Well, if you're in the mood for something depressing… This is what depressing songs make me write. Anyway, I don't own Harry Potter, you all know that.
"Hello?" Molly called into the house. She was sure she had heard someone in here. Maybe it was Kreacher. Ron had assured her that he had reformed very much with a little kindness. Still, she was a little doubtful. Taking her wand out and holding it in front of her, Molly climbed the stairs to the first floor where she had thought she'd heard the noise. Her feet led her into the drawing room where she paused at the doorway. No one was there.
They had told her about the locket. Her head pounded, thinking hard of a boy, not even twenty who had given up his life for the cause. She felt tears welling to her eyes again. Fred had been nearly the same age as Regulus Black when he'd died. It felt like all she'd done was cry lately. It wasn't all sad. There was joy to see Ron, Hermione, and Harry back again. Tears of anger at those who had nearly taken their life so many times had fallen from her eyes. Fear had pushed out its own tears as she heard the treats of Death Eaters who were still running around. She took a deep breath as slowly she moved out of the room.
She had no recollections of a living Regulus Black. She'd heard a few comments from her younger brother about him being sorted into Slytherin, that he seemed like a typical Black. In truth, she'd never given him much thought. Even when she'd join the Order and they'd set up headquarters in the House of Black, she'd only thought of him as another typical Black, the opposite of Sirius. How wrong she'd been.
Briefly she wondered if his mother had cried for him as much as she'd cried for Fred. She couldn't comprehend throwing any of her children out at sixteen like his mother had Sirius. Having Percy leave at nineteen had been so hard on her. There was no way for her to wrap her mind around forcing a child to leave. But surely any mother would cry at her child's death, wouldn't they? Would she have cried more or less knowing what he had died for, a noble cause, a brave, sweet boy in the end instead of just the prince of the Black's? Molly felt an unwanted tear on her cheek and almost brushed it away before deciding just to let it fall, just in case. Just in case, there needed to be somebody to cry for Regulus Black. Her feet led her forward towards the shrunken house elf heads. She shook.
Molly had to admit, she'd never completely understood Hermione's obsession with freeing the house-elves. It did seem right that there should be some reforms. They shouldn't be mistreated but she couldn't understand why they should be freed when they did not want to be. This was definite mistreatment though. Her eyes followed the house elves, wondering who would be cruel enough to detach the head of one house elf and display it in the house where his or her offspring would see it every time they went to the first floor. No wonder Kreacher had been a messed up elf all the time she'd been at Grimmauld Place.
Cruelty seemed to run in the Black family. Everyone knew the name of Bellatrix Lestrange, deranged, murderous, a loyal and fearful follower of Voldemort. She had been a Black, the first Black of her generation. Molly remembered her fairly well. They had been in the same year at Hogwarts. She remembered a girl, the same age at her who had a temper unlike anything Molly had ever seen, including her own. A girl, her own age, who cornered a sixth year with a curse and sent him to the hospital wing, who had been nearly expelled countless times in her first year alone according to the rumors that flew around school. And she had never grown out of it. It hadn't been a shock in her last year of Hogwarts to see Bellatrix Black flaunting a new scar, late to class, or flat out skipping class and no where to be seen in the castle. She had heard the rumors, seen some of it herself, Bellatrix Black falling away from her two sisters, Andromeda and Narcissa. At the time no one knew why. They had all learned the cause. Voldemort. Bellatrix Black became a very loyal Death Eater.
Molly had been just out of school when the war had fully broken out and she'd married Arthur not long after. But she had seen the reports in the paper. She heard her brothers talk. All around her the world had spun out of control. And she had cried, sometimes alone, sometimes with her husband for an end to the war. At last, with a new baby girl in her arms, she had heard that the end had come. Silly that she'd dared to believe. The Death Eaters had more to take away. She'd made friends in the Order. And watched them get taken away, two of them by the very woman she had watched at Hogwarts.
Nymphadora Tonks, a woman who chronologically was a bit short of thirty but in actually was both a young teenager and a woman nearing a hundred at the same time. The first war had produced a few children like her, Bill and Charlie seemed quite similar sometimes. The only world they had known for most of their childhood was the war. It made them wise beyond their years yet also taught them how to find humor, how to have fun, how to try to make others happy. She'd fast become a favorite of Ginny and Hermione, and somewhere between a friend and a second daughter to Molly. She hadn't been able to bear seeing her own daughter fall the same way, couldn't bear to see Ginny fall to the ground they way Bellatrix's niece had. Or her cousin.
There were times she couldn't believe how intertwined her story had become with Sirius Blacks' without her notice. For a long time the only thing she'd known about him was that he was a Black who had surprisingly been sorted into Gryffindor. Her brothers had later assured her he was a good guy. That was before Fabian and Gideon had died, before the first war had ended, before Sirius Black had been convicted with thirteen murders, before Percy had found a rat. It had taken her longer to deal with the full story of Sirius Black than it had anyone else in the Order. She's watched old friends of his listen think and then shake his hand or run up and hug him. Even Kingsley Shacklebolt had taken it more easily than her, a man who'd never known Sirius before and who had been trying to arrest him for over two years. For Molly, the hard part to accept wasn't that Sirius was innocent. She saw him, a boy of twenty stuck in a grown man's body, a boy who'd once been popular and smart and well loved now a convict, stuck inside a hated house. He wasn't always kind or responsible or completely sane but he wasn't capable of the kind of betrayal they'd charged him with and then sent him to Azkaban. No, for Molly, the issue was accepting the rat that she'd allowed to sleep in the room with two of her sons.
In time, perhaps she could have really gotten to like Sirius; in time he might have grown up and been let out of the house. He could have been a good mentor, a good godfather. From time to time he had shown signs of it. And certainly, Remus who was the same age and had gone through Hogwarts with the same group of friends had become an adult. Sirius had needed time, that was all. Sometimes she regretted things she had said to him, thought perhaps she should have treated him like a child recovering from the loss of his best friend, most of his only real family, the age where Azkaban had made his life freeze. But she could see Harry looking up to him. And she knew that Harry could get hurt. So she had sided for what she thought was best for Harry. She still didn't know what she would do if she got the chance to live it through again. So much for hindsight being twenty-twenty.
Again, Molly thought she heard a noise. Was someone here? Her heart thumped. "Hello?" she called again, her voice more solid this time. There was no reply. She had come here to collect things she had left in their rush to get out of the house. And she was here to collect memories. Fred and George apparating all over. Extendable Ears. She wished desperately that George would get back to inventing. He needed something to take his mind off his brother. Molly felt tears in her eyes again and tried to brush them away. Her feet led her to an empty bedroom, the one that had belonged to Hermione and Ginny while they were here together. There was no one in there, not now. Sadly, Molly chuckled a little. She remembered when Sirius had told them that Narcissa and Andromeda had used to use this room when she came to stay. Arthur's eyes had narrowed. His daughter sleeping in the same room a Malfoy had. Molly had fought hard not to laugh. His biggest complaint about the house was that a Malfoy had slept there before she was a Malfoy.
She had known Narcissa at school too. Everyone had. She was slim, pretty, blonde hair, blue eyes. She had a way of charming people, teachers, students, even the caretaker. But Molly had never given her much attention. Narcissa Black was four years below her and no one had ever seen much of a hint that there was more depth to her than a girl destine to marry a rich pureblood as her foremothers had done before her. When there was gossip about the Black girls, Narcissa wasn't the target. She was the one working the gossip lines to make them forget all about her sisters. And that's all she had seemed to grow into. A perfect wife for Lucius Malfoy, learning to pull strings at the Ministry. Molly smiled sadly as she closed the door to the room. At least, so she had seen.
Narcissa would have cried if it was her son. She loved Draco, loved him enough to throw out her principle's about Voldemort, enough to lie. She had taken a risk and saved Harry. Molly would never be able to think as much ill about her as she had before. Harry had become one of her children and Narcissa had saved her, even if she was only really saving her own. Molly could understand her a little. There was more to her. She would never dig deep enough to know. Neither of them would want her too.
Andromeda Tonks had never really been a big blip on Molly's radar. She had been a quiet girl at school, usually in the library or with her older sister. She was very close to Bellatrix. Everyone had figured she would go in the same direction. Yet in Molly's last year, people had started to see it. The oldest two Black sisters were splitting apart. No one then had guessed the scandal that had followed. Quiet Andromeda Black who had rarely broken a rule in her life had been dating a muggle-born boy since the end of her fifth year. Listening in to her younger brother, Molly heard rumors that Andromeda Black was engaged to marry the same muggle-born, even a slight rumor that she was already pregnant. Molly hadn't put much stock in the rumors. Perhaps she was prejudiced. All her life she'd seen the Blacks seemed to contradict that idea. And then Andromeda had fallen back, away from the rumor mill, out of sight for everyone including Molly, until the rumored baby showed up at an Order meeting with bright pink hair, already a young Auror.
Molly's feet led her to the last bedroom, a smaller one that often female members of the Order had stayed in when they were there late. Emmeline, Hestia, once Minerva, many times Tonks. Molly was now sure she heard noise and held her wand tight, pressing on the already half opened door. The woman inside jumped and then settled. "Hello," she greeted quietly as slowly Molly put her wand down.
"I was calling. You didn't answer."
"I'm afraid I did not hear you," she said calmly. "My apologies." Molly studied her, the tears running down her face. She wondered how she was keeping her voice so calm when her body was even shaking a little in the effort not to cry out.
"You just startled me that's all."
"Understandable. Nymphadora, she told me where the house was in case I ever wanted to come back. I didn't think I would. But I wanted to think," she replied honestly. "Harry does not seem like he would be bothered by my being here as long as I did not touch anything of Sirius's." Molly studied her, a woman about her age, only a couple years younger. Dark grey eyes met hers, the same as Bellatrix Lestrange and yet so different. She had her doubts that Bellatrix Lestrange had ever looked so sad in her lifetime. Her hair was held back loosely, frizzing out of its ponytail, wild hair that seemed so different from her calm, neat appearance, a hint at her past. The features on her face were so similar to her older sister's, her body seeming younger than Bellatrix's because she had not lived through years in Azkaban. And she seemed so much more put together than Molly, just as she had the only other time she'd seen her since the war when she had gone with Harry to see Teddy. Now Molly began to look closer.
She saw a ring she was twirling around her left hand, still not willing to remove. She saw the tears. She saw the muggle clothes applied fairly well, something no normal Black would be able to manage. And she saw the eyes, the shaking, the slim façade of composure. Andromeda Tonks had experience with loss and trying to hide it. That, Molly realized was the only thing that kept people from seeing the woman's pain. It was very much there and tearing her apart. She met Molly's eyes again for a brief second and then looked away sharply out the window.
"I can go. I am sorry I scared you," she said stiffly as she headed toward the door. Molly reached out as she was passing and touched her arm, making her slump. Andromeda was taller than her and she looked down, with her proud shoulders slumped.
"I'm sorry," Molly said lightly.
"Thank you," she said distantly, monotonously. She had said the same thing before, too many times.
"I know it hurts. She was yours, your daughter, your child. And then your husband on top-"
"I know. Please, I will get out of your way. I was going to go anyway. Harry wanted to take Teddy for the day but I am sure he is lost and wishing against it by now. I doubt he has much experience with infants." She tried to chuckle but it seemed pathetic and sad.
"He can easily get a hold of Ron or Ginny. They've both babysat their cousins. Or Arthur too. He's had experience." Andromeda managed a weak smile.
"Yes I suppose. Nonetheless, I think I will be going." Tears were still falling from her eyes.
"I understand, you know," Molly said. "I was- I am going through the same thing."
"No, you're not. I am sorry, but you're not. You didn't once love your daughter's murderer, your husband's killer. She wasn't the one who told you all her secrets and made you laugh when you were sick and hit you with curses that you still have scars of, that you spent all of the first war hoping they would be the only marks she got on you. You don't understand having that person be the one to kill your little cousin who you barely saw over the age of ten and is forever in your mind that way. You don't have to hear about your other baby cousin being killed for the same cause that took away his brother and your son-in-law," she paused, biting her lip, "your husband and daughter.
"You don't have to look in the mirror every single day and see the person who murdered your family reflected in your own face." Her voice was finally starting to crack, the tears flowing hard. "You lost parts of your family, your brothers and yours son. You've lost friends. I have nothing! I left them, left my first family behind behind. The problem is they wouldn't leave me." She made a low sort of sobbing noise. "Bella wouldn't leave me alone. She always thought she could get me back to her. And now I have to live with the undeniable fact that she's not going to pull a Sirius and really be innocent even though, Merlin, I of all people knew she wasn't innocent. I saw her, I talked to her, I got mad at her and cried over her as she sunk deeper and deeper in." Her body was really shaking now, the tears coming hard, her speech becoming more and more blurred. "You don't understand. No one understands. No one else is still crying over the woman who killed everyone else she loves." And Andromeda finally completely broke, sliding down against the wall, nearly unable to breath. It was the first and only time Molly had ever seen a Black fully cry. And she knelt down and pulled the woman close to her.
"You're right I don't understand," she said, rubbing her back as if she were Ginny, tears falling for her own eyes. Molly Weasley, who had been proud of her blood-traitor status since birth, began to cry for a Black.
See, the problem with writing things while listening to depressing songs? Now I'm depressed. Anyway, this might stay a one-shot but I might add on a second chapter as kind of a one-shot series if that makes any sense because I wrote another reflection on the Black family from Slughorn's eyes (about the same time I wrote a chapter with Slughorn talking to Andromeda in my Andromeda/Ted story).
Well, hope you liked it and there weren't too many grammatical or other problems. If there were, tell me! Or if you just liked it I'd love to hear that too… *smiles hopefully*