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Andromeda Tonks didn’t know how to be a mother. The only examples she had from her childhood were her own mother, who had blasted her name off the family tapestry at eighteen for daring to love the wrong person, and her aunt, who … well, if she could do a better job than Aunt Walburga, that wasn’t saying much.
Ted’s mother, on the other hand, was perfectly lovely. But she was a Muggle, and while Andromeda had wholeheartedly rejected her family’s prejudice against them, the fact remained that they came from two entirely different worlds. She could look to Ted’s parents and their warm acceptance of their son’s life as a wizard for an example of what unconditional love looked like in action, but they could not teach her how to raise a magical child.
How did a good mother respond to her child’s first accidental magic? Surely not by using it as an excuse to exclaim over their bloodline’s superiority, as her own parents had done.
What was an appropriate age to start letting her daughter ride a toy broom? According to Andromeda’s own mother, the answer was never, because proper pure-blood girls sit still and wear long skirts and would never be caught dead playing Quidditch.
Why did all her friends keep recommending The Tales of Beedle the Bard for bedtime stories when, from what Andromeda remembered, they were horrifying tales about literally heartless warlocks, mobs of angry Muggles, and a cauldron that swallowed people whole?
“No, no, you’ve got it all wrong,” said her close friend Emmeline Vance. “The hopping pot bullies a wizard into helping his Muggle neighbors, and the heartless warlock is a cautionary tale, not a role model.”
If that was the case, it was news to Andromeda.
Andromeda didn’t know how to be a mother, but she had plenty of good examples of what not to do. When her infant cried, she soothed her herself, rather than handing her off to the house-elf she and Ted didn’t have. When her two-year-old threw a tantrum, Andromeda gently calmed her down rather than silencing her with a silencio. When her four-year-old was quickly proving to be the clumsiest child on the planet, she patiently repaired the broken cup with a wave of her wand, set the toppled end table back on its feet, and cast a healing spell over Nymphadora’s skinned knees and bruised leg.
“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” she admitted to Ted. “I’m just trying to do the opposite of what my mother and aunt would’ve done.”
It wasn’t the same as having a role model, but it was a place to start.
Andromeda didn’t know how to be a mother, but Cedrella Weasley did. The woman who had once taken her distant cousin’s hand and assured her that following her heart was worth the risk now sat with her as she agonized over her young daughter’s education.
“You can teach her at home, of course,” said Cedrella patiently. “That’s what I did with my boys when they were little. Or you can send her to a Muggle primary school.”
Andromeda shook her head.
“Ted would like that, I think,” she said. “But Dora doesn’t have the self-control to keep quiet about magic, or to keep her metamorphmagus abilities to herself. Still, I …”
She didn’t like the idea of keeping her at home until Hogwarts. At least when Andromeda was that age, she had been one of three sisters. Nymphadora was an only child. And their parents had been able to pay for tutors in every subject from reading and mathematics to music and ballroom dance, whereas Andromeda and Ted were struggling to make ends meet.
“I’m not sure I can teach her everything she needs to know, and I want her to be around other children.”
Cedrella smiled. It was a warm smile, full of affection and pride. Cedrella was proud of her, Andromeda realized, and that was a thought that made her smile back despite her lingering indecision.
“My son, Arthur, has children around your daughter’s age,” said the older woman. “I believe she and little Charlie will be in the same year at Hogwarts.”
Andromeda nodded. That was … nice, perhaps, but it didn’t solve her problem - and Cedrella seemed to know that.
“It’s not uncommon,” she said, “for two or three magical families to work together on their young children's education. One parent teaches history, another reading and writing, another maths, and so on, coordinating childcare and lessons around each other’s schedules. If you and Ted would be willing to do your part in something like that, I suspect Arthur and Molly would be very open to it.”
Taking a sip of tea, Andromeda did her best to hide how relieved she was. And how nervous about contacting a couple of complete strangers with such a big request. Cedrella, though, seemed to see right through her on that as well.
“I can reach out to them, if you’d like.”
The Burrow was unlike any other house Andromeda had set foot in. Her childhood home had been elegant and overly-formal, full of velvet sofas and grand pianos, windows blocked by dark curtains and portraits of various ancestors looking down their noses from every wall. On the other hand, the home she shared with Ted was full of light and warmth, decorated in soft neutral colors and furnished comfortably but modestly. She had thought the two were as different as any two houses could be, but that was before she first set foot in the Weasleys’ house.
It was magical in a way she had never imagined. Shabby, yes, and patched-together, probably held up by enchantments more than by any physical architecture. But everything from the family clock to the self-cleaning dishes seemed like something out of a very strange dream to Andromeda.
These people didn’t treat their magic like a valuable treasure to be shown off and jealously guarded. They wove it into their lives in everyday, practical ways. It was a tool to them, no different than the car Arthur drove or the hearth around which they gathered on cold winter nights. No wonder they weren’t hostile to newcomers like Ted, she thought to herself. They had no need to be. Magic, to them, was not a sign of prestige but a gift to be shared.
Andromeda didn’t say any of that. They didn’t need to know just how much she was still struggling to untangle all the absolute nonsense her family had taught her. Maybe, at some point, she would talk to Cedrella about it, but she doubted Molly and Arthur would understand. If she got this whole parenting thing right, neither would Nymphadora.
“You’re good with the kids,” Molly told her one day as they watched their children run around in the backyard between lessons. “You were so sweet to Charlie when he was having trouble with his sums.”
Andromeda smiled.
“I had some very good tutors as a child. I suppose I’m just trying to do what they would’ve done.”
Them and not her parents, but that much remained unsaid.
Arthur Weasley liked Ted Tonks a lot better than Ted liked him, and that was probably going to be a problem at some point.
“It’s not that he’s not a nice person,” Ted grumbled. “But I need him to stop asking me about Muggles as if they’re some exotic breed of unicorn and not just people like us without magic.”
Andromeda sighed and wondered if he knew his parents looked at her exactly the same way.
Far way from the simple warmth of the Burrow and the Tonks family’s house, there was a war going on. In the hidden streets of London, in the corridors of Hogwarts, in the homes of magical families and the halls of the Ministry, its shadow loomed. And their families were on opposite sides.
It didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter what Bellatrix and Narcissa were doing, because everyone knew they no longer considered Andromeda their sister and assumed the reverse was also true.
It didn’t matter what Molly Weasley’s brothers were doing, because the Order was fighting for people like Ted, and Andromeda stood behind that wholeheartedly.
It didn’t matter, because Andromeda was hardly the first renegade Black to find refuge with the Weasley family. And if she spent a few painful evenings at Cedrella’s house with a bottle of firewhiskey reminiscing about the past they both left behind, cursing the fact that they’d been forced to choose, sobbing over the people they loved who now stood on the opposite side - well, that was nobody’s business but theirs, was it?
They didn’t talk about it, the Tonks and Weasley parents. They let it remain, not so much the graphorn in the room, but more of a demiguise: invisible and unnoticed until the moment it showed up in the headlines of The Daily Prophet or the rumors whispered over lunch.
“I hope it’s all over before Nymphadora starts school,” Andromeda told Ted. “I want her to have a peaceful childhood, where she can focus on her classes and her friends, not one where she has to worry about all this.”
She had read enough letters from Sirius to know just how heavily the shadow of the war was looming over Hogwarts, and she didn’t want that for her daughter.
“I don’t want this war to ever touch her,” Andromeda admitted to Ted one night. “I don’t want her ever to suffer for being related to the people I’m related to. And I don’t want to be the kind of mother to her that mine was to me.”
Ted smiled sadly and took her hand.
“Well, I can’t make any promises about the first two,” he said. “But I don’t think there’s any risk of the third one.”
Andromeda wasn’t so sure of that.
“I don’t know how to do this.”
“You have good instincts,” he said, reaching out to wrap his arm around her. “You want what’s best for her. And you don’t have to do it alone.”
That much was true. She had him, of course, and his parents, who might not be able to help with age-appropriate toy brooms but seemed more fascinated than alarmed by their granddaughter’s ever-changing appearance and bouts of accidental magic. She had Cedrella, who understood exactly what sort of family she came from and how hard it was to break away. She had Molly and Arthur, who would never understand that but had shown her an entirely different way of life, who had welcomed Nymphadora as a playmate and peer for their own children.
She was not alone. She wanted what was best for her daughter. And she knew exactly what sort of mother she did not want to be.
She could do this. Daunting as it seemed, she wasn’t about to give up.