"Fool's Law" - Tonks - PG
Title: Fool’s Law
Author: WargishBoromirFan (B2WM)
Rating: PG
Warnings: brief swearing and assorted Moody-ness, no spoilers
Prompt: #46: In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.--Doris Lessing
Summary: Ready? Deep breath in. Lengthen your spine, raise your heels, and lean forward. Hold your arms back to prevent yourself from falling. No, not ready. Never ready, little fool. Laugh, and maybe you can fly as you fall. And you thought your first job interview was rough...
A/N: I wrote this before HBP had come out, so all spoilers are unintentional. I thought about getting multiple chapters out of this, but that isn't happening until long after the challenge is finished. Thanks go to Snowballjane for her beta work. I own nothing.
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In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools. -- Doris Lessing
Nymphadora Tonks fiddled with her wand. Her favorite old wizarding band T-shirt had been traded in for no-nonsense robes, and she wore her hair in a conservative style, in a nice chestnut colour today. She hadn’t thoughtlessly turned it orange again, had she? A quickly-whispered spell revealed that she had not. Nothing was outwardly wrong with her. She’d make a wonderful impression on the Aurors. She hoped.
Mentally, Tonks went through her introductory speech again. She knew her lines, knew her law, and knew her spells. She knew she was prepared for this. So why didn’t she feel ready?
Because it’s Mad-Eye that’s doing the interview, she reminded herself unnecessarily. Alastor Moody was known across Britain as one of its most effective - though also most paranoid - Aurors. How he had ended up with such a silly assignment as interviewing a witch straight out of Hogwarts for an application was beyond Tonks. She did not know whether to feel honored or frightened. Surely, they didn’t think that just because of her aunt, Tonks would have Death Eater sympathies, did they? She did not kid herself into thinking that Moody would not know of her relations.
Still, her mother’s name had been blasted off of the family tree, and knowing the rest of the family, that suited Tonks just fine. At best, her mother’s clan was over-obsessed with bloodline, arrogant, and prone to giving their children such silly names. Even though Andromeda wasn’t as bad as all that, Tonks was a prime example of what she believed was a Black conspiracy to turn its scions into prats. What child, when stuck with a name like Nymphadora, would not turn into an arrogant snob? She was thankful for a good solid Muggle last name to go by, at least.
But funny names did not begin to excuse what her estranged kinsmen had done. Aunt Bellatrix and her husband were infamous Death Eaters. Aunt Narcissa’s family had supported the Dark Lord, though there had never been enough evidence to convict them. Her cousin Regulus Black was dead; and his brother Sirius, the one member of the clan that had acknowledged Tonks and sent her Christmas cards, the one who had let her ride in front of him once on his motorbike when she was five, the one that had encouraged her love for Weird Sisters… Sirius had betrayed them the most deeply of all. He had infiltrated the Order of the Phoenix; the select group of loyal Aurors that had fought He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Then, just when there had been a chance of success, Sirius had turned against his best friend and betrayed the whole Order to the Dark Lord. Who knew what would have happened if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named hadn’t been defeated?
Tonks was glad that it was neither Sirius nor the Dark Lord she was facing; Moody was daunting enough. She would make a poor Auror if she lacked the courage to even face her associates, but she couldn’t repress all her jitters, given Mad-Eye’s reputation. He was an Auror of the old sort: a former member of the Order, and scarred inside and out from his experiences. That magical replacement eye twitched wildly in the nightmares of Death Eaters and law-abiding witches and wizards alike. And he had come down from his escapades of legend to interview her. Tonks fiddled with her wand again.
At long last, the door to the office opened. A tall, well-built black man walked out, giving her a light smile. "Good luck," he offered in an undertone.
"Thanks." Tonks returned his grin, hopefully looking a bit more confident than she felt.
"Just ask for Shacklebolt once you get in; I’d be happy to show you the ropes sometime." He really did have a lovely smile, just what she needed to feel a bit surer of herself for this interview.
"I’d appreciate that," Tonks said, squaring her shoulders and walking into the office. It wasn’t so frightening. Moody was famous, and paranoid, and according to rumor, a few broomsticks short of a full quidditch team, but he was surely just your average wizard, when it came down to the heart of things. Your average wizard that was willing to cast Unforgivables on anybody. But he wasn’t He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, for Merlin’s sake. "Hello there, sir, my name is - Wotcher!" Tonks ducked a sudden spell, breaking off from the introductory spiel she had worked so hard to memorize.
"Well, you’re quick enough, girl, but you ought to be able to disarm your opponent as well as avoid the attack," the man behind the heavy desk said, setting down his wand. His mismatching eyes took her in appraisingly. "Don’t they teach Expelliarmus at Hogwarts anymore?"
"I wasn’t really expecting an attack, sir," Tonks offered lamely. She rose from the floor in slow increments; whispered tales of Mad-Eye’s insanity reeling through her mind.
"Constant vigilance, girl. Never know where the next attack will come from. Now, you said you were ‘Wotcher?’ I’ve got an interview written down for an N. Tonks. What’s your business?" The wand was in his hand again.
"I’m Tonks, sir. You caught me by surprise, is all," she said rather sheepishly.
"Nymphadora, isn’t it? Or do you usually go by ‘Wotcher?’" he examined the papers before him with one eye. The magical one continued to scan the room, turning backwards into its socket eerily.
The room itself appeared to be a war zone. Piles of paperwork sealed the desk into a verifiable fort, and tailsmans that she had never seen the like of hung from every clear vertical space that had not been taken up by posters of wanted and captured criminals. Even the people in the pictures seemed wary of the room’s main occupant, slinking to the edge of the poster or diving for cover as the old Auror’s electric blue eye passed over them.
"Tonks will do fine, sir." She attempted to keep her calm, brushing off her dress robes.
"The Ministry’s heard some good things about you, Ms. Tonks. They want to take you on as an Auror. However, there are a few issues that make me a bit leery of working with you." Tonks wished he wouldn’t emphasize the point with his wand.
"If this is about my family, sir, I assure you that my mother cut off all ties with the Black clan before I was born."
"Burned off the family tree, wasn’t she? Hmm… The Blacks have dismissed family members before, and a really ambitious witch might earn her way back into the family’s good graces, if she could take down the Aurors that arrested her kinsmen."
"I’m not Sirius," Tonks cut him off fervently. She promised herself that she would never turn into Sirius. She didn’t understand what had driven him to betray his friends, but who really understood what made Death Eaters tick, after all?
"We encourage a relaxed working atmosphere, in order to better embrace all our employees’ special eccentricities, but we do hope you’ll take your job seriously." Mad-Eye almost managed to sound less than fully sarcastic, which Tonks hoped was a good sign.
"Oh, I am serious, about the job, I mean, sir. But I’m also serious that I’ll never turn into another Sirius Black." Tonks felt like she’d been tripping up over her own tongue throughout the whole interview, but at least she might be able to walk away from her meeting with Mad-Eye Moody alive.
"Good," Moody said. "He was a damn fine member of the Order, before he turned on us. I hope that there is some of that Black ambition in you, Ms. Tonks. I just want it controlled and on my side."
"Certainly, sir. I mean to do the best I can here on the job. I daresay I’ll try my hardest to fit right in." She nodded, hoping that the intentions behind the words got through, even if they were a little trite. Blending in would be so much less of a problem if she weren’t stumbling over her words and feet so often.
"We need more than fitting in. You’re going to have to excel if you’re going to get through training and be of any use in the field. Too many bright young things fizzle out halfway through the programme and never live up to their supposed potential. The Ministry doesn’t have rigorous enough standards, if you ask me." Moody tapped the scar that ran from forehead to eye to nose with his free hand and turned the wand once more toward her, as if to remind her that said bright young things could be elimnated by more than a failing exam grade. "Most of the rest of the lot that make it through training end up doing something bloody stupid on their first assignment and we’re left trying to scrape up the mess and explain it to the Muggles. Bah! You know what causes them to fail? They don’t watch what they’re doing. That’s why I’m not too keen on some hotheaded youngster trying to take over the postion with only three years’ worth of experience, but better the evil I know than that I don’t."
"You, er, know me, sir?" Tonks wondered just how far the paranoid Auror was willing to go in the name of research.
"Do you know what Shacklebolt and I were discussing eariler?" Moody raised an eyebrow.
Tonks bit her lip and looked away. Surely, it had not been her. He was just trying to make her as paraniod as he was. She tried to think about the man that had walked out as she had entered Mad-Eye’s office. That smile was easy to remember, at least. But she had been too distracted to note much else about him, or his mission. "Not exactly, but I assume it had to do with the reasons why you’re interviewing new potential junior Aurors," Tonks said at last.
"Good enough," Moody nodded grudgingly. "They say I’m getting too old for this sort of thing. The upper mangement says I ought to retire, maybe teach a little. I haven’t lost my edge, though, and I don’t intend to be sent off to some educational pasture just yet. If you younglings are still outgunned by me, I don’t think these Ministry bigwigs will be pushing me out anytime soon. As to your question, I know your type: decent grades in school, not particulary talented in any field, but good enough to get what you want. You know how to work hard, so you’ll keep doing so on the job. But we don’t get many learning experiences out in the field, so you’d better make all the mistakes you’re going to make in the next three years. You survive them, and then maybe you’ve got what it takes to be a good Auror."
"I’ll make sure of it, sir. And if you don’t mind me saying, I think it’s because you haven’t lost your edge that they’re so eager to have you out." Tonks knew she shouldn’t have been so bold, but the ghost of a satisfied smile in Alastor Moody’s natural eye made it worth the rejection letter her loose tongue had most likely earned her.
"That’s what Kingsley told me." Moody paused, and for a brief moment, both eyes focused on Tonks. "Now, the other matter that concerns me… You won’t be blasting that wretched garbage that passes for music amongst younger wizards all throughout the office, now, will you?"
Tonks smiled genuinely for the first time during the interview, though she kept a wary eye on his wand. She tried to think of anything besides what that wand just might shoot out next. "Not too often, sir."
"Well, I’ll have to finish up the rest of the interviews, Ms. Tonks, but we’ll keep you in mind, girl. Expect an owl within the next three weeks." Moody added a few final notes to a hidden paper.
"Thank you very much, sir." She stood, extending a hand. He examined it distrustfully.
"Go on, girl. Before I decide you need practice with something more dangerous than petrificus totalus." He shooed her off without touching the hand. "And what happened to your hair?"
Tonks reached up, blushing. She pulled forward a lavender curl. "Metamorphmagus," she mumbled.
"Well, see that it doesn’t happen on the job," Moody said, waving her out with the wand.
"Yes, sir." Confidence breaking, she beat a hasty retreat out of the office. Well, that hadn’t been too much of a disaster, she told herself. They might even hire her.
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