling her gently into his embrace. Her tongue tasted his lips as she threaded her legs through his, her foot sliding against his calf. His hand dropped to her arse, pulling her yet closer.
They kissed languidly, easily. Though the most urgent parts of Harry's being demanded it, their embrace did not deepen into the hunger of the night before. This closeness meant so much more than the urges she so easily wrought from him.
He did not take her, as his body begged, nor did she take him. But rather, their bodies met until their forms melded against one another. At times, she laid on top of him, her breasts soft against the firmness of his chest. At times, she twisted him in her grasp until she was beneath him, her eyes big as they looked up at him, their gaze teasing. Her legs would wrap around his waist, her thighs holding all there was of him.
His body was at its most desperate in those moments, but he did not take her then. He instead continued to kiss her softly. His caress gentle, mapping rather than devouring, holding rather than grabbing.
In the tiny parts of his mind that could think beyond the joy of Tonks, he realised he'd never had moments such as these. Kissing until the seconds turned to minutes which turned to hours. Intimacy, without sex.
Before, there had been an overwhelming rush throughout it all; an urgency that burned away any connection he might've well found beyond the physical. He'd never felt comfortable enough with anyone else to be as careful as he allowed himself to be with Tonks.
They were still clumsy, still learning one another. Their teeth met on occasion, though they just laughed through it rather than drifted away. As their hands wandered into the messes of one another's hair, and their fingers caught in the tangles wincingly, they worked through the tangles until the locks flowed freely once more.
He came to adore her hair. The softness of it in his hands. The way her magic danced along her locks, sending tingles across the pores of his skin and going deeper still. The moan that fell from her lips if he grabbed it a fraction too tightly.
There was just something of Tonks that put him purely at ease in those moments. Her hands upon the hard lines of his shoulder, gentle kneading until their tension dissipated and he faded into her yet further. Her lips smiling into the kisses they shared, reminding him that they were there for the joy of one another. Her ankles fastened at the small of his back, never allowing him to leave.
Not that he at all wished to.
Eventually, eventually, Tonks lifted herself from him.
"Baby," she said, the word sending them both into blinding smiles. She ran her hand along the long length of her violet hair. "I need water."
Without warning, she left his arms and jumped out of bed, exposing the full nakedness of her figure. She stood still for a moment, grinning as she watched him, watch her, his eyes growing heavily lidded as he took her in.
"I'll get you some too," she said, laughing as she walked over to the fridge. Whether or not she lingered as she bent over, with the roundness of her arse presented to him, was for only Tonks to know.
Harry quickly found his glasses. Just quickly enough to see the bottle that flew toward him, his dazed reactions still quick enough to catch it.
"I was hoping that'd hit you," Tonks said with a pout. She faced him, gifting him the sight of her, bare to him.
Of her, there was so much to be enraptured by. The wide flare of her hips as they flowed from the curves of her waist and muscled core to the thickness of her thighs. Her pale legs, long and yet powerful, her calves toned. Her muscled arms, slight and yet strong. Her full breasts, still bearing the red marks his mouth had sucked upon them for hours on end. Her elegant neck, made yet more enrapturing as she lifted her head back to drink her water.
A woman.
A strong, powerful woman he was allowed to see and touch and adore.
Harry pulled off the cap of his water and swallowed half its contents in one go.
"Why did you wanna hit me?" Harry asked. The time between question and answer was much too great to be deemed reasonable. Or, indeed, caused by anything other than his absolute appreciation of the gift that was the sight of Tonks. "Are you not enjoying yourself?"
Tonks laughed. "I'm not answering that."
"How come?"
"It's a stupid question," Tonks said, walking back to bed. "One that we both know the answer to."
"Do we really?"
Tonks came to stand at his side of the bed, Harry forced to look directly upward to meet her eyes. Once he did, she threaded her hands into the raven's curls of his hair, the act by then familiar. Her touch dragged him forward until his mouth met her hip, and then the paleness of her toned stomach.
He kissed there, his teeth gently nipping at her hip until soft sighs left Tonks' mouth.
"False modesty isn't attractive," said Tonks, her grip on his hair tightening just so. Harry gripped her thighs to steady himself. "Neither is teasing."
Tonks' hand pushed down upon him, guiding him to her centre, yet he did not go, preferring to contain his gentle affections, even as they drew groans of frustration from her.
"I beg to differ," said Harry, mouthing the words against her. "You've done nothing but tease me for four days and you've never been hotter."
Tonks raised her knees to rest on either side of Harry's hips. Harry wrapped his arms around her waist, drawing her close, until her arse sat against his abs, his sex pressed against the softness of her inner thigh.
"Teasing is always more fun when you're the one doing it," Tonks said, a grin playing upon her cheeks. Her hands parsed a rhythm into his hair, slow and soothing. She moved to grab his glasses from behind his ears, but he shook his head.
Harry wanted to know exactly what Tonks looked like upon him.
"It seems a little bit pointless to tease now though, doesn't it?" Tonks asked. She dropped her hips suddenly so that she pressed against him. "You could have me whenever you like."
"But baby," said Harry, drawing circles against her back. "I'm enjoying our intimacy far too much for that."
Tonks was off of him in a flash, shooting to the other side of the bed in near-cartoonish disgust. Her hair burned coal-black, her eyes holding the same darkness. Her nose took to its scrunch of disgust and stuck with it.
She crossed her arms across her chest and pulled the covers over her legs and up her waist.
"I was having such a lovely time," said Tonks scathingly, her lips pouting without her likely ever meaning them to. Harry had to laugh. "I'm being so serious. I was having such a nice time and you ruined it with that word."
It took a long while, but Harry did eventually stop smiling, no matter how much her expression amused him.
"I'm sorry," Harry said, as he inched toward her, slowly approaching her side of their bed. But the moment he got within arms reach, she extended her arm out to collide with his face. "I really am sorry."
"You don't sound sorry."
"I am," said Harry. "But, you have to admit, your reaction was really funny."
Tonks pouted yet more brilliantly. The crème de la crème of pouts. The magnum opus of adorable misery. "That word is no laughing matter."
"I'm really sorry." Harry sighed, raising his palms in surrender. Still, she held her palm against his face. "I didn't realise it was so bad for you."
Tonks groaned and then threw her head back so that it hit the pillows with a hard thud, her hands coming up to hide her face.
"I'm not saying it scarred me for life," Tonks said. Harry slid beside her, his hand dropping to her hip, but only after her nod of permission. "However, if I could live a life without hearing that fucking word ever again, I'd consider that a successful life led."
Harry's thumb brushed over her pale skin. He met her eyes, his eyes lidding half-closed as he brought his mouth close to hers. He did not kiss her until she nodded, and only then did he allow himself to feel her soft lips against his.
"How about this," began Harry, a hair's breadth apart from her. He kissed her again, unable to be so close to her and not allow himself the indulgence. "This is all connected to some tragic story, right?" Tonks nodded. "Then we can trade. My story for yours."
Tonks kissed his lips sweetly, and then his cheek. "You're very sweet." She allowed her lips to slide against his skin until she met the juncture of his jaw and throat. "But, I promise that nothing you've suffered is in any way similar to the kind of quiet agony I endured."
"Quiet agony?" Harry mused, gasping as her tongue swept against his neck.
"In that, I was silent throughout the ordeal," Tonks said against the column of his throat, "and my soul felt true agony."
Harry tilted his head, firstly in question though mostly to bring himself nearer to her affectionate lips. "Oh?" He paused for a moment. "Oh."
"Yeah, that kinda night." Tonks pulled away from him fully; Harry forced away the whine her sudden absence pulled from the core of his spirit. "Okay, I'll tell you, but we can't be like…touching, or anything, during me telling you." She brushed a stray hair behind her ear. "I'm not allowing my brain to draw any connections between this actually quite lovely day, and that horrid, horrid night."
Tonks shot off the bed, scuttling quickly across the floor to find something to wear. She settled upon the white dress shirt he'd worn yesterday. It reached the top of her thigh, and she'd button only the middle two buttons, so Harry was offered the sight of the sides of her breasts and the pale slip of her abs as she walked. First to the fridge to retrieve another bottle of water, and then back to bed, where she sat cross-legged at the end, while Harry sat up against the headboard, taking several much-needed swigs of water.
"Now, after all this is over, I expect something from you in compensation," she said, pointing her finger all the way over at him. She drank a sip of water. "Nothing will compare, obviously, but I expect something."
Harry grinned. "Absolutely."
Tonks shook her head and then sighed. She gave herself one final drink of water before drawing the deepest breath her lungs could muster.
Then, she began.
"When I was about twenty, Hestia decided to set me up on a blind date," she said. "The guy was hot enough. He looked a bit like he read poetry if you know what I mean, a bit pretentious, but I was working ridiculous hours as a new Auror, so I wasn't in a position to be picky. Or, so I thought."
Tonks sighed.
"I went back to his, and we started kissing and it was fine. He was good at it, and it, y'know, hid the whole pretentiousness of his face. We go to his room, it's all grand. Perfectly serviceable. Then, in a rather impressive display, he picked me up and threw me into bed. The action clashed with his aesthetic and it threw me off a bit, but I moved beyond it easily enough. But then." She winced. "But then, he said.
"Darling, let's get intimate.'"
A shudder ran through her entire body.
"Now, that was fucking awful obviously, but I hadn't yet seen the light about that fucking word. It was bad, but ignorably bad. I was horny. I was already in bed. And, what he said fit with his aesthetic so well that I was momentarily stunned that he'd managed to boil his own essence down into just four words. It was impressive; kinda faintly mesmerising actually.
"Anyway, it wasn't yet a deal-breaker. What was a deal-breaker was that he then proceeded to provide me with the worst head I've ever received in my entire life. Laughably bad. Bad enough to give me an existential crisis. Literally. I pondered the very nature and cruelty of existence in those moments. I considered reincarnation, and that I'd been someone fucking awful in a past life to suffer in such a way, like genocidally awful. The man had no talent. Like, negative talent. He actually had a talent for making me dry. He was like the rice of eating pussy.
"But, what made it worse was that the entire time he kept fucking saying 'I love being intimate with you.'" Her jaw clamped tight as she spoke the word again. "Or 'I feel so intimate with you.'
"So, the word is entirely fucking meaningless to me now. All it means to me is bad head and pretentious suffering," Tonks finished. "I truly can't impress on you enough how bad we're talking here. Like, I briefly thought that magic didn't exist. I thought human life was an illusion crafted solely to punish me. Just terrible."
Silence took the room for a long time after that. Harry looked to Tonks, and most of all, Tonks looked at Harry. Neither looked away, nor did they do anything else other than just breathe their shared air, and look through the space that stretched between them.
There was something different in the air of Tonks after her proclamation. Harry would not claim for it to be a burden eased, as the burden still was so clearly upon her as how could it not be, but the burden was, without question, lessened.
Then, to his utmost relief, Tonks allowed a giggle to slip through the blank façade of her ennui. The laugh, just as all of her truest laughs, began at the marrow of her bones and flowed through every inch of every pore of her skin. When she truly laughed, she laughed with her whole being, the sound nearly explosive in its joy.
Soon, Harry was falling about the bed with laughter too, overwhelmed by all that she had said, but mostly how unavoidably odd the past three days had been.
Three days ago, Tonks had been one of his dearest friends. One he'd thought beautiful, but not one he'd ever imagined himself possibly being able to be with. Their case, finished though it then was, had begun as more blessing than grim reminder. The thought of spending an evening, and sharing a bed, with another soul had been terrifying and not delightful.
It was just truly amazing what could happen in three days.
"Can you believe that happened?" Tonks asked incredulously. "Can you believe that happened to me?" Another peal of laughter ripped through her. "Because I truly can't. The entire thing feels like a fucking Pensieve memory."
"You poor thing," Harry cooed. He extended his arms, even as they, just as the rest of him, shook with laughter. "Come here."
Tonks kneeled up on the bed, and quite nearly threw herself into his arms. Harry caught her and wrapped her up in him.
She folded nicely into his chest, Harry found, to their shared contentment. And it was his turn then to thread his fingers through her hair in rhythmic patterns, from crown to tip and then back, coaxing away the black shades until it was a blushing pink.
"You are right. I don't have anything that compares to that," Harry said. His free hand dipped into the shirt she wore — his shirt — to scratch his nails gently against her back. "I was just going to tell you about how Gabrielle and I ended things. It's not even that interesting."
She placed her palms on his chest and rested her chin on top of her hands. "Go on," Tonks said. "It'll bring at least a little balance to this."
Harry lifted his head to stare at the ceiling, his words spoken to the sky, though his hands did not grow idle upon Tonks' pale skin. "After two months of just the weirdest…I don't even want to call it a relationship, but almost-but-not-quite relationship, in which we just didn't talk—"
"—God, how I wish that dude had just not talked."
Harry smiled. "Anyway," he said, "we just didn't talk. She'd come over to Grimmauld, we'd, y'know—"
"—fuck?"
Harry sighed. "Sure, let's go with that," he agreed. His hand darted away from Tonks' hair for just a moment; long enough to readjust his glasses and no more. "Then, she'd just leave. No cuddling, no plans to see each other in any capacity other than horizontally."
"I always thought you were exaggerating when you said that," Tonks said. "She's quite, you know, well to do. I would've thought she wouldn't mind being seen in public with you."
Harry cleared his throat. "It's like the question didn't even exist in her head. The whole liaison felt like a work meeting she had to go to twice a week."
"Was it good at least?" Tonks asked, leaning forward on her palms.
"Not really. Like, objectively, it was fun, but it wasn't really good," Harry answered, his nose scrunching. It was definitely not good comparatively, either. "Anyway, after a couple of months of that weirdness, I finally asked her what was actually going on." He sighed. "You know what she said?"
"What did she say?"
"Nothing," Harry said, his voice growing oddly faint. "Absolutely nothing. Just got dressed, walked out of the door, and I haven't spoken to her since. Whenever I go to the Delacour's, she just actively avoids me. Has for two years now."
Tonks laughed. And, she laughed in such a way that her whole body vibrated with it in between his legs. It was difficult for Harry to feel anything other than joy when he heard it, which was a delightful blanket over the confusion that thoughts of Gabrielle came with.
"God that's weird," she said, in between her laughter. "I...I just don't understand that at all."
"I don't either." He sighed heavily. "Every time I try and guess what was going on, or even attempt to make sense of it, it just fades away from me."
"Maybe she just didn't know what she wanted?" Tonks offered, her voice rising in pitch. "And since you two were just kind of static, continuing to say nothing was easier than confronting it all."
"Probably," Harry agreed. "It just doesn't fit with anything else about her. It's just really, really odd."
"And it's not as if she's a weird person, either."
"No, she's super normal. These days she's got everything. Married, career, successful. The works." Harry's hand stilled in her hair. "Anyway, I know it's not quite as painful as your ordeal, but it's at least something."
"It is something. It's definitely something."
They lapsed into contented silence. Tonks, sensing the change, dropped her head onto the hard plane of his chest, her hands clutching his sides as he continued to caress the edges of her body. Tracing patterns along her spine and charting the course from her collarbones all the way to her shoulders and then back.
Tonks hooked her ankles around his leg, her foot passing upward and downward along his calf. She would occasionally dip her lips to press featherlight kisses to his chest, and occasionally dropping lower to his ribs, and then his stomach, but never any further.
Though the sky outside the room changed with the pitch of the sun, its blues fading with the clouds and growing with the open air, their bedroom's light did not shift. All that did shift within that room was Tonks and Harry.
They did so slowly, and they did so gently. They moved against one another, and with one another. Either by the other's guidance or by their own willingness. But they did shift, and they did change, together.
Always with consideration and always with affection. Always to bring one another closer, or to allow their touch to sink deeper into one another. To soothe ills that neither could see. To enlighten in that dark, and to hide against any light that might slip through.
Under one such change, Harry found himself holding Tonks, her back pressed against his front and his shirt long-since discarded. His hand held her breast, his mouth on her neck, Tonks sighing delightfully in his hands.
"This is lovely, isn't it?" Harry asked of her, his mouth beside her ear. He brushed her hair, strands of the most incandescent violet, behind her ear just to feel it against his skin.
"Yeah," Tonks said, her words half-moaned. "Strange." She placed her hand upon his. "I don't think I've ever done anything like this."
"Nor have I." Harry smiled. "It goes without saying, but cuddling really is underrated."
Such thoughts were a new development, of course. Very new.
Tonks laughed. "It depends on who you're doing it with."
"Do you disagree?"
She shook her head, her hair brushing against his face. "You're very comfy. It's just this isn't the first place my mind goes when I picture us naked together."
Harry grinned, sucking wetly against her neck. "Is that something you find yourself picturing often?"
"More and more every second," Tonks said. "Not now though, obviously. It'd be a little redundant."
"And before?"
Quickly, Tonks turned in his arms so that he could look into his eyes. His glasses too were long since discarded, with his sight deemed less important than his affection, yet he could make out her expression very clearly.
"Are you asking if I thought you were hot before these past few days?" Tonks asked.
Harry bit his bottom lip, thoughtful. "I suppose so, yeah."
"Then yes," Tonks said quickly. Harry held her waist, pulling her into a soft kiss. "Your eyes are a bit too much to look at sometimes. They always have been." She laughed to herself. "The way they looked at me sometimes used to make me nervous."
"I'm sorry."
"Un uh," said Tonks, her eyes dipping closed as she kissed him once, twice. "They were the good kind of nerves. I'd say butterflies, but I'd be disgusted with myself."
Harry laughed.
He knew exactly what she meant.
"I thought you were gorgeous too," Harry said, his eyes searching hers.
"And now?"
"Beyond words."
Tonks grinned. "Those are pretty good words."
She leaned up to kiss him. Softly too at first, though she soon sucked his bottom lip, her tongue lathing against his.
"I think," she started, her words breathless. "I think you and I were just separated by something. Our own shortcomings, maybe. We were never quite ready for…this."
Neither of them could endure the disentanglement of the sensation of another soul's skin against theirs, and the longing that came along with it. And, her touch upon him, and his touch upon her, would always, always, always mean more than just the meeting of flesh.
Tonks, in their years of work together, had sank into the bones of him, and he into the bones of her.
He'd not truly been happy in the stasis of before, he realised that now, as he remained against her, reminded of the vast beauty of her and the vast joy of those moments. Of the far reachings of her spirit, and how it reached into him.
Her wonder was such that it inspired change in him. Or rather, it reminded him of the change he owed himself to make.
"I'm going to leave the Aurors," Harry said, after a quiet lull. He watched the change of the colour of her eyes as he spoke, and then still for just a moment as she came to realise what he'd said. "This was my last case."
"Why?" she asked. She made no mention of the conversation's turn, as in their lull, amidst the quiet passings of her hands against him, her eyes had only watched his and so had watched the change occur there.
Harry was silent for a spell. He looked away from her eyes, bewitching though they were, to stare into the clear darkness of the room.
"It's not where I'm supposed to be," Harry answered at last. "I don't think it's what I'm supposed to be doing with my life."
"According to who?"
"According to me."
"Good." Tonks smiled. "So, is it only because it's not what you're supposed to be doing, or is it because you're not happy?"
"Both," Harry said, drawing Tonks closer until she was smiling against his chest. "I think this last case proved it." He pushed his hand through his hair. "I joined the Aurors to stop big threats, you know? I mean, the entire time we were here, I was convinced this was some Death Eater plot, not a rich twat being a rich twat."
"But you know something new will come along eventually, right?" Tonks asked. "I agree with what you're saying, but the thing we've been fighting against — that hate. It's still out there. Those feelings haven't gone away in seven years."
"And it's not going to go away, either. I mean, people are still coming out of Hogwarts holding the same opinions their parents either hold or died trying to hold," said Harry. "I knew even after Voldemort had died that we hadn't really won. Not yet. I'd hoped in the beginning that our people would just learn. That if we just wiped away what the war had left, that we'd all be clean. But I think we need more than that.
"I've thought about that fucking prophecy," Harry then said. "For a while, I'd thought that it was all nonsense. A convenient tie to bind all that Dumbledore and Voldemort wanted, all with me in the middle. But, as I've gotten older, I realise that I'm not gaining anything by thinking that way. Even if it's true, I'm a coward for thinking it, because Dumbledore didn't think that way.
"Everyone says I'm this symbol, right?" Harry asked. Tonks nodded eagerly. "I can't change that. My name means something more than the words Harry and Potter. And I'm tired of that power being used in the place of what people should be doing. I have a responsibility to use that power for more than giving speeches and playing at politics because it's not just mine. So many people gave just..everything for it. My mum and dad. Dumbledore, Sirius and Remus. Luna.
"I owe them the world they died for," Harry finished by saying. "This world isn't that world. But I owe it to them to try and make it that way."
Tonks smiled, her hair turning black, her eyes fixing into clear blues. "Are you only doing this out of obligation?" she asked. "Is your only reason because you think you owe the world something?"
"I do owe," Harry said. "I owe a lot."
"No, you don't."
"Yes, I do."
"No, you don't."
"Then why did I get brought back?" Harry asked, quietly. "Why am I the only person in history that gets to die and then live, if not to do something with the life I've been given?"
"Because it had to be someone," Tonks said. "Your death isn't the world's sail, or even just yours. It's the anchor. It kept us here, but it will sink you if you hold onto it. You're special because of who you are, and that's what lets you do the things you've done. Not the other way around. You know that."
"So what then?"
"So, do what makes you happy," Tonks said. "Do what you think you should do, not what you think you owe the world. You were born into some ridiculous fatalistic role, and you became incredible in spite of that, not because of it." She sighed. "I owe the world something. You've paid your nonexistent debt a thousand times over."
"What do you owe the world?" Harry asked. "You chose to put your life on the line to save others. And when a war started, you kept putting yourself in front of the fire for everyone else. You don't owe the world a thing."
"When I took this job, I took on a responsibility," Tonks said, her black hair still, her blue eyes still. "And I've failed that responsibility."
Harry sighed. "Tonks, we can't do this job perfectly. We can't catch everything."
"I know," Tonks agreed, "but we have to try. I went through that war and I watched friends die. I watched Moody die. I watched Remus die." She swallowed. "I watched Luna die. I watched Bellatrix kill her. I can't live my life pretending that that didn't happen. I need to change."
Without a word spoken, Harry and Tonks found the hand of one another, their fingers threading through one another's. Harry stroked her tensed knuckles with his thumb, and she passed over the heel of his palm with hers.
He met her eyes, the offer of greater comfort floating within them, but a small shake of her head ended all of it.
"I need to stay and change the Aurors," Tonks said. "Make them better. Kinder, more careful. We need to see more than we currently do. These past few days proved that, and with Kingsley going up, I know my place is Head Auror. It's the only role I've ever wanted; one that I finally feel like I'm ready to take."
No one fit the office better. None of those that'd sat there before did, or even came close.
Not even Kingsley.
"I think I need to go back to Hogwarts," Harry said. "Too many people slip through the cracks." He sighed deeply. "I can't let people follow in the footsteps of their parents. I can't let someone like Jeffers get to where he got to be. And I can't let what happened to Sally-Anne happen again."
Silence held the room for a cascade of moments.
"The Defence position is open," Tonks told him.
"And I hear the Head Auror spot is opening up pretty soon, too."
There was again that strange weight to the air between them, thin though that air was. It was as tight as a bowstring.
And then Tonks laughed, and the tension bled from the room, the bowstring snapping.
And Harry laughed too.
"That was a bit serious, wasn't it?" Tonks said, drawing another laugh from Harry.
Tonks leaned into Harry, to take his jaw in her hands. She kissed his lips once before she went upward. His eyes fluttered closed and then she ghosted her lips across his eyelids, drifting upward yet further still. First to the space where his eyebrows knitted themselves together, and then finally her mouth rested against his forehead.
"I did mean what I said earlier, about you being happy with what you do," she said, her mouth speaking her truths against his brow. "Whatever is currently happening between us won't change what you've meant to me. This day has been wonderful, and the night before too, but you've been my friend for years before that and that means a lot to me.
"I just want you to be happy," Tonks told him. "And I'm not going to lie to you and say I won't miss working with you, because I will, but we've not really worked together properly for a long time now." She smiled, and Harry could feel it curve into being upon him. "And, if this is the last time we do, then this is the best way for it to end."
The end of one. The beginning of another.
"I think I have ample reason to see you," Harry said against her collarbone. "And I do want you to be happy, too."
Tonks kissed him.
"Spending time with you makes me happy."
"Spending time with you makes me happy, too."
They shared another laugh. Harry used the moment to take Tonks by the hips and pulled her down into bed, dropping her head onto the pillows with a quiet gasp.
He descended onto her, his mouth at her neck.
"I think we've talked enough," Harry said, falling to her breasts and then her hips. "Fun though it has been."
He disappeared beneath the covers. And then he disappeared into her.
"Finally," Tonks said, her hand threading into his hair. "Oh, baby…"
Eventually, there came time to leave their bed, albeit briefly, to shower and to order food.
They had thought to apparate into London to eat, though that required getting properly dressed, and breaking the seal around themselves in that room; separating the honeyed closeness they'd begun to form together. And so, in the end, they decided on room service.
They'd also thought to shower separately. A very short-lived thought.
And so they sat on the bed facing one another, wrapped in the fluffy softness of the hotel's complimentary dressing gowns, with still-damp hair sticking in all directions and a bowl of strawberries and ice cream in their hands.
Their legs did still intertwine as they laid. Tonks absently allowed her toes to pass over his calf. Upward and downward.
Harry reached out to take one of her hands in his, his thumb passing over the back of her hand just as her foot passed over his calf. As she went up, he went up. As he went down, she went down.
"I think you'll be a good Professor," said Tonks, in the middle of eating a strawberry. "Plus, if something weird is going to happen at Hogwarts which, if we're being honest, is always going to be the case, then you're in the right place to stop it."
Harry smiled. "Who would've thought my years of going into all the places I shouldn't have at school would pay off now?"
"You got so lucky," said Tonks. "When you guessed that shit was going on and went running around the restricted section, shit actually was going on. But when I did it, apparently my theory that Professor Sprout was growing narcotics in the greenhouses was 'wishful thinking at best and libellous at worst'." She stabbed her spoon into her mound of ice cream. "Life's just not fair sometimes."
"Aww baby, I'm sorry," said Harry, squeezing her hand. Her lips twitched at the term of endearment. "If it's any consolation, I had absolutely no fun at the time. It was mostly just spending every day in Potions thinking it would be the day that Snape would snap and murder me."
Tonks hummed around her spoon. "Who would've that he was the good one all along?" she asked. "I mean, he wasn't good. He was still a cunt, being a dick to kids for no reason and everything. But he, you know, chose the right side in the end."
"That's what his tombstone should read," said Harry, smiling. "Here lies a treacherous cunt. But, one whose decision making at the very, very end was actually his best feature."
"'Feel sorry for McGonagall. She has to spend all her time in her office with his portrait," said Tonks. "That's one of the crueller things you ever did."
"It's more about fairness than kindness," said Harry. "And, it's a reminder to every Headmaster or Headmistress that sits in that office. You can never get too comfortable."
"It's impossible to be anything approaching comfortable around Snape."
"Exactly."
"So, in like ten years when you're sitting in that office as Headmaster Potter, first of his name," said Tonks, laughing at her own words, "I'm sure you're going to be really thinking about the fairness of it all."
Harry raised his finger into the air. "Ah! That's where you're wrong."
"You think you're going to patch up things with Snape in that time?" Tonks asked. "Because anything short of paint stripper isn't going to help much."
"Fuck that," Harry said, with a shake of his head. "I'll just not use that office. There's about a million other ones to choose from." He finished his dessert and levitated it toward the table they had originally thought to eat at. "However, are you going to be able to handle working at Kingsley's desk?"
"Yeah, of course," said Tonks, blasé, "it's not even his desk in my mind. If anything, in my head it's mostly just the desk that Scrimgeour and Robards sat at when they scowled at me for being way too good at my job."
"Really?"
"They might've phrased it as 'idiot with a death wish who never waits for back up', but I try to not let negative thoughts like that into my mind."
"It's less about caring about your predecessors, and more like, caring about all of the stuff we did in that office."
"We didn't do anything in that office," Tonks said. "I mean, I might've imagined it once or twice, and I'm sure you did, given how much you liked studying the stitching on my jeans, but we didn't do anything."
Harry shook his head fondly. "I meant all the times we got drunk and left little gifts in there for Kingsley to find the day after."
By gifts, they usually meant indoor fireworks, as sold by the Weasleys. Sometimes other things too. Thirty howlers singing the national anthem at different tempos and pitches, like the worst choir that humanity had ever had the misfortune of enduring. Hundreds of glasses of water on the floor, all filled so that even the slightest push would cover the carpet.
They were the worst ones, though often it was just minor inconveniences. Changing the colour of the ink in every one of his inkwells from black to blue. Turning his entire room around completely; nothing changed, just rotated one-hundred and eighty degrees so that he faced the windows and backed against the door. A bottle of his favourite whisky, hidden in a draw that they shouldn't have been able to break into.
Fleur and Bill were owed thanks for that, too.
However, Kingsley was not the sort of man that took such infractions lying down. He did not initiate such interactions, but he would not lose once they began, either.
After the water incident, Harry had gotten back to Grimmauld Place one afternoon after work and came to learn that Walburga Black had been given a picture frame in every one of the rooms in the entire house, and her voice was permanently amplified so the foundations very literally shook every time she spoke.
And, after Tonks had charmed every quill in his office to evaporate whenever he touched them, he'd done the same to every single item of clothing she'd possessed. There had been a counter-spell, Kingsley had told her after days of sobbing over various band t-shirts he'd destroyed, but the fear was already born.
"Shit," Tonks said, her hair turning snow-white, her bowl held limply in her hands. "I mean, he wouldn't do anything awful, would he?"
"I mean, the one time Ron slipped a voice-changing potion into his morning tea, Kingsley turned all of his Cannons jerseys and scarves into Falcons ones, and then paid for one of the seats in the Falcons' stadium to be named 'The Ron Weasley Seat'," Harry recounted. The West Country Derby was the most vicious in all of Quidditch. It was the only Quidditch rivalry, outside of international fixtures, that required Auror supervision. "So, I wouldn't hold your breath."
Tonks shrugged. The least nonchalant shrug Harry had ever seen. "I mean, Kingsley likes me. We've been mates for ages. He'd never do anything to me," she began to argue. "And! And! It's at work. He's way too professional to ever do anything at work. And who's to say I'll even get the Head Auror spot, either?"
"Baby," Harry said softly. "You're the best Auror in the department by miles. You're the best Auror I've ever seen. You're going to get it."
Tonks winced. "I am, aren't I?"
She didn't look at him for a while after that. She stared at her by-then empty bowl of ice cream, twirling her spoon in the thin film of melted dessert that coated the bottom of the ceramic.
Harry brought himself to his knees and crawled toward Tonks. He gently placed his hands upon hers, and slowly took the bowl from her grasp, placing it on her bedside table. He pulled her into his arms tenderly, and she came with him, wrapping her legs around his waist so as to comfortably sit on his thighs.
He brushed a still-damp lock of her hair away from her face, guiding it behind her ear. "It'll not be too bad," he said. "One really awful day, and then you get your dream job forever."
She pushed her face into the fluff of his dressing gown. "You don't understand," she said. "He took my Pixies shirt from me. My Pixies shirt. You can't do that to a person."
"It was only for a bit."
"It was an eternity," Tonks said. Harry opened his mouth, though she placed a finger to his lips. "There's nothing you can say that will comfort me about this. It's going to be awful."
Harry nodded. "I'm sorry, baby."
Tonks grinned before she could help herself.
"It's not fair that I like it so much when you say that."
"I'd apologise, but I'm not sorry," he said. He waited a moment. "Baby."
Tonks rolled her eyes but slid her hands into his dressing gown to pass over his back.
"You have a really nice voice," Tonks said, refusing to meet his eyes. "And I've never heard you say that word before these past few days, so please don't ruin it."
Harry smiled. He laced a tender hand through her hair, pulling her away from his chest so that he could look at her.
"I'm not usually into pet names," Harry said. "Though I really see the appeal now."
"It's not the word that's the difference; it's how the word is said that's amazing. Like, I can replicate your voice, but I can't copy how you say baby when you mean me. That's special." Tonks smiled softly. "But you don't have to say it if you don't want to."
"I do," said Harry. He watched her smile. "I definitely do."
Tonks settled into his arms and remained there. For the rest of the day. Fading into one another, bare-formed, stripped of everything. They moved in the slightest, gentlest shifts, until they laid together, with her back resting against his chest, and his mouth resting at her nape.
Harry found sleep easily like that. Comfortably, like that. With his hand at her hip, and his mind, at last, utterly unburdened.