Right then, up to this point I've stuck with devoting one chapter to each term or holiday. I didn't really plan to do that when I began but it's worked as a structure. However, this summer is going to be divided into two chapters. Partly due to length, and partly due to they're very different in tone and didn't fit well together. Also, there was another part to this chapter I left off because I wanted to end on the tone I ended on. May post it in my livejournal. (pimps livejournal)

I was actually scared to post this chapter, because after all the build-up, how can it live up to expectations?

Chapter 21- Do You Believe in Rock and Roll?

"Well," said my Mother imperiously, as the door was closed behind me softly by a house elf. Since I couldn't find any implicit question or order in "well," I remained silent. I was a bit nonplussed to begin with at having been summoned to my Mother's room alone, and I was a little wary that I was about to be punished, although I couldn't immediately recall anything particularly bad I had done.

"Well, don't stand over there for Merlin's sake, come here where I can see you," she snapped, and so I approached her desk, where she was writing something on engraved monogrammed stationary with a long, silky white quill. Since my Mother was not the type to exchange long chatty letters with her friends, I assumed it was either an invitation or a thank-you note for some party. Keeping her social schedule was indeed a full-time job. She put down the quill to give me long, appraising look. So long that I started to get uncomfortable and it was a struggle not to shift around nervously, but I knew squirming would be unacceptable.

She stood, and continued to study me, circling me as though to see me from all angles. There was something decidedly predatory about it. Mother was a tall, formidable, statuesque woman, blond like Narcissa, though not as pretty, she was the sort of woman people called "handsome."

"Well," she said for the third time, and then went on. "I suppose you've turned out beautiful. I was never sure when you were young, I thought you might be rather plain."

It didn't even occur to me to take offense to that, she had never taken any care to spare our feelings or be nice. Nor did I feel any particular pleasure at the compliment, for from her it wasn't so much a compliment as a statement of fact. Had I been ugly, she would have said that just as simply.

"And you are nearly sixteen," she went on, again stating the obvious. She fixed me with a piercing look and so I assumed I was supposed to say something.

"Yes Ma'am."

With a rush of horror, I wondered if I was about to get "the talk." Conventional wisdom was that ladies did not discuss such things, which must have once led to generations of pureblood women going into their wedding nights with no idea exactly what it entailed, but those women had not had the benefits of a girls' dormitory at Hogwarts, and a sister like Bella. Adrienne proved to be particularly informed on such matters, and in response to inquires as to how she had acquired such knowledge, gave a quintessentially Gallic shrug and replied that she was half-French, after all. Bella's knowledge was mostly academic, I knew, but I was fairly sure that thanks to her, I could have taught Mother a few things that would make her blush. I needn't have worried; Mother had no desire to have a cozy mother-daughter talk about sex with me.

"Given that you are quite beautiful, and by most accounts intelligent enough, I imagine there should be no difficulty making a proper marriage for you, assuming that you continue to conduct yourself properly. Since that unfortunate incident in your fourth year, I have had no occasion to be concerned with your behavior, but people will be watching to see that you behave in a manner befitting a Black lady."

A lot of words to simply say "don't embarrass us."

"Yes Ma'am."

"I was given to understand you had a relationship with the younger Avery boy?"

"Oh…no Ma'am, not any longer. We…we're not…"

I wondered if I was going to be in trouble for a perfectly good match not working.

"Don't mumble Andromeda, it is most unbecoming. That is for the best then. They are a fine family now of course, but there are some questionable sorts in their history, and his mother's line is not as pure as they let on."

I would have to be an idiot to mention the questionable parts of our own history, and so I merely nodded.

"It is much simpler, of course, if you have no particular attachment to any young man," she said, and then turned back to me with a sharp look. "You must be very careful now Andromeda, of how things look in the way you behave with men. You're not a little girl anymore, you must be careful of your reputation." She gave me a rather brittle smile. "Black women are always in control, however we might allow men to think otherwise."

Just by a trick of the date, my sixteenth birthday fell on a Saturday, and so the ball to celebrate my turning sixteen was actually held on the exact day.

"Oh Andy," Narcissa cried, actually clapping her hands she was so excited. "You look so beautiful! I'd hardly recognize you!"

I gave her a look in the mirror. "Gee, thanks."

"Oh don't be dumb, you know that's not what I mean! You just look so much older."

I did know what she meant. It hardly mattered what someone looked like normally, you put them in evening clothes with all the accompanying jewelry and make-up and regalia, and they looked like a different person. Looking in the mirror, I saw that I looked like a different, much older and much more dramatic person.

The simple reality of having an older sister, especially one with Bella's overwhelming force of personality, was that I never did anything first, and so when I did things, they had already been done. Since I never had her need to be the center of attention, this had almost never bothered me before. But I can't deny that for the first few weeks of that summer holiday, I reveled in everything being about me. It was my dress and my party and my future that everyone talked about, and Bella and Narcissa good-naturedly took a back seat for a few weeks, genuinely happy for me.

Watching Bella the year before, I understood the importance of The Dress. Mother's attempts to help me decide were half-hearted at best, she expected that Bella would intervene and take over, and so she did. We finally found the dress with the prefect cut I wanted- fitted in the waist with a heavy skirt that fell straight and admittedly a deeper neckline than I normally would dare, but if the purpose of the evening was to be admired then I was not averse to flaunting a bit. Unfortunately the dress we found was a hideous shade of pink, but Bella's sharp eyes noted the cut would be perfect and her solution was to buy it and take it to a robe maker, to have it remade in the right color, which after much deliberation was a deep sapphire blue. I wore Mother's sapphires with it, a gift rather than a loan, which had surprised and even touched me a little, as it was a tradition, but one I had been unaware of.

I've never thought of myself as a particularly vain person, but as I stood in front of the mirror, with Bella fussing with bits of my hair, I thought I looked beautiful. Unbidden and too suddenly for me to force it down, an unwanted thought forced its way into my head- I wish Ted could see me now.

I shook my head to get rid of the thought, drawing a "Tcha! Hold still Andy!" from Bella. She finished with a last tweak of curls or clips, and then rested her chin on my shoulder for a second. "There, you're beautiful." She paused for a moment, as though she wanted to say something else, then just kissed my cheek.

Father was a bit insultingly shocked by how I looked. He stared for a second, then cleared his throat and said warmly, "You look very nice, Andromeda."

"Thank you, Sir."

I avoided the spotlight that Narcissa craved and Bella simply drew inadvertently, but I needed as much as any other sixteen-year-old girl to think I was pretty, and I couldn't help but think it that night.

It was not just the gazes of boys I knew, or even men who were far too old for me, but that women will always need approval for each other, and my friends, even Annabelle and Shannon, who I had grown apart from, were full of nothing but compliments.

I never sat out a dance that night. There were matters of form and tradition, a formal dance with my father, and Uncle Orion. With Sirius, for though we were cousins we made a pretty picture, and then there were the boys from school. Rabastan, who I considered a friend although in the past few months I felt like he was withdrawing much as Bella was. He talked to me in the same warm, teasing, and cheeky manner he always had, but his eyes were shuttered, closed off. At one point his gaze traveled over my shoulder, and I turned my head enough to see Rodolphus enter the room. He caught Bella in a rare alone moment, standing at the edge of the ballroom with a faraway look. Rodolphus came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder, and then dropped a light kiss on her neck, apparently thinking no one was looking. It was a surprisingly gentle and sentimental gesture from him, and for some reason it devastated me. She didn't turn, but she did reach a hand up and lightly touch his cheek with a thoughtful and entirely unfamiliar smile. They were not yet officially engaged, but I knew then their relationship had changed. Rabastan, I knew, has seen it too, and I realized again what we had in common when he murmured, "Well, in any case you'll be a sort of sister-in-law, won't you?"

It was a relief when Hadrian walked up with the authority of a man twice his age and tapped the shoulder of one Guillame LeBlanc (Adrienne's cousin), who was trying to impress me with his explanation of how he planned to expand his family's business to the United States. I was not an idiot and even had a fairly acute business sense, but I was bored out of my mind and trying to figure out how to extricate myself when Hadrian gave him a trademark "Slytherin look of utter contempt" (we really did practice it in the mirror), and asked me to dance. It was relaxing to fall into his arms after trying to keep my distance from all the nice pureblood men my parents hoped would take a liking to me.

"Your father is watching," he whispered confidentially in my ear after a few moments. "He looks terribly pleased."

"Can you see the galleon signs scrolling behind his eyes?" I murmured. "He's wondering just how much you're worth."

Hadrian chuckled, a slight vibration I felt rather than saw. "Be careful Andy, your cynicism is showing."

"And here I thought I covered it so well."

He grinned. "So…your sister and Malfoy?" he said conversationally, looking over my shoulder. I turned slightly to follow the direction he was looking and saw Lucius talking to Narcissa. She smiled at something he was saying- a, cool, typical Narcissa smile- but it was obvious to anyone who knew her that she was glowing under the attention.

"Mhm," I murmured, not at all surprised, and even happy for Narcissa in a way, for that was what she wanted.

"What's that about?"

I glanced over at them again, and shrugged. "You know…Tristan and Isolde, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet…written in the stars…soul mates…all that. Whatever."

He smirked. "Be as cynical as you like Andy, but you're a romantic deep down."

"I'm not!" I insisted as though he'd said something terribly insulting about me.

"Yes, you are. Eventually Andromeda, you're going to fall in love. And I, with my vastly superior foresight, am going to laugh at you. And point. I'm going to point and laugh."

Andy, meet me at the Leaky Cauldron at 5 on Saturday. It's a surprise. Come on…you know you're curious.

-T.T.

I was curious, especially since it was the week after my birthday and I was willing to bet it had something to do with that. I wasn't sure how I felt about seeing him after my talk with Sirius on the train. A part of me wanted to write it off as Sirius's twisted one-track mind. A part of me was flattered in the general sort of way I always was when someone found me attractive. A part of me was terrified that Sirius was right, and a part of me was terrified he wasn't.

Getting out of my house was easier than one might think. We weren't closely supervised, and Bella or Narcissa hardly had any ground to stand on when it came to telling me not to sneak out, and I had any number of friends I might see that they wouldn't argue with, I could merely say I was meeting Marlene or even Hadrian. It was almost too easy, and I suppose that's why I approached it carelessly.

"Andromeda, where do you think you're going?"

I turned with a handful of floo powder, and found my father. There was no way I could claim I wasn't going anywhere, and so I tried to come up with an answer that would get me in the least amount of trouble, but my mind was absolutely blank, as it was invaded by a vision of my actually saying "Going to meet a muggle-born boy who I've been friends with behind your backs for five years…"

"She's going with me," snapped Sirius, pushing past him rather rudely into the room. Father looked as though he was trying to decide if he was willing to discipline his brother's difficult son, and then settled for a stern look.

"And where are you both going?"

I remained silent, knowing that Sirius was coming to my rescue and not wanting to interfere with his plan.

"To a Quidditch game," Sirius said, as though it were obvious, holding up two parchment tickets. "Appleby Arrows. Only decent team in the league this year."

My father frowned. "I didn't know you were particularly fond of Quidditch, Andromeda."

"She's not," said Sirius, with a look of male commiseration. "She just thinks one of the players is good-looking."

I remembered, vaguely, Annabelle and Adrienne giggling over some Arrows player who was "so cute," and I had an all new respect for Sirius's ability to think on his feet. My father gave a smirk, apparently in amusement over how silly females were.

"Well, I suppose it's all right if you're with Sirius, but you know Andromeda we don't like you girls running around London…"

"Yes, Sir."

He waved a hand idly in dismissal. We flooed to Flourish and Blotts, as their floo was less crowded than The Leaky Cauldron and you were less likely to stumble over another person as you arrived. As Sirius arrived after me, brushing soot off his robes, I turned to him with a grateful look.

"Thanks, Sirius."

He smirked. "You're a horrible liar. One would think you'd be better at it, in our family, but you're not. "Look of total panic" is not the way to go when asked a question."

"Are you really going to a Quidditch game?"

He nodded, as we stepped out of the bookstore and headed for The Leaky Cauldron. "Yeah, with Remus. His parents are really nice, but they can't afford things like really good seats for Quidditch, and I thought this would be a good game. But a far more interesting question, I think, is what you have planned."

"I have a…meeting," I said evasively.

"With…"

"My weekly meeting of the "none of your damn business" club."

He grinned. "See, normally I'd think that's a pretty good comeback and let it go, but seeing as I just saved your arse, I think I deserve to know."

I sighed, as that was a perfectly valid point, and yet Sirius was grinning like he already knew and just wanted me to say it.

"I'm meeting Ted," I said quickly, and braced myself for the reaction, which was surprisingly subdued, a wide and inexplicably suggestive smile. "But really Sirius, nothing like you're thinking, it's-"

"How is the weather there in Egypt?" he said slyly.

"Shut up, Sirius. I am not in denial. Just because you don't understand the concept of being friends with a girl doesn't mean-"

He cut my off with a raised eyebrow, and "You're keeping him waiting Andy."

I frowned, torn between that and staying to defend myself. "If you hadn't just saved me with Father I'd hex you."

He shrugged. "I know. Listen though, meet me back here by ten, even if the game isn't over Remus's parents won't let him stay out too late, and obviously we should show up back at the house together."

I nodded, and he gave me a smile that was genuine, not mocking. "Have a good time."

Ted was waiting outside The Leaky Cauldron, in the shade of a covered table. He stood up when I approached and I wondered how I had never realized how much taller he was than me, and if that was a new thing in the last month. I wasn't short, but he was easily six inches taller than me, and I was for some reason suddenly and surprisingly aware of it.

He didn't seem to notice that I was nonplussed, grinning at me.

"You made it."

"Sirius is surprisingly adept at lying to my parents as well as his own."

"Somehow, that actually doesn't surprise me," he took my arm politely, just a hand under my elbow to guide me toward the pub and nothing that wasn't perfectly proper, but I was suddenly hyper-aware of even that little contact.

"Where are we going?"

"That's a surprise, I told you." He grinned, "I will tell you than in the interest of further expansion of your world, we will be taking the muggle underground."

I stopped dead, halfway to the front door of The Leaky Cauldron, the muggle side. "The what!"

He grinned, his grip on my arm tightening. "Come on," he said with clear amusement at my hesitation, and drew me again into the wild, loud, busy chaos of muggle London. I felt once again overwhelmed by the simple volume and rush of all the traffic and the people along the sidewalks, but I was with Ted who slid in between them as though it was nothing. We came to Kings' Cross station and he drew me down among a crowd of muggles buying underground tickets and looking at underground maps and simply standing around talking to each other.

"Are you sure this is…you know…safe?" I asked, looking around the platform suspiciously.

He rolled his eyes, not even consenting to answer that but instead changing the subject. "How has your summer been so far?"

I shrugged, not wanting to really get into my birthday and the politics and expectations of my turning sixteen. "Yours?"

"Boring really. I've hardly seen anyone."

"Not even Alice?"

He cleared his throat and pushed me toward the train that had pulled up. "Er…no. Well, we broke up."

"Why?" I realized I sounded far too interested. "I mean…that's just…she was nice."

"Yes, she was very nice," he agreed. "And also completely fancies my best friend."

"No way! Frank?" I made a not-entirely-successful effort not to smile. "Well, you don't seem very mad."

He shrugged. "I was, but then I realized it's not something she set out to happen, you know? You can't really help things like that."

I considered that but didn't say anything else as the rattling of the train made it hard to be heard.

"Here, this is the stop."

"Where are we going?"

"Is it the word "surprise" you're unfamiliar with, or the concept?"

"You could at least give me a hint."

"Sure thing. It's in London."

I gave up, and turned my attention to the muggle world around me. We were in a more residential neighborhood than the area outside of King's Cross, a little like the neighborhood around Grimmauld Place but less posh, with smaller white terraced houses with little shops on every corner.

"Do you live around here?" I asked, since he seemed to know the neighborhood so well.

"No, but a neighborhood kind of like this," he frowned suddenly. "You know, come to think of it, I don't actually know where you live."

I realized with some surprise he was right. "We live at a country estate, it's a way south of London I think, but then we really just floo or portkey everywhere. A lot of times we stay at Grimmauld Place- that's where Sirius and Reg live technically- though, that's in London."

"Mhm, Sirius doesn't speak of it too fondly."

"Well no. It's very dark, and…it's not exactly a fun place to go for holidays."

He nodded thoughtfully, and then snagged my arm. "Here we are."

I stopped, and looked up at the store front we had come to. It took me a moment of studying the posters plastered over the windows to figure out what it was.

"Music! It's a music store!"

Ted grinned, looking pleased with himself and pleased with my reaction. "Yes. I don't mind telling you Miss Black, I was appalled by your lack of knowledge of music every British teenager should know, and a little horrified that you think what they play on the WWN constitutes music. Thus, I am rectifying that."

For once, I couldn't think of something sarcastic to say. I only looked at him, and then at the music store. "Ted, it looks closed…"

"It is," he said easily. "The owner runs it himself, and he's in Cornwall visiting his daughter. She's having a baby."

"So we can't get in?" I said, disappointed.

"Would I have brought you here if we couldn't get in?" he asked, and held up a key.

"How'd you get that?"

He smiled. "I've been working here Andy. Summer job, although I understand the concept would be lost on you it's a pretty normal thing. And since I can't use magic outside school yet, I went with a muggle summer job. And Mr. Hocking, he's the owner, an old family friend, said that I was a "fine boy" and if I wanted to bring my friend from school around that would be fine with him."

He unlocked the door and flipped on the lights. It was a small shop, not like the huge music stores that lined main streets but clearly a smaller neighborhood shop, the walls plastered with years' worth of posters and flyers for local bands, and everything crammed into a space just a little too small.

Ted pulled me in enthusiastically, dragging a little case up from under the counter, which proved to be a record player.

"Now let's see, to start…" he said to himself, rifling through a shelf.

"What about the beetle thing you talked about?" I suggested, leaning on my elbows on the counter.

"Gods Andromeda…Beatles…B-e-a-t-l-e-s." He apparently found what he was looking for and passed a black shiny disk to me. "There, start with that, their first album…"

"But I don't know how to work this thing…"

"Oh…right. Here, I'll show you. No, no, be careful of scratching it," he said quickly, as I was apparently handling it too carelessly. He leaned past me to take it. "Like this."

He set it on the turntable, and then dropped the needle gently. There was a moment or two of crackling, and then music. I couldn't help a bit of admiration for the ingenuity of muggles.

He had been right, I realized, as I felt a growing anticipation for each new song as the record went on. Muggle music was entirely unique to anything we'd been exposed to. Though the wizarding world would develop its own rock bands, we tended to follow a bit behind muggle trends. While I thought the music was brilliant, it wasn't entirely that. It was so easy just to be around him, to be there.

It was something I was doing without knowing it, or knowing it and not really admitting it. It was all little touches, brushes against an arm, a flutter of fingertips as I passed him something. Suddenly brave, any earlier nervousness I'd felt was gone, and we talked about nothing of any consequence.

"I don't get this one…" I was sitting on the counter, turning one of the record jackets in my hands.

"What's not to get?"

"Well, why would they live in a yellow submarine?"

"You're way too literal for this."

He didn't realize that anything had changed, that I had changed from an offhand comment that Sirius had really only intended to make me blush, by catching a look from him that made me blush without really knowing why, with unexpected straying thoughts. It all came together for me then, sitting there, with my chin resting on my hand, in the semi-darkness of the closed shop, with the Beatles playing. It should have frightened me, it should have been uncertain. It was a shift from a world slipping away- that of my sisters and my family- to something that was solid, that would always be entirely there, always had been even if I hadn't always needed it or known it.

"About muggle music," I said finally, needing to say something. "You were right."

He grinned. "I'm sorry Andy, could you repeat that? I couldn't quite hear. There was this noise…"

"Pity that, because I don't repeat myself," I said. He just laughed.

"I just figured that…" He began, turning to me, and then trailed off uncertainly. We were sitting side by side, but so close our shoulders were almost touching, so that when I turned and looked at him, he was suddenly impossibly close. We both froze for a second, and then he turned away abruptly. "Right, er, well…"

He jumped up suddenly and held out a hand to me, I gave him a confused look, still caught in the awkward moment we'd just had. "What?"

"The best part about muggle music, is dancing to it."

I took his hand and he pulled me up as I started to giggle. "One time Sirius tried to teach Reggie muggle dancing. They both looked really stupid."

He snorted. "It's not so hard. I reckon you can manage it, although you're not exactly the most graceful girl I've ever met."

He was right, it wasn't so hard. The song that was playing just then was a fast one, but it was nothing more than spinning whichever way Ted whipped me around, and it took only a few minutes before I was spinning easily, dizzily, and laughing. Then the song ended, and the record switched itself to another. It wasn't the kind of fast dancing with fancy steps that Sirius and Regulus had tried, but slower, more just swaying in time with the music. It would have been comfortable even, if I hadn't been so intensely aware of his hand on my waist, forcing me closer than the proper dances I had learned at the pureblood balls that were so much a part of my growing up. The music was still playing softly, a pretty melody I didn't know. Every time I heard it, after that, it would bring back that perfect, heart-pounding moment.

"See? Not so hard?" he said, and I glanced up at him.

"I'm doing all right?" I asked, realizing with a shiver how close he was, and yet not at all inclined to pull away.

He didn't answer, but I couldn't drag my eyes away. He hesitated slightly, as though giving me time to change my mind.

"Are you sure?" he said softly, and I knew he wasn't talking about dancing.

I kissed him.

I'm not sure if I can explain, even now, what it felt like. There were no fireworks, or swelling violin music. There was no great rush of passion- that would come later. There was simply the feeling of being more completely right, more completely myself, than I had ever been before.

He drew away suddenly, before I wanted him to, and looked at me closely with questions I could feel rather than hear- is this really what you want? Is this something more than just this moment?

It was, and he kissed me again. It was a strange thing, that while I had been kissed before, it was entirely different. It was impossible, that this was me, that he seemed to know me. It was so much easier than it should be, and yet exactly like it should be, and still our breaths catching on the sudden sensation of being so close to someone you'd never let yourself touch before. I wanted to tell him all of this, maybe I did; maybe I only thought about it, for when I drew back for a second it was only to kiss him again.

It was the small things that I noticed, that would come back to me later. The record skipped, scratched, and settled back into the music. His shirt, cotton I suppose, was surprisingly soft under my fingers where my hand rested on his shoulder. He gently disentangled the hand I was holding to pull me closer, firm against the small of my back.

Finally I had to let it end, though actually doing so proved harder than I thought, for he captured my lips again, and I indulged a sudden need to kiss his lower lip, but finally it ended, and I simply stayed in his arms. I was close enough to feel his heart racing, and it occurred to me then that this might be as wild and terrifying for him as it was for me.

The enormity of what I was doing didn't crash down on me suddenly, but rather crept around insidiously, until suddenly I was panicked. I started to pull away, but as though he had expected that, he pulled me back against his chest, tracing slow circles between my shoulder blades.

"It's all right, Andy. Everything's fine."

"What's going to happen next?" I had no idea what the world would be now.

He released me only enough to see my face, and shook his head. "I have no idea."