Questioning

By: Thanatos Angelos Girl

Disclaimer: I don't own HP.

A/N: This is for the To Be or Not To Be competition. Enjoy!

Andromeda wanted to point her wand at herself and whisper two illegal words that would end her pain forever. She couldn't believe how much agony she was in. Andromeda didn't think being left all alone, being disowned from her family, would feel this awful. She was supposed to be free and happy yet all she was at this moment was hurt and even more chained down. Sure, she was finally married to Ted but she didn't want to be. In the back of her taunting head she knew the man she really loved was still in the world she left.

A feeling of raw sorrow had consumed her heart and she feared there was no way to shake the cursed emotion away from her. She felt so pathetic, she felt so weak. She was still in shackles and fetters but the chains were disguised as freedom. Andromeda was so stupid to think that she could be a free spirit. All that she would be was a caged bird the only thing that would change were the cages. She felt so insignificant. No one would remember her name and no one would care. The most important people in her life hated Andromeda and that hatred was strangling her leaving her breathless as the weight crushed her delicate body and left it in a broken mangled ruin.

Who knew she was so dependant on their attention and favorable graces? She had never needed them until she could no longer have them. Andromeda was always the person who wanted something simply because they couldn't have it and when she could the recently acquired item would simply be discarded when she found something better. She thought she wasn't a Black but she was. She was from the same shallow and foolish cloth that her kin came from.

She had thought she was being rebellious and perhaps she had loved the romanticized version of freedom but she couldn't be a housewife and here she was in the exact place she hadn't wanted to be in! She was stuck in a small, sparse, and definitely beneath her house and with a husband who wanted a woman that could cook pancakes and sing and play with animals! She was none of that! She had wanted to explore the world but the only place she seemed to explore was the dangerous terrain of the kitchen.

She hated the very essence of her existence. She was a bloody housewife! She knew at one point in time, a long time ago, she had been in love with Ted but that was simply no more. She knew he was a wonderful and kind man somewhere in her mind but all she could think and see when she looked at him was the word mud. She felt guilty and awful and she was disgusted with herself. She was a reprobate. She was worthless and imprisoned in her own misery. She wanted to taste freedom on her lips. What she had thought to be freedom wasn't freedom so then that posed the bigger question: what was freedom? Had Andromeda no sense of the word? Was she a fool and nonsensical?

Sometimes Andromeda felt mad, insane really, because she could feel her spirit was becoming as fragile as parchment. Especially after her miscarriage her state had deteriorated. Were the Fates cursing her for forming a union with Ted? Was her family right? Andromeda was so confused and so broken that when she requested to stay at a recently vacated winter house of an old friend of theirs Ted didn't hesitate to agree.

Andromeda arrived at the cozy cottage by the woods in the countryside with nothing but her shawl and a small bag of necessities. She didn't plan on staying very long in the cottage at all. As soon as she put down her things, she felt like she was on a mission. Andromeda planned on committing suicide. Andromeda planned on killing herself in other words. She walked into the small garden in the backyard and sat on a stone bench staring down at her shoes and steeling her nerves. She didn't know why she was so scared when she could finally end her misery that had accumulated since she was married more than two years ago. Maybe because she had been taught it was wrong to spill her precious Black blood. Was her blood so precious now that she was tainted at least in the eyes of her family?

She lay down on the bench, her thick locks of chocolate brown splayed around her head. If she could leave her family and all she had grown up with no matter how horrid the decision was then she could do this. Couldn't she?

"To be or not be, that is the question." Andromeda whispered to the small billowing breezes. "I don't know if I want to live anymore."

The harsh reality of her words finally being spoken even if to nothing but air was shocking. Every nerve in her body seemed to come alive. She had finally said it out loud instead of the recesses of her mind.

"Andromeda, whatever happened to your strength?" A mocking voice questioned her and she sat up and whipped her head around to stare into a man's eyes that were so similar to her own, a black color, the color of an onyx, a precious stone, that seemed to mark their "precious" blood ties.

"Regulus what are you doing here?" Andromeda questioned. She couldn't find a reason why her Death Eater cousin was here. She hadn't really talked to him in her life. Wasn't he supposed to hate her too, yet despite Andromeda's notions he strode toward her from across the gardens?

"Apparently I'm here to stop you from doing this." He informed Andromeda, as he stood right in front of her. She noticed his lithe and muscular body and the way the wind tossed his ebony hair around.

"Why? I'm disowned." Andromeda raised an eyebrow. She didn't trust him.

"Yes and you will provide even greater scorn to our family by choosing a coward end." He leaned towards her, his robes dancing. His eyes were twinkling with a dangerous light. "Besides, I have to admit Andy I think you can give more to the world. Do you forsake your decision?"

"To marry Ted? Yes. To break free of the domestic expectations of me I do not." She replied carefully watching him closely, especially when his deep laugh jumped into the night and his crooked smile shone in the darkening sky.

"I can understand that. I never thought of you as a housewife. Cissy is the only one I see enjoying that pathway." Regulus remarked.

"Regulus-" She began to ask what he was really doing here. He was a Black, and they didn't just show up for nothing. Suddenly Regulus's face showed a fleeting sign of pain and that piqued Andromeda's curiosity.

"I need to leave now. But Andy you don't need to do this, if you want to leave him, leave him." Regulus placed his hands gently around Andromeda's hands.

"I'll have no where to go." She said in a shaky voice. What was he doing? She could feel a blush, uncalled for and unwanted, rush into her cheeks along her high cheekbones.

"They miss you. I miss you. If you wish to you can come back. It's not too late." Regulus's voice was soothing and it made her feel secure. The feeling scared her, the feeling of her sorrow easing away in the face of something familiar, something that wasn't suffocating her, and something that wanted her.

"I may." Andromeda breathes out because now she feels something she's not used to. Something she hasn't felt in a long time and something she knows she shouldn't feel even though in her blood it's not that surprising.

Regulus, not a boy anymore, smirked and leaned into her face to which Andromeda closed her eyes as lips thin and soft lightly caressed her own lips.

"Toujours Pures." Regulus whispered into her ear with no intent of leaving any time soon and Andromeda lost control.

Andromeda couldn't believe that had happened. Did she really just have sex with Regulus, her younger cousin? She did…. She was stunned. He was gone and everything seemed like a dream. It couldn't have happened. It was just her imagination surely. She was horrified and even though that event had stopped her from committing suicide she was felt so slimy, so filthy.

The Black motto Regulus had whispered into her ear kept reverberating in her head. She hated that motto since the first day she heard it. She felt like she was apart of a twisted monster and that had been her turning point to leave. Was it fitting that it was her turning point now? But into what did she turn? Did she turn into a vicious cycle of depression or did she break it?

A hot shower would be nice. Andromeda wanted to wash away the invisible slime, if she could that is. If she had felt disgusted with herself before she really felt disgusted now. She had vowed not to be like her family and here she just did one of the most twisted things that some of her ancestors did. She hated Regulus and loathed herself.

A stronger conviction almost built itself in her heart. They wanted her back. The Black family wanted her back and they had sent Regulus. That had to be it. She was on the right path. She was doing the right thing it was just the fact that freedom isn't always glorious that had worried her and after her miscarriage maybe her friends were right. Perhaps she was a little unstable. She wouldn't be like the rest of the females in her family and she would fight the madness. She wouldn't let it get her down. She would be strong.

She had to be. If she was then could that someday make up for her biggest regret? Had that night been a result of that famous inherited Black madness? If so then she would try to remain stronger and she would beat the demon and her family. She had just needed this wake up call that was all. She was still the "blood traitor" Andromeda Tonks.

Or that's what Andromeda tried to tell herself as she tried to persuade herself that the child she soon found out she was carrying a few weeks later was Ted's but there was a nagging voice that sounded like the damned man himself that whispered something so cruel.

"In Orion's side of the family there are signs of a Metamorphagus."