"Can we please talk about something else?" She begged.
"No way," sniggered Mainwaring.
Had she mentioned that he could really be a little prick? Because he could and she didn't like it. He didn't have to take quite so much pleasure from this. None of them did.
"I thought you were supposed to be my friend?" She declared loudly.
Loud enough to draw the attention of other trainees but she just ignored them. They didn't matter right now. Anyway, they all returned to their own lunches pretty quickly, used to weird noises coming from their table. Apparently, they were a "noisy bunch". Whatever. Not her problem.
"I am. And friends tease each other."
"You aren't teasing me, you're torturing me."
"Like you did to your poor dance instructor?"
"Shut up, McCabbert."
But of course, all that did was got them laughing again. At her. It wasn't funny! She had injured someone! Like, honest to Merlin injured someone. And not even deliberately, like a duelling injury or even a duelling accident! Those would at least be acceptable reasons to injure someone. But that wasn't how it happened. Dancing. She'd done it while dancing. Or, not dancing, as it was. It wasn't something to laugh at!
"I knew you had two left feet, Tonks," Dubois teased. "But that doesn't mean you have to injure the right foot of someone else out of jealousy."
Apparently, that was hilarious. So hilarious that their laughter was out of control. Mainwaring actually banged his head off the table when he doubled over but even that didn't stop him from laughing!
"It was his shin, not his foot!" Tonks felt the need to defend herself.
Not that that made it much better. It was still an injury. One that needed actual Healers to fix and not a MediWitch or Wizard, in fact. That had been something she had learned out of all of this. Apparently if the bones in the skin shattered a certain way, it was more fiddly to heal. Guess how she had shattered Blanchier's shin. Yep, the way that was complicated. Because of course she had.
"Big difference."
"There's so much difference!"
"You for him sent to St Mungo's, Tonks," Matt pointed out with this stupid grin on his face. "I don't think it matters what part of his body you injured."
"It does so!"
"Technically, you're making this worse for yourself," Mainwaring said through a chuckle.
Not being able to come up with a snarky retort to that, she simply folded her arms and snapped, "Oh, shut up!"
Which just seemed to amuse him even further. And Matt. Great. They were all laughing at her expense. Great.
She supposed that she should be glad that they had got over any of the awkwardness about the topic of her family that had been brought up a few days ago. By she hadn't wanted the awkwardness to give way to This! Give her back the suspicion, the mistrust, the weirdness, the silence. She would take all of that over this. And, no, she wasn't overreacting in the slightest. Of course, she wasn't. This was a perfectly valid response to what was happening.
"I can't wait to hear more stories about you dancing," Mainwaring said far too eagerly.
"Bad news, you're not because I'm never ever going to dance again."
"Aw, come on!"
"I'm not!"
"You should!"
She gave him a look. Seriously? Really? Mainwaring tried a different tact.
"You're going to have to if Moody wants you to."
"Well, I'm just going to refuse."
The amount of doubtful and incredulous looks she got for that sentence was just downright insulting.
"I'm not!"
Dubois patted her on the arm condescendingly. "Of course, you aren't."
"Well, I'm not going to dance just to amuse you lot!"
"Aw, don't be such a spoilsport!"
[xxxxxx]
"No!" She said loudly, crossing her arms across her chest. "No! I'm not doing it."
What was with everyone and her dancing? No. How hard was that one little word to understand? Apparently, very, because she had been repeating herself for the past five minutes.
"Tonks..."
"No!"
"This is going to be different-"
Ha, no it wasn't. It was going to be exactly the same and she wasn't doing it.
"I refuse."
"You can't refuse," Moody growled.
"I can and I am."
She wasn't backing down on this. She wasn't. Not now. Not ever. She was never, ever, ever, ever dancing again. It wasn't going to happen. No way.
Moody briefly looked stunned at her refusal to do as she was told. He wasn't used to that, Moody wasn't exactly someone who you disobeyed, after all. But this was the exception. His glare soon returned though.
Maybe it was because she just spent her entire lunch being teased about it. Or maybe because she was actually traumatised by the whole incident. Or maybe because it was glaringly obvious that she was simply no good and didn't see the point in it. Or maybe because she couldn't even think through her embarrassment whenever it was mentioned. Whatever the reason was and, let's be honest, it was a mixture of all four, she wasn't doing it and that was that. No one was going to make her do it. Not even Alastor Moody. Even he wouldn't be able to force her into it. No matter how hard he tried. And he was trying hard.
Seriously, he kept on going on and on and on about it. Tonks was fed up and she was sure that he was as well. The problem was that they were both equally as stubborn and neither of them were backing down.
"It's important," he tried.
Nope, that wasn't going to work on her. No way.
"No one else has to learn how to dance," she shot back.
"Because their mentors are idiots."
"Their mentors are following the Ministry syllabus."
Dancing wasn't mentioned anywhere on it. Trust her, she checked.
"Ministry doesn't know anything. You need it for undercover work."
"When am I going to go undercover in a situation where I'll need to know how to waltz?" She asked in exasperation.
"You never know, do you? Constant vigilance!"
She rolled her eyes. That was his response to everything, no matter what. There was no way that applied to every little thing in life.
"Don't roll your eyes at me."
It was hard to resist sticking her tongue out at him but she managed.
"It's still a no," she said stubbornly.
Yes, she knew she was basically digging herself into a pretty deep hole over this, defying Moody tended to make you do that, but she didn't care. She wasn't ever going to dance again. It wasn't happening. Simple as that.
Moody stared at her and she tilted her chin up and stubbornly stared right back. Oh, she was going to get into so much trouble for this but she really could bring herself to care. Steeling herself for more arguing, she tried not to let her gaze falter. Because that would be giving in and she was not about to give in.
The two of them stared at each other and Tonks was now starting to get really uncomfortable. This was weird. But she had kind of started something and now she had to see it through. She had to. Because she wasn't going to ever dance again.
Finally, Moody broke the spell.
"Fine," he growled. "You don't have to do it."
Yes! Wait. What?