Fic: Going Shopping
Title: Going Shopping
Author: bookish_brownie
Rating & Warnings: PG for very mild innuendo
Prompt: shopping
Format & Word Count: Fic, 1180
Summary: Andromeda spies on Nymphadora while she's shopping with a companion.
Author's Notes: This is my first fic from Andromeda's point of view and my first fic without dialogue. I hope everyone is having a happy New Year. Enjoy!
She watched them from across the street.
They looked completely oblivious to anyone but themselves. The young woman turned her face up to laugh at something the man had said. He seemed startled by her guffawing, but he didn’t move away from her. She continued dragging him down High Street and into Gladrags.
Andromeda followed them. She knew she shouldn’t, but it was her daughter, with a strange man that she had never met. He did look somewhat familiar, but she couldn’t place him. She focused too much on his face and the way his hand held Nymphadora’s to pay much attention to the rest of him, but her quick eye did note that his hair was graying and his coat seemed more patches than actual fabric.
She waited several minutes before she ducked carefully into the store. Fortunately, the Christmas season had all the witches and wizards out in force, and she was able to be a more anonymous face in the crowd. It wasn’t the ideal situation for keeping an eye on her daughter; however, her hair kept her visible and at least there would be witnesses in the event that Nymphadora saw her spying.
She worked her way closer to the back of the shop while maintaining a few racks of clothes between her and her quarry. Nymphadora was gleefully pulling out what were in Andromeda’s opinion the most garish robes and holding them up to herself for the judgment of her companion. He smiled at some, pulled exaggerated faces at others.
After about ten more minutes, she announced that she had had enough browsing. He asked some question that Andromeda didn’t hear; Nymphadora’s only answer was to say something about looking being most of the fun. He smiled at her briefly and indicated that he would join her outside in a few minutes. She had to bend down quickly to avoid being seen.
When she deemed it safe to raise her head, the man was still standing in front of the same rack, looking at the price tag on one of the few garments that Andromeda had actually liked. It was a set of relatively simple sapphire dress robes. She thought it would be lovely against her daughter’s pale skin, at least if she would wear a natural hair color.
His expression caught at something buried deep within her. To a casual observer, it would have seemed a perfectly neutral expression; he was not reddened or grimacing. But his face was absolutely, unnaturally still. It was the same face Ted had worn during their first Christmas together, when he told her that he couldn’t afford to buy her any presents. She had tried to find the perfect way to tell him that he gave her the greatest gifts every day and she needed nothing else from him; it was enough that they had a home where she was free and a baby coming in the spring. It was still a solid month before that look finally faded completely.
In that moment, she trusted this stranger to do right by her daughter. Seeing one expression on his face did not mean she knew him. Doubts would surely creep in once the moment passed. He did look older, after all. Nymphadora wasn’t a naïve little girl, but her mother’s heart whispered older men wanted only one thing from women years their junior.
This same voice compelled her to follow once they were both a little distance ahead of her. They wandered into Flourish and Blott’s next. It was another crowded shop. They immediately went to the Defense Against the Dark Arts section; the man started poring through a heavily bound volume, occasionally nodding or shaking his head.
Nymphadora brought him a book bound in bright red cloth, apparently as a joke, because he rolled his eyes theatrically at her before flipping through the pages. His expression became even more dubious before he couldn’t contain chuckles and she joined him. They managed to compose themselves fairly quickly. He held out the previous, dignified volume he had been studying. She seemed to approve of the choice. He took the book back and began to move through the other shoppers to the front to pay. Andromeda ducked quickly out of the way behind another row of shelves. The man drew an elaborately decorated velvet purse out of his coat.
The discrepancy between it and the rest of his clothing startled her, but somehow she hoped there was a logical explanation for it. She was beginning to feel like she could trust him as an honest and decent man. It was absurd because he was a stranger, but she set the matter aside. The couple left the shop. Andromeda was too engrossed to stop following them now.
She had never wished for Polyjuice Potion so much. She continued to allow a good amount of space and at least five people between her and Nymphadora. She was pleased when she saw that they were going to Honeydukes. She had many happy memories there from her own school days and after. It had been one of her earliest rebellions to spend a whole week’s allowance on sweets, defying her mother who declared at every opportunity that it was not proper for a good pureblood daughter to gain weight or get spots. She hadn’t, but she used to enjoy picturing her mother’s face if she ever discovered how much money she had spent there.
The couple seemed to be enjoying themselves a similar amount. They pointed almost gleefully at new candies that they hadn’t tried. They bent their heads close together when they were examining the merchandise. Though they grew more interested in flirting than in shopping, Nymphadora ended up with several different kinds of chocolate bars and other assorted sweets in her basket. Andromeda convinced herself that it was time to leave before they finally caught her.
Andromeda decided then and there that this man, though he appeared older and shabby and weather-beaten, could be good for her. She was open enough to change that she didn’t believe a husband and children were the only sources of happiness for a woman, but she worried about Nymphadora sometimes. Being an Auror was a lonely job; she had pressures that few others, including her and Ted, could understand. She didn’t think that Nymphadora had kept in touch with many of her Hogwarts friends; they had gone in different directions, and her rigorous schedule left little time for socializing. She hoped that this man was at least someone she could talk with and connect with on more than a professional level.
Conversations with her daughter had occurred much less often than she wished in the previous months. She had dropped several oblique hints asking about her love life, but she had always been gently (or not-so-gently) repelled. However, she would use all her Slytherin cunning to orchestrate a meeting with this fellow. She had an intuition, however unfounded it might be, that he would be a part of her daughter’s life for a long time to come.