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Lady Andromeda Black turns the page of the tome on the use of gemstones in rituals, fascinated by the topic. The pain relief potion she took after answering her absurd amount of correspondence—being a baroness is a hassle—has finally finished its work, relieving her of her headache. Her wrist, still slightly sore despite the pain relief potion, twinges when she turns another page.
No one, regardless of their social station in life, should need to personally respond to more than a hundred missives at once. However, Andromeda truly did bring the pain upon herself by putting off answering the many invitations and penning responses to social inquiries and matters of business on account of her current magical research obsession.
“I need to acquire some amethyst the next time I’m in Leisure Alley,” Andromeda mutters to herself, hoping she won’t forget to do so. She could send her house-elf, but, when it comes to ingredients used in rituals, it really is wisest to choose them oneself.
She slouches slightly, allowing the back of the sofa to take some of her weight, forgoing the textbook-perfect posture that has been taught to her since childhood.
As if she can scent the imperfect behavior, Lady Druella Black swans into the parlor. She frowns, an expression that Andromeda is all too accustomed to seeing on her mother’s face when her mother is looking at her, and snaps, “For Morgana’s sake, sit up properly, Andromeda! You’ll never attract an acceptable suitor with such a slovenly posture. At least pretend you’re equal to your sisters in this one area.”
Andromeda straightens so quickly that her spine aches. She’s instantly upset with herself for doing so. She’s a grown woman, a powerful witch, not someone to be crushed beneath her mother’s endless criticisms.
“It’s a pity you’re not beautiful like your sisters,” Druella sniffs. She rakes her eyes down Andromeda’s body. “It’s certainly not something that you inherited from my side of the family.”
It’s infuriating that, after all these years, the words still strike at the very heart of Andromeda. Life would be so much less painful if she could convince her heart that it doesn’t matter that her mother loves both of her sisters but is ashamed of Andromeda for committing the crime of being plain.
Lady Druella Black née Rosier was one of the great pureblood beauties of her generation and she has taken it as a lifelong insult that Andromeda is not a great beauty.
“As you say, Mother,” Andromeda replies demurely before quitting the parlor, unwilling to tolerate her mother’s vile words a moment longer—not even for the sake of filial piety.
Andromeda wonders how monumentally livid her mother would be, how grand of a tantrum she would throw, if she ever discovered Andromeda’s most closely held magical secret. Andromeda has inherited one of the rarest Black family magical gifts. She’s a Metamorphmagus.
If Andromeda wanted, she could make herself more beautiful than her younger sister Narcissa, or more darkly seductive than her older sister Bellatrix. She can literally alter any aspect of her body, become any magical’s ideal physical type, and lure any unsecured title with her rare magical gift alone.
Yet, day after day, Andromeda has mousy brown hair, common brown eyes, and plain features.
It’s not that Andromeda is incapable of bringing a room to a screeching halt with her looks alone, it’s that she’s not interested in doing so. Someone’s body is the least interesting thing about them, as far as she is concerned. And she’s not the type of witch who would be delighted to hear that “beautiful” or “ravishing” or “stunning” was the first adjective that came to someone’s mind if the person were asked to describe her.
“I’ve no interest in someone who’s more interested in what I look like than who I am,” Andromeda mumbles to herself.
Andromeda is a consummate Slytherin in every way that actually matters. She’s cunning, ambitious, magically talented, and so forth. She can fade into the background and acquire blackmail and gossip as easily as she can dominate a conversation on current politics and magical advancements.
This is why she’s so grateful she found a like-minded witch in New Blood Miss Lily Evans.
“The Lily Cottage,” Andromeda states, throwing a handful of Floo powder into the fireplace in the room next to the parlor.
Grates and fireplaces flash past her, one after the other, before she steps out into the small sitting room of Lily Evans’ cottage. It’s everything that Black House isn’t—warm and homey and cozy. It isn’t the slightest bit pretentious. Everything is built for comfort, not for show.
Andromeda loves it here.
“Lily?” she calls.
They don’t have a scheduled outing today, but Lily told her that she’s welcome to drop by at any time. Andromeda has only spontaneously visited on a few occasions, most often following another bout of her mother’s vitriol.
Lady Druella Black is as ugly on the inside as she is beautiful on the outside.
After Andromeda bonds, it’s unlikely that she will ever see her mother again. Given that she fully intends on bonding with Lily—her mother is still unaware of their engagement and Andromeda has no intention of enlightening her—a New Blood witch without a title, her mother will probably do her a favor for the first time since Andromeda’s birth and cease all contact, enraged that Andromeda chose not to seek someone with a significant title.
“In the kitchen, Andy!” Lily replies.
Andromeda absently Vanishes the traces of soot on her plain green robes—she’s not the sort to enjoy ornamentation or fripperies; even her wand-holster bracelet is simple, another grave fault, according to her mother—and heads to the kitchen.
It would absolutely boggle her mother’s mind to learn that Andromeda has no interest in seeking a higher title. As it is, Andromeda desperately hopes that her cousins Sirius and Regulus will soon bond and produce offspring, pushing her further down the line of inheritance, and relieving her of the Barony of the Opal Mines in the process.
She’s much too interested in her studies, which are many and varied, to want to spend her life tied to a desk and study, overseeing an estate with hundreds of tenants and businesses and magical villages and everything that entails.
But until that happens, until Andromeda is no longer a baroness, no longer holding one of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black’s subsidiary titles, she will fulfill every duty laid upon her shoulders to the utmost of her abilities, regardless of her mother’s snide comments that the barony—which was briefly Bellatrix’s before her bonding to Heir Rodolphus Lestrange—was more prosperous and efficiently run while under Bellatrix’s care.
It’s not true. Andromeda has seen the books, the ledgers, and has studied its history. It has been centuries since the barony was as prosperous as it is right now under Andromeda’s care.
It takes an inordinate amount of self-control to not rub that fact in her mother’s face. But, in the end, Andromeda doesn’t want to sink to her mother’s level. She doesn’t want to become her mother, even for a moment, which has led to Andromeda quitting a room almost as soon as her mother enters it for the past few years.
“How was your morning?” Lily asks.
She’s wearing a pair of shorts and a short-sleeve blouse. Lily has her hair back in a ponytail. If they weren’t engaged, it would be more than a bit scandalous. Her hair certainly isn’t properly ‘up’.
“Well, I saw Mother, so—” Andromeda shrugs.
She’s in her twenties now and has had over two decades to become accustomed to her mother’s spiteful, dismissive, and downright cruel behavior on occasion. How any pureblood witch can think that the most important thing any other pureblood witch can be is beautiful is beyond Andromeda’s comprehension. It’s such a shallow way of thinking.
“The next time I see your mother, I’m going to hex her with cursed spots. See if I don’t!” Lily huffs.
Lily turns away from the counter, where she was kneading some sort of dough by hand instead of using magic—Andromeda doesn’t recognize the exact kind; she’s never spent time in the kitchen, her mother loudly and repeatedly declaring that’s where house-elves belong, not titled purebloods—and pulls Andromeda into a hug. She’s probably leaving floured handprints and smears on Andromeda’s robes, which doesn’t faze her in the least.
Andromeda is aware that a proper pureblood daughter would object to such a thing. She’s sick and tired of being told all the ways that she fails at being ‘proper’.
“If that’ll make you happy, then do it,” Andromeda says.
There’s too much unhappiness in the world for Andromeda to steal even a small glimmer of it away from the witch that she adores so wholly that she was willing to risk her very sanity itself by loving her—when she has dedicated her entire life to enriching her mind. She will never be able to express in words how utterly relieving it felt to have Lily give her a chance when Andromeda chose to risk having her heart broken, which would have triggered the bloodline curse on the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black and robbed her of her sanity.
“Oh, I will,” Lily says before kissing Andromeda lightly on the lips. “She’s a horrid wretch and she deserves it.”
Andromeda can’t refute that statement without sounding completely mad. Not, of course, that she has any inclination to do so. She, after all, knows firsthand how vain and vicious her mother is. It only emphasizes the disparity in how her mother treats her sisters in comparison to how her mother treats her like a Bludgeoning Hex to the heart.
“I don’t want her at our bonding,” Lily admits with a frown, staring right into Andromeda’s eyes.
Lily’s green eyes reveal her emotions in such a blatant manner that it’s almost unnerving. No Slytherin would so easily bare their hearts for others to glimpse and wound. It’s humbling, in a way, that Lily is so emotionally raw in Andromeda’s presence and trusts that she will not be hurt for it.
“Neither do I,” Andromeda whispers, voice rough.
If her mother isn’t in attendance at their bonding, gossip will spread like Fiendfyre through the pureblood drawing rooms. The speculation will grow more ludicrous with each retelling. But, at this point, Andromeda finds that she doesn’t care. Because if her mother dares to turn her cutting tongue against Lily, to flay the most wonderful part of Andromeda’s life to shreds—especially at their bonding—then Andromeda might just become the first kin-slayer in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black in the past three centuries.
It’s not a legacy Andromeda would prefer to leave behind—though, of course, she would be cunning enough not to get caught, would leave no evidence, would allow nothing to take her away from Lily’s side—but it’s a sin she’s willing to stain her soul with if she deems it necessary.
Andromeda might tolerate slights and attacks against herself, but that does not mean she is willing to tolerate such things when they are aimed at someone she loves.
There is no one in all of Avalon that Andromeda loves more than she loves Lily.
“You know,” Lily starts, a wicked grin on her face, “we could always elope and then announce our bonding in the Daily Prophet. It would serve your mother right for her to bear the shame of having one of her friends call horrendously early in the morning to discuss it, or offer congratulations, only for your mother to be caught entirely unaware on account of how she lies in every morning, long past when the newspapers are delivered.”
Andromeda fiddles with Lily’s silky red ponytail, twirling it around her fingers as she imagines the horrified look that would appear on her mother’s face—unmasked for anyone to see.
A wickedly delighted thrill tingles up her spine.
“You know that I love you, Lily. I’d take you as my lady-wife at any time of any day. Whenever you want—”
Lily silences Andromeda with a kiss, soft and lingering and so full of love that the echo of it emanating down their engagement bond has Andromeda shivering in place.
“Today. Now,” Lily breathes against her lips.
Andromeda clutches Lily more tightly against herself and tries to calm her racing pulse. Oh. Lily is ready now, is— She almost wants to pinch herself. She was prepared to wait several more years until Lily finished her apprenticeship, but … if Lily wants to bond with her today, Andromeda is more than willing to do so.
“Are you sure?” Andromeda asks. Her lips twist for a moment as she adds, “We’ll be baronesses for, likely, years, as neither Sirius nor Regulus seem in any rush to bond and produce heirs. And even after all the years we spend as baronesses, the family magic will default the barony to the next in line once said child is born.”
“I would willingly spend five hours a day on tedious politics and paperwork and meetings with the inhabitants of the barony without complaint if I could do so at your side, Andy. There’s nothing I’m not willing to face when we’re together,” Lily replies, her voice bluntly honest, her eyes almost admonishing, as if she thinks that Andromeda should already be aware of this.
“You hate politics,” Andromeda says as she idly fiddles with Lily’s hair. If they do this, later today Andromeda will get to see it down for the first time. It’s an alluring, heady thought.
“Yes, I do,” Lily agrees. “But I love you more than I hate politics.”
Her heart racing wildly in her chest, Andromeda smiles and says, “Then let’s elope, Lily.”
Andromeda gently tugs Lily’s head back by her ponytail and claims her lips again, kissing her more fiercely than before. It feels, as it has since the first time they kissed, like coming home.