Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures	By : Daye Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Harry/Tonks Views: 93080 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Harry Potter franchise. I make no money from the writing of this.

Chapter List
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Chapter 9: Friction

When Harry slowly came back to consciousness the world had turned soft and fluffy. It took him a while to realise that he’d actually been moved. The last thing he recalled was being slumped down on Tonks’ rug. He opened his eyes to sun blazing through short but wide windows that lined the top of a circular room. He was lying in a large bed with ornately carved wooden head and end boards, underneath a thick, soft blanket. Next to him, Tonks made a small sleepy noise and snuggled up closer to his side. Harry lay back and let his eyes half close and felt completely contented.

Harry didn’t know how long they dozed there and he didn’t really care awfully much. Eventually though, Tonks began to stir. She became alert much faster than Harry did and smiled up at him with eyes the colour of amber.

“Good morning,” Harry said softly.

“Uhhh, Morning? Far too early,” she replied as she buried her head back in the pillows.

“Not what you were saying, yesterday,” Harry teased.

“Yeah but it’s Sunday today,” Tonks said lightly. “Day of rest, you know?”

“Rest and relaxation,” Harry said and leant in to plant a soft kiss on Tonks’ neck. His arms snaked about her, as he kissed her again on the top of her ear and then the earlobe. Tonks murmured happily, but still gently began to extract herself from his embrace.

“You seem plenty relaxed to me, Harry,” she said as she slid out from the covers and stretched.

“Spoilsport,” Harry said, cheerfully sticking his tongue out at her.

“Now, Harry. You realise I have a lot of paperwork to do,” she said, trying to assume her stern ‘Professor McGonagall’ expression but the fact that she had bright pink hair and wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing rather ruined the effect, “and you have at least one essay which I know you want to devote your best effort to.”

Harry just chuckled at the expression on her face and laughed even harder when she tried to stifle her own giggles under the stern mask.

Quite a while later, Harry had managed to find and don his clothes, had a light breakfast from the stove in Tonks’ room and set out through the revolving wall section into the castle beyond. He glanced up and down the corridor he emerged in and realised that he had absolutely no idea where in the castle he was and couldn’t really remember the route he and Tonks had taken the previous evening. Shrugging his shoulders, he picked a direction and set off. His stride was long and smooth again and he felt utterly relaxed and strangely unconcerned at finding himself lost. Normally, he got very annoyed that even after five years of living here he still didn’t know every part of the castle. At the moment, he couldn’t remember why, though. After all, sooner or later he would reach a window or a part of the castle that he recognised and in the mean time, he was seeing new things. So, what was there to complain about?

He hummed tunelessly to himself as he wandered through the corridors until quite by chance he found himself at a familiar looking tapestry that pointed him back towards Gryffindor tower. He ambled back to the portrait of the Fat Lady still humming, which earned him an odd look from the painting, and walked past the early rising Gryffindors and their avid gazes. Their staring put a slight dent in his good mood—so he was the Quidditch captain and famous, and utterly handsome as well, but they really should have gotten used to it by now. He put them out of his mind.

And so his good mood continued all through the common room, up the stairs and into the dormitory. When he entered, however, every single occupant turned to look at him with serious expressions on their faces.

“And where have you been?” Ron said, as he folded his arms and glowered darkly at Harry.

~0~

If there was one thing that was universally recognised by Albus Dumbledore’s advocates and detractors, it was that he was brilliant but quite, quite mad. Unfortunately for Tonks, this seemed to extend to his ideas about when it would be a good time for staff meetings. Sunday afternoons were, in her opinion, no time to force yourself into a creaky armchair in the stuffy and cramped staff room, to listen to her fellow teachers talk on and on and on about their subjects and houses and this was after only a week of classes. Tonks hated to think about how long these meetings could go on after a few more weeks when things actually began to happen.

Still, lectures at Auror Academy had given her a lot of practise in sitting somewhere and apparently paying attention without her eyes glazing over too much. Skills she put to good use as Dumbledore tolerantly let Argus Filch drone on at length about all the students that had offended him that week and how they should be strung up by their ankles. A suggestion that caused Dumbledore to feign deafness and move on the next teacher’s report.

Tonks didn’t have much to say for herself. She was still in her ‘getting to know the students’ phase, their strengths, their weaknesses and most importantly their names. It was remarkable how such a diverse lot of kids could look exactly the same to her.

Still, after a good ninety minutes of talking, they were finally free to go. Tonks quickly got to her feet and stretched and turned for the door...

“Nymphadora,” Dumbledore said softly, “a private word, please?”

Tonks felt her stomach drop as she looked at Dumbledore and walked back to a seat next to him. His tone had not differed one iota from normal but something in his eyes looked less sparkly than usual. Dumbledore obviously had something serious on his mind. As she sat down she noticed Professor McGonagall hovering at the door. She looked very much like she wanted to sit in on the meeting but Dumbledore just smiled, waved to her and said ‘Good evening, Minerva,’ and she took the hint, which was at least some small comfort to Tonks. If Dumbledore was about to reprimand her, she’d like to keep it as private as possible.

“So, Nymphadora,” Dumbledore said, arching his fingers and sending a piercing look her way over the top of them, “How are you settling in?”

“Well enough,” Tonks said tersely, “Like I said before, just trying to learn all the kid’s names.”

“And Harry?”

“I knew his name already,” Tonks joked but it drew neither a chuckle nor a twinkling eye from Dumbledore.

And he did not reply. He just gave her another long look. The silence stretched and frayed along with Tonks’ nerves.

“Out with it, Albus,” she said finally, “What do you want to say to me?”

“I am... concerned” Dumbledore said, ponderously, and Tonks saw a flash of uneasiness go across his face so quickly that she might have just imagined it, “about what you and Harry having been doing together.”

Tonks’ stomach didn’t so much drop as disappear completely and she fought the blush rising across her face. She had nothing to be ashamed of; she and Harry were married. In fact, they were married solely thanks to Dumbledore’s machinations, so he really had no grounds to complain here, at all.

“I think,” she answered stiffly, “that what Harry and I do in private is no-one’s business but ours, wouldn’t you say?”

A shadow of his former twinkle passed through Dumbledore’s eyes.

“I hardly call the school grounds private, Nymphadora,”

“I- huh?” Tonks’ retort stumbled in her confusion, “What are you talking about?”

“I have been told that yesterday morning you were taking Harry through some, ah, extracurricular defence training, shall we say?”

Tonks had to run through what he said in her head a couple of times before it even began to make sense to her.

“You’re objecting to me showing Harry how to fight?” Tonks said, disbelievingly, “For Merlin’s sake, why?”

Dumbledore sighed and dropped his hands to the table.

“I imagine Harry has told you about a certain prophecy concerning him and Voldemort?”

“He mentioned it,” Tonks nodded, “He said that eventually it had to be him or you-know-who. That’s the main reason I’m training him to fight, you might realise; so that he’s got a fighting chance against the evil dark lord who’s got about half a century of experience over him.”

“The prophecy also speaks of the power that Harry has and the Dark Lord knows not.”

“A special power?” Tonks snorted, “Harry’s showing promise as a duelist but there’s no special powers there.”

“I believe that power is love, Tonks,” Dumbledore said calmly, “something I can vouchsafe Lord Voldemort does not possess.”

“Love?” Tonks echoed incredulously, “That’s hardly a power, Dumbledore, and maybe You-know-who can’t feel it but everyone else can.”

“Yet none of us were marked by Voldemort as an equal,” Dumbledore explained, “None of the rest of us are linked to him by fate. But if you teach Harry how to fight, you will teach him to cut himself off from compassion, you will tell him to be pragmatic, ruthless even to defeat his foe, and in so doing you will cut him off from the very power that he must use to defeat the Dark Lord, and that I can’t allow,”

“Can’t allow?” Tonks said, her voiced raised, “Can’t allow?! You want me to send Harry out there, untrained, just so the power of love can save him? That’s your grand plan?”

“I would not have put it in those terms,” said Dumbledore, as if she had not been shouting at him, “but yes, in essence.”

“You’re mad,” Tonks said, “And not eccentric old man – mad, we’re talking off the rocker, bonkers here!”

Dumbledore simply raised an eyebrow,

“As headmaster of the school, I am responsible for all the teaching that goes on at the school,” he said with utmost formality, “and with that authority I’m going to have to ask you not to teach any students in preference to other students and confine all your teaching to the scheduled classes. I must point out that as a teacher it is your duty to teach all students as equals.”

Tonks rose to her feet stiffly.

“I’ll take it under advisement, Professor,” she said frostily, and walked out.

~0~

“What do you mean, ‘where have you been’?” Harry said shortly.

“I mean, ‘where have you been?” Ron said, “I’m asking because I know you haven’t been here all night.”

“So, so what?” Harry growled in response. Dean, Seamus, and even Neville were backing Ron up, standing around him with stern expressions.

“Well, the rules say we’re supposed to be back in the tower before curfew,” Ron said.

Harry noted the tenseness of Ron’s posture. Ron had always been taller than him but since he’d become Keeper on the quidditch team he’d lost most of his gangliness as well, making a fair bid to become as broad shouldered as he was tall. The result was an impressive amount of loom when he wasn’t slouching. Harry had never even thought of Ron as being intimidating but he was a lot closer now than ever before, but Harry couldn’t understand why Ron was suddenly getting all over him. Seamus and Dean he could understand, there was probably still hard feelings that they hadn’t made the team yesterday, but Ron’s and Neville’s sudden animosity was puzzling.

“And when did we play by the rules, Ron?” Harry said, trying to laugh it off.

“You were with her, weren’t you?” Ron said, “Tonks.”

It was as though the clouds in his mind had suddenly parted and let sunbeams of understanding blaze down on his brain. Ron was jealous; he should have seen it coming. It wasn’t like it was a new thing. Still, the other boy’s interest was completely out of the blue. Harry’s mouth was completely dry. He didn’t know what to say.

“Well, yes,” Harry said, after a long pause, “we’re married after all.”

“You’re banging her, ain’t ya, Harry?” Seamus asked suddenly with a grin and then the grimness surrounding them broke. The boys snickered with a slight gleam to their eyes. Harry flushed bright red.

“That’s private,” he snapped, automatically.

“That means yes, don’t it?” Seamus said, nudging Dean conspiratorially, who nodded in agreement.

“No,” Harry growled, “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Oh, he’s so modest,” Dean said, sarcastically, “if anyone else was knobbing some bird as hot as that we wouldn’t stop hearing all the details until days after we were sick of it. But ol’ Harry’s just too damn good for that.”

Harry’s cheeks and neck burned with the deepness of his blushing but he held his tongue. Dean might be right, he never was much inclined towards boasting to them; he kept things to himself. But on the other hand, it wasn’t only him he was thinking about; Tonks was still their teacher. If he gave the boys all the dirty details about her, it could only undermine her position with them and he couldn’t do that to her. He cast his mind about for an easy exit.

“Sorry, guys,” he muttered grabbing his school bag from on top of his trunk, “I’ve got to do that essay on counter-curses.”

But even as he left, he heard Ron again, his sullen comment pitched so low Harry figured it was only meant for the other boys,

“Yeah, like you’re really going to have to try to pass that.”

As ever, reviews are most welcome. Thanks go out to Salon_Kitty for beta reading.

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Desperate Times, Desperate Measures