Changes - Meda

They were… Well, the PR answer was that they were managing. But they weren’t. They were floundering. And she didn’t know what to do about it. She didn’t have the resources to do much about it. And asking the world for help wasn’t an option. It was, she could ask, but Andromeda didn’t want to risk bringing too many more people in. They already had foreign dignitaries here that were sick, and that couldn’t return to their own countries. She had a king that was willing to offer help if it meant that he could get his daughter home safely. But she couldn’t send the illness there, and she didn’t want to risk too many people coming here.

She couldn’t stop them, obviously, not without closing the borders completely, and she didn’t want to do that either. Andromeda could admit that she was still worried about owls leaving the country, and how whatever this was, was transmitted. But without answers, she didn’t really know what to do. She didn’t have anything that she thought would be a solid lead, and sitting in her office, dealing with the politics of it, was driving her crazy. She wanted to help…

Andromeda had always been a healer first, and this… This annoyed her more than anything else could. Because she was going to have to admit that Rodolphus was right. Had been right, when he had said that she was going to miss it. That she was going to bore of the Ministry and want to get her hands back on the medicine. And admitting that her husband was right was not on her list of things she ever liked to do.

But it wasn’t Rodolphus that she was meeting in the kitchen this morning. She had left him upstairs, headed for the shower as she had left it. Andromeda had kissed their still sleeping sons on their heads and had made her way downstairs to the kitchen. She nodded in response to him and was unsurprised when his words were direct. No pleasantries this morning. This was a meeting, not breakfast in their own kitchen.

Her eyebrows raised ever so slightly at his words though. She had not been expecting quite this. Of course, she should have been. She knew them both well enough to know how no longer having magic was affecting them. It was something that she didn’t think about too often, in terms of herself. She had used magic on the occasion that it was handier, with two infant sons, and a castle, and a nation to run. But she had known the loss of it before. She had known how to live without it. They were not that lucky. They were experiencing the loss of something that they had always known.

Something that they had had, even in the worst of times. And while Andromeda hated thinking about them, and Bella, locked in Azkaban, she was beyond grateful to have them here with her now. They were her family, just as much as her sisters were. Just as much as any of them were.

Waiting for him to finish speaking Andromeda felt half of her mouth turn up in a sad smile and she shook her head. “I will not accept unless you absolutely insist.” In her opinion, there was no need to. “You can still teach them. They can still learn. It does not take magic alone to do what you do. And you are wiser than you would like everyone to believe, Rabastan.” She knew that, and she knew that he knew that. He was brilliant, when he wanted to be. “Teach them, teach them what you know, and teach them without magic, because they don’t have it either. Very few do. If we are to survive this, and prove whomever started this miserable assault wrong, we mustn’t let them take what we have built.”

Andromeda knew that they had no idea for sure if it was something that had been set by someone, but she was rather confident about that assumption. She knew that she had talked about it with Rabastan too. He knew her thoughts on the matter. For it was he, above all others, that she had first sought out with her theory.

It had been two months since this had hit them, and it had hit them with all of the force of a steam engine barreling down the tracks. Andromeda had known that it was coming. And maybe that was the hardest part. That Hesper had warned her. They had known. They had known that something was coming, and they couldn’t have done anything about it. They had been powerless to stop it. And she thought that that was what ate away at her more than anything else. She had seen it. Hesper had shown her what was coming. And she had made the choice to let it come. She had made the choice not to warn them. Because what would warning them have done? She didn’t have enough information to warn them.

She could have done the unthinkable and told them that something vague and terrible was going to descend upon them at an undisclosed time. She could have had her people living in fear of something that they had had no way to control. Or she could have done what she had done. She could have chosen to prepare in all of the ways that they possibly could without raising suspicion. And without really knowing what it was that she would have been warning them against, it would have been worse to do it that way. It would have been worse to tell them, and cause mass panic.

But she could have told Rodolphus. She could have told Rabastan. She could have told Davina. She could have told her family. And she hadn’t said a word. Andromeda had kept her mouth shut, and by the fact that everyone had seemed blindsided completely when it had hit, anyone that had known, anyone else, besides Hesper, that had seen, or felt it coming, hadn’t had any idea what it was going to be either. She didn’t think that anyone had had any clue that it was going to do this. That it was going to be this.

Rabastan had asked to speak to her this morning, and so she had delayed going in to work. She had told Sophie to go ahead and arrive at the same time, so she knew that the boys were already being watched over, and she could give her brother-in-law her full attention as he spoke to her. Resignation. That was… Well, not entirely unexpected, but she didn’t think that he had actually expected that she was going to accept either. She wasn’t losing the allies that she had. Not right now. Not when there were plenty that would have her head if they could figure out how to do it without pissing the Lestrange brothers off.

His words were truthful. Hit wizards without magic were not hit wizards at all. But neither were Healers, or Aurors. Neither were Oblivators, and Unspeakables. Andromeda could not accept resignations from all of them. She would not. And she was not going to accept his either. Not unless he was absolutely certain that he was wholly using logic, and not the profound sadness that was to accompany their current crisis. “Then perhaps it is not only them that will learn.” Her words were not meant to be cruel, they were not meant to chastise him for not already knowing, they were fact. Perhaps it was time that he learn as well.

“Muggle weaponry is not quite as advanced as magical combat, and I’m afraid that there are a good many times that it is quite a bit more explosive. But it gets the job done.” She had seen her daughter use muggle weapons. Nymphadora had known what she was doing in her father’s world, as well as her mother’s. Andromeda had taught her to be a Black. To duel, and to debate, and to fight like a witch should fight. Ted had taught her to hunt ducks, with dogs, of all things. But it had transferred over. She had seen her wield a muggle weapon. And she had faith that Rabastan could learn as well. "If I can save a life without my magic, you can surely learn to take one."