Chapter Two

Andromeda was of the opinion that fate was an invention made primarily for the use of people who wanted to give someone a reason not to leave them. She was inclined to ignore anyone who used it as an excuse, which was why she was currently making plans to leave Ted’s house by the closest convenient exit if he came up with one more recycled line about things that are meant to be. She had had a long day, and an offer of a cup of tea had seemed reasonably innocuous. She had not expected to have to listen to what she considered meaningless burble at great length.

It was probably better for Ted that she should leave now anyway. After all, she had every intention of doing so in the long run, and she had already hurt him quite enough. She was now utterly regretting her spur of the moment decision to go to Ted’s house. It had been neither fair nor kind, and would doubtless have inspired in him ideas that she did not want to hear.

“We should elope. You have the right dress for it.”

Like that one, for instance. Taking a deep, measured breath, Andromeda set down her mug and got to her feet. Carefully, one step at a time, she crossed the floor to the door, opened it, stepped out, and closed it behind her, all the time not allowing herself to consider anything other than the correct sequence of movements to produce the result of her absence from the house. The instant that she was invisible to all eyes, she fled across the garden and out into the street.

To her immense frustration, as soon as she rounded a corner she found herself at a dead end which she ought to have known perfectly well was there. Turning back, and feeling not unlike a mouse in a maze, she headed back towards the redbrick house, where she was brought up short by the sight of Ted leaning against the gate and attempting to look like part of the scenery.

“Mild Confundus Charm. You forgot which way to turn.”

“Alright, Ted. That is enough. More than enough.” Inside her head she was shouting, but there was only a slight wobble to Andromeda’s voice. “What makes you think that you have the right to mess with my head like that? I didn’t come back here to have you treat me like you owned me, to be forced to stay when I want to leave, to listen to you make idiotic comments about things that you don’t even understand.”

“What is it that you want me to understand then? What is it that you came back for? You explain that to me, Andromeda Black, because I can’t figure you out.”

“I’m not a riddle! I’m not something to be figured out. I’m a girl, and I was scared, and I came back to find the one person I thought I could trust, but it turned out that he was just like everyone else, desperate to get me married off.”

“You know that wasn’t what I meant.”

“Well, and what did you mean?”

“I just meant... that I was glad you came back.”

“Oh yes? And in what sense does ‘we should elope’ mean, ‘I’m glad you came back’?”

“In my slightly twisted mind?”

“And you say that I’m a riddle?”

“Actually, it was you that mentioned riddles.”

Despite herself, Andromeda was fighting a smile. Ted had always been able to do this to her. It wasn’t fair; she was trying to have an argument here. Well, actually, she had been trying to storm away. That hadn’t worked out. Andromeda couldn’t actually remember the last plan she had had that had worked out. So she might as well give in to Ted for the time being. She didn’t think she had the energy for storming away just at the moment.

“Okay, Ted. You win, for now. I’ll come back inside. Do you have any other clothes I can wear?”

“Girls’ clothes? No.”

“Clothes that wouldn’t drown me and I could wear without looking utterly laughable?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you want another cup of tea?”

“What happened to the one I had?”

“You knocked it over storming out.”

“No, I didn’t,” she said with an absolute certainty surprising in one who had not been in any fit state to notice such things at the time.

“Okay, fine, I knocked it over chasing after you.”

“Infinitely more likely.”

Ted turned away to the kettle and did not reply. He felt that it might spoil the tentative peace they had made to laugh now, even though just the fact that Andromeda was back in his kitchen and behaving in a manner that was at least an approximation of the one he had been familiar with in the past made him find this a lot harder than he would have expected, given the circumstances.

He stared out of the window, afraid to look at Andromeda. She might be here, but she hardly seemed pleased about it, and although she was half-joking now, only minutes earlier she had been quite ready to leave on a distinctly negative note, and former experience had taught him that she could return to this state of mind almost instantaneously. He had never worked out whether her manner hid her feelings or her emotions really were that unstable.

As it happened, neither of these things were exactly true. Andromeda had been forced to spend her life repressing her feelings, but Ted had a way of making her let her guard down which she found somewhat unsettling, hence her rapid escapes into iciness when she feared that she was opening herself to judgement. In addition to this, she had spent much of her time with Ted utterly confused by her conflicting emotions, and his presence gave her the ability to express what she was thinking and feeling, whereas to everyone else she was what was expected of her. The result was an unpredictable and unstable state of mind of which most of her friends of family would never have thought her capable.

It was fortunate that Ted was unaware of this, as had he known the power he held over her, a good deal of his fear of Andromeda’s anger would have been removed, and without it he would have been open to a good many more of her bad moods that he would have expected or been able to cope with. As things were, although the situation was not optimum, he behaved as well as might be expected, his only reaction to the sound of Andromeda pulling herself together, a ritual with which he was familiar, involving mainly deep breathes, being smirking out at the garden, until such a time as the water boiled and he was able to aid the process with tea and biscuits.