Dealing with the Devil

Andromeda did her prefects' rounds by rote. She'd been assigned this particular patrol back in her fifth year, and by some odd combination of luck and skill, she'd never been switched to a different duty. It was simple - a loop around Gryffindor Tower. Start at the tower, take a left, head down a flight of stairs, cross through the upper library into the Charms corridor, up a staircase, take a left, and back down the corridor to the Tower again.

Her territory. Her turf.

She would go up and down these corridors for two hours tonight, from curfew until even seventh-year prefects were allowed to rest and let Filch take over. There would be no-one and nothing to disturb her; the first years were very well-behaved this year, Sirius Black was sick and his little friend, Lupin, was in the hospital wing again, and nobody else ever bothered sneaking around at night, anyway, not on Thursday evenings, when it was so much more fun and profitable to be a nuisance on Saturday night.

Simple. Easy.

Andromeda wished, once again, that she had company. Gideon Prewett had used to accompany her, but Thursday night was counted as so quiet and unlikely to be bothersome that the powers that were - namely, Dorcas Meadowes with her infernal timetables - had decided that Andromeda was a big girl now and didn't need a partner. Andromeda loved Dorcas, but the girl was too obsessed with working out perfect little schedules in perfect little boxes so everyone would have a perfect duty roster of perfectly equal times on prefect's duty.

Dorcas the perfect prefect. Well, Head Girl, but everyone had known that was going to happen. Andromeda had never been competition; for one thing, she was a Black - and Dumbledore had little, unspoken biases against the Blacks, even if Andromeda wasn't in Slytherin. More pertinently, however, Andromeda simply wasn't a very good prefect. Oh, she did her duties, but she did them perfunctorily - she didn't give a damn about rules, really, especially not stupid ones, and so her enthusiasm for enforcing them had always been lackluster. It would, naturally, be Dorcas who was Head Girl.

Not that Andromeda was envious of Dorcas's position - being Head Girl would mean patrol duty every night, and extra-special time with Filch rounding up miscreants.

It was just so - lonely, on these dark nights. Loneliness had a habit of bringing out the worst, must uncomfortable and unsettling thoughts; with nothing to blot them out or hide them away, they crowded to the forefront of Andromeda's mind.

It's night in mountains Andromeda doesn't know, and below her lies a church, its steeple

No! She was not going to think about that.

It kept popping up to the front of her mind, however, a shrill and nagging fear. Andromeda had as little idea how to save herself now as she'd had on that first, awful night when He'd marked her as His own. How could she possibly escape from that man, with His awful red eyes?

Suddenly, and with seemingly no provocation for an outside observer, Andromeda broke into tears. She felt her knees give way, and tumbled to the floor, leaning against the wall as if she thought she could find some solid foundation for her crumbling life in the ancient stones of Hogwarts.

Andromeda didn't know how long she lay weeping, but her tears were interrupted by rapid footfalls climbing up the library stairs. Through a haze of tears and darkness, Andromeda saw that it was Ted Tonks, his face radiating fear and concern.

"Annie, Annie, what's wrong?" he whispered desperately, pulling her to her feet and into his arms.

She only sobbed more loudly, collapsing against the solid comfort of his weight, and he stroked her hair as she cried desperately into his shoulder.

Slowly, slowly, she quieted, and the desperate, wracking sobs left her body. She felt drained and exhausted, the muscles in her stomach cramping; she did not know if she could walk.

"Andromeda, what on earth is the matter?" Ted asked, solicitous and frightened.

"I - oh, God, Ted, I'm so scared, I'm so scared!" She started to cry again, but this time they were gentle, hiccuping sobs, and they were quieted more easily.

"Let's go somewhere to talk," Ted said firmly, his arm supporting Andromeda as he began to lead them down a flight of stairs.

"B-but you're Head Boy," Andromeda said in protest. "You're on d-duty, and you c-can't just leave off everything to g-go with me."

"Annie, part of my duty as Head Boy is to 'aid the students for whom I have been instructed to care in their times of need.' You, my bold and beautiful Gryffindor girl, are about as needy right now as anybody I've ever seen. Come on, let's find somewhere where Filch and that damned - cat - won't get us."

Andromeda couldn't help but laugh, weakly, and Ted laughed with her, gently, and he guided her down the stairs.

"Into the basement," he said. "Not the dratted dungeons - too Slytherin - but there are some nice, cozy little rooms near the Hufflepuff Dormitories that will be just right, I think. They're Hufflepuff secrets, but if you promise you won't tell where they are, I figure I can trust you with the top-secret locations." He waggled his eyebrows at her, a signature Ted expression, and Andromeda couldn't help but laugh again.

"There you go, love. I'll get a House Elf to send up some tea for you, and you'll be right suited for a nice long talk."

This was a sobering thought, but Andromeda was calm, now; she had cried her heart out, and didn't have any tears left. That was good, she reflected, because she did not want to be interrupted by tears when she told Ted, as she knew she would.

Ted needn't have worried that Andromeda would reveal the super-secret locations of private Hufflepuff snog rooms (for, undoubtedly, that was their primary use); she was so tired and teary she knew she wouldn't remember how she'd gotten there by morning. The room Ted led her into was small, but in a cozy, well-lit sort of way. The floor was covered by a yellow-and-black rug in a vaguely persian design, with small paintings of woodland creatures on the walls; three overstuffed armchairs, a couch, and an enormous cross between a pouf and a bean-bag filled up the small space. The room was lit in a warm, yellow light from four torches and some sort of spelled lamp.

Ted sat her down carefully on one of the armchairs, and then dragged another so that he sat directly opposite from Andromeda. Taking her own small palm into his large, rough working-boy's hands, he said with quiet insistence, "Andromeda, what's wrong?"

"I don't know where to begin," Andromeda said dazedly. "It was - the first day back home this summer."

"Is that why you never wrote?" Tonks said suspiciously.

"In part. I was - for a while, a few weeks, I was very close to my older sister Bellatrix, and she wouldn't have liked me writing. I'm sorry, it wasn't fair of me at all."

Ted looked hurt for a moment, and then said, as if struggling, "I don't blame you. No - I don't, I swear. My mother is Polish - yeah, I know, weird comparison, but I know about families. They were so angry when she married an Englishman. I know about families."

"Do you?" The question was more arrogant and angry than Andromeda had anticipated, and she shook her head softly after a tense moment. "I'm sorry, Ted, that wasn't fair of me either. It's just - it's all about blood, you know? Everything that's wrong and bad and ugly in my world - our world - it all comes back down to blood. Blood that binds. I don't know about muggles, but in the wizarding world, blood is the most important thing there is, almost. Family, kith and kin - they're the strongest ties, the strongest magic in the world."

"You're putting me off," Ted said with a hint of disappointment.

"No - really, I'm not. I just - you have to understand, Ted, that's what this is all about. Blood."

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Andromeda began to explain. "I love my sisters, both of them, from the bottom of my heart. Odd as it may seem to you, they love me too; they don't understand me, they can't bridge the gap between us, but they recognize our common blood and they love me, because I'm their sister. Bellatrix would kill me, would kill me in an instant, but she would also die for me, if she could. Does that make any sense? No - it wouldn't, you see, because magic defies logic. There are plenty of brilliant wizards without an ounce of logic because they're so caught up in doing the impossible with their wand and their guts that they never stop to reason anything out."

"This summer, just as I came home, Bellatrix decided she was going to - well, I don't know what she was thinking. Probably, she wasn't thinking at all, being Bellatrix. She decided she was going to show me why she stopped torturing muggleborn first years last year. She'd moved on to bigger and better things, you see." Andromeda laughed, bitterly, and looked up at Ted. He was watching her raptly, his big brown eyes deep and concerned and compassionate.

"God, you're such a wonderful friend, Ted. I don't know where I'd be without you - as crazy as Bellatrix, probably. Well. Bellatrix. You know those riots up in Bath, and in Nottingham and everywhere else? Those were Bellatrix's fault, I'll bet my life on it, because she sure as hell started the one outside of Gringotts that night. You must have seen it in the paper."

"An auror dead, three wounded severely; one civilian died of his wounds in St. Mungo's three days later, and five more were hospitalized long term." Ted reeled off the injuries as if he were a mediwizard, his voice unreadable.

"Yes, yes. They didn't say, but one of those poor girls hospitalized - it was the Cruciatus Curse. I saw it. I saw my sister do it. I stopped her, and she nearly did it on me."

"Oh, my poor Andromeda," Ted said, grasping her hands and reaching up to stroke her hair. "You poor, beautiful dear - no wonder you were so traumatized. You've had to carry that around with you all summer?"

It was so absurd, that Ted should think this was all on her mind, all her grief, that Andromeda laughed. It was a high, cold, terrifying, frantic, hysterical sound, and she stopped almost immediately.

"Oh, Merlin. If only. I'm not telling this very well.... Well, Bellatrix takes me off to Diagon Alley, practically forces me - you know how Bella is, I doubt even McGonagall could stop her when she's really determined. She takes me to Diagon Alley. And then she gets up onto the steps of Gringott's, and starts - making a speech, I guess. All this nonsense about purifying the Wizarding race and how it's a Ministry for Mudbloods - pardon my French. And it really gets a riot going. It was some big idiot's fault, he started all the violence; I'd have sworn he was a plant if I didn't know any be - oh, God."

"What?" Ted asked, worried again.

"No - it's too horrible. Just - there was a man, with Bellatrix, and I just thought - well, what if the man who started it all was under Imperius? It's not like he would have had a problem with it."

"You don't know, so don't worry about it," Ted said firmly. "He was probably just an idiot, so don't go worrying yourself on his behalf."

"It's not him I'm worried about! It's all the others, all the other people who were hurt, or will be hurt, because of him and Bellatrix and Avery."

"Avery? As in, Edmund Cassius Avery?" Ted asked in horrified disbelief.

"No, no - I'd have recognized him. Might have been his family, though. His father - Bella said that he was married.... Well. This riot started, and so Bellatrix left and hid out in Knockturn Alley with Avery, and I got dragged along. Then this poor muggleborn girl was running up, and Bellatrix just started torturing her - right there on the street - and I had to stop it, I couldn't let her, so I did the finite incantatem, only Bellatrix was so angry - I thought she might have used it on me, for a moment.

"Well. Then the riot died down, and Bellatrix and Avery went around collecting some of the rioters who'd been on our side - oh, God, not our side, I mean the ones who'd agreed with Bellatrix and Avery. She found seven of them, seven stupid idiot rioters, and she dragged them all up to this shop. Bellatrix was going to take them all to a - well, she made it sound like a rally of some sort. So she's giving out apparition instructions, and then we're the last one in the shop and she takes out this port key and gives it to me - and I try to tell her no, I'm not like her, but she won't listen and God, Ted, I'm such a coward!"

Andromeda broke down again, though no tears came; but she wailed her heart out in self-loathing and fear and pain, and Ted took her into his arms and held her until she was still.

"Ted, don't interrupt me when I tell you this. I can't just stop and start, I'll never get through it all." Slowly, painstakingly, Andromeda told the Hufflepuff boy everything, every detail she could remember. When she was done, there was a long moment of immaculate silence.

Then she broke the silence. "Look, you can't even see it," Andromeda said in a near whisper, as she pulled up the sleeve of her robes. "He did it there, on the underside of the arm, right into the skin. I could feel Him burning it into me - but there's no sign. I feel it, though. A twinge, every now and then, like He's calling to me. Not me, but them. His servants. My sister."

"Ted, I'm going to die," Andromeda said slowly. "One way or another, I'm going to be dead by June. Either I'll kill myself, or He will, because I'm never going to serve Him. I hate Him with every bone in my body, and I know I can't fight Him or defy Him, but I won't ever serve Him. I won't be like my sister. Bellatrix is so beautiful and powerful and proud, but she crawls to Him like all the rest, and He makes her think she likes it."

"The time has come," Ted said slowly, "to think logically. You said it yourself, a while back - wizards without an ounce of logic. As I see it, you're presented with this problem: he's done some sort of spell on you - like a summoning charm, almost, or - or maybe a Protean charm - so that next June, if he remembers -"

"He'll remember," Andromeda said dully.

"So that next June, you'll be forced to disapparate to him. Either you swear that you'll serve him, or he will try to kill you. Now, either we have to stop you from disapparating to him, you actually join him - I'm not recommending that, mind, just saying - or we have to stop him from killing you, somehow.

"I can't see how I could stop you from disapparating. I could ward you, sure, but this sounds like you'd be compelled to move outside of all wards, I read about it in a book on eighteenth-century Goblin wars a few months ago.... I could lock you in the tallest tower - but that mightn't work, either, you might do something stupid like jump out of a window out of desperation."

Ted chuckled, softly, though Andromeda saw no humor in that statement at all. Just the sort of thing He'd do, she thought bitterly.

"Or, we have to stop him from killing you. I wonder - do you think he always meets with his - what are they, Death Eaters? - in the same place? Because if he does, it wouldn't be so hard to spring an ambush on him."

"Are you mad?" Andromeda said, incredulous. "On some bloody mountain in Wales, right on the top where you could see anyone approaching for miles? You'd have to be an idiot, or else bloody Hercules on a Horntail."

"That's another thing - the Ysgyryd Fawr, you said? Well, that's right outside of Abergavenny, almost. I was in the area with my Grandmother once, and I'll bet I know just where it is, or at least the general area, anyway. It's wild country, and pretty uninhabited, but it's not like it's off the map. Really, it's a stupid thing of him to let you go when he knows you're not a Death Eater, knowing where he is and everything. Why, I bet with a - a pensieve, or something, a clever wizard could pinpoint the exact spot."

"Could we please not talk about pensieves? I don't care how stupid He is, He's trying to kill me and He'll damn well succeed, too."

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Ted said with such determination Andromeda loved him utterly.

"What are you going to do, you great fool? Take on a dozen armed Dark Wizards by yourself, in the dark, on some lonely mountain in Wales?"

"We should go to Dumbledore," Ted said firmly.

"No!" Andromeda said, in a terror again.

"Why not?" Ted replied angrily. "We know he'd help you - or, at least, we don't know, but everyone knows he hates - well, you know who I mean. Everyone knows he fought against Grindelwald, and that Dumbledore's been fighting this new Dark Lord, too."

"Bellatrix will be there," Andromeda said desperately.

"Are you - are you seriously worried about her?" Ted said incredulously, jumping to his feet. "Your bloody sister led you like some sacrificial lamb to a - a deranged Cult Leader who goes around torturing muggleborns, she took you to him and he damned near almost killed you, and you give a damn about whether Dumbledore finds out she's an evil hag? Everybody knows what she's like, Annie! It's no secret that she's as black as they come - no pun intended. You really care?"

"I told you," Andromeda said, almost crying. "It all comes back to blood. It's not logical or sensible or any other good, down-to-earth Ted Tonks trait. It's because she's my sister and I love her, and she loves me. She would die to save me if she could, Ted. She nearly did. I won't let Dumbledore lock her up in Azkaban."

"Well, if you won't, I will," Ted said grimly. "I don't care, Annie! I'm not going to let him kill you! She's not worth it - I'd kill her myself if I could save you, I'd do it and damn myself to an eternity in Hell to keep you safe, and I'll be damned if I'll let you go off to Wales and just die next June. I refuse to lose you!"

He was on his feet - had been for a while, though Andromeda couldn't recall him standing up, and he moved with purpose toward the door, perhaps to run up to fetch Dumbledore in the middle of the night.

"Don't leave me!" Andromeda cried, a note of utter desperation in her voice, and Ted whirled around to meet her. In a moment, though Andromeda was again not sure how she'd gotten from the armchair to Ted, she was in his arms, and she was kissing him hungrily.

"I'm so scared, Ted, I don't want to die," she mumbled, but soon she was too busy to speak much. There was such a desperate need in her to live, to feel alive, to be as far as possible from the cold soil of the grave she anticipated.

Andromeda couldn't remember when she'd realized she was in love with Ted. It was a stupid thing to think about, she reflected, as she pressed him against her frame; but somehow she felt disconnected from it all. They'd always been best friends - had met on the school train, when Andromeda ran away from Bellatrix, and they'd liked each other tremendously. Andromeda had been heartbroken when she found out that Ted was a muggleborn, and more so when he became a Hufflepuff, but Ted had persisted in his friendly overtures, and by the end of their first year neither of them cared that Andromeda was a Black, and Ted's family were Polish immigrants and electricians.

As best Andromeda could remember, she'd first realized she loved Ted in her fifth year, when he was dating Marlene McKinnon; that hadn't lasted long, however - Marlene's social life in Slytherin had become a shambles, and the girl hadn't managed the stress of prefect's duties and O.W.L.s, and cries of "blood traitor" as well. Then, in their sixth year, Andromeda had dallied with Gideon Prewett - payback, of the pettiest sort, and that hadn't lasted, either, not after she caught Gideon making eyes at Rosalind Bungs.

No, Andromeda had loved Ted for a long time; and given Ted's current passion, she guessed he'd loved her rather as long.

It was funny - she'd never really anticipated anyone loving her, not when she was younger and just starting to think about boys. Bellatrix, after all, hung like a dark and impressive shadow before her, so dynamic and beautiful that she rendered young men speechless when she walked into a room. Narcissa, too, was lovely - younger, yes, but she was delicate and refined where Bellatrix was passionate and bold. Andromeda felt like the awkward cross between the two - brown as mud, in hair and eyes, and so ordinary in a House full of extraordinary wizards and witches she sometimes wondered whether she was even related.

Then, suddenly, Andromeda couldn't think very clearly any more, and gave herself over to simply holding Ted as tightly as she could, and being held.

--

When it was over, and they lay together in a tangled heap of limbs and robes, Andromeda could not sleep, though beside her Ted's chest was moving steadily with the deep breaths of slumber.

There were two things on her mind: first, that in the heat of their shared passion - or desperation - or folly - or youth - neither had remembered anything like a contraceptive charm. That was stupid of them, but Andromeda wasn't seriously worried. It just didn't seem very likely. She was only seventeen, after all, and still in school.

More worryingly, Andromeda couldn't help but worry what her mother would do if she found out. Ariadne was not so crude as to indulge in racial epithets regularly, but she always sneered a little when she spoke of half-bloods. Andromeda remembered her mother say, when she was fourteen, "You're a woman now, Andromeda, for better or for worse. There are two very stupid things you can do now: you can let young men seduce you, and you can let young men of the wrong sort seduce you."

Ted was so obviously of the wrong sort, from his muggle trainers to his calloused hands, that Andromeda couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of him in her mother's parlour. Or of her aunt chaperoning them! Cassiopeia Black, in the same room as an amorous young muggleborn man - it was too much.

The sensible, prefect part of Andromeda told her to get up, and to wake Ted, and to walk upstairs to Gryffindor Tower and pray Filch didn't catch her, but instead, she tucked her head against Ted's chest, and let herself drift away into sleep to the rhythm of his soft breathing.

--

Andromeda woke, suddenly, when Antonia Crawford began her usual morning ritual of calisthenics and yoga - always at 6:30 in the morning, and always accompanied by obnoxious groaning, moaning, and thumping.

She was in her four-poster, the curtains drawn closed and the blankets up to her chin; when she moved to get up, she realized she was still in yesterday's robes. With a suddenness that made her head pound, she remembered exactly where she'd been the night before, and who with; and also realized she hadn't the faintest idea how she'd come to be in the Gryffindor Tower.

Not pausing to brush her hair or change her clothes, Andromeda leapt out of bed, over Antonia, and down the winding staircase into the common room. Bursting out of the portrait hole, Andromeda practically shouted at the Fat Lady, "Who - when - how did I get back last night?"

With a supercilious little sniff and a knowing glance, the Fat Lady replied, "Really, dear, you shouldn't go wandering around at night without a chaperone. In my day, no young lady worth her family name would ever -"

"Oh, get to the point!" Andromeda snapped, feeling tired and cranky and worried.

"It was that young Tonks boy, dear, he was really quite a gentleman - he's the Head Boy, you know, so he had the password; he carried you in through the portrait hole, and I assume he must have taken you to your dormitories. I don't know how he got up the girls' stairs, but perhaps that's another Head Boy's privilege. It was very gentlemanly of him, I must say I quite approve. Though, in the future, dear, perhaps it would be best if you didn't stay out quite so -"

But Andromeda had already begun running, down the stairs and past the few early risers already heading to breakfast. They stared at her, at her knotted and frizzed than curled, at her crumpled black robes and at the prefects' badge dangling on a diagonal. She didn't care.

Against all odds, Ted was already at the Hufflepuff table, buttering a scone. For a moment, he neither saw nor heard Andromeda's approach, and Andromeda could not help but notice the dark circles under his eyes, and the distinct worry in every line of his face. Then -

"Ted, I - you didn't tell him while I was asleep?"

"Do you trust me so little?" he replied, looking hurt. "Andromeda, by Hell or high water I will get you into his office, but I won't go behind your back."

Sudden relief swept through Andromeda's body, and she flung herself at Ted, wrapping her arms around his neck. He was considerably taller than she, and her toes barely touched the ground as he swept her up into his embrace.

"Shh, Shh," he said to her as Andromeda began to cry again. "I want you to look at me. Straight in the eye."

She did, slowly.

"Now," he said with steady purpose, "I can't force you to do anything, I know you too well for that. But you should know me by now, too - I don't give up on the people I love. I'm not a Gryffindor, courage doesn't come naturally to me, but if I can't get you to save yourself, I'll fight the whole world for you."

Then Andromeda couldn't hold it back any longer, and she wept openly while he held her. She didn't care that the whole school - or, at least, all of the school up and alert for breakfast at 6:45 on Friday morning - was watching her. Or even that the headmaster, with a disconcertingly knowing look in his eye, was gazing straight at her and Ted.

She didn't care.

She only knew two things: she loved Ted, and she loved him so much that, somehow, she would find a way to live.