"Alright, Nymphadora," Mum snapped, throwing open the door to Tonks's childhood bedroom and casting a light charm without so much as a by your leave. Don't call me Nymphadora, she thought, but actually saying as much seemed like far too much effort. Maybe if I ignore her long enough, she'll go away... "Enough is enough. You need to get up. I know you're tired and the world doesn't seem worth it, but quite frankly, I don't care."

That was enough to shock Tonks into a reaction. "What?"

"You heard me correctly. I know you're in a funk. I know you've left your job, you married a cowardly sack of shite you currently can't stand the sight of, and you're six weeks pregnant with a child he doesn't want. I don't care. You knew that if the Dark Lord took over, it was only a matter of time until you would have to give up being an Auror. You knew that Remus hated his wolf and had the self-confidence of a particularly pathetic rodent when you married him. I believe I told you at the time that you would regret marrying a man who only said yes because all of his so-called friends in Dumbledore's little vigilante club of yours bullied him into it. You said that you didn't care, you loved him. I told you that you were mad and making a desperate attempt to pull yourself out of last year's funk by convincing yourself you were in love. You told me to go to hell. Is this ringing any bells, Nymphadora?"

It was. Much as Tonks didn't want to admit it, her mother had been right. (She usually was.)

"And we both know you're pregnant right now because you specifically decided to get pregnant. You knew that Remus didn't want children. You decided to present it as a fait accompli, and you have no one to blame but yourself for ignoring his perfectly reasonable concern about any such child's quality of life!"

Tonks glared at her mother. "You sound like you want me to kill it, too, now!" she said, hating the way her voice shook. She was angry, damn it! Why did she want to cry?! Fucking hormones... "You're supposed to be my mother! Mine! On my side!"

"No, I want you to acknowledge that you did this because you wanted a child, because you thought it would make you happy, like you thought falling in love would make you happy, or getting married, or—"

"Fine! Yes! I want a baby! Is that so wrong?"

"Yes," Mum said firmly, throwing Tonks for a complete loop. "You don't have a baby because you want something in your life to love you unconditionally or make you feel like you matter, Nymphadora! You get a bloody dog! Babies are a lot of thankless bloody work and investment that doesn't pay off for years, and then abruptly stops paying off when your kid starts growing a mind of their own and decides they hate you for no reason other than that you happen to exist and they need someone to rebel against. Do you remember being thirteen? Because I remember you being thirteen, and it was a fucking nightmare.

"Having children means living in constant fear for their future or their health or whether you'll be able to meet their basic needs day-to-day, or whether they'll grow up to make a series of potentially catastrophically stupid choices like following Albus fucking Dumbledore or getting fixated on the idea of marrying a tragic figure who believes himself to be entirely unlovable or having a child when they can't even take care of themself!"

"I can take care of—"

"Nymphadora, you've been lying in bed eating conjured cupcakes for a week. Don't you dare try to tell me that you can take care of yourself."

Tonks glowered, but she really couldn't argue that it was perfectly normal, healthy behaviour to eat nothing but cupcakes for a week, even if the fact that they were conjured (and fifty per cent sugar) was irrelevant to a metamorph.

"I'm not telling you to abort the child — I'm telling you that you want it for all the wrong reasons, and committing to a project like bearing and raising a child when you can't face the idea of getting out of bed at any point in the course of a day is the most selfish thing I've ever heard of. At least my mother bore the children she wasn't prepared to care for under duress, with the understanding that the House would raise us if she couldn't," Mum sneered.

Tonks winced. That was a low blow. Mum's mother had been the queen of all selfish bitches. Being compared to her here was not a compliment.

"You don't have that option, so I'm telling you that I don't care whether you're in a funk or not. If you plan to keep this child you need to get up and prove to me and to yourself that you're capable of doing what is necessary regardless of how down you might be and how difficult it is, because you do not get the luxury of being a self-obsessed brat when a child's life and future depends on you managing to do considerably more for them than the bare minimum. You simply don't. I will not be disappointed in you if you decide that you're simply not up to the task, and it's the wiser course to give this one up and wait until you're more stable to try again, but you can bet your shapeshifting arse I will be if you go forward with this pregnancy knowing full well that you're not up to the task.

"So you are going to get out of that bed, take a shower, and join me to discuss whether this is really the path you want to take over tea," she said sharply, turning her heel on the unspoken or else, and stalking away.

Tonks wasn't entirely certain what the or else would be, but she was certain she didn't want to find out. It was hard to remember sometimes, now that Tonks was an adult and her parents lived in Hogsmeade like civilised people, instead of on a homestead in the middle of the Canadian wilderness like they had in the Seventies, but Mum was still a scary bitch. You didn't survive growing up in the House of Black if you weren't, and for all she was nuttier than a fucking fruit cake, the Blackheart had made sure her baby sisters could take care of themselves.

Mum might not be completely insane, but she'd been willing and able to move her pregnant, eighteen-year-old self and her newly wedded husband to the middle of nowhere and make a home and a life for them with little more than their wands and the clothes on their backs. (That was a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much.) She'd once used Tonks as bait to kill a wendigo that was threatening the nearest muggle settlement because she didn't want anyone official to maybe look into it and notice there were a couple of British refugees hiding out in the area, and had taken her to see a werewolf dominance challenge when she was six, as an object lesson on appearances sometimes being deceiving.

She hadn't stopped six-year-old Tonks visiting the werewolves (their nearest magical neighbours), before or after witnessing the fight. She'd just wanted Tonks to know that the side of people they let her see wasn't always all there was to them, and be careful. With werewolves and people whose ugly sides weren't quite so obvious.

She was the same scary bitch who adopted a puppy every spring to sacrifice to the Dark at Yule — who painted dark wards on the walls in her own blood to return any harm done within them upon the caster threefold, and stood up after being crucio'd to tell the Death Eaters who'd accompanied the idiot who cursed her (whose brain was comprehensively fried) that if Bella wanted to come try Mum herself, she'd be waiting. ("Please remind my sister that she never managed to beat me in a game of wits before she lost her mind, but if she'd like to try again, I've been planning our reunion for twenty-five years...")

Dad wanted to get the hell out of Britain again, Tonks knew, go back to Canada or something, but Mum had flat refused. ("I've spent the past fifteen years trying to level the legal playing field between muggleborns and commoners and the nobility of this country, Ted. I'm not going to run away from this fight. Not this time.") As long as there was even a façade of legality to the Death Eaters' leadership, Mum would stay and keep defending muggleborns as best she could, putting that pureblood princess education of hers to good use as the most prominent class traitor of her generation.

Tonks, meanwhile, was just wallowing in short-sighted misery. Mum's right, she told herself firmly. I have to get up, I have to do something...

Not just to prove that she could, and that it wasn't completely selfish and irresponsible of her to have a kid at this point in her life — she was keeping the baby, she'd already decided, Mum could go to hell with Remus if she had a problem with that — but because there was a bloody war going on out there, damn it! Even if she couldn't be an Auror with the Death Eaters in charge, she couldn't just lie around feeling sorry for herself when people were dying, either!

She did her best to psych herself up as she showered and dressed, preparing to defend her decision to keep the baby and make it clear that she was going to do something to help people, damn it (even if she hadn't quite figured out what, yet), but when she reached the sitting room, instead of bringing up their earlier topic of conversation, Mum handed her a letter.

"This came for you while you were in the shower."

It had been sent to the flat she and Remus had been renting, which was not particularly comforting to see. If it had been redirected here, he must not have been there to receive it, and she couldn't help worrying about where he was, but she was even more worried about who had sent it. She could count on one hand the people who knew where they lived — where she lived, technically, werewolves couldn't own property in Britain, and practically no one would let to them. She didn't recognise the handwriting, and it was sealed with a plain blob of wax. The contents had been jumbled with a fairly standard cypher charm.

When she performed the counter, the message was hardly reassuring. "It's from Hermione Granger," she informed her mother, who was doing her best not to look curious about it, and failing miserably. "And Ron Weasley, and Harry Potter. They're...looking for advice on how to deal with a potentially malicious legilimens? Not just learning occlumency, I assume, since that's hardly a quick solution, and this girl has apparently decided to move in with them."

"I believe there's a scheme for a protective amulet to guard against mental intrusions in Stark's Defensive Enchanting," Mum said immediately. "But who is this girl? And how has she moved in with them? I thought they were supposed to be on some mission for the Late Goat."

"They are. That's what Remus said last time we spoke, at least. And...it says she claims she's Harry's half-sister from another timeline?" Sounded like obvious dragonshite to Tonks, but the kids seemed pretty convinced. (Not surprising if the girl was a legilimens, though it was sort of surprising she'd let them write for help if she was manipulating them somehow...) She sighed, pushing herself to her feet again and shoving the letter into her pocket. "Apparently they're at Grimmauld. I should probably go check it out. Don't wait up," she said firmly, trying to feel as decisive and competent as she sounded.

Mum, with her usual degree of cool collectedness, just nodded, taking a sip of her tea. "Don't forget the book. It should be in the study, on the bookcase to the right of the door. It's blue."

Yes, Mum...

No one was home when Tonks arrived at Grimmauld Place.

Well, no one she wanted to see, anyway. There were a couple of Death Eaters staking the place out who tried to ambush her in the street outside. She was pregnant and depressed, though, not slow. She'd managed to cut one of them fairly badly. His partner had apparated him away before she could finish him off. Good riddance!

But when she'd gotten inside and dismissed the Tongue-Tying Jinx and the Spectre of Vengeance old Mad-Eye had set up to attack that traitor bastard if he dared step foot in here again, there was no one. Just the elf, Kreacher, who bustled out to croak at her that she wasn't welcome and the Master wasn't in and no, he wouldn't say where the Master had gone, go away.

She'd told him she'd wait in the kitchen, expecting him to bugger off to wherever he usually lurked, but he'd followed her to keep an eye on her, muttering under his breath about strangers showing up, not listening to Kreacher, his Master not listening to him when he tried to protect him, and so on.

It seemed...out of character, honestly, for the old elf to give a damn about Harry, but maybe that was just the difference Harry being his "master" made? Obviously he hadn't cared if Sirius lived or died, but...

It wasn't entirely surprising he didn't recognise her, she wasn't wearing the face she used to around here — it reminded her too much of Moody and Sirius, and the man she used to think Snape was, before he'd shown his true colours at last.

For all Mum might think she'd made a shite choice to trust Dumbledore, she hadn't really followed him into this war so much as she had Mad-Eye. Her old S.A. was the one who had approached her, said he knew some people, if she wanted to try to do something about this Dark Lord business before it really got off the ground again. She missed him a hell of a lot more than she missed the old Headmaster, and she felt like she'd never really gotten to know Sirius, when everything Remus had said about him...well, it seemed like they would've had a lot in common.

Thinking about Snape just made her angry. Fucking infuriated, really. She'd liked him, back when she was in school. Trusted him, even! He'd talked her out of killing more than one bastard preying on the younger Hufflepuffs — made sure that rapist bastard Stryke paid for his crimes when the Headmaster turned a blind eye, and took care of at least two Defence Professors who were hurting her housemates, arranging for them to have "unfortunate accidents" which were far more painful than any death Tonks could've come up with. Yeah, Snape was obviously a dark wizard, completely open and unrepentant about it, but so was Mum, and he had his priorities straight, and she'd thought he was a good man! Maybe not noble, not the sort of person most of the Light could respect, but honourable, by the standards Mum had taught her as a kid — the sort of man who knew his duty, kept his word, and was fucking reliable, damn it!

Bastard was lucky he was up at Hogwarts, or he'd have Tonks to answer to, not for blasting Dumbledore off a tower (Morrigan knew, Tonks had wanted to do the same more than once, especially when she'd found out that he wasn't going to press charges against Stryke and "ruin the life of a good boy over one little mistake" — which could easily have killed the girl he'd poisoned with his badly-brewed love potion, but yeah, one little mistake...), but for– for abandoning them, like a rat jumping off a sinking ship! Killing Dumbledore was one thing, especially since anyone with eyes could see he'd been dying already, slowly and painfully, from whatever curse had caught his left hand, but turning his back on the Order when she was sure he could have kept feeding them intelligence or something somehow— He was a crafty fucking bastard, the Slytherin of Slytherins, she wasn't going to believe he'd finally been backed into a corner and had to abandon them to save himself. If he wasn't helping them anymore, it was entirely his own fucking choice, and if he weren't—

No, actually, she realised suddenly, fingers drumming anxiously on the kitchen table, the fact that he was up at Hogwarts wasn't going to save him. As soon as she dealt with this legilimens, she was going right up to that school, and she was going to give him a piece of her mind, and if he wanted to try to kill her, too, they could see if a fully qualified Auror with the largest of chips on her shoulder was a little harder to murder than an old pacifist who was already half dead on his feet!

Mimi withdrew, smirking slightly at not-Ariel's attitude of general annoyance toward Sev, in spite of her exhaustion. She didn't need to see Ari wait for the kids to get back, or the three of them filling them — her, apparently, in this timeline — in on exactly what was going on, or follow through the entire series of events leading the four of them to be sitting at the kitchen table when she came in through the back door, variously relieved, unnerved, and suspicious.

"He didn't jump ship, the rest of the Light morons you're allied with made him walk the plank," she informed the metamorph.

Harry and his friends gave her a look like she'd lost the plot. "Er...what?" Ron asked.

She shook her head. "Sorry. Talking to dementors really takes it out of a girl, and then I had to spend all afternoon dealing with soul-sucking bureaucratic dragonshite. Having a real job is so incredibly overrated. I swear, I will never understand people who actually like office work. Your brother? Percival? He's a fucking freak. Hi, Ariel."

Ronald didn't really disagree about his brother, though none of the three were really certain whether she was taking the piss about the Ministry being more soul-suckingly exhausting than the dementors. Not-Ari was pretty sure she wasn't. They didn't like dementors, obviously, but they'd also had much more experience with bureaucratic dragonshite than any of the kids, and would probably give her that it was a coin-toss most days. Before any of the kids could ask, not-Ari said, "How do you know that name?" eyes narrowed in overdone suspicion.

"That's the name you've used in my timeline since...I don't know, longer than I've known you." Here they only used it in the underground duelling scene, apparently. (Colour Mimi not the least bit surprised that "Tonks" was involved in an extralegal duelling club despite also being an active-duty Auror...until about a month ago, apparently.)

"So you...know me, in your timeline?" she asked, still somewhat suspicious about the other timeline thing, but apparently Granger explaining that Druella was involved had at least provisionally convinced the Auror that Mimi wasn't entirely taking the piss. (Or that she was taking the piss pretty damn convincingly.)

"Well, obviously. You — my Ari, I mean — ran away to New Avalon when you were about fourteen because— Well, you — they — have to have given me about thirty different reasons over the years, but they were really just being a brat and giving Aunt Andi the bird. Though, I don't know, maybe you're not really the same person. I mean, I can pretty confidently say my Ari would never be willing to stay female long enough to carry a pregnancy to term." Tam would, and had — Robin was five and completely adorable — but Tam had spent the first sixteen years of his life not being a metamorph, and then the next however long as a bloody book. He didn't find the idea of being the same sex for months at a time nearly as uncomfortable as Ari.

Not-Ari went a bit pink — not enough for the colour to creep into her dark hair, too, but noticeably — silver eyes flicking over toward the trio of locals, all of whom...were apparently surprised that metamorphs could casually change sex. Of course they were. (Fucking Britain, honestly...) "I've been female for most of the last six years," the metamorph said somewhat defensively. "Aurors meet new people often enough it's annoying having to explain, yes, I'm still Dora Tonks, all the bloody time."

"...Right." That sort of made sense, except the part where they could easily still be a bloke when they weren't at work, if they wanted to, but whatever. "It's still weird you're preggers. Though you can tell your husband and Aunt Andi the Curse isn't transmitted from mother to child unless the mother is a werewolf, and she has to stay in a vortex every full moon she's carrying so she won't lose it. But metamorphs can't be Turned anyway."

Not-Ari had no idea why that was significant, it wasn't like she'd been bitten, but she shrugged off her confusion in favour of asking, "How the hell would you know that?"

"Er...I'm Avalonian? We probably have the largest werewolf population in Europe..." They'd built an apartment building in the middle of the Mann Vortex so the werewolves could live there and not transform on the Full Moons, so they got immigrants from all over. There was also a portal to somewhere in the middle of nowhere for the wolves who liked being wolves, but most of them were willing to take a pass on running with the Pack if it meant they got a pass on being violently transformed into fucking wolves, at least most of the time. According to Bella, they tended to get really down if they didn't transform and run at least a couple times a year, but. "I mean, I know metamorphs can't be turned because Tam tried it. But there are a handful of other werewolf or mixed couples who have kids. None of the ones with human mothers inherited the Curse. And every kid borne by a metamorph is a metamorph." Obviously. Was that not obvious? Well, apparently not, not-Ari seemed surprised, but.

"So...what happened at the Ministry?" Harry interrupted...somewhat hesitantly? Oh, he wasn't sure if he wanted to know how badly he'd hurt Thicknesse.

Right, best just tear that bandage off. "Thicknesse is dead." She winced as the words hit him like a punch to the gut, and he openly projected his shock and self-directed horror. "My understanding is that Flannery's as much a puppet as Thicknesse was—" The new Chief Warlock was a generally unassuming Lord she'd never heard of before, probably Imperiused, since House Flannery had nothing to do with New Avalon in her timeline. "—so he'll probably nominate a successor candidate at Voldemort's direction within a day or two, either one of the 'respectable' Death Eaters or another nobody they can push through and enthral. Probably the latter, the Knights who didn't go to Azkaban aren't exactly the most trusted members of the Organisation, and they don't control the entire Wizengamot. If they want to maintain some semblance that this is anything other than a violent coup, they need at least token support from non-Death Eaters in the leadership.

"Ah...the new Minister will have to appoint his own Senior Undersecretary — probably a Death Eater who'll be the actual power within the Ministry — I'll keep an eye on that. Yaxley will probably warn them about me, but I may still have to go and impress upon them the importance of taking slow and reasonable measures if they want this takeover to succeed—"

"We don't want this takeover to succeed!" Hermione interrupted.

Mimi rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know. And if we weren't going to have an alien invasion to deal with in a few weeks, I'd maybe hesitate to help them out, but since we are, the less disruption there is before then, the better. You know, fewer muggleborns locked up and wands confiscated, less public unrest provoked?"

"What happened to the Pink Menace?" not-Ari asked, keeping her scepticism about the invasion well hidden.

Mimi's lips twitched at the nickname. She pulled the unconscious cat out of her pocket, dropping it none-too-gently on the table. "You might make an amulet to sustain that transfiguration while you're at it," she added. When while you're at it provoked an edgy wariness — she's not going to be upset we're trying to foil her, is she? — she added, "Good call on the mind-magic amulets. I probably should've thought of that myself, since you three really shouldn't be going out in public if you can't manage even basic occlumency. In the interests of full disclosure, an amulet won't actually stop me getting into your minds, but there's realistically nothing you can do to actually prevent me legilimising you if I'm actually trying." Not-Ari thought that sounded like a bluff, but Mimi didn't really care. "The amulets will make it more difficult to casually establish contact and stop you openly projecting shite all over the place, though, and they'll block the legilimency charm and shite like that, so I'd still recommend you make them."

She broke off with a yawn, allowing Harry to remind her, "Did you at least get the horcrux? And what about the Weasleys?"

"Oh, right, yeah." She pulled it out of her other pocket. "The amulets should stop this thing trying to get in your head, too, but maybe also get Kreacher to find a containment vessel for it, or enchant one yourselves? Don't put it on and definitely don't try to open it before I wake up. If you get possessed, I will be very annoyed with all of you."

"Yeah, okay, but my parents?"

"I warned your father. He called your mother to give her a heads-up. I obliviated him and planted a false memory of you recovering enough to go to school so he won't have to lie about not knowing where either of you are. Molly's under orders to fill him in when he gets somewhere safe and calls her mirror. They'll be fine."

Arthur was absolutely certain of that fact. He and Molly wouldn't be coming to Grimmauld — their fall-back plan was to join their eldest son, William, at his home, and attempt to continue the Order's work by getting muggleborns and their families out of the country by any means possible. He was far more concerned about his children and their fates. Ginevra in particular, given that she was currently being held hostage at Hogwarts.

Mimi was almost certain that Ambrose would be too afraid of the potential consequences of admitting that he'd let his prisoners escape to try to use the girl in any way — the adult Weasleys were in potential danger because they could be prosecuted for lying about their son's whereabouts, not because anyone would be able to get a message to Ronald and thereby Harry demanding they turn themselves in in exchange for their lives or something — but she'd written a note to Severus asking him to alert the girl to make her escape anyway, at the Weasleys' insistence. Not that she'd told them who her contact in the Castle was. She might have strongly implied that it was one of the school healers, because she had no intention of spending however long it might take convincing the Weasleys that Sev was still on their side.

Ronald let out a sigh of relief. "Thank God." You can call me Mimi, she thought facetiously, making his ears go adorably pink. "Er...right. Thanks, Mimi." Way to not get the joke... He cleared his throat, his face only growing redder. "And, um. The muggleborns? Missus Cattermole, and everyone? They got out alright?" he asked, clearly concerned that he might've hurt Mary's chances to escape by fucking up the atmospheric charms in Yaxley's office even worse, but also slightly desperate to change the subject.

"Yes, they all obviously had alibis for the attack on Dolly's office, so they were cleared pretty quickly, and the Registration Commission is no longer detaining muggleborns. If your brother's half as good at his job as he seems," she added, nodding to Ron, "he should be able to keep them on a non-genocidal track for the next few weeks, at the very least. I left him in charge of the project, so." She yawned again. "If that's everything, I've been up for...almost forty-eight hours, I think? and like I said, dementors take it out of a girl. So I'm going to take a nap. Do me a favour and stay down here and on the first floor? There aren't any wards here to keep me from dreamwalking into your minds or to keep you from waking me up thinking too loudly."

Her Grimmauld didn't have dreamwalking wards either, actually. Her range was only about twenty feet, but it was omnidirectional, and Grimmauld wasn't actually that large a property, physically speaking. With all the non-euclidean architectural modifications here, she could feel out the entirety of any given floor she happened to be on, as well as the vast majority of the two above and below. The exterior wards were enough to keep her from legilimising the neighbours or random passers-by out on the street, and she'd lived alone (aside from the elves and Lily for a little bit), so she'd never really seen a reason to ward her bedroom. She'd actually taken one right in the middle of the second floor because she liked being aware of the entire property.

But since there were other people here, and they weren't even capable of keeping their thoughts to themselves, it would probably be for the best if she crashed in the attic for the moment, and they stayed well away.

"Um, sure?" Harry agreed, which Mimi took as a collective yes, we'll leave you alone, creepy mind mage.

"Brill."