A Verb Strong Enough

[starfishstar]

Continuing this year's general tenor of "I wrote this months ago but never got it together to crosspost it here"...

Also, since it can't be stated too often: I utterly reject J.K. Rowling, her transphobia, and her choice to use her enormous platform to trumpet said transphobia. I won't let her take away these characters who have brought joy into my life for so long, but I in no way support her as a person, author, or public figure. And I *more* than understand those who've chosen to go the other way, and no longer engage with HP fandom at all. Take care of yourselves out there, friends.



A VERB STRONG ENOUGH

Fandom: Harry Potter

Summary: Amidst the wreckage of unfathomable loss, Andromeda forces herself to grasp hold of gratitude for what was and what still will be.

Characters: Andromeda

Words: 500


Read here below or on AO3.

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Every day, Andromeda practised gratitude.

No: practise wasn’t a verb strong enough for what she did. Andromeda forced herself through gratitude. She wrenched it into her grasp and clung on, teeth gritted against the anger and the pain.

Andromeda was grateful, yes: grateful for Ted, his warmth and solidity, his belly laugh that had always made her laugh in return. She was grateful they’d found each other so young, for it meant they’d had many years together before this horrible end. Ted’s quiet but unshakable goodness, his firm sense of right and wrong that had at first baffled Andromeda, then taught her to find the same within herself—all of that, yes, she knew herself to be grateful for, despite the hole now gouged in her heart by the loss of the love of her life.

She was grateful for Nymphadora, her baby. For Nymphadora would always be her baby, no matter that she’d become an adult and a fearsomely talented Auror and a mother in her own turn. Nymphadora, with her enormous love and her cheeky humour and her fierce pursuit of justice. Fully as much as Ted’s quiet kindness had done, Nymphadora’s fiery honesty had shaped Andromeda into the person was. A day would never pass when Andromeda didn’t want her back. Always, always, always. Yet she was helplessly grateful, too, for the too-short years she’d had her daughter at all: her tiny baby weight in Andromeda’s arms, her toddler tantrums and ever-changing hair, her mad rushes into danger. Through the pain, despite the pain, there was gratitude to have had such a brilliant and terrifying daughter.

And, yes, Andromeda was grateful for Remus, too. He had caused no shortage of heartbreak in the short time he’d been in their lives, through his own fears and self-doubt, but there was no question he’d adored Dora as utterly as she deserved. By the end they’d managed to be marvellously happy together, and it was cruel that their time together had been cut so short. Yet Andromeda pushed herself to find the gratitude that lived there as well—for would she have wished her daughter not to have loved at all?

Perhaps most of all now, she was grateful for Teddy, the tiny infant grandson left suddenly in Andromeda’s baffled care. She was wrenchingly grateful for his cries and for his tiny, eager hands reaching out to grasp for the world. She was grateful for his weight against her chest as she sang him to sleep, his soft breath that made the long nighttimes less alone. She was grateful to Teddy, for he was the reason she had no choice but to go on living—and beneath it all, despite it all, Andromeda wanted to live.

And so she forced herself to remember gratitude. In those endless first days and nights of what would now be the rest of her life, through the haze of exhaustion and grief, Andromeda cradled her grandson to her, and breathed in, and was grateful.

 

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