Saying Yes, chapter 11
Jun. 9th, 2013 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starfishstarSAYING YES chapter 11
Summary: At 17, Andromeda Black thought being in love was everything. At 57, Andromeda Tonks knew better. Yet the first time Kingsley Shacklebolt asked her out, she surprised herself by saying yes.
Characters: Andromeda Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Teddy Lupin and ensemble (Harry! Ginny! Molly! Kingsley's kids! All the Potters and Weasleys!)
Warnings: None
Chapters: 15
Story:
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Teddy, when he came home that summer, seemed to sleep half the day and eat anything he could get his hands on. And while he laughed with his friends as easily as he ever had, Andromeda sensed a reserve in her grandson when he was around her.
She tried not to take it personally. He was a teenager, after all.
She tried to give him the space she knew he needed, allowed him to meet his friends whenever he liked and didn't ask what in Merlin's name he was reading at all hours of the night in the books he kept tucked away in his room.
The secretiveness should have been a sign, but Andromeda missed it. As long as he's not setting his bedroom on fire or consorting with goblins, she would think, smiling as she recalled Kingsley's words.
So she was blindsided when that illusion fell apart.
Teddy was down by the pond at the bottom of the garden one afternoon with Ben, a friend of his from Ravenclaw. Andromeda had started down the lawn to ask the boys if they'd like a snack, when she heard Ben say, "So, you're still planning to take the N.E.W.T.s you need for Auror training?"
"What did I say about talking about it here," Teddy complained.
"You said you didn't want your Gran to know, but she's got to find out at some point, hasn't she?" Ben retorted.
Andromeda stopped short on the lawn, the warm afternoon suddenly turned cold. She didn't hear Teddy's response. Without any conscious thought, she turned and walked back to the house.
That evening, when Ben had gone home, Andromeda went upstairs and knocked at Teddy's bedroom door.
"Teddy?" she called. "May I come in?"
"Yeah, sure."
As Andromeda opened the door, Teddy looked up and hastily shoved the book he'd been reading under a pile of other books on his desk, then tapped his wand against a scroll that was spread out next to them, which neatly rolled itself up. It was so hard to fathom that he was seventeen already, of age and independent in his magic.
He looked up at her with a face that was innocent and expectant, and Andromeda didn't know whether to be furious or devastated.
She sat on the edge of his bed and he swivelled on his chair to face her, now looking puzzled.
"I heard you talking to Ben this afternoon," Andromeda said.
Teddy stiffened.
"What he said suggested to me that you're planning to try out for Auror training,"
Teddy's eyes darted guiltily to his books before meeting hers again.
"When we talked about this a year ago, I asked you to please reconsider," Andromeda pressed, trying to keep her voice level. "Since then, whenever I've asked you your thoughts about careers, you've led me to believe you were pursuing other ideas. In fact, I distinctly remember that at one point you said you were planning to pursue Healing."
Teddy was grimacing.
"Teddy, can it be you've been lying to my face for the past year?"
"Not all year!" Teddy protested, then clearly sensed this had been the wrong thing to say. "I mean – I mean – I didn't mean to," he finished lamely.
"I have always let you make your own decisions and find your own path," Andromeda said. "I have never given you cause to doubt my faith in you or my love for you. I have only ever asked one thing of you, Teddy, and that is not to put yourself deliberately in harm's way. Why would you do the only thing I have ever asked you not to do?"
Teddy couldn't seem to find an answer.
"All right then: Why did you lie?"
"You didn't give me any choice!" Teddy burst out. "I told you what I want to do, and you said I couldn't, but what am I supposed to do? This is what I've always wanted, I don't want to do anything else!"
"Nothing else? With top marks and every possible career open to you, you choose that?"
Teddy's hair was turning a fiery red. "You talk about being an Auror like it's something so awful! I don't get it, Mum was an Auror, Harry's an Auror, and Uncle Ron, for Merlin's sake Kingsley was an Auror, practically everybody we know is an Auror, and I'm the only one who's not allowed to? What kind of stupid – unfair –"
"It's not unfair, Teddy, when you're all that I have!"
"All that you have? That's stupid too, because what about Kingsley, and –"
Andromeda found herself standing, taut with rage. "You have no idea, young man. You have no idea what it is to lose a child. If you think anything could ever replace you –"
Teddy stood too, matching her. Taller than her, now. "Okay, fine, yeah, but you have no idea what it's like to – to be like me, to not have parents! Always this thing there, this thing like I have to be careful what I say, be careful not to be too much like them, but not too little like them, and I have live up to them, and they were these perfect heroes, and they sacrificed everything for me so Merlin forbid I waste any of it because they died for me, right?" Teddy was shaking. "When do I ever just get to be me?"
Andromeda stared at him. "I've never asked you to be anything but yourself."
Teddy looked like he was fighting back tears, but his words were abrasive. "I don't know who that is."
"Teddy, you are…yourself. You're kind and brave and loyal to the people around you –"
"I don't care about all that! I just want to be allowed to do what I want to do!"
"Teddy, please –"
"I don't want you telling me what to do!"
"Teddy –"
"No! I want to make my own choice, for once! I'm not my mum and I'm not dumb enough to go and get myself killed!"
Andromeda gasped. She had never once heard Teddy be flippant about his mother's death.
But Teddy was still going. "You're so stuck in the past, it's embarrassing! Nobody else's parents are afraid to let them do things!"
"The fact remains that I am not anybody else's parents," Andromeda answered coldly. "And while you live under this roof you will follow my rules."
"I'm of age," Teddy said. "And I'll try out for Auror training if I want to. You can't stop me!"
Andromeda raised her wand. "Accio Teddy's books." Books emerged from underneath piles of clothes and papers, zooming toward her from all corners of the room and landing in a neat stack in her hands. The one that landed on top, facing up at her, was a small booklet titled "The Pupil's Guide to Becoming an Auror."
"Hey!" Teddy shouted, but Andromeda Banished the books with another flick of her wand. Teddy turned towards her, incensed. "You can't do that! How dare you!"
Andromeda pressed her lips together and took a breath before she spoke. "I think you need some time to think this through. Without your books at hand."
Teddy's chin jutted out defiantly. "Then I'll just go buy the same books again."
"Then I'll have to ground you for a few days, so you can think this over without distraction."
"Well then I'll LEAVE," Teddy shouted. "You can't make me stay!" He actually started toward the door.
"Stop right there," Andromeda said and before she even knew what she was doing, she had her wand pointed at him. It was something she had sworn she would never do.
Teddy stared at her in disbelief and Andromeda slowly lowered her arm.
"And?" he demanded. "What are you going to do to me? Are you going to hex me if I leave? Are you going to try to trap me in here? I can break out of any spell you cast on me," he declared, and Andromeda didn't doubt he could.
She dropped her wand to the floor, sickened with herself. "No, Teddy. I won't try to trap you or force you to do anything. All I can do is beg you not to do this. I'm too old for this, Teddy, too old to have to fear for your life every day. Please, don't make me do that."
The tremor Andromeda couldn't keep out of her voice seemed to scare Teddy more than her raised wand had. "Stop trying to guilt me," he whispered. "Just – stop –"
Trying to collect herself, Andromeda said, "I still think you'd make a wonderful Healer, but if that doesn't appeal to you, there are plenty of other, less dangerous jobs in the Ministry that involve prosecuting those who break laws."
"No!" Teddy said again, his voice harsh.
"I just think –"
"I don't care what you think!"
"I only want what's best for you."
"Ha, that's hilarious. You only want what's best for you."
Andromeda stared at him. "Edward Remus Lupin," she said. "Everything I have ever done has been for you."
"You're an interfering old bat!" he shouted. "You're not even my mother, so where do you get off telling me what to do!"
For an instant, there was nothing but pure, shocked silence between them. Then something inside Andromeda snapped. "Get out," she said.
"I will," Teddy replied, pushing past her. She heard him thundering down the stairs.
Andromeda sank onto Teddy's bed and tried to get air back into her lungs. Had she just – no –
Teddy would be downstairs, she told herself, or banging his way angrily out to the garden. Andromeda pushed herself up from the bed, took a deep breath and walked downstairs.
Teddy wasn't in the house, so she checked the garden. Empty.
She went to the front door and looked out. The street was empty as well. Had he tried to Apparate? He'd only just got his license and if he was unfocused and angry…
Where would Teddy go? To one of his school friends? The Burrow? Harry's?
She closed the door and paced the small entryway. Should she start placing Floo calls? Or should she wait and see if he came back, before she started unnecessarily alarming everyone they knew?
Andromeda allowed her footsteps to lead her into the sitting room, then stopped in front of the fireplace, uncertain. Indecision was unlike her. But then, so was ordering her grandson out of the house.
She rested her hands against the marble mantelpiece. Yes, she should light the fire, in case Teddy tried to call from somewhere and didn't have enough Floo powder at his end. But her wand was still where she had dropped it on the floor of his bedroom upstairs. She would allow herself a moment to collect her thoughts before going up there again.
The photograph directly in front of her on the mantle was her favourite one of herself and Ted. It was a casual shot, the two of them squinting and blinking into the sun on the day of their leaving ceremony from Hogwarts, arms around each other. It was the first time she'd dared to be so open with Ted in public, because she knew then that by the end of the day she'd have broken her ties with her family and they'd be far past needing to hide.
"Ted," she murmured aloud, "Were we ever this difficult?"
She knew the answer to that. Of course they had been.
Andromeda sighed and told the picture, "I guess all we can do hope is he doesn't do anything truly crazy, like getting it into his head to follow tradition and run off with someone his family disapproves of."
Then she heard what she'd said and winced.
"Oh, I didn't mean that, Ted, you know I liked Remus in the end. And if it hadn't been for Remus, we'd never have had Teddy, any of us, so there that is."
Andromeda studied the pattern in the cool marble beneath her fingers and wondered what she should do.
She'd just turned to fetch her wand from upstairs, when a voice behind her said, "Andromeda?"
Andromeda spun and saw Ginny's head in the fireplace. Green flames had sprung to life, lit from Ginny's end. Andromeda dashed back and crouched in front of the fire, heedless of the protesting in her knees.
"Ginny," she said. "Is Teddy with you?"
Ginny nodded, an awkward motion within the flames. "He turned up here in a flap and I told him he could stay for the night, erm, and cool off a bit. I hope that's all right?"
"Yes, of course," Andromeda said, her mind finally allowing itself to picture all the dire scenarios she'd been trying not to think about, Teddy alone and splinched somewhere. She sank carefully to a sitting position in front of the fire.
"Harry's furious with him for what he said to you," Ginny said. "So am I. But we've always wanted Teddy to feel he had a home with us and that he could come here if he ever needed. So it seemed best to let him stay…"
"Yes," Andromeda said again. "Yes, of course."
"Harry will have a talk with him tomorrow," Ginny said. "But you know we're always here for you too, if you need us, right?"
Andromeda caught herself thinking, as she sometimes did, that Ginny was like the grown daughter Andromeda hadn't got much of a chance to have. Andromeda couldn't think how to express her relief beyond, "Thank you, Ginny."
"Any time," Ginny said. "I'll let you know when we're sending him back over, all right?"
"All right," Andromeda said. And because there was really nothing else to say, she said again, "Thank you."
Andromeda stayed seated on the floor a long time after Ginny had pulled her head from the fire and the flames had died down to a small play of red above the embers.
In her mind's eye she saw herself and her mother on that last, inevitable day. I hate you, Andromeda had screamed. I hate you and I always will. Then, before her mother could be the first to say, Get out, Andromeda had shouted, I'm leaving and I'm never coming back.
Sirius had called her a sneaky Slytherin, later, and he was right. Where Sirius had left his parents' house in a hotheaded moment, Andromeda had been putting the pieces in place for months before she dared to finally speak her mind.
She'd been of age. She'd managed to slip most of her share of the family wealth out of their Gringotts vault without anyone noticing. She was finished with school, had an entry-level job lined up at the Ministry and she'd already signed a lease with Ted on a tiny London flat. It had been all over but the shouting.
But thinking about that now didn't do any good. Andromeda pushed herself up from the floor and went to fetch her wand. Then she did what she should have thought of from the first and Flooed Kingsley.
"Andromeda," he said, looking harried, when she stuck her head through the fire into his kitchen. "I'm just now having the no-really-I-do-mean-it-and-it-is-bedtime discussion, can it wait half an hour?" Then he leaned down to look at her more closely and said, "You're upset."
"Yes," she said, "but it can wait half an hour. Or until tomorrow, if you're busy with the children."
He shook his head. "Half an hour. I'll Floo over to you?"
Andromeda nodded. "Thank you."
She paced the house, then made a cup of tea, which she didn't drink.
She Summoned Teddy's books back from where she'd Banished them, but couldn't quite bring herself to put them back in his room, so she stored them in her own room instead.
By the time Kingsley stepped out of the fireplace, Andromeda's nerves were jangling far worse than they had done when Teddy had first slammed out of the house.
"I left the kids a note saying where to find me if they need anything," Kingsley said, starting across the room toward her. "Andromeda, what is it?"
"It's fine," she said. "Nothing's happened; I mean, no one is in danger. But I had a terrible row with Teddy." She hugged her arms to her chest in the middle of the sitting room. "I don't understand myself. I've spent seventeen years terrified of losing him and then I went and told him to leave."
"What? What's happened? Where is he?" She could see Kingsley shifting seamlessly into search mode.
"No, no," she hastened to reassure him. "He's fine. He's at the Potters'. I'm just shocked at myself."
"All right," Kingsley said. "Clearly there's a story here that I'm missing. Come, sit down and fill me in."
Andromeda allowed Kingsley to lead her to the settee, thinking a little wildly of how rarely she used this room, the sitting room, for anything but the Floo. Was it an unconscious protest against her parents, who'd conducted nearly their whole lives from the formality of their parlour? She and Teddy did most of their living in the kitchen or out in the garden. As had she and Ted and Nymphadora, in a previous life.
Kingsley reached out and placed a gentle, steadying hand on her arm. "What happened?"
Andromeda thought back to how this had begun. "I overheard Teddy talking with a friend today," she said. "It turns out he's been lying to me all this year – he still wants to be an Auror."
"Ah," Kingsley said, his expression oddly knowing.
"You knew?"
"No, no. Of course not. But I had a suspicion that, well – you can't stop a person wanting what they want."
"But he lied to me about it."
"And he shouldn't have done," Kingsley agreed. "But did you leave him any other choice?"
Andromeda stared at him. "Any other choice? Of course I did. I've always taught him to tell the truth."
"But at the same time, you made it clear to him that what he wanted and what you were willing to accept were incompatible."
"And that should have been the end of it."
Kingsley sighed. "Andromeda, I don't want to argue with you over this. I'm just suggesting that perhaps you should be the one to give way here."
"And let him go ahead with this, when everything in me screams out against it?"
"I don't know," he said, his gaze troubled. "I really don't know."
"You're right," she said. "He can't help wanting what he wants. But I can't help the fact that this terrifies me."
"You'll figure this out," Kingsley said, and the way he said it made it seem like a promise.
– – – – –
(continue to chapter 12)
Summary: At 17, Andromeda Black thought being in love was everything. At 57, Andromeda Tonks knew better. Yet the first time Kingsley Shacklebolt asked her out, she surprised herself by saying yes.
Characters: Andromeda Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Teddy Lupin and ensemble (Harry! Ginny! Molly! Kingsley's kids! All the Potters and Weasleys!)
Warnings: None
Chapters: 15
Story:
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Teddy, when he came home that summer, seemed to sleep half the day and eat anything he could get his hands on. And while he laughed with his friends as easily as he ever had, Andromeda sensed a reserve in her grandson when he was around her.
She tried not to take it personally. He was a teenager, after all.
She tried to give him the space she knew he needed, allowed him to meet his friends whenever he liked and didn't ask what in Merlin's name he was reading at all hours of the night in the books he kept tucked away in his room.
The secretiveness should have been a sign, but Andromeda missed it. As long as he's not setting his bedroom on fire or consorting with goblins, she would think, smiling as she recalled Kingsley's words.
So she was blindsided when that illusion fell apart.
Teddy was down by the pond at the bottom of the garden one afternoon with Ben, a friend of his from Ravenclaw. Andromeda had started down the lawn to ask the boys if they'd like a snack, when she heard Ben say, "So, you're still planning to take the N.E.W.T.s you need for Auror training?"
"What did I say about talking about it here," Teddy complained.
"You said you didn't want your Gran to know, but she's got to find out at some point, hasn't she?" Ben retorted.
Andromeda stopped short on the lawn, the warm afternoon suddenly turned cold. She didn't hear Teddy's response. Without any conscious thought, she turned and walked back to the house.
That evening, when Ben had gone home, Andromeda went upstairs and knocked at Teddy's bedroom door.
"Teddy?" she called. "May I come in?"
"Yeah, sure."
As Andromeda opened the door, Teddy looked up and hastily shoved the book he'd been reading under a pile of other books on his desk, then tapped his wand against a scroll that was spread out next to them, which neatly rolled itself up. It was so hard to fathom that he was seventeen already, of age and independent in his magic.
He looked up at her with a face that was innocent and expectant, and Andromeda didn't know whether to be furious or devastated.
She sat on the edge of his bed and he swivelled on his chair to face her, now looking puzzled.
"I heard you talking to Ben this afternoon," Andromeda said.
Teddy stiffened.
"What he said suggested to me that you're planning to try out for Auror training,"
Teddy's eyes darted guiltily to his books before meeting hers again.
"When we talked about this a year ago, I asked you to please reconsider," Andromeda pressed, trying to keep her voice level. "Since then, whenever I've asked you your thoughts about careers, you've led me to believe you were pursuing other ideas. In fact, I distinctly remember that at one point you said you were planning to pursue Healing."
Teddy was grimacing.
"Teddy, can it be you've been lying to my face for the past year?"
"Not all year!" Teddy protested, then clearly sensed this had been the wrong thing to say. "I mean – I mean – I didn't mean to," he finished lamely.
"I have always let you make your own decisions and find your own path," Andromeda said. "I have never given you cause to doubt my faith in you or my love for you. I have only ever asked one thing of you, Teddy, and that is not to put yourself deliberately in harm's way. Why would you do the only thing I have ever asked you not to do?"
Teddy couldn't seem to find an answer.
"All right then: Why did you lie?"
"You didn't give me any choice!" Teddy burst out. "I told you what I want to do, and you said I couldn't, but what am I supposed to do? This is what I've always wanted, I don't want to do anything else!"
"Nothing else? With top marks and every possible career open to you, you choose that?"
Teddy's hair was turning a fiery red. "You talk about being an Auror like it's something so awful! I don't get it, Mum was an Auror, Harry's an Auror, and Uncle Ron, for Merlin's sake Kingsley was an Auror, practically everybody we know is an Auror, and I'm the only one who's not allowed to? What kind of stupid – unfair –"
"It's not unfair, Teddy, when you're all that I have!"
"All that you have? That's stupid too, because what about Kingsley, and –"
Andromeda found herself standing, taut with rage. "You have no idea, young man. You have no idea what it is to lose a child. If you think anything could ever replace you –"
Teddy stood too, matching her. Taller than her, now. "Okay, fine, yeah, but you have no idea what it's like to – to be like me, to not have parents! Always this thing there, this thing like I have to be careful what I say, be careful not to be too much like them, but not too little like them, and I have live up to them, and they were these perfect heroes, and they sacrificed everything for me so Merlin forbid I waste any of it because they died for me, right?" Teddy was shaking. "When do I ever just get to be me?"
Andromeda stared at him. "I've never asked you to be anything but yourself."
Teddy looked like he was fighting back tears, but his words were abrasive. "I don't know who that is."
"Teddy, you are…yourself. You're kind and brave and loyal to the people around you –"
"I don't care about all that! I just want to be allowed to do what I want to do!"
"Teddy, please –"
"I don't want you telling me what to do!"
"Teddy –"
"No! I want to make my own choice, for once! I'm not my mum and I'm not dumb enough to go and get myself killed!"
Andromeda gasped. She had never once heard Teddy be flippant about his mother's death.
But Teddy was still going. "You're so stuck in the past, it's embarrassing! Nobody else's parents are afraid to let them do things!"
"The fact remains that I am not anybody else's parents," Andromeda answered coldly. "And while you live under this roof you will follow my rules."
"I'm of age," Teddy said. "And I'll try out for Auror training if I want to. You can't stop me!"
Andromeda raised her wand. "Accio Teddy's books." Books emerged from underneath piles of clothes and papers, zooming toward her from all corners of the room and landing in a neat stack in her hands. The one that landed on top, facing up at her, was a small booklet titled "The Pupil's Guide to Becoming an Auror."
"Hey!" Teddy shouted, but Andromeda Banished the books with another flick of her wand. Teddy turned towards her, incensed. "You can't do that! How dare you!"
Andromeda pressed her lips together and took a breath before she spoke. "I think you need some time to think this through. Without your books at hand."
Teddy's chin jutted out defiantly. "Then I'll just go buy the same books again."
"Then I'll have to ground you for a few days, so you can think this over without distraction."
"Well then I'll LEAVE," Teddy shouted. "You can't make me stay!" He actually started toward the door.
"Stop right there," Andromeda said and before she even knew what she was doing, she had her wand pointed at him. It was something she had sworn she would never do.
Teddy stared at her in disbelief and Andromeda slowly lowered her arm.
"And?" he demanded. "What are you going to do to me? Are you going to hex me if I leave? Are you going to try to trap me in here? I can break out of any spell you cast on me," he declared, and Andromeda didn't doubt he could.
She dropped her wand to the floor, sickened with herself. "No, Teddy. I won't try to trap you or force you to do anything. All I can do is beg you not to do this. I'm too old for this, Teddy, too old to have to fear for your life every day. Please, don't make me do that."
The tremor Andromeda couldn't keep out of her voice seemed to scare Teddy more than her raised wand had. "Stop trying to guilt me," he whispered. "Just – stop –"
Trying to collect herself, Andromeda said, "I still think you'd make a wonderful Healer, but if that doesn't appeal to you, there are plenty of other, less dangerous jobs in the Ministry that involve prosecuting those who break laws."
"No!" Teddy said again, his voice harsh.
"I just think –"
"I don't care what you think!"
"I only want what's best for you."
"Ha, that's hilarious. You only want what's best for you."
Andromeda stared at him. "Edward Remus Lupin," she said. "Everything I have ever done has been for you."
"You're an interfering old bat!" he shouted. "You're not even my mother, so where do you get off telling me what to do!"
For an instant, there was nothing but pure, shocked silence between them. Then something inside Andromeda snapped. "Get out," she said.
"I will," Teddy replied, pushing past her. She heard him thundering down the stairs.
Andromeda sank onto Teddy's bed and tried to get air back into her lungs. Had she just – no –
Teddy would be downstairs, she told herself, or banging his way angrily out to the garden. Andromeda pushed herself up from the bed, took a deep breath and walked downstairs.
Teddy wasn't in the house, so she checked the garden. Empty.
She went to the front door and looked out. The street was empty as well. Had he tried to Apparate? He'd only just got his license and if he was unfocused and angry…
Where would Teddy go? To one of his school friends? The Burrow? Harry's?
She closed the door and paced the small entryway. Should she start placing Floo calls? Or should she wait and see if he came back, before she started unnecessarily alarming everyone they knew?
Andromeda allowed her footsteps to lead her into the sitting room, then stopped in front of the fireplace, uncertain. Indecision was unlike her. But then, so was ordering her grandson out of the house.
She rested her hands against the marble mantelpiece. Yes, she should light the fire, in case Teddy tried to call from somewhere and didn't have enough Floo powder at his end. But her wand was still where she had dropped it on the floor of his bedroom upstairs. She would allow herself a moment to collect her thoughts before going up there again.
The photograph directly in front of her on the mantle was her favourite one of herself and Ted. It was a casual shot, the two of them squinting and blinking into the sun on the day of their leaving ceremony from Hogwarts, arms around each other. It was the first time she'd dared to be so open with Ted in public, because she knew then that by the end of the day she'd have broken her ties with her family and they'd be far past needing to hide.
"Ted," she murmured aloud, "Were we ever this difficult?"
She knew the answer to that. Of course they had been.
Andromeda sighed and told the picture, "I guess all we can do hope is he doesn't do anything truly crazy, like getting it into his head to follow tradition and run off with someone his family disapproves of."
Then she heard what she'd said and winced.
"Oh, I didn't mean that, Ted, you know I liked Remus in the end. And if it hadn't been for Remus, we'd never have had Teddy, any of us, so there that is."
Andromeda studied the pattern in the cool marble beneath her fingers and wondered what she should do.
She'd just turned to fetch her wand from upstairs, when a voice behind her said, "Andromeda?"
Andromeda spun and saw Ginny's head in the fireplace. Green flames had sprung to life, lit from Ginny's end. Andromeda dashed back and crouched in front of the fire, heedless of the protesting in her knees.
"Ginny," she said. "Is Teddy with you?"
Ginny nodded, an awkward motion within the flames. "He turned up here in a flap and I told him he could stay for the night, erm, and cool off a bit. I hope that's all right?"
"Yes, of course," Andromeda said, her mind finally allowing itself to picture all the dire scenarios she'd been trying not to think about, Teddy alone and splinched somewhere. She sank carefully to a sitting position in front of the fire.
"Harry's furious with him for what he said to you," Ginny said. "So am I. But we've always wanted Teddy to feel he had a home with us and that he could come here if he ever needed. So it seemed best to let him stay…"
"Yes," Andromeda said again. "Yes, of course."
"Harry will have a talk with him tomorrow," Ginny said. "But you know we're always here for you too, if you need us, right?"
Andromeda caught herself thinking, as she sometimes did, that Ginny was like the grown daughter Andromeda hadn't got much of a chance to have. Andromeda couldn't think how to express her relief beyond, "Thank you, Ginny."
"Any time," Ginny said. "I'll let you know when we're sending him back over, all right?"
"All right," Andromeda said. And because there was really nothing else to say, she said again, "Thank you."
Andromeda stayed seated on the floor a long time after Ginny had pulled her head from the fire and the flames had died down to a small play of red above the embers.
In her mind's eye she saw herself and her mother on that last, inevitable day. I hate you, Andromeda had screamed. I hate you and I always will. Then, before her mother could be the first to say, Get out, Andromeda had shouted, I'm leaving and I'm never coming back.
Sirius had called her a sneaky Slytherin, later, and he was right. Where Sirius had left his parents' house in a hotheaded moment, Andromeda had been putting the pieces in place for months before she dared to finally speak her mind.
She'd been of age. She'd managed to slip most of her share of the family wealth out of their Gringotts vault without anyone noticing. She was finished with school, had an entry-level job lined up at the Ministry and she'd already signed a lease with Ted on a tiny London flat. It had been all over but the shouting.
But thinking about that now didn't do any good. Andromeda pushed herself up from the floor and went to fetch her wand. Then she did what she should have thought of from the first and Flooed Kingsley.
"Andromeda," he said, looking harried, when she stuck her head through the fire into his kitchen. "I'm just now having the no-really-I-do-mean-it-and-it-is-bedtime discussion, can it wait half an hour?" Then he leaned down to look at her more closely and said, "You're upset."
"Yes," she said, "but it can wait half an hour. Or until tomorrow, if you're busy with the children."
He shook his head. "Half an hour. I'll Floo over to you?"
Andromeda nodded. "Thank you."
She paced the house, then made a cup of tea, which she didn't drink.
She Summoned Teddy's books back from where she'd Banished them, but couldn't quite bring herself to put them back in his room, so she stored them in her own room instead.
By the time Kingsley stepped out of the fireplace, Andromeda's nerves were jangling far worse than they had done when Teddy had first slammed out of the house.
"I left the kids a note saying where to find me if they need anything," Kingsley said, starting across the room toward her. "Andromeda, what is it?"
"It's fine," she said. "Nothing's happened; I mean, no one is in danger. But I had a terrible row with Teddy." She hugged her arms to her chest in the middle of the sitting room. "I don't understand myself. I've spent seventeen years terrified of losing him and then I went and told him to leave."
"What? What's happened? Where is he?" She could see Kingsley shifting seamlessly into search mode.
"No, no," she hastened to reassure him. "He's fine. He's at the Potters'. I'm just shocked at myself."
"All right," Kingsley said. "Clearly there's a story here that I'm missing. Come, sit down and fill me in."
Andromeda allowed Kingsley to lead her to the settee, thinking a little wildly of how rarely she used this room, the sitting room, for anything but the Floo. Was it an unconscious protest against her parents, who'd conducted nearly their whole lives from the formality of their parlour? She and Teddy did most of their living in the kitchen or out in the garden. As had she and Ted and Nymphadora, in a previous life.
Kingsley reached out and placed a gentle, steadying hand on her arm. "What happened?"
Andromeda thought back to how this had begun. "I overheard Teddy talking with a friend today," she said. "It turns out he's been lying to me all this year – he still wants to be an Auror."
"Ah," Kingsley said, his expression oddly knowing.
"You knew?"
"No, no. Of course not. But I had a suspicion that, well – you can't stop a person wanting what they want."
"But he lied to me about it."
"And he shouldn't have done," Kingsley agreed. "But did you leave him any other choice?"
Andromeda stared at him. "Any other choice? Of course I did. I've always taught him to tell the truth."
"But at the same time, you made it clear to him that what he wanted and what you were willing to accept were incompatible."
"And that should have been the end of it."
Kingsley sighed. "Andromeda, I don't want to argue with you over this. I'm just suggesting that perhaps you should be the one to give way here."
"And let him go ahead with this, when everything in me screams out against it?"
"I don't know," he said, his gaze troubled. "I really don't know."
"You're right," she said. "He can't help wanting what he wants. But I can't help the fact that this terrifies me."
"You'll figure this out," Kingsley said, and the way he said it made it seem like a promise.
– – – – –
(continue to chapter 12)
