It's time for chapter 3…Yippee! Thanks to all of you who reviewed. I really appreciate it. I hope you enjoy this. Each chapter is getting a little easier and it's because I know I have readers, so, thanks again. Keep reading and reviewing and I will keep writing.

This chapter is dedicated to my awesome beta Chloe because she rocks my socks.

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Of Meetings and Maps

The meeting took place in the kitchen; they discussed the prophecy a bit this time. None of them knew anything about it. Dumbledore said it was very important that it did not fall into Tom's hands. All of them had questions, but he was not giving any answers. Somehow he had gotten the floor plans of the Ministry that laid out where the hall of prophecy was, and where they would be standing guard. The hall was safe enough during the day but at night it was open game, so one of the Order members would be standing guard every night.

After that was discussed, she had to listen to Snape go on and on about He Who Must Not Be Named and his plans for the future weeks. I appreciated what the man was doing for us, but must he present the same idea twenty times. I started to play with my hair, thinking if I did it long enough, maybe Snape would get the idea and stop jabbering. I grew it longer, and let the spikes fall out. I let it grow till it touched my shoulders then halted it and started to braid it. As I finished each braid I would change it a different color. The first was neon green, the next was electric blue, and then orange quickly followed.

I looked across the table and nodded like I was listening and saw Remus hiding a grin as he looked at my hair. I glanced over at Snape, he was not grinning at all, as a matter of fact, the angry professor looked like he was fixing to have a conniption fit. As he looked at my hair, aggravated by its brightness, I purposely made it grow brighter.

"Tonks," he said in a deathly calm voice, "Can you stop acting like a child and pay attention?"

"I don't know what you mean Severus, I am behaving like I do all the time," she said cheekily.

"Well then," he drawled, "Why don't you tell us all what I was just discussing?" He said in a voice reserved for his students.

"Why should I let the rest of the Order be bored while I reinstate the facts you just spent the last hour telling us about twenty different times? I believe we all have better things to do, like dinner, but if you insist, you were talking about He Who Must Not Be Named and his plans for attaining the prophecy and freeing the prisoners of Azkaban. I think that about covers it."

She glanced up to his face and saw his scowl deepen and smiled more largely and went right back to braiding her hair.

Snape sighed loudly and said, "I have said all I am going to say tonight, good-bye," and with that he was out the front door with the rest of the order quickly following.

Soon, all that was left was Bill, Remus, Sirius, and her, and then as soon as the room cleared there was a great outbreak of laughter followed by congratulations for smarting off to Snape without getting cursed.

"It's a gift. I used to sit and do that at the end of class and he would just get angry, but could not do anything except deduct points. I never got a detention because of it."

"Oh," said her cousin then, "What did you get detention for?"

"Well in 4th year I was having a bad day; you know the kind, I tripped, broke all of my quills, and failed a test. Basically, it was an extreme Tonks day, so I walked into class and I don't know, it had to have been about halfway through the lesson, we started to argue and I said something along the lines of, 'those who can not fight brew,' and he took offense for some reason. Stupid greasy git ruined my no detention streak I had going that year. Granted, it was only the second week. I had to disembowel horned toads with no magic for a week. I swore I was never going to do that again in my life and I have kept that promise."

"Ah," said Sirius, "So there is a bit of a prankster in you. I bet you pulled all kinds of stunts at school."

"Yep, but it would not have been possible without a map me and Charlie found in third year. It was called the Marauder's Map, It was great, it took us the better part of that year to get it to work, but when we did, man that thing was dead useful," she noticed the table was quite and then she heard Sirius' voice.

"That's just so odd, I can't believe my cousin ended up with that map," he said looking at Remus who was shaking his head with a grin on his face.

"What are you guys talking about?" asked Tonks.

"That map you guys found, we made it, Remus, James, me, and the rat," he said the last part with a sneer, "For us to pull pranks."

"Wow that is odd. I wonder who has it now. It was confiscated from us in 6th year," She said quizzically.

"Harry," said Remus' quite voice, "Harry has it. I gave it back to him in his third year before I left."

"Now talk about a full circle," she said.

The group sat quiet for a few minutes then heard the noises on the stairs that signaled the kids were coming down to eat. Dinner was great; she played her nose game with Hermione and Ginny and kept glancing at Remus. It was so hard to keep her eyes of the hunkish man, but she tried. She did notice a look her cousin shot between her and him, but before he could raise his eyebrow she turned away. She did not want her cousin to know about her crush yet, maybe never, but if she wanted answers on how to get Remus to talk, she was going to have to get some info from dear old cousin Sirius.