"No, you can't do that. You'll give away your hiding spot."

She grumbled but crossed the line out, the most recent of many, unfortunately, and tapped her quill on the parchment. Of course, it let go of a huge splodge of ink, leaving a big mark. Thankfully she hadn't written anything there. But still, it hasn't been something that she wanted to happen. A lot of today could be described like that. Yes, it wasn't a good day for her today, okay? And that ink splodge wasn't helping. She glared at it. Stupid ink splodge.

A frustrated noise escaped her and she reached for a new piece. At least this one would be neater. Because she was going to get this right with minimal mistakes. She couldn't even tell what was right on her previous bit of parchment there were so many crossings out. So, in the grand scheme of things, the ink splodge wasn't really an issue.

Right, let's try this again. Tonks wrote out the start of her plan, even gave it a nice heading.

"No, that's illegal."

"Since when do you care about what's legal or not?" She said in exasperation.

He glared at her. "A raid is where you have to get every bit of paperwork correct or the whole thing is invalid and nothing will be held up in court. And I quite like things being held up in court. Anyway, this is you, not me and you're going to need to follow every single little rule."

"And you don't?" Tonks raised an eyebrow.

"Remember, a lot of these people are either high up on the social ladder or they have a great many connections. You have to get it right." He said without answering her question.

Tonks grumbled about privilege and pricks as she glared at the map in front of her. She glared at it so hard that her vision actually wavered for a second. Eurgh. What was she supposed to do then if she couldn't do what she wanted?

This was annoying. Extremely annoying. She couldn't seem to get it right. And she couldn't even shrug it off because she knew it was important. Planning was very important, she knew that. She just wasn't good at it. This was the downside of being able to learn on your feet, preferring practical demonstrations over theoretical. It meant that you tended not to focus on the theory side of things and forgot that theory was important as well. And it was really biting her in the butt now. Because someone had told Moody that they needed more examples of her theory work so here they were.

With a huff, she scrawled out her plan outline and handed it to him. It definitely wasn't her best work by any stretch of the imagination but she'd got it done.

Moody read over it, his face not giving anything away and then suddenly threw the piece of parchment up in the air and set fire to it.

"Hey!" Tonks exclaimed as the ashes fluttered around them.

"Do it again. And do it properly this time."

Offended at the idea of him thinking she wasn't taking this seriously, she crossed her arms and glared.

"I was doing it properly!"

"It was wrong."

"Being wrong is different from not doing it properly!"

"Don't be cheeky!"

"I'm not being cheeky!"

"You can take a turn around the obstacle course after this to tire that tongue of yours out."

Tonks barely stopped herself from letting out a frustrated screech. Barely. The only reason why she managed it was because she literally bit her tongue. As in, she could taste blood. This wasn't fair. It wasn't her fault. She was trying! Well, maybe not trying her best but she was trying. He was just in a bad mood.

She hadn't had to do what she now dubbed punishment runs in ages. Maybe not since second year by now! She was a third year! He had no right to humiliate her like That! Except he was. And she didn't like it.

"What are you looking at me like that for?" He gestured at the door. "You know damn well where the course is. Go."

She crossed her arms and glared. Moody glared right back. Damn him. Damn him. Damn him. She never won when this happened. With a thoroughly annoyed noise, she stomped out of the room.

"And don't come back till you've exhausted yourself!" He called after her. "Maybe if you're tired, you'll have no energy to backchat."

Slamming the door behind her was a very satisfying touch.

[xxxxxx]

Tonks couldn't help but feel satisfied with herself. Oh, she knew that he meant for her to do one of the obstacle courses instead of the running track. Or at least one of the longer tracks but he wasn't here, was he? And there was no way she was going to do a hard one if she didn't have to. And he didn't tell her which one to do anyway so she could choose whatever she liked. Which meant that she chose the easy one. The short one. Which was pathetically easy for her now. She had gone round three times already; it was that easy.

She wasn't even tired, which meant that she didn't have to go back yet. Didn't he say not to go back until she was exhausted? Well, that was going to take a long time. She might not even see him again until the end of the day. She didn't want to see him until then.

Unfortunately, fate had other plans as Moody decided to appear. Great. With a huff, she stopped jogging and went over to him. He didn't look happy.

"Just what do you think you're playing at?" He bellowed at her.

But she refused to be cowed by it.

"Running. Like you told me to."

"On the short course?"

"You didn't specify," she said scathingly. "So, I picked."

He narrowed his eyes at her. She didn't even recoil, she was beyond that now.

"You know damn well I meant for you ftp do something that was actually difficult."

"You didn't say that."

"Well, I'm saying it now."

"But late for that."

"No, it's not. Get."

She gave him a look of disbelief. "You can't be serious."

"I'm deadly serious."

"I've already run for ages!"

"Not the way I wanted you to."

"It's still running."

"You need to follow orders."

"You don't give me any except to run!"

She didn't know why she was arguing with him. Hell, she didn't even know why she hadn't done what he had expected for her in the first place. She had known what he would have wanted her to do. They understood each other without him having to give her numerous, neurotic instructions and she knew what he expected of her. She just... didn't do it this time. And she didn't know why.

"You knew damn well what I meant!"

He actually shouted at her instead of growling and she knew she had crossed a line. Between that and the disappointment basically radiating from him, Tonks suddenly felt all her fight just leave her.

This hadn't been as good an idea as she thought it would be.