The Goblin, the Snitch, and the Werewolf
Summary: Harry considers the future of the House of Potter. Andromeda considers the past of the House of Black. Teddy is where they collide. It isn't always pretty. Immediately post-Deathly Hallows (SPOILERS!).
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Andromeda had hoped that by appearing at Hogwarts while the Chosen One Who Lived or whatever Harry Potter was calling himself these days was speaking, she would avoid having to do much speaking herself. The plan hadn't been a bad one in theory, but things had not gone according to plan. Harry had noticed her, and everyone else wanted to notice what Harry noticed (which wasn't a bad tactic as survival skills went, but was still irritating from where Andromeda stood).
She hadn't been a Black, in name or in deed, for a quarter of a century. Still, at times like this, the training she had received in her babyhood reasserted itself:
"You're a Black; of course everyone is looking at you. Don't look back at them. They don't matter and they're looking at you because you do. You're practically royalty. Don't demean yourself."
None of it was true. She'd known that even as a child, although a desire for self-preservation had kept her from voicing her objections. Instead, she'd waited for the opportune moment and made a clean break. If she had protested as a child, the punishments would have been severe and varied. If she had merely announced that she intended to marry a Muggle-born, her parents would have found a way to remove him from the picture. But announcing that not only had she married a Muggle-born, but that she had taken her NEWTs while already pregnant with his child… that had presented her parents with quite the fait accompli.
Now she had returned to her old school to claim the body of that child.
On the makeshift stage at the front of the Great Hall, Harry Potter and Lee Jordan were talking again, but a few eyes were still trained on Andromeda. Whether they stared because she had been Bellatrix's sister or because she had been—still was—Nymphadora's mother, she didn't know. She also didn't care. She had a choice between remaining aloof and crumbling to pieces, and the former seemed much the best option.
"Mrs. Tonks, this way."
It took her an instant to focus on the voice, which emanated from one of the small rooms beside the Great Hall.
Even though she had known what to expect, it took all of her childhood lessons in dignity and comportment to stop herself from collapsing in a screaming heap the first second she saw the corpses, lovingly laid out row upon row.
Then, all of the bodies save one faded from her vision.
Nymphadora's heart-shaped face bore the frozen, surprised look that was always the remnant of the killing curse. Her hair hung limply off of her head; it had reverted to the dull, mousy brown color it had been the year before when she'd been recovering from her injuries and pining after Remus.
Andromeda shifted Teddy in her arms to run her hand along Nymphadora's cheek. Teddy, his sleep disturbed, attempted to focus on Nymphadora, too, but he gave no sign of recognizing the stiff colorless body as belonging to his mother. A flash of rage swelled in Andromeda as she realized, clearly, that Teddy would have no memories of Nymphadora.
She took his tiny hand in hers and laid it against Nymphadora's face. "This is your mother," she told him in a whisper that did not sound like her own. "But she's gone now."
Teddy could not have understood her, but the soft fringe of hair that covered his warm, fragile head changed suddenly from turquoise to black.
"Mrs. Tonks," said the same voice that had called her into the room. This time, Andromeda forced herself to fight through a wave of dizziness and respond.
"What needs to be done?" she asked coolly, not otherwise greeting the young witch. They had never met; the girl had known her name through some magical or administrative means.
The witch swallowed visibly and looked as if she might subject Andromeda to the usual platitudes: that Nymphadora was at peace, that Nymphadora had felt no pain, that Nymphadora had died the way she would have chosen. Instead, though, she produced a grubby roll of parchment. In dark blue ink, midway down the list of names, was "Lupin, Nymphadora (Tonks)." Just below it was "Lupin, Remus."
"Sign," the witch directed.
Andromeda signed.
"Do you want to take her body now, or do you want someone to arrange to transport it? If you haven't decided how to—what you—"
The girl was obviously a volunteer, doing this awful duty out of the goodness of her heart. Had it been any other way, her incompetence would have been breathtaking and her discomfort preposterous.
"She'll be buried next to her father," Andromeda decreed. "Remus, too, of course." She hadn't even looked for Remus's body, not from lack of fondness, but because she had eyes only for Nymphadora.
The young witch looked down the row of corpses; her flushed face paled. "He was lying next to her," she said distractedly. "They were lying hand-in-hand, I saw them!"
"What's wrong?" asked a new voice from the doorway. Andromeda had only heard that voice a few times, but she knew it. Every witch and wizard in this part of the world, perhaps the whole world, did.
It was Harry Potter.
He walked quickly to the witch and addressed her with obvious familiarity. "Katie, what happened?"
Katie's eyes darted from Harry to Andromeda to the rows of bodies. "Professor Lupin's body. It was here, but it's not now!"
Harry, too, looked over the corpses as if expecting to see something Andromeda and Katie had not. His green eyes seemed to catch on several bodies—Severus Snape's, a young boy's, and Nymphadora's among them—before he came to the obvious conclusion.
"How long've you been standing guard here?" Harry asked Katie.
"Not long—just since a bit before you started speaking. No one's been in to claim a body other than Mrs. Tonks. Well, the Weasleys were taking Fred home when I first—"
Tears started to slip down Katie's cheeks, and she was suddenly much more interested in looking at the ground than at Harry or Andromeda. Harry, in the calming way of someone who was used to taking control when everyone else was going to pieces, sent Katie to fetch the auror who had left her to watch over the bodies of the fallen.
Harry glanced once more at the bodies that seemed to have special meaning for him—Snape's, the boy's, Nymphadora's—before turning his attention to Andromeda.
"I'm sorry," he said, and she could tell that he meant it.
"Thank you."
"Is that," he nodded toward the infant in her arms as if he had never seen such a thing before, "Teddy?"
"Yes." She stared at the baby herself. His hair was still black.
"Is, er, he, I," said Harry. Andromeda sensed that the boy was looking for an invitation to hold the infant he had never met, or at least some sort of confirmation that it had been Remus and Nymphadora's plainly expressed wish that he be Teddy's godfather.
Andromeda levelly met Harry's awkward gaze, and Harry took a step back. Somewhere, in some place where she was not two feet away from the dead body of her only daughter, Andromeda might have found it quite humorous that a boy who had just defeated You-Know-Who was intimidated by her.
Andromeda, though, wasn't in that place where anything was in the least entertaining. She was holding all that was left of Ted and Nymphadora against her chest. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she could not give him up, even for an instant, to this gangly boy who looked as though he hadn't had a proper wash in a week and who had probably never held a baby in his life.
Savior of the world or not, godfather or not (and he wasn't, yet, officially), Harry Potter was not going to take Teddy from her, and certainly not if he couldn't summon the nerve to ask.
Something else that might have been amusing in a world where Ted hadn't been hunted down like an animal and Nymphadora hadn't been slaughtered in battle was her reluctance to acknowledge the fact that the most famous wizard in the world had agreed to stand godfather to her grandchild.
X
The first Black baptism Andromeda well remembered had been in honor of her cousin Sirius.
In the four years preceding Sirius's birth, three daughters were born to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.
Bellatrix, called Bella, was the eldest. Stunning in beauty, even more stunning in cleverness, most stunning of all in stubbornness, Bellatrix had all the Black family could have wanted save a y-chromosome.
Andromeda, called Anna, was just a year younger than Bella. She was the "not-quite" sister. Although she bore a marked, undeniable resemblance to Bella, she wasn't quite as pretty. Although her intelligence was never in question, she wasn't quite as clever as Bella. She wasn't quite as wanted, either; if a child wanted to disappoint the House of Black by being born a girl, of all things, the least she could do was be better than every other girl in every measurable way.
Narcissa, called Cissa or Cissy, was born two years after Anna. Her unusually blonde hair caused a tongue or two to whisper that she might not be accurately called a Black at all, but her subversive way of getting all she desired silenced those doubters before she reached a year in age.
It was when Cissa was about a year old, and Anna three, that their cousin Sirius arrived.
His first cry sent pangs of relief though the family. Daughters were well and good. Daughters were indispensable when it came to forming alliances with other wealthy, aristocratic families. Daughters kept histories and secrets; daughters were brilliant innovators; daughters performed great feats of magic. But daughters did not carry on the family line the way sons did.
The Black family threw a grand party to celebrate the day of Sirius's baptism. There had been talk that the honor of being his godfather would go to the Minister of Magic himself, or perhaps to a reclusive but extremely wealthy French wizard. In the end, though, it was the parents of the three Black daughters who stood up as godparents of their first nephew. Nothing was expected to happen to Sirius' own parents, of course, but the family was not willing to take the risk that in the event of disaster anyone who was not a Black would be a force in the life of their young heir.
The gifts given Sirius at the celebration were many and elaborate. Most of them he would never touch; they were symbolic of his place in the world and had nothing to do with the baby himself. The three sisters, too, were less than an afterthought as rich and powerful wizards from around the world strolled from room to room in the family's ancestral home and attempted to impress one another. Bella, Anna, and Cissa sat in a perfect row beside Sirius's crib; they were three objects among many on display. They went un-remarked upon unless one of them happened to move or speak out of turn. In that case, all three were swiftly reprimanded, even Cissa, who was barely old enough to speak and didn't make much sense when she did.
Once Sirius had been baptized, he was firmly in place as the heir. When the spare, christened Regulus, arrived the next year, he was presented with a hard act to follow.
From birth, Sirius was all his parents and grandparents and uncles and cousins had known he would be. As Bella did, he showed the promise of great good looks. The more he grew, in fact, the more he mirrored Bella.
In the first years Anna remembered, the five cousins found themselves thrown together more often than not. A Black child could have no worthy companion but another Black child (or perhaps the pureblood child of a king, but those were so scarce as to be non-existent).
They all sat for lessons with their tutors in an attic room of Anna's aunt's house each morning, but their afternoons were their own. It was of no matter that Sirius was four full years younger than Bella; it was to him that she gravitated, ignoring her sisters. Bella was the oldest and the strongest, and she took what she wanted. Sirius didn't seem to much mind being "taken." He followed in Bella's wake better than Anna could have.
Likewise, almost before Regulus could hold his own head up, he was meeting Cissa's eyes each time Bella tore off with Sirius in hot pursuit. He never had to speak to say what are your crazy sister and my crazy brother up to this time? Cissa, who was only rarely interested in things that were not herself, seemed to feel a kinship for her younger cousin almost from the start.
That left Anna by herself to fade into the elaborate woodwork. She didn't mind. She had books to look at and dolls to play with and a cat whose fur she brushed until it shone.
Sometimes Anna liked to play with her sisters and cousins, too, but sometimes she dreaded nothing more.
One afternoon when Anna was nine, Bella stormed into Anna's bedroom wearing the most ridiculous robes Anna had ever seen. At second glance, Anna realized that they were not robes at all, but a gown that a Muggle might wear. (She couldn't be sure; she had never seen a Muggle, but she knew that they did not wear robes.)
"Why are you wearing that?" she asked, even though she didn't usually want to know why Bella did the things she did.
"We're going hunting. Change." Bella threw a garment nearly identical to her own at Anna. Her tone left no room for argument.
"What is this?" Anna didn't have to decide whether she wanted to follow Bella's lead this time; she couldn't follow it. Bella might as well have told her to wear a desk.
"It's a Lady's Hunting Costume From the Fifteenth Century," Bella said proudly, pronouncing each word with all the weight she seemed to feel it was due. "It's so people will think we're Muggles if we're caught."
"Muggles from the fifteenth century?"
Bella snorted in a most unladylike way. "Muggles haven't changed much since then. They're backward, they are." Without further comment, she began removing Anna's robes and shoveling Anna into the costume.
It took both sisters a good deal of work to get the right parts of Anna's body into the corresponding parts of the garment. When they were done, Anna still wasn't sure that they had managed to get it right. She could barely stand up; her movements were so restricted that she doubted she could walk, let alone "hunt."
"You'll get used to it," said Bella bracingly. "Come on."
Anna came, not because she was at all convinced that this was a good idea, but because the whole thing was so ridiculous that she had to see it through. It was like watching two brooms collide at full speed in midair; it was awful, but you couldn't look away.
Cissa, Sirius, and Regulus were waiting for Bella and Anna at the back door. Cissa's dress was much the same as her sisters'. Sirius and Regulus, though, had gotten the worst of the deal. Their legs were covered with tight, clinging material; their upper bodies were swathed in puffy fabric embellished with all manner of ornaments.
Anna laughed.
Sirius looked mutinous. "I am not wearing this," he informed Bella. "I'd rather go starkers than wear this." He attempted to make good on his threat, but he was no more able to manipulate the strange clothing than Anna.
Bella stared down at Sirius imperiously. "We can't look like wizards if we get caught. Do you want to be sent to Azkaban?"
"Why don't we just not get caught?" asked Sirius, still tugging at the strange clothing that covered his legs.
"There has to be a contingency plan."
"What's contingency?" Sirius was the only one from whom Bella would have tolerated so many questions, or, indeed, any questions.
"Just in case."
"I don't think—"
"Thinking isn't your job," said Bella sharply, and she prodded Sirius to his feet. Regulus and Narcissa stood without being beckoned. "Forward, hunters!" she cried.
Anna wasn't surprised when they all trooped to the edge of the Black property. The Blacks' land was separated from the Rosiers' only by a stream. Anna's mother had been born a Rosier, but the relationship between the families was currently strained. Old Mrs. Rosier had made it plain that she did not want the Black children trampling her flowers or tormenting the aged hippogriff who lived in a shed behind her house.
This made it all the more tempting for Bella and Sirius to cross the stream and explore the Rosiers' property every chance they got.
Bella came to an abrupt halt on the bank of the stream. "A raging river!" she exclaimed in her most melodramatic voice. "Mightier than the Thames! How will we ever get across?"
"The bridge?" asked Regulus, pointing upstream. Regulus was five and didn't yet understand theatrics for the sake of theatrics. Sirius trod on his brother's foot and shook his head.
"There is no bridge!" Bella shouted with so much certainly that Anna surreptitiously glanced sideways to make sure the bridge still existed. It did.
"We could build one," suggested Cissa, who was looking openly at the bridge Bella had declared non-existent, evidently in the hopes that Bella would re-allow the bridge if she were allowed to take credit for it.
"I'll bet you could make a bridge just by wishing for it," Anna said obsequiously, building on her younger sister's foundation. "You're so magic."
They all did magic inadvertently from time to time when they were startled or angry. Bella, though, had been working to harness her powers ever since she'd become aware of them. She couldn't do much without a wand, but she took immense pride in her small triumphs.
Bella shook her head sadly. "There's no time. We'll have to…. Jump!"
It had rained a good deal over the past few days, and while the stream perhaps didn't compare to the Thames except in Bella's mind, it still looked deeper and wider than Anna had ever seen it before. Bella might jump it if she were lucky; Anna herself might, too, if she could control her ridiculous costume. But Cissa and the boys had no chance of making the leap successfully. Their legs were too short.
"We'll be soaked!" protested Cissa.
"Is that what you want to tell Mum and Dad when the whole countryside has been ravaged by rampaging beasts? We didn't find them and kill them because we were afraid to get wet?"
Cissa had noticed her reflection in a still pool of water beside the stream, and was gazing at it with unabashed fascination. She seemed to have forgotten her argument with Bella.
"I'LL GO FIRST!" cried Bella loudly, concerned that she was losing her grip on her audience. Without even taking a running start or adjusting her ridiculous clothing, she leapt from one bank to the other. Her legs barely moved; her arms were strangely stiff. Anna wondered if Bella had managed to nick and use a wand.
From the opposite bank, Bella pointed at Anna. "You first!"
Anna took stock of her options and thought them through, as her tutors always told her to do in the green and silver school room at her aunt's house.
She could refuse to cross, or use the bridge, but that would send Bella screaming for revenge. Arguing with Bella was a bore.
She could wade across and be soaking wet for the rest of the day as Bella led them through who-knew-what.
She could jump, and would most certainly fall on her face when she tripped over her gown.
She nodded to herself and resolutely backed away from the stream. Then she hiked the gown up around her waist and took a running start. She closed her eyes as she pushed off of the near bank and stumbled as she landed next to Bella, who was laughing hysterically.
"Not ladylike," roared Bella in a fair imitation of one of their tutors. "But impressive all the same. Well done, Anna." Regulus and Sirius applauded from their side of the stream.
Cissa took advantage of Bella's distraction to run to the bridge, scramble across it, and sprint to Bella's side. Bella looked languidly at Cissa from beneath exotic, heavily lidded eyes. "Cheating."
"I jumped," said Cissa, all earnestness. "You didn't notice because you were looking at Anna."
Bella laughed again. "Good enough." She turned her attention to the two small boys still on the Black side. "Now you, my Sirius."
With a hard, determined look on his baby-round face, Sirius attempted the jump. He didn't do badly for being so small. The force of his leap carried him across the deepest, swiftest part of the water before he fell to his knees among the rocks that would have formed the stream's bank had the water not been quite so high.
He gritted his teeth and pulled himself upright, making an obvious but successful effort not to favor his newly bruised ankle.
"Regulus," directed Bella.
Regulus was even smaller than Sirius (there was much gushing amongst their grown family members that Sirius would one day be unusually tall, as befit a Black heir). Regulus obeyed Bella's command, and an instant later tumbled into the middle of the stream. He lost his balance and his head dipped under the water, but the others still heard his shout of fear.
Anna was ready to admit that enough was enough and wade into the water to retrieve Regulus, but before she could move, Sirius darted past her. Back straight (posture was also discussed in their daily tutoring sessions), eyes fixed on his goal, he marched into the water and grabbed the now-sobbing Regulus by the hand.
The brothers struggled out of the stream together, Regulus teary and Sirius defiant. Bella jerked her right arm up and down, and Regulus' clothes miraculously dried. Anna's earlier speculation that her sister had stolen a wand and had it concealed in her sleeve was confirmed.
Regulus' tears stopped when he found himself unexpectedly warm and dry. He looked at Bella in wonder.
Sirius glared at Bella, who did not seem inclined to do anything more. "What about me?"
"What about you?"
"Dry me off, too!"
"You walked in! It's entirely your fault that you're wet."
Sirius pointed accusingly at Regulus. "He was drowning!"
"Was not," muttered Regulus unconvincingly.
"Even if that were true," said Bella with an air of finality, "sometimes when you're on a quest, you have to leave people behind."
"He's my brother!"
Bella was unimpressed, and she turned on her heel, striding toward the shed that concealed the decrepit hippogriff. Regulus and Cissa exchanged a look and followed. Sirius followed as well, irritated enough that he forgot to stop himself from limping. Anna brought up the rear, watching the bedraggled procession with morbid fascination.
The first part of the "quest" involved a series of dares to "touch the hippogriff" or "throw a rock at the hippogriff." The beast was blind, deaf, and almost insensate as well as being firmly tethered in place, so these feats weren't quite as foolhardy as they might have been with another animal.
When this pastime inevitably grew boring, Bella vanished and returned with what Anna recognized as a common garden gnome dangling from one hand. It appeared to have been stunned; whether Bella had done that with her concealed wand or by hitting the thing over the head, Anna did not care to speculate.
"This," Bella announced dramatically, "is the source of all the beast's power. We've overpowered its guardian," she gestured to the sleeping hippogriff, "and now all we have to do is finish the job!"
She prodded the gnome awake. It squealed angrily; with a nervous glance at the house, Bella ripped a swatch of fabric from her costume and made a gag for the gnome's mouth. The gnome's eyes widened in terror.
Bella poked the gnome, then let it run just so far from her before grabbing it again. She asked her sisters and cousins to suggest what to do to the gnome next. The gnome was squeezed and tossed about; the gnome's hands and feet were bound. Anna was uncomfortably reminded of her cat capturing a mouse and proceeding to rip off its fur bit by bit rather than going for the kill as soon as it pounced.
Anna stared hard at the gnome. Bella had some control over her magic when she didn't have a wand, and if Bella could do it, Anna could do it. Anna wished the gnome out of the shed and free of its bonds. She tried to channel the gnome's fear and make it her own. It didn't work.
If only old Mrs. Rosier would come to check on the hippogriff! That would send Bella scrambling for their own house, gnomes forgotten.
That was it.
When she was very sure that Cissa, Regulus, Sirius, and Bella were all entranced by the gnomes latest desperate gyrations, Anna slid one hand deep into the hippogriff's feathers and twisted with all her might.
The hippogriff gave an odd, outraged roar and scrambled to its ill-assorted, arthritic feet. Anna jumped away unnoticed by the others, who had all jumped themselves.
"Run or hide?" whispered Sirius.
"Run," Bella decreed. "Run."
They ran, and didn't stop until all five were sealed in Cissa's bedroom (nearest the back door), laughing with the exhilaration of it all.
Bella and Anna had never been the dearest of confidants. Each had chosen her own way from birth; they were as different in personality as they were alike in appearance. Still, that day marked the first time that Anna felt not only different from Bella, but afraid of her.
When Bella went off to Hogwarts less than a year later, Sirius took over as the one who ruled the schoolroom and the one who made cheeky comments at dinner and got away with it. Anna grew quieter than ever; while self-preservation necessitated keeping a close eye on Bella's performances, Sirius's antics were merely silly. Anna could lose track of her surroundings without worrying that she would be pulled into something dangerous.
Anna's parents bought her an owl to "ease her grief" at having her sister so far away. Anna didn't tell them that all she felt was relief.
X
In the present, Andromeda allowed Katie to conjure a stretcher and help float Nymphadora's body to a waiting carriage while the auror she had fetched promised that Andromeda would be contacted as soon as Remus's body was recovered.
She didn't bid Harry farewell. Slipping away from someone who had the tiniest claim on the last being in the world Andromeda loved was just as much as relief now as being rid of Bellatrix had been thirty-odd years before.
TBC.
Note on Ages: J.K. Rowling has created a universe and characters that millions of people love, worship, and adore. However, her math is, shall we say, scary. Therefore, I haven't matched the ages of the Black cousins to the dates on the published Black Family Tree, despite my efforts to stay canon-compatible with the rest of this fic.
I also find it almost impossible to mimic Rowling's style while writing Andromeda's point of view instead of Harry's, so I haven't tried. Next chapter is back to Harry's point of view and back to me making a conscious attempt to imitate canon writing patterns.
Finally, parts of the flashback were posted in a slightly altered form several years ago as part of a fic which was never finished.