Title: Between Hope and Despair
Fandom: Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter
Rating: Teen
Length: 423 words
Content Notes: Choose Not to Warn
Author Notes: Part of Gray Ships, Andromeda and Glorfindel after the White Ship has an unexpected detour.

Summary: No matter what she does, someone will be hurt, and she will feel torn.

More Notes: A month after Sirius fell through the veil, Andromeda and Draco had an incident of magic interacting poorly that sought to do what it was commanded (protect them (wards), anywhere but here (Draco), and with family (Andromeda)), and found themselves in different parts of Middle Earth. Sirius, Andromeda, and Draco all have been in Middle Earth for longer than they've been gone from the wizarding world - Sirius for most of twenty years, Andromeda and Draco for a decade.

---

Andromeda leans against Glorfindel, pretending that her face is wet with the spray from the ship, ephemeral as it is, and not with tears. She had thought she'd come to terms with the loss of her family, even though there had been the slimmest of chances of the Valar being able to give her a way home. To see Ted, still caught between hope she lived and despair that she had died, had ripped open a wound she had thought scarred over. A wound she found she couldn't let him see, didn't know how to share with him, and barely wanted to acknowledge.

To walk away from him - to leave behind him and their daughter - is easier and harder than she had thought it would be, and she still isn't sure which had been the right thing to do. No matter what she does, someone will be hurt, and she will feel torn. Whichever way she had chosen, she would have left behind family - and in the end, she had already left behind Ted and Nymphadora once before, no matter how accidental that had been. She knows now that they live, and they will continue to survive.

"You know coming with the ship, accepting the gift Megilwen gave up, doesn't actually mean you won't eventually die?" Glorfindel's voice is almost as much felt as heard, he's speaking so quietly, and Andromeda lets out a brief laugh.

"Does it matter? I wouldn't want to live forever, even with friends who will do the same." She watches the water as they sail before the wind, the surface gleaming silver. "And so long as someone remembers who I am over my life, I am not entirely dead. Beyond the reach of the living, perhaps, but not entirely dead. Ted and Nymphadora will remember me, and so I will live on in their minds - and in Nymphadora, too, in a way. Children are immortality, of a sort."

Glorfindel hums a moment, tightening the arm he'd wrapped around her shoulders when she wasn't paying attention. "I will remember you. All of us, I think, will."

"Then I will never die, will I?" Andromeda smiles, though she can still feel tears slipping down her cheeks. "I will miss them, but I think I've grown used to missing them. And I couldn't stay. I wish I could have, but I couldn't."

She feels Glorfindel rubbing her shoulder, and turns away from watching the sea to hide her face in his shoulder, letting herself mourn the family she's left behind again.