Author notes: My thanks to Mariana for the superb beta job and to Romana03, Miss Cora, LadyLisse, and Lupinesque for support and encouragement. Cheers to anyone that I ought to have named and forgot. Next time.
"Tonks? Hey, Tonks! C'mere, sit with us!"
"Did you actually understand what McGonagall was getting at in class?"
"Hey, Tonks, do that thing you do with your ears!"
Nymphadora Tonks swung herself onto the bench and smiled at everyone. Mealtimes were so much more pleasant now that she had people who wanted her to sit with them. She had tried to be friendly ever since she had started Hogwarts, hoping to make friends, but it had not worked before this year.
The first time they had asked to see faces, she had been unsure whether she should be flaunting her abilities. She had seen others showing off at the table and in the common room and she had always felt that they were more than a little obnoxious. Not long after the requests began, however, Professor McGonagall had informed her that her OWL in Transfiguration would probably include an examination of her inborn talents as well as the spells she had learned. Given that, she had decided that she might as well practice whenever she could and simply made sure that she was never the one who initiated the "game." The other girls did seem to enjoy it, at least; it made them laugh and she found she enjoyed that sort of attention far more than she would have imagined a year ago. She closed her eyes, shutting out their eager expressions, and concentrated fiercely on the image of the first face...
When the change happened to her for the first time, her mother had screamed and her father had sent for help from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. They were both perfectly understandable reactions, her mother told her later. There was a war being fought, after all, and their marriage was not exactly sanctioned by her family. They thought she had been cursed by one of their enemies or, even worse, stolen and replaced with something horrible. She had spent days at St Mungo's, fussed over by specialists, Healers and other learned folk, until eventually, someone had pronounced her healthy and fit, allowing her to go home again.
She was three years old.
"We can't prevent it from happening again, but there's nothing whatsoever the matter with her. Your daughter is a Metamorphmagus. It is a very rare gift, indeed, an inborn ability that normally does not manifest itself until late childhood or early adolescence. It took a great deal of detective work to figure it out, I must say; no one has ever heard of one starting at such a young age before. Metamorphmagi show up only once or twice in a generation, sometimes not even that often. I cannot even begin to tell you what lies ahead for her. She's a very lucky little girl; she'll have the benefit of seven years of instruction in the use of her gift instead of the more usual four or five."
Later on, once her parents had had a chance to do proper research, they had been both proud of and fascinated by their little girl's ability. Even so, her mother had flinched whenever Tonks changed accidentally and the fact that the little girl could not prevent it only seemed to make matters worse. When three-year-old Nymphadora became angry, her face would literally turn red. At five years old, she began to have nightmares about turning into a monster, nightmares that became real by morning. The fact that things could quickly be made right again did not make up for the ordeal of waking up to whatever changes her dreams had wrought.
Mirrors, talking or otherwise, were banished from the Tonks household. Her parents had no trouble learning the spells needed to return their little girl's face to normal again. Whichever parent saw her first simply put her to rights without commenting on it. It became routine for them but if the Healers had bothered to ask Tonks, she would have told them that she did not feel lucky at all.
Her housemates were still laughing when dinner ended and she felt the warm glow of belonging as she left them and headed for the Library. They thought she was fun, they liked her because she could make them laugh. It almost made up for the way they had edged away from her and ignored her for the first few years. At least they had never been deliberately cruel to her, the way some others had. They had simply been afraid of something they hadn't understood.
Professor McGonagall had begun teaching her how to control her abilities on her first day at Hogwarts. Tonks had been nervous around her at first. The professor seemed to be everything that the eleven-year-old was not-- tall, composed, and in full control-- and her presence had made Tonks feel even more ungainly than usual. During the very first interview with the Transfiguration teacher, Tonks had expected her to sniff scornfully when she heard how distressed the little girl had already become at the behavior of the other first-years, but she had proven extremely understanding.
"People don't always understand those who are different from themselves, Miss Tonks. What they do not understand, they tend to fear, especially now. You are old enough to remember what it was like when You Know Who was operating; during those years, anything that was not immediately familiar had to be regarded as deadly, because even familiar faces and places could become dangerous without warning. Those lessons will never leave us entirely. Once you have learned how to maintain your natural appearance all the time and can return to it at will, they will cease to fear you. And, to that end, we will begin with the first exercise."
It had been a heavy and confusing concept for an eleven-year-old to accept. Surely, the others must know that she would never have anything to do with You Know Who. Still, her fellow students shunned her at best and went out of their way to torment her at worst. Tonks had done everything that the professor suggested, though, and over the next few years, the promise slowly became reality.
She became quite convinced that Professor McGonagall was the most amazing and brilliant teacher at Hogwarts. She seemed to know everything there was to know about everything, not just Transfiguration. She was also an Animagus, an animal shape-changer and even though the process of becoming an Animagus was entirely different from what Tonks had experienced as a child, the act of transformation was not very different at all. The only difference that Tonks could see was that she herself took much longer to transform to another form than did the professor and it took effort to make the change right. McGonagall had explained that, for an Animagus, both forms were equally "right" so every change was changing back into a familiar form. Tonks had only one form, the one she had been born with and it would take time and experience before she would be able to slip into favorite "other" faces with ease. Practice would bring that day about sooner, the professor had told her.
It had made sense. Turning back to her own face took far less time than turning into someone else and, once she understood why that was, she made much faster progress. Rather, she had been making progress until recently. At the moment, it seemed her normal, everyday clumsy behavior had metamorphosed along with her body and become something monstrous. In nearly every lesson, it seemed, she was upending her inkwell, knocking over her books or tripping over her bag. It became even more pronounced when the professor was in sight. There was the memorable day she had upended the professor's inkwell all over a batch of freshly graded essays. Tonks did not know what was wrong with her, but it had become extremely embarrassing, more so because the professor had been so pleased with her progress.
She was so lost in thought that she caught no hint of danger until it was too late. She wasn't ready for a Trip Jinx and when it struck her, it sent her tumbling down the remaining stairs to landing a bruised heap on the landing below.
"Awwww, poor little 'Dora, she's hurt herself." Two sets of brutally efficient hands yanked her to her feet before she could scramble up under her own power.
"Dumb 'Dora." The hands gave her a vicious shove in the general direction of whoever had spoken those words.
"Dumpy 'Dora!" Another shove. She staggered and nearly collapsed against someone, her hair straggling across her face and obscuring her vision.
"Dirty 'Dora!" This time, whoever pushed her followed it up with a kick to the back of one knee. Tonks blundered into the banister and nearly fell down the next set of stairs.
They had her surrounded. She cursed herself for taking the back stairs on her way to the Library, for not paying attention to where she was going; she was a long way from any sort of help.
Her cousin pulled her away from the banister and shoved her into the wall, hard enough to rattle her teeth.
"Amuse us, freak. Make us laugh."
"Yeah, do that deformed rabbit thing. That one's my favorite."
The rest of the group chuckled and pressed in around her.
It was an old game. Her cousins, whom she had known of but never met, and their friends had been waiting for her to arrive at Hogwarts for exactly this reason. She had hoped, at first, that they would eventually become bored with bullying her and move on, but they kept coming back. It was hard to pretend to be indifferent when your face and body betrayed your inner state; from the first day, they knew that she feared and hated them and the knowledge kept them coming back.
A blow to her stomach doubled her over, retching.
"Look at me when I talk to you, half-breed."
What would Professor McGonagall do in a situation like this? She would make sure she never got into a situation like this. Or else she would wave her wand and turn them into a lot of newts.
Tonks blinked. She knew magic. She could wave her wand and...
And what?
Hex them into next month, whispered a resentful little voice inside her head.
It will only make things worse, counseled another, sounding more than a little like her father's voice. Eventually, they will get tired of pestering you and leave you alone, if you just refuse to react to them.
Darling, hexing people isn't the answer. You simply can't go around cursing everyone who doesn't agree with you or who doesn't like the way you look, said another memory, her mother's voice this time. Andromeda Tonks was still deeply ashamed of the things that her family had been responsible for during and after the war and so, she always urged her only daughter to choose the least aggressive, the most cooperative solution to every problem.
Did she even know a spell that could get all of them at once and give her time to escape? They had been at Hogwarts two years longer than she had; was there anything she knew that they did not, anything that might help her? Tonks tried to remember any spells she had looked up in the Library that others might not know. Could she actually hit someone, meaning to hurt them?
"I said look at me, filth!"
Her cousin struck her again, a backhanded slap across the mouth.
There was a ringing in Tonks' ears and she could taste blood where her lip had split. Now is the time, she thought desperately and seized on the first plan that presented itself to her. She took a deep breath and screwed up her face, concentrating on creating an image of someone she had never seen. She bent her head, trying to block out the sight of her cousin's sneering face, trying to ignore the laughter of the girls surrounding her. Her face felt stiff at first, then warm and liquid as her features started to shift. They wanted to see ugly. All right, then, she would give them ugly.
Sorry Mum, Dad, your way wasn't working...
Moments later she was running, because she was sure her life depended on it. She was not supposed to change herself to look like anyone real, but she had done it anyway. It did not matter that she had never seen the one she had imitated, for neither had her tormenters. Miraculously, the sight had shocked them for long enough that she was able to hit all of them with a single Foetorius Charm and run for it while they were still wracked with helpless heaving. She had frightened them, though, just for a moment and she knew that she would pay for it if they caught her.
As she ran, she begged her feet to obey her. Don't stumble, don't trip, look out, there's a lump in the carpet, jump that step there, come on, don't fall now... If she tripped now, they would have her, for sure. Her only chance was to run, as fast as she could, back to her common room and safety. What she would do tomorrow, she had no idea.
"Stupefy!"
Oh gods, she tried to duck, tripped, and fell rolling as the Stunner shot past just over her head. It struck a nearby coat of armor, which teetered and began to fall in slow motion. Tonks writhed out of the way and somehow got to her feet, banging her elbow painfully in the process.
"Impedimenta!"
She did not wait to see if she had hit anyone. The yells behind her suggested she might have. She ran harder, taking the steps two at a time. She had to compose herself enough to change back; she did not dare let anyone else see her wearing a horrible, lipless, red-eyed face. She did not want to find out what would happen if she ran into a teacher looking this way. Trying to change while running was a lot like trying to stop a spasm of hiccups, but somehow, she managed it without falling, without running into anything. At least, she hoped she had done it. She tried to feel her head, without stopping her headlong flight.
She ducked behind a tapestry and darted down the secret passage behind it. Almost there, almost there, I'm going to make it! She thought that she could still hear the faint sounds of pursuit over the sound of her own hoarse breathing.
She bounced off a wall trying to take a corner too quickly and then she was at the end of the passage, near the last staircase leading to her common room. She flung herself at the tapestry, clutching her wand and hoping they had not managed to get ahead of her.
"OH!"
There were two bodies in the corridor just on the other side of the tapestry and she could not stop herself. She hit the smaller of the two with a tremendous thump.
The floor was hard. She landed painfully, bruising her already-sore ribs. Her wand skittered away, coming to rest at the base of a statue of Archibald the Lightheaded. Her head cracked against stone and everything dissolved into blazing darkness.
Her eyes blinked open. She was lying on her back, looking up into the ribbed stone ceiling of the corridor, which wavered uncertainly through the sparks that danced in her peripheral vision.
"Miss Tonks! What is the meaning of this?"
Standing over her was an incensed Professor McGonagall, her black brows drawn together until she looked as though she had only one. There was a groan and a scraping sound from the floor behind her and Tonks raised her head cautiously, ignoring the way her stomach twisted as she did so.
Madam Hooch had pulled herself into a sitting position and was holding her head, on which a large lump was forming. When she saw Tonks looking at her, she grinned, looking rather more amused than Tonks would have expected, and said,
"In a hurry, were you?"
The flying teacher levered herself to her feet and reached down to help Tonks to hers, then stopped and knelt down, peering intently at her face.
"How does your head feel, Tonks? Are you dizzy, at all? Yes, I thought so. She needs the hospital wing, Professor. Madam Pomfrey had better see to that bump."
Just then, the tapestry burst aside again and four of the girls who had been chasing Tonks came tumbling into the corridor, wands at the ready. She tried to get up, intending to scramble across the floor to retrieve her wand, to protect herself somehow, but she was pushed firmly back down by Madam Hooch, who had her own wand out.
Tonks blinked. She had rarely seen Madam Hooch with a wand, not unless somebody had broken a broom or had hexed an opponent on the Quidditch pitch. She looked different, somehow.
"Accio!"
Tonks' wand slid obediently across the stone. Madam Hooch scooped it up and handed it to her without taking her eyes off the scene in front of her.
Professor McGonagall was regarding Tonks' pursuers with a grim expression on her face. They stared back at her, shock slowly giving way to anger. One of them shot a murderous glare at Tonks.
Tonks closed her eyes and groaned. Now she was in for it. The last thing she had meant to do was go running to the head of Gryffindor house for help, even by accident. Of all the rotten luck! She had to explain matters and smooth the whole situation over somehow, or she would be in for even worse trouble than before. She tried to struggle to her feet, despite the sick spinning starting in her head, but this time Madam Hooch applied her wand after pushing her back down.
"Somnus!"
Tonks awoke to the sound of Madam Pomfrey's voice from the other end of the ward. It sounded almost as though she was scolding Madam Hooch and Professor McGonagall for something.
"Hang on, she's awake again."
Tonks wondered how Madam Hooch could have known this from so far away. She had not moved, except for opening her eyes, nor had she made a sound. There were footsteps and then three figures appeared over her bed.
"Back with us again, are you, Miss Tonks?"
That was from Madam Pomfrey. For the first two years of her Hogwarts career, Tonks had been in the Hospital Wing nearly every day, either having her features returned to normal or having bruises and scrapes treated. She was not quite sure what to say to the nurse and looked around at the three adults, trying to gauge how much trouble she was actually in.
"I would appreciate hearing your side of the story, Miss Tonks."
Tonks considered her options. She did not want to lie to Professor McGonagall--she suspected the woman would know at once if she did-- but she did not want to bear tales to the woman, either. It was bad enough that she had gone running to her, even if it had been accidental.
"We've already had most of it out of them, Tonks. A few well-placed questions was all it took." Madam Hooch had perched herself on the next bed over. She was swinging one booted foot and completely ignoring Madam Pomfrey's stern look. "I don't think they'll try that again soon. This been going on for a long time, hasn't it." It was not a question.
So, Tonks told them everything, beginning with the episode on the train, before she had even arrived at Hogwarts, and ending with the story of today's ambush. Madam Hooch was a good listener, better even that Professor McGonagall, and Tonks found herself telling her the things she'd never so much as whispered, not even to herself; that she had thought maybe, if the gang continued to concentrate on her, they wouldn't be harassing smaller, more vulnerable girls. She had never told anyone this part before. If her parents had heard it, they would have scolded her for endangering herself and for being self-important. Halfway through the explanation, she saw Madam Hooch shoot a smug look at Professor McGonagall, who nodded as though conceding a point.
When she was done with her recital, the three adults looked at each other silently for a long time. Tonks had the eerie feeling that she was being discussed, even though they were not saying anything aloud. Finally, the professor sighed.
"I think it would be best for you if we continue to pretend that you are also being punished for this incident, Miss Tonks. I believe that it will cause you the least difficulty."
Tonks nodded. "That way, maybe they won't feel quite so much like they have to punish me, themselves. They think I got them in trouble on purpose, but maybe if you're unpleasant enough to me, they'll change their minds." She did not really think it would work, but maybe it would ease the hostility a little.
Professor McGonagall nodded in satisfaction at Tonks' quick understanding. "Officially, then, you will be serving detention for at least a month for running in the halls and injuring Madam Hooch. Unofficially, however," the woman smiled broadly, a sight that rendered Tonks speechless. "I think that if you are going to make such a habit of walking into this sort of trouble, you had better learn how to fall without hurting yourself, among other things. Once Madam Pomfrey is satisfied with the condition of your skull, Madam Hooch will begin seeing to that portion of your training. I suggest that you work very hard."
Tonks looked warily at Madam Hooch, but the Quidditch coach seemed quite pleased with the professor's verdict. Tonks had taken flying lessons as a first year, of course, but she had yet to get onto her House Quidditch team and so her contact with the flying instructor had been minimal after the first year. She suspected that "learning how to fall" would probably involve broomsticks and heights.
"Don't worry, Tonks, I don't bite. I helped train young would-be Aurors during the war and I think you'll enjoy some of the same training. You'll get to collect fascinating bruises and I'll have someone to help clean and maintain the school's brooms." She raised a silver eyebrow at Tonks' expression. "This is supposed to look like a punishment, after all. It'll be good for you."
"The child needs rest, Professor, Madam Hooch. If you still need to speak to her, you can see her again in the morning."
"Come down to my office once you've healed, Tonks. I'll be expecting you."
Tonks watched, bemused, as Madam Pomfrey chivied the two teachers out of the ward, then lay back against her pillows. She was going to receive Auror training from someone who'd trained fighters in the war. I wonder how much she taught them. And what. Maybe, how to fight back? I should start paying more attention in Charms and Defense. Have another surprise ready for when they come after me again.
She felt extremely odd, as though the past years of bullying had happened to someone else. As if she had unexpectedly transformed into someone quite different from who she had been just that morning. She wondered what her parents would think of all of this. They would probably not be pleased with the Nymphadora that was replacing the one that they knew.
However, as Madam Pomfrey bustled up to her with a potion bottle in hand, she decided that she, Tonks, was going to enjoy being her, very much.
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