Author's note: Enjoy!
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights
Warnings: Vaguely mentions anti-Muggleborn prejudice (canon; hello Black family!)
If The Time We Had Wasn't A Lie
If I could turn the page
In time then I'd rearrange just a day or two
Close my, close my, close my eyes
But I couldn't find a way
So I'll settle for one day
To believe in you
Tell me, tell me, tell me lies
-Little Lies, Fleetwood Mac
In her first year, Andromeda had seriously floundered her history of magic exam. To be fair, she had been so terrified of doing poorly (after Bellatrix told her that Professor Binns haunted all his failing students) that all of her studying was for nothing when the parchment full of questions came before her. She remembered each of them vividly.
Question 1: What is the precious thing that the Philosopher's Stone was meant to create?
The answer was gold. Andromeda had written 'time.'
She had been wrong, of course, anybody who had ever heard about alchemists would know. But she was starting to think that maybe she had been on to something, then.
Because when she had walked into the Room of Requirement six years after failing that test, where she and Ted were meeting to spend the day together while everyone went to Hogsmeade, the Room… somehow it had become a house. Not a big one, mind you, but a house nonetheless. A whole, entire house. It was baffling.
Andromeda had done a fair share of exploring by the time Ted arrived–she had run her fingers against the wallpapered walls, examined the green tiles in the kitchen that boasted a strange mix of Muggle appliances she couldn't make, touched the cool window panes that had appeared in the Room and impossibly–so impossibly–were letting in sunshine… Ted was just as surprised to see the house, but let her take his hand and drag him around.
She showed him the small living room with all its comfortable chairs and brought him up the impossible staircase to show him the upper floor that shouldn't be there with the master bedroom and comfortable, quilt-laden bed… She squealed when Ted wrapped his arms around her waist and tipped them onto the bed so he could bury his face in her sweater and get his hair played with among… well, among other things.
They kept exploring the house. The cupboards were empty, of course, since even the Room of Requirement's strange magic couldn't create food, but they sat at the kitchen table to eat the cinnamon buns that Ted had smuggled to them from the Great Hall, along with the tea he'd transported in something called a thermos. They found a Muggle board game called Sorry that Ted taught her all about, and a Wizard's Chessboard with enchanted pieces that made him laugh too hard to take the game seriously. And when he laughed and smiled, Andromeda got distracted by the tilt of his head and the glint in his grey eyes–so it wasn't like she was playing her best either.
They investigated the library shelves full of Herbology and healing books, but also classics and fairy tale collections. Ted had never heard any of Beadle the Bard's, so Andromeda perched on his lap to read him a few pages as he played with her hair. They took a bubble bath and smelled like lavender. They found a closet full of coats and hats and evening gowns and robes and dressed up for each other, laughing as they put together the zaniest outfits that they could or tossed silly hats at each other.
They wasted the whole day away and had a grand old time, until Andromeda realised that there was a door on the second floor that they hadn't opened yet. It had been locked during her first lap around the house, and there had been so much else to see that she'd promptly forgotten about it.
"I left my wand downstairs; do you want to try charming it?" Ted suggested as he examined the lock with her. She nodded and pointed her wand to the lock.
"Alohomora," Andromeda said.
The door opened for her effortlessly and Ted pushed the door open since he was the more curious of the two of them. Andromeda's stomach sank when she saw what was inside; the pale green walls, the wooden crib, the changing table, the rocking chair with the soft pink quilt thrown over the back…
"Right," Ted said. He cleared his throat awkwardly, fingers suddenly twitchy as they drummed against his thighs. Twitchy fingers, but he didn't reach for the doorknob to close the door. "Well… we don't need this."
It was around that time that she realised that the Room of Requirement hadn't just given them a house that day, it had shown them a home. And it was a home they would never have or share–because if they weren't hiding away in the Room of Requirement while the castle was empty, what could they be? What did they have if not these lies?
Anger suddenly bubbled up in Andromeda's throat. Ted looked at her with that usual, endearing, so-very-Ted furrow between his brows, and she couldn't stand to see it in the mirror across from them, hanging over the impossible nursery's changing table.
"Bombarda," she said coolly, pointing her wand at the mirror.
Ted jumped back as the mirror shattered, shards of glass scattering at her feet.
"Andromeda–" he said.
"Bombarda!" she said with more gusto this time, with rage and hurt and grief for the impossible in every syllable of that spell. The frame was all that was left of the mirror, so this time it was splinters of wood that flew across the room.
"Andromeda!" he said, taking her hand and lowering her wand for her. "Talk to me. You're scaring me. Andromeda…"
A sob choked in her throat and something deep and low inside her sank even lower and deeper. Staying angry would have been too easy, she supposed.
"Oh, Andra…" he said. "Come here…"
She let him scoop her up in her arms and she sobbed into his shoulder; sobbing and sobbing as the lies around them unravelled and drowned her.
"What is it?" he asked gently, combing his fingers through her still-damp curls. She tried to explain but choked on her sobs, so he shushed her some more. "Whatever it is, you can tell me. We can fix it. Tell me what's going on…"
"I don't know how to tell you that I want us to have more time," Andromeda said. "Because we're graduating so soon, we'll be grown-ups in the real world soon, and it's not enough–it's never enough…"
She expected the house to be gone when she looked around again; the Room usually changed quickly enough when it realised that it was not what they wanted or needed for this visit. But the house was still there, with its warm wooden floorboards and panelled walls. And Ted, most important Ted, was still there too.
"Time," she said, even if it hurt, even if it was impossible, even if there was no way to make time–especially not for them, not without losing so much else at least. "I want more time with you. I want all the time in the world with you."
"Yeah, well…" Ted chewed on his lip. He knew as well as she did that it could never happen. Merlin, it would be him that her family would go after if they ever found out about them.
Ted brushed a piece of hair from her forehead and a tear from her cheek. She turned her head to look back into the nursery, at where the mirror had once been. And that was about when she realised that she wanted this home, and all the time they could spend in it, badly enough to make it–no matter what else she would lose.
"If I leave," she said quietly. "Will you marry me?"
WC: 1306
