Disclaimer: JKR owns everything.

Please note: I took a little creative liberty with the Black sisters. According to this and previous stories, Andromeda's the oldest. Bellatrix was born when Andromeda was eight and Narcissa was born two years later. Also, Sirius was born the same year as Narcissa. If you've read the previous chapters and my other story, Paintings of Life, it's the same case. I feel that, becasue of the emotional attachment and relationships I've developed between the sisters, this order works a bit better. :-D

That's the beauty of Fanfiction!

Anyway, enjoy!!

Andromeda Tonks (nee Black)'s Greatest Secrets

She was supposed to be a twin, supposed to have a twin brother for her family to cherish. But when she was born, something went horribly wrong. She came out of the womb first and was as healthy and happy as any baby but……there was something wrong with her brother. He survived two weeks and, despite the attentions of the best healers in St. Mungo's (only the best for the Ancient and most Noble House of Black), her brother died of afterbirth complications. She knew this should have affected her life. After all, she never did know the brother she could have had and you can't miss what you never had. But…..every time she did something wrong, her mother would tell her that she had murdered her brother, that she was supposed to die so that he could survive and so that their family line could continue. Not the other way around. She was supposed to destroy herself so that her brother could survive. She wasn't supposed to kill him. And her whole life, she was reminded of that. Her whole life she was reminded that she wasn't supposed to be alive.

Despite everything, as she grew up, she loved her parents. They lavished attention on her and, though they spoiled her silly, they provided the groundwork for her life. Even years after the war, she couldn't bring herself to admit it but she knew that her parents made her who she was. Her parents taught her to fight for what she wanted, to push herself to create a life for herself and to win. More than anything, they taught her the need to win, the need to beat the world to reach her full potential. She owed her family everything because they taught her who she could never be. They taught her that she could never be like them, could never hate as much as they hated. But they also taught her that, if she just worked hard enough, she could defeat the whole damn bunch.

She loved her sisters. More than anyone else in the world, she loved her sisters. They never judged her. They never did anything but look up to her in admiration and love. She adored her sisters, Bellatrix and Narcissa and she vowed from the moment she held Bella for the first time, she would give her life to protect them. She would die to protect them because they so needed protection. No one else would help them, she knew, because they were girls, unwanted burdens to the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black. So she helped raise them, the way her mother never would, the way she knew that the mother who was….kind enough to remind her that she was never meant to be born would never protect her other two daughters. She loved them. She taught them everything she knew before she left for Hogwarts, and…..and when she left, the only thing she could think of was them, because no one would protect them now that she was gone to school.

She met Ted Tonks on her first day, on the train, when her parents were more concerned with showing off than with ensuring that their eldest daughter was comfortable and safe. She felt so lost, wandering all alone on the train. She had nowhere to sit, nowhere to go when Ted peeped his head out of a compartment and stood in front of her. She remembers him asking her name and then taking her small hand, leading her to his compartment and introducing her to the two other people there, Arthur Weasley and Molly Prewet. She remembers him smiling at her and telling her that it'll be alright. That was the beginning of their friendship, the beginning of a life-long connection that truly set her apart from her family. And even to this day, she knew that it was the nicest things that anyone had ever done for her. It was the first time in her life she'd ever known kindness, ever known a soft touch. If you ever asked her, she'd tell you she fell in love with him then, muggleborn or not.

But….somehow, he never seemed to see her as anything more than a friend. He never seemed to like her as anything more than the girl he spent time with, than the girl he helped with homework and dueled with in class and helped coach through potions. And she never thought that Ted would ever like her the way she liked him. So, like every other girl, she dated around, even going out with Arthur Weasley for some time before her fifth year. But when Arthur kissed Molly for the first time after breaking up with her, she knew that she couldn't avoid it any longer. So, she confided in Molly, telling her that she didn't care what her family said, she loved Ted Tonks. The day she cried for the first time was the day he asked her out. She couldn't stop crying for almost two hours after he asked her, despite his desperate attempts to sooth her. At that moment, she knew she loved him, that she'd die for him, that she'd do anything to be with him for the rest of her life, despite everything her family had ever taught her about blood purity or the inferiority of mudbloods.

But, no matter how much she loved Ted, leaving her family was the hardest thing she ever had to do. She knew she couldn't stay. She knew that she couldn't live with them, not after the way they looked at her when she told them she was dating a muggleborn. She couldn't stay, not after the way she was treated, not after her mother told her that she should have been killed the day she was born for murdering her brother, not after the way she was treated by her friends, with that much contempt, when she told them what she was always taught. She knew she couldn't stay with them, but leaving was the hardest thing she ever did. Because her family made her, and now, she had to disown them to be with her one true love. It was Ted who got her through everything. It was Ted who helped her live with herself after she swore at her mother, screamed at her father, packed her bags and kissed her sisters goodbye forever. It was Ted who helped her get over losing her sisters, because they were the most important things in the world to her after him.

For a time, she wasn't sure she'd made the right decision by leaving her family to marry Ted on an impulse. Then….then, she became pregnant. It was less than a year after she got married when she found out that she was carrying Ted's baby. It was then, when she found out that she was pregnant, that everything fell into place. It was then that she knew she and Ted belonged together, that with or without her family, they would live happily ever after, them and their new little bundle of joy. And more than ever, she knew where she belonged, on the outskirts of proper pureblood society, with the people she truly cared about, with her husband and her only daughter, Nymphadora.

When she first heard that Sirius had betrayed his friends, destroyed his life, and killed so many people, all she could feel was disbelief. How could her cousin, whom she loved almost like her own son, be a murderer? How could her funny, lighthearted young cousin who she taught and helped and coached be a cold and ruthless man? How could the single member of her family who left, just like her, the only person in her family she really agreed with, she truly loved, how could he be just like them? How could he betray his friends like…….like a cold blooded murderer? She couldn't believe that he would do something like that, because she wouldn't and she knew him better an almost anyone else. She vowed from that moment that, despite her dreams for reconciliation with her family, she would never go back. She couldn't go back. She could never subject herself or her daughter to that. She could never go back…..for Nymphadora.

The second war…..the second war was hell for her. She was safe. She was pureblood, the sister to one of the greatest Death Eaters, the sister-in-law to another. She was safe forever but her family was persecuted. Ted…..Ted was muggleborn. Nymphadora was a member of the Order. And even though she never fully approved of her son-in-law, she still loved him as a member of her family. He was Sirius's friend and Nymphadora loved him. They were…..they were all in danger and she….it was all her fault. All she could think of was that everyone she loved was persecuted. Everyone she loved was marked for death. When Ted died……when Ted died, she thought that her world was dead. But Nymphadora…..her daughter was pregnant and suddenly, nothing was more important than protecting her. When Teddy was born, she knew that her true love didn't die in vain. But then…..the battle and it felt like her world was falling apart once more. It felt like…..like pain beyond death. First Remus, then……then Nymphadora left, never to return from the battle. Her sister, the sister she raised from a baby destroyed her family, killing her only daughter. The only thing that held her together was her grandson, the last piece of her family she had left.

After the war……after the war, the world seemed to heal, if only a little bit. She raised Teddy, teaching him and pouring all her love into him, giving him the life Nymphadora always wanted him to have. Narcissa reconciled after the war, helping her raise Teddy with her son Draco. Her youngest sister came to her less than a year after the war had ended, standing at her doorstep in the rain as she wondered whether or not to forgive the last piece of her. When she finally invited Narcissa in, it seemed like she'd never left home. Her sister was here, her life was complete. She had Cissy and Draco and Teddy and Harry, and a small part of her knew that she had found the life she'd always dreamed of. She knew that, the moment she held her great-granddaughter Nymphadora for the first time as her daughter-in-law, Victoire rested in her hospital bed, that her life was complete. And when the time was right, she knew that he was waiting for her. She knew that Ted was clearing the path for her and that one day soon, when the time was right and her family stopped needing her, she'd join him in the ground, underneath a grave beside him. She knew that she'd join him, in paradise.

PLEASE REVIEW!!!! I'd love to hear from all of you. I want to know what you think about this and other chapters. I'd also like to hear any other ideas you have.

I really would love to know what you think. :-D

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