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Lettie ([info]osteological) wrote,
@ 2010-10-27 22:14:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
ANGST ANGST ANGST
Andromeda Tonks is sitting with her back against the wooden doorframe of her kitchen. The trim has faded lines running up the length of it from very close to the bottom to a foot or two from the top and the thin strip of wall next to it has dates scribbled next to each little mark (Nymphadora had gotten to be taller than both of her parents were betting, considering the near-toxic amountes of caffeine she'd ingested as a teenager). She drops her head back against the frame with an audible 'thud', then winces.

If it wakes up Nymphadora, she's going to be awfully cross (pregnancy hormones are a bitch). She lets her eyes slide to the mail slot again, slow and lazy, like pretending that she isn't anxious about the post not coming today will make it come faster. She squeezes one eye closed, then the other. Opens one eye, then the other. She pretends this isn't the same thing she's been doing for almost an hour. Before she realizes it, one hand comes to her mouth and she's chewing on a cuticle with a jagged piece of skin, pulling it off with her teeth.

If there's blood, she doesn't notice it, doesn't taste it. She's itching for a cigarette, but damned if she's going to smoke inside the house when she knows that her pregnant daughter is asleep in the next room. The more time she spends thinking about Nymphadora's well-being, the less time she has to think about other things.

It's been thirty seven days, thirteen hours and fourty-nine minutes since Ted left. She had ached to go with him, to protect him from what she knew would be after him ... but this wasn't the family that she had abandoned that first time she had run off with Ted Tonks. This family was loved by her, needed her.

Sitting on the mantle of the Tonks household is thirty seven objects that seem not to have any connection to each other at all. There is a napkin from some dive-bar in the middle-of-nowhere (complete with barbaque sauce), a glass marble, and a half-crushed violet that looked like it should have been better wrapped. There are other things too, things that have been piling up one day at a time since Ted first left.

Mail flutters through the little brass slot in the door and Andromeda is almost ashamed at how quickly she springs on it, fingers shaking uncontrollably. There are three envelopes, and she thumbs through them quickly - they all have addresses and when she opens them, they are all simply parchment. Her breath catches in her throat and she lets the letters drift back to the spotless carpet in front of the door. She clenches her fists and brings them down to the ground quietly (can't wake up Nymphadora, not now), bows forward until her thumbs are pressing into the hollows of her eyes.

For a few days she tells herself that the mail must just be delayed, that Ted must be far off having a reckless adventure.

For a few days more, she pretends that he's had a change of heart and decided to run off with a cheap trollop on vacation from Amsterdam (but she still can't even pretend to hate him, not even a little bit).

It's more than a week before Nymphadora finally, angrily asks what the hell her mother is doing collecting such rubbish on her mantle when she's always hated mess. Too much hiding things has made Andromeda tired, and when she finally tells her daughter what they mean she understands too quickly.

She tries not to be too emotional in front of her daughter. Dora has so many other things to be sad about, to worry about -- and the baby needs to be healthy. Andromeda needs the baby to be healthy -- but this just makes her daughter more upset and in the end, they both cry until nightfall.

The next days aren't any easier for Andromeda, but Remus finally comes to his senses and Dora names the baby after her father. Andromeda loves the boy, but it takes her months to call him by his real name.

Things don't get easier, but Andromeda begins to think that as long as she has her daughter and her family, she might be all right.


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