Stepping into the kitchen, the first place in the house that Hermione had seen that looked almost habitable, they were met by Sirius and a cute blonde chick that Hermione thought looked to be a few years older than herself.
"Hi Hermione — welcome to Grimmauld Place, the home I grew up in that I'd hoped I'd never have to set foot in again," greeted Sirius dryly. "And this is Tonks, my cousin."
"Pleasure to finally meet you — Sirius has told me all about you," said Tonks, holding out her hand for Hermione to shake, which she promptly did.
"So what is the Order of the Phoenix, and why is it meeting here of all places?" asked Hermione, looking around. "No disrespect, Sirius, to your family home, but this place is a complete dump that would be condemned in a heartbeat by any muggle health inspector."
"None taken in the least," replied Sirius. "And the Order of the Phoenix is the group of us who fought against Voldemort the first time around — plus a few new recruits like Tonks here — who are fighting against him again since the Ministry refuses to pull their heads out of their arses. And we're meeting here because my family put every charm they could think of on this place to keep it from being discoverable by anyone they didn't want to. So while the house itself might kill you, there won't be any Death Eaters getting in to kill you."
"That's enough, Sirius!" barked Mrs Weasley. "Tell her any more and you might just as well induct her into the Order straightaway!" Turning to Hermione, she continued saccharinely, "Come on dear, I'll just show you up to your room that you'll be sharing with Ginny and get you settled in, and then after lunch you can join us helping clean up this place and make it look a little nicer."
Hermione figured she had more of a right to be a part of the group fighting Voldemort than Mrs Weasley did, given the fact she'd actually helped Harry fight Voldemort before even if she'd never come face to face with the tyrant herself yet, and she'd never heard in four years of a single thing Mrs Weasley had ever done to stop Voldemort other than refuse to say his name and wince when she heard it, but Hermione could already tell that the Matriarch always got her way around there, and so it would just be a giant waste of time to ask to be inducted.
So instead she walked over to Tonks and whispered quietly into the older girl's ear, "This house seems huge — is it actually necessary to double up rooms?"
Tonks shook her head.
Turning back to Mrs Weasley, Hermione said politely but firmly, "I'm sorry if you don't like it, but I'm not sharing a room with your daughter. I'll share a room with her" — here she nodded over towards Tonks next to her — "if she'll have me, or else sleep in a room of my own, but I'm not sharing a room with Ginny."
Based on what Ron had let slip the day after Christmas the previous year, Mrs Weasley was trying to force Harry to marry Ginny one day, and her to marry Ron, and the overbearing woman had already taken her away from her parents and by extension Harry that morning — there was no way in bloody hell she was sharing a room with any of them. She may not have got to know this Tonks girl yet, but she seemed nice enough, and Hermione had always had a knack for being able to tell what kind of person someone was just from a first encounter.
The Matriarch stared at Hermione in shock, once again not used to anyone refusing to bow to her every whim, but Hermione merely crossed her arms over her chest and stared back at the older woman defiantly.
Tonks and Sirius watched the scene with interest for several long seconds, until it became clear that the staredown could go on forever, so Tonks piped up, "I'll take you up to my room, Hermione. I can conjure up another bed, and there's plenty of room in there."
Then she walked out of the kitchen, Hermione following right behind her. Hermione wondered for a second if Mrs Weasley would try to stop them, but apparently the Matriarch could tell she was outnumbered three to one, and so merely glared at their backs as they exited, before turning to glare at Sirius for a while longer after they'd left for not siding with her and stopping them.
As Hermione and Tonks reached the landing they'd first come in on, Tonks flicked her wand at Hermione's trunk, levitating it in front of them so they wouldn't have to carry it up the stairs.
She also said in a low tone as they passed by a portrait frame with curtains covering it, "That's a portrait of Sirius's mummy dearest that we can't remove, that screams its head off any time it's awoken — usually by my clumsiness or some argument someone's having with Mrs W. And let's just say, Sirius's mum is not happy having a bunch of people who aren't strict purebloods in her house."
Continuing up the stairs past a row of shrunken house elf heads, Tonks continued on, "When the Black family house elves became too old to be useful, they would chop off their heads and mount them. The house is just down to one house elf now, Kreacher, who's spent the last decade serving the portrait of Sirius's mum, followed by suddenly not being allowed to do anything by Mrs W and the sudden influx of non-family and non-purebloods, so he's understandably in a right state right now. Sirius thinks he's senile and a nutter, and won't even try to understand the shock Kreacher is going through, while Mrs W more or less simply pretends Kreacher doesn't even exist, I guess because for whatever strange reason the Weasleys haven't had any house elves of their own for generations despite being an ancient pureblood family. And everyone else pretty much just follows the marching orders of those two. Dumbledore's half-heartedly told Sirius and some other people that they should treat Kreacher nicer, but he hasn't actually done anything to make them be nicer to the house elf, or kick them out if they don't. And I'll admit, Kreacher's definitely a strange one, but he spent almost his entire, quite long life serving the Blacks, who for the most part have been very Malfoy-like in their purebloodedness, and now has suddenly been thrown into the completely opposite world while being denied the ability to do what his purpose in life is — serving. So it's little surprise he's gone a little around the bend, and it's sadly probably only going to get worse the longer they keep treating him like they are."
By this point they had made it up to the fourth floor and walked partway down the hall.
Stopping between two doors, Tonks said, "My room's that one, but the room next to it is empty, if you want your own room. I just told Mrs W you could share my room since the empty room hasn't been cleaned at all yet, and there's no way she would even grudgingly acquiesce to letting you sleep in a room she hasn't approved of as being cleaned. And the house definitely has a lot of dangerous things in it, but I'm an auror, and you're the smartest student at Hogwarts, so between us we can easily make it safe enough to sleep in for tonight, and keep working on it some each day until it's completely clean — just be alert and stay away from anything we haven't looked at yet."
As Tonks pushed open the door to the empty room, Hermione said, "Sirius wasn't kidding when he said the house might kill us even if Death Eaters and Voldemort can't, was he?"
"Unfortunately, no," replied Tonks. "A decade of abandonment after centuries of what would now be considered dark wizards, even though they never joined ranks with Voldemort, Grindelwald, or any of the other power-hungry tyrants over the years, has led to lots of dangerous artifacts and creatures and everything else living in here now. But a little magic, and anything that might try to kill you while you sleep should be all taken care of — but a word of warning, when Mrs W makes you start cleaning with everyone else this afternoon, she's going to try to make you do it entirely muggly. I'm sure if you challenge her, her excuse will be that you're underage, even though we all know that the Trace is meaningless here, but she's been making her kids, even the twins who are of age and can legally perform all the magic they want, clean everything by hand. So just be prepared for a fight when you pull out your wand to clean things the efficient way."
"Thanks for the warning," said Hermione, as she stared around at the dusty, abandoned room. "So how do we do this?"
"Scourgify's the best for all the general dust, grime, and mold," answered Tonks. "The vacuum cleaner spell will get all the dirt out from tight corners and off curtains and bed sheets and such that Scourgify doesn't get well enough. Petrificus for most moving objects be it pests or enchanted objects, and stationary dark artifacts are best handled individually as we come to them as they're all different."
So Hermione and Tonks pulled out their wands and set to work. By the time they heard Mrs Weasley calling for them to come down and join everyone else for lunch in the bedroom all the Weasleys had been cleaning muggly all morning, the two of them had Hermione's room shining brightly, and free from anything that could attack her under it's own volition. They even had several dark artifacts removed and stuck in a box in Tonks's room where she was storing them until she could take them in to the aurors office to be destroyed or disenchanted.
"In my official position as a qualified auror, I declare this room safe for occupancy," said Tonks as they looked around. "Nothing else potentially dangerous in here can harm you without you getting too close to it."
"Then let's go get some lunch, and face the music of trying to speed up their cleaning process by being smart," smirked Hermione in reply, before suddenly noticing something about her cleaning-mate. "Um…Tonks? Wasn't your hair blonde and several inches shorter when we started? Because it definitely wasn't lime green."
Tonks smirked back, as her hair slowly changed to deep blue, then on to purple, through pink, and finally settling on lime green again, only with horizontal bands of orange running though it this time.
"You're a metamorphmagus!" gasped Hermione, finally understanding.
"I knew the smartest girl at Hogwarts could figure it out," smirked Tonks. "But yes — I am a metamorphmagus, and can change any part of my body at will. But I just normally change my hair, unless I'm on an auror mission I need to change my looks for for any number of reasons, or if I'm going to have to do a lot of running so there's less bouncing."
"Most girls would use that skill for the opposite reason," replied Hermione with a smile, looking at Tonks' still small chest. "At least based on the number of potions and spells I've seen tried by my dormmates over the last couple years."
"Oh yeah — none of my dormmates, or anyone else who put together that I was a metamorphmagus when I was at Hogwarts could ever understand why I didn't use it to change myself into their definition of beauty and attractiveness," answered Tonks. "But that's just never been me — never worn makeup, either, even for the few dates or couple of fancy events thrown by Hogwarts during my seven years there. The hair's fun to play with, though I usually go eccentric more than alluring, but my looks are how they are, and if someone doesn't like them, we obviously wouldn't be meant for each other anyway."
"I totally agree," replied Hermione. "For the Yule Ball last year, all I did was dress robes, that weren't anywhere near as fancy and extravagant as most of the girls', and just a tiny bit of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion so it would be close enough to wavy instead of this normal bushy mess that I could wrap it up slightly fancy to go with the dress robes and fancy atmosphere — but that was all I did, and why it only took me fifteen minutes to get ready instead of the three plus hours I heard some of the other girls talking about it taking them to get ready. Harry asked me out, the girl he hung out with every day who never wears any kind of makeup or anything else, so why would I change to look like something different for what he invited me to? And putting on a bunch of makeup to look 'natural', instead of just being natural, is just plain stupid in my opinion."
"Totally," nodded Tonks. "If I'm already with a friend, or already dating a guy, I don't mind having a little fun every once in a while with what I can do, it is a cool gift, but I'm not going to change the physical me to get someone to like me. But Mrs W might physically change our backsides with a switch if we don't get down to lunch, so we should really get going," she finished with a smirk.