The Hogwarts Express announced itself with a loud whistle as it slowly chugged to a stop at station 9 ¾. Harry shared a glance with his aunt, who was standing reluctantly at the wall that led into the magical part of the train station. She'd wanted to accompany him to the train, to see him off properly. But due to her quite rational fear of the magical world, she wanted to stay standing at the exit, so that she could leave quickly.
An unsaid goodbye passed through where their eyes met, and Harry watched, pained at the odd twitching that seemed to pass through the woman's arms. It was like she wanted to hug him, as an instinctive reaction. But she couldn't, the distance between them was too great. They'd come early, to avoid the traffic of other wizards and with a nod, they both departed into their separate worlds so that they wouldn't clash.
Harry boarded the Hogwarts Express with a loud sigh, a glance over his shoulder showing him that Petunia had left. It was a sad situation, losing your child nine months a year. It was good for him, because for all that he loved his family, he wasn't in the market as someone who needed parenting, but he couldn't imagine it was very easy for the Dursleys.
At the end of the day, his mother's death had been a tragedy with very far-reaching consequences. As most tragedies did, it seemed to reverberate far further than its initial devolvement. Stowing away his luggage, seemingly the only person on the train, Harry pulled out his wand. Everyone always cast spells on the train, and there had been a particular one he'd been looking forward to casting with a wand for two weeks now. He wasn't really in the mood, to be perfectly frank, but that itself would be good practice.
Bringing up the happiness intrinsic to most people's life and the gratitude that came with this capacity to experience it, he waved his wand in an intricate and elegant pattern. He'd practised with a stick for two weeks, and it seemed to show, as when he finally incanted, "expecto patronum." A bright white mist erupted from his wand and filled up his half of the compartment. It lingered for a few seconds, struggling to form a coherent shape before it dissipated like a fart in the wind.
Unbothered by the failed attempt Harry made to try again when an itch at the back of his mind made him look to the compartment door, where a heart-shaped face was staring at him in stupefaction. He aborted the second attempt to cast the spell and instead twitched his wand.
The door to the compartment slammed open with a bang and Harry frowned. He'd been powering up his telekinesis this Christmas since it was apparently a viable way to harm creatures with innate magic resistance.
"You're really a bloody genius, aren't you?" Tonks asked bitterly from where she stared at him in her continued position of standing at the door. Her hair was black, for once, and Harry had to say that it suited her. Pale women, as was the norm in the United Kingdom, looked really good with black hair.
"Don't tell anyone, it's a secret," Harry muttered. "What do you want?" he asked, slightly bitter about how he'd been avoided by the upper year.
Tonks snorted unkindly, before breathing in and calming herself down. "Look, I just wanted to say sorry. For how our duel went. I think it's better if we don't have another one."
"Alright, you can apologise. I'll forgive you," Harry replied.
"I just did."
"You said you wanted to say sorry, you didn't actually say sorry."
"I'm sorry, ok, I lost it. It was too much, why am I struggling against a second-year? How am I ever supposed to become an Auror if this is the step I already failed at?" Tonks questioned, bitterly, still standing.
Harry wondered if she actually wanted to know the answer to that question, then decided that he wanted to give it anyway. "Do you think there's any Auror in the department that could defeat Albus Dumbledore in a duel?" he asked.
"What, no!" Tonks said with wide eyes, before thoughtfully putting a hand to her chin. "Well, maybe Potter, or Black-"
"They wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell and you know it," Harry harshly reprimanded. Dumbledore's magical prowess was one piece of knowledge that he didn't doubt at all.
Tonks sputtered, before growing incredulous. "You're not comparing yourself to Dumbledore, are you?" she asked angrily.
"The difference between an Auror and Dumbledore is that the Auror trains to be able to fulfil their function. They have an arbitrarily set fighting capacity they have to reach before they qualify for the role. Dumbledore never gave two wet shits about his fighting capacity, he just loved magic and studied the fuck out of it for several decades. Becoming one of the most powerful wizards in the world was an unintended consequence of his passion. That's the issue with ambition, at some point you fulfil it. The thirst for knowledge, however, never goes away. Neither does passion. I love magic, it's the one thing that I couldn't live without in this world, even if I left Wizarding society behind me. For you, it might be just a tool with which to gain the social prestige inherent in being an Auror, but for me, it's a way of life. You're a deer only going to water when you're thirsty, whereas I just love to swim. The results of these two different attitudes are completely obvious!" Harry almost shouted, out of breath. "I'm not Dumbledore, but I'm definitely not an Auror," he finished, more calmly.
"That's so bloody arrogant!" Tonks snarled, finally putting a foot into the compartment. "You don't know me, how much I practise. You don't know anything about me!" she shouted.
"I don't know anything about you," Harry replied. "But you're a simple person at heart. You want to get married, have some kids, have a slightly prestigious and successful, but not too difficult career and a vacation house by the sea. It's not a bad dream, but the moment you compare yourself with someone obsessed, you don't stand a chance. Just accept that you're average, the most special thing about you being an inherited trait," he goaded with a glint in his eye. She was incredibly entitled in thinking that her weekly training, which probably lasted 5% as long as his, would make her anything but cannon fodder. He was trying to protect her, really, from dying so uselessly as she had in the original books.
The hair on Tonk's head started furiously cycling through colours and her face was a rictus of anger, plus some tears. "I'll show you," she whispered threateningly.
"I should be able to open up my schedule somewhere towards the end of the year," Harry said dismissively, "I might have lost the last two times, but that's over now, and we both know it. Use the time to practise and you might make me break a sweat."
Tonks stared at him with clenched fists that looked like they were about to start leaking blood.
"You'll lose," she said, before storming off.
Harry slumped back in his seat once the girl finished her departure and wondered if he'd acted correctly. In a way, Tonks did deserve to get some backlash for how she'd acted towards him, but he'd quite obviously gone beyond any means of retaliation and had instead gone into completely priggish provocation. The thing was that Tonks obviously needed a kick in the ass to get anywhere with her ambitions. He was just being a nice guy by helping her gather the necessary motivation.
If it got him one more practice duel against the person who'd likely decided not to fight him anymore, and whom he needed to defeat to attain a sense of narrative catharsis, then so be it. For quite some time now, Harry had started feeling as if he was walking towards a grand and unavoidable destiny. Perhaps such hubris was normal for someone excelling on all fronts, even if a comparison to other people his age wasn't justified.
Whatever the case, having been mean to Tonks didn't affect him overly much and the biggest thing taking up space in his mind was his quest to learn the patronus and his excitement to talk to Flitwick. He couldn't wait to hear what the man had to say about Harry's progress, considering that at least on a grade level, it had been nothing but exemplary.
"Have you seen Tonks?" a voice suddenly asked from the still-open compartment door.
Harry looked up lazily and saw Charlie Weasley, wild red hair contrasting brightly against his black Hogwarts uniform.
"You seemed to have known each other at the Slug Club party," the boy insisted. "We said we'd meet early on the train but now I can't find her."
Harry tilted his head at the boy, in a way a relationship probably represented a distraction from Tonks' desire to become an Auror. However, he wasn't someone willing to get in between a teenager and the way they made horrendous mistakes they would regret for years to come. Some lessons need to be learned, and if Tonks wanted to try a long-term relationship, with a wild card that would run away to Romania to live with dragons first chance, then she could do whatever she wanted.
"Check the female bathrooms, she seemed upset for some reason," he said innocently, receiving a grateful nod before the other redhead rushed off.
Harry was curious to some extent how the boy would get Tonks out of the bathroom if she was there, but decided that practice took priority. A twitch of his wand closed the door to his compartment and soon enough white bright mist filled the inside of the room.