(no subject)
TITLE: three words, my love
AUTHOR: eudaimon
RATING: PG
WORDCOUNT: 1900.
NOTES: So close! Written for the hp_literotica Valentines challenge. I hope this counts. In a recent fic, I killed off Ted Tonks. This, I guess, is the fic that goes with it. This is what was going on while Ted was meeting his five people in Heaven. It's the first time I've ever written Andromeda without Ted to filter her. This is dedicated to _shades_, because the Charlie Weasley here is her characterisation. One of these days, I'm going to write what she asks me to. Lyrics from a Ryan Adams song.
. The telegram had sat curling on the table top, curling in on itself, Ted's death, the end of love contained in stop stop stop.
She knew that Muggles wore black for funerals, but she'd always worn black; long skirts, layered lace and velvet, her hair twisted into careful curls. On the first morning (the world without him), she sat in front of a mirror flecked dark with age and painted her lips into a scarlet bow, a kiss for Ted Tonks' memory. There wasn't any excuse for falling apart. Ted had been her strength and, even in his absence, she was laced tight with steel. No loose curls, though; she pinned her hair tightly back. No time to be a girl, now. The telegram had sat curling on the table top, curling in on itself, Ted's death, the end of love contained in stop stop stop.
It took Charlie and the twins visiting to give her courage. What it took was the memory of Charlie just after Nymphadora's death; how he'd been quiet and pale under his freckles and very brave. They had a closed casket at Nymphadora's funeral; cruciocruciocrucio left a greenish cast. She'd seen the reflection of it in Charlie's eyes, in the ways that he'd played with the twins. He'd been quieter and older by then..
The twins danced and spun in the field behind the garden. They were five years old; they were too new, too far away, to have any concept of death. Granddad wouldn't be coming home, just like mommy hadn't come home. Granddad and Mommy always did have a tendency towards getting lost.
She could hear the radio on in the kitchen below; whenever he was in the house, fascinated, Charlie left a trail of turned on Muggle appliances. With the telegram clenched in her lap (terrible tragedy stop nothing could be done stop) and she'd wanted to smash everything, all of Ted's Muggle things, into shards and dust. She wanted to render everything into ruin. In the end, she'd dusted the Muggle way that Ted had preferred (and that she'd come to prefer as well), the somehow sensual thing of polish and soft cloths and she'd covered the mirrors with veils (which recalled another loss) and she hadn't turned on any lights.
Stop.
Charlie sat on the patio, a cup of coffee in his hand, watching the children turning clumsy cartwheels in the rising dust from the grass. He more closely resembled his mother than his father; he had Molly's kind, concerned lines around his eyes. She walked up behind him, had the overwhelming urge to smooth his red hair but settled for his shirt over his broad shoulder instead.
"Would that we all had a child's capacity for joy..." She said, sitting down beside him, her own cup of coffee in her hand. With a pang, she realised that Ted had had that capacity, that Charlie had too, before Nymphadora's green death. Jack and Gwen's screams echoed up the garden and Charlie smiled.
"When they were born," he said, rueful and handsome, Pureblood but more like Ted than any other man she'd ever met. "When they were born I was disappointed that they weren't more like, y'know...like Dora. Special."
"Of course they're special, Charlie. They're hers," said Andromeda, and hurt.
Stop.
When the body came back (she had to correct herself, not the body. Him, just him), Molly did exactly what they'd all expected and tried to be involved. On the pretence of helping with the children, she'd rolled up her sleeves, filled basin after basin with water, had Andromeda's kitchen trickling with steam and condensation. Andromeda stood in the doorway of her own kitchen, wrapped in her own arms, watching as Molly fussed, as Charlie bounced a screaming child on his hip. In the lounge on a trestle, under a sheet, Ted was lying waiting. Andromeda smoothed her hands over the fluttering of her stomach, the same fluttering feeling as she'd felt the first night that they'd slept together, Hogwarts, a make-shift bed under the eaves, an old trick. She'd had the feeling that it wasn't the first time, a practiced air, but she hadn't minded. She'd already been thinking about loving him.
"Molly," she said, quietly.
"Mum," said Charlie, bouncing Jack on his hip. "Mum." Molly wasn't listening, caught up in being useful, having a purpose. Ted had always liked Molly, been fond of her brothers. All the handsome boys were dying now; Bill Weasley had looked so like his uncles.
"Enough, Molly." She hadn't realised that she'd shouted until she realised that Jack was staring at her, sucking his thumb and clutching at Charlie's shirt, eyes saucer wide. Molly had stopped too, holding a basin in reddening hands. Andromeda took a deep breath, smoothing her dress over her stomach. "I'm glad that you came, Molly and thank you, but I am going to do this on my own. I think it's time I did this on my own." Breathing slowly, concentrating on one step in front of the other in too high hells, Andromeda took the basin from Molly. "He was the love of my life, Molly. If I can't...If I don't do this, I'll..." She nodded. "Thank you, Molly."
Stop.
Alone with him for the first time in a week, she felt almost normal. Hollow, but closer to herself than she had been without him. She took it slowly; a scarf with Gypsy colours that he'd bought back from India for her hair. She'd carefully unfastened black pearl buttons and slipped her cardigan from her shoulders, turned around with her arms bare, her hair wrapped. She'd felt a chill across her shoulders as she'd lifted the sheet, not him, just the air in the room. She lifted the sheet. She hadn't realised that she was holding her breath.
"Hello, Ted," she said.
She looked him over but couldn't find it, no split, no scar. How cruel for him to die without a mark, like he'd been knocked down by the wind and died of the fall, not even the fall. Like his heart had just stopped. In the busy panic of her grief, Molly had made the water too hot. Andromeda held her hands under the surface anyway, watched her hands redden. Molly's hands were always red, honest hands, blushing in their cracks and pads. Andromeda wrung the cloth, the excess water, pressed it to the centre of Ted's chest, over where she imagined his heart would be. Women had always done this; Wizarding women, Muggle women, all the same. Adventuring men eventually came home. She dipped the cloth again, dripped water through his brown hair, streaked grey. Her husband hadn't been a soldier, had stayed well clear of war; amo, amas, amat in Muggle schools, but his death had caught up with him. Spells had been cast, to preserve flesh and skin, give him the appearance of life. There was probably a spell that she'd could have cast to make him warmer, but she washed him, cold as he was.
"You had better," she said, concentrating with the cloth, moving lower, no sex but not embarrassment either, "have found that girl of ours, Ted Tonks. You had..." She took a deep breath, not going to cry, would not cry, "You had better be happy, the two of you." She pressed both hands to his chest, bending over him to kiss a cold mouth which gave in all of the wrong ways. "I love you, Ted. I really did. I...always did."
Stop.
Ted's father was waiting at the doorway, in the arched doorway of his church, waiting. She'd decided, and it had been hard for her, that a Muggle funeral was what Ted would have wanted; grown up in the shadow of the Muggle church. His mother, the one who'd died so young, was buried up there, under the tree. It was what he would have wanted.
"Patrick," she said, holding out her hands to him, her purple scarf blowing and pulling in the wind. Ted would have made a handsome old man, if he'd lived long enough, if he'd taken after his father. Ted had always said that he looked more like his mother, that it suited Julie but was ill-fitting on a bloke. The Reverend Tonks enclosed one of her hands in both of his.
"Andromeda," he said, wrapping his arms somewhat hesitantly around her shoulders. Ted had learnt his warmth from somewhere. At first, in the early years of their marriage, before Nymphadora was born, Andromeda knew that Patrick had struggled with her. It was the magic, she supposed. It was the command to stone all witches. She'd turned up on his doorstep in black with her very high heels and he hadn't known quite what to make of her except that his son was deeply, madly in love with her. Sometime before the birth of his first (and only, as it turned out) grandchild, Patrick had reconciled himself to her. He had sent flowers on her birthday; white carnations for pure love and a woman's luck, basil for best wishes. She had looked those things up in a book which Ted had. That afternoon, they took a walk up to the hill where Rebecca lay buried, her twenty eight year old bones.
"It's a terrible thing," said Andromeda, wrapping her coat tight around herself. "Burying a child." Patrick nodded, slowly.
"Suffer the little children," he said, which made Andromeda frown.
"Ted was fifty."
"Still my boy, though." Andromeda nodded, and tried not to cry, thinking about her twenty nine year old
Stop.
The house was full of people. Ted would have wanted it that way. Ted had never liked being on his own, but then again, he had, Sunday afternoons in his shed and God knows what he'd done down there on his own. She'd ventured there rarely. It wasn't her space. It was all her space now. She was the sole inhabitant of all that she surveyed and it broke her heart. In the lounge, the children were playing a circle; in the dining room, Charlie and his brothers were getting morbid over a bottle of whiskey. She loved them but she couldn't be near them; she was glad that they were there but they were stifling her.
She went down to Ted's shed, barefoot in the barely starting rain.
The first thing she did, walking through the door, her widow's skirts gathered in her hands, was start up Charlemagne, the rigged power supply spluttering from the battery taped to the wall. She looked around the shed for a moment, clinging to herself in case the weight and smell and presence of all of that evidence of the man that she had loved enveloped her. Ted had been a packrat, a hoarder extraordinaire. He'd tacked a wall full of photos; Dora and Charlie and the kids, Remus and Molly and the twins and constellations, fucking galaxies of Andromeda, Andromeda, Andromeda. She'd been avoiding Ted's shed since he'd died, knowing that in those four walls were all the proof of Ted that she would ever need. Tucked under a book, a yellow piece of parchment; a drawing that Nymphadora had done, Mommy and Daddy, her own head a shower of rainbow sparks. Andromeda sat down, sobbing, unable to keep it back, not strong enough to remember the two of them together. She leant her face against her knees and imagined a shed in Heaven, where they were together, together and waiting.
Ratta-tatta-tatta went the train, dreaming north.
Stop.
AUTHOR: eudaimon
RATING: PG
WORDCOUNT: 1900.
NOTES: So close! Written for the hp_literotica Valentines challenge. I hope this counts. In a recent fic, I killed off Ted Tonks. This, I guess, is the fic that goes with it. This is what was going on while Ted was meeting his five people in Heaven. It's the first time I've ever written Andromeda without Ted to filter her. This is dedicated to _shades_, because the Charlie Weasley here is her characterisation. One of these days, I'm going to write what she asks me to. Lyrics from a Ryan Adams song.
. The telegram had sat curling on the table top, curling in on itself, Ted's death, the end of love contained in stop stop stop.
She knew that Muggles wore black for funerals, but she'd always worn black; long skirts, layered lace and velvet, her hair twisted into careful curls. On the first morning (the world without him), she sat in front of a mirror flecked dark with age and painted her lips into a scarlet bow, a kiss for Ted Tonks' memory. There wasn't any excuse for falling apart. Ted had been her strength and, even in his absence, she was laced tight with steel. No loose curls, though; she pinned her hair tightly back. No time to be a girl, now. The telegram had sat curling on the table top, curling in on itself, Ted's death, the end of love contained in stop stop stop.
It took Charlie and the twins visiting to give her courage. What it took was the memory of Charlie just after Nymphadora's death; how he'd been quiet and pale under his freckles and very brave. They had a closed casket at Nymphadora's funeral; cruciocruciocrucio left a greenish cast. She'd seen the reflection of it in Charlie's eyes, in the ways that he'd played with the twins. He'd been quieter and older by then..
The twins danced and spun in the field behind the garden. They were five years old; they were too new, too far away, to have any concept of death. Granddad wouldn't be coming home, just like mommy hadn't come home. Granddad and Mommy always did have a tendency towards getting lost.
She could hear the radio on in the kitchen below; whenever he was in the house, fascinated, Charlie left a trail of turned on Muggle appliances. With the telegram clenched in her lap (terrible tragedy stop nothing could be done stop) and she'd wanted to smash everything, all of Ted's Muggle things, into shards and dust. She wanted to render everything into ruin. In the end, she'd dusted the Muggle way that Ted had preferred (and that she'd come to prefer as well), the somehow sensual thing of polish and soft cloths and she'd covered the mirrors with veils (which recalled another loss) and she hadn't turned on any lights.
Stop.
Charlie sat on the patio, a cup of coffee in his hand, watching the children turning clumsy cartwheels in the rising dust from the grass. He more closely resembled his mother than his father; he had Molly's kind, concerned lines around his eyes. She walked up behind him, had the overwhelming urge to smooth his red hair but settled for his shirt over his broad shoulder instead.
"Would that we all had a child's capacity for joy..." She said, sitting down beside him, her own cup of coffee in her hand. With a pang, she realised that Ted had had that capacity, that Charlie had too, before Nymphadora's green death. Jack and Gwen's screams echoed up the garden and Charlie smiled.
"When they were born," he said, rueful and handsome, Pureblood but more like Ted than any other man she'd ever met. "When they were born I was disappointed that they weren't more like, y'know...like Dora. Special."
"Of course they're special, Charlie. They're hers," said Andromeda, and hurt.
Stop.
When the body came back (she had to correct herself, not the body. Him, just him), Molly did exactly what they'd all expected and tried to be involved. On the pretence of helping with the children, she'd rolled up her sleeves, filled basin after basin with water, had Andromeda's kitchen trickling with steam and condensation. Andromeda stood in the doorway of her own kitchen, wrapped in her own arms, watching as Molly fussed, as Charlie bounced a screaming child on his hip. In the lounge on a trestle, under a sheet, Ted was lying waiting. Andromeda smoothed her hands over the fluttering of her stomach, the same fluttering feeling as she'd felt the first night that they'd slept together, Hogwarts, a make-shift bed under the eaves, an old trick. She'd had the feeling that it wasn't the first time, a practiced air, but she hadn't minded. She'd already been thinking about loving him.
"Molly," she said, quietly.
"Mum," said Charlie, bouncing Jack on his hip. "Mum." Molly wasn't listening, caught up in being useful, having a purpose. Ted had always liked Molly, been fond of her brothers. All the handsome boys were dying now; Bill Weasley had looked so like his uncles.
"Enough, Molly." She hadn't realised that she'd shouted until she realised that Jack was staring at her, sucking his thumb and clutching at Charlie's shirt, eyes saucer wide. Molly had stopped too, holding a basin in reddening hands. Andromeda took a deep breath, smoothing her dress over her stomach. "I'm glad that you came, Molly and thank you, but I am going to do this on my own. I think it's time I did this on my own." Breathing slowly, concentrating on one step in front of the other in too high hells, Andromeda took the basin from Molly. "He was the love of my life, Molly. If I can't...If I don't do this, I'll..." She nodded. "Thank you, Molly."
Stop.
Alone with him for the first time in a week, she felt almost normal. Hollow, but closer to herself than she had been without him. She took it slowly; a scarf with Gypsy colours that he'd bought back from India for her hair. She'd carefully unfastened black pearl buttons and slipped her cardigan from her shoulders, turned around with her arms bare, her hair wrapped. She'd felt a chill across her shoulders as she'd lifted the sheet, not him, just the air in the room. She lifted the sheet. She hadn't realised that she was holding her breath.
"Hello, Ted," she said.
She looked him over but couldn't find it, no split, no scar. How cruel for him to die without a mark, like he'd been knocked down by the wind and died of the fall, not even the fall. Like his heart had just stopped. In the busy panic of her grief, Molly had made the water too hot. Andromeda held her hands under the surface anyway, watched her hands redden. Molly's hands were always red, honest hands, blushing in their cracks and pads. Andromeda wrung the cloth, the excess water, pressed it to the centre of Ted's chest, over where she imagined his heart would be. Women had always done this; Wizarding women, Muggle women, all the same. Adventuring men eventually came home. She dipped the cloth again, dripped water through his brown hair, streaked grey. Her husband hadn't been a soldier, had stayed well clear of war; amo, amas, amat in Muggle schools, but his death had caught up with him. Spells had been cast, to preserve flesh and skin, give him the appearance of life. There was probably a spell that she'd could have cast to make him warmer, but she washed him, cold as he was.
"You had better," she said, concentrating with the cloth, moving lower, no sex but not embarrassment either, "have found that girl of ours, Ted Tonks. You had..." She took a deep breath, not going to cry, would not cry, "You had better be happy, the two of you." She pressed both hands to his chest, bending over him to kiss a cold mouth which gave in all of the wrong ways. "I love you, Ted. I really did. I...always did."
Stop.
Ted's father was waiting at the doorway, in the arched doorway of his church, waiting. She'd decided, and it had been hard for her, that a Muggle funeral was what Ted would have wanted; grown up in the shadow of the Muggle church. His mother, the one who'd died so young, was buried up there, under the tree. It was what he would have wanted.
"Patrick," she said, holding out her hands to him, her purple scarf blowing and pulling in the wind. Ted would have made a handsome old man, if he'd lived long enough, if he'd taken after his father. Ted had always said that he looked more like his mother, that it suited Julie but was ill-fitting on a bloke. The Reverend Tonks enclosed one of her hands in both of his.
"Andromeda," he said, wrapping his arms somewhat hesitantly around her shoulders. Ted had learnt his warmth from somewhere. At first, in the early years of their marriage, before Nymphadora was born, Andromeda knew that Patrick had struggled with her. It was the magic, she supposed. It was the command to stone all witches. She'd turned up on his doorstep in black with her very high heels and he hadn't known quite what to make of her except that his son was deeply, madly in love with her. Sometime before the birth of his first (and only, as it turned out) grandchild, Patrick had reconciled himself to her. He had sent flowers on her birthday; white carnations for pure love and a woman's luck, basil for best wishes. She had looked those things up in a book which Ted had. That afternoon, they took a walk up to the hill where Rebecca lay buried, her twenty eight year old bones.
"It's a terrible thing," said Andromeda, wrapping her coat tight around herself. "Burying a child." Patrick nodded, slowly.
"Suffer the little children," he said, which made Andromeda frown.
"Ted was fifty."
"Still my boy, though." Andromeda nodded, and tried not to cry, thinking about her twenty nine year old
Stop.
The house was full of people. Ted would have wanted it that way. Ted had never liked being on his own, but then again, he had, Sunday afternoons in his shed and God knows what he'd done down there on his own. She'd ventured there rarely. It wasn't her space. It was all her space now. She was the sole inhabitant of all that she surveyed and it broke her heart. In the lounge, the children were playing a circle; in the dining room, Charlie and his brothers were getting morbid over a bottle of whiskey. She loved them but she couldn't be near them; she was glad that they were there but they were stifling her.
She went down to Ted's shed, barefoot in the barely starting rain.
The first thing she did, walking through the door, her widow's skirts gathered in her hands, was start up Charlemagne, the rigged power supply spluttering from the battery taped to the wall. She looked around the shed for a moment, clinging to herself in case the weight and smell and presence of all of that evidence of the man that she had loved enveloped her. Ted had been a packrat, a hoarder extraordinaire. He'd tacked a wall full of photos; Dora and Charlie and the kids, Remus and Molly and the twins and constellations, fucking galaxies of Andromeda, Andromeda, Andromeda. She'd been avoiding Ted's shed since he'd died, knowing that in those four walls were all the proof of Ted that she would ever need. Tucked under a book, a yellow piece of parchment; a drawing that Nymphadora had done, Mommy and Daddy, her own head a shower of rainbow sparks. Andromeda sat down, sobbing, unable to keep it back, not strong enough to remember the two of them together. She leant her face against her knees and imagined a shed in Heaven, where they were together, together and waiting.
Ratta-tatta-tatta went the train, dreaming north.
Stop.