Kin and Broken Crystal
When Andromeda came to him the night before graduation, her eyes bright with excitement and rebellion and plans, Ted Tonks said no.
And he'll never forget how her face fell, how the elation disappeared from her eyes in a single blink, how that proud Black steel elegance of her bearing buckled and strained under his rejection.
No? she'd managed, finding the breath to speak the words somewhere in her emptied lungs. But…Ted, I love you. You won't marry me? You don't love me? He'd crushed her, there in the Charms corridor six minutes before supper.
And that wasn't it at all. He loved his cool, ivory-handed princess, but she did not understand. They were seventeen years old and she knew nothing of sacrifice; he would learn the lesson in her place. She had been his for a little while: beautiful and Black and inherently impermanent, ink and blue blood cupped in his hands, ready to slip through his fingers.
I'm not sure you love me enough, was what he was too afraid to say. She'd always seemed just a little too bit to enamored of the rebellion, of the sneaking around, of the shadows they hid in. Ted was too afraid she wouldn't love him in the straight sunlight; he was much better looking in the shade. And then there was her sister.
Narcissa would hate you, was what he actually said, words just as true as the ones he was too fearful to give voice to. And that froze her a little. That was the hesitation that would grow into resentment, those old velvet scraps of love she would have to throw away for him. If she cared for anyone at all in this world, it was her little sister, just as cool and just as proud in their shared Slytherin silver, but considerably frailer in the construct, only crystal where Andromeda was diamond.
And if he wasn't sure he could do this, if he could say goodbye, if there was a moment of doubt, that flash in her eyes had cemented it. She might have walked away from her status, her wealth, her mother, her father, her dead elder sister (Bella's dead, she'd told him one night in April, a letter balled up in her fist and her eyes glassy, the closest to tears he'd ever seen her. Bella's dead because I loved her and I don't love this. She'd burned the letter.) All that might've been as easily turned from as a burned out old house that held nothing of any true value. But Narcissa…She won't forgive you, 'Dromeda. She can't.
Andromeda loved her crystal sister and Narcissa would always come first.
It would have been hard if he'd let himself feel, but he just stared into her eyes without seeing and said goodbye and kissed her cheek. Her perfume wove through the air like pleading fingers, pulling at his senses, smooth and warm and Andromeda. He stopped breathing through his nose and turned his face away from the warm, molasses fall of her hair, from the traitorously steady fix of her eyes that had replaced that short moment of hesitation.
He imagined her sister, imagined the way Bellatrix looked when she was resentful, angry, mad with hatred, and borrowed the images for Andromeda's face. What she would look like when the teenage rebellion had run itself out, when their stolen kisses and secret rendezvous were made nothing more than shame in the light of day, when he paled before the magnitude of what she had thrown away for him. It made it easier to turn away, to leave her Andromeda Black and behind him in the Charms corridor. He would take this sacrifice, with all its lesser regrets.
She stopped him as he turned, her face unreadable and unspeakably adult. She smiled strangely, her pretty rose lips forming vaguely around a few words that looked something like thank you and goodbye and I love you. And then she turned; the receding rhythm of her footsteps on the flagstone echoed in Ted's ears long after she'd gone, long after he'd turned himself and found his way to the Great Hall for supper.
Ted didn't expect her to cry and she didn't disappoint him. It was what she'd said to him the first time they'd spoken, December of fourth year after Dirk Cresswell's charmed Bubotuber pus snowball had missed its mark on Lucius Malfoy's smarmy face and smacked her square and Ted had felt so guilty about having the idea that he'd volunteered to walk her to the infirmary. Lucius had been somewhat held up; the Slytherin prefect nearly had to wrestle him to the ground to get his wand off him and cease the volley of nasty spells he was sending at Dirk. Apparently Andromeda's honor was more important than her physical wellbeing, because she'd still been crumpled in the snow, hands pressed to her face, when Ted had broken out of the crowd watching from a safe distance to help her up. You can cry if you'd like, you have every reason to. I won't tell anyone. She'd managed to look haughty even then, even blinded and disfigured by the swelling.
Blacks don't cry.
She looked almost happy on the train platform, and Ted hurt a little bit less to see her (a little bit; his world was still in the aftershocks of her absence). She didn't look, but Narcissa caught the gaze he'd set on Andromeda and glared disdain at him over her youngest cousin's head. He almost smiled at her, a grim, broken gesture to the woman who'd won Andromeda without even fighting for her. Dirk helped him load his trunk onto the trolley and the two set back out to the Muggle side of the station, and Ted had to stop himself looking back for Andromeda. He swore he felt Narcissa's broken-glass gaze cutting into his back long after the magic of the platform was far behind them, but then, Blacks were far from gracious winners.
They got their sort-of fairytale, in the end. Only sort of; Ted had never heard of a story where the Prince—no, he was no prince, he was the adventuring farm boy too far from home—left the maiden in her gilded tower, a tale where the Princess found her own way out, trekked over glen and dale until her silk slippers were in tatters, came to the simple country lad with only the words, "I have nothing left. Please don't turn me away." There was nothing grand or victorious about their beginning, and it did not come without its fair share of tragedy.
He asked her, years later, as they stood at the front gate of the village school, waving off their six-year-old daughter, how she turned away from Narcissa. Strolling back to their unimpressive home along an unremarkable muggle street, Andromeda explained. "She loves Lucius, Ted. If I'd stayed and married him like I was supposed to, I'd have lost her anyway. She could never have appreciated it for the sacrifice it would have been for me. She'll be happier this way."
"A sacrifice?" He shoved his hands into the trouser pockets with a little difficulty—snugger than usual, Andromeda'd been halfheartedly admonishing him to lay off the Cauldron Cakes.
She looked over at him, the unnaturally pale blue of her eyes unusually soft. "I would've missed you every day, trailed after this unlived life in my dreams until I was quite lost in it."
He smiled crookedly, reaching out for her hand. "This was a sacrifice, too, 'Dromeda. You miss her."
She said nothing on the subject, turning her face away with the dignified, diplomatic elegance bred down into her bone.
Over supper that night, Nymphadora asked if she could have a baby sister like her cousin Lucy had, couldn't Mummy have another baby like Aunt Janie? Andromeda shattered a glass dish over the sink.
"Dangerous magic," she whispered to no one as she cleaned up the glittering ruin, the broken glass flying in an efficient arc to the bin with the elegant sweep of Andromeda's wand. Ted put Nymphadora to bed, distracting her with promises of a Kneazle kitten or a Cruppie, because there would be no little sister for her.
I'm FINISHED with my law school applications, I'm blowing through the next chapter of Life in Black and White like it's my job, AND I just wore my size six skinny jeans, which I haven't been able to fit in for like a year! Life is good! :) Please, won't you take a moment to review? It really does just make my day!