" So all told you won't be there until you're around 26, at the earliest, unless something major happens to get you promoted faster than normal. Of course, you will have to compete against your male counterparts for any position, who will be favoured over you," he said disapprovingly.
...
Seeing the look of concentration on her face, he could tell she was thinking through everything he said carefully. Several minutes passed before he gave a slight cough, drawing her attention back to him.
"During all this you are obviously going to have to pay rent, buy food, and other essentials to get by; there's a good chance that you will fall in love, have a wedding, and nine months later you have a kid, this forcing you to put your career on hold, effectively resetting your progress on the career pay ladder to the bottom. That's if you're still able to have kids by this point," he said sadly, giving her a sober look.
"What do you mean 'still able to have kids?'" her voice higher, a mix of anger and genuine concern.
"I meant no offense," he said, holding up his hands in a surrender gesture, "But one powerful dark curse to the stomach, maybe two, will effectively kill your womb, and end your ability to have children due to irreversible curse damage," he responded, watching 'Tonks' rub her stomach in response before continuing.
"I know this because one of my mother's friends, who happened to be a auror during the last war, got hit with a dark cutting curse, losing her unborn child and the ability to have another child in the future," he said soberly, pausing bit, waiting for any response. None were forthcoming, he noted, before deciding to continue on.
"The equipment the ministry provides it aurors is basic at the best of times, and is primarily designed to be worn by male wizards anyways, hence the low protection for such areas as the womb, since men obviously don't have them. Therefore most female law enforcement officers often get desk jobs or appointed to support roles, which pays even less, about half what a frontline auror earns," taking a breath, seeing he still had her attention.
"Even then, most of the gear provided is just standard enchanted leather, and meant to withstand standard spells the average magical would use, rather than the ones dark wizards would cast.
Simply put, against an opponent who has even basic knowledge of the dark arts, your armor would act like butter to a hot knife, totally useless to you, ill-suited for a female body, and after one good spell you're in the grave," he ended his lecture, at the moment very grateful for his father's journal and his insight on the dangers for aurors, whilst waiting for Tonks to say something.
"Ok, so how do you come into this", she said looking across the table with interest and leaning forward, looking into his eyes. In return he gave her a slight smile, leaning close as well, not breaking eye contact in their staring contest and finding that he loved the warm brown colour of her eyes...
He responded quickly and succinctly, "I have access to the galleons you need. I can easily afford to provide you with custom-made dragon hide armour, far superior to the ministry provided gear and any other items you need," raising his hand at the end, clearly showing her his heir ring to back up the point, before giving her a chance to examine it closer by giving her his hand.
Taking his offered hand to get a closer look at the ring, she checked it out, before replying, "I see, so what is the deal exactly then?"
"You become my personal trainer in DADA and duelling for the next two years. I can either pay you weekly for the additional hours at an agreed upon rate, and you can save this money up for when you leave Hogwarts and then use it to buy any gear you desire. Or, I can buy this gear for you at the end of the two years, to prevent you from spending the gold you were meant to be saving," he replied, 'he personally thought it was a good deal,' "Plus it's not taxed that way."
"Interesting" Tonks replied, and once again they lapsed into silence, before asking "Do you mind if I think this over and give my answer later, you gave me lot to think about?"
"That's fine, but I'd like to know by next week at the latest, so that gives you until next weekend to think it over," he said, before rising up from his seat to walk over to the door to get on with his evening.
"Wait, I know you're a Potter, I recognise the crest, but what's your first name?" She asked, moving towards the door to follow, this resulted in her tripping over her own robes.
Moving over to help her up, he took a hand, and helped her back to her feet, before placing a light kiss to back of her hand, before saying "Harry James Potter, Heir to the Most Ancient and Noble House of Potter," followed up by a warm smile.
"And you know you can find out a lot and confirm everything I've said tonight about aurors in the library, just by asking Madam Pince for the ministry career advice articles," he advised.
...
A week had passed since their first meeting, yet he knew he had gotten Tonks to agree the moment he gave her a kiss on the hand; it was just a matter of time. After all, money and charm go a long way in the world.
Tonks had taken the deal in the end, but had chosen to take the gold now, rather than later. He could easily see that backfiring in a couple years' time if she decided to join the aurors, but that was her choice, not his. Of course, in a couple years he could offer something similar and gain additional favour. He could see many advantages to having indebted friends in magical law enforcement. The information potential alone would be worth it many times over.
As fair compensation, they had agreed upon 70 galleons a month for eight hours a week. Now he had a teacher he could actually understand and duel with, he also felt better after the first duel being able to vent his unspent energy.
It was made even better when he had taken Tonks down by surprising her with his second year spell knowledge. The value of surprise was once again confirmed to be a great equalizer, even over an opponent with greater skill, power, and experience. A valuable lesson to be sure.
He had also solved his potion evaluation problem by attaching them to a Gringotts Bank owl, which had just delivered his monthly bank statement.
He gave instructions to Bloodmoon that he wanted a potion master to test his own brews, and to give him feedback and advice should any problems be detected. He trusted that his account manager would take a reasonable fee for finding a suitable potion master. So everything was going well on that front as well.
Now all he could do was wait and see what happened.
...
Christmas was just a couple weeks away and a lot of the students were excited about returning home to see their families. Harry himself was just happy to be away from his; he took great comfort in the knowledge that he would never have to spend another Christmas with them again.
But now he was faced with the problem of having to select and send Christmas presents to his friends. He also had to decide who he was giving gifts to in the first place. He personally was going for more simple items, this year at least, that way it didn't matter whether they got him one or not.
He gave them all a mixture of candies. To Padma he gave some chocolate frogs since he knew she was addicted to them as much as he was. He also gave them all a generous gift card to one of the magical bookstores in the alley.
However, he did include a book on mediation exercises since it would certainly help them later in learning the mind arts. He also included a cryptic message explaining the purpose of the book, seeing if they would understand its importance, as a test.
He was planning to give them all copies of his family's 'Discovering the Mind' or some book with a similar purpose, at the end of the school year, so they could learn over the summer.
After all, if he ever wanted to truly be able to trust them and share some more of his secrets, they would have to be able to keep them safe. Otherwise he doubted he would ever be able to fully 'open' up to them.
For the teachers he had simply gone with a bottle of good quality wine, since everyone likes a good bottle of wine he had been told, so why not get the teachers 'merry' with a bit of vino.
He had planned to send a bottle to everyone. Sadly, that included the Headmaster and Snape, since he didn't want to raise attention by leaving them out.
He was tempted to just send socks instead to the headmaster, after all, don't all old people love warm clothing? In the end he dismissed it as a silly idea, and just went with the wine as it was easier.
He kept the one which was originally meant for Binns to himself, because he bought that by mistake. And frankly he wanted to try some for himself; the ghost wouldn't miss it, he couldn't even drink it.
...
Hey guys I really need some power stones to Elevate the ranking :)
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