Categories > Books > Harry Potter > Let's Try That Again, Shall We?
Mail Forwarding
2 reviewsTonks tries to send mail to Harry. This is sort of a point of no return for the story. Note the warnings! [Y] is not quite right, but close enough. I don't think I can claim an overall PG, eithe...
3Original
The Harry Potter universe is the creation of J.K. Rowling. This is fanfiction. The standard disclaimers apply.
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Chapter 14: Mail Forwarding
Saturday, September 22, 1990.
The first few times Tonks tried to use a school owl to send mail to Harry, she had gotten no response. She knew not to expect a ten-year-old boy to be much of a correspondent, but she was getting worried. The next time, she tried addressing the note to "Harry Potter, Longbottom Manor", and telling the owl where to find him; she got a response from him two days later in the morning post. That was odd.
The next time she wrote to him, she used just his name and gave the owl no special instructions, but put a tracking charm on the letter. After dinner that night she decided to check up on it, and the charm just indicated that the letter was upwards. "Did something happen to the owl?" A visit to the owlery was unenlightening; there were dozens of school owls, most of which looked like they might have been the one she used. At least none were sitting there with a letter still tied to their leg.
"Did one of you take a letter to Harry Potter today?" The owls just looked at her. "Well, it was worth a try. I guess you guys don't normally have to remember every letter you ever delivered."
The next morning, the letter was still being detected as "up". After her last class for the day, she had a few hours before dinner, and decided to do some reconnaissance by broom.
Tonks quickly realised she had missed flying for just the fun of it. Hogwarts Castle has somewhere between five and thirty-seven towers, depending on how you count, the needs of the school, and the arcane workings of founders'-era magics. The overall floor-plan had been stable during Tonks' last timeline, but presumably if the Headmaster really wanted it, entire wings could be moved around.
In any case, the tracking charm's "up" soon resolved itself into a spot halfway up a minor tower. Circling closer, she found an open window and flew up to it, but her eyes couldn't make out anything inside; the late-afternoon sun was too bright in comparison for her eyes to adjust. She checked the window for wards, but came up with nothing. There might be something troublesome inside, but she knew how to take reasonable precautions when entering a strange room.
The auror academy had not, in fact, covered "entering a strange room through a window you can barely squeeze through, while you are 200 feet above the ground on a broom." Tonks fell through the window, which turned out to be four or five feet above the floor inside. She managed to avoid serious injury by falling into a roll, which ended with her crashing into some rickety metal shelving, followed by a mountain of paper landing on her head.
"Well, so much for a cautious entry. Lumos!"
The room contained a series of shelves, arranged like library stacks, and covered in piles of mail—ranging from ordinary-sized envelopes to some fairly large packages. She looked up and saw a box balanced precariously above her, close to falling off. "That was close." She stood up, more or less unhurt.
"First things first." She had no idea what might have happened to her broom, and was afraid to look. The window was at about head height for her; she had to pull herself up and lean out to see anything. "Damnit. Let's see . . . accio broom!" This caused some motion, allowing her to spot it on a rooftop several hundred feet away, but it was too far for her to summon. Harry had summoned a broom from within the castle during the Tri-Wizard, right? So it wasn't impossible. She'd try later after she'd had longer to recover from her tumble through the window.
"Right then. So what's in here, anyway?"
The room was obviously bigger on the inside than the exterior of the tower that housed it. A single door, closed, presumably led out to a landing of a spiral staircase. She wasn't going to try that, yet. A quick safety-check, which she kicked herself for not doing earlier, revealed a charm on the middle of the floor that probably directed incoming mail to more-or-less free shelves. Owls would know to fly there, and letters would be automatically untied from legs and levitated into place. There didn't seem to be any provision for refiling anything that got knocked out of place.
"Fine." She was quite good at organizational charms, and soon had all the mail at least back on shelves, if not in its original locations.
"So really, what is all this?" It was soon clear the entire room was redirected mail that had been sent to Harry—everything since he had been one and placed with the Dursleys. For whatever reason, Dumbledore had never stopped having it sent here. Tonks picked a shelf and started going through it.
"Ads, ads, okay that's normal, here's a card. Let's see it." Tonks had been taught several techniques for getting letters out of sealed envelopes and back. Clearly celebrity stalking—well, no, Harry was legitimately her friend in both timelines—snooping, then, was the highest and best use of these skills. She proceeded to snoop.
The room, she decided, had not been particularly neat to start with. She found evidence of mice (why didn't the owls get them?) in one corner, and several packages that had once contained food had in fact been chewed open. Other than the ones already open, Tonks couldn't do much discreetly with most of the packages—there was tape at some layer that she couldn't undo magically without tearing, and solid objects couldn't be magically manipulated through small holes as easily as letters could. A few things were obvious—some books, a broom—but mostly she was limited to letters. There were a lot of letters.
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Dear Harry,
Happy Birthday! My mum thinks you are turning seven this year. My name is Sarah and I am 6. I hope you are okay and having a good birthday, and get lots of presents.
love,
Sarah
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Dear Harry Potter,
My brother says you must be a very powerful wizard to have blocked a killing curse. I want to know if you can do magic yet even though you're only 9? I am ten and my family won't buy me a wand because they say I won't use it safely. Do you remember Voldemort? What was he like? Do you ever get to play with other kids your age? Please write back!
Robby
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29 July, 1982
Dear Harry,
I know you are probably too young to read this, but hopefully when you are older you'll be glad to have letters like this. My husband and son were both killed by the dark lord, and it means a lot to me to know that they didn't die in vain, that he was ultimately stopped. I know you were just a baby, but that event changed so much. I hope you never see the world again the way it was during the war.
[This letter went on to describe the author's husband and son, and included a family photo.]
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Dear Harry,
I'm your biggest fan! I know nobody knows much about you, like where you live or who you are friends with. A few of my parents friends live around Surrey and have seen you sometimes with your relatives, but they said your relatives are really careful about who you talk to. I guess that's understandable if they think maybe some people would want to hurt you. But one of them said you looked about my age and were cute, and still had that lightning bolt scar on your forehead.
I hope you don't feel bad about that scar; I think scars can make people exciting, don't you? Do you have a girlfriend? I'm eight and have never had a boyfriend. My mother says that I'm too young but she's wrong. If you wanted, I would be your girlfriend. Even if you don't want me to be your girlfriend, please write back! And I would really really like it if you could send me a photo of yourself so I can hang it in my room.
XOXOX (my sister says that means "hugs and kisses")
Kim
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Tonks had no idea who these people were, but there were a lot of letters like them. A few writers sounded like shoo-ins for Quibbler columnists, and a few were actively unfriendly, but she didn't find anything dangerous, but most of the personal mail was sincere and heartfelt. Some of the cards were hand-drawn, with varying degrees of complexity and artistic success (wizards were unfortunately not known for artistic ability of any sort). On the shelf she was looking at, besides yet more junk mail (of which Harry had received a surprising amount), Tonks found business proposals (many likely fraudulent), Ministry pamphlets, personally-addressed requests for donations to charities, and at least two formal-looking proposals for arranged marriages. She hadn't found anything from anyone she knew.
After going through hundreds of these, she came to a thick manilla envelope, sealed with wax, addressed simply:
"To: Harry Potter
Only to be opened by Harry."
There were indentations along the edge where the owl had carried it; it was impressive that you didn't see that more often with things you couldn't tie to their legs for them. Tonks briefly hesitated to look at it, but curiosity got the better of her, and she cast the charms which rolled the contents up into tiny tubes that could come through the top of the envelope, then brought them flat again. The first thing to come out was a letter.
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IF YOU ARE READING THIS AND ARE NOT HARRY POTTER, SHAME ON YOU.
THIS IS FOR HARRY ONLY.
Dear Harry,
I bet you get a lot of letters from girls who want to be your girlfriend, and I don't know how you feel about that or whether you already have one. But I'd really like it if you'd consider me.
I saw you in the grocery store and recognized you by your scar, but my parents wouldn't let me go talk to you. I wish I had run off anyway. You looked like you didn't get along with the people you were with. Were they your muggle relatives? and I felt bad for you. I think you are very good-looking, and I can't stop thinking about you.
I'll be eleven this next January, so I'll start Hogwarts the September after that. I'm only a year older than you so I'll be able to meet you once you get there, but I was hoping if you liked me back you would meet me now?
My aunt taught me how to develop photos last year, and I got my own camera for Christmas. My family lets me use the attic for a darkroom. I like it up there because there are lots of boxes up there and I can pretend to make houses out of them or hide from my parents.
I have sent you some photos of me that I took myself. My camera has a timer, so I can get myself into the photos I take. I think I am okay looking. I'm not fat or anything, and I take dance lessons. I'll be sad if you don't like me back but I know there isn't much chance of you liking a girl like me. Please don't show the photos to anyone else or tease me about them.
Okay I am really nervous so I am going to say goodbye before I get too scared to send this.
love,
Rachel Comrie
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That name sounded familiar—that girl must have been sorted just this year! The photos in the envelope were 8"x10", carefully placed between two sheets of cardboard, so Tonks had some difficulty finessing them out one by one.
The first was a photo of a small, white, fluffy dog, sleeping in a bed next to a fireplace. On the back was written "This is our dog Xenophon. He's really old but he's my best friend."
The next three were photos of the girl's yard. Tonks was impressed; it was tricky to do anything artistic with wizard photos, but Rachel had managed to capture the subtle movements of tree branches and flowers swaying in the breeze and clouds moving across the sky.
The fourth was a picture of Rachel herself, in her garden, smiling and waving. Tonks thought she had seen that girl in the hall—maybe she had been sorted into Ravenclaw? "This is me, in the garden."
The next showed her sitting cross-legged on her bed, with the same smiles and waves. Among some music posters and pictures of hippogriffs on the wall behind her, Tonks could make out lightning bolt scar, suggesting a hand-drawn picture of Harry. "My room."
Then Rachel standing next to the drawing, which showed her and Harry holding hands under a tree with a castle, presumably Hogwarts, in the background. It was actually pretty good. "I drew this! I hope you like it. I could draw you something if you want."
Tonks started removing the photos so that she read the backs first.
"I took these next few before going to bed. I had to use the flash for them and also leave the aperture really wide, which is why I'm the only thing in focus!" Rachel was sitting on the edge of her bed, wearing flannel pajamas. She had turned the camera 90 degrees to take portraits.
"I'm not very developed yet, because I'm only ten, but I don't think you'll mind." She had unbuttoned her top, holding it open to show her chest. She looked completely un-self-conscious.
"A close-up portrait." She was standing now, and had taken her top off to pose from the midriff up. She turned around, showing long blonde hair down past her shoulder blades.
"I think I'm pretty, but you can see that for now the only thing I'm developing is photos (ha! ha!)." She had removed the rest of her pajamas and moved the camera back to include the rest of her body. Now she looked a little awkward, and moved back to sit on the edge of the bed, spread her legs, looked down and back at the camera, and grinned sheepishly. Tonks watched this repeat several times, dazed, before moving to the last photo.
"Okay, this was this morning right before I developed these. I said I took dance lessons and I wanted you to see. You can see with the sunlight there is a different color balance. I think I look better in the sun. ps. I really really hope you like these, because I will be really embarrassed if you don't." Rachel was still in her bedroom, nude save for a pair of ballet slippers. Sunlight was streaming in the window, and she had contrived to have it occasionally backlight and catch her hair as she went through several ballet positions, piruoettes, and kicks. It was the dancing of a ten-year-old who had only taken a few lessons; unpolished, but not innocent either. She very clearly knew what she was revealing, such that each move, were it executed by an older, more skillful dancer, would have been stunningly sexual.
Tonks felt drained and confused as she charmed the photos back into their envelope. What Rachel had done was, taken as a whole, an entirely normal thing for a ten-year-old girl to try; Rachel just also had the artistic ability to back it up. Given a crush on a boy, a camera, a willing owl, and a complete lack of anyone stopping her, she had put together what seemed to her a natural way to get Harry to like her. It was also probably illegal. Maybe. Even after several years experience as an auror, the question was really complicated. Tonks just sat there for several minutes, lost in thought.
Eventually, she realized she was hungry and that it had been dark outside for several hours. A time spell revealed it was 8:24. On one side of the room was a warded door; if she didn't go through it properly it would probably alert Dumbledore, who might have entirely forgotten this room existed. Aside from her desire to stay out of trouble, after that last letter, Tonks didn't really like the idea of Dumbledore having access to all of Harry's mail.
She did a quick calculation: She had sifted through a few hundred letters—let's call it 200—there were four sets of free-standing shelves, and more on the walls—after a little more figuring she estimated there were upwards of 10,000 pieces of mail in here. For all she knew, that meant another 50 or so letters like Rachel Comrie's.
She wondered how many students at Hogwarts right now had sent letters to Harry which were in this room, and how many of those letters would cause unspeakable embarrassment if they got into the wrong hands. Well, this one was in her hands now, and if she let it get to anyone other than Harry, it would be a disaster. She shrunk it, stuck it into her pocket, put a sticking charm on it, and layered several more charms on it for good measure. 'Constant Vigilance!' she thought, laughing, then turned to her more serious problem of escape.
"Ugh. How the hell do I get out of this one?" Tonks was not at all confident of her ability to pick apart Dumbledore's wards without being detected. Sure, she could overload most of them and blast the door away if she didn't care about being noticed, so she wasn't completely screwed, but there was far too much at stake for other people for her to risk using brute force here. She decided to make a second desperate attempt to summon her broom.
She remembered the vague direction it had been in; she hoped nothing had moved it. Standing on her tiptoes, holding her wand above her head and pointing down towards the rooftop, she started in:
"Accio broom!
Accio my broom?
Accio Tonks's broom!
Accio Nimbus 500?"
She waited, concentrating for a while. Nothing.
"Okay, if I'm just going to try harder, there's a smart way and a stupid way to do this." She cast a silencing charm in a bubble around herself—she could still cast spells and hear herself doing it, but no one would hear her screaming across the rooftops (or, she mentally added, her swearing across the rooftops, or crying hysterically . . .).
"ACCIO BROOM!"
She went on like this for a while, trying to focus. Her hair cycled through scarlet, electric blue, turqouise—in streaks, lengths changing; one eye went a deep violet and stayed there, the other cycled between green and yellow. She regressed in age, alternating between her appearance when she met Harry, and the features of the girl from the photos. She was screaming.
"ACCIO THE DAMN BROOM, DAMNIT, ACCIO BROOM!
ACCIO MY FUCKING BROOM!"
She had stopped, out of breath, still holding her wand above her head, when without warning she was knocked out with a blow to the temple.
She came to a few minutes later, dizzy, bleeding, and under a pile of mail. "Damn. That blood is going be hard to get off. Worry about it later." With one hand applying pressure to the gash on her forehead, she cleaned up the mail as best as she was able. "Okay, broom."
Unwilling to repeat her mistake entering through the window, she resolved to go through the window on the broom, however stupid she looked while doing it. It wasn't, she thought, like Madam Hooch, or her auror instructors were going to be on the other side criticising her as she came out. And so she lay headfirst on her broom, legs wrapped around it, flying one handed out the window into the night. It had gotten cold, and it was much colder up here. The chill made her slightly more alert, but she knew she really ought to get to the hospital wing.
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The first thing she noticed upon waking up the next morning was the white curtain drawn around her. "Ugh." There was a glass of water on the table next to her. She drank it, and felt a little better. She remembered explaining (entirely truthfully!) to Madam Pomfrey that she had gotten hurt trying to summon her broom. The healer had sighed, saying "you have no idea how many times I have seen that exact same injury." Tonks had been kept for observation for the night in case she had a concussion, and had been given the usual nasty-tasting blood-replenishing potion.
"Good, you're awake. You look better—last night you were so dizzy I thought you might collapse! Drink this. Yes, I know, it tastes awful. That's because I have Severus add the flavor for me—can't have people wanting to take medicine like it was pumpkin juice or something." Tonks hadn't the faintest idea if Madam Pomfrey was joking. She knew _some_ mass-produced potions were sold with bitter flavor added, and the muggles did that stuff to virtually everything, but she didn't think it was justified at Hogwarts out of anything but sadism.
"Blech. Couldn't he just, I don't know, dye them bright green and put bigger labels on them, and make them cherry-flavored or something?"
"You might think that at first, but I have learned over the years that wizards will eat and drink almost anything. Once they learn that earwax-flavored jellybeans are a delicacy, then they develop a taste for the grass-, rotten egg-, and dirty-sock-flavored ones, and you'd think that there was really nowhere else to descend to from there, but no, they just take that as a challenge and move on to dirt, earthworm, and troll bogey. Hold still for a minute . . ." She changed the bandage on Tonks' head, and concentrated while waving her wand back and forth a few times. "Looks good. Anyway, and then, after all that, they come in here wanting medicine to taste like cherries and oranges! No! It's ridiculous, and I won't do it. How does standing up feel? Good!" She smiled. "If you can walk out of here, you're free to go. That was a joke—don't worry, I think you're fine. Just try to pay more attention when you summon things in the future?"
As Hogwarts mysteries go, the ingredients in Madam Pomfrey's potions were not one of the more arcane or exciting ones, but Tonks decided to ask around anyway.
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Chapter 14: Mail Forwarding
Saturday, September 22, 1990.
The first few times Tonks tried to use a school owl to send mail to Harry, she had gotten no response. She knew not to expect a ten-year-old boy to be much of a correspondent, but she was getting worried. The next time, she tried addressing the note to "Harry Potter, Longbottom Manor", and telling the owl where to find him; she got a response from him two days later in the morning post. That was odd.
The next time she wrote to him, she used just his name and gave the owl no special instructions, but put a tracking charm on the letter. After dinner that night she decided to check up on it, and the charm just indicated that the letter was upwards. "Did something happen to the owl?" A visit to the owlery was unenlightening; there were dozens of school owls, most of which looked like they might have been the one she used. At least none were sitting there with a letter still tied to their leg.
"Did one of you take a letter to Harry Potter today?" The owls just looked at her. "Well, it was worth a try. I guess you guys don't normally have to remember every letter you ever delivered."
The next morning, the letter was still being detected as "up". After her last class for the day, she had a few hours before dinner, and decided to do some reconnaissance by broom.
Tonks quickly realised she had missed flying for just the fun of it. Hogwarts Castle has somewhere between five and thirty-seven towers, depending on how you count, the needs of the school, and the arcane workings of founders'-era magics. The overall floor-plan had been stable during Tonks' last timeline, but presumably if the Headmaster really wanted it, entire wings could be moved around.
In any case, the tracking charm's "up" soon resolved itself into a spot halfway up a minor tower. Circling closer, she found an open window and flew up to it, but her eyes couldn't make out anything inside; the late-afternoon sun was too bright in comparison for her eyes to adjust. She checked the window for wards, but came up with nothing. There might be something troublesome inside, but she knew how to take reasonable precautions when entering a strange room.
The auror academy had not, in fact, covered "entering a strange room through a window you can barely squeeze through, while you are 200 feet above the ground on a broom." Tonks fell through the window, which turned out to be four or five feet above the floor inside. She managed to avoid serious injury by falling into a roll, which ended with her crashing into some rickety metal shelving, followed by a mountain of paper landing on her head.
"Well, so much for a cautious entry. Lumos!"
The room contained a series of shelves, arranged like library stacks, and covered in piles of mail—ranging from ordinary-sized envelopes to some fairly large packages. She looked up and saw a box balanced precariously above her, close to falling off. "That was close." She stood up, more or less unhurt.
"First things first." She had no idea what might have happened to her broom, and was afraid to look. The window was at about head height for her; she had to pull herself up and lean out to see anything. "Damnit. Let's see . . . accio broom!" This caused some motion, allowing her to spot it on a rooftop several hundred feet away, but it was too far for her to summon. Harry had summoned a broom from within the castle during the Tri-Wizard, right? So it wasn't impossible. She'd try later after she'd had longer to recover from her tumble through the window.
"Right then. So what's in here, anyway?"
The room was obviously bigger on the inside than the exterior of the tower that housed it. A single door, closed, presumably led out to a landing of a spiral staircase. She wasn't going to try that, yet. A quick safety-check, which she kicked herself for not doing earlier, revealed a charm on the middle of the floor that probably directed incoming mail to more-or-less free shelves. Owls would know to fly there, and letters would be automatically untied from legs and levitated into place. There didn't seem to be any provision for refiling anything that got knocked out of place.
"Fine." She was quite good at organizational charms, and soon had all the mail at least back on shelves, if not in its original locations.
"So really, what is all this?" It was soon clear the entire room was redirected mail that had been sent to Harry—everything since he had been one and placed with the Dursleys. For whatever reason, Dumbledore had never stopped having it sent here. Tonks picked a shelf and started going through it.
"Ads, ads, okay that's normal, here's a card. Let's see it." Tonks had been taught several techniques for getting letters out of sealed envelopes and back. Clearly celebrity stalking—well, no, Harry was legitimately her friend in both timelines—snooping, then, was the highest and best use of these skills. She proceeded to snoop.
The room, she decided, had not been particularly neat to start with. She found evidence of mice (why didn't the owls get them?) in one corner, and several packages that had once contained food had in fact been chewed open. Other than the ones already open, Tonks couldn't do much discreetly with most of the packages—there was tape at some layer that she couldn't undo magically without tearing, and solid objects couldn't be magically manipulated through small holes as easily as letters could. A few things were obvious—some books, a broom—but mostly she was limited to letters. There were a lot of letters.
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Dear Harry,
Happy Birthday! My mum thinks you are turning seven this year. My name is Sarah and I am 6. I hope you are okay and having a good birthday, and get lots of presents.
love,
Sarah
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Dear Harry Potter,
My brother says you must be a very powerful wizard to have blocked a killing curse. I want to know if you can do magic yet even though you're only 9? I am ten and my family won't buy me a wand because they say I won't use it safely. Do you remember Voldemort? What was he like? Do you ever get to play with other kids your age? Please write back!
Robby
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29 July, 1982
Dear Harry,
I know you are probably too young to read this, but hopefully when you are older you'll be glad to have letters like this. My husband and son were both killed by the dark lord, and it means a lot to me to know that they didn't die in vain, that he was ultimately stopped. I know you were just a baby, but that event changed so much. I hope you never see the world again the way it was during the war.
[This letter went on to describe the author's husband and son, and included a family photo.]
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Dear Harry,
I'm your biggest fan! I know nobody knows much about you, like where you live or who you are friends with. A few of my parents friends live around Surrey and have seen you sometimes with your relatives, but they said your relatives are really careful about who you talk to. I guess that's understandable if they think maybe some people would want to hurt you. But one of them said you looked about my age and were cute, and still had that lightning bolt scar on your forehead.
I hope you don't feel bad about that scar; I think scars can make people exciting, don't you? Do you have a girlfriend? I'm eight and have never had a boyfriend. My mother says that I'm too young but she's wrong. If you wanted, I would be your girlfriend. Even if you don't want me to be your girlfriend, please write back! And I would really really like it if you could send me a photo of yourself so I can hang it in my room.
XOXOX (my sister says that means "hugs and kisses")
Kim
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Tonks had no idea who these people were, but there were a lot of letters like them. A few writers sounded like shoo-ins for Quibbler columnists, and a few were actively unfriendly, but she didn't find anything dangerous, but most of the personal mail was sincere and heartfelt. Some of the cards were hand-drawn, with varying degrees of complexity and artistic success (wizards were unfortunately not known for artistic ability of any sort). On the shelf she was looking at, besides yet more junk mail (of which Harry had received a surprising amount), Tonks found business proposals (many likely fraudulent), Ministry pamphlets, personally-addressed requests for donations to charities, and at least two formal-looking proposals for arranged marriages. She hadn't found anything from anyone she knew.
After going through hundreds of these, she came to a thick manilla envelope, sealed with wax, addressed simply:
"To: Harry Potter
Only to be opened by Harry."
There were indentations along the edge where the owl had carried it; it was impressive that you didn't see that more often with things you couldn't tie to their legs for them. Tonks briefly hesitated to look at it, but curiosity got the better of her, and she cast the charms which rolled the contents up into tiny tubes that could come through the top of the envelope, then brought them flat again. The first thing to come out was a letter.
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IF YOU ARE READING THIS AND ARE NOT HARRY POTTER, SHAME ON YOU.
THIS IS FOR HARRY ONLY.
Dear Harry,
I bet you get a lot of letters from girls who want to be your girlfriend, and I don't know how you feel about that or whether you already have one. But I'd really like it if you'd consider me.
I saw you in the grocery store and recognized you by your scar, but my parents wouldn't let me go talk to you. I wish I had run off anyway. You looked like you didn't get along with the people you were with. Were they your muggle relatives? and I felt bad for you. I think you are very good-looking, and I can't stop thinking about you.
I'll be eleven this next January, so I'll start Hogwarts the September after that. I'm only a year older than you so I'll be able to meet you once you get there, but I was hoping if you liked me back you would meet me now?
My aunt taught me how to develop photos last year, and I got my own camera for Christmas. My family lets me use the attic for a darkroom. I like it up there because there are lots of boxes up there and I can pretend to make houses out of them or hide from my parents.
I have sent you some photos of me that I took myself. My camera has a timer, so I can get myself into the photos I take. I think I am okay looking. I'm not fat or anything, and I take dance lessons. I'll be sad if you don't like me back but I know there isn't much chance of you liking a girl like me. Please don't show the photos to anyone else or tease me about them.
Okay I am really nervous so I am going to say goodbye before I get too scared to send this.
love,
Rachel Comrie
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That name sounded familiar—that girl must have been sorted just this year! The photos in the envelope were 8"x10", carefully placed between two sheets of cardboard, so Tonks had some difficulty finessing them out one by one.
The first was a photo of a small, white, fluffy dog, sleeping in a bed next to a fireplace. On the back was written "This is our dog Xenophon. He's really old but he's my best friend."
The next three were photos of the girl's yard. Tonks was impressed; it was tricky to do anything artistic with wizard photos, but Rachel had managed to capture the subtle movements of tree branches and flowers swaying in the breeze and clouds moving across the sky.
The fourth was a picture of Rachel herself, in her garden, smiling and waving. Tonks thought she had seen that girl in the hall—maybe she had been sorted into Ravenclaw? "This is me, in the garden."
The next showed her sitting cross-legged on her bed, with the same smiles and waves. Among some music posters and pictures of hippogriffs on the wall behind her, Tonks could make out lightning bolt scar, suggesting a hand-drawn picture of Harry. "My room."
Then Rachel standing next to the drawing, which showed her and Harry holding hands under a tree with a castle, presumably Hogwarts, in the background. It was actually pretty good. "I drew this! I hope you like it. I could draw you something if you want."
Tonks started removing the photos so that she read the backs first.
"I took these next few before going to bed. I had to use the flash for them and also leave the aperture really wide, which is why I'm the only thing in focus!" Rachel was sitting on the edge of her bed, wearing flannel pajamas. She had turned the camera 90 degrees to take portraits.
"I'm not very developed yet, because I'm only ten, but I don't think you'll mind." She had unbuttoned her top, holding it open to show her chest. She looked completely un-self-conscious.
"A close-up portrait." She was standing now, and had taken her top off to pose from the midriff up. She turned around, showing long blonde hair down past her shoulder blades.
"I think I'm pretty, but you can see that for now the only thing I'm developing is photos (ha! ha!)." She had removed the rest of her pajamas and moved the camera back to include the rest of her body. Now she looked a little awkward, and moved back to sit on the edge of the bed, spread her legs, looked down and back at the camera, and grinned sheepishly. Tonks watched this repeat several times, dazed, before moving to the last photo.
"Okay, this was this morning right before I developed these. I said I took dance lessons and I wanted you to see. You can see with the sunlight there is a different color balance. I think I look better in the sun. ps. I really really hope you like these, because I will be really embarrassed if you don't." Rachel was still in her bedroom, nude save for a pair of ballet slippers. Sunlight was streaming in the window, and she had contrived to have it occasionally backlight and catch her hair as she went through several ballet positions, piruoettes, and kicks. It was the dancing of a ten-year-old who had only taken a few lessons; unpolished, but not innocent either. She very clearly knew what she was revealing, such that each move, were it executed by an older, more skillful dancer, would have been stunningly sexual.
Tonks felt drained and confused as she charmed the photos back into their envelope. What Rachel had done was, taken as a whole, an entirely normal thing for a ten-year-old girl to try; Rachel just also had the artistic ability to back it up. Given a crush on a boy, a camera, a willing owl, and a complete lack of anyone stopping her, she had put together what seemed to her a natural way to get Harry to like her. It was also probably illegal. Maybe. Even after several years experience as an auror, the question was really complicated. Tonks just sat there for several minutes, lost in thought.
Eventually, she realized she was hungry and that it had been dark outside for several hours. A time spell revealed it was 8:24. On one side of the room was a warded door; if she didn't go through it properly it would probably alert Dumbledore, who might have entirely forgotten this room existed. Aside from her desire to stay out of trouble, after that last letter, Tonks didn't really like the idea of Dumbledore having access to all of Harry's mail.
She did a quick calculation: She had sifted through a few hundred letters—let's call it 200—there were four sets of free-standing shelves, and more on the walls—after a little more figuring she estimated there were upwards of 10,000 pieces of mail in here. For all she knew, that meant another 50 or so letters like Rachel Comrie's.
She wondered how many students at Hogwarts right now had sent letters to Harry which were in this room, and how many of those letters would cause unspeakable embarrassment if they got into the wrong hands. Well, this one was in her hands now, and if she let it get to anyone other than Harry, it would be a disaster. She shrunk it, stuck it into her pocket, put a sticking charm on it, and layered several more charms on it for good measure. 'Constant Vigilance!' she thought, laughing, then turned to her more serious problem of escape.
"Ugh. How the hell do I get out of this one?" Tonks was not at all confident of her ability to pick apart Dumbledore's wards without being detected. Sure, she could overload most of them and blast the door away if she didn't care about being noticed, so she wasn't completely screwed, but there was far too much at stake for other people for her to risk using brute force here. She decided to make a second desperate attempt to summon her broom.
She remembered the vague direction it had been in; she hoped nothing had moved it. Standing on her tiptoes, holding her wand above her head and pointing down towards the rooftop, she started in:
"Accio broom!
Accio my broom?
Accio Tonks's broom!
Accio Nimbus 500?"
She waited, concentrating for a while. Nothing.
"Okay, if I'm just going to try harder, there's a smart way and a stupid way to do this." She cast a silencing charm in a bubble around herself—she could still cast spells and hear herself doing it, but no one would hear her screaming across the rooftops (or, she mentally added, her swearing across the rooftops, or crying hysterically . . .).
"ACCIO BROOM!"
She went on like this for a while, trying to focus. Her hair cycled through scarlet, electric blue, turqouise—in streaks, lengths changing; one eye went a deep violet and stayed there, the other cycled between green and yellow. She regressed in age, alternating between her appearance when she met Harry, and the features of the girl from the photos. She was screaming.
"ACCIO THE DAMN BROOM, DAMNIT, ACCIO BROOM!
ACCIO MY FUCKING BROOM!"
She had stopped, out of breath, still holding her wand above her head, when without warning she was knocked out with a blow to the temple.
She came to a few minutes later, dizzy, bleeding, and under a pile of mail. "Damn. That blood is going be hard to get off. Worry about it later." With one hand applying pressure to the gash on her forehead, she cleaned up the mail as best as she was able. "Okay, broom."
Unwilling to repeat her mistake entering through the window, she resolved to go through the window on the broom, however stupid she looked while doing it. It wasn't, she thought, like Madam Hooch, or her auror instructors were going to be on the other side criticising her as she came out. And so she lay headfirst on her broom, legs wrapped around it, flying one handed out the window into the night. It had gotten cold, and it was much colder up here. The chill made her slightly more alert, but she knew she really ought to get to the hospital wing.
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The first thing she noticed upon waking up the next morning was the white curtain drawn around her. "Ugh." There was a glass of water on the table next to her. She drank it, and felt a little better. She remembered explaining (entirely truthfully!) to Madam Pomfrey that she had gotten hurt trying to summon her broom. The healer had sighed, saying "you have no idea how many times I have seen that exact same injury." Tonks had been kept for observation for the night in case she had a concussion, and had been given the usual nasty-tasting blood-replenishing potion.
"Good, you're awake. You look better—last night you were so dizzy I thought you might collapse! Drink this. Yes, I know, it tastes awful. That's because I have Severus add the flavor for me—can't have people wanting to take medicine like it was pumpkin juice or something." Tonks hadn't the faintest idea if Madam Pomfrey was joking. She knew _some_ mass-produced potions were sold with bitter flavor added, and the muggles did that stuff to virtually everything, but she didn't think it was justified at Hogwarts out of anything but sadism.
"Blech. Couldn't he just, I don't know, dye them bright green and put bigger labels on them, and make them cherry-flavored or something?"
"You might think that at first, but I have learned over the years that wizards will eat and drink almost anything. Once they learn that earwax-flavored jellybeans are a delicacy, then they develop a taste for the grass-, rotten egg-, and dirty-sock-flavored ones, and you'd think that there was really nowhere else to descend to from there, but no, they just take that as a challenge and move on to dirt, earthworm, and troll bogey. Hold still for a minute . . ." She changed the bandage on Tonks' head, and concentrated while waving her wand back and forth a few times. "Looks good. Anyway, and then, after all that, they come in here wanting medicine to taste like cherries and oranges! No! It's ridiculous, and I won't do it. How does standing up feel? Good!" She smiled. "If you can walk out of here, you're free to go. That was a joke—don't worry, I think you're fine. Just try to pay more attention when you summon things in the future?"
As Hogwarts mysteries go, the ingredients in Madam Pomfrey's potions were not one of the more arcane or exciting ones, but Tonks decided to ask around anyway.
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