A/N: Hello again. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed this story! You guys are great! :D So here's another chapter! I hope you like it. This story will be all over the place as far as characters and timeframes (post DH) go. This chapter ended up going an interesting way… I really do hope you all still like it!

Emerald flames erupted in the grate and a second later expelled two sooty figures onto the hearth rug. A little boy with bright green hair wriggled in his grandmother's arms, impatient to be let loose.

Andromeda waited for Harry and Ginny's kitchen to stop spinning around her before brushing the ash out of Teddy's hair and dropping him lightly to the floor. He took off at top-speed the moment his feet touched tile, squealing and screeching and pretending to be a monkey as he half-ran, half-tumbled across the room.

"Hey, Monkey-man," came an amused voice as Harry appeared in the doorway and Teddy bounced off his knees and hit the floor.

Teddy squealed with laughter as Harry swept him off the ground and held him upside-down, tickling his exposed belly. Andromeda watched them with a fait smile, leaning against the table until finally Harry swung Teddy upright and shifted him in his arms so that he could look at her. The amusement gave way to solemnity as their eyes met.

"Do… do you want us to walk with you?" Harry asked only slightly awkwardly, the teenage look that had not quite left him yet coming through. "I could take him for ice cream or something while we waited," he added, jerking his head towards Teddy.

At the words 'ice cream' Teddy began to squeal again, whipping his head back and forth so that his lime-green hair spun out and chanting excitedly "Ice cream, ice cream!", completely immune to the serious mood.

"No… thank you," Andromeda said quietly, casting her eyes down. "I think I have to go alone. Could you tell me where it is?"

Harry nodded. "Yeah… It's right next to my parents. Fifth row from the back, to the left of theirs."

Andromeda nodded once. "Thank you." And then she turned and slipped out the back door, disappearing with a swish of robes on the back porch.

Harry watched her go with a somber expression, Teddy sagging dizzily against his shoulder, still chanting. Harry looked down at him and his somberness lifted somewhat.

"Oh, alright," he said in bemusement at Teddy's hopeful look. "Just don't tell your Gran."

And he crossed to the ice box with Teddy wiggling delightedly in his arms.

XXX

Andromeda pushed the old kissing gate open. She had been in plenty of cemeteries, especially in the last few years, but never had one evoked such nervousness in her. It was a battle. One she had been fighting for six years. Ever since her daughter had come flying into their house with the news that the whole world had been wrong. That Andromeda had been wrong. For fourteen years. She should have gone. She should have gone right then. But she could not. Not after those fourteen years.

She was too late. Far, far too late. But he deserved something rather than nothing at all. And yet she still battled that nervousness, that shame that had dragged her back each time she'd tried before, which was the reason she had not come the week before when all the rest had.

No one would have known from observing her what chaos reigned in her head as she walked calmly between the headstones. A carefully crafted mask of blank calmness spread across her face, her hands clasped placidly before her. The only hint of emotion was a shadow of somberness in her eyes as they flicked from headstone to headstone, counting, until finally they found the marble one shining in the sunlight, and beside it a stone cross.

With even, measured steps, Andromeda moved towards the cross, her eyes never leaving it. Then she reached it and stared down at the letters engraved across it:

In memory of Sirius Black

1959-1996

A Hero

A hero… Those last two words were what shattered the façade, brought her crashing to her knees, gasping as if something had hit her. A hero…

And the memories that she had pushed back, first in pain and then in shame came swelling back, roaring around her, blocking out the sunny morning, the warm June breeze, the stone cross before her…

A little boy darted out into the hallway, dark hair falling in his eyes and a wicked grin across his face. Shrieks followed him from the drawing room as he pelted for the staircase, laughing gleefully.

"Sirius!"

A girl, several years older, swept into the hallway, white-blonde hair flying and pale face stormy. Ink splattered the front of her silken robes and dripped from her hands.

"Get back here, you nasty little monkey!" her shrill voice echoed up and down the staircases at the end of the hall.

A second little boy, smaller than Sirius, but with the same dark hair darted out from behind her, ink covering his own fine clothing, and flew up the hall. He caught Sirius around the middle halfway up the stairs and the two struggled with each other as the girl stalked up towards them. Sirius succeeding in kicking his little brother off, but the girl had already reached them and she seized Sirius by the hair as he attempted to scramble away.

"Ow! Get off, Cissy!" he complained, pulling at her fingers.

"Never! You wait until I tell your mother what you did, you little cretin!"

She began to drag him back down the stairs by the hair, his yells reverberating off the walls. Another girl appeared at the top of the stairs, looking curious and then alarmed.

"Narcissa, let him go!" she ordered, hurrying down to them and prying her younger sister's fingers apart.

"Andromeda, look at what he did!" Narcissa shrieked indignantly, shaking her stained hands so that a few drops of ink splattered onto Andromeda's cheeks. "I'm telling Aunt Walburga! She'll flail you good this time," she added nastily to Sirius, who had fled up to the top of the stairs and now glowered down at her, an arm wound around the banister.

Andromeda surveyed her little sister dispassionately.

"Leave Mother and Auntie be, Cissy," she told her. "They're busy."

Narcissa puffed up like an angry peacock, but Andromeda cut her off before she could start squawking again.

"I'll deal with him," she said, turning on her heal and marching up to Sirius. "Mother said I was in charge. Come along, Sirius."

She grabbed his ear as she passed him and yanked him away, glowering and ignoring his protests until they had reached the bedroom she and her sister were staying in. Andromeda shut the door with a sharp snap and let go of her cousin.

Sirius backed away from her, rubbing his ear and scowling at her reproachfully.

"What was that for?"

"What was that for? I just saved your neck, Sirius," Andromeda hissed, pushing Sirius down onto one of the beds and sitting opposite him. "Haven't I told you to just leave them be and ignore it?"

"She deserved it," Sirius said petulantly, scuffing the floor with the toe of his shoe.

"Maybe, but it will only end with you in trouble. You know that."

Sirius just scowled at the floor. Andromeda sighed.

"Why did you have to set her off?" she asked, sounding a little pleading.

"You heard the way she was going on last night!" Sirius said furiously. "About how proud they all are about Bellatrix's pure-blood campaigning and all our creepy relatives and all those snooty things about you being a disappointment! She's a stuck-up priss, and Regulus is just like her!"

"I know, Sirius, but you can't win with them," Andromeda told him tiredly. "The best you can do is ignore them, even when they do deserve ink bombs and worse."

"Easy for you to say," Sirius muttered mutinously. "You'll be on your own soon and you won't have to put up with them anymore."

"Exactly," Andromeda said sharply, fixing Sirius with a severe look. "I won't be around all the time to pull you out of trouble. You've got to learn to ignore it. Just do as you're told and keep your head down and get out as soon as you can."

Sirius's angry, rebellious expression did not change.

"You'll be at Hogwarts next year," Andromeda said, trying a different tact. "They can't get at you there. Your life is your own at school as long as you're smart about it."

Andromeda thought something close to hope sparked in her cousin's face at this, but he kept his truculent expression firmly in place.

Andromeda sighed again and leaned back on her elbows, giving the lecture up. Sirius would hear only what he wanted to hear. She just hoped that sheer stubbornness was enough to keep him from getting sucked into the vortex that was the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

"What exactly did you do, anyway?" she asked.

An evil grin suddenly broke out on Sirius's handsome face. "Stuck a dung bomb in Cissy's ink pot."

Andromeda was too well-controlled to let her disapproving expression slip, but her eyes danced with mirth and that was enough for Sirius. He crowed delightedly.

Andromeda rolled her eyes and reached out a hand to ruffle his hair because she knew he hated that. "You're okay, kid."

The memory spun away, faded to be replaced by another, from nearly seven years later.

A snarling roar ripped through the warm summer night, shattering the sleepy hush that had hung over the little house. A soapy dish slipped from Andromeda's hands and smashed in the sink, spattering her with hot dish water.

"Andy? What was that?"

Her husband clattered into the kitchen behind her, wand drawn, but Andromeda was too busy gaping out the kitchen window to answer him. She lunged for the back door, fumbling with the latch with her wet fingers, and flung the door open just as a young man leapt off of the enormous motorbike that had just flattened her begonias.

"Who on earth…?" Ted said faintly from beside her, gazing open-mouthed at the teenager.

"Hey, Andy," the boy said casually, giving her a broad, mischievous grin as he leaned against his bike. "Thought I'd drop in."

"Sirius?" Andromeda's voice seemed far away, even to her own ears as she stepped towards the boy, unable to reconcile this tall, wild dragon-hide-clad young man with the cheeky menace of a little boy she had last seen him as.

"Yeah, it's me," he told her, laughing at her expression.

Andromeda watched him introduce himself to Ted, shake his hand, accept the invitation into their kitchen and plop down easily into a chair at the table, as though he did it every day. There were a lot of things she wanted to ask him, a lot of things she wanted to tell him, the first member of her family she had seen since she'd eloped with Ted, but she had grown up a Black, so she sat down calmly opposite him and eyed him calculatingly. Then she smiled.

"So you got a bike," was what she said instead. "Hoping to give your mother a stroke?"

"Well, yeah, in general," Sirius answered with that wicked grin she remembered so well. "But not with the bike. That was just 'cause I could." He let the front legs of his chair drop back to the floor with a snap as he leaned forward, a wild, almost frenzied glee on his face. "I got out."

"You got out?" Andromeda repeated, eyes widening.

"I got out of our mad, twisted, hell-born family, Andy! Just like you! My mother can scream all the insults she likes and my dad can pretend I never existed and Regulus can go on being their damned perfect little son, but they can't do a thing to me 'cause I'm out."

If he'd been the little boy she remembered, Andromeda might have swung him around and kissed him, but she had to settle for beaming with pride instead.

"I hoped you would," she told him as Ted set three mugs of coffee on the table and sat down beside her. "How'd you manage it?"

"I just took off," Sirius said with great satisfaction. "Christmas about a year and a half ago it just got too much and I couldn't take their crap anymore. We had a huge fight and I left and haven't spoken to a damn one of them since! But old Uncle Alfard kicked the bucket a few months back, and he left me some gold. Got my own place now, and my bike, so I thought I'd come look you up now that no one's stopping me."

"Well, I'm glad," Andromeda told him, sipping her coffee. "I heard you've been pushing their sanity for years, now. Did you really get sorted into Gryffindor?"

Sirius grinned wickedly again. "First Black not in Slytherin for six generations. I'm pretty proud of it, actually."

Andromeda couldn't help it. She had tried to tell herself for six years that she really did not care what became of her family. And she didn't, for the most part. But she was curious and she had to ask.

And Sirius answered her questions, though she could tell he didn't want to, and relayed what few stories he had paid attention to before running away. Andromeda did not let the disappointment show on her face when she heard that Narcissa was engaged to the Malfoy heir. She didn't give any sign of regret when Sirius told her, a bitter edge to his voice, that Regulus had fallen in quite happily with the creepy, pure-blood-manic crowd in Slytherin. But when Sirius informed her of Bellatrix's success among the Death Eaters, Andromeda could not suppress the revulsion that rose inside her.

At this point Sirius leaned forward, looking more serious than he had since he'd arrived.

"Are you going to fight?" he asked, eyes locked on Andromeda.

"You mean with Dumbledore's lot?" she asked, though she already knew.

Sirius nodded. Ted and Andromeda exchanged looks.

"Sirius, I don't like what Bella's doing and I don't like what Reg's getting into," Andromeda told him. "But I don't want to be in the middle of it. Too many people get hurt in the middle. I can't."

She glanced at the photos hanging on the wall behind Sirius's head and he followed her gaze.

"That's her, isn't it?" he asked, eyeing the little girl grinning toothily at him with curiosity. "Your little squirt?"

"Yes, that's our daughter, Nymphadora," Andromeda said, smiling proudly.

"What's up with her hair?" Sirius asked, but he turned back towards them before they could explain, serious once more. "Look, Andy. You're already in the middle of it. We're all in the middle of it."

"I'll take that as confirmation that you're already planning to run head-long into the fight?" Andromeda asked quietly.

"Hell yes," Sirius said at once, and Andromeda saw once again that rebellious anger in his eyes and knew she should have expected it all along. "And you should, too, if you give a damn about that kid of yours."

"Sirius," Andromeda said warningly, but Sirius was already talking over her.

"Haven't you been paying attention to the news? Haven't you seen what kind of things they've done? You can't honestly think that 'do as you're told and keep your head down and ignore it' will keep you safe with this?"

"Sirius," Ted said a little uncomfortably because he didn't know this firey, wild-looking boy who had come out of nowhere into his kitchen. "It's an admirable fight. It really is. And if we didn't have a family, if we weren't risking so much, we'd join. But as it is…"

"My mate, his dad got killed a couple months ago," Sirius said abruptly.

"We're very sorry to hear it," Andromeda murmured.

Sirius nodded, looking broodingly at his knuckles. "He was a pure-blood. Not like our family, though. A really decent bloke. You know why they killed him?"

Andromeda and Ted shook their heads, looking apprehensive. Sirius gave a harsh bark of laughter.

"Because he tried to stop them ambushing a couple of Muggle-borns leaving the Ministry. All he did was put up a shield charm and they killed him. Just like that. Four of them, in masks and cloaks. And they got away. He wasn't even with Dumbledore or anything."

Sirius sat forward, his eyes glittering oddly as he stared fixedly at the coffee pot in the middle of the table. Neither Andromeda nor Ted dared to say anything.

"James Potter's dad was the most decent man I've ever met. You know where I went when I ran away? I went to James's house. He'd been furious with me for weeks before. I'd pulled some shit and it was the worst fight we've ever had, but when I turned up, soaking wet at two in the morning he let me in. He gave me some dry stuff and let me crash on the sofa and cussed out my family pretty good with me and it didn't even matter that he'd been furious with me the day before because that's just the kind of people the Potters are.

"And you know what Mr. Potter said when he came downstairs and found me in his living room?" Sirius laughed again, but it sounded kind of strangled this time. "He asked who the tramp on his sofa was and James told him it was his new charge and he just nodded and said I should get used to eggs 'cause that's all he could cook."

There was a heavy silence. Andromeda watched the fury gather on her cousin's handsome face.

"He had a family," Sirius said at last, and his voice was low and full of force. "He had a kid and a wife and he would have helped you anyway."

"I'm grateful to him, then," Ted said earnestly.

Sirius swallowed and nodded.

"Not everyone can be a hero, Sirius," Andromeda told him quietly.

"Shouldn't stop you from trying," Sirius said back.

And Andromeda was back in the cemetery, kneeling beside a stone cross marked with the word 'hero', the last solid thing left of her cousin.

She did not cry. She had already mourned him, first when he had been taken to Azkaban, when she had believed that his father's death and his brother's disappearance had pulled him back in, had turned him into a betrayer and murderer, and then again when he had died, five years ago last week. Her throat ached and her eyes stung as guilt and sorrow washed over her, but she did not cry.

She should have faced this six years ago, when it might still have mattered. Andromeda had known, from the time he was very small, that Sirius Black was rash, wild, and hot-headed, and that one day, it would lead him into trouble that she could not pull him out of, that no one could. But he had gone as a hero, and that was how he would have wanted it.

A/N: So? I've been kind of hung up on the Marauders lately (I'd like to start a one-shot series about them, too, but I'm waiting until I finish Teddy to do that) and I guess this was my way of getting around the whole post-DH thing to squeeze them in :D No, actually I wanted to examine Sirius and Andromeda's relationship. I've always been curious as how she felt about what happened to him. I don't think they were extremely close, but I do think there was a little something behind Sirius's comment that Andromeda was his favorite cousin. Anyway, Reviews would be lovely! I'm not very sure about this one…