A/N: Short one-shot about Andromeda breaking tradition and marrying muggleborn Ted Tonks.
Submission for:
The Classic Disney Movie Challenge!: Mulan: Write someone breaking tradition/rules.
As always, read and review. I hope you enjoy it. I do not own Harry Potter.
Pureblood wives exude elegance and grace in every step. They exhibit with demure countenance when interacting with others. They are always well-polished, well-spoken, and well-mannered. Pureblood wives worry for nothing and are provided with everything. They are delicate flowers who lift no finger except to tend to household matters and the children. They are perfect in every way and live to support their husbands in all endeavours, at the risk of their own happiness.
Andromeda had been taught the merits of blood purity all her life. Her family was strongly prejudiced of those with lesser blood status. She grew up around others like her all her life. For her, pureblood was the only thing she had ever known.
Her mother instructed her and her sisters in the 'proper' pureblood behaviour, moulding them into perfect ladies for their future husbands, already arranged by their parents and their associates. Andromeda was told by the time she was at 13 that she would marry her cousin Evan Rosier, although he was younger than her. She accepted without comment or complaint, like a proper pureblood wife.
She didn't notice when her hard diamond shell slowly began to chip away, how its shine gradually became dull and muddy. Maybe it was all those parties she had to pretend to enjoy, maybe it was all the fake smiles from the other pureblood girls, or maybe it was from knowing there would be no love lost between her and her betrothed.
She tried to hold onto her long-held beliefs, repeat her mother's teachings as if treading the well-worn path would make the lines permanent, but she could feel the her future suffocating her. The more she thought about it, the more she knew she didn't want a life with no light or colour, a life of black.
Then she was offered the forbidden fruit, particularly a boy who held out a red apple to her. She didn't know how much meaning was held in this small gesture at the time. She was wary of the boy's generosity, unused to it from the people around her. And she knew she was not to associate with his kind in a friendly manner.
But she saw in his eyes a light, she saw in his smile the pure happiness he felt, and she envied the way his shoulders slumped with ease. He didn't have to worry about acting proper, he didn't worry about a dim future. His future would be as bright as he chose it to be, whereas Andromeda didn't have a choice. She took a bite of the forbidden fruit, wanting to share in some of this boy's freedom.
Andromeda had become addicted to the happiness, the light and the freedom of this boy. She had grown to love him and she knew it was dangerous for the two of them. Such was the fate which befell Eve who ate from the forbidden fruit, Andromeda would be cast from her family, from the pureblood society, for going against its wishes.
But as she saw this new world, she found that she wasn't giving up much. Her new future was much brighter than what was planned for her. At last, she could see out of the diamond shell they had formed around her.
She abandoned their future in search of her own. She found love in Ted Tonks, a muggleborn.