It doesn’t make sense, really.
She grew up with her sisters, Bella and Cissy, respectively.
She didn’t have a nickname.
The first time it happens it booms out across the oak-leaf splattered quad like a the swing of a woodcutter’s axe.
‘Oi, Andy! Andy! Andromeda! Black!’
That gets her attention. The mention of her family name, her upheaval, her responsibility, what her sisters would say if they saw Ted Tonks, Muggle-born, upright and sturdy, striding across the quad with the sun streaking through his head of tawny hair and his amber eyes shining –
‘What do you want?’ she swipes, not unkindly, brisk, blunt, to-the-point.
He gives her a filthy, lopsided grin. It makes her heart ache. ‘Is that any way to greet an old friend?’
‘We’re not friends,’ she reminds him, taking off, legs cloaked in opaque stockings striding against the short length of her black, pleated skirt, a book pressed to the torso of her sweater.
‘What makes you say that?’ He asks, ever cheeky, jogging to catch up with her, all lumbering and broad-shouldered and grinning, fuck –
‘I said, we’re not friends. Tick off.’
‘Tick off? Really, Black?’
‘No can do, Black. I have a bone to pick with you.’
‘Why d’you say we’re not friends?’
‘Why d’you say we’re not friends? Why d’you look at me in Charms and then look away? Why do you linger around the aisles in the library like there’s a bad smell under your nose?’
She considers this, an accosted look slapped across her face, her resemblance to her sisters probably never more pronounced. She considers, considers the fact that she has been looking, the fact that yes, she has been looking at Ted Tonks, and yes, he has been looking back.
He has been looking back, just as he is now, head cocked to one side, funny, thoughtful, lips twisted in a wry smile, eyes full of the sun.
She answers him, lips tight and expression tight and the whole length of her body, tight. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, her lips still pressed together as she sets off, stalking back across the length of the quad, back straight.
He kissed her when they were fourteen.
It was Truth or Dare and it was a Hufflepuff winning streak and it was him, all gangly limbs and shoulders that were yet to be filled out and hands, hands everywhere, pressing her into the stone wall just outside the library.
‘What are you doing?’ she whispered, quietly, softly, insistently, as he pulled back a hairs breadth. His eyes were still closed.
‘Andromeda,’ he says, none-too-condescendingly, pink lips parted in silent appraisal, his breath caught between them, smelling like the woods on an Autumn day and distinctly boyish, ‘I’m kissing you.’
He does it again, lips soft and rough and roguish, all at once. He’s not that much taller than her.
‘Don’t,’ she says, softly, venomously, low and dangerous and threatening, ‘ever do that again.’
He looks accosted, in his own, quiet way, wary and cautious and full of understanding.
And for three years, he doesn’t.
That’s how she hears him describe her to Clancy Goshawk in the Great Hall when she asks him why she looks like she has a stick up her ass.
‘She’s….’ Ted thinks, thoughtfully, for a moment, eyes full of puppyish hope, lips pursed. Boyish. ‘…resigned.’
‘Resigned?’ Clancy practically shrieks, falling back in her chair. She tosses her hair, slightly, casting a sly, backward glance in Andromeda’s direction. ‘You’re too nice to her, Tonks. You’ve got it bad.’
‘What can I say,’ he says, cheekily, wafting a hand, ‘I’m a man of many secrets.’
She smirks into her porridge.
‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’ He asks her, one day, catching up to her on her way back from the library.
‘No,’ she answers, shortly, then amends herself, quieter, softer, ‘no, we’re not.’
The puppy cocks his head to one side, surveying her, then says, ‘Can I change your mind on that?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘No, you can’t.’
‘Oh, well,’ he replies, smirkingly, walking backwards, eyes twinkling, ‘I’m going to, anyway,’
The broad-shouldered, cheeky git stumbles, crashing straight into McGonagall with an undignified squawk and a tip of his hat.
She sighs. Damn him, she thinks. Damn him to hell.
When Andromeda smiles, it’s never full blown, nor is it minor, incompetent, miniscule.
Ted was right. She is resigned.
When Andromeda smiles, it’s slight. It’s a half-assed, backwards glance. It’s twisted lips, smirking, eyes shot, doe-like, shoulders hitched, laughter-muffled, achingly, pouringly, sweetly smiling.
He notices that about her.
He decides that he likes it.
He decides that he wants to be the cause of it.
He decides that he wants to make her smile more often.
Ted Tonks may have been a lot of things, but he wasn’t disrespectful.
So when he asks Andromeda why she doesn’t like him, it’s in the quiet, in the hazy hours of the afternoon, on a Sunday, in the back corner of the library.
She’s never there to study. She doesn’t need to. She could pass pretty much all her classes with her eyes shut.
She spends all of her time, lazily, eyes soft, thumbing a novel, daintily covered, embroidered in gold thread or upholstered in velvet or bound in leather.
She likes books about stars. He has no idea why.
Ted Tonks may not have been disrespectful, but he was certainly blunt.
‘Why don’t you like me?’ He asks her, brows furrowed.
She doesn’t start, just glances up at him, slowly, like she only just noticed he was there. Her eyes narrow.
‘I beg your pardon?’ She uses that voice again, low and harsh and dangerous. He thinks of her older sister.
‘I said,’ he slides into a seat next to her, ‘why don’t you like me?’
She doesn’t say anything. He continues.
‘Everyone likes me,’ he says, throwing an arm out, always gesturing with those muscled, beefy arms of his, ‘I like Quidditch and I’m not too shabby in classes, and I try to be nice to people. I try to be nice to you, Andromeda.’ He looks quietly furious, dropping his voice low. ‘Why don’t you like me?’
She has gone rigid, taught, eyes fixed on the table, legs pressed together. She’s quietly furious, too, but it’s a different kind. Where Ted is a raging inferno blazing 5 000 miles away, Andromeda is a bed of embers that threatens engulf your entire existence.
‘It’s not,’ she begins quietly, voice measured, breaths measured, ‘that I don’t like you, Tonks.’ He waits. ‘It’s that I do like you. Very much, in fact.’
He’s too confused to be elated. ‘Too much,’ she reiterates, in case he isn’t getting the message.
‘I don’t understand,’ he growls, not unkindly, ‘if you like me so much, then why don’t you –‘
‘Tonks,’ she interrupts him. She’s gone rigid, again. ‘It’s not up to me. I can like you all I want, and nothing’s ever going to happen. You must understand. It’s not up to me.’
He scowls. ‘Then who is it up to?’
She whispers. ‘Who do you think?’
There’s a second where he doesn’t speak. ‘Your family?’ he says, disbelieving.
She looks like she’s about to get angry, like, really angry, but measures herself at the last second, reigning in her anger like a fish on a line. ‘Ted, no. I – I can’t. I mean, yes, it is them. But, but I can’t – Agrippa, Merlin, fuck – ‘
She just swore. She never swears.
He looks at the table. She grabs his arm. Her eyes are filled with tears. He wants to punch a wall. ‘Ted,’ she whispers, imploringly. ‘Don’t you understand? You can’t make me choose –‘
‘I’m not making you choose.’ He interrupts her.
‘Yes – ’ she hisses, ‘ – you –’ her voice raises, ‘ – are!’ she yells.
He notices that she doesn’t yell like anyone he’s heard before. It’s low and guttural, not high or shrieking, like she’s spent her whole life talking in measured breaths. Maybe she has.
‘Ted,’ she continues, quietly, softly, ‘you are making me choose. Just by being around me. Because I can either have you or have my family. And I can’t have you.’
He’s not even quietly furious, now. He’s blatantly furious. He’s angry. And Ted is an angry crier.
‘I’m sorry,’ she chokes out, bitter.
‘Good thing nothing’s even happened between us, then,’ he tries to joke, but it splinters between his lips. It sounds like a slap.
‘I’m smart enough to know where this could go,’ she says, simply. She’s right. She is smart. She’s too smart. Too smart for him, anyway.
Andromeda doesn’t feel things quietly.
He gets up from the table.
She thinks, after that, that she’s made her choice.
She kisses him when they’re sixteen.
There were utterances, splattered all over her Summer, her sister, making jibes and curses about Muggleborns, about Ted Tonks, about their younger cousin and his friends.
She marches into the Charms classroom on the first day back, and its empty save for Ted Tonks. She knew he’d be here. She knew he’d be alone. And she came anyway.
And he’s there, all 5’11 and sandy hair and warm, hazy, casual brown eyes, an easy gait and broad, broad, muscled shoulders, like he probably spent his whole summer chopping wood, and corded forearms and legs swathed in his fucking well-fitting woolen gray pants and rolled-up shirtsleeves and an askew Hufflepuff tie and a simple, easy, ear-splitting grin that breaks his face when he sees her, like he’s happy to see her, which he probably is.
‘Andy,’ he breathes. He’s still smiling.
She throws herself at him.
She becomes all about choices.
She chooses to draw him into the broom cupboard on the Fourth Floor, she chooses to visit him in the Hufflepuff Common Room on Tuesday night, she chooses to laugh at his jokes in Care of Magical Creatures.
She just isn’t choosing him.
It happens in the quiet, on the downlow, away from her sisters’ prying eyes and the word-of-mouth and that nosy Fourth Year who can’t keep her mouth shut.
She doesn’t sit with him in the Great Hall.
She doesn’t hold his hand on the way to Charms.
She doesn’t return his letters.
Ted Tonks also makes a choice.
He corners her after Charms, when she’s packing her books into her bag and straightening her shoulders and doing a great job of ignoring him.
She doesn’t look at him as he nears her.
It makes her start, almost imperceptibly, but she presses her lips together and keeps her eyes downcast and looks as though she has no idea what he’s talking about. The words bore a whole in her.
‘What about?’ She says on the sly, nose titled.
She goes to leave when he doesn’t answer, but he grabs her wrists. He’s desperate.
She holds his gaze. ‘Let go of me.’ Her voice is even.
He does. ‘I can’t do this anymore.’
She looks as though she hasn’t heard him, tipping her head up to look at him, back straight. ‘What?’ Her voice breaks on the word. It’s small. She ticks.
‘Andy,’ he says quietly. ‘I can’t do this anymore.’
She courses back, eyes wild. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Moving past him, she’s almost at the threshold when –
‘Andy, I – ’ He starts. ‘Andromeda. You know – ’ His voice breaks. ‘I can’t do this. It – it hurts. It’s not enough. I mean, it’s good and all, snogging you – ’ He catches her smile. He mentally kicks himself in the shins. ‘ – but I can’t – ’ Her face breaks with his voice. ‘I can’t keep doing this. I want – I want more – ’ He steps forward, taking her hands. ‘I want you.’
She wrenches her hands from his grasp. ‘Teddy, that’s all well and good, but –‘
‘Don’t.’ He stops her. ‘Don’t pull that ‘Black Family Values’ crap on me.’ It may be the darkest selection of words he’s ever said to her, like he doesn’t know, but of course he knows, he knows all about the training stamped into her posture, the stillness in her eyes, the clasping of her hands, her voice –
‘I told you before.’ There it is again. Still. Calm. Deadly. ‘I don’t have a choice.’
‘I know,’ he wrenches the words out, ‘I know. And I can’t ask you to choose. Because it hurts you. And if there’s one thing I don’t want –‘ He reaches for her again. She lets him hold her arm. ‘It’s to hurt you.’
‘You are hurting me, Tonks.’ She says, evenly. She’s looking up at him through her lashes, the blunt strands of her hair. It kills him.
‘Then – fine.’ He says. ‘I’m not making you choose.’ He releases her. ‘You can have your family, Andy. I’m out of the running.’
Her eyes widen, even though she probably knew what he was going to do two steps before he did it.
‘You don’t have to choose me. I’m not a choice. Because it hurts too much to have you, but not be with you. It hurts me, Andy. I want you. Everything about you. I – ’ He utters the next words, quietly, looking at the floor. ‘I love you.’
She doesn’t let him finish.
She goes for almost a whole year without speaking to him, properly.
But it doesn’t stop the sun from bleeding in through the ink, like a kind of poison.
They smile at each other during class.
He sits nearer to her in the Great Hall.
He drops off Muggle books for her in the Library.
And it’s just like it was when they were fourteen.
But not being with each other.
It lasts for almost a year.
Andromeda Black makes a choice when she’s seventeen.
She packs her bags and whirls Cissy into a hug so tight that she thinks about the chinaware on display in their Mother’s vanity cabinet, leaves Bella all the books about horses they used to share when they were 10, empties out her drawers and leaves a note on her dresser, because they knew, they knew all along.
And it’s all just too much, anyway.
The sly glances and the easy smiles and the causal touches from him, and the snide remarks and tight-lipped expressions and underlying disapproval from them. They all rose to a crescendo in her ears that was so loud it felt as though she was drowning, that her ears were bleeding. She cut the chords.
Andromeda Black has a piece of parchment in her hand with a scratchy address on it, ripped from the envelope of Ted’s last letter, one that she didn’t respond to.
She treks through the woodland bordering a cottage, and she remembers, just as she thought when she held the paper in her hand and apparated there five minutes ago, that it’s peaceful, that it’s serene, that it’s beautiful.
We could have horses, she thinks. I could have horses.
And there’s a small bump swimming under the lace folds of her petticoat and tears swimming in front of her eyes as squashes bluebells under the soles of her riding boots.
The cottage is small, and cosy, built of stone and host to a chimney that leaves gusts of smoke drifting on the afternoon air.
And he’s there, standing in the yard, swinging an axe, wearing a thin flannel with that’s gone transparent and sweat forming on his brow, with a determined and hewn expression, somehow more at peace and more unhappy than she’s ever seen him.
And she’s there, standing at the edge of the wood, in a dress and a tweed blazer with a suitcase in one hand and the other resting on her stomach.
And it takes all of five seconds before he’s dropped the axe and she’s dropped her suitcase, and her surges toward her and she’s sprinting against the folds of her cotton dress, and he grabs her and she wraps her legs around him and his arms grasp her back and her waist and she holds his steady, steady jawline and kisses him like she’s wanted to for the past five years, completely and unburdened and without thought.
And he holds her against him, waiting even after they’ve pulled back, both of their eyes closed and their noses a hair’s breadth away. Her breathing is unsteady.
He lowers her to the ground with such care and thought and adoration it makes her heart break, making sure her footing is steady and that she’s standing upright that she has to swat him off, consumed with laughter, alight with happiness, her chest full of it, of him.
‘Teddy,’ she whispers against him, shaky. His hand cradles the back of her neck.
And she says the words that she’s wanted to say ever since she told him no, that she had a choice, and that the choice wasn’t him. Her voice breaks and her eyes are full of morning dew.
