Chapter Four

“I need you to listen to what I’m saying.”

“And why should I do that?” Andromeda retorted, pacing back to the table without looking at him. “I don’t see what you find so incomprehensible in what I’m saying. I made my decisions, I worked through the mess you left me with—”

“Excuse me,” Ted interrupted, “I left you?”

She sighed. “I didn’t mean that. I just meant... it was difficult to get back to something like normal, after...” she trailed off.

“Why do you find it so difficult to admit that you used to care about me?”

“Used to?” Andromeda queried, and then instantly regretted it.

“What’s that supposed to mean? It was you who left. It was you who wrote me out of your life. It was you who came back here in a wedding dress all ready to shatter my life again.”

“Well if that’s the way you feel about it, I’ll leave now.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“You can’t chicken out now. You still owe me an explanation.”

“What more do you want?” she asked, stung.

“Look. You came back here. You’re honestly telling me that means nothing at all?”

“It means that I still relied on you a bit. I didn’t know that. I’ll get over it.”

“Then explain to me why you had trouble with me saying that you only used to care about me.”

Andromeda buried her head in her arms. “Stop going around in circles, you’re giving me a headache.”

Ted leant forwards and tentatively touched her arm. She didn’t move. “Look, Dromeda—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Andromeda. Just listen to what you’re saying. Please. It’s you that’s going in circles. You can’t let yourself admit that you ever cared about me, but you can’t let me say that you don’t, even now. You say you don’t know why you’re here, and yet you’re not leaving.”

“I am,” Andromeda replied, not so much as lifting her head from the table.

“And what are you going to do?” Ted wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know the answer to that one, but much as he would have been prepared to let her stay slumped over his table forever, it was hardly a practical solution.

“Well, I don’t think I’m going to get married. But I am going home.”

“What will your parents say?”

“I’ve bought myself some time, I don’t have to worry about that for a while.”

“And when you do?”

“I’ll work something out.”

Ted sighed. She had apparently lost all inclination to think ahead, but seeing as in his eyes that was only a loss in that it had always been something she tried to make him do, he couldn’t see the point in arguing.

“My turn to ask a question,” she said suddenly, and he turned to find that she had raised her head and was looking considerably better.

“Yes?”

“Why did you say we should elope?”

“Light humour.”

“Ted, I’m not stupid.”

“What?”

“It was hardly a humorous situation.”

“I was panicking.”

“Oh yes?”

“Yes,” he said firmly.

She gave up. “Alright. Well, I’m going. I’ve answered your questions, and now I have things to do. Parents to placate.” She got up quickly before he could argue.

“Okay, okay, I’m letting you go. You probably want to change out of that dress first though.”

“I’d forgotten. What do you have?”

“Um. Clothes?”

“Would it be easier if I went to see what I could find?”

“Probably.”

Ted watched her disappear into a back room, wondering why he suddenly felt like smiling. Despite everything, he and Andromeda kept slipping back into an old and comfortable routine of teasing and quick retorts, and although it made him miss the days when they spent all their time together, it was conclusive proof that the old Andromeda was still around somewhere in the strange and contradictory person that she had become, and could probably be rediscovered with patience. Really, the whole issue of what Andromeda had become confused him. Had he done that? Could he have?

As she rifled through his Muggle clothes in search of a fairly innocuous set of robes, Andromeda’s thoughts were in a similar place. Being with Ted made her notice that she had changed, and that he hadn’t noticeably. She wondered whether she had actually ever had any effect upon him at all. What she was missing was that whereas she had become a different person entirely upon the loss of Ted, he had reverted to what he had been before her, and as she had been familiar with this concept of Ted, she did not see the lack of the changes she had wreaked upon him over time, because they had occurred so gradually.

Dragging her head out of both the past and his wardrobe, she pulled herself together. “Ted! Do you have any robes?”

“They’re in the back.”

“That’s where I’m looking.”

“No, behind the back of the cupboard,” he explained as though it should be obvious, entering the room and waving his wand to move the offending piece of furniture a few feet to the left. This action revealed a crushed pile of crumpled robes, on top of which sat a disgruntled looking tabby cat. “Sorry Libby, I forgot you were sleeping there,” he added to the animal, who stalked away looking as offended as only a cat can.

“Ted!” Andromeda sighed, reaching gingerly for the topmost garment. “These are all creased and covered in cat hairs.”

“Well... they’re not comfortable... so I hid them.”

“Well, of course, the obvious reaction. Lend me your wand for a moment?”

“Where’s yours?”

“I’m wearing a wedding dress. They don’t have pockets.”

“Someone should design one that did; you’d make a fortune selling them to people who—”

“Ted. Wand.”

“Right.”

He watched as she attempted to create something that she would be prepared to wear from his pitiful collection of clothes. After several minutes of what looked like exhausting work, which seemed pointless to him given that she would have to walk back through a thick forest, she ejected him from the room so that she could change. Several minutes later, Andromeda emerged looking fairly presentable, carrying the wedding dress in a small blue bag which he didn’t recall ever having seen in his life.

“And now I really am going.”

“Alright, go.”

“I will.” Andromeda hesitated for a moment, then determinedly pulled the door open and strode outside.

“Andromeda?”

“Yes?” She made an effort not to turn back too quickly.

“Do me a favour?”

“Yes?”

“Write to me.”

Andromeda let out her breath without realising she had been holding it. “I will.”

Turning, she disappeared up the path and away. As soon as she was out of sight, Ted closed the door and collapsed at the table. “That girl,” he said to the cat, who was sitting on the kitchen window sill, “is not good for my sanity.”

He picked up her abandoned tea and drained it in one gulp, not even registering that it was now stone cold.