Author's Note: Fuck it; this is going to be a three to five part series on Andromeda and Ted Tonks because I need to find some way of giving myself more serotonin. Might feature some reworked scenes from past Ted/Andromeda fics. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. You can tell I am not she because #transrights

Hogwarts: Assignment #3, Charms Task #3: Write about someone being unable to do something because of their age.

Warnings: Arranged marriage; nudity and citrusy beginning

Borrowed Time and Borrowing More

They think they know what we're going through, they don't know nothing

And I know it's bad when we look out

But bad, bad people don't live in our house so

I'm gonna get right for you honey

I'll take all of my medicine, spend you all my money, yeah

And I know it's hard enough to love me

But woke up in a safe house singing, "Honey, let's get married"

—"Let's Get Married," Mitski

As soon as she rolled off him and into the mattress, Andromeda sunk into the mattress and under the weight of the covers profoundly and comfortably. It was good that Ted actually gathered her against him and Andromeda ran a flighty hand over his chest until she settled down, curled up against him. He turned his head so his nose sunk into her curls and breathed in deeply. She'd showered that morning and her hair still smelled like iris petals and lavender oil, two smells that he loved. She had gone out of her way to time her hair-washing with tonight's escape to the Room of Requirement, since she knew they would be able to get away discreetly after their rounds as prefects.

Both of them were panting as they gathered themselves again. Andromeda knew that the blush that had taken over her chest and arms was still burning bright red against her fair skin, which still tingled in all the places he'd touched her.

"That was incredible," she said.

"It was," Ted said. "I could do this forever."

"Me too," Andromeda said. "I could if I…"

She trailed off. They were getting too close to the thing they did not talk about, the thing they did without, because their time together was too precious to waste.

But not tonight. Tonight, apparently, that thing had grown too heavy because Ted whispered about it.

"I can't believe you're going to marry him," he said quietly.

Andromeda's stomach dropped and she propped herself up to her elbows, looking down at the boy spread on the bed. The sheets slipped, but only to reveal one of her shoulders to the surprisingly harsh cold air. Her curls fell like a curtain. Ted's brown curls were flopped on his pillow and he looked up emptily, his eyes sad.

"Why are you saying this now?" she asked quietly, reaching out to push a piece of hair out of his face. His hand caught hers and he kissed her knuckles.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have… I shouldn't have said anything."

"You deserve to say the things that you want to say and have them heard," Andromeda said—ironically, since he'd been the one to teach her that.

"I love you," Ted said in that way he had of saying things so simply that they were devastating and felt truer than truth.

"I love you too," Andromeda said. "Be honest with me."

"I love you so much it hurts," Ted said. "I feel like I've been shot in the stomach when I think about how you have to marry him and when I try to understand why."

Andromeda swallowed, hard. Her engagement to Lucius Malfoy had hung over her head since it had been announced last Christmas, and Ted was so close to her now in every possible way and against every odd that it was above his head too. Andromeda was too young to have signed the contract herself, of course, or to dispute it even if she could since her birthday was only in March. But it had been drawn up and signed by her parents and Lucius', and a dress had been bought for her to wear at an engagement party on New Year's Eve. Andromeda hadn't felt at home in her house, in her world or in her body since.

Ted had taught her a Muggle expression some time ago now about frogs in boiling water. A scientist had coined the phrase when he'd discovered that if frogs sat in a pot of water whose temperature was slowly and very carefully turned up bit by bit by bit, they actually wouldn't feel the water begin to boil around them. The frogs might not even try to leave the pot and stay where they were, boiling alive.

Increasingly, Andromeda understood pureblood society as that boiling pot. It was difficult to understand how incredibly finicky and structured and controlling it was unless you had been submerged your entire life, as Andromeda had been. Now, she just so happened to have another frog sitting next to her who had fallen in when the water was already steaming, in the form of Ted (though she would never call him an amphibian to his face). Usually that was okay, because it meant she wasn't alone. It meant she had moments like these. But Andromeda was increasingly realizing, and increasingly regretting, how badly Ted would get burned since he wasn't jumping out either.

She kept her musings on frogs to herself.

"I can't explain it, Ted," Andromeda said. "Not to you, you… you weren't raised like me."

"I know," Ted said. "I just… I don't want to think of you as unhappy, Andra."

Her stomach twinged.

"I'll be fine," she promised him. "I'll make myself happy."

You deserve a happiness that comes easy, Ted had told her a long time ago—when they had started slipping away and stealing moments here and there to be together. It doesn't have to be with me, but you deserve that much. And if it can be with me, for a little bit of time at least, I would love to.

She could feel those words, or similar words at least, on his lips now.

"My obligations will always come before my happiness," Andromeda said. "I know you're not from a world where blood and lineages are an obligation, but… but it's all I've ever known."

"I know," Ted said quietly. "I know and I would never take that from you. I've told you before; I just want what you can give me when you can give it to me. You told me a long time ago that we were on borrowed time. I just… I just wish that you had obligations to yourself that were just as strong."

He sounded so sad when he said it, so resigned, that Andromeda… well, suddenly Andromeda felt the boiling against her skin. She felt herself boiling alive when she looked up at Ted, Ted who she needed as badly as she needed oxygen, and realized that he might slip away. What would she do when she lost him? What would she do when she couldn't breathe?

"My parents have already arranged everything," she said weakly. "I have little to say on the matter, that's just expected. I would never end this, end us, on purpose."

"I know," Ted said. "You've told me before, it's alright, just… just forget that I brought it up, alright? Forget that I brought it up, just lay down again. That was nice, when we were laying down and that was all."

Andromeda lay down again but her stomach gurgled. She tucked herself against Ted and kept it together for a grand total of twenty seconds before tears burned her eyes. She breathed in sharply and Ted sat up.

"Andra, I'm sorry," Ted said. "I'm sorry, I… I shouldn't have brought it up."

"It's not you," Andromeda said, wiping at her eyes. She sat up too, shakily, and rubbed her palms against her eyes to try and steady her breathing. "It's not you, it's never you, Ted. I just… I can't believe I'm marrying him either. I can't believe I'm marrying him when you're right… when you're right here."

Right there and looking at her with those jade green eyes, concerned and caring and so focused on her that she felt seen, and seen as more than an eligible daughter with beautiful hair and good manners and whatever other assets the Malfoy family had seen in her and that her family had marketed.

He reached out and grabbed his hoody from the end of the bed where it'd been thrown some time earlier, bundling her up in his most comfortable item of clothing to cheer her up. The smell of his soap wrapped her up along with his arms as he pulled her back to him so she leaned against his chest. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that she would have to shower before returning to the common room lest the other girls in her dormitory smell him on her the way they could sometimes tease her about the remnants of a smile or a dreamy look in her eyes when she returned from their rendez-vous. He buried his nose in her hair again and his arms wrapped around her waist, keeping her sturdy. How was it that he was cleaning up a mess he hadn't made? She put her hands on top of his and she felt him shaking against her. That was how he realized that he was trying not to cry too.

The first bit of French she had learned as a child was the family motto, toujours purs. Always pure. Always about the family; everything always went back to the family; the family was always where she started and where she ended and all the parts in between. Her obligation rested with the Blacks.

But that wasn't true anymore. She had hidden and snuck minutes and hours here and there as she could to be with Ted, and somewhere along the way… somewhere along the way she suddenly owed him something too. Not much, of course—because that was the thing with Ted. She didn't owe him her life or her loyalty or her body or her status; but she did owe him her love because he'd loved her so well. He'd shown her grace and patience and love and honesty and a world she couldn't have dreamed of touching. She couldn't put him away like a borrowed library book now. She owed him her best, because he'd both given her his and shown her the best things about herself—the parts of her that couldn't be written into a marital contract or a prenuptial agreement.

She might not be strong to put her obligations onto herself, but she was strong enough to see just how much she owed Ted. She owed him more than an inevitable end they had always seen coming since they had always run on borrowed time. She had an obligation to fight for him, which meant fighting for her.

"I want more," Andromeda said.

"What?" Ted asked.

"I want more time with you," Andromeda said. "We've borrowed enough, so I don't know where to go next, but I want… I want more time with you."

Ted's arms tightened around her.

"I'm sorry, Andra. I didn't mean to—to get emotional and cry and…"

"No," Andromeda said. "No, it's more than that. I want… I want it, Ted. I just don't know how. I'm not old enough now to invalidate the… the contract that was signed. I'd have to be seventeen and that won't be until March. And by the time I go home in May and have even a chance in hell to appeal to the Ministry, the contract will have run past its probationary period."

"What does that mean?" Ted asked.

"It means it can't be broken unless there is a legal issue," Andromeda said. "These contracts are bound in magic, it's not a kind deadline. There are consequences to breaking the contrast then, unless there's another problem, but my family… purebloods have been marrying purebloods for generations, now. I cannot imagine that a mistake that big would be left behind in paper and ink."

"No," Ted said. "No, it… it's probably as tight as it can be."

Andromeda chewed on her lip. Ted's hand reached up from around her waist to play with the ends of her long curls.

"I don't know a lot about Wizarding marriage laws…" Ted said. "But I know that in Muggle Britain, you can't… you can't get married if you're already married."

Andromeda's blood chilled in her veins.

"I… I don't know," Andromeda said quietly. "But I suppose that would… I suppose you can't."

"This is mad," Ted said quietly. "I know this is mad, alright? You don't even have to say anything, nothing at all, but if you need to… if you need to go to the Ministry to break the contract, that can't happen until May. But we go to Hogsmeade every other weekend and there's a chapel there."

Andromeda sat up a little straighter and turned to face Ted. A blush had spread across his nose and cheeks but he still looked at her with those concerned and attentive and—at the moment—very, very serious eyes of his.

"What did you say?" Andromeda asked again quietly. Ted's blush deepened.

"I said—I said, well, if we need to borrow more time and if we need to break that contract," Ted said. "I—I think we can… if we get married the second you turn seventeen, when both of us are old enough, we can create a legal problem. It doesn't have to be forever, it can just last us until we have a better idea…"

"Ted?" Andromeda said quietly.

"Yes," Ted said, blushing more. She had never seen him this nervous but Andromeda, meanwhile, had never felt this sure.

"Ted, if you marry me, it won't be on borrowed time. You'll never get rid of me," Andromeda said seriously.

Ted's jaw dropped.

"Really?" he asked, his voice twinging as he said it.

"If you're serious about this," Andromeda said, pushing her hair behind her ear. "If you'll have me that long…"

Ted leaned forward, cupping her face in his hands and kissing her square on the lips.

WC: 2308