Notes:
Welcome back my dear readers and once again thank you for all your support, I must say I do enjoy waking up to 200 emails telling me how many immediately jumped on my stories, the comments are great too. I do like answering all the questions that you have for me about my DnD group and the story at large. After this chapter, the naming theme for each chapter will be obvious, the chapters I know most of you are looking forward to the most are: The High Priestess, the Ace Of Cups, and Death. Though I'm personally looking forward to The Empress and the Three of Wands, now I'm no tarot expert, and since they are based on personal interpretation some chapters may seem off and that's fine.
On with the show,
Harry Potter
Harry was exhausted, he was running off a few hours of sleep and had just gotten done with dealing with the Head Auror, a man with a lion main for a haircut by the name of Rufus Scrimgeour, and a stern and no-nonsense monocle-wearing witch named Amelia Bones who was the head of the department of Magical Law Enforcement in an intense meeting that had Harry on pins and needles as they took his statement. They asked a lot of questions "why did you charge back into the crowd Mister Potter?" "Because they were torturing a little girl," "Why did you snap Lord Selwyn's wand after you knocked him out?" "So, if he got back up he wouldn't have a weapon," "Why did you use a muggle weapon instead of a wand? Rather brutal don't you think?" "I'm not allowed to use magic outside of school and they were assholes who deserved it,"
While the Head Auror hadn't been amused by that last answer, the Head of the DMLE did snort at it, and considering the woman had a straight face the entire time, Harry considered it a victory. It had taken another two hours before all the questions were asked and the statement was taken before he was allowed to leave, Harry and Ted had to stop by the Auror office so Harry could get his wand and bow back. He had to admit it was a pretty cool-looking place with all the wanted posters and newspaper clippings covering the walls of the cubicles for each Auror, all the people in red robes running to and fro with files, bags, or random items like a toilet with teeth that snapped at anyone who moved too close. He had to wait for a bit for them to find his wand and bow from evidence, so Harry stood around awkwardly as Ted went to talk to someone in one of the cubicles.
Harry was looking at an old wanted poster for Sirius, the one with him laughing like a madman, and was debating on if he could steal it for a memento of what happened last year when he hears a door open to his left, normally he would just ignore it, but when he heard "Lord Selwyn" he felt the Hunt purr in the back of his mind as he turned to the men walking out of the door. Harry didn't know his face, but his scent was unmistakable from a few hours earlier, he was a short man with graying brown hair swept back and a neatly trimmed mustache, and his eyes were an angry green set above sharp cheekbones and a glass jaw. Harry felt a pit of disappointment looking at the man's two working arms, he had snapped his right arm in three places before twisting his shoulder out of the socket.
He was shaking hands with an Auror who had the look of someone touching something unpleasant, "You have my thanks, Auror Breekon, I'm sorry I couldn't help you more in catching the scum who had cursed me, but it is my hope you catch the scoundrels that were behind this attack on my person and those innocent who were harmed," Selwyn says with a seemingly innocent smile made to look disarming, but neither Harry nor Auror Breekon bought it for a second.
"Of course, Lord Selwyn," the Auror says, in a thick cockney accent not smiling at the man, "Perhaps you should pay more attention to where you're using the John next time, since it seems that you're, …exceptionally vulnerable to the Imperius curse," Auror Breekon says before a smug smile grows on his face as he talks to the Lord like he was insulting him.
Selwyn's lips twitch downward but otherwise, he seemed unfazed but the Aurors words, "I'll keep that in mind, Auror Breekon," Selwyn tries to smile as he says that but it comes out more of a sneer before he lets go of the Aurors hand and turning to leave just to see Harry standing in the hallway looking at him with a passive bored look on his face and stops dead.
"Mister Potter," Selwyn half hisses out, "What a surprise," he takes a few more steps toward Harry with a smile that wasn't friendly at all on his face, Harry watches the Auror tense before a wand slips into his hand with narrowed eyes, "I've been informed that I have you to thank for stopping me from doing unforgivable things to those poor people," Selwyn says, his voice like oil. When Harry just looks away from him, uninterested in what he has to say, does the man's tone change.
"Listen here, Boy," Selwyn says in a sharp tone, "It would do you well to listen when your betters are speaking to you," he says, sounding angry and insulted by Harry's clear dismissal of the man as a threat.
Harry turns back to the man with the same bored look that was normally found only on Artemis' face, he speaks loudly and clearly to the man in front of him so he would not confuse his words for anything else, "Lord Voldemort," Harry says and he watches the man flinch, Harry scoffs as he looks way shaking his head, the man was a coward through and through.
"Do you think yourself Brave for saying the Dark Lords' name, Boy," Selwyn says as he walks closer to Harry, anger rolling off him in waves, "You have no idea what he was capable of, the terror he spread, the horrors that were conjured by him, the power he wielded like he was a God, the Witchfather reborn," he snarls at Harry, "All you've done was get lucky surviving his-" But Selwyn cuts himself off as Harry snaps his head back to the man, his pupils split from the small amount of the hunt he let in, Selwyn takes a step back when he looks into Harry's eyes, for he stared deep into the eyes of the Hunt and the Hunt deemed him nothing but prey.
"I've been in the same room as Voldemort three different times," Harry says, smirking as he watched the grown man take a step back and flinching, "I don't remember the first time, but the other two ended just the same, so, excuse me if I'm not impressed by a coward who flinches at his name," Harry says as he turns fully to the man, keeping his eyes looked with Selwyn, "and don't call me Boy, ya cunt," Harry says before turning back to the wanted poster of Sirius.
"That is Lord Selwyn to you, Boy, " Selwyn says through gritted teeth.
"I would call you Lord Cunt, but I'm pretty sure we both know who that is," Harry says with a shrug, "So, do us both a favor and go away, because I don't think the Aurors would be very happy with me if they had to clean up another dead body," Harry says, intent on ignoring Cunt-wyn until he left. Surprisingly, Selwyn doesn't say anything more, he gives Harry a wide berth as he walks past him and down the hall leaving Harry alone.
Auror Breekon lets out a low whistle before he speaks, "Nice job, gov'na," he says before Harry turns to look at him, the Hunt gone from his eyes, "Haven't seen one of them Death Eaters knob heads run with their tails between their legs in a long while," he says before turning to look at Harry with a grin, "Good to see It again," he says as he slips his wand back up his sleeve.
"Do, ah, do you my mind if I-I, ah, have this?" Harry asks the Auror, pointing at the wanted poster.
Auror Breekon just shrugs, "Go for Mister Potter," he says with a smile before Harry pulls the poster down and folds it up, while he stuffs it into his pocket Ted walks around the corner looking for him.
"Ah, Harry, there you are," Ted says with a smile, "Have they released your things to you?" The man asks with a smile.
"Not yet, they're looking for them now," Harry says with a shrug, looking back at Auror Breekon, but he had already left.
"Well, no harm in waiting for a bit more," Ted says standing next to Harry, "Just so you know, My Daughter is coming over for dinner tonight, it will be just us four," he informs Harry as he watches the boy shuffle his feet awkwardly but nods, "Thought it would be better to introduce you to everyone at once, rip out the throne, so to speak," Ted says with a smile as Harry looks at the man with narrowed eyes.
"Is that a joke about me being sorted into Gryffindor?" Harry asks in a flat and tired tone.
"Perhaps," the jolly older man says with a smile, and for the first time since Harry met the man, Harry cracks a smile.
(Don't call me)Nymphadora Tonks, The-Den-on-the-hill.
Do you know what's odd? Coming back to your childhood home after a long bloody day at work when all you want is to go back home to your own flat, to your own bed, snuggle up to your oversized fuzzy pillows and pass out. But when your dad walks into your job and informs you that Harry bloody Potter is going to be staying with your parents for the next few weeks, you pull on your sexy skintight dragonhide leather big girl pants and head over for dinner. So, with a crack of magic Nymphadora, or Dora to her dad, apperates into the garden behind her childhood home.
It wasn't a big or fancy home, even if her mum and dad could easily afford one with both of their jobs, it was more a summer cottage built low and into the hill it had sat atop, with stairs leading down to the front and back doors that Dora had tripped over more times then she cared to remember. Stone walls on all sides made it look more like a dug-in fortress with a mossy roof located deep in the countryside a mile away from the closest muggle town. The garden was filled with both magical and mundane plants that her mother grew for one reason or another, wrapped around the entire home with a waist-high white picket fence that served as a wardline for anyone not keyed to it. The home itself was located on a ley line to further enhance the charms, wards, and enchantments that lay on it. They couldn't go too overboard with the magic for the sake of all the muggle technology that was in the house she and her father liked, and while her mother could live without(coffee maker not included), her mother liked as well. They had to balance a very thin line to live with both, too much magic would fry the muggle stuff, and too much muggle stuff would cause the ley line to lose power. Took her father years of testing when she was little to get it just right, but he was able to figure out the ratio by the time she was ten.
Walking carefully down the steps to the den and fished her spare key out of her jacket, a gift from Charlie back from when they were still dating, Red Wyvern leather with charmed metal black spikes on the shoulder. While not as protective as Dragonhide, it was still a bit resistant to magic, also, looked bloody wicked with all the scale marks on it. Slipping her key into the lock before giving it and the doorknob a twist she opens it up to the warmly lit house, not the muggle kind of lights or the torches or candles found in Hogwarts, but witchlight-infused runes carved along the walls and ceiling showing dark corners with white light that you could turn off and on with a flick of a wand or even change colors if you wanted. The floors were a rich mahogany wood almost everywhere but in the bathrooms and kitchens which had plain black and white tiles, the living room had a thick brown carpet, the hallways and bedrooms were all wood, however. The smell of roasted chicken and vegetables filled the air as the sounds of the Tardis traveling through time and space echoed throughout the home as Dora pulls her jacket off before hanging it on the hooks next to the back door.
"Wotcha mum, dad!" Dora calls out as she walks into the shared space of the kitchen and living room.
"Dora!" Her father calls out in greeting, getting up from his favorite chair in the living room to come hug her which she returns with a smile.
"Nymphadora, dear, good to see you okay," her mum says as she hugs her, and kisses her on the cheek, Dora rolls her eyes at her full first name but doesn't say anything back. For as fearsome with a wand as she was, her mother still could scare the socks off her if she got mad.
"I'm fine, Mum," Dore tells her, "We got there in the aftermath of Hurricane Harry, most of the blighters got away," the Auror says with a bit of a frown.
"Hurricane Harry?" Her Mum asks, a bit of amusement in her voice as she walks back to the kitchen and opens the fridge.
Dora shrugs as she walks into the kitchen and sits down at her normal spot at the table, "That's what most of the department is calling him," she says, accepting the ale from her mother and twisting the top off, "And considering what I've heard about him, oddly fitting nickname," she says before taking a look around, "Where is he anyway?" She asks her Mum, watching as her mother's lips pressed into a thin line before sharing a look with Dora's father, that was never good.
"He's in the guest room with his owl last I checked," Dora's mom says, as she walks over to the stove, and flicks her wand to remove the chicken and vegetables from the oven.
"Somethin' wrong with him?" Dora asks, taking a sip from her bottle, she was asking out of courtesy more than anything. The kid had killed three men with a bow and fucking arrow, Ol'Mad-Eye had told her she would have to kill in the Auror ranks when necessary, even prepared her for it by taking her to murder scenes and painlessly killing some livestock set to go to the slaughterhouse. Kinda fucked, but killing another person was fucked anyway and he was trying to prepare her for the worst outcome so she wasn't the one dead instead, shame the old scarred blighter retired from the force earlier this year, but if anyone deserved a quiet retirement it was Moody; Witchfather knows his neighbors won't get any peace.
"No," Dora's mum says, flicking her wand at the cabinet and having the table set itself, "He's fine," the Mediwitch says it like it was terminal.
"Oh," Dora says, because Oh shit would have gotten a stinging hex aimed at her bum by her mum if she said it out loud, and she had an amazing bum if you were to ask her, no need to swell it further, she can do that herself, thank you. But if the kid was fine after dropping three arseholes, well, that wasn't a good sign, now was it?
Dora's dad sits down right across from her, his own beer in hand, "Yeah, that just about covers it," he says with a sad grin.
"Maybe it just hasn't hit him yet?" Dora suggests, "shi- something like that can take a while to really sink in, Ya know?" The Auror offers looking between her two parents, who once again share a look that Dora didn't like.
"Maybe," her mother offers but says nothing else as she begins to carve the roasted bird at the counter.
"Okay, what the bloody hell is going on with you two?" Dora asks, "Was he ranting and raving about how he enjoyed killing the blighters?" She asks before her mother turns and looks at her with sharp eyes.
"Nymph-" Andromeda begins to raise her voice before stopping herself and taking a breath, "Nymphadora Tonks, language," she says in a much quieter voice which does nothing but confuses the Auror which was painted on her face.
"It's not that, Dora," Her father says, "It's just, …something about Harry we learned eariler today," he admits, looking grim.
"Is that why you two are acting like you're walking through a minefield?" Dora asks, her confusion deepening.
"Some of it, yes," Ted sighs out, closing his eyes to rub them, "But we can't really do anything about them now," he says before looking back at her, "Why don't you go introduce yourself to Harry and tell him dinner is ready," he suggests as Dora looks between the two before sighing herself and standing up to do just that, she totally didn't almost trip when her foot got caught on the leg of the table.
"And Nymphadora," Her mother says before Dora turns to look at her, "None of your usual antics with him, be polite," Andromeda tells her daughter with pleading eyes, antics? Dora didn't do "antics", that was just her natural charm, but her mother's comment was interesting nonetheless, so Dora nods before walking into the hallway leading straight down like the spine of the house, she passes her old room, her parent's room, and the washroom before getting to the last door in the hall. The dark wood door was shut, but the witchlight was flooding out through the bottom, Dora knocked on the door to be polite, seeing the kid should be awake. Dora hears a loud hoot coming from the other side of the door, and taking that as a go-ahead she opens the door and looks at the boy for the first time since what had happened less than 24 hours ago.
Her first thought was how small he looked, he was hunched over the small writing desk in the room, his back to her and his chin resting on his crossed arms on the desk. He was looking out of the window into the twilight sky with the rising full moon overhead, a snow-white owl was nesting on his shoulder, its head turned all the way around to glare at her, its luminous yellow eyes narrowed as it looked at her with what seemed to be unnerving intelligence in its eyes.
When she had first laid eyes on Harry outside of Hogwarts and at a Christmas party from years ago, almost too long ago to properly remember, was less than 24 hours ago as he stood in the burning campgrounds, he seemed taller then with an aura of death and hatred so thick she had first thought he was going to turn the bow he held on the Aurors that she arrived with, all he needed in that firelight was a silver crown and a white horse and he could have been Conquest freshly summoned from the first of the seven seals. But now, now everything rolling off him was morose and melancholy as he looked out the window, he didn't want to be here, he wanted to be anywhere else but here, she didn't know why or what caused the boy to feel like that.
But that wouldn't do, that wouldn't do at all.
"Wotcha, Harry," Dora says with a smile, injecting as much cheer into her voice as possible, the boy turns his head, and for a second, a split second Dora looks into Harry's eyes, but they were no longer the bright emeralds that she vaguely remembers Lily having all those years ago. They were as Silver as the full moon on a cold night with slitted pupils, they were as breathtaking as the green ones he had earlier in the day, but then Harry blinked and they were gone, and Dora was standing there gaping a bit like a fool. She shakes her head a bit to recover before speaking again, "Dad sent me to tell ya that dinner is done, roasted chicken and vegetables," Dora says smiling again as Harry doesn't say anything, but does nod. She leans against the door frame as the boy stands up and walks over to the silver spray-painted owl cage and gets his owl in, he gives her a soft smile before scratching under her beak, and the owl hoots softly.
"Okay, okay, I'll bring you back some chicken, you spoiled bird," Harry says with a chuckle before turning around and walking over to the door where Dora was standing, he didn't look up at her, just stared at her feet.
Dora sticks out her hand, and watches Harry flinch before taking a quick step back, "Oops, sorry bout that, just trying to introduce myself, Nymphadora Tonks," Dora says with a bright smile, Harry doesn't look up but does slowly takes her hand before mumbling his name, it was kinda cute, the whole shy thing he was doing would work on a few of Dora's girl friends.
"Though, fair warning, Don't call me Nymphadora," She says as she drops her hand as Harry pulls his away quickly, "Call me Tonks, or Dora I guess, you get a pass on that last one because you're like family, come on, mom's chicken is to die for," Dora says as she turns around and walks down the hall with Harry dragging his feet behind her. They make it to the kitchen table, Dora sitting across from her father as Harry sat across from her mother. For the most part, it's a quiet affair, the Tonks family cutting into their meal with gusto, taking occasional sips of their drinks as Harry just pushed around his potatoes and carrots on his plate looking unsure of himself, his head down over his plate but Dora could see his eyes flicker around wildly.
Andromeda looks up at Harry from her meal, her face tightens a bit before she speaks, "Harry if you're hungry, eat," she says in a soft tone as Dora spears a carrot and turns her head just in time to watch Harry destroy the plate of food faster then even Ron could, and that kid was like a vacuum the few times she had eaten with the Weasleys.
Dora turns to look at her mother with a raised eyebrow, but all the other woman does is press her lips into a thin line before shaking her head slightly, whatever was up with that Andromeda wasn't about to talk about it at the table, okay then, time for polite small talk with her awkward food processor of a tablemate. "So, Harry, what's your best class at Hogwarts?" Dora asks before eating her carrot.
Harry slows down his eating just enough to shrug and mumble something before he starts to eat again.
"Riiiight," Dora says, drawing out the word in her confusion, "You might not know this, but we were at Hogwarts together, during your first year," she says, and watches Harry's eyes flick to her before looking back down at his plate, "Oh," is all he says before he continues to eat at a rapid pace.
Dora pauses for a moment before continuing, "Yeah, thought about talking with you, but that would be pretty Awkward, wouldint?," she says before taking a sip of her ale, "Can you imagine, Wotcha, Harry, I'm Dora and you may not remember me, but I held you at a Christmas party when you were a baby," she says with a snort and a shake of her head. When she turns back to Harry, his plate was clean other than the last bite of chicken on his fork that was halfway to his mouth, and he was looking at her, like really looking at her with those intense green eyes.
"You did?" Harry asks in the first clear words he had spoken to her since they met.
Dora feels like a deer caught in a pair of headlights with him looking at her like that, and not for the first time thanked the Witchfather and Mother Magic for being a Metamorphmagus as she was able to hide the creeping blush she felt crawling up her neck and on to her cheeks, Jesus wept this kid was gonna be a heartbreaker when he was older with his eyes alone. Also, she should stop creeping on a fourteen-year-old because the want to shift to a more age-appropriate form for him was strong, she really needed to get laid soon, was Charlie still in town?
"Umm, Yeah, yeah, I did," Dora says, blinking the stars out of her eyes as Harry sets his fork down on his plate, "I was…maybe seven?" She says looking over at her mother.
Andromeda's eyes were lost in the past, before they widen a bit in remembrance before she swallows her mouth full of food, "Oh, I remember that, you were almost seven, Sirius invited us to a party over at his flat," she says with a soft smile, "I think that was when you and Charlie first met, it was him, Bill, Harry, and Neville all watching Christmas specials in the living room," she says.
"Neville? Neville Longbottom?" Harry asks.
"Yes, his Mother, Alice, was an old friend of Lily's I believe," Andromeda says with a sad smile before Harry falls quiet again, simply sitting and playing with his fork, dragging it closer and closer off the table. Dora watches his eyes dart around to the eating family out of the corner of her eye and she had a sneaking suspicion of what he was trying to do.
"Didn't you tell your owl that you'd bring her a bite of chicken?" Dora asks looking back over to Harry who freezes in place, and Dora sees fear pass through his eyes, but Andromeda looks up from her plate, her eyes swiping across the table, lingering on the fork with a bit of chicken on the end of it, close to the edge of the table.
"That's fine dear, you can cut off a small piece for her from it on the counter," Andromeda says with a disarming smile, pointing at the chicken on the counter, "Just clean up anything she drops on the floor, okay?" Dora's mom says before going back to her meal like she didn't see anything at all. Dora, Ted, and Andromeda were only halfway through their dinner while Harry sat in front of an empty plate keeping quiet, looking anywhere but at them in awkward silence.
Before long Ted sighs a bit before looking over at Harry, "If you're done eating Harry, just put your dishes in the sink, you don't need to ask to be excused," he says with a smirk, gesturing with his beer at the sink, and Harry nods quickly before mumbling a thank you before standing up with his plate before heading to the sink quickly, far too quickly. His foot catches on the table leg and he trips, the dish slipping from his hands, shattering against the tile floor. Before Dora could jump up and scream in victory that she was right, that the kitchen table was trying to kill everyone who sat at it, she saw her mother's face, she was looking past her and to Harry, her eyes wide with worry; Dora turns and looks at the boy.
He was standing still and shaking head to toe like a leaf in a summer storm, his eyes were wide while looking down at the broken plate on the ground but not really seeing it, his eyes were dull and glazed over with no small bit of fear, his mouth was moving but no sound was coming out, it looked like he was saying "Im sorry, Im sorry," over and over again. Dora turns to look at her father who was, very gently, putting down his beer.
"Harry," Ted says slowly and softly, concern lacing his words, but still Harry flinches before closing his eyes, tensing as if he was expecting a hit. Andromeda pulls her wand before giving it a wave and the plate becomes whole again before she speaks.
"Harry, dear, open your eyes," Dora's mother says in the same soft tone as Ted's, "Look at the plate, Harry," she says, and Dora watches as Harry, breathing heavily and what looked to be a great amount of willpower on his part, slowly opens his eyes to look back down at the plate, whole and looking brand new, but still he continues to shake.
Andromeda flicks her wand making the plate levitate and Harry backs away from it like it was the most cursed object he'd ever seen, "See, it's perfectly fine," Andromeda says, "No harm, no foul, you're not in trouble, okay?" She says softly as she guides the plate into the sink, Harry watches it, blindly nodding his head before Andromeda speaks again, "You can go if you want, Harry, you're not in trouble," she reiterates before Harry turns on his heel and begins to move swiftly out of the room, stopping before he turns around the corner and into the hall to walk back over to the sink, pulling the piece of chicken off the fork he had in a white knuckle death grip before dropping the utensil into the sink and rushing out of the room.
No one speaks for a solid minute before Dora turns her head to her mother with wide eyes, "Why the fuc-" but before Dora could finish her mother shushes her before waving her wand over the entrance to the hall, the tell-tale flash of light green magic of a silencing charm flashing around it before Andromeda turns back to Dora.
"Language," Andromeda says sternly to her daughter and Dora sputters at her.
"Language!?" Dora says shocked, "Harry Potter almost has a panic attack in the bloody kitchen, and you're telling me to watch my language?" Dora asks, gesturing with her hand towards the hall, but her mother didn't look fazed at all.
"I have a bar of soap young lady, and I'm not afraid to use it," Andromeda says sternly, so Dora looks to her father for a little backup, but he was looking down the hall with concern coloring his face.
Dora takes a deep breath before she speaks to her mother again, "Why did Harry, almost have, a panic attack, over a broken plate?" She says through clenched teeth and her mother sighs before leaning back in her chair, throwing her napkin over her food.
"I'm surprised you knew what was happening," Andromeda says.
"Mum, I had Mad-Eye Moody as my teacher," Dora says, "He tore through the training halls because someone thought it was funny to light a firework off remotely behind him," she explains as she pushes her plate away and leans on the table, her mother looks at her disappointingly but doesn't comment, "He called it being Spell-Shocked, it was the whole reason he was forced into retirement," Dora says as her mother sighs and rubs her eyes, "How the hell does Harry Potter have panic attacks, he's just a child-" but Dora stops mid-sentence, her mouth still open before she leans back in her chair, the answer hitting her all at once.
But the worst part is when her father confirms it, "He's been abused," he says sadly, "for as far as I'm able to figure out it was for most of his life," Ted says looking at his daughter, his face twisted up in grief.
"Who?" Dora asks, her training kicking in, she needed the who, when, where, and the how before she moved forward with any charges. But all her parents do is look at one another, before Her father speaks.
"We don't know, Harry won't talk about it and, while I'm sure Sirius knows, he's not saying a thing about them," Ted says, frowning.
"Why the hell not?" Dora asks in shock, "did Azkaban rot his brain that much!?" She yells, "Child abuse. Is. Illegal," she says gesturing with her hands for each break in her words, choosing to ignore the fact that she was seriously thinking about shagging Harry not twenty minutes ago.
"It's a bit more complicated than that, Dora," Ted says and before Dora could ask why, he explains, "Trust me, I want nothing more than to bury the people who did it in enough investigations and inquiries and lawsuits to drown them, but to do that I need names, Harry won't talk about it so soon after leaving them, and Sirius is sure that if he tries anything like that to them, that Dumbledore would move to intervene," Ted says with a grim face.
"Dumble- so soon?!" Dora sputters, "How long ago did he leave the situation?" Dora asks, shocked as horror colores her words.
Her parents look at one another before looking back at her, "a Little over two months ago," Andromeda says as Dora just looks at her in shock.
"Almost eleven years," Dora says as her guts twisted in horror and sorrow, "he was abused for almost eleven years and no one has done anything about it?" The Auror asks, she had done the mental math, Harry was barely one when Dumbledore had claimed he was somewhere safe, subtract the three years he had spent at Hogwarts for most of the year, and Harry had spent eleven years give or take being abused. That's when the Black madness begins to rise up in her as her hair changes to a fiery red from its previous brown.
She stands from the table, "Nymphadora, what are you doing?" She hears her mother ask.
"Getting those names," the enraged Metamorph says, making her way to the hallway, but stops short when she hears her full name being called again with a slight bit of anger in the tone, but it wasn't her mother.
"Nymphadora Tonks!" Ted says, stopping his daughter, "You are not interrogating an abused child for those names in my house," He says firmly, rising from his seat, as Dora spins back around to face him.
"I'm not going to interrogate him," Dora defends herself, "I'm doing my job," she tells her father.
"Your job is catching dark wizards, not browbeating a list of names from a child," Ted says, pointing down the hall.
"My job is helping people, Dad," Dora argues back, bringing her hand to her chest before pointing down the same hall, "And if I can't help an abused fucking child get some goddamn justice for what happened to him, I'd be pretty shit at it," she starts to yell back.
Ted takes a deep breath to calm himself, he didn't like yelling or arguing with his daughter, "Dora, please," he says softly, "I already have most of the paperwork for this in the process of being drawn up, but we need to either wait till Sirius calms down from his paranoid mood swings or for Harry to come to us," He pleads with his daughter.
Dora sighs, the wind taken out of her sails by her father's tone, "This is bullsh-" she begins to say, but before she could even finish a bar of soap appears in her mouth.
"Enough," Andromeda says in a tone that spoke of worse than a bar of soap if the two badgers continued their row, "You will not be interrogating Harry about his life, if you feel the need to interrogate anyone, do it to Sirius when we see him next week," she orders, "He's a grown man, he can handle it, Harry is a traumatized child, do you understand me?" Andromeda tells her only child in a tone that would make her feared and respected grandfather and the last true head of the House of Black proud.
Dora stands at the entrance of the hallway, the bar of soap still stuck in her mouth, crossing her arms as she glares at her mother before nodding.
"Good," Andromeda says before stowing her wand, "Now, will you be staying the night dear, or are you planning on going back to your flat," she asks in a motherly tone as she had just flipped a switch on her personality. As Dora stood there, breathing in and out through her nose, a plan began to form in her head. It was underhanded and devious, she would have to be charming and disarming, she would have to be manipulative and possibly even a little flirty with an abused child, her ancestors would be proud, so she mumbles through the soap that she would stay the night.
After all, Badgers are known for their loyalty, and if anyone thought that they could hurt a kid that belongs to her family…
Well, that wouldn't do, that wouldn't do at all.
Six of cups
Two children in a field of flowers, one male and one female, the female is older, standing and bending over to look down at the smaller male while she holds out a cup of flowers, the other five cups are arranged around them in a pentacle, both children are wearing jackets the female wears red while the male wears a black one. In the background, higher on a hill a lion and a honey badger doze away on a low wall. If one would look closely, one could see the tail of a snake wrapped around the ankle of the female.
And just because I know y'all would ask:
The Fool
A young man in a silver jacket stands with his back to the card, wand in one hand and a silver spear in the other, he stands under a moonless sky in a fog-shrouded graveyard with a castle looming in the left corner far in the distance, the lights coming from its windows twinkle like stars.
Notes:
Chapter done!
And we enter the Tonks family, Nymphadora was rather fun to write, and before anyone says anything about Tonks waiting to jump Harry's bones there for a hot minute, let me explain:
I'm a huge fan of the Honks ship, so I had to get at least some of that in this.
Artemis is a shockingly beautiful goddess, most of her stories are about hunters coming across her bathing and just getting floored by her beauty. Artemis doesn't really care about beauty and is vain about other things, but being one of Harry's moms, her beauty would be passed down to Harry.
Aphrodite's curse is kicking up to full effect in this year.
But boy oh boy, I do wonder what the gift of the fea is planning?
Found out next time!
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