All They Needed

It was their ritual. Every week, after her astronomy lessons, they'd meet up and sit outside, hands linked as they stared up at the stars. (His friends knew; they understood. He would glance at the moon every so often on clear nights, marking its progress in his heart.) They never met when the moon was full - it just fell like that, and Andromeda never thought about it.

They would sit together in the ice of the night, hand in hand, silent. Andromeda watched the skies intently, leaning forward, never talking. She knew what people must think of their nights up in the Tower, or she thought she knew. She knew what her friends thought, the stark jealousy that they never bothered to hide.

It wasn't like that. She didn't covet Sirius, the way her friends (friends?) did. She didn't primp herself, flirt outrageously whenever he was near (he was resistant to their so-called charms anyway). Why should she? She'd known him forever. He'd seen her at her worst and, very rarely, at her best.

She was best, she thought, on her nights with Sirius, searching out their namesakes. He wouldn't say much, generally, but neither would she. She didn't think they needed to. She thought they knew each other well enough that words weren't necessary. Nothing was necessary but the light touch of a cool and hand and the knowledge that someone was there. That was all they needed.

Then one day, in the holidays (the pattern always broke in the holidays; it agitated Andromeda) she went to visit his house. It was Christmas - family ought to be together at Christmas. She was hoping they could watch the stars, fix the pattern. She didn't like the way she was impatient and unhappy, stargazing alone. She needed Sirius, needed that silence, to keep sane.

She arrived with her sisters and her parents to a house aflurry of righteous, vicious anger. Sirius's mother cursed and raged. Her husband was left to explain things. Regulus sulked in the corner as the man talked, and Andromeda watched him, searching for his brother's features in his face and lips. She found Sirius there, but the anger in Regulus was not Sirius's.

The man who was Sirius's father and Andromeda's uncle talked over the situation in his cool voice that let nothing slip, and Andromeda felt herself falling. She had to lean on her sister for support, breathing raggedly.

He'd run away. Sirius had run away. And after the shock came anger, and after that, misery, and none of her parents or relative's gifts could satiate her. They were not from Sirius. They were not Sirius.

She found something of him under the pillow, in the bed she always slept in on her stays here. There was a hard lump that pushed against her neck. She took it out, and unwrapped it in the near dark, with only a little wand light under the covers so she did not wake Narcissa. The gift sparkled and reflected the sparse light back at her, and there was a note in Sirius's lazy handwriting, strangely measured on this scrap of paper.

"You're too good for these people."

She thought she would cry, and in the darkness she scrunched up the note and pushed it beneath the pillow, with the necklace. But the bump would not go and the tears caught in her throat. So she pulled the necklace out and fumbled to clasp it 'round her neck, and imagined Sirius was there.

Back at school the next year, Sirius never showed at the Tower like he used to, and he never looked at her when they passed in the halls. Or maybe she never looked at him.

She got over him, though she still wore the necklace, at night. If she didn't she would get so agitated and worked up that she would breath too fast, and wouldn't calm until the silver was back around her neck, and the jewel against her throat.

She met a boy in one of her classes, a mudblood boy who was undoubtedly below her, but so, Sirius had said, was her family. If nothing was worthy, then it hardly mattered if she went out with Ted, if she fell in love with him. The first time he kissed her, she thought desperately and wishingly of Sirius. That night she refused to wear the necklace, even when she hyperventilated and the girls made her go to Madame Pomfrey. She thought she saw Sirius in the halls on the way up, but decided it was her imagination. The next day, Ted found out and smothered her in concern. She laughed and kissed him. That day she thought not of Sirius, but of Ted, who had been worried, and who looked so sweet when he was worried.

The family kicked her out when they heard, but by then she didn't care. She didn't invite any of them to the wedding, but she did invite Sirius, and he came with his friends and wished her luck. They were clever, and made her laugh, and once she looked wistfully at Sirius.

Then Ted hugged her from behind, and she knew she had done the right thing.