A/N: Written by Chaser 1 of Montrose Magpies for the QLFC Daily Prophet Issue 11 competition.
Prompt: Hello by Adele
Word count: 599 words on Google Docs
Andromeda watched the owl fly off into the sunset, his ebony feathers standing out in stark contrast to the vivid yellows and oranges that were slowly seeping across the horizon. Her hands clenched into tight fists, her fingernails cutting into the soft skin of the palm of her hand. On the first day of every month, without fail, she sat down and poured her heart out into a letter. And even though she had yet to receive a response, on every subsequent morning, without fail, she waited for a reply.
The first time she had tried reaching out to her sister, the owl had been returned to her with its neck snapped. Ted had tried to convince her to take that as Bellatrix's answer, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Not when the letter that the owl had been carrying was noticeably absent.
If there was even the slightest chance Bellatrix was reading her letters, Andromeda had to keep trying. Bellatrix hadn't given up on her when she was fifteen years old and still couldn't wink, and she wouldn't give up on her now.
Instead, she had bribed a shopkeeper to weave a Tracking Ward into Bellatrix's robes. After monitoring her sister's movements for a month, she had determined that it was safest to time things so the owl arrived at her house in the middle of the night. She had then bought the darkest owl she could find, trusting that the cover of night would render him almost invisible, and trained him to peck knots loose so he could drop the letters off and fly away before anyone returned.
Ted didn't understand why she had gone to so much trouble to write to someone who clearly didn't want to hear from her.
But then, he wouldn't, would he? He only knew Bellatrix as she was now, ruthless and bloodthirsty and cold. But she remembered the girl she had once been. She had always been drawn to the dramatic and the macabre, but there had been a restraint and a kindness that had made her a wonderful older sister. She had believed that Muggle-borns should be banned from wizarding society, but she hadn't wanted to kill them.
Not then, anyway.
That part had come when Andromeda left.
Andromeda hadn't told either of her sisters that she was planning to run away, knowing that they would try to convince her to stay and fearing that they might succeed. She had, however, left them both notes—much like the ones she was writing to Bellatrix now—apologising and begging them not to hate her.
I love you, but I have to do this, she had written. My heart is his; he is essential to me.
Everything Andromeda knew of Bellatrix's life after that came from Sirius or the newspaper. They were hardly unbiased sources, but by reading between the lines of what was said, she had been able to piece together a timeline of what happened.
Her decision had broken Bellatrix's heart. It had fractured her, leaving her chipped and shattered and furious and betrayed. And it had left her vulnerable to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named when he swooped in with the promises of a lifetime of purpose and glory.
Andromeda had never told Ted, not wanting to burden him with the knowledge, but Bellatrix blamed him for stealing her sister from her.
That was why he could never understand.
And that was why she would never stop writing the letters, trying to make up for the pain she had caused her sister in the hope that, maybe, it might just bring her back.
A/N: I'm twenty-three years old and still can't wink properly.