CHAPTER 10
The Pen of Doom

Andromeda, apparently, had not been as successful in establishing Tonks's boundaries as she thought she had been.

Indeed, when she arrived in the Charms classroom the next day, she found Joy waiting for her at their usual desk and froze. Joy was not what made her freeze. What made her freeze was the sight of a sturdy boy of average height with square jaws and bright hazel eyes, sitting just behind her seat in class. It was only a second before she regained her composure, but she was certain that during that second, Ted Tonks had noticed the surprise in her eyes be replaced by dismay, then anger, then a cold, arrogant disregard.

When she sat down, she swore she could feel the warmth of his eyes on her back. She ignored it, naturally, but her insides were squirming. He did not use to sit here! she thought angrily.

Annoyed at the muggleborn probably smirking evilly behind her back, she did not notice Joy's worried glances in her direction until the poor girl finally dared to speak.

'I feel like I'm asking this every other day, now, but are you angry with me?' she asked softly.

Andromeda nearly jumped. 'What? No,' she said, surprised, before realising she had been rather rude to her friend. 'Oh, Merlin, I'm sorry Joy. I was thinking of something else!' she tried to give her a reassuring smile and Joy looked slightly appeased. 'And I'm sorry for how I acted in Hogsmeade as well,' she continued, her voice apologetic and sincere. 'I know I haven't been spending a lot of time with you. It's just, these days, I've been… I don't know, worried about a whole lot of things.'

Joy nodded gently. 'I understand,' she said, 'you have a lot of expectations on you. It's normal you'd be on edge from time to time.'

Andromeda felt a sudden burst of gratefulness warm her insides and spread to her entire being. She had never realised just how much she had wanted to hear those words and, looking at Joy, just how comforting it was to hear them from a person she had called a friend since they were eleven. Thankful, she put a hand on the girl's shoulder and they both exchanged a tender smile.

'Thanks,' whispered Andromeda.

Joy replied with a simple nod.

It was a nice moment of friendship and understanding, like a haven of peace in Andromeda's recently bumpy existence, that had occurred in a time more than essential on the complex ride that formed her existence. That was probably why she was not surprised to see it so immediately ruined by the loud chuckles of the two Hufflepuffs sitting behind them.

Both Andromeda and Joy looked above their shoulders with murder in their cold eyes. The two boys did not notice right away how dire of a situation they were in. Tonks was hiding his laughter behind the long sleeve of his Hogwarts robe, turned towards his friend Adrian Wispbelly. Him and Tonks were always together.

They were still laughing as she glared at them, but their hilarity seemed to be directed at a drawing Wispbelly had doodled on his piece of parchment rather than at her and Joy, which Andromeda had initially thought. Not in the mood for unnecessary conflict, she was about to turn around and forget all about them to concentrate on Professor Flitwick's class, the which had already started five minutes ago, but Joy seemed to think otherwise.

'What are you laughing about?' she whispered angrily.

Tonks' eyes shot up, and his smile faded, replaced by a look of innocent surprise, like a kid being scolded for something he did not know was bad. Andromeda nearly smiled at the sight of him. She stopped herself, remembering he had ignored her speech about boundaries (although now that she thought about it, she had never told him that sitting behind her in class was forbidden...) Wispbelly, on the other hand, did not look half as concerned. He raised his head slowly to meet Joy's glare, one eyebrow up and a look of utter boredom in his eyes.

'What's it to you?' he retorted in a nasally voice.

Joy glared harder. 'Just keep your mouth shut,' she spat, and Andromeda was surprised at her hostility.

Wispbelly's bored expression turned into a dissatisfied frown, but it was Tonks, next to him, who replied.

'What did we do?' he asked, and he sounded honestly inquisitive.

Joy's certitudes visibly wavered as she bit her lip. She probably only just realised they had not been laughing at them at all, which made her the one in the wrong. If only to dodge any chance of more second-hand embarrassment, Andromeda grabbed her shoulder gently and turned her back to the front. Thankful for the elegant save, Joy obliged.

Andromeda was ready to forget the incident completely, but Wispbelly apparently was not.

'Aren't you going to apologise?' he called.

Andromeda tried to warn her, tell her to simply ignore him, but her petite friend had already spun back towards him, her long ponytail flapping the air behind her, and was throwing him another murderous glare.

'Not to you, no!' she snapped, a little too loud for Andromeda's liking.

'Because you're too proud?' provoked Wispbelly.

'Because you're not worth it,' insisted Joy.

Well, this felt familiar.

Now, Andromeda did have a strong sense of loyalty. As a matter of principle, she would always defend her friends against whoever else they needed defending from. However, she felt completely legitimate in disproving them mentally, which she could not help but do as she watched, annoyed and already bored, the purposeless argument in which Joy had thrown herself. Was Wispbelly right in demanding an apology for having been unfairly insulted and rudely addressed? Yes. Was Joy in the wrong for not offering that apology? Probably. Was she, Andromeda, going to accept that the argument was inevitable and therefore try not to look at it condescendingly? Not a chance.

So she rolled her eyes and looked around, as a natural gesture, to meet the glance of another exasperated soul who would share in her irritation and lack of faith in humankind. Whose eyes but the bright hazel ones of one Ted Tonks were there? None. And that is the story of how she, for the first time, exchanged a knowing glance, paired with a complicit smile, with a Hufflepuff, and a muggle-born.

'Enough chit-chat over there!' squeacked Professor Flitwick. Joy mumbled a last insult before turning back to the front and Andromeda imitated her, calmly and with enough confidence that she would look anything but guilty. 'What is going on?' asked the Professor after a few seconds, throwing unhappy glances at the still fuming Joy and Wispbelly.

His question was followed by tense silence, a silence that had expanded to the entire classroom whose eyes were all directed towards the four of them. Flitwick waited patiently until he put his hands on his waist with a disapproving huff. Ted sit up straighter and smiled amicably.

'It's nothing Professor,' he said brightly, 'just a misunderstanding.'

Wispbelly remained frowning and silent. Joy, arms crossed over her chest, scoffed. Andromeda sighed despite herself and rested her head on her hand, her elbow bent on the table. Flitwick looked all but convinced. However, after a last suspicious glare, he nodded and went back to his teaching.

Other students continued to throw them interested glances through the room but, other than the overwhelming tension electrifying the air around them, nothing notable emerged on their side of the class for the following hour. Andromeda occasionally heard Tonks and Wispbelly whisper behind her back but doubted it was anything she should be concerned about, and despite Joy's petulant mood, managed to have her own conversations with her friend. By the last ten minutes of class, she nearly had forgotten completely about the previous incident but fate had a way of smacking her in the back of the head when she least expected it. With a weird sort of featherless quill.

She snapped around to find out where the projectile had come from and was, this time, legitimately surprised – though thinking back on it she really should not have been – to find a wide-eyed Ted Tonks, his hand in mid-air and panic in his eyes. A hand still oncher skull where she'd been hit, she locked eyes with his gaze and watched as he stopped breathing.

'What,' she started in a voice worthy of Bellatrix's best threatening moments, 'did you just do?'

Tonks gulped audibly. Next to Andromeda, Joy swirled back around, a look of near triumph on her face.

'Ha!' she exclaimed, her eyes shifting between the wide-eyed Tonks and the blank-faced Wispbelly. 'You're gonna tell me you didn't do that?'

Wispbelly shrugged. Ted started shaking his head frantically.

'It was an accident!' he blurted. 'I promise! I absolutely did not mean to throw it in your face! I –'

'You are disturbing class again!' squealed Professor Flitwick. Andromeda was surprised to see his face red with anger; he was always so calm and cheery. 'I noticed you've changed seats, Mister Tonks and Mister Wispbelly. If it is to disturb my class, I'm going to have to move you back. Really, I did not think I would have to say this to my sixth-year students. Do not forget your NEWT curriculum expands over two years.'

All four students turned red with shame and embarrassment. Andromeda had rarely ever seen the young Professor so unhappy. Having always been extremely competent in Charms, she did not want his esteem of her to dwindle. Joy must have been thinking along the same lines.

'But Professor,' she called. 'Tonks threw something at Andromeda!'

Andromeda stopped herself from groaning. Sometimes, she really wished Joy would simply stop talking.

A mutter rose in the classroom following her intervention. Flitwick seemed confused by the revelation. Tonks jumped from his seat and started justifying himself loudly.

'No Professor! I didn't do it on purpose I swear! It was an accident! I was playing and it slipped —'

Amidst Tonks's gesticulations and the general noise he was making, Flitwick, glanced at Andromeda. She glanced back and, for a second, thought of lying in the hopes of getting Tonks detention and thus feeling avenged. Then she realised that she did not want that because then rumours would spread that Tonks got detention for accidentally sending his quill Andromeda's way, and then she would be mocked and ridiculed and seen as a horrible spoiled brat… Which she might have been, but that was not the reputation she wanted, and reputation was everything. Instead, she shrugged, and articulated in the most detached and aloof voice she could muster:

'It was probably just a mistake, Professor.'

Flitwick who — she had made sure of it until now but sacrifices sometimes needed to be made — had never witnessed this side of her before, raised both eyebrows in confusion but did not argue. When he looked away, she did the same. She could feel Tonks — who had stopped pleading his cause — staring at her from where he still stood but ignored him. A few seconds later, she heard Wispbelly whispering for Ted to sit back down in an annoyed voice.

Joy leaned towards her.

'Why did you save his arse again?' she asked.

'Because a Black does not get attacked by a mudblood with a quill!' Andromeda hissed angrily.

Joy shrunk back on her seat without another word, throwing her sideway glances as she bit her lip. Only then did Andromeda realise the slur she had used. It came naturally to her when she felt irritable, but ever since last year she had made a point of not using it anymore. It was, after all, a discriminatory insult against the use of which the Ministry of Magic had spread a campaign of awareness.

The bell rang the end of class and Joy shot right up her seat. 'I have Quidditch training! See you later!' she said excitedly. Andromeda let her go with a nod. She took her time gathering her belongings in her bag, thoughtful. From the corner of her eyes, she saw Tonks walk towards her hesitantly. She did not move. It took him a while to finally stop fidgeting. Instead, he coughed. It was timid and Andromeda ignored it. A few moments later, however, she had everything in her bag and no more excuses for pretence. Seeing as he was blocking the way, she had no way of walking past him either. She put her weight on one hip and glared at him.

'What?' she spat.

'Err… I'm sorry…' he started. She tsked and stepped forward, ready to push through. He did not let her. 'Wait! I actually need my pen back.'

She raised an eyebrow. 'Your what?'

'My pen,' he replied, scratching the back of his neck.

She threw him a look as if he was a whale stuck in a tiny inkpot.

'What on earth is a pen?' she asked.

She regretted it immediately. Do not ask questions to those inferior to you unless you know the answer! Merlin Andromeda, stop forgetting the basic lessons of your childhood!

She looked around and was at least relieved to see that nobody was left in the classroom except for Adrian Wispbelly, who was standing against the door and thus too far to have been able to hear her, and Professor Flitwick who was busy organising pieces of parchment on his desk. However, when she looked back at Ted, the thought of hexing him was so demanding she had to curl her fingers into a fist to stop herself from grabbing her wand and possibly pluck it into his eyes. He was smiling! He was smiling as if he could not believe that she did not know what a pen was! As if a pen was some object that everybody should obviously know about! Merlin knows she could have killed someone in that instant!

It must have shown through her eyes because Ted lost his smile. Pretending he was fine when she could see the vivid blush on his cheeks and the fidgeting of his fingers, he started to blurt out some explanation about what a pen was. The word was so ugly anyway!

'It's like a quill but without the feather,' he said. 'You know, what I accidentally lost my hold on and… well… it landed on… your… head.'

Andromeda took a deep breath. A long, deep, profound inspiration. She was calm. Bellatrix was the one with the temper. Andromeda was different. Andromeda was calm, and poised and disinterested. When her nostrils had stopped flaring, she glared at Tonks some more before turning back and taking out her wand. Indeed, the object she assumed to be the pen was there, under her desk. Now, she could have bent down and grabbed it but she had pride and knew that bending down was for muggles, so she threw a silent "Accio" in her head and caught the pen with her free hand. When she turned again, she decided it was admiration on Tonks' face and, ignoring his thanks, pushed him aside and walked away. Calm and poised and disinterested. Wispbelly stepped aside to let her through the door, she did not make notice of his existence.

In her next class, Professor McGonagall was giving a fascinating lecture on new methods of Transfigurations and, any other day, Andromeda would have loved to hear it. But on this particular day of October 1968, she simply could not, and for one simple reason:

Pens!

oooOOOooo

The next day, Andromeda had another period of Charms with Flitwick. Tonks and Wispbelly had retrieved their seats behind her. Joy had fallen ill from yesterday's Quidditch training. Andromeda had accompanied her to the infirmary the previous evening and checked on her again in the morning. Joy was tired but otherwise fine and would completely recover before the end of the day. Andromeda was thus alone and did not feel guilty in thinking she was, in other words, witness-free.

Slowly, she turned on her seat and balanced her chair to put an elbow on Tonks's desk. He nearly jumped when, looking up, he found her face so close to his. Andromeda continuously glared at him as he sat back to put some distance between them. From the corner of her eyes, she knew Wispbelly was looking at her suspiciously. She ignored him and diverted her attention back to Ted Tonks and his shining, bright, golden eyes.

'Remember what I told you the day before yesterday. About us being friendly?'

'Yes…' he replied, looking hopeful.

'Well, nothing has changes.'

'Oh. Okay,' he replied, looking disenchanted.

She let it sink in before adding, 'Now, about the pan…'

'Pen,' he corrected automatically.

She frowned. The corner of his lips quivered. She felt hers do the same. He saw it and smiled. She nearly smiled too, then realised what she was doing and hurriedly moulded her expression back into a poker-face. He stopped smiling.

'About the pen,' she repeated.

'Yes?' he obliged carefully.

She looked down at the object in question, held between Tonks' fingers. His hands were large. She wondered how small her own would look compared to his... The pen! It was long and black and made of a material the name of which she did not know but that was shiny. Overall, nothing special, expect for the fact that it had no feather, its tip was different from other quills and Ted had no inkpot on his table.

'How does it work?' she articulated with much more difficulty than she had anticipated.

She was not happy with herself. Not happy that she had to ask for knowledge to a muggleborn. But she found she had no choice! She could not simply allow him to know more than she did! Besides, he had proven before that he could keep his tongue, so rumours of her ignorance were not likely to spread over the school. As for Adrian Wispbelly, who was eyeing her curiously, she had vaguely talked to him a couple of times before and knew that he was not a man of many words. She felt confident that he would not babble away. If the idea crossed his mind, Tonks had better stop him or she would be extremely disappointed.

Tonks, as it happened, looked happily surprised by her question. After the initial few seconds of shock, he leaned forward and started dismantling the object.

'It's simple really,' he said. 'There is an ink cartridge inside, just there, and it goes into the tip, there. It lasts a while too. It's much less messy than a quill and you don't have to constantly tip it back into the ink pot.'

Andromeda looked at him and raised an eyebrow. Besides the fact that what he said made a lot of sense, she was surprised at how happy he was, explaining it to her. His face glowed brighter than when he looked at her with fear or worry, and his hazel eyes shone a brighter gold than she had ever seen. Noticing her silence, he looked up and found her staring at him quizzically. A pink glow appeared on his cheeks. She looked back down at the pen, then at Ted's parchment.

'And is horrible handwriting another advantage of the pen?' she asked disdainfully, though her voice was much too soft for it to sound as mean as she had intended.

'That's just me, I'm afraid,' he replied with a cheeky smile.

She surprised herself by smiling back.

Suddenly, Wispbelly coughed. It was obviously a cough he had tried very hard to supress for what was probably many a minute, but it was enough to snap Andromeda back to reality.

'You can't tell anyone about this,' she told Ted in a distinctly threatening voice.

Then, without another word, she was back to leaning on her own desk, facing the front, and royally ignoring the Hufflepuff boy sitting right behind her and who, though she hated to think about it, had actually taught her a lot in only a few encounters. She did not know how she felt about this. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more uneasy it made her feel, and the more she felt like she was doing something inherently wrong. And of course she was! She had been talking to a muggle-born! Repeatedly! Despite promising herself more than once that it would never happen again!

Her insides twirled and she felt a knot form in her throat. She was careful, however, not to show her torment. Throughout the rest of the lesson, she kept her eyes on Professor Flitwick, diligently noting down everything he said and even raising her hand to answer questions, something she rarely ever did. But her mind was not truly in the classroom. As she let it wonder, she decided one thing. No matter what, pens were not as good as quills. Quills looked better anyway.