Tonks rubbed her hands together. She refused to perform a warming spell in the summer on principle, but the night air was getting to her after a few hours outside. The spooky alleyway she was lurking in didn't help matters, but this was the exact sort of thing she'd expected to do when she joined the Auror Office. The only unexpected part was that she was in the alleyway on behalf of the Order, not the Ministry.
She was supposed to be monitoring for Death Eater activity in the area. They'd gained intelligence from a source that Tonks wasn't privy to that some of them would be meeting there that night, but she hadn't seen anything. She wished she had, so she wouldn't have been standing outside for nothing. As soon as she had the thought, she caught herself. Death Eater activity was never a good thing. She could stand to be a little chilly. Though if the bastards were going to be active somewhere…
A glance at her watch showed that the time she'd been waiting for had arrived after what felt like hours past when it should have been. After one quick message to Kingsley that reassured him that she hadn't seen anything, she was free to go home and bury herself in her warm bed.
She tightened her grip on her wand and summoned a memory of her speaking to Remus and Sirius not that long before Sirius had died. There was a twinge of sadness in the memory, but there was enough happiness in it too that it did the trick. Her patronus materialized in front of her.
Her brow furrowed as the figure took shape. Something about it wasn't familiar. She stared at it for a moment before the pieces of the puzzle fell together.
Her patronus had become a werewolf.
She backed up, scared of her own creation. They'd studied patronuses extensively in Auror training. All Aurors had to visit Azkaban at some time or another, so you couldn't pass training without proving you could conquer one consistently under intense pressure. Her patronus was even on record with the Ministry and the Order to make sure no one pretended to be her. She'd been taught that they only changed under extreme circumstances. What about her experiences could possibly be extreme enough to trigger it?
The werewolf stared patiently back at her. Tonks wondered if it was an exact representation of what Remus looked like during a full moon despite her never having seen him during it. She swallowed. If this change was permanent, she'd have to tell both the Ministry and the Order about it. She had no idea what the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement would think about her patronus suddenly becoming a werewolf of all things.
She had a better idea of what Kingsley would think when he saw it. Despite him knowing full well what her patronus had once been, she knew that he wouldn't doubt it was really her speaking when he saw the wolf.
"No one came tonight," she said, her voice shaky. She tried not to look at the werewolf as she spoke, even as it stared at her obediently. "I'm going back home."
She waved her wand, and the werewolf ran off. As soon as it was out of sight, she backed up against the wall and pressed a hand to her chest.
Some things were far more harrowing than waiting for Death Eaters in dark alleyways.