It Always Breaks by wendelin the wierd
This is how it should be, you think, it always seems as if everything- everything is falling apart in your world, except it isn’t.
It’s certainly falling apart in hers.
You watch her, wondering what is wrong. She keeps biting her lip and drawing it in before letting it go and for some strange reason this horrible gesture fascinates you.
You think you know what the trouble with her is, but then, you always think that. It’s more like a fond indulgence to pretend you always know what is wrong even when you don’t.
You see her with her shirtsleeves rolled up and somehow it incredibly reminds you that she has thrown away nearly everything to be with you ( it was the war, you think, but it isn’t) and in that once split- second you hesitate wondering whether to thank her or slap her, to say she has done well or to say she is a fool, and that one split-second is all she needs to understand you, for you can be read much easier than her.
And you are foolish enough to think of yourself as her Perseus.
‘Are you alright?’ you whisper softly, half-wondering if you even want the answer.
‘I am fine,’ she says at first, albeit unconvincingly. ‘I was just thinking…Ted, what do we call her? And what if it is a boy?’
You try to be soothing, understanding, calm and a thousand different things that you are not, but it seems to you that maybe, just maybe, she still wants to be a Black and you know that you will never be able to deny her that chance.
‘How about Orion?’
After one whole second that seems like all eternity, she slowly gathers what remains of her composure, as you very well know it is you who have shattered it into a million different pieces. ‘Orion was Sirius’ father, Ted. It has always been a custom of the Black’s to name their first-born son or daughter after a star and often the youngest too. But, doesn’t it seem to you that when you look up at the sky, you see almost everything there?
‘No, of course it wouldn’t be that way to you, Ted. You were never a Black.
‘Orion was not a father to look up to. Sirius hated him, Regulus didn’t know him and Walburga was faithless to him.
‘Do you want our son to grow up like that? To be hated by his kin, to be spurned by his wife, Orion was hardly anyone to emulate.’
There is a long, awkward pause in the conversation and the ensuing silence weighs down on you till it’s almost suffocating and you try desperately to slip its grasp. ‘Well, we could name him Sirius…’ you trail off uncertainly, almost afraid of her reaction.
She sighs heavily but at least she isn’t crying now. ‘Sirius, he betrayed me, he betrayed me in the worst way possible for a brother to betray a sister.
‘It seems that everyone in the Black family is tarnished, but Sirius is probably more so than anyone else.’
‘Regulus?’
‘Regulus- a coward, a traitor, a fool. He didn’t even last seven days, Ted. It would be an omen, no, it would be a prophecy if any child of mine were to bear his name.’
‘Bellatrix? Draco?’ you ask desperately, hoping that she will pick one of them and just get this endless agony of anticipation over with.
This time she looks up into your eyes, and they seem to be filled with some sort of wild fury. ‘Bellatrix!
‘Good heavens, Ted, I don’t want our child to grow up to be a murderer!
‘As for Draco, how could you even think I would name my child that?
‘You should suggest that to Narcissa, though. Bet she would love it,’ she finishes bitterly.
And suddenly it comes to you and you are quite at a loss as to why you didn’t think if it before. ‘Andromeda! We’ll call her Andromeda!’
This time when she looks up at you there is something different in her eyes. It’s almost…pity. ‘Andromeda.
‘I don’t want her to have the same curse. I would never want my child to have the same curse.
‘Our baby will be the seventh child in our family, Ted.
‘It something else you wouldn’t understand. All these names- Bellatrix, Orion, Draco, Sirius, Regulus, they are all meaningless. ’
‘For every star there is a reason to live’ you quote and when you see her face harden you wish you had never said that.
It seems to you that the world is slowly spinning and it is moving further and further away from you. It's as if when you watch it go, she is standing next to you, with that empty look in her eyes and that is what breaks your heart more than anything else.
But when you see her, it's quite a different emotion in her eyes. She looks up at you with a slight smile on her face and then, determined to break a thousand years of tradition, determined to have her own way and to besmirch the name of the Blacks, she says to you softly, “We’ll call her Nymphadora.”