Andromeda stared around her room for the last time. She'd lived, dreamed, breathed in this room for twenty years. It was so easy to leave, but at the same time it was much too hard. She brushed a brown curl away from her face. She'd never seen her room this empty in her life. Her books, her clothes, her pencils and charcoals, her magazines, her shoes all packed into one trunk. Her life packed away.
The room was very bare. Lone dark purple letters spelt out her name over her bed. Her bed had never been this clean, no books, no dolls, no pencils tangled in the sheets. The floor was visible for the first time in years. Andromeda's favorite doll, Phoebe, with her porcelain white skin and her big blue eyes and her cherry red lips and her jet black hair just like Bella's, was not sitting on top of the desk where she'd sat for years. The desk where Andromeda had always done her schoolwork, and painted her pictures. 'AB' was etched into the dark wood of the desk, marking the desk as Andromeda's.
Andromeda gazed up at the ceiling, where stars marked out the constellations. Bella had mapped them out and helped their father to put them up when Andromeda had first started astronomy and had had trouble remembering the constellations, never mind that she was named for a constellation herself.
Andromeda opened up the big armoire in the corner of her room. She remembered playing hide-and-seek with Bella and Cissy, covering Cissy's mouth as she giggled while the two of them crouched in the black of the armoire and hid from Bella.
She could stay here for hours and hours, wallowing in her memories. But Ted was waiting for her, dearest Ted, darling Ted. And she still had one more thing left to do. With a wistful smile, Andromeda traced her fingers along the wall, and walked out of her room for the last time.
Andromeda strode right past Bella's room, without even looking. The bond between the two sisters had withered. Bella had burned that bridge when she'd taken up with Rodolphus Lestrange and his friends. Andromeda had broken that tie by listening to and befriending and falling in love with a muggle-born.
But she paused in front of Cissy's room, placing a palm on the sturdy, solid mahogany wood of the door. Gently, she turned the knob and eased open the door. It was dark in Cissy's room. Andromeda tiptoed through the room and carefully sat down on the bed, watching her baby sister sleep.
As much as Cissy liked people to think of her as a fairy princess, Andromeda knew that her sister slept like one possessed. Sheets tangled, blonde curls spread across the pillow, legs flung halfway across the bed, and one arm dangling off the bed. Andromeda put Cissy's arm back on the bed, straightened the sheets, pushed Cissy's legs into the middle of the bed, and calmed her sister's hair.
This was the hardest thing she'd ever had to do. She'd put off this moment as long as she could because she had known how much it would hurt Cissy. But she couldn't put this off any longer. She was supposed to marry Lucius tomorrow morning.
She could never marry Lucius. Not ambitious, uncaring, unfeeling, killing Lucius. She couldn't stand his long blonde hair and cold, sly blue eyes. She couldn't marry him even to please her parents. Not when she was in love with Ted.
Perfect Ted with his caring brown syrupy eyes and his messy sandy brown hair. Sweet Ted, who held her while she cried because Bella had gone crazy and Andromeda could never have her back again. While she cried because she wasn't allowed to talk to him. When her parents told her she was to marry Lucius Malfoy. Ted, who'd told her that he would understand if she couldn't come with him, with his beautiful smile.
She could never marry Lucius. With all of his notions of pure-blood, which Andromeda knew she didn't believe in any more. With the dark mark on his left arm. With his cold indifference to any one in his way. Not when Cissy was in love with him.
Cissy cried whenever she saw Andromeda now. She wouldn't talk to her. The only time Cissy had ever said 'I hate you' to anyone had been to Andromeda after the engagement party. Andromeda couldn't convince Cissy that she would be just as miserable married to Lucius as Cissy would be not married to him. Cissy could not conceive that anyone would not want to marry Lucius.
All the same, Andromeda felt bad leaving her baby sister with crazy Bella and their parents. Who would protect her now? Who would stop her from getting too spoiled? Who would calm her down after a tantrum? Who would help her with schoolwork? Who would make sure she ate and didn't starve herself?
She bent over and brushed a soft kiss across Cissy's forehead, and stood up. She tucked a dark scarlet envelope under Cissy's pillow and walked out of the room.
Ted drew her into his arms. She let him pull her close. They both gazed up, looking at the dark windows of what had for twenty and a half years been Andromeda's home. She breathed in deeply.
"Dromeda, sweet. Shall we go?" Ted asked, finally.
Andromeda took his hand and they walked away.
Andromeda didn't look back.
