AN: I know, I know, I promised a chapter of Tyrant Rising for today. BUT, I have a good excuse: I basically spent the past week going through withdrawal because of some issues with my ADHD medication. Between the constant crippling anxiety and awful depression, I just wasn't able to get any writing done.
Fortunately, I was already a bit ahead of schedule for this story and was planning on releasing this chapter next Friday as a little surprise since there are five Fridays this month. As it is, I decided to release this today, and the Tyrant Rising chapter will be coming next week. Sorry for the delay, I hope this'll help make up for it.
Last chapter, I got a question about the chapter name. Like all of my stories, there is a theme to the chapter names of Would That Work, I'm curious to see how long it'll take someone to figure it out.
Hermione stared down into her piping hot cup of tea with the focused intensity of one who seeks to find the secrets of life's great mysteries within the mundane banality of the everyday.
Or someone trying desperately not to look around the coffee shop to see if she had somehow missed Tonks for the fifteenth time in as many minutes. She'd arrived far too early and was already getting looks that made it clear people thought she'd been stood up for a date.
The chime of the door opening broke her self-imposed staring contest with the contents of her cup as her head whipped up to examine the new arrival. She tried and failed to hide her relief when she realised that, this time, it really was Tonks sidling in with a cheeky smirk on her face.
Raising a finger to gesture for patience, the older witch strolled up to the counter and ordered a drink before coming to join Hermione at her secluded table.
"Wotcher, Hermione!" She enthused, gesturing for her to stand and accept a hug with the implacable determination of a seasoned veteran.
Hermione happily obliged, hopping out of her chair and wrapping her friend up in a bone-crushing hug.
"Air, Hermione." Tonks croaked melodramatically, using her metamorphmagus abilities to deflate her chest comically, although not so much that anyone looking might notice.
"Honestly," Hermione huffed, swatting the older witch on the shoulder even as she didn't bother trying to hide her grin. Tonks always managed to make everything feel less tense.
"I was surprised when I got your owl," Tonks admitted, stepping back and looking Hermione up and down as if to make sure she'd been eating enough.
"Thank you for agreeing to help," Hermione said earnestly, "I know it's a lot to ask."
"Don't be ridiculous," Tonks dismissed the thanks with a wave of her hand. "I was just surprised you owled instead of texting me or something."
"You have a phone!?" Hermione gasped, stunned by the revelation.
"No need to sound so shocked!" Tonks huffed, crossing her arms. "I'm not that old."
"It's not that, it's just…" Hermione trailed off, not sure how to phrase it without sounding offensive.
"Most witches and wizards wouldn't know technology if it came up and slapped them with a damp flobberworm?"
"Well, yes," she admitted.
"My dad's a muggle," Tonks explained, pulling out an expensive-looking phone and handing it over to Hermione, "he made sure I didn't grow up clueless."
"Do phones work at the ministry?" She asked, typing in her number and sending a text to herself so she could add Tonks into her contacts.
"Eh, not really," Tonks scratched at her nose and accepted the phone back, putting it face-down on the table between them. "It doesn't fry them like Hogwarts though, so that's something."
The pair sat and chatted for a few minutes, catching up on what had happened since they'd last seen each other, but, once Tonks had claimed her coffee, it was time to get down to business.
"So," Tonks began, fixing Hermione with the piercing stare of a seasoned interrogator, "you snogged a boy, huh?"
Hermione felt the colour rush to her face immediately.
Actually, that had been one thing she hadn't done with her mouth during her and Harry's encounter. Oh Merlin, she'd sucked a boy off without even kissing him first!
Tonks snickered, causing her to bury her face in her hands to try and escape the auror's teasing smile, "I'm guessing that's a yes?" She teased.
"Not exactly," Hermione whined after several long moments of silent suffering.
"Not exactly?" Tonks' chair scraped loudly across the floor as she leaned forward excitedly. "You said you had a — wot was it? — an amorous encounter," the words were spoken in a very poor approximation of Hermione's own voice, "with a boy?"
"Yes." Hermione moaned.
"But you didn't snog him?"
"No," why had she thought asking Tonks was such a good idea again?
"You let him get a bit handsy with your quaffles?" Tonks guessed, grabbing her own — suddenly very generous — pair evocatively.
"Not that either."
"You got a bit handsy with his beater's bat?" Tonks was practically vibrating by now.
"Yes?" She'd done a lot more than that, but her hands had been involved.
"I know that 'yes' young lady, don't tell me you gave him an audition for the position of Head Girl?"
"Yes! OK!? I sucked his giant cock!" The words exploded out in a rush, the embarrassment far too much to bear.
The look of stunned shock on Tonks' face at the revelation was far more gratifying than she'd have ever thought possible.
At least until it morphed into an expression of pure wicked delight.
"Oh, sweet Merlin, no!" Hermione groaned, bypassing her hands this time and simply letting her forehead sink down onto the table.
"Sucked his 'giant cock,' huh?" Tonks asked, her shit-eating grin easily audible in the words.
"I hate you."
"Love you too, 'Mione." Tonks made an exaggerated kissing sound that almost succeeded in drawing a giggle out of her. "Still, Ron's packing a serious wand, huh? You'd never think it to look at how gangly he is, but then I always kinda wondered what with how many kids-"
"WHAT!?" Hermione choked, snapping upright so fast her knee slammed into the underside of the table and threatened to send both their drinks flying.
Everyone in the shop turned to stare at them, and she offered them a sheepish smile and a wave to indicate everything was alright.
Once they'd all turned back to their business, she hissed across the table, "Why on Earth would you say something like that about Ron of all people?"
"You mean he wasn't the 'friend' you had this encounter with?" Tonks seemed genuinely shocked, although Hermione could've sworn she mouthed something like 'suck it, Kingsley!'
"No," she whispered, knowing what question would be coming next.
"It was Harry?" She couldn't find it in her to respond verbally, so she just nodded.
"Fuck, Hermione." Tonks simply sat for several long moments, processing this incredible revelation.
"And when you say giant-" she began, only to break off giggling when Hermione moved to dump her cup of tea over her head.
"Alright, alright, calm down! You know I'm only joking." Hermione glared but did put her cup back down.
"Well, first off, the fact that it was Harry means I think you can calm down." Tonks began, settling into the comforting older sister role Hermione had been hoping she'd adopt from the start. "He's hardly the kind of guy who's going to be pushy or stop being your friend if you tell him it was just a one-time heat-of-the-moment thing."
That was true, Harry could and would face down a basilisk for someone he barely knew, he'd never turn his back on her for anything so stupid as a blowjob. She felt the knot of tension in her gut start to ease slightly.
"Do you think it was just a heat of the moment thing?" And the knot was back.
"I don't know!" She moaned, taking a large fortifying gulp of tea and wishing, for the first time in her life, that it had something stronger mixed in.
"Well, why not find out?" Tonks shrugged and took a sip of her drink as if the suggestion were the most obvious thing in the world.
"I- you- what!?" Hermione spluttered, thankful she'd waited instead of taking another sip herself.
"Find out," Tonks repeated, setting her cup down and fixing the younger witch with a calm gaze. "You're not sure if you actually have romantic feelings for him, or if you were horny, he was hot, and it happened. I'm not saying you have to march out of here and go ask him on a date right now. Just, think about it. Could you see yourself going out with him?"
Hermione did think about it. What would it be like dating Harry? Holding his hand and wandering around Hogsmeade? Feeding him a treacle tart and giggling when he got a bit stuck on the tip of his nose? Letting him pull her into an alley and press her back against the wall, his lips claiming hers as he ground the straining hardness of his-
Her eyes snapped open, she hadn't even been aware she'd closed them. Tonks was looking at her far too knowingly from across the table, so she hid behind her cup for a moment and took another sip.
"I… don't know." She admitted once she'd settled down a little. "I can imagine going on dates with him, but," she trailed off, not sure quite how to phrase it.
"But those dates involve him tearing your clothes off and fucking you through the nearest wall?" Tonks finished for her, apparently deciding on the absolute crudest phrasing possible.
"Mhm," Hermione squeaked, not trusting herself to attempt anything more sophisticated.
"Yeah, I've been there," Tonks whistled, leaning back in her chair and staring at Hermione contemplatively over the rim of her cup for several long moments.
Eventually, she nodded to herself and took a long swig before setting it back down.
"Yup, I'm definitely glad I'm not your age any more." She sighed contentedly.
"Fuck you."
"I'm flattered, but Harry would get jealous." Tonks grinned before cutting off Hermione's furious rebuttal with a laugh. "Look, Harry's an attractive guy, OK?" Tonks leaned forward and gave her a companionable pat on the shoulder. "I'm sure you're not the only girl hoping to get a ride on his firebolt."
"Must you keep ruining every possible piece of quidditch equipment!?" Hermione hissed. How was she going to listen to Ron and Harry discussing the stupid game now?
"Forget the metaphors!" Tonks brushed her complaint aside with an impatient wave of her hand. "All I'm saying is: Harry's hot. I'm not even interested, and I've noticed. But," she held up a lecturing finger, "he's not the only hot guy in the world."
Hermione paused, curious to see where she was going with this.
"Maybe what you need to do is spend some time with other guys your own age," the finger moved forward to press against her lips, silencing her attempted interjection. "I said spend some time with, not blow." Hermione flushed and looked down, embarrassed.
"If you find yourself thinking the same kind of thoughts about other hot guys, then it's probably just that your hormones are getting particularly nuts. Merlin knows you must need to blow off some steam with everything you lot have been dealing with for the past year." Tonks took a last long drink of her coffee before clattering it down on the table and standing up.
"If not? Well, that probably means something. Now, come on, I know another way to work some stress out."
Blowing things up was, it turned out, incredibly cathartic.
The latest in the unfortunate line of targets to be placed before her exploded in a blooming conflagration of indigo energy and shattered stone. Shrapnel exploded out across the training lane like balls in the world's deadliest pinball machine. A shard of rock half as long as her hand careened off the shield in front of her with a crack like a gun, striking at a point that would have carried it through her skull if not for the protective enchantment.
"Fucking hell, Hermione!" Tonks whistled appreciatively, taking in the utterly annihilated target. "You sure you don't wanna think about becoming an auror?"
Hermione grinned back, preening a little at the praise.
"I can't believe I never knew this place existed!" She enthused, looking around at the large private practice lane the older witch had rented for the pair of them.
"Most people don't." Tonks admitted with a shrug, turning to study her own target for a moment before cracking her wand like a whip and punching a hole into its centre. After a moment, the surface of the target started to crack and crumple inward, before the entire thing was swallowed by a tiny black dot which then seemed to consume itself and wink out of existence.
Hermione made a mental note to look that spell up when she got home.
"It's technically a practice facility for duellists, but most of the actual customers are aurors or auror trainees looking to stay in shape." A new target rose into place in front of Tonks before liquifying into molten lava and glooping down the podium like a particularly deadly piece of modernist sculpture.
"Very nice," Hermione complimented, slicing her own target neatly into six identical pieces with a complicated twirling wiggle of her wand. "You should try shopping that around to the Tate."
Tonks barked out a laugh, "It's true, my artistic talents are being wasted with the auror office." She draped a hand across her forehead and swooned melodramatically.
The effect was somewhat ruined when she then tripped over her own feet and almost face-planted into her protective shield before managing to catch herself.
"Laugh it up, Hermione!" Tonks grumbled, setting herself back in a steadier position. "You try keeping your balance when your body keeps changing all the time."
"Couldn't you just change your body less?" Hermione asked, genuinely curious.
Tonks' face scrunched up, "Not that easy, is it? It's like-" she paused, searching for an appropriate simile. "It's like trying to stop your facial expressions or a twitch. You can do it if you're focusing on it, but it's not exactly something you can keep up all the time. Even if I could, it gets," she stretched out her joints as if the mere idea had made her body feel stiff, "uncomfortable, being cooped up in the same skin for too long."
"That sounds," Hermione took a moment to search for the right word, "unpleasant?" She tried.
"Eh, sometimes." Tonks shrugged. "It's more annoying when I wake up in the morning after a particularly vivid dream and scare the crap outta myself when I see a random stranger in the mirror!"
Hermione stifled a giggle at the thought of a half-asleep Tonks jumping out of her skin at the sight of her own reflection.
"Can you turn into other people?" Instantly, she knew she'd struck a nerve. Tonks' face darkened, her hair shifting to black and curling into something resembling a bramble thicket. The good-humoured camaraderie that had grown up so easily between the pair died an ugly death. "Tonks, I'm sorry, I didn't-"
"BAHAHAHAHA!" Tonks cracked, her hair flushing a playful aquamarine and relaxing into a wavy curtain that fell to her shoulders.
"You! Total! Arse!" Hermione fumed, punctuating each word with a punch to the metamorphmagus' shoulder that did very little to lessen her amusement.
"Ah, I'm sorry, your face!" Tonks wheezed, putting her hands on her knees and taking deep steadying breaths to regain her calm. "In answer to your question, kind of?" To demonstrate, she turned into Hermione.
Only, it wasn't quite Hermione. The nose was slightly too large, her eyes a little too small, and the expression was just wrong. It was honestly a little unsettling.
"I can get all the major stuff right," Tonks explained, and — Merlin — it felt even weirder hearing the other woman's voice come from her mouth. "But if you really look, or really know the person, then it's not hard to notice the minor stuff that's just a little bit off."
"Could you practice?"
"You mean study someone until I can do 'em perfect?" Tonks waggled her eyebrows suggestively, making Hermione snort. "Eh, I suppose?" She scratched her nose — or, rather, Hermione's nose — contemplatively, "Not really much point though."
"Wouldn't that be useful as an auror?"
"Not as much as you'd think," Tonks shrugged, turning her attention back to her target and chewing her lip thoughtfully. "See, we have a lot of pretty strict laws about impersonation, especially for aurors during an investigation. Wot with polyjuice and transfiguration, you can see why people would be a bit leery about law enforcement pretending to be them on the job. What's to stop an auror from doing a crime while pretending to be a perp they're sure is guilty anyway?"
And, what happens when that certainty turns out to be incorrect? Hermione nodded, seeing the sense behind it.
The pair spent a few minutes in comfortable silence. Apart from the sounds of the targets being torn apart through a myriad of magical means as they engaged in an unspoken competition to see who could manage the most esoteric form of annihilation, of course.
"By the way," Tonks said, watching Hermione's latest target peel itself like an oversized orange. "I'm planning on taking Harry out to a club on Friday, that alright with you?"
"What!?" Hermione wheeled around to stare at Tonks as if she had grown a second head. Actually, could she do that?
Never mind, not the time.
"I thought you said you weren't, y'know," she made a vague but meaningful gesture.
Now it was Tonks' turn to goggle, "WOT!?" Her hair flashed bright white and her eyes actually expanded in shock. "No! You!?" She groped futilely for words for a moment before settling on another, "WOT!?"
Hermione couldn't help but giggle at seeing the normally unflappable auror so flustered.
"I am not interested in Harry like that," Tonks stated emphatically, making an 'x' with her arms as if to ward off an evil spirit. "I like my men mature, thank you very much."
"Harry is mature!" Hermione objected.
"Well, yeah," Tonks admitted, "for his age. But I'm talking, like, a grown man here."
"He stood up to Voldemort! He taught practically our whole school Defence Against the Dark Arts last year!" Hermione contested hotly.
"Are you trying to convince me I should be interested in Harry? Didn't take you for a girl who likes to share Hermione."
"What!? No! No, no, no!" Hermione shook her head vigorously, "I just- I don't like hearing people put Harry down. I wasn't trying to-" Tonks cut her off with a smile and a friendly pat on the back.
"I know, Hermione, don't get yourself worked up. I wasn't saying Harry isn't brave or responsible, just that there's more to being mature than that. Like learning to control your emotions a little, or realising that you don't have to try and do everything yourself."
She nodded. Those were definitely things Harry still struggled with, despite his maturity.
"Anyway," Tonks continued, steering them over to a set of nearby benches and pushing Hermione down onto them. "I was asking 'cause I know your feelings about our resident 'chosen one-'" she actually made the air quotes for the latest moniker the Prophet had saddled him with, "are a bit confused right now. And, even if I'm not going to do anything like that and it is Harry, who wouldn't know a girl flirting with him if she stripped naked and gave him a lap dance-"
Hermione felt more than a little mean for snorting at that, but it was true. Honestly, even Lavender had given up after that time when he actually gave her his broom cleaning kit when she offered to help 'polish his broomstick.'
"It is a club," Tonks continued, drawing Hermione out of her fondly exasperated reminiscence, "and things do happen. So, I didn't want you to be blind sided if it ever came up."
"Thanks, Tonks." Hermione gave the other woman a tired hug, the exertion of casting spells more-or-less non-stop for an hour starting to catch up with her.
"I appreciate the concern, but it's fine. Like you said, it is Harry. And even if I'm not completely sure how I feel about him, it's not like I have any right to control what he does."
"Or who," Tonks joked, bumping her with a shoulder. "Now, let's get you home before you conk out on me and I have to carry your arse."
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