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Andromeda Black’s posture could never be described as anything short of perfect, but she leaned back — just a smidge — to peer out one of the windows of the Hogwarts’ library. The spring sunlight reflected off the Black Lake, which was as still as the first time she saw it, before the boats for the first years launched into the water of their own accord.
She had always enjoyed the library, ever since she had first arrived, eleven years old, the memory of a faint whisper of “Ravenclaw” from the Sorting Hat before she sternly informed it “Slytherin! For survival, it must be Slytherin!” Madam Pince’s strict rules and propensity for popping out from behind neighboring shelves ensured that expressions of inter-House rivalry were kept to a minimum. Even the Muggleborn could be assured of a relatively jinx-free experience. Beneath the floating candles she’d been able to work with her fellow Slytherins, but also Ravenclaws, Gryffindors, even Hufflepuffs, all under the cover of Slytherin ambition — who could fault her desire to do well in her studies? She’d seen female cousins from the extended Black family drop out after obtaining a few O.W.L.s, but her parents had no objections to putting three daughters through Hogwarts, particularly if it gave them more time with wealthy Pureblooded young men. And if her career inquiries drifted towards Pureblood establishments that were respectable in her parents’ eyes — but only just — well, who could fault her?
“Is this seat taken?” a familiar voice asked behind her. Andromeda pushed her black curls out of her face and glanced over her shoulder.
“No, it’s empty,” she said. Her voice wasn’t cold, exactly, but it wasn’t inviting either.
“Excellent.” Ted Tonks said, sliding into the chair next to her, his tie ever so slightly askew under his cheerful face. “Madam Pince seems occupied with your cousins, I don’t think she’ll pay us much mind.”
“Which ones?” Andromeda asked sharply, the first hint of feeling Ted had gotten out of the whole exchange. For their first few years at Hogwarts, Ted barely noticed Andromeda — and when he did, he thought her unfeeling and a touch haughty. A lucky Herbology pairing and her quick thinking fourth year had saved him from a Venomous Tentacula bite, and he soon discovered she had a quiet sense of humor hidden away.
“The little Gryffindors, Sirius and the Potter boy. Sounds like they had a bit of chocolate or something, I’m not sure. They were in the Quidditch section.”
Andromeda sniffed. “James is hardly a cousin, Mother and Father don’t really socialize with the Potters.” She had caught Sirius in one of the empty rooms at Grimmauld Place the summer prior and told him about the Sorting Hat, how one could insist on Slytherin, guessing (correctly) that her favorite cousin was also the most likely to hear something whispers of other houses from the tattered hat. He’d ended up in Gryffindor despite their conversation — Andromeda suspected he hadn’t even tried. She envied him a bit and from what little she saw of him he seemed happy enough. Perhaps his name was showing up on detention reports a little too often, and Cissy had complained a bit on their walks about the grounds, but he had always been a spirited child. He had once tarnished an entire cabinet of family silver in a fit of accidental magic. Andromeda had caught him trying to do it again on purpose the afternoon of his tenth birthday party, the hem of his stuffy dress robes slightly muddy.
“Yes, yes, you’re all inbred blood purists,” Ted said, waving a hand as he pulled some notes out of his bag.
“And what is your plan if Narcissa comes in?”
“Oh, don’t worry, we’ve got an Ancient Runes project — don’t look so scared, you haven’t forgotten homework, I’m only making it up! What your sister doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
“It’s a good thing Bellatrix is gone,” Andromeda said, dropping her voice back to a whisper. The eldest daughter of Cygnus and Druella Black had left Hogwarts two years prior, much to Andromeda’s relief. Narcissa could still carry tales, and there were a few Rosier and extended Crabbe cousins about, but Sirius’s sorting into Gryffindor and subsequent friendship with James Potter was taking up most of the family's vexation. Andromeda, for the time being, was overlooked. She didn’t know what to make of James Potter. She was fairly certain his parents hadn’t been on the list of invitations for her seventeenth birthday ball, for all that Great Aunt Dorea had married a Potter.
“Have you given more thought to the Easter holidays?” Ted asked.
“Ted…I just don’t know how I could manage it. Mother and Aunt Walburga will be on the platform, Narcissa will know I haven’t really put my name down to stay. They’re all busy worrying after Sirius, but they’d notice if I wasn’t at home or at the castle.”
“What about Slughorn? Sneaking out?”
“Sneaking out how? Apparition won’t work, your parents don’t have a Floo connection and anyways someone would notice.” Andromeda’s curls fell back across her face as she waved her hands. “Don’t sigh, I’m not trying to be difficult!”
“I know, I know,” Ted said, reaching out as if to grasp her hand but pulling back at the last minute. “I just wish you could come. I want you to meet them. My parents, my sisters, they’d love to meet you.”
“I know.” Andromeda’s whisper was barely audible. “I want to meet them too.”
“Do you really?” Ted asked with a small smile.
“I do, I do, you know that, right?”
“I know that now,” he said with a slightly self-deprecating smile. In truth, Ted hadn’t been sure. His knowledge of pureblood wizarding society came entirely from Andromeda, but it was obvious how very different it was from his own. They had bonded once over being caught between two sisters — one elder, one younger — but that was where the similarities seemed to end. Ted’s family rarely came to London, he’d maybe been twice before his first trip to Diagon Alley, while Andromeda’s family had a home in Camden, well hidden from the Muggles but hosting a full calendar of social events for those in the Black’s circle. Ted had had a typical country childhood before receiving a visit from Professor McGonagall the summer after he turned eleven. He’d attended the village primary school and spent summers and afternoons tramping about local fields and ponds. Andromeda had shared a governess with her sisters who taught them wizarding history and French alongside reading and maths.
“Will they mind?” Andromeda asked urgently, her voice turning to the tone Ted recognized as the one she used whenever they discussed their post-Hogwarts plans. Ted had never dreamed of studying magic, never dreamed of falling in love with a pureblooded Slytherin from one of the oldest magical families in the country, but he’d also never dreamed of that same Slytherin interrupting one of their, ahem, stolen moments to demand his intentions, his plans. For Andromeda planned everything, and it was apparent to her (and made apparent to Ted) that maidenly blushes and romantic obfuscation could have no place if they intended to continue. “Will they mind that they haven’t met me before I come?”
“No, I don’t think they will. I’ll explain it to Mum, if that’s alright with you, they’ll be ready. I haven’t told them about all of it, not the professors or the disappearances — or the disappearance of that last professor — but they know some. They know there are problems. They were in a war, they’ll understand, I think.” Ted tried to sound reassuring. Many would say he was crazy — a blood purist ascendancy (“Like they weren’t already running things!” Ted’s halfblood roommate Patrick once said over a stolen glass of firewhiskey) and he was courting a Black daughter. Courting danger. But Ted knew Andromeda was giving up more than he would. He was giving up an ever-shrinking measure of safety and anonymity, but she was giving up family. Out of the corner of his eye, Ted saw Narcissa Black walk into the library and, by her posture, he knew Andromeda had spotted her as well.
“They’ll love you,” he said quietly as he opened an Ancient Runes text.
“So what about this girl, I hear?” Ted first heard, rather than saw, his mother come around the corner into the sitting room. She was carrying the rose spray pattern tea set on a dainty tray. Dorothea Tonks had never been a subtle woman. Despite standing barely to Ted’s shoulder, with a graying blonde knot at the back of her head, she had a presence — perhaps from the many Women’s Institute or Mothers’ Union meetings shepherded by her firm hand.
“Da told you?”
“No,” Dorothea said, pouring tea as she nodded to a chair closer to her own. “I overheard Ellen and Isobel.”
Ted rolled his eyes. “Ellen must’ve been awake on the train home, I thought she was sleeping.”
“You wanted her to visit?”
Ted gripped the dainty saucer. “Yes, I hoped she might be able to come round over the holiday, but she’s stayed at school to study.”
“What’s her name?” Dorothea asked. She’d neither embraced nor spurned her son’s magic. Ted’s father took him on the train to Diagon Alley and King’s Cross, and even after Ted’s seventeenth birthday she had no interest in magic doing the washing up or the ironing. But she followed Ted’s progress in school, his friends, and replied to all his letters by way of owls.
“Andromeda Black.”
“Unusual name — is she from a family of wizards then?”
“Yes, her whole family is magical,” Ted replied, taking a sip of tea to buy a moment of time. His parents were not unaware of the blood prejudice of the magical world, but as Ted got older and comments from ignorance gave way to those of malice, he’d learned not to tell his parents all of what went on in the magical world. Not about how the previous three Defense Against the Dark Arts professors had left after only a year — under somewhat mysterious circumstances each time — or how Andromeda had heard Bellatrix talking excitedly about a…patron…of her fiancé’s who promised to purify the magical world. No, Ted did not tell his father, veteran of the War, or his mother, who had gone straight from the school room to the farm as part of the Land Army, about talks of “purification.”
“Have you met any of them?”
“Some,” Ted replied, “Her elder sister, Bellatrix, was at school with us. Narcissa, her other sister, is a fifth year. She’s got some other cousins but honestly there’s so many of them I have trouble keeping up.”
“What about her parents?”
“I haven’t met them, no.” Ted watched his mother as she surveyed him over her teacup. He’d never quite been able to gauge what his parents thought about Hogwarts, magic, and the wizarding world. His mother had knitted him a scarf in his house colors for that first Christmas. But now he shifted slightly in his seat.
“Oh, ought we invite them over?”
“No,” Ted said quietly, “No, Mum, we shouldn’t.” Dorothea was silent. Ted’s saucer shook slightly as he put it back on the tray.
“Andromeda and I are getting married — please don’t interrupt,” he said, seeing that she was about to speak, “Andromeda and I are getting married, and she’d like to come here immediately after school lets out. Right away, you see, Da wouldn’t pick me up at King’s Cross. I’d like her to come here. Andromeda is a pureblood and her family are blood purists. They believe in separation from Muggles and that the Muggleborn, like me, are inferior. They don’t know we’re in love, I’m not sure her parents even know my name. Once they know about us, they likely won’t speak to her ever again. She’ll be cast out — one of her aunts is particularly vehement.”
Dorothea was silent. Ted looked at his mother, but her outward expression was calm. Finally, she spoke. “I see. And Andromeda, she wishes to come here?”
“Yes,” Ted said quickly, “She would like to meet you all, and also she will have almost no money. She cannot afford to go anywhere else. She has some jewels but they can only be sold in the wizarding world and we’re not sure anywhere will take them without her parents’ permission — or at all, once the news breaks. She gets an allowance and they can’t take what they’ve given her back, but she’ll be cut off going forwards.”
“Goodness, the newspapers! Is she that important?”
“She’s not got a title or anything like that, they don’t have those in magical Britain,” Ted reassured his mother, “But yes, I suppose in a way, to the newspapers, it would be a bit like the daughter of a peer running off. It’s not likely she’d travel to Diagon Alley for a while.”
“I see. And your father, have you spoken to him about this?”
“No, not yet.”
Dorothea sighed. “I don’t like it Ted. You’re eighteen, I can’t stop you, but it’s hard marrying without family support. Can she do it? Can you? It’s a world of heartbreak you’re courting if she can or if she can’t.”
“I know,” Ted said, “But it’s the only way.”
“Has she tried? Has she talked to them? They could see reason, she’s their daughter.” Ted looked away, out the window and across the field towards a copse of trees at the border of a neighboring farm.
“It wouldn’t be safe to try,” he said finally, “There’s a man — his name isn’t important right now, but he’s convincing witches and wizards like Andromeda’s family that the time has come to rid magical society of people like me. It’s getting violent. Andromeda’s parents haven’t joined him, but they agree with a lot of what he’s saying, and we think her sister’s fiancé is one of his followers. We don’t want to give them any warning. It must be fast, and so this is how it must be.”
“I see,” his mother said heavily. Her cup and saucer were on the tray now too, and she rested her forehead in her hands. The quiet forcefulness Ted was used to seemed to have gone out of her. “Ted, you know I love you,” she began. His heart sank. “I have, and I always will. You’re grown now, and I won’t pretend it wasn’t a shock when that professor came. Magic! I didn’t know what to make of it. But clearly it was best that you go to Hogwarts, it did explain some things, but you were never as flashy as a child as some of those leaflets described. Over the years, though, I’ve seen what magic enables you to do — enables all of you to do, it’s not something we can defend against.” She paused, then forced the words out. “Ted, can they follow you here? With Andromeda?”
“No,” Ted said firmly, “We’ll Apparate — disappear from Hogsmeade and reappear here, right in the house. It’s not considered polite, Andromeda will be terribly embarrassed, but it’s the safest option. They can’t follow Apparition, and they can’t track her. Andromeda’s smart, Mum, smarter than me. She’ll charm a letter to be sent on by owl. They won’t be able to track that either. I can put up defenses around the house. My roommate, Patrick, his brother is a few years older, their mother is a Muggle. He can come round and add some protections as well. Andromeda knows plenty. We’ll protect you, but there’s no reason to worry. Andromeda loves to plan.”
Dorothea let out the breath she had been holding. “What will you do next then, for the wedding?”
“We can’t get married at the parish here, Andromeda doesn’t have any Muggle identification. There’s a way to get some, from our Ministry, but we’d have to give more information than we want on record. The registrar’s office won’t work either, for the same reason. Wizards don’t have registry marriages, but there’s a sympathetic parish in Godric’s Hollow. The curate is a Squib. You’ll be able to come, but there won’t be a lot of fuss.”
“How will they do the banns?” Dorothea asked.
Ted shook his head, “No need, it’ll be by special license — we’re not the first couple to have this problem. I know,” he said, seeing his mother’s wry smile, “It’s like an Austen story. But the Blacks won’t be able to do anything once we’re married.” He heard the front door open and the muffled sound of Ellen’s bright voice carried down the hall. “Try not to worry too much, Mum,” he said, patting her hand, “She’s a wonderful woman.”
“Tuesday won’t do, Mrs. Wilson should be coming home from hospital then, I’ll be popping round to check on her, poor dear is so —” CRACK , CRASH . Dorothea Tonks dropped the tea cup she was holding straight onto the hearth, where it shattered. Whirling about, she saw her son standing in the middle of the room with a young woman on his arm. They hadn’t been there a moment prior. She had curly brown hair and a gently pointed chin and stood just a few inches shorter than Ted. It seemed the trend of large, feathered curls so prominent among her daughter’s friends had not reached the wizarding world, but her clothes looked as if they came out of a picture book.
“Oh dear,” she said, putting a hand to her mouth and reaching a hand into her old-fashioned cloak. Dorothea took a slight, involuntary step back.
“Mum,” Ted said, his voice low and reassuring, “Mum, Isobel, this is my fiancée, Andromeda Black.”
Andromeda let go of Ted’s forearm and stepped forward, hand outstretched. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she said, her accent immediately marking her as from a wealthy area of London.
Dorothea collected herself and shook Andromeda’s uncalloused hand. “Hello, welcome to our home. Ted told me you’d be arriving suddenly this morning, warned me not to have anyone about, but of course it’s a bit of a shock. I haven’t ever seen him Apparate before. Isobel,” she said, turning to her daughter, “Go and get the broom — shame about the teacup.”
“Oh, don’t worry Mum,” Ted said, pulling out his wand, “ Reparo .” The teacup reformed itself neatly on the floor and, with another swoosh of Ted’s wand, settled on a nearby table. Dorothea let out a small breath through her nose.
“That’s handy,” Isobel said brightly, “Can it do dresses? One of my frocks got fearful moth-eaten over the winter packed away in the attic but I wanted to wear it to a dance this weekend. Hello, Andromeda — Ted, she hasn’t got a ring, what sort of proposal did you make? For shame!” Dorothea thought she saw a bit of a blush color Andromeda’s cheeks, the hint of a nervous glance towards Ted, who had begun to look impossibly grown up the moment he uttered the words “fiancée” in his introduction, but it was gone in the next minute, and Andromeda looked as cool and composed as any earl’s daughter or new viscountess Dorothea had seen in the newspaper.
“Isobel, hush,” she said, “Have you eaten? You must be hungry. Where are your trunks?”
“Here, Mum,” Ted said, patting his pocket, “I shrunk them so we could apparate. I can undo the spell once Andromeda is settled.”
“Right, well then, Andromeda you’ll be sharing with Isobel and Ellen. Isobel will be taking the trundle so you can have her bed. Isobel,” she said, turning to her daughter, “Show Andromeda to your room so she can have her trunk back.”
“Won’t it interfere?” Andromeda asked Ted, her voice pitched a little low.
“No, no it’s fine,” Ted said reassuringly, before speaking normally, “Magic interferes with electricity in large quantities, but that’s mostly enduring charms and enchantments and regular spell work. We can’t spell the moths away from the attic, but I can repair a teacup or unshrink a trunk without bothering anything.”
Dorothea nodded, “Well, that’ll do then. Go on Isobel. I’ll get some food on the table.” Dorothea watched as Ted and Andromeda followed her youngest daughter up the stairs, then turned towards the kitchen.
Standing at the countertop fixing some tea sandwiches to tide them over, Dorothea tried to think about the first glimpses she’d had of her future daughter-in-law, but mostly her thoughts strayed to Ted. Her son had never been subtle, even as a young child. He was cheerful and clannish, and when he’d come home from Diagon Alley with a copy of Hogwarts: A History to show her, she’d read about the houses with interest. He’d be a Hufflepuff, she’d guessed, and she’d be right. When he told her about his engagement, her initial instinct had been to scold Ted for proposing without speaking to the girl’s – woman’s – father, then to worry about her own daughters’ safety once Ted had told her about the troubles in the magical world. She should have known her protective son would have thought of her worries. Still, he seemed to show a softer side of protectiveness towards Andromeda than he had ever shown his sisters. It was only natural, she supposed, as she rinsed some fruit and placed it next to the sandwiches.
“Wotcher, Ma!” Ellen called through the kitchen door as she opened it, swinging a basket of eggs in one hand and a crumbled yellow raincoat in another.
“Ted’s home!” Dorothea replied by way of greeting.
“Oh, has he brought the girl then?”
“Yes, Andromeda, they’re upstairs in your room getting settled. Go and check on them, I’ve got some sandwiches for them. Wait, leave the eggs!” Dorothea called, for Ellen had begun to bound towards the stairs with both basket and coat.
A few minutes later, the four teenagers — teenagers, Dorothea thought with a small sigh, Ted was only 18, Andromeda probably the same — entered the kitchen. Ellen and Isobel appeared to be doing most of the talking, filling Ted in on all he had missed since Easter (“The ewes have had 3 lambs!” “Billy Kentwhistle set off firecrackers down in the village!”).
“Andromeda, may I take your cloak?” Dorothea asked, interrupting her daughters.
“Yes please,” Andromeda replied, undoing the silver clasp and handing it over to Dorothea, removing a slender stick of wood — a wand, Dorothea surmised, for it looked similar to Ted’s — from an inner pocket.
“Is that a wand?” Ellen asked, voicing Dorothea’s question.
“Yes,” Andromeda said, “It’s cypress and dragon heartstring.”
“How do you store it?” Isobel asked, “It seems awfully long and inconvenient?”
“It depends,” Andromeda said, “Most of my clothing has pockets sewn in, like that cloak and this dress.” Andromeda slipped the wand into an almost-invisible pocket at her waist.
“We almost never see Ted’s wand,” Ellen said blithely, “He told us he couldn’t do magic at home until he was seventeen, but even last summer he didn’t have much to show us.”
“I told you Ellen,” Ted said with a laugh, sharing a private grin with Andromeda, “It’s hard to do magic in an all-Muggle place, don’t want to get caught.”
Dorothea carried the food to the table as the other four settled into chairs. “How was your journey?”
“Quick,” Ted replied, “It’s really just disappearing from one place and reappearing in another. Bit unpleasant, but not much to it.”
Dorothea held back from asking about Andromeda’s family or the letter Ted told her she’d have sent, not sure how much he wanted his sisters to know (or how much she wanted Isobel developing flights of fancy about secret engagements and runaway brides). Instead, she asked, “Where did you grow up, Andromeda? Do you have any siblings?”
“I’ve always lived in London,” Andromeda said, “My parents have a house there, not far from my father’s sister and her husband. I have two sisters. Bellatrix is the elder and Narcissa the younger. I’m the middle sister.”
“Oh, London!” Ellen said, “Have you been to the V & A? Or the West End?” Andromeda looked at Ted in confusion.
“A Muggle museum and a theater district,” he explained.
“Oh, no,” Andromeda said, “Wizarding London keeps fairly separate from the Muggle world. I’ve walked through a few of the parks, but it’s hard to be inconspicuous.”
“What do you have in Wizarding London?” Isobel asked curiously.
“Not much, really, at least in comparison to what Ted has told me about the Muggle side. There’s Diagon Alley, which has Gringotts Bank and the shops. There’s a theater in London, but we always took the Floo network or a Portkey.”
“Two methods of magical transport,” Ted chimed in.
They continued chatting for another half-hour, Dorothea mostly listening, Andromeda patiently answering the girls’ kind-hearted interrogation. She didn’t give away much, that Andromeda, Dorothea thought later as she dusted the sitting room, the teenagers having gone for a walk into the village after Ellen lent Andromeda some Muggle clothing. She’d learned a bit more about the wizarding world, what with Andromeda having grown up in it, but she seemed reserved. Dorothea wondered if that was common to all witches or just Andromeda’s temperament. Still, she seemed polite and level-headed. Dorothea hadn’t heard a hint of a plan from either her son or his fiancée as to how they’d be supporting themselves after the wedding — or even a timeline upon which this marriage was supposed to take place — and resolved to get her husband to speak to Ted before the week was out.
The telephone rang from the hall, and Dorothea let it go for a ring or two before she remembered that Ellen or Isobel would not be running down the stairs to answer it.
“Tonks residence,” she said, picking up before the final ring.”
“Dorothea, is that you? Mary just came in from speaking with your children and she said there was a girl with Ted — his fiancée! Fancy that, is your son getting married? Awfully young.” Dorothea held back a sigh — it was Rachel Moore, the town busybody (and talented quiltmaker and housekeeper). “I know many did it after the war,” Rachel continued on, “But is he even eighteen yet?”
“Yes, he’s been eighteen a few months now,” Dorothea said, “I’ve really got —” but Rachel carried on.
“Well, fancy that now, eighteen already! The girl had an awful odd name Mary said, something astronomical or floral. Well now but Mary said she seemed sweet if a bit quiet. Still, you know Winifred Douglas, she married at eighteen because” here Rachel’s voice dropped “she was in the family way, you know, but I told Mary that your Ted was likely too respectable for that.”
Dorothea’s heart dropped. Another thing for Ted’s father to discuss with him. “No, nothing like that,” she said, trying to keep her voice from sounding high and nervous, “They met at school.”
“Well, I’m sure you all know best,” Rachel continued in a tone that made clear Dorothea and John Tonks probably did not know best, but thankfully switched to other topics and Dorothea was able to escape from the phone after just a few minutes.
The sun had reached high noon and still no signs of the children’s return. Dorothea puttered about the house, tidying somewhat aimlessly, and thinking of what little she knew about her new daughter-in-law or indeed the whole world that Ted now inhabited. What did wizards do for work? Where did they live? Where did they shop, was it only in London? Dorothea had never considered whether they might have theatre or parties or museums or such things. Were there wizarding farms? She glanced out the back window at the neighboring fields, wondering if any of her fellow farmers were wizards in disguise.
Andromeda, meanwhile, was taking in all the sights and sounds of a small Muggle village, while also trying to keep track of Ted’s sisters’ conversation. They had met a few neighbors already — they seemed kind, but Andromeda felt awkward and cold, anxious about seeming unusual. She was clearly a bit of an oddity as an outsider, but Ted was friendly and comfortable, as he almost always was.
“How are you finding it?” he asked her in a quiet moment, when Ellen and Isobel had gone down a small path in search of flowers for their mother.
“It’s lovely,” Andromeda replied.
“A bit overwhelming?”
“Yes,” she said with a laugh, “A bit. It’s a good thing you live in a small village.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Ted slipped a hand into hers. “In a city like Manchester or Liverpool we might be a bit more innocuous. Here everyone knows everyone else, it’s hard to fly under the radar. Are you missing your family?”
“Yes,” she admitted, “Not that I’d be with them yet, we’d still be on the train. It’s all new, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Ted said, looking around and stealing a kiss, “A whole new adventure.”