A One-Shot About the Three Black Sisters Saying Good-bye. Set After DH.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters.
Andromeda had strongly debated about going since she had gotten the letter. What was there to say?
But in some way, it made her feel better about herself- that she would still go see her, although Andromeda herself had been forgotten for all those years.
So Andromeda made her way to Azkaban, to the cell where her sister Narcissa was being held.
The two sisters see each other, through the bars, for the first time in twenty-five years.
Narcissa stares at her sister silently for what seems like ever. This frustrates Andromeda. What is she doing? Is she judging her, even now as Andromeda walks free and Narcissa is imprisoned? Can she still truly think that she is better than her?
"If you brought me all this way to say nothing, I really have to leave. I have Teddy to watch over now."
"They let me out- To go to Bella's funeral. You weren't there."
Andromeda felt the rage she had been holding onto the past few weeks come boiling to the surface.
"How can you ask that of me!? To go to- She killed my husband and my daughter!"
Narcissa shrinks against the wall, still as afraid of shouting as she was as a child. Narcissa had never been the strong one, Andromeda remembered.
"I'm so sorry," Narcissa says- empty words to Andromeda's ears.
"It is long past the time when you could just say sorry and make up for everything. We aren't children anymore and this isn't some squabble. If Molly hadn't killed Bella, I would have done it myself!"
"The three of us used to be so close," Narcissa says, in barely more than a whisper.
"Honestly, would you two have gone if it had been my funeral? Or if it had been your son I had killed, or even if one of my friends had done it, would we be having this conversation?"
Andromeda watched her sister's face turn anguished at the thought of her son's death. Her precious Draco. Andromeda had enough of this conversation, and turned to leave.
"I did it for Draco. I knew it was wrong, but if I had stood up, said anything, Draco would have been the one hurt…"
"So you understand how a mother feels? When you heard them planning on taking my family away? It was a conscious choice you made, wasn't it?"
Andromeda turned back to her sister, meeting her eyes for the first time in almost thirty years. Narcissa, always the prettiest sister, looking so forlorn in that little cell where she would spend the rest of her life.
"You got what you wanted then. It was my Dora instead of your Draco."
As Andromeda left Azkaban, she mulled over the past. How many family members had been here at one time or another?
But her mind settled on a point further in the past. When they had been children, Narcissa had been right, they were close.
All these years, no matter what they did, Andromeda could never bring herself to hate them. Until now.
Yet, strangely, she felt a certain peace with her sisters. The Bella and Cissy she had known were long gone. And the death eaters that had taken her family would never get the chance to go after Teddy.
Azkaban, and the whole Black family, was just becoming a painful memory.