McGonagall offered me a job as Transfiguration teacher at Hogwarts, and asked Remus to come back and teach Defense Against the Dark Arts again.
The students’ Hogsmeade trips had been canceled, due to You-Know-Who’s rise in power.
Harry, Ron and Hermione decided not to come back to Hogwarts. They were out searching for the remaining Horcruxes (The rest of the Order was informed about them after Dumbledore’s funeral). Last I had heard, they hadn’t found any yet...
The school seemed so different without Dumbledore. At the start of term feast, when McGonagall went up to make an announcement, the students fell silent immediately. It was a grave silence, one you would expect to hear at a funeral. There were not very many first years coming in. Parents were probably worried and scared to send their children off.
Even the Sorting Hat seemed different than I remembered. This is what it said:
Since I was made
A thousand years or more ago
When four wise ones
Built a school that’s standing to this day
Each taught students
All so different
But still so much alike
The cunning went to Slytherin
Who taught them all he knew
And the Brave to Gryffindor
Who built them strong and true
The cleverest belonged to Ravenclaw
Who kept them sharp and bright
And all the rest to Hufflepuff
Who showed them what was right.
I have said
One time before
That dividing you is wrong
When in this time you must be one
To become strong
Now that you’ve lost a wise old friend
It will take all you have
To gain victory in the end.
McGonagall said it was the shortest song the hat ever sang. It got the message across though. But apparently the seventh years weren’t listening.
My first class of the year, the next day, started off quite... interestingly.
My seventh year classes are doubled, and my first one was Gryffindor and Slytherin. When I got in the room, a few of them were fighting. The yelling grew louder as more and more people joined in the verbal fight.
“Oy!” I yelled over the noise when I walked into the room. “That’s enough! I’m talking now.”
“And you are?” a Slytherin girl shot back at me.
“Professor Tonks,’ I replied. I had decided to keep my maiden name so not to be confused with Remus. “Now, just to give a little background info, I’m an Auror and a metamorphmagus, which means I can change my appearance at will. Like this-” I morphed my face to look like the Slytherin girl who had snapped at me. There were a few “wow’s” and “oo’s”, then I put a giant wart on the tip of my nose, still keeping the girl’s appearance.
All the Gryffindors laughed, and some of the Slytherins sneered in the direction of the girl.
I morphed my face back to normal. “See?”
One of the students raised her hand. “Can you teach us to do that?”
“Sadly, no. Being a metamorphmagus is a gift you’re born with. You can’t learn it. But, I will be teaching you other ways to change the way you look.”
After that I seemed to grab the attention of most of the class. Except the girl I had morphed into.
“How’d your first day go?” Remus asked at dinner.
“Suddenly, I have a lot more respect for my old teachers,” I laughed.
He smiled. “Tough time?”
“No, just... well, yeah.”
“It gets better.”
“If you say so.”
The rest of the week crawled by, as the tension between the Slytherins and Gryffindors rose. It was getting ridiculous, I was sure that within two months, I would loose my voice from having to yell so much.
“How do I get control of them?” I asked Remus one day after a particularly nasty fight between Seamus Finnigan and Pansy Parkinson.
“Start threatening detentions,” he replied.
I sighed and put my head on my desk. I had a splitting headache.
“You need to relax,” he said, wrapping his arms around me from behind. “Come with me to Hogsmeade tomorrow. It’ll take your mind of all this.”
“Alright...” I sighed, I still had one last class to teach. Luckily it was first years, they were easy.
The next day, I met Remus after breakfast at the front doors, and we walked down to Hogsmeade together.
Even though it was only a few days into October, it was unusually cold out. The grounds were covered in dead leaves that crackled under out feet.
I pulled my cloak tighter around me, hoping it would help to warm me up. Remus opened his cloak and pulled me inside with him, keeping his arm around my shoulders lovingly. That, of course, did not last very long. I eventually tripped over his feet and the two of us fell onto the ground.
I turned a bright shade of pink and smiled apologetically.
“It’s fine, Tonks,” Remus laughed. He leaned in and kissed my cheek, then helped me up. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I kissed him back.
He put his hands on my hips and I pressed mine against his neck as we stood, snogging, in the cold October weather. My eyes closed, and my mouth opened, inviting him to take a step further. He took the invitation and his tongue explored my mouth as my hands ran through his hair, down his neck and onto his back.
“Thanks...” I said, my eyes still closed.
“You’re welcome,” he whispered.
I smiled at him, and he took my hand, leading me Hogsmeade.
Once we got there, we sat in Three Broomsticks, talking and laughing over butterbeer. He was right. I did need to get out more.
BAM! An explosion went off down the street.
“Stay here,” Remus instructed.
“You’re delusional, Remus, if you think I’m going to stay here and wait for you to come back.”
He sighed and we ran out down the street to the source of the noise.
A crowd of panicked people ran past us as a group of Death Eaters, who were lead by Bellatrix Lestrange, sent spells flying at anyone they could see.
Aurors arrived on the scene soon after we got there.
Spells flew every which way, dust filled the air, and debris were spread on the ground around us. Through all that, I had lost Remus and began to panic, but not for long. Bellatrix had cornered me and was able to throw me back against the wall. But she didn’t do anything after that. Unless she used a non-verbal spell... She just stood there, looking at me.
After a while, there were too many Aurors, and the Death Eaters who hadn’t already been captured Apparated out.
Remus appeared somewhere among all the chaos.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah... I think...” I said slowly. “It’s like she didn’t even want to do anything, she just stood there.”
“You still should go to the Hospital Wing, just in case.”
“Alright.”
He helped me up, but all of the sudden, when I stood up, my head started to spin and my legs felt like they had been put under a Jelly-Legs Jinx. Remus helped to support me, and brought me back to Hogwarts and into the Hospital Wing.
Madam Pomfrey looked over me, but couldn’t find any hex or jinx, so she just told me to rest a day or two.
“In a few days you should be back to normal,” she told me. “Just take it easy.”
I nodded.
But a voice in the back of my head told me I was in trouble. Big trouble.