still watched eagerly by the band of wizards. Their relentless staring was starting to
annoy him.
'Cheers,' said Moody, when Harry handed him the glass. He dropped the magical eyeball
into the water and prodded it up and down; the eye whizzed around, staring at them all in
turn. 'I want three hundred and sixty degrees visibility on the return journey.'
'How're we getting - wherever we're going?' Harry asked.
'Brooms,' said Lupin. 'Only way. You're too young to Apparate, they'll be watching the
Floo Network and it's more than our life's worth to set up an unauthorised Portkey.'
'Remus says you're a good flier,' said Kingsley Shacklebolt in his deep voice.
'He's excellent,' said Lupin, who was checking his watch. 'Anyway, you'd better go and
get packed, Harry, we want to be ready to go when the signal comes.'
'I'll come and help you,' said Tonks brightly.
She followed Harry back into the hall and up the stairs, looking around with much
curiosity and interest.
'Funny place,' she said. 'It's a bit too clean, d'you know what 1 mean? Bit unnatural. Oh,
this is better,' she added, as they entered Harry's bedroom and he turned on the light.
His room was certainly much messier than the rest of the house. Confined to it for four
days in a very bad mood, Harry had not bothered tidying up after himself. Most of the
books he owned were strewn over the floor where he'd tried to distract himself with each
in turn and thrown it aside; Hedwig's cage needed cleaning out and was starting to smell;
and his trunk lay open, revealing a jumbled mixture of Muggle clothes and wizards' robes
that had spilled on to the floor around it.
Harry started picking up books and throwing them hastily into his trunk. Tonks paused at
his open wardrobe to look critically at her reflection in the mirror on the inside of the
door.
'You know, I don't think violet's really my colour,' she said pen-sivey, tugging at a lock of
spiky hair. 'D'you think it makes me look a bit peaky?'
'Er -' said Harry, looking up at her over the top of Quidditch Teams of Britain and
Ireland.
'Yeah, it does,' said Tonks decisively. She screwed up her eyes in a strained expression as
though she was struggling to remember something. A second later, her hair had turned
bubble-gum pink.
'How did you do that?' said Harry, gaping at her as she opened her eyes again.
'I'm a Metamorphmagus,' she said, looking back at her reflec-tion and turning her head so
that she could see her hair from all directions. 'It means I can change my appearance at
will,' she added, spotting Harrys puzzled expression in the mirror behind her. 'I was born
one. I got top marks in Concealment and Disguise during Auror training without any
study at all, it was great.'
'You're an Auror?' said Harry, impressed. Being a Dark-wizard-catcher was the only
career he'd ever considered after Hogwarts.
'Yeah,' said Tonks, looking proud. 'Kingsley is as well, he's a bit higher up than me,
though. I only qualified a year ago. Nearly failed on Stealth and Tracking. I'm dead