A/N: Sweet little nothing I whipped up in less than two, it's still piping hot!


Title: Blue Paint

Summary: "Look, Miss Tonks, I'm a smurf!" Timothy told her proudly. "Melissa is a smurf too!" Melissa did not seem to enjoy being a smurf. Or: Andromeda Tonks is a primary school teacher. Muggle!AU Teacher!AU

WC: 1,004

Genres: Family, Humour, Slice of Life

Characters: Andromeda T., Ted T.


"Timothy? Timothy! What is happening here!" Andromeda cried when she saw what Timothy was doing

And what exactly was Timothy doing, you may ask? Well, the Year Ones had recently taken on a unit on the sea and they were busy making the background painting for their classroom. Needless to say, it included a lot of blue paint in various different shades. And Timothy, an absolute red-headed darling, always the little trouble-maker, was currently bathing in the blue paint. His playmate, Melissa, was also covered in the pungent liquid, and was crying rather loudly.

"Look, Miss Tonks, I'm a smurf!" Timothy told her proudly. "Melissa is a smurf too!"

Melissa did not seem to enjoy being a smurf just as much as Timothy, as she tried to wipe the tears and paint from her eyes, which basically turned into a rather horrifying blue snot-ball.

"Miss Toooooonks," Melissa wailed, and Andromeda whole-heartedly agreed.

"Now, Timothy, what did we say about the paint?" she asked him, taking a stern voice, which made his absolutely adorable face fall, but after all, he had to learn his lesson.

"That we can play with it?" he offered with a grin. Though he knew he was in trouble, he couldn't resist being just a tad cheeky.

"No, we said we had to be very careful with the paint and not get it everywhere," Andromeda reminded him.

"Oops?" Aww. He was just too sweet.

"And does Melissa look happy?" she asked him.

"No…" A trace of remorse appeared on his face, when he took in his crying friend. "I'm sorry, Melissa," he offered spontaneously.

Andromeda was impressed, she hadn't even had to ask him! "Good job for apologising, Timothy! Now, while smurfs can be fun for a moment, we should get you into clean clothes."

She took the two little ones to the bathroom, scrubbed their hands and faces, tried (and failed) to get most of the paint out of their hair before changing them into their spare set of clothes. Melissa had stopped sniffling the moment Andromeda told her she could go play in the doll area and she set Timothy to cleaning up after himself carefully watching what he was doing.

"Everything okay, Andy?" her co-worker, Eko asked her.

"Yep, all is fine!" she reassured him. "You missed a spot, Timothy!" she reminded him when she spotted him trying to escape cleaning-up duty.

"You handled the situation well," Eko told her and she smiled brightly at him.

"You think so?"

"Yeah, just remember not to let Timothy unsupervised around a tub of paint."

"Trust me, I've learned my lesson," Andromeda reassured him, and pushed a hand back through her hair, not surprised to see in came back stained with blue paint too.

"Miss Tonks!" Anurita came running up to her, "Can you come and look at my fish."

"Of course, Anurita." And she was dragged away to where the girl and her friends were currently colouring in fishes for the sea background. She had pink and yellow pen on her nose. Arts and Crafts was fun, but often very, very messy…

The day finally came to its end a couple of hours later, and Andromeda personally waved every single child from Year 1Penguin (their class mascot). She then cleaned up with Eko, reviewed the lesson plan for the next day and headed home through the busy streets of London.

When she finally got home to the tiny apartment Ted and she shared, she was delighted to find he was already at the stove, cooking dinner.

"Ted!" she said, throwing down her bags and rushing to give him a hug.

"Hey," he greeted her before giving her a kiss. "You've got blue paint in your hair, by the way."

"Oh yes, Timothy was a menace today," she told him as if this sufficed for an explanation. After all, she regularly regaled him with tales of Timothy's antiquaries.

"And on your jumper, too," he pointed out.

"A real menace, he turned himself into a smurf!" she complained.

Dinner was a quiet affair, with both of them recounting their respective days to each other. While she was learning to the ropes to become a primary teacher, he was studying to become a doctor, and they both had their far share of anecdotes to tell each other.

"Have you seen the papers?" he asked her later, when they were comfortably snuggled on their couch and watching the telly.

"No, why?"

"She's getting married," he murmured.

"Cissy?"

He nodded.

Her shoulders tensed and she forced herself to take a deep breath. Andy Tonks had once been born lady Andromeda Black. She had left her family the day she turned 18, eloping with Ted. The ones she had once upon a time called 'family' were a bunch of elitist prats who had been trying to foster her off on another of their so-called aristocracy, whatever little value the title might hold today.

"To whom?" she asked slowly.

"Lucius Malfoy."

Andromeda nodded grimly, but didn't say a word more. She hugged her knees for a moment. Cissy was off to be married to another of those big-headed fools who couldn't even see that their title conferred them absolutely no power. Lucius Malfoy, she knew, under all those airs of grandeur was one of the worst of them, and Cissy was only eighteen. Sweet Cissy, who couldn't bear her eloping and continued to write her emails every week until her father found out…

"You okay?" he asked her, quietly.

"Yes," she assured him.

"You don't…. you don't regret anything?"

"You mean, do I regret marrying to love of my life, getting to study, and becoming what I've always dreamed of becoming?"

"Despite the blue paint fiascos?" he supplied.

"Despite the blue paint fiascos?" she added. "No, I absolutely do not."

He smiled at her, and she smiled back. They had their own perfect little world together, far away from bigoted parents and mouldy principles and full of the joys of teaching, loving, learning and occasionally; blue paint.


FOR ILVERMORNY SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY

November Assignment: Task 4 – Professor: I don't think you need a lot of information on this one. Teachers are needed in both the wizarding world and the No-Maj world. As you can tell by just paying attention in lessons, our job is to teach you something. Write a teacher AU.

Bonus prompts: 4) [Word] paint 6) [Character] Andromeda Tonks 9) [Colour] Blue