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nest_of_spiders Day 4
Apr. 4th, 2007 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rosie_ruesTitle: A Feast of Fools (4/14)
Wordcount: 1795
Date: 1972
Pairing: Ted/Andromeda (eventually)
Rating: PG
Prompt: "Castle remembered how he had once made a map of the Common with all the trenches marked and the secret paths hidden by ferns. That was like a spy too ... With difficulty Castle found the old trench. The dug-out where the dragon had lived was blocked by blackberry bushes."
- Graham Greene, The Human Factor. Penguin, pg 60.
Disclaimer: If you recognise it from the books, it's not really mine to play with.
1 2 3 4
Just after the Hufflepuff cuckoo clocks had cooed the notes of midnight, Andromeda gave up trying to sleep and slipped out of bed. She dragged her school robes over her nightdress and walked out quietly, not wanting to wake any of the other girls in the dorm. She was the only Slytherin, and the only member of an old family, who had ended up here and she couldn't face the task of explaining the situation to these halfbloods and muggleborns. She missed Ianthe and the other girls in her house, who would understand, even if they had little sympathy.
She might go in search of them, once she'd had a chance to sit in the silence and think. The house elves should still at work, so she could go to the kitchens and get some hot chocolate or milk to soothe her nerves.
When she stepped out into the common room, however, the first person she spotted was her cousin Sirius, sitting cross-legged in front of the fire. He was still in his robes and was grinning to himself, so she bit back a sigh and went to investigate.
“Expecting a Floo?” she inquired.
He jumped. “Meda!”
“What are you up to?”
“Nothing!” he said quickly, shuffling his wand up his sleeve and turning his head away. “I just don't particularly feel like sleeping in a bed tonight.”
Andromeda knelt down beside him and grabbed his chin, turning his face towards her. Across his forehead a line of neat red pimples read Nose picker. She rolled her eyes. “Severus again? Who started it?”
“Me,” Sirius admitted, scowling and squirming. “I had to hex him, though, Meda, honest I did.”
“Of course,” Andromeda said drily.
“I had to!”
“Hush,” she said, and dug out her wand. “I've got some lotion which should heal these.”
“Really?” asked Sirius, expression brightening. “Remus was going to make me one of those scarf things, like pirates wear, but Pete said it might fall off which would be rubbish.”
She summoned the lotion silently and set to work on his face. “What started it this time?”
“He said you were going to marry Lucius Malfoy!”
“Ah,” Andromeda said and busied herself with screwing the lid back on the jar.
“Meda?” he whispered. “You're not?”
“It's a family decision,” she said quietly. Let him understand this now, before his turn came.
“But I don't like him. He took points off us just for existing. I don't want you to marry him.”
She laughed, despite the cold feeling in her stomach. “Oh, Sirius. It's not that easy.”
“Well, it should be,” Sirius asserted, twisting his robes in his fists. “You don't want to marry him, do you?”
That made her laugh again, a little more freely. “It's duty, darling. I'll do what the family needs.”
“Well, you shouldn't!” he burst out. “It's not fair.”
She reached out to ruffle his hair. “Gryffindor.”
“Well, it's not,” he said mutinously.
“Go to bed, Sirius,” she said, feeling a generation away from him. “And apologise to Severus in the morning.”
He shot a quick glance at the fireplace. “I think I might just sit out here a little longer, actually.”
“Really?” she said and moved onto the nearest sofa. “What a nice idea. I think I might join you.”
“Oh, you don't have to,” he assured her, grey eyes wide and guileless. “I'm just going to think, y'know, apologising thoughts.”
“You do that,” Andromeda said and curled up on the end of the sofa, tucking her feet in.
“Which absolutely have to be done alone,” Sirius tried. “In case I, um, get confused and hit him by mistake.”
“How do you hit someone by mistake?”
He sighed heavily. “With Snape, it's easy. I just see him and it happens. Pow. Ted says I've got poor control of my impulses.”
“Does he?” Andromeda murmured.
“Yeah.” He looked into the fire dreamily. “But I think it's just 'cause I like hitting Snape.”
“Sirius-”
He shot her a sly look. “See, you've already distracted me.”
“Nice try, chicken,” an amused voice said behind them. “But none of us were born yesterday.”
Andromeda jumped, glancing round to see Alice strolling towards them. The Gryffindor prefect dropped into the chair opposite and grinned at them. “We must stop meeting like this, my poppet.”
“How do you always know?” Sirius demanded, shoulders sagging.
“Years of experience,” another voice said and Ted Tonks flopped onto the sofa beside Andromeda. “Where's your partner in crime?”
“My what?” Sirius said, blinking at them. “I can't think who you're talking about, Ted. I've never-”
Andromeda raised an eyebrow. “Potter, I presume.”
“Oh, you mean James,” Sirius said. “That would be James Potter, my good friend James-”
“Who is also missing from his bed,” Ted said over him.
“Really,” Sirius said, shuffling towards the fireplace. “How extraordinary. Now, it's funny you should say that because just the other day-”
The fire suddenly flared. Andromeda, making a wild guess, grabbed Sirius and pressed her hand over his mouth.
“Hrumph,” he said just as a small, soot-coated boy shot out of the fireplace, swiftly followed by two others, who went crashing into the floor and the nearest pile of cushions.
“It works!” the first proclaimed, rubbing at his blackened glasses with his pyjama sleeve. “The Prewetts were right-”
“-and we can go anywhere!” The round one squeaked, from where he had landed spread-eagled on the carpet.
“-Snape's never going to know what hit him,” came a muffled voice from where a skinny pair of legs stuck out of the cushion pile.
“Mmmmuph!” Sirius tried.
“-the staffroom, the kitchens, the Slytherin common room-”
“Hogwarts is ours, boys! All ours!” Potter shoved his glasses back on and then trailed off. “All... Oh, not again.”
“Nice to see you, too,” Alice said, grinning. Sirius struggled a bit harder and Andromeda let him go before he took her arms off.
“I tried to warn you!” he burst out.
“I think,” Pettigrew said gloomily, “that when it comes to warnings, trying isn't enough. S'like sponge puddings.”
The Lupin boy finally untangled himself from the cushions and looked around warily. Andromeda, who had always had the vague impression that he was well-behaved, regarded him in astonishment.
“Perhaps one of you would be kind enough to explain precisely why you are gallivanting around the fireplaces in the middle of the night?” Tonks suggested.
“Ah,” the Potter boy said, running his sooty hands through his hair until it stood on end. “It was like this-”
Lupin cleared his throat and said, rather apologetically, “Er, Ted, I don't think we were actually breaking any rules. Seeing as, well, there aren't any these days.”
The other three turned to look at him. Then, as one, grins spread over their faces and they turned back towards Tonks.
“In fact, you could say,” Lupin continued, scuffing his foot against the carpet, “that as Dumbledore unlocked the internal Floo network, he was actually encouraging-”
“Bed!” Tonks growled.
Sirius and Potter exchanged triumphant glances.
“But not,” Andromeda put in, “until you've emptied your hands and your pockets.”
Four sets of shoulders slumped. Andromeda watched in mild amazement as they produced a sizable pile of contraband, including a pot of Floo powder, a pink wig, a bell jar full of doxies and a slumbering baby mandrake root with plugs in its ears.
“Good lord,” Alice said faintly. “Right, I'll deal with this haul.”
“I'll supervise here,” Andromeda said, “if Tonks doesn't mind returning these young gentlemen to their respective dormitories.”
“I'll glue them to their sheets while I'm at it,” muttered Tonks.
“You can't do that!” Potter protested. “What if the school burns down and-”
Under the glare of Head Boy, Head Girl and a Gryffindor prefect, he shut up fast.
Tonks plucked the pot of Floo powder out of the pile and seized Lupin first. “Right. Where have they stashed you?”
“Ravenclaw,” Lupin said wistfully, allowing himself to be dragged back towards the fireplace.
Alice scooped up the most dangerous items of contraband and started towards the portrait hole.
Sirius glanced at Andromeda hopefully. He began to sidle towards the pile.
“You know,” she said mildly, turning her wand over in her hands, “with no school rules, there's nothing to stop me from hexing someone until their toenails start singing opera.”
Sirius skidded back to Potter's side.
Half an hour later, all four miscreants were back in their beds and their plunder had been locked away safely. Alice had beaten Tonks back by mere minutes and they had all crashed down in front of the fire again.
“Forgive me for asking,” Andromeda said, watching the fire dance. “But how did you know they were out of bed?”
Tonks and Alice shared an amused look. “Magic,” Tonks said, leaning back into the sofa with a smirk.
“After the great points disaster last term,” Alice said wryly, “we charmed the lot of them so we'd be woken up every time they were out of bed without permission.”
“They'll figure out the counterspell eventually,” Tonks said, turning to look at Andromeda. “Until then, it reduces the damage.”
Andromeda relaxed. Damn it, why couldn't he be this easygoing all the time? There was no need to take blood differences so personally. “I'm surprised you're getting any sleep,” she said lightly.
“Not much,” he said and raised an eyebrow at her. “Not condemning our ethics?”
She smiled at him and felt some of the tension slip out of her spine and shoulders. “I may yet, but not until you've taught me the charm. I can think of some of our little beauties who could do with watching.”
She expected him to comment, but he simply stared at her, looking pleased. She frowned back, uneasy. What had she said?
After a while, Alice cleared her throat and said, “On the subject of sleep, my ducks, I think I prefer my bed to this chair, so I'm off.”
Andromeda climbed to her feet, not quite sure why she felt so reluctant to move. At least she was sleepy now. “Good idea. Until the morning, then.”
She was almost back to the door of the dorm when he said softly, “Andromeda.”
She spun, startled. She'd been working with him for months and he'd never used her name. “What?”
He smiled quickly, his whole face suddenly bright and open. “Goodnight.”
“Oh,” she said, puzzled. “Goodnight.”
He smiled again and then strode off to his own room, leaving her standing in doorway, feeling as if a large part of the conversation had been missing.
“Bloody Dumbledore,” Alice muttered, stumbling towards her bed. “He had to send the whole school bonkers as well, didn't he?”
Wordcount: 1795
Date: 1972
Pairing: Ted/Andromeda (eventually)
Rating: PG
Prompt: "Castle remembered how he had once made a map of the Common with all the trenches marked and the secret paths hidden by ferns. That was like a spy too ... With difficulty Castle found the old trench. The dug-out where the dragon had lived was blocked by blackberry bushes."
- Graham Greene, The Human Factor. Penguin, pg 60.
Disclaimer: If you recognise it from the books, it's not really mine to play with.
Just after the Hufflepuff cuckoo clocks had cooed the notes of midnight, Andromeda gave up trying to sleep and slipped out of bed. She dragged her school robes over her nightdress and walked out quietly, not wanting to wake any of the other girls in the dorm. She was the only Slytherin, and the only member of an old family, who had ended up here and she couldn't face the task of explaining the situation to these halfbloods and muggleborns. She missed Ianthe and the other girls in her house, who would understand, even if they had little sympathy.
She might go in search of them, once she'd had a chance to sit in the silence and think. The house elves should still at work, so she could go to the kitchens and get some hot chocolate or milk to soothe her nerves.
When she stepped out into the common room, however, the first person she spotted was her cousin Sirius, sitting cross-legged in front of the fire. He was still in his robes and was grinning to himself, so she bit back a sigh and went to investigate.
“Expecting a Floo?” she inquired.
He jumped. “Meda!”
“What are you up to?”
“Nothing!” he said quickly, shuffling his wand up his sleeve and turning his head away. “I just don't particularly feel like sleeping in a bed tonight.”
Andromeda knelt down beside him and grabbed his chin, turning his face towards her. Across his forehead a line of neat red pimples read Nose picker. She rolled her eyes. “Severus again? Who started it?”
“Me,” Sirius admitted, scowling and squirming. “I had to hex him, though, Meda, honest I did.”
“Of course,” Andromeda said drily.
“I had to!”
“Hush,” she said, and dug out her wand. “I've got some lotion which should heal these.”
“Really?” asked Sirius, expression brightening. “Remus was going to make me one of those scarf things, like pirates wear, but Pete said it might fall off which would be rubbish.”
She summoned the lotion silently and set to work on his face. “What started it this time?”
“He said you were going to marry Lucius Malfoy!”
“Ah,” Andromeda said and busied herself with screwing the lid back on the jar.
“Meda?” he whispered. “You're not?”
“It's a family decision,” she said quietly. Let him understand this now, before his turn came.
“But I don't like him. He took points off us just for existing. I don't want you to marry him.”
She laughed, despite the cold feeling in her stomach. “Oh, Sirius. It's not that easy.”
“Well, it should be,” Sirius asserted, twisting his robes in his fists. “You don't want to marry him, do you?”
That made her laugh again, a little more freely. “It's duty, darling. I'll do what the family needs.”
“Well, you shouldn't!” he burst out. “It's not fair.”
She reached out to ruffle his hair. “Gryffindor.”
“Well, it's not,” he said mutinously.
“Go to bed, Sirius,” she said, feeling a generation away from him. “And apologise to Severus in the morning.”
He shot a quick glance at the fireplace. “I think I might just sit out here a little longer, actually.”
“Really?” she said and moved onto the nearest sofa. “What a nice idea. I think I might join you.”
“Oh, you don't have to,” he assured her, grey eyes wide and guileless. “I'm just going to think, y'know, apologising thoughts.”
“You do that,” Andromeda said and curled up on the end of the sofa, tucking her feet in.
“Which absolutely have to be done alone,” Sirius tried. “In case I, um, get confused and hit him by mistake.”
“How do you hit someone by mistake?”
He sighed heavily. “With Snape, it's easy. I just see him and it happens. Pow. Ted says I've got poor control of my impulses.”
“Does he?” Andromeda murmured.
“Yeah.” He looked into the fire dreamily. “But I think it's just 'cause I like hitting Snape.”
“Sirius-”
He shot her a sly look. “See, you've already distracted me.”
“Nice try, chicken,” an amused voice said behind them. “But none of us were born yesterday.”
Andromeda jumped, glancing round to see Alice strolling towards them. The Gryffindor prefect dropped into the chair opposite and grinned at them. “We must stop meeting like this, my poppet.”
“How do you always know?” Sirius demanded, shoulders sagging.
“Years of experience,” another voice said and Ted Tonks flopped onto the sofa beside Andromeda. “Where's your partner in crime?”
“My what?” Sirius said, blinking at them. “I can't think who you're talking about, Ted. I've never-”
Andromeda raised an eyebrow. “Potter, I presume.”
“Oh, you mean James,” Sirius said. “That would be James Potter, my good friend James-”
“Who is also missing from his bed,” Ted said over him.
“Really,” Sirius said, shuffling towards the fireplace. “How extraordinary. Now, it's funny you should say that because just the other day-”
The fire suddenly flared. Andromeda, making a wild guess, grabbed Sirius and pressed her hand over his mouth.
“Hrumph,” he said just as a small, soot-coated boy shot out of the fireplace, swiftly followed by two others, who went crashing into the floor and the nearest pile of cushions.
“It works!” the first proclaimed, rubbing at his blackened glasses with his pyjama sleeve. “The Prewetts were right-”
“-and we can go anywhere!” The round one squeaked, from where he had landed spread-eagled on the carpet.
“-Snape's never going to know what hit him,” came a muffled voice from where a skinny pair of legs stuck out of the cushion pile.
“Mmmmuph!” Sirius tried.
“-the staffroom, the kitchens, the Slytherin common room-”
“Hogwarts is ours, boys! All ours!” Potter shoved his glasses back on and then trailed off. “All... Oh, not again.”
“Nice to see you, too,” Alice said, grinning. Sirius struggled a bit harder and Andromeda let him go before he took her arms off.
“I tried to warn you!” he burst out.
“I think,” Pettigrew said gloomily, “that when it comes to warnings, trying isn't enough. S'like sponge puddings.”
The Lupin boy finally untangled himself from the cushions and looked around warily. Andromeda, who had always had the vague impression that he was well-behaved, regarded him in astonishment.
“Perhaps one of you would be kind enough to explain precisely why you are gallivanting around the fireplaces in the middle of the night?” Tonks suggested.
“Ah,” the Potter boy said, running his sooty hands through his hair until it stood on end. “It was like this-”
Lupin cleared his throat and said, rather apologetically, “Er, Ted, I don't think we were actually breaking any rules. Seeing as, well, there aren't any these days.”
The other three turned to look at him. Then, as one, grins spread over their faces and they turned back towards Tonks.
“In fact, you could say,” Lupin continued, scuffing his foot against the carpet, “that as Dumbledore unlocked the internal Floo network, he was actually encouraging-”
“Bed!” Tonks growled.
Sirius and Potter exchanged triumphant glances.
“But not,” Andromeda put in, “until you've emptied your hands and your pockets.”
Four sets of shoulders slumped. Andromeda watched in mild amazement as they produced a sizable pile of contraband, including a pot of Floo powder, a pink wig, a bell jar full of doxies and a slumbering baby mandrake root with plugs in its ears.
“Good lord,” Alice said faintly. “Right, I'll deal with this haul.”
“I'll supervise here,” Andromeda said, “if Tonks doesn't mind returning these young gentlemen to their respective dormitories.”
“I'll glue them to their sheets while I'm at it,” muttered Tonks.
“You can't do that!” Potter protested. “What if the school burns down and-”
Under the glare of Head Boy, Head Girl and a Gryffindor prefect, he shut up fast.
Tonks plucked the pot of Floo powder out of the pile and seized Lupin first. “Right. Where have they stashed you?”
“Ravenclaw,” Lupin said wistfully, allowing himself to be dragged back towards the fireplace.
Alice scooped up the most dangerous items of contraband and started towards the portrait hole.
Sirius glanced at Andromeda hopefully. He began to sidle towards the pile.
“You know,” she said mildly, turning her wand over in her hands, “with no school rules, there's nothing to stop me from hexing someone until their toenails start singing opera.”
Sirius skidded back to Potter's side.
Half an hour later, all four miscreants were back in their beds and their plunder had been locked away safely. Alice had beaten Tonks back by mere minutes and they had all crashed down in front of the fire again.
“Forgive me for asking,” Andromeda said, watching the fire dance. “But how did you know they were out of bed?”
Tonks and Alice shared an amused look. “Magic,” Tonks said, leaning back into the sofa with a smirk.
“After the great points disaster last term,” Alice said wryly, “we charmed the lot of them so we'd be woken up every time they were out of bed without permission.”
“They'll figure out the counterspell eventually,” Tonks said, turning to look at Andromeda. “Until then, it reduces the damage.”
Andromeda relaxed. Damn it, why couldn't he be this easygoing all the time? There was no need to take blood differences so personally. “I'm surprised you're getting any sleep,” she said lightly.
“Not much,” he said and raised an eyebrow at her. “Not condemning our ethics?”
She smiled at him and felt some of the tension slip out of her spine and shoulders. “I may yet, but not until you've taught me the charm. I can think of some of our little beauties who could do with watching.”
She expected him to comment, but he simply stared at her, looking pleased. She frowned back, uneasy. What had she said?
After a while, Alice cleared her throat and said, “On the subject of sleep, my ducks, I think I prefer my bed to this chair, so I'm off.”
Andromeda climbed to her feet, not quite sure why she felt so reluctant to move. At least she was sleepy now. “Good idea. Until the morning, then.”
She was almost back to the door of the dorm when he said softly, “Andromeda.”
She spun, startled. She'd been working with him for months and he'd never used her name. “What?”
He smiled quickly, his whole face suddenly bright and open. “Goodnight.”
“Oh,” she said, puzzled. “Goodnight.”
He smiled again and then strode off to his own room, leaving her standing in doorway, feeling as if a large part of the conversation had been missing.
“Bloody Dumbledore,” Alice muttered, stumbling towards her bed. “He had to send the whole school bonkers as well, didn't he?”