Harry shook himself. There was no help for it. He had known as soon as he woke up that he had blown it with his show of weakness the evening before. He had hoped to have more time to make up the bad impression, but it was not to be, and asking to be taken with her after she had already made her decision, or for more time to show that he was worth keeping around, would merely be to display further his weakness in needing companionship.
He was a weapon, albeit a broken one at the moment, a freak of nature with no purpose beyond the destruction of Voldemort. Certainly, even if he achieved it, he could not expect to receive sympathy from the side of Light once they learned that he was in fact a creature of Darkness, a demoness.
He wiped all expression from his face, projecting only attentiveness. Tonks would be forced to remain in his presence until Dumbledore completed warding her new home, so he should do his best to minimize the discomfort he might cause her. He would certainly not break down and cry in front of her again, no matter how much his traitorous body desired it.
---
Tonks shuddered as she watched Harry . . . or rather, Neerja now, leave the room. She did not know what had done it, the news that he was to be taken from Hogwarts, or the swiftness of Dumbledore in giving her a new name, and a new family.
Whatever it was, it seemed to have caused her to close off once more. She had been opening up again this year, in spite of her loss. She had finally begun to shed the hostile, defensive coldness that had been his hallmark the year before, but now all that progress seemed lost. She was once again stone-faced.
She executed every curse, charm, and potion asked of her with suprising skill, but no soul. There had been none of the amusing or emotional touches from the days before, no toy soldiers, no laughter, no smiles.
As a coldness settled on the room in the small girl's absence, Tonks felt her hope fade. That dream, her first night watching over the new Harry, had given her a faint hope that she would come out of this without losing Harry's friendship, but that dream was now seen to be that and nothing more. It was no omen or portent of the future, but a simple dream, a useless fantasy.
Somehow, Tonks knew that her dreams this night would be cold, and lonelier than they had been since she came back to Hogwarts.
---
Stoic though he had managed to remain throughout the day, Harry could not hold in his tears once in the privacy of his room. Scarcely had the door closed behind him than a silencing spell left his hands to contain the sounds of his sobs.
Controlling his emotions in this new form was far more difficult than it had ever been before, as if all his work over the years in learning to hide his anger and pain from the Dursely's had been wiped out in an instant. It was only the power of his will and the knowledge that to release his emotions would merely be rubbing Tonks' face in her eventual death, and the torture and death of her family, an event that would be the inevitable result of his weakness, that gave him the strength to conceal his pain.
He collapsed in tears on his bed, wishing that he was dead, hating having to face the pain that his weakness was causing someone who deserved none of it. Worse still was the recognition that he was forced to accept: that his transformation and resultant inability to face Voldemort, according to Dumbledore, meant death and torture not just for Tonks, but for all of the people he truly loved, all of the people that had treated him as something better than a useless freak.
He thought again of Hermione, and her priceless gift to him, a gift that he had not even had the grace to be truly conscious of when he was receiving it, believing it to be nothing more than a dream. What right had he, a useless freak whose very stupidity and inability predicated her death, to take such a gift from her?
If only he had been worthy of Tonks' admiration, if only he had been strong enough to rid the world of Voldemort to ensure her safety . . . But he was not, and the worst thought of all was that no-one else could do it, because of that accursed prophecy. No other, regardless of strength, skill, or power of magic, could end Voldemort's twisted un-life. What was the use of such a prophecy, laying a burden on one incapable of fulfilling it? What power the Dark Lord knows not could he possibly have? Love, Dumbledore had said? What kind of screwball sense did that make?
A revelation burst upon Harry with a startling, even frightening intensity. Voldemort could not be allowed to know that he was now a girl, but he had been male in his dream with Hermione! Even more importantly, every single one of his new abilities, by virtue of its connection to his succubus nature, was a power of love . . . or at least an aspect of it. He paused for a moment, pondering the difference between love and lust, before discarding it as irrelevant. If lust was the sole basis of his powers, then all he would have would be a body to die for. The only reason for his mental abilities, and his ability to reshape his form to match someone's lover, was to invoke and evoke the power of love.
Furthermore, he had been the next thing to all-powerful in his shared dreams, aside from being summoned by Hermione. He had created her bedroom with a thought, had done similar acts of effortless creation for Tonks, and had recreated the Gryffindor common room practically subconsciously when summoned by Hermione and Ginny.
Last, but far from least, were his bloody sheets, and the startling news that Hermione had given him in their next dream. His actions in the dream could affect the waking world. Of course, it went the other way as well, but if he had near-complete control of the dream, surely moving out of the way of Voldemort's spells would be child's play. Indeed, he should be able to torment the red-eyed freak without ever revealing who he was.
Of course, the plan entailed considerable risk, and he understood now, as he had not before Dumbledore told him the full prophecy, that he would be risking the whole of the wizarding and muggle worlds, especially those he most loved, as well as himself. So testing and verification were in order, but much as he would like to experiment on Snape or Draco Malfoy, he could not risk revealing his nature to them, lest they inform Voldemort.
Nor could he test on Dumbledore, for the old man would be far too quick to tie the clues together and discover Harry's true nature. Tonks, Hermione, and Ginny seemed poor choices both because he did not want to torment them, and because they, having experienced the shared dreams with him already, might recognize them for what they were.
For a moment, his eyes gleamed in the darkness as he contemplated tormenting the Fudge, before sighing. No, Fudge was too pre-disposed to blame Harry for whatever was going wrong in his life.
Finally it hit him. Crabbe and Goyle were mostly brainless henchman, so far as he could tell, and tormenting them would be like shooting fish in a barrel, but they would be pretty unlikely to figure out what was going on. Of course, that was assuming that he did not get sick just from being in their minds.
He did not expect to be able to work out his abilities well enough to face Voldemort before Tonks left, but the sooner he could get the evil bastard out of the way, the better the chance that she would believe him when he claimed to have done it for her. Maybe then she would be willing to allow him to stay with her.
Harry wasted no time after picking a target. Laying back, Harry descended effortlessly, instinctually, into a searching sleep, his mind reaching out for his first target.
It was a very different experience than searching out Hermione's dreams had been. He did not know Crabbe's mind, the feel of his soul, the way he knew his best friends. His travel was much slower, and for the first time, Harry really felt his invisible passage through the castle. There was no drawing sensation, no guiding pull this time.
He drifted through the halls, an invisible spirit, sinking slowly through the walls and doors and floors of Hogwarts, not bothering to follow the halls or stairs. He knew where the Slytherin common room was, having been there in his second year.
Not having to worry about moving stairs, doors pretending to be walls, walls pretending to be doors, or portraits that refused to open, Harry reached the Slytherin common room in just a few minutes. From there it was a simple matter to pass down the halls, looking briefly into one room after another, before he spied a shock of white-blond hair. Draco.
He stood over his long-time nemesis for a long minute, struggling with the desire to torment the little ferret, before turning aside and glancing around the other beds.
Crabbe was easy enough to find. There were, after all, only five boys in the Slytherin sixth year dorm room, and Crabbe's distinctive physique and short hair were obvious.
Mimicking his earlier actions with Tonks, Harry focused once more on being invisible and intangible, then reached out, sliding his hand into Crabbe's skull. As had happened before, when he was physically present, the nebulous contact was enough to catapult him into Crabbe's dream.
Harry was mildly surprised to find that Crabbe was not dreaming of food, as Harry had half-expected, remembering how he and his friends had taken advantage of Malfoy's brutes' weakness for sweets in their second year.
He was even more bemused by the actual context of the dream. Apparently Crabbe hung around Malfoy at least partially out of jealousy, or at least felt it strongly enough for it to become the focus of his dreams. Crabbe was strutting around what Harry recognized as the Slytherin common room, with a rather silly grin on his face, as the other Slytherins in the room gazed at him with adoring, awe-filled eyes.
Harry started small, vanishing Crabbe's fan club one at a time. Fulfilling his expectations of the large boy's dimness, Crabbe did not notice until he, Goyle, and Malfoy were the only three left in the room.
"Hey, where'd everybody go?"
Harry let the air grow slowly colder, and the room darker, enjoying the scene, as Crabbe, who was no leader, no matter what his dreams might pretend, stumbled about trying to come up with a coherent plan of action, while Malfoy and Goyle whined uselessly about the cold, the dark, the absence of the other Slytherins, the lack of food, and in general, everything and anything they could find to complain about.
Harry felt a nearly physical lurch when Crabbe's delusion, to which Harry had added no support, cracked completely. He was not entirely sure what had happened, until he heard Malfoy speaking in his usual supercilious manner. When the pressure was on, Crabbe obviously needed the support of his arrogant leader to guide his reactions.
At Harry's instigation, a dark-robed figure slipped out of the shadows, wand gripped firmly in a lifted hand, wrapped in long, slender, bony fingers of pale white. A murmured curse sped across the gap before the startled boys could react. It was a simple hair-bleaching spell, though cast in a threatening manner more appropriate to a dark curse. The spell was one that Malfoy might be expected to recognize, given his general vanity, but Harry was unconcerned. The likelihood that Crabbe would know it when hissed in such a manner was slim, and the Malfoy staring now in shock was not the real Malfoy, but only Crabbe's mental impression of him.
The spell might as well have been a stupefy, for as soon as it struck, Crabbe fainted dead away. Harry was thrown from the dream as Crabbe dropped into a different state of consciousness, the Slytherin boy's dorm forming about him once more.
Much to Harry's irritation, Crabbe's hair was as dark as ever, the figure's spell having had no effect. Disgusted, Harry moved to the next bed, where Goyle lay snoring, and slipped smoothly into his dreams.
This time, when the figure stepped out of the darkness, it was no dream construct, but Harry himself, having altered his appearance to fit his dream character, and he cast the spell at Goyle, not by merely imagining the visual and auditory effects, but by going through every step, every motion and vocalization he would use to cast it in the waking world.
Though Goyle did not faint, nor even notice, as Harry had cast the spell from behind the other boy, not desiring to be thrown out of yet another mind, Harry quickly left the dream. His mood immediately lifted, and he had to stifle a chuckle of amusement at the pale blond locks Goyle was now sporting. He wondered what Malfoy's reaction to such apparent mockery would be . . . or would he take it as flattery?
So, spells and physical actions coming directly from him would take effect in the real and dream worlds, while the actions of his constructs would affect only the dream world. That was unfortunate, as it meant that he risked Voldemort recognizing the feel of his magic. Harry wondered, as he left the dungeon and headed back to his room, what the effect of a Priori Incantatem might be like in a dream world, and whether his seemingly wandless casting would still trigger the effect of the brother wands.
Neither boy had noticed when he took over their dreams, nor been able to identify him, but he had hoped that he would be able to torment and hopefully defeat Voldemort without actually having to face him and risk his retaliation. After all, with him physically or magically attacking Voldemort directly within the dream, he would be exposed to a return attack, and Voldemort was not one likely to hold back. Not to mention that allowing Voldemort to even be aware that it was Harry in his dreams risked him attacking through Harry's scar with all his force. Harry had rather easily shut him out the last time he had sought entry, but he had not been in the man's dreams himself at the time. Such an act might, for all he knew, open his defenses completely. That would lead to precisely what Dumbledore feared most, the abuse of the bond to steal Harry's power.
Harry's return to his body was followed by a night of bittersweet dreams, as his mind tormented him with visions of a defeated Voldemort and a grateful Tonks, beaming at him with a delight he doubted he would ever see in her waking eyes again. He made no attempt to control his own dreams, to shield himself from this painful sample of what might have been. He would be losing her, sometime in the next few days if he had understood their morning conversation correctly, then it would begin.
Just as the Dursleys had always threatened him, without their 'generosity' in allowing him a home, he would be passed from guardian to guardian like so much unwanted luggage, and he suspected he would probably end up locked away, alone, with only food provided by house-elves in his sleep for a pretense at company, if perchance Dumbledore still believed in the prophecy, still saw some chance for Harry to at least remove Voldemort, even if it cost his life. If not, then he would probably end up in a Muggle orphanage, like as not to experience the same sort of torment a young Tom Riddle experienced, eventually to leave and live a lonely adult life until Voldemort located him and put him . . . or rather, her, out of her misery.
Even that was the best he could expect. He was deeply afraid that Dumbledore would come up with an idea far worse. He could not forget the Headmaster's words about the bond. Harry had a horrible premonition that the one way around the bond was to be already bonded, and he had little doubt regarding whom the Headmaster would choose. Had he not sought many times to force them together?
This reality was painfully harsh when he roused from his dreams to face it. Would he get even the one more day in her presence? To be sure, he knew he did not deserve it, and from that perspective, would prefer that she be relieved of the pain of his nearness, and allowed to return to her home. Yet, he could not help but hope that he would get to be with her for at least today. He was not ready to give up the comfort of her presence, though he knew he had only himself to blame for losing it. How could he have been so stupid? So weak? Especially once he had learned how much everything depended on him.
It was not as if he did not know that her parents were exactly the sort of match Voldemort despised, especially coming from a family that had otherwise largely supported him. He should have known how much she needed to see his strength. It was just his sort of ill-luck to realize that only after he had already committed his solecism.
He felt even worse when, after showering and dressing, he stepped out of his room and saw Dumbledore and Tonks sitting at the breakfast table, breakfast already cooked, and it looked like they had already cleaned their plates. How much of what might be his last day had he foolishly slept away, sleeping off the exhaustion of his futile night-time activities?
He had missed the opportunity to cook for her again, and even as Tonks looked up and saw him, a sad expression crossing her face for just an instant before it cleared of all emotion, he realized that her bags were packed and sitting by the door. He felt his heart sink to his feet. Why would they be there already, unless she was going to leave before the morning was done?
"Are you packed, Neerja?" asked Dumbledore, that infernal twinkle still dancing in his eyes.
"Me?" Harry asked in confusion. "Where are you . . ." He stopped himself with a sigh. He had only himself to blame for losing Tonks, so who was he to complain if Dumbledore found it necessary to move him to accomodate whoever he had found to replace Tonks as his guardian. "Never mind," he muttered. "I never unpacked my trunk," he informed the headmaster, suppressing his emotions as best he could. He did not want to make Tonks feel guilty. His insensitivity was no fault of hers. "I'll go get changed," he mumbled, looking down at the dress he was wearing, then turning and walking off.
Dumbledore watched her leave, then turned his puzzled gaze on Tonks. "How long has she been like this?"
"Since you left yesterday," Tonks sighed. "She just closed down. She did everything I asked, but without emotion, without life. I don't know what did it, if it was the new name, or the idea of leaving."
Dumbledore pondered this for several minutes, going over what he knew of Harry's psyche. His thoughts were interrupted by disbelief, as he stared at the pitiful figure of Harry, smaller and thinner than he had ever seen her, swamped in a massive shirt and huge, billowing jeans, bound up at the ankles by what looked like frayed shoestrings, dragging her trunk behind. She looked like she was carrying the weight of the world.
He watched in concern as Harry shot a short emotion-filled glance at Tonks, then turned to him and said, "I'm ready, sir."
Tonks stepped forward, but before she could speak, Dumbledore held out a long grey sock. "I know you don't care for portkeys, but it is the safest way for us to travel."
Harry stared at the sock Dumbledore was holding out with unmistakeable dread in her dark eyes. Dumbledore glanced meaningfully at Tonks, and she nodded and reached out, taking a light grip on the sock. Harry's eyes widened, and he glanced between them, before taking a deep breath and reaching out.
---
His trunk rested at the foot of his new bed. His new room, as large as the one he had been given in the apartment at Hogwarts, had not existed mere hours before. He could hardly believe he was here.
When they had arrived at Tonk's flat, and she had shown Harry around, the presence of only a single bedroom at first confirmed Harry's fear that this was but the first stop, and that in a short while Dumbledore would hand her another portkey.
He had been trying to prepare himself for a flight into the unknown. He was deeply afraid that Dumbledore would decide that the only way to avoid Voldemort binding her would be to bind her to another man, and she knew exactly who he would choose. Dumbledore was always trying to get her and Snape to get along, and he trusted the man, for no apparent reason that Harry could see. Harry could not deny that Snape might possibly be loyal to Dumbledore; that definitely did not change the fact that Snape hated Harry with a passion only rivaled by Voldemort himself.
There was absolutely no way Harry would ever allow himself to be bound to Snape, trustworthy or otherwise. So he was trying to be ready to do whatever it took to get away, to protect himself from the old man's good intentions.
When Dumbledore instead showed him the room that he had magically added to Tonk's flat, he was dumbfounded. He had been certain that Tonks had asked to return to her flat because she was fed up with him, because she had realized that it was his fault that her parents were fated to die.
A whisper-soft sound caught his attention, and he looked up to find Tonks standing in his newly created doorway, looking at him questioningly. When he made no move to ward her off, she walked softly into the room and sat on the bed beside him. "Well," she asked, "how do you like your room?"
---
She could hardly believe the change. Neerja's attitude had reversed completely, again. Tonks was reminded strongly of the muggle lights of her father's home, and the way they came on and off in an instant, with little or no middle ground. In just that way Harry had flipped, from an emotional, enthusiastic, and motivated girl, to a repressed, un-emotional automaton, and now back again.
Surely some of the blame could be laid at the feet of her new form, and the unfamiliar feelings and hormones she was experiencing, but Tonks doubted that they could explain it completely.
When the change had initially occurred, Tonks had wondered whether it was the move or the name change that had caused it. She had not spoken to Harry of the move previous to that meeting, as she had not wanted to raise her hopes, in case Dumbledore had in the end decided it would not be safe.
Something in that conversation had seemingly shut Harry down, and Tonks ran through it again and again in her mind, trying to catch the point that triggered the change. More than once, she wished she had a pensieve, so that she could see this scene from an outsider's perspective.
Little did she know, as a result of her expressing her concerns to Dumbledore, and his own observations, the Headmaster was doing exactly that, watching the scenes in his pensieve, following Harry's every reaction. After the revelations he uncovered when looking into transferring Harry's protections, he had discreetly questioned Petunia Dursley, and then Obliviated her of the entire meeting. What he had learned had greatly disturbed him. That Harry was not welcomed into their home, he had known. That he would have been treated with less affection and restraint than their own son, he had anticipated. Yet he had neither expected nor anticipated the extent of the mental abuse Harry had suffered in that house.
With the knowledge of the Dursley's lectures to Harry about his 'freakishness,' the horrors of orphanages, and how lucky he was that he had even the little they were willing to give him in mind, Dumbledore was able to spot the critical moments in his interactions with Harry. He did not look over only the recent events, but watched and examined every interaction he could remember with Harry, and finally he felt he understood.
---
Tonks guided Neerja to a doorway he had not seen before. "The elves just finished linking this doorway for us. According to the Headmaster, this is something that is only possible with Hogwarts. I admit, I don't understand how it works, but, well . . . you'll see . . ."
With that, she opened the door, and Harry gasped. Within the room was the study from their apartment, wall of books and all, though they were entering the room from the opposite side.
"I've no clue how they did it, but somehow, house-elf magic, combined with being bound to a structure as old and powerful as Hogwarts, made this possible. So, we've got a safe escape to Hogwarts at any time. I told him we'd need to get books and such for your training, but he did not want me going out and buying anything that might be linked to your training, so he set this up."
"Wow," Neerja said, stepping through. "I knew house-elves had powerful magic, but this is amazing. I think this, aside from brooms, is the first form of magical transportation I actually like! No hooks, no squeezing, no motion-sickness, heck, I'm not even off-balance." She stepped back across the doorway, and then re-entered the room. "I don't even feel it!"
"It is pretty cool, huh? Well, listen, I've got to go check in with the Professor, so you can spend some time studying your Herbology. I know it's not as fun as the classes where you can actually cast magic, but you don't want to fall behind before you can take the actual classes again, and I'm afraid we'll be hard-pressed to give you any practical Herbology work, as we've no greenhouses we can access like this, so you'll have to study the theory extra-hard, okay?" Tonks watched her charge's face closely, and felt a wave of relief when she saw no hint of rebelliousness. She knew well enough that Harry had a powerful will, and if she dug in her heels there would be little Tonks could do to move her.
"Alright," Neerja said, "I'll study hard. Will you be long?"
"I don't think so," Tonks assured her, "I think he just wants to give me an update."
Harry watched in silence as Tonks left, then sat down and called the sixth-year Herbology text to her, summoning it from the bookshelf, and settled in to read. She had mixed feelings about the door. She was definitely impressed at the work the house-elves had done, and she was absolutely happy that she would not have to use a portkey to go back and forth, but she was nervous about being back in Hogwarts.
She could not help but be reminded of her earlier determination to flee if Dumbledore had indicated that she was to bond with Snape. While her fears at the time had proved to be baseless, as he merely assisted with her move to Tonk's flat, he still had not revealed what his potential solution to the issue of the bonding might be.
Meanwhile, Tonks was making her way to Dumbledore's office. Not wanting to be accosted by Harry's friends, as she knew that at the very least, she, as an Auror and a member of the Order of the Phoenix, would be a likely choice to be part of Harry's training team, were Dumbledore's explanations true, she had morphed into the guise of one of her dorm-mates back in her seventh year. If anyone saw her, she would look familiar, as if they had seen her before, but it was unlikely that anyone still at the school would have been a close friend, or even more than passingly familiar with her.
As it was, she made it through the halls unaccosted, and managed to get past the gargoyle at the entrance after guessing only eight candies. Dumbledore's voice rang out, inviting her in before she had even reached his door.
"Welcome, Nymphadora," Dumbledore said gravely. "I was going to drop by, if you did not show up soon."
"What's going on with . . ." Tonks paused suddenly, as a movement caught her eye, and she was reminded that the room was full of portraits, all listening, no doubt, whatever they pretended. She looked at Dumbledore, then back at the portraits.
Dumbledore sighed, and nodded, waving his hand in a casual gesture. Instantly, the portraits were frozen, immobile. "Fear not, they will hear nothing, and remember nothing."
"Good," she stated firmly, suppressing her uneasiness, "now, what is happening with H . . . with Neerja's problem? Have you found a solution?"
She really wanted to question Dumbledore about Harry's reaction, and what their previous interactions had been like, and what might have prompted such a dramatic shift. She could not, however. As important as Harry was becoming to her, she was not ready to demand answers of Dumbledore.
There was no twinkle in Dumbledore's eyes as he sat, and sighed sadly. "I think I have," he responded slowly, "but it won't be easy, and I'm afraid it does not have a terribly high chance of success. There are alternatives we can fallback to, but each poses its own problems. But before we discuss that, I need to know how Neerja is handling herself in your flat?" He leaned forward, a slight twinkle appearing in his eyes as he focused on Tonks' face. "Has it helped, at all, getting away from Hogwarts?"
Tonks shook her head in frustration at Dumbledore's evasive answer, causing a worried frown to briefly flit across his mouth, before she answered positively, "She is better now, but when we first got there . . . it was scary, how she just shut down. I don't understand what happened."
Slowly, Tonks described the experiences of the past week, and the dramatic shifts in Harry's behavior and interest in the classes. Dumbledore remained silent for several minutes after she finished, considering her words.
Finally, he spoke again. "I don't think we need to be too greatly concerned at these mood shifts, Nymphadora. She is going through a difficult time, and dealing with her sudden change in living conditions; well, I am not suprised that she showed a reaction to it." He focused on her more intently, catching her gaze, an expression of slight reproof on his face, "She seemed quite surprised when we brought her to your apartment. One would almost have thought she had not been told she would be moving with you," Dumbledore said, very gently.
Tonks reeled with shock, finally realizing what she had been missing, the last piece of the puzzle falling into place for her, and in her chagrin, as she realized that Harry must have thought, until he arrived there, that he was being abandoned, that she had given up on him, or been assigned away. In her dismay, she failed to realize that Dumbledore had once again deftly turned aside her thoughts from prying into his own failings in dealing with Harry. She had intended to question him about the Dursley's, and why Harry had reacted with fear that morning in the kitchen, but now she was overcome with remorse that she might have been the one to cause Harry such needless pain.
She left Dumbledore's office a few minutes later, with really no more idea what he intended to do with Neerja than she had when she entered. Luckily for her, she had remembered to retake the form of her former dorm-mate, for she passed by Hermione and Ginny in the halls.
She did her best to push that incident out of her mind, knowing that if she were to accidentally refer to it, in the slightest way, in front of Harry, it would hurt her greatly.
When she reached the outside door to their Hogwarts flat, Tonks was startled to find the door resisting her pressure. She pushed again, disbelieving, then leaned up against the door and shoved. The resistance was strong for a moment, then gave way, and she stumbled in. Her eyes flew wide as she stared around in shock at green walls and colorful flowers, vines and branches that hung down, heavy with different fruits.
She quickly closed and sealed the door behind her, and slowly walked into the apartment, looking all around. A branch dropped into her view, a golden peach hanging off it. She stared at it for a moment, then jumped when it moved again, the branch coming towards her, the peach nudging against her cheek.
She backed up, nervously, then sidled around it, trying to ignore the way the branch drooped. The peach was just too heavy, that was all, it wasn't disappointed, definitely not . . . she shrieked in surprise, when from behind her, she felt what seemed to be a hand on her shoulder.
When she turned to look, she realized it was merely a bunch of grapes, fat and glistening.
"Tonks?" A nervous whisper drew her attention to the doorway, where she spied Neerja, peering out at her. "I'm sorry, it was an accident. I didn't mean to, honest!" she pleaded, her eyes darting around. Tonks was disturbed to see that her hands were shaking, and she was actually trembling.
Nonetheless, Tonks could not help gasping out, "What happened in here?" Harry's face lost all color in an instant, and Tonks felt her heart drop. "I'm sorry, Harry," she said, holding her arms open wide, "I'm not mad at you, I'm just surprised."
Neerja started, then ran forward and hugged Tonks tightly, babbling the whole while as she tried to explain how one simple spell had gone so wrong.
It took some time to get her calmed down to the point that she could tell a coherent story, but eventually Tonks got the idea. Neerja had grown bored reading all of her herbology work, with nothing to actually do. When she found a spell that would trigger magical growth in a plant, she had looked around until she found a small decorative fern that she could try it on.
Unfortunately, it had apparently worked too well, or she had experienced a power surge, and it had affected all of the fruit in the kitchen, which produced roaming blackberry brambles, orange, peach, and apple trees cracking the flagstones in the floor. It affected the minor bits of mold and mildew in the cracks of the wall, carpeting the floor in a thick mossy growth that climbed some of the walls. It also affected the various decorative plants, from flowers to ferns.
Neerja had been desperately trying to counter the growth, to trim back the plants, or banish them, or kill them, to clean it up before Tonks returned, but as evidenced by Tonks' experience, the growth was ongoing, still feeding on that magical surge, and her efforts went nowhere, driving her near to tears.
"Come on," Tonks urged, "let's go back to the flat, and you can get away from this mess and unwind. I'm sure the house-elves can either handle it or get Dumbledore in to handle it." She coaxed Neerja back into the library, which had luckily been spared due to the absence of plants and excess moisture, and through the new door back into her flat.
She had just managed to get Neerja to sit on the small couch when the girl looked up, her eyes puffy and red, her cheeks tear-stained, and asked, "Tonks, what's wrong with me? Why can't I stop crying? I haven't cried in years, and now I can't stop crying."
"I wouldn't worry too much about it," Tonks replied thoughtfully. "Girls don't think the same way boys do." She grinned, and continued teasingly, "I'm sure you've noticed that in your friends by now, right?" She smiled down at Neerja, who was nodding with a rueful grin. "You're under immense pressure right now, even more so than you have been, and at the same time, the tools you have to deal with it," she continued, tapping Neerja on the forehead, "are no longer the ones you are familiar with."
Tonks wanted to ask Harry whether Dumbledore was right about the reason for her withdrawal, but she held off. She was obviously having enough difficulty dealing with her situation, and Tonks did not want to trigger another withdrawal.
"That was a very impressive Herbology demonstration, you know," she continued, in a gently teasing tone, "I could do with more plants around my flat, but I'm gone all the time and it is hard to keep them alive. Maybe I can get some now that we'll be here for a while."
Neerja's sobbing slowed, and a giggle escaped, though her tears continued to flow. She nodded, leaning into Tonks' side. "I'd be happy to take care of them," she said, sniffling. "Can I . . . can I still use the Hogwarts rooms?"
"What?!" Tonks blurted, startled. "Of course you can, Harry," she assured her, forgetting the right name to use in her confusion, "why would you think otherwise? I'm sure Dumbledore and the elves will have those plants taken care of in no time."
"Indeed," a rich, cultured voice interjected, and both ladies jerked and spun to face the doorway. Dumbledore stood there, a gentle smile on his face. "I'm sure you'd no way of knowing it, Neerja," he said, his eyes twinkling madly, "but the last time that suite was used was as the quarters for the Herbology professor three professors ago. Apparently, he had left certain instructions for the house-elves, insuring they never touched his research materials . . . including dried, dead cuttings of lost plants he was trying to cultivate. Professor Sprout is cleaning the rooms as we speak, and she was beside herself when I saw her last, babbling about replanting and recovering."
Tonks was surprised to realize that Harry was literally shaking, and the tremors were getting worse as Dumbledore continued. "Did . . . does she know?" Harry asked nervously.
"That it was you? No, certainly not," Dumbledore reassured her, "she knows only that an unexpected magical burst occurred, triggering growth of forgotten plants there."
Harry collapsed against Tonks in relief. "I came through to inform you, because obviously, for this story to hold up, it would not do for you to enter the chambers while Professor Sprout is still there. I will come back when the chambers have been completely cleared, and let you know that it is safe to return."
"Thanks," Tonks said, "We appreciate you taking the time." Harry nodded in agreement, offering a tremulous smile. Dumbledore beamed and them, nodded, and vanished with a soft pop.
"He apparated," Harry said in surprise. "Why did he do that?"
"He probably didn't apparate all the way to Hogwarts," Tonks answered, thinking it over. "At a guess, I'd say he had somewhere else to go before returning there. Coming here must be a nice shortcut compared to having to get all the way off the grounds."
"Yeah," Harry agreed, sighing. Tonks looked down at her, and realized that her tears had stopped. She also realized that she had lost hold of her effort to think of Harry as Neerja, and reminded herself how important that was to her future.
"Are you ready for a bit more training, Neerja," she asked softly, "or would you rather rest a while?"
Neerja shook her head vigorously, reaching up and wiping her eyes, and meeting Tonks' eyes. "I'm fed up with falling asleep crying," she claimed, unconsciously conjuring a tissue and blowing her nose it, and vanishing it, both without looking away from Tonks' eyes.
"Alright," Tonks said, "let's get started, then."
---
Harry collapsed into his new bed, and considered his day. He had found a clear downside to the new ease with which things were coming to him. Not only were his emotions out of control, to the point that instead of only losing his temper under severe stress, he was falling apart when practically anything at all went wrong, but his magic was apparently also prone to going out of control.
He did not really want to think about what Dumbledore had said about the plants, but he could not keep himself from it. Lost plants, he had said, and the way he said made Harry think they were more than lost. The plants he had caused to grow had apparently included bringing to life things that had been dead for years on years.
He was not sure how old, because Dumbledore, as usual, had given him practically nothing in the way of real information, but he had never heard anyone refer to an Herbology professor other than Professor Sprout, implying that she had been there at least seven years before he himself showed up, and probably quite a few before that.
He had no idea how long her predecessors had lasted, either, but there were no stories about a curse on Herbology, the way there was with defense, so it seemed reasonable to assume that the previous professors had lasted a normal run of time in their positions, and everything he had learned about the wizarding world told him that a normal run of time had every chance of being decades longer than he would assume of a normal schoolteacher.
A hundred years, at least, seemed if anything a lower bound on the age of the dead plants. And he had brought them to life. Could he do the same with animals . . . with people? Did that mean he was a Necromancer? Or was that not the same thing?
Disturbed at the turn of his thought, Harry tried hard to think of something, anything else. It was a fruitless endeavour, until he happened to think of how close he might have come to losing his recently regained access to Hogwarts. He had not really been in a state to consider his distance from his friends when the move occurred, expectant as he was that he was being given up on by Tonks, and that he would shortly be handed over to his most hated professor's dubious care.
He had not really had enough time there before Tonks revealed the new doorway to contemplate overmuch the distance that now lay between him and his friends, but it hit him now. If his own foolish action, his new inability to control his magic, directly attributable to his foolishness in attempting the animagus transformation against all advice to the contrary, had damaged the Hogwart's rooms beyond repair, how long would it have been before he could reach Hermione, or Ginny, or any of his friends again?
Worried that he might yet make some fateful error and lose his access to the castle he saw as home, and to his friends, Harry lay back and closed his eyes, intent on seeing if he could reach Hermione from where he now lay.
He reached out in his mind for his friend, lacking this time any sense of what direction to reach in, as he had little to no idea where Tonks' flat was in relation to the school.
He thought it might be in London, so that Scotland would be to the north, but that was only an assumption, based on the proximity to Diagon Alley, and considering that Tonks was an adult, fully capable of apparating, it would certainly be no hardship on her to live in Edinburgh.
Unable to focus on direction, he resorted to simply focusing on her, remembering with desperate hope the feel of her skin as he had pleasured her in her dreams, the sound of her voice, in quiet chiding, and raised in passion, the scent of her hair, the salt of her tears. He brought into his mind everything he loved about her, everything he admired about her, everything about her that irritated him, and holding it all, he let go of himself, and his body collapsed bonelessly to the bed, just as the door swung open.