THC/The Houses Competition
House: Ravenclaw
Class: Herbology
Category: Drabble
Prompt(s): [Event] Garden Party
Word Count: 996
Betas: Ashjulliet, Bea, Leia Ivy
Coronation chicken is Andromeda's favorite, but this afternoon it's like chewing on parchment. On the buffet there are pointed white tea sandwiches and a tiered porcelain tray of petit-fours. A house elf mixes gin and tonic and a scared-eyed maid pours tea. The garden party is in full swing—although it's more of a listless swaying, Andromeda thinks. Standing on the table is an ice sculpture of two gamboling nymphs that's charmed to melt and refreeze itself into a different pose every quarter-hour. There's a doily on every surface one would expect a doily to be, and a few one wouldn't: Uncle Alphard's shining bald head, for example. He's drunk already and the only one having fun.
The young man she's supposed to marry is standing across the garden beside the snake-shaped hedge. His hands are cocky on his hips as he chats with her father, his face putrid with that smug downturned smile all the rich boys she knows seem to wear. Like the whole world is a joke and he's the only one who gets it. Andromeda sticks close to the buffet, where she hopes she can keep her mouth full of Coronation chicken and not have to talk to anyone.
Her little cousins are running around and swatting each other with sticks they've broken off the pear tree. Earlier, Sirius ran up and hugged Andromeda around her waist and she cupped his sharp-chinned, grinning little face in her hand.
"Have you been good?"
Sirius shook his head wildly.
Beside him, Regulus made an indignant face and muttered, "I have."
She scooped them both into a hug.
That hug is going to have to last her forever, she thinks now, because in eleven-and-a-half days, she is going to leave and never see any of them again.
In eleven-and-a-half days, at two in the morning, Ted Tonks is going to pull up the long carriageway in his Muggle dad's automobile. He'll keep the headlights off and the motor running while Andromeda climbs down the weeping wisteria that drips over the side of the house. She'll quietly shut the little green trunk she has already packed inside the boot. Then she'll bundle her sweet, elderly rabbit Orpheus in her lap and Ted will drive them away to the little flat he's let on a narrow street in Clerkenwell, where the bed folds out of the wall. He's already found a book of paint swatches for her. His kind, warm, loud, weird, wonderful Muggle family have bought them a set of dishes and tea-towels to match.
She's squirming inside with the nearness of the escape. It's a strange weightlessness, liberating and dangerous, like her feet might leave the ground at any moment. Like an unhinged giggle might escape her and become a scream.
"You're up to something," says a hiss in her ear, and her sister Narcissa suddenly grips Andromeda's shoulders from behind. Her pointed red nails dig in painfully.
Andromeda breaks out of her grasp and turns around.
"Up to what?"
"I don't know, but I see that look on you. Smiling like the pussycat that caught the puffskein. You're back with that…" Narcissa stops and seems to swallow the word she was going to say, but she spits the rest with such venom she might as well have said it: "...boy, aren't you?"
Andromeda shakes her head and schools her expression to big-eyed innocence.
"I told you, I don't date Ravenclaws anymore. They're not as well-connected as Slytherins."
Narcissa smirks. "Oh? Then why aren't you over there talking to the Lestrange boy like Daddy asked you to?" She's still speaking in a harsh whisper, which in the quiet babble of this boring party might as well be a shout.
Next to them, the ice sculpture abruptly melts into a puddle, then reshapes itself and freezes solid. The two nymphs have their arms slung around each others' waists like sisters. Their heads are thrown back in frozen laughter.
"Cissy," Andromeda pleads in a low voice. "Let's talk about this later."
Her gaze strays over Narcissa's shoulder to where their sister Bellatrix is playing with the little cousins. Bellatrix has taken their sticks away and is prodding Regulus with one as he backs up into the hedgerow. Sirius is between them, trying to grab the sticks back, and Andromeda sees Bellatrix pull her wand and flick it. Sirius suddenly grabs his face as if in pain, and Bellatrix looks around as if to check that no-one is watching.
"I'll tell you everything later," Andromeda lies. "Please, just don't tell Bella."
Narcissa quickly glances over her shoulder. When she looks back at Andromeda, a change has come over her face.
"I just want to say this, Annie," Narcissa whispers, quieter this time. "You're going to regret it. You could have a good life, be looked after, have all the pretty things you like, the best tutors for your children..." She shakes her head and regards Andromeda with a melancholy confusion that seems strange on her fair, fine face.
"No," manages Andromeda. She and Narcissa look at each other for a long time.
Behind Narcissa, Walburga Black has one bony finger shaking in Bellatrix's face, telling her off inaudibly but fiercely. The two boys have apparently fled. Bellatrix is cackling.
Narcissa looks like she is deciding whether or not to be cruel, and then she is: "Well. I hope you have plans for poor old Orpheus. She'll kill him if you leave him here." Narcissa puckers her lips sourly. "She'll make it hurt."
Andromeda blinks, her eyes suddenly stinging, as Narcissa turns curtly on her heel and saunters away.
The ice sculpture melts and recreates itself again. Andromeda could swear, this time, that the two nymphs are looking at her.
Just get me through the next eleven days, she prays to them crazily. Just let Ted take me away from this. You can have my gold. My firstborn child. Anything.
The ice sculpture glistens silently in the afternoon sun.