Duality

Andromeda has never felt like more of a fraud than she does here tonight.

For one thing, she hasn't been honest with Ted or Dora about where she's gone. They think she's out for drinks with Dorcas, bonding together over what it's like to be outcasts in their own families; he's got no idea that she's in the thick of the Blacks, listening to Narcissa's toast just minutes after helping her clean up the gash on her leg, making half-plans to hook up with Rabastan like this is still seventh year and Andromeda is still living that double life, parading her fiancé around the castle while shagging her boyfriend in broom cupboards.

She'd thought the lies were going to stop when she picked which man to marry. Instead, she's out here pretending like she enjoys stirring up trouble in her ex-family when, really, she just wants someone in this room to tell her that they've missed her, so that she can stop feeling like she's the only one who does.

No one ever comes forward. The hole inside her is growing and corroding by the second.

It's just—Andromeda may be a blood traitor, but she's still a Black, no matter what Mum or Aunt Walburga says, and it's not like nothing about that life ever made her happy. Narcissa did, and Regulus did, and even Rabastan did, in his way. It was just that—none of them was Ted.

Then again, Ted can't give her any of what she left behind.

And it's not like that's such a bad thing. One person isn't supposed to be anybody's anything, and Andromeda knew when she married him that Ted was never going to replace all the parts of her life she was giving up. It's not like she didn't realize how much she was walking away from, but—she guesses she was naive enough not to realize it was going to be this hard.

So she shows up here just to play the villain and act like she doesn't care when she does care. She wants to support the sister who's no longer her sister, and she wants to fool around with the fiancé who's no longer her fiancé, and she wants to have it all.

Wouldn't you?

She shouldn't be telling anyone here any of this, but we all know how well it went the last time Andromeda tried to be two people at once. Mrs. Selwyn and Mrs. Avery are both in the loo when Andromeda ducks in there, so she fiddles with her mascara at the mirror until they leave and then locks herself in, collapses back against the sink, and cries.