She knew she should have waited and gone to St Mungo's to get her ears sorted instead of going to the Medical Room for them. She would have been fine waiting until the weekend. Oh, sure, she would have had to put up with two days of ringing ears but that was better than what was currently going on now. Anything would be better than what was going on now.
Moody was treating her with kid gloves. Kid gloves! She never thought that he even knew the meaning of those words but that's what he was doing! And she didn't like it!
There had been no random reaction tests, no weird uses of spells and no threats to making her run laps! Since when did Moody not threaten to make her run laps? Never, that's what!
It was weird and she didn't like weird. Well, she did. But not like this. She liked Moody's weird remarks on how something might save you (which only sometimes made sense to her). Then there were the weird paranoid things that Moody did. Or his weird grumpiness that she was pretty sure wasn't actually grumpiness. That kind of weird! The tiptoeing around her and the carefulness was not a good type of weird. It was uncommon and, well, weird. And then there was the silence! Oh, sure Moody didn't really talk that much but he was always grumbling or muttering about something! But now he was barely saying anything! Just enough to teach her but that was that! She didn't like it one bit.
Give her back her gruff, growly Moody, thank you very much! This calm one was just unnatural. It was freaking her out!
"I'm not going to break, you know," she told him, just about holding back her exasperation.
He had held back on a spell that he had instructed her to dodge instead of shielding against and although he made sure the floor felt padded, he never usually held back on the actual spell, saying that she needed to get used to how non-lethal ones felt so that she didn't easily get incapacitated by them. But this one didn't even tickle her when kt hit.
"Hmm."
"You do realise that she fixed my ears, right? No harm done."
He actually snorted at that.
"I could have deafened you."
"But you didn't," she reminded him. "See? I can hear you just fine. No harm done."
"Hmm."
"Can we please do something interesting today?" She pleaded.
She'd had the most boring days of her Training so far, the last two days. They even beat the days where she just went over Legislation. Yes! It really was worse than that!
"You're to take it easy for five days," he reminded her."
"Yes!" She flung her hands up in the air in exasperation. "Take kt easy! Not do absolutely nothing!"
He had her do wand movements every day since the whole incident in the Medical Office. Wand movements. As in, not casting any spells. Not even a tiny one. Oh, sure he did some of these dodging exercises as well but like she mentioned above the spells he used barely did anything. She may as well be doing nothing.
"You were put on light duties until the MediWitch deems otherwise," he grunted.
"And she said I was fine two days ago!"
She really had! Granted, it was after a rather aggressive inspection of her ears but still!
"She also said to ease you back into normal work," he pointed out.
Which yes, she had said but surely, she didn't mean for Tonks to be reintroduced at a snail's pace?
"You scared of the big, bad MediWitch?" She taunted.
"Yes."
She blinked at that, not expecting that sort of response at all. Though, what had she been expecting? Maybe for him to laugh it off or something. Definitely not a point-blank answer like he just gave her.
"You, you're afraid of the MediWitch?"
Tonks felt like she really, really needed this confirmed.
"Are you dea-?" He began and then he snapped his mouth shut.
"You can joke about me being deaf, you know," she said with an eye roll.
He just grunted at her and didn't say anything.
"Come on," she coaxed. "It's kind of funny."
That got her a dark look.
"Oh, please. Mentor almost deafens trainee? How is that not funny?"
Another dark look. This one actually made her shrink back a little. Okay, then. Maybe it wasn't funny. She would just shut up about it then.
"Right," he said shortly, drawing himself up. "I've had enough of your smart mouth."
"Oh, finally," Tonks said in relief only to earn herself a confused look from Mad-Eye.
"I've been so bored," she whined by way of explanation, making Moody shake his head.
"Medi Witch's orders."
"Yeah, yeah, you're afraid of her."
"Because I am sensible. Unlike you."
If that was meant to be a scathing remark, it didn't work. In fact, kt made her snort disdainfully. Really? The MediWitch? She had to have something on Moody. She just had to. Why else would he be like this when it came to her?
Realising that Tonks didn't look too impressed, be folded his arms.
"I can send you over there. Say I'm still concerned about your hearing, you know."
She narrowed her eyes. "You wouldn't."
He didn't even flinch. Not that she was really expecting him to.
"Try me."
"Back to my boredom," she said quickly, not really wanting to be sent back to the MediWitch.
Knowing her luck, she'd be sent home to rest up for a week or something and that would just be unbearable.
"Well, this will hopefully cure that," he said with a sly look. "And it has the added benefit of me not hearing your smart mouth."
Now it was her turn to look confused.
"Silent spell casting," he said with a grin and Tonks groaned.
Surprisingly, Moody hadn't started her training with silent casting like a few other Mentors had - wanting to capitulate on what Hogwarts had already started in their final years. But, of course, Moody did things differently.
Despite being one all for catching your opponent by surprise and being sneaky, he placed far more importance on wand movement, saying that it was important to get that efficient and precise, and then pronunciation. Because apparently there was no point in silent casting if you didn't even cast the damn spell right in the first place.
But now he seemed happy enough with her wand movements and pronunciation so recently he had moved onto making her silently cast spells. It hadn't been going overly well so far. Either the spells weren't cast or they were seriously underpowered. It was incredibly frustrating. And tiring. And that was with her doing one silent spell to two spoken ones! It was still a serious drain on her magic.
Allegedly, it got easier but she hadn't even seen any of the other trainees get to that point yet. So, she had a long way to go.
"Right," she groaned, getting out of her seat.
She'd really walked into that one, hadn't she?
"Wand out!" He barked.
She sighed heavily. Hey, at least things were back to normal. Right?