1968: Fifth Year
Ted and his girlfriend continued dating after the Ball. They swiftly became known as the cutest couple, even more so than Andromeda Black and Hyperion Malfoy. During the summer, they wrote to each other frequently, but that did not stop Ted from missing his girlfriend. As soon as they found each other on the train, they quickly found an empty compartment for a – er - quick reunion. A long time passed before…
"Oh, shit! We're gonna be late for the Prefect meeting!" Ted said as he broke off from snogging his girlfriend.
"Damn!" Emmeline swore with her breath heavy and uneven. Her hair was slightly disheveled and her blouse was rumpled as she stood up and grabbed Ted's hand, "Come on let's go!"
From a quick glance at his watch, Ted knew that they were already ten minutes late.
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"Sorry, we're late," Tonks said sheepishly as he walked into the Prefect Compartment. Behind him was Vance who was looking quite embarrassed.
Andie glared at the couple as they made their way to their seats. Seriously, Prefects are supposed to responsible, not snogging each others faces off all the time. Are you sure you're not just jealous because no one is snogging your face off?, a nasty voice whispered in her head. Andie blushed at the thought and quickly turned her attention back to the Head Boy.
"So here are your patrol schedules for the week," the Head Boy said as the Head Girl handed out the schedules, "As I had said earlier before the interruption, each pair of Prefects from each House is responsible for leading the first years to their dormitory. As you all know…
He continued on with many rules and regulations for another half an hour. At the end of the lecture, he said to the whole compartment, "…Got it? Alright, I think that is good enough for today. You can all go now. Oh, and Slytherin Prefects, you are in charge of the patrol of the train for the first shift."
Andie groaned as everyone else got up and left. More time to spend with her lovely boyfriend (which she still had no idea how he had been made a Prefect seeing as he is such an idiot) while Ted Tonks got to snog with his girlfriend. Get a hold of yourself and stop thinking of Ted Tonks! He has a girlfriend and you have a boyfriend and you should be thinking about your own boyfriend and not someone else's boyfriend, Andie snapped at herself, unconvincingly. She could not help but notice that Tonks was a hell lot more interesting than her stupid and boring boyfriend.
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"Tonks and Vance! Not you two again!" the Head Boy yelled at the couple as he found them glued to each other in a broom cupboard. But they sure jumped far apart when they heard him. "This is the third time catching you two since Halloween. Okay, that is it, this is the last straw! From now until the end of the year, Tonks, your patrol schedules will be switched with Malfoy's and you will be working with Black. Vance, you will be working with Malfoy. This ought to teach you two some responsibility!" The Head Boy snapped at them and walked away. Ted stared after him, with his mouth hanging open, not quite processing what just happened.
"Did he just say what I think he did?" Ted asked when he could finally talk, "I have to work with Ice Queen for the rest of the year??" Emmeline giggled at the comment and at his horrified expression.
"Oh she's not that bad…" his girlfriend said, trying to comfort him, but failing as she was trying to stop herself from bursting out and laughing.
Ted groaned, not understanding how his fifth year could start out so great and already start to, for better lack of word, suck.
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"It's Black, not Andromeda!" Andie snapped at Tonks, "Only my friends call me Andromeda and you are definitely NOT my friend!"
She turned around and stormed off. It seemed that her luck had finally run out. Out of all the people to be stuck patrolling with, it was with Tonks. Andie knew, deep down, that Tonks was definitely better than her scumbag boyfriend and that she would probably not dread patrolling as much. But she was not about to tell that to the world. After all, she was still a Black and a Black did not make friends with anyone else besides their own kind, let alone a Muggle-born.
"Alright then, Black," Ted said apprehensively as he caught up to her, "Can I just ask you one question?"
"…"
"Why are you always so cold to everyone?" he asked, after taking her silence as a yes.
"I'm not cold," she snapped. She stopped walking and rounded him, "And I frankly don't see how it's any of your problem."
"Well, actually it is my problem seeing as we're gonna be partners for the rest of the year," Tonks said cheekily as she groaned at the comment, "So I rather not have to work with someone who is such a bitch, no offense."
"That's your fault! It's your fault for goofing off during your shift with Vance! It's something called responsibility! And you know what, I don't see any solutions to this — this problem or what ever this is!" she snarled, her voice gradually getting louder and louder, carrying down the dark, empty hallway.
"For one, I think we can call each other by our first names," Tonks said in his annoyingly cheerful tone, "and get to know each other you know?"
"And why would I want to get to know you?" she asked, with her eyes narrowed in suspicion, "After all I am a Black and—"
"And Blacks don't hang out with people like me, I know, I'm not stupid," Tonks said, his tone slightly colder. "But like I said, we're gonna be working together for a long time and I rather not make life a living hell. Just think about it okay?"
Andie seethed, not seeing a way out of this. Having no choice, but to nod curtly, she continued the rest of the patrol in silence.
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Throughout the rest of the year, Ted continued patrolling with Andromeda, or Dromeda as he sometimes called her (they had started calling each other by their first names just after Easter Break, though Andromeda still called him Tonks for most of the times). Slowly, but gradually, Ted managed to get her to open up more. At first, she was very reluctant to talk to him at all; having conversations with one word answers only. As time went on, the word grew into a sentence and the sentence grew into actual conversations.
Ted nearly fainted with shock when Andromeda first laughed at his joke. He realized that her laugh had a very nice ring to it. It was warm, unlike her usual persona. He hypothesized that the Ice Queen image was only a front that Andromeda put on for her family and her Pureblood stereotype. When the two of them were on patrol together, Ted found that she would slowly let her guard down and the Ice Queen would disappear, replaced by a completely different girl that fitted perfectly with the beautiful laugh. Often, when she realized how open she was, the Ice Queen would come back on and Andromeda would give him the legendary 'Black Glare' like it was all his fault.
Outside of patrols, they never talked to each other. Ted had his own friends and Andromeda had hers. Ted also knew that there was no way her friends would accept her talking to him. When they passed each other in the halls, he would sometimes smile faintly at her before moving on.
As Ted and Andromeda's relationship, or friendship as Ted liked to think, grew closer during the patrols, his with Emmeline slowly fell apart. Emmeline did not like the fact that her boyfriend spent so much time with Andromeda Black. (Even with her usual Ice Queen face, she was considered to be one of the prettiest girls of their year, and with that, Emmeline felt competition.) It wouldn't have bugged Emmeline so much if Black treated Ted like everyone else, but she often caught sight of them looking way too friendly (in Emmiline's opinion) at the end of their patrols. Her jealously couldn't help but grow and it finally snapped one Friday night at the end of May.
"…see the look on Slughorn's face!" Ted was saying to Andromeda near the end of a shift, "I honestly thought he was going to murder me, again!"
Andromeda laughed out loud, holding a hand over her mouth from looking too unlady-like. "I remember that! It was back in third year when you chucked that potion at him!–" Suddenly, she stopped talking and her face became expressionless. "Anyways I will see you next shift. Good night," Andromeda said curtly and walked off before Ted had a chance to reply.
Ted looked down the corridor and saw under the dim moonlight that Emmeline was waiting for him at the end. He frowned as he tried to remember if he had told her to wait for him or not.
"Hey Em, what are you doing here?" Ted asked her, not knowing why a small pint of guilt was slowly rising within him.
"Oh, nothing. Just waiting for my boyfriend," she said smiling strangely.
"Oh…alright then…" Ted said, "Let's get back before we get caught."
"Okay," she replied. She took his hand and started heading back towards the Hufflepuff dormitory. "So how was your shift with Black?"
"It was alright. Not much people were around. Me and Andromeda did catch Diggory and McNelly snogging in a broom cupboard though. It was about time those two got together," he said, grinning widely.
"That's interesting," she said, with a strained smile. "So why do you call her that?"
"Who?" Ted asked, confused.
"Black," she answered as they rounded a corner.
"Oh, Andromeda? Well, it is her name," he said skeptically.
"You usually don't call any Blacks by their first name," she said quietly.
"Er well she is my patrol partner, nothing wrong with that," he said. They walked a bit in silence before Emmeline spoke again.
"I don't like how close you are getting with her," she said so quietly that Ted almost didn't hear her.
"What?" Ted said in shock, "She's just my patrol partner!"
"Black never has manners with anyone yet she said goodnight to you," Emmeline said, continuing over him as if he never spoke.
"That's ridiculous!" Ted exclaimed. By this point, they had both stopped walking and were facing angrily at each other. "She was just being polite!"
"All the Blacks are never polite! Just the other day, the sister of your precious patrol partner knocked me off my feet and all she did was sneer and laugh at me before she walked off!"
"That doesn't mean that Andromeda is rude! You know how wild Bellatrix is! Andromeda is—"
"Oh here we go with the first name again!" Emmeline practically yelled, "Really, if she's so amazing why don't YOU TWO go out already! Seriously, you guys are—"
"Why can't you just trust me??" Ted roared.
"Because I see the way you stare at her when she walks away!" she screamed at him.
"What do you mean? I don't stare at her any differently! She's a Pureblood and I'm Muggle-born don't you get it!?"
"Oh I get it perfectly," Emmeline laughed wildly. "It's you who is not getting it!"
Ted opened his mouth to protest but Emmeline cut in and yelled, "And it still doesn't change the fact that you're head over heels for her!"
It seemed like as if time had frozen. Both teenagers glared daggers at each other with their red face as if they had just ran the whole Quidditch pitch length. A ringing silence that followed the argument became even more pronounced as time passed by.
"That's — that's preposterous," Ted finally stammered after the long pause.
"See! You don't even try denying it!" she growled frustratingly
"Well what do you expect me to do?! It's not like you'll believe me anyways!" Ted exploded.
Emmeline paused, and then quietly said, "You know what, that's true." She looked up into her eyes with an unreadable expression. "Then I guess that's it."
"What's 'that's it?'" he asked and she glared.
"Argh, I had enough of you Ted Tonks! We're over! You hear me?! We. Are. OVER!!" She screamed and stormed off to the dormitory
Ted didn't know how long he stood there, staring at where Emmeline had been. He was hoping that, just maybe, this was all a horrible nightmare and he would wake up any second. But he soon realized that this thing he called a nightmare was as real as reality. The moment that Emmeline broke up with him, he felt two emotions. One was heartache (after all, they did go out for more than a year and Ted truly did care for her). The other was relief.
He admitted that ever since Andromeda became his patrol partner, he was intrigued by her. After every shift, he found himself wishing for time to pass by faster for the next shift. However, that doesn't stop the feeling of heartache from taking over all his other emotions, and leaving him even more confused than ever.
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Andie tapped her foot impatiently and glanced at her watch for what seemed to be the fiftieth time. Ted Tonks was late; he was never late. After another five minutes, which felt like another hour to Andie, Ted – no Tonks – finally showed up.
"Why are you late?" she snapped, letting her impatience get the better of her.
"None of your business," he replied rudely.
"What do you mean none of my business? You're my patrol partner, and either you like it or not, you are my responsibility! What were you doing? Snogging Vance again?" she sneered.
"No actually, we broke up yesterday, if it's any of your business. Happy now?!" he yelled at her. Andie stopped in her tracks, stunned with his outburst. He looked so heart broken that she muttered quietly, "I'm sorry."
"It's alright; it was my fault for being late and yelling at you," he replied gruffly. She patted his shoulder awkwardly. She blushed and quickly put her hand down when she realized what she was doing. Andie stared into his face to see if he noticed but it seemed that Ted was too upset to notice her abnormal behavior. Andie wished she could make him feel better but she didn't know how to. So for the rest of the night, the two fifth years patrolled in complete, yet somehow comforting, silence.
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