True Love

Him

Andromeda began to realize that her guest was watching her intently now. It made her uncomfortable. "What?" she asked, annoyance showing in her voice as she opened the book Lucius had placed before her. "Am I sporting horns? Spinach caught in my teeth?" Lucius seemed at a loss at her questions. He cleared his throat. "How do you feel?" he finally asked, looking slightly nervous himself now.

She shook her head. "How do I feel?" She considered for a moment, then spoke with some vehemence. "Here I have a piece of my rather unpleasant past walking into my door. I know for a fact from my daughter, who is an auror, that you are what's called a Death Eater, that you serve the most evil wizard that ever lived, that this wizard has recently returned from the dead and that you are out with your friends every night killing muggles and the wizards and witches who live with them. Your promise that you are not going to hurt me isn't exactly reassuring in comparison. How do you think I feel?"

Lucius raked his hand through his hair dislocating some strands from his precise coiffure. "Can't you get past that for a moment?" he asked testily. "I told you I was not going to kill you." Andromeda took yet another sip of tea. "Yeah, what about Ted?" she replied. "He might be back any minute. Are you going to kill him? You sure wanted to once, and you weren't even a Death Eater then, or were you?"

That was not the question the blond wizard had expected. He was shocked to find that she still seemed to show concern for her muggle consort. For a moment he considered telling her the truth, that he would like nothing more than seeing the piece of filth who had dared lay his dirty hands on his woman writhe at his feet in agony, but he realized that it might actually upset her. And he certainly didn't want that. Maybe the potion needed a little time to work, or maybe Severus was a stupid quack and he would have to kill him after all. Maybe he hadn't put enough of the philter into her tea.

"Fine, I won't kill him either," he growled. She looked at him, mauve eyes scanning his face. His stomach lurched at the intensity of her gaze. He imagined sweeping the distillation equipment and boxes of dried herbs off her large kitchen table and throwing her on top of it instead. He would rip those demeaning and unflattering muggle clothes off her and would finally take what by rights should have been his so many years ago. However he again suspected she would take a rather dim view of that also. He began to realize he hadn't really thought his whole visit through very well.

Eventually he decided he would let Andromeda discover the truth for herself. Perhaps the potion would kick in while she was reading. With a nod he indicated the diary that lay open under her fingers. "I believe you want to start reading that at the entry of October 15th 1975," he said quietly. She tried to appraise his expression, but found he gave her nothing. "Read," he repeated, with some vehemence.

She lowered her gaze to the book, and Lucius felt relief to be free of her scrutiny for the moment. She did not trust him, and what she knew of him through her daughter made her fear him. As the mother of a mudblood she had every reason to. And yet he was sitting here with her, intent on having her learn the truth, and on having her return to him instead of following his master's orders. This disobedience could cost him his life. Was she worth it?

With her attention occupied elsewhere he looked at her trying to see her as she was now, not as he remembered her. Her lowered face glowed in the electrical light of a rather ugly and functional hanging lamp and showed the same light, flawless skin she had possessed when he had first known her. Only a few creases at the corners of her eyes and two shallow lines that ran down from her nostrils and bracketed her mouth bore witness to her age. She still carried herself with graceful pride, and her body did not betray her childbirth. Her hands that held open the diary remained as slender and elegant as he remembered them.

Lucius decided she was worth it. He leaned back and sipped his tea, waiting for her reaction upon finding out how her two loving sisters had played her. When it came, it surprised him, as Andromeda calmly closed the slim book and looked at him. He had expected an outbreak, fury, outrage.

"Why did you show me this, Lucius?" He gasped for breath, finding himself lost for words for once. Finally he leapt up in annoyance, not caring that his chair fell down behind him with a crash. He paced the room as he spoke. "Because it is the truth! Because you need to know! Because you are freed from the enchantment now and need to rid yourself of the unworthy muggle scum whose marriage is threatening your very life. Because you will return to me and we will be avenged on Bellatrix for her outrageous betrayal!"

Andromeda kept her dark eyes fixed on him, but now alertness showed in every line of her body. Her voice became louder as she answered him. "First of all don't confuse your facts, Lucius. The only ones who are threatening any lives here are you and your master, Lord Voldemort! Second, how can I be free of the enchantment? Narcissa writes that you need a second dose of the love potion to reverse its effect and she smashed the vial rather than undo the magic. For all I know I'm still bound in love to my husband. Unless…"

She, too, got up and Lucius cursed himself inwardly. He had let his frustration get the better of him and had given his plan away. Andromeda's eyes flitted to her empty mug next to Narcissa's diary, then to her visitor's face. "You did it, didn't you? You got another batch of the potion and put it in my tea when I left the room to hang up your robes."

With lightning speed her hand lashed out and made contact with his cheek. Before he had even fully realized the stinging pain he had captured her wrists in his fists and shook her, his annoyance giving way to anger now. "What do you think you're doing?"

She glared at him. "You miserable, underhanded bastard," she hissed. "Why do you think you are any better than them? You made another decision for me behind my back. You are exactly like Bellatrix! My sisters never asked me when they poisoned me, and neither did you when you repeated their actions. I was right about all you stupid, arrogant purebloods. You are all the same. To hell with you! I hate you!"

"Oh you hate me?" he replied hotly. "Well, why don't you get your facts straight? You should hate your sisters! They started it! They made you elope with this cretin! I am doing you a fucking favor, and what do I get?!"

At that moment they heard somebody clear their throat behind them, and as Lucius whirled around he looked into the half scared and half annoyed eyes of a tall lanky man with short-cropped brown hair in his late thirties. His lips lifted from his teeth in a snarl as he released Andromeda with a shove and pulled his wand from his cane. "Ted Tonks! I have so waited to meet you again."

The doctor swallowed, his face clearly showing his fear, but he still walked over to his wife and put his arms around her protectively. "Lucius Malfoy, isn't it? I remember you. You betrayed Andromeda to her father so she got expelled by her family. I would appreciate it if you did not hurt again," he said firmly. "Do with me what you will, but she has done nothing wrong this time."

Lucius huffed, leveling his wand at the couple. "What do you say, Andromeda?" he challenged the witch. "Do you still love him? Will you still die for him? Die with him?"

Andromeda briefly touched her husband's face in a gesture of such familiarity, of such gentleness and reassurance that Lucius had to fight to keep his composure. "Threatening death now, are we? So much for the promises of a Death Eater," she sneered when she finally turned towards him.

"Yes," she added quietly and firmly. "Of course I still love him. I loved him before Bellatrix' hair-brained plan; and I love him after your despicable maneuver. Why wouldn't I? I have shared twenty years of my life with him. We have a wonderful daughter together. He's my husband. Didn't you know love potions only compelled the unwilling? They have no effect on those who already are in love."

She stepped in front of her husband, again pulling out her wand. "I will fight for my life and his life. Do you want to fight me, Death Eater?" Lucius lowered his wand. "No," he said, his voice deadened. He had not known about the fact that the love potion had most likely been ineffective in both cases. That meant that Andromeda had done exactly what she wanted when she had left him for a muggle. The shame of it was almost too much to bear, but Lucius did not want to add insult to injury by retracting his former promise.

He exhaled. "I never came here to fight. I came here to lift the spell and win you back. I came here in defiance of everything I believe in, everything I fight for. I came here for love, not hate. If you will give me a few minutes alone to speak with you, I will leave you both alone and alive."

Both the wizard and the witch reluctantly lowered their wands and Andromeda slowly nodded. "I will speak with you. I guess I owe you that much, though I hated you for many years for your petty revenge of telling my father about Ted and me." She turned to her husband. "It's all right, Ted. Why don't you just settle in? I bet you had a long night. I'll be done in a few minutes. Don't worry."

She stepped to the kitchen door and motioned for Lucius to follow her. "Let's talk in the living-room." Lucius sheathed his wand with a snort and shrugged to straighten his robes. "Good," he said. "It will be interesting to hear how you managed to do all this without the help of a potion."

They entered the living room with Ted Tonks hanging behind in the front hall, looking both angry and worried. But obviously he knew enough about his wife's world to refrain from challenging a powerful wizard. Lucius looked back at him with a sneer as he firmly closed the parlor door in his face.

As he turned back towards Andromeda she whirled to face him, her black tresses flying. Her eyes were blazing at him in anger. "Why wouldn't I love him, Lucius? The stupid potion was as good as a sip of water! He was the only one who stood by me when everyone including my own parents turned their backs on me. He didn't love me for my money or my stupid pureblood ancestry. He loved me for me. And he has loved me for the last twenty years with loyalty and without fail. No one else has ever done that. Don't flatter yourself that you did. You yourself saw nothing but my ridiculously meaningless pure bloodline every time you looked at me."

He stared at her as if she had slapped him in the face again. "You really think that of me? Why would I be standing here talking to you if that were true?" He pulled the Dark Lord's list from his robes, shoved it into her hands. "Here, this is what I am supposed to do with you." She stared at the list of names. "That's us," she said uncomprehending. "What does it mean?"

He gave her a mirthless laugh. "It means these people are all dead. I killed them this very night at Voldemort's command." He was now furious enough that even the name of his master came over his lips without hesitation. "It means that if I had been following orders, I would have assassinated you and your precious muggle husband and your mudblood child by now." Andromeda staggered away from him, horror and disgust marring her beautiful face. "You have become a monster, Lucius. What happened to you? If my choice was the cause of this, I will never forgive myself."

Lucius looked at her, and for a moment she saw utter despair in his eyes. However when he spoke his face bore nothing but the expression of seething anger and she realized that while he would not kill any more this night, he would still stab her to her heart and enjoy it. "I have relished being a Death Eater," he told her coldly. "Every muggle that went down in agony before my magic bore the face of your husband. I have killed him a hundred times over. Every mudblood child I murdered I named to myself your rotten, treacherous offspring."

Andromeda felt tears spring to her eyes. "That is not true, Lucius. You are better than that. I won't believe it." He suddenly reached out and cupped her face. "No! Remember, I am all about wizarding ancestry. You just told me, you were nothing more to me than your 'meaningless pure bloodline'." He saw her cry openly now, but he ruthlessly quelled any pity he felt. He drank in the sight of her tears as one dying of thirst.

"I'm – I'm sorry I said that," she sobbed. "I wanted to be cruel. I wanted to tell myself you didn't care. Gods, how can I live with causing such hatred? Causing so much pain, so much death? Please, Lucius!" She felt the grip of his hands that held her face tighten to painful intensity. His grey eyes pierced her. And then, suddenly, inexplicably, he released her. For a moment he appeared to her as a young man again, nineteen years old, as she had once known him, with his life, his hope, his promise ahead of him.

"Andromeda, it was my choice, just as tonight is my choice, just as the consequences of sparing you will be my choice. I am powerless against this, as hard as I might try. Go with him if you love him. Go with him and warn your child and flee. I may swear not kill you, but there will be others. Let this be proof to you that I love you as much as you think he does – that I love you more. Remember this night. Go and know that you chose wrong, just as I did."

He stepped back from her and it felt to her as if each step put an immense distance between them. His face closed off to her and now reminded her of a mere mask. His grey eyes that had regarded her with fury, love, longing and concern only a split second ago became cold and hard. "We become the choices we make. You have made yours. I have made mine. I hope you can live with yours. I will live or die with mine. Go!"

He turned on his heel and strode out of the living room. Outside he bumped into Ted Tonks. He shoved him into the hallway wall without emotion, passing like a force of nature, unconcerned about the muggle in his path. He grabbed his robes from the coat hanger by the door and carelessly threw them over his shoulders. Outside, on the street he caught his breath pressing his hand on his chest. His heart seemed frozen.

He stilled and looked behind him at the house he'd left, at the woman he'd left, and through the bay window above the garden he saw the warm light of her living room and outlined before it in silhouette a woman and a man embracing. Ted Tonks and Andromeda Tonks were holding on to each other, and would for all eternity as far as he knew. He swayed with grief, blindly leaning on his cane to keep himself from falling, then clenched his teeth and ruthlessly tamped down his emotions. As he resumed walking he caught a soft fleeting movement off to his side, and a taunting, hoarse female laugh.

Her

Malfoy Manor, February 15th, 1976

I was at the ministry today to meet with some old friends from work and to get some cold potion from St. Mungo's dispensary for medical tinctures and tonics. The weather is simply dreadful; and old Mrs. Malfoy has been laid low with a miserable cough for over a week now.

Lucius is busy with some project or other that involves a lot of evening and night work. He won't talk about it to me, and he is in a terrible humor right now. I've decided not to ask after he gripped my wrist so hard the last time I tried to bring it up, I still have to pull my robe sleeves over the bruise.

I met up with Celia, who now works in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as a forensic investigator. We went to the place where I first met Severus Snape – big mistake that one – and talked. Her job is really fascinating. She is not a poper auror, but they come to her when crimes have been committed, and they bring her articles from the crime scene like spell blasted clothes, or abandoned wands, or even the occasional corpse! And she needs to find out what magically happened.

She says that crimes of wizarding folk against muggles are particularly interesting, and that she has met a young muggle detective over one of the cases, who is convinced that witchcraft and what he calls the "paranormal" are real. She had to laugh so hard, though, when she told me that he believes that corn circles are caused by beings from other planets. I think she called them "extraterrestrials", when everyone knows it's just house elves when they are bored.

We had such a wonderful time! I need to go to London more often, and I will definitely make a point of meeting Celia whenever I go. She is still single and told me she is "experimenting", dating different wizards and finding out what she wants. I think that is very clever of her. At least she will be able to settle for someone she is thoroughly happy with. Still, she said I am everyone's envy among her other girl-friends for having snagged Lucius.

I told her that nothing looks quite like it seems at close quarters and that she can tell her friends that there are down-sides as well. But still her comments pleased me and comforted me. I guess I have to keep telling myself that I have married the most eligible bachelor around. That's quite a feat!

Then, just before we were going to pay and leave, she leaned in and asked me: "Do you want to know about your sister?" I thought she meant Bellatrix and nodded. "Well, Andromeda is pregnant," she said, and I sat back in shock.

No one had talked about her since she got disinherited, and I think I must have looked horrified. I thought the aurors might have found out about Bellatrix and me poisoning her, but Celia continued. "You know in November she applied for a handfasting license to the Ministry to marry that muggle doctor she was seeing. And she is still close with Trinna in Magical Imports. So she was talking to her the other day at the Leaky Cauldron during Trinna's lunch break and told her she was probably about two months gone."

I don't know what I said, but Celia grinned at me conspirationally. "I think it's so cool she just put up two fingers at tradition and followed her heart. Trinna says she's really happy. I'm happy for her. And as I'm sure your family won't tell you or don't want to know I thought I'd be the one to let you in on it. After all, she's your sister!"

I guess I thanked her, but really went to the hospital in a daze. Andy is married and will have a mudblood child. And Lucius and I are still waiting for me to get pregnant. She's beating me to it again. Damn her!