Three years was a long time to go without seeing someone, someone who you cared about at least. Andromeda sighed as she flicked through the star chart carefully cradled in her lap. Despite popular belief she did care about her sisters. She cared about them a lot.
Alya, Anka, Cassiopeia, Electra, Gemma.
Bellatrix was the eldest. With her high cheekbones and luscious dark locks, she had also been considered the most desirable, the most unpredictable. Then the madness had crept into her eyes at some point during Andromeda's sixth year and her spontaneity had changed into something darker. She had watched the mudbloods and blood traitors with her wand in her hand and hatred in her heart. Her dark eyes, once soft, had hardened and when Andromeda looked at her she could see only the insanity flickering like a flame in her sister's dark orbs. Boys could see the flames too, but they didn't understand. They saw only the passion and pined for the release a dance with the fire would bring. Andy knew they were wasting their time. That sister's heart already belonged to a man. A man cloaked in the darkness that had flooded her sister's mind; as unobtainable to Bella as Bella was to the boys she scorned.
They had soon learnt not to play with fire.
Then there was Narcissa, beautiful Cissy. Cissy who was the light to Bella's dark. Narcissa floated through life like an angel, unknowing and uncaring – the effect only enhanced by her halo of golden hair. Then in Andy's seventh year a boy had looked past the china doll shell, and pushed. Andromeda had watched and waited with baited breath as her little sister took her first teetering steps into the world of shadows, praying she would stumble and fall. She hadn't. And now that light was marred forever, with a tumor like black stain wormed deep into the heart of Narcissa's soul. The boy had destroyed something in her sister, even as he breathed new life and a new purpose into her. Andromeda had always thought it was innocence.
It had broken her sister's hearts when she had left.
Just like they had broken hers.
She had been a sheep she knew. A white sheep in a den of black wolves. But all it had taken was the touch of true love and she had fallen from their purpose. Sometimes she felt as if she was a leaf, falling from a mighty oak. She was crumpled and brown; a stain on the tree's majestic form and it had cast her aside as such. No matter how much the leaf might want to go back, to change back from the dull brown to the proud green, it couldn't. She was stuck in a state of perpetual falling. Fallen angel, fallen from grace, fallen from her path.
But then Ted would smile and she would forget the falling. She knew he would catch her.
Maia, Merope, Mira, Syrma, Tania.
Even now as she sat there, star chart in hand and the last name: Tonks, erasing her Black past she still treasured them. She could still remember their last conversation they'd had. It was the night before she left…
"What are you going to call it?" Narcissa had asked, causing Andromeda to start. Worried that her sister had caught sight of the ring gleaming softly under a hastily applied glamour she subtly shifted her arm so that the sleeve fell and draped itself over her hand.
"Call what?" She asked with a nervous laugh. Bella who was watching quietly in the background rolled her eyes, as Cissy tutted disapprovingly.
"Honestly, Andy. One would think you weren't listening!" She teased, tugging softly on one of Andromeda's long plats, "what will you call your firstborn?" Andromeda laughed again, and this time there was more humour, and less fear.
"Aww, Cissy. Is Lucius bringing out your maternal instincts?" She teased back, trying to take the conversation away from her.
"It doesn't matter what Andy wants to call it anyway," sniffed Bellatrix. Andromeda turned to face her sister, unable to prevent her eye brow from raising. Bellatrix grinned wolfishly, her eyes glistening and Andromeda realized with a start that her sister could no longer truly hide the madness growing behind them. "Andy knows it's a tradition to name your first born after a star. If you're a Black, you're born from the heavens."
Andromeda had thrown a pillow at her sister and her last night as a Black had contained nothing but giggles as the sisters quarreled and perused through the star charts, seeking names from the heavens. Then in the morning, Andromeda left. They let her go.
As Andromeda drew herself back from her memories she gazed down at the chart, before turning her eyes to the growing list of names she was writing on her parchment. Unconsciously her hand moved to curl around her swollen belly.
Alya, Anka, Cassiopeia, Electra, Gemma, Maia, Merope, Mira, Syrma, Tania.
All could name the baby girl growing inside her. All were star names. Each tied her to her sisters. They were the only things she had left.
Bellatrix had said that all Blacks were named for the heavens that bore them. All Blacks. With a realisation shocking in its suddenness Andromeda gave a soft moan. Her child would not be a Black, and she would never be a Black again.
That night she let her list burn, watching silently as the fire engulfed the neat, handwritten words. Slowly the paper twisted in the flames, the creamy white shriveling to black, before being consumed as black ash. Only when the last scrap had disappeared did she allow herself to crumble. Weeping, she had finally allowed Ted to hold her tight. He was her family now.
With trembling hands she handed Ted a piece of parchment, watched him read it, roll it around his mouth and smile. This was the name she had chosen. Not a Black name. Not a tie to her sisters. A new start. One word…
Nymphadora.