Saying Yes chapter 13
Jun. 11th, 2013 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starfishstarSAYING YES chapter 13
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 THIRTEEN
It was not that the rest of the summer was always placid and easy, nor that there was never conflict. The night before Teddy left for Hogwarts, they came perilously close to another row, but managed to head it off with a tacit agreement just not to talk about it.
On Platform 9 ¾ the next morning, though, at the sight of her little boy leaving for his last year of school, Andromeda couldn't help hugging him fiercely. To her surprise, he hugged her back.
After the train's whistle had faded into the distance, Andromeda and Kingsley went for their traditional ice-cream together, both of them quiet that afternoon.
In the sudden emptiness of her home that autumn, Andromeda focused her attention on her book manuscript and had a final draft complete far sooner than she'd anticipated. She and her publisher set the publication date for that winter, and Hermione insisted on taking Andromeda out to lunch to celebrate.
"Look at me, starting a new career," Andromeda laughed. "I'm 62, Hermione!"
"I know," Hermione said earnestly. "But you don't look a day over 61, I swear."
The joke was so unexpected, coming from Hermione, that Andromeda burst out laughing again. "I have you and your friends to thank for keeping me young," she said. "And Teddy, of course. Though I think I also have him to thank for my grey hair."
"Well, I think it's wonderful you're doing something new," said Hermione. "It's…I don't know how to put it exactly, but it just seems like everyone is doing well these days, you know?"
Andromeda did know. When she stopped and looked around herself, she saw her friends happy and busy with their lives and their work, and a country more or less at peace. No, all would never be perfect in the wizarding world. But Andromeda had never thought she'd live to see a world largely untroubled by the tensions that had torn apart her youth, and Dora's too. She wished Ted could have lived to see this, not least because it would have given him a good laugh.
But this was her world now, and Andromeda found she'd made her peace with it.
"Could you imagine growing old together?" Kingsley asked one night in their bed. As soon as the school year had started, they'd slipped easily back into the habit of spending most of their nights together.
Andromeda looked over at him and smiled. "Aren't we old together already?"
Kingsley laughed, that rumbling chuckle she loved so well because it seemed to well up from the deepest, truest part of him. "Oh, no, no," he said. "I'm only just getting started."
"Oh, well, in that case," Andromeda said, smiling back at him, "all right."
The release of her book, "The More Things Stay the Same: Wizarding Culture Through the Centuries," didn't come until after Christmas, but Andromeda still gave a copy as a gift to each of the people who were the biggest influences in her life: one for Kingsley, one for Molly and Arthur, one for Harry and Ginny, one for Hermione and Ron, and of course one for Teddy, although she had to send his by post, in the trusty talons of Kingsley's enormous eagle owl, Royal, who consented to be loaned for the occasion.
For each of the others, Andromeda wrote a personal inscription inside the front cover, but for Teddy she simply signed, "Love always, Gran," beneath the words already printed on the dedication page:
"This book is for my grandson, Teddy Lupin, as is the better world we've tried to build for him and his generation."
Teddy's letters grew increasingly intermittent over the course of the school year, but Andromeda sensed he was simply busy, not angry with her, and let him have his space.
He wrote that he would be staying at Hogwarts over Easter to revise for exams, which was no surprise, but he still hadn't disclosed which N.E.W.T.s he was preparing for, so Andromeda finally wrote and asked.
Teddy's reply, clearly trying to sound casual, confirmed what she had expected. He planned to sit six exams: Defence Against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration, Charms, Potions, Care of Magical Creatures and, Andromeda was surprised to see, History of Magic.
In other words, fully enough to apply for the Auror programme even if he only passed five of the six.
Andromeda wrote back wishing him great success and held herself back from saying anything else.
After dinner at the Burrow one night, Andromeda helped Molly clear away the dishes as Kingsley and Arthur went to start a fire in the living room grate. Molly smiled fondly after them, then took a stack of plates from Andromeda's hands and asked, "When are you going to marry that man, Andromeda?"
It was a rare thing, but Andromeda found herself rendered speechless.
"It's been long enough, hasn't it?" Molly continued. "He's proven he's going to stick around."
"For one thing, he hasn't asked," Andromeda murmured as she followed Molly toward the kitchen, glancing back at Kingsley's retreating back and hoping he wasn't overhearing this conversation.
Molly deposited the dishes in the basin and fetched pudding from the cold cupboard, then said, "You, of all people, I wouldn't expect to need to wait around for him to ask."
Kingsley said nothing when Andromeda returned to the living room, but his eyes sparkled at her mischievously as he stood to take the pudding from her hands and set it on an end table.
When they stepped out the door at the end of the evening to Apparate home, Kingsley murmured in Andromeda's ear, "So all this time, you've been just waiting for me to ask, have you?"
"No, I haven't," she said firmly. "I don't believe love must be validated by marriage. There was a time when I believed that, but not anymore."
"Ah, well, I suppose that answers that question," Kingsley said, leaving Andromeda blinking with surprise as he Disapparated ahead of her into the dark.
_ _ _ _ _
Teddy's correspondence dropped to nothing as he revised for, then sat, his exams.
The day Teddy would be coming home from Hogwarts for the last time, Andromeda woke with such a clear memory of standing in the spring sunshine with Ted on the day of the leaving ceremony, arms around each other and squinting toward a friend's camera, she almost felt she was there.
The Wizengamot wasn't in session that day and Andromeda found she couldn't concentrate on anything else. She ended up puttering around the house, cleaning the kitchen and readying Teddy's room for him.
From time to time she glanced at her watch – the one Ted had given her, later, because she'd thrown her 17th birthday watch at her mother's feet in a fit of pique the day she left home – so knew exactly when Teddy was on the lawn in the sunshine with his friends, listening to a few final words from his professors, and she knew when he waved a temporary goodbye to younger friends such as Alastor and Victoire, then followed the rest of the seventh years to the waiting boats that would ferry them back to Hogsmeade Station.
She thought of Teddy gliding across the lake in an enchanted boat in the sunlight, his whole life in front of him, and she was glad. Terrified, but glad.
When Kingsley came to collect her when it was time to meet the children at the station, she clung to him a moment longer than was really necessary, but he understood. They Apparated to King's Cross together.
Teddy bounded off the train, cheeks flushed, Junior Junior's cage dangling from one hand, and shouted, "Gran!" He ran at her and then, of all things, lifted her straight off her feet in an exuberant embrace.
"Teddy!" she gasped.
"Wait a mo', have to get my trunk!" he yelled, and was already back up the steps of the train, past Victoire Weasley, who was laughing at him good-naturedly.
Andromeda saw Emmeline throw herself into Kingsley's arms, then Alastor came off the train at a sedate pace, trying to look more dignified than his sister. Bill sent Andromeda a smile as Fleur swept first Victoire, then Dominique, into her arms.
Next year, Harry and Ginny will be the ones here, Andromeda thought, almost dizzy. Then a couple years after that, Hermione and Ron. And Percy, and George…
Then Teddy was back, talking a mile a minute, saying, "Steve – that's the older brother of this mate of Stor's – he's in a band and they're giving a concert at the Leaky Cauldron tonight, it's kind of in honour of the school leavers, you know, and it's not like we'll be unsupervised, because Ben's parents are coming – you remember Ben – and I'll Apparate straight home afterward, or if you don't want me to Apparate – it's not that far, though – but if you don't want me to Apparate you can pick me up there after the concert if you have to."
Andromeda hazarded a glance toward Kingsley, who appeared to be at the receiving end of a similar speech from Alastor.
"Teddy –" she'd just begun to say, when Victoire bounded up to them.
"Mum says I can go!" Victoire announced to Teddy, who didn't miss a beat in turning pleading eyes on Andromeda.
"Please, Gran? It starts at eight, it won't even go that late."
"Oh – I –"
Teddy and Victoire both watched her, breath bated.
"Oh, all right."
Teddy whooped.
"But you'll Floo home, Teddy, not Apparate. And you're to be back by midnight precisely, or I will indeed turn up at the Leaky Cauldron to mortify you in front of your friends."
"Thanks, Gran!" Teddy grinned, unfazed by threats of public embarrassment. If Andromeda squinted just the littlest bit, she really could almost believe he was still eleven years old, sweet and excitable. She couldn't help smiling back at him.
"Congratulations, dear," she whispered as she leaned in to give him the briefest of hugs, then straightened again. "Victoire? Can I count on you to keep him from getting into too much trouble?"
Victoire grinned. In looks she was very like her mother, with her blonde hair and striking features, but in her expressions, Victoire was pure Weasley. "Sure thing, Mrs Tonks."
Teddy pulled his watch – Remus' watch – from his robes and checked the time. "Ooh, we've got to hurry," he said. "I want to drop my stuff off at home first, is that all right?"
It seemed Teddy had only been home a few minutes before he was off again, stepping into the fireplace to meet Alastor so the two of them could Floo to the Leaky Cauldron together.
Not a minute later, Kingsley's head appeared in the spot Teddy had just vacated. "Well, good evening," he said with a smile. "Would you like some company over there?"
Andromeda, who'd just been tidying the Floo powder away, looked at him in surprise. "Aren't you staying home with Emmeline?"
"She's at the concert as well."
"In Diagon Alley? She's only fourteen!"
Kingsley raised an eyebrow and seemed to shrug his shoulders, though Andromeda couldn't see them through the fireplace, and she reminded herself that she and Kingsley were not the same kind of parent. "Yes, then,” she said. “Come on through."
It was a lovely, mild evening. Andromeda opened a bottle of wine and they took their glasses out to the patio, where they watched the sun slowly sinking down behind the neighbours' trees. Andromeda remembered watching the sunset together on their holiday in Lithuania and reached over to squeeze Kingsley's hand.
They chatted about this and that as the last rays of light disappeared, then a lull fell between them and that was nice too. Andromeda had never been able to be silent with anyone so well as with Kingsley.
After a while, he turned to her and asked thoughtfully, "Andromeda, shall we get married?"
Andromeda didn't choke on her wine, but it was a near thing. "Is that a proposal?"
"No, it's a question. I'd like to know what you think."
Andromeda thought, and found there was hardly a question at all.
"Yes," she said. "I think we should."
She looked at Kingsley and his eyes twinkled back at her. "Oh? I thought you didn't believe in validating love with marriage?"
"I said it wasn't necessary. I didn't say it couldn't also be very nice."
Kingsley's gaze turned contemplative again. "I agree. It could be very nice."
– – – – –
(continue to chapter 14)
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 THIRTEEN
It was not that the rest of the summer was always placid and easy, nor that there was never conflict. The night before Teddy left for Hogwarts, they came perilously close to another row, but managed to head it off with a tacit agreement just not to talk about it.
On Platform 9 ¾ the next morning, though, at the sight of her little boy leaving for his last year of school, Andromeda couldn't help hugging him fiercely. To her surprise, he hugged her back.
After the train's whistle had faded into the distance, Andromeda and Kingsley went for their traditional ice-cream together, both of them quiet that afternoon.
In the sudden emptiness of her home that autumn, Andromeda focused her attention on her book manuscript and had a final draft complete far sooner than she'd anticipated. She and her publisher set the publication date for that winter, and Hermione insisted on taking Andromeda out to lunch to celebrate.
"Look at me, starting a new career," Andromeda laughed. "I'm 62, Hermione!"
"I know," Hermione said earnestly. "But you don't look a day over 61, I swear."
The joke was so unexpected, coming from Hermione, that Andromeda burst out laughing again. "I have you and your friends to thank for keeping me young," she said. "And Teddy, of course. Though I think I also have him to thank for my grey hair."
"Well, I think it's wonderful you're doing something new," said Hermione. "It's…I don't know how to put it exactly, but it just seems like everyone is doing well these days, you know?"
Andromeda did know. When she stopped and looked around herself, she saw her friends happy and busy with their lives and their work, and a country more or less at peace. No, all would never be perfect in the wizarding world. But Andromeda had never thought she'd live to see a world largely untroubled by the tensions that had torn apart her youth, and Dora's too. She wished Ted could have lived to see this, not least because it would have given him a good laugh.
But this was her world now, and Andromeda found she'd made her peace with it.
"Could you imagine growing old together?" Kingsley asked one night in their bed. As soon as the school year had started, they'd slipped easily back into the habit of spending most of their nights together.
Andromeda looked over at him and smiled. "Aren't we old together already?"
Kingsley laughed, that rumbling chuckle she loved so well because it seemed to well up from the deepest, truest part of him. "Oh, no, no," he said. "I'm only just getting started."
"Oh, well, in that case," Andromeda said, smiling back at him, "all right."
The release of her book, "The More Things Stay the Same: Wizarding Culture Through the Centuries," didn't come until after Christmas, but Andromeda still gave a copy as a gift to each of the people who were the biggest influences in her life: one for Kingsley, one for Molly and Arthur, one for Harry and Ginny, one for Hermione and Ron, and of course one for Teddy, although she had to send his by post, in the trusty talons of Kingsley's enormous eagle owl, Royal, who consented to be loaned for the occasion.
For each of the others, Andromeda wrote a personal inscription inside the front cover, but for Teddy she simply signed, "Love always, Gran," beneath the words already printed on the dedication page:
"This book is for my grandson, Teddy Lupin, as is the better world we've tried to build for him and his generation."
Teddy's letters grew increasingly intermittent over the course of the school year, but Andromeda sensed he was simply busy, not angry with her, and let him have his space.
He wrote that he would be staying at Hogwarts over Easter to revise for exams, which was no surprise, but he still hadn't disclosed which N.E.W.T.s he was preparing for, so Andromeda finally wrote and asked.
Teddy's reply, clearly trying to sound casual, confirmed what she had expected. He planned to sit six exams: Defence Against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration, Charms, Potions, Care of Magical Creatures and, Andromeda was surprised to see, History of Magic.
In other words, fully enough to apply for the Auror programme even if he only passed five of the six.
Andromeda wrote back wishing him great success and held herself back from saying anything else.
After dinner at the Burrow one night, Andromeda helped Molly clear away the dishes as Kingsley and Arthur went to start a fire in the living room grate. Molly smiled fondly after them, then took a stack of plates from Andromeda's hands and asked, "When are you going to marry that man, Andromeda?"
It was a rare thing, but Andromeda found herself rendered speechless.
"It's been long enough, hasn't it?" Molly continued. "He's proven he's going to stick around."
"For one thing, he hasn't asked," Andromeda murmured as she followed Molly toward the kitchen, glancing back at Kingsley's retreating back and hoping he wasn't overhearing this conversation.
Molly deposited the dishes in the basin and fetched pudding from the cold cupboard, then said, "You, of all people, I wouldn't expect to need to wait around for him to ask."
Kingsley said nothing when Andromeda returned to the living room, but his eyes sparkled at her mischievously as he stood to take the pudding from her hands and set it on an end table.
When they stepped out the door at the end of the evening to Apparate home, Kingsley murmured in Andromeda's ear, "So all this time, you've been just waiting for me to ask, have you?"
"No, I haven't," she said firmly. "I don't believe love must be validated by marriage. There was a time when I believed that, but not anymore."
"Ah, well, I suppose that answers that question," Kingsley said, leaving Andromeda blinking with surprise as he Disapparated ahead of her into the dark.
_ _ _ _ _
Teddy's correspondence dropped to nothing as he revised for, then sat, his exams.
The day Teddy would be coming home from Hogwarts for the last time, Andromeda woke with such a clear memory of standing in the spring sunshine with Ted on the day of the leaving ceremony, arms around each other and squinting toward a friend's camera, she almost felt she was there.
The Wizengamot wasn't in session that day and Andromeda found she couldn't concentrate on anything else. She ended up puttering around the house, cleaning the kitchen and readying Teddy's room for him.
From time to time she glanced at her watch – the one Ted had given her, later, because she'd thrown her 17th birthday watch at her mother's feet in a fit of pique the day she left home – so knew exactly when Teddy was on the lawn in the sunshine with his friends, listening to a few final words from his professors, and she knew when he waved a temporary goodbye to younger friends such as Alastor and Victoire, then followed the rest of the seventh years to the waiting boats that would ferry them back to Hogsmeade Station.
She thought of Teddy gliding across the lake in an enchanted boat in the sunlight, his whole life in front of him, and she was glad. Terrified, but glad.
When Kingsley came to collect her when it was time to meet the children at the station, she clung to him a moment longer than was really necessary, but he understood. They Apparated to King's Cross together.
Teddy bounded off the train, cheeks flushed, Junior Junior's cage dangling from one hand, and shouted, "Gran!" He ran at her and then, of all things, lifted her straight off her feet in an exuberant embrace.
"Teddy!" she gasped.
"Wait a mo', have to get my trunk!" he yelled, and was already back up the steps of the train, past Victoire Weasley, who was laughing at him good-naturedly.
Andromeda saw Emmeline throw herself into Kingsley's arms, then Alastor came off the train at a sedate pace, trying to look more dignified than his sister. Bill sent Andromeda a smile as Fleur swept first Victoire, then Dominique, into her arms.
Next year, Harry and Ginny will be the ones here, Andromeda thought, almost dizzy. Then a couple years after that, Hermione and Ron. And Percy, and George…
Then Teddy was back, talking a mile a minute, saying, "Steve – that's the older brother of this mate of Stor's – he's in a band and they're giving a concert at the Leaky Cauldron tonight, it's kind of in honour of the school leavers, you know, and it's not like we'll be unsupervised, because Ben's parents are coming – you remember Ben – and I'll Apparate straight home afterward, or if you don't want me to Apparate – it's not that far, though – but if you don't want me to Apparate you can pick me up there after the concert if you have to."
Andromeda hazarded a glance toward Kingsley, who appeared to be at the receiving end of a similar speech from Alastor.
"Teddy –" she'd just begun to say, when Victoire bounded up to them.
"Mum says I can go!" Victoire announced to Teddy, who didn't miss a beat in turning pleading eyes on Andromeda.
"Please, Gran? It starts at eight, it won't even go that late."
"Oh – I –"
Teddy and Victoire both watched her, breath bated.
"Oh, all right."
Teddy whooped.
"But you'll Floo home, Teddy, not Apparate. And you're to be back by midnight precisely, or I will indeed turn up at the Leaky Cauldron to mortify you in front of your friends."
"Thanks, Gran!" Teddy grinned, unfazed by threats of public embarrassment. If Andromeda squinted just the littlest bit, she really could almost believe he was still eleven years old, sweet and excitable. She couldn't help smiling back at him.
"Congratulations, dear," she whispered as she leaned in to give him the briefest of hugs, then straightened again. "Victoire? Can I count on you to keep him from getting into too much trouble?"
Victoire grinned. In looks she was very like her mother, with her blonde hair and striking features, but in her expressions, Victoire was pure Weasley. "Sure thing, Mrs Tonks."
Teddy pulled his watch – Remus' watch – from his robes and checked the time. "Ooh, we've got to hurry," he said. "I want to drop my stuff off at home first, is that all right?"
It seemed Teddy had only been home a few minutes before he was off again, stepping into the fireplace to meet Alastor so the two of them could Floo to the Leaky Cauldron together.
Not a minute later, Kingsley's head appeared in the spot Teddy had just vacated. "Well, good evening," he said with a smile. "Would you like some company over there?"
Andromeda, who'd just been tidying the Floo powder away, looked at him in surprise. "Aren't you staying home with Emmeline?"
"She's at the concert as well."
"In Diagon Alley? She's only fourteen!"
Kingsley raised an eyebrow and seemed to shrug his shoulders, though Andromeda couldn't see them through the fireplace, and she reminded herself that she and Kingsley were not the same kind of parent. "Yes, then,” she said. “Come on through."
It was a lovely, mild evening. Andromeda opened a bottle of wine and they took their glasses out to the patio, where they watched the sun slowly sinking down behind the neighbours' trees. Andromeda remembered watching the sunset together on their holiday in Lithuania and reached over to squeeze Kingsley's hand.
They chatted about this and that as the last rays of light disappeared, then a lull fell between them and that was nice too. Andromeda had never been able to be silent with anyone so well as with Kingsley.
After a while, he turned to her and asked thoughtfully, "Andromeda, shall we get married?"
Andromeda didn't choke on her wine, but it was a near thing. "Is that a proposal?"
"No, it's a question. I'd like to know what you think."
Andromeda thought, and found there was hardly a question at all.
"Yes," she said. "I think we should."
She looked at Kingsley and his eyes twinkled back at her. "Oh? I thought you didn't believe in validating love with marriage?"
"I said it wasn't necessary. I didn't say it couldn't also be very nice."
Kingsley's gaze turned contemplative again. "I agree. It could be very nice."
– – – – –
(continue to chapter 14)
