While the World Rejoiced
To Nymphadora Tonks, the day seemed no different to any other. She was a child of the war; to her disappearances, killings and violence were everyday occurrences. To an eleven year old Nymphadora Tonks, this was normal. She accepted it, because she was too young to help, but she did not like it one bit. Naïve as she was, she was ashamed of her parents for not helping. She knew other people were fighting against the dark wizards, she had overheard people talking when they thought she was asleep. People like her cousin Sirius and his friends whom she knew as 'the fat one', 'the scruffy one', and 'the one with all the scars', people they knew were fighting for what was right. Tonks liked that. Her parents told her she read too many fairy tales. They said when real people fight evil, they get hurt; there is no happily ever after in the real world. But the eleven year old Tonks refused to believe this was true. There would always be someone to save the day, and you never knew if that person might be you. She thought that even if it was hopeless, you had to try. That is, she believed it until the war ended.
It was a pleasant autumn evening, and Ted Tonks had taken his daughter on another camping trip on the edge of Dufftown. He had put as many defensive charms as he could think of on their little three-man tent, and they spent the day playing games, telling jokes, tickling and gurning. Father and daughter always had a competition to see who could pull the best face; naturally the younger always won. It was getting late when they lit the campfire. They poked pink sausages onto greensticks they had scavenged from the nearby wood. They held them above the fire, half inside their sleeping bags and watched them slowly browning. The sky darkened as their dinner did. As they sat in silence, (which Edward relished given his daughter's hyperactive nature), they were content. The calm mood did not last. They jumped as a huge explosion went off some distance away, the dark sky filling with coloured shapes. Fireworks. They hadn't been seen since before the beginning of the war, and this was Nymphadora Tonks' first experience of them. As she watched the sky with her father, something else unusual happened; Andromeda appeared a few feet away from their tent with a soft crack. For her mother to have arrived there, Nymphadora knew something was wrong. Her mother hated the great outdoors, she said that bugs and other nasty things were meant to live outside, and that people were meant to be above such things. Nymphadora knew that her mother was just afraid of getting mud on her nice dress. Andromeda had never been on a camping trip in her life, and so her being there meant something must be wrong. Edward balanced his stick against the fire and took his wife off to one side. They thought their daughter would not hear, but she did.
"It's over," Andromeda told her husband, close to tears.
"Did we win?" Ted asked. Nymphadora wondered who he was talking about, since he had not been fighting anyone. Andromeda nodded solemnly. She took a deep breath.
"Si..Sirius was a spy, he…he's a Black after all," she stammered. "He told you-know-who where to find the Potters and…and he killed them both, Lily and James are dead."
"What about little Harry?" Ted asked.
"He's fine, they're saying he vanquished you-know-who, nobody knows how." As Andromeda spoke, Nymphadora wondered how they tiny boy she had once painted blue could possibly have stopped him, but then she remembered her stories. There was a hero after all.
"But they caught Sirius and he killed twelve muggles and his friend Peter trying to get away but they caught him and they'll surely give him the kiss for it and.." Andromeda was hysterical. As Edward tried to comfort her, their little daughter was left completely alone. She began to cry. Cousin Sirius was going to go to prison, and Harry's mum and dad were dead and so was the fat one. Poor little baby Harry. But then, Nymphadora thought, he can't feel that bad because he's just a baby, and if he could defeat the most evil wizard there ever was, then maybe he'd be okay.
But in Nymphadora's world, it was far from okay. Her mother was now down on her knees, screaming her lungs out, hitting her husband away when he tried to comfort her. Nymphadora now knew her mother had been right when she said all Blacks ended up the same in the end. Sirius had betrayed them all and now Andromeda was reverting to the person she had been before Edward had waltzed into her life. Nymphadora's aunts would most likely go to Azkaban with Sirius, she had heard some terrible things about what they had done. As far as she could tell, she was the only disloyal Black left and she was entirely alone in the world.
"Daddy! Daddy! The sausages are burning! Daddy listen to me!"