A/N: I'd like to dedicate this piece to two people; Azzie (Inkfire) for being my long-standing friend and moral supporter, and keeptheotherone, who was generous enough to give me some much-appreciated feedback, and who gave me the confidence kick-start that I needed to actually publish this!
To Carry a Heart
Andromeda dug a hole in the hard, compact earth, working frantically in a movement that correlated with her heartbeat, pounding erratically inside her chest. Shovel, lift. Shovel, lift. Shovel, lift. Overhead, clouds lingered in the sky, allowing a ray of sunlight to dapple the garden around her. She sought to feel its warmth, unable to escape from a cold and hollow world in which she was slowly drowning. Shovel, lift. Shovel, lift.
She had heard them celebrating. She had heard them, volume raised high on the Wizarding Wireless, glorifying a non-existent good fortune. She had heard them even above the shrill and desolate wails that pierced her heart - cheering, laughing, and painless. How could they heal so quickly, when the Battle of Hogwarts had been a mere seven days ago, and when she woke every morning with an ache in her heart that seemed as if it would never ease?
How could they celebrate - how could she - when more than fifty coffins had lined the front of the ceremony that morning, coffins of people she had known, when she had witnessed people who weren't living anymore staring at those coffins with gaunt, lifeless eyes? These soulless people had seemed as if they would never take another breath, never heal, again -
Andromeda steadied herself with a deep exhalation, cold beads of sweat forming at her brow. She could almost feel his strong arms around her - her Ted - gently gripping her shoulders, murmuring words of encouragement to carry on, to fight, to never surrender, but she couldn't. Like Nymphadora, he was gone.
Silly old woman. Bodiless whispers lurking in the depths of the garden mocked her efforts. This won't save them. This won't bring them back -
She continued to dig, becoming frustrated with the unyielding earth at her feet.
The cruel hand of murder had stolen the lives of fifty witches and wizards, fighting for what they had believed in, and these ignorant people were celebrating.
Pummelling the earth at her feet, unwelcome thoughts attacked Andromeda, echoing inside her head. No-one could ever understand how difficult it had been to sit amongst those grieving people - people who weren't alone, like she, but had hands clutching theirs - and cast lifeless eyes amongst them, too afraid to share a glance and be pelted with even some of the anguish that they were feeling, too, because she just couldn't take anymore.
No one could ever understand how difficult it had been to block Kingsley's soothing words from her mind and to swallow the taunts that they left behind; by listening, she would have been forced to accept the true reason that she was there, attending the wretched ceremony - to mourn her Husband's and Daughter's deaths.
Andromeda's anger rose like a snake within her, poisoning her as she stabbed at the earth with savage strikes. Kingsley had spoken that morning of redemption, freedom, and forgiveness, but how could someone ever forgive the evil that had murdered the only two people whom she had ever loved?
How could someone forgive a kind of evil that had left an orphaned child alone with a grandmother who could barely look him in the eye, who saw only his deceased parents, who turned up the wireless rather than listen to the wails that pierced at her heart? How could Andromeda forgive the evil that had left a house, once vibrant with noise and adolescent laughter, with chairs that could no longer hold her, mirrors that could no longer reflect her, and walls that only contained her?
She could have done more - she should have done more - she could have stopped Nymphadora from entering that battle, she could have barred Ted's way when he was preparing to go into hiding, she could have insisted that they left together. She should have prevented them both from leaving her, just as she left her own family an eternity ago.
Tears blurred her vision. Andromeda swiped them away with a bleeding hand. She would not allow herself to crumble - not now, when she was so close to finishing the task she had started two months before, when Kingsley had walked up the garden path carrying Ted's wand in his hand. The earth finally dug, sifted of any protruding rocks and rotten roots, she placed the seedling in the hole beside her and moulded the earth around it. One day, it would grow into a tree identical to its brother, a shoot in a patch of earth beside it, and yet they were both still young - too young.
"with chairs that could no longer hold her, mirrors that could no longer reflect her, and walls that only contained her" is based upon an extract from Jandy Nelson's The Sky is Everywhere.