COME CLOSE

@andi

This used to be something that he was good at--that he enjoyed, even. It was funny to think about that sometimes. How easy everything used to be. How simple it had been to just go to a wedding, have a few drinks, and go home thinking that he had actually had a good time. Rodolphus had still be different back then--he had still not felt things the way that a normal person did, but it had been easier to fake it back then. It had been easy to be charming, and the people that he deigned to talk to at these sorts of events would always say that he had been entertaining. He didn’t talk to everybody, but the ones that he did were always charmed. He had just been… good at that, back then. Parties were fun with alcohol and good company--better if he got something out of it, but still. They had been fun for him, once upon a time. But time had changed many things, him more than anything else.

Now weddings were… tedious. Boring. Annoying sometimes, depending on the wedding and if there was anyone in attendance that he considered to be more irritating than the average person. When it was mostly family, then that could sometimes be okay. Griff and Davina’s hadn’t been that bad just because it had been that small. There really hadn’t been all that many people to deal with at all. This one was… still mostly family, but it was slightly bigger--Rosier side, and all that, and that had made that there were more people to contend with. That wasn’t exactly ideal, but he supposed it hadn’t been all that bad. It was easier to be normal, easier for things to go back to normal, the longer he was out of Azkaban. Two years. It had been two years since his sentence had been lessened and he had been sent to the work camp--which felt a lot like freedom, after everything that he had endured in Azkaban.

Two years had helped some, and two more would help… more. He didn’t know if he would get that lucky though. Rodolphus didn’t know if his days were numbered, or if this power was going to last. He knew that he would have a better chance of being more of a man than a monster the longer he was free of that prison, but he also knew how often the tides could turn. He didn’t know what was going to happen now, even with his wife in charge. She had let the Mudbloods go, after all. In a way. She had logic behind it, of course. They could lead them to unregistered Muggleborns, they wouldn’t have a reason to overthrow her if it looked like she was lessening policies but… he wasn’t as sure. A part of him did wonder if she was going easy on Mudbloods because she did eventually plan on lifting the registration entirely. He knew that her fews were more complicated than his--more complicated than her family’s. She had run away for a reason.

Maybe this was eventually going to show him where those differences lied. He thought that it was a possibility, at least. They would figure it out. She was the Lady Lestrange, and she was the Minister. If this was what she was going to do… then she had to think that she had the power behind it, and he was separating himself from politics for a reason. He was letting her deal with it. As long as they were in power. That was what he cared about. He did want two years to become more than that. He wanted to be as close to the man that he’d been before Azkaban as it was possible to be, and sometimes he got more of a glimpse of that future as more time went on. But that was still something far in the future. In some ways, he knew that Azkaban had forever changed him. There was no denying that. But in some ways, he thought that time could help. There was just no way of knowing that now, and no reason to expend another thought on it tonight. It wasn’t going to help him get through this wedding. He didn’t know how much longer Andromeda wanted to be here, but he thought it was certainly long enough to need another drink. It was why he had headed up to the bar to get a double whiskey, in hopes that it would settle him enough to contend with the rest of this party.

come close this is who we are

Tags: Rodolphus

Andromeda's Outfit

When Carlisle had brought Sloane to her, almost a year ago now, Andromeda hadn't known if they were going to end up here or not. A wedding was something to look forward to, it was something most little girls wanted, and she hoped that Sloane had gotten what she wanted this time around. She had never done the big, fancy, wizard wedding. She had gotten married in a muggle church the first time, and in an office at the Ministry the others. This last time, she had gotten married in black. And then they had both gone to work. No pomp, no circumstance, no making him stand at the end on a aisle and wait for her. That hadn't felt... Right... And maybe getting married in a Ministry office hadn't felt right either, no flowers, no cake, no anything. They hadn't even had family member witnesses. They had just added it to the list of things to do that day, and she had gone to the hospital, and waved her wand at the name on the door, changed it to Lestrange, and that was that. No fuss, no anything. She honestly wasn't even sure how long it had taken before people realized they were actually married...  It wasn't instant. Not having a wedding made it a little more subtle. People realized soon enough though. Her sister was mad. Not that she had gotten married again, but that she had done it without saying a word. There was no sense in prolonging the inevitable, she had had a ring on her finger for a couple of months, and she had already adopted Roarke... There had been no sense in actually planning something. In finding a time, and a dress, and everything else. It seemed silly at the time. Frivolous. Now... Well now she almost wished that she would have. Just because she would have liked to walk down the aisle to him. It would have been the one time when she would have known that he was supposed to be looking at her. And maybe she would have known, really known, what 'I know' meant. She thought that she knew, she knew what she wanted it to mean. But she couldn't make it mean anything. She knew that it didn't work that way, that he didn't really love her. That he couldn't. But sometimes she felt like he did.  She felt loved, even if he didn't know he was doing it. And that meant more than anything to her. When she was upset. When she didn't know what to do, or where to turn, he was there. He could just exist in her personal space, and it felt like enough weight was lifted to breathe. He kept her steady. And she had no idea if he knew how much she relied on him for that. There were a lot of things that she knew that she struggled with. Things that she was never going to get over. But she thought that it was just something that she was going to have to try and figure out for herself. She was going to have to try and muddle through what things meant. Try and figure out what it was that she was going to do with all of her thoughts. She couldn't tell him, not when she already felt like she was too much of a burden on him. That she was too broken compared to what she had been before. Everything had changed, and she was still dealing with the damage. She was dealing with what it took to try and heal. And he helped her.  Without knowing that he helped her, he did. He was there. And sometimes that was all that it took. But Andromeda could never ask him for more than that. She couldn't ask him to listen to her as she tried to explain what he meant to her, when she knew that he wasn't capable of feeling anything like that anymore. Maybe a long time ago, it would have been closer to possible, but even then she didn't know. She had no idea if he had ever loved her. But she knew that she loved him. And she kept falling in love with him. Over silly things. Things that seemed every day, and common, and yet, she thought that she loved him just a little bit more for them sometimes. Looking over at where Narcissa and Arista sat talking with the boys on their laps Andromeda picked up her empty wine glass and silently slipped away from them all. The party was still in full swing, but she thought that it was more than past time to take the boys home. They were the perfect excuse to slip out earlier than most everyone else, and she would take what she could get sometimes. Smiling when she saw that Rod was leaning against the bar she made her way that way, the cape of her dress flowing out around her just a little bit as she moved.

come close I know this world is crazy

He would tolerate this wedding, because it was family. That was the only reason that he was even here. Rodolphus had no idea if they got a lot of wedding invitations from people that didn’t matter. For all he knew, they did. Maybe they got invited to places all of the time, and Andromeda just knew that he wasn’t interested in going at all. Maybe she went by herself when he wasn’t paying attention, or maybe she didn’t go either. He thought it was more likely the latter. The fact of the matter was, he would be likely to miss nearly all weddings that they were invited to, simply because he didn’t like being around people. He didn’t like socializing or dealing with small talk. It was something that he had been good at once in his life and something that he had lost throughout years in isolation in Azkaban. Now it was just tedious--and a reminder of something that he was no longer good at. And that was not a reminder he thought that he needed. He would much rather not go to weddings at all, because they were irritating and unnecessary. He would make an exception for family, but he didn’t think that there were any more weddings in their future. Not for a while anyway. At least, he couldn’t think of anyone else getting married that would matter to them. Andromeda’s side of the family connected to… nearly everyone. He was sure that she would get plenty of invitations to weddings, but he couldn’t think of really any that would matter to him. Rabastan’s, he supposed. If his brother had been being serious about Athena Finley of all people, then that would be a wedding that he would obviously have to go to. But he didn’t know if his brother was even going to want a real wedding--or if he would follow in his footsteps and just sign some papers at the Ministry and make it official that way. Rodolphus had no idea what Rabastan would chose to do if he ended up wanting to marry Athena, but that was a wedding that he wouldn’t be either to avoid either. And that was fine. His brother getting married was different than some cousin or nephew of Andromeda’s. That was not something that he wanted to get dragged to. But he had to admit, a wedding for Rabastan and Athena could have some… problems. After all, one side of the family was currently in power at the Ministry, and the other side was who they ousted from power. Ares would likely be there, and Andromeda obviously would since it was his brother’s wedding. The attendees of that wedding would not be people that would get along all that well. Rodolphus did not know how that was going to go, but it was hardly what mattered now. Despite what Rabastan said, Rodolphus was… well, it wasn’t that he didn’t believe his brother. But he would believe that his brother was getting married when he saw it. There was just no reason to think that it was going to get to that point just yet. If it did, then they would deal with that awkward and potentially violent wedding when it happened. Hopefully, they would just realize those problems and get married at the Ministry. Then they could just act like they weren’t now all related through marriage, and everything would be fine. He thought that it would probably be all right. There was nothing wrong with Athena. He supported his brother’s choice. There was just the potential for some uncomfortable situations, ones that hopefully wouldn’t become violent. Hopefully. But if something needed to resort to violence, then he was more than willing to do that. He was well aware that he was the best equipped to deal with that sort of thing. But a wedding wasn’t really supposed to end with violence or murder, so he knew that he should probably stop thinking about it at all. It wasn’t the wedding that they were currently dealing with anyway. There was nobody here that was going to cause any problems for any of them. This really was family, so it would be fine. He was pretty ready to leave, obviously but it was still… fine. He just needed a bit more alcohol in order to get through the rest of this night. He took the glass from the bartender with a nod, before turning in time to see Andromeda approaching. With neither baby in hand, thankfully. The last thing he needed was her trying to shove a baby at him to hold in the middle of a wedding. That was not something that he needed to deal with right now. Luckily, there were plenty of women at this wedding that happened to love babies.

Come Close

this is who we are

A wedding was always something to celebrate, and this was a wedding for family. That made it that much better, and that much more tolerable. Andromeda had declined every wedding invitation that she had gotten since they had gotten married themselves. They hadn’t had a wedding at all. And she thought that maybe that was the part that she regretted. But that was a silly thing to regret. She had what she wanted out of that day. She had him. And she had the boys. And she had her family. They were her family. The four of them were a family, and she thought that that was perfect. That was how it needed to be. Because she couldn’t let herself hurt over everything, and everyone that she had lost. That had been taken from her. Had walked away from her. She had him. And she had their sons, and the rest was just how it was going to be. They were them, and that was it. That was the end. That was all that they needed to be. That was all that they were ever going to be. Andromeda was proud to be the Lady Lestrange. She was proud to be the boys’ mother. She was proud of who she was, in regard to her family, more so than anything else.

And it wasn’t that she wasn’t proud to be the Minister. Because she was. She just thought that her family would always be more important. She wanted to be his wife, and their mother, more than she wanted to be anything else. She thought that tonight she could do that. Tonight, she could just be his wife. Their mother. She could be the groom’s cousin. She could just be a person tonight, and that was something that she liked very much. It was rare. And it was something that she didn’t think that she had a chance of getting again for a while. It was hard, not being able to go anywhere. To do anything. She just wanted to take a break. Even just a weekend. She would have loved a weekend anywhere that she wasn’t in charge of. Anywhere where she didn’t have to be anything that wasn’t just his wife. She would leave the boys with Lucy, or Davina, and she would gladly go anywhere. Anywhere in the world that they had never been. She would have loved to go. But she didn’t know how to make that happen.

She supposed that she could. She could go on some official visit somewhere, or something, but she didn’t know how to get that accomplished, and she didn’t exactly want to advertise throughout her staff that she needed a minute. That she needed a weekend to breathe, and not read paperwork in bed until all hours of the night. That she wanted a full forty-eight hours where no one called her Minister in a way that said that they wanted something. She thought that that was probably impossible. If she was going to run a government that functioned as a government, and she didn’t just let them wander around doing whatever they wanted, then that was something that she wasn’t going to get. As much as she would have liked that, she would have taken just about any time alone with him. She wanted to be around him, close to him. He made her feel better. Just being around him helped her control her emotions. Helped her level herself out. He was a living, breathing, security blanket for her, because he was safe. He made her feel like she was safe. That the world around her wasn’t going to get to her when he was there.

And that was something that she had never had before. She had never had that place to call home like that. That sense of safety that came from another person. He gave her that, and she didn’t know if he even knew that he did it. She had no idea if he knew what he meant to her. But she couldn’t lose him. And she didn’t think that she needed to worry about that being a possibility. He hadn’t left her when she had taken over as Minister, and if there was ever going to be a moment where she worried that she was going to lose the man she loved over something, it was that. But that hadn’t happened, and she didn’t think that she was going to do something like that all over again. She wasn’t going to be that crazy again. Setting her empty wine glass on the bar for the bartender to refill and she leaned against his side for only a second before she supported her own weight again. “Don’t stare at the guests too hard, you’ll start looking like you want to hurt someone. And then you’ll get all attractive when you contemplate murder, and we’ll have to leave.”

Tag: @ rod
Words: 822
Andromeda's Outfit

THANKS ANNECORDELIA

come close
i know this
world is crazy

❧

He knew that he had to get through this wedding. At the very least, there were plenty of people here that he could actually stand to be around for a couple of hours. That was a definite benefit to this wedding mostly being family. It wasn’t large enough to attract too many people that irritated him. Yes, there were some people that he wasn’t all that fond of, for different reasons. Lucinda, for one, had managed to piss him off months ago, and she had not been stupid enough to try to talk to him since. So that was something. He didn’t need her coming around and telling him that something was wrong with Andromeda and that he needed to figure it out. He was not that man. Andromeda knew that he wasn’t, so it wasn’t anybody’s damn business to decide what it was she needed or what he was supposed to do. It had been incredibly annoying, to say the least, and there were a few other people present tonight that he’d rather not have to deal with. Luckily, those people tended to know how he felt about them and left him alone. And there were far more people here that were actually tolerable, surprisingly enough.

That didn’t mean that he liked weddings because he didn’t. That time in his life had come and gone a long time ago, and he didn’t think that he was ever going to be that person again. There was no getting that back. There had been a time in his life where his personality had been more than a little addicting and people had just wanted to be around him. He’d always had his fun at parties. He had been pretty used to being the center of attention--if he wanted to be, at least, and he was just as good at blending into the background when he wanted to watch what was going on around him. But now… now events like these irritating at best, and usually he couldn’t wait to be done with them entirely. He didn’t have to go to too many weddings. He didn’t know if they even gotten invited. They probably did. They were the Lestranges--it would be rude to not include them by inviting them to events like this. She was the Minister, for Salazar’s sake. But they never actually went. So, either Andromeda turned down the invitations without telling him, or she went on her own. He didn’t know.

Quite frankly, he didn’t care either. She could do whatever she thought was best when it came to bloody weddings and that sort of thing. Whether she turned the invitation down outright, or sent a gift, or went by herself. He didn’t care what she decided to do, as long as he didn’t have to deal with more weddings than he absolutely had to. Rodolphus had known that there was no getting out of going to this particular wedding. Carlisle and Sloane had become… something like family to them. He knew that she and Carlisle were technically related, but they had a different sort of family than just blood. Him, and Andromeda, Griff and Davina, Carlisle and Sloane. He didn’t know when those bonds had been formed but they were there anyway, and he knew that he would not get out of this wedding even if he tried. Andromeda would likely drag him here if she had to and that was not something that he thought she would resort to all that often. But he hadn’t put up a fight for this particular wedding. He had gone, and while he was getting tired of the whole thing, the liquor was good and the company was… not horrible.

So, he wasn’t going to rush her out the door or anything. She could stay as long as she wanted to, and he would hover around the bar or talk to Corban or someone else that he could actually tolerate. As long as Lucinda Bulstrode kept her distance, he didn’t think that they were going to have any problems tonight. Rodolphus didn’t know if Andromeda even knew about the conversation that the pair of them had had all of those months ago. It wasn’t as if she was brought up all that often and he saw her even less. There was no reason for him to bring it up, but since Lucinda was superb at running her mouth, there was a good chance that she had told Andromeda, and Meda just hadn’t seen a reason to bring it up to him. It didn’t much matter to him. Lucinda would have been far better off minding her own damn business. She was rather lucky that he hadn’t figured out a way to give her a lasting reminder to do just that. “There’s nobody I want to murder here. That I know of, at least.”

@ meda

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Come

Close

They were married. Carlisle and Sloane were married, and they were probably better off for it. Andromeda couldn’t deny that she thought that they were all just that much better off married, and that was an outdated way of thinking, but with the society that they lived in, it was a true statement in any place. She was all for feminism, and making sure that they were represented, and had a voice, but Andromeda also knew that she was the Minister for Magic, not because she was there all on her own. She was there because she had his name. They had backed her, because they backed him. She knew how much power he lent her. And she was trying not to squander it. Tonight, she didn’t have to worry about that though. She didn’t have to worry about much of anything. She was here as a guest, and she liked nights where she wasn’t in charge of anything. That was all that she wanted, was to be there for her family, and tonight she could be. She was the groom’s cousin. That was all that she was.

It wasn’t often that she could count herself in a position where she was the one that they were overlooking anymore. She had found a spotlight that she didn’t always want, but it was one that was there anyway. It was one that she couldn’t get out of unless she stopped being the Minister, and she wasn’t done being Minister yet. Did she want to be Minister forever? No. She had wanted to be the Minister for stop a war, but she didn’t want to be Minister forever. Andromeda thought that this might be the last job she took. Because she had missed so much of Dora growing up in that hospital. And she had missed so much of Teddy growing up the same way. She knew that this was going to be different, and she wanted to think that she would accept that. That she would accept taking a step back, when it came time for that, and just being their mum.

That was a position that she never would have let herself even consider in the past, but it was different now. She was different now. Andromeda didn’t have to be the strong one anymore. She didn’t have to be the one that was holding it together all of the time. That wasn’t who she needed to be anymore. She didn’t need to be anything. She didn’t need to support them. The last thing that they were going to have to worry about at this point in her life was money. She had worked her entire life at this point… She had been working for nearly fifty years at this point, and Andromeda wasn’t convinced that Rodolphus wouldn’t just be okay with that. If she didn’t want to work anymore after all of this. Once the government was settled, and stable… If she just wanted to be home, and maybe teach, every once in a while. She could write books. Maybe fund a foundation that awarded prize money for healing technologies…

She didn’t have to work for the rest of her life, and she didn’t want to. She thought that it could finally be time to just be her. And she liked who her was when she was with him. She liked Andromeda Lestrange. Far more than she thought that she had ever liked Andromeda Tonks. There had been something missing when she had been Andromeda Tonks. There had been some sense of something that hadn’t been fulfilled. Something that was taken care of with him. Something that she had every intention of hanging on to, because the man next to her right now, was the only man she thought that she had ever really loved. That was what had been missing. She had needed that sort of love. The kind that she wasn’t faking. The kind that she didn’t have to think about. The kind that had withstood everything. She loved him. And he… Well he didn’t love her, but whatever this was, she wanted this for the rest of her life. Andromeda’s lips curled into a smirk as she took not her wine, but his whiskey from the bartender and took a sip of it, “I think you missed the real point of that statement there Dear…”

@ rod - 729 - andromeda's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOXOGRPHY 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]Come close to me baby

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[attr="class","clyrics"]I know this world is crazy[break]
What's it without you

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]The longer he was out of Azkaban, the easier that it seemed to get.
[break][break]
Rodolphus was not foolish enough to think that he would ever be normal. Why would he want to be? He didn’t see much of a reason to want to deal with the sort of things that a regular person had to contend with. Emotions were so… messy. He had learned that a thousand times over, especially in the last year.
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He hadn’t had to deal with much of the emotional sort in a long time. Even when he had been married to Bella, they had just… understood each other. She wasn’t one to get upset or cry, he wasn’t one to get angry and yell. Had he loved her? No. Had she loved him? No. But it had worked out and had made him completely unused to dealing with a woman’s emotions. It wasn’t as if he was the best suited to that to begin with, but at least if he’d had previous practice, he might be able to fake it.
[break][break]
But he couldn’t. Andromeda could act like she didn’t have emotions all she wanted, she could pretend that things didn’t matter when they did, but he was never going to actually buy into it. She wasn’t her sister. It didn’t mean that she wasn’t strong in her own right, but it wasn’t in the same way that Bella had been. She could try all she wanted, but he was never going to believe it. Even if he didn’t know much about that sort of thing, he knew her well enough to know it.
[break][break]
There was nothing wrong with all of that emotional shit. He was glad that he didn’t have to feel it personally, but there was nothing wrong with feeling those things. Sometimes he just thought that she thought that there was something wrong with it. That was how it came off anyway, but Salazar, what the hell did he know?
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He wasn’t an expert in that sort of thing. Never had been, never would be.
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With Bella, he hadn’t had to be. Not with Blair either, not really. Maybe she could have used someone that had known how to help her, but in the end there had been no one alive that could help her. And she was probably happier now, but that was beside the point.
[break][break]
While it did get easier for him the longer he was out of Azkaban, he was never going to be even half of a normal man. And that was fine with him. There were some parts of him that were never going to change. Andromeda had realized that when she had chosen to be with him and so he supposed she probably realized that he occasionally had a tendency of not really listening to half the words that anyone said. At least if he was in a public place, and annoyed, and a hell of a lot had been said. “Oh?” Raising his eyebrows at her, he took his whiskey glass back from her, before downing it and setting it back down.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]516 ● @ meda

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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come close

I know this world is crazy

What's it without you

It was funny, the way that life worked out. Ten years ago, this would have all seemed like a fantasy. Five years ago, this would have been impossible still. But here they were. All of them. And Andromeda thought that that, more than anything else, was what she had wanted. She had wanted her family to be whole again. She had wanted to see them all here, together, like this. To see them smiling, to see them happy. And she knew that it wasn’t perfect. That none of them were even close to perfect under a smiling exterior. But she would take what she could get. She would make sure that when the time came, they were going to be okay. That was what being Minister was about. It was about making sure, that when this was all said and done, and it was time to walk away, no one was going to get hurt.

Maybe that was a pipe dream. Maybe there was no way that they wouldn’t be hurt in some way. But she thought that she would take that chance. So long as her sons were safe. So long as she kept them afloat, and they avoided an all-out war. She thought that she could be okay. That they could be okay. Nights like tonight could happen, and no one had to worry about anything. Carlisle and Sloane could get married. Griffith and Davina could go to Paris. They could do whatever it was that they wanted to do. Andromeda wanted that for all of them. She wanted them to have some sort of peace. For their children to grow up and have peace. Arcturus, and Roarke, and Ava, and Brenna. She wanted them to be okay. She wanted them to have the life that they should have had all along. That everyone should have had.

And they were all too broken, too damaged to do anything about it now. Andromeda was not a fool. She knew that there wasn’t an adult in this room tonight that didn’t have damage. She did. Rod did. Davina did. Sloane did. They were damaged. They were broken. But together, they were this strange family. They had figured out how to exist like this. How to be this. And she didn’t think that any of them expected anything else. She had known what she was signing up for when she had signed up for this. When he had given her that choice. When he had told her that she could take the baby and walk away. Andromeda knew what she had chosen, and she would make the same choice again. Arcturus was his son. And she loved him. No matter what else. No matter if he could never love her back. No matter any of it. Andromeda loved him. And she would choose him. Every time.

This life that they lived, it wasn’t easy. No one had thought that it would be. But she didn’t think that they had expected it to be this hard either. Still. There were plenty of memories that they could drink to. There were plenty of people that they could raise a glass to. To say goodnight to. Thank you to. She raised her eyebrows back at him for a second, and then she shook her head. “I think I can talk Arista into taking the boys home with her. She and Harland can watch them for the night. And then you can take me home…” She wasn’t really interested in staying here all that long. If it hadn’t been Carlisle and Sloane’s wedding, she would have done what she did for every other wedding that they were invited to, and sent a gift, and a card, and called it a night. But that wasn’t exactly an option here. They had had to come. But now she wanted to go home.

@ rod • 645 • andromeda's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]come close to me baby

[attr="class","cscriptde"]let your love hold you

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[attr="class","clyrics"]i know this world is crazy[break]
what's it without you

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[attr="class","cbody"]Rodolphus couldn’t honestly say he knew how many invitations they got to events like this. He knew that people in their society tended to get married… a lot. Well, not a lot, he supposed, but it felt like there was always some second or third cousin or some daughter of some acquaintance getting married.
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He just never actually went to the weddings. He heard about them eventually, which was why he knew it had happened to begin with, and he supposed there was a chance that they hadn’t been invited. But he thought that there was a much better chance that they were invited and Andromeda just went by herself or declined the invitation altogether. He didn’t know. It didn’t really matter to him. If she wanted to go to a wedding by herself, that was fine. Quite frankly, he was relieved that she didn’t actually think he’d agree to go--the fact that she didn’t even bother asking proved she knew what the answer would be.
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There was such as much of a chance that she turned the invitation down entirely, but he figured it would depend on just whose wedding it was. There were some that she might feel obligated to go to, even without him, but if she could get out of going, Rodolphus thought that she would.
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This was not one of those weddings, however. Carlisle and Sloane getting married was not something that they could just decide not to attend. Rodolphus didn’t really know how it had happened, but they had somehow become important to Andromeda, just like Griff and Davina had. He understood how she had started to get close to Davina, but he wasn’t as sure when it had happened for Carlisle and Sloane. Carlisle was family, of course, but there had been a time where they hadn’t been… on the same page.
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After all, it had been Carlisle that had acted on Wentzell’s wife’s orders to torture Davina in the Great Hall. That had been pretty telling as far as taking sides went, but they had come a long way since then. He knew that this was not a wedding that he was going to get out of attending and that was fine. Luckily for him, there were plenty of people that he didn’t mind seeing here and enough good liquor to keep him occupied. He assumed that it was Sloane that had made sure of that.
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The good part of weddings were the amount of people that liked babies, and could take the boys off of Andromeda’s hands so that she didn’t have to deal with having both of them at the same time--and he didn’t have to deal with her having them all the time. It wasn’t like she expected him to be all that helpful or hold babies, but still--with Lucinda around, there was a chance that she’d decide to throw out her unwanted opinion and try to push a baby into his arms. Better for someone else to be dealing with the babies than him.
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Her words surprised him, not that he necessarily cared where the babies went for the night. There was just a time when she barely liked being in a different room than them and now apparently they were past that. Thankfully. “Somehow I think that will end with you missing them immediately,” he answered, with a chuckle. Making eye contact with the bartender, he gestured at his empty glass and waited for him to come to refill it.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]586 ● @ meda

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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come close

I KNOW THIS WORLD IS CRAZY

what's it without you

Perhaps this was not the life that people envisioned when they had thought about where they would have all been at this point. She knew that she certainly wouldn’t have thought that she was going to be a mother again now. That she was going to have Rodolphus. That she was going to get to call herself Lady Lestrange. Andromeda had always thought that she had lost that chance when she had walked out on the contract with Rabastan all of those years ago. She had thought that she would have had to remain on the side, loving him in a way that meant that she could never have him. And she had been okay with that. She had been okay with that for a long time, until it had hurt too much.

Until loving him had become real in a way that she couldn’t explain. Until she had known that she couldn’t have him at all. Until they had taken him away from her. And then everything that had happened, from that day forward, everything that she had done, that she had allowed to happen around her, she thought that it was something that she couldn’t even have explained. Because she went through a long time after that on autopilot. She let her life go on around her. She couldn’t bring herself to divorce Ted, when she didn’t have anywhere to go. She couldn’t go to that apartment. Not after everything that had happened there. But looking at the house, she wished that she could leave it.

Every time she stood in front of it, she could close her eyes, and see him leaving her standing there crying. She could feel her heart breaking, and the warmth of his hand on her cheek as he kissed her goodbye. She had hated those memories. She had hated losing him at all, and now she had him back. Now he was hers in a way that she wasn’t going to let anyone take from her. He was hers. And she knew that he didn’t, couldn’t, love her. But she didn’t think that she needed that. She didn’t need him to say that he loved her. Not when she knew how much his tolerance of her in his space, of her head on his chest so that she could sleep, of making him deal with the fact that they had children at all, meant. Because she knew how much those things meant.

That he never snapped at her for it. That he didn’t push her away when she had had a bad day, and just wanted to be around him. He never said a word when she decided to work, curled up in her chair in his office instead of at her own desk. She loved him enough for both of them. This was the family that she had built for herself. The one that she should have had all along. The one that she should have fought her sister for forty years ago. Because her sister had never loved him, and Andromeda didn’t think that she had ever loved anyone besides him.

And the world had changed all around them, but they had made it this far. Together. Parents. They had two sons that were nearly a year old, and she didn’t think that that would have been something that anyone would have expected. That the Lestrange heirs would have come with her as their mother, and not her sister… Still, she had thought that letting her cousin take them for the night was worth a shot. Narrowing her eyes at his chuckle she picked up the wine that she had abandoned in favor of his whiskey and took a sip of it before she answered him. “Maybe…” He was probably right, and they both knew it, “I have to leave them sometime. Unless you’re planning on picking up a different date to take home instead of me.” Her innocent smile hidden once again behind her raised wine glass.

@ rod • 668 • andromeda's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0