andromeda black
two weeks before the start of school
Andromeda Black
a beautiful prison, shackled willingly
until wrist bleeds dry will she be free
There was something euphoric of watching the stars bleed into the morning sky, just before the sun made it’s first appearance. When the night was gone, but the day hadn’t begun. It gave Andromeda this false sense of security she could bask in. Like just for this moment in time, nothing and no one could hurt her. Perhaps that is why the Eurasian Scops owl that flies to her window each morning at this exact time sends such a wave of calm over her she doubts herself a Black for a moment. For Black’s are not known for their calm.
She’s soft footed when she stands from her vanity, careful to not wake another soul, despite the silencing charm around her room. She knows Narcissa has a habit of tearing down simpleton spells in order to garner information. And she wasn’t entirely sure her younger sister would stray from doing so just because they were family. Actually, when she thought of it. She’s almost positive that would encourage her even more so. When she reached the grand window and opened it, the owl immediately brushed her hand and entered the room with great familiarity.
“Hello, Pigeon, what have you brought me today?” Her voice mimicked a spingtime’s breeze, soft and careful. As if scared to be too much and not enough all at once. She reached forward to untie the letter, the yellow fabric keeping it there falling to the floor when her greedy little hands got ahold of their newest treasure. She took a treat from her side table and fed it to the aesthetic owl, smiling as he clearly huffed in pleasure.
“I have a letter of my own to send this time, Geo, will you wait while I get it?” She brushed his feathers once more, placing the letter on the windowsill. She could have sworn the clever little thing gave her a nod. She turned to rummage through the grand desk that sat against the far wall, a few paces away from the french doors that lead into the small receiving room just before her bedroom began. Her soft ivory nightgown billowed a bit with the open window.
It took only a moment to secure the letter to the owl with a silk green strap. “Take care of that, Geo. I’m counting on you,” She winked at the owl and smiled.
A harsh knock came to her door and her eyes widened a bit. “If he writes me back, bring it at dusk, wait here and no one will bother you,” shooing the owl and closing the window. She fixed her nightie and made her way to the door, she had to enter the receiving room to do so and as she did she noted the knocking getting louder and far more aggressive. Her father was her immediate thought. Or worse, her aunt Walburga. But when she opened the door with her most docile mask on she was greeted with a more frantic Bellatrix and an exasperated Narcissa.
It took Bellatrix half a second after the door being opened, where she was pushing through and making her way into Andromeda’s room. Instead of immediately following after her, Andy looked to her younger sister. Her eyebrow raised in concern and question, Narcissa’s reply was a singular shake to her head. And it told Andy all she needed to know. She squared her shoulders back before walking into her own bedroom after Bellatrix, who was laying on her bed– kinda. Her feet were still planted on the ground, but her back was flat against the mattress.
“Comfortable?” Andromeda had asked, her voice teasing and yet there was something laced within it, concern perhaps. Bellatrix huffed. “No,” she said, annoyance slipping out but also a bit of fondness.
“Well good, I wouldn’t want this to become a habit and if you found yourself too comfortable I’d have to hex you,” Andromeda was leaning against the french doors, and Narcissa was sat in a rather comfortable beige accent chair made from furs she didn't want to know of. Although the way she was sat, her legs over the armrest and her head laying back so the blood rushed to her head, looked far too uncomfortable for Andromeda to try.
“As if you could catch me, Dromie–Bear” Bellatrix was less annoyed in this reply, “I wouldn’t need to catch you, Bellie–Bee, just figure out your end point and meet you there,” Andromeda laid dramatically beside her big sister. A small huff of laughter escaped each of them as the bed bounced, and Andy closed her eyes basking in the first few moments of daylight pouring through her window.
Bella must have felt the sun too because her head rolled to the side where the large window was located, painted a soft green– olive almost, if it were a twinge darker. Andromeda felt the bed shift with missing weight and when she opened her eyes she was assaulted with the sight of her sister palming a sacred letter.
“What’s this?” Bella teased, not sensing the shift in the air. Andromeda was propped on her elbows, unblinking and surely not breathing. Narcissa immediately was upright, eyes bouncing back and forth from her sisters, calculations being made behind inquisitive eyes. “Nothing,” Andromeda said quickly, too quick. Bellatrix raised a perfectly refined eyebrow, her head tilting to the side and that cruel smirk of hers upturning the edges of her lips.
“Does our little Dromie–Bear have an admirer?” She began to play with the edge of the letter, almost daring Andromeda to stop her. Her finger clipped the letter, ripping it open just a little. A tease, a threat, whatever it was meant to be, Andromeda wasn’t sure. “Bella, please” Her voice was soft, pleading. She hated it. She was no weak link to the Black family. She was no push over, but this was her big sister. Her first best friend and she did not want to fight her.
There was no use, because as she stood, Bellatrix opened the letter.
“Incendia,” the curtains behind Bellatrix went up in flames, “Careful Dromie, wouldn’t want to burst this precious little thing on fire,” Bella said, she flapped the paper in the air as she spoke, mirth and something dangerous in her tone. She waved her wand and casting a non-verbal shield. The flame that touched the curtains remained lit in her shield.
Bellatrix let out an exaggerated cough, “My Dearest, Andy… ah, classic start. The comma is after dearest, Dromie… isn’t that interesting” She cackled, another hex hitting the shield. And then another and another.
“I long for the day in which I can love you out loud,” Bellatrix continued in her best manly posh accent. Which was quite pointless as Andromeda’s letter author had a distinct cockney accent. “It feels as though the days are longer without you, dragging on. I beg for the nighttime skies to appear, to stare at the stars and pretend as though I am looking upon you,” Bellatrix made a show of sighing with her hand on her heart.
Her shield rippled, Andromeda smirked. “Bella! Stop!” she sent another slicing hex at the shield.
“I am counting the days until I see you again, and even more so until the days in which I…” Bellatrix faltered in her reading, her eyes widening and glancing to Andromeda from the letter. Andromeda was not deterred by the way Bellatrix’s resolve crumbled before her. Instead she used the momentary weakness, casting a rather powerful “Bombarda” dissipating the shield in which Bellatrix had all but forgotten and sending the witch flying back into the wall.
Her body landed far too close to the still burning curtains. Narcissa was quick to dispel the fire. And her head snapped to Andromeda. But before either of them said anything, or could do anything, Bellatrix was up.
“You’re leaving us?” Her voice was low, yet calm. There was something terrifying in Bellatrix’s calm. Andromeda was stunned. Her heart pounding in her chest, the guilt and anger all twisting and knotting together to create something unknown, something eager and ugly. She shook her head, her mouth opening and closing but nothing came out. If she didn't know better, shed think Bellatrix was closing her throat with her mind.
“Wait.. what?” Narcissa stepped forward, snatching the letter from Bellatrix. Andromeda could do nothing but watch as her baby sister’s face went from aloof to a nothingness fueled by betrayal. Andromeda knew better than to think Cissa had no reaction to the letter, instead she was heartbroken to realize Narcissa now deemed Andromeda an unsafe viewer of the way her face contorts with emotion when her perfect mask is not in place.
“No. No, you don’t understand–” finally her words caught up with her, falling from her lips in such quick succession shes sure the syllables bonded together. “I–I’m not leaving you,” It’s the way she specifies this that has Narcissa scowling at her. Bellatrix looks feral, eyes wide and sneer leveled at Andromeda. She had never been on the opposite side of her sister’s ire and absentmindedly she realizes where she should feel fear she feels nothing but devastation.
“I love him,” she whispers, her wand dropped to the floor and the desperation for them to understand sinks her knees to the ground. Her eyes do not shed the tears that brim in them, she refuses to allow that. “I love him and he is not worthy of the house Black,” She spits the word out, and doesn’t dare to look up to see the calculating look in Narcissa’s eyes. She has damned herself, she knows. She is making mental check lists of what she can grab and get away with before her Father is made aware of the reason she has left.
Her breathing is quick and moving at the pace of her mind. She doesn’t note the movement of her sisters, not until she feels the rough pull of her arm. “Get. Up,” Bellatrix hisses. Her nails dig into Andromeda, and she gives no fight back. Her two worlds have collided, and she will be burnt up and fall to the ground for it.
Narcissa is stood with an outrageously straight back. “You are not leaving,” She says with such haughty authority Andromeda is almost inclined to agree, but instead she rips her arm from Bellatrix. Andromeda never showed much defiance, not until she met Ted. Not until she fell in love with a man far beneath her and far too good for her and her rotten blood. “I will not marry some pureblood lackey who will never love nor respect me to appease father, nor you” the words are harsher than she means. But she had just told her sisters she was in love. In love enough to forsake their family, money and status and they are rejecting that. Rejecting Ted. Her.
“No. You will not,” Her arm is back into Bella’s grasp and she is being dragged out of her room. She has no idea what is happening, all she knows is that she will protect Ted from their rot. She had dropped her wand in her heartbreak, so her only opportunity to run will be with physical violence. Luckily, Ted had been insistent she learn to defend herself and not be too reliant on her wand and magic.
“You purebloods seem to forget there are other ways of life besides magic, you’ve grown complacent and placated by the ease of life. It will be your downfall,”
It is while she plans her attack that she realizes Narcissa is not with them anymore, and that they are in front of Lord Black’s study. “Bella, please” she pleads for the second time in just that morning. Bellatrix just sneers at her and knocks roughly at the door. She is not the perfect pureblood Andromeda is…was. So she does not wait for the call to enter, she pushes the door open and pushes Andromeda inside.
“Ladies…” There is a confused tint to his tone, but not much else. He is perfectly poised and the sight makes Andromeda want to shiver.
“Dromie here has the perfect candidate for your proposal,” the words startle Andromeda, partly because she hadn’t expected to hear Sirius’ voice from behind her and also because she knows hes speaking of Ted as if he is something of an experiment.
“Does she?” Lord Black asks, hes skeptical, Andromeda can tell. And he should be, considering she has no fucking idea what’s going on.
“She does. A muggleborn hufflepuff who fancies himself in love with her,” Sirius says it so casually that she doesn’t register what it is he’s said until he’s standing besides her. She straightens her back, a sneer to her lips. “Ted will not be harmed,” she is sure she sounds far less intimidating than she intends, but she keeps her stance open enough to move freely and quickly.
“You’re right… he will not be harmed,” Lord Black says, and stands. He is in front of Andromeda in seconds.
“He will be the first muggleborn to take an inheritance potion, of which we will learn which family his magic is derived from,” He lets her ingest that information. They want to make Ted a target. The fanatics will surely see this as an admittance to him stealing magic. She doesn’t get the chance to tell him No, before he begins speaking again.
“He will gain his rights to his family magic. And you will be permitted to see each other in a romantic capacity,” Ah. This is to set up the House Black reformation. Andromeda shakes her head, her hair wild and frantic much like herself.
“It will make him a target for the Death Eaters,” she hisses, she snaps her head to Sirius. Surely he’d see her side of things, but as it happens whatever drew him from the Potters has quelled his more rambunctious tendencies.
“It will,” Lord Black says. “And we will protect him,” She didn’t mean to scoff. But she did.
“If you run from us, if you run to him… You know too much, you will jeopardize all of us. I will not allow it, Andromeda,” He has no humor and lightness to his tone. It is not even a threat, more so he is allowing her to make an informed decision.
And she knows he is right. She will be a liability to her family, her sisters. If someone wanted information on the Black Family, and there are many who would, especially once people take note that there is a completely other side to this war.
“Why? What do you gain from him doing an inheritance test?” She asked, mulling option over option.
“It paves the way for what we will stand on as a platform for our world in this war. Not the abolition of either muggle or wizard traditions, but a collaboration of the two. He will still be a muggleborn, but he will be taught our traditions and embrace them,” She was making a very big decision for Ted. Morgana forgive her.
“He’ll do it,” Her voice shakes with this confirmation and she can feel her cousin and sisters relax at her agreement. She can’t look at them. “Good.” He says and she sees it as the dismissal it is. Narcissa tries to touch her arm as she walks past but she is in no mood. Instead, her shoulder connects with her. They have put her above Ted, put their own selfish desires above her own. They care more of keeping Andromeda than of her happiness.
It grounds her. She is angry and fueled by it. “Dromie,” She hears Narcissa and Bellatrix behind her. She stops abruptly and turns, her curls whipping quick and flutters with golden sparks of magic.
“If something happens to Ted, I will become the Black you desperately want to keep me as,” She says to them with thinly veiled contempt. “You have taken our choices, our lives, our wants and pushed them aside like the selfish entitled brats Father raised you to be,” Her nose scrunched in her anger and she took a step closer to them. Narcissa is good at keeping her mask tight and her emotions concealed, Bellatrix: not so much.
“I will never apologize for keeping you safe, Drome. Never,” and with that Bellatrix walks past her sisters. And before Andromeda can storm off, a dainty little hand grabs hers. For a moment it stalls the anger, and she snaps her head to see Narcissa looking at her with a shred of guilt in her deep set eyes. She says nothing, perhaps she recognizes it as futile and doesn’t wish to further push Andromeda. She squeezes her hand three times. Three for the three of them, for the words I Love You. For comfort Andromeda needs but does not want from them. It makes Andromeda’s anger flare again.
“Fuck” she whispers when her back is laid against her bed again, after storming away from Cissa and leaving her lonely in the hall just before their rooms.
“Misses is ready to take you to shop,” the small elf says before popping away as quickly as she came.
“Fuck,”