Even to the Edge of Doom by Aldawen
Chapter Notes: So, I definitely wrote this in lieu of a looming research paper... And I'm still borrowing from Jo. Don't sue! Enjoy.
A month into term, however, Andromeda’s attempts to rid her life of Ted Tonks were not going well, and it was certainly not for a lack of effort on her part. With her older sister out the picture, Ted had become bolder in his advances, and Andromeda was beginning to think that maybe he really fancied her. Though she made sure to sign up for patrols on nights she knew he was busy, he seemed to show up in the corridors at odd hours of the night on pretences that were most certainly fabricated. Andromeda even went so far as to detail her family history, from the the decapitated elves whose heads now adorned on her Uncle Orion’s wall to Aunt Elladora’s penchant for Muggle-hunting, but Ted only laughed (she realized later that he probably though she’d been joking). She started holing herself up in the Common Room or the girls’ lavatory during her free time “ any place where Ted couldn’t find her. Her housemates, and the rest of the school for that matter, could hardly fail to notice his attention to her. Their responses seemed to cross House lines, for the general consensus was that Ted must be mad. The worst of it came just before Halloween when he went so far as to ask her, right in the middle of dinner, to go with him to Hogsmeade. She had refused him at once, flushing at the sight of the scandalized Slytherin faces around her, but his smile never broke. He put his hand on her shoulder and told her gently, “I suppose I’ll see you there anyway.”
“Get your hand off her, filth!” Narcissa cried. Andromeda’s blush deepened.
He didn’t flinch, instead flashing the onlookers his most winning grin before walking back to his friends at the Ravenclaw table, but for the rest of evening, Andromeda could tell he was in a bad mood.
Come Hogsmeade weekend, Andromeda, as much as she wanted to visit the village, decided it would be better to spend the day at Hogwarts and avoid such mortification again. She kept her head under her covers and pretended to be asleep while the other girls in her dormitory got ready for the excursion, yet she couldn’t help but hear their hushed gossiping.
“”but honestly, what is he playing at?” hissed one girl.
“I heard Lucius telling her sister he’d take care of the Mudblood if he bothers her again…”
“Yeah, but you know she hardly gets any attention from boys, she probably likes it,” another answered. The girls laughed.
“Well I just feel sorry for her family, it’s them who’ll pay the price. If word of this gets to them, I guarantee the Lestranges will break the engagement, and where will that leave Andromeda, not to mention poor Narcissa?”
“It’s not as though she’s encouraging him ““
“Anyone with proper wizarding pride would curse the bastard into oblivion for even suggesting such behavior, or at the very least have someone else do it!”
“I’ll bet she’s seeing him in secret. I’ve seen how she looks at him “ she fancies him at least as much as he does her. Tonks isn’t the kind of person to go after a girl without a little encouragement, you know.”
There was a collective gasp, followed by an outbreak of babbling (they no longer bothered keeping their voices down) as they filed out the room.
Andromeda’s blood ran cold. If that was what they really thought, she was worse off than she’d even imagined. And Ted “ perhaps she should warn him? But that would only elicit more tongue-wagging, of course, and that was the last thing either of them needed. She was sure Narcissa hadn’t written to Mother and Father yet, but her increasingly disapproving looks meant that Andromeda’s time was fast running out.
As soon as she was sure the other girls were long gone, Andromeda tumbled out of bed and headed for the showers, where she spent nearly three-quarters of an hour worrying about what on earth she was going to do next. She was pruney by the time she realized that with Ted in Hogsmeade today, and Andromeda safely drowning herself in the bathroom, no one could possibly have any suspicions about what was between them. She had refused him in front of the whole school, after all, and surely he would have asked some other girl out to save face. She scowled as she imagined Ted cuddling with a faceless girl at Madame Puddifoot’s, but, she thought, at least it would distract him from her.
After she’d dressed and combed her hair, she resigned herself to an afternoon of homework, though she threw her favorite book in her bag with her Transfiguration text in case she got too bored. She felt completely out of place once she reached the library; she practically had to wade through the sea of first and second years who were studying rather too noisily to get anything done. She opened her book in front of her and scratched the title of the essay and her name at the top of her parchment, then began to stare unseeingly at the page.
She’d managed to take in the first couple of pages, and she’d even written a pretty good introductory sentence for her essay, when she noticed the person sitting at the desk across from hers. She and Ted locked eyes for the briefest of moments before she looked away hastily and began rolling up her essay.
“Homework on a Saturday?” he whispered, moving his own things closer to her.
“I “ I thought you’d be in Hogsmeade,” she mumbled lamely.
“Well, I was going to go, but the girl I asked didn’t want to go with me,” he said. “It’s not too late, you know.”
“Yes it is! It is too late!” she hissed, slamming her book closed. “I don’t know what I have to do to convince you of that!”
Ted raised his eyebrows at her.
“Time to be a good little Slytherin, is it?”
She gave him her haughtiest glare.
“I am a Black, Tonks, and while that might not mean anything to your kind ““
“Are you serious, Andromeda?” he asked, backing away slightly. “That’s how it is then?”
“That’s how it has always been and will always be,” she replied primly, picking up her book. “Now please, save us both the embarrassment and leave me alone.”
She turned on her heel and marched away, trying to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach. Ted’s shocked face swam in her mind’s eye, and a tremendous wave of guilt rushed over her.
Well, she thought wryly, at least he wasn’t snogging girls in Hogsmeade.