Morphogenesis

I

There had been no doubt in Ted Tonks' mind that his raven-haired, marble-complexioned wife, Andromeda Black-Tonks, would have loved their child under any circumstances, would have loved an invalid or a monster just as easily, on the arbitrary (and therefore—to her thinking—rational) ground that the girl was hers. But Ted could see the relief in her sparkling gray eyes as she gazed upon their newly-born daughter's few strands of mousy-brown hair, not particularly pale skin, and dark brown eyes.

Unless you saw her mother, or heard her Christian name, you'd not have suspected young Nymphadora's Black blood; especially not after she learned to walk. Certainly, no Black in recorded history had been so fun-loving. She would entertain herself for hours, dancing around the old cardboard box that was her favorite toy in the world (it had originally held a birthday gift—a tricycle, if memory served—but the packaging had long outlived the gift proper), inventing a story as she went, and playing every part herself.

She might not even have noticed the first time that she morphed herself to better fit her chosen role, so deep was she in concentration. But Ted had seen, glancing up from the newspaper just in time to see his daughter's hair change to gold, and her eyes to clear blue, a princess out of a picture-book.

Andromeda had explained that the potential for this was one of the lesser-known aspects of her pure-blood heritage, and she had to explain it once or twice more before Ted would stop hyperventilating. But Nymphadora was still so obviously her clumsy, playful self underneath her various disguises that Ted soon made his peace with it.

That had been when Dora was seven. It had been when she was eight that Ted had been sitting at the dining table, making some final alterations to a report for work, and seen Andromeda walk in looking more ghostly pale than usual.

"She was morphing again," Andromeda had explained, when she had her voice under control. Ted had not seen her so troubled since she had left her parents' house for the last time. "She looked exactly like Bella at that age, exactly like her."

Dora was never quite so free with her morphing after that.

"You did try to apologize?" Ted would ask his wife. They had been in their bedroom, he sitting in the recliner reading a book, she brushing her hair before the mirror. "You know she didn't mean any harm."

Andromeda had continued to stare at the mirror, but the mirror had faced him as well and he could see the pain in her expression as she put down the brush. "I tried, Ted." Andromeda whispered, "She pretends not to know what I have to apologize for. I didn't say anything at the time, you know. It was just such a shock . . ."

II

Ted had been proud, of course, to send Dora off to Hogwarts the first time. How quickly his little girl was growing up! But he had been glad to have her back for the holidays, too. He and Andromeda had stood waiting for her at Platform Nine and Three Quarters, she standing somewhat more dignified than he behind him. Andromeda loved Dora as much as he did, but expressed it differently, which is to say, less. She, for example, never called their daughter Dora, but always Nymphadora. Certain habits died very hard with Andromeda.

Dora had run off the Hogwarts Express, in neon green hair and pink muggle clothes, stopped to look around, and run for him and Andromeda as soon as she had them in her sights. She had hugged him first and then run to hug Andromeda, grinning wide enough to split her head. But, as soon as they were safely in the privacy of the car, even before Ted could ask how her stay had been, the first words out of Dora's mouth had been "Mum, what do you suppose all the pure-bloods have been whispering about behind my back?"

And Ted had seen the way his wife's expression became closed, calculating, the way he had first seen her at Hogwarts, when she would have stood with her family right or wrong and Ted was nothing but a dirty, common-blooded outsider. Certain habits died very hard indeed. He never saw the conversation or the further explanatory letters in which Andromeda explained her heritage to Nymphadora. But he saw the change in her.

Ted had thought, when Nymphadora was first born, that she would favor him. She had looked like him, after all. She had behaved like him. But, as he saw Nymphadora's clumsiness become more pronounced, her accent more Cockney, her hair more neon, and her clothing more muggle, he knew that she was only drawing further and further away from him and closer to her mother's heritage.

Nymphadora never deserved her Christian name more than when she most vehemently rejected it, and she was never more a Black than when she fiercely asserted her Tonksness, for it was with a vehemence and a fierceness alien to the Tonks character that she made these rejections and assertions. Ted wondered, sometimes, if Toujours Pur had not succeeded as a statement of fact about the Black psyche, even if it had failed as an ideal for the Black bloodline.

He wondered if Andromeda saw herself, or her elder sister, or some Black family archetype in Nymphadora, when they rowed over her choices of hair color and clothing. She saw something, though, and it frightened her. Ted suspected that Nymphadora wasn't half so upset over her mother's criticism as over her mother's fear, and over the suspicion that it was something in her that inspired that fear. And Nymphadora's solution was to further bury that frightful something under yet brighter neon colors, yet more muggle clothing and culture. The whole cycle must have looked, to the muggle neighbors, like a classic teenage rebellion. If only they knew.

III

If memory served, electric blue had been the hair- and eye-color of choice the day, in Dora's seventh year, that she announced (without having discussed it seriously with either of her parents beforehand) that she had conclusively decided to be an Auror. This, of course, instigated a row with Andromeda that ranged from whether or not the Ministry was worthy of Nymphadora's loyalty to whether or not the color electric blue was suitable to Nymphadora's complexion, to whether or not a grown woman should insist on going by her surname only even while under her parent's roof.

For duration, volume, vehemence, and number of extraneous issues introduced, some still alive and others resuscitated for the purposes of the argument, it was the worst row in the history of this particular Tonks household. On the bright side (Tonkses always spontaneously look to the bright side), it was the last. Mother and daughter came to a truce that day: Andromeda would not call Nymphadora by her name except under certain, clearly stated conditions, Nymphadora would be a little less brazen in her idiosyncrasy, and nobody would have to shout to be heard again.

Ted was proud of how his daughter applied herself to her Auror training, but he wondered if she would ever come to terms with the irony of it. He had seen Andromeda throw herself into domestic pursuits with the same Black intensity that Nymphadora threw herself into her training. He had met Bellatrix once, and seen the barely contained passion in her eyes as she informed him, every syllable clipped and perfectly under control, that she would kill him most dead did he not discontinue his "dalliance" with Andromeda. He saw the same passion, and the same iron control holding the passion back, in Nymphadora as she discussed hunting dark wizards.

Ted wondered, sometimes, if the Ministry of Magic would prove able to hold Nymphadora any better than the Ancient and Most Noble House had held Andromeda. But he comforted himself that he knew, come what may, that Nymphadora Tonks should be able to handle what life threw at her, with all the fierceness and flexibility of both her family traditions, whether she admitted as much to herself or not.

THE END