Chapter 03

• Scars •

A soft humming woke Harry from his not so restful sleep. His whole body ached and at the same time felt extremely odd almost as if it were just awakening, tingling everywhere. He could see he was on a couch of some sort, but he could barely move to see any further than that.

The sound of humming continued and Harry moved slowly, turning his whole body very slowly into the right position so he could locate the source. He wasn't sure exactly what'd happened or where he was. No memories of the night before returned to him immediately.

Tonks was the one that was humming. In the dark it was hard to see her, but every few minutes a car would pass and the lights would be just enough to light up her face. Harry knew it was her the first time, even though she didn't look as he'd expect her to look. He could see she was staring out onto the street, while playing with a ring in her hand. It glinted whenever the lights from outside caught it. She seemed so normal, not like the Tonks he'd started to get to know.

As if she knew someone was watching her she glanced back to Harry. In the darkness apparently she couldn't see that he was watching her and she turned back, frowning, to the window. A brief glimpse of the previous night made Harry stop to think. He remembered pieces of the previous night, mostly just garbled flashes, but he was starting to piece things together.

A flash of lightning brought everything that he couldn't remember back. Everything that he could make sense of anyway. Some of the last things he'd done he couldn't remember at all. "The rain... it was cold." He whispered to himself as he remembered that it had been amazingly cold.

The words were just loud enough to reach Tonks' ear and the calming humming stopped as she turned to Harry. She was smiling, but he could see it was forced. When he moved to try and sit up, she was at his side immediately, holding his head down, making sure he didn't get up.

"Just rest." She said, easing his head back down. "You won't be able to do much more than that for a couple of days. There's some food in the kitchen, they don't have too much of a selection but it'll do. The fridge is almost empty." Her grin almost made Harry forget about the frown on her face earlier. She seemed so happy just being herself that it was hard to tell she was sad at all.

"I fell..." he recalled. He remembered seeing the lights and then the rush of flying, but very little else. Tonks frowned again and Harry changed the subject, he didn't like her frowning. "Where are we anyway?"

"Dunno." Tonks said, innocently enough, but her face told different with a mischievous grin. "Sure is a nice place though. Wish I'd grown up in place like this, no one would've ever found me when we played hide-and-seek, not that they could anyway. I only got caught once and that was because I kinda tripped over the table in the living room." She paused and her smile started to fade. "Sorry. I really talk too much most of the time, and then I usually say the wrong thing at the worst of times. I should just quit talking altogether. Or at least that's what Henry... Sorry. Babbling again."

It didn't really bother Harry at all, and he smiled at her and tried to shake his head, but found he was having a hard time even just doing that. Tonks didn't seem to have much coordination socially or physically. It occurred to Harry to ask her about his injuries, and why he was on the couch, but he had a feeling that it would make her sad again and he didn't like it when she was like that. If he was going to be stuck on the couch he wanted to talk and be happy for a while. The house they were in was extremely luxurious, not like anything Harry'd ever been in before, and even if they weren't invited they might as well enjoy there time however brief it was.

"Who's Henry?" Questioned Harry, trying to keep Tonks talking. It was relaxing to him.

Something about the question got to Tonks, and Harry almost regretted mentioning it. But she didn't frown, she smiled after some thought. "He was my accomplice when I was training to be an Auror. He and I came up with some very good pranks. But he graduated two years before me. After that... some things happened and well... he was injured by a child and never recovered. After he died everything changed, no names were released in fear of the child's life. I don't think it was an accident though, he was too smart to let something like that happen."

"Oh..." Harry said, looking away and trying not to think about death. It was still overwhelming to think about Sirius, and Harry didn't really want to deal with that at the moment.

It took Tonks a minute to figure out why Harry had looked away and she covered her mouth, sighing. "Sorry. Like I said, I always say the wrong thing at the most inopportune time." She looked around, trying to find something else to talk about, but finding nothing just sat quietly next to Harry.

The silence for Harry was almost as bad though, he wanted to talk about something. "I want to be an Auror too you know." He finally said, hoping it was enough to spark a conversation.

"Really?" Tonks said, perking up a great deal. "I had a hard time doing it, but you'd be great at it. You're probably the most talented 6th year I've ever met. I still have a hard time getting some of the spells right that you can already do."

When Madam Bones had been so surprised that Harry could form a corporeal Patronus Harry had felt as good. He smiled as best as possible. "I don't know if I'll be able to do it though, I don't think I did well enough on my OWLs. I tried, I really did, but I just hope that it was enough. Potions always got me a little mixed up. Hermione thinks I just don't study enough, but it's hard to remember them with Snape standing over your shoulder."

Tonks giggled. "It's cause that git Snape's teaching it. He's good at them, but he doesn't teach others so well. We had Mr. Grant teaching us for the first two years I was in potions and no one seemed to do as bad as when Snape was teaching after that. I was never much for potions either, but it was enough to get into the Auror's."

"What's it like being an Auror?" Harry asked, feeling as if Tonks might be able to answer the question more thoroughly than anyone else could. She was rather like him for the most part and he wanted to be an Auror so bad. He wasn't sure why anymore, but when Moody had suggested it a few years before it had stuck to him and he had never had any other thoughts about what he wanted to be.

When McGonagall had asked him what he wanted to be and he'd thought about it. There really wasn't any question in his mind, even after that evil woman Umbridge had tried to make sure he couldn't. It was amazing that she could have done so much. Thinking about the woman Harry rubbed his right hand, feeling the words that were forever inscribed into his hand now. Before school ended he'd tried on his own to remove them, looking through book after book, but never finding anything that might do it. When he thought about it he doubted that he would be able to remove them anyway, there were scars on all sorts of wizards and they weren't removed, so he doubted his would be able to be removed.

When Vernon had seen it of course he'd thought it proper and made sure that everyone else saw it too. Dudley had thought it was hilarious, but he seemed to have forgotten since then. For the most part, the year before he'd kept his hand in the pockets of his cloak and no one else had yet to discover the scars. Some of the other students had been put through the detention too. Harry was sure of it, but none of them had had to deal with the amount of time he had and so there were not permanent.

"What's wrong with your hand?" Tonks asked, when she saw him rubbing it. She was being concerned because of everything that had happened, and she'd yet to thoroughly check him over. Harry began to withdraw it, hiding it under the blanket. Tonks' Auror training came through and she was able to get a hold of it before it disappeared.

The silence was deafening as Tonks stared down at the words. After several seconds, Tonks' hands fell away. Harry pulled the hand back under the blanket, feeling ashamed of the scar. He didn't want anyone to see it at all, especially Tonks even though he wasn't sure why. Harry vividly remembered writing the lines and the pain that came with them.

"It's a ..." he tried to explain a possible reason that it was there, but nothing at all came to mind. He'd tried to come up with a reason before this happened, but nothing had been even remotely good enough.

"She did it, didn't she? That bitch." Tonks asked, her eyes watering. She did something with her hand and showed it to Harry. Slowly a scar appeared in front of him, and words. I will obey the rules.

It didn't stay for long, but Harry saw it clearly before it faded.

Harry looked up at Tonks, mouth agape. Tonks smiled as best as possible. "She almost stopped me from being an Auror. The first year I was training I goofed off a lot, but they wanted me because I could be anyone or anything. They made her in charge of me, but it didn't work very well even after she made me do lines. I learned how to block the pain and I could make the scars go away. But until then..." She took a deep breath. "She's an evil woman. She never liked me because father was muggle-born. She said I had bad blood all the time."

Harry force himself not to cry, he had a hard enough time as it was. "Don't tell anyone." Harry choked.

Tonks sniffled and then was gone in the blink of an eye. Harry heard something fall in another room, and a muted curse from Tonks. He wasn't sure why she'd left, but it made him more comfortable when she had. He didn't want to talk about it, too came to mind when things like that were brought up.

The comforting feeling was short-lived. Harry started to look around again, feeling very self-conscious about where he was. The muggle household was where someone else lived, and even if they weren't there at the moment it wasn't a good place to hang around.

Someone drove by again and the tainted lights from the headlights filled the room with odd looking shadows, creeping on the wall. Harry usually didn't feel bothered by shadows, but after the attack at his home he wasn't sure what might be after them. He shivered and pulled the blanket tighter around himself, hoping Tonks wouldn't be gone for long.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Harry, Tonks was in the next room, head hung down and trying to keep from crying. She didn't want Harry to see her cry, and that's why she'd left the room. She was well aware of everything that was going on around them. Her memories were as bad, if not worse than Harry's dealing with Umbridge. She more than hated the woman, on her own personal list the woman was next to Voldemort, and only because Voldemort had killed people precious to her, like Lilly and James along with countless other people.

•

"Tonks?" Harry asked the next day, while Tonks was searching for food. Harry could move around a little but Tonks refused to let him go anywhere until he'd healed more. "How did you know you were a metamorphmagus?"

"You want to be one, don't you?" She asked, as a can fell off the counter and onto her foot. The words that followed made Harry laugh inside, but his face still kept straight. She was trying to keep from saying anything improper and was having a difficult time doing it. "I remember you said that last year." She added, before just giving up on making something complicated and pulling down a bag of chips.

"Yeah, I just... it'd make things easier sometimes. In the muggle world no one knows who I am, and I like it that way, I'm no different from anyone else. But in the magical world... well everyone knows who I am as soon as they see the scar. I hate being famous for something I didn't even do." He smirked again, finding it hard to talk serious with Tonks was trying to open the bag. It was giving her a difficult time.

Giving up on doing it herself, Tonks brought in the bag and handed it to Harry, hoping he'd open it for her. "You know, sometimes I wish no one knew about what I could do. They don't ever want me because of anything else I can do, it's only because I have this stupid ability. It is nice to have, to be able to become a different person so that no one knows who you are. I never really was able to hide that well though; they could always pick me out."

Using his hands, which were freed from the blanket, Harry pulled the top apart for Tonks, slowly so she could see how he'd done it. "I thought your father was a muggle-born?" He asked, wondering why she couldn't even figure out how to open the chips.

"Ah, yeah, well..." She scratched her head. "When mum swept him up he didn't bring much of the world with him, he likes the way magic works a lot more. Learned to use a tele when I was young, but mum got rid if it ages ago."

Tonks poured the chips into two bowls and handed one to Harry. "I'll make something later." She said.

Harry, having some of her prior cooking welcomed the chips as an alternative. "So there's no way I can become an metamorphmagus at all?"

"Nope, it'd be like surviving Avada... well, no, you survived I guess. But, the only time I've heard of it is in stories mum used to tell me. Stories about some of our family that had the ability, she doesn't, but my great gran did. Some of the stories are just made up though, and I think that when she talks about someone else getting it, it's just a bunch of rubbish. It's always said in books that the only way to get it is to be born to it and unless you have been it isn't going to happen. Some people don't know though. I only found out when Johnny Frericks said he only liked blondes and the next morning when I woke up my hair was blonde. Mum had never mentioned it before, but when she saw what'd happened she told me all about what I could do. Took me a while to learn to control it, she didn't know no one else that was a metamorphmagus so I had to learn by myself."

Harry closed his eyes, he'd had some sort of remote hope that maybe he was one, even though he knew hoping wasn't enough to make it true.

There was a long rift of silence and Harry's body got the best of him, taking into a deep sleep.

Tonks on the other hand felt comfortable in the silence, it was unknown to her and she rather enjoyed it. She wanted to make Harry feel better and she didn't know why, it was more than just a sense of duty. For hours she combated sleep and thought about how she might be able to help Harry, in some ways he was so much like her, but in other ways he was so different.

Harry woke to humming this time and the clank of pans. Tonks mumbled a curse under her breath and Harry smiled, she was probably trying (unsuccessfully) to be quiet.

"I could teach you, you know." Tonks said when she saw Harry's eyes open from the kitchen, she left the kitchen and headed into the living room to talk to Harry. "...how to be an Auror and all. Everything I know I'll teach you."

"Really?" Harry asked, smiling slightly. He could move his arms now and he had them outside the blanket had been trying to unsuccessfully to unwrap himself. Tonks seemed to have charmed it or tied it shut and, after several time he quit trying. Now he was feeling good again, energetic to say the least. "You'd really teach me to be an Auror?" He asked again, excited at the prospect of learning the secrets of the Aurors.

Tonks lips turned up slightly, and he assumed she was smiling, which was a good sign. She had moved over to the couch that he was on and was sitting up against it, tired, but not daring to sleep. So far Harry hadn't seen her sleep since they'd come to this house. She was awake every time he woke up, usually with some sort of soup she'd concocted. None of it was really that bad, it was better than what he'd gotten at home, but it was far from the best he'd ever had. Her head tilted back and she turned slightly, giving Harry an uneasy feeling.

"There are some thing I can't teach you, but it's only because I don't know how to teach them or I don't know how they're done. They gave us some special stuff too that I probably can't give you either. I'll do as much as I can though. Just don't tell anyone, I could get in a lot of trouble if they knew I were teaching stuff to you. Dumbledore even told me not to show you anything. I don't know why, he's usually pretty nice about things but I think he's wrong to make sure you don't know anything, that's why I'm doing this. I saw what happened at the..." she trailed off and then started again, not continuing the sentence even though Harry'd known where it was leadng. "Anyway, just don't tell anyone, alright?"

Harry eagerly agreed with her, he'd never tell anyone about what she was teaching him. He asked the very next thing that came to his mind. "Can I start now? I know I can't get up, but is there something I can do, isn't there?"

There was a silence as Tonks turned and looked around the room, Harry wondered what it was she was going to have him do. She was obviously trying to see if the room would be good enough, maybe he'd be learning something that would require a lot of space even if he was stuck on the couch.

Finally Tonks reached down near the fireplace and grabbed something from within the logs that were neatly stacked there. She handed the object to Harry with a smile. "Here. Make this grow again."

Confused Harry stared at the twig that was in his hand. It was about 3 inches long, and was so dry it was brittle. There was no way he'd be able to make it sprout, it'd been dead for a long time. "But, that's impossible. Can you do it?" He asked.

"Harry, when you can make that sprout I'll teach you something else. But until then you have to learn everything you can by yourself. Understand?" Tonks said firmly, she wasn't making the lesson easy. Harry wondered how he would make it sprout, maybe it was some sort of trick and she was testing him. He didn't understand. He thought for several minutes before coming to a conclusion, he would need a potion to do it, but why would Tonks give him something to do that he couldn't?

An hour later Harry, still trying to figure out the problem, looked to Tonks. She'd left the room for a while but had also returned, and was quietly sitting on the floor of the room across from him. "How?" He asked; puzzled about what exactly she wanted him to do. She had said it plainly, but it still was extremely confusing.

"That's part of the problem." She said grinning. "You will understand when you figure it out."

Deepening his resolve to somehow get the branch to grow Harry lost himself in thought. Tonks watched him from the other room, unusually quiet. She had taken this test, and she remembered how difficult it was. She wondered how difficult it was going to be for him.

Hours past and Harry stared straight at the branch, trying to dredge up every possibility there was. It was dead, so that left out anything non-magical. That meant he had to real choices, potion or magic. Given that Tonks had told him that he could do it while he waited to get better, potions were out of the question. It took nearly two hours for Harry to get that far.

No wand.

Tonks hadn't given him his wand back, Harry knew she had it, even though she hadn't mentioned it. When he started thinking about his wand he started to wonder where the rest of his clothing had gone. They hadn't been there when he'd woken; he hadn't been wearing much at all.

A vivid image of Tonks removing his clothing filled Harry's mind and the thought of making the stick grow vanished. His whole face turned a brilliant red, having Tonks do such a thing made him more than just uncomfortable. His grip tightened and he closed his eyes, wishing it wouldn't've happened.

It was bad enough, being stuck on the couch and making Tonks take care of him, but being sick like he was and making her do such things with him was more than just a little embarrassing.

Slowly the fact that it had happened already, and there was nothing he could do about it, filled him. He was going to have to get better quicker so that they could go to the Orders Headquarters. He could almost now as it was, enough that he might be able to walk he hoped that within a day he'd be almost completely healed.

A deep inhale from Tonks, somewhere nearby, made Harry open his eyes. He gasped too when he saw the reason she'd been surprised. In his hands was a miniature tree. The branch, no longer than 4 inches, was now almost a foot tall, roots had sprung from underneath Harry's hand and small branches had formed with tiny green needles covering it already.

Startled beyond belief, Harry dropped the miniature tree. Tonks, who had snuck up on Harry while his eyes were closed, grabbed it before it finished its fall. She seemed almost as surprised as he was, but she had her wits about her still.

"It... grew." She said awkwardly, gawking at the tree. "It really grew."

Tonks put it down gently on a table and grabbed another stick from the wood pile next to the fireplace. "This one too. Just one more time."

Harry was still having a hard time with the fact that he'd made the first one grow. It had taken a few seconds and he wasn't sure exactly what he'd done to make it grow, it just did almost by itself. Taking the second stick Harry stared at it, trying to do it again. He had absolutely no luck for the next several minutes while he tried everything he could think of that he'd done. His mind was so focused on doing it again that he didn't see Tonks pull a bowl from the cabinet in the kitchen and place the tree inside it. She even went as far as going outside and getting some soil to pack around it.

"I can't do it again." Harry finally revealed, hoping that it wouldn't matter. He wanted to learn to fight, not to make things grow. When he looked up to Tonks she was watering the now planted miniature tree.

At first she didn't respond, she finished soaking the soil to insure the plant would take root, then put it on the table near the couch. "Alright. How did you do it the first time?" She asked, now controlling the surprise she was still feeling.

"Don't know." Harry revealed, staring at the tree. "It just happened, I wasn't even trying. How'd you do it the first time?"

Tonks, who seemed to be caught off guard by the question took a moment before she answered. "I can't tell you, everyone has to do it their own way. If I make it easier by answering then you won't be able to understand why you have to do it. But you did it, sort of, you'll have to do it again before I show you everything but I promised I'd show you more when you'd done it so I will as soon as you're all better."

Eagerly Harry nodded, but Tonks turned around to him. Pulling her wand out, she whispered a spell. He quickly went back to sleep.

•