Forever Knight [Harmione]

Chapter 16: Found

Tonks simply refused to let him go alone.  She was, in fact, standing in the middle of the men’s locker room as he armed himself.

Harry sighed as he strapped his sword to his back and various other weapons to his body.  “Look, I could’ve snuck out on you, but I didn’t.  I chose to let you know that I’ve got something to do and this is how you repay me?”

Hands to her hips, she was not amused.  “Harry Potter, if you don’t tell me where you’re going right now, I’m going to tell Molly Weasley that you lied about trying to get Cho Chang back after she dumped you!”

“What!  You wouldn’t!”

“Watch me, Potter!”

No self-respecting adult man wanted to get it from Molly Weasley when she got it into her head to make his love life her business.  Tonks wasn’t playing fair. 

“Well, you lied to her about making that cake!  I know you didn’t make it.  You bought it and pretended it was home made!”  Harry shot back.

Tonks gave him a smug smile.  “Go ahead.  Tell her.  She didn’t believe me when I said I made it, anyway.”

He stood there, quite undecided.  He used the last weapon in his footlocker: He channeled the Boy from the Cupboard Under the Stairs and stood shuffling uncertainly as he pleaded her with his brilliant green eyes.  Without his auror robes, he looked like a muggle messenger boy with scruffy jeans and a rumpled buttoned blouse.  His trainers were looking a bit worse for wear and the shirt underneath his blouse had a horrified cow on it that said, “Hamburgers are made of WHAT?!?”  Honestly, if he weren’t so good at his job, Shacklebolt would get on his case about his hopelessly unprofessional couture. 

It was working.  “Don’t look at me like that,” Tonks said sternly.  “How in hell did you convince Finnigan to let you go by yourself, anyway?  I thought the fool was your partner?”

Harry shrugged one shoulder, maintaining the pitiful look on him.  Really, he was quite expert at this.  “Didn’t tell him.  Told him I was going home,” he muttered. 

Tonks stared at him another moment before sighing and throwing her hands up.  She was broken. 

Harry grinned. 

“Alright,” said Tonks.  “I won’t involve Molly in this, but you must understand why I worry about you.  Don’t do this to me, Harry.  If something happens to you, Ron and Remus will never forgive me.  Please.”

He sighed and ran his hand through his unruly hair.  “I’m not even sure what this is.  The thing is, if I drag you into this and something happens to you… Tonks, I simply can’t face Remus—“

“Then take someone.  Take Seamus.  Or take Ron.  Just don’t go alone!”

“I have to do this alone.  Give me a tracing charm, then.  I’ll activate it when I’m in the kind of trouble I can’t handle by myself.”

“Oh, wonderful, Harry.  By the time we get there, you might be dead.”

“It’s that or nothing.”

Tonks cursed and dug into her purse for a tracing charm.  She brought out a tube of lipstick and presented it to him. 

Harry stared at it for a few seconds.  “Is it at least my shade?”

“It’s all I have on me right now.  Be a man and take it!”

“Fine.”  Harry took the lipstick and stuck it into his jean pocket. 

“It’s Mystic Plum.”

He ignored her parting shot.  He just knew she was punishing him for not telling her.  She probably had a comb, or at least a hairpin in her huge purse, that served as tracking charms, but she gave him the lipstick so that when they found his dead body, the examiner would fish the lipstick from his jeans pocket and think Harry Potter led a double life as a big, bad auror by reputation and a man who liked wearing make-up in secret.