"How stubborn are you?" Moody asked suddenly.

Tonks looked up from the stupidly large textbook Moody had her going through and frowned. He was timing her on how fast she could find things in books. Apparently, a useful skill to have when you were doing a raid on somewhere. She wasn't the quickest, more likely to get a paper cut or slice her palm than find a piece of text or a loose page tucked inside. But him interrupting her certainly wasn't going to help.

"We'll start that again in a minute," he said dismissively.

Tonks took that as permission to close the book. Thankfully. Did you know how boring it was to rifle through a book looking for a piece of paper that may or may not exist? It certainly wasn't thrilling work. And it sounded like that would be a big part of being an Auror. Great. Oh well, it couldn't be all excitement, could it?

Though what he was asking her promised to lead to something more exciting than rifling through books. Well, she hoped so anyway. It was Moody so he really could he bringing her anywhere.

"So, are you stubborn?" He repeated impatiently, tapping his foot on the ground.

What sort of question was that? Honestly, she was starting to realise why people thought of Moody as mad and it wasn't totally to do with the freaky eye.

"I'm pretty stubborn," she replied.

Her dad always said that she took after her mum. And he didn't mean it in a bad way because he always said it in this admiring voice but that could have just been because he was talking about mum. Those two were so in love it was sickening sometimes.

He raised an eyebrow, "Pretty stubborn?"

"Very stubborn," she admitted.

Look, being very stubborn wasn't exactly a character trait people admired. Stubborn, yes, but as soon as you put "very" in front of it, it became a problem. People thought you were inflexible. Unwilling to change. She wasn't either of those things. She was just very stubborn when it came to upholding fairness. She could really do her heels in then. Ever the Hufflepuff, she supposed. Not that that was a bad thing, no matter what anyone else said!

Then she realised just who she had said that to and narrowed her eyes. Why did Moody look almost gleeful?

"Why?"

"I want to try something."

She really should know by now that when Moody wanted to try something that it wasn't going to be something normal. It wasn't even going to be something pretending to be normal. Nope. Definitely not. She was pretty sure that the man didn't know the meaning of the word. Which was normally interesting for her, in a good sort of way. But this was interesting for her in a bad sort of way. As in this was not going to end well. She just knew it. Because there was no way anything good could come of this no matter what Moody thought.

The Imperious curse. The goddammed Imperious curse. He wanted to cast it on her. And apparently, he had got permission to do so. That is, if she gave her permission to have it cast on her. Apparently, there were forms for that. Because of course there were. This was the Ministry of Magic after all. There were forms for everything. There were probably even forms for forms.

"Is this even going to be worth It?" She complained half-heartedly.

"I'm not having you be a security risk."

He said this so seriously, like it would be his reputation on the line or something if she wasn't able to at least try and throw it off. No one would actually care. Not that she was going to tell him that.

"Then I'm pretty sure everyone's a security risk," she grumbled.

She had looked it up a while ago because she was curious about how this sort of thing was dealt with during the War, this was not something Aurors were expected to be. Not a skill they were expected to have. All the textbooks and manuals listed how to deal with an Auror that was under the Imperious- how to contain them, how keep them safe until the curse was broken. There was even a list of legal procedures to follow in the event that the Auror had been forced to break laws.

"But you aren't going to be."

"Riiiight."

He really was starting to sound crazy, no wonder they called him mad.

"You aren't."

"I guess I'll do it," she said with a shrug, feeling a bit apprehensive.

Hey, wouldn't you if someone was suggesting to cast an Unforgivable Curse on you? It did sound useful though. And, if she was being honest, she kind of wanted to know what it felt like to be under the curse. This was going to be in a safe and controlled environment so it was the best way to find out rather than some Dark Wizard casting it on her.

He didn't look too impressed with her answer. Didn't he want her to do it?

"That's not exactly explicit permission nor do you sound sure of yourself. So, I'm going to ask you again, do you want to do this?"

"Yes! Of course, I do!" She said in an offended tone.

What did he even want? Her to be all chirpy and happy about this? It wasn't exactly something you were going to be happy about, it was just something that needed done. Well, something that Moody thought he needed done. Which was basically the same thing.

And she could see where he was coming from. Of course, she wouldn't be able to throw the damn curse off (You would have to be more powerful than the caster if she understood the theory behind it correctly) but she could make it more difficult for the curse to take complete control of her. At least, that's what Moody was saying. She hadn't known that that was possible. But apparently it was. That's what he wanted to train her to do.

"This doesn't even sound real, you know that, right?"

"It's real enough," he said impatiently. "I've seen it be done."

"Yeah, by older and more skilled Aurors than me."

"Age and skill have nothing to do with it. It's all about the mind."

"And that makes you sound crazy."

He didn't look too impressed by that.

"I'm still doing it," she reassured him.

Merlin, she was just joking around. You know, make the whole situation a bit more light-hearted. It wasn't really working. But then again, it was probably a bit inappropriate to make talking about an Unforgivable Curse light-hearted.

"Come on then," he said, holding the door open with an impatient look on his face.

"What?" She asked even though she was already getting up.

Could they not do this in his office? Was there somewhere special they had to be?

"We need to fill out paperwork first."

Right. Of course. She rolled her eyes. This was the Ministry, after all. Obviously There was going to be paperwork for her to fill out. Even for something as odd and as probably illegal as this. Why was she even surprised?