One more day, Thought Andromeda Black, staring up at the emerald hangings that hid her from view of the other girls in her dormitory. One more day, and I will no longer be a Black.
Andromeda was surprised she wasn't any more nervous than she was. It was entirely unlike her to do something like this, yet it felt so right.
That's because it's Ted, she thought, fixing her gaze on the small diamond ring on her finger.
She still remembered how it had happened, nearly seven years ago.
She had arrived on platform nine and three-quarters to board the Hogwarts Express for the very first time, and she had been very late. When she got on the train, her older sister Bellatrix went to find her friends, leaving Andromeda to find a compartment on her own. All the compartments had been full, except for one at the very end of the train, empty except for a small boy with dark brown hair and chocolate eyes.
Despite all their differences, they became immediate best friends.
Andromeda was one of the three sisters of the well-to-do pure-blood Black family. Ted Tonks was the only child of two muggles. Andromeda had nothing in common with anyone in her family, yet Ted was exactly like his parents, from his handsome features to his quiet personality.
Even though Andromeda had been sorted into Slytherin, and Ted Ravenclaw, they remained friends, every moment of their spare time spent studying together, going for walks on the school grounds, or just spending hours talking in whispers in the library.
Andromeda never spoke a word of Ted to her mother, and did her best to hide their friendship from her sisters Bellatrix and Narcissa, but every letter that Ted sent home made mention of Andromeda, and within a couple months, though she had never met her, Mrs. Tonks felt that she knew Andromeda nearly as well as he did.
But then, in her third year, Andromeda began to see Ted in differently. She tried her hardest to bottle these emotions, afraid that it would ruin their friendship, but at the end of he found out. And it didn't ruin a thing.
Her life took a wonderful turn. All through her fifth year, she was the happiest girl in Hogwarts. Their relationship had it's ups and downs, but for a whole year, they remained together without a soul learning of them.
But then, in the middle of their sixth year, Andromeda's younger sister, Narcissa found out, and had to modify her memory before she told their mum.
That Christmas, Andromeda's mother made her spend the holiday looking through boxes of records, trying to find a "respectable, proper pure blood" to marry as soon as she was out of school.
Andromeda began to worry. If she came back home at the end of her seventh year, her mother would see to it that she never laid eyes on a muggle-born again. Yet, she had no where else to go.
But Ted had surprised her. On her seventeenth birthday, he had asked her to marry him.
And, of course, she had agreed. And tomorrow would be the day.
The next afternoon, she got off the train hand in hand with Ted. They walked past her family, paying no heed to their awestruck, mortified faces, through the barrier, and into the world.
As Andromeda sat next to Ted, writing her name on the parchment, she knew that she had made the right decision.
As they walked out of the tiny chapel, the sound of ringing bells all around them, they knew that whatever happened , no matter where life took them, it would be okay. Because they would always be Ted and Andromeda Tonks.