FIC: Of Two Worlds for pansydarkbloom
Title: Of Two Worlds
Author/Artist: ???
Rating: PG-13 for brief mention of violence
Characters: Andromeda, Narcissa, Ted Tonks
Summary: Andromeda explains her justifications for marrying Ted Tonks, and how it came to be that Narcissa showed up on her doorstep the day before the wedding.
Recipient: pansydarkbloom
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You showed up on my doorstep the day before my wedding.
It had been five months since I left. He proposed to me in that muggle restaurant where the cook sang greensleeves and the fabric flowers were grease-stained and limp on the tablecloth. Ted liked it there - said it had character, had love in it. Ted felt loved in places like that, stores and restaurants that were imperfect but with a wink and a nod, just regular folks like you, no pretensions. I remember thinking of pale peach brandy, stored in oaken barrels and carrying the lingering taste of it, chilled and poured by an unobtrusive hand. Of candlelight refracted against silver, crystal, porcelain plates hand-painted with heliotrope. Of camellias and orchids and the soft sound of velvet, satin, and crinoline lace. Of rice served in milk and honey, sweetened by almonds. There was a love in that world, too, in its delicate and impermanent perfection, but Ted could not see it.
I said yes.
My engagement ring was made of faded gold - with a ruby, not a diamond. Ted could not afford a diamond, not that he would admit it for the world. He said that rubies had more personality to them, more spice, more passion. Mayhap he even believed it. But he knew, deep in his heart, that it was only the second best, and he knew I knew as well.
It’s what I loved him for. You wouldn’t understand, of course. You never tired of our world - our world of champagne and the marble, drenched in diamonds and little spoons for sugar. After that, after years of sitting in the drawing room and bending with aching eyes over the needlepoint, of nothing but baroque quartets and pheasant in plum sauce, tender and rich, I realized. It was all utterly, maddeningly futile.
Yes. I know you do not want to hear but yes, that’s when. Don’t be unreasonable. Cissy, how could it not change me?
If you think it’s out of some perverted sense of debt, you’re wrong. I can’t believe you’d degrade me to think such a thing, you, with your arranged marriage, selling yourself to that Lucius, that man you swore to me you hated. Spreading your legs for a Malfoy, do you have any idea what I could tell you about that family, about how they came to earn their vast riches? No, of course you don’t want to know. It’s easier for you if you don’t know.
Ted was the one who saved me - I’ll never forget that, and I’ll never stop being thankful for it. But I didn’t marry him because of it. I didn’t, so don’t you judge me. I married him because he opened my eyes to the decadence of our world, the senseless, glutinous hedonism. When I was with … them - no, Narcissa, I am going to tell you, like it or no - people showed me kindness. Not the ones who took me, no, though they themselves were not at all the type of monsters I had been raised to think muggles were - just desperate. Others, muggle men and women throughout the country were gentle with me, and there was something in their eyes that told me that, were I to just open my mouth and tell them, and ask them help, please, they’ve taken me from my home and I don’t know where I am or what they want with me or how long it’s going to keep going, please help, they would have helped. Their society is not so saturated with paranoia as our own. Had they known my situation, I am sure beyond a doubt that many would have come to my aid, heedless of the harm that might have befallen them. It was weeks, Narcissa, weeks before I heard that any … search was being made by the wizarding community, if you could call it that.
No doubt father wanted to postpone reporting my disappearance to the Ministry of Magic until it was absolutely necessary. Just think of the scandal: Andromeda Black, high-born daughter of one of the most prestigious and influential pureblood families in the wizarding world, abducting by a bunch of muggle criminals. The thought must have been as absurd as it was ruinous. My reputation would have been tarnished forever, and the standing of the family lowered, had the information been made public. As it was, I hear father merely engaged a couple of private Aurors and Ministry men to conduct the search under a veil of magically-binding secrecy. A clever move, even if it did postpone my return by a few weeks. But what is a few weeks of torment for one’s child verses some gossip?
Stop, Cissy. Oh yes, I know our father was beside himself with grief. The way I remember it, he and his family friends grieved themselves right into a muggle suburb and right into the houses of six or seven muggle families. I’m sure it was a very stressful time for you all, wondering what had happened to me. I’m sure the raping and lynching of our completely innocent neighbors seemed a perfectly viable channel for his grief at the time, though I imagine the energy put into it might well have done more good if it had been given towards the search for me. Of course, I was only the middle child, and unmarried. I was never the important one - Bella was the eldest, and you the prettiest. What good does cleverness do for a pureblood scion of the most noble and ancient house of Black, born and bred to be sold off like a piece of meat to the highest pureblood bidder - and don’t you dare say it isn’t true. You know very well it is.
I don’t believe I would have survived if I had returned to our world. When that day came, and I saw my opportunity, I knew where I would run. I had been paraded through the muggle sections, and I knew by that time that they were nothing like the tales mother would tell that would put a chill in my blood. Even my captors were merely men - cruel men, embittered by the hardships of the world with cracked and calloused hands, but men nonetheless. When they left me alone for a few moments, I knew that that might be the last opportunity I would have for escape. With my hands bound behind my back with duct tape - it’s like spellotape but thicker, Cissy, don’t try to change the subject - I ran from their car, away to the nearest shop I could find. It was Ted’s, you know that much. The first thing he did was cut my hands free and shoo the customers out. He even listened to me when I asked him not to call the police, though he demanded to know why. Once he had grasped that I was a witch pretending to be a muggle, he understood … but his manner of treating me did not change at all. Even when he had thought - he told me this later - that I was a muggle prostitute who had been abducted, he was kind, and tender with me. His shop was a dingy little place with flat yellow lighting and dusty shelves, but it seemed like heaven to me then, more than the chandeliers and ballrooms at home ever had.
When he asked, I said yes.
The day I left, there was no shouting, no throwing of delicate willow-patterned vases passed down in our family for centuries, just a cold, brittle silence. You were sitting there on the divan, still and unmoving, your back to me. I can see it even know, in my mind’s eye - the way your hair was, the book that lay upside down in your lap, that summer tea dress you were wearing, the green one I always liked so much. My little sister, my Cissy, with tears on her face, saying nothing and refusing to look at me. I twisted the engagement ring around my finger - it was too tight, and hurt a bit - and went upstairs to pack my things. There was a suitcase sitting outside my bedroom door, and I could hear our mother crying inside. That entire afternoon sticks in my memory like a scene from some terrible, tragic play.
It was easier if I didn’t think about it, and so I did not. I moved into Ted’s flat in central London and, for months, I thought of nothing but fabric flowers and Greensleeves. I told myself that you and mother and Bella were pampered, pretentious fools. I hated myself for having lived so complacently in my little cage of diamond and orchids.
But.
It was denial - I realized that the moment I opened the door and there you were under the lintel, with a black veil of lace over your face as if you were in mourning. Mourning my stupidity, my little futile rebellion. And, in that moment, I felt my justifications come crashing down around me. The truth is, Narcissa, I do not love the world of Ted Tonks. I do not love the greasy-table cloth and the brash, rude laughter of fat men in smoky chip shops. It is the absurdity of your existence - my former existence - that makes it perfect in my eyes. The cold, hard, bright beauty of the fading aristocracy. They love too recklessly, too hotly for my slow, blue blood.
Blood will out, as father always said.
I still love Ted. I still love everything that he means to me, and the way he looks at me after we've made love with that soft, reverent, blubberous way of his. When you walked into his apartment you were like a knife, a silver knife cutting through the musty, grease-stained canvas of my self-deceit. You were sharp like a diamond, cutting against my veins, drawing out of me the thread of blue, and the pure, sweet taste of magic in my open mouth.
You didn't say a single word that day. You moved like honey through the hot, buzzing summer air of the open-windowed, sun-drenched room, your arms full of lavender, and a veil over your eyes, with the incisive blue cutting through the lace. I yielded to you in that moment, even though in my mind I remembered tears in those eyes, and the erectness of your stature as you turned from me. You laid the fragrant stalks in my bare arms like one would a child, and you kissed my eyelids, your silk gloves, smoothing across my naked lips. I opened them to say your name, but I had lost my voice. I knew where it was - it was trapped in the polystyrene, in the plastic forks, in the little meaningless clatter of my glasses on the wood as you kissed me there, amidst the floating particles of dust.
Author/Artist: ???
Rating: PG-13 for brief mention of violence
Characters: Andromeda, Narcissa, Ted Tonks
Summary: Andromeda explains her justifications for marrying Ted Tonks, and how it came to be that Narcissa showed up on her doorstep the day before the wedding.
Recipient: pansydarkbloom
---
You showed up on my doorstep the day before my wedding.
It had been five months since I left. He proposed to me in that muggle restaurant where the cook sang greensleeves and the fabric flowers were grease-stained and limp on the tablecloth. Ted liked it there - said it had character, had love in it. Ted felt loved in places like that, stores and restaurants that were imperfect but with a wink and a nod, just regular folks like you, no pretensions. I remember thinking of pale peach brandy, stored in oaken barrels and carrying the lingering taste of it, chilled and poured by an unobtrusive hand. Of candlelight refracted against silver, crystal, porcelain plates hand-painted with heliotrope. Of camellias and orchids and the soft sound of velvet, satin, and crinoline lace. Of rice served in milk and honey, sweetened by almonds. There was a love in that world, too, in its delicate and impermanent perfection, but Ted could not see it.
I said yes.
My engagement ring was made of faded gold - with a ruby, not a diamond. Ted could not afford a diamond, not that he would admit it for the world. He said that rubies had more personality to them, more spice, more passion. Mayhap he even believed it. But he knew, deep in his heart, that it was only the second best, and he knew I knew as well.
It’s what I loved him for. You wouldn’t understand, of course. You never tired of our world - our world of champagne and the marble, drenched in diamonds and little spoons for sugar. After that, after years of sitting in the drawing room and bending with aching eyes over the needlepoint, of nothing but baroque quartets and pheasant in plum sauce, tender and rich, I realized. It was all utterly, maddeningly futile.
Yes. I know you do not want to hear but yes, that’s when. Don’t be unreasonable. Cissy, how could it not change me?
If you think it’s out of some perverted sense of debt, you’re wrong. I can’t believe you’d degrade me to think such a thing, you, with your arranged marriage, selling yourself to that Lucius, that man you swore to me you hated. Spreading your legs for a Malfoy, do you have any idea what I could tell you about that family, about how they came to earn their vast riches? No, of course you don’t want to know. It’s easier for you if you don’t know.
Ted was the one who saved me - I’ll never forget that, and I’ll never stop being thankful for it. But I didn’t marry him because of it. I didn’t, so don’t you judge me. I married him because he opened my eyes to the decadence of our world, the senseless, glutinous hedonism. When I was with … them - no, Narcissa, I am going to tell you, like it or no - people showed me kindness. Not the ones who took me, no, though they themselves were not at all the type of monsters I had been raised to think muggles were - just desperate. Others, muggle men and women throughout the country were gentle with me, and there was something in their eyes that told me that, were I to just open my mouth and tell them, and ask them help, please, they’ve taken me from my home and I don’t know where I am or what they want with me or how long it’s going to keep going, please help, they would have helped. Their society is not so saturated with paranoia as our own. Had they known my situation, I am sure beyond a doubt that many would have come to my aid, heedless of the harm that might have befallen them. It was weeks, Narcissa, weeks before I heard that any … search was being made by the wizarding community, if you could call it that.
No doubt father wanted to postpone reporting my disappearance to the Ministry of Magic until it was absolutely necessary. Just think of the scandal: Andromeda Black, high-born daughter of one of the most prestigious and influential pureblood families in the wizarding world, abducting by a bunch of muggle criminals. The thought must have been as absurd as it was ruinous. My reputation would have been tarnished forever, and the standing of the family lowered, had the information been made public. As it was, I hear father merely engaged a couple of private Aurors and Ministry men to conduct the search under a veil of magically-binding secrecy. A clever move, even if it did postpone my return by a few weeks. But what is a few weeks of torment for one’s child verses some gossip?
Stop, Cissy. Oh yes, I know our father was beside himself with grief. The way I remember it, he and his family friends grieved themselves right into a muggle suburb and right into the houses of six or seven muggle families. I’m sure it was a very stressful time for you all, wondering what had happened to me. I’m sure the raping and lynching of our completely innocent neighbors seemed a perfectly viable channel for his grief at the time, though I imagine the energy put into it might well have done more good if it had been given towards the search for me. Of course, I was only the middle child, and unmarried. I was never the important one - Bella was the eldest, and you the prettiest. What good does cleverness do for a pureblood scion of the most noble and ancient house of Black, born and bred to be sold off like a piece of meat to the highest pureblood bidder - and don’t you dare say it isn’t true. You know very well it is.
I don’t believe I would have survived if I had returned to our world. When that day came, and I saw my opportunity, I knew where I would run. I had been paraded through the muggle sections, and I knew by that time that they were nothing like the tales mother would tell that would put a chill in my blood. Even my captors were merely men - cruel men, embittered by the hardships of the world with cracked and calloused hands, but men nonetheless. When they left me alone for a few moments, I knew that that might be the last opportunity I would have for escape. With my hands bound behind my back with duct tape - it’s like spellotape but thicker, Cissy, don’t try to change the subject - I ran from their car, away to the nearest shop I could find. It was Ted’s, you know that much. The first thing he did was cut my hands free and shoo the customers out. He even listened to me when I asked him not to call the police, though he demanded to know why. Once he had grasped that I was a witch pretending to be a muggle, he understood … but his manner of treating me did not change at all. Even when he had thought - he told me this later - that I was a muggle prostitute who had been abducted, he was kind, and tender with me. His shop was a dingy little place with flat yellow lighting and dusty shelves, but it seemed like heaven to me then, more than the chandeliers and ballrooms at home ever had.
When he asked, I said yes.
The day I left, there was no shouting, no throwing of delicate willow-patterned vases passed down in our family for centuries, just a cold, brittle silence. You were sitting there on the divan, still and unmoving, your back to me. I can see it even know, in my mind’s eye - the way your hair was, the book that lay upside down in your lap, that summer tea dress you were wearing, the green one I always liked so much. My little sister, my Cissy, with tears on her face, saying nothing and refusing to look at me. I twisted the engagement ring around my finger - it was too tight, and hurt a bit - and went upstairs to pack my things. There was a suitcase sitting outside my bedroom door, and I could hear our mother crying inside. That entire afternoon sticks in my memory like a scene from some terrible, tragic play.
It was easier if I didn’t think about it, and so I did not. I moved into Ted’s flat in central London and, for months, I thought of nothing but fabric flowers and Greensleeves. I told myself that you and mother and Bella were pampered, pretentious fools. I hated myself for having lived so complacently in my little cage of diamond and orchids.
But.
It was denial - I realized that the moment I opened the door and there you were under the lintel, with a black veil of lace over your face as if you were in mourning. Mourning my stupidity, my little futile rebellion. And, in that moment, I felt my justifications come crashing down around me. The truth is, Narcissa, I do not love the world of Ted Tonks. I do not love the greasy-table cloth and the brash, rude laughter of fat men in smoky chip shops. It is the absurdity of your existence - my former existence - that makes it perfect in my eyes. The cold, hard, bright beauty of the fading aristocracy. They love too recklessly, too hotly for my slow, blue blood.
Blood will out, as father always said.
I still love Ted. I still love everything that he means to me, and the way he looks at me after we've made love with that soft, reverent, blubberous way of his. When you walked into his apartment you were like a knife, a silver knife cutting through the musty, grease-stained canvas of my self-deceit. You were sharp like a diamond, cutting against my veins, drawing out of me the thread of blue, and the pure, sweet taste of magic in my open mouth.
You didn't say a single word that day. You moved like honey through the hot, buzzing summer air of the open-windowed, sun-drenched room, your arms full of lavender, and a veil over your eyes, with the incisive blue cutting through the lace. I yielded to you in that moment, even though in my mind I remembered tears in those eyes, and the erectness of your stature as you turned from me. You laid the fragrant stalks in my bare arms like one would a child, and you kissed my eyelids, your silk gloves, smoothing across my naked lips. I opened them to say your name, but I had lost my voice. I knew where it was - it was trapped in the polystyrene, in the plastic forks, in the little meaningless clatter of my glasses on the wood as you kissed me there, amidst the floating particles of dust.