Title: Strings of Fate
Author: Knife Hand
Feedback: Constructive feedback appreciated, flames unappreciated
Spoilers: Nothing Specific, general for first few books.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I do not own Hermione, or Luna, or Ginny, or Cho, or... I would buy them all but I am broke.
Summary: Being raised only by his Aunt, Harry comes to Hogwarts not only knowing about the Wizarding World, but with a kind of training no one at the school is expecting.
Tonks and her roommate stumbled back into their shared room at the Auror Academy. Their muscles were aching having come from a hand to hand combat training session, and that had been after a four hour written exam on proper crime scene containment procedures that had exhausted their minds as well.
Tonks got on well with her roommate. Like Tonks, who insisted that everyone call her Indy, her roommate was also known by a nickname. Dark haired, with a lithe figure she spoke slightly slower and more deliberately than normal thanks to her slight, if not really identifiable, accent. Her name was Tatiana Liana Zorah, but was known simply as Tali. Her family had moved around a lot as she was growing up before they settled in London a few years ago.
"Dibs on the shower." Tali said.
"Fine, I'll just suffer here in silence." Tonks replied.
"Indy, you're never silent." Tali said with a laugh as she ducked into the shower.
A few minutes later, Tali emerged from the shower dressed in a towel and using a second towel to dry her hair.
"Indy, why don't you just… you know, morph away the pain?" she asked.
"Can't." Tonks replied. "Wouldn't even if I could. That's getting into the realm of biochemistry and you don't want to mess with that. That's a quick path to a painful death. Besides, apart from changing my hair and eye colour, almost all morphs hurt. And getting the sympathetic systems right is a bitch."
Tonks closed the bathroom door behind her and turned the temperature on the shower up to max. She hoped she did not scare Tali, but if anything she had played down the potential risks of being a metamorph. As she stepped under the almost scolding hot water, Tonks thought back to the only two other Metamorphs she had ever met.
Most people would not believe her if she told them, but Tonks was actually a Class III Metamorphmagus. The least able type of Metamorph. Sure she could change the structure of her body at will, but she was restricted by her mass and the human form. She could not alter her mass, so while she could go short and dumpy or tall and skinny, she could not turn into, say, a four hundred pound, six foot man, or a child. She did not have the mass for the former and too much mass for the latter.
Thanks to her mother, while growing up Tonks had spent time with two of the only three other Metamorphs in the Britain, the third being a recluse in the wilds of Scotland who never spoke to anyone. Their names had been William and Kathryn, and neither had lived past fifteen.
Kathryn, almost seven years older than Tonks, had been a Class II Metamorph, able to change her mass as well as her shape. When she was fifteen, Kathryn had tried to shrink herself down to get through a crevice in a rock formation when she had been hiking. In her rush, she got the sequencing wrong and her ribcage literally squeezed her heart and lungs till they burst. By the time the pain registered it was already too late for Kathryn to do anything about it.
William had been a Class I Metamorph, and he had died a mere six weeks after Tonks had first met him at age twelve. As a Class I, unlike other Metamorphs, William had the ability to change the fundamental chemistry of his body. He had tried to make a change to be able to process oxygen easier and made one slight mistake. His screams of pain had lasted sixteen hours, and still haunted Tonks, as his altered body chemistry had slowly eaten itself from the inside out, with no one able to assist him.
Tonks shook the morbid thoughts from her mind as she stepped out of the shower, dried off and put on a bathrobe. She liked being a Metamorph. It was not as easy or versatile as most people thought, and it caused a lot of pain during the morphs and took a lot to get the sympathetic systems right. To grow in height she had to break all the bones in both her legs and her arms; convert muscle or fat into bone in all the bones to keep the proper proportions; adjust the alignment or break and expand several vertebra in her spine; rearrange all the muscles in her back and shoulders and then when all that was completed spend a few hours re-learning how to walk easily with her new centre of gravity. On the other hand, hair care was the easiest thing in the world, and she never got pimples.
She was running a towel through her hair as she emerged back into the main room, only to see Tali, dressed in nothing but a bra and knickers, standing at attention at the foot of her bed. A quick glance and Tonks dropped the towel and snapped to attention as well.
"Relax. I've told Zorah here to be at ease but she won't listen." The new figure in the room said.
"Well, Ma'am, you are the Director and we're just recruits." Tonks replied.
Amelia Bones grinned slightly at this statement.
"I'm not here as Director." Amelia replied. "Had some news from Hogwarts. Ambassador made the House Team. Chaser. Figured you would want to know, seeing as at this stage of your training your Post is on hold."
"That's good news, Ma'am." Tonks replied, relaxing.
Seeing Tonks relax, and not get chewed out by Director Bones, Tali stopped standing at attention and began to cautiously get dressed.
"Can you have my congratulations passed on?" Tonks asked.
"Of course." Amelia said before turning and leaving the room. "And I'll make sure he understands why you are not responding yourself."
Tali stared at the closed door for a minute, before turning to look at Tonks.
"Indy, who's Ambassador and how did Director Bones know about him?" Tali asked.
"Ambassador is my Cousin at Hogwarts. The Director's Niece is one of his best friends." Tonks replied.
The door slammed open and one of the training instructors stuck their head in.
"Silent Casting practice. Training room six. Ten minutes." The instructor barked and then closed the door behind him with a slam.
Tonks and Tali just sighed. Tonks shed the bath robe to get dressed while Tali began taking off her civilian clothes to change into the proper training uniform. There had been nothing else scheduled for today.
Harry, Hannah and Susan were relaxing in their apartment's living room, having gotten their homework done earlier and there was still some time being curfew. Harry and Susan were sitting on one of the two seater couches while Hannah was in one of the armchairs. They were laughing at one of the harmless but funny pranks that the two Janus' had done earlier at dinner when the knock came at the door. With a shrug, Hannah got up and answered the door, to reveal a Sixth Year Witch.
"Sorry to interrupt." The Sixth Year said. "But Little Beth, a Fist Year in my apartment has a request."
"How can we help?" Harry asked, as both he and Susan rose from the couch.
"Apologies, Ambassador, but the request is not for you, it is for Diva." The older girl replied. "Beth loves your singing and wants to know if you can sing this for her tonight. She got her mother to send the sheet music."
The Sixth Year handed over the sheet of music to Susan. Ever since the night that Professor Sprout had found the crowd outside their apartment and ordered Susan to sing a soothing lullaby, every evening just before curfew all the apartment doors along their corridor would open, and the students from the apartments in the other corridor would gather in the common room, and Susan would sing a single song. Most were bedtime melodies but there were a few more popular song included as well.
Looking at the sheet music and then at the clock, Susan considered if she could learn and do justice to the song in under an hour. It was a simple melody, the kind you would expect a mother to sing to her daughter.
"Not a problem." Susan replied.
Just over an hour later Little Beth, who was probably the shortest First Year that anyone had ever seen, barely coming to Susan's lower ribs, was hugging Susan's lower body and repeatedly saying 'thank you'.
"We might need to set up a suggestions box in the Common Room." Hannah said as Beth took the Sixth Year's hand and was led back to her apartment.
"That's not a bad idea." Susan said. "At least it will give me a bit more time to learn some of the songs.
Along the hallway, the doors to the apartments closed and their occupants went to bed with Susan's melody running through their minds, as they did every night.
TBC…