Harry Potter - Gamer Neighbour
Summary: The new neighbour over the street at Privet Drive number five seems pretty normal, but not Privet Drive normal. But is anyone with the power of the gamer ever even remotely normal? No fucking way.
Disclaimer: I do own some shit, but not any recognizable characters, places or settings in this particular fanfiction.
AN:
Busy month, pretty much like I expected. Thankfully my main job is more mentally and emotionally demanding rather then physically draining, so working on the house after the usual daily grind is over works pretty well so far. Sleeping like a log though and not a whole lot new stuff has been written.
But thanks to writing more then I published for so long, there's still chapters sitting around on my SSD awaiting spellchecking and final tweaks. Just need to summon up the time and energy to actually do that. I managed it this time, but can't promise anything for the foreseeable future.
The new house does have enough structure that it now has a roof over it and I feel a whole lot more confident that I will be able to avoid having to crash elsewhere once I do get kicked out of my current one. My plan to have at least the bedroom and bathroom in place before I get kicked out of here still seems doable.
That's a bit of relief, hopefully not having to stress over failing to meet that particular deadline means that I may just be able to get some writing done in what little spare time I still have. Should probably also go back and revise a bit, flesh out and clarify a few bits.
I m still getting reviews from people who seem to think that Violet s outburst destroyed a bunch of Horcruxes instead of just the one pseudo-Horcrux inside Violets head and then did a bit of collateral damage to the areas around the real Horcruxes while leaving them intact and unharmed. That Nicks amnesia was still in full swing once he met Violet and who are under various misconceptions because I failed to explain just how different the Drakar och Demoner RPGs and World of Darkness RPGs are from the system used by the Gamer and most fics based on the Gamer concept that I've read.
So if there's a random update notice at some point without a new chapter having been posted, it's probably because I replaced chapter one with a revised version that explains a bit more about my fusion of DoD and WoD RPG systems. Not sure if I'll somehow do it in story, in revised author notes or perhaps a combination, time will tell.
Anyways, on to the long delayed chapter instead of my ramblings.
Chapter 15:
"So, I see the red-headed population has grown since my last visit. Escaped convict one too." Tonks continued as she looked around the room. "And it seems like I may actually need to speak with some Aurors specializing in underage sex crimes after all." she added with a teasing grin.
"She-who-always-appears-with-the-worst-timing." Nick groaned once he managed to free his lips from their previous entanglement. "Please do not make this messy situation any worse!" he pleaded in her direction, while trying to push Violet back into her seat on the other side of Lily from him.
"What? You two told me that I didn't need to worry about any naughty business between the two of you, now I find you dragging a second red-head into the mix and with a voyeur present to boot! Though the new one at least seems like she s of age!" Tonks exclaimed and rubbed her hands together. "It's like my birthday, Christmas and paid vacation, all rolled up into one lovely little piece of blackmail material!"
"You are an evil woman, Tonks." Nick grunted as Violet was finally back in her seat and he quickly leaned back away from her, then dragged Lily out a bit from the backrest, turning her to face Violet with him behind her back. "You are my designated meat shield now, Big Red. Your job is to protect me from your randy daughter. If she comes at me again, I expect you to hold her at bay. I raised you from the dead, so you owe me one." he informed Lily, who squeaked at his mock demand and unexpected manhandling.
"Daughter?" Tonks questioned as she walked closer to the couch, coming to a complete stop and turning pale as a ghost as she got a better look at Lily. "L-l-l-l-l, AUNT LILY?!" she stuttered as she recognized the gaunt woman as the older family friend she hazily recalled from her youth and whom she had seen pictures of from time to time afterwards.
"Yeah... Crazy guy here decided to dabble with raising the dead." Violet not-so-helpfully explained with a gesture at Nick hiding behind her mother who merely waved somewhat timidly at Tonks, a confused expression on her face as she tried to identify the new arrival.
"My job..." Tonks moaned, then her forehead furrowed and her expression turned introspective. "Wait, no, perhaps not. Is Necromancy illegal?" she muttered and frantically tried to recall if it was or not. "Don't think it is, actually, just Inferi creation. Probably hasn't been an issue before. Who would be crazy enough to think there might be a need for a law against raising the dead?!" she eventually concluded, still staring at Lily.
"Little Nymphadora? Andi's daughter?" Lily asked, her attention torn between Violet who looked pretty pleased with herself and the shocked-looking woman who had just arrived. Her features were somewhat familiar, but it took her a few moments to connect them to anything and if Nick hadn't said 'Tonks' earlier and the unknown woman not called her 'Aunt Lily', she probably wouldn't have managed to make the connection at all. There was a bit of Andromeda around the nose and cheekbones, but other then that, not much would have made her connect this woman to her old friend Andromeda Tonks.
The pink hair certainly didn't help, although she did recall Andi's daughter being born a Metamorphmagus and had even seen her change hair colours as a child with her own eyes on a few occasions. Pink hair had been amongst the ones she had seen, but it had by no means been the only hair colour she had seen the young girl sport.
"Tonks." the woman insisted. "I refuse to acknowledge that other name." she added with a displeased expression.
"Could have been 'Acantha', 'Alcippe', 'Euphrosyne', 'Phaedra' or 'Terpsichore'." Lily revealed, each name causing Tonks to shudder a bit.
"Alright... Could perhaps have lived with 'Phaedra' I think, but yeah... My family is weird." Tonks grunted. "Is that really you, Aunt Lily?" she asked, still in a bit of shock from recognizing the red-haired woman in front of her.
"I am." Lily replied and shrugged self-consciously. "The daughter-molesting coward hiding behind me brought me back yesterday." she added with a thumb jerking over her shoulder at Nick, who still had his hands on her shoulders, keeping her angled towards Violet.
"Do I need to examine your eyes again, Wondergirl? Did you not see her leaping at me instead of the other way around?" Nick protested. "I am the molested one here!" he complained in mock outrage.
It wasn't like he'd usually complain if a hot girl came at him with intent to kiss, but he did wish Violet wouldn't do so in front of her mother. It appeared that the two of them must have had a chat about him when he was out smoking with Sirius, but it must have been an unexpectedly subdued discussion. He'd certainly not heard any angry shouting or seen them act overly agitated when glancing back at them from time to time while he was out smoking.
Both of them had struck him as the kind of fiery little hellcats that would be unable to remain calm if they found themselves on opposite sides of an argument, so he had wanted them to avoid that talk for as long as possible so the two of them wouldn't find themselves distancing themselves from each other.
He'd be lying to himself if he tried to claim that his desire to have them postpone that conversation was entirely altruistic, but for the lions share it actually was. The two of them had just reunited, it'd be a shame to have their newly restarted relationship break down before it could even really start. Family turning on family was just wrong in his eyes.
But it seemed as if his concerns had been somewhat unfounded or they had just somehow miraculously managed to remain civil in spite of likely having completely different viewpoints when it came to him.
"Wondergirl? Kind of appropriate." Tonks mused with an expression that flitted between shocked, confused, amused and curious, then shook her head. "Alright, I actually have tomorrow off, so I can have the drink I so sorely need now, then get some answers and explanations, then drink some more in an effort to forget everything I asked and probably didn't like the answers to." she declared after a brief moment to consider the situation and the likely course of events during this visit.
"Sirius! Keep her from drinking the good stuff! You're looking at pictures of naked women thanks to me, you owe me too!" Nick snapped over at the bemused Sirius, who divided his attention between the book and what was going on across the room.
"These books are great and all, but..." Sirius started, then gestured over at the various bottles lined up in the cabinet next to the love seat he was reclining in. "I don't even recognize half of this stuff, it's all Muggle and even with the few labels that do look somewhat familiar I don't really know good from bad." he added with a faint shrug.
Nick looked at Sirius with a betrayed expression for a few moments, then sighed and snapped his glare onto Tonks instead.
"If I find you guzzling any of my single malts straight out of a bottle again, I'll knock you out, strip you naked and string you up for public perusal in the middle of Diagon Alley." he hissed warningly. "And Tonks, just so you know, I haven't had physical porn in my possession for at least a decade. So if someone happens to stumble across a 'Red-heads gone wild', 'Sticking it to the gingers', 'Short stacked teenagers', 'Keep it in the family', 'Mother-daughter threesomes' or some such magazine or DVD in my home, I know who to blame for that." he added.
"Aw." Tonks said in a disappointed tone of voice, then pulled out a Blu-ray from her purse. "And here I thought leaving this around somewhere with some conjured white sticky stuff on it would be pretty funny." she continued, tossing him the Blu-ray which he awkwardly caught after hastily removing one hand from Lily's shoulder.
"Jack's Redhead Adventure. Redhead onboard. Yes, the carpet matches the curtains." Nick read off the front cover, then groaned and carelessly tossed it onto the table, then returned to a two-handed grip on Lily's shoulders, still keeping her firmly lodged between him and Violet. "I was just pulling the possibility of you leaving something here out of my arse earlier when Sirius claimed to have found porn, but as soon as I said it, I just knew that it was something you might actually do."
"Aw, you know me so well. It's almost sweet, in a stalkerish kind of way." Tonks flippantly responded. "Ah well, I'll just grab myself a drink, then I think it's time for some more explanations. Seems to be about par for the course in this house. By the way, what's for supper?"
"Chili and laxatives." Nick groused with a displeased expression, looking mournfully over at his liquor cabinet. "Brussel sprout pie for dessert." he added with a glance at a rapidly paling Violet.
In spite of his earlier threat, supper was Spaghetti Carbonara with individual fruit tartes for dessert, no chili or laxatives in sight. Although a slightly pale-looking Sirius had actually been given a Purging Potion after being examined by Nick, so he had kind of been given a magical laxative of sorts.
In spite of Nick's worries, the Azkaban escapee was in remarkably good health given the circumstances. Like Lily, he was a bit gaunt and would certainly need to eat regular meals and perhaps have a few snacks in between those meals. But after a deworming and delousing treatment, then a Purging Potion, there was nothing truly physically wrong with the old dog that food and rest wouldn't fix.
The long stay in Azkaban on a shitty diet had left him with some issues that likely would have resulted in quite the challenge if he wanted to have kids at some point, but apparently Sirius hadn't been too keen on the idea of leaving little kids around when he was younger, so he had actually used a somewhat respected Knockturn Alley 'Healer' to have his little swimmers rendered inert before he even left Hogwarts. He admitted to having some regrets over that youthful decision, or at least regrets that he'd went for a permanent solution rather then a reversible one.
But he'd been pretty miffed at his family at the time and had just wanted the main Black line gone after him, so he'd went for permanent, not being able to imagine ever changing his mind about having kids at the time. Of course, he'd also went for a treatment to gain chocolate-flavoured semen, which he proudly informed everyone present about with waggling eyebrows as he happily told them about all the girls who'd been very appreciative of that particular treatment in spite of Lily trying to get him to shut up about it.
Nick had shaken his head in mute disbelief. He was no stranger to rash decisions in his youth and could certainly well recall his own fears about becoming a teenaged father once he had a few pregnancy scares before he went on the Potion, but he just couldn't imagine ever wanting to go for a permanent solution. He still wasn't ready to become a father, but he did imagine that he would be at some point in the future and to then not have the option to become one?
He had shuddered and offered his mental thanks to his own younger self for not picking quite as drastic a solution as Sirius had. Permanently altering the flavour of his man-juice though? Nick hadn't been aware of that possibility before, but he certainly was now and was giving it serious consideration.
Nick had even given Sirius Animagus form an examination too, but even that was healthier then expected. The Grim-looking dog could use a bit more meat on his bones, but other then that, was remarkably healthy once that form was dewormed and deloused, something which had been necessary for the human form as well.
He was a bit more concerned about possible mental issues from long-term Dementor exposure, but Sirius was overall pretty lucid and rational. There were some concerns, like Sirius not just having thought about stealing food or money instead of eating trash and catching rats to feed himself.
He didn't seem insane in a batcrap crazy kind of way, but there certainly was an occasional odd glitch or two in his reasoning and problem-solving abilities. But other then a few oddities, he checked out pretty well and mostly completed all the logic, reasoning and puzzles Nick tried on the old dog.
He was also carrying around a lot of hate and resentment, perhaps justified it had to be said, but it still wasn't healthy. Nick hoped that some time spent around actual people instead of Dementors and the occasional human prison guard would get Sirius back on the right mental and emotional tracks, because the Wizarding World was crap when it came to mental healthcare.
If a Cheering Charm or Potion didn't help, treatment was pretty much non-existent. Truly dangerous nutcases would be isolated from the general public, but that wasn't treatment, just a way to sweep a problem under the rug. Less dangerous nutcases, would be just allowed to go on about their business as usual.
In spite of having the Mind Arts, with all the various ways they probably could be used to accomplish things Muggle mental health care professionals could only dream about, the Wizarding World didn't have such a thing as mental health care professionals and there was very little research into it.
So if Sirius didn't get any better and Nick couldn't do something on his own to help, there wasn't really anyone else in the Wizarding World that could either. He could bring the Animagus to a Muggle expert, then Obliviate him or her of all knowledge about the Wizarding World, but it'd probably be pretty darn hard for Sirius to make much progress if the person who was supposed to help him do that lost all memories of the patient after every meeting.
Despite some pretty dark thoughts and major concerns, supper with Tonks and Sirius present was a pretty jolly affair, both of them having some pretty funny stories to share in addition to the more boring explanations of just how Lily had been resurrected, why Violet was staying with Nick, the various health issues and things of that nature. Tonks being present also gave Nick an opportunity to embarrass the cheerful Metamorphmagus in revenge for her devious attempt at sneaking porn into his home for Violet to find.
If he had accurately judged Violet, she likely would have just laughed it off and jumped onto the teasing train herself, possibly using it in her campaign to upgrade him to boyfriend status. But if Lily had found it? Yeah, he didn't think she would have just laughed it off. Tonks thus certainly deserved to have the story about her being drenched in olive oil and treated like a tough slab of meat being told.
"Waitwaitwaitwait! Wait just a minute! Did you just say that you almost handed Tonks her arse to her with cooking spells?!" Violet exclaimed in shock and outrage on the Junior Aurors behalf.
"No need to scream it out for the entire world to hear." Tonks muttered in acute embarrassment. "And hey, I won that duel, so it was me doing the arse-handing, thank you very much!" she added fiercely and proudly.
"You try focusing and fighting back after you've been drenched in olive oil and have a meat tenderizing charm banging away at you, Mini Red." Nick laughed and shook his head. "It was pretty darn funny seeing her dropping her wand, slipping around on all fours and squeal like a little piglet."
"That fucking tenderizer..." Tonks groused and shuddered in her seat. "It's like being hit with fifty Depulso spells all at once every couple of seconds. Pretty weak ones, admittedly. But still, it's like taking blows all over your entire fucking body. Eyes, cunt, ears, legs, head, tits, stomach, jaw, ass, nose and even the soles of your ruddy feet. Nothing gets away from being 'tenderized'. That oil spritzer is a real pain too, it gets everywhere!"
"No real defence either, most cooking spells bypass almost all the common shields and you try to cast finite when you're being beaten all over while covered in oil. You kind of jerk when hit too, so it's even harder to stay on your feet, feet now covered in oil as is the ground you're trying to stand on. Holding on to your wand is a bitch as well." Nick laughed on, pointing at Tonks.
"You should have seen her. She was pretty miffed already from when I had told her that I'd give her a handicap and only use cooking spells, then when she almost got completely neutralized by them before she could defend herself, she damn well went nuclear. It was probably her saving grace, really. If she hadn't been so mad, I don't think she would have managed to ignore everything happening to her and get her wand back. Managing to get off a Stupefy in her state was also pretty impressive. I was too busy laughing at her to dodge it, so she got me with it." he continued and chuckled, eyes sparkling with joy as he recollected the spectacle of Tonks slipping around on all fours, desperately trying to get her wand back while being tenderized and cursing frantically.
He didn't care about his loss, he pretty much felt like the winner anyway. It had truly been that funny of a sight.
"The rematch right after was just as fucking bad. Take my word for it, never let this bastard have any advance warning before you spar against him. He'll ruin your day with Runes. I still have nightmares about small cards unleashing hell. Can't even play poker anymore without flinching every time someone tosses a card in my direction." Tonks grunted. "I'd seen him carving his fucking Runes into these big-arse wood sheets before, but didn't know that he'd shrunk them down so he could carry lots of them around in case of a fight breaking out!"
"He kept throwing those bloody card-looking things around and I never knew what sort of fresh hell they'd unleash in my direction or surroundings. It could just as well be a fucking spike-covered rinocerous charging at me as something that covered the ground in a sheet of ice or created electrified tentacles trying to give me a bear hug. He just spammed rapid-fire Piercers at me with his wand while throwing down his fucking Rune cards with his free left hand. Those Piercing spells kept me dodging and shielding, while the distractions just kept piling up. It was just pure luck that I managed to summon the bastard into his own fucking electric tentacle hell before I got impaled by the rhino, trampled by the sodding pool of Sulfuric Acid transfigured into a hippo, bowled over by the size-changing gorilla or molested by grabby electrical tentacles!" she continued with a somewhat frantic and traumatized tone of voice.
"Another couple of seconds and yeah, you would have been toast." Nick agreed with a grin.
"I've never sparred against this fucker since. That one time was more then enough." Tonks snarled and shook her head.
"Got plenty of new ideas and refined some of my old ones after that spar, so it's just as well. Some of the shit in my battle card collection now are real showstoppers." Nick responded with a wide grin, which caused Tonks to shudder again.
"Cooking spells..." Violet groaned in disappointment. "I've never seen you use a single spell in the kitchen, but you use them for fighting? And find the results so funny that you forget to dodge when your opponent retaliates?"
"They hardly take any power at all, all are fast as hell to cast, they are very hard to shield against, some don't have any visible cues at all and the only spell I know of easier to cast non-verbally then most cooking and cleaning spells is Lumos. In the time it takes you to cast one Stupefy, I can probably get off five or six meat tenderizing spells. By the time you've raised one of the few shields that could block them, if you even know that they can be blocked at all, you've probably already been hit and had your concentration broken."
"Some prank spells are similar. Not sure how the Duelling circuit is now, but the jelly-leg jinx was still pretty popular before I got put away." Sirius mused. "It won't end the duel on its own, but it is fast as hell to cast. If you get hit by it, you'll almost inevitably wind up falling over and probably get hit by something much nastier while trying to end it and avoiding falling flat on your face."
"You still see it used pretty often." Nick agreed. "Overpowered Cheering Charms are the same. It's pretty hard to do much if you're busy laughing like a loon, so it's pretty popular to use on those who haven't mastered Occlumency enough to resist the effect or gotten darn good at casting Finite while distracted."
Violet was pretty torn. She imagined Duels as pretty spectacular affairs, Cheering Charms and Jelly-Leg Jinxes certainly hadn't been the sort of spells she imagined being used in them. But she supposed it would be pretty darn hard to put up much of a fight when falling to the ground because your legs just wouldn't support you any longer.
"There's a couple of shielded training rooms for rent in Diagon. We can spend a few hours letting you get a feel for magical fighting once your burns have completely faded." Nick offered.
"Sorry, but I'm calling bullshit. Cooking spells doesn't work on living beings and certainly not on humans." Lily interjected, having just listened for a bit with a confused expression and then pondered what she'd heard.
"Normally, they don't. But the boiling and steaming ones works just fine for shellfish and the like, doesn't it? You don't need to kill crayfish, lobster or clams before boiling or steaming them. If you've ever tried a defeathering charm on a live chicken or a shaving charm on a pig that hasn't been slaughtered, they work just fine as well. It certainly seems that they do work on living things in spite of the commonly held belief, wouldn't you agree?" Nick asked with a faint smile, which caused Lily to stop dead in her tracks, a surprised expression on her face.
"It... It does." she breathed out with astonishment, as she could actually recall boiling a live lobster once with a cooking spell.
"It's all about intent. Most cooking spells are created with the intent of preparing or cooking food, which is why they don't work on humans. I suppose a cannibal might be able to get them to work on a human, but if Tonks were to try and steam my arse, I'm pretty sure nothing would happen." Nick explained and smiled. "The reverse is fortunately for me, not true. I could actually steam her arse if I felt like it."
"But... You modified them, reverse-engineered them and redid the Arithmancy in order to get them to work on humans?" Lily asked, coming to a realization about how he might have managed to get spells to work on other living beings. But she was fairly certain that he'd lose the speed casting edge and that the modified spells would splash harmlessly against most shields in that case.
She had been a deft hand at Arithmancy, Charms and spell modification herself and probably still was, she just hadn t had an opportunity to confirm it after her return to the living world. But she was pretty sure that it just wasn't possible to modify any cooking spell in that way without loosing the advantages he had spoken of.
"No. Targeting others with the intent to harass, injure or kill is the trigger most shield spells look for and that intent infusion is what makes true offensive spells take longer to cast. If I did that, a simple Protego would be able to block them. That cooking spells aren't meant to be used offensively is why they can just slip past most protections, they don't register as something worth blocking." Nick replied and kept smiling at Lily, who was now frantically trying to work out the trick to it.
"Just bloody tell me what I'm missing." she eventually grunted out. "A pervert you may be, but I doubt you're a cannibal."
"Indeed." he agreed with a wide grin. "But I am pretty darn good at the Mind Arts. I can easily pull up and copy the same sort of intent I have when cooking and force that to the forefront while supressing my offensive intent in spite of aiming at a human. I basically trick myself, hypnotize my own mind into believing that I am preparing supper. With that intent firmly in place, the spells work just fine. It's why you can boil living crayfish, you know that you are preparing food, so the spell doesn't get imbued with offensive intent, which would disrupt the delicate spell matrix. You could likely even get most cooking spells to work just fine on a living cow or pig, as long as you were actually planning to cook something with them or like me, tricked yourself into thinking you would." he explained.
"People just believe they don't work on living creatures, the few who have actually tried were likely uncomfortable with the idea and thus failed to cast them properly or tried on living creatures they had no intention of eating afterwards. Some crazy bugger may have actually tried a few on other humans and failed. Then they theorized that cooking spells didn't work on living beings and that faulty theory was then passed along. So when you learned cooking spells, you were told that they didn't work on the living, you believed it and you never tried to disprove it. When they are actually used in situations where people are taught are impossible, most just seem to gloss over it or never even notice in the first place." Nick chuckled.
"I... I... I... To think that... I usually question everything! But cooking spells just didn't seem very important or interesting so I just... I didn't..." Lily stuttered.
"My mother taught me and my siblings to cook both with Muggle and Magic means when we grew up. The first time she showed me the Boiling spell, she was making crayfish. In spite of actually using it on living creatures at the time, she tried to tell me that it didn't work on anything alive. She'd also been taught that it didn't work, but still managed to use it on those crayfish without really thinking about it. I immediately questioned it, since I was fucking watching her doing something she had just claimed was impossible. Later on when I was older, I started questioning WHY it worked on crayfish, but not on hornets, flies, mosquitoes, wasps and the like which I had experimented on. Once I figured it out, well, I started trying to come up with ideas to get them to work on humans anyway, since I was keen on duelling at the time and had noticed what an incredible edge fast spells were." Nick continued.
"That's ruddy brilliant!" Sirius stated enthusiastically.
"More then you think. How many Stupefy's can you cast at the same time?" Nick asked with a glance at Sirius.
"One." Sirius replied drily. "I can cast them pretty fast, but not simultaneously."
"How many Potato Peelers can you get off at the same time?" Nick asked while looking at Lily.
"Six or seven, never tried more." Lily slowly responded.
"I have experimented a bit. I can get off ten Tenderizers at the same time while maintaining decent accuracy, almost thirty if I don't care about missing with about half of them and having shoddy aim with the rest. So if I ever find myself in a situation where I have to fight say six people, I can hit all six at the same time with a Tenderizer. I'd like to see someone unprepared do much of anything right after being hit with that for the first time. Tonks did surprisingly well, but I know she's actually used to taking a few physical hits. Most Wizards and Witches aren't. Sadly almost all cooking spells have a tendency to just fizzle out and fail if you overpower them, which is a shame. Otherwise I could just overpower them and knock out everything in my path with a single Tenderizer before they have much time to react or put up a defence. So they don't put someone out of a fight on their own, but as distractions and to prepare to hit the victim with something much nastier, they're pretty darn kickass." Nick explained with a bit of a disappointed expression at not being able to use his beloved cooking spells to knock out whole groups.
"I somewhat regret not being more attentive when Molly have tried to teach me to cook in the past now." Violet interjected, shaking her head. As much as she liked to eat, preparing food hadn't really been something she had ever shown much interest in. That attitude was anathema to Molly Weasley, so it wasn't unusual for Violet, Hermione and Ginny to get dragged into cooking and housekeeping lessons while the Weasley boys got strongarmed into garden chores instead during the few times Violet had gotten to visit the Burrow.
Even the times she'd went for shorter visits when she'd stayed in Diagon Alley after the incident with Aunt Marge, she'd occasionally been press-ganged into the kitchen for 'lessons'. She actually was a deft hand at Muggle cooking in spite of her lack of interest, due to growing up with the Dursleys where she'd often been forced into the kitchen. But she'd been an uninterested and reluctant student at best when Molly had tried to teach her how magic could be used in the kitchen or the rest of the house.
Being forced to do so much cooking while growing up had certainly left a mark on her, leaving her with an extreme distaste for the cooking process, even if she was a big fan of the eating process.
"I got mom to give me some remedial lessons after that spar." Tonks responded. "Haven't gotten good enough at Occlumency to get into the proper mindset fast enough or while doing other stuff to make it useful it a fight yet. I can do it, but not in a real fight. May be able to use it for an ambush or something though."
Nick blinked at that, then smiled proudly at Tonks. They hadn't discussed it for a while, but the last time they had, Tonks had yet to successfully cast a cooking spell at a human. She must have managed to spend at least some time practising in spite of having a pretty busy schedule as an Auror and a young woman keen to party and socialize with her friends in what little time off she had.
His own relatively open schedule had given him plenty of time over the years to focus on things most people probably wouldn't consider prioritizing. Some didn't really lead to anything truly useful or were just big failures in general, but his curiosity and experimentation with cooking spells for non-cooking purposes certainly had worked out.
Sadly, he hadn't really had any success with it until after he'd lost interest in becoming a professional dueller. But it could no doubt come in handy now when he found himself with a two-legged piece of Voldemort bait living with him.
Two pieces of Voldemort bait, come to think of it. The bastard seemed to have a real hard-on for finishing what he had started with Violet, but he likely wouldn't be all too pleased to find out that Lily was alive either. Nick imagined that the ruddy old bastard would be equally eager to finish what he d started if he found out about Lily being back.
He hadn't really come up with a good way to use cooking spells to actually knock someone out, seriously injure them or kill them. The Boiling spell was briefly painful, but the spell itself had built-in safety features like so many other cooking spells, so it wasn't truly harmful as it cut itself off before doing any true damage. It might be possible to reverse-engineer it and make a new modified one without that safety feature, but it'd probably take months of work, time he just didn't have or at least didn't want to spend on that.
But as distractions, many were pretty darn great. Hit someone with a Boiling spell and while they lost concentration and yelped at the sudden pain, there was no stopping him from casting something that could kill or injure. Landing an insta-win spell was great and all, but landing a distraction first before the insta-win spell hit wasn't too bad either.
The revelation that Sirius had permanently changed the taste of his semen earlier had also gotten his mind working in an odd new direction. He'd browsed through the non-porn bits in occasional tawdry Wizarding magazines in his youth once he was done with the porn bits and seen all sorts of articles, spell instructions and various advertisements.
Most of it had been obvious bullshit and snake oil from assholes out to make a quick buck from horny teenagers, but while he had never made an actual study of it, he knew that there were true working sex spells and potions out there. But other then learning how to make several different anti-pregnancy potions for both male and female users and getting good at the intimate shaving charm, he'd never really bothered learning anything else.
But now?
He'd already mentally written down several orders to the various book shops he frequented. He'd either borrow Hedwig when she got back or pop on over to the Owl Office to send physical copies off at some point. Not only was he now pondering the viability of sex magic for combat purposes, but there were certainly out-of-combat applications for such a thing too, especially for a guy in his very odd and particular position.
But he really fucking digged the notion of incapacitating an opponent with a sex charm, then take them out of the fight with a combat spell while they were distracted. He'd need to do some tests and experiments, but he rather doubted sex charms had the offensive 'flavour' many shields reacted to, so it was possible that he'd be able to learn many more spells that would just slip past most magical shields.
Talk about a happy end!
A very embarrassing end for the victim, but a happy one none the less, depending on the charm used.
Tonks grinned at the two Potters across the table while letting the burn from the rum she was sipping from work its way down her throat.
With the Junior Auror being present, Nick had felt comfortable enough to go with Sirius to check out his old family home and see how viable it might be as a possible bolthole. Sirius had also stated his desire to go through the old family wands, to see if he could find something useable for him, then bring the rest back to see if Lily was compatible with any.
That meant that the three ladies were now left to their own devices and Tonks did have some questions she wanted answered.
The fact that they were likely to embarrass at least one, if not both, redheads was a pretty nice perk. She liked making people uncomfortable and watch them squirm in embarrassment, something she had in common with Nick.
"So. What was the peeping Mutt voyeuristic menage a trois kiss-fest earlier about?" she asked after having had a few sips of her rum.
Lily was clutching a cup of coffee protectively as if it could be taken away from her at any time while sparing Tonks glass of rum the occasional longing glance. Nick had nixed her desire for a drink before leaving with Sirius, but had agreed that coffee seemed fine. During the afternoon, she'd had diluted coffee with the pastries Nick had gotten while visiting the Azores. But she had gotten a cup of undiluted coffee with her fruit tarte earlier and other then the first couple of sips feeling a bit uncomfortable, it seemed that her body was able to handle it just fine.
Violet was sipping from a glass of cider. She'd asked for a glass of rum too, but Nick had just raised an eyebrow, looked at Lily and told her that if she got her mother to approve it, he didn't mind. Of course, after being told that she couldn't drink any herself, Lily had been highly disinclined to grant her daughters desire to drink rum. Being allowed more coffee did not quite make up for not being allowed a true alcoholic drink. So Violet too was looking a bit enviously at Tonks glass of rum while sipping the much weaker cider.
"Nick found out why I've hardly grown at all since I was bit by a basilisk and think he can make it so I can. I figured that deserved a reward." Violet replied easily, her cheeks were a bit pink, but her voice steady and confident.
"The fixer strikes again." Tonks snorted and took another sip. "Tell him about a problem and he won't be able to stop himself from finding a solution. Even when he can't, he'll still be working on it in the background, only to come back a little later with a solution. He'll probably tease, complain and bitch a lot while doing it, but still help." she continued while fingering her belt.
If she was in a hurry, she could actually morph faster then size-changing charms could keep up with. Once after she'd quickly disguised herself as an obese older woman during her Auror stealth training, she'd damn well nearly gotten bisected by the belt she had been wearing at the time. She'd taken fat forms before, but never with the sort of speed she'd taken one during that particular incident. She'd revealed the mishap after a night out with her girlfriends when she'd staggered into Nicks apartment requesting food instead of going to her own place which usually was pretty food-deprived. He'd fed her, listened to her story and for her birthday five days later, he'd given her this belt.
Hestia was a daft hand at Runes and her eyes had widened significantly once Tonks had shown her the belt. She hadn't been able to take her eyes off the Rune arrays lining the inside of the belt for several minutes, before declaring that it was simple, but bloody brilliant. Instead of one single array to change the size of the entire belt all at once, Nick had etched twenty smaller ones that each changed one smaller section of the belt. Thanks to each array having less area to work with, the size-changing was a lot faster then with one single array doing the entire belt.
One single complaint while drunk that she could barely remember and he'd fucking went ahead and solved her problem. He'd even went over her entire wardrobe and done the same for all her clothes. He even kept doing it whenever she bought new clothes.
She fingered the clasp. She'd been aware of the size-changing aspects of the belt and that it never seemed to get dirty no matter what happened to it, but she remembered his off-hand comment a few days earlier about how he could also find the belt and know if Dark Magic was used near it. He had not told her about that bit when she got it and since Hestia who had examined the belt hadn't said anything, he'd likely done it in some way that she hadn't discovered.
She hadn't said anything at the time about his mother-hen overprotective and somewhat controlling nature, but she had certainly committed it to memory for later consideration. Who the hell puts a tracker on their friends? But after initially being somewhat annoyed at him, she had recognized that it was likely something he'd done because he was worried and concerned for her safety due to her line of work and managed to calm down.
Now, she'd calmed down enough and actually found a slight amount of comfort out of touching the belt, secure in the knowledge that he was looking out for her even when he wasn't physically present. The tracking bit was a bit stalkerish and she probably should ask him exactly how it worked to be certain, but she was fairly confident that he wasn't constantly keeping track of where she was, because that would be pretty darn creepy and her success rate in sneaking up on him would likely be worse than it was. But she'd certainly get back at him somehow for putting a tracker on her without letting her know about it.
"You've known him for a long time?" Lily asked, staring down into her cup of coffee with a troubled expression.
"Three, going on four years." Tonks replied and shook her head to clear her mind. "He can be an annoying bugger at times, but somehow managed to worm his way into being one of my best mates."
Lily glanced at Violet for a split second, then back at Tonks as she tried her best to phrase what she wanted to ask in the privacy of her own mind before she actually vocalized it.
"Is he... A good man?" she eventually asked, electing to keep it simple and as non-offensive as she could bring herself to be.
Violet perked up a bit at that, eager to find out what Tonks would answer now when Nick wasn't here to overhear anything.
"As a mate and fellow human being in general, yeah." Tonks replied after a few seconds to consider her answer. "I hadn't started my training as an Auror when we first met, but I knew that was what I wanted to be. We had a few talks about law, morals, conscience, crime and punishment back then and some more later on. We mostly mesh incredibly well, but I've known for years that I don't want to wind up on his bad side." she continued and glanced over at Violet. "Have you explained any about the plans for the future?" she asked.
"Yeah, she knows." Violet replied and Tonks nodded, returning her attention to Lily.
"I was shocked, but in retrospect not surprised, to find out that Nick was plotting to get something done about the corrupted system. I knew that he had issues with our society, hell I have them as well. But where I decided to fight the system from within and be a voice of reason, Nick stays on the outside and looks to be the needle to lance the boil or just burn the entire boil off if lancing doesn't work. He's generally kind, helpful, funny, caring and supportive towards both friends and strangers, but perhaps because of that, he can also be one mean ruthless bastard if he believes it is for the best for those he cares about." she explained and sipped from her rum. "You know how he plans to get the more corrupted members of the Wizengamot out of the country in time for the emergency session?"
"He'll play on their greed and lure them to some meeting." Violet agreed.
"If that works, all well and good. Heck, if the bait is big and profitable enough, it probably will work just fine. But if it doesn't work out, I'm almost afraid to learn what plan B is supposed to be." Tonks responded.
She was honest about that, she did not relish the thought of just how far Nick would be willing to go and the kind of position it could place her in. If it was as she suspected and his plan B involved some more violent, illegal and possibly lethal measures, where would that leave her? Would she have to stand up against her mate, force him to either go for a softer plan C or attempt to put a stop to whatever he had planned, perhaps even bring him in?
She knew the system was flawed, that some people at the very top of it shouldn't be there and how nothing would really improve as long as nothing changed. She realized that killing was sometimes necessary, but in her mind it was preferable to put hardened criminals away for a long time and attempt to rehabilitate them.
The Azkaban treatment of basically putting people in an out-of-sight corner to suffer mental torture for years clearly wasn't working, but if the prison system could be modernized and bereft of happiness-sapping Dementors, she truly believed it could work. She believed that redemption was possible, although certainly not for everyone.
Nick believed redemption was possible and was all for it in many cases, but he just wasn't willing to risk the innocent to give the guiltiest a chance at it. If he had his way, most of the more hardened criminals in Azkaban and some outside who'd bribed their way to freedom, should just be straight up executed on the spot.
She would not be at all surprised if he'd be willing to just straight out start to assassinate the more corrupt members of the Wizengamot. At least in theory and planning, she wasn't entirely sure that someone who could be as kind and caring was actually capable of killing in reality. But if he could and did cross that line and managed to put theory into practise, he could likely be a pretty darn effective killer.
She may have bested him in their only two duels, but she did not relish the thought of facing him in a true fight where their friendship didn t put a damper on things. She did not think she'd seen the limits of those annoying Rune Cards and shuddered to imagine what sort of hell he could unleash if he went all out and focused instead of giggling at his opponent s misfortune. She had seen some of the books in his collection and knew well of his beliefs that anything could be done with Runes as long as you knew what you wanted those Runes to do.
So what might a Rune freak like him be able to get Runes to do with his collection of Chemistry books? Anatomy? Physics? She had often made her way into his apartment unannounced only to find him reading. A lot of the time it was something Rune-related, but it certainly wasn't unusual to find him reading some Muggle science book. With all the weird shit he knew, what would he be able to get Runes to do?
Tonks herself wasn't very good at Runes and only had a fairly rudimentary knowledge of how fire and explosions worked, but she was decently confident that she'd be able to use that pretty basic knowledge to make a magical hand grenade or minor explosive of sorts if she had to. After all, magic was a great crutch that could make up for missing knowledge in return for a heavier magic drain. She had no idea how the Stupefy spell actually knocked someone out, just that it did. But that didn't mean that hers wasn't capable of knocking people out, because magic compensated for her lack of proper knowledge.
But what the hell sort of explosion might someone who knew how nuclear bombs worked and how antimatter acted be capable of generating? She knew about both, but certainly didn't understand either. Nick probably did though. So what the hell might he be capable of if he tried to make a magical hand grenade or even a big bomb?
But she doubted there would be any true fights or truly massive explosions involved if Nick figured people dying was for the best. He'd transfigure hand grenades to snakes and send them through the sewage pipes to blow up when his targets sat on their porcelain thrones using a relatively small but controlled explosion. Use Alchemy to refine poison to insanely deadly degrees then use transfigured mosquitoes to covertly deliver it or use the Mind Arts to have whatever people he figured needed to go do something to kill or otherwise neutralize themselves in some embarrassing or morbidly funny manner.
If people suddenly started killing themselves by breaking their necks after trying to administer oral sex to themselves or something like that, she d certainly go straight to Nick in order to find out just why the hell he d done that.
She wasn't entirely sure that she bought his entire 'Runes are the shit!' way of thinking, but she had seen him pull some seriously impressive stuff seemingly out of his arse. The gorilla that shrunk to the size of a pebble when her wand was turned towards it only to grow back to full size when the wand was pointed elsewhere, that had been... Annoying.
She was a deft hand at transfiguration and could transfigure a gorilla if she felt the need to, but she'd had to use additional spells to change the size of it after it had been transfigured, which took further work and attention after the transfiguration. Nick had used Runes to set everything up beforehand, so once he changed his Rune card with a bit of magic, the gorilla had operated without further input or need for attention from him.
So yeah, she hoped that plan A worked without a hitch, because she was fricking horrified at what plan B might involve.
"You suspect that he'll do... What exactly?" Lily asked.
Tonks thought for a few seconds on how to answer that, then moved her gaze to Violet.
"He may have pushed Miss Kissylips away, but did nothing else and joked right after. Heck, he lets her stay in his house, so close to his precious single malt collection, so he likes and cares for her." she replied and chuckled. "So if he decides that a bunch of corrupt old men might inconvenience or even threaten her somehow? I'd say that they should consider themselves lucky if all that happens is that they find themselves forcibly Portkeyed to the shit tank in a waste reclamation facility when they're trying to get to the emergency session."
She supressed a shudder.
There certainly were a whole lot worse places a Portkey could deposit someone then an oversized tub of excrement, but that was still pretty darn bad.
"I drank half a bottle of thirty year old single malt whisky once when I raided his booze cabinet back in his old apartment. I had never seen someone completely frozen in horror before that incident. Once he was capable of movement again, he offered me a strained smile and said nothing further about that. Everything seemed fine for the rest of the weekend and most of the next week. When I got off from training on Friday afternoon after that incident, looking forward to the weekend off, he ambushed me before I could leave the Ministry. He transfigured me to a toilet brush and left me in a male bathroom." Tonks revealed and shuddered at the memory, while the other two ladies looked in horrified shock at her, unconsciously jerking back away from her as if she was permanently dirtied in some manner.
Tonks didn't blame them.
"He'd hit me with a notice-me-not and came back for me after an hour or so, so nobody used me or even spotted an additional pink toilet brush in there, but I didn't know that he'd hidden me. I don't think I've ever been that horrified in my entire life, wondering if the next person to walk into the loo would be the one who'd use me to clean up the toilet after their Indian Curry lunch wanted out." Tonks continued with a displeased expression.
"Fucking hell..." Violet breathed out.
"Well, I certainly learned to not just carelessly guzzle down the 'good stuff' after that scare. But that's what he did to someone he likes when pissed off! Granted, he protected me from actually being used and 'just' scared me, but I didn't know that when I was a toilet brush! I didn't know about the notice-me-not until he'd returned me back to normal." Tonks shivered, the memory of just sitting on the bathroom floor without being able to do anything as people came, used the bathroom and went was still pretty darn vivid in her mind. She had far too many vivid memories of less-then-attractive hairy male arses for her peace of mind.
"So yeah. He's normally one of the kindest, most caring and supportive people I've ever met, a real mate through thick and thin. But piss him off and you'll find out that he can also be a ruthless vindictive traumatizing heartless bastard who'll hit you in the way you least expected, from a direction you weren t even aware existed and at a time you believed yourself to be completely safe." Tonks finished.
"I have good news and bad news. Since I like finishing on a good note, you get the bad news first." a somewhat cheerful albeit somewhat disturbed-looking Nick announced as the two men returned with a faint popping noise after almost two hours.
In spite of his announcement, he didn't say anything right away and instead kicked off his shoes and headed towards the booze. As he passed Tonks, he glared suspiciously at the glass in her hand, but seemed to take no issues with the half-empty glass of rum or the nearby bottle she had gotten occasional refills from. He poured himself a tall glass of whisky and after what seemed a bit of hesitation, poured a second glass which he brought over to Sirius who'd gotten rid of his own shoes and then ambled over towards the TV couch where the ladies were seated.
"The bad news is that Sirius likely is the sanest Black who ever lived, the rest of his family seems to have consisted out of some of the most paranoid crazy motherfuckers who ever lived. I have never even heard of Wards this crazy or nasty on a family home before. Not only is the building itself heavily Warded from outside threats, but they put down multiple internal Wards and Curses as well. Even with the Wards on the lowest setting, the entire house is still a freaking health hazard. I don't even want to imagine stepping out of any of the few safe zones if the Wards are brought up to the highest setting." Nick announced after taking a long sip from his glass after handing the other to Sirius.
"I've been saying the same for most of my life." Sirius agreed with a grin and took a cautious sip from his own drink, then smiled wider and took a large swallow from it after confirming that it was drinkable. "A right bunch of utter nutters, every single one of them."
"With the Wards up on the highest setting, the toilets will shoot metal-meltingly hot fire at whomever is stupid enough to use them without having been keyed into the Ward scheme AND using a complicated password before using them. You get no arguments from me. The Blacks were all fucking insane. One of the books grew arms and legs, then pulled a knife on me when I walked through the library! I admire the creativity, but how fucking crazy do you have to be to even think of that in the first place? One of the mirrors in what used to be the Mutts brothers room has a Blinding Curse on it that will become active if you speak about Muggleborns in complimentary terms. I shudder to imagine just how many mental asylums should have been filled with members of your family." Nick complained and shook his head. "And that fucking elf! I thought Dobby was a tad off, but that bastard doesn't just take the cake, but the entire fucking bakery!"
"Kreatcher is an... Acquired taste." Sirius agreed. "One I've never acquired." he added with a distasteful expression.
"I doubt anyone even remotely resembling sane would, so he fits right into that place! Your mothers painting will shoot poison darts at anyone trying to remove it! Not at intruders in case someone is actually crazy enough to attempt a break-in, but at anyone trying to remove it! I could understand if it was an anti-theft measure that wouldn't touch people keyed into the Wards, but that shit will happen no matter if you are keyed in or not! Then Curses that can just spring into action no matter if the Wards are fully up or not?! Who does that?!" Nick ranted on.
"My mother was a crazy devious bitch and she was not the first one in the family by a long-shot." Sirius commented with a happy grin, seemingly happy to find common Black-hating ground with Nick.
"Soooooo, not a good bolthole then." Violet summed up with a bemused expression.
"Oh no. It's great for that! Slap some more shit for concealment on it and it's more or less impenetrable. I doubt even fifty of the worlds greatest Curse Breakers cooperating would be able to safely unravel that mess in less then a month or two, unless they just decide to Fiendfyre the entire building into the ground. Which I think it may be Warded against and I wasn t even aware that you could Ward against freaking Fiendfyre! I'm not sure for how long those Wards have been up or how many crazy motherfuckers have added to them over the years, but I wouldn't attempt to mess with them for all the gold in the world. So as a bolthole, it's awesome, as long as you know how to avoid getting killed or disfigured while staying there. Thankfully Sirius grew up there and my Mage Sight is pretty helpful with the things he's forgotten about or just was never told about, so we should be able to map the place out and let you know what to do and what not to do." Nick replied with equal amounts of horror and enthusiasm.
"Books wielding knives..." Lily groaned and shook her book-loving head. "That's nightmare fuel, right there." she added and directed a sympathetic gaze at Sirius. "I always thought you were exaggerating when complaining about your family."
"Not really, no. Reg was Death Eater and he was one of the more normal ones. Even the few 'nice' ones I got to meet were all a bit bonkers." Sirius easily admitted.
"So, yeah. Great bolthole. The bad news is that it's filled with disgusting and dangerous crap, an insane elf, a painting that can shoot poison darts, dirt, cursed furniture and a vibe more suitable to a haunted house then a place to live in." Nick summed up. "Good news number one is that with a bit of work and a lot of cleaning, it should be a great place to evacuate to if needed, though not necessarily a place I would want to stumble around in while drunk. Good news number two is that Sirius found a wand suited to him and brough the entire collection over for Lily to look through. Good news nu..." he continued, but got cut off.
"Wands? Let me see them!" Lily interrupted him and Sirius offered a pouting Nick an even wider grin as he approached the excited red-head and put a small wooden chest down on her lap. He opened it up and gestured theatrically at two small wooden levers and a counter revealed now when the lid was open. The chest itself seemed empty. Sirius pointed at the counter.
"Slot 87 out of 342 in use. Or well, 341, but I haven't managed to figure out how to get the chest to realize that 87 is empty now." he pointed out and pulled the right lever, which caused the bottom of the chest to fade to darkness, while a new bottom rose from seemingly out of nowhere, an old dusty wand resting on it. "Slot 88. Right to go higher, left lever to go lower." he explained and Lily started pulling the levers, observing the chest offering up different wands in all slots except 87, which is apparently where Sirius had found his new wand.
Lily fiddled away with the chest, reaching inside it to touch the various wands it revealed to her. It didn't take very long until she found a suitable wand in slot 102, which she caressed with a faint smile after having removed it from the chest.
"Good news number three, is that I am awesome." Nick declared once Lily had a new wand and was ready to focus again. "Mage Sight usually just means that you can see if something is magic or not, but I also get impressions of the magic I see, which allows me to somewhat see what sort of magic it is. If someone casts a spell I've never heard of before, I can still somewhat tell what it'll do in very broad terms. Just by looking at a Ward for a few seconds, I get a sense of what it'll do that would take a trained Curse Breaker an hour or so to discover. Anyway, because of my awesomeness and highly refined Mage Sight, I got a bit curious about just why the fuck there was another Soul inside that house besides the Mangy Mutt, the crazy elf and the awesomeness that is me. Or rather, a piece of a Soul. So good news number four is that because I'm awesome and curious, we found another Horcrux." he announced and bowed to the three ladies. "You may praise and bask in my awesomeness now. Feel free to applaud. Please refrain from throwing your panties at me or other acts of crazy fangirling however."
"Did the two of you perhaps run into any booze in that house too?" Tonks snorted, well acquainted with drunk Nick and his antics, thus suspecting that something was up.
"My family has collected both wine and fire whisky for centuries. Nick really took to the collection." Sirius replied with a grin. He normally would have been all for guzzling his way through whatever booze wound up in his path, but had refrained for once. Nick had ogled the fire whisky collection with eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets when they first came across it and before they left, he'd returned to it and had tasted small amounts from several bottles while Sirius merely bemusedly observed the younger man who gushed enthusiastically over everything he tasted.
Fire whisky was a potent enough brew as is and only grew more so with time, so even the relatively small amount Nick had tasted his way through packed quite the punch, as several of the bottles he'd tried had been resting in the Black collection for multiple centuries. He wasn't fall-on-his-face-drunk, but he certainly seemed more relaxed and jollier after he started to taste his way through the collection.
"I'll put some coffee on." Tonks declared and got onto her feet, snatching Nick s glass away from him. "I'll put this away for now. You shouldn't be adding to whatever is already in your system until after you've put your paws all over Violet again." she said and Nick pouted at her for a few moments, before giving off a sigh and nodding begrudgingly.
"You cutting me off is a weird turn of events, Detective Prankpants." he said rubbed his temples. "But yeah, coffee is probably a good idea." he agreed after a quick glance at Violet s condition while Tonks chuckled.
She was pleased to see happy Nick rather then contemplative Nick. It was a bit of a coin toss as to what Nicks initial stage of drunkenness would be.
Option one was that he would be jolly, almost overly friendly and kind of a goof like he seemed now. The alternative was that he'd be quiet, thinking deeply about whatever grabbed his attention and withdraw into his own thoughts until someone jerked him out of them. He always remained remarkably coherent, coordinated and perceptive through either initial stage, but happy Nick was a lot more fun.
But if she had let him continue drinking, he might have crossed over from the initial stage and that was where most of their crazy adventures got started. That was always a hoot and a half, but it probably wasn't a good time for that now. Especially as in spite of her own sips of Rum, she had noticed the Magic Burns on Violet darkening somewhat. She didn't seem as stiff as the last time Tonks had seen the Burns starting to act up and they weren't as dark, but it probably would be a good idea if Nick didn't get himself roaring drunk before the young Potter had gotten a massage.
There had been ample time for conversation between the three women during the hours Nick and Sirius had been away.
Tonks was well aware that she may give off the first impression of being somewhat of an airhead, but you didn't get the NEWT's to get accepted into the Auror force, make it through Auror training or get the attention of the near-legendary Mad-Eye by being an airheaded simpleton.
She'd chuckled and laughed when told that Lily had thought Nick had fingered Violet right in front of Lily, grinned and tittered as Lily had asked pointed questions about Nick and while she hadn't outright lied, she certainly hadn't shared everything and deflected questions a bit at times.
It was pretty clear to her that Lily wasn't a big fan of Nick, just as it was pretty clear that Violet was. The snogging scene she'd arrived to earlier hadn't been necessary for that to have become evident to someone as perceptive as she actually was.
At the current stage, with him still mostly in control, at most she could see him trying some stupid joke or tease that could possibly backfire, since Lily was already on high alert around him. But if he had kept drinking?
She wasn't quite sure, but it was likely for the best to entirely avoid having to find out. No point in chancing him upsetting Lily even further, as Tonks had no doubt that Lily would be just as involved in their little conspiracy as the rest of them.
Their little group could ill afford serious internal conflicts if they were to actually have a shot at not only getting rid of Voldemort, but in the process of doing that, pretty much completely shatter the current status quo Wizarding Britain had been in for so long.
So, she'd have her mates back and keep him from doing something irrevocably stupid when drunk. It's what you did for good mates.
But dang if today hadn't been a treasure trove of future blackmail and the day wasn't even over just yet!
Stocking up on blackmail material in case you needed to cut your mate down to size at some future point was also what you did for or rather to good mates.
And if you asked Tonks herself, she was the very fucking best of mates imaginable.