"Drink this," Andromeda said to Harry after he came out of the
nursery, Teddy asleep in his crib.
Teddy had started to sit up on his own. It was a weird thing to be
proud of, but Harry was absolutely delighted. It was the best he had
felt in what seemed like years.
Harry took the little glass vile from her and asked, "What is this?"
"A potion."
"For what?" Harry asked.
"I brewed it," she said as if that answered his question.
"Where?"
"In the basement."
"This house as a basement?" he asked, that was news to him.
"Just drink it."
Harry sighed but he uncorked the vile and downed it in one go as he
had learned to do with all potions. Nothing with 'eye of newt' ever
tasted good.
Except this one had a pleasant aftertaste. Like the sweetest fruit, the
tastiest salted vegetables, a delicious fatty cheese, and a dessert to
kill for. The fact that the potion was a pleasant experience to drink
should have tipped him off that there would be other side effects.
A shiver of pain went up his spine, and yes, it was comparable to the
torture curse only rather than experience the pain, his brain decided
that passing out was the better option.
Harry fainted into Andromeda's arms. With no difficulty at all, she
was able to lift Harry and bring him to the couch.
When next Harry woke, it was to a fever, his version hazy. He
moaned and turned, trying to get up beforeIt was lucky for him that there was a conveniently placed bucket.
Harry's body was shaking, he was cold and hot, and his head felt like
it was in a vise. He would say he felt like he was dying, but death
hadn't felt like this.
Slender fingers combed his hair back from his face and a cool
washcloth was placed on his forehead.
Blindly, Harry reached up to catch that hand.
It took him three tries to wrap his tongue around the words, "Mrs.
Tonks- what… you… to me?" He shut his eyes and tried to breathe
through the fluttering sensation in his lungs, it almost felt like his
lungs were shifting or morphing somehow. He tried not to think about
what that might mean on a physical level.
"Andromeda, Harry, call me Andromeda," she told him and began
running her free hand through his sweaty hair.
Her touch felt good, but if he had enough energy to do more than
speak, he would be in full panic mode. "What's happ-" His throat
closed up. Everything hurt.
"It will be over soon, Harry," she said.
And Harry wished he could see her face, but whether his eyes were
open or closed it didn't matter, his vision had gone completely black.
He imagined his organs were shutting down.
Was it really possible that he was dying?
What about Teddy? He couldn't leave Teddy.
Harry fought, fought to sit up, fought to move, to see.
But the blackness had already swallowed him.
Harry didn't so much wake up as catapult himself off the couch. He
was in his boxers and although he was trembling he wasn't in any
pain.
He accioed his glasses and was pleased that there were no black
spots in his vision. Staggering to his feet he went to the nursery first.
Harry had finally set up a proper changing table so that the dining
room table was clear. Teddy was asleep and Andromeda was
slumped in the armchair Harry transfigured out of the rocking chair.
Harry and Andromeda took turns falling asleep in the stupid thing
and a cushioned chair was a lot better for the neck and back than a
hardwood rocking chair.
Quietly, Harry snagged a clean pair of clothes. Harry would be
having words with Andromeda when she woke up.
"'Drink this,'" he mocked under his breath to himself. That was the
last time he trusted her.
He nearly fell over himself when he checked the date with a spell.
Three days. He had been out for three days .
Using the wall for support he made his way to the bathroom. He
stripped and got into the shower. For not having eaten in three days
he felt surprisingly strong. He felt like he had just returned from
quidditch practice; tired and worn in a way that made the next
practice a little bit easier. Of course, that wasn't logical as he had
been passed out sick for three days on the couch.
The mirror was fogged when he got out of the shower. Wrapping a
towel around himself and went upstairs for clean clothes. Andromeda
had moved him into Nymphadora's room and out of Teddy's closest.
Thankfully, the rooms were not torn apart.
It wasn't until he tried to pull on his pants that he really began to
notice the differences. The pants fit but they were four inches too
short and they were tight around the waist.
Harry shut the door to Nymphadora's room, there was a full-length
mirror on the back of it.
He gaped at himself. The man who faced him was not a scrawny
teenager but a fully developed man. His shoulders were broader, he
was half a foot taller, and he hadn't lost his muscle mass but where
once he had been all wiry muscles now he had some meat on his
bones.
It looked like if he worked out that he could get the definition this
body promised.
Yet perhaps the most remarkable change was in his face. Harry had
always had sharp features, his cheekbones were overly dramatic
and his skin had always been unnaturally pale. In the latter half of his
life, he had eaten better, but he had never been able to eat away the
damage that had formed in his younger years.
The Dursleys had never starved him, but his meals hadn't always
been consistent and a 'balanced meal' was not always on the menu.
Now his face was full, his eyes brighter, his sharp features softened,
so that even he thought, wow, that's a handsome guy.
The potion Andromeda had given him had been a healing potion. A
potion that had successfully healed the physical woes of something
everyone else had long ignored.
He wasn't sure how long he stood there, but when Andromeda came
into the room Harry went to her. He wrapped his arms around her
and marvelled that he was a bit taller than her now.
"Thank you," he said into her dark curls. He wasn't just thanking her
for the Harry 2.0 but for caring, for noticing the physical scars that
went bone-deep. It didn't really matter to Harry what he looked like,
not truly, except that it was a continual reminder of the Dursleys
ingrained into his flesh. That someone had gone to the trouble of
healing those scars, that mattered to him a great deal.
The Dursleys had been a part of Dumbledore's master plan and
Harry as much as he had once loved Albus Dumbledore, neither the
Headmaster nor the Dursleys had treated him like he was a person
with his own needs and emotions. To have what the Dursleys had
done to him removed, even if it had made him shallow, Harry felt
more gratitude than he had words for.
This was the body he was meant to have, would have had if his
parents had lived or Sirius had been able to take him in.
Andromeda rested her cheek against his shoulder and hugged him
back.
Another Month Passes - Teddy does many cute things as is the
nature of his existence.
"Hello Wendy Bird," Harry greeted his little owl. She had a perch in
the kitchen and in Harry's room on the second floor.
She hooted at him pleasantly.
Where Hedwig had been beautiful, Wendy Bird was the embodiment
of avian adorableness. Her eyes were black and the arrangement of
her feathers framing her face always made her look like she was
peeking out at the world.
Harry fed her a piece of bacon, and very gently she pulled it from his
fingers. She rubbed the side of her head against his knuckles.
"I like her," Andromeda said.
"Hermione got her for me," Harry said with a smile.
"She hasn't been around for a while," she noted.
"Hermione and Ron returned to Hogwarts."
Andromeda wrinkled her nose, "I had unprotected sex with Ted the
summer he graduated. I didn't have to return to school for my sixth
year."
Harry nearly snorted his coffee, "You had Tonks when you were
fifteen?"
She gritted her teeth, "Her name is Nymphadora and I was sixteen.
Ted was seventeen, turning eighteen. We had a 'shotgun' wedding in
the muggle world, and I never had to go back to my parents' house. I
don't know that Cissa ever forgave me for that."
This was the most Andromeda had yet spoken to him since moving
in. He was worried that if he asked too many questions she would
shut back down, but he couldn't help himself. "So you got pregnant
on purpose?" Harry asked.
"Of course. Nymphadora and Ted were the best things to ever
happen to me."
"Did Ted know-"
"Know that I wasn't using contraceptives?" She finished for him. "No.
We had been secretly dating for two years before that, but he wasn't
exactly happy with me that we had a baby before he had even
finished his first semester at St. Mungos. Training to be a healer isn't
an easy thing. I don't think he minded in the end. He was a good
father and I am not sure he believed marriage was even an option
for us, given my maiden name. I never had to get a job though, as
my Uncle Alphard gave me a huge wedding gift.
"He exchanged half his share of the Black Fortune into muggle
currency. I bought this house and deposited the rest in a muggle
bank account. As I am sure you could tell, the money has gone a
long way. That was about four years before he died. Sirius got some
money from him then I think. He moved in with your grandparents
when he turned sixteen too if I remember right. I regret not doing
more to reach out to him and Reggie."
"What was-" Harry bit his tongue. That probably wasn't a question he
should ask.
"What was so wrong with our family that my older sister's tentative
sanity snapped, that the Heir of the Black family got himself sorted
into Gryffindor before running away? That his brother became a
Death Eater and that at sixteen I had a baby with a muggle-born to
get away from them?" she asked for him.
"They were psychotic, Harry. The entire lot of them, inbreed and
twisted. They believed their own stories and the type of magic they
played with… it shaped them.
"Don't ever believe that learning the Dark Arts can't change you. It
changes the way you think, it dims the lights and makes the
shadows more alive. They valued their magic more than valued life
itself, us kids were a by-product of their ideals, not something they
ever desired to have." Andromeda ran a hand down Wendy Bird's
back. "I had Nymphadora because I wanted a child to love and
protect. I wanted a family, not a legacy."
"Nymphadora brought love wherever she went."
Andromeda smiled sadly, "She didn't get that from me. Ted was like
that. He loved me when I was mean and afraid of my own shadow."
She met his gaze, "If the Marauders were a terror at Hogwarts it was
nothing to what my sisters and I did. The Black Sisters; we were less
like bullies and more like the mafia. No one could touch us, top of
our years, rich, beautiful, and ruinous. We didn't know that what we
did would attract the Dark Lord's attention. He took Bella the year
she graduated. She was three years older than me. My fifth year… It
was one thing to have her not at Hogwarts, it was another to knowto see what she became."
"Are you saying that if Bellatrix hadn't met Voldemort she wouldn't
have been evil?"
Andromeda shook her head, "Merlin, no. My older sister was always
cruel and never the stablest cookie in the box, but she wasn't always
broken. She very well might have become a dark lord -or I suppose
Dark Lady, in her own right. But the witch who was my sister would
never have debased herself before anyone -least of all before a halfblood, no matter how much of Salazar's blood he had in him."
Harry frowned, "But you couldn't have been that bad. Sirius said you
were his favourite cousin."
"Sirius was never a saint, I doubt what he deemed acceptable you
wouldn't have. Besides, I was before his time. He didn't see the
Black Sisters in our glory years."
"Is this why McGonagall doesn't like you?" he asked.
"McGonagall doesn't like me because when I was supposed to be
taking my OWLs in the fifth year, I manoeuvred my way into taking
my NEWTs. I had stolen Bella's notes from the year before and
thought I knew what I was getting myself into."
"How did you do?" Harry asked, loving every scrap of information he
could learn about this mysterious woman he had been living with for
months.
"I broke both McGonagall's and Dumbledore's scores in
Transfiguration, and Potions for that matter. When I dropped out of
school that following summer… I was not an easy student. I was not
particularly attentive in my classes, I fooled around with Ted more
than I did homework, and for me to do well then become what
amounted to a muggle housewife? Minerva McGonagall is a very fair
witch, and she expects the best from her students. I was a
disappointment.
"That was the last thing Bella ever said to me actually, 'Andromeda,
you have made an art form out of disappointing expectations.'"
Not knowing what else to say, Harry said, "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I took it as a compliment," she said. Andromeda stood and
took Harry's empty coffee mug from him. She went to finish the
morning dishes, leaving Harry to get the awakening Teddy.
Andromeda could end a conversation with the angling of her
shoulders or the line of her lips. He wasn't sure if it was him
becoming that attuned to her or whether Andromeda's presence
could simply command a room that well.
Harry had no idea what to make of Andromeda Tonks née Black.
Some days she was as silent as the grave and other days her
tongue was as sharp as a whip. The last month had become easier
with her. The days she needed Harry's help to pick her off the floor
were growing rare. Harry was relieved that she was finding herself,
but he worried that soon she wouldn't need him because if one thing
was for certain, Andromeda Tonks was a law unto herself