Who: Andromeda Black and Ted Tonks When: October 3rd, after classes Where: A corridor! Somewhere! Outside of Ravenclaw! What: Near Death Experiences and/or Waking Up To Hear That A Muggleborn is Dead and Not Knowing If It Is Your Secret Boyfriend can be a Good Thing Status/Rating: Incomplete/PG-13 for probably snogging.
It had taken powers of persuasion that Andromeda didn't know she possessed to convince her parents to take her back to school late on Wednesday. She still wasn't feeling her best, but the idea of being confined to her childhood bed, cut off from nearly all contact with her friends and indeed the outside world at large, was agonizing enough to prompt great effort on the girl's part; not to mention the lurking fear that at any moment, Bellatrix or that horrible Malfoy boy would write to her parents about their suspicions and she'd be locked in her room forever. In the end she'd enlisted the help of the still-hovering mediwizard who, while he must have been getting a good fee for his troubles and who was still obviously concerned that if she suddenly croaked he'd be blamed for it, evidently felt that the stress outweighed the benefits of his position.
The trip back to the school- in that blasted carriage, which had always made Meda nauseous and anxious and which she considered ridiculous in its ostentation- had been harrowing; Cygnus had not been available, a mixed blessing at best, because it meant that Druella felt free to spend the entire trip complaining loudly about everything and anything, from Andromeda's continued pallor to Dumbledore's "inability to keep one of his vile little pets alive, so how on earth can we expect him to provide proper care for a Black?" That statement would have been painful to the Meda of a year ago, as casually unfeeling as it was; now, she had to swallow hard against the prickling of what could only be angry tears. Not least because, while Regulus had told her that the death in question had been of a young Hufflepuff girl, she couldn't get rid of the abiding dread that he'd been wrong, or lying to her to keep her calm while at home, or that Ted had sickened and even died since then.
If that was the case, Andromeda didn't think she could live with it.
And so it was that, once Druella had finally left her at the entrance to the Slytherin dungeons after an almost interminable goodbye and stalked off to torment the Headmaster, Meda didn't even bother trying the password that had been in effect a few days ago. Instead, she counted to twenty, very slowly and deliberately, and then set off in the general direction of Ravenclaw tower at as fast a pace as her still weak, wobbly body could take her. Someone there could tell her, she knew. How he was. Where he was. And then she could find him, and apologize to him for everything, and that was all that she could bring herself to care about at the moment.