"Look, Harry, Dumbledore said that you should stay pretty close to here
until the first. I know you want to go to the Weasleys' --" Nell started,
as reasonably as she could considering it was the tenth or so time she'd
said it. Ah, thirteen-year-olds, reasonable, predictable, and easy to
parent.
Yeah. Right.
"Why do I have to do what Dumbledore says? You always do whatever you want no matter what he says," Harry said.
"And I always get us in trouble for it," Nell retorted. "Look, Harry, you only have two weeks left and you have reams of summer work to finish. You've hung out with Ron all summer, and if you go to stay at the Weasleys', you won't get anything done. Why don't you use this as a chance to catch up?"
Harry snorted. "Now you sound like a mum," he said, his eyes narrowing.
Nell shrugged and tried to grin conspiratorally. "Funny how that happens, hey?"
"Shut up," said Harry sullenly.
Nell raised an eyebrow. "I beg your pardon, young man?" she said, in as exaggerated old-lady-mum voice as she could muster. It only seemed to make Harry madder. He stormed out of the room.
Just before he slammed his bedroom door, he shouted, "You're not my mum!"
Nell sat down suddenly. Where had that come from? She hadn't heard that phrase since the first time she'd had to lay down the law with Harry -- years ago. She shuddered. Teenagers. She wryly decided not to try to call her mother for sympathy -- the statute of limitations hadn't run out on Nell's teenage years, quite, and her mum was more likely to laugh than commiserate.
A sudden bump from the hall made her head jerk up. She scanned the area, but she didn't see the source of the noise. She said, on a sudden suspicion, "Harry Potter, if you're sneaking out in your invisibility cloak, no force of heaven or hell will stop you from being grounded the rest of your natural life. You had better just turn your invisible self right back around."
No response.
"Harry?" she called out. She got up and walked back to his room. She knocked lightly twice, then stuck her head inside. And sighed. His trunk was gone, his things hastily packed. And the cloak was gone. Dammit. She heard the front door slam and turned around hastily, dashing out of the flat.
Once outside and in hot pursuit, Nell ran pell-mell towards -- nothing. How does one chase an invisible person, after all? She slowed, peering around and listening closely. She saw a flash of hand several metres ahead of her, but a loud BANG startled her. A triple-decker purple bus had landed between her and Harry, and when it vanished, so, apparently, had he. Nell huffed an exasperated breath and returned to the flat.
She headed straight for the fireplace, but before she got there, she was intercepted by a small grey owl. It dropped a letter on her head then swooped away. Improper Use notice, she assumed, and pocketed it for later scolding.
She tossed a pinch of floo powder into the fire, and after a moment of thought, said, "The Burrow!" and stuck her head inside the green flames.
"Hello?" she shouted, looking around the Weasleys' kitchen. "Molly? Arthur?" She groaned internally when the first faces she saw were those of Fred and George. "Hello, Fred. George," she greeted them. "Is your mum around?"
"Nah," said George (or Fred, she still wasn't sure). "Thing with Ginny's hair and some treacle." He grinned at his twin and Nell closed her eyes.
"Fine," she said. "Can you have her floo me soonest? It's a bit of an emergency -- Harry's run off in a snit. He'll likely land there in a bit, and I need him back. Right?"
"Right," said Fred with alacrity. The two boys took off upstairs, and before Nell left the fireplace, she could hear their delighted shouts. "Ron! Guess who's coming to visit?" she heard one whoop up the stairs.
She sighed and brushed some soot off her cheek. Not her best plan. "Dumbledore's Office," she shouted, trying again with the Floo powder.
"Hello, dear," he greeted her, with a twinkle. "Is there a problem with Harry?"
"You might say that," she said. "He's run off."
His eyebrows went up. "Oh, dear," he said, the twinkle replaced with worry. "That is worrying. Do you know where he went? How? With whom?"
"Weasleys', I think," she replied promptly. "Whacking big purple bus. Alone."
"Ah," said Dumbledore, "the Knight Bus," and seemed to relax, which reassured Nell.
"Oh!" Nell remembered. "He got another Improper Use notice. What should I do about it?"
"I'll take care of it," he said. "Don't worry." He smiled kindly at her. "He'll be fine, dear."
Nell nodded and pulled her head back into her flat. She wasn't worried.
Much.
However, a few hours later, when she still hadn't heard from the Weasleys, she was getting worried. When someone knocked on her door, she leapt to answer it. Standing there were two Aurors -- an enormous black man and a gangly pink-haired girl about Nell's age. Her face went ice-cold. Harry -- something happened to Harry --
She blinked. She was sitting in her lounge holding a warm cup of tea. Very curious, she thought idly, before remembering why she'd been shocked out of her wits. "Harry!" she said urgently. "Is Harry okay?"
"He's fine," said the man. "Fine, Miss Burton."
"We're not so sure about you," the girl cheerfully chimed in.
Nell flapped free hand absently. "'m fine," she muttered, a little embarrassed about her reaction. "Just, I've been worried."
"Yeah, I know," said the girl sympathetically. "I wouldn't want Harry out on his own, not with Sirius Black on the loose."
The man shot her a nasty look, but Nell sat up. "Sirius Black? What does he have to do with Harry? Or do you just mean in general?"
The girl went a bit pink. "Oh. You didn't -- Oh." She covered her mouth. "Sorry, Shacklebolt ."
"That will do, Tonks," the man said reprovingly. To Nell, he said, "My name's Kingsley Shacklebolt , miss, and this is Nymphadora Tonks." The girl winced but kept quiet. "She's only in training, and hasn't had the sessions in tact yet, but she has a very useful talent, our Tonks." He looked at his colleague, and she screwed up her face in concentration.
Nell gasped. Instead of pink hair and slightly pointed features, the girl now had tangled, elbow-length black hair and a gaunt face. "Sirius Black?" she guessed, having seen the picture on the telly. "Is he a wizard?"
The girl -- Tonks -- nodded enthusiastically. "And how! Right hand of You- Know-Who himself, betrayer of the Potters, blew up thirteen people with a single curse, put in Azkaban for twelve years." She ran out of breath, but gasped and kept going. "He escaped somehow and now we think he's probably after Harry to give him to his old master." She stopped and went back to her previous face and hair, evidently thinking that she'd explained the whole situation, but Nell's head was spinning.
Shacklebolt was grimacing. "No tact, has Tonks," he repeated. "But essentially accurate. Turns out Harry didn't head for the Weasleys', but to Diagon Alley. He'll be fine there," he reassured Nell, who had half-risen on hearing that little tidbit, "bodyguards round-the-clock, but we don't really want him to travel any more than he has to. Too many ways to subvert Floo," he said darkly.
Nell scowled, but nodded. "If you can take better care of him there," she said unwillingly. "But make sure he finishes his summer work."
He nodded. "If you'll make sure to Floo immediately if you see
Black hanging about."
Nell sat up. "You mean he knows where we live?" she asked, alarmed. "Will he be coming 'round here?"
"It's -- entirely possible," Shacklebolt admitted reluctantly.
Nell sat back. "Well, then, I don't want to stay here, either," she said. "Are you kidding?"
"Do you have anywhere to go?" he asked.
"Can I stay on the Alley, too?" she responded. "I'd need to stay in London to go to work."
The look on his face was negative enough. She'd figured.
She sighed. "Can I at least get someone to stop by to make sure I haven't been murdered in my bed?"
"Sure!" said Tonks brightly.
Nell smiled at her enthusiasm. Tonks smiled back, and their eyes caught. Nell blushed, for no particular reason, and held the gaze.
Shacklebolt cleared his throat. "We should be getting back," he said. Tonks leapt up, barking her shin on the low coffee table. She swore under her breath, and Shacklebolt chuckled.
"Around six tomorrow?" said Tonks, on her way out the door. "Will you be back from work then?"
"Yeah," said Nell. "Should be fine. Can you get me an update on Harry then too?"
"Sure," said Tonks over her shoulder, and bobbed along in Shacklebolt's wake like a single, pink-haired chick.
*~*~*~*
The next day at work, Nell could barely concentrate. She practically ran home, but then she had three-quarters of an hour to bounce around her apartment.
When Tonks finally knocked, she flung the door open. Tonks grinned. Her hair was green and curly today, Nell noticed. She gestured Tonks inside and shut the door behind her. "Well?" she asked impatiently.
"Hello," said Tonks. "How are you doing today? Oh, I'm just fine. Tea? Oh, lovely, thanks. I've been shadowing an extremely boring thirteen-year-old all day."
"I'm sorry," said Nell, penitent. "How was he?"
"He sat in the ice-cream parlour and did his homework," said Tonks, screwing up her face in distaste. "Then he went and had a sedate dinner at The Leaky Cauldron and looked at brooms. Boring, except for the brooms part. Did you know the new Firebolt design's out? The Irish side's ordered them!" she concluded excitedly. "It looks like they're a shoo-in for the Cup --"
Nell smiled indulgently. She'd gotten used to Quidditch chatter, and it certainly wasn't a boring sort of sport, she'd give it that. Hearing that Harry was doing fine on his own stung her pride a bit, but she'd known his independence was inevitable. She just hadn't thought --
Tonks interrupted her own Quidditch monologue. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Not a Quidditch fan?" She said it like it was an unspeakable crime, and Nell was happy to assure her that that wasn't the problem. As the tea brewed and they moved to the lounge, Nell poured out her parenting woes.
"--and I've only been doing it five years! Shouldn't it get easier? I mean, I'm twenty-six, I should be a grown-up by now!"
Tonks winced. "Is that the deadline?"
"You know what I mean," said Nell.
"''Course I do, and it's bollocks," Tonks said. "For example, I'm twenty, and I don't plan on being a grown-up until I'm forty at least. Probably not even then."
Nell snorted. "That's cause you don't have a kid around," she said. "You feel forty then. I remember Harry's first snit -- 'You don't understand, you're too old!'" she mimicked.
Tonks winced. "Sorry," she said sympathetically.
"No, it was great, actually," Nell insisted. "Except for that whole 'old' thing, it meant he knew I wouldn't throw him out if he fought a little. It was getting a little scary how angelic he was before that," she said, scowling a little.
"Wish you'd tell my mum that," Tonks said, laughing. "We still go a few rounds now and then -- she should hear that she's lucky to have fights!"
Nell laughed along with her, and when she caught Tonks' gaze again, something electric seemed to spark between them. Nell blushed and they both looked down, their laughter fading. She glanced back under her lashes and saw Tonks doing the same.
"So how do you make your hair change?" Nell blurted out suddenly, a question that had been bothering her popping to the surface.
Tonks started to explain, and without thinking about that moment any more (much, anyway), Nell relaxed into the couch cushions, curling up comfortably to listen.
Tonks stayed until about ten, chatting about trivialities until she'd happened to catch sight of the clock and whirled away, yelping about late training: "Late, late, late, ow! Mind if I -- ouch -- apparate? Sorry," POP! and Nell was left with a suddenly empty apartment.
~*~*~
The next evening was much the same, zinging glances included, although Nell greeted Tonks politely (and Tonks' hair was bright orange). Harry was deeply boring and an embarrassment as a juvenile delinquent, and Black was keeping his head down (he'd been sighted in Devon, but it turned out to be a false alarm).
This time, Tonks was keeping an eye on the time. At about half nine, she politely excused herself, explaining more slowly that she had a late training session this week, so she could have Harry-details during the day. Before Nell could feel guilty about over-burdening her, Tonks had vanished.
~*~*~
"Look," said Nell the next evening (pink hair again), "if you're overworked watching over me and Harry --"
Tonks looked at her in deep surprise. "Are you joking?" she asked incredulously. "I had to fight to get this assignment. Shacklebolt opened his big mouth at the training hall, and I had competition like you wouldn't believe. I had to trip over Dawlish to make him stop yapping about it," she added mischeviously.
Nell grinned. "Is your tripping all that planned?" she asked innocently.
Tonks grimaced. "I wish," she said. "But I guess my feet are just too big, or my legs, or something."
"No," said Nell quickly. When Tonks looked questioningly at her, she blushed. "I mean, have you tried to take grace courses or dance lessons or anything? To get more comfortable in your body?"
Tonks grimaced again. "I think that's the problem, actually. My mum tried all those, plus some borderline illegal spells. I just -- I don't know," she finished helplessly, waving her hands about cheerfully. "Maybe I'm just a klutz." She smiled endearingly at Nell, who wished she'd never brought the topic up.
"Have you tried visualisation or hypnosis?" she suggested weakly.
"Who-what?" asked Tonks.
"You know, being hypnotised and then visualising yourself being graceful. It's supposed to be really helpful. My friend used to do it to us all the time at uni."
"Can you do that sort of thing?"
"I can try," said Nell dubiously. "Lean back and close your eyes." Tonks obeyed, and Nell took a deep breath. "Count backwards from ten, very slowly." She counted softly along. "Now take ten deep breaths. Deep, deep, lovely. That's relaxing, isn't it? You're sleepy. It's late, and you're so heavy in the chair. Deep breaths, deep, deep. Your eyes are heavy, and you want to go to sleep. You can't really move, but it's okay. Now, imagine you're in a pool of water. It's clear, and deep, and cool." Tonks hummed. "Yes, it's nice, isn't it?
"You're swimming along, and you're moving easily and gracefully. Cutting through the water, not putting a single foot wrong. All of your body working together, wonderfully. You're all linked, foot and knee and hip and shoulder and elbow and neck, all working together." Nell paused and took another deep breath. "When you wake up, you'll remember how that felt, working together, fluid and easy. You'll be able to move like you were swimming, Count forwards from ten, taking deep breaths on each number. When you reach ten, you'll be completely awake and refreshed." Nell sat back and watched Tonks.
"Ten," Tonks said, and her eyes snapped open. She stood up, completely fluidly, and crossed the room swiftly to Nell. "I don't know about graceful," she said, leaning down, "but that was the sexiest bloody thing I've ever heard." And she pressed her lips to Nell's.
After a startled moment, Nell cooperated. Another moment, and she'd melted. Tonks might not be particularly graceful, but what did that matter, if she could kiss like this?
Tonks pulled away and yelped. "I'm late again! You beast!" she said. "Tomorrow?" And she POPped out of sight.
Tomorrow. Nell grinned foolishly.
Yeah. Right.
"Why do I have to do what Dumbledore says? You always do whatever you want no matter what he says," Harry said.
"And I always get us in trouble for it," Nell retorted. "Look, Harry, you only have two weeks left and you have reams of summer work to finish. You've hung out with Ron all summer, and if you go to stay at the Weasleys', you won't get anything done. Why don't you use this as a chance to catch up?"
Harry snorted. "Now you sound like a mum," he said, his eyes narrowing.
Nell shrugged and tried to grin conspiratorally. "Funny how that happens, hey?"
"Shut up," said Harry sullenly.
Nell raised an eyebrow. "I beg your pardon, young man?" she said, in as exaggerated old-lady-mum voice as she could muster. It only seemed to make Harry madder. He stormed out of the room.
Just before he slammed his bedroom door, he shouted, "You're not my mum!"
Nell sat down suddenly. Where had that come from? She hadn't heard that phrase since the first time she'd had to lay down the law with Harry -- years ago. She shuddered. Teenagers. She wryly decided not to try to call her mother for sympathy -- the statute of limitations hadn't run out on Nell's teenage years, quite, and her mum was more likely to laugh than commiserate.
A sudden bump from the hall made her head jerk up. She scanned the area, but she didn't see the source of the noise. She said, on a sudden suspicion, "Harry Potter, if you're sneaking out in your invisibility cloak, no force of heaven or hell will stop you from being grounded the rest of your natural life. You had better just turn your invisible self right back around."
No response.
"Harry?" she called out. She got up and walked back to his room. She knocked lightly twice, then stuck her head inside. And sighed. His trunk was gone, his things hastily packed. And the cloak was gone. Dammit. She heard the front door slam and turned around hastily, dashing out of the flat.
Once outside and in hot pursuit, Nell ran pell-mell towards -- nothing. How does one chase an invisible person, after all? She slowed, peering around and listening closely. She saw a flash of hand several metres ahead of her, but a loud BANG startled her. A triple-decker purple bus had landed between her and Harry, and when it vanished, so, apparently, had he. Nell huffed an exasperated breath and returned to the flat.
She headed straight for the fireplace, but before she got there, she was intercepted by a small grey owl. It dropped a letter on her head then swooped away. Improper Use notice, she assumed, and pocketed it for later scolding.
She tossed a pinch of floo powder into the fire, and after a moment of thought, said, "The Burrow!" and stuck her head inside the green flames.
"Hello?" she shouted, looking around the Weasleys' kitchen. "Molly? Arthur?" She groaned internally when the first faces she saw were those of Fred and George. "Hello, Fred. George," she greeted them. "Is your mum around?"
"Nah," said George (or Fred, she still wasn't sure). "Thing with Ginny's hair and some treacle." He grinned at his twin and Nell closed her eyes.
"Fine," she said. "Can you have her floo me soonest? It's a bit of an emergency -- Harry's run off in a snit. He'll likely land there in a bit, and I need him back. Right?"
"Right," said Fred with alacrity. The two boys took off upstairs, and before Nell left the fireplace, she could hear their delighted shouts. "Ron! Guess who's coming to visit?" she heard one whoop up the stairs.
She sighed and brushed some soot off her cheek. Not her best plan. "Dumbledore's Office," she shouted, trying again with the Floo powder.
"Hello, dear," he greeted her, with a twinkle. "Is there a problem with Harry?"
"You might say that," she said. "He's run off."
His eyebrows went up. "Oh, dear," he said, the twinkle replaced with worry. "That is worrying. Do you know where he went? How? With whom?"
"Weasleys', I think," she replied promptly. "Whacking big purple bus. Alone."
"Ah," said Dumbledore, "the Knight Bus," and seemed to relax, which reassured Nell.
"Oh!" Nell remembered. "He got another Improper Use notice. What should I do about it?"
"I'll take care of it," he said. "Don't worry." He smiled kindly at her. "He'll be fine, dear."
Nell nodded and pulled her head back into her flat. She wasn't worried.
Much.
However, a few hours later, when she still hadn't heard from the Weasleys, she was getting worried. When someone knocked on her door, she leapt to answer it. Standing there were two Aurors -- an enormous black man and a gangly pink-haired girl about Nell's age. Her face went ice-cold. Harry -- something happened to Harry --
She blinked. She was sitting in her lounge holding a warm cup of tea. Very curious, she thought idly, before remembering why she'd been shocked out of her wits. "Harry!" she said urgently. "Is Harry okay?"
"He's fine," said the man. "Fine, Miss Burton."
"We're not so sure about you," the girl cheerfully chimed in.
Nell flapped free hand absently. "'m fine," she muttered, a little embarrassed about her reaction. "Just, I've been worried."
"Yeah, I know," said the girl sympathetically. "I wouldn't want Harry out on his own, not with Sirius Black on the loose."
The man shot her a nasty look, but Nell sat up. "Sirius Black? What does he have to do with Harry? Or do you just mean in general?"
The girl went a bit pink. "Oh. You didn't -- Oh." She covered her mouth. "Sorry, Shacklebolt ."
"That will do, Tonks," the man said reprovingly. To Nell, he said, "My name's Kingsley Shacklebolt , miss, and this is Nymphadora Tonks." The girl winced but kept quiet. "She's only in training, and hasn't had the sessions in tact yet, but she has a very useful talent, our Tonks." He looked at his colleague, and she screwed up her face in concentration.
Nell gasped. Instead of pink hair and slightly pointed features, the girl now had tangled, elbow-length black hair and a gaunt face. "Sirius Black?" she guessed, having seen the picture on the telly. "Is he a wizard?"
The girl -- Tonks -- nodded enthusiastically. "And how! Right hand of You- Know-Who himself, betrayer of the Potters, blew up thirteen people with a single curse, put in Azkaban for twelve years." She ran out of breath, but gasped and kept going. "He escaped somehow and now we think he's probably after Harry to give him to his old master." She stopped and went back to her previous face and hair, evidently thinking that she'd explained the whole situation, but Nell's head was spinning.
Shacklebolt was grimacing. "No tact, has Tonks," he repeated. "But essentially accurate. Turns out Harry didn't head for the Weasleys', but to Diagon Alley. He'll be fine there," he reassured Nell, who had half-risen on hearing that little tidbit, "bodyguards round-the-clock, but we don't really want him to travel any more than he has to. Too many ways to subvert Floo," he said darkly.
Nell scowled, but nodded. "If you can take better care of him there," she said unwillingly. "But make sure he finishes his summer work."
He nodded. "If you'll make sure to Floo immediately if you see
Black hanging about."
Nell sat up. "You mean he knows where we live?" she asked, alarmed. "Will he be coming 'round here?"
"It's -- entirely possible," Shacklebolt admitted reluctantly.
Nell sat back. "Well, then, I don't want to stay here, either," she said. "Are you kidding?"
"Do you have anywhere to go?" he asked.
"Can I stay on the Alley, too?" she responded. "I'd need to stay in London to go to work."
The look on his face was negative enough. She'd figured.
She sighed. "Can I at least get someone to stop by to make sure I haven't been murdered in my bed?"
"Sure!" said Tonks brightly.
Nell smiled at her enthusiasm. Tonks smiled back, and their eyes caught. Nell blushed, for no particular reason, and held the gaze.
Shacklebolt cleared his throat. "We should be getting back," he said. Tonks leapt up, barking her shin on the low coffee table. She swore under her breath, and Shacklebolt chuckled.
"Around six tomorrow?" said Tonks, on her way out the door. "Will you be back from work then?"
"Yeah," said Nell. "Should be fine. Can you get me an update on Harry then too?"
"Sure," said Tonks over her shoulder, and bobbed along in Shacklebolt's wake like a single, pink-haired chick.
*~*~*~*
The next day at work, Nell could barely concentrate. She practically ran home, but then she had three-quarters of an hour to bounce around her apartment.
When Tonks finally knocked, she flung the door open. Tonks grinned. Her hair was green and curly today, Nell noticed. She gestured Tonks inside and shut the door behind her. "Well?" she asked impatiently.
"Hello," said Tonks. "How are you doing today? Oh, I'm just fine. Tea? Oh, lovely, thanks. I've been shadowing an extremely boring thirteen-year-old all day."
"I'm sorry," said Nell, penitent. "How was he?"
"He sat in the ice-cream parlour and did his homework," said Tonks, screwing up her face in distaste. "Then he went and had a sedate dinner at The Leaky Cauldron and looked at brooms. Boring, except for the brooms part. Did you know the new Firebolt design's out? The Irish side's ordered them!" she concluded excitedly. "It looks like they're a shoo-in for the Cup --"
Nell smiled indulgently. She'd gotten used to Quidditch chatter, and it certainly wasn't a boring sort of sport, she'd give it that. Hearing that Harry was doing fine on his own stung her pride a bit, but she'd known his independence was inevitable. She just hadn't thought --
Tonks interrupted her own Quidditch monologue. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Not a Quidditch fan?" She said it like it was an unspeakable crime, and Nell was happy to assure her that that wasn't the problem. As the tea brewed and they moved to the lounge, Nell poured out her parenting woes.
"--and I've only been doing it five years! Shouldn't it get easier? I mean, I'm twenty-six, I should be a grown-up by now!"
Tonks winced. "Is that the deadline?"
"You know what I mean," said Nell.
"''Course I do, and it's bollocks," Tonks said. "For example, I'm twenty, and I don't plan on being a grown-up until I'm forty at least. Probably not even then."
Nell snorted. "That's cause you don't have a kid around," she said. "You feel forty then. I remember Harry's first snit -- 'You don't understand, you're too old!'" she mimicked.
Tonks winced. "Sorry," she said sympathetically.
"No, it was great, actually," Nell insisted. "Except for that whole 'old' thing, it meant he knew I wouldn't throw him out if he fought a little. It was getting a little scary how angelic he was before that," she said, scowling a little.
"Wish you'd tell my mum that," Tonks said, laughing. "We still go a few rounds now and then -- she should hear that she's lucky to have fights!"
Nell laughed along with her, and when she caught Tonks' gaze again, something electric seemed to spark between them. Nell blushed and they both looked down, their laughter fading. She glanced back under her lashes and saw Tonks doing the same.
"So how do you make your hair change?" Nell blurted out suddenly, a question that had been bothering her popping to the surface.
Tonks started to explain, and without thinking about that moment any more (much, anyway), Nell relaxed into the couch cushions, curling up comfortably to listen.
Tonks stayed until about ten, chatting about trivialities until she'd happened to catch sight of the clock and whirled away, yelping about late training: "Late, late, late, ow! Mind if I -- ouch -- apparate? Sorry," POP! and Nell was left with a suddenly empty apartment.
~*~*~
The next evening was much the same, zinging glances included, although Nell greeted Tonks politely (and Tonks' hair was bright orange). Harry was deeply boring and an embarrassment as a juvenile delinquent, and Black was keeping his head down (he'd been sighted in Devon, but it turned out to be a false alarm).
This time, Tonks was keeping an eye on the time. At about half nine, she politely excused herself, explaining more slowly that she had a late training session this week, so she could have Harry-details during the day. Before Nell could feel guilty about over-burdening her, Tonks had vanished.
~*~*~
"Look," said Nell the next evening (pink hair again), "if you're overworked watching over me and Harry --"
Tonks looked at her in deep surprise. "Are you joking?" she asked incredulously. "I had to fight to get this assignment. Shacklebolt opened his big mouth at the training hall, and I had competition like you wouldn't believe. I had to trip over Dawlish to make him stop yapping about it," she added mischeviously.
Nell grinned. "Is your tripping all that planned?" she asked innocently.
Tonks grimaced. "I wish," she said. "But I guess my feet are just too big, or my legs, or something."
"No," said Nell quickly. When Tonks looked questioningly at her, she blushed. "I mean, have you tried to take grace courses or dance lessons or anything? To get more comfortable in your body?"
Tonks grimaced again. "I think that's the problem, actually. My mum tried all those, plus some borderline illegal spells. I just -- I don't know," she finished helplessly, waving her hands about cheerfully. "Maybe I'm just a klutz." She smiled endearingly at Nell, who wished she'd never brought the topic up.
"Have you tried visualisation or hypnosis?" she suggested weakly.
"Who-what?" asked Tonks.
"You know, being hypnotised and then visualising yourself being graceful. It's supposed to be really helpful. My friend used to do it to us all the time at uni."
"Can you do that sort of thing?"
"I can try," said Nell dubiously. "Lean back and close your eyes." Tonks obeyed, and Nell took a deep breath. "Count backwards from ten, very slowly." She counted softly along. "Now take ten deep breaths. Deep, deep, lovely. That's relaxing, isn't it? You're sleepy. It's late, and you're so heavy in the chair. Deep breaths, deep, deep. Your eyes are heavy, and you want to go to sleep. You can't really move, but it's okay. Now, imagine you're in a pool of water. It's clear, and deep, and cool." Tonks hummed. "Yes, it's nice, isn't it?
"You're swimming along, and you're moving easily and gracefully. Cutting through the water, not putting a single foot wrong. All of your body working together, wonderfully. You're all linked, foot and knee and hip and shoulder and elbow and neck, all working together." Nell paused and took another deep breath. "When you wake up, you'll remember how that felt, working together, fluid and easy. You'll be able to move like you were swimming, Count forwards from ten, taking deep breaths on each number. When you reach ten, you'll be completely awake and refreshed." Nell sat back and watched Tonks.
"Ten," Tonks said, and her eyes snapped open. She stood up, completely fluidly, and crossed the room swiftly to Nell. "I don't know about graceful," she said, leaning down, "but that was the sexiest bloody thing I've ever heard." And she pressed her lips to Nell's.
After a startled moment, Nell cooperated. Another moment, and she'd melted. Tonks might not be particularly graceful, but what did that matter, if she could kiss like this?
Tonks pulled away and yelped. "I'm late again! You beast!" she said. "Tomorrow?" And she POPped out of sight.
Tomorrow. Nell grinned foolishly.