Biscuits With Extra Love

Andromeda Tonks looked down at the small child standing on a stepstool beside her and burst out laughing. Her five-year-old daughter, Nymphadora, was wearing an apron over her robes, her hair (today long and blonde) was tied back in pigtails, and yet she still looked like she had been in a fight with an enormous bag of flour, and lost. Hair escaped her plaits in long tendrils that were plastered across her flour-streaked face, her whole front was powdery-white, and, inconceivably, since they hadn't even begun to work with the chocolate yet, a streak of chocolate was smeared across her tiny nose.

Andromeda grabbed a rag from the side of the sink in her formerly immaculate kitchen and wiped ineffectually at Nymphadora's face, smearing the flour around more than removing it. "I don't know how you managed to get so dirty," she said affectionately, giving up the battle and returning the rag to the sink, "we've only been mixing for a few minutes!"

Nymphadora looked down at herself and giggled. "I look like a ghost!" she exclaimed.

Andromeda laughed and plunked a ball of dough in front of her daughter to roll. "So you do! Now, roll out this dough just the way I showed you. This is the way your daddy's mum taught me to make biscuits before you were born. I was trying to cook everything using magic, but she said the Muggle way adds extra love," she finished, pushing Nymphadora's nose with her finger.

Nymphadora giggled again, then picked up the rolling pin. Her forehead wrinkled up in concentration as she began rolling out the dough unevenly, huge waves and valleys remaining in the wake of her inexpert rolling. "Isn't Daddy's mum your mum, too?" she asked innocently.

Andromeda laughed lightly, adding more flour to Nymphadora's rolling pin as she rolled. "No, sweetie. If we had the same mum, Daddy would be my brother."

Nymphadora nodded, the furrows on her forehead deepening. She knew about brothers. Daddy had a brother who came to visit and played funny music on their Muggle record-player. "Well, why don't you have a mummy then?" she asked, working it out finally.

Andromeda paused, unsure how to answer. She never mentioned her family around Nymphadora. "I do have a mummy, love," she replied, hoping Nymphadora would lose interest. "Let me finish the dough, all right?"

Nymphadora surrendered the dough, in favour of this more interesting topic, and studied her mother with big, serious eyes while she re-kneaded it and rolled it out once more. "Why doesn't she come to visit like Grammy does?"

Andromeda didn't answer for a long time as she continued to roll and knead the dough, and Nymphadora began to fidget atop her stepstool. Finally, she sighed and dropped the dough back into the mixing bowl, muttering, "Forgot to add the chocolate chips," before meeting Nymphadora's level gaze. "Well, you see," she began, trying to figure out how best to phrase it, "my mum got very angry at me once, and she doesn't like to visit. Now put some chocolate in the bowl."

Normally, Nymphadora liked this part best, watching the chunks of chocolate spill into the bowl and sneaking a piece out and into her mouth while her mother pretended to look stern. But today, she barely watched the chocolate shake out of the bag, spilling a good deal of it onto the counter in the process. "Doesn't she love you?" she asked, clearly concerned that anyone would not love her mum.

"Of course she does!" Andromeda reassured her, quickly sweeping up the spilled chocolate chips with her hands and dropping them into the mixing bowl. She doubted her mother was even capable of love as Nymphadora understood it, but she was not about to expose her daughter to the idea that any mother could refuse to love her little girl. "I'm sure she misses me very much, but she's proud, so she doesn't want to admit it."

Nymphadora carefully wiped her small flour-and-chocolate covered hands down the sides of her robes, missing the apron completely. "Why'd she got mad at you?"

"'Get', darling. Why'd she get mad at you?" Andromeda corrected automatically as she mixed the chocolate chips into the dough. She sighed; she really didn't want to be having a talk with her daughter about Muggle-hatred at this age, but she should have expected that Nymphadora would have questions eventually. "Do you know what a Muggle is?"

Nymphadora nodded proudly - this was one she knew. "Muggles are people what ain't got magic," she declared confidently.

"That's right. And Daddy's whole family are Muggles," she explained.

"Like Grammy?"

"Like Grammy, yes. But out of his whole family, Daddy was special and he could do magic, so he came to Hogwarts, where I was going to school."

Nymphadora nodded impatiently; she knew this story. Daddy and Mummy fell in love when they were at school together and got married as soon as they finished.

"Well," Andromeda continued, choosing her words carefully, "some wizards don't like Muggles because they're different from us. And my mum thought that I should marry a wizard, not a boy from a Muggle family," (she would not say the word 'Mudblood' in front of her child), "so she was angry that I didn't take her advice."

Nymphadora was quiet as she processed this new information and Andromeda removed half of the biscuit dough from the bowl, rolling it out before her daughter. "Here," she said, dropping a selection of different shaped cutters on the counter. "Choose a cutter and cut out some biscuits so I can bake them."

Nymphadora nodded distractedly, still trying to work out why Mummy's mum was angry with her, and reached for a cutter near the bowl. As she reached out, she knocked the bowl off the counter, shattering it and landing the remainder of the dough in a messy heap on the floor. Immediately, she started to cry. "I'm sorry, Mummy! I didn't mean to! I broke the biscuits with extra love!"

Andromeda, grateful for the distraction, and feeling a fierce surge of protection and love for her small offspring, swept the wailing Nymphadora up into her arms, kissing her flour-stained, tear-streaked face. "Shhh, don't cry, darling. We can make the other half to share with Grammy when she comes." She hugged her daughter to her chest tightly, whispering more to herself than to Nymphadora, "No matter what you do, you will always be loved."