notes: when i first started this (at 2 am in the morning when i couldn't sleep) it was a 500-word drabble but then it just kind of got out of control.
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don't make me sad, don't make me cry
sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough
i don't know why
keep making me laugh
let's go get high
the road is long, we carry on
try to have fun in the meantime
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born to die - lana del rey
#
Here is the thing. It starts as a teenage rebellion—the kind that ignites your veins and boils your blood and makes you want to shout out at the world, screaming, screaming and burn it to the ground—but also curling up into the floor and crying your heart out, crying, crying—
It starts as a teenage rebellion.
It is a Wednesday, it is the middle of the middle of the week, and he still has this awfully hard to write Transfiguration essay about some theory he does not understand waiting to be written, but instead of writing that, Ted Tonks just happens to be walking aimlessly, his uniform still on— only a bit more messy, with no tie and his shirt is out of his trousers, instead of being tucked in neatly as he always wears—
He is messy, and his mind feels messy, and he just—he just—
He hears a sound of someone breathing softly when he realizes where he is. He feels the wind on his skin, and he looks and he— and he sees he is at the top of the Astronomy Tower.
Apparently, he have been walking way longer than he thought before.
Fuck.
He walks towards the sound of the breathing, because it is already too late—it must have been at least 3 am—and even the teachers has to sleep some time, so the person he hears breathing must— they must be a student as himself. There is no way otherwise.
And he finds he was right.
There, at the top of the tower, sits a girl— as he can see in the light of the moon, her legs dangling from the edge, she is shaking them back and forth, her eyes closed as far as he can see and it seems she is murmuring some sort of song— a lullaby, which he've never heard of.
He clears his throat when he comes near enough for her to hear him, and she jumps at the unexpected sound and he reaches just in time to pull her backwards, so she does not fall from the edge and break her neck and spill her brains or something to the cold hard ground and—and fuck, he didn't think she would startle so much that she would almost fall.
"What the hell do you think you are doing?" she exclaims once she manages to catch her breath and she turns around to face him and—and—
Fuck.
She is one of the Blacks, one of the actual, informal queens of Hogwarts, and not just one of them but— but the pretty one, the one he admired from afar since like— forever, really.
All the air leaves his lungs and he stares at her, eyes wide, his jaw slackened and hanging open and still as a statue and he—he just cannot comprehend that he almost accidentally killed Andromeda Fucking Black.
He stares at her a bit too long for it to become even more than awkward, and she sighs in annoyance and shakes her head. "Well?"
He blinks a few times, he shakes his head to clear his thought and takes a few breaths. And then the words spill from his mouth fast— so fast that he is scared he cannot stop now that he started salking, who knows maybe he will never be able to stopğ and just speak for an eternity— or until he chokes on his spit, whatever comes first.
"I—I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I thought— hell, I didn't think actually. You would startle that much—yes, that was what I didn't think— I though you had hear me, my footsteps or something and I— I saw you stting and I thought— We were both out after curfew and sleeples it seems and I thought maybe— maybe we could talk and you know we— we could be sleepless and breaking a lot of school rules together—because—because—"
He cuts off with a deep breath and realizes she is laughing—no—no, giggling—that thing girls do when they are being extremely annoying—at least that is what he thought all this time but Andromeda Black giggling at him—at him—is not annoying at all, it is cute actually, cute and fucking beautiful and he just stares—it seems the only thing he can do when he is in the presence of her and he stares—watches at the shapes of her mouth makes while she is giggling and the perfect pearl whiteness of her teeth and she is just—
She is beautiful.
"You talk too much." she says, once she stops giggling, but there is still a smile on her face and a light in her eyes as she looks at him—which could be the reclection of the moon, he is not sure.
He nods repeatedly, shaking his head as though he is one of thouse dog toys that constantly moves their heads.
"Yeah, that's what— that's what Ma says all time time, that— that I never stop once I started, and it all comes so fast and no one ever und—" he trails off as she starts to giggle again and a smile forms on his face as he listens the sounds that comes from her mouth, and god, he would give anything—anything— to never stop hearing it.
She scoots a little to her right, and pats the spot next to her.
"Come, we can sit together and talk and break the rules together." she teases, echoing the words he said a few minutes before.
He almost—almost—looks behind him to see if she is talking to him or someone else, because she is a Black and he is a muggle-born, and there is no way she could be offering to sit and talk with him willingly, but he refrains himself at the last second and he nods at her. He sits next to her, his legs dangling as she was sitting before—before he came and almost made her fall.
"So, you are a Hufflepuff? I don't thing I've seen you around before." he hears her saying and when he faces her he sees her eyeing his uniform and the badger on them.
"Yeah, yes—I am. I—I am a year above you, I think— maybe that's why you never saw me. Slytherin and Hufflepuff don't really get mixed up, you know." he replies.
"Yet you knew I was a Slytherin." She raises her eyebrows, looking questioningly at him.
He scoffs, as if there is anyone at school who does not know about her and her sisters. "You are a Black. Everyone knows who you are."
He sees her face falling and she turns away from him, looks at the direction of the forest, a wistful look on her face, her eyebrows furrowed.
"A Black." she repeats, and he can hear—hell, see—the bitter tone in her voice. "It seems it is all anyone sees me as."
"I'm—I'm sure it is not just that. You have friends after all, right? They can't just—They can't see you as a Black."
She is the one to scoff this time. "Friends? People don't have friends in Slytherin. We have acquintances and allies. Friends only get close to you and the stab you in the back."
He arches an eyebrow. It sounds so awful, he cannot imagine a life like that. "No friends? Must be a shitty life you have, then."
She laughs, suddenly, and the sound makes his heart soar. "That is exactly how this life is. Shitty."
The swear word sounds foreign coming out of her mouth, it doesn't suit her, she looks and acts so much like a lady from the medieval times that he never thought she would be someone who swore.
"So, what brings the good, proper Black sister here, after curfew?" he asks after a minute of silence, only to hear her sweet, intoxicating voice.
She slides backwards and faces him, brings her legs forward, closer to her body and crosses them. She shrugs. "I don't know. I just—I felt so—so suffocating in the common room. Like the walls were coming down at me, like—like I was dying inside. Almost everyone is pureblood in the common room and all of them are always so proper and at the same time so daring, you know. They are always talking aout howmuggles are filth and how muggle-borns do not belong and it just— it gets boring and just so infuriating after a while. I don't— I don't want to be like them— like, like Cissy for example. It is almost certain that she is going to be a trophy wife and I don't want to be that—a trophy wife to someone and just sit there prettily and when it is my time only to talk about being pureblood and hating muggles. It is just so—"
She stops abruptly and he can see the blush on her cheeks even in the dark.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have just talk about all my problems."
He shakes his head immediately, and prays to whatever God listening that she does not notice the tense in his shoulders.
"No—No. It's not a problem. I didn't know you felt like that." He shuts his eyes tightly once the words come out of his mouth. Of course you didn't know, you idiot, you just talked to her for the first time.
Thankfully, she does not notice. She has a faraway look in her eyes, like she is not even on the tower anymore, her mind is somewhere else—somewhere different, somewhere Ted would not know, somewhere he would not understand.
"No one does. I did not even talk to my sisters about it I mean— Cissy would probably listen and she may even understand where I am coming but Bella— Merlin, I don't want to even think about what she would do if she knew I was not as Black as they thought me of."
At his inquiring look, she elaborates. "Bella is— well, for a better word, she is violent. She likes things just as they are and she loathes change. She always stucks for her beliefs."
"Her beliefs to kill all the muggles and muggle-borns, you mean." he mutters, he is not expecting Andromeda to hear, but to his horror she hears anyway and flinches. When he sees the effect of his words, he grimaces and feels the guilt crawling up from his throat.
"I— I mean— I didn't mean—" he starts but he cannot find the proper words. He shakes his head in frustration.
"No." she cuts in. Her eyes cold as ice, her mouth in a frown. "You meant what you said. And you are not wrong. They are her beliefs, and all of my family's."
The tone of her voice gives hope to him. He tries to crash the hope down, and when he fails he tries to ignote it this time, but he fails on that too.
"But, not you?" he asks without thinking.
Andromeda eyes him, she sighs softly in a way that fells like she lost her might to live, she is tired and does not want to do anything but sleep anymore.
"No, not me."
And the hope that was in his heart just seconds before rises again, brighter and happier and even bigger than before.
.