Summary: Harry and Tonks can't keep their hands off each other, but Tonks is starting to feel like a dirty old lady, so she decides it's time to set some ground rules. Short and sweet, with just a hint of angst. Sequel to "Turning Point".

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Ground Rules

"I can't do this anymore." She's sitting on the edge of my bed, looking at her feet.

"We haven't done anything."

"But we're going to."

I haven't got much of an argument to that. Sounds like a plan to me!

"You're sixteen. I'm twenty-three. This isn't right."

"It's perfectly legal," I grumble.

"Doesn't make it right." I scowl at her. She scowls back. "Didn't those horrible Muggles of yours ever tell you not to make faces like that or it might freeze that way?"

"They did. But I've made plenty of faces since then, and I haven't noticed much difference." I look down at the carpet. Like everything else in Number 12, Grimmauld Place, it's ugly, ornate, and depressing. I scowl at the carpet.

"Harry..." She's pitying me. The bitch.

"Look, Tonks, it's all right." I sigh and rub my face. "I'm going back to Hogwarts next week. It's not like this would withstand months and months apart, anyway."

Silence. We're both thinking about the two hours and nineteen minutes it took me between showing up here for Christmas and finding myself pinned to her floor by her slight but densely muscled weight, hungrily reacquainting myself with her hair and her lips and her fingertips. We told ourselves in August that it would just go away, but so far, all evidence is to the contrary.

I look up at her and start. She's changed again. Her hair is dark brown, so dark it's almost black, flitting in a halo of fine waves to her shoulders. And her eyes are a pale, silvery grey I've only seen on one other human being before in all my life - Sirius, I think, with a pang. Her nose isn't small or large, and her lips are pale but full and moist. Her face is delicately boned, reminding me unpleasantly of her relationship to Malfoy. She looks younger than she is, but some kind of knowing that starts around the region of my navel tells me that this is what Nymphadora Tonks really looks like, nothing changed, with the elegant, fragile features of her snotty first cousin and the stormcloud eyes the portraits have always seemed to imply ran in the Black family. The determined jaw and smooth sweep of forehead are all her own.

I'm not sure what to say. Finally, "That's a low blow," I say levelly.

She looks like I've slapped her.

"Why are you doing this to me, Tonks?" I drop my eyes down to the hideous carpet again.

"Doing what?" Her voice is confused. Exasperated. Wounded.

"How many people have you shown that to?" I reply, angry. She draws in breath sharply and looks away, blushing slightly. I scowl and look back down. I knew it.

Neither of us says anything for a moment.

I glance up, briefly. She hasn't changed again. I return my attention to the floor. It's safer that way. "It's hard," I say finally, my voice soft, trying to hide its trembling tone, "to pretend that it's nothing, when you're looking like that."

"Looking at you how?"

"Not looking at me like that, just - " I sigh again. "Just looking like that." I venture to look at her face again, and our gazes lock.

Here we go again, sighs a small part of me as I lunge at her and push her back onto the bed. A larger part of me gleefully shouts, Here we go again! She makes absolutely no effort to resist, and in a second her hands are brushing the skin on my stomach, running up and down my sides, under my jumper. Her lips are so hot I can feel their imprint searing itself onto my neck. Her fingers hook in the belt loops of my jeans and she pulls me close. I moan, feeling the sharp bones of her hips pressing up against me through the soft fabric of her robes.

She freezes, and I berate myself silently. Goddammit, you idiot! She's fine until you moan and then she always freaks out! At this rate Ron is going to get some before you do!

"We need to stop," she says, reluctantly, withdrawing her touch.

I push myself up on my hands, looking down at her, but I don't move. I search her face. I'm not sure what I'm looking for.

She closes those astonishing grey eyes. Her features shift and change, and her hair sprouts back up pink with green tips, her face plumps up. She sticks her tongue out at me and pushes me off her. I laugh. I can't help it.

She sits up next to me, cross-legged on the bed, and runs her hand through her messy hair. She always does that when she's nervous. "Harry, look." She sighs. "You don't act like a kid. You've seen too much to act like a kid. But you don't act like a grownup either." She smiles, wryly. "Neither do I, but that's neither here nor there." She reaches over and touches my face. My heart jumps. It's such a careless touch, to affect me this way. "You may not act like a kid, but you are a kid. You've got a year and a half left at school."

"But I'm sixteen!"

"Exactly, you're sixteen. I'm almost half again as old as you are, and this just isn't right." Her face is oddly serious. Tonks is almost never serious.

I sit up, finally, and settle down facing her, crossing my legs. The edges of her eyelashes glow honey-gold where the light touches them. I swallow. "This isn't going to go away, Tonks," I say, trying to keep my voice even. "I don't - I don't forget you, when I'm not here." She leans back and opens her mouth to talk, but - "No, Tonks, please, let me finish." She closes her mouth again, and looks at me expectantly. "This fall was hard, being back at school. Thinking about what I missed, what I wanted - " my voice cracks, dammit - "All I wanted to do was talk to Sirius, about the way I felt about you." I pause. "I'm not going to stop - I'm not going to stop loving you, Tonks."

Her jaw drops. She stares at me openly.

"Oh, Christ," I mumble, but it's too late to take it back. Fabulous. How could I have been so stupid? Nice going, Harry. She's never going to want to talk to you again.

"Um." She stands up next to the bed and starts to pace. "Um...oh, Merlin. Um..." She runs her hands through her hair. Both hands. She's clearly flipping out. Go me. Finally, she stops, and comes and sits back down. "Okay. Okay! We really, really need to set some ground rules."

"Ground rules?" I'm confused.

"Yeah, some ground rules. Because...because, oh Merlin, it's not easy for me either. It's not going away and I feel like I'm going crazy because I'm head over heels for a sixteen-year-old boy."

I look up, eyes wide. That was surprising.

She stares at me. I stare back. I lean over and kiss her. "Mmm. You're horrible, you know," she murmurs, but she's smiling as she pulls away. "Ground rules, remember?"

I sigh, but nod. "Ground rules. Check."

"Okay." She takes a deep breath before beginning. "If this is supposed to work, it'll still work when you're a little older."

I scowl at her again. "So far, I'm not liking where this is going."

She sticks her tongue out at me again. "Tough. I'm not going to let this go places that it shouldn't go."

"You're impossible."

"Will you shut up?"

I grumble.

"Fine." She sounds exasperated. "Look, you've got a year and a half left at school, and the only reason why Dumbledore keeps putting me on Remus-babysitting duty when you're about is because he thinks I'm good for you, too." I smile a little sadly. I had been hoping they'd decided Remus was okay enough to not need to be watched all the time anymore. She continues. "I'd rather be out on active duty more anyway, rather than stuck in this madhouse pouring over dusty books all the time."

I nod. I can tell where she's going. "So when I'm here, it'll just be me, Remus, and Mundungus, thus preserving my virtue."

"I certainly hope that Mundungus is not a threat to your virtue."

I consider the implications of this statement. "...But it's okay if Remus is?"

She just grins evilly.

"Oh, Tonks, that's disgusting!"

She laughs. "Well, I think you've got the basic idea, at any rate."

I think about it for a moment. "What about when you are here? Even if you're out on active duty, you'll have to come back for meetings and the like."

Her face grows serious. "I know. And Harry - I think maybe we just shouldn't...be alone, together."

"Don't trust me, do you?"

"Should I?"

"...No, probably not." I smile weakly. "So no kissy."

"No kissy," she confirms.

"Until when?"

Her eyes darken a little. "Until you finish school, at least. Then we'll talk."

Silence. Her face is sad. Her hair is a mess.

Finally, I sigh. "That's a long time."

"I know."

"I might meet someone else."

"Part of me hopes you do," she whispers.

"Yeah," I sigh. I stare at her features, memorizing her face right now, a face that will never be exactly as it is ever again. "A lot of me hopes I won't."

She smiles at that, and leans towards me. Her lips brush gently against mine.

"I thought no kissy." I bite her lip softly, and rub my nose against hers.

"Oh," she says into my mouth. She tastes like peppermint mouthwash and smells like citrus shampoo. Her fingers bury themselves in my hair. "This is just one for the road."