Love Will Tear Us Apart

GIRLS BATHROOM

Andromeda was unable to steal much time away from her sisters for weeks after the incident in Diagon Alley, with Bellatrix insisting that Andromeda was definitely up to something and declaring that she wouldn't rest until she found out exactly what it was.

It was her own fault really, she had lost track of the time in the Leaky Cauldron. Being around James and Sirius felt like being wrapped in a thick blanket of familiar comfort, and with Ted's hand intertwined with hers under the sticky table, she had been in complete bliss. 

She had felt so at ease. 

When she had finally reemerged from the pub onto the street wheree she had left her sisters, darkness had fallen and Bellatrix resembled a storm cloud. She had screamed at her for hours and then refused to speak to her for days. Narcissa didn't seem to know how to respond to Andromeda, so she just mimicked however Bellatrix acted towards her. It suited Andromeda fine, she yearned for time alone and the rest of half term had passed in relative peace without her sisters' constant presence.

By the time they had arrived back at school, things had changed. Bellatrix had practically attached herself to Andromeda, and had written to their parents to ask them to order Andromeda to stay near her sisters at all times or else there would be consequences. She was effectively grounded.

But now that she was having to be even more careful around her sisters, Andromeda found herself slacking on how secretive she and Ted were when they were together.

They sat together in every class now, sometimes even able to steal a few words before and after the lessons began. She longed for the moment when Ted's fingers would brush by hers when he passed textbooks or parchment to her to hand onto the next person, lingering longer than necessary, but not so long as to arouse suspicion from the other students.

No one seemed to have noticed yet, but Andromeda found herself following Ted ought of her lessons, trying to find a moment to talk to him, or to pull him into a broom cupboard for a quick kiss, but every time she got close one of her sisters, or someone she knew would report back to her sisters, appeared and dragged her away. Andromeda knew that soon Bellatrix would start making the connection between Andromeda rushing off to avoid her sisters and the presence of the elusive Ted Tonks.

But the stolen glances and murmered reassurances weren't enough, and Andromeda had to find a way to sneak away again to be with him. Nearly two months after she had met him in Diagon Alley, Andromeda sent him a letter similar to the one he had sent her inviting her to Hogsmeade, telling him to find her in the third floor girls bathroom at midnight.

That night Andromeda lay in bed, clutching the covers to her chest with anticipation as she waited for her sisters and the rest of the girls in the dormitory to fall asleep. Then she began to count down the minutes until the clock reached quarter to midnight. She counted three more minutes of Narcissa's steady, sleep-addled breathing, she swung her legs out of the bed and into her slippers, which she had bewitched with a muffler charm earlier that night when her sisters weren't looking.

Grasping her wand in one hand, and an shawl Bellatrix had gifted her a few years earlier in the other, Andromeda slipped out the girl's dormitory and into the Slytherin Common Room. As she had hoped, there was no one left awake to snitch on her, either to her sisters or to any of the Hogwarts starff. She stepped through the entrance to the Common Room and out into the vast corridor. The night air hit her in an icy wave, a shock after the comforting warmth of her bed and the Common Room with its roaring fires, but Andromeda didn't turn back. She hurried through the castle, using the moonlight, which was casting shadows through the large windows, as her guide in some areas and her illuminated wand in others.