A Likely Story

In The Dungeons

Snape opened the door to his chambers and gestured for Tonks to enter.

"We have a problem," he said, without preamble, as soon as he'd re-warded the door. "You need to go to Minerva's office, but if you run into Umbridge again, you can't use the same excuse twice." He began to pace up and down the small room.

Tonks watched him, bemused. Unless he was asleep or in extreme pain he seemed incapable of remaining still.

"You didn't have a contingency plan?" she asked.

"We didn't expect Umbridge to be waiting inside the front door."

"I could just morph into some random person," she said. "And transfigure my clothes into...into..."

"Into what?" he retorted. "Hogwarts isn't a public place. A stranger wandering about would be challenged by teachers, prefects, and probably Umbridge, considering our luck today. We took great care in developing your cover story, and if you get yourself arrested..."

"Yes, I understand. My cover will be blown." Tonks chewed her lip thoughtfully. "What about using a Disillusionment Charm on me?"

He shook his head. "The anti-Apparation wards also prevent Disillusionment Charms. Otherwise, what would be the point?"

"If only I had my trunk with me," she said wistfully.

"You have an invisibility cloak in it?"

"No, I could have gotten inside the trunk, and you could have brought it to Minerva's office." She brightened. "Could I borrow your trunk?"

"Why would I have a trunk?"

"Surely everybody has a trunk..."

"I have no use for a trunk."

"What about when you travel?"

"I'm a wizard. Everything I need can be shrunk and placed in my pockets."

"But surely you had a trunk at one point..."

"I don't any more," he retorted. "We'll have to think of something else."

They couldn't think of a good reason for why an Auror would come to Hogwarts bearing a trunk and had hidden it at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. They'd managed to transport it from Tonks' flat by sitting down upon it side-by-side while Disapparating, at Snape's suggestion. Though they'd avoided any further damage to Snape's back, they experienced an awkward landing upon arrival at the castle gates. Tonks planned to fetch it once she was in the guise of a student.

"Portkey?" she ventured.

He shook his head. "Dumbledore still insists on making all the unofficial Portkeys. We could as a last resort, but I should hate to drag him all the way back up to the northern hemisphere just for that." He ran a hand through his hair pensively. "If we can't solve this little quandary ourselves, surely the Dark Lord will have us."

Then he smacked himself in the head. "How could I have been so stupid?"

Tonks looked at him in surprise.

"We don't have to go to Minerva's office to fetch Gryffindor robes for you. Dobby!"

The house-elf materialised with a crack and bowed low before Snape. "How can Dobby serve Professor Snape?"

"Fetch some Gryffindor student robes to fit her." Snape commanded, gesturing at Tonks.

If Dobby found this request odd, he gave no sign. He straightened to regard Tonks for a moment, then bowed low towards Snape once more before vanishing.

Snape looked back at Tonks. "Sit," he said curtly, conjuring another chair. "We need to have a word about your appearance." He settled himself in the chair opposite and rapped on the chair's arm. A pewter tea service materialised atop a table of an appropriate size. As well as tea, there was a plate of chocolate biscuits and a bowl of Blackpool candy broken into pieces.

Tonks helped herself to a cup of tea and a piece of candy. "Albus may be gone, but at least he left his candy," she quipped.

"That's because he isn't really gone," replied Snape, nudging the bowl of candy aside with an obligatory sneer as he reached for the teapot. "If he were truly departed, there would be no more of his sweets at Hogwarts."

They sipped their tea in silence for a moment before Snape said mildly, "As I was saying, you should use your natural face, only morphing enough to achieve a younger appearance."

She shook her head. "It's not necessary," she said.

"I think it is," he said. "The less you are morphed, the less clumsy you will be. Simple, really."

"I'm not as clumsy as I was, and even so, I got through your class just fine, didn't I?" she snapped.

"Not as clumsy as you used to be?" He smirked. "Mrs Black says otherwise every time you knock over that troll leg umbrella stand. As far as my class goes, I tightened up my standards since you graduated. For the sake of everyone's safety, I now refuse to admit anybody with less than an O in their Potions OWL."

"I never hurt anybody," she protested.

"No, but that was just lucky. Or have you forgotten the little incident before Easter break in your seventh year?" She saw a triumphant gleam in his eyes and realized that he knew she remembered.

She was walking back from the ingredients cupboard when she tripped on either an irregularity in the stone floor, her own feet, or an outstretched Slytherin foot; she never found out. Her hand holding the Acromantula venom jerked sideways, spraying a majestic arc of pungent liquid over several rows of desks. Students crying, "Eww!" tried to shield themselves, but nobody covered their cauldrons, which bubbled ominously for a moment before vomiting magenta-coloured goo in all directions.

"Evanesco!" cried Snape instantly, and the mess disappeared from everyone's robes, faces, the floor, the ceiling, and the walls. Snape's black eyes darted about searching for any trace he may have missed. Seeing none, he fetched Tonks' flask, lying miraculously unbroken on the floor before her outstretched hand. He examined the flask, sniffing the contents before hauling the mortified Metamorphagus to her feet and beginning a verbal count of emptied cauldrons.

"Eleven...twelve batches destroyed. Congratulations, Miss Tonks. You have set a new record for wanton destruction in my class. That will be...let's see...fifty points from Gryffindor, and a weeks' detention." He brought his face closer to that of the trembling girl. "You are fortunate your little misstep produced nothing more than a harmless mixture, Miss Tonks." He lifted his head to address the class. "I had assumed that anyone achieving at least an E in their Potions OWL was capable of the physical coordination necessary for handling the more dangerous ingredients I make available to students at this level." Tonks remembered looking at her feet, struggling not to cry. "Apparently," Snape continued, his voice barely above a whisper, "when Miss Tonks took her Potions OWL, she was experiencing a day of unusual grace."

The Slytherins sniggered, then Bill Weasley indignantly exclaimed, "That's not fair!"

Snape slowly turned to face Bill. "Twenty points from Gryffindor," he said lazily. He started to turn away, then he said, "Or did you have something further to say, Mr Weasley?"

Bill glared at Snape. "That's not fair, sir. Metamorphagi can't help their clumsiness."

"So I've noticed," interjected Snape, to more Slytherin sniggering.

"Because their physical forms needn't stay fixed, they have trouble maintaining their..."

Over his shoulder at Tonks, Snape said, "He's done research on you. How touching." The Slytherins laughed outright. To Bill, Snape said, "Another twenty points from Gryffindor for insolence and wasting class time with irrelevant explanations. And you needn't worry about Miss Tonks. Rest assured, I will have her performing tasks that help improve eye-hand coordination. For homework..." he was addressing the class in general. "Two feet of parchment on what happens when excessive Acromantula venom is added to Dopaminergic Draught before the final distillation."

Tonks remembered the glares from Gryffindor and Slytherin students alike before she ran from the dungeon.

"You punished everyone for my mistake," Tonks reminisced.

"And an expensive mistake it was. Why should only one person learn from it?" he replied. He poured himself more tea before continuing. "These days, if you are excessively clumsy, everyone will wonder what came over me to allow such a dunderhead into my NEWT class." He leaned back in his chair and gazed at her over his teacup. "Why are you being so stubborn?"

Just then, Dobby reappeared, bearing a neatly-folded robe. Setting the robe on the tea table he said, "If Professor Snape is not wanting anything more..."

"Wait a moment, Dobby," said Snape. To Tonks, he said, "I want to show you something. Revert to your natural face."

Tonks looked from Dobby to Snape in confusion and slight alarm.

Dobby said, "If it makes miss uncomfortable, Dobby should leave."

Snape said, "I forbid it."

The house elf's ears drooped, but he stayed where he was.

Snape said again, "Revert to your natural appearance."

Tonks sighed and looked uneasily at the house elf. She scrunched up her nose, and Snape and Dobby both watched in fascination as her hair darkened and lengthened, her skin lightened, her heart-shaped face narrowed, its cheekbones becoming more prominent, and her twinkling dark eyes became deep-set.

She looked between Snape and Dobby, her formerly-pert nose now almost as long as Snape's, though straight rather than hooked. An aristocratic nose, thought Snape.

"Can I change back now?" she asked a little defensively.

"You are changed back," he replied softly. He turned to the house-elf. "Do you see a resemblance between this woman and Bellatrix Black?"

Tonks covered her face with her hands. Her fingers were longer, thinner, paler. "Oh, for Merlin's..."

"Dobby ought to know," interrupted Snape in the same soft voice. "He served the Malfoys for...Dobby?"

Ears quivering, eyes wide, Dobby replied, "It makes miss uncomfortable."

"Answer the question, Dobby." Snape's tone was slightly sharper.

Tonks lowered her hands and smiled sympathetically at the house-elf. "Don't worry about me, Dobby. To be honest, I am curious."

"Well?" said Snape with a note of impatience.

Dobby gulped and said, "The hair and the shape of her face is similar. But the eyes is all wrong."

Snape looked at the house elf in a calculating sort of way. "What do you mean? Her eyes are dark and deep-set like Bella's?"

But Dobby vigorously shook his head. "When she" indicating Tonks, "looks at Dobby, Dobby feels completely different from when Mrs Lestrange looks at Dobby."

Snape regarded Tonks in silence. Without looking away, he said, "You may go, Dobby."

With a sigh of relief, Dobby disappeared.

"You bear only a passing resemblance to your aunt, you know," said Snape.

At a loss for words, Tonks could only stare back at him.

"If I were you," Snape continued silkily, "I'd be more embarrassed about looking like Sirius Black." He held up a mirror. "When did you last look at yourself in a mirror? Your real self?"

She glared at him, avoiding looking in the mirror. "One could say the same to you," she retorted.

He rolled his eyes. "I see myself in a mirror every time I brush my teeth."

She smirked. "Like I said..."

His expression darkened. Grabbing her arm, he pulled her towards him, brandishing the mirror in front of her face while she twisted her head back and forth. Through clenched teeth he hissed, "You are putting this mission at risk because you are unable to face who you are."

She yanked her arm free and stalked away from him. When she turned to face him, her deep-set eyes were bright with angry tears. "I can't imagine how hard it must be for you," she said venomously, "to go through life looking like that."

In the silence that followed, she stared at him defiantly, internally bracing herself for his reaction.

Then he smiled. It was not a nice smile, though he probably couldn't smile nicely, given the state of his teeth. "This is the part," he said in his low, dangerous voice, "where I am supposed to eject you from my office in a rage." He continued in a more conversational tone. "Your cousin also forgets that I am not fifteen years old anymore and can see through such transparent ploys." He smirked and tapped his fingers on the back of the mirror almost playfully.

She stalked back towards him. "Give me the fucking mirror," she snarled, grabbing it from his hand and raising it in front of her face.

"I wish you'd save the insults for Potions class," he said mildly. "It's been a madhouse around here lately. I could do with taking lots of points off Gryffindor."

"Like you don't anyway," she said in a distracted voice from behind the mirror.

She lowered the mirror, and he saw her expression of puzzled wonderment.

"I look like a Black," she said. "Like my aunt."

He nodded. "Like the house-elf said, it's the eyes."

Bella's gaze was usually sly and cruel; that is, when her eyes weren't shining with frank madness as if she were lit up from within. Even with the family resemblance and the glint of anger, Tonks' gaze looked no more like her aunt's than it did Mad-Eye Moody's.

"I didn't believe you," she said.

"I know," he replied, glancing at his wall clock. "As a Head of House, I am expected to make an appearance at lunch, and my absence from breakfast has already been noticed."

"Yes, of course," she said, raising the mirror to look at herself again. For years, Tonks' mother had tried to make her look at her real face, and she had always refused. But Tonks' mum had always asked nicely. Maybe a little arm-twisting was what she needed, but that didn't justify the smugness of this man, who was now smirking at her slightly. She'd show him gratitude, all right.

"One more thing," she said. She stepped close, grabbed the back of his neck, and pulled him down into a passionate kiss.

For a moment he was too astonished to do anything but enjoy being kissed by a young woman. Then he recovered himself enough that he began to kiss her back, as if young women threw themselves at him every day, and he'd been expecting this all along. So this is what it's like to be Lucius, he thought. He had closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her when he felt a slight movement of her body, and he reminded himself that for appearances' sake, he really couldn't miss lunch.

Then she released him from the kiss and he opened his eyes--and staggered back a few steps in shock.

She was slightly shorter and thinner, her somewhat pear-shaped body now more boyish. Her angular features were softer, the high cheekbones now less well-defined. Overall, she looked ten years younger, the approximate age of a seventh-year Hogwarts student.

She grinned mischievously. "Do you think I should have put the Gryffindor student robes on first?" She summoned the robes from where Dobby had left them and entered the bathroom.

Snape was in a fury. How could he be so stupid as to forget what inveterate pranksters the Blacks were? Just a few years after Sirius had almost gotten him killed, Bella had nearly succeeded, and just for a laugh, ha ha.

Tonks emerged from the bathroom in the Gryffindor robes. "Guess I'd better get to Minerva's office before she has to go to lunch, too." She looked askance at him. "What's wrong now? You got your way." She spread her hands before her face.

"Leave my chambers now!" he hissed.

She smiled and nodded. "Of course, Professor. See you in Potions, sir." She curtsied and left, satisfied that this ruse was going to be easy to maintain. Once she had the Gryffindor robes on, Snape was easily as vicious to her as he was to any real Gryffindor student. And acting appropriately terrified of him was going to be loads of fun. Though that kiss seemed to have left him a bit wrong-footed. Maybe she shouldn't have done it, but she'd always been a bit impulsive. Another Black family trait, she thought, pausing after she stepped out of Snape's quarters to bring her hands tentatively upwards. Funny how the curves of her own face felt unfamiliar, as if it were just another morph. She could get used to this, but at the same time, she preferred that nobody besides Snape knew the significance of this face.

"What I don't understand," she was saying to Professor McGonagall, "is why you didn't just put me in fifth year. Surely I could keep a closer eye on Harry Potter if I actually took some classes with him."

Professor McGonagall shook her head. "If you get too close to him and his friends, they might recognize you. Especially Hermione Granger--it's been a long time since I've seen such a clever young witch."

Tonks nodded. "Remus said Hermione was the only student to figure out he was a werewolf."

Professor McGonagall's mouth thinned. "Yes, well, she didn't come to that conclusion without any help at all. Speaking of whom..."

"You needn't worry," Tonks quickly said. "I can handle him."

The Gryffindor headmistress regarded her sharply for a moment before saying, "Maybe you can trust him with your life, but you wouldn't trust him with anything less. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand," replied Tonks, not at all sure she did.

"Then let's show you where you're sleeping. You remember the way to Gryffindor Tower? I don't have to show you? Excellent--we'll take the shortcut." She stood and tapped the rear wall of her office. The wall didn't change in any perceptible way, but the professor walked through it and disappeared. Tonks followed and found herself in the Gryffindor common room.

Many students had already wandered down for lunch, but there were at least a dozen, gathered around one table, to stare at the newcomer.

Fred and George Weasley had a number of objects spread across a tabletop, which vanished at the appearance of their head of house. They sat back in their chairs, hands folded, affecting looks of round-eyed innocence. Harry and Ron were sitting at the same table, and Hermione was standing off to the side, as if in disapproval. Tonks avoided their eyes, looking away as if in shyness, though she saw Hermione frown slightly.

Professor McGonagall stepped up to this table. "This is Dora Black, who has transferred here from Beauxbatons for her final year. She has been sorted into Gryffindor, and I would like you all to make her feel welcome."

Hermione stepped forwards, smiling importantly from behind her Prefect badge. "Bonjour, Dora. Comment allez-vous?"

"Comme ci, comme ca," replied Tonks, looking at her feet and pitching her voice lower than usual, trying to project the sort of demeanor she'd decided upon, of being at once haughty and shy. "I am English, actually," she added, making a mental note not to divulge too much of her cover story at once, recalling the admonishments of her instructors, who warned student Aurors how suspicious it looks when anyone is too eager share a lot of personal information with new acquaintances.

Professor McGonagall said, "Let me show you where you are sleeping before we are all late for lunch," and swept off towards the girls' quarters. Tonks stumbled as she hurried after, catching herself on the back of a chair while several bemused students watched.

"Do you think whatever Fred and George were up to bears investigating?" asked Tonks when they were out of earshot of the common room.

"They're better than the poltergeist," replied Professor McGonagall cryptically.

She lead Tonks into one of the familiar rooms with four-poster beds surrounded by curtains. To her surprise, her trunk was already on the floor at the base of one of the beds.

"Here is your schedule," said Professor McGonagall, handing Tonks a piece of parchment. "You will notice that it has half the number of courses a seventh-year usually takes. If Madam Umbridge pries, and she will, you were on an accelerated track at Beauxbatons, and had finished half your required courses by the end of the fall term. We're hoping a reduced schedule will minimize the necessity of using the Time-Turner."

Tonks looked at the schedule after the professor left. No History of Magic, thank Merlin. Just Double Potions with the Slytherins first thing Monday morning. Severus is going to be disappointed when he sees how much less clumsy I am, she thought.