Post by ANDROMEDA NEREID TONKS on Oct 13, 2014 8:59:59 GMT -6
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Born Andromeda Nereid Black, the middle Black sister was not quite the darling babe that her sisters were. She was a fussy baby, and a petulant toddler. Born before her was Bellatrix - and while the two of them certainly shared coloring and other physical attributes, that was where the similarities ended. In the years before Narcissa was born, Andromeda and Bellatrix did grow close. They were different, but… well. They were still sisters. When Narcissa was born, blonde and porcelain as a doll, it simply completed a trinity. They went everywhere together, did everything together. They were each different, but the importance always had lain more in the complementary nature of their personalities: where there was darkness and a hard mean streak in Bellatrix, there was too Narcissa's sweetness and Andromeda's kinder heart. And, oh, on some things they were always similar. Of course, they each had mastered the frosty stare by the time their eldest sister had left for Hogwarts. They had always played so well together - making up games and stories with which to occupy themselves. They talked wistfully of their futures - already set in stone - they each would marry the man who Father and Mother would present them with, they would make their own families. They would be brilliant, and wonderful.
It was all that Andromeda had ever known; while she knew that not everyone had that kind of childhood - left mostly alone by her parents, with her sisters as her best friends, her mind moulded to the ideals that her family had always held to the highest regards - she couldn't imagine it any other way. She'd heard, from the things that her parents did tell her about the half-bloods and Muggles and Mudbloods, that the non-pureblooded people of the world had quite different lives. Some were even poor. But she couldn't envision that life, she couldn't see her own life, even, going any other way. How could she have? She had never even met anyone remotely like that.
As a pureblood, an open mind is a terrible thing to develop. At the tender age of eleven, Andromeda boarded the Hogwarts Express to join her sister at school. Her excitement could not be contained. At Hogwarts, there could be so much more, she thought. Oh, she would certainly miss Narcissa through the months at school - but she promised to write often, and so had Cissa. And her eyes were so bright with all the possibilities! Magic. She'd learned a handful of it at home, but never really been able to practice... and potions! Oh, she loved the idea of potions. There was just so much to learn - and so many people. As she had followed dutifully behind Bellatrix (almost like a puppy, following a trusted friend) through the train, she had seen so, so many people. Those her age, and older. Bella looked friendlily at some faces, and glowered at others. Relationships, she thought, so many connections. While the sisters had had, well, "play dates" of a sort with many of the other pureblooded children of an age with them, they hadn't had much opportunity to really mingle amongst a crowd of this size. Andromeda, innocent and wide-eyed, wondered about their stories, their lives. How did they grow up?
She forgot to ponder about their blood.
It was a lesson quickly remembered. Andromeda had been the third new student sorted by the Sorting Hat this year - Blacks were always top of the line. Even if it was alphabetical. The Hat took in her wonder, her inquisitive nature, that thirst for knowledge and whispered knowingly into her mind about it all. Her expression never changed - oh, her upbringing had been too good for that - but inside, she had frozen. No. No! Her mind all but screamed. I am Slytherin. My family is Slytherin. That is my legacy and I belong there! Frantic, she pushed thoughts to the forefront of her mind. Thoughts of disdain and thoughts of how cunning she could be when she put her mind to it. Again, there was the knowing chuckle. The Hat did not deign to whisper to her again, to tut at her thoughts. Instead, it just shouted her new home out to the hall. SLYTHERIN. She stepped up from the stool, handing the professor her ratty old hat back, and tossed her hair over her shoulder. She had not been born for possibilities, she remembered. She smirked. She had been born for this.
Her next several years at Hogwarts were perfect. Andromeda was a stellar student: she never did quite lose the hunger for knowledge that had once given the Sorting Hat pause. She excelled most at potions and charms. She had a fair share of friends within her own house, and a handful in Ravenclaw as well - mostly other purebloods with whom she shared study sessions and other common academic interests. In her fourth year, she joined the house Quidditch team, first as a reserve Chaser - and then she stepped up into a vacated slot the following year. There weren't terribly many girls on the Quidditch teams, but she was good at it. Her parents didn't exactly care for it - but they didn't stop her, either. They just... kept a close eye. But she was good, even they could see that. She had always loved to fly, and she was a nimble player. Slighter than many of the other players, Bludgers did not find her quite so easily, and honestly? The entire thing gave her the most incredible rush.
It was on the Quidditch pitch that she had met Ted Tonks. Gryffindor team. She - well. She didn't hate him. Per se. She had a healthy amount of disdain for him, as she did all Mudbloods. She also held a fair amount of disdain for him as a Gryffindor. And as an opponent: an obstacle to overcome on the pitch. But he got under her skin. To this day, she can't quite remember what had possessed her. It had started out as it often did - they didn't get along, so they growled and barked at each other, in their ways. Snark and sass, a thin curl of heat poised under glassy sheen of ice. It was this time, though, that things got a bit steamy. They didn't walk away, and only got closer and then--next thing Andromeda knew, she was in a bloody broom closet, with two pairs of lips fighting for control.
It was never happening again. It could never happen again. He was bloody Ted Tonks, that stupid goofy Gryffindor with the tendency for destruction. He was just the Keeper for the opposing team, just an obstacle for her to overcome during a match on the pitch. Otherwise, he was nothing. Nothing. So, obviously, the very next week when she was coming to work on some solo practice on the pitch and he was the last to leave his team practice - they ended up in the locker room.
She was sixteen. It happened. She told herself, alright. So it was happening. So what? Nothing would ever come of it. It's just to- let off steam. So be it. Fine. It wasn't going to bother her. Whatever. Her sixth year progressed - she studied, she played Quidditch, she snogged Ted Tonks in secret. She found her balance. Her seventh year was the same - only... more. The stress levels had hitched up: Quidditch was more intense, and there were NEWTs coming up, and the thing with Ted seemed to be building wildly towards some sort of peak, some sort of thing that was bigger than she really wanted to think about - and of course, on top of all of that, the summer before her seventh year, she had met her future husband. He was nice, she remembered thinking. He seemed like a good person, more or less. Mildly attractive. But - no crackle. No heat. No... zing. She had found herself comparing him to Ted, in many ways, and hating herself for it.
That September was when she stopped snarling the word "never" at Ted Tonks. Instead, it was a nervous, tenuous "later." Christmas holidays came - she went home. There were holiday parties, and she drank eggnog and kissed her betrothed under some mistletoe and found herself lying in bed on Christmas eve wishing for a certain sandy-haired boy to grin at her in that way he had. Even as the vision had floated in her mind, she had raged against it. But there it was nonetheless. When she returned to school, she found herself saying things to Ted Tonks that she didn't know what she meant. "After school is out," she told him. Spring was coming, then. You could almost feel the greenery beneath all the melting snow - and that spring had just felt full of promises. She didn't strictly tell Ted about her betrothal. She wondered if he'd ever heard of it. Things just got more and more intense with them, and while they bickered constantly - about each other, about the secrets, about everything they could possibly fight about - they couldn't seem to get enough of each other, either.
She took her NEWTs and felt good about the exams - not great, but good. At least the ones that counted, she thought. She had decided in fifth year that she was going to aim for a Healer career path - she had a knack for the necessary skills, and more... she appreciated the art of it. As time had gone on, and the world had begun to go to shit - for both sides of the brewing war - she knew that she could help save people who would otherwise die. And that was good. She had told her parents of it last summer and their response had been as expected "that's nice, dear, you'll need a hobby." She could never really pinpoint when it was that she had decided she didn't want to just be a wife, that her view of her own future had so drastically changed from the one she had envisioned as a child - but it had. And now school was out. The fervent promises she had made to Ted had hung over her, as a threat and a possibility. She went to him often after she got out at Mungo's. As a healer-in-training, she had worked odd hours, and that was a fact that she'd made clear to her family. She thought they never suspected a thing.
But they still had watched her with a closer eye than she'd anticipated, and they were caught. She loved Ted by that point - no denying that. No matter how much they screamed at one another, no matter how much they fought and threw things and railed against it all - she loved him. But she had still been technically promised to someone else. She told her parents - and her sisters - it was just a fling, she was just using him. Just letting off steam, she had said airily. As if she didn't care. It was important that they thought she didn't. Otherwise it could be even worse for him. She knew he thought that he'd seen the worst that her family could do. But Andromeda knew better.
So she went to her betrothed, and she was a good little girl once again. She apologized to her family, to the man she was engaged to marry. She came straight back home after her hours at the hospital. She followed the rules. She almost didn't notice when she skipped a period. But she did. And the flu that had come up in the middle of May. She hid it as long as she could, doing the math and hating herself more every day she tried to find another answer. Ted had let her go. He had given her up, and she had put herself back together, back to how everyone wanted her to be. She thought - briefly entertained the idea of passing off the child as her fiance's. But it just didn't add up. It couldn't. Everyone in her family would know, they could do math as well as she. And so she had done what she had to. She had held her head high and told them all. She was pregnant. And it wasn't his. They cast her out - cut her off - blasted her off the tapestry. She could never come back now, and she knew it. It was awful. But... it was freeing, in a way.
She didn't run straight back into his arms. She often wondered if it would ever have been better if she had. No, instead, she'd kept her distance. Working at Mungo's until the slight showing became more prominent. They told her she needed to take some leave - for the health of the baby, they said. And she knew they were right. The way she worked at Mungo's wasn't good for the baby. It wasn't. It couldn't be - healthy adults could be broken by the healer program. There was no way a growing fetus could withstand that kind of stress. But the pay was gone, too. Oh, she still got a little - maternity leave and all - but it wasn't enough, not to live on. Not alone. Even so, she was a coward about it. She wrote him a letter. Hadn't seen him in months - but oops, guess what, I'm having a baby. Of course, those weren't her exact words - but that was how she felt, trying to tell him in a good way. What good way is there to say it? "Thanks for letting me go, letting me go back to my family - buuuuut..." just doesn't work. Nothing does.
It wasn't much longer before they were married. She loved him. She did. Maybe she always had, in a strange way - but she didn't feel like she'd wanted to on her wedding day. For the first time in her life, Andromeda was poor. She was poor, she was beginning to look like a beached whale - and worst of all, she felt like she was trapping them both in a bad situation - er, trapping all three of them in a bad situation. But she still loved him. And they still fought. She gave birth to a daughter - darling Nymphadora Tonks, the light of her world. And she thought, for a few blessed hours in which she held her baby and looked at her husband... they could do this. And they could be happy - together.
That hadn't lasted long. Especially what with the sleep deprivation an infant brings around. And now they're both twenty-five, raising a toddler and working opposing schedules and pretending the other doesn't exist half the time. She knows this: they love each other, and they love Dora. And more, she knows - Dora is the only reason he ever would have married her.
So she lives her life: she loves her daughter, heals the sick and the injured. And she tries to make sense of all the rest of it - how one could love someone so much and still want nothing but to scream at them half the day, how to handle feeling more like a burden than a wife.
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ANDROMEDA N. TONKS
MICHELE || CST || PM or AIM
[PTabbedContent][PTab=I]TWENTY-FIVE
ORDER SUPPORTER
PUREBLOOD
SLYTHERIN
HEALER
JAMIE ALEXANDER
[/PTab={background-color:#444444; font-size:9px;padding:5px;tab-hover-background-color:#000;tab-selected-background-color:#000;}height:82px;][PTab=II]▼
Born Andromeda Nereid Black, the middle Black sister was not quite the darling babe that her sisters were. She was a fussy baby, and a petulant toddler. Born before her was Bellatrix - and while the two of them certainly shared coloring and other physical attributes, that was where the similarities ended. In the years before Narcissa was born, Andromeda and Bellatrix did grow close. They were different, but… well. They were still sisters. When Narcissa was born, blonde and porcelain as a doll, it simply completed a trinity. They went everywhere together, did everything together. They were each different, but the importance always had lain more in the complementary nature of their personalities: where there was darkness and a hard mean streak in Bellatrix, there was too Narcissa's sweetness and Andromeda's kinder heart. And, oh, on some things they were always similar. Of course, they each had mastered the frosty stare by the time their eldest sister had left for Hogwarts. They had always played so well together - making up games and stories with which to occupy themselves. They talked wistfully of their futures - already set in stone - they each would marry the man who Father and Mother would present them with, they would make their own families. They would be brilliant, and wonderful.
It was all that Andromeda had ever known; while she knew that not everyone had that kind of childhood - left mostly alone by her parents, with her sisters as her best friends, her mind moulded to the ideals that her family had always held to the highest regards - she couldn't imagine it any other way. She'd heard, from the things that her parents did tell her about the half-bloods and Muggles and Mudbloods, that the non-pureblooded people of the world had quite different lives. Some were even poor. But she couldn't envision that life, she couldn't see her own life, even, going any other way. How could she have? She had never even met anyone remotely like that.
As a pureblood, an open mind is a terrible thing to develop. At the tender age of eleven, Andromeda boarded the Hogwarts Express to join her sister at school. Her excitement could not be contained. At Hogwarts, there could be so much more, she thought. Oh, she would certainly miss Narcissa through the months at school - but she promised to write often, and so had Cissa. And her eyes were so bright with all the possibilities! Magic. She'd learned a handful of it at home, but never really been able to practice... and potions! Oh, she loved the idea of potions. There was just so much to learn - and so many people. As she had followed dutifully behind Bellatrix (almost like a puppy, following a trusted friend) through the train, she had seen so, so many people. Those her age, and older. Bella looked friendlily at some faces, and glowered at others. Relationships, she thought, so many connections. While the sisters had had, well, "play dates" of a sort with many of the other pureblooded children of an age with them, they hadn't had much opportunity to really mingle amongst a crowd of this size. Andromeda, innocent and wide-eyed, wondered about their stories, their lives. How did they grow up?
She forgot to ponder about their blood.
It was a lesson quickly remembered. Andromeda had been the third new student sorted by the Sorting Hat this year - Blacks were always top of the line. Even if it was alphabetical. The Hat took in her wonder, her inquisitive nature, that thirst for knowledge and whispered knowingly into her mind about it all. Her expression never changed - oh, her upbringing had been too good for that - but inside, she had frozen. No. No! Her mind all but screamed. I am Slytherin. My family is Slytherin. That is my legacy and I belong there! Frantic, she pushed thoughts to the forefront of her mind. Thoughts of disdain and thoughts of how cunning she could be when she put her mind to it. Again, there was the knowing chuckle. The Hat did not deign to whisper to her again, to tut at her thoughts. Instead, it just shouted her new home out to the hall. SLYTHERIN. She stepped up from the stool, handing the professor her ratty old hat back, and tossed her hair over her shoulder. She had not been born for possibilities, she remembered. She smirked. She had been born for this.
Her next several years at Hogwarts were perfect. Andromeda was a stellar student: she never did quite lose the hunger for knowledge that had once given the Sorting Hat pause. She excelled most at potions and charms. She had a fair share of friends within her own house, and a handful in Ravenclaw as well - mostly other purebloods with whom she shared study sessions and other common academic interests. In her fourth year, she joined the house Quidditch team, first as a reserve Chaser - and then she stepped up into a vacated slot the following year. There weren't terribly many girls on the Quidditch teams, but she was good at it. Her parents didn't exactly care for it - but they didn't stop her, either. They just... kept a close eye. But she was good, even they could see that. She had always loved to fly, and she was a nimble player. Slighter than many of the other players, Bludgers did not find her quite so easily, and honestly? The entire thing gave her the most incredible rush.
It was on the Quidditch pitch that she had met Ted Tonks. Gryffindor team. She - well. She didn't hate him. Per se. She had a healthy amount of disdain for him, as she did all Mudbloods. She also held a fair amount of disdain for him as a Gryffindor. And as an opponent: an obstacle to overcome on the pitch. But he got under her skin. To this day, she can't quite remember what had possessed her. It had started out as it often did - they didn't get along, so they growled and barked at each other, in their ways. Snark and sass, a thin curl of heat poised under glassy sheen of ice. It was this time, though, that things got a bit steamy. They didn't walk away, and only got closer and then--next thing Andromeda knew, she was in a bloody broom closet, with two pairs of lips fighting for control.
It was never happening again. It could never happen again. He was bloody Ted Tonks, that stupid goofy Gryffindor with the tendency for destruction. He was just the Keeper for the opposing team, just an obstacle for her to overcome during a match on the pitch. Otherwise, he was nothing. Nothing. So, obviously, the very next week when she was coming to work on some solo practice on the pitch and he was the last to leave his team practice - they ended up in the locker room.
She was sixteen. It happened. She told herself, alright. So it was happening. So what? Nothing would ever come of it. It's just to- let off steam. So be it. Fine. It wasn't going to bother her. Whatever. Her sixth year progressed - she studied, she played Quidditch, she snogged Ted Tonks in secret. She found her balance. Her seventh year was the same - only... more. The stress levels had hitched up: Quidditch was more intense, and there were NEWTs coming up, and the thing with Ted seemed to be building wildly towards some sort of peak, some sort of thing that was bigger than she really wanted to think about - and of course, on top of all of that, the summer before her seventh year, she had met her future husband. He was nice, she remembered thinking. He seemed like a good person, more or less. Mildly attractive. But - no crackle. No heat. No... zing. She had found herself comparing him to Ted, in many ways, and hating herself for it.
That September was when she stopped snarling the word "never" at Ted Tonks. Instead, it was a nervous, tenuous "later." Christmas holidays came - she went home. There were holiday parties, and she drank eggnog and kissed her betrothed under some mistletoe and found herself lying in bed on Christmas eve wishing for a certain sandy-haired boy to grin at her in that way he had. Even as the vision had floated in her mind, she had raged against it. But there it was nonetheless. When she returned to school, she found herself saying things to Ted Tonks that she didn't know what she meant. "After school is out," she told him. Spring was coming, then. You could almost feel the greenery beneath all the melting snow - and that spring had just felt full of promises. She didn't strictly tell Ted about her betrothal. She wondered if he'd ever heard of it. Things just got more and more intense with them, and while they bickered constantly - about each other, about the secrets, about everything they could possibly fight about - they couldn't seem to get enough of each other, either.
She took her NEWTs and felt good about the exams - not great, but good. At least the ones that counted, she thought. She had decided in fifth year that she was going to aim for a Healer career path - she had a knack for the necessary skills, and more... she appreciated the art of it. As time had gone on, and the world had begun to go to shit - for both sides of the brewing war - she knew that she could help save people who would otherwise die. And that was good. She had told her parents of it last summer and their response had been as expected "that's nice, dear, you'll need a hobby." She could never really pinpoint when it was that she had decided she didn't want to just be a wife, that her view of her own future had so drastically changed from the one she had envisioned as a child - but it had. And now school was out. The fervent promises she had made to Ted had hung over her, as a threat and a possibility. She went to him often after she got out at Mungo's. As a healer-in-training, she had worked odd hours, and that was a fact that she'd made clear to her family. She thought they never suspected a thing.
But they still had watched her with a closer eye than she'd anticipated, and they were caught. She loved Ted by that point - no denying that. No matter how much they screamed at one another, no matter how much they fought and threw things and railed against it all - she loved him. But she had still been technically promised to someone else. She told her parents - and her sisters - it was just a fling, she was just using him. Just letting off steam, she had said airily. As if she didn't care. It was important that they thought she didn't. Otherwise it could be even worse for him. She knew he thought that he'd seen the worst that her family could do. But Andromeda knew better.
So she went to her betrothed, and she was a good little girl once again. She apologized to her family, to the man she was engaged to marry. She came straight back home after her hours at the hospital. She followed the rules. She almost didn't notice when she skipped a period. But she did. And the flu that had come up in the middle of May. She hid it as long as she could, doing the math and hating herself more every day she tried to find another answer. Ted had let her go. He had given her up, and she had put herself back together, back to how everyone wanted her to be. She thought - briefly entertained the idea of passing off the child as her fiance's. But it just didn't add up. It couldn't. Everyone in her family would know, they could do math as well as she. And so she had done what she had to. She had held her head high and told them all. She was pregnant. And it wasn't his. They cast her out - cut her off - blasted her off the tapestry. She could never come back now, and she knew it. It was awful. But... it was freeing, in a way.
She didn't run straight back into his arms. She often wondered if it would ever have been better if she had. No, instead, she'd kept her distance. Working at Mungo's until the slight showing became more prominent. They told her she needed to take some leave - for the health of the baby, they said. And she knew they were right. The way she worked at Mungo's wasn't good for the baby. It wasn't. It couldn't be - healthy adults could be broken by the healer program. There was no way a growing fetus could withstand that kind of stress. But the pay was gone, too. Oh, she still got a little - maternity leave and all - but it wasn't enough, not to live on. Not alone. Even so, she was a coward about it. She wrote him a letter. Hadn't seen him in months - but oops, guess what, I'm having a baby. Of course, those weren't her exact words - but that was how she felt, trying to tell him in a good way. What good way is there to say it? "Thanks for letting me go, letting me go back to my family - buuuuut..." just doesn't work. Nothing does.
It wasn't much longer before they were married. She loved him. She did. Maybe she always had, in a strange way - but she didn't feel like she'd wanted to on her wedding day. For the first time in her life, Andromeda was poor. She was poor, she was beginning to look like a beached whale - and worst of all, she felt like she was trapping them both in a bad situation - er, trapping all three of them in a bad situation. But she still loved him. And they still fought. She gave birth to a daughter - darling Nymphadora Tonks, the light of her world. And she thought, for a few blessed hours in which she held her baby and looked at her husband... they could do this. And they could be happy - together.
That hadn't lasted long. Especially what with the sleep deprivation an infant brings around. And now they're both twenty-five, raising a toddler and working opposing schedules and pretending the other doesn't exist half the time. She knows this: they love each other, and they love Dora. And more, she knows - Dora is the only reason he ever would have married her.
So she lives her life: she loves her daughter, heals the sick and the injured. And she tries to make sense of all the rest of it - how one could love someone so much and still want nothing but to scream at them half the day, how to handle feeling more like a burden than a wife.
