A New World Bursting into Bloom (1/2)
A NEW WORLD BURSTING INTO BLOOM
Summary:
“Andromeda Black, I like you.” Ted grinned. “You want to go to Hogsmeade together next weekend?”
“What? No,” Andromeda said. “Wait, what are you asking me?”
Was he laughing at her? She was quite sure he was laughing at her. “I’m asking you if you want to go to Hogsmeade with me.”
“I - no. I’m sorry.” Andromeda winced as she said it, but she couldn’t think of a kinder way to reject him. She walked away wondering what in Merlin’s name made him think that was a reasonable thing to ask.
It was only much later, after the lights in the dormitory were out, that it occurred to Andromeda to wonder what made her think it wasn’t.
Characters: Andromeda, Ted, various Black family members
Rating: PG-13 for brief mentions of sex between consenting teenagers
Words: ~11,000
Notes: The idea for this story was initially inspired by MandyinKC, who has called Ted the "great unseen character" in my Andromeda stories - crucial to the story, yet always just offstage. I wanted to give Ted his chance to appear onstage, too!
Thank you to stereolightning for beta-reading!
Oh, and I don't think I've ever thought to say this, but everything I post here can also be found at AO3 - under the same user name, starfishstar - if you prefer reading stories there. This story, for example, is here.
(This story formerly titled "A Series of Firsts.")
Story:
1. The First Time They Talked
“Hi!” said an unfamiliar voice to Andromeda’s left.
She turned to see that a broad-shouldered, sandy-haired boy had slid in next to her in the Quidditch stands, in the spot vacated when Bellatrix had run off somewhere just a moment before. It was the last match of the year, Ravenclaw versus Gryffindor.
“I’m Ted Tonks,” the boy said. “You’re Andromeda Black, right?” The grin on his face was goofy yet somehow likeable. Andromeda thought she had a vague memory of him being Sorted into Hufflepuff the same evening she’d joined Slytherin, making him a fifth-year like her. They’d never spoken before.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m Andromeda. Why?”
He looked incongruously delighted at her answer. “No reason, really. Just, my friends dared me to talk to you, said probably the only thing you would say would be to tell me to leave you alone.” He grinned again, disarming. “But I’m glad you didn’t do that. Anyway. Enjoy the match!”
And with that, he slid off the bench again, giving her a little wave.
Did other students really think her that aloof? Andromeda wondered. Or was this one of those tiresome inter-house things, where Gryffindors assumed all Slytherins were snobs and Slytherins assumed all Hufflepuffs were daft and so on ad nauseam?
Gazing out at the players without really tracking their movements, now Andromeda almost wished she had told him to go away. It would serve him right, for playing into those tired clichés.
Someone slid in beside her on the bench again, and this time it wasn’t the Hufflepuff boy.
“Oooh,” Bellatrix said, settling the many folds of her long, dark skirt around herself and wrinkling her nose as if she smelled an awful stench. “What was that sitting next to you just now? Don’t you know he’s a Muggle-born?”
“Well I didn’t talk to him,” Andromeda said, feeling nettled by the whole thing. “He came over and talked to me.”
“You have no taste, Andromeda,” Bellatrix said, then shrieked in triumph as the Ravenclaw Beater got a Bludger to the Gryffindor Chaser’s back.
Did taste enter into it, though? Andromeda wondered. He’d seemed nice enough. And besides, you didn’t need to know a person’s entire family credentials just to talk to them at a Quidditch match. If you were going to marry them or something, sure. But what did it matter for day-to-day things?
2. The First Time They Partnered in Class
The start of sixth year meant another reshuffling, as each student focused in on some subjects while dropping others, and smaller class sizes meant being grouped together more with other houses. For Transfiguration, for example, Slytherin was now paired with Hufflepuff.
Professor McGonagall seemed to be deliberately organising the class into cross-house pairs. Andromeda wouldn’t be pairing with Nedra Nott anymore, then. Pity. They weren’t close outside of class, but they always worked well together. Nedra was clever and understood Transfiguration, traits Andromeda appreciated.
It took Andromeda a moment to place the boy that Professor McGonagall seated next to her. Sandy hair, affable expression - it was that same Hufflepuff who’d come up to her at the Quidditch match last year.
“You’re Ted,” she said.
His answering smile was unexpectedly shy. “And you’re Andromeda. You remember me?”
“Of course I do. You sat next to me at the Quidditch match that one time.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that, my friends, you know-”
“-simply assumed I would be so rude as to refuse to even speak to you, if I recall correctly.”
“Hey, wait, that’s not fair-”
“Attention!” McGonagall called in her crisp voice, setting the class their assignment for the day and in the process heading off the conversation between Andromeda and her new deskmate that was veering towards bickering.
They were to Conjure a goblet from nothing, a more complex bit of Transfiguration than they’d attempted so far, since metal was one of the most difficult materials to Conjure. Ted Tonks was the first in the class to perform the spell perfectly.
“Nicely done,” Professor McGonagall commented as she passed by their pair of desks.
Andromeda watched as Ted made minute adjustments until his goblet was finally to his satisfaction. When he looked up and saw her watching, he smiled and said, “Neat, huh?”
It was on the tip of Andromeda’s tongue to ask, Where did you learn to do that? I thought you were a Muggle-born! - but that, she thought, would definitely count as rude. She’d never seen a Muggle-born wizard do such good spellwork, though.
Now she found herself curious about Muggle-borns in a way she’d never been before. What was it like to first step into this world at the age of 11? What was it like, for that matter, to spend your entire childhood not even knowing magic existed? Andromeda’s imagination failed her there completely. She couldn’t conceive of ever having been different to how she was now.
3. The First Time Ted Asked Andromeda Out
Ted seemed to like to listen to Andromeda talk. She could talk about wizarding history, Conjuration theory, anything at all, as they worked together on the day’s Transfiguration assignment, and he’d sit there and absorb it, intent on his spellwork but listening to her, too.
“You’ve got so much in your head,” he’d say sometimes, wonderingly. “Where do you keep it all?”
You’re not so bad yourself, Andromeda would think. You’ve learnt everything I already knew from birth, except you did it in half the time.
One day after class, Andromeda was still going on about everything that might have gone differently in the Goblin Rebellions if wizard wandmakers had just been willing to sell to other species as well as humans, when she broke off, realising that almost everyone else had left the classroom, but Ted was still there, leaning against the side of her desk and paying close attention. She looked up at him, wondering at his patience, then gathered her books together and stood as well.
“Sorry,” she said. “I know I sometimes really get going on topics I care about.”
“‘Sokay. You always make it interesting, the way you tell it.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Her surprise must have been plain on her face. No one else ever seemed to want to hear her questions and critiques about the things that got handed down to them as immutable historical fact.
Ted was studying her, his expression curious and intent. “Andromeda Black, I like you,” he said. He grinned. “You want to go to Hogsmeade together next weekend?”
“What? No,” Andromeda said. “Wait, what are you asking me?”
Was he laughing at her? She was quite sure he was laughing at her. “I’m asking you if you want to go to Hogsmeade with me.”
“I - no. I’m sorry.”
Andromeda winced as she said it, but she couldn’t think of a kinder way to reject him. She walked away wondering what in Merlin’s name could have made him think that was a reasonable thing to ask.
It was only much later, after the lights in the dormitory were out and she was drifting towards sleep, that it occurred to Andromeda to wonder what made her think it wasn’t.
4. The First Time Andromeda Asked Ted Out
And the amazing thing was, it wasn’t even weird after that. Ted had asked Andromeda out (she was pretty sure he’d been asking her out), and she’d said no, and they went on being Transfiguration partners, and it was fine.
The year before, when Andromeda had politely declined Andronicus Burke, he hadn’t talked to her for the rest of the year, lifting his chin haughtily away whenever he passed her in the halls.
But Ted…just kept being Ted.
The last Hogsmeade weekend of the term fell shortly before the Christmas holidays, and from the time the date appeared on the Slytherin noticeboard, all the chatter in the common room was about who was going with whom and who was planning on shopping for what. The latter was a topic that tended to veer quickly into who was expecting a racing broom or some other gesture of largess from their parents this Christmas and Andromeda, who fully expected her parents to give her yet more terribly expensive things she had no need for, found little to hold her interest in those conversations.
For the first time, though, she was intrigued by the who’s-going-with-whom, who’s-expected-to-ask-whom-any-day-now gossip. Sometimes in the evenings she would sit near the common room fire, one of her schoolbooks open on her lap, and listen with feigned disinterest to the names being dropped around her. Did anybody in her house date people from outside the house? It didn’t seem like it.
The Tuesday before the Hogsmeade weekend, Lucius Malfoy sauntered by Andromeda’s seat in the common room and smirked at her as he passed.
Oh, Merlin, he couldn’t really think - could he? He was only a fifth-year.
More to the point, he was a smarmy, self-satisfied toad of a fifth-year, and receiving a shiny Prefect badge over the summer had only made him ten times worse.
Narcissa, who happened to be sitting with Andromeda that evening instead of with her usual gaggle of fourth-year friends, sighed and watched the back of Lucius’ white-blonde hair swing away from them and murmured, “He’s dreamy.”
Dreamy? Were they both looking at the same Lucius Malfoy?
The Thursday before the Hogsmeade weekend, Andromeda fidgeted with the spine of her Transfiguration book, standing by her desk after class, then said, “Do you want to go to Hogsmeade with me?”
Ted said, “What?”
“I said, do you want to go to Hogsmeade with me?”
A slow smile was spreading across his face, like dawn breaking across the expanse of an ocean horizon. “Are you asking me what I think you’re asking me?”
Already, Andromeda was starting to regret it. “Well, if you don’t want to…”
“Are you mad? Of course I want to!”
“You do?”
“Uh, yeah.”
He was smiling that same daft, adorable grin at her that she remembered from the first time they’d met. Andromeda realised she was smiling too.
“I’ll see you on Saturday, then,” she said. “Meet in front of Scrivenshaft’s?”
“It’s a date,” Ted said, then gathered up his things and dashed out of the classroom like he couldn’t contain his eager energy a second longer.
5. Their First Kiss
Andromeda had never really got the point of the whole “Hogsmeade weekend as opportunity to go on a date” thing.
It was Hogsmeade. They were sixth-years; they’d been there so many times by now. There were only so many times you could make the rounds of the village’s shops and pretend to still find it all fascinating.
And they were all the same people, too. You shifted the scenery a bit, but you were still surrounded by the same hundreds of Hogwarts students you lived among every day. There was nothing new about a Hogsmeade weekend just because of the person you happened to be walking around the village with.
Except it turned out Andromeda had been utterly wrong about that.
Walking through Hogsmeade with Ted Tonks, Andromeda felt as if there were fire running under every inch of her skin, despite the chill wind and the layers and layers she wore to keep it out. Snow had fallen overnight, and Hogsmeade looked like a postcard, all the houses and shop so sweetly picturesque it almost hurt to look at them, and she and Ted were walking so close that their hands kept almost, almost, almost brushing.
She could barely hear for the rushing in her ears and the pool of heat gathering in the very centre of her chest.
Ted was talking, and she was trying to listen, she truly was, but all she could think about was the back of his mittened hand just barely grazing hers, and the deep, deep brown of his eyes whenever he turned to her to emphasise a point.
Wasn’t this the same Ted she’d sat next to, carelessly bumping and jostling elbows, every week this term? What was happening to her?
Andromeda had dated a boy before - two, in fact - but she had never experienced anything that remotely approached this. It felt as if at any second the ground might fall away beneath her feet and she would find herself treading air, or the strange heat behind her breastbone might burst right out of her, or possibly both of those things at once.
Andromeda wondered if she was dying. Ted was talking about Quidditch. He supported the Appleby Arrows. He was talking much more than he usually did, fast and edgy.
He was nervous, Andromeda realised. He was nervous too.
They fetched up at the edge of town, beyond the last of the houses, where a wooden fence ran along the road for a last small stretch before the cobblestones gave way to a woodland lane. There was no one else around.
Ted stopped and leaned against the wooden fence, so Andromeda did too. She pulled off her gloves, then wondered if she should put them back on. What was she doing?
Ted reached out and found her hand. His hands were bare now too, his palm warm.
“Andromeda, can I-”
The pause seemed endless.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she breathed.
He leaned in and Andromeda’s heart pounded, a wild thing in her chest.
Then Ted’s lips met hers and that wild beating feeling spread through all of her. It was perfect. It was kissing Ted Tonks and it was perfect.
He pulled away a little and said, “So.”
Andromeda said, “Yes.”
Ted was grinning. He really did seem to smile an awful lot.
“Ted?” Andromeda said.
“Yeah?”
She smiled back at him. “I like you.”
6. The First Time They Talked about Her Family
It was nearly time for Christmas dinner. Finally. The day had been excruciatingly long, and it wasn’t over yet.
Sirius was running around shrieking, as usual, and Auntie Walburga was pinching the bridge of her nose with a faint air of counting the hours until they could return to their own home, making Sirius the nanny’s responsibility once again.
Sirius was, what, nine years old now? He ought to know better than to behave like a hooligan. Andromeda sometimes thought Sirius lived to annoy everyone else around him.
Regulus, meanwhile, was sulking about something, also as per usual, and Narcissa was sitting beside him, stroking his hair and murmuring to him. Narcissa did love playing Mummy, and she always made such a pet of Regulus.
Father and Uncle Orion were debating something in loud voices from their armchairs next to the fire, Bellatrix sitting on the floor by Father’s knee with her face upturned and avid. Andromeda was doing the opposite, trying not to listen, because whatever they were talking about, it would likely only make her want to answer back. It wasn’t actually a debate, when Father and Uncle Orion talked. It was just a contest of who could express their shared views the loudest.
It was a pity Uncle Alphard hadn’t come this year. He, at least, occasionally said insightful things.
And to round out this portrait of slightly inbred, slightly crazy holiday cheer, Mother was probably in the kitchens, berating the house-elves.
They really were a bit mad, the lot of them, weren’t they, each in their own way. But Andromeda loved them anyway. How could she not? They were her family.
She kept thinking at the oddest moments about Ted Tonks, and then having to suppress the secretive smile that inevitably rose to her lips when his gentle, laughing face appeared in her mind’s eye. There had been barely any free time between the last Hogsmeade weekend and the end of the term, but what little there was, she’d spent with Ted, talking or wandering the Hogwarts grounds in the snow.
Andromeda wondered what Ted would say about her family, if he could see them now. He’d have a good laugh, maybe. And hopefully not take Father and Uncle Orion all too seriously in their ignorant blather.
They gathered at the table for dinner, served by the elves, with Father presiding from the head of the table and Mother from the foot. Mother was still dropping hints about Lucius Malfoy and what a suitable match he would make. She’d been doing it all through the holiday, and not very subtly either. Bellatrix had only just been engaged off to that limp dishrag Rodolphus Lestrange - the official betrothal celebration wouldn’t even be until summer - but already it was Andromeda’s turn, it seemed. Just hearing Lucius’ name was starting to make her mildly nauseous.
What a fine old family the Malfoys were, or so Mother kept working into conversation. What good connections they had. And with only one son in the family - well, the girl who caught him would be lucky indeed.
Is that truly all we care about? Andromeda wanted to ask. How many of their ancestors happened to be magical, and how much gold and how many greasy-palmed connections they have? What about whether they’re kind? Or have a sense of humour?
Andromeda decorously fled the dinner table as soon as manners allowed.
“Ugh,” she said to Ted, once she was finally back at Hogwarts at the end of the holiday, and they were ensconced together in one of the window nooks at the very back of the library, his arm comfortably looped around her shoulders. Andromeda wasn’t sure what would happen if someone from her house saw them together like that. So far, no one had. “My family have practically married me off to Lucius Malfoy already.”
“Wait, what?” Ted’s body seeming to startle against hers.
“To Malfoy, of all terrible choices. I think I’d even prefer that creep Rabastan, if it came to that.”
“No, that was ‘What?’ as in, What do you mean? Are you seriously saying your family think they get to dictate who you marry?”
Andromeda twisted around so she could look at him. “Ted. Yes, of course.”
“What?”
Andromeda bit her tongue before she could say something that would end up coming out unkindly, like, You’ve lived in this world for nearly six years now, so how can you possibly not know that yet?
“That’s just how it is,” she said instead. “The old families have a strong interest in continuing their line, so of course a lot of thought goes into who marries whom. I’m not saying I agree, not entirely, but that’s just how it is.”
Ted was sitting up fully now. “Wait, so let me get this straight: Your parents are going to pick your husband-to-be - out of only the richest, ‘oldest’ pure-blood magical families, of course - and you’re just going to go along with it?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” Andromeda burst out. The whole topic made her feel edgy and claustrophobic. “I’d been hoping not to have to think about it for a few years yet, frankly. But all of a sudden, Mother seems intent on getting us all married off like Hinkypunks in a row. She kept going on about it all through the holidays. It was beastly, Ted.”
“Andromeda,” Ted said, very slowly. He’d moved his arm and turned so they were facing each other in the window seat. “What’s this between us, then?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I guess I kind of thought you were my girlfriend. But apparently not, if you’re sitting here telling me about the perfect pure-blood match your family’s got all picked out for you. So what are we, Andromeda, if you already know you’re going to marry someone else?”
Was Ted her boyfriend? He was her friend, certainly. A bit more than friends, to be honest, since kissing had been involved on a number of occasions. Very nice kissing, at that.
But it wasn’t like that…was it?
“Well, we’re not - we’re - it’s not as if we’re going to get married,” Andromeda struggled.
“Why not? If we wanted to?”
“But - but surely we needn’t talk about that sort of thing now!”
“I’m not saying we should get married - we’ve only just started getting to know each other - but why is it such a crazy thing to talk about in theory, just like you’re talking about marrying Lucius Malfoy? How is that different?”
“How is it different? It’s completely different! It’s - oh, I don’t know how to explain it to you. It’s just how wizards are.”
She was afraid she’d offended him then, but Ted just said, the assurance in his voice taking her by surprise, “No, it isn’t. That’s how your family works, Andromeda, but it’s not how most wizards’ do. All my mates in Hufflepuff are pure-blood or at least half - they’ve all got at least one wizard parent, I mean. And I promise you, not a single one of them is expecting to have an arranged marriage.”
“But I’m a Black,” Andromeda said. Even to her ears, it sounded a weak excuse.
“And, what, that makes you royalty? You’re like the Muggle queen, you can only marry into other aristocratic families?”
“I - no. I don’t know.”
The same argument had been whispering in the back of Andromeda’s mind all through the Christmas holiday, and she didn’t know how to answer it. She didn’t know how to answer Ted. All she knew was that she didn’t want to lose him. There were so few things Andromeda felt sure of these days, but that was one thing where she was certain.
“Can we not talk about this right now?” she pleaded. “I really just don’t know.”
The pause before Ted answered wasn’t all that long, probably, but to Andromeda it was excruciating.
“All right,” he said.
“Thank you.” She reached for his hands, and squeezed them tightly.
7. The First Time It Was Official
Andromeda watched Lucius Malfoy, covertly, when he passed her in the halls or the common room, his chest perpetually puffed out, the better to display his Prefect badge. Halfway through the school year, it seemed the thrill of power had not worn off.
Andromeda had nothing against pure-bloods, per se. For Merlin’s sake, she and all her family were pure-bloods. She’d be a bit of a hypocrite to condemn Malfoy only on those grounds. Andromeda wasn’t one of those rabble-rousers who thought being from a pure-blood family made you practically evil, any more than she was one of those terrifying elitists who thought being from a Muggle family made you no better than an animal.
But Lucius Malfoy in particular made her skin crawl. There was a mean kind of calculation to him, a cold self-interest that wasn’t right in a fifteen-year-old boy.
It wasn’t so much about comparing Lucius to Ted, who didn’t seem to have a cold or calculating bone in his body. It was simply that when Andromeda looked at Malfoy, she knew this was not someone she ever wanted to link her life with.
And when she thought of Ted, it wasn’t really about comparing him to Malfoy, either, though it was true that even at sixteen, she could picture Ted as a husband and a father in ways that seemed downright impossible with Malfoy.
No, it was simply that Ted was funny and kind and made her laugh and had a gorgeous smile that made her stomach go funny every time. It was simply that being around Ted made her happy.
She found him in the corridor between classes, managed to slip up next to him, slide her hand in his and whisper in his ear, “I want to be your girlfriend, Ted. If you want to.”
His head whipped around. “Seriously, Andromeda?”
“Seriously, Ted.”
He looked like he wanted to kiss her right there amid the throng of students passing by them, but thought better of it. He squeezed her hand. “Yeah. ‘Course I want to.”
“I have to get to Potions. See you later.”
“Okay. See you later.” He stood there grinning after her, and was still grinning when she glanced back once to look at him as she continued down the corridor.
How was it possible, she wondered, for anyone to be as uncomplicated and whole as Ted Tonks was? And could a person like her be with a person like that?
8. Their First Night (Well, Actually Afternoon) Together
It was February and gusts of wind drove snow against the windowpanes, where it collected in the corners, transforming square angles into smooth, white curves.
Since it was a weekend afternoon, the Hufflepuff common room was full of students talking and playing Gobstones or Exploding Snap, but with the aid of a few well-placed Distraction Charms, Ted was able to smuggle Andromeda into the sixth year boys’ dorm.
Andromeda took in her surroundings with great interest. It wasn’t just that this was a boys’ dorm instead of a girls’. The whole style of the place was different, all warm colours and cosy nooks, instead of the ornately carved dark wood and rich brocade draperies of her own room.
This was unfamiliar, but she liked it.
“This one’s mine,” Ted said, leading her by the hand to an inviting four-poster in one corner, with warm yellow curtains and lots of pillows. Andromeda tried to perch on the edge of the bed and then laughed as she tumbled the rest of the way onto it, the mattress far softer than she’d expected.
Ted followed only seconds later, kicking off his shoes with a thump-thump and toppling down half on top of her.
“Hey!” Andromeda said, pushing Ted’s elbow back off of her stomach. He leaned his chin into her shoulder, fixing her with a devious grin.
“Now this is a sight I’ve been dying to see,” he said, his voice going throaty as he reached out to smooth Andromeda’s hair where it spread across his pillow.
Andromeda’s stomach fluttered as she fully took in the significance of where she was, floating deep in the cloud-like softness of Ted’s bed, the weight of his body warm against her side.
She reached out and pulled him closer, and watched Ted’s eyes flutter closed as his lips met hers. Fire raced through her from that point where they touched, fire that fed on itself and whispered, more more more.
Andromeda slid her hands up under Ted’s T-shirt, a simple Muggle-style garment of a type she herself had never worn, fascinated by the contrast between its cotton softness and the smoothness of Ted’s skin. He sighed and smiled and opened his eyes to meet hers. His eyes were so deep and warm, Andromeda felt she could get lost in them. Then he leaned in to kiss the curve of her neck, and she gasped and arched into his touch.
“Can I - can I take this off?” he asked, fingering the hem of her blouse. Andromeda nodded, and they both shrugged awkwardly out of their shirts, giggling as they got tangled up with the pillows and the duvet. And then they were bared to each other more than they had been yet.
Andromeda reached up and ran her hands across the warm skin of Ted’s chest. He shuddered and sighed and then did the same, tracing one hand up her side so lightly that she shivered and pulled him more tightly towards her.
She couldn’t help thinking of the two boys she’d dated before. With one it had been nothing beyond a little furtive hand-holding and a few kisses, but the other, Marcus Graupel, she’d slept with, out of curiosity more than anything else. Three times in total, and each time it had felt like some bizarre kind of competition.
It hadn’t been tender, like this was.
“If you’re worried about my roommates, don’t be,” Ted murmured against her lips. “We’ve got the room for the afternoon.”
“What do you mean?”
Ted leaned back and cocked his head at her, like he wasn’t sure what part she wasn’t understanding. “I asked the guys if we could have the room to ourselves for the afternoon.”
“You did?” Andromeda asked, torn between being mortified and amused to learn that all the boys Ted lived with knew exactly what they were doing in here. “And what did they say?”
“They said sure. Why wouldn’t they?”
Andromeda imagined trying to do the same thing in Slytherin, where your roommates might let you have the room for the purpose of getting off with a bloke, but only so they could hold it over your head later. Ted Tonks, she thought, if ever I needed proof you come from a different world, this might be it.
Misinterpreting her thoughtful expression, Ted hastened to add, “I mean - that doesn’t mean I’m expecting anything, you know?” His hand groped to find hers, his expression earnest. “There’s no goal, Andromeda, really. I just want to make you feel good.”
And Andromeda gazed back into those warm brown eyes and thought, Yes, this one. I want this one.
(continues in a second post...)