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"You'll both do well for yourselves”. Madame Moreau shook the tea leaves slightly. Her dark eyes flickered between Narcissa and Andromeda. "You'll both do very well, You’ll both lose much, But you’ll lose more", the Seer said, her earrings shaking. Andromeda knew what she was talking about. Druella didn’t. Narcissa, who was only distracted when talking about
herself, missed the point entirely. "I knew I'd get more NEWTs than you." She said smugly. Druella shot her a glare. "What else do you see, Madame?"
Andromeda wouldn't call her parents particularly attentive growing up. Their mother alternated between railing anger at their daughters and freezing silence, but if you caught her at the right time (and the right potions dose), she could communicate a modicum of care or respect.Sometimes she bought Andromeda new earrings for no reason. She took her daughters to a Seer
religiously every year, and planned their lives-down to the color of pinafore she bought the girls before Hogwarts-based on the predictions. Druella was superstitious, and suspicious, but the visits meant she cared. She'd given Andromeda a hug once, after a particularly good reception at a ball the Notts had hosted. Cygnus Black, forever distant, had never tried to have a relationship with any of his children. A "very good" for strong marks on end of year exams and the trembling of
his fingers shutting the study door behind her when he was angry was all Andromeda could- would- think of him.
She knew it was a blessing. They were fed, clothed, as children. Their parents were a far cry from the calibre of parenting that most of the Blacks and Rosiers engaged in. Even when their parents left them at Orion and Walburga’s, when they traveled, she had her sisters. She cursed Druella under her breathe whenever she had to comfort Cissy, or barricade the suite so
Orion would to work a few minutes longer to get in. But she wasn't alone. Cissy wasn't alone. The charms Bella cast around the suite were hard to break, and Cissy, when she stopped hyperventilating, could transfigure the door's wood so that it was impossible to tell it had ever been broken.
It was a blessing, and she knew the Seer was right, and she still threw it all away.
When Nymphadora was born, Andromeda refused to let her out of her sight. Before she was born, Andromeda had gone for maternity care at a Muggle hospital and read the books the midwives gave out over and over, folding pages she wanted to remember carefully. When she had nightmares, she woke up in the middle of the night and read the section on bonding with
your baby over. Had her mother rocked her to sleep? She didn't think so. If Druella had, would she be a better person? If she was a better person would she have left her sisters? Andromeda froze sometimes, taking care of her daughter. She would be gripped by a sudden fear-wouldn't it be better if Ted did this? Ted was a good person? His father had died in the Muggle war before he was born and he wrote letters to him and had dinner on holidays with his widowed mother and helped with the laundry they took in and oh Merlin if she left Bella would find them-
Ted would find her (he quit his backdoored Muggle factory job to write charms theory from the other room because he saw what a terrible parent she was) and take the baby in one arm and-
"You’re not a bad parent”, he would say over and over again,cupping her cheek in his hand. It took her a few years to stop saying it to herself."I left her alone”,Andromeda told him, the first time it happened. "It's been minutes and I'm just-just standing here with half a bottle and my back turned - Ted carefully reminded her he had only counted thirty seconds and gone to make her a calming draught.
When it all was over-after quite golden years in the little Cardiff flat with the creaky kitchen cupboards, after she learned about postpartum anxiety from a Muggle healer and parenting a Metaphoragus from a Wizarding healer in Belgium that they paid through the nose for, after Bella went to prison and Andromeda could try to breathe-after-after she learned exactly how
much Madame Moreau saw her loosing- she was alone with a baby again.
After the war, a Muggle fortune teller opened up shop a few streets over from the rented cottage Andromeda stayed in. Their home-the farmhouse they bought when Nymphadora was twelve-had beein destroyed in a raid. Andromeda walked Teddy to the park in the afternoons, pushed the pram pashed the neon flashing signs that said “Want to know your future? Come inside”. She wondered what the Muggle fortune teller would see in her tea leaves.
Each time she reached the park, even the summer after the war, she felt that familiar pang in her chest. There still had to be rogue Death Eaters. What if one of them found her? What if she got sick at the park, collapsed, and left Teddy alone? Andromeda would count her breaths and verbalize the sensations around her. Ted taught her to do it, when he went back to work in and office when Nymphadora was a toddler.
She had the same worries back then. Winter in Cardiff had been their favorite time of year but she remembered freezing as they left the flat to walk to the harbor to watch the sunset. What would happen if they left the flat? What if someone attacked when they were outside the wards? Ted would touch her shoulder. “You just need to breathe”, he’d say. He taught her to verbalize the scratchy wool jumpers they wrapped Nymphadora in, the crunch of the snow under their boots, the way hot cocoa tastes.
Things were different now, lifetimes later. She was alone with a baby and the sensations she around her were brighter. Prickly grass, Teddy’s bright green eyes, cool wind as the evening arrived. In the winter, after Nymphadora was born, she had thought at least she could barricade a door well enough her family would never attack her daughter. Now she knew she had failed.
Ted had taught her to think carefully when her thoughts ran together in a flight of anxiety. Since he was gone, her memories caught the rapid heartbeat to bubble up again. If she wasn’t careful, her thoughts ran together too, jumping from bad to worse. Except now the worst had happened.
Sometimes Harry came to the park with them. It was strange. He was overjoyed by everything. “I’ve never seen one this small.” he said when they showed Teddy the toddler sized structures on the play park. “I didn’t get to go to playgrounds outside of school.” He would sit Teddy at the top of the smallest slide and then carry him to the bottom, where Andromeda would pretend to catch him. Teddy squealed with joy.
Once they got ice creams after they went to the park. Again, it was Harry’s idea.
“I always wanted to get chocolate ice cream when I was a child”, Harry told her. She laughed softly, wiping Teddy’s chin. He was just learning to use a spoon and was still eating messily. “The Dursleys never let me.” Harry said it so normally, so matter of fact, that the implication almost passed her. Then he followed with “they didn’t give me ice cream at all.” She stared. He shrugged. “It’s in the past”, he said, and reached for the toy Teddy was grasping for.
The next time Andromeda took Teddy to the park, she remembered how she and Bella used to play in the garden. She had loved to run wildly in the garden, tripping over roses and peonies alike. Bella had laughed at her and her mother had been angry when she got dirt on her robes. But she had loved the feeling of of the wind whipping at her hair. She’d loved the feeling of running like she could leap over the hedges that squared her in.
As if he could read her thoughts, Teddy shrieked “Run, Nana”, and stumbled onto the field bordering the play park. She laughed, and ran with him.