"Right, that's enough!" Moody shouted. "Tonks! Enough!"

She hadn't obeyed him the first time. She hadn't wanted to. But this time she did. Breathing heavily, she lowered her wand and wiped her face. She was sweating so much that her skin was soaked. Yuck. Gross. But it was her own fault. She had been pushing and pushing and pushing. Feeling like she had to. No one had told her to. She just did it. Needed to do it. But that didn't matter if Moody was bellowing at her like that.

Speaking of Moody, he was looking at her funny like he was trying to figure her out. Well, there was nothing to figure out. She wanted to train, train, train. Couldn't he let her do that? Didn't he want her to do that?

Everything else was stupid. Stupid. Stupid. She wanted to work. Work. Work. And he wasn't letting her do that. Why wasn't he letting her do that? Work would solve all of her problems. All of them. Not that she had problems. No. She had no problems whatsoever. She fine. She was great. Nothing was wrong. She just wanted to work.

But she knew better than to say it like that to Moody. Because, as he said, he was the one who made the orders, not her. She was the one who followed them. So, she had to settle for showing her disapproval through a look.

"Get that disrespectful look off your face."

Okay, so that didn't work. That tone meant business. A flicker of remorse appeared and she tried to rearrange her face. Moody looked satisfied at least.

Now he had his arms folded and was looking at her like she had done something wrong. She had done nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing. She hadn't. Except for the whole not listening thing. But look, like she had said before, she wanted to work. He really couldn't find fault with that, could he? No. He couldn't.

"Can we get back to work?" She asked, trying not to sound too rude as silence stretched between them.

What was even the point of making her stop of he wasn't even going to say anything to her? Talk about wasting time. And he was just looking at her. Not even checking something or thinking about something, he was just looking.

"Sit."

He even pointed at the chair. So, she sat. You really couldn't disobey that tone. Nope. You definitely didn't want to. Hence the sitting. She had dropped quite hard into her seat and her butt kind of ached a little. And then he went back to staring at her. What was with all the staring? It was weird. Not in a she was getting x-rayed by his magic eye kind of weird, it was just weird. This wasn't normal behaviour for him, and that was saying a lot when it came to Alastor Moody.

"What's going on?"

He said it just as gruffly as he would ask anything but Tonks figured she heard a little bit of concern in his voice. Or maybe it was just her imagination. It was probably her imagination. Moody showing concern? Yeah, she didn't think he really did that. Except for the whole trying to restore her confidence thing which was sweet but maybe that hadn't been concern and more wanting to get her back to work. It would make him look bad if she wasn't trying, after all. Though, Tonks was pretty sure he didn't care about those things.

She shrugged at him. That little action conveyed her thoughts perfectly, she thought. He didn't seem to like that too much.

"What's wrong?"

Now he sounded more like him. More impatient. A tiny bit annoyed. Standard Moody stuff.

She thought back to her concern for her parents, her concern for Sirius, how those two were intertwine with each other. Then her wonder about whether or not she should he feeling guilty about being concerned about Sirius. And then annoyed at herself because of course she believed he was innocent so she shouldn't be feeling guilty.

She thought of her so-called friends who were still treating her weirdly. Who swung between awkwardly talking to her and just ignoring her. They were still talking about her behind her back no matter how they decided to interact with her.

She thought of her Auror Training and how the end of this year, the end of being a Trainee was looking closer and closer and he she didn't feel prepared. How she worried about never being able to get some of the things she was studying. How maybe his was all just a big joke. That she was just a big joke.

She thought of how sometimes she lay flat on her back at night and stared at the ceiling because of all of this. That she hadn't even bothered pretending to try and cook herself dinners these days because she didn't want something else to go wrong. How she really needed to clean her apartment but she just didn't have time.

"Nothing," she said shortly.

He snorted at her. Actually, snorted at her. Like he didn't believe her. Which, fair enough, he shouldn't because technically she was lying but still! She didn't want to talk about it so the least he could do was pretend.

"You think I'm daft?"

"Am I allowed to answer that?" She joked weakly.

He ignored her. "Talk."

She folded her arms. "I don't want- no, I don't need to."

That was an important difference. Because there was nothing to talk about. Not that Moody seemed to think that. He was still just staring at her. Well, he could stare all he wanted, she wasn't going to say anything. Nothing at all. Because there was anything to say. She didn't need to say anything or get it off her chest or anything. She. Was. Fine. F. I. N. E. Fine.

And then she wasn't. It was like something broke inside her and it was hot and heavy and she wanted it gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.

So, she let it go. And she started talking. About Sirius and bow she felt about it. How her family felt about it. How annoying it was. How confusing it was. How it wasn't fair. How she hated how she was judged because of him and other members of her family. It wasn't fair. And how she tried, tried, tried not to care but it didn't feel like she could. Because of course she cared. She didn't like being treated like she was this hidden, dark witch about to snap. She didn't like whispers or suspicion that always seemed to follow her. It worse, derision like she was pathetic and a freak. And all this muttering about Sirius wasn't helping at all so there.

Somehow, she managed to say all of that in one breath and now she was panting. Stubbornly, she turned her head away so she didn't have to see the look on Moody's face. Also, so he didn't see the tears on hers. Dammit! Why did she always cry when she got upset or angry? It wasn't fair! Tears were stupid! So stupid that they actually dripped off her nose and she didn't want then too! How pathetic was that? Sniffing heavily, she roughly brushed them away. There would be no tears. No tears, do you hear her?