Wrote this ages ago - well, sometime last week - and forgot all about it. Remembered it on the bus to college today, though, so here it is. Just because I always wondered if Andromeda and Sirius ever saw each other after his breakout. I used Lexicon to try and figure out the age differences, but I don't know when Andromeda actually ran away...so its as acurate as I could make it.
36. The Favourite
She was older than he, by several years. But always, she was his favourite. She wouldn't sneer at him, or tell him to stop looking at those muggle things, or try to fill him with pure-blood pride.
Instead, she'd tell him stories, and say it was okay for him to be fascinated by motorbikes, and once, when he was eight years old and he asked her if pure-bloods really were better than muggle-borns, she looked nervously around, then met his eyes and told him he'd have to figure it out for himself.
When he was ten, she left her family and married a muggle-born. When Sirius heard, he grinned widely, and wrote to her, telling her in his childish scrawl how proud of her he was.
When he was thirteen, he heard that she'd had a daughter; he snuck out of the house one night and caught the night bus to Andromeda's house. She opened the door to him, and nearly burst into tears at the sight of him, half-nervous, hafl-defiant, with a smile she'd missed. When she'd asked him, her voice shaky, what he was doing here, he replied with a bright, "I've come to see my favourite cousin."
"You'll get into so much trouble, Sirius!" She'd hissed, but she let him into her home, introduced him to her husband and let him hold her daughter. He spent several hours there, before she apparated him home. He told her she better go, fast, and that if he was caught he wouldn't admit where he'd been.
"I won't let them hurt you." He told her, and she was deeply touched by the protectiveness of the young boy, the only member of her family to feel like family.
She watched him climb up the house and through the window, and waited outside for ten minutes. If he was caught, she was sure she'd hear something from inside the house. If she had to, she'd rescue him, get him away from them and take him home.
She'd told him never to do it again, for it was too risky. He ignored her, as she'd known he would, and several times during the holidays he'd visit her. She never admitted it, but she was glad of it.
When he was sixteen, and he left home, the first thing he did after moving into James' was visit her.
"I broke away." He told her when she opened the door. "I'm not one of them anymore, either."
She hugged him then, two outcasts, and told him she was proud.
He visited her often over the next few years, babysat her daughter and laughed with her husband. They were the only relations each could claim to have.
And then when she saw his picture on the front page of the Daily Prophet, the headline screaming that he was a murderer, a Death Eater, she cried.
"Not Sirius." She whispered. "Not Sirius."
She refused to believe it, and Ted refused to talk about it, when Dora heard about it, she looked Andromeda dead in the eye and told her it was all lies.
"It's just a mistake." She said flatly. "It'll work out. Can we visit him in prison?"
They couldn't, of course, it wasn't allowed, but for months Andromeda was tormented by the memory of a teenage boy risking everything to see her.
The years passed and she forced herself not to think of Sirius, of her favourite cousin, not to argue with herself whether he was innocent or not. When he broke out, she cried again, because the headlines still screamed that he was a murderer. She found herself laying awake some nights, listening for the sound of the doorbell, imagining that she'd see him, stood on her doorstep, half nervous, half defiant, with a grin and telling her he'd come to see his favourite cousin.
And then Dora told her Voldemort was back and that she'd joined the Order of the Phoenix. And she talked Andromeda into going to their headquarters for dinner on night, grinning away and refusing to tell her why.
He was waiting in the hallway. He looked older, and he'd changed so much, but she still recognised him.
"Sirius." She whispered.
"Hey." He said, and offered her a little grin. "Did you come to see your favourite cousin?"
She'd laughed and hugged him and told him he'd worried her half to death.
He laughingly apologised, and then they talked for hours, and it was just like when they were kids. She saw the little changes in him, the things Azkaban had done, but also the boy he'd been, the spirit that refused to break. He saw the maturity she'd developed, as well as that girl who'd never tried to change him, and her worry, her bone-deep worry for her daughter.
"I won't let them hurt her." He promised her, and she remembered the protective teenager he'd been.
He was always her favourite.