The End
"You're dating Rodolphus?" Andromeda and Narcissa simultaneously exclaimed.
"I fail to see why this is so interesting to you," Bellatrix replied in a bored tone, lazily doodling on the cover of Andromeda's Charms textbook. Even thought it was winter break, most of the professors had assigned some sort of homework; Andromeda was the only one of the sisters to have actually taken her textbooks out as of yet, though.
"How could you have not told us?"
"How could you have not told Mother and Father?"
"How could we have not noticed?"
"We wanted to keep it quiet for a while, we didn't want our parents to hop up and force marriage down our throats when we had only been dating for a week, and that really speaks more towards your observation skills than anything else," Bellatrix ticked off the questions one by one.
"But I've never seen you two kissing or even holding hands or anything like that," Narcissa pressed.
"Yeah, and Rabastan and I have only been going out for a few months and both of you have already caught us snogging a few times," Andromeda stated matter-of-factly.
"Do you and Rodolphus even kiss?" Narcissa asked, curious and almost a bit concerned.
Bellatrix continued her doodle, tracing circular curves with her quill. Andromeda and Narcissa silently waited a reply until enough time had passed that it almost seemed their sister had simply not heard them. "Occasionally," she finally replied.
" 'Occasionally'? But if he's your boyfriend…" Andromeda trailed off.
"Your point?" Bellatrix's doodle was starting to take a more fully-formed shape now, the ink lines fitting together. "He's my boyfriend, that doesn't mean I have to lose my head. That wouldn't be very healthy, anyways; a good relationship should have a nice dose of practicality to it."
"Bella, why are you doodling a skull?" Narcissa abruptly interrupted.
"That is awfully morbid," Andromeda added.
"It's not just a skull, it's a symbol," she replied, lightly, darkening its lines. "There's a movement that's starting to take place, to make sure that the Wizarding World doesn't slide downhill anymore than it already has, and this is the symbol."
The next time Andromeda saw the symbol it was drawn by her own hand. "Have you heard of this?" she spoke as her quill carefully drew the curve of the snake.
"Oh, yeah, loads," Rabastan eagerly replied. "My father talks about them a lot."
"Bella told me and Cissy a bit about them, but not very much," Andromeda slowly stated.
"Well, want to hear a story?"
Andromeda gave a nod before adding, "How does it end?"
" 'And just like that, the world was perfect.' " Eager to impress, Rabastan allowed the words to trip out of his mouth a bit more quickly and haphazardly than his normally carefully calculated stories. "There was once a time when wizards were so utterly restricted that they could barely leave their houses. Just to walk down almost any street, they had to dress in ridiculous clothes and remove any visible trace of magic, as though they were ashamed of their abilities and their culture. Hogsmeade was the only town in all of Great Britain that was inhabited entirely by wizards. And then, one day, the entire wizarding community decided that centuries of oppression was enough, that they were going to break the shackles restricting them."
"And?" Andromeda breathlessly asked when he paused.
"And the wizarding community decided to make their presence known, to show that they weren't going to let themselves be controlled, imprisoned by the Muggles. So they bonded together behind an organization called the Death Eaters. And just like that, the world was perfect."
She nodded, feeling as though his story sounded almost more like fiction than fact. It was not until the name 'the Death Eaters' started making its way in hushed whispers around the Slytherin table that it struck her perhaps the organization was not merely contained to fantasy. The hushed whispers grew into open discussion as the skull symbol slithered its way onto the front page of the newspaper and finally snaked its way off of the inky pages of the newspaper onto the forearms of a few of the older Slytherin boys.
Andromeda buried herself further in her textbooks, in O.W.L.s and, after she had passed those, in her N.E.W.T. classes, spending time with Rabastan and her two sisters, until Bellatrix finished her time at Hogwarts and promptly married Rodolphus upon graduating.
It was a huge wedding by any definition—the eldest Black daughter! the Lestrange heir!—and Andromeda vaguely wondered as she made her way through the crowd (was that Bulgarian she just heard?) whether her and Rabastan's wedding would be as large. Even if they were not engaged, and had not officially made plans to marry after their graduation in less than two years, it was clear both to her parents, his parents, and the entirety of the Slytherin house that they eventually would.
"Have you heard whether the groom has connections to the up-and-rising movement?" Andromeda heard a guest's voice state, just loud enough to be audible, and just quiet enough to be conspiratorial. With a quick glance around at the other guests, she pinpointed the voice as belonging to a senior Malfoy and quickly slowed her steps at his oblique reference to the Death Eaters.
"Oh, I would say it's quite likely. His father is rather well connected," a knowing male voice replied.
"And the bride? Bellatix Black?" Andromeda felt something like ice crawl across her ribcage at the man's words and hastily turned, placing all of her effort into putting one foot after the other and carrying herself away from the two men discussing her sister. Joining the Death Eaters was something that other people did. Killing wizards and witches in attacks, risking their lives—dying—was something for other, distant, faceless people. Not her brother-in-law. Not her sister. (Because she couldn't imagine the thought of her sister dead—dead—so she simply wasn't going to).
By the beginning of the next Hogwarts year, her final year, Rabastan had a permanent seat in the discussions of the ink-stained boys (she wondered if they scrubbed hard enough, would the Dark Mark come off?) and soon he was not just whispering murmured stories of a perfect world into her ear, but broadcasting tales to the Slytherin Common room of welding the world through blood and fire. She took solace in the smooth, unblemished skin of his left forearm, because talk was one thing, but battles and war and death was another.
It was a few days before the winter holidays when Rabastan approached her with a nervous energy of the sort she had never seen before. "Me and some others are sneaking out tonight," he whispered secretively. "Out of Hogwarts."
"Oh, who else?" she struggled to maintain a conversational tone, to ignore the awful feeling that her stomach was being filled one-by-one with heavy rocks.
"Carrow." Ink-stained. "And his sister." Not ink-stained. "Goyle." Ink-stained. "Crabbe." Ink-stained. "Bulstrode." Not ink-stained. "Rodolphus," ink-stained "is meeting us outside. He said he might bring along Bellatrix." Ink-stained.
She didn't meet his eyes when, forcibly casual, she added, "So what will you all be doing? Visiting Hogsmeade or something?"
A laugh, accompanied with a smile. "Ann, I've finally been invited to join. To help the cause."
The rocks in her stomach had suddenly piled up until she couldn't breathe, couldn't move. "But—but you do so much to help the cause. You talk about it so much, I bet you've convinced dozens of people to join. That's more than you could ever do if you-" died "-joined."
"But I want to join. I want to help, not just stand on the sidelines, and this is my opportunity," he eagerly exclaimed.
"Rab—" she could feel something (what, she wasn't exactly quite sure) slipping away from her, twisting its way from beyond her fingers. "Don't. Please. Please don't. Death Eaters, you've seen the news articles, they—they die, they're killed in battle. I don't want you to—to—"
"Relax, Ann, I'll be fine. That won't happen to me. Trust me." He placed a soothing arm around her shoulders and pulled her into an embrace.
"How can you say that? You don't know! And I'll just be left waiting…waiting to make sure you came back safe after every attack." Terror. That was the name of the feeling detaching her brain from her body, accelerating her heartbeat and the rate of her breathing. Terror that she might lose Rabastan.
"Come with me then! You can join too, I'm sure of it."
"But I don't want to join! And I don't want you to join, either!" her words were begging, pleading, verging on hysterical. "I love you Rab and I can't—I can't stand the thought of worrying, waiting for you." (Because she was already checking the obituaries daily to make sure that Bellatrix was still alive and the thought of having to look for two names-) "I can't, I just can't and—and I won't."
"You'll see, Ann. You'll come around," he kissed her lightly on the forehead as he left.
Andromeda promptly left for the library, as though one second longer waiting in the Slytherin Common Room would drive her more mad than she already was (because Andromeda had never liked waiting or being clueless as to how things were going to end.) The library was peaceful, nearly empty despite the few remaining final exams to take. She carefully, meticulously pulled her roll of parchment from her bag, followed by her quill, her evenly polished inkwell and finally her Charms textbook. The doodle Bellatrix had drawn on her Charms textbook—years ago, now—gazed up at her, battered and smudged but still recognizable as a Dark Mark. The helpless feeling of fear and worry instantly snaked around her ribcage again and the thought that, one way or another, she was going to lose Rabastan, was repeating uncontrollably in her head.
She could wait for him, and make sure he came home safe after every batter.
But she wouldn't be able to make sure he came home safe.
He might never come home.
She wouldn't even know, then, though.
She'd just be left waiting.
Waiting.
Worrying.
Waiting.
Always.
Andromeda could not succeed in packing up her things before the fear and uncertainty spilled over in the form of tears. Hastily leaving the library, she attempted to restrain the sobs in her throat from leaking into the air.
"Hey, are you alright?" The voice was one she didn't recognize and it took her a minute to sweep the blurriness away from her vision to see a Hufflepuff, one she vaguely recognized as belonging to her year, looking at her with a concerned expression on her face. "I know finals are tough and all, but I'm sure you'll do alright. You're always answering the professors' questions in class, and all."
She almost gave a hiccup of a laugh at the idea that she could be this worried over something as comparatively trivial as exams. "I'm not crying over finals," she stuttered, a fraction of a sob escaping as she opened her mouth to speak.
"Oh, okay," the Hufflepuff looked awkwardly away before adding. "Do you want chamomile tea or something? I know the trick to getting into the kitchens, if you want I can show you. That's, um, normally what I offer to any of the Hufflepuff underclassmen if I see them crying," he hastily explained at the blank expression on her face. "Somehow it's turned into my job to comfort all of the underclass men when they're distressed. Normally they're crying because they're homesick though, and seeing as you're a seventh year, I doubt you're homesick. I mean, if you are that's fine, but, well, yeah."
"Tonks?" she blurt out after a moment.
He was now the one to be looking at her, perplexed. "Um, yeah?"
She had guessed right, Tonks was the boy's name. Probably a half-blood.
"Here, come on, I'll show you the way to the kitchens," he gave a timid smile to accompany his words and started walking, Andromeda pausing before haltingly deciding to follow him. "You know, normally I don't talk to Slytherins much, you lot really stick to yourself." He continued talking, mostly to himself, when she didn't reply. "But I suppose you won't bite, right?" A laugh. "Probably would be venomous if you did. Get it? Slytherin? Snake? Venomous?"
Andromeda allowed another hiccup of laughter to escape at his bad joke. He was distracting her, if nothing else, and there was something refreshing about even just being away from all of the Slytherins and discussion of the Death Eaters and the thought that one day one of her housemates (or Rabastan) would simply disappear, killed in some battle and buried a nameless body (and she'd be waiting forever and ever and ever).
She returned to the Slytherin common room after curfew, spent the last two days of the term in the library and chose to sit with Narcissa on the train home, only catching a few glimpses of Rabastan (because now each time she saw him she wondered if it would be the last.)
(It already felt like she had been waiting for him for forever.)
She next saw him at her house, sitting in her living room with a tense smile around his lips while his father nonchalantly reclined in a chair.
"Andy, you and Rabastan have been dating for several years at this point, correct?" her father started by way of greeting and Andromeda felt a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach at what she knew was coming next. "Seeing as you will both be graduating in a half years time, Mr. Lestrange and I believe it would be appropriate to make the engagement official."
At Andromeda's blank, nearly shocked expression Rabastan tilted his head towards his father. "His idea," he mouthed before shooting her a small smile.
Rabastan's smile floated to somewhere behind her ribcage, blooming like a flower before melting into her veins. And, just like that, her decision was made. "I can't."
"Now, Andy, I know you feel young, but directly after Hogwarts is really the most convenient time to marry and—" her father started.
"No." Her voice shook slightly on her declaration and she stared resolutely at the wall opposite of her, avoiding Rabastan's eyes, "I mean I won't marry him. Ever."
'I love him too much to wait for news of his death,' was what she meant to say, what she never told her parents and Narcissa and Bellatrix when they asked what had happened. (Because she was already waiting for news of Bellatrix's death, too, and—who knew—in a few years she might be similarly waiting for Narcissa and she couldn't tell them that the worry was eating her alive, that the uncertainty was driving her mad.)
She spent the remaining months of her Hogwarts career avoiding nearly all of the Slytherins—cut her connections with Slytherins, cut her connections to the war, she thought, as she drifted into friendship with classmates from the other houses (and a certain Hufflepuff who liked chamomile tea and bad jokes and who was evidently not a half-blood but a Muggle-born, but what did that matter as long as he wasn't participating in the war?).
Years later, when she was married and bouncing a giggling baby girl on her knee, she realized that disappearing from her family was really just the final step, with Bellatrix being sent to St. Mungo's, gravely injured after a battle, being the trigger.
She was too young then to realize that disappearing from her family, by running off with a Muggle-born, of all things, would not insulate her from the war.
Andromeda considered herself an old woman the next time she returned to Hogwarts—how could someone survive two wars and not be old? A baby boy with blue hair and no babysitter rested on her hip, a scroll of parchment clenched in her other hand so tightly that it was almost nothing more than sweat and shreds of ink staining her fingers. Shacklebolt had requested that, with her knowledge in healing spells and her status as an honorary member of the Order of the Phoenix, she attend the aftermath of the Final Battle (she did not ask why Shacklebolt had sent the request, and not her daughter, her only daughter.)
The dead had already been lined up in a row against one wall (Andromeda did not, would not walk past them) while the wounded victors conglomerated in the middle, forming a haphazard line in their wait for treatment. Andromeda, allowing her gaze to wander, idly thought that a number of the arrested Death Eaters, forced into a sitting position with their hands magically bound, looked more badly injured than those waiting for treatment. One man had something green and noxious-looking sprouting from his legs, another was slumped against the wall, the next had a bloody gash across his face—
Andromeda felt a memory stir somewhere behind ribcage, and her feet numbly led her through the post-battle chaos towards the line of Death Eaters.
"Episky," she swallowed, pointing her wand towards the face of the man with the bloody gash
The man jumped at being healed so suddenly before smiling and whispering incredulously, "Ann?"
"Hi, Rab," she whispered, the corners of her lips turning up in a small smile.
This story ends with that smile.
…
A/N: Hm, in retrospect I think to really do justice to my imagining of Rabastan and Andromeda's relationship I would have had to write a full, novel length, Black sisters fic. Unfortunately I have a few other novel-length fics planned first, so this'll have to do for now. Constructive criticism is always appreciated, especially on transitions (seeing as my goal with this fic was to not use any line breaks for transitions. My other goal was to try past tense since sometimes I have a bit of an obsession with present tense).