Andromeda knew that there was no way around what was going to happen now. She knew the moment that she had seen him standing there that she was going to have to face a life without him. He wouldn't have come here unless he thought that there wasn't much time. He wouldn't have come here, and risked Ted being home, unless there was a reason. And she had heard what had the papers had said. She knew that the Potters were dead. She knew that they were blaming Sirius. That he had been caught. She didn't believe it. She would never believe it. But Andromeda knew that it wasn't the Potters that had led to this. It wasn't her cousin that had the man that she loved at her house right now. Ted had taken Dora and gone to his mothers. She knew that without even asking. Of course, that was where he would go. But this… This was something that she was going to let herself get distracted by. She could deal with her hatred for her husband tomorrow. She could deal with the fact that he had taken their daughter from her, in the morning. Tonight, she was going to focus on the man that was standing in front of her right now.

She was going to stay focused on what it was that she was really losing. Because there was no way that he would have been here if she wasn't about to lose him. And she didn't know how to process that. She didn't want to hear him say goodbye to her. She didn't think that she could hear those words from his lips and not cry. She didn't think that she was going to hold it together all that well when she read the papers. Because she knew that it was going to be in the papers. They weren't going to take them quietly. But Andromeda knew that she was going to have to cry somewhere else. She couldn't cry for him here. And she didn't want to. She didn't want to cry for him at all. She didn't want him to go. That much she knew. She didn't want him to leave here, she didn't want him to walk away from her, because she wasn't convinced that she was ever going to see him again, and really that wasn't a reality that she was prepared to face.

There wasn't a choice, she knew that. She knew that she didn't have a choice about whether or not he would stay or go. She wouldn't really ask him to stay. She knew better than that. She didn't have a claim on him the way that her sister did. She was just the mistress. And she thought that she was probably one of many. But to her, it meant something that he had come here. She mattered to him, at least, she thought that she mattered to him. Because he had come to say goodbye. And she wouldn't let him. She didn't want to hear it. Whatever they had done. Whatever it was that they had done that was so horrible, Andromeda didn't care. She didn't care what he had done, or why. She knew that he had done it for the man he served. He had done it out of loyalty to the Dark Lord. And she knew that that was a name that she would never escape. That that was someone that would always have some sort of hold on her, some influence in her life. He was gone, but she didn't really believe that. She didn't really think that he could have been defeated that easily, and that meant that this wasn't over.

That was what she was holding on to right now. He was standing in front of her, and he was telling her goodbye without saying the words, and Andromeda was holding on to the thought that this wasn't over. And that if it wasn't over, then this couldn't really be goodbye. Her eyes searched his face as he spoke again, and she nodded, "I'm glad…" She didn't think that she would have kept herself under control if she would have read of them taking him, without having this chance. This chance, to tell him that she loved him… To tell him that she didn't want him to go. To tell him that she wanted him to run. That she would go with him, that they could disappear, take on new identities, be anyone that they wanted to be. Because she knew that he wouldn't lie. That he wasn't going to say that he had been forced. That was demeaning. That was weak… She thought that running though, running proved your allegiance, and your fight for something more. But she knew better than to ask it of him, no matter how badly she wished to… "Come inside?" Ted wasn't home, and she knew that he wouldn't be. If Bella didn't know that he was gone… And maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he thought something like a clean break would have been better, but she didn't believe it… She didn't want a clean break, she wanted a memory. A messy, painful, gut wrenching, memory…

This wasn’t ideal, but they had all known that it was possible. They had all known going into this, that it wasn’t a sure thing. He had believed in the Dark Lord’s cause, though--they all had. He was more powerful than any wizard that he had ever met, and Rodolphus had thought that he would be able to do what he had promised. He had thought that they would have more power than they had even now, if they helped him get to where he wanted to be. They would all be rewarded, and they would also get rid of all of those in the magical world that did not deserve to be there. That was important to him. It had always been frustrating to see Mudbloods in Hogwarts, or walking down the street in Diagon Alley, thinking that they had a right to this world, had a right to magic. Rodolphus hadn’t seen anyone else ready to do anything about that. The Dark Lord had been ready. He had been prepared to do whatever it took--and he had the power to make that happen. He had thought that he would prove to be successful, but they had all known that the alternative had been possible. He just hadn’t been expecting it.

But they knew what was going to happen. Bella knew, Rabastan knew… they had not been quiet about their loyalties. Barty might end up being all right. He might as well get something from his father’s high position in the Ministry. But the rest of them knew what was coming. They knew that the aurors could come at any day, and he had no idea what Bella was doing tonight--what she was doing on what could be their last night of freedom before Azkaban. Perhaps she was with Rabastan. It was no secret, to him anyway, that his brother… enjoyed his wife’s company more than a brother-in-law should. It just didn’t bother him. And it was not Bella that he wanted to see tonight. She knew what was coming. But Andromeda didn’t know. She had no idea what was going to happen and they had come to a point in their relationship where he felt like he needed to tell her. She couldn’t find out that he had been arrested in the papers with everybody else. He couldn’t let her be blindsided like that. Her mattering to him wasn’t something that he had been prepared for when he had first seen her in Knockturn Alley. Frankly, he had just wanted to shag her, and that had been exactly what he’d done.

He hadn’t felt all that bad about shagging his sister-in-law. His wife didn’t know about it, no one knew about it. Andromeda had been disowned, after all. She had run away from home, had broken the betrothal planned for her and his brother, and she had married a Muggleborn. So he had just shagged her because he had wanted to shag her, and he hadn’t thought that it needed to be more than that. She was a blood traitor, and far from their world these days. He was a Lestrange, her sister was his wife, and he didn’t need to complicate things more than one shag. She was pretty--in a different sort of way than Bella. They looked alike--Merlin knew they looked alike, but it was… different. He had thought one shag would be enough, and then it hadn’t been. He hadn’t thought that it would turn into this. He hadn’t thought that it would last this long, and that he would be coming to the house she shared with her husband, to tell her that he was going to be gone. She deserved to know that though. She deserved to go on with her life, and not thing about him anymore. She needed a goodbye for that--she needed closure.

If the Dark Lord had been successful, maybe she would have been able to divorce her Mudblood, and they could have figured something else out. But it hadn’t worked out that way and now there was little point in anything but goodbyes and closure. Being a blood traitor was safer in a world where the Dark Lord had failed. For now, anyway. But he was quite sure that the time would come and they would rise again. By then, there was little way for him to know where Andromeda would be or what she would decide. There was no reason to think into the future like that. “I shouldn’t…” Coming here to say goodbye had been the plan. There was no telling when the aurors would come, or if they were already on his trail. If he was in her house, then she could get wrapped up in this in a way that wouldn’t do her any good. Outside was safer. Easier. That way, if they were already onto him, they wouldn’t them all cozy in a cottage together. She did not need to deal with the aftermath of that.

He wouldn't have come here unless there hadn't been another option. Unless getting her to their flat would have taken too long. If he was that pressed for time, making sure that he saw her, she knew. Something had happened. Something was happening. They had done something. They were going to come for them, for him, and she was going to be alone. She wasn't really going to be alone. Andromeda knew that she was never alone. She was married, she had a child. Those things mattered too. But she thought that she would be the only person left free in the world that knew how much he mattered to her. That she was the only person that would know that the people that she was grieving over, were not the Potters, or whomever they had hurt now. She was grieving for herself. For the loss of the one person that made her feel like her again. That didn't try and contain her or limit her. The one person that she thought that she loved the way that a woman was supposed to love a man. He was the only person that she had ever felt like that about, and she had never even said it. She had never told him she loved him.

And she couldn't say it now. She couldn't tell him that she loved him, because it would sound like a plea. It would sound like she was begging him to do something that she had no intention of begging him for. Did she want to? Yes. She would have given up everything to run away with him. To take Dora and run. Because she would not have left her daughter behind. That was the one hiccup in the plan. The fact that she would have had to take her daughter. That he would have had to be okay with that, and she didn't know how that would have gone over. Who they would have become. Because he wasn't exactly the stepfather type, and she thought that Dora was plenty big enough that she was going to remember her father. That she was going to remember the grandparents that she loved. Andromeda had never been able to give her that. Ted had. He had been the one that had provided the family, and the warmth, and everything else that Dora loved. Because that wasn't Andromeda. She didn't have a family. She didn't have that warmth.

She was warm all on her own. And she wanted to be that now. She wanted to protect him, somehow. But that wasn't an option. She couldn't protect him, and Salazar only knew that he probably wouldn't have let her if she could have. She wanted him safe, and she wanted him with her. Andromeda knew that she didn't have any right to want that, that she didn't have any claim on him. That he was her brother-in-law, that she was married too. That they weren't supposed to have been anything to one another, but they were. He was important, and she thought that she needed him. She needed him in a way that she didn't think that she could even explain, because she hadn't realized it until right now. Until he was standing in front of her telling her that he was going to be taken away. That there was no other choice. Andromeda didn't know if she wanted to know what they had done. She didn't think that she did, but she also didn't care. She didn't care who he had hurt, what they had done. They didn't matter. He mattered. They mattered. And she was losing that.

Everything was unraveling, the lie that they had been living, the lie that had made everything else easier to bear, was coming undone, and she couldn't stop it. She couldn't stop it because she didn't have a right to. She didn't have the right to beg him to run. She didn't have that right to do anything other than accept this. To keep her chin up, and not cry, and just get through this. But she couldn't do that either. Because she wasn't going to let him tell her goodbye. She didn't want to hear it. That made it sound final. Like she was never going to see him again, and she didn't accept that. She wouldn't accept that. Andromeda's stubbornness was showing through. She wasn't going to let him just up and walk away from her that easy. Reaching up to move her fingers to the hair at the base of his neck she shook her head, part of her wanted to try and negotiate with him, to get him to take her inside. But part of her didn't want her begging him to be the last thing that happened either. "I don't care…" and she didn't. She didn't care that he shouldn't, she didn't care that they were supposed to hate one another. Because she loved him, and whether or not she had never said that before, she thought that it was written all over her face.

then you can tell me goodbye If you wait a lifetime before you leave

The choices that he had made were not ones that he was ever going to regret. Not when he knew that they had done what was right. The wizarding world was a better place without the scum that weakened their magic, year after year, generation after generation. The more mudbloods that they allowed to dirty their magic, the worse it would get. They were all better off with them being eliminated. It was a fact. Getting rid of mudbloods was the right thing to do, and the Dark Lord had promised them all that he would do just that. And he would give them more power than they could ever imagine. Rodolphus was a man that wanted power. Not the kind that he could get by climbing the political ladder at the Ministry--that had never interested him. But the kind of power that he could get by aligning himself with the right people… and the kind of power he could get with the right kind of dark magic. He knew that was a dangerous path to go down, but the dark arts was something that he’d been learning about since he was a boy. It was something that his father had been teaching him for as long as he could remember. He had known that there was a risk of this not going there way. There was always that risk. But with the Dark Lord being as powerful as he was, Rodolphus hadn’t thought there was much of a chance of that happening. They had the wizarding world scared. Petrified, really. No one knew who to trust and it had been quite amusing to see. He had thought that they had been well on their way. He had thought that they were going to get everything that they’d been promised and then the Dark Lord had gone to Godric’s Hollow. And they all knew how that had ended. Not the specifics, of course. Not a person alive knew the specifics, but they knew that he was gone. For now, anyway. And he wasn’t going to run. Running had never been an option for him. Instead, they had gone to Frank and Alice Longbottom and the aurors would never recover from that. Azkaban was in their futures now, but the Dark Lord would reward them when he returned. Others were already claiming the Imperius Curse and he knew he could too. They all could. But they wouldn’t. There wasn’t much to do to get their affairs in order. Their vaults would likely remain frozen and their homes abandoned. There wasn’t anything to do, other than to wait. How Bella and Rabastan were spending their… potential last night, he didn’t know. He just knew that there was one person that he had to see before he was arrested. One person that deserved a goodbye face to face, and deserved not to find out about his arrest by reading about it in The Daily Prophet. She deserved at least that--more than that, really, but this was all that he could give her. Sleeping with his wife’s sister had started out as just… fun, but it had turned into more than that. He cared about her. It was a risk coming here, and he knew that. If they were already on his trail, they might just realize that Andromeda wasn’t as separate from this world as everyone thought that she was. No one needed to find that out. She was married to a Muggleborn, she would be safe as long as nobody caught them together. Nobody had yet. And he couldn’t have that change tonight. It was why it was dangerous to come here. But it was an even worse idea to go inside. If they caught up to him and he was outside his sister-in-law’s house, then he could come up with some kind of explanation. Maybe he wanted to kill his blood traitor relative before being arrested. He could come up with something… but going into her house, that was asking for trouble. He wasn’t sure that was something that would be worth the risk. It would just make leaving even harder and this didn’t need to be any more difficult than it already was. “You should…” It was the difference between any of this coming back on her or her remaining unscathed. It was better for her, since everything was going to change now. She needed to protect herself and the best way of doing that was to forget about him and go back to her life with her Mudblood. It was just the best option for her. He had just thought that she deserved a goodbye face to face, and that he needed to see her one more time before he was taken to Azkaban.

Then You Can Tell Me

tell me you'll love me for a million years

The cottage was off limits. It was like her going to Lestrange Castle. It didn’t happen. And it hadn’t had to be said. They hadn’t had to say that they weren’t going to go there. That they weren’t going to cross that line. They hadn’t had to. They just knew. They were a secret. They were the affair. She was one of who knew how many women that he had on the side, but she was different, and she had always known that she was different. She wasn’t a one time thing in a bathroom in a bar in Knockturn Alley. She wasn’t one night, after buying her dinner in response to her sharp tongue. She wasn’t any of those things. She was just her. And they were just them. And nasty Chinese food. And cheap wine. And a record player that she could dance around to for hours when she was just a little too drunk, and they hadn’t made it to bed yet. She knew that it was more than her just being one of many. Because if she didn’t matter he wouldn’t be here right now. He wouldn’t have bothered to say goodbye.

He was a monster. And she knew it. She wasn’t under any delusions that he was a good man. That he was going to make good choices. That he did the right things. She knew that he was a monster. But what everyone failed to see, was that she was too. Not in the same way. She didn’t kill people. She didn’t go around throwing out torturous curses and hurting people because they were in her way. She didn’t do that, but she was a monster too. She was just as bad. Because she had the same victim. Over and over and over again. She was a monster because she had fallen in love with a man that she wasn’t married to. She had fallen in love with her sister’s husband, and she didn’t even like her own. Not anymore. Not really. They didn’t have a chance. There was no comparison. She was a monster, because she held on, when she knew that she couldn’t love. She was the monster, because she hadn’t let go. She was cold, and cruel, and she was there for their daughter. She was there because Dora was too important to leave. She was there, because she had to be. Because she didn’t know how to get out.

And there wasn’t anywhere that she could have gone. She couldn’t raise a kid in that flat. She couldn’t take her there, when that was for them. She couldn’t do anything about it. She couldn’t do anything about any of it, because when it came to him, she had been in love with him for years. She was twenty-nine years old. She had loved him for a decade now. There was no changing that. There was no changing the fact that she had loved him that long. That she had been lying for years. That she had lived another life. A life that had made it possible for her to live the one that she had to face every day, because she knew that she got those nights with him. And they were rare now. They had been rarer, since the war had started. They were few and far between, but she still loved him. And she knew that it was impossible to tell him that. It was something that he was never going to get the chance to say now. Because this wasn’t the moment. Not for the first time. She couldn’t tell him that, when he was trying to tell her goodbye. But she wasn’t going to let him tell her goodbye either.

She couldn’t hear those words. Andromeda didn’t want to hear him say that this was it. That this was the end. Because he wouldn’t be in jail forever… Or he would. She knew that he very well could be. He had done enough to get sent there for the rest of his life. She wasn’t stupid. She knew that the Dark Lord had fallen. She knew that they weren’t going to lie. She knew that he wasn’t like Lucius. She knew that he wasn’t going to lie for anyone, not even to save his own skin. That wasn’t loyalty. That wasn’t anything. That was self-preservation, and he didn’t have enough of that to outweigh what he was doing. But she knew that she couldn’t talk him out of it. He would go down for the halfblood. She had married the mudblood. They were both screw ups. But his screw up was taking him away from her. Forever. And she’d be damned if she let him see her cry. Andromeda closed her eyes for just a moment at his words, and she bit her lip for just a moment before she opened them again to look at him. “I know…” Pulling him down to her, she kissed him one last time. There would be no goodbye. She wasn’t going to let him say it. She didn’t want to hear anything else. He could go. She would let him go. But she would always love him…

Tag: @ i love you
Words: 868
Andromeda's Outfit

THANKS ANNECORDELIA

Then if you must go
I won't tell you no
Just so that we
can say we tried

❧

Rodolphus knew that this was going to hurt her. He had known that when he had made the decision to come here to begin with, but he knew that he had to. He needed to see her one more time before the aurors came for him, and he wanted her to hear what was going to happen from him. Not from the papers, or anyone else. He wanted to see her, so that they could say goodbye. That was all there was to it. He couldn’t linger, he couldn’t stay for more than a couple of moments, because that would be putting her at risk. If they were already on his trail, then it had been a dangerous idea to come here already. But he was good at covering his tracks, so he thought that it would be fine. If they were quick enough, they would be all right, and no one would ever have to know that he was here. He knew that it was going to hurt, but he thought that she’d feel worse if she heard it from the papers. He thought that she’d feel worse that she hadn’t known that their last time seeing each other was the last time that she was going to see him.

At least now she knew. She knew that he was going to walk away and then she was never going to see him again. Not unless the Dark Lord rose to power again and freed them from Azkaban. It was something that Rodolphus did think could happen in the future. There was no way that he was truly gone. But there was no way of knowing when that would be. There was no way of telling who he would be after he got out of Azkaban. So, this was goodbye. The only goodbye that he could give her. Coming here in the dead of night, for only a couple of minutes--that was honestly all that they had. All the time that he had. He wouldn’t put her at risk for any longer than he had to. He had told himself that before he had gotten here, because he knew how easy it would be to get caught up with being around her… in telling himself that they could have a couple more minutes. It would be a simple thing to do. It was surprisingly easy for him to forget about everything else when he was around her. But he knew that he couldn’t.

He couldn’t tell himself that it was okay, that he could come inside, that he could stay a little longer. It wasn’t okay. He couldn’t come inside. There wasn’t time. These were their last couple of minutes, and there was nothing that he could do about that. Rodolphus wasn’t going to run. He wasn’t going to claim that he had been Imperioed liked so many cowards had already. He had accepted his fate. Yes, that meant leaving Andromeda behind and he knew that was partially his choice, but the alternatives to Azkaban were not real alternatives in his mind. It was just not something that he could even consider. All that he could do was accept his fate, be ready to take down as many aurors as he could in the process and take the couple of minutes that he had to say goodbye to the woman that he… might love, if he’d had any experience at all with that emotion. And he hadn’t. Not really. It wasn’t something that he thought that he could feel at all. But he thought that it would feel a lot like this--and for him, that said plenty.

Andromeda knew that he couldn’t come inside. Rod knew that she did. She was trying to tell herself that it was okay, just like he had been tempted to do before he had gotten here. But it wasn’t, and they both knew it. He wasn’t going to lead the aurors here. He wasn’t going to risk her getting caught up in this--either getting hurt in the crossfire or getting into trouble with them and ending up in… well, likely not Azkaban, but still. He didn’t want any of this on her. She was separate from it currently. No one knew that they were involved. They had been careful. And her family had disowned her. There was no reason for the Ministry to suspect her in the slightest and he was not going to put that at risk by being here when the aurors came. He kissed her back, a hand moving to cup her cheek before he pulled away. And then he was silent for a moment. He knew that it was time to go, but he didn’t think that she would actually want him to say goodbye. Rodolphus didn’t know why. It just felt like a word she’d rather not here. Instead, he nodded, and took a step away, his eyes never leaving hers. “You’ll be fine.” And with that, he took another step back, and then he was gone.

@ meda

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Then You Can

Tell Me Goodbye

This was the end. She knew that. She knew that he was going to walk away from her right now, and there was a very real possibility that she was never going to see him again. Andromeda was not a fool. She was not naïve. She knew the consequences of his actions. And she knew the consequences of her own. She was going down for this if he came into the house. She would go down with him. And that couldn’t happen. No matter how badly she wanted to. No matter how many times she told herself that it was going to be okay. No matter how many times she tried to convince herself that they wouldn’t be long. That no one would ever know. But they would. If she took him into that cottage, they would know. She would lose him. And she would lose everything else in the process. Dora… The one reason that she was still here was for Dora. She was going to do her best for her daughter. Her daughter. Not Ted’s. Hers. And he had taken her…

That anger bubbled up inside of her all over again at the thought. For a moment Rod had been enough. His touch had, like always, been enough to erase everything else from her mind. But she knew that she was losing him. And Ted had just tried to take her daughter from her too. She wasn’t going to stand for any of it. Rodolphus wouldn’t give her a choice. She knew that. She had no choice but to let him walk away, but to lose him. She would not lose Dora too. She couldn’t. Ted would be bringing her back. And they could… Well, she didn’t know. They weren’t going to figure it out. Because she didn’t love him. She wasn’t honestly sure that she ever had. But she knew for a fact that she didn’t now. The man that held her heart would be taking it to Azkaban with him. Of that, more than anything else, she was certain. Rodolphus Lestrange held her heart, and there was no getting it back.

She didn’t even want it back. That was the worst part. That was the part that made her just as much of a monster as he was. That she was willing to let him take it. She would rather he take it with him to that horrible place, than give it back to her now. She didn’t think that she could stand it if he tried to give it back. But he hadn’t. He had told her that he couldn’t come inside, and she knew why not. She knew that he was protecting her. But she didn’t like it. She wasn’t going to like a single piece of it. Instead, she was going to be angry, and she was going to let that anger from Ted taking Dora, from Rodolphus leaving, from all of it. She was going to let it bubble, and build, until she was ready to burst, and then she just might set that house on fire. She had been thinking about it before he had gotten here, after all, and now he was leaving her again… He was walking away, and she didn’t know if she would ever get to see him again.

When he kissed her back, she could feel it. The goodbye. It was in the kiss, but he didn’t say it. Even as he put his hand on her cheek. Even as he pulled away from her. He didn’t say it, and she needed that. She needed him to not say it. Because there was no finality to it if he didn’t say it. There was no closure. And Andromeda didn’t want closure. His words echoed around her as he disappeared, and she choked back the sob she had been holding in the entire time. She wouldn’t cry in front of him. She had refused to. But now… Now she couldn’t hold them back anymore. The tears streamed down her cheeks, one hand covering her mouth, the other pressed flat against her stomach. He was gone… He was gone… Andromeda didn’t know how long she stood in the front yard crying, but it was long enough that she was exhausted when she was through. Her heartbreak, and her anger, and everything else, had been in those tears… She would never be fine.

---

END OF THREAD

@ rod - 734 - andromeda's outfit

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