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The Daring Win	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 8180 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Thirty-Three—Wider Horizons
“Miss Dolores, I wanted to ask you something.”
Dolores put the Potter account ledger aside and focused her attention on Harry. They’d had a lesson with the ledgers that morning, combining maths with information about the properties that Harry would have to manage someday. She didn’t think Harry had come back because he was panting after another one. “What is it, Harry?”
“I want someone else to teach me lessons besides you and Remus. Would that be all right?”
“What subjects do you want to learn?”
Harry blinked as if he’d staggered up against a wall he hadn’t expected and bruised his nose. Dolores kept her eyes patiently on his even as she felt her lips twitch. Harry couldn’t always predict her the way she could him.
“You’d let me learn?”
“You’re asking. It must be important if you’re asking the question. I know that you don’t ask for toys and unimportant favors the way most children do all the time.”
Harry straightened his shoulders and looked around the brightly-lit dining room he and Dolores had used for their class about the ledgers that morning, as if he was seeing the shadows of other lessons. Dolores watched him with her chin in her hand. Yes, Harry was going to be someone remarkable, and it would be a pleasure to watch as he grew.
Harry switched his attention back to her. “History and politics are good. And maths. But I want to learn more about potions.”
Dolores cocked her head. “I don’t think Snape would consent to teach you.” Snape was on the verge of locating a property for the shop that he wanted, and Dolores was already dickering with some of the current owners he’d identified. The chaos of moving out—not to mention the chaos of the party Sirius would probably throw when he learned Snape was gone—wouldn’t be conducive to lessons for Harry.
“Oh, no, not him. Someone who learned Potions at the Ministry and who’s young and has some enthusiasm about teaching.”
Dolores muffled a snort. It seemed that Harry had picked up on Sirius’s and Remus’s distaste for Snape, although at least he didn’t look inclined to prank him. “Did you have someone in mind?”
“How could you tell?”
“Your list of adjectives was overly specific.” Dolores leaned back with one hand draped over the arm of the chair, and watched Harry relax in response. She sometimes tested his instincts and observations of people this way, seeing if he could read her and others trying to keep up a blank face. “So, who is it?”
Harry hesitated once, then said, “Sirius took me to the Ministry a few weeks ago? When you wanted me to see how the Department of Magical Law Enforcement works?”
Dolores nodded, curious. Harry had explained some of the exciting things he’d learned about on that day to her, but he hadn’t mentioned either meeting a teacher or hearing about someone who would make a good one.
“There’s an Auror. Her name is Nymphadora Tonks.” Harry stared right into her eyes now. “She’s a trainee, and they’ve mostly got her brewing healing potions right now. She said that she never learned Potions well under Snape at Hogwarts, and she had to teach herself to get her Potions NEWT. She likes it more than she expected.”
“What are her other recommendations?”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t imagine that you would want to be tutored by an Auror you’ve just met, Harry, unless there was something else special about her. Is she related to Ernest or another ally of ours?”
“Yes.” Harry let out an explosive little breath, while Dolores nodded. “She’s related to Sirius. Her mother is his cousin Andromeda Black. Her family disowned her for marrying a Muggleborn.” Harry’s eyes sparkled with something only a fool would have mistaken for happiness. “Isn’t that the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard?”
“I’ve heard some things that rival it. Mostly out of Albus Dumbledore’s mouth.”
Harry ducked his head as if afraid of showing his smile, and then looked up and nodded. “Yes. Well, I want to be tutored by her. She’s a Metamorphmagus, too. It’s so brilliant to watch her hair change colors and her nose change into a pig’s snout!”
Dolores smiled herself, but she made a little note in her mind to check out Tonks’s qualifications and make sure that she hadn’t been in contact with Dumbledore. It seemed too much of a coincidence that someone young, self-taught, and so appealing to Harry had appeared out of nowhere and offered to teach him. Especially since Sirius hadn’t said anything about meeting her at the Ministry.
“We’ll see. I’ll want to meet Miss Tonks and have Professor Snape evaluate her skill.”
“Oh, but you can’t! She said that Professor Snape makes her so nervous that she messes up her potions. The ones she taught herself are a lot better than the ones she made in Hogwarts.”
Dolores considered that. It could easily be true. She knew that more than one family had spoken disparagingly of Professor Snape’s skill, including Arthur Weasley in the tentative correspondence they’d set up.
For a moment, she wondered if it would be so bad to let an Auror ruled by Dumbledore into the house, since she let Harry play with Ron Weasley and she was writing to his parents. But then she shook her head. Communicating by letter or permitting Harry to lead the Weasley boy around by the nose was different from letting someone into their house to teach Harry. He already respected his teachers more than he should, which was one reason he’d agreed to hide Remus’s secret for so long.
“I’ll want to evaluate her myself, then. I’ll send her an owl and invite her over for tea next week.”
“Thank you, Miss Dolores.” Harry beamed at her and touched her side for a second, then bumped away and up the stairs. Dolores watched him go.
It would be like Dumbledore to slip someone into their confidence if he couldn’t contact Harry himself. And while it would be a massive coincidence for him to have a Potions instructor ready just when Harry wanted to learn Potions, the girl herself could have planted the idea in Harry’s head. All it would have taken was a few minutes of conversation and guile.
Dolores pursed her lips. Well, she would have to see what she thought when Tonks arrived next week.
*
“Whoops!”
As it turned out, the first thing Dolores thought was clumsy.
Nymphadora Tonks was still holding out her hand from her Floo entrance and reassuring Dolores that she liked to be called by her last name and not her first when the poker beside the fireplace tumbled and hit her in the leg. Flailing, Tonks grabbed hold of the mantel and managed to pull it down, sending several delicate porcelain keepsakes that the Potter house-elves had found in storage rooms flying. Dolores used her wand to keep them from smashing, and looked down at the young Auror lying on the hearth in front of her.
If she’s a spy, then in a way, she’s a very good one.
“And you’re an Auror?” she asked, unable to keep her voice even.
“Still a trainee, right now,” Tonks said earnestly, digging her elbows into the hearth and hauling herself upright. She seemed to stumble again, over soot and air as far as Dolores could tell, but this time she at least grabbed hold of the stones of the fireplace, which wouldn’t shift. She beamed at Dolores. “But I’m going to be amazing someday!”
If the Ministry doesn’t break to pieces around you first, Dolores thought, and subdued her headshake. “Come with me, would you? The house-elves have tea laid out for us in the dining room.”
Tonks trotted after her, and gasped, probably because the dining room was an immense place of arched wooden ceilings and windows that would have been at home in a fortress. Her hair changed from its relatively plain blonde-streaked brown to a clashing combination of purple and pink Dolores winced away from. “Wow! It’s brill!”
Indeed, Dolores thought, and gestured for Tonks to sit down on the side of the table opposite from her. She approvingly noted that in the time it had taken her to welcome Tonks and walk her in, the house-elves had Transfigured the delicate china plates and cups to replicas of shining stone. House-elves had their own opinions about people who went around breaking the valuables they were supposed to safeguard. “This is Harry’s ancestral home. It is a little grand, but we don’t always use the dining room to entertain.”
“Am I such a special guest?”
Now Tonks was subjecting Dolores to that suspicious stare that most Aurors seemed to learn sooner or later. Dolores tilted her head. “Of course you are. I’m considering you for a candidate to become Harry’s Potions instructor. I keep a close watch on his teachers. One lives in this house, you know.”
“I don’t want to,” Tonks said at once. “I have a flat in Muggle London that’s good enough for me.”
“I wasn’t proposing that you would. Only to let you know how seriously I take this.”
Tonks hesitated for a minute. Dolores waited, sipping at her own tea. Tonks had tasted hers and put it back with a faint grimace that argued she at least wasn’t going to drink more than a guest should.
“Harry’s a great kid,” Tonks finally said. “He’s not what I expected from someone trained to be political.”
I wonder who told her that he was. Dumbledore? Her mother? Dolores even wondered for a moment about Narcissa Malfoy, but dismissed the thought. If Tonks was a half-blood, it was unlikely that Narcissa would ever have associated with her. “What did you expect?”
“Someone cold and haughty. Who acts like a pure-blood and despises my mother for what she did.”
“Harry’s mother was Muggleborn. Of course he would be interested in someone else who has that experience of the same heritage, but growing up in the wizarding world,” said Dolores quietly. “And he spoke well of you. I don’t think that he’s looking forward to Hogwarts.”
“He should be!” Tonks’s hair turned all pink, and she waved a hand around as if trying to catch a stubborn fly. “Hogwarts is great!”
“But he’s had conflicts with Hogwarts’s Headmaster.” Dolores picked up the jar of marmalade, watching Tonks closely. She thought she had the woman’s measure, and she wouldn’t be a good liar. There ought to be some sign of guilt if she was playing a part at Dumbledore’s request.
There was nothing, though. Dolores didn’t see a crinkled nose or twitching eyelid or darting gaze. Tonks only shrugged. “Dumbledore was distant enough from most of us. He was only interfering with Harry’s life because of who Harry is, right?”
“Only.”
“Oh. Okay.” Tonks munched her lip for a minute. She at least was eating the scones. Dolores wondered idly how the house-elves could possibly have made the tea offensive. “That changes things a little.”
“It does.” Dolores sat up as straight as she could. “I would like to see the way you brew, to judge your effectiveness as a teacher.”
“How is watching me brew going to tell you that?”
“I am not a poor brewer,” Dolores said. “I would have taught Harry myself, but I am not at the expert level that I want him to learn from. And the potions that I make well are rather limited in application.” With luck, Harry would never need to know how to brew the mild calming and compulsion potions that Dolores had used to make her superiors spill gossip in her presence. People would stumble over themselves to tell him things because of his name.
“I’m not an expert, either,” Tonks said, and her hair changed to brown, while she looked around as if she wanted to bolt from the room.
“Then are you the best choice to teach Harry?”
Tonks sighed, and calmed down enough to dunk a scone in the tea and eat it without apparently noticing what she’d put it in. “I don’t know. I can only think of one thing I could do for him that Professor Snape definitely couldn’t. And probably most of the Aurors who teach me couldn’t, either.”
“What is that?”
Tonks looked up. “Be his friend,” she said simply. “I didn’t know until Sirius came to get him, after we’d spent about half an hour talking, that he was Sirius’s godson. I didn’t even know he was Harry Potter. He wasn’t showing me his scar. He just wants a friend.”
“He does have them,” Dolores murmured, thinking of Draco and the Greengrass girls, Ron Weasley and even Sirius.
“Well, maybe an older sister, then.” Tonks’s hair changed again to pink, and she flushed a little. “I know that Sirius is more of an older brother than a godfather, I can see that, but there are some things that I think I could show him better.”
And you are more cheerful than Sirius, Dolores thought. And more capable of understanding when to stop finding things hilarious. Sirius’s emotions still changed frequently, suddenly, from brooding melancholy to the kind of wild laughter that she had seen Harry watch with wide eyes. “Should I trust you?”
“Well, you said that you were going to evaluate my brewing before—”
“Not that,” Dolores said. “I want to know why you suddenly appeared. It seems likely to me that you might be a recruit to Dumbledore’s side of things. I know that you were either a Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff—”
“Hufflepuff,” snapped Tonks, and her hair turned to flat black. “Why would you—I know Dumbledore was ordered to stay away from Harry. Why would you think that I would help him to get access? That’s insulting!”
“You’re a young woman related to someone who used to be part of Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix,” Dolores said, counting the truths off on her fingers. “You have a talent for changing your appearance that’s rare even among the Blacks. You have a Muggleborn father. You won’t be sympathetic to pure-blood politics, and you even expressed disgust at the thought that Harry had been tutored in them. You come out of nowhere exactly when Dumbledore finds himself barred from visits and letters. Why wouldn’t you be his spy?”
Tonks stared at her with her lips parted. Then she flung her head back and laughed.
Dolores waited, her hands clutching either side of the teacup. Tonks finally broke off and choked on her tears, wiping them away. Then she conjured a handkerchief and blew her nose messily. Dolores let her lip curl a little.
Tonks didn’t appear to notice. She simply shook her head. “I’m not part of the Order of the Phoenix, Madam Umbridge,” she said. “And I don’t think that Dumbledore is looking to recruit me any time soon. Sure, I’m related to Sirius. That’s not a recommendation right now. I’m a half-blood, but there are lots of those in the wizarding world.” She looked at Dolores pointedly.
Dolores nodded.
“I was just surprised that Harry Potter was deigning to talk to me,” Tonks said. “Yeah, I don’t like the traditional pure-blood families much, not after the Blacks exiled my mum. But that’s a long way from helping Dumbledore manipulate a little boy.”
Dolores began to relax. Now she thought she understood. Perhaps because Harry was still small for his age or because his fringe had hidden his scar at first, he had struck Tonks as a child.
“My appearance really was a coincidence.” Tonks cocked her head. “And the Aurors were interested in me for my Metamorphmagus magic, so I suppose I can’t reassure you that Dumbledore never would be. But I think he’s mostly interested in people who worship him. You know, so they’ll do things like manipulate a little boy without question.”
The disgust in her voice was real, Dolores judged. She nodded. “Then you will not be interested in attending Harry’s politics lessons?”
It was a test, to watch how much Tonks’s mouth twisted. She shook her head. “I reckon you’re right, and he needs it. He is important. But I like the boy I met that day, the boy who asked me all sorts of questions about myself and what it was like to grow up in the wizarding world with one Muggleborn parent.” She leaned forwards, her eyes intent. “I won’t help someone hurt him. I want to help him. But until you owled me, I couldn’t think of any way. I didn’t think he would be impressed by the skill I do have with Potions.”
“I suppose I have to see it before I know if I will be, either,” Dolores said, and stood. Her heartbeat had calmed. Perhaps she ought to trust Harry’s instincts, she thought. He would have distrusted a sycophant. He had disliked Dumbledore from the moment he laid eyes on him. Let him spot and choose his own champions.
I taught him. I should have faith that he would be able to defend himself with words.
“Then let me show you.”
Tonks looked like a confident and collected young woman as she stood up. At least, until her sleeve caught hold of the cup and made it fly towards the wall. Dolores sighed and flicked her wand, catching it and lowering it again.
Tonks flushed. “Sorry.”
“Let me show you to the brewing lab,” Dolores said, and led her there, shaking her head as they went. She would have the house-elves replace some of the breakable vials and other equipment.
But she thought she might have found an ally for Harry at least as good as Sirius.
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The Daring Win