FicWad

The Harry Potter universe is the creation of J.K. Rowling. This is fanfiction. The standard disclaimers apply.


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Chapter 36: Christmas, Hermione


December 21, 1990. Evening.


"So, I think that went pretty well, don't you? Did you spoil your godson enough?"

Tonks had followed Sirius home after seeing off Harry and Remus, and they were sitting in the library discussing the day. The drawing room reminded Sirius too much of having to deal with his mother and her friends, so he had been spending a lot of time in the library.

"Well, in terms of attention, definitely. In terms of Christmas presents, well, that will just have to wait. He took it pretty well, being told to wait a few days and see what he got. Most kids his age would at least squirm, in that situation."

"So do you have plans for what you're getting him?"

"A few. There's the broom, of course, and a bunch of practical things like books he can get a head start on—even if the Longbottoms have copies, he'll want his own at school. Lots of candy. Beyond that, I'm not sure. He's at that tricky age where he might still play with some toys, but is growing out of a lot of them. Do you have any suggestions?"

"Not really, no. I think you handled it pretty well today, buying Harry and me those muggle clothes without making Remus uncomfortable. I was impressed."

"Remus and I have been friends for a long time. I doubt I could have done that with anybody else."

"Thank you, by the way. I know it's not much money relative to the Black assets, but it's still not easy to do all that without being awkward. I would have screwed it up, if it were me."

"Why, thank you! I think that's the nicest thing anyone has had to say about my social skills since . . . I'm not sure, actually. I don't seem to inspire that sort of compliment very often. On the subject of finances, though, I have been meaning to ask you . . ."

"Yes?"

"Do you have any nefarious schemes I ought to be investing in, that I don't know about?"

Tonks smiled. "Plenty! 'Ought' is a vague word, though. And there are just as many that require time as money. But the short answer is 'yes'. That is, depending on how much you are looking to invest."

"Let's start small. What would you do with a hundred galleons and a few days of my time? My time, of course, is in great demand these days. The owls are just swarming around bringing me party invitations, and there's a horde of girls out there on the street as we speak, crying because they can't find my door to knock on."

"Hah! I think that's the closest thing to deadpan humor I've ever seen out of you. Must be a good sign—having a day out probably helped? Anyway, a hundred galleons and a day. Hmmm.

So, hypothetically speaking—"

"Oh, come on Dora, we both know it's not hypothetical. If you started in with 'So, Sirius, hypothetically speaking, if I, say, knew the location of Atlantis', I'd go ahead and start thinking of water-breathing charms and treasure-hunting equipment. What is it?"

"Well, not Atlantis. You probably know more about that than I do. So, don't ask how—"

"Aaannd I know better than to do that, too, now. Go on."

Tonks grimaced for a moment, trying to strip all the qualifiers from whatever she was about to say. "There's a muggleborn witch, Harry's age, who will probably be in Gryffindor with him, and who is smart enough to learn the contents of any book we can throw at her between now and when school starts. Given the deal you just offered, I'd drag you to a used bookstore and get you to help me find several years worth of textbooks and anything else we can think of, then buy them. Then I'd try to tell her she's a witch without her freaking out, give her the books, and convince her to let us buy her a wand. Then we'd contrive to introduce her to Harry before school starts. Very high return on investment, but I don't have the funds to do any of it myself."

"Sounds good. I'm in. There, that was easy, wasn't it? Come with me tomorrow, and we'll get a copy of everything we get for Harry. And it doesn't have to be used, either. Heck, if she lives somewhere she can get away with it, let's get her an owl, and she can ask us for help if she gets stuck . . . is the idea to have Harry get help with his homework?"

"Well, that too, but only incidentally. I think Harry's smart enough not to need help, assuming he can be convinced to do his homework in the first place." Sirius chuckled—that was fair, and just like him and James. "I was thinking more along the lines of outsmarting Death Eaters if it comes to that."

"Thaaat was barely even hypothetical, and I didn't like the sound of it. How bad is it? You don't have to give me details, but what are we looking at? Full scale war again? A small resurgence and a mop-up operation?"

Tonks looked thoughtful for a moment, and stared into space. "That's hard to say. We have some opportunities to outmanoeuvre them, and there are a few unknowns that could swing their way. If they do everything right and we do everything wrong, things will be at least as bad as the last war. I'm not sure how to do everything we might want to do on our side, so I can't really say what the best case is."

Sirius nodded, slowly, then stopped. "I'm not sure I feel any more enlightened than I was before. I wish you would tell me more. Although, I suppose I might not be asking the right questions. Could you just give me a list of things you want to have happen, without regard to cost, or trying not to scare me, or what my feelings might be about being asked to—horrors!—do actual work? Surely you can tell me something more."

"Well, a lot of it's obvious, right? Make sure Harry and his friends can fight off Death Eaters if they have to, and that he has a lot of those friends, although that would be good even without the Death Eaters, of course. Always act like the Ministry is completely compromised, figure out where we're relying on it, and stop. Assume Fudge is too blind to admit that the dementors are disloyal. Assume your bitch of a cousin will eventually escape. Plan accordingly, whatever that means, and no I don't have any good ideas yet. Put at least some basic wards up to protect people we care about, like the Burrow, or Remus, even if they fuss about accepting charity. Heck, take the time we are not being attacked and learn to actually make better wards. Like, say, it would be great if Dumbledore would just tie Snape to a table in his office—"

"—I like this already!"

"You would. Tie him to a table and not let him leave until Dumbledore understands the Dark Mark better than Voldemort ever did. Can I borrow a piece of paper?"

"Uhhh, here. Here's a pen."

"Great." She scribbled something down and passed it to Sirius.

------------------

Malfoy and the like could order their house elves to do their dirty work for them. I wish we knew how to stop that. Destroy this note NOW.

----------------

"Damnn! I don't think that happened in the last war, though."

"We got lucky. It only takes one of them to think of it. But really, these are all very practical, very generic things. The Death Eaters will already be expecting us to do them, and it's just a question of whether we are stupid or lazy enough to sit on our asses and do nothing instead."

"They weren't all that obvious to me, but of course I hadn't spent any time thinking about them, because I didn't know I ought to. Now that you have finally given me some idea what we're dealing with, I might be able to help. Don't underestimate your demented old cousin."

"I don't. I'm just not comfortable asking for that much. It feels like I ought to be adding 'and also I want a pony' to the end of it all."

"I think you were also playing at being Dumbledore, and not in a good way."

"What? Keeping too many secrets, never delegating, treating my friends like weapons, making the fate of the wizarding world rest on my shoulders, and then having everyone's lives hang on whether or not I make some stupid screw-up? At least I'm not wearing purple robes with orange polka dots."

"Dora, your hair is purple right now."

"Damn you. But no, I don't want to be Dumbledore, at all. And I'm finding it really hard to not act like him sometimes."

"I'll try to keep you in line, then. So, book shopping tomorrow?"

"That would be great."

"Do you also want a pony?"

"No. It would probably bite me."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


It had been a nice change of pace to be able to use a regular pointing spell to find the Grangers' house. She had done it at night, on her broom, after leaving Sirius' place, and apparated into the back yard directly after her shopping trip with Sirius. Tonks had disguised herself as a woman in her thirties, with relatively normal muggle clothes and hair-colored hair.

Hermione's parents weren't home, which Tonks hadn't expected. It made things a little easier. Although, unlike Sirius, Hermione had patiently allowed Tonks to get through her entire carefully-prepared hypothetical, Hermione had also taken her for some sort of cult member trying to distribute religious literature. It was . . . not an easy conversation.

Tonks had begun with something like this:

"You're Hermione Granger, right? Can I talk to you for a few minutes? You don't have to let me in if you don't want to, it's okay."

Hermione peered through the door, cracked open with the chain in place, trying not to let too much cold air in.

"Do you know what an allegory is? Excellent. Will you listen to me for a bit while I tell you one? Thanks, Hermione. I know you'll think this is kind of weird, but please just hear me out, okay?

So, imagine a story book, where there was a girl with magical abilities, who would eventually be going to a school of magic with other children like herself. And, imagine you were part of that magical world, and you learned about her, and found out she was really smart, and a really good person, and you were sure she'd do a lot of good some day. But the rest of the magical people didn't know these things, because she wasn't quite old enough for the people who run the school to go looking for her yet.

And assume you, the person already in the magical world, had a wealthy backer, so you could quietly, secretly, without the school or anybody else knowing, get her a set of her textbooks a little early, and maybe some other things if she wanted, and the only condition would be that she could only tell her parents, because in that country only magical folk and their blood relatives were allowed to know about magic.

Now, this wouldn't work so well for other children her age, but this girl is really smart—smart enough to learn everything you could think of to teach her. So it would actually be possible to give her a head start, and she'd definitely enjoy it.

And maybe the magical world wasn't all goodness and light, even though the girl clearly was, at least by your standards. So you had a sort of selfish motivation, too. Got all that? In that story, you'd try to slip the girl some books, right?"

"An allegory is an extended metaphor. So I think it depends on what the metaphor is for, right? It's clearly about some sort of ability that the person giving the books believes in. That could be something real, like science and engineering, or some people might think all of what you just said could apply to politics, or maybe the arts. Probably not the arts. But it might also be religious, or the person could be delusional.

We're assuming the person just shows up at her door, right, like this? If the girl is smart she's going to suspect it's a trap, that there's something dangerous about the books, or that there's going to be something else she has to do, and she'd worry that the person would use the books to lure her into a trap that way. And within the, er, metaphor again, if there were bad people in the magical world, they'd want to use her, too. So she would probably be scared."

"Oh." Said Tonks. "There were a whole bunch of problems in there that I didn't think of. I'm not sure how to fix them. I hope you can. Sorry. Okay. Let's try this again. Say I am standing here, offering you a whole bunch of books about magic, with the only condition being that you don't tell anyone other than your parents, and you explain to them that it's illegal in Britain to talk about it to non-magical people. And assume that for most magic, at least until you're really good, you need . . . let's say, a wand, and you have to try a bunch of them to find one that works for you. And assume the . . . wand-maker isn't going to want to bring his whole wand shop around to your house. The person at the door is offering to take you to buy a wand—will buy you whatever magical . . . school supplies you want, and will even take your parents along too—but you don't know whether to trust them. Then they offer to show you magic, trying to prove to you that it's real. What
would you do in order to decide whether or not to accept the books?"

"Well, the tests of magic would be easy—don't take anything they suggest, since they wouldn't suggest something they couldn't do. You'd have to try to come up with something that can only be done by magic, then ask them to do it.

The second part—the question of the books and the wand shop, I mean—depends on deciding whether they are one of the good magical people or the bad magical people. I think most people have a good intuition for picking strangers they can trust, but not when they don't do the picking. It's very hard to decide whether to trust a stranger, you know, when they're the one who approaches you. If there were a universally applicable test, they'd figure out how to cheat at it beforehand, right?"

"Does that have anything to do with magic?"

"Not from the girl's point of view!"

"I really didn't think this through beforehand."

"Well, what are you actually trying to do? This is a very interesting conversation, but I'm letting cold air in, and I wish you'd get to the point. If this is some sort of joke, it's a bad one."

"What do you think I'm trying to do?"

"I don't know. I don't think your allegory is helping. I'm clearly the girl, right? And you are trying to get me to accept some object, probably books, because you know enough about me to think that's what I'm most likely to accept."

Tonks looked dejected. "Yes, that's all correct. And you're right, if I were trying to trick you, I'd definitely use books as bait or whatever, but I wasn't thinking like that."

"But you don't have the books with you, or else there's only one or two."

"What if I said they were in boxes in my pockets, and my pockets were bigger on the inside than the outside, and the boxes had been shrunken?"

"Then, I could ask you to show me, but I still wouldn't know whether it was a trick, or if you were a good or bad person."

"Hermione, speaking entirely not hypothetically, I really, truly am trying to give you textbooks ahead of time so you can get ahead in the school you will be starting in the fall. I'm going to sit down on the step here if that's alright." Tonks sat down, staring at the cement in front of her.

"Why not try to get the school to do it? Why are you doing it?"

Tonks flailed her hands. "Because Headmaster Dumbledore will fuss and fiddle and say you're too young and that keeping you going at the same pace as the other students is for your own good, and you should be allowed to have more of your childhood . . . I don't know why adults insist on doing things that way, and yes I disguised my age so that if anyone read your mind I'd stay out of trouble, but I am apparently doing a lousy job of everything today. But to answer your question, I was planning on just letting you go at your own pace instead of deciding what it should be. Haven't you had that problem in your primary school?"

"I have—all the time! But that's also what I would say to me if I were trying to convince me." Now Hermione sounded like she was having fun. At least somebody was. Then, more seriously, she added "if you are not actually talking about a school of magic, at this point it would be mean of you to keep pretending, and I think you should stop."

"Come up with a test."

"I don't know what magic is supposed to be able to do."

"If you read the books I'm trying to give you, you would."

"And I'm still not sure whether you're trying to pick on me."

"I apologize for the way I said that, then. You didn't deserve that, and I'm sorry. Please come up with some way I can prove myself to you! I'd have to do it where no one else can see, of course, just like you would."

"Okay. Can I have a few minutes? Go around to the back door and wait for me."

Tonks sat on the back steps for something like five minutes, wondering what Hermione was up to. She hoped the girl didn't pick too many impossible things.

Eventually the back door opened. Hermione looked a lot more cheerful. "Okay! I think I have some good ones. Can you do things through the crack in the door?"

"Sure."

Hermione took a deep breath, and looked really nervous. She put an apple down on the kitchen floor where Tonks could see it. "Can you turn it into gold?"

"Not permanently, but yes." Tonks took out her wand and did so.

"Oh." Tonks saw Hermione reach out to try to pick up the apple, and fail. She did manage to push it along the floor a little. "Could you keep it that way long enough to trick someone?"

"You could trick someone who couldn't do magic. But a wizard would know to check. And you would get in a lot of trouble if you were caught, specifically for passing off fake gold, and maybe also for violating the Statute of Secrecy."

"Okay. Can you make it float?"

"Let's see . . . yes."

"Can you make it bigger?"

"Yes, but not infinitely so." Tonks got it to about half again its original size.

"Can you turn it into a chicken?"

"What? I think I'd have to put it down first. And the chicken wouldn't be permanent, either."

"Okay. Put it down and turn it into a chicken." Tonks did this, and the chicken immediately sped off out of sight, clucking.

"Oh! I didn't think of that!" shouted Hermione, running off after it. She returned a minute later, holding the squirming chicken. "I cornered it in the bathroom. So is this a real chicken?"

"I'd say no, but that's sort of a philosophical question, not a magical one. Like I said, it's not permanent."

"So you could do things to a fake chicken that you wouldn't do to a real one."

"Some people would. I'm not comfortable doing anything to a transfigured animal that would hurt a real animal."

"If I cooked and ate this chicken, what would happen to me?"

"It would eventually change back into apple in your body, possibly after it had been used for things. You could get sick and maybe die."

"Do you normally change things back, or let them change back on their own, when you have an animal?"

"Um, I've never let it go until the magic wears off. You're trying to ask me a moral question, I think, but basically I'm just uncomfortable trying the experiment and don't have a good theoretical justification for it. I'm sorry. I hope I didn't just fail some test."

"No, that was fine. Go ahead and change it back to an apple." Tonks did this. "Is the apple safe to eat?"

"Provided that there's nothing bad that got onto it from the floor while it was gold or a chicken, yes."

"So, I should wash it first."

"Right."

"Okay, here's a paper cup. Can you fill it with water?"

"Yes. Conjured water is actually safe to drink, unlike food. It's a different kind of magic. I can banish it—make it go away—but that water there is just water. It isn't magical and dispelling it wouldn't work."

"Okay. Freeze it . . . Would that freezing spell work on a living thing?"

"Yes."

"When would you cast it on a living thing?"

"I probably wouldn't. If you are in a really serious fight, there are various reasons for not casting the same spells over and over. Wizards might try a lot of things to throw off their opponents, some of which can be quite cruel. Given the difficulty of using it effectively in a fight, and that it would have serious effects, I can't see myself ever using it outside of some contrived situation. I won't lie to you, though—wizard duels can be extremely nasty."

"Do you know a lot of spells that are only good for that?"

"For fighting? Yes, I do."

"Why?"

"I won't tell you right now. It's complicated."

"Will I be expected to learn them?"

"A few of the less cruel ones, for class, yes. Otherwise no one will really make you learn them. It would be best if you did, though, I think. I'd worry about you a lot less. And you'd be better able to protect your friends."

There was silence from the other side of the door for a while.

"Turn the apple into a stick of wood . . . can you break it?" Tonks sent the weakest reductor she could at it. The two halves skittered off across the floor. Hermione retrieved them. "Fix it. Oh. Is the fix permanent?"

"Sort of. It is slightly less structurally sound than before, but the magic won't decay. There are only so many times you can break and fix something before it's just held together with magic and you can't push it any further. I don't fully understand how it works. You eventually will."

"Can you use magic to heal people?"

"Yes. You can cure all sorts of things with magic that you can't cure otherwise."

"Do you ever feel guilty about not sharing that with non-magical people?"

"Ouch. I'm going to say no, which you probably won't like, but hear me out. Whenever wizards have tried to live alongside of muggles—that's a wizarding term for non-magical people—it has always ended badly. The muggles fear the wizards but keep making more and more demands, and eventually it ends in everybody fighting everybody else. Maybe, once in a while, if it can be done without violating the Statute of Secrecy, wizards will secretly help muggles out. But that's hard to do without being found out. It's really not a fair question, Hermione."

"What's the name of the school?"

"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

"Is there a difference between witches and wizards?"

"Argh. Not magically, and everyone knows that. There is slightly less inequality than in the muggle world, but it's not perfect."

"Do students bully each other at Hogwarts?"

"Yes. I don't know how it compares to muggle schools. The staff tries to prevent it, but can't catch everyone. And kids from wealthy, powerful families get away with more, just like in the muggle world. And I warn you that you will not like how wizards treat other magical beings. I'm sorry. Wizards are far from perfect, Hermione, and sometimes they're downright awful, but you can't change them from the outside looking in! Somebody has to be willing to stand up to bullies, or to Dark wizards, or to whoever is in power wherever you are. You would do it. I know you would.

But you would also meet really nice people and make real friends. I promise you there are more good wizards than bad."

"Why did you start this whole thing with an allegory?"

"I thought you'd enjoy it."

"That's it?"

"Pretty much, yeah. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. I mean, I didn't want to just say, 'Hi Hermione, you're a witch, here are your textbooks for the next seven years, and I need you to start studying right away, just in case we need your help fighting a war later.' That seemed like it wouldn't be any fun. Normally the school sends out a fancy letter, and that's how you learn, if you're muggleborn. I didn't want you to feel like you lost out somehow. I'm really, really sorry if I botched it. I made a terrible first impression, didn't I?" Tonks paused. There was silence. Crap. "I'm so, so sorry Hermione. I thought I could just walk right up to you and it would be fine, but I was just withholding information and you must have thought I was teasing you, which I should have realized you were sensitive to if I weren't a moron, and you're such a nice person that you don't deserve that." Tonks was sniffling, and didn't hear Hermione walking around in the kitchen until she heard the door close. Her heart sunk, and then she heard the chain being lifted and the door opening again.

"Come on in. Here's a tissue. Are you okay? Your disguise didn't last—did you know that?" Tonks shook her head and walked in, blowing her nose and drying her eyes. "I like you better this way. Come sit down in the living room. My parents should be home soon. I'd understand if you didn't want to stay and meet them, but you can if you want." Hermione showed her into an armchair. "Can I see the books?"

Tonks wasted no time getting two boxes out of her pockets, quickly expanding them into large wooden crates. "All yours. All seven years, plus anything my cousin and I could think of to throw in. You'll start this upcoming September. I'd particularly appreciate it if you worked on the Occlumency book some between now and then—that's exercises to keep people from reading your mind."

"Are you a student too?"

"Yeah, but I'm in my seventh year, so we won't overlap any. I'll introduce you to everyone I know, though, if you want. So, um, right now my parents think I'm at my cousin's place, and he knows I'm here, and the two of us are the only ones who know you exist. Er, well, you know what I mean."

"How soon could I get a wand?"

"Well, the shop's open now, but it could take up to an hour to find one for you. It's like trying on clothes, but worse." Hermione giggled—it was the first time in a while she hadn't seemed either deadly serious, or like she was trying to beat Tonks at some game.

"Hermione, is everything okay? I really was trying to not botch this. It's supposed to be fun and exciting."

"Oh! I'm sorry. It's just that you started off making me think about story books. In books, whenever the hero learns that magic is real, they go off doing stupid things, and I hate it when they do that. I decided once that I would never be like that. Just in case it ever happened, I mean. I didn't really expect it to."

Tonks grinned. "That sounds like a challenge. Well, maybe not to get you to do stupid things, but to not be quite so serious all the time. That's my cousin's job. Ahh, forget that for now—I think your parents are here. If you have any idea how best not to scare them, I'm all ears."

"No you're not. You only have two. Unless you meant you were going to transfigure extra ears on yourself?"

"No."

"Okay. Let me go catch them . . ." Hermione ran out the door. It was about five minutes later that she entered, a smile on her face, followed by her parents. Tonks had met Mr. and Mrs. Granger only once in the previous timeline, and then only in passing, but they had seemed like perfectly nice people. They did this time, too.

"Hi, I'm Ralph Granger, and this is my wife Adeline."

She realized she was supposed to introduce herself, and that she had been pretending to be someone else. That now seemed like too much work to maintain. "Tonks. Just Tonks, for now. It's my last name. I don't like my first." Ralph laughed, and they shook hands.

"I understand my daughter made you wait in the cold for an hour while interrogating you mercilessly, then decided that you must be a good witch because she could reduce you to tears."

"Dad! That's not fair!"

Tonks grinned. "No, that's a pretty good summary of things, at least from my perspective. I mean, I wasn't exactly sobbing, but I needed a tissue at the end. It was . . . impressive. There's a reason I was willing to sit crying in the snow on your back steps. I wouldn't do it for just anybody!"

"I hope you wouldn't mind a small demonstration for us. I must admit I'm still skeptical."

"Sure. Hermione insisted on picking her own tests, since she said I couldn't trick her as easily that way. The only mistake she made was with the chicken, but then I didn't think of that, either."

"She mentioned the chicken. Perhaps you could do something a little slower? Like, say, a potted plant?"

"Well, doing the plant, the dirt, and the pot is actually beyond my skill level. Something else?"

"Actually," asked Adeline, "can you use magic to clean the rug?"

"Yes! That's a great idea, and I'm good at that kind of thing." Tonks then proceeded to clean all the dirt from the rug, dusted everything in the room in one swooping motion, cleaned the upholstery until it looked like new, and had started repairing tears and scratches when Adeline recovered her senses enough to stop her.

"Tonks, I think that will do nicely for now. It was . . . very impressive. I don't know what to say. Also, thank you. Some of that would have been impossible for me to do myself, and you saved me quite a bit of work right there. Hermione, did you ever think to have her try something practical like that?"

"No, mum."

"At least occasionally I can be a step ahead of her. Not very often anymore, though!"

"Hah! Well, hopefully she will be able to pick up those charms pretty quickly. Which gets me to the next two points. First: You two and Hermione are bound by the Statute of Secrecy. It's illegal, at least in Britain, to talk about magic to anyone who isn't allowed to know about it, which means anyone who isn't a wizard or a blood relative of one. So you are legally allowed to know anything your daughter knows, but can't talk about it. Okay?"

"We'll do our best to make sure she stays discreet."

"Dad! I'll be very careful."

"Second, most things wizards do require wands. It's about 4 PM, so there's still time for me to take her to a wand shop and get her one. My cousin is paying for it, and the explanation for that is long. Please don't fuss over it too much, since I have absolute confidence your daughter will be saving the world often enough that nothing we do for her up front will ever compare, so this is really our only chance right now. I know that sounds epic, and it is, but this is Hermione."

"Ooookayy. I guess everyone believes in their own children, so I think I'm obligated not to question all that . . . How do you know so much about her?"

"Unfortunately I'm not sure it will ever be safe for me to tell you, since there is magic that allows people to read minds, and you would be unable to learn the defenses. Unless Hermione invents some other way, of course."

"You seem awfully confident in her."

"I am."

"I'm willing to have her go shopping now, if Adeline and I can accompany her. But I won't let her go off on her own with a stranger, no matter how thoroughly she may have interrogated them."

"That's fair. Let's see . . . we're going to Charing Cross Road to get to the alley where the wand shop is. No time to drive there. Do you mind magical transportation? I can't get all three of you there, though . . . let me think . . . I could go to my cousin's place, go home from there and let my mum know I'll be out with him for a little while longer, since that's where she thinks I am, and then between the two of us we ought to be able to get all three of you. It's the magical equivalent of being able to carry one person on your back just fine, but not three. Sound okay?"

"It's not the sort of thing you say no to, is it?"

"I was hoping you would think that way. Be back shortly!" Even after all they had seen, the Grangers were very impressed to watch Tonks disappear with a 'pop!'.