Finding the Sun

I.

If you wanted honesty

21 December 1970

Christmas hols, sixth year

When the train pulled into King's Cross, and he saw a dozen or so of her relatives waiting, he asked (very hesitantly) what it was like, belonging to a family like hers.

She didn't answer.

Andromeda knew all about Ted's family, of course. He talked about his mum with great affection: a tall woman with messy brown hair and a crooked smile, working day and night to support her two sons. His younger brother was almost fifteen, going to secondary school, and completely fascinated by Hogwarts. (I sent them a picture of us, Andi; Charley said you were bloody gorgeous, and demanded if I'd used magic to spell you in love with me.) She knew about his dad, lying beneath the tiny stone marker in the London graveyard, and how his mum still left violets there when she could afford it.

She knew so much about his past, and revealed very little about her own.

He didn't know that the scar on her left shoulder was from the Cruciatus when she was nine: punishment for a screaming argument with her sister. Or that Bella's last letter had been about the new leader who championed purebloods and despised Muggles (Lord Voldemort has promised he'll bring it back to the way it should be). Ted, with his loving mum, could not know that first her aunt, and then her mother, had always been quick to reprove flaws with force, and that Andromeda's straight back and proudly tilted chin were the result of years of rigid discipline.

Ted wouldn't understand her world, the Black world, with its ancient silver crest, tangled family tree stretching back to Merlin's time, and every drop of her blood so pure that her childhood was a riot of accidental magic… Hogwarts students talked in awed voices about her family, but they didn't have a goddamned clue what it was like being one of them. A Black danced that knife's edge between madness and brilliance, but in the end it was always brilliant because it was a Black doing it.

Everything would change if he knew what they were really like. First he would mistrust her, and when mistrust grew to outright hatred he would leave her; that was the way things worked.

Secrets and silence were her only safeguard.

So she lowered her eyes and whispered, barely audible, "You will be there, won't you? You won't forget?"

Ted took her hand, laced their fingers together, and pulled her into his arms. "How could I?" he chided, breath tickling her ear. "I promise I will."

She breathed deeply, unsteadily, and murmured, "I love you," into the collar of Ted's striped shirt.

When she pulled back, he looked slightly dazed (he always did, when she said that), but grinned and tugged her hair. "Be brave. And don't—"

"Meda." Her younger sister's cool voice floated from the door, and they turned to see Narcissa watching them with narrowed eyes. "Mother and Father will want to leave as soon as possible," she said, giving Ted a scornful glance.

Andromeda nodded, and her poised sister left with a flick of pale hair. She wasn't worried: Narcissa would keep her own counsel.

Levitating her trunk down, she made sure all the locks were secure and pulled it to the door; even preparing to go back to them made her tense up. She looked back.

Ted had a little smile on his face. "I promise," he repeated, and she relaxed.

She was going back to her world, the Black world, for the last time.

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Disclaimer: It all belongs to J.K. Rowling.

Notes: Thank you to Noldo and Avendya for being interested, and for all the plotting. ;)

This is the first of seven chapters.