Chapter Seven

As it turned out, Tonks had achieved only half of the things she had set out to do (well she liked to think of it that way, anyway), for when she woke, the sun had already set and she could smell the stew being made for dinner downstairs. She groaned, sitting up and stretching. Her stomach took that opportunity to make rather impolite noises. In her worry that morning, Tonks had not eaten breakfast, nor was she awake to eat lunch or afternoon tea. She slipped her feet into her slippers and went down to the kitchen to investigate what stage dinner was at.

Andromeda smiled as she heard her daughter approach. "Good evening," she said good-naturedly.

"Hi," replied Tonks, taking a spoon from the cutlery drawer and scooping up some stew from the pot. "Not bad," she said approvingly.

Andromeda pretended to look offended. "Only 'not bad'? I'm hurt!"

Tonks laughed. 'It's delicious, as always. When will it be ready?"

"Not long. Five or ten minutes, maybe."

As soon as it hit her plate, Tonks wolfed down her dinner, earning rueful looks from both her parents.

"Why are you in such a hurry tonight, Dora?" Ted asked amusedly.

"I didn't end up practising any spells today so I wanted to at least go over some of the theory before Monday," Tonks replied through a mouthful of stew. In no more than sixty seconds, Tonks was polishing off the last forkful of her dinner. Without another word, she levitated her plate to the sink and charmed the scrubbing brush to do her washing up for her.

The remainder of the night was spent going over the theory for the spells she had learnt. She wrote out each spell, what it was used for, the incantation and wand movement, then read it over and over again until she could recite it from memory, word for word. Feeling satisfied but exhausted by the early hours of Saturday morning, Tonks collapsed into bed to sleep for a few hours until she had to get up again.

She awoke with the sun's rays filling her bedroom with warm, pale light. She took her time to get out of bed, knowing that it was a tad too early for her parents to be awake. After basking in the sunshine filtering through her window for a while, she got out of bed, dressed in her favourite pair of baggy jeans and her Weird Sisters t-shirt, and went to her mirror. She wasn't really in the mood for a normal hair colour. Unsatisfied with her trademark shade of bubblegum pink, she morphed her hair green through violet through maroon, Tonks finally settled on turquoise waves which fell to her waist. She then added a box fringe. She thought it completed her look rather nicely.

Happy with her appearance for the day, Tonks went downstairs to make a cup of tea and enjoy the peace of the morning until her parents woke up. Lost in thought, Tonks didn't register that her parents had joined her until her father came up from behind and gave her shoulders a squeeze.

"Good morning, Dora. Lost in thought there, are we?"

After recovering from her shock, Tonks replied, "Yeah. I just went away with the fairies for a bit there."

"So what are you planning on doing this weekend?"

"I might go to Honeydukes sometime today. I've had a craving for chocolate for days."

Ted chuckled. "Don't let your mother hear that. She'll have a fit."

At that moment, Andromeda entered the kitchen. "Why am I having a fit?" she asked.

Tonks grinned. "You're not. Being the brilliant daughter that I am, I'm going to go to Honeydukes today and get us all some chocolate."

"I see," said Andromeda, amused.

By mid-morning, Tonks had arrived at Hogsmeade. She loved it here. Even though she was an Auror trainee with hardly any money, she still enjoyed looking around at the shops and planning what she would buy when she could afford it. However, she always found that she could always spare enough money for a bar of Honeydukes' chocolate.

The smell as Tonks walked into the sweet shop was delicious. Honeydukes had to be the best-smelling place in Hogsmeade, as well as the most colourful. Sweets of every colour, shape and size filled the displays. Tonks gazed longingly at the treats before turning away with the bars of Honeydukes' finest chocolate and making her purchase.

"Tonks!" called a voice from behind her. She turned around, recognising the voice of Stefan Davenport.

"Wotcher," Tonks greeted him.

"Hi there," he replied. "We missed you at training on Friday. Where were you? We were kind of worried. We asked Mad-Eye, but all he would say was that you were away for personal reasons. Is everything alright?"

She nodded. "Yeah, everything's fine. I just needed some time to myself to see where I'm at with training. I talked to Mad-Eye on Friday before training and he was really good about it. He let me have the day off."

Stefan's eyebrows disappeared into his fringe. "Really? But he's really pedantic about us not missing any sessions. How on Earth did you convince him to let you off?"

Tonks shrugged. "I didn't. I told him what was going on and he gave me some advice and told me I could have the weekend to smooth things out."

Stefan walked over to a bench, sitting down and gesturing for Tonks to do the same. "So what's up?" he asked, with what sounded to Tonks like genuine concern.

Picking dirt out of her shoe, Tonks sighed heavily. "I was just having a bit of an emotional crisis. It was stupid, really."

Stefan looked at her, frowning. "I'm sure it wasn't," he pressed. "Tell me about it and I'll decide for myself."

Tonks looked at him in surprise. Why did he care?

"Well… you know how I didn't tell you guys that I was a Metamorphmagus?"

"Yeah…" said Stefan.

Everything that Tonks wanted to say came out in a huge rush. "I didn't because I didn't want you guys to treat me any differently. I just wanted to be a normal Auror trainee, a normal witch for once. And then I morphed by accident and you lot made a huge fuss. It's not that I blame you or anything… it just sort of threw me off, 'cause I'd already put heaps of pressure on myself because, like you probably already know, I was already having trouble with the stuff we've been doing. The reason I went to Mad-Eye was because I was going to quit."

Stefan looked at his feet. "Oh."

Tonks laughed mirthlessly. "It's stupid, isn't it?"

"Of course not," he replied fiercely. "We treated you really badly Tonks. I'm so sorry. I… we didn't even think about what we were doing."

Tonks shook her head. "Don't worry about it. Moody made sure that I had my head screwed on right."

Stefan clasped her shoulder gently. "But I really am sorry. I hope you know that."

Tonks nodded, and they fell silent. After a moment, Tonks pulled out her bar of chocolate from the Honeydukes bag. Tearing it open, she offered her companion a piece. "Chocolate?"

"Thanks," said Stefan, accepting the chocolate.

The rest of the afternoon was spent talking about everything from Quidditch to Pygmy Puffs. Things were finally looking up.