Saying Yes, chapter 3
SAYING YES chapter 3
Summary: At 17, Andromeda Black thought being in love was everything. At 57, Andromeda Tonks knew better. Yet the first time Kingsley Shacklebolt asked her out, she surprised herself by saying yes.
Characters: Andromeda Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Teddy Lupin and ensemble (Harry! Ginny! Molly! Kingsley's kids! All the Potters and Weasleys!)
Warnings: None
Chapters: 15
Story:
CHAPTER THREE
Andromeda met Kingsley for a last workday lunch before the end of the Hogwarts term.
"I've been wondering what I ought to do with Em next year," Kingsley said, twirling his fork in his pasta absentmindedly. "I used to send them both to the day lessons at the Ministry, which was certainly convenient, but by this point she's learned everything she's going to learn there. I still do lessons with her, on the days we're home together. I swear to you, Andromeda, I've got a budding little Arithmancer on my hands. But she's bored, without Stor at home, and I don't want to put her through another entire year of that, before she can start Hogwarts herself."
"You know, I should have suggested this before," Andromeda told him. "You could send her to Molly's. She runs something of a homeschool for children, before they begin at Hogwarts. It started with just her own grandchildren, but it's grown from there, and some of the children must be Emmeline's age."
"I didn't realise it was an official thing, what Molly does," Kingsley said.
"That's been my impression." Pushing aside the feeling of concern that she might not be ready for these two worlds to combine - intimacy with Kingsley, friendship with Molly - Andromeda suggested, "Why don't you come along at the weekend, and Emmeline can see if she gets along with the Weasleys? Molly always has a big family gathering at the start of the summer, and her definition of family is highly flexible. You know Molly, she likes to collect people."
Kingsley chuckled. "Even people who invite themselves along?"
Andromeda smiled back at him. "You just wait and see."
When Andromeda and Teddy arrived at the Burrow, Molly came bustling out and greeted them both with a warm hug. There were few people Andromeda allowed to treat her so familiarly, few people who would even think to, but somehow she'd never minded it from Molly. The friendship that had grown between them over the last decade was as unshakeable as it had been unexpected.
"I'm so glad you could come," Molly said.
"Molly, when have we ever not come?"
Molly gave Andromeda's arm another squeeze, before turning her attention to thoroughly fussing over Teddy. "Look at you, Teddy Lupin!" she exclaimed, as she gave him another hug and he squirmed. "Where in the name of all magic is the little boy we first sent off to Hogwarts?"
Teddy rolled his eyes good-naturedly at Molly as she released him. "I just grew a little, Gran Molly, that's all," he said. "Everybody does it at some point."
Molly laughed and affectionately smoothed his hair, though she had to reach up now to do so to Teddy at fourteen. "Come out to the garden, the kids are playing some sort of horrifyingly loud game I'm sure you'll want to be part of."
Teddy loped off toward the back garden. Andromeda followed at a more sedate pace, and found Kingsley already there, watching Alastor, who was among the children tearing round the garden.
Going up to Kingsley, Andromeda teased, "Look at you, turning up without an invitation."
He turned to her and smiled. "I had it on very good authority that Molly wouldn't mind."
"Looks like Alastor's having a good time. Where's Emmeline?"
"Off with Bill's middle daughter, I think…Dominique?"
"That's right," Andromeda agreed. Of course, Dominique would be just Emmeline's age.
Andromeda turned to see Teddy, just joining the game, greet Alastor with a grin and a slap on the back. Alastor had been Sorted into Ravenclaw and apparently the two had become friends.
Kingsley followed her gaze and nodded. "Evidence does seem to show Shacklebolts and Tonkses can't help but get on famously."
"Well, Teddy's a Lupin, not a Tonks," Andromeda said fairly.
"As you like," Kingsley agreed, in the voice she'd come to recognise as the one he used when he didn't agree with her, but knew it would be better if he pretended he did.
She leaned over to swat him on the arm. "Don't humour me, Kingsley Shacklebolt. I can tell you Teddy is just as much like his father as he is like his mother."
"Oh, but of course not at all like the woman who raised him," Kingsley murmured. "That would be giving her entirely too much credit."
"And don't you start using sarcasm on me!" Andromeda replied, but she said it with a laugh.
- - - - -
If she was being honest, Andromeda had known that an entire summer of seeing Kingsley only briefly on workdays was not an acceptable option.
It was lucky, then, that Teddy's friendship with Alastor provided a perfectly natural reason for the two families to meet, in the same way that Andromeda often came along to chat with Molly when Teddy played with the Weasleys at the Burrow, or to visit Harry and Ginny when Teddy went to shower his patient brotherly love on the Potter kids.
So Andromeda dropped by Kingsley's house together with Teddy sometimes, or they all went out for ice-cream together. Once, they took the children to the coast for an afternoon, where Teddy and Alastor ran tirelessly back and forth with a Quaffle and Emmeline sat daydreaming and drawing in a sketchbook. Andromeda and Kingsley sat on a picnic blanket and shared the tea he'd brought along, charmed to stay piping hot.
When Alastor joined a group of younger boys playing by the water, Teddy came back and dropped onto the blanket, pushing back the hair that always seemed to flop into his eyes, no matter how often Andromeda reminded him it would be the work of a moment for him to make it grow shorter.
"Mr Shacklebolt, are you still an Auror?" he asked. Teddy had seemed at ease with Kingsley from the first.
Kingsley turned his full attention to Teddy. "No, Teddy, I'm not," he said. "I left active service when I became Minister for Magic."
"So you can't be both, then?" Teddy asked, absently helping himself to several biscuits. "You had to choose between being Minister and being an Auror?"
"That's right," Kingsley agreed. "But it's the same whatever job the Minister holds before. You leave your previous job to take up the post."
"Was it cool, being an Auror?" Teddy wanted to know, sounding a little dreamy.
"Teddy!" Andromeda said, surprised. Where had this line of questioning come from?
"What?" Teddy asked. "Harry and Uncle Ron try to make it sound like all they ever do is sit around in the office doing paperwork, but I know it's not true. You read in class and stuff about all the important things Aurors have done. Harry just tries to make it sound boring because thinks it's dangerous and he doesn't want any of us to want to be Aurors. Which is silly, right, 'cause he's one."
"He's right that it's a dangerous job," Kingsley answered, regarding Andromeda's grandson seriously. "And I'm not sure 'cool' is the best descriptor. Rewarding, yes, and difficult. But it's not exactly an uninterrupted string of fantastic adventures."
Teddy nodded, and seemed to think about that. For a few moments, there was no sound but the scratching of Emmeline's drawing pencil. Then suddenly, with a strange little furtive look toward Andromeda, Teddy turned back to Kingsley and asked, "So did you know my mum, then? Since she was an Auror too?"
Andromeda's breath caught. She should have expected that question, yet somehow she'd managed not to.
But Kingsley answered steadily, "Yes, I did. She was a marvellous Auror, and I considered her a friend. Your father, too."
Teddy gazed up into Kingsley's face with heartbreaking intensity. "You knew my dad?"
"I was in the Order of the Phoenix, so I knew both your parents."
"Oh." Teddy hugged a knee to his chest and didn't say anything to that. Then he sent another involuntary half-glance in Andromeda's direction and finally she understood: Teddy wanted to hear more about his parents from this unexpected new source, but he was afraid of upsetting Andromeda by bringing them up.
Andromeda stood and brushed a bit of dirt from her skirt. "I think I'll go see what Alastor is up to. It looks like he and those boys are building a stone fort down there."
Kingsley squinted up at her, a question in his eyes, and Andromeda gave him a tiny nod. It was right that Teddy get pieces of his parents wherever he could, and good that he felt comfortable asking Kingsley. And Andromeda couldn't always be there to protect him when Nymphadora and Remus came up in conversation.
So she left them to it and found a rock to sit on near where Alastor's new friends were collecting the largest stones they could find on the pebbly beach and assembling them into a rough circle. She turned her face up to the sun, soothed by the sound of the boys' chatter, and tried to loosen that ache in her chest that came whenever she thought about how everyone else but Teddy had had the chance to know Teddy's parents.
Sitting there in the summer sun, Andromeda reached a decision she'd been waiting on for a while. At home that evening, she fetched a slim notebook and a narrow box from a top shelf in her bedroom and brought them back downstairs to where Teddy was curled up with a book in the sitting room.
"Teddy," she said, and he looked up from the pages. "There are some things I'd like to give you. I think you're old enough now."
She saw the shift in his posture, a tension of readiness. "Sure, okay," he said.
Andromeda came and sat in the other armchair beside him. She set the small notebook on her lap and smoothed her hand over the cover. "This is a journal your mother kept when she was in Auror training. From the fact that she left it lying around here with no protective charms, I assume she wouldn't mind terribly if you read it. In fact, I imagine she'd be pleased.
"I was never quite sure if you would want to read this, because, well, she also mentions friends, men she fancied, things like that. This was a while before she met your father. It's nothing too detailed," she hastened to add. "But she also writes about her day-to-day experiences in her job, so if you're curious what her work was like, I really shouldn't keep this from you."
She held out the thin volume to Teddy and he took it with wide eyes, not lifting the cover yet, just resting a careful hand against its spine. "Are there - other journals?" he asked. "Did she write ones later, I mean?"
Andromeda shook her head, knowing what he was asking. "If she wrote about meeting your father, she was clever enough not to leave that anywhere her mother's prying eyes might see. I'm sorry, love."
"That's okay," Teddy murmured, his eyes fixed on the book in his hand. "Thank you."
"And there's something else," Andromeda said. Teddy looked up, and she held out the narrow box. "These were your parents' wands."
Teddy just stared, and couldn't seem to bring himself to reach out and take the box. "My…?"
"They were - found with their wands, of course. And I kept them for you. I didn't tell you when you started Hogwarts because it was right that you find your own wand, one that was exactly right for you. But these belong to you as well."
Teddy finally reached out the take the box, his voice barely a whisper. "Thank you, Gran."
This time, he did open the object in his hand, setting the lid carefully aside and staring down into the box, where two wands nestled in soft, purple cloth.
"The one on the left is your mother's," Andromeda said quietly. "The very first time she waved it around at Ollivander's, a bouquet of flowers popped out of the end."
Teddy reached his wand hand into the box and gently touched one wand, then the other. "They feel kind of warm," he said. "A little bit tingly. Not as much as my wand did, when I got it, but still like they're maybe responding to me. Is that possible?"
"It's absolutely possible," Andromeda said.
"Do you think I could try using them instead of my wand, sometimes?"
"I imagine you could," Andromeda said. "But I think you'd better wait and ask your professors' advice first, when you're back at school."
She had decided now was not the time to tell Teddy about the more intricate aspects of wandlore, that his mother's wand might bear certain allegiances to Molly, because Molly had killed Bellatrix after Bellatrix murdered Nymphadora. Or, more troublingly, that his father's wand might still display loyalty to a Death Eater's descendants.
Such complexities could wait until Teddy was older, and hopefully would never be relevant at all as anything more than an academic question.
At any rate, Teddy nodded and gently set the lid back on the wand box. "Mr Shacklebolt told me a bunch of stuff he remembered about Dad," he said, so quietly that Andromeda had to lean closer to hear him. "It was nice."
"I'm glad," Andromeda said, and she was.
Teddy nodded again. "I think I'll take these up to my room."
Andromeda watched him rise, carefully collecting the box and the book and leaving the room with the same peculiar grace Remus had always possessed. Andromeda saw Nymphadora in Teddy's quick smiles and open expressions, even aside from the obvious fact that he had inherited her rare Metamorphmagism, but he was purely Remus in the way he held himself, that quiet self-possession.
Far more importantly, though, Teddy had always been simply himself.
The rest of the summer holiday passed in a blur of picnics and outings and pleasant afternoons with the Potters. Seven-year-old James had developed a new obsession with becoming a professional Quidditch player, and made Teddy practise plays and drills with him for hours on a pair of toy brooms.
"Entirely Ginny's fault," Harry assured Andromeda, and Ginny just grinned.
A few days before September the first, Teddy looked up from his toast at breakfast one morning and asked, "You're all right, aren't you, Gran?"
Andromeda turned from the teakettle in surprise. "What do you mean?"
"It's just, sometimes you seem really sad, but lately I think you're all right. Aren't you?"
Andromeda gave the question the full consideration it deserved, then said, "Yes, I suppose you're right, Teddy. I am."
- - - - -
( continue to CHAPTER 4)
Summary: At 17, Andromeda Black thought being in love was everything. At 57, Andromeda Tonks knew better. Yet the first time Kingsley Shacklebolt asked her out, she surprised herself by saying yes.
Characters: Andromeda Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Teddy Lupin and ensemble (Harry! Ginny! Molly! Kingsley's kids! All the Potters and Weasleys!)
Warnings: None
Chapters: 15
Story:
CHAPTER THREE
Andromeda met Kingsley for a last workday lunch before the end of the Hogwarts term.
"I've been wondering what I ought to do with Em next year," Kingsley said, twirling his fork in his pasta absentmindedly. "I used to send them both to the day lessons at the Ministry, which was certainly convenient, but by this point she's learned everything she's going to learn there. I still do lessons with her, on the days we're home together. I swear to you, Andromeda, I've got a budding little Arithmancer on my hands. But she's bored, without Stor at home, and I don't want to put her through another entire year of that, before she can start Hogwarts herself."
"You know, I should have suggested this before," Andromeda told him. "You could send her to Molly's. She runs something of a homeschool for children, before they begin at Hogwarts. It started with just her own grandchildren, but it's grown from there, and some of the children must be Emmeline's age."
"I didn't realise it was an official thing, what Molly does," Kingsley said.
"That's been my impression." Pushing aside the feeling of concern that she might not be ready for these two worlds to combine - intimacy with Kingsley, friendship with Molly - Andromeda suggested, "Why don't you come along at the weekend, and Emmeline can see if she gets along with the Weasleys? Molly always has a big family gathering at the start of the summer, and her definition of family is highly flexible. You know Molly, she likes to collect people."
Kingsley chuckled. "Even people who invite themselves along?"
Andromeda smiled back at him. "You just wait and see."
When Andromeda and Teddy arrived at the Burrow, Molly came bustling out and greeted them both with a warm hug. There were few people Andromeda allowed to treat her so familiarly, few people who would even think to, but somehow she'd never minded it from Molly. The friendship that had grown between them over the last decade was as unshakeable as it had been unexpected.
"I'm so glad you could come," Molly said.
"Molly, when have we ever not come?"
Molly gave Andromeda's arm another squeeze, before turning her attention to thoroughly fussing over Teddy. "Look at you, Teddy Lupin!" she exclaimed, as she gave him another hug and he squirmed. "Where in the name of all magic is the little boy we first sent off to Hogwarts?"
Teddy rolled his eyes good-naturedly at Molly as she released him. "I just grew a little, Gran Molly, that's all," he said. "Everybody does it at some point."
Molly laughed and affectionately smoothed his hair, though she had to reach up now to do so to Teddy at fourteen. "Come out to the garden, the kids are playing some sort of horrifyingly loud game I'm sure you'll want to be part of."
Teddy loped off toward the back garden. Andromeda followed at a more sedate pace, and found Kingsley already there, watching Alastor, who was among the children tearing round the garden.
Going up to Kingsley, Andromeda teased, "Look at you, turning up without an invitation."
He turned to her and smiled. "I had it on very good authority that Molly wouldn't mind."
"Looks like Alastor's having a good time. Where's Emmeline?"
"Off with Bill's middle daughter, I think…Dominique?"
"That's right," Andromeda agreed. Of course, Dominique would be just Emmeline's age.
Andromeda turned to see Teddy, just joining the game, greet Alastor with a grin and a slap on the back. Alastor had been Sorted into Ravenclaw and apparently the two had become friends.
Kingsley followed her gaze and nodded. "Evidence does seem to show Shacklebolts and Tonkses can't help but get on famously."
"Well, Teddy's a Lupin, not a Tonks," Andromeda said fairly.
"As you like," Kingsley agreed, in the voice she'd come to recognise as the one he used when he didn't agree with her, but knew it would be better if he pretended he did.
She leaned over to swat him on the arm. "Don't humour me, Kingsley Shacklebolt. I can tell you Teddy is just as much like his father as he is like his mother."
"Oh, but of course not at all like the woman who raised him," Kingsley murmured. "That would be giving her entirely too much credit."
"And don't you start using sarcasm on me!" Andromeda replied, but she said it with a laugh.
- - - - -
If she was being honest, Andromeda had known that an entire summer of seeing Kingsley only briefly on workdays was not an acceptable option.
It was lucky, then, that Teddy's friendship with Alastor provided a perfectly natural reason for the two families to meet, in the same way that Andromeda often came along to chat with Molly when Teddy played with the Weasleys at the Burrow, or to visit Harry and Ginny when Teddy went to shower his patient brotherly love on the Potter kids.
So Andromeda dropped by Kingsley's house together with Teddy sometimes, or they all went out for ice-cream together. Once, they took the children to the coast for an afternoon, where Teddy and Alastor ran tirelessly back and forth with a Quaffle and Emmeline sat daydreaming and drawing in a sketchbook. Andromeda and Kingsley sat on a picnic blanket and shared the tea he'd brought along, charmed to stay piping hot.
When Alastor joined a group of younger boys playing by the water, Teddy came back and dropped onto the blanket, pushing back the hair that always seemed to flop into his eyes, no matter how often Andromeda reminded him it would be the work of a moment for him to make it grow shorter.
"Mr Shacklebolt, are you still an Auror?" he asked. Teddy had seemed at ease with Kingsley from the first.
Kingsley turned his full attention to Teddy. "No, Teddy, I'm not," he said. "I left active service when I became Minister for Magic."
"So you can't be both, then?" Teddy asked, absently helping himself to several biscuits. "You had to choose between being Minister and being an Auror?"
"That's right," Kingsley agreed. "But it's the same whatever job the Minister holds before. You leave your previous job to take up the post."
"Was it cool, being an Auror?" Teddy wanted to know, sounding a little dreamy.
"Teddy!" Andromeda said, surprised. Where had this line of questioning come from?
"What?" Teddy asked. "Harry and Uncle Ron try to make it sound like all they ever do is sit around in the office doing paperwork, but I know it's not true. You read in class and stuff about all the important things Aurors have done. Harry just tries to make it sound boring because thinks it's dangerous and he doesn't want any of us to want to be Aurors. Which is silly, right, 'cause he's one."
"He's right that it's a dangerous job," Kingsley answered, regarding Andromeda's grandson seriously. "And I'm not sure 'cool' is the best descriptor. Rewarding, yes, and difficult. But it's not exactly an uninterrupted string of fantastic adventures."
Teddy nodded, and seemed to think about that. For a few moments, there was no sound but the scratching of Emmeline's drawing pencil. Then suddenly, with a strange little furtive look toward Andromeda, Teddy turned back to Kingsley and asked, "So did you know my mum, then? Since she was an Auror too?"
Andromeda's breath caught. She should have expected that question, yet somehow she'd managed not to.
But Kingsley answered steadily, "Yes, I did. She was a marvellous Auror, and I considered her a friend. Your father, too."
Teddy gazed up into Kingsley's face with heartbreaking intensity. "You knew my dad?"
"I was in the Order of the Phoenix, so I knew both your parents."
"Oh." Teddy hugged a knee to his chest and didn't say anything to that. Then he sent another involuntary half-glance in Andromeda's direction and finally she understood: Teddy wanted to hear more about his parents from this unexpected new source, but he was afraid of upsetting Andromeda by bringing them up.
Andromeda stood and brushed a bit of dirt from her skirt. "I think I'll go see what Alastor is up to. It looks like he and those boys are building a stone fort down there."
Kingsley squinted up at her, a question in his eyes, and Andromeda gave him a tiny nod. It was right that Teddy get pieces of his parents wherever he could, and good that he felt comfortable asking Kingsley. And Andromeda couldn't always be there to protect him when Nymphadora and Remus came up in conversation.
So she left them to it and found a rock to sit on near where Alastor's new friends were collecting the largest stones they could find on the pebbly beach and assembling them into a rough circle. She turned her face up to the sun, soothed by the sound of the boys' chatter, and tried to loosen that ache in her chest that came whenever she thought about how everyone else but Teddy had had the chance to know Teddy's parents.
Sitting there in the summer sun, Andromeda reached a decision she'd been waiting on for a while. At home that evening, she fetched a slim notebook and a narrow box from a top shelf in her bedroom and brought them back downstairs to where Teddy was curled up with a book in the sitting room.
"Teddy," she said, and he looked up from the pages. "There are some things I'd like to give you. I think you're old enough now."
She saw the shift in his posture, a tension of readiness. "Sure, okay," he said.
Andromeda came and sat in the other armchair beside him. She set the small notebook on her lap and smoothed her hand over the cover. "This is a journal your mother kept when she was in Auror training. From the fact that she left it lying around here with no protective charms, I assume she wouldn't mind terribly if you read it. In fact, I imagine she'd be pleased.
"I was never quite sure if you would want to read this, because, well, she also mentions friends, men she fancied, things like that. This was a while before she met your father. It's nothing too detailed," she hastened to add. "But she also writes about her day-to-day experiences in her job, so if you're curious what her work was like, I really shouldn't keep this from you."
She held out the thin volume to Teddy and he took it with wide eyes, not lifting the cover yet, just resting a careful hand against its spine. "Are there - other journals?" he asked. "Did she write ones later, I mean?"
Andromeda shook her head, knowing what he was asking. "If she wrote about meeting your father, she was clever enough not to leave that anywhere her mother's prying eyes might see. I'm sorry, love."
"That's okay," Teddy murmured, his eyes fixed on the book in his hand. "Thank you."
"And there's something else," Andromeda said. Teddy looked up, and she held out the narrow box. "These were your parents' wands."
Teddy just stared, and couldn't seem to bring himself to reach out and take the box. "My…?"
"They were - found with their wands, of course. And I kept them for you. I didn't tell you when you started Hogwarts because it was right that you find your own wand, one that was exactly right for you. But these belong to you as well."
Teddy finally reached out the take the box, his voice barely a whisper. "Thank you, Gran."
This time, he did open the object in his hand, setting the lid carefully aside and staring down into the box, where two wands nestled in soft, purple cloth.
"The one on the left is your mother's," Andromeda said quietly. "The very first time she waved it around at Ollivander's, a bouquet of flowers popped out of the end."
Teddy reached his wand hand into the box and gently touched one wand, then the other. "They feel kind of warm," he said. "A little bit tingly. Not as much as my wand did, when I got it, but still like they're maybe responding to me. Is that possible?"
"It's absolutely possible," Andromeda said.
"Do you think I could try using them instead of my wand, sometimes?"
"I imagine you could," Andromeda said. "But I think you'd better wait and ask your professors' advice first, when you're back at school."
She had decided now was not the time to tell Teddy about the more intricate aspects of wandlore, that his mother's wand might bear certain allegiances to Molly, because Molly had killed Bellatrix after Bellatrix murdered Nymphadora. Or, more troublingly, that his father's wand might still display loyalty to a Death Eater's descendants.
Such complexities could wait until Teddy was older, and hopefully would never be relevant at all as anything more than an academic question.
At any rate, Teddy nodded and gently set the lid back on the wand box. "Mr Shacklebolt told me a bunch of stuff he remembered about Dad," he said, so quietly that Andromeda had to lean closer to hear him. "It was nice."
"I'm glad," Andromeda said, and she was.
Teddy nodded again. "I think I'll take these up to my room."
Andromeda watched him rise, carefully collecting the box and the book and leaving the room with the same peculiar grace Remus had always possessed. Andromeda saw Nymphadora in Teddy's quick smiles and open expressions, even aside from the obvious fact that he had inherited her rare Metamorphmagism, but he was purely Remus in the way he held himself, that quiet self-possession.
Far more importantly, though, Teddy had always been simply himself.
The rest of the summer holiday passed in a blur of picnics and outings and pleasant afternoons with the Potters. Seven-year-old James had developed a new obsession with becoming a professional Quidditch player, and made Teddy practise plays and drills with him for hours on a pair of toy brooms.
"Entirely Ginny's fault," Harry assured Andromeda, and Ginny just grinned.
A few days before September the first, Teddy looked up from his toast at breakfast one morning and asked, "You're all right, aren't you, Gran?"
Andromeda turned from the teakettle in surprise. "What do you mean?"
"It's just, sometimes you seem really sad, but lately I think you're all right. Aren't you?"
Andromeda gave the question the full consideration it deserved, then said, "Yes, I suppose you're right, Teddy. I am."
- - - - -
( continue to CHAPTER 4)