A/N- QLFC, Kenmare Kestrels, Chaser 1, Round 1
Main Prompt- The Lover- Goal: Connection
Additional Prompts- 5. (emotion) hopeful, 9. (dialogue) "Go to sleep.", and 15. (character) Teddy Lupin
Word Count: 2025
If she were honest, Andromeda had never been a fan of children. She didn't delight in their tiny noses or melt at the sight of their big doe eyes. She didn't want to hold them or play with them or teach them how to be humans.
And frankly, it had never been her plan to have one.
She remembered the day her cousin Regulus was born, how her family crowded around her aunt and uncle with happy smiles on their faces.
"He has your eyes, Walburga."
"He has your chin, O."
"He looks just like his brother."
"People will think Sirius and him are twins."
Seven-year-old Bellatrix had darted through legs to catch a glimpse of the child. She pulled on robe sleeves and begged to hold the baby. It took a long time, but finally Aunt Walburga relented, gently placing the boy in her niece's arms.
Regulus immediately began crying.
"Why is he crying?" asked a distressed Bella.
"It's just what babies do," their mother explained, extracting Reg from her daughter's arms. "You just have to try your best to understand them," she continued, rocking the wailing child for a moment until he quieted. "See, he just needed a little sway. All better."
"But how do you know what to do?" asked Bella, scowling. "It isn't like they can tell you."
"No. Sometimes you'll have no idea what they want until you've tried every blessed thing under the sun."
"Sometimes they simply want to cry," their dad added.
Bella's face scrunched up with confusion. "That's stupid. What is there to cry about? He's a Black."
The adults all chuckled, a prideful look in some of their eyes.
Andromeda went back to reading the book in her lap, one of the first year tomes she'd almost completed before her schooling had even started. She startled at her mum's presence on the sofa next to her a few seconds later.
"Do you want to hold him?"
Andromeda glanced at the newborn, then up at her mum. "No, I'm okay."
Druella tilted her head, a furrow appearing between her brows. Then she smiled knowingly. "I never liked babies either. And then I had you. One day you'll want one of your own," she stated as if it were fact. "Or maybe more than one."
Andromeda watched her mother rub her round belly out of the corner of her eye. Her little brother or sister was probably two months from birth now. Andromeda was very much looking forward to being at Hogwarts when that happened.
"I don't think so," Andromeda replied simply, returning to her book.
"Mark my words, dear. The day you have your first child, and you're looking down at him or her with nothing but love in your heart, I'll be right there next to you. And the first words out of my mouth will be, 'I told you so.'"
Druella Black wasn't there the day Nymphadora was born. With the circumstances in regards to her disownment as they were, no one in her family even knew she was pregnant.
Her mother didn't tell her, "I told you so."
And her mother was wrong, regardless. As Andromeda looked down at the child in her arms, love wasn't the only thing in her heart. Though she felt it, it was overwhelmed by a much more volatile emotion: fear.
Ted was beside her on the cot, making all the right cooing noises and saying all the things a parent should say.
"She has your little nose."
"She has my ears, poor thing."
"I can tell she'll be tall, already. Don't you think she'll be tall?"
Andromeda didn't feel the tears rolling down her cheeks. She was numb with fear, because she didn't see it. She didn't see her nose or his ears. All she saw was a baby who looked like any other baby. She couldn't imagine this baby getting older, couldn't imagine her learning to walk or talk or write. She felt no connection to this child. She only felt love in her heart because she knew she should.
"Dromeda? Hey, what's wrong?"
Ted had wrapped her in his long arms and she let herself sink into his embrace, sobs coming out in hiccuping little rasps.
"I don't see it," she choked out through her tears. "I don't see myself in her."
"Oh, Sweetheart." Ted ran a hand though her sweat-soaked hair, his fingers getting tangled up in the rat's nest. He chuckled as he tried to extract himself before giving up entirely and holding her closer to his chest. "She's like, two hours old, okay? I don't see those things either. It's just what you say."
Another sob wracked through her body as she laughed into Ted's chest. It took a long time for her to calm down and when she did, she looked up into her husband's eyes and started bawling all over again.
"What if I never see her?" she wailed.
Druella and Cygnus had never seen Andromeda. They'd never seen her for who she truly was. They only saw the Black name, the Black family dark hair, the Black family light blue eyes. They thought her and her sister, Bellatrix, were practically identical in every conceivable way, and brushed off their significant differences with a wave of their hand.
She didn't want to be like her parents. She wanted to see Nymphadora for who she truly was.
"You will," Ted murmured calmly against her temple. "Maybe not tomorrow or next week or next month. But one day it will creep up on you like the tide and you'll think, 'There it is. There you are.'"
Andromeda sniffed and wiped her tear-stained cheeks with the back of her free hand, the one not holding Nymphadora. "You really think so?" Her tone was so full of hope.
"I know it," he replied, running his thumb across her cheekbone. "And when that day comes, I'll be standing right beside you and I'll say, 'I told you so.'"
Andromeda waited for that day with bated breath. But it was hard to make a connection with a girl who defied her mother at every turn.
Nymphadora started showing signs of being a Metamorphmagus at three. Now, even if Andromeda wanted to see the Black family features in her daughter, she'd be unable to find them.
Nymphadora was sorted into Hufflepuff at age eleven. Ted and Dora had always been thick as thieves, but this just made them closer. Andromeda had no stories to tell of her days in the Hufflepuff dormitories or sneaking into the kitchens. The only stories she had to relate involved Ted, so why wouldn't Nymphadora just get them straight from the source?
Nymphadora stopped going by Nymphadora at age fourteen. Tonks was her name. Her hair was pink most of the time.
Nymphadora quit healer training at age nineteen. It had taken both Ted and Andromeda by surprise. Just when Andromeda thought she'd figured something out, had started putting the pieces together, Nymphadora quit learning to do her father's job. Who was this girl now if not her father in female form? Who was she?
When the day finally came, when the tide came in and Andromeda saw her daughter for who she truly was, Ted had been dead for two months. He wasn't there to say, 'I told you so.'
"I have to go."
Dora paced the length of Andromeda's living room, little Teddy asleep in her arms. The battle for Hogwarts had just begun and Remus had left mere moments ago with a kiss on his wife's cheek and a promise to return.
"You can't go," Andromeda stated simply.
"I absolutely can. I'm an auror. I should be out there. I should be with my husband fighting the good fight."
"You have to look after Teddy."
Nymphadora looked down at the bundle in her arms and then up at her mother. "You can look after Teddy."
Andromeda startled out of her seat when her baby grandson was placed into her arms. "I— what? Nymphadora!"
Her hair was a wild purple today as she grabbed her wand from its holster and stalked out onto the porch where the anti-apparition wards stopped. She glanced back at her mother.
"Mum. My name is Tonks." She nodded down at her son in her mother's arms. "And he's yours until me and my husband get back. Do you understand?"
Andromeda did. In that singular moment, she saw her daughter. Her wild, insane, beautiful daughter. A Metamorphmagus, an auror, a member of the Order of the Phoenix. A warrior. Tonks.
Andromeda nodded her head. She met Tonks' eyes and felt the tether that connected them together tighten. It pulled them toward each other for one last embrace in the frame of Andromeda's front door, Teddy squished between them.
She wasn't sure how she knew that this would be the last time she saw Tonks, but she knew it in her heart of hearts that Tonks wouldn't make it back from this battle.
Perhaps Andromeda should have begged her daughter to stay, kept her wrapped in her arms until the battle was over. That would have been the motherly thing to do, to keep her daughter safe from harm.
But she couldn't do that to Tonks. She couldn't keep Tonks from the war that took her cousin, her mentor, her father, and would most likely take her husband. Tonks wasn't one to sit out a fight. To deprive her of this battle would be wrong.
So Andromeda let go.
After Tonks had spun on her heel and Disapparated, Andromeda glanced down at the boy in her arms.
"Don't worry," she said, the whisper loud in the quiet of her empty house. "I'll figure it out much quicker this time. You'll see."
It was two o'clock in the morning and Andromeda was collapsed in an ancient rocking chair watching her grandson wail at the top of his lungs in his crib. She'd done everything she could think of to help him. She'd changed his nappy. She'd fed him his bottle. She'd given him his pacifier.
But all night, Teddy had simply cried and cried until he was red in the face.
It had been four months since the Battle of Hogwarts and Andromeda Tonks was delirious with exhaustion.
Teddy let out an earth-shattering shriek, and Andromeda had just about enough of all this noise. She stood from her rocking chair lightening-quick and stalked to the crib to glare daggers at the child contained within.
"Would you shut up?! Just shut up!"
Andromeda immediately regretted her actions and she wilted, stumbling blindly as she reached into the crib to gather Teddy into her arms.
"I'm sorry," she hummed, rocking the still crying boy, gently swaying in what she hoped was a soothing manner. "I didn't mean it— Well, I meant it, but I didn't mean it. Does that make any sense?"
She swaddled Teddy tighter in his little cocoon of baby blankets and continued to bounce him tenderly, trying her best to make some kind of connection with this infantile creature. Andromeda tried to make him understand that she loved him. She truly loved him.
But how was she to know if Teddy comprehended that love, for this was the real crux with babies. They were severely lacking in the communication department.
Hopeless was how she felt as she looked into the wide, uncomprehending eyes of the only family she had left in this world.
"Don't you know I'm sad too?" she asked, her words coming out in a breathy whisper. "Please… please just go to sleep. Give me some kind of sign that you understand me."
The auburn tufts of hair on Teddy's head began turning a bright cobalt blue. The boy began to quiet some.
Andromeda's heart filled with hope.
"You beautiful boy," she cooed.
"You have your mother's gift."
"You're going to grow up so strong and wonderful."
"You just needed a little sway, is all."
She wiped the happy tears from her cheeks.
"I told you I'd see you," she said against Teddy's soft cheek. "I told you so."