The Shape of Me

Chapter Two

Faces

The next week, I dragged myself back up to my classroom at the Ministry, almost hoping that dull old Ms. Teadle would be back. But when I arrived, there was Sully, writing something on a piece of parchment at his desk and looking for all the world as though he had always occupied that spot. He waited until I had entered, and as soon as the door latched shut behind me, he looked up. "Good afternoon, Miss Tonks. Kindly assume your proper face, and we can begin."

Oh, I didn't like that one bit, let me tell you! It was like the intervening week had never taken place, and I was just as indignant as I'd been the first time that he made that request. However, I was at least smart enough to realize that it was silly to pretend that he didn't already know what I looked like, and he had the means to force my cooperation if I was too recalcitrant. So I made the switch, fuming the whole time, and then came forward to sit in my usual seat and began pulling out my books and quill.

"Don't bother," he said, waving a hand casually toward me. "You've had plenty of that to this point, apparently with little effect. We're going to do something different today."

I paused, one hand still deep in my bag. Different? As reluctant as I was to like the man, he had my attention. Nothing Ms. Teadle had ever done, no matter how far outside our usual routine, could even remotely have been described as 'different'.

"What do you mean?" I asked him suspiciously, straightening in my chair.

"Today we're going to work on noses."

I gave an impertinent snort. "Noses? I can change my nose- it's the first thing I learned how to change."

Sully nodded imperturbably, unfazed by my bad manners. "It usually is, either that or the hair. But I can promise you that you don't have nearly the control or the attention to detail that you think you do, even on something as simple as a nose. So let's begin, shall we?"

He dragged his chair out from behind the desk, letting it scrape carelessly across the parquet flooring until it was drawn up backwards on the opposite side of my little desk. I sat up straighter, a little intimidated at being that close to him and not wanting to sit any nearer than I absolutely had to. He straddled the chair, leaning his elbows on the edge of my desk, and tapped the tip of his nose with a forefinger.

"Today we'll work with noses, and nothing else. I want you to hold every other piece of you still and unchanged while we adjust that one feature."

"Okay." It was the first time that the use of my abilities had ever been sanctioned in my class before, let alone instructed, so I couldn't help but be interested even if I was a little contemptuous. Noses, I thought, really were old hat, and while I craved the exercise of my abilities, I was also eager to prove my competence and move on to more challenging changes.

"Look," he said, emphasizing the word with another tap. "Study my nose in all its details; look at its shape and size, its placement on my face. Examine the texture of my skin, as well as its color, and look for anything distinguishing."

"It's just a nose," I mumbled, and he raised an eyebrow.

"It's my nose, thank you very much, and there aren't any others like it. Nor do I expect there will be, even after your attempt to replicate it in a moment. Now, as I was saying- distinguishing marks. Look for broken capillaries, lesions on the skin..."

He went on in that vein for some time, while I stared dutifully at his nose. It wasn't particularly large or shapely or unattractive- it was just a nose, boring in its mediocrity. It was slightly asymmetrical, as most noses are, and there was a smallish knot just below the bridge. I studied it, keeping one ear out for Sully's drone until he finally said, "So," and the plain, unexpressive nose I had been watching was suddenly as smooth and sterile in appearance as a store mannequin's. It didn't even look real, as the color was flat and uniform, with no hint of the warmth that flesh reveals. "Show me my nose."

I found that I couldn't remember what his nose looked like at all; I just kept staring at that odd, unnatural growth that filled his nose's position on his face until he growled at me, "Shut your eyes; when you can't visualize, close your eyes and block out the distractions." I shut them fast, a little irritated that he had needed to remind me of that old trick, and gradually the image of his nose began to reform in my mind. With a little effort, I sculpted mine to mirror his, ignoring the sharp twinges that I felt as I pushed my body for greater detail on that feature.

"Your ears, Miss Tonks. Please keep them their natural shape."

My ears? I hadn't been aware, but as I had concentrated on shifting my nose, my ears had wavered back to resemble more the ears I wore in my public mask. With a thought I pulled them back to norm, then went back to work on Sully's nose. In more time than I'd have thought to spend on a mere nose, I announced that I had done it.

He cocked his head to one side and examined my creation. It felt a little strange, wearing a feature that I knew belonged to him while he looked on dispassionately, more so because I had been faithful to the proper size and it was overlarge for my head. I'm glad that he didn't laugh at the odd picture I must have presented; I don't know that I would have forgiven him if he had. Yes, I would have; I was a brat, but he redeemed himself to me more than enough times later for me to have liked him, no matter what he might have done when we were first getting to know one another.

I wanted to hurry him, to get him to praise my work and move on to eyes, or scars, or something else cool. Noses- I hardly thought about noses anymore.

Finally, he shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. "Not too bad, considering. Now let's get a mirror, and we'll see if you can spot what you've done wrong." He pulled out his wand, and with a flick of his wrist he brought a large floor-standing mirror into being next to us.

I was surprised, then angry. What I'd done wrong? Maybe I wasn't as good as he was, but I thought it was a bit of a stretch to say that I had done it wrong. Eight, remember? I was such an arrogant little know-it-all when it came to morphing- I have never been so lucky as the day that I got Sully as a tutor. Well, maybe once, but that was totally different...

Anyway, he pulled the mirror a little closer, and let his nose resume its natural appearance. That was the first time that I'd ever really compared an original with my mask, and I could immediately see what he was talking about. I hate eating my words as much now as I ever did them.

"The tip of my nose is different from yours," I told him grumpily, noticing the slight taper in his which I had replaced with a more bulbous tip. He nodded in agreement, obviously waiting for more. "And the bridge on mine is narrower."

Sully inclined his head again. "Those are the largest errors, but to be successful you must notice even the minor things. Look here, and here," and he pointed out the areas where the nose joined up with my own face, right above my lip and around the nostrils. "You haven't paid any attention to how the skin falls and joins, and as a result the merge between my nose and your face is only half-formed. It looks like someone has pasted it on you. Also, you didn't place it on your face in the proper position; you put it where your own nose sits."

"That's where my nose is; I have to put it there."

"No, you don't. You are a Metamorphmagus, and that means that you can adjust all of the tissue and cartilage in your body. The only things you can't alter are your bones, and I would seriously advise against attempting to change them. I did, once, when I was a little older than you are now, and it was the most excruciating experience of my entire life. Take my word on it, kid."

That was the first mistake on his part, although he had no way of knowing it at the time. Still, I say you ought not throw down any gauntlets like that around children; they are always dying to pick one up and appear the adults they are not.

I didn't comment on it at the time, I merely tucked the fact away and went on with the lesson. He made me reshape his nose all afternoon, sometimes while I studied his face, other times while his nose was returned to that weird, plastic appearance. By the end of the class, he was wearing preposterous schnozzolas, and trying to distract me as I formed his own. But I got it; Metamorphmagi are nearly always quick studies when it comes to training their bodies, as their bodies seem to have a built in desire to be molded. When he finally told me it was time to pack up my things and meet my mother downstairs, I was tired, sore about the face, and secretly satisfied at the day's work. Not that I would have admitted it to him at the time, but I was starting to look forward to what this odd fellow had to teach me.

"This upcoming week," he told me, as I shrugged into my coat and hefted my bag, "I want you to continue working on noses. Observe people around you, and mimic their noses when you have some free time. Pay special attention that no other body parts shift while you do this; control is key. When you come back next week, I want you to be able to show me at least two other, distinct noses, and you should be able to slip them on without so much as a flicker anywhere else on your face. And pay attention to detail!"

With that admonishment, he bid me good day and left the room, and I grumbled as followed him out. Homework was one thing that I had never had to bother with in Ms. Teadle's class, and while part of me was excited about actually being told to play with my masks, there was still the ingrained resistance that any child has to additional work. So once more in an ill humor, I went off to meet Mum in the lobby.

~*~*~

The next classes followed the first in much the same manner. If I had hoped that the next session would find us moving on to more interesting parts of the face, I was sadly mistaken. Each class would begin with the inevitable and hated request to resume my face (I was still refusing to wear it into the room and save us both the hassle of needing to be asked), and then Sully would critique the noses that I showed him, chastising me when I let other parts of my face slip. I did that a lot at first, although he assured me that it was one of the hardest things for a Metamorphmagus to learn.

"Our bodies like to move," he told me, in that deep, rolling voice. "You'll never see an obese Metamorphmagus; it just won't happen. Our metabolisms are far too high to allow it, and we are almost always the most fidgety people that you could meet. I'll bet your Mum has scolded you about that many a time."

She had, but I didn't feel the need to contribute that. "You don't fidget," I said instead, hoping to catch him in a lie.

Sully smiled thinly back. "I did say almost always. And I have been practicing my control for years- I was probably worse than you are now, when I was your age."

That was Sully all the way: superlative to me, right down to his flaws.

But under his intense tutelage I began to gain some real control, finally managing to run through a series of memorized noses without altering any other thing on my face. I was even able to produce an invented nose on the spot that Sully magnanimously labeled 'passable'. "Passable if the observer isn't another Metamorphmagus, that is. They would certainly know. But you're young; you're young. Give it time."

Yes, he was tough. Bit of a bastard, really. But he made me mad, which in turn made me want to show him up, and the result was that I really tried to learn for a while. And it worked; we finished with noses after two months, but ears only took me a month and a half. Next came mouths, which were simple and at the same time fiendishly difficult- there are a lot of variables in a mouth! Teeth, lips, tongue, gums, the shape and width of it...sorry, you're glazing over a bit. I tend to go on when I find someone willing to listen to my blather.

After mouths came hair since it was time, he said, for a little break. I had been concentrating on my features for so long that I had forgotten how much fun hair was- stop laughing at me! Where did you think it came from? And I bet you'd do it too, if you could. Nyah. Anyway, that was a very memorable time, and it was the first time that I briefly stopped seeing Sully as Teacher/Adversary, and just enjoyed what we were doing. Sully had a sense of humor, and while it was usually hidden under heavy layers of cynicism, I started to get a sense of it then as we played with real hair, styled hair, colored hair, impossible hair. It was a great time.

After that, however, it was back to the grindstone, and we were on to things like cheeks, chins and jawlines. All those bits of modeling on a person's face that you don't really take account of, I was learning to study and emulate. I can't count the number of nights back then that I would go to sleep using an icepack as a pillow- just because Metamorphmagi can change their faces, it doesn't necessarily follow that it's painless. It definitely is not, not at first. It's very similar to building up other muscles in one's body, be it by weight training, or running, or any other exercise. The muscles must be toned up and accustomed to what you ask of them and, while my morphing is partially derived from magic, I still had to adjust to the physical aspects of it.

Anyway, that's how we went on for almost a year; I had almost forgotten that this was an ethics class as well, since all we did now was shapeshift. Sully's command of his abilities was phenomenal, and while he was gruff at times and forthright to a fault, he drew abilities from me that I never knew I had. After the time spent learning about hair I was much easier with him, though he still tended to say and do things that irritated me irrationally- a common enough obstacle in dealing with any kids of that age, and me in particular. But I respected him by then, and that was more that most adults had achieved with me.

It was about that time that my classes were interrupted for a few weeks. It was the climax of the big war with You-Know-Who that was going on at the time, though I had no idea, thanks to Mum and her studious refusal to admit any troubling information into our home. I was bored, missing my classes and the new challenges that I had come to look forward to, and out of desperation for anything to do I had taken to following Mum around the house. Sitting cross-legged on the floor by my dad's chair one day, I watched her with the critical eye I was developing as she cleaned the living room, flicking her wand with little commanding motions at any messes she encountered.

Her hair, the color of honey dripping from the comb, was pulled back from her face as she worked, and I could clearly see the way she pursed her mouth every so often, and the little line that would form between her brows. She was chattering about some nonsense- neighborhood gossip, like as not- but I wasn't paying any attention to it, and I don't think that she was either. The more I watched her, the more I was certain that something was wrong; her hands weren't shaking, but their was a hesitance to her movements although she was cleaning with an intensity that approached compulsion.

So I looked, really looked hard at her face for a few minutes, and then excused myself to my room. Once there, I locked the door and hurried over to my dressing table- a gift from my grandmother that I seldom used- and sat down, staring into the mirror. Using all the skill that I had gleaned from my classes, I reformed my mother's face on my own, and tried to study the image reflected back to me.

Like almost any changeling child, I had worn my parents' faces before, but this mask of my mother was subtly altered from the previous ones. It was like her face had been retensioned, with the skin too loose under her eyes and a mouth that was drawn too tight. Just wearing that face I could almost feel the tension that must have been buzzing under her own mask, which I knew for a certainty now was all that this was. You can't pull things like that over on a Metamorphmagus- we can always tell. Merlin, I sound like Sully.

So I just sat there, wearing my Mum's face, trying to imagine what could be upsetting her, and scaring the devil out of myself in the process. Since Mum had never been anything but calm and unflustered, I didn't understand what could possibly cause this reaction in her, and it bothered me so that I didn't come out of my room until there was a commotion downstairs, and knocking at the door. I hurried out of my room, peering through the banister at what I could see of the entrance hall, and trying very hard to be unseen. I was sure that this had to somehow be connected to my Mum's anxiety.

As it turns out, I was right, although I thought the opposite at the time. It was Sirius.