disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling. I do not own these characters. Please do not sue me.

background: I don't know what it is about Andromeda and Ted. Perhaps it's because dear Nymphadora Tonks is the person she is, but I can't help thinking that Andromeda and Ted must have been two remarkable people.

Not quite Romeo and Juliet - though I suspect that the more hardcore Blacks would rather have died than even acknowledge the existence of the Tonks family - but two innocents caught on either side of an equally great war.

Andromeda and Ted's forbidden love crossed the boundaries of that war, and they must have been extraordinarily brave to go against the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, as well as all those others who believed that a pureblood and a Muggleborn had no place together.

Albus Dumbledore told the students at Hogwarts at the end of Goblet of Fire that there was sometimes a choice to be made between what is easy and what is right. I believe that Andromeda and Ted made that choice, and they chose the right path.

This story starts at the beginning of Andromeda and Ted's seventh year at Hogwarts. According to JKR's family tree, this would be 1970 (Andromeda being born in 1953). I really, really wish that Andromeda and Ted had been around at the same time as the Maurauders et al., but if I'm to keep this canon, they were a year too early. Who knows - perhaps a young Sirius may crop up. Perhaps not.

Anyway, enough preamble. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

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They had seen each other every day for almost six full years, but in that time they had not exchanged a single word.

To him, she would have been the ultimate in unattainable - if he had ever wanted her. He knew her reputation, her family's reputation. He never even began to think of her in that way. He had no time for people like her, like her family: people who wanted to keep him out of this thrilling world of which he had only recently become a part.

To her, he barely existed. He was below her radar; beneath her in every ancient rule that dictated her existence. She knew his face, saw him around school, in the occasional class, during meal times. But she had her own world, and he didn't belong to it. There was no room for Muggleborns in the lives of those who were toujours pur.

And so they continued in their way, two persons at the opposite ends of the scale, the distance between them greater than any others in the school. She had her friends, he had his. And there were other distractions.

It was the late sixties - the time of hippies and free love, of feminism, of civil rights, but none of that really hit home at Hogwarts. A few boys grew their hair long. Some students took things further than their older siblings had done during those hot summer evenings. And a few girls stood up in common rooms across the castle and declared that they would never just be some wizard's housewife, that they would forge their own careers.

And who could then have forseen the outcome of those clouds gathering around Britain? That name, Voldemort, which would ten years later mean so much, was merely a name spoken quietly in front of children. A name debated in offices in the Department of Magical Enforcement at the Ministry of Magic. A name whose actions were relegated to eight inches of column space on the tenth page of the Daily Prophet, beside an article advising wizards to beware of a batch of inferior quality wands recently imported from Bulgaria, and below a lengthy report on the recent triumphs of the Scottish wizarding chess team.

No, civil rights, equality and apartheid were not topics of conversation at Hogwarts - at least, not openly. Of course there were murmurings of discontent, but they seemed to the staff to be merely the stirrings of teenage rebellion, and so were of course generally ignored.

Andromeda Black wasn't even one of those murmuring her discontent. Andromeda was a sensible girl. Unlike Bella before her, or Cissa after her, she had, so far, fulfilled all her parents' expectations.

Bellatrix, the wildest, eldest child who craved dominant-submissive relationships with all she knew, had fallen in with a bad set at school, and had not severed her ties with them on leaving Hogwarts. In the summer after Bella had left school, Andromeda occasionally caught snatches of conversation between her parents. Her mother was worried; her father fiercely proud. One of the family was finally not only living by the family motto, but seeking to enforce it upon others.

And then there was Narcissa. Whilst as strong willed as her sisters, Cissa had failed to do well so far at Hogwarts. It was not that she was stupid; no, she was sharp, and clever, but her interests lay in the more social side of life. Cissa was a networker, and had all those in Slytherin - especially the boys - completely under her thumb. As detrimental as it was to her schoolwork, Cissa wielded influence in the common room that others could only dream of.

Romy, as she was known to her family and friends, was different. She was intelligent, a perfectionist, socially extroverted yet cautious, and had that slight arrogance which comes with intelligence and privilege. She did brilliantly in her schoolwork, with a string of Os for her OWLs, and was predicted the same again at NEWT level. A career in whatever she wanted lay at her fingertips.

Yet the question of what her parents really wanted from her once she left Hogwarts was looming. She had a year left, and her parents would expect to announce her engagement to a suitable young man no later than a year after she left school.

The prospect of marriage didn't daunt Andromeda. She had been prepared for it for her whole life. She had never questioned that her life would end up any other way. But it had to be the right man. And finding him was much more difficult than she could possibly have imagined.

Edward Tonks - known as Ted to all and sundry - was leading the sort of life he could never even have dreamed of when he was a child. Growing up in a tiny house in the East End of London with a mother who was always ill and a father who worked long, late shifts at the docks, he had thought as a child that he would end up, like his father, working for the rest of his life. He was a bright child, but felt that schoolwork was pointless - he would rather be playing football in the street with his pals.

Hogwarts for him was a clean slate, a chance to see a new and different world. For Andromeda, Hogwarts had been a certain birthright; for Ted, it had been an unexpected privilege. Even now, as he entered his final year at the school with the Ravenclaw prefect badge pinned to his wool jumper, he was still struck by the power of the school to amaze him at every step. He had friends across his year. He worked hard, and even played Quidditch briefly for his house, before realising that actually he preferred to watch it.

Ted was having too good a time to think much about what he was going to do after Hogwarts. He had some vague plan to be a healer, to help people like his mother, who had died from lung cancer when he was only eight. His grades were good enough to admit him to almost all the wizarding professions. It seemed as if his life had somehow been turned around, all the empty holes filled in by Potions and Herbology and Transfiguration. He finally felt like he belonged.

They had seen each other every day for almost six full years, but in that time they had not exchanged a single word. Six years is a long time. And sometimes opposite sides reach far enough around to place fingertips together.