Inconstant Vigilance

Inconstant Vigilance
~ by Chthonia ~

FsssstCRACK!

Tonks ducked. The hex missed her ear by an inch. She didn't look to see what happened to the tree it hit; she dodged to the left and ran.

Too slow. He was gaining on her.

Branches whipped her face. A bush exploded to her right.

Cover. She needed cover! But there wasn't any: just saplings, puny bushes, a dark stand of pines ahead.

She cast a wild Impedimentia behind her and sprinted towards the pines.

Two steps into the wood, she Apparated.

And stopped. And changed.

Inhumanly tall, unnaturally thin, almost like a tree herself, if her wordless Illusion charm had any say in it.

She was deep in the wood now, the air dense, dusty, only a rare finger of light questing through the canopy.

Had she been followed? If she could turn from hunted to hunter...

All still.

All silent.

She held herself motionless, listening hard. The carpet of pine needles muffled everything, even her usually heavy feet as she turned to look-

She lurched as her toe caught on a tree root. She wrapped her arm around a tree for balance. Birds erupted squawking from its branches. Her wand fell from her hand.

A short, sharp, distant crack.

She grabbed for her wand.

The protruding root was the last thing she saw before the spell hit.

*

She came to in a room full of other young wizards, most wearing dusty or torn robes. Her head felt as if the Weird Sisters' drummer was giving her a personal concert from the inside; from the pained expressions she saw around her, most of the others were almost as bad.

She staggered to her feet and headed for the water fountain, then slumped on a bench to await her fate. She didn't have to wait long before the familiar clunking echoed in the corridor outside.

Alastor Moody stood in the doorway, his bright blue eye spinning rapidly at everyone in the room.

"Everyone all right?" he boomed. "Yes? So no need to look so miserable. Nobody's died, though from what I've seen today we might not be so lucky when you get out there for real. You want to be Aurors? So start behaving like Aurors! Dorny – you look gloomier than a Pogrebin's arse. And if I ever see you mishandle a Stupefying Charm that way again, you'll be bloody well looking like one too."

Tonks winced and felt for her wand. Sod the water: she'd have killed for a good Invigorating Draught.

Moody was still ranting. "Hopkins, if you can't manage to cast a better Illusion than that, at least buy yourself a wig. Now, Palmer, passable spellwork as usual, but you need to learn to think. And to look. Constant vigilance, remember?"

Tonks braced herself for her turn.

"Tonks, on the other hand, showed some quick thinking. Well done. She could do us proud, if she can only learn not to trip over her own feet."

He'd praised her? After she'd ended up with a faceful of pine needles? She hated to think how bad the others had been.

"Now," he continued, "I know you're getting fed up of these exercises. Perhaps you're thinking this is too hard? Too dull? Not the glamorous Dark-wizard hunt you signed up for?" He peered at each one of them in turn. "Well, let me tell you something. This work IS hard. And it can be dull. And anyone who thinks that losing chunks of your limbs or watching your partners being torn apart by Dark magic is glamorous can walk right out of that door and not come back."

No-one moved. They'd heard the speech many times in their six months of training.

"No takers?" He grunted. "Good."

He flicked his wand at the door. It slammed shut with an Imperturbable thud.

Tonks sat up. This wasn't part of his usual performance.

Moody eased himself onto a bench. "Now listen up. You've all heard the Minister waffling on about our ten years of peace and prosperity and how we've never had it so good. That's his job, to tell comforting lies that everyone wants to hear. They want me to lie to you as well. But let me remind you of something: Voldemort never died. And not all of his supporters ended up in Azkaban. They'll expect us to be fat and complacent like them upstairs, but we need to be ready. That's our job – to make sure the comforting lies are true. And we may have to be ready sooner than you think."

"You mean he's coming back?" one of the trainee Aurors asked.

Moody didn't reply at once.

"It's hard to say," he said heavily. "Some odd things have been happening – you heard about the Gringott's break-in last September? Now, I don't know who or what is behind that, but I know I don't want to meet it in a dark alley unprepared – and neither do you. So next time you don't want to get out of bed in the morning, or your friends want you to go out drinking all night, or your parents want you to transfer to a nice safe department where you won't get bruised, remember: this is real. Better to have me hitting you in the back of the head with a Stupefy than a Dark wizard hitting you with something worse."

He levered himself to his feet. "That's all. You're dismissed for the day. Back bright and early tomorrow."

Tonks didn't move. It was true: she had felt safe, with her evil relatives securely locked away. She'd wanted to show all the snobby Slytherins that her father's background didn't make her weak, and all the snobby Griffindors that her mother's didn't make her Dark, but actually fighting Dark wizards suddenly seemed far scarier than it had at that careers interview...

"No home to go to, Tonks?" Moody asked.

"Yeah, sorry," she muttered, standing up.

"Wait a minute," he said. "I've been wanting to talk to you."

"To me?" She didn't think she'd broken any major rules recently.

"You've been quiet lately," he said. "A bit too quiet, to my way of thinking. Something on your mind?"

"Not really." She sighed. "Not unless you count my inability to creep up even on Slughorn heading home from the Three Broomsticks without being noticed."

He didn't reply. She shuffled her feet – and stopped before she could fall over again. Finally, she looked up at him.

"Now listen to me, lass," he said. "I've seen plenty of young witches and wizards come through these doors, and I'm telling you the only thing that'll stop you walking out of them an Auror is thinking you can't. And if you've got half of your Aunt's talent, you'll do very well indeed."

"My Aunt?" Last time she'd looked, neither the society wife, the psychopath or the Blackburn social worker were particularly Auror-like role-models.

"You know who I'm talking about," he said. "I put her where she is now, so I know: she was an evil piece of filth, but she knew what she was doing in a tight situation. Don't let her choices make you afraid of your talents."

"You don't think it makes a difference then? Being half-blood, I mean?"

"No, I don't. And again, I've seen enough to know."

"Okay." But she wasn't sure he wasn't just saying that to be encouraging. Her parents had impressed upon her the virtues of a mixed marriage, but with so many people at school seemed obsessed with blood status, and hers in particular, it could be hard to know what to think. At least Moody didn't seem prejudiced one way or the other.

"I suppose you're wondering about my own background," he said.

"What? No, not-"

"Well don't," he said. "It doesn't matter. That's the point. Don't ask, and you can't be prejudiced. And don't fret about your own blood status: and don't fret about your weaknesses, either. At least, don't give them more attention than your strengths."

"How?"

"Well," he said. "You think you're clumsy and uncoordinated-"

"I am clumsy and uncoordinated. And I trip over my own feet."

"So don't use your feet."

"What do you mean?"

He smiled, one side of his mouth twisting up in his scarred face. "Ever ridden a broomstick?"

"What- Oh." She grinned back.

"That's better. Now be off with you. I've got to go see the Minister. No doubt he'll tell me that there's no threat from Dark wizards and I should just resign and let them merge the Aurors with Magical Law Enforcement because that was his department." He snorted.

Tonks frowned. "He'll listen to you, though, won't he?"

"He'd better," he said grimly, "or we're all in trouble."

Tonks walked with him to the lift. She hadn't expected him to be so... sympathetic. She was still in awe of him, even a little scared at times, but before that day she'd not been expecting to learn more from him than battle strategies.

Although, as she watched him get out on Level One, she couldn't help thinking that he might be wise to deploy more constant vigilance on the battlefield of politics.