WISHLISTS: "The Thing with Feathers" (Augusta/Andromeda)
Author: kellychambliss
Recipient: Phantom Tomato
Title: The Thing with Feathers
Pairing: Augusta Longbottom/Andromeda Tonks (sort of)
Request/Prompt Used: "loss in the face of raising a child"
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2350 (a bit long, sorry!)
Summary: After the Battle of Hogwarts, Augusta Longbottom has a duty to perform.
Notes: Dear Phantomtomato, you have written me such excellent gifts that I wanted to pay you back a bit! This story didn't turn out to be quite as femmeslashy as I had intended, but I hope it will suit. I was also thrilled to see your requests for first- and second-person, so I'm giving you both.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Hope" is the thing with feathers --
That perches in the soul --
And sings the tune without the words --
And never stops -- at all --
--Emily Dickinson
You take your hat off its peg and study it critically. The stuffed vulture ornament is charmed firmly in place, and under the brim, your name label is as crisply readable as the day you wrote the words in indelible magical ink: "Augusta Longbottom."
It's well made, this hat, still an unfaded, deep black, thanks to Mordant's ColourCharmed Dye. The felt is one-hundred-percent magical shepple's wool, so that it lasts forever and protects your head. As good as a battle helmet, and you should know. The Battle of Hogwarts was only a month ago, you and your hat fought in it, and here you still are. You and the vulture both came through without a scratch.
Yes, it's well made.
This sort of careful craftsmanship is rare these days. Neville chuckles when you say that nothing is the way it used to be -- such an old person's cliché, he thinks -- but what does he know? He wasn't there.
He's never said anything about the stuffed vulture, but you know that others disapprove. Hagrid always looks at it with tears in his eyes, Pomona Sprout has taken you to task about it more than once, and Neville's friend Hermione Granger glares at the vulture with such ferocity that you're surprised she hasn't started a useless society to protect it. Too opinionated for her own good, that girl.
But you don't care what they think. You had that vulture sewn onto your hat the day after Alice and Frank were committed to the Janus Thickey ward, and you don't intend to take it off for as long as you and the hat are standing. It's your way of letting the world know that even if it does its worst, you're going to be there at the end, watching and avenging.
Even if carrion is all that's left.
You most definitely plan to wear the hat today, because you're on a mission.
It's one that you're sorry to have to undertake; you'd give a great deal for it not to be necessary. But when a woman and her family fight against darkness, and the woman's husband and child are killed, and that woman is left to raise her grandson on her own. . .well, your duty is clear.
You put on your hat, turn the vulture face-forward, and set out for your appointment with Andromeda Black Tonks.
~~~~~
Ever since Ted and Nymphadora died, I've been deluged with invitations for dinners or weekend visits ("it will do you good to get away, Andromeda"), or with offers to help with baby Teddy or bring me meals. Even Narcissa sent a black-edged sympathy card that I incendio'd as soon as I saw her signature. How dare she?
I know the offers are well meant, and I appreciate the thoughts, but I say "no" to everything and everyone.
Except her. Mrs Longbottom. I have agreed to see her.
She sent her request in an old-fashioned, formal way that I have not seen since I left the oppression of the Blacks: via a snowy owl with its wings charmed to look black, the traditional wizarding way to acknowledge a death. Her note was equally formal: "Mrs Frank Longbottom (Augusta) sends her sympathies for Mrs Tonks's loss. If Mrs Tonks feels at liberty, Mrs Longbottom would like to call to pay her respects."
"Mrs Tonks" is not sure if she will ever "feel at liberty" again, but there was something comforting the formulaic wording. I know how these old-school "pureblood" women think, even those who reject pureblood bigotry and violence. Mrs Longbottom would maintain a respectful distance if she visited; she wouldn't presume intimacy, wouldn't offer unwanted hugs and tears, wouldn't expect me to "open my heart" to her, as others have suggested ("Dear Andromeda, if you ever feel like opening your heart, you know where to find me," one well-wisher wrote. I do indeed know where to find her, and I will take pains to avoid the spot.)
Still, I found myself wanting to talk with Mrs Longbottom, both because of her likely restraint and because she is one of the few who can understand. I mean truly understand.
I want to talk to someone who is in my situation: not just the situation of losing a husband or child, not even the situation of losing them to torture and murder, to the forces of darkness and hatred. I want to talk to someone who lost everything to such madness and who had to pick up the pieces, had to pull herself together to raise a parentless child whether she would or no.
"At least you have the blessing of little Teddy," people write to me. I already love him with a ferocity that is physically painful, but is he a blessing? I have no idea. Can I be the carer he needs me to be? I have even less idea about that.
Do I want to be that carer? I don't ask.
Instead, I invite Mrs Longbottom (Augusta) to tea.
~~~~~
The tea table is impeccably set, you'll say that for Andromeda Tonks. None of those giant plates that people seem so fond of these days, no absurd "mugs," no silly tiny spoons sitting in a sea of loose sugar.
No, the plate is appropriately small (only the vulgar would overeat at tea), the delicate cup sits on a saucer, and the sugar is in lumps the way it should be, waiting for you to Levitate whatever number you choose into your cup. The cake stand bears a few small fruit tarts and well-trimmed cucumber sandwiches, nothing ostentatious.
You hadn't been sure what to expect. You know the sort of "toujours pur" upbringing that Andromeda Black and her sisters would have been given. In addition to lessons in bigotry, Druella Black would have made certain that her daughters knew how to serve tea correctly.
Andromeda, smart girl that she was, turned her back on that pureblood nonsense years ago, but for all you know, she might have thrown out the baby of table manners with the bathwater of destructive philosophy. She might have embraced the abomination of tea bags along with the necessity of democracy.
But evidently not. A fragrant Darjeeling is steeping properly in a pot, and Mrs Tonks gains another check mark on the "credit" side of the ledger of approval that you maintain in your head.
Her house meets with your approval as well. Acceptably tidy, but not obsessively so. Baby Teddy is asleep in a portable cot tucked away discreetly against the back wall; you have not been required to coo over him.
"I have not come out of prurience," you begin, perhaps rather more abruptly than you'd intended. But you have important things to tell this poor woman, and you'd best get started. "Nor do I pretend to the impertinence of personal grief. I do not claim to have known Mr Tonks or Nymphadora well. But I can claim a great deal of empathy with your circumstances. I reared my own grandson, you know. Perhaps you've heard of him? Neville Longbottom? The hero of the Battle of Hogwarts? He killed Voldemort's snake. The big one," you add, in case she isn't sure.
Mrs Tonks's lips quirk. When she opened the door to you earlier, you had seen something of Druella Black's hauteur in her face, but there is no trace of it when Andromeda smiles. The humour fades quickly, though, and she replies soberly, "Yes, I've heard of him. I remember what happened to your son and daughter-in-law, and I read about how you opened your home to Neville."
"Well, of course I did," you say. "As you are doing for Teddy. There was never any question of doing otherwise."
"No. . . ." Mrs Tonks replies slowly, but you can hear the doubt behind the word.
"Never. Any. Question," you repeat as forcefully as you can. "He needs you."
Something flashes in her dark eyes, anger or grief or despair, you don't know, but there are no tears.
"There's certainly no question about my doing what's right and best for Teddy, if that's what you mean," she retorts with spirit. "But I -- " Her voice trails away, and she looks down at the napkin twisted in her hand.
Ah. Now you understand. You take a moment to straighten the hat on your head and brush your fingers against the vulture. It steadies you.
"But you don't know if you are the best or right person to rear Teddy, is that it?" you ask.
Her shoulder twitches in a shrug, and she gives that half-smile again, wry this time. You think how handsome she is, with her softly-waving dark-brown hair and the strong Rosier cheekbones inherited from her mother.
"Because if that's what you're asking yourself, it's the wrong question," you tell her. "Best or not, right or not, you're the person he has. Just like you were the mother Nymphadora had. For better or worse, you're it."
Of course, you suspect that Andromeda Tonks is also haunted by a different question: whether she even wants to raise her grandson. It's an enormous responsibility, in some ways the end of whatever previous life she's made for herself.
You know she's asking this question because you asked it, too. Screamed it, actually, to the cosmos on an empty moor to which you Apparated on the day the healers told you there was no hope for Frank and Alice to regain their right minds.
But even as you shouted your angry question to the heavens, you knew the answer.
Mrs Tonks, you think, knows her answer, too.
"It will be different," you say, and you try to say it gently even though you are not the gentle type. "Raising an orphaned grandchild is not the same as raising your own baby. But in many ways, it's not very different at all. You'll know how you did when you see what sort of person they become."
~~~~~
I find that I like her, this stern old woman with the ridiculous hat. I'm a little surprised, actually. I'd known her by reputation, the way all the old wizarding families know of each other, and I expected to find her unpleasantly overbearing. "Damned pushy harridan" is what Alastor Moody called her, once when he visited here with Nymphadora.
I can definitely see that aspect of her; she's obviously willing to speak her mind. But then, so am I. She's been honest, which I appreciate; I like that she isn't trying to tell me that raising Teddy will be easy because "you already did a fine job with Nymphadora" (as more than one person has rather condescendingly said to me). And she has tact: she hasn't even hinted at the fact that the reason she had to raise her grandson was that his parents -- her son and daughter-in-law -- were tortured into insanity by my sister.
So yes, I like her.
She nibbles the corner of a cucumber sandwich and puts it down on her plate between bites, in the dainty way her mother no doubt taught her.
There is something else I want to know, something important. "Mrs Longbottom," I begin, "I would like. . . Could I ask. . .? I mean. . ."
I'm not usually so incoherent, and I take a breath, planning to start again, but my visitor lifts an imperious hand to stop me and says, "This must be a question you find difficult to ask?"
I nod.
"Out with it, then," she orders. "Just say it. No use beating around the bush. Life's too short."
I'm relieved. "All right, here it is. In raising Neville, you must have made some mistakes. What were they? What did you do wrong? Warn me. I need to know."
She gives a short bark that may be laughter or may not. "You think my answer will help you avoid having any regrets of your own? That's naïve, my girl; you must know better than that. "
"Your mistakes," I insist. "Tell me." I hear Teddy rustle in his cot, make a small noise.
Augusta Longbottom looks at me steadily, and I think there might be tears in her eyes. I'm shocked; it's like unexpectedly seeing her naked.
I want to glance away from her, but it seems cowardly, somehow. I watch as she adjusts her hat on her head, fingering that weird stuffed vulture.
Finally she speaks. "You will tell yourself that you need to prepare Teddy for the dangers of the world, no? You'll tell yourself that you need to be tough with him, make him strong. You'll tell yourself, 'no coddling. No softness.'"
Her eyes bore into mine, beady and unblinking, bizarrely resembling the vulture's. "Don't listen to yourself."
~~~~~
You believe you have said all that you need to say today, so you take a final sip of tea and get to your feet. "And now I must bid you good afternoon."
Mrs Tonks rises, too, and you think again how attractive she is; the Blacks, however despicable their politics, have always been nice-looking.
In another life, another world, you might have been able to act on your attraction. You might have asked Andromeda to dinner, got to know her, held hands with her, even spent time in her bed. You might have been able to show her that her own life didn't have to end just because she'd given a large part of it over to a little boy.
But you don't live in that world. You came of age in a world in which witches could choose either to marry wizards and do their part in keeping up the magical population, or they could stay single and bury themselves alive teaching in a boarding school or something, like Pomona and that old cat Minerva McGonagall.
You chose to marry Frank, and you are not sorry. You will not try another path now.
"Thank you for the tea," you say.
"Thank you for coming," replies Mrs Tonks. She extends her hand, and you shake it. Her fingers are warm.
Recipient: Phantom Tomato
Title: The Thing with Feathers
Pairing: Augusta Longbottom/Andromeda Tonks (sort of)
Request/Prompt Used: "loss in the face of raising a child"
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2350 (a bit long, sorry!)
Summary: After the Battle of Hogwarts, Augusta Longbottom has a duty to perform.
Notes: Dear Phantomtomato, you have written me such excellent gifts that I wanted to pay you back a bit! This story didn't turn out to be quite as femmeslashy as I had intended, but I hope it will suit. I was also thrilled to see your requests for first- and second-person, so I'm giving you both.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Hope" is the thing with feathers --
That perches in the soul --
And sings the tune without the words --
And never stops -- at all --
--Emily Dickinson
You take your hat off its peg and study it critically. The stuffed vulture ornament is charmed firmly in place, and under the brim, your name label is as crisply readable as the day you wrote the words in indelible magical ink: "Augusta Longbottom."
It's well made, this hat, still an unfaded, deep black, thanks to Mordant's ColourCharmed Dye. The felt is one-hundred-percent magical shepple's wool, so that it lasts forever and protects your head. As good as a battle helmet, and you should know. The Battle of Hogwarts was only a month ago, you and your hat fought in it, and here you still are. You and the vulture both came through without a scratch.
Yes, it's well made.
This sort of careful craftsmanship is rare these days. Neville chuckles when you say that nothing is the way it used to be -- such an old person's cliché, he thinks -- but what does he know? He wasn't there.
He's never said anything about the stuffed vulture, but you know that others disapprove. Hagrid always looks at it with tears in his eyes, Pomona Sprout has taken you to task about it more than once, and Neville's friend Hermione Granger glares at the vulture with such ferocity that you're surprised she hasn't started a useless society to protect it. Too opinionated for her own good, that girl.
But you don't care what they think. You had that vulture sewn onto your hat the day after Alice and Frank were committed to the Janus Thickey ward, and you don't intend to take it off for as long as you and the hat are standing. It's your way of letting the world know that even if it does its worst, you're going to be there at the end, watching and avenging.
Even if carrion is all that's left.
You most definitely plan to wear the hat today, because you're on a mission.
It's one that you're sorry to have to undertake; you'd give a great deal for it not to be necessary. But when a woman and her family fight against darkness, and the woman's husband and child are killed, and that woman is left to raise her grandson on her own. . .well, your duty is clear.
You put on your hat, turn the vulture face-forward, and set out for your appointment with Andromeda Black Tonks.
~~~~~
Ever since Ted and Nymphadora died, I've been deluged with invitations for dinners or weekend visits ("it will do you good to get away, Andromeda"), or with offers to help with baby Teddy or bring me meals. Even Narcissa sent a black-edged sympathy card that I incendio'd as soon as I saw her signature. How dare she?
I know the offers are well meant, and I appreciate the thoughts, but I say "no" to everything and everyone.
Except her. Mrs Longbottom. I have agreed to see her.
She sent her request in an old-fashioned, formal way that I have not seen since I left the oppression of the Blacks: via a snowy owl with its wings charmed to look black, the traditional wizarding way to acknowledge a death. Her note was equally formal: "Mrs Frank Longbottom (Augusta) sends her sympathies for Mrs Tonks's loss. If Mrs Tonks feels at liberty, Mrs Longbottom would like to call to pay her respects."
"Mrs Tonks" is not sure if she will ever "feel at liberty" again, but there was something comforting the formulaic wording. I know how these old-school "pureblood" women think, even those who reject pureblood bigotry and violence. Mrs Longbottom would maintain a respectful distance if she visited; she wouldn't presume intimacy, wouldn't offer unwanted hugs and tears, wouldn't expect me to "open my heart" to her, as others have suggested ("Dear Andromeda, if you ever feel like opening your heart, you know where to find me," one well-wisher wrote. I do indeed know where to find her, and I will take pains to avoid the spot.)
Still, I found myself wanting to talk with Mrs Longbottom, both because of her likely restraint and because she is one of the few who can understand. I mean truly understand.
I want to talk to someone who is in my situation: not just the situation of losing a husband or child, not even the situation of losing them to torture and murder, to the forces of darkness and hatred. I want to talk to someone who lost everything to such madness and who had to pick up the pieces, had to pull herself together to raise a parentless child whether she would or no.
"At least you have the blessing of little Teddy," people write to me. I already love him with a ferocity that is physically painful, but is he a blessing? I have no idea. Can I be the carer he needs me to be? I have even less idea about that.
Do I want to be that carer? I don't ask.
Instead, I invite Mrs Longbottom (Augusta) to tea.
~~~~~
The tea table is impeccably set, you'll say that for Andromeda Tonks. None of those giant plates that people seem so fond of these days, no absurd "mugs," no silly tiny spoons sitting in a sea of loose sugar.
No, the plate is appropriately small (only the vulgar would overeat at tea), the delicate cup sits on a saucer, and the sugar is in lumps the way it should be, waiting for you to Levitate whatever number you choose into your cup. The cake stand bears a few small fruit tarts and well-trimmed cucumber sandwiches, nothing ostentatious.
You hadn't been sure what to expect. You know the sort of "toujours pur" upbringing that Andromeda Black and her sisters would have been given. In addition to lessons in bigotry, Druella Black would have made certain that her daughters knew how to serve tea correctly.
Andromeda, smart girl that she was, turned her back on that pureblood nonsense years ago, but for all you know, she might have thrown out the baby of table manners with the bathwater of destructive philosophy. She might have embraced the abomination of tea bags along with the necessity of democracy.
But evidently not. A fragrant Darjeeling is steeping properly in a pot, and Mrs Tonks gains another check mark on the "credit" side of the ledger of approval that you maintain in your head.
Her house meets with your approval as well. Acceptably tidy, but not obsessively so. Baby Teddy is asleep in a portable cot tucked away discreetly against the back wall; you have not been required to coo over him.
"I have not come out of prurience," you begin, perhaps rather more abruptly than you'd intended. But you have important things to tell this poor woman, and you'd best get started. "Nor do I pretend to the impertinence of personal grief. I do not claim to have known Mr Tonks or Nymphadora well. But I can claim a great deal of empathy with your circumstances. I reared my own grandson, you know. Perhaps you've heard of him? Neville Longbottom? The hero of the Battle of Hogwarts? He killed Voldemort's snake. The big one," you add, in case she isn't sure.
Mrs Tonks's lips quirk. When she opened the door to you earlier, you had seen something of Druella Black's hauteur in her face, but there is no trace of it when Andromeda smiles. The humour fades quickly, though, and she replies soberly, "Yes, I've heard of him. I remember what happened to your son and daughter-in-law, and I read about how you opened your home to Neville."
"Well, of course I did," you say. "As you are doing for Teddy. There was never any question of doing otherwise."
"No. . . ." Mrs Tonks replies slowly, but you can hear the doubt behind the word.
"Never. Any. Question," you repeat as forcefully as you can. "He needs you."
Something flashes in her dark eyes, anger or grief or despair, you don't know, but there are no tears.
"There's certainly no question about my doing what's right and best for Teddy, if that's what you mean," she retorts with spirit. "But I -- " Her voice trails away, and she looks down at the napkin twisted in her hand.
Ah. Now you understand. You take a moment to straighten the hat on your head and brush your fingers against the vulture. It steadies you.
"But you don't know if you are the best or right person to rear Teddy, is that it?" you ask.
Her shoulder twitches in a shrug, and she gives that half-smile again, wry this time. You think how handsome she is, with her softly-waving dark-brown hair and the strong Rosier cheekbones inherited from her mother.
"Because if that's what you're asking yourself, it's the wrong question," you tell her. "Best or not, right or not, you're the person he has. Just like you were the mother Nymphadora had. For better or worse, you're it."
Of course, you suspect that Andromeda Tonks is also haunted by a different question: whether she even wants to raise her grandson. It's an enormous responsibility, in some ways the end of whatever previous life she's made for herself.
You know she's asking this question because you asked it, too. Screamed it, actually, to the cosmos on an empty moor to which you Apparated on the day the healers told you there was no hope for Frank and Alice to regain their right minds.
But even as you shouted your angry question to the heavens, you knew the answer.
Mrs Tonks, you think, knows her answer, too.
"It will be different," you say, and you try to say it gently even though you are not the gentle type. "Raising an orphaned grandchild is not the same as raising your own baby. But in many ways, it's not very different at all. You'll know how you did when you see what sort of person they become."
~~~~~
I find that I like her, this stern old woman with the ridiculous hat. I'm a little surprised, actually. I'd known her by reputation, the way all the old wizarding families know of each other, and I expected to find her unpleasantly overbearing. "Damned pushy harridan" is what Alastor Moody called her, once when he visited here with Nymphadora.
I can definitely see that aspect of her; she's obviously willing to speak her mind. But then, so am I. She's been honest, which I appreciate; I like that she isn't trying to tell me that raising Teddy will be easy because "you already did a fine job with Nymphadora" (as more than one person has rather condescendingly said to me). And she has tact: she hasn't even hinted at the fact that the reason she had to raise her grandson was that his parents -- her son and daughter-in-law -- were tortured into insanity by my sister.
So yes, I like her.
She nibbles the corner of a cucumber sandwich and puts it down on her plate between bites, in the dainty way her mother no doubt taught her.
There is something else I want to know, something important. "Mrs Longbottom," I begin, "I would like. . . Could I ask. . .? I mean. . ."
I'm not usually so incoherent, and I take a breath, planning to start again, but my visitor lifts an imperious hand to stop me and says, "This must be a question you find difficult to ask?"
I nod.
"Out with it, then," she orders. "Just say it. No use beating around the bush. Life's too short."
I'm relieved. "All right, here it is. In raising Neville, you must have made some mistakes. What were they? What did you do wrong? Warn me. I need to know."
She gives a short bark that may be laughter or may not. "You think my answer will help you avoid having any regrets of your own? That's naïve, my girl; you must know better than that. "
"Your mistakes," I insist. "Tell me." I hear Teddy rustle in his cot, make a small noise.
Augusta Longbottom looks at me steadily, and I think there might be tears in her eyes. I'm shocked; it's like unexpectedly seeing her naked.
I want to glance away from her, but it seems cowardly, somehow. I watch as she adjusts her hat on her head, fingering that weird stuffed vulture.
Finally she speaks. "You will tell yourself that you need to prepare Teddy for the dangers of the world, no? You'll tell yourself that you need to be tough with him, make him strong. You'll tell yourself, 'no coddling. No softness.'"
Her eyes bore into mine, beady and unblinking, bizarrely resembling the vulture's. "Don't listen to yourself."
~~~~~
You believe you have said all that you need to say today, so you take a final sip of tea and get to your feet. "And now I must bid you good afternoon."
Mrs Tonks rises, too, and you think again how attractive she is; the Blacks, however despicable their politics, have always been nice-looking.
In another life, another world, you might have been able to act on your attraction. You might have asked Andromeda to dinner, got to know her, held hands with her, even spent time in her bed. You might have been able to show her that her own life didn't have to end just because she'd given a large part of it over to a little boy.
But you don't live in that world. You came of age in a world in which witches could choose either to marry wizards and do their part in keeping up the magical population, or they could stay single and bury themselves alive teaching in a boarding school or something, like Pomona and that old cat Minerva McGonagall.
You chose to marry Frank, and you are not sorry. You will not try another path now.
"Thank you for the tea," you say.
"Thank you for coming," replies Mrs Tonks. She extends her hand, and you shake it. Her fingers are warm.