Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter today, didn't own yesterday, pretty sure I won't own tomorrow.
A/N: No idea where this came from, haven't written HP in a while and all. I did however have a chat with my muse, so this goes to her, as a early birthday present. Andromeda Tonks PoV, Pre-Series. Read, enjoy, let me know what you think.
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Andromeda isn't sure why she bothers with all of this.
This process of picking a suitably amiable greeting card—this year it is a forest scene that reminds her briefly of the black horizons that surrounded the school, a view that was never particularly prevalent from her dungeon dormitory—and going through the motions of sieving through a year's worth of events in order to settle on what's best included and what's best neglected for another year. It's tiresome and she has never been overly infatuated with the Yule time season to beginning with, and if it were to be blamed on anyone, she thinks it would be on Ted's mother who sends her Christmas cards like clockwork yearly. But the truth is that Andromeda would not send cards if it were only because of Ted's mother, but rather because it feels right, in a terribly domestic and quaint way to have some sort of tradition within this, her family, so she sends them as well.
She writes, long letters full to the brim with uncensored happiness, one to her mother-in-law and one to Sirius who teases and writes back with parodies that make her blush and giggle in such a way that only a fellow black sheep could be responsible for the response. There is one for her Ted's sister in Wales and one for Claire Grey at the shop.
But these letters are not her burden and these are not the ones that make Andromeda pace and second guess herself, bite her lip before the quill tip comes near the ink well. These are not the letters that Andromeda spends lifetimes rereading and editing before finally spending off.
No that long list of accomplishments belongs to the sole letter addressed to a Black and Andromeda's stomach still goes to knots now, years later, as though it were not a holiday card but rather something bigger, as though she weren't a happily married woman of twenty-four but rather an eighteen year old with an elopement under her belt and a wedding band tucked secretly within the confines of heavy robes.
Andromeda isn't sure why she bothers, why she enchants the quill and half hesitates over every thing that is scribed, until the parchment is as full—though slightly less crowded—with the happenings of her home (not the true happenings because there is danger in every corner and Black resentment is a lifelong affliction and there is no motivation in Andromeda's lips to tell her mother that Ted got promoted or that her own garden has come in beautifully this year, or that the Potters are taking good care of Sirius and that she and Ted had him over just the other day for dinner).
Instead Andromeda goes on about the one thing in her life that knows nothing of the secret blood feuds and disappointment and disloyalty (because her daughter has no business getting caught in the flood water of her family's contempt for her choice, because her daughter is too pure, too full of love and laughter and beauty). She talks about Nymphadora and how her little girl is growing (three already, how quickly time passes). She tells her mother that Dora likes to paint and sing and dance. She talks about how Dora plays tea with her dolls and regularly levitates the plastic tea pot—something Andromeda never did master as a child, because raw magic was never as particularly free in her as it was in Bella, and at the thought of that she stops her narration and erases the words.
She talks until her voice is weak and forced and lost among the steady scratching of quill. And when there is nothing left to say—nothing else she is willing to say because paranoia is a Black trait that is not done away with half as easily as the Black tree did away with her—she signs the letter in her own hand, most determinedly, Andromeda Tonks.
Andromeda isn't sure why she bothers, why she puts the card into the envelope and sends it out with all the rest. Because her mother works like clockwork too and not three days pass before the rustled owl appears again in her kitchen window with the same envelope in its claws. Except that no one has bothered to recast the shielding charm that Andromeda applied to the material before sending it out into the winter weather and the paper is now soaked and bloated, the ink running and smearing in the spots where the owl's claws have torn through the soggy paper.
Andromeda isn't sure why she bothers until she is holding the ruins of her work in her hands once more, and she is overwhelmed with the scent of memory which has embedded itself into the spoiled letter—the smell that she is sure has embedded itself in her own flesh and which no amount of rose oil will ever be able to cover or do away with. And there in her own little kitchen on the edge of muggle Dover, is the smell of silver polish and doxy repentant, wrought iron and mahogany wood, dust caught in the creases of long-ago embroidered pillows and the lingering after thought of her mother's hands, like rose oil.
And in a moment Andromeda knows with perfect clarity why she bothers, because in a moment she can remember all the times her mother kissed the crown of her head or plaited her hair as sharply as she can remember all the times she was reprimanded for speaking out of turn (which till this day are as crystalline as the last words her mother spat before she turned the angle of her shoulder and walked away from her daughter).
And Andromeda Tonks, who has always been more heartsick than homesick all these years, both prior to leaving and long after, puts the card in the waste basket and promises herself (as she did the year before, and the year before that one and the year before that) that next year she won't bother at all.
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End
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