Autumn 1981

She was not supposed to be eavesdropping but she could not care less. Intently listening to the muffled voices coming from the kitchen, she was sitting on one of the bottom steps of the staircase, wearing her nightdress and hugging her knees.

Tonks was not sure what had woken her up. Suddenly she had realised she was lying awake, looking at the ceiling of her bedroom. She had been having a fantastic dream, in which she was riding a flying motorcycle on her own and wind was rushing all around her. And then, she was wide awake.

A sound coming from downstairs had made her sit on her bed. It had been a soft sob... was somebody crying down there?

Very carefully she had opened her bedroom door, and climbed down the stairs, trying hard not to trip with anything ant not to make any unnecessary noises. By some stroke of luck, she had not made any or maybe, if she had, nobody had noticed.

An now, she was listening to Mum and Dad's conversation.

It was Mummy who was sobbing. Tonks had never hear her do that. It had been her cry that had drawn her out of her room and brought her down to investigate.

Dad was murmuring something, in the same soft voice he used when she was angry or sad. He was trying to calm her mother down.

"It is impossible!" she yelled in exasperation. "Not Sirius, not the Potters! He wouldn't do anything to anybody, least of all, to them!"

Tonks felt a knot forming somewhere in her throat. Sirius?

"I know, 'Dromeda, but there are witnesses. A street full of Muggles saw him being corned by Pettigrew…"

"There must be a mistake-" Mum's voice died in another sob. "It doesn't make any sense! He is his friend! Their kid's godfather, for Merlin's sake!" a sob interrupted her cries, and then she added in a much softer voice, "He couldn't have done... I always thought he was… he was one of us," she almost whispered.

"Me too," Daddy said, with a tired voice. "How on earth would anybody have thought...? He always seemed all right to me."

"He was more than all right!" Mum cried again. "He was… is… a decent man. There must be a mistake. There must be!"

Dad murmured something Tonks couldn't hear.

"We have to think of something. Some defence on the trial… I could speak to somebody at the ministry so they listen to his story and..."

"There won't be a trial," Dad said, almost whispering. There was the sound of parchment being shuffled. "See? Barty Crouch's on charge. No trial."

The kitchen went silent.

It was with a very hoarse voice that Andromeda finally spoke.

"They are going to send him to Azkaban," her voice started to raise, "based only on the testimony of Muggle witnesses? And without a trial?"

Tonks couldn't stand it any more. Even though she was risking to by sent to her room, even if she would not get any answers, something bad had happened to her cousin Sirius. And even though she was learning a lot from her eavesdropping, she wanted to ask her own questions and get some answers.

She stood up and tripped on the last two stairs, but she managed to climb down. The creaking of the kitchen door made her parents look up. Mummy was crying as if she was a little girl, her face white with big puffy red eyes. Dad was pale and had a hand on her shoulder. With the other one, he was clutching a copy of the Daily Prophet.

"'Dora," he said.

"What happened?" she asked looking at Mum.

"Nothing, honey," he started.

"Don't tell me nothing. Something happened, and it's grave, and it has to do with Sirius. I wanna know!" she stomped her foot impatiently. She was not going to get that "nothing, honey" rubbish when it was so obvious something was terribly wrong.

Mummy looked at her and opened her arms. Tonks ran at her and sat on her lap.

"Is Sirius all right?" she asked with a whisper.

"No, honey, he's not all right," Mum finally said after a long while, rocking her softly as if she was a little girl. She did not mind, though.

"What happened?" she whispered, and she felt as if something icy was slithering down her spine. Something very unpleasant.

It seemed it was something really difficult to explain. Mummy was there, silent, thinking.

"Sirius… It seems that Sirius did something very, very bad," she finally said.

"Did he Stun someone on purpose?" Tonks asked, remembering their last conversation.

"Something like that, yes." she replied.

"Is he in trouble?"

"Yes. He is. And he won't be coming home for a while."

"He will go to Azkaban," Tonks said, "you said it before."

"You've been eavesdropping, huh?" Dad asked with a sad smile.

"You were loud," she replied defensively, looking at him with fiery eyes. "Will he go then? To prison?"

"Yes, Nymphadora, he will," her mother aid quiet. She looked up at her, new tears were running down her cheeks.

"Did he kill anybody?"

Mum did not say a thing; Dad opened his mouth but he closed it again. Tonks realised she did not want to know. Not really.

"How long is he going to prison?" she was almost too afraid to ask.

"We don't know just yet. A while."

"A year?"

"Longer, possibly."

"But what if it's a mistake?" she asked vehemently. "What if someone else did it and they are blaming him? What if he's innocent?"

Mum looked at her with tired eyes and gave a deep sigh.

It was Dad though, the one who answered.

"People saw him. They say he did it."

"But what if-?"

"Listen to me, honey." Mummy shifted her in her lap, so they were face-to-face. Tonks couldn't help herself and started crying quietly. "Sirius won't be coming in a very long time, so it would be best for you to try to forget about him, all right?"

Forget about Sirius? How could her mother ask her to do that? He was her favourite cousin!

"I won't!"

Her mum sighed softly and wiped the tears off her cheeks with her thumbs.

"You will have to, honey. We all will have to."

She looked at Mum frowning. She was looking at her gravely, and Tonks felt that, for the first time in her life, she was being asked to do something important. Grown up stuff.

"He won't be allowed to say goodbye to us, would he?" she finally whispered.

"No, 'Dora, he won't." Dad ruffled her hair and she realised it was mousy-brown and bushy. For a moment she though Sirius would have mocked her if he had seen her this way.

"Could we go to visit him, then?"

"No, honey," Mum hugged her tightly and both of them starting sobbing. "They don't allow visitors in that place."

For a moment there, she imagined he would open the kitchen door and enter, unannounced, like he often did. As if all of this had been noting but a joke, like the ones he used to make. The tears of Mum falling on the top of her head made her realise that was just silly. Her cousin Sirius would not come back.

"I'll miss him," she finally whispered.

"I know, Nymphadora, we all will."