Her child is not be born into a celebration - balloons and cigars and flowers. It is something which Andromeda comes to terms with early on in her pregnancy; St. Mungo’s is not even an option. A good-natured husband who wishes and wills himself to see the good in everyone just so happened to pick a wife who dissects the faults. There are too many gossips in a world where pointing the finger elsewhere keeps the heat off their family.
Breaking the news of the disgraced Black girl giving birth to a half-blood is too tantalizing to leave in the hopes of her optimistic husband.
Her daughter is born on a brisk day, she comes with the sun. And, as Andromeda is slowly becoming accustomed to, it is messy. She is not willing to allow Ted to shed blood for her, but what saturates the cheap sheets now seems fitting. The last of the House of Black inside of her making room for what pumps through her veins once she hears those first cries.
Her hair is not naturally bubblegum pink (as Dromeda will remind her endlessly throughout her much too short life) - it is black. Though she does not open her eyes, and though she knows from her studies the eyes will initially be black she hopes for blue. Blue, kind, optimistic eyes like her father.
Andromeda wipes her daughter gently but somehow knows she does not need to handle with so much care. This is her gift after years of suffering - this is the pay-off. She is not born into flowers and hoards of people rushing to greet her. She is met by her parents, in a dark room on cheap sheets with only the flowers her father picked to brighten the room. She is strong, she is built for this life, and she will be made safe by her own hands and never made to feel powerless against some immoveable force.
She is a gift and she will be gifted.
A kiss is placed to her head, and slowly the wails die down. Slowly the oxygen assimilates with her little lungs and the tiny mass of red and black settles into her mother’s hands.
Ted (who has never minded much of a mess) moves behind her with towels and tears. “Have you decided yet, Dromeda?” he asks and she knows he can forgive her for not tearing her eyes away from the little one. She has studied his face through many mornings, she needs to get acquainted with this one. “What will we call her?”
There is blood on the sheets - blood from a family replaced with what is now in her arms. Still, her eyes trace the outlines of a button nose and bulging stomach and the childhood memory of summer nights with her sister comes back to her. She had the name picked out long ago - whispered to Bellatrix and Narcissa while clutching a doll with dark hair and blue eyes.
“Nymphadora,” she tells him in a voice broken by the screams of a birthing woman, rebuilt in the joy of a new mother. “Her name is Nymphadora.”
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