Chapter Two

Your Own Worst Enemy

"I'm trying to decide if a new defense teacher is a good thing. I'm beginning to think it will only make things worse." Hermione stated. She had "commandered" one of the books Tonks had brought for Harry called The Art of Incapacitation and was busy looking for spells that could be demonstrated in the DA.

"Why is that?" Harry asked and immediately regretted doing so. His mind reviewed her statement and he should have recognized she was waiting for an invitation to rant and he'd foolishly obliged.

"Without a class to teach, if one can call what she pretends to do teaching, she'll have more time to roam the school making everyone's lives miserable. It'll make holding the DA meetings that much more difficult. Do you think we should split the groups up and meet with the claws one night, the puffs another, and our house on a third?"

Harry was often fascinated by his friend's logic. "Your solution to the increased chance that she'll catch wind of the meetings is to have more meetings?"

"Hmm," she said and pursed her lips tightly. "When you say it like that, it doesn't sound like a great idea. I was just thinking that the large groups will be more suspicious."

"Maybe the new bloke will be good enough that we won't need the DA," Ron supplied. "Bill told me that he thinks this fellow is the genuine article."

"That's entirely possible, but we're months behind and it's our OWL year." Hemione paused, but decided to stop there. With his dad recovering, she apparently wasn't going to read him the riot act.

Harry cringed, knowing this wasn't going to end well. Ron and probably most of the others would drop out if the instructor was decent. He didn't have the heart to tell Hermione that the rest of the student body didn't obsess like she did.

"Harry, do you mind me asking what exactly Tonks is showing you?" Hermione said.

"No, I don't mind you asking," Harry replied, knowing she likely started the conversation so she could ask this question. Sometimes talking with Hemione was similar to playing chess with Ron.

"You're obviously not practicing spells, so it must be something else."

"She's showing me how to meditate and clear my mind. It's supposed to help me control my emotions and organize my thoughts."

It wasn't the whole truth, but it was all Harry was willing to confess to at the moment.

"That sounds useful," she said. "Do you think she would show me?"

"You'll have to ask her. She said she was doing this and letting me borrow some of her books instead of giving me a present for Christmas, so..."

Harry let his comment trail off and punctuated it with a helpless gesture. He hoped it would be enough to disuade his friend from burrowing deeper.

She frowned in obvious discontent, but said, "I understand. After you've gotten it down, would you mind showing me these exercises?"

"Sure," Harry said. "Although, your mind is probably so organized already that it has its own Dewey Decimal System."

Harry's compliment paid dividends as Hermione blushed at the compliment. She'd been pleased at his new outlook on studying during the holidays.

Truth be told, Harry wasn't that excited about putting his nose to the grindstone, but between discovering how to use his new found abilities and the fact that the classes at school weren't really teaching him anything useful, Harry knew the only thing that would help was extra studying and preparation. He couldn't fault his Charms and Transfiguration teachers, but much of what they were covering was similar to the things he'd learned last year for the tournament.

Then there was this Occlumency business. He was of the opinion that the phrases Harry Potter and emotional restraint weren't meant to appear in the same sentence.

#

"Dumbledore knows," Tonks said.

"How?" Harry asked, stunned and feeling like he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't have.

"There's a painting in his office of a former headmaster named Phineas. He's a Black and also has a frame here. One of the other paintings must have seen you when you managed to change your hair color and told him."

For some reason Harry felt annoyed. "Yeah, I know about that painting. Should've thought about it sooner. Still, it's probably the most attention he's paid to me all year. So what did the headmaster say?"

"He said I can take you to Hogwarts and work with you. He mentioned that you and your friends had discovered some kind of secret room that we could use."

Again, this statement irritated Harry. Dumbledore seems to know things that are going on and, at the same time, was doing nothing to help him out.

"Why the long face kiddo?"

"It's nothing," Harry said, trying to push the headmaster's apathy into a "box" in his mind like Tonks had instructed. He saw her disapproving look and added, "Or, it's nothing that I can control, so I need to minimize the emotional impact."

Tonks smiled and tapped his nose three times with her index finger. "That's the correct answer. Grab your wand and some of the books I've lent you. If we're there at the castle, I can do some spell work with you."

"I can do that," Harry said momentarily thinking that he'd have to sneal by Hermione. Fortunately, he remembered that she was down in the kitchen helping plan Mr. Weasley's return party with some of the Order members.

After grabbing the books, Harry followed Tonks through the floo which dumped them out in Hogsmeade. Tonks tried to catch Harry as he came out, but it only served to send both of them sprawling to the floor of Aberforth Dumbledore's mostly empty establishment.

Tonks clearly thought this was a riot. She started laughing harder than Harry had ever heard her before. Somehow, she had fallen on top and pinned Harry.

With Tonks laughing in his ear, Harry grumbled, "I hate floo travel."

"And people call me clumsy," she said. "Well, at least you've got good instincts. Figured you for a boob man. Looks like I was right."

"Huh? What do you mean?" Harry said before realizing where his right hand happened to be resting. "Oh God! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry."

Tonks pushed off of him and smirked. "If that's your story stick to it."

"It was an accident," Harry protested as she offered her hand to him.

"I know, but if it happens again I'll have to start calling you the boy who gropes."

Harry was certain his face had gone beyond Weasley red and was comparable to a tomato at this point.

For the first two minutes trudging up the path, Harry kept silent while Tonks kept needling him.

Finally she said, "Alright Harry, I'll stop. It's obviously making you uncomfortable, but one of the things you'll need to come to grip with is people will view you differently as a metamorph."

"How so?" He asked, but deep down he already knew where she was going with this.

"Harry, lots of blokes and quite a few birds think of me as nothing more than a shag doll who can make herself look like anyone's fantasy. It probably won't be so bad for you."

"Why not?"

"You're a guy. There's a double standard. Folks will look at you and say that you can make yourself bigger, stronger, and faster. To me, they say I can make myself prettier and more desireable. Ergo, the double standard. It's almost as bad as what Bill's girlfriend has to put up with."

Harry recalled how the other students treated Fleur because of her aura during the tournament. The boys followed her around...about as bad as the girls followed Viktor Krum.

"How'd you handle it?" Harry asked.

"Here's the best bit of advice, I ever got. Once I accepted it, my outlook on life improved drastically. If you're comfortable with who you are, then no one else's opinions matter. Wanna see the bloke that told me that? He's your first assignment. By the end of the day, you'll look just like him."

Tonks fished around in her jacket and produced a moving wizarding world picture. She handed it to him. The pretty girl in pink pigtails hammed it up for the camera and planted a kiss on the boy's cheek, who laughed and started tickling the girl.

"That's me and Eric in my sixth year. I dug that photo up so you could try a full facial transformation. To pull off his look, you'll need to lighten and lengthen your hair, broaden your shoulders slightly, grow a couple of inches, and add roughly a stone."

"Are you sure I'm ready for this?" Harry wanted to take this opportunity to remind her that this was a bit more than just elongating his nails or changing the color of his hair.

"Harry, it's the difference between putting a puzzle together and drawing a picture instead. You can go through it one step at a time or you can imagine yourself like a blank slate and fill in the details all at once. Your first few full transformations will probably take hours, but practicing going back a forth, you'll get the hang of it."

They reached the door and had to wait for Filch to let them in. Somehow, Harry got the feeling that hag, Umbridge would catch wind of his presence at some point. Then again, she couldn't exactly ban him from quidditch for life, because she'd already said she was doing that.

"Argus Filch, as I live and breath. You get more handsome with each passing year." Tonks fanned herself.

"Spare me, Tonks," the janitor said. "I'd hoped to never see you inside these walls again. Shall I alert the house elves so they'll be ready to repair the damage to the castle?"

"It hurts when you say that - right here," she replied.

"Not going anywhere near the potion labs, missy?"

Harry caught a quick frown on her face, but only for a moment. "Just picking up some items Mr. Potter left behind since he had to leave before the term ended."

"Very well," Filch said stepping aside.

As soon as they got out of the janitor's earshot Tonks said, "Never like to idiot. Used to hound me back to the tower over something I'd done."

"You were a Gryffindor too?" Harry asked. For some reason, he'd thought she was a puff.

"Hardly," she said trying to sound offended as she twirled next to the base of the staircase and posed. "I was a Ravenclaw. What? Are you surprised? I was the complete package of beauty and brains."

Harry found his nerve and said, "So what happened?"

He bolted up the steps while hearing her response of, "Why you ... Get back here you little prat!"

Harry made it up three flights before the moving staircases forced him to wait. Turning, he saw Tonks closing in with an evil grin on her face and her wand twirling between her fingers.

"Hi," he said. "Nice weather outside. Isn't it? A little brisk though, dontcha think? Remember the unwritten rule about jinxing on the staircases."

"I guess I'll just have to wait until you show me this room of yours. Then I get to see the legend in action."

"You wouldn't hex a bloke with glasses would you?"

"Don't worry, I'll summon those off of you first. That should get you started on the road to fixing your eyes. Think of it as dual purpose training."

#

"I stink," Harry said with an audible sigh and caught his wand. He cancelled the boils covering a wide swath of his right arm and reversing the leg locker she'd gotten him with.

Tonks, by her own admission, wasn't a top duelist and she'd still beaten him. Dueling was much more intense than just tossing spells back and forth like he did in the DA. It was like going from flying on a broom to the intnesity of a quidditch match.

"No," Tonks said, slightly out of breath and trying to reassure him. "You most definitely do not. If I went into the office and told Kingsley or Mad Eye that it took me over ten minutes to incapacitate a teenager who hasn't even passed his OWLs yet, they'd laugh me out of there. Furthermore, I wouldn't dream of mentioning the fact that you hit me twice during our practice fight. They'd give me no end of grief."

"I hit you twice?" Harry said.

"Fumble fingers and a leg locker. I was lucky and caught my wand on the first one. Technically, you had the first hit in the match. If we were using stunners along with the rest of these basic spells, you'd be waking me up. On the second jinx, I fell and rolled. I cancelled it out during the roll. Keep moving. You stopped when I got you. That's where you lost. Eventually, you can learn to use your special ability to break them."

Harry felt a little better about his performance after she said. Still, her statement was tainted by his knowledge that Voldemort and his Death Eaters wouldn't be using basic spells.

"Here," she continued and sat down. "Go ahead and leglock me."

Complying, he saw her legs snap together. He watched as she concentrated and a wave like ripple slid down her body and stopped when it hit her hips. She did it again and the next ripple stopped just above her knee. The third and final one went completely through her body and Tonks spread her legs.

"Like I said before. Enough practice and you'll be able to handle the minor spells. It takes me about two minutes to beat a body bind. Now, I'll lock your legs and you try to break it."

It took him considerably longer than Tonks to do it, but he grinned when his legs popped appart.

Tonks, meanwhile, had been testing out the limits of the Room of Requirement while he was occupied with her curse. Under her direction, it had changed from a dueling room, to a beach, and finally into a park.

"I sure wish I'd known about this place when I was here!" she exclaimed. "I'd have gotten into so much trouble."

Harry got to his feet and watched her concentrate. A massive pile of pillows appeared and she dived into them. It reminded Harry of the neighborhood kids he'd seen growing up in Surrey attacking leaf piles in the fall.

It occured to Harry, that the woman really enjoyed her life in a manner that he couldn't really comprehend. She had the sponteaniety of the twins, a sharp mind, and had somehow accepted her powers despite all the negative reactions she'd endured. He was strangely jealous and wished he knew how Tonks had managed that feat.

He caught himself and suddenly wondered if he was crushing on the much older Tonks. Idly he compared her to Cho and recalled how they had kissed just a few short days ago in this room. It also occured to him that he hadn't even thought of the Asian witch in the last few days.

In just about every way, Cho came up woefully short when pitted against Tonks. Except for the small fact that he could date Cho.

"Why the long face, green eyes?" Tonks asked as she wiggled out of her mountain of pillows with a grin on her face.

"Just worried that I'm never going to get my morphing down," he said knowing that it was mostly a lie.

"Yeah," she said slowly and patted several pillows next to her. "You're not even a week into this and you've already picked up so much. Come over here and sit down."

Gulping, he crossed the room and did as she asked. Tonks remained stretched out and casual. Harry would've had a hard enough time if it was Cho, Hermione, or any other girl from the DA, but Tonks was a woman with a complete set of womanly curves.

"Alright," Tonks said in a take charge sounding voice. "We're going to fix your eyes now."

"How? Do I need to focus on changing the shape of my eyeball?"

"No Harry. I think this problem runs deeper. Those times I did guard duty at the Dursleys, I'd hear them calling you a freak. Come to think of it, I never heard them use your name. It was always boy or freak."

Now Harry felt ashamed rather than nervous.

Tonks eyed him sympathetically and reached out to squeeze his left hand. "I'm guessing they did this long before you knew anything about Hogwarts. Am I right?"

Harry nodded, refusing to meet her eyes.

The auror continued, "That's what I figured. So, you grew up with them calling you a freak and subconciously you were conditioned to accept that. And not having any frame of reference about the magical world, the easiest way to make yourself into the freak was to need glasses because young kids always tease other kids who wear them."

"What are you saying?" Harry said noticing she was still holding his hand.

"I'm saying you're the one who made yourself need glasses and you're the one who can fix it. Self doubt is the only thing holding you back. Conquer that and there's no stopping you. That's why I got you the book on Occlumency. Put your mind in order and the rest will come."

"You make it sound so easy," he said.

Tonks rolled her eyes and gave a hollow laugh. "No, it most definitely is not easy."

"So how do I convince myself that I'm not a freak?"

"You're not. You're special."

"That's just a word polite people use when talking about freaks."

"No," she said, drawing out the two letter word for at least five seconds. "By special, I mean things like qudditch star, triwizard champion, dementor fighting, giant snake slaying, metamorph of a teenager who with little or no dueling experience who can hang with a trained auror. Do you think your friend Hermione could do any of that? How about Ron?"

Harry was reluctant to say anything bad about his friends, so he shrugged his shoulders.

"Still not a believer yet, I see. How about we compromise, Harry? You're freakishly special. Do you honestly think Bill, Charlie, or any of us would sit outside your worthless realtive's house if you weren't worth it? Would I be here right now if you weren't worth it? Trust me, I could be at my mum's right now, scarfing down some of the best tasting brownies in all of England straight from the oven."

"No, I guess you're right," he said.

"Okay, Mr. Grumpypants," she said mocking his sullen tone. "It's something you have to sort out on your own, but here's one last bit of advice that you'll probably hear a few times from your new professor. He used to say that every day you get out of bed it's a new struggle. It's you against the world. Some days you'll win. Some days you'll lose. Some days your best effort will only get you a draw. Then tomorrow, if you're lucky, it starts all over again."

Harry clenched his jaw and nodded. "Sounds like good advice. You keep bringing up this Fox bloke quite a bit. Anything to that?"

"Ha ha. Very funny," she said and summoned the picture she'd shown him on their way up here. "If you want the story, I'll tell you when you look exactly like he did."

"Alright," he said, taking the picture from her and starting to study the boy. "But if I get it today or tomorrow, I want to try one of those brownies."

"Just one? That'd be like torture. I never eat less than three at a time. Your punishment if you don't complete the transformation is only eating one while watching me eat the others."